1n1REzE

Peter Watts 257 Blindsight
were just sick of keeping it all in, sick of restraining yourself with
all this meat, and nobody else could be spared from their jobs.
This was my job, wasn't it Not synthesist, not conduit. Not even
cannon fodder or decoy duty. I'm just something disposable to
sharpen your claws on.
I hurt so much. It hurt just to breathe.
I was so alone.
Webbing pressed against the curve of my back, bounced me
forward gently as a breeze, caught me again. I was back in my
tent. My right hand itched. I tried to flex the fingers, but they were
embedded in amber. Left hand reached for right, and found a
plastic carapace extending to the elbow.
I opened my eyes. Darkness. Meaningless numbers and a red
LED twinkled from somewhere along my forearm.
I didn't remember coming here. I didn't remember anyone fixing
me.
Breaking. Being broken. That's what I remembered. I wanted
to die. I wanted to just stay curled up until I withered away.
After an age, I forced myself to uncoil. I steadied myself, let
some miniscule inertia bump me against the taut insulated fabric of
my tent. I waited for my breathing to steady. It seemed to take
hours.
I called ConSensus to the wall, and a feed from the drum. Soft
voices, harsh light flaring against the wall: hurting my eyes,
peeling them raw. I killed visual, and listened to words in the
darkness.
"—a phase" someone asked.
Susan James, her personhood restored. I knew her again: not a
meat sack, no longer a thing.
"We have been over this." That was Cunningham. I knew him
too. I knew them all. Whatever Sarasti had done to me, however
far he'd yanked me from my room, I'd somehow fallen back inside.
It should have mattered more.
"—because for one thing, if it were really so pernicious, natural
selection would have weeded it out," James was saying.
"You have a naïve understanding of evolutionary processes.
There's no such thing as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most