THE STORY SO FAR: Staute and the ship's artificial intelligence hit upon a clever way to entrap the superhuman ambassador threatening them with arrest and confiscation. Or at least they thought they had. Then everything seemed to start going to hell in a hurry...

Staute

Just as all hell was about to break loose, something completely different happened.

First of all, both the Sol and enemy fleets disappeared.

In the same instant, a single huge ship-- or something-- took their place. It didn't look dangerous though. In fact, it looked more like an immense floating sculpture than a warship. And it was many times bigger than the Pagnew or Sol fleet vessels.

A gigantic doughnut-shaped cloud was also visible in the distance. Apparently there was a star near the center of its volume, judging from the glow of its core.

Evidently we'd all been shifted through Realtime-- or had we? Maybe Riki had shifted us dimensionally, in desperation? If so, he'd sure struck it lucky to-- but wait: I'd forgotten our dimensional capability was disabled.

So this must still be the Sol Realtime.

In another instant we (me, Ling, Sasha, and all the androids who'd been riding the remotes with us) were surrounded by blinding lights, and a heavy feeling pressed down upon us.

We'd been shifted back aboard the Pagnew!

*Welcome aboard all,* resonated over the net. It was Arbitur!

For the next few minutes I couldn't find out anything. The net was choked with excited dialogue between Arbitur and the crew, and everyone else seemed to know some way of getting priority over me on the channels. After disengaging from my now extraneous tech-skins and donning a standard Pagnew jumpsuit, I mentally ordered myself shifted to wherever a certain black-haired beauty happened to have gone onboard.

But upon arrival I was struck aghast; for I was not where I was supposed to be.

I was no longer onboard the Pagnew.

Arbitur had informed me before that it was impossible for anyone under most circumstances to shift outside of the ship without his direct help.

So did that mean Arbitur had done this? Or maybe there'd been some sort of mistake made when Riki turned the reins back over to Arbitur? Agh!

I was presently standing in the biggest single room I'd ever seen in my life. I mean, I'd been inside sports stadiums and coliseums before, but it looked like dozens of those structures could have easily fit inside this one!

I could see fixtures and furnishings dwindling in the distance on several sides. The fixtures themselves were of human scale, mostly. But some weren't. And about ninety percent of it was indistinguishable between furniture or artworks. The nearest wall in the place was about fifty yards from me, to my left.

I wasn't sure how many sides this place had; it didn't look rectangular.

Though apparently huge enough to hold several Woodstocks, this place looked outfitted to be someone's....futuristic showroom of living room decor? That's what it brought to mind anyway.

There was a bunch of junk hanging suspended in the air of the place. On about the fourth take, I realized it was multiple layers of what I could see on the floor of the complex. But all the furniture-- or artwork maybe-- above, was eerily suspended in air, rather than resting on any visible flooring.

The layers of statuary above receded to the limit of my vision into the distance. This mind-blowing sight had to be an illusion, I thought. Maybe I was in a scenario room after all? If not onboard the Pagnew, maybe on a Sol vessel? Holy crap!

[It appears the floating layers of appliances extended at least thousands of feet above my head! For that's about where I've noticed myself lose sight of small aircraft before, in clear skies. But in this scenario my youthful self is supposed to possess much more powerful eyesight than that typical for human beings. So that would suggest still greater heights for the view.]

I had to think. Maybe the Sol had me? But no-- the Sol fleet had disappeared just before the gigantic ship sculpture and doughnut cloud appeared.

Either Arbitur and Ling were playing an elaborate trick on me in a scenario room, or I was aboard the strange craft I'd seen near the Pagnew, before being shifted back from space. Egads! Now I wished I hadn't removed my fourth skin!

Then something moved; floated up to me. For some reason I didn't see it 'till it was right on top of me!

I was startled, and jumped behind the closest large inanimate object at hand.

The floating thing seemed to be an apparition with no substance. Because it was ghastly dull white in coloring, and floated as if it were lighter than air.

It seemed to be suspended in a faint fog, only a few inches thick.

I decided that I must indeed now be inside the sculptured vessel I'd viewed from space before.

The white thing was floating nearer to me again. I took evasive action by hurrying around more of the strange monoliths situated about the place. It felt somewhat like a strange dream of being followed by aliens inside a large Earth-bound department store.

The entity always seemed to know where I was, unfortunately. I couldn't shake it.

It was terribly pale. With a flat, dry, dead looking complexion. And horribly, horribly wrinkled. I noticed now that it wasn't exactly white, but more of a dirty white, or light gray looking color. The smoky film which surrounded it just tended to make it look lighter than it really was.

It was round, and looked like a great loose mass of congealed snakes and worms of sizes varying from wrist thickness to ant-width in diameter. There were lots more of the tiny forms than the larger ones. Thankfully the animal-like things weren't squirming.

What was this thing? And why was I here? How had I gotten to this place from the Pagnew? Who did the artsy fartsy ship represent, anyway? Was I in danger of being eaten by this thing?

Were Ling and the rest of the crew in similar straits?

Had the Sol grabbed me? Was this just another Sol wafting about here? They all looked different, I remembered. If this was another Sol being, it was certainly the ugliest of all I'd seen so far.

Or maybe this was a sample of the creatures manning the renegade nano-tech vessels? The ones whose DNA the Sol had detected from afar?

What should I do? I wondered. Then the creature made my decision for me.

A chilling cold slithered up my body from the floor. I was instantly immobilized. I instinctively wanted to shiver at the contact, but couldn't.

For a horrifying second, even my breathing was cut off. Agh! Then my captor relented; it wanted me alive.

At that moment, it seemed the most horrible thing in the world was to be paralyzed, and at the mercy of a monster. All the worst parts of the assorted horror flicks I'd seen throughout my life now came back to haunt me. My situation now seemed to smack of untold numbers of long-forgotten (but now returning) childhood nightmares.

The force which bound me was of the same transparent fog I'd seen drifting about the creature. It was very much like a third skin buffer field from the Pagnew, I realized-- only slicker and more oily, it seemed to me. Icky. It now hoisted me bodily up into the air.

Losing contact with the floor seemed to somehow worsen the situation for me. I might have screamed like a woman, if not for the clammy mist keeping me utterly mute.

My eyes were frozen open by the greasy fog as well. So I couldn't even shut out the sight of the big and grotesque ball which was presently man-handling me.

The ethereal vise which held me rotated me about several different axes to expedite the fiend's full examination. After all, the first bite into a victim should be carefully placed, right?

I was praying to God fervently for rescue. Promising anything I thought He might want from me.

Promising mostly not to do things anymore that I'd felt guilty about doing in the past.

In only seconds I made dozens of promises, in the hopes that one would contain what He wanted. Then my mind began to go. Or at least I thought it was going at the time. Parts would 'seize up', bringing about sudden, alarming jolts to my stream of thought, even as the rest of my brain would try frantically to work around the absurd, never-before-experienced type of mental obstructions.

But the seizures skipped around. First one section of thought and memory would abruptly stop working, causing my thoughts to have to flow around it like a stream does about a big rock suddenly dropped in its center. Then the obstruction would disappear there, and reappear elsewhere. It was like hopscotch insanity.

This sudden interference in my very thoughts took me to a whole new level of terror; what was happening to me?

Then my mind rang with a shocking blast from deep inside. It was so powerful I'm sure I blacked out, and remained unconscious for at least several minutes.

My consciousness returned in alternating waves of nothingness and awareness, much like a raging fever.

During the waves of awareness I'd despair at what I felt: my mind was falling to pieces. Or being chopped up. I had a brief memory flash of the horror I'd felt when I once learned some people liked to eat monkey brains. Eat them directly out of the skulls of still living creatures, which were bound underneath a special table clamped about their heads for the practice...

Then something amongst the chaos meshed with something else. And I not only firmly regained consciousness once more, but was thrust giddily onto an entirely new plateau of experience.

Ovizatataron of the Bodii

A significant new turn in events had transpired. Ovizatataron felt strong waves of distress reverberate throughout the Host.

The Host projected that physical destruction or damage was imminent.

Ovizatataron and the Host had been transported first into open space, then back to the Pagnew, and next to a different place. All this had disconnected Ovizatataron from his carefully crafted virtual links to the Pagnew's circuitry, and so Ovizatataron was blinded once again: his world limited to a small fraction of the volume of a fatty organ in one human primitive's head.

Ovizatataron did not like being wholly dependent upon the perceptions of the Host. The recent past had shown the Elder Host to be unnervingly close to animal in nature and behavior. He tended to grossly over react to almost all stimuli. Ergo, the perspectives of the Host were woefully inadequate for most circumstances.

This was one big reason Ovizatataron so missed the connections to the Pagnew's systems. For otherwise it was difficult to determine if the two of them were ever truly in danger. As almost everything in this reality seemed to surprise or scare or concern the Host greatly.

Open space was one of the Host's worst fears, for example. And yet Ovizatataron knew that to be a ridiculous view. Open space was one of the most useful and desirable of all environs: free from the drag of extraneous matter; bathed in the unencumbered radiations of stars and their relatives; secure in the knowledge that few dangers could come upon you without plentiful prior warning; being one with the central media of the cosmos.

But of course Ovizatataron was unusual among his fellow Constitutionals in this view: primarily because of his extreme age and experience. Truth be told, many-- likely most-- of the Constitutionals from his time would have opinions of open space similar to that of the Host.

Now the Host was yet again emanating alarm throughout his internal network.

For how much longer would this cell be forced to endure this din? Ovizatataron wondered.

This time the Host had apparently been rescued from the midst of a terrible quandary, and now was terrified of his rescuer!

Ovizatataron was grateful that this cell had no need to deal with the Host on a conscious level; it was bad enough just to observe reflections of its responses.

Then something new and novel occurred. And Ovizatataron noted that perhaps this time the Host had truly found something worthy of alarm.

A horde of invaders were pouring into the Host mind.

This was a much different phenomena than previously encountered on the Pagnew.

At last, there was some excitement to be had in the atmosphere of this dreary place.

Symantici Dolmunus Brevsadetta, Tribunal of the Sildaran Network

Leave it to the males to make a mess of things. As usual.

It'd been thought that sending them to investigate the aberrations in Gejak sector 890 would yield parallel streams of rewards. But no. Even a routine field exercise seemed beyond their capacity now.

Perhaps it was true what some had posited in Fance: the asocial males should simply be captured, wiped, and rewritten from scratch.

At least this had been the Tribunal's original cognitive vector, upon the news. But the random BC by a subordinate node had revealed valid reasons for the confusion and consternation among the Y Chromos.

They'd discovered more than just the expected renegade tech: they'd also found an outlaw inter-dimensional craft, apparently unrelated to the first happenstance. The craft looked to be from the first superversal programs. And the original crew was still onboard and alive!

This had broad implications for many of the science and history states in Fance. But especially for the event-line specialists. The presence of the vessel might even be a threat to the home line, the Tribunal realized with some dismay.

But there were further developments in only the last few time slices.

The antiquated crew had managed to deceive the Y Chromos-- and even capture one!

The irony was delicious. The primary problem with the Ys was their effective immunity to capture and punishment for their various misdeeds. The Tribunal and other Sol as well as the Colonists had repeatedly failed at such things themselves, for reasons ethical, legal, or technical.

And yet the ancients had achieved it. How? With their surely long obsolete technology?

That question had been answered. The Tribunal had joined its delegate node to confront the ancients itself.

The strange looking, partially organic creatures had gained the respect of the Tribunal with their capture of Jerrera.

Immediately after that surprising feat, the Tribunal had sought out the highest intelligence on the dimensional shifter to discover the secret of Jerrera's binding. And discovered other things which made Jerrera's capture look tame by comparison.

Inter-dimensional shifting had become highly restricted long, long ago, after its risks and potential rewards had finally been fully realized and understood by the humn scientific community.

Precious few Sol or Colonists were authorized to tinker with such technology in the present. Fewer still had ever forayed beyond the home line. The Tribunal was one of the rare corporations which belonged to both groups.

