I stepped away from the terminal. Years of preparation and data collection, more years of analysis, calculation, re-calculation and re-analysis. I could not see any other way of interpreting what was displayed on the screen that I had turned my back to.
I felt the warm green glow of the results display on my face as I turned back to it once more.
There was no doubt. But it could only mean one thing.
I held onto myself, as the room seemed to pivot 90 degrees about me.
I lifted one heel first – a few millimeters, and I felt the absence. It rolled along my platar fascia and within my work boots each day raised itself one by one.
A wobble steadied itself as I aligned my eyes with the right angle I knew lay up and down in front of me around the thick door to the lab next door.
And then it began, the other foot raised heel-first too, before a gradual unpeeling raised me.
There it was – I looked down and saw a dark shadow beneath me – the project negative of my own body lay pooled in a gap between my feet and the grey linoleum of the floor.
It was a lie, and I knew the truth.