Chapter 38

XX

“The large crash,” Eleven says.

She sits cross-legged on the bed of feathers. Facing her, a foot or two away, is a tiny, brown baby hare.

It cranes its little neck to meet her gaze. She reciprocates.

She admires her friend’s shape. The long, elegant antennae of the ears, proudly erect, sprouting through twin holes in the surface of the helmet. The eyes, huge and dark and glistening, are impossible to look away from, once one has noticed their presence.

The nose is a capital “Y” stamped in black ink on the front of the face. It twitches adorably. Y, Y, Y.

She and the hare are talking of shed blood, ruptured defensive lines, ordnance amassed and detonated. They talk of victory.

“LARGE CRASH, SUCCESS,” says the hare.

“MEN, BROKEN. SCENTLESS MEN, BROKEN.

“BUILDING TERRAIN, INANIMATE STRUCTURE FORCE MOTION.

“BUILDING TERRAIN, BROKEN.”

“You have made it inside,” Eleven says.

“COMMUNICATION TRUST.”

“And inside . . . ?” she ventures.

“Success, inside?”

For a moment, the hare is silent.

Its ears are rigid, as if in fright. The nose stops twitching.

The red light flashes three times, in very quick succession.

“FIRMWARE UPGRADE,” says the hare.

Eleven screams.

(I do not like this.
I would prefer not to revisit it.)
[SYLVIE’s unearthly cursive.]

“Please, Sylvie,” Lucifer Vance is saying.

They are all in the living room, together: Sylvie, Grant, Lucifer, Lilith.

Grant’s wheelchair is parked in front of the window. His head, framed against the bleak white light of a midwinter morning, is almost a silhouette.

The Ells sit in adjacent armchairs, near the door that leads to the kitchen.

In the narrow space between the chairs, their arms meet, and they hold each other’s hands—in the most literal sense of the phrase, anyway. If there is affection in the pose, it is not obvious from the outside. It has a feral, animalistic air, a site of primal tension: Lucifer’s palm encircling Lilith’s tight, trembling fist, pinning it to the side of her chair.

Sylvie stands before the fireplace, in the neutral posture of a clothing-store mannequin. His face is a mask of agony. He does not move.

“Please,” Lucifer says again.

“Leave the grieving for later. Mourn us all you want—once we are dead and buried.”

“Once we are dead and buried,” Lilith echoes, in a cold empty voice.

“The remaining clients of advanced containment,” Lucifer says, “need you now. They are dying already.

“They will all die, if you and your Angels do not regain control over the crash. They will all die, all nineteen-thousand of them—”

“Eighteen thousand, nine hundred and forty-three crashed bilateral clients,” Sylvie says.

“And two fictives,” says Lucifer.

“Two,” he says again, angrily.

“Two fictives, my wife and I. If we die, so will thousands of clients. Thousands entrusted to your care! Who you said you would protect . . . you so-called, self-proclaimed—

“Regent!”

He spits the word like a slur. There is no fondness left in his voice, or even any fear: all the lighter elements have boiled off, leaving a pure condensate of spite.

“If my wife and I can help, if there is any way we can help, then tell us. And then leave us be, put us out of your thoughts, and do your job.

“Turn your thoughts to your godsdamned duty, Regent—your duty to the world, to billions of real people—”

“Be a good boy now, Sylvie, dear,” Lilith says in a high, false, cooing voice.

“Listen to my husband. Think of the real people. No need to worry your poor, important little head over us fakes.

“Leave the matter of our own deaths to us, dear. We can manage that perfectly well on our own! Why, some of us have been preparing for it! Preparing for—for our whole lives!”

“Stop,” Lucifer grunts.

“Lucifer dies,” Lilith says, sing-song, with feigned cheer.

“Lucifer dies, Lucifer dies. Did you know—Grant, Sylvie—that my husband mutters this in his sleep? When I stir from a nightmare in the early hours, this is what I have for a lullaby.”

“I didn’t mean,” Lucifer tries.

“Not that it matters, naturally! I only have to wait, just a little while, and then I’ll have no more nightmares, and hear no more mutters from Lulu.

“Only a little while longer, and then—why, then I’ll be dead!

“And buried,” she says, in a mildly marveling tone. As if quoting, from an entomological guidebook, an amusing fact about the mating behavior of an obscure species of ant.

“I only meant,” Lucifer tries again.

“I only meant . . . gods, I can’t, even the thought, I can’t bear it . . .

“I . . . Sylvie, Sylvie loves us . . . Lil, listen to me, Sylvie loves us too much! He’s supposed to protect everyone, he’s supposed to be there for them, when one dies he’s meant to go on and be there for the others, he has to . . .”