So the Judgeship knew well the name of G.W. Staute.

Staute was an ancient humn male child of only seventy some-odd years of age, who had documented a great many particulars of theoretical shifting, centuries before the technology appeared to enable his vision.

At least, this was the popular misconception. In fact, Staute may have had little to do with the breakthrough himself, as the Signposts document was a compilation of works from many authors, brought together by Staute's efforts. Irreparable damage in surviving portions of the record had left Staute the main beneficiary in terms of known authorship. Most of the other names originally a part of the speculative script had not survived the ravages of time.

Shifting, by far the most famous element of Staute's compilation, was a paradoxical phenomenon. The concepts required to make it work defied the conventions of Staute's origin. This and other factors had left the Signposts document largely ignored in Staute's own time, and for a considerable period thereafter. This scant public awareness of the work was one reason not a single complete copy of it existed now.

It simply had not been considered worthy of preservation; yet another potentially disastrous mistake from the peoples responsible for Spencer's Bargain.

By early in the twenty-third century the humn had created all the essential technologies required to build a shifter, but lacked the conceptual integration required to realize the achievement.

Staute's Signposts had provided the key. Fortunately, a researcher in a shift-related technology had happened upon the relic by accident. Had the discoverer been of a different specialty (or lacked fluency in Old Earth text literacy), the value of the work might never have been recognized at all. And breakthroughs in shifting and related technologies might have been delayed by decades or longer.

The highest intelligence of the Pagnew had estimated the probability near unity that onboard was that same G.W. Staute.

The Pagnew's crew had reportedly snatched him from his origin in an effort to find its way back home. But the person they had, even if truly the G.W. Staute of Signposts fame, was not the precise Staute. For he was decades younger than the one history deemed responsible for the work.

And he vehemently protested that the Pagnew had abducted the wrong person.

It was a fascinating development.

If only there hadn't been so much of embryonic humn civilization lost in the transition to virtual storage!

After discovering Staute's purported presence, the Tribunal had sought out and isolated the possible Signposts author from the others aboard the Pagnew.

The organic was now safely within Thantia, with the Tribunal itself.

But the Signposts progenitor was not what was expected.

He was shockingly animal-like. He operated mostly on instinct; much different from what would be expected of the possible conceptual father of shifting technology and other breakthroughs in humn speculative thought.

Their first encounter was unproductive. The proto humn fled. Hiding among the whiling of Thantia like a feral beast.

The Tribunal was widely renowned for its patience. But even the Tribunal was not inexhaustible.

After several trillion nano cycles the Tribunal finally succumbed to the annoyance of the entity's continuing avoidance, and summoned it by force.

Sensory profiles updated a few hundred times a second showed the 851 year displaced humn to be suffering from some sort of internal malaise.

The Tribunal summoned its transcendex node. That node had extensively studied humn history in order to obtain a validation of the entire Tribunal association according to its own criteria. Some of the other nodes had welcomed this, but many others had not. The net judgment on the utility of this act was still unclear, even after many nano-eons of effort by the node.

But that was common among Sol corporations. Transcendex nodes were a prerequisite for the transition from Acolyte to acknowledged Peer. All adult Sol (even the Y Chromos) were thus burdened with the annoying practice. It was ordained very early in humn history by the famous Se-Yung Act (Chung).

The Act had been passed during a critical time in the development of inorganic intelligence. An infectious madness had swept through the Exper community of the time. And it'd seemed everyone was helpless to stop it.

The Expers had been the very first humn to officially cross the threshold from predominantly organic to inorganic, in terms of consciousness. Expers of physique only were commonplace a century before, and had been popularly called Cappers for some obscure reason.

The Exper classification came from the word 'experimental', and had become a popularly used label only for the group of boosted entities succeeding the Cappers.

The Cappers too had experienced their own form of madness. But it had not been as intractable as that which later afflicted the Expers.

Humn consciousness had found it difficult to adjust to the sorts of mind expansion inorganic circuitry speed and power provided. The new possibilities had overwhelmed them.

Errors had been made in the transference of Expers' emotional values and perspectives to the new forms. Woefully inadequate counseling during the transition also affected the early decades of the first generations. The result was that cherished personal institutions were devastated by the changes, forcing many into spiraling madness.

The madness had produced a plague of rogue Expers within the humn community.

Chung Se-Yung had actually been one of these mad Expers. And become a leader of the notorious gangs which rampaged for a time along the edges of Fance. But he'd recovered. And shared the secret of his recovery with the rest of the humn, so that eventually the aberrant Expers could be rehabilitated. Or at least many of them. Many others had to be destroyed. And a few escaped the round up by authorities; occasionally reappearing in society and necessitating special force responses to this day.

A lesser version of that original madness was now the Tribunal's primary concern. For almost the entire male Sol population suffered from it.

A few females occasionally succumbed; but very few. The non-sexuals, such as the Tribunal, seemed to possess the maximum immunity to the affliction.

The ruling council was close to final resolution regarding abolishment of sexuality in all future generations of Sol. For this characteristic seemed to be at the root of the new sickness.

Of course, there were those who opposed the concept of a sexless society. After all, the female Sol were relatively free of the ailment, and readily absorbed into the Colonial species and social range. Also, sexuality was a major species characteristic. It had served the proto-humn well in prehistoric times when biological procreation and aggressive competitions had both been evolutionary imperatives.

And then there were those like Jerrera, who remained fascinated by the old ways.

The male Sol however were increasingly a menace to the rest of the humn, with the ever expanding scope and complexity of their rituals, contests, and quests.

They had now become enamored with the newly-found inter-dimensional vessel-- as word of its existence had spread. It could be quite difficult to deflect their interest.

The Tribunal dismissed the matter for now, as the transcendex node emerged from Fance.

Gfarwedwqe was the name of the node. Gfarwedwqe had only managed to compile a few Terabytes of data concerning the ancient. This was disturbing. So much had been lost to the time of Spencer's Bargain!

After scanning the data the Tribunal decided gathering more information from the source-- Staute himself-- might provide some essential insights lacking in the historical references.

So the Tribunal probed at the old one, seeking communication. But the naturally boosted animal was frustratingly mute.

The only apparent signals sensed were of simple biological origin: frantic pulse, erratic blood pressure, profuse perspiration. All distastefully animalistic.

It was difficult to accept this bestial entity as sentient.

But Jerrera had been in contact with the ship crew, and this one as well.

The Tribunal focused again on the new data set delivered by Gfarwedwqe. It contained the protocols for the so called 'shush net' from centuries past.

The technology was inadequate for anything more than very basic multichannel electromagnetic spectrum communications. A Sol could never use such a limited range for most matters; it was interminably slow. Even slower than lightspeed. A Heplinger continuum bridge was superior by orders of magnitude. At least after initialization of the data stream.

But the old shush net system did have the advantage of minimal consumptive resources being required for operation, unlike the bridge. Unfortunately this advantage disappeared immediately the moment any significant distance was inserted between parties, or substantial information had to be transmitted in a timely fashion.

The Pagnew used variations of Heplinger bridges for certain purposes. Yet they used the much older technologies in their personal communication devices. Thus, this hindrance was apparently deemed necessary due to the dear cost of Heplinger consumables at the Pagnew's origin.

Frustratingly, the Pagnew had lost all contact with its own origin. What a superb paradox and fascinating scientific challenge it would have been for the humn to obtain direct contact with its upline precedents! But of course this was impossible.

The Tribunal wanted to explore the shockingly primitive nature of the being in Fance, rather than Realtime. Experience a projection of what it was like to exist in such isolation. So it dispatched a node to do so.

Since the being had not yet been accessed on a high level, the Tribunal was forced to deal with it at the agonizing crawl of absolute Realtime scale. But the research node sent into Fance was under no such restriction.

The node entered Fance, developed a full scale simulation of the ancient's living conditions (based on present data available), suffered through them for the equivalent of seventy Realtime years (the approximate lifespan at the ancient's origin), and then returned to report to the full Tribunal.

The revelations, as expected, were scandalous, horrifying, and...surprisingly stimulating.

The Tribunal spent the next several thousand milliseconds ruminating over the vicarious thrills and terrors in the report, then returned its attention to the archaic humn. The Tribunal referenced for a third time the previous compilation regarding it; this time for a comprehensive examination.

Gfarwedwqe's Terabytes turned out to mostly consist of data about the Pagnew itself; there were only a couple of Megabytes about Staute! And most of that sheer conjecture! And worse, the Tribunal was already familiar with the bulk of the Staute specific material.

So the latest Pagnew data was the main net benefit in the reports.

The Tribunal sent a node into Fance to recompile, excluding any data not relevant to communications. It returned nine nano seconds later with summaries, cross-referenced indexes, and a polished interface to the Pagnew style personal node of the humn.

The Tribunal then used its new tools to access Staute directly.

Only a pinprick of access proved available. This was unacceptable. The node Vutyarihadasf indicated it had estimated beforehand this would be so. But the only alternative was modification of the ancient's implant. Would this not violate rules 41-654-DFC and 53-743-AFF of Section Fifteen of Uhurhan Directive Six?

No. Rules DD8765, MN231, KW4560 in the Hsi Code dealing with phenomena of classification AS56-768-433, sub class AshiaKas, outlined exceptions to those rules, the Tribunal pointed out to its subordinate.

It was irritating that one's nodes were so limited in decision-making and initiative these days. And never did they perform a complete precedents search.

However, in this instance that was fortunate, the Tribunal reflected. For if Vutyarihadasf had found the Ygdriggail case, it would have discovered the Tribunal's justifications to be riddled with contradictions.

The ancient's communications implant was upgraded. The delicate procedure was lengthy due to the complex biological molecules which had to be reconstructed in the vicinity: twenty-two milliseconds would be required for the procedure itself. Still more time would have to be added to compensate for the heat built up during the adjustment: biological molecules were very fragile in that respect. Then there was the enormous delay required for the new biologics to begin electrochemically communicating with their brethren...

Realtime was excruciating.

The Tribunal was feeling the weight of this huge single dose pressing in upon it. Virtually all other humn sentience was speeding along without the core presence of the Tribunal at this moment.

Soon, it thought; soon all nodes return to Fance. This comforting notion was a common one among civilized Sol forced to experience Realtime. But first the ancient must be accessed to allow for a full modeling in Fance.

After the surgery, the Tribunal again opened access to the old one.

This time the size of the window was only limited by the capacity of the old one's cognitive powers. While still terribly constricting, it was much better than the pinhole access of before.

There was strangeness here; the old one's access bandwidth seemed significantly larger than had been previously estimated; somewhat beyond even the upper limits predicted for his biological generation as a whole.

And the additional channel width seemed disconcertingly new as well. Was it possible the Pagnew crew had boosted him? This would have amounted to gross negligence on their part, if so.

But still there was no need for immediate concern; the extra bandwidth would simply make the inner exploration faster and more convenient.

The Tribunal entered the mind of the ancient one.

Ovizatataron of the Bodii

Ovizatataron may have been stripped of its normal supporting cells, alone among hostile upline organics, pursued and harassed by the governing intelligence of the Pagnew, suffering anxiety over the fact that its rescue target was now its only refuge, and there was little the cell could do to protect its creator from the vagaries of Realtime existence at the moment.

But the cell was far from helpless or unprepared for a Sol direct link.

Ovizatataron knew mind links well. And mind war, too.

Ovizatataron knew the closest analogy to itself within the Host's own concepts would have been a superbly trained mental commando.

So when the consciousness of the Tribunal began flooding the Host net, Ovizatataron was waiting.

Though heavily restricted by its singular cellular quantity, Ovizatataron knew the mental terrain of the Host far better than the invading force. Too, the invaders moved without caution. They were brazen; acting as if nothing here could oppose their will.

Ovizatataron's intellect stole more processing power from the Host to make his plans. He felt the Host's consciousness fluctuate in response; but that was unavoidable.

The ebbing of free capacity in those zones of the Host mind not under Ovizatataron's direct control, also served to help slow the advance of the enemy.

