Theopraxis (Infinity or Bust)

8/8/2019 Theopraxis (Infinity or Bust)

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Ferrell / Theopraxis / 2

I. MISE OBSCENE

Cold air rushed past my head, as if trying to get around me on the way to some fearfully

important convocation to which I had not been invited. I struggled for breath, clawingdesperately to pull in some of the fugitive atmosphere. I could sense I was fighting a losing battleas I twisted and spun in free fall, but something inside me would not simply bow to what seemedthe inevitable. When at last the welcome oblivion of unconsciousness enveloped me, my finalsensation was once of profound peace...and perhaps a touch of indigestion.

Sunlight played warmly over cold toes. Something made me stir: perhaps the light, perhaps some uncomfortable fragment of a dream lodged like a ganglionic pea between two of the more sensitive layers of my brain. I pulled my legs up to my chest in a fetal reflex and indoing so withdrew said toes from the narrow band of heat. The thermal state of my metatarsaldigits suddenly became a thing of sufficient importance to my brain that it started me down the

path to the waking world, stopping only for a brief moment along the way to unfold and check

the map.Sleep ended suddenly: a book being shut on the metaphorical wasp of repose. I openedmy eyes and blinked without comprehension at a bare stone wall that confronted me with itsmute and frozen visage. In the indeterminate distance I thought I heard the call of a bird, or

perhaps it was a piece of rusted industrial machinery, wailing in a muted sforzando .A whirl of inchoate thoughts clouded my reason as receding tendrils of neural fantasia

made this waking world seem less real than the one from which I had so recently and precipitately sprung forth like a Venus de Milo. After a few long moments of confusion thedistant sensation which had called me back coalesced and I remembered that I had toes at sub-optimum temperature. The toes themselves seemed indignant at my slow response. I lookedalong my legs to my feet, and they struck me as grotesquely unfamiliar things: bare,mud-splattered, and somehow alien. I could not deny their connection with me; the fact that theywere chilled and its consequences were blunt reminders. I seemed to recall that I usually worethings—I couldn't remember what they were called—on my feet to protect those toes. Iwondered, supine, through the last stubborn cobwebs of slumber, where those nameless thingswere now. I felt along my legs and discovered to my horror that my touch elicited no sensation.Was I paralyzed, I wondered? A little more exploration led to the realization that the legs I wasfeeling were not my own; mine were underneath these and a little to the right. Relief washedover me in a warm, wet, pungent, torrent.

I was forced by circumstances to consider that I had, for whatever unlikely reason, slepthere barefooted, on the cold stone floor, without so much as a nightlight. When I tried to dredgeup some explanation for this behavior, I found to my initial annoyance and then increasing

bewilderment that I had none at all. In fact, my recollections of anything that had come beforewere, in effect, nonexistent. I dimly remembered falling and gasping for air, but nothing else.Oh, and something about operatic divas and an outboard motor.

It occurred to me that I had not the least idea where I was, or how I had gotten here.Worse, I had no name for myself. I was, in many ways, a blank slate, wiped clean by someunknown agency. I could almost taste the eraser dust. I sneezed in rather a grotesquelyorchestrated outflow. Fortunately, I then discovered that I had sleeves and remembered whatthey were for.




I braced myself for what I feared might prove to be the extraordinarily painfulconsequences of moving. (After all, I had a recollection of falling for a long while, an activity thesudden cessation of which quite often results in reduction of mobility.) So prepared, I sat up.Rather, in my mind I sat up. My body abandoned the effort after flexing abdominal muscles andfinding them rather stiff and uncooperative. I decided to lie there awhile longer and think about

where the extra legs had come from. Eventually I bit the bullet and rose gingerly to a sitting position. My muscles were sore, true, but nothing appeared to be broken or even dented. Thesupernumerary limbs had vanished, so that was one mystery less.

The walls around me were devoid of ornamentation. The ceiling seemed very close andlacked even rudimentary visible detail. After puzzling over this for a moment I realized that I hadfallen back over and was now lying prone. I rolled ponderously over and forced myself oncemore to rise. Everything was a stupefying neutral gray, broken not even by tracings of mortar where stones met. The air, though seemingly very dry in my throat, hung misty and nebulous anditself possessed a grayish quality I found rather not to my delight. My mind was like unto a

painting of quaint provincial customs on sable velvet.I struggled at last to what I was reasonably certain was my own feet. The dried mud on

my ankles and arches cracked and scattered as the skin flexed beneath it. My limbs werecuriously weak, but since they seemed otherwise intact and of the correct number and type, Iresolved not to be overly concerned.

Gradually I grew somewhat more at ease in my pallid chamber, and as my eyes adjustedto the diffuse and reserved illumination afforded by what I supposed was the advancing day Imade my way to the nearest vertical surface to examine it up close and personal. It was finelytextured with slightly irregular pits that seemed to recur endlessly with bland uniformity but inno discernible pattern. The walls, ceiling, and floor were universally provided with this selfsamefaçade, as though the decorator had happened across a fabulous sale on the stuff and wanted touse as much of it as possible.

I searched for an opening from which what little light there was could be emanating, butcould find no break in the tedious grisaille ocean. For what seemed hours I searched, until I knewthousands of details of my small stone cell by heart, each identical to the next. A curious featureof my incarceratorium was that it gave the impression of being quite closed and finite from anyone spot, but as I approached any particular section of wall, that area seemed to extend itself intothe indefinite distance. It was difficult to establish even a relative sense of direction in the totallyfeatureless surroundings, but after a little experimentation I felt reasonably, though irrationally,certain that the receding section of the wall shifted with time and, more to the point, with myown position. It moved with me. It felt my pain; it constituted my pain.

Having no desire to remain in the mind-numbing gray room any longer than necessary, Iset out to find an exit. It seemed to me that the key to escape probably must have something todo with the wall that dropped back as I approached. Locating it once again, though, was not

proving a simple task. I felt blindly along every vertical surface, even the horizontal ones,searching for any slight anomaly that might signal the boundary of the preternatural corridor.After what I determined had been a complete circumnavigation of the gray room, I haddiscovered nothing. Certainly not finding that the chamber lacked fixed dimensions was whatone would have expected, but in light of my earlier observations I was astonished and annoyed

by the sudden normality. I reversed my direction and retraced my steps in growing alarm andfrustration. I devoted my full concentration toward minute exploration of what I now wascoming to think of inexorably as my personal prison. After a considerable time had elapsed I was




finally overtaken by fatigue. (Or perhaps it was ennui. The light was poor.) I stepped back fromthe dreary panoply and glanced around the room dizzily, my eyes amblyopic from the strain of close focus.

I shook my head and blinked until visual acuity returned. As it did I began to realize thatsomething was different. My surroundings had been subtly altered by an as yet unfathomed

change that for the moment defied my critical analysis. I knew something was different—couldfeel it with a sense of certainty—but I could not see what the difference was. I closed my eyes briefly and steadied myself to face this latest perceptual challenge. A chorus of screaming night birds echoed in my inner ears. I opened my eyes suddenly and tried to take in as much of theroom as possible, before anything had the chance to become filtered out, as it were. The firstthing that struck me was that it seemed somehow to have stretched along one spatial dimensionand narrowed along another.

It was some time before my disoriented mental processes managed to work out that I hadapparently found the corridor I was seeking. Not only had I discovered the putative egress, I had

by all evidence traveled some unguessed distance along it. I realized with a start that I had noway of knowing the direction from which I had come, and the speculation that I might be

inadvertently returning to the gray room sent me into a brief stomach-churning fit of anxiety,which I finally relieved only by whistling atonically. I stared in both of the directions affordedme by the hallway, and eventually chose what seemed most likely to lead away from the grayroom.

To all visual clues I was moving along a straight path, yet my positional sense insistedthat I was somehow describing a gentle arc to my right. It was, as previously noted, very difficultto orient in this phantasmal realm, so I eventually just had to set aside the perception asunimportant, even if true. Since I didn't have any concept of my destination, it didn't seem tomatter much what path I took to reach it.

The limitless expanse of gray was now occasionally punctuated by the occasional flicker of softly diffuse light. Whenever I tried to look directly at one of these vaporous glows, however,it softly and silently stole away from me, a mere smudge in my peripheral vision. Whispers of events and vaguely familiar vistas floated past my mind's eye; I found myself clenching andextending my fingers (my toes were too cold to be of much assistance) in concert with myfrustrated inability to grasp the meaning of these fleeting glimpses of what might represent myown past. The images were as equally likely, I reflected grimly, to illustrate the past of someoneentirely different. I felt somehow violated by this notion, though a sudden unrequited urge for

popcorn also surfaced.I stood rooted to the smooth stone pathway by a gathering vortex of thoughts that seemed

to originate from outside my own mental environment. The air was filled with flashing, whirlingmotion now. The momentary visions left a crystal clear impression on my inner eyelids, agaping, gangrenous horror at the core of each. I cried out and fell to the ground, writhing withinthe coils of a formless serpent. I was in the iron grip of the most soul-wrenching experience Icould have imagined: a vicious psychic wedgie.

I strained to extract from this impalpable fury something I could identify, but the visionswere too brief for analysis on any but the most visceral level. I cradled my head in my arms (noone else’s being available) and rocked gently, trying to block out the demons that tormented me,chasing them through my tortured mental landscape with a psychic two by four. Green seethedlanguorously through a steamy jungle in my mind. The green throbbed with verdancy; it wasmottled irregularly with less vibrant tinctures but the sheer greenness of it was overwhelming,




encompassing an entire spectrum with but a single hue. Lightly effervescent pastel shaded tochartreuse; riotous grass burst forth and then bobbled its way into a glorious vert, which marchedthen with a stately cadence into the heavy dark sage of tundral woods at cold, clear dusk.

Where the green was a celebration, a crisp and intensely savory embodiment of thingsalive, the red that now flowed thickly into view was darkly malignant, like blood baked in a

pestilential heat. Death incarnate and incarnadine rolled heavily by, a river of corrosion thatfollowed no path but its own. It was like Christmas in the underworld.Terrified and deeply appalled but with no means of escape, I abruptly ceased to struggle

against the darkness but instead yielded to it, flinging myself into its maleficent embrace.Stricken, I fell into a swoon that led me not to my knees but into heretofore undetected pathwaysthat formed themselves out of the mist now defining the cocoon of my personal reality.

For hours and eons I wandered an incoherent and implacably chaotic chiaroscuro of primal desperation. I had been engulfed by a cataclysmic pseudopod that altered the veryfoundation of my soul. Words have scarce capacity to convey this, which affected not theintellect so much as the deepest self. My link with the infinite, nurtured and cherished throughouta possible lifetime, was rudely and maleficently sundered as though by the execrable talon of evil

itself. No wonder, then, that I was beginning to realize that I was in an unpleasant mood.




II. GENESIS

A swirling gelatin mold of time enveloped me and I found that nothing in my field of vision seemed to possess any textural elements upon which my eyes could focus. I had no anchor

to the visual world of shapes and spatial perception, and nor had I apparent control over my other perceptual faculties. I floundered in a turbid sea of soundless cacophony and brilliantly blindingdark.

Tossed in a twisting storm of irrational illusion, I suddenly caught sight of a stationaryimage in the middle distance. I could not help but doubt, and strongly, my brain's interpretationof whatever trick of space or time had brought this singular manifestation into subjectiveexistence before me, but after long observation during which I could detect no inconsistency, Iallowed myself an embryonic hope that here, perhaps, was some architectural or geologicalfeature which owed its existence to the same framework of physical laws and zoning restrictionsas myself.

Moving closer but cautiously, I struggled to penetrate the densely enveloping mist, eager

for some confirmation of my hopes. As gradually the image took on definition and its formstabilized, I saw that it was a man, rather than a topological feature. At least, it had the shape of aman. More did it resemble a statue, yet an apparently living one. It seemed real enough,

possessed those minute characters that living men exhibit, but made neither sound nor movement.

I paused, uncertain of the reaction which the anthropomorph had engendered in me.Gathering after a few moments what meager intellectual resources and courage I was able tomuster, I spoke in greeting. No reply, nor even barest acknowledgment, was forthcoming, inkeeping with the inanimate character so far exhibited. I stepped yet nearer; boldly I examined theface, specifically the eyes, for evidence of any deep resident awareness. Although I thought that Icould detect a transient aqueous glint, my scrutiny proved otherwise fruitless. It was like looking

into a mirror and seeing someone else's face.Here, inarguably, was something very like a man, yet some quality inherent in thishominid lent the distinct impression of mere distant relation. I felt perhaps as a domestic dogmight feel, granted human cognition, as it gazed upon a dire wolf. Perhaps this was the future of my species, or some undocumented past. Perhaps it was a department store manikin. Perhapsthey were one and the same.

What is it that separates us from our cultural and taxonomic predecessors? Cranialcapacity, stance, social interactions, food-gathering methodology, weapons technology, personalhygiene, television programming choices...? Are these tangible, measurable attributes the sumtotal of our claim to evolutionary superiority? Or is it perhaps our very ability to pose suchquestions that sets us apart, as a species? Certainly our capacity for putting pen to paper on this

subject seems inexhaustible.These philosophical meanderings led me eventually back to the figure poised in wildinaction before me, and I decided to push for some sort of response from it in acknowledgmentof its (or my own) existence. No matter my loud shouts and flagrant gesturing, I could elicit noreaction whatsoever from the rigid, seemingly comatose entity. His eyes were indeed wet, andglimmered occasionally in the shifting mists; the skin was warm and pliable to my tentativetouch —but there was no hint that movement even occupied a place in his behavioral repertoire.My existence and his did not seem to coincide on any intellectual or temporal plane. I was truly




like unto a rational man trying to make himself understood by a politician.As I gazed once more into the deeply watchful gaze, the mouth began, ever so slowly, to

open. At first I thought it was merely my imagination, but soon it became undeniably clear thatthere was movement. I forced down my excitement at this hoped-for development and stared,

breathlessly, at the unfolding drama. As the lips pulled back, I could see the unmistakable

contours of long, razor edged canine teeth. With a shock I realized what they were, and pulled back. The figure grinned, or seemed to, as blood ran down each side of its chin in thick, dark rivulets. I felt dampness on my shirt, and suddenly knew that the blood was mine. I looked downand saw a ragged tear across my breastbone. I screamed soundlessly at the sight and threw up myarms to fend off any further attack, but my assailant was no longer there. I was alone, and I cameto realize a moment later, unpierced. Fear fell away like the skin of a peeled grape and confusionand an intense weariness took its place.