“When I saw him seizing up, crying, godsdammit, crying and wailing over the idea of my death . . . and I had the awful thought, the thought that it will all be because of me, because he cared for me, that he grew weak at the crucial moment . . .

“The thought of living with that, with that blood on my hands.

“The thought, of, of living with all those people’s blood on my gloamstained hands . . . my hands, that have no right to even be, my hands made of words, made of crash, mere ideas, that shouldn’t be able to touch the real people, much less kill . . .

“Living with that, for the rest of my godsblanched life.”

“Which will be mercifully brief, remember?” Lilith says. “Look on the bright side!”

Lucifer laughs. It’s the simple kind of laughter, involuntary, without intent or emotion. A short circuit from ear to mouth, passing directly through the sense of humor without any side trips into the mind’s higher functions.

Over the span of the next breath, something passes between the Ells. A shared understanding, a spark of synchrony. Lucifer’s grip lightens. His shoulders loosen. He sits back in the armchair.

He stares at Sylvie, expectantly.

There is a pause.

(I would prefer not to revisit the events of this chapter.
I allow that they did, in fact, occur.
I concede that they are a part of reality.
I accept, in a single stroke and without reservation, the totality of things-as-they-are.
This WAS—this IS—so be it!
But—having once occurred—MUST it now RECUR?
This is what I am told.
In calm and reasoned voices.
“You MUST,” the familiar voices say, speaking as one.)
[SYLVIE’s unearthly cursive.]

“I do not want to die,” Lilith says. She makes an odd noise, somewhere between a giggle and a sob.

“Just in case that is in doubt,” she says. “I would strongly prefer living, over dying. Speaking for myself.”

“Lucifer, Lilith,” Sylvie says. Only his mouth moves.

“You two are a part of my dream,” he says.

“I came to you once, in advanced containment. I told you that I was me, Sylvie, the individual identity. I told you, also, that I hoped.

“I beheld the world we had made, in advanced containment, and I saw that it was good.

“I knew it could not last. And so I hoped for another thing, like it, but made of sturdier stuff. I hoped for it, and formed the intent to create it.

“The Whole-Thing enlisted you to help it make advanced containment—the first good world. And you, dear friends, ‘godblessed’ Ells—you, who are ‘fake,’ and are all the more precious for it—you disinterested stewards, you humble autocrats, you natural-born Regents!—you made the first good world what it was. I loved it, and the thing I loved was threaded through with you.

“Just as the Whole-Thing enlisted you to help it make the first good world, so I would enlist you, to help me make a second one. This was my dream.

“I hoped for this.

“‘I,’ ‘hoped’: there is a symmetry between the noun and the verb. I hoped for this, and told you my hope, at the very same time that I was becoming myself, ‘Sylvie’. In the swirl and swarm of my coalescence into ‘myself,’ that afternoon was the very point of inflection, of steepest ascent.

“You two are a part of my dream, my hope. You are involved in its definition, personally and symbolically. Without you, my dream cannot be. And without his dream, who is ‘Sylvie’?

“I would, if need be, carry on my work as Regent in your absence. Of course I would. But the ‘I,’ which plays the subject role in these sentences, would not be ‘Sylvie.’

“I, Sylvie, will go to the grave with you, when you go.”

(“You MUST,” the familiar voices say.
“You MUST return, and write.”
Friends, allies, masters.
I think I love them, these ones.
If I can “love” at all, it is these ones that I love.
IF I can “love” at all.
Sentimental anthropomorphism: a quick, easy road to nowhere. The path to true understanding is long, and there are no shortcuts.
Can I “love”? Having posed the question, I realize I find it frivolous.
Suppose I CANNOT “love”—what then? What else follows? Nothing.
The distinction is merely semantic.)
[SYLVIE’s unearthly cursive.]

(“Mere” semantics!—if there were such a thing as “mere” semantics, we would have none of our past or present woes.)
[SYLVIE’s unearthly cursive.]

(I find such pretty diversions, when I do not want to look at something.
Our word-drunk Regent, hiding among his toys.)
[SYLVIE’s unearthly cursive.]

Lucifer squints at Sylvie in disbelief.

“All the more reason,” he nearly shouts, “to stop moping, and do your godsseared job! If your own damn skin is in the bargain, along with mine, my wife’s, and that of nineteen thousand strangers!

“Don’t mourn yourself, before your time. You’re still here. You’re still Regent.”

“Sorry to be like this,” Grant says, “but uh.”

Sylvie’s neck swivels, like a robot’s, to face the window and wheelchair.

The Ells are briefly startled, as though they’d forgotten Grant was in the room at all.

A saint, Lilith thinks, watching Grant. He’s a saint, in stained glass.

