The Bog Monster of Booker Creek

A Novel


By Wayne V. Miller  © 2009

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
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Dear Brett,


Just to be clear -- the bog monster was always me, never anything
or anyone else. I wish I could have explained this to you in a way
that made sense to you. I'm starting a record of what happened, but
I won't share it with you until you're older, maybe when you're
twenty-five, old enough to chuckle at your off-kilter old man but
young enough to remember how we survived the frenzy together. You
were tough, tougher than I could have imagined, but I wish I could
have done more to protect you. Maybe you'll understand when you
read this.

I am going to lay everything out from the beginning, in February
2005. You were an eighth grader at Phillips Middle School, a tall,
lanky, skinny- armed boy, with pale skin and an assortment of
blackheads and zits, a sometimes goofy smile that I saw you
cultivate in front of the mirror -- which fit perfectly with the
oversized cat-in-the-hat headwear you wore sometimes to parties --
and yet there was a penchant for the pained look of the only child.
Your mother and I were worried about you because you seemed to have
bottled up, withdrawn from the kids you had played with just a few
years before. Nothing seemed to interest you much; you watched too
much TV, played too many video games, and lay around the house like
an unacknowledged secret. Then the assignment came.

It was the worst kind of schoolwork -- one requiring your parents'
attention and time, too. Your mother helped as much as she could,
invited your schoolmates to come over and snack and work, but in
the end she came to me and said, "John, you need to get involved."
I was happy about being needed, but not about the position it put
me in. "What is it?" I asked. She didn't answer, which wasn't a
good sign.

Your science teacher, Mr. McGrath, had mastered the fine art of
overblown homework: exquisitely defined projects whose purpose was
known only to himself and his God; repetitive components adding up
to an ungodly sum of points so that the whole seemed like a giant
scramble; and a scope that knows no bounds, apparently on the
assumption that thereby Mr. McGrath is not stifling the creative
ones. This meant that the best projects were mostly done by the
parents, and students shrugged their way to a grade they didn't
deserve. I wasn't going to fall into line. You were going to do the
project, whatever it was.

"Brett," I asked from your doorway. "What is this project your
mother asked me to look at?"

"Huh?" you said, looking up from a hand-drawn comic you were
working on.

"The project?"

"Oh that," you said, looking back down at the sheet. "I-don-noh."
The pencil started moving again.

"Let me see the project description," I said, and you pointed at
your notebook without stopping. That particular habit of yours
always irritated the heck out of me, but I decided to let it pass.
I opened the notebook, but you had to point me to the page, which
did finally distract your attention, in fact so much that you
decided to reread the instructions yourself, until I yanked them
from you.

Environment. Biology. Something about statistics. McGrath's
explanation didn't enlighten me, but the examples set the light
bulb off. My favorite was "Scat-ology": "Map out a wooden area and
comb it for wild animal scat. You'll need a good animal-tracking
book. What does your research tell us about wild animal
populations? Use an appropriate graphing technique." No surprise
that Doreen deferred this one to me. I asked you what your team had
decided on, and with hems and haws you laid it out: you were going
to search old police blotters -- from the days when the police were
animal control -- for reports of marauding animals, in order to
develop a scatter plot of animals who lived in proximity to people
but who found it difficult to co-exist. You speculated about
wolves, bears and badgers. I thought more likely: rabid raccoons
and stubborn skunks.

Jared's father was a police officer, and Jared said that he could
get the information without problem. You didn't know whether he had
asked his father about this or not. I smelled a distinct whiff of
wishful thinking, but at the same time a hint of success. You were
surprised by my reply: "This could be mapped." This was the perfect
match, since I was in charge of Orange County's Geographic
Information System (GIS), and I'd already offered to show you how
it worked. "Cool," you said before becoming absorbed again.

The topic waited for another week, until we reached a point where
the deadline was impossible to ignore any more. I called up Jared's
father to see if he'd been brought into the loop. "Oh, we'd talked
about it a couple weeks back," he said with obvious irritation,
"but I thought he was going to find another project. At the
station, we don't have blotters, or even criminal records, from far
enough back in time to be of use to the kids. I suggested they try
the county museum or the Chapel Hill Reporter, but I don't think
there's anything out there." At that second, I was trying to
imagine how we could bring this into the present and get at
existing data -- Animal Control and road kill statistics? Nothing
pleasant came to mind.

I confronted you the next morning at breakfast. "No worries, dad,"
you said and kept eating your cereal. "What do you mean, no
worries?" You waved me off and said, "Jared's got it handled. He
called the county museum and they have police blotters going back
100 years. We're going there this weekend." Oh, I thought, you
might have told me. But I was equally surprised and pleased that it
was handled.

Or seemed to be. I ended up driving you all to Hillsborough on
Saturday. The team was you, Jared, Frank and Billy. The curator
wasn't at the museum when we got there, so we wandered down the
main drag in Hillsborough, past the historic courthouse and down to
the river park. Eventually, we came back up and only then read that
the museum was open every other Saturday. We had already packed
into the car when we saw the curator walk with peculiar purpose to
the door, open and close it carefully behind him. "Jared," I asked
for the first time, "did you tell him we were coming today?"

"Sure," he said immediately and with gusto, then: "I mean, I told
him. I don't remember if he said anything." I just looked at him.
After I thought I made my point, I sighed and said, "Well, let's go
see what he'll say now." I thought that was pretty equanimous of
me.

You all piled out of the car and chatted and gravitated to the door
without seeming to pay one bit of attention. A slight rain was
threatening to turn into a downpour. The front door was locked, so
I knocked. After some time, the curator came with a pained look to
the door, but I doubted the curmudgeonly show.

"What can I do for you gentlemen?" he said, peering at each one of
us over his glasses, stopping longest on Billy, who is black.

I waited in vain for Jared to explain what was up, so I said: "We
were hoping we could see some records today. The boys have a
biology project, and they want to look at animal control or police
reports to see what kinds of animals end up in conflict with
people." That seemed pretty cogent to me.

"That doesn't make any sense to me," he said to me. Then he looked
back at Billy, as if speaking directly to him. "Can you boys
explain what you want with the Orange County Museum?" Frank and
Jared both started talking at once, and at one point Billy cut in,
but Jared finally got them to settle down: "We want to see your
historical police blotters," he said with a final smile.

"I see," he said. "Well, we don't have a public collection."

"Oh, okay," said Jared, as if that were it. I can't tell you how
badly I wanted to stick my index finger in that guy's chest and
tell him something about jerking people around, but I decided I
should let you all resolve this. The finger in the chest usually
doesn't do me much good, anyway -- I've felt like a raging maniac
more than once.

Frank said: "We have an assignment."

"Have your teacher talk to me, then," the curator said, with a
peculiar smile.

Billy added: "He gave us an assignment, but this is our idea. We
really want to do a good job."

The guy registered as completely unimpressed, so it surprised me
when he said, "All right, I think there's something here that can
help you." We followed him in. He explained that a Chapel Hill
resident had clipped the police blotter from local papers for 50
years, and had, when he died, bequeathed the entire yellowing and
brittle mess to the county.  Three large musty cardboard boxes were
brought up by the boys from the cellar, and we took turns pulling
out a sample and trying to figure out what we had.

"If you agree to describe the contents of each box on one of these
forms," the curator said, "I'll let you examine them. Here, though.
Nothing leaves the museum. Policy."

Jared had a giant smile, though the other three -- yes, you
included -- had the look of sheep seeing their new guard dog for
the first time: hang-dog and alert all at once.


So there you were digging through decaying newspapers and talking
all over each other about how you were going to score the hits. It
took a fair amount of time before you all realized, seemingly at
once, that there were no hits: no jackals, no wolves, no panthers,
no raccoons, not even a rampaging swamp rat. There was a long slow
letdown. Even Jared didn't know how to solve this one; he looked to
me.

"How about property damage?" I said after a bit.

"We want to do wild animals," said Jared.

"No, what if you look at property damage and see from the
description whether a wild animal was involved? You'll have to do
some guesswork, but you ought to be able to tease out some cases."

Jared looked to you to see if you were able to translate this, but
you had no better sense of what I meant. It seemed like an
admission of defeat to you all, but after a long hem-and-haw
session I said, "Look, just start collecting property damage
reports -- what was damaged and whether the cause is identified --
and let's just see what comes out, okay?"

We finally got started for real, and it didn't take long for the
property damage cases to start rolling: car accident, neighbor
busting a fence, break- in, a case of arson, garbage dumping, tree
falling on a shed, and so on. Then someone, Frank I think, read
aloud: "Chicken coup was opened from the top and six chickens were
taken."

"Wow," I said, to get everyone's attention, "does the article talk
about what did that?"

He scanned the page. "No, there are just a few words about broken
planks."

"That must have been something big. A bear maybe?" I said and
looked around. No one thought much of that suggestion, and the
collective-you dropped your noses into the boxes again. I had to
make the rounds a few times to convince you all to note enough
details: whom, where (reported location and source), when, what,
why (speculate if necessary) and who (modus operandi, if unknown).

We were there two hours, working away, before you all became too
noisy and distracted to continue. You, Jared and I returned one
time after we had processed some data to see if further searching
substantiated our findings -- which it did.

You never did like my summary of events. I have here Jared's
version, from an interview he gave early on:


Reporter: So, how did you get on the trail of this creature?

Jared: We wanted to find out what wild animals were harassing
people. Our assignment was to map how wild animals and people
interfaced over time, as more and more people moved in. We couldn't
get data about wild animals directly. What we got was police
reports from old newspapers.

Reporter: What did the police reports tell you?

Jared: That there was a pattern of property damage along a creek.
That made us believe that a large animal was living there. It
wasn't until we looked at the kinds of damage more closely that we
had to eliminate all kinds of animals except one -- homo sapiens.

Reporter: But you concluded that this was not a person living in
the woods --

Jared: Because the area was just too wet and too inhospitable.

Reporter: And that's why you called it a bog monster?

Jared: It was a goofy name, but it stuck.

Reporter: Who came up with this nickname?

Jared: Brett Densch did.


Well, there you have it. You came up with this name? Not so. Sure,
it was you who put the name to this hypothetical woods dweller. But
to get to the root of this name we need to go back a good decade
further, to the day you were born, a day when your mother and I
looked at each other differently and saw in each other's eyes:
"This is not the place and not the way to raise a kid." We were
living in Phoenix at the time -- actually in Mesa, and we were both
working in the city. Your mother stopped working for a year or so,
but our monetary needs brought her back into the job market and you
into a childcare home. You didn't complain, but your behavior
changed in ways that we didn't like, a kind of diffidence toward
your parents, a fixation on other kids and your caregiver, as if
you were punishing us. It may have been that you were happy in a
shared environment, but we felt it was time to simplify our lives.

Your mother and I also hoped that a change in environment might
change some negative dynamics between us. So we both put out
feelers on family- friendly locations, and the "triangle" (Chapel
Hill -- Durham -- Raleigh) came up very high on the list. We hoped
to move to Portland, Oregon, but I didn't get a nibble, let alone a
job, so Doreen deferred and we moved to Chapel Hill on the strength
of my job and a few possibilities for her.  It took her a while,
but she was able to find a part-time position and a part-time
child-care situation for you. Still, the transition felt like a big
win: daily commutes measured in just minutes; twice the house and
lawn; clean air and two-lane country roads; a community of college
professors and biology PhDs, with equally smart and engaging kids;
enough rain and greenery to soak out fifteen years of living in the
desert.

We've visited Phoenix since, but you won't remember what it's like
living there. Desert living these days is something unto itself,
maybe comparable to living in Alaska in winter. During the
inhospitable season, you live inside, moving from one man-made
space to another, and you venture out experimentally, warily. 
Chapel Hill is the kind of place that you inhabit -- wet when it
rains, sweaty when it boils, exhilarated on Carolina- blue days,
disgusted in summer nights by the arthropodic abundance under
electric lights, mesmerized when the cicadas echo from the trees
like a permanent parade. We lived through one extended Carolina ice
storm, when power was out for days, and a single fireplace served
as a substitute for central heating. We felt like pioneers, camped
out in their drafty first- generation cabins. Fortunately, that was
in our first few years, when the cold was still a novelty.

We were here five years when I first tried the phrase on you. For
exercise, I had adopted hiking -- on trails in Chapel Hill, through
the roads and paths of the Duke Forest, and around the few state
parks -- and your fate was to give me a reason and justification.
You didn't appreciate the walking, but mostly you complained about
being in the woods. I thought that you'd internalized a Brothers
Grimm fear of treed areas, but Doreen said: "He doesn't like bugs
any more than I do." I thought I could do what I usually do, which
nerves Doreen and never sat very well with you: make a big joke out
of it.

