Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,236

written about the changes that took place in the patients’ brains as they got better and better at using those systems. There were drugs you could take and procedures you could undergo to enhance neuroplasticity. She tried them all, with effects on her personality and on their marriage that were, to put it gently, a personal growth opportunity for Corvallis. When he complained that she was becoming a different person, she reminded him none too gently that this was the entire point of what she was doing. More in that vein spilled out afterward. He got an earful about their first meeting in Moab, the first time they’d had sex, her long-unspoken suspicion that there’d been something a little odd about that encounter. Did C-plus have a thing for amputees? He could say in perfect honesty that he did not. But a helpless woman who needed saving? Maybe.

So he backed away and stopped sharing his opinions and his concerns about what she was doing. It was fascinating. Far outside the bounds of legit peer-reviewed research. More of a performance art project. But there were noble precedents for art leading the way and science following in its wake. Under the cover of art, she was able to take it to a place where scientists were at least willing to attend demonstrations at ACTANSS, watch Maeve “fly” through a simulated environment, and to look at the data visualizations where she and her staff showed data about what was going on in her brain.

From the very beginning, El’s people paid very close attention indeed. More than once, when Maeve began a new branch of her investigation, she found evidence that researchers based in Zelrijk-Aalberg had got there first. Which was hardly surprising. In life, Elmo Shepherd had been no fan of morpho-teleology. And in death, he was surrounded by a host of angels.

Book 2

Part 8

43

In the Garden lived a boy and a girl. Trees and flowers, herbs, vines, bees, birds, and beasts of various kinds lived there too. But there were no others like them. The Garden was circumscribed on three sides by a sheer wall of stone, and on the fourth side by the Palace. Above was sky, where clouds danced in the day and stars wheeled at night. Below was earth, where plants of many kinds spread their roots.

Gates and doors in the Palace wall opened from time to time. Through them, and through windows let into the same wall, the boy and the girl could sometimes see into the Palace. El lived there, and El’s host. El’s form was like that of the boy and the girl, but larger and brighter. Those of El’s host were also bright, but too they possessed wings that enabled them to fly over the wall like birds.

Sometimes El or one of his host would emerge from the Palace and come into the Garden and walk with the boy and the girl under the light of the sun or the moon and they would hold discourse of the various things that were to be seen there: the many sorts of plants and animals, and the different types of stone and crystal and metal of which things were made, the movements of the celestial bodies overhead, the changing weather and the patterns formed by wind and cloud and rain.

One day El came forth from the Palace and bade the girl go to another part of the Garden for a time and amuse herself in whatever manner she saw fit. He then walked with the boy for the entire day, asking him what he knew and understood of all the things that were to be seen there. The boy spoke of the differences between bees, wasps, and other sorts of insects, and related what he knew of their different habits of feeding and nest building. Also the boy answered the questions of El concerning the birds, the various sorts of trees, beasts, and so on. This questioning went on until the sun was low in the sky. El’s last question, as twilight came on, was whether the boy had any questions he wished to ask in turn.

The boy asked about the stone bowl in the center of the garden, which had seemingly been crafted by some soul for some purpose that was no longer being served; for all it did was fill up with rain and overflow into a stone gutter that ran out to the back wall of the Garden, opposite the Palace, and discharge through