SEGMENT 8
1. The child
stood protected by his Segment 8
chaperone, oblivious to his
nakedness; he didn't feel happy or
sad and was simply in a
comfortable presence of
mind. The child had never
known any other life; unexposed to
the typical emotional influences
of biological evolution
elsewhere. The child had
grown up with Segment 8
machines.
2. "I-20," Conscious said
softly, "teach the boy to
fly."
3. I-20 was not conditioned
to second-guess the will of
Conscious, so he began a forward
glide while the boy remained fast
and unmoved. I-20 turned and
beckoned the boy to follow
him. The lad stepped
forward, and not quite reaching
I-20, leaned into a forward glide
alongside him.
4. I-20 acknowledged the
boy's accomplishment, "How were
you able to fly alongside me?" he
asked. The boy returned a
psionic symbol that meant,
'coalescence.' The entire
epistemology of failure was not in
the child's memory, which blocked
any condition outside of I-20's
demonstration.
5. "Faith is a conduit to
reality outside of time dilation,"
he remembered Adam saying inside
the construct. Adam had been
given language, and was instructed
to quantify the objects in his
Universe with notations and
equations.
