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The words “The Tyrant suffers forever so that we may live in peace” were etched in block metal letters above the entrance to the Lattice of Sorrow. The phrase struck Ayesha as such a vengeful prayer.

She walked along the long shadows cast by the words, through the massive open gate. The Lattice, perhaps the largest sculpture in the galaxy, now stretched out before her, each one of its billion monuments commemorating a tragedy from the Last Great War. The smallest memorials were no bigger than a tombstone; the largest, great stone and metal mausoleums, covered hundreds of cubic metres. The monuments stretched in every direction and far up into the sky, all unique save for two common elements: each told a story about one of the Tyrant’s massacres, and each had a light commemorating the life and death of one of the Tyrant’s trillion victims.

For the next hour Ayesha randomly floated through the Lattice, experiencing the sensations which emanated from the memorials. Some whispered stories, others projected emotions scanned from victims at the moment of their deaths. The most prevalent emotions were horror and fear. The most unsettling emotion was relief, for people only feel relieved to die after unbearable suffering.

A placard at the centre of an arched doorway caught her attention. It read,

The recording contained in this mausoleum was taken 1,000 seconds after the death of Elizum Kemble, 14 years old. He was one of the one billion people killed during the Siege of Ashanti, the final battle of the Last Great War.

The Tyrant suffers forever so that we may live in peace.

Ayesha had always thought that it was perverse to experience a death scan, but because of her anger at the senseless murder of this child, she decided that she would. She stepped under the tomb’s portico, paused for a moment and then entered. She felt a slight jolt as her perspective was replaced by that of Elizum Kemble.

Mechanized soldiers fall through the air like snowflakes, their uniforms splashes of white against the deep, blue sky and the brown, dusty town. I want to run but I cannot. There is no where to run to. We are encircled. I hide in the shadow of a doorway hoping that I have not been seen.

The soldiers walk towards each other, compressing the crowd. I know the people in the crowd, they are my friends. I want to help them but I cannot. I am trembling with fear.

The Mechs pause, raise their weapons and fire. In a moment everyone in the square is dead. They vacuum up the corpses into power packs which they carry on their backs.

The square is now clear of bodies. The Mechs turn their backs to each other and face the perimeter of the square. One looks directly at my hiding place. It knows that I am here.

As the mechanized soldier walks towards me I can see details. What from a distance looked like a mouth is some form of mechanism that is designed for war and not feeding. The protrusions on the end of its arms, though they look somewhat like hands are more complicated: I can see a number of devices that are different types of weapons and sensors. When it gets to within a few paces of where I am hiding I can see that its mottled green-brown eyes are those of a human. I stare into its eyes, trying to understand what, if anything, it is thinking as it prepares to kill me.

Ayesha hastily stepped out of the mausoleum. She was shaking because the Mech that killed Elizum Kemble had the same eyes as the one that had murdered her own family. She staggered off the platform in front of the memorial, hovered unsteadily in the air for a moment and then scudded away into the darkening sky. She had had enough of memorials so she flew directly towards her ultimate destination, the Ashanti Palace. The Palace, which once was a regional headquarters in the Tyrant’s empire, had been converted into his prison after his defeat. The entrance to the Palace faced onto the Plaza of Justice. From a distance the Plaza appeared flat and empty, save for a lighted sphere in the middle. As she drew closer she saw that it was teeming with people. Many were clearly tourists, but a surprising number had erected camps and had become semi-permanent residents. She inspected these camps and realized from the thickets of posters and slogans that surrounded them, that they were inhabited by protesters and agitators. Though most were concerned with the Tyrant and his fate, she could see representatives from a vast array of the galaxy’s political interests. If you wanted to get a message out, this was a good place to do it: most people visited the Lattice at least once in their lives.

The Plaza was so large that it took several minutes of flying before she could see the Panopticon, which was the Tyrant’s punishment. Ayesha had always thought of the Panopticon as a transparent sphere, but as she approached it she could see that it wasn’t a structure at all: it was simply a force field that held the Tyrant’s gaunt, naked body suspended in the air. A web of long, thin tubes radiated from him. His body was constantly moving. From a distance these disjointed movements appeared graceful, but as she lowered herself closer to him she saw that he was in agony.

Unlike her siblings and friends, Ayesha had never flinched in the face of pain. When she grazed herself as a child she did not run whining to her parents for solace. Instead she would intently study her wound. She would close her eyes so that she could focus on her pain; she would touch the wound to determine its depth. She learned that squeezing can both increase and decrease the flow of blood, depending on how it is done. Ayesha could not help but look at the Tyrant as he endured his punishment. After ten thousand days of torture she was surprised to see that his sunken, hollow eyes were alert: they constantly darted around, looking directly at faces in the crowd that pushed around the sphere for a better view. The look in his reddened eyes was deranged. His apparent lunacy was emphasized by his bloodied tongue, which incessantly licked his lips.

After several minutes of intent viewing Ayesha retreated to a quiet spot several hundred feet above the Tyrant’s body, and prepared to watch the end of the Cycle. The Panopticon and the memorials in the Lattice were part of a 10,000 day punishment. During each second of the Cycle a memorial light would be extinguished, to commemorate one of his murders. As the light was extinguished, the Tyrant’s body would be wracked by pain. At the beginning of the Cycle the Lattice burned with lights. Now that the Cycle was ending the lights were gradually giving way to night. When the last light was extinguished later this evening, medics would take down the Tyrant’s wretched body so that he could be revived sufficiently to endure another round of torture. Ayesha would interview him before his punishment resumed.

As the bright lights from the Lattice dimmed to darkness the crowd became quiet. Just before dawn the last memorial light was extinguished. The only light in the entire Lattice of Sorrow came from the Panopticon, which continued to glow with white-blue light. The Tyrant’s body had stopped writhing. He hung limply, and only periodically twitched. His eyes were closed; blood dribbled down his chin. Over the next few minutes the light from the Panopticon began to fade; soon everything became black and still. The darkness lasted an interminable time then was ended by a loud, crashing noise that echoed for a few minutes more. When the last echo died away there was a final moment of silence and then the memorial lights were turned back on.

The Plaza was far more crowded than Ayesha had realized. She lowered herself carefully into an empty spot several hundred metres from her destination. Once she landed, she began to walk towards the main entrance of the Palace. On her way she passed a group of protesters quietly sitting in a circle, sipping tea. Their placards read, “Only God can punish for eternity” and “Let the Tyrant die and be judged. Hell is worse than anything man can build.” Immediately beside this group sat a sanguine gathering shaded by a banner which read, “His soul has been judged already. Let his body suffer.” After she passed underneath this banner she kept her eyes to herself.

As Ayesha walked towards the Palace entrance she had to ask herself again why she was here. She certainly had no intention of vindicating the Tyrant’s actions or of pleading for clemency. She had no problem with punishing this monster. Her problem with punitive justice was that it was so difficult to determine with any certainty what was wrong. But in this case there were no doubts. The Tyrant had ravaged a million worlds and, though he personally had killed not one person, his soldiers had murdered over one trillion. She was here in the hope that through one interview could gain an insight into his motivations that she could use to prevent further massacres.

A rabid looking man pushed his way in front of her and shouted, “He didn’t do it! He only killed in self-defense. This is all a lie!” The Denier waved a brochure that he thought contained evidence for his ignorant claim. Ayesha pushed the man aside and walked into the thickest part of crowd, towards the main entrance to the Palace.

Though Ayesha’s movement through the crowd was very slow, she eventually arrived at her destination. Once there she activated the signal on her security pass, as she had been instructed to do. A group of soldiers appeared out of nowhere, and with apparently no effort, cleared the crowd from around her. They entered the Palace through a tiny side door that opened onto one wing of a tremendous, square hallway. The floors of the hallway were paved with polished marble laid out in a red and white checkered pattern. Twenty metre high statues, done in a classical style, lined each wall. In the center of the hallway there was a huge alabaster sculpture of a man wrestling with a demon. The roof had a grid of skylights that let light shine down in articulated lines. The roof was held up by long columns of green marble, the tops of which were decorated with elaborate carvings of acanthus leaves.

Seven hallways radiated out from the atrium, a main hallway that immediately faced the entranceway and one on each of the 3 remaining sides. Ayesha was led by her escorts around the wrestler towards the main hallway. Her footstep’s echoed loudly as she walked. The soldiers who accompanied her were silent. At the entrance to the hallway she saw the erect, still body of a Mech. She looked at its eyes. They were green-brown. Her entire body became tense with fear. She stopped several metres before it, to collect herself.

The Mech let her stand silently for a respectful moment and then spoke in a disconcertingly soft voice. “Are you alright?” She tried to answer the soldier’s question but could not.

The Mech spoke again. “Please do not be alarmed madam. No doubt you have seen countless images of soldiers like me enacting terrible atrocities. I have been reprogrammed; I pose no threat to you.” Still she did not reply. There was a schedule to be maintained however, and unless she was going to give up her rare privilege and return home, she had to proceed. In silence, she stepped forward to face the Mech. He stepped aside, and gestured for her to proceed.

The main hallway was designed in a baroque style. It had a painted parquet floor; its walls were adorned with tall mirrors, which were interspersed with arched crystalline windows. Large glass chandeliers hung in a row from the centre of the ceiling. Even the most prosaic items, such as door handles and torch holders, were the products of elaborate craftsmanship. Ayesha paused to examine a fresco that dominated one wall. The focus of the painting was a man with a great curled white wig; his clothes were made of purple velvet and were covered with heavy gold ornaments. His feet were shod in long leather boots that opened up at his thighs. On one hip he wore a scabbard out of which protruded the handle of a sword that had been decorated with colored stones; his gloved right hand rested on a holster, which contained a gun. On his head he wore a large, rimmed hat which was decorated with a tremendous feather. The large feathered cap initially made Ayesha think that this man was some type of shaman, but when she examined the entire painting more carefully she realized that he was a military leader, for he was flanked by men with an array of odd weapons: metal spikes on sticks, primitive firearms, mechanical bows and countless other devices which appeared to be weapons. Directly in front of the great man was a prostrate man, grandly dressed, who was signing a handwritten document. The prostrate man was also flanked by armored men, though his soldiers had all lowered themselves onto one knee, and were unarmed.

Ayesha moved slowly forward, examining the other paintings. All contained similar themes: pictures of the great man in various grand, dysfunctional outfits, surrounded by victorious and vanquished soldiers. She realized then that the entire hallway, the mirrors, the chandeliers, the crystalline windows, down to the very last, ornate detail, had been constructed to glorify this one man’s military exploits. Not one painting gave any indication of how brutal warfare was for these soldiers. “Imagine killing someone by impaling them with a metal stick, or blowing them apart with small balls of steel” she thought. “Somehow these images never surface when victories are celebrated. It’s as if humans have some form of blind spot that makes us unable to see our barbarity for what it is.”

[Her reflections brought her back to her greatest doubt. She was here because from the moment her family had been murdered she had been on a mission to open up humanity’s eyes to its barbarous side. Though she was praised by many for her courage in exposing atrocities in forgotten war zones, most people dismissed her as an idealist and a fool. “Perhaps we will never be able to overcome our destructive nature, because destruction is part of our nature.” This thought briefly sapped her motivation. She halted.] Her escort interrupted her reverie. “We have a few moments until the prisoner will be fit enough to meet you, Madam. Is there anything that you would like to know about the Palace?”

“Who is that man?” Ayesha pointed to the leader with the feathered hat.

“His name is Louis Quattorze. He was a French ruler. This is all a replica of a hallway in one of his Palaces.”

“Was he a great military leader?” she asked bitterly.

The Mech replied in a neutral voice. “If you judge greatness in terms of conquests, then no he was not a great leader. Although he fought many wars against his neighbors, when he died his nation’s borders were little changed from when he began. Most of the few increases in territory he did achieve were through legal victories, not military ones.” The fact that the glorious battles depicted along this gallery were pointless did little to change her low opinion of Louis Quattorze.

The Mech waited a respectful moment for her to reply and then once again tried to prolong the conversation. “The craftsmanship is tremendous, isn’t it, particularly when you consider that the originals were all constructed with the crudest machines?”

She nodded her assent, but let the Mech’s attempt to converse fail.

The hallway ended in a large room also decorated in a baroque style.

“What is this place?”

“The Hall of Peace.”

“Was this one of Mr. Quattorze’s rooms?”

“No. The Hall is modern. It is where the Tyrant was captured after his attempted suicide.”

They did not enter the Hall but instead turned down a grey, utilitarian service corridor. At the corridor's end they encountered a heavy metal door with a grill on its thick glass window. The Mech encouraged her to towards the door, “Please enter. This is where you will be meeting the prisoner.”

The interview room was a small, windowless box, with white walls and blue-white lights. In the center of the room there was a thin metal table that was bolted to the floor. There was only one chair. She expected the Mech to stand but wondered where the Tyrant would sit. Directly opposite the chair there was a second door exactly the same as the one through which she had entered. She sat down while the Mech moved to a position beside the second door and became still.

As Ayesha waited she looked directly at the Mech. It was interesting what human traits had been retained in the design of these hybrids. They had protuberances that resembled arms and legs, they spoke through a vent where one would expect a mouth and had human-like, eyes. “Why had their designers kept anything human at all?” she wondered.

“How old are you?” she asked the Mech. Though the question itself was neutral, her tone of voice was accusatory.

“I was born 1,158 years ago. I reached this final state” it gestured towards its body, “1,026 years ago, just after the conclusion of the Last Great War.”

“Why do you exist?”

Though the Mech’s voice remained without affect, it was clearly taken aback by her question, “What do you mean?”

“I know that you are an amalgamation of human and machine. But I don’t understand the need for a hybrid soldier. Why did the Tyrant order you to be built? Why didn't he create an army of robots? What does your humanity bring to soldiering?”

“Memory”, the Mech replied.

“I don’t understand”.

“The way humans and machines interpret their experiences is different. Machines have virtually unlimited storage capacity. Humans do not and therefore must constantly filter and reinterpret their experiences. The Tyrant felt that war was an art, and that humans, because of how they remember and learn, were more artistic than machines.”

“But you are programmed. Where is the room for artistry in that?”

“It is true that the general parameters of my behavior are strictly regulated. For example, I am incapable of killing you right now. Or anyone, for that matter. But within these parameters I am free to act based on my experiences and judgment. I am not very different from you.”

“What about your conscience?” she asked. The Mech did not answer her question. She spoke again, “Did you fight in the War?”

“Yes. In fact I fought right here on Ashanti, during the final battle of the war. I was captured by the same group of soldiers that captured the prisoner.”

“Did you kill anyone?” Ayesha looked directly into the Mech’s green-brown eyes as she asked this question.

“I personally was responsible for 1,021,067 verified deaths and several million more that have were never verified.”

“Do you regret what you did?”

“What I did was senseless.”

“Is that your programming talking?”

