Sabin finally spoke. “Creighton, I want you to know that I thought Abby was the most special person I’ve met in a long time. A very long time.”

“I thought so too, Sabin.”

He picked up a stone and tossed it a ways down the mountain. “Have you thought about a memorial service?”

Had I thought about a memorial service? “No. It hadn’t even occurred to me.”

“When are you coming back to Dallas?”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel I can leave yet. If I do, it will mean closing the book on everything we came here for—finding out the truth about Ray and my father, getting answers about her village. I can’t do that to Abby.” I looked over at him. “I don’t want her sacrifice to be wasted.”

“Do you want me to come up there and help you?”

“I wouldn’t. I don’t think you’d be safe. I wonder if anyone here is safe.”

“What will you do?”

“I have to try to stop Ray Caldwell’s warning from coming to pass. That’s the least I can do.”

“There’s nothing I can do to help?”

“I’ll let you know if there is.” I hesitated. “Actually, plan a memorial service. You’re right. We should do that.”

I exited VR, walked downstairs, and sat at the breakfast table. Abby’s copy of To Kill a Mockingbird lay at her spot. I stared out the breakfast room’s bay window. Abby always looked out windows. She lived outdoors, in the jungle. She should have stayed in the jungle.

46

Bryson Nichols walked to the witness chair in front of the House Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation. He sat behind a simple wood table.

Chairwoman Jillian Cahill introduced Nichols, welcomed him to the proceedings, and invited him to begin his prepared statement. He cleared his throat, probably for dramatic effect—everything Nichols did was for effect, I surmised—glanced at the rows of representatives before him, and began.

“Madam Chairwoman, we stand on the brink of the greatest upward leap in human history…”

Nichols’s testimony, I discovered, didn’t have to interrupt what I regarded as my real work for the day: monitoring Cleary’s memory stream. I could simultaneously attend the hearings in VR and scan the stream—one of a constant series of discoveries of my new brain’s capabilities.

“Imagine a world in which every man and woman has immediate access to the entirety of human knowledge. And not only immediate access, but the ability to process and synthesize that knowledge instantly. Ignorance disappears overnight, and with it superstition. Public policy disagreements evaporate, for we all see reality completely and perfectly and come to the same conclusions regarding ideal courses of action.”