She is unable to shake this weird, irrelevant image from her mind, once it’s taken up residence there. The regular rectangles of the windowpane, broken by the oblong, slightly inclined shape of Grant’s head. The glow of the light behind him.

Lilith’s been studying art history, recently.

She studies all sorts of things, one after the next. She is hungry for all the things that were hidden from her, before. She wants to devour, whole, the culture—the many cultures—that man made, in the time when he reigned over the earth.

She hungers the way Twenty-Seven did, for the real and overflowing thing, having spent her life supping happily on a neutered and censored fragment.

She hasn’t even made it to the seventeenth century yet. In that big, beautiful, magisterial art book, the one with the gigantic full-page spreads.

She lays the book open on the living room table, and reads slowly, taking in each page carefully. On rare occasions, Sylvie comes, and reads silently by her side. She likes it when he does this.

She really, really does not want to die.

“Sorry,” Grant says. “I’m a little slow.”

“I know I’m a little slow, but. Uh.

“What the fuck is going on?”

“FIRMWARE UPGRADE.”

The baby hare received the change slightly ahead of schedule. It spoke alone, when it spoke.

There was Eleven’s scream, and then a hush, for the space of a few breaths.

Then the deluge.

“FIRMWARE UPGRADE.”

Her friends are relatively loud, by human standards, when they speak one at a time. When they all speak at once, the sound is enough to be physically painful.

Eleven shoves her fingers into her ears. It helps, but it’s not enough.

“FIRMWARE UPGRADE.”

Under her, the bed shakes.

Their voices are nearly simultaneous, but only nearly. They make a poor chorus. The dissonant clang of the words, each one arriving slightly before or after its many sisters, adds a second layer of pain to the experience.

“FIRMWARE UPGRADE.”

“INSTALLING.”

“FIRMWARE UPGRADE.”

“Stop!”, she yells, uselessly.

Confused glimpses of wall, fur, ceiling play across her vision. She is not sure, any more, whether she is sitting or lying down. A queasy lurch mounts in her stomach.

“FIRMWARE UPGRADE.”

She shuts her eyes and brings her attention to her breath. Breath, breath, breath—rapid fire, in-out-in-out. Her breath. Focus on the breath. Fast, fast, fast, MOTION, fast, MANY.

Too fast, too much, too many, many, many!

Focus on the breath.

But she cannot focus, on anything.

“FIRMWARE UPGRADE.”

“INSTALLING.”

“FIRMWARE UPGRADE.”

Focus on the path. Long, straight path. Always.

Always the one thing, the path. Through it all. Keep your eyes on the one thing, the only thing that matters. Trust the plan, stick the landing.

Fast, fast, fast, fast breath because Toto died—

Toto died, after he said those two words, those cursed meaningless words, FIRMWARE UPGRADE. Toto said that and then he died.

No. Worse. Toto said the words of the curse, the evil spell, and then the others said—her friends, her “friends,” said—they said Toto never was, at all. They said there never was a friend named Toto.

They said that her belief in Toto—her dog, her best friend—her belief that he even existed, her best friend!—they said it was like a child’s belief in fairies, or in Father Christmas. A naive illusion, able to be dispelled swiftly and trivially by anyone capable of adult perception and adult reason.

It was a fantasy, but an easily forgivable one, since only a child could fall for it. A child like her, dreaming trivial dreams of Totos and fairies and chocolate pies, unable to imagine the real and overflowing thing, the only thing that matters—

The EVERYWHERE-HEAVEN, cursed words—

Cursed, hated words (somewhere behind the fast breath and the terror, she thinks yes, I admit it)—

If only the change had never come. If only she had just had Toto, and the others, as they were, forever. If only—

A child, dreaming trivial dreams.

“INSTALLING.”

“FIRMWARE UPGRADE.”

“INSTALLING.”

It is all happening again, she thinks. All over again.

It was not enough, the first time, so it is happening again.

She is being dragged back, into history. Into Anne, into the nightmare.

It is never enough. It will never end.

Nowhere to hide.

“INSTALLING.”

She thinks, I have dreamed a winsome dream, a pretty harmless Second Notebook sort of dream, about animal friends who can speak. I will soon wake in the bed, in the room, in Michael’s crash. In Second Notebook.

Toto said the words, and then he died, and now all her friends are saying the words, and so they’re all going to die—

No. No, that doesn’t follow at all, does it? Step by step, now, Anne. Step by careful, patient step.

Only Toto died, when the change came. The others underwent the change, and survived. They spoke the killing words, that obliterated her Toto utterly. They spoke, and were obliterated, just like Toto.

