4
nched them. It took a while. I had to look at my hands very hard for a long, long time.
The rock dropped to the ground, blood-slick and glistening.
"I was trying to help." I didn't understand why he couldn't see that.
"You're, you're not the same," Pag said from a safe distance. "You're not even Siri any more."
"I am too. Don't be a fuckwad."
"They cut out your brain!"
"Only half. For the ep--"
"I know for the epilepsy! You think I don't know? But you were in that half--or, like, part of you was..." He struggled with the words, with the concept behind them. "And now you're different. It's like, your mom and dad murdered you--"
"My mom and dad," I said, suddenly quiet, "saved my life. I would have died."
"I think you did die," said my best and only friend. "I think Siri died, they scooped him out and threw him away and you're some whole other kid that just, just grew back out of what was left. You're not the same. Ever since. You're not the same."
I still don't know if Pag really knew what he was saying. Maybe his mother had just pulled the plug on whatever game he'd been wired into for the previous eighteen hours, forced him outside for some fresh air. Maybe, after fighting pod people in gamespace, he couldn't help but see them everywhere. Maybe.
But you could make a case for what he said. I do remember Helen telling me (and telling me) how difficult it was to adjust. Like you had a whole new personality, she said, and why not? There's a reason they call it radical hemispherectomy: half the brain thrown out with yesterday's krill, the remaining half press-ganged into double duty. Think of all the rewiring that one lonely hemisphere must have struggled with as it tried to take up the slack. It turned out okay, obviously. The brain's a very flexible piece of meat; it took some doi