THIS POST HAS BEEN REPLACED BY THIS BETA VERSION: https://zaporacle.com/parallel-journeys-beta-test <<<<<PLEASE GO THERE!! Parallel Journeys © 2014, Jonathan Zap (Parallel version 14-1---Beta Test Version) Beta-tester User Agreement and Warnings Participating in the beta-test means that you have read and understood all of the following warnings and agreed to all specified conditions. Participants must be comfortable with explicit, written accounts of consensual and nonconsensual interdimensional travel and reality-distortion effects. 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Feedback can range from a global assessment of your reading experience to detailed line edits, typos pointed out, etc. You don’t need to be trained as an editor to give even the more detailed editing. For example, a very helpful form of editing is just to put an “AWK” (for awkward) after any sentence that seems poorly constructed, or that you were forced to reread because the meaning wasn’t clear. You could also put AWK after any phrase or word that seems ill chosen. If it would make it any easier to get the text as a Word attachment, send me an email with “Parallel” in the subject heading. Inconsistencies in the plot or in aspects of characters would also be good to point out. If there are particular parts that really did work for you---sections, plot elements, characters, even sentences---feel free to point those out. Again, you don’t have to leave detailed feedback. Global impressions are fine too. Any sort of feedback is appreciated. If you’re worried about your feedback being unwarranted, and peculiar to your experience or biases, don’t be. The reason I am seeking out multiple beta-testers is so that I can triangulate the feedback. If three or more people give similar feedback than I know to take that seriously. If you liked what you read enough to want to read the finished text let me know and I’ll put you on a list to get a free copy of the finished book. Thanks for being a Parallel Journeys beta tester! I Andrew’s Journal, August 11 Anomalous experiences, like the one I had last night, have been the key turning points of my life. Until a few months ago, I was a photojournalist and earned a living largely through writing about subcultures. That sounds like a profession that should prepare you for writing about anything, but when it comes to the stranger aspects of my own life, I’ve struggled to find both will and words to render them into any sort of narrative. Experiences, past a certain level of strangeness, are charged and slippery things, like electric eels. Sometimes I've tried to catch them in a net of words, but usually it feels like the holes in the net are too big and the eels just slip through. And yet, especially after last night, some inner urgency insists that I try again. When I look into that inner urgency, I sense an outer aspect as well. As I sit here in the dark in the back of my camper van in front of the glowing screen of my laptop, I have this sense of at least a few other people looking over my shoulder and pressing me to continue. I think these are people who are also living anomalous lives, and who, however removed from me in space and time, want me to bear witness to the strange experiences I am living through. All witnesses disappear sooner or later, but if I can make a worthwhile record of my experience, even if it is only a string of ones and zeros lurking somewhere in the interstices of the web, I have a feeling that those few other people will find it. The web has certainly worked that way for me. You cast a lure out into its depths, a lure you make out of a few key words, and out of some obscure crevice comes just what you were looking for---squirming and alive on your screen. Life has taught me that anything could happen to me at any moment, but the strings of zeros and ones I make are more resilient and might be of use to someone somewhere when I’m no longer around. Although I may be only twenty-six years old, and people say I look almost exactly as I did at nineteen, you can probably tell that I am filled with a sense of the impermanence of life, and in my present phase, feel only tenuously connected to it. The reasons aren't hard to find. A car accident when I was twelve killed my parents and brought me past the threshold of death and back. The best friend of my childhood and adolescence died when we were both sixteen. And now I am living in the aftermath of the suicide of my best friend, my traveling partner for three years during which we were together for almost twenty-four hours a day, traveling in the very same camper van I am writing from right now. So that’s another force bringing this journal into existence---I need a new traveling partner I can share my secrets with. *** I I’m sure I’ll have more to say about some of these traumatic events later, but first I need to tell you about what happened last night, an experience of high strangeness I’m struggling to understand. Partly I think it was a kind of hallucination, but not a self-generated one. I feel that I had an encounter with a potent being of some kind, and that being may have generated a series of visions or illusions in my mind while I had an actual encounter with him. I expect anyone who might read these words in the future to be skeptical. I agree with that stance. So much paranormal experience is ambiguous and past the edge of our comprehension. It's naive to make overly confident claims about these sorts of experiences. But, instead of putting "it seemed as if" in front of every sentence, I'm just going to narrate what I experienced. I guess I should fill you in on a few things before I tell you about what happened last night. It's late summer and I've been here in Seattle, living in my well-equipped camper van for a little more than two weeks. For the last few months, I have been doing a traveling, fundraising canvass for a worthy non-profit run by some people I know and trust implicitly. I've been doing it as a volunteer since I have savings from the photojournalism career I was pursuing until the suicide of my friend. I'll probably have more to say about my former career later, but this is what I'm doing right now. The non-profit is the Pinion Mesa Animal Refuge in Southern Colorado. It’s run by a very idealistic group of people who have devoted themselves to rescuing animals, especially big cats, from guaranteed hunts and other abusive situations. They don't pay me, but I get reimbursed for gas and mileage on my van so it's not costing me very much to travel around the country for them. Doing the canvass has been helping to give structure to my days and some kind of feeling of moral purpose to the wanderings of the last few months. Still, if I hadn't made a commitment (however informal) to these very worthy folks in Colorado, I'm not sure if I would be sticking with it, good cause or not. Even though they prepared me for it, as best they could, I didn't quite get the psychological stress of canvassing until I actually started doing it. Danny, a master canvasser who took me on a one-night "skill share" canvass cheerfully called it "annoying people in the privacy of their own homes." I stood next to him as he endured rejection, and sometimes outright rudeness from people, and somehow he took it all with good humor, even chuckling when one person slammed a door in his face. Danny warned me not to take any reactions personally, that rudeness and rejection just came with the territory. It was much easier not to take it personally when I witnessed the rudeness and rejection directed toward cheerful and resilient Danny, and it's been quite another thing canvassing by myself night after night. So, yeah, it's psychologically stressful, but it would be absurd for me to complain about it since it's something I'm choosing to do, and in some ways it's been helping to keep me together. Sometimes canvassing can provide very pleasant interactions with people. Many nights someone will invite me in to drink tea or a beer, or even smoke some weed with, and usually that's followed by the writing of a check, sometimes a fairly generous one. Danny, however, warned me to screen people with my intuition before I accepted an invitation into someone's home: “Some of our younger canvassers have found themselves in sketchy situations with people hitting on them and so forth. You happen to be a particularly good-looking young guy and I can definitely see that happening to you. Usually, it's nothing dangerous except that you may end up wasting half an hour with someone who is interested in you, but not the cause, and if you don't return their interest you may walk out empty handed and with a major part of the evening gone." I assured Danny that my previous career depended on my being able to assess people intuitively, and that I wouldn't enter the home of anyone with a creepy vibe. My former job sometimes involved putting myself into sketchy situations, and since I have a youthful, somewhat androgynous look, I would often get these protective warnings from people. Although the warnings were unnecessary since I've been through my share of life or death situations and am vigilant about hazards, I always took comfort that people cared enough to say such things. Until last night, the invites I got into people's houses had been pretty safe and nothing too untoward happened. Some of the people I could tell were interested in me in a physical sense, but it was polite and subtle, and once I was in someone's living room I almost always left with a check. I'm a photographer and I bring along a portfolio of laminated photos I've taken of the rescued animals for them to look at while I tell them about Pinion Mesa, and stories about some of the animals it's rescued and what their contributions or, ideally, ongoing memberships could accomplish. It's pretty much a memorized rap at this point, but I do my best to make it conversational, and sometimes we have actual conversations too. These encounters are mostly what relieve the solitariness of the traveling canvass. I stay in university towns or very liberal cities until I feel a need to travel and then head out to the next one. I guess that's enough background for you to understand what I was doing last night, Friday night---knocking on doors, annoying people in the privacy of their own homes, trying to get at least one person to write a check. On this particular night, as sometimes happens with canvassing, it was a long run of rejection, and I had yet to bring in even a single dollar for the cause. It was a rainy evening, and Seattle was troubled by a thick fog, a fog that had the mind-numbing feeling of a bankrupt dot-com executive lying etherized upon a table. Canvassing was often mood challenging and a test of perseverance. I've had a few zero nights before, and Danny warned me that every canvasser has the occasional "doughnut hole night" as he called it. "Just view those as character building sessions,” he advised me. This night seemed destined for some major character building. It was Friday night in a fairly happening city, and in the neighborhood I was canvassing, it seemed like almost everybody was out on the town except elderly, shut-ins of various sorts, or people so exceptionally rude that there was no place else for them to be on a Friday night except home, waiting, waiting for days, or even weeks possibly, for some canvasser to knock on their door, someone to whom they had no ties and on whom they could vent the bitter poisons of a life of sleep and irritability, an incarnation spent in work places lit with fluorescent lights and a private life that consisted mainly of cable and heavily processed food. A life of that much misery and boredom had to be someone's fault, and that someone was very likely this unwanted person standing on their doorstep with a clipboard. These were the kind of people that were lying in wait for me on this fog-obscured night. At least this is how it felt to me last night, my mood having been darkened by a number of factors. As an introvert, it was inevitable that I retreated inward while still going through all the motions of canvassing. I allowed my canvassing self to be somewhat cloaked and mechanized, shrouding myself in a trance-like dissociative state that canvassers sometimes adopt---what Danny called "autopilot." He said that I would probably not have a great total on an autopilot night, but admitted that most canvassers went through autopilot funks and sometimes you could still luck into a big check. "Ninety percent of canvassing is just showing up." Danny told me. "Getting yourself to knock on that first door will some days feel like a speed bump the size of Mount Everest. Ninety percent of the effort can be just getting yourself out there, but once you do, you can always last at least three hours, even if you have to retreat into autopilot." I was two hours into rain-dampened, mood-challenged autopilot, but still felt that I needed to hold to the discipline of never doing less than three hours once I got out there. Since I have no shortage of what canvassers call "turf," Danny advised me to profile houses, looking for signs of liberal folks with a little bit of money. A late-model Subaru parked in the driveway, for example, was usually a good sign, while a rusting Camaro raised on cinderblocks was not so propitious, and so forth. Two hours in, I was deep in autopilot, my mind preoccupied with things that had nothing to do with canvassing, and I found myself opening the chain-link gate of a rundown house with an infinitely bland early-seventies look to it, that, had I still been profiling, I would have passed by. It wasn't until I knocked that I registered several visual clues that this was a door better left undisturbed. I had failed to notice the most obvious and classic signs that a highly conservative, elderly person lived in this house. The stoop was covered in threadbare AstroTurf, and windowsill shelves held dusty knick-knacks of the sort where a ceramic Eiffel Tower might stand next to a puffy, large-eyed plastic child whose outspread arms held a little placard that read "I love you this much Grandma!" Sure enough, a gaunt, elderly woman in a shabby dress opened the door the three inches allowed by the security chain and stared at me. Her eyes were clouded with cataracts, and she gazed at me with a look of uncomprehending irritability that teetered right at the edge of senile paranoia. There was a hearing aid in one ear, but something told me that the batteries had been dead for a long time. Her appearance may sound unprepossessing, but her face was ground zero for a déjà vu shockwave that staggered my mind while autopilot delivered the opening line of my canvassing rap, "Sorry to bother you, my name is Andrew and I'm doing a fundraiser for the Pinion Mesa Wildlife Refuge---" "Mr. Anderson from the what?" "From the Pinion Mesa Wild Life Refuge." "I don't need any wild life. I'm on a fixed income." But I was no longer listening to what she was saying, because now I felt I knew with absolute certainty where I had seen this old woman before. I was nine years old and it was the second day of a week long visit with my cousins in Maryland when I saw her, an old woman who happened to be a perfect copy of an old woman I felt sure I had seen in a tiny Manhattan supermarket just three or four days earlier. In childhood, I had been haunted by some of the paranoid fantasies that, I have since learned, are not that uncommon in children of this era. I used to ask my mother, for example, how I would know if she and my dad were really themselves and not precise replicas created by aliens. Apparently, these are common delusions. There’s even a name for this condition---Capgras Syndrome. But when I saw what I was sure was the same supermarket lady I had just seen in Manhattan in Maryland, I didn’t consider that I might be deluded. I had this shattering feeling that I had seen something I wasn't supposed to, a flaw in a gigantic deception, and I was particularly terrified about what might happen if anyone knew that I had caught on. I quickly looked away from her and tried to cover my shock. I had this fearful notion that if the supermarket lady knew that I knew, she would emit some sort of piercing scream and that all the other simulated people would stop what they are doing and surround me, engulf me. For a couple of years after that incident, I had a sometimes desperate fear that many people, and perhaps all people except my best friend, were what I called "extras"---people somehow contrived to fill in crowd scenes, to take up most of the empty space on subway trains, to mutely walk down sidewalks holding lumpy plastic shopping bags in the hot sun. When I looked at their eyes, looked closely, I had a feeling that there was no one there, that I was just seeing glass doll's eyes, cleverly made to look bloodshot, to scan and blink like real eyes, but actually artificial contrivances of alien technology made to give verisimilitude to purely mechanical simulations. Even though I have long since outgrown this childhood paranoia, I've never been able to entirely shake the feeling that things aren't as they are trying to seem. And then, when the door of this house opened and I saw, standing right in front of me, the very same supermarket lady, still wearing the same frowsy, floral-patterned dress I had seen her in as a child, the almost forgotten paranoia of childhood came rushing back. Autopilot still allowed me to deliver the opening lines of my rap, but then shock seemed to paralyze my ability to speak. The great deception I had feared as a child now seemed to be staring right at me and I had this sickening feeling that she knew that I knew. Her facade seemed to fall away. The senile scowl disappeared along with the cataracts, and there was a high-pitched ringing or humming in my ears. I couldn't quite hear what was said to me, but I knew I had been invited into the house. In a state of shocked compliance I stepped into a living room whose only illumination was a black-and-white television with a test pattern on it. And then I had that acutely embarrassing sensation you get when you realize you have been way off in guessing someone's age, or perhaps have even mistaken their gender, because I saw now that the old woman was not actually the supermarket lady, or even an old woman, but a pale schoolboy with large, sorrowful grey eyes. He wore a white button-down shirt, narrow, dark tie and grey trousers and his neck was long and seemed weirdly elastic. His style of dress seemed to be that of an English schoolboy from an earlier era. There was an uncanny intelligence, as well as sadness in his eyes. I felt embarrassed and confused. I assumed that walking around in the fog, and poorly lit streets had caused my mind to play a terrible trick on me and that I might be disturbing this kid with my shocked expression. I tried to bring autopilot back on line, and in a rather stilted way asked, "Are you interested in helping endangered wildlife?" "Yes, I am." The boy had a slight British accent and spoke in a manner that was confident, formally polite, but also deeply sincere and humble. His tone and answer were so unexpected, I wasn't sure what to say next. "You are?" "Yes," he replied with the identical tone---sincere, confident precision. "You want to help endangered wildlife?" His manner unsettled me, and I was lapsing into redundancy. "It's the main reason I came here." This last statement puzzled me into another silence. I replayed it slowly in my mind, It's-the-main-reason-I-came-here. He sounded so sure of himself, but I couldn't quite get a handle on what he meant. "Please," said the boy as he turned and gracefully, with an elegant, old world manner, motioned for me to follow. We stepped out of the darkened living room and into a long, wide corridor of polished brown marble, magnificently decorated with Persian rugs of deep colors and intricate patterns. Crystal chandeliers glimmered from the high arched ceilings. There were beautiful cabinets of mahogany and beveled glass that were filled with what appeared to be antique nautical instruments---sextant, astrolabe, chronometer, ship's compass, globes of various kinds, a complicated apparatus of gears and spheres of precious stone---was it an orrery or simulacrum of some other solar system? I followed the boy down the long corridor, and into a room that looked like the private study of a nineteenth-century English gentleman. There were floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes of fine, old, hand bound books of the sort with marbleized end papers, and gilt titles. There were draperies of wine-dark velvet, and a chandelier of fine, old crystal. The boy motioned me toward a comfortable chair, while he sat behind a large desk with an elaborately carved oriental dragon motif. On the desk was a single object, an exquisite mechanical clock, a "grand complication," I believe they are called, with numerous hands and dials that showed phases of the sun and moon, and God only knew what else, for this clock had alchemical symbols or glyphs where one expected to see Roman numerals. The clock was housed in a crystal bell that revealed a whirring galaxy of gears, jeweled bearings, and other tiny parts in complicated movement. "Would you care for something to drink?" The boy motioned to a small marble-topped serving cabinet on which there were glasses and a prismatic decanter of amber liquid. I assumed it contained some costly brandy, and wasn't sure about the legality of accepting alcohol from a minor. Come to think of it, I wasn't supposed to enter a home at all on the invitation of a minor. My judgment seemed to be in an addled state. "It's non-alcoholic." The boy seemed able to read my mind. "Well, in that case..." He carefully poured me a drink, and handed me a glass tumbler of the amber liquid. It tasted golden, fragrantly herbal, like a mixture of sparkling cider, currants, maple syrup and cinnamon. Its effect was warming, relaxing, enlivening in a way that was more like an elixir than a stimulant. This seemed magical and uncanny, until I remembered that nowadays, exotic, herbal concoctions could be found in any corner store. I took another sip of the drink, and put my clipboard filled with animal photographs on the desk. "So, how long have you been interested in helping endangered wildlife?" I asked. "Oh, a very long time," he replied. "It's only in recent years that I've allowed myself to intervene." This seemed an odd, even weirdly grandiose thing for a schoolboy to say. But his manner did not seem to suggest pretentiousness, so much as a world weary, poignant sadness. "What kind of endangered wildlife are you interested in?" He looked puzzled by my question, and his eyebrows arched quizzically. "Your kind of course, and all the other kinds of wildlife in this realm, because it's all endangered isn't it?" This was an odd way of putting it, but I knew what he meant. I had often been struck by the irony of talking about certain endangered species, when really the whole planet was in an ecological crisis, and almost every species, besides cockroaches and bacteria, were endangered. "Are you interested in volunteering to work with the animals?" There was a long moment of silent eye contact. He had a boy's face, but his large, grey eyes seemed so old. The moment of eye contact seemed to stretch on and.... then there is a complete lapse in my memory, I guess this is what some people call "missing time," because I found myself opening the chain link gate of the house. I knew I should leave. I remembered what had happened until that moment of eye contact with the boy, but there was just a blankness inside about any transition. I closed the gate and walked down the street feeling stunned. It felt like I had been in a hall of mirrors, and there was a sense that I had been hypnotized, or put into some kind of trance and made to see a series of visions. And my questions to the boy, when I reviewed them in my mind, did not quite make sense, it was as if I was not getting what was happening to me. Had I just been in shock or did this being put me into some sort of hypnotic state where my perception was manipulated? I had the feeling that the supermarket lady had been pulled out of my memory. There was a feeling that I had been tested, or evaluated, and that the test had all been various forms of simulation and illusion. I looked in my clipboard for my map so I could make a mark where the house was, and I discovered that in the clear plastic envelope where I put donations, there were now eight very new-looking hundred-dollar bills that I had never seen before. Whatever illusions or manipulations I had been exposed to, it had at least been a very successful night of canvassing. II It's now about six weeks later, summer has turned to early fall, and though I meant to put much more into this journal, obviously I haven't. Now I have to. A whole lifetime of strange experiences has happened during what the calendar says was just a couple of days. Inner necessity has brought me back to this journal as I struggle to integrate all that has changed. Before I do that, though, I feel I should make up for at least some of what I neglected to write about when I first set up this journal. Perhaps I should start by explaining a bit more why writing has been difficult and how it relates, in a paradoxical way, to my former career that involved writing. Before the present phase of being a canvasser wandering the country in a camper van, I wandered the country in the same camper van pursuing a career many would consider enviable and that for many years absorbed me completely and enthusiastically. I was a photojournalist, mostly freelance, who specialized in subcultures. I would spend months hanging out with obsessive video gamers, then the next few months living near the Pennsylvania Dutch Amish, then a few months immersed in the vampire subculture of a couple of large cities, and so forth. It sounds fascinating, I know, and it was. Also, not to affect false modesty, I was pretty good at it. Some of my photographs made it into galleries and a couple of museums; my articles have won awards and been printed in prestigious magazines. I was very fortunate, but to be honest, I might never have had all the success I did if it were not for one amazingly lucky break that happened a couple of weeks after I graduated from college at age twenty. I was interested in exploring a particularly obsessive subculture of young video gamers, and my youth and inexperience helped me to gain access. The article I wrote got picked up by a major magazine and that got me a lot of positive notice. So I got my lucky break my first time out and haven't lacked for opportunities since then. You would think that the six years I spent writing about the lives of others would make journal writing easy, but it hasn't. I became so used to describing the lives of others with journalistic detachment, that writing about highly subjective experiences in my own life feels weird and disorienting. Also, I had grown accustomed to laboring over every sentence, something you absolutely must do if you are going to attempt to capture a subculture in a single article. A consequence of this is that I have developed a deeply engrained self-scrutiny and perfectionism about whatever I write and can't bring myself to just dash off daily journal entries with serviceable but sloppy language. Maybe it is merely an influence of my former profession, but as I said from the start, I feel that this journal is not meant for me alone. Since I have that sense, I realize that there is so much context I have not filled in, and that’s part of what’s been keeping me from writing in the journal--- the sense that there are some things I should have admitted from the start. Months before the experience in Seattle, there’s been a strange and personal thing going on that's as subjective as it gets and that I haven't wanted to write about. Perhaps it's too intimate, or perhaps I'm too identified with being the detached photojournalist or afraid of revealing myself as the unreliable narrator we all are, overflowing with subjectivities. Sometimes in articles, I felt obliged to admit a bias or two I had when that colored my view of a subculture. I felt that I owed it to readers to disclose such things, to do otherwise would be inauthentic. And now that I'm sitting here in the dark, in the back of the camper van with the screen of my laptop glowing in my face, I can see that I've been avoiding the journal because I wasn't ready to admit all the subjectivities going on in me. I intended to write about my experiences, but was still trying to cling to professional photojournalist mode, and that would be grossly inauthentic. If I'm going to narrate strange outer experiences happening to me, the reader is entitled to know about my strange inner experiences as well. I don’t think that strange inner experiences necessarily make someone an unreliable witness, but the reader is entitled to make their own judgment. So, before I attempt to describe what happened last night, I want to at least disclose that I've had many different sorts of paranormal experience since childhood. I won’t go into the details now because the most significant of my past paranormal experiences, including those of the last few months, will come up in the course of what I am about to unfold. I was canvassing last night, and it was a dark and windy October evening. The wind intensified as I canvassed, autumn leaves swirling around my feet, gusts of wind almost throwing me off balance as I tried to persevere. This part of Colorado is a high desert and prone to very high winds. Wind, even more than rain, can make canvassing impossible. People don’t want to open their doors when the wind is that high. To someone ensconced in a nice, warm house the intrusion of the wind and of the canvasser blur in their minds. To them you seem like this vaguely person-shaped creature blown in by the howling winds, a fanatical scarecrow wielding a clipboard with papers crackling and whipping about in the wind. I had just made the decision to quit for the evening. Almost as if gravity had lessened, I felt my step become lighter on the other side of the decision. I was walking swiftly down a tree-lined avenue. The trees were struggling in the wind, and I saw that some had already lost branches. A tree branch could easily fall on my head, so to continue canvassing literally threatened life and limb. Self-satisfaction with my decision making process was diverted as I approached a house that seemed to be weirdly illuminated. A flickering of pink and blue lights seemed to be reflecting off the white vinyl siding. They could have been Christmas lights, but Halloween was the upcoming holiday, and Halloween lights are usually orange. The lights shimmered and moved. I drew closer, till I stood beside the house.... But where are the lights coming from? There was a field behind the house and I saw glimmers of light out there, but the gusts blowing in my face seemed to blur my vision. What I saw looked like a ring of sparklers seen through fog or colored, glowing smoke whipping around in the wind. It looked like a cross between an aurora borealis and a dirt devil. With implacable curiosity, I walked between the houses toward the field, all the while fighting a fierce headwind. My mind raced, trying to explain what I was seeing: Is this the birth of a tornado pulsing with ball lightning, or luminescent plasma or aurora borealis, or... But, no, no, this is outside any known category---this vortex is pure anomaly. I was both frightened and transfixed by the spinning of it. It was more than spinning, it was like looking up through the eye of a tornado, but it was a tornado not of wind, but of luminous, scintillating filaments. Each of these filaments, which seemed to have no beginning and no end, twisted and spun each along its own axis. They looked like glowing strands of double helix DNA hooked up, like plumbing rooter snakes, to invisible turbines spinning and whipping them around the tornado. Even more bizarre, these twisting, spinning, spiraling filaments of light formed a pulsing funnel, a funnel that folded back and in on itself again and again. Air rushed away from this singularity, and the resulting gusts blasted me nearly off my feet. I could not retreat from it. I had a strong feeling, later confirmed, that it was there specifically for my benefit. In my whole body, the awareness dawned that I beheld a portal, perhaps a wormhole made of spinning, vibrating, hyper-dimensional super strings. I knew that my finger trembled above the reset button, that I hesitated at the threshold of a hole torn open in the Babylon Matrix. A gentle voice I heard inside my head asked me to step into it. I can remember the wind blasting me, color and light exploding before me, into me, and then...blankness, silence, a slight wind fading off into the night, and I stood in a field, a field of sage brush and high desert grasses, and it was the same field I had been in. I knew this somehow as a certainty, I was in the same place, but there were no houses, no street lights, nothing manmade. It was still Colorado, but it did not have the name Colorado, it was just a high desert land that was and had always been, untouched by man----white man, red man, any kind of man.... Above were clouds drifting in silvery moonlight, and far above the clouds what looked like a distant aurora borealis of pink and blue lights receding into the darkness of space. The field was a mesa of sagebrush, grasses, here and there were boulders and pinion trees, and everywhere silence, stillness, vastness, the night air empty of human sound, empty of a single human thought besides my own. I knew in my whole body that I was still on the earth, but this earth lived and breathed and dreamed untroubled by the nightmare spawn, the human species. I was an alien presence standing there in my blue nylon parka. My metal clipboard was gone, but my camera/utility bag of black, weathered nylon was still buckled to my waist, and I felt it as an anomalous artifact, a thing of weird polymers, lenses, plastic, chemicals, electronics, extruded into a world of organic virginity. I scanned the moonlit mesa, turning slowly to see the whole horizon, and when I came back to my starting point I saw that a figure now stood a few paces from me, a boy with large gray eyes. He stepped forward and I saw that he was the boy, or what had seemed like a boy, when I had met him six weeks ago in Seattle. We regarded each other silently for a few moments. It seemed like he was waiting politely for me to break the silence. I was willing to. Instinctively, I felt that in this encounter I needed to be proactive, to engage this strange being and not merely react to him. Last time I encountered him I felt afterwards that I had been put under a spell and this time I wanted to find out what was really going on. "This thing I passed through, a portal of some sort, did you create that?" "Yes, I did." Graciously, the boy paused and maintained an alert silence for many moments, sensing that I needed time. A gentle invitation hung in the air. Speaking aloud was such a crude and confrontational way to communicate. It intruded on the restful sound of the wind blowing across the mesa. He would continue to speak aloud if I preferred, but telepathic communication was so much subtler and more elegant. I assented by maintaining silent eye contact with him as we allowed time to perceive the other without the intrusion of words. In some nonverbal way, essential aspects of this boy became readily apparent. This boy was not a boy, he was in the form of a boy, but he was a highly intelligent and potent being, endowed with an array of paranormal abilities. His form was human, yet he was not Homo sapiens, but another species... I realize that naming this species may well stretch my credibility to the breaking point, but there is no way around it. He was an elf. To some that term may conjure candy canes and diminutive plastic figures with red stockings and green felt pointy hats, but there is no other word I can use. He was not an "elf" in some fairytale sort of way, no, he was the biological type---elf---revealed to my bodily perception. Recognizing another species is a deeply embodied function. When you see a spider, or a banana, you don't have to think a whole lot about it, your body is able to register such easily recognizable biological forms on a cellular level. There are also some other biological forms, not presently recognized by science, but which your body can identify instantly. My very cells registered this boy-like creature as an elf. That he was not human in any conventional sense should have been apparent to anyone with an ounce of awareness. For one thing, the apparent biological age of his body did not have the meaning it did for a human being. He was imbued with a great depth of wisdom and mystical experience, what felt like the product of centuries rather than years. His form was physical, but his hair, skin and eyes were just ever so slightly more flawless than they would have been on even the best-looking human being. His eyes conveyed mysterious depths and uncanny awareness. He was a potent being, shimmering at the edges of his cloaked fields with concealed magical powers. Time slowed down around him. Even my cells registered the presence of a higher biological, a species in advance of Homo sapiens. He was a fully realized personification of a species that many of us have sensed, and that you can see glimmers of in some fortunate human beings. It is a species that some of us have longed for and sensed nearby, a species that lives in parallel with us. Much earlier in my life I had another encounter with this species, but that will come up later. Silent eye contact with him continued. The moonlit mesa was completely quiet except for a gentle breeze flowing through the pinion and sagebrush. The breeze brought the scent of sage and a few other medicinal plants. As subtle as the breeze was the flow of nonverbal telepathy. It was gentle---atmospheric rather than intrusive. Just as the breeze carried the scent of sage and pinion, the gentle flow of telepathy carried permissions or invitations to go further into it if I wished. I hesitated, and then pulled back a bit. Although I had a deep sense of him as benign, some part of me recoiled from such unexpected intimacy. Opening to it felt like too much of a shock to my sense of human identity and the boundaries I expect to have. I was OK with the gentle telepathic atmosphere that enfolded us, but I needed words to be exchanged. I realized that the words didn't need to be said aloud. Even pronouncing them in my mind, felt crude and intrusive, like speaking through a megaphone to a relaxed and receptive person sitting right across from me on a couch. "Who are you?" My mental words seemed as loud as the clash of timpani in the telepathic atmosphere. The timpani of these words shimmered and reverberated into the silence of the mesa, a mesa that seemed innocent of human thought forms. Perhaps it was gracious forbearance, but he didn't show any sign of discomfort with the intrusion of my mental words and responded to me in the same mode without hesitation, “My name is Jeremiah. I am a traveler from a parallel realm and I know only a small part of why the fates have brought me here. "I am an adept of the Vehrillion, an alchemical art of transformation, which allows me to alter the way I appear, to open portals, to use intention to shape and give form and to achieve many other purposes. You are experiencing me as very different from you, but we are much more alike than you realize. I know this will seem very strange, but in my realm I knew a parallel version of you, someone who was a friend, but also a mentor and teacher. Your essence is very familiar to me, but I also realize that you are not the person I knew, that your experience, perspective and so many things are quite different and hard for me to grasp. “When I look at you, there is so much recognition, but also a sense of so many differences. It is both strange and wonderful to find someone who feels so familiar and yet is from another timeline. Although I know you are not the person I knew, I feel myself projecting onto you all the memories of the person I did know. All those experiences were with someone who is both you, and not you, and that is disorienting. So we both have some struggles with our perception, because parallel usually means things that follow alongside, but do not cross. We seem to be at a nexus where that which was parallel has crossed, and that is very strange for both of us. We are both struggling to translate the other into perceptions that were formed by timelines that are parallel, but different,” said Jeremiah. “Why did you bring me here?" I asked. "This is a realm closely parallel to the one you come from. It is stable, quiet and relatively easy to get to. It's as if someone created a reference planet, a version of the earth, as it would have continued without hominids of any sort. I chose this as a more neutral setting for us to encounter each other since we are both from different timelines and this world exists in still another timeline, but has elements familiar to both of us. I've come here to rest and contemplate a few times, but my present fate has me tethered to your realm, the earth and timeline that you know. "I realize this is disorienting, and you may think I have more answers than I do. My state of disorientation is at least as deep as yours because you are still connected to your native timeline, and I've become displaced, perhaps irreversibly, from where and whence I came. I know some things you don't, of course, and I'm willing to share what I know, but I also journey surrounded by strangeness and unanswered questions. The version of you that I knew was someone I looked to for answers. In this occurrence of our relationship, our roles are greatly altered and, for now, it may be necessary for me to be more the teacher about some things. This does not mean, however, that I know better than you where the fates are leading us, or co-creating with us. From what I know of your essence, you may be better able to sense that than me...” Jeremiah broke eye contact for a moment and looked off into the darkness of the mesa. The telepathic atmosphere conveyed the vastness of what Jeremiah sensed he needed to communicate to me and of his trying to sense what should come next. “I made a choice. I was given a vision that I must journey to the ancestral realm the elves call ‘Old Terra,’ the world that you call ‘earth.’ It is the world that we came from, the mother world of our ancestors. The version of you that I once knew was also born on that world. Traveling back to Old Terra meant traveling backward in time, a form of travel none of us had ever attempted. To get here I had to seek out a very dark and painful portal. Through it, I fell into your realm. It was Old Terra, but soon I realized that your Old Terra is on a different timeline than the one my ancestors came from. That's why the version of you that exists here has a different history and future than the person I knew. Also, as far as I can tell, the bridge or link between our realms was created by you when you were a child." "Created by me?" “Yes, you might have realized that by now except that I have been communicating to you in a disguise. I felt it was necessary so as not to shock you with too much at once. I knew that you would recognize me if I came to you as I really am.” As I stood and looked at Jeremiah under the moonlight, his form shimmered for a moment and then altered. I recognized him immediately, though I was eleven when we had last met. The grey-eyed schoolboy was gone, but his essence was the same, and his revealed form felt truer and more physical. He was now somewhat taller, his hair was longer and the color of dark gold, and his eyes were green. Overlooking his slightly pointed ears, from the distance, Jeremiah might appear to be an exceptionally graceful and androgynous fourteen-year-old boy, but there was none of the temporary look of youth. His body had a completely finished quality. He was smallish and slender, a body size you might expect from a 14-year-old boy who had yet to have the growth spurt of later adolescence, but there was also a sense of sinewy, muscular athleticism about him, a warrior aspect, and this was highlighted by the shocking incongruity in his appearance----his skin was slashed with fresh scars. They seemed pink and in a healing phase, but there were so many of them---long twisting lines as if he had been slashed from head to foot with knives. I felt a shuddering certainty that his whole body was scarred in this way, and sensed these wounds as a glowing lattice of pain. Somehow, the perfection of Jeremiah’s elf body had been compromised by mortal scars, and the incongruity of these wounds cast a shadow of vulnerability on the preternatural beauty of his kind. "What happened to you?" "The wounds you see are a small part of the price I had to pay to earn my passage, to make the crossing to your realm. I could tell you more about that later if you want, but I have set up a campsite not far from here where we can make a fire and be more comfortable." We began walking. Despite the injuries, Jeremiah had a radiant vitality, and a sense of physical poise and alertness, like a cat that was relaxed but capable of instantaneous action. He was clothed in what seemed like dark velvets, mostly green and brown, and he wore a cloak of similar material and colors that seemed to blend with the night. The mesa seemed to go on forever. Walking across it in the moonlight, night winds sweeping by us, time unfolded in a way I had never experienced before. The mesa, and this whole realm were so empty of human chatter. We approached a rock formation, giant sandblasted boulders of red stone surrounded by desert plants. The curvilinear contours of the red stone emerged, grew out of the mesa and it was very subtle, but I could see a deep indigo light around them. This was some sort of power spot, and the phrase "medicine stones" arose in the telepathic atmosphere. In the center of this crown of red stone was a fire ring created with ritualistic perfection, a circle of precisely fitted rocks with a teepee of dry sticks at its center. Beside the fire ring, was a cloth bag, almost hard to see, of the same velvety, self-camouflaging material as Jeremiah’s cloak. Jeremiah lit the fire using an ordinary plastic lighter, and we sat beside it, its orange glow pulsated with warmth, and sparks flew up and disappeared into the high desert night. Jeremiah reached into his cloth bag and produced a beautiful flask that he handed to me. This flask, it was communicated, was one of the few things Jeremiah had been able to bring with him from his realm. I felt the mysterious otherness of this artifact of another world. Its design was flowingly organic-looking but it was made of a material unknown to me. It looked somewhat like bronze but may have been some sort of lightweight ceramic that had the adamantine quality of some very hard gemstone. The cap of the flask was inset with what appeared to be a beautiful cabochon emerald. Jeremiah invited me to drink from it. Carefully, I unscrewed the emerald cap and brought the flask to my lips. The liquid that flowed into my body was…. it would almost be an understatement to call it a magical elixir, it filled my body, every cell, with elemental colors of light, radiant nourishment, a chorus of voices of colored light, the harmonizing energies of elements, gemstones, stars coursing through me, transforming me as pure vitality and color energizing my core. One sip of this elixir was more than sufficient, and I carefully screwed the cap back on, feeling the deep green medicine of the emerald, and passed it back to Jeremiah. The fire had become a blaze, enveloping us in warmth and firelight as we sat before it. Jeremiah had already gathered ample firewood, enough to feed it all night, and in an ordinary cardboard box he had provisioned the campsite with bottles of water and some packages of dried fruits and nuts that he offered to me with a gesture. I politely declined and decided to resume the conversation. Words still felt a bit intrusive, but they were necessary, at least for me. "I had an experience when I was a child---it seemed that you were there. Is this what you meant by the bridge I created when I was a child?" I asked. "Yes. What did you experience? We were never entirely sure what happened or why," said Jeremiah. "There was a terrible car accident when I was eleven. It took the lives of my parents and I was mortally injured. I left my body. I saw my body, my parent's bodies, and then the wrecked vehicle bellow me. I seemed to rise above the whole scene very quickly, and in a couple of moments it felt like I was above the earth, in space. As I rose, my speed seemed to increase exponentially until space itself seemed to form into a tunnel that allowed me to travel faster than light. Stars streaked by for a few moments and then disappeared. Then the speed was gone, and the darkness became still. It felt like I was climbing out of a deep well, and when I emerged from it, I was in a beautiful grassy field on a warm, sunny day. There were wild flowers, and I saw you and three others sitting in the grass. “You all looked so beautiful. I could feel your astonishment and concern for me, and there was so much love present, love for me, and the deep bonds that existed between the four of you, and that was in the whole atmosphere of this place. You came forward and knelt before me and looked at me. No words were exchanged, you just stayed there with me, and I felt so completely loved and accepted. Just being there with you for a few moments was deeply healing. I felt from you, and with you, that my life was meaningful and deeply appreciated and that I had ties with you and others who needed me to live. Then there was this knowing---a knowing that I had to go back, back to where my body and my parents’ bodies were. The next thing I saw was a medic, his head framed by flashing lights. He was asking me my name and I tried answering him, but my voice didn’t seem to be working right. That’s the last thing I remember until I regained consciousness a couple of days later in the hospital." I stopped speaking and Jeremiah and I just stared at each other, the telepathic atmosphere overflowing with emotion. Jeremiah was once again looking at me with love and acceptance, only we were both older, and he was scarred and separated from the loving world in which I had encountered him. We both felt some great circle closing, an arc of time from those moments in that sunny field until right now. I took a deep breath and resumed speaking, "This brief encounter with you, at such a young age, and at such a perilous moment, shaped and influenced my life in profound ways. I felt like I had a double identity, that I also belonged to another world and another tribe and that world felt more loving and more like home than the harsh world where I found myself orphaned and hospitalized. “Although I knew the experience in the field was real and of the greatest significance, I knew that it would be worse than useless to try to tell anyone about it. The experience, grieving for my parents, the prolonged nausea from general anesthesia, the ugliness of the hospital, the helplessness, pain, and weird sensations of my injured body---all these strange elements got mixed up together. I felt that I was in the wrong world and everything in the world in which I was stranded seemed unnecessarily brutal, ugly, painful---a vast and intrusive banality that wasn’t anyone’s fault. I could see that everyone at the hospital was trying to do their job, trying to help my body stabilize itself in a world I didn’t want to be in. So much of what they did seemed mechanical, and I had this disassociated sense that I was like some kind of invisible alien inside the body of a child that they were looking at and doing procedures to. I had no choice but to pretend to be this child and give expected responses. I had to prove that I could function in the mechanical way that they did or something even worse would happen to me. “I also felt that the bodies of the nurses and doctors and everyone I saw were distorted, grotesque--- more bestial somehow than they were supposed to be. You, and the others I saw in the meadow, were like the true form, and these bodies were frightening malformations, but yet no one seemed to realize the problem. Instead, these malformed people were the very ones who were supposed to be helping the body of this child. And the body of this child also seemed horrifying. It was covered with stitches and bandages, plastic tubes ran into it and so many parts were swollen and discolored and I wasn’t sure what sort of monstrosity the hospital would make of it. I knew that the malformed people would be satisfied if the child became another lumbering meat robot like they were. “When my best friend Corey was allowed to visit, I snapped out of the worst of this disassociation. Unlike all the others, his form seemed true and beautiful, and I could feel that he was seeing me, and not just the deformed body of a child inhabited by an invisible alien. I roused myself to welcome his presence, and after he left, I felt an intense will to be more like him, to look as he did, and not remain in a form that would disappoint him. His image seemed like a model that my bodily intelligence needed to remember what a body was supposed to look like. Beginning with his first visit, my recovery progressed ‘dramatically ahead of schedule’ as the doctors and nurses kept telling me in self-congratulatory tones as though they had done something very clever. Of course, they were partly right. They put me back together with the greatest skill available. But the pieces hadn’t really come back to life until the first visit from Corey. “Corey was also the only one I confided in about some of my strange experiences. He seemed to accept that I felt like I had lost two families, my parents in this world, and another family or tribe on this other world that were still alive and that I wanted to find. “My aunt Hannah, who had been traveling in Europe when she got the news about the accident, moved into my parent’s apartment and became my legal guardian. She ended up living with me in that apartment until I graduated from high school at age sixteen. Soon after being discharged from the hospital, I felt ready to go back to school. Corey and I went to the same school, and seeing him everyday was part of the motivation. I continued to get high grades in the subjects I liked, and respectable ones in those that I didn’t. “Hannah was the perfect guardian for me. We were both introverted intellectual types. She gave me plenty of space, and in return I caused very few problems for her. It was an atmosphere of mostly quiet mutual respect and admiration. She was an extremely accomplished, intelligent, talented woman with lots of things going on in her life, and she was careful not to intrude or interfere with what I was doing. I gave her the same respect, and we got along really well. “From the outside, my life seemed to have regained a smoothly functioning equilibrium. Inwardly, however, I felt haunted by a sense of something profoundly wrong with the whole reality. Most human body types still seemed grotesque and malformed to me, and I found so much of the human world ugly and banal. “I knew that what I experienced in the sunny field and that sense of connection I felt to you and your kind was real, but I had no idea what to do with it. I remembered the other three only vaguely, but you always seemed to be more than a memory. I felt you were still with me in some way, though there seemed to be two versions of you. One version was the person who knelt before me in the field, and the other version looked like you, was you in some way, but was a boy like me, though he was about three years older. I felt him close by in the time after the accident. It felt like he was protecting me or watching out for me. "The awareness of this boy---more than awareness, I feel like I live alongside him somehow, has stayed with me ever since. He stayed the same age as I continued to grow older, and that has changed our roles. At first he seemed to be my protector, but as an adult, I have felt more protective of him. Sometimes when I sense him, it is as if he has stepped into my world, other times I see him in his world. I've always seen him in the country, in this very wholesome and secluded setting that is quite specific. I've even been able to draw a map of the layout. It appears to be a small and beautifully designed intentional community. The buildings are small, but with exquisite architecture and carpentry. Tommy was trained by the person who built them, and did some of the work himself. I've often seen or, more than seen, encountered Tommy in this beautifully constructed tree house that he built. All the woodwork is very flowing and organic looking, but done with great precision. I know what every object inside that tree house looks like. Sometimes I've caught glimpses of green mountains in the distance, and I'm pretty sure these are the Green Mountains of Vermont. Also, Tommy has told me that there are solar panels embedded into the pagoda like roofs of the small