Examination and ruminations occupied my attention fully for what may have beenminutes or days; without any yardstick with which to quantify the passing moments, it wasdifficult and indeed pointless to be concerned about it. When at last I returned to an awareness of my external milieu, the densely enveloping mist had lifted and left me in subtly altered environs.

The walls and floor of the corridor seemed smoother than previously. I looked up at theceiling and found it, however, as vague and maddeningly indistinct as before. The surface textureof the enclosing walls was different—more regular—and imparted to me some other, less readilyidentified transformation. I found myself, inexplicably, almost frantic to grasp precisely whathad transpired to effect this impression, but to no avail. A wave of now familiar disorientationcoursed over me, and my world became once more a gibbering inferno of disharmony.




III. INDURATION

When at last the instable world had calmed and once more could I claim the freedom to

navigate, I resumed my journey into the unseeable future. I stepped hesitantly along theconstantly evolving corridor and realized after a short distance that the bland gray characterizingalmost everything in my sight had taken on a brownish glare; a subtle glint of overripe avocado.The smooth coldness of the walls and now their somehow sinister chromatic ontogeny left mevaguely uneasy. The air was getting too thick to breathe easily.

Sharp points of light, strongly metallic. An odor that seemed to bypass the olfactory. Amillion soft pinpricks of toweringly sensual illumination. I fell through a hole invisible toimagination; the spinning multitudes that engulfed me became clearer to the eye yet indistinct toreason. My existence was tenuous yet firmly obdurate, with no recourse but the lightning shock of realization or a fierce grappling resistance. No reason allowed me sanity, nor perchance did Idream.

A tempest with its trappings lolled about the water's edge. With every breaking wave didstippled infestations forcibly conscripted from some hadean reservoir break over me in agonizingtotality. Nothingness, then a screaming repose troubled by demons. A panoramic confusion withevery molecule and deepest striation unaware except in liquid tumescence. Globular, linear, atrest and swarming: all in gibbous synchrony. Marbled forms flowing from horizon to zenith.Embers left by passing conflagrations glowed hotly, embedded in the sky close around me.Alabaster concretions dropped without warning from a midnight ceiling and their loathsome,squirming forms spread around me to the limits of vision.

A sudden shift of limiting perspective jerked my battered awareness from thecircumambient chaos to focus it on my physical surroundings. I had been crawling on my knees,it suddenly dawned on me—crawling on my knees and howling like a despondent wolf. All atonce a sense of shame flooded my soul; I crossed arms in front of my body as though I werenude and trying to hide all the naughty bits as best I could. My toes were still chilly.




IV. EMANATION

Try as I might, the finer points of absolute orientation in three-dimensional space were

eluding me. Nothing I could do proved effective at establishing within my framework of cognizance any real sense of location. I wobbled like a nearly spent top, keeping to my feet only by the narrowest of margins. After my recent excursion through paralyzing phantasms of giddydisequilibrium, little connection with commonplace considerations of balance and navigation

penetrated to my deeper self. I just wandered drunkenly, occasionally colliding with the scenery.A distant melodrama seemed to call to me. Floating along a beam of insistent pulsations,

I felt my way toward the compelling beacon. As from a far, far dream, silence ignited andspread, expanding rapidly and taking control of both thought and substance with equal rapacity.Sound could not overcome the sudden suffocating barrier that leapt up, solid and infinitelymaterial, around and across my aural horizon. Breathless, I ceased all struggling and listened.Even respiration, when it resumed seconds later without my conscious direction, was missingany audible component. It was, I thought to myself, like a librarian's conception of heaven.

The universe, or at least the tiny and rather irrational slice of it within my immediategrasp, seemed stunned. It assumed, insidiously, a continuity which at first merely excludedsound, then gradually negated the very concept of acoustical sensation in general. My ears andtheir more axial connections became obsolete, mere channels for barometric equalization, andnot sensory accouterments at all. I found it prudent to rely all the more emphatically, therefore,on vision. This new allegiance was validated only briefly before a creeping inundation of darkness scathed my helplessness with raw denial. I could feel, clearly, an infirmation of all linksto the substantive physical environment advancing upon my impotent corporeal shell.

In this seeming constriction, this divorce from all elements not of my personalinvocation, a narrow, suffocating descent inverted itself unexpectedly and grew wide. The wispsand fragments of forgotten, unrealized comprehension, compounded of imagination and of speculations unbounded by constraints beneath the infinite, blossomed in lanceolate splendor within a panorama at once both defined and limitless.

There in that pristinely littered wildness, drifting without pattern within a grandunfathomed pavane, yet in precise motion, wafted unbridled the myriad yearnings anddeterminations of a cerebral potency. I had not regained vision, hearing, or any other of myrecently lost and bitterly mourned senses, yet a wealth of impressions crowded in upon me,

perceived by acuities quite beyond the crude viaducts of conventional detection and superficialinterpretation.

I found no manifest landmarks by which to understand the elegantly profound latticespread before me in what insistently, disconcertingly, suggested space in excess of threedimensions. Intellectual estivation precluded a broader examination of interdependentrelationships. Unfettered by external incursions, the delicate tracery of inexpressible musingsrevealed itself, hesitant yet jubilant in the newly disencumbered framework. I frowned; I peeredintently at the landscape so dauntingly and yet invitingly offered. I steeled myself and leapt,though cautiously, into the unraveled netting.

Glittering and a-glisten, silvered threads wind their way through scintillating caverns of light, solid and ethereal. I touch, I experience, but cannot transcend, the purposeful direction so

powerfully and inextricably imparted by and into and throughout the fluorescent whorlsshimmering across the spatial dimensions of thought and recondite perception.




Transfixed, I dangle. Unrevealed future, untouchable past, unaccepted present—allcontinuous and contiguous within the confines of consciousness. As though from a distantdelving dream, my incarnate introspections are divulged, divested of exoskeletal obfuscation,

bared and bloodless.Bereft of even the merest metaphor, the stark antithetical suppositions of incautious

contemplation grate abrasively upon my discomforted soul. I must approach the perniciousindigence of my questioned embrasure of the profanely mediocre in full possession of theknowledge that such derision breeds of itself.

Hesitantly I extend and, in committing to the act, am released. An insouciance sheathsme; whether an act of preservation or spurred by some less formal and categorical impulse, itcomes. I still face myself, perspiring, but sweat is no longer an extension of my fear and mystruggle to come to terms with emotions stripped of their marshmallow pretense. I feel insteadspent, relieved, no longer the tight prisoner of my psyche. I do not soar; my disposition is not onewhich allows the unfettered flight of burdens cast off. I sleep a motionless sleep, a soundlesssleep, a slumber of nothingness which leaves me no longer fatigued, but neither am Irejuvenated.

Deeply affected, yet not by any distillation of identifiable forces or impressions, I can perceive only the aftermath of a profundity undeniable: an introjection so fundamentallyreshaping my understanding that unity and individuality blend to a murky and ill-definedmiasma, magnified and distorted in ragged tempo.




V. ENTROPY AND EOS

And then, the world was around me. Not, perhaps, the world of life and civilization and

familiar context, but the environment I recognized as integrally tied to my recent experience: theuniverse of which I could claim to be at present at least a nominally cognizant component.Light played a newly important role in this world. In doing so, it prompted me to consider

that my sight and, I slowly realized, my other senses had all returned to full acuity, as thoughthey had never departed. Lights and colors were in evidence here, obtrusively they seemed todefine more than just shapes and contours. The texture of things not defined by visual means intraditional physics seemed palpable now, having been granted this property under the newly

potent influence of a light that penetrated exterior surfaces and revealed underlying truths, both physical and seemingly as well the philosophic.

Where there is light and form, there are shadows. Here I could see deeply sable recessesand shallow margins; some were sharply defined, others showed only the briefest and mostvague of outlines. I became aware for the first time that dark is the touchstone of light, for onewithout the other has no discernible identity. I felt a sudden, deep awe for this photon dancewhich engulfed me. It stirred, as well, a distant memory: a weak but still viable reverberationfrom earliest existence, though whether my own or of something far more primordial wasscarcely clear. Not content merely to illuminate, the light dazzled me now—it shone with anintensity that became, after a short while, rather painful. Perhaps as a refuge from theever-increasing brilliance, perhaps because the very contrast drew me, my thoughts went tosubterranean darkness and the cool mysteries to be found therein.

Quite without any warning of premeditation, a spinning blackness leapt from someshaded crevice and propelled me defenseless into haunted boulevards. A mist suggesting doomcrept through the suddenly chill air, surrounding me and thickly impeding my movements. I waseclipsed in inky totality.

Darkness is often said to be the mere absence of light, yet I swear by the very hounds of the eternal that this darkness was palpable. It was a solid thing, with texture and smotheringsubstance. From a focal point hidden from my sight came a vague luminescence that swelled,

pregnant with an underscoring of dismal menace. A sadness seeped under the transom framingmy thoughts, and I fell into a lugubrious, fearful stupor from which it seemed I would not beempowered to withdraw (although deposits did not seem to be discouraged).

Marionettes of mayhem danced mistily before me. I reached out to grasp them: aninnocent gesture seemed somehow to offer promise of absolution where even avoidancedemurred. Conciliation was not to be, however, and fiercely was my overture repulsed.

The silence throbbed darkly through caves which riddled the vast desolation of which Isensed myself to be the center. From mires populated by unfabricated Dybbuks came the essenceof temptations and all those expressions of malfeasance inhabiting myriad unseen fissures in thevast topography of ignorance.

With the passing of time, unmarked though it was by any conventional oscillation, thevisual domination of my world became ever so slowly less overwhelming. As the photonic tidereceded, it left a sensory vacuum which began to fill with sound. At first barely audible, almostinsinuative, the acoustic envelope expanded steadily, taking on additional levels of nuance andcomplexity as it progressed. It occurred to me, while this festival of noise was yet sufficientlyinceptive to permit the luxury of logical cogitation, that though I was now effectively blind once




more, the already thousands of suggestions and murmurs of physical proportion being born fromthe rippling cascade of sound all around me were taking the place of optical acuity in a way Icould never have imagined. I wondered if animals which rely on echolocation saw the world inthis same pallet of auditory and other non-visual colors.

There were many more sounds than I could describe or even completely understand; they

seemed as well to come from a greater number of directions than I had previously been able todiscern. Rippling detonations spread widely from innumerable foci, interacting and interfering inever more complex patterns. I began to lose all notion of the origins of individual sounds, andthen all capacity to discriminate between sounds, so that the whole of my acoustic environmentslid into a muddy, disorienting mephitis.

In the midst of all of this sensory discombobulation, I was suddenly aware of a somehowfamiliar pattern. It took quite a while for me to comprehend its nature, but once this fundamentaltenet revealed itself, a severe jolt of shock and wonder surged through me as the jamais vuresolved itself.

These might have been the first voices I had ever heard, given my memories of events prior to this day, but somehow I comprehended that they were not the first. I knew precisely

what they were and what they were saying. No, I had clearly been exposed to speech before,though when or where I could hazard not even the merest conjecture.Silently the sands shift through impeccable landscapes.Surprise and reflex: I crouch and whirl, searching but eluded.A torrent unleashed brings cascades...I cannot find my way and yet the voices will proffer no surcease.Achievements of splendor! Down the vivid balustrade comes the self, glittering in the

mawkish habits of pride.A deeper voice pounds my clenched forehead now; the words are themselves spirits

which seek ever more intimate terraces.Deception knows thee. As the stars and their effortless raiment decry unto a universe

relentless, so thy suffering is the center.I call out to no one; my pain is expressed loudly through reverberant chambers of

knowledge barely revealed and bleeding inexorably. Never did I feel with less corrupted impulse than this: waves of the purest transcendence

pummeled my newly-delivered consternation and I was set adrift by what I could not know.The ceiling crashed down around me with fearsome tumult, and as blackness conquered

my dwindling faculties an echo pervaded insistently within my rapidly eroding sphere of comprehension:

Destiny is the original prevarication.




VI. INCITATION

"I do wish you would be a trifle more circumspect in your entertainments, darling. It is

frightfully difficult at times to explain to some of the more frangible guests your little 'forays,'you know."I blinked and shook my head from side to side in a desperate effort to clear out the heavy

drapery which had apparently taken up residence across the inner surface of my brain. As boththe reality and the meaning of the words being, to all appearances, spoken to me by this other creature had their full impact upon my sorely tried comprehension, I gasped involuntarily.

"What was that, sweets?"I looked, for the first time, directly at the source of these spoken pronouncements, and

was startled almost beyond recounting to see that a woman, a female apparently of my ownspecies, was speaking to me. At first, I could not find the key to fabricating an appropriateresponse. I felt so completely alien to this setting that even minimal interaction proved too taxingto my abilities for the time being. I could but moan and cradle my suddenly throbbing temples.

She was about forty and slim, with lightly frosted hair worn in a loose bun. Long strandsof blonde curled from just in front of each of her temples, the spirals growing less defined asthey wound down to a faintly brown termination approximately level with the high and rather sculpted cheekbones. Her face was well-proportioned, and the set of her mouth and eyes clearlysuggested a genteel upbringing. Even in my confused condition, I realized that further inarticulate parrying on my part could not but exacerbate what seemed to me to be something of a strained social setting.

The only thing I could bring myself to reply, however, was, "I don't feel well.""Poor dear," she cooed, coming near to me for the first time and laying her cool hand

upon my forehead, "You do feel a trifle warm. Shall I have Felicia make some iced coffee?"I raised my eyebrows as I thought about this proposition. I could associate no taste

memory with the concept of 'iced coffee,' but as this woman seemed to know more about mylikes and dislikes than I could claim to be the case for myself at the present moment, I groggilyacceded.

