Chapter Twenty
A New World
I met Maria soon thereafter and finally had a chance to see how I looked sealed into my suit. It was a substantial shock. My rubber-helmeted and steel-caged head, other than my grotesquely masked face, was now covered by a tight-fitting, thick-textured, woven steel mesh cap, fastened over everything. It fully covered my head, including a mesh screening over my eye ports, with its bottom rim stopping at the lower edge of my wide collar.
My entire face remained covered and imprisoned under the cloying mask that had been fitted so precisely and permanently nearly 48 years ago. Even with modern technology, the doctors had been reluctant to remove the eye covers and devices that kept my eyelids always drawn wide open, and so I could only stare out from behind the c
