PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 192 Blindsight
business."
"She's just taking an interest. Not everyone considers childhood
memories off-limits, you know."
"Thanks for the insight." As if people had never taken an
interest before. As if Helen hadn't taken an interest when she went
through my drawers and filtered my mail and followed me from
room to room, asking the drapes and the furniture why I was
always so sullen and withdrawn. She'd taken such an interest that
she wouldn't let me out the door until I confided in her. At twelve
I'd been stupid enough to throw myself on her mercy, It's personal,
Mom. I'd just rather not talk about it. Then I'd made my escape
into the bathroom when she demanded to know if it was trouble
online, trouble at school, was it a girl, was it a—a boy, what was it
and why couldn't I just trust my own mother, don't I know I can
trust her with anything? I waited out the persistent knocking and
the insistent concerned voice through the door and the final,
grudging silence that followed. I waited until I was absolutely sure
she'd gone away, I waited for five fucking hours before I came out
and there she was, arms folded in the hall, eyes brimming with
reproach and disappointment. That night she took the lock off the
bathroom door because family should never shut each other out.
Still taking an interest.
"Siri," Pag said quietly.
I slowed my breathing, tried again: "She doesn't just want to talk
about family. She wants to meet them. She keeps trying to drag
me to meet hers. I thought I was hooking up with Chelsea, you
know, nobody ever told me I'd have to share airspace with..."
"You do it?"
"Once." Reaching, grasping things, feigning acceptance, feigning
friendship. "It was great, if you like being ritually pawed by a
bunch of play-acting strangers who can't stand the sight of you and
don't have the guts to admit it."
Pag shrugged, unsympathetic. "Sounds like typical old-school
family. You're a synthesist, man. You deal with way wonkier
dynamics than that."
"I deal with other people's information. I don't vomit my own
personal life into the public sphere. Whatever hybrids and the