"I forgot to tell you, Brett, I guess I should explain now," I said
one day as we walked along the creek trail from MLK Blvd to the
Community Center. "There is something you should know. It's --
well, it's an old legend I'm sure. But they tell of an ancient
creature in these woods." I stopped talking and looked at you to
make sure you understood the joke. "Something that lives here in
the bogs. Do you know what they call it?"

You answered non-committally: "No."

"The Bog Monster of Bolin Creek, of course."

"Really?" you asked, raising your voice and looking at me.

"That's the legend," I said.

"Really?" you asked. "Really, daddy?"

"Really, that's the legend, or really, is there a bog monster?"

You were unable to respond, so I said, "That's the legend. But
there are no bog monsters. Do you see a bog monster here?"

"No," you said, looking around.

"Neither do I. Maybe there's really nothing to be afraid of hereŠ?"

You didn't answer, but after a few moments you got on the balls of
your feet, ran ahead and stopped at a bend in the trail to wait for
me. Ooops, I thought, this didn't go right. I resolved to repeat it
until you got so sick of the notion that you'd lose any reaction to
it. When Doreen picked up on this, she had a heyday explaining to
me why this kind of irony is lost on children and asking what was I
thinking, and finally pleading: Could I leave her only child alone
with my pretzel psychology?

You and I never did work out what a bog monster would look like,
but pretty soon we were discussing it like a bad children's book --
"daddy, I told you that's a silly story" -- not exactly the fear
tamer I had hoped for, but it lost its lightning-rod status. After
a year or so we forgot all about it. More years passed before you
developed into the young man I know now, and when you did, you
discovered, as the young are wont to do, that you had unexpected
talents. This one was cartoon drawing. One fine summer day Doreen
brought you home from cartoon camp and later that evening put a
drawing under my nose. "Five years, and he's still afraid; thanks a
lot, John." There it was, reminiscent of Yeti or Big Foot but with
a Fort Bragg crew cut and appropriately short fur, labeled: "The
Man-eating Bog Monster of Chapel Hill and Carrboro." It smiled a
big carnivorous smile, with an oversized blood drop hanging from
one incisor, and had large anime eyes. That was the only time you
drew it, at least as far as I know, and I got the impression that
you drew it as part of an assignment rather than any eruption of
suppressed childhood angst, but I didn't ask you, in case the
question itself would circulate and keep the unpleasantness in
front of us. I think I may have thrown out the drawing.

When the four of you put your heads together, you saw the obvious
zone of activity, along the course of Bolin and Booker creeks from
the heights to the west, down to the Estes flats, where they come
together at Little Creek; there were signs of a retreat over time,
the only consistency being a series of acts that implied a
prehensile and skilled set of appendages. You didn't know what this
indicated, and retreated to the notion of ambulatory bandits
("What," I asked, "a lost tribe of marauding Indians?"). You all
feared you had nothing in your hands.

"Don't despair," I said, "let's take another look at your data.
Maybe there's a pattern we're missing." One of you, maybe Billy,
proposed that maybe it was Indians, using deer trails. "Or some
other animal," said Jared. "Maybe it's a bear?"

"Now you're talking," I said.

"There aren't any bears around here," replied Frank, morosely.

"Any more," I finished. I was afraid at that point that you would
all lose your nerve and want to start over, the one thing I
couldn't stomach. An improbable but intriguing result seemed more
than good enough for Mr. McGrath's daft assignment.

"Okay," Billy said, "let's go with a bear." Right, you all said, at
least for the next few minutes, but then, as you were breaking up,
Frank spat out: "We're going to have to change. A bear leaves scat,
and Mr. McGrath won't accept it if we say one was hiding around
here and no one saw the signs. We're going to have to go with a
panther. It must bury its poop, like a cat." Great, I thought, a
stealthy and clever bear is one thing; a great cat wandering up and
down our creek without anyone the wiser seemed to push the limits
of possibility. But at least no one threw up his arms.

Two mornings later, the day the assignment was due, I heard from
you during your breakfast (head in a bowl of cereal, comics laid
out beside you), that discussions with Jared's dad had produced a
new result: "He said the blotter crimes had to be persons, a group
of people living somewhere along the creek." "So you're giving up
on the animal angle? It's all people?" "I guess so," you said,
slurping and munching. Okay, I thought, as long as the assignment
goes in.

It did, and we got on with our lives. The next stage is the key.
How did everything go awry? Who framed this as news? How in the
world did a press release come out about an assignment by an
earnest but puerile set of middle-school boys? Who put the tail to
the donkey, or more precisely, to the bog monster? When did you say
it, Brett?

It's too easy to mix things up in your memory, so I've asked
questions of everyone I could, and perused the clip-outs and
digital archives I could find. Facts: The assignment itself doesn't
mention a monster of any kind. A news release from the school
district appearing three weeks later stipulated that no students
turned in an assignment about a monster. Mr. McGrath was never
quoted in the press and so could not say anything about a monster,
but the press release stated he was pleased with the assignment and
its fundamental scientific soundness. According to the same
release, the students speculated that, despite a large range
reminiscent of a top predator and a carnivorous MO (mostly:
creating access to prey of various kinds), a ring of human thieves
were probably involved. This was not what was assigned, but a good
effort and an honest result.

The first mention of this non-story appeared in the Chapel Hill
Reporter two weeks after the assignment was turned in. No one ever
admitted seeding the story to them, and the reporter who filed the
story is gone -- whether up or down the journalistic food chain, I
don't know. I do know that the reporter reported on a school board
meeting three evenings before the Sunday edition with the story,
and that the reporter was seen laughing with a member of the board.
That board member was known to be friends with Jared's parents. I
can't help thinking they were laughing about you, Brett.

When did you say it? You couldn't tell me exactly when, although
you affirmed when I asked you: "I guess so." It must have been an
offhanded joke -- 'my dad used to talk about a bog monster.'
Wistful? Were you angry with me, the perpetrator of an
ill-conceived fairy tale? Could it have seemed anything but
innocent to mention? Not rancorous, certainly not fateful. I read
somewhere that fate is any port of call you couldn't have imagined
when you began your journey; at some moment, the unexpected becomes
the destination, and you become little more than a passenger.

Here's the story:

Local Students Uncover Historical 'Monster'

GIS and police data suggest creature's range and activity

A local group of middle school students uncovered a pattern in 50
years of yellowing police blotters, gathered from historical
editions of Orange county newspapers, that indicate that for
decades a large carnivorous animal stalked outlying areas now
incorporated into Chapel Hill and Carrboro. The pattern emerged
when the data was coded and entered into the county's GIS system
with the help of system administrator John Densch, whose son is one
of the student researchers.

Spokesman Jared Brightman explained at an impromptu press
conference in his parents' home that the students had officially
reached an opposite conclusion. "We thought it was a band of
thieves," he said. His father, police detective Ferguson Brightman,
affirmed this interpretation: "I still don't know what else it
could be."

"It wasn't until later," Jared added, "that we realized this was an
unsatisfactory explanation." The younger Brightman displayed a
large map depicting the paths of Booker Creek through northern
Chapel Hill and Bolin Creek from outside Carrboro to their
confluence, with stars to indicate incidents. The map also
indicated roads and trails and large areas of wetlands. "This map
shows how unlikely it would be for humans to navigate among these
sites, except by road. And if these acts were carried out by humans
on roads, why would they go to the trouble of doing this just in
the creek areas?"

Then Brightman put up a poster with a selected list of events.
"Chicken coop broken into, three chickens taken, four left. Dog
maimed. Garbage contents upset and spread around lawn; rib bones
taken. Pond fish taken. Locked freezer in carport damaged during
attempted break-in. Window over kitchen sink broken, no bird, rock
or other cause found. These and many other events are inconsistent
with human activity, which would show different ways to maximize
the reward for the risk. These random occurrences are more like the
acts of a roaming animal, by necessity a large animal."

When asked what kind of animal, Brightman responded that they were
still unsure, but they had a name for it: 'The Bog Monster of
Booker Creek.' He attributed this name to his fellow researcher,
Brett Densch, the son of John Densch, pointing out that the family
resides near the Cedar Forks tributary of Booker Creek. At press
time there was no comment forthcoming from the Chapel Hill or
Carrboro police departments about the students' investigatory work.

-- Okay. Yes, I gave Jared the map. I gave him the human activity
argument. I provided him with the perfect opportunity to mix it all
together and make a mockery of us.  I don't know why. I was upset,
I guess, that you had all taken Jared's dad's advice over mine. I
was showing off. I couldn't imagine it would have the slightest
consequence. My mind was elsewhere.

We all had a yuck about the Reporter article, though, as I said,
the school district did go to the trouble of issuing a disclaimer.
A day or two after the press release, I got a call at work from a
reporter claiming to work for the Associated Press. Okay, I
thought, I'll bite. "Sure, I can answer a few questions." It turned
out that he had already interviewed Jared and wanted to know my
reaction to a few statements that seemed even a bit more
provocative about those peculiar Densches. He wanted to speak with
you. "Absolutely not," I said, not knowing that you yourself had
already given an in-person interview to the Reporter reporter, now
writing for the regional paper. The story had gone out on the wire?
I was nonplussed. It was being played as local interest throughout
the southeast? In the "wacky news" bin nationally? Being prepped
for morning radio shows and morning weather anchorsŠ

I wanted to call Doreen right away, but maybe you'll understand my
dilemma. "Bog monster?! Now you're humiliating him in the national
media?! Why you are so destructive with your own lifeblood, I'll
never understand, John. Never."

I didn't want to go home, but when I did, it was without incident.
We had a couple more days before it all blew up.


At one time, there were thousands of acres of bog in North
Carolina. I wouldn't have been able to tell you that. I assumed
that a bog was a northern cranberry- or peat-growing watery
wasteland. I wouldn't have been able to tell you that bogs are a
common natural feature at various altitudes and latitudes, one of
many contradictions in the distribution of water around this world.
The Chapel Hill area probably did once have its share of hilly
Piedmont bog land, although our GIS maps will only show you the
designation "wetlands," and these are now mostly commercial wannabe
reconstructions standing in for the natural features we've
destroyed. At least Bolin and Booker still run free, except where
they disappear into concrete tunnels beneath the University and
Eastgate malls, before emerging free and mostly unsullied -- the
Booker dramatically from beneath the local Burger King.

I've walked most of the length of these old creeks and found
surprising room for a bog monster to stretch out in the muck. If
you trace the Bolin out to Lake Hogan Farms, you can even begin to
imagine an untamed, dark, and forested time, in those few minutes
once you have left one subdivision behind and before you see the
next.

I can almost hear you say, "You can't follow these creeks. They
pass through private property almost the whole way. Now you're just
crapping me."

Brett, you'd be right, mostly. That brings me to an admission I
hadn't planned on making, but this narrative seems to have taken on
a life of its own. There may be no one alive who has seen more of
this county than I have. Think about this. Delivery people, police,
handy men, they all travel from one end of the county to the other
-- but they never get far from roads and driveways. What if I told
you if easily 50% of the county is more than 100 meters from a
road? Maybe 20% more than 1000 meters from any public road? Who
knows what's there? The landowner, sometimes. The hunters he or she
rents to. The farm workers. Otherwise, the occasional agent from a
timber company interested in the buying a tall tree stand.

And me. If you had walked over to my car at the time and opened the
trunk, you could have found -- after some shuffling -- a reflective
county safety vest marked "Surveyor" and a big, industrial looking
GPS unit. I used these on random afternoons, when I couldn't stand
the office any more or when I'd leave work a bit early, or what
have you, to find an undiscovered corner of the county. Usually I
consulted a random number generator to grab coordinates from the
GIS map, figured out the best way to approach the location, and
drove straight there. It was a compulsion, I guess. It had begun a
few years before as an innocent game, but sometimes the urge to get
out left me completely unable to concentrate -- and I just had to
go.

When this first blew up, I started to walk these creeks
systematically. I had to be cautious, of course. It's one thing for
a salt-rock-shotgun-toting farmer to find me pacing off his hay
field, it's quite another for a father to find me walking behind
the family house, for all the world an unpredictable stalker.
Eventually I walked the whole lot of them -- Booker Creek, Cedar
Fork, Bolin Creek, Little Creek, even down to Mill Creek off of
University Lake. There's not a lot now that would count as a bog or
even a true wetland, but enough to give you a feel. All these
things we call lakes now -- Elizabeth, Eastwood, University -- they
may well have been good bog candidates, way back when, maybe in
between dammings by beavers and humans.


