Greg Bear's "Legacy" and Yours Truly's "Transition"

This review of Greg Bear's sci-fi novel Legacy is juxtaposed to the next-to-sci-fi experience that is Transition because it is the neatest metaphor I have found to date.

It contains spoilers and probably errors.

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This analogy occurs to me in reference to transition - A process I feel that I am now mostly on the other side of.

Stunned; I spent a lot of time in that other place, and it was killing me. I think. Was I actually there? It seems so distant. But I remember when I think about it, and it slips out in conversation.

"Here" is a strange place; not quite what I left  more than half a lifetime ago, but it's familiar. Both it and I are changed. I thought about here often, but thought I'd never get here.

So being here is good.

But it's even better to not be there

- - - I was sure I was gonna die down there.

Is this real? Did this really happen? I suppose so.

Am I going to wake up tomorrow and have all this stripped from me? I don't see how. And if that loomed, I would not let it.

But the threat seems real, just having lived with the alternative long enough.

I guess I get used to it, and learn how to live from here.

I mean, what else do you do?