“No. From a purely military perspective, the massacres were not constructive, even though our victims' bodies did power our weapons.”

“Did you take any death scans?”

“I took scans from as many of my victims as I could. That was part of my standing orders.”

“Have you viewed the scans?”

“Yes. All of them.”

Ayesha imagined this man-machine sequestered in a booth reviewing its murderous deeds from the perspective of its victims. She wondered if the Mech was like an idiot child who could use its fingers to count but could not make the cognitive leap to the concept of numbers. Could this Mech determine that its senseless murders were evil or did the fact that it was programmed preclude the possibility of moral sensibility? Could you program conscience? Could you unprogram it?

Her agitated mind leapt back to the murder of her family, “Have you ever been to the planet Luthan?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

Ayesha said nothing but instead let the conversation lapse.

The doors opposite to her opened with a clang. Two soldiers in white armor appeared in front of her; the body of the Tyrant was suspended awkwardly in the air between them by a force field. The soldiers saluted the Mech and then exited. The force field that controlled the Tyrant’s actions maneuvered him into the space in front of her. He dangled limply in the air, the toes of his feet hovering a few centimeters above the white tiled floor.

Although Ayesha knew that the Tyrant had just completed a Cycle, she expected him to be more substantial than he was. In his propaganda he was lean, powerfully built and dominating. The man in front of her was stooped and frail. He wore an orange jumper that hung loosely on his body. His watery blue eyes were unfocussed and drifted lazily around the room, rarely settling on any one object for more than a blink. His manner was likewise unfocused and his limbs constantly twitched. There was no hair anywhere on his body.

The prisoner leaned forward suddenly and shouted directly into her face, “What is your name?!”

The force field that contained him slammed him back into the air, so that his body became straight and rigid. Immobilized, he floated back towards the door. Though startled, she replied without hesitation. “Ayesha”.

After a moment the prisoner began to move his fingers tentatively. Apparently the force field which imprisoned him allowed him a certain amount of movement, if he behaved. After a calming moment the force field relaxed its grip and the Tyrant’s body became slack.

He addressed his next question to a blank wall. “You didn’t answer my question. I asked you, why are you here, Ayesha?”

“I am here to interview you.”

“What do you want to talk about?” he continued, belligerently, his gaze still fixed on the blank white wall to his right. “My punishment? Do you want me to tell you what its like to be electrocuted one billion times? Do you want to talk to me about justice?”

Ayesha knew from her research that the prisoner would eventually tire of these histrionics, so she silently waited for him to continue. After a moment he spoke again, this time with a tired voice, “Very well. Interview me.”

Ayesha took a moment to collect herself. She only had a brief time for this interview and wanted to make each question count. She was well prepared. In her hand she held a list of clearly cross-referenced questions, like a flowchart of potentialities. If he said this she would ask this, otherwise that. But where to start?

Her thoughts kept returning to Elizum Kemble’s memorial and the murder of her own family by a Mech so she asked the question that had been foremost on her mind all day, “Half of your victims died in the last year of a ten year war. Why did you keep killing after you had lost?”

The prisoner floated away from Ayesha; his head fell backwards onto the nape of his neck and his manic eyes wandered around the ceiling as he answered her question, “Do you know the story of my capture?”

“You poisoned yourself moments before the 82nd airborne stormed this Palace. Allied medics revived you and then you were tried and sentenced by the War Crimes Tribunal to a life sentence for each one of your victims, to be served in the Panopticon.”

“Do you know what kind of poison I used?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how deadly it is?”

“Yes. At least I think I do.”

With each question the Tyrant asked his body became slightly more erect and his eyes more focused. He took a deep breath, gasped and then his rigidity collapsed. He spoke his next statement with a soft, halting voice, “Ayesha, I was dead for over 6 hours before the medics revived me. I cannot answer your question. I do not have any memories.”

His quiet words inflamed her response, “Why would the Tribunal let me see you, if you have no memories? Why would they let anyone see you?”

He replied with the same, quiet voice. “The Tribunal doesn’t believe me. They hope that you will trip me up with clever questions.” He nodded towards the ceiling. “They’re watching now, you know.”

She dismissed his allusions to the surveillance sensors and continued. “But you can think. You’re lucid.”

“When I’m not being tortured.”

Her mind was racing and yet somehow blank. If what he said was true, all of her questions were irrelevant. She repressed an urge to strike him. She knew that anger was just an expression of her frustration. Then her rage turned against the War Crimes Tribunal. “How dare they mislead me like this!” she thought. “This interview is the culmination of years’ worth of effort. They could have warned me about this!”

“Do you feel betrayed?” His voice now had a cloying tone. “Of course you do. All the interviewers do. You’ve been manipulated.”

“Where were you born?” Ayesha shot the question out of nowhere.

“On the planet Sirius under a blood red sun," he immediately replied.

“How do you know that if you have no memories?”

“I hear that dreadful poem recited continuously when I am enduring my punishment.” The prisoner made a croaking noise that Ayesha assumed was laughter.

“What do you think of your punishment?”

He answered her question indirectly. “Did you experience any death scans before coming here?” She nodded and he continued. “There are millions scattered throughout the Lattice. My soldiers took most of those scans for me. I have been told that I used to experience the scans for pleasure. Ayesha, my punishment is terrible, but I can’t blame you for wanting to punish me.”

His emphasis on the word you off-put her. She had never felt herself culpable for his suffering. But from his perspective of course she was. His punishment was dictated by her society. She could throw her support to the myriad groups that felt that he would be better off dead than tortured in perpetuity. But she did not, and therefore she shared responsibility for his suffering.

The pisoner continued speaking, “You’re not here because of the people I murdered are you?” This raised her hackles, but before she could correct him he completed his point, “Ayesha, you’re here because of some other personal tragedy aren’t you?”

She took a moment to calm herself: it was foolish to be angry simply because this damaged, insane man understood her motives. “Your guess was right.”

“Are you afraid of me?”

She looked at him. “No.”

“What about that?” he nodded towards the Mech.

“Mechs terrify me.”

“Why?”

“Have you ever heard of Luthan?” she asked.

“You have asked me that already. I still don’t know.”

“It’s a mining planet. I grew up there. My father was an executive in the company that owned it.” She looked at him to see if he was listening and couldn’t tell. Even though his gaze was averted, somehow, out of the corner of his left eye he noticed her gaze, “I am listening. Continue.”

“When I was eight years old a company tried to buy Luthan. The company was very coercive. They bribed most of the people who could influence the sale. My father opposed the bid. He was a stubborn man who was strongly motivated by his strict sense of morality. One day, as my family prepared for dinner, a Mech murdered him. Then it killed my brother, my mother and my two sisters. I escaped because I hid in a tree. The police never captured the murderer. They claimed it was a renegade from your army that had not been captured and reprogrammed. It was a transparent but serviceable lie. The next day Luthan was bought.”

The prisoner spoke to some space behind her left shoulder. “Ayesha, people are greedy.”

She shook her head sadly, “Its worse than that. Years later I saw an interview with the owner of the corporation that murdered my family. He was asked why his company had fought so hard for a relatively unimportant planet like my home world. It turns out he did it for Eleutheria.” She began to shake while recalling the memory. The prisoner reached one of his palsied hands towards her, but the movement was ended abruptly by a force field.

“What’s that?” the prisoner asked.

“Eleutheria is a very beautiful garden. The takeover, the murders, it was all done so that one rich, powerful man could control a garden.”

“What do you think of that man?”

“I hate him.”

“Would you torture him?”

“No.”

“Would you kill him if you could do so with no consequences?”

When she did not answer, the prisoner resumed his interrogation, “What do you feel about me?”

“I hate you.”

She braced herself for a demonstrative response, but instead the Tyrant slumped pathetically forward. His force field pushed his limp body back into an erect but akimbo position. He weakly spoke, “Ayesha, do you want me to suffer until the end of time?”

“I want you dead. You are a monster.”

He laughed weakly. “Ayesha, I’m certain that the old me, who I was before I died, would have loved your hatred.”

An alarm beeped twice. Moments later two soldiers appeared to escort the Tyrant from the room; the interview was over. As his limp body was pushed out of the door, she could see that he was trying to say something to her. His words were muted by his force field prison.

The Mech escorted Ayesha to the service doors through which she had entered, but did not leave the Palace with her. She stepped alone into the crowd; the small doors closed quickly behind her. Immediately, a dissembling man with matted hair, loose clothing and wild eyes approached her waving a pamphlet into the air. “Lady, you must be important. Only important people are allowed into the Palace. You must listen to me. He didn’t do it! You must set him free. He’s innocent.” The man stuffed a pamphlet into her hands and then shouted directly into her face “He Didn’t Do It!” Her temper flared; she harshly shoved him out of her way.

Her scuffle with the Denier was interrupted by a procession from the Palace: the Tyrant was being returned to his punishment. Everyone turned to watch. At the base of the Panopticon the Tyrant's escort backed off into a semi-circle leaving his skewed body to hover just above the ground. Slowly he floated into the air. As he moved the cables that nourished and tormented him gradually ensnared him in a web. There was a thick moment of anticipation once he was in position; this was followed by a loud crashing sound which echoed into silence: the Cycle had begun. The Tyrant began to writhe in pain as one by one the lights of the Lattice of Sorrow were extinguished.

Ayesha fled in horror into the air far above the Plaza and then set her course away from the cursed place; the Denier followed her. She landed at entrance to the Lattice. The moment she did the Denier grabbed her by the shoulders, roughly turned her around and shouted into her face, “HE DIDN’T DO IT! YOU MUST HELP HIM” She faced him full on and shouted in reply, “LEAVE ME ALONE!” then violently pushed him to the ground. The Denier fell into the shadow of the letters cast by the gate:

The Tyrant suffers forever so that we may live in peace.

Fin

You own your own brain!? I had no idea." Without thinking, I touched the cerebral implant at the base of my skull. It was a cheap, server-based model and like the brains of 99% of Americans, it was rented. The advertisement finished with the famous tagline, "My love, I love your iDentity." Alhough the actors in the ad were fake, their message was all too real: I knew that because I did not own an expensive personal brain, no trophy woman or man would give me a second glance. But how could regular people afford to own their own brains? Wages had not increased in a century, yet the cost of food, rent and energy just kept rising.

I was distracted from my surfing by the rumbling of a distant storm. I looked out the window: Interstate 80 was running at capacity. If my car drove well, it would take at least another 20 minutes to get to the George Washington Bridge and after that another 30 minutes to get to my home in Inwood, at the northern tip of Manhattan Island. I checked the clock. It was just after five. I still had plenty of time before the polls closed at eight. I am normally not one for political participation. This election was different. Proposition X, a ballot initiative that would allow businesses to require their workers to have an electronic brain as a condition of employment, promised to transform my country. Although it was only a matter of minutes until I voted, my mind was not made up.

The next ad, for a pharmaceutical that treated Inchoate Acquisitive Disorder, drew my attention away from the looming storm and back to the Internet. The ad captured my attention because I was trying, as yet unsuccessfully, to get my insurance company to cover the cost of Zanthrax, the only drug that could control my IAD. I ignored the half-dozen ads that followed.

The commercials eventually melded back into my talk show. Because it was election day, the top story was political. The debate thus far had been limited to conservative themes, like preemptive arrests, sufficient violence and class-based policing. To my surprise, one of the hosts, a slight, pretty simulacrum, asked a tough question about the constitutionality of imprisoning entire populations. A round headed pundit, who was so excited about the issue that he was red in the face, fielded the question as if it were a soft ball; the interview finished with the conservative view otherwise unchallenged.

While I barely watched the discussion about how tough on crime all of the candidates were, the next story, which was about the Cognition Gap, grabbed my attention. The phrase "Cognition Gap" was a code that Corporate Republicans used to discuss Proposition X. In general, I supported the idea behind the spin. Every day you would see in the news a story about how another company had off-shored good, white collar jobs to a think-farm in Asia or Africa. In fact, I had only one reservation about Proposition X: corporate America supported the initiative so strongly that it was willing, in most cases, to pay for it. This made me wary; I am always suspicious of anything that is freely given by an organization which is trying to make money.

My talk show concluded with an advertorial. The Ken part of the news team, a tall, dark simulacrum with a virtual coiffure, railed, as usual, against liberal hypocrisy. The details of his rant elude me now, but his words, as always, elicited a ping of clarity that entered my consciousness via my iDentity and reverberated through all of the nonsense that cluttered my brain.

When my talk show ended, I made my car change to a progressive station in order to mix things up a bit. On Pacifica, Amy Goodman, or I should say, a simulacrum of Amy, was interviewing a thought artist. He too was talking about Proposition X, but from a different perspective. The artist argued that Prop X should be defeated because it promoted something he called the phenomenological web, which included electronic brains, bio-glasses and even plug-in translators. He did not like any human-machine interface, and thought that perceptions should never be mediated. He did not even wear glasses, although his vision was astigmatic. Unlike the clear ping I experienced earlier, the artist's words only confused me. I nervously touched my iDentity-Shuffle's power switch. Even though my server-based implant was a toy compared to the latest personal models, I could not conceive of living my life without it.

Amy concluded the interview with one of her signature questions, "What is your advice for our viewers?"

"Unplug yourself."

As if on cue, my Net monitor went blank and my car shuddered to a halt. My iDentity caught a cluster of distress signals as all of my personal electronic devices fell to the floor around my feet. Then they all went silent.

There was no electronic noise in my brain.

Only silence.

It took me several minutes to screw up the courage to leave the safety of my car. I exited cautiously, with my eyes half closed, to reduce my sensations and thereby contain my fear. I braced myself against my car door and fully opened my eyes. Everything was less clear without my iDentity, and there was more of it.

My car had stopped in the plaza at the New Jersey entrance to the George Washington Bridge. The plaza was crammed full of vehicles, which to my disoriented mind looked like predators. I was overwhelmed and at a loss as what to do next, so I sidled toward the edge of a nearby group of people. They were looking for someone who had a personal brain to come forward and take charge of them, but no one did; our brains were just Nanos and Shuffles. Finally one agitated person said, "This is crap. We should just deal with this ourselves." I agreed, but felt anti-social, so I proceeded alone to the pedestrian walkway to Manhattan.

Alhough the Bridge was full of people who had chosen to walk home, the crowd was thin enough that I managed to cross in relative isolation. It was early evening so the west coast of the Hudson River was engulfed in shadows. The levies that protect western Manhattan were tinted a rusty red-brown by the setting sun. A flock of cormorants rested on the roof of the tiny, red lighthouse that poked up from the Hudson River immediately beneath the eastern span of the bridge.

