"I am." He was hunched, twisted in midair with tortured tendons pulled tight as a bowstring, tight as frayed nerves.

"Gotham should take you home."

Animated, opening his arms. "I have configurations. Lachesis can be coaxed. Look." And a sudden darting, dash to a stack of cardboard pieces with rough sketches on them, the equivalent of meandering technological gibberish, like a sentence translated into a few languages and back, whatever original meaning hopelessly lost in translation.

"I know you'd like to go home."