THE STORY SO FAR: Just as doom descended upon the crew from several different directions simultaneously, they were miraculously snatched away into entirely different circumstances! Or were they? An all new player entered the scene, thereby setting the stage for a clash between fantastic mental titans from opposing future eras: with Staute's own all too frail human mind serving as the battleground.

Staute

Exquisite ecstasy flowed seamlessly into intense agonies. Hellish, sadistic demons danced upon my soul.

I felt suddenly cold. And woke up to an unusual sight: a glowing white body floating near to me!

I jumped up and away from the thing. It seemed startled by my actions.

It was shaped like a woman. At least superficially. But it didn't look human.

At first I thought it was naked and hairless. But upon further consideration I figured it was wearing a skintight suit, which covered it from head to toe.

It was as shapely as a human fashion model; very pleasing in that respect.

But everything else was strange: not right at all.

Everything about the woman-thing's covering was a glowing white color. A soft, glowing white. Like the sheen of a pearl, I realized; a silvery, shining white.

Even the eyes were that same all silvery color. That part was the scariest: I could see no pupils, but could tell the eyes were looking at me anyway, somehow. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

My surroundings indicated I was still in the same mind-blowingly gigantic room I remembered from before. But there was no sign of the big floating knot. The only thing different was I was no longer alone. The white figure now floating a few yards away from me was at least human-shaped.

I heard something like a bird singing-- but not a bird. The music was oddly familiar.

Turned out it was laughter. Laughter coming from the bald white woman-thing. Audible laughter; not an effect communicated over the net.

"Who are you?" my voice rasped out, almost too quiet to be heard. I was losing my voice from disuse, it seemed. Saying the words caused me to cough.

The musical laughter continued a moment, then changed to something else.

Love, my love, do you not see?
I am you, and you are me.
Living and dead, here and there,
Destiny calls us, for this to share.

The musical voice carrying the words was beautiful; it pulled at me.

The woman looked familiar. And I remembered my dream.

I'd dreamed of Sue Anne, while in reality this...thing had been with me; I trembled in a confused mix of emotion: anger, loss, humiliation, fear.

As the seconds mounted, I also became aware of a shroud of exhaustion and dark depression settling over me. Despair approached in ever broader steps, signaling the coming of a monster headache, and worse. The silvery figure continued to sing at me.

Come come, my love,
there is nothing to fear,
I am your beloved,
and you my most dear.

There was something about the thing which strongly attracted me. But I knew better. I tried focusing on my shush net node through the mounting pain, to call for help from the Pagnew. And inadvertently ran smack into the waiting mind of the white witch.

It was a searing, white hot thing. For just the briefest instant, it burned like the fires of hell.

But that only lasted until I'd revved up enough to synchronize with it. You might say the experience was something like suddenly realizing your clothing had snagged onto a moving train, and if you didn't manage to jump on you'd be dragged under the wheels.

Yep, I'd say that pretty much sums up the feeling of initial link up.

Too, when my own rhythms matched pace with the other, my pains, sorrows, and fears all fell away as if by magic. I began to realize what had been happening to me over the past couple of hours.

Symantici and I were in Sol direct link again. We had been before, but my conscious mind had been only partially engaged then, and so was stunned upon awakening; it didn't understand what was going on. Now I was consciously in the link, and everything was crystal clear.

Symantici and I were one. Our united identity spun lazily about its axis, joyous in its completeness and contentment.

Symantici had never meant to harm me. And in fact was incapable of it, in any voluntary fashion. As I was with her.

Neither had Symantici meant to unnecessarily deceive me. The original projection of Sue Anne had been a desperate bid for survival on her part. And had pulled me back from a death wish that could easily have been otherwise realized, since I'd been drowning in trauma from the mental conflagration going on in my skull at the time.

Sym admitted to me her original goal had been to scan my memories and experiences of the past as part of an investigation into what the whole Pagnew-related mess was about. All sorts of strange and conflicting data had streamed in from the Sol fleet we'd hung out with previously. And part of Sym's job was to make sense of such things for the local inhabitants. But when she'd invaded my head, she'd found someone else had gotten there first.

Being that Sym and I were one in the link, I didn't hesitate to believe her, for I could see and recall everything which had happened from her perspective, much as she could herself. In the link I was Sym and she was me. So Sym had a ringside seat on the experience from my side of the aisle as well.

[There is a very strange sense of inevitability and acceptance here, on the part of my supposed younger self. The memory conveys the same to me. It's like we've subconsciously known someone else was in our head for a while now. Plus, the wild trip aboard the Pagnew has so broadened our horizons that we're now taking even the most extraordinary and potentially alarming events in stride-- almost treating them as routine.

Too, there's a deep calming effect flowing from the link with the Sol. Indeed, this may be having the greatest influence of all on our respective attitudes towards these matters.

I wonder though if my younger self could remain this calm, outside of the Sol's mental influence?

The link with the Sol also reveals Symantici had considered and rejected certain possible explanations for the mysterious entity which had thrown her together with my younger self. Possibilities like the entity being an artifact of the mental illness which was common during the 20th century; that it might even be related to the initial creation of the Signposts document itself.

But regardless of the true source or identity of the seemingly separate intelligence, my primitive self's possible contribution to history made it far too risky for the Sol to make any attempt to remove or modify-- or even closely examine-- the unexplained presence in my young self's mind.

My younger self picks up on all this of course-- otherwise I wouldn't recall it here. But he's curiously nonchalant about it. Again, perhaps because of the Sol's influence. Too, I see no way to determine how much (if any) the separate...personality...may itself be affecting my younger version's behavior.

At the moment it's like younger me doesn't realize or care that this anomalous presence may greatly increase the chance of he-- and I-- truly being the Staute revered by various parties here.]

We knew what had happened to us, and how. But we didn't know why. Or where this Ovizatataron character could have come from.

Together over time, we would try to find the missing pieces of the puzzle. But for now the mystery of Ovizatataron would have to wait. For it wasn't the only thing missing a chapter or two; there was also Sym herself.

At this time Symantici was relatively crippled, so far as Sol entities go. So I had to serve as a missing piece of her Triad, until a replacement module could be fitted into place. I helped her set the repair into motion by enabling her to contact some of her Sol friends about the matter. It didn't take long to get what we needed to re-integrate her psyche.

Basically all I had to do to help was be with her in the link. It was that easy.

The thought of contacting other Sol didn't bother me in the least, since I knew through Sym that her Sol associates were vastly different from the male Sol we'd been dealing with before.

As the direct link gave me virtually the same access to Sym I had while replacing Redbywar in the triad, I felt no loss once repairs made my triad role no longer necessary. Instead, I felt the same relief as Sym, that she was now whole again. As well as some pangs of regret, for how both our lives were now permanently changed in ways we could not have anticipated before.

Naturally a great hub bub was threatening to erupt over what had happened to Sym, and our link up-- and of course, the whole matter of the misplaced Pagnew itself. There were way too many Sol in the know about much of this to keep the lid on it for long.

It wasn't that the whole Sol public now knew everything which had taken place-- but there was an inkling out there. The elite Sol and Colonists were the ones who knew the most. And Jerrera's crowd too, of course.

But despite the fact Sym now had to relinquish the high office she'd previously held, she still had friends in high places. One of these friends I was surprised to discover was her ship. At least, I'd thought it was her ship. But it wasn't. It was actually a High Sol by the name of Thantia. One of the top few dozen Sol in this local area of Realtime, my Sym memories informed me. We'd been inside her the whole time we were being mentally bludgeoned or whatever by Ovizatataron-- and she hadn't lifted a finger (or a tendril?) to help! Apparently because the way the conflict played out, Thantia herself had little indication of what was happening at the time.

Anyway, the Sol political theater which followed was quite confusing-- to put it mildly. Even with the benefit of being privy to Sym's thoughts, I found it hard to fully grasp just what was going on. There was just too much about every matter it seemed, to all fit in my head at once-- and so I couldn't comprehend the forest, because I couldn't cram all the trees into my skull simultaneously.

Unfortunately, even with a Sol direct link, both partners tend to retain certain restrictions stemming from their basic physiology and education. Sym trying to explain her Sol conversations with me was like me trying to explain the differences between TV movies, TV news, and TV commercials to a three year old: just plain old insufficient data in that young head, ma'am. Sorry!

My (and the Pagnew's) legal status were one unholy mess. So was Sym's too, now. There was immense pressure to separate the crew from the ship and each other, disassemble the ship immediately, then begin a massive investigation into everything remotely related to us. Thankfully Thantia had the clout and the inclination to save us from all that-- at least for a while.

It turned out Thantia wanted the same things Sym and I did: one, to spend some time recovering from our forced link up and its ramifications; two, figure out where Ovizatataron came from, and why he'd orchestrated our union; three, try to discover what the Pagnew was doing here, and why; and four, correlate all this other stuff with the possibility that I was the Signposts Staute, and see where that led us.

It was a tall order, but the entity that was both Sym and I was hopeful over our chances for success.

One of the first things Sym and I had to do was consolidate our unity-- rearrange our psyches a bit to make our integration more comfortable and functional. We needed to restructure our relationship now that Redbywar had been replaced with the aid of the Sol medical facilities. Part of the job was simply exploring who we were, both now and before.

