His body walks out onto the darkened stage , and a roar goes up from the crowd. He stands in front of the mic, and he can feel his face twist in a sneer-the Elvis sneer from his dreams-though he never told it to move. He is powerless now, a spectator at his own moment of glory.

Suddenly, as one, all the Greys stop talking and gape at Christian. What? Christian is singing softly to himself at the piano. Silence descends on us all as we strain to hear his soft, lyrical voice. I've heard him sing before, haven't they? He stops, suddenly conscious of the deathly hush that's fallen over the room. Kate glances questioningly at me and I shrug. Christian turns on the stool and frowns, embarrassed to realize he's become the center of attention.'Go on,' Grace urges softly. 'I've never heard you sing, Christian. Ever.

Each big idea like that is an operating system upgrade," she says, smiling. Comfortable territory. "Writers are responsible for some of it. They say Shakespeare invented the internal monologue."Oh, I am very familiar with the internal monologue."But I think the writers had their turn," she says, "and now it's programmers who get to upgrade the human operating system."I am definitely talking to a girl from Google. "So what's the next upgrade?""It's already happening," she says. "There are all these things you can do, and it's like you're in more than one place at one time, and it's totally normal. I mean, look around."I swivel my head, and I see what she wants me to see: dozens of people sitting at tiny tables, all learning into phones showing them places that don't exist and yet are somehow more interesting...

It was a voice that you felt you had to listen to__r you ignored at your peril.

Okay, fuck the sundial. We'll just go straight and eventually we'll get there. What I mean is that we'll get somewhere. Out of here. I mean, logically, we have to get out as long as we walk straight. I've done this millions of times. Whenever everything's killing me, I just say to myself, screw it, and go straight ahead.

The timbre of his voice went into that low register that made my insides curl in on themselves--it was like my uterus was tapping out a happy dance on the rest of my organs.