“And the occipital? The temporal?” —The older woman, her voice full of anticipation.
Ank opened his eyes in time to see the man glance at her and smile. “Occipital and temporal are, as predicted, essentially on fire. Congratulations.”
There was a round of applause as Ank drifted back into memory. For the rising had not stopped there, had it? No, it had continued on until he was virtually amongst the clouds—until he had been engulfed in an array of lights the likes of which he had never seen, at least not up close—alien lights, foreign lights. Lights which pulsated and bled in and out of each other and seemed at once both physically alive and utterly abstract. And then he was being lowered, back through the clouds and the blue nothing of the air, back toward the pond and the body and the