During a link I satisfied my own curiosity about why Sym couldn't replace Redbywar on her own. Turned out that capacity had been present in the earliest Sol-type beings, but proven dangerous. Think about it: if people could readily perform radical brain surgery on themselves in a painless and easy manner, pretty soon a sizable portion of the population would almost certainly drive themselves wacko with it. In the proto-Sol beings, that's exactly what had happened. But there were other flaws too besides that one, leading to an even larger proportion of crazy super-beings back then, than this bug would have generated on its own. Yikes! So of course all these things were fixed. Hence, Sym's inability in the present to replace Redbywar on her own.

Sym was not a single person, but a conglomeration of hundreds of sometimes competing, sometimes cooperating, micro-personalities, and/or drives or priorities. At least from my perspective. For I could easily distinguish hundreds of different voices and different minor intellects, if I cared to look past the facade of her single topmost face, single loudest voice, and single most over-riding consciousness. At lower levels, I perceived Sym to be a crowd of people conscientiously going about their business in a nice and orderly fashion, just behind or beyond the Sym I saw when I looked into her eyes.

When I say she was the equivalent of hundreds of people, I use the term 'people' to mean the partial intellects which populated much of the twentieth century experience. For it always seemed to me many of us hid away and left unused and unengaged much of ourselves in our jobs, our relationships, and our other activities on a regular basis, for a variety of reasons. Partly we did this to hide away bits of ourselves we didn't think others would like or be interested in. Partly we did it to make it easier to disguise ourselves; to look like something we weren't, either in search of acceptance or simply to survive various adverse circumstances. Partly we did it because we ourselves simply didn't know how-- or didn't want to-- cope with certain aspects of our own personalities or intellects. Whatever the reason, many of us traveled through life displaying only fragments of ourselves to others, and using only some of our abilities. With the result that advanced aliens scooping up a random sampling of us from a street corner would probably notice few of us were really 'all there'. That is, most of us (after a certain age) consisted of only a portion or subset of what we'd originally been, or possessed the potential to become: for eventually those bits of ourselves which we consistently try to disguise or excise or remake to better fit into what we think others expect of us, wither completely away, or else become so starved or distorted as to have either a negligible effect-- or an entirely unnatural one-- on who we are, or how we behave from that point on.

And so the sample the aliens take might consist of nothing but miscellaneous pieces of human beings, rather than any whole individuals: due to our long term conscious or unconscious restraint or winnowing on big parts of our natural born abilities and sensibilities.

The hundreds of different voices which made up the total Symantici I knew and loved were like that bunch of twentieth century folks scooped up by aliens. Each individual voice was a person; but not a whole person. Many were superb experts or specialists in a certain area, but became jabbering idiots if confronted with something that didn't belong to their particular domain. They were all 'niche' personalities, which somehow worked in concert to form the totality which was my Sym.

After a while in my relationship with Sym, I became aware something was different about me; something more than the changes made necessary by our merger.

It turned out my interaction with Sym was subtly rearranging my own neural network!

My neuron linkages were no longer exactly as they'd been prior to the merger. Sym had found problems in my connections, she said. Problems like bits of damage here and there, from my past. Damage caused by bouts with physical violence and minor malnutrition, fever associated with sickness, and excesses of alcohol and other mind altering substances.

But some of the worst items I'd caused myself, with bad habits in processing, according to Sym. It turned out that for humn from my time most all this stuff was normal. But the habitual abuse of my brain with largely self-inflicted overdoses of depression, loneliness, and self-loathing, had warped my psyche, leaving me significantly disabled in some important ways, mentally speaking.

In direct link a shared personality always fixes any problems uncovered in any component automatically (if possible). In one way this exercise was just a very advanced form of the grooming practices hominids had performed for one another millions of years ago. Physical grooming had evolved to mental grooming: that's just how it was. And Sym had performed these alterations on me in pretty much an unconscious fashion-- it was basic instinct for the Sol. And it was quick: only after the deal was done, did Sym realize her normal link behavior may have jeopardized my essential historic nature and role. But she just couldn't help it. Improving my cognitive functions in our initial merger was for Sym like it would have been for me in the 20th century, correcting a mispronounced word by a child learning to read. It was that easy, that quick, that automatic; and that virtually instinctive an action, for Sym.

[Hmmmm. 'The information must flow': a hacker's dictum for the 1990s. Looks like it caught on big time in millennia to come. According to this recollection anyway. To paraphrase an anti-drunk driving ad, " Friends don't let friends process inefficiently."]

But of course there were some spots inside me that Sym dared not go, or attempt to repair, even subconsciously; because that was where Ovizatataron lived.

Ovizatataron was strong. And scary. He'd consumed Redbywar and injured Sym. But when Ovizatataron started to go further and kill her, I'd stopped him somehow. I had to admit I liked the hero part of the story. And the whole thing did seem vaguely familiar, in a weird kind of way. But familiar like a fading dream, was all.

Fortunately, although Sym remained wary of Ovizatataron, she didn't fear him anymore. The reasons included my apparent ability to protect her from him, the fact he hadn't shown himself to us again in our links, and certain precautions Sym had since added to our unity state, which would automatically call in help from Thantia and other Sol resources if needed. Sym and her associates also harbored an intense fascination with both me and my apparent inner demon. And Sym herself in direct link with me seemed the safest and most thorough way to investigate the matter.

Which of course meant more lovin' for yours truly. Yay!

Sym was an old hand at Sol direct links. But encountering vivid memories of human hormone fed passions, and undergoing actual personality modification at Ovizatataron's unseen hand, had made our own direct link practically a religious experience for her. Not to mention the fact that I'd made her into the woman she was today! Ha, ha. I loved that!

Sym Anne

Symantici; Sue Anne; Sol.

Woman.

The transition was unlike any other in memory. Not even the Matux Trials had so drastically changed the fabric of this id.

Symantici noted intriguing new depths in her persona; but she also perceived new limits.

The change was at once both liberating and constraining; a paradox unlike anything in the persona's prior experience.

She.

She.

She!

This new aspect of her persona was bittersweet. From a purely logical perspective, it was abhorrent and degrading. And yet something within her welcomed the change. Celebrated it, as if a new season of growth and opportunity had come upon a once desolate wasteland.

Staute

I knew all Sym's memories now, just as she knew mine. I could see how both our paths had converged.

And I could see the tracks of the mysterious Ovizatataron in our psyches.

Our combined intelligence and integration of observations showed us that he'd manipulated us both into the present accord.

But we forgave him. For we were now more than either had been alone. And happier.

Ovizatataron had not re-emerged from his hiding place since the merger. Somehow he was able to hide himself well within the framework of my own neural net. Symantici informed me that though she'd been unable to inspect that region of my mind for flaws to correct, she was sure Ovizatataron had already done so: for such a being could not be comfortable in an environment limited by old (and repairable) damages.

Symantici was fascinated by her newfound sexuality. I was amazed at what the mental link added to the mix. We played for a long time with our new toys-- each other.

The changes which had occurred in the human race since my time were astounding. In my tour with Ling, I'd been able to observe our posterity more than 500 years into the future.

Now, with Sym, I was given a look at the race another 340 years beyond Ling's time.

Some of the trends at Ling's origin had crystallized into policies and tradition by Sym's-- while others had taken bizarre and unexpected paths.

The government itself generated new people now; at least in most cases where the Sol were concerned. By this time the Sol were but one branch of the humn. There were many other very different races now, all descended directly or indirectly from the same humanity as the Sol. Depending on who you asked, the child races humanity had boosted to sentience from other species such as chimpanzees and dolphins, were or were not members of the humn.

The government process which produced new Sol citizens was called Issuance.

It took a while for my euphoric afterglow to retreat sufficiently that I thought about Ling and the Pagnew again. But any concern I had for them was instantly assuaged by my connection with Sym. She had perfect knowledge of their whereabouts and status, and so I did too.

Symantici had rescued us from her fellow Sol. It had been she-- having temporarily assumed Jerrera's looks-- who had appeared immediately after his capture, and worried Arbitur and I so much.

Arbitur had taken over the synthesized Sol body I'd previously controlled, to grapple directly with the new apparent threat. Symantici had easily overcome him, and downloaded everything he knew. And then she'd come for me.

I sure was a popular fellow with these future folks! Ha, ha.

I now felt a lot different about myself, than I had at the beginning of this trip.

In the twentieth century, I was a down and out college kid with an uncertain future, precious few friends, and even fewer prospects for female companionship. Now my future was supposedly something important, I lived among undreamt of wealth and technology, where things were driven literally by imagination, and I had two-- count'em!-- two girlfriends! At once!

I so wished Steve could see this!

Symantici was amused by my perspective. As far back as my own twentieth century, multiple-- even simultaneous-- intimate relationships were not uncommon for either sex.

Maybe she was right. But they'd sure been uncommon for me!

Of course, they'd been just the opposite for Steve.

I realized then that maybe I should be glad Steve wasn't here after all. My friend Steve would have fit in a lot better than me with these classes of people. Hell: knowing Steve, he might even have taught Ling and Sym something they didn't know about lots of things, like sex and mind games: for those were two of his favorite pastimes!

