kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"2003.ADITLOFT.0"

words

The fire from the barrel in front of him warmed his hands. He looked at his nails: they were long, almost polished, but grimy, still. His fingers peered out of the ends of thin, brown, knit cotton gloves, beggar's gloves. His eyes danced with plasmic regularity, fading images of staring into the fire. His ears rang with the peals of chimes. He knew there were twelve of them, and he knew--somehow--that they signified something important. He had a feeling that those chimes had made no physical manifestation.

Around him were the sights and smells of drunken revelry. A freeway overpassing, but he heard no cars, only giggles and shouts and roars from human, or humanoid, throats. It certainly sounded like there were monsters under this bridge, rough, gravelly, other-worldly. But he had a feeling that there were no monsters here. Not tonight. He had a feeling that perhaps there were no monsters in this world, only in dreams and stories, but he wasn't sure.

Walking away from the fire, he bundled tighter into his leather-and-fur jacket and rubbed his hands together to keep the heat in them. Nobody gave him more than a cursory glance as he got out from under the overpass and looked around at the city sprawl around him. His ears were cold, and he wondered if he had a hat. Searching his pockets, he found a fisherman's knit cap, black, and some change, and a note scrawled in an odd handwriting. "Don't give up," it said. Almost like a fortune cookie. He put the cap on his head and wondered if he was hungry.

The overpassing cut down into naggingly familiar territory, but he couldn't place it. He could see docks in the distance, warehouses. He was on a slight rise, possibly even something that had been put there for the bridge. Bridge. He looked up--it was a magnificent bridge, spanning to a far island, then curving and running even further. He saw no traffic on it, heard no sounds of machinery moving. He heard fireworks, and far in the distance, other parties. What was he doing here?

He traveled down through city streets that at first couldn't decide whether they were isolated castles of suburbia, hi-tech dot-com warehouses, or truly industrial warehouses. Those faded quickly and he found himself trying to decide whether to find a way through a large fenced building between him and the water he'd seen. The fence was chain-link, with razor-wire spiraling around its top edge; the top edge was curved inward, which he found odd--an accident of the design, or were they really more worried about keeping people in than out? He shrugged and took a deep breath of the cold, salty air; the smell of fish was strong. The moon was high, and he could strongly make out the maria in its dim grayness. He walked along the fence until it angled toward the water, and tried to orient himself.

There was the bridge, obviously; it was rather hard to miss. Where it connected to the earth, though, where he'd come from, was cut off by buildings ten and twenty stories high. They'd seemed much smaller from up there. Regardless, he was fairly certain of his ability to get back to the fire, presuming it was still there. He had a feeling he should follow the people he'd been with, that he'd meant to be part of them, but that he wasn't yet. Or hadn't been, last he was with them.

But he wanted to see the water. He wanted to feel the water, and, somehow, the time didn't seem to matter at all, to him. He was happy to accept things however they worked out. And so he followed the fence again, and after some time found himself twenty feet above the cold, black water. It wasn't moving much; with land some mile or so on the other side, it was probably just a bay. It could be a river, but it would be unlikely to have an island survive in the middle of a river this size; surely nobody would build one there.

He sighed. He would feel the water some other time. He was fairly certain he had nothing else to do, and he now he was certain he _had_ been hungry; the hunger had left him, but in its place was a vague sort of dizziness. Peering intently at the water one last time, he nearly swooned into it, and he pulled himself back. Oddly, the thought of falling into the water hadn't disturbed him at all.

But it would probably be best if he saw to his hunger, regardless of its apparent absence. He traced around the curve of Embarcadero, walking the crust of a quarter pie, enjoying the street lamps, stop lights, and pedestrian right of way boxes. They amused him, though he couldn't place why. At a street labeled 3rd, he decided he was far enough around, and, giving one last glance toward the water that had curved around to follow him, started back up the incline toward where he expected he had left from.

The sky was no brighter, but the city's deeper silence told him some time had passed on his walk. The people he had been with would likely not still be there, and he was going to have to find a place to hole up. However, there was no harm in checking; he was deeply enjoying the walk. He felt like he'd had the weight of the world life off his shoulders this night. He was happy, and care-free. He hadn't felt like that in a long time; he didn't know how he'd spent the time, but he didn't care. Now, he was happy. He knew, somehow, that he did not have to worry about his existence, subsistence; he would survive. He could be happy. A small tinge of guilt tried to surface, and he let it, and watched it carefully, wonderingly. As it touched atmosphere, it dissolved into nothingness. He smiled, and continued on.

Sure enough, the crowd had disappeared when he reached the underpass. The barrel burned low, emitting a reddish-orange glow against the gravel debris and post-industrial weeds. He decided to cozy up against the barrel for a bit. It was hot against his flesh, warm through his jacket and clothes. He hadn't realized how cold he'd been. Now he could see his breath, and a shiver worked its way out of his bones; his foot knocked the barrel and the embers stirred. As he watched, patterns in the embers began to strobe, and he followed a spark rise up--slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, until it seemed to hover right above his head. He tried to focus his eyes on it, but no matter how close he got, it remained a single point of light, refusing to resolve into anything else.

A hacking cough from the other side of the barrel drew his attention away from the spark, and he felt as if the world had just restarted from some momentary lapse. He closed his eyes to adjust them more quickly back to darkness, and then walked around the barrel. There was an old man wearing green army fatigues laying flat on the ground. The old man's face was painted near-black, as were the backs of his hands, which were crossed over his chest. His eyes were closed, but there was a sense he was more conscious than not.

"Good evening."

Orbs of startling white were revealed suddenly. The old man was watching him.

"You wouldn't happen to know where the party took itself to?"

"I would." His voice was gravelly.

"I would like to rejoin it."

The old man was silent.

"Could you tell me where I might find their trail?"

"You might find it here."

"How would I go about doing that, good sir?"

The eyes squinted in thought, eyelids swallowing their edges into the night. "Who are you?"

"I do not know."

"You don't know?"

"Correct. Is that going to be a problem?"

"That might be a solution to a problem. That might be a problem. What are you looking for?"

"At the moment, food and warmth, somewhere to sleep."

"There's a whole city of somewhere to sleep. This place is safe enough for tonight, and the barrel is warm. Food is easy enough to get in the morning, if you're willing to wait."

"I would like to find the people that I had been here with before."

"All right, cat; they're at the Club House. That mean anything to you?"

"I'm afraid not."

"I can take you there in the morning, after breakfast."

"If you told me where it was, I would trouble you no further."

"I'm not going to do that. You're an unknown, and unknowns don't get there unassisted."

"An unknown?"

"Simple--I don't know you. That means they don't know you, at least not as a unit. That means you don't get there unassisted. But I can take you there in the morning."

"Will they still be there in the morning?"

"Perhaps not. But signs will be."

He shrugged. "Very well then." He sat down and watched the sparks, one or two at a time, rise from the barrel, like lost fireflies. He wondered where their souls went when they died, these creatures that only lived for a few seconds at most. Then he shook his head--time was unimportant, or relative, something like that. He wondered what that meant.

The sparks came less and less frequently, and the sky slowly lightened. The city was reluctantly waking. Metal beasts flew on steel-belted radials overhead, replacing the sparks in frequency, then raging with the insistence of a bonfire. The ramp hid them from the sun, and his companion slept on. As the sun rose higher, rays managed to snake through the buildings beyond, around the ramp, and highlight with a faerie nimbus of yellows and reds the edges of things around them, leaving a surreal purplish tinge to the rest of the darkness. His companion sat up.

"It's time to find breakfast. Follow me." And so he did.

They walked down a third way, not the way he'd left for the water nor the way he'd returned; they were very suddenly on the edge of urban commercialism, and seemed to be heading straight in. The amount of trash on the sidewalks diminished, replaced by people; the amount of trash in the gutters increased and then was hidden by cars parking. The distant rush of cars was replaced by the sounds of urban life; music from the headphones of people wishing to make it to work without seeing the world around them, groups of people walking fast together, talking fast together in a multitude of languages, mostly English, some Spanish, smatterings of Japanese and Cantonese and Mandarin, the occasional Tagalog. [?[He wondered if he was really recognizing all those languages, and then more immediately wondered if he was actually understanding them. It seemed he could tell what people were saying, despite the overpowering din.]?]

Those walking alone without the aid of headphones to protect them from the city seemed almost embarrassedly naked. They walked, some tiredly, some hurriedly, with their eyes constantly averted from anything that could possibly attempt interaction. Most watched the ground in front of them, and the stores they walked by, reading signs, glancing away whenever there happened to be a person in the window where they were looking.

He watched the people as they walked by, making sure to keep near his companion as his companion bobbed and weaved through the crowd. The crowd walking past them would find just that slight burst of energy more to be past them sooner than otherwise; the homeless in motion were unpredictable, to be feared. It felt odd to him to be an unknown, but not to be feared. He wondered at that, for a moment, but then his companion was talking to him.

"I'm expecting you haven't been on the streets long, so here's some words to the wise. Don't look 'em in the eyes until they're almost past you. The ones that feel guilt enough inherently will feel antagonized if they have to consider you as a real person." They continued their bob and weave, and he wondered where they were heading; if they were heading for a given destination, or if his companion was playing it by ear. "The ones that are about to walk past you can sometimes guilt-shock into stopping for you." They stopped for a light. "Cars are a bigger problem; nobody wants to break out of the comfort of their steel box to give you something, so if you're doing a busy intersection you've got to make eye contact with each and every one you can." The light changed, and they crossed ahead of the crowd. "And don't mess with motorcycles. They can be friendly, but other than the yuppies they tend to be the rougher sort, and the rougher sort know the city and will look you up if they don't like you." The old man was moving amazingly spritely; he had no trouble keeping up, but he had a feeling his body was above the norm.

His companion coughed, and spat a large glob of phlegm near the base of a light-post, then leaned against it. "Plus it's a pain in the ass for a biker to pull money out; I used to have a bike." There was a pause, and the two looked at each other. "It was an old Honda, before they started to make those plastic pieces of shit. Ran on oil and duct tape. Somebody torched it, though, and that was the end of that. I think it might have been an ex; she always was a crazy bitch. Anyway," he gestured, "this is prime real-estate. Should have money for breakfast in no time. How about you take the opposite corner, eh? Doesn't help to have two old fogies too close together. Kitty-corner, we're likely to hit separate crowds."

"Very well."

His companion pulled out a well-worn cup from a pocket by his upper thigh, and unfolded it, then inspected it for holes. There were two, but they were apparently deemed small enough; the old man struck a pose, eyes closed, arms crossed at the wrists, right wrist over left wrist over right thigh. The cup was held loosely by its lip in the left hand, fingers curled, thumb and forefinger. It seemed as nonthreatening a pose as possible, yet was still guarded. He nodded, and crossed both streets, walking through the traffic but not impeding it. It was odd to him, but felt natural at the same time. He decided to lean up against a shoe shop, and took off his hat. It was cold, still, and the wind was sharp in his ears, but he didn't have a cup. He held out his hat, and looked at the ground.

The ground was aged for its youth; the cement couldn't have been poured more than twenty or thirty years ago, but it had seen countless traffic. He watched feet walk toward him, or rather, toward the ground past him, then give him wide berth as he was noticed; feet blurred past past him almost comically, and he wondered what sort of film that could make. A documentary on the feet and walking patterns of downtown... downtown... He looked up and tried to catch someone's attention. "Excuse me-- Excuse me-- What city is this? Excuse me, what city is this?" They walked past him giving even wider berth, as they now had to somehow walk around not just him but his words as well. He shrugged and looked in his hat. Thirty-five cents was not much of a score; he wondered if it was enough for a coffee. He couldn't quite remember what things cost, but he was pretty sure thirty-five cents wouldn't get him a coffee at most places.

"Any luck?" came the old man's voice from his side.

"Not much, I'm afraid."

"Yeah, people don't like hats; plus you don't quite look _street_ enough. They figure you're just slumming, or something; that you could, and so should, get a job. But that's okay, I got us some grub. Two egg patties on sourdough muffins, and a coffee. Do you like coffee?"

"Sure."

"Okay, I'll get you one; stay right here, and hold these." The old man handed him the bag of treats and coffee, and took the thirty-five cents out of his hat, then walked back across the street. The food smelled empowering. Really, it smelled like crap; the coffee smelled the worst of it, but he knew that it would satisfy something in his system.

An impossibly large black woman ambled up to him, a stack of thin newspapers under her arm; "Spare some food, man?" She nodded back behind her at two impossibly large children, probably no more than ten and twelve apiece, yet larger in girth than a typically obese adult. "My kids are hungry. Can you spare some food?" Something about her tone was disturbingly belligerent. He tried to look into her eyes, but she wouldn't meet him face on; her head bobbled left and right in an impatient figure eight. "Come on, man, spare some food?"

"I'm afraid not," he answered, finally.

She huffed. "Fuck you then," and then waddled after someone else, papers outstretched. "Spare change, man? Some food? Buy a Street Spirit?"

He shuddered, and it wasn't from the cold this time. She seemed somehow seriously diseased at the core. He wondered if that was a superficial judgment; he thought that it wasn't, but had nothing to corroborate it.

"Hey Ethel; take another corner, eh? This one's occupied." His companion was back with another coffee.

"Fuck you, man. Fuck you!"

The old man laughed, and turned to him. "Ain't she a marvel? Gives us all a bad name, but really, the city would be poorer without her. And sometimes it helps to have a bad name."

"Thank you for the coffee and breakfast," he segued.

"No problem. It's easy enough in this city."

"What city is this?"

His companion fixed him a cold stare; the old man's eyes bore into his and then more critically examined every piece of him. "What _do_ you remember?"

"I remember being with a large group of people, then walking down to the water and back. You've been with me pretty much since then, and I feel like i could recall any moment there with near-perfect clarity."

"Hmm," was the only reply forthcoming. The old man continued to look at him critically.

He pressed forward: "What city is this?"

"San Francisco."

"Thank you." His thoughts flashed back for a moment to what he'd wanted the city's name for: _a documentary on the feet and walking patterns of downtown San Francisco_. That could be interesting. Or a film, a regular sort of film, but foot shots instead of head shots. That could be interesting as well. He smiled, thankful to complete the thought.

The old man was still looking at him, either waiting for him or trying to decide something.

"Should we eat here?" he asked.

"Let's go to the Square."

"After you."

His companion led him straight up several more blocks until a street named Market. There, the streets lay forty-five degrees from each other, as if two competing sprawls had collapsed into each-other. They turned on to Market, crossed the street, and took a slight left up Powell. A few more blocks had them on the corner of a small cement attempt at a park, surrounded by skyscrapers. He was saddened a bit that there was a parking garage under the park, but then thought again--at least there was a park. Surely a city the size of San Francisco could use a larger parking lot than just that; he took his blessings where he could.

They picked an empty bench off the center of the small park. Pigeons flocked about in mostly distinct packs, though it was hard to tell whether the members of a group, when wandering off, would return to the same group, or if they'd merge with another seamlessly. He wondered whether he was part of any group, if he had been part of some other group, and whether he was going to become a seamless part of this crowd of people he appeared to be trying to reattach to. They ate and drank in independently contemplative silence.

Some children rode their skateboards up and down, occasionally attempting a grind on one of the benches or concrete walk-ends. One pre-pubescent boy with a bright green helmet was failing horribly at free-styling with his small bicycle; the front and rear wheels both had tubes out from the right side of each axle, and when he tried to grind he'd only manage to lift one or the other up high enough, or neither. The skateboarders laughed at his attempts, but he and they disappeared all at once as some policemen approached.

The meal was slight, but chased with the coffee it seemed to invigorate him. He could feel new solidity in his poise, new warmth growing in his center and tingling its way to his extremities. He felt his consciousness speeding up, clicking more quickly through idle thoughts. When he stopped thinking, for a moment, there was a distinct buzzing in the back of his skull. He could feel the flavor of the coffee racing to his pores to spill through. He was ready--ready to come one step closer to figuring out what he might be readying himself for. One small part of him was sure that the whole hunt was pointless; he noted it, acknowledged it, and turned to his companion, who happened to be once more silently observing him.

Remembering his current circumstance, he used a napkin to clean up the last drops of coffee from his cup, and folded it carefully. He put the remaining napkins and the cup in his left jacket pocket, and looked for a trash receptacle to leave his remnants in.

"You might keep the bag as well."

He nodded, stood up, and nearly fell over from the sudden rush of energy now available to his muscles. Taking a deep breath to ground himself, he walked over to a trash and emptied his bag's contents into it, and then inspected the bag: clean enough. He folded the bag and put it in his jacket pocket with the cup and napkins, the pocket now bulging, and turned back to his companion. "Do we go to the Club House, now?"

"Sure. You got a BART pass?"

"BART. I think I know what that is, but I doubt I have a pass." He searched his pockets, but came up with nothing new.

His companion pulled out a sheaf of tickets, thin business cards with a magnetic strip on one side, blue strip down the middle, and a white arrow in a black rectangle at one end of the blue strip. The old man shuffled through them and handed him one. "This will get you to where we're going."

They walked back to Market, and angled toward a large white sign reading 'ba' in blue letters; stairs led down, and down, into a brightly buzzing cavern of seventies' chic architecture. Octagonal tiles, bulging slightly out from the wall, served as, he had to guess, sound dampening. He noted that they had some slight hypnotic properties. Machines recessed into the wall blinked and scrolled messages and did other distracting, randomly unintelligible things. People would occasionally step up to one, push buttons, insert money, push more buttons, and receive what looked like a ticket.

They walked to a gate, where his friend inserted a ticket, pulled it out of another slot, and then walked through as the gate open and closed. He did the same, and looked more carefully at his ticket. It had a small number, somewhat smudged, that appeared to read 3.15. He presumed that was dollars and cents, and it was the only number on the ticket. He wondered if that number had been there before entering.

"Put it away, and don't lose it; you need it to get out at the other end."

"What happens if I don't have it, there?"

"They fine you the full amount. If you don't have the money for the fine, they'll write you a ticket... or if you don't have identification, they'll give you free room and board for a night."

Over the intercom came a mechanical voice: "Ten car Daly City train now boarding, platform one."

"Free room and board?"

"A night in jail. It's really not so bad unless somebody wants to work through their issues on you. But that's not where we're trying to head at the moment, so keep your ticket close."

They walked down a set of stairs to a long platform, seats and pillars arranged nearly as far as he could see.

"Are there many pickpockets here?"

Heads turned to look at the question, then looked away. Someone coughed.

"You'd be surprised at how few, and they don't tend to ply there trade here--more in the department stores and cafes. But BART tickets are notoriously fickle. One moment there, one moment not."

Digital signs hung every twenty feet or so, scrolling and blinking the time, pending trains, and security advisories.

"How did you come by such a collection of them?"

"Not by picking pockets, I'll tell you that. I stick to the straight and narrow, for the most part. It's an easy enough life, that way. The Bay Area keeps you fed and warm, if you like. Keeping on the good side of the law means less worry. But... well, homeless shelters will give you a ticket if you say you're going to go job hunting, or if you're going to sell their newspapers for them, or any of a dozen things, really. And people will tip you their spare bits, which you can glom together if you go to an office in a particular station during obscure hours one day of the week."

"Odd."

"One of the less easily explicable elements of the system."

The loudspeaker intoned in a mechanical female monotone: "Nine car train for Pittsburgh/Bay Point in eight minutes. Eight car train for Dublin/Pleasanton in twelve minutes. Eight car train for Fremont in fifteen minutes."

It was warmer in the BART station with the heat of the city's commuters largely trapped underground and only the wind of an occasional train rushing to a stop and then away. He took off his hat and tousled the short, thick hair underneath. He could tell the hair did not take well to such constraints. Looking to his companion, he asked, "How do you know which one to get on?"

"There aren't so many. If you want, we could find a map. They tend to be on the other side of a schedule, if you see one of those."

"That's okay. I can find one later if I must. We're at the Powell station; what is our destination?"

"Ashby. Which means we want a Richmond train--they're labeled by the endpoints of their lines, which gets interesting as the powers that be slowly extend the tendrils of ba."

"Ba?"

"The signs up above, the trademarked logo of BART, or whatever it is; just 'b' and 'a' in large letters, marking entrances."

"I see."

The loudspeakers crackled and a male machine intoned: "Nine car train for Pittsburgh/Baypoint in four minutes. Eight car train for Dublin/Pleasanton in eight minutes. Eight car train for Fremont in eleven minutes. Ten car train for San Francisco/Daly City in twelve minutes."

They stood silently and watched people line up on either side of the platform; little black squares marked where the train's doors would supposedly line up. He wondered how accurate that could be, whether it was human or automaton driven. The tunnel smelled oddly sterile for such a public place. It was certainly cleaner than the city above.

"Nine car Pittsburgh/Baypoint train now arriving, platform two," intoned another male-sounding machine. He noted that the side of the platform they were on was labeled 'TWO'.

"How do you know which side the train's going to be on?"

"It never changes," replied his companion. "They're fixed directions."

"Indeed." He thought again about the tendrils of ba, wondered what it would be like if the entity of ba were to suddenly awaken. How would it react? What would it know? Would it have memories of its time before? Vague dreams?

Was he the personification of ba?

There was an odd change in pressure and the train was whizzing by, just a few feet from where he stood. It slowed and then stopped; a breeze followed it by half a second, and the doors of the train opened. People shuffled off; people shuffled on. Children shouted at each other from far away, up the steps, goading themselves on to hurry up. Their shouting was eclipsed only by their footsteps smacking the cement ground. The tunnel was comparably voiceless.

His companion entered the train and took a seat by the door; he joined the old man. The slap of footsteps fell closer and the shouts reduced in frequency and volume. It seemed they were pushing harder to make the train now that it was actually within reach. Another automated voice intoned, "The doors are closing. Please stand clear of the doors." This one sounded more human, perhaps an actual recording. It seemed out of place, almost, but fuzzed just enough to not be. In a breath, three boys were chattering loudly to each other, next to him. One held the handrail just a half foot from his face and he wondered at the shrunken personal space, given the whole train to choose from.

Giggles came from the boys next to him, and he turned as the train restarted. Vertigo--the train was leaving without him? People, sitting, passed through him; the train itself passed through him, and he felt only the slightest unease. He was sitting, unmoving, on nothing. Trying to look around, he felt the panic: he couldn't move. But. He was not in danger. Not in much danger? He could still hear the boy's voices next to him, the rocking of the train--if he concentrated on it. So what was he seeing? Was this a fugue? He thought not, thought not with strong conviction, but couldn't say why.

He wondered for a moment if the tendrils of ba had taken him, but dismissed that; while everything, he thought, was a little bit real, Occam's razor usually led to more fruitfully applicable paths.

The tunnel seemed differently contrasted than when he'd been fully corporeal. The dead parts were deader, the live parts more varied and vivacious. Runes glowed along one bar of steel--the third rail. Where _they_ real, or part of his fancy? Where they alive, signs of intelligence, or merely a wonder of physics?

He found himself drifting toward them; he felt that he ought to be able to control his movement, but couldn't gather his thoughts well enough about him; any attempt to interface with his musculature met with... nothing. He could not grasp his semi-physicality, but thus it was; he drifted closer to the third rail, still. At least, he reasoned, he felt no menace from it. He felt nothing. From down the tunnel, he heard the rumbling of a beast coming to consciousness. The rumble rose.

Thoughts flashed through his head more quickly than he could categorize them, and he knew them as irrelevant: else he would have had all the time he liked to examine them. He wondered at that knowledge--an intense spasm ran through his soul, his spine, his heart--something had walked over his grave, or plowed through it, or--his vision sparkled blackly, sizzled, and suddenly everything was lighter, louder, muffled... His temples throbbed and his joints ached.

"Learn anything?" came the voice to his side: the old man's voice, his companion. The kids had moved further down the car; maybe they'd gotten tired of standing. He turned to the voice.

"How do you mean?"

"You were gone for a bit. First I thought you were just stonewalling those kids, but then you didn't come back when they left. I figured you must be remembering things."

"_The doors are closing. Please stand clear of the doors._"

He looked at the doors, watched them as they shut, and looked back to his companion. "I was somewhere, but I don't think it was memory. Though memory could aid my understanding, most likely."

They were silent after that, listening to the sounds of the train.

There was a slight pressure to the rear of the train and it began to hum; it went through several tone changes as it sped up, shifting electromagnetic gears, and then the train was deep in the tunnel, rocking back and forth, the sound of tortured spirits ripping at it. No one seemed to mind. Almost as suddenly, it began to slow, and then slowed some more. Then it stopped, choppily.

"Embarcadero is our final San Francisco stop. If you want to remain in San Francisco, please exit the train."

"_Ten car train for Richmond now boarding, platform two._"

He'd stayed with the train, this time. He was thankful for that, though a bit disappointed as well. He gnawed at those thoughts, but made no progress, if anything denting his mind more than the bone. _Who am I_, he finally allowed himself. The train rocked gently back and forth with the occasional jar while it rocketed forward; his ear adjusted itself to higher pressure, and then back to lower, and suddenly they were aboveground; he realized he'd missed the light immensely. They flew up out of the ground and rode above a broad expanse of clean, modern warehousing, then homes and apartments, dirtier and rundown but not without charm. He noted with amusement one rooftop, hand-painted to advertise itself to the curious BART passenger; then it was gone and they were curling into a giant cement creation.

"Now approaching West Oakland station. West Oakland station. The final destination of this train is Richmond; this is a Richmond train. Passengers traveling to Fremont or Dublin/Pleasanton should get off here and wait for a Fremont train. Passengers traveling to Pittsburgh/Baypoint can transfer at Macarthur. This is a Richmond Train."

The train remained mostly empty, and pulled away from the station. Above the treetops, it felt far more vulnerable, far more fragile--far more unlikely--than it had worming its way through tunnels. Here the beast of ba was exposed. But despite his misgivings, the train now calm, now jarring back and forth attempting to leap its rail shackles, then calm again--despite his misgivings, exposed, it was still an impressive beast.

And then in an instant, an old man's blink, the sun was gone; they were underground again. How convoluted were these tracks? How was it decided some stations would see sun and others would be buried as living tombs, cathedrals of worship for the dark beast of privatized public transportation? _Privatized? How did I know that?_ he wondered.

"Oakland 12th Street/Civic Center, now approaching Oakland 12th Street/Civic Center. Passengers on the Pittsburgh/Baypoint line cross the track and wait for a Pittsburgh train. Travelers for the Fremont line should head downstairs. This is a Richmond train, Richmond. The final destination of this train is Richmond."

Here there was a greater transfer of commuters, but still the net gain was small, or negative. He wondered that they ran so many cars for so few people. Perhaps, he thought, it simply ran for its own sake.

"Does it run twenty-four hours?" he asked.

"BART?"

"Yes."

"No. Or not usually. Some holidays, but mostly it's a 6am to midnight sort of thing. Varies by station, of course."

"I see."

Again, the oddly comfortable silence settled in with them like an old companion. He smiled at the hint of a memory he could just barely taste--warm rain, cool sun, a cold breeze, his blood boiling with life. It tasted orange, but just the zest, bready, sweet but not saccharine, coffee-cake, a medium-dry coffee-cake with a strong coffee. He smiled more widely--that had been food coffee, or at least, for shitty fast-food coffee, it had done his system much good. The egg contraption sat less well in his stomach, but he could feel the warmth of life coursing through his veins and out onto his skin; he felt radiant. He wondered for a brief moment if that memory he could just barely taste really warranted such splendorous feelings, but cast that aside as irrelevant.

He wanted, all of the sudden, to share his ebullience, his immense good cheer; he wanted to tell his companion wondrous stories, but he had none to share. He had no self but the present--and in any case, he could sense his companion was fine. The old man was excited under his plain exterior. Though he showed no range of emotion on his face, in his mouth or cheeks or forehead, his clear eyes shone just shy of a twinkle. He could imagine what it would take to pull a twinkle out of his companion's stoic comportment.

"Now approaching Oakland 19th St. and Broadway. This is a Richmond train, Richmond. The final destination of this train is Richmond." He delighted in the slight trill to the 'R' the train operator added now and again. He wondered what it must be like to do the same thing over and over again, all the while putting on a jovial front. But it didn't seem a front. The operator seemed real enough about it; there was something in the voice. He wondered if the train operator came up with train jokes that he told at parties, where "Richmond, this is the Richmond bound train" was the butt of the joke, and everyone laughed on cue. It was interesting, where the train seemed to have enough automated phrases stored up, that the operator still felt the need to add a personal touch. He wondered if that was part of the job description.

"How does one get a job as a train operator?"

"BART trains?"

"Yes."

"I don't know," replied his friend. "But I'm sure it takes some sort of credentials."

"Indeed." He traveled down that slippery slope of unknowns for a moment, then surfaced with, "Do you believe in magic?"

"Of course." The reply was surprised, but then hesitantly followed with, "Of a sort. It depends a bit on what you mean by magic, and what you mean by believe. But it's hard to get through a day without seeing a million coincidences and not ascribing a thing to them."

He smiled. He knew what that was like. He knew that. He felt the beat of his heart confirming magic in his every conscious breath, the tingling of sensation, oversensation, in his fingers. He realized, belatedly, that the coffee had worked its way mostly through his system. And they were aboveground again.

