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REFLECTION 14: Much Later, While Watching the Atlantic

Why should storms provoke violence? Why must our moods reflect the weather? We leave the winter cities and travel to warm southern lands because winter exhausts us. We have huddled in the brightly lit apartments for too long; we know the night waits outside, and feel it even when our drapes hide us. We want warmth and a natural breeze. Most of all, we want sunlight.

Would Rick Johnson have been shot without the storm? I don’t believe he would, because he wouldn’t have been so anxious to kill us without it. Had he not been so anxious to kill us, his life might have been spared, at that time at least.

Might have been, but would it really have been? He said he had Chelle’s secret, which was once Jane Sims’s. Susan says she does not have it, and I believe her. Should I believe Rick as well?

To what degree was Rick really Rick? How much of the man who went from West Point to Johanna was left? What did the Os take away, and what did they leave behind? Does anyone, any wise man or woman, any supercomputer concealed beneath a mountain, really understand the Os? We do not even understand ourselves. The proper study of mankind is man, they say: nosce te ipsum. But what do the Os say?

Did Susan know what was coming when she surrendered her gun? I have not dared to ask her and will not so dare. I have brought her near to suicide already. I must not—and will not—do that again.

The suicide ring must be destroyed and destroyed utterly, not only for Virginia’s sake but for Susan’s. Virginia might be protected; what measures could protect Susan from herself?

What of the shooter? What of Charles? Did he plan from the beginning to kill Rick? Did he fear that we, with the Os’s model before us, would do as they did?

I would have. Silent leges enim inter arma. In order that Earth survive, our rulers would gladly render Earth not worth saving.

Was he unarmed? He’s surely working for somebody, but for whom?

And why?