Cal rubbed at his arm again. The nanobytes had disappeared into his skin instantly, leaving no trace of their existence or passage.

- Is everything okay Cal? The calm voice of the Mind sounded in his head, startling him for a moment.

- All the systems went dark for a few seconds there.

I'm fine, Mind. I think it's the testing equipment Dr T loaned me. Apparently it has an adverse effect on some of your monitoring functions. My apologies.

- Not a problem, Cal, systems all seem to be functioning within normal parameters once more. Good evening to you.

The Mind withdrew, leaving Cal to his thoughts. He rubbed at his arm again and felt suddenly dizzy. He moved to the bed and slumped against the wall, his heart racing and sweat beading on his brow. Pain slammed into his brain like a spike of metal driven into his skull. He groaned, rubbing at his temples with his knuckles. He glanced over at his desk, and the screen whited-out, fuzz and interference filling the view. As he watched, a shadow hove into view and a hand smacked against the screen from the other side. Time and time again the palm slammed into the image, each time the surface of the intelligent wall deforming more. Pain spiked in his head, and tears sprung to his eyes. The wall deformed, and the hand reached for him as he slipped into darkness...

... darkness...

... and green lines...

The Mindscape surrounded him once more, its stark simplicity subsuming him. The endless plains of his memory giving way to the surrounding contours of distant hills. Pain subsided as he calmed, the familiar scene of his mental haven relaxing him and bringing him contentment.

The ground beneath his feet was a series of interconnecting hexagons. Lines of memory and thought connected the vista—an endless plateau in dark green and black, bordered with contoured green hills, and a featureless sky. His heartbeat slowed, and he felt the familiar trance-like state of deep meditation fill his being.

A hexagon glowed nearby, and he floated over to it. But instead of looking into a memory as he had done in the past, a figure morphed up from the ground beneath his feet to meet him, green and black contours shaping into a familiar form as he staggered away in surprise.

"Hel?" he whispered.

"In a way, yes. But maybe not. This is the Mindscape after all. Everything is only as real as you imagine it to be."

Cal stumbled forward on virtual feet to give the shade of Helena a hug, but passed through her instead. Her contours reformed behind him, and he turned to face the memory of her, a bitter smile on his face.

"I miss you."

"But this isn't me. This is a memory of me transmitted to you via the nanobots you allowed into your body."

"So what's the point of me talking to you?" he responded bitterly. "You're a shade of the girl I used to know, a memory, a virtual you in the silence of my head. I need the real you, not some virtual half constructed memory of nothing!"

The last words rose to a crescendo of anger and pain, and he lashed out with his mind, the Mindscape devolving under the onslaught to leave him floating in a sea of darkness, alone.

Cal sank to his knees in the void, his senses bereft of input. "Oh damn. Helena. Please come back to me. I'm sorry, I'm such a fool. I love you."

A green and black contoured hand appeared from the nothingness and stroked his face, only the sight of it giving him any clue she was there with him. "You were never a fool. A numpty occasionally, but never a fool."

"What do I do now, Helena? Everything we thought was true appears to be a lie. Outside the City isn't what we thought it was, Takei has hinted that people have left the City before, but I have no idea who, or even when or where. There is so much I don't know, and I can't find a way out. I need you here. With me. I need you to tell me everything will be ok. I need you..."

"What you need to do is find out the truth, Cal. I tried. There is so much more going on than we know. The Outside is healing, it's no longer the toxic wasteland we thought it was. There are ways to exit the City. There are paths we could take. There are—"

"Enough!" shouted Cal. "I don't care. There could be chariot-riding flamingoes out there for all I care. None of it matters. None of it matters anymore because you're not there to share it with me. You're not there..."

The Mindscape shuddered back into existence around him, and Cal sank to the black and green floor, his knees drawn to his chest and head resting on the starkly lit floor.

