George Yoritomo nodded his thanks, and his image collapsed and faded from the screen.
Stanton walked back over to the window, but this time he looked at the horizon, not the street.
George Yoritomo had called him "Bart". It's funny, Stanton thought, how habit can get the best of a man. Yoritomo had known the truth all along. And now he knew that his pupil—or patient—whichever it was—was aware of the truth. And still, he had called him "Bart".
And I still think of myself as Bart, he thought. I probably always will.
And why not? Why shouldn't he? Martin Stanton no longer existed—in a sense, he had never existed. And in actual fact, he had never had much of a real existence. He was only a bad dream. He had always been a bad dream. And now that the dream was over, only "Bart" was real.
He thought back, remembering George Yoritomo's explanation.
"Take two people," he had said. "Two people genetically identical. Damage one of them so badly that he is helpless and useless—to himself and to others. Damage him so badly that he is always only a step away from death.
"The vague telepathic bond that always links identical twins (they 'think alike', they say) becomes unbalanced under such conditions.
"Normally, there is a give-and-take. One mind is as strong as the other, and each preserves the sense of his own identity, since the two different sets of sense receptors give different viewpoints. But if one of the twins is damaged badly enough, then something must happen to that telepathic linkage.
"Usually it is broken.