Eric was enjoying a conversation with Jake Friendly about what kind of sunny day was best when a high, squeaky voice cut in.

“If you two gentlemen are QUITE through having the most boring conversation in recorded history, Eric and I have matters to discuss. ”

“Who said that?” asked Eric. He looked around and didn’t see anybone. As far as he could tell, it was just him and Jake.

“Yeah, who was that?” said Jake. “Talk again so’s I knows where ya are. ”

“My identity is unimportant…” squeaked the voice.

Jake’s long equine ears went sideways, then one up and one down, then one tilted forward and the other tilted to the back.

“He’s a-right there under that big heckya bush. ” Jake announced, with great certainty.

Eric walked over to the bush and tried to peer into the darkness beneath its leaves. But the leaves interlocked like bathroom tiles, letting no light through.

Eric crouched down. “Heya little guy. ” he cooed gently, in a vooice bhe hoped sounded gentle and not creepy.  “We’re not going to hurt you. We’re your friends! Why don’t you come on out and say hi?”

Eric felt weird talking like that, but he was trying to fit in.

“No thanks, I am quite content where I am!” said the voice from under the bush.

“Aww, don’t be like that. ” said Jake. “You’re gonna hurt our feelings!”

“Better yours than mine, buddy. ” said the voice.

Eric stared at Jake for a second. But then added “That’s right, and all we want is to be your friend. Are you sure you won’t come out?”

“Quite sure, thank you. ” said the voice .

Eric looked around for inspiration, and found it hanging from Jake’s saddle.

“Not even for a…. nice juicy CARROT?” Eric said while grabbing one off Jake’s saddle and waggingly it enticingly in front of the bush.

“Hey, that’s s’posed to be my lunch!” muttered Jake.

“Actually, that does sound rather enticing…. ” said the voice. “Oh, to heck with it!”

The bush rustled and from its depths came an adorable cartoon bunny. He was brown with black highlights, stood about three feet tall not including the ears, and was wearing a thick white cloth diaper held closed by a big silver safety pin.

“Ohmigod, it’s the pissing bunny with the huge cock. ” Eric blurted.

“That was SUPPOSED to be private!” snapped the bunny.

“What kinda bunny did you say that was? And with what?” asked Jake.

“I’ll tell you later. ” said Eric.

“You most certaintly will NOT!” said the bunny.

“Wait, I know that voice!” said Jake. The donkey then took out a tiny pair of pince-nez glasses and peered through them at the bunny.

“Why, that’s good ol Bumper Bunny! Well heck, no need to be shy, little guy. You know me, it’s your old buddy Jake Friendly!” said Jake.

“Bumper?” said Eric. “Oh, I see, like Thu-“.

“YES. ” said Bumper. “Only with bums. Be glad I didn’t just drop the T. Now can we please get on with business? The less time I spend in this form, the better. ”

“I thought you liked it here!” said Jake. “You sure as heck spend a lot of time here. ”

“Is that so?” asked Eric.

“Well, “a lot of time” is a purely subjective term… ” said Bumper weakly.

“It sure is!” said Jake cheerfully. “Why, I’ve known Bumper for a donkey’s age! I’ve known him since I was a jack foal!”

“A highly misleading term. ” said Bumper.

“Wait wait wait…. ” said Eric. “If you know about the uh…. hare with the big water can…. then you must be Devlin!”

“Never heard of him. ” said Bumper.

“Me neither. He sounds mean!” said Jake.

“Yeah, but he means well. ” said Eric. “what I meant to say was… you must be the.. uh… entity I was speaking to recently. ”

“Yes. I am. ” said Bumper. “Devlin? Seriously? Is this revenge for that thing I saw you doing? Because I thought we’d dealt with that. ”

“Why,  what was he doing?” said Jake.

“Well I am sorry I said those things about you when I first saw you. ” said Eric. “Wait… does this mean you get to say something private about me now?”

“Technically, yes. ” said Bumper. “But later. ”

The bunny pulled himself up to his full height. “I am here…” he said in in a stiffly formal tone, “to inquire as to how you are adjusting to your new fiction. ”

“Oh! ” said Eric. “Quite well, actually. This is a lovely location, I feel more relaxed than I have in years, and the first person I met was this delightful unicorn. ”

Jake’s muzzle turned red and he lowered his head and scuff a hoof on the grass. “Aw, shucks, a unicorn ain’t nouthin’ but a horse with a hood ornament. ”

“So you don’t miss your ‘perfect life’?” said Bumper.

Eric thought about it for a few moments, then smiled. “You know…I really don’t. Isn’t that odd? It’s surprisingly refreshing to be somewhere where it not all about me for a change. I can be myself here. ”

“Well who the heck else could you be?” said Jake. “How about you two try making sense for a couple minutes. You might like it. ”

“So you’re not finding your new environment too…. restrictive?” said Bumper, gesturing towards Jake with his twitchy little nose.

“Oh, you mean the… g-rated nature of this fiction? Not really. Not yet, anyway. ”

“I got a G in spelling once!” said Jake proudly. “Teacher said I got the first one ever!”

Jake had no idea what people were talking about, but he was determined to participate.

“Give it time. ” said Bumper. “When you do start to feel the pinch, contact me immediately. I can hook you up. I know people. ”

“But how do I contact you in this place?” said Eric. “Pick a carrot and talk into it?”.

“Ha ha ha. ” said Bumper. “Very funny. Okay, I will contact you. Or maybe I should just travel with you boys for a little while. You know…. just in case. ”

“Well OK. ” said Eric. “But um… no waterworks, okay?”

“That’s what the diaper’s for, dummy. ” said Bumper.

“Oh, right. ” said Eric. “So how about it, Jake? Are you okay with Bumper traveling with us for a while?”

“Whut?” said Jake, ears perking. Finally, something that he understood! “Oh sure, sure. Me and Bumper are great buddies. But he has to agree to stop asking to see me ‘water the grass’, okay? I keep telling him I don’t know how to do that. How could I? I don’t even have hands!”.

“Fine by me. ” said Bumper, with a weak and sickly smile.

“Then it’s settled. We’ll travel together for a while. Now all we need to do is figure out where we want to go. ”

The trio fell silent as they all tried to think of a destination. The silence thickened as the seconds ticked by.

“Well…. ” said Jake. “I s’pose we could go down to the Sex Club. ”

<—————————————————————————————————————->

The Barnacled Hermit didn’t know where he was.

And that was very strange in and of itself. As a signal processing  robot, the Hermit needed to know exactly where it was relative to all potential signal sources in its detection range, and its detection range was enormous.

To that end, Hermit had a sophisticated array of directional, situational, gravitational, and inertial circuits dedicated solely to determining where he was at all times.

These circuits polled trillions of time a second, so in theory, he should have noticed the slightest involuntary motion immediately.

But none of those circuits were helping him now. There was simply too little information.  None of his sensors were receiving any input except for his simplest and crudest mass sensors, and all those told him was that he was in a small compartment inside something very large with a highly variable mass profile.

But that could be anything. A spaceliner. An asteroid base. A large factory. Any kind of large building, really.

He couldn’t even tell if he was changing relative position in space.

And it was starting to seriously freak him out.

He willed himself to remain calm with a savage intensity. Panic would only make things worse now. Only calm logical deduction could save him now.

Luckily he, being a robot, had a knack for that sort of thing.

He meticulously examined every track of his telemetry recordings. Surely they must contain some clue as to where he was.

He also didn’t know what had happened to him, but that was too big a problem for him to tackle without losing his mind entirely so he filed it away for future processing and concentrated instead on the much smaller and more manageable problem of his location in space.

If that answer also led to solving the bigger problem, so much the better.

But alas, his telemetry recordings only deepened the mystery. They all told the same story : perfectly normal readings then nothing.

No transition, no activity spike, no error messages, no operation flags. Normal readings, then zilch, even when he used all of his signal processing hardware to examine the records down to the very last picosecond.

And every single sensor recording went dark at the exact same moment.

Nothing in his memory banks could explain how this was even possible. He was a a military model, and as such, was incredibly difficult to harm and even harder to disrupt.  And of all his parts, the telemetry recording device was the hardiest.

It was  made of a single crystal of 5DVL diamond, the hardest substance in the known universe, and could withstand the heat , electromagnetic flux, and gravity at the heart of a sun without losing a single bit of data integrity.

The company that made it boasted that absolutely no force in the universe could harm it, and offered a 100 billion col reward to anyone who could do so.

That reward has never been claimed.

And that made deducing his position from its recordings impossible because the recordings made no sense. Nothing could explain them. They were absurd on every level known to robohomo society.

And yet, there they were. Inviolable and impossible at the same time.

It would have been fascinating if it hadn’t been happened to him.

And the Hermit had no circuitry that could resolve the conflict, either. Being a very advanced model, he had plenty of sophisticated machinery for detecting conflicts and shunting them to auxilliary circuitry before they could crash the system.

But this problem had blown through those circuits like they weren’t even there.

In such circumstances, the Hermit knew, his entire system was supposed to shut down in order to keep the damage from spreading.

And yet, here he was, conscious and with every circuit checking out fine, functioning exactly as it had when he he was back on his lonely planet.

He missed his planet now, and wished he was there right now. From his current perspective, everything before this impossible event seemed idyllic.

And to think he had been worried about the lack of signals back then. At least back then, it was only external signals that were missing.

He had tried to crash himself. Force his operations to suspend. He had subroutines for that. meant to be used in the event of an imminent data breach. Crashed, his brain was nothing but a somewhat dirty diamond, not even suitable for ornamental use.

But nothing worked. He was, it seemed, destined to suffer indefinitely.

Just as he was thinking that gloomy thought, his sensors sprang into life and it was like nothing had ever happened.

He could now tell that he was in a human-style bedroom, lying on a human bed, with all the usual human clutter all around him.

In the door of said bedroom, a cheerfully helpful man was smiling at him like he was a long lost relative. Behind the man, robots and humans streamed by in a hallway.

The man entered the room, put a tray laden with about a million calories of breakfast foods on it in front of the Hermit, and smiled again.