"Macarthur station. Macarthur. This is the final transfer point for the Pittsburgh/Baypoint line. Fremont, Dublin/Pleasanton passengers should go downstairs and cross to the opposite platform. Pittsburgh/Baypoint passengers simply cross to the opposite track."

"The next stop is Ashby, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Memory?"

"I suppose. I must have lived here for a while for that to come out; or something important happened here."

"Lots of import happens everywhere; perhaps there's something for you here. I'm sure you've not been on these streets long, but you could be a traveler. You seem a bit like an old traveler, but just a bit. Like you're beyond even that."

"What's a traveler?"

"Just that. But more than likely someone who's not new to the street, not tied to any one street or set of streets. They tend to be a bit more mature--refined, even. I was a traveler for a while, but I'm getting old; I'm feeling old. San Francisco, hell, the whole Bay Area, that's Oakland and Berkeley I'm talking about, is a pretty good place to make roots. People are nice here, the weather is nice here. I know I'll be well taken care of."

"I see."

His companion warmed visibly: "Yeah, you do. I saw that pretty quickly. I tell you, it's refreshing. These street punks, they may know a lot, but they don't see very much."

"They're young."

"Some of them are getting on in years, but--oh, like lives around the wheel sort of thing. Yeah, they're young. Still, I have to say: just for the most part. Some of them are downright mean, and they must have had a time or two around to get there. But yeah. Young. You know, I was pretty young once. This life, even, physically. But I've gone a couple lives this time on Earth, if you know what I mean. You ever think about that?"

"Possibly." He smiled.

"Right, sorry. I bet you have. Hell, you've got a new life right here. You sure you want to know the past? You're a decent sort as you are. Who knows what the past made you do?"

"Somebody."

"I suppose."

Silence came again, a welcome bath cleansing the conversation. The train dove beneath the surface yet again.

"Ashby station. Now approaching Ashby station."

The train stopped; the doors opened. He and his companion stood and stepped out onto the station platform. The decor here was different than where they had entered; he wondered how much that had to do with the differing locales, how much simply due to a desire for individuality, and how much was due to the different decades the stations must have been built in. How long, he wondered, had it taken to grow this beast of ba? Where had the seed first taken root, and how had it spread? He wondered if he'd known those answers in a previous life: before his memory hole. Yesterday. He wondered whether he'd always wondered so much, and if so if he often found answers; and if not, if it had to do with his memory loss, his open mind nature's abhorred vacuum, trying to fill itself with anything and everything available.

His companion was fifteen steps away, turned toward him, waiting.

"Still nothing," he said. "This time I was lost in the process of memory creation, no less. Lead on, Macduff, lead on. I will follow."

They walked upstairs and proffered their tickets for a six-headed Cerberus, guarding both entrance and exit. The old man's ticket spewed out, was plucked away, and the gates to the land of Ashby swept open.

His ticket went in but didn't come back out. The gates opened without his prompting and a half-moment had him too confused to walk through; then he hurried past, and the gate shut behind him. He belatedly realized that the ticket must have been exact.

His companion turned right and walked straight out of the station; he followed. They walked through an open-air parking lot filled to the brim with all makes and models of car, most modern, five years old or less by the look of them.

Walking up a slight ramp, they crossed a street, avoiding oncoming traffic, turned right for the last smidgen of block left, then turned left.

They walked straight, in more-or-less silence, for fifteen minutes or so, past two stoplights and an odd mix of suburban and ghetto scenery; the road they were on was attempting to be both residential and highway, though it was only two real lanes. It seemed that at least some folks were trying to keep the area in repair, but who the victor would be was still in question.

They stopped at an ugly pink house, poorly boarded up, shielded only somewhat by a rotting wooden fence missing the occasional plank or chunk thereof. The house was in a sad state of disrepair; it looked like a reconstruction project that had lost either its will or financing, or both. What lawn there was was overgrown but still did a poor job of hiding the glint of cans and bottles and seemingly random junk strewn around. They walked counter-clockwise around the house, passed through one of the many gaps in the fence, and came up to what appeared to be the house's back door, slightly ajar.

He heard Mexican children playing on the other side of the fence, a house over, and dogs barking in the distance. There was a freeway nearby, traffic like a constant, distant surf. He imagined he could smell an actual bay beyond the trash and traffic.

His companion rapped three simple knocks on the door, and crossed the threshold as it squeaked gently open. He followed.

The room smelled of mildew, beer, and urine. There was no furniture. The carpet was splotched; it was hard to tell what color it had originally been, and hard to ascribe to it a color now. The carpet was exactly the color that it smelled, whatever one would name that. It was somehow colder indoors, despite the five-odd bodies curled to and fro. There was conversation coming from a room he couldn't see, and someone was, or several someones were, puking in the bathroom. Unfortunately, the bathroom door was open. Fortunately, for some value of fortunately, the smell of the bathroom was overpowered by the aforementioned living-room odors of mildew, beer, and urine.

"Bring back any memories?" asked his friend.

"Not as such. I think I might recognize one or two of the floor-dwellers from last night, but a hunch tells me I do not know them. Honestly, I expect I won't know anyone here. But the hope is that perhaps they will know me, or... or something would occur."

"Nothing occurs!" came a voice from a pile-of-clothes-come-group-of-beings toward the center of the room. The voice was filled with nihilistic hangover and tiredness, and seemed to almost be replying by rote. "It's all a joke. Worthless!"

Another voice came from a corner of the room, more awake and lively: "Speak forth thy wisdom, Nietzsche!"

Yet another voice chimed in somewhat unhappily, resignedly, "Does this mean we're not sleeping any more?"

From the far room came, "Who's there?"

"What time is it?" came a different voice from the pile containing Nietzsche.

"Time to greet a new day of brilliantly pointless existence, of course!" replied the corner, and then called out louder, "Spot and some old guy."

"Greet, schmeet. We sally forth for booze, my droogs. Another day to lose, and no time to lose about it!" shouted Nietzsche, with new inspiration.

A round of retching sounds came from the bathroom, followed by laughter.

"Spot, who've you got with you?" came a second voice from the far room.

"He doesn't know," replied his companion.

"Who doesn't know?" came the muffled question from the far room.

"I don't know," came another muffled voice.

"Well, ask," was the reply.

"Who cares?" cast Nietzsche, who stood up and kicked the other two bodies, who were obviously not quite sure they actually wanted to start moving yet. He pulled out a hip flask, unscrewed the lid which then hung loosely by a chain, and took a long swig. "Burns going down!" He coughed and laughed. He was shorter than he'd seemed when sitting down; his torso belied shorter legs than expected. He was a bit fleshy for his height, with a deep gray button-down shirt tucked in but extruding an inch or so out over his Cthulhu belt-buckle and black jeans.

"Who doesn't know?" was shouted back from the far room.

He looked to Spot, his companion, who shrugged. "I don't," he finally decided to chime in. People were moving slowly, getting their things and their selves together. It was hard to tell who, if anyone, was paying any sort of attention.

"Who's that?"

"Some old guy, apparently," he replied.

"Who are you?" called back.

"I don't know," he laughed. He was enjoying not knowing; these seemed to be fun people.

"Aaarrrgh," came a grumble-shout from the far room; there was the sound of the zipping of pants, and otherwise scooting into clothes. He heard a door open, and two girls came around the corner. One was tall, dark skinned, a bit fleshy but small-breasted; he noticed because her torso was free to the wind. She had on just a pair of jeans that she obviously could just squeeze into. The other girl was of more average height, pale-skinned though a bit flushed. She was wearing a black miniskirt with pins hanging from it, a rip down the side sewn loosely with shoelace, and a white blouse, low-cut and belly-free, exceedingly grimy. She seemed unhealthily skinny, ribs showing out from under her bosom, caving in further to her belly.

"Who are you?" demanded the tall one; hers had been the voice that had really resonated out. The other, he decided, must have been the muffled one, presuming there weren't more hiding in the other room.

Another round of retching echoed out of the bathroom. "Ow," whimpered someone. "Ewww," came a male voice.

"He doesn't remember," said Spot.

"What is he doing here?" she asked.

"His last memories--his first memories--are the party last night. Figured if he was hanging around, someone here might know him.

She looked around the room, waited.

Spot shrugged.

The boisterous girl from the corner, slinging an army pack over one shoulder, straightening herself, called out, "Maybe Nietzsche gave him some of the scrub juice, eh? Nietzsche, you holding out on us? You have scrub juice last night?"

Nietzsche laughed, and hoisted his flask. "No scrub juice here, and fuck you all if I did have some. Why should I help you out of your own meaningless lives when I've got more important things to deal with, like my own?"

"Because you like to, sometimes," replied the still-trying-to-sleep pile at his feet.

"Aww, is Spoon feeling left out?" asked the girl from the corner.

The naked girl's partner mumbled, "He needs a name."

"Well, he hasn't got one. He lost it," came back from the corner.

"You're in way too good of a mood this morning, Dee. What gives?" asked Spoon.

"Yeah, Death. You're like. Un-goth." said Nietzsche.

He looked at Death. Her face was pasty-white, mostly from makeup; an eye of Horus dragged down under her left eye, and her shoulder-length hair and clothes and lipstick were all black. Her right eye seemed recessed, colored to look like Kohl, he guessed. She had a black leather jacket, torn up but perfectly black, black jeans, and a tight black t-shirt that highlighted her moderate bust.

"Aw, fuck it. Can't Dee have a little fun on the hangover morning of all mornings?" she asked. "How 'bout we put him on a vision quest?" The goth girl giggled.

"Oh, it doesn't have to be a _name_ name," said Spoon. "He just needs something. Or he doesn't need it, but we do. This is silly. How 'bout we call him George?" Spoon stretched and rubbed pale hands through her reddish-brown buzz cut. She seemed a proper Irish, heavy-boned and nicely fleshed.

Death laughed. "You gonna hug him and squeeze him, girl?"

"George is as good as anything for now," he replied.

"It speaks!" cried Nietzsche. "Let's get it drunk!"

"Let's get George drunk," corrected Spoon, still at Nietzsche's feet, curled around yet another body, George belatedly realized. He shook his head--he had a name now. George. It was an odd name, certainly not his; but it was, he thought, good enough.

"It doesn't wanna drink, man. Let it die in piece, eh?"

Death was too kind; George smiled. "I'm not in need of alcohol nor vision quest. If none of you remember me... hmm... then I shall make an introduction. I am hereby known as George until such a time as a better name is acquired or ascribed." He turned to his traveling companion. "And I'm to take it you're Spot?"

"Yeah. Spot, Lookout, or Get Out Of The Way, depending." his companion chuckled. "And in this corner, we have Death. In that corner lies the sleeping Ogre, or Stink if he's sleeping or you're feeling tough. In the center we have Nietzsche, Spoon, and Girl. And our mistress of ceremony is Jenn; her blushing bride is Fey. In the bathroom, if my ears don't deceive me, are Charles and Barbie." He called out to the bathroom, "You two all right in there?"

"Yeah," shouted Charles. "We're having a puking contest!"

Spot shuddered. "Now's probably a good time to leave. Who's up for lunch?"

George shrugged. "I have no schedule, obviously. How does lunch work itself out?"

"The girls go spange, the guys fuck off," answered Jenn. "And we meet back at the park in a few hours."

Girl uncurled from his kitten pose and sat up. He was small and skinny, much like a kitten, really; too-large eyelashes, delicate features. He was probably eighteen and hadn't shaved a day in his life. He had makeup smeared all over his face, powder mixed with mascara and blush. "Who makes the signs?"

"We got sign materials?" challenged Jenn.

"I dunno," said Girl. "We had cardboard last night, where'd it go?"

"Burned it," replied Nietzsche. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, all that bullshit. Come on, I've got lunch right here!" He raised his flask to the ceiling. "I'm almost ready to pass out, and nobody else's touched a drop!"

"That's largely because you're not sharing," noted Jenn.

The large body mass in the heretofore silent corner roared awake, "Ogre sleepy. You make noise. Ogre--" and drifted off in confused thought.

"Is Ogre all right?" asked George.

"Yeah, he's always like that. Sorta. Girls?" said Jenn.

"Ready," replied Death.

"Ready, I guess," said Spoon.

Fey just hugged her.

"Just gotta blink some sleep out of my eyes," said Girl.

"Not you," said Death. "Nobody wants to spange a freak-boy _pre_vert like you."

Girl pouted.

Spot turned to George. "We'll spange a few blocks down from the girls. Chances are in front of O'Henry's well get a salad or even a burger. Which I think is good enough for us, right?"

"What exactly is spange?"

Spot laughed. "I suppose it's not entirely inherently obvious. Spare change."

"I see," George replied. "I see. A salad or burger would be delightful."

Jenn retired back to the bedroom, presumably for more clothes. Fey was looking at him very strangely.

"_Do_ you remember me?" he asked her.

She shook her head and ran off after Jenn.

He turned to Spot. "What's with her?"

"Couldn't say. She's sensitive sometimes. In any way you want to take that."

"Ah. Hmm. Perhaps I'll try to ask an easier question next time." George wandered into the bathroom to see if he could borrow its use to expel the coffee he had earlier imbibed. Charles and Barbie were both leaning on the toilet rim, feet out, looking far paler than anyone ought, and naturally. Charles looked like a normal sort, compared to the rest, a bit of a geek if anything. He had short black hair, thin, and thick, round features. George guessed a medium complexion, if Charles hadn't been expelling his body's liquid reserves.

Barbie fit her name to a tee; she was beautiful, just drained and dirty. And perhaps one eye was lower than the other, but that was the sort of thing that gave a model a trademark, these days. She wore the appropriate sort of clothes, a smart outfit if it was more cared for. Barbie smiled wanly up at him.

"Any chance you two would mind giving me a few moments with your porcelain altar? I have some coffee I want to drain."

Charles and Barbie exchanged daunted looks, then looked up at him as one. Their movements were liquid, unbalanced. They both needed food and fluid. And probably sleep. If anything, they'd puked all the blood out of their system and were running on pure alcohol. They both pulled their feet in, leaned forward to their hands and elbows, crawled out of the bathroom, then collapsed just outside the door. The door wouldn't shut with them in the way, so George did his best to not think of them while relieving his bladder.

They were exchanging gentle snores when he stepped over them back into the living room. "Are they going to be all right to leave there?"

Jenn, now covered with a frilly red thing, replied, "Probably. They'll feel like shit for a long while, but Charles has come up with far worse things when drunk. Fey was at her side, almost clinging to her.

Ogre was finally up and moving about, and George saw he deserved his name. The man was possibly only six foot tall, but he was large. And while fat was a good portion of that, it was obvious he had muscle underneath it. And his clothes looked like he'd worn them for years, unwashed. The stench was visible. He was at least half of the smell of beer and urine that George had earlier ascribed to the room itself.

"Morning, Ogre," he said.

Ogre grunted noncommittally.

Spot caught his attention. "We should head out. The quicker the number of people here reduces, the quicker the remainder will manage to leave as well."

"Indeed," he replied, and strode out the door.

Only twenty minutes had passed, if that, but he felt completely different. For one thing, he had a name, George, which really wasn't his name, but he felt he was starting to become it. He wondered what sort of George he'd be, and decided if anything he'd be curious. Also, he'd fulfilled the one immediate goal he'd had, or at least as best as he could. He'd learned nothing, but he'd made the attempt, and now his horizon was open. Beyond base survival, which seemed easy enough in this crowd, he simply had to decide what he wanted his new life to be. Likely it wouldn't be hanging out in this crowd indefinitely, but it felt good to be with them for now. And if his last life started to come together, then he'd worry about that as it happened. Spot was right--he didn't need it.

"But he doesn't have a _soul_," whined its way out of the house. That was... that was Fey, he thought. She was the little one who had been hiding from him. Was that what she was on about? He walked back inside, past Spot who was just exiting, and the room fell silent amidst loud hushes.

"Fey," he said, "Just because I don't remember anything doesn't mean I don't have a soul. Children are born remembering nothing, but they have souls, right?"

"But they have _names_," she insisted.

"I have a name, now, too."

"It's not yours!"

"But it's becoming so."

"That's not it, anyway. I don't know if it has anything to do with your memory, or your name, or what. You don't have a soul!"

"How do you mean, then?"

Jenn spoke up. "Fey's big on mysticism. She has this idea where, well, it's kinda based on the 'true love' sort of thing. Where people are meant for each other. That would be an instance of two people sharing a soul. Only, it's more than two people sharing a soul, it's any number. And a person shares any number of souls. It's kinda complicated, but it's a nifty idea. One of those self-perpetuating magics we use to decide who's in and who's out, stuff like that. She can see the connections between people, what she thinks are souls. And it works pretty well."

"So you see no connection between me and your group? That's fine. I'd guessed as much, really. But that doesn't mean I don't have a soul, does it?"

Fey's whine came back with a vengeance. "But you don't have _any_ connections. To anyone. Anything. It's like you don't exist!"

"Well, that probably does have to do with my memory, right? I very obviously have no connections to anyone or anything, or they'd come back to me."

"These aren't just superficial connections based on memory, time spent together. These are real, they're like physical bonds, only, well, metaphysical. But inherent. I've never seen a soul gained or lost, not even in one of Nietzsche's month-long scrub-juice binges. And you'd be amazed at what he's scrubbed away!"

"I don't suppose there's anything I can say to that. Perhaps my... souls, as you describe them, are different. Or perhaps I don't have any. I really couldn't say. I would presume I've got something of the sort. I exist. But don't worry; I doubt I'm going to go about devouring other people's souls. I just don't have any connections. I'm fine with that. For now, at least."

Fey whined to Spot, "Be careful, Spot. I don't like him."

George shrugged and walked back outside. He didn't have a soul? Curiouser and curiouser. He'd have to find out later if she was on drugs, if that was how she normally was, or if something disproportionately odd was going on. He circled back around the house and slunk through the fence. His fingers twitched like they wanted to hold a cigarette.

Spot came back out after him, and wordlessly they set out. George noted the signs as they went up Mabel instead of Ashby. They were walking somewhat back the way the came from, but perpendicular to it as well. A few blocks in they reached a stretch of park and Spot sat down at a picnic table. George noted a glint of metal on the grass, and picked it up. A penny, heads up: good luck, he hoped. Maybe his soul would find him. Or he would find it. He offered the penny to Spot. "For your thoughts?"

"Too complicated to say, really. Keep the penny. When I figure them out, I'll let you know."

He sat down next to Spot and stretched his legs. He could tell that his body was not all that used this sort of ongoing exercise. But it could get used to it, he knew. So long as he didn't mind the pain, he was certain he could push the endurance of his body to just about whatever ends where necessary. He massaged, one by one, the muscles of his right leg, and then left.

"So what do _you_ make of that whole incident?" asked his companion.

"Probably less than you. We're both missing _my_ context, but you've got some sort of history with Fey and her environs."

"Fey's a mouse. She's gifted, but not prone to power plays. Whatever she was acting like is what she was. Anyway, for all she's the quiet type, she's not too bright. Or maybe she's just not creative. That whole soul idea--that's Jenn's, with some help from Dee. They worked from what Fey described, but... yeah. What I'm saying, every different which-way but up, is that your lack of context told you just as much as my history. Essentially."

"Sounds like a good kid."

"She is, really. It's good luck she found a crowd that looks after her."

"Luck?"

"You know what I mean."

"I think I do," he replied evenly.

The wind played through the trees, wisping leaves under and over a merry-go-round. A swing squeaked gently. The park was a bit larger than your typical city attempt, stifled still by the middle-class suburban housing surrounding it, but with eight-odd square blocks it held its own. It had a fair amount of grass, a barbecue area, two sets of tennis courts, a soccer field and a batting cage, as well as an honest-to-goodness playground. It was a hard place to relax at, but sitting still the wind calmed down and the sun warmed his skin, warmed his muscle, warmed his bones. An ache in his hands relaxed that he hadn't even noticed until it was gone. He was comfortable and had to fight the sudden urge for sleep. George closed his eyes and daydreamed of nothing in particular.

Slow, heavy footsteps brought a shadow over his skin and over his eyes. "Ogre hungry." The voice managed to startle him the slightest bit despite his expectation of it; he opened his eyes.

Ogre looked, if anything, worse in direct sunlight. His face was covered in acne and acne scars, his teeth were varying shades of yellow and green, caked with white and black outlines, and he looked like he could very well be a full-on ark of assorted parasites. He scratched his back and squinted at them, probably due as much to myopia as the daylight which his 'kind' were not supposed to be accustomed to. The sun picked out that his shirt was actually a poor medieval sort of male blouse, and his chest was blatantly rashy under that. The whole of his presence made George's skin crawl just the slightest bit.

"You can drop the act, Ogre," said Spot.

"Ogre hungry," he said less forcefully, resignedly. "Want food."

"What do you want us to do about that?"

"You were going for food; I thought I'd tag along. They were still arguing and distracting each other back at the squat."

"I thought you didn't eat salads."

"Well, you know. Whatever."

"Join the hunt, then." Spot stood up slowly. "Time for these old bones to get a move, before they settle too far into the Earth."

George stood as well, and waited for someone to lead the way. Ogre took point and set a lumbering pace that raised George's pulse just noticeably. Spot and George fell in behind; the sun was roughly ahead of them and to their left, not quite above their heads but well out of their eyes. There was very little life outside beyond that not usually ascribed such--the breeze, the trees lining the streets, the grass. They walked.

The houses devolved to upper-class ghetto for a number of blocks, losing trees and grass to cement and broken bottles, and then, crossing a major street, became middle-class semi-urban again. For two blocks the houses were actually large, two and three stories, and well cared for; the odd bird and squirrel chittered and scampered about. Then they were at another major intersection, and turned left at a slight diagonal. George tried hard to make it seem familiar, but could not begin to put the various places together in a coherent framework.

Crossing the street, he looked down and watched his feet plod one after the other; he remembered his idea for a movie, and was annoyed. Several hours into this new life and already he was repeating himself. Still, he could the mental picture, grainy frame after grainy frame of feet walking along varying ground. How much could be told about a place by a worm's-eye view? How much could be told about a person by their shoes? He studied his shoes intently: up, down, up, down. He noted that his walk was even, and the wear on his shoes was even. They seemed recently polished, the sort that were meant to last a lifetime. They'd been resoled if he'd had them a lifetime.

There was a sudden pain in his side and his feet stopped moving; his heart wasn't beating, he wasn't breathing; life had stopped. He was frozen like in the BART station, but still within his body. He concentrated, imagined the scene he was in, and tried to see it from an 'outside' perspective. He could just about picture himself, still in the street, his companions ahead of him. Ogre was paused mid-step and looked like he should fall over. Spot appeared lost in thought. George had been lagging behind, head down, watching his shoes. He resisted the urge to continue that examination. At his side was a car, unmoving. He wondered at his imagination, wondered how much of this he was making up and how much came from the subconscious... and how much he was really having a frozen-time out-of-body experience. Having a frozen-time out-of-body experience seemed somehow _right_ to him.

Why did his side hurt? He saw the driver in the car, a blue pontiac musclecar, watching Ogre cross the street. The driver was sipping coffee with one hand, keeping the wheel roughly straight with the other. The driver-side window was down and his hair was blowing back in the wind--

There hadn't been any wind. He saw the driver's foot on the gas, saw the speedometer pegged at twenty-five miles per hour. The car was moving; it was trying to move through where he was. _That_ was the pain in his side. A shudder went through his body. He shut his eyes tight and braced himself, then wenched with all his might to twist aroudn the car plowing through him.

He shattered.

He shattered into a thousand pieces of being; he shattered into a thousand different beings. The sound of tires screeching faded into the distance.

Spot turned around at the sound of tires screeching. Skid marks led from the pedestrian crosswalk to a dark metallic blue caddillac stopped at about ten degrees from the road. George was nowhere to be seen. Spot ran up to the caddy and checked the grill, but there was no damage on the car. The driver looked pale, and cold. He turned his head and looked at Spot, looked around, and drove slowly off. Spot let him go. Where the hell had George gone? Had George just been a figment of his imagination? He shrugged. Ogre was turned back, watching him silently. They said nothing. Spot took point and led them to People's Park, deciding there would be free food there and no need, now, to drag George through the more interesting aspects of street life. Finally, he asked Ogre: "Was there someone else walking with us?"

"I'm happy to believe not if you are."

"Funny."

"I suppose. He was a bit funny. But I don't know where he went, so I'm happy to believe he didn't exist."

"If he didn't exist, did you make him up, or did I?"

"You must've. I don't have an imagination like that."

"Indeed."

"Now you sound like him."

"Must have been me, then."

"You know, he kinda looked like you, too."

"That's called 'age', Ogre."

"No, the facial characteristics. And he was skinny and short, like you."

"Everyone's skinny and short to you, Ogre."

"That's not fair," Ogre grumphed.

"Okay. Most everyone, especially two old, skinny, short guys. One of whom we just agreed didn't exist."

"I wonder if that's why he didn't have a soul. Maybe you were just projecting him."

"I don't have that sort of magic, Ogre. I can make things become, but--that's _things_, not people. And those things don't just disappear into thin air. They last. Come on, I've had this jacket for a decade."

"You pay more attention to the jacket? Or jackets are easier to manifest. I don't know; you know I don't know. I'm just thinking, you know?"

"Let's get some grub; maybe Fey will have something to say."

They walked into the crowd milling about the folding tables and held out their hands for sandwiches.

"Vegan, veggie, or meat," asked one of the social workers behind the table.

"Veggie," said Spot, "and a meat here for my friend."

She looked at their hands, stamped each with a smiley face, and handed them two sandwiches. "Enjoy."

"Thanks."

They walked across the field and sat down in one of the shaded areas to relax. This was where the potheads and moderate junkies hung out; Spot didn't smoke, not anymore, but he liked the smell of pot, and he liked having a tree at his back. He looked at his sandwich contemplatively: an egg-salad sandwich. On his own, in any other city, he would have tossed the sandwich back in the trash. Unless he was really that hungry, and a visit to the emergency room wasn't usually worth that--though a visit to the emergency room meant he was flushed with all the electrolytes his body could handle. So only if he was really, really on the verge of incapacitation. But here in balmy California, or at least the Bay Area, you didn't even have to ask for food, just if you wanted to. Free meals were available all over the place; the harder part was showers, but they tended to come along when you decided you needed one. That was manifestation, which he was particularly good at: anything tended to come along, in some form or other, when you decided you needed it. This morning, maybe he had needed an old friend. Or perhaps that had been something else entirely. At the moment, though, the egg salad sandwich beckoned him. He took a bite, and Ogre sat down next to him.

"You think the girls are actually going to get their act together and spange today?" asked Ogre.

"Depends on how hung up they get on having good signs."

"Yeah, I suppose. So how likely do you think that is?"

"They tend to get hung up on things. They don't really have anything else to do. But I think today will be the exception. Today, I think they'll be spanging out on the ave in an hour."

"We're not going to be hungry in an hour."

"They will. Although they'll probably get enough food while spanging, so the rest will go to booze and drugs; for those that enjoy those sorts of things."

"And folks wonder why streetfolks get a bad rap, huh?"

"What folks would that be?"

"Oh. Uh, I suppose not. I suppose not."

"So, dear Ogre. How do you plan to fill your day today?"

"Probably go down to Cody's and read."

Spot doffed a look of shock and awe.

Ogre started and finished his sandwich and three bites, and looked longingly at the table, still with food. Spot sighed. "I'll get you another sandwich."

Spot walked back over to the table, cleared his throat, and waited for someone to notice him. When he caught their eyes, he asked, "Can I get another sandwich? My old body isn't so good at things these days; I dropped it on the ground. Normally I'd just pick it back up, you know, but egg salad winds up being more dirt than salad when it spills."

She looked at him, frowning, and at the food on the table, and shrugged. "We've got plenty today, Sir, and there's no point in you going hungry. Egg salad sandwich, you said?"

"Actually, could I have one of those turkey ones? Egg salad on the ground I found not such an appetizing picture."

"Certainly." Handing him the sandwich, she gave a wan smile, and her eyes sparkled a bit, likely with thoughts of her own father. He hated that; well, he hated that sometimes. It made him wish he'd had children, or kept up with them if he'd had them. There was always the possibility he had some progeny somewhere, but it would have been a different life to stay around to find out. If anyone had wanted to find him, well, maybe they couldn't have, but at the time he'd assumed they would. And now he was old, too old, and nobody had ever found him. Oddly, the young ones on the street seemed attracted to him, but he wasn't about to start things now. He probably just reminded _them_ of their _grandfather_. That was not a pleasing thought. He took the proferred sandwich and ambled back to Ogre.

"We'll walk with this, huh?"

"Okay."