I wondered, as my mystery woman left the room to instruct this 'Felicia, ' whoever thatmight turn out to be, where, precisely, I was, and how I had made my way there from the

phantasm-riddled place I found still freshly impinging upon my mind. Was this house mine? Isurveyed the quarters and found myself hoping for an affirmative answer. Certainly whoever

possessed this house, or at least what admittedly restricted portion of it I had so far been privileged to view, had access to a respectable degree of wealth and taste. The furnishings wereelegant, of velvets and fine hardwoods. Crystal, brass, and delicate porcelain were in evidence;none of them in disproportionate arrangement. Dark paneling provided a foil for curiouslyappropriate blonde wood bookcases and a tawny brick and tile floor. I grew quickly fond of thisroom, and made a mental memorandum not to explore beyond its comforting and almost familiar confines unless and until I felt more at ease with myself, both mentally and physically.

My ruminations were brought to a halt by the return of the creature who had welcomedinto this emotional panacea my browbeaten and tempest-tossed person. I looked into her eyes,expectant and questing. What, I asked her in my mind, what are you and this place? What do youwish of me? Why are you wearing that piece of metal in your navel?

Her face did not betray any inkling of my uncertainty. She simply smiled: a kind smile, a




quiet and loving countenance had she. She showed no indication that she believed there to be anyneed for sincere concern on my behalf, whoever she conceived me to be; her conversationconsisted principally of trifling, empty comments about my personal effects and my generalwell-being. She did not mention any recent events, or otherwise present herself as a person withwhom I should feel any sort of kinship or intimacy, except inasmuch as she treated me as a

familiar companion. This avoidance of particulars did not seem so much to be a deliberate act asit did an integral facet of our supposed relationship. I was relieved, thereby, of the difficult task of attempting to produce some plausible explanation of my recent whereabouts and lack of definable past history, but at the same time I was disturbed by the implications of this departurefrom what I seemed to remember to be the normal pattern of social intercourse. The stark and, Inow was beginning to feel, undeniable artificiality of this encounter gnawed at my initial elationat being once more in a setting where I could at least find some comfort in the solidity anddemonstrable human utility of the environment. I felt decidedly awkward and increasingly lessable to reconcile my physical presence in this place with what I had previously found to be theway in which the universe behaves. I realized, abruptly, that I could not truly believe myself to

be here, and at that instant, things began to fade.

Why can't my other problems behave this way? I wondered idly as I watched the universedissolve around me.The change was not, however, immediately drastic. It was as though successive layers of

some diaphanous, impossibly sheer fabric were being drawn across my field of vision. Colorsand textures began to soften and blur, and sounds, of which there were few save the occasionalinarticulate bleat from the increasingly indistinct woman-simulacrum, took on a muffled andvaguely ferrous character.

When no longer could I sift from my surroundings any hint of the lost desultory drawingroom and its esoteric occupant, I got to my feet. With some trepidation, it is to be admitted, Itook several steps, which should have propelled me into the oaken bookcase were it yetobjectively extant. I flinched as I passed through what I judged to be the approximate point of contact, I was more surprised than I had expected to be when no such connection between myself and solid matter was forthcoming.

I executed a bolder tactical reconnaissance of the area, the result of which was myrealization that once more was I marooned in a world without discernible contours. I wasdisturbed and yet somehow relieved to discover that I preferred this amorphous landscape to thedomestic bliss which had so recently offered itself to me.




VII. BAPTESME

For the first time in my abbreviated memory, the world stretched out before me, inviting,

seemingly endless and daunting by virtue of its very accessibility. Landscapes which at firstglance appeared rather flat and featureless took on deeply sculpted relief whenever I devoted myconcentration to their inspection. Deep valleys, soaring peaks, rills, rifts; the variety andcomplexity of the physiognomy to be seen was vast and disconcerting after the foreshortenedhorizons of my experience so far. I was eager to explore but reluctant to take the first step,wishing in some way to auspicate the journey.

Though I struggled, I could not overcome the darkly powerful paralysis which grippedme now and made immobility part and parcel of my existence. How long I might have stood inthat one spot I cannot say, for after rather a brief interval a gale arose from behind me whichreached very quickly such an intensity that I was literally propelled from my inactivity into astumbling, sliding descent from the promontory upon which I had first surveyed the tramontanetableau.

The zephyr died away as suddenly as it had irrupted and left me winded and heaped at the base of a monolithic column of darkly veined stone, somewhat the worse for my precipitoustumble. I lay stunned; not seriously, but enough to warrant further immobility for a time while Igathered both strength and resolve and concentrated on comprehending my immediatesurroundings.

I had come to rest in a thick bed of lichens or some equivalent vegetation encrusting asoil-packed jumble of stones, their sharper margins apparently eroded by some force to moregently rounded forms. I breathed silent thanks for this boon as the significance of it relative tomy well-being made itself obvious. After determining with less than consummate certainty that Ihad suffered no permanently debilitating damage, I struggled to my knees and began to examinemy new environment in ever-widening circles. I was surprised and, after a moment, delighted todiscover that the seemingly bland stone was in fact imbued with a disarming variety of colors.The means by which these hues blended to create the illusion of gray from any but closest rangewas a manifestation wondrous to me. I felt myself being drawn into the myriad patterns thatswirled before my eyes, hypnotized by the very perfection of these meticulous creations. Iexplored at length the dips and swirls and infinite artistry of the fabulous lithic master works thatsurrounded me. I felt the presence of many legions of tiny wingèd creatures, each contributing adab from a tiny palette which, when viewed as a whole, made up the intricate tapestry I was nowexperiencing. Or, they could be gnats; the distinction escaped me.

So enraptured by my new-found appreciation for geology was I that the storm caught meunawares. What warning signs it proffered I cannot relate, for I was, as I have said, engrossed byother marvels of Nature. What transpired after the maelstrom was upon me, however, I shall notsoon forget, though wish to I might.

It began as a howling ebullition which forced its way into my bemused reveries: a soundthat seemed as pure as any I could imagine, and one which took on, as I came to understand itsorigin, the veritable distilled essence of fury. The very volume of it, both within the range of myhearing and beyond, lifted me bodily from my relative shelter and I found myself suddenly at themercy of forces beyond even my ken, to say nothing of my control.

Some merciless shower of projectiles (it could have been rain, but I felt no sensation of wetness) pummeled me from every angle, and I felt as utterly helpless as one who was




completely paralyzed. I groped blindly for some anchor against the tidal onslaught of wind andnoise, but could find none. Nothing solid could I feel but my own flailing limbs as they collidedhaphazardly with one another in the vicious tempest. Breath was now a scarce commodity, and Irelaxed my struggles for control of my spatial orientation in order to concentrate on the moreimmediate necessity for respiration. Ironically, once I stopped fighting the storm's manipulations,

I found the punishment I was enduring from the violent indecision of its wind currents lessenedconsiderably.Eventually whatever condition obtained which militated against breathing diminished,

and my head began to clear as full oxygenation returned to my hard-pressed blood cells. Asvision sharpened, I became increasingly puzzled by the roiling vapors surrounding me, as well as

by an inability now even to feel the rocks beneath my feet. I strained for some visual clue to thisenigma and was rewarded by the abrupt comprehension of my true situation; namely, I wassuspended in the heart of the storm itself, some unguessable distance above the geography I hadso recently been appreciating. I decided then and there not to think about the probableconsequences of such a flight: there was little if anything I could do to improve my position, andI did not intend to spend my last moments in this life, if they were to be such, in a state of high

anxiety. Instead, I whistled Bach and resolved not to appreciate nature any longer.About midway through the second movement of the Third Brandenburg Concerto myhead popped without warning into a fantastic world of cloud tops and intricate, soaring sculptureof cyan and pearl. I was once again breathless, but this time with sheer awe. Nothing I couldhave imagined possessed the sheer force of impression that was inspired, and effortlessly, by themajestic spectacle before me now unveiled.

My forward motion seemed for the time being to have lost its impetus, and I foundmyself relatively stationary in a vast panorama of tumuli. Completely surrounding me were hugemounts of billowing opaque vapor, ever evolving yet carved in stone. The utter artistry of it allcrashed in upon that part of me which could still appreciate it, and I near wept at the impact.Here, I thought, must surely be the final and clinching proof of the existence of an omniscientforce in the universe, for what random sequence of entropic events could generate such beauty? I

began to realize, at this point, that my awe was overwhelming my sense of proportion andintellectual detachment. Given my circumstances, however, I forgave this temporaryabandonment of hyperrational doctrine and put it down to grandiose scenery combined withacute anoxia.

I found that I had closed my eyes. I had slept, in fact, and had now been awakened bysome feeling of uneasiness, the source of which I was unsuccessful in locating other than thesupposition that I was many thousands of feet above solid ground with no apparent means of support. I bumped and tossed for a few seconds on some newly unstable air pocket, and suddenlymy apprehension proved valid as a gaping maw opened up beneath my flailing feet. I rode thedying remnants of the updraft which had so long supported me in this empyreal expanse,suspended for a few moments in a realm devoid of sound or movement, then plummeted throughthe now insubstantial sky into a maleficent and caliginous whirlpool.

All was terrifying dark. The air was alternately water-saturated and charged withtremendous electrical potential. The only substantive evidence that I continued to fall wascochlear stimulation; it was, however, evidence difficult to disregard. I was conscious of falling,

but I felt no personal circular motion to speak of. The clouds around me seemed to be spinningrather rapidly, though, as if I were falling through a rotating tube of atmosphere. I noticed thatsmall nodules of hazy light would on occasion detach themselves from the inner perimeter of the




tube and float about in my vicinity. Whenever one of these manifestations ventured to withinabout twice its own diameter of any part of me, my hairs would stand out from my body and Iwould feel a creeping prickle along my arms and neck. Finding this sensation not altogether

pleasant, I kept myself occupied for some time by avoiding these encounters whenever I couldmanage to do so. It was at times as difficult as avoiding individual wasps in a provoked swarm.

The luminous pests abandoned me suddenly, and (as though to fill the sudden vacuum) afew seconds later I was given a more important and far more arduous task: that of eluding thecascade of debris that rushed without portent up the now even more rapidly rotating tunnel of vapor. There were a great many objects, most of them unrecognizable, that hurled past me ontheir way to some stratospheric destination. I was very hard-pressed to avoid being pummeled bythese projectiles, but somehow I managed to keep the bruising impacts to a minimum until, atlast, the pounding stopped. There were a few blessed moments of nothing rushing past but cool,salty air, and then I slammed head-first into a concrete partition of water.

At the moment of impact I was presented with a vivid insight: people decide to ceaseexisting. Fatal encounters almost invariably give the victim an instant in which to adopt anattitude toward the impending event. Those who decide to die do so without fuss or chance for

life. Those who are adamantly opposed to ending, however, find within themselves an extraundefinable quality which allows them at least some opportunity for redemption. I realized that Iwas not yet ready to end a life which left so many fundamental questions unanswered, so Idecided not to die. It was not a decision of which the rest of the universe seemed to approve.

I did not die, but for a time I was not altogether certain of this. I felt an all-encompassingnumbness of body and spirit, an emptiness of sensation which threatened to negate my veryawareness of self.

I was cold. After an interlude of insensate suspension, I was cold. The experience was notenjoyable; I shivered violently, uncontrollably, and yet was overjoyed at the renewal of my

jealously coveted interaction with the physical environment, for with this resumption came afresh influx of will. I felt, therefore I was alive, and this life behooved any amount of struggle for its defense.

Struggle I most certainly did, for my world had turned against me of late; most recentlyin the guise of an horrific maelstrom, and now by transmuting itself into a thing that threatenedto freeze and drown me in concert. I fought for warmth; I fought for breath; I fought for mobilityin a thickly stinging, blindingly hostile milieu. By degrees my struggles seemed to win for me ameasure of adaptation, though by what physiological mechanism I could not divine, and I grewmore at ease in what for all appearances was a world of salt water. I could only guess that I had

been deposited, or rather propelled, into this sea by the storm which had whisked me along in itsdark bosom. I had surely met with the surface of this vast aquatic jungle in that mind-obliteratingconnection I had experienced with a wall of adamantine wetness; this threshold had been lost tomy perception, however, and neither gravity nor phototropism offered any revelationsconcerning my relative position with respect to the purely gaseous biosphere.

Having gotten my bearings, at least nominally, I was now being forced, inexorably, toaccept the proposition that I was submerged. Not only was I submerged, but reasonably thriving.The biological implausibility inherent in this suggestion set me to renewed speculation on theobjective veracity of my comprehension, or at least on the real status of my consciousness. The

possibility that this was all just a vivid and restless dream reared itself yet again, but I found it nomore satisfying as an explanation than I had in its previous incarnations. Meanwhile, my pelagicexistence went merrily along its extraordinary way, heedless of any doubts on my part.




I tried to conjure up mental accounts of marine life, of specific details that might proveuseful as a guide for my actions and reactions in this strange new setting, but I could producenothing useful. At last, after what seemed hours of most intense concentration, I managed toinvoke an image of light streaming down through undulant, refractive indigo, but little else. Inthis situation, as in all others since my inexplicable re-awakening into cognizance, I realized that

I would be relying solely upon instinct. I berated myself for not carrying around a note pad.During this introspective interlude, I had been sinking, albeit so lazily as to be virtuallyundetectable. I knew that I had been sinking when I settled, gently and in a slowly billowingcloud of murk, on the bottom.

At least, I had come to rest on some relatively flat surface. Whether or not it was inreality the 'bottom' of anything was essentially a moot point and, given the utter impossibility of my survival in this milieu in the first place, a trivial one. I simply accepted my position at its facevalue and determined to get on with existentializing.

Once I had come to terms, however tenuously, with the undeniable fact that I wassuffering no apparent ill effects from my continuing submersion, I cast about for someinformation about my latest change of locale. I could tell rather little about my surroundings,

owing chiefly to the lack of illumination. It occurred to me after a bit of thought that there wasnothing surprising about this; while I could not put any sort of figure on how far I had sunk prior to coming to rest on this sooty plateau, I felt reasonably certain that it was far enough to excludemost sunlight. (I was struck here by a sudden realization that my mental picture of the sun wasincomplete; it represented more an abstract concept than an actual object that I had experiencedand could visualize.) The occasional oddly-proportioned creature swam by me, glowing in placeswith an eerie greenish-yellow luminescence, but again, this was more or less what I expected tosee.

