[He knows they've had this conversation before. Sure, he's missing, what, the better part of a year? But the time didn't pass for him like it did everybody else. He can see why it'd fade from a painfully organic human brain, but to him he was on the barge and feeling more or less like this... weeks ago.]

That was my last idea. The false gate of truth. It opens to nothing and nowhere. Failed experiment. But the admiral and his precious little boat wouldn't even let me have the fucking nonexistence.