They walked up the short side of the park, past the freepile, and cut back to Telegraph. Spot handed Ogre his sandwich, and Ogre devoured it in another three bites. This time, he smiled. That had soothed the "savage" beast. They walked into Cody's and back into the nonfiction section. Ogre headed straight for the computer books, while Spot meandered around, and found himself in the magazines. Cody's was a good place for magazines; they had the mainstream stuff, they had the midstream stuff, they had the specialist zines, and they had the local zines. They sold just about anything. He picked up a two hundred page photography journal and started thumbing through its pages, trying to understand what people 'see' these days. It seemed to be a very different emotion, less of an emotion, less real, that what people saw fifty years ago. Closer to the staged photos of a hundred some odd years ago, when photos were a novel form of portraiture. Only these were certainly far more 'modern'. Then there were the practically abstract photos, the architecture bits, that could only loosely be compared to landscapes. He sighed. People weren't very interested in people, these days. He put back the photography journal, and noticed someone had put dropped a Street Spirit on one of the lower shelves.

Spot pointedly ignored it, muttering under his breath about self-indulgent pap. But that's what you got, he sighed, with an area that actually fed, and to some extent clothed and homed, its urban indiginies. He prodded the paper with his toe and saw an odd bit of poetry fall out--a separate leaflet that it appeared someone had added to the paper.

GLIMPSE _walking along, I'm in his home as much as he is; he doesn't remember through self-inflicted daze whatit is to have four walls and a door that locks._

"Pretentious bullshit," he said outloud.

Ogre came up behind him with heavy steps.

"Ogre done reading now."

"That was quick."

"Ogre not find picture books he want."

"All the porn was wrapped up?"

"Let's go back to the park."

"You just wanted to use the restroom here, didn't you?"

Ogre winked.

"All right, let's go back to the park."

They grabbed their bags back from the disdainful security counter, and pushed out through the doors onto the moderately busy street, then stood there uncertainly.

Ogre spoke first. "Ogre bored."

"We can go back into Cody's. They don't tend to mind you reading books so long as your hands are clean. And I know you can read more than picture-books."

"Yeah. Ogre not wrap mind 'round book right now. Ogre not have concentration for books."

"And are you looking to me to fill your day with excitement, suffer in the morass of boredom with you, or...?"

"Ogre not expecting."

"Well that's good. I was fairly sure you had no female reproductive systems lying about you."

Ogre gazed at him blankly. Spot sighed.

"All right. We are two wayward souls in search of some wayward adventure. Let us sally forth and see what may unfold before us."

Ogre scowled.

"Expecting as in expecting a baby, okay?"

Ogre nodded slowly. "Okay, I get it. That was bad. Ogre skeptical of adventure with bad punner. Anyway, what we do? What we find not boring?"

"Well, there's nothing like a good conversation between friends, especially hopped up on caffeine or speed. We have the makings of a wonderful elocutive adverture right here in our own two minds, as we stand at this very spot."

"Elocuwhat?"

"Elocutive. Elocution being talking, sort of. Public speaking, sort of. And we are in public. But I may be taking more liberties with the language than I ought; it seems a splendiferous word to me, regardless." He grinned. "Eh? Eh? Splendiferous? Okay, you are bored, and it is wrong for me to tease you like this. But I'm not bored, and it helps me stay that way. In any case... yes. Where were we?"

Ogre harumphed. "What we talk about? Boredom?"

"Is there anything else in this mortal coil?"

"Things that aren't boredom."

"From the right perspective everything's boredom."

"I'd rather be bored than annoyed. But boredom makes me annoyed. I don't think annoyance is ever boring. Tiring, maybe. Not boring."

"That's not boredom, I think. That's a gut feeling there's actually some _specific_ thing you should be doing, as opposed to the ennui of not doing anything."

"Ogre not think of anything."

"Perhaps it's time you moved on?"

"Ogre not move on! Ogre like it here."

"Not if you're so mortally bored. Or is it just my company today?"

"No, Ogre just bored."

"Well, then. You don't like this place as much as you thought. You've been here for, what, three months?"

"Yeah."

"I think you might be starting to wake up."

"What you mean?"

"Higher functions tend to go to sleep when the body is under prolonged duress. You were surviving, just, so your body activated only that which was necessary; it left to rest to rot, as it were. That would be your mind--" Spot held up a hand to Ogre's protestations: "Okay, perhaps rot isn't quite fair. But it does atrophy, and don't you interrupt! You're not going to be bored on my watch. We're waking you up. Come on, we'll walk while I talk."

They headed leisurely North, up Telegraph.

"Your mind probably never was properly stimulated, we don't need to go into your childhood. Regardless of what your life had been, unless you were cultivating your mind specifically, it shut off, or at best reverted, and I mean that evolutionarily." He glanced over his shoulder to catch Ogre's puzzled contemplative look. "Evolutionarily, like good old Charles clumsily implied, we all crawled out of the sea at some point. The mind evolved in stages, and it reverts in stages--there's man, which is where we theoretically start. Then comes primal, or primate, like a monkey. Amphibians are pretty cool. Reptile is where it gets really interesting, just reflexes that you're not even conscious of having hidden deep in your subconscious. Past that, well, there's not much there. At least for our current discussion. You probably only regressed to primal. Ever try to have a conversation with a monkey? Even the ones that know sign language, there's not much there."

Ogre cleared his throat pointedly and Spot looked around. "Ah, ladies. We were just looking for you. Or adventure, or something of the sort. We won't tarnish your spot by staying too long, but how fares the faery day?"

"Where's your friend?" asked Fey, looking around nervously.

Ogre butted in, "You saw him too?"

"Uh... yeah. Remember, the whole incident at the house? Me pointing out he didn't have a soul?"

Ogre turned to Spot. "You're pretty good. I forgot about that."

Spot shrugged. "He may not have been my figment, you know. That was just the most plausible thing at the time."

"What do you mean?" asked Fey.

Ogre replied, "Well, we walk along, and... all of the sudden, he not there."

"Like he dove into a store or something?"

"No, like. He walk. We walk. He not there. No store. We were coming out Russell, crossing Adeline."

"Odd," she said, and then pointedly stared away from them.

"She's checking our aurus," said Spot to Ogre. "It's easier to see in the periphery. She's afraid he might be in one of us. But if he didn't have a soul to begin with, she's not going to see any change in us anyway. Let's go before she starts having a bad trip."

Ogre shrugged. "Bye Fey. Bye Jenn. Bye Dee."

"Bye Ogre," they sing-songed back.

"Goodbye girls," said Spot. "Where is Girl, by the way?"

"He stayed back at the pad to do a line of coke," said Dee.

"He did not!" argued Jenn. "He just wasn't feeling up to much. Making signs tired him out."

"Where are the signs?"

"Sitting on 'em. The pavement's cold, today."

"Good thing Girl didn't come, then."

"Yeah."

"Okay, then; we'll see you around, I'm sure."

"Like, totally, like, man, wow," said Dee, and giggle.

Jenn laughed. "Like wow totally, like."

Fey turned away and watched the other side of the street, a worried look etched into her face.

Spot shrugged and walked up towards campus, Ogre in tow.

"Where are we going?"

"We'll know when we get there."

"So we're walking."

"Exactly. And talking, observing, and hopefully thinking. But the walking tends to help get things moving."

"You're too punny."

"Huh?" Spot stopped, confused.

"Keep things moving. We're walking to keep things moving. You didn't do that on purpose? I thought I was getting something."

Spot smiled. "That's fine; it was certainly there for the getting, and it's on me for not noticing I'd put it there."

"So... uh... what do _you_ do to keep from being bored, if you've been awake in this city so long?"

"Promise not to tell anyone?"

"Uhh. Sure. I guess. You're not hacking people into little bits, are you?"

"Not physically."

"Hey! I know I'm not the brightest bulb but, er, you're not going to chop _that_ into little bits, are you?"

"Not such that you'd notice."

Ogre stopped in his tracks and crossed his arms; he glared somewhat worriedly.

"Okay, okay, not like that. I promise, I'll spare you!"

"And what about the rest of them? What about Fey? Your mysterious stranger's certainly throwing her for a loop!"

"I'm writing a novel."

"What?"

"I'm writing a novel. It's not about you, or me, or them. But it has bits of each of us in it. That's all I meant, I'm dissecting the various psyches around me for inclusion in my novel."

"What kind of novel are you writing?"

"It's rather existential. Or... abstract, even. Like modern art, modern music--it's the modern novel. Just lines, colors, textures."

"With words, though, right?"

"Yeah, there're words, so I suppose it's not as modern as all that."

"How much have you written?"

"Not a thing." Spot laughed. "Where would I hide it? Where would I keep it? And what would people say?"

"Then... how are you writing a novel?"

"It's all in my head."

"But you're writing it?"

"In my head. Okay, so as such, I've gotten... I don't know. It's textural, like I said. The whole thing is essentially written, I have the players, and there is nothing but them. Now I'm working on the subtleties, adding nuance, mixing and remixing. I hope to have a self-describing fractal by the time I'm done. Perhaps then I'll write it down."

"You really remember a whole novel all at once?"

"Certainly. Well, there are bits that change from thought to thought, but that just makes it more alive, like the Illiad or the Odyssey. Have you _seen_ how large those things are?" Ogre shook his head. "I've read them. I learned them, in the ancient way. I could recite from any key scene to any other, including of course the beginning. So I'm writing my story the same way."

"Do you say it out loud, then? When you tell it? Er. When you write it?"

"Actually, no. I do subvocalize a bit here or there when I'm trying to work it out, but really, no. I hadn't thought of it. Would you want to hear some of it?"

"Would I understand anything?"

"Understanding not required. It's meant to be an experience."

"Yeah, but if I don't understand it, I'll just be bored. I've already experienced that."

"Perhaps some other day, then."

"Right. Perhaps."

They'd crossed Bancroft and entered Sproul Plaza. The fountain was in fine form, multihued bubbles splashing about; Spot presumed someone had done that on purpose, from the quality of the bubbles, and not just done their laundry in it. He could appreciate either, but he preferred the art. Some of the bubbles would float over the edge and pop on the marble rim, or twirl upwards in a lazy gust, and fade from vision before extinguishing. Spot smiled.

"Know anything about fractals?" he asked Ogre.

"Uh... no? They're pretty."

"Yeah, that. Hmm. Do you know complex math?"

"It's all pretty complex to me."

"Ba-dum ching," said Spot, mimicing a drum kit.

"Ogre not joking!"

"Yeah, yeah. It's just a... yeah." Spot realized he was sitting on the fountain, playing with the bubbles, and stood up. "All right, we're moving again. Thoughts ran away with me for a bit." He walked them further North, through Sproul Plaza, through Sather Gate, turned right, walked past the Mary Poppins building, doubled back down through an alcove, through a small lot, over a slight bridge, and then over the top rim of faculty glade. Just before the small bridge, he dodged into the bushes. Ogre dutifully followed him throughout.

Spot kneeled before a lady growing out of the ground. Ogre looked at him, and then the statue in turn, quizically. "Is _this_ the dryad everyone keeps talking about?"

Spot nodded, mumbling some valediction under his breath.

"Huh. I expected something more."

Spot stood up. "You ever wonder what that old geezer on the far end of the field was grinning about?"

"The football guy?"

"That would be him."

"He's watching her?"

"That would be it."

"That just seems like a horrible in-joke. Which statue was here first?"

"I couldn't say. That's a really intelligent question, Ogre."

"Yeah, well, I'm not stupid. I'm just not ... smart."

"I know you're not stupid, though I have my doubts you actually accept that you aren't. And I think your playacting, while it may make you feel good, is hurting in the long run."

"Ogre like play!"

"Indeed. It's damaging to the self-esteem, I'm sure. Whether you accept that or not. But let's not argue in front of the lady."

"Ogre. Like. Play."

"I will admit that, yea and verily. Now, this fine lady is about to give us a quest. Are you ready for that quest?"

"A quest?"

"Yea and verily," swore Spot, solemnly.

"Yea and verily?"

"Yes."

"Yes what?"

"A quest."

"How is this statue going to give us a quest?"

"She is a dryad, a creature of the earth and trees. Quests is what they do, or at least some of it."

"But she's a statue!"

"Every statue has its secret; if it does not, people give it one. Yea and verily." Spot reached behind the statue, and pulled a worn fortune-cookie fortune out. He handed it to Ogre.

Ogre looked at it skeptically, then read it out loud. "All your days are belong to us." He read it again, confused. "All your days are belong to us."

Spot laughed. "I think that was the wrong one. But it will work. It's something to think about on our journey, that is all."

"The wrong one?"

Spot pulled a small handful of fortunes from an inner coat pocket. "I've got a small collection; most are original, some I wrote myself, and a very few came from actual fortune cookies. I didn't have much of a chance to pick one out, so I just sleighted one that felt less worn than the others."

"That's not a nice joke," said Ogre.

"It's not a joke at all, my friend. Come, sit down." Spot sat down and patted the ground beside him.

Ogre sat down.

"I have two bits of paper that go with that last one, as follow-up. They'll help your meditation."

"More fortunes?"

"Of a sort. Allow an old man his crypticism, eh?" Spot held out a tiny strip of paper, slightly perforated into two squares.

"Hmm. Candy from an old man. Ogre decline. Acid boring."

"When, what, and where did you do it before? I've heard it many things, but boring is not one of them, not unless you've been doing it daily for months on end; and even then."

"In Texas a few years ago. I did tabs, which were supposed to be a super acid/ecstasy mix. It made my skin crawl a bit, and I got lost in thoughts, but they were lame. I kept thinking about my parents."

"What about your parents?"

"Wondering how they were, if they ever missed me; if they even remembered me. I wondered what they looked like, how they'd aged, if my sister ever moved or if she's become typical trailer trash, or what. Just... stuff."

"Anything else?"

"I tried some another time, in Colorado, but it didn't do anything. I kinda think it didn't do anything for anyone there, but everyone else at least convinced themselves it did. But they were regulars, so I doubt it mattered much."

"I see. I guarantee a better trip this time, or your money back. Seriously. I'm very skilled. And I know you don't have school or work to worry about, tomorrow. You can sleep it off with no problems. So I'll have taken care of some twenty or thirty hours of your life that would have been otherwise boredom. And perhaps you'll have some good reflections, something to look back on later, or something to work towards other than the endless nothing."

Ogre frowned at the proferred pieces of paper, but took them in hand, and brought them up to his right eye, squinting the left, for closer inspection. "This is thick paper, no designs. I thought acid was supposed to have designs."

"Sometimes yes, sometimes no. This was made by a friend of mine, and he just isn't a fan of the fancy paper. He says this lasts better; and it seems to. I wouldn't know, chemistry's not my thing."

Ogre put the paper under his tongue, and suffered a disconcerting tingle that started at the flap of skin under his tongue, and ran straight down the outside of his esophagus, disturbing a flock of butterflies in his stomach, and then bounced around the head of his penis. He shook his head confusedly and tried to make the swelling in his penis go away; it was becoming painful against his tight jeans. His heart rate increased. He could feel sweat beading up on his skin. He felt dirty. He felt the grime and grit under his fingernails, felt the vague fuzziness of whatever was growing on his teeth. It all made him want to cry--he realised he wasn't breathing, and he took a deep lungful of breath. He looked for Spot, but his vision was billowing in and out, and he couldn't force anything to stand still long enough to seem like a solid object.

"Spot?"

"Right here, Ogre. Isn't today a wonderful day?"

"Am I standing or sitting?"

"You're sitting down."

"So it's safe to fall over?"

"Sure. Sure, it's safe to fall over. Here, let me help you."

Ogre felt warm soft things on his sides, felt his stomach looping crazily through the sky, felt himself falling backwards, the loops looping stronger and wider, vision going black and then beyond black to kaleidoscopic; he heard the ocean rushing in his ears, and that was a kaleidoscope, too, rushing from one universe to the next. He was flying--

He was flying through a world of molten metal, cold molten metal, silvery shimmery molten metal whose reflections sounded in his ears as a choir of angels. He stretched, slowly, deliberately, stretching every muscle he could stretch, every muscle he could find with his mind and then stretch; he would stretch it and it felt sooooo good to stretch, and the earth under the backs of his knuckles, the grass...

His ears went black and he shivered. He was cold. He didn't want to be cold; he didn't like being cold. "Ogre cold!" he said, and a tear started to form in one eye. His voice sounded large and muffled; distant. Something warm, something large and warm and warm was sliding over his stomach; large, warm, smooth, warm, over his stomach. He twitched and clutched at it, afraid of what it might be, but he felt--it was cloth, a jacket, it was a jacket. Spot. Spot had given him his jacket, probably. "Spot?" he asked.

"I'm right here. You're perfectly safe. Just enjoy it."

Spot's voice sounded even weirder, like he'd overlayed his normal voice with someone breathing helium. The helium voice wiggled all around the normal voice, and Ogre giggled. He heard his giggling and giggled harder; his eyes started to hurt, then his chest, and he realized he wasn't breathing, again. That was bad, but he couldn't stop laughing. Laughing. He started laughing, taking deeper breaths and letting them out in larger barks. The giggles were gone. The laughs felt good, but he still wasn't breathing. He took a deep breath, and another, and let them out slowly, deliberately. He closed his eyes--or had they been closed? He shut them tighter, and opened them; open, there was a difference. He could see the sky, and it was so many different colors of blue. He could taste the color of blue, and it confused him, because it wasn't like anything that he would have thought; it wasn't cold, it wasn't water or blue candy or anything blue he'd tasted before, but it was taste, and it was blue. It was actually somewhat warm, and wispy like air, but blacker, like the space beyond it. It was cold. It was warm _and_ cold. And crisp and soft. Blue. He wondered if he could perfect that flavor of blue if he was, for instance, a Jelly Belly master. He wondered if the blue was physically, chemically, possible to produce, or if it required really messed-up brain stuff to appreciate it.

He wondered what red would taste like, if it would taste the same or if it would be a completely unique experience as well, but his stomach revolted at the thought; its contents grew, and churned, and grew. He felt them pounding at the lower end of his esophagus, gathering force and ramming the gates, attempting to batter it down.

He turned his head and opened the doors on their next charge, letting them all out onto the ground beside him. He laughed, and then spit, trying to get the last remnants out of his mouth. His stomach hurt a little, he was colder again, he felt a bit drained, but it was good. He felt good. Dizzy, maybe. Was he dizzy? He wasn't sure. He was still lying down, and he could tell he was flying, the world shifting around under him, and he shifting around with the world, yet shifting apart from it as well.

"We'll need to get you more food later, but that's okay," came the voice from the heavens.

The thought of food made him turn his head again and dry-heave a few times.

"All your days are belong to us, Ogre. Think about it."

He groaned. The voice in the heavens was confusing him. He knew "All your base are belong to us". That was obvious. Anime. Sort of anime. A video game, with horrible... horrible everything. But "All your base are belong to us" had caught on, somehow. The phrase. Nobody remembered what game it actually came from, or at least nobody he knew. Or maybe nobody would admit to knowing. It was that sort of bad. All your base all your base all your base.

All your days are belong to us. That had to be "the man", whatever that meant. Right? He realized he wanted some of his thoughts to be out loud and some not to be, but all of his thoughts were just happening in his head. Acid thoughts, acid chemicals, pinging around in his brain, making it zoom zip and wake up, zoom zip and it wakes up... "The man, right?" he asked. His voice sounded more normal. Not normal. More normal. Less abnormal. Yeah.

"You tell me," came the voice from the heavens. Only it came from his side, sort of, and above him, but to the side.

"I think I can sit up now," he replied.

A female voice floated in. "Is he all right?"

"I'll be fine," he said.

"We're just having a little discussion about life, the universe, and everything," said Spot.

He opened his eyes again--had they been closed? Why did he keep going through loops of not knowing whether his eyes were open or closed? His eyes pulsed with the beat of his heart; he felt his sweat dry on his skin. He saw creatures, one- and two-celled creatures, swimming through the sky; they were on his eye, they were everywhere and moved with his vision, they had to be on his eye, but he couldn't feel them. He knew better than to try to touch them, but he covered his face with his hand to see whether they'd be on his hand or behind it; they were on his hand, swimming as if his hand had only the vaguest sort of physicality.

Everything was alive with motion. Everything, moving, moving everywhere and everything. He smiled, and revelled in the stretch of his facial muscles. He moved his jay around stretching every last one of them, popping his ears, blowing out through his nose, flaring his nostrils, wiggling his eyebrows, stretching out trying to move his ears. He gave up and felt his ears, grabbed each gently with either hand, and rubbed, kneaded, squeezed them through his fingers. That felt really good. That hurt. That. He couldn't tell; he stopped. He looked around, and everything was alive with motion. He smelled wet, and dark, and grass, and sun. The light bounced off of every available surface, most of all his retina. He felt the little photons of light bouncing in, bouncing around, triggering all sorts of odd chemical reactions, some of them escaping back out.

This was the beginning of a new year, he thought. A new year. This. Year. Years were such arbitrary creatures. Who had come up with them? Sure, there were seasons, sort of. Mostly there were just seasons in the temperate zones, but most of the world was not temperate. Most of the world didn't really see seasons the way 'modern man' had decided them. Some places just saw "hot", some places cycled between "light" and "dark". And we didn't know enough about human physiology to tell how old a person was by carbon dating them or anything like that, but we "knew" that if you had somehow lived through... he multiplied out twenty-one and four to eighty-something. If you had somehow lived through eighty-something years, in the good old U. S. of A., then it was okay to imbibe alcohol. Then you were allowed to know what was okay for your body and what wasn't, within certain limits. Limits. All your fucking days are fucking belong to us, because everything is limited, limited by the government, but that's we the people, we the people are fucking chaining ourselves. What's up with that? What is up with that?

"Spot?"

"You still want to sit up, Ogre?"

"Uh. Whoah. I forgot." He opened his eyes... again? Today was a day of opening eyes. He'd never imagined acid would be like this. He couldn't believe it. Could he? What was belief, anyway? He wished he had a dictionary. "What is belief, Spot?"

"It's assuming things without knowing them, because you want to."

"You're a good dictionary, Spot."

"What are you thinking about?"

"All your days," he said, and started giggling. He remembered giggling before, wondered what he'd been giggling at then. He didn't think it was funny to giggle, so he stopped. He opened his eyes and swiveled his head until it caught focus. "Hello Mrs. Dryad," he said to the statue. She seemed far less metallic, far more real. Or perhaps just more real. More alive real sort of thing. She smiled at him. He could feel her arms moving towards him, but whenever he looked at them they hadn't changed. She was smiling. At him. "Thank you for the quest. I don't understand it at all. I think." He frowned, and it felt like his chin was about to fall off. It hurt the back of his head. He tried to smile to balance it out, but his face just felt _weird_. He tried to massage it with his hands and scared himself with how simply he could feel the bones underneath. How simple the whole structure of the face was! The skin was just a rubber mask loosely connected to the real machinations. Where did he get the word machinations from? He wondered if he actually knew what it meant. "Spot?"

"Yes, Ogre?"

"What does 'machinations' mean?"

"It's like when somebody is plotting against someone else, making nefarious plans, stuff like that."

"Oh." What had he wanted the word for? He rubbed his face--it felt so weird.

"What are you thinking now, Ogre?"

"I can feel my face. It feels so weird."

"I bet it does. Don't decide you don't really need it, though, okay?"

"Uh... sure. Sure, Spot. Sun, Spot." He giggled again.

He swiveled his gaze to where he hoped Spot was, then adjusted, then adjusted again to try to find the other voice. It was Jenn.

"Hey Jenn. How's it going?"

"Not too bad. You sound... you sound different, and I don't just mean the acid."

Spot chimed in, "It _is_ 'just' the acid. It's all in your mind, all in his mind. Mind the mind, I always say."

"But his... his voice is slurred a little, and I'm sure that's the acid, but his words sound clearer, still."

"Ignore the man behind the curtain," laughed Spot.

"Ogre?" asked Jenn.

"Yeah?"

"What are you thinking?

"Einstein's relativity is kinda scary."

"You're shitting me."

"Yeah."

"You're shitting me?"

"Maybe?"

"Shit."

"Yeah." He laughed, laughed hard, and stood up. The world was ages below him, he was floating in the clouds. His muscles felt extra springy; he wanted to run. "Umm. I'll be right back," he said. Ogre burst out of the bushes and ran up the trail and up the short hill, under a huge oak tree, trunk curled over and held up with a long cable, ran around the huge oak tree, jumped and tapped the cable at its lower end, and then sprinted for all his legs could carry him across the flat ground past the music halls, past the art buildings, and stopped at the street. It was cold out. He could see his breath, could feel his eyes bulging open from the acid, could hear sirens in the distance. He turned around slowly, looking at each person his gaze fell upon for several seconds. Their bodies swam with motion and bits of color, and he couldn't really concentrate on anything, but he was curious. He was curious? Could they tell he was on acid? Were any of them on acid? What did it mean to be on acid? What did it matter if he or they were on acid? Why were people so afraid of acid? Why were people so afraid of questions?

That was a good question. He wanted to remember it. He repeated it to himself, again and again, as he ran back to Jenn and Spot. "Why are people so afraid of questions?" "Why are people afraid of questions?" "Why are people afraid of questions?" Maybe it's the answers they're afraid of? Or is it the confrontation? Or maybe they're afraid they can't answer the questions, or they'll look stupid with a bad answer, or... Why don't people ask more questions? Or ask questions more of the time? Do they realize there are _so_ many questions to be asked, collated, listed, answered for the rest of humanity? How does information get shared in a meaningful way? Codified? It's so jumbled! He wanted to remember his questions. How do you remember questions? By saying them out loud. Saying them out loud. Saying them out loud. "Why are people so afraid of questions?" he gasped, hopping a low-hanging chain attempt at a fence, bowling down the slick grass straight for the dryad.

He started to lose his footing, and sped up to keep his feet under him; the dryad was coming at him far more quickly than he was comfortable with; he half-imagined action lines in his periphery, imagined a huge comic-book "KAPOW" as he careened into the statue; he tackled it, shielding his body with his arm and right side, keeping his head tucked behind his shoulder as best he could. "KAPOW" he exlaimed, exhaled, slumped down onto the ground.

His eyes stung, his head rung; was that the Campanile? He looked up, trying to see stars, but he merely managed to blind himself on the sun. "Ow ow ow ow ow!" he moaned. "Ow!"

"Ogre?" That was Jenn. He wanted to stop hurting. He tasted blood and it sat unpleasantly on his emptied stomach.

"Ogre?" That was her again. He wondered what she wanted. He wanted to stop hurting. The blood tasted kinda good if it didn't feel so weird in his stomach. He didn't want to swallow because his jaw hurt. His right ear hurt. A lot.

"Ogre?" Was he imagining her? Why did she keep asking him? Asking him... Questions!

"Why are people afraid of questions?" he blurted out.

"Are you all right?"

"Sure, just make the sun go away. And the pain. But keep me here, I don't want to go wherever the pain goes. Where _does_ pain go, when it goes away? Can you imagine pain vacationing in tahiti? Maybe it would be worth going with pain, if it meant getting to vacation in tahiti. What's Tahiti like, Jenn?"

"Warm, I'm sure. Lots of sun. Are you all right?"

"I think so. Or I'm going to be. I'm going to be. It's okay. Things will stop hurting eventually." He stood up, wincing; his muscles were all tight from the run, and hadn't met with the dryad under the best of circumstances. It would have been an unpleasant accident even under the best of circumstances. He really hurt. The back of his skull felt like it had been balled out with an icecream scoop; it ached with the emptiness.

He felt liquids trickling down his body and wasn't sure how much was sweat and how much was blood. He really had to go to the bathroom. He wanted his eyes to focus. "where's Spot?"

"He said he had some things he had to attend to, but that he'd catch back up with you on your way down."

"Down? I don't think there is a down, even mashed to bits against lady Dryad there, I don't think there's a down." He paused for breath. "Why are people afraid of questions?"

"I don't know what you mean. How are people afraid of questions?"

"You know, like... " his brain derailed through rough gravel, sliding forwards while trying to get back to what had caused the question in the first place. "Oh. Well, you know how Acid makes you have lots of questions?"

"Not really."

"Oh. Huh."

"Go on, anyway. Pretend I do."

"No, it's not worth it. Dammit. Spot said he was going to watch me."

"We're tag-teaming. I'm supposed to ask you what 'All your days are belong to us' means."

"Oh, damn, I'd forgotten all about that."

"Yeah. 's'why he had me ask."

"All all all all all all. All days. Really, what's the difference between one day and the next, huh? Time. Passing. All time passing are belong to us? Time? Time. Like a watch, or something. If you're bowing to the all-mighty time, and everyone bows to the all-mighty time, unless you die... and even then, who knows? Time time time."

"Is that the acid speaking, or a concussion?"

"Who knows? Come on, I want to go somewhere."

"I know just the place."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Cool, because I had not a clue. I'll follow you."

"'kay."

Jenn scooted around the edge of the pathetical little creek, and onto a semi-rounded cement block joining one side to the other. She swung herself around a tree that had spent decades slowly building a curved path around the cement block, and skipped along the block to the other side. Ogre looked at her, looked at the tree, and surveyed his damage.

"It's easier than it looks. If you want to hug the tree, that's fine. Or is your balance and whatnot completely shot? Ah, hell, hug the tree and it won't matter what your balance is, promise!"