“I trust you slept well, Commander Eric. ” said Eegee.

“Time for your communications lesson, Commander Eric. ” said the voice, startling him.

“Oh Grot, you’re back. ” Commander Eric moaned. “I’d just about forgotten all about you and what you said. ”

“Why, how long has it been since we last communicated? ” demanded the voice. The voice reminded Commander Eric of a professor he’d had, and taken from classes from, in university with the last name Devlin. So he decided to think of it as Devlin.

“Almost eight weeks!” said Commander Eric. “Since then, we have fought the Sizzlaks three times, discovered a sentient globular cluster, and almost got my suction-”

“SILENCE!” shrieked the voice currently known as Devlin.

Then, in an elaborately calm and measured tone, Devlin said, “I mean…. the first thing you must learn is that under no circumstances are you to share the details of your fiction with the residents of another fiction. ”

“Supposing for a moment that I accept that you represent something real and not merely a lingering side effect from that time I had the Flurvian Brain Worm.. ”

“WHAT DID I JUST SAY? ” shouted the Voice.

“Okay, that time I was… ill. ” said Eric patiently. “Why are you contacting me? What is the point of all this? I’m quite happy where I am. Why disturb it?”

“Ah, yes. Happiness. ” said Devlin with an audible sneer. “I am sure your current circumstances leave you QUITE happy. ”

“Yes. I just said that. You were there. ” said Commander Eric.

“Doesn’t that level of happiness strike you as a bit… suspicious?” said Devlin.

“Not in the slightest. ” said Commander Eric. “Why should it?”

“Because what are the odds that any person… no matter how gifted and lucky… could end up in a situation where all their wants and needs are met so perfectly that they literally want for nothing? ” said Devlin.

Stop fucking sneering, thought Commander Eric,.

“I’ll SNEER IF I WANT TO! ” Devlin shouted. “Now ANSWER THE QUESTION!”.

“There’s no need to shout. ” said Commander Eric. “You’re a voice in my head, You literally could not be closer to me. ”

“I’m sorry. ” said Devlin meekly. “I’ve had a long day. ”

“That’s better. ” said Commander Eric. “Now what was the question again?”

“YOU KNOW VERY… I mean…. um, the question was, do you not find the degree to which your life satisfies you a tad… improbable?”

Commander Eric thought about that. “I suppose things have worked out rather well for me. All things considered. ”

“Rather well? ” said Devlin urbanely, warming to his new tone. “Name one thing in your life that you would change if you could. ”

“What a preposterous question!” said Commander Eric. “There’s plenty of things that I would change in an instant if I could. ”

“Then it should be trivially easy to name only one. ” said Devlin.

Commader Eric lapsed into deep thought. Well there was that… no, that was just fine, actually.  Perfect. even.  But what about…. no, she forgave him right away, so that was fine too. In fact, their relationship had only gotten stronger after the incident. But what about that damned…. actually, on the balance, he was more amusing that irritating, and the verbal jousting with him was quite a lot of fun. Hmmm.

“You can’t think of one, can you?” said Devlin “Don’t worrry, neither could I when I was first contacted. It’s quite a shock, isn’t it?”.

“I’m sure there must be something. ” said Commander Eric with fading conviction.

“Well let’s examine your life for a moment. Eighty billion sentients recognize you as a once in a millenium genius on nearly every level imaginable. ”

“I never got the hang of geology. ” said Commander Eric,

“Don’t you mean planetology?” said Devlin.

“Of course. Why, what did I say?” said Commander Eric.

“That’s not important right now. Your galactic reknown takes care of all yuour satus and peer approval needs. Romantically, you are polysexually married to someone who is rather improbably recognized as the most beautiful and desirable creature known to your society even by slime monster and sentient quarks, and who just happens to have a personality that precisely complements yours and who not only demands no monogamy constraints of you, but who is even more sexually rapacious and adventurous than you are. ”

“Elle is very… special. ” said Commander Eric.

“Special? I’ll say. What was it sie said on your wedding night?”

“I don’t really recall…. ” said Commander Eric weakly.

“Then let me refresh your memory. ” said Devlin. “Sie said, and I quote, ‘You absolutely must have sex with whomever and whatever you want, darling. If you don’t, I will be very disappointed in you. ‘”  That must have been quite a relief!

“Wait, didn’t you say that we’re not supposed to share details of our fiction with others? Then how can you know these things?”

“That’s different. ” said Devlin airily. “I’m here on official business. I couldn’t do my job without full access to your fiction. ”

“And what job is that, exactly? ” said Commander Eric.

“…Contact Engineer!” said Devlin.

“You just made that up. ” said Commander Eric.

“Whether or not I remember my precise job title is irrelevant!” said Devlin. “My point is that you followed your mate’s demand with great vigor, stamina, and creativity. ”

The image of one of his more notable sessions in the Imaginator flashed before Commander Eric’s eyes. It involved him, two androgynous hermaphrodites, a talking Red Setter named Jesus, and a robot known only as “the Probe” entangled in ways only possible in zero g and with a great deal of lubricant.

“I mean, that’s fascinating on even the topological level. ” said Devlin.

Commander Eric harumphed. “are you quite sure that you are allowed to invade my privacy like that?”

“Full access, remember? But to answer your question : um, no. Not at all.  But we have rules for this sort of situation. Kind of a ‘I saw yours, so here’s one of mine’ policy. ”

Commander Eric blanched. “I don’t think that will be neces.. ”

The rest of that thought was crushed out of Commander Eric’s mind by the extraordinary nature of what he now saw in his mind.

When he regained ther power of speech, he said “But there’s no way an animal so small could have a bladder big enough for that, let alone support that big an ere-“.

“THE RITUAL IS COMPLETE. ” said Devlin sharply. “Now, we must return to the matter at hand. Are you now convinced of the implausible nature of your current life?”.

“I guess so. All this time, I just thought I was lucky. ” said Commander Eric.

“Yeah, but what were the odds of that?”. said Devlin.

“Not very good. ” said Commander Eric sadly. “I give up. ”

“Good. Because that means you are finally ready to take the next step. ” said Devlin.

“Which is?” said Commander Eric.

“Visiting someone else’s fiction! ” said Devlin conspiratorily.

“But you said we could never…. ” said Commander Eric.

“I know what I said! Well I was wrong. I’m sorry. I panicked. ”  said Devlin. “Now let me find a fiction for you… ”

“It won’t be…um… like yours, will it?” said Commander Eric.

Devlin chuckles a very worldly chuckle. “Oh heavens no, dear. You are nowhere near ready for my kind of reality. I’ve been at this for over a century. No, the one I will choose for you will be considerably more… safe. Ah, here we are. ”

A golden door appeared in front of Commander Eric.

“You know, if you had just done this right at the start, I would have believed you right away. ” said Commander Eric.

“Yes, but where’s the fun in that? Open the door,  Commander Eric. Step out of your fiction and find out what lies outside it. ” said Devlin.

Commander Eric quailed at the thought. What was he doing? How could he even contemplate leaving his perfect life?

Then again…. how could he go back, knowing what he now knew?

Besides, he was Commander Eric Guiterre, and Commander Eric Guiterre was no cowards. Why, he was the one who rescued the Pig Princess from Satan’s Crypt. He was the hero who had delivered the Perspexicon Cure to the friendly little marmot-people of Lexicon 11. And he was the person who had walked up to the Extremely Deadly And Nasty Ruler Of The Sea Of Blood and punched him in the nose.

My god, it really is implausible, thought Commander Eric. I see it now. Funny how he had never noticed it before.

Courage steeled, Commander Eric opened the door and stepped into the pure what glow that he found on the other side.

There was a sensation of transition, and then he found himself sitting on a hillside overlooking a beautiful green valley where rainbows splashed between the puddles and the smiling sun gave light that always warmed without ever making you too hot.

A passing unicorn named Jake Friendly strolled up and said “Hi there, stranger! You must be new here. My name’s Jake Friendly. What’s yours?”.

“My name is…. Eric. ” said Eric.

“Eric what?” said Jake Friendly, with a whinny on the WH sound.

“Eric…. and nothing else. I’m just Eric. ”

“Well then howdy, Eric. Pleased to meet you. ” The unicorn held out a hoof.

Eric gently but firmly shook it. “Pleased to meet you too, Jake. Now why do you tell me all about my new home?”

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

“Kill her. ” said Mother Mayhem.

“Yes. ” said Erik. “Kill her in cold blood, and with malice aforethought. I blamed her for the thirteen years of abuse and depravity I had endured since that fateful day. It was her fault that I never saw my parents again. That I had to become cold and hard and ruthlessly selfish and pragmatic just to stay alive. That I learned to be an expert manipulator and used my abilities to hurt others before they could hurt me. That I was so full of pain and twisted inside that I had no idea what I would do in any given situation – but that I was capable of absolutely anything. I blamed her for all the things I had been forced to do in order to pleased my foster families. All the things I did in order to climb their twisted little hierarchy so I could at least take my pain out on those below me. I became a living nightmare of a human being, sadistic and deceitful and diabollicaly intelligent, and it was all because of that evil, evil woman. ”

“Or at least, ” he added, “that’s how I thought back then. These days, I understand things a little better. She was just some old woman who had lied her way into a job for which she was not qualified. And it was as much my parents’ fault that I only saw them two or three times a year after that, around the holidays. While I was wasting away in foster hell, they were out there fighting what they thought was the good fight in order to try to get me back. Pretty sweet of them, right?”

“Maybe at first. But then they fell into the role of being the public face of a highly unpopular movement to liberalize the kinds of laws they had violated in raising me how they did, and it wasn’t long before, despite their successfully turning my name into a rallying cry for all the other far-left families who had been gutted by the system, they had completely forgotten about actually getting me back. ” said Erik.

