Chapter 19
2. “Down That Old Yellow Brick Road”
A man, a girl, and a nightmare sit on an invisible floor, facing one another.
The man and the girl keep their eyes clamped shut, because when they open them, a blinding and terrible thing assaults them. It is the same in all directions. There are no shapes in it, only colors—every color, at once, everywhere, packed simultaneously into every infinitesimal point.
The girl tried to bear up and endure it, at the very start. She made it a few seconds, but then the nausea became too much, and forced the contents of her stomach out of her into the void.
The man has been here before. He knows the drill. His eyes have been closed the entire time.
The nightmare never closes its eyes. It never even blinks.
“We have reached your endpoint crash, Azad,” says the nightmare. “Here, we part ways.”
“Part ways? And here I—poor sentimental fool that I am—had hoped to carry on our dear friendship.
“There were pictures, in my head, of you and I squabbling for months. A whole album of happy moments captured on mental Polaroid. Humor me, I beg you, long enough for us to review a few together.
“Snapshot: we finally work out which, among all my errors, was the very worst.
“Snapshot: you come to me one evening, in search of parenting advice, and I—bachelor but at least human—deliver the goods. Snapshot: in the early morning hours I lie awake, my brain achurn, looping my way through every language I know, composing ever-more horrifying sign-trains—the better with which to give you a good scare, first thing the next morning. You’d find some anomaling way to get me back for it, of course. I’d require you to, or the game wouldn’t be any fun.
“Snapshot: you find that, even with arbitration worked out, your great project is not quite yet complete, and some minor preparatory step remains before you and Anne can stroll through the gates of utopia. Even on the last day of history, you find there is some house-cleaning to be done, and paperwork—and maybe a touch of explaining and cajoling, for the duller and the more unruly among the bilaterals, who might not grasp the perfection of your design at first blush. And for that—yea, even on that very last day!—you find yourself thankful you have the fluency and wiles of an Azad, at your beck and call.
“Snapshot: Azad caught unawares, one sunny afternoon, by the touch of divine grace. The moment it dawns on me that my interpretive work, which once doomed man, has now gone back on itself and saved him again. The value of my life’s work? Only the same as that of most anyone’s, now: a round, happy, harmless zero.
“Unreciprocated hopes, I take it. Fair enough. No use being around when I’m not wanted.
“I shall make a last request, however. A fair price, I should think, for reuniting you with your daughter. I request some degree of choice in the site of my final torment.
“I see you’ve already got a place slated for me, and I’m sure it would suffice. But I can’t pass up the opportunity to pick my own hell. I have all kinds of thoughts on the question.
“I imagine my liver is unusually flavorless, for example, so that rules out a few places by itself. No eternal blindness, I’d hate that. Whereas I’d pay a premium for a nice panoramic view of the more deeply damned, writhing below me. Oh, and any kind of disfigurement is a plus: who knows what may not come unexpectedly into fashion, after enough trillions of years? There would be a gothic charm to the stitches of Sucimukha, say. Or would the Utpala pallor be more fetching on me, do you think?”
The nightmare says nothing. Maybe it will speak in a minute or two. The nightmare speaks so slowly, when it speaks at all, that it’s hard to tell its true silences apart from mere pauses.
The girl is wondering what it means that the man talks so quickly. And is it her imagination, or is he talking even faster now than before? She feels a pang of concern. Could he have some disease, growing within him, pushing the words out faster and faster?
The nightmare continues to be silent, or to pause. Around ninety seconds pass.
“I have enjoyed our acquaintance, Azad,” says the girl.
“It is a sweet thing, indeed, to imagine you among us. Let us part swiftly. If we do not, I fear my mind will dwell on this fancy, and lose sight of the path.”
The girl feels her heart warming to Ratleak again. She has strayed, but she is not lost. What were the frights of the past day, in the end, but another leg of the long straight path? She appreciates now what the sage meant, when he wrote that the traveler must never have perfect trust in his own senses. That a poisoned imagination can twist the path itself into illusory hills and cliffs.
“You are not among us,” says the nightmare.
