[IC Inbox -- Snowblind]

[heavensreader]

Is it worki - oh. Ahem. This is Kesara Freamon. Please leave your message here and I will call back on you as soon as I can.







Wait, is it still - argh, how do I ma-

Comments

[devoutish]

It's real enough to matter. We don't always come back, do we.

[heavensreader]

It's not the same thing, then, is it? If someone really dies... it's not the same as this thing that only looks like it.

[devoutish]

I think of it as death and revival, myself. They look dead enough, lying in the morgues.

[heavensreader]

Do you... [she swallows hard.] Do you think it's magic?

[devoutish]

[His answer is tired.}

I don't know what I think it is, bubbeleh.

[heavensreader]

[Tired. She understands. She should stop for now, pull back... but how do you pull back from this?]

You came back twice, Mr. Solomons, you must think it's something.

[devoutish]

It did not feel like death. But we've been tricked here before.

[heavensreader]

It did not feel like death.

[She echoes it, and breathes out.]

If this is a trick then I am going to learn it. Learn how.

[devoutish]

How much do you care, compared to all the other things?

[heavensreader]

But it isn't the same. The other things are just, they're only these inventions that in the future we could make. The tablet is like a telegraph, isn't it? It isn't really so different. But souls are different. We aren't meant to toy with tings like death.

[devoutish]

I don't mean things like the tablet. Other things, Kesara; the most important things. The machines in our blood, the anomalies that look like us, the idea that we are not the first to be brought here and may not be the last. Death is only one of many things that we need to figure out.

[heavensreader]

Oah, yes, but - all of these things -

[She isn't herself sure of the distinction. There are a few false starts before she finds words again, and even then.]

All of these things are just - just - questions. With death, it's - if it isn't a trick then, it's as though the answers are wrong. The Church's answers, I mean, or, all the other answers to why men must die and what is a good life and what is not, isn't that so? If death is not death, then - then - well, I knew people who died and I thought I ought to pray for them and otherwise what will I do?

[devoutish]

Mm.

[That's an approving Alfie grunt.]

Think of it as halfway to death, then. Their body goes, but their spirit is kept behind.

[heavensreader]

[That... is a perfectly reasonable explanation.

It comes with its own horror, but one that she can parse, something imaginable. Kesara's breathing still stutters slightly as she measures the new answer, turns it this way and that in her head, but in the end she finds it sufficient.]

That could be. I think that could be. After all people sometimes are buried who aren't truly dead, or who must be but then are not... so it could be something of that sort. And still right clever.

[devoutish]

Yeah. And Kesara.

[He's not so much changing the subject as he is going back to the more basic subject that underlies it.]

You do well this time. If anybody can find their way out of the predicament you're in now, I'd put my bets on you.