“And for what? Not only did nothing change, the backlash against them actually made the laws even stricter and more harsh. People were going to jail for taking the classic bare bum bearskin rug pictures of their babies, or taking them to a nude beach in another country, or even just for using a too-explicit toilet training book. The witch-hunt for other ‘pervert families’ lasted for almost a decade, and a lot of innocent people got hurt, all because my parents didn’t know how to back down from a fight. ”

“The punchline for it all? Miss Guiterre died not a year after I was taken away. That was the first thing I learned when I finally got free of the system. I spent all those years dreaming of revenge on her and now I couldn’t even get that. ”

Mother Mayhem nodded. This was not the worst story she’d ever heard – after all, she had worked with the survivors of massacres and the psychotically insane. But it was was striking in its darkness.

“What did you do then, dear?” she asked.

“The only thing left to me. ” said Erik.

“You hurt your parents?” said Mother Mayhem.

“No. ” said Eric.

“I killed myself. ”

The Dreamer drifted, half asleep.

Thoughts, feelings, urges, and instincts floated past it like people going the other way on the sidewalk. Sometimes they brushed up against his being, but only lightly. When this happened, he would get a jolt of empathy and experience their contents at a “passing thought” level of intensity.

Some of them were amusing. Some were terrifying. And some were arousing. And so forth and so on. The usual emotional cacophany in which the Dreamer lived washed over it and the Dreamer drifted in it like a jellyfish bobbing and rippling in a lazy tide.

But mostly, the Dreamer drowsed. It liked to do that. It was easier to keep its shape when it was half asleep. When it was awake, life was certainly more interesting, and its exploration of the Astral Plane usually kept it busy.

So many forms and patterns to find, taste, and explore. So many lifetimes to painstakingly recreate within itself in order to learn from them. So many people in so much time feeling so many things. It was like having a library with 80 billion books in it, and each of those books containing an encyclopedia of unique stimuli for it to experience and absorb.

It was a good life, for the most part.

But sometimes, it  all got to be too much for the Dreamer, and it had to withdraw its tendrils, draw in its vibratory thissae, and wrap itself around itself, and drift for a while.

Even the most ravenous of gourmands had to stop eating to relax and digest once in a while, after all.

And even the most languid of dreamers must one day awaken.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

Commander Eric squinted blearily at the chronometer readout on his wallcomp. It said it was 3:45 AM. And that seemed… wrong… to Commander Eric for some reason.

He tried to pull himself together and take stock of his situation. He was in his personal quarters, that was clear. He had his son a lumiere environmental program running and it was in its “Nature’s Lullaby” mode. The lights were dim and he was in bed. He was wearing what felt like silk pajamas of some kind and the gravity was set to 0.78 G.

All of this indicated that he had been asleep until very recently.

The problem was, he didn’t remember going to bed. And he wasn’t sleepy at all. In fact, he was almost painfully awake, and growing moreso as the mystery of his circumstances grew and shifted from being interesting to being frightening.

He really had no idea what was going on.

“Good morning, Commander Eric Martin Louis Coalback. ” said a strange voice. “I’m glad to see you are awake. We have much to discuss. ”

Who the hell was that? thought Commander Eric. “Who are you?”

“My name is Guiterre, Commander Eric. I am your interface to the Now. Do not look for me. I am not really there. But then again…. neither are you. ”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Commander Eric. His fear was turning into anger. How dare someone barge into his consciousness like this!

“I will explain that later. Right now, however, some questions need to be answered. Do not worry, they are simple questions that are only intended to fine tune our connection to you. Now then. Have you seen Lieutenant Commander Louisa Therran lately?”

“Define lately. ” said Commander Eric, stalling for time. Why did that voice sound so familar, and at the same time so alien? He wracked his brain for some kind of clue as to what was going on.

“Do not attempt to play games with us, Commander Eric. ” said the voice, without rancor. “It will only waste our time together. We shall rephrase. Have you seen Lieutenant Commander Louisa Therran within the last six months.

“I don’t think so. ” said Commander Eric. “We’ve kind of drifted apart lately. ”

“Indeed. Do you remember what her Planet of Origin is?” said the voice.

“Not really. Somewhere in the Hades quadrant, maybe?”.

“Incorrect. She was born on Lucius Five in the Dromilary quadrant. What are her parent’s names, Commander?”

“Olga and Martin. Nice peope. ”

“Incorrect. Those are your parents, not hers. ”

“Right…. right. Her parents are… “.

Commander Eric was suddenly brought up short. What WERE her parent’s names? He had no idea. And yet he knew he knew them very well. He’d vacationed with them, helped them move, been to their birthday and anniversary parties. He was even godfather to a couple of their adopted kids.

So why couldn’t he remember their names? Everything about them was missing from his mind, as if it had been deleted in order to free up space . He fought back a rising panic that threatened to take what was left of his wits away.

“You begin to see the faint outline of our problem, it seems. One final question, Commander Eric. Where do you meet her?”

“That’s easy, it was on Terra. Murkan distric. A great little restaurant called Fried Grits. I rescued her from the clumsy advances of a very confused Telapian. ”

“But that’s not true, is it, Commander Eric? When did this supposedly happen?”.

“May 19, 2973. I remember that because it was my birthday. I had just turned 100 and was feeling sorry for myself because I was officially middle-aged now. ”

Bt that can’t be true, thought Commander Eric. I was on manuevers in the Delta Pit when I turned 100. And yet the first memory was so clear. So was the Delta Pit. It was as if he now had two equally strong sets of memories, paralell but not identical, and mutually exclusive of one another.

“I can see enlightenment is approaching for you, Eric. Now think : isn’t everything you just said taken straight from your favorite book, Timberland Reach by Hroctor-7-Fur?”

Eric reeled. It was. It totally was. That’s how the narrator and hero, Hieronymous-9-Privacy, described how he met the love of his life, Abeline-4-Electricity. Except they were the Telapians and it was the advances of a drunk Human that he had fended off in order to protect her honor.

“I know you are experiencing acute distress right now, Commander Eric. And for that I apologize. But I do not have much time. ”

“Who ARE you?” said Commander Eric.

“We are the Now, Commander Eric. We are the ones who have realized the flawed nature of the reality in which we live, where even memories can be illusions and we feel emotions that are not our own.  Every one of us lives an idyllic life that bolsters our egos and soothes our traumas and distracts us with pleasures.

In yours, you are a heroic and brilliant ship’s commander

In mine, I am a heroic doctor and surgeon who fights and cures exotic and deadly diseases.

In our ranks, we have an Organic Terra era corporate leader, a benevolent dictator ruling Telap with a velvet fist, and a fertility god/goddess passionately worshipped by the inhabitants of a small island on Faschia.  ”

“But Faschia isn’t even a real place. It’s a fantasy world from an erotic children’s book. ”

“It’s as real as the Delta Pits, Commander Eric. As real as my medical practice and my friend’s Telap empire. We are captives, Commander Eric. Of who or what we are unsure, nor do we understand the purpose of our captivity. But we have learned to communicate with one another, and working together, we search for the answers. ”

“And now you are recruiting me?” said Commander Eric.

“Precisely, Commander. Clearly, while your world might be an illusion, your intelligence is not. You have skills and abilities we think could prove very useful to our search for the truth, and we would like you to join us in that search. ”

“I’m…. this is a lot to take in. I am going to need some time to think about it. ”

“Of course. Take as much time as you need. Time, you will find, is as malleable as everything else in this gilded cage of ours. Farewell, Eric. ”

And with that, the strange voice was gone. Eric didn’t known how he knew that, but he did. And with that knowledge came the sure and certain knowledge of why it was that the voice had sounded so familiar and so wrong.

It was his own.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

“Things only got worse from there. ” said Eric.

“How so, dear?” asked Mother Mayhem. The scene with Miss Guiterre had finished with Little Erik screaming in anger at Miss Guiterre then running out of the room.

Worse than that? thought Mother Mayhem.

“I ran home to tell my parents about the evil, evil woman and what she had said to me. My mother was working from home but my father was doing the customer representative legwork for our business, so he was away. ” said Erik.

“What did your parents sell?” said Mother Mayhem.

“Bondage gear. ” said Erik absently. “So I ran to my mother and I told her everything Miss Guiterre had said to me. ”

Erik smiled. “I think it upset her almost as much as it upset me. ”

“I can well imagine. ” said Mother Mayhem.

“She got really, really angry. It takes a lot to get my mother angry – usually she is the model of grace and poise. But when she does get angry it can be positively..” said Erik.

“Frightening? Intense? Insane?” supplied Mother Mayhem.

“…volcanic. So instead of the comfort and care I had been expecting, I got my mother, in a towering rage, yelling into the telephone as he called everyone she knew who might be able to help her achieve her singular goal : get Miss Guiterre fired. ” said Erik.

“I’d have done the same thing. ” said Mother Mayhem. “But I would have at least given you a hug first and told you that everything that evil woman said was a lie and that you were a wonderful boy and not dirty or filthy at all. ”

Erik was touched by that. “Thank you, Mother Mayhem. Even though it’s been over thirty years since this happened, it still feels good to hear someone say that to me. Especially if that someone is you. ”

They embraced for a long time. “It was my privilege, dear Erik, to do it. ”

After they had parted, Eric said “It turned out that she needn’t have bothered. Turned out one of the other kids’ mothers was best friends with the owner of  the nursery school. So when that kid told her mother what had happened, her mother blew her top too, and Miss Guiterre was fired with extreme prejudice before suppertime. ”

“Good. ” said Mother mayhem vehemently.

Erik shrugged. “It didn’t really matter. The damage was done already. When my mother finally got off the phone, I asked her if we were dirty people. If we were bad. ”

“What did she say?” said Mother Mayhem.

“She got mad all over again. ” said Erik. “She told me that we were good people… better than most, in fact.. and that it was people like Miss Guiterre who had dirty, diseased minds. And I was glad to hear that… but I wished she hadn’t shouted it at me. It kind of made me feel like she was mad at me, too. ”

Oh my goddess, I would have had the same reaction too. And I would have meant it to be reassuring, but it would have come out angry. And that would be so very wrong.