He likely would've stolen both Ling and Sym from me, had he been here. And then set out to conquer the entire female side of the Sol race!

Symantici mentally chuckled at these thoughts. And marveled at my seeming ability to sidestep the anti-deception measures in the link, to provide her with such a deliciously absurd vision: she thought I was joking!

Anyway, Symantici had transported us and the Pagnew out of harm's way, and to her own 'backyard', as it were. Just when we'd needed it most.

I could see in her memory pools that we were indeed safe here. The male Sol would not dare approach uninvited.

We had Thantia to thank for much of this of course. She'd so far managed to keep a lid on the discontent of the community about me and the Pagnew's unexpected appearance in this Realtime, and its implications. As well as our ruining of their perfectly good Tribunal.

But what of the renegade tech enemy we'd faced beside the male Sol? Weren't we in danger from them here?

No. Sym knew much about the enemy. She assured me that the entity was seeking only unimpeded development in that corner of space, similar to a wasp nest on Old Earth.

They were more a pest than anything else, I was amazed to learn. The male Sol had primarily been dispatched in their direction simply to keep them (the male Sol) busy, and out of everyone's hair in the local colonies and vicinity. In fact, this was a common practice here.

From the perspective of Sym and possibly the colonists as well, the male Sol seemed to be little more than trouble-making vigilantes who-- like children-- had to be kept corralled and/or distracted via various measures for the safety of both themselves and others.

I kind of felt bad for my gender among the Sol-- I mean, it sort of made all men across all time look bad, the way the male Sol acted (Sym gave me all the examples of their past misadventures I could stand; it wasn't pretty). Fortunately, there were plenty of males among the rest of the humn who were just as civilized as the female Sol-- so the male Sol mostly appeared to be just a notable aberration-- and not representative of all males everywhere, in this Realtime.

But what about the Pagnew? Weren't Ling and the crew worried about me? No. Sym had informed them I was being 'interviewed' as part of an investigation, and would be back in contact later. And I could 'see' through Sym's resources that everyone aboard the Pagnew were being very well treated, and had been engaged with opportunities to learn about this Realtime that made even Ling too happy to worry much about me. I did touch base with Ling briefly a couple times after merger, to confirm what Sym had told her. It turned out I could still get to Ling over the shush net-- to do so I just had to bypass the default option, which was now basically the Sym channel.

Did I reveal to Ling how Sym and I had bonded? Nope. Not to deceive her; basically, I just didn't know where to begin in describing the experience to her. One thing I was certain of though, was that doing that would require plenty of time. And at the moment, both Ling and I were happily pursuing other ventures...

Sym herself was a full fledged inorganic by many measures. But her core was decidedly human, unlike that of Riki or Arbitur. And yet that core was organic only in terms of its blueprints. It was an inorganic version of Symantici's original biological neural net.

Sym was a typical example of her Sol generation in some ways. E.g., she'd had no parents. In other ways though, she somewhat differed. Her core brain's D.N.A. pattern for instance was roughly one one thousandth of a percentage point different from her peers. Most modern Sol were more homogenous than this in their intellectual base patterns.

Most of the individualization of the Sol by far was performed via variations in their initialization (read: raising) rather than their legacy genetic coding.

There was a ceiling on how much information could be coded into the D.N.A. chain. The ceiling was reasonably high, but not infinite. So when it was desired to upgrade the genetic pool, the specialists eventually hit the ceiling, and began to edit out non-essentials to gain more 'elbow room' in the resulting code (soon virtually everything but the genetic info describing various brain functions had been edited completely out). This was one of the reasons such a low percentage was available for the randomness of individuality.

So what new things did they write into the fresh script? Great genius, for one. Or at least as much of the infrastructure as was known to be necessary for such developments.

They'd been disappointed to find that works of genius did not automatically follow from such arrangements. That the percentage of actualized geniuses within the population actually declined from earlier centuries (this is in adjusted figures of course: for ancient populations often killed geniuses when they appeared, or else restrained them so heavily that they did not often reproduce).

So within the last century or so the Sol had raised the percentage of randomness allowed with a small portion of the new beings, in hopes of reversing the trend. Sym was an example of such a test batch.

Unfortunately, that meant Sym had lost out on a few other 'goodies' that most of the rest of her generation enjoyed.

But anyway, besides providing generous support synapses for genius brainstorming, what else did the Sol geneticists do?

They hardwired in support for massive interfaces to nano-tech equipment and related software protocols. They also heavily beefed up the visual centers. And developed an extensive synthesis between the logical brain half and its inorganic support.

Early on some extremists had caused the more nebulous and dreamy side of the brain to become isolated from much of the enhancement process. The logical, linear working sections had gotten the lion's share of the developmental efforts. Two reasons for this had been that the dreamy side was much more complex and hard to understand, and hard to interface to concrete functions. Another had been the great difficulty encountered in getting quantifiable results from any improvements made to that hemisphere.

So the analytical side had enjoyed the greatest development, to the detriment of the creative side.

The creative side had been further diminished by the complete removal of biological hormonal tides from its environment. These factors had played a key role in its overall workings, being as they were essential to much of the emotional interplay the right side used to sift through possibilities.

Beyond this, they'd even stripped that hemisphere of a major responsibility: memory.

Memory storage was a natural function of the creative half. But the Sol had felt it too unreliable and incomplete in this duty. So they'd built special inorganic support hardware for that too, and put it mainly under the control of the analytical side.

The end result was that the dreamy, emotional, creative hemisphere of the human brain was left behind in the Sol's pursuit of perfection.

Thus, Sym's creative emotional half was lethargic and dilapidated when we met.

When she'd direct linked with fellow Sols in the past, few of those encounters had warranted much action on the part of that little used wing of her consciousness. But I was a primitive. And my dominant half was my creative side (at least, that's what Sym told me after she'd done an analysis of me).

So when we came together in the link, I naturally clicked with her starved half. The resulting fusion was explosive; maybe unexpectedly so, even by Ovizatataron himself.

Though Symantici had welcomed me as an emergency replacement for her Redbywar node, and been aware she was giving me a brief but enormous role in her consciousness by the move, what she hadn't realized was the powerful magnetic attraction which would occur in direct link between an analytically dominated awareness, and a creatively dominant. So we'd fused with far greater force than she'd expected.

Most anyone reading this account in the twentieth through twenty-fourth centuries surely knows full well the seductive power of passion. Indeed, we 'primitives' must often fight it off, so that we can maintain some semblance of logic and reason in our actions. But Sym had never tasted this before. She hadn't even known it'd ever existed, except for the dry and lifeless historical accounts she'd studied in her sexless youth.

There's just nothing like the real thing.

Sym had been starved for emotion, for illogic, for freedom. She just hadn't known it.

Passion is to a certain degree what life is all about. Right? Right!

Of course, for all its wonderful qualities and potential, there was one big problem regarding direct link with Sym: I could never maintain it for very long. I soon discovered why.

The experience, though wonderful and ecstatic, was also exhausting-- damn near to the point of being fatal. It was so stimulating, that very rapidly you began to feel 'burnt up', as if your brain itself was beginning to smoke, and on the verge of bursting into flame. This, despite the fact that Sym (for my benefit) was operating purposely at the slowest extreme of her processing range in such connections.

Needless to say, this was perhaps more frustrating for Sym than me.

Some sort of Sol 'fail-safe' would typically kick me out of direct link with very little warning, when I appeared to be on the verge of suffering something like a brain seizure.

It was a jarring experience to go from unbridled ecstasy one second, to the comparative vacuum of cold hard reality the next.

And too, my organic brain would automatically try to 'balance out' things by giving me a taste of hell to make up for the previous pleasures. On emerging from the link I'd be immediately struck with the king of all headaches, and a devastating sense of depression and loneliness. Depression and loneliness even worse than what I'd experienced in the 20th century. And that's saying something!

Direct link also did things like severely dehydrate and starve me. The normal maintenance functions of my second skin too even seemed disrupted. For example, after one early direct link session, I noticed on emergence that my hair was matted, my muscles had all gone slack, and my body exuded a strange odor, the likes of which I'd never smelled before. My virtual trysts with Sym had some pretty devastating effects on my body chemistry, early on.

Even though I'd be in critical need of nourishment after the link, my appetite would be nonexistent due to the headaches, weird mix of muscle soreness and exhaustion, and black depression of the aftermath.

Fortunately Symantici was able to compensate for many of these things, as she became aware of them. Her advanced Sol technologies were wonderful in this respect.

But eventually it began to dawn on me that this whole direct link thing seemed uncomfortably similar to a crippling 20th century-style drug addiction.

However, once link time came again, I'd be so happy I'd forget all about the darker aspect of the experience.

In the ensuing sessions, I encountered other strange and unexpected problems with regards to my Sol mate. For one thing, Symantici was afraid of doing the 'real thing'. Even though we'd by that time done it hundreds of times in simulation.

That was how I discovered Sym was unaccustomed to actual physical contact. Of any kind. Whatsoever.

She'd not been physically touched since Issuance!