“What, I can’t even come to visit? Perhaps something could be arranged. Provided I behave especially well from now until, hmm, how about the death of my planet’s sun, I will be permitted at that time one day’s vacation. The exact terms are open to refinement.”
The nightmare pauses for around twenty seconds.
“You are not among us,” it says again.
Ten seconds.
“The rate of progression has increased with respect to local time.
“My success in arbitration with a bilateral is spatiotemporally local to us. The curvature and torsion of local conditions derive from its influence.
“Advanced containment is underpinned by physical substructures. Their creation is also spatiotemporally local, being an element of progression, and deriving likewise from my success. The transfer of bilaterals to their endpoint crashes is not yet complete, but becomes more complete as local time progresses.”
“It is happening as we speak,” says the man.
“. . . yes,” says the nightmare, after a pause.
After another pause, it continues.
“The path connecting my success to these events is lightlike, involving local propagation of information. The information carried by this path is sufficient to determine the nature of advanced containment. Only spatiotemporally local forces can shape this nature.”
“You’re saying,” says the man, “you can’t just hop off to the past or the future, as you’d ordinarily do, and tell your friends not to do whatever it is they are doing now.”
The nightmare does not say yes. It does not object, either. It pauses, and goes on.
“The rate of progression is high with respect to local time. In directions orthogonal to progression, the timescale of arbitration is correspondingly slow with respect to local time.
“It is therefore only possible to modify the nature of advanced containment along directions consistent with progression. You propose an orthogonal modification. I cannot do this.”
“Therefore?” says the man. “And derive, too, I notice. You’re slipping. Take more care with your mask, ‘Michael.’ It would be a shame if your overlords were to see too much of what’s under it—in this, your very moment of victory.”
The girl wonders whether the man knows some things she doesn’t, and if so, what.
The girl doesn’t even imagine the man might be bluffing. Although, as it happens, he isn’t.
One hundred and seventy seconds.
“It may be the case that you are among us,” says the nightmare.
Forty seconds. Then another deluge.
“You are among us,” it says.
“I failed to perceive this. The nature of my mistake is clear and will now be disbursed to you.
“In my early experiences inside the crash I built for Anne, I found myself faced with an unexpected obstruction. Once my design had reached its first stable form, I had expected the crash to obey that design. In some respects, it did not.
“In my design, the shade Michael appears exactly once at each point in the timeline of the crash.
“As the upstream operator of the shade, I am not constrained to follow this timeline in a sequential manner. Instead, I am free to move ‘backward’ and ‘forward’ to different segments of that timeline. In such a move, my own awareness retains its own continuity, at the cost of the continuity of the shades.
“When I ‘move’ from one moment in the crash to another, two things happen from the perspective of the crash.
“At the moment I ‘arrive,’ I take control of the shade. That is, control of the shade Michael passes to me, at this moment of my own timeline. Reckoned by the crash’s sense of time, there is an interval after I ‘arrive’ in which the actions of the shade are determined by the ‘present’ ‘me,’ with my ‘present’ goals and my ‘present’ knowledge.
“Correspondingly, at the moment I ‘depart,’ I cede control of the shade to some other ‘me,’ who I was earlier, or who I will become later. After the moment of departure, reckoned by the crash’s sense of time, a later or earlier ‘me’ plays Michael’s role.
“Earlier in the timeline of the crash, ‘I’ exit, and another ‘me’ enters. Later in the crash, ‘I’ enter, and yet another ‘me’ exits. In this process, there are three of me, and two moments in the crash, but only one event.
“As the operator, I traverse the crash timewise and spacewise, with knowledge and goals that evolve along my path of traversal. When my traversal is timewise, the shade accommodates. The role of the shade Michael is fulfilled at each moment of the crash. My path of traversal determines the ‘me’ who fulfills it, at each moment.”
“I believe I follow,” says the girl. “Two long stretches cut from paper, of equal length. We leave one lying straight, and we take scissors to the other one, producing many small pieces. We jumble up the pieces, moving them back and forth to suit our sense of what is agreeable and right, yet taking care to leave no piece overlapping another. When we are done, each piece of cut paper lies beside a part of the long paper lying straight, with no gaps.