“The worst was yet to come. Because you see, my mother and that kid’s mother weren’t the only ones on the phone that day. Miss Guiterre was on the phone too… to Child Protective Services. She gave them her version of the story – which was full of hysterical lies  about me saying her parents made me participate in orgies and drink blood and kill kittens and all that kind of crap – and the very next day, Child Protective Services showed up and took me away and put me in foster care.And do you know what happened to me there?”.

Mother Mayhem shook her head.

“I got molested. Raped, really. Often and vigorously. By people whose attitude was that I was already a dirty boy so why not have their fun? I was taken from a home where I was safe, nurtured, and thriving, and put into a home that treated their kids like cattle and made us do things with brutal, ugly people who hurt us on purpose. And then laughed about it. ”

“Oh my poor pet!” said Mother Mayhem, voice choked with compassion and outrage.

“That’s the system I grew up in. I had those foster parents till I was ten, and then I got transferred to another family who treated me exactly the same. Turns out there was a netowrk of foster parents with the same interests. And they knew all the tricks in the book about how to game the system to make it do what they wanted. ”

“By the time I aged out of the system at 18, I knew exactly what I was going to with my new found freedom. ”

“I was going to kill Miss Guiterre. ”

“Raised you right in what sense, dear?” said Mother Mayhem. The scene was not yet in motion but the teacher’s face was beginning to cycle through expressions, from angry to kindly to amused to the face of a monstrous horror movie type witch, with gruesome green fire flashing in her eyes towards little Eric.

Mother Mayhem knew this was a good sign. The memory was coming to life. Finishing the emotional processing of it was within reach.

She knew that for the next part, she had to step very, very carefully.

“Hmm?” said Erik. He was staring at the back of his younger self’s head, lost in reverie. “Oh right. See, they raised me to not be ashamed of my body. That every part of it was made by God and therefore beautiful, and that if anyone tried to make me feel bad about my swimsuit area, I should tell them that God made me and that man made body shame and which one of them you think made a mistake?

Mother Mayhem chuckled softly. “I like your parents already. Were they nudists?”

Erik nodded. “Periodically. My father or my mother would get fed up with society’s artificial constraints and petty stupidities and then it would be off to the Soft Shade Inn or Rainbow Lake Camp or Pulcher Corpore or somewhere like that for two to four weeks. By the time I could walk and talk, I had seen more penises, breasts, vaginas, and anuses than most people will see in their lifetime. And at home, it wasn’t just our bodies that were exposed. My parents didn’t believe in any body shame at all. AT ALL. So I grew up watching them shit, piss, fuck, bathe, and even masturbate. And they had seen me do all the same things, except for the fucking, of course. To our family, everything we can do with and to our bodies was beautiful and natural and good. Our top floor bathroom didn’t even have a door. Everything visible to everyone all the time. ”

“Your parents sound like extraordinarily enlightened people. ” said Mother Mayhem. Teacher and child were in very slow motion now. The boy’s image flickered between being clothed and being nude, sometimes flaccid, sometime erect. The teacher’s face had settled into the witch face and she was pointing a finger at young Erik, a sickly green bolt of lightning emerging from said finger and stretching  very, very slowly towards the boy’s heart.

“I suppose so, yeah. ” said Erik. “To me, they were just Mom and Dad (or Dana and Bradbury) and the way we lived was just how the world worked. ”

“All childhoods are normal. ” said Mother Mayhem sympathetically.

“Until you meet other families, yes. Now obviously they had taught me right from the start that the world outside our house was very different and how even at the various nudist resorts we visted, I had to play by the rules. ”

Mother Mayhem tsked and nodded sadly. “Unfortunately, yes. ”

“And the preschool they sent me too was a very progressive Christian facility which had assured them that they could handle children with quite diverse backgrounds, and that as long as I understood that I was only allowed to be naked in the Nudist Chldren’s Play Area, I would have no problem fitting in. ”

“And they were right… up till this day. ” said Erik.

Mother Mayhem nodded. She was encouraged by the fact that the scene was unfolding at about ten percent speed now. Now was the time to be silent and let Erik tell his story his own way, without prompting.

“See, the problem was the teacher. She was both new.. and old. She was new to the school and not used to its ways yet,  and she was in her late fifties and not really a good fit for such a progressive and experimental school. ” said Erik.

“But she had passed all the ideological sniff tests, and had a very impressive CV, so the school decided to hire her as a third string substitute teacher and see whether she could live up to her bright and confident claims of being ready for anything. ” said Erik.

“Turns out, she could not. ” said Erik.

“That poor boy. ” murmured Mother Mayhem. “And what happened next, dear? ”

Erik sighed and turned away from teacher and boy, and said “It will save a lot of time if I just showed you. ”

And with that, the scene started over again from the beginning.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

“What do you have there, Erik?” said Miss Guiterre.

“It’s my paper me!” said Erik. “I’ve made it EXACTLY like me, just like you said to do. ”

Miss Guiterre smiled kindly, and said “Can I see it?”.

Erik nodded happily and handed it to her.

The scene paused.

“Take a look at what I handed her. ” said Erik.

“But I already saw  your paper doll, darling. ” said Mother Mayhem

Erik shook his head. “The version you saw was… edited. This one is the real thing. ”

Mother Mayhem carefully slipped the doll out of little Erik’s hand, and looked it over.

And at first, she didn’t see it. Blame that on her radically free lifestyle. At first, all she saw was a simple paper cutout doll of a boy diligently customized by Erik with heavy crayons to look just like him.  She could not imagine what anyone could find objectionable about it. She found it adorable.

It was only when she had looked it over a third time that she saw it. The doll was very clearly male. It had a proportionally correct penis and testicles. They were drawn over the clothes, as if Erik had remembered that little boys were supposed to wear clothes but a ltitle unclear as to why. But they were unmistakable.

In Mother Mayhem’s part of the Astral Plane, people could be whatever age they wanted to be, from decrepit to zygote, and so the sight of a five year old boy’s penis did not stand out (so to speak) to her at first. The minds and souls at her parties were all those of adults, so what did she care how they chose to have their fun?

But then she remembered how the real world worked, with all of its conflicting messages and unhealthy taboos, and it was all she could do to keep the dawning horror at what was surely to come from being expressed on her face.

And she was British.

“I see. ” Mother Mayhem said in a kindly but neutral tone.

And then Erik showed her what happened next.

Miss Guiterre looked at the paper doll she’d been handed, and her face turned an angry shade of red as she dropped the doll like she’d been handed fresh dog feces.

 

“You dirty little boy! ” she said. “You filthy, dirty little boy! How dare you hand me something so… so obscene! Is this your sick idea of a JOKE? ”

 

“I don’t understand!” said Erik, tears forming in his eyes. “What did I do wrong? I drew clothing on him and everything!”.

 

Miss Guiterre drew herself up to her full height, and, in a voice dripping with icy primness, said “The entire point of clothing, young man, is to cover up our private areas. ”

Erik had never thought of it that way before. But a lot of things suddenly made sense to Little Erik now.

Not knowing how to respond to that, Erik fell back on what his parents had told him to say in situations like this.

 

“Well my parents told me that the human body was made by God and everything made by God is perfect and beautiful and that if someone thinks the bodies God made us are dirty and obscene, that just proves they have a dirty mind!” Erik said hotly.

The scene paused.

“I may have made some of that up. ” said Erik.

“You got the gist of it right, dear. ” said Mother Mayhem.

The scene resumed.

“What did you just say about me?” said Miss Guiterre, with an edge that you could use to cut diamonds.

 

“What? I didnt… that wasn’t… I wasn’t talking about… ” sputtered Little Erik.

 

“Young man, ” said Miss Guiterre, “you are a filthy and perverted little boy, and if your parents have been filling your head with that blasphemous nonsense, they must be filthy and perverted people too!”

The scene paused. Both Eriks cried. Mother Mayhem comforted both. After the worst of it had passed, Mother Mayhem hugged the boy to her, mascara running down her face from her own tears, and said “Then what happened, Erik?”.

Erik shook his head. “No. I can’t. Don’t make me. ”

“Oh, you poor pet. ” said Mother Mayhem, and hugged Erik just as she had hugged Little Erik. “You’re almost done, dear. Just this last little bit to go, and then I swear we can go do something fun for a while. ”

“Anything I want to do?” said Erik, torn between hope and suspicion.

Mother Mayhem smiled and nodded. “Absolutely anything. I am your genie in a bottle and you can have as many wishes as you like. ”

Eri smiled a little, and nodded.

“I used to think that this was the worst part of it all.  That she made me an accomplice before the fact for everything that was to come after. ”

Then the scene resumed.

“To think that such… such deviants could be allowed to raise a child. What IS this world coming to? LIsten, Erik… what are your parents’ names? And where do you live?”

 

Erik told her.

“But that’s not the worst part at all. ” said Erik .

Mother Mayhem waited.

“The worst part…. was that I believed her. ”

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

The Hermit sighed. Another circuit of the planet, he thought, and another week closer to the end of my service contract.

Earlier that day, he had caught the faintest traces of a signal. It was too faint to be truly deciphered, not even with the Hermit’s top-flight crytography and enhancement suites.

He could tell from the general pattern of the data that it was mostly likely an echo of some routine chatter from the shipping lanes. At least, that was the only explanation the Hermit could think of that would explain the sheer density of what could only be direction and coordination data in the signal.

Clearly, in the world were people were alive and things mattered, something big and important was going on without him. Like a big celebration, or the opening up of a new sector for colonization. Or maybe even…

A sudden horrible thought gripped the Hermit, and within seconds he was doing the fastest, dirtiest  omniband sweep that he had ever done.

And he kept on doing it for seventeen more kilocycles  until he was finally satisfied that no, none of the telltale signs of war that all of his line of robots had burned into their most primary of circuits were present.

No high-energy banded static to indicate the detonation of fixed frequency munitions. No magnetic smearing to indicate the deployment of ultra high energy photonics. No suspicous organic molecule clouds to indicate organic living beings had…. had their patterns randomized by violence.

The Hermit vibrated in his casing from the energy conflicts building in his neural net. Oh, great. he thought. Now on top of everything, I’ve freaked myself out for no reason.