Half an hour passed, by my estimate, during which time I saw a fair collection of almostcomically designed life forms float and swim past me; I suppose that they, given the ability (and

burden) of cognition, would consider me a perfectly ridiculous thing, as well. I certainly couldnot boast of even the merest adaptation to this world—respiration itself was more a matter of some arcane mysticism than evolutionary physiology in my case. I began to move about alongthe surprisingly firm surface, kicking up the occasional cloud of detritus. Everything in this ethosseemed to move more slowly than I had ever before experienced, as though the universe werehere scored to a more relaxed tempo ( Largo for Divers Marine Organisms and Discontinuo ). Ifinally more or less mastered the skills necessary to approximate regular, reproduciblelocomotion in the heavily incrassate brine.

It wasn't exactly a visual clue that led me to the city. I could sense that there wassomething incongruous other than myself somewhere ahead; more precise description of thesensation I cannot, alas, offer.

Whatever drew me, it drew me to a rim which quite suddenly dropped away, sheer andabsolute, into the even more inframarine depths. On dry land and within that much lessrestrictive liquid which covers it, I would have fallen, and fatally, over that dizzying precipice.Even in this otherworld I fell, but my velocity was, if anything, still less pronounced than earlier,and I was never in danger of a significant impact. I skidded and tumbled, albeit in slow motion,down an extremely steep and seemingly endless declivity, until finally I came to rest on yet afurther platform of thickly layered detritus. I sat there, recovering, and wondered just what thisentire episode meant—if indeed it meant anything at all—and moreover where it was leading. Itried vigorously to avoid thinking about the impossibility of my survival in this yet more hostile




environment, with its paucity of human-extractable oxygen and nearly incomprehensible pressures, for fear that my body might at once realize that it had no justification for functioninghere, and cease to do so. It left me precious little to do, however, except watch the traffic.




VIII. NIFLHEIM PASSAGE

With a sudden stabbing jolt that seemed sure to lift my skull cap from my head, the

incongruity of what I had just thought to myself slammed into me. As though I had been dealt a physical blow, I fell (slowly) back onto a softly gibbous shelf of extremely fine muck and laythere, twitching. Something that resembled a translucent dish of pasta floated past me, tentacleswaving gracefully.

Finally I felt nominally able to cope with looking once more at the spectacle which hadso recently and decisively deranged what little remained of my reason. Taking the mentalequivalent of a deep breath (still a rather uncomfortable sensation for me), I turned to therelatively level table at the lower end of the decline and surveyed the scene. My initialimpression had been essentially and disconcertingly accurate: Lines of creatures were passing inreview along faintly outlined boulevards, trailing luminous visual streaks that resembled thoseleft by automobiles on a misty evening. I did not understand precisely what I was rememberingin this evocation, but the comparison was clear enough, and I put off further thought until theworld was a less puzzling thing.

I examined the animate little bodies as closely as I felt appropriate, and realized after afew moments that they were, not too miraculously, fish. The 'lights' I was observing were greenor reddish globules at the end of various thin arm-like structures emanating from the piscines atseveral points. The fish took no notice of me, even as I moved closer, but continued in their regular and carefully patterned rituals of movement. In watching them flit effortlessly meremillimeters from the fine layer of sediment which blanketed every stationary surface, I suddenlywas struck by an idea which had not previously presented itself to me, though it seemed nowglaringly obvious.

I propelled myself into the heavy waters in an upward angled trajectory and began,awkwardly at first, to swim. Movement in three dimensions still had not adapted itself to mythought processes, but I was making some progress. In this way I was able to observe the fishfrom a new and more widely encompassing vantage, from which it was clear that their machinations were part of some larger and much more elaborate geometrical schema.

Similar groups of fish circling in tight, defined configurations were scattered at intervalsalong a vast polygonal periphery, with multitudes of interconnecting spokes that intersectedalong their lengths with internal rosettes and starbursts, I could not swim high enough to see theentire architecture, for the gloom of the oppressively turbid water obscured the faint illuminationfrom the fish, which provided the only means by which I was empowered to observe the pelagic

ballet. I descended, therefore, to a point optimum for both field of vision and clarity and settledin simply to marvel at the sight.

As I watched, bemused, the almost mechanical nature of the repetitive activity going on below me in this densely silent universe drew me in. My full attention was focused on the panorama beneath; the utter absence of any other sensations which could offer a distraction played a decisive role in this singular devotion. Immersed thusly, I was therefore completelyunprepared for the voice which washed suddenly over my right ear. It was an oily sort of sound,although sound is not the proper term for what I experienced—it was more of an acousticapproximation—that somehow contrived to convey with fine precision its piscine origin.

I was reasonably assured, despite my woefully inadequate access to any chronicle of mylife's progress, that I had never before been the object of such comprehensible communication by




any marine organism (other than, perhaps, the distinctly nonverbal protestations of slightlysuperannuated salmon paté); this sudden fluency caught me, then, all the more by surprise.

"Tedious, aren't they?"I had no clear idea; in truth, I was absolutely without the merest trace of inspiration. I

simply could find within my (admittedly meager) social and cultural arsenal neither appropriate

nor even plausible reaction to an opening remark by a fish. I did not, in fact, know whether it was possible for me to reply, respiration and mechanics associated with it being provisional andenigmatic processes. Fortune was yet with me, by all accounts, as the fish seemed not at alldistressed by my failure to acknowledge its remark.

"I mean, look at them all—one after the other, following the leader like so many mindless bubbles. I'm sorry, but I just cannot feel anything but frank contempt for such utter codependence."

I found it increasingly difficult to concentrate fully on what I still considered the vastlyimpressive panoply of precision drill enacting itself before me, for the (to me) singularlyobjectionable philosophy being expounded to my dexter levered itself insidiously between theobjects of my fascination and my power to devote my attention to them. I was now torn between

the desire to express myself to this creature and a certain relief at being unable to do so and thusembroil myself in a controversy of unknown dimension and outcome."They are so profoundly devoted to this regimentation," my prolix companion continued,

"That death itself will not long deter them."Presumably to illustrate its point, the fish (which I now noticed with some alarm was

rather large and dentally well-endowed) shot towards the nearest grouping of the apparentlyunsuspecting drill team and proved them quite easy prey. Returning to my side with a full gorgeand a faint aura of satisfaction, the philosophical piscivore growled, somewhat incongruously, tomy mind,

"Bloody automatons, each and every," (a pause for dislodging an uncooperative bit of rhetoric, followed closely by what gave all indications of being a deep-sea burp) "...blasted oneof them."

I paid the presumably satiated but still potentially perilous predator the attention I felt thatit demanded before returning the bulk of my concentration to the regiments. The discontinuityleft by the vicious assault and local decimation was even now almost undetectable. The rankshad closed between the severed margins of the now-digesting segment with casual,matter-of-fact alacrity, and this utter lack of even the most fundamental predator shock amongstthe survivors left me uncomfortable and vaguely irritated. Empathy with at least some of thesentiment I had heard propounded concerning these ignoble creatures burgeoned within me.

I pondered this change of heart and the behaviors which had prompted it for a longmoment. A feeling that something had altered somewhere gradually took hold of my thoughtsand I glanced around to note with some surprise and a faint, far sensation of worry that myerstwhile commentator and gastronome had departed into the deep marine gloom from which ithad manifested.

I developed at this juncture a rather pronounced feeling of fatigue, brought on at least in part by the weak but constant fanning motions I was forced to make in order to maintain my position in the aquasphere. I found it therefore propitious to sink gracefully to the bottom andtake for myself a much-needed rest on a soft bed of silt and some unidentifiable blackishmaterial. Within moments I slept, and from that repose there sprang almost at once a vividsomnolent fantasia.




IX. THELYS

An excruciatingly familiar enveloping curtain confronted me; a mist that was suspended

throughout my latest environs and impeded both vision and sanguine progress. I chose adirection with arbitrary decisiveness, since no vantage offered the least bounty of detail over anyof the others. I felt my stumbling way through that humid lethargy forever and beyond.

At last my questing digits encountered something that surprised me: a curtain of softvelveteen texture, quite solid and quite apart from the wet atmosphere. I examined thisanomalous portiere to great extent, and concluded that here was a drapery of prodigiousdimensions. In color it was, so far as I could ascertain in the eerie half-light pervading the brume,an indulgent beet-red that seemed at times to throb as I inspected its myriad folds andchiaroscuros.

Having no preferred course of action, I felt my way along the vast cliff face defined bythe wall of fabric until I came abruptly upon a slit, a discontinuity in the weave of themonumental edifice. Interested, I explored the parameters of the break, and discovered that itwould afford me passage. I slipped between these fustian lips and made my path through miststhat were thinned by the barrier now melting into obscurity behind me. Fewer than two scoregrains trickled through the hourglass before I experienced a presage of yet another of the

portentous palisades somewhere in my path.My presentiment proved accurate when, after a brief interval, a shimmering wall rose

from the Stygian foundation just ahead, demarcating perpendicular impediment so far as visionand even imagination descried. This tapestry was far lighter than its predecessor; it was analmost gauze-like wisp that was nevertheless disturbingly opaque. It occurred to me at thisrevelation to test the tenacity of the curtain's vertical orientation. It allowed a certain minimaldisplacement when pressed upon, but beyond this refused wholeheartedly to travel, no matter my

physical blandishments. It wasn't exactly an 'iron curtain,' but it would probably have qualifiedfor 'aluminum.'

Eventually I came across an opening in this barrier as well, through which I passedwithout a moment's hesitation. This pattern of interlude-scrim-aperture continued until I began tolose my memory of any previous landscape. Time and time again I encountered these fabricremorae, each of different weave and constitution from the one previous. Some of them were

ponderous and heavy, as though they were constructed of thick velvet intersewn with lead.Others were so diaphanous as to dissolve, literally, under my gentlest palpation. Colors andtextures were likewise of wide variety. I was alone and wandering through an endless draperyshowroom, without even a salesman to break the monotony.

My travels thus far had instilled in me nothing if not patience with the vagaries andvicissitudes of a capricious ethos, yet I grew weary of the utter immutability of the motif. I took to giving myself up to fatigue after every fourth passage; soon I hungered for both sustenanceand abrogation of this mind-paralyzing iteration.

It was, therefore, with the most profound relief and wonder that I found myself facing asheer brattice of ice when I turned to inspect the reverse aspect of a rather peculiar arras of luminous ivory silk through which I had just navigated. Somehow I knew that the prospectsconfronting me when I resumed my trek would be unlike those so recently my bane, but nothingresembling the full extent of this precognition made itself apparent to me.

I turned around slowly, anticipating and a little wary of what I both hoped and feared




would prove a dramatic change of scene. At first the subdued illumination afforded me noviewing at all, for my eyes were yet bedazzled by the reflective prowess of the mirrored glacialabutment marking my salvation from ennui. There were definitely shapes in the distance, shapesthat beckoned rather than loomed, or so it seemed to me.

I wandered gladly down a gradual decline strewn with blunted stones and a sweetly

fragrant grass until I spotted a dimly demarcated erosion in the contours before me, which after afew moments of study I recognized for what it was: a path. It was, moreover, a path such aslightly shod human feet might incise, and the prospect of encountering another of my kind,coupled with the implication that survival was probably among the inducements offered by thiswelcomed coomb, raised my spirits to a level above any erstwhile reckoning.

I aligned myself with this highway in short order, and with light heart assayed itsnegotiation. The world was becoming more visible to me, whether due to my own adjustments of aperture or to an increase in the ambient light intensity I was ill-equipped to determine which anddisinclined to care.

As I approached the shapes which had called to me, I beheld that they were stonefacades; loosely mortared concretions of a grayish-green rock that were extensively encrusted

with dark moss. Other bryophytes hung from cross members and tree branches, and favored mewith their shy caress as I moved among the jumbled reliquiae.The structures were plainly ruins, yet the precise nature of their original functions was

not clear to me, no matter the depth nor duration of my investigation and surmise. They seemedalmost to have been raised with no other purpose in mind than to harbor vegetation and present amysterious and romantic aspect. I concluded after some fairly extensive explorations that I wasnot now, and nor was I ever likely to be, privy to the architect's intentions, and that suchknowledge was not in the least prerequisite to my appreciation of the ambience created by theartist's labors.

I found this attitude enhanced by the discovery of a delightful grotto, wherein resided avariety of truly succulent fruits, vegetables, and nuts. I found even a merry spring that burbledalmost as though alive, and lent to this sylvan Elysium both its utility and an exquisite musicalspirituality. The totality of these surroundings was such panacea for my emptiness and longingafter some sense of stable identity! I was almost completely inured to my former self-doubts andanguishes for a time, until the visions began.

For a time I was content merely to confine myself to the glade I now called home, passing seldom more than a few yards from its fairly well-defined borders. Everything I couldhope for insofar as sustenance and wholesome environment for reflection was seen to by asuddenly benevolent providence; I had no desire nor need to tempt this benison by straying.

I discovered one day a wooden chest, bound in rusted bands of iron, hidden in a small,foliage-shrouded alcove. I was taking a stroll on a cool morning, having breakfasted on dates andstrawberries, and, in the process of exploring a rather labyrinthine series of narrow, twistingwalled passages, I literally stumbled upon the artifact. It lay wedged between two vertical rock shelves, covered by dense mats of a vine with broad, serrated leaves. One of the restraining

bands had become separated from the chest lid, and it was over a portion of this band protrudinginto my path that I tripped, leading me to the sequestered pyxis.

Gaining access to the coffer was something of a labor, to be sure: I had first to clear off an enterprising layer of tenacious woody vegetation, then, persuade a lid which had not beenasked to provide any demonstration of articulation upon its hinges for an incalculable interim tooperate for me in a conventional manner.




Finally, however, and with a grunted flourish, I let the edifying light of day streamwillfully into those deep caliginous recesses. I was of course quite interested in what the contentswould now reveal themselves to be, and allowed myself the small anticipatory conceit that I haddiscovered some ancient, fabulous treasure and would soon be struggling to overcome thestigma, and a pleasant struggle it would be, of parvenu.

However munificent providence had been on my behalf during this chapter of mychronicles, it obviously was not prepared to go to that extreme. The chest contained mostlyhopelessly molded and degenerate clothing, some tools and other metal implements so oxidizedas to be virtually unrecognizable, and a small, heavy thing wrapped in linen.

This object proved, after I unwrapped numerous yards of surprisingly intact linen, to be astatuette. It was carved from some stone that I could not recall having seen before, or at leastidentify, and was shot through with appealing reddish-bronze venation. Far more intriguing,though, was the subject of the sculptor's inspired crafting. Words, those guttural mutterings,those simple symbolic representations on skin or paper, fail utterly in encapsulating even the

barest, most primitively meager vestige of the essence of the incomparably noble beauty I beheldin the corpus and countenance of the maiden portrayed in this figurine.