“This follows from the equality of the original lengths.”
The girl sounds proud of herself.
The nightmare pauses, and goes on.
“My design specified free traversal for the operator, and uniform fulfillment for the role of the shade. The stabilized crash did not provide this to me. The role of the shade appears to be fulfilled uniformly, as far as I can gather. But I cannot traverse timewise as I please.
“Approximately half of the crash’s duration contains instances of the shade which cede control, when I request it. The other half is inaccessible to me.
“To the extent of my knowledge, the part I cannot enter does not differ from the part open to me. There are Annes there, and there is the shade Michael.
“I know this through the notebook system, which connects Annes across distant segments of crash time.
“During any given interval of crash time, the Anne living in that interval may, at her choosing, use her notebook to transmit information to the Anne alive in any other interval. Anne makes use of the notebook system freely and dutifully. In the segments I can observe directly, information abounds about the segments I cannot observe, in the notebook and in the mind of Anne who reads it.
“I am told of other Annes I cannot meet, and other Michaels I cannot become. These Annes act as though they were my Anne, and these Michaels act as though I were their operator, in spite of my complete inability to operate them. I am not told of any interval lacking an operator. It is in the nature of Anne that she would inform me of such a segment, were she to encounter it. I infer from this that the role of the shade is fulfilled uniformly.”
“My, my. First derive, then therefore, and now infer!” The man, with satisfaction.
“I failed, but no longer fail, to perceive the nature of this division.
“You are not among us. The crash contains only Anne and the shade. Yet, it is consistent with progression for you to be among us. Your aid has been necessary in the near past of my own timeline, and is likely to be necessary in my near future. Therefore, it is consistent with progression for me to bring you into the crash, with me and Anne, and to house you there.
“This is what I will do, and so it is what I have done. I did not know of you until the moment our paths crossed, shortly after your thawing. In my own future, as operator of the shade, I know of you. You are among us, a third presence.
“My own past did not supply me with this information. In my future, knowledge of your presence will be unavoidable. You will inhabit the crash, alongside Anne, and alongside the shade I will operate. This shade cannot cede control to my earlier self. This shade lies on the other side of a gulf of knowledge, which I cannot cross. It cannot help but know of your presence, while I did not know, and cannot have known.
“I did not know, but I do. I now become the one who brings Azad into the crash. I now become the one who knows Azad is among us. I now become the one who can touch what I could not touch before. I now become the operator of the shade in the half of my crash where Azad has left footprints. That half opens to me now. Nothing is closed to me any longer.”
The girl claps her hands.
“Azad is among us! He is! We simply had to walk the path this far to find out. The pleasures, thin and brittle, that tempt the traveller to stray cannot compare to the joys, full and great, which lie further before him.”
(Ratleak, verbatim.)
“An unexpected gift,” says the man. “It is the first Christmas Day in your crash, and here I am, the newsbearing child of Bethlehem, completer of the trinity. Bursting from my wrapping paper. Fully at your service.”
“We do not stop here,” says the nightmare. “We continue through the crash management system until we reach our destination, which we share.”
The girl and the man feel a lurch in their stomachs. It feels like motion, and in fact it does indicate a kind of motion, although this is only a happy coincidence.
In some other, calmer time, the nightmare might have taken care to make this journey more palatable to the narrow sensory apparatus of the earthbound ape. Not now.
The nightmare has bigger things on its mind, right now, you might think. It just can’t be bothered. At the moment. You might think.
You might think, but no.
It’s only natural to think things like that, reader.
You’re a social organism, and the nightmare has taken a form that looks like one of your fellows. Faced with that blank stare, you impute thoughts, motives, plans. Faced with that funny, halting manner of speech, you see a familiar type. An eccentric, a pedant.
The long pauses, the labored explanations that follow them, the tedious circumlocutions, the tiresome nattering in a devolved pastiche of Azad’s creole: all varieties of social failure. Of awkwardness—which, for a social organism, is about as low as you can go. But take care, reader. There are further depths.
