[ The immediate friendliness and the claiming of his arms makes him think of no one so much as Karen, and while that reminder makes his heart ache a little, it also settles him down. His friends are somewhere in there, but there are good people out here too, new people to get to know. Intimidating, perhaps, but it's the same as it ever was: adapt or die. And he's always known which one he intends to do.]

Well, there's that, [ the whole 'your world is ended and everyone you know is boxed up like last night's leftovers still' ] but sit one of those tubes up and make it about five feet wider and it was my accommodations for about fifty years.

[ And yet, of the two of them, it was the one who'd trapped him there who'd paid someone to make him forget the whole thing, not Sand. ]