1n1REzE

Peter Watts 161 Blindsight
Months sometimes, according to the case files. For one poor
woman, a year and more.
Appeals to logic fail utterly. How could you see the bird when
there is no window How do you decide where your seen halfworld
ends if you can't see the other half to weigh it against If
you are dead, how can you smell your own corruption If you do
not exist, Amanda, what is talking to us now
Useless. When you're in the grip of Cotard's Syndrome or
hemineglect you cannot be swayed by argument. When you're in
thrall to some alien artefact you know that the self is gone, that
reality ends at the midline. You know it with the same
unshakeable certainty of any man regarding the location of his own
limbs, with that hardwired awareness that needs no other
confirmation. Against that conviction, what is reason What is
logic
Inside Rorschach, they had no place at all.
On the sixth orbit it acted.
"It's talking to us," James said. Her eyes were wide behind the
faceplate, but not bright, not manic. Around us Rorschach's guts
oozed and crawled at the corner of my eye; it still took effort to
ignore the illusion. Foreign words scrabbled like small animals
below my brainstem as I tried to focus on a ring of finger-sized
protrusions that picketed a patch of wall.
"It's not talking," Szpindel said from across the artery. "You're
hallucinating again."
Bates said nothing. Two grunts hovered in the middle of the
space, panning across three axes.
"It's different this time," James insisted. "The geometry—it's not
so symmetrical. Looks almost like the Phaistos disk." She spun
slowly, pointed down the passage: "I think it's stronger down
here…"
"Bring Michelle out," Szpindel suggested. "Maybe she can talk
some sense into you."
James laughed weakly. "Never say die, do you" She tweaked
*