I was surprised to learn that despite what I thought, I'd never touched her either up to this point. Rather, I'd only touched a buffer field that fit her like a nano-tech glove over 100% of her body. Sym's buffer layer had been around an inch thick when I'd first met her. Which was why I got that weird impression the first time I'd physically touched her (or thought I touched her).

Even Jerrera I was surprised to learn never dropped his own version of this field. Not even in his most amorous moments with the ladies. Those of us still wholly organic in nature couldn't detect any trace of this field on our own (unless the Sol involved wished us to). It was far too thin and close fitting to the Sol bodies at its finest settings-- thinner even than the second skin I now wore.

The Sol field could literally be impregnable. Mainly because the Sol would automatically shift a zillion miles away if there was the slightest chance something might get through it. In the case that Sym's auto-shift didn't work, something greater than a nuclear blast at point blank range was required to bust her buffer field. Anything less could at most hurl her away at a few hundred miles per hour, unharmed. For her field would instantly switch from its standard form of a fog of microscopic nanotech gnats, to a completely different type of protection: a mirror bright reflective, multilayered hard shell, completely enclosing her. Nothing of a four dimensional nature could penetrate such a barrier. It was based on a variation of shifting technology, and essentially encased Sym in several super thin layers of six-dimensional space, which exactly fit over the outer surface of her body. Realtime physical laws simply could not apply to the 6D layers, and therefore could not pass through them to affect Sym herself.

Since Sym could not physically move inside the ultimate version of her shield once encased, and the shield required practically every photon of energy she could generate to maintain, Sym herself would shut down. Not see, not hear, not think, not move, until the field reopened.

In effect, Sym's shield could make her a tiny little sleeping universe in her own right.

The shells would re-open again in a staggered, monitored sequence, to provide still more protection. Whenever one shell opened, a sacrificial layer of hardy instrumentality underneath it would gauge and judge the surrounding environment as to risk, and transmit the results via Heplinger Bridge to the remaining layers.

Intelligence built into the next layer would decide how much time to wait before it itself opened, exposing the next sacrificial shell.

Sym's normal internal energy sources could typically maintain full shielding of this magnitude for up to 36 hours, and no more.

But remember one thing: even if her auto shift and her 6D shell failed, Sym herself was made of very sturdy stuff (when she was wearing her physical body; she didn't always, as to the Sol, physical bodies were like what automobiles were to 20th century folks). Sym's usual corporeal form was something at least as tough as the fourth skins of Ling's origin. So she could still survive radiation levels equivalent to that existing very near the explosion at Hiroshima in World War II, temperature extremes of 5000 to 6000 degrees, at least several dozen gravities of acceleration (compared to old humn limits of about nine), and more. So Sym was one tough cookie; even with no shields whatsoever.

Learning all this made me wonder how come the male Sol had appeared to be vulnerable to the weapons of the enemy fleet earlier-- and then I understood. According to Sym's knowledge of things, the male Sol technology was consistently inferior to that of the female Sol, and even to that of many of the Colonists! Why? Again, it could be attributed to the males' predilection towards more primitive ways in general. They mostly avoided technology upgrades, and also the virtual realities like Fance, where most all the information for such matters was stored. It wasn't that the males couldn't access the technology, so much as wouldn't. Because doing so would have required them (at least to some degree) to end their self-styled isolation.

Sym's primary tactile experience within her normal buffer shield was a sort of radar, which actually did give her a really wild form of perception. She could literally feel each pore in my skin with it (I know because the link let me feel through her senses).

It wasn't a human sense of touch, with different areas possessing different levels of sensitivity. Or the possibility of both pain and pleasure sensations. To Sym, practically all physical sensations were the same. And she really had no erogenous zones-- except for her mind.

She just didn't have any physical comprehension of the subject beyond the implied elements she'd learned in the link from me.

It seemed that I learned a lot myself about sex, from experiencing Sym's curious lack of knowledge on the subject.

Once I became aware we weren't really doing anything, but just thinking it, I became very dis-satisfied with the status quo.

This mind sex was great, but it somehow wasn't right to do it to the exclusion of the real thing. Where I came from, the closest thing to mind sex was your own imagination, and that was heavily frowned upon, to put it mildly. I don't think any red-blooded 20th century American man would feel differently about it.

But there were substantial obstacles to achieving such an event with Sym.

For one thing, it was amazingly difficult to persuade Symantici into having real sex. She'd been trained and/or programmed since Issuance to avoid 'physical collisions' and contact of all kinds. Physical contact was one of the few real dangers the Sol still faced. So most all aspects of their existence (especially Sol like Symantici) were grouped about virtual experiences.

Heck, I learned that any physicality at all was fast becoming unusual for Sym's people as a whole-- except for the male Sol. And even they often spent time in pure data form, as Jerrera had been prior to our encounter.

It seemed the Sol were (over time) all turning into permanent machine ghosts like our own Will, Jorgon, and Yamal onboard the Pagnew. But those crew members had at least lived in physical form for many decades or longer, before moving into their virtual digs. Many Sol never left Fance at all these days.

Owning a physical body was for Sol like Sym something like a rich 20th century person owning an expensive restored antique car (which had all its internals updated to the latest and greatest technologies available, of course). Like that 20th century aficionado, Sym rarely actually got into her body and drove it anywhere. Usually she stayed in Fance, like all good modern Sol. But to pose effectively as Jerrera in the remote location aboard the Pagnew, facing possibly unexpected challenges, she'd put on her body, shape-changed it for disguise, and made her foray. Once she'd dealt with Arbitur and retrieved me, she'd elected to pump me for information before 'changing' back out of her physical form. And that's the only reason she'd been embodied when I met her.

And it seemed Sym's self-containment in her physical form may also have played a part in the isolation which left her vulnerable to Ovizatataron's designs.

Since our merger, Sym had spent a far greater proportion of her time ensconced in her physical form than usual, for her kind. And she'd also spent considerable effort re-configuring her body to something closer to what my own preferences for a human mate were like-- basically using my memories of Sue Anne for her template.

As I personally had always considered Sue Anne to be stunningly, achingly beautiful, I didn't put up much overt argument with Sym over her choice [cue wolfish howl here].

In direct link Sym had started out virtually identical to Sue Anne, but over time was subtly changing herself to better express her own individuality, while at the same time remaining pleasing to my own sensibilities.

After all, neither Sym or I wished for her to be a clone of Sue Anne. That wouldn't have been fair to anyone-- especially Sue Anne herself. I was certain Sue Anne wouldn't have liked any arrangement here which included a resemblance too near to her own likeness.

(To be more precise, I don't think the original Sue Anne would have wanted Sym aping her appearance over the long term, for casual reasons. But my first hand impression of her (the original) was that she was a good soul, and wouldn't have minded us borrowing her look during the life-and-death crisis which preceded our merger. And besides that, she owed me one. For I'd once risked my own life-- as well as wrecked my car-- to save the lives of her and several of her friends, way back in the 20th century.)

But of course as Sue Anne almost certainly had been dead now for centuries (and I personally hadn't had much conscious input on Sym's initial selection), I didn't worry too much about it. I resolved to try to be as good and honorable a fellow as I could in the circumstances though, so if somehow Sue Anne could see all this, she might not mind so much after all.

So Symantici's looks rapidly diverged from Sue Anne's identical likeness in our link visions. Partly because I didn't feel it right for her to keep Sue Anne's exact appearance, and partly because-- like any woman-- Sym wanted her own distinctive look.

All the above concerned Sym's virtual appearance within the shared illusion of our direct link. Her actual physical look had been starkly different in the early hours and days of our relationship.

In cold, hard reality, Sym's utterly inhuman great-loose-knot look had first transformed into a near-featureless, female humanoid shaped, pearl-complexioned animated form (kind of a live but creepy-looking store mannikin or statue). Since then her body had been steadily becoming more human-like, both internally and externally-- at least in terms of my perception of it, and Sym's own project to learn more about the experiences of the primitive human females of my time.

But despite all this, Sym had no plans to actually let me touch her.

As far as the Sol were concerned, all physical action was to be avoided, and everything done in Fance where possible (Fance is one name for the virtual side of their civilization, in case I didn't make that clear before).

If Realtime movement was necessary, it was well planned, and then executed at the highest practical speed for efficiency. This allowed those involved to return as quickly as possible to the proper state of being, which was virtual. Note here that the recommended high velocities of movement made collisions potentially an even more devastating possibility for the Sol. This 'need for speed' apparently stemmed mostly from the Sol's abhorrence of Realtime and its snail's pace of progress, compared to Fance.

There also was the recurring incidence of renegade technology to consider. This included criminally programmed buffer fields, virus programs, and others. The Sol were vulnerable to such things, even in this far future. Direct link supposedly automatically filtered out such threats via the most advanced protection agents known to Sol science. Somehow though Ovizatataron had managed to defeat or bypass those safeguards-- perhaps with a little help from Sym's own negligence.

So the Sol tended to consider their greatest vulnerability by far to be physical proximity to any threat; ergo, actual contact was considered the greatest danger of any to their well being.

As a result of this, Sym's whole existence revolved around not actually touching anything. Can you believe it? That the human race had become like gods, and in the process become terrified of touching anything: including each other.

This reasoning had been one of the driving forces behind the development of the Sol probability triggered auto shifts. It had grown out of a measure originally designed to prevent actual contact or collision with other physical objects!

