I wish I could tell you humorous anecdotes, but truthfully, mostly things were dire.

[ Harold can find some room for fond nostalgia about his time with Root, but it's thickly overshadowed with how tenuous their grasp on survival had felt the whole time. How close they'd been teetering to crossing lines that couldn't be walked back.

Just recalling it makes Harold look tired, someone who ran a marathon for the past year and now wants to collapse. ]

She was relentless, [ he says like a confession, a trace of admiration present for a champion marathon runner who'd put him to shame. ] Challenging me constantly -- and the Machine, for that matter. Ms. Groves did not go quietly into that good night.