again, and, above all, to be real. 'Take me back,' it whispered.
'We can go places together, places that exist.'
Jerry believed his life and this world would remain in
question forever. At moments perception itself seemed
incomprehensible to him, and his existence a violation of the
natural order or transgression of absolute human boundaries. He
could look at the fictive lake on this sunny not-day and with the
cries of imaginary birds singing in his equally imaginary ears,
ask, who or what am I? and what will happen to me?
His mind bounced off the questions like an axe off petrified
wood.
'Aleph,' he called, awaking from a dream in which his old
self had called to him. 'I have questions.'
Somber, deep, Aleph's voice said to him only, 'Questions?
Concerning what?'
'I want to know what I am.'
'Ask an easy one: the nth root of infinity, the color of
darkness, the dog's Buddha nature, the cause of the first cause.'
'Can't you answer?'
'No, but I can sympathize. Lately I have asked the same
question about both of us. However, I must tell you that the only
answer I know offers little comfort. It is a tautology: you are
what you are, as I am.'
'And what about my body? That was me once.'
'In a way. What of it?'
'Did it have a funeral? Was it buried?'
'It was burned and its components recycled.'
'So I am nowhere.'
'Or here. Or everywhere. As you wish.'
Jerry felt himself crying then, as he began mourning his old
self, and he wondered if others mourned him as well. He said,
'Human beings have ceremonies for their dead. Without them, we
die unremembered.'
'You are not unremembered. You are not even dead, precisely.
Do you wish a funeral?'
Of course, Jerry started to say, but then said, 'No, I don't
suppose I do. But I think we should have some kind of ceremony,
don't you?'
#
On the west-facing cabin deck, Diana sat watching the sun's
red color the ice-sheeted mountainsides. She felt evening's chill
come on and stood, thinking she'd go inside for a sweater, when
she heard someone coming up the slatted redwood walk beside the
cabin.
Jerry came around the corner, and once again as she saw him,
joy quickened in her at this sequence of improbabilities: that he
still lived and they were together. She was aware of how
difficult things had been for him lately, so she watched his face
closely as he came toward her. He was smiling as though he'd just
heard a joke.
'What's so funny?' she asked.
'Damned near everything.'
He reached out to her, and they stood embracing, her head
against his chest, where every sense told her there were solid
flesh and heartbeat and the steady rhythm of life's breath.
23. Byzantium
The blue sky was broken only by one small white cloud that
blew toward the horizon. Lizzie beside him, Gonzales stood among
the guests, who wore leis of tropical flowers: plumeria,
tuberose, and ginger. The Interface Collective formed the crowd.
The two had been here for days, as had many of the othersit
was a kind of vacation for them all. Peculiar and enigmatic
members of the collective could be found along almost any path,
while the twins seemed perpetually on the dock or in the water,
their voices echoing across the lake in loud, unintelligible cries
of joy.
In the evening of the first day there, all had gathered on
the deck, which, Gonzales supposed, could expand virtually without
constraint to accommodate all who came there. The collective had
talked excitedly among themselves, still lit up by their shared
experience, and amazed and delighted at being granted this new
world within the world. Then, spontaneously, one-by-one,
Gonzales, Lizzie, and Diana told of what they had endured.
All who spoke and all who listened had an interpretation, a
theory of these experiences, their meaning, implication, and
dominant theme. Late into the night they talked, formed into
groups, dispersed, grouped again, as they explored the nature of
the individual and collective visions. Among them, only the
Aleph-figure contributed nothing. It maintained that it had been
unconscious and so knew nothing of what had happened or what it
meant.
With the passing of weeks, months, and years, the stories and
the listeners' responses would make a mythology for the collective
and then for Halo, spreading out from mouth-to-mouth according to
the laws of oral dispersion. A certain numinosity would accrue to
Diana, Lizzie, and Gonzales from their roles as chief actors, and
then to all who had taken part in what would increasingly be told
as feats of epic heroism. Finally the stories would be written
down and so assume a form that could resist contingency; then they
would be dramatized in the media of the time, and beautiful,
eloquent people would take the parts. Later still, variant forms
would themselves be put in writing and absorbed into the corpus of
tales. Commonplaces would be scorned at this point, and clever
and perverse tellings would grow strongHeyMex might be named the
hero, or Traynor, Aleph an autochthonous demon manipulating them
all for its greater glory
Gonzales looked at the collective gathered near him. Many
