Xenia is shocked to learn that she's just one of many identical clones populating isolated apartments within the Habitat. Nathan confronts the hologram of Doctor Loveless about the machine that hypnotizes the clones while they sleep:
“It scans her mind, right?”
“Not only that, it's also a neural communicator that resonates with the brains of all the clones, creating the most powerful organic computer ever assembled. A system capable of solving almost any question, combining the processing power of a machine with the inventiveness and imagination of human beings.”
“Liar! I'm not a clone! My name is Xenia! I have memories, a childhood!”
“Artificial memories that I synthesized myself for you. For all of you.”
“Why? Why are you doing this to me? How can you be so inhuman?”
“It's simple, Xenia. A holographic projection can't have feelings, because it doesn't exist.”
“A computer?”
(Nathan)“I'm sorry, little one. I really am." (Turning to Loveless' hologram) "Now give me one reason why I shouldn't turn you off.”
“You'd kill the only comfort these little girls have.”
“You just deceive them. You made them live in fear of a nonexistent disease to keep them confined down here.”
I chuckled at the large panel filling most of page 75. Rather than draw complicated machinery, the artists simply used a photograph of the innards of a desktop computer, shown in mirror image on the two walls. Anyone who's ever had to upgrade their system's memory sticks or parallel port devices is well familiar with this scene.