So if Sym could be persuaded to do so, we had to defuse her auto shift, disable her tight little buffer field, grow her a synthetic human-style nervous system through which to feel differing tactile sensations, and defeat her strong instinctual prohibitions against much of the above, to give her just a portion of the capacity for love-making that a standard 20th century female possessed as standard equipment.

It helped a lot that I had been, however briefly, a member of Sym's Triad. The fact that her analytical nature was so fascinated by my paradoxical dreamy side didn't hurt either. Despite my primitive nature and her total access to my consciousness, I defied her ability to understand me, much as her complexity defied my own attempts to grasp her. Naturally though, her algorithms looped furiously trying to figure me out, even as I just accepted the fact I couldn't do the same with her. Indeed, it was finally this aspect that put me over the top in convincing her. For she couldn't resist compiling more empirical data with which to analyze me.

We would turn off her probability defense mechanism first. I felt in her mind at the time a sense of 'nakedness' that someone in the twentieth century would feel, if they were considering removing all their clothes in a public place.

She'd grown herself a synthetic version of a nervous system to approximate that of a human female from my own time, based upon examination of historical data and information about the (embodied) female crew members aboard the Pagnew (there were some in the back up crew too). Other details were involved as well, such as applying special disabling programs upon her physical behavior and personal defense systems so that Sym couldn't accidentally disintegrate me any number of ways as a reflex action on her part-- if and when we ever actually touched.

Yes, physical contact with a Sol female was definitely lots more trouble than the link kind.

But even after all the preparation, when it came down to actually doing it, Sym discovered within herself a towering wall of reluctance.

Though frustrated by Sym's resistance to physically 'go all the way', I also experienced a certain amusement from the irony. For here was this beautiful goddess of a woman (with her continuing transformations both virtual and physical, she looked better every day)-- powerful enough to burn me to a cinder in a second-- as timid as a twentieth century virgin, her first time out!

It had come as a bit of a shock to me to realize that Sym truly was a virgin. Indeed, she was technically more a virgin than any girl from my own time. Because twentieth century virgins in the teenage social circles had usually been female since birth; possessed at least fourteen to sixteen years of experience of being feminine, and of possessing a sexual identity (even if only an immature one). Sym on the other hand, had only turned physically female a matter of days before.

Too, twentieth century females had experienced physical contact all of their lives, long before their first sexual escapades. They'd floated in their mother's womb for nine months; doctors had delivered and examined them; parents had hugged and carried them; siblings and friends had fought and played with them, as well as slept alongside them.

Sym though had never physically touched another being in her life.

I pondered how much stranger and more alien this experience must seem to her, in anticipation, than to a typical twentieth century innocent.

And yet Symantici was regarded as fully matured in her own culture-- though not as mature and developed as High Sol like Thantia, of course.

Even after she was prepared physically, we still ended up going several more sessions before I could persuade her to go the rest of the way.

The clincher came when I had the bright idea to have her do a projection of the risk I myself faced from the encounter too, if Sym were to somehow lose the precise control she had over her body.

Remember that Symantici was a Sol: equipped with a nano technology body; literally super strong and super tough.

It would be all too easy for Symantici's dazzling form to become a gorgeous meat grinder for me: a frail, 100% biological human male from the ancient past.

Though the probability of this happening was extremely low, still it existed. And so could be examined in virtual reality by Symantici herself.

This contingency showed her that I too would face a risk similar to her own; a higher risk, in fact. For there was negligible risk of me harboring something which might do comparable damage to her. Even Ovizatataron could not pose a risk in physical encounters anywhere near that he'd presented in the link. Since the merger, Ovizatataron had remained pleasingly dormant. Plus, if Ovizatataron was an infection, Sym had already suffered through him. She now was 'inoculated' with a formidable array of specially designed programs and other resources to shield her from any more of his shenanigans. And all that was atop her one already proven defense, of having me in the link too. After all, I'd already chased him off once (somehow).

Indeed, Sym now welcomed the thought of Ovizatataron attacking her again. For the moment he emerged from hiding in my neural net he'd be vulnerable, and Sym might could force him out entirely-- and without appreciable harm to me, either (or so she claimed).

I must admit there remained some sensitive territory here about what would be done with or to Ovizatataron, if a handy opportunity did arise. For we really couldn't say for sure that he didn't belong there; he might be important to me someday doing the Signposts document. Maybe the Sol outside our little local circle would eventually override this uncertainty: but it didn't appear Ovizatataron faced much of a threat from Sym, Thantia, and I, so long as he didn't threaten us first.

When Sym finally did relent to my desires, she managed to put things off yet another session by insisting we do things in the ancient manner, if we were to do them at all. I didn't quite understand what she meant, but had to go along with it. After all, it was the only choice she gave me.

So the next session turned out to be quite different indeed.

For one thing, we didn't go immediately into direct link, but instead stayed entirely in Realtime, and in our own heads. We even spoke aloud instead of communicating over the net! I was surprised. And pretty rusty, in terms of speaking aloud.

Sym had apparently accelerated her human transformation since our last physical meeting (our direct links seemed unaffected by distance; at least within the confines of Thantia). Though her skin retained its pearly gleam from before, in every other way she seemed much more human. She was also wearing clothes.

Clothing for her physical form hadn't really been necessary before, as Sym had only gradually been taking on the details of human features, beginning with her face and head. The rest of her had remained much like the chassis of a living clothing mannikin from the 20th century: a pleasing shape, but devoid of the details and pliability you'd expect in a truly human physique.

But maybe that had changed now.

For a rank amateur in wardrobe selection, Sym had sure done a great job; the vision before me was breathtaking.

Apparently Sym had played improvisation with what she'd learned from my own memories, plus whatever history books existed in her virtual libraries. The result was a curious mix of cheerleader outfit and evening gown: something many guys would like to see worn in a beauty pageant competition.

At least, that was my initial impression: but someone more knowledgeable of fashion might not describe it that way.

I got the cheerleader outfit idea from the bright white mini-skirt-like item which adorned her hips. But a long second skirt split all the way up the middle of the front fell from beneath the mini-skirt, with some extra length trailing behind her feet. This left her long and luscious legs almost completely exposed with every step she took.

(Of course, she was only mimicking walking for the visual effect: she was actually treading atop a floor made of her protective buffer field; if you looked closely, you'd see a small spacing between her feet and the floor)

Only the outer mini-skirt was completely white; the flowing split open skirt underneath was white at top, but gradually changed to a medium blue as it neared floor level.

On her feet were something like high heeled sandals, I guess you'd call them. The sandals were kept in place by thin, spare straps, which wound fetchingly up and around her ankles, to end approximately halfway up to her knees.

Sym's arms and shoulders were bare, but for a very few, and very fine, tattoo-like markings here and there.

Her top appeared to be a simple white fabric wrap, which well accentuated her curves.

Some sort of fine metallic mesh or chain with strategically placed rigid frameworks in the mix covered the sides of her head, with holes through which her ears could be seen (Sym's ears at this point were merely featureless protrusions suggesting the general presence of human ears). The contraption manipulated her impressive mane of hair into a series and array of cascading locks up top, at the sides, and behind her. The head gear itself was a gleaming crimson color.

Sym's new hair appeared to be spun of extremely fine gold filaments; with a glittering metallic sheen to it which dazzled the eye. So each strand was probably many times the diameter of a single biological human hair. She sported a few subtle tattoo markings near her eyes, to match those on her arms and shoulders.

Sym also glowed. And not from some sort of contrivance: it was her skin itself that was alight.

If she'd been more traditionally human in appearance-- and not glowing-- she'd have been rated as a solid knockout by any 20th century male, I'm sure. But with all her other-worldly charms added to the mix, I guessed at least half of all 20th century males would have considered her maybe just as scary as she was gorgeous.

She smiled a Mona Lisa smile at me as she drew nearer; closed-mouthed and reserved.

Objects of various sorts suddenly began appearing out of nowhere in the space between us: a table; chairs; then items upon the table. Soon, an impressive looking (and smelling) 20th century style meal had formed there.

Symantici walked up and pretended to take a seat at the table (her buffer field always maintaining a discrete minimal distance between her and anything else). She looked at me expectantly, and I joined her.

This all went on with no communications link whatsoever open between us, but for the obvious visuals. That's when she surprised me by speaking aloud. With sound; from her mouth.

Sym had not spoken to me acoustically like that since the semi-singing she'd done in the immediate aftermath of our forced merger. After that, we'd used the shush net exclusively (until now).

"You weren't expecting this, were you?" she crooned. Or maybe not: for some reason whenever Sym spoke aloud to me, it always seemed like she was singing; or that her words themselves were music. It was only the actual sound of her voice that seemed this way though; in our links, this quality was absent. The whole time I would spend around Sym, I'd be baffled by the lyrical quality of her voice (what few times she used it). For I'd always wonder if it was truly as harmonious as I thought-- or if I was only imagining it, somehow. I never got the chance to get the opinion of another biological human being on the matter, as Sym never spoke aloud in their presence.

"No; I definitely wasn't!" I replied, my voice raspy from disuse. "What is this, Sym? I thought you Sol don't eat like us 20th century folks."