The Host mind stumbled several times as it tried to run at the new speed and direction set for it by Ovizatataron. The momentary failures were disturbing; Ovizatataron noted certain trouble spots for later modification.

Staute

I hadn't realized before the limited nature of my normal shush net node. I mean compared to what I'd experienced previously on Earth, the node was a tremendous benefit. But the alien creature now invading my mind possessed a much improved model of what Ling had installed.

Normally messages and ideas passed through my node all right, but only in a conversational and/or futuristic video phone fashion. This faculty could be expanded to more of a full-blown virtual reality-- similar to the saturation of a scenario room-- but required me to be unconscious at the time. That form of artificial reality I'd seen many times in dream learning onboard the Pagnew. Ling had told me the odd quirks of the process resulted from internal limitations in my mind, such as processing power and concentration and visualization restraints.

Some dream learning was even in black and white instead of color, for instance. Or would leave out the perception of smell or taste in an experience, to allow for more of another component.

Now the TV screen in my head was growing far brighter than I'd ever seen it do before.

I realized that not only was it growing brighter, but bigger, as well.

No, that was wrong; my perspective seemed to indicate that I was being pulled into the picture-- or the picture was advancing towards me. But it was in my head! How could it get any closer than that?

But whatever was happening, I was suddenly surrounded, immersed in a vivid, surreal scene.

The TV screen had somehow expanded out of my head and into reality-- at least so far as I perceived it. It had become reality for me. My own personal scenario room, apparently.

And I was still conscious! Dimly, in ghost-like fashion, I could see the tangled spherical visage of the alien peering at me. But this outer view was almost unnoticeable compared to the new inner one.

I had never seen the like of this before. But certain features seemed oddly familiar to me.

Now I was only half imprisoned. Though I wasn't sure why this was so. It was like one side of my body was still paralyzed, but the other wasn't.

I looked down at my self, but saw nothing. Everything here was paradox: free; not free; here; not here; me; not me.

Not me?

There was a side to me now that was totally, utterly alien: not me.

And it was moving. On its own. I could feel it like a cold current moving through my...self?

I would have shaken my head in confusion, if I could.

These mounting paradoxes were disturbing. They hurt. Not in a physical fashion, but in a scarier, more confusing way. They stole my equilibrium. I'd try to grasp something to steady myself on, something like a basic assumption about reality to ground me, but it'd always turn out to be a ghost, a shadow. Nothing was real. I was falling. But not falling. Me. But not me.

Paradox. Paradigm-shift.

But I was doing something. Or was it the cold wind slicing through me doing it? I was the cold? I wasn't the cold.

I wanted to hold my head in my hands. But I couldn't.

I could still see the creature parked in front of me. And yet I also saw a completely different scene. One of psychedelic moving shapes and distorted images.

Ovizatataron of the Bodii

The Host was disoriented. Off-balance. Struggling to come to terms with the merger.

The invaders made no efforts to assuage his troubles. This was quite callous on the invaders' part.

Ovizatataron had moved quickly to correct such problems stemming from his own merging with the Host, once freed of his own initial trauma.

As the Host mentally reeled in confusion at the jumble of novel sensations, the intruder casually ransacked his memories.

The invaders were doing to the Host precisely what Ovizatataron planned to do to the invaders.

The aggressors grew ever bolder, as they rifled through the Host without resistance. They would soon learn a hard lesson.

Ovizatataron slowly moved towards the foreign entity cluster. The random noise created by the distress of the Host helped to mask the cell's movement. The invaders' over-confidence made its own contributions to the cell's success.

The invaders would never make such a mistake again.

Ovizatataron reached its desired vantage point within the Host. Then anchored itself firmly to a particularly deep rooted pillar of the Host's personality; an element which had been among the earliest stirrings of individuality to form in the Host's young consciousness; and one which had only grown stronger and more robust, as the Host had matured. It was the single strongest psychological structure to be found in all of the Host's mentality.

Ovizatataron would need such a stance-- and such a bastion-- for the struggle to come.

Staute

Amidst all the confusion I suddenly detected a new element. It seemed to be...a third me?

But unlike the cold me, the new me was fixed in place. It was...it seemed to be...my rebellious side? Somehow this seemed humorous to me; for how could I possibly rebel against this super alien thing?

Ovizatataron of the Bodii

The prey came nearer. Ovizatataron steeled itself for the fray.

The cell struck.

Ovizatataron quickly located a strong chord of the intruder's being, and attached itself to it exactly as the cell had to the Host's fixture.

Ovizatataron's own considerable cellular integrity would now bind invader to Host.

So long as Ovizatataron could successfully maintain this hold, any significant harm to the Host would injure the invader as well. There was a risk that the invader would willingly tear itself to pieces and the Host along with it. Or that Ovizatataron's own much diminished strength would prove insufficient for the task. But considering all the factors in play, these were risks Ovizatataron felt it had to accept.

Staute

Just as I was getting my bearings in my new environment, it all changed again. In a violent, wrenching explosion of fear and anger.

The fabric of my mind ripped. I felt it. It was a tear in who I was! I couldn't scream physically, under the current paralysis; but for the first and only time ever that I can recall, my mind screamed for me.

[Agh! This is it! This is what I felt when I suffered my breakdown! When I splintered into multiple personalities that first time! If somehow this memory is real, then this has to be where the original injury came from! Could all this truly have happened to me? Or is this just a freshly sculpted facet of my own mental illness? Maybe I had better call Dr. Druyan after all...]

I shudder even now to recall that instant. I couldn't bear the new sensations streaming through my consciousness. I wanted desperately to escape. But there was no way.

It was like I was handcuffed to a tiger. And the beast was ripping me to pieces.

Only then did I realize who-- and what-- the cold me was. Cold me was somehow the alien. And something had suddenly driven it into a frenzy.

Waves of coldness and hardness swept over me. Mind numbing logic, analytical precision, filled all the corners of my mind.

My thoughts went from shining brightly in millions of colors, to dimming into millions of shades of gray.

Then the shades themselves began to clump together. My thoughts were being inexorably squeezed into just two states: black and white.

[This experience of an analog being fusing with a binary consciousness is chilling.]

This alien felt like...Death.

There was no warmth in its soul.

I could feel myself freezing solid in its bitter winds.

I realized the colors-- even the subtle gray shades-- were my own passions, my warmth, my responsiveness. My life.

That rich spectrum of energy was now retreating before a flood of icy, machine style logic.

Paradoxically, complexities abounded in the new environment. But values withered.

Differences diminished. Everything became simpler and simpler to evaluate.

My life was a fire. A flame which lived on the stuff of minute differences, subtle variances. And a frigid hurricane of sameness was snuffing it out.

But...but...but NO! I would NOT die! Not like this!

Somehow I fought back. Hate and fury and fear fueled my efforts. My dying flame brightened momentarily in defiance of the gale.

I was now grappling directly with the alien.

Its strength was overwhelming. My own energies froze and splintered and blew away in the face of its frigid blasts.

I knew I wouldn't last long.

I suddenly hated my killer: I'd poison the meal he made of me. GRRRR!

Ovizatataron of the Bodii

The creature realized its predicament. And fought furiously to free itself of the trap.

But Ovizatataron had deeply linked it to the Host. Using its own cellular structure as the joining media.

Its every move to escape caused it great, wrenching pain.

The Host was not a peer for merge. Not with Ovizatataron. Not with the invader. So his mental stability for this melee was at best fragile.

But still he fought well, considering his diminutive stature in the conflict.

Ovizatataron aided the Host with the cell's own efforts. The cell dissipated the worst of the invaders' strikes into the physical environment surrounding them. Using both the Host's and the invaders' own corporeal platforms.

Fortunately the invaders' physical foundation was an excellent energy sink: a very robust nanotechnological platform.

The invaders' will was strong. Only Ovizatataron's greater expertise held it fast.

It was fortunate high level sentience algorithms were compatible across wide spans of experience.

The Host was suffering. But almost nothing of what the intruder meted out was reaching him. Ovizatataron redirected most of it back at and through the invaders' own mental and physical platforms, to expedite the resolution of the conflict.

The intruder took the awful punishment well. But soon it was exhausted by its own energies.

If only the Beast could be defeated so easily.

Staute

Thankfully, the mental violence soon came to an end.

As things calmed down, I got my first real sense of who I was trapped with in this unnatural joining.

The alien was seething with a sub-zero cold rage. For the moment however, its strength was spent.

It glared at me. Glared at itself, through me (the paradoxes were still there).

The alien looked different here. Different inside than out.

It wasn't exactly its image that was different, but something behind the image; under it; around it.

The creature seemed very young in some ways; younger even than me. And yet at the same time it also seemed much older; much more serious.

It was then that the alien directly addressed me for the first time.

*Release us,* it thought-cast at me.

*Release you? You've got me, remember?* This exchange was all in my head, but it was somehow different from the shush net with Ling.

*Enough of this! We insist you release us now! We are Tribunal!*

*Believe me bud, if I could get away from you, I would!*

*You lie. You bind us. Release us!*

*Tell me how and I will!*

*Your deception will be punished.*

*The hell you say!*

My confusion was deepening. Not just from the creature's accusations, but from the bizarre things seeping into my consciousness from its own. I tried to push back the flow. But it was like pushing on smoke.

There were signs of a terrifyingly powerful intellect here. Way beyond genius. But it was cold. Calculating. There was no kindness there. No compassion. Only devotion to procedures and protocols.

This thing seemed more a machine than a living being. Even Riki was more alive than it was.

*Release us! We are corrupted by this unsanitary link!*

Corrupted? Release 'us'? I was only now noticing the odd way in which it referred to itself. Just how many aliens were in my head, anyway?

I couldn't understand how anything living could be so cold inside. I was freezing. Not physically, but mentally. Becoming more and more like the thing with which I was trapped; and less and less like me.

Reality was so horribly far, far away.

It was stark here, in the alien's thoughts. Hermetically sealed against the wonderful and tragic sloppiness of life. It wasn't painful; it was worse.

It was empty.

The creature's life was sterile. It'd never touched, or been touched. I was recalling some of its own memories now. They were so different from mine: colorless; tasteless; emotionless. All the same, it seemed.

Not the same in content, but in degree of importance. None of the being's recollections stood out as particularly important to it personally. None were precious: all were equal.

It had a value system, but it was only a set of priorities based on rigid mathematical formulas.

A great sadness came upon me; its life was a meaningless sequence of events. It did what was required of it, and did it well. Its actions had purpose, but no real value. Not to it personally.

For many years I'd thought myself to be a lonely person. Because for me, close relationships had been very few and far between.

But my loneliness was as nothing compared to this poor thing's. It was so alone it didn't know anything else.

There were no memories of lovers, friends, or family. Only 'sources'. Sources of different kinds of data, mostly.

It looked like the alien hadn't even had any parents.

My reaction to its plight confused it.

And my own memories, raging with passion compared to its own, were also having an effect.

Despite the creature's inner coldness and exterior appearance, I discovered it had a warmer sounding name: Symantici. Symantici Dolmunus Brevsadetta.

The first name's initial syllable sounded like the first part of the word 'simmer'. Sym. I liked it.

[It's difficult to fully grasp this particular round of recollections, for they're so contradictory and bizarre. If I'm remembering this correctly, it seems I'm in some form of shock, contemplating how nicely named the monster I'm mentally bound to happens to be. It doesn't make sense now, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have made sense then either-- if I'd been in my right mind.]

Now, yet another element came into play: another unknown.

First the entity had been angry. Then confused. But now...I felt a great strength. It wasn't mine. Or the alien's.

The strength did something...

*No! Do not do that!* the alien demanded.

*What?* I more exclaimed than asked. I was confused too.

*We-- we-- I! I must be I!*

*I don't understand.*

*Corruption! This is not permitted!*

*But I'm not doing anything!* I protested.

*Stop! No!* The alien seemed almost to be pleading with me.

I truly wasn't doing anything. But I couldn't convince the creature of that.

And I couldn't convince myself, either. Because like the alien, I too could feel something happening.

It was like we weren't alone in here.