I was transfixed as though bound by an inescapable enchantment radiating from the veryincarnation of physical perfection that I perceived in this effigy. I found myself sitting on a stone bench some yards from the open chest; I must have wandered there whist in the trance inspired by the icon still in my trembling hands. What path I had traversed or how much time had elapsedsince first I was captivated I could not judge with any hope of accuracy.

In the days that followed, I found three more of the sculptures in various cryptic locationsthroughout what I had come to regard as the garden. Each was, if possible, more alluring than its

predecessor, and pleasant reveries concerning the putative mannerisms and other physicalattributes of the model began to occupy more and more of my thoughts.

After finding the fourth figurine, this fictitious woman began also to insinuate herself intomy dreams. I would see her sitting on a kind of carved stone pew, seemingly almost a cathedra,with a slight suggestion of sadness in her features that yet betrayed no hint of physicaldeprivation or grave emotional trauma. She seemed to be searching: for what, I knew not.

These dreams were themselves rather pleasant, at first, as they provided me with a gooddeal of romantic fancy with which to pass my somewhat empty days in that paradise which was,apparently, devoid of other sapient life.

Gradually, however, the dreams and reveries began to take on an existence of their own,independent of my conscious desire to call them forth. The preoccupation evolved of its ownvolition into an obsession which left me weak and haggard owing to its depth and intensity. Ifound it difficult to gather the will to eat; at last when I did accede to necessity I wasincapacitated by the persistent specter of the object of my infatuation, which impeded my visionto the point where, literally, finding sustenance was difficult. I was quite clearly a prisoner of myown desire, my own speculative prowess.

How oft, in the course of the drama which occupies us all, have those players upon whomfate has visited some calamity as a result of their own iniquitous designs taken flight to somber refuge, and therein with frailties bared given voice most pitiable to their sorrows? More directly,what part of these insupportable misdirections could have been averted by the simple expedientapplication of even limited foresight? I cannot but muse over this singular human capacity for self-doubt and embrace it wholeheartedly in my turn as I reflect upon the entanglements thatenmeshed me in complexities undreamt of.




To what extent would I have abridged or otherwise modified my actions, had I but knownwhat was to come? This question I cannot, or will not, prevail upon myself to resolve; let anywho are privy to this tale construct for themselves an answer satisfactory each to his particular design. For now, I will tell her story, or that part of it that I was able to synthesize from thoseautobiographical morsels offered me during our discourses by the stars inspired.

She was nineteen years in this life when they began to court her. She was not yet fullyflowered, yet she possessed a radiance that attracted not one but two suitors, who strove with oneanother for her attentions. Flattered, she encouraged both; she did not intend to set them againsteach other, but rather she could not bear to think of hurting either. Thus it was that, by thisyouthful naïveté, the stage was set for the curious competition that led finally to destiny quiteapart from any expectations.

For years they dueled over her: at times in open confrontation, at times merely by eachtrying to outdo the other in commanding her attentions with gifts or impassioned rhetoric. Theyfound, through these frequent interactions, that they had a certain similarity of tactic, a discoverywhich led eventually to mutual respect and finally incipient tolerance. At last a grudgingfriendship had its embryonic inception, and at that moment she began to dwindle ever so slowly

in their separate estimations. She was not a deliberate manipulator of people; she realized thatshe was losing her hold over both of them, but could not see the situation with the objectiveacuity necessary to react properly.

Meanwhile, the two beaux grew closer as they continued to find common ground inmannerisms and tastes. The relationship finally reached the stage wherein her presence began to

be extraneous and increasingly awkward for both men. Something had to be done, she decided,and something dramatic. She therefore made what was essentially a proposal of marriage to oneof them, having made her choice essentially by flip of a coin.

For a time this act of desperation seemed to be having the desired effect, in that thefriendship was stymied and the chosen one receptive, but abruptly one day the ersatz engagementwas off, the other man was now taken, and she found herself twenty-four and alone.

For weeks she was in an emotional coma. The world seemed unreal to her; no stimulusmade any inroads on her sensory pathways. She ceased to have any social context whatsoever:she wouldn't even answer her phone. Nothing mattered.

Eventually she snapped out of her torpor and developed a raging anger towardseverything that she felt had hurt her, including God, society, herself, and the male gender in toto .She vowed never to allow herself to be 'duped' by emotional attachments to a lover from thatmoment forward, and to be in absolute control of herself and her feelings at all times, despite thefact that she was far from being in control of herself even as she made the pledge.

Her anger and bitterness left little resources for social interaction. She became a loner,drifting through her days with only the minimal necessary contact with the human environment.Her friends and acquaintances were concerned, quite naturally, and made numerous attempts to

breach the barriers she had erected against them, but to no real avail. She would never be again‘compromised.’

One evening she wandered, lonely as a star, through a greenway that twisted tortuouslyalong a languorous creek. She scrambled up the steep contours and skidded down the narrowravines with practiced facility, but lacking any overt awareness of her physical surroundings.That part of her which concerned itself with navigation chose a roughly-outlined path that

plunged rather awkwardly after a few meters and opened up quite unexpectedly into a miniaturecanyon.




Her feet trod gladly through this new and interesting vista, while her barely present perceptive faculties began to signal to the rest of her mind that here was something worth seeingand considering. When at last she did focus her attention on the world around her, she was at firstunable to react. The landscape which presented itself to her now cognizant glance was sounfamiliar as to be unreal, and she simply had no yardstick by which to determine the

appropriate response. She was in a valley of lushly verdant aspect that quite failed to resemble atall closely the park from which she had unintentionally and without noticing egressed. Shehunted a little frantically for the trail back to her familiar haunts; no such avenue made itself apparent, however. She continued to search in increasing alarm and bewilderment for quite along while, but eventually grew fatigued and gave up, frustrated.

The frustration slowly transmuted to fear as she considered her situation, and she fought back the initial manifestations of a developing panic. Marauding beasts and an unforgivingclimate were dangers that suddenly gained a powerful foothold upon her thoughts. She hurriedtoward a stone structure of some sort in the distance that offered at least the promise of shelter from the approaching mantle of darkness.

She did not encounter any of her dreads during the night, although she was rather less

than snugly comfortable. The morning was bright and cheery, however, and she discovered anample supply of fruit and nuts nearby that provided her with a hearty breakfast. Satiated andfeeling much bolder in the light of day, she began to explore, albeit tentatively, what was to

become her new home.She tried to find her way back, of course, made many forays toward that end, but always

she encountered a tangled and strangely oppressive wilderness that seemed to threaten by its veryexistence her peace of mind. Never could she bring herself to forbear that heavy intimidation for long, and so was she at least partially of her own accord a prisoner.

The stone 'ruins' and their enclosing maze of vegetation were both extensive andmultifarious; she seldom found any cause during the daylight hours to wish for some occupationto relieve tedium. The evenings were of another stripe: they crowded in upon her at times and

beat down her stolid assurance with fists of emptiness and longing. She cried out on these black occasions to whatever spirits were incarnate in the dance of Earth, that they might with unctionassuage her sufferings and deliver her soul from the hellish torments of a life miscalculated. Atlast, broken and weeping, she would fall into a darkling repose that in truth resembled that of fever more so than any healthy slumber.

The morning would find her withdrawn and haggard, but the indefatigable enthusiasm of the new day nudged her spirits unceasingly, and eventually she would be forced to reconsider her

judgment of life as an essentially negative event. The day was rich with promise, she wouldrealize, of new discoveries and perspectives; opportunity was once again renewed.

It was on one such morning that she found the tool. Wedged in between two stonesconstituting the plinth of a short pedestal was a piece of metal with a sharp, tapered blade at oneend and a point at the other, which she found while hunting for blackberries in what sheestimated to be early summer. She pulled it from its anchoring and examined it: it appeared to berather crudely manufactured overall, yet the actual cutting surface was smooth and even.

She almost discarded the implement as an interesting but useless artifact when an oblong piece of soapstone caught her eye and planted the seed of creative desire. She had been a sculptor in college. The idea had not occurred to her for a couple of years, busy as she had been with thisthing and the other, but it seemed an inspiration from Heaven under these circumstances. Thetrouble was, she had no model to sculpt.




She tried her hand at various flora, and even a few of the local animals, but none of themsatisfied her artistic craving until she found the pool. It was a small pool, in a secluded niche atone corner of what she had come to think of as the central impoundment. There were the remainsof elegantly carved benches at several spots along the periphery of the pool, and seated on one of these, she found her model: herself, reflected in the crystal clear mirror of the tarn.

It was, admittedly, a bit difficult at first to translate the odd perspective of atwo-dimensional semblance perpendicular to the axis of orientation of the sculpture into anyrealistic representation, especially since she couldn't easily observe all the necessary angles of her subject. After a few false starts, though, she got the hang of it and began to create some quitelovely art. Her initial efforts she kept on a makeshift shelf in the overhung grotto she thought of as 'home.' Since, however, one of her only occupations was the production of these statuettes, shesoon lost interest in retaining them, and left them wherever she had finished carving.

She did not limit herself to soapstone: wood, crude clay, other stones, and even a form of leaf sculpture held together with glue made from plant sap; all these media became intimatelyfamiliar to her sensitive fingers. After perhaps three weeks of daily sculpting, she began to noticethat the art she was casually discarding at her several 'workshops' was disappearing. Four or five

of her pieces, she was certain, were nowhere to be found, though she knew without any doubt precisely where she had left them.This puzzled and faintly worried her, since she had never had the slightest indication that

any creatures large enough to carry off such objects as the stone carvings (other than theoccasional grazing deer, who weren't known for their appreciation of human art or their taste for stone) even existed in this place. Most of the purloined pieces were stone, but on occasion awooden one would vanish. She tried putting out a variety of objects; the thief seemed to zero inon the sculptures only.

She decided to set a trap and see if the culprit could be caught in the act. Toward this end,she spent several days fabricating a truly wondrous and elaborately detailed likeness of herself from a richly-veined slab of stone she had discovered some days earlier. It had a startling streak of deeply lustrous blue-green that ran across her finished likeness diagonally, as though she werewearing an aquamarine wrap from shoulder to hip. This was her best work to date, and shefervently hoped that she was successful in retrieving it from the trap she was concocting.

She let it fall (carefully) into the lush grass near the log upon which she had sat whilecarving this latest self-portrait, and arranged herself in some nearby brush which formed anatural bower to await the appearance of the burglar. After a while she began to wish that shehad brought along something to eat while sitting her vigil.

The gathering dew damped her hair and her spirits. The gibbous moon slipped mistily behind a silent copse and she slept. She dreamt a dream of faceless shapes and namelesscreatures that crept across the plains and scarps of an untrammeled Morphean palette. From theshadows on the edge of awareness they taunted her, never close enough to be clearly seen, yetalways within the limits of her perception. She thought she could see, or feel, the presence of some other, wholly different, manifestation, but any details concerning it were beyond her abilityto comprehend.

She woke with a start, nagged by a sense of duty neglected and impending disaster. Thevividly incoherent particulars of her dream still clutched at her mind, forestalling the incursion of the totality of this latest reality into her beset faculties.

When at last the whirling miasma of her nocturnal otherworld settled into murmuringquiescence, she abruptly recalled her mission and set to searching for the bait. At first she could




not find it, but then it showed itself, behind a clump of stiff grass and clothed in the cloak of thenow moonless night. She sighed, and picked it up.

Something pulled at her, something that caused her to take the statuette back to her grottoand examine it closely under torchlight. Almost at once, it became apparent to her that this wasnot the same piece of sculpture that she had dangled invitingly before the inscrutable thief. Her

outrage at having been so casually circumvented fought for preeminence amongst her jumbledsensations with the dawning realization that she had lost the one product of her wanton creativitythat mattered in her estimation, as it presently stood.

She was frustrated at these events, to be sure, but deeply couched in her subconsciouswas as well a kind of joy or relief at being handed a cause: something to fight for, if you will.She decided that the pursuit of this nefarious criminal would be her raison d'etre, at least for thetime being. Her cause was doomed from inception, however, for the villain she was so doggedlyto course was not one that could be dealt with or even understood in human terms: it wascapricious fate itself.

If her prospects for a successful conclusion to the venture were, for the most part,hopeless, her elation in the battle now joined was nevertheless considerable. She plotted and

schemed at ways to trap the desperado and defeat him even amidst the very architecture of hisown devices. Her mind was a formidable matrix of foils and lures, moves and countermoves.Her involvement in this game became so complete, in fact, that for several weeks she

literally thought of nothing else. She at last won her victory over fate by the simple expedient of making the conduct of the game itself the conquest. She found fulfillment in the pursuit, andrelegated capture to a secondary position, at last making it in fact an undesirable denouement toher new-found purpose.

No more of her traps were productive. She eventually came to doubt even that the firstepisode had transpired as she seemed to remember it. It became more and more difficult toconjure up a clear picture of the thing she had lost, until finally she no longer truly believed in it.Her efforts to bring to light the culprit took on a ritualistic aura as the justification for themfaded.

One morning she stopped to look at herself from an old, nearly-forgotten objectivity, andshe was dismayed. The tenuous threads that had bound her to monomania softly snapped, andshe was free: free to resume her search for something to occupy her time and intellect.

The prospect was a daunting one...no, not so much daunting, as dampening...it dampenedher spirits, it dampened her philosophy, it dampened her very metabolism.

I spoke earlier of the caprice of destiny, of that ineluctable happenstance known as fate; itis this very agency of Providence which now assumes the directorial reins of the drama.




X. CONFLUENS

I cannot in all honesty say that I was unable to sleep. Sleep itself came with more or less

its accustomed regularity; the dreams engendered by this somnolence were fairly normal as well,and of no specific theme. No, my dilemma was born not of insomnia, but of phantasm.While my nocturnal landscapes were not especially vivid or memorable, my waking

hours were increasingly haunted by images of the feminine spirit transfixed by that namelessartist of the statues. The temper of these visions was such that only by observing peripherally— catching them 'out of the corner of my eye'—was I able to discern any real sense of detail. Adirect examination inevitably sent the illusions melting into misty oblivion.

