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everything went wrong.
    She hit her regular limit, the mental space where her Level 3 machine usually cut off and restricted her power. She was used to having to ruthlessly pull on her mental reins and slowing her energy flow to a trickle. Suddenly, there was no edge . Her energy kept spilling over the tipping point of her mind-constructed limit and going off into the void. She jerked her energy back in shock, trying to feel around in that space for a point where she could stop without her energy bleeding away.
    It took her much too long to realize that of course there was no limit. Kaede could expand as much as she wanted, and she guessed that this was where the stretching came. It wasn't the void she was pouring her energy into, it was the rest of the machine. She'd lost control of it after a certain point, but now she had to take control back and direct it further out.
    The process was slow going, but seemed to be working for a while. It was like feeling around in the dark with your eyes closed, flailing to find the walls to guide herself along. She was exploring the uncharted areas on her mental map, the farthest reaches of her imagination.
    She thought she was doing well when everything jerked to a halt again. There was still room to go, but now there wasn't enough energy to fill the empty spaces. She was stretched to her limit, and for several long, terrifying moments, she thought she wasn't a Level 1 source after all. This was all just a huge mistake. She'd been wrong, and everyone else had been wrong too.
    Then she realized that she was still following her old energy web pattern. She was still using all the smaller ports, but they didn't allow enough power out; it had bottle-necked. She hadn't remembered her three new ports when she'd started her source-trance, and now there was no energy flowing from them.
    Oh no. Did this mean she had to restart the entire trance? She wouldn't really be able to, not unless Mariko started the shutdown sequence.
    She decided to pull back some energy from one area and hopefully feed it into the area of her energy web that were absent of power.
    The process was hard. It was like trying to stretch out something that was too small to fit something larger. It ached, and occasionally a sharp flare of pain caused her to stop. She was forging new pathways in her own inner energy web and it hurt .
    Finally, after what seemed like an endless lifetime of tunnelling through her own body, she found the three ports and fed energy into them. That left behind a stinging sensation sharper than the ache of making new energy pathways. The ache lessened the more she allowed the flow of energy to increase; she did so until the paths were well-established, if a bit raw.
    Her energy spilled outward faster, filling out the space of the machine, going so fast now that she didn't really have time to keep a map of her energy. Kaede was just pouring it into the machine and letting it flow where it would. Doing that wasn't a good practice if one wanted to keep track of energy and regulate it, but at this point, she just wanted to expand until the machine was full.
    She kept up the flow of power far longer than she ever had before, and it welled up inside her as if her energy were endless. She saturated every inch of the machine, and at last she found the edges that contained her.
    She rested, just for a second, not pushing outward. Her energy settled; now she could make a map of the power spread out all around her.
    That was it. Now it was stabilized.
    She was so pleased at finally getting it right that all she felt was keen disappointment when the machine started its powering down sequence. Their twenty minutes must be up.
    Kaede let her energy go and waited, coming out of her source-trance slowly.
    As her senses came back to her, she realized that she could hear raised voices over her comm system and Mariko yelling something back at them. What was all the noise about?
    "Nomura, are you with us yet?"
    "Yes.