buildings, but they seem to be constructed of what look like painted shingles, so this would have to be very advanced solar technology. There are also a couple of futuristic-looking wind turbines, obviously some very advanced design. I've researched wind turbines and haven't been able to find such a design anywhere. Tommy also has a computer in the tree house with a screen that seems to be completely flush with the wall almost as if it were painted on. I feel that Tommy lives in the near future, rather than the present, and that ever since I was eleven, I’ve been accessing only a certain time in his life, a particular summer, and this may explain why his age hasn’t changed. I've seen fireflies where he lives, and heard crickets, and everything is always very green. I never see the leaves turn or even a hint of snow. I believe that a portal opened after the accident to this particular boy who lives in this little intentional community, and the portal is to this specific summer when he is fourteen. I would know more, but I've also felt this constraint that keeps me from asking him questions about specifics. I sense that it would be wrong, deeply inappropriate for some reason, and perhaps the constraint would keep me from asking even if I chose to." "Yes,” replied Jeremiah. “I've experienced that sort of constraint as well. When you travel to another timeline it is a privileged access, but the privilege only extends so far, and there are a lot of implicit constraints that keep you from certain times and places, and that seem to forbid you from making contact with certain people or trying to influence or intervene in particular events. But there are other times and spaces, and sometimes people, in the new timeline that welcome you, that draw you toward them, so the constraint doesn't feel at all like hardship, but quite the opposite. It's more like a guardian fence that keeps you from straying into places where you don't belong." "Yes," I replied, "you're helping to clarify what I've felt about it. The constraint feels very proper and benign. And I experience it from within, not as any sort of external imposition." "What else can you tell me about Tommy?" asked Jeremiah. "He looks so much like you. The difference is that he is actually young, young in the ordinary sense. He looks very fit, but isn't quite as muscular as you are. His form seems newly made, what you would expect for a fourteen-year-old human being, while your form shows no sign of age, yet you have this subtly finished or fully developed look. But if you wore the same clothes and were seen by someone from thirty feet away, you would look like identical twins. Of course your ears are slightly pointed, but from thirty feet away that might not be noticed." "And what have you learned of Tommy’s essence?" asked Jeremiah. "I've learned that he is compassionate, empathic and loving. As with you, I feel this deep love and acceptance. He is highly intelligent, imaginative, creative, and artistic. He has great skill with his hands. I know the name of the person who trained him in woodwork and carpentry, Matthew, and have seen a glimpse of him once, a good-looking man of about 40. Matthew is a friend and teacher, very close to Tommy, but not his father. I also know the names and approximate ages of a few of the other people in this little community. “There is a strong sense of psychic awareness in Tommy, and perhaps that is part of the source of the portal and the portal may be helping to awaken his psychic awareness. He is very aware that his communication with me is a paranormal experience, but also one that he invites and appreciates. The only difficult part of it for him is that he too feels the constraint that we experience. It keeps him from talking about the portal and his other paranormal experiences with his loved ones, and this is difficult for him. He lives in this very small community of sixteen people. The atmosphere is transparent and sharing and unlike the adults there, Tommy was born into that community, so extreme openness is a given for him. “Tommy feels that the constraint is right, but also feels that the paranormal things he is experiencing are setting him apart, forcing him to have a secret identity. More disturbing is that Tommy sometimes feels a foreboding sense that he may be further separated from his community in the near future. This sense is like a dark cloud that seems to hang over what would otherwise be an idyllic summer. Tommy senses this dark cloud, and I've also sensed this dark cloud over his world, sensed it before he said anything about it. “As deeply present as Tommy has felt during so many encounters with him, I've never ruled out, until tonight, that he might be an exceptionally vivid creation of my own imagination, an alter ego or something like that. Tommy's sense of being set apart from his community closely paralleled my own feelings. Even before the accident, I felt this difference between myself and other members of my species. Corey and a few others were exceptions though. I felt like they were part of the same subspecies as me. And Tommy felt like he embodied this subspecies.” I paused for a few moments. Jeremiah had listened to everything I said with close attention, but now there was a shift in the telepathic atmosphere. He was sensing something, a hazard of some sort. “We need to leave this realm,” said Jeremiah. “It’s not good to stay here too long. It’s a very restful place, but it can put us out of phase with Old Terra if we overstay our welcome. We should get back.” I helped Jeremiah put out the campfire and then we walked quickly back across the mesa to the place where I had arrived. “Are you going to summon a portal?” “Yes,” said Jeremiah, "this is going to take me a few moments of total concentration, but you don't have to do anything, just take a few deep breaths and try to clear your mind." Jeremiah closed his eyes so I closed mine too. I found that I could clear my mind much more than usual, and took very long, slow breaths. Wind was kicking up, swirling around us and I opened my eyes. Jeremiah had his arms raised but I couldn't see him too clearly because we were enveloped by a vortex of wind and colored light that blurred my visual field. The vortex intensified, and seemed to pull me off my feet for a moment. Then it all calmed down. I saw that we were in the field where I had first entered the portal. My clipboard was still lying on the ground and despite the vortex, the papers and laminated photos were still neatly stacked beneath the spring clip. Jeremiah seemed alert, scanning the field around us. “We should leave here,” he said. We walked swiftly out of the field, heading toward the street. "I'm glad those were still there,” said Jeremiah glancing at the papers on my clipboard. "That portal doesn't allow you to take too much across. I've got a pack stashed near here." Jeremiah pulled an ordinary backpack from dense shrubbery near the edge of the field and hoisted it on his back. I noticed that Jeremiah’s appearance had shifted slightly. The scars weren’t visible and neither was the slightly pointed shape of his ears. The color-shifting, velvety aspect of his clothing was gone replaced by solid colors and the look of ordinary cloth His height hadn’t changed, and yet he seemed smaller, much more like an ordinary fourteen-year old, but more serious and alert. Our telepathic link was still intact, and Jeremiah reacted to my observations, “This is how I will appear to most people here. I employ only a thin layer of cloaking and that takes less energy and is easier to maintain and much more likely to work when I'm going to be seen by a variety of people. If I need to appear very different than the way I actually am it takes a lot of energy and focus and is hard to pull off on more than one observer at a time and especially if it’s got to be sustained. If I could sustain it, traveling here would be easier if I looked bigger and like a legal adult.” Jeremiah stopped walking and looked around. “I wanted us to get away from that field. I think we’re OK now. Anywhere you want to go?” “Yeah, why don’t we go to my camper van? It’s about a fifteen minute walk from here.” I felt Jeremiah’s assent and I led the way, “Have you had much trouble traveling in this form?” I asked. “Some,” said Jeremiah, “some people want to take care of me and others want to take advantage. There have been some unsettling experiences, but I have extensive training in evasion and in defense if it comes to it, though most of the abilities I developed through the Vehrillion are significantly weaker in this realm. It feels like there is a strong field here that suppresses such abilities. In dire need I seem to be able to come up with something, but it takes all my will. The illusions you’ve seen me create and summoning the portal took a lot of preparation and focus. They are the furthest limit of what I’ve been able to do with the Vehrillion here on Old Terra. On my home world, or even on that green world we just came from, I can do quite a bit more." Perhaps it was that Jeremiah's form had been slightly modified to look fully human, or that he was now in my realm and I was leading him toward my camper van, but I could see that I switched from being slightly intimidated by his powers and awareness to feeling protective toward him. Part of it was that he now looked so much like a young kid, and even if my mind knew that wasn't the case, other parts of me registered him that way and felt protective, even though intellectually I knew that he was probably better able to take care of himself than anyone I had ever met. As much as he now looked like an innocent and slightly smaller than average fourteen year old, he had the alertness of an alley cat that sniffed danger, and his situational awareness seemed to take in everything and with more than the usual senses. Jeremiah motioned me to walk closer to the shadow of some trees that lined the street. "A man in a house over there senses something and is about to look out of his bedroom window," said Jeremiah. Right after this telepathic message, I saw a second floor light come on in that house. "Do you feel the field of energy around your body?" asked Jeremiah. I assented. "Take a deep breath and when you are inhaling feel that energy come in closer, then hold your breath for a moment and try to keep that energy closer so that when you exhale it stays closer." I tried it and it seemed to work, but I also felt Jeremiah was helping me. "I should train you in at least some basic cloaking techniques." said Jeremiah. "Right now the two of us walking together is putting out an unusual field of energy and people will be able to sense it. Some people on Old Terra are drawn to elf energy, but others will instinctively want to attack it or even worse." Jeremiah didn't make it clear what the "even worse" was, but I assumed he meant some sort of sexual predation. He responded to my assumption, "Yes, there are reactions to elf essence on many levels, and no matter how well you cloak yourself some amount of that essence is picked up by people. Some will have this fascination and want to draw close, to find out who you are, to get close to your field, to touch you, but not in any menacing way, though their interest can sometimes cause problems. For other people, the elf essence they sense will be like a glowing splinter in their mind, and that splinter may drive them toward violence, desire or a dangerous mixture of both." "Yeah," I replied, "But you don’t have to be an elf to get that kind of reaction from people. I've experienced quite a bit of that. And a couple of my friends have as well." "There is a tension between hominid species and subspecies," said Jeremiah, "it's one of the most characteristic features of Old Terra. Even a member of the same species with a different skin color is enough to trigger this tension and create craziness, even mass violence. Some elves who studied the history of Old Terra concluded that it came from the deep past of Homo sapiens, a prehistoric era when there were other hominid species living alongside of them." "Like the Neanderthals?" I asked. "Yes," replied Jeremiah. ""We believe that Homo sapiens killed off the other hominid species and the memory of that is deep in the species unconscious. The more different another hominid seems, the more of a threat they seem, and a killer instinct may be aroused. Others who sense elf essence want to merge with it and assimilate it into themselves. Sometimes that drive is fairly benign. It's like they are charmed or enchanted by elf essence and just want to get close to it and would like to be your friend or lover. But for others, the otherness is sensed as a threat, or there may be a dangerous combination of fear, competition and desire, and it is crucial that we avoid the notice of such people, and if that fails, we tread very carefully. Now I'm realizing that the more time you spend with me, the more your elf essence will be activated and visible to such people, so we need to work on your cloaking and evasion skills. Instinctively, you seem to have developed a certain degree of cloaking, but now you need more. " We arrived at my camper van. "Here it is, my mothership," I said, patting it affectionately on the side. Jeremiah circled around it and looked at it with great interest, stopping at one point to touch it lightly with his fingertips. His way of taking it in pleased me greatly. I take a certain pride in my home vehicle, which is both my main transportation and residence. It's a very late model, very sleek, with silver flake paint to reflect the sun's heat, a solar panel on top, and well-made cabinetry and appliances inside. "I'll give you a tour once I repark the van," I said, unlocking the front doors. Jeremiah was obviously familiar with vehicles and buckled himself into the passenger seat. "I've done a bit of hitchhiking," Jeremiah said, "this is a nice ride." I drove down the dark, tree-lined street. "I've developed a few rules to keep myself from getting bothered by the police for living out of a camper van,” I said. “It's illegal in most places to sleep in a vehicle unless you are at an official campground or something like that. I never hang out in the camper on a private street. If I'm going to spend time in the back, I usually park at some big twenty-four-hour place like a supermarket or truck stop. If it's a truck stop, I'll stay the night, but if it's a store lot, when I'm ready to go to sleep I'll repark, usually on a quiet side street, and then as soon as I wake up I repark again, usually at a supermarket lot and that's where I'll make breakfast and so forth." "Sounds like a good cloaking strategy," said Jeremiah, "keep moving before you draw attention. That's exactly what I do." "But in this town I've got a better option---a free national campground in a desert canyon. It's mostly empty this time of year and the only limitation is that you can't stay more than one week in the same spot." I pulled off onto the dirt road leading into the campground. Jeremiah seemed very silent and I turned to look at him for a second. He had dropped the cloak, the scars were back and his eyes warily probed the night. I could tell he was sensing something, and so I stopped my casual talk about camper life and grew more alert myself. I felt strange, but couldn't tell if it was something I sensed at the campground or if I was just being influenced by the serious feeling of Jeremiah's alertness. The campground was almost empty, and I drove through it very slowly, trying to sense the best campsite to park in. The place I picked had a spectacular moonlit view of a large open mesa bordered by distant canyon walls. Out in the mesa some buttes and rock formations could be seen as silhouettes. I turned off the engine and silence seemed to envelope us. We sat quietly for a few moments before Jeremiah spoke, "You've taken us right to a nodal point, a place of great power," said Jeremiah unbuckling himself. He opened the door and stepped out of the van. He walked a few feet out into the mesa, and I followed him. Jeremiah pointed to one of the buttes out in the mesa and I looked at it carefully. There was this very subtle, nearly invisible corona of indigo light fringing it. It was like the blue fire coming from a gas jet, but at that point at the edge of the flame where the blue was nearly invisible. There was moon shadow on the left side of the butte, but the shadow seemed to flicker slightly, the darkness within it was flowing, an anomaly I found disturbing. The butte felt imbued with an ominous power, almost as if it were an abandoned nuclear power plant tower allowed to disintegrate out in the desert, silently irradiating the mesa. "What is it?" I asked. "A shadow portal," replied Jeremiah, "a doorway into shadow visions and shadow worlds." Jeremiah looked at the moon and appeared to study the position of the stars. "It's not just this place, it's also this specific moment in time, this night, that forces lined up to open this portal." Jeremiah kneeled down and picked up a red rock from the ground that he held in his hand as he stood there. He closed his eyes for a few moments, and took a few deep breaths. "This portal has appeared here before, but perhaps not in a couple of hundred years." "Should we stay here?" I asked. The more I looked at the butte, the more I felt its dark power in the pit of my stomach. Jeremiah turned and looked at me searchingly, compassionately, for a moment. I felt his look pervade my entire being, felt myself the subject of preternatural elf intuition and vision. "I think you brought us here for a reason," said Jeremiah. "And the reason has more to do with your destiny than mine. Your intuition is working at a much deeper level than you realize. There's a lot for us to talk about." There was a chill in the air, and I suggested that we hang out in the camper. I offered Jeremiah various things I had in the small refrigerator inside, but he politely declined everything but an herbal tea. Soon we were seated comfortably in the back, a couple of candles sitting on the table before us illuminated our faces. "What else can you tell me about this shadow portal?" I asked. "Crossing the threshold of a shadow portal is the key initiation into the higher levels of the Vehrillion," began Jeremiah. “And you said you are an adept of the Vehrillion, so you must have been through this," I said. “Yes. But I probably shouldn't have used the word 'adept'. We use 'adept' to mean a certain level of training, but it does not mean that anyone is a master. There are no masters of the Vehrillion, just different stages of learning. It is more an exploration than a finished set of teachings. “You’re right, though. I have passed through a shadow portal, but every occurrence of a shadow portal is different, and the experience I have of them is in my realm. I can't be sure how they work in this realm. All I know is the effects shadow portals have had on a few of us, including myself. It was a shadow portal that brought me the vision that my destiny required me to journey to Old Terra." Shocked realizations began to form in my mind and with them came an icy dread. I realized that I would have to pass through the shadow portal. I sensed Jeremiah quietly withdrawing from the telepathic atmosphere to give me space for inner vision without his influence. I saw that there were lines of force running through the mesa. I saw them as luminous curtains of energy that shifted like aurora borealis. The shadow portal was a key node in this network of energy. Another key node seemed to be within me because the map of energies shifted with my every thought and feeling. I could feel the shadow portal out there in the mesa even though I couldn't see it any more. The whole map of energies wanted me to go deeper into it, into dark and fluctuating corridors of possibility that lay beyond the shadowy threshold. "This shadow portal is here to initiate me, isn't it?" I asked. "That's a question only you can answer," said Jeremiah. "What have these initiations been like? What are the hazards?" "Every encounter is different, but the few that I know about have had certain things in common. All involved dark visions and experiences, but the portal itself is not necessarily malevolent. We've chosen to view it as a teacher, though the lessons it teaches may be painful and grotesque. "So far in our experience, the encounters have had a certain structure of phases. You step across the threshold, and for a few moments after you may not feel much of anything. Then a vision comes, a vision of something dark and hidden that needs to be brought into awareness. The visions have been shocking and profoundly disturbing. So far, though, they have all been comprehensible, and the experiencer is intact throughout the vision. What is seen may be shattering, but the experiencer is allowed to be a clear witness of it. After the vision comes, they are clear for a time, and if they choose to, they are able to share what they have seen. “We've structured the initiation so that the experiencer chooses a minder, someone who will stay with them throughout the experience, mostly to take care of their body. The vision phase passes quickly, less than an hour. A wave of vision comes, and then the experiencer has some clear time to think about what they have seen and to share it with their minder if they wish. After, the experiencer sits with eyes closed in a meditative state to compose him or herself for the next phase. Then, from the perspective of the minder, the experiencer will suddenly lose consciousness and their body will slump to the ground. Their body enters a vulnerable state that resembles an illness with fever. Sometimes the illness seems to have crisis phases where fever becomes high and there can even be a brief convulsion. This unconscious phase lasts about three days, and when the experiencer awakens, the physical symptoms disappear, but full health doesn't return immediately. The body is still in a weakened state requiring a few days of rest and recuperation. Given the healing and regenerative ability of the elves, this was for some of us, our closest experience of serious illness." "But that's what it does to an elf body," I pointed out. "Actually, the first experiencer was what we call ‘a protoelf,’ someone who is like a bridge between Homo sapiens and the elves. This is what you and Tommy are," said Jeremiah. "The protoelf who was our pioneer in the shadow portal experience did have a longer physical recovery, but otherwise he went through the same basic phases as the rest of us who followed." I sensed that the protoelf Jeremiah referred to was my parallel version, but I didn't ask for a confirmation. The feeling of constraint I felt around Jeremiah was confirmation enough. It was also enough to make me realize that this initiation was less a choice than a fateful inevitability. To choose not to undergo it would be a choice to retreat to some lesser destiny. "So that's what the phases look like from the perspective of the minder. What is happening to the experiencer while their body is in this fever?" I asked. "They are living lives in shadow worlds, realms that may seem like grotesque distortions even from the perspective of your realm, Old Terra, which already has so many grotesque distortions,” said Jeremiah, “but whatever darkness and grotesque distortions you are aware of, these portals take you past that. "In the first phase there is a revelation of darkness, but however powerful, you are present as an observer of the revelation. No matter how shocking or disturbing it might be, you are still you, you are a witness to the vision, no matter how overwhelming. But the next phase..." Jeremiah hesitated, and was obviously choosing his words carefully, "I was about to describe it as a journey, but the word 'journey,' may be misleading. For us, through the Shadow Worlds Portal, we were not merely observers, but participants fully immersed in those worlds, and that immersion meant that we were also stripped of our identities, the identity we had before we entered the portal. The Shadow World experience was not so much a journey as an incarnation, or series of incarnations in which we found ourselves in different identities and in incarnations that already seemed to be in progress. They did not begin with birth. “As grotesque and distorted as these identities might seem to our baseline personalities, we had only a vague sense of unease and wrongness. When we merged with these new identities we were they, our memories were their memories, and all sense of who we were before we entered the portal was absent. And there was no transition, no awareness of any metamorphosis. “Usually we would find ourselves waking up from sleep, perhaps vaguely remembered dreams, and now we were this new identity, in a new world, a new culture, and we had no sense that it was new, it was all familiar because our memories had been replaced. The only residual awareness we had was a vague unease and sense of wrongness about things, even though everything was familiar. When we regained our original identities, what we experienced seemed so bizarre and grotesque, but even in retrospect it felt altogether real, and every choice, every action that we took in the shadow worlds seemed to be as morally consequential as the choices and actions of our regular lives. "While three days may have transpired from the perspective of the keeper, the experiencer might remember a whole lifetime, sometimes even more than one lifetime in the Shadow Worlds, and there would be a period of acute disorientation and confusion about identity. Even once we were able to fully function in a transformed version of our original identity, the process of integrating the reality of multiple identities and remembered lifetimes is ongoing. At the time that I left my realm, none of us felt that we had completed the process, and the lack of closure seemed purposeful, it was a crucial part of the initiation. A certain solidity in our identities had been permanently shattered, and that shattering, painful and confusing as it could be at times, allowed us to advance much further in the Vehrillion. “This is probably as much as I should tell you. The details of what we experienced, we did not share except sometimes with a minder or one or two others who had also passed through the shadow worlds. Knowing what someone else experienced would be misleading at best, because everyone's experience was unique. Anything I say about it can only give you a sense of the nature of the choice. None of it can prepare you, because nothing will be retained once you are immersed in the experience. "I am telling you about the general nature of the shadow portal experience because we've found that this can be helpful in the recovery process. When you return, you will still remember this talk and remembering will help with reorientation to this reality. Perhaps your experience of the life of Old Terra is a superior preparation, since you come from a realm that has more grotesque darkness than elves are accustomed to. "You also have a few hours to contemplate your decision. The way we structured the initiation, the experiencer approaches the shadow portal a little more than an hour before sunrise. This way, the shadow worlds journey begins close to dawn. We believe this sets up the shadow world experience to be a little less dark. Some of us have found that the time the experiencer's consciousness awakens in the shadow world may correspond to the time at the portal, so it may be close to dawn there too and that seems a propitious time to enter a new reality." "I'm relieved to hear that there is a dawn in shadow worlds." I said. "Most, but not all, have had some version of the day cycle. The shadow worlds seem to be grotesque versions of realities we can still comprehend. You will likely find certain parallel aspects with your baseline reality. But there may also be crisis moments in the shadow world experience where a reality that is already grotesque may break down and become unstable and even more distorted. So far, experiences have begun with an intact day cycle and, however grotesque, a reality that is relatively stable. This is an example of why I say that the experience may be dark, but does not appear to be maliciously designed. It seems like you are given a chance to ground yourself in a new identity before things get even more distorted." said Jeremiah. I took a deep breath. "Well, I don't think we came here to find a shadow portal so that I could choose not to undergo an initiation that you happen to be trained in. I'm feeling dread in every cell of my body, but it seems obvious that I have to do this. Is there something I should do for the next few hours to prepare myself? I certainly don't feel capable of sleep or even quiet rest." "No special preparation," said Jeremiah. "Drink lots of fluids, but don't eat anything. I think we should use the time to communicate with each other. I'd like to learn more about your life, and you may have many questions for me." "I do indeed,” I replied, "and I'm also willing to tell you anything you want to know about my life." "Thanks," said Jeremiah, "you can ask me anything you want about my life too, though I might be constrained from talking about some things. We can start with some of your questions." I thought for a moment. “You said that this other version of me from your timeline was also born on Old Terra, which is the earth apparently, and you also called it the mother world of the elves. So where were you born? What world did you come from? Another planet?” “Yes,” replied Jeremiah “another planet." “So we’re talking about space travel?” “Originally, yes. The elves do not engage that sort of space travel, but the protoelves who were our ancestors did. They left Old Terra on a journey that took a generation, a passage that we call the 'Great Crossing.' They lived in a biosphere, a sealed and sustainable ecology. The journey ended when they found a verdant planet that had perfect conditions to sustain a colony. After that, we never attempted space travel of that sort again, but didn't foreclose that as a possibility for the future. We felt that we needed to work on our development and other forms of travel before voyaging into space again." "Can you tell me more about your species? How are you different from Homo sapiens, and what does it mean to be a protoelf?" "Well, we are human in many ways," replied Jeremiah. "We are persons, individual, self-aware beings, same as you, and our bodies are very similar, but we don't age, and our cells and organs have greater regenerative ability. We aren't plagued by the illnesses that humankind experiences, and we can recover relatively quickly from injuries, but only up to a point. Severe enough injuries can still be fatal. Usually, we are able to avoid severe accidents and injuries for a few reasons. Our intuition, and what you might call 'psychic awareness,' is greatly enhanced. We can sense approaching dangers and many other things. Our senses are greatly heightened. We see, hear, taste and smell things that most humans would not be aware of. Our bodies tend to be smaller and lighter and we have greater speed and agility. We don't need or want to eat as much food as humans do. We also couldn't, or at least wouldn't need or want to eat many of the foods that human beings eat. We can go longer without sleep if we need to, and don't tire from exertions as easily. Our experience of time is different, and this is why we can sense hazards in the near and sometimes more distant future. In emergency situations, we can greatly speed ourselves up so that, in effect, it feels like we have slowed time, giving us more options and room to act in survival situations. We can create illusions in the minds of many other sentient beings as you've experienced. We can also conceal our energy, cloaking ourselves when we need to travel undetected. We can merge our energy and awareness with other sentient beings and even inanimate things. We sense some of the memory of living things and also what you might consider inanimate objects. In relating to our kind, the ability to merge with each other in a very intimate way has largely overtaken the much more physical way that most humans experience sexuality. We still use words, but our ability to share with each other does not require them, and we communicate more with vision and can do so at a distance. “The journey I have taken, however, is beyond mere distance and I've lost this link with the others, but I can sense, at least vaguely, some of the protoelves of your realm from a distance, just as I sensed you soon after I crossed over. Your essence was already known to me, and we have fateful ties, so this sense was much more distinct. Most of what I just described are the natural endowments of the elves, but there are other abilities that have been awakened by the Vehrillion, the alchemical system we have created and are still developing. The version of you that I knew was our greatest pioneer in the development of the Vehrillion.” Jeremiah paused for a moment, and it seemed as if he felt a twinge of discomfort. “Is that the constraint you are feeling?” “Yes. Though I said that elves have an intuition that warns them of approaching dangers, some part of me wanted to go right up to the limit of the constraint. I think it is because of my emotional attachment to the relationship I had with the other version of you. I wanted to say as much as I could to give an idea of the role you played, and perhaps that was selfish. I wanted to build a bridge between these two versions of you for the sake of my feelings. I felt the edge of the constraint, but maybe I was still able to say what I just did about the role you played in the development of the Vehrillion because it is valuable and appropriate for you to recognize something about your creative potential. Even so, I can feel that I am right at the edge of the constraint and can’t go further. At least not at this time,” said Jeremiah. “In traveling to a parallel realm there are some essential taboos, the constraints, and they seem to be built into the structure of reality. One of the strongest is not to get close to a parallel version of yourself. Physical closeness feels like it is absolutely forbidden, I can feel it instinctively, like a primordial incest taboo, but I also feel that even information about a parallel self might be harmful. Perhaps it compromises the individuality of who you are in your native timeline. I feel a certain queasy sense that I've already almost overstepped this boundary in telling you even the little I have about your other self.” “And Tommy, who looks so much like you, he is another version of you?” “Yes.” “But I felt no constraint telling you about him.” “That’s probably because I am already so developed. Depending on how old Tommy is when you meet him, you may feel more constraint telling him about me, and I doubt that I would ever be able to meet him. “When I crossed over to this realm, I sensed Tommy as a potential about to be manifested. Because of some weird and necessary parallelism, I believe that the moment that I fell to your realm was the same moment that Tommy was conceived, and that presently he still slumbers in his mother's belly. Although this seems like it contradicts the nature of the constraint, I feel that the parallelism between his conception and my crossing into Old Terra and your timeline allows me to be a subtle influence on his development. My existence in his realm, without our ever meeting, may act as a seed crystal helping to activate his elf potential. "Your fate and Tommy’s fate are entwined, just as our fates are entwined, and maybe this is just one fate since we are of the same essence, just as you and the one I knew are of the same essence. "But I also sense a time anomaly related to you and Tommy. In your native timeline I believe he is still unborn, but I also sense him crossing into your timeline sooner, and in a more realized state, than that would suggest, so there's a mystery there that is yet to be revealed. I'm realizing some of these things as we are sharing..." Jeremiah paused for some moments, sensing things. "I think part of why I am here is to teach you some things, initiate you into some elements of the Vehrillion, before you meet Tommy. If I can do that, perhaps I will have fulfilled part of my intention in coming here, to act as a catalyst for the protoelves. " "What else can you tell me about the protoelves?" "All the people who were part of the Great Crossing turned out to be protoelves. There were fateful and telepathic aspects to how they came together and became aware of each other. The crossing itself, the disconnection from the rest of their species in this sealed ecology traveling through the vacuum of space, acted as a catalyst. “The protoelves are people with the elf potential who are born and raised as Homo sapiens. The degree to which their elf potential emerges can vary drastically. On Old Terra, protoelves often feel tormented by a sense of alienation, a sense of wrongness about their realm, their timelines, their bodies, the human form and the way humans are." "The two protoelves that I have been close to both died young, one by his own hand," I added. “I'm sorry,” said Jeremiah, “but I'm not surprised. The conditions of Old Terra can be a torment to those with high elf potential. They are raised in a world where everyone uses the old form of communication, a form that is not sufficient for them. They may experience human sexuality as primitive and brutal and feel confused about their own identity. Only the very strongest protoelves can survive such conditions without losing their elf potential. Some adapt to the Homo sapiens condition by submerging or even extinguishing their elf potential. Also, protoelves vary greatly in the degree to which they are imbued with elf essence versus Homo sapiens attributes. This was true for the protoelves who made the great crossing. All had a degree of awakening, but only a few were able to master the sharing of visions, and there was considerable variation amongst them in the degree to which they were able to awaken elf attributes. While most experienced a diminution of aging, they had already lived too long amongst Homo sapiens, their bodies were too firmly rooted in the old form, and some didn't even survive the Great Crossing and never set foot on the New World. Those that did continued aging to various degrees. The children of the New World called them "the Old Ones," and they revered them, and cared for them when they grew feeble...” Jeremiah was silent for a few moments, and the atmosphere of our communication was filled with poignant feelings. "We felt a deep debt of gratitude to the Old Ones, they were our parents, our teachers, and it was a great sadness in some ways to watch them become old and feeble while we remained forever young. One by one they departed for the spirit world and after many years only we, the children of the New World, remained... Amongst us, there was also a difference between those of us who were born in the biosphere, during the Great Crossing, and those of us born on the New World, but that's another subject. You asked about the protoelves, and I've talked about them generally, but you are a protoelf, and I think we should also look into your case." Jeremiah asked me a whole series of questions about myself. He wanted to know in detail about my paranormal experiences, my diet, my health, sexuality, and so forth. It feels like too much to record all of that here. It was almost as if he were some sort of naturopathic physician taking a detailed case history. After he absorbed all the information he said, "You don't seem to have aged much." "I'm only twenty-six," I replied. "Even so, now that I have traveled in Old Terra, I have seen that even by that age, most humans have aged considerably. You look much younger. Even amongst the protoelves I’ve observed in your realm, by that age most have bodies that have fully hardened into the Homo sapiens form. The diet that you have followed has helped considerably. It seems that you were instinctively choosing to eat closer to the way of the elves, but I advise you to go further in that direction. We view food more like an essence, a medicine---matter that is infused with life spirits. We don't eat foods unless they are sufficiently infused with life spirit. Other species, species that are closer to matter, eat food, often food in bulk quantities if it is available, and this keeps them more closely tied to matter. If food is not sufficiently infused with spirit, than even protoelves will try to eat in this bulk way, unconsciously looking to get more of an essence that is barely present in what they are eating. This will submerge elf essence and accelerate aging. The Old Ones realized this and changed their way of eating which allowed many of them to live lifespans that would have been considered anomalous by human standards. I can initiate you into some practices and other things that will help awaken more of your elf potential, if this accords with your wishes.” "It does." I replied. "Are the elves what Homo sapiens are evolving toward?" "I don't know,” said Jeremiah. "I think the elves are a species that some Homo sapiens are reaching toward and might, under just the right circumstances, evolve into, but I don't think that's the only possibility. All I know is that in my timeline a small group of protoelf Homo sapiens evolved and gave birth to the elf form, but this doesn't mean that it is an inevitability foreclosing other possibilities. Although some of the Old Ones had visions, we don't know exactly what transpired on Old Terra after we left. Perhaps Homo sapiens merged with machines and evolved into cyborgs. Perhaps the species went extinct. We just don't know. I think it is quite possible that the human species does not evolve into a single species, but into many. No other animal created so much novelty and had so much individual difference as Homo sapiens. I think that it is quite likely that once they break free of the old form that there may be a variety of outcomes---species and subspecies of which we cannot even conceive. So when I said I could initiate you into elf practices, if it accords with your wishes to move in that direction, I meant that I did not assume that it does accord with your wishes. For some, the evolutionary path of the elves may not be their best destiny. I feel more of an intuitive confidence that it will be the right path for Tommy, but I’m not as sure about you, even though you have every aspect of a protoelf. Perhaps you are meant to do something different with that potential. “We elves are not a finished creation, but from the perspective of my timeline, a very new one. Who knows where we will go? Perhaps we will evolve into a variety of forms. Perhaps the act of traveling across timelines itself makes one another species. In my realm, I am one of a small first generation of elves, and even during my lifetime I witnessed and participated in our species awakening, developing, and taking on form. It is a very different feeling than finding yourself a member of a species that has been around for millions of years and that has acquired so much form. Even so, although we found ourselves so much more unformed, we also had a strong sense that we were not the only occurrence of the elves, we were awakening, perhaps in a new way, to a form that already existed at least as potential. Homo sapiens has lore about the elves, and reports of encounters, dating back thousands of years before we awakened. It's hard to say on what level of reality these glimpses and encounters occurred. Were they a sort of memory of the future? Were they elves who, like me, crossed timelines and intersected with the human past? I don't know, and I also don't know that there is only one answer. Very likely there may be a number of strange answers to the whys and hows of the resonance of the elf form with the human past. “You said before that even before the accident that you already had feelings of being set apart. When did those begin?" "I'm not sure when it started," I replied. "Perhaps some degree of it was present even when I was a very small child. Although the feelings were at their most acute right after the accident, I always sensed this wrongness with the way most people were, and the way they looked, thought and acted. I felt like I was a member of a different species, and that the species in which I found myself was primitive and brutal. The accident that took my parents and brought me this strange moment of contact with you and your kind contributed to these feelings, but also relieved some of the bitter disappointment I felt. I've always sensed that there is an alternative, and a very few people I've known seem to embody and personify some of that alternative. “But mostly, I've felt like an observer of my own world and species. I found that I instinctively assumed the role of a visiting anthropologist, and even managed to find a career that paid me to play that role. “While I can be curious about people, and am a good observer, I always feel like a stranger in a strange land. I witness and document what they are doing, but I can't be part of it. For the first three years of my photojournalism career I was a loner, traveling from assignment to assignment. Although I would become very engaged with the people who were part of the subculture I'd been sent to write about, once the article was written I left and went on to the next assignment. “Then about three-and-a-half years ago, a few days before the spring equinox, I was working an assignment, and this nineteen-year-old kid, who was also wearing a camera, came up to me to ask me what I was doing. He took a picture of me and then I realized he was interviewing me. It was a very pleasing role reversal moment “This is how I met Alex. He was very funny, charming and unique and obviously what you would call a protoelf. He was small, quick moving and androgynous looking and was wearing a green hoodie so that I actually thought he looked a bit like an elf from the first moment I saw him. There was a strong feeling of mutual recognition and curiosity. I offered to buy him lunch and when the food arrived, I noticed that he was really hungry. He had been living out of a backpack, had a tent set up in a secluded spot, and he had been hitchhiking around the country for the last couple of months. “He was very well-spoken and educated, and his manner was funny, animated and mercurial. He told me that he was a writer too and showed me a thick spiral notebook he had with him. The notebook was filled with writing and small, skillful drawings in the margins. ‘Traveling has been helping me write.’ said Alex. ‘What have your been working on?’ ‘A story, perhaps a novella, who knows what it will turn into. This thirteen-year-old boy is in a car with his parents when they have this massive car wreck. His parents are killed and he survives, but is in a coma for a couple of months. When he wakes up from the coma, he remembers this whole other life he had on another world. He remembers it in great detail, a whole different culture, and now he knows so much more than a thirteen year old should, but about a different world, a much better world, only now that world is gone, and he is an orphan and has to figure out what to do in the life he wakes up into. He's not sure which world he really belongs to and wants to get back to the one he was living when he was in the coma. That life seems as real as the one he wakes into at the hospital, and he is sure that it is still going on somewhere.’ “I was almost too shocked to speak. I had felt something the first moment I laid eyes on Alex, something fateful, but this seemed too much a strange parallel, and at that moment I may have had a moment of fear that he was some sort of psychic trickster pulling things out of my mind. “‘Could I take a look at it for moment?’ I asked, gesturing toward the notebook. A certain shyness and self-consciousness seemed to come over him, a side I hadn't seen so far. Later I would discover that there were many more unseen sides, that he was far more complex than I realized. “ ‘Well, this isn’t finished work, it's not really in a presentable form, it needs a lot of proofreading and editing, probably not too impressive to a professional writer such as yourself, but, OK, here—’ he passed me the notebook, and although I felt a bit rude for asking to see it, I felt somehow that I had to. “When I held the notebook in my hands---it was a bit battered from travel and had some loose papers and pictures in at as well as so many pages embossed with handwriting---I felt almost as if he had passed me a piece of his soul, and I think from that moment I realized that I loved him, and wanted to protect him, take care of him. I opened the notebook and was struck by the flowing beauty of his handwriting, and the little images he sketched in the margins were so skillfully done. I read just a page or two, enough to verify for myself that there really was a story about a boy who survived a car wreck that killed his parents and so forth. There were spelling and punctuation errors, and I expected it to be very amateurishly written in general, but it wasn't. The sentences I read revealed a skillful, clever and graceful command of language. I gave him back his notebook and told him about the parallels in my life. “We spent the afternoon walking and talking, and Alex told me about his recent hitchhiking experiences, and I took some pictures of him. Most of the people who picked him up were kind and generous, but one experience was rather harrowing and sounded like he had narrowly evaded getting raped. Anyone would have been worried about him hitchhiking because he was small and beautiful in this androgynous way, long blonde hair and large brown eyes, he looked almost as elf like as you do. I found him physically attractive, and apparently so did some of the people who picked him up. Most of those were harmless situations that Alex was clever enough to handle, but the one harrowing episode sounded like it had the potential to end in rape and perhaps murder. “And so I invited Alex to travel with me, he could be like my assistant and traveling partner, and I would gladly teach him anything I knew about photography and writing. I knew it would be dishonest and wrong in all sorts of ways if I didn't disclose that I was physically attracted to him, and so I did tell him that. But I also told him that was a line I would not try to cross and I had already picked up from our conversation that afternoon, in which he mentioned a couple of young women he had been involved with back in his hometown, that his inclinations were not in that direction anyway. Alex thanked me for my honesty and we seemed to pass over this disclosure without too much fuss. As it turned out, this one-sided attraction would be one of a number of strange tensions between us. “But there were at least as many affinities, which we both felt from the start, as there were tensions. There was the parallelism between Alex's story and my life story, the parallelism between our talents for photography and writing and that we both had androgynous, youthful looks that often brought strange projections from others. On the other hand, I was 23 and he had only just turned 19. Four years may not sound like much of an age gap, but at that phase of life it was. I had already graduated from college and had an enviable career, comfortable finances, and so forth and that was a difficult asymmetry for Alex. Although, I had no trouble covering traveling expenses for both of us, Alex never liked taking my money and would have much preferred to have his own income. Alex had a fragile pride that was easily wounded by real or imagined slights. “Right after I disclosed my attraction, Alex warned me that he had a history of lashing out at people close to him, and went through a lot of mood changes. His warnings were well founded. Alex was incredibly mercurial and his mood shifts could be dramatic. There were many times during our travels when Alex was elated and enthusiastic about what he was learning and experiencing, and much of the time he was charming, funny, loving and appreciative. But there were also unpredictable shifts into dark moods in which his pride could feel offended by almost anything I said or did. Alex would accuse me of thinking of him as a sidekick and not an equal and things like that. He quickly figured out the vulnerable parts of my personality and in a blacker mood wouldn't hesitate to attack those. Later, he would be genuinely remorseful and would tell me that I was the closest friend that he ever had, and that he had never known anybody that he could to talk to as openly as he did with me and that nobody had ever taught him so much. “The journey we went on together, to various American subcultures, a shared journey that lasted almost three years was, as Alex put it, ‘epic.’ In the last part of it though, Alex's moods became increasingly unstable, and he talked about needing to be on his own, and perhaps to start college before he got any older. I never resisted any of this, and even told him that I would help him apply to schools, write recommendations, and give him money to travel home or to get started anywhere he wanted to go. I didn't want him to go, and I knew it would be a shock to be back on my own after such immersive companionship, close to three years in which we were often together twenty-four hours a day, but I also didn't want to hold Alex back from anything he needed to do. Also, I was starting to feel like I needed some space too. As much as I loved Alex, his mood shifts could be quite stressful, and we were often together in such close quarters that at times I felt overwhelmed by his emotions. Maybe we both needed a break from that. “It was winter, a few weeks before we would have hit the three-year mark, when Alex woke up one morning and announced that he wanted to leave that day. Although he had been somewhat estranged from his family since before he met me, he wanted to return to his hometown. I immediately got him a bus ticket, gave him travel money, and said goodbye to him just a couple of hours after he announced his intention to leave. He left behind several notebooks of his writings, said he might send for those later. I told him that he would be welcome to rejoin me in the future, if he wanted. “It was a difficult transition for me, made much more difficult when I discovered that Alex wasn't responding to messages I sent him. Then I got a very brief message saying that he didn't want to communicate with me for at least half a year. He offered no explanation, but I felt I had to respect his wishes. A couple of months went by and then I got a crisis phone call from Alex. He was fighting with his family, had some bad episodes with alcohol, and was confused about what to do next. We talked for about an hour and I gave him the best counsel I could and he thanked me for it, apologized for grief he put me through, and said goodbye. I thought the phone call might have been the beginning of resumption in our communication. But then a week or so after the phone call, I got an email from Alex saying he had nothing against me, that he thought I was a good person, but that he wanted to break all ties with me and that I should not try to contact him ever again “I hoped this was some sort of phase he was going through, and felt haunted by the sense that he was suffering through difficult times and that there was nothing I could do, that I had to respect his wishes. Meanwhile, I immersed myself in work and hoped that he would reach out to me again. A few weeks passed, and then one morning I woke up from a terrible dream about Alex, a dream where he came to me in a very distressed state in what seemed like an abandoned city. He had some wounds that he had wrapped in rags and was in a state of fear and confusion, not sure where he was. The dream left me deeply distraught and I thought about trying to contact him. When I turned on my computer, I found an email from one of his friends. Alex had committed suicide the night before..." I paused for a moment, remembering what it felt like to find that email, and also feeling the empathic receptivity and compassion that I felt in the telepathic atmosphere and saw in Jeremiah's eyes. "I called to back out of the assignment I was about to begin and immediately started driving cross-country to Alex's hometown, a place I had never been to. I tried communicating with Alex's spirit on the way there, the way many people would who just lost someone, but I felt nothing, just an empty and bleeding place in my heart. I arrived the next evening, and parked the camper van next to a public park. I walked the forlorn streets of his town, it was a slightly impoverished rather homely town, and the atmosphere felt mournful and depressed. “I returned to the park where I had left the van and that's when Alex's spirit showed up. It seemed as if he had also been wandering the town at night and saw the familiar camper van and felt my presence. His presence was emotionally intense, and inwardly I saw him very vividly. He was wearing clothes I had seen him in before. He didn't want me to look at him, though, and he didn't want to look directly at me or communicate directly with me at first. I sensed that he just needed to be near me, near my energy, that it was helping to give some stability to his spirit body that was in a very depleted state. “There have been a few episodes where he needed me in this way, but I want to emphasize I never felt drained in the least by them. I was certainly well aware of all the lore about vampiric spirits, hungry ghosts that can appear in guises to drain your energy. This wasn't like that at all. It felt more like Alex was a child lost in a forest at night, nearly freezing, and I was like a campfire he could draw close to and be warmed by my presence. Just as a child drawing close would not deplete a campfire’s heat, my energy wasn't drained at all, if anything it was increased as I felt the warmth of my essential energy being needed and healing someone I loved and feared that I had lost forever. “We sat silently next to each other for a few minutes during which there was no specific communication from Alex, but I could sense that he was being nurtured by my presence. And then, in the same mercurial fashion in which Alex's moods shifted when he was still in a physical body, he became animated and almost cheerful and amused. The first thought forms I got from him were, “'Wow, this is pretty cool, I'm still here, I can still see everything.' At first, he didn't seem too interested in me, but in the discovery that he still existed and was capable of things. Although he didn’t communicate much, part of the discovery was that I was aware of him and that he could send me words as thought forms. “I was about to reach for something on the table I was sitting at in the back of the camper and Alex stopped me and said, “‘Don’t touch anything and I’ll show you a little magic trick.’ I sat very still and waited for a few seconds. My laptop was open on the table in sleep mode, the screen dark, and then it blinked on by itself. I'd never seen it do that without being touched, and the screen opened to a photo of Alex wearing the same clothes I had visualized him in. I have tens of thousands of a photos stored on my laptop and I didn’t even have any photo editing or viewing programs open. “ ‘Ah, so you like my little magic trick?’ he said it in such a characteristically charming, impishly trickster way. This was the first of many signs or ‘little magic tricks’ as Alex called them. As striking as they were, I realized that I couldn't be absolutely certain of their source. Perhaps they were some sort of poltergeist phenomena generated by my grief or a trickster part of my unconscious. At least these were doubts or other possibilities I entertained when I didn't feel Alex's presence. When I did, his felt presence overwhelmed the doubts. “The happier, discovery phase when Alex did his first magic trick and realized that I could hear his thoughts, lasted maybe an hour, and then Alex seemed to take off to see other things in the town, and I think he visited people grieving for him. “I took down the table and set up the bed and was lying there in the dark when Alex came back. He was severely depleted again and curled up next to me in a fetal position. It felt like I was nursing him back to life with my energy. I think the grieving of others and a certain instability in his newly acquired spirit body made him particularly vulnerable the first few days. “I spent about a week in his hometown waiting for the funeral to happen. Even during those few days, the relationship with Alex's spirit was tumultuous and went through many dramatic phases. “A few times during that first week, and a couple more times in the months after, there have been episodes where his process, which sometimes seemed like a physical illness with crisis phases, required me to nurture him energetically for an hour or so until he could recover himself. I think we’re past that phase though. Alex has stabilized himself in his spirit body and seems healthier now. “Most of the first couple of months especially, Alex was very much like he was in a physical body, only his mercurial mood shifts were even more extreme. Especially during that first week that I stayed at his hometown, there were some episodes of acute anguish in which he felt intense regret for having done something so drastic and irreversible. At other times, there were more positive feelings as he appreciated our renewed fellowship and found that he was still able to experience life, and quite vividly when he was close to me. He could see and go anywhere he wanted apparently, but I also offered to him that he could perceive the world through my senses if he wanted, and he seemed to find this very gratifying. “A couple of times he asked me to have a glass of wine on his behalf so he could taste it and feel the flush of alcohol again. But it wasn't like he was tempting me toward his vices like a hungry ghost. Quite the opposite, most of the time. Increasingly, Alex acts protectively toward me. Sometimes he warns me about approaching hazards that are easier for him to foresee as he no longer experiences time as I do. But there were plenty of other times, especially the first month or so, when Alex would still taunt me in ways he did when he was in a physical body. He would get annoyed with my grief, at times, and mock it a little bit, “‘So this all about you, isn't it?’ He didn't like my feeling grief, because it felt like doubt that he still existed, and made him feel like a failure, ‘Why don't you let me grieve for myself?’ he would say. ‘I’m getting too much of that already from my family, and I don’t need more if it from you. If you knew what it is like over here, you’d understand how much that kind of grieving drains me. I know it’s my fault that people are grieving for me, but it doesn’t help me at all. It weighs me down and makes me long for total oblivion. Just because I’m not in the flesh anymore, doesn’t mean that I don’t feel things. That’s one of the toughest things about being here, you can’t get away from what people in the flesh feel about you and with most of them, there’s so little you can do about it.’ “ ‘What is it like over there?’ I asked. But Alex never seemed interested in satisfying my intellectual curiosity about the afterlife. At most he would say, “‘You don't need to know.’ Other times he would just say, ‘It just is what it is.’ Or, ‘I don't want to talk about it.’ Usually he just ignored such inquiries until I learned to stop pressing him for information. One fairly consistent thing he started telling me after the first few months is that the best way I could help him was for me to allow him to help me. If he could help me, if I could allow him to help someone who ‘still had all their skin in the game’ as he sometimes referred to the living, it would be a much quicker and more powerful way for him to repair his karma. ‘I can watch your back from here. I can still be useful,’ Alex would say. ‘I can see what’s going on in you and in your life much more clearly now, and I’ve got a lot less to distract me. Let me contribute, that’s what I really need. I was given so much more than I realized, and I abandoned everybody without giving enough back. I need a chance to give something back. Give me a chance to help you.’ “But the emphasis on helping me came up later, maybe three months after the suicide. At first, Alex seemed to be acutely struggling with his feelings and some phases, as I mentioned before, almost seemed like a physical illness. The most volatile time was the first week that I spent in his hometown. When I felt ready to leave, Alex told me that he was ready to leave too, that he wanted to travel with me again. He called the town his ‘valley of tears’ and said that it was far too painful a place for him to remain. As I drove out of the town, there was a huge mood shift in Alex, the sense of some crucial boundary crossing, and he was elated when I pulled onto the highway. “In the next ten minutes or so of driving, some sort of spontaneous magical ceremony and bond seemed to occur. I told Alex, pretty much as I had told him when he was in a body, that I didn't want to hold him back from anywhere he needed to go, but that he also had permission to stay with me, to participate in the whole rest of my life span if he wanted. And then I inwardly saw this magical object, it was not conjured by Alex, and it didn't feel like it was particularly conjured by me, it felt like some other force was recognizing our bond, or helping to bring it into manifestation, and it was taking the form of this jeweled lattice work, a delicately constructed object, golden and bejeweled, that seemed to wrap around a section of my spinal cord across from my heart. The jewels also seemed to be little eyes. The object was not merely ornamental or ceremonial but functional and organic. It was like an interface that allowed Alex, in a stable and healthy way, to live partly as a symbiont within me able to perceive through my senses anytime he wanted to. “His presence is not always active, and there continued to be a sense that another part of him still lived in this abandoned and desolate city-like place in the lower astral, and that he could withdraw there anytime he wanted to, but he could also come forward and become vividly present in my world and aware of what I was experiencing anytime he wanted to as well. Since, as he often pointed out, time was now very different for him than it was for me, I don't know how he experiences this participation in my life. Perhaps for him it is all like one compressed life review he is experiencing, or perhaps when he chooses to more intensely engage with me and my experience he is able to step into linear time mode, like someone losing themselves in the timeline of a movie, even though the time cycle of the movie is so different from their native experience of time. Alex doesn't care to join me in such attempts to analyze what's going on intellectually, but he will show great solidarity for what I am feeling and a certain moral dimension to choices I make which he says are far more significant than I realize. “So now maybe you can understand why Alex's suicide and the strange resumption of our relationship caused me to take this time off from my photojournalism career. There was too much strangeness going on in my own life for me to immerse myself in another subculture and engage with it as fully as would be necessary to play my observer role well. “Instead of journalism writing, I spent time going through the notebooks Alex had left with me. Before the suicide, I hadn't looked into them--- I wanted to, but knew I should respect his privacy. After, I felt no such constraint, and Alex would usually be present, peering over my shoulder as I went through his writings. It was a very poignant exploration, and parts of it made me feel guilty as I saw ways I had failed Alex. The writings revealed amazing talent, even genius, and although I had realized some of that when he sometimes shared writings and allowed me to work with him as an editor, I had failed to recognize the scope of his talent, the depth of his perceptions and his ability to realize them creatively. Alex's mood changes, and all the tensions between us, kept me struggling to keep my balance and I hadn't been sufficiently receptive to his unique talents. Shamefully, I reflected on his many accusations that I wasn't treating him as an equal and realized that he had been right in some ways. “During the first couple of months following the suicide, I typed up every bit of Alex's writings, correcting only misspellings and obvious punctuation errors. At the least, I wanted his writings to be archived digitally in the cloud. The notebooks were too vulnerable, what if my van were stolen? The archiving process allowed me to appreciatively immerse myself in Alex's writings and that process seemed to draw him forward whenever I was engaged with it. “Since I completed the archive, the relationship has gone through a number of phases. There have been times when Alex withdrew for days at a time, and I wondered if he had left for good, off to another incarnation perhaps. Although I would feel some grief, and abandonment feelings, I tried to transform these into prayers for Alex's wellbeing, and encouragement for him to go forward. Then, at unpredictable times, he would come forward again. The only pattern that I could observe was that he was much more likely to come forward when I traveled to someplace new, someplace he had never been, and he wanted to experience the novelty with me. “In the last few weeks, the relationship seems to have stabilized. Although during most of the post-suicide phase, Alex's mood changes seemed at least as mercurial as ever, and there were crisis moments, plunges into despair, depressed withdrawals, even moments when he would taunt me as he once had. But for the last couple of months, Alex has been coming consistently from an intention of helping me and seems to always be near by in case I need him. He doesn’t send me as many specific thought forms, but seems more interested in being a presence and witness to my life. When I do get specific thought forms from him now it is almost always in response to some inquiry from me. When I asked Alex last week if there was anything more I could be doing to help him, he replied, ‘You don't need to try to help me anymore, you don't know enough about where I am and how things work here, to help me, and your focus needs to be on where you are, and what's going on in your life. You're the one who still has all your skin in the game. The way for you to help me is what you are already doing---letting me participate in your life. And if you can just allow me to help you, you will be giving me a lifeline more valuable than you can possibly realize. That's the way it needs to be now, that's what will be best for both of us, letting me help you.’ "Sometimes when Alex comes forward, his form seems more solid and physical and he will help me in very pragmatic ways. He has said that nothing is too small or mundane. If I'm sitting in the back of the camper, I can feel the gentle pressure of Alex's hands correcting my posture, helping me not to slump or unnecessarily contract muscles. He counsels me about my moods, helps me when I am going through difficult moments with canvassing. And from his position in time, his situational awareness often seems much better than mine. For example, I might be about to leave the van with my clipboard and Alex will say, ‘Are you sure you have enough layers with you? I think it is going to get colder tonight than you realize.’ “It's a strange role reversal, it's like Alex needs to pay me back for all the many times when I was more the person looking after him. A relationship that once had me on the ropes with all the dramatic mood and phase shifts, before and after the suicide, has now become almost the opposite, and Alex now seems to have adopted helping me as a devotional practice, and he comes forward to do so on his own, or anytime I ask. He becomes particularly concerned when he senses me giving in to negative thoughts or feelings and those are the times when he is most likely to send me unsolicited thought forms. One night, when I was really struggling with dark thoughts and feelings, Alex broke through and communicated to me with impassioned urgency, “’This is exactly the kind of thing that did me in,’ he said. ‘You have no idea how dangerous such negative thoughts are. I feel for you, I know what you are going through, but I wish you would realize what I realized only now when it is too late. When you mess around with negative thoughts, when you view yourself and your life as a failure, when you think resentfully and bitterly about things, it’s like you are a child playing with matches and gasoline-soaked rags. Once you start playing with these things you lose control over them and the rags wrap themselves around you and the fires you start burn you and others who come near. When you keep burning yourself this way you feel so bad about the pain you have caused yourself and others that you will just want to dig a hole in the ground and put yourself in it to stop the fire. When you are in a body you forget that your every thought is real and potent and that each little thought affects everything. Bitter thoughts are like cancerous tumors you create with your own life energy. You set them growing in you and they start to take you over and want you to feed them with more negative thoughts and feelings so the disease can spread. Let me help you be more aware of this. It would help me to witness you overcoming such dark thoughts and feelings that destroyed my life. Now I know what I did, now I see how I did it to myself. Now I feel shackled with regrets, regrets for the pain I caused, regret for the way I abandoned life and those who gave me things and cared about me. Those regrets aren’t just like these passing thoughts and feelings anymore. Over here, they’re physical, like heavy weights attached to my spirit body. When I was still in a physical body, I could have changed the weight of regret at any moment with a phone call, with a smile or kind word. I had no idea of the opportunities that were available to me and that I squandered. Now it feels like the regrets have been set in stone or metal and attached to me. That’s why I need you to allow me to help. Your awareness of me is giving me a precious chance to be released of some part of the regrets that weigh me down. If I can witness you learning from my mistakes and partly through my influence overcoming some of the self-inflicted darkness---that’s like giving me another chance at life. Whenever you feel yourself falling into dark thoughts and feelings call on me to be close to you. I’ll be there with you. Let me help you through those moments. You’ll be helping me as much as yourself.’” I realized I had been talking for quite a while, but Jeremiah's receptivity, given the telepathic atmosphere, was very active in a way, his engagement with the emotional depth of what I experienced was palpable. After I stopped talking, there was an eloquent silence in which the depth of feeling was shared without words. "You are both fortunate to have found each other,” said Jeremiah. "Some people seem able to act as portals between realms, and you are obviously one of those people. Having this quality means that visitors and companions from other realms can approach you, even enter your realm through you. I became aware of you soon after I crossed over; your presence here was a key link that drew me toward this timeline. This portal quality also allows you to cross into other realms, as you did as a child when you showed up as a spirit in my realm. And then there is some sort of portal of mutual awareness between you and Tommy even though you are displaced in time. This portal aspect is an essential part of what makes you a protoelf, and it is an ability that can be developed further. So far, it has been more of a talent that has emerged spontaneously in the presence of great need." Jeremiah considered in silence for a few moments before continuing. "You chose a profession in which you were a traveler, and even since you have left it, you are still traveling, never staying too long in any place or with any group, and this suggests that you sense that it is your role to be a traveler, and not just in your native realm and timeline. For you, it is not a certain group of people at a certain time and place, but a few key companions with whom you have deep ties that seems to shape your destiny. For me, and also for Tommy, the pattern seems a bit different. Both of us were born into loving communities where we were united with the others with deep ties of affinity that were stable and nourishing. This was the formative experience for both of us, only for me it went on for so much longer before I felt a destiny that led me on this path of exile from my beloved community. Tommy, it seems, in the time in which the portal exists, is close to the threshold of some bitter exile, and this is the dark cloud you both sense hanging over his idyllic summer. Alex is more like you, someone who never felt such a deep bond to a community of souls, and you were both travelers when you found each other, and then you became traveling companions." I felt deep appreciation of Jeremiah's wisdom, his ability to see the deep soul patterns, but I also realized that his words were giving form to mutual awareness, to the telepathic atmosphere in which we were immersed, and I found that I too could give voice to this shared awareness, "And you and I," I added, "we are also meeting as fellow travelers...And if I ever meet Tommy, if our timelines ever converge, it will also be a meeting of travelers." Jeremiah's assent needed no words. Into that word silence a vision appeared, a mutual vision, it was a map of some sort, perhaps an elvish map, or a map from some spirit world, because instead of place names it had alchemical symbols, runes and glyphs, and there was an intricate network of lines, and I sensed that this map showed lines of fateful affinity and destined purpose, lines that connected parallel souls in different realms. The vision passed quickly, and I realized that it was not there to show me any specifics, but to show me how things worked generally. And then, for the first time in this evening, I felt Alex's distinct presence, sharing in the experience of the vision. Usually, I would hear his thoughts distinctly in my mind, but perhaps because Jeremiah was part of the telepathic atmosphere he felt shy about that. Instead, he shared his feelings and awareness in a way that felt more private. Here, I must express that in words, but what Alex shared were soulful feelings without words. Alex was experiencing the truth of the vision, the truth of the map, and he wanted me to be aware that it was truer than I could realize while I was still in a physical body. There was a depth of regret in Alex that he hadn't realized enough when he was still incarnate the links between himself and some other souls, and he wanted me to know that these links are deep, and not broken by death. He hadn't realized when he took his life how much his soul would still be bound by those links even as he chose exile to a desolate place where he could no longer reach those souls that he loved so much more than he realized. If there was any value in his suicide, it was that it gave some of the souls he was connected to a glimpse of the map, but it was a glimpse seen through tears of blood, a depth of sorrow he didn't anticipate and with which he was now burdened. And that's why he needed me to stay available to him. I was the only soul he was linked to that he could reach so directly, and that's why he needed to look after me, to give me at least some part of the love that he had withdrawn from the group of incarnate souls he was linked to. My map was closer to his map, because, like him, I was not altogether physically bound to one realm. I had difficult travels ahead of me and he wanted to help with that. The map of linked souls was so much more sacred and powerful than Alex ever realized, and he wished that I could share his awareness of its depth. And then Alex seemed to withdraw, and I was left with that last feeling from him, that the link between souls was more sacred and powerful than I was capable of realizing. I looked at Jeremiah who seemed to be silently aware of at least some of what I was feeling. Then I realized what I needed to ask him next, and without knowing why I felt that I needed his answer before I faced the shadow portal. III "Can you tell me how you got those scars?" For the briefest moment I saw pain flicker across Jeremiah's face, a bodily memory of suffering, and I wished I hadn't asked the question so bluntly. "Yes," replied Jeremiah. "It's a dark story, but that's part of why this is the right time. I sense that the telling may be a necessary part of preparing you to cross the threshold of the shadow portal. To tell you how I got the scars you see, I must tell you how I crossed a portal into your realm. You will be the first person to hear this story, and perhaps the telling of it will also help me to be more at peace with it." Jeremiah paused and looked at me for a moment. It seemed as if he was assessing my readiness for something. "I could tell you the story," he said, "but I think it would be more powerful if I shared it with you." "Sharing would mean some deeper telepathic merger?" I asked. "Yes," replied Jeremiah. "How would that work?" "I think it would be better if you just experienced it," replied Jeremiah. "Giving you many words about it would only take you to the wrong side of your being to have the experience. I'll say only that a shifting of identities may occur, and choosing to allow that may put you in a stronger position when you cross into the shadow worlds. If you are willing, I will guide you into it." I was willing, and felt Jeremiah drawing me into deeper eye contact. He was taking long, slow breaths and I found myself breathing with him. Jeremiah closed his eyes and so I did too. The darkness behind my eyes seemed to grow more spacious. The fuzzy light show behind my eyelids clarified into a starlit night. I was looking down into at a canopy of coniferous trees in a forest. Jeremiah was sleeping in a small space between a few of these trees. He was wrapped in a thin, velvety blanket that seemed to blend with the shadows and floor of pine needles. There were no scars on his face. His sleeping form moved and took in a deep breath. As his eyes opened, my point of view switched. I was seeing the forest through Jeremiah's eyes, and then I was feeling, smelling and hearing it through his senses. Full sensory participation soon became a merging of identities as the full contents of Jeremiah's inner experience became available. Part of my mind realized throughout that I was an observer of someone else's experience, but this cognitive frame thinned to near invisibility as I gave myself to the merger. Night vision was very acute, I could hear the minutest sounds of the forest, and there were so many layers of scent---pine needles and the musky earth were dominant, but there were so many other subtler smells I couldn't name. The blanket still clothed me in body warmth, and as I stretched I felt the lightness and suppleness of my body, my movements flowed with graceful precision, and I felt my body's readiness for swift action. I did a three-hundred-sixty-degree scan of the forest and with more than the usual senses. I felt its rhythms and pulsations, felt the direction in which I had to travel and saw within my destination, a cave entrance that looked like it had been burrowed into the side of a mountain. The sight of the entrance, which looked like it had been tunneled into the earth by giant insects, filled me with nausea and dread. Jeremiah had shifted the sharing, paused it to narrate with word-based thoughts the meaning of this entrance. The identity merging, the merging of senses, was suspended as the sharing became almost conventionally cinematic, like a movie flashback with voiceover narration. Although I stayed focused on the content, the way Jeremiah directed the sharing made sparked a realization in me: Movies, the way they are structured, the way they communicate, are an evolutionary development preparing Homo sapiens for this more visual telepathy. Once I adjusted to the different levels of telepathic sharing, it felt so much more natural than talking. To be able to communicate only by talk, only by laboriously pushing out a series of percussive mouth noises to create a string of words, now seems unbelievably primitive, awkward and limiting. To merely talk to another person feels like we are two telegraph operators wearing earphones and busily tapping out Morse code messages to each other even though we are sitting across from each other in the same room. Meanwhile we make movies and computer games and so forth that communicate to us more visually, but still in more limited ways than we are capable of sharing with each other without having to resort to all this equipment. So, once again, the sharing shifted at the vision of the burrowed hole in the side of a mountain. It was what Jeremiah, soon after he awakened under the coniferous trees, pictured as his destination and filled him with dread. Jeremiah's voiceover in my head narrated some things he wanted me to think about without images. "The hole burrowed in the mountain led into subterranean depths where a potently evil entity lived, an archparasite, a hive queen who incubated and fed across dimensions, a shape-shifting being with a powerful array of dark capabilities. She was a master of illusions, a twister of wills, a blinder of eyes, an eater of souls. She was Viealetta, Archparasite of Old Terra. "Some great change had happened to Old Terra since the Great Crossing, something that ruined Viealetta's harvest, and she became a hungry fugitive across time and space, searching for anything like the host that had nourished her for millennia. Across the galaxy, Viealetta caught the energetic scent of the elves who were so recently evolved from the very hominids that nourished her with their vitality. She willed herself to the New World and burrowed deep below Liatrin Mountain creating a lair in which she could be surrounded by darkness and hunger. "Somehow, within this lair, Viealetta opened a portal backwards in time, back to the era of Old Terra in which she had hive and harvest, and this portal was like a feeding orifice for her. Ethers of suffering, rage and desire fermented and bubbled up from Old Terra and fed her through the orifice. This was sweet nourishment, but its displacement in time and space gave it a certain thinness that did not satisfy her hunger. She was famished for richer ethers, the blood essence of Homo sapiens. Elves were a poor substitute. Our life energy burned with fires of the wrong colors for her. Nevertheless, we were the closest living relatives of the species that had been her host, and this similarity had drawn her across the galaxy. She crossed the hungry vacuum of space to find us, but we frustrated her by sensing her approach and defending ourselves by weaving layer upon layer of protective fields and boundaries around our community. "But Viealetta is an entity of insidious patience. Eons are but moments to her, and very gradually, the subtlest, smoky tendrils of Viealetta's twisted thought forms crept toward us, looking for the smallest opening in which they could begin the burrowing, the parasiting and twisting of our minds. Paradoxically, Viealetta was a catalyst for the development of the Vehrillion as the most advanced adepts had to evolve ever more potent countermeasures to act as a collective immune system to the nearly invisible tendrils and infectious miasmas Viealetta infused into the atmosphere of the New World. "Viealetta was ever hungrier for our vitality, but could not feed on it in its present form. Harvests of vitality needed a fermenting to be digestible by Viealetta. She wanted to cocoon us within the spider silk of her spells so that she could slowly soften, corrupt and ferment us into darker, weaker forms that exuded the sweet ethers of suffering that nourished her. The elves had sweet potential, but presently burned with fires that had too much green, blue, indigo and violet for her to digest. Viealetta sought to welcome us into her webs, welcome us as a hive queen welcomes drones needed to do the delicate work of their own fermentation, the pre-digestion of their life energy from a rainbow of indigestible colors into the brownish blood color of dark passions, fears and agonies---the bloody, fecal soup of decomposing hominids that exuded such sweet ethers into her ever-hungry core. "We successfully maintained and evolved our defenses for many years before a disaster occurred. One day it was discovered that three of our number were missing. They had set off on a wilderness sojourn together, but had not returned on the appointed day, and even those of us closest to them could not reach them with our minds. In the home of Nicholas, one of the missing, we discovered a letter left for those who might come looking for them. They had conceived a plan to slay Viealetta and had set off for her lair with that purpose in mind. "When we read the letter carefully we noticed a certain grandiosity in Nicholas's words and realized that Viealetta had found a weakness in his personality that she could exploit. She had managed to lure them into her lair with implanted fantasies of accomplishing a great and noble deed. But in her lair, Viealetta was an indomitable foe. They had walked right into a trap. "We formed a rescue plan. There were five adepts, including me, who could function at the seventh level of the Vehrillion. We would go to Liatrin Mountain, our wills linked, and use everything we had to recover our friends. In the midst of this planning, the attack came. It was like a hurricane of razor-sharp shrapnel dipped in acid. Viealetta had broken the three and disassembled their minds. She had taken every thought, memory, feeling and perception they ever had and twisted them into dark and painful fragments she projected at us with all her will. Every piece of shrapnel in this storm had something to bite into our minds because they all contained a piece of us, a piece of our culture, a moment in the experience of our species, and particular memories of each of us. The memories were like piercing splinters of mirror glass. They were reflections of actual moments the three had shared with us, but twisted so that every interaction seemed like a betrayal, rejection, and humiliation. "Instead of a rescue, the five of us had to link wills and use everything we had to form new defenses. Eventually, the defenses succeeded, and the piercing splinters of mirror glass became like the distant tinkling of debris hitting an impervious dome of force that surrounded our small community. Once our defenses stabilized, we used our linked wills to try to establish communication with the three, but found no trace of them in our realm. Every splinter of mirror glass contained the despairing thought form that the very souls of the three had been consumed. Certainly Viealetta had broken their defenses and gained access to their psyches, but the three were fifth-level adepts, they were capable of summoning portals, and we clung to the hope that they had escaped to some other realm. "The threat of Viealetta spurred us to advance our work with the Vehrillion in the weeks and months following the disaster. Whatever had happened to the three, Viealetta now knew so much more about the elves, our hopes, vulnerabilities and also the workings of the first five levels of the Vehrillion. It was then that I decided to return to shadow portal. I used all abilities to focus an intention that I be given a vision about how to resolve the situation with Viealetta, and that I not be pulled into shadow worlds. "So that you can understand this vision, I should tell you that in the midst of the Great Crossing, and continuing on the New World, several of the Old Ones were haunted by visions of the planet they left behind. Once they left the earth, they began calling it ‘Old Terra,’ a name they found in a visionary book they admired. For some of the Old Ones, the crossing was like one long and endless night. There was no sun to divide days into light and dark. Artificial lights were dimmed and brightened to simulate day and night, but this was no substitute for sunlight. For my brothers and sisters born off planet, this was not a problem because this biosphere traveling through space was all they had ever known, and children have a gift of adaptability. But many of the Old Ones became despondent and felt a longing to at least know what had happened to Old Terra after they left. They felt like exiles, and for them the Great Crossing was a dark and interminable exodus into the sterile, cold vacuum of space. Deep in their bodies, many of them knew that they would never live long enough to see it through. No matter what its flaws, they longed for their mother world. They had not forgotten how the forces of Viealettation had tried to destroy them and made so much of their on-planet lives miserable, but still they had yearnings to reconnect. When they were still on planet, they had only felt their desire to separate from the primate collective and ‘awaken from the nightmare of history,’ as they put it. But now that they were so irretrievably separated from Old Terra and its history, they were forced to realize that part of them still lived, or wanted to live, on a world that was so many light years away. As some told it, they felt Old Terra with something like the phantom pain of a missing limb, but in their case their whole body and being felt like the phantom. “Some tried to use what few powers they had to see what was happening on Old Terra. They called this practice ‘remote viewing,’ but this was before any level of the Vehrillion was conceived and what little they were able to see was shadowy and vague, and they could follow the time stream of the planet only to a certain point, and then they couldn’t see Old Terra anymore, but only strange colors and lights that for a time and then vanished. They called this horizon line of their vision ‘The Mystery.’ Some felt remote viewing of Old Terra was nearly impossible because of the dilation and displacement of the time streams. At the speeds that we had traveled for decades, thousands and thousands of years would have passed on Old Terra. They felt we were too remote from the old time stream to be able to view it anymore. Others disagreed and said that anything could be viewed remotely if you resonated with it. It was their belief that the time stream was obscured by what they called ‘novelty.’ There had been so much change on the planet that their minds simply could not resonate with it coherently. Despite the disagreements about what could be known about Old Terra, all the Old Ones shared a feeling of loss, a deep and haunting sadness that they could never communicate with those they left behind, and would never be part of the life they had known there. As their biosphere drifted through the galaxy, what had at first felt like this triumphant exodus came to feel more and more like an amputation and abandonment. “A few of the Old Ones were advanced proto-elves who had been able to slow their aging process enough to complete the crossing and live in the New World. I became close to these few remaining elders. I helped take care of those who were enfeebled by age, and was always grateful to learn from them about Old Terra and the ancestors of the elves. One of these elders, Arthur, a man of great wisdom, told me something shortly before he died that kept resurfacing in my mind. Arthur's words have a direct connection with my being here and with the quest I have undertaken." The sharing shifted. Although some passing images had appeared with the mostly word-based thought forms Jeremiah projected, now a stable vision unfolded. I was seeing Arthur on his deathbed from Jeremiah's perspective. “‘Jeremiah, the time of my next great crossing draws near, and I feel at peace with that. But one doubt still gnaws at me. I have tried many times to view the Mystery and the few glimpses I have been given cause me to feel that it was somehow diminished, that some quality my mind cannot name was lacking in it. I wonder if our departure was not a misdeed, if we did not take something away from the mother planet that she needed. We took some of her life away in our biosphere, and without much thought of how this might diminish the mother world. Within those of us who left was such high concentration of the elf potential. We took something from the mother world that she had labored for eons to create and cast it out into the sterile darkness of space. If the bearers of that essence and their descendants had stayed with the mother world the transformation would have unfolded differently. When the mystery came, I believe it would have had a different quality. What we did, sending a seed out into space to colonize a new world, and concentrating the elf essence away from the dark influences of Old Terra, was a catalyst for the evolution of the elves, but it was also an abandonment of the mother world, and of all the Homo Sapiens and protoelves we left behind. You do not share in this guilt. You were born after the choice was made. I am one of the last of those who came to feel this burden. Our choice led to a New World and the blossoming of a new species, but the cost of this is that we abandoned our mother." The deathbed vision dissolved and Jeremiah said: "Arthur's words haunted me, and I often thought of Old Terra and studied the vast digital archive we had of its culture and history. Some things that happened to me when I crossed the shadow portal also left me feeling that Old Terra is a crucial nexus. And then, after the loss of the three and Viealetta’s attack, I returned to the shadow portal, my intentions focused on getting a vision that could help us resolve the situation with Viealetta.” The sharing shifted into a form I had not yet experienced. Sharing Jeremiah's vision was much more than seeing what he saw with his physical eyes, because this was potent inner vision shared from a merged identity perspective. The strangeness and power of the vision was overwhelming to Jeremiah when he first experienced it, and therefore it was overwhelming to me as I re-experienced it. Geese flying were flying in a perfect V formation in a stormy sky. I seemed to be just below them and then I was amongst them, seeing from the perspective of one of them in the formation. Below was a vast and turbulent ocean. We were approaching a part of the ocean that was filled with human thoughts and emotions. Moving slowly through the waves below us were these complex structures of wood and rigging and cloth, with brightly colored flags rippling in the wind. The perspective shifted, there were no more geese, but I was flying or hovering through a fleet of ships at a level just above the top of the bellowing sails. The brightly colored flags marked territories, landmass territories, and the ships crawled with Homo sapiens busily doing things with rigging, sails, and especially cannons. Cannons were being pushed out of trap doors in the wooden hulls of the ships until the fleet was bristling with exposed artillery. The cannons pointed at another fleet of very similar ships. The flags of these ships had different colors, but the thoughts, feelings and activities of the Homo sapiens on these other ships were almost identical as they adjusted rigging and pushed cannons out of trapdoors and so forth. The ships of both fleets were marvels of engineering, complex and beautiful structures of wood, metal, cloth and rope and all of it being expertly controlled and adjusted by precise and disciplined team work. The crew of each ship was an individualized society with precise hierarchies of command and highly specialized jobs. All of this structure was strained to a fever pitch of activity. Orders were shouted, and precise actions were being taken that involved ropes, sails, wooden pulleys and metal hardware. All their technology depended on human muscular strength and the crews were sweating, their muscles and tendons straining to the limit. I could feel their heart rates accelerated by adrenaline. I could smell the fear in their sweat and there were all these other smells---salt water, gun powder, canvass, wood, tar… And then, a signal was given somewhere, and there was a deafening roar of explosions as fusillades of cannon fire erupted from both fleets. In moments, all the complex structures of moving parts and people became a chaos of smoke, fire, screaming and blood. Agony, fear, panic and rage were everywhere. These beautiful ships and miniature societies, so similarly designed, were destroying each other in a territorial blood fury. Sudden perspective shift to that of a young man on one of the ships who was kneeling before a fallen comrade. The deck was slippery with blood. I felt his terror and the agony of his love as he looked into the pale blue eyes of his dying friend. His liver had been pierced by a huge wooden splinter and he was bleeding out. Their eyes reached out toward each other and their essences were merging. They were protoelves, and moments before death they had discovered telepathic sharing. The perspective ruptured, and suddenly I was breathing oxygen-rich air pumped into my helmet by a black rubber hose. The glass canopy of the fighter jet allowed me to glance down at grey battleships in the ocean. My mind was a cold mechanism driven by adrenaline and the roar of jet engines. Needles and numbers trembled and moved on an array of analog instruments around me as I extracted critical information from a few of them. I flicked a switch and armed my weapons. Another rupture--- A worker was staring straight ahead, his eyes were bored and his plasticized uniform was splattered with blood. He held a black pneumatic gun in his gloved hands and was firing bolts into the heads of cows as they came down a chute toward him. Then I was back in the fighter jet again breathing oxygen that smelled like black rubber. The diaper in my flight suit was saturated with urine. I was cruising above cloud level, accelerating toward mach 2 when ahead of me there was a blinding flash, the detonation of a hydrogen bomb, a fiery mushroom death head loomed before me, as I tried to accelerate away from the approaching shock wave. I was hovering above a surgical procedure, bright lights, surgeons with membraned hands and facemasks, precision parts and stainless steel tables. They were assembling a human-cybernetic organism. I was in a banquet hall, Homo sapiens sitting at tables of white linen. They wore costly fabrics and perfumes and their pockets were filled with slender machines of plastic and silicon. They had cunning eyes, and faces adorned with subtle cosmetics. Spells of deception and power were woven into their every glance and spoken word. Amidst an array of glass and metal implements they sat at tables of white linen and dined on the cooked tissues of their fellow mammals. Then there were five children, three girls and two boys, sitting in a circle in a wooden gazebo by a pond. They were protoelves, and they were trying an experiment, an experiment in group-telepathy. It was summer, and they lived in a small and protective community, but they were aware of the larger world. It was particularly one of the girls, somehow I knew her name was Sarah, and she was their leader. Although she was only eleven or twelve and living a sheltered life, Sarah was motivated by a profound recognition that Old Terra was in a state of crisis and that they needed to do something. She also recognized that even though they were children, they were capable of doing something that could have powerful effects on the situation. They were essentially trying to initiate themselves into the first level of the Vehrillion and I wanted to help them. I wanted to step out of the vision and join their circle. I could feel their seriousness and moral purpose, their will to help an imperiled world. The intention to help them intensified, and then I found myself standing before the burrowed hole at the base of Liatrin Mountain. Hidden within Viealetta's lair was the portal she had opened, a portal that extended across space, but also backwards in time, back to Old Terra before the Mystery. I could tell that the portal was surrounded by potent cloaking fields, and that my vision of it was heavily distorted, but I saw it as a hideous, orifice-like crater overflowing with a luminous miasma of suffering, the ethers of fermented hominids that Viealetta fed on. With dread and a sense of fateful inevitability, I realized I had to find a way to cross that portal. I experienced vertigo, nausea, and a terrifying sense of closeness to a mind that was complex, alien and merciless. Some unknown force was linking my mind to Viealetta’s, and I saw glimpses through her eyes. Everything in the universe, every color, and every value completely altered---and I was at the center of an intricate, honeycombed structure of dried and porous bone. The universe was revealed as a multi-dimensional labyrinth of fractal bone structures of staggering complexity. Most of the structure was dry and sterile, but hidden deep within it were cavities filled with red ethers that had a sweet glow. The bone labyrinth was dense with intricate structures and the sweet cavities were buried deeply within. The ever-hungry mind of Viealetta projected herself into it as a cloud of spores. As they penetrated the structure, each spore became a pale worm that glowed with the baleful luminosity of the moon as they burrowed into the bone labyrinth seeking out all the cavities that held sweet ethers they could suck dry. My mind wanted to recoil in horror from these alien perceptions, but they lasted for only a few moments and then the strangeness stabilized, and I found myself in a vast domed space, a space of alien intelligence that was computing and processing reality as continuously transforming hyper-dimensional geometric forms. I had this implicit sense that the domed space was a kind of diplomatic embassy that was translating the higher thinking of alien species to form complex treaties that helped to structure the cosmos. A parallelism had occurred. The vision I experienced had a parallel in Viealetta. A translation process was being computed in a language of hyper-dimensional geometric forms. My part of the translation was being rendered into a series of impersonal, but comprehensible thought forms that unfolded in my mind. Viealetta was part of a precisely engineered species of hyper-dimensional parasites necessary to the structure of the cosmos. From her perspective, her lifecycle had been interrupted, and she persisted in a state of illness and frustration unable to thrive, multiply or metamorphose into something that could. The lifecycle of her host species, Homo sapiens, had gone in a direction that diminished both species. Archparasites are careful never to kill their hosts, but the webs that she wove, and novel developments in Homo sapiens, had created unexpected emergent effects that destabilized a carefully tuned and balanced ecosystem to the detriment of host and parasite. A treaty and possible solution had been calculated. A sufficiently evolved elf, allowed to pass through the portal back to Old Terra could act as a catalyst, a seed crystal that might reconfigure lifecycle patterns to alter the diminished outcome. Outcomes could not be precisely known because some Homo sapiens had a degree of free will that made them mutagenic, wild card variables, the effect of which could not be calculated. A visual thought form was presented. A cauldron was bubbling slowly with putrefying and ill-formed organic fluids. It was a crucible of stagnation that had lost the spark of life, a failed experiment. A seed crystal dropped into this cauldron before it had devolved into terminal putrefaction could have a number of unknown effects. The purer the elf seed crystal, the more likely it was to trigger mutagenic and catalytic alterations. Viealetta would permit such a seed crystal to pass through the portal, but she would also be allowed to use any means short she deemed necessary to test prospective seed crystals for flaws before she allowed them through. If the process worked, if the stagnant equilibrium could be transformed and undergo a certain metamorphosis, it was possible that both species might be able to fulfill their lifecycles. There was a shift in the thought forms unfolding in my mind. I understood that a translation process was occurring, and Viealetta’s perspective was being translated into a form I could comprehend. Viealetta wanted to be freed from the lair she had burrowed into the planet of the elves. This lair had become a prison for her, a place of famine and illness, an entombed sterility and stagnation in which she could she persist indefinitely in a state of hunger and frustration, but would never thrive, multiply or complete her lifecycle. She realized that no matter what thought forms she managed to implant here and there in the minds of vulnerable elves, her ability to infiltrate this species would never be sufficient for her purposes. No spell that she wove could ever blind the elves to her existence. They would never allow the deep fermentation necessary to make them digestible. And even if they did, their numbers were too few to be more than a taste that only whetted appetite without hope of satiety. This was why Viealetta would allow a seed crystal in the form of an elf to pass through her portal. But if the seed crystal were flawed, she would devour it and wait for another. A possible solution had been calculated, defined and accepted. The translation ceased, as the parameters of the treaty had been clarified for both parties. If the seed crystal intervention worked, three species---Homo sapiens, the elves, and the hive organism of which Viealetta was queen, would all benefit. Across the domed space, I sensed that the mind of Viealetta had absorbed all the information into the hungry bone labyrinths of her mind. The inner vision ended, and Jeremiah narrated in my mind: “The focused intention I had brought to the shadow portal, to get a vision of how the situation with Viealetta could be resolved, had been fulfilled. If I were to take the vision literally, then I had been given glimpses into Viealetta’s mind and she had even participated in the working out of an interspecies treaty. But I knew that it was dangerous to take visions literally, and perhaps the domed translation space and the idea of a treaty were merely ways of showing me that Viealetta, Homo sapiens and the elves were all part of a delicately counterbalanced ecosystem. At the core of the vision was a call to action that I found terrifying. To resolve the situation I would have to go into Viealetta’s lair and cross the portal to Old Terra. It was possible that I could make it across, and it was also possible that I would be devoured. The treaty, if such a thing literally existed, even allowed Viealetta to devour ‘flawed seed crystals.’ But I am flawed, and so are all the elves, so how could any of us make it across? I thought. When this doubt formed in my mind as a question, I was surprised to find that something in my mind immediately formed a response. It was the treaty itself responding. I discovered that the treaty was not merely a memory, but more like an intelligent machine that remained in my mind and was able to telepathically address any direct inquiries I posed as mental questions: “‘A flawed seed crystal is an elf whose will can be broken by Viealetta. If the requirement were impossible for any elf to achieve, it would not have been calculated as a possible solution,’ responded the treaty. “I tried a couple of additional questions: “‘Supposing I do make it across the portal to Old Terra, what am I supposed to do there?’ “‘Your presence itself is a new element in the crucible,’ responded the treaty. ‘What you should do is not for us to calculate. You are a free-willed, self-aware agent and it is expected that you will take actions that accord with your essence and core intentions.’ “‘If I make it across the portal to Old Terra, and have some catalytic effect on the situation, would there be any way to make it back to my home world and the timeline I was part of there?’ I asked. ‘”No provision for return has been made herein,’ the treaty responded. I tried a couple of additional inquiries, but it soon became apparent that although the treaty was intelligent enough to understand my questions, its responses were intentionally limited to very basic information. I also knew that I had a very limited time before the shadow worlds journey would begin and I had no minder with me. I needed to prepare myself for that trial and hoped that my fevered body would be all right during the three days it would be unconscious. I composed myself and waited, but the expected time came and went and I felt none of the sensations that would indicate I was about to go under. And then I realized: The shadow worlds journey meant to go with this vision is the descent into Viealetta’s lair and, if I make it across the portal, Old Terra. The sharing shifted again and now I was seeing Jeremiah, as I had at the beginning, sitting in the forest looking about him. Our identities merged and I was getting up, brushing pine needles off of my clothes. I drew the velvety cloak around myself for warmth. I had a small bag made of the same self-camouflaging, velvety material that I wore slung around one shoulder. I moved swiftly, blending with the shadows and the gentle night breeze, so that my footfalls and movements scarcely made a sound. As I walked, I did a whole series of Vehrillion practices, adding layer upon layer of cloaking and defensive shielding. I took deep breaths, and with each breath I added another layer of shielding. At certain moments I caught iridescent glimpses of the shielding. It had a many-layered, wavy structure like very fine Damascus steel, except that the intricate, curvilinear layers moved and adapted to reflect energies around them. At the same time that I was adding these layers of shielding, I was hiding away vulnerable parts of myself in a memory palace I had long ago built within my mind. Whole sections of my personal memories were locked away in hidden rooms deep in this inner palace that was surrounded by high and impenetrable walls. Every soft spot and vulnerability of my memory had to be heavily shielded, because I knew that Viealetta would relentlessly probe them. The protective layers were minutely embedded with mirrors and false images to reflect the energy of telepathic probes and scans so that they returned only meaningless distortions. I knew that no amount of cloaking would allow me to escape Viealetta's detection of my presence. She would know that I approached and was an advanced adept of the Vehrillion, but I wanted to limit her to that if I could. Nothing I did, however, could ensure that I was safe in her presence. For eons she had developed the black arts of Viealettation, the process of deceiving and distorting the perception of a victim, of bending and breaking his will, of rendering him into a fragmented state in which he would ultimately allow himself to be devoured. She had the patience and unbending intent to burrow into defenses and find even the tiniest openings and vulnerabilities she could infect with her poisonous spells. The crucial thing was to recognize the subtle, dark whispers at the edges of your mind if they got through, and to bring the blue light of self-awareness and vigilant observation to the attempted Viealettation which would infiltrate from any blind spots it could find, from any areas of inner conflict, desire and fear. It wasn't fatal to have inner conflict, desire and fear only not to be aware of them, to look away from those vulnerabilities during an attempted encroachment and infection. I passed out of the forest and into the damp floor of the valley where I could see Liatrin Mountain looming before me, its dark silhouette outlined by stars. I could feel Viealetta now, and I knew that she wanted me to feel her. I sensed the nucleus of evil beneath my feet, a throbbing appetite so potent that I could feel its pulsations through hundreds of feet of insulating soil and stone. I felt it in the cells of my body, a primordial feeling that animals, even insects, can recognize. It was the feeling of being prey. My body, my blood, my life energy, was food approaching a vast and insatiable hunger. I felt her parasitic intelligence attempting to enclose me in a bone labyrinthine with sharp, dry edges, a billion thorns, spindly fangs and poison-filled stingers scratching at the edges of my shields. I suffused the space around me with more blue light, and to still my fears I focused all my attention on my body and the immediate environment. I engaged my awareness with my muscles, breathing and movement so that I walked in a way that flowed with the rhythms of the night and the valley. My stance was fluid, but alert, and I felt my training taking over the adjustment of my defenses, utilizing everything we had learned from studying Viealetta's earlier attacks. In this way, I walked across the valley until I stood before the burrowed opening, which looked like the entrance to a giant termite mound. Liatrin Mountain glowered over me ominously, a massive and desolate presence that made me feel the smallness of my body. Any hesitation at the threshold would only signal weakness so I crossed it without breaking my rhythm. I touched the navigator Medallion I wore around my neck and it became luminous, illuminating the area around me. I was in a sort of corridor of dark rock and crags with harsh angles, and moisture from an unseen source left the rocks wet and slippery. The light of my navigator threw back an oily sheen on the rock surfaces. The corridor curved and descended and narrowed until it became a corkscrew that forced me to crawl on my belly. I had to stow my cloak in my bag, which I had to push ahead of me. I compacted my shields to stay close to my body and intensified my breathing to maintain body heat. Long years of training in the various arts of balance and movement contained in the Vehrillion allowed me to move efficiently through the awkward and claustrophobic space. The corkscrew gave way to a jagged, vertical shaft. Water dripped, and the rock was slippery, but the shaft was so narrow that extending my limbs was enough to control my descent. Footholds and handholds abounded, though many secure positions had to be gained by allowing jagged points of rock to press against my back and other parts of my body. As chilling water dripped beneath my clothing, the bruising pressure of these rock points was like being chewed by teeth of dull stone. I descended a considerable distance, and the shaft began to swell outward so that my limbs could no longer extend across it. One foolish move now would mean plummeting. And when a foothold I tested loosened a chunk of rock, I waited many long moments before I heard the sound of its impact echoing back up the shaft. I increased my vigilance, jamming my fingers into cracks and using all my senses to feel the underlying structures, the fissures and weaknesses in the rock before I trusted it with my weight. And in this way I descended, like a fly walking backwards down a steep wall. When at last I reached the bottom of the shaft my hands burned and were covered with abrasions and bloody marks. At the bottom of the shaft was rock and gravel over which flowed a thin surface of icy water. The temperature had dropped considerably with the descent, and the moment I stopped moving I felt the chill steal over me. A couple of feet above the floor of the shaft was a tiny opening that was the only possible exit. I had to remove my bag and push it ahead of me to squeeze through the opening and into the roughly horizontal tube. Cold water flowed along the bottom of the tube soaking me, and I had to engage an ancient practice called fire breathing to heighten my life energy and keep the core of my body from becoming chilled. Slowly, I pushed my bag and crawled on my belly over jagged rock and gravel. The tube descended, spiraling again like a giant corkscrew, and I had no choice but to keep crawling forward, allowing it to take me wherever it would. The corkscrew became narrower, and after a time, I came to long for another vertical shaft that, no matter how treacherous, allowed me to stand and expand my limbs. I had no choice but to keep squirming forward relentlessly. I had become a crawling thing of meat and bone caught in the deep bowels of the earth. I lost my sense of the passage of time and could no longer guess how long it had been since I had begun my descent. But then I detected a change in the sound of the water and in the flow of cold air about me. The tube curved around some more, and I saw there was an opening where the flowing water fell vertically. I crawled forward and came to the opening. There was a sheer vertical drop into a dark space. I took out my navigator and adjusted the focus and intensity of its beam and surveyed what was below. I beheld a high domed space of rock and glittering stalactites, and beneath was a dark lake of inky blackness. There was no way to climb down, and retreating was unthinkable, so that left only one possibility----to allow myself to fall through the opening and into the lake. I probed it with my senses and the beams of my navigator, and felt reassured that it was quite deep. If I were deceived and shallow water covered jagged rock, I would certainly be crushed, but desperate choices are made somewhat easier when there is absolutely no alternative. With some contortions, I managed to tie my bag to an ankle. I crawled forward and performed a practice to slow the perception of time and heighten all senses so that as I plummeted, I would be able to finely adjust my diving form. I pushed myself out of the opening and plunged through the cold air. Moments later, I shattered the still plane of the dark lake and submerged into the icy water. Rising to the surface, I swam toward the nearest shore. I was shivering and soaking wet, but all of my clothing was made of a sturdy survival cloth that shed moisture very quickly. I maintained slow time so that I could respond in a splintered second to any attack. The lake still rippled from the shock of my impact, and water continued to fall from the opening far above, but otherwise there was perfect stillness, and silence. While I waited for my clothing to dry, I renewed my shields that had been diminished by crawling through the wet corkscrew. I sensed that Viealetta was well aware of my exact location, but no longer did she feel like a nucleus of evil pulsating with appetite. Instead, I detected the shadowy coolness of powerful cloaking fields, and sensed about me an attitude of highly observant waiting. At the outer boundaries of my shields, I detected the most subtle and devious telepathic probing. The probes revealed deep knowledge of Vehrillion shielding, and I wondered, once again, about the three who had come here before me, and if they had employed the very same strategies that I was playing out. I adjusted the outer boundaries of my shields to better reflect the energy of the probes, but found the adjustment difficult and a bit draining. The energy of a conventional attack could be converted to add to the energy of shielding, but Viealetta employed a sort of anti-energy that could not be converted. The deflection of the dark tentacles of her probing took a continuous output, and even if she couldn't feed off the energy that drained, it still extracted a cost. I could only hope that as the blue glow of my shields burned away the dark tentacles of her probes that there was an energetic cost to her. I focused the beam of my navigator and surveyed the large domed space. There were a number of openings into antechambers, alcoves and corridors of hidden depth. As I surveyed, I felt a profoundly disturbing resonance in the air, a sense of the suffering and despair of the three, but I couldn't tell if this emanation was an actual remnant of their spirit energy, or, as I suspected, one of Viealetta's deceptions. It may have been actual suffering and despair that she tasted from them and was now playing back to frighten and demoralize me. With a shock, I realized that if it was something that she was generating than she had, to an extent, already penetrated my shields by attacking me with negative energy made in the guise of my own species. I readjusted my shields to keep out this atmosphere of despair. Completing my survey of the domed space, I decided to move to one of the larger antechambers. I preferred to wait out Viealetta in a space that had fewer entrances. I walked along the shore and climbed the gently sloping bank that surrounded this part of the lake like an amphitheater. I entered the antechamber. It had a high, arched ceiling like a cathedral and spindly stalactites glittered in the beam of my navigator as I examined the interior. Besides the opening on the lakeside, there was an interior opening that was smaller, but still large enough to admit a creature of even gigantic size. I felt that it was most probable that Viealetta would appear through this entrance rather than expose herself on the shore of the lake. I stood in the antechamber in a relaxed, but alert stance. My first perception of the approach of Viealetta was an ammonia-like odor, and this olfactory perception was followed by the sound of a billion scurrying creatures. Like heralds or courtiers at the head of a royal procession, a wave of albino insects entered the antechamber. They scurried forward with military precision and quickly covered every surface of the antechamber, as well as the arched ceiling, though they stayed well clear of my energy shields. The tiny creatures seemed to be of numerous species, some resembling minute crabs, others seemed like arachnids, and there were great boiling masses of centipedes and millipedes. The anteroom had become a living white cathedral, when a massive form moving with the springy, stealthy grace of a tarantula appeared through the inner entrance. My mind struggled to take in the asymmetric complexity of its form. Pale insects moved all over it, so that at first I thought its body was composed of myriad tiny creatures. Its head was enormous and teardrop-shaped, with the swollen end terminating in a kind of face with two glittering black orbs for eyes. It was a face, and yet not a face. It was immobile, expressionless and translucent like a large blister in the shape of a face. The whole enormous head was translucent, covered with blue veins, and seemed almost liquid, like an egg yolk, while its body was an armored hybrid of insect, arachnid and crustacean components. Everywhere it bristled with asymmetric arrays of claws, coiled scorpion-like stingers and articulated armor. But its most hideous and disturbing feature was the corona of chaotically moving hair-thin, red antennae that surrounded its face. Besides the dense corona of antennae around the face, a sparse distribution of the hair-like red antennae covered its almost liquid skull. I remained in my stance and kept my breathing slow and regular, my muscles poised, but relaxed. I sensed the bone labyrinth of Viealetta's mind examining me, searching for betrayals of nervous tension, the little edges of fear it could pry open to invade my mind. Insistent telepathic signaling pinged at the surface of my energy shields, but I refused to let it enter. A telepathic link to Viealetta was far too dangerous. If she wanted to communicate with me, it would have to be through audible speech. The glittering black orbs of Viealetta's eyes tried to pierce my shields with bursts of intense mind pressure, but this projected energy only caused my shields to shimmer more brilliantly as the energy was reflected. But this attack proved to be misdirection, because at the same time, perhaps through some sort of relay or reflection system, there was a cloud attack that seemed to come from all the myriad creatures in the antechamber. I felt the pressure of billions of tiny eyes trying to pierce my shields, but I held my stance and transmitted a telepathic message that I would accept audible communication only. There was a hissing sound as of steam escaping a valve, as unused voice passages were cleared and readied. A voice, cold and cutting like a razor, emerged not from the mouth of the sort of face, but from apertures on the flank of the body. “Who is it that comes here to disturb the rest of Viealetta?" “One who seeks only to pass through the portal that leads to Old Terra." I replied in an even, neutral tone. “Only?" replied Viealetta with a hissing sneer. "How dare you use such a term to describe a privilege which is denied to you and your kind?" “Who denies it?" I responded. The answer was obvious, but I decided to adopt the mocking, arrogant tone of an over-confident warrior. I wanted Viealetta to underestimate me, and make inaccurate assessments of my strengths and weaknesses. “I deny it," responded Viealetta, "and I punish unto death and beyond any who question my authority. Would you like to see your three little friends? They too thought to defy me and I still squeeze sweet drops of nectar from the suffering of what little remains of them." Viealetta turned and raised a flap of her pale hide. Within the translucent tissues of her body was a sight, the horror of which nearly shattered my resolve. The mutated, shrunken, degraded forms of the three were inside her, artery like tubes attached to every orifice including eyes, ears, and mouth. They had become fetus-like organs within her body. "I keep them around for old time’s sake, but I’ve sucked on them so often they’ve gone rather stale and sour, while you seem so fresh and savory. Would you like to join with me now? I’m hoping you’ll say no, I’m hoping you’ll resist to the last. There is nothing so sweet to me as that kind of sport." I engaged a practice to disassociate from my shock. I took the horrifying visual memory of the three inside her body, labeled it an artifice, and locked it away in a vault in my memory palace so that it could not haunt my mind. I focused all my will on shielding and maintaining the mocking stance, “Nothing seems so sweet as what we can never have," I replied. "But if you need someone to play with you, I will try to be as entertaining as possible. All I ask is that we move in the direction of the portal that leads to Old Terra. Keep moving in that direction, and I will be delighted to let you chatter on and on. But please don’t be so boorish as to attempt to travel in the wrong direction. That sort of falsehood will be apparent to me." This last part was not a bluff. I had a technique that could discern such a basic truth or falsity. “Ah, now that would be an amusing journey," replied Viealetta. "What I will enjoy most is that slow climax when you start begging to join with me like your three little friends. So, yes, I do pledge solemnly to always lead you toward the portal you desire. It will be a most succulent diversion. Prepare yourself, however, for it is a long and difficult journey, and I must rest now, refresh myself, before we set forth. I suggest you do the same." Immediately following this suggestion a thin milky film covered the glittering black orbs and with mind-numbing speed armies of albino creatures raced over the surface of her body and into and out of numerous apertures and ventricles. At the same time, strands of spider silk appeared to blow out of a thousand points on her body. Gradually, the scurrying armies of creatures became invisible beneath a white cocoon that covered Viealetta like a royal canopy of woven silk. I stayed in my stance, aware that thousands of tiny eyes were tracking, and somehow recording, my every breath. While my face and eyes remained impassive, my mind raced through many vital considerations. My life, I understood, depended on my being as opaque as possible. A single careless word or gesture could reveal quirks or qualities that would allow Viealetta to register my personality. It was obvious that she favored the psychological attack, she had as much as said so, and if there were any telepathic leakage points in my shields, or revealing nuances in my words or movements, she would immediately uncover vulnerabilities. And what was happening beneath her canopy of spidery, white silk? I didn’t believe for a moment that she needed rest. Probing with all my senses, I detected a furious metabolism that had raised the temperature within her cocoon to an atmosphere of high fever. Masses of scurrying creatures served as an army of robotic surgeons under precise telepathic control. Extensive surgeries were being performed, whole areas of tissue excised or reconfigured. I tried to analyze the possible reasons for this metamorphosis. The most likely was that she was reconfiguring herself to attack me more potently in some psychological way. Viealetta never seemed to resort to direct physical attack. Perhaps she was under some cosmic restraint that forbade such an approach, or perhaps it just didn't serve her purpose, which was to burrow into a psyche and corrupt and weaken it from within until it allowed itself to be hollowed out by the parasitism. The metamorphosis, therefore, would not serve a physical purpose, but would be aimed at psychological attack. What bothered me was that she had plenty of time to perform such an operation while I was struggling through the cave and waiting in the anteroom. Did this mean that she had registered me, and was reconfiguring herself based on what she had perceived of my vulnerabilities? Or would she periodically transform herself just to keep me off balance? Possibly this was the standard strategy of a creature long known to be a changeling. I replayed every word we exchanged, but gained little insight. She was a masterfully opaque manipulator, and what she did reveal she did so blatantly, as a measured thrust in her attack. She had agreed to lead me toward the portal, and when I tested this statement with discernment practices I detected trickery but no blatant falsehood. I sensed that the treaty was intact. If my will could be broken, she would devour me, but if my will held, she would allow me to pass through the portal. Now that I observed her close up, I realized that the vision I had of her bone labyrinth mind had prepared me for her complexity and viciousness, but I had not sufficiently recognized the depth of her psychological penetration. For eons, she had observed and exploited every vulnerability of hominid psyches. She knew the nuances of every language, audible or telepathic, and above all she knew our weaknesses, better than we knew them ourselves, and this gave her a tremendous advantage in manipulating us. I allowed the speculation and analysis to go on for only so long. I knew that I could not allow restless thoughts to tumble through my mind continuously, for that would only exhaust my spirit. Elves, even without the training of the Vehrillion, are able go without sleep, food or drink for long periods. Even so, I knew it was to my advantage to obtain a certain type of rest. I quieted my mind, kept my senses alert, and my shields up. My eyes were open, and I could respond to a sudden threat with great speed, but core parts of my being were allowed to sleep and recuperate. Partly awake, partly asleep, I remained in my stance for some time before I heard the sound of a billion insect mouths devouring the cocoon. Gaping holes opened in the silken canopy, and soon all trace of it had dissolved. Armies of tiny albino robots scurried away with quantities of removed tissue that seemed to still be alive. Standing before me was the reconfigured Viealetta. She had reduced her size and complexity and had become far more hominid-like in form. Her body had two main segments. The one that faced me was fashioned in the form of a roughly human naked female, pale and hairless. Her face still had the large glittering black orbs, and hideous corona of red antennae, but was now an expressive, personal face with puffy cheeks and a mousy look of fear, confusion and anxiety. She was squat and shaped a bit like an ancient human fertility doll with pendulous breasts and greatly exaggerated reproductive organs. One hand had ordinary stubby fingers, and the other was not a hand, though it had skin and finger-like joints that matched the hand, but was shaped in the form of a coiled scorpion tail and bristled with some of the undulating, hair-thin red antennae that surrounded her face. This was the mostly human-looking segment of her body. The other, much larger segment closely resembled a headless albino spider, but it had an enormous scorpion tail protruding from its rear which coiled and uncoiled a bit as it moved, counterbalancing the weight of the humanoid portion. The humanoid part was attached via a very thick, flexible neck-like structure that was large enough to cover most of its back and strong enough that it suspended the humanoid form a few inches from the floor like a puppet. The spider legs could move her swiftly backward or forward while the humanoid portion always faced me, its soft flesh jiggling as its arachnid-like locomotive platform moved it about. “Sire, what is it that you require of me? I want only to serve you," said the new Viealetta. Her tone was mousy and obsequious, as if she feared some dreadful punishment for any slight transgression. “I hope you are amusing yourself with this puppetry, Viealetta. You know very well what I require of you, take me to the portal." “Oh Sire, why do you call your poor servant, Lianna, by this terrible name, Viealetta?" The tone and facial expressions were the perfect semblances of a nervously servile creature. Every nuance of her speech and body language conveyed the sense that she was a much-abused slave or servant who was filled with fear and shame. She held her scorpion coil hand limply to her side and a bit behind her as if she were ashamed of its deformity. I found that parts of me were beginning to automatically register her new form as that of a low-status, submissive creature, even as my mind recognized that this was pure subterfuge. I wanted to minimize communication until I had more time to analyze the psychological warfare that was behind this new form and manner. “Since I am your sire I command you to take me toward the portal that leads to Old Terra without further discussion." “As you wish, Sire." With the help of the flexible neck that attached her to the arachnid, the humanoid form made this abjectly submissive curtsey, and still facing me, the spider legs carried her rapidly backward and through the entrance at the back of the anteroom. She moved swiftly with her multiple legs, and I had to struggle to keep up with her as we moved quickly through a winding stone corridor. As we traveled, I studied the transformation and tried to analyze the effect it was supposed to have on me. The puppetry was very effective in many ways. Although my mind saw through the deception, my body still registered the humanoid portion of the new form as nervously submissive and as different from the Viealetta I remembered before she vanished into the cocoon. I still had ancestral instincts that stereotyped various body types and tones of speech. Viealetta was sidestepping my mind and convincing parts of my body that she was low-status and submissive. But then there were was the jarring incongruity of the undulating red antennae, the scorpion-tail-shaped hand and the spider locomotive platform that terminated in a gigantic scorpion tail. These elements seemed designed to awaken even deeper instinctual mammalian fears of biting and stinging creatures that crawled on the ground. The only consistent theme was that Viealetta was exploiting and revealing my mammalian ancestry and the degree that this ancestry still conditioned me. The disturbing incongruity of the submissive, humanoid female aspects and the frightening, invertebrate elements was a masterful example of the black art of Viealettation. By mixing powerfully dissonant biological forms, she threw my bodily intelligence off balance. Part of my body interpreted this form sympathetically as a submissive human, while another part interpreted it as a dangerous invertebrate. As I studied the subtle power of this manipulation, I recognized a shocking flaw in my own strategy. I had attempted to hide any trace of my personality by adopting the consistent tone and manner of an arrogant, over-confident warrior. But Viealetta could surely see through such a simple subterfuge, and since I had adopted a perfectly consistent persona, I had given her a stable frame of reference. The slightest deviation in tone or gesture from this contrived persona would reveal volumes about the underlying personality. These betrayals would be apparent only to the most discerning and attuned observer, but I could have little hope that Viealetta was anything less than that. It seemed more probable that Viealetta was a great deal more, that she carried within her the entire history of human fears and frailties and through the process of breaking and devouring the three, she had acquired intimate knowledge of the vulnerabilities of elf body and spirit. I considered whether I could better camouflage myself by adopting a random assortment of personas when I communicated with Viealetta. But since this was an obvious abandonment of my previous strategy in favor of her mode of shape-shifting Viealettation, it would mean that I would be crediting her as master, and diminishing myself to the role of imitative disciple. I decided to forgo a conscious strategy for the present. Instead, I would respond spontaneously as the need to communicate arose, trusting that intuition would serve me better then a conscious plan. I did not have long to wait before she tested me with maddening Viealettation communication. “Oh Sire, I hope it is not disrespectful to ask you this, but do you really want me to lead you to the portal or have you just tricked me into this dark space so you can have your way with me once again?" I wanted to show that I felt under no pressure to respond to such nonsense, so I ignored her question for a few moments. I considered making no response at all, but I suspected that she might not continue to lead me toward the portal if I refused to engage the game. She stood there looking at me with this fearful, submissive look and it was obvious that she would not continue until I responded. “I have to say I am a bit disappointed in you, Viealetta," I said shaking my head in mock sadness. "I had heard that you were a creature capable of highly creative improvisation, and here you are right from the start doing exactly what I expected, the old Viealettation trickery. Is there no way you can at least rework this ancient routine to make it more interesting?" Viealetta bowed her head in a pose of abject shame and submission. “‘Oh Sire, it confuses and frightens me so to have you call me that terrible name and say such strange things I cannot understand. It makes my poor head too dizzy to be able to lead you. Please Sire, have mercy on poor Lianna." Viealetta was adamantly refusing to break character and showed me plainly that if I did not play along, she would refuse to take me to the portal. I decided to play the part she indicated for me, but with a sarcastic exaggeration. “Oh poor, dear, Lianna, please excuse my frivolous jokes. I know you only wish to serve me, dear, so I won’t torment you with further discussion. I’ll leave your poor, little head free to concentrate on guiding us to the portal." “Oh Sire, you know if you want to have your way with me you need only ask. There is no need to mock me with such a joking tone." Viealetta still refused to move, forcing me to recognize another demand---I must not only play the part, but do so convincingly, even a facetious tone was enough to create an impasse. This last demand made me very wary, and for a time I made no reply. How far can I let this playacting go? If she demands that I play Sire more and more convincingly I will be giving her a powerful lever to twist my mind with. But each moment that I keep silence might also reveal weakness, hesitation, and indecisiveness. To cover my uncertainty, I resolved to extend the silence while I stood in a very relaxed pose. I wanted to see if I could get her to make the next response. Silent moments stretched long and uneasily as I studied the glittering black orbs and the chaotic, rippling of the corona of red antenna. Finally, Viealetta broke the silence, “Oh Sire, these strange stares and silences make me feel so vulnerable. It feels as though you are undressing me with your eyes, though you can see that I have shed all my garments as you desired. If you want to enter me you know that you have only to say so Sire, you know that Lianna can deny you nothing that is in her poor power to give." “Yes Lianna, there is one thing you can do for me. It is simply to continue leading me toward the portal. And please indulge Sire in one more kind service and refrain from conversation as far as possible, as my thoughts are elsewhere today." I kept my tone carefully sincere-sounding. Viealetta, apparently satisfied with this victory, curtsied and began moving again. Her spider platform allowed her to walk so nimbly over the jagged rock floor that I could scarcely keep up. After a long time moving rapidly through a maze of stone corridors, I was forced to ask her to slow down. I was loath to reveal a physical limitation, but I knew I would exhaust myself if I tried to match her furious speed. Keeping my shields at such a high level of defense was too taxing for me to keep up a racing pace. “Lianna, Sire would like you to go at a slower pace.’ “As you wish, Sire,” said Viealetta, and now she began to crawl at an agonizingly slow pace. “Thank you for slowing, Lianna, but this pace is too slow. Could we try a moderate pace?" “Oh Sire," she replied in the tone of a long-suffering, humble creature being humiliated by capricious and contradictory orders, "I so much want to obey you, but your orders are terribly confusing." Now she raced ahead and then abruptly slowed, raced, slowed at random intervals. Once more I was being successfully conditioned. If I tried to use my assigned role as Sire to control her actions, I would be made to regret it. It was better for me to go along with whatever she wanted me to do. We went on in this way for quite some time. With each twist and turn of our dialogue, Lianna took on the role of a poor, abused slave and to get any sort of cooperation I had to play the Sire role convincingly. After long and weary travel through huge stone tunnels, we entered a long, dusty passage not quite high enough for me to stand erect and I had to walk in an uncomfortable, crouched position. A couple of seemingly contradictory intuitions battled in my mind. Although my falsity-detecting technique revealed that Viealetta was always leading me toward the portal, there was trickery involved, and I was sure that she was using a needlessly roundabout way and taking a sadistic delight in drawing out our journey. But I also had a strong intuition that Viealetta, as unpleasant and disturbing as she was to deal with, was not showing me her fierce side, and that although she would gladly devour me, she actually preferred that I show myself worthy enough to pass through the portal. After traveling some distance down the low, dusty corridor, I realized that I had to insist that she give me some time and distance estimates of our journey. I had been avoiding any sort of questioning, but there was an important tactical consideration here. By forcing me to follow down a corridor where I had to walk bent over, Viealetta had intensified the war of attrition on my body by several notches. I knew that energy could not flow through my body properly with my spine so contorted for a long period of time. Eventually, my shields would weaken and I would become vulnerable to telepathic attack. “Lianna, tell Sire how long this corridor is, and estimate the time it will take us to cover that distance." “Oh Sire, poor Lianna has trouble understanding you when you talk in such a strangely calm way, I’ve grown accustomed to your angry manner.” Now I knew exactly where Viealetta was trying to take me with her Viealettation puppet games. She would demand an ever-angrier tone from me, and I would have to accept the potent Viealettation of playacting an ever more sadistic Sire. That was completely unacceptable. Viealetta had successfully discovered a lever that would ultimately twist and distort my mind. I stopped moving and adopted a restful stance. “Sorry Viealetta, but game’s over. I will not play Sire any longer, and I will not follow you another step unless you draw a map of our exact route here in the dust with correctly scaled distances. Show me where the portal is." Lianna stared at me for a moment as if she were terrified and confused by a demand that was so irrational and sadistic it made her fear for her life. She took a half step back from me and cowered as if in terror. When she spoke, she stammered as if fear were making it hard for her to even speak, “Oh, oh, oh, si-si- Sire, you’re si-si-scaring pa-pa-poor L-Li-L-ianna, I da-da-don’t na-na-know wha-wha-what you wha-wha-want mi-mi-me to da-da-do.” She cowered and then emitted this long, whimpering whine that seemed to go on forever. My heart rate increased and I recognized my body was having an immunological response to the whining. The whining, and the stammering that preceded it, were acoustical spells of some sort and there was twisted information encoded in them. The spells that Viealetta would have inserted telepathically she was encoding acoustically, a communication channel I had left open, and this was an attack I had not anticipated at all. I engaged a practice to block my perception of the whine while allowing my hearing to be sensitive to any other ambient sound. Viealetta was aware that I had blocked her spell, and for a time she just maintained her cowering position while the glittering black orbs studied me. Abruptly, she stopped cowering, her mousy expression dissolved, and the humanoid face altered to reveal wrinkles and heavy jowls while the rest of the humanoid body sagged as if it were made of wax that had partly melted. “How boring of you to take so long to ask these simple questions." Her voice and face were so altered and specific that waves of shock coursed through my body, forcing me to realize how deeply she had conditioned me to expect the Lianna puppet. The new face had bags under her narrowed eyes and the voice had the husky, hoarse register of a woman in her sixties who had been smoking cigarettes for decades. In a single sentence she conveyed the feeling tone of an older woman who had led a life of base pleasures and dissipations, but whose body had soured to a state where excitements had receded beyond her grasp, and even greedy lechery had faded into a vast and bitter boredom. Her face scowled at me with disappointment and disgust as if I were a male prostitute whose services she had paid for in advance only to find that I was unable to perform. "Who knew that little elf boys have become so dull that such a simple game would have to be drawn out to such tedious, fatiguing lengths and you still haven’t seen through it." She switched voices to grotesquely mimic my last statement in the high-pitched falsetto of an annoying child, "Show me where the portal is. ---Did it never occur to you how I could be leading you toward the portal no matter which way we went? Turn that stupid light off little boy and I’ll show you the portal." Warily, I dimmed my navigator and allowed the corridor to go dark. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I beheld a faint glow coming from the albino spider portion of Viealetta’s body. Within its translucent tissues there was a tubular cross section of living light, a pale ring of fiery sheets in undulating folds like a tiny aurora borealis. Its luminosity was pale and lunar like the shimmer of a hungry moon. “Behold the portal to Old Terra that lives only within me." said Viealetta, her cigarette husky voice taking on a taunting and grandiose aspect. To be sure, I engaged my truth detecting practice, but I already knew there was no deception. Viealetta lived off the negative energies of Old Terra and to continue to feed in this new time and place she needed a portal that reached across space and backward through the stream of time. The portal functioned like an organ of digestion with hungry mouths on both sides. And where better to hide and protect such an intestine-like portal than within her own body where she could be directly energized by the fermenting hates, fears and desires of a planet crowded with billions of humans? For a moment, I wondered, as she wanted me to, if I were not dull-witted to have failed to consider this possibility. But then I glimpsed something I wasn’t supposed to see. It was as if I had seen through an open crack in a door that was quickly pulled shut. I saw that an intricate lattice of potent spells surrounded me that, despite all my training, I had been unable to detect. Some spells were long and woven together like an encircling web. Other spells hung just outside the web like powerful magnets capable of misdirecting attention with great precision. Wary as I was, Viealetta had tricked me into underestimating her powers. “You see the portal you desire." Viealetta’s husky voice slowed to a whiskey-tone pitched to sound sultry, and darkly seductive. "Now little boy, relinquish your shields and remove your garments for the only way to Old Terra is to pass through me, and I allow that privilege only to the most beautiful and succulent young flesh." I felt Viealetta's black orbs glittering at me, and her excited metabolism heating to a feverish intensity. I lit my navigator and saw that a long slit was opening along the length of its rapidly transforming puppet torso. My mind and heart quavered with terror. Is this how she devoured the three? But I also knew that my quest required me to pass through this very portal into Old Terra and there was only one way to do so and there had to be some chance that I could survive. I could not hesitate at the brink of this terrible crossing. I dimmed the navigator and with shields still up I removed my clothing, stowing it in my cloth bag, which I tied to my ankle as I had done before diving into the lake. I hoped that Viealetta, in her state of great excitement, would either not notice or care about such a detail. Then I engaged a practice to slow my perception of time so that with hyperawareness I could sense every nuance of change that occurred between heartbeats. Finally, with an involuntary shiver I relinquished my shields and trembled to feel that only the air on my naked skin separated me from physical contact with Viealetta. The vertical slit on the humanoid torso puckered and opened revealing some sort of viscera within. I felt Viealetta’s voracious appetite as throbbing waves of hunger on my naked skin. Struggling to overcome fears too dreadful to name, I stepped toward Viealetta. As I did so, her head loomed up and the corona of hair-like red antenna shot outward and lashed my naked body. Blinding flames of white-hot agony tore through me as flesh-dissolving acids in the antenna cut through my skin and allowed the antenna to suck greedily at my blood. I dove through the opening and into the body of Viealetta. There was a shocking reversal of sensation. Viealetta had so tuned her body chemistry that the flaming agony of acid-cut wounds was neutralized and replaced by opiate fluids streaming through my wounds that produced sensations of blinding, shivering pleasure that nearly extinguished my mind. I knew that if I didn’t act instantly, my will would dissolve and in one more heartbeat this parasitic womb would enslave me forever. I swam forward and into the portal. I fell into a non-place, an ether-like limbo of horrible suffering within the portal that was removed from physical time or space. My identity merged with the culminating death moments of countless human lives that were being extinguished in states of absolute Viealettation. I lived for a moment in the body of a woman who watched impassively, paralyzed with despair, as uniformed men put her on a metal plank to be slid into a gas-fired oven. I lived through the final moments of countless suicides and withered on steel beds penetrated by plastic tubes and machinery. And then there was a sensation of plummeting, of falling backward through space and time. I found myself tumbling through a dark sky for a moment or two before falling to Old Terra, landing as if by parachute, with a bruising impact on red, dusty soil. I was naked and bleeding, but still conscious and able to move and scan my environment. I was in a red desert near the entrance to a canyon. Great buttes were in the distance and there was a scattering of dusty green desert plants and reddish boulders. My body and mind were shattered and bleeding, but I had passed through the portal and now lay somewhere on the surface of Old Terra. My body began to tremble and convulse in pain and shock, but I willed it to be still and allow me to remain conscious. I knew that all my available energy and will had to focus on one thing—--coagulation, for I was bleeding from a hundred different wounds. I gave all of my attention to my wounds until I was able to stem the flow of blood. This took precious moments longer than it should have, and much of my life energy spilled onto the red soil. From a thousand planes of intuition I knew that many of my powers had been diminished or lost as I fell so terribly wounded to this ancient world. Viealetta had drawn my blood from a hundred deep lacerations and my body was feverish from poison and infection. My very cells were going into a state of shock, and I was in imminent danger of losing consciousness. I engaged a couple of survival techniques to slow time, and to keep my ravaged body and mind focused on solving problems of immediate survival. I illuminated my navigator and felt its radiance stabilizing my energy and heart rhythm. My bag had survived the crossing still attached to my ankle and I untied it and found my flask of healing elixir. I stilled my trembling hands enough to unscrew the cap and take a sip from it. Gratefully, I discovered that it had retained its potency. In the whole history of this medicine it had probably never found an elf body so in need of its restorative effects. Healing energies and warmth rippled through my body, fever and infection vanished, wounds that had only just coagulated began to close but still burned like fire. I pulled a small cloth out of my bag and put a few drops of the elixir on it. Moving as quickly as I could, I applied it to the wounds and wiped blood from my skin. Every movement had to be paid for in pain— the lacerations were like strings of fire whipping around my whole body. I could have blocked the pain, but I knew I needed it to keep alert. Next I took my clothes from the bag and put them on. The soft fabric comforted my skin and protected me from the cold, desert night. I put the hood of my cloak up and drew it around me. The cloak reflected back the warmth of my body and I covered myself with it as if it were a small tent. Although it was profoundly weakened by trauma, I could feel my body stabilizing and starting to heal. Feeling that I was out of immediate danger, I allowed myself to turn down the pain so I could focus more on my surroundings. I looked about me and saw that I had landed in a place of great power. Canyons and buttes of red stone stretched out in vast moonlit vistas. All about me were medicine plants, the potent desert plants of the high desert—-sage, agave, and yarrow—-to my eyes they were fringed in blue electricity. Towering buttes rose out of the desert like giant lodestones charged with planetary energy. The desert was intensely alive, and its heart beat with a rhythm as long, slow, and powerful as the rhythm of the most ancient mountains. Falling to Old Terra, my spirit had been drawn to a land displaced, a vast high desert inhabiting its own time stream, a place of the dreamtime shrouded in primal mysteries. As I felt the mystery of the desert, faces came out of the night, the faces of protoelf spirits who were linked to me in this world through strange patterns of destiny connected to my quest. One of these faces was... I felt the identity merger fold in on itself and release as I realized that it was me that Jeremiah had sensed in that moment. The sharing gracefully concluded as I came back to myself sitting in the camper across from Jeremiah, his face illuminated by candlelight. The sharing had affected me profoundly and back in my own identity there was so much to process---the strangeness and horror of Viealetta, the deeper sense of Jeremiah and elf consciousness, the crossing, the sharing itself, and how easy it was to merge identities with another. We sat silently as I tried to grapple with all this and then I thought of a more mundane question to ask Jeremiah. "What happened to you since the red desert? How have you managed to survive?" "Once my body stabilized enough for me to get up and begin walking I discovered another fortuitous reason for my landing in this particular place of power. Walking a short distance, I found myself standing on a patch of ground that exuded a feeling of hidden content. I could feel that there was something buried only a foot or so beneath my feet and that it was something of value, a survival resource of some type, something I was meant to find. "I found a flat rock with an edge I could use as a shovel. Every movement was painful, and my body was exhausted, but the red dirt wasn't densely packed and what I was looking for hadn’t been buried very deeply. Soon I came to a layer of black plastic. Inside the plastic were neat stacks of paper currency, intricately printed on high quality paper. They were hundred dollar bills, and as I touched them I retrieved images of the man who buried them and the desperate state of mind he was in at the time. I tracked his timeline in my mind and saw that he died a violent death a short time after the hurried burial. “No one had any awareness of this buried treasure or claim on it. Holding one of the bills in my hands, I could see that it was a carefully constructed magical artifact woven with spells in the form of images, letters and numbers. All the magical artifacts I had ever seen or created were handmade, but these were designed by a government and produced by machines. These bills had no individual personality, and yet they were imbued with a collective power, a power that had many dark aspects. It was my first contact with money. Money had ceased to have any meaning with the start of the Great Crossing, and I had lived in a world that had never used any form of it. “I understood that the bills were artifacts of the dominant magic of Old Terra, and that with these paper rectangles I could obtain any sort of physical resource I might need. I put as many as I could carry in my bag and then buried the rest. I noted the spot, and thought about setting wards and fields to hide the buried content, but then I realized I had no rightful claim on these objects. I also realized that as much as this paper currency was valued by humans, a mere foot of dirt would be sufficient to hide the cache from untrained eyes. "Some force had brought me the one universal resource I would need to survive on Old Terra and although my abilities are lessened here, I have so far not encountered any hazard or obstacle that has hindered my ability to travel anywhere I want to. I have also been able to help a number of needy people I've encountered in my travels by giving them a few of these bills." I recollected now the seven, new-looking hundred dollar bills I had found in my clipboard that night in Seattle. "Eventually I may return to that spot in the red desert to obtain some more, but even if that cache were gone, I sense that there are other such poorly hidden caches that would be easy for me to detect if I needed to. Since I don't really have a claim on these artifacts, just a greater ability to locate them, I let them pass through me freely to people who need them more than I do." Jeremiah paused, and it seemed as if he had checked some inner clock. "I think it's time we prepared for your approach to the shadow portal." I knew the moment was coming. We had been talking all night and I remembered what Jeremiah had said about the hour before dawn as the most propitious time to approach the portal, but nevertheless I felt a renewed sense of dread now that the moment was at hand. "I will be with you the whole time, or with your body at least, but it's unlikely that you will have any awareness of my presence." "I remember everything you said about it, but can you review the physical procedure---we're just going to walk out there?" "Yes," said Jeremiah. "When we get close, I'll stand back and you will approach. When you enter the portal's field the shadow vision will commence. From my perspective, this may last only ten minutes or so. You will be standing the whole time. When the vision breaks, you will become aware of your environment again and you will have about another twenty minutes to talk or share your vision. At this point it will be better if you are sitting. You will start to feel very strange for a minute or two during which it is best for you to close your eyes and breath deeply. Then you will lose consciousness, your body will slump to the ground and your consciousness will resume as a different identity in the shadow realms. When the shadow vision breaks, I suggest that we walk back to your camper. It will be safer for you to be in your camper in a place where you can lie down before you lose consciousness." We both stood up, and I quickly converted the back area to a bed and showed Jeremiah where I had stored water and a few amenities he might want while he minded me. When we stepped out of the camper, I felt Alex's presence standing beside me to provide solidarity as he recognized that I was about to undergo a difficult trial. As we walked across the mesa toward the rock formations, I could see more clearly that they framed an area of flowing and flickering shadow. The shadows distorted the light around them like heat ripples rising from hot asphalt. When we were about a dozen feet away, Jeremiah stepped in front of me, and faced me so that he was standing between the portal and me. He lifted his left hand, palm facing the night sky, and a cobalt blue sphere formed and hovered about a few inches above the center of his palm. It looked like a sphere of the highest grade of blue sapphire, about three inches in diameter, except that it had an internal luminosity---it was an energy source, and it was alive, the way a cell or a star is alive, and the feeling of its aliveness was calm, clear, and aware. The optical precision, clarity and beautiful midnight blue color of this orb were also its energetic properties, the qualities of its aliveness and awareness. Jeremiah held his hand steadily, allowing me to look into the deep blue depths of the orb. "This is medicine you can bring with you," said Jeremiah. "An orb of blue sapphire elemental, manifested through the Vehrillion. To behold it is to have it with you. Behold it in your imagination, see it in your mind's eye, and you also partake of this medicine, for its manifestation is not limited by matter, time or space." I felt its power, a power of calm and penetrating vision. “I see that you are wearing some silver jewelry. As you look into the orb, look also at these silver objects in your mind's eye." This request was unexpected, but I did as he said, and saw these silver objects that I had worn for many years. Two of the objects, an amulet and a ring, carried sapphires. And then I knew why he had called my attention to these objects. I had chosen them for a purpose I hadn't fully comprehended until that moment. They were designed, like tuning forks, to resonate with the energy of this orb. It was as if these items of jewelry were carefully tuned antennae. And these were energies that I had instinctively sensed that I needed. Jeremiah took a step closer to me and gently brought the orb near my body. I could feel some of the silver objects, especially the amulet, humming in sympathetic response. At the same time, I could feel a subtle realignment of the energies that flowed through my bodily organs. "You and your silver objects will now resonate more strongly with this medicine. The silver objects will offer you some protection, but keep them within your personal field, do not put them aside or let others handle them. If others try to take these objects from you by force or deception, the medicine will only work against them. The Vehrillion sapphire elemental has a virtue that cannot be stolen, it can only be received as a gift, and only the worthy can receive the gift.” Jeremiah fell silent for many long moments while the orb floated above his palm, the stillness of the mesa all around us. The blue of the orb was deep, and the depths of the sapphire mesmerized my gaze. It was a gift of energy and awareness to behold this elemental orb, and Jeremiah seemed to be encouraging me to draw as much energy from it as I could. As I gazed into the cobalt blue depths of the sphere, I felt the infusion of its calm and penetrating clarity. I allowed it to fill my field of view as Jeremiah’s gentle telepathy whispered softly in the background. “The medicine of this sphere brings you clarity and inner strength. Your mind is relatively strong and stable for your kind, but the Shadow Vision Portal will challenge this stability. Make your hands into a bowl.” Jeremiah paused until I had done this. Carefully he brought the sphere of glowing sapphire energy until it was just above the bowl of my hands and allowed it to spill off of his hand and into my hands. As soon as it touched my skin, it dissolved into me. The calming, blue waves of sapphire energy coursed through my body, strengthening and enlivening me. Jeremiah stepped aside. "Now you can approach the portal. It holds no physical danger. Any darkness it shows you is already in existence or a possibility of some kind. Just keep breathing and let it show you whatever it has to reveal." I nodded and walked slowly up to the portal. As I got close, the portal disappeared from view, but I could feel that I was in its field. I was still in the mesa, but the wind had lessened, and everything was still and quiet. I saw no vision, but felt the slowing of time. The beat of my heart felt really slow and I could feel the pulse in my fingers. I felt an odd sensation on the surface of my body as though I had walked into the dry, silken threads of a large spider web. I looked down and it took a long heartbeat before I was willing to let what my eyes scanned fully enter my mind. Attached to my body, emerging from my body, running through my body, was a lattice of dark filaments, undulating filaments like a spider web spun of black silk, moving chaotically like the tentacles of a sea anemone. Each of the filaments was a kind of nerve cell, a shadowy black neuron with infinitely complex dendrites and interconnections with other threads of tissue. It was continually reconfiguring itself to create new interconnections and networks. Its activity was intelligently directed and oriented toward the efficient and invisible absorption of my life energy. It was highly aware of me as host, as primary food source, and