I was able to adapt after an initial period of wonder and some paranoia, and eventually togo about what constituted my daily routine, but always with the feeling that I was beingshadowed, even somehow threatened, by this mysterious and incorporeal companion. I began tofeel myself, in fact, almost wed to this woman who existed, so far as I knew, only in myabnormally inventive and assertive subconscious.

Deeply, then, did I dream of her: a heady exuberance washing over me as a springtimeEos wove her breathless magic. There also, glowing with a warm radiance that transcended thegentle rose of dawn, she was that which inspired me to flights unimaginable with but the shadowof her trenchant glance. I felt her presence; she inundated all of my senses, and by that flood wasI illumined even unto my innermost recesses.

Mind and nerve were by her encompassed, and thus was I released, wherein myrestrictive emulation of countless societal predecessors was magically rescinded, if but for amoment. Softly she melts in and out of the shifting mists that weave their mesmeric symmetriesacross a shining matinal tableau. Whenever I approach her or otherwise attempt to intensify our contact, she retreats gracefully into her ethereal sanctuary and I am left to ponder and grapplewith the intangible.

Bereft then of even her insubstantial image, I must needs face the hollow agony of solitude, of living as one in an ethos intrinsically designed for two. Thus were my days andnights inflicted upon me for a minor eternity. I found her one day at last quite naturally, as thesunlight threaded its way cautiously through a glorious tangle of vegetation which at times gavethe impression of being not so much an earthbound canopy as merely the lowest layer of sky.The dreams, or visions, had abated somewhat, or I had developed a degree of inurement to their effect, and I was beginning to reestablish a modicum of psychic peace on a day-to-day basis.

She had made the fairly respectable journey down to a picturesque little streamlet, toescape perhaps the utter routine of her life (for even Paradise knows tedium). She had thensettled herself on a grand throne of limestone that seemed to have undergone countless centuriesof erosion specifically so that she alone could be seated there. This petrous loge conformed soclosely to her physical parameters that the thing projected every indication of having beensculpted especially for her use by some thoughtful and far-sighted deity of these indisputablyenchanted woodlands.

An elfin stillness descended upon both me and the world within my sensory perceptionsas I crept along a pathway that appeared somehow to have been walked by another pair of humanfeet suspiciously recently. I was not truly creeping by intent; the unexpected and grosslyunfamiliar sensation that I was not necessarily alone in this pristine wildness, combined with thesepulchral damp silence of this atypical morning, urged me toward a dignified caution.




The farther along this trail that I dared myself to progress, the greater my impression thatan encounter of totally unfathomed dimension was imminent. For once my intuition provedsearingly accurate. She, too, felt the approach of the storm, and the charged air which carried itdiscomfited her. Her perceptions of the nature of what was to come were less revealing,however, than my own.

A general and pervasive uncertainty was her principal reaction to my unanticipatedapproach, and it made her all the more ill at ease to remember that she had sought out this placeto flee from those facets of her existence which she found less than idyllic. Chief among thesewas boredom, admittedly, but she wasn't at all convinced that this borderline fear and anxiety shenow found herself experiencing was what she had come to unearth from a stultified reservoir of mostly forgotten sentiments.

After all this time unencumbered by social rules, she had largely lost the ability to dreadin that peculiar fashion that people dread the company of others whom they would rather avoid.What she was feeling, therefore, was as confusing for her as it was uncomfortable.

I was far from contented as well, but for decidedly different reasons. I was by nowmotionless on my twisting path to destiny: motionless and virtually breathless. The atmosphere

had become suddenly animate and seemed intent upon removing itself with marked vigor frommy beleaguered lungs. I felt this treasonous withdrawal keenly, as well I might, and it threatenedto overcome me. I plopped down heavily on a thickly gnarled root that angled from the black soiland concentrated on breathing. I could not ascertain that I was accomplishing a great deal at first,

but I kept at it, and eventually the air thought better of its rebellion and grew less obdurate.She decided in the meanwhile that whatever was transpiring in the universe of her

visceral impressions had attained that level of insistence wherein she felt unable and unwillingmerely to sit and wait for fate to find her. She stood and resolutely started off to face thisunspoken challenge, whatever it should prove to entail. It proved, as mayhap an astute pursuer of this chronicle will have surmised, to be me.

I sat there, perched precariously on my piece of root, and tried my best to cope with thedizzy disorientation that had temporarily (at least I ardently hoped) taken hold of me. I wasconsidering the possible salubrious effects of crawling off into the underbrush for a recuperativenap when my skin began to tingle, lightly. I wondered briefly whether this was some further symptom of impending debilitation, when I felt suddenly compelled to glance up.

I had no reason to do this; my world was for the moment almost completely dominated by that which lay beneath my feet. I felt compelled nonetheless, and the exercise was in no way acasual one. I twisted myself into a position from which the motion would be most easilyaccomplished, and took a deep breath.

Her feet were white and fitted demurely (so it seemed to me) into some rather fragile-looking sandals. I stared at these sandals and their totally awe-inspiring cargo with frank astonishment, mingled with an undercurrent of disbelief. I continued to watch them, waiting for these artifacts of a species of which I had long since concluded I was the only residentrepresentative to waver and transmute back into the innocuous denizens of the forest floor theysurely were.

When, after several interminable moments of scrutiny on my part, they remained to allappearances solidly incongruous, I steeled myself and began to elevate my gaze. By the time Ihad scaled that wondrous peak and locked with her soft brown eyes, the dizziness which hadstood aside momentarily during my ascent flowed back into me, and I toppled rather awkwardlyonto those alabaster foothills.




I did not faint at her feet, or rather on her feet; I merely collapsed in order, as I told her later, to take advantage of the opportunity that she presented me. She very nearly fled, as anysane person would surely have done, but some instinct calmed her and she instead watched me tosee if I was likely to threaten her. When it became clear to her that I was in no condition even tosee her very well, much less to offer her harm, she drew once again close to me and propped me

up on that selfsame root which earlier had been my bench.I was certainly aware of this, and found it far from objectionable. However, my ability toexpress my gratitude for her ministrations was markedly reduced by the dogged insistence of my

personal universe on a rather nauseating spinning plummet. I found it best to shut my eyestightly and hold on to the nearest solid structure, which happened to be her leg.

I suppose that I lost control of my cognizance at about this time, for my next prolonged bout of it took place back on a well-padded dais in her little bower. When I first saw it from myconfused and rather pessimistic stupor, it reminded me at once of a bier, and I was for that reasonnot overly attracted to it as a resting place. I had little choice in the matter, fortunately, and soonovercame this macabre and misplaced objection.

Her name, as it came to be known to me, was Alcyone. I thought this a remarkably lovely

name, for a more than remarkably lovely beauty, and I told her as much now, on what was to bethe first of innumerable occasions. She seemed flattered, but confessed that she had always foundit slightly silly, and had suffered as a child from its unconventionality.

Given my lack of access to any shared cultural context, I was unable to sympathize withher to the extent and with the sincerity that I would have preferred. She seemed not to notice, or to have evolved a philosophy that was sufficiently comfortable with itself that such socialfeedback was not essential. Whatever the case, we got along well during the 'nurse-patient'

phase, and by its end I, and I believe she also, was well along the road to emotional commitment.One humid morning I awoke with a robust feeling I had not experienced in some weeks,

and decided to take a walk down to the spring which bubbled animatedly about fifty yards fromour shared refuge. I noticed the low, dark clouds which scuttled by overhead as though being

pursued by some ravenous beast of frightful aspect off over the southwestern horizon, butthought nothing of them in my newly vigorous optimism.

I took a healthy mouthful of the sweet nectar and swished it around in my mouth like avintage wine. As I knelt there by that fountain, melodramatically savoring its offering, I heard alight step and turned just as she laid a delicate and graceful hand on my shoulder. Her touchelectrified me in a manner with which I had no previous experience, and against which I had nodefense (not that any was wished). Her gesture had been one of concern, and of congratulation atmy apparent full recovery. I was nonetheless guiltless of misinterpretation, for to interpret isfundamentally a conscious act, and no thought whatsoever entered into my reaction.

This was pure; this was primal, and the strength of it washed over us both in its stormsurge. I stood to face her, and we searched each other for clues to what was happening. Never was any case solved more expeditiously. Our fingers met, lightly, and explored each other as onewithout vision might explore an exquisitely detailed sculpture. Our fingers found the other's lipsin a profound synchrony of movement, and the navigational knowledge thus imparted was soon

put to use as those lips sought and gained their safe berth.




XI. GRADATIO

We passed several piquant hours in the meticulous examination of each other's delighted

topography. We did not give in to the initial onslaught of impatient passion, but rather channeledthose urgings into a measured and prolonged crescendo of mutual desire and understanding. Aswe came upon that sacred Elysium, casting at last our final demurrals to the unbridled winds,those very mistrals built into a screaming squall that paralleled our fervor. A wild tempest arosefrom behind our thrashing ecstasy, and our moment of revelation was crowned by a prolongedglorious crashing of Jovian indulgence provided, as it were, by a seasonable and theatricDivinity.

Our lives threaded themselves together into a joyous stuff that draped our union in thegayest possible bunting. Days fused one into the other as the bliss of absolute mutual fulfillmentwas spun into the warp and woof of our existence. Each morning was the herald of another ebullient string of hours through which we walked and skipped and courted.

I told her of my disjointed experiences, of course. She seemed to take them in stride moreeasily than some others might have, given her own trials and exile to this inexplicableShangri-La. We conversed at great length on matters of origin and destination, and while sheshowed me a number of new ways to look at such topics, she was unable to assist me in thefundamental question of what had transpired in the first three decades or so of my existence.

I was becoming increasingly aware of the handicap my unembellished history foistedupon me, and of the unfortunate necessity for providing the details of that dossier purely throughmy own devices.

These ruminations, though disturbing, were far less burdensome for me during my timewith Alcyone. She filled my thoughts and my senses with pleasures which ran an elaborategamut, from rapture to the simple joy of waking up beside a warm, familiar presence.

I relegated the deep questions of my lost roll of deeds to a lesser-used corner of myconsciousness, and remanded my full attention to Alcyone. I often found myself appreciating her simply by drinking in her beauty. Her long, richly coppered tresses flowed over and around her stately frame in multiple caresses that shifted whenever she stepped, or bent, or turned. The

proportions of her body enchanted me by their very geometric precision. Each of her aspects wasideal, both in itself, and in relationship to the whole of her. Not only were her limbs themselves

perfectly formed, even the most rudimentary motion she performed with those limbs was graceincarnate. To watch Alcyone going about her daily routines was to behold an exquisitelychoreographed ballet performed in all innocence and sans any trace of self-conscious affectation.I loved her well and without reservation.

One can never truly know another's thoughts and feelings, of course, but in both wordand deed, Alcyone professed her love for me with equal fervor. We often seemed to have beendrawn to this isolation merely to find and be given the opportunity to enjoy each other, withoutthe complex interferences of overweening society. In this pursuit we soon excelled. We walkedtogether, my star and I, over many a winding path and true.

For weeks of deepest bliss we shared all that may be shared between two corporealspirits. Our love and our lives, our secrets and longings, our intimate self-appraisals: all of thesethings we offered to each other as proof of our bond. The unity that I felt with this woman leftme at times breathless, dizzy at the sheer magnitude of trust involved. I could not love more thanI did at these moments.




She brought up the subject of marriage, and I instantly agreed, although the mechanics of such a ceremony seemed to me to pose something of an obstacle, being as we were totallyremoved from a milieu in which such matters were of importance, and in which they weredesigned to be performed.

This objection she treated as trifling, and so it was that I awoke one cheery morning to

find that I was to be married on that very day. She had banished herself for long periods of eachof the preceding several days, and forbade me to accompany her on these forays. Having somenotion, however vague and devoid of facts, that what she was doing was of great importance toher, and seeing her joyous exuberance at the end of each day as a result of her labors, Idetermined to bear these separations as well as I might, and resist any temptation to violate her desire for secrecy.

I was to be dressed in my usual garments (the only ones I possessed), albeit verycarefully cleaned and spruced up by an industrious Alcyone. She wore a captivating full-lengthcloud of what appeared to be silk, punctuated effusively by garland upon garland of radiant floralglory. Where she procured this garment, whether by serendipity or painstaking (and borderingon miraculous) manufacture, I was never to discover.

As it stood, I had no immediate desire for information regarding this matter. I wantedonly to be with this creature, who now more than ever owned my loyalty and happiness as surelyas any such commodities have ever been owned.

It was no great hike to the place she had prepared for our joining, yet along the sylvantrail I was overcome with a great sense of occasion; I had ample time to review what little I knewof past events, and even more to hope for and speculate upon what was to come. I was, therefore,deep in thought when we topped the gentle rise and came into the wedding bower.

A troop of elves, such as was depicted in any number of tales I seemed to recall fromsome far distant jongleur, could scarcely have achieved with magical ministrations thetransformation brought about by Alcyone. What had been a small glade overhung with a canopyof the surrounding arbors was now a chapel in testament to a woman's profound intimacy withthe vital forces of nature. The symmetry of construction was exacting, with aisles leading

precisely to the altar, and the entirety of the design exquisitely color balanced, yet there wasabout it no sense of having been engineered by human artifice. The impression generated wasrather one of some spectacular and favored retreat in the realm of a woodland deity, broughtforth by the wood itself as an expression of devotion and worship. I was awestruck on seeing it.

The ceremony was one of her devising as well. We repeated to one another vows of amost noble and loving nature, with the whole of creation in eloquently silent witness. When wehad plighted our everlasting love in a manner and to an extent that satisfied her, she led me to asecluded and semi-enclosed chamber she had fashioned from the luxuriant undergrowth behindthe altar.

There I surprised her with a set of rings I had managed to create from a small butimpressively pure deposit of some metallic ore I had lately discovered—hers I had set with adeeply iridescent blue stone—and it was there as well, on an impossibly soft couch of grass andleaves overlain with a luxurious woolen mat, that we consummated this fairy tale marriage in aforest verdant with celebration.

The next two weeks were so overwhelming for me that I have great difficulty inseparating events one from another. My days and nights were a steady, uninterrupted sequence of exaltation and blithe serenity, tempered by a healthy dose of utter contentment.

