PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 252 Blindsight
"So much more aware, so much less perceptive. An automaton
could do better."
He's snapped, I thought. He's insane. And then No, he's a
transient. He's always been a transient—
"They could do better," he said softly.
—and he's been hiding for days. Deep down. Hiding from the
seals.
What else would he do?
Sarasti raised his hands, fading in and out of focus. I hit
something, kicked without aiming, bounced away through swirling
mist and startled voices. Metal cracked the back of my head and
spun me around.
A hole, a burrow. A place to hide. I dove through, my torn hand
flapping like a dead fish against the edge of the hatch. I cried out
and tumbled into the drum, the monster at my heels.
Startled shouts, very close now. "This wasn't the plan, Jukka!
This wasn't the goddamned plan!" That was Susan James, full of
outrage, while Amanda Bates snarled "Stand down, right fucking
now!" and leapt from the deck to do battle. She rose through the
air, all overclocked reflexes and carboplatinum augments but
Sarasti just batted her aside and kept on coming. His arm shot out
like a striking snake. His hand clamped around my throat.
"Is this what you meant?" James cried from some dark irrelevant
hiding place. "Is this your preconditioning?"
Sarasti shook me. "Are you in there, Keeton?"
My blood splattered across his face like rain. I babbled and
cried.
"Are you listening? Can you see?"
And suddenly I could. Suddenly everything clicked into focus.
Sarasti wasn't talking at all. Sarasti didn't even exist anymore.
Nobody did. I was alone in a great spinning wheel surrounded by
things that were made out of meat, things that moved all by
themselves. Some of them were wrapped in pieces of cloth.
Strange nonsensical sounds came from holes at their top ends, and
there were other things up there, bumps and ridges and something
like marbles or black buttons, wet and shiny and embedded in the
slabs of meat. They glistened and jiggled and moved as if trying to