Ogre hugged the tree, and tried to figure out how to scoot around it while maintaining the hug. He couldn't. He weakened the hug and managed to slide roughly against the tree, aggravating some abrasians he'd already acquired on his right hand. He wondered what that was from, then was around the tree; he hunched low and lumbered across the bridge cautiously. The other side was coated with ivy, and a few trees for cover; he continued to walk carefully another ten feet up slight incline, then stepped thankfully onto flat cement.

Ogre took a deep look at the pavement under his feet. It swam as badly as any plant-life in the wind. His knee was starting to throb, and he limped forward, watching the ground, and his footing. The ground managed to swim without actually changing place. It was a very interesting phenomenon. Slowly, he decided to trust it to stay in place, and looked up. The mild panorama before him swam with the same activity, greens and blues and reds, but mostly grays, overlapping-but-not. A cool breeze blew over his face and made his right cheekbone sting. His nose filled with the smell of wet salt. Jenn padded nonchalantly before him, past the Campanile, down into Memorial Glade and up the insane slope to North Gate. There, they continued North past a few cafes and campus shops, and on into and through well-to-do neighborhod, then into an area with cramped but lavish near-mansion apartments. A few blocks past those, the road broke out into a large park to the right and a rose garden to the left. Ogre felt his thighs, and tried to rub the bounciness out of them. It had been a blur of odd sights and images that could have taken anywhere between twenty minutes and a few hours; judging by the shadows it had been close to just the twenty minutes, which amazed him with how much he had experienced, how much he _was_ experiencing. He wondered how well he'd be able to remember any of it, if what he didn't remember would have any significant impact on his psyche. He wondered how much of what he saw hidden here and there was a trick of his mind, and how much the eclecticism of the North Berkeley cognoscenti. At one point he saw a giant Carrolian caterpillar leaning down a flag pole, eating the pole the wrong end first. He almost stopped Jenn to find out what it really was, if it was anything, but decided he'd rather not know. He didn't have to be smart all the time, obviously, and he really didn't need to know. He liked it his way just fine.

"There's one trick I really like up here, figured I'd show you; then we could walk through the Rose Gardens, play on the slides, whatever."

"Okay," said Ogre.

"Mind you, it's a lot better at night. But by the time night comes you're not going to be as open to the suggestion."

"I'm always open to a suggestion; well, sort of. Or how do you expect me to be, come night?"

"Well, chances are your mind will be racing, maybe a little burnt out, but your senses won't be nearly as different as they currently are, and your body is going to be severely deplated, and in a fair bit of pain. And that's normally; I'd expect your injuries are going to hasten that."

"Do you know anything about Spot's thoughts on 'awakening' out here?"

"Awakening?"

"Like... your mind starting to wake up, not having to worry about survival so much, out here, getting bored, that sort of stuff."

"Ah, the famed midlife crisis."

"I don't look _that_ old. I'm just ugly and smelly and fat. I don't even look _half_ that old."

"It's just a term. You're getting bored, you want something more, yadda yadda. It hits everyone now and then. I wouldn't say it's really this area, though it's fair to assume the area has some bearing on frequency and amplitude."

"Well, what do _you_ do about it? What keeps you lively and running things and all that?"

"Couldn't say. I just don't get bored."

"Must be nice."

"Sorta. I tend to cultivate interesting times, like I pissed off some ancient chinese deity."

Ogre shrugged.

"So this," said Jenn, pointing to a human-sized archway in a wall under the road, "is the tunnel."

Ogre peered down the tunnel and saw a speck of light down towards the bottom of the other side. "Dark."

"That's the idea, and you see why it's better at night. It's a sensory deprivation chamber. Really lets you sing." She paused. "Well, don't sing, really. If you make too much noise, your senses coordinate and you realize how narrow the tunnel really is. But on a good night, you can let yourself adjust, and you completely forget that there's an outside world just a short walk away."

"How is that not boring?"

"Try it," she said with an edge to her voice. "It's what we walked here for."

Ogre shrugged. "Ogre try." He walked into the tunnel and immediately felt the temperature drop ten or fifteen degrees. It was tilted slightly downwards, curved just a bit side to side. He trudged forward until he was, as best as he could judged, about halfway down the tunnel. He closed his eyes and stretched across from wall to wall, touching both, imagining he was a human power conduit. He could feel the energy rushing from one finger to the other. Or was it the other finger to the one? It seemed to go whichever direction he thought about it; he tried to think it both ways, but found himself just thinking one or the other, forgetting the other, or the one, in response. There was, he had to admit, and truly strange whooshing sound. He wondered if stone dryads existed, and if the did if they were called something else. Maybe the metal dryad was a relative of the stone. He knew that rocks and metals were related somehow, though what he'd heard was that you just squeezed the stone until it bled, which he had some trouble lending credence to.

He went back the way he'd come.

"Well?" asked Jenn.

"Not really what you described. But I can imagine it would be powerful in the dark."

"Damn. Well, at least we can have some fun in the park, right? Come on, I'll push you on the swing."

"Why are you here with me, really? It's puzzling me."

"Ogre puzzled? Ugh ugh? Spot asked me to, and suggested I might learn a bit of use if I did. For instance, I can see you're a far better talker under the influence. Anything that's good for the group is good for me. Anything that's good for me, well, might be good for the group. That's how things work."

Ogre didn't know what to ask next. Everything seemed too personal. So he dropped it. "What's on the other side of the tunnel?"

"The Rose Garden, of course. Come on, I'll show you." She grabbed his unhurt arm and jerked him companionably into the tunnel.

They walked the length of the tunnel, and came out into oddly brighter sunlight than what they'd left. "The other trick is that this is a different world. Try that on for size."

"What sort of different world?"

"Well, it's a long tunnel, with roses on the end. You've just entered faerie--there's a brownie under every bush, and all the bees are sprites."

"I don't see any bees."

"Well, it's just as winter here in faerie as it is in the mortal world. The sprites are off in heated castles."

"All your days are belong to us! That's a faerie thing! The dryad knew I was coming here."

"Perhaps. Why would she tell you that, though?"

"Maybe I'm supposed to do something, here. Or maybe this is a transformation or something. Or maybe I'm high on acid and everything makes sense."

"Roll with whatever seems right. Perhaps all of the above." Jenn laughed. "Smell one of these roses."

"But there aren't any roses, there're just pokey stumps waiting for Spring."

"Smell one of the roses," she said.

Ogre bent down to one of the thicker rose stumps and took a deep breath in, wincing as pain reminded him of his earlier injury. The smell of blood and roses shot through his nasal cavity, ringing cold his right eye, numbing the eyebrow, rolling back through his brain to his ear. It sang sharp and shrill there, and pink; he could feel the petals of a rose tickling his ear, and it was the oddest sensation he had ever known. It was a very, very--

He looked up. The fuzzy rose was Jenn with a feather and a mischevious look on her face. "Just because Ogre not so bright not nice to play like that."

"Oh, enjoy it, enjoy it. It has nothing to do with your general mental capacity, only with your current state. Consider this one another thought-puzzle: how many other things that you think are true have been fabricated for you?"

Ogre paused like a deer in headlights.

"Oh, come on. I mean, that's what we expect from the right-wing mass-media, right? They're always playing the sleight-of-hand, only they don't tell you which is the illusion and which the reality. Or if they're all just illusions. So we're smart and don't listen to anything they say, even if it happens to be the gospel truth from time to time. Well, the left-wing counter-media's just as bad in its own way, but we prefer their lies, right? And we trust their lies to be looking out for the larger mass of people than the smaller one. Plus it's just fun to be fighting for something, no matter how absurd, right? So even those lies we accept. But what about the lies we're not even told? The ones that we simply figure out for ourselves based on near-subliminal suggestions. What about those?"

Ogre shook his head, lost. The words impacted him, but just one step shy of babble. She seemed impassioned, and he wanted to be able to follow her, but his thoughts kept drifting. He wondered what time it was. He wondered if the pain in his stomach meant he was starting to get hungry again. The thought of food wasn't making him nauseated. "Got any snacks in your pack?"

"I see."

"What, I'm hungry. I think I'm hungry. Ah, I don't know. My fingers are still tingly but I'm starting to feel tired."

"Tired already? That's not good. Spot mentioned you peaked quickly, but... you don't get in many fights, do you?"

"Uh... no, not really. I tend to just intimidate. Why?"

"Just wondering how much experience you have with concussion."

"Not very."

"Arright. We're going to keep you up and moving until you stop feeling tired."

"What if it doesn't go away?"

"Then you can go to sleep when the rest of us do. You're really developing a serious bi-lateral pan-orbital haematoma, there."

"A what?"

"A shiner."

"Where did you get words like that from?"

"Some radio show. Sound cool, don't they?"

"Sure, I suppose. I could hardly follow them."

"Okay, this is boring. You're not hitting off of anything here, so let's get you up over to the park and see if that does anything."

"Okay."

Jenn led them up a set of stairs and over the road. "Keep an eye out for some cardboard; they're weird slides."

"I don't think I'm up for that, really. Maybe we could go over to the swings. Er. No, I can go over to the swings, and you can do what you like. I appreciate the babysitting, but I'll be fine."

"Ah, I'll push you."

"You sure?"

"Yeah; it's a good experience. Come on, let's get those brainwaves back onto a coherent track of randomness."

Ogre sat down in one of the swings. It was cold on his backside and he was reminded again how much damage he'd done to himself running into the dryad at, thankfully not literally, break-neck speed. Jenn laid in a gentle push against his back and immediately the wind was a slightly uncomfortable cold against his face. He felt the hint of bloody snot attempting to trickle out his nose. He hated that feeling, but didn't want to let go of the swing in order to wipe it. "All your days are belong to us," muttered Ogre.

Questions! Pointless questions! That's what his days belonged to, at least today. Who cared what the randomly picked fortune cookie said? Nobody. Nobody but him. And that was just an exercise for his trip, which was meant as a simple thing to pass his time. But he was tired and sore and didn't need to pass the time any more. What he wanted now was a nice bottle of warm brandy, and some blankets to curl up into.

The swing went up, the swing came down. The swing went up, the swing came down. It was taking a fair amount of effort to keep his feet off from the ground at every down swing. But he did it and tried to think interesting thoughts. What is the square root of two? What do you get when you square the speed of light? How many angels could dance on the head of a junkie's needle? What was Spot's figment, and where did he name George come from?

He was flying, and it was twisting his stomach almost as much as it had however long ago. This time, though, his vision was not so much swimming on its own; his mind was rambling, but the swimming of vision was from being cyclically launched into near-swing-orbit. "Down!" shouted Ogre over the incessant squeaking of the swing joints and the cold wind rushing through his ears, giving him a headache. Ogre was unhappy.

"Down?"

"Down! Ogre cold! Ogre want fire!"

"Okay." Jenn stepped back and let the swing wind down. "Bring any firestarter?"

"No, but it's sure time for a manifestation. Ogre want fire."

A shape stepped out of the tunnel, and called out to them. "Hey there; Spot said I'd find you out here. Didn't really believe him but I figured it would be a nice walk, and if you weren't here I'd probably have the park and garden to myself. Of course, it would be nicer to have it to myself and a romantic interest of some sort, but ... Times are hard, aren't they." Girl was dressed in fine form and carried several cardboard signs under his arm.

"Girl got lighter?" asked Ogre.

"A girl's _always_ got a lighter for a big boy like you. What do you want torched?"

"You're sounding like Nietzsche," said Jenn.

"If I was Nietzsche, I'd be too drunk to find my lighter by the time I made it out of the house. Especially when my lighter's been appropriated by Girl for more ready usage by someone who might actually use it."

"How are you feeling about the signs?"

"Eh. They were good seat-warmers, apparently. I took them back when I got to the Ave."

"Would you feel strongly against making them hand-warmers?"

"If I burn them, at least there's a chance they'll go to someone who will actually appreciate them, so sure."

Ogre finally slowed down enough to hop off on his good leg, and hobbled towards a metal trash bin conveniently settled into the sand. He grabbed some newspaper and other assorted kindling out of it and helped Girl rip up bits of cardboard and toss those in, mixing it with the thinner kindling. Girl then reached in with Nietzsche's lighter and lit as much kindling as he could before burning himself.

The fire moved slowly but with reasonable assurance that it would grow. Ogre smiled and huddled into his jacket, then closer to the trashcan. He hoped there wasn't too much plastic, and even more strongly hoped there wasn't too much wet. Girl simply stared into the fire, whether basking in its existence or actually tracking its progress, ready to step in if need be, Ogre couldn't tell. Jenn stood contemplatively staring off into nothingness.

Ogre watched the fire and let it play around in his head: construction and destruction, transformation of energy. Activation energy, heat. Lots of concepts he'd touched on in highschool chemistry, before he'd been kicked out for disciplinary problems. The flames and paper and whatnot seemed to have some small hint of the motion that left their positions unchanged; wind and, well, he supposed the heat differential in the barrel equated as wind also... those added a bit to the life of the fire. And the streaks of overexposure the fire left on his retinas gave a certain amount of super-normal glow and shimmer. His stomach grumbled.

"Got any snacks?" he asked Girl.

"I've got some bars, if you're that hungry."

"I think I am. What sort of selection?"

"Not much of one. Peanut butter or chocolate chip?"

"One of each?"

"Sold for a hug to the mighty Ogre."

Ogre leaned down and gave Girl a slightly awkward hug. Girl pulled a handful of bars from his bag and picked out one of each for Ogre.

Ogre looked over to ask Jenn if she wanted one, too, but she wasn't by the barrell. He saw her walking away, down Euclid, head down.

Jenn was lost in thought, trying to assimilate what she'd learned about Ogre. She didn't like that she'd actually fallen for his act so strongly, because that made her wonder what else she was falling for, so far as her group was concerned. She should be able to read them better, for the good of the group and for her own good. Sure, she had Fey's 'hunches' to back her up, and her miss on Ogre didn't seem to have any serious ramifications, but she still wasn't happy with it. She was supposed to be the one that read between the unwritten lines.

The sky opened up; clouds danced around and unleashed a mild torrent of rain. She smiled. It was cold, unpleasantly so, and she was going to feel like ass when she got him, but really there wasn't much in the world that put things in better perspective. Not that things could always be worse, but the sheer insignificance of human life in the force of nature: that was perspective. She walked more briskly but otherwise the rain effected no change in her walk home.

Jenn contemplated the rain, focusing her consciousness on every piece of ground it won, experiencing herself experiencing the rain. At first it was just wet, beading up and bouncing off of her clothes, forming the ocassional rivulet down some unprotected stretch of flesh. At this stage, her upper calves and the backs of her knees were getting the brunt of the cold and wet, while her Docs received and warmed the then captured rain.

Then her cutoff legwarmers reached saturation, and the backs of her thighs tingled with sudden cold and wet; it almost felt like she was pissing herself, only it was colder on her thighs. A lot colder. Around that point, it finished its way through her hair and bombarded the back of her neck, which sent a shock-shiver down her spine, then curled around the front of her blouse, teasing her breasts. She contemplated splitting off the road and finishing herself off, but decided to see how far she could get just walking along in the rain. God himself was getting her off. She extended her stride and experimented with grinding her legs just the slightest bit together, as if she were holding in her bladder.

The blocks passed swiftly in this manner, and she found herself descending onto campus before she remembered she wasn't going anywhere in particular. At this point she was not caring much for the conventional standards of decensy and kept taking potshots at her nipples, and the outside of her thighs. She turned off to the right before fully descending into Memorial Glade and slipped into a bushy wooded area, making sure she wasn't _too_ visible from the main paths.

Five minutes later, she emerged warm and glowing, and the rain was a continuous and ingenious post-coital caress. Fey was sweet but she wasn't so hot in the sack, really. Too timid. On a good day, things were good. A moderate day was more like masturbation against warm flesh, and on a bad day, well, masturbation was preferable. Fey'd really been distracted as soon as that old guy had walked in the door. Fey'd gone tense straight away, and Jenn had thought it had been something she'd done, but then Fey was up and out the door peering out and whispering back at her that there was a stranger. A strange stranger. Then she's gone into babble to quick for Jenn to really catch.

That had been strange. And painfully unfulfilling. Jenn had been so close. But that was gone, she'd made it and then some, and now she should see about gathering folks up for tonight's activities, whatever they might include. Finding something for herself to do if nothing else.

Jenn turned right, through Memorial Glade, left at Moffitt Library, and traveled the path between Wheeler and Dwinelle, though Sather Gate and into Sproul Plaza. Evening was a good five or six hours away, but it was winter vacation, so with nobody to compete with, several drum circle folk had already turned up and were working through a simple but effective beat. No sign of anyone she was looking for there, though, so she continued on down, off campus, and walked the Ave. for a few blocks. She turned left after a bit and then angled into People's Park. If anyone was going to be anywhere, they'd be here, at some point. So she'd just make herself visible while scouting for other folks.

She noticed, suddenly, that the sun was shining out again, that the rain was over. That had been one freak thunderstorm; not unheard-of, but not so common for such an intensity and lack of duration. She wondered if Spot's friend could have had anything to do with that, but rejected the thought out of hand. Perhaps he had, perhaps he hadn't, but he wasn't here now in any case. If he even existed, of course. But she was less willing to believe in a manifested figment than Spot and Ogre seemed to be. Spot was hard to read, though, so you couldn't really tell what he meant and what he didn't. And Ogre, now, well, she'd though she'd had his number, but she'd had a digit of the area code wrong. Because that's how he'd told it to her, and the rest of them. She really didn't like that.

She really, really didn't like that. And Fey hadn't caught it either--or Fey had kept it from her.

Why was she doubting everyone all of the sudden?

And what did it really matter anyway?

Reputation. Reputation was equivalent to the lifestyle you wanted, just about any lifestyle you wanted. That shot, there was no life; you might as well go work the corporate nine to five for all the respect you got when your crowd turned you out. She shook her head. It was too easy to do the paranoia spiral; she wasn't ready for that. She just needed to breathe a little more slowly and allow things to happen.

She needed someone to talk to; or better yet, a talker to listen to. That always helped her sort out what _she_ was actually thinking.

She leaned against a tree and daydreamed about Fey, tossing in Dee for the occasional extra spice. Someone was going to find her, and offer her a hot shower, she decided. She could almost picture the outside of the house--it was a crapshack that she vaguely remembered walking by... on King, she thought, south of Ashby. Odd that someone would have actually bought and renovated that. Maybe she was misreading the prem. Not that she believed in any of this stuff anyway, she reminded herself. But still.

"I hear your shack got raided," said a new voice from a few tree-circles away. It was directed toward her, she was fairly sure, but she didn't have a clue how: how it was directed towards her, or how she could tell, really.

"Funny, I think I would have heard something about that. What's your source?" She looked out towards the mouthpiece but could quite make him out. She thought it was likely to be one of the Rasta Freaks

"Word of mouth, that's all we've got, babe."

"Yeah, but whose word, and which mouth are they using?"

"One of your flock. A Chinese, maybe? Name was, if memory serves, something along the lines of 'Mi Ching'. 'Mi Chi'?"

"Nietzsche?"

"Yeah, that would be it. I think he headed up to the rose garden to find you. CW said you were there with a boy. That true?"

"CW be fucked if it's implying what I think it is. I ain't bi. But implications aside, yeah, I was up there with Girl and Ogre."

"They still up there?"

"Probably. Why?"

"Spot was asking."

"Where's Spot?"

"Couldn't say. Probably back to the city, if there wasn't anything keeping him here."

"How long ago did Nietzsche run off?"

"What, I'm your fucking secretary?"

"Whatever," Jenn sighed. This wasn't good; they hadn't expected a raid for another few weeks. Something must have either drummed up the profile of the place, or things in general were getting less pleasant. But now she knew why she'd been thinking of the squatshack on King. She needed to go see if it was available now. She stood up and stretched. She didn't want to deal with this right now, but if she didn't have a place for them to stay, well, there were spots. But it _was_ nice to have a roof, and separate rooms; a girl liked to have some privacy, sometimes. It was one thing to be an exhibitionist, after all, quite another to... well, maybe she wasn't as much of an exhibitionist as she thought. Or she was ashamed to see how awkward things were with Fey. That was probably. That sucked.

Jenn wandered South out of the park, walked down Dwight past Telegraph, a dozen blocks to Shattuck, past Martin Luther King, and then to King, where she turned left and walked another ten blocks or so past Ashby, and a bit beyond. Before her, finally, was the squatshack. And it indeed looked... available. At least mostly. She circumnavigated the place looking for open boards, and heard moaning coming from inside. No open boards though. So someone really skinny had squeezed through some obscenely small hole, she was missing something obvious, or one, or more, of the boards were a fakeout. She circled again, this time looking for more subtle clues. The moaning was getting louder and higher-pitched; there were at least two people going at it, she was fairly sure. From the sound of it, they were really going at it. Then she noticed the marking--'*DEMENT*'.

That was _her_ marking. Why would someone have claimed the house as _hers_? Well, she mused, if they'd used her marking, maybe they'd been kind enough to use the tricks and directions that such implied. She walked up to the house straight from the marking, and evaluated which side of the house was shorter from there. She walked along the shorter side, turned around the corner of the building, and continued on to the first boarded window, where she carefully tested each board to see whether it was properly nailed shut. None of them were; she peered around to make sure nobody was paying too much attention, then crept in. Her left foot landed gently on a large metal rod that she could only assume was a squatkey. It rattled against the floor, but the moans didn't pause. One of them, no, maybe both of them, were starting to make very recognizable squeaks. She grinned. Dee and Fey. She wondered if that's where her prem had come from.

She slid down against a wall and waited for them to finish up.

Five minutes later, or so, they came out, dressed; Dee sqeaked in startlement at seeing her. Jenn smiled.

"Hey Dee."

"Hey Jenn. Like the place?" Dee was smiling, still flushed from her exertions. Fey seemed to trying to hide herself without moving.

"Seems good; funny to catch you here, I was actually just making sure it was still available myself."

"Why so?"

"You haven't heard?"

"Heard what?"

"Well, I don't know if it's true or not, but one of CW's friends said that Nietzsche said that our old squat's been raided."

"Aw, fuck. I was starting to like the Mabel shack."

"Yeah, well. I'm just hoping it doesn't mean they're stepping up their raids or something like that. But then it's a question of, did one of our neighbors rat us out, or was it just bad luck?"

Fey spoke up. "I bet it was George. He coulda been a narc."

Jenn shook her head. "I don't think so. Not saying it's not possible, just that I don't think so. Aw, I don't know. But yeah, this place seems fine. You two want to come along and verify the status of the Mabel shack??

Fey professed exhaustion while Dee bounced on the idea; then they reversed positions, and reversed them again.

"Just pick one or the other, okay guys? I don't care which."

Fey looked hurt when she said that, but Jenn was in no mood to play those games, even if they weren't 'just' games to Fey. Fey was a little messed up. A little more than a little messed up. Jenn liked that, mostly, but not always. Right now, Jenn was really not liking that.

Jenn waited out what she expected was an uncomfortable silence for Dee and Fey.

Finally, Dee spoke. "I think we're going to hang back here and talk about a few things. But we'll, well, we'll be here tongight probably. Cool?"

"Cool," acknowledged Jenn. "No chance the water's turned on here, huh?"

"Don't think so," said Dee, "but I honestly couldn't say if we tried."

"Lemme know later, kay?" There was no point in her wasting time on it if they were spending the rest of the afternoon and evening there with 'nothing particular to do'. She left by the back door, letting it lock behind her, and headed back up to Ashby, where she turned left and walked down to the Mabel Shack.

The shack wasn't there. Or it was, but it was swallowed by a huge house tent thing marking off the entire place as off limits due to fumigation. That wasn't a raid. Someone was actually looking into developing the place. That sucked worse than a raid, really. Raids came and went, but once somebody developed, really developed, on a piece of land, it wasn't going to be 'unsafed' without serious damage, like a fire or something. That squat was dead.

Jenn sighed. Maybe she was getting bored of things. Maybe she was tired of it all. Maybe she didn't want to deal with any of it.

She laughed. That was absurd. If she was tired of it, all she had to do was walk away, possibly tell someone, or sometwo, that she was actually heading out, possibly to return, and not to worry late at night whether she happened to be around or not. So was she tired of it?

There was an easy answer to that question. Give it up. If you want it, come back; if you don't, move on to the next thing. Simple enough, though 'come back' didn't necessarily mean you got what you left. But... the group hadn't really had a leader before she'd come in to it, chances are it wouldn't have one when she left. She could work with whatever existen when she came back, if she chose to come back.

Then what? When did she leave, what did she take, who did she tell? She laughed again. She took her pack; protein bars for the road, a _lot_ of protein bars for the road, and then a few more protein bars for the road. A few bottles of water. She had everything she needed in her pack. That's what it was there for. Maybe a tarp since it had been raining. It was a shame Ogre and Girl had burned all the signs, not that she would have brought one all the way from the Rose Garden to here. But. Yeah. At least one of them would have made a nice tent. She shrugged. She didn't need anything. She'd be fine. She'd go up in the hills, find a few faerie rings, and see where that put her.

Though she _would_ have liked someone to do it with. Fay was apparently more monogomous than she realized, and Dee was going to run with that, which was fine. Nietzsche just went on and on in his nihilistic ways. Spot was interesting, but the wrong tone for what she needed right now. Ogre was just the wrong tone, period. Barbie and Charles weren't worth even a moment's consideration.

Jenn doublechecked her pack's elements, doublestrapped everything as necessary, and followed Spot's earlier path up through the park to Adeline, to Dwight. She walked up Dwight, as it turned into hill; the road ended and she continued onwards up a small fire trail. The trail zigged horizontally along the hill for a while, then doubled back; she stopped there and considered her options. She already had a beautiful view of San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, Oakland, some other bridge, probably the Richmond bridge. Or something like that. The bay was beautiful, but even more so were the trees just below her and off to the side, climbing up a small crevice between the hill she was on and the hill to the South of it.

She skidded a slight distance down the hill, then entered the wooded crevice proper. It was amazingly lush and wet; which made sense as that was where all the water from the hills channeled through, but it was still impressive. She could almost feel the faerie power, that nefarious thing she wanted to believe in but didn't, just, quite--buzzing all around her. There were gnats and lacewings and other flying creatures, and she made her way downstream to what looked to be a very small closed pool. There, all sorts of winged insects congregated.

She wondered if tinkerbell would be offended to be considered an insect. Probably. But that's all she saw at the moment, so it was probably a safe description. This, she said to herself, this was tranquil. Maybe a bit cold. And wet, yes, it was wet. But you didn't get more peaceful than this, more real than this. Jenn almost imagined another voice whispering in her ear. She tried to listen for it, but the harder she strained the harder it was to understand.

The voice seemed to be coming from one of the trees, up in the branches; she couldn't see anyone there, so she climbed, as best she could, slinging off her pack and hanging it on a branch. Jenn liked to climb trees, she enjoyed the giddiness and sense of self that staring down from a height gave her. Still, she heard the voice, but she couldn't pinpoint it--it was always on this side or that side of the tree, just behind a branch, or--

"Hello up there," came a motherly voice from the base of the tree. "Looking for anything in particular?"

The voice sounded familiar. Oddly... had it been the one she'd been chasing? Jenn squinted down; her distance vision wasn't so good. "Just climbing about," she called back, and started climbing back down.

"You know, it's usually best to ask permission before you go crawling about in somebody's tree."

"How do you mean? This is public land." Jenn looked at the woman quizzically. The woman was very beautiful for her age, whatever it happened to be. And she was dressed... was she dressed? Yes, she was dressed in hippie chick rags: a loose hennaed skirt, thinly woven, hinted of a thick womanly figure and unshaved pubes; a hemp belt, knotted, adorned with beads and metal rings helped draw the eyes to her hips' earthy curves; and pleasantly pendulous breasts were silhouetted by a white muslin blouse. She really didn't seem the sort to be worried about what tree belonged to who.

"The tree's permission, girl. It's one thing for the gnats to flit about, but you're of a size to compare to it; you did climb about generally respectably, but even so the odd shootling branch suffered abuse, bits of bark were unwittingly abraded. It's just polite to ask before doing."

Jenn wanted to ask the woman what sort of freak she was, but refrained. There was just a certain quality to her that forebade such glibness of tongue. "How would I ask?" she decided on, finally.

"Just like that," the woman replied. "Just like that, or any other question. It's good to be polite, but you don't have to be all archaic or anything of the sort. Some trees do enjoy it, especially oaks, but it's certainly not necessary, and they generally won't slight you for it. Here now, thank the tree you were just in for its hospitality."

Jenn turned to the tree, trying to see in it any vestige of spirit or human face in its knots or branches, trying to find some 'being' there that she could talk to.

"No, just do it. Say thank you."

"Thank you," she said to the tree. She felt silly, but that was quickly replaced by a warm contentment.

"She says that you are most welcome. And that I was overly harsh in my criticism of your climbing. _I_ think she's simply had her expectations lowered over the last hundred years."

"How old... how old is she?"

"Several hundred if a day. I nursed her from a sapling. This is good, fertile ground here." She patted her own abdomen.

Jenn could almost see the life squirming about in there; the woman was pregnant in some manner. In a flash, she knew: eternally pregnant, eternally birthing. What did that mean? She had no understanding of the knowledge. "Can I touch your belly?" she asked impulsively.

