From Everett Dock Q-32

Sometimes I get confused. When things get bad here, I try to remember the reason I signed up in the first place. If I think about it long enough, I remember that that isn't necessarily the way to go about it. I should try to remember the reasons I was eligible to be a candidate in the Everett Group; it's not as if I had the choice of signing the dotted line.

Memories now are like books on the shelf, I know I've read them, but the contents are largely inaccessible. I remember a few parts, arbitrary things that don't have much to do with the story, but it's all so vague now. I feel like that's the least of my worries. Something they gave me has made me too aware of the things going on inside me.

It's like suddenly having power over things that are usually filed under involuntary muscle control. I don't have to think to tell my to heart beat, but I'm much more cognisant that it is beating, and I can't escape it. Sometimes I catch myself moving my lips and tongue inaudibly, as if I'm using muscle memory to remember a phrase, or a word, but when I realize I'm doing this it disappears, and it's hard to lapse into it again. Like when a person shakes their leg, it's like they can go on forever until the person next to them snaps.

I remember one of the exercises was to focus on all the parts of your body. You were supposed to sit there with your eyes closed, on the floor and hum some mantra, and focus on your toes and feet and knees, and everything, but all I could think about was Sally Mitchum, and telling her mom she was dead. I couldn't deal with the mantra, for one thing. Two rows ahead of me, Forester was really going at that fucking mantra and he was in tune, man. He was almost vibrating, he could've disassembled his goddamn cock and put it back together- he could feel every little distinct anatomy-book piece of himself.

Well, I do remember something else now, writing this. Henry Bale pissed himself, right in the middle of all that. It was probably the third session, and there was Henry, crying, with two attendants leading him out of the room. The instructor was going nuts trying to get us all back into the rhythm of things, but the smell was awful. No one could look at Henry, here was this guy who always had a good word for everybody, and nobody could look at him. Before I closed my eyes again, Esther looked at me and whispered, "Sebastian."
I really felt bad for Henry, and there was Forester going on like he never left his trance state, like he was above all this physical shit and the smell of piss wasn't damp in his nose.
I'm trying to remember the sessions after that, and I can't. I don't even know if we did that exercise anymore after Henry left. That was the last time I saw him, and I'm pretty sure he's not in the Everett Group. But for all I know Henry could be in Q-33.
Even if he were, he may as well be on the moon, because I'm in Quarantine-Dirty Blue, Thirty-Two.