“Lena asked me to leave,” Xiu told him. “Maybe I pushed her too hard.” But I know where she lives now! I could go there. I could make her see how much I’ve changed. And maybe that would just prove that he had changed in all the ways that didn’t matter. So Robert didn’t drive out to Rainbow’s End; he didn’t snoop the public cams there. But he continued to write her. And when he was outside, he often imagined that besides that 7-by-24 attention of the security authorities, perhaps there was another watcher, one who would someday forgive him.
— Rainbow’s End by Vernor Vinge.
