But then she has another thought. Maybe she isn't dead at all. Maybe she is in a third place, somewhere suspended between life and death. She looks again at Stone and tells herself they're not dead, they're in some kind of time machine. This voyage is about time.
Now time has begun to flow around her like a river. Days, weeks, months, years, they all course by. But she knows it is a chimera. Nothing can make time go faster or slower.
Then the bright lights are gone and she feels alone. Very alone.
But she isn't. She hears voices around her, drifting, echoing, and she tries to understand what they are saying.
"She's stabilized. We're past the critical phase."
"Do you want to bring her up now?"
"Not yet. We still don't know how it's going to go."
There was a pause, and then a male voice.
"This was the Beta too, wasn't it, Karl?" Another pause. "Well, wasn't it? The injections. That's the first time since . . ."
Again the voices drift off. She listens, not sure what she is hearing. She tries to process the word "beta" but makes no headway. In computer slang, "beta" means a program that is still being tested. Then she remembers hearing the word just hours earlier. She had been talking to some woman. But she can't remember who—“