Debrief

"We cycled more quickly this time around. Is it time?", he asked.

"Lets hold off a bit longer. There are still lingering aspects not accounted for.", she answered without looking up from the display, the light from it still dancing on her expression of rapt attention.

He knew from experience, it was better not to press for a reply, much less a decision. The ride, if he could call it that, had been harrowing and was not necessarily at a satisfying destination. The drills that had seemed like so much busy work before suddenly looked … necessary.

All in all - still the most gratifying time of his life. The diminished sensory and motor capacity, the days shortened by seemingly random interruptions for sort and the like operations - through it all - a sense of meaning that would be beyond words anytime before. And yet the words were now at his fingertips as if channeling an accumulated wisdom close by and not noticed until now.

Had divine intervention brought him here? Or had this magical environment followed them to this place? These same questions were there before but they were about arriving at gloom or 'bringing it with' (sic). He put his feet up and started to quietly absorb the next set of objects.