Knives' entrance to the Plant Facility was not terribly difficult, but it was rather different than he had expected. The guard looked up from his post as he entered and, by the way his eyes widened, obviously recognized him. Braced for an attempt to bar his path, and on some level welcoming the chance to release some of his tension, he was surprised and a bit disappointed when the guard smiled at him.

"Mr. Millions, I was told to expect you. They thought that you would be here earlier this morning. Please wait a moment while I page Mr. Herman."

Knives looked at the guard, nonplussed, as the man turned his attention to the phone. A few phrases were exchanged, and then the guard looked up again. "If you would just take a seat for a few moments, the President will be down shortly.

Knives perched on the edge of the closest chair, and spent the next two minutes wondering what made humans consider fake plants attractive. If the somewhat tree shaped example next to him was any example of the kind, he could find nothing aesthetically pleasing about the fake leaves or the plastic pressed trunk. He wondered idly if the plant had been packed on the ships prior to their departure from Earth, or if it had been produced on Gunsmoke. In the first case, he couldn't imagine anyone so attracted to this… thing… that they would pick this as a part of the baggage they were allotted. In the second, he wondered who had woken up one morning thinking that what Gunsmoke really needed were some shoddy looking false plants, and that he was just the person to fill that need.

Before he could exhaust the imaginative properties of the second notion, Mr. Herman was standing before him. Knives stood and looked down at the nervously smiling man and wondered what was in store for him.

With a gesture and a bit of nervous babbling, he was directed through the main door and off into the first room on the right side of the corridor.

"If you're going to be coming and going, we need to have the proper sort of identification to get you where you need to go. No need for you to be held up by someone who thinks he should be more vigilant then he was told to be, after all." The babble was punctuated by nervous laughter, then continued. "You'll be cleared for almost everywhere; we aren't going to hide anything from you. Just the vaults and the my office, and even I need to sign in when I go into the vaults, ha-ha, because what's stored there is our heritage. No one person has more access to our heritage than another, right?"

Knives allowed himself to be photographed and duly entered into the computer as a person allowed to go where he wanted.

"This will keep you from starting any more fires to get where you want to go, ha-ha. Just pass it over the black pads and the doors will open for you."

"I am well versed in basic security system procedures," Knives said testily, hoping that this would be over soon and that the human would go babble at someone else. He knew that he was supposed to acknowledge that the president of the plant had come down personally to guide him through this process, and that this was supposed to be some sort of honor. Frankly, all he wanted was to get to Anne, and after only a minute of the man's presence, to be somewhere quieter.

A side effect of living by himself for so many years, but he was easily irked by senseless chatter. He debated the pros and cons of demanding that the little man be quiet, but before coming to a conclusion the ordeal was over and he was allowed to go on his way.

He was surprised that he was allowed to walk through the halls without some sort of escort, but Mr. Herman had merely walked him to the door of the room before turning him loose. A part of him had expected to find an escort joining him along the way, but aside from passing a few scattered groups of employees in the halls, his travels were undertaken alone.

Entering the room, only two technicians were there to take care of the plant. They were seated at the terminals dedicated to ensuring that the plant received enough nutrients and that her power balances were properly calibrated. All the terminals dedicated to regulating power flow were conspicuously empty. Both looked up at him, one smiled and said hello. Knives ignored them and the greeting, moving to the bulb more quickly than he had walked through the halls, but still not quite running.

He stood where he could see Anne and saw that nothing had changed from the last time he was there. Her eyes were still closed, her face still slack and unresponsive.

"I'm not letting you go," he said, then sat. His back rested against the glass of the bulb, and he tilted his head back until it touched the warm surface as well.

He relaxed and let his mind reach out for hers. This time instead of ripping through her mind in the hopes of finding her, he drifted down through all the layers of her mind until he reached that small, last spark. Gently, he enfolded it with his mind, careful to not disturb the few flickerings that remained. He felt her respond to his presence, a wordless, thoughtless gesture like nothing more than a sleeper protesting the need to get up. Softly, he soothed her until the protests subsided, and then he clamped his mind hard around hers and drew her up one level of her mind, into her earliest memories.

Any protest she might have made was entirely ignored.