Summary

A man enters Nat’s store, SelfTalk, to sell a prism. She offers a low price because the divergence between the other world and hers is recent. Prisms have a limited number of ions with which to transmit information between branches in reality: video burns them quickly, so many users stick to text to make them last longer. The customer and his paraself decide not to sell. Nat sets two more customers up with their prisms as her manager, Morrow, arrives. He tells Nat that he has been visiting one of their customers, the elderly Jessica Oehlsen. Jessica is lonely, and now that she is bedridden in a nursing home, Morrow brings a prism so she can speak with her paraself. A nursing home aide has told Morrow that she only has months to live, and Morrow plans to profit.

Dana’s client...