I'm really not sure, Brett, if we're at the end of this story or
the beginning of another one. One morning, you were more morose
than usual and Doreen glanced at me with that "you lunkhead" look
when I made a point of it. "I'm fine," you said. "There's a love
interest," she said after you went upstairs. That's all she would
tell me, with you in potential hearing distance, and I knew I
wouldn't really get more out of her until she was ready. I decided
to see if I get more out of you. I found myself falling back in my
own mind to my first struggles with love, and despite all the hard
lessons I've learned, boy, I know I don't have the right to give
you advice if you don't ask for it. I wouldn't take my own counsel.
Sure, I can give you the statistics and try to steer you from
self-destructive behavior, but otherwise my perspective is too
clouded by my own unplanned life. And even if I felt justified,
could I really tell you something about love that you won't have to
learn on your own person?

I never thought much of words like "passion" and "love" because
they made it seem like this thing comes from the mind. Not that I'm
arguing that "raging hormones" and "lust" are a good substitute for
what we feel. It's the intersection that gets us: a physiological
state that leaves a deep and broad sense of lack -- and, every once
in a while, a mental picture of its completion, in a feedback loop
that heightens every sensation, every slight, every hope. It's an
unsustainable state of disequilibrium that cannot be explained as
desire, but that sometimes finds an object of desire.

What you may not be able to understand, Brett, is that I'm 42 years
old and -- although my life has nothing in common with that of the
skinny young man I was -- I'm still him. Sure, the humor has
changed, at least beyond the need to protect myself with a quick
joke. The impassioned and longing young man has become the
impatient and distracted husband. The infinite potential has become
a comfortable technocrat. The existentialist a realist. The sworn
opponent of the failed nuclear family an uncertain and angry
father. You get the picture.

But here's the mystery. I am still there with that young man. I can
sit here quietly at a desk, or sometimes when I sit on my car hood
in the middle of nowhere, North Carolina, and I can feel my way
back. It is as if all the changes are incidental and the core is
these few events, which feel as real to me as the day they
happened, no matter how much they lose in fidelity. It's as if I'm
stretching a latex sheet back through a short, dimensionally folded
distance into the past, and I'm sitting there for the young me.
Details are few, but the reality is full and undeniable -- a
continuity I've felt for the last twenty-five years.

At the same time, the sheet is impermeable. I cannot interact; I
cannot change a thing, employ my experience or benefit from
hindsight. The girl will never look at me, or lean over to kiss me,
always just that painfully unself-aware young man. The answers
never change, the mistakes never get undone. The beautiful moments
and the horrible ones, together. Take my advice or not -- I'm not
sure anyone's advice could help you, for however much I or others
stretch back and forward in time. Just don't be surprised when,
later in life, you find yourself identifying more with the teenager
than the person you've built of yourself.


The TV truck was waiting at Phillips Middle School: lots of good
background shots there, enough woods to convey the mood, and a
small creek if water were desired. Jared was on tap for a national
interview before school began. We didn't know a thing because we
don't watch morning television. Off you went to school, backpack,
trumpet case and lunchbox in hand, like a sheep to the slaughter.

I can imagine you on the bus, unhappy with sleepiness, a tickle of
longing in the back of your mind, looking out the bus windows,
unable to fix anything in your mind until the very last minute,
when you feel the tensing of the start of the school day, as you
see the school parking lot open up before you. You observe a white
truck where there should only be deep yellow buses, a large truck
that slowly resolves into a television broadcasting truck from the
local arm of a national network. You sense why it's there, but it
seems too unreal to accept. The whole world, after all, doesn't
revolve around you. You're just a middle-school cog, in an
education machine like thousands of others, a boy on a bus like
hundreds of thousands of others, an awkward 7th grader
indistinguishable from his worst self-image. If there is something
special here -- she, whoever she is, only she is indecipherably
more.

The front doors flap open, and you wait your turn, force your way
into the aisle at the necessary moment, then jump down the steps
onto the asphalt. You look back over your shoulder at the truck, a
huge antenna arm extended skyward, a generator chugging away. Still
wondering, you pass into the building like hundreds of times
before.

Your first class is what, math? You are sitting in the class for
15-20 minutes before the distorting intercom activates. The
principal's voice itself comes on. "Mrs. WinchfieldŠ Mrs.
Winchfield, would you please send Brett Densch to the office? Brett
Densch. Thank you so much." A click off.

You look up at the box in disbelief, or maybe you have already
played through the possibility so much that you show no surprise.
In either case, a series of moments pass, during which your teacher
and your fellow students process the message and speculate in their
own minds why you are being summoned, sometimes with a mental "tsk"
or "ooh." You get up and wonder if you should bring your books, but
Mrs. Winchfield indicates with a small wag of her head that, no,
you should assume that you'll be right back: Always assume you'll
be right back, unless you are given to understand otherwise.

The walk to the office just builds the tension, and you have to
slow your steps as you approach the office. You turn the corner and
there he is: the early-twenties production assistant, with the
headset with mic, the clipboard and a harried expression. Or maybe
it isn't so hackneyed, but you are introduced to the staffer, who
tells you that you should be congratulated for making such an
impression at an early age, that this is a unique opportunity,
enviable but, more importantly, your chance to be a participant in
modern American culture. This kind of opportunity may only come
once in a lifetime, you know?

You come around, or you wonder how you can say no, or you wish
someone could decide for you. "You just need to call your parents,"
he says, handing you a cell phone with your home number keyed up.
Doreen picks up, because she happens to be home. "On television?
What?" she says. You explain in half sentences, then: "Never mind."
You hand the phone back to the assistant as if to say this is now
officially over. But he continues the conversation with your
mother, who is the picture of disbelief, now, temporarily, before
she thinks that this all stems from that one ill-conceived joke and
decides that I have now completely undermined my own offspring - -
believing no doubt that I had to be aware of this, if matters had
come so far -- and she metaphorically throws up her hands.
"Whatever. If it's what his father wants to do to his only child."
"It's fine?" the attendant asks, with his digital recorder up to
the earpiece. "Fine," she says and hangs up.

You are shuttled outside to where the small crowd of onlookers and
the equally crowding TV crew have encircled the interviewer. He is
perched on a director's chair, with an empty chair beside him. You
probably don't recognize the man, but his face is better known
among the great slew of Americans than all but a few politico
faces. His shtick is weather, but his role is the easy, informal
and wacky interview. "You're going to be great," the assistant
says. "Just be sure to speak up for the microphones, okay?"

After you've been seated next to the weatherman, who peers up for
just a moment from his assistant's notes to squint at you and then
briefly smile, you wait. A considerable time rolls by, with no one
paying a wit's attention to you, until you hear a voice from
somewhere behind the camera: "One minute." "Okay," your conversant
says to himself, and he looks at you and smiles. "Hi," looks down,
"Brett." Looks up. "I am so-and-so. I'm going to ask you a few
questions about this story. I'm going to ask you how you came up
with the name, and why you think there's a monster in the woods
around Chapel Hill. How does that sound?" "Fine," you may have
said.

Once the lights come on and the camera operator gets very serious,
there are only a few seconds until the producer points at the
weatherman. "We're back in Chapel HillŠ" The rest blurs in your
mind, until the man shifts a little forward in his chair and half
turns toward you. "With me outside Guy B. Phillips Middle School is
Brett Demsch, the young man who is credited with helping to
identify and name North Carolina's answer to Sasquatch. Brett, how
are you this morning?" "Fine," you say, quickly, defensively. Not
an auspicious start.

"Great," he says as he looks down. "Brett, tell me, how did you and
your schoolmates decide that a Bigfoot has been stalking Chapel
Hill?"

You look at him, a bit astonished, every bit the young teenager
aghast at another incomprehensible twist in adult logic. "We didn't
say Bigfoot -- "

"Right! -- So, how did you come up with the name 'bog monster.'
That seems a bit more appropriate for Connecticut, my home state,
or maybe New Hampshire. Are there bogs in North Carolina?"

"I don't know," you say, and let the first question rest.

"Then why 'bog monster'?"

"My dad -- " you say, but don't know how to finish that thought in
a sentence. I understand why, believe me, as I keep writing.

On television, a graphic of the paper's three main conclusions
replaces the speakers, during which a signal to the interviewer
must have indicated, let's cut this short. "Your dad coined the
phrase? He helped you map out the territory of the bog monster,
didn't he?"

"Yeah," you say, again with a pregnant pause that shows you want to
fill it with the truth, but your conversant finishes: "All right, I
appreciate your coming out this morning to share this with us. What
class do you have right now?"

"I'm not sure," you say, looking over your shoulder at the school,
as if it could answer you (good for a laugh in 60% of viewer
homes).

"All right, Brett, you get to your next class. Back to you, guysŠ."
He waits motionless and smiling some seconds for the signal, and
when it comes he relaxes his spine and takes off the mic as a
surgeon might doff plastic gloves. He doesn't turn back to you,
Brett, at all, and the production assistant comes up to move you
away from the impromptu set and back to the school entrance.


That evening was hard. It began with our muted greeting of each
other -- our eyes seemed to have the same magnetic pole and
couldn't catch each other without diverting. Doreen moved with the
motions of someone in soaked clothing -- soaked in disappointment.
I walked the way you might to say, "This downpour isn't so bad."
You, Brett, had homework and didn't stay long at the table. We were
left sitting beside each other, chewing slowly, unable to speak.
Not that this was new, and in a strange way this was already better
than where we'd been many times before.

You deserve to understand. Imagine you and your friends at a table,
at lunch, laughing the way friends do -- not exactly
unself-consciously but with such practice and repetition that it
becomes easy, routine, comforting. Then this kid you know -- son of
a circus geek or an inveterate nerd or someone who stinks or the
kid with the crossed eyes, who knows -- comes to you and says,
"Brett, can you come over to my house this afternoon?" You
(thirteen again) look at him incredulously. "No," you say with half
a laugh and a look at your buddies. What was he thinking? But say
he keeps asking, day after day, until you don't answer any more,
you just glare and let that silence wrap around his ears, weigh
down his shoulders and keep him locked in place, while you walk
away.

Doreen and I have been silent with each other that way. If you can
hate a stranger who imposes himself for just a few seconds on your
space and your mind, imagine someone whom you love, who seems to
say the same kinds of nonsense and with the same indifference to
your answers and your feelings and your sense of what's right,
until you don't speak any more, you glare and let silence whoosh in
with a great big icy vapor cloud of contempt, until you are both
spitting it out back and freezing out everything you share.

There we sat at the dinner and couldn't begin to talk, couldn't
look at each other, and yet we couldn't walk away. We were both
angry and that was a relief in its own way. You don't argue out of
contempt, although you can stop any argument that way. No, if you
argue and shout, it's because you want something from your
conversant, and as unreasonable, insulting, impossible or selfish
as it may be -- it's still something that holds you together. I
know this death grip well. More on that later.

Doreen, your mother, finally broke the silence. "So, John, did you
see your son on national TV this morning? Anne gave me a copy, in
case you'd like to see it." Then she held her words and her breath;
she narrowed her eyes and hollowed her cheeks as she watched her
fork collect the remnants of spaghetti on her plate. Her complexion
seemed to drain of blood even more than usual.

"I didn't," I replied, "but I heard about it. I can't believe they
put him on without our permission. George recommended that I sue."

She dropped her folk with a clatter and looked at me. "Don't try to
put this on me or the television crew. You're the one who started
this, you kept it alive at every turn, and now, along with your
being likened to the village idiot" -- ouch! -- "your son was
absolutely humiliated before a national television audience while
trying to defend you."

"Now wait a second," I shot back as if a shark smelling blood, "you
gave permission?"

"I told them nothing you wouldn't have," she said, "I told them
that if you wanted him to talk to them, I wasn't going to stop
you."

"Where the hell did you get the idea that I wanted them to talk to
him?" I shouted. "I've turned down every interview request."

"Don't you curse at me, John. This whole thing is because you
cannot be straightforward with your own child. You're always
playing out these jokes, hiding behind them. Your own son doesn't
even know who you are."

"He doesn't, or you don't?" I asked, still with an edge on my
voice. Attack prevarication.

"Ha," she said with no humor. "I've given up." Pause. "But I've
been trying to get you to participate in raising your son, and all
I see from you is a constant tearing down."

"Wait a second --" I said, putting up a stop sign in my mind.

"It's not just this," she said. "This is bad -- very bad -- but it
will pass. What I am worried about is that you don't connect at all
with your son. You don't play ball; you don't share any hobbies
with him; you don't share anything about yourself. You show up late
for dinner, then you sit in front of the TV or that computer, and
you live in your own little universe, no matter how much your
family tries to bring you out." A sigh.