I glided through my post-nuptial life in a kind of modulated euphoria, grinning rather




stupidly and following Alcyone in her daily activities in much the same state of dazedlymalleable bliss as I suspect males throughout history have fallen into at such times.

I began to build a stone 'palace' for her at about that time. I had figured a formula for some crude but seemingly effective mortar and I set to work drafting, laying out, andconstructing a more permanent residence for us. I felt myself a pioneer husband, of sorts, and set

my mind to live up to those standards that I seemed to remember such men were reported to haveestablished for frontier family life.I had made surprising headway on this project, having reached the waist-level window

sill stage on the perimeter walls, when on one rather dreary day I chanced to wander a bit further than had been my custom in search of appropriately fashioned raw materials.

I am no geologist; I cannot tell you the type of stone for which I was searching on thatday. It was a light gray, with a relatively smooth texture and not so dense as to be impractical for transport. I had found a few tantalizing traces of the stuff, which seemed to me to presage alarger lode if only I could track it down.

It was in pursuit of that desired end that I entered, alas none too cautiously, the narrowcave about whose mouth I had found strewn numerous small pieces of my intended prize. I had

no light source, but there seemed to be some illumination further along the cave corridor, thoughfrom what conceivable source I was not prepared to speculate. I decided therefore to continue my journey of exploration until such time as I could no longer safely navigate, and hope that I struck a reasonable supply of the stone in that interim.

I did, in fact, find that which I sought, and my joy at this discovery knew little bounding.I immediately began to quarry some goodly-sized blocks, and picked up a brace of them for removal to the entrance. As I approached this goal, I felt a sensation of incongruity, of somethingnot as it was before. I stopped and concentrated on my senses, hoping to evaluate thisdevelopment for what it might portend. There was a slight ledge before me, upon which theentrance to the cave was situated, and after a moment of unproductive analysis I struggled up itssteep embankment with my spoils.

It was during this struggle that I hit upon the source of my previous discomfort: the air had grown somehow thinner and colder since my entry into this cave, scant minutes earlier. I

paused for breath, then heaved myself over the lip of the shelf and into the vestibule at the mouthof the cave. Having disengaged myself from the loose gravel and unsure footing on the slope, Idirected my attention to the outer world, and received one of the most eviscerating joltsimaginable.




XII. SCISSURE

The mouth of my cave was flanked by several large, rather flattened, boulders, and

located at the apex of a gently inclined eminence. A broad swath of spongy grass led to the caveentrance, and trekked down away into the ubiquitous forest. At least, this was a description of the Mise-en-scène when I made my unsuspecting way into these promising caverns.

What grisly and hateful geography confronted me upon my return to the demesne of daylight I find it even now difficult to relate. Instead of the pleasant sylvan setting to which I hadgrown contentedly accustomed, now there fell away from before my disbelieving eyes a sheer,mist-enshrouded precipice that quite literally vanished into the incalculable depths in which theroots of this montane behemoth were presumably sunk. I could not begin to estimate my altitude,except for the notable paucity of atmosphere in comparison to earlier, more hospitable climes.

My sudden dizziness was no doubt a reaction to the anoxia and the drastic demands being placed upon my coping faculties; I sat (or more nearly, crumpled) abruptly to the moist dirt floor of the vestibule and cradled my confused head. I tried desperately to assess the situation, toestablish some rational and ordered series of events which could plausibly have led to thisoutcome. I failed utterly, and it was in the midst of this cachexia that the realization which was to

provide the impetus for what I must describe as my subsequent insanity erupted into my mindand filled it with white-hot anguish.

All traces of rational analysis and prudent recourse were annihilated by theall-encompassing image of my beloved Alcyone. My sight seemed to distort sickeningly; I heardmyself screaming to the vast and echoing expanse which unfolded before me imprecation andcommination that sprung from the turbid depths of a violent emotional paroxysm. I knew withoutneed for reason that I would not find Alcyone, nor any vestige of her tranquil and loving domain,even if I could discover some tortuous path that led me at last from this singularly isolated peak upon which I had been cruelly and arbitrarily incarcerated by that same Fate which had given me

bride and joy unbridled. I stood for a moment on the brink of that swirling torment, then with aroar of purest rage I flung the now despised stones into the empyrean wastes and myself after them.




XIII. REGELATION

Stillness. Silence, but only momentary. A steady, growing rush of air. A thousand

sensations, a thousand alarms, none of them truly heeded. Darkness of choice shielding fromdesperation. No place for subtle feelings, no room for graded emotions. The raw abrasion of stark surety. A histrionic flashing past, inciting stirred rancor flowing thickly between desolate

banks even without sight. Struggles that corrode the inner resolution and direct trepidationthroughout a vulnerable reef of hope.

An empire solidly formed on bedrock unknowingly riddled with a billion cavities: yetdoes it endure until a critical enceinte gives way. The weight of each bears upon its neighbor; thelabyrinth thus contributes to its own demise as observations affirm again.

But I did not fear these phantoms, potent though they were, for their very essence waswithin me. It bore me up sharply, its acrid tentacles enfolding my wisdom in sheaths of oblivion.This insulation kept me from the icy reality in which I was now inextricably steeped, yet it wasin places transparent, and I could not escape awareness on some fundamental plane.

Bloodless, the jagged gleam of a pestilent grin mocked me from just beyond myambiguous bulwark, and I could not escape that poisoned glance. Alone and impotent at thecynosure of a turbulent affectation, I could but wait and seethe. Betrayed by nature and self, Istill would not allow such demons as hungered for the secret pith to gain their sway over me.Hopelessly and exhaustedly resolute, I shut myself to imprecation and importunity alike.

In the meanwhile, the crystalline expanses flooded past. The plunge eventually ended.Despite what may seem a physical inevitability, this cessation was not a particularly remarkableevent. In fact, I cannot say that I was even aware of it having occurred until I at one point beganto examine some physiographic details and realized that the existence of static structures impliedstrongly a discontinuation of free fall. In keeping with the spirit of having recently experienced a

precipitous collision with an unforgiving terra firma, I conducted a concerned examination of body parts most likely to have suffered from such an impact.

Finding after lengthy investigation that I was, however miraculously, at least superficiallyintact, I turned my attention to the increasingly insistent cold in which I now found myself immersed. As my eyes acclimated to the sharply brilliant illumination which flooded thelandscape around me, I began to pick out features which soon resolved themselves into toweringspires of ice. The whole of my milieu was now ice, in fact, and ice of the clearest and mostfrigid character imaginable.

I tried standing, and discovered that my assessment of my condition had been somewhatoptimistic. I had acquired a slight but at times exquisitely painful limp in my left leg, which atleast served to divert my attention momentarily from the invasive cold. As I set out for an iceoverhang some thirty or forty yards to my right, hampered considerably by my injured leg, asudden rush and swirl of wind seemed to freeze my blood in situ, and brought with it a blindingcurtain of minutely sparkling ice crystals, which glinted and twirled in a frigidly preternatural

ballet.I fought my way through the glacial maelstrom, angry at this latest impediment to my

progress and ease. My entire body surface was coated with the adhesive ice crystals that soughtto drive themselves deep into my skin. I screamed into the wind my rage at this attack; the wholeof my being clenched and drove itself against the storm.

So deep was my blooded fury, in fact, that it was several moments after I had reached




shelter before this fact registered within my enraged sensibilities. I stopped, breathless, andsurveyed my surroundings. This was not what I would have portrayed, given an artistic outletand an impetus for such activity, as the stereotypical ice cave. It was still quite cold, true, butthere the congruity ceased, and decidedly. The walls were more like thick pasta than anythingelse, and had about them a vague puce cast that seemed more or less to pulse to an

undecipherable rhythm.I was so taken aback by the decor that I failed to notice the whirlpools until I slippedsmoothly into one. These were not deep, and nor were they rotating with any real velocity. I hadno doubt after a brief bout of apoplexy that I would have little difficulty in extricating myself from the turbid fluid. The most interesting and noteworthy aspect of the mishap, however, wasthat I found reason not to do so.

To begin with, the pools were very colorful. The liquid seemed to change huecontinuously as it swirled around, as though it were composed of thousands of drops of essenceof prism. Another aspect of the stuff that I found pleasant, especially in light of current climaticconditions, was that it radiated a particularly enjoyable warmth.

So tantalizing was this sensation, in fact, that it engendered a kind of euphoria that I

found irresistible. Rather than struggling to remove myself from the iridescent plash, then, Iinstead relaxed and slid into a comfortable position wherein my head was the only portion of meabove the surface.

I was at first somewhat reluctant to close my eyes, given my wholly unknown tactical position in this unlikely cavern, but eventually the balm lulled me into trust and I flowed awayinto languor. Initially I saw only colors: mostly warm reds and yellows flowing lazily throughmy thoughts like so many rivulets of volcanic mud. Their lethargy passed itself along to me, andI slipped further into hypnotic relaxation. It was, as the truly disturbing disruptions of my mindwere wont to be, an insidious process.

Some chance aspect of the patterns parading aimlessly to and fro in my imaginationtriggered my latent desires, and before I was really aware of the scope of my feelings they roseup to engulf me. Perhaps my subjugated remembrances of nuptial bliss were the chief culprit inthe ensuing imbroglio; perhaps it was merely that more diffuse and fundamental hormonalunderpinning upon which the superstructure of all higher life is erected. Whichever the case, I

began to experience at first merely suggestive, but eventually frankly erotic, visions over which Ihad no control.




XIV. PURGAMEN

In the beginning they were but gentle stirrings, distributed over my anatomy carelessly

and without discernible pattern. It took a few minutes for them to separate themselves from theoverall feelings of nirvana washing over me in joyful waves. Even after they began to focusthemselves on one particular region of my body, I remained appreciative, at first. I had not, after all, experienced any such feelings since my fall from bliss (how long ago, I had no realunderstanding).

I basked in this aura of physical innuendo for some time, with no prescience whatsoever of the storm soon to come. I was surrounded by pleasure that seemed to be taking on an almosttangible character. Little wisps and tendrils of it writhed in stately animation all about me. Theyencircled my chest, my arms, my legs—subtly, and without overt tactile infringement. I in truthenjoyed even this, for it provided more a sense of secure ensconcement than one of restraint. Istruggled deliciously within a gossamer embrace, still not fully cognizant of the indoctrination

being given me.As I shifted within my light bonds, each new slight alteration of posture brought waves of

quivering delight coursing through me. For a time these vaguely prurient impressions held mesquirming in their sway, and neither intensified nor decreased. I grew so totally acclimated tothis sensory rete that it ceased to be for me an external stimulus. It took on instead the cast of anintrinsic reaction to some outrageous spectacle being witnessed for the first time by human eyes(with myself being the possessor of those fortunate ocular organs).

Somewhere within this rapturous polyphony a single discordance arose. Scarcelynoticeable at first amidst the sensory tumult, the seed established a firm beachhead upon theundefended shore where my conscious and subconscious came together. Up to this point myenjoyment had been of a rather esoteric nature, not connected to any specific mentalvisualizations: I was not so much fantasizing as simply being caressed by the warmth andsuggestive stimulation.

As the lascivious kernel fed upon my carefully constructed predisposition, however, it began to generate fantasies of the first order. They were initially just softly erotic portraits passing in review before my hapless mental sight, but with completely unanticipated alacritythey blossomed redly into explicit, grinding lust. I sat up, breathless, and flailed weakly for somehandhold. Finding none within my restricted reach, I dug my fingernails into my own buttocks,and held on as the tide of this latest imprecation advanced inexorably, quite literally nearlydrowning me in its thickly exotic brine.

The softly encircling tendrils tightened into bindings of steel which held me ever morestiffly in their implacable grasp. I soon felt myself unable to move or speak, and my vision

became limited solely to those manifestations of my rampantly lewd subconscious.Throughout this ordeal, for such it was, I comforted myself with the belief that this frank

phantasmagoria was a product not of my own psyche, but rather an intrusion by some outsideagency intent on corrupting my will. Any admission on my part that no influences existed here

but my own would likely have proven seriously damaging to my already fragile sense of self. Iwas disturbed by the lack of identity evinced by my phantasmal partners in the more graphic of these adventures. This shortcoming seemed for once to be not a reflection of my paucity of accessible past experiences, but instead an inability to pick out any facial characteristics. Suchfeatures were there, yes, but I could not assimilate them multiply. No sense of gestalt ever




manifested itself as a result of my examinations of these faces, and no memory of them remainedwith me for more than a few brief seconds. Such misgivings were largely in retrospect, however,for my mental state at this point was hardly conducive to analytical consideration.

I was forced to contend now with sensory assaults depicting flagrant sexual acts. Allmanner of such deeds were being energetically perpetrated upon my helpless body by an

assortment of anonymous and adroit nymphs. I felt myself increasingly unable to get my breath,and my muscles were rapidly cramping from straining at my bonds, as well as from theunavoidable reaction to my tormentors' ministrations.

One event led into the next now without interlude, and often I was being treated toseveral unspeakable manipulations simultaneously. The women positioned me at will, withoutregard for gravity or any other of the traditional physical constraints. I suppose some part of meenjoyed this experience, or at least would have if the pace had been reduced, but the greater

portion of my mind was furious at the removal of my right of choice.The rhythm of my torments increased constantly, until at last I could sense only a

bucking, jiggling blur of movements and sensations that channeled itself finally into onedescription-defying orgy of hyperventilating climax, from whose environs I fully expected never

to return. With a crashing, thrashing chaos of involuntary irruption, I spun wildly over a yawning precipice and down into a darkly heaving caldera of limbo.I regained my awareness eventually, and found that I was positioned half in and half out

of the swirling eddy. It had cooled somewhat, and it seemed now to contain mere water: slightlysalty to the taste, but otherwise and most especially chromatically unremarkable. I pulled myself onto the sandy verge and lay as one paralyzed, mercifully unable at first to recollect my ordeal.Tenuous pieces of it were just beginning to invade my stultified consciousness when the vividand unsought image of Alcyone leapt forward, obliterating all other sensations.