adapted itself continuously to keep me as a blood pump and energy source within its neural network. I was like an organ living within a parasitic brain. The dendrites and axons of black spider silk undulated, but also pulsated in a dissonant rhythm that had some particular horror for me. It was the inversion of my arterial pulsation, the anti-heartbeat of my heartbeat. This pulsating lattice of tissue was like a capillary suction pump. It beat in perfect counter-rhythm to my heartbeat because as my heart pumped blood out, the lattice sucked in---not blood, but vital energy. The rhythm and counter-rhythm were so perfectly aligned that it was not clear if I was merely tissue, an organ inside of its body, or if it was a parasitic tissue that surrounded my own body. Something about the light-absorbing blackness of the filaments made them tendrils of energy suction, and also rendered them invisible to ordinary human eyesight. At certain nodes of the web, a nexus of dendrites formed a densely entangled, bulbous thicket of black nerve tissue. There was space inside these bulbous nodes, and inside those spaces were pale, worm-like parasites. These worms had the silvery luminosity of hungry moons whose light was merely the reflection of a host energy source. These moon worms were part of a complex and delicately counterbalanced parasitic ecosystem, an ecosystem for which I was the food source. Horror at what I was seeing was starting to overwhelm me and then I remembered the blue sapphire elemental and saw it in my mind's eye. The energy of the blue orb was still inside me and as I thought of it, I felt myself glowing blue. I slowed my breathing, and breathed in blue energy with each in breath. With each out breath, I exhaled blue light from my skin. As I did so, I saw that the parasitic web surrounding me undulated in an agitated, chaotic state. With the next out breath of blue light, all the myriad points where the web lattice connected to my body burned away. For a moment, the outer edges of the parasitic web were loose filaments of spindly neurons whose dendrites had been burnt off. Only dismembered axons remained, waving in amputated torment until they reconfigured and linked to each other and the lattice reconfigured itself so as to avoid the field of blue energy around me. What I was seeing was but the smallest part of a parasitic matrix that had always harvested my energy, its perpetual suction a hidden, insidious taxation of my every pulse of life energy. Now the web simply flowed around me, steering clear of the blue light that was, for it, a potent toxin. My awareness of the web, and the blue light I was emanating, had freed me, however temporarily, from the parasitic network. Now that it wasn't attached to me, I could gaze more calmly at this alien life form. I realized that I was seeing that which it is not permitted to see, a hidden matrix underlying the surface appearance of the world. What I observed was just a tiny fragment of the vast and hungry web that enclosed Old Terra, the predatory, parasite-riddled realm that I inhabited with seven billion of my brothers and sisters. With my thoughts, the vision shifted to show me images of the human condition in a parasitic world. I saw so many of my fellow humans going about their day gazing downward, many with broken spirits. Above their bent heads was a dark, coagulated sky. Flowing and undulating all around them, and through them, was this insidious and invisible web, the parasite matrix. Their bodies were not moving through free space, but a latticework of hungry filaments that were a hidden taxation and dark influence on their every thought and emotion. While I stood, for the moment, freed from the matrix, they lived on the surface of a parasitic brain whose tendrils sucked hungrily at the sweet ethers of their suffering. All their fear, pain, hatred, jealousy, addictive passions and lethargic indulgences fed this dark brain. The shadow portal was giving me forbidden knowledge, and although part of me wanted to cringe from the horror of it, I also felt it was an inescapable duty to go further. As I stood there on the mesa, a new vision flickered into my mind. I saw the gleaming Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, buildings I had visited when I was a child. I knew that this was early on the morning of September 11, 2001. It was a beautiful, late-summer day of sunshine and blue skies. The Towers were still perfectly intact, and people were going about their business. But the latticework of invisible filaments surrounding them was in a state of extreme excitement and accelerated growth. Massing and swarming around the Twin Towers was an increasing density of pulsating nerve tissue. As I watched, as the seconds to the first impact ticked down, I saw the towers become a mass of hungry black vines----the axons and dendrites of the parasitic brain that was sprouting shoots of suctioning tissue to this particular place and time. It knew what was coming---a great, exploding feast of terror about to erupt. And then I saw the horror of its living puppet show. Axons and dendrites of its will and ravenous hunger were wired into the puppet brains of people in the cockpit of the plane so that the parasitic brain actually looked out at the gleaming towers through the eyes of its puppets. The towers gleamed in its ravenous mind. It craved with sexual frenzy to rupture those towers, to pop them, to tear into them like a starving, rabid bear tearing into hives full of golden honey. The honey it craved was shock, fear, horror and all the blood---blood vaporizing in the fiery combustion of exploding jet fuel. There was honey within the towers, but also sweet ethers of human suffering flowing toward them as the world’s attention focused on this eruption of terror. Hungry tendrils sucked greedily at the calorically rich harvest of suffering. The collapse of each tower was a vampiric orgasm, a suctioning implosion of ravenous feeding that shivered and pulsated throughout the parasitic matrix. And then I caught a glimpse of her, hidden in some boundary place between dimensions was Viealetta, the queen of the parasite matrix. I saw her as a huge albino arachnid clinging to a vibrating nexus where all the webs converged. The red antennae around Viealetta's bulbous head were erect and vibrating at a high pitch and she was silently screaming in orgasmic ecstasy as each tower collapsed. My whole being trembled as I beheld the godhead of evil, the face of the planetary parasite, the Medusa, whose hair of snakes was some early vision of Viealetta. Before the Medusa could paralyze me with dread, my vision pulled back and I felt the influence of the Vehrillion Sapphire Elemental. Its cobalt blue depths brought calm and penetrating clarity. Intuition suffused my perception, a sense of deeper pattern and process. I perceived that the parasitic brain was being exposed by its ravenous greed and need for vampiric orgasm. The host was awakening. The insidious suction of its web, once cloaked in shadows, was being revealed, at least to a few. But there was something more to see. I saw a man with dark eyes looking out of the window of a high office tower. He was a man of great wealth and power, but his spirit was shriveled and his bodily tissues soured. He was dying of a metastasizing cancer, and yet his mind was still focused on power and cruel strategies. I saw that Viealetta communicated to him through wispy, smoke-like tendrils whispering in the background of his mind. From another angle of vision, I saw that his body had spinnerets where his genitals, stomach, heart and mouth should be. Silently, the spinnerets were emitting axons and dendrites of parasitic nerve tissue flowing out into the larger world. Vision shifted again. I saw a stream of people walking on a busy city street. The vision was cinematic, but in an almost clichéd way. I saw several blocks of people walking on a large and busy city street. Their hazy outlines, which were highlighted by the rays of a morning sun, seemed to be compacted by telephoto compression. The next vantage was a shift to both slow motion and wide-angle perspective, so that looming individual people, each of them casting an elongated shadow, floated down the street. I saw that each of them had spinnerets under their clothing emitting dark filaments of nerve tissue into the surrounding atmosphere. Tendrils of smoky thought forms whispered at the edges of their minds promoting their own dark thoughts. And these thoughts, conventionally seen as interior, individual occurrences, were actually an organic latticework engulfing the planet. The spinnerets transmitted, but also, like transceiver antennae, they received, and pulsated with currents running through the global brain. The global currents they both received and transmitted controlled the dark threads erupting from their spinnerets. The human species had been made into organs of this parasitic brain. We had been repurposed to generate the dark tissue that fed off of us and entrapped us. All who followed the dark whispers were strengthening the parasitic web. The vision shifted again, and now I perceived the inside of a series of people. I was not seeing tissue, but different configurations of how they related to the parasitic brain. A few people I saw were nearly hollowed out; their vacuous interiors were echo chambers for the dark whispers. These were the hollow folk, the mechanized agents of the parasitic web. Most people I saw had cores of self-awareness within them, but these cores varied considerably in radiance and structure. Some cores were like the collapsing centers of dying stars, but others were vibrant, even brilliant. Some people were aware of the dark whispers. They knew they could choose whether they acted on them or not. A few people had cores that emitted pulsations of light that incinerated dark whispers and hungry nerve tissue. These people emitted tendrils of light that illuminated whole sections of the global mind. Glimpsing the inner configurations of various people, I continued to be amazed by the variety. The scans of some people were appalling, others were inspiring, and some were both inspiring and appalling. I saw a charismatic and highly intelligent politician. Tendrils of dark infused with light emitted from a core that was like a swollen sun. In many cases, it was hard to tell where the human left off and the parasitic matrix began. And then, without any transition I can recall, the terrible visions dissolved and it was just the silent mesa where I was still standing. I felt Alex’s presence nearby, his silent solidarity. I took some deep breaths, feeling the stillness, the peace of the mesa. Jeremiah approached and put his arm around me, his hand on my shoulder in a very human and touching gesture of comfort. Words did not intrude into the telepathic bond between us. There was a sense of some vast parallelism between us that had brought us together. We were travelers gazing out at an unbounded horizon shimmering with interdimensional portals. We walked back to the camper. I needed time to understand what I had just seen before I was subsumed into the shadow worlds portal. Jeremiah sat across from me on the bed that I had unfolded in the back of the camper, and for a moment I tried to assemble words to describe what I had seen, but soon realized that this was an unnecessary labor. The telepathic atmosphere allowed me to share the visions as I replayed them in my mind. After the sharing, Jeremiah spoke telepathically, “Old Terra is certainly oppressed by unseen parasites, I would just caution you against taking what you saw in the vision too literally. You know how visions work---they are usually more like dreams than literal representations. Although you saw images of the parasites as a planetary nervous system, this could be a biological metaphor. The parasite matrix may look differently to different observers.” I was relieved when Jeremiah communicated this. Although I already knew not to take visions literally, this one had so many concrete details. “Perhaps it was showing me that the parasitism spreads through networks of information, and the nervous system is the best biological representation of that,” I pointed out. “That makes good sense, “ said Jeremiah. “When a vision uses biological forms it is sometimes because it wants to communicate not just with your mind, but with your bodily intelligence as well. On the other hand, visions can sometimes reveal literal, specific, physical realities, so only you can decide on what level to interpret what you have seen.” “I’m not sure yet,” I replied. “I guess I’m going to have allow the level of reality to be ambiguous for now.” “A very wise stance,” said Jeremiah. “The ability to tolerate ambiguity without reaching for premature conclusions is one of the foundational principles of the Vehrillion.” Jeremiah gave me an admiring and knowing smile and I knew that he was recognizing the essence of my parallel self and that this recognition pleased him greatly. An intuition occurred to me, and whether it arose from within me or from Jeremiah’s memory diffusing into the telepathic atmosphere was also ambiguous. “He was the first to explore these portals, wasn’t he?” Jeremiah gave no response, but I saw assent in his eyes. I felt the parallel patterning, felt the inevitability of my facing the shadow worlds portal. Right after I had this thought, my bodily state destabilized and I felt the pores of my skin open and waves of heat and nausea flood through my body. I had a moment to feel Jeremiah's loving and calming presence, to close my eyes and take a couple of deep breaths before I lost consciousness. IV Through the Shadow Worlds Portal Note: Since after a few moments of confusion I became completely subsumed by a new and grotesque identity, I think the most authentic way to narrate this is from his perspective and in his vocabulary and way of speaking. I can feel his voice, a voice that often grates on me as obnoxious and self-pitying, wanting to come forward to tell his story in his way. He talks back to me in my head, complaining loudly if he thinks I’m misrepresenting him or if he senses any sort of judgment from me. Perhaps giving him his voice will help me to integrate this alternate identity that I am still struggling to accept. I can feel the bulging weight of his personality wanting to break free of my attempts to contain him, and don't feel I have a choice---I must let him speak for himself. It was dawn of a bleak winter morning, and I stood in a mostly empty parking lot. The pale winter sun cast my shadow before me, and I saw the gross roundness of my body and how big and round my head was. I wore a big old black overcoat, a coat so familiar it was almost part of my body. Its pockets bulged with a messy collection of important items---candy bars, coupons, plastic pens, dog-eared envelopes and folded up pieces of paperwork. These bulging pockets reassured me and I felt my old, fat wallet in an inside pocket built into the satin lining of the overcoat. The presence of such familiar things was comforting, but I also felt a strange blankness in my head, a blankness you can get on those groggy winter mornings when you’ve just woken up and you’re not sure yet of where you are and maybe even who you are. I closed my eyes for a moment trying to clear the disturbing fuzziness I felt in my head. A memory arose in vivid detail of Dr. Beckstein, the distinugished mutantologist, looking at me through the thick magnifying lenses of his heavy black glasses. He was speaking to me about my condition in his old world German accent. "Vhen you ghett oldher it is inevitable zhat arteries in your brain vill narrow somevwhat. At zhat point, if even a zingle ice cyrstal zhould break loose, it can cause a kind of stroke. Zhere could be a whole zeries of mini strokes first, some of vhwich you may barely notice." Perhaps the series of mini strokes had happened while I was sleeping, and parts of my brain needed for my memory to function had been deprived of necessary fluids and oxygen and this had caused them to deteriorate, perhaps irreversibly, while I was sleeping on my mattress, oblivious to the neurological catastrophe happening inside my head. When I searched my mind, I found that so many areas were fuzzy and inaccessible. Nervously, I pulled out my trusty, old wallet and opened it up. The scuffed up plastic of my all-important government photo ID was still there, thank God, and I studied my big round head, the heavy bags under my worried eyes that were as black as coal. As bad as I looked in the photo, I had to remind myself that this was how I looked four years ago, and that I had aged considerably since then. And there was my name, Martin Schnauman, and embossed holographically across my face was that person in a wheel chair icon but with an "M" where the head should have been. So much more than just an ID, this was also my all-important, official disability certification that entitled me to government services and relief checks, and a few entitlements like handicapped parking spots. Not that parking privileges did anything for me since I've never owned a car, and even if I did, they never would have granted me a license. Next to the wheel chair icon was my all too familiar ID code: DMR-089-54-7895. There was no fuzziness about my nine-digit DMR number. In case you’re lucky enough not to know, "DMR" means "Disabled Mutant Registration Number." I knew it backwards and forwards, could recite it in my sleep, probably did recite it in my sleep sometimes, because of all the endless paperwork I had to fill out twice a week when I had to go downtown to the Office of Disabled Mutant Services, ODMS, which everyone pronounced “Odd-ems,” as if we needed reminding of our oddness. Every week I had to go down there and fill out the same papers over and over again to get my disability payments. Now I realized why my head felt so blank. I was trying to forget that I had to spend my morning and afternoon at Odd-ems sitting on uncomfortable plastic chairs filling out papers under florescent lights waiting for my number to get called by contemptuous clerks who always seem to assume that "mutation" is synonymous with "retardation." Except that they treat you like not only are you retarded, but as if it’s your fault you're retarded, and that you are somehow doing it just to irritate them. Meanwhile, I'm forced to be exquisitely polite to all of them, because each one of them ranks my "CCI" or "Courtesy and Cooperation Index" on a scale of 1-5. Anytime my CCI falls bellow 3.5 I have to start the same paperwork cycle all over again. Nevertheless, the general public resents us because they think we have it so easy. My case worker, Mrs. Sternberger, always tells me I shouldn’t call myself a mutant, but a “reality-challenged survivor,” (or “RCS” as she always stamps my paperwork), but then she always treats me like I’m a retard if I forget to get some paper stamped, especially if its my DSM-4 voucher, because she can’t get paid on time if my DSM-4 isn’t notarized, and she’s still giving me this huge, snotty attitude because I forgot to get my stupid DSM-4 notarized like seven months ago. I felt sick to my stomach just thinking about having to talk to Mrs. Sternberger and her attitude. Descending the iron steps into the subway station, I felt the sprightly enthusiasm of an elderly, rheumatic coal miner about to begin a one-hundred-hour shift after a breakfast of cold gruel. I stood on the subway platform feeling hungry and nervous. My pockets bulged with cellophane-packaged snacks, and I started tearing into them, eating square orange crackers that were sandwiched with a layer of dry, industrial peanut butter. I didn’t even notice what I was doing until I was sitting in the screeching subway car and there was a huge lump in my stomach. The lump felt like it was composed of greasy sawdust, salt and chemicals, and I let out a belch that reeked of artificial cheese flavoring and rancid peanut butter. Great, now I had school cafeteria breath and nothing to drink. I searched my pockets in vain for a mint or any sort of hard candy that might relieve the industrial cheesy taste burning my mouth. I felt a terrible dryness that started in my throat and then seemed to steal moisture from every ice crystal of my body so that I felt dizzy and weak. I had been suffering for years from the equivalent of hypoglycemia, candida, and Epstein-Barr, and I knew I was supposed to be drinking lots of fluids to replenish my ice crystals, but here I had gone ahead and eaten all these dry and salty snack foods without bothering to bring even a single, warm drink box of Hawaiian Punch with me. And then that voice started to speak in my head---you know the one I’m talking about, it sounds like a cross between a hypercritical AM radio talk show psychologist and my caseworker, Mrs. Sternberger. The voice started saying stuff like, “Hey Mutie Boy, Hey Mr. Softballs, can’t you remember about avoiding dehydration---DUH?----is somebody else supposed to take responsibility for your health?---DUH?---Is it gonna be our fault if you get metastasizing snowcancer, Mr. DUH-head? How many times do we have to send you the message before somebody inside your big DUH-head picks up the phone?” The voice went on and on seeming to merge with the sound of the subway car. It was the sort of subway car where the lights always flickered and there was the continual screech of metal parts brought into unhappy contact with other, equally unfulfilled metal parts. Lost in a malaise of screeching metal and chaotic thoughts, I stared down into the world of subway car linoleum. The subway screeched around a curve and something slid into my field of view. It was a magazine of a sort I had never seen before. The magazine was called Healing Nexus Magazine and there was a picture of a man with smiling eyes and sunlight all around him. Underneath it said, “Your Guide to Healing and Wholeness.” I felt goose bumps forming on the surface of my snowskin when I opened the magazine. I knew this was no coincidence, the magazine had slid right toward me, and flipping through it I saw an article about astrology headlined: “There Are NO Accidents!” The people in this magazine were all backlit and smiling at me with such beautiful smiles and clear eyes. Mrs Sternberg couldn’t smile that way if a sexy movie star showed up in her office to tell her that the lottery ticket in her purse was worth thirty million credits. It felt like these smiling faces were all my friends, that they knew all about my troubles and were here to feel me, touch me, heal me. The lonely boredom of my subway ride disappeared, and I blinked back tears of joy and gratitude. I flipped through the pages and came to a picture of a man in white robes with arms outstretched and the dawning light of morning streaming all around him. I felt intuitively that he was the leader, that he was the highest of all the beautiful angelic healers in the entire magazine. His name was "Ra, Light Bringer." Since I have a photographic memory for a lot of things, I can tell you exactly what the ad said: “A Special Invitation to Freedom From Ra, Light Bringer “Know then that after vanquishing his ego and shedding the last vestiges of his human identity, Ra, Light Bringer became one with divine essence at the precise moment of galactic harmonic convergence. Freed from human bondage, the being once known as Matt Weinstein, recalled his former lives and recovered his true identity as Ra, Light Bringer, Master of Osiris and Jah, Secret Origin of the Goddess, Bearer of the Seven Seals of Solomon, Writer of the Akashic Record upon the Emerald Tablets of Eternity, Rider of the White Buffalo as foretold in Native Prophecy, Supreme Certified Reiki Master, Tantric Initiator of all Younger Sisters of the New Age, Conqueror of the Serpent Ego in all its Many Guises, Blameless One, Wearer of the Many Colored Cloak of Great Radiance, Soul Guide, Grandfather Leader, Past Life Regressor and Sacred Prophet of all Peoples. “Having come back to the mortal plane only to serve as the single true source of all divine light, Ra, Light Bringer challenges you to cast aside the rag of your human identity and follow him with absolute submission onto the only true path of freedom. Do not be waylaid on the path of freedom by others in Healing Nexus Magazine who are merely the myriad Maya-tongued deceivers filled with hollow promises of wisdom, power and spiritual attainment. These false teachers and prophets seek only to submerge you in the ten thousand things of Maya and to keep you from the only true teacher and prophet who is the bringer of the one true light that illuminates all the universes of creation. “Brothers and sisters, render unto Babylon what is Babylon’s! Allow the Living Light Foundation Trust to take from you the unclean and heavy burden of Babylon money and worldly possession and fill you up with the Living Light of Ra, Light Bringer’s video series, Stepping onto the Path of Living Light and Freedom. This exclusive, three-disc series is all you will ever need to cast aside the rag of human identity and enter the Realm of Divine Living Light that Ra, Light Bringer has brought forth for your eternal freedom dance. “Do not be deceived by the serpent-tongued enslavements of the so called “friends” and “family” that want to cling and ensnare you, to bind you to their fears and shackle you to the realm of outer darkness where all things dwindle and perish. Ra, Light Bringer, as Divine Prophet, foresees this danger for you! Be steadfast, or you will never regain your one and only opportunity to find the living light path to freedom that opens to you only through the divine illumination of the one and only true video series, Stepping Onto the Path of Living Light and Freedom. “Many other books, videos and teachers abound in Healing Nexus Magazine that promise you wisdom and illuminations. These are fine and useful tools if you intend to follow the thorny, descending path of samsaras where you limp weakly through false incarnation after incarnation into the endless sterile ether worlds of torturous bardos and phantom-haunted wastelands where your dwindling spirit cries out for freedom and has none. “But if you happen to prefer the short and easy true path, then become a freedom dancer in Ra, Light Bringer’s way of divine, living light by obtaining the one true video series that opens the door to eternal freedom. This exclusive three-disc series, Stepping Onto the Path of Living Light and Freedom, is so much better than free, it is available to you only in exchange for our freeing you of the heavy, unclean burden of your Babylon attachments. Please complete attached “Power of Attorney” form and have it signed and witnessed by a notary. Render unto Babylon what is Babylon’s! The door opens and light is streaming through waiting for you to begin your eternal freedom dance! Act before midnight tonight and receive Ra, Light Bringer’s Medallion of Freedom Pendant wrought of genuine Polymer Crystal and set on a scintillating chain of authentic Gold Tone from the Crystal Workshop and Forge of the Living Light Foundation Trust which has been authorized and blessed by Ra, Light Bringer himself. Send notarized documents to the Living Light Foundation Trust.” An address, which I won’t record here, was given. I know what you’re thinking: What a snowy fool you must be to fall for such an invitation! Like dark ripples flowing backward in time, I can feel your negative judgments of me trashing my self-esteem. Don’t forget that everything you "assume" about me, just makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me" because things are not always what they appear to be. So, if you will kindly have the patience to suspend judgments and just allow my narrative to unfold, I think you will find that such an attitude will be by far the most helpful for your understanding as well as for my self-esteem. For example, it may surprise you to learn along with me, as my story continues, that Ra, Light Bringer is exactly who he says he is, if not more so, and that the absurd nature of the ad was an intentional, highly conscious alchemical blind, a ruse to deceive the uninitiated who could be expected to make premature judgments that it was all a typical New Age rip off. Being misjudged is exactly what I expect from people who think they know what’s going on, but have never been labeled a deformed mutant by society or suffered for years with chronic incarnation seizures (what they now refer to generically as Multiple Incarnation Disorder Syndrome or MIDS) or any of a number of heath challenges I’ve had to face. Let me be up front with you right from the start. The life of a mutant suffering from MIDS (among numerous other health challenges) is not always a pretty picture and I’ve never claimed to be the perfect poster child, so if you can’t deal with that, if you’re the type that can only view a mutant’s life through rose-tinted glasses, if you’re the sort that needs the harsh edges of an actual mutant case history sugar-coated with the glib, inspirational tone of an after-school special, then maybe you ought to back out now before things get a little too real for you. And if you are going to keep looking over my shoulder like I know you’re doing, the least you can do is hit the mute button on your negative judgments and stop trashing my self-esteem. Anyway, when I finished reading Ra, Light Bringer’s ad in Healing Nexus Magazine I was filled with a deep calm, an inner sense of knowing. I might have been deceived by any number of the false teachers in that magazine but, intuitively, I had turned to an invitation from the one true teacher, the one true path, and, obviously, the one true video series. In a moment I was shifted from my usual indecisive, passive disposition into a warrior, a man of action. Instantly, I decided to blow off the Odd-ems appointment, get off the subway at the next stop, and find a notary. Well you can probably guess many of the events that followed. Since you think you can guess them, I’ll skip over the next few weeks and give you a brief summary. Yes, I was evicted from my apartment, no, I never did receive the video series or polymer crystal freedom pendant I was promised, and, yes, my tiny checking account, and all the practical side of my life became the proverbial black hole at the center of the cosmic doughnut. I was, not to put too fine a point on it, a homeless mutant, a reality-challenged survivor thrown out, penniless, luckless, hungry, thirsty, poorly rested, without health insurance or a friend in the world on the cold, hard streets of urban poverty. No, I’m not going to try to glamorize homelessness for you. It might be the “cool thing” to make it sound like it was a descent into the inner labyrinth, an archetypal journey into the belly of the beast and all that. I could give it the old mythic spin and make it sound like I was a mutant on a classic hero’s journey with a modern, gritty, urban, slummin’-it flair. But that just wouldn’t be the truth. The truth is I didn’t like any part of homelessness. There was no heartfelt bonding with other street people, and when I could rouse myself from almost inanimate depression, I would feed off of self-pity like a starving subway rat on three-day-old, extra-cheese pizza. The truth is that when I got tired of self-pity, I had no spiritual epiphanies or transcendent experiences, but after three or four cups of Salvation Army coffee (with extra sugar and non-dairy creamers) I would spend hours cursing Ra, Light Bringer, this so called being formerly known as Matt Weinstein----or “Sucker Boy” as I called him. I had endless Kung Fu fantasies where Sucker Boy would just happen to walk down the street and I’d just saunter up to him real casual like and say stuff like, “Go ahead, make my freedom dance.” Then I would proceed to head butt Sucker Boy like twelve times a second. Also, I would do these flying scissor kicks that would send Sucker Boy somersaulting upward only I would spin around so fast that I would be in position to do another flying scissors kick to Sucker Boy’s jaw before he could land and just keep him somersaulting back and forth like that thirty or forty times in a row. I walked down streets making intense facial gesticulations and saying things like, “Oh yeah, Sucker Boy, enlighten this…” And people would get out of my way. Then my blood sugar would collapse again and my Kung Fu self would fall from its high, caffeinated precipice of rage and fall through the weak, watery trampoline of self-pity to land in the dark gutter of absolute depression once again. Now, of course, I can see that there were many immature aspects to how I reacted to things at that time. But this is what my life was like for about six weeks of abject homelessness. Then, one particularly cold and windy night, I walked aimlessly down street after street. The Kung Fu rage part of the day had long since dissipated, and I found myself to be a kind of homeless snow zombie, my mind nearly blank. That was the moment when I first heard the telepathic voice, the first moment that the true Ra, Light Bringer revealed himself to me. “Snow Child, hear me, it is I, Ra, Light Bringer.” His voice resonated into my deepest psyche. The whole, demeaning “Sucker Boy” ego concept I had formed of Ra, Light Bringer, vanished at the first moment of telepathic contact. My whole being felt suffused with Ra's unconditional love and his strength and clarity pervaded my psyche. It was his presence, even more than what he said, that could not be rationalized away. I realized, with an intense, déjà vu-tinged inner knowing, that Ra, Light Bringer, was the one who had always guided me, but that somehow vast realms of Maya had caused me to forget him. Unconsciously, I had been waiting all of my life to rediscover Ra, Light Bringer, to take him into my heart and allow him to fill my self-esteem with confidence, light and peace. “Snow Child, listen to me, for I have not forsaken you to the miserable existence that has befallen you. I see what you have suffered. The suffering I created with my deceptive ad in Healing Nexus Magazine was not an act of cruelty, but one of love, and as you grow toward the light you will see that it was the only way that you could have learned. Many other worlds await you, and if your eyes are open you may behold a key, a key that will unlock the vast deception of your existence.” The reverberating voice of Ra, Light Bringer, grew silent and his presence withdrew. I looked around me, and everything seemed perfectly ordinary and as usual. But I did not return to my ordinary, depressed state of mind. I was still filled with the living light of Ra, Light Bringer’s presence, and I had become hyper-alert and my senses heightened to a dazzling acuity. I knew that I had waited a lifetime for this moment, and I knew that the true Ra, Light Bringer could speak no falsehood, that I would soon behold the sign, the key, as he had put it, that would unlock the vast deception of my existence. I was able to accept all of that in a single moment. Recognition was easy for me because somehow I had always sensed that there was something more, that there were other worlds than these, and that my whole existence as a mutant was caught up in those other worlds. I walked down the street and my mutant awareness scanned out panoramically, aware of every shard of broken glass, every rusty bottle top and pigeon dropping. I scanned surface texture variations on the galvanized steel of street lamps, and perceived even the most faded and obscured graffiti marks on peeling walls of ancient, over-painted cement. I was searching for that off detail, the clue, no matter how minute and hidden, that would unlock the great deception. And then I saw her, saw her walk out of the dingy, florescent gloom of the small, inner-city-sized supermarket. She was an old, heavy woman in a shabby overcoat carrying two lumpy plastic shopping bags. She was that supposedly human anomaly that ever since I have referred to as “The Supermarket Lady.” As I said before, I have a photographic memory for a lot of things. It has been my fate in this incarnation to remember in painstaking detail almost everything that I have experienced on this plane of existence, while having no recall whatever of what happened before or beyond it. One glance was enough to tell me that I had seen The Supermarket Lady before. The style of clothing she wore now had been updated slightly---it had a darker, more urban look than the flowered print dress she had worn then, but her apparent age and every detail of her face and physiognomy had been repeated and was identical to how she appeared decades earlier when I had first seen her. This was what Ra, Light Bringer had told me to look for, a single, but shocking flaw in the deception, a careless moment of recycling an “extra,” a pseudo person that was meant to be a background detail that would be forgotten as soon as it was perceived. Someone had neglected to account for my mutant memory, a tiny slip, but I had caught it, and now I understood. Every particle of my seeming world was a simulation, and I had been caught in that simulation for a lifetime, like an insect caught in amber. It was a shocking revelation. Then I started to hear ringing tones in my ears. Adrenaline pumped through the veins of ice water deep in my body. Ra, Light Bringer’s voice broke through telepathically: “Snow Child, now you understand what I could only have shown you in this way. You have seen through the great veil of deception and now if you look about you once more, you will behold a portal into other worlds than these.” I staggered down the street, the ringing tones in my ears heightening in intensity. I passed into the dark shadows under a highway overpass and saw a large, perfectly clean and empty refrigerator box lying before me. It lay with open-ended side toward me, and its interior was shadowy and vague. The box glowed with the uncanny aura of anomaly. This was the homeless part of town, and an unoccupied box that perfect, in such a convenient place, was as unlikely and uncannily fortuitous as an uncrumpled, hundred-credit bill lying on the sidewalk. I walked around the box examining from every angle its unblemished walls of cardboard and the four reinforcing bands of white plastic that gave it extra structural integrity. In small print I read, “This Energy Efficient CFC-Free Refrigerator Manufactured by Inter-Spatial Home Appliances, a fully-owned subsidiary of Portal Technologies Unlimited.” Here was the portal that Ra, Light Bringer had told me I would find! I got down on my hands and knees and crawled into the shadowed opening of the box. *** It would be conventional to say I “fell into” dark, empty space. But to say that would imply gravity and spatial direction. It would be a shade closer to the truth to say that I crawled for several feet until I “swam out” into space. But it would be most accurate to say that I just found myself in dark, empty space. There was a sense of movement, but there was no up or down, or any frame of reference to define it. I floated in this undefined, dark space for many long eternities while my mind, having no context to think in any more, regressed and curled in on itself like a fetus gone asleep for long eons of self-forgetting. Eons and eons and eons passed by, but there was no one there to be aware of them. Without an observer the eons themselves began to get sluggish and sleepy. They began to pass slower and slower and slower. Time itself began to curl in on itself and go to sleep and I had still not even completed the first eternity. But because of that weird thing about time and eternity, all of this incredibly long amount of time passed in an infinitesimal moment, like the twinkling of a star, and I hardly noticed it at all. Mostly I didn’t notice it because after about a few hours worth of total sensory deprivation at the start of the first eternity, my ego collapsed and there ceased to be an observer. My awareness slumbered deep within me and gradually, imperceptibly, my nearly perfect photographic memory dissolved, and with it my sense of self-identity, not to mention my self-esteem, vanished into complete nothingness. After all these eternities had passed, I fell out of featureless, dark space and into the most distant outskirts of a universe of some sort. Slowly, the dormant kernel of my mind reanimated itself, awareness dawned and there was once more an observer, me, and I noticed that I was slowly tumbling through outer space. I couldn’t tell whether I was tumbling up or down, and that concerned me a great deal. It occurred to me that if I was tumbling downward, then it was inevitable that I would eventually fall bellow the universe, but if I were tumbling upward, it was inevitable that I would eventually rise above the universe. Then where would I be? You may imagine that tumbling through outer space there would be stars and comets and so forth lighting up the darkness everywhere. But, as I’ve already mentioned, this was the distant outskirts of a spotty, threadbare universe, a spatial backwater where stars were few and far between. In fact, I could see exactly five distant stars. There were two yellowish stars in binary orbit, and a triangular constellation of two yellow-white and one blue-white star. As I tumbled, the binary yellow stars would be ahead of me and then they would rotate out of view and the triangular constellation would be ahead of me and this process repeated itself over and over and over and over again. I can’t deny to you that I had negative judgments about this universe. Also, the monotony of the weightless tumbling was making me nauseous, disoriented and anxious. As time slowly passed, I became more and more irritated at the lack of celestial bodies. Self-pity and depressiveness overtook me. What chance did I have of a meaningful relationship or a worthwhile existence of any sort in the distant outskirts of such a thin, disappointing universe? Then a sudden realization brought me up short and shocked me out of my depression: What a fool I am to wish for more stars! What if I should come too close to one and be pulled into its gravitational field? I would be burnt to a tiny cinder. Stars may be nice to look at, but in reality they are my enemies. And now I observed something that made my whole being pulsate with anxiety. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, it seemed that the triangular constellation of stars was getting larger. I must be falling toward them! I thought with rising panic. Frantically, I tried to twist and contort my snowbody to change the direction of my flight away from the triangle. But my trajectory had a slow, but inevitable momentum, and I could do nothing to change it. Try as hard as I might, I would keep going in exactly the same direction. That triangle's evil gravity is controlling me. Despairingly I realized: I've completely lost my free will. And I ground my icy teeth in frustration. Gradually, I came to realize that the triangular constellation was not actually getting closer, that it had only been my anxiety that had made it seem that way. As far as I could tell, my only movement was tumbling. I had a rotational inertia, but there was no trajectory, no forward, backward, up or down movement. This became decisively apparent when an object came into my field of view that really did have a trajectory. A smallish, grey, pitted asteroid came speeding by at a distance of what I estimated to be a few thousand feet. Without even considering the unlikelihood that there would be any sentient being on the asteroid that would be both able and willing to help me, I waved my arms and tried to shout as the asteroid hurtled past me. I attempted to shout but absolutely no sound came out. My memory having dissolved, including whatever little I had once known about astronomy, I had no concept that sound was impossible in the vacuum of space. Falsely, I concluded that the problem was with me. I’m a mute, I thought. And as I contemplated what life would be like with what I assumed to be a permanent handicap, there was a drastic drop in my self-esteem. At that point I began to question the value of my whole existence. Who am I anyway? I couldn’t even remember. I stared at my skinny tentacle-like fingers of pale, snowy tissue. Suddenly I realized that this body structure was not normal, that it was, in fact, a horrifying deformity, a mutation. I’m a mutant. I realized, and this realization stirred formless, somnambulant memories. A lifetime of vague recollections crowded around me darkly, refusing to take on specific form. I experienced them as an obscure cloud of painful feelings and shame. The cloud enveloped me and my personality began to spiral downward into the utterly black event horizon of absolutely no self-esteem at all. I know what you’re thinking: This mutie boy just doesn’t have the “right stuff.” He just doesn’t have what it takes to make it through the demands of space travel. He just doesn’t have that square-jawed guy thing that would allow him to tough it out. Poor snowy little wimp whose self-esteem is ready to collapse the moment things get a little rough. You probably think that if you were there you’d teach me a lesson or two on how someone who’s really cut out for it would handle space travel. Well, I hate to be the one to pop your little fantasy bubble, but unless you are also a mutant I can almost guarantee you that you would have gone stark raving mad long before I even had my first worried thought about space travel. When you think space travel, you’re probably thinking astronaut specials you’ve seen on TV, or science fiction TV series. You’re probably thinking there would be a “Ground Control” to talk you through everything and plastic squeeze tubes of all your favorite foods. Maybe you’re even imagining some huge space station with artificial gravity where you’ve got your own carpeted dorm room and a replicator that can make you all your favorite foods and drinks any time of the day or night. I’d like to remind you that what I experienced was solitary space travel, without any refreshments, in the thin outskirts of a low-quality alternate universe while in a state of complete amnesia. Try that on for size, big guy or gal, and then come back to me with your negative judgments about my supposed mutant wimpishness. Having said that, I shouldn’t feel the least bit ashamed to admit that I probably did go stark, raving mad after a certain point. My self-esteem had fallen so far below absolute zero that if my self-esteem had fingers, touching liquid nitrogen would have felt like white-hot metal. So for a time I was tormented by dark hallucinations. After the hallucinations spent themselves, my mind cleared, and I noticed an old, black duck, with a heavy abdomen and over-sized, rubbery, webbed feet standing before me. The duck was late middle-aged, had a protuberant gut covered with thick, dull black feathers and an enormous flesh-colored beak that looked like worn, grimy plastic. Its wide, staring eyes seemed fearful and enraged and its breathing was rapid and agitated. Suddenly it quacked something at me that sounded like, “Nhagwheel, Nhagwheel, Nhagwheel,” I couldn’t understand what the hell it was saying and every time it quacked it sprayed saliva that crystallized in the cold, vacuum of space and floated away like smoke signals. Impatiently, it began stamping a heavy, webbed, rubbery foot in time with the quacking.“Nhagwheel, Nhagwheel, Nhagwheel.” It quacked, quacked sixteen, seventeen times in a row and then suddenly I comprehended what it was saying in the garbled, speech-impediment voice of duck-speak, “Not real. Not real. Not real.” I stared into the dark black pools of the duck’s staring eyes. “Not real. Not real. Not real. Not real. Not real.” It quacked and stamped its webbed foot furiously. It seemed to be saying that I wasn’t real and that it was furious with me for pretending that I was. It seemed that from the duck’s point of view, I was a disturbing hallucination that it was angrily refusing to accept. Then, in a sudden nervous gesture, the duck jerked its wings up and covered its eyes and somehow I felt compelled to cover my eyes. But as I felt my hands move through space to where I thought my head was, I discovered that I had no eyes and there was no darkness behind them to go to, no other real besides this one. The duck brought its dusty black wings down and stared at me with furious irritation. The dark, enraged pools of the duck’s staring eyes seemed to grow larger and larger. Or perhaps it was that they were getting nearer and nearer. There was some sort of uncanny suction involved in the duck’s stare, and I found myself being pulled into the dark spinning vortices of its eyes. Horrified, I tried to resist this suction, but found I had nothing to resist with. My God, I’m paralyzed! I thought with rising panic. I tried to flail about with nonexistent limbs, and to scream with a nonexistent mouth, and then a horrifying realization exploded in my mind: Oh my God, I have no body at all! In my mind, I screamed and screamed helplessly as I was pulled closer to the dark twin vortices of the duck’s eyes. Though I had no physical snowbody anymore, apparently I had a spirit snowbody that the eyes attracted with an irresistible gravitational force. As I grew closer, the eyes became immense and filled my field of view. Each eye was a spinning black hole and, as I crossed into the dual event horizons, I felt their attractive power pulling my spirit body in two directions. In a moment, I was pulled into two parts and then sucked into the centers of the two eyes. I blacked out momentarily, and found myself spiraling around in a featureless, dark space. Everywhere this dark space was permeated by the presence of the duck’s quirky personality. Especially, I felt the intense fear, bordering on hysterical panic, occurring in the duck’s psyche because it interpreted what was happening as possession by an alien spirit. I felt a deep empathy for its fear, but there was nothing I could do to comfort it. I knew that I could communicate with the duck telepathically, but if I did so, he would only interpret such a telepathic communication as further evidence that he was possessed. My profound, but impotent, empathy for the duck was suddenly interrupted by a shocking telepathic communication. I felt another me calling out to me from another hemisphere of the duck’s mind. The reason for this was both obvious and highly disturbing. Although I had been torn in two when I crossed the twin event horizons of the two eyes I was no longer conscious of myself as split. The reason was that I had now become a split off half out of contact with my other half. I had crossed a fork in the path of reality, and my soul had been split in two and taken onto each of the new paths. My other self was calling out to me, warning me of our separated plight. Each of the duck’s eyes was a portal into a different reality and while we remained in different sides of its mind we could still communicate, our telepathy like the corpus callosum, the dense bundle of nerves that allows the two hemispheres of a brain to communicate. But once we left the duck’s mind, our paths would irretrievably sunder into two different universes where communication would be impossible. Our experiences would inevitably diverge as we spent time in these separate realities, and therefore we would become increasingly different and the possibility of our reuniting as the same being would become more and more remote. I felt an aching sense of loneliness and abandonment in these last moments of communication with my other self. We were like identical twin fetuses being separated not at birth, but before birth, pulled into different birth canals to be born into different realities where no reunion was possible. Then there was a heart-rending telepathic cry of desolation from my other self just before it was ejected into the birth canal of its new reality. Already our experiences were diverging as I still spiraled in my side of the duck’s mind and lingered still in the realm of the unborn. *** Slowly, I spiraled downward in the quirky darkness of the duck’s mind, and as I descended, the speed of my rotations accelerated like water spinning down a drain. When I reached the epicenter of the duck’s mind, I plummeted downward like a snowball tossed into an elevator shaft. Instead of hitting the bottom of anything, I crossed the threshold of the new reality and found myself shooting upward like a rocket in the star-dappled heavens of a new world. Unlike the skimpy universe I had tumbled in previously, this seemed to be a proper universe with a rich array of stars and nebulae. And I was not just tumbling either, I had a powerful upward trajectory and in the vacuum of outer space there was nothing to slow it down. Up ahead of me I could see a distant planetary body that was pale and luminous. It glowed softly like a giant pearl set amidst a vast jewelry of stars. I could see that my trajectory was aimed directly for it and, intuitively, I knew that this was a world I was destined to encounter. A feeling of déjà vu-inevitability intensified as the separating kilometers dwindled rapidly. In this new reality I had regained my corporeal snowbody, and was clothed in the dark overcoat and other shabby garments I had been wearing when I had crawled into the refrigerator box portal so long ago. My overcoat billowed around me when I encountered the thin atmosphere of this planet and acted as a parachute. Fortunately, gravity was weaker than usual on this smallish planet, though it still seemed that I was heading toward it at a potentially injurious, if not flattening, speed. A silvery, grey landscape rushed into view and I impacted a surface far softer than I could have dreamed possible. I became submerged in an almost liquid layer of grayish dust several feet thick. I swam easily to the surface, but found that I had to keep swimming to keep above it. The dust was filled with static electricity that sparked painfully on my snowskin whenever I moved. There was too little density to support my weight if I tried to stand on the surface, but because gravity was so weak I could, if I balanced myself just right, lie on top of the dust, supported by surface tension. Any unbalanced movement, however, broke the surface tension and I was forced to doggy-paddle my way back onto the surface while getting stung by static electricity. Panting, I lay carefully on my back turning my head slightly and using the wide angle of my mutant-enhanced peripheral vision to scan the landscape all around me. Great dunes and starlit desert plains of the silvery, grey dust stretched out to the vanishing point of the horizon. Everywhere was a vast monochromatic desert of dust with pale shadows and windswept topography. Dust that had gotten into my nostrils during impact caused me to sneeze violently and, of course, that broke the surface tension and I had to doggy-paddle myself back to the surface. A small amount of dust that I had dry-swallowed made me feel nauseated and left the faintly radioactive aftertaste of very old nuclear fallout dust. I was seized now by a fit of sneezing and the sneezing not only broke my hold on the surface but sprayed clouds of dust into my eyes. The infuriating sparking of static electricity seemed to be burning painful, itchy sores on my snowskin. My eyes were red and irritated, and my breathing was constricting to an asthmatic wheeze. I was becoming painfully aware that I was highly allergic to the principle ingredient of this new world----dust. Once again, I struggled against the dark undertow of despair. I knew it was only a matter of time before my allergy would become fatal in such a disastrously inhospitable environment. I wondered about my other half and whether he faired better or worse in his new universe. Telepathically, I tried to call out to him, but there was no response, only a reverberating silence. In attempting telepathic contact, however, I made a serendipitous discovery that undoubtedly saved my life. During this unsuccessful attempt at telepathic contact, I observed a strange pulsing of colored light coming from deep inside my snowbody. The light was strong enough to be visible through my shabby clothing. Pulses of different colors came from various parts of my body and, thanks to my photographic memory, I noticed that these corresponded perfectly to the placement of the chakra system in the human body. If in this reality my subtle energy is actually visible it might mean that my mutant psionic powers are increased generally, I realized. I tested this by focusing my will on rising above the dust and found that I had just enough telekinetic power to resist the weak gravitational field of the planet so that I could hover a meter or so above the surface. With more practice, I found that I could hover and glide forward at a modest pace. In this way, my chakras pulsing with color, I was able to glide over the undulating desert. Since I no longer had to touch the surface, I stirred up very little dust and my allergic symptoms began to abate. I traveled very long distance in this almost featureless landscape. The life force that glowed within the icy crystalline structure of my body reflected off the silvery dust beneath me as a living corona of psionic energy, an aura of concentric bandwidths of flickering, spectral color. My expansive corona partly illuminated