Omega point

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Otto Klein sank into blackness as the machinery on the wall invaded his cybernetic mind and spread its pages wide.

Notes sounded, silver trumpets in the dark.

It always came back to that.

Why had he agreed to this?

The trumpets faded.

It wasn't right. He shouldn't have to see her again, not under these circumstances.

Honour appeared in the black, a ghostly nimbus around her. Her head was shaved, her face drawn. An ovoid scar ran from her left ear right the way round to her occiput. She smiled nervously. "How do I look?" she said.

Otto wanted to say that she looked beautiful, and that he was sorry, but he was a spectator to his own past, and could only say what he had said. Back then he was eager to hear how she found the mentaug, trying to justify himself, to make her see. He hadn't thought what the surgery might mean to her.

He listened as he said what he had said, and hated himself for it, as he'd hated himself every single time he'd lived the moment through again.

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