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This would be the cruelest dream of all, he could tell, but for now he was in it, and if he must pay the price, he would at least relish this, soak in it, let the sound wash over him like a warm sea, this purity, this essence, this holy . . .

Music.

This was music, he realized. The way others heard it. To him, it had never been anything but endless, horrible grinding, tones that rang through his bones. People liked it, he knew that, but he was not of people.

Too soon the voices began to wind down. When the music drifted to an end, it felt like the vanishing of a physical force propping him up. Then he heard something else. Beside him. Another noise he had never known. A voice as it sounded to the speaker.

“It’s something, isn’t it?”

Soren knew the dream was about to end, then. He wanted nothing more than to stay a little longer, a little longer, forever. But it was the way of dreams that he turned anyway. On the pew beside him sat Nick Cooper. A man he had killed, and who had returned from the dead to trick him and break his bones and send him to a purgatory of white and counting.

“Music,” the monster said. “I thought that might be the best way to show you. You’ve never heard it before, have you?”

The dream would end soon. Soren turned away, faced the choir again. Perhaps they would sing again.

“You have a T-naught of 11.2. If I say ‘one Mississippi,’ it takes me about a second. But you’ve never heard that before, have you? You’ve heard, ‘Ooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnne Mmmmmmmmmiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissssssssssssssssssssssss . . .’” Cooper broke off. “You’ve never known life. Not really.”

The back of Soren’s neck itched again, and he scratched it. Most dreams he merely experienced, but ones this clear were usually under some level of conscious control. He decided to banish Nick Cooper from the chapel, and to focus all his attention on the music until the dream grew threadbare.

“Let me guess,” Cooper said. “You think this is a dream.”

Despite himself, Soren spun.

“It’s like the parable about a man who dreamed he was a butterfly. When he woke, he couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t a butterfly dreaming he was a man. And other exercises in dorm room philosophy.” Cooper’s smile did not reach his eyes. “Well, let me end the mystery. You’re not dreaming.”

“What, then?”

“It’s lovely, isn’t it? The chance to walk and talk and think without having to watch the rest of the world drag along. Imagine how things might have turned out if you hadn’t been born the way you were. You could have had a life. Friends, relationships. You could listen to music or stroll on the beach or have a conversation. All the things everyone else takes for granted. All the things you’ve always been denied.”

“What is this?”

“You know,” Cooper said, “you don’t have to stick to the whole three-words-at-a-time thing. Stretch your wings. Try a whole sentence.”

Soren stared at him. Waited.

Cooper sighed. “It’s the possibility of a real life.”

“Real?” He glanced around, at the chapel, the choir, the Roman street through the open doors.

“You of all people should know that ‘real’ is a flexible term. The rest of the world experiences one thing, and you experience another. Which is real? Ours? Yours? Neither?” Cooper shrugged. “Perception is just a matter of electrical signals in the brain. Philosophers and poets and priests say there’s more, and maybe they’re right. But that doesn’t change the fact that consciousness is a matter of current. There is no objective truth, only the subjective experience our minds perceive. After all, when you thought this was a dream, didn’t you want to stay in it?”

More than anything, and for the rest of my life. But he just repeated, “What is this?”

“It’s a simulation. Designed by the best and brightest in the Holdfast. Really puts the new in newtech, huh? It’s basically a cutting-edge game, powered by predictive networks that stay one step ahead. I’m not a bioengineer, but the way it was explained to me, it directly stimulates the parts of your brain that process sensory information. The occipital, temporal, frontal, and parietal lobes, neurons in the brain stem, who knows what else. Point is, it’s as real as anything else in your head. And because it’s generated, here we can nullify your perception of time.”

“How?”

“We sedated you while you slept, and Erik’s surgical team implanted a small interface device.”

“Why?”

“I think what you mean is ‘thank you.’” Cooper flashed another cold smile. “For a guy whose idea of entertainment is counting holes in the wall, whose dearest hope is that I’ll kill him, this is basically Christmas.”

He understood then. “An offer.”

Cooper nodded. “And this is just version one-point-oh. With time, Epstein can create a permanent interface, a sort of mental translator that would allow you to experience the world the way the rest of us do.”

Scratching at the back of his neck, he said, “What price?”

“Information.”

“About John.”

“Yes.”

Soren paused.