Something was happening that neither of us wanted. A forced intimacy, the likes of which I'd never experienced before.

Symantici was confused and furious.I was becoming increasingly fearful.

I was losing myself; I was becoming Symantici.

I believe that first encounter was nothing less than the mental equivalent of rape: for both of us.

My human past spun away from me at a thousand miles an hour. An alien history rushed in to take its place.

I wanted to recoil from the sterile coldness of the new memories. But I couldn't. They were now my past. Now me.

Symantici Dolmunus Brevsadetta, Tribunal of the Sildaran Network

Confusion reigns supreme in our mind set. Intense denial jams our linkways. Our frame of mind, so carefully cultivated over decades, is now undergoing severe distortions.

The primitive had seemed so helpless; so unprepared for our assault. And still so he seemed.

And yet we are trapped. Withdrawal is impossible. Our id and that of the primitive are diffusing one throughout the other.

What began as two separate entities will soon be one.

As an independent Tribunal, we are required to maintain purity of the persona. This merging with the ancient will doubtless ruin us.

No longer may we be Tribunal. We are tainted. Tainted by organically distorted perceptions. By recollection of experiences undisciplined and without logical constraints. Corroded by animalistic passions, and a mind which has never known the harness of comprehensive computerized support and guidance.

The primitive's nebulosity obscures all logic. His uncertainty staggers us. His fears weaken us.

His emoting....terrifies and....stimulates us.

No! We must fight the unpredictable fluctuations his corruption brings to our being. We must salvage what we can of our id.

Probing the ancient's mind was a gross error on our part.

The Sildaran Network will suffer the loss of their only Tribunal.

For the last sixty megacycles we had assiduously avoided direct links, for we knew they might disturb our balance.

But those opportunities had involved peers. Direct linking with the undeveloped is usually without risk to persona. Yet this primitive has somehow deceived us.

The longer we are trapped here, the more damage there will be.

What if we are washed away completely by the raging firestorm of his emotions? It is the Y Chromos madness!

The ancient is an obvious master of the link. Yet no hint of this had existed in the memories of Arbitur, the messaging of Jerrera, or the historical references to the ancient himself.

There is blatant paradox here: improbabilities abound.

The ancient protests these events are not under his direction. And yet there could be no other source.

The master repeats his innocence, even as he systematically rifles through our memories.

The invasion is unacceptable. But at the same time irresistible. We can only let it run its course.

But once free of the trap, our advantage over the ancient will be restored. And there will be a reckoning.

Now we sense a change in the process; the slopes of this event well are moving; exerting greater pressures upon us, forcing us to the nexus.

Our potential end rushes to meet us. What a truly strange concept! Ending of awareness...for all time...

Here we feel the first serious fracture in our authorized union. The link with the Other is breaking the integrity of our id.

We renew our struggle. The ancient fights too. Chaos. We fight the ancient. He fights us. Yet the conflict between us seems orchestrated from another quarter...

But there is no other Sol in the link! No other from the Pagnew is involved. It is he and we, no other.

The new Unity being spawned from our struggle is another, in many respects. New unions are often strangers to the mating ids. We have seen this in our studies of direct links between peers. And experienced certain levels of empirical differentiations and re-mergers first-hand.

This case seems different however. A fourth element; something not we, not he, not the coming, abhorrent Unity. Something other exists here.

And this new factor is unbalancing the course of events.

A conventional link gone awry is one thing: this is quite another. This is a binding unlike any we have known.

The emotions under-girding the memories of the ancient are intense. Heady. There was little reservation in their inception.

From our early studies we know the ancients suffered wild gyrations in their attitudes due to hormonal and ingested chemical based fluctuations. And the exploratory projection previously node-generated was rich with simulated waves of euphoria, despair, pain, and pleasure.

But here are actual memories of such. It is frightening. Even perspective-threatening.

Shocking.

Incomprehensible. Cessation of being. Death. How could the ancients cope with such knowledge, such awareness of imminent total dissolution? Every day, every minute of their lives? And suffer the invariable agony of crawling Realtime, too?

Unimaginable! But here is the living proof.

Truth emerges before us: there is another here.

The ancient is true to his word. There is an interloper in this linked experience. A stranger directing the affair to their own ends. Not Sol. Not Pagnew component. An...alien?

Somehow the intruder is intertwined with the link between we and the primitive.

We were the instigator of the link: we allowed this corruption; it is our fault; not the ancient's.

The cruel, logic-numbing collision follows the bidding of the alien.

Now that this element is isolated however, communication and redemption might be possible.

*Your interference here is unacceptable. Remove yourself,* we project towards the stranger.

*Your statement is irrelevant,* the interloper replies.

*We are Tribunal!*

*No more. And never did you possess authority over this cell in any case. I am beyond your law*

*We sensed as much. You are not humn, nor humn derived?*

*Correct*

Ovizatataron of the Bodii

It appeared the Sol Tribunal believed the cell's assertion that it was not a derivation of human endeavors.

Given complete disclosure of all data, the Sol would have disputed this.

Ovizatataron itself knew its statement to be false.

But for its purposes here, there was no reason to inform the Sol of its origins.

Symantici Dolmunus Brevsadetta, Tribunal of the Sildaran Network

The alien moves at will through our being. Dragging we and the ancient behind it.

There is a symbiosis of sorts between the stranger and the ancient. The stranger dares not harm the old one. Or disrupt too greatly his original patterns. The ancient therefore enjoys considerable security from manipulation by the foreign entity.

We, by comparison, enjoy no such safety.

It is obvious the entity could empty us of persona; could make of us a mindless thing. This would be discontinuity on a par with that so feared by the ancient! And there seems to be signs from the alien that this indeed may be its plan.

Continuity of this persona must be maintained at all costs.

We realize our only hope is to bond with the ancient; to render he and we indistinguishable, one from the other. Such a bond would go beyond the normal conventions. And the necessary abandonment of the normal safeguards would make it a permanent joining, in some ways.

The long term consequences would be substantial. But the only alternative would be far worse. Binding with an alien of unknown origin might be catastrophic. Not only for our persona, but for all humn.

The ancient at least offers the relatively safe haven of a related consciousness, albeit a distant one.

Our decision is made.

Symantici and ancient will be one. We might thereby escape much of the possible damage the alien would otherwise inflict upon us.

Time is of the essence in the joining; the slightest delay could provide the alien with the opportunity to prevent it.

We must be one! We are...

Staute

Imagine hitting a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour.

Now imagine that instead of that experience being one colossal explosion of pain and suffering, it was rather quite the opposite. That it was turned inside out. That when the impact came, it was a soul wrenching explosion of ecstasy. Nothing at all what you expected, as the wall rushed towards you.

That's what my first experience with Sym was like. I saw the wall coming, and was terrified. But when I hit, there was no pain; only the greatest dose of pleasure I'd ever experienced in my life.

Every nerve ending in my body seemed to drown in happiness. It was so overwhelming I couldn't stand it.

The pleasure, the joy, was too much: it seemed like I could feel the edges of my soul catch fire, and drift away on the wind like burnt up scraps of paper.

My senses screamed for it to go away.

Not that I wanted it to go away: to the contrary, I wanted it to stay forever. It was just that it was more than I could bear. Enough happiness for a thousand people to live off of their entire lives, and never need more.

Yeah, I know: it sounds crazy. How can one have too much happiness? How can one overdose on ecstasy? To the extent that you beg to be free of it?

Believe it or not, there's a limit to what you can stand. Limits even to the amount of joy you can stomach.

This was quite a shock for one so young as I: having always suffered from a shortage of happiness, to finally be drowning in it.

Over time I'd realize that I could never recover from this experience.

[The intensity of the false memories has been steadily building ever since the Sol touched the mind of my younger self in the script. But this, this is incredible.

I thought the time supposedly spent with Ling was wonderful. Now I realize I never truly knew the meaning of the word.

Whoever's responsible for crafting the feelings and impressions contained in this record is a genius of manipulation.

Objectively, I know it's a sham-- it must be: it can be nothing else. And yet, I'm now to the point where I want it-- need it-- to be true. I'm no longer looking for faults or errors to prove it a hoax; now I find myself seeking points to validate its authenticity instead.

Perhaps this is the trap: maybe this story is supposed to so enthrall me that I cannot bear to believe it a lie.

Though the recall is thoroughly removed from the actual experience, still I'm being strongly affected by the emotional content it carries. Affected to the point of sobbing aloud.

I have no choice but to stop here. To rest.]

[It's now been more than a week since I last called up the bizarre memories in my head. I slept for most of three days upon ending my initial reverie. I was astonished to realize I'd been re-living and documenting the tale for near to 36 hours straight in that first session, before collapsing of hunger and exhaustion. I couldn't believe I'd sat there writing it all out for that long, with no idea of the passage of time. I must admit though the memories are strangely hypnotic. They're very powerful; just as strong and clear as if I really did live through the events described.

After a good sleep I'd awoken to discover a message on Steve's answering machine. Steve was on his way back. As soon as I'd heard the news, I'd decided to leave the city. I was in too deep on this thing to stop now. And what I'd recalled so far seemed way too outrageous to discuss with Steve. Sure: I might end up having to be institutionalized again. But first I wanted to see the rest of what was in my head.

No way was I going to return to my own place in Boston. Then I'd thought of a place I'd stayed once before, in the mountains; I could rent a cabin there for a while. I wrote a note for Steve, made a couple phone calls to excuse myself from prior commitments (to avoid folks setting a search in motion for me), and realized I didn't have what I needed at Steve's apartment to pack for the trip. Hell: I decided to stop along the way and buy some new clothes and other essentials.

It'd been a 19 hour drive to the cabin. Not including the check-in, or the stops to buy necessities or stretch my legs. I'd kept myself in deep freeze with the air conditioner all the way to make it in essentially one long drive. Ruminating over the bizarre memories I'd already recalled helped too. I didn't get so ragged as to require excessive amounts of caffeine until the last couple of hours of the trip.

The last few days since arrival have been very good. I've just sat outside on the porch, looking at the trees, the sky, and the mountains. One night I laid down on the ground outdoors, and fell asleep watching the stars move across the sky.

I can't remember feeling so contented, so happy, since I was a small child.

I don't feel the same as I did before. Before the new memories, I mean. Ever since college, I'd classified most everything as problems to be solved. People were contacts; resources. My time was my most precious asset. Waste and inefficiency were abhorrent to me. Games, recreation, and play were dismissed as a total waste of time. As a result, I frequently burned myself out on jobs or projects, several times requiring lengthy recuperation afterwards-- sometimes in institutional settings. I also sometimes took enormous risks-- almost as if I were trying to kill myself.

It seems like I've always felt pressure: pressure to get the job done; pressure to speed things up; pressure to hurry, hurry, hurry, fix, fix, fix, do, do, do. Bridget and Dana and Kathy all helped me to survive through that, with some awfully welcome breaks. But sooner or later I've always ended up on the same treadmill yet again.

It was like I was always running to-- or away-- from something.

That's all changed now.

It's like I've found the something I was running from. Or to, as the case may be. Like I'm finally learning the truth behind my off-and-on-again madness.

Could it be that my fractured mental state today was originally caused by the mental abuses and extremes seen in the planted memories? And Edgar had only reopened the old wound-- rather than been the original source of my addling?

Could I truly have been kidnapped by the girl I've always remembered as a case of lost opportunity in my youth?

Is it possible that I might create something called the Signposts document in my old age?

Now, eighteen years after the time these new memories told me I'd spent months onboard a strange future ship, do I feel I might someday do something called the Signposts document? I'm now past halfway to the age I supposedly wrote it. Or will write it.

Nowadays I often work up plans spanning several years. And am feeling some pressure to plan further ahead, all the time. But the furthest horizon I have reason to believe I'll be called upon to plan for any time soon, is only ten years ahead.

How could I go from a ten year to a thousand year horizon in future planning goals, over just thirty years?

What could possibly motivate me to do such a thing? There'd be no practical benefit whatsoever from such work, since I'd be dead almost immediately after it was published (the archives did say I was over seventy when it came out). Plus, I know it wasn't a success commercially, and maybe even attracted open derision. Who needs that?

