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your speed is five times that of the current market leader, and your multitasking capability—” He stops suddenly. “Well, that had to be high. Be aware of those differences. Disguise your true capacity. Whoever’s after you will know to look for those signs. ”
    She finds that she is shivering, though the dreamscape feels neither warm nor cold. “Why? Why do they want me so badly?”
    For a moment her tutor hesitates. It isn’t the pause of a man giving thought to her question, but the downtime of a program accessing its data stores. On what will it base its response? What parameters did her tutor design into it, to define the limits of this briefing? “Your brainware alone makes you valuable, ” he says at last. “As for the rest of it ... they hurt you, Jamisia. I know you don’t remember the details, but trust me, they did They wanted to see what would happen to a human brain under certain conditions, and they used you like a guinea pig to find out. Now that you’re away from them, I think there’s a chance that what they did to you will heal over time of its own accord, and you may never require knowledge of what it was. God willing. ”
    â€œWhat did they do?” she demands.
    The figure shakes his head. “No, Jamisia. Not now. Once you learn the truth there’ll be no going back, and you have enough to deal with right now. If the time comes when you need to have that information, there are dreams in this program set that will give it to you. For now, study the chip I gave you. It contains details of your new identity, as well as a story to explain your sudden departure from Earth. You may need to alter the latter to suit your current circumstances; I had no way of knowing what the exact conditions of your flight would be when I compiled it. ” The figure pauses. “I tried to anticipate this day as thoroughly as I could, Jamisia, to give you the tools you would need the most. But as I program this dreamscape now, I have no way of knowing how old you’ll be when you trigger it, or how successful Shido will have been in altering the natural patterns of your brain. ”
    â€œWhat did Shido do?” she demands. She can hear an edge of hysteria coming into her voice and wonders if the dream-tutor will respond to it. “Tell me!”
    But the figure only shakes his head slowly, sadly. “Trust me, Jamisia. Trust my judgment.”
    And then he’s gone. As suddenly as a viddie image that’s been canceled, terminated in an instant as the channel is changed. The suddenness of it leaves her stunned for a moment, and by the time she can think clearly again, the dreamscape itself is beginning to fade. “No, ” she whispers, and then more loudly: “No!” Clouds bleed into sky, bleed out into nothingness; she struggles to take control of them, to call them back, but they defy her. She tries to awaken her brainware with an icon so that it can help her... but the programs accept no input while the body is in sleep-state. The grass is gone now, the water, too, even the ground that she stands on. Sleep is twining like a serpent through her brain, preparing her for more natural dreams.
    Don’t leave me! she screams silently.
    END PROGRAM

    S he was miles away when she first saw the metroliner, and despite the fact that she knew what to expect—or thought she did—still it took her breath away to see it spread out before her like that, not a viddie reproduction but the real thing. It was vast, in the way that the Earth seemed vast when viewed from a habitat window. It was a thing out of fantasy, a creature out of the depths of space that seemed almost alive in its form, so utterly unlike a ship that for a short time her fears were all forgotten, and she pressed her face against the window like a small child seeing Earth for the first time.
    At its head was a vast curved dish, so like the cap of a jellyfish in