"You are correct. However, I thought you might appreciate the ritual. Too, although the ingesting of biological matter isn't typical of our race, we can do so, if we wish." As if to demonstrate, a small bit of food from her plate detached itself from its companions, then levitated up and into her open mouth (via her buffer field). At that point, Sym hesitated a moment, then closed her mouth, and began trying to chew the morsel in the clumsiest manner imaginable. It was quite amusing to watch her facial expressions during the process.

I briefly pondered the details and implications of her masticating and swallowing foodstuffs like a biological being. Like, how well would that work with her buffer field restrictions? But I quickly dismissed it as merely a parlor trick on her part. For with the technology available to her, she could simply shift the material somewhere else without me knowing it. Or even have her buffer field or body 'convert' it to something entirely different and so acceptable to be incorporated into or stored by her corporeal form. And I'm talking doing this at the molecular or even atomic level. So-- in other words-- her 'eating' was almost certainly not for real, but simply part of the show.

I wasn't sure how she'd handle me laughing at her, so I tried to hold it in, and decided the best thing for me to do was to take a bite myself.

I didn't know what it was we were eating (there's plenty of 20th century Earth dishes with which I'm unfamiliar, such as just about all non-American fare; plus, Sym surely knew of additional centuries worth of items I'd never have heard of, too).

That being said, at least part of what was on the plates wasn't bad. One item was unspeakably horrific-tasting, and another merely bland to the point of tastelessness; but the third was fairly decent.

Of course, I didn't spoil it by telling Sym my opinion. Besides, she'd know it immediately the next time we linked up, if she cared to check the memory-- or I happened to think about it in the link.

"I do appreciate it, Sym: your effort here, I mean. Thanks." I smiled at her.

Sym returned the smile; though there too, she wasn't as good at the physical version as she was the virtual (or maybe in the link there was always some built-in compensation that helped the expressions, perceptions-wise).

We sat there for a while, not exactly eating, but more picking at the food, for our own separate reasons. It dawned on me that Sym was trying to emulate a 20th century style courting ritual: a dinner date. Including casual (and archaic acoustic) conversation. As you might expect, it went somewhat awkwardly. For Sym, because being a 29th century Sol, she was extremely out of her element here. And for me, because-- well, to be frank-- dating and casual conversations with the opposite sex were two things I'd never been good at either, even in my native century, and with my own fellow 20th century human beings (damn it).

The 20th century reenactment bit (with zero mind link) perplexed me, though. I wasn't sure as to what Sym's motives might be-- unless maybe she was simply trying to postpone contact yet again.

If not for the awful feelings which accompanied non-linking (and the burden of speaking aloud, by this point), I might have welcomed the circumstance. After all, there was only so much pleasure a fellow could withstand, anyway. But the post-link therapy Sym had devised for me did not wash away all the deleterious effects. I'd partly wanted the physical linkup as a way for us to better gauge and control the effects that breaking the link had on me. Though I loved direct link, it affected me way too much like what I'd heard about heroin in the 20th. I thought I needed to have an alternative means of intimacy with Sym, and old fashioned sex seemed like it'd not only be safer and easier, but maybe in a similar league of fun as the link, as well. Or hopefully, anyway.

The memory of direct link was almost as painful when you didn't have it, as the link itself was pleasurable when you did. The two-as-one state was...well...literally too good to be. At least for us 20th century folk. Coming down off that stuff was hard indeed! But maybe some real, physical sex could make both coming down and the time in-between links a little easier (at least for me personally).

As our clumsy attempt at dinner conversation dragged on, I decided that it seemed Sym was indeed postponing things again. But the lack of link too really made it a bummer. Well, though it literally hurt to be shut out this way (not even Sol tech could completely obliterate the low level pounding of my headaches in-between links), I figured I'd just have to take it; Sym was after all a Sol.

Finally, after what seemed like a very, very long time to me, Sym apparently decided that we'd had enough of the dinner play, and the table and its contents disappeared; the chairs on which we were sitting gently brought us closer together, and then lowered, merged, and transformed into a single luxurious couch, with us sitting next to one another.

It reminded me a bit of certain mechanical rides at a county fair I'd attended only a few years before.

These alterations in our environment smacked of the gist of lots of scenes from old movies from my time. It was easy for me to imagine Sym having sent a subordinate node into Fance to comb through such archives, to boil down their essence to these discrete stages, for setting up her own recreation in the present.

She did get a bit mixed up on the choreography, though. Like when she stretched one arm around my shoulders, before I had the chance to do the same to her.

She seemed to be touching me, from the feel of things. But wherever I could see the expected points of contact between us, there was always the dimness of an intervening buffer field. Thin and near invisible, but there (I still possessed the enhanced vision bestowed upon me aboard the Pagnew).

That seemed to clinch it for me: she was indeed trying to put off real contact again.

"May I?" She looked at me expectantly, as she placed her other hand on the tab that would pull my jumpsuit apart.

"Well, sure! If you're willing to touch it, you can have it!" I said, with some sarcasm. A dim, thin film of buffer field separated her fingers from the tab. Something in me rebelled against the deception and misdirection I perceived going on here.

"Don't you feel my touch?" She still hadn't pulled on the tag.

"I feel the touch of your buffer field, Sym. Is the reason we're not in direct link right now because you wanted to fool me into thinking we were touching, when we weren't?"

Sym removed her hand from my tab. "Why are you so difficult? I have studied the problem in the Store, and theoretically we could perceive more than 99% of all the tactile sensations generated in a sexual act through the medium of my field."

"Ahh--" I held up one finger in narrative"-- but we wouldn't get 100%. And more importantly, we wouldn't be risking anything in the contact. Real sex must entail the real anxieties of mortal beings. Call up the fear of death and rejection and loneliness and the feeling of separateness. Collect up and bring to the party all the bad things about consciousness, to meet with all the good.

"If we don't do that, how can we really compare and contrast our individuality with our unity?

"The risk of death-- of discontinuity, or disruption, no matter how slight-- brings about an instability. An unpredictability, that can allow the movement to a different energy state. It opens the way to reaching and passing through our next bifurcation point," I found myself spouting.

'Bifurcation point'? My hoarse and sometimes squeaking voice seemed to be taking on an intelligence of its own. Drawing on knowledge I didn't recall having before, even from the pools I'd plumbed within Sym. Something in me was struggling to persuade the analytical Symantici to risk a totally illogical exercise.

Surprisingly, I found in my head the very information I was talking about, after a bit of sifting. But Sym was now responding to my last statement.

"Your proposal is intriguing, Jerry. And the dissipative structures of mind, both organic and inorganic, can indeed benefit from periodic events of instability to allow the formation of new matrices. However, you leave out the fact that such newfound states tend towards the chaotic; the psychotic. There are no guarantees we would make gains from such an experiment. Indeed, the probabilities point towards a negative outcome rather than positive."

Sym's words inspired a robust response of my own.

"But that's the element of risk involved! It's a necessary factor to open up the possibility of advancement in the first place. To remove the risk, you must remove the instability. If you remove the instability, you close the window of opportunity for any jump in energy state, or increased complexity at all. Ergo, if there is no risk, there is no chance of transcendence. No chance of jumping to a higher state of consciousness.

"And the potential rewards can be so great, Sym! Great enough to make the risk seem very cheap indeed.

"And the risk itself is not nearly so great as you postulate, anyway. You are assuming the worst possible scenario for risk, while here we are actually nearer to the best possible scenario; to the lowest possible risk. We have both already joined in direct link; therefore we know that neither of us would purposely harm the other. It seems well established that Ovizatataron can't or won't hurt you now. Or me. We're deep inside Thantia, your home, in the Sildurian sector; probably the safest place in this universe for either of us at this moment. And your friends and allies, both Sol and Colonists, neither of them insignificant in resources themselves, are nearby. I too have friends aboard the Pagnew we could call to for aid if need be."

I wondered how she'd respond to that? I felt like I was doing a decent job here, against such a mega-mind as I knew Sym to be. Of course, this was almost the ideal forum for my meager capabilities: me, a primitive 20th century male, highly motivated to persuade a beautiful girl into the sack-- and already having been heavily tutored by two separate sets of advanced future folks, in many of the very concepts and jargon required to sweet talk an intellectual like Sym. Plus, I'd even been inside and all around Sym's mind itself; so I was practically unbeatable! Yay!

Heck: under conditions that favorable in the good old 20th century, I might even have won over the real Sue Anne herself!

"You might someday make an adequate prosecutor, Jerry," Sym said, with a frown.

It tickled me to see her practicing her newly acquired art of human expression; she had a wonderful face for it. It'd been wasted before, in stoicism. So I'd urged her to examine facial expressions from my era, and apply them as appropriate. It was gratifying to see them in use; they made her seem much less alien.

Of course, as she was still struggling to get them right, her expressions often resembled the extremes seen in young 20th century children learning such stuff for the first time too. And so could be both humorous and endearing, to a fault.

"So...does that mean you're willing to try again, Sym?" I asked hopefully.

"You forget that I am unaccustomed to purposely seeking personal risk of cessation, Jerry. While you-- being from a backward time-- accept it as a basic premise of consciousness, I am the product of an era wherein such concepts are...considered perversions."

