The Salt Mine

“The painter would come into her body and Linnea didn’t come back till the painter was finished.”

“Can we talk now?” Verona asked him. The ship had settled into its jump, the first time they’d been alone in weeks. “It’s a long trip to Mercury Flats. There’s no good reason to put it off any longer.”

“Sure, we can talk. You’re doing good, Verona,” Clem Aballi said. “It’s not easy to take when everything you thought you knew turns out to be garbage. False notions, bad ideas, fantasy. It’s even harder when you’re unstable. So I guess that explains you. Even before you became one of those ... I don’t know what you call yourselves—”

“Devotees.”

“Yeah. That. Even when you were a person you had a foundation. The way you looked at that artwork told me you were connected to it, to something powerful in it.”

Clem Aballi shook his head.

“I was unmoored. You were the first thing in this universe that ever called to me like that, and then you broke me.”

“I broke you?”

“Yeah. When you took my mortality from me, you also took my humanity. What little of it I had to begin with. So you really want to know what happened to me?”

“You and your faction were pointing weapons at me, as I recall, Clem. And everything that befell you I warned you about in advance.”

“Oh, that’s true. That’s true. But you didn’t protest, not nearly enough. If you’d had an ounce of compassion in you, a speck of courage, you’d have taken the bolt to the head. But you didn’t have those things. I learned that quick. You were as dead inside as I became. I resented that for a long time. A long time.”

“You still do. I can tell that from the tone of your voice.”

“Can you blame me, Verona? I’m better than I was, but resentment still? Maybe so. I’ve come a long way though.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Where do I start?”

“What happened to you after the transformation? Where did you go? You disappeared. Believe me, we were looking hard for centuries.”

“I went to some dark places. Dark places, Verona.”

“Start at the first things you remember.”

“Right after?” he sighed.

“Sure. Whatever you think was relevant, Clem.”

“It was all relevant. I guess what I remember was the hunger. It was like feelings disappeared, and before I met you, Verona, I was all feeling. Hardly even a man really, just dominated by my emotions, and suddenly it was like all those emotions vanished and I was flat except for the anger. I didn’t know how to act because I didn’t know how to think for myself. I couldn’t reason my way into anything, so I did a lot of stupid things.”

“Like what?”

“Like staying with my uncle, for one. He’d claimed that he had this voice guiding him. That was how we found you, which was part of what led us to the vault in the first place. But after, he had no idea what he was supposed to do, or maybe it was just he was terrified of me, because he was. But we had all that dark tech we had stolen—AIs and processors, and relevant to me, we had the biotech, most of it nano, and because he thought I was immortal or in whatever way impervious to it, he encouraged me to put some stuff in my body I wish I could get out of it. That didn’t help matters any. When he realized I could impersonate people, we turned into a pair of hucksters really. Nothing seemed like a better idea to me at the time. We ran con jobs, small time at first, perfecting the art of robbing rich people blind.”

“How did you impersonate people, Clem?”

“Nanotech. I could touch someone and pass bots to them, into their bloodstream. Then the tech targeted specific neural receptors, mapping out the commonest pathways in the fusiform face area—so like a husband or whatever—and their brain would cross those wires with my face, and the brain makes a lot of corrections for you, helps trick them into believing I was Mr. So-and-So. Then we’d do something spontaneous, like make a new investment, empty funds to go on holiday, sell a property, something like that.”

“So they would look at you and see who?”

“Their husband usually. I could make them see whatever I wanted them to see, though. A secret lover, their brother, a dog, a hat. Whatever I wanted to write over a familiar neural pathway.”

“Wouldn’t other people recognize that you weren’t the real spouse?”

“That part was trickier, yeah. But because the mark thought I was really the spouse, the people who mattered for our purposes—business agents, attorneys, bankers, human or automated—they would register my authentic face as the real spouse. So I’d come back later, clean out the rest of the accounts, sell all their properties, disappear, try a new colony. That was one trick. We were richer than we ever needed to be in months. But, you know how it is. When something is that easy like that for people who had it hard for a long time, why stop? You keep going, keep pissing people off, keep breaking the rules.”

“When I first met you, Clem, you claimed to have a purpose. You seemed idealistic.”

