Chapter 36
Chapter 36 — The Weight of Numbers
Aldren wakes from the big sleep to find stone foundations, a wall, and a fireplace have grown around the sleeping family. Meredith-Kay communicates telepathically about 'big me' and 'milk mum,' explaining where they came from. Aldren discovers the number 2 on his wrist. When Kayline and Mireth wake, Meredith-Kay sends 'love you love you love you love you 1 2 3 4.' Kayline has the number 1 on her wrist and Mireth has 3. The family examines the new stone structure and their marks together.
Aldren woke the way divers surface — in stages, each layer of consciousness peeling away from the one below it, pressure equalizing as he rose through depths that had nothing to do with water and everything to do with the particular opacity of dreamless sleep. Not dreaming sleep. Dreamless. The distinction mattered. Dreaming sleep was work — processing, integrating, learning at the tip of the branch. Dreamless sleep was the branch gone. The tree gone. The forest gone. Just the earth beneath, holding everything up without being asked.
He'd been under. Properly under. The kind of sleep that reboots whatever needed rebooting and leaves you uncertain not just about what day it is but about what century you've wandered into.
The light was wrong.
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