"Doreen," I said firmly, as if her name would bring her back from
this brinkmanship. I wanted to say: if there's anyone who lives in
their own universeŠ but I knew that wouldn't be fair.

"Doreen, Doreen, can't you do any better? Doesn't something occur
to you? Isn't there anything you can contribute to this
discussion?"

"What am I supposed to say?" I said. "Gosh, Doreen, your analysis
is perfect again. It's all my fault. I should just shrivel up and
die. Thanks for letting me know."

She looked away and sighed again. "I don't know why I even bother.
You can't ever seem to get beyond your own little ego problems.
Fine. I don't want to know anything about you. Just share something
with your son beyond the fact that you imagine monsters behind
every rock, okay?"

I looked at her incredulously. She got up and went to the kitchen.
The storm seemed to have passed, and maybe the sun was coming out,
I couldn't tell, but regardless we were both shivering wet.


The experts -- a phalanx of them -- emerged from God knows where. A
biologist specializing in urban fauna. A statistician with an
advanced degree in geography. The columnist with no patience for
hoaxes. The science teacher with his own TV show. A former police
chief. The cultural literacy specialist. A former chicken coop
thief. The Bigfoot debunker. A muckraking reporter. The
"shame-on-you" plain-talking parent activist. A local politician.
For the most part, they took this opportunity to pontificate about
my irresponsible effort to fool you and your friends, and then the
unforgivable way that I let you advocate for me and my cheap
publicity stunt, though a few thought you were the adolescent
criminal genius and I your patsy.

You, Brett, seemed no more morose than usual, for which I was very
grateful. I found my hands shaking just a little bit more; my sleep
a bit shorter; distractions all the more important. I sat in front
of the TV one evening after another, and watched more B movies than
I'd like to admit. I watched until I was sick of them and their
mechanically predictable plots, so much that a single question came
up again and again: Just how many B writers are there, just how
many imaginations flow like a vortex around that drainŠ?

You won't know this about me, Brett, but I once thought about being
a writer. That may explain why this missive won't stop growing, but
the more immediate cause is my prolixity at memo writing. I can
write them at quite a clip, and my colleagues tend to pass the
assignment to me whenever they can. My emails can be quite the
production, too, so much so that my supervisor has more than once
phoned me to get the one-minute version.

As a writer, I have a B sensibility, with a predilection for the
grandiose storylines of science fiction -- so believe me, I am not
disparaging those who make formulaic, half-baked movies. But you
can only chew through so many of them before the inconsistencies
and conventions itch inside your brain no differently than the
tension that you're escaping fromŠ.

After many evenings, I started unpacking from my memory old stories
that I had told myself, recreating an internal life that I had had
many years earlier, when I still thought of getting them down on
paper. In fact, I had started writing most of them, but never got
far on any of them. It's a common situation: the elation lasts for
a few days as words flow and ideas take form, then you find
yourself before a problem, a scene that doesn't come into focus,
and you let things lie, tell yourself you're strengthening the
plot; after several days you know you have to get back at it, and
when you look at what you've written, you see nothing but trite
phrasing and paragraphs of filler and plot-propping characters, and
a storyline that no different than a story you've seen four or five
times before -- and which has no doubt been told somewhere on this
world hundreds of times before. Why go on, then? It's so much
easier to finish a memo; no one is surprised if it's vacuous.

The media hounds called our house for a few days, until they
concluded I wasn't going to talk to anyone, and the feeding frenzy
went on in a swirl around my apparently cold, lifeless body. 
Doreen -- it would be unfair to say that she reveled in my pain. I
could see the struggle in her eyes and sometimes a stifled laugh,
sometimes a swallowed sigh, sometimes with an edge that said, this
is my man to make fun of, not anyone else's. I guess that's a kind
of protection, in the same way a man might want to put his arm
around his little lady's shoulders (thought Doreen is at least as
tall as me) and say, "Don't worry your pretty little head about all
that."

I felt like I was at the bottom. No matter what they thought of my
representation in the press, my friends, colleagues and
acquaintances said I had brought this upon myself. "A smart aleck
with an unpleasant tinge of arrogance," I saw with a furtive glance
at an email that made Doreen guffaw. Much as this irritated me, I
couldn't contest it. Even you seemed to have had enough of me. I
don't know if it was because you yourself were suffering -- I
didn't have that much access to your life. Even the few moments of
weakness -- "a girl's involved" -- seemed to have passed.

The transition came for me one morning when I dared to open the
local news in the newspaper. It was a two-paragraph story with an
inauspicious two-line headline: "Farm to host monster fest." It
described how a farm field along the Bolin Creek -- outside of
Chapel Hill -- had been leased for a month-long summer festival
celebrating the Bog Monster of recent fame. "The lessors are 'The
Southeast Sasquatch Society' and the 'Renaissance Fayres Group of
the Piedmont.'" My chance to guffaw, spilling coffee all over the
paper and half over me. I thought: something to distract from my
bagatelle. Of course, I knew that this would drag my name through
the cow dung again. But I was pleased.

I could look Doreen in the eye again. She laughed, too, but
couldn't see any vindication for me in it. I carefully dried the
page, and downloaded the story off their website. She and I didn't
talk much, and she went to bed most nights without checking with
me. I began to sit in front of the computer until late at night,
and write little chunks of stories that kept coming back to me. You
were quiet, reclusive, impenetrable. Doreen opined: "Oh, there's a
girl all right." I felt I understood your impassiveness, but I
can't say whether you felt any of the empathy from your parents.


One story begins this way. -- A young man awoke slowly, feeling
drugged or maybe weakened by long illness. His nerves reported back
from throughout his body before he could move any part --
immobilized by sleep or drugs -- and he was aware of sores in his
skin, aching joints, closed eyelids that were gunked and dried
shut. He slowly gained control over his muscles, and tried to move.
It proved to be impossible, but not because he was confined or
injured: he couldn't move himself with his muscles -- they were
either too weak or too uncoordinated. He forced his eyes open with
a crackling sound. A film on the lenses left everything in a fog.
After a long series of blinks one eye cleared, and he saw that he
was surrounded by a soft light, emanating from all surfaces, floor
included; the floor was a milky white surface with a regular hash
pattern every three feet of metallic-looking runners; the walls did
not have any hash, and seemed about two feet away from his head and
again from his feet. The wall in front of his eye was eight to ten
feet away. The height of the walls was impossible to determine from
this angle.

He became aware of spittle running out of his mouth in a rut, and
simultaneously of a disconcerting feeling that his head had become
indented where it lay on the floor. The room was warm -- no, hot
and extremely dry, like a sauna just before someone drops a ladle
of water on the heating stones. He was naked, as he realized when
his legs moved against each other. What he could feel of his skin
was caked with dried sweat, and greasy at the joints.

Slowly, minutes or dozens of minutes later, he gained some strength
and could begin to lift himself, to move his shoulders to a better
angle, to adjust his legs to assist. His head wouldn't cooperate;
it resisted as though it had grown to twice its normal size. His
whole body was resisting, in fact. He didn't know why the
rebellion, and inexorably fell back into unconsciousness.

When he awoke again, the room was darker. It may have been cooler
as well. He lay still for quite a while, trying to collect
thoughts. Where was he? A hospital? He could not remember where he
last was, but he seemed fairly certain that he had gone to sleep in
his own bed. He ran through memories, named his family and closest
friends, to eliminate the possibility of amnesia. Or rather,
perhaps he was suffering from a traumatic occurrence that caused
him to suppress the event and everything leading up to it. A
hospital then?

Perhaps this was a treatment appliance, maybe a hyperbaric oxygen
chamber. That calmed his nerves for a while, and put a number of
questions to rest. Eventually, though, a thought came up that he
could not dismiss, could not calmly reason away: what if he was
dreaming in an extended coma? That would explain his emaciated
self-image and the detail-poor environment that he found himself
in, his paralysis, and the lack of memory. This was a frightening
thought, especially because of the immobility. He could not stop
the thought of agonizing days, weeks, months of enforced,
unremitting stillness and sameness until he went mad or his body
was allowed to die. As he lay there, still and breathing
laboriously in and out, the word "death" began to sound in his mind
like "release."

A long time passed, during which the room got darker. He tried to
control his mind, with panic at the edges. He almost missed the
change: near his feet a rectangle frame appeared in the wall, and a
door moved inward. From the near darkness of the uncovered space
emerged a body, held upright on four arms and hands and topped with
two cockroach-style antennae and two extra hands holding a small
plate. The hands lowered and then let drop the plate. The
apparition retreated and the door closed. Some kind of a giant bug
had just brought him a meal.

The young man had plenty of time to contemplate this, even after he
slept again. The room was getting brighter again, a circadian
cycle. The plate had something oozy looking, probably food,
probably his mind's twisted reconstruction of hospital food, and
the bug an image of a hospital aide. Did that mean he was up and
about, able to chew, and just encapsulated in insanity? Was he
gravity-welled on a bed in a hospital that his comatose mind was
unable to perceive? The answer to this question had many
implications, but the issue was at the moment undecidable. For a
long time he debated taking the bait -- trying to get to the food
-- in the end, he decided to.

He realized that brute force was not going to get his head where he
needed it, so he tested his limbs for their positioning and
purchase against the floor. Grease from his body made things more
difficult. Eventually, he mastered a shallow roll of his head
together with a wave movement of his body. After innumerable
repetitions he had half turned himself toward the plate. He could
stretch his lower left arm out and with some rolls and reps he felt
the plate between his fingers. It felt like plastic but was as
heavy as lead. He got close enough to use his thumb and pulled the
plate a little toward him.

His fingers then explored the stuff on the plate. It felt organic
enough, so he squished some into his palm and dragged his hand back
to his body, lifted the forearm and deposited the sticky fingers
and payload in his mouth. He chewed slowly. A familiar consistency,
but nothing like the taste of food, neither a spice nor oil nor the
distinctive odor of a particular vegetable or meat. It was the
definition of bland, though it went down fine.

When his hand was back at the plate, he flicked his finger at the
plate, which clanged no differently than a polymer would, but with
no movement. Extra gravity? he thought in a moment of realization.
He dropped his arm against the floor; the whack ached. Effect of
insanity, or the paling of life in a dying body?

Or reality?, ventured a small internal voice he didn't recognize as
his own.

He let the bug memory fade -- if it did not repeat it was an
anomaly that should not detract from the central issue of his
body's real condition. He noted that he had no urge to urinate or
defecate. Was that thirst in his throat, or a coating from the
food? Maybe what he swallowed was soap? Or some poison?

After a while, he felt something in his stomach. A lump, as if what
he had eaten had coagulated and hardened and now was bloating him.
The bloating feeling slowly gave way to the loss of sensation,
freezing his muscles from the inside out, taking with it his nerves
and sensations, first where they are scarce and vague, then in his
limbs and appendages. The last bit to tingle and fade was his mouth
and eyes. He was both afraid and expectant, hoping death here would
mean rebirth there, where he was really alive. Goodbye -- see you
on the other side -- he thought of his body, as his eyes went
black.


Doreen, your mother, doesn't think much of my science fiction
affinities. I know you don't either, though the reasons differ: you
prefer adventure where the frame is more real, the stakes
realistic, and the hero's improbable success an all the more stark
contradiction; Doreen reads psychological novels, self-help and
spiritual tracts, and finds science fiction an empty evasion.
"Empty, no," I reply.

Your mother has a psychology degree, which she uses more or less
daily in her administrative role in human resources at Blue Cross.
You still marvel at the reflective, wedge-shaped building off
highway 15-501, looking more like a gigantic sculpture than a
building. I find the building as interesting and bothersome as any
trompe l'oeil, the kind of thing that engages you on first sight,
makes you stop and think, makes you want others to stop and look,
too; you feel all the more sheepish when you find yourself entering
the building without another thought -- the first impression
abandoned for common sense.

Your mother was just starting her career when we met. I don't know
what it was that made us stick to each other, actually. I guess we
were both desperate to find something that worked in our lives, and
we functioned together. Don't get me wrong -- your mother and I
love each other, and we're working on loving each other more. But
if we had been on different trajectories, it's hard to believe we
would not have just bumped off each other. That's part of the
disappointment, part of the baggage that we bring together. Soul
mates? More fellow travelers, I'm afraid, and that always makes you
nervous -- the unnerving sense that you may be heading to different
destinations and that your paths may diverge unexpectedly.