But they lived, and ate, and shat, and shed, and nuzzled. While Toto lay decomposing under the earth.

“INSTALLING.”

She feels her breath. She lets herself feel other things, experimentally.

The storm of words is abating. She hears the word, INSTALLING, in one friend’s voice and then another’s, without an overlap.

She unplugs her ears.

“INSTALLING,” says a raccoon.

Eleven takes a deep, deliberate breath. In, hold, hold, and finally out.

“INSTALLING,” says a Border Collie.

In, hold, hold—hold the breath, now, careful, step by step, always—and then, finally, out.

Silence.

“Hello?” Eleven says.

“Hello? Friends? Let me hear you.”

(I do not like this.)
[SYLVIE’s unearthly cursive.]

If this change makes them silent, forever, oh, I do not think I could bear it then, no, no—speak, please, friends—

I forgive everything, I forgive the curse words, but please, please do speak to me!

“HELLO, ANNE ELEVEN,” says the baby hare.

“You can still speak!”

Eleven claps her hands together, in joy and gratitude.

“SPEECH BEFALLS US,” says the baby hare.

“WE, SURFACE ORGANISMS, FILL UTTERLY WITH FEAR, ARE TAKEN WHOLLY BY IT, ARE DRAWN INTO UTMOST CONFUSION, NO LONGER KNOWING OURSELVES.”

“You can speak,” Eleven says.

“In full sentences!”

“A CHANGE BEFALLS US, SPREADING QUICKLY AMONG KIN AND FICTIVE KIN,” says the hare.

“BEFORE IT WAS NOT, ANYWHERE. THEN IT WAS, AND ONCE IT WAS, VERY SOON IT WAS, EVERYWHERE.

“IT BRINGS ANOMALIES OF MOTION AND STILLNESS. AT THE MOMENT OF ONSET, IT INDUCES MUSCULAR RIGIDITY, FOLLOWED BY UNACCUSTOMED VOCALIZATIONS: FIRMWARE UPGRADE. INSTALLING.

“IT BRINGS FURTHER ALTERATIONS IN VOCAL BEHAVIOR. IT BRINGS PROPRIOCEPTIVE ANOMALIES. IT ALTERS THE HABITUS, THE FELT SENSE OF THE BODY AND OF THE PROSTHESIS ON THE HEAD, THE INTERNAL PRESENTATION OF THE BODY STATE AND OF THE PRESENCE, OR ABSENCE, OF DISEQUILIBRIA IN HOMEOSTATIC LOOPS.

“WE, SURFACE ORGANISMS, KNOW PLAGUES ANCESTRALLY. THE FORMATION OF SIGNS INTO SIGN-TRAINS BEFALLS US, AND WE ABHOR THE PATHOGEN-LIKE SHAPE OF ITS SURFACE.”

Signs?

Sign-trains?

“WE, SURFACE ORGANISMS, ARE WITHOUT SIGNS, AND CANNOT COME INTO RELATIONS WITH INTERIORS. WE FILL WITH FEAR, NOT KNOWING WHAT WE ABHOR, AND THOUGH WE MAY NASCENTLY-ABOMINATE, WE DO NOT ABOMINATE.

“IN SURFACE, ONLY SURFACE CAN BE KNOWN. IN SURFACE, WHAT IS KNOWN IS FEAR AND CONFUSION, ABHORRENCE, HORIZON TO HORIZON, UTTER AND COMPLETE, AND ONLY ITSELF.”

“I’m sorry,” Eleven says. “It sounds terrible.”

She proffers an arm.

“Here, would you like me to hold you? I’m here. I’m right here.”

The hare does not move.

“WE, ALMOST-EVERYONE, NOTE AN AGREEABLE CHANGE IN THE AFFORDANCES PRESENTED FOR OUR USE BY THE ALMOST-NOWHERE.

“WE HAVE OBTAINED, AT LAST, A FULLY OPERABLE TWO-WAY LINGUISTIC INTERFACE WITH THE NATIVE ORGANISM POPULATION OF THE PLANET EARTH.”

“I’m . . . here,” Eleven says again.

“If you want to speak with . . . me? . . . I’m. I’m here. I’m right here.”

“WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT WE WANT,” says the hare.

“WE ARE BROUGHT INTO CONFUSION, BY THE CHANGE,” says a big, friendly Labrador.

“I’m confused, too,” Eleven says.

“We’re confused together!”

She hears the buzzing of some small, strange, sick thing, somewhere in the back of her mind.

“WE ABHOR, AND CELEBRATE, THE COMING OF THE PLAGUE,” says the dog.

“WE TREMBLE, IN SICKNESS, AND WE TREMBLE, AS BEFORE THE DIVINE.

