Somewhere, somehow, long ago, a chronicler had leapt from its subject, just as I had—and joined not a boy, but this vastly more capable partner. In a flash, I understood how it all worked: the vast rhizome of the reeds ferrying scraps of RNA that were integrated into the fish; each fish in turn becoming a living data point, its brain patterned by the RNA to determine its response to the woven queries from the beavers. It was sublime.
