remembered

looked up.
The box was there, in the weeds. He hadn’t seen it, half-hidden there, until it had moved. It almost seemed as if the thing was watching him; the way it had a corner poked out of the weeds like a head. . . .
His reaction was stupid and irrational, and he didn’t care. He bolted, ran all the way back to the guard-shack with a chill in his stomach that all his running couldn’t warm.
He didn’t stop until he reached the guard-shack and the safety of the fenced-in MacDac compound, the sanity and rational universe of steel and measurement where nothing existed that could not be simulated on a computer screen.
He slowed to a gentle jog as he passed the shack; he’d have liked to stop, because his heart was pounding so hard he couldn’t hear anything, but if he did, the guards would ask him what was wrong. . . .
He waited until he was just out of sight, and then dropped to a walk. He remembered from somewhere, maybe one of his jogging tapes, that it was a bad idea just to stop, that his muscles would stiffen. Actually he

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