In the slow sinkage of that, the recognitions, I began to know what to do.

If not for the ark, I would have made a different choice.

The end of the text I’d seen in the Unitopia visitor center, so long ago, read:

But once you got used to this new perspective, you’d look at the ground and it’d open up its layers, past topsoil and earthworms, down into the deeper epidermis, until you’re overcoming a sense of vertigo, because even though you’re standing right there, not falling at all, below you everything is revealing itself to you superfast. And maybe then, while still staring at the ground, even more would open up to you and you’d regress to the same spot five years, ten years, fifty years, two hundred years ago … until, when you look up again, there’s no street at all and you’re in the middle of a forest, and there are more birds and animals than you could ever imagine because you’ve never seen that many in one place. You’ve never even seen this many old-growth trees before. You’ve never known that the world was once like this, except in the abstract.

You’re, in fact, standing on an alien planet. And once you got used to that, maybe then … only then … you’d be able to reach a level in which you inhabit the consciousness of an animal—something less advanced, at first, like a tortoise or squirrel, and then work your way up to something “fairly” intelligent, like a wild boar or a raccoon.

And once you’d worked your way “up” to human, or sideways to human, or down to human … whatever that looks like … then and only then would you be allowed to look to the future, to think of a time beyond, only then would you know enough because you’d feel it in your skin, and in your flesh …

I don’t know if that is the change Silvina sought. It feels like just one part of something bigger. Just to see the world better, to be vulnerable to it, is not enough. No one thing can be enough. The ark told me that. The three formulas told me that.

To take the chance is to believe in death as well as life. To believe that, even with the odds against you, you should jump off the balcony. To trust you’ll get through it. Somehow.

I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved or cared about. In the end, I didn’t think I could bear to find Silvina again … and lose her. Not really.