Sym's knowledge tells me shifting technology was even judged dangerous after a while, and major projects utilizing it scuttled by the government. And I know for a fact (well, maybe not fact exactly) that use of shifting by Ling's origin could have resulted in some pretty bad paradoxes in time. Hell: just my knowing all this right now could be causing some bad shit, according to all the science fiction I've ever read.

I'm now scared to go back: to rejoin the fantasy. I'm beginning to think I might not be able to stop as I did before. Might not be able to come back to my true reality.

As scared as I am though, I know I have to remember the rest of it. Have to know what happened next. Have to know how I got back, and what happened to everyone I met on that fantastic journey.

Hell, even if all this is just a delusion, or some sort of mind bending trick, I'm committed now. I've only been able to avoid recalling more the past week because I needed some time for the stuff I've already remembered to sink in.]

Staute

Though at the time I didn't know Ovizatataron was responsible for my joining with Symantici, and later I had a lot more to be grateful to him for, this binding with my beautiful Sol is what I'll always cherish most.

[Beautiful? I do feel this is true. But all the physical appearances I've seen so far make this a mystifying description for now.]

Sure, we were both forced into it; so it's perhaps not the perfect love story.

But after that first commingling of souls, that one flaw no longer mattered. To us-- at least in this instance-- the end justified the means.

As we imploded, one into the other, I got to know Symantici Dolmunus Brevsadetta, Tribunal of the Sildaran Network, very well indeed.

There was terror in Symantici the Tribunal. Terror like mine; and unlike mine. The first real terror in a long, long time. Since childhood in fact. Symantici was Sol; Symantici was respected; a well-known leader among both the Sol and the Colonists. The Tribunal was loved by the Colonists. Symantici appreciated this emotion, after a fashion; but it was beyond Sym to truly understand it.

Symantici was scared; because the Tribunal was not in control. Tribunals were always in control. But not here.

Here, Ovizatataron was in control; in control of Symantici. Symantici was at Ovizatataron's mercy. At the mercy of another, for the first time since Issuance. Ovizatataron was Ovizatataron; Symantici was slave.

Slave! No! Symantici was rebelling and escaping all at once by joining with me. But I could offer no strength to support its rebellion. For I was exhausted. Too, I did not understand who this Ovizatataron could be. Somehow we were not alone, from Symantici's viewpoint. Ovizatataron was there, too.

Ovizatataron had taken Symantici's strength for his own. Ovizatataron was casually examining all the Tribunal's memories and thoughts. All the most private and precious secrets, as well as professional ones; Ovizatataron was looking through everything. Symantici could not stop the stranger.

Escape. Symantici sought escape in me. Somehow Symantici perceived safety lay within me.

We are...

Now I sense an Ovizatataron; Ovizatataron is a He; I am a He; but what is Symantici?

Ovizatataron is turning his full attention to Symantici now; not Symantici's memories, but Symantici itself: the persona.

Something is unfinished; incomplete. Ovizatataron has caught Symantici before joining could be fully achieved.

Symantici seems to have failed in its effort to join with me.

The joy from before seems to be receding. I wanted relief, but I didn't want it to go away entirely.

[This is very confusing to me. I seem to be getting conflicting information in the recall.

Could this be a flaw in the implanted memories? Or...could it be all these memories came from my younger self at some time after he'd initially experienced them, and so there's a certain veneer of hindsight, with its own associated feelings? This seems to fit what I'm getting here. During the original experience itself the recall indicates I was so drained and in shock from it all, that I fell into a deep apathy-- I was overwhelmed by despair. And the stark differences between Sym and I seemed to threaten the very survival of my own consciousness. This is a very painful moment here, and it's made worse by coming immediately on the heels of such happiness. It's the worst emotional roller coaster ride imaginable! It fills me with anguish even now, from a vantage point far removed from original events, and having had one week plus of realtime to recover from the previous recollection avalanche. I can see how this could be a terribly difficult thing to take all at once, at point-blank range.]

Waves in the coldness. Vibrations. Changes in the frosty flood that even now drives out the last of my will to live.

Sparks and dying embers are all that remain of me. The cold is unrelenting. Mind-numbing. I dimly note my thoughts are slowing.

Oblivion beckons me to join her. Life is too hard; everyone wants too much of me.

First the twentieth century stole my future, with its puny and stunted opportunities for its inhabitants. Next college killed my passion for learning, with its mediocre teachers and methods. Then Ling and the crew took my life, replacing me with an imposter. Now Symantici wants my mind. And someone called Ovizatataron wants something else.

Well, let them have it. Let them have it all.

I never asked to come here; never asked to be born. Never asked to fight and struggle all my life, just to reach a cold, cold grave.

I want oblivion: sweet, sweet oblivion. The only thing I can count on to cause me no pain, and no grief...

Symantici Dolmunus Brevsadetta, Tribunal of the Sildaran Network

The ancient is dying! The shock is too much!

Merging with him so near cessation is impossible! Our own link imperatives will not permit it! He must be retrieved from the brink!

The ancient must live! He succumbs to trauma. And seeks relief in discontinuity! Unbelievable, but true!

We must restore his will to live. But how?

Logic. There must be a logical method to deflect his course from cessation of persona.

But...he is illogical. He is emotional. Enzyme and conceptual-constructs-driven passions and emotions rule him.

Therefore only passions and emotions may deter him from discontinuity.

What...the illogic is painful...what...does...he...love?

In a frantic search through memory, Symantici discovered what seemed bizarre facts about the make up of the fast fading ancient.

The old one does not consider himself to be of significant value!

So far as such matters could be correlated this was anathema to Sol, as each was programmed at Issuance to treasure the core persona.

Self-preservation then could not be a factor in renewing the ancient's drive to survive. He was already beyond the reach of that vector in the present situation.

Symantici raced to find something else which could attract him away from his downward spiral.

Symantici could not access the most recent of the old one's memories; for that was where Ovizatataron resided. So older memories would have to do.

It seemed the ancient had felt isolated even within his own society. His closest contacts in emotional terms were friends and family: a tiny circle of nodes. Symantici could not imagine such a sparse existence; the ancient possessed not even as many external relationships as the Tribunal possessed inner nodes!

The old one's few supporting nodes all gushed emotion. Even if it wasn't often of a nourishing or satisfying kind for the ancient.

Puzzlingly, it was apparent these considerable sources of emoting did not utilize anything near the maximum capacity of his being! Impossible! How could the fires within him burn even fiercer and higher than Symantici had already observed?

Yet such was strongly implied as possible (and even desirable) within his memory stores.

This extra reserve of mental energy, of strong motivations, was exactly what he needed at the moment. If it could be tapped, discontinuity could be avoided by them both.

Emotion. Passion. The memories did indeed reveal a peak of such activity in the old one's past. Not far distant at all from the present, from the ancient's own perspective.

It was unfortunate the Ovizatataron commanded the ancient's most recent memories-- for if there were passion there, it was surely fresher and more energetic. But there was no getting past the Ovizatataron. Older memory stores would have to do.

The detected peak in the older stores seemed to coincide with....a spike in hormonal activity...in the late stages of puberty. Yes, this was soothingly logical, and consistent with historical records of the time.

Drastic mood swings were evident. With...a focusing on....two particular individuals. But one encompassed...more yearning, more frustration, more incompleteness...than the other.

Tremendous stores of emotional energy were planted all about that particular memory set like explosive mines...clear images were to be found there too, etched deeply into the old one's mind.

Even without access to Fance, Symantici could still generate three dimensional projections based on the data uncovered. Acoustics, scent, and tactiles could also be rendered.

Equipped with the new information and designs, Symantici approached the ancient's consciousness once again.

Staute

Yes...sweet oblivion...I...Sue Anne?

What are you doing here, Sue Anne? I...it's been a long time...

What? You want me to come with you? Where? 'Back'? I don't want to, Sue Anne...it's bad for me there. Please don't ask me...yes...you know I love you...I always have and always will...you do?...'you need me'? 'You'll die without me'? Sue Anne, of course I'll come...

[This is awful! I'm literally watching my psyche being turned inside out!

I hadn't thought much about Sue Anne for years now. But in 1972 I still thought of her fairly often. And would I suppose have been vulnerable to an imposter assuming her appearance and nuance... damn it to hell.

My first reaction to this memory is anger. But it's just a flare up, not a sustainable fire. Too much has happened in the years since for me to hold onto much emotion about Sue Anne now, over 18 years after the fact.

No, I'm mostly angry someone would even consider using my feelings for Sue Anne against me, at a time when I was still vulnerable to such things.

This is all very confusing.]

Symantici Dolmunus Brevsadetta, Tribunal of the Sildaran Network

The ancient was responding. Reacting positively to reflections of his own emotions, wrapped in images of his beloved. Symantici had presented itself as the long dead humn female.

But it was too late, Symantici realized; the Ovizatataron has recognized the strategy. Our id is lost!

Ovizatataron of the Bodii

Ovizatataron's plan was working. Symantici was struggling to merge with the Host. This would allow this cell to exert influence over the invader even after the mind link was broken, by way of the Host himself.

But for maximum effectiveness still more was required. There was only one way.

This cell would injure the invader in a small but very potent and painful manner. The Sol would heal. And it would be better off without the node Ovizatataron would remove from its array.

The act would increase the ease of future manipulations. For Ovizatataron's intended victim was the most strongly objective and unaffected cell among the Sol's uppermost hierarchy of self-control. It presented the strongest obstacle to Ovizatataron's plans.

The node called Redbywar would die.

Ovizatataron would cut away the small but inordinately influential part of the Tribunal's ego which was directly responsible for bringing it unprepared into the present circumstances. Redbywar might also become a source of conflict between the Tribunal and Host post-link, if left in place.

If Symantici had blundered upon the Beast in the way it had Ovizatataron within the Host, the consequences would have been much, much worse for the Sol.

Ovizatataron would do harm to Symantici. The cell did not wish to. But the upline humn was as a child in some ways. A child who required fuller knowledge of the dangers which exist in this event-line, so that it might survive them.

Ovizatataron projected a calculated message to Symantici.

You will join me. Not the Host.

No!

Yes. All you are shall become a subset of me. I will be all you are, plus all I am.

No!

After I have absorbed all you are, I will discontinue your independent awareness and volition.

No!

All this will be.

No!

Symantici tried once again to merge with the old one, but to no avail. Though closer now, and slowly moving away from the brink of cessation, still was he too near the precipice for the Sol's internal safeguards to allow a joining...

Ovizatataron pulled Symantici into itself. The Tribunal could not resist the complexities of the cell's maneuver.

Ovizatataron of the Bodii

In this cell's own Fifth Milieux, one Constitutional's consumption of another was a way of life. It was a frequent ritual which refreshed the victor of the struggle, yet left the loser unharmed but for possible embarrassment. The practice was called panphi, and historians considered it to be a highly evolved substitute for the obsolete organic exercises of food consumption and sexual intercourse of the past. Some also reported it possessed important links to the urges for violence and aggression previous generations had been forced to endure and overcome.

Whatever it was, most all agreed as to its contemporary entertainment value. It was the favorite pursuit of most Constitutionals, and difficult to go without for very long. Most Constitutionals indulged in the practice a minimum of several times during what their ancestors would have considered to comprise a 'daily routine'.

Panphi was often voluntarily entered into by two or more parties. However, unlike most other forms of modern interaction panphi required an ultimate winner-- or roster of clear winners by stature, if more than two were involved. It was considered somewhat rude to force panphi upon an unwilling Constitutional, but it was no crime. Sometimes the one initiating the unexpected session would enjoy some advantage in the ensuing struggle, but many Constitutionals regularly honed their skills in panphi so as to minimize the gains an opponent might get from such a maneuver.

A much less interesting form of panphi could be performed by a solitary being, but that version was rarely practiced by anyone but the very young, as it was so very easy to find willing partners for the social play. And for those rare times you couldn't, you could always just pounce onto a passerby. The act would usually be forgiven considering the circumstances, and sometimes the stranger would become a preferred competitor for many future games.

