The Conference
- Kelvin is sleeping with Rheya; he has a bad dream and she's concerned for him.
- Rheya thinks he doesn't trust her so he tries to reassure her, but he realizes she really doesn't know that she's not Rheya.
- Kelvin sleeps for a long time and wakes up with Rheya having put a compress on his head.
- Rheya cut herself out of her dress and put it beside the other dress Kelvin cut the first Rheya out of. Seeing the two dresses side by side makes Kelvin terrified for a moment, but he gets over it.
- He sneaks out of the room and closes and locks the door.
- Rheya bashes through the door like the incredible Hulk, then falls into his arm weeping.
- He carries her back into the room—her hands are cut to the bone—but as she rests on the bed, her hands regrow and regenerate.
- Rheya doesn't remember smashing through the door. Kelvin is now quite upset himself, but he tries to comfort Rheya. Which seems like a good idea: You probably don't want the super-powered, semi-amnesiac, volatile simulacra getting any more worked up than necessary.
- Kelvin takes a sample of her blood.
- Snow calls and says that Sartorius wants to have a video conference with all three of them. They can't meet in person because they have visitors, and Snow and Sartorius don't want Kelvin to see them.
- Kelvin examines the drop of Rheya's blood through a super microscope: It seems not to exist on the sub-molecular level.
- The conference with Snow and Sartorius gets underway via video. Kelvin explains what he saw with the blood, and he says the visitors appear to be copies superior to the original.
- There's some pseudo-scientific burble about how this might explain everything. It doesn't, really, but so it often goes in science fiction.
- They decide that the visitors are projections from their brains, which explains why the visitors can remember things the originals couldn't, and also why they go bonkers in unanticipated situations and then forget.
- Suddenly Sartorius's visitor tries to get on screen, causing him to be upset.
- They end the conference. Snow says he'll come by and see Kelvin in person later if he can.