Johnny Winger and the Europa Quandary

  Chapter 15

  “It is by suffering that human beings become angels.”

  Victor Hugo

  Inside the Mother Swarm

  Coordinate System: Unknown

  Time: Unknown

  When he was six years old, Liam Winger nearly drowned in the ocean. But this wasn’t like that. Not exactly. No, this was like being in a warm bath, surrounded by bubbles, the water caressing your skin gently. No, that wasn’t quite it either. Maybe snuggled under the covers on a cold snowy Saturday morning.

  The feeling was hard to put into words. Pretty embarrassing for a professor from Cambridge. Maybe he should just report what he was experiencing, sort of like a Captain’s log of sights and sounds.

  I think, therefore I am. At least, he thought he was thinking. I have a mind. I have thoughts. But there was more. Something more than his thoughts. Was somebody else in here? That was ridiculous.

  I have sensations. Hot, cold, hard, soft. Try to analyze this.

  A snatch of memory came to him: Personal identity is the unique identity of a person existing through time. That is to say, the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the same person, persisting through time. In the modern philosophy of mind, this concept of personal identity is referred to as the diachronic problem of personal identity. The synchronic problem is grounded in the question of what features or traits characterize a given person at one time.

  Where the hell did that come from? I must have read that.

  Now, he was sure of it. There was someone else in here. Just a snatch of voice, a snippet—

  ***Do you recognize me?***

  Recognize you? I can barely hear you. Yet, there was something—

  An image came to mind. It was fuzzy at first, but with effort, it sharpened. It was a man, a dark-skinned man, with a thin black moustache.

  Symborg.

  It was Symborg.

  ***You do recognize me***

  It was a statement. Liam was forced to agree. And there was more. Like whispers…he strained to make it out—