"The thing about the Matrix," Trinity said, watching the rain trace paths down the porthole glass, "is that it doesn't miss you. It just... fills in around the space where you were. Like you were never there at all."

Thomas Anderson — he still thought of himself as Thomas Anderson sometimes, when the ship was quiet and the others were asleep — pressed his palm flat against the cold metal. "Maybe that's better," he said. "Maybe that's the kindest thing it does."

Five: He was right about the crop circles in Bellefleur. He was right about the black oil. He was right about the consortium, about the bees, about the vaccine, about every impossible thing Scully had catalogued in her careful scientific handwriting as "unexplained."

One: He was wrong about the thing he should have been most certain of. It was right in front of him for seven years, and he kept looking past it at the sky.

Capeside in July smelled like salt and sunscreen and the specific kind of boredom that felt like it might last forever.

Pacey sat on the dock with his feet in the water and thought about nothing in particular, which was the only kind of thinking he was any good at. Somewhere across the creek, Dawson was probably writing in his journal about his feelings. Pacey didn't keep a journal. He figured if his feelings wanted to be remembered, they'd have to work for it.