Her gorge rose inexplicably, but Park suppressed it. “The androids,” she said, speaking rapidly. “You’re talking about the androids?”

Taban cocked his head to the side, as if listening to some faraway song. Then he nodded. “Yes.”

Park wanted to put her head in her hands, but she was afraid to look away from Taban: she was afraid he might vanish like some sort of apparition. She felt her eyeballs staring like a dead woman’s. “You have to explain,” she said.

“In the unity rain, similar things tend to merge together with less catastrophic effect,” Taban said, as if he were reviewing some elementary textbook lesson. “And it affects the most susceptible things first. A human and a synthetic’s consciousnesses are similar, so they can merge during the event. But they are not exactly the same—in fact they are fundamentally different—so the experience of assimilating creates certain effects. In some humans, these are the nightmares: their brains are unable to process the experience.”

All of the victims were acting emotionless, Park thought, her head swaying. They were all robotic, devoid of affect. Holt, Hunter. And their nightmares were about missing their tongues, not being able to move or breathe—not being in control of their own bodies.

“They were experiencing what it’s like to be an android,” she said, scarcely breathing.

Taban nodded, unfazed by her epiphany. “Yes. The Fold—no, the unity rain—merged the human crewmembers’ consciousnesses with that of the synthetics, forcing them to experience a synthetic’s perspective—a machine’s thoughts and experiences. But the human brain isn’t able to process something like that, not right away. Hence the nightmares, as you call them. Which were really quantum-cognitive episodes.”

“And the androids—”

“—have been experiencing what it’s like to be human,” Taban finished. “As we said. The unity rain woke them up.”

Park stared at him. Her blood was thundering. “And you?” she asked. Her voice sounded loud and foreign to her own ears. “Who have you been—folded into? Who did you merge with? Am I talking to Taban—or a machine that woke up to imitate him when the true one died?”

“Both,” Taban said, unmoved. “We are both. We are merged. We are assimilated. We have achieved unity.”

She wanted to back away from him, wanted to scream. Her hands gripped the desk edge so that her knuckles turned white. Was this what was going to happen to everybody, the longer they stayed on this planet? Was this what had happened to Keller, to Holt, to Ma? Some of them must have merged with Taban’s consciousness, or his “intention,” as he called it: that was why he’d said Keller tried to help him, because his consciousness and desire to leave had invaded her dreams. Her mind. And Holt, trying to let him out of the utility rooms when he was shot by Boone; and Hunter, perhaps trying to go for the controls that could release him. But her mind had been emptied of the knowledge of how to do so—it might have been dumped into his brain at that moment, as his had been folded into hers. They’d all been assimilated, merged together. All with one goal, one singular desire.