“I maybe was at least half that before. My uncle, though, he was full of it, come to find out. He just wanted his. He was a con man, through and through. He talked all that stuff up to get those militants involved, was so convincing I fell for it. Then, after, I was confused, like I said. It’s hard to feel a connection to humanity, to a movement, when you can’t feel anything at all but anger and hunger. That was probably the worst part—how disgusting the food tastes, and there’s no amount you can eat to make the hunger go away.”

“It’s difficult,” Verona concurred. “A lot of the sect’s preparation and training all those years after the transformation targets these very challenges. I could probably help you.”

“Correction. Could have helped me. I’ve figured it out.”

“Certainly, you have in large part. I only meant, there may be some gaps. I wouldn’t presume.”

“Yeah, do us both a favor. Don’t.”

“Very well.”

“Anyway, I never did kill him.”

“Your uncle?”

“Uhm. It was useful to have him around. He had human needs. Even as loathsome as he was, that kept me connected to reality. He had to eat. He had to make social connections. A lot of those bad business decisions were as much the social compulsion as greed. Even screwing somebody over for him was a way of connecting with a person, as messed up as that is. Made him feel alive. When he died, I lost even that. And I was still a ball of hate, rage, hunger and anger. I didn’t know how to think. I decided I was either going to self-destruct and take as many people with me as I could or I was going to master my own mind.”

“I don’t mean to be, uhm ... how would you say?”

“Condescending? Your tone implies that, by the way, Verona, like at baseline, you sound haughty as hell. For your information.”

“No, not condescending. I’m not trying to be fresh by asking this, but have you mastered your mind? I’m asking earnestly.”

Aballi paused to consider. “Sometimes, I’d say. Sometimes the anger takes over. I’m maybe ninety-five percent there. That five percent, though. That can be a problem.”

“What did you do after your uncle died?”

“At first, I kinda lost my mind. But I used to copy his face for decades after he died, blame him for things I’d done, taking his face when I conned people, aping his mannerisms and behavior whenever I lost control of my own. I lied to myself a lot, as much as anybody else. I think maybe I was trying to replicate those bonds to humanity that went when he died, and I suppose I did it the only way I knew how, through him. As I said, I didn’t know how to think, just feel and react.”

Aballi paused as though deep in thought. Verona didn’t say anything, just watched, waiting for him to think his way through that difficult terrain.

“I’m wondering, Verona, maybe you don’t know, because you were given a mission along with the longevity, but I had no such purpose. And that ... that was harder than maybe anyone can imagine. You think people are so scared to die, but maybe this is the one thing your sect did get right. Death is a blessing, lights a fire under people. You maybe think, oh yeah, it’d be nice not to have to fear death all the time, but it also takes away that fear. Now what do I do?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean, Clem.”

“Well, you’re here, and you’re going to be here indefinitely—no time limit. So what do you do? What’s your motivation to do anything? The city you live in, you’re going to outlive it. You could live long enough on a mountaintop that it wears away to dust beneath your feet. So what? Living people, mortal people, they’re compelled. They have instincts to make a mark in the time allotted.”

“I see what you mean.”

“I understood this, at least viscerally. Somewhere deep. I decided I needed to learn to think so that I could think my way through it. I started reading and writing, mostly philosophy, moral philosophy, human action.”

“Where were you all this time?”

“Different places. I spent a lot of time in Dreeson’s, both Athos and Iophos. Back and forth to Charris. After I wore out Athos, I went out into the barrier worlds, way out into the Letters and beyond.”

“And all that time you were working on your mind?”

“Something like that. Figuring out how to use it, I would say. Then I decided how I wanted to apply it.”

“Did you build any relationships? Connections?”

“Closest thing was I had a Precops clone for maybe two centuries. I abducted him at first as a kind of mental challenge, to see if I could do it. I had tech in me that could control lesser bots simple. But a clone of a prime AI was a test of my abilities and a big risk, but I managed to do it without getting myself into any major trouble. I overwrote its deeper protocols so it couldn’t turn against me. I wouldn’t say he liked that all that much. Not a good basis for a friendship.”

“It’s interesting to hear you use that word, Clem. Did you ever have any friends?”

“I had some people I wanted to be friends, but the only people ever loyal to me weren’t loyal to me but to a cause I was using. To be friends, though, really, there has to be something true in it. I learned that mostly from failure. But you know what, Verona, I don’t know what you expect out of this conversation. You want to know what I’ve been doing for the last thousand years? The short answer is trying to figure out how not to be miserable. I get miserable and bad things happen.”

