She gathered her things with hand-wringing haste. She made a point of avoiding his gaze.

Thomas reached out to press a palm against the wall, did his best to make it look casual. Suddenly his living room felt like the edge of a cliff. 'We should talk about this, don't you think?'

Sam sniffled, paused to pull a tissue from her purse. She did her best to smile at Ripley while she pulled on her heels.

'Sam… Please…'

She paused for an instant while still looking down. The aura of contrived briskness dissolved. When she looked up, two silver tracks etched her cheeks. She shook her head and smiled in a queer, apologetic way that Thomas found terrifying. 'Sorry, professor,' she said. 'I can't do this.'

Then she was upright, straightening her jacket and skirt with her palms. 'I never could,' she said as she stepped through the door. Thomas listened to her heels tap across the concrete.

Rather than meeting her father's plaintive gaze, Ripley sat listless in the oblong of sunlight, picking fluff from the mat.

'What's wrong with Mommy?' Ripley asked again, this time from the safety of the television's circus glare. To her credit, she had let several minutes pass before repeating the question, apparently every bit as content as he was watching the riot of soundless images.

So much life from so many angles. Explorations of a sea-wrecked world.

'Mom misses Frankie, honey,' Thomas said, somewhat amazed he could say his son's name aloud. Apparently Control was back online.

'But Frankie's just sleeping in the hospital. You said he wasn't dead yet.'

Thomas blinked.

He knelt before his daughter. 'What about you, Ripley? Don't you miss Frankie?'

'Naw,' she said with a shrug. 'It usually takes a week or so for me to miss his sorry ass…' Then she exploded in tears.

Thomas picked her up and rocked her in his arms, whispered loving reassurances in her ear. When she finally stopped crying, he sat with her in the recliner for a time, saying nothing. Soon sorrow became boredom and she began picking at his thumb. He made her giggle by pretending it was an animal ducking in and out of his palm for cover.

'Come,' he said finally, hoisting her into the air as he stood. 'Do you want to join me in my office? Color or something?'

'You gotta work?' she asked.

'Yep,' he said. 'I gotta save Frankie.'

At first, it seemed he had simply awakened with the revelation. But in retrospect, he realized that it had dawned on him talking to Gyges the previous day, only he'd been too rattled to make much sense of it. And even then, he wasn't sure it qualified as a revelation at all.