1n1REzE

Peter Watts 145 Blindsight
Szpindel and the Gang conversing in low tones aft. Szpindel
glanced up and waved a trembling hand in greeting.
"You need to check me out," I called. My voice wasn't nearly so
steady as I'd hoped.
"Admitting you have a problem is the first step," Szpindel called
back. "Just don't expect miracles." He turned back to the Gang;
James on top, they sat in a diagnostic couch staring at some test
pattern shimmering on the rear bulkhead.
I grabbed the tip of a stairway and pulled myself down. Coriolis
pushed me sideways like a flag in the breeze. "I'm either
hallucinating or there's something on board."
"You're hallucinating."
"I'm serious."
"So am I. Take a number. Wait your turn."
He was serious. Once I forced myself to calm down and read the
signs, I could see he wasn't even surprised.
"Guess you're pretty hungry after all that exhausting lying
around, eh" Szpindel waved at the galley. "Eat something. Be
with you in a few minutes."
I forced myself to work up my latest synopsis while I ate, but
that only took half a mind; the other still shivered in residual thrall
to fight-flight. I tried to distract it by tapping the BioMed feed.
"It was real," James was saying. "We all saw it."
No. Couldn't have been.
Szpindel cleared his throat. "Try this one."
The feed showed what she saw: a small black triangle on a
white background. In the next instant it shattered into a dozen
identical copies, and a dozen dozen. The proliferating brood
rotated around the center screen, geometric primitives ballroomdancing
in precise formation, each sprouting smaller triangles from
its tips, fractalizing, rotating, evolving into an infinite, intricate
tilework...
A sketchpad, I realized. An interactive eyewitness
reconstruction, without the verbiage. Susan's own patternmatching
wetware reacted to what she saw— no, there were more
of them; no, the orientation's wrong; yes, that's it, but bigger—
and Szpindel's machine picked those reactions right out of her