“What about when you weren’t miserable? There must be some times over the last thousand years you weren’t miserable? Not even happy times, per se. Decent times?”

“Per se? See, Verona, that. That’s that haughty talk. Makes regular people think that you think you’re better than them.”

Verona laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m talking to a regular person.”

“Touche, I guess.” Aballi shook his head. “See, now you got me doing it.”

“It’s contagious,” Verona said, smiling. “Anyway, what about it? Was there anywhere you found any peace?”

“There was a place. Some people. They helped me. It’d be recent for you, not so much for me. A long time ago now.”

“What do you mean, Clem?”

“It wasn’t so long before I left to come here. Just before that little dustup with the Athosians—the second one. Presumably the reason you came looking for me, thinking I was about to destroy the ring.”

“We all heard about that, yes,” Verona stated. “My new friends here knew a thing or two about it.”

“Yeah, I figured they weren’t just random travelers, especially not the bipal. They don’t seem too hostile to me, anyways, but I don’t suppose they can call for backup in this place, even if they wanted to take me in. They sure as hell can’t kill me.”

“I think they’d be open to the truth about you, if you’re willing to share it.”

“I don’t know these people.”

“I presume there’ll be time to get to know them.”

“I don’t know you, Verona.”

“If you ever did have a friend in this universe, Clem Aballi, it’s me.”

“Sure. My friend. You’re the one who made me like this. Cursed.”

“Fate made us. Fate brought us together then. And fate has brought us together again through time, through thousands of years and halfway across this galaxy. We’d be foolish to ignore it.”

Clem Aballi shook his head and looked away.

“It doesn’t have to be complicated,” Verona said, leaning in to make eye contact with him. “We can just exist. Be ourselves. See where things go.”

“It is complicated. This place? If it’s anything, it’s complicated. The people aren’t, but the place is.”

“That’s fine. I’m just saying this doesn’t have to be complicated. We can be friends, Clem, you and I.”

“You have a lot to learn about me.”

“I’d like to learn it. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I am being earnest about that. I know you’ve been alone a long time.”

Aballi turned to make eye contact with Verona.

“There were some people. Salt miners. They were simple people. Decent people. Just wanted to stick to their own. Never wanted anything more than that. A good life.”

“When was this?”

“I was trying to find my way back to one of these artifacts, trying to get away from the Athosians right after I’d escaped the rocks. Did about six months incarcerated and then bolted, out into the boundary worlds looking for an archeologist out in the Letters who knew something about the Kappa artifact, but I couldn’t track her down with the Athosians on me. I kept going farther out, looking to escape the trouble, but the trouble just kept finding me. So I caught a freighter inbound toward Hellenia, hoping I could poach a ride from there to Charris, maybe steal a ship and go myself. And I saw a girl there, I thought maybe sixteen. Beautiful but tough. I could see in her hands she was common people, dirt in her nails, nothing manicured. She’d got cleaned up to go to the station, but she couldn’t clean up that, I guess.”

“Where was this?”

“Omana Post. Little station between Hellenia and the systems at the outer boundary of the Protectorate. At least it was then.”

“I know it,” Verona stated, nodding. “The Protectorate was my territory. Not so far from Kalergol.”

“That’s right. Anyway, this girl, her people used to trade there, small stuff. Vegetables, tech, industrial parts for their bots and loaders. I think when I saw her, they were in for food, personal supplies.”

“What was it about her?”

“I don’t know. She had a look about her. I thought, maybe this one. And of course, I figured she’d never have anything to do with me as I was, and by then, I had a dozen different tricks for passing tech to the skin. I’d been running cons for centuries, so even the savviest teenager in the universe was like a lamb to me, just easy prey.”

“And that’s it? Once you touch her one time you can manipulate how she sees you?”

“Your people in the vault know how it works if you want the details. That’s where me and my uncle took that tech from. But yeah, I project a persona, and it doesn’t matter, whatever the tech in their brain tells them I am, that’s what I am. I projected myself to her as a kid. Then I met the rest of the people in her family, disappear for a minute and come back, then they all see a kid, a hungry kid who needs a place to stay. You can’t do it if there’s a lot of people around, but they only had seven people on their pod. So they took me in.”

“What was her name?”

