tion beyond the Heisenberg threshold, a corruption of objective reality at the quantum level. What you’ll find inside very much depends on what you want to find inside.” I laughed. “And what is it that I want to find inside?” Boyd blinked rapidly. “Twelve spheres, crystal lattice neural nets, beneath an active electrostatic barrier. But you have to hurry. Once removed from the storage grid the built-in capacitor can only sustain—” Again Mason put a hand on Boyd to shut him up. The man could sure run on at the mouth. “Pull this off, Lucky, and you can have anything the surface can provide, gift-wrapped.” “Anything?” He nodded. “Anything.” I flexed my fingers and stepped up to the table. The box label was still legible. “Ascended thirteen to twenty-four. Are you a religious man by nature, Mason?” He frowned at me. “Religious?” “The Ascended, man, the Powers. I’m not messing with scripture, and that’s final.” Mason pinched the bridge of his nose. “A social anthropologist would have a field day up here. Look, Eve was simply an intelligent entity, like Jah – the Janitor Aft servitor that runs this ship. The Powers as you call them were designed to be living expert systems…Oh, screw this, can you give us what we want or not?” I shrugged. The box felt cool beneath my fingertips. I could see…circles; a pattern, four by three, like the top was glass. I could also hear whispers, voices, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then my name, repeated, repeated, repeated-
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