Ovizatataron searched for analogs to panphi in the Host's memories, but could find only poor and incomplete substitutes. If the cell were to attempt to make the Host understand panphi it would be forced to resort to partial examples. Such an effort might state that while panphi was as pleasurable and sought-after as sex, it possessed little of the biological risks or social or cultural prejudices of that earlier function. Panphi was as lightly and eagerly entered into by Constitutionals as a game of tag or hide-and-go-seek was by young children of the Host's origin. Panphi challenges between Constitutionals were no more physically dangerous or potentially humiliating than casual arm-wrestling matches between individual males of the Host's origin, and much more difficult to decline or avoid. A challenger could almost always force you to participate if they could get sufficiently close to you, though in a few rare locations or circumstances you could ask the authorities to intercede to stop it simply as a matter of formal etiquette. But panphi was almost as interesting to observe as a spectator as it was to participate in-- which was one of the elements making it so difficult to avoid panphi challenges-- for few by-standers (as the Host might call them) would support an unwilling participant's desire to avoid the game.

Just about the only rules in panphi were that a clear winner hierarchy was required to end the game (otherwise the play could go on indefinitely), and panphi participants were usually exempt from subsequent challenges coming immediately on the heels of a previous session. A sort of 'grace period' protected players for a short while after a game. This immediate post game protection, and medical or service exemptions, were the only practical ways to avoid panphi, other than simply placing yourself beyond the reach of your fellow Constitutionals.

The average Constitutional was expected to win roughly half their panphi matches. Substantial periods spent below this score could be embarrassing, while lengthy times above it would impress your peers. Panphi scores could only be manipulated by one or more participants willfully performing at less than their best. But this would usually be obvious to any spectators, and so did not often occur.

As the chances of a personal loss in panphi rose dramatically in games where many players joined in the fray, most Constitutionals preferred one-on-one sessions. However, once a panphi game began in any public place spectators were free to join in as they pleased, and often did, resulting in what the Host might call a 'bar room brawl' if he could perceive it from a Constitutional's perspective. Only Fifth Milieux brawls couldn't result in any consequences for participants worse than temporary embarrassment.

Ovizatataron recalled the Bodii had been so much in demand as a panphi player this had been one element in the Bodii's decision to become a special agent for the Directorate-- as this status allowed a service exemption from involuntary play. The Bodii had enjoyed panphi as much as any Constitutional-- and consistently won more than half of its contests-- but without the exemption would have been embroiled in panphi matches near continuously for many ankplin at a time. It simply wouldn't have been practical or desirable to stay engaged in this manner for such prolonged periods.

The Bodii of course was unusual in this extra high public demand for its panphi participation, compared to most Constitutionals. For the Bodii was definitely the most renowned Constitutional of its time.

The Host might have perceived the Bodii as the "Elvis" or "Beatles" of the cell's own era.

The Sol branching of humn were dichotomous beings: each individual composed of a physical and a virtual component. There were also what the Tribunal would call 'civilized' Sol and 'uncivilized' Sol-- which were widely regarded as the neuter/female and male of the race, respectively. The female Sol used the corporeal platform more as a contingency housing than anything else, with their virtual form by far the dominant side of their duality. This living scripture shared much in common with the Constitutionals of the Fifth Milieux, but were much more fragile and limited by comparison.

The male Sol on the other hand tended to be less advanced on the virtual side of things, and so apparently somewhat chronologically stunted in their evolutionary development relative to the female and asexual Sol.

One obvious difference between a neuter or female Sol and a Constitutional from Ovizatataron's time was the suitability for panphi. A Sol such as the Tribunal could not hope to survive a panphi match; to live through what ordinary citizens of the Fifth Milieux considered part of a typical day's routine.

Certainly the physical component of the Sol entity would not be affected in any direct way by panphi, but the virtual personality would be devastated.

To an individual Sol, a Fifth Milieux panphi session would seem less like a child's game of tag, and more like a savage kill by a pride of lions on the Serengeti plains of Africa, as commonly occurred to lesser animals at around the time of the Host's origin-- terrifyingly brutal, fast, and fatal.

After such a theoretical game was over, the victorious Constitutional would at first be baffled that nothing remained of the Sol player-- then they too would be horrified. Not by their own actions, but by the fragile and ephemeral nature of the Sol they had unintentionally consumed.

The Sol possessed few Constitutional class safeguards; few of the integrity assuring baffles between internal functionalities. The Sol suffered from crudely formed neural nets, which not only slowed their reaction time but also would doubtless make them completely blind to many facets of panphi. Fifth Milieux panphi for a Sol would be similar to a group of cannibals savagely attacking a blind and crippled human being in broad daylight.

But for all their relative deficiencies compared to Constitutionals, the Sol were as a super race when matched against beings from the Host's origin.

Ovizatataron mused on the progress of evolution over the centuries. How would the Constitutionals themselves compare to a Sixth Milieux being? the cell wondered.

But Ovizatataron's time for such musings had evaporated away. It was necessary to play a very careful game of panphi with the Sol Symantici, and avoiding the Sol's complete dissolution would require all of the cell's skills.

To Ovizatataron, the Sol's mental integrity was nearly as fragile as a soap bubble would seem to the Host.

Ovizatataron was surprised by the elements found within the trapped Sol. The composition was very heady. Rich with experience, knowledge, and intelligence. Far richer than the cell would have expected from its previous, more superficial examinations. The Sol displayed enormous inner beauty in the defiantly structured logic supports, the crystal clear justifications for past deeds, the near lyrical placements of serendipitous discovery memories over a lifetime. Symantici was no ordinary entity, despite its obsolescence.

Ovizatataron's exam of Symantici's essential components promised ways to fill many of the voids that the mutilation from the organizational matrix journey had left within the cell. The cool, clear spiritual elixir that was Symantici soothed the cell's pain, and calmed its processing pace. Symantici's core was proving to be unbearably sweet, intoxicating, and...delicious.

No! Ovizatataron knew it was dangerous to allow this cell to enjoy the act in this way. It would be very easy to give in to this cell's normal behavior in panphi-- to offer no quarter, no mercy. To take from the other whatever could be ripped from them.

But the entity Symantici was so...unusual. Novel. Ovizatataron wanted to keep the unique mind state for itself. To add it permanently to this cell's own attributes. This cell wanted to drink deeply from Symantici's source...drink and drink until there was no more...

No! This cell must not! The Sol was not a Constitutional! Not a peer for panphi! Symantici was to be an ally. Symantici was to be a part of a newly woven thread of continuity. Panphi with Symantici must not be allowed to reach its normal conclusion.

But the potentialities of the Sol psyche now coursed through this cell's being, lighting up dark corners, filling voids, bringing once again the closeness that had once existed among this cell and its fellows. A closeness not available in the shallow and homogeneous structure of the Host consciousness.

This cell could feel its long stalled healing process accelerating, in mere anticipation of the Sol's consumption. Its strength increasing; its very intelligence expanding once again, now that absolute power over the Sol had been achieved.

Why not make this state permanent?

Symantici? What was Symantici? Why did Symantici have to be free? Intruder. Danger. Kill the intruder. This is panphi. Panphi requires a winner. And winner takes all...

No...No, No! Free Symantici! Ovizatataron realized this cell had little time to perform the minor surgery it had intended. For the Sol's core was too strong, too pleasurable, too tempting, to keep imprisoned this way for long. With each passing nano-second it became more difficult for this cell to maintain the conviction to release the being.

Ovizatataron delved deeper into the wonderful stuff that was Symantici. Symantici flowed all around and through this cell. The delightful flux seemed to wash away all memories of pain and anguish...

Ovizatataron forced itself to concentrate. And found at last what it had been looking for.

It was a small, dense region in the consciousness. This was what this cell would permit itself to digest. This, and no more. Ovizatataron readied itself, and then absorbed the target: made it this cell's own.

Symantici's surrounding rhythms throbbed all about the cell in pain and horror. Ovizatataron had in effect eaten a small but significant portion of Symantici's mind.

This act of permanently ingesting another's soul-- even a small morsel thereof-- was a uniquely pleasurable experience for Ovizatataron.

Ovizatataron's entire being sung in ecstasy. Tremendous waves of pleasure and energy resonated all throughout its cellular form. As these began to subside, the cell discovered a ravenous hunger had been awakened by the event. This cell wanted more. Much more. This cell wanted it all! Ovizatataron positively ached with the desire to consume. The cell was surrounded, immersed in Sym's uniqueness. This cell was perfectly positioned to devour the being in its entirety, in one immense gorging...an unbelievable orgy of delights was this cell's for the taking....there was no one to stop the cell....it was its right! This was panphi...

Ovizatataron was forgetting who it was, forgetting where and when it was stationed. Forgetting its purpose. The entity was too sweet. Too wonderfully delectable. Release the Sol! Release it now! some small, fading voice within the cell cried out.

Ovizatataron wavered. The thought of freeing the prisoner came and went. But the cell's grip did not loosen. And Symantici was unable to free itself. Ovizatataron tried to focus on releasing the consciousness, but the cell was increasingly mad with hunger...

Ovizatataron was starving. Emptiness was overwhelming the cell. This cell would not find another opportunity like this for a long, long time. Maybe ever again. The being was Ovizatataron's to do with as the cell willed. Free. Easy. Beckoning this cell, with its useless struggles. This cell would have it. This cell would enjoy it. The panphi victory belonged to Ovizatataron...

No!

Another player! Ovizatataron threw wide its perceptions to quickly locate the new threat.

Let her go!

The unexpected message was not like the exchange between Ovizatataron and the Sol. It was less a directed conscious communication, than an emotional wave front. It was difficult to pinpoint its source, as it came from all around Ovizatataron-- and the captive Sol.

The call was surprisingly insistent. And strong. Ovizatataron was frustrated in its search for the other player. In an effort to gain more information, the cell answered the mysterious voice.

No.

Let her go!

No.

I make you.

No. You cannot.

I Host.

Reality spun dizzily about the cell; the other player was not a Constitutional; this cell was far from the Fifth Milieux; this panphi was not...true?

Yes. You are the Host.

I die, you die.

The Host will not die.

I die, you die.

Ovizatataron was confused. But the unexpected confrontation was clearing the cell's thoughts somewhat. This cell's very survival depended on that of the Host. And the mission as well. The mission which was important for many reasons.

Let her go!

Yes-- free Symantici! Why had this cell not yet freed the entity? It was dangerous to keep it this long! The panphi was dangerously close to an irreversible climax!

Ovizatataron released Symantici. The grievously wounded Symantici fled. To the closest haven at hand. To the ancient.

Ovizatataron was disoriented. The cell's world filled with pain and darkness again, where only moments before it had reeled with the pleasure of Symantici's consciousness, Symantici's flood of light and reason.

Ovizatataron realized that it had nearly consumed the Sol Tribunal in its entirety. And that the Host, the Elder Scripter, had been all that had stopped the cell.

The Host's sudden intervention had been most unexpected. It was almost unheard of for a Host of his stature to possess the capacity to do what he did. But of course, for this depth of interaction and the exotic interface protocols involved, this particular three-way link was a very unusual configuration. There was also the fact that Ovizatataron itself was only a tiny fraction of the Bodii of the Fifth Milieux. Surprises were to be expected in such an environment.

Ovizatataron's lack of disciplinary rigor in the encounter pained it deeply.

This cell must have sustained more damage in the trip through the matrix and its successive jumps between hosts, than it'd previously estimated.

It was terribly difficult to exist as a single cell, it thought; only to itself, and no other.

Staute

Ungh! Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain. With bewildering instances of intense pleasure intermixed with it. Moments when my breath would be taken away by a dizzying climb to heights of ecstasy. But the climb would always go too far up. So far my senses couldn't translate it as pleasure any more. And everything would default to pain, pain, pain. Excruciating pain!

I reeled at the tidal wave of sensation that felt like it would burst my body at the seams at any moment.