The woman smiled and took Jenn's hand and held it to her abdomen. The life there threatened to overwhelm her; her breath was swift and shallow, life energy pouring through the fingers. Her fingers felt like they were on fire, like they were in a Gom Jabbar, but this was no test, it just was: life. Life. She whimpered.

At Jenn's whimper, the woman let her hand drop. Now, she could feel the life as a pleasant echo, another afterglow. It tickled her skin and ran the lengths of her muscles, enervating them in the manner of wine and a warm bath. She felt... looser, ready; ready for what?

On perfect cue, the woman's hands cupped her face, their lips touched; SO ALIVE! Jenn's heart stopped.

The air was colder, her skin moist; her leg hurt a little from twisting it when she fell. It wasn't bad, though, nothing really wrong, just pained. She had an urge to figure something out, but she wasn't sure what. Something specific, though. Something she'd heard before. Before, today? Or before today? Jenn had to go to the store for something. No, not the store. What was she doing? Thoughts were buzzing around in her head faster than she could catch them, and a large number of them didn't seem like hers; she could feel thoughts twisting like ribbons, occasionally whipping out a point but mostly just flowing along or tangling. Tangling thoughts. That would make a nice picture, she thought. Thought, thought, thought. The thought echoed. Pictures. She saw a picture in her mind of Spot's nameless friend. She was supposed to find him. How the hell was she going to find that nondescript character? She would feel him. Somehow. Somehow she would know where to go.

Then why was she standing here wondering what the hell she was doing? If she knew were to go, why wasn't she going there? Because she didn't fucking know where to go, that's why.

Jenn paused for a moment, and reflected--she was arguing with herself rather strongly, and in an unusual manner.

Her mind was ablaze with a dance of ribbons.

She would find him. She would know where to find him. She just had to let herself feel. Feel? She was feeling an awful lot already. What else was she supposed to feel? Right, she answered herself rhetorically, I'm supposed to feel where to go. But...

Okay. If I find him, I'll get my mind cleared of that at least. Concentrate, Jenn. Concentrate, and let go. Concentrate, let go. Where is Father Time hiding? Concentrate. Oh, the fuck of course! The Campanile. She had to get to the fucking Campanile.

Jenn clambered up the ravine, and headed back on the trail, not sparing a glance any which-way. She was breathing raggedly by the time she made it down to the street, and had managed a stitch in her side by the time she made it down to Telegraph. She limped up the Ave, taking harder and quicker steps with her right foot, shorter simpler ones with her left; her right hand was pressed against her side and her throat was raw. She wanted to stop walking, but couldn't. Couldn't want to? She couldn't want to stop walking enough to stop walking. Did she really want to stop walking? She wanted to get to the Campanile to see what she could see. What would she do when she got there? She would see. She didn't know any way in or up...

She didn't know any way in or up.

Her pace slowed and her mind came back to her with a few less ribbon trails for a few moments. She would go to the Campanile, she would go, but she didn't know what she would do when she got there, and chances were she couldn't do anything. So she could go slower. It would be all right. Really, she was in no hurry. Hadn't she been off into the mountains, anyway? What had dragged her back into the city? That man. George. Fey's soulless being.

But he wasn't soulless. He couldn't be. No--he was. But that complicated what the matter of a soul was. He was... different. He was imagination; an active imagination. What the hell did that mean?

What the hell was going on in her head?

What the hell was going on in her head?

Something grabbed her shoulder, and she twirled with a fist, swinging over Nietzsche's head. He'd ducked, just a bit, and been shorter than her reflexes had somehow assumed. Nietzsche backed away, hands up, palms toward her. She bent over, hands on quds, and breathed deeply, trying to get her heart rate under control. She'd really been about to bash the poor boy's brains out. She looked at her right hand--with spikes. Really, regardless of how hard she hit him, she could have taken one of his eyes. That wasn't right. That wasn't _right_.

"Sorry," she breathed heavily. "Sorry about that, Neetch. You gotta be more careful whose reflexes you test, though."

"Geeze, Jenn. Really. You okay?"

"I don't know. No, I'm not, but there's nothing to discuss. What's up?"

"Umm, well, I guess. I was trying to find you to tell you about the squat."

"I heard about it."

"Yeah, figured you would have by now. But I saw you coming up the street, and I started talking to you. Or at you, I guess; you walked straight past."

She fumbled for words, and got her breathing back. The ache in her side was subsiding, at least. "As for the squat, there's one on King that I'd had my eye on for a while. Fey and Dee know where it is."

"Uhh... okay. So. What is up with you?"

"I don't know. That's all. I just don't know."

"Well, what are you up to? I'm out of change and out of drink, so it looks like I'll have to chase oblivion some other way. Properly enjoyable excursions serve some smaller purpose, in that they pass the time more quickly. And the faster things go, the quicker you are to oblivion."

"Sure, Neetch. I'm just heading up to the clock tower to look for George."

"George? You found him?"

"Maybe. We'll see when I get there, right? I suppose that means you're coming along?"

"Do I look like I have anything better to do?"

"Yes, just about. But that's okay, you're going to come along anyway." Jenn set out at a more normal pace, and continued the conversation. "Did you catch up with Girl and Ogre up at the garden?"

"Yeah. They were making angels in the sandbox."

"That's... good, I guess. You have to wonder if that's getting them cleaner or dirtier."

"No thanks, I'd rather not know. Man, can you imagine some poor kid getting in the sandbox later? They'd be swallowed by pigpen's latent aura!"

"Hey, speaking of, well, okay, not, but anyway--have you seen Spot around?"

"No, but that's normal, right? He's usually off in the city anyway. Or, you know, just napping about somewhere on his own."

"Right."

They walked in silence up through campus, and came to its center. There stood the Campanile, designed, she'd heard, to fall toward the water in case of an earthquake, a wide, wide road clear of buildings to swallow its fall. "Did you know they have Indian bones in the basement of the Campanile?" she asked, suddenly.

"Indian bones?"

"Yeah."

"What would they want with Indian bones?"

"Couldn't say."

"I hear they have _dinosaur_ bones. I never heard of any Indian bones."

"Wait, now maybe I'm remembering. Like, they dug them up when they were doing the foundation, or something. Did you know this was all Ohlone land?"

"Well, yeah, or... I mean, duh that this was all Indian ground at some point. That could be said of any plot of land on the whole of North or South America. My mother's back yard was an ancient Indian burial ground, fer chrissake. What do you think I'm trying to forget?"

"I think you're trying to forget anything and everything you can. But... yeah. I dunno. I dunno. Your mother's back yard was really an ancient Indian burial ground?"

"No, I'm just saying. I'm just saying. So... I don't see that George fellow around anywhere..."

"Yeah. I ... I don't know. I feel like I have to go into the Campanile."

"That's whack. You aren't on anything, are you? You're really all over the place right now."



"No, really, I'm fine. I, uh... I don't know. I think I'm going to hang out here for a while," she said.

"Oh... kay. Sure. Sounds great. See ya 'round, then?"

"Sure."

Nietzsche frowned. Jenn was acting something freaky; he'd heard there was some acid going around, maybe she'd gotten her hands on some of that. Or been dosed, but... no, she'd know if she'd been dosed, she'd say something. But if it wasn't that, then she'd done it herself and was trying to play it off? He couldn't tell. He really didn't want to have his brain running pell-mell, though. He had to find some drink. Nietzsche scratched his head and turned away, started walking slowly West. He traipsed through Memorial Glade, past Moffitt Library and the Valley Life Sciences Building, then turned left into the eucalyptus grove.

He could smell the pot from the edge of the grove, and headed towards it. Deep in the trees, seated in a circle, off to the side of Strawberry Creek, sat four random stoners; probably students. They looked up as he approached, and one of them palmed a small pipe .

"You wouldn't have any Jack with that Jimi, would you?"

They relaxed a bit. "Naw, man. Just the weed. Want some?"

"A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," he said, and sat down next in line for the pipe. "Know of any parties going on?"

"Naw, man. All the party people be sleeping tonight. Unless you know of something?" The guy next to him handed him a pipe and lighter, and he sniffed the sweet aroma.

"Wouldn't be looking if I did. Just need something to while away the time, ya know? Need to knock the noggin around some, chemical-like. Make the bad thoughts go away. Or the good thoughts go away, depending on your perspective." He held the pipe to his lips, and lit the lighter, sucking the flame into the boal and watching the leaves curl into reds, greys, and blacks.

"Yeah, man. Yeah."

Nietzsche cut the lighter and took a deep drag, inhaling past the point where his lungs burned; his eyes screwed inwards and he felt a deep black fog billowing out in his mind. Holding it in with great control, he passed the pipe on around the circle.

They watched him, cautiously, curious to see how long he was going to hold his drag, whether he was going to cough it up or swallow it; He could feel his vision swimming, the birds of his diseased mind warbling in his ear; he felt the rush of falling, the rush of stopping, the rush of release: his lungs exhaled explosively, but he did not cough. He was dizzy, blissfully dizzy. His head hurt a bit, but that was fine. That kept him from thinking. Fear wasn't the mind killer, he thought: pain. Pain is the mind-killer. Pain and pleasure, really; they both did it. Pain was a lot easier to find in this world, though he didn't begrudge the odd pleasure that came his way. That was good pot.

He lay on the ground, staring at the towering eucalyptus trees. The creek babbled nothings, and the stoners shuffled where they sat.

"Don't mind me," he said. "Just enjoying the ground." Then the cold of the ground began to seep through his body and he sat up again; the pipe had been passed around again, and the smoke was beginning to form a low haze in the cold air. His head _really_ hurt now that he was sitting up.

"You fine folks wouldn't want to chip in for a fine bottle of Jack, wouldja?"

"Naw, man, we're good." The other three nodded their assent, and he shrugged. He waited for the pipe to come back to him, and took another deep drag; he passed the pipe on, and stood up. His head was ringing, on the verge of unpleasant. He exhaled carefully.

"Thank you for the treat, good folks. Fare thee well, and all."

"Uh, yeah, man. Good company and all that."

"Some good smoke." He walked out of the grove, to the North and West, then followed the curve of West Circle down to Oxford. He was going to have some liquor if he had to piss it himself, he decided. Piss it himself, he would. Just as soon as he had some. He chuckled. The air was seeming less cold, his breath moister. His ears hurt, and he shivered, but still the air seemed less cold. He shrugged. He walked North to University, West to Shattuck, and up Shattuck a half dozen blocks to Andronico's.

Nietzsche entered the Andronico's, and meandered up and down the aisles, occasionally picking things up and putting them back down. He walked through the candy aisle, the liquor aisle, then the candy aisle again. He looked at the fruit but didn't see anything he wanted. He walked out of the store, and started back south. A few blocks down, he pulled a bottle of Jack Daniels out of his pocket. "Laugh, and the world laughs with you," he laughed. "Cry, and you cry alone. But not if you've got Jack!" He contemplated heading back down to the stoners and offering them some, but they probably wouldn't be interested anyway. He shrugged to himself. What, oh what, will I do, now that I've got this bottle all to myself?

Might as well take it down to the park.

He walked back down Shattuck and took a left onto Dwight. He thought about taking a nip from the bottle, thought about it every few steps, but refrained. It would be easier to drink in the park, and he didn't want any hassles once he started. One of the drawbacks of lifting a bottle was that you didn't get a small paper bag to go with it. He could have lifted one of those, but... they were more trouble than they were worth. Amusing that the things of least worth were just about the most guarded. The things under lock and key were cigarettes and prophylactics, but beyond them, there was rarely a checkstand unattended, and that was the only place you'd find a single bag for use.

He started humming a song and wondered where it had come from. Then he remembered, and wished he hadn't wondered. That had been his mom's favorite song, before the 'accident'. He didn't want to remember her, though. Not her, and especially not his shit of a dad. "Yeeaargh," he swore, and kicked at a passing bush. How hard was it to lose your fucking memory? It seemed like it only happened to people who _didn't_ want it. Though who knows whether he'd realize he didn't want to have lost it if he lost it that completely. Still, from this end of things, he was sure he wanted it gone; dead and gone, gone and buried, buried and... something.

Nietzsche wandered into the park and looked around for a friendly crowd. There were several crowds, but he didn't see any one that looked particularly inviting; nobody he knew so well as wanting to interrupt them to share a bottle of Jack. He found a pleasant tree to sit against; he wriggled his back against it to scratch an itch, then broke open his long-coveted bottle. He took a deep sniff that sent brain cells running for cover, then chugged a few hundred milliliters. He felt the cold liquid pour like fire down his esophogus, then coat his stomach and slowly feed into the mix with his gastric juices.

It hit bottom with a nauseating wrench that started blood pounding in his ears, at his temples, and screwed his eyes inwards again. There was nothing in his stomach but the alcohol; he could imagine it soaking straight into his blood, stealing all the oxygen. He'd liked chemistry in high school but couldn't follow along so well. He wished he'd really paid more attention there... well, more attention to the teacher, perhaps. He'd paid plenty of attention to his souletry. God, that was lame. Poetry. Poetry from the soul. Blackest black, deepest night, and all that shit. You'd think with the attention he'd paid to it, it would have gotten better... but it wasn't until years later that he'd tried to reread it. It was just plain bad.

God damn! Was everything he did going to bring back memories? It was like that dude losing his meant more for everyone else, or something. How come _he_ got the blank slate, huh? Nietzsche took another deep swig, then paused as he willed his stomach to settle. He wasn't about to abuse the alcohol by losing it onto the ground. Not yet, at least. He could do that once he was sure he wouldn't remember it.

Nietzsche had blacked out more than anyone he knew, and he still didn't know how to tell whether he was going to do it or not; didn't know in the course of creating a possible memory-to-be whether it was going to stick with him or not. Or if he did, he at least couldn't tell when he was sliding in to it. Of course, if he figured it out well into the experience, he wasn't going to remember _that_. Such was the difficulty of his experimentation.

He took another swig, and felt the pain in his head fade. That was nice. Pain kept you from thinking, but after a while the same pain just became annoying; annoying things made for _more_ thought, not less, even if the thought wasn't particularly useful. Especially if it wasn't useful. Or something. He wasn't quite sure what he'd been thinking. He smiled--that was a start, right? Pot and alcohol were a pretty good mix to work on the lack of memory. He tried to remember... something. He couldn't remember what he'd been trying to remember. Nietzsche laughed, stood, and shouted, "It has begun!"

He waited a few moments for a crack of thunder, but nothing happened. He shrugged. Moment to moment he had now. Moment to moment. He drank another swig of the Jack. The Jack was good. He didn't think he'd need any other. The pot had been good. Mellow. Inducing. Mellow-inducing. He wondered where everybody was. Was there a party going on that he didn't know about? He noted the irony of the possibility of his being told and forgetting. BUt that was okay, he didn't need memory. Memory was a constant pain that simply meant constant annoyance, fucking unhapping. Fucking hell. He didn't need that, nosireebob. Not that. So. Fucking sounded good, but he still didn't see anyone he knew.

Scratch that thought--scritch scratch the shiz shat. Shilly willy hath a filly. Fucking horse. Whores. Yeah, that's good. No, no it's not. Not good to get your hopes up there. But. He was thinking something.

He'd been thinking. Something.

Where was everyone?

He took another swig of the Jack.

"A pirate's life for me, for me, a pirate's life for me," he sang off-key. "Yo ho ho and a bottle of _Jack_. Maybe I should get some rum so I can be a proper pirate, huh?" He lifted his bottle in a toast. "Cheers! Where everybody knows your name!" A small voice in the back of his head spoke up, wondering if he was making too much of a scene, wondering if he'd really devolved that far, that quickly. His ego wondered if it was a sign of weakness or a sign of strength, accomplishment, that he was so fucking drunk. So fucking drunk. "So fucking drunk," he said out loud.

Nietzsche slumped back against the tree, and wondered what time it was. His eyes were closed, and he couldn't tell from the light not really making it through his eyelids whether it was not-quite-dark out, or still-a-bit-of-light out. It certainly wasn't Kansas anymore. No, he couldn't be certain. He'd never been to Kansas. He'd never made it out of California. California was just too good to be true, other than his shitfuck of a father.

"One, two, buckle my shoe, three four, lock the door," he mumbled. Where had that come from? One of the Nightmare on Elm Streets, he decided: Freddy's coming for you. He wondered what it would be like to only exist in other people's dreams. He'd lucid dreamed once or twice, but never quite enough to really run with it. So he couldn't really say what it would be like ot even be _conscious_ in a dream. Not that that was his forte, of course. Better he was at being _anticonscious_. He was pretty damned good at that. He wondered if he could still write shitty-ass poetry, or if he'd burned even that small talent from himself. He paused in thought, cleared his mental throat, and wondered where he should start.

Feelings were good. He was feeling... he was hiding. He was hiding from memory. Did he want to know more than that? He knew he was hiding from memories. He wasn't going to go any closer than that. But that was fine for shitfuck poetry, wasn't it? He recited out loud, "Your grip I find is much too hard, I want you to let go." That was a start. "I want you to let go." Let go of what? Whose grip was too hard? He had to rhyme something with hard, though. "Your grip I find is much too hard." Hmm. Hard, fard, chard, charred, charred is a word. But whose grip? Memory's grip, yeah, that was good. That was good shit. "Your grip I find is much too hard, I want you to let go. Memory makes--" He paused. "Memories leave my soul scarred." "Memories leave my soul scarred, I want them away to go."

Nietsche laughed hard, hurting his throat. He wondered if it was raw from the pot, or if it was just raw. It was a good laugh, though. "I want them away to go," was just _utterly_ wrong. He cleared his throat again. "Your grip I find is much too hard, I want you to let go. Memories leave my soul scarred..." His mind blanked for a long pause, and he almost forgot that he was trying to rephrase a line of poetry. "Soul scarred, soul scarred, soul scarred, I want you to let go... I no longer want to know!"

He started fresh, "Your grip I find is much too hard, I want you to let go. My memories leave my soul scarred, I no longer want to know. I... I wash them clean with alcohol, with pot and with ... no, no good. I wash them clean with turpentine, these scars upon my soul, I wash them clean, but back they grow... grow... back they grow... no, no good. Not even bad good. Just bad." He paused once again, mumbling sounds to try to find a match in rhythm or rhyme.

He shook his head; he'd forgotten where he was entirely. "It was something like... I find you grip way too hard... Shit! I've got to write this down." He looked for a rock, pocketed his almost-empty bottle, and moved to the sidewalk; there he began to scratch the cement. 'Memory', he titled the piece.

"Okay, how'd it go? Your grip I find is way too hard, I'd like you to let go. My soul is scarred from memories, I don't want... I don't want to fucking know. Sure, that works. Not quite it, but that works." While he was talking he scratched the words onto the cement. That was taking more effort than he really wanted to put into the mechanics of the project, and he let it go. "Let it go, let it go," he murmured, and pulled the bottle back out, killing it in one last swig, several gulps. Then he walked over to a trash bin and put the bottle in the top receptacle, for recycling. Berkeley was a good place, he thought; maybe he could acquire something to write with. There was a stationery store somewhere... somewhere. He wondered what he wanted at a stationery store. His memory... memory! He wanted to write.

He sighed. This was going to be a much slower, longer drunk than he'd been looking for. If he was lucky, he wouldn't remember how slow it went, he wouldn't have the memory at all, and then the slowness of the now wouldn't matter at all. He had a vague idea of a conviction of how to live his life, what mattered and what didn't, and how to weigh things. But... He hadn't quite figured out the end. The gist of it was that you had experiences. That was a given. And those experiences were innately, for some value of innately, pleasurable or unpleasurable. Or rated somewhere on that scale, at least. Something like that.

But time was transient. It came and went, and if a moment's pleasure or displeasure went with the immediate transience of time, then it didn't matter at all. It could be the greatest pleasure in the world, and if you had no hint of its existence one second later, it was as if it had never existed. So it might well not have existed. So what did it matter? So the good of a thing was some function of it, and how well it persisted. As was the ill of a thing. Nietzsche liked to spout pseudo-math around it, but it was all a gut hunch. Which seemed to make fine sense until you got to the limit of the system, where... everyone died. Everyone dies, memory is gone completely, and your life was utterly worthless. This was where he usually decided to get blitzed, and forget. But... that wasn't what he was really trying to forget, it was just a good excuse.

He laughed. He didn't need an excuse to forget! It was fun. Was it really fun? "I can't remember," he said out loud, and laughed. "I can't remember. Do you remember? Will you remember for me? Then I don't have to at all!"

"Who are you talking to, Nietzsche?" He recognized that voice. It was... no, he recognized that smell. It was _definitely_ Ogre.

"To myself and the world, Ogre. Myself and the world."

"You're drunk?"

"Merrily and forsooth and verily and yea and other such shit."

"Whatcha get?"

"Good old Jack; and a few hits of some good Jimi while I was out and about. How has this day been treating you?"

"Well, I ran into a statue. That hurt a lot. Actually, it's hurting more now. But it hurt a lot then. And... I walked a lot. Which I suppose is usual, but I noticed it more today. I noticed a lot more, and probably a lot less, today. Ogre tired now. Ogre tired for a while. But Ogre not sleep."

"Why not sleep? I always find it a welcome distraction."

"Ogre can't sleep. Ogre tired, but Ogre not sleepy. Ogre want sleepy. Ogre want Jack if you have any. Jack good medicine."

"Sorry, Ogre. I finished the bottle just a few moments ago. Say, you wouldn't happen to have any implements of writing, would you? I've been having a hankering for the writing of bad, horrible, despicable, putrid, and other adjectival negative things, er... poetry. Yeah. 'My mind is like a sieve, I wash it clean and it, with water pure', uh... yeah. Bad poetry. And I--"

"You're rambling."

"So I am. But you wouldn't happen to have any implements of writing, would you? My hankering for the writing of bad poetry goes unquenched."

"No, Ogre not write. Ogre get you writing stuff, though. Kay?"

"Uh, sure Ogre. That'd be great. I'll just sit here and stare at the ground while you do that, then. Maybe I'll be inspired to finish 'In Xanadu did Kublai Khan'. Though I don't think I'm sick. But maybe that's what the ending needs, some non-fevered dream, for closure. Right?"

"You're rambling. Ogre go. Ogre come back with implements of writing."

"Okay, Ogre. You do that. I'll be here. Really. I'll just be--"

Ogre turned and walked away with an odd smile quirking up to blend into the confusion on his brow.

"--sitting here, minding my own business, not a care in the world, is anybody paying attention to a word I'm saying? I can't remember what I was saying. Ah, blessed be, my memory, once it was here and now it's gone. And I wanted it that way, right? Gone? But it would be nice, really, to have some short term memory. The short term stuff is never so bad, and usually somewhat helpful. It's the days and months and years that I want to keep away. Keep away, keep away, though foul demons mind, though foul demons mine..."

Nietzsche sat down crosslegged on the pavement and began to draw stickfigures. He added axes and swords and breasts and penises and hats and anything else he could think of to them, then scribbled them out, and started anew. "Stick figures in snowstorm!" he laughed. "Mind the mind the mind the mind."

"Where'd Ogre go," asked another voice from behind him.

"Why's everybody come up from behind me," asked Nietzsche. That was starting to irritate him.

"Well, uh... I don't know. Just how you're sitting compared to the rest of the park, probably, and where we're coming from. Right?" Girl sounded confused.

"Sure, sure. Hey, you wouldn't have anything to write with and on, would you?"

"No, not really. I have the marker, so you could write on your clothes or your skin or something, but it's a wide tip so you wouldn't fit much. And we burned the signs. Why, what's up? And, wait, did you say where Ogre went? I didn't catch that."

"I didn't say, but he went to fetch me some paper and some thing for the marking of paper. I couldn't say much more than that, at least not that would be relevant, pertinent, something, to what you wanted to know. Probably. With the asking of that question. Or something like that."

"You sound stoned."

"Stoned stoned stoned, drunk drunk drunk. All the horse's men couldn't put humpty fuckhead back together again." Nietzsche giggled.

"You wouldn't have any left, would you?"

"I'm sweating contact high, but no, not beyond that."

"But Ogre's going to come back, right?"

"Well, I should hope so, or I won't have anything to write with and on. What do you need him for?"

"I'm supposed to be watching him."

"Watching him?"

"He's tripping."

"Indeed. I wouldn't have guessed. That's an odd critter, that Ogre. I ... hmm. I don't think trying to liberate some paper and a pen is the best thing to have someone attempt to do while tripping. You should be keeping a better eye on him, I'd say."

"Dammit, Neetch, that's not what I need to hear."

"No, I think it is. Let's go find our wayward mythical creature, shall we?" With that, Nietzsche stood up; then nearly fell to the ground again. It was as if the alcohol had finally seeped into his bloodstream, but his blood hadn't been moving until he tried to stand up. The standing had made the blood rush through his system at break-neck speeds, fighting for the honor of providing nutrients to his extremeties and intremities, unwittingly carrying the toxic alcohol payload to every place at once. Meanwhile, his left leg had gone to sleep. The combination was severe.

He stood awkwardly for several moments, willing the paralysis and waves of dizziness and nausea to go away.

"You all right?"

"Yeah, yeah, fine. Just waiting for my legs to come back together."

"Oh. Kay."

Nietzsche shrugged off the discomfort and stood fully. His left leg buckled slightly, and he stumbled forwards, limping just a little, keeping with the forward momentum so as to not have to try to stop. "Where do you think he'd have gone?"

"Well, Rexall has the best selection, probably, but they magstrip things. So we'll hope he didn't go there. Next would be... I don't know. Maybe the little hole in the wall next to the falafel joint?"

"I don't think they have paper there."

"Dunno. It's close, at least."

"Okay, there it is that we go. We go, we go, we go."

"You go."

"We go. Or are you talking about the car?" Nietzsche peered around to see if he was missing something.

"No, I'm just... oh, all right. We go. I don't even know if I was saying anything. I think you're contagious right now."

"Moi?"

"Twa."

"Twat!"

Girl scowled.

By the time they left the park, Nietzsche was walking normally again, or as normally as a drunk person with a fair amount of active self-control could walk. He wasn't limping, at least. They walked up Telegraph and came across Ogre walking back, a pad of paper and two pens in his right hand.

"My saviour!" remarked Nietzsche, who was struggling to remember why he'd wanted paper.

"Ogre bring stuff. Why you here and not where you say you going to be when Ogre return?"

"We were looking for you. Girl here was worried you might get carried away."

"You were worried too," Girl retorted.

"Or I just wanted to shut you up. Or I wanted to go for a walk. Or something. Who knows? But our Ogre is alive and well; let's go back to the park, shall we?"

Girl muttered something under his breath, and walked back to the park with Ogre and Nietzsche following.

Nietzsche spoke to Ogre, "I do thank you for the paper and pencils, Ogre. They will hopefully do me much good. You wouldn't happen to remember what I wanted them for?"

"Poetry," replied Ogre.

"Oh, oh right!" The whole scenario popped back into his head. "I was writing something about memory. Ode to a Grecian Urn--thou art where I store my mind, when writing is unkind, my rhymes are strained, my poor old brain... Yeah, I need to write this down to think about it."

"Might as well spange while you write. Some people like that."

"That's a good thought, Ogre; thanks. Want to sit with me while I babble to myself?"

"Ogre like Nietzsche babble. Ogre sit."

Girl turned around. "Okay, you two just sit there; I'm going to go do something more interesting, like jump off a cliff."

Nietzsche laughed. "You've a long walk to find a cliff."

"Yeah, well, that should be more interesting too."

"Geeze, what got under _his_ skirt," Nietzsche asked Ogre, as Girl huffed off.

"Ogre think he's feeling left out, or something like that. Ogre not know. Ogre guess."

"That's probably a good guess, but bowing out of interaction like that is surely _not_ the way to go about being included things, don't you think?"

"Ogre stop thinking. Nietzsche ramble."

"I'm not rambling yet, Ogre."

"Right. Nietzsche start ramble now, please?"

"Ohh. Right. Right, right. Right, right, right. Right. Where was I?"

"Warming up."

"Poetry, huh? Right. Poetry."

"Bad warm up."

"Ode to a memory," said Nietzsche, then sat down on the pavement, and flipped the notepad open to the first page. He advanced the pencil's lead and wrote the title on the first line of the notepad, and underlined it twice for emphasis. "Ode to a memory," he said again, fishing for words.

"Ogre got that."

"I wasn't talking to you. I was trying to figure out what to write."

"Ogre could leave if Neetch be snippy."

"No, no, I appreciate the company. I'm sure I appreciate the company. Just... No, I'll be okay. Okay." Nietzsche smiled, and looked at the title he had written.

He scratched out the 'a', then started writing as he spoke. "Memory mine, you are so fine, and still I want to lose you." He scratched that out, and tried again. "How is the mind that memory, of days and months and years, can not be lost, despite the cost, I spend to scrub away those tears?" He scratched his chin. That wasn't too bad, and all at once was kind of neat. There was a rhythm problem, but he could work that out later. He appreciated being able to see the words on paper, so that they weren't lost. That meant that after his mind wandered, as it always did, he could bring it back to focus. Focus. "Fucking short term memory," he sighed.