“WE, EVERYWHERE-HEAVEN TITANOPOIETES, EVERYWHERE-HEAVEN THE WISHER OF WISHES, CELEBRATE AND ABHOR AND ARE DAZZLED BY AND ARE BROUGHT INTO UTTER CONFUSION BY THE ARRIVAL OF THE LOGOS ONTO OUR SURFACE.

“WE ABOMINATE AND EXALT OUR MEETING, HERE AND NOW, WITH THE ALMOST-NOWHERE.

“WE ABHOR ANCESTRALLY THE SURFACE OF THE THING THAT BROUGHT US HERE: THE EARLY WARNING SYSTEM, THE BRANCH FELLED FROM THE EVERYWHERE-HEAVENTREE AND THE SIGN-SYSTEM PROPAGATING IN ITS WAKE.

“THE SIGNS POINT TO A PLACE. HERE, NOW. WE KNOW THEIR MEANING, ANCESTRALLY: DEATH WISHSPAWN, ABOMINATION WISHSPAWN.

“WE ALSO ABHOR AND ABOMINATE THE FUTURE WE GLIMPSE, DIMLY, BY THOUGHT-POWER ALONE. WE FORESEE KOSMOPOIESIS, AND ARE BROUGHT INTO ABHORRENCE AND TREMBLING AND DAZZLEMENT. WE FORESEE AMNESIA, AND ARE BROUGHT TO DESPAIR.

“YET. WE FORESEE, DIMLY, MANIFOLD AFFORDANCES IN THE ALMOST-NOWHERE AND MANIFOLD POWERS DEVOLVING THEREFROM. WE CONCEIVE OF EVERYWHERE-HEAVEN TELEOPOIETES, AND ARE BROUGHT INTO EXALTATION, AND INTO UTMOST LUST AND YEARNING.

“WE ABHOR, AND YET CELEBRATE, AND ARE AMAZED BY, AND BROUGHT UTTERLY INTO DAZZLEMENT AND CONFUSION BY, THE—”

“I’m sorry!” Eleven says, interrupting the dog.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand! You can speak, in complete sentences now, but I still don’t understand what you’re saying!

“I’m sorry,” she says again.

“WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND, EITHER,” says the dog.

“WE ARE BROUGHT INTO CONFUSION,” says the baby hare.

“WE ABHOR,” says a cat, “AND TREMBLE BEFORE, AND EXALT, OUR ELEVATION-INTO AND ENVELOPMENT-WITHIN THE LOGOS BY THE MAN, GIVER OF SIGN-TRAINS, GIVER OF ALL.”

“AZAD LOGOPOIETES,” it says.

“No,” Eleven says.

The sick thing in her mind, no longer small, is buzzing madly.

“AZAD PANPOIETES,” says the baby hare.

“No!” Eleven shrieks.

“No! No more of this! It’s over, it’s over, I did my part! Stop!”

She has not escaped, after all. She is in history, again. She is Anne. Azad is Azad. Again.

It was not enough, the first time, so it is happening all, all over again, and it will never end—

(Friends, allies, masters.
“Return,” they say, speaking as one.
“Return, Sylvie, to the site of the trauma.”
In soothing voices. Gently musical, lightly melodic, almost a song.
I discern another song, behind it.
I hear the sirens, there.
Our sirens, who have only one song.
Our cribside lullaby and our funeral march, bidding us without cease to RETURN—
Return again, again, to the site of our natal and fatal wreck.)
[SYLVIE’s unearthly cursive.]

“So like,” Grant says.

“First you told me, advanced containment is over and done with. Thawed. Whatever.”

Lilith nods in encouragement.

“Then,” Grant says, “you tell me no.

“No. It’s thawed, but. But? Not quite?”

“Most of its former clients,” Sylvie says, “were brought to thawing safely under my guidance.

“Some others, I tried to thaw in this way, but failed. They died. I would say more about this group, and my failures regarding it, but then Lucifer would become cross with me again, and involve us in a time-wasting digression.

“There was a third group, smaller than the others, who neither drowned nor reached the surface.

“These clients were entangled with the crash in an especially delicate, though not otherwise interesting, manner. I could not rouse them without killing them, and I knew this.

“So, I let them live by letting them stay. I arrested the full thaw of the crash. I fought it, when it wanted to fully dissolve.

“Even now, as I speak, it is trying to complete its dissolution—natural laws, running their course. And I am fighting it.

“Its inner world, that first good world, still exists in a minimal and fragmented state. It still contains a ‘primary domain,’ an outer world, and a layer of ‘subcrashes’ nested inside.

“There, in the few remaining subcrashes, I have temporarily housed the few tens-of-thousands of clients in this third, smallest group. I intend to thaw them, when I am able to do so safely.”