some of the near shadows of the undulating dunes, and on one occasion this proved to be life saving. There was no dawn, no daylight, in this twilight world, and therefore no conventional way to measure the passage of time. The cheap digital watch with a busted wristband that I kept in my overcoat pocket was still there but it seemed to tell time counting backwards---and even that it did inconsistently---it would stay at the same time for a long while and then it would start hurriedly losing about a minute a second as if trying to catch up with backwards time. I was unable to eat, drink or sleep and the landscape was so colorless and unchanging that after a while I just tranced out, scarcely paying attention. A strong ammonia smell brought me out of trance for a moment, and I noticed my flickering aura reflecting off something moving in a dune shadow. I intensified the light I was projecting, and saw the first living organism I had noticed in this lifeless desert world. It was a pale, faintly luminous scorpion-like creature, about a meter in length with a densely coiled tail like a giant watch spring. Each of its eight legs terminated in webbed pads that allowed it to move over the dust. Although the pads looked like floppy clown feet, it came scurrying toward me with terrifying speed. I glided back just in time. The scorpion flicked out its tail at me so fast it made a sound like a ricocheting bullet. When it missed, it scurried toward me with even greater speed. Fear intensified my psionic power and I glided quickly out of range. The scorpion’s gleaming, bulb-like eyes stared at me with furious hatred, and when it saw that it could not overtake me, it hissed with a horrifying intensity as bubbles of ammonia came out of its mouth. Before I had time to recover from my shock, I caught another whiff of ammonia, and there was another scorpion almost in lethal range. I evaded it and it also hissed and bubbled ammonia. I soon discovered that I was in an area of desert that was heavily infested with these evil scorpions and that they were even more dangerous than they looked. It was obvious that they had some sort of telepathic, collective mind, as after the first attack they all seemed to be waiting for me. They also seemed aware of my evasive abilities and adopted counter strategies. Groups of three or more worked cooperatively, trying various ambush tactics. Fortunately, their ammonia scent always gave me warning and I was able to stay out of range. Their frustrated hatred for me intensified, and everywhere across the desert I heard hissing and the bullet ricochet sound of tails being snapped. On one occasion, when a group of three tried an unsuccessful ambush technique (each of them rushing at me from a different direction) I simply hovered a few meters above them. They were so enraged and frustrated by this simple, but effective, evasion that in their fury they attacked each other, tails whipping out and slicing off body parts until they were all in pieces and bellow me was a twitching mass of infuriated scorpion parts stirring up dust and static electricity sparks. A couple of amputated scorpion tails ricocheted about wildly and the ammonia vapors from their dismembered bodies nearly blinded me. Finally, I crossed out of the scorpion-infested part of the dustscape and some time after all traces of the smell had dissipated, I stopped gliding and hovered for a few moments. I was exhausted. Every ice crystal burned with hunger and feverish dehydration. I was rapidly losing the psionic energy I needed to keep moving and it was impossible for me to rest on the loose dust. I had to suppress my panic and focus all my will on gliding. Somewhere there had to be something to eat and drink. I hovered across the desert until I was at the limit of my endurance. Then I saw a strange object up ahead of me. It was roughly cylindrical and shaped like a giant hook about ten meters high. It threw an enormous hook-shaped shadow across the desert. I drew near it cautiously and saw that it had a faded stripe of red that twined around it from top to bottom. Its surface was pitted and abraded by thousands of dust storms, but here and there were patches of its original glazed surface. It appeared to be a gigantic candy cane of some sort, and there was a feeling of almost geological antiquity about it. I was so desperate for nourishment that I tried biting into it and found that under the brittle surface patches of glaze it was mostly air like dried out Styrofoam. I ate a couple of big mouthfuls. It tasted like a mixture of peppermint-flavored saccharine pills, Styrofoam and dust. It left my ice crystals with a chemotherapy aftertaste and seemed to suck precious moisture out of my body. Health issues plagued my mind. Anxiously, I realized that the dryness of the desert was causing profound dehydration. As I dehydrated, my ice crystals shrunk in size and my old overcoat hung loosely on my diminishing snowbody. As a natural defense mechanism, my snowtissues dehydrate in a special way. No crystals are lost: each of them diminishes in size, but proportionally, in order to preserve as much of the complex crystalline structure as possible. But once dehydration passes what’s called 'the Beckstein Limit,' there begins structural deterioration, and as this happens my bodily tissues become coarsened and reduced to the most rudimentary level of functioning. Since this tissue deterioration obviously includes the brain, the result can include permanent brain damage and impairment of cognitive function. As dehydration continues, profound memory loss and other cognitive deficits and loss of motor function become inevitable and irreversible. At a certain point past the Beckstein Limit, brain damage and collapse of organ function leads to coma, respiratory failure, cardiac arrest, death and ultimately, total snowtissue evaporation. When the last trace of my deteriorated ice crystals vaporized in the desert air I would be gone. There would not even be a skeleton left behind since my bones are not mineral, but cryptocrystalline ice. I would become absolutely nothing at all. An empty overcoat lying on a desolate dune of gray dust. Such anxieties about my health, and the possibilities of disability and even death, stung at my mind like a thousand pale scorpions. Every ice crystal was individually aflame with thirst. My psionic gliding took on a slumped aspect. Inside my overcoat my body had shrunken and my appearance took on the anxious, bedraggled sallowness often associated with the ghosts of the anorexic. In short, I looked like a very tired version of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. I continued across the endless dunes of dust for what seemed like forty days and nights of eternal gloom. And then, some time late on the fortieth night, I encountered two beings that I first beheld from the distance gliding toward me with shocking speed. They were as fast as fighter jets and the energy of their psionic auras were like two flames---one of deep indigo, and one of yellowish green. A couple of heartbeats after seeing them bobbing and whipping over dunes, they hovered right before me. Their auras hissed with power, and their eyes stabbed me with telepathic probes. One entity glowed violet, and it was shaped like a giant skull that hovered over the desert floor throwing a purplish shadow onto the gray dust below. It had the porous surface texture of a real skull, and yet it seemed more like a horrible puppet of some kind. There was a fierce will behind it, and that will was using the skull as its form. Occasionally there were flickers of movement visible in its dark, skull-shadowed eyes. The other entity glowed yellowish-green and seemed to be a giant, highly evolved grasshopper. Its expression was as flat and unreadable as that of an android card hustler, but I formed an impression that it was benign and more of a neutral observer. Unlike the skull, there was not a trace of ill will from the grasshopper entity, but I also knew that it would not intervene on my behalf. They hovered in front of me, bobbing up and down slowly as though they were suspended unsteadily by hover jets. Slowly, almost too late, I realized that their bobbing movements were intended to be hypnotic. It took a great effort of will for me to keep my eyes from automatically following their movements. Mercilessly, they probed me, and the weak psionic shields I was able to put up were like thin films of oleomargarine against the surgical steel of their telepathic probing. Suddenly, as if a switch had been thrown, the skull’s jovial and bitingly sadistic voice began speaking in my head. His telepathic voice had been somehow contrived to have the scratchy sound of a very old phonograph record and his delivery had this exaggerated singsong quality like a perverse and sadistic department store Santa. "Ho! Ho! Ho! And how'de do!" said the giant skull-shaped entity. "My name is Captain Skull and this is my good friend, and sycophant, Mr. Grasshopper." “My named is Snowman,” I replied telepathically with as much defiance as I could muster. "Yes, and a fine figure of a Snowman,” said Captain Skull laughing spitefully. "Quite a fine figure, indeed, eh, Mr. Grasshopper?” The grasshopper laughed with a horrible, thin, high-pitched insectile laugh, but there was no malice in it, somehow I could tell that he was just playing out the role indicated for him. "Yes, quite a fine figure of a Snowman, indeedy, though perhaps a bit dried up, perhaps a bit on the deteriorated and generally diminished side, but one can certainly see that here was once the potential to be a perfectly ordinary Snowman, yes indeedy, Ho! Ho! Ho!" The cruel intention and content of Captain Skull’s words tore into me, and my self-esteem became a tattered plastic bag tangled in a barbed wire fence, shreds of plastic being blown this way and that way by the cold, indifferent winds of an artic storm. “So just what on Pluntith do you think you’re doing here?” asked Captain Skull. "I guess I'm on a quest," I replied weakly. "Ho! Ho! Ho! On a quest! The Snowman on a quest! That's rich, that's truly fabulous, really a most entertaining delusion! Imagine, a Snowman on a quest! Imagine that Dr. Beckstein, I mean, Mr. Grasshopper. Why you are quite an amusing little jokester Mr. Snowman!" "What's so freakin’ funny?" I asked, some deeply defiant aspect of me awakened by the challenge. “What's wrong with my being on a quest?" "Ho! Ho! Ho! I say. Ho! Ho! Ho! You do have me absolutely in stitches, in sutures, positively in sutures, in long rows of black sutures, you really do! What a marvelous misconception, really quite a creative, neurotic delusion.” Whenever Captain Skull spoke, I was disoriented by the phonograph record staticy timbre of his voice. His statements were unpredictable, yet they sounded as if they had been replayed so many times they had become scratchy. "I still don't get it. What’s the delusion?" I asked in a challenging tone. "Ho! Ho! Ho! He doesn't get it! My but this Snowman can really play off the straight Man to a P, to an absolute P. What a magnificent jest! The way you pull that off with such a straight face!" Captain Skull imitated me speaking with a squeaky, falsetto voice, 'I'm a Snowman. I guess I'm going on a quest.‘ “ ---Why you do it with such a deadpan one can almost believe for a moment that you yourself believe it. As if you didn't know that you are a mere ornamental entity of the most limited sort with crude features wrought by careless children on a whim. And as for your life span! Ho! Ho! Ho! Seasonal at best, n'est pas? And your body! Ho! Ho! Ho! Your body! Ho! Ho! Ho! Why sir, to say that your body is weak, to say that it is flaccid and sallow, to say that it is soft and mushy to an extent that bullets and knives pass through it with pleasurable ease, to say that it is utterly lacking in the cardio-vascular capacity and muscular definition needed for the rigorous exertions of the quest, why sir, to say that your body is absurdly lacking in physical charisma and both laughingly comical and sickeningly repulsive in appearance, why to say all this would only be to flatter you and cushion you from seeing the real and actual horrors of your bodily existence. Why to butter you up with such fake compliments would only be a cruel encouragement of the delusion that you might be adequate for anything. Surely you must have noticed that most of the serious players on quests have abdominal six packs, high muscle definition, suntans, long flowing hair and noble foreheads. And, Ho! Ho! Ho! I can't say that I remember anyone on a quest with a warty, cone-shaped nose, spindly stick-shaped arms, pale tentacle hands and flabby snow belly! Ho! Ho! Ho! Why even if there were handicapped parking spaces on quests with refrigeration, can you imagine what would happen if you butted in? Why my goodness, everyone would be so hysterically laughing at your looks, not to mention your weakness and incompetence, that there would be such nonstop hysterics at your expense that nothing would ever get done. And Ho! Ho! Ho! How could there be a quest if nothing ever got done?" Captain Skull’s words shocked me into silence. It seemed that everything he said was true. Impotent despair paralyzed me and I found that I was compelled to stare into the dark, skull shadows of Captain Skull’s eyes. I felt my self-esteem as a tiny cinder washed down into the sewer system of a city abandoned to eternal nuclear winter. Deep inside the enfolding skull shadows of his eyes glowed a gyrating indigo spiral and I found my awareness tumbling through that spiral, tumbling into a blackout. *** When I came out of the blackout, I found myself leaning heavily on a bathroom sink. There were razor blades on the white porcelain and bottles of sleeping pills. The water in the sink was a dull, scummy white, like heavily used bathwater and it was slowly turning in a vortex centered on a steel drain that made a loud slurping sound as the water was sucked into it. The spiral twisting of the water was strangely fascinating, and my mind became immersed in the counter-clockwise rotation of the vortex. The thought occurred to me that the universe must have flipped over and begun turning backwards. As the last of the spiraling water began to disappear into the center of the drain, I saw that the there was a little rubbery thing riding the current of water. It was a rubbery, ill-formed doll with a tiny, squeaky voice. "Sorry folks, no afterlife," it said before disappearing down the long, dark drain. A wave of intense nausea passed through me and I found myself clutching both sides of the sink for support. I was sick. I lifted the cover of the toilet and threw up. There were pink, rubbery flakes and shards in my vomit. I stood up and looked at myself in the cracked mirror, the florescent light in the bathroom mercilessly revealing the flabby white features and misshapen nose of a body that seemed both flesh and snow. I looked down at the twisted veins of my pale, skinny arms and the complex tangle of track marks, each mark a tiny little needle-hole mouth, each mouth hole puckering with rabid hunger for more stuff, more of the dreamy white powder. My head felt heavy, and I could barely keep my balance. I opened the medicine cabinet and found works and a glassine envelope of beautiful, snowy powder. Reverently, I poured the powder into my steel tablespoon, added measured drops of tap water and caressed the bowl of the spoon with the flickering orange tongue of a plastic lighter. The sound of the bubbles roiling on the spoon was like a chorus of tiny angels heralding the approach of paradise. I picked up the hypodermic. It was greasy with perspiration from many weeks of use. It felt plastic and hollow and hungry. But as I drew back the plunger and sucked up the precious fluid it began to glow with a warm power in my fingers. And then the gruesome part of the ritual, trying to find a live tube in all the tangled snowmeat that could suck up all that warm liquid paradise. My needle had to make many new hungry red mouths before it found home and was able to come inside me. My hands felt numb and swollen. I let the works fall clanking into the sink and walked heavily out to the old sofa bed that had once been tan but was now mostly gray with dust and grime. Living in mother's basement wasn't so bad anymore, now that mother had stopped coming out of her room. My weight felt heavy and relaxed on the sofa bed. I felt comforted by the smells of stale cigarette and pot smoke, spilt beer and old urine. It was like I was floating on a heated waterbed in a beautiful, dark motel room. I closed my eyes and floated in the velvet darkness for a long, long while. But then the lovely darkness was interrupted by an annoying sound, the wailing sirens of alley cats surrounding the house. Those evil, little pygmy heads of fear and paranoia popped into my mind. Alley cats again in the backyard, wailing alley cats all around the house. They must smell my mother upstairs. They'll let everyone know, they're trying to bring the law down on me! They’re trying to get me sent away from the dreamy, white powder! I struggled with my lethargic, rubbery limbs until I was standing. I wobbled, stabilized and then grabbed the taped hockey stick handle by the sofabed and walked out of the house. But the backyard was empty, and there was no sign of a cat anywhere. I looked around carefully. All the backyards were dark and empty. Low, howling winds shook the old aluminum wheels of the laundry-lines and rattled ancient TV antennas on rooftops. How long had it been that all the yards were empty? There was that unmistakable feeling of ancient abandonment. Alley cats were nowhere to be found. The thought form, alley cat, had not whispered its sinuous, feline phrases for centuries. There was not even the dark stain of an alley cat crumbled to dust in the old cement driveway. Slowly, I remembered that the world had ended such a long, long time ago… It wasn’t so bad being the only one left so long as I had the dreamy white powder. The white powder had all the answers. The white powder was a winner. And the reason the white powder was a winner was because it always made all the right moves. The wind howled through the empty yards. Underneath the howling wind I heard that strange wailing again, but this time I could tell that the wailing was happening inside my head. Weird sirens were speaking to me inside my head. I couldn't tell what they were saying, but they tormented me, like kids whispering about me in the schoolyard. I couldn’t quite hear what they were saying, but I knew it was about me. Out of my peripheral vision I saw a white bulbous thing, blurred with speed, whip around the back of the garage. I wasn't supposed to see that, I thought nervously, it's that Skull again. The wailing sirens vanished and a melodious, deeply aware voice spoke softly inside of me, "Please don’t be alarmed. It's only another incarnation seizure and we're here to guide you." To help me calm down, the voice sung me a little lullaby, “We're the ones with the great big eyes. We're the ones who help you when you dies. We're the ones that watch and wait. We’re the ones that guide the Snowman's fate.” And now I saw that things were changing. The winds had quieted to nothing and there was a benevolent presence in the yard. They were behind me and then all around me, encircling me, but for some reason I was unable to see them, I could only feel their great dark eyes at the edges of my vision. The guide floated toward me and into visibility. He was wearing old blue jean coveralls and a sun-faded, red-and-white-checkered shirt. His head was long, gray and elastic, and his enormous black almond-shaped eyes probed me compassionately. Above, in the deep darkness of the sky a luminous disk hovered, waiting. "What do you need?" The guide spoke gently, lovingly, in my head. I looked down at myself, looked at my bloated gut and the network of track marks that covered snowtissues soured by endless years of alcohol, cigarettes and needles. I saw the emptiness of the back yard, the stained and broken cement, and thought of the dark, porous husk of a mother in the upstairs bedroom. I need a new body. A new incarnation. My request lingered in my mind as the guide gently willed my eyes to close. His long, tapering fingers projected rapid pulses of energy into my body. Alien finger energy vibrated through me electrically, generating a cascading chain reaction in my snow crystals. The vibration intensified until it seemed like my very snow molecules were being split apart. I'm having another incarnation seizure! I realized, and hot electrical wires of fear burned into my snowbody. I was destabilizing. Waves of entropy shattered me, and as I was shattered, the surrounding reality of empty cement yards and abandoned apartment buildings deteriorated with horrible rapidity. It warped and thinned and then suddenly popped like an old blister. The flimsiness revealed made me feel intensely nauseous. Moments later, I blacked out. *** There was an old woman tugging on my arm, trying to get my attention. She wore a white lab jacket, her face was haggard and there were enormous bags under her eyes. She was obviously in a state of extreme nervous exhaustion. She wanted me to follow her, so I did, and while we hurried along she spoke in a voice that was edged with barely suppressed hysteria, "We've tried everything. I haven't slept in eleven days. No one will do anything...look." The woman gestured with a pale, blue-veined hand. There were scientific and medical-looking equipment everywhere, but she seemed to be directing my attention to the binocular eyepiece of an enormous black microscope. It looked like it was probably the most advanced optical microscope in the world, but of an earlier era, probably the Nineteen-Forties. It was composed of massive black enameled components labeled “Zeiss Ikon.” There was an illuminated circular stage on which was mounted a single glass slide with a drop of yellow oil in the center. The blue-veined hands of the woman began to tremble violently. She tied an old piece of surgical tubing around one arm, took a glass and steel syringe from her lab coat pocket and injected herself with a yellowish liquid. She looked up at me with dark, terrified eyes and I saw that her eyes were yellowed, and her hair ravished by chemotherapy with only a few thinning tufts on her barren scalp. "I've lost all my natural beauty," said the woman with a terrible sadness. I turned and looked through the binocular eyepieces of the microscope. There was a blurry yellowness with something at the center. I removed my gaze from the eyepiece and examined the illuminated stage of the microscope. A large oil immersion objective rested in a pool of yellow oil above the glass slide. I looked back into the eyepieces and adjusted the fine focus knob. There was a strangely shaped dark object, a cell or a tiny organ or organelle, suspended out of focus in a field of yellow oil. Knobs on the stage of the microscope allowed me to alter the position of the slide. I readjusted the fine focus knob and the object came imperfectly into focus. It was a tiny Snowman with dark, empty eye sockets. I looked away from the microscope. The old woman was gone. The hospital room was dark and dusty, it was filled with equipment, but there were no people around. I wondered for a moment if all this meant that I was dead, and that was why she wanted me to look in the microscope. Sometimes people don’t know if they’re dead. And then it occurred to me that a lot of movies had come out recently about someone who had died, but didn’t know it. What if they were all trying to tell me something? I decided to look back in the microscope to be sure of what I had seen. I adjusted the fine focus knob but suddenly I heard a crack followed by a loud beeping sound. I had a terrible twinge of fear. I believed that the beeping came from the microscope and that it meant that I had shattered the glass slide with the oil immersion objective and permanently damaged the valuable optics. I looked up anxiously to see if anyone had observed my costly blunder. That’s when I saw that the beeping was not coming from the microscope, but was actually the obnoxiously-loud beeping of a garbage truck backing up. *** The sound of the garbage truck was amplified by the narrowness of the alley and I had a pounding headache that seemed to throb in time with that stupid beeping that continued even as sanitation workers banged metal garbage cans full of glass bottles into the back of the truck. My bloodstained eyes struggled to focus on the cement surface of the world. My head was pounding, and there was the severe nausea typical of the aftermath of an incarnation seizure. A yellow Taco Supremo wrapper smeared with the grease of fried cow meat had become stuck to my face and I peeled it off. The smell of rancid cholesterol and artificial cheese flavoring was sickening. Once again, my memory was nearly blank, and I felt exhausted. In the cold light of this overcast morning, I brought reality slowly, and reluctantly, into focus. There were black tarry stains and broken glass on the gray concrete. On the other side of the alley were the rust-colored stains of fossilized dog shit. I must have had night sweats, because pieces of debris were stuck to all my exposed snowskin. I pulled a newspaper advertisement off the back of my hand. Parts of the newspaper did not peel off and bits of newspaper fuzz stuck to my skin. The headline of the newspaper ad read, "Physician Recommends Suffering as a Treatment for Chronic Pain.” Sluggishly, I tousled with that old tyrant---gravity, and brought myself to a sitting position. Back and neck pain felt like a series of white-hot knitting needles stuck in my snow. By my side I noticed a worn plastic shopping bag that looked vaguely familiar. The bag was decorated with a stylized image of a cat in top hat and tuxedo in some sort of tap dancing pose. The most complex and fully formed thought of the morning arose in my mind: This is my shopping bag. I felt heartened, momentarily, by the realization that I still had possessions. My shopping bag. I repeated the thought with satisfaction. In the center of the worn folds of plastic was a little pool of amber liquid. When I picked up the bag the amber fluid streamed down the bag and dripped onto the bone-dry cement. I opened the bag and found a large flask made of colorless glass that contained a dark amber liquid. I sensed the bottle as highly significant, its contours were familiar to my hand and it resonated with vague memories. It was more than half-filled with an oily, reddish brown liquid that had almost exactly the color and viscosity of boiled down cockroach juices. Identifying the flask was a white paper label sloppily adhering with glue wrinkles convoluting the paper. On the label was a crude black ink drawing of a skull and cross bones, and a snowman with black Xs for eyes lying unconscious in a puddle. The words "Snow Comfort" in large black letters were stenciled on the top of the label. A painful feeling in my chest distracted me from consideration of the bottle of Snow Comfort. I looked down at my body. It felt as if the pain were coming from my clothing, perhaps some sharp object sticking out of one of my pockets. Underneath my dark overcoat I wore a rayon shirt that had an upholstery-like pattern of brown and orange flowers. There were dark snowmelt stains under my armpits that went right through the shirt and the overcoat. The pain seemed to originate from the shirt pocket where I wore a large, white plastic pocket pen protector. On the flap of the protector was a decorative seal---a red and gold heraldic crest design with a white eagle clutching a vanquished black serpent that been pierced by many arrows and dripped vermillion drops of blood. Beneath the crest was a Latin motto in ominous-looking Gothic font. The protector contained a single ballpoint pen with a splintered, plastic barrel that had been jammed into it diagonally. The pen had punctured the plastic of the protector and leaked greasy black ink that had penetrated my thin rayon shirt and seeped into the naked ice crystals within. Carefully, I unbuttoned the shirt. There was a black nucleus of ink stain on my snowskin. Deep into the translucent snowtissues the nucleus reached long wavy fingers of black ink that moved toward invisibility at their dendrite-like extremities. The creeping rivulets of stain felt like the insidious tendrils of a rapidly metastasizing snowcancer. I tried to wipe off the main nucleus of stain with sheets of newspaper, but most of it seemed to have penetrated beneath the surface. I knew that I was dangerously dehydrated and decided to drink the Snow Comfort. The dark, oily liquid tasted deliciously of coffee, cola, cocoa powder, rum and non-dairy creamer. It immediately soothed my nausea and glowed deliciously inside of me. I drank the rest of in one long swallow, and as the rich, creamy fluid went down into me my mood went up and up and up. I reached into the shopping bag and found a battered transistor radio. I turned it on and by fortuitous coincidence found that my favorite song was playing---My Exgirlfriend's New Boyfriend by The Depressives. I felt perky enough to sing along with it for a minute, but the station cut off the last few seconds of the song (I hate it when they do that) and an annoying commercial jingle came on. A chorus of toddlers with irritating falsetto voices sang endlessly repetitive lyrics, "Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacks. Buy and eat. Buy and eat. Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacks. Buy and Eat. Buy and Eat...." The jingle went on for several minutes. I tried changing the station, but the jingle was playing on all of the stations. The only difference was that each time I changed to another station the children seemed to sing with greater speed and urgency. Then a loud beeping sound came out of the radio and a red LED display blinked, "Commercial Evasion Fine: 35.73 Credit Units." The display kept blinking and now the radio wouldn’t play anything, it just kept beeping and I was forced to smash it repeatedly on the concrete to get it to stop. I searched further into the shopping bag and found a big white rectangular box that was incredibly narrow. It seemed to have been chewed through on one end and the thin white cardboard was gummy with saliva. On the box were alternately neon hot-pink and yellow-green letters that read, "Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacks Buy and Eat Buy and Eat." Beneath the lettering was a glossy picture that showed blond-haired, blue-eyed teenagers with golden suntans playing volleyball on the beach. They wore skintight nylon bathing suits that revealed the Olympian muscular definition of their supple bodies. Their faces were frozen in orgiastic grimaces of youthful, summery euphoria. In the foreground of the scene was a powerfully built boy wearing a black-and-red football jersey. Bent over in front of the boy was a young girl who was naked, handcuffed and blindfolded. He was in the act of taking her from the rear and he had this leering and all-confident grin on his face. The boy's football jersey had sparkly red letters that read: "Joey Consumer Studback Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacker" There were open boxes of Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacks lying on the beach all around him. Following an irresistible impulse, I put the chewed through part of the box to my mouth and poured the contents into me. Industrial-strength flavorings of turbo-charged pink lemonade and sour green apple exploded into my mouth and set off a massive sugar quake in my brain. My mouth was so full of gummy sugar and chemical flavoring that I could scarcely breath. Artificially colored sugar bubbles began to shoot out of my nose and pop loudly. Inadvertently, I opened my mouth too wide and a gooey satellite of the main wad of mouth candy fell to the concrete followed by a long, thin comet of sugary spittle. Without even thinking, I tongued the chewy mash of pink, yellow and green sugar right off the cement. I chewed and sucked avariciously until the entire sugary chew, the satellite and the main wad, were completely gone. Then I tried to inhale all the sweet candy vapors still hanging moistly in the air about me. The sugar vapors dissipated, and I felt nervous and shaky. Nausea returned, and my stomach felt like an over-heated drying machine tumbling ruptured bleach bottles of old grease and the charred carcasses of scorpions and insect antennas burned in a chemical waste fire. Suddenly, a policeman in a yellow uniform appeared at the end of the alley. He barked into a gigantic black rubber bullhorn, "Attention, you are an unauthorized consumer! Your presence in this private retail corridor is illegal. You need to step to the sidewalk so we can scan your identity code." At that moment an enormous tabby alley cat with brilliant yellow-green eyes ran into the alley. "C'mon Snowman! We've got to blow this alley." Electric shockwaves of déjà vu jolted me as I realized that I knew this alley cat, that I was somehow familiar with his beautiful eyes and glossy, stripped coat. His sleek elegance in form and moving was highlighted by the oppressive ugliness of the alley. "Snap out of it Snowman!" the cat said. "Don't you, remember me, Eddie Cat?" He gave me a penetrating stare. Eddie Cat, of course, my old friend Eddie Cat, how could I have forgotten Eddie Cat? While I puzzled about this, there was a loud stapling sound and a painful impact on my shoulder. Some type of metal dart was stapled into my arm and attached was a yellow photocopied form of some sort. "Quickly!" said Eddie Cat. "They're serving papers on you." I looked up and saw that the policeman in the yellow uniform was holding a big, horn-shaped gun. Another stapling sound and I ducked just quickly enough to avoid a paper dart that nearly caught me in my left eye. "C'mon!" shouted Eddie Cat. I exerted every ounce of my strength to follow behind Eddie Cat who ran with blinding speed. His speed seemed to pull me along in a wake of feline acceleration as the alley rushed away from us and we skirted between stores and garbage cans. We raced over rooftops, down fire escapes and through mazes of narrow alleys. One alley opened into a garbage-filled vacant lot behind a row of abandoned stores. "Ah, we can slow down now matey," said Eddie Cat. I was wheezing horribly trying to catch my breath. Gently, Eddie Cat removed the paper dart from my shoulder. A little clump of ice crystals came off with it and I had to clench my teeth to keep from crying out. "Where are we?" I asked breathlessly. "Why, Upright City of course, the land of the flesh-covered masters," replied Eddie Cat, surprised by my question. "I'm getting too old for this, Eddie Cat," I gasped, still trying to get my breath. "You're only as old as you feel," said Eddie Cat, giving me a huge encouraging smile. "But I feel old," I replied. "Oh.” Eddie Cat paused, and thought about this for a moment. “Then I guess that means you are old, Snowman. Do you think that you'll be getting put to sleep soon?" I felt a dark inevitability about Eddie Cat's question. "I don't know. It might be for the best." "Hmmm, I'm not so sure about that Snowman," said Eddie Cat. "Did I ever tell you about what happened to my cousin Debbie Cat?” I shook my head. “She was put to sleep too soon," Eddie Cat's voice lowered to an ominous whisper, "and we've heard that there were problems in the afterlife because of it." "What kind of problems?" I asked nervously. "Y'know. Problems. Papers to fill out. Remediation courses. Arbitration. Surgery. Complications. Audits. Chemotherapy... In fact," Eddie Cat motioned for me to bend down so he could whisper in my ear. "There's a rumor that Debbie Cat might get sent back down to Upright World and have to do the whole nine lives all over again!" "Oh my God, I’m so sorry to hear that," I replied in a shocked whisper. "Best to go the distance kiddo," said Eddie Cat with a friendly wink. But after he winked at me I got the distinct impression that he had made up the whole Debbie Cat episode, and I began to have doubts about Eddie Cat’s credibility in general. I sensed that he had an unexpressed agenda of some sort, but I wasn’t sure what it was. We walked across the cracked asphalt of the vacant lot toward an area thickly grown with weeds. We traversed vast mazes of weeds that became larger and more densely entangled as we traveled inwards. Many of the weeds were over my head and they grew in curved, twisty, narrow rows. These rows would intersect each other, and at each intersection Eddie Cat would stop and sniff and then decisively turn his head in a particular direction. At first I thought we had entered an overgrown lot and kept expecting that we would get to the end of it. But we kept walking, and never seemed to get to a place where there was anything but rows of weeds in every direction. I began to wonder where Eddie Cat was taking us. "These weeds are such a twisty maze," I remarked to Eddie Cat “ how can you find your way?" Eddie Cat turned and looked back at me as if I had asked the stupidest question imaginable. "By instinct of course." said Eddie Cat smiling at me with the sort of smile a friendly social worker might have when handing a balloon to a retarded child. By instinct of course, replayed in my mind as we resumed walking. What is this instinct that makes Eddie Cat so powerful and confident? I wondered. It's obviously a magic power of the highest order. I certainly don't seem to have any of this instinct at all. Yet how can I live in this world with out this power? I would perish before I could find my way out of these weeds without instinct. We walked for quite some distance. The morning wore thin and the white-hot sun rose in the sky. I could feel the heat of the sun beating down on me, making my body sag. Sweat began to bead on my forehead and with a nervous start I remembered about the Beckstein Limit and what could happen to me if dehydration went on for too long. Eddie Cat, on the other hand, seemed to thrive in the heat, and I felt deeply ashamed of my bodily disadvantages. I dabbed my forehead with an old pocket-handkerchief and decided, after some anxious consideration, that I would not tell Eddie Cat about my condition. As we walked, the weeds seemed to change. At first the weeds were all very similar. They seemed heavy and dusty, with branches thick as cables and leaves that were wiry or covered with a dull fuzzing of white fungus. After we walked for a long way, I noticed the ground sloping downward. We seemed to be walking toward the center of a giant crater and as we gradually descended, the weeds became weirder-looking and more various. One had waxy, translucent skin and strange bulbous growths all over its spindly structure. "Where are we going, by the way?" I asked, privately disturbed by the increasing deformity of the weeds. "Cat City, of course." replied Eddie Cat "Don't you want to hang out with us?" My face flushed with embarrassment. Eddie Cat had a way of always throwing me off balance socially. "Oh, of course I want to hang out with you," I replied with considerable embarrassment. "I'm honored that you were nice enough to invite me. I only meant that I'm having this slight memory problem, but I'm sure it's only temporary. It's just that I keep blanking on certain things like people, places, things, events and animals, that I just can't find in my head." "Oh. OK. I'm glad you shared that with me, Snowman. It's important that we communicate openly," replied Eddie Cat. "It's very nice of you to be so considerate to me," I said with awkward sincerity, "I really appreciate your help." I had traveled such a long way without companionship and was genuinely touched by Eddie Cat's close attention. "Don't mention it." said Eddie Cat. "I've always enjoyed being your social worker. And even if I didn't, I'm well paid for it." "You are?" I was shocked. "What, paid?" said Eddie Cat looking extremely insulted. I was in an agony of embarrassment. "Oh, no, no I didn't mean that, I didn't mean about being paid, of course you're being paid, why shouldn't you be paid for being with me, see it's all just a misunderstanding. I just said the words, 'You are--' because I was trying to say, You are my social worker.' But when I said, 'are,' my voice broke, and it sounded like a question. And of course you were perfectly right to misinterpret it as a question because it was my voice that cracked and made it sound like a question. I..." "It's OK," interrupted Eddie Cat, "it's cool. Don't worry about it. What's done is done. It's over. Let's just forget about it." “OK," I replied quickly. We walked together for some distance in a nervous silence. By the side of one very long row of weeds, we passed two large lava rocks in a tiny clearing under the hot sun. "We'll rest here," said Eddie Cat gruffly. He still seemed highly irritated with me. We each sat on a grayish rock that felt like hot, scratchy Styrofoam. The heat was intense and the air was thick with greenish weed scent. I felt bone-tired and thirsty, but Eddie Cat began to lick himself and purr loudly with perfect contentment, obviously enjoying his grooming ritual. How can Eddie Cat so completely lose himself in licking his fur like that? I wondered. He seems to be able to enjoy it with unreflecting pleasure as if he hasn't got a care or worry in the world. I would be so embarrassed to lick myself in front of someone else. After a while, Eddie Cat finished licking himself and turned toward me and it seemed as if he were noticing me for the first time and had never been irritated with me. Then he did something utterly disarming and unexpected. He lightly brushed his furry cheek by the side of my head in a gesture of feline affection. "Don't worry about any little thing, Snowman,” said Eddie Cat in a purring, singsong voice. He was still purring, even as he was speaking. "Don't forget I'm not just your social worker, I'm also your good friend." I was touched by Eddie Cat's obvious sincerity and warmth. It encouraged me to ask a question that had been bothering me. "Eddie Cat, I know that you are taking me to Cat City, but for some reason I am not thinking of the place where we are in right now." "This is Weedland," said Eddie Cat. "And a more wild and desolate place is not to be found anywhere in the whole outskirts of Upright City." "You mean we're no longer in Upright City?" I asked, stupidly. "Of course. That's why you don't see any Uprights. Upright City is where the Uprights live. And since this is still the age of the Uprights we also refer to this whole plane of existence as Upright World." "How did Weedland get this way?" I asked. "Because of the Uprights," replied Eddie Cat. "And who exactly are the Uprights again?" I asked sheepishly. Eddie Cat looked at me with astonishment. "You know who Uprights are--- Skinjobs, the furless masters that call themselves humans,” said Eddie cat, his voice taking on an edge of exasperated irritation. "Oh. But how did the Uprights create Weedland?" I asked. I knew Eddie Cat was getting annoyed with my stupid questions, but felt I had to know. "By dropping the N Bomb on it of course," replied Eddie Cat impatiently. The phrase “N Bomb” made my blood run even colder than usual. "What's the N Bomb?" I asked in a hushed, shaky whisper. "You never heard of the N Bomb?" asked Eddie Cat, obviously amazed at my ignorance. "It's only the most advanced bomb ever made. It's really amazing to think what it can do. Why, it's over fifty times more powerful than the M Bomb! I mean, we're talking about a little piece of hardware, a little firecracker here, that can MIRV into ten thousand separate almost microscopic war heads each one of which is thirty times more powerful than the early L Bombs." "L Bombs?" "You never heard of the L Bomb?" Eddie Cat was astonished by my stupidity. “Just what sorts of bombs have you heard of?" I searched my memory for a bit before answering. "Well, I think I remember hearing something about the A Bomb and the H Bomb," I replied defensively. "What? You mean those ancient mushroom bombs? Why kittens throw them off of rooftops on Parade day. Next you'll be telling me you're from the Atomic Age. Time to wake up and smell the mutations, Snowman! Haven't you noticed something abnormal about eight foot weeds and talking cats? We're heavily into mutations here. How do you suppose you became a conscious Snowman? It's obviously a mutation. The species are always evolving and mutating, but especially after all the irreversible damage the J Bombs did to the reality waves. I wonder what sort of Upright mind came up with the idea of a bomb that actually damages things on the quantum mechanical level, a bomb that ultimately burned cancerous pinholes into the black fibers of space-time? And now they say that damage to space-time is spreading. Reality wave distortion is beginning to diffuse back to the past so that it's starting to distort all the earlier times too." "Are you sure about all this?" I asked in state of shock and confusion. I sensed that there was both truth and misinformation in everything Eddie Cat said, but it was hard to discern which was which. Eddie Cat gave me a shrewd and penetrating look. "Haven't you ever noticed something odd about being a conscious Snowman?" asked Eddie Cat. "Well, now that you mention it..." Eddie Cat’s train of thought was disturbing "Look, haven't you been experiencing weird blackouts and sort of out-of-body experiences where you feel like you are flashing through different lifetimes, different incarnations or universes?" "You mean I'm not the only one having that problem?" I asked, feeling suddenly elated. That I suffered incarnation seizures had always been my deepest, darkest secret, a burden that I assumed I alone had to bear. Through many long lifetimes, I had borne this shame it total secrecy. Never before had I been able to talk to another sentient being about my condition. Relief washed over me in warm waves. I looked up at Eddie Cat with a newfound love and gratitude. “Nothing personal against you," said Eddie Cat compassionately, “but in an earlier, more virginal reality, before the J Bombs caused irreversible distortion of the reality waves, something like you would never have happened." Shocked, I responded with reflexive denial, "It's not true!" “Well, just look about you Snowman. What sort of mutations do you see? Do you see how everything is a relatively slight variation of the original reality? In the ancient days, cats couldn't talk and they didn't have as much structured thought as we do. They couldn't hold objects in their paws very well, and were only a fifth our present size. Our ancient ancestors were known at the time as 'Alley Cats.' They lived in the margins of Upright society and were treated as second-class citizens. But despite these differences, we are still very much like earlier feline species. Similarly, although these weeds have gigantism and some other deformities, they are still basically variations of ordinary weeds. But," Eddie Cat lowered his voice to an ominous whisper, "you are something that cannot even be named.... You are the forbidden mutation. You are the Inanimate Become Animate One, the IBAO. A Snowman was never before a living thing. There is no other like you. In a sense, you are the J Bomb's only son." I looked into Eddie Cat’s yellow-green eyes. "I feel the truth of it. I am a mutation. I am a highly mutated mutation." I said slowly. "Yes you are. Everybody knows that you are the most reality-deteriorated mutant in all of Upright World." "I am?" There was a sudden spike in self-esteem, almost like a sugar rush. Nobody had ever told me that I was the most at anything. "Isn't it obvious? Everybody else's body has a definite structure, but you are amorphously composed of ice crystals. I've read your entire medical evaluation," said Eddie Cat. "What medical evaluation?" I asked suspiciously. "Oh my God, don't you even remember anything of the early days when we first found you? Your medical evaluation was recorded on a tiny computer chip that you wore around your neck. The Uprights ran a whole series of phased reality scans on you. They say that you are formed from an extremely unstable field of nuclear magnetic resonance which has generated a uniquely mutated hybrid of organic and representational reality waves." Eddie Cat sounded like he was reading from a book and I wondered if he really knew what he was talking about. I had a distinct feeling that I was being fed misinformation. "Well, does this medical evaluation say how I got so mutated?" I asked in a challenging tone. "Why, yes it does, Snowman. The evaluation says that your biological mother abused---or, shall we say, challenged herself, with an army surplus reality wave distortion field generator." "Why would she do that?" "According to the evaluation, your mother was part of an underground cult that felt they could use reality wave distortion fields to expand their awareness. They weren't aware, or didn't care, how much it mutated their DNA. They were probably just doing it for a quick buzz." I put my twig-like hands over my ears. "It's not true! I don't believe it! Not a word of it." "I'm sorry, Snowman," said Eddie Cat. He brushed against my leg in a friendly, reparative gesture that immediately calmed me. "I didn't mean to upset you. Let's forget about the evaluation. Everything will be just fine once we get to Cat City.” I felt calmed, but I could also feel that Eddie Cat was schmoozing me. It seemed quite possible that everything he said was a lie, but another part of me wanted to go along with it, wanted to believe I was getting definite answers even if they weren’t the answers I wanted. Also, I would do anything to avoid the terrible loneliness I had felt tumbling alone through space and through so many lifetimes. I clung dependently to Eddie Cat, and wanted, desperately, to believe him. My reverie was interrupted by a question. “Can you remember where you've been these many suns that we haven't seen you?" asked Eddie Cat. "No." I replied truthfully. I could recall falling through space and that there had been many incarnations, but a deep amnesia still covered all the specifics. "You must have had more of those incarnation seizures. Can you remember being in any other lifetimes or dimensions?" "I can't seem to remember much about other lifetimes. The truth is I can't remember much of this lifetime either. All I can remember is that I had this dreadful headache. It was like a Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snack hangover headache only a thousand times worse." "You mean all you can remember of all your incarnations, including this one, is a headache?" Eddie Cat was incredulous. I suddenly felt nervous and defensive. "Oh no, I can remember some stuff of course," I replied evasively, "it's just that...I mean what causes these incarnation seizures I've been getting? Can't anything be done for this sickness? Aren't there any sort of antibiotics or pills of some sort I could be taking for it?" "Whoa, one question at a time Snowman," said Eddie Cat, "let's talk about the cause first. The cause of the seizures is pretty obvious. Remember I told you that you are formed of some highly unstable fields of distorted nuclear magnetic resonance? Well, every so often, more and more often it seems, those unstable fields get a little too unstable. When that happens, your reality waves can shift to a parallel universe. When the system restabilizes, you return to Upright World. It used to be called Missing Time Syndrome. Recently, your system seems to have lost a critical level of cohesion and you seem to be destabilizing more and more often." "What about treatment?" I asked gloomily. "Treatment? Well, you have to realize that the underlying cause of your distortion and instability problems is the overall deterioration of space-time and its inevitable descent into entropy and increasing instability. When there is a seasonal flare up of reality wave distortion, most of us ordinary mutants get a little nauseated or a slight headache. You get massive incarnation seizures. Remember, treatment is only one aspect of the healing process. The first step is to think of this as more of a challenge than a handicap." Eddie Cat's words sounded sweet and well meaning, but they sure didn’t keep me from feeling depressed about my condition. We walked down another long weed row in silence. I felt tired and soggy. There was a white-hot sun over us now and I felt the Beckstein Limit hovering darkly on my bodily event horizon. There was a weird smell of heat baking on dusty soil and green weed sap boiling in wilted stems and leaves. "We must continue the healing process," said Eddie Cat after a while. His voice had taken on an hypnotic cadence. "Tell me what you remember of your unhappy childhood." I shook my head. "I don't remember." "You mean you don't remember your foster mother Betty Cat?" I shook my head silently, as a feeling of deep, indefinable shame came over me, as the name "Betty Cat" stirred some deep feelings I didn't want to face. "It's a pity you've lost the memory," said Eddie Cat sadly. "Your blessed foster mother, Betty Cat, may she rest in peace, was a wonderful guardian for you----it was she who found you when you floated down the Miltiff Industries River in an old plastic laundry basket." Slowly, like a developing Polaroid, a memory began to form in my mind, but then it faded away again. "Ah,” said Eddie Cat, his eyes lighting up suddenly. “I see what your problem is! You're suffering from Repressed Memory Syndrome!” Eddie Cat’s tail trembled electrically with excitement and delight. Sheepishly, I nodded my head in agreement. I wasn't sure what Eddie Cat was talking about, but I desperately wanted to please him and gain his approval. Eddie Cat danced an ecstatic little feline jig and began skipping circles around me while singing and rhyming with horrible excitement, making up the words to some sort of demented, feline limerick as he went along: "Repressed memory syndrome. Repressed memory syndrome. Candy and catnip spice and everything nice. Repressed memory syndrome. Repressed memory syndrome. Makes me famous, makes you well, health and happiness, everything will be swell. Repressed memory syndrome. Repressed memory syndrome. Pots of treasure beyond the shrouded veil! Repressed Memory Syndrome reveals the hidden tale! Makes your past a many-splendored meal, like thick slices of luscious veal we can eat with great zeal! Repressed Memory Syndrome is the best. Makes you heal, gets me a lucrative book deal!" I shuddered nervously. Eddie Cat seemed crazy, perhaps dangerously crazy, and his yellow-green eyes glowed greedily. His tail vibrated electrically as if he had stuck his paw in a high voltage outlet. And yet there was something intensely charismatic about him, and his excitement, that made me want to follow him. "Quick, kneel down on the ground,” said Eddie Cat. Obediently, I knelt on the ground. My hands were sweaty and I felt moisture from my kneecaps seeping into the dusty ground beneath me. From a hidden pocket, Eddie cat pulled out a big gold pocket-watch hanging from a golden chain. Under its domed crystal, was a black spiral on a white background. Eddie Cat began swinging the watch in a slow pendulum arc. My eyes moved back and forth rhythmically as I stared at the watch. Eddie chanted in an ever-so-soft, hypnotic voice, “Getting sleepy, nice and sleepy, nothing creepy, isn't it nice to get nice and sleepy, nice and sleepy, nice and sleepy, nothing creepy, isn't it nice to get nice and sleepy, nice and sleepy, nice and sleepy..." My eyelids grew heavy and closed. My breathing slowed to a somnambulant rhythm. Somewhere inside, down a long, dark corridor, a door opened and memory flooded in. As memory returned, I blurted out what I was experiencing to Eddie Cat. “I remember mother now, I remember the laundry basket. I remember the way she used to lick my face when I was little. But the other chill-dren..." As I said, "chill-dren," I found that I was clenching my teeth and my hands had become shaky and my voice began stammering. "I never got along with the chill-chill-chill-dren, they were always so cruel to me. And they had a name for me. A name I didn't like." "What was the name?" asked Eddie Cat very interested. "I'd rather not say," I replied. "Remember what I said before about open communication?" said Eddie Cat in a soft, but very insistent voice. "I’ve read every Upright book written on social working, and one thing they all agree on is that you can only help those who open themselves to help. And open communication is the key to opening yourself to being open to help. As part of that openness I want you to tell me that name they called you." I felt a powerful reluctance, but my desire to please Eddie Cat gradually overcame it. "Well, OK, what they used to call me, if you really have to know, what they called me was, was...’snowfag.’" I nearly choked on this name that I hoped was forever in my past. Eddie Cat covered his mouth with his paw and seemed to be coughing suddenly. "What's so funny?" I felt a humiliated resentment of Eddie Cat's probing. "Nothing at all. That was very cruel. I can see why it bothered you that they called you such a name." "It did bother me, it still bothers me." "Well, go on, what else did the children do to you?" "I'm not sure...I..." "Do you remember that night in the school yard?” asked Eddie Cat. Eddie Cat's words seemed to cut right into my snowbody. "The night in the school yard?" I knew what he was talking about, but couldn’t bear for it to be brought up. "Yes, what occurred that night in the schoolyard? Can you remember what happened to you that night when those children abused you?" A wave of nausea went through me, I felt feverish and vomited. I spat vomit out of my mouth and onto the dusty soil. I clenched my fists and banged them against my forehead. I had to make the words. I had to get it out. "I snuck into the schoolyard one night of my fourteenth summer to shoot some baskets. I had this idea that if I could teach myself to play a sport really well that the others might accept me. It was the summer and I hadn't seen most of the other kids in the seventh grade for weeks. I shot a few baskets and suddenly Kevin Cat and all his friends appeared all around me. It scared me and I gasped. You know how cats can creep up real stealthy and all when they're after you? It is the scariest thing in the world. They were all staring at me, and their eyes had this predatory glow. I was terrified. I was only fourteen-years-old and there was no way I could fight all ten of them, they were only a year older than me but they were full-sized toms. “And then they started saying stuff like, ‘Hey snowfag. What are you doing at out basketball court snowfag? You’re too spazzy for basketball snowfag.’ “They knocked my basketball out of my hands. Then Kevin Cat's cousin Jerry Cat started saying stuff. He started saying I was soft and that I made their school look retarded when I sat in the bleachers at football team pep rallies. Kevin Cat started in, “ ‘Yeah snowfaggy, you make us look stupid.’ “ ‘You’re such an ugly softy-balls,’ said Jerry Cat. Then all the others joined in with a chorus of ‘snowfaggy!’ and ‘softy-balls!’ Then with sudden feline speed they grabbed me and pinned my skinny arms against the wall of the school. “ ‘Let's show him how soft he is,’ said Kevin Cat. And then…” I found I was having trouble breathing. I gasped for air, but I had to get the words out, ‘They started putting things...They started putting things in my snow. Pens and combs and pieces of sharp glass. They said they wanted to show me how soft I was." I began to sob almost uncontrollably as the remembered pain pierced my body. Eddie Cat's glittering yellow-green eyes peered into me. "Stop that crying!" said Eddie Cat. "You're losing moisture." "You mean you know about my condition?" "Of course we know about your condition, it's pretty obvious isn't it? Now tell me what came after, what happened after they put the things in your snow?" "I can't say," I replied nearly screaming. "I promised never to say." "You must say it or you will never learn to live with the wound. It is essential to the whole healing process," said Eddie Cat vehemently, looking at me with weirdly fascinated eyes. I was hyperventilating with anxiety, but I knew I had to say it. I gasped for air and blurted out, "I made them go away. Something happened inside my head and then I just looked at them, and their bodies deteriorated and then they just went away. They were gone." There was a long, tense silence before Eddie Cat spoke, "Those young Toms should never have done what they did to you." His voice was smoothly professional and had a soothing, consoling tone. "No, they shouldn't have," I replied bitterly, "but what I did was so much worse. I couldn't help it, it just happened." "You must learn to let go of it," said Eddie Cat, "that's step number one in the healing process." I took a shuddering breath, and felt the peace of a profound catharsis. "Come on," said Eddie Cat. "We've stayed here long enough. Let's make it to Cat City before nightfall. Weed Land is no place to be when the sun sets." As I walked beside Eddie Cat, I felt that we had crossed some major barriers and that heavy burdens had been lifted from my shoulders. But I also felt exhausted by the emotional stress of the process and the worsening dehydration. The dry, cottony taste in my mouth was changing to the vinegary acetic acid smell associated with snow tissues that have begun to metabolize themselves, one of the first symptoms that I was approaching the Beckstein Limit. I knew I had to say something. "I must say I am getting very tired and thirsty, Eddie Cat." "Me too, but we're only a few turns away from Puddle Town. I'll treat you to some food and drink when we get there. We may even run into my cousin, Jamie Cat," said Eddie Cat, giving me a curious sidelong glance. The name, “Jamie Cat” reverberated strangely in my mind. "What kind of town is Puddle Town?" I asked, unable to remember anything about it. "Hmmm," said Eddie Cat, "you usually beg me to take you to Puddle Town. Well, if you really can't remember, I should tell you that it's more of a port than a town. It's a pleasant alternative to the bustling crowds of Cat City. And the food, spirits and lodging are all better and more reasonable than anywhere in the city. In fact, I was going to suggest that if you're feeling pretty walked out we might want to call it a day and put up at my cousin Stanley Cat's Admiral Black Paw Inn. It's their slow season so we might be able to get rooms with a view of the water." “That sounds very inviting," I said feeling quite attracted to the offer. "It also sounds very nautical. Is the Admiral Black Paw Inn frequented by seagoing folk?" "Why, yes it is," said Eddie Cat. "You know how their advertising rhyme goes, 'The Admiral Black Paw Inn--- A valued harbor to those who travel far. A relaxing refuge to those who drink from our well-stocked bar. The Admiral Black Paw Inn is the place to get your rest. Drink and slumber here before you resume your quest!' Seagoing folk? Why, The Admiral Black Paw Inn has its own dock and slips for up to a dozen boats. And there are always three or four weather-stained schooners docked there. But look about yourself if you choose to linger in the common room. Some felines hold their spirits better than others. Never arouse the ire of a pirate cat once he has taken to his cups I always say." "There are pirate cats there?" "Aye, but don't tell me you can't remember pirate cats!" said Eddie Cat. I felt it was better not to press the issue and walked silently, trying unsuccessfully to recollect something about Puddle Town or pirate cats. Soon, however, we passed by the pools of stagnant water that gave Puddle Town its name. "Welcome to Puddle Town" was painted in gilt letters on a weathered wooden hanging. The row of weeds became much wider and there was gravel on the ground now instead of dust. Distantly, I could smell the salty wetness of an ocean breeze. The path twisted and turned, but the weeds were so tall that I could still get no glimpse of Puddle Town. The path led up a hill and as we came over the top, I could see below an especially large puddle that had a crude dock of old, weathered boards on the far side. On the dock slept a magnificent cat with glossy black fur and orange stripes. "Ah, Jamie Cat," said Eddie Cat. "But she's sleeping." I stared at Jamie Cat feeling an inner surging of unfocused but potent memories. As I stared at her glossy fur, time slowed and I felt the heat of the sun burning through the pores of my ice crystals. Things deep inside my snow body swelled with excitement and tried to reach out to the musk-scented black and orange of her sleek, smooth fur, to feel the infinite fineness of that taut and supple feline body. Jamie Cat. I had always known and desired Jamie Cat, though I could remember nothing about her. The gentle rising and falling of her breathing was the rhythm of the dark ocean of my eternal voyage. Jamie Cat. Now was the long winter of my discontent made glorious summer by this sudden apparition of Jamie Cat. Now I knew why I had walked the long and tortuous path, suffered the blinding fury of the sun's glare and returned from every displacement of the incarnation seizures. I had run down alleys and across rooftops, over deserts, tumbled through universes and lifetimes to find Jamie Cat. And now was she revealed as the source and core of the life force that stirred in me, animated my existence, and propelled my every movement. Jamie Cat. Every ice crystal urged me toward her. Here was the magic that Eddie Cat called ‘instinct’ that allowed me to know exactly where fate called to me through all the twists and turns. Somehow I had forgotten my destiny, and now it lay for me at the bottom of a hill, waiting for me, sleeping in the sun, at the end of the long journey. Many heartbeats of eternity passed before I realized that Eddie Cat was staring at me, his shrewd eyes two all-knowing yellow-green slits. "I see some things never change," said Eddie Cat. I found his tone annoying and superficial. And how could Eddie Cat stand to look at me when beauty incarnate reposed before us? "It would be a little rude to disturb her rest, but I can see that you are keen to visit with her." "Oh no, don't disturb her, " I replied quickly. I suddenly felt terrified of going down the hill. "Can't we just stay a few more moments and gaze upon her? Please, as my social worker, I beg of you, cross to the other side of these weeds with me and let us hide ourselves amidst their dusty foliage so I can look upon my beloved." With a patronizing shrug, Eddie Cat followed me into the weeds, and once again I gazed upon Jamie Cat, feeling the pulse beating in my thin stick-like arms as I inhaled the hot ocean-scented air, the same air that Jamie Cat breathed. In the ocean of atmosphere our breaths commingled. Now was the dusty, weedy world turned into a lush jungle of rich colors and radiant life. Now was the white glare of the sun made beautiful that it had this living jewel, Jamie Cat, on which to reflect its rays. And to what dark, dreary, empty night would the whole universe fall were it not for Jamie Cat, the focal point of all beauty, color and delight? And then there was a sudden change in Jamie Cat's breathing. The life force stirred in her, her head arose, and Jamie Cat opened her green eyes upon the world. "Oh beauty of all beauties!" I gasped. "Was there ever green before her eyes? The finest emeralds are like gray dust compared to the green magic of her wondrous eyes." "Hmmm," said Eddie Cat. "that’s starting to sound like a very codependent attitude, Snowman. All the social working books talk about this sort of thing, and it's not very healthy. Step one in the healing process…" But I was only dimly aware that Eddie Cat was speaking, and could not follow his words long enough to derive any meaning from them. How could I before the green magic of Jamie Cat's eyes? And then Jamie Cat yawned and I beheld her beautiful pink gums, the polished white feline ivory of fangs and teeth and then, with slow and luxuriant elegance, Jamie Cat licked near her front paw and then used that area of wet fur to wipe her face until her nearly sparkled. Ahh...the inviting, rasping wetness of her long tongue glistening with saliva drove me nearly mad with desire. Jamie Cat arose and stretched her spine magnificently---first convex and then concave as the gloss of her fur glimmered in the sunlight. Then she sat and scanned about her with her alert green eyes. She was luxuriantly calm, but also aware of something, and her moist, delicate pink nostrils pulsed as they sniffed the air and interpreted the subtle variations of scent about her. It seemed as if she sensed a presence, a presence the sensing of which, made her animated, even (dare I think it?) excited. Could it be that my snowscent had wafted down to her and was evoking her alert attention? But suddenly there was an intruder. A huge, shiny black tomcat sauntered onto the dock without the slightest hesitation or introduction. Jamie Cat regarded him with turned head and steadfast green eyes. And then the oversized tomcat went over and licked Jamie Cat's forehead. Instantly, my body stiffened in pain and outrage. "Who is this vile beast that dares lay his slimy tongue on my Jamie Cat's noble forehead? I'll gut him with my bare hands." "Not so fast," said Eddie Cat, "it's only Tony Cat. Jamie Cat's new boyfriend." "Her new boyfriend!" I nearly choked on the poisonous words. "I guess you don't remember anything do you?" sighed Eddie Cat a little impatiently. "Jamie Cat's been going out with Tony Cat ever since Joey Cat, her ex, found her fooling around with that young pirate Tom, Sinbad Cat." "What?!! This is madness and lies, I don't believe a word of it!" I cried with great agitation. But at that moment Jamie Cat and Tony Cat circled each other in a peculiar way and Tony Cat somehow got his nose near Jamie Cat's hindquarters and sniffed her there. "I will kill that vile beast instantly!" My icy blood was up and pain galled every crystal of my being. With smooth feline speed Eddie Cat locked powerful cat arms around me, restraining me with great efficiency. And then Jamie Cat turned to look at Tony Cat as if only now aware of what he was doing. "She'll shred his evil eyes in a moment!" I gasped, struggling to breath under Eddie Cat's powerful grip. But the moment passed, and Jamie Cat didn't shred Tony Cat's eyes. Instead, she turned and sniffed Tony Cat's hindquarters and then licked him there and.... kept licking him there. I turned away in horror and threw up onto the weedy dust. My mind reeled and I collapsed into my own vomit, sobbing inconsolably. When I was capable of speech I cried out, "Oh, I am fortune's fool! Cheated of looks by horrifying mutation, deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this cruel, breathing world, scarce half made up, and that so lamely and unfashionable that even mutant, cyclopean dogs bark at the very sight of my deformity! Why was I put here except to be stabbed and mocked by fate? Let me die that I may be free of this torture!" I writhed on the dusty, vomitus ground in agony, snowfoam drooled from my mouth, and my writhing became almost electrical, and seemed on the verge of turning into a grand mal incarnation seizure. Eddie Cat’s eyes dilated with alarm as steam ruptured the trunks of weeds that popped and hissed all around us. My rage was creating dangerous mutant psionic effects, and Eddie Cat knew this must be stopped before God only knew what happened. "Snowman, get a grip on yourself! This is the codependency speaking inside of you. It is not you! You are complete in yourself. You have to start feeling good about yourself. Let go of the voices of low self-esteem that make you choose such dysfunctional attractions! What is Jamie Cat to you, or you to Jamie Cat? It is all an overblown adolescent infatuation! Letting go of this is the first step in the healing process!" "You don't understand," I sobbed inconsolably, "there is only Jamie Cat.” "But didn't you say the same thing about my little cousin Caitlin Cat? And remember how you went through that thing with Jasmine Cat? Don't you see how you keep repeating the same pattern?" My head was spinning with rage and confusion and I felt like my whole snowmass was about to go critical and implode in a reality-warping suction that could take down whole universes. I didn’t remember any of the shecats Eddie Cat referred to, and it could all be lies but there were too many holes in my memory for me to be sure of anything. I looked toward the dock. Tony Cat had pulled a weed cigarette from a small leather pouch and he and Jamie Cat were smoking it together, their tails entwined, as they casually sauntered off the dock. "They're gone," said Eddie Cat, reaching a paw down to help me up. “Let's get out of here. We can talk more about this when we get to the Admiral Black Paw Inn." I picked myself up slowly. My gut felt like it had been stabbed with the ten thousand white-hot knives of a spiteful universe. How could Jamie Cat degrade herself in that way? Why does Jamie Cat forsake me? Why, Jamie Cat, why, why? I staggered down the path in agony. Desperately, I decided to appeal to Eddie Cat for help, "Eddie Cat, you are my social worker and my good friend, is there nothing I can do to win Jamie Cat's love?" My voice was pleading, whining, and I trembled right on the brink of another huge crying jag. "It would be an unkindness to you if I gave you false hope, Snowman,” said Eddie Cat gently. “I don't believe there is anything you can do. You've tried everything already. She does like you and thinks you are a very interesting and unique mutation, but that's as far as it's going to go." "But why is there no hope, Eddie Cat?" "Well, you know these things are always a mystery, but, in your case.... I wish there was a more delicate way to put this, but the truth is you are a snowman and Jamie Cat is, well, a cat. That's a tough barrier to cross. This has always been a problem for you. You always seem to be attracted to athletic, young shecats and they're mostly attracted to young tomcats. It's their instinct. Have you ever thought that one day you might find a snowwoman?" "No!" I replied with enraged vehemence. I was sickened by the thought. All that bulging white snow. It was a nauseating image. "I don't like the way snowpeople look at all, if there were any besides me, which there aren't as you very well know! You also know very well that cats have always been the best-looking animals around. You yourself wouldn't settle for anything other than a shecat, why do you think I should?" "But there are other things in relationships besides all that mad, sexy stuff,” replied Eddie cat in an exasperating tone of patient reasonableness. “What about companionship and spiritual love and all that? Don't you want someone nice you can grow old with?" "No! I want cats and you know that very well!" I shot back with vehement passion. "In my body, my heart, my soul, I know I was meant to be with cats. You yourself said I was found in a plastic laundry basket as a snowbaby by a cat, my foster mother Betty Cat, who always wanted another kitten. I was meant to be a cat!" "But," said Eddie Cat gently, "you know it is a common practice among the Uprights to abandon mutant babies. Don't you think you probably had an Upright ancestry?" "No! I can't believe you could even think that. I’m a snowman. I am not born of Upright flesh!" I cried passionately. "And no, I may not be fully a cat either. But I am myself, and I am the one who can make the weeds hiss and pop when the rage rises within me. I will conquer this handicap. I will transform myself so that Jamie Cat can love me. “Why should Jamie Cat be with a snowman when I myself cannot bear the sight of my own deformity? Why should she want me when I myself sicken to glance at my snowy self in the looking glass and even my shadow throws a dark blemish on the dust? Oh, why am I so cheated of feature by dissembling nature? Why am I in such a reality-deteriorated shape---this hideous and nauseatingly repulsive snowbody, an awkward and grotesque form that seems more crudely representational than real? Why am I this inanimate become animate freak with stick-like arms and fingers that are more like snowy tentacles? “I must have a new body. I will have a new body! If there are cats, how can I stand it to be no cat! If I cannot fully make myself a cat, then I will use artifice and make myself appear to be a cat so that none can tell the difference! I will dye my crystals black, I will exercise to tighten my muscles, I will eat cat food and drink, inject myself with cat hormones and I will have the fur of cats who have died in accidents transplanted onto the whole surface of my snowskin!" I stood suddenly tall and almost shouted with triumphant fervor, " I'll just do it. I'll go for it, and it will be done!" A psionic aura---golden, with a flaring corona of violet appeared around my ecstatic snowbody. "Snowman, don't you see this is just the manic, low self-esteem side of you talking? You are fine just the way you are. It’s only your low self-esteem that makes you think you have to be a cat or look like one. Self-acceptance is the first step in the healing process. Your reality challenges are part of what makes you special and unique. And you know that transforming yourself doesn't work. Don't you remember all those things the gypsy gats sold you, the herbs, the potions, the special foods? None of it worked. Remember when you gave that gypsy cat six-hundred-and-eighty-five credit units for that Upright machine? They told you it was called the ‘Snow Flex’ and was specially made for snowmen who wanted to look more feline and impress shecats. The Gypsy Cats told you it would turn you into something they called ‘a Nordic Snow Cat," and you believed them. But it was just an old Upright exercise machine, and those Gypsy Cats were laughing and laughing at you behind your back. All that exercise you did made you healthier, but you only looked like a healthier snowman. Those gypsy cats are nothing but a bunch of cheap conjurers, smiling swindlers and greedy tricksters. They will only take your money again to sell you on false hopes. You must learn to accept yourself just as you are." "No, no, never!" I cried adamantly, feeling the will rise up inside of me. "It's easy for you to tell me to accept myself because you are a cat!" I leveled an accusing stare at Eddie cat, and the aura of energy around me burned fiercely. "If I were a cat, I could accept myself too! Try being born into a world of cats as a freakish and deformed non-cat before you lecture me on self-acceptance." I glared at Eddie Cat. "And who are you to be giving me any kind of advice anyway? You are a cat. You can just skate through your life doing things by instinct. But my instinct tells me to go over a cliff. And if that is where the universe fates me to go then I will go there! And all your advice, all your middle-of-the-road, sensible advice, is no more use to me than the white-hot sun that withers my ice crystals. I want to be a cat, I need to be a cat, I will be a cat, and Jamie cat will be mine! And Tony Cat will pay, yes he will, he will pay dearly, you hear me!" "Good, good," said Eddie Cat. "Let the anger out. It's the first step of the healing process." I turned on Eddie Cat savagely, "What healing process? What healing process do you have for me, an entity of ice crystals that withers before the sun? Can your words heal me of that? Can your healing steps tell me where I will go when my last ice crystal has turned to vapor! Can you make a shecat love me or make life make sense to me without that love? Can you save my eternal soul? You have no healing process! Your words are a sham and you social-working cats are nothing but gypsy cat tricksters in fuzzy sheep cat clothing." The raw power of my mutant, psionic rage had Eddie Cat cowering and backing away. "Well you needn't be so husky with a fellow," said Eddie Cat who seemed smaller and walked with his tail between his legs. "I told you it's all just stuff written by Upright experts in social-working books. Social worker is a good job for a feline these days. I never said the books were true or anything. How is a cat supposed to know how to do a job if he doesn't follow instructions in a book? We're not born knowing how to do these jobs!" "What about your instincts?" I asked, my voice dripping with sarcasm and contempt. "Oh, well instincts can't do everything you know. Try operating heavy machinery by instinct. That's a good way to lose a paw in a hurry. Besides, we mutant cats have been trying to get away from instinct. Instinct is what drives the lower animals. A scorpion is all instinct---do you want to be a scorpion or a pair of ragged claws scuttling along the slimy floors of silent seas? How are we to rise above instinct if we don't follow the instructions the experts write in books? Remember, this is the N190s. It's almost two centuries since the N bomb was dropped. We social-working cats believe that this is the New Age that all the Upright books talk about. We believe that this is a time when all the spirits of everybody and everything, Uprights, felines, weeds, dung, and even snow people, will all harmonize and converge into a new era of healing and safety. This is a great secret," Eddie Cat's voice lowered to an ominous whisper, "don't let anyone else know, but in a cave near the old sea we found an ancient magazine from the olden times of the ancient mushroom bomb era. This magazine says that it is a journal of this New Age. Experts have restored the gloss of its aged pages and interpreted its strange words. It talks of an ‘Harmonic Convergence’ that will happen in our lifetime and begin to change everything. At that time all the reality wave deterioration will start a cosmic healing process. In the New Age, everyone will have a sacred place and a sacred value so long as they agree to respect everyone else's sacred place and sacred values." "Oh?" I replied sneeringly. "And what of the mutant spider wasp with its fangs that inject its prey with fluoride-based radioactive neurotoxins? Will you respect its sacred values? Your New Age is only another reworking of the stories Betty Cat used to tell me about Sugar Candy Mountain where all the good creatures went when they died and where Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacks grew on trees. Tell these tales to your grandkittens to ease their little kitty minds, but forsake to trouble my ears with these childish things and delusory trifles. Save your book instructions and New Age clichés for some other gullible sap, for I will seek my own answers and search for healing in my own way. If reality's rules say that Jamie Cat is not for me, and I not for Jamie Cat, then I will seek out the rule maker and challenge him with my woe. My body is different than this reality and ultimately withdraws from it. I will follow its direction and my quest will be to see if there is some other dimension, some other world than Upright World where I can find my path." Eddie cat seemed fearful of my violent passion and there was a tense, charged silence. "Well," mumbled Eddie Cat, "If that's how you feel, then let's away to the Admiral Black Paw Inn where many a great quest has been known to begin." We walked down a long row of weeds until we reached another puddle. This puddle was smaller than the pond-sized puddle where I had seen Jamie Cat hook up with Tony Cat, but it’s water was clear and seemed deeper. While Jamie Cat’s puddle was murky with algae, this puddle was more like a well in the desert with smooth pebbles at the bottom that you could see from the top. "I want to wash myself here," I told Eddie Cat. I was feeling ashamed of my disheveled appearance and had an anxiety that we might suddenly come upon a whole group of cats and that they would be able to tell that I had been crying. This was not the sort of thing that I wanted to get back to Jamie Cat. Intuitively, I knew that to have any chance with Jamie Cat I had to radically transform the image I projected. "You've picked a good spot for washing, Snowman," said Eddie Cat. “And that's another thing---" I turned to face Eddie Cat and focused an intense, dark stare on him. "I'm sick and tired of you calling me 'the Snowman.' How would like it if I called you 'the Feline’ all the time?" I did a mocking imitation of the often singsong cadence of Eddie Cat's voice, “Good morning the Feline. You've picked a good spot for it, the Feline. You've got to feel good about yourself, the Feline! Not having a name is the first step of the healing process, The Feline! The Feline! The Feline! Twenty-four hours a day--- The Feline! I'd like to know who decided that I should be referred to in this cold, generic way when everyone else seems to have an actual name as if they all had individual personalities and I didn't!" I took a deep breath and spoke with impressive resolve, "Hereafter, I am no longer to be referred to, by you or by anyone else, as “the Snowman.” Hereafter, I am to be referred to by my new name..." I paused to think for a couple of seconds. "By my new name.... Jake. I am now Jake." "Well, you've picked a good spot for washing up, Jake," remarked Eddie Cat with a sarcastic emphasis on the new name. "What's that supposed to mean?" I asked. "Oh, and by the way, Jake, I hereafter no longer wish to be referred to as Eddie Cat. My new name is.... The Grand Imperial Dragon Slayer and Wizard King of Upper Elthamador and the Northern Lands. And please, don't even think about abbreviating any part of my new name because that will be taken as a great insult to my personal dignity.” I regarded Eddie Cat with a highly unamused glare. "What the fuck are you taking about? What has all that bullshit you just said got to do with my desire to have a simple, commonplace, one-syllable name? And what has it got to do with you, that you feel you can mock it? I--- oh, just forget it, I don't have to justify myself to you. Why am I even bothering with this conversation when Jamie Cat is out somewhere doing God only knows what with Tony Cat!" Dismissively, I shooed Eddie Cat with my spindly hands and he backed away. I knelt down at the edge of the puddle and was about to put my hands in the water to wash off the dust and grime. But for some reason I paused before my hands actually went into the water. For a long moment, I held my hands above the rippling surface of the puddle and gazed at the weird asymmetries of my long, twig-like fingers. As I beheld my delicate snowfingers above the shimmering reflections of the puddle water time slowed, and I felt myself being pulled inward. I had always considered my pale, elongated hands the most freakish and hideous feature of my body. Hands weren't something you could hide under a long, dark overcoat. Hands were always out there. Hands always had to be used, whether you liked them or not. I hated and abhorred my hands, but I also depended on them for performing so many manual tasks. If not for their utilitarian value, I would have had my hands surgically removed a long time ago. The velvety, supple paws of healthy young cats were always a source of fetishistic obsession and envy. And if there was one part of my life that I always dreaded, it was the little repressed gasps of horror and surprise when stranger cats saw my hands for the first time. Forever embedded painfully in my mind was the little she-kitten on the Cat City Trolley who remarked to her mother, "Look mommy, that man has insect hands!" It was because of my hands that I had always dreaded any event that involved public eating. Often I would just sit there with my hands at my sides neither eating nor drinking. I moved my long, skinny fingers slowly above the shimmering ripples of the deep puddle, and despite their spindly shape they felt heavy and swollen with the painful and portentous weight of my whole existence as a snowman. A memory arose, as if from the watery depths of the puddle, and began replaying itself in my mind. It was something that happened when I was a very young snowboy. For the first seven years of my life, my foster mother, Betty Cat, had insisted that I eat with her whole family during holiday gatherings. Betty Cat insisted on this out of love for her adopted snowboy, but it ruined the meal for everyone else. The practice finally ended one day when I was seven and Betty Cat was invited to spend Bird Feast Day with her family. The invitation pointedly did not include my name, but that only redoubled Betty Cat's righteous determination to bring me along anyway. As a very young snowboy, I’m not sure how conscious I was of the controversy in the family about my being included in these events, but I did feel the general atmosphere of uneasiness, and dreaded these family occasions as sessions of torturous embarrassment for everyone. On that particular day, I had been crying alone in my room all afternoon because I didn't want to go to the Bird Feast Day gathering. I moped under the covers all morning crying and speaking in whispers to Joey, the large fuzzy, stuffed red mouse that was the constant companion of my early years. "They don't like us over there, Joey. We're going to run away together." I hugged Joey tighter and large tears of melted snow dripped onto Joey's fuzzy red fur. Betty Cat yelled from the kitchen of our small house by the river. "What you be doin' in dhere all day, Snowboy?" Betty Cat had the heavy accent of the black river-cat culture she came from. It had been said that her great-grandfather was descended from a full-blooded black alley cat. In addition to my other deformities, my extreme whiteness did not exactly help me to blend in her clan of black river cats. "Now you can go sulk yourself all day in dhere, Snowboy, but you will be going to Bird Feast Day just like any normal chile. And you best not be cryin' in there Snowboy. I done told you about dhat too many times. You know you gonna dry yourself up with all that girlie-cat cryin’ till there ain't be nothin' left of you 'cept one little snowflake dryin' itself up in the dust under dhat radiator. You hear me Snowboy?' "Yes, mama." "Now you put up that Joey thing and get yourself in your Sunday best. I wanna be proud of my Snowboy when we go to Aunt Bertha Cat's house." Betty Cat opened the door to my room and walked in with a steaming washcloth. She rubbed my face so vigorously that it always felt like she was going to rub my snowskin off and turn me into a living snowskull boy. It was so different when I was still young enough to get my face licked. Slowly and sulkily, I got out of bed and slugged around my room. Betty Cat yelled at me some more and with glacier-like slowness I dressed myself in the brown corduroy Junior Fat Boy trousers, starchy white button-down shirt and narrow red and yellow tie that Betty Cat had spent half a pension check on at The Bulging Boy---a shop that sold garments for obese Upright children. I hated the outfit, especially since it was made for Uprights. Every time I buttoned the starchy, white shirt I felt like I was putting on a straitjacket. And then there was the way those ugly black rubber suspenders hiked my pants up practically to my armpits that made me feel like I must be the ugliest mutation in all of Upright World. Finally, I had to put on the most humiliating part of my outfit, the special deformity shoes that Betty Cat had gotten for me at Henry Cat and Sons Surgical Supply Store where her cousin Sugar Cat worked. They had been specially made for a kitten with splayed-paw syndrome. But the kitten had died of complications before he could grow into the deformity shoes, and Henry Cat and Sons had to take a loss on them. Eventually they heavily discounted the deformity shoes and put them, perhaps as a curiosity, in the dusty black velvet display case behind the large plate glass window of their River Avenue storefront next to the cervical collars and aluminum walkers. Cat children from my elementary school would sometimes go to Henry Cat and Sons to stare at the shoes and laugh at them. The large brown deformity shoes looked like a frightening hybrid of orthopedic shoes and clown feet. They had been custom made to accommodate the specific splayed-paw deformities of the deceased kitten. Besides flaring out in the front, they had all sorts of weird curves and protuberances. Along the sides of the deformity shoes were a whole grid of air holes, each reinforced by a tiny brass grommet, that were necessary to provide the proper ventilation crucial to the treatment of splayed-paw syndrome. In addition to laughing at the shoes, the cat children would sometimes join hands in a circle and dance around singing, "Monster shoes! Monster shoes! Ten times uglier than doggy-do-do!" Henry Cat or one of his sons would eventually have to go out and chase them away. Eventually they got tired of it, and decided to discount the shoes to almost nothing. But I didn’t hear about any of this till much later. As soon as the shoes were discounted, Sugar Cat called Betty Cat on the phone and said, "Betty Cat honey, you better get on down here in a lickety-split hurry, cause old Mr. Henry done just put a pair of Cat City-made shoes on sale for half the price of a bottle of flea pills. And I know they're gonna fit your snowboy as if they was made for him special." Sugar Cat always had a particular dislike for me and was never remiss when it came to stirring up trouble. She knew very well that Betty Cat was very poor and could never miss anything she took to be a bargain. Later that day, Betty Cat brought home the deformity shoes in a large, brown box, but didn't tell me any thing about their origin, afraid that I wouldn't want to wear them if she did. And I hadn’t walked by Henry Cat and Sons Surgical Supply Store in months because it was in a shopping area where cat children from my school hung out. I knew I would be mercilessly teased and scratched by their sharp, young claws if I so much as showed my snowy face there. Betty Cat took the shoes out of the box and started to put them on my snowfeet. She pressed and pinched my snowfeet real hard from the outside of the shoes before pronouncing, "These shoes be near a perfect fit for you, son. And look at how expensive Cat City-made they are too!" "But they look kind of strange, ma. And what are all these little holes for?" "Oh now hush up with all your worry-talk. You worry more than any old scaredy cat I ever met. You'll be worrying us both to death one of these days. Ain’t you the one always complainin’ about wearing Upright clothes? Here you got yourself a brand new pair of Cat City-made shoes you can be proud to wear to the first day of school tomorrow, and all you gonna do is worry yourself sick about them." Tearfully, I remembered that first day of school as I put on the deformity shoes. I knew that Betty Cat did things because she loved me, and sometimes all I could do is go along with her well-meaning plans, even when I knew that no good would come of them. She was, after all, an old woman cat, and it wasn't her fault that I was a freak. One day I hoped to do something great and become rich and famous. Then I would buy Betty Cat a beautiful big house with a lovely garden and all her favorite things. Finally, I was dressed, and Betty Cat took my hand and we walked on the path beside the long, dark river. There was a sharp crescent moon hanging just above the bare branches of the trees. I carried an old wicker basket that held the freshly baked sardine pie that Betty Cat had made for the feast. We walked in silence for a while, and I had one of those strange déjà vu moments that would come upon me at odd times and in lonely places. Time slowed, and I heard the flowing of the river and the wind breathing through the tree branches. From inner depths I could feel that I was on a path, a path that was long, and dark and deep. When we got to Aunt Bertha's house, I tried to hide myself amidst the noise and confusion and cat chatter. Kittens were racing up and down the stairs and through the hallways, all the women cats were coming in and out of the kitchen carrying tons of food, and all the men cats were sitting around the living room smoking smelly catnip cigars and talking about sports and money. I stood in a shadowy corner by myself trying not to be noticed. But then they were ready to serve the feast and I had to sit at the table between Ellie Cat, a young she-kitten around my age, and Sammy Cat, a tom-kitten a year or two older. The table looked like it was going to collapse with food. There was a large turkey, pigeon and sardine pies, squirrel blood pudding, a roast duck stuffed with mouse meat, and Aunt Bertha's specialty---young sparrow breasts tartar, sautéed in a catnip-vinaigrette dressing. I was highly allergic to all animal foods and was sickened by the sight of all the holiday foods everyone else was making such a fuss about. To me, the feast looked, and smelt, like platters of steaming, dead birds. And even if I wasn't allergic, I hated the thought of eating dead animals---it had always seemed savage and gross to me. Betty Cat always complained that my vegetarian diet would stunt my growth, but I told her I didn't care. Better to be stunted than have a body made of dead animal parts, I thought. And if I grow, it will only mean a greater mass of disgraceful and embarrassing snow flesh. The only thing at the whole feast I could eat was the one platter of summer grasses. This was an out-of-season vegetable and was either frozen or from a can so that it was soggy and looked like seaweed once it was heated. It was one of those traditional dishes that was expected to be there, but in practice no one but me actually ate it. Betty Cat passed me a big plate of summer grasses that looked like it was frozen and canned. You couldn't even make out the individual blades of grass, it was all just a big soggy mess emitting this greenish steam that smelled putrid and looked like a cloud of poisonous gas. Sammy Cat made a face and I just sat there with my hands at my sides, feeling hungry, but totally unmotivated to eat the steaming green mush. Everyone else was scarfing down tons of bird flesh, the men cats drank big mugs of sardine wine which made their breath stink of dead fish and catnip smoke. And most disgusting was the way they all talked with food in their mouths, chewed with their mouths wide open and ate with such noisy gusto that I felt like I was eating with a pack of starving hyenas wolfing down an especially tough carcass of raw zebra meat. The entire spectacle nauseated me, but I knew I had to sit there until the torture was over. I cast my dark eyes down at the tangled clumps of boiled grass on my plate imagining that it was a steamy, swampy jungle on another world. And that's when the incident happened. "Snowboy, Snowboy!" ---It took a couple of repetitions of my name for Betty Cat to get my attention. "Be a good Snowboy and pass Ellie Cat that chicken liver pot pie." I looked up and saw there was a platter of small, livery-smelling pies in front of me next to a big bowl of tarry looking squirrel blood pudding. I reached out to the platter of liver pies like Betty Cat told me to, and as I did so, Ellie Cat, who was quite a nervous, little she-kitten anyway, got a close look at my hands, and to her they looked like long, white worms. Ellie Cat emitted a piercing shriek and then threw up on her new, pink chiffon dress. Suddenly all the chewing stopped and every eye slit of every feline was focused on me. "What'd you do to her Snowboy?" demanded Buck Cat, Ellie Cat's father. I looked around and saw the hateful, accusing eyes glaring at me, and suddenly the whole family looked to me like a pack of predatory animals, savage and alien, and I let out a scream of pure terror, a scream of shattering psionic intensity that broke glass in houses half a block away. Bird Feast Day was ruined and Betty Cat ended up blamed and ostracized for bringing me. Something died in Betty Cat that night. She would always love her Snowboy and think of me as the chils God gave her when she was too old to have a litter, but her hopes that I would be accepted by the family were put to rest. There were many hysterical phone calls in the ensuing weeks when Ellie Cat stopped eating anything and eventually had to be hospitalized. Buck Cat and Missy Cat blamed it all on me, and, by implication, on Betty Cat for bringing me. For a time it seemed like no one in the family was going to speak to Betty Cat. Ellie Cat eventually got better, but I was never taken to another family gathering. I began to feel nervous even eating in front of Betty Cat and would take my meals alone in my room. I would push my school papers aside and use my desk as a dining table. Sometimes I would put Joey on a chair next to me and talk to him during meals. Later in life, as an adult, I would always eat alone in my room at the boarding house. Mostly I heated up canned goods on a hot plate and ate out of the battered tin saucepan that had belonged to Betty Cat before she passed away. The memories ebbed away and I still stared at my hands hovering over the silvery ripples of the deep puddle. Somehow I had survived all that painful past and was still here. And now I saw my hands as if for the first time. The weird asymmetries looked purposefully complex, like the elegant brush strokes of oriental characters, or the intricate wards of a pair of uncanny, living skeleton keys. I saw now that there was something strangely powerful and intelligent about my hands. These hands were designed for some great and unknown purpose, I thought. And if these hands are not meant to caress the lustrous black and orange of Jamie cat's fur then I will find the keyhole that they are meant to unlock, whether it be flesh or some unformed destiny on some other plane. I dipped my hands into the cool, dark water. Deep within I heard the luscious inner tinkling of the dry ice crystals as their capillary osmosis sent streams of replenishing moisture throughout my whole body. I scooped up double handfuls of water and doused my head, cooling liquid passing through my brain and bloodshot eyes leaving them clear and refreshed. My body felt new made as the water flowed to my extremities, filling out my muscles and renewing every living crystal. I knelt before the pool, my hands and forearms immersed, for quite a while feeling the life giving moisture coursing through all my snowtissues. When at last I stood up, I seemed have grown and filled out so that now I towered over Eddie Cat, and my fully rehydrated body almost welcomed the heat of the white sun. We walked a little ways further down the road before noticing a side path. It led us to a puddle the size of a bay that stretched out to the horizon. Near the shore, its waters rippled with dark green algae and some strangely colored and shaped seaweed. As we drew closer, I could see that where the water deepened there were bioluminescent jelly fish glowing beneath the surface and painful memories of their poisonous tentacles haunted the edges of my mind. "Ah, Puddle Bay,” said Eddie cat. We’re only a few minutes from the Admiral Black Paw Inn." We were on a dirt path, but now it seemed better tended and the sides were bordered with cobblestones. It led us along the edge of the Puddle Bay until came upon the Inn, a two-story structure of weathered stone and wood. The windows were of an old fashioned sort with thick diamond shaped pieces of colored glass fused with lead solder. Surrounding the inn were well-tended vegetable gardens where many fine varieties of catnip and grasses were growing amidst a number of tall sunflowers. The air was filled with the intoxicating, minty smell of thriving catnip plants. The rear of the inn overlooked the dark waters of Puddle Bay, and a stone path led down to a wooden dock where a single schooner was tied in. Eddie gestured toward the singular boat, “Looks like we’re arriving at a slow time for the inn, all the better for us.” Eddie Cat knocked on the door, and we were greeted by Jimmy Cat, a handsome, young boy cat with alert and respectful green eyes and neat, tabby-stripped fur. "Good evening, Sir Snowman and Sir Eddie Cat, welcome to the Admiral Black Paw Inn." Jimmy Cat had perfect manners and had been brought up to speak formally and with the greatest respect to all the guests. "Actually, the Snowman is now to be referred to as the Jake," said Eddie Cat. "That's Jake, not the Jake," I corrected. Jimmy Cat looked a little confused. "Oh forget it," I said. "I'll keep my original name. You can call me the Snowman." "Yes, Sir Snowman." said Jimmy Cat bowing formally and gesturing for us to enter the establishment. We stepped into the common room, and found it pleasantly illuminated by the diamond pane windows that were catching the warm glow of late afternoon sunlight and reflecting it off the dark mahogany paneling and heavy wooden tables and chairs that had all been polished to a fine luster. "Would you gentlemen care for any refreshment after your long journey?” "Yes we would." said Eddie Cat. Jimmy Cat showed us to a table beside a window with a view of the garden. He told us about the daily specials and gave us menus printed on old parchment paper. Jimmy Cat brought us a large pitcher of iced catnip tea while we considered which of the inn’s specialties would please us most. When we had decided, Jimmy Cat took our order and disappeared into the kitchen. In a short time he returned with another large pitcher of iced catnip tea, followed by chilled cream soup and fresh red snapper for Eddie Cat, and for me a plate of steamed, seasoned summer grasses, squash and potatoes---all fresh from the garden. After we finished this excellent meal, Jimmy Cat offered us handmade catnip cigars from a polished wooden box, and pastel-colored after dinner mints shaped like anchors on a red glass dish. Eddie Cat took a catnip cigar, and Jimmy Cat immediately lighted it for him. I politely refused the cigar but eventually ate all of the after dinner mints. It was against a Puddle Town ordinance to offer guests intoxicating spirits, but it was permissible to have written advertisements, and to serve anything that guests asked for. The Admiral Black Paw Inn was especially known for its fine variety of homemade sardine and catnip wines and their special Quest Rum. Eddie Cat ordered a flagon of catnip wine for himself and a large mug of the Quest Rum for me. We sipped our drinks as the setting sun cast roseate rays through diamond-shaped panes of glass. Jimmy Cat lit candles and began a fire in the fireplace. "Jimmy Cat, that was a fine meal," said Eddie Cat. "And your Quest Rum is a most excellent beverage," I added, raising my second mug. "Quite true," said Eddie Cat, "but no finer than your catnip wine which is a vintage of surpassing excellence.” I noticed that Eddie Cat was affecting a version of the local dialect and speaking cadence and unconsciously, I had as well. “I'm wondering, young Jimmy Cat,” Eddie Cat continued, “if you have a moment to spare from your evening chores, what news you can give us of comings and goings at the Inn and whether there are any quests or great voyages happening that you are aware of." Eddie Cat patted the seat beside him. "Thank you, sir." said Jimmy Cat seating himself on the indicated chair. "And, by the way, how is your respected father, Stanley Cat?" "He's taken to his sickbed, sir." "It's nothing serious, I hope." "I'm afraid it is, sir. Doctor Lindsay Cat says he fears that the end is at hand," replied Jimmy Cat with tears in his young, green eyes. "I'm so sorry to hear that," said Eddie Cat. "I'm so sorry to hear that too," I said awkwardly, but with real sympathy. Jimmy Cat had impressed me with his serious, respectful manner so unusual in a boy-cat his age. I felt a nurturing love for Jimmy cat that seemed a finer, and more noble than anything I felt for Jamie cat. We were all silent for a few moments. "There have been some strange occurrences here," said Jimmy Cat, remembering his duty to report on the news. "A fortnight ago we were visited by the Old Cat Woman of the Cards." "The Old Cat Woman of the Cards!" exclaimed Eddie Cat. "She lives? I heard of her as a kitten and even then I thought her to be nothing more than an old legend." "Aye, she lives, sir. But she be very, very old indeed. She knocked on our door these fourteen days past," said Jimmy Cat in a hushed tone. "I was the only one awake. At first I took her to be some sort of gnome mutant, so shrunken she was, and hidden within her red-hooded cloak. I invited her inside and saw that she was covered with the dust of many leagues of travel. She was very tired and I brought her biscuits and rum coffee. She spoke in so creaky a voice that I had to struggle to make out her words. It seemed as if she were in a trance and she spoke as one who walks in their sleep. “‘Young boy,’ she said, ‘honest, and steadfast young boy. Your heart be true so I come to tell you of strange events that draw near your inn. The cards have spoken to me and you must expect strange guests who arrive for an unknown purpose of great import.’ From a worn, leather pouch she drew out a card and laid it flat on the table beside the plate of biscuits. The card showed what looked like an Upright boy standing on a dark hill holding a silvery dagger up to the moonlight. ‘A prince travels here from afar, another world, another time.’ She drew another card that showed an unformed Upright man hanging upside down from a rope attached to a yellow doorframe. ‘A mutation, powerful and in conflict within himself, will follow. These guests will be strangers to each other, yet before one moon has passed over your roof they will embark on a quest together,’ her eyes were upon me and I felt my body tremble as she gazed into me. ‘Give all possible aid to this endeavor, young Jimmy Cat, for you are fated to be a servant to strange forces at work in the cosmos. The cards have spoken...’ “And with that, the Old Cat Woman of the Cards stood up, drained her cup of rum coffee in one swallow and wrapped her cloak about her. I begged her to let me make up a bed for her so that she could rest herself before she set out on the long and wearisome road, but she didn't even look in my direction as she headed for the door. The door closed behind her and that be the last I've seen of the old woman. But three days later, on a windy evening, there was another knock on the door. “I opened the door and there stood a mutation I supposed he was, but of a sort I've never heard of. In outward form he was alike an Upright youth, yet he was not an Upright, or not like any Upright I've ever heard of. His ears were slightly pointed, his hair was golden and his eyes were green and farseeing. And all about him was an uncanny feeling, a feeling of magic and strangeness. It seemed as if he glowed with an inner light and were not of this world. He wore a dark, hooded cloak and about his waist was a beautiful dagger. I remembered the card of the prince that the Old Lady of the Cards had drawn. I could see that her prophecy was coming true for here was surely the prince from afar, 'another time, another world' as she had said. He spoke to me, sirs, with a voice that was flowing, almost like a song, and when he looked into my eyes, time seemed to slow and I could see that his heart was true and good. 