Let me see if I can describe to you the woman I had met. She was in
her early twenties. She smiled a lot more then, and the smile had a
way of animating her face in ways you may not recognize: a young
woman, confident, enjoying life, sure of her friends, innocent
even. I was a lot quieter and maybe not so ready to laugh or smile,
but I could sit in a corner and watch her and her friends enjoy
themselves for literally hours, which I did on more than one of the
few occasions that brought us together. Eventually she noticed, and
there were two possible reactions -- either freak- out or
curiosity. She freaked.

I didn't see her for a number of years, then one day we crossed
paths again. She seemed changed, and in fact was, in the wake of a
very painful betrayal by a boyfriend. She had mostly forgotten why
I had stood out, but remembered that I had had something for her.
We went out, first as a consolation for her and, I suppose, a
reward for me. After we dated for a few months, we found our lives
intertwining, and we drew the consequence: we became engaged. A few
weeks later she was pictured as bride-to-be in her parents' local
paper, though no date was set.

When I married Doreen, she was a serious woman, someone who
understood the consequences of marriage, household, offspring and
life together only too well. I know she had remembered every detail
of what happened between us, too. She tended to wear austere
clothing, mostly pantsuits, with a hint of eau and mascara, and she
pinned her hair back much of the time. She acted as if in training
for something; her face grew taut, while its wrinkles seemed more
pronounced, neither of which helped her narrow head and long nose,
although her mottled blue eyes did well under this treatment. Tall
and thin, she was attractive as a woman, but with a hint of
abstinence or illness in her silhouette.

Having a child changed her a lot -- she lost the thinness, filled
out her face, and became more relaxed, lethargic even, as if
something had been decided with your birth. That's a mistake I've
made several times. Nothing is decided for good -- if it matters at
all it'll be tested again and again, no matter how certain you are
of your choice. Having a child is the perfect example, a decision
that comes back again and again for reaffirmation. Brett, even if I
don't always shout my joy, I want you to know that you were never
just one decision, but always the best I ever made.

So -- Doreen became your mother. She had some hard times, and I
think you know this. What you may not know -- but deserve to, when
you're 25 -- is that your mother experienced real depression when
you were young. It was hard for me to watch. She was effusive and
elated one day, reemerging as the young woman I had first met; then
depressed and withdrawn, sometimes barely able to get out of bed,
and suspicious of almost everything I did. Prescriptions pulled her
through, but I don't know what she thought of me at the time. I
know I'm no perfect husband. Right now, I should be up stairs, with
her, thinking this through with her, but I'm sitting here,
communicating with a mature son who doesn't exist yet. Who may
never read this.


The lights were down, way down. The young man opened his eyes aware
that something had changed. Where was he? He looked a long time
before his mind admitted that his eyes saw the same indistinct
walls and hashed floor as before. But something had changed. He
contemplated how to best move his body. Just before he began to
work it, something passed over his eyes: at first it was just a
dark rush, but he eventually recognized small limbs jutting from a
disc that looked like a headless sea turtle. It stopped over him.
He saw tall stalks extending out the upper side, waving slightly in
an invisible wind, and near the mouth two glints that slowly
resolved into large, black, reflective globules, glossy like
irises. Eyes.

The young man screamed with the half lungs he could fill. The disc
reacted immediately, moved noisily backwards on four larger limbs
-- not the small appendages to either side of the semi-globes --
that were jointed like a lizard's. Two massive hooks opened and
revealed something hideously like an ant's mouth. From deep within
resonated clicks, whoops and thuds, perhaps its own scream.

The stalks were atop the facial area and looked like antennae
twitching in rhythm -- although a slight arrythm worked its way in.
They were maybe the length of the disc. The body measured 2 foot in
diameter, perhaps a foot deep and another foot off the floor. Like
the main appendages, it was brown and grayed, leathery, slightly
haired. The antennae gleamed like plastic or obsidian. The little
arms were black and dark, similar to the inside of the mouth and
its mandibles. The eyes, shiny as a billiard ball, stared without
blinking.

When the young man had emptied his lungs twice, he had to stop. The
clicks also receded. They were both faced with a fight-or-flight
situation. He was theoretically armed with long legs and arms,
fists and a large well- protected brain. The creature was, on the
other hand, not just hypothetically mobile and obviously much
stronger. It also had the presumed advantage of understanding the
situation, whether nightmare or delusion or twisted reality. The
young man tried to assess his ability to gather strength into a
single act of desperation, but he hoped and thought it wouldn't
come to that. If aggression was intended, there had been plenty of
opportunities to pull his appendages from their sockets as he
slept.

He began to discern that some clicks and whoops did not come from
the bug creature before him. Strategizing. The bug began to go
backwards and a section of wall opened into darkness. The creature
disappeared and the door shut.

For a long time, the young man gathered his breath and wits. The
lights seemed to be intensifying. All of a sudden he heard an
electromagnetic "whoomp" and felt the difference. To his surprise,
his body was not naked. There was a full-length bodysuit, partially
cut out, strangely airy and now suddenly steely as well. Bondage,
then, he thought and decided to test it, not expecting much. For an
instant, there was no movement, then WHAM! He literally flew up
into the air and landed with a bone-echoing crunch. His skull might
have cracked, but he had what seemed like a thin helmet on it.
Blood flowed in his mouth and he spat some out. Slowly now, he
lifted his two arms, set his hands on the floor and lifted his
upper body up with a jerk. His head flew back and forth until he
flexed his neck and it stopped. He pushed up further and pulled a
knee in, then the other. He raised his upper body. He was half
standing, supported by an exoskeleton that responded to his every
muscle movement. The exaggerated movements felt a bit like the
sudden jerky movements of an insect, but he soon steadied himself.
He stood up fully.

He could look down and get a sense of his body. His legs and arms
looked thin but strong enough, while his chest was sunken and his
fingers boney and weak -- as if the main muscle groups had been
worked, while other muscles had simply atrophied. His skin was pale
to translucent. The bend in his arms seemed punctuated by
numberless dots -- perhaps microinjections? After examining himself
for a long while, he looked up and noticed that the door wall had
lost its luminosity.

Behind the transparent wall he could discern six bug creatures.
Two, including, he thought, the one from before, were seemingly on
the ground, although the contours of the room were indistinct. The
other four were apparently hovering -- the edges of their personal
aircraft were visible underneath the bodies of the higher two. The
same two had something in the concave area of their oblong bodies,
something shiny and pointed in a way that reminded him of a weapon,
slanted so that he assumed that one of their major limbs, now
resting limply on footguards, must have been double- jointed and
could reach up and over, grasp and bring to bear. The bug world
equivalent of a gunslinger?

As he stood, he tried to find signs that this was an irreal
experience -- as it must be. But the typical flow and ebb of a
dream was nowhere to be found. He counted the seconds, and nothing
changed, except that the hovering bugs seemed to be moving up and
down as if x-raying him in chunks. Maybe the antennas, he thought.
That gave him a momentary ah-ha: evolution would never produce
these freakish amalgams of bugs, leathery animals and primates,
which had therefore to be products of his mind, perhaps unusually
detailed and effective because his whole comatose brain was engaged
in their creation. Let the antennas x-ray him.

The question was, whether the coma dream was preventing him from
reaching consciousness, or whether consciousness was out of the
question. If the latter, then there was no cost in believing the
former, while ignoring the former was tantamount to suicide. But
how to break the illusion, force his mind to consciousness?

"Who are you?" he asked the bugs behind the glass wall.

A few clicks and whoops followed.  This approach wasn't going to
get him very far.

He took a single jerky step toward the wall, and it went opaque.


You don't normally look me up, so forgive my surprise when you
surfaced next to me and said, at the instant I saw you, "Can we go
to the fair?" I was nonplussed. "Fair?" You seemed pained,
incredulous and disturbed at the degree to which I was out of touch
with the world. "The bog monster fair," you let out.

I thought at first that you were joking -- making fun of me, of
course. I wanted to say that, but realized I ought not to shut down
communication -- all Doreen's post-mortems weren't without their
effect -- and so I said, with great parental matter-of-factness,
"Oh, that fair. Are you sure it's appropriate? Our family has had
to suffer a great deal because of the press about the 'bog
monster;' this might only aggravate things."

"Oh come on, dad," you said. "Nobody cares about that."

"That's not exactly true," I said.

"Okay," you said, "if you live by what people say about you, then
maybe it's not true. But nobody I know cares."

"And when a hundred cameras flash in your face with a statue of Big
Foot behind you?"

You chuckled: "The camera people are gone, dad. You have to notice
your environment more."

I couldn't argue because I hadn't seen them around either. I just
figured that they were camped out somewhere with our pictures on
the trailer wall, waiting for the dayŠ. A bit ludicrous.

"Okay," I said. "All rightŠ. You're right. How about tomorrow?"

You were both relieved and panicked, if that is possible. "No -- 
no -- I want to go this afternoon." You let me look into your eyes
-- I guess because of your desperation. It surprised me when I
recognized your mother's eyes, slightly crossed in a narrow face,
with a hint of the same frustration and distance, the eyes of
someone left in line when the ship finished loading, or facing a
ticket counter with all flights cancelled.

"All right," I said. "But why does it have to be today? I've got
plans, too, you know."

"My friends will be there."

"Why don't you just get them to take you?"

"I can't really ask," you said.

Friends that you can't ask -- that was all the evidence I needed
that this had to do with the opposite sex. I looked around for
Doreen. "All right, Brett. Give me fifteen minutes or so."

You looked relieved, and as you left: "We don't have to go for
another hour." And you were gone.

A metallic taste formed in my mouth, but I shook my head, stretched
my shoulders and went back to the disjointed story taking form on
the LCD screen before me. The hour went by in a flash, but I was
ready to get out of the house. You, Brett, had to be reminded of
our deal as you doodled in your room. Or it was an act; I couldn't
tell.

I told Doreen where we were going, but she didn't seem surprised,
so I knew how this had all progressed. Still, it felt good to be
walking to the car with you, a couple guys heading out together,
doing their stuff. We didn't talk much; you were preoccupied and I
was getting more nervous all the time. The signs, half amateurish,
half commercialized, led us to a field with an attendant (charging
for parking in a cow lot?), and a hundred or more cars. The number
impressed me. We walked toward a field from which spewed a thin
cloud of straw dust and dirt, with distant music, displaying a
number of large tents and pennants flapping slowly in the wind.

You started moving away from me as we approached, and I shouted,
"Okay, Brett, we'll meet at the entrance in an hour to check in.
All right?" You seemed to nod before you strode away, faster than I
thought possible. I was left alone at the edge of the festival. A
ticket taker was selling admission, checking re-entry stamps, and
taking tickets that came from who knows where. He was dressed in
something approximating late Middle Ages garb and had the wide
eyes, unbridled facial and cranial hair one might project backward
into such a rough-hewn age. The pointed-toe soft shoes were a nice
touch, though they lent perhaps too much of the clown motif.

"One," I said to him.

He gave me some frou-frou Renaissance-speak and waited for my
response. When I didn't play the game, he took my $10 and bowed
slightly and waved me into the fairgrounds.

So there I was, in the middle of the Bog Monster Festival. No one
gave me another glance. A Renaissance Fayre crowd was engaged in
preparations for jousting and hand-to-hand combat. A respectable
Carolina rock-and-roll band was playing for dancers and picnickers.
Lines had formed at a beer booth and a rice-and-chicken wrap place.
There were a few sideshow attractions, and a few booths offering
New Age wares. People did not seem as numerous as the number of
cars implied, but even the thin attendance at so many venues added
up to a positive impression.

I wandered by the stage, then eyed the beer stand; I couldn't
justify the indulgence and went on to the booths. I had no idea how
I would fill an hour. The pyramids and homeopathic snake oil
wouldn't do it, and the grunting, oath-uttering jousters weren't
going to cut it, either. The sun was hot and irritating. I went
back to the wrap place, waited for a good ten minutes and finally
got a frozen lemonade.

With refreshment and a bit more sugar in the bloodstream, I
wandered back to the booths. That's when I met her. You have to
understand, Brett, that I wasn't looking for an encounter. I
wouldn't mention it except that you may wonder how this part of the
story started. Barbara Hohenstauffen. I was familiar with the type:
long bushy hair, substituting volume for style, freckled, thick,
white skin, luminescent brown eyes outlined in mascara, wide,
smooth face, full if not overly long white teeth, not too tall,
wide hips and noticeable but not too defined bosom, a gait that
threatens to move into free-form dance at any point. Loose
clothing, colorful lacy cotton flowingly cut. There was nothing
unexpected about her selling pyramids and life- energy pap. The
surprise was that she saw me.

