Page 201 - TruthAboutLyingFinal

Nicholas Boothman
Timelines folded into each other. Human forms. Populations. Changes.
The images shifted again. Faster now.
Henry raised a hand, pointing, but it felt delayed, like his body was a step behind what he was seeing.
“These changes...” He swallowed. “They’re not gradual.”
He jabbed at the field, more urgent now.
“Here. And here.” His voice tightened. “Those aren’t evolutionary steps. They’re...”
He found the word.
“Jumps. Across different populations.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning something interfered,” he said. “More than once.”
Jinji nodded. “That’s the only model that fits.”
“So you’re saying...” He hesitated, then forced it out. “Different groups of humans were altered at different times.”
“Yes.”
“Deliberately?”
“It doesn’t look accidental,” Jinji said.
“That would explain a lot.”
“Like what?”
“Why we don’t just disagree,” she said. “Why we can’t agree at the deepest level. Why it always ends the same way.”
Henry turned back to the shifting patterns. Same species. Different changes. Layered together.
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