I couldn't help it: I laughed out loud.

"Well actually, sex was considered fairly perverted even in my own time, Sym. At least by a lot of the people I personally knew. They couldn't understand how such a sweaty, clumsy, inelegant thing could have been conceived by the same God which created all the rest of the world too.

"Now that I think of it, I guess the grittiness and messiness of the act has something to do with making its level of intimacy go off the scale. I mean, if it's a bit clumsy and awkward, neither partner, no matter how high falutin' they may think they are, can fool themselves into thinking that they've achieved perfection. It's sort of an admission of imperfection, between partners. An admission that, 'yes, I'm human like you, and feel the same need for union.' And 'yes, I feel exposed and vulnerable too in this venture'. And 'yes, sometimes I make mistakes and am uncertain, even where mistakes and uncertainty may present the greatest potential for adverse consequences--"

"Yes," Sym said. Interrupting my speech.

"Does that mean what I hope it means?"

Sym hesitated. Then nodded. "Yes."

"Whoopee!" I said, then cocked my head to one side, as it struck me how appropriate the term was. But yet again, we weren't quite to the point that I thought we were; we'd merely progressed maybe another single Planckspace unit nearer to the goal.

"The thought of discontinuity-- it frightens me, Jerry," Sym told me.

"Sym, have you forgotten?

"Love, my love, do you not see?
I am you, and you are me.
Living and dead, here and there,
Destiny calls us, for this to share.

"Come come, my love,
there is nothing to fear,
I am your beloved,
and you my most dear."

Sym's eyes softened as I reprised her original, desperate plea to me.

I wished I could think of something slick to add to it, but I was no poet. Or singer either, for that matter. It sounded bad enough just coming out in my voice, as compared to Sym's delightful musical tones.

"I-- trust you, Jerry. And entrust the deactivation of my field to your node."

"To my node? How would I work it?"

"It-- it is easy. The trigger is visual. Think of me as you first beheld me, in my true, neuter form. And audibly say the phrase 'Urrut-berri-sund'. My field will then instantly dissipate," she told me-- accompanied with an involuntary full body shudder. Wow! Her newly grown human-style nervous system must be more developed than I thought!

At last! I'd have her out of her bubble! But Sym had had a reason for doing things this way. Perhaps she couldn't bear to collapse the field herself, having enjoyed its protection all of her life. Or maybe making the trigger be the disgusting sight of her original shape was calculated to make me not want to crack her shell. No matter: if she thought disgust would hold me back, she'd greatly erred indeed; for I didn't think any male could resist her as she was now.

Sym's eyes were narrowed in apprehension. I closed mine and brought forth her original visage: the great floating gray knot. "Urrut-berri-sund," I uttered aloud.

I heard her gasp, and felt the slightest extra sag on the couch next to me. I opened my eyes.

Sym immediately jumped off the couch, and fell into a heap on the floor. She looked up at me from the rumpled splendor of her Sol clothing, and I realized she hadn't fell purposely.

"Sym, what's the matter? Why can't you walk?" I asked, as I bent to help her.

"No! Don't touch me! Please don't touch me!"

I recoiled at her words. "I-- I wasn't going to hurt you Sym, just--"

"Please Jerry, please give me back my field," Sym was shaking now, quivering in fear. I couldn't believe her over-reaction.

"Okay, but how?"

Amazingly, Sym seemed about to go into 20th century human-style shock. For a moment she couldn't answer me, and her eyes threatened to glaze over. But then she got hold of herself again, and told me what I needed-- but via direct link rather than verbally.

*The same way you deactivated it-- it's a simple toggle mechanism. Please hurry!*

I returned her field to her, and a wave of relief became visible throughout her entire body. She immediately arose to float in mid-air. And closed her eyes in a meditative look. Almost immediately after that, she reopened them.

"I am undamaged!" she exclaimed, plainly surprised. Speaking aloud again.

"You mean you thought you were hurt by the fall?" I asked naively (and acoustically too again, just like Sym).

"No: I feared the contacts of you, the couch, the floor, and the atmosphere."

"But I never touched you!" I complained. For I hadn't!

"You did not touch me purposely, but when I fell onto the couch, I grazed against you--" she shuddered again "-- and then I fell to the floor."

"But-- but you're okay now?" I was disappointed. Was this as far as things were going to go?

"Yes. I am undamaged. Un-infected."

"Well then, doesn't this prove it?"

"Prove what?"

"Prove that it's safe for us to touch?"

"No...it proves only that it was safe for us to touch at that moment and location."

"But it's still that moment! It was only a minute ago!" I raised my open hands in exasperation.

"Correction: it was thirty-three thousand nine hundred and seventy point fourteen milliseconds ago; innumerable changes could have come about in the current environment over that time."

"What? You've got to be joking!"

"No: I would not jest about a matter as serious as discontinuity."

I was stymied. So I changed the subject.

"How come you fell in the floor?"

"You deactivated my bubble!" Sym responded accusingly.

"What? That shouldn't have dumped you in the floor!"

"I-- my bubble is my means of local mobility."

"You mean...you mean you can't walk?"

"Of course I can walk. But not without my bubble."

"Well-- you've got legs, don't you?"

"Yes. But they are an inefficient means of mobility."

"Well, that's what I use! I don't have a bubble; only legs. And evidently I can walk better than you can!"

"Of course you may walk better than I; it is your primary means of locomotion, and you have practiced it your entire life. For me on the other hand, walking is as alien a means of motion as wiggling flagella to move about would be to you."

"Wiggling flagella? What are you talking about?"

"Flagella are the primary motive mechanisms of bacteria. If you were forced to use such a method of locomotion you would doubtless find it difficult in the early going."

It was at that moment it hit me.

"Sym, how about a compromise? I mean, I've already established that there is negligible risk here, and all that. But what if we do try it your way first? With your bubble still intact? And then proceed without it later, if you like what happens?"

"Yes!" Sym seemed overjoyed by that. It made me happy to see her happy. But guilty too, as I was planning a typical male subterfuge that was thousands of years old. And poor, sweet, naive superhuman Symantici, had no idea. Then I remembered she could barbecue me in only a hundredth of a second if she took offense.

But damn, she was beautiful. It'd be worth it to be barbecued, I thought. Hell: what did I have to look forward to anyway? Returning home to wash restaurant dishes and study engineering? Seeking out odd jobs in free moments to plug the gaping holes in my bank account? Better to burn inside a gorgeous Sol frying pan.

"Sym, just how thin can you make your bubble?"

*Forty-one nanometers!* she beamed over the net, in her glee. Whoops! Can't have that. Not if I'm going to surprise her.

"Uhh Sym, let's stick to voice communications on this first run, okay? Like your original plan?"

"Oh yes! That was my vector, Jerry. I just seemed to have...jumped a track in my thoughts...this is most unusual for me..." Sym looked embarrassed and concerned.

"No no, Sym, that's just fine! Your reawakening creative side is just displaying some of its random effects on your behavior. That's good!" I lied. I didn't know why she'd 'skipped a track'. But heck, I did that all the time! Surely it was nothing. But I had to feed her analytical side something to chew on, else it might derail the whole thing.

"Okay Sym, make your field as thin as you can..."

"But that parameter-- "

"Please Sym! We've already compromised! You can at least pare down your field as low as it will go."

The next moment was intensely frustrating. And stupid. Of me. For in my haste, I'd forgotten something about Sym's buffer field...

Sym's field contracted in the blink of an eye. Sym and the vague dimness of the field surrounding her instantly transformed into a hard, cold, and unmoving metallic chrome statue. With a mirror finish which gave me a fun house reflection of myself, staring at it in dismay.

Then the entire process reversed again, leaving me with the normal Sym as before.

"My field at maximum density is a level two spacetime shield, Jerry. Impervious to virtually all Realtime phenomena. It would present difficulties in interaction between us-- unless you are a much more powerful being than I believe you to be..." Sym explained with a slight smile.

Arggh! Maybe my compromise hadn't been such a good idea after all.

"Well, how thin can you make it to get that 99% plus sensitivity you mentioned before?"

"Half a micrometer should provide greater tactile resolution than your biological senses can fully read."

"Great!"

This time it was a lot better. There was no 'level two spacetime shield' rendering her into a rigid chrome statue. And it did seem like I could feel her pretty well. However, I still sensed something missing; felt that it wasn't the same as a real person-to-person contact. Although this may have been largely an imagined prejudice on my part.

I decided to go for it, regardless. I'd get the real thing soon enough. Unless Sym had taken back the control she'd given me over her shield.

I'd pulled Sym down from her mid-air bobbing position, and back onto the couch again. We were sitting alongside each other, in one another's arms.

Sym's buffer field was stretched to its max over her now. Most of it was sort of floating lazily above us in the air, to one particular side. I could faintly see the envelope stretching over to her, but it was so thin now between her and I that it was definitely invisible-- unless I focused to its limits the super sight bestowed upon me by the Pagnew crew, to see the matrix of nanotech gnats still standing guard between us.