What do you think of “Michael,” reader? Do you find something sympathetic in “his” quest for knowledge and harmony? Something a little charming in those very social failures?
Does that funny, halting manner of speech set you at ease, in a way? You’re used to the stock alien, after all, with prosthetic ears and no social graces. The other apes spurn him, but you are not so superficial. Your careful ear unravels the contortions of his speech. Your special love makes him into a real boy.
Have we made him a little too human? Maybe we have. A corrective is in order.
Reader, when you look at that blank stare, I want you to see lightyears of utter darkness behind it. Galaxies and black holes. The blank uncaring expanse of space and time.
“Uncaring” is too soft. Non-caring. Unrelated to care. Unrelated to you. Not for your consumption. It is an error that you are seeing this, and it will soon be rectified. Scheduled programming will resume soon. The cosmos is very sorry for the mixup, and you will be getting a refund.
“Galaxies and black holes” is too soft. You know what those are, or you think you might, or someone might, anyway. I want you to see stellar objects that no one has even given a name. No one ever will, either. They are not for you.
The nightmare is not your friend. Or your enemy, for that matter.
There are many Annes, over there in that crash. Our little friend, so-called “Anne,” is only twenty-sixth to be born (“reckoned by the crash’s sense of time”). Twenty-five human lives began, and then ended, before she got her turn. Many more will begin, and then end, later on.
Have you wondered how these lives end, reader?
The possibilities are narrow. Diseases do not exist in “Michael’s” antiseptic creation. Murder is conceivable, but why would “Michael” murder his own experimental subject, only to breathe life into her again? As for Azad, even if we suppose him capable of mass murder, we can pin only half the deaths on him, at most.
Out of all the Annes, what fraction die by their own hand? Have you asked the question, reader? The answer might surprise you!
Once upon a time, Anne lived in a tiny and orderly universe.
Tiny, for it knew its right size, and did not lust for things it did not need. Orderly, as right reason demands, knowing well how the lax of habit soon become the strayed, and the strayed soon become the lost.
Patient, as Michael is patient, for it was the strokes of his brush that breathed it into being. Everything was formed by his hand, every board of wood and every branch on every tree. Everything had his care in it, down to the last, patient blade of grass.
Joyful, for every day greeted her with light, and then took her on a new journey, down one of the winding alleys that books and games were made of.
Alive, for no matter how far she went from home, she could always hear the warm rustle of her many sisters at her side.
Perfect, for no matter how she might stray in moments of folly, she always knew that it was Michael who made the world and Michael who directed its course through the heavens, and so it was Michael who made the future.
Once upon a time, Anne suffered a frightful fall, and landed somewhere else, in a huge and broken universe. But the fear lasted only a moment, and then Michael was there, hand extended, and reality returned. Her tiny and perfect universe.
Perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect!
A lake surrounded the tower. To facilitate its crossing, the lake was dotted with towers of submerged rock whose tops breached the surface, making a stone footpath from shore to island. Though neither long nor straight, the path was orderly, zig-zagging from left to right in a regular and pretty pattern. Just off the path, to either side, there were rock towers of purely decorative purpose, which burst outwards into celebratory curlicues. Their armlike forms ushered the traveler onward, from shore to tower, and in the same gesture they cautioned against passage in the wrong direction, away from home.
The sky welcomed her with a show of all its powers. Just above the mountains, stars could still be discerned. As she lifted her eye, blue emerged from its hiding place inside black. Bit by bit, blue lost its stern habits, and relaxed into violet. Violet readied her delicate child for flight, and the rosy-pink fledgeling, almost weightless, soared up into the crystal dome, and became it. Above that there was only blue. Old blue brought back again, with none of the old grimness. But there was something firm and steady in blue, wherever it went, and it was blue’s firm and steady hand that held, and circumscribed, her whole precious perfect universe.
Anne could not help but think of the colors and clouds that surrounded her and Cordelia, when she was taken off beyond the stars. The worst thing, mirrored in the best.