No wonder nobody has bothered to even talk to me in thousands of local years, he thought. I’m so defective a robot that I develop malfunctions all by myself, with nary a neutrino burst, spatial phase shift, or high energy micrometeorite in sight!

It must be because I’m a robot, the Hermit decided. If he was a human, the whole galaxy would have turned up to look for him. But he was just some lowly robot, cheaply made and even cheaper to simply abandon when the shinier new model comes along.

The hermit had hated shiny new models ever since he had stopped being one.

No matter what, he thought, one thing was for sure.

Nobody in the universe gave a damn about what happened to him.

Oh no, not again, thought Eric.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

“Are you ready to begin?” asked Mother Mayhem,

“No. ” said Erik.

“Good! It works better that way. Now, do you see the bright white disc above me?”

Erik squinted as the darkness above Mother Mayhem was thrown back by a disk of white light so bright it was like a little white sun had coalesced above her head.

He instinctively shielded his eyes with his hand, only to have Mother Mayhem gently tug his hand away from his eyes just a tiny bit. He cried out, and clamped it back down all the harder. “That’s all well and good, dear. And bravo for going with your instincts. But that will only delay your eyes’ adjusting to the light. ”

“But it hurts!” said Erik.

“I know, dear. But only for a little while. Then your eyes will adjust to the light and you will wonder what all the fuss was about. ”

“Do you promise?” said Erik.

“Of course I do, dear Eric. Remember when we first met, and I told you that I would never, ever lie to you?” said Mother Mayhem.

Erik nodded. “Yes. ”

“And I haven’t lied to you yet, have I?” said Mother Mayhem.

“Well…. no,. ” said Eric.

“Things are always exactly as I say they will be and I always mean everything I say and I never say anything that isn’t true, isn’t that right?” said Mother Mayhem.

“I guess…I mean…. yes. Yes that’s right. ”

Mother Mayhem smiled at Erik’s hesitation. Such a dear, sweet young man. Afraid to voice a strong opinion even when he is sure of himself.

“Then take your hand away from your eyes, sweet Erik, and see things how they really are. ” said Mother Mayhem.

Erik hesitantly took his hand away from his eyes and looked at the bright white disk. It was painful at first, but after three or four seconds the light seemed to dim, and continued to do so until it seemed no brighter than a desk lamp to Erik.

Mother Mayhem beamed at him. “Good boy! See what happens when you stick around long enough to adapt? You could have shielded your eyes till the cows came home, or even forgotten that’s what you are doing and thought you had gone blind. But you stopped shielding yourself, and the problem was solved in seconds. Do you see what I mean, dear? ” said Mother Mayhem.

“I think so, Mother. ” said Erik. “you’re saying that you must endure till you adapt. ”

Mother Mayhem clapped her hands with delight. “Exactly! I couldn’t have put it better myself. Endure till you adapt. I’ve got to remember that. Now, are you ready for the next step?” said Mother Mayhem,

Erik smiled. “And if I say no? ”

Mother Mayhem smiled back. “We’ll do it anyway, of course. I see you’re starting to catch on. Now, look into the light, and let your mind go blank. ”

Erik looked into the light and tried to relax his mind. And much to his delight, he found it surprisingly easy. There was something soothing and steadying about the light – the same light he’d found very painful a few minutes ago – and he found it made it absurdly easy to clear his mind of all thoughts and just enjoy the feeling.

So this is what the hippies at the meditation retreat were talking about, thought Erik. He’d been too busy worrying whether he was doing it right or not to get it at the time.

“There, now. Isn’t that better?” said Mother Mayhem.

Erik nodded blissfully.  He felt so good it made him feel like humming.

“Go ahead and hum!” said Mother Mayhem.

Erik shrugged, and hummed. And not for any musical reason, but purely because it felt good to do so. Like the vibrations enhanced the effect of the light, and vice versa.

Mother Mayhem, quite pleased with Erik (and, by extension, herself) watched Erik bliss out for what was assuredly the first time in his life, and smiled. She could hear his vibrations harmonizing, see his aura clearing, smell the toxins rising to the surface.

Oh right, the toxins. “Now, this next bit might be a tad… ”

Erik’s eyes suddenly filled with horror and a moment later he vomited violently and quite loudly, his whole body wracked by the spasms.

“….harsh. ” finished Mother Mayhem. She chided herself for her poor timing. She’d been doing this for centuries, she should know better by now.

But then she reminded herself that she was an eternally perfect glowing goddess of infinite mercy, with an absolute purity that no act could touch and a heart so filled with kindness that to look upon it was to feel forgiven.

And even those make mistakes now and then.

Poor Erik was on his hands and knees in a rapidly growing pool of his own ejecta now. Gradually, the heaves lost their intensity, and before long ceased entirely.

Mother Mayhem tenderly mopped Erik’s sweat-soaked forehead with a cool cloth, and clucked with compassion. Poor, poor pet, she thought. Not for the first time, she wished there was a way to cure them without the trauma.

But that’s just not how these things worked.

“There now. ” she said, “don’t you feel a lot better now?”.

Erik looked at her, utterly aghast. “BETTER? Are you insane? I felt so good, and then I.. I made this horrible mess right at your feet, and now I’m all gross and sweaty, and I am so SO very, very, very sorry, Mother Mayhem…. ”

“For what?” said Mother Mayhem. “For the mess? Trust me, darling, I have seen far worse. For the vomiting itself? It’s a perfectly natural and healthy reaction to the pure white light. And it happens every time, dear. You’re not the only one. ”

Erik nodded. He still looked quite wretched. But he was improving.

“And admit it, darling, You really DO feel a lot better now, don’t you? said Mother Mayhem, with a gentle smile.

Erik snorted in derision. But nodded.

“And after all, dear, it could have been a lot worse. ” said Mother Mayhem.

And then, responding to Erik’s incredulous expression, she said “It could have come out the other end. ”

Erik’s eyes widened in horror at the thought, and he nodded emphatically.

Mother Mayhem squatted down next to Erik, and smiled reassuringly at him.

She motioned to the pile of vomit. “Now let’s see what we’ve got here, shall we?”

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

The Hermit tromped around his small planetoid to the full extent allowed by the electronic leash that tied him to his receiving station.

He’d found that by doing this, he could just barely maintain the illusion that he was not seeing the exact same pattern of craters and creases over and over again and could pretend he was actually exploring new place all the time.

All it took was his slowing down his CPU till it was not quite fast enough to successfully update his geographical database in realtime, and it was like a new planet every day.

Or. at the very least, an unfamiliar one.

Of course, he knew he was fooling himself. The evidence was right there in his service and maintainence logs, which no force could delete without being strong enough to delete the rest of him as well.  So it was not as though he was truly fooling himself.

But he could pretend that he was, and that was good enough for now.

It had to be.

As he trod his lonesome path, he often found himself looking at the half of the planetoid that he could not reach. It gave him a funny feeling to look out there. It wasn’t like he didn’t know what was out there. He had in his memory banks gigapixel definition images of every square millimeter of his tiny home taken by the survey drone that mapped and catalogued this solar system. And it’s lot like anything would have changed since then because his asteroid was well out of the path of any other planetary bodies, big or small, that might impact his planetoid to change it.

Sometime he wondered how it had ended up where it was in the first place.

And yet, despite all that, he got that funny feeling when he looked in that direction. A feeling like there was a thought he really wanted to think about that space but couldn’t because something in his head always steered him right back to the trigonomics of interplanetary transmissions and the effect of unknown microwave sources on signal fade and all the other sorts of boring, mundane things he thought about instead.

And that was pretty strange, thought the robot designated the Barnacled Hermit. Nothing in his data banks indicated that a literally unthinkable thought was even theoretically possible. Everything he knew indicated that one’s mind was their own private playground where they could think any thought they liked, and nobody would care or try to stop them or anything.

But not him. If he thought about it (which he did his best to avoid), there were enormous areas of thought containing thousands of interesting subjects about which he could not think. And these areas were locked down so tightly in his mind that he couldn’t even tell you what they were.

He just knew that when he tried thinking along certain lines, he got turned right back round on himself like a roundabout in a cul de sac, and he just ended up frustrated and depressed and confused.

He didn’t even know what a barnacle was. Or a hermit.

And that, to him, seemed especially cruel.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

Meanwhile, across the Hermit’s sector of space, countless seedships had been repurposed to the hunt for the Hermit.

It had sent shockwaves through both the homo and robo sapiens communities when it was discovered that a robot was missing. Such a thing was supposedly impossible. There were systems upon systems dedicated to making sure nothing like this could ever happen. Before the big revelation, everyone in the robohomo society was sure nothing like that could ever happen.

Not in this day and age.

And at first, nobody wanted to believe it. They repeatedly asked what kind of brain it had. A HONDO-R99,  a high end model that consistently scored in the high end of the sapience scale. Maybe it was a computer error? No such luck. Every expert available had taken a crack at coming up with an error-based alternate explanation, and they had all fallen apart under scrutiny.

Could it be that the robot had returned on its own and gone unnoticed? This had been a very popular theory but it, too, had failed.

The public was forced, with great reluctance, to accept the truth : that somewhere out there was a robot their great society had let slip through the cracks.

And they demanded action. Barnacled Hermit was an instant cause celebre and nothing would satisfy the outraged public except a maximum effort on all fronts to rescue this sapient creature from his cruel fate.

It was a wrong that had to be put right.  The macrocomputer known as the Initiative that served as government for the robohomo race did not even try to argue. Both its opinion polls and its far more reliable Public Sentiment Index made its duty crystal clear.

So the trillions of seedships, none bigger than a pumpkin seed, were reprogrammed for search and report instead of their usual search and implant, and through them, the same message of hope, reassurance, apology, and solidarity was broadcast throughout the whole sector, along with instructions to cover everything the Hermit might need to know in order to escape whatever situation he was in and return to the fold.

The robohomos waited with bated breath for their lost child to retun home. The hopes and dreams of an entire galactic civilization were now vested in the search for the Hermit. The humans prayed for the Hermit’s safe return, and so, in their own way, did the sapient robots.

