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the term, when he was assigned to visit a distant planet system which had an assortment of old mining equipment, she demanded he not go. Of courses, it was impossible. After another session of twisting reality around him, Rez was ready to flee to the ship just to hide from her.

  Things did not go well. The ship grabbed a hyperspace anchor point and spun the space past herself. Upon entering real time and space again, they encountered one of those incalculable accidents. A rather small bit of rock bounced off the hull at precisely the moment between coming out of the anchoring point and before the shields went up. It wasn’t too awfully bad, the crew thought, just a dent in the skin showed in the exterior cameras.

  The cameras lied. While it was no more than a simple dent, it was in the ship’s skin adjacent to the cargo bay airlock. When a crewman entered the bay to inspect, the airlock cycled automatically. Someone back at academy dispatch forget to include a minor detail regarding the area they were visiting: It had been mined for heavy metal crystals formed in ways no one could comprehend. That bouncing rock had left microscopic slices in the hull. Upon cycling the airlock, the whole dent suddenly became a gaping hole with loose shards of skin flying around the bay. The crew had to evacuate quickly.

  They waited for a bot to clean up the mess but none of the standard temporary seals would work. They had the raw materials for custom patch, but not enough for large holes. It required calculating for the microscopic details of the damage, something not typically available on a ship’s computer. It meant someone using a handheld camera, and the image would have to be transmitted back to the academy. They tried repeatedly, but between the signal issues from all the clutter in the area and the unusual nature of the damage, Rez’s instructor simply could not get a proper scan. The calculations came back too imprecise.

  Naturally, Rez demanded a chance to try. Viewing the screen display in his suit helmet, he was able to estimate the precise location for the camera on a half-dozen views. But there was still the issue of transmission. The captain decided to risk using their small store of slow propulsion fuel and backed away just a bit from the asteroid belt. It was all entirely too risky, especially for a training mission. So while Rez managed to save the day and they finally got it all patched and were able to limp back to the academy port, no one could save Rez. The entire experience offered a stress level few space veterans handled well, but Rez was still a bewildered student from a backwater colony.

  He never remembered exactly what it was; no one else saw it. His girlfriend had managed to plant a message on his personal device. As soon as he touched it to record something for her, it came to life. Whatever it was, it pushed him over the edge. During the routine check on the personnel before coming out of hyperspace, they found Rez curled up in a ball, his personal device shattered on the floor beneath his bunk.

  The actual electronics of such devices were microscopic. The whole thing was done by automation, designed and built by computers, and consisted of various strands of exotic artificial molecules. The most recognizable part was the display, which still had to produce an image which was human readable. The ship included an analyzer for most common electronic devices, standard equipment on such voyages. When Rez’s device was scanned, the computer suggested there was a high probability someone had added a 3D projection module. This would explain why so much of it was burned, since it would have drawn almost all the battery power in a single flash for just a few moments of projection.

  All they knew for sure was it had something to do with his fellow students at the academy. The automated medical scanning showed a comatose young man who did not respond to any of the array of things they could do to him. Whatever was there at the academy was a threat to him, so taking him back was out of the question. After some back and forth with academy officials and some others on the planet, the only reasonable hope was to see if the Brotherhood could help them recover their huge investment in one very promising student and hero.

  The ship switched to another anchor point in hyperspace and took Rez back to the same star system they had just left, because it happened to be where the Brotherhood had their hospital.

  9

  The Brotherhood claimed they held no secrets. They had always been willing to teach anyone interested in their stuff. However, the vast majority of those who came in from the outside to learn decided it was either incomprehensible or just hokum. Yet a few seemed to understand, but were unable to enlighten anyone in the majority who didn’t get it. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood turned out a lot of patients who were made sane again, albeit always with some curious changes in their personality.

  According to the Brotherhood, they simply restored the humanity most of mankind had lost. They weren’t arrogant or snide about it, but made no secret they regarded most of human space with strong cynicism, and a measure of disgust. They had never tried to take over anything and had always been content to live in relative isolation. The one thing everyone knew for sure was the Brotherhood could not be bought. This was the primary reason they were so often hounded from one place to another. What the almighty corporations could not buy was a threat when things were unsettled.

  Still, they could never be stamped out. Just when it was presumed they had been isolated to a single planet, and that planet was destroyed, they suddenly popped up all over the galaxy again. Whatever it was they did and taught always seemed to outlast everything which came against them. So it was when Rez was brought to them, there had been a time of relative peace and they were doing their unique work, much to everyone’s admiration.

  Rez didn’t remember the first few weeks, and the Brotherhood didn’t seem to think it mattered. At some point, the pain in his soul ebbed just enough for him to realize he was scared to live and equally afraid to die. He worried if he died he wouldn’t be able to escape the nightmares which haunted his shredded mind. Some part of him knew he was never alone in the room, not for long, but there was not enough difference between the healers for him to tell them apart at first. That is, they all seemed to have the same intensity of caring while never invading his space.

  His first conscious awareness was of music. It was soothing, seemed to resonate in the deepest corners of his mind. As best he could describe, it was almost as if the music squeezed on the darkness and nightmares, folding up small areas like an accordion wall and letting him see just a tiny glimpse of light. The atmosphere of peace and isolation helped more than anything else. Between the music and gentle presence of the attendants, always the same few faces, always quiet and trustworthy, he began finding the few bits of himself he could recognize. Eventually he emerged painfully from the dark place where he had been hiding.

  That peace was expressed in immeasurable patience, as if those attending his needs really didn’t have anything else to do. Eventually he managed to notice the physical differences, but for a time it was the same small group in rotation. They spoke rarely unless he spoke first. It was both disconcerting and yet reassuring when they seldom answered his queries directly. Often he felt they were answering some other question entirely. Yet, it always seemed to be the answer he needed.

  At some point, the questions brought longer and longer answers. The initial focus was for Rez to find himself. There seemed a lot of rooting out the mythology of others, only because it was necessary for him to write his own mythology. They didn’t seem to think reality needed to be so solid and trustworthy as was his self-concept. He learned not to trust perception and reason, but to dig for something much more substantial, to grapple with what was bigger than himself. The nightmares became silly little lies. They weren’t gone, but had no power.

  None of this followed the methods of psychology which were part of his education, yet all of it was recognizable. It was recovery by paradox, something he had scarcely heard about. It was considered a joke in his classes, but he wasn’t laughing now.

  “You can live only when you are ready to die. You can’t win until you no longer care.” And so it went. He never was unsure how or why, but it m
ade sense. Some part of him was absorbing all this, turning it into something solid and permanent. They helped him understand what had shaped his past. He didn’t have to blame himself for what happened yesterday, but it was completely up to him to decide if there should be a tomorrow.

  It completely reshaped all his expectations. Not simply the facts about the wider universe of which he was ignorant as a colony boy, but the moral significance of things. The whole universe was just a gauzy film which could hide things, but could never make anything clear. Clarity was to learn how to pull back the wispy curtains and see what was behind it all. The Brotherhood didn’t rehash with him the details of what the girl had done to him. Instead, they helped him see what she really was deep inside, a desperate soul without a bottom, an endless need he could never have filled, nor would anyone else. She was a moral black hole, sucking the life out of everything and everyone near her.

  During one of the teaching sessions, it occurred to him to ask about the fabled Big TD and if they knew what The Boundary meant. “Rez, our human conscious minds can only exist within a certain perceptual space. We experience the