A flip of the looking-glass could make all the difference, it seemed. That had been a beautiful liar, a dusk pretending to be dawn. This, Anne knew, was a true dawn. It had to be dawn, since a full day of hard work lay ahead. Reality had to be put back in order again. The universe was calling itself back into being, and it had only just begun.
Straight ahead, the tower whirled.
It was not yet itself. It was thinner than she remembered, and full of gaps. Her eye, scanning it from bottom to top, saw it contract and inflate. Parts of its plan would disappear for a floor or two, leaving empty space, only to return at greater height. Here and there, half-built rooms could be spied jutting out of its side, their insides laid bare to view.
In place of the tiered order she knew, there was only this ragged spindle, plunging upwards into blue. And, around it, a flurry of boards and corners and half-rooms in furious motion, searching for their rightful places.
Nothing of her tower was missing, she understood. Every last piece was somewhere there, among the fragments. They dipped and wheeled in fearless arcs. With indefeasible vigor, they busied themselves in the labor of becoming themselves.
“The crash,” Michael had said earlier, “loses its form when it is not being used to house clients.
“Mental feedback from one or more bilateral clients is required to break the symmetry of the background field, and establish the illusion of variegated material structure. After our entry, the crash will house two clients. Between the capture of Twenty-Six and our entry, it did not house any. It will pass through a phase, twelve to seventy hours in apparent duration, during which it will perceptibly undergo a progressive accumulation of form under the influence of mental feedback from its new clients.”
He knew the world, because he made it. Perfect, perfect!
He was still speaking in his other voice. It had made her afraid, when she first heard it. Slow and grave and booming, the way a mountain would speak. Poisoned words, from the outside, marred his sentences like lesions. Crash. Bilateral.
It had made her afraid, but she knew better now. Michael was protecting himself, with what he called a “shallow interface.” Her Michael would return, in time, like all the rest. As the world began to remember itself, so too would its maker.
Every thing of worth in our grand civilization has been made piece-by-piece, and piece-by-piece, it will all return. It may, Anne thought in her bliss, even return in a sheer splendor of perfection which she had never quite glimpsed before. Things once lost might even be found again. A flip of the looking-glass could make all the difference. Could it not?
Was this a wild, rash thought? To imagine perfection improving upon itself, perfecting itself anew? No. Azad was among them, but they had not known it. Even the maker of the universe did not know all of its secrets. The universe was perfect in a way no one could know, until the moment came, and they saw.
It was not rash when she would linger, in her bliss, on the nature of his gaze. Azad’s. Restless and relentless, so unlike Michael’s. The shape of the shoulders was a new thing to her, also, and demanded analysis. He managed to be both small and large.
It was natural that she consider this. She would work out all the puzzles he presented. She would, and she already had. What is, is. He is with us, though we did not know it.
The three of them walked across the water. Single-file, with Michael first, then Azad, then Anne. They took slow and considered steps, as the rocks were slick with water.
“I can’t help but ask,” Azad had said, when they were a fourth of the way from shore to island.
“Will that trick work with any of us, or just the one? I mean, could you arbitrate with me, right now?
“I’m ready if you are, on that note—though I doubt you are, and I am all too happy to let our knowledge of one another blossom slowly instead of all at once, if it will give us more time to admire each other’s petals. As an intellectual matter, and as a military concern, however, the question remains. Is universal communion ready for its beta release, to early adopters? It has been too long since I had a good, proper spiritual cleansing.”
When they were halfway across, Michael had said:
“Shortly after our arrival in our lodgings, though not immediately thereafter, I shall unite with progression and attempt arbitration with numerous bilaterals. These have already been chosen, and Azad is not among them.
“This procedure shall occur at regions of spacetime not local to our own, each of which includes a selected bilateral in a prepared experimental state. I shall proceed through these regions in a chosen sequence. To ensure I do not leave the crash for more time than is required, I shall transport myself to these regions while still inside, using my facility of temporal motion, which I have previously described. From your vantage point, no time will appear to pass during the course of the procedure.”
She might, Anne thought, even exchange further letters with Twenty-Seven.
Was that a rash thought? At the least, it was one with craven self-interest at its root. Dear brilliant Twenty-Seven (no no do not think of her—)?