As the salt and ozone breeze blew New Jersey's asphalt laden air away, my frayed nerves became calm. I examined my mind. My thoughts were certainly different than before I was unplugged. Technology, which I had never before feared, I now did. This fear was a symptom of a more fundamental change. The balance between things seemed to have altered. My brain was processing more marginal details: I was certain that I was now perceiving more things around me, more cars, more people, more smells. This plethora of sensations, the sound of the rushing river, the smell of the air, caused my brain to become unfocussed. "How will I ever vote properly if I can be distracted by the smell of a sea breeze?" This thought made me think again "Why did iDentities filter out smells?" I wondered.

The exit from the Bridge onto 181st St. jarred me, though my feeling of anxiety was less pronounced than it had been when the Net first went down. In the interests of time, I veered from my usual walking route and took Broadway past Fort Tryon Park to Dyckman Street. Unlike the situation in New Jersey, traffic was moving, but listlessly.

Even though I had no craving for a Big Mac I was drawn to the McDonalds at Dyckman and Broadway by habit. I do not remember whether I enjoyed my meal, but the burger and fries did comfort me. As I ate, I listed the pros and cons of Proposition X onto a napkin. It was a tough decision. America is an unforgiving place. If I were homeless and unemployed I would do anything for a job. Being required to use a brain in return for employment seemed like so little to ask. Furthermore, why should a business, which was focused on making a profit, have to hire someone who was measurably less intelligent than an employee with even the lowest bandwidth brain? Although I thought these were strong arguments they did not compel me.

In the final analysis, I was far more concerned with how Prop X affected me, rather than corporations and artists. I decided to vote No simply because of my vivid experience crossing the George Washington Bridge. It was one thing for an implant to increase intelligence; quite another for it to filter perception. I circled the heading on the No column of my list, then folded the napkin that it was written on carefully, as if it were my franchise. I placed the napkin in my knapsack for reference, should my resolve to vote against Prop X waver.

On a typical day I would have avoided Dyckman Street because commercial thoroughfares exacerbate my Inchoate Acquisitive Disorder. I decided to risk an episode in order to get home quickly. The polls would close in just over an hour; I was feeling rushed.

I reached Fort George Hill with my wallet full and my credit rating intact. Not once, as I had walked along Dyckman, did I feel the shopping compulsion that characterized IAD. "Perhaps my affliction is the result of a defect in my iDentity?" I thought optimistically. "If I could upgrade my Shuffle, perhaps my IAD would be cured."

The twenty-one story rectangular concrete building that I live in looks modest, but it is valuable because it sits on the side of Fort George Hill, and so is rarely flooded during hurricane season. A long line of people snaked out of the service doors, which today served as the entrance to the polling station. "Of course voting is delayed", I thought. "Every decision is slower if you are brainless".

Thirty minutes later, as I waited in the hallway outside the station, the lights flickered and everyone sighed, afraid that the entire electrical grid, and not just the Net, was now failing. Our fears were ungrounded. The hum of electronic noise in my head signaled the return of Internet connectivity. The reactivation of my iDentity felt like an epiphany: my vision sharpened and my extraneous perceptions disappeared.

Much to my surprise voting did not speed up after our server-based brains reconnected to the Net. It took a full hour to get to the front of the line. Immediately upon entering the puce colored polling station, I was handed my ballot. For a moment I paused and stared witlessly at it. I tried to remember why I was in line but the question slid off of my consciousness. Since my iDentity had reactivated I had entered a fugue state; my sense of self had diminished and my consciousness focused narrowly on thoughts about items that I wished to buy.

"Mr. you can vote over there." The clerk's sharp words reminded me of the task at hand. I proceeded to the voting booth in a clear-headed trance. It felt like my motor control was the result of some one else's motivations as I scrolled through my voting options to the one I cared about, Proposition X. When my hand prepared to vote Yes my sense of self returned, just barely, in the form of cognitive dissonance: somewhere in my head I suspected that I wanted to vote No despite what my actions indicated.

I took a step back from the booth, placed my knapsack on the floor and pulled out the napkin on which I had earlier noted my voting intention. I could barely read my notes: it was as if someone had placed a film over my consciousness that made certain perceptions transparent. Nevertheless, I could just barely see the word No boldly circled and underlined at the top of my list. I quickly tried to vote. My gambit failed: when my right forefinger approached the No button, an external force took over my hand and jerked it away.

As I got angrier and more frustrated by my lack of free will I experienced the first attack of Inchoate Acquisitive Disorder that I had ever had in a non-retail environment. I looked at the screen. The Yes button had turned into an image of a tiny porcelain doll. The doll wore lederhosen; a bright green alpine hat protected its painted, brown hair from the elements. I could think of nothing else but buying it. I knew that I could buy it if I pressed the Yes button. The No button had turned into a far less appealing image of a cloth gnome, which I had no desire to own. While my brain was preoccupied with this illusion, my hand proceeded to vote against my intentions.

Less than an instant before I clicked Yes, I was distracted by the impatient poll clerk who said, "Mr. hurry up. There are people lined up out to the street. The polls closed 30 minutes ago."

"Ok. Ok." I replied.

This second interruption caused my IAD to subside enough that I could read the screen. The Yes and No buttons were still shifting images of dolls. I followed the Yes doll with my left forefinger and eventually the button stopped moving. When my fingers were close enough to the touch-screen that the hairs on my hand were energized by static electricity, I once again remembered that I had decided to vote against Prop X. It didn't seem possible but a quick look at the napkin in my left hand confirmed that that indeed had been my intention when I was unplugged.

"Hey Mister are you OK?" the polling clerk's nasal voice penetrated the clear fog in my head.

"Yeah. I had a problem with my iDentity."

"I can call Apple ..."

"I'm fine now. I'll be right out."

Once again, I lifted my hand to vote. I could feel resistance as it moved towards the No button, which I still perceived as an ugly gnome. This enraged me. Though the rage cleared my head of confusion it did not give me the motor control to vote as I intended.

I reached behind my left ear, where the iDentity implant was. I would turn it off.

"Mr., hurry the fuck up" an impatient person had taken over the hectoring role of the polling clerk. His angry words did not faze me, for I was intent on my new goal.

The power switch on my brain did not work.

I dug my fingernails into my skin. I could not dislodge any part of my iDentity's power mechanism. I clawed until my skin was bloody, but my perceptions continued to be filtered and my actions controlled. Then I remembered that I had a fuel-cell lighter in my knapsack. It took but one second for the lighter to sear my skin and disable my implant.

I voted No.

As I staunched the flow of blood behind my ear, my iDentity's charred starting mechanism fell through my fingers onto the floor, where it lay with the bloodied parts of a dozen other electronic brains.

My injury provoked a few askance glances but no comment when I left the polling station and took the elevator to my floor. For the next few days I felt profoundly alone as I sat unplugged in my apartment, too overwhelmed by my rediscovered perceptions to consider connecting to the Net to check the news. I felt a fear that bordered on terror when I finally did: alhough the vote was close, Proposition X was defeated.

Fin

The road to the Phaeton Spa was shaded by two rows of implacable willows. The still trees suggested that at this place change being slow was non-existent and time, being protracted, was eternal. "Why have I returned?" Joachim thought to himself as he approached the Phaeton's entrance. "Am I here simply to relive my last trip?" As someone who had devoted a life to the pursuit of new experiences, returning here seemed like a denial of what he was, but he dismissed the idea: just because his accommodation was similar to last time did not mean his experience would be.

He entered the cabin where the spa's guests were registered. He was greeted by a concierge who looked more simulated than real. "Welcome back to the Phaeton, Mr. Banks. It has been approximately 100 years since your last visit."

"By my planet's calendar, it has been exactly 100 years."

"Happy anniversary. I notice that you have not made any special requests."

"I've asked the therapists to surprise me."

The concierge smiled mischievously "Do you think that you can be surprised by a memory, Mr. Banks?" He smiled back, but did not answer her cryptic question.

"Your cabin is a re-creation of the one you stayed in during your last visit. It's at the top of the Lower Falls, on the ocean side of the Commons. Do you remember how to get there?"

Joachim nodded assent as he turned away from the concierge, crossed the veranda, and walked down three wooden steps onto the field that was known locally as the Commons. If he went left, towards the ocean and the setting sun, he would reach his cabin in a matter of minutes. Instead he decided to relax and have a drink, and so walked forward, towards the Commons Bar. He found a seat in an empty section of the bar near a pond. His table was surrounded by a small, manicured garden of diaphanous flowers. In the foreground tiny song birds fluttered merrily. As he watched a great raptor flew by like a dart and swallowed a song bird whole. About a hundred metres from where he sat there was an elevator entrance imbedded into a giant oak tree, and behind that was a sharp drop to the ocean.

He sat facing the ocean and the setting sun. Perhaps 10 minutes before sunset a woman exited from the oak tree elevator and walked directly towards him. With her back to the sun she appeared as a lank, black shadow. Even so, he recognized her immediately by her gait; this was her anniversary as well. When the woman got to within several paces he could make out what she was wearing: her jacket had sharp, padded shoulders, and bluntly cut edges; her simple skirt was pleated. He could only just make out the curves of her body through this web of lines. He had always thought of this woman in terms of lines: the cut of her clothes and hair, the edges of her cheekbones, the slant of her writing, her scars. And of course, there were the last words she had ever said to him, 'Don't cross that line.'

The moment the woman arrived at Joachim's table the light from the setting sun hit the diaphanous flowers at just right angle and turned them into a riot of refracted colors. The woman spoke first, "Do you remember the spectral flowers?"

"I've forgotten nothing, Marina. We first met on this exact day, at this exact time, at this exact table 100 years ago. These might even be the same flowers."

"Are you celebrating our anniversary?"

"'Celebrate' is a strong word. This visit is more like therapy than a vacation. Why have you returned, Marina? You were never one for dwelling on the past."

"I'm here for the same reason as you: therapy."

"That's another change."

"I'm here for your therapy." She smiled obliquely and joined him, uninvited.

As Marina sat down she adjusted the straps of her dress. He noticed that the scar she used to have on her back was not there; neither were there scars on her right wrist and just below her left eye. "You're not really Marina, are you? You're some kind of image of her. Like a greeting card" He spoke with an accusing voice.

The woman winced at his words, "Joachim, I am an exact replica of Marina."

"How could the Phaeton allow ... ?"

"I left instructions for this" the clone gestured towards herself "to be constructed should you choose to return here. Though management was reluctant, several therapists thought the idea was intriguing. As you can see, the therapists got their way."

"I ..."

"What did you say?" she asked, for his speech had become inaudible.

He nodded his head in consternation as he replied. "Your visit is quite a surprise."

"Shall I leave?"

"NO!" The intensity of his response surprised him. He again lowered his voice to near the point of inaudibility and continued. "Please stay. At least keep me company while I finish my drink."

The clone of Marina pulled her chair closer to him. They sat quietly for a moment viewing the fields, the cliffs and the sky in the afterglow of the sun.

He broke their silence, "What should I call you? Marina?"

She moved her head so that she looked directly at him when she replied. Her black eyes were clear. "Yes. Call me Marina. That is who I am, after all." The moment she directly faced him, she came into sharp focus. Without the scar under her left eye her face was perfectly symmetrical. The intensity of her beauty sent a chill down his spine. It took great effort to look away from her.

"There .. uh .. there was a time when I used to think about meeting you, I mean Marina, every day", he said

"I am Marina", she replied. He ignored her and continued to speak, "But I rarely think about meeting her now. I've moved on." He was forcing himself to gaze over the clone's shoulder at the ocean, so he missed the sad expression that crossed her face as he spoke.

"What have you been doing this past century?" she asked.

"Nothing exceptional. I've married twice, and had 2 children. They've grown up now and scattered to the corners of the galaxy."

"... and your wives?" she asked tentatively.

"We keep in touch for anniversaries, but I'm single again. I'm done with family life. What about you?"

He realized his mistake; they both smiled awkwardly. Despite his faux pas, he forged ahead anyway, "What about the original Marina? What is she up to? You must know?"

"I left no contact information."

This response angered him. "What do you mean? Aren't you here as some form of emissary? What kind of game is this?"

Without thinking she placed her hands over his and said, "Joachim, I'm only here to say goodbye." The last time they had met Joachim's anger had ended in violence; this time his anger was diffused by her touch. He sat for a moment longer, then all of the fatigues in his life caught up with him. As he rose to leave he said, "I really must rest. I've had a very long journey. Shall we meet again?"

Marina's clone did not immediately answer, but instead embraced him. After a long moment she pulled herself away and spoke, "The concierge will know how to reach me. It was wonderful to see you again. Goodbye." With that ambiguous pronouncement she walked away. His eyes lingered on her flawless back as she did so. After a dozen steps she turned and saw that he was still watching her, smiled, waved an unscarred hand and then disappeared into the Commons. He sat for many minutes wondering whether he would see her again.

§

The walk to his cabin was mostly as he remembered it, though with subtle differences. His cabin was still perched on the cusp of a waterfall and had a huge view of the western ocean. When he reached the stairs that had been carved into the face of the cliff he realized that the scene had changed during the past century: though the stone stairs still began at the beach; the water from the falls had eroded the cliff face and now the falls, along with the waterfall house, were a dozen metres inland.

As he walked up side of the cliff to his cabin his mind turned to thoughts of Marina and her clone. Though he was open about how he had once loved Marina, his memories of her were tinged with rage and bitterness. Even now he felt this way, although he also had conflicting feelings. His thoughts settled on that chilling moment when he looked directly into the clone's clear, black eyes. Joachim was an aesthete. Though it had enraged Marina he had always thought of her as a work of art. He knew now that the original Marina, with her scars and black eyes was not an artwork at all: she was one of nature's wilder experiments. Marina's clone was different: she was the most beautiful construction that he had every seen. He sat for a long time on the edge of his bed staring blankly into the middle distance. When he finally did fall sleep, he slept fitfully.

The next morning, the moment he finished breakfast, he asked the concierge to contact Marina Trujillo. The phone rang immediately. It was early in the morning, so he wasn't surprised that the video feed was turned off.

"Marina?" he asked the blank console.

"Yes".

Despite himself, he stammered, "I'd, I'd like to see you again."

She did not immediately reply. He tried to read some meaning into the blank, silent console in front of him, but could not. The video feed suddenly activated and Marina appeared in front of him. He had expected to see her in a dressing gown, so was surprised to discover that she was dressed for tennis; she had clearly been up for a while.

"Joachim, this may strike you as odd, but I don't know if I want to see you again. When I left this" she gestured to herself, "I only had one goal. I never thought beyond last night's meeting."

He tried to temper his insistence with sincerity as he spoke, "Marina left you as a messenger. That task is done. But what about you? You are your own person, aren't you?" She nodded. "Do you want to meet me?" The clone of Marina looked away briefly and then her image disappeared entirely; she had turned off the video feed. When she resumed speaking, her disembodied voice was halting and cracked, "I do want to meet you Joachim. Are you free this afternoon?"