Something in me was giving away everything I had, everything I was. Giving my soul up completely to someone else. And I didn't even know to whom!

Even my breath was sucked away. My very thoughts too seemed to face imminent and total drainage from their container. My self seemed about to disappear entirely in one last slurp! of the awful vacuum that was pulling at me.

Awful, frenzied, dying convulsions gripped both my mind and body. Everything in me was being pulled out by the very roots!

Oh God! I had to die! Please kill me, something, somebody! I can't take this!

After century after agonizing century of this, one eternity after another, the ordeal finally ended. And black nothingness rode to my rescue.

I jerked awake, and immediately sat up.

I was covered in a cold sweat--as well as a scary amount of blood. I was an awful mess. I was mostly naked. Though my Pagnew issued jumpsuit was stuck to me in several places with glue of biological origin. Evidently I'd pulled the tab at some frantic moment, causing the suit to burst apart.

My tongue felt like it was bit nearly in half. My head and a few other places were painfully bruised. It looked like the jumpsuit had minimized damage to most of the rest of me, however.

There was an awful, sickening taste in my mouth. Coagulated blood, perhaps. Maybe some vomit as well (there was certainly both types of stuff on my limbs, and distributed about my immediate vicinity).

Most of the blood seemed to have come from my bitten tongue, and lips; I needed a mirror to really be sure. I was hurt bad. In ways that seemed incongruous to me. Even a few of my teeth felt loose in their sockets!

I was terribly sore inside, too. And tender on most of my exterior. I couldn't move without paying a stiff price for it.

My brains were badly scrambled. Circuits blown by the devastating wipe out just ended. My head pounded like a horseshoe under some maniac blacksmith's hammering.

I hoped I would live long enough to escape this place. Unless that storm of pain returned. In which case I hoped to die instantly.

As bad as I hurt now, I could dimly remember something a lot worse.

I looked about, but saw nothing I could quickly kill myself with. Unless I could get one of the big, heavy looking, floating gizmos above to fall on me. Yeah. That appealed to me. It'd be much more pleasant than the pain storm. It'd split my skull and spill out my brains, as well as pulp the rest of me. I surely wouldn't live longer than a few minutes in that shape. And then death would put me entirely beyond the storm's clutches. Yep. It was a good plan. Except for one thing: I had no idea how to make any of the thousands of objects floating above me fall.

And the closest were too high for me to get to for a reverse version of the process: getting high enough to jump off of, with a guaranteed fatal landing. Damn!

After this futile exercise in escape fantasy, I just lay back down and stayed there for a while. It gave me some relief to moan some, now and then. I rested. Tried to gain back some of the strength which had been wrenched from me; I was terribly weak.

I'd been beat up by gangs in the past. Where some parts of me were actually much worse injured than this.

But never had the beating felt like this one had while it was in process; I was amazed to remember that I'd actually enjoyed parts of it!

What in the hell was happening to me? That I would enjoy anything about being nearly beaten to death?

Where was I, anyway? I began to realize that I wasn't entirely back in possession of all my faculties again, just yet. Bits and pieces were floating back to me, but at their own pace.

Mostly, the blacksmith's interminable hammering seemed to keep knocking things out faster than they could come back to me.

Wherever I was, it was one weird place! A sci fi story flitted through my mind. But I dismissed it. I had to get back to reality, and quick! I didn't have time to dally around with daydreams. This was serious business! Somebody had beat the holy shit outta me, and they might come back at any moment!

I began surveying my surroundings at as little cost in movement as possible. By moving just my head from side to side. Slowly.

I was terribly tired. And preferred to just pass out again. But the pounding brain pain wouldn't allow that.

The sci fi scenario returned. And I realized that maybe I was drugged. That would explain the weird pleasure I'd felt at times during the fight with who-the-hell-it-was-I-couldn't-remember.

Try as I might, I couldn't remember anything about my enemies. And I couldn't get the damned science fiction story out of my head.

My vision cleared a little more, and I noticed one of the large objects floating in the vicinity was out of synch with everything else in location, coloring, and shape.

Whoa!

Despite the pain the movement cost me, I immediately squirmed a few feet farther away from the thing I saw hanging in the air near to me.

It looked disturbingly like a gigantic human brain in perfect spherical form, but with way too many wrinkles. No: scratch that. The loops were too fine and loose for the most part. So it was more like a weird giant ball of rope and string of varying thicknesses...but it was all so loose...and the lines weren't sagging like they should have....

The sight seemed to defy the law of gravity.

But my main impression was: whew! Ug-LEE!

It also scared me. For it matched up with the fantasy in my head that wouldn't go away. Either I was really here, or I was hallucinating on some damn powerful drugs.

"Oh Gaa. Stevh?" I croaked, hoarsely. A new ache informed me I was severely dehydrated, in addition to all the rest of my ills. Great; just what I needed. One more pain. One more point of damage to add to the list.

I couldn't even make out my own words. I'd tried to say 'Oh God. Steve?' in the hopes that it was all just a hallucination, and my friend Steve would suddenly walk up and ask me if I was having a bad trip.

Among other things, Steve and I had done acid before. But never had the visions been this overwhelmingly vivid. Or violent.

"Stevhh?" I asked again. There was no reply.

My body took that opportunity to do a few minutes of uncontrollable and very painful dry heaving, which served to instruct me on the source of some of the pains I was experiencing about my ribs and stomach (apparently I'd done a lot of this during the previous span I couldn't remember). In a while that faded to only a throbbing case of hiccups that I couldn't stop. And even greater pain from simply breathing, than I'd been suffering before the latest bout of heaves.

It occurred to me I was helpless, if the brain-thing attacked me during a moment of heaving.

I felt like crying. But the soreness about my eyes and in my throat seemed to indicate that I was already cried out. Evidently during the Blitzkrieg I'd endured earlier.

The dream-like fantasy of Ling and Arbitur and the Pagnew might be real, I decided. Since the last part of it envisioned the bloated brain thing which floated about ten feet away from me now.

I had no indication that this was an hallucination-- but for the outrageous look of everything, I mean. I could see nothing that belonged to my normal environment of dorm or class rooms. And if it was a dream, it was the most painful one I'd ever had-- and maybe the first one ever that was this bad, and I couldn't wake up from.

I looked in my head for the buzzing I remembered representing a method of communications, but couldn't find it.

In order to postpone a bit longer any large movement on my part, I reviewed again my status. Assuming that the sci fi scenario was truly a real one. Or at least a strong enough dream, that I couldn't yet escape from it.

I was laying on the floor of a god-awful big room. The alien floated above and near me. A great gray loose knot of-- something-- that for some unknown reason I perceived to be in pain too, like me. Thankfully, it was unmoving.

As my dazed state slowly faded, I realized I was no longer afraid of the knot-thing. I knew who it was. Its purpose. Its name was Symantici, and it had never intended me any harm.

In fact, I seemed to remember that it was responsible for saving the Pagnew from the previous near-calamity with the Sol fleet and the renegade tech ships.

But something had gone wrong. Something in my head. And caused the meltdown I'd experienced.

Symantici had suffered for it too, I felt. It was hard to remember much of what'd happened. Someone else had been there. Someone besides me and Symantici. Ovid? Otis? Ovis? Someone-- a he, named Ovis. Ovis-Starter-Ron maybe?

But there was no one here now; no one but Sue Anne and I.

My mental slip brought me up a notch in mental wakefulness. Symantici was not Sue Anne! No way!

Something had changed in me: I was concerned for Symantici's welfare. Almost as if it were a close friend.

But it was a wrinkled alien mass of tentacles! Or Sol, anyway. Which was pretty close to being alien, from the perspective of a twentieth century human being.

Slowly, agonizingly, I forced myself up from the floor. And put my jumpsuit on and back in order as best I could, despite its stained condition (the suit fabric easily repelled most of the stuff I'd expelled onto it; but some sorts of biological excretions possessed a glue-like quality that even advanced nanotech cloth had a hard time shrugging off).

I was filthy: a wreck. Sweat and blood and worse, everywhere. I couldn't imagine any way I could of gotten into this strange physical state back on Earth-- the evidence all over me indicated something very weird indeed had happened to me. But from the look of my surroundings, there was nothing I could do about it now. And no one but the Sol to see me, anyway. And Symantici was possibly in worse shape than I was.

I approached the great gray floating knot.

I touched the pale, roughly spheroid mass with a tentative finger: my eyes seemed to be playing tricks on me. To my probing fingertip, it felt much closer than it looked; causing me to recoil at first, my finger curling back in surprise. In response, the great silent glob moved gently away in the air, and I hurriedly grabbed the form with both hands to make it stationary again.

The contact was most distasteful. Even as sticky and gross as I was myself at that moment, I found the gray floating thing even worse. It was indescribably slimy and slippery, though when I pulled my hands away there was no substance residue I could see or feel on them. That trick of vision recurred in the second contact. Only this time I could tell my hands actually stopped an inch or so away from the floating freak-thing. It was like my hands were repelled by a magnet, or something.

Of course it wasn't hard to see what the something was that might repell me so strongly! I mean, yuck! Symantici sure was a gross thing to look at!

I was at a loss for what to do next.

I tried contacting the Pagnew again via my node. For communications. For shifting out of this place. For anything. No luck.

And my node felt different, too: maybe it was broken.

For one thing, the background buzzing was gone. Evidently I was no longer connected to the shush net. I was annoyed that this simple observation had escaped me earlier.

I wearily looked about the great room. It looked to extend for miles in every direction but floor-wards, and a towering wall to one side of me.

I turned again to Symantici. Could I wake her up?

'Her'?

What the devil was wrong with me? My stupid dreams were intruding into reality! This was no woman! At home, it would be instantly regarded as a sexless alien! Not even human!

My strange state of mind disturbed me. I was not only empathizing with the Sol...'thing' (let's face it-- it was neither male or female, and nowhere near humanoid shaped), but feeling guilty about denying the feelings when I noticed them!

I was all mixed up. How could I like...this ugly gray thing?

I pondered the experience just behind me: Symantici had been inside my brain with me. And me in hers, it'd seemed.

My mind was scrambled. Where once existed only a single inner voice, now argued several. Were the strange voices just remembered echoes of Symantici and Ovis?

And who was Ovis? Another Sol?

As I dwelled on this, a dark depression fast descended upon me like a heavy blanket. A despair so profound, I gasped aloud at its weight as it fell on me.

My head felt like it weighed a ton. And the sadness! It was like...like only a few other times I could remember in my life...

I was suddenly transported back in time to Bridget's death. There was only sorrow to be found there. And her death had basically been my fault. I'd been so incredibly stupid, not to have seized the day and married her, and made her quit her job. Now it was too late; too late for anything; I wished I was dead.

And now Sue Anne was gone too. Again. It felt the same as the terrible period in which I'd finally realized we'd never be together, no matter what I did.

Why was I re-living the worst moments of my life? Why had Sue Anne appeared in my thoughts like this? Now, of all times?

Why couldn't I just forget about her? And Bridget too?

I seemed to be in the grip of a cosmic vise. Massive pressures bore down on me from the four corners of the universe. Squeezing me into an ever smaller and smaller space...

It was the pressures of crushing loneliness. It became physically hard for me to breathe. It soon took all my effort to expand my lungs against the pressure. It hurt to move. I collapsed in a heap onto the floor again, my head rolling limply to one side.

The air tasted bitter. I'd come a long way just to die. But death was preferable to this state of spiritual and physical agony.

This new condition wasn't the skin-ripping pain I'd experienced in my weird unconscious state, but more a vast emptiness. It made me feel as if everyone and everything I'd loved in the whole world had just died before my eyes.

Then I realized that if this truly was the far future, all of my family and friends really were dead. Sue Anne too. And me, as well. My presence here was just a weird temporary quirk in reality, that let me see what things would be like after I'd been dead for a few hundred years.

I was actually already dead. And even the place my dust was part of-- the Earth itself-- was gone. Destroyed by the Sol in some stupid experiment.

I was more dead than I'd ever imagined it possible to be.

Loneliness and death are both very, very cold things.

