Steven nods, shakily - the bubble is half the problem, at any rate. But he doesn't understand enough about what's happening in his head to fully know how much it has to do with him. He knows it feels like communicating with the cluster, but different and more frightening than he can comprehend.

He hasn't had this problem with his bubble since he was a kid - which, really, was only a couple years ago. At the same time, though, it feels like an incredibly long time, and he feels like a very different person than he was then.

Maybe that's the person Lars usually thinks of him as.

"I'm too scared," he says. He can't remember if Lars heard about what happened to him, but...