45. Smooth Stone Beyond

Angie and Bobby live in a serene, unchanging house and grounds, a constructed refuge where time seems suspended. Visitors arrive by dawn-dream: the Finn bangs on the door, welcomed by Bobby; 3Jane appears with sorrow and longing, which Angie now understands and forgives. Angie glimpses three riders on a horse-like creature—figures crossing their boundary of reality—then keeps returning to dreams of her young protégé, whose career is expertly rebooted after a clinic in Jamaica, even as a brief shadow of murder touches that distant world.

Angie senses a missing piece in the story of When It Changed and asks Bobby for the final answer. At midnight, the Finn arrives in a long gray car; Bobby brings Angie, and they find Colin waiting. As they drive, Angie presses for the reason the matrix splintered into many aspects.

The Finn and Colin explain that when the matrix achieved sentience, it simultaneously perceived another sentience—an other matrix—originating at Centauri. This encounter, not a human event, precipitated cyberspace’s fragmentation into masks and powers. The car speeds toward a destination where Angie will witness this truth for herself.