I screamed until my lungs could no longer support the necessary exhalation, then I turnedover onto my stomach and cried as loudly and forcibly as any soul that ever lodged in an earthlyshell. I railed against fate and the evils of an existence which could callously thrust me into mycurrent state of utter deprivation and desolation. I wept for my lost memories and my lost wife,and for the basic happiness I now felt certain would forevermore be beyond my feeble grasp. Ished my body's briny libation for the children I would never spawn and the simple familialintimacy I had been denied by cruelly capricious happenstance. I cried until I had neither thestrength nor tears to cry any longer, then after a brief episode of bitter recuperation, I threwthoughts of composure to the shrieking winds and dissolved into yet another apoplectic bout of lamentation.

For countless hours after I had exhausted the resources necessary to continue this pitiablecycle, I wandered a bleak and sullen landscape on the periphery of oblivion. I cared not for theuniverse, and it cared not for me. I consumed no nourishment, for none seemed worth my efforts.I struggled not for life, for it was not to me a thing which merited prolonging. I detested allthings, for all things had betrayed me, either by their actions, or by their failure to act where suchcould have lent me succor. Inconsolable, I laid myself to rest on the bare stone and gave myself up at lastto that despicable fate which had bayed so clamorously for my soul.




XV. COVERTURE

I awoke from a chilling black coma and found myself staring skyward into a fine

encapsulation of drizzle. I eventually allowed myself to notice that I was rather less thancomfortable in this emplacement, and struggled wearily and hopelessly to my feet. At once I wasassaulted by an insistent odor which penetrated my well-entrenched gloom and coerced me intofocusing on the world spread out around me. It was a scent, or rather a mixture of scents, thatstruck me, even before I was able to identify their source, as decidedly incongruous with what Ihad determined to be the ecological norm of this area.

Looking around at my feet, I stared for fully two minutes in dull amazement. The knollupon which I had slept was blanketed in a living carpet of blooms. Flowers of literally hundredsof different forms were spread out in every direction, for as far as vision could encompass. I feltas though I had been deposited by some sort of aerial process onto a floral butte in anundiscovered country born of a vivid and wistful imagination.

Despite my residual hovering misery, I could not evade a certain inrush of gladnessgenerated by the sheer spectacle of my floriferous milieu. For the first time in a subjective eon I

breathed deeply the pure and scented air, and took in the whole of my surroundings with joy. AsI stood on a knoll of wild colors and sipped the heady exudate of rampant Spring, my inner sightwas filled once by visions of bacchanalia, but these were not the heavy, throbbing thrashings of sexual lust, but rather a lighthearted delight in the simple joys of a field of sweet-scented flowers.

An orgiastic romp through the petaled lawn proved too powerful a temptation and, unableat last to contain myself, I leapt forward into the glorious rainbow sea. This gay floral carpet wasof such a density as to obscure its substrate entirely. Afloat on the insistent current of desperatelyneeded celebration, I heeded no cautions whispered by a tiny nucleus of wisdom. A splash of violet bordered by incarnadine beckoned to me, and I flung myself willfully into its embrace.

The beauty belied treachery, however, and I plunged recklessly into a crevice hidden beneath the rolling waves of inflorescence. At first I plunged painfully through staggered layersof brush and ricocheted off closely-spaced rock outcrops, never quite able to gain sufficient

purchase to halt my descent entirely. Just when I felt myself battered to the point of unconsciousness, however, the air through which I plummeted began to thicken somehow, and tomerge with the stone and roots until all was a homogeneous syrup of translucent sienna. Theeffort of struggling within this restrictive atmosphere quickly exhausted my remaining vigor, andI gave up the battle to lie as one deceased, at the mercy of the unfathomable tides and currents of this outlandish dross.

I was tossed about mercilessly; I was spun and flipped and pitched into every conceivable bodily contortion. All of this took place, however, in slow but irresistible motion. I several timesfelt myself on the verge of suffocation, yet somehow I managed to derive breathable air from themeager atmospheric envelope surrounding me unevenly in this viscous porridge. I do notremember any loss of cognizance, but suddenly I was no longer being manipulated against my

physical will by the treasonous air.I found myself beached, exhausted, on a cold and darkly brilliant flooring of an

implacably adamantine character. My vision was impaired by some force—whether an artifact of my own making or a meteorological manifestation, I could not discern—but this was short-lived,and I soon began to resolve my latest environment. It was, in a word, terrifying.




XVI. AD POTESTAS

Human perception is an odd manifestation. What may be to one a relatively innocent and

inconsequential event may to another herald disaster of Brobdingnagian proportions. Similarly,spatial orientation may be perceived to possess, in itself, a horrific quality if it engenders fantasyof a vividly unpleasant variety. Subjective impression, therefore, plays a decisive role in anyconsideration of psychological impetus. There was, on the other hand, more than the subjectiveabout that which now confronted me apace. Almost at once I felt something threatening aboutthis place.

Even before I gained some measure of success in my struggle for efficacious vision, acold web of dread was settling over my body and spirit. When at last my sight was of use to me,I beheld in awe and fear that which pierced my heart with razored anguish. I was a mote poisedtenuously along a ribbon stretched from earth to sky. The grade was acute, it seemed, yet I feltno obvious tendency to slide or otherwise be pulled down to the (extremely) distant foundation.

There passed a number of grains through the vertex ere I gained the requisite fortitude toevaluate my position in space more precisely. Finally, though, I steeled myself and peered boldlyover the edge of my celestial companionway (from a fearless prone attitude). Below me I sawmist and an almost impossibly distant panorama of earthly topography. Above me I saw only themyriad pinpricks of the cosmic infinite.

It became apparent to me that I was to choose a direction, and proceed as best I might.My altitude at this point was a parameter I had no reliable means of estimating, but I was fairlyconvinced that it was no small consideration. As it seemed equally precarious for me no matter the direction I chose, and as I felt that I had experienced most of what the lesser elevation had tooffer, a great deal of it unpleasant in the extreme, I decided to climb.

Once I made this determination I was somewhat more at ease, though the prospect of traveling along this rather exotic-appearing structure was not one which filled me with a deepsense of anticipation and confidence. My misgivings notwithstanding, I hugged the center of theribbon and started upward.

The going was surprisingly effortless. I felt infused with a strength that resemblednothing I had previously known (or at least could remember). The air around me shimmeredfaintly; this manifestation was as much electrical as it was visual. I became gradually enlightenedto the utter propriety of my choice, and my enthusiasm for the ascent grew.

After a quarter hour or so of steady, perspiration-inducing climbing, the overall climate began subtly to evolve. Looking back, I could no longer even estimate the point at which thislatest odyssey had begun. Around me now, the air grew cold and crisp. I thought I could catch

brief glimpses of snow-capped peaks in the empyrean void, though how such a thing wasengineered I leave to more facile minds.

A disconcerting crackling sound began near my feet and progressed rapidly out in alldirections, and suddenly I felt another presence. I whirled around and was very nearly sent intocardiac arrest by the sight that confronted me. A young man, dressed in a short belted tunic andhose and swathed in a diffuse silvery radiance, stood in a rather awkward stance on a squat

boulder that seemed to have arisen from some other reality and stared soulfully off into theempty distance. Suddenly he launched into discourse aimed not at me in particular, it seemed,

but rather offered up to whatever sentience might be suspended in the crystalline firmament inwhich we were alike adrift.




"An instable sea is love without benefit of secure commitment," he began dramatically, asthough auditioning for a play, "a turbulent tide, which confounds the senses and lays waste to themeager resources of reason."

He shifted to the other foot and continued with bombast, "the boundary between pleasantinfatuation and the obsession of utter devotion is easily penetrated, yet as simply overlooked.

The passage back from this treacherous domain is, however, a feat of navigation that far exceedsthe skills of most of our wretched species."At this he appeared to falter a bit, and even coughed in a pathetic sort of way, but after a

moment of this infirmity he straightened once more, and with renewed vigor struck yet another thespian pose.

"Further," the word came like a gunshot from his seemingly frail lips, "few, if any, arespared the coldly mesmerizing touch of realization, at some point in their miserable voyagesacross the largely barren plains of a too brief life, that love is essentially a prison, a trap, the steelteeth of which can be sprung without warning by a glance or a whispered word."

With this last syllable he was obscured by a brilliant whirlwind of wine red violence, andwhen the zephyr had subsided, he was gone. I was left a little weak in the knees by this totally

unexpected and decidedly individual performance; so much so, in fact, that I found crawling amore expedient means of progress than walking for the next few minutes. I did return to uprightlocomotion, though, and I kept at it for a very long time before I was forced to rest. When rest Idid at last, I fell into a fitful slumber upon the sleekly laid footpath. I had several vivid anddisturbing dreams, all quickly lost upon waking save the most auspicious.

In this oneiric drama I danced, and my dance was a ballet of dominion. Then did I movesinuously across a panoply of worlds, each taking up my rhythm and my motion as my shadowfell upon it. The creatures and flora inhabiting each of those separate universes did emulate meas well, and my merest passing notions became the templates by which their fates were cast. Iachieved in that dream a kind of godhead, a power of casual control so total that I knew as acertainty that anything I wished would be so, with the swiftness of thought.

I returned to the waking world with a feeling I had never before experienced, nor evenimagined. My sense of loss, of anonymity, of being aimlessly adrift in an unfathomablecircumstance, all fell away from my reborn soul as bark peels from a tree that has run the courseof its life. At last I knew where and what I was.




XV. APOTHEOSIS

The ribbon stretched up and away still, disappearing into ethereal mists far above my

head, but my progress was no longer in doubt, and the remainder of my journey seemed trivial. Icontinued to gain vigor in great dollops, drawing sustenance seemingly from the very fabric of the reality woven tightly about my refreshed spirit.

Majestic images floated all around me; grandeur epitomized became my cloak. I heededit not, yet was it a part of me as I strode easily the final distance to the pinnacle of my long and

precipitous adventure.I entered at once a courtyard filled with low assemblages of what appeared to be metallic

hedges. Everywhere were there shrubberies of vast concept and exceedingly intricate design, atonce both delineating the boundaries of the peristyle and emphasizing its lack of enclosure. Istarted with no hesitation to thread my way through a truly labyrinthine tangle of narrowthoroughfares cut into the strangely gleaming foliage. My feet knew precisely where they weregoing, though they had neglected to pass along this information to any other part of me; Inevertheless gave them free rein and allowed them to fulfill their obvious mission.

At the far end of the courtyard, after having negotiated with flawless skill theconsiderable navigational prerequisite thereto, I passed through a simple stone arch wound withdeep green ivy and found myself in a valley of light. There was a decidedly unusual optical

principle in effect in this place that made fugitive the visual clarity of any feature examineddirectly. Marvelous details hinted at by peripheral vision proved impossible to pin down; anincredible panoply of architecture was inaccessible save to the most casual indirect inspection.Frustrating; in fact madding, though this teasing was, I forgave it with a broad magnanimity andwandered lightly among the eidolons.

After quite an extensive, albeit not unpleasant, episode of exploration in these gardens of apparition, I came to realize that no egress, no further ascent into splendor seemed about to

present itself. Even the arch through which I had entered had apparently departed on someotherworldly errand. Alone and again a captive in disconcerting Paradise, I waited.

Finally, my newfound inner harmony faltering briefly, I directed my attention to the blank expanse of firmament o'erhanging me and addressed myself to the unknown.

"All right," I began, "Here I am. I've gone through a lot to get here. Would it be perhaps possible to find out why?"

I scanned the air, expectantly. After a few minutes of absolutely no reaction, I tried again."I mean, it seems to me that all this bother should have been for something. I just want a

clue as to what I'm supposed to be doing now."Again, nothing. I sat down on a shimmering object that resembled an Art Deco fountain

unless you looked right at it, and sighed a satisfyingly melancholy sigh. One can sigh only somuch before one begins to get dizzy, however, so I eventually found myself obliged to leave off the expressions of pathos and find some alternate emotional state. The next logical step seemedto be anger.

"Look, you wiped out my past, dumped me in a surrealistic cesspool without even somuch as a pair of shoes, beat me, drowned me, gave me love then took it away abruptly; youdragged me across innumerable weird landscapes and through countless sensory deprivationexperiments: all for what?"

I was getting up a fine head of steam at this point. "I have finally won through all this




trammel and travail, and stand here naked before you" (I wasn't really naked, but it soundedright).

"My question, then, and a reasonable question it is under the circumstances, is why?Why??"

I suddenly realized that I had not the faintest idea to whom I was addressing this polemic.

Somewhere during the tirade I had scrambled up the eye-twisting contours of a structure thatsuggested a trellis if not examined closely, and it was near the top of this peak that I now foundmyself, sans equilibrium.

My indignation evaporated almost instantly, to be replaced by panic as I teetered on theverge of plummeting. With a distinctly graceless floundering of limbs, I did so plummet, andlanded painfully in an unceremonious posture. Fortunately, I came to rest in a large clump of what could have been flowers, and very soft flowers at that. If I didn't dwell on it, they smelledrather nice, as well.

I spent a fair amount of time prone among the flowers. When at last I felt like sitting up, Iwas momentarily surprised by a stiff, cold breeze that blew across my back. I got shakily to myfeet and noticed at once the change that had come over my tinseled arboretum. The metallic

features of the garden had grown dark and lifeless; no sparkles of exuberant illuminationcrisscrossed the grounds as before.Confused and concerned, I explored for a few moments, then was again distracted by the

cold wind. I followed it to its ingress into this secluded strath, which proved to be a narrow cut inthe coldly verdant encircling hills. I stepped through and was pulled, as though standing on the

platform of a celestial chariot, into a seething void.




XVI. PRIMORDIUM

All was dark: the deepest, most velvet dark imaginable. I was suspended in an infinitude

of dark without physical dimensions or parameters. Before me I could sense water, water whichstretched out for seemingly many thousands of miles in all directions, water that had an intrinsiclight to it, that made its presence known and its oceanic character vividly apparent, yet remained

beyond the boundaries of vision.Though I could sense the water in ways that never before had been accessible to me, I

still found myself craving something. For a moment I searched for that something, and then avague recollection stirred within and I found a concept for my desire. I wanted to see the water and the sky: I wanted light.

Suddenly, the whole of the waters were lit by a luminescence of such power andmagnificence that it seemed that a billion nuclear events were transpiring solely for my benefitand at my beckoning. The waters were still, or wildly turbulent, or lapped gently one wave uponanother, all at my seeming unspoken wishes. I saw the water, and the sky above, and I saw that itwas good. I spread my mind out upon the waters, and thought about what was to be.

Principium.

Documents

Theopraxis (Infinity or Bust)