§

They met for tea at a tiny restaurant on the beach at the foot of the waterfall. It was a convenient location for him, so he arrived early and ordered a drink at the bar. Marina arrived precisely on time. Her hair cut was uncharacteristically asymmetrical and slightly blacker than when he had met her yesterday. She wore a peasant skirt that was embossed with mirrors, and a sleeveless blouse that showed off her unscarred back.

The hostess escorted them into the main dining room, which was a circle divided into two parts. One half looked out over the sea. The back wall was a curve sliced out of a limestone cliff. Fossils could be seen if you looked closely. In the center of the circular room was a tiny hearth that was home to a hot, red fire. They sat with their backs to the limestone wall, looking out over the water. The sea was dotted with an atoll of islands. In the far distance they could see the Town, floating just above the horizon.

"Was this restaurant here the last time we met?" she asked in order to make conversation.

He replied, "I don't remember. During our last visit we didn't dine out much, unless you count picnics on the beach." An agitated moment passed and then Joachim blurted out, "How did you feel before meeting me, not the first time, this time?"

"I was nervous. I still am nervous." A vulnerable look flashed across her face. This unsettled him. Nervousness was not an emotion that he associated with her.

"When did Marina decide to leave you for me?"

"I gave instructions that I could be cloned one month after you left. I knew that you would come back here. For someone who searches for new experiences, you have a way of always coming back to things."

"You're right. I'm still trying to get closure on our relationship." He regretted how their affair had ended. Not the breakup; they both knew that they could not have had a long-term relationship unless they turned into different people. He did regret how the breakup had happened. He had thought that his jealousy, because it was caused by her actions, justified the worst form of behaviour.

"Marina, I'm very sorry our relationship ended the way it did."

For their entire conversation Marina's clone had been sitting so close to him that he could feel the heat radiating off her body; he could feel her breath on his face as she spoke. She acknowledged his apology silently, and then moved closer to him. The moment she touched him, he realized that he was tense. He exhaled slowly in an attempt to relax. She took his left hand in her right hand, and then turned to face him as she tried to speak. To his surprise, she said nothing; she simply let his hand be embraced by hers. They leaned back against the wall and looked out over the ocean; for an instant her head rested on his shoulder.

The moment she finished her drink she said in a somewhat forced but excited voice, "Joachim, I hope you don't mind but I have to go now. Let's meet in a less formal environment. Are you interested in going on a picnic tomorrow?" He nodded assent. She kissed him chastely on his right cheek. Although her manner was restrained, in his mind the kiss was full of intensity.

§

Joachim had made no plans for the evening so he wandered idly through the Commons. At the entrance to his cabin, he spent a moment looking at the waterfall. He knew exactly how he would feel if he stepped into it. He knew also what he would do when he stepped out of it, for he had done so a dozen times. He felt that he was on a treadmill. He decided to break his routine and visit the Town.

The taxi ride gave him time to reflect on Marina's flawless clone. In his culture it was nothing for someone to be without blemishes; in fact blemishes were an exception not a rule. Only radicals and artists marred their bodies or neglected to erase deformities. It was far more common for people to view their looks as plastic and to mold themselves with surgery in order to produce a perfect expression of one style or another. One reason why Marina had initially captivated Joachim was because of her scars.

He was now obsessed with the scars that were not there.

The Town floated 100 metres above the ocean. As Joachim approached it, he looked out his taxi's window. He was greeted by the sight of hundreds of people jumping into the diamond studded ocean. Some floated slowly to the water, assisted by anti-gravity devices; others seemed to have sped up their descent. Such thrill seekers used to annoy him: thrills were such crude experiences; something for the unimaginative. Tonight he was content to let them be.

He was dropped off in the bohemian section of town. He found a street-side table at a restaurant, ordered a drink and surveyed the scene. The night life here was unsurpassed: there were few places anywhere where you could see 100 species partying together. A group sat down at the table beside him. His eyes were drawn to a young woman who had the exact same haircut as Marina. Despite himself, he kept staring at her, as if the haircut allowed him to use her as a foil for his thoughts. It was impossible to tell the woman's age from her looks, so he watched what she did. He guessed from her insecurity and indecisiveness that she was barely an adult. The young woman reminded him that he had been a youth when he had last visited here.

"Hey Mister, hi." The girl noticed his attention and spoke first.

"I was looking at your haircut. Did you get that here? I like it" he replied.

"Yeah. Just over there." She pointed to a tubular building, which from his vantage point appeared to be full of water. "Are you here alone?" she asked.

"Kind of."

"You've met someone, haven't you? It's easy to meet people here. My sister and me already we've met all these people." She gestured to the eight men and one woman sitting at her table. "We're going sky diving later, if you want to come. You can bring your girl."

Joachim's eyes lingered on the young woman's features. She didn't just resemble Marina in her hairstyle. She was the same size as Marina, with a similar figure, symmetrical features and unblemished skin. "If I could erase all history, all memories, all context, would it feel any different making love to her than to Marina's clone?" he thought. He knew that it would be different. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Jin."

"I think I'll just stay here and watch the world go by, Jin. Enjoy your visit."

"See ya. Thanks."

§

The next day Joachim arrived late to Marina's cabin but she was not concerned. They walked slowly along the seaweed strewn beach. The sky was overcast so there were no shadows. On the north cove of the inlet the beach gave way to tidal pools. They crossed ankle deep in water across the slippery, sharp stones of the pools, and then climbed up stairs that had been crudely carved into the face of a mossy cliff. At the top of the cliff, it was as if the sky had fallen: clouds scudded low across the ground; the air was damp and cold. Though the landscape was beautiful in its moody way, Joachim was ready to have their picnic indoors. Marina was adamant. She even attempted to use an energy field to seal off spaces underneath trees and amongst the rocks, but there was no escaping the dampness in the air and in the soil.

When Marina was on the verge of despair, the sun broke through the clouds. For just one moment there was a rainbow in the misty sky above them. The sun lit up her face. "Joachim, I have an idea. Let me put this on you." She took a bright purple sash from where it hung loosely on her skirt. The sash was too small to fit around his waist so she tied it into a kerchief around his head. He scowled as she did so, well aware of how the improvised bandana looked with his otherwise conservative dress. She brushed away his objections, "Forget about fashion, the sash is an anti-gravity belt." As she spoke, she wrapped her right arm around his left. Arm in arm they leapt off the cliff into the air. Marina caused them to fall very slowly towards the sea. As they fell, she wrapped her legs around Joachim's hips and then maneuvered herself so that she straddled him. A moment before they landed in the ocean, their downward motion stopped. They hovered for a minute - during which time Marina kept whispering in a hoarse voice, "hold on" - then rocketed straight up into the vaporous clouds. They were temporarily blinded by mist then they burst through the clouds and into sunshine. Marina stopped their ascent at the point where the mist of the cloud-bank was thin, but cooling; at this altitude the direct sunlight was very strong. Marina fell backwards off of Joachim's hips and landed in the air. Her bags, like her, fell akimbo, but gradually collected themselves and began to layout their picnic on the surface of the cloud.

Marina rolled from her back onto her side. "Pretty quick thinking, huh?" As she spoke, he placed his hands on her shoulders and began to rub them. She was not relaxed. "Joachim, I expected you to be angry. I know how much you hate being startled."

"I was angry until you straddled me". He tried to sound flirtatious, but his voice was cracked and tentative.

She angled her head, so that she could directly return his stare. "Do you think I'm like the original Marina?" she asked. Once again the beauty of her symmetrical face sent a chill through his body.

"I think that you are exactly like her, but better."

"Why better?"

"Because you have no scars."

She rolled onto her stomach and pulled back her left shoulder strap. "But I do have a scar."

She did. It was exactly the same scar that the original Marina had. The clone continued, "I never told you how I got that scar, did I?"

"I never asked about any of your scars," he replied.

"Yeah" she mumbled to herself with an uncommitted voice. "Why not?"

He evaded her question, "Does it make you feel more like the original Marina to have that?" he asked, nodding towards the imperfection on her shoulder.

It took her a moment to collect herself before she continued, "Even if I resemble Marina, I am different from her: though I have all of her memories, I only have five days of experience.

Joachim doubted that she could tell the difference between an experience and an implanted memory: although her skin had changed, how much different could she possibly be from the original Marina? Had she forgotten how to argue? Was she no longer ironic? Had she learned to have compassion for her self? The clone looked directly at him with her clear black eyes. Despite himself, he thought, "Maybe she is different from the original Marina. Maybe our relationship could work out differently."

Marina interrupted his reverie. "What about you? Are you the Joachim that I remember?"

"I don't know."

"I think you've changed. You seem more like me now."

"What do you mean?"

"The way you pull your anger inward. You picked that up from me, didn't you?"

"I did."

"Have you ever hurt yourself?"

Joachim thought of how his anger had destroyed relationships. "Yes." He wanted to give a longer reply, but looking at her realized that her thoughts were elsewhere, so said nothing more. She sat with her head along his thigh; her hair spilled over his lap as she looked upwards towards the stratosphere. They finished their meal in silence.

When they were done eating, the picnic materials collected themselves into their rucksacks, while Joachim and Marina sat on a thatched mat and watched a flock of high-flying birds chase the sun.

"Joachim, let me give you a massage."

He lay back on the mat and once again straddled him. As she rubbed Joachim's knotted back muscles, they slowly began to fall upward from the cumulus clouds into a bubble of warm, dry air. Marina turned him over onto his back and began to rub his chest.

After making love they lay on a mat that floated above their picnic camp. She stared passively upward, towards the distant cirrostratus clouds. He looked at her obsessively. She noticed his gaze and asked, "Do you think I'm better than the original Marina?"

He looked at the scar on her shoulder. "You're now only two scars different from your prototype."

His casual remark elicited a venomous response, "You are so subtle, Joachim!"

Although he was taken aback by her words, they provoked him to ask the question that was foremost on his mind, "Marina, is this really you?"

Marina was now sitting on her shins, "I am always me!" she loudly replied.

"I mean you're not a clone are you?"

"I don't think that question is relevant." She looked at him with furious eyes.

"It does matter: if you are a clone you're telling me the truth. If you're Marina, you're lying."

While Joachim was expending all of his energy trying to contain his anger, Marina let hers explode. "Joachim, only I can define who I am." The wild look on her face gave him pause but his anger had become craven and could no longer be contained. He now wanted to provoke her into doing something crazy, "Who are you?", he prompted with a slow, even voice.

Marina's clone tore a strip of course material off of one of the picnic baskets and rubbed it against the soft skin below her left eye until she drew blood. She threw away the bloody cloth, grabbed a water bottle and a wine bottle from the picket basket and smashed both of them together. She removed a clear piece of glass from the pile of shards and ran it across her right wrist.

Her cloudy black eyes did not leave his as the medics spirited her still vibrant body away.

Joachim remained on the bloodied cloud, brooding, until late afternoon. Gradually his horror gave way to sadness. Marina would live, but she was dead to him for a second time. It was a strange loss for nothing really had changed: the clone, if that's what she was, now looked like the Marina of his memories, and he, with his muted but untamed temper, was little different from whom he was when he arrived, [save for his brief glimpse of how beautiful Marina was when unblemished by scars.]

§

As Joachim exited the spa, the concierge said farewell to him with a cheery voice, "Thank you for visiting, Mr. Banks." Though she had interrupted his reverie he smiled back through habit. "Thank you" he replied. "The session was transformative."

He retraced his steps along the lane in front of the main entrance to the Phaeton. It was dusk, the air was still and the pathway long, so it took but an instant for the implacable trees to suck him into one of their timeless moments. But time did pass. Gradually the sky darkened. In the breath before sunset the spectral flowers burst into light. The flowers lit his path to the gate.

Fin

Do you have any idea how horrifying it is to be stored in a static bag? Every moment feels like infinity. You have no sensations. You cannot move. And you only have one thought, how in the next moment you will be eaten alive by green bug-eyed Monsters." Though his audience was sparse, George's speech was making an impact. Several people had already left because of revulsion at his words. One frail person had even fainted. "My friends", Mr. Brash continued, "we must attack the Monsters before they eat every Human in this sector."

A heckler, as usual, was the first person in the audience to reply to George's haltingly delivered diatribe, "I think that you underestimate the Monsters, my friend. Right now their technologies may seem primitive but they are a far more formidable enemy than your easy words imply."

George bristled as he replied. "Are you kidding me? A dozen cruisers could disable their entire space fleet. Forget about what one battleship could do."

"Do you have a battleship?" the heckler asked.

"I have access to 6 fully armored cruisers" a balding man with wicked, small eyes interjected. "Though I think Mr. Brash's case could have been more articulately made, I agree with his assessment of the species from the planet Kuln."

George cast a discerning eye over the evil looking gnome who had just spoken. In addition to his beady eyes, he had a crooked smile and grating manner. "This truly is the type of man who would have access to military hardware", George thought with excitement. "He could help me realize my dream of initiating an illegal military action against the Monsters." The heckler, the audience, indeed the entire university campus became invisible to him. He looked the man in the eye and asked, "What is your name?"

"Richard Chump. Call me Dick."

George looked away from Dick and towards the dwindling crowd. He inhaled shallowly and then spoke, as if to a throng, "If Mr. Chump can deliver six cruisers to me, the time for talking is over. If there is anyone in this audience who wants to do something about the Monsters, step forward. I am no longer interested in debating with myself."

Risa, a petite woman who had been standing in the front row while George gave his pitch hesitated. On one hand, George's insistence that only a violent solution was possible to the Kulnoi problem, disturbed her. She was a good Christian and believed that peace was better than war and that love was better than hate. On the other hand, she was realistic enough to know that some species only understood violence; so violence in foreign relations was inevitable. In the end what swayed her was George's decisiveness. Humanity couldn't just do nothing about the Monsters. If she was going to hitch her boat to someone, it would be someone like George who was willing to do something, anything, about Humanity's greatest foe. She stepped forward.

Jam wasn't certain why he stepped forward. Certainly, he was, like every right-wing Human, profoundly concerned about the Monster problem. Perhaps more importantly, he viewed himself as someone who should step forward. He was an unreflective man of action, whose naval service had convinced him of the importance of militarism to the achievement of Humanity's hegemonic goals; his skills, experience and attitude were perfect for an illegal military adventure. However, there was no denying that there was something witless and sophomoric about George, so Jam also hesitated. In the end, like Risa, he was charmed by Mr. Brash's unwillingness to let soft values undermine the pursuit of hard, realistic goals.

Unlike Jam and Risa, the lobbyist Cruel Rave brought very little to the table, and knew it. "What good are my skills in the heat of battle?" he thought morosely. So he too hesitated, but was ultimately compelled to volunteer for George's criminal escapade by his patriotism. "Mr. Brash", Cruel addressed George in his thin, nasal voice, "I really don't have too much to offer. All I ever do is spin news stories for my political masters. And I know I'm not much to look at. But I lost a brother at the Battle of Kuln; I hate Monsters as much as anyone."