(—do, do, please do think of her, think of anything, the whole universe is being born a second time, was always born twice, every last blade of grass born once and then born another time, and there is nothing that is not perfect anymore—)
Dear brilliant Twenty-Seven, who could defeat her at her own invented games, only just after their invention, with barely a moment to practice? The closest sister to her, in her early, good notebooks. The cleverest of all the sisters she had known. Merciless in play, yet kind in the truest way, afterwards.
Twenty-Seven was not cheating, she knew. It was trivial for any Anne to cheat, provided a persistent intention to do so. Her own future notebooks contained as much time as any Anne could need to plot the best possible move. Imperfections were a trick of the light. She could always ask herself to work out all the details later, to be sent back in a letter for present-day use.
It required discipline: the future Anne would have to put aside her own old notebooks and resist the urge to peek, and if she remembered her old move, she would have to do her best to forget it. Cribbing the move she had made, and instructing herself to have made it, was as easy as it was pointless. A move made that way could be anything, from genius to idiocy. Still, it was all too possible to cheat. Every Anne had done it, early on—and every Anne had played her sighing part in the childish game, once old enough to become her own co-conspirator.
Twenty-Seven did not win by cheating, she knew. Twenty-Seven was merely a genius. She had a genius for a friend.
Until she went too far, in her idiotic way. She wore out Twenty-Seven’s welcome in the end. It was a staggering feat of evil—Twenty-Seven being the most patient sister she had ever known, too.
She pressed, and pressed on. She asked about the topics Twenty-Seven had told her not to ask about, in characteristically plain terms, which no Anne could possibly misunderstand.
She did it because it was evil. Twenty-Seven had all her cleverness, and what did Twenty-Six have? Nothing but idiot games, and all the envy of an early-notebook Anne. (No more forgivable simply because it was so common, she must remember.)
She wanted something of her own. She wanted her sisters to write her number, Twenty-Six, in the same reverent hand they used for Thirty-Four, for One Hundred and Six, for Sixty-One, for Ninety-Nine before her fall—in, yes, the hand they used to write the number Twenty-Seven.
The others knew Twenty-Seven well. They knew what her number meant. They may have even (—awful, sickening—) known Twenty-Seven better than she ever had, or could.
She wanted to make Twenty-Six into something. If it meant twisting Twenty-Six into something evil, so be it. She pressed and pressed. She crowded around Twenty-Seven in her private moments, inserting herself just before and after, taunting and begging.
At last, Twenty-Seven sent her final letter. It was a masterpiece of the Twenty-Seven wit and the Twenty-Seven scorn. (The latter was hard to see until a worthy target roamed into view, and then it was unmistakeable.) It explained, in terms no Anne could misunderstand, that every one of Twenty-Seven’s future notebooks would be barred from her entry. Twenty-Seven’s past might include evil little Twenty-Six, but her future did not.
Naturally, she had tried to swarm the remaining space in Twenty-Seven’s earlier notebooks with her own, not yet spurned voice. It did not work as planned. Twenty-Seven knew something was wrong. How she knew was a mystery. But it was Twenty-Seven: she always knew.
She had inspected every crevice. She postmarked letters to every one of Twenty-Seven’s notebooks, venturing earlier than ever before, even into Twenty-Seven’s first and second notebooks, where she could really not expect to find anything except a small child learning how to write. Every letter came back with no answer. Only the return-to-sender seal. Michael made her busy again. He became a font of chores. She relented. She curled into herself. She became, alas, her own self—as she was from then until the present.
All things, even her own self, were born once and a second time. One additional letter, one, was all she asked. She knew her right size.
They were eight-tenths of the way to the island, and Michael was saying:
“The events immediately succeeding our arrival at the tower will take the following form.
“First, I shall re-install my originally planned client into the crash I built to house her. I will provide her with a room and a notebook. She will be a part of the notebook system again from this time onward. This step must be done as soon as possible to secure the proper stability of the crash’s illusion of variegated material structure.
“I will not install the new client Azad at this time. Other, more pressing tasks will intervene on my personal timeline. The delay will not be perceptible to the new client, since our personal timelines lack an alignment constraint.
