((True Name#Castor opines how far away she is from Lagrange on learning the news. Codrin has forked into Lenuța maybe))
The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream walked.
She walked to burn off steam, to stem the tide of overwhelming emotion, to deal with the uncontrolled and uncontrollable sensations overflowing within her.
When she walked like this, it usually took the form of stepping from sim to sim. As soon as she started to get invested in it, she would step on to the next. There would be interest, for there was so much that cladists and Artemisians in the two worlds housed within the Launch Vehicle Castor had thought up in the seventy five years that it had been racing away from the Solar System. There were scenes familiar and alien. There were so many small towns and jungles with hyperreal colors and office buildings and endless rocky outcroppings that stretched up toward a yellow-red sun. Perhaps she could have explored these; perhaps she someday would.
She never did. As soon as she felt that urge, she would step away.
She would walk in each for five minutes, perhaps ten at most, most times she began to overflow. Today was different, though.
Today, she lasted a step or two — ten at most — before the scenery changed before her eyes.
Blip: a crowded subway.
Blip: a deserted food court.
Blip: an island no wider than she was tall with a single palm tree surrounded by an endless ocean.
Blip: a bar, sparsely populated, beer-sodden patrons slouched on the bartop.
Blip: basalt plains, bright sun, countless thirdracers basking in the warmth.
She walked, and then she began to jog, then to run, and the scenery arrived and vanished in a flicker before her eyes.
She could not see, anyway: her eyes were too full of tears.
When, at last, she skidded to a halt, it was in the living room of her home, hers and Codrin’s.