The booth was empty when I took a look at some crystal pyramids
that left a variety of spectra on the shelf that held them. I
leaned over to try to read the blurb about the life-generating
effects, but then thought better of it. I turned, and she was
directly behind me.

"May I see your hand?" she asked. I thought at first that she must
have suspected that I had taken a pyramid and concealed it in my
hand. I opened my hand palm up and made to deny any such
intentions. The whole while she had a smile on her face that seemed
completely out of context for what I thought was happening, and for
any other explanation except a crassly commercial one.

"Thank you," she said and took my hand in both of hers. She leaned
over at the neck so far that her hair fell over and obscured our
hands.

I could then feel one of her fingers tracing out lines in my palm,
a sensation that made this moment intimate in a way that made my
whole body tense. A faint waft of perfume reinforced the tension.

She felt that, looked up with a headshake to throw her hair back,
and even took a half a step away. "Your palm fits you," she said,
still with the smile and a small nod to encourage me.

"What?" I asked.

"I can give you a palm reading," she said as she let go of my hand.

I could feel my cheeks redden, a bit chagrined for having let this
get this far. "I'm sorry," I said, apologizing for leaving the
impression I might be interested, "I don't believe in this kind of
thing."

She broadened a knowing, but not condescending or fatuous smile. "I
know," she said lightly.

Of course, that made me suspect what she felt she was selling with
a palm reading.

"I like doing palm readings for skeptics," she said as she moved
away from me back into her booth. "They always surprise."

I didn't know whether to answer ("so do non sequiturs") or just
walk away.

She didn't wait and wandered back behind her booth. I hesitated for
a few seconds -- I suppose I was tempted to keep this completely
unexpected encounter alive -- then turned away. From behind me:
"You're the bog monster, aren't you." Not a question.

I took just a step, and found myself immobilized again. I decided
that I couldn't leave that unanswered, both as a communicative
gesture and as a challenge. I turned and tried to say
good-humoredly, "You saw that in my palm?"

She had said that without looking at me, and only raised her eyes
after a few seconds. She seemed half surprised to see me still
facing her. "No, I recognized your face."

Stupid, I thought. She was just mocking me, even a life-energy
gypsyŠ.

"But it makes sense. It's in your aura."

"My aura?" I tried to sound skeptical but not, for my part,
mocking.

She squinted at me. "Yes, definitely." Then she looked away --
maybe down the way to the stage -- as she related the following:
"All living creatures have an aura, a pattern of psychic energy
that surrounds their physical being. The aura changes with your
mood, but it's also as distinctive as a fingerprint, a signature --
a palm." She looked at me, the smile working its way in. "I see the
pain in your aura." A pause. "You suffer for your creature."
Another. "Because it bears your anxiety for you."

"What?"

"I can work up your profile," she said, looking down and speaking
now as if rehearsed, "but it takes a lot of energy, a lot of time.
I can't do an aura for free, it's way too psychically draining."

I didn't want to end the conversation on that point, so I asked:
"Do you believe in the bog monster?"

She squinted at me and then smiled broadly. "Oh, yes, without a
doubt." She turned back to her task, but added with a flick of her
head: "Take my card -- in case you change your mind." I took two
measured steps forward, reached into the crystal cardholder and
took one. "Thanks," I said. Stupid, I thought and walked away.

That whole exchange took less than two minutes, and I wanted
nothing more than to be driving away from this place. I wandered up
and down a bit, trying to recognize your silhouette among the young
people. Nowhere. It took twenty minutes and I saw you coming from
the creek with a small group, on a path from a small shrine for the
bog monster. A piece of this little festival that I hadn't been
aware of. When you were safely off to watch the next band tune up
and do a sound check, I followed the path down to the creek side.
There was a reproduction of a painting nailed to a tree, an
artist's rendering of the bog monster -- a hyper-realistic painting
of a cross between a typical Big Foot and a gorilla emerging from
the muck -- a portrait festooned with flowers and surrounded by
small votive candles. A corkboard was covered by scraps of paper
with sentiments -- "I'll marry you, bog monster" and "what a
crock!" and "please grant me a cure" -- that fascinated me while I
grew progressively more ill at ease.

On my return I saw your group moving among the booths, trying, it
seemed, to extort free samples or buy some of the cheapest wares.
You yourself haggled with Barbara H.; I could not tell with what
degree of irony, but she seemed not to be engaging with you. I
can't tell you anymore how that made me feel; I was probably
pleased, not only because it would mean that she did not recognize
you. I began to discern your group: no one I knew, but it had three
boys and two girls. Always a volatile combination, I find. I have
to admit that I watched carefully how one of your friends joked
maybe too passionately with the girls over an extravagant scarf. I
couldn't tell how you related to each of them; they did not seem to
stop for your hamming-up and did not seem to pay particular
attention to you. But you were part of the group, definitely, and I
was pleased.

I tried not to follow you, even with my eyes, but the area was not
large enough to lose sight of you once I had it. I listened to the
band, and also tried not to let my eyes settle on Barbara's booth.
I did take out the card I had pocketed:


PsychEnergy of Pittsboro, NC

"Because life is psychic energy"

Readings, Consultations & Wares

Barbara Hohenstauffen & Jerry Brookheim


I tried to enjoy the music for a while, but I had a crick in my
back and I wanted nothing more than to be walking out the gate. Two
songs came and went, and I discovered I had lost track of you.
That's when I noticed your group huddled beside the stage, looking
conspiratorial and silly. I had a sinking feeling that was
confirmed a few moments later. One of the girls bounded onto the
stage and whispered for a while into the singer's ear. She hustled
off the stage, but not before he began: "Ladies and gentlemen, we
have a special treat todayŠ. You are all familiar with the modern
and oh so local legend of the bog monster. With us today is Brett
Densch, the middle- schooler who discovered the evidence of our
monster. Brett," he said with his mouth glued to the mic and
looking over at you, "please come up." There was a smattering of
claps and whoops. You went up onto the stage with a wave --
thankfully nothing like a bow or blown kisses -- and stood next to
the singer. "So, Brett," he said, "tell us a little bit about this
bog monster you discovered." He relinquished the mic and you moved
up to it. Your mouth directly against the wind screen, you began to
speak, your voice booming deep and yet cutting sharp at that
volume: "Thanks. I want to thank you all for coming out today" --
you shot a look at your group; this was probably part of the bet --
"and let me just say that the bog monster and I are on the best of
terms, and he thinks this festival rocks!" Your fists went in the
air, as if anticipating a thunderous response. None came, just a
few random shouts and claps. You said a few other things that I
have no recollection of, and went off stage. The group members were
mostly laughing among themselves, but you seemed or tried not to
notice. I could see finally and clearly how you were trying to
gather the attention of the stage-whispering girl with your
comments and your eyes. She noticed, but didn't respond; she mostly
joked with the other boys. For me it was a mercy when you all went
to get some lemonade.

After a few more songs, the band took a break. The canned music was
still loud but quiet by comparison. I kept imagining that someone
would turn around and scream at me like a pod person identifying
the last flesh-and- blood human. Or maybe I was really the pod
person, still concerned about being found out. No one seemed to
even know that a body was sitting here, which made the moment with
Barbara all the stranger, more stark. Then you showed up next to
me: "Let's go." I wanted to ask about your group, but you were
already moving. I guess a question had finally been answered for
you.


The young man slept more soundly with his new exoskeleton, but when
he awoke he found that its tension was gone and he was splayed
against the floor. He was not surprised when the wall door popped
open and a bug padded in. When another larger bug followed, he was
a bit more apprehensive. He noticed that he was aligned against the
far wall, which meant that he had been moved in his sleep. He tried
to raise his head, but the muscles were still too weak.

The first bug -- perhaps the same from the last time -- moved to
the side and the larger bug approached. It was no more than five
feet from his head. It dropped to the ground with a thwap, and one
large appendage bent back over and pulled something from its
concave back. The object was a ball, a softball-sized silver ball
with protrusions and etchings all over the surface. The bug bounced
the ball in its foot/hand, as if weighing it, then suddenly moved
its hand moved forward and down. The ball rolled toward the young
man.

He didn't have many options. The ball was rolling toward his head,
so he put out his hand to stop it. When contact was made, he
received an electrical jolt unlike any in his life. It pulsed
through his fingers, up his arm and across his body; a white light
filled his vision for an instant; he could feel his entire body
shudder. The ball seemed glued to his hand, until the electrical
pulse weakened. He was unable to think during two complete energy
cycles, then he made a monumental effort to push, and the ball
rolled away from him. Half way to the bug.

That bug lifted its body and padded forward to the ball. It lowered
the front half of its body, took hold of the ball with its two
miniature black arms, and gave it a shove. The ball clanged on the
floor and rolled toward the young man again. He tried to punch it,
but his strength gave out when he struck the ball. Three cycles
passed this time before he was able to push the ball away, and it
rolled a foot. The bug, still tipped forward, padded up to the
ball, grabbed it and pushed it half the remaining distance to the
young man.

He cursed and added: "This is torture, it's not allowed." He
relaxed his arms in protest.

The two bugs started clicking and whooping. The bigger bug got up
on all fours and padded backwards to its original position. There
was a minute of impasse, then "whoomp!" The exoskeleton powered up.
The young man stochastically raised himself to a standing position.
The ball still lay before him. He moved a step forward and gave it
a great kick. He realized what a bad idea this was when he felt his
large toe break on contact -- the cracking sound was unmistakable
-- though the ball did become airborne and seemed to threaten the
bugs' antennae. As it approached the larger bug, a field of some
kind bled off its momentum, and the ball fell with a clunk before
the bug. The young man lowered his body to a lotus position. He
winced at the sight of his toe but otherwise kept his eyes on them.

The larger bug repeated earlier actions, though the ball came at
the human more slowly, rolling to a stop about a foot from him. He
carefully put his good foot behind the ball and gave it a moderate
push. The shock was profound, but short lived. The larger bug
pushed it back, and with a wince the young man repeated his action.
When the ball came back yet again, the young man surrendered, moved
to a cowering position in the corner, and just looked at the silver
ball. The bugs started chattering. This went on for quite a while;
the door behind the bugs opened then closed twice. Finally the
larger bug came at him -- either to get the ball or to roll it to
him again -- and stopped, dropped to his belly and flexed his main
forearms/legs up as if to ask what the human was going to do.
That's when the young man reacted. "You want me to touch the goddam
ball? Do you think I'm afraid of it? Of you?" He crawled forward,
leaned over just ahead of the bug, grimaced at him and slapped his
hand onto the ball. Even though he knew no actual eyes were on him,
he kept his on the bug -- as the shock spread throughout his bones
with a burning ache, boiled in his stomach, and exploded in his
ears. "Arrgghhh," he spat out once the charge decreased. The bug
did not move. Then the blue-tinged white light filled the man's
senses againŠ

He next found himself sprawled on the ground, apparently much later
because the lighting had changed, with a burnt hand and no ball or
bug in sight. His toe ached, but he noticed that it was wrapped and
set.

He heard the "whoomp," began the motions to sit up, and listened
for any motion at the wall door. He was upright and sitting before
the door opened. After a few moments, a bug -- the first one? --
entered and padded half the way to him. It set itself down and let
its limbs rest beside its torso. There was a long waiting period,
during which the young man assumed they were testing his mental
state. What had the episode with the ball done to him? For one
thing, he couldn't say why he had reacted as he had.

Amid clicks and trills, the lights lowered. Next to the bug, a
curtain of sparkles came down like confetti over a party, but it
stayed in the air; slowly an image formed on the surface of the
cloud. It was a crude representation of a star and planets, maybe
with the detail that their eyes could discern. The third planet
looked a lot like earth. Something resembling a spaceship emerged
at the right lower corner and disappeared as it approached earth
and shrank to its scaled size. After a few seconds, it emerged
again and zoomed off the screen to the right. The perspective
changed: the solar system moved to the upper left on the screen,
with earth enlarged so that you could see its orbiting; the orbits
sped up until the motion was barely visible in a solid ring around
the sun. Meanwhile, the star pattern in the main part of the screen
began to change. A small number of stars, patently the near ones,
began to move off to the left -- as the years passed. The young man
understood. Dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of years passed.
Finally, the rotation of the sun's satellite slowed to a crawl, and
the star pattern settled in. One of the stars grew in size until it
was a sun with its own planets. The fifth planet, brown and white
in swirls, expanded to fill the entire screen. Okay, clear enough.
This was supposed to be his new home.

"All right," he said. "You just told me that I have traveled
thousands of years across space to a distant world. The timescale
is important, right. Everyone, everything I've ever known is dead,
has been for millennia. I'm supposed to be resigned to this prison,
right? A zoo, maybe?"

