Halo: First Strike (33 page)

this meeting, even this transformation of myself.  A linked ring

of events and agents of them, intentionally brought forward to

this point.  It seems I had been manipulated by myself to my own

ends without my knowledge.

I was scandalized.  I had grown used to humankind's ignorance

or disavowal of its own purposes, and I had learned to look behind

the words, ideas, and images that people hold before themselves to

justify what they do.  But I had never suspected I could act with

such ignorance.

Now an uncertainty equal to death's hovers over everything I

do.  My own prior self stands behind me, pulling strings that I

cannot see or feel, a ghost that haunts me without making itself

seen or heard, a ghost whose presence must be inferred from

nearly-invisible traces

So I went to Toshi, who is interested in such things, and I

told him my story, and I said to him:  "I am controlled by the

invisible hand of my own past."  And he laughed very hard and

said, "Welcome, brother human."