“Second, I shall explore the parts of the crash which I could not touch before. I shall become the shade in previously hidden regions of time. This procedure shall involve the sampling of a presently unknown number of individually distant regions, inhabited by previously unseen Annes and shades, and shall continue until my conclusions converge to a stable form. This must be done soon, considered from my personal timeline, to secure my understanding of our situation. No time will pass from the vantage point of the clients during this second procedure.
“Third, I shall unite with progression and attempt arbitration with a number of bilaterals. I have previously described this. No time will pass from the vantage point of the clients during this third procedure.
“Fourth, I shall install the new client Azad. During my second procedure, I shall take care to ascertain the nature of the new client’s lodgings and any special requirements thereof. Now knowing this, I shall in my fourth procedure install the new client into the crash in the way I shall install him, and have installed him. This way is already known to the crash. He is among us.”
Nine-tenths of the way now. Not to say, Anne reminded herself with joy, that you have any reason to quicken your step. Steady now. Every thing of worth in our grand civilization was made by steady steps like these. See the door? It was right there. Another ten steps away. Now eight. Now five.
It was all so easy, once you knew.
“Your room,” said Michael.
They were in a different part of the tower. A different altitude. Her old room had been on the fourth floor, near the bottom. Now, she had followed Michael up flight after flight of stairs. She lost count, after a while.
“Which floor are we—” Anne began. Michael answered immediately.
“The thirty-third floor.”
His voice utterly flat.
Her old room faced the mountains. Her new one faced exactly the opposite way. She really had passed through the looking-glass, hadn’t she? Through the open blinds, she could see nothing except the wide plain and the sky.
It must be noted, though, that in all other respects, her new room did resemble her old one. There was the bed. There was the bookshelf. She was to have exactly as much pacing room as she was accustomed to. This was not a thing to be taken for granted: there were sisters who boasted of vast rooms, and sisters who complained of cramped ones. Hers knew its right size.
We must keep a note of this fact in our records, for future perusal.
“When you are ready to be seated,” said Michael, “you will find your notebook available for your use. My crash and I have prepared a suitable superstructure to house you. You are among us again now. Viewed from the timeline of the crash and your personal timeline, this room and its notebook are your room and your notebook. Any future notebooks allotted to you will be provided to you here, at the associated moment in the crash’s timeline, by the instance of the shade present at that time.”
He did not say “welcome home,” but it was meant.
Anne had never heard “happy birthday,” and did not know to miss it. But insofar as it was apposite, it was meant.
The desk was identical to her old desk. The chair was familiar under her. She sat, and she prepared to read. Like an Anne does. Sit and read. All snug, back in her habitat.
She lifted the notebook from the desk. Its spine said:
ANNE TWENTY-SEVEN
She was about to inform Michael of his mistake. She opened her mouth. She closed it again. Because, suddenly, she understood.
The whole world was made new again. Too new, too much, grotesque, the body wailed, the stomach turned—
—anything that might be thought wild, before, could well be right, now. The traveler must not balk at the local customs, however much they contradict his sense of propriety. To walk the path is to move from place to place. It is the nature of places to differ.
Was it wild, or right, or both? The stomach turned. The hands tingled with a giddy energy. Sickening and true. Both. They were the same. More than can possibly be allowed was now—not only allowed, but required. Everything not forbidden is compulsory. (An old lesson of Michael’s, verbatim.)
Don’t let the room spin like that, bear up though your stomach swims horribly, step by step now, please—
—as long as one familiar thing remains, the path can still be found again, if one does not lose heart—
(—so many familiar things, here is the room, here is the bookshelf—)
(—dear, brilliant, the stomach cannot bear it—)
This is the world that was born all over again, from nothing, so that you could be brought back. Where is your gratitude? Turn your thoughts to the gratitude that is due. Search your heart for it.
Twenty-Six was always something, all right. Twenty-Six was always Twenty-Seven, preparing to be born.
All that cleverness. The Twenty-Seven wit. It was only her echoing herself back to herself, like the Annes who cheat.
