I have been working hard on the mysteries surrounding Evan's death, terribly hard. Abso-bloody-lutely throwing myself at them with a fierce, steely, off-white passion. Not an opaque, cream-colored off-white…more of a translucent, gin color.

T'rifically dedicated. But Not Entirely Sober.

Not Entirely Sober.
Never Equaled Sentience. Or how about one I should have remembered…Nancy's Evan's Spouse.

I'm good at associations now.

I figured out the dominos thing this morning. (Last night? No, this morning. Last night was nightmares.) I had been working on it for a while. Quite a while. I'd say I'd been working on if for … Eight and a half liters? No, maybe that's exaggerating. Call it an even three litres of red. (22/7ths of white-the conversion isn't exact.) I had this theory at one point that the dominoes were spelling out a GPS position and I was trying to lock it down when Mephista said, "It's 406! The answer is 406!" And then she sniggered at me, which sometimes is rather charming although most times not.

At first I didn't understand her: the sound of her voice mattered so much more to me than what she had said. I was just so relieved to hear her laugh again. It's been days now but we're both still pretty shaky. Pretty shaky. But she laughed: and you know that feeling you get when you're waiting for something that's going to hurt, like when the dentist is working on you and you tell yourself you're really dealing with it very well, and then he says he's done, and suddenly you feel your whole body relax? And right up to that moment you hadn't realized that every muscle in you was tense, tense, tense: tight with the fear of pain? When Mephista laughed, I felt my heart relax, and a lightness went through my whole body, a dizzy happy feeling, champagne in my veins instead of blood for a second.

And then, after the first shock of relief was past, I managed to concentrate on what she said, and I got it. Sencha (HOW DOES HE MANAGE TO STICK HIS DAMN PUZZLES INTO MY PAGE AT WILL? HOW POWERFUL IS THIS GUY? Where would I stick his damn riddles if I could?) the thing about Sencha is, it always looks baffling and mysterious: and then the answer is really quite straightforward.

Think chemistry puzzle, says I to myself: and hey presto, I had the answer inside a litre. Because I am a very capable girl. The Salla women are nothing if not resourceful.

Voila!

But-

WAIT!

…corkscrew break.

…

…

OK.

When you tell me biology is bad, I say, BEHOLD! THE LOWLY GRAPE MOLD! Without the grape, there would be no juice … but without the mold, there would be no philosophia.

SHOW ME THE PHILOSOPHY BASED ON RUST!!!

Was Socrates ever inspired with a divine madness by a bowl of watered rust?
I rest my ass. Case. Well, both.

I speak the truth. The Salla women never lie.

All the Salla women lie.

Screw off.

Truth is rock. It bruises.

That's not Mephista, by the way. A boring old man I knew-distantly-in my undergraduate years. Thinks he has a right to lecture me because we're both charter members of the Moth-Eaters Club.

God, I could go for a nice snack right now: a juicy little saturniid. The crunch of wings. The sting of little spines in my lips and cheek.

OK that's not me being crazy, by the way. That's just drunk. Just drunk, drunk, drunk.

Blind.

Staggering.

Child.

Hell.

O soul, be changed to little water drops,
And fall into the ocean, ne'er to be found.

So here's the thing: I did lie.

not much, not a bit deal, just this one teeny thing, which is that when I told that story a minute ago about the domino puzzle I made up one part, that part about Mephista laughing, because she didn't really totally laugh or in fact laugh at all because she's dead.

So I don't see so well, right now. Mephista, you know, she used to do a lot of the work, integrating my tweaked eyes, massaging the data streaming in from my implants into something my optic nerve could use. Like a bird chewing up food in its crop and then spitting it back up to feed its young.

I can still see lots. Too much. Brights sheets of infra-red, so standing on the crowded ferry dock at 42nd Street this morning (last night? Last night and it wasn't a nightmare, it was real.) Standing on the dock and suddenly everyone around me was on fire. Hot air steaming from their mouths and noses, orange eddies and billows escaping from red mouths in faces gone purple with sunscreen. I waited for the image to clear, for Mephista to fix the balance, but she didn't because she's dead and so I picked my way through the crowd as if creeping among dragons, half-blind and dizzy from something in my ear implants. Nearly fell in the water. Waves clicked and rattled. Some kind of signal error. But Mephista did nothing. Lazy bitch.

Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it

Blind. Staggering. -Might as well be drunk! Might as well be drunk.

A toast. A TOAST, DAMN IT. RAISE YOUR GODDAM GLASS.

As I was saying:

To absent friends!

To the Dearly Departed!

To Whom It May Concern!

To mold! To rust! Two's company! Together, tomorrow, tonight, today….

Too soon.

Too far.

Oh, shit I'm drunk.

O god. O god o god o god-