They voted, and embraced one last time as separate persons. Then they let down all their security measures and their walls, and accepted one another’s thoughts. They shared sins and sorrows and aspirations, all the muck and trivia of all those lives, all the dark secrets they were ashamed of, all the joy and love and fear. Above all the fear, and the anger, and the singularity of purpose that could induce every last one to transcend self and become other, to become what they needed to be: a new thing that was all at once a mind, a weapon and a redoubt: me.