When I touched her and she touched me, it felt very much like there was nothing at all between us. But if one pressed hard, the interface between us became slick to the touch, and hands or fingers would slide on it as if upon some really good lubricant which left behind no residue at contact. When that happened, all tactile sensation was lost (at least briefly).

It was like a mutated teflon coating, I guess. It could be somewhat distracting, as whenever we had a spike in our enthusiasm, we'd inevitably create enough pressure somewhere to get that telltale reminder that the shield was still there, between us, keeping us for all intents and purposes as separate and isolated from one another as if we were each in our own individual test tube.

I resolved to try to ignore it for the time being.

Although we'd already been about as intimate as it was possible to be in direct link, that had all been virtual, or simulated, in our heads alone. In fact, this moment now marked our first real (as in physical) kiss ever.

Just as I'd suspected, the real thing turned out to be quite a bit different from the virtual version. Especially for Sym, who had no prior real world experience to fall back on. I think it had something to do with subtle algorithms in the link which tended to fill in the gaps for you there, while in realtime you had to attend to the details personally.

So Symantici was adorably clumsy and awkward in our first true make out session-- almost the exact opposite of what she'd quickly become within direct link, after our initial connection.

I loved every mistake she made. For one thing, such fallibility made her seem more human to me, and less far future super woman.

Of course, I kept getting little reminders of her buffer field still being in place, here and there (which irked me).

The unwelcome analogy came to mind of Sym being wrapped in a plastic bag as I made love to her. And increased my annoyance.

I really liked how things were progressing. But I really wanted rid of her buffer field, too.

Soon, I promised myself: soon. I'd kill her bubble, if I could get her to the point that it didn't matter to her. Or that she wouldn't notice it.

For now I figured I'd just get whatever enjoyment I could out of this sterile make out routine, and treat it as an 'appetizer' before the main course.

I could after all see her below me (we'd fallen over into a more impassioned position by this point), sort of feel her there, and definitely pick up her scent. Thank goodness the bubble allowed that! The sight and smell and almost-feel of her alone-- even without actual surface-to-surface contact-- was pretty damn fine.

And it was fun to be on one side of her first experiences in kissing and caressing, even if it was for now just a very near thing, and not true.

Sym seemed almost as eager as I to push the proceedings further-- so long as her buffer field remained in place. And so we were soon discarding various items of clothing too, as we explored one another.

There were a few more surprises in store for me there: surprising differences which still remained between Sym and biological females from my own time. But luckily none of them turned out to be too jarring or off-putting for me. I ended up not much minding the subtle differences that Sym had elected to make to her physiology in those respects. Heck: in some ways it made everything even better!

We had a fantastic time getting to the point where she was down to her last small article of clothing, and I was left with none at all. I'd spent much of that span determining just how and where to best exploit her newly installed nervous system. Or at least I'd done that whenever I wasn't otherwise satisfying myself with the view, tastes, and textures of the exquisite feminine feast now laid out before me.

At times, the sight of her laying there like that threatened to paralyze me: to momentarily hold me in place, spellbound. For I would want to commit the vision irrevocably to memory.

She seemed so much like an honest-to-goodness angel laying there, about to be desecrated by a mortal, that I felt an odd pang of regret. Like I was somehow considering the commission of a grave sin.

It felt like God himself might strike me down at any moment, to prevent me from carrying out my dastardly intentions.

But I summoned forth all the bravado of my esteemed lineage of past male ancestors, cast off my moral misgivings, and pressed on: I'd show'em some history all right! Grrr!

Although I seemed to be getting some feedback indicating that she had indeed successfully grown herself a synthetic version of a 20th century woman's nervous system (along with its erogenous zones), I knew from previous direct links that her transformation had been somewhat haphazard, as she continued to insist upon picking and choosing which biological elements to incorporate, rather than simply adopting all of them. And besides that, she'd often had problems figuring out what to do with the new sensations she got from the modifications. So I was determined to do my damnedest to 'turn all her lights on', as I think a popular song lyric from not long after my time had described.

(One neat thing about exploring the Pagnew's history archives had been checking out future music by bands and artists I'd liked in 1972. That is, hearing songs they'd made years after my abduction.)

I just hoped she'd actually installed enough 'lights' so that half her house of pleasures wouldn't be left in the dark here!

So I was performing a lot of trial and error experimentation as I went along. Sort of like a sexy version of the Frankenstein's Monster story! Ha, ha.

Unfortunately, much as I'd expected from what I'd learned in our links, Sym seemed often more mystified or confused than titillated, by my efforts. In some ways she was still overwhelmed by the storm of emotions she'd originally encountered in link with me. It was like she was still digesting all of that, even now, and here I was pressuring her to explore the entirely different realm of physical sensations too.

Yeah, it would have been nice to give her more time to absorb all this. But I just didn't have it. Plus, all indications were that she could be pushed lots harder than a biological woman about such things, without significant risk of harm. While my own frail biological constitution seemed to be at enormous risk from burn out, due to the huge toll the aftermath of our links was taking out of me.

So I continued to persuade, cajole, and pull her along the path to what I hoped would be nirvana for us both.

"Close your eyes, Sym. Concentrate on the feeling," I instructed her.

She did so, but still seemed to not quite get the message.

"Sym, do you realize that I'm trying to give you something here?"

Sym opened her eyes. "I do not understand. I thought you wanted physical contact between us to alleviate your discomfort stemming from our links."

"Well, yeah, I do. I need that. Otherwise I just won't be able to stand many more links. But it's more than that. I want to give you something you've never had..."

I didn't know exactly how to phrase what I meant. But I realized now something was missing here: Sym thought I wanted all this only for my own benefit. She didn't realize it would ruin it for me if she got nothing out of it.

"You have already given me a multitude of unique and novel experiences, Jerry," Sym said, as she ran her unnaturally slick fingers through my hair.

"No. I don't mean the link-related stuff," I replied. "I know we share a lot there. But it's...it's too cerebral. Or not too cerebral...but too limited. I'd like there to be more. Because we are more. More than just thoughts, I mean.

"Actually we are far less than thoughts, Jerry. Our existence hinges on the interference patterns among many fluctuations in the medium of the superverse--"

"Yeah Sym, I know that theoretically we're vibrations in nothingness at some level, but that's not how we feel, is it? We don't feel like we're only waves of nothing, do we? Don't we feel like-- like-- like more than that?"

"But feelings are irrelevant, Jerry--"

"No! That's just my point, Sym! Feelings aren't irrelevant! In one way, they're all we've got! Don't you see? If we see ourselves only as hapless waves in a media of nothingness, that's all we are. But if we decide that our feelings have meaning, a meaning beyond the quantum mechanics or whatever that randomly produced them, we raise ourselves to a higher level. 'We think, therefore we are.' Descartes, I believe; a paraphrase," I shrugged. Thank God I was reasonably well read for a young American of 1972 AD.

"Anyway, it's a trap to allow ourselves no greater value than that of our constituent elements. We're more than just a random mixture of quarks! We think! We're aware! We examine ourselves, and know we're made of quarks, but do quarks themselves do that?"

Sym responded. "Priori elementary particles, and even their larger clusters the subatomics, communicate amongst themselves. Certain evidence suggests that these matrices are the basis for many forms of consciousness, matter organizations, and gravitics flow. Some of which may only be fully manifested in a range of universes which excludes our own."

Eh? Sym was telling me things that were beyond the physics I'd learned aboard the Pagnew. Quarks had consciousness? Oh shit.

"You mean quarks do know themselves? That they are self aware, like we are?"

"After a fashion. It is a different form of awareness, however. Suited to a much different reality. Or perhaps to a wider spectrum of realities, than our own. Not all universes are as complex as ours. The majority in fact probably are much simpler. Ninety-nine percent of the superverse may well be so simple as to contain only the equivalent of one or two elements in composition."

"So you're saying that quarks are even more self aware than we are?" I winced. Sym had ruined my little spiel.

"Not necessarily. It appears that only a relative few of the prioris are more complex than the majority of their brethren. But those few appear to be entire universes in their own right. Or more specifically, to be windows on other universes near to or related to our own."

"So some of these-- particles, I guess you'd call them-- look like holes into other universes?"

"Yes. In a manner of speaking."

"But there's only a few of them?"

"I was speaking proportionally. In actual numbers priori particles are infinite; therefore any fraction of their number also represents an infinity."

"But wait! I thought there was only a few hundred quark gizmos-- and most of them were just variations or attributes or something!"

"Your estimate seems based on knowledge from the Pagnew store. That value was widened significantly by research after the Pagnew's departure from origin. And itself expanded into the priori elementaries. Infinite numbers were eventually estimated at the priori level, given the open-ended range of their possible parameters."

Symantici may have looked like a sexual goddess now, but inside she was still the brainy gray knot. Only now with arms and legs attached.

I was sitting here naked with perhaps the most beautiful woman-thing in existence-- stripped down to her bare essentials-- and still somehow had gotten all tangled up in cosmic truths and quantum physics.

My own analytical side had been enormously strengthened by Sym in the link, just as Sym's creative side had been affected by mine. So I was now inordinately susceptible to logical arguments and new scientific information.

My original excitement was gone.

I'd been robbed!

What happened next? Fractures

Copyright © 2004-2011 by J.R. Mooneyham. All rights reserved.