Hiro cannot reach the tablet, which smashes into “large fragments” against the helicopter pad. Raft passengers attack and immobilize Hiro, then take him to an airplane hangar, where a woman’s voice babbles incoherently. Hiro sees Juanita emerge; she has an antenna attached to her head but explains that she is now immune to the virus because she has built up a tolerance to religion. She can control the “me,” and she can write a nam-shub of her own. Juanita is on the Raft because she is fascinated (and appalled) by Rife’s actions. Being on the Raft is “like following Jesus or Mohammed around, getting to observe the birth of a new faith” (307).

Hiro photographs the broken tablet shards and sends the images to the Librarian, who reassembles the cuneiform writing. The words are read over the Raft speakers, and the control over the passengers vanishes. Juanita rips the antenna out of her head and joins Hiro, bleeding badly. She ripped out the antenna so that she did not lose her understanding of the “me.” When Hiro asks whether she will be his girlfriend again, she “naturally” agrees.