“Linnea. Linnea Howard. You want to know why her hands were dirty all the time?”

“I guess because she was a salt miner, no?”

“No, they never touched the stuff with their bare hands on the job. The bots did all of the grunt work. She was a painter, Verona. They sorted all those minerals out of the rocks they broke up in the mine. Their ship pulled in whole asteroids to get to the sodium mostly. Then they’d ship it off to Athos and Iophos. And then they were left with all these powders, and she would take them, mix them in binding agent and paint on the walls of the collection hall. She’d go out there almost every day, no suit, just her palette, a D-belt, and a nanosheet, no thrusters or anything, just floating. She used to say that Michaelangelo would have killed for a canvas like that, in zero-G.”

“How big was the hall?”

“Oh, it was a proper outfit. Ten square kilometers.”

“That big?”

“Yeah, to pull in smaller asteroids and break them down you needed a big frame. The interior was just one sheer plate-metal box. And she’d go in there and do works in what she called yellowscale. Just basically dark, light, and this kind of burnt orange sulfur.”

“What did she paint?”

“Everything you can imagine. Space scenes. Earth scenes from the archives. Animals. Ships. Cities. Just any image you could imagine that she thought was worth painting.”

“What did she paint with? Brushes? I can’t imagine supplies were easy to get out there.”

“No, she’d print these spatulas from the same carbon fiber they used for tool handles and bot joints and the like. When I first got there, Linnea was a good painter, very talented. By the time she was a young woman, though, she was something different. You’d have loved her, Verona. She was something. Just a blank metal wall and a pile of dust and give her a couple hours, and she could paint something that would take your breath away. Watching her work was like ... It was the only time I can remember real peace. I’d go out there and float around behind her, no idea what she was going to do, and there’d be nothing, then random lines, smears, spots she would use to mark scale. And the whole time, behind us, the bots would be pummeling rocks down to dust, sucking it up in vacuum bags—industrial chaos, but it was silent, of course, because the whole collection area was basically a giant hanger for mountain-sized asteroids, opened right to space.”

“Apart from your memories, Clem, do you have any copies of her work? You know I’d love to see some of it.”

“I have stills of every section she ever did. Hundreds of videos, recordings of Linnea working. All of it’s in my ship back in the Battery. It’s there if we go back. I can show you.”

“She didn’t mind you watching her paint like that?”

“She hardly noticed I was there. No. Once she started painting it was like there was nothing else in the universe. Linnea, the palette, and the wall. That was it. She’d put buds in her ears, turn on the music, put up her nanosheet, and float out the airlock, and it was like she disappeared into a different plane of reality. Almost like a different person out there. The painter would come into her body and Linnea didn’t come back till the painter was finished. She was a genius, Verona. One of the few geniuses I’ve met in over a thousand years.”

“I’d love it if you showed me some of her work someday. Is she still alive?”

Aballi looked over at Verona and shook his head. “You mean two million years ago, I presume?”

Verona shrugged.

“No. They’re all gone, the Howards. She never had a family. Her brothers left the outfit when it started trending the way it did.”

“What way is that?”

“The way it always goes with Athos. The Trasp I could respect. Even if they were awful bastards—submit or die—at least they were honest with themselves and everyone else about it. You do business with Athos, eventually, Athos owns everything. When I first went out there, the operation was independent. Madaran Mining Co-op. The workers bought into the ship in shares originally, and when they wanted out, they sold their share and their partition to another family. And there were distribution hubs that the different families sold to in bulk. You’d have thought the people of Dreeson’s and Hellenia were made of nothing but salt from the outgoing shipments. Just crates and crates of salt bricks at a scale that would take your breath away. Then you think, trillions of people, a little salt every meal? Starts to make more sense.

“When I first got there, Linnea didn’t think much about the business, because her parents ran their family’s share. She was a kid, you know. She worked her share, then she went out to paint. Nobody there minded she did it. It brought a little light into their lives. At that time, all the different owners had say over where they sold. It was a fair enterprise. I hid out there, did work for them, lightened their load, didn’t eat a lot, kept quiet, tried to think. You know it helped me to think, watching her work, doing my own work, you know, with the salt. You’d be surprised, mindless stuff like that, separating, mixing, binding, inventorying the stores. A bot could have done my job just as easy, but I think they liked that they were helping me out, and they were, just not in the way they thought.”