"That sounds like a good poem," said Ogre. "You should write that one."

"How about you give it a try?"

"Fucking short term memory," said Ogre. "You fucking suck. Ogre not like you. Goodbye."

"Not bad. Not what I'm going for, but it's your poem. Want me to write it down for you?"

"Ogre know how to write. Ogre not moron."

"I know that, Ogre. Or at least figured it, couldn't say whether I knew it for a verifiable fact. Just so happens, though, that I'm holding a pencil and paper, and as such it would be convenient and not so much of a hardship for me to jot down your words."

"Oh. Ogre knew that. Ogre testing you. But you don't need to write Ogre's words. They're gone already. And they did their purpose."

"Indeed. Okay. Thank you for them, Ogre."

"You're welcome. Write more, now."

"Okay. Umm." He reread what he'd written. "And still that self-same mind, it keeps, disposing of those thoughts, which short-term have, thought, something. No. That doesn't work. Shit. Fuck shit fuck shit fuck. Shit."

"Neetch write haiku?"

"Funny, Ogre." Nietzsche reread what he'd written, again. "I want to say something about my short-term memory being fuckered. And the irony contrasting that with my long-term memory refusing to fucker-off. Should be simple, right?"

"Sure, Neetch. You just told it to me. Now write it down."

"But what I told you isn't a poem."

"Okay, then write down a poem."

"That's the rub, now, ain't it? Write the freaking poem. Yes, master, yes master, three bags full."

"Baaaa," said Ogre.

"My fucking short term memory, it's so absurdly short, I can't from one moment to the other know, at end, where was the start."

"Sure, poem. Good Neetch."

"Thank you, Ogre. Well, now that that's all taken care of..."

"No more poetry?"

"Maybe later. I think I lost the mood."

"Okay. We go back to park now?"

"Sure, unless there's something you'd rather do."

"Nah, park good. Ogre like park."

Nietzsche looked up at the sky and tried to judge the time again. It seemed like the Jack had run its course a fair amount, however long it'd been. He could almost begin to concentrate on things. He wondered if that meant he should go get that Rum he'd wanted earlier, or allow himself to wind down. Maybe if he came down, he'd be able to write a better poem. Or just a different one. Right, he was busy wondering what time it was. Perhaps the Jack hadn't run all the course it was going to. It had a few laps left in it. Time. At the beep, the time will be... He looked back up at the sky: somewhere between two and four, probably.

Nietzsche stood there contemplating life.

It was a long contemplation.

He realized he was hungry; he either needed more liquid food to fill him, or something more substantial. He couldn't decide which he would prefer, and decided to ignore it until it decided itself. He started walking and led them back to the park, where more people were beginning to gather. He and Ogre nodded and smiled where appropriate, and wove their way to their own crowd of folks: Girl and Barbie and Charles and Spot.

Spot waved them over; Girl, Barbie, and Charles seemed involved in an odd conversation.

"I still don't get where they'd come from," said Girl.

"Why'd they have to come from anywhere?" asked Charles. "Couldn't they just exist, the way everything else just exists? Why are we having this pointless discussion?"

"What would you rather do, go jack off behind a tree?" snarked Barbie.

"Maybe," sighed Charles. "Anybody want to play a touching game?"

"Football?" asked Ogre.

"Go play with yourself," said Girl to Charles. "I'm actually enjoying this. Or I think I am. And that's good enough for now, isn't it?"

"So we're saying they are consciousness and life, and that consciousness and life go hand in hand, right?" said Spot.

"What did I just step in?" asked Nietzsche.

Ogre shrugged.

"We're experimenting with Fey's idea of the multispirit cosmos," said Spot.

Charles got up and walked away from the group, muttering about mental masturbation.

"Do you know where she is?" asked Nietzsche.

Girl, Barbie, and Spot shook their heads in the negative. "I think she went off with Dee a few hours ago, but I don't know where," said Girl.

"Anyone know where Dee is?" he asked.

They shook their heads in the negative once more. "But this is more fun without Fey, really. She gets all defensive when you try to ask her about it," said Barbie. "Like, she doesn't like to think about it, and stuff. It makes her nervous, like she might get it wrong, or something."

"Afraid we'll catch her in the lie?" asked Nietzsche.

"Ogre not think Fey lie," said Ogre.

"Well, yeah, something like that, really," said Barbie. "But I don't think she's lying. I think she, like, just doesn't trust herself, or understand what's going on, or something. And, like, it's all she's got that really makes her interesting, ya know?" Barbie stopped for a moment and thought about that. "Not that that's a bad thing. I don't even have that. But--But she cares a lot about that sort of thing. Right?"

"Ogre not get it."

Girl studied his feet. Nietzsche took it on himself to reply in character, though he wasn't feeling it much. "Who needs interesting when it's all a waste, anyway? I'm just coming down from a drunk. Anyone want to liberate some mindwipe?"

"Ogre help," said Ogre.

Barbie frowned. "Why don't you go ask Charles? We're trying to have a conversation here, like, even if not all of us are as smart as you. Or something." Typical of that wannabe intellectual, she muttered to herself; he couldn't answer any question straight out if it had any real meaning or emotion behind it.

Nietzsche looked somewhat chagrined, but when nobody else spoke up to join him, wandered away. Ogre followed him. "Is it so hard for him to do something constructive?" Barbie whined, once they were out of the immediate vicinity.

"Well, he tried writing poetry earlier," said Girl.

Spot stood up. "I think he needs to get something out of his system that's not getting out on its own. But, you know, you mold yourself a being and then you're stuck with it. He's a lot like Fey; we all our, in our ways. But to be polite, I won't deconstruct as at the immediate moment. In Nietzsche's case, though, he's wrapped his life around these self-destructive tendencies that he may or may not believe in at any given time. But attempting to do anything about them means giving that up. He can't let himself grow, because he's afraid changing means losing who you are. And it does, but that's not a bad thing. At least, that's not _necessarily_ a bad thing. It's certainly a difficult topic, possibly more difficult than Fey's multispirits. But I'll leave you all with the multispirits and see if I can't talk whatever it is out of Nietzsche."

The group was silent. Barbie was left a little dizzy from the storm of rational discourse. She wasn't used to it, these days. He sounded like her dad, all of the sudden. That was weird. She was hanging out with her dad. She giggled, wondering what her dad would think of that. He probably wouldn't find it very funny. He was a bigshot lawyer, and those only found other bigshot laywers funny. The fucker. Especially when he--

Right. He wasn't there, she told herself. He wasn't there. She was with her friends, and she was safe with them. She smiled. "Umm. Like, what were we talking about?"

Girl looked at her incredulously. "Where did _you_ go?"

"JUst lost in thoughts, why?"

"Dunno, I guess I'm just in a mood right now. We were discussing Fey's multispirits, but everyone went away."

"Well, I didn't go away," Barbie pouted.

"Maybe not physically," said Girl, pointedly.

"Okay, so, the multispirit things. They're like souls, right?"

"Right. I think. Spot understood everything a lot better, but..."

"But we're all guessing anyway, so it doesn't matter, right? Like, this is all just speculative, and stuff. So. Everybody has a soul."

"Everybody has multiple souls," corrected Girl.

"Everybody has _parts_ of souls," said Barbie.

"Right. So what's that mean?"

"That's the rub."

"Right."

Barbie kicked around the dirt with her shoe. "So, according to Fey, we're all soulmates, right?"

"Right. I guess. That's what 'makes' us like each other, get along, and all that stuff."

"But it's just like any friendship, really. I mean, not all of us likes all of the others. At least, not all of the time. Everybody shares a bit of soul with somebody else in the group, but most don't share more than that. I think I remember her saying something like that. Right?"

"Right. Right. You know, I wonder why we never made a picture of it all. That would be kinda cool to see, don't you think?"

"That would. I wonder who I share a soul with. I hope it's not Ogre."

"I bet that's why we haven't made a picture of it. That _would_ make things more awkward, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah, totally more awkward. But maybe that's good. Maybe things should be more awkward, so we get more of that growth and change Spot was talking about."

"Maybe. So, the souls... where do those fit into religion and stuff?"

"What, like Christianity and Hinduism and all that?" Barbie was skeptical that that was what he meant, but couldn't see what else he could mean, so.

"Yeah, sorta. Like... reincarnation and, well, like, just what is a soul? I mean, it's 'me'. But there're different 'parts' of me. Is each part of me one of those parts of the soul, or is it more complicated than that?"

"You want a definitive answer?"

"I want a discussion. I mean, sure, definitive would be wonderful, but I don't think either of us are that bright."

"Yeah. But even if we were, we wouldn't _know_ we were right, would we?"

"Well, we'd be able to come up with a test to see if we were right... if we were _that_ smart. But I don't think anybody's that smart. Maybe. Or something. I don't know. I hate blanket statements, but it's hard to talk without them, you know?"

"Yeah. It really is."

They sat and contemplated that for a moment, but then Barbie sidetracked back to their original conversation. "What do you think happens to a soul when one of the parts of it dies?"

"That's a good question. I wonder. I wonder if it actually dies. I mean, I doubt it would die, right? I mean, why wouldn't it just redistribute among the other pieces?"

"Well, what about ghosts, then? Doesn't a person _have_ to have a single soul if we're going to believe in ghosts?"

"Maybe that's the part of the soul of the dead person getting lost on its way back. That would explain why it's only partially there, you know, besides being ethereal and all that... but like, why ghosts tend to be so single-minded and stuff."

"Huh. That sounds good. So, then, would the afterlife _exist_ at all? Do the souls ever get a break? And... and... Damn. I was thinking something else, but I don't remember what."

"That's okay, there's lots of thoughts to go around, especially just for the two of us."

"True. Umm. Okay. So what would the afterlife be like? Really? I can't picture it at all, now."

"Umm." said Girl. "Okay. Let's try to take it one step at a time. I don't think we're there yet. But. Umm. Okay. See..." He trailed off in thought; Barbie watched him expectantly, hoping he'd break through some barrier so that they could think more. It was nice, having him around. He was a lot like the brother she never had. Maybe. Except any brother she could have had would probably have been a lot more fucked up than Girl. Even if he _did_ want to be a girl.

She wondered what it would be like to want to be her. To not get half the jokes said around her... but to enjoy most of them, when she wasn't afraid they were _about_ her. Sure, she looked pretty, well, mostly. But... It was damned inconvenient to be a girl. And scary, sometimes. She was pretty sure _he_ didn't worry walking around late at night if he was going to be raped and murdered. Or wonder if the next time he walked into an elevator if he was going to be groped, or worse. Or. Or wonder if he lost a few days if he was accidentally going to start bleeding everywhere and not be prepared to sop it all up. He probably didn't see any of that. If he even considered it, he certainly didn't understand how deeply it was rooted. But then, sex was probably like that; the need for it, that was, for guys. She really couldn't comprehend how deeply rooted it seemed to be for them. Like, they were just _animals_ when it came to that. But so was she, with her fears. She understood, but she couldn't understand. She couldn't even understand what she meant by that.

Barbie gave a heaving sigh, and noticed Girl's eyes flicker at her chest. She scowled a little then brightened. He couldn't help it, and he wouldn't do anything to hurt her. He was just her little brother, and that was that. And of course her little brother would, being male, notice her bits. Of course. That wasn't his fault. She was still safe with him, not like with--

"Afterlife." said Girl.

Barbie looked him in the eyes, and smiled. She was glad he wasn't reading her thoughts, glad that he was able to focus on what they were discussing, and keep them on track. "Afterlife," she replied.

"So... okay. We've got that we're all roughly the same age, which is something, right?"

"Umm... okay," said Barbie, confused, but eager to see where things went. "Within a couple of years, right?"

"Right. Well, not right, there's Spot, too."

"Right. It's easy to forget how old he is. He's not at all old like some people get old."

"Yeah. Okay, ignoring Spot for a bit, then. It's unlikely, even then, that a single soul fills everyone at the exact same time, right?"

"I suppose," agreed Barbie.

"And it's unlikely that everyone it's in dies at the exact same time, right?

"Yeah."

"So there has to be some leeway between one and the other."

"Or it could just roll on, filling new bodies as they're made, sort of thing."

"I guess, if at the exact moment anyone died there was one new body for it to fill." said Girl.

"Well, you gotta keep in mind that there's a bunch of different souls that get released when a physical body dies, right? Do you think they'd all go together into the same body a second time?" Barbie didn't see what would keep them from doing that, but it didn't seem right, somehow.

"I don't know. I mean, it would make sense that they did. But then they'd sorta be a unit, like a soul itself, as opposed separate souls, right? I mean, that would be a different sort of thing, wouldn't it?"

"Okay, let's stick to the first sort of thing, then," decided Barbie. "We'll presume the various bits of souls go different places. It would be some coincidence to assume they'd all have places to go all at once, right?"

"Right. So they wander for a bit, or something."

"Ghosts, sure," said Barbie. "_Or_ they go back to the soul world, those bits of souls, and rest. I mean, that's plausible at least, right?"

"Sure. Sure, why not?"

"So there's the afterlife, sorta." Barbie smiled, then thought about it a little more. "Just bits of a soul, different souls, really, floating around in the soul world. So what would that be like? Do they have lives back there? Up there? Down there? In the soul world. Like, ... yeah. Like, do they have soul lovers and soul children and all that, or am I personi-whatsifying them too much? I mean, they have to be a little like us, right? Or not? Why would they, except it seems right that they'd have to be a little like us. But is that just because I can't imagine anything else?"

"Yeah, I don't know." said Girl. "I mean, you have to wonder what a soul's life cycle is like, right? Where do they come from? Did they evolve along with us, or are they aliens or something? And with us doing this whole population explosion thing, constantly, are they spreading thin, or are they growing to match... and if they're growing to match, is that coincidence or somehow intrinsic to the whole thing? It's really overwhelming."

"Totally overwhelming. Like, yeah, just totally overwhelming," agreed Barbie. "That's really deep."

Girl smiled, and something flashed behind or over the smile. Barbie didn't like that, but couldn't tell what it was. It made her nervous, though. Barbie didn't want to be nervous around Girl. She frowned, and Girl frowned with her. "What's up?" asked Girl.

"Nothing," said Barbie, and told herself she was just imagining things. Her hunches tended to be good, but they weren't always. She wouldn't let herself believe that Girl had a crush on her. She didn't want that; she really didn't want that. "Umm."

"Yeah?"

"I lost track of where we were again."

"We were discussing souls."

"Yeah," said Barbie. "I've got that much, now. But you just said something, and I lost my way."

Girl furrowed his brow and looked at the ground. "Like, souls, umm. Like, where did they come from, and how are they really tied to us? Like, population-wise and such."

"Yeah, it does seem overly coincidental that their population would change with ours. Unless it's a predator-prey sort of thing, like we're their food, 'cause then they would grow with us, right?"

"I suppose, yeah. But... whoah, that's crazy. Food, huh? Man. Like, I've got five different psychic vampire teeth stuck in my body right now. Or something like that. That... that makes me all tingly inside, like in a bad way."

"Yeah, totally," said Barbie. She shivered at the thought of it. She could feel sharp... _things_... floating around inside of her, sucking her essence dry. "But... what would they eat, really? Right? I mean, if they're our souls, our consciousness and stuff... I mean, they can't be eating that. And if they're sort of the cause of emotion and stuff, then they can't be eating that."

"Well, nobody said they were the cause of emotion and stuff, right?"

"But they're supposed to be what makes us like each other."

"Oh, shit, I just had the craziest thought. What if they're the whole cause of civilization and shit. Like, they herd us together, make us want to form communities and shit like that. Wouldn't that be crazy?"

Barbie could only nod her head dumbly. That would be crazy. That would be the mofo shiznit to end all mofo shiznit. Whatever that meant. Really, though, what would that mean? "Why would they do that?"

"Well, okay, maybe it's just coincidence. Like, doesn't matter too much if it's not intentional. Doesn't change things being what they are, so let's suppose they don't have a master plan, right?"

"So we're ignoring the fact that maybe these bits of souls brought civilization together?"

"Yeah. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but they probably didn't mean to, right? I mean, that sort of thinking's what winds you up in the mental ward."

"True," Barbie nodded. "So once again I lost where we were, though I don't feel so bad this time. You threw things for a loop."

"Well, let's try another loop. Are the souls conscious themselves, or not?"

"Oh, man."

Girl chuckled. "Yeah. Do we dare?"

"We must!" said Barbie.

"You go."

"No, you."

"I did the last one!"

"But it's _your_ loop!"

"But I've already thought about it some; let's see what you think of it and then compare notes."

"Oh, all right." She thought about it for a bit. "There are a couple of options, right? They could be conscious when they're in us _and_ when they're not, or just conscious when they're not in us, or not conscious at all. But since they're supposed to be our consciousness, at least somewhat, it's probably not that. If they were conscious when they were in us, then we'd probably know all about them, and everyone would see connections the way Fey can. So... So they're conscious when they're not in us, and not when they are. Or at least, that's what I think sounds right, right now. Something like that. Right?"

"That's what I was thinking, basically. It's cool to get independant verification like that."

"Well, we're both making this shit up, right?

"Right, but if we make up the same shit, independantly, then there's a better chance it makes sense."

"Makes sense to minds like ours, at least."

"Yeah, but that's all we've got."

"I wish Spot were here."

"I got the impression he wanted us to run with it ourselves. He was just prompting here and there, instead of actually participating in the discussion. I think."

"Yeah, I suppose you're right. Do you think he actually believes in any of this stuff?"

"Do you?"

"I don't know. I don't think so, but maybe. I'd feel better about believing in it if he did."

"Yeah, me too. But... well, there isn't any harm in believing in it, is there?"

"But what if it's all just a bunch of crap. I don't want to believe in a bunch of crap that's not real."

"Well, people do that all the time."

"But we make _fun_ of those people."

"Not always. We only make fun of _some_ of those people."

"I don't want people making fun of us. I get that enough as it is." Barbie was suddenly very depressed. Where had that come from?

"Well, we don't have to _tell_ anyone that we believe in it or not. We can just nod and smile, right? You're good at that. People don't tend to look beyond your smile when you nod."

"_That's_ not true; they're watching my breasts, is what they're watching. They don't care one whit about my smile unless they're thinking about shoving things in it."

Girl was staring at her. Maybe, Barbie thought, just maybe he had a whiff of what being a girl really felt like. Or maybe he was feeling ashamed for lingering his gaze over her perky little flesh sacs. She frowned. "I'm sorry, I don't want to talk about that, I don't know where it came from," she said. "Let's go back to souls."

Girl nodded. "Okay."

They sat there, looking at each other. "So, these souls," said Barbie.

"Right."

"Where were we?"

Girl frowned. "Why do _I_ have to be the one keeping track, always?"

"I don't know, just works out that way I guess. I mean, if you can't remember either, we can make something up." Barbie giggled. "Wouldn't be the first time, right?"

Girl allowed a hint of smile to crop up in his face. "Sure. It's all make-believe anyway."

"No, wait, I do remember! Soul consciousness. We decided they were conscious when out of body, and not conscious when in."

"Right." Girl smiled. "Right. So. Then. Do you think they're conscious of the whole process, when they're not part of us? Would they know about being part of us, and not part of us, and all that?"

"I just had a thought," said Barbie. "Maybe it's like a dream to them. Maybe that's what they need us for, the way we need dreams."

"Hey," said Girl. "That's a good one. I like that. And it brings up, where do they go when _we're_ asleep, and dreaming?"

"A dream within a dream? Or maybe they're conscious then. Could you imagine if that was what their consciousness was like? Like being in a dream, all the time?"

"Dude. That would be weird."

"That would be _fucking_ weird."

"Yeah."

"Dude," laughed Barbie.

"Dude," agreed Girl.

"So let's say," said Barbie, "for the sake of argument--"

"I wouldn't really say we're arguing."

"--but we could. So in case we want to argue it, let's say--"

"I don't want to argue it."

"You're not being funny," said Barbie.

"It was worth a try?"

"I guess. But now you've lost my train of thought again."

"Sorry," said Girl.

"No, I've got it now, that's okay."

"Fire away."

"Nope, lost it again."

"Next time just run with it, then."

"Good idea."

They looked at each other again.

"Shame we're not writing this stuff down," said Girl.

"Yeah," said Barbie. "I wonder if we had this same conversation tomorrow, if we'd come to the same conclusions."

"Well, I'd think we'd remember at least some of what we decided."

"Probably, probably even if we didn't _remember_ remember, it would come out that we'd remembered. Or something like that."

"Yeah, probably," said Barbie. "Ooh! Right. Almost..."

"Almost?"

"Shit, no, lost it again."

"Maybe we should try something else."

"But it's right on the tip of my tongue," she said. It was. Right on the tip... so frustratingly close, she didn't want to let it go. "Dream!" she exclaimed.

"Eh?"

"Their consciousness is dream," said Barbie.

"Like a dream within a dream, or like they actually are conscious when we're dreaming, and we're having a go at what life is like for them, then?"

"Like dreaming is what life is like for them. Though... here's an odd one," said Barbie. "Do they all go to sleep at the same time? Or rather, do they all become conscious at once? Or is there a dominant soul bit, or what? Or maybe that's why dreams are so disjoint, as we're trying to glom three or five different dream consciousnesses together at once?"

"Maybe. So maybe their consciousness isn't as confused as all that, and it's just how we perceive them to be, when we're less conscious?"

"Maybe. Or maybe they're actually that jumbled together, and they're as confused as we are."

"What would make more than one soul inhabit a body, then, if it was going to be that confusing for them?"

"Maybe that's how they breed. Like our body is an incubator for souls or something."

"Hey, that sounds good. They don't need us for food, per se. They need us to breed. That feels better."

"I think it feels kinda icky," said Barbie. "But yeah, I suppose it's better than having ethereal pyschic vampire teeth things sucking us dry."

"Just a little," said Girl, sarcastically.

"Yeah," agreed Barbie. "Just a little."

"So."

"So, right," said Barbie. "Right. Umm. What else might make a bunch of soul-bits congregate together in one body? And why _would_ they split up into different bodies? That just seems weird."

"Hmm. Maybe if they lost all bits of themselves before being able to get into another body, they would actually die themselves?"

"That's a thought. Definitely a thought," said Barbie. "Weird. Or..."

"Or?"

"I don't know. I think there has to be something else, again on the tip of my tongue, but less so."

"There's probably lots of something elses. But yeah, I'm not thinking of them."

"Okay, we leave that alone. What else?"

Girl shrugged, and looked up as Nietzsche approached.

"You two still going on?"

"What's it to you?" asked Barbie.

"Just amazed is all. Is all, is all."

Barbie could tell he was drunk again. He didn't drink nearly as often as he intimated, didn't have nearly the tolerance he wanted to have. Or no, that wasn't right. He boasted of his tolerance, but at the same time was trying to knock himself out. Barbie frowned; she didn't understand him at all. She didn't like not understanding him because not understanding him made her nervous; he made her nervous. Her dad never drank, at least not around her, but his friends would tell her stories sometimes. He was one crazy mother fucker, sometimes. Sometimes. Why did she keep thinking about her dad? And where was Spot? Had spot talked to Nietzsche at all, the way he'd planned to?

"Where's Spot?" she asked.

"Went off looking for Jenn, I think," answered Nietzsche.

"What do you think of Fey's idea of multisouls?" she asked.

"Couldn't say. If I've got a bunch of bits of souls in me, they're probably all at war."

"What are your dreams like?"

"My dreams?"

"Yeah."

"I don't have dreams," laughed Nietzsche. "I obliviate them, obliterate them, smash 'em to a billion pieces and one."

Nietzsche and Barbie fell silent; Girl remained so.

Barbie stood up, glaring at Nietzsche. "I don't know how you do it, but you're really good at what you do."

Nietzsche looked confused.

Barbie huffed, and walked away, not thinking about where she was going. She found herself heading towards campus. It was still odd to be walking through the area as a punk instead of as a student, though she'd dropped out almost at the end of last spring. That had been, what, it was January, now... May... a good seven or eight months. And really, she'd stopped going to classes early on, so closer to ten months. It was nice of her dad to keep sending her the blood money. She chuckled, and tried to remember if he actually knew she wasn't going to school anymore. She hadn't talked to him since she'd left for college, though she'd certainly cursed his name a fair amount. She especially didn't know how she'd gotten into Berkeley, of all places; she didn't every really _want_ to know what strings he'd pulled. She'd figured it couldn't be all that, despite what people said... after all, it was a state school, _and_ she'd gotten in. She hadn't considered string-pulling until a few weeks into her classes, but then it was the only possibility. Everything was way beyond what she could do, and the professors were grody-old, and nobody even paid her attention, though she was by far the best looking girl on campus. It was like the other girls didn't even know _how_ to compete. Or they were competing for something else, but she couldn't imagine _trying_ to look ugly.

So she'd stopped going to classes, stopped and started talking to the only people that _did_ pay her any attention. And every month there was more money in her bank account, enough for tuition and housing and all that, if she'd been going. She opened up another account, and was squirreling money away into that, just in case the flow ever stopped, and to make it look like she really was spending all the money she was supposed to. Meanwhile... well, meanwhile she was enjoying herself, for the most part. She wondered what day of the week it was. Friday and Saturday nights folks would gather for a role-playing game, and sometimes she joined in. She had a character, and everything, though she didn't really know the rules. But they'd help her through the rules because she was cute. It was fun to be someone you weren't. But those games didn't start until sundown, anyway, so... that wasn't going to occupy her at the moment.

So while she had fun in general, she was feeling listless. It seemed to be going around, today. Nobody was acting quite right. But that was probably New Year's depression, right? Probably. Another milestone, but nothing had changed, same as always. Though being on her own was a change, and a big one, and it was cool. She liked it. But... but she'd been on her own for a while, even if it hadn't been a year; it had been a lifetime, easily. She had trouble remembering back to sitting in her classes, trying to pay attention to whatever dry stuff the professor would be scribbling on the board, wondering where all the cute guys were.

But... what was she going to do with her life? She hadn't made any New Year's resolutions. She hadn't been able to think of anything she'd wanted to do, and now... she still couldn't think of anything she wanted to do, really. She liked... she liked hanging out with people, and stuff like that. She liked talking to people, she liked doing _girl_ things and talking _girl_ things. She wanted... she wanted to do just that. But to do that, you had to get married to some freak that supported you, and that freak would then want all sorts of things in exchange, like sex whenever, like keeping a house clean, like having children. She shuddered. She wasn't ready for anything like that. She didn't _want_ to be ready for anything like that. But she also didn't want to be a lonely spinster with just cats for company. And she didn't want to live on the street all her life. That just didn't happen.

But...

But what was she going to do with her life?

"What's on your mind?"

She looked up; Girl had followed her, was sitting next to her on the steps at Wheeler Hall. She looked around; there wasn't anyone else there. She didn't remember sitting down, didn't remember--hadn't been paying attention. But there she was, and there was Girl. "Not much," she replied habitually.

"You look down."

"Well, yeah, I am."

"Anything I can do?"

"What am I going to do with my life, Girl?"

Girl sat there and looked at her. "What do you mean, what are you going to do with your life? Anything you want, probably. You're young, you're rich, you're beautiful. At some point you're going to stop slumming with the rest of us, and get on with whatever."

Barbie was shocked, didn't know where to begin being shocked and responding. "Is that how you see me?"

"Well... yeah. Yeah."

"Firstly, what makes you think I'm rich?"

"I've seen your ATM receipts, transferring money from here to there. Couldn't say where you get it, I know you don't do tricks, doubt you're selling, so... I figure it's inheritance or, at best, blackmail." Girl felt a little defensive, admitting to snooping around. But... But.

Barbie was silent, contemplative. "Have you told anyone?"

"No, didn't see it was any of their business."

"What made it yours?"

"Curiousity? I dunno. I like you." A lump caught in his throat when he said that. Did he like her? Did he really like her? And did he mean it like that? And should he be saying it in any case? What if she ran away?

"What do you mean you like me?"

"You know... like, I find you interesting, and stuff. And you really are beautiful," he answered honestly, before thinking things through more fully.

"I--I'm sorry."

Girl was confused. "Sorry for what?"

"I'm sorry you like me. I'm not worth liking, really. I'm really not. I wish you wouldn't." She looked like she was about to cry.

"I... I don't understand."

"How could you?"

There. Now she was crying. He wanted to put his arm around her and comfort her, but he was fairly sure that would be the wrong thing to do. He was fairly sure just about anything would be the wrong thing to do, now. He'd already done the worst thing possible, apparently. Damn it all. Damn it all! All he could do was sit there and hope, feel the slow bubble of hope growing tenuously, tremulously thin... ready to pop at the slightest whim.

"I'm... sorry?" he asked. He was sorry. He didn't want to be sorry, but there it was. He'd said his mind and it had hurt her, and now he wished he'd just kept his counsel, shut his trap, suffered in silence, whatever he had to suffer. It hadn't been that bad, had it? Not worth all this crying, at least. He stood up; Barbie didn't appear to notice.

