12. Confetti (02:23)

Manuela: [unclear]

Fen: What?

Manuela: There’s an, uh, like a mass effect? I don’t even know if that’s the right word, but if a few people do it together. People with malfunctioning implants.

Fen: Huh. Interesting. I’d actually noticed I’ve got a bit more access to it when I’m with my partner. But I didn’t try more than two people yet. She’s got a surgery coming up so we’ve been shielding.

Manuela: Oh, of course. Well, we had a few people round for Vivian’s birthday and they stayed over. Next morning we were all squashed on the sofa or in blankets on the floor, you know. Well, I was still half asleep. And I saw these tenuous bridges of stars and gas, like tiny knots of gas…

Juuli: No no no, you’re not telling it right! Give me the phone! [muffled speech] Put me on speaker then!

Juuli: No, arms! It was arms! These delicate, semi-transparent arms drifting off the top, curling over. And whenever we came close, there was this faint upside-down U-shaped blue glow and a shimmy. The spiral arms unwound, and gas and dust were pulled in all directions, like it was releasing confetti.

Fen: It reacts to physical contact?

Manuela: We weren’t even all touching. Just close.

Fen: OK not contact, but you were in a group. This field, or dilation, or whatever we’re generating, it must extend a little distance beyond our own bodies. And it sounds like it’s combining?

Juuli: I think you’re right. That morning, I set up a swell of time far faster than I’ve been able to do before. It was more stable, too; it lasted longer. It wasn’t so quick to collapse and slip through my fingers.