Human beings are superhuman.
Let the moon and the stars direct you.
49
When you reach the approximate location of a Hotspot, cut the engine.
You will be in total darkness, in total silence.
If you wish, you may lie down at the bottom of the boat.
The fact that you feel like you’re dying doesn’t mean that you will die.
Remember that, should you die, your body will yield a trove of crucial data.
Remember that, should you die, your Field Instructions will provide a record of your mission and lessons for those who follow you.
Remember that, should you die, you will have triumphed merely by delivering your physical person into our hands.
The boat’s movement on the sea will remind you of a cradle.
You’ll recall your mother rocking you in her arms when you were a child.
You’ll recall that she has always loved you fiercely and entirely.
You’ll discover that you have forgiven her.
You’ll understand that she concealed your paternity out of faith that her own infinite love would be enough.
The wish to tell your mother that you forgive her is yet another reason you must make it home alive.
The thought that your father will never know what he has lost is another reason you must make it home alive.
The need to tell him what he very nearly lost is another reason you must make it home alive.
You will not be able to wait, but you will have to wait.
We have never failed to recover a Citizen Agent, dead or alive, who managed to reach a Hotspot.
50
Hotspots are not hot.
Even a warm night turns frigid at the wet bottom of a boat.
Looking up at scattered, blinking stars can feel like floating above them and looking down.
The universe will seem to hang beneath you in its milky glittering mystery.
Only when you notice a woman like yourself, crumpled and bleeding at the bottom of a boat, will you realize what has happened.
You’ve deployed the Dissociation Technique without meaning to.
There is no harm in this.
Released from pain, you can waft free in the night sky.
Released from pain, you can enact the fantasy of flying that you nurtured as a child.
Keep your body in view at all times; if your mind loses track of your body, it may be hard—even impossible—to reunite the two.
As you waft free in the night sky, you may notice a steady rhythmic churning in the gusting wind.
Helicopter noise is inherently menacing.
A helicopter without lights is like a mixture of bat, bird, and monstrous insect.
Resist the urge to flee this apparition; it has come to save you.
51
Know that in returning to your body, you are consenting to be racked by physical pain.
Know that in returning to your body, you are consenting to undertake a jarring reimmersion into an altered life.
Some Citizen Agents have chosen not to return.
They have left their bodies behind, and now they glitter sublimely in the heavens.
In the new heroism, the goal is to transcend individual life, with its petty pains and loves, in favor of the dazzling collective.
You may picture each pulsing star as the heroic spirit of a former agent beauty.