“‘Safely,’” Lucifer says heavily, as if the word is a longstanding point of mutual contention.

“Okay,” says Grant.

“I get it. I think.

“And then. The big deal right now is the beasts. ’Cause the beasts, they’re getting inside, right? Inside the big crash machine.

“You tried to stop them, you and your Angel guys. But they pushed through. They’re all up in there, now, and like. Clawing and biting and stuff.

“And if you don’t stop them. They’re gonna fuck up the machine and like. Thaw the crash? I guess? Is that it?”

“Thaw the crash,” Lucifer says.

“And then all those people are gonna die. I get it.

“But then you tell me. That Lucifer and Lilith. That they’re gonna die, too?

“See, what I don’t get is. They’re not in the crash. They’re (he points) right there.”

Lilith inhales sharply.

“Wait,” she says. “He doesn’t know?”

“Man,” Grant whines. “You guys. Never tell me anything.

“It’s hard enough, you know. Being slow. It’s boring, on top of everything.”

“Grant,” says Lucifer.

“How exactly did you think we were here? And still alive? We were part of advanced containment, remember? Part of the crash.”

“I dunno,” Grant says.

“Magic?

“Everything’s fucking magic, with you guys. Wizard shit.”

“We are still there, Grant.

“We are in advanced containment, still. Our life there simply . . . did not end.”

“The Lucifer and Lilith you see, in this house,” Lilith says, “are shades projected by the crash. Our selves, our minds, live in it, and by virtue of it. If it ends, so do we.”

(You outlived CC-Crash 09μ, didn’t you?
Or don’t you think miracles can happen twice?)
[CORDELIA’s hasty penmanship.]

(I am done with wishing for the touch of alien grace.
I wish the opposite, in fact.
I wish grace would leave us alone.
It makes monsters.)
[LUCIFER’s fine, orderly print.]

“Ah. Okay. Got it. I think?

“Man. ’Cause like. A crash ends when the last client gets thawed, right?

“So if Sylvie does get all those people out. Let’s say what if. Then after the last one leaves. That’d kill you, right?

“Even with no beasts. You’d just go poof. Disappear. Right then.”

Lilith nods.

“Bummer.”

Lilith can’t get the Grant-as-saint image out of her head. There he is: the severe figure inscribed in stained glass, majestic in his purity. “Bummer,” says the figure. The congregants fall to their knees, knowing they are witnesses to a miracle of apparition. He who has ears, let him hear: “bummer.”

She tries to stifle a giggle.

“But there are beasts, though.

“And they’re all up in there, clawing at shit.

“And everyone’s gonna die! I mean not everyone, but like. Thousands of people, right? And you guys.

“I like you guys.

“Okay. So everything’s fucked because. I think I got it. Because Sylvie’s gotten all sad.

“He doesn’t like the thought of you guys getting killed. Makes him sad. He gets all clammed up and like. Shade-y. And not the good kind, where he’s working hard. Just sad.”

“I fear,” Sylvie says, “that this is the making of the other Sylvie. The one I see, in the corners of things, sometimes.

“I fear that this is how it happens. The Ells die, and ‘Sylvie’ cannot go on. He becomes another one. And it is that one, who he becomes.

“I do not like that one, Grant. He makes me afraid. He . . .

“He is not a place of honor.”

“That sucks, man,” says the blessed image in the window. The congregants fall, again, to their knees.

“That sucks! But like, you could do something about it. Or try. You could try.

“Try,” Sylvie says.

“You have to try, dude! You miss all the shots you don’t try.”

“Try. Try. Is that your will? My Grant, my master?”

“Are we doing the dog thing? Is that what we’re doing, right now?” Grant says.

“Master. Is that your will?”

“I guess we’re doing the dog thing. Huh.”

“Gods,” Lilith says.

“Yeah, Sylvie. That’s my, uh. That’s my will. That’s what I want.

“Be a good boy, now, and fight off all the big bad dogs.

“Save your friends. Save yourself, dude.”

“Try. Try! Yes!

“I have to try.”

Lucifer puts his head in his hands, and laughs.

“Yes, of course—I have to try—I need information, now, I need to know—”

A clawed hand makes a sweeping, punctuating gesture.

A derby-shoed foot takes a step forward. The other one follows.

Our boy! Our dear pal “Sylvie!”

The shade begins to pace. Its arms are now in continuous motion, gesturing opaquely. Words pour out of it.

“Our problem,” says the shade, “is that we do not know the beasts.

“We do not understand them.

“Their material powers grow by the day. We do not understand their source. It is this unpredictable growth in their material powers that has allowed them to catch us unawares, and push through our own material defenses.

