This section presents a subjective account of Flora's linkage with the AI network so it is not immediately clear what is going on. She is aware of:
an enclosing "induction unit" (p. 483);
the couch on which she lies;
the walls of her quiet room;
the view outside - silver turf, a fountain, a diamond shell growing a comet-mining spaceship, energy-implanting weather control modules overhead;
her past as slave, fugitive, servant, leader and companion;
a five hundred year old memory clear except where it has been eroded by quantum randomness;
her ability to renew important memories as her body is renewed;
a neuropeptide (p. 484) linking to the receptor on a nerve cell;
the presence of her guide although physically he is elsewhere on Earth;
the meshing of their identities;
many-patterned, crystalline, brilliant, multi-dimensional figures;
Phyllis, her human teacher;
sharing Phyllis' interest in harmonics and microgravity laser polo;
the downloaded configuration of the mind of her friend, Nils;
a physicist who had shut down his body while programming his mental pattern into the system and who now plans Earth's weather, designs extensions of the Web or computes the fate of distant galaxies, although most people prefer to remain immortal as organisms;
her merging with Phyllis, her guide and Nils into a new self;
terror as she flees back to her organic self.
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