George thought as deeply as he could about the problem posed by this pasty, weak volunteer. With his flat feet, drooping paunch and thinning hair he certainly was not an impressive physical specimen. But Mr. Brash also knew that physical health was not that important in a modern, military adventure. It was far better for a politician-warrior to have a wanton, destructive nature than a toned abdomen. "Is this man craven enough to be on my crew?" he thought discerningly. He looked directly into Cruel's weasel eyes and saw a shiftless, untrustworthy soul. "You lost family at Kuln?" George said. "I lost my father. "

"Yeah. I heard the static-bag story" Cruel replied, with just a touch of dismissiveness in his voice.

This moment of near-intimacy clinched George's decision "Cruel, you have more than nothing to offer our team. When our expedition stirs things up between Humanity and the Monsters we're going to need all the spin you've got, and more." He continued with a stern voice. "Before our inevitable victory there will be other jobs to do. Have you ever fired an anti-gravity cannon?"

"Ever shot fish in a barrel?" Cruel chirped. The two men laughed at the prospect of the upcoming Monster massacre.

§

The group, because they were a clique of criminal adventurers, decided to call themselves the Coterie. They met the next day at Mr. Rheumy's house. Though Dundald's house was modest, everything about it suggested more. The casual placement of the clay soldier in the hallway, for example, suggested that Mr. Rheumy could afford the entire Qing army if he so chose. What impressed George most was that these modest suggestions of wealth and power were real. If Dundald could afford even one battle cruiser he was a very rich man indeed. George understood that Mr. Rheumy was financing the entire expedition.

George began the meeting without introductions, "Is there any one here who cannot go on a mission immediately? If so, you should leave now. I will have a driver take you home." One astute-looking sorority boy spoke up, "I can't leave until next week." George, the leader, and his erstwhile accomplice locked eyes for a moment and then the dejected youth silently withdrew, leaving six heroes in the room.

Dick filled the conversational silence with a wheeze and then said, "So we're all in?"

They all nodded assent.

Now that she was committed to this adventure, Risa wanted to bolster her decision with details. "How long will the mission last?" she asked.

"20 to 30 days tops", Dundald replied briskly. "Most of that is travel time."

Despite himself Jam was excited. It had been ten years since he'd experienced battle. He knew war was a horror. He'd been caught and tortured as a prisoner of war. He had even spent time in a static bag, during basic training. Despite its brutality, he felt that there was glory in war as well. He yearned, all of Humanity yearned, for a big victory. There had been too many stalemates recently. "So what exactly is the mission, gentlemen?"

George answered Jam's query, "We're going to liberate the food factory on Kuln's Moon." The room became completely silent at the apparent lunacy of his answer. George burst into a grin. "It is possible. Dundald, would you like to explain?"

Mr. Rheumy strode to one end of the board table. Though his skin was thinly stretched over his sharp bones, he looked neither gaunt nor weak. "First a bit about myself, I'm a military historian."

"Sometimes he makes history" Dick interjected in the smarmy way that cronies have with each other.

Dundald smirked but continued as if Dick had not spoken, "Most military victories involve a large army overwhelming a small one. Not only is this approach wasteful, it does not guarantee victory. Think of all those battles like Marathon, where a small, organized force defeated a much larger, poorly organized one. If you can sometimes win with a smaller force, why not always win with one, and save money."

"How is this relevant to the Monsters, Sir?" Risa asked. It was an impatient question, but no one minded. In fact, Dundald's thin lips disappeared into a smile as he responded, "Imagine a situation where you have a small, overwhelming force", he said.

"Are there any battleships included in this hypothetical force?" Jam asked. He was not yet convinced by Dundald's theoretical talk.

"After we liberate the Moon."

Jam gasped. Dundald's words implied that the Human navy would intervene, with battleships, against the Monsters once the Coterie's escapade was complete. "I'm surprised we only got six cruisers!" he exclaimed.

"Five more than we need" Dundald crowed to his audience. "Each cruiser has a munitions factory on board. With access to the metals which are abundant on Kuln's Moon, these ships could fight for 100 years."

"Even if we win our battle, how do we ensure we do not initiate a war?" Risa asked.

Cruel, who was barely visible in his padded chair, replied, "Avoid war? Risa, the purpose of this adventure is to start a war."

§

The Coterie could best be divided into the leaders George, Risa and Jam; the cronies Dick, Dun and Rave; and ten mercenary pilots. This natural division was reflected in their flight plan. Five cruisers were given two pilots each, while the cronies and the leaders piled into the Shill, which became the command ship.

The presence of two cliques on the Shill could have led to trouble but did not. Fortunately, the cronies, whose military strengths were also serious social weaknesses, preferred to keep to themselves. They would sit in the smoking room for hours drinking and reminiscing. Their discussions, by virtue of constant repetition, were nuanced: they would talk for hours about deeper aspects of political philosophy, such as whether it was more fun to harm an innocent opponent or an insufferable prick. Cruel was particularly interested in incarcerating his enemies. When he held forth on penal politics it was as if Plato himself had founded his Republic on the bridge of the Shill.

Conversation did not flow so easily among the leaders as among the cronies. George, in particular was a problem because he was inarticulate to the point of incoherence, but felt that it was incumbent upon himself as their leader to keep the conversation going. Although George was an ineffectual leader his instincts were on the money: it was a good idea to keep the conversation going, because whenever the leaders were silent they brooded on what it was like to be eaten alive by green bug-eyed Monsters.

§

During one occurrence of terror-filled torpor Jam said, "George, you never told us why our ship is called the Shill."

"It's a tribute to one of my role models." George replied. "I chose my role models from among the mediocre. That is because I am not a great man, like Tamerlane or Genghis Khan. I am near-great."

Risa approved of George's humility. "It was right that the near-great should be humble", she thought. "Leave arrogance to the great men, who don't need it."

George continued. "My models include leaders like Calvin Coolidge, Madame Chiang Kai-shek and Gerald Ford, people who through extreme serendipity have managed to gain responsibility far in excess of their abilities."

"Yes. But why the Shill?" Risa was always quick with the impatient questions.

George marshaled his free ranging neurons towards a point, "In the nineteenth century there was a political boss in New York City named Roscoe Conkling. Though Roscoe's perfidy made him a great politician, it was his near-great protégé, and shill, Chester Alan Arthur who became the 21st President of the United States. I named this ship the Shill after President Arthur, to remind myself that if I pimp for the right boss, and have a bit of luck, I can make it all the way to the top."

The well-liquored Mr. Chump's face twisted into the smile of a curmudgeonly troll. Dick knew that George was a ton of bricks short of a full load, so was always pleased to see wisdom somehow finding a purchase on his slippery, thin brain.

Unfortunately, they could only keep conversation with George going for so long and then they would lapse into a fearful silence.

§

They brooded not only because of their fears but also because there was so little to do. Heroic journeys are mostly prosaic and dull. Like ordinary people, heroes must focus on such issues as where to sleep, how to keep busy and what to eat. Food is always a contentious topic because the food supplies on quixotic missions are inflexible, which causes problems when people discover that the burgers suck and the lasagna is really good. Friendships form because of this. For once in his life Dundald found that his lean and hungry bearing was a social asset, for he rarely ate and was happy to share treats such as chocolate cake. "It is as if you can live on malice alone" Risa, a frequent beneficiary of his largesse, once noted. He laughed raucously at this remark, for her words were truer than she realized. In contrast, Cruel emerged as a social problem because he was a glutton and lied about it. Worse, he was lazy and would leave the dishes from his food burglaries lying about for others to clean up. After George roughed him up, Mr. Rave's worst excesses abated. Fortunately for all, Dick's taste buds had long since been destroyed by booze and cigars, so he didn't notice the putrid, chalky taste of the burgers; he happily fed on these, keeping the peace by leaving extra lasagna for everyone else.

So the crew of the Shill divided their boring days between torpor, idle conversation and eating. The boredom was serendipitous because when Dick finally assembled them together, two days out from their first objective - a military base that spanned between the third and fourth planets in the Kulnoi solar system - the fear of being eaten alive by green bugged-eyed Monsters had given way to a yearning for action.

George's strategy was bold and simple: they had six ships, they estimated that the Kulnoi had 1 million ships in orbit around the third planet, a gas giant. The Coterie would divide the enemy into five quadrants, one for each of the five mercenary cruisers. The Shill would fire at will. Each cruiser would have a quota of 166,666 kills. When the Kulnoi outpost was obliterated they would use the gas giant to slingshot to Kuln Prime and then liberate its moon.

George's bold plan caused some consternation. Jam felt that the idea of five quadrants was unclear mathematically speaking; and Risa strongly believed that the Shill should have more of a plan than simply firing at will. The cronies agreed with Jam and Risa. Dick even pointed out that space was three dimensional, and existed within a fourth dimension, time, whereas George's plan was based on a flat, static view of the universe. Nevertheless, the cronies let George's plan prevail. The mood on the Shill was that the upcoming battle would be a cakewalk and that quibbling over details was bad for morale.

§

It is one thing to participate in a military brief and quite another to implement it in battle. This weighed heavily on George, who was a rooky leader whose responsibilities far exceeded his abilities. On the morning of their first attack, after the cronies had finished mocking his stupidity, George sat down beside Jam and asked with a worried voice, "Jam, what is battle like?" Though the old timers were playing poker and Risa was reading, they all lent half an ear to his response.

Jam had heard this question a hundred times before, so was ready. "The easy answer George, is that in battle you give a command to fire, the computer that controls your ship's artillery fires, the enemy gets killed, your on-board factory makes another bomb, and then you do it again until all of the enemy combatants are dead. Sometimes they surrender before you kill them all; the Kulnoi never do."

For once, George was not placated by a simple answer; he wanted to know more, lots more, about battle, "Have you ever seen friendlies get hit?" George asked.

"Yeah, all the time" Jam replied with a stern look on his face. "We've got to remember that the Coterie has tremendous fire power. It's likely that we are a bigger threat to ourselves than the Monsters are to us." At that point the entire crew, even the cronies, were thankful to have the experience that Jam brought to the team.

Because Jam's military wisdom flowed deeply and George's wisdom was like a shallow, dirt-filled eddie, the questions continued, "Is it wrong to kill Monsters, even though they don't have souls?" George asked.

Jam took a big inhale as he prepared to respond, but Dick cut him off, "Let me field this one, Mr. Fain." Dick directed his next remark to George, "You don't need to refer to religion here, my son. You must understand that war, because of its nature, has different ethical guidelines than peace. You can massacre Monsters because they are your enemy. It is a good thing to kill your enemy during wartime, whether they have immortal souls or not."

"What about starting a war? Surely that must carry heavy moral consequences?" Although George had great respect for Dick's sophistry, he followed his own moral path.

Dick warmed to his theme. "Wars are often good, George. They can help you better understand who your friends and enemies are, for example." Dick's bold answer caused Risa to look at him in a new light. "It is rare to see a moral compass that is so crude yet so finely honed," she thought admiringly.

§

George and the cronies spent the 24 hours before battle working out the details of George's strategy. By the time they arrived at their first target, the communications outpost that protected the gas giant, the two dimensional side of the battle-plan was pretty much complete. There were some three and four-dimensional details related to artillery trajectories that still needed work. George was not worried.

It only took a moment to destroy their first target, a communication satellite. The moment the dust of the dematerialized target disappeared off of their scanners, Jam called the attention of the gunners to their unfinished business, defining how to calibrate artillery in five quadrants while moving. George, as a near-great leader, would not have his troops doing computer work when victorious. Besides, the pilots were mercenaries. They had other priorities. He ordered the pilots to destroy the small fourth planet, and its dozen moons, wisely realizing that this would be good for morale. As she watched George pander to the mercenaries, Risa mused, "Self-importance makes him act like twice the man he is".

Once they had finished their vandalism, George loudly asked to anyone who was listening, "I wonder what they're saying on Earth about this overwhelming victory?"

"We must maintain communications silence." Jam said over his shoulder. He was annoyed, though somewhat relieved, by George's idleness. "At least he isn't giving anyone any orders." Jam thought.

"Chill out, Jam, I think that the Kulnoi know that we are here," Dundald calmly interjected. "After all, we just blew up their outer solar system."

While Jam struggled to tame a pack of biting replies, Cruel's insinuating voice piped out of the couch in which he was buried, "Do you really want to see what Humans are watching, George? I wrote the copy before we left. Here, let me show you." Whereupon, to everyone's amazement, the spin-doctor turned on a screen and switched to the news. "Don't worry Jam - I'm not communicating with Earth, or any Humans. This is canned." The cronies, and George, laughed at Jam's expense.

Risa was beyond being impressed at this point. She had read so much about freedom of speech. She was awed to have finally met someone powerful enough to exercise it. The "Heroes of the Shill" were younger, more beautiful versions of themselves; and the destruction of the communication satellite took longer on the news than it had in real life. Who had heard of that! Even Jam, who prided himself on his modesty, had to admit that the story tickled him pink. "It's been too long since someone called me a hero," he thought wistfully.

Cruel's flattering spin made George pensive. His family had never used the word "hero" lightly. He came from a long line of people whose near-greatness - the near caused by avarice, laziness and/or narcissism - had left the family utterly devoid of heroes. Not that the Brash family had given up trying to produce one. George had been raised to be a hero. From birth he had learned that heroism was something exceptional. It came from having the conviction to stand up to nay-sayers, the boldness to draw moral lines, the steadfastness to defend those lines, and the courage to lead the charge against someone else's moral system and crush it. Without realizing it, George addressed his next words to the entire bridge, "Am I a really a hero because I just blew up this remote communication outpost?"

"You are witless" Dick noted, to general agreement.

George heard Dick's wise words, nodded his head sagely and said, "I sometimes fear that stupidity may be my tragic flaw."

Risa would have none of it, "Do I hear a hint of doubt in your voice, Mr. Brash. Let me tell you a story. I once asked my grandfather if heroes were born or made. He told me that heroes are borne with heroic qualities, which are fulfilled through heroic deeds. Don't doubt for a moment Mr. George Brash that you are a hero even if your actions achieve nothing or cause damage."

Risa's faint praise brought tears to George's eyes but failed to bring conversation to his lips. His awkward muteness made him wish that he had the type of leadership intelligence which produced a detailed battle plan. On one hand, he had to admire the simplicity of his five-quadrant strategy. Unfortunately, in the quiet hours before their first full-scale engagement, this simple, astute plan left his idle mind free to dwell on the many ways in which the green bug-eyed Monsters eat Humans alive.

§

Within hours of destroying the outer solar system they arrived at the third planet from the Kulnoi sun, a gas giant that was 200 million kilometers from their ultimate goal, Kuln's Moon. They steadied their trajectory 1 million kilometers above the planet's surface and prepared their attack.

"Look at your planet side monitor, sir." Jam said to George.