'My name is Jeremiah. I need food and lodging. I can pay with these.' From a small bag, he removed three beautiful gold coins and handed them to me. I've never seen such a coin before or since sir. On one side was a tree with many branches before the crescent of an old moon. On the other was a symbol of some sort I've never seen." Jimmy Cat reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a shimmering gold disc. He put it on the table before us. My eyes opened as I stared at the uncanny beauty of the coin. The engraving on its surface showed every texture of the tree's bark with detail that was far beyond ordinary eyesight. There was something about this coin that was different than any object I could ever remember seeing. It had a feeling of unequaled quality, and there was something about the complex shape of the tree that seemed so inevitable, so familiar. On the other side of the coin was a single, intricate rune. I felt that I should know the meaning of the rune---its flowing lines hung in my mind even as my eyes looked away from it. "These are strange tidings, indeed, Jimmy Cat," I said, slipping further into the local dialect. I returned the beautiful coin. "Can you tell us more about this Jeremiah?" "I’m afraid I don’t know much more, sir. He has a corner room that faces the water. He comes and goes but we catch scarcely a glimpse of him. He has the gift of stealth says my mother. Stealth beyond even feline stealth." "I believe we will see him soon," I said with an inner sense of knowing. "I feel there is a powerful inevitability to these occurrences. The old woman read the cards well. Could you show me to my room, Jimmy Cat?" I looked at Eddie Cat. "I hope you don't mind, but I feel I must be by myself for a while." Jimmy Cat got up at once. We went upstairs to the room, and Jimmy Cat gave me the key. I unlocked the door and went inside. The room was simple with the moon visible through a porthole-shaped window near the ceiling. There was a larger window of clear diamond-shaped panes that caught the moonlight reflecting on the rippling water of Puddle Bay. Jimmy Cat pulled back bedcovers and fluffed the fine feather pillows. But at that moment, a middle-aged woman cat, obviously Jimmy cat's mother, showed up. She wore a shabby housedress and apron and had a face that looked very worn and cross. “Jimmy Cat, would you come here please.” She sounded angry and irritable and glared suspiciously in my direction. Jimmy Cat went to where she was standing in the hallway. In a hissing whisper, but that was perfectly audible to my mutant hearing, she scolded Jimmy Cat, "What's the matter with you letting such a horrible mutation into the Inn? Do you think we're running a flophouse for reality-distorted freaks? And you served him food and drink! What do you suppose our neighbors and customers would say? How many times have I told you that mutations belong with their own kind and not in a respectable business. What are you thinking boy? Do you want to bring disgrace and ruin down on us? Do you want us to be penniless on the street? It would be bad enough if this were an ordinary mutation, but this, this thing, you let in... Just you wait till I tell your poor, sick father. God only knows what kind of mutated diseases or parasites its harboring. We'll have to pay hundreds of credits to have the whole room fumigated. Have you taken leave of your senses, are you utterly determined to see us ruined? Send it away at once and throw out the food and scrub the plates while I talk to your father about your punishment. And don't you dare ever, EVER to think of doing such a foolish thing again or I'll box your ears into bloody stumps." How I wanted to scratch at her eyes and in my mind I called her all sorts of names, old dish rag, pussy head, lice pussy, dung cat, cat bitch and the like, but I didn't want to embarrass young Jimmy Cat who had been so nice to me. I felt in the inside pocket of my overcoat and found that I had a few of the rectangular plastic credit wafers that would be accepted as currency in Cat City or almost anywhere in Upright City and its outskirts. The mother withdrew and Jimmy Cat turned to me with a very chagrined expression on his innocent, young face. He seemed to be aware that I had heard everything. “Sir, please don’t be offended by my mother’s harsh words. She has not been herself since my poor father has taken ill. We---” But I waved away Jimmy Cat’s apologies. “None of this is your fault, Jimmy Cat, and I am all too familiar with how people can react to mutants. I’m only sorry that I have made trouble for you and I can easily find lodging elsewhere. I will be off momentarily, but there is one great service you can do for me if you are willing.” “Please sir,” replied Jimmy Cat with sincerity, “I would like to help in any way that I can.” Acting from pure intuition, I gave Jimmy Cat some instructions in a confidential whisper, “The next time you see this strange prince, Jeremiah, as he called himself, please tell him that you have seen a living snowman and that I have gone on to Cat City. He can find me there if he wishes. Also, don’t mention anything about my departure to Sir Eddie Cat until tomorrow morning.” “Certainly, sir.” said Jimmy Cat, and he led me down a back staircase so that I could make my departure anonymously. But before I set off, he insisted on giving me a large paper mug of the excellent Quest Rum, and a small paper sack filled with the anchor-shaped, pastel mints to, “lighten my spirits for the long evening walk,” as he put it. I thanked him profusely for his consideration and set off on the long walk to Cat City. I walked a long way down the road before I saw the outline of Cat City ahead of me as a jewelry of lights . I sipped Quest Rum, ate mints, and my heart felt lightened by Jimmy Cat’s kind treatment of me. My mind pondered the strange prophecies of the Old Cat Woman of the Cards, the beautiful golden coin, and the mysterious Jeremiah. After a while, I found myself under the lime-green blinking neon sign of the Mutant Motel, a squalid little establishment on the outskirts of Cat City. It was a depressing contrast to the rustic charm of the Admiral Black Paw Inn. A grimy sign on the door said "Since N171 Providing Quality Lodgings for Guests of the Reality Challenged Persuasion." The night shift motel clerk was an ugly, old tomcat wearing a sleeveless white T-shirt. He was watching obese, mesomorphic tomcats wrestling on a cheap, black-and-white television. I stood there for several long seconds before the clerk bothered to look up and glare at me with open suspicion. He had a foul-smelling catnip stogie in his mouth. It was slimy with saliva and looked like a tube of dog shit. He didn't even bother taking it out of his mouth when he spoke, "Can I help you?" His tone was surly and lethargic. "I want a room," I told him with cold terseness. "Credit wafer," replied the clerk, his mouth slobbering the stogie. He tapped on the counter with his claws to indicate where I should put my credit wafer. I slapped it down and looked about the dingy motel office while the clerk ran the wafer and shuffled some papers. All the while the wrestling cats on the television set were grunting and cursing in the background. There were wire racks in the motel office that offered a very limited selection of Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacks. I found a big twenty-eight ounce cellophane bag of Hungry Tomcat Mesquite Fiesta Barbecue flavored Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snack capsules. It wasn’t my favorite flavor, but I could get twice as much for my money than if I bought the little twelve-ounce packages. Collecting dust on another shelf were some mutant specialty drinks including a liter bottle of Snow Comfort. I put the bottle and the cellophane bag on the counter next to my credit wafer. “And these." The clerk looked at me spitefully, as if he knew I were buying these items just to make more work for him. While he rang me up a slimy thread of catnip-stained saliva descended from his mouth onto my card wafer. I felt a distinct urge to wrap my thin and twig-like, but ever-so-strong, mutant hands around his throat and squeeze him until his eyes popped out. The clerk ran my credit wafer through a slot. Several seconds later, there was a loud beep. "Declined," said the clerk triumphantly. I slapped down another credit wafer and could see the his annoyance when it went through. He handed it back with a greasy plastic access card. "Room 101," slobbered the clerk and immediately he went back to watching wrestling on the little television set. Alone in my room, I lay on the uncomfortable bed watching the pale green neon ghost of the motel sign throbbing on and off on the ceiling. Compulsively, I began eating my way through the bag of Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacks, the sweetened, artificial barbecue flavor mixing unpleasantly with gulps of Snow Comfort. I didn’t feel buzzed at all, only extremely tired but unable to sleep. Bitter, bitter thoughts about Jamie Cat, which I had managed to put out of my mind for a while, came back with a vengeance. Jamie Cat. Jamie Cat. Somewhere she was feeding all her life energy, and all the moist, warm treasures of her body to Tony Cat who was lapping them up with smug satisfaction. How ludicrous and pathetic was the idea that she would ever consider me anything but an annoying and loathsome mutation--- a creepy, freakish thing to roll her eyes at as she and her cool tomcat boyfriend Tony Cat walked down the street together. Why shouldn't she think that when it is all too true? I thought, writhing on the uncomfortable motel mattress. I felt nauseated thinking about my ugly snowbody sagging on the plastic urine-smelling mattress. Various dark thoughts and fantasies made a grotesque parade through my mind. I thought about breaking the motel mirror and slashing my wrists with broken mirror fragments. I saw Jamie Cat watching me being carried out dead on a stretcher. Then she'll be sorry, I thought. Then she'll realize who really loved her. I ate and drank and felt my snowbrain become feverish with sugar and alcohol. Attempting to escape my inner chaos I turned on the motel television. It was a cheap and antiquated TV, cathode ray type, sitting across from my bed. The glass screen was permanently stained with some sort of amber-colored organic residue that I realized was porno-vid induced tomcat cum that had become baked on by the heat and radiation of the video tube. Beneath the amber stains, I saw a luscious, young shecat and her tomcat boyfriend rubbing against each other. The tom mounted her and began thrusting into her as their tails entwined in ecstasy. After their copulation, their excited purring was amplified as they took drags from Lover Cat catnip cigarettes. The shecat was calling her boyfriend, "Ace,” and he was calling her, "my sweet fur thing." I changed the channel in disgust. The Play Cat channel was on and I saw a big stud-cat mounting a svelte shecat with big staring eyes and a wet, pink tongue. Next was a music video channel that was featuring the insinuating voice and pelvic gyrations of Electro-Star Tomcat, the new singer that all the young shecats were fawning over. Resentfully, I remembered that Jamie Cat went through an Electro-Star Tomcat phase. At one point, she had all his discs and a huge poster of him hanging up in her room. There was the sound of his unctuous singing and shots of Electro-Star Tomcat riding a motorcycle dressed all in leather and studs, then a shot of him dancing in a disgustingly pelvic manner surrounded by spotlights and screaming young shecats with dilated eyes, then a shot of him pouncing on a big, terrified mouse and biting its head off with one bite. I changed the channel and took another handful of the Hungry Tomcat Mesquite Fiesta Barbecue Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snack capsules with a chaser slug of Snow Comfort. The seductive eyes of a luscious shecat were on the tube staring right at me, “Hey you,” she whispered looking right at me. “Yes you,” I glanced nervously around to see if there was anyone else in the room. “No, I mean you,” and she pointed a graceful paw at me, “You big boycat.” she said coquettishly, “Oh, oh you're such a big, big boycat you're getting me sooo excited. Ohh, ohhh, you know who I'm talking to. I'm talking to you, you big studley tommuffin. It's me, Honey Cat, and I know who I'm talking to. You come on down and see me, see me tonight, I'm waiting for you. You know what my number is. Come on down to Adventure Cat City. I'll be waiting for you at 900 Pussy Plaza. Ohhh you big tomcat, don't make me wait for you, ohh, ohhhh....” I knew it was all an illusion, but I have to admit that I was turned on by Honey Cat seeming to accept me as a tomcat. If only Jamie Cat could see the inner tomcat in me. Every time Honey Cat referred to me as a “boycat” or “tomcat” I felt my shrunken self-esteem enlarge and pulse with life. No one had ever affirmed me as a tomcat the way Honey Cat was, and she did so repeatedly and with such seductive confidence as she stared me right in the eyes. Then Honey Cat faded out like a mirage and a slick announcer’s voice came on: “Are you just lying around in front of the TV stuffing your face? You could be getting down at Adventure Cat City and winning the race! Hey you, don't put up with a reality that’s shitty. You could be hanging with the girliecats at Adventure Cat City!” “Adventure Cat City” flashed stroboscopically in bright purple against a hot-pink background. Then there was a shot of the Adventure Cat City Casino, which was shaped like a giant mouse with red neon eyes. Nearby was the Adventure Cat City Lounge, which had been made to look like a giant pie-shaped slice of Swiss cheese next to the mouse. “Oceans of liquor! Hot slots and even hotter girliecats!” blinked the TV. I watched the ads with cynical disgust. No sleazy, shystercats were going to make money off of my misery. Oh Jamie Cat. I ate another handful of the Hungry Tomcat Mesquite Fiesta Barbecue Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snack capsules and felt myself getting older and weaker, felt all the refined sugar drying out my snowcrystals, vital moisture being replaced by an artificially barbeque-flavored syrup of chemicals. The capsules had been made for the cat market and had a nasty burnt animal flesh aftertaste. I breathed into my hand and sniffed it. Now I had putrid, Mesquite Fiesta Barbecue breath that was likely to stay with me for a several days until the toxic residue could get metabolized out of my system. But that was the least of my concerns. At this very moment, Jamie Cat could be sleeping in a bed in Tony Cat's arms. My whole being writhed with the agony of this possibility. Heartbeat-by-heartbeat I felt the separation from Jamie Cat. Every moment I was away from Jamie Cat, Tony Cat was preying on her luscious body, taking her again and again whenever and wherever he felt like it. With feline acrobatics, he was taking Jamie Cat in every sort of humiliating and degrading position he could think of. And while all those sexual acrobatics were going on, I was doing nothing except gnawing cheap sugar capsules alone on my urine-smelling motel mattress. Once again, I thought of the mirror, thought of breaking it into shards of glass and cutting myself with them, cutting myself until all the moisture ran out of my body, cutting myself not to make Jamie Cat sorry, but as an act of mercy, the only way I could think to end the suffering that stretched out the moments so that each blink of the motel's neon sign was an eternity of darkness and suffering. In counter-rhythm to the throb of the neon was the throbbing of the television, "Hot slots and even hotter girliecats!" still blinking hypnotically above the Cat City Casino. Finally, they changed the image and a new slogan started blinking, "Win Big! And have it all!" There was a short video clip that showed a middle-aged, out-of-shape tom in shabby clothes playing a slot. The cylinders of the slot spun and then with a cash register-clang they stopped to reveal a row of six red mice. The slot vomited an impossible torrent of huge gold coins. Then the video cut to a shot of the same tom, but now he was at the wheel of a huge yacht, his gut bulging beneath a colorful Bermuda shirt. He had a cocktail glass in one hand, smoked a big fat catnip cigar and wore one of those cheesy, fake yachtsman’s caps. Luscious young shecats in bikini bathing suits were all around him and one of them was unzipping his fly and winking at the camera with a big mouse-eating grin. "Win big and have it all!" blinked the TV. Half-heartedly, I fantasized about winning big at the casino. I could roll up to Jamie Cat in a stretch limousine and give her a diamond bracelet. I could buy her anything. But that would never buy her love I realized, at best it would only make her a prostitute. I saw Jamie Cat bringing the diamond bracelet and a bunch of loot home to Tony Cat and them both laughing and laughing. Jamie Cat would go into the bathroom and disgustedly spit out a few snowcrystals and gargle with antiseptic mouthwash. Then she'd come out and party with Tony Cat all night doing lines of coke and, of course, doing their coked-up sexual acrobatics all night long. The thought of this made me nauseated and I took another shot of Snow Comfort to calm myself. Somehow, the additional dose of alcohol ignited a flash of survival instinct, a fight back response. I realized that I was wallowing in potentially suicidal self-pity and that I had to take an action of some sort. I sat up on the motel bed and resolved to check out of the Mutant Motel and, for reasons I was not quite clear about, determined that I would travel to Adventure Cat City this very evening. Adventure Cat City was not a real city of course. It was merely the red light district of Cat City, a garish nighttime world of pornography, prostitution and every other sort of vice you could think of. The streets were lined with massage parlors, catnip bars and the so-called “chop shops” where aging tomcats could hunt mice that had been fattened and given drugs to slow their reflexes. I passed by “Pussy Galore” a gigantic adultcat video store that claimed to be have the world’s largest collection of videos depicting cats doing just about anything with other cats. I passed “Rhodeo,” a gay bar and dance club where dangerous looking toms in leather motorcycle outfits stood out front looking for trouble. There was also the “Pink Pussy,” a transvestite nightclub where gigantic, statuesque shemale cats in high heels and sequined outfits passed out flyers advertising their variety shows. Sleaze and decadence called from every angle of Adventure Cat City, but I felt strangely comfortable here, it was the anything-goes part of town, the one place where no one would pass judgment on me for being such a deformed and deviant mutant. I had already seen a number of highly deformed mutants on the streets, and none of them seemed to raise an eyebrow. The most striking of these was a shemutant who looked like a large, three-headed ostrich. Each of her three faces bore a striking resemblance to the jowly face of Eleanor Roosevelt in her seventies. Her eyes were kindly, world-weary and old, but she was tricked out incongruously in heavily spiked black leather and chains. But there were some feminine touches as well---she wore a strand of pearls, there was a cameo brooch pinned to one of the lapels of her leather jacket and on the other lapel she had a corsage of white carnations. The back of her leather jacket had hand-embroidered letters that read, “Naughty, but Nice.” The whole outfit seemed a bit pathetic since it was hard to imagine who would want her to be naughty, but nice. Nevertheless, I felt a strong affinity with this creature. There was a sense that we shared a certain loneliness known only to the most reality-distorted mutants. Acting on an intuitive impulse, I decided to and ask her for advice. “Excuse me madam, but I am somewhat unfamiliar with this part of town and wonder if you could recommend an establishment appropriate to a mutant in my situation?” This was obviously a very poor question, since it wasn’t necessarily apparent what my situation was, but her faces seemed so kind and understanding that I felt it would be all right to ask her anything. Also, now that I stood close to her, I noticed that she had this old-lady-talcum-powder smell that I found reassuring. “Hmmm, let’s see now, an appropriate establishment…” The creature had a pleasing, if somewhat affectedly falsetto, motherly voice, that sounded very feminine, but also like she was trying very hard to sound feminine which made me realize that I couldn't be entirely sure of her apparently female gender. Still, despite the ambiguous gender, the chains and black leather, and affected voice, she conveyed an inner dignity and benevolence that contrasted all the sleazy hustlers and decadent types abounding in Adventure Cat City. She also had a very peculiar way of speaking. The middle head, which was apparently dominant, did all the real speaking, and the side heads filled up the pauses with a chorus of repetitive phrases such as, “Oh my-oh-my-oh-my, yes- yes- yes” and “I see-I see-I see.” “An appropriate establishment—oh-my-oh my, yes-yes-yes, I see-I see, well I suppose that depends on what sort of diversion or service you might be looking for. Are there any sort of particulars you require?” I thought for a moment, “Well, let’s see, I’ve been feeling very poorly about an unrequited love affair and I’d like some sort of adventure that would take my mind off of it, but I need to stay somewhere in the Adventure Cat City/Cat City area as I am expecting another party to come find me here eventually.” “Oh-my-oh-my, yes-yes-yes, I see-I see-I see. I should think you might find just what you are looking for at the Adventure Realities Store, which is just another two blocks down this side of Broadway.” I thanked her profusely and found myself even bowing slightly. She had been so courteous and considerate and despite her deformities, she carried herself with an almost regal bearing that I found pleasing and even admirable. I wondered for a moment if one day I would be able to bear my deformity with such grace and dignity. I walked a short distance down Broadway and found myself standing before a rundown-looking storefront with a sign that said, “MORE REAL THAN REAL----YOUR PORTAL TO ADVENTURE REALITIES.” Beneath the painted sign was a partly-broken, red neon sign that blinked, “MORE REAL THAN R A .” A worn-out, pre-recorded voice droned the same message, "...MORE REAL THAN REAL MORE REAL THAN REAL, MORE REAL THAN REAL..." endlessly from a bullhorn-like loudspeaker over the door. This all seemed depressingly mundane, and yet I had another of those strange, déjà vu moments. It felt like someone was walking over the grave of long buried memories. I knew that I had arrived at exactly where I was meant to be. Feeling these presentiments, I walked in. A young, thin Upright man, one of the very few Uprights I had seen all night was sitting behind the counter. He had a very pale complexion and spiked, fluorescent magenta hair. He wore wrap-around mirrored sunglasses, a shirt brilliant with colors, and earbuds. He didn’t seem to notice me at all. His head was bobbing and weaving to music from the headphones and he was sucking on a drink box of Turbo Sugar Speedo Rush Ultra Max. The colorful shirt he wore was glossy and had detailed comic book scenes printed on it. All the scenes showed a part Upright, part machine cyborg built on an heroic scale with bulging metal or protein muscles---it was hard to tell---and all sorts of heavy metal protuberances and integrated armor and weapons. His face was completely hidden behind a black breath mask. In each of the scenes the cyborg was having sex in a different position with a helpless-looking pale, thin Upright girl, barely pubescent, with big terrified eyes. It was quite offensive, but a lot of Turbo Sugar packaging had these sorts of images so it was starting to seem commonplace. A huge advertising button on his shirt pocket read, "More Real Than Real Laser Shirts You Design. Wear Your Favorite Moments. 29.95 Credit Units." I stood right in front of him, but he still gave no hint that he noticed me, his head bobbing and weaving to a pulsating rhythm. I took out a credit wafer and without the slightest break in his rhythm he passed it through a credit reader and announced, “Bed Seven.” I glanced behind him and saw there was a plasterboard hallway with numbered doors. I walked down the hallway with the depressed certainty that what I had paid for was nothing more than a tanning salon session. Perhaps this was how the three-headed mutant interpreted “an establishment appropriate to a mutation in my situation.” A memory resurfaced of a time when I had bought a tanning package. It was when I first met Jamie Cat and I naively thought I could get somewhere with her by improving my pale complexion. The tanning salon looked very similar except that it had fading posters of tropical islands taped up everywhere. I opened door number seven and found myself in a cramped plasterboard room with a single light bulb dangling from a wire. The only thing in the room was what appeared to be a battered sarcophagus-like tanning bed. There was the acrid, musky smell of tomcat perspiration. A torn paper sign entitled, “More Real Than Real Rules and Regulations” was taped to one of the plasterboards. There were six consecutively numbered items: 1. Remove all jewelry and metal appliances. 2. Disrobe completely. 3. Not recommended for pregnant women, people with heart conditions, liver disease, retroviruses, parasitic infections, mutation formations, bodily fluids, DNA or fluid-filled cell structures. 4. Obtain permission from your health net. More Real Than Real accepts no responsibility or liability. Use at your own risk. 5. Orgasm Tax (There were several numbers crossed out, each one representing a slight price increase, and a final uncrossed out number---“27.85 credit units”) 6. Absolutely no refunds. I wasn’t sure what to make of all these rules, but supposed that they were local tanning regulations. I wasn’t very interested in tanning, but I realized there were no refunds and felt determined to get my credit units worth. I turned the little locking knob on the doorknob and tested it to make sure it was locked. I hated the thought of anyone seeing me in my bare snow. I disrobed and lay down on the bed. The smell of old tomcat perspiration was nauseating. Then there was a pneumatic sound, and the bed closed in on me. There was darkness, not a glimmer of ultraviolet, and I became alarmed. My snowskin felt prickly all over and I tried to push open the lid of the sarcophagus, but found my body was completely paralyzed. I couldn't even blink my eyes. There was a feeling of something like warm, wet fur touching every part of my body. I felt like I was inside the womb of some huge animal. Then I felt electricity flowing into me from the fur and realized that what felt like wet fur were actually microscopic electro-conductive filaments of some sort, and the wetness was apparently some sort of electro-conductive gel. There was another pneumatic sound and I felt fluids being pumped into my snowtissues. I blacked out for a moment and regained consciousness in a space of fluorescent pink. *** I was tumbling weightlessly in a universe of undifferentiated fluorescent pink. The perspiration smell was gone, replaced by a distinctly recognizable Turbo-Sugar-Power-Wad-Pink-Bubble-Gum smell. It was quite pleasurable, and I felt my breathing slow down and my whole body relaxing. My mind felt blank, and I was completely relaxed, when a flash of lightning, powerful beyond imagining, shattered the pink universe into tiny globules that flashed away like a comet and left me tumbling in outer space surrounded by stars and nebulae. Powerfully amplified Wagnerian music came on, Thus Spake Zarathustra I think, and increased in volume until I felt my whole being tremble with the crescendos. At the same time, a monolith-like rectangular object was hurtling through space toward me. When it came to a stop, it towered over me, starlight flaring around its silhouette. It rotated slightly allowing the front to be illuminated. It was a humongous box of Turbo Sugar Power Wad Pink Bubble Gum. Then there was another devastating flash of lightning, the box disappeared, and an enormous stone tablet came hurtling toward me. It seemed about to crush me, but halted right before my face. The tablet was ringed with fire and had chiseled letters on it that read, "NO REFUNDS." Then came another great burst of lightning and the tablet shattered into scintillating dust. There was a moment of silence and then, from inside my head, a voice occurred, a super-amplified voice of power with an echo effect that made all my snowcrystals resonate. There was also some new Wagnerian music in the background, The Flight of the Valkyries, and when the voice spoke it felt like I was hearing the voice of God: "TURBO SUGAR CORPORATION, IN LEVERAGED ASSOCIATION WITH TURBO GOD-X SYNERGISTICS, GENESIS-ZEUS TURBO-GRAPHICS AND NEXUS-DEUTERONOMY NEUROPHARMACEUTICALS, PRESENTS--- TURBO SUGAR WORLD---with CENTURION NEURAL INTERFACE 7.1 and DOLBY PROSYNAPTICAL SURROUND SENSE 3.1 (Where Available)." There was a loud tearing sound, space somehow tore open, and I found myself free-falling toward a huge city of staggering complexity with moving metal buildings and superstructures and self-transforming building-sized machines. There was movement and complexity beyond what my mind could possibly comprehend, and my mutant panoramic vision staggered my snowbrain with an impossible upload of visual information. My freefalling slowed to a gentle landing on an empty street. The street was curiously still and a striking contrast to all the complex movement and self-transforming machinery I had seen from above. The buildings on the street were tall, but windowless and empty. Many had huge holes where mortar shells had hit them and millions of small holes from automatic weapons fire penetrated everything. The ground was strewn with chunks of concrete, shell casings, and metal fragments. A strange smell and acrid smoke was coming from a smoldering pile of debris just in front of me. I took a step closer and recoiled in disgust and horror. It was a pile of charred Upright limbs, bits of flesh and clothing still visible as the mass of mostly organic material smoldered next to a burnt-out artillery gun. A dark plumb of acrid smoke from the flesh fire drifted down the avenue. I felt disoriented and nauseated by the charred flesh smell of the smoke. Slowly, I rose to my knees and found I was clothed in plain gray coveralls. Before I could stand and get my bearings, there was a crashing sound and a terrible vibration that shook ground and buildings. It felt like an earthquake, and in a couple of seconds there was another dreadful crash and shaking. I trembled on my knees and put my hands over my head as the crashes continued at regular intervals growing louder and more violent. Looking out from between my fingers, I saw that a titanic behemoth was approaching with fat legs of pink flesh at least sixty-stories high. I looked up and saw that the legs belonged to what appeared to be a giant infant that towered over the high-rise buildings. The infant was wearing a white diaper, a black eyepatch, and it wielded an enormous two-bladed bronze battle-axe with glittering, razor-sharp edges. The infant was acting out fighting moves, its battle-axe slicing the air with the speed and agility of a Samurai. Partially demolished buildings were falling to pieces just from the impact of its footfalls as the gargantuan infant approached. Chunks of concrete bristling with rusting rebar came crashing down near me, and I missed being crushed by just a few feet. I scrambled to take evasive action, but the infant came to a halt just before me. Its pinkish feet seemed to rest in asphalt that had cratered around them. Trembling, I looked up, and beside its enormous legs, all I could see of this infant behemoth was an enormous white diaper that filled the sky like a giant cloud above me. The diaper puffed out so much that it was impossible to see the head or upper torso. A voice rang out that seemed to make the whole city reverberate with its power. "PREPARE TO FIGHT NEW BOY." There was a swooshing sound and the battle-axe came slicing down through the air bringing a curved razor edge fifty-feet across to within an inch of my face. "But I don't want to fight," I gasped. My voice sound tiny and weak compared to the infant who seemed to speak through 100,000-watt subwoofers. "You don't?" Suddenly there was a pale, large-eyed boy standing in front of me wearing faded rags. There was no sign of the terrible infant anywhere except for the huge footprint holes in the street. The boy was small, thin, but good-looking, with large, intelligent brown eyes. "You really don't want to fight?" the boy had a vaguely cockney British accent. "No, why would I want to fight?" I asked. "Everybody else wants to fight," said the boy. "Everybody wants to fight or do the sexy stuff or fight and do the sexy stuff together. It's quite boring really. What sort of powers do you have? Can't say I've seen any snowmen in the TSW before. Seems an odd character to pick in a world with so many first-person shooters." The boy seemed friendly and curious. "It's not a character, this is who I really am," I replied. "What? That's ridiculous," the boy replied contemptuously. "I hope you don't expect me to believe that. Nobody comes to the TSW as who they really are. Even if you wanted to, the code wouldn't allow it. Besides, there's no such thing as a living snowman. Is this some sort of trap or surprise attack? Try anything and I'll be Baby Blaster again in half a nanosecond." "Who's 'Baby Blaster'?" I asked. "One of my characters, of course, you retard. Are you still trying to play that you're not a character?" "I'm a mutation. I was born this way." "Very funny. So funny, I forgot to laugh. I'll prove you're a character." The boy detached an object from a utility belt that was hidden beneath his rags. It was a scanner of some sort that looked weatherized and was covered in yellow, rubberized armor. The scanner hummed and beeped a few times as the boy made a quick pass with it a few inches from my face. The pupils of his large eyes dilated as he looked at me with growing astonishment. "Holy shit, I thought I'd seen everything down here," said the boy, looking at me suspiciously. "How did you pull this off?" "I didn't pull anything off. I was in a place that I thought was a tanning salon and—“ the boy cut me off impatiently. "Enough with the storyline. I get it. You're not going to tell me your proprietary secrets. And your storyline is that you were already such an extreme mutation that the TSW's filters assumed you were already in character and let you through as such. If I knew a hack as cool as this, I wouldn't tell just anyone either." The boy stared at me with a look of shrewd appraisal. "What's your name?" I asked. "Oliver," said the boy, "Oliver Twister." "Is that your real name?" I asked. "Of course it's not my real name!" said Oliver, "So your character is supposed to be a retarded snowman? That's going to get old really fast, but original, I'll give you that. C'mon, let's get out of here before someone wants to fight or do the sexy stuff to us." I got up and followed Oliver Twister across the street. It was then that I took more careful notice of the clothing I was wearing. The grey coveralls I had found myself in seemed almost featureless, no hems, buttons or zippers, but they had a large advertising patch with the TSW logo and in candy-striped font, the words, "Turbo Sugar World." "Wait a minute," I said, thinking of something. "If I'm here as myself how come I'm wearing these gray coveralls? I lay down on that neural bed thing naked and I've never owned a pair of gray coveralls." "Well the TSW isn't going to let you come through naked, you know," said Oliver Twister, who looked at me now as if I really must be retarded and wasn't merely play-acting. "Why not?" I asked. "It's against the FVC." I looked puzzled. "The Fam-ily Val-ue Code." Oliver Twister over-enunciated, giving me a look of extreme impatience as we walked past the still smoldering pile of charred limbs. "But then why do they allow the sexy stuff?" I asked. "I don't know. Why is the sky gray? It's always been that way!" replied Oliver in a tone of such exasperation that I decided to stop asking questions. I followed Oliver into a long dark alley, our footsteps echoing off walls of dark concrete. One alley led to another and soon I realized that I had followed Oliver into a maze of alleys, many of which were claustrophobically narrow. As I followed him through the twists and turns, it occurred to me that I could never find my way out of this maze on my own, and that I knew next to nothing about this self-admitted "character," "Oliver Twister." Guess I should have thought of that before I followed him into this labyrinth. I gnashed my teeth and the thought of my passive stupidity was like another spadesful of dirt tossed on the putrefying corpse of my self-esteem. The alleys went on and on and by the time Oliver halted, the grey sky had turned dark and our only light was artificial, mostly amber light filtering through grimy windows with tattered curtains or blinds. Some seemed to be covered from inside with what looked like stained oilcloth. Oliver had pulled out his scanner and used it to sweep the area. “Just making sure no one followed us,” said Oliver, putting away the scanner. Nothing seemed to distinguish the place where we had stopped, though I noticed that we were standing at an intersection of alleys and the entrance to one of them was beyond shadowy. There were a few feet of shadow, but the rest of the alley seemed to disappear into total darkness. Oliver pointed toward the darkened alley. "This is going to lead us into another set of alleys, a set that the TSW has never mapped and that their locator bots are unable to recognize. It's going to get pretty weird for the first couple of minutes though. Once we enter, you may have trouble seeing me so I want you to follow this red dot. Oliver pulled a cylindrical object from his pocket, a laser pointer apparently, because he used it make a bright red dot on the sidewalk. "No matter how disoriented you get, just follow this red dot," said Oliver, "Got it?" "Got it," I replied. Oliver led me into the shadowed alley that immediately shrouded us in a deep, velvety darkness. With the darkness came vertigo and disorientation as I sensed spatial relations being violated and up/down, left/right got shuffled around. I looked for the red dot, but no longer experienced it as on the ground. It was just a point ahead of me, like a red star somewhere in a dark space that seemed to support me though I had no sense of footing, or even of the direction of any ground on which I could place my feet. Oddly though, as soon as I made the motion of walking, my every step seemed to find a velvety platform underneath it, but I had the queasy sense that these platforms I was using as stepping stones were placed at precise intervals that anticipated my footsteps, and that otherwise I was just crossing an unformed abyss. Some of my footsteps seemed to shift my whole spatial orientation and when that happened I felt a surge of anxious and nauseating vertigo. It was a sickening and demoralizing disorientation of the sort you might expect to feel if you were made to sniff airplane glue from a paper bag and were then led blindfolded through a series of spatially distorted M.C. Escher etchings. I decided it was better not to think about what I was doing too much or I might lose my nerve, so I just kept walking, if you can call it that, toward the red dot. Mostly I think I got through the horrible disorientation by the sense that I was being led very precisely through all the spatial distortions. I must have been getting the hang of it, because I caught up to the red dot, and could feel Oliver breathing next to me. We took a few steps together, and then it was as if the darkness had been merely a bubble enclosing us and now we were stepping out of the bubble and onto a rain-swept bridge made of chain and loose wooden planking. There were powerful gusts of wind and my spindly fingers wrapped themselves around the slippery wetness of the chain handrail as I tried to stabilize myself on the undulating bridge. Oliver looked back at me and had to shout for me to hear him through the ferocious wind, "Make sure you've always got a tight grip on the handrail. The bridge will hold, but it's been known to whipsaw around in the wind. We're almost there." Tightening my white-knuckled grip on the handrail, I followed Oliver across the swaying and slippery planks. The bridge led us into a swirling grey mist, and I could barely see Oliver ahead of me. We came out of the mist, and the winds seemed to swirl around us. Lights, or optical distortions of some kind, were spinning around the bridge that led up to what looked like an old iron door with heavy rivets and an oversized sliding latch. Oliver pulled on the latch with considerable effort until it clanged open. We stepped across the threshold, and Oliver closed and locked the iron door behind us. The sound of the wind was cut off completely when the door closed and now there was the eerie quiet of an abandoned city. We were in another alley that looked very much like all the other alleys we had been through before--- which made the whole disorienting journey seem pointless. Oliver turned toward me, as if he were aware of my thoughts, and said, "This might look like all the other alleys, but it's not. We are in a set of alleys that is completely hidden from the TSW even though they are largely running off of their processing power. Get it?" "Got it," I replied. I wasn't completely sure that I did get it, but that sort of call-and-response question seems to trigger the expected answer automatically, and I knew that Oliver didn't have the patience to answer my naive questions. "OK,” said Oliver, "just a little ways further. I followed him through a few more alleys to an innocuous spot where a few grimy, concrete steps led down to a metal door and what looked the outside of a dingy basement apartment. Oliver put his hand flat on the apartment door and I heard some sort of electronic scanning sounds come from inside the door. A beam of blue light came from the little glass spy hole in the door and scanned the pupils of Oliver's large, brown eyes. There was a sound of bolts retracting and Oliver opened the door which led us into a metal tank with metal planking across the floor. The door closed behind us, and all I could see where are few amber and red lights on an instrument panel with knobs and analog meters. I heard the whine of what sounded like some very large machine, an old dynamo perhaps, powering up and beginning to spin. "Reality distortion decontamination chamber," said Oliver, "Designed it myself. It's going to strip away any sort of reality-distorting code, no matter how subtle, and reveal us in our true forms. Every layer of misrepresentation will be gone, so even if all you've got on is a bit of a digitized eye shadow and a 2% percent vertical stretch to look thinner, you can expect to lose that now. You go first." Oliver pointed toward the far end of the tank where the metal planking led into a field of indigo plasma suspended between a ringed array of giant brass electrodes. Hoping that I wasn't about to be electrocuted (snowtissue is nearly as conductive as mammalian tissue), I approached the field of indigo plasma and stepped through it, not feeling much. There was only a couple of additional feet of planking and then an ordinary-looking metal door with a doorknob and no lock that I could see. When I reached for the doorknob, I saw that my regular overcoat and usual clothing had replaced the coveralls I had been wearing. I opened the door and stepped into a room that looked comfortable in a lived-in way, but also had a few racks of technical-looking equipment. There was a desk and posters on the walls, most of which looked like complex maps or diagrams of some sort. Near the middle of the room were two upholstered chairs and a small antique table with some tea china on it, and a steaming iron teapot on a charcoal brazier. Turning around, I saw Oliver step through the field of indigo plasma and then through the still open door. He had emerged transformed. His eyes were grey instead of brown, and he was taller and older. He had the appearance of a highly intelligent and good-looking -college student who was nineteen or twenty-years old. He had curly blonde hair, glasses, chiseled features and that sort of smooth, slightly pale, unblemished skin that seems slightly translucent so that you can see traceries of blue veins beneath the surface. His face reflected intelligent amazement, the look of a brilliant mind rapidly analyzing a novel situation. Oliver's glasses had a purplish, iridescent sheen and I sensed that they were streaming some sort of data into his grey eyes even as he stared right at me. Despite his youth, he had a somewhat commanding presence. I sensed his seriousness, intense will and a brilliant, somewhat arrogant mind that didn't suffer fools gladly. "OK. Now you've got my full attention," said Oliver. "This is some kind of amazing, absolutely fundamental hack you've pulled off. I know you aren't any kind of agent of the TSW, so who are you, what are you?" I looked down at my pale, spindly fingers of snow tissue. "As far as I can tell," I replied, "I'm exactly who I seem to be me." Oliver stared at me silently for a few moments, and then gestured toward the two chairs near the center of the room. I sat down on one of the chair that, despite the old-looking upholstery, seemed to be filled with memory foam as it adjusted to the contours of my body perfectly. "Jasmine green tea?" asked Oliver. I nodded, and Oliver poured tea from the iron teakettle into two china cups he set carefully on the small table. I sensed that Oliver was someone who ate a very refined diet, vegan raw foods perhaps, and that contributed to his unblemished skin and this glow that he had that was both healthy, but also slightly pale and unearthly. "We should let these cool for a couple of minutes." Oliver sat back in his chair, his grey eyes intense and analytical beneath the lenses of his slightly iridescent spectacles. "Exactly what reality did you come from before you entered the TSW?" asked Oliver. I replied as best I could, relating the More Real Than Real place, Cat City and some of the things leading up to it. I decided to leave out a lot of the embarrassing details, everything related to Jamie cat and so forth, and Oliver seemed most interested in the incarnation seizures. The tea cooled, and I saw Oliver watch in fascination as my spindly snow fingers wrapped around the cup. I described every incarnation seizure I could remember and eventually got back to the morning on the subway where I realized there was a fuzziness about my memory and that for a few minutes I was convinced that I had a series of mini-strokes while I was sleeping that had ravaged my brain. Although I could remember very vividly some of the childhood incidents of being raised by Betty Cat, there seemed to be vast discontinuities in my memory, fuzzy missing spaces where all the memories of the time before that morning on the subway should have been. "Fascinating," said Oliver, "It looks like there is a distinct horizon line in your memory. It suggests that you may have had another identity before that horizon line. Do you have any memories, even if they seem very disconnected, of ever having worked with code, of ever being involved in source-code hacking?" I shook my head. As if making a great summation, Oliver said, "I think I actually believe you." He seemed surprised by his own words, and for a moment he looked younger, and his quality of intense, brilliant skepticism dissolved momentarily so that he seemed more like a college student struggling with a mind-blowing experience. "So you don't know what you did, and none of my instruments---," Oliver gestured toward the racks of equipment in the room, "are telling me anything useful about what you did. But somehow you pulled off a fundamental hack, a total transformation of your baseline form, and despite what you call 'incarnation seizures,' what I might call a cascading series of matrices, this novel form seems to be stable. The tank out there stripped away any sort of distorting and code and yet---" Oliver gestured toward my person. "This is an amazing accomplishment, but we need to know how it was accomplished." "Why do you need to know?" I asked. Oliver took a deep breath, and again, for a moment, he seemed more like a vulnerable and confused college student struggling with a difficult decision. "OK," said Oliver a bit uncertainly, "this is more or less against all my security protocols, but---" He took off his glasses and folded them on the table. The purple iridescence vanished and I realized that he had not merely taken them off, but deactivated them as well. Without the spectacles, his grey eyes were startlingly charismatic. I sensed that his brilliant and innovative mind was used to being able to think his way through problems, but he had come to a juncture that didn't allow for that, and he was having to rely on intuition to take a rationally blind leap of faith. "I'm part of a group, a secret group, "said Oliver, haltingly, "let's call it a guild of source-code hackers. We believe that everything is ultimately hackable. If we can hack DNA, if we hack fundamental particles in supercolliders, than everything must be hackable. A few of us have learned to hack even the most secure digital matrices without detection. We've even demonstrated that we can use the processing power of some the most complex, corporate and government matrices to create emergent---," Oliver seemed to be struggling with words again, "emergent effects, and hidden submatricies, let's say---I'm trying not to get too technical---and some of us are working on hacking certain analog matrices through lucid dreaming, artificially induced near-death experience, neuropharmecuticals and other means. But as far as any of us has gone into any of these matrices, there is always the organic tether---eventually we always return to our baseline physical forms. But you, you seem to have accomplished something much more fundamental, you've transformed, or something has transformed, your baseline form into this improbable--" Oliver gestured toward my snowbody again. "For source-code hackers this is like the Philosopher's Stone, you've broken what we call the monobody rule, the deep source code that determines that each psyche is, this side of death, tethered to a particular organic body with DNA and carbon-based metabolism unfolding in linear time, etc. That you can stabilize such a form---you must be a hack or two away from achieving full on shape-shifter capability." I found myself mesmerized by Oliver's words and his charismatic presence. He seemed to be tapped into something fundamental about the realities I had been wandering through, but even more potent for me was that he affirmed my whole, reality-challenged existence, and even my pathetic snowbody, as a great and unique accomplishment. Deep within, I felt my self-esteem, which had been a tattered, rag-like thing, floating helplessly through sewer tunnels of despair, being reforged as a glowing sword waiting to be unsheathed. I was so used to being judged, by myself and others, as a pathetic and freakish invalid, but Oliver didn't see me that way at all. The curse and bane of my existence was, from his perspective, a miraculous anomaly. But just as I began to fully embrace this new perspective, a wave of nausea and vertigo came over me and at that precise moment, some of Oliver's instruments began beeping and red lights flashed from a few of them. Oliver grabbed for his glasses and put them on. "Goddamit!" Oliver exclaimed, "something is trying to yank you from the TSW." Oliver and his room blurred, flattened into two dimensions and froze. It was like I was seeing the world I was just in flash-frozen beneath a layer of wax paper, and then, as if projected on the wax paper with glowing red font, appeared: “ILLEGAL OPERATION. EVENT TERMINATED AT 023.0032. Fine: 27.99 credit units.” and then I blacked out. *** I regained awareness in time to hear the pneumatic sound of the sarcophagus-like bed opening. I was still ensconced in the wet, furry electrodes and electro-conductive gel that felt like it had merged with my snowtissues. But as soon as I moved any part of my body, the gel and electrodes slipped off me fluidly and without discomfort. I sat up and focused my eyes on the plasterboard bareness of room number seven trying to reconcile myself with what happened. It felt like Oliver was about to tell me something of the greatest significance about my identity and would have if I hadn’t been so rudely and abruptly yanked out of the TSW. I wondered about what Oliver was doing and thinking and what he had experienced at the moment I had been removed. Did I just blink out and disappear? Or was all the information that organized my snow crystals withdrawn? If the information was withdrawn, then the snowbody I inhabited in his room would have just sagged into an undifferentiated mass of slush. I felt waves of shame and humiliation as I visualized what this would have looked like from Oliver's perspective. I saw Oliver holding up my soggy and perspiration-stained clothing, dripping with grey slush as he examined it with horrified fascination. Would he even touch it? No, he was too intelligent and cautious for that. He would probably back away from it, put on surgical gloves and take small samples to analyze only to find disorganized water molecules with traces of contaminants. The image of Oliver studying my messy remains caused my self-esteem to sag to the floor like an empty and soggy overcoat. By the bed, I found that my overcoat and other clothing were still lying on the floor where I had left them. So maybe my clothing as well as my snowbody had just deteriorated into chemicals and organic contaminants when I was pulled. Now I visualized Oliver, his unblemished face and intelligent gray eyes filled with loathing and disgust as he peered at this odiferous puddle of gelatinous, toxic fluids I left behind, permanently staining the upholstered chair I was sitting in. The chair I ruined was a perfect match to the chair he was sitting on, so probably both chairs would have to be thrown out. Hot waves of shame flushed the surface of my snowcrystals, and seemed to pull me out of my sluggish and disoriented state enough to stand up. As soon as I stood, I felt dizzy from all the neuropharmaceuticals still percolating uselessly in my snowbrain. I put on my clothes and staggered down the hallway where the young Upright man was still bobbing and weaving rhythmically to his earbuds. He tore a poorly printed receipt from a machine and slid it with my credit wafer across the counter in an absent and distracted gesture. "Looks like you ran over and there were some extra charges, plus an illegal operation fine," he said in a very bored voice. I put the receipt and credit wafer back in my wallet and walked back out into the nocturnal streets of Adventure Cat City. My head was spinning and I felt highly disoriented. The effect was like emerging from a gut-wrenchingly emotional movie only to find yourself back in the very same movie-theater parking lot as if nothing had happened. Only I had been in the movie, and the movie had ended with me sagging into a stinky puddle, ruining two chairs and embarrassing myself in front of this brilliant, young mind. I wondered if I would ever see Oliver Twister again or if there was any way to send him some sort of wretched apology for the disgusting mess I had left behind. Perhaps I could offer to pay for the ruined chairs. Then I realized that there was probably nothing left on my credit wafer. But then I had to imagine hitting "send" so that my message with offer of compensation was irretrievable and the shameful realization that I would be unable to make good on the offer of compensation would come a sickening moment after I hit send. Then I would have to admit that I was a homeless snowperson with no funds, and it would seem like I had set up the offer dishonestly just to get him to pity me, and perhaps extract charity from him, which would only cause Oliver to feel disgust and hatred for me and my contemptible attempt to apparently extort funds from him. You pathetic, soggy mess of passive-aggressive extortion mixed with victim consciousness and self-pity. You sicken me, Oliver would think. He wouldn't even bother responding to my message. He would just delete it as spam and wish he could delete even the memory of me just as easily. In a daze of shame and humiliation, I walked down Broadway with no clear purpose or destination. Vaguely, I realized that I was still being affected by all the neuropharmaceuticals that had been pumped into me. Since my descent into the web had been abruptly terminated, all the chemicals were apparently still percolating at near-peak levels in my brain. Time moved sluggishly, and drunken groups of boisterous partycats seemed to float by amid pulses of colored light from storefronts, clubs and bars. The bright lights left ghostly trails in my visual perception, and all the sharp edges blurred as if I were underwater. I felt strangely detached from my surroundings, and scarcely noticed as I left the garish color of the Adventure Cat City area and strayed into the dark, desolate streets of an industrial area of Cat City. I liked the darkness. It relaxed my overwrought nervous system, and sometimes I closed my eyes as I drifted down street after street. I felt myself being drawn toward a certain quarter and allowed myself to flow in that direction. I crossed old railroad tracks and the terrain became weedier and less industrial. The neuropharmaceuticals seemed to have enhanced my psionic powers and I partly glided as I walked, my chakras pulsating with colored light from deep within my snowtissues. I walk-glided down an old dirt logging road with dark woods on either side of me, and felt myself drawing closer to a presence, a presence that had attracted me faintly, almost unconsciously, from Adventure Cat City, but now seemed far stronger and more magnetic. It guided me gently, drew me deeper and deeper into the dark woods. No hint of menace troubled me, and I allowed myself to flow toward the center of magnetism. I felt it pulling me as if my snowcrystals were made of iron and there was a powerful lodestone hidden in the depths of the forest. The logging road had become an overgrown trail and coniferous trees scented the darkness. The lights of the city were far away and the faint illumination of a crescent moon barely penetrated tree branches thick with green needles. Psionic power was ever so gradually increasing as I drew near the hidden lodestone, and effortless gliding overtook any semblance of walking. I could hear the sound of a stream now, though the woods were too dark for me to see it. My snowtissues felt the increased moisture in the air and the relaxing rhythm of crickets blended with the sound of clear water flowing over smooth pebbles. I came over a very slight ridge and could see a small orange-yellow light off in the woods toward my right. This was also the direction of the lodestone, and I allowed its attractive magic to draw me off the trail. I glided soundlessly around trees toward what I could now perceive was the orange-yellow flickering of a small campfire. There was the crackling and sparks of burning pine branches. The fire burned in a tiny clearing and as I glided closer I could see a cloaked figure seated very still beside the fire. I stopped gliding and hovered nearly still, several feet from the clearing. The hood of his cloak was thrown back and firelight glimmered off of his long, blonde hair. He had the countenance of a beautiful youth, but his ears were slightly pointed, and even from a distance he had a depth of presence that was difficult to render into words. I knew at once who he was---Jeremiah, the strange prince that the Old Cat Woman of the Cards had foreseen and that Jimmy Cat had met at the Admiral Black Paw Inn.
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