“I thought you were right there with me.”
“I know.”
“I thought—but you weren’t. You did come, or I thought you did—I made you…but if the last thing you remember is…”
Colby now looked genuinely startled. “Did I? I think that might’ve been the exact second when I…ah…got lost in a metaphorically scalding pot of unfortunate tea. The sort I don’t like, the not good sort, to borrow our original symbolic language for a moment. I remember feeling as if I were going to come, it was right there, I thought I was about to, but I was also feeling a bit dizzy and having some…memories, sensations, that weren’t us, just then. And then everything completely went away, inside my head.”
“I’m so sorry. God, I’m sorry.”
“You did stop. As soon as you realized.”
Colby hadn’t even been awake for that. “How