Where was he going to go now? He couldn't go back to the park. He couldn't go back to the squat. Or maybe he could. Maybe he could go to the new squat and claim an area. He wanted to draw. He liked to draw. Drawing would keep his mind off of other things, right? Right. Maybe. Or maybe it would make things worse, but it would be doing something, and doing something was always better than not. Unless doing something hurt somebody else; that sucked. That really sucked. He didn't want to face up to that. He walked along, not watching where he was going, just watching his feet go up and down, generally looking far enough ahead to make sure he wasn't going to walk into anything, like a tree. He could tell from the gradient roughly where he was going, but did his best not to think about it any. He didn't want to know, didn't want to care.

Girl wanted to run into somebody he knew, but didn't... he wanted to run into someone who would talk to him, talk at him, completely ignore him and help him ignore himself. He wondered that he wasn't overreacting a bit, but didn't know what to do about it. It was like hyperventilating, he decided. He was every bit conscious of what was going on, but had no control whatsoever. Maybe Nietzsche had that sort of control. _He_ certainly didn't. He, for the billionth time that day, wished he were someone else. Especially someone female. Almost anyone female. They got more respect. They really did, regardless of what everyone else thought. Maybe they didn't twenty years ago, maybe they didn't in some fields, but in the here and now that was the only thing he knew, it really paid to be a girl. If you were a girl, people liked you; they paid attention to you. They wanted to be around you.

If you were a girl, regardless of what you did, people appreciated it more, in some sick rebound of thousands of years of history.

It wasn't fair!

But there it was.

It wasn't fair.

He wished he were gay; that would be one step closer to being a girl, because at least then other guys would be interested in him, he wouldn't have to struggle so hard to be with someone. Guys were just so damned easy to please. But he wasn't interested. He'd tried once or twice, but he didn't want to think about that. It had just felt... wrong. Especially all the body hair. That hadn't been pleasant.

But that had been, thankfully, a different city; a different life. So many lives. He wondered how many different lives the average person went through in a life. He wondered what it was like to see lifelines the way Fey did, whether they changed at all through a person's life. He wondered how much a person was was based on the souls making him up, and how much a person was changed the souls making him up; or he tried to wonder that, at least, but wound up tangled in the words and thoughts. He became so confused and tangled in those thoughts that he finally managed to forget that he was really busy being exceptionally depressed and down on himself. He even managed to whistle for a bit, walking down Telegraph.

He wished that he could do magic, if he couldn't be a girl. Magic would be really cool, even if it was just little stuff. He wanted to be able to sense spirits and energy flows and stuff like that. Hell, he wished he could be Fey. Fey had it good. Sure, she was a bit self-conscious and stuff like that, but really she had it good, and she'd get over that stuff.

Then he thought of Barbie again. Right now, he decided, he was just thinking with his penis. Fey had it good because she was hot, Dee was hot, Jenn was hot, Barbie was really fucking hot. And Fey slept with all of them except Barbie. And maybe she even slept with Barbie, he didn't know for sure. Girl didn't sleep with anyone; at least, not like that. He really, really, _really_ wanted to, though. Maybe it was his time of the month--it was oddly overpowering, more so than usual. Or perhaps he'd just gone longer than usual without releasing his internal pressures. Usually they took care of themselves.

But he really couldn't concentrate. Not that he normally could concentrate all _that_ well... no, he normally could. He normally didn't _bother_, but he normally could concentrate if he wanted to. Now he couldn't think about anything without getting depressed, which wasn't really the same thing as not being able to concentrate, but it was like it. Similar. He didn't have anything _to_ concentrate on. Maybe if he did, he'd be able to stick with it.

He paused in thought: a stick. He could carve a stick. That was a wonderfully mindless task! He started looking around for a stick to carve. There wasn't anything immediately apparent. Where would be a good place to find something to carve? Certainly not the Eucalyptus Grove, though that was the first 'trees' thing that came to mind.

The park. That had more real trees, and they'd drop their droppings wherever. Okay, maybe he could go back to the park. Just to look for a stick. Then he'd find somewhere else to carve it. Then maybe he'd go find the new squat, and carve it there. Woodchips would probably help whatever smells it had.

Girl turned back around on Telegraph and then down Dwight, back to the park. It was funny how everything centered around the park. But it was a nice park, for what it was--it was close to everything, but it was a park. And that's what it was. Not exactly profound, Girl sighed. But that's what it was. And that's what he was. He was not exactly profound. Not precisely, not anything like profound. He just was. He avoided acknowledging anyone in the park, just traipsing about looking for a nice thick stick to carve. He contemplated breaking a branch off, but he didn't really want to do that if he could avoid it.

However, after circling, weaving and bobbing and weaving again, he decided he wasn't going to find any fallen limbs to suit him. What was there were just bits and pieces, the ends of ends, nothing that would leave a thing to carve when the bark was peeled off. So he circled a time and two again, eyeing the branches, looking for something already broken off a bit, so he wouldn't waste too much of a branch. Finally, he decided he'd found what he needed, and he climbed the tree to get a good position to break the branch. He tried to just push and pull the branch free, but it was by far too strong. It would be really good to carve, but it was going to take some work to take down.

He started slicing off the bark in a ring around the branch where he was going to try to break it off.

Suddenly he was falling.

Suddenly he was landing on something soft on the ground, with a chokehold around his neck. His vision swayed.

His attempt to speak came out in a gasping, rasping, painful gurgle.

His right arm flared with pain around the forearm--something had just sliced a hemisphere around his forearm! His shriek was a high-pitched gurgle that used the last of his air, and his last feeling as he entered darkness was of something wet falling across his cheek.

"So you want magic, do you?"

He was sitting cross-legged in a small glade. He'd never seen a glade like this outside of his imagination. The grass was clean and clear and bright, thick blades that not only caught but reflected the orange sun. Orange? He looked around but couldn't see it. It must be setting, he decided, yet it was so bright! So warm!

In front of him sat Mother Nature. He knew this. He knew this the way one knew things in dreams, the way he always had imagined one knew religion. It just was, and it was silly to question; there wasn't anything to question. It was.

She sat cross-legged as well. She looked oddly like Jenn. That seemed wrong. Mother Nature should look a lot more feminine than Jenn, he thought. But then, this Jenn did look more feminine. And not just because she was naked, because he'd seen Jenn naked plenty. But the nakedness was fuller, somehow; perhaps her flesh was fuller. Everything seemed a bit odd; he wondered why he was trying to figure it out. Hadn't he just fallen out of a tree? Surely he'd hit his head, or something. But if he _knew_ he was dreaming, he could control it, right? He just had to remember it was all a dream.

"This isn't a dream."

Damn it all, it wasn't nice of his dream to try tricking him. He decided to fly, up, up, and away.

He didn't move.

"Why can't I fly?" he asked.

She didn't answer.

Was his psyche really this self-defeating?

"Maybe you don't want magic."

Maybe he didn't. Maybe. His head hurt. He must have hit his head hard. He wondered if there was something that kept you from being truly lucid in a concussion as opposed to in a regular dream. He was _fairly_ sure that you weren't supposed to _dream_ in a concussion. So what was this?

"Why don't you tell me?"

"I don't know."

Maybe if he _really_ wanted magic, he'd be able to fly. That seemed reasonable. But. He couldn't think very well. He felt that he was just supposed to experience. He wasn't supposed to do anything. He wasn't ever supposed to do anything. Why not? Was that his lot in life, to just be the third, or fifth, or twenty-seventh wheel, whenever stuff was going on? What _was_ going on? Why couldn't he think?

"Maybe you should listen."

Listen to what? He didn't understand. That was a big problem. He wasn't good at understanding things. But lots of people weren't good at understanding things. It shouldn't be such a big problem. Why did it matter so much? Did it just matter to him, or did it matter to other people, also?

"Everyone is human. You haven't felt that, yet, but maybe you will."

Where the hell had that come from? "What am I supposed to listen to?" he asked, frustrated.

"Everything, of course."

He listened. He didn't hear anything.

"I don't hear anything!"

"Listen..."

He heard... his breathing. He heard wind in the trees, wind in the grass. He heard her breathing fifteen feet ahead of him. Her breathing and the wind seemed to have a lot in common. He found his breathing slipping in with hers, in with the wind, in with everything. His head felt lighter, pleasantly lighter.

"Good," he heard the wind say.

Good? What was good? He strained to hear more...

"Good," he heard the wind say, again.

"Good," he said, with his breathing. "Good."

He heard the tree behind him crying.

"Why are you crying?" he asked, with his breathing.

"Somebody cut me," replied the wind.

Then he felt the flare in his forearm, felt red liquid trickle outwards, exploring.

"Someone cut me, too," he said, with his breathing.

"Why are you here?" asked mother Nature.

This was absurd! What kind of moralistic tripe was this? Surely he could do something better in his own dream! He wanted to see Mother Nature get jiggy with herself. Hell, he wanted to get jiggy with Mother Nature. _That_ was what these dreams were supposed to be like, when you could get control of them. Or even if he couldn't get control of it, that was what was on his mind all the time, so that's what should be the subject of his dream. So why was he having this artsy fartsy one world one life sort of thing?

Hell, he'd just wanted to carve a stick to stop thinking about Barbie. Was that too much to ask?

"Perhaps if you'd asked," said Mother Nature.

"Asked who?" said Girl. But he knew she meant the tree. That was crazy talk. But... that's what this dream was, after all. A lot of crazy talk, that so far as he could tell wasn't coming from his own psyche at all. Or something exceedingly repressed, if it was. He wondered if this was supposed to be some assed-up Oedipus complex.

"It's not," said Mother Nature.

"Then why am I here? This is lame. This is really lame. This should be a lot less lame, whatever it is."

"It is what you make of it."

"I don't think so. If it was what I made of it, then I'd be flying, or having sex with you, or something."

"Do you really want to have sex with me?" She was suddenly standing right in front of him, her sex dripping like the roof of a cave, spots of water trailing down the stalactites of her pubic hairs. Her pubic hairs were green and mossy at the tips, trailing up to denser brush. It was odd.

He would never have imagined what Mother Nature's sex would like like. He couldn't imagine that his imagination was really this twisted. But... so it was. Or something stranger was going on. Who could tell? But no... he didn't want to have sex with her. He wanted to have sex with Bunny. Jenn was too much like his mother, anyway. He wondered how much of a parallel there was in his mind, turning Jenn into Mother Nature. Or was he turning Mother Nature into Jenn? Anyway, he didn't want to have sex with either of them.

Well...

No, no he didn't. Not that he'd admit, anyway.

"Not that you'd admit?" asked Mother Nature.

"What do you want from me?" he asked.

She was silent.

What was he supposed to do? He didn't like this, he didn't like this one bit. He should be aroused, at least, in a dream like this. Or something. It was all too confusing. He had to wonder if he was dead. He didn't want to be dead. Or if he was dead, he didn't want it to be like this. And what about the multisouls, then? If he was dead, how come he was still him? Why wasn't he "them"?

He hadn't thought of that. In a dream, sometimes, you were only one barely conscious self. But what about lucid dreaming? Things weren't making any sense at all.

He felt cold.

He really needed to purge the yang from his system; it was clouding too much. Maybe that's what he was supposed to do in the dream, he thought. That would be odd.

He was cold. That wasn't right. Had something changed? He looked around, slowly noticing that the sun was gone, or rather, the colors were gone, and it was darker. It wasn't night out, there wasn't a moon, but the colors were gone. Everything was more silvery. It was like something out of one of Tolkien's books. This was elf land. What did Mother Nature have to do with elves?

He couldn't think.

There was a tugging on something connected to his heart. He felt drawn... through the ground. He was falling, and his only thought was "Not again."

Suddenly, he was lying on the ground, looking up at the tree he'd just fallen from. He'd made it out of the dream.

He laughed, and the laugh became a cough; his throat was rough and painful. Bringing his hand up to rub his throat, he noticed that there really was a cut around his forearm. It was relatively thin, with beads of dried blood soiling his skin at just a few spots of the line. The line itself was red, and it hurt more as he looked at it.

"Are you all right?"

That was Fey. He swiveled around looking for her. She was behind him; he sat up, and turned fully around.

"I guess so. What happened?"

"I don't know. I don't know. I... I have some thoughts, but they don't make sense. I just got here; apparently you've been lying there for about five minutes. I think Jenn may have snapped."

"Jenn?"

"Yeah. You didn't see anything?"

"No, I don't have a clue."

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"I was just climbing that tree to cut a branch off. No, I was cutting a branch off. I had climbed it, and I was cutting a branch off. Then I had the craziest dream."

"What sort of dream?"

"I dreamed Jenn was Mother Nature and that she was... she was punishing me for something, and something else I couldn't tell. It was really weird."

"I think Jenn pulled you out of that tree."

"Why would she do a thing like that?"

"You remember the guy with no aura?"

"Umm... Yeah, sure."

"Well, there was something like that around her."

"There was a 'no aura' around her? How do you get that?"

"It's more complicated than that, obviously. I don't know if it's _really_ the same thing as was on George, but I'm fairly attuned to Jenn's aura. I know her connects and how they interact, and all that, okay? And they were still there, but they were a _lot_ harder to see. If I hadn't known better, at first glance I would have said she had no aura, also. But I knew better, and I looked harder, really hard; I strained my periphery to near blacking out, and it was like there was a wall of color on the edges. Like Jenn's aura was obscured by some other, singular aura. Only it didn't look singular, it looked like it was made of hundreds or thousands or more, like an uber-aura."

"You sure nobody slipped you a mickey?"

"Fairly. It would have to be something special to just affect my astral vision, don't you think?"

"I suppose so. But... So... So what happened? Where's Jenn?"

"She ran off towards the hills."

"Nobody followed her?"

"Nobody seemed to notice anything going on but me. I figured it was better to check on you than to go off running after Jenn, especially if she's gone psycho. She's way stronger than me." Fey scowled.

"Today seems to be a day for psycho," said Girl.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I don't know. It's just everyone seems to be more on edge, listless. Maybe it's just the phase of the moon, or something. But really."

"I hadn't noticed, but I haven't been much around people today."

"Huh. Well, take it from me, then."

Fey looked him up and down, trying to read more out of his expression, out of his aura, than he was letting on. He did seem run down. He also seemed horny, but more run down. It didn't seem usual for Girl to be that run down. Then again, he had just fallen out of a tree, or been pulled out of it, and had a nasty gash on his arm. He was probably going through all sorts of things. Fey scanned the area, trying to see if anything else seemed out of the ordinary. She was fairly drained as well, but that was more from several sweaty hours with Dee. Fey blushed at the thought; Dee was good--Dee was damned good in bed.

"Any thoughts?" asked Girl.

"No. I think... no, I don't know." Fey didn't like being put on the spot, but if she was going to do anything...

Fey squinted her eyes and tried to feel around for any other mega-souls. She didn't see anything, but she didn't know if she would if it was there. She wondered what had happened to Jenn, where she'd run off to. She wondered if she'd really gone feral, or if something weirder had happened. Fey banked on something weirder, with all the aura stuff going on; feral, she assumed, would look significantly different than that. Not that she really had anything to back that up but a hunch, but her hunches tended to be good.

So now what?

So now she figured she should track down Jenn. But she shouldn't do it on her own. And Girl wasn't going to be any help if Jenn was anything like feral. But Girl culd track pretty well. And maybe he'd be up to leading, somehow. Fey wasn't good at doing anything on her own.

All she had to do was talk, now, but she didn't want to do even that much. She just wanted everything to go away, or something. Something. Maybe she should borrow a deck and do a reading, or something like that. That was far more her style. But no, if Jenn needed her...

"Are you all right?"

"Yes," she snapped. "I'm trying to think."

"Sorry. I'll, erm, be right here, by this tree," said Girl, and he sat down against the tree.

Dammit.

She could really use a bundle of sage, right now. She had a leaf, but one leaf wasn't going to do any sort of purification. It _could_ help keep _her_ mind clear, though. One thing at a time, right? First thing should be to find Ogre. Except if she found Ogre then chances were she'd scare away any chance of Jenn keeping 'round. What was she going to do?

She wanted to cry.

So, she supposed; she was going to have to track down Jenn on her own, and just... hope for the best. She was good at hoping for the best, at least. At least, that's what kept broadsiding her every so often.

Fuck.

She turned away from Girl, and started walking. She didn't want him to follow, so she didn't want to look like she was actually going off after Jenn right away.

"Where you going?" he called.

"To think," she replied. "There's too much here to let me think."

"You'll let me know if you want any help, right?"

"Sure," she called back. Sure, she thought. Sure. I want help so badly, but I can't handle it. She turned left on Telegraph, when down a block, and doubled back. She walked up to College, turned left, and then took a right on Dwight, heading up into the hills where she had a hunch Jenn had gone off to. She didn't really know how she was going to find her beyond following her hunches and keeping her eyes open. She hoped that was enough. She hoped that _trying_ was enough, either enough to find Jenn, or enough to make her feel like she'd done what she could, and go on with her life.

It felt really weird to be writing Jenn off so simply, but it would be the same if Jenn'd simply decided to move on to a different city. People moved around, some more than others. And Jenn had been more tired of things lately than she had been before. And it was unlikely that Jenn would ask her to come with her. Jenn would probably not have turned her away if she'd wanted to go, but things had been getting awkward. She probably wouldn't have gone. Jenn probably would have gone. And here it was, Jenn had gone... and Fey was trying to track her down. But Jenn hadn't gone in a normal way, she told herself. Something was odd, and she felt she owed it to what they had to see that things were ... right, somehow. Something.

Fey shook her head--she didn't have a clue, really. But she had to keep on trucking. That was her clue.

She methodically scanned side to side for signs of Jenn, signs of the un-Jenn, as she walked up the hill, walked up the steps, walked along the trail. She loved walking along this trail, because if you kept your vision just far enough ahead, it split the world in half, green grass to the left and right, and suddenly the hill was flat ground and you were walking along at forty-five degrees, and if you didn't check the urge, you'd fall down into the hill. Which was fun in itself, to do, and relatively safe.

She methodically scanned side to side to side, sweeping up and down the hill. Her hunch was leading her into the crevice between two hills, down where the water trickled and plantlife bloomed. Down where the faeries lived. The first time she'd come here, she'd been stoned out of her mind. She'd been seeing colors everywhere, like people say they do on acid, only these were her aura colors; they were flaring against the sky, and all over, but especially up into the hills and down into the ravine. She'd been less than careful but had managed not to hurt herself, scrambling down the hillside off of the trail. It had been beautiful down there, with the sunlight just so. She'd seen faeries there, then. Not that she really believed in faeries, but every little buzzing gnat had had its own aura, and she'd never seen an aura on anything but people before... so it was easy to believe they were faeries. With her eyes and mind super-dilated, the fuzzy rings of aura had really managed to shape themselves into little people, buzzing about so fast that she could only see them if she blinked; else they were just blurry fuzzy aura gnat things.

Where was Jenn?

She saw a streak of color to her left, and it was gone--that had looked like someone she knew. Something she knew? A piece of herself!? Or a piece of one of her pieces. She scrambled up the hill, looking for what might have caused the streak of color. Ten feet up, she found a small hole, the sort a ground squirrel would dig. Had that been what she'd seen? A ground squirrel? She would have sworn what she'd seen had been more complex than that. But she was feeling pretty ragged as it was. Who knows what she was imagining and what she wasn't? She didn't have a good handle on that under the best of circumstances, though in better circumstances she didn't worry about it so much. She wished her optimism wasn't so passive-aggressive.

She sat there, and _felt_ for the aura she'd seen. She felt it close and underground. She felt it come closer. Maybe it was a brownie, she mused, just the size of a ground squirrel. She didn't believe in faerie creatures and what not, per se, but she didn't unbelieve in them either. She'd just never encountered any evidence of anything like them, yet. A part of her really wanted to. A part of her was afraid to, worried that if she _did_ encounter something like that, then she'd really be on her way to the loony bin. But then... she wouldn't have to tell anyone. She could just go quietly schizophrenic. Psychiatrists had called her that before. Maybe she was. And maybe it was okay.

And maybe, just maybe, she wasn't crazy.

She'd really rather not be crazy.

A ground squirrel was staring at her from out of its hole. She knew it was the one that had gone running away, that had caught her eye. "Hello critter," she said to it. It didn't move. She slowly moved her hand towards it, turned her hand palm-up and uncurled her fingers, then dipped her fingers toward it for it to sniff. It didn't move.

She _felt_ toward it, trying to _feel_ it moving closer to her; it moved to sniff her fingers. Its tiny wet nose tickled the tips of her fingers as it snuffled them. Fey wondered whether this was how familiars worked. She'd never considered animals sharing soul-stuff, but if they did... if they did, that would make perfect sense.

Fey did her best to open her mind to the little critter, imagining what it would be like to talk to a ground squirrel. Trying to imagine what it would be like to talk to a ground squirrel. She wondered what its voice would sound like, in her head, or if she'd have to communicate in images... she had the urge to put her hand on the ground, so she did, and it climbed on. She peered closer at it, trying to understand how ground squirrels saw; she wondered what pattern-matching they did that made each and every one of them look unique to the others, or if it was more a smell thing. She wondered if they saw in color or black and white. She wondered how different it was to be a ground squirrel, wondered what differences there were she wasn't even wondering about. She was still straining for the first flash of comunication, wondering why it didn't happen.

The ground squirrel crawled up her arm onto her shoulder, and climbed halfway up her head, tiny claws gripping precariously in her thick hair. It chittered in her ear, and she hadn't a clue what it was trying to say. She wondered what ground squirrels ate. Probably nuts, she decided. But what sorts of nuts? She looked around but there weren't any trees in the immediate vicinity. She wondered if they ate grass. She pulled a long sheaf of grass and offered it up to the ground squirrel still chittering up in her ear. It grabbed the grass in its mouth and scurried down her arm back to its tunnel, where it disappeared for a few moments and then came back. It was poking its head out of the tunnel, apparently waiting for something. She had the urge to grab a bundle of grass and hand it down into the tunnel. The ground squirrel took the grass and ran back inside with it.

Fey wondered what sex it was, what it was doing with the grass. Was it making a nest? Did it have baby ground squirrels down in the tunnels with it? What else could it be using the grass for? Or was it just having fun with her, like a game or something? Could ground squirrels understand what a game was? Sure they could; all animals knew what play was, didn't they? But surely they wouldn't play like this. Or maybe it was just testing that she would be a good provider, or something. Who knew what could be going on in the presumed mind of a familiar? Maybe it thought she wanted it to hide the grass for her. She wouldn't put that past her powers. She wished she was more sure of them, more sure of everything and anything that was going on.

It really disturbed her to not _know_ that she wasn't making everything up. Though it was unlikely some random ground squirrel would come up to some random person, right? But she could be imagining it completely. That would have been a good reason to have somebody along, to corroborate with her whatever was going on. But she was fairly certain it wouldn't be going on if there were anyone else with her. Did that mean she knew it was all in her head? No. It didn't. Just... she didn't know.

She stood up and looked around. What was she going to do? She meant to be looking for Jenn, but now her hunch was telling her she wasn't going to find her. So what did that mean? Had her hunch just dragged her along to run into this ground squirrel, or had something significant happened to change her chance of finding Jenn? Or had it just been the time passing, or what? What was going on, today?

She took a few careful sliding steps back down the hill and turned to see what the ground squirrel would do. It poked its head out and looked at her, eye to eye. What was it thinking? She concentrated as hard as she could on wondering what it was thinking, and it took that as an invitation to climb back into her hair. She worried it wouldn't find its way back home if she just went off with it. But she could... probably. Probably. How would she find it? A bright strip of fabric, or something, but that could lead other people to the tunnels, people who would just collapse the tunnel, or worse... whatever worse might be. Something could always be worse.

She could try to line up a couple of rocks, but people moved rocks. So then what? Then she'd just have to assume she or it could find the way back. She'd feel terrible if she got it lost, though. It was horrible, she decided, to be living in a city with all these other people. She had the urge to just disappear into the forest. But deeper in the forest, well, there wasn't much forest here. She'd have to go a ways through city to get to anything that felt like _real_ forest. This was just... she didn't know what it was, really. A pleasant bit of land left moderately wild. A fair amount of it. But not a forest, not something somebody could live off of for an extended period of time. Anyway, Fey didn't even know _how_ to live off of the land. Perhaps it was time to learn, but there were better ways to learn than first-hand experience. At least to get started.

But she had to find Jenn. The way Jenn was acting, maybe _she_ would have some answers for her. That would be nice. Fey was not good at coming up with answers. Fey wasn't good at much, really. She sighed and the ground squirrel in her hair that she'd somehow already forgotten about chittered at her in a most convincing and articulate manner.

Okay, she decided. Okay, she'd find Jenn, and not worry about any of that other crap until, or if, it became important. She carefully scooted the rest of the way back down to the path, and continued her trek along it, casting back and forth and forth and back for a sign of Jenn or that odd mega-aura. The ground squirrel clambered down her hair to her shoulder, then into her blouse. It tickled there, but it was warm; it seemed to be bedding down. She hoped it didn't itch.

She wandered along the path and came to the first real stopping point: a single, craggly tree growing up from the path; probably what had caused the path in the first place, she decided. It was good shade, and a nice place to hang. The tree was a good vantage; she could see a large chunk of Oakland, a fair amount of Berkeley, and off into the distance was San Francisco. Fey could just make out the Golden Gate bridge, and the Bay Bridge was of course exceedingly visible, and then there was another one further down... and maybe another one further down; she couldn't quite tell if what she was looking at was really a bridge or just some odd lump in her eye, or something else entirely. She knew there was another bridge down that way, but didn't know if she should be able to see it or not.

Fey cast for auras with all her might, and found herself noticing dozens of them scurrying about under the ground. Great, Now I'm well and truly flipped out. Maybe I should start a pest removal service. Fey McFey, removes unwanted aural-bearing buddies.

She sighed. She couldn't even get a chuckle out of herself. What was she doing? She was looking for Jenn, because she didn't want to have to think for herself. She just wanted to experience life, and have that experience explained to her when necessary. Maybe Dee could take that role; though she thought Dee was more of a temporary thing, really. Dee's attention tended to wander, and she shouldn't expect more than that.

It really was a breathtaking view.

She sighed and continued on. The path split two ways, or so it seemed. The main part switched back, winding up the hill, while another part carried straight on, blazed by nothing more, it looked like, than the desire not to follow the main path as it switched back. The secondary path was not nearly as worn, not nearly as steady; the hill seemed less regular, and the path wove around that irregularity for best footing.

Fey found another split in the path, though this one really was a judgement call. She knew that jumping down here would take her to the faeries. But she only knew that because she'd done it. The path really continued on a ways--she wasn't sure where. Did she care? Yes. That was the path someone else would have followed, because it was unlikely they'd be distracted by the blinking lights that it appeared only she could see. She followed the path further and came to the cleavage between the two hills. Here, trees actually grew; one large oak grew downwards towards where she knew the faeries lived. The path crossed simply, with a foot's jump, off to the other side, where it began to meander upwards. Fey vaguely remembered that that went to one of the larger trees in the area, at a plateau, and then an unpaved road led up and down past that. She didn't want to go there.

So she went down the cleavage, staying out of the water, when water there was, until she came to her faerie copse, with its other-worldly shade tree, and its ferns, which seemed entirely out of place, and the little pool of water that made it far harder to continue further down. There, she looked around, and seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she sat down against the tree, and waited.

She couldn't think of anything else to do but wait.

She waited for what rationally seemed to be about thirty minutes, but felt more truly like forever, and gave up. She couldn't wait here forever--she was starting to get hungry, and chances were slim to none that Jenn would actualaly come here out of all of the places there were to go. Sure, her hunch had taken her here, but... well, maybe she was misreading her hunch. Maybe it had just wanted to take her here, and now she was free to go. Maybe--

Maybe, maybe, maybe. She didn't know, and that was the crux of it. Jenn was gone, or not, and there was nothing she could do about it, or at least nothing that she knew of. That was indeed the crux of the matter. She pulled out her leaf of sage and a lighter. Maybe the sage would clear her mind and she would know better what to do.

She lit the tip of the sage and wove it slowly around through the air. She loved this herb--it was the only thing she'd seen that seemed to have aura infused within it; when it burned, the trails it made were full of colors. And sometimes those colors had shapes. And sometimes, those shapes had meanings that she could discern.

The sage's sweet-sour musky scent filler her nostrils and brought tears to her eyes. It was so innocent a smell. And sensual, still. There was movement at her breast, and a ground squirrel head popped out, testing the air. She reached to scritch it under its chin, but it jumped out and ran up the way she had come. Fey sat there, stunned.

"That was sudden," she said out loud. "I wonder what got its nose in a tizzy. I mean, I suppose it was the sage, but..."

But? Fey cried. Nothing was going right. She took out the lighter and began singeing off the hairs on her hand. _That_ would show her. _That_ would teach her. She shouldn't whine, she shouldn't cry. She should feel the pain. The pain was good. The pain was all she needed. THe pain would make things clear, put things in perspective. She didn't need Jenn. She didn't need Dee. She didn't need anyone but herself. Herself and the pain. Pain pain pain pain pain! She screamed release of the frustration that had been building up in her.