The bug seemed to be listening.

"Except that I don't believe you're real." He nodded slowly to make
the point. "You're a dream, an illusion in an elaborate dream
state. You don't exist. You can't exist. You're an impossibility.
The only question is whether I will ever wake up from this
hallucinationŠ. Maybe it's my personal hell. Do you know what hell
is?"

A brief clicking spell indicated a response of some kind.

"Okay, I assume you do." He half smiled, for the first time since
awakening in this cell. "But before we discuss eschatology, we
should at least have a formal introduction. My name is Derek
Sorensen. Pleased to meet you." He lifted a hand in a half
greeting.

The bug clicked a series, paused, repeated it. Derek tried to
transliterate it in his head. "Click-cluck-agh" was the first part.
He said, "Okay, why don't I call you Click-Cluck. My pleasure,
Click-Cluck."

The screen beside the bug dissolved to black. What followed was a
jumble of excerpts from television, Derek's vintage. A preview, he
concluded, to the earthly library holdings of the bug people from
their recent artifact-collecting mission. Maybe, coming back with a
specimen of the planet's apex predator was just a bonus, and this
collection of music videos and Clint Eastwood movies was their
actual goal.


The outlines of his new life became clear. The main bug,
Click-Cluck, came once or twice a day in order to cluck a few new
things at him: he assumed they were words or phrases, but he
couldn't be sure. He tried to guess their meaning but couldn't say
if he was comprehending or fooling himself. Sometimes there were
even quizzes, when the bug would stop and point with its withered
forelimbs at itself or the plate of food or even at Derek. He would
attempt to cluck the words. The bug brought him a dime- store
notebook and a Bic pen, and he began writing down a vocabulary.
There was a dull ritual to all this, such that Derek might even
have reason to doubt his dream-state theory, but he convinced
himself that his cognitive energy, so diverted, was capable of
creating this level of dream realism. His book would be moved after
he slept, indicating their interest in his efforts at
xeno-linguistics.

For its part the bug seemed intent on learning English words. Every
session began with clucks and clicks spilling out of its mouth in a
vain effort to create the resonance of a voice box. Still, Derek
began to recognize the cluck equivalents of "d" and "g" and "k" and
"t." Vowels and some consonants were simply impossible, but these
consonants bordered on the possible.

Derek did his best to click and cluck some sounds, but he had no
idea how to make his tongue create the others. By his count, there
were fifteen distinct cluck sounds. He suspected they would resolve
into more with time, since he had only recognized five or six for a
number of hours. The bug seemed to create most of the sounds with a
stiff tongue, as it moved against in-mouth protrusions that were
much like teeth. Then again, some sounds involved the external
mandibles in a way he couldn't see: when the bug spoke slowly, the
contact points were impossible to intuit, as the sound itself
evaporated; when the bug spoke normally, the movement was too
rapid. A few sounds, rattles really, emanated from deep within the
bug's frontal area.

Derek knew enough to realize that he was sleeping on someone else's
time. The nights stretched on forever on those occasions when he
couldn't sleep. The days were interminable, if he was not engrossed
in something. He guessed this day was twice earth's period. The
evening food seemed to contain some sort of sleeping drug that kept
him down during the bugs' daily rituals: cleaning the room of his
excretions, sweat and oils; administering more microinjections and
conducting who knows what other tests; and reviewing his work in
the notebook. For all he knew, they all called it a day when the
drug took hold and they'd done the necessary.

He had grown accustomed to his bareness. The bugs, too, bore no
clothing, although he had not yet seen their tail ends and could
only guess what they hid back there. They did eventually provide
him with a cloth that seemed thought as a diaper; when he had to go
in the corner of his room, he used the cloth to cover the waste.
The next morning, he would have a new cloth. The truth was that he
seldom went: the glop they served dissolved almost completely in
his digestive system, and it was sufficiently imbued with liquid
that he drank little. He and Click-Cluck found a mutually
understandable word ("clunk-thwack-ughghgh") to designate a
container of water. It would come with a greenish hue in something
that resembled a dog bowl, but he drank it up to show his
cooperative spirit. The green stuff left no aftertaste.

After morning lessons, his exoskeleton would be powered down. He
couldn't tell if it was completely disabled because he was able to
move around regardless. Perhaps his muscles were coming back. They
gave him something that looked like a balloon but felt more like a
basketball; he dribbled it, bounced it off the wall (he wondered if
they jumped behind the two-way mirror), and passed it behind his
back to the sidewall. The room was too small and low to play
basketball for real. When he grew tired, he would roll the ball
slowly to the wall, which would open, swallow the ball and close.

Most afternoons, he would see the bug again, and they would run
through more vocabulary. The bug would engage the cloud projector
and show TV images -- frozen in blurry relief -- and point to
something. Sometimes, the bug would ask for the English word and at
other times would venture the bug word. Sometimes, the image would
flow to reveal a movement of some kind: batting a baseball;
kissing; walking up stairs; a car splashing water on people waiting
for a bus; eating a steak; and so on. Very human-centric. Derek
would describe it, sometimes at great length, and the bug would
slowly work him down to the minimum, using some phrases that he
recognized to mean, "Again" and something like, "More precise." The
bug would describe the scene as well, and Derek thought he could
hear the rudiments of their grammar: how sounds were added before
the thing's name to indicate the action. He would transcribe what
he could and try to recognize the patterns. He was not as
disciplined as he might have been, and it took him longer to pick
out patterns than it took the bugs.

After the afternoon's work -- or sometimes the bug wouldn't show
and he would try to spend the afternoon as he could, helped by a
television show or two -- he would be left alone with his dinner.
In the evening, he recorded what he had done that day, insofar as
it had not been captured in his vocabulary work. One entry:

I try to accommodate the bugs, as I can. They are, after all, me.
It is a mercy, even if I'm stuck in a room that betrays the sensory
deprivation of a comatose mind, that the bugs tend to my abandoned
ego self. They are an impossible projection, but their world is
consistent, coherent and not without intellectual challenges. I
cannot tell you what would happen to me if I were alone in this
isolation. This hallucination keeps me from uncontrollable
insanity.

The evening would fade into darkness and he would recognize a
powerful sleepiness coming over him, and he would resolve again to
skip dinner in order to test his theory of drugging. On another
level, he assumed that his captive mind continued to need an
unconscious period and that it invented the feeling of drugs in
order to explain how this need overtook his apparent reality. The
constrained prisoner needed less sleep than he found himself
taking. He did skip his dinner a few times, but could never
convince himself that drugs were part of the fare. He would wake up
early; dinner was gone; and he was hungry. No noticeable hangover
or sense of deprivation.

Days merged one into the next, and still he had no plan. It was
enough, he found himself thinking, to live from one day to the
next. With each unwilled breath he could feel how life can be its
own reason, but somehow it seemed wrong -- a betrayal of the life
that he wanted to live, the past that was beyond his reach but
which could be his again, if only he could resolve to break through
these walls. But what if he threw himself against the walls and the
bugs stopped coming? He would know that he had condemned himself to
the encroaching madness.


I don't read tabloids, but they must put their stories out on the
wire sometimes. The Chapel Hill Reporter picked up one because of
its local interest. I sank in my chair when I saw the teaser, just
above the attribution to a weekly tabloid: "College town reportedly
stalked by hideous creature." Accompanying the story was a sinister
image of the creature, similar to what I had seen portrayed at the
festival, manifestly drawn by the same hand, but to a very
different end. In the short article, found on page E5, a
pseudonymous local farmer "Bubby Frank" was quoted as having seen
the monster walk away with several of his egg-laying hens hanging
lifeless from its massive hands. A local police report, so the news
weekly, confirmed the tale (though in an addendum the Reporter
relayed that it was unable to find one at any of the local police
or sheriff departments). Your name, Brett, was mentioned as the
local youth who had uncovered its reign of terror over so many
years.

I wanted to call the tabloid and see what I could find out about
"Bubby," but that was an obvious way to self-immolation. Instead, I
called the Reporter. It took two days, but the local editor who had
run the article got back to me.

He sounded bemused. "John Densch, eh? Can't leave this story alone,
can you? You know we had a story ready to run about your son and
the Bog Monster festival, but we decided not to run it. It really
aggravated the guy who wrote the story. I wouldn't be surprised if
he wrote this one just for the tabloids."

"I hope this helps you see you made the right call."

"Oh sure," he said. "The whole story has fallen way beneath our
standards."

I let that be for a few moments. "So who's the reporter? He's
local?"

"Sure," he said. "He's done a number of color pieces for us lately.
But because we didn't run the story it's not appropriate for me to
give you his name. Sorry."

Sorry, sure, I thought. "Okay, thanks." I hung up and resolved to
find him myself. It's a small paper; there weren't more than a
handful of suspects, and only one with the quirky sensibility that
would alight on bog monsters, terrified farmers and tabloids.

"Barry Moore?"

"Yeah?" He had what you might call a tough voice, gravelly and
world- weary, but I think you know the type: poseur. I could
imagine the well- trimmed beard, carefully ironed plaid shirts and
a library of stances that he practices before the mirror.

"This is John Densch. I thought maybe we should talk."

He was silent for a few moments. "What do you think I want to hear
from you?"

"Well," I said, "maybe you want to know the truth about this whole
monster thing."

He chuckled. "And you're the one to give me the truth?"

"More than Bubby Frank," I said with an edge.

He hadn't expected that, but he caught up: "Bubby is a reliable,
uninterested witness, whereas you're manifestly entangled, if not
ensnared in your own self-interest."

"Okay, look, Barry. I don't care what you write about this damn bog
monster. I just want you to leave my son out of it."

"Ah," he said. "Fatherly love. Very touching."

I felt a streak of anger flare up but didn't want to go that way:
"It's the least you could do. He didn't deserve any of this. I'm
the one you should be pillorying."

"I'm not pillorying anyone," he said: "I'm interested in the human
story." And finally, because he couldn't help himself: "I'm writing
a book about it."

"A book?" I was incredulous. "This is a made-up story; there's no
book here."

He laughed. "You don't understand, do you, John? Š Look, I'll be
happy to sit down with you and get your version. Who knows, maybe
you'll convince me. There've been lots of Sasquatch sightings in
Virginia I can look at."

We agreed to meet at Carolina Brewery as a first step in this
negotiation. Doreen had her usual face on when I told her, but she
was preoccupied with other matters and didn't say anything. You
were at your own business. I drove straightaway to the pub and set
myself at the bar, which was unoccupied at the time. I ordered a
pale ale and waited. Barry surprised me when he arrived: a short
and relatively thin man, unassuming in dress and manner, he wasn't
the poseur I had thought, nor did I see anything about him that
matched the deep raspy voice. He had a nervous energy about him, so
you could understand the wiry frame beneath the comfortable
outdoors clothing, and his thin face had the wrinkles of someone
who had spent a great deal of time outside -- or had recently given
up chain-smoking. His head was crowned by fairly long and stiff
gray and black hair that strayed out from his head but mostly fell
back in a messy sort of mullet. He had reading glasses hanging down
on his chest. He set himself down next to me, but spent the next
half an hour alternating between sitting, leaning on the stool and
standing.

He discussed what was on tap for a few minutes with the bartender
but eventually settled on a coffee. Only then did he address me:
"John Densch."

"Yes," I said.

"Do you mind?" he said as he pulled out a mini-cassette recorder.

"Can I review what you write for accuracy?"

"When it's published," he said blankly.

I didn't respond, so he clicked it on.

"John, can you tell me what you know about the bog monster of
Orange County?"

I relayed all I could remember of the beginning of this mess. He
listened, nodding at various points; whether he was affirming my
account or mentally noting supposed inaccuracies, I couldn't tell.

"Very good," he said, as if rewarding a trained seal. I wasn't
impressed. "That is very interesting stuff. I have some details of
my own, but it always helps to get the story straight from the
wolf's mouth."

"What details?" I asked.

"This is a great deal more complicated than you know, John. But I
don't fault you for that. In fact, the public explanation is the
only one that makes sense. A kids' prank, prodded on by a
vainglorious adult."

I quaffed to avoid cursing at him.

"In reality, John, there has been a systematic government effort to
suppress public knowledge about a species of humanoid creatures
variously known as Big Foot, Sasquatch, Yeti -- and now Bog
Monster." He waited for my reaction, but when he saw that I wasn't
going to dignify that with a counter-argument he went on. "I can
show you the visual, biological and anthropological evidence
another time. I can't carry it all, and really, a bar counter isn't
the right place to evaluate printed materials. The point is that in
order to recognize the value of the evidence you have to move
beyond the conviction that there cannot be evidence. You need to
realize that conspiracies do exist."

