Driven Read Online Free Page A

metaphorical eye of the storm, or he wouldn't, but
turning back now would just guarantee his destruction.
    Just
as Geoffrey became convinced that he'd misjudged, that he wouldn't
have sufficient strength to arrive at his destination, he brushed up
against something hard, something unyielding, the only unyielding
thing he'd yet found in the sticky sea surrounding him.
    Matching
his essence to the barrier was more difficult than usual. The same
stickiness he'd noticed in Keith's thoughts was also present in the
barrier, but eventually Geoffrey was able to pass through the barrier
and into the calm center of Keith's mind.
    As
always, Geoffrey was astonished at the way the thoughts and beliefs
in the center of Keith's mind formed a coherent, beautiful
latticework of glowing crystal. Aly had been right, there was an
incredible amount of goodness in what presented itself to Geoffrey.
Keith was a person who had great creative capacity, but there was a
black fissure running through one side of the arrangement of light
and glass.
    The
beliefs and habits located here in the center of Keith's being had
only minimal ties to the memories outside of the room, but Geoffrey
still got vague impressions of a soul-crushing loss that had happened
at some point in Keith's past. There was just enough to that thread
for Geoffrey to formulate a plan for fixing the flaw he was
examining.
    As
always, creating constructs inside of this place was a heady but
difficult experience. The mental commands and impulses Geoffrey was
leaving would have a staying power exponentially longer than anything
he could do on the surface of Keith's mind, but it was hard to work
simultaneously with thoughts and emotions all the while seeing the
fruits of his labor visualize as part of the living forest of crystal
before him.
    Even
working here in the near-absolute calm that made what he was doing
possible, Geoffrey still knew that he wouldn't be able to fix
everything that needed to be fixed before he ran out of strength. He
arrived at a compromise as he was working, a compromise that felt right even though he had no way of being sure that it would work.
    Creating
an aversion to the drugs that were ruining Keith's life was easy.
That construct was equal parts aversion to poking himself with
needles and a healthy fear of the long-term effects of what the drugs
were doing to his body.
    If
Geoffrey had been able to stop there he would have returned to his
own body still with a large portion of his energy reserves intact.
Unfortunately that was nothing more than a short-term fix. Unless
Geoffrey could correct the underlying problems Keith would just find
a different way to self-destruct.
    Geoffrey
laid out a series of patches designed to hold the damaged part of
Keith's mind together. An acceptance that loss was part of life, that
without the bad parts of life the good parts wouldn't be quite as
good, was one glowing shard that connected the two halves of Keith's
psyche and then contracted to pull the edges back together.
    An
ability to forgive himself, a deeper understanding of what his
actions were doing to those around him, especially Aly, a desire to
interact with others, the constructs sprang into existence one after
another and stitched themselves into the fabric of Keith's beliefs
like life-saving sutures.
    Looking
at the clean vista around him, it would have been easy for Geoffrey
to believe that he'd solved the problem, but he knew it was still
there, a fissure of weakness running underneath the patches that was
just waiting to break back open.
    Geoffrey
marshaled what was left of his strength and sent a single tiny
tendril of thought back out into the sludge of Keith's thoughts. He'd
never tried this particular experiment before, but it seemed to be
working. Geoffrey let his probe skitter from thought to thought,
memory to memory, until he finally found what he thought was the key.
    Keith
had lost someone important, but it wasn't just anyone, it had been
someone very