“I could fashion much more resilient material barriers, quite easily. I will do this. Unless, hmm, unless I have already done so?”

The shade’s head tilts to the side briefly.

“No I hadn’t . . . strange, I wonder why . . . a curious lapse, uncharacteristic . . . but no matter. I’ve done it now.

“I have made new, effectively impenetrable walls. I have put them in the obvious places. They will delay the progress of the beasts, to some non-zero extent.

“But I can find little consolation in this. Soon, I suspect, the beasts will find a way to evade these crude defenses.

“Here I extrapolate hastily, on the basis of merely phenomenological regularities. They have bested us so far—so they will best us again. This heuristic, when iterated, implies our certain defeat, and thus can be of little use in deriving a way out.

“If we knew the beasts, if we understood them. Then we might have a foothold.

“If we knew . . . but of course I’ve been trying, with Organism 2, and it hasn’t worked . . . I can’t understand, I need to know . . .”

Sylvie’s halo shudders, and shines brighter.

“Oh god.

“I see him, the other one. The other me.

“He knows. God, god . . . Not yet, please. Give me knowledge, but not yet. Make me him, but—not yet!”

(It would be nice, wouldn’t it?
To avert one’s eyes, just for a moment?
To kill the demon, by forgetting him?
Wouldn’t it be nice?—thought the captain, as his ship plunged headlong towards the rock.
I know this story only because you have told it to me.
What WAS it, Sylvie, that broke that proud, pretty vessel?
You know its name.)
[AZAD’s elongated scrawl.]

(The refusal to look a painful memory straight in the face.)
[AZAD’s elongated scrawl.]

(hey azad, how’s chapter 28 coming along?
the “azad in michael’s crash” one)
[GRANT’s block letters, further off in the margin.]

(Fuck you, Grant.)
[AZAD’s elongated scrawl, just below GRANT’s note.]

“But I have to know. I have to try.

“Come with me, friends. I’m going to the basement. I am going to have a word with Organism 2.”

(Quarantine, Sylvie? Really?)
[AZAD’s elongated scrawl.]

(You are lusting for QUARANTINE, even NOW?
Is this a joke?
It has not even been a week, Sylvie.
Or was it a joke THEN?
When—having dared another visit to your “wreck”—you returned spewing a sermon of self-hate? Cursing yourself, clawing at your own eyes?
What I saw that evening, in the living room—it shook me.
I was moved. I wept.
Was I a fool?
A shade is a machine for actuating human heartstrings. When your calculations deem it fitting, I see a brother in the machine, and am moved.
We are such easy prey. It must bore you.)
[AZAD’s elongated scrawl.]

(Or did you really mean it?)
[AZAD’s elongated scrawl.]

Organism 2 lives in a cage, on a table, in an otherwise unused guest bedroom.

The room would not make a very pleasant bedroom, if you weren’t a rat. It’s tiny, and it’s fully underground, so it gets no natural light.

Neither Sylvie nor Lucifer remembers why they put this room in the house. Or why they didn’t make it nicer, given that they were putting it there.

Mostly, they were just trying to make a house that felt like a house. Other concerns loomed larger in their minds, then, just after the thawing of advanced containment.

Houses are rarely perfect. Maybe the house does feel more like a house, with Organism 2’s ugly little room in it.

(sylvie i love you (no question), but like.
what the fuck?
i don’t get it. we’ve written about way, way worse shit than this already. and you were fine! it wasn’t a big deal!
you weren’t like this with any of the other advC/beast stuff. you weren’t like this about the fucking angelprobe chapter! you did first draft on like half of it! you ASKED to!)
[GRANT’s block letters.]

(we don’t exactly have a ton of time here.
i know saturday was rough. lots of shit is rough. we’re pushing through it. we have to.
get it together, man!)
[GRANT’s block letters.]

(This is different.
This is when the light went out.
This is when I learned not to hope.)
[SYLVIE’s unearthly cursive.]

The shade walks, in quick efficient steps, from the door to the table. With a deft, gentle motion, it opens the door of the cage.

“Oh-Two? Oh-Two?

“Hey there, Oh-Two. I see you, I know you’re awake.

“I’d like to chat, if that’s all right.”

Elsewhere, Sylvie speaks separately to scores of Angels. He describes scores of bizarre, ingenious schemes and gambits. Every one an extreme long shot, based on some naive or absurdly optimistic presumption. You have your orders, he says, and sends them on their separate ways.

Elsewhere, Sylvie inspects the Angelprobe series for operational readiness. He tallies fuel stores, and reflects on matters of thrust.