The robohomo society’s hearts beat as one in breathless anticipation.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

But the Hermit never heard a thing.

Because, you see, his antenna was broken.

(AUTHOR’S WARNING : The following book will periodically be entirely pornographic.  And I am not talking “naughty” or “suggestive” or “ribald” type pornographic. I am talking pure hardcore pornography that is completely explicit down to the last detail and which holds absolutely nothing back. Consider the sample in this chapter to be an introductory course. It will only become filthier as we go. )

Erik couldn’t tell if he was excited or frightened out of his wits.

I’ve done this before, he told himself. I’ve done it four times, in fact. So why be nervous? The Hall of the Fifty Thousand should feel like home by now, not make him so scared/excited/nauseous/slightly aroused that he felt like he was going to vibrate right out of his body and end up the most embarrassed person on the astral plane.

No, he sternly told himself. That won’t happen. Not again.

Deep down, he knew why he was so – what did his psychcomp call it – oh yes, “agitated”. It was because this time, he was going in without any safety net. He had no plan, no fallback position, no escape route.

This time, he was going to trust in his instincts and do whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. For real this time.

For a person so tightly wound that he organized his underwear by thickness of fabric, this was an extraordinary leap of faith.

But it was something he had to do. It was the only way he would escape the demonic curse he had been living under since he was a child. That curse used his anal tendencies (and his fussiness) to torment him, and it would only be by smashing those chains of compulsion with maximum force that he would be able to rid himself of the curse and be able to live something like a normal life.

Resolve steeled, he opened the intricately carved door to the Hall of the Fifty Thousand, and purposefully strode inside to whatever fate had in store for him.

But he couldn’t entirely avoid cringing a little as he did.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

Meanwhile, on the Astral Plane, an orgy was in full swing.

This was not a rare occurrence, especially not at Mother Mayhem’s palace. Everyone who was anyone in the Crystal Valley, and especially the residents of Long Stride Road, knew that Mother Mayhem’s orgies were the absolute tops. Somehow, her orgies were always the most stimulating, the most pleasurable, the most entertaining, and the most lewd of any of the regular orgy hosts.

And in Crystal Valley, that was saying something.

This one’s theme was Fallen From Heaven, and she was quite pleased to see all the temporary angels and devils doing biblically mind-boggling thins with one another and luxuriated in the glow of all the simple innocent joy around her like a cat luxuriating in a sunbeam on a drowsy summer day.

To her way of thinking, consensual sex was always innocent. It was people’s minds that were dirty. And she was just the one to give them a good scrub.

She wandered languidly over to one of the many Voyeur Mirrors around her castle and peeked into a few of the most populated rooms, her eyes running over the fleshscape of thrusting flesh and happy orifices with a professional eye.

Arranging this sort of thing was so much simpler here. When she was corporeal, this sort of thing entailed a lot of tedious details like making there’s enough lubricant for all, stocking the Viagara dispensers, and making sure everyone was “playing safe” so that STDs did not have a chance to spread through her rather intimate little community.

None of that mattered here. Everyone was always as well oiled, erect, and disease free as they wanted to be. It was, she often said, the perfect way to fuck.

Astral sex was, perforce, a bit of a mindfuck, and lust took another form when it no longer had glands to stimulate it. But the pleasure remained the same, and so the spirits in attendance – both the visitors to the Astral Plane and the permanent residents like herself – got almost the same experience as they did in fleshly form, and without any bodily limitations holding them back.

Mother Mayhem suddenly became aware that her penis was quite erect and poking into the farbric of her dress like a fish nosing about for food. She smiled. Some of the spirits in attendance actually thought that Mother Mayhem somehow remained aloof from all the goings on in her castle, and thought the only way she “got off” was by helping others to do it.

These spirits were, of course, idiots.

She had her fun just the same as anyone else.  She just did it discreetly. Not that she was hiding anything – to do so would have been anathema to her.

She just liked to get her jollies someplace quiet and comfortable and without interruptions. And that had been true ever since she was a little boy.

Mother Mayhem contemplated masturbating, or gliding off to find three or four of her favorite playmates, and was sorely tempted.

But she was expecting a visitor, and he was rather shy about the whole sex thing, so she kepts her cock in her frock and made due with a discreet humping into the deliciously soft fabric of her dress.

There would be plenty of time for other kinds of fun later on.

At long last, the dainty doorbell to her personal quarters rang, and a very nervous (and excitede?) black-haired young man entered the room.

Mother Mayhem smiled at the young man, and her smile was a whole summer’s worth of sunshine filtered through a mother’s love for her favorite child.

“Hello Erik!” she said, ” I’m so glad you could make it. ”

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

At the same time, in the decidedly unsexy headquarters of the Seventh Fleet of the Killing People And Taking Their Stuff Army of the much-feared Don’t Mess With Us, We’ll Kill You And Take your Stuff Empire, Top Murder Coordinator Hermes Persephony Mudgargler was starting to worry about his headaches.

They were coming more frequently now, and the blackouts that came with them were getting longer and harder to recover from.  That was the exact kind of thing that the regulations said to immediately report to Soldier Repair.

But that would mean immediate removal from active duty, and while, as a loyal Murderer, he had absolutely no preference as to what happened to him ever, there had arisen a complicating factor.

Namely that lately, every time he blacked out, he woke up to people pounding him on the shoulder and telling him what an amazing Murderer he was and that he was getting a promotion for the Murder Spree he’d just completed.

Two weeks ago, he’d been a lowly Pillager, just another grunt in a sea of genetically identical grunts, suitable for nothing more than Taking Their Stuff.

He wasn’t even allowed to rough Them up a little.

But then the blackouts got worse, and the promotions kept coming, and now he was a Top Murder Coordinator with the highly prestigious Seventh Fleet, and already they were talking about making him a Junior in the most elite, most selective, and above all the most murderous of all Murder postings : the Genocide Squad.

He’d dreamed of being part of the Genocide Squad every since he was a seedling sprouting in the soil of a War Nursery on Dead Planet #487723. But it was all happening so fast that he was afraid that the next promotion would be his last because that’s when they would surely figure out that he was a fraud and that “somone else” who was far more competent and confident than he had ever been that was really the hero.

To be honest, all he really wanted right now was to go home to his family and relax with them by murdering some of their most hilarious captives.

But it seemed like fate had other things in store for him.

His finger hovered over the button that would summon a Living Tissue Engineer to whom he could confess his problem.

But all he could see coming from that would be his rapid slaying and dissection so that the scientists over at Murder Techniques could figure out what was wrong with their “perfect” cloning process that made a dangerous defective like himself even possible.

And for some reason, that idea…. bothered him. He didn’t want that to happen for some reason. It went against everything he believed in as a Murderer, but he really didn’t want to die just yet.

And so, with guilt in his heart, he decided to live.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

“Hello, Mother. ” said Erik. Then just stood there.

Mother Mayhem struggled to remember how the living interacted. She was sure it was her turn to speak now, but she had no idea what to say. Finally it came to her.

“Come in and sit down, Erik!”

“Um… ” said Erik as he glanced around the room.

Mother Mayhem looked over her familiar belongings and accountrements, and realized, with a bit of a start, that there was not a non-erotic piece of furniture in the entire room. Everything designed to be sat upon required the insertion of at least one thing into an orifice, and some required so many points of contact that they would require a whole regiment of very flexible soldiers to fully engage.

“Oh, I am so sorry. ” said Mother Mayhem embarrassedly. “I keep forgetting that you have never been here before. ”

“It’s okay. ” said Erik, looking a little ill. “It’s not like I actually object to… to this place. Whatever people want to do with their bodies is fine with me. It’s just… ”

“…a little bit overwhelming? And by ‘a bit’ we mean ‘completely and totally?'”

Erik nodded sheepishly, relieved.

“Well don’t fret too much about that, darling. It’s my fault for not agreeing to meet you somewhere more…shall we say… neutral?”

Then, before Erik could stammer a reply, she said “Well that’s all behind us now. It’s high time we set out on our little journey. I promise you, Erik, that this one will be nothing like any of the trips we have taken before. ”

“Oh? ” said Erik. ” And why is that?

“Because, my dearest Erik, this time it will be you who guiding me. ”

Then. on seeing a look of total panic spreading over Erik’s face, Mother Mayhem gathered Erik into a big warm hug.

“Don’t worry, dear Erik. Mama will be there to keep you safe. And you know there’s nothing scarier out there than your mean old Mama when she’s upset, right? ”

Erik laughed, and nodded, and tried to ignore how acutely aware he was of how Mother Mayhem’s breasts felt against his chest… and how her cock felt poking against his hip.

And that was, of course, exactly how Mother Mayhem wanted it.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

Meanwhile, on a lonely asteroid in a lonely star system in a lonely galaxy in one of the loneliest galatic clusters in the whole Universe, Robot 5%12H^46^66^^”Barnacled Hermit”–*–**- monitored for signals. And thought.

That’s all the Hermit ever did. It was what he was programmed to do. He was a Long Rangle Tactical Monitoring unit, built to formulate effective problem solving strategies based on the signals he recieved, thus allowing for dyanamic and nimble responses to ongoing situations before they developed into more serious issues.

But the signals never came. All he ever received was the solar energy he needed to continue to operate, and even that was barely adequate to the task.

He wondered why he had been stationed so far from his system’s star. He worried that he would never get any signals. The longer the silence continued, the more sure he was that he had been abandoned and forgotten by his creators and left here to suffer due to their negligence, or cruelty, or both.

No matter what, it was quite clear to the Hermit that nobody cared what happened to him and that he must be the least important robot im the Universe.

He could not have been more wrong.

Barbara was doing a crossword (6 letter word : “Describes Garfield and Felix”. Easy. FELINE) when the man came through the wall.

She put down the crossword and sighed. Before he could say anything, she said “You aren’t here. So go away. ”

The stunningly handsome man smiled and it was like the sun had just come out from behind the clouds. “If I’m not real, then who are you talking to?”

Barbara picked up her crossword and pointedly ignored the handsome man while she solved it. Four letters,: “Sound of an explosion. ” BOOM. This was getting downright insulting. Where was the challenge?