“Did you ever tell them who you were?”

Aballi shook his head. “That would have been cruel. Their intentions were always pure. You might think that I should have felt bad about deceiving them all those years, but then, after all that time, if I’d have told them my real identity, what would that have done except break a part of them they were proud of? To what, alleviate my conscience? No. Linnea’s parents both died happy and proud of who they were. They thought they were good people helping me, and they were right. They were good people. Plus, I never had much of a conscience.”

“But you didn’t want to hurt them. So there must have been something there, Clem, guiding you.”

“Maybe so,” Clem Aballi stated, shrugging. “Let me ask you, Verona. The people you’ve outlived, have you loved any of them? Mourned them? Or do you love them in the abstract, like a piece of artwork—the way you used to stare at those walls, back when you were human. Do you even love art like you loved it then?”

“I thought about that very question for a long time in the vault. I’m not sure I ever loved the art, Clem. It wasn’t ever that, even when I was human. And, yes, I have mourned several people these past few centuries, especially before the war. There was real beauty in the Protectorate before they militarized.”

“Beauty in the Trasp worlds?”

“I always wanted to be an artist. I wanted my name to be on those walls, but it wasn’t ever the art. It was the connectedness, that place in their minds they go, like you said of this Linnea—the connectedness to something outside themselves, the frequency of creation. I always knew it wasn’t in me, so I gave my life to protect it in others, in the artifacts of such creation they left the rest of us. If I have a thousand more lives to live, I will never grow tired of seeking, of finding the ones who resonate on that frequency. The universe speaks through them. They’re in Trasp space. They’re on Etterus. They are on Athos and Iophos. They are in Hellenia and the cylinders and the Letters. They are everywhere human beings draw breath. I look to them still. They give me hope. They give the others hope. That’s why I spent all those hours staring at walls, at pillars, at inanimate human-shaped stones.”

“That’s the first true thing you’ve ever told me about yourself, Verona. I think maybe I could have been one of those people once, in some other life. I think that’s why I hated what you made me.”

“You made yourself as much as I did.”

“This could get difficult if you keep saying true things to me.”

“That’s what a real friendship is, Clem, difficult,” Verona paused, trying to regain her train of thought. “What happened to Linnea and her family?”

“Not just them. All of the Madaran Mine. It happened slowly. Linnea was in her mid-twenties when the first change with the Athosians happened. When I first got there, they bought at will, sold at will. Suddenly, Athos came with an envoy, offering direct access to the Athosian market to sell at wholesale, around the distributors. The tradeoff was quotas. What Athos wants more than anything, always, is a sure thing. It’s like a machine—the universe’s most gigantic machine. And it needs its inputs when it needs them. So they let you sell to them at will for a few decades, and then one day they come with an offer. I tried to tell her parents. I asked them what they thought would happen to their other markets after they began selling exclusively to Athos. ‘They’ll find their salts elsewhere,’ they answered me. Then you’ll have no choice but to sell to Athos, I warned them. I’d seen the Athosians do it before, with metals, with tech, with every commodity the machine needed to run. But I couldn’t tell them that, couldn’t make it known to them that I seen their fate unfolding before them. All they could see was the higher commission selling direct. And for a decade, I sounded like a fool.”

“You stayed with them that long?”

“Why would I go anywhere? It was the first quiet I’d known in four centuries, and this was before the war. I had work that helped me to think, and I got to watch Linnea do exactly what you said, Verona, to tune into that frequency. Just when I thought that I understood, that I could predict what she would paint on those walls, that I could discern a pattern, Linnea would create something so magnificent and different and divergent.”

“What did she think of you all that time, Clem? You must have grown close.”

He shook his head. “She wasn’t close to anything. She wanted to be elsewhere, and by that, I don’t me elsewhere from the mines. I think she wanted to be on the other end of that frequency, if that makes sense. Not in the receiving place but out there, whatever place it was that was transmitting. I was like a little brother, a cold, quiet little brother who followed her around. There was no warmth between us, no love. But I think she knew that I’d have killed anyone who tried to hurt her. I was fiercely protective. I think she appreciated it about as much as she resented it. I worked hard for that family.”

“The more we talk, Clem Aballi, the more in common I believe we share.”

“By my standards, you haven’t been outside your vault very long yet. The hardest thing about watching them is seeing them do the same things over and over, never even knowing they walk in the same footsteps, making the same mistakes.”