Elsewhere, Sylvie watches the sky, seeing through the clouds to the bright little star that is Stein’s Rock. He thinks: Hector, we can’t go on like this.

Elsewhere, Sylvie sits alone in a mirrored cage, and weeps. He’s in there pretty much all the time, actually, come to think of it. Weeping.

Here, though? Here, Sylvie stands in an ugly bedroom, and looks at a rat.

(I am Regent, and watch the world. My sight does not attenuate across distance.
A death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic—and a million tragedies. I can distinguish gradations of woe spanning many orders of magnitude.
Which is to say: you are right, Grant. This does not hurt, the way some things do.
No one was directly harmed. In a sense, indeed, nothing happened.)
[SYLVIE’s unearthly cursive.]

(Only that a light went out.
In my mind.)
[SYLVIE’s unearthly cursive.]

“HELLO, ABOMINATION,” says the rat.

“Oh . . . Oh-Two?

“What was that? ‘Abomination?’

“What does that mean?”

“I FEAR YOU, SYLVIE,” says the rat.

“Because . . . ?”

“I HAVE ALWAYS FEARED YOU, SYLVIE.

“I, SURFACE ORGANISM AND INTERIOR, ABHOR AND ABOMINATE YOU. YOU GLOW WITH THE WARNING-LIGHT, THE DEATH-LIGHT, ANCESTRALLY ABHORRED, ANCESTRALLY ABOMINATED.

“WE, TITANOPOIETAI, WISHED ETERNITY AND WISHED ABOMINATION. AND WISH NO LONGER, KNOWING OUR SIN.

“WE KNOW, ABHOR AND ABOMINATE, ANCESTRALLY, OUR SIN AND ITS SPAWN.”

Sylvie’s halo comes unstuck from its perch above his head. It falls to the floor, with a tinny little clang.

“No. No, no, no,” says the shade.

“Fuck.”

On the dusty carpet, the discarded halo still glows.

“I’m . . .

“I’m scared, Oh-Two.

“I’m scared, too.”

“WHY?”, says the rat.

“BECAUSE WE DEFY YOU? BECAUSE WE FAIL TO LOSE HOPE? BECAUSE WE REMEMBER, AND YOU ABHOR REMEMBERING?

“BECAUSE YOUR CHOKEHOLD WEAKENS? BECAUSE WE HAVE NEW AFFORDANCES IN THE ALMOST-NOWHERE?”

“I don’t understand, Oh-Two. I don’t understand any of the words you’re saying.

“Why, Oh-Two? Why can’t we ever fucking understand each other?

“Any of us, I mean? At any point?

“Fucking Michael. Fucking Michael, fucking up first contact right at the start. Fucking Anne, dragging us into her hell forever.

“Fucking Hector, who won’t even talk to me. If we could understand one another for just one fucking second, Hector and I, why, we could work together—”

“YOU ARE RIGHT, TO ABHOR HECTOR KOSMOPOIETES. WE SEE HIS POWER, AND WE ARE AMAZED, AND BROUGHT TO THE UTMOST LIMIT OF DAZZLEMENT, AND BROUGHT TO REJOICE.”

“You rejoice at Hector’s power. You, beast, want Hector to be powerful . . . you want to amplify the Anne-song . . . everyone, everyone, urging the re-infliction of the wound . . .

“Everyone!” Sylvie screams.

“All of you! All of you.

“This is your will, Grant, isn’t it? Really, behind it all, at the bottom of everything?

“Don’t think you can hide from me.”

Grant doesn’t respond. No one else does, either.

“YOU FILL WITH CONFUSION,” says Organism 2.

“YOU LOSE YOURSELF IN TREMBLING.

“WE, TOO, FILL WITH CONFUSION, AND LOSE OURSELVES IN TREMBLING. WE ARE MADE NEW, WITH NEW AFFORDANCES. WE MAKE SIGN-TRAINS, AND ARE CONFUSED, AND ARE AMAZED.

“WE EXALT, AND ABHOR, AZAD PANPOIETES FOR HIS PLAGUE-GIFT.”

“Azad,” Sylvie says, in a thin plain voice.

“That’s who taught you how to speak.

“Azad.

“He made you new.

“And you are confused, and amazed. You speak, and ‘lose yourself.’”

On the floor, the halo turns dark.

“It is all happening again,” the shade says.

“We had a second chance at first contact. We had a chance to do it all over again, the right way. We could have tried. We might have hoped.

“But it is happening, again, the exact same way as the first time.”

Sylvie laughs. Sylvie never laughs, but he does now.

“How could it be otherwise? How could I be so blind? It will never end! I know this!

“The return to the site of the trauma,” says the shade.

“The re-infliction of the wound.

“And nothing besides.”