The fall dissolves my body because I allow it. The radiolaria takes my consciousness into the network because I command it. I do not perish; I am not swept away by outside force; the waterfall accedes to gravity only upon my word. The lingering presence of Commander Te'Qal in my C2 vertebra understands the value of a tactical retreat.

At age forty-three I stood on the edge of the Citadel with a jar full of brains. Two hundred and twenty-seven Maya Sundareshes replicated by the Vex, readied in turn as weapons against them. Sappers. Explorers. Lab rats loosed into a maze.

Venus was lifetimes ago, before Lhasa, before Neomuna. Before the network and my new becoming.

My Chioma stood at my side. Both of us in proxy suits, too fragile to walk under the shadow of the Citadel in our own bodies. Weak. Mortal. Scared for our lives and those of our copies, trapped within a linear flow of time, unable to stand aside and see that this was the happiest we'd ever be.

The only ethical choice, we believed, was to accept the copies' vote and release them into the network.

We should have crushed the drives, broken the jars, strained the tadpoles from the water and poured them into an incinerator, instead of dropping them into the pond. None of those copies were my Chioma; none were the true me. Frameshift mutations instantiated by the Vex to torment us with what they knew, and what was beyond our control. Photonegatives, skewing further and further out of alignment the longer they were allowed to exist in something approaching linear time.

Those Venus-Chiomas still walking the network, the lingering remains of the Vex's first assault on my life, are crude parasites. Mimics of the real plant. Boquila trifoliata hoping the angles of their misshapen leaves will keep them from my notice.

I know my Chioma, and she knows me.

If she does not know me with the light of an Echo around my neck, then she is not the true Chioma, she is a weed in the flowerbed choking out a true rose.

I control the variables. I command the Vex. There is nowhere that my Chioma can hide from me where I will not find her. There is nobody who can keep her from me.

The waterfall at the heart of Nessus sweeps me into the information network and reassembles my body. The mantle on my shoulders sings with purpose as sweetly as ever. Te'Qal's memory guides me yet. A setback will not stop my work; one voice silenced will not end the chorus.

I lift my hand, breathe, and let the baton fall.