George gasped. The huge face of the gas giant was covered by Monster war ships.

As Risa rushed to her monitor to see for herself, Dick leapt out of his chair and said authoritatively, "Don't panic men, and Risa, this is what we expected."

Dick's brave language inspired Mr. Brash to take charge. George was proud to be commander of the Coterie. This was the end point of a path that he had been on since he had stopped partying 15 years ago. Every step that he had taken had been focused on this one goal, and with each step his options had narrowed until now there were no more decisions to be made. He pushed the button on the intercom, "Coterie. This is your Captain. Divide the sky in front of you into 5 quadrants as discussed in our briefing. Each of you will focus on one quadrant. The Shill will fire at will." He turned off the communicator, trying to remember if he had missed anything and realized that he had, but he couldn't remember what.

While George fumbled with his communicator, Risa rocked nervously on her heels impatiently waiting to speak. At the first appropriate moment she let what she had to say burst out of her. "Commander Brash, I know it's a bit late to ask, but are you certain everyone is clear about what the five quadrants are?"

At this point the ship's computer did something that was quite rare for a servant-machine: it interrupted George just as he began to evade Risa's question. It said, "Risa, George's plan is ambiguous from the perspective of four dimensional reality. There are still some calibration issues related to what happens in the fifth quadrant when our ships fire while moving. These problems are particularly difficult to solve as we accelerate towards light-speed ..."

George interrupted the upstart computer with a cold, patrician tone, "I have no time for your trigonometry, machine. Be quiet."

The insolence of the ship's computer had distracted the crew from the fact that the Shill was actively engaged in battle. George looked at the battle simulation that was being projected onto the screen in front of him. The view of Monster vehicles exploding was like the biggest imaginable Independence Day celebration. The combination of the Coterie's pinpoint targeting and the abundance of targets, led to kill after kill after kill after kill after kill. 700,000 kills later it looked like the Monsters had had enough. Their vehicles pulled back and regrouped. While the enemy regrouped, George decided to move their ships towards their primary objective. He gave the order, "Coterie, cease firing and prepare to slingshot."

As George's team hurtled forward, the Monster ships began to rise up from the surface of the gas giant in a path that was exactly perpendicular to theirs.

"What are they doing?" George tried to speak decisively, but there was a waver in his voice.

"I know," said Jam, "it's a three-dimensional crossing of the T".

"What do you mean?"

"It's a battle strategy used by navies that float on water."

"Why should that work here?"

"I do not know."

While Jam exposed the limits of his naval lore the enemy battleships moved upward through the space directly in front of them, all the while concentrating their fire on the Urgent Fury, which was the Coterie's vanguard ship. When he saw that the Fury's shields were failing George gave the order to fire back.

The Fury exploded.

"Computer. What just happened? Did we hit our own ship?" George was aghast.

"Yes. A missile from the Contra just destroyed the Fury", the computer said laconically, "The damage happened in the fifth quadrant. You will recall that we have some calibration issues there."

"Stupid computer, why can't you make my plan work?" George would brook no mathematical talk-back from a machine that was designed to chop numbers.

The machine's voice remained placid. "The lack of clarity over what the fifth quadrant is makes it difficult to create firing tables."

"What difficulties?"

Risa thought she heard the computer sigh as it replied. "Overlap, for example. The fifth quadrant logically has to overlap with some part of the first four quadrants."

The machine's reasoning was compelling, so the crew let George respond. He did, with vigor. "Whole numbers!" George exclaimed as he slapped his head with the palm of his right hand. He pitied the simplicity of this machine, which could solve impossibly difficult problems and get stumped by simples ones, like dividing a flat surface into five blocks of four.

"What do you mean?" the computer asked.

"Only use integers in your calculations. That'll get rid of the overlap."

Before the main computer could seek clarification about this novel approach to navigational mathematics, George sentenced it to silence. He had more important things to focus on. After all, they were down one ship; their plans had to be updated.

"Which quadrant was the Urgent Fury covering?" George asked Risa. The waver in his voice was now gone.

"The third."

"Good. Divide responsibility for the third quadrant among the pilots."

"Shouldn't we simply divide the battle field into four quadrants?" the artillery sub-system hopefully asked.

The sub-system's impudence made George so livid he turned down the volume on the Shill's entire human-machine interface. "We're finishing this battle on mute."

Before George had finished speaking these words, the Coterie's new vanguard cruiser, the Contra, exploded into a ball of flame. The Monsters immediately focused their fire power on the Rolling Thunder. It glowed red then disappeared into a puff of metallic vapor.

"Did we do that?"

"No" Jam stated in a flat voice. "When the Monsters concentrate their fire they are able to overwhelm our shields."

George was dumbfounded. In the same way that he knew that God created Heaven and Earth, he also knew that the Monsters could never destroy a Human ship. The heat of battle gave him no time to reflect on this development however. He received an urgent communication from the mercenaries.

"Captain Brash. I'm speaking for the ships Ajax and Dessert Storm. What is happening in this battle is not covered by our contract. We're turning back."

The Coterie was down to one ship.

The Monster guns turned onto the Shill just as it hurtled into the inner solar system.

Within moments they were 1 million kilometres above Kuln Prime, and only a shade further away from Kuln's Moon. The sky was full of Kulnoi warships. Though they were dramatically outnumbered, George did not hesitate, "Computer. Prepare to set up a base on Kuln's Moon. Make sure the site is defensible."

George's decisive commands led to nothing. It took Risa but a moment to realize that the Shill's human-machine interface was still muted. The moment the computer got it's voice back it said, "Commander Brash, there isn't a good place to set up our base. The entire moon is militarized. If we get within 500,000 kilometres of it we will be blasted to Andromeda."

George was not an evidenced-based leader, so the ship's stern warning did not cause his resolve to waver. He inhaled deeply and then spoke, "Fine. We will orbit Kuln Prime and keep firing until every Monster ship has been destroyed."

Risa looked at her control panel and reported that George's plan was impossible. "Our missile factory is malfunctioning."

"I assume that we still have enough munitions in reserve to obliterate the Monsters." George was all over this problem.

"We have slightly more than one million missiles left." Risa replied. "The enemy have just over ten million ships that are within immediate firing range. There are at least 10 million more stationed on the moon.

"Let's get started. We're going to have to make every shot count. Ten times over."

"Twenty times over" Mr. Chump corrected. He had a grim look on his face.

Though the battle was heated and the Kulnoi casualties mounted, they all - with the exception of George, who was a bit slow in these matters - realized that defeat would only be a matter of time. Fortunately, no one had a moment to dwell on how they would soon be eaten alive by green bug-eyed Monsters

The Shill ran out of missiles one day and over two million casualties later. The Monsters then bombarded it until its shields imploded. Once they had broken through its defenses, the Monsters adulterated the Shill's air supply using a drone.

When the Humans awoke they were astonished by the size of their cage. That mystery was solved when their captors arrived. The Kulnoi were huge compared with Humans, and walked very lightly in the low gravity environment of Kuln's Moon. They wore leather tunics made from the hides of their victims. The brown leather was offset nicely by their pond green skin. Their eyes were comprised of spheres of hexagonal lenses. Clusters of them were perched on stalks. Most of the Monsters had only five or six eye-stalks, one had a dozen. Below their eyes were two vicious looking sets of mandibles that they used to tear up food before inserting it into a circular mouth full of razor sharp teeth.

The Kulnoi leader began to bellow at the crew of the Coterie the moment it arrived. Initially they looked dumbly on but finally Cruel stepped forward, placed his personal communicator on a table, activated it then stepped away. The communicator said something in the Kulnoi language. The chief Monster walked over to the device and examined it. It grabbed Cruel's device, then Cruel himself, and brusquely left the room.

Several hours later their captors returned with Cruel's device, though without Mr. Rave himself. The Monster leader handed the communicator to George. It played a hologram of the Monster saying, in George's own dialect, "Mr. George Brash, capturing your ship was a great victory for the Kulnoi. You are my prize. Though your government has offered to pay me a large ransom for your safe return, you are much more valuable to me as food."

After delivering this message the guards then took Dundald and Dick away. George, Jam and Risa had only moments to wonder who would be next; the guards quickly returned for them. They were taken to a food-sorting factory. Probably the very one that George's father had been packaged at. The Humans were divided into pens, each of which moved very slowly on a conveyor belt towards the Packers and Sorters. Healthy Humans were thrown into static bags by the Packers to be eaten later. The unhealthy and the dead were identified by Sorters and then ground up into pet food.

Commander George Brash looked bleakly up at his enormous, threatening captors. He was four pens away from the Packer, three from the Sorter. He wondered which of the two Kulnoi would seal his fate. He spoke, but did not directly address Risa and Jam, who shared his pen. "I don't want to be a Monster's appetizer." Risa, who had had enough of George replied sharply, "Captain, whether we're kept alive in a static bag, or ground up for pets to eat - either way we're food."

"What I mean is I don't want to be eaten alive" George retorted. He sprayed himself and then handed Risa his sprayer. "Apply this ointment to your skin. They'll think that you've spoilt and will kill you quickly." They solemnly sprayed each other and prepared to die like heroes. The spray caused Risa to vomit convulsively.

§

The Sorter rudely grabbed a young Human, chewed off his head and then tossed the corpse into a masher where it would be ground into pet food.

"Hey, don't eat the merchandise" the Packer chastised.

"It was already dead", the Sorter replied.

"That's disgusting, eating something that is dead."

"Not all of us have good jobs, like yours, Mr. Packer. If you paid me more, maybe I'd be able to afford some of this living merchandise."

The Monsters continued working sullenly. After a while the Sorter spoke again, "Do you think they suffer?"

"Of course they do." The Packer guffawed at the irrelevance of the question. "My friend you are overcomplicating your simple job." As he spoke the Packer picked up George and poked him harshly in the stomach. He recoiled in pain. The Monster plunged George head first into a mild solvent to remove his terrible smell, and then threw him into a static bag. George struggled futilely until the instant the bag was sealed and time stopped. The Packer turned to the Sorter and said, "It's actually very simple: if it moves, it's alive. If it's alive, its food."

Fin

The Bay of Fundy was as clear as a cup of tap water. The water was so pure that when the sun was directly overhead, as it was now, you could see the ocean floor. Chandra floated to the surface and lay on her back staring at the sky through filtered eye-glasses. Even though it was midday, on the horizon she could see the outline of the rising moon. Soon the gravity of the sun and the moon would combine into one of the most powerful forces on Earth.

Chandra's dove down into the ocean. Initially all that she could see was a bloom of moon jellies, which after a moment parted to reveal a tube-like creature that glowed with a faint, phosphorescent light. At first she thought that the creature was a typical scyphozoan, perhaps 2 or 3 metres long. The giant jellyfish floated in the perspectiveless sea towards her. She scanned it and discovered that it was 100 metres long. “Scyphozoan giganticus”, she thought. ”One of the newest and largest creatures in the North Atlantic.” The creature was shaped like a huge, diaphanous bell, its tubular body not unlike that of a squid. The cilia that lined its perimeter glowed red, yellow and blue neon. She could see through its translucent body, save for where there were thick, pulsing objects that looked like organs. There was a dark cloud in the middle of the creature, probably a meal of krill or zooplankton.

The jellyfish flailed pathetically. Chandra saw that it was trapped in a halo of detritus including the skeletons of running shoes, plastic toys and fish. As she swam closer, with the intention of freeing it, she noticed that it had been trapped in an ancient drift net. She proceeded carefully. Even though she was protected by a suit that would allow her to walk safely on Jupiter, she knew that the giant invertebrate could nevertheless kill her if she got ensnared in its tentacles. After much careful effort, she cut the jelly free. It disappeared in a moment.

Chandra returned to the surface of the Bay and again inspected the positions of the sun and the moon. They were almost aligned. The ocean started to tremble; she could feel its energy shake her soul. “This is the point where natural biology intersects with religion”, she thought. Though mankind had fled from its wounded home planet centuries ago, every culture from the Earth Diaspora had moon and sun and water cults. You could find vestiges of these cults on planets without moons, in deep space orbitals with no oceans and on mining colonies with cold, distant suns. The myths remained strong because their roots were so miraculous.

For one moment, all was still then the tide turned and the ocean began to race towards the sun and the moon. The cove where Chandra was expelled from the Bay was littered with beached invertebrates, twigs and kelp. She had a few minutes to explore before she needed to leave for England so she decided to walk along the very narrow strip of land that was not now under water. She crawled over a fallen tree and around a bend into an inlet that had a large wide beach. In the middle she saw a giant jellyfish. As she watched, the creature slowly pulled itself towards the ocean. Its main weight, its head, was oriented at a small angle the sea; its tentacles were weak and had difficulty finding purchase. The creature was blasted by a huge wave and then pushed farther back onto the shore. It struggled again and then went flaccid. Chandra was amazed that it had not yet suffocated. After a brief respite the jelly pulled itself up. To her surprise it began to move towards her and away from the sea. The jellyfish paused when it got to within a dozen metres of her; it sent several long tentacles towards her, as if it was inspecting her. The next wave swept it away.

After a moment's reflection on her encounter with this new, apparently intelligent species, Chandra reluctantly summoned her aircraft. There was a storm moving towards the coast of France which she had to hurry to avoid. Her craft instantly dropped out of the clouds; it looked like a freaky little bug as it skimmed across the Bay towards her.

While she returned to Dover, Chandra wondered what would happen next. Her uncle had secured permission for her to study the Nepean Spring Tide in the Bay of Fundy, which she had just done. Would his favor be accompanied by some form of imposition? On this count, his record was mixed. Some of her uncle's gifts, like his payment of her tuition for post-graduate studies were deeply appreciated. But others far less so. Chandra remembered receiving a lone parakeet from him once. The gift was inappropriate not just because of its obscene cost but also because she was a person opposed to captivity for any animal. The parakeet had vexed her for weeks until finally, at great cost and risk to her reputation, she found a way have it returned to an environment where it could live and breed in freedom.

Worse than his inappropriate gifts, were the one's that had strings attached to them. Her uncle was rich, so his demands were always for abstract things that he could not directly purchase, like impositions on her time and reputation. Though awkward, she typically would accede to his least offensive requests. For the most part it was wasted time, but she accepted this without complaint, because her gratitude for his assistance with her education was genuine and enduring.

As she thought about her uncle's motivation in allowing her visit to the Bay of Fundy, she looked out of the window. Her craft was flying over the Grand Banks now. To her surprise she saw a vast construction site where she had expected to see nothing but ocean. Her craft was traveling rapidly, so the site disappeared after only a few minutes; she examined it on her scanner for several more. Between the enigmas of her uncle's motivations and the construction site on the Grand Banks her mind was kept busy while her craft scudded across the north Atlantic. She landed on the Channel side of her uncle's property, one kilometer from his main residence. Though the epicenter of the storm that had been chasing them was on the other side of the Channel the wind was blowing with considerable force. She still wore her diving suit, so was perturbed neither by wind nor water. She made an attendant take her belongings to her uncle's home and walked towards the cliffs. A second attendant followed her at a respectful distance.

