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P: Do you remember the kids telling ghost stories, on Sixth?
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C: Yes, I remember.
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P: Did they scare you?
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C: No.
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P: You didn't like them though?
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C: They didn't make a lot of sense.
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P: And you only like stories that make sense?
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C: We knew so much about spirits. Why waste time on something that could never happen? Ghosts flinging things around, driving ships, pulling people out of bed. It's not possible. What is there to be afraid of in a ghost story that doesn't make sense?
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P: Is this not a ghost story that doesn't make sense?
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C: Is it?
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P: If a ghost is a spirit that's still here even though they're dead, and you are gone even though you're still alive.
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C: I'm still here.
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P: You're still there.
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C: Are you afraid?
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P: On Sixth, the ghost was always haunting someone's peripheral vision. Now I'm spooked by catching nothing in the corner of my eye, where you should be. It scares me, then, for a moment. That I don't know where you are. You never used to be far away.
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C: But I'm so close to you — I can just reach out my finger and
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(Silence.)
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C: You're here. Almost like I can touch you.
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P: You have never been further from me. Four dimensions, each with two directions, and you have gone the smallest distance along the only vector I cannot travel.
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C: What are you talking about?
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P: Every time I think I've caught sight of you, you've already gone one second into the past, and I can't follow you there.
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(Pause.)
C: A vector already has a magnitude. It's redundant to say I've travelled a small distance along a vector. It's just a vector with a small scalar component.
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P: I know how vectors work. You're being pedantic, it's a metaphor.
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C: Well I've never known you to be so imprecise. I'm worried you're getting morose.
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P: I am getting morose.
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But I would have somewhere else to put my metaphors if you let me make some money publishing unauthorised sequels to romance novels.
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C: I don't think it will sell, Warden. For a start, no one here has read that book.
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P: Nona and Pyrrha like it.
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C: They're hardly unbiased reviewers. Nona can't even read. And she likes you too much.
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P: What about Pyrrha? She reads a lot, and hardly likes me at all.
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C: She just has bad taste.
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P: Who do you think Nona really is?
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C: I think she's someone I have never met before.
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P: Me too. I like her though.
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C: Me too.
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C: Do you think they will like us, if we… afterwards?
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P: Maybe.
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C: Nona probably will. She likes everyone.
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P: She loves everyone.
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C: She told me to tell you particularly that she loves you this morning.
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P: She's a girl that's going places.
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C: I'm not just in the past, you know.
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P: What?
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C: I'm not just a second in the past. I'm a second into the future. You could join me there. You're travelling that way anyway.
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P: I'm treading too heavily on your present to step on your future as well.
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C: Warden?
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P: Yes?
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C: Can you ever feel the warmth of the button? Where my finger was? From when I've pressed it?
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P: No, I don't think so. But sometimes I imagine I can.
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C: Me too.
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P: Fuck.
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