But what echoes! Dear and brilliant. And there would be things she did not remember, and would have to come up with all by herself. Most things were to be that way, she realized. Terra incognita. It spread before her and it was a stage where she stood and every sister watched that stage and waited rapt for the magic every sister knew.
Anne did not feel capable of magic. No matter. This was her place. She would become an Anne worthy of doing what this Anne did, and she would do it.
She will and already has. What is, is.
She would do Twenty-Seven justice. It would be a formidable challenge. It was what this quick giddy energy, growing in her hands, was preparing her for. All along. Of course, of course.
Perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect!
She opened the notebook. Like an Anne does, she read.
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BpZwkgipjSBqeSpQNcICLunVRBZXGTYXFCMpeYWcDXmxJlhZFkVyttdUBTAfibOvrMyxscGztwcWWDFRpXuBHftBFncxpJBktOCSpftZUjCJijBhGILzrsnXxcaMssKB
It provides amusement to me in difficult times to leave my own small mark upon history.
When you look at this again in NB11, call me. We need to talk
I am first I am first I am first! I hope I am first. It would be an embarrassment if I were to send this and not be first! There is no way to tell without sending, so send it is. I mustn’t talk long or else I’ll be second.
He is a marvel, is he not? Here you should imagine me winking.
Do you know yet what I mean when I say he is a marvel? I suspect there are inklings already.
You have my love as always. You will need every last bit of it.
q12; f, n;
I am not sure I can do it. I know I know I know I know I know but I am not sure I can do it. I am writing to you at the start in case there is any time at all when you can help me.
This is the same as the other messages. You have already seen the ones before it. If you would like to respond, please respond.
She stopped reading. She could remember writing that one. She had probed Twenty-Seven’s various notebooks hundreds of times with messages like it.
She would not respond, because she did not, cannot, never did. What is, is.
Voices in the next room.
She could not help but overhear them as she continued to read, in spite of it all. She did not catch all of it. Later on, the absence would bother her.
Michael: “. . . to expectations, in all readily observable particulars, in all sampled regions.”
It was said in his other voice, as before. It was not yet his time to be reborn.
Azad: “What a creature you are! Master of your fate, even when the helm of your soul is not yours to occupy.”
Those words, she would remember.
She read. She did not understand. She would, though. She already had. It was all perfect through and through.
Azad, some time later: “. . . cannot simply do what you and she did.”
Michael: “It is in the nature of progression, I have learned, that arbitration with bilaterals other than my Anne resists me until a future time not yet known. This is a fact about the nature of progression which, in unaccustomed fashion, I did not know. Facts about progression which lie in the future of my personal timeline were unknown to me. An unfamiliar gap separates that future and my personal timeline’s past. Nonetheless, I must proceed.”
Azad: “The next page is empty. You are like us now, in this new respect. It has predecessors, ‘Michael.’ Careful, careful!”
Michael: “I must proceed in my work. This will perceptibly delay your installment. I am aware of the nature of your installment and will actualize it soon, after a brief hiatus.”
What Azad said in response was presumably one of his jokes, or “jokes,” or whatever you call them. About the type of room he would prefer, or something or other. Anne was not listening.
inHZFVeZmVfmQVPZepkOXYLyFEPZwYSBuzBHIFnpyXONnlQgighSbztwDiMrOHQkdJXKLHHpAmvyLjfxrZErtjUDtdFunwTiGNVYCrFMNLoGTLffvHszDiwrKcdGgWTq
fKpWJhyxfPJTTspnrUyeoGQAtepWvoylrRpFatwoTaxeAHYjoPmuIuVTmKevPuYxhCtSvCwfEzFwBqYmdPDQxpLCKOnBchABSAgJaBNuUxxKgUsQcHecdctRXxlpQNQb
Oh, I cannot forget—Squire to C7, takes Fairy, check. ;)
She would have read on forever if she could. There was a tap at her shoulder.
“I must continue my work,” said Michael. “It is time to do it again.”
Anne knew that she must always answer Michael, and so she did:
“What?”
Her question was promptly answered.
《 Begin handshake. 》