He wore the disk again, this time focusing his attention on the parasite attached to Kebe’s mind. As he did, all other streams of data ceased, and the world around him, the cave, Kebe and his million cells, faded abruptly into nothingness.

Through his augmented senses Noah perceived the parasite as a white leech, attached to the thought processes of its host. Data from it tasted different: far more subtle, more complex than human thought. As his queries prodded it harder, determined to glean more usable information, he noticed the parasite stir… and change.

The data his queries returned became garbled as the leech quickly executed a set of instructions too fast for him to follow. Almost instantaneously he lost contact with his query programs, cutting him off from all flow of external data.

The leech had struck him blind. Now he was stuck in mu, senseless save for awareness of his self and his grave predicament.

~

Time could not pass, until 240 bits of data reached him: _{Requesting realtime datashare.}