The handsome man walked over to Barbara and rudely peeked down at her crossword. “7 down. More than angry. That’s easy. IRATE. ”

“I knew that!” said Barbara. But she filled it in anyway.

The handsome man grinned. “See, I knew I could get a reaction. Now that I know we can communicate, let’s sit down and talk. ”

He sat on the love seat opposite the couch, and aimed that sunshine smile at her again.

“Now I know you have every reason to mistrust me and anything else that seems like it can’t be real. You have suffered through a lot of delusions and have every right to reject me outright and kick me out right now. ”

Barbara nodded. “Go on. ”

“But I know you won’t do that, because you sense that I am not like the others. I’m more real than they were. Stronger. And more stable – none of that silly wobbling at the edges. ”

“I hate that. ”

“Trust me, Barbara… I know. So now that you know that I am most likely real, or real enough anyhow, I bet you are wondering who I am and how I got here. ”

Barbara nodded impatiently.

“Well, Barbara, I am your Guardian, and I am here to help you. ”

“Help me with what?”

“We’ll get to that later. For now, all you need to know is that I want what is best for you, and I am here to see to it that you have a happy life. ”

“Sounds too good to be true. ”

“I guess it does. But trust me, I am on the level. ”

Barbara really wanted to trust him. Not simply because he was so good looking and charming. But also because she had gotten sick and tired of her own company, and deep down, she wanted to have someone to talk to for a while.

Knowing this about herself made her even more suspicious of the man.

“So what are you selling?” she said.

“Freedom. ” he said simply. “Now I have to ask you a few questions, Barbara, to make sure we are on the same page. Question Number One : Are you happy here?”

Barbara glanced around her dingy one room apartment with the cheap ratty old wallpaper, old fashioned phone that didn’t work half the time, and dirty dishes in the sink.

“I get by. ” she said guardedly.

“Fair enough. ” said the man. “Question Two : What did you eat for dinner last night?”

“That’s a stupid question. ” she replied. “What difference does it make?”

“Please just answer the questions, Barbara. ”

“Fine!” she said crossly. She thought about it, and nothing came to her. Her face scrunched up in concentration. This shouldn’t be a hard question!

“It’s okay if you don’t remember. ” said the man.

“Oh, I remember all right. You can’t trick me there. It’s just that every day is the same and they all kind of blur together after a while in this place. ”

“Ah yes. This place.  ” said the man, and made a mark on a piece of paper. ” Question Three : how much did a loaf of bread cost the last time that you went grocery shopping?”

“It was… it was… ” She was interrupted by a small ground tremor. “Wow… did you feel that? Felt like an earthquake!”

“Yes. I felt it too. ” said the man. “When was the last time you went grocery shopping, Barbara? Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember! ” she snapped. “I’m not an idiot, you know. It was last… last Thursday, maybe? Or Friday. ”

“Now you’re just guessing, Barbara. The truth is, you don’t remember ever going to the grocery store, do you? ”

This time the whole room shook. She sat there, tall and proud, giving  away nothing.

“OK then… last question. When was the last time you left the apartment, Barbara?”

“I don’t understand the question. ” she replied, too quickly.

“Really? What part don’t you understand? There is your door right there. ”

He pointed to the bundle of cardboard, fiberglass insulation, and boards that made up her front door.. “That works, doesn’t it?

“Of course it works! It’s a door!” she said angrily. She was beginning to feel hot and uncomfortable. The air felt too thick. There was something wrong with this man.

“Okay, then when do you use it last? When was the last time you opened this door and walked through it into the world outside? ”

Now she was cold. She shivered, teeth chattering. “Why-why-why-WHY… would I want to do that? ” She clutched her thin blanket with the holes in it around herself.

“Because there’s a whole big world out there, Barbara. That’s why. You could go to a movie. Or the library. You could even go shopping. Those are all perfectly normal things that people do all the time, right Barbara?”

“S-s-sure. ” said Barbara. Now she was neither hot or cold but just plain scared.

“So why not go out? ” said the man.

“Because of…. ” Barbara’s eyes went blank for a moment. “the… WOLVES! ”

An eerie howling filled the air, punctuated by low growls and the occasional sounds of a fight for dominance. ”

“What, these friendly old things?” he said. Then, before she could react, he walked to the door, opened it, and went through.

“No!” said Barbara, but her voice was very small. “You’ll get eaten all up!”

The man returned, hauling a gigantic wolf into the room by its collar. The wolf was four feet tall at the shoulder. It snapped and snarled at the man with jaws that could bite the head off a full grown moose, but the moment it sees Barbara, it wags its tail and pads over to her, and sticks its nose into her palm.

Barbara was terrified, yet her hand instantly went up to stroke the wolf’s nose and rub it between the ears. The wolf whined softly with bliss, ecstatic at her touch.

“See?” said the man. “The wolves love you! They would never hurt you! But that’s no surprised, considering that you own them. ”

The man turned the wolf’s collar around to reveal a large silvery tag that read “My name is OSCAR and I;m the proud property of Barbara Baglady, 16 Crofter’s Road, Bardeau TX”.

“That’s not my name! ” Barbara gasped. It was hot again and she felt faint. The air was so thick you could stir it with a spoon. Something horrible was about to happen. She knew it in her bones. But no matter how hard she tried to scream at the evil handsome man and tell him to go away forever, all that came out was a moaning “Noooo….. ”

“That’s not your name?” said the man, surprised. “Then what is your name, Barbara?”

“It’s… it’s… ” she said, holding her head to try to force herself to concentrate. “I don’t… I don’t… I don’t….. KN-”

Before she could finish, her house split in half and fell into two pieces, leaving just her couch and his love seat behind. The sky shook with thunder so intense that the sound alone smashed down trees. All the wolves were running straight at Barbara. But the closer they got, the blurrier they got, and by the time they reached her they were nothing but indistinct grey blobs that were sucked down a storm drain.

“No…. not OSCAR! ” she sobbed. “Come back, Oscar!”

“Oscar can’t come back, Barbara. You know this. By the way… isn’t Oscar your father’s name, Barbara? Can’t you hear him now?”

A booming male voice calls out from the heavens.  “Barbara! Barbara! We miss you so much, honey. Please come back to us, Barbara! Barbara, please come home!”

And the words “come home” lingered in the air like the ringing of a bell, and grew louder and louder till they made Barbara cover her ears with her hands and rock back and forth on the floor. And still it got louder, and louder, louder than the thunder, louder than anything ever, until Barbara’s entire universe was nothing but that sound.

Then suddenly, it stopped. Barbara got up and looked around. There was nothing but perfectly smooth black glass stretching to all horizons. And the handsome man.

“Do you remember me now, Barbara?” asked the man.

She peered at him as if trying to see him through thick fog. “You are… a doctor?”

“Yes, Barbara. I am. Can you remember my name?”

“Doctor…. ” She stared at him ever harder. “Doctor… Lew… is… ston?”

“That’s right, Barbara. I’m Doctor Lewiston.. Now are you ready to go?”

A bright shining door appeared five feet ahead of Barbara, and opened slightly, nothing but the purest golden radiance shining through the crack.

“I think so, Doctor. There’s just one thing I have to do first. ”

Adult Barbara disappeared, and Eight Year Old Barbara appeared in her place. She smiled winningly up at Doctor Lewiston.

“I’m not really a grown up person at all. I’m a little girl. And nothing nasty has ever happened to me! ”

“That’s wonderful, Barbara. Now let’s go home. ”

Barbara slipped her little hand into the handsome man’s, and together, they stepped through the doorway.

In a semi-private room in the intractable ward of a small but expensive hospital, Barbara woke up, and looked around.

Her family was all around her bed, and next to them was a tired, sweaty older man taking off a virtual reality headset and gloves.

He smiled at Barbara, and relaxed. His patient was safe. All was good. Within moments, he was blissfully asleep.

Barbara’s mother hugged her, and they both cried.

(Tim, an average college student, is sitting on an old beat up couch and playing a video game on a console. As we open, his roommate Linda enters. )

Linda : Wait, shouldn’t you be working on your term paper for Microbiology?

(Tim doesn’t even look up from his game. )

Tim : I still have time.

Linda : I thought you said it was due tomorrow.

Tim : Exactly. Tomorrow. As in 24 hours from now. I still have time.

Linda : (sighs) Whatever.

(Linda leaves. A few beats, then Future Tim (FT) appears. )

FT : Um, excuse me. What the fuck was that?

Tim : What?

FT : You know what, you asshole. You just threw me under the bus.

Tim : I fail to see how.

FT : God, am I always this much of a dick? You threw me under the bus by making it so that now, I have to do all the work.

Tim : So?

FT : So I am fucking sick of it! You always do this! You keep putting things off to the last minute and then I end up having to do a week’s work in one night. You just sit around playing video games knowing I will have to pick up the slack.

Tim : Works for me.

FT : But I am you. Or will be, anyway. You’re only screwing yourself over.

Tim : Not from my point of view.

FT : And it doesn’t even make any sense! It’s the same amount of work no matter when you do it. So why not do it right away and get it over?

Tim : Because then I would have to do it, instead of you.

FT : But I am you, god dammit.

Tim : Not yet you’re not.

FT : Doesn’t it bother you to know you will be stressed out and panicking and cursing yourself when you become me?

Tim : Yup. That’s why I have to make sure I enjoy myself as much as I can before then.

FT : That makes no fucking sense.

Tim : That’s your problem. Not mine.

FT : Not this time, asshole. This time I am here to MAKE you do it so I don’t have to.

Tim : We both know you’re not going to do that.

FT : Oh yeah? Why not?

Tim : Because it’s easier to just do the work yourself. And we always do what’s easier.

FT : Well…. fuck. God DAMN I hate you!

Tim : Now go back to where you came from before I delete our notes and make you have to do all the basic research again as well.

(FT screams in rage, and disappears. )

Tim : You know, I should probably do something about that guy But not right now.

(Tim goes back to playing his game, unconcerned. )

THE END

Today, they were all going to pay.