The shadow of a memory whispered in his ear. "I am always with you, Cal, always."

~~~

Cal came back to himself, a shuddering breath racking his body as he disconnected from the Mindscape. Anger warred with shame and grief. Curling up into a ball on his bed, he sobbed into his pillow. After a few moments, he sat himself up, focusing on the screen on his desk. His hands clenched into fists and his teeth clenched as he struggled to control his emotions.

"I

"am

"so

"alone!"

As the last word howled from his lips in a scream of pent up anger and pain, the screen and the desk erupted into a fractured, splintered pile of components and fragments. Shocked, he sat unmoving for a few moments, and watched as the house bot emerged soundlessly from its alcove to begin cleaning up the mess.

"What the heck was that?" he muttered, all trace of anger lost in the confusion of the moment.

He looked at his hands in amazement, stunned at the ferocity of his mental actions.

Mind?

- Yes, Cal

Did I just destroy some equipment in my apartment?

- It would appear so, Cal, but the means of destruction are still under investigation.

Sorry, Mind. It wasn't intentional.

- Not a problem, Cal, accidents happen.

"Accidents?" whispered Cal. "Was that an accident or something entirely different? What the heck is going on?"

The bot finished cleaning up as Cal looked over at the photographs on the wall.

"Did I just do that with my mind?" he muttered. "Is that possible?"

He sat on the bed, his back against the wall behind him. Closing his eyes momentarily, he slowed his breathing again and concentrated as his old professor had taught him. Once centred, he opened his eyes and sought to extend his senses beyond his body. Tendrils of thought reached out past his skin into the room beyond; questing, searching, seeking, probing. Holding up a hand, he reached out and made a lifting motion with one arm, his mind fixed on the framed picture of his professor. The frame juddered on the wall, swung sideways and then lifted from its hook. Sweat beading his brow, Cal concentrated and the picture moved through the air to come to rest in his raised hand.

"Holy heck!" he whispered. Standing, he carefully placed the picture back on the wall, and leant back against the wall.

Mind.

- Yes, Cal?

How many people have the same mental facility as I do to talk to others without being Connected?

- At present count, just under one thousand.

Worldwide?

- Yes, Cal.

And can any move objects with their minds?

- No, Cal.

Disconnect.

Cal disconnected from the Mind and sat with a bump on the floor. "What on earth am I becoming?"

His gaze wandered around the room and, as had become the norm over the last few days, it came to rest on the pictures of Helena and Professor Kelna. He made a lifting motion with his hand and the picture of the old man lifted from the wall wobbling a little as Cal concentrated on moving it precisely and in a controlled manner.

For the next few hours Cal experimented. As he concentrated, his awareness of his abilities grew, and his fine control increased until he could maintain several objects in the air at once. But it was as he tried to lift an extra apple into the air that his concentration wavered. As the piece of fruit lifted from the bowl to join two of its fellows, there was a soft bong signifying a message was ready for his attention, and he glanced at the screen to see who it was from. The picture of Kelna, still held aloft by his mind dropped like a stone to the floor, and an apple hanging close by also plummeted downwards. Panicking, Cal made a mental swipe at the picture and it skittered sideways to smash into the apartment wall, the frame splintering and breaking. Realizing other objects were falling he pulsed out a burst of thought to try and catch them all. The apple closest to him ripped apart with a fleshy squelch, another exploded in a welter of pulp, and a third bounced against his foot.

As the house bot once again moved from its alcove to tidy up, Cal grabbed at the broken frame of Kelna's picture and watched in horror as the destroyed remnants of various fruits were cleaned and removed.

"I don't think I'm quite ready to start juggling yet," he said with a grimace.

Pain lanced through his index finger and he sucked at the damaged digit. The edge of the frame had snagged the skin, and he turned the picture over to check the picture inside had not been damaged.

The joints of the frame were splintered, and a crazy paving web of broken glass obscured the intensely intelligent gaze of his old mentor.

Cal sighed and sat on the bed. Bot, he commanded, and the house bot rolled obediently to his feet. Pressing a button on the top of the bot, he waited until the lid of the bot had opened to reveal the internal storage chamber, and began carefully deconstructing the damaged frame. Holding the picture over the bot so the fragments fell into the chamber, he pulled away the frame, and shook away the glass from the picture.

"Sorry about that, professor, it would appear I need a little more practice. I'm not quite sure what I'm capable of yet."

Bot, dismissed.

As the house bot silently rolled away, Cal bowed his head and cried, the last few days finally catching up with him in a torrent of hurt. After a few minutes, he gathered himself, dropped the picture on the bed beside him, and rose, moving to his small bathroom to wash his face. It was as he went back to the bed to pick up the photo he noticed the note.

"You are not alone."

The words were scrawled on the back of Kelna's photo, the spidery script of his mentor's handwriting scribbled at an angle across the plain reverse of the picture. Another soft bong sound from the room reminded him that he had a message. He reconnected with the Mind and glanced at the screen, watching a new message as it scrolled across.

"You are not alone."

There was no signatory, or sender registered on the message, and Cal stared at it for many minutes, his brain whirring, eyes unseeing as he contemplated the methods of the message's delivery and its import.

"You are not alone."

"Maybe," he muttered. "But where do I go to find company?"