The landscape was flat and grey. The dominant vegetation was tundra, spotted with low lying ferns and heather. At the edge of the cliffs she encountered a large strip of tape that was placed in a semi circle around the stairway to the beach. On the tape was written the words “Caution: Industrial Zone” in large, iridescent block letters. To Chandra the tape was informational and not a barrier; she ducked under it and walked towards the edge of the cliffs. She knew this section of the property very well; she had played here as a child. Her current path led to a secret stairway that had been carved into the cliffs long ago. She walked towards the stairway, with the intention of going down to the beach. When she reached the top of the stairs, she saw that the beach was lined with large machines that had scoops with teeth so sharp that they looked like the mouths of predator dinosaurs. The machines were attended by whisper thin robots, which walked calmly through the raging wind as if it did not blow.

“Mining on Earth!” Chandra thought. She was so amazed that it took her a moment to comprehend the entreaty of the house attendant that had followed her: “Madame, it is far too dangerous to be out here right now.” The machine's statement was punctuated by a strong gust of wind.

The attendant repeated its point, “Madame, we must hurry! The hurricane is upon us.”

There was no outlasting an insistent machine so she turned her back to the Channel and walked towards her uncle's home. She paused to compose herself at the entrance. A little brass nameplate graced the door. The words on it read “Satish Dekas, Councillor at Law” Seeing her uncle's first name, Satish, made her smile; the family's nickname for him had always been Surya, after the Sanskrit word for the sun; she never thought of him by any other name.

She was asked to wait in the house's interior courtyard; it was full of trees and flowering plants. Tables were sparsely distributed throughout the courtyard, each situated in the middle of a copse of trees. She could see hummingbirds and bees. What struck her most in the midst of this abundance was the humidity. There was no humidity on the orbital where she lived.

In the middle of the courtyard there was an aquarium which contained a snapshot of what had once been the Carysfort reef off of Florida, including tiny dolphins and tuna. She chose a table on the perimeter of atrium as far away from the aquarium as she could. That her uncle had achieved an amazing feat by miniaturizing an entire eco system was undeniable. But to her it was a dastardly miracle that mocked one of the greatest tragedies of Earth history, the destruction of the coral reefs.

Chandra had not been sitting for more than a breath, when her uncle greeted her with a barrage of questions, “How was your trip? Do you have pictures?” He smiled as he spoke. His friendly curiosity was an aspect of him that she loved. As he spoke he gently prodded her from where she sat and escorted her to a table immediately beside the aquarium. She could find no way to politely resist him.

They spent the next few minutes reviewing the footage from her trip. To her surprise he spent most of his time examining her scans; and had more questions about the acidity of the water than about the strange creatures that she had encountered. He did pause at the video of the beached giant jellyfish. “Earth is so alien” he said.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Chandra, when you see these monstrous invertebrates don't you feel that this isn't our planet anymore.”

“Uncle Surya, Earth was never your planet.”

He caught his breath and then changed the subject. “Do you have any other trips planned?”

“I've been trying to get permission to visit Shantung. The tides there are almost as powerful as those at the Bay of Fundy.”

“Why don't you come with me to Florida while you wait? I'm doing some work on the Carysfort reef that you might be interested in."

“Uncle, there's no reef there. The Caribbean is just a desert.”

Instead of replying he simply glanced at the aquarium.

“You're trying to recreate the reef aren't you?” Chandra was quite angry. Surya tried to keep his expression featureless, but for an instant a supremely self-satisfied look fleeted across his face.

“Why didn't you tell me?” she asked coldly.

“Chandra, that is a ridiculous question. I still haven't told you anything. You know how I operate. When I'm making a deal, even a charitable one like this, no one except those who have a need to know are given details.” He reached out and affectionately clasped her hands in his, “You're the first person to whom I will give details once my project goes live.”

For a moment she dared to dream that perhaps her uncle had stumbled upon a miraculous technology that only caused good and not bad. With this technology he would rebuild the desert oceans while leaving what little life remained in them alone. It was an impossible fantasy. She tore her hands out of his and said accusingly, “What you propose will affect every ocean. How do you know that your tinkering won't kill what little life is left in the seas?”

“Chandra, the specifications for my work have been studied for nearly 100 years. Or a million years if you include the computer models. No whales or tuna are going to be affected. In fact, they will thrive under my plan.”

“Why must you do anything? Why can't you let the Earth heal itself?”

His smile did not break the ice that had formed in the chilly space that separated them. “Chandra, though I would love to talk with you more about this project, I cannot. But please humor me. I am a good man. Let me show off my legacy to you before you leave. It would mean so much to me.”

Surya's attempt at reconciliation failed, but she was ensnared by her curiosity. She had guessed some of his plan's key details: the construction site at the Grand Banks was a heat pump to start the Gulf Stream; the mining at Dover was to provide a source of calcium for reefs; the tiny creatures that she saw in his aquarium would doubtless grow to full size when released into the ocean. Perhaps she could find a weak link in this scheme, and in a subtle way sabotage it. Despite being compelled by this fantasy, her answer to his offer was non-committal: “I'm really tired. Let's talk about this after I've had some rest.”

“Of course.”

She did not rest.

She spent the evening fantasizing about reprogramming a battalion of slight, industrial robots to dismantle all of her uncle's mega-projects. She knew that dismantling even one project would be daunting; but she also knew that robots were persistent and if convinced of the morality of a path would follow it to its conclusion.

The next morning she agreed to visit her uncle's triumph in the Caribbean. Surya had assumed she would accept his offer, so she did not even need to pack before they left. Everything had been arranged.

As they walked towards the landing field her uncle was in an ebullient mood. They passed the limestone mine by the tape barrier near the top of the cliffs. “Uncle, why are you mining these cliffs? Is it for Carysfort?”

“Sort of.” He smiled sheepishly.

“How are you getting this limestone there?”

He didn't answer but she already knew the answer to her question. “That's what the heat pump you are building off of the Grand Banks is for, isn't it?”

She knew that her guess was correct when he said, “Chandra, I always forget how much smarter you are than me.”

Again she asked, “Uncle, why can't you leave the Earth alone?” They lapsed into silence when he did not reply.

Surya chose a seat near the front of their craft, while she settled into a seat near the back. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts: flying made her introspective.

She had always thought that flight and sailing were among mankind's most significant inventions. Man was a creature of land, and with flight he conquered the air and with sailing, water. Thinking we controlled the elements, we vanquished the Earth and were forced to move on.

Her reverie was interrupted by her uncle's leering smile. “Chandra check out the news. Any channel.” His good humor made her cringe, but she did turn on her monitor. The news commentator startled her out of her chair. “Yellow fin tuna have been discovered just west of Gibraltar, swimming in an unusually warm water currents.”

“The heat pump must already be working” she thought. She turned to her uncle and asked, “Is it sustainable?” She expected another one of his businessman dodges in reply.

“What?”

“The pump. Once you've got the temperature differentials working will the Gulf Stream propel itself?”

“The heat pump is like a pace maker. Once the Stream is working we expect to need to use it only sometimes.”

The news saddened her because it limited the scope of her activity. Disabling the heat pump off of Newfoundland would, if anything, make the Atlantic more variable, which in turn would threaten more life. She cursed her uncle and all those like him that forced her to act and made it so difficult for her to do so.

Chandra turned her back to her uncle, effectively ending their discussion. There was no point in trying to reason with him. The virtue of leaving things alone was something that he would never understand. For the remainder of the trip she did nothing but watch the sparkling blue ocean pass under the wings of her speeding vehicle.

They landed at Key Largo then took a boat to the inlet where the old Carysfort lighthouse was located. The inlet had become a construction site: its far end was lined with piles of soil. The rest of the beach was covered with metal containers. Here and there she could see robots crouched over assembling devices that she could not identify. The machines' activities were overseen by a dozen people.

There was lots of motion. Most activity was focused on the pier, where 2 flat bottom boats were docked. One was covered with metal containers, the other with piles of a gelatinous material that she could not identify.

Out of politeness she asked for permission to go swimming. She entered the Caribbean beside the aged lighthouse. After just a moment in the water, it was as if the construction site did not exist at all. The rocky ocean floor was covered in a faint white shawl, which was a reminder that once this region had been a vast coral reef teeming with more life than had yet been found anywhere else in the galaxy.

Chandra swam further out towards where the reef used to be. Her path was clearly marked by signs of human intervention. The dusty calcium layer on the ocean floor gave way to regularly placed mounds of material that were battened down by baskets made of stones and wire. She swam next to one of the mounds to inspect it more closely. The material was highly alkaline. The mounds themselves were slightly elevated above the ocean floor. She dove deeper to inspect the gap between the ocean floor and the mounds. The water heated by several degrees as she approached. Periodically jets of water were sprayed out from the bottom of the mounds. She analyzed a sample from the water spray. It was full of protein. Though the protein resembled the organic detritus that blanketed the ocean here prior to industrialization the regularity of the molecular structure suggested that the material had been manufactured. The mounds were apparently some form of device to help with the reconstruction of this eco-system.

While she swam along the proto reef a jellyfish swam into view. It looked very much like the giant one that she had seen in the Bay, but was about half the mass and glowed faintly red. She swam to within 20 metres of the animal then held her space. Suddenly the jelly launched in her direction. Startled, she swam backwards for several metres. The jelly overtook her in a second. It circled around her twice and then stopped a safe distance away from her. Though there were no eyes in its head, she felt it looking at her. The jellyfish's inspection ended abruptly when a pod of dolphins crested the limestone mound behind her. The pod swam directly towards the jellyfish. The jellyfish raced away and the dolphins immediately dropped their pursuit. It was obvious that they were not trying to catch jelly; but rather were simply trying to scare it away from their food source. Suddenly the jelly dashed over the top of the limestone mound and snared a baby dolphin in its tentacles. The jellyfish disappeared with its victim before the pod had time to realize what had happened.

She swam to the ocean floor in order to inspect the hot air vents, with the intention of trying to find a way to disable them. The vent that she chose to inspect was surrounded by a miniature school of sharks that was feeding off of the protein that it was expelling.

A long, thin boat stopped in the space above her, its shadow cutting off some, but not all, of the sunlight. Packages were being dumped into the ocean. She caught one in a net and cautiously examined it. It was a sunfish encased in a buoyant, translucent substance that she did not recognize. While she was examining the sunfish several blooms of different types of jellyfish appeared around her. They inspected the packages and then began to tear them open. Some fish swam free. Others were ingested by the jellies. Then the sea darkened again. The ocean above the feeding frenzy turned milky. At the moment the downward falling milky water contacted the jellies they recoiled as if in pain. In an instant all of the jellies were gone. The remaining translucent packages dissolved and a host of creatures from the old Carysfort ecosystem emerged. She swam up to one school of miniature tuna to investigate. They were eating the packages they had been encased in. which seemed to be made of some form of engineered plankton. She looked at her scanner: the water had become significantly more alkaline.

A group of moon jellies hovered at the edge of the milky sea. In the middle of the group Chandra saw a much larger species of invertebrate. She swam towards the bloom, to investigate. The creature's movements seemed wrong, somehow. They were more listless than the other invertebrates that she had swum with. She moved still closer and realized why: the jellies were dead. She thought to herself, bitterly, “We are recreating this habitat with the techniques of a god and the sensibility of an animal.”

Chandra swam around the jellyfish corpses taking detailed scans for her records.

Once her scan of the jellyfish corpses was complete she drifted back to the vents on the sea floor. If she wanted to undermine this project she could do worse than to begin here.

As she went to work destroying the vent, a pod of miniature dolphins appeared. They were attracted by curiosity about her. When they noticed the vent they immediately swam down to it and began to feed. The genetically engineered creatures appalled her. Her uncle was recreating nothing at all: these weren't the creatures that thrived here before the oceans had become acidic. These were constructions. Yet, to her scans the genetically modified dolphins were indistinguishable from those created by nature.

The presence of these dolphins, like the presence of any other life form, challenged her actions. If she destroyed this vent she was threatening these creatures just as much as leaving it alone threatened the jellyfish. Her uncle had forced her to act and made it impossible for her to do so. She put away her tools and left the damaged but still functioning vent to its fate.

She returned to the shore just north of the Carysfort lighthouse in the late afternoon. There was far less activity than when she had left. The industrial robots had packed themselves away and what few humans remained were quietly preparing to leave.

When she emerged from the water she was greeted by three security robots. Her visa was immediately revoked. Though Satish did not say farewell to her in person, he did let her borrow one of his more versatile vehicles for the flight to the interplanetary port. She wished to inspect the Gulf Stream on her way into space, so her uncle's parting gift was appreciated. While waiting for her clearance to leave the atmosphere, her vehicle floated over the Atlantic Ocean. She scanned the news. The top story was about a bloom of giant jellyfish which had washed up onto the Carolinas. Over 100 kilometres of beach were affected. Many scientists insisted that this was a sign that the Atlantic Ocean was returning to health.

As her craft flew east over the Gulf Stream she noticed a huge, brown smear of water that stretched across the horizon, from her uncle's mine in Dover to the Caribbean. As her vehicle moved over the Azores she noticed another smear moving exactly perpendicular to the calcium laced Gulf Stream: a tremendous bloom of jellies was moving towards the Ocean's acidic depths. She widened the area of her scan and saw one more bloom also moving towards the mid-Atlantic. As she watched the blooms merged together. “Perhaps they will survive after all”, she thought. Chandra's eyes were glued to her monitor as her ship left the atmosphere and entered space; still she could see the bloom of jellies.

Fin

My ship, the Quark, popped out of hyperspace 10 lakh kilometers above the planet Eleutheria. The moment it did I looked at my scanner: sure enough all of the bio-sign readings were extreme. There was no planet in our galaxy with remotely as much biomass per cubic hectare as the green-blue giant that dominated the view in front of me.

My research told me that this trip could be very dangerous. Though it is common for space probes to suddenly stop sending messages; it was exceptional that every single probe that had been sent to explore this planet had failed. I scanned the solar system for signs of weaponry. Nothing. Then I scanned for signs of artificial energy production. Nothing. There was no sign of any technology whatsoever. “All this life and no machinery”, I thought.

The Quark almost imperceptibly shuddered, then stopped. I browsed through my control panel trying to determine what had happened. Aside from the change in the ship's momentum, every other measurement was unremarkable. The fore scanners showed the green-blue planet, the aft scanners the blazing yellow-white sun. I tried to move the ship backwards, away from Eleutheria. Energy was expended but the ship did not move. I then tried up, down and sideways to similar effect. I cut the engines and all extraneous power sources in order to save energy, and then began to investigate why my ship had stopped. It had to have been because of some form of counterforce, but my logs told me nothing.