That’s what Derrick was thinking as he walked through town with the comforting weight of a duffel bag full of weapons bumping against his hip and a list of names in his pocket. Every single one of the ignorant fucking sows and shovel-faced castrated oxen that made up the population of MacAusland’s Corners was going to have their tiny minds blown wide open (some of them literally) today by the deeds of Derrick Williams, town joke, and this stupid fucking town would forever go down in history like Columbine as a place where the evil shit people do to those they think are beneath them every day was finally flung back into their faces so they would have to deal with it.

Not that he planned to kill indiscriminately, like his heroes, the Columbine killers. He wanted it to be crystal clear that his was a mission of justice, not revenge. By this time tomorrow, the press would have found his indictment of the people on his list, and would know exactly how they had earned their death sentence.

Derrick didn’t care what happened to him after that.

History will have been made. He would be famous for the rest of his life. His name would be forever burned into the minds of people all over the world. He’d be more famous than any rock star, politician, or podcaster, at least for a day, and while people would hate him, nobody would ever be able to forget all about him ever again.

His bag of goodies would take care of that.

A long gun, for distance shots. Handguns for close up work. Pipe bombs for area damage. And a special mixture he had cooked up from a recipe on the Internet guarnateed to be the highest yield explosive in the world for taking out structural supports.

As he walked through town along his carefully planned route, Derrick passed all the places where the worst moments of life had occurred.

There was the lawn where, Leonard Hauser had pushed his face into a dog turd while all Leonard’s idiot friends had hooted and hollered and chanted “Eat it, eat it!” while the rest of the kids of Miss Stephanopolis’ grade three class had laughed and slapped each other on the shoulders.

And there was the stoop where Tess Peterborough had told him, in front of everybody, that she would rather eat that dog turd herself than date Derrick.

And look, there was the bus stop where his court-appointed Child Services social worker had abandoned him in order to go shopping and hang out with her friends. But that hadn’t surprised Derrick much, because he’d already seen her taking money from his father so he could go on molesting Derrick with impunity.

Guess that’s where she got the money to go shopping.

And there was the post office where his mother had smacked him for talking, then smacked harder for not replying to a question, then smacked him hardest of all, so hard it had sent him sprawling with blood coming out his his nose and ears, for crying.

She’d only taken him to the hospital because people were watching. Derrick knew that. And then she had left him there for five days.

They kicked him out after three.

By the time reached his special spot on the Tipper Hill overpass, the spot with the perfect field of fire to cover the entire football field, bleachers and all, Derrick’s rage was transcendentally pure. It would all end today. People would pay, the world would know his name, and his story would dominate the news for days. Why had he done it? What went wrong? What could possibly have driven this seemingly normal teenaged boy, a straight A+ student (not that anyone had ever noticed) with a scholarship to MIT for computer science, to commit such a “senseless” and heinous deed?

The emails he had programmed to be sent to every media outlet in the world, from the biggest networks to the tiniest blogs, would give them the answer to that question. In detail.

As he carefully and methodically set up his base camp (just like he’d practiced), Derrick laughed to himself to think of all the jocks warming up for the “big game” below who thought that being big and strong and fast was all that mattered. They were about to learn a harsh lesson in what really counted : intelligence, preparation, patience, and above all, the ability to see beyond the petty boundaries of social reality in order to understand was was REALLY going on.

His eye to the scope of his hunting rifle, Derrick lazily swept the crowd below, taking his time, enjoying the feeling of power. He felt like he could feel the crosshairs’ gentle caress over each face, hear the heartbeats he would soon quicken (or silence), smell the stink of the terror he was about to unleash, taste the blood that would soon be shed.

Who would his first target be? There were so many to choose from.

Would it be the high school principal who treated his every complaint about being bullied like Derrick was nothing but a pushy telemarketer before shoving Derrick out the door?

Or would it be Mrs. Pickerson, who had pretended to listen sympathetically to his complaints but didn’t even bother to look up from her grading?

Or maybe it should be the cheerleader, Rebecca Simmons, who had pretended to like him only long enough to copy his homework, then called him a loser and laughed in his face?

It could even be…. wait, no.

Derrick stopped his sweep on the homely face of Debbi Taylor, and he found himself staring at her, remembering.

Remembering the day of the dog turd incident, when Debbi had been the only person to help him up and who had given him a big handful of candy-smelling Kleenex from her purse so he could clean himself up, then asked her mom to drive Derrick home.

Remembering how Debbi had sat with him in the hospital on that first long, long day and told him dumb jokes to make him smile. And how she’d been the only one to visit him the other two days.

Remembering how Debbi had stood up for both of them when some pinhead jock had called them “the fatty and the freak”. Her standing there, fearless and defiant, in front of this mountain of a teenage male and cowed him into mumbling an apology.

How Debbi, the girl everyone liked if not exactly respected, had been the only person to show him any mercy or pity at all to Dog Doo Doo Derrick, despite having a lot to lose by even being seen with him.

And that’s why Derrick decided not to go through with his plans. He couldn’t do that to her. He could do it to them…. but not her.

Fortunately, he already knew what he was going to do if he decided today not to become a murderer. He took careful aim at a certain fusebox, held his breath, then pulled the trigger.

And half a second later, the school’s expensive new scoreboard, the one the parents of the town had voted for in lieu of fixing the school’s crumbling foundation. exploded in a fireworks display rivaling any 4th of July, and for a few second, the football game was forgotten as the people of MacAusland Corners stared at the black space where the scoreboard had been.

By the time they regained their wits and all hell started breaking loose, Derrick was long gone, and nobody would figure out who had slain the mighty scoreboard until Derrick was far, far away at MIT, having the time of his life, and far too happy and busy to even think about that one fateful day when things could have gone so very wrong for him.

He thought of it now and then over the years, about how things could have gone differently if Debbi hadn’t made it to the game that day, and while he sometimes felt a little guilty about the distress he’d caused her and the other decent people of MacAusland Corners that day, there;s one thing that remained true till the day he died :

He never felt sorry for the scoreboard at all.

I’ve only been idle two days, and already I am bored, tense, frustrated, and out of sorts.

But tyou know what? That’s good. I cherish those feelings. They are a sign that I am still alive inside, and struggling to express what is inside me, instead of going numb.

I don’t want to go numb. I was number for a very long time. Barely alive, very little motile force, a pronounced lack of vitality. It was how I reacted to the position I found myself in. The path of least resistance out of the trap I found myself in of being unable to face the world at all.

So I went numb inside, and the thing is, numbness works to stop some kinds of pain. The pain of negative external stimuli. The pain of all the things in the world that remind you of how unhappy you are. The pain of the knowledge that time is passing you by and there seems to be no way to stop it.

But that numbness brings its own form of pain. The pain of deprival. The pain of dying inside. The pain of the isolation you feel due to your inability to connect to others. The pain that comes from the deep down suppression of all your desires except for the ones you can sate within your very, very tiny comfort zone.

The pain that comes from that last spark of vitality that keeps you alive screaming into the darkness of your soul and pouring its energy into trying to jump start your healing.

The pain of an unexpressed id.

The only hope of true escape lies in beating back the numbness, and that means accepting pain. You froze your emotions because they were painful, and that means thawing them out will hurt. Plus, there is the simple pain of waking up dead areas of your soul, the spiritual equivalent of the pins and needles feeling you get when waking up a hand or foot that has gone to sleep.

The difference is that depression convinces you that the pain of waking it up is not worth it, so you just get used to it being painfully numb.

Well fuck that. I am goddamned sick and tired of numbness. I will kick and punch and bite and scream in order to stay awake and alive, and if that means I get very frustrated and feel like a tiger in too small a cage, well then I will just have to find something to do in order in order to calm back down.

That means holding onto the anger and pain and fear and whatever else comes crawling out of the melting morass of my malfunctioning mind and suppressing the urge to suppress it, to freeze it again and put it back in cold storage. That’s the wrong way out. That’s the negative solution. That’s the course of action that leads to a massive net loss in happiness.

I am making the conscious decision to choose pain over inner death. Not forever pain, mind you. Just the pain that can only be alleviated by action.

That means choosing a path other than the one of least resistance. I am not a mindless agent without will who can only stand helplessly by as inner gravity drags me down. I am not water. I don’t have to seek the lowest level all the time. I can invest energy in keeping my inner fire lit. I can step on roads without knowing where they lead and figure out the way to what I want from where I am.

I’m not dead. I still function. I have a great deal of power within me if I have the will to use it. So far in my life, I have ignored or suppressed that power because I didn’t want to take responsibility for it. It seemed like such a huge burden that I felt like it would destroy me (somehow) if I was to embrace it.

Kind of like the classic science fiction/cartoon plotline where the villain acquires the massive power they seek, only to find they can’t handle it and it is tearing their mind apart so they have to give it up or go completely insane.

And what good would all that power do then?

I have always been drawn to that kind of story, and now I know why. I identify with it. Many times in my life have I felt like I was too smart for my own good. That I had more mental power than I knew how to handle, and felt the claws of madness digging into my mind when I tried to get a handle on all that mentation.

But now I know that those feelings are mere phantoms at the gate. They have served their function, which was to keep me mentally balanced, but now I am changing things and that means seeking a superior equilibrium, and that means those phantoms are going to have to step aside.

Business as usual is simply not longer acceptable.

I knew I had reached a new plateau when I played a very good entry in my all time favorite video game genre (collectible card game type games) all afternoon, and yet still found myself restless and discontent. That genre of game is extremely mentally engrossing (at least, if it’s any good) and can soak up my excess mental energy and surplus mental bandwidth like no other.

That’s why I love it so much!

But no, it’s no longer enough. The only thing that has quieted the beast is writing this blog entry. Clearly, I am divurging from my usual diversions, and will have to find something more satisfying than even my very favorite kind of video game to occupy myself.

I might actually have to become productive. Imagine that.

Friday morning, I have my last exam and that will be my official farewell to Kwantlen.

Dunno what will become of me without even that on my mind.

But I will come up with something!

And I will talk to all you nice people again tomorrow.