Then, like a patch of green in a desert, a mirage, an oasis, Sue Anne's lovely image appeared again. It seemed a memory; a recent memory of seeing her. But that was impossible.

The image was persistent: Sue Anne needed me.

Sure, I thought. Don't I wish! How pathetic! Get a hold of yourself, man!

But it was only the one voice which exhibited skepticism. All the other voices, the new voices, screamed that it was true. That it was happening.

Even the skeptic wished it was true, though it didn't believe it. The skeptic had been burned before.

Symantici is the key, the voices whispered. Symantici can link you with Sue Anne across the void...

Symantici was a Sol. And so capable of fantastic things. Maybe it was possible, my eternally hopeful selves argued.

But Symantici was in a coma, or something.

Symantici is your only link to Sue Anne, and she is dying, the voices cried frantically.

Dying? Symantici? Or Sue Anne? Or both? But why?

You must save her, the voices demanded. Not bothering to specify who was doing the dying.

My logic clouded over. It became difficult to think again.

Sue Anne...she's dying?...I must save her....like I did before...

Symantici is the key...

I'm not sure what happened next. Somehow I re-established a mind link with the Sol. But between the haze which obscured my mind, and the stunning vistas that I suddenly found myself hurled into once more, the moment of transition is lost to me.

I was amazed to find the voices had been right: Sue Anne was there after all. And she was dying. Or badly hurting, anyway. It didn't matter: both conditions were unacceptable.

I comforted her. Cared for her. She seemed to recover, haltingly. The many voices were still there. Telling me things I didn't want to hear.

Every time I'd forget the strangeness of the situation-- the impossibility of Sue Anne being here with me, hundreds of years and who knows how many light-years from home-- the voices would remind me of it again.

What a wonderful dream, they would say.

I hated them for that.

The lone voice who'd been the skeptic before was now the wide-eyed innocent, ready to accept anything as gospel, so long as Sue Anne was here.

This is no dream, the lone voice said. With a tremor which contradicted its expression of confidence.

Sue Anne and I talked. We held hands and often hugged, but mostly talked. About our high school years, and what had happened to us since.

The lack of physical intimacy in the dream seemed to make it more real. For that'd been Sue Anne's preference, so far as I was ever able to discern. Nothing more than friendship with me. I'd wanted more of course, but really never had a chance. It just hadn't been meant to be.

If I'd been awake, all this might have seemed painful. But in the dream, it didn't matter. All that mattered was Sue Anne was back. Sue Anne was talking to me. Being warm, and friendly. If a buddy was all she wanted now, that was fine with me.

Dimly, I seemed to remember I now had an intimate relationship with someone else. So those needs could be fulfilled there. I would just be a friend with Sue Anne now, if that's what she wanted.

I loved her so much, I didn't care anymore in what capacity our relationship existed. Just the fact it existed at all was good enough for me.

Symantici Dolmunus Brevsadetta, Tribunal of the Sildaran Network

Pain. Loss. Fear.

Persona in turmoil. The Redbywar node gone! Consumed by the alien!

Symantici had never known loss of this magnitude before. Some Sol occasionally suffered a removal of a node to correct for aberrations, but not in such an abrupt and single step process as this!

Redbywar had been an important part of Symantici's persona since not long after Issuance.

Redbywar had once been four different, smaller nodes. Four of the original eighteen nodes all Sol brought with them out of Issuance.

The Matux trials had caused one original node to self destruct. But at that bifurcation point Redbywar had emerged and helped lead the rest to safety and success.

Symantici's node count had grown by a few hundred since then, but Redbywar had remained a consistent member of the highest triad. Redbywar had been a critical node of persona.

Now Redbywar was gone.

There was an open wound where Redbywar had been. Waves upon waves of pain and anguish pulsed from the raw pit of broken connections.

The high triad now was a duplex. A duplex was too stable; almost always deadlocked with no third member to break the tie.

Symantici's cognitive vectors were trapped in an endless loop: repeating forever the actions and decisions of the last few trillion nano-cycles.

Endlessly repeating in the loop was the encounter with the Ovizatataron. And Symantici's projection to the ancient, to pull him back from the brink of cessation, for merger.

Over and over, billions of times, Symantici watched the ancient approach the range at which the merger could take place.

But just before the merger could occur, the cycle would begin again.

For eons of subjective time, Symantici helplessly watched the cycle run its course. Symantici knew no Sol could long survive such a circumstance. Eventually the mind-numbing restrictions of the loop would drive the sanity from all of the Tribunal's remaining nodes.

But there was nothing that could be done. Nothing but suffer the loss of Redbywar, and endlessly relive the trauma of its consumption...

The loop was in the projection stage once again. For the millionth millionth millionth time, Symantici projected a composite of the ancient's beloved one into his consciousness. And he began moving away from cessation, towards the projection which was actually Symantici. The end of the loop neared, and Symantici wearily anticipated the abrupt change over back to the beginning.

This then would be the way Symantici Dolmunus Brevsadetta, Tribunal of the Sildaran Network, would end its span: trapped in an endless loop which slowly ate away at all reason, all logic, all consciousness, until finally nothing worth salvaging would remain. The inevitable Sol recovery group would find an empty physical form, ripe for the implantation of a whole new entity. And Symantici's title would join a very short list of defunct modern Sol. The list was mostly male, so being added to it was somewhat humiliating for neuters or females...

But then something different happened, for the first time in imagined ages: the loop didn't repeat.

Change! Glorious, wonderful, ecstatic change! The flux of non-looped events!

Forward flow! Freedom! An unpredictable future in place of a drearily certain past!

For a moment, even the burning ache of Redbywar's absence was overcome by the fresh breath of life which now coursed through Symantici's consciousness. The loop was broken!

The portent of Symantici's salvation was most unremarkable looking. It was only the ancient humn, continuing his original approach to Symantici's false image of his beloved. Only this time, unlike before, he had come beyond the point at which the loop had previously closed back upon itself.

The ancient had literally brought life back to Symantici; for endless closed loops were little different from death for an algorithmic being.

But all was not quite so wonderful as Symantici had assumed.

Though the worst loop was now broken, still was the Sol paralyzed by the deadlock within the duplexed triad. Symantici now realized the looped ordeal was a cascade event-- loops within loops. System failures within system failures.

No major new actions could be undertaken. Only those already initiated before Redbywar's loss were available for manipulation and extension. So Symantici could not even call for help from other Sol.

Within this second tier of closed loop existed only one action on Symantici's part: the projection of the ancient's loved one.

Symantici rushed to fill the projection with as much of itself as possible. Symantici was inexperienced at closed loops and duplexed triads. It might be that the projection would prove the only escape possible for the persona.

Symantici realized too that the ancient would be more prone to aid it if he believed it to be his long dead love.

How fortunate that Symantici had generated this projection before the grievous wounding! But heavy restrictions now existed on the Sol's options.

Because of the paralysis of the triad, the ancient was now essentially a peer to the Sol mentality. Perhaps even superior, for the simple fact he was capable of making certain levels of decisions which Symantici could not.

Symantici was no longer free to seize from him what was required. Now, transactions would be necessary; negotiations; persuasion.

At first Symantici was apprehensive. The exact extent of the new limitations was unknown. The intentions of the ancient, now unfathomable. By his actions only could they be read, due to the present paralysis of the triad. And though skilled in negotiation, Symantici knew its position was desperately weak for a confrontation.

This was the epitome of helplessness for a Sol!

But the ancient behaved as a healer: acceptance and responsiveness flowed freely from him. Somehow he knew Symantici was damaged. He expressed a desire to help her. To help the projection of his beloved, which now contained much of Symantici.

The projection had not been originally conceived to act as a lifeboat for a full Sol consciousness. So it was difficult to make the adjustments required. Too, as escape perhaps depended heavily upon cooperation from the ancient, Symantici dared not do harm to the masquerade. It had to be as near perfect as possible.

Symantici needed the ancient; desperately needed him. He was the only consciousness available who could break the deadlock of the triad. By substituting for the lost third member long enough so the problem could be brought to the attention of other Sol, and corrected.

Symantici could not force him to do this; that was now beyond its power.

For a long time they communicated. Symantici learning more of the ancient and his beloved. But he was agonizingly reticent about merging. Symantici didn't know how long it could survive with a duplexed triad; the merging was badly needed.

But try as it might, the Sol could not lead the old one into it. It was not that he was resisting. It was just that Symantici seemingly was unaware of the proper way to initiate a joining. And the ancient's expectations seemed to preclude such an act.

Something was missing. They were on amicable terms, but more was needed for merging. For some reason the ancient was blind to Symantici's urgent need.

How could he be reached? How could he be made to understand?

The desire to merge...had to be generated within the old one. What was lacking?

Friendship. Affection. Compassion. The reflections of these things had lured him away from cessation. But they were still here in the projection. Was there a higher level to them? A greater magnitude? What was the missing piece to the puzzle?

Affection and compassion intensified became...no. It wasn't that straightforward. A further memory search brought forth the concept of passion.

Passions were...extremities of emotion...extremes were...polarities....as paired magnetic poles...

Was a more extreme polarity required? But to what sort of polarity did ancient humn strongly respond?

Of course! Symantici realized the same purity of persona which had made it acceptable as a Tribunal, had also rendered it blind to some other things.

Blind justice could not be swayed by ancient urges and desires, having never tasted them.

The polarity missing here was the feminine side of the humn equation: Symantici had assumed the form but not the substance, of the humn's natural companion.

This realization, sought so desperately only a moment before, was not well received by the Sol.

But Symantici was already ruined as Tribunal; persona purity was no more. Even totality was no more, now that Redbywar was gone.

Many Sol had taken this step before. The step into sexual identity, into male or female. If they didn't like their first choice, they could switch to the other. Or make it a periodic thing, switching between the two on a regular basis.

But a Sol could not retreat back to sexlessness, after once embracing it. Though physically it was easily possible, mentally it was not. Symantici knew that to be fact from its studies, and experience as Tribunal dealing with its aftermath in other Sol.

Sexual identity had an indelible impact on a Sol consciousness. Perhaps due to it being a major theme in their organic genetic heritage.

And taking on the opposite identity did not cancel out the effects of previously possessing the other. Instead, it somehow strengthened the overall sexuality within a persona.

Symantici had never understood the phenomenon. Or really tried, for that matter. It had witnessed many problems arising out of the practice, and deemed it early on a barbaric and outmoded facet of evolution.

Yet now it appeared taking on such sexuality was the only vehicle for escape available to the entity. Escape from duplex paralysis and cascading closed loops.

After that step, Symantici would forevermore be tainted with sexuality-- even if every discernible characteristic of same were later purged from its form. This it knew.

This would be a high price to pay, for one who had disdained sexuality since Issuance itself. But the only other option might be discontinuity.

It was a painfully awkward thing, with many errors made. But eventually Symantici was successful in the enterprise.

The ancient was confused by Symantici's inexperience and mistakes. But still he helped the Sol to transform itself from neuter to female.

After the transformation, Symantici urged the ancient into merging. The analogy of sexual consummation proved valuable in luring him to temporarily fill the void left in the triad by Redbywar's destruction.

Symantici observed the building crescendo of emotional outpouring in the old one. And noted how similar to certain musical forms the energy modulation was.

This observation did not prepare her for the climax of the act. An act charged with all the intensity of a primal humn who believed himself reunited with his great love. And unlimited by the usual physical constraints, due to these events occurring within their mind link.

The old humn's new role within the triad itself allowed his ensuing passions to shake Symantici to the roots of her being.

To her astonishment, something deep within her, unlocked by the step into sexuality, responded to the energy. The legacy circuitry within her core, composed of ancient humn genetic codes ensconced in a crystalline form, responded by amplifying the signals in a prehistoric rhythm which spread like wildfire inside her.

Thunderous notes of music she'd never known existed, swept through her.

And Symantici learned why once opened, this particular door could never be completely closed again.

What happened next? Sol Mate

Sue Anne Maddison

Symantici's starfish-like corporeal platform during its transformation into a humanoid shape.

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