“I watched it happen to the Trasp. History, marching them backward as it moved them on.”

“Linnea inherited her parents’ share. She bought out her brothers. They went in together on a small vending corp. on Athos that did well. They were close. Both of them were always more interested in commerce than mining. Linnea just wanted to keep painting that wall. She’d filled thousands of squares along the inner wall in those years between that first Athosian deal and the time the buyouts began. She was thirty-six when the Athosians came back, making offers. Again, the machine. And I told her, again, they were only there to tighten their grip, and then, too, they told the owners and operators it was a deal—five percent over market to sell to Athos, to be managed according to the vote of the majority. I did the math for her. If people retired at the same rate, sold, and Athos bought even half of the shares that came up, the independent co-op owners would be a voting minority in twenty years’ time.

“But I couldn’t speak at the owners’ forum, because I wasn’t an owner.

“Linnea spoke passionately against the proposal, but at five percent, it meant families could sell sooner, two years, three in some cases. For us, Verona, maybe we would spend three extra years in a salt mine. These years are like days to them. We see them walk the same path, over and over, because it makes sense. They’re transacting. Buying time. If you’ve only got one life, it’s no life, a life in a salt mine.”

“How long did she last before Athos came for the rest of it?”

“Seventeen years, almost to the day of the vote on the buyouts. Once they had a voting majority, Athos compelled a buyout of the final shares.”

“Did they offer her a fair price at least?”

“That depends. That all depends, Verona. Fair’s a funny idea, you know. What does it mean in the long run? I take this, you take that, and we both agree not to cut each other’s throat. They gave her money and they took her home.”

“Where did you go?”

“Linnea decided she wanted to live on a planet. So we went out into the Letters.”

“Did you stay with her till the end?”

“No. I didn’t stay long after that. It didn’t go well out there. She was bitter and miserable. She didn’t adapt well to the constant gravity, even as I tried to alleviate her pain, she did not like to be touched by me. And that technique of hers, the yellowscale, the minerals, all the canvas and materials she ever needed, she never adapted to a new style, never found a wall big enough. I think maybe without the distraction, the focus, she began to think about things other than creation. Maybe she saw me. I think she finally saw me, Verona.”

“Or maybe she always saw you. Maybe she worried you would see her, the actual Linnea Howard, not the painter.”

“I never thought of that.”

“I shall have to see that. Next time I go back to Athos, I’ll go looking for the Madaran Salt Mine.”

Aballi shook his head. “It’s no use. I went back, maybe fifteen years later. A life’s work, Verona, a fraction of one of those walls. They’d sent a bot out there to scour that wall bare as soon as they’d cleaned all those co-oppers out. Tides over the sands.”

“Then maybe you could give me something to put back in our vault. You shouldn’t be the only keeper of such a treasure, especially in your line of work. A lot of people would like nothing more than to blow up your ship with you and the last record of Linnea Howard’s work in it.”

“We’ll see about that,” Clem Aballi stated.

“Was that it?”

“Was what it?”

“Something set you off. Got you so bothered about Athos no one had heard your name for seven hundred years. Then you resurface, a menace so troublesome we hear your name clear across the Battery from a thousand different agents, promising the total destruction of Athos. All because of Linnea Howard’s salt paintings?”

“I may be an animal, Verona, but I’m not a rabid one. No.” Clem Aballi laughed. “It goes deeper than paint on walls. Maybe you haven’t been out in the galaxy long enough to see. It’s not so easy to explain. I hope you live long enough to see it.”

“To see what?”

“Like seasons. They had beautiful seasons on Earth, Verona. The flowers would come up and the leaves would fall. The smells. You couldn’t believe the smells.”

“What do you mean, Clem?”

“Every place you turn where there are people and it’s spring. There are people like Linnea Howard everywhere. Not these pets in this place, I mean people, real people. They leave echoes in the darkness.”

“Have you been to Earth, Clem?”

“One day, Verona, when we secure the future, I’ll show you the past. Time is not what you think it is.”

“I don’t understand.”

“And likely, none of us ever will. It’s a story that can’t be told in one sitting. We’ve got people here to save.”

“How exactly do you plan on doing that?”

“For starters, we need to teach them to smear sand on walls. Small steps, I know. But somehow, we need to teach these people to feel again.”