The steering column had crushed his right knee. A ballpoint pen, flung loose from the coin tray, had perforated his stomach. The side-curtain airbag had bruised his left eye, and at first, after the swelling went down, he presumed that the light he saw leaking from his injuries was a result of the contact lens the doctor had prescribed, designed to keep the scab beneath his eyelid from scratching his cornea. Then someone told him about the Illumination, and he understood that the same thing was happening all over the world. Everywhere, everywhere, in bars, locker rooms, parks, and emergency wards, the wounded were burning with light. He could see his own lesions shining through the bandages on his shoulder, the cotton compress on his abdomen, the pins and netting of his leg harness. He was aware of the pain, but ever since he woke from surgery, his senses had been buoyed up on a sea of narcotics, and as he lay there staring at the contours of his limbs, it seemed to him that he was watching a distant cloud bank flashing with lightning.