And then she understood why her hunch had brought her here--it was simply to clear her mind. She'd needed a clearer mind. She'd lost track of herself, in the midst of all those people, they'd clouded her. She'd just needed time alone, time _really_ alone, without the fuzzy thoughts the ground squirrel had represented. It probably hadn't even existed, had just been a conjuration of her own mind to try and communicate to her.

Sage was innocent. The noxious smell of burning hair was not. She was the noxious smell of burning hair, not innocence. Her innocence had been burned away a long time ago. Now she wanted a shower. A shower to wash away the cloying innocence that had been building up around her, that she'd been trying to protect herself with.

Fey put away the lighter, and threw the sage away, spitting on it as it fell.

She sneezed.

Fey stood up, and clambered back the way she'd come, only more deliberately. Every step was a conscious decision to move. Every step.

Charles watched her climb up from the ravine; he wondered what she'd been up to, but only a bit. More than that, far more than that, he wanted to show that skanky bitch his what, make her squirm, make her... He wanted his what deep up her slick warm crevice, is what he wanted, while she screamed for him to stop. He'd plow her something fierce, split her from end to end; that's what he'd do, the skanky bitch.

He didn't get it, but she had to be something special, now didn't she? So skinny, so dirty, so nasty, like a crack whore, only everybody slept with her but him. How was she such the prize, huh? Well, he'd find out, that's what. His what and her what, his what and her what.

Charles couldn't decide if he was hiding or not. He was in the tree, the tree she'd have to pass to get back, but... should he jump out and grab her at the last moment, or should he confront her on the trail? No, no, he should wait. She was a witch of some sort, couldn't wouldn't do to have her too ready. So he just nonchalantly lazed about in the tree, chest burning with hate, a pleasant smile on his face. This was going to be good. Oh man, this was going to be good. It was hard not to whip out his what and play it through right there. But then, so what if he did? He was going to teach her good and proper, and it wouldn't none much matter if he did.

He started stroking his what through his pants. It felt good, it felt _real_ good. He could imagine it was her fingers stroking his what pretty easily, she was crying and whimpering but she didn't stop stroking his what. Yeah, that was good. That was _real_ good. Then he had it in his hand, stroking it long and hard; his pants were unbuttoned and unzipped, his hand warm around his what, and he closed his eyes--it wasn't his hand, it was hers, and she was breathing hot and wet on his what, teasing him, teasing him good. She wanted him, the tears and all that were over, and she wanted him; she wasn't skanky after all, the dirt wasn't caked in her ribs, that was just a show. Her breasts were full, and her flesh was solid, muscled, and she was hot and ready. He could feel her what quivering with anticipation. His what was building, building--

He opened his eyes and watched dumbfounded as Fey strode along the path, hardly sparing him a sideways glance, but with so much disgust in that one glance. He fumbled with his pants, zipped and buttoned them, and ran after her. Damn her for just walking past him, damn her for that glance, and damn her timing, 'cause his what was on the friggin edge. He ran after her with blind fury, tinged with lust and hate. She turned around as he neared her; she shrieked. The shriek was music to his ears, it boiled his blood to an ecstasy. She was going to be his.

He felt his jaw explode with love and urgency; his eyes rocketed against his skull and bounced back. That was okay. She could do whatever damage she wanted, she would still be his. She couldn't do anything to him. She--

wait...

Time slowed as he felt blow after blow concuss him, all over, like Fey was suddenly a thousand furies. That wasn't right. This wasn't right. Where was he going? Why couldn't he stop moving? It was like he was falling straight into her every blow. A fist like a rock struck his temple, and he was getting dizzy, like he was spinning, spinning, spinning--

Fey looked down at Charles, receding in the distance. She didn't understand what had just happened, she was fairly sure she didn't want to. He'd jumped out at her with madness in his aura, had run at her, and she'd swung a backhand at his jaw that tumbled him down the hill.

Fey was scared. Fey was really scared. She didn't want to have killed him, but she feared even more what might happen if she hadn't. She ran along the path, eyes darting left and right and up and down, looking to see if anyone else had just seen what happened. She nearly fell herself when she came to the wooden steps merged into the hillside, but she stabilized herself and managed to take them one at a time. Then she was on solid trail again, and she run full out, ran full out onto the street, down the street. She was crying again, crying because the pain and deliberation had lefther and now she was just a scared, innocent little girl. She just wanted to be a scared, innocent little girl, and the bad men would go away, the scratching in the night would just be a tree branch on the window, everything would just go away and leave her be.

Two blocks later, the cold air was rasping painfully against her throat, ringing in her ears. Her side had a cramp. Her feet hurt. Her head hurt. Everything hurt. Her eyes hurt from crying. She could imagine how puffy they were; she was glad she wasn't wearing mascara, or she'd really look a fright. Though she knew she probably looked pretty scary anyway. She hobbled on, hoping nobody would see her.

She turned left on Dana, and zig-zagged through the back streets of south Berkeley, heading for the new squat. Maybe, just maybe, it had running water. And even if it didn't, well, she could put up some wards or something. Burn the rest of the... no, she'd thrown the sage away. Damn it. She could do something. She could do a reading. Or something.

She wondered if Dee would still be there, sleeping things off. Probably, she decided. Probably.

The sun was just starting to drop down as she snuck into the squat; she listened, and heard an odd sound, a 'shik', repeated over and over. She closed her eyes and willed them to adjust to the darkness, then felt out for whatever might be in the house. She took a step forward, and a board creaked. The sound stopped.

Girl wondered if he'd imagined the creak of the floor board. It didn't happen again, or at least... he waited... he waited and strained to hear it, but he didn't hear anything else. He curled up a little tighter into the corner he'd claimed, and waited, holding his knife in one hand, and the stick he'd found to whittle in the other.

"Anyone there?" he asked.

"Girl?"

"Fey?"

Fey walked into his line of sight, curling around the door frame.

"Are you all right?" he asked. She didn't look all right. She looked like she'd been crying something fierce. "Did you find Jenn?"

Fey laughed. "I completely forgot I was looking for Jenn. No, I'm not all right. I'm not all right, but I think I will be. I'm just a little out of sorts right now. No, I'll be fine. I hope. I just need--I see you found a stick to carve."

Girl blushed, and hoped she couldn't see it in the darkness. After considering things for a while, he'd 'asked' the tree for a branch to carve, and then he'd noticed one that someone else had nearly broken off hanging just a few feet from the one he'd been trying for. Just to be safe, he'd thanked the tree before and after severing the branch. He didn't know what to think about it, but... he thought that was all right. If he wanted to believe in magic, then he'd give all that a try. It couldn't do him too much harm. Probably. Maybe. He smiled. "Yeah, I found a stick. And after all that, I don't know what I want to do with it. I'm just carving off the bark right now, rounding off the knots and stuff like that."

"You wouldn't happen to have any food stashed away?" asked Fey.

"No... no. Umm. I'm sure we can go spange some, though. You want company?"

"Yes and no. I've got a lot of thoughts bouncing around in my head, but having a warm body nearby would be good. Umm. Sure."

"All right, let me just pack up these shavings, and I'll be ready to go."

"What are you keeping the shavings for?"

"Not sure, yet. Magic, I think." Girl wondered why he was being so forthcoming with Fey, but shrugged it off. Probably because she seemed safe. Even if she did have Jenn's ear, well... right. She didn't any more, it appeared. Maybe nobody did, not even Jenn.

"Magic?"

"Yeah. I figured I might be good at something, myself. Worth a try, right?"

"Sure," said Fey. "You never know."

"How did you figure out you had talents?"

"You mean, like, magical talents?"

"Yeah."

"To be honest, well, I--I don't know. I'd always noticed strange things. For a long time, I thought everyone did. I didn't realize I was the only person that saw them. Then... well, then I told someone, I think my parents, and--well, first they took me to an eye doctor, but he said my eyes were fine. So after a lot of soul-searching, they took me to a shrink, who said I had a mild form of schizophrenia, and prescribed me some pills that made everything go away."

"That sounds scary. What does schizophrenia have to do with seeing auras?" Girl was confused.

"Schizophrenia has everything to do with seeing aurus. At least, sorta. It's all about hallucinations, visual and auditory, sometimes smell and touch."

"I thought schizophrenia was all about being different people trapped in the same body, sort of. Like, split personalities. Jekyll and Hyde."

"Well, they can go together, but... no, that's Multiple Personality Disorder. None of the shrinks ever accused me of that."

"Weird. Okay. So, go on, the pills made everything go away?"

"Yeah. Everything. Not just the auras, but the thoughts that went with the auras. All of a sudden, I was a plain little girl, just like all the other plain little girls. I didn't notice at first; I _forgot_ about everything, and was just a good little girl. And then... well, then I found a diary I'd been writing when I was seven, and all I could _talk_ about in the diary was the different colors people had around them, and how they seemed tied together. And all of a sudden, all the lines and colors made _sense_, and I stopped taking my pills."

"How old were you when you stopped taking your pills?"

"Like, eleven. I think. The scary thing is schizophrenia is a degenerative disease. So, like, here I am growing my powers and stuff like that, but at the same time I'm worrying that none of it's real. It's just all one big hallucination that's getting worse and worse."

"That's scary."

"Yeah. So, really, to answer your question, or your sorta-question, at least--I don't know. I still don't know if any of this is real or not. But it seems to work, from time to time. I suppose the same way horoscopes work. If they're general enough, then they work, and sometimes they're spot on, just because sometimes they are. But I _think_, I really, _really_ think, that I'm not making it all up. Or maybe that's just what I want to think. But there's not much of a difference, right? I have self-doubt from time to time, but overall it works. And if it works, it's magic, right?"

"I suppose. I was going down a path a lot like that, really. Or. I think I was. That weird-ass dream when Jenn pulled me out of the tree really threw me for a loop."

"I bet it did."

"So, umm. All that aside, you were hungry, right?"

"Right. Right, and you were just going to pack up, and I asked why you were packing up your shavings."

"Right. Magic. Right."

"Any idea what sort of magic you'd be doing with those shavings?"

"Not the foggiest. But I figured it would come to me if I needed it. Or something. It sounds like a lot of magic is letting things be."

"Well, magic's what you make of it, that's for sure. Unless someone else can make more of it than you, and shove that down your throat."

Girl's stomach rumbled with the thought of shoving something down his throat. He imagined fries, or a burger. Something bready would be nice, and something to wash it down with exquisite. He swept up the shavings with his hands and dumped them into a plastic baggie, which he then scrunched up into his backpack. He then shouldered his backpack, and walked over to the window, holding it open for Fey.

Fey scampered through the window, and Girl realised he wasn't going to fit through with his backpack on, so he deshouldered it, and dropped it through to Fey, who took it and put it on the ground. Then he clambered through the window himself, reshouldered his backpack, and started walking with Fey back to campus. As he walked, his forearm began to sting, and he remembered that it had been cut. Odd, that he could forget something like that. But he certainly had. And now... now, sweat was trickling on and around it, and every so often his movement would open it up just enough for a bead of salty sweat to drop itself in, and sting.

Damn it, that hurt. But he could live with that. Really. It was just a little thing. Just a little thing. Just a little thing, he repeated. Three times made it true, right? Right. Just a l--hmm. What did four times make something? Probably less true. He'd leave it at that.

They walked up King, past Alcatraz and Ashby, to Dwight, where they turned right. "So where should we head, really?" he asked.

Fey took a moment to reply. "Well, there's the park, where folks tend to be. There's sproul plaza, where folks are probably moving to for the drum circle, and then there's the ave, where other sorts of folks are going about their business. Think we've got a better chance winging food off of someone we know or someone we don't?"

"I think I'm more in the mood for someone we don't, at the moment."

"I'll second that."

They turned up Telegraph and looked for a good spot to sit.

"How about Raleigh's?" asked Fey. "Some salad with their creamy rich dressing would hit the spot right now."

"Yeah, that's probably our quickest bet. Nobody can finish those friggin' things. Well, maybe Ogre could."

"I've seen Jenn finish one."

Girl was surprised. "That girl? A full Raleigh's salad?"

"Cross my heart," said Fey, and repeated it more softly, "cross my heart."

"Whatcha thinking?"

She looked up at him. "Thinking I could really use some salad right now."

They stopped in front of Raleighs, and sat down on the sidewalk. Girl, on a whim, got out his baggie of wood chips, and spread them out before them. "No, I mean, what do you think happened to Jenn? You _were_ thinking about her right then, weren't you?"

Fey nodded. "Yeah, I suppose I was. I don't know. I'm worried for her, a bit. And worried for me, and worried for us."

"Us?"

"Well, who's going to take charge, and all that? Mother everyone?"

"Well, I don't think anybody needs to take charge. I mean, if Jenn's really gone, then perhaps that's for the best. It's not like we _need_ someone in charge. We can be a functioning anarchy, or oligarchy, or whatever we happen to be at any given time. It's all about manifestation, right? What we need, will be."

"I guess."

"And if you really need someone to mother us all, well, you're probably next in line."

"Me!?" Fey squealed. "I couldn't! I don't! I--"

"Well, okay, maybe not you. You seem like you could, though. People listen to you, at least when you're not mumbling and stuff. And if you actually _care_, then that's a good start, right?"

"What about you? Haven't you always wanted to be a mother?"

"Not really. If I were a girl, I doubt I'd ever sleep with a guy, let alone get pregnant. That's scary stuff. I... I don't know. It's complicated."

"Yeah, it's all complicated."

Girl looked down at his woodchips and saw a salad had manifested itself in a large plastic container. It looked picked at, but most of it was there. He wondered what else the people had ordered that they'd left that much of the salad. He picked up the salad and offered it to Fey, who looked it and him over, looked around, and then accepted it from him. She set it on the ground and opened it, and picked at it with the plastic fork that had been in it.

"Aren't you going to have any?"

"I'll wait. You never look like you've eaten enough."

"And you do? You're, what, eighty pounds?"

"At least my ribs aren't sticking out."

"Yeah, well... yeah, okay. Come on, split it with me. I'm hungry, but I don't know how much of an appetite I have."

Girl saw something dark flash across her face, and he decided not to argue with her. He took a fork out of his backpack and helped himself to the salad. It tasted really good; felt really good going down. Before he knew it, they'd finished the salad. He wasn't sure if he was full, so he asked Fey. "How are you doing?"

"Oh, I could probably eat another. But I don't need to."

"Yeah, same."

"Well, if we don't need to, why don't we see what's up at the drum circle?"

"Sounds good." Girl, out of some sudden chivalraic urge, offered his arm to Fey, who took it hesitantly. They walked arm in arm up Telegraph, and the sound of drumming slowly filled the sky.

Barbie looked up from her drumming to see Girl escorting Fey into the circle. That was odd. That tramp would sleep with anybody, wouldn't she!? Damn. And here Barbie was thinking that Fey was purely gay, not bi. She missed a beat, but nobody appeared to notice. Her heart skipped a beat, and she wondered at it. Maybe I should have--no, no, this is good. He can keep being my little brother, she decided. She hoped. She didn't want to think about what she'd been about to think about. Shaking her head, she picked up another beat, trying to match her drumming and her heart.

"Anything wrong?" asked Dee.

Barbie shook her head. "Any clue how long those two have been sleeping together?" she asked, nodding her chin towards Girl and Fey.

"What makes you think they're sleeping together?"

"Well, they look it, don't they?"

Dee shrugged. "Couldn't say. I wouldn't have thought so. Anyway, isn't Fey straight gay? She's sworn up and down she wouldn't sleep with a guy."

Barbie shrugged. "Things change, huh?"

Dee nodded. "Things change, things always change. The more they stay the same, huh?"

"What's that?"

"The more things change, the more they stay the same."

"I suppose. That sounds like a quote."

"Yeah, it is."

"Where from?"

"Couldn't say, really. I never thought to wonder. It's just one of those things that people say."

"It's French in origin," said Nietzsche.

Barbie turned to him. "You don't know that," she said.

"Sure I do. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose," said Nietzsche. "French. It transliterates more to 'The more that changes, the more it is all the same.' But 'The more things change, the more they stay the same' rolls off the tongue more easily in English. Or something like that."

"Just because you can say it in French doesn't mean it _is_ French," argued Barbie.

"I suppose not. But I'm fairly sure it is anyway."

"Any thoughts, Dee?"

Dee shrugged. "I think I've heard it both ways, but I wouldn't know one from the other. Eh, who cares anyway? Since when do _you_ care, Nietzsche? Don't you just want to burn it to the ground?"

Nietzsche shrugged. He didn't really care. Or... no, he did. He wanted to be right. He didn't care much more than that, though. He stood up and wandered vaguely north, wanting to lose himself in his thoughts. Ogre stood up and followed him. They walked under Sather Gate, and Nietzsche paused over Strawberry Creek, watching the trickle of poison water flow underneath. Talking with Spot had really thrown him for a loop, and he was still somewhat dizzy from that. He wanted a drink, he wanted to make all the thoughts go away... but really, what was he running away from? "What am I running away from, Ogre?"

Ogre looked at him incredulously. "What mean run away from? You not running. You standing."

"No, I mean, really, what am I afraid of?"

"Ogre not know. Why you afraid?"

"Well, I've just been thinking, you know? What're all these self-destructive tendencies _for_, you know? I mean, sure, if it feels good, fine. But if I'm past all that, then why wallow in it, right?"

Ogre was silent.

"I think I'm just worried everyone's going to think I was a poser this whole time."

"So?"

"So. So totally right. Maybe I am a poser. Maybe I'm not. But I should at least allow myself to be _me_, right? Am I right? Yeah. Yeah, I'm right. And me, right now, me wants a bottle of Jack." He felt like a weight had been lifted from him. He didn't _have_ to drink, he _wanted_ to. And he could deal with the rest of whatever later. Nietsche laughed.

"Ogre not get joke."

"That's okay, Ogre. The jokes on me. But I think I'm just going to get pleasantly fucking drunk, and ignore the whole trying to erase my mind thing. I mean, what's wrong with having some fun, right? No point in doing everything to such excess that the only thing I remember is moping about."

"Are you okay, Neetch?"

"FUck if I know, but right now I don't care, and that's what's important."

"Not caring is important?"

"To live, it is. To love. Ah, let's leave love out of this. Living is important, Ogre. Never forget that. Dying is important to, but it's the same thing as living. Every day, we die a bit; we can only die as much as we've lived, else we just stop existing. But dying isn't the cessation of existence. Dying is living. We should all die to the best of our abilities, and no further. We should all try, we should never stop trying, but... you know, if we don't make it? So what?"

"Ogre not get at all. What Neetchie saying?"

"Nothing and everything, my friend. I haven't a fucking clue if I'm making any sense even to myself. But come on, let's get a bottle of drink. I know just the place."

Jenn listened to them go and watched the water trickle past her feet. She wondered why nobody ever looked down. Or perhaps they only saw what they wanted to. They saw the water and marveled at it, this creek in the middle of an urban center. They didn't stop to think how dirty, how human-filthy and diseased the water had to be. And they certainly didn't notice one little girl blending into the side of the creek, because what would one little girl be doing there?

What _was_ one little girl doing there? She was confused. The past few hours... or longer, she couldn't tell... time had been a blur. She was looking for Father Time. But why, or what? Or... she didn't know. She didn't know a thing. She vaguely remembered loping off into the forest after wrestling with Girl, but why would she wrestle with Girl? She vaguely remembered a chipmunk, and talking with Fey... or was that a dream? She'd been dreaming a lot, today. She was tired of dreaming.

She looked up from the water and saw across from her a reflection that wasn't her reflection. At least, not quite. It looked like her, only older, ageless, and far more feminine than she'd ever been. Actually, it didn't look like her at all. She peered harder through the coming darkness, but what should have been perfectly clear just ten feet away was a blur. She couldn't see it, just right. She...

"Now you know what it is to be climbed," said Mother Nature.

"Was _that_ what that was?" Suddenly, the images, the memories, were clearer. She had no clue why she'd done what she'd done for the last many hours, but she at least knew... She'd _attacked_ Girl! Jenn wondered what he must think of that. She wondered if anyone else had seen. She wondered--she wondered what Fey was feeling, to have killed Charles. She wondered if Fey even knew she'd killed Charles. Jenn knew that Fey's mind had been not exactly coherent when it had happened. Things had been playing around with her. _She_ had been playing around with her, a bit. What had all that been? "Was that _all_ that that was? Why _me_?"

"Why you? Why that tree? Why not?" She was talking to a tree, she noticed. She could still see Mother Nature, just barely make her out, in the folds of the tree across the bank from her. She could feel the tree's voice swaying through her mind. "Yes, there was more. For your peace of mind, there was more. But certainly that was enough?"

"Enough? Come on, you certainly don't give psychotic episodes to _everyone_ that climbs a tree. So come on, really, what was up with that?"

But the tree was silent to her pleas. Finally, she walked up the creek to a point where it was easier to ascend, and climbed up the bank. She was filthy. She was really filthy, and she was dying for a drink. She scampered after Ogre and Nietzsche, who were walking slowly enough. Nietzsche was singing a bawdy song about some sailor named Barnacle Bill, Ogre joining in sporadically for the chorus.

"Buy a lady a drink?" she called out after them.

They both turned to gawk at her. "Where've you been hiding all day?" asked Nietzsche.

"Look like sewer," said Ogre.

Jenn shrugged. "You _might_ believe me if I told you, but I'm unlikely to say a word of it without being stone drunk. And even then I'm fairly unlikely. But you're welcome to try." She winked mischeviously.

"Well, the lass has set us a challenge, then," said Nietzsche.

Ogre suddenly remembered the dryad, and what he'd been set to do. "You two go ahead," he said. "Me gotta find somebody."

Nietzsche looked him up and down. "You sure, big buddy? We're off to get this fair lass blind drunk. That's not an occasion to be missed."

"Ogre sure. Ogre got to find... Ogre sure."

Nietzsche shrugged. "Fare thee well, then, my fairy friend."

Jenn glanced at Nietzsche and Ogre, oddly, then asked, "How goes your trip, Ogre?"

"Ogre down for while, think. Ogre got beat up by dryad. And ogre not see any fairies. But it was good. Ogre need to finish trip, still."

Jenn looked at him with concern. "What do you mean by 'finish', Ogre?"

"Nothing big. Or. Nothing... er... Important, but not important. Ogre find youse guys, okay? Not worry 'bout Ogre."

Nietzsche shrugged. "An Ogre's got to do what an Ogre's got to do," he said.

Ogre smiled. He liked the new Nietzsche. He was funny. But he had to find the dryad, and give her an answer. And then he had to find Spot. And then... Well, then, ideally, he would find George, because that would really make the day complete. And he figured he'd find George if he found Spot, because George was Spot's figment, after all. At least, sorta.

Ogre loped past the Valley Life Sciences Building, past Dwinelle and Wheeler, and turned South just as he was passing the Campanile. Crossing the bridge, he walked up to the status of the kneeling, grinning football player, and followed his gaze into the bushes. He walked to the bushes, and there was the dryad, just as she'd been the infinity of time ago that morning had been. "All your days are belong to us," he said.

She smiled at him.

"Maybe Ogre not come down yet," he said to himself.

"Maybe not," the dryad agreed. "Have you come with an answer?"

"Yeah," said Ogre. "Ogre have answer."

"Then whisper it in my ear," she beckoned.

Ogre tip-toed up to the the dryad, and whispered in her ear. The dryad giggled. Ogre stepped back and regarded her. "That right answer?" he asked.

"If you think it is, it is," she said.

He heard Spot walking up behind him. How he knew it was Spot, he couldn't say, but... no, it just had to be him. Plus he was pretty quiet; Spot was pretty quiet, walking around. He was heard when he wanted to be, and not when he didn't.

"How went the quest?" asked Spot.

"Ogre not know."

"Oh?"

"Ogre come up with answer, but dryad not say if answer right or not."

"What _did_ she say?"

"She say if Ogre think it right, it right."

"And what does Ogre think?"

"Ogre think it right 'til she say that. Ogre wanted confirmation."

"Well, why don't you tell me, and then we'll see, huh? Perhaps I can convince you one way or the other, and then you'll know for sure."

"Spot sure Ogre can say?"

"I won't tell a soul," said Spot.

Ogre nodded. "Okay. All your day are belong to us. It means, well... it hard to say, now, out loud to you. It easy to whisper in dryad's ear. Ogre feel stupider than stupid." He pouted.

"Now, now. Nobody here thinks you're stupid. Silly, perhaps, but you do that on purpose. So... out with it." Spot smiled encouragingly.

"No, now it sounds like stupid acid thought. I don't want to say it. It dumb."

"All right, then. Perhaps you were wrong, then. But not _every_ acid thought is dumb, even if it seems like it."

"Okay, it tricky. Because it not say who you and us is. So it could work any number of ways."

Spot nodded. "That was certainly part of it. So what did you latch on to?"

"You is us, and us is things we don't understand. We spend all our time trying to figure out things we don't understand."

"And how do you feel about that answer?" asked Spot.

"I don't know. I feel like it's not much of an answer."

"They never are," said Spot. "Unless they're wrong." He laughed. Ogre had a look of indignant consternation on his face. "No, give me a chance," he said. "Look. The import of the answer is to you, and you alone. So really, now that you've spent all day on the question, spend at least a little time considering your answer. How do you _feel_ about your answer. And I don't mean whether it's right or not, or whether it says anything. It certainly says _something_. So what does it say to you? Run with it a moment."

Ogre was silent.

Spot waited patiently.

"Ogre think too much time wasted on figuring things out. Figuring things out good, but more important to live?"

"Are you sure living isn't just figuring things out?" tested Spot.

"No. But Ogre not care. Neetchie happier now, Ogre be happy too."

Spot laughed. "Happiness is important, Ogre. I hope it lasts you a while."

"Ogre hope, too. Spot not see George, huh?"

"No, I haven't seen the old rascal. I hope he's all right."

"He's _your_ figment," said Ogre.

"No, I don't think he is. Or I don't think he's just mine," said Spot.

"What you mean?"

"Well, I've been thinking on it a lot. This has been my puzzle, the way you've had yours. Sometimes things overlap--I've been very happy, today, figuring things out. And I think, from snippets here and there, and some uneducated guesswork... I think old George is none other than Father Time himself."

Ogre looked at Spot incredulously. "Spot do acid too?"

"Nope, nothing more than my contact high from you and Fey and Jenn."

"Fey and Jenn do acid?"

"No, not that. But they've all been floating around in mental spaces, today. Doy ou believe in magic, Ogre?"

"Of course," replied Ogre.

"What do you mean by 'of course'?"

"Well... I mean... uhh... why not? There's nothing that says it doesn't exist, so why wouldn't it exist, right?"

"Do you believe in God?"

"Kinda. I believe in magic more, though. But God could be magic, and then it's all the same. Stuff we don't know, right? Ogre believe in stuff we don't know."

"Well, then." Spot paused, wondering how to phrase what he was going to say, wondering what exactly he'd been meaning to say. "A lot of magic has been going around, today. I don't know what, exactly. But stuff. A lot of stuff people don't understand has been happening today. But I've been on the outskirts of it all, watching it happen, putting the pieces together. And while I can't say I _understand_ any of it in the greater scheme of things, it all makes some sort of sense when put together in little bits."

"Ogre lost."

"Yeah, I think I lost me, too. That's okay."

"But you're saying George is Father Time?"

"Well, see, like he was the idea of Father Time."

"How you mean?"

"Well, you know how Fey didn't see any souls in him, right?"

"Sure."

"Well, so, right. We pretty much agreed that meant he didn't exist, right? Especially after he pulled that vanishing act?"

"Sure."

"And we've all been feeling time a little differently today, right?"

"Ogre not understand."

"Everyone, and I mean, yes, even me: everyone's been going through a bit of ennui today."

"On whee?"

"Everybody's been a bit more listless, on edge, wondering about big philosophical things, stuff like that."

"Even you?"

"Even me."

"What about your novel?"

"Well, to be honest, your questions about it earlier made me realize I really didn't have as much of it as I'd thought. I _couldn't_ put it down to paper, any of it. I had ideas, but the didn't go together. That's part of _why_ I've kept to the outskirts of everything today. Though I suppose I tend to keep to the outskirts of everything most days. But no, that's not true. Usually, if I'm gone, I'm off by myself. Today, I really did stick around, the unseen observer. And I think I made good progress, if not with my novel, then with my understanding of myself."

"And time?"

"Well, it sounds good, doesn't it?"

"I suppose. I suppose it sounds good."

"And that's what matters," shouted Spot. "That's what matters! Case closed, let's move on."

Ogre nodded, a small smile snaking its way up his lips.

And high above, on the Campanile, George watched the various groups move to and fro. He didn't really have any understanding of what was going on, himself, but he had the note he'd found in his pocket, and he was going to persevere. He'd learned a lot today, especially after a long talk with something calling itself Mother Nature. Perhaps Spot, and she, were right, and he was some sort of figment named Father Time. He apparently had a year to himself before his memory would disappear again, and he had a lot to learn. He imagined he'd had a lot of ennui built up, himself, to set himself back at square one instead of piling himself up with reminders, but the car had helped set that free. He'd exploded, and released the poisons, and other people had worked them out for him. Perhaps there were no _real_ answers, but perhaps there didn't need to be.