- They take Connie to a different ward to prepare for the experiments.
- They find Alice Blue Bottom in bed, with her head swathed in bandages.
- Skip and Sybil tell them that the doctors stuck needles in Alice's brain.
- The next day Connie's confined to bed, so she heads back over to the future again.
- They all have breakfast in the future. Dawn is there.
- They talk about the future project for contacting the past. Dawn says she wants to make everything come out well; the others say you can't make things come out right.
- Connie tries to get them to tell her why they've contacted her.
- They're cagey about it. Also, maybe, the author didn't have all the details worked out. These things happen.
- Anyway, they say they may blink out if she screws up, but they won't tell her what she needs to do. That seems like a recipe for things not turning out so well, people.
- The future doesn't listen though. Stupid future.
- Anyway, future people explain there was a long war and revolution that made the future they're in, or if it didn't, then they're not. Got it?
- They debate whether to give Connie more specific details, but then decide not to.
- And we're bumped back to the present, where the doctors are clustered around Alice.
- They start taking off her bandages.
- Sybil tells Connie they've put electrodes in Alice's brain to control her.
- They set up and start to take Alice's picture, but she's embarrassed because she's bald.
- An administrator, Valente, figures out that Alice is embarrassed and suggests getting wigs.
- The doctors decide to go ahead while Alice is upset, because they're horrible people.
- They struggle with Alice and set up their equipment and then the doctor zaps her with the brain juice, and she gets calm.
- Then the doctor zaps her again and she gets mad, then calm again (or not exactly calm—interested in sex. Which embarrasses the doctors a little.)
- Connie is freaked out, as you might imagine; she doesn't want anyone putting electrodes in her brain and making her perform on command.
- And then in the evening we go back to the future, where the community is trying to get Luciente and Bolivar to stop being jealous of each other.
- It's called a worming; the point is to make sure everybody gets along.
- This is a much different approach to attitude-adjustment; rather than sticking electrodes in somebody's head, they try to talk out the problem.
- Connie says it seems like it's a waste to spend so much time on personal petty nonsense, but Parra says they think personal petty stuff can turn into a community-wide mess.
- Yet more talk about how the future handles crime. Basically, if you do something violent you're supposed to confess and figure out how to atone. If you do it twice they execute you.
- Connie finds out that Parra is from Mexico near where her family is from; they start chattering, then realize they're supposed to be doing the crit for Luciente and Bolivar.
- Luciente criticizes Bolivar's art; Bolivar criticizes Luciente, but basically they're both jealous of Jackrabbit.
- The group decides Luciente and Bolivar have to talk to each other.
- Connie thinks the problem for Luciente may be that she dislikes Bolivar and Jackrabbit's relationship because both are men.
- But in the future there is no homophobia, and Parra doesn't even really understand what Connie is talking about.
- Connie remembers her first love, Martín, who died in a knife fight.
- She hasn't been lucky in love.
- She wishes she and Martin had lived in the future, where they both would have had respect and fulfillment.
- And then bump, back to the present and the asylum, where respect is not on offer.