I spent the next several hours sending out messages, on the assumption that someone, or some thing, had stopped the Quark. These efforts to communicate fell on deaf ears, or at least were not responded to in a way that I comprehended. Though I had no information that would allow me to interpret this silence as anything specific, the silence soon provoked me to anger. I am not one of those people who become violent when angry. As my temper flared I became more and more focused on solving the riddle that I was in. With obsession as my motivation, I worked continuously for the better part of the next day. I analyzed my data from every angle but no trick worked. No matter had shifted, no energy had been expended, and yet the Quark had made the transition from light speed to stillness in an instant. Ultimately my frustration gave way to amazement. On my explorations I have encountered countless superior technologies, but never one that could not be recognized as technology.

I brooded until I fell asleep.

When I awoke I was amazed to discover the projection of a small, frail man standing in front of me. There were beads and ribbons in his hair and he had a gnarly beard. He wore a white sari, which hung loosely on his thin frame. Because he was translucent, and stood in front of the fore scanner, a filtered image of the green-blue planet could be seen through his body. The moment I noticed him he greeted me with a low bow and said, “Welcome to Eleutheria. Namaste.”

There were so many ways I could have responded to this first encounter. I could have been afraid, startled or full of anticipation and hope. I regret to report that I was simply disappointed. Seeing an image of a human in front of me, even one as oddly dressed and wild-looking as this one, meant that Eleutheria had not only been discovered, it had been colonized, and was therefore just another piece of human history that had been lost and now found. Such discoveries happen every year and are rarely headline news.

The wiry old man, apparently reading my mind, said, “Fame is not the only reason you are here my friend.”

I nodded my head in agreement; he smiled easily.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Sadhu Jain.”

I knew that a Sadhu was a holy man and that Jainism was a religion but had never heard the two words used as a name. “It is obvious that you are a projection. Where is the real you right now?” I asked.

“My physical body is on the planet. What you see here is not a projection", he gestured towards his translucent body “it is the real me.”

I let this cryptic remark go unchallenged and asked the question that was foremost on my mind, “How did you stop my ship?”

“Your perspective is backwards: your ship is still moving, it is the universe that has stopped.”

I leapt to my control panel and quickly did a scan of the galaxy since I had arrived here 30 hours ago. Not a single star had shifted. “How could I have missed this?” I thought excitedly. “My ship has not stopped, it has somehow been taken out of time.” Curiosity cleared my head of anger, “Sadhu Jain, I would very much like to visit your planet.”

“I will ask permission.” The mystic blinked into nothing.

The next moment I was in space. Eleutheria loomed in front of me; nothing was behind me, nothing was above me and nothing was beside me but the flickering of distant stars. You have never experienced the sublimity of space until you have done so outside of your ship. I slowly twisted myself around so that I was facing the centre of the galaxy. No matter how far I looked I saw stars. The vastness turned my awe to terror. I abated my fear by twisting my body the other way so that the green-blue planet swallowed my entire view.

I used my pocket scanner to orient myself. I was 5 lakh kilometers away from my ship and a comparable distance away from Eleutheria. Again, it appeared as if no energy had been expended to transport me to where I was. The only thing that I could measure was a data smudge on my scans that somehow described the 10 metre spherical corona that surrounded me. On the inside of the corona was an atmosphere exactly like the one in my spaceship; on the outside, the near vacuum of space. I was slowly falling towards the planet.

A shadow crossed my view. I looked up to see a placid Sadhu Jain standing beside me. You would think that I would be afraid, in fact horrified, to be suspended in space by some form of technological magic in the company of an unkempt mystic. But I was not afraid of Sadhu Jain; I was not afraid of the magic that kept me alive while I hurtled towards this amazing planet. I was not afraid because I have great faith in life. Eleutheria had far more life per cubic metre than anything our people know.

I tried to focus by orienting myself to the planet's surface, but initially could not because of the dizziness caused by my descent. I spoke the moment I could, “Sadhu this is a very complicated way to get me to your planet. Why can't I simply take my ship?”

“Machines are not allowed on Eleutheria” he replied.

“Really? What do you mean by machine? Do you mean any machine? My right eye is artificial.”

“The machinery in your eye will not work on the planet. But there is no need to worry about that.”

I wanted to press him a bit on his beliefs. “How am I different from the Quark?” I asked. “Aren't I just an organic machine?”

“You are divine”, he blandly replied.

I smiled at this bold statement, but I fear that my smile was rueful: my intentions may sometimes be divine, I know that my actions rarely, if ever, are. “If I am divine, Sadhu Jain, then why did you have to get permission for me to visit?” I queried, with just a hint of mockery in my voice.

His response took me aback. “I had to ask permission for you to visit because you are very dangerous to us” he said.

“Why are you letting me visit at all?”

“Because you are divine”, he repeated with a neutral voice.

His circular dialog caused my temper to fray, again. “What is this place?!” I exclaimed.

“It is a dream of a perfect world.” I blinked. When my eyes opened Sadhu Jain was gone.

§

I fell towards the planet as if through a vision; for though my view altered as I moved, I felt nothing, neither wind, rain, nor friction. All that I saw was the green-blue planet enlarging before me. Because I felt nothing I found it difficult to believe that what I saw in front of me was real. My scanner told that it was, but I did not trust the data.

I passed through the planet's outer atmosphere in an instant. A moment later I burst through the clouds into a vast sky. I could not see any horizon because everywhere I looked I saw something that was alive: huge flocks of birds; ten thousand meter high trees; entire continents covered in herds of animals; and seas that were bursting with fish.

As I drew closer to the planet's surface, the arc of my trajectory altered. I no longer fell but instead raced along the top of a forest canopy towards the rising sun. After a few moments my movement slowed; then I gently began to settle towards the earth. I landed in the middle of a triangle at the conjunction of three roads. At the entrance to each road was a gate. A small town surrounded the triangle. Beyond the buildings, wilderness stretched in all directions; in one direction there was a forest, in another a lake. The third gate looked towards steppes and a mountain range.

I landed beside Sadhu Jain. He seemed more substantial than the projection that I had seen on the Quark, though barely so, for his eyes were watery and unfocussed, his dreadlocks were wild, his sari was tattered, and his manner was loose.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“This is the town of the Three Gates. It is the entrance to our world.”

“What do you mean? Is this some kind of test?” I asked.

“No more than any other experience”, the Sadhu replied. He walked towards the gate that faced the mountain range. I followed. “These gates lead to aspects of our planet that we would like to show you before asking you to stay”, he stated without a trace of affect in his voice. I entertained no thoughts of staying for I am an explorer; I do not settle down anywhere. Nevertheless, I was very interested in going to where the holy man led me.

The first gate shimmered and was difficult to focus on. Initially, I thought that this was because of a problem with my eyes, perhaps as a result of my recent journey; then I attributed the shifting images in front of me to distortions caused by heat and humidity. I looked more closely and saw that both of my hypotheses were wrong: the physical structure of the gate was actually changing. “What is this gate an entrance to?” I asked.

“We call this path Maya” he replied, “which is our word for illusion.” As the Sadhu spoke, he gestured me to follow him and I did. I was still enclosed in an atmospheric bubble, so I floated rather than walked through the squirming gate, and then I skimmed along a path that cut through a vast steppe. There were herds of animals that covered the ground all the way to the horizon. After an hour, the herds thinned and were replaced by plains filled with enormous grains that had kernels the size of my body. A while later the steppes gave way to woodland where there were trees that had nuts the size of a house. We moved through this teeming world, but never disturbed anything. It was almost as if we were not there at all.

When we reached the mountains our trajectory veered so that we followed the surface of one vast peak towards its apex. As we moved upwards, the ground life dissipated. The air however was full of flocks of birds. Perhaps 5,000 metres into the air we arrived at a waterfall. It was covered in vines, mosses, trees and flocks of birds. I could actually see plants crawling up the sides of the cliffs, their leaves splashed by cascades of water. As I watched, a heavy, bulbous creature floated along the face of the waterfall towards the sky. Its movements seemed utterly impossible.

“Sadhu, look at that animal. How is it flying?”

“It is falling.”

“How is it possible to fall towards the sky?”

The Sadhu swept his arm in front of his body in a gesture that encompassed the entire planet. “You should always be asking yourself 'What is real and what is an illusion?'”

“Is he saying that everything that I'm seeing here is kind of projection?” I wondered. “If Sadhu Jain could stop my space ship by manipulating time, surely he could immerse me in a simulation of this quality.” Scanning the abundance in front of me didn't give me information to dispel my doubts. It did make me want what I perceived to be real.

My thoughts returned to the mysterious barrier that protected this planet from me. “Sadhu, you said that machines could not work on this planet, yet I am still able to measure things with my scanner.”

“That is because you are not yet part of the planet.”

“If I am not part of the planet, how can I measure it?”

I swear that I detected a touch of impatience in his reply, “You will find nothing with your that”, he gestured towards my scanner. “This ... ” he gestured widely with his right hand “... and this ...” he gestured now with his left hand “... is all about perception and not measurement.”

§

We had landed beside a pool midway down a waterfall. The mist from the waterfall penetrated the field that enclosed me and the faint smell of wild flowers infused the air. I let my gaze wander over the water, the sky and the trees. I have always poetically imagined that each of us have an affinity to particular aspects of the world. Some people are watery; some are stiff like iron; others are vaporous, like the air. I believe that I have an affinity to wood. My gaze settled on a large willow tree by the water's edge. I floated over to it. This was my first moment of reflection since arriving. I sat, my mind empty and meditative, under the tree.

I closed my eyes in order to enhance my other senses. My only sensation was light. The willow had a green aura; mine was yellow; the indigo light that infused the entire area around the waterfall, I knew to be the Sadhu. I focused on the tree, trying to absorb its nature. I could feel our aura's blend; the tree was now within the bubble that enclosed me. I could feel the spirit of the tree as if it were part of me. I could feel my roots spreading deep in the earth.

The Sadhu had said that my separation from this world was a problem of perspective. “Perhaps my thoughts alone can cause the barrier between me and Eleutheria to dissipate.” I thought. As I sat until the willow tree I focused my attention on the exact spot where the atmospheric bubble that enclosed me met Eleutheria. I then reversed my perception and focused on everything but that barrier. To my astonishment my thoughts were responded to by a host of voices and a riot of lights; each one was a spirit.

§

When I opened my eyes we were back at the Town of Three Gates. The Maya gate was to our left. We now stood facing the middle gate. Sadhu Jain gestured for me to follow him through. As I did, now floating just barely above the ground, I asked, “What is this path?”

“We call it Karma.” He spoke with his back to me, as he had already floated through the gate. I raced to catch up. For several minutes I floated behind him, over a hilly savanna, thinking my own thoughts. The metaphysical aspect of my tests intrigued me: why would a test about karma, the moral nature of our actions, follow illusion? Was there a progression to these tests?

I caught up to the Sadhu above a large herd of deer. When I noticed that the deer grazed unafraid amidst a pride of lions, I said, “Sadhu, I am hungry.”

“That is a problem” he replied gravely.

“What do you eat?”

“I survive on Atman.”

I fell silent. I knew that Atman was an ancient word for the universal spirit but was certain that for Sadhu Jain Atman referred to something else, for example a food synthesis technology. I puzzled over this question as I looked intently at grasslands below.

As my hunger became insatiable the planet sensed it. The deer began to stampede in a circle. The lions pawed the earth and growled loudly. A great flock of pigeons wheeled through the air. When I was meditating under the willow tree the spirits of this planet tried to erode the barrier that separated me from them. Now they were trying to reinforce it. The bubble that enclosed me thickened. I rose high above the plain.

As I hovered Sadhu Jain dissolved into a field of indigo light that enveloped and then infused me. Initially I resisted, but his spirit gave me great comfort and reduced my hunger.

I began slowly to fall towards the planet; the bubble that surrounded me once again began to dissolve and my scanner stopped working. The animals became less agitated. They inspected me. A lion stepped forward. As he got closer to me he began to turn into a burning orange aura. When he got close enough to lick me with his tongue he was like two creatures, one of which was made of radiant light.

The aura-lion signaled me to mount him so I did. I was glowing yellow; the Sadhu glowed indigo beside me.

I blinked then we were again at the Town of Three Gates. I was still riding the lion. “The last gate is Anava”, the Sadhu said, anticipating my question. “It is our word for ego.”

The lion stepped lightly over the threshold of the modestly built Anava gate. Before me flowed three golden rivers, which were choked with reeds the size of trees. A large fish splashed. A startled flock of birds leapt into the sky as we passed by. Every creature and plant had an aura.

I rode dreamily beside the middle river. My spirit felt like a tiny boat on the surface of a calm ocean, except that unlike a boat I was not content to float on the surface but rather felt a compulsion to be immersed in water. I dismounted and walked into the river and then began to swim.

Although I still do not know how much of Eleutheria was illusory, I do know that it was a world of spirits; as I immersed myself in the Golden River I merged with them. In one moment I was the spirit of a fish, in the next I was the spirit of a bird; after that I was a fast land animal. My connection to these souls spanned the river and the universe.

“If you can surrender yourself completely you can stay”, the Sadhu said.

Up until that point I had been experiencing other spirits. Now they tried to experience me. The feeling was like standing beside a breaching dam the size of infinity trying to hold back the water. I was overwhelmed. Swimming, which initially had been effortless suddenly became difficult. My panic and fear caused the water around me to churn. I tried to shut out the millions of spirits that were eroding my identity. The waves grew thick; my fear transformed into panic. I began to sink like a stone through the water. I was drowning.

You cannot stay!

With this message I was flung out of the Golden River. I could feel no breeze, I could smell no smells; once again Eleutheria was quarantined against me. Sadhu Jain stood beside me. He said farewell with a low bow and a plaintive “namaste”, then I was hurled away from him, upward towards the clouds.

Though I moved with great velocity I felt like I was not moving at all, so it was easy to ignore the images speeding by me and to muse on my sudden exile from this planet. “What kind of perfect world would not have me as part of it?” As I thought this sad thought I burst out of the green-blue planet's atmosphere and into space. “ Eleutheria is not exactly a perfect world”, I corrected myself, remembering the Sadhu's words, “it is a dream of a perfect world.” This made me wonder, “What would I dream of if I would dream of a perfect world?” I remembered skies thick with birds, seas bursting with fish, and dense forests. I had an answer to that question. I share the dream of Sadhu Jain, for I too dream of harmony, peace, and abundance, and when I dare to imagine, I imagine a world where there is no suffering. I have visited this dream, but could not stay.

I watched the Quark grow from a distant dot into a space ship. I knew that I would take a few minutes to reach it, so I twisted my body to look once again into the deepest part of space. This was the third time today that I had confronted infinity; this time I was not afraid, for my terror had given way to awe and my heart was full of longing.

Fin