You couldn’t tell. You couldn't tell what Catherine felt, what she really thought. Only what she wanted them to think she thought. And felt. She was good at that. Catherine was good at that. And Catherine wasn't Catherine. Catherine was what she should be, what she would be, if it wasn't for reality. The autumnal sunlight fell in long yellowy bars through the ornately pretty Georgian windows as the cloud shifted, momentarily illuminating Catherine’s wistful, long gaze. Her brown pool-like mirrors, the ends of long, long tunnels that separated her inner and outer consciousnesses. Her short, dark hair framed her pretty features, her slight chin resting on her clasped hands forming a steady bridge, her elbows resting on the desk. Catherine may well, in fact did appear to actually be listening to her lesson ( it was about Roman architecture and seemed at least a million miles away ) the rock pool was brown and murky, yet somehow reflective. A journeyer, a tripper through Catherine`s mind, having once dived into the pool mouth, down through those murky depths would have to keep swimming for a long-long time before they arrived at her inner, subjective landscape. Their-in, they would find now only a denial, complete, actual even to herself. Only a certainty that she could, and would make it stop. Stop what had started as tears. Yes, there were plenty of them. In patches, regularly. She didn’t enjoy how her first sexual experiences led her to feel later, when the men she had hoped had loved her snapped her heart with their icy cool, for instance. But Catherine had also always, at times, laughed too. And she had always known that, however hard she may cry, she would again laugh, because life was like that. But she hadn’t known she was ill. It was when she discovered, when she knew, when Dr. Killfoil had informed her she was a sufferer of mental illness. That feeling mentally terrible was caused by a disease, much the same way feeling physically terrible was, typically. But this disease had no known cure. But symptoms that could be managed. So now she knew that what was causing her to feel sad she only imagined did when in reality it was because of the disease. All those tears, meaningless, only symptoms of an illness. As much purpose behind them as a blocked nose has. All her thoughts and emotions, that which made her her, which caused her to feel high or low, happy or sad meant nothing, were just a disease. Then she understood. Understanding is experience (part of her had responded to the covert authority of the doctor. That part responded, reacted automatically, independently of her conscious understanding and she understood what her teacher had taught her, that she was a number, that she was data, data in a computer that computed her meaning to be next to nothing until she was running society’s sickening sacrificial program.) “YOU CAN ESCAPE” Catherine had seen the phrase without seeing it, as had most of the other passengers of the X31 that morning. The program switched on, the
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