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ethereal and earthy, round and graceful in a way I could never be. Her eyes draw me in. They’re the brown of the soil, the brown of reality.  
    “You’re a Jumper, aren’t you?”   Her words hang breathless in my ear.  
    I wonder how she knows, then I realize that the implants on my head are visible. My own hair had to go when I joined Algor. I nod. “Yes, I’ve been in almost a year.”   I realize that I’m responding to her. I want to sleep with her. I want to feel her cream-colored skin under my wandering fingers.  
    She leans closer. Her breath tickles me, butterflies fluttering near my ear. “Tell me about the stars, Jumper woman. Come back to my place and tell me what it’s like to walk through the universe.”  
    We spend three hours in bed before I realize that I have to get home. I have to get up early, and the nurse will be waiting for me. I kiss Patrice on the eyes, the lips, the breasts, the stomach...I pull myself away and head for the door. She sits up, covered only by a thin sheet. “You will be back, won’t you? I don’t want you to walk out on me.”   I realize she means it.  
    “I’ll be back,” I say, and realize I mean it.  
    I am almost home when a man leaps out from behind a blue Ford and starts beating on me. He hits my head against the side of a brick building and I can feel a sheen of blood dripping down my cheek. “Money, if you got any you’d better give it over.”
    Dazed, I point to my pockets and he rips them open and a splatter of coins falls to the ground.  
    “That all you got?”   I nod.  
    He doesn’t believe me because the next thing I know, he has smacked me against the wall again. I’m going to die. I know it. His fingers close over my hand and something breaks, then a snap echoes in my wrist where he’s got hold of me and I step out of my body.  
    I’ve heard other Jumpers talk about it. Once you’ve been plugged into the SYSTEM for awhile, whenever pain gets real bad or sometimes just for no reason at all, you’ll spontaneously slip out. It seems that once you trigger the brain enough, it can do it on its own.  
    Anyway, I am floating in a white fog and musing on whether I’m already dead and then it hits me that perhaps the SYSTEM has proved that there’s some sort of an afterlife when a jolt knocks me sideways and I’m back in my body and hurting bad.  
    Patrice is bending over the prone body of my attacker. He’s dead, that much is obvious. She silently helps me up and we get out of the area before the cops come. She takes me back to her place and cleans me up and then she takes me to a hospital. I don’t ask how she knew I needed help. I don’t ask what she did to the man. I don’t want to know. I do call the nurse to tell her I’ll be late and she says my mother died less than an hour before. That night, I move in with Patrice.  

    The Rift scintillates and I snap out of my fugue. A presence draws near. I’ve never felt anything like it before. I look around, hoping it’s Jorge but it isn’t and I stumble back, (it is possible to stumble over your own thoughts—this I have proved many times). There, peering over the edge of the Rift, is the gaseous form from which the life force emanates. And it’s hungry.  
    I spin and head out into open space. If I can get far enough away, fast enough, I can trigger the emergency code that will translate through the SYSTEM and warn them to get me the hell away from here.  
    The creature, or whatever it is, follows. I have never seen anything quite so beautiful. It is brilliant and vibrant and shimmering and part of the Rift itself. It drifts closer, like some ethereal cloud, but before it can reach me, the SYSTEM’s code kicks in and I am suddenly snapped back, like when you stretch out a rubber-band until it almost breaks and then you let go. The jolt as I hit back into my body hurts.
    I have been out for seven hours. Margaret quietly unlocks the restraints. She puts me through a