"I'm not adverse to conspiracy theories," I said.

"Good. I'm not talking about your Roswell conspiracies, Area 51,
all that crap. There is one way, and one way only, to know the
difference between crap and reality. The smell test. What does the
evidence smell like? What is the odor emanating from the government
denials? Do you smell honest sweat on the witnesses and experts?
Without that, there is no way to get your nose off all the scat
that crisscrosses your trail."

"Very poetic," I said, "but that sounds like solipsism to me. And
why are you telling all this to me? I know how the bog monster
story started, and it has nothing to do with government cover-ups."

"Okay," he said. "You know the beginning of the bog monster story.
You also saw some evidence of large predator interventions over
many years in the Bolin Creek area, evidence that is subject to
some skepticism but convinced you. Right?" I half nodded. "Do you
know the Indian legends and modern ghost stories that parallel and
corroborate your son's half-scientific report? Have you sat down
with the dozens of sane individuals who can provide firsthand
encounters with these unexplained creatures?

"And -- what if I told you that Duke University, maybe the largest
federal grant recipient of any institution in the southeast, is
implicated in this cover- up? That the far-flung pieces of Duke
Forest serve as a shelter of last resort for the Bog Monster? That
the Duke primate center, supposedly dedicated to the lemur, is a
cover for research into an unknown endangered species, a species
for which public acknowledgement could simultaneously mean
extinction? Would you dismiss me as a crackpot? Or are the stakes
sufficiently high now that you are willing to suspend your
disbelief, and listen?"

"I don't know," I said. "What ghost stories?"

He looked down and sipped. "I'm collecting them for the book." That
was the end of that.

"What evidence do you have for the Duke stuff? Who are these
reliable witnesses?"

"Tell me," he said. "What evidence would convince you?"

"A body, I suppose."

"Exactly," he said. "Exactly what the government is going to make
sure never happens. We have to agree on another standard if we're
going to get anywhere."

"Anything else can be faked, or be the result of a
misunderstanding. 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary
proof.'"

"Don't misquote Carl Sagan at me. He also wrote: 'If we've been
bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the
bamboozle.'"

"I'm sure he wasn't talking about Big Foot there."

"No, he would have rejected Big Foot out of hand. He wasn't ready
to admit that science depends upon social conditions quite alien to
its core. He also argued: 'Our species needs, and deserves, a
citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how
the world works.' Yet he would never acknowledge how science
blithely affirms the existing human order, while it goes about
creating the appearance of order in the natural world. Science
mirrors the conditions that enable its insights; change the
conditions, and you change the science. That has always been true,
both before and after the introduction of the all-consuming master
narrative we know as Progress."

I didn't see any sense in pursuing him down that path, so I said:
"That may all be, but to me it's beyond believable that these
creatures have co- existed with us while eluding capture for all
these centuries."

"Well, I won't bore you with the history of unexpected species
popping up in unanticipated places. It's quite extensive, actually.
And we'll have to agree to disagree about the importance of
anecdotal and folk revelations. What really matters is -- the smell
test."

"I smell bull."

"Of course you do. That's because it's in your nose all the time."


The Duke Forest is laid out in six large patches across three
counties, 7000 acres of controlled access, forest in perpetuity.
The Blackwood section, in Chapel Hill, is studded by great towers
spewing the extra carbon dioxide that the rest of us should expect
to breathe sometime later this century.  All the chunks are used
for biological and forestry research. There are roads and trails
spread out throughout the forest, but great stretches are
inaccessible and closed to the public. I've wandered into more than
one thicket in my GPS ventures, and never seen anything untoward.
But what was I looking for? That moment when the GPS's
distance-to-goal zeros out. Any number of eyes could have been
glued on me, and I would not have noticed.

In fact, I usually feel watched when I'm searching for point zero.
You might think that being observed makes me feel more alive, but I
see it more as a collateral cost in my quest. I'm always entering
someone else's space, and that just makes me more determined not to
stop. It is a funny thing, a professional deformation, I guess. 
The virtual Orange County I ply for information day-to-day is
exactly the county that I pace off -- why is one public record and
the other eternally private space? I can see closing off buildings,
and the legitimacy of "no hunting," and "keep your sightseeing butt
off my land" signs. But why can't I ever touch the land that you've
been deeded? Why can't I see what you're doing with those twenty
some acres, unless I'm two hundred feet up in the air? There ought
to be a right for public access, once a year maybe. A two-week
notice period. A public process with the right of appeal. Make it
stinking hard. But let me touch the clay, feel the bumps on the
tree bark, hear the cicadas, and then get out. Make an honest man
out of me.

Barry and I parted on (to me) surprisingly good terms. His perfect
paranoid vision -- a conspiracy always just beyond his ability to
unravel it -- was compelling in its own way. I was afraid that he
talked lofty but would sell me out for another sensational story in
the tabloid -- or maybe I was looking forward to the confabulation,
I can't reliably say. We agreed to meet again, under circumstances
more advantageous for sharing his evidence, though I assumed I
wouldn't see anything until it was just a footnote -- neither
convincing nor easily explained away -- in his published book.

Your mother didn't say anything about this incident, but I knew I
would hear about it, someday, sometime. I looked at me, working
through something in her head, but there were no visible signs on
her face, except the one, the distanced, troubled look that I know
so well.

I was not willing to betray my thoughts to her, not only because
Doreen would doubtless assess Barry to be pond scum, but because
Barry was my connection back to Barbara H. "Oh, I was there at the
bog monster festival that afternoon. I saw you two," he said late
in our conversation, when I was a bit tipsy and he was drunk on his
presentation. "I saw the sparks fly." That was an obvious
exaggeration to which he appended a smile, but he said, "I've
gotten a profile myself. She drew the line at that, or I'd be
getting them weekly."

"Really? So what did she find in your aura?"

"A lot of crap. She says I'm obsessed with excrement."

"You seem to be."

"I'm obsessed with getting the smell out of my nostrils. She, on
the other hand, was just responding to things I had already told
her."

"Do you believe there is an aura around living beings?"

"Don't be ridiculous. She's deluding herself for the sake of her
marriage. Turns out, her husband actually believes it. I imagine he
is psychotic and can't help himself. She squints and pretends, and
charms her way to a clientele mostly of middle-aged men."

"Why is an aura so different from your phantom humanoids?"

"I don't think you need me to answer that. Let's just imagine I'm
trying to sell you on life aura, and just incidentally she's the
one marshalling evidence of a giant humanoid cover-up. Do you even
give me the time of day?"

"Time of day, maybe," I said, and we dropped the subject. Barbara
Hohenstauffen was both more and less attractive to me after that
moment, and the thought of her created a vague sensation of guilt,
especially when I sat next to Doreen at the dinner table but found
myself returning to the festival field, perusing crystalline
pyramids and bee wax suppositories. Doreen was staring at me as I
got back to my dinner. I suppose she just thought I had checked out
mentally, but she might have been afraid of those moments -- she
obsesses on the fact that my mother, your grandmother, suffers from
dementia. I wanted to say what I was thinking, but that could to an
all too awkward silence or another proxy battle over you, Brett,
though really over our own disappointment with each other, a
difficult thing to get your mind around over a shared meal in a
small common space. Much too small for such moments.


Barry delivered on a visit to the pseudonymous Bubby Frank's plot
of land. It was not too far from the Blackwood section of Duke
Forest, but hardly adjacent. Closer to the Maple Farms ice cream
store. Still, it is not impossible to imagine a large creature
slipping over fences and across arteries under the cover of night.
Mr. Frank was not present when we drove up his driveway. There was
a small house and a few grit-stained trailers arrayed around a
courtyard of sorts. The chicken coop was dilapidated but alive with
chickens wandering around and in and out. That morning was dark and
gray, threatening but unlikely to rain. Barry kept an eye out along
the road and into the little forested stand to the opposite side,
as if fairly certain that we would be joined by someone, whether by
a surprised resident or a surprise visitor.

What was there to say? I still couldn't picture the bog monster
emerging from the half acre forest to devastate the coop; it was
simply too incongruous. I looked at Barry, expecting him to shrug.

"You can't sense it?" he asked.

"What? The bog monster's aura?"

"No, cretin," he said without emphasis, "the fact that something is
missing?"

"How could I know whether anything is missing, except maybe the
owner?"

"Dogs," he said.

"The bog monster ate the dogs?"

"No. This property has no dogs. Frank's got something against
them."

I waited for the bombshell, but then said, "And? Any marauder would
avoid a place with dogs loping about."

He swung around and said triumphantly, "That's right! -- Come on."

We approached the house. He stopped at the near side of the house.
He pointed to a floodlight aimed out into the common area of the
driveway. A small box hung below it, barely attached and half
smashed. A movement sensor.

"No dogs, but lights. There's another one of these on the side of
coop. It's busted, too."

"So somebody broke them. Bubby maybe."

"He had no reason to. He's not getting any fame out of this. He's
staying out of the limelight. Me -- that story barely covered my
expenses for the amount of time it took to research and write."

We stood there for a few minutes, awkwardly checking things out,
moving in different directions. The place felt suddenly much
quieter, even tranquil, like a beach after a storm. I wanted not to
believe Barry at all, but it didn't smell like crap. Mud, wet
leaves, chicken shit a little. Finally, Barry took me over to the
coop and picked up a board from against the wall. A 4x1 plank that
was broken at one end. In the middle were distinct scratches and
indentations, as if a massive hand had pulled that plank to its
breaking point.

"Hmmm," I said. I could see where several planks were new and out
of character on the coop. "Still, that's not really evidence,
either.  -- What about foot prints?"

"You'd think," Barry said, still contemplating the board. "But the
incident came just before a storm. The ground was as hard as cement
during the incident."

"Any of that good forensic evidence? Hair? DNA?"

"Yes, you would think we'd find some hair, right?" he said. "But
remember I said a storm, with a fair amount of wind and rain. I
found nothing when I came out to speak with Bubby."

"That's a lot of coincidence for why there's no evidence."

"Coincidence?" he repeated back to me. "You really believe that all
of this could be coincidence?"

"Not necessarily," I said, but not sure how to answer. "So --
you're saying that the bog monster planned this?"

He smiled. "Either that, or I'm bullshitting you. Take your pick."

I grunted, not sure I wanted to say what I was feeling. After a few
more minutes, we got back into the car. As we entered onto the
highway, I said what was on my mind: "If Duke scientists are
supposed to be looking after this creature, why is he out making
trouble?"

Barry looked at me as if to say, finally. "Indeed," he said. "The
most mind-bending part of this is that the creature can't know that
it's being cared for. That would be the end of the experiment, a
simultaneous end to the balancing act between its need for
authentic existence and our desire for order."

I thought about that all the way to 3Cups, a local café; Barry was
fascinated by alcohol culture -- breweries, wine shops, bars -- but
preferred caffeination.

We were sitting and drinking before I spoke. "So the creature is a
prisoner, but one that believes in its anonymity and freedom?"

"Voilà," he said. "The perfect symbol for the society that holds it
in its thrall."

I don't remember what else we said -- I kept coming back to this --
but after about 20 minutes Barry had his phone out and was making
an appointment for my aura profile at PsychEnergy for the coming
weekend. I remember him slumping a bit when Barbara's husband took
the call, but the appointment was put on her schedule. "I'll be
accompanying him," he said with a complete expression of freedom to
do what he chose. I wasn't sure if he was looking to reconnect with
her or to capture new information for his next article.

"All right, Barry," I said finally, after I told him I had to go.
"Let's assume you're not just feeding me bullshit. We've got
several more problems, foremost of which is the lineage. Are you
saying that there is a whole family holed up in the Duke Forest?
And even if there is, how do they propagate -- are they completely
inbred, the mother with the son, and all that crap?"

"Sure," he said, "I wouldn't put it past them, under duress, to
propagate that way. But they are not alone, John. There are
confirmed sightings all around us, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia,
West Virginia, the entire western portion of this state. These
creatures are unusual only in their dogged loyalty to this place,
this outpost."

"So -- they import a bride?"

"More likely," he said, "they sent their children off to find a new
life in the mountains. I think we have our last generation here.
The raid on the farmer fits the MO of your creature 50 years ago.
That means either they pass on very specific behaviors, or we're
dealing with the same bog monster. Either way, we have a
responsibility to them."

"Wouldn't our responsibility be to leave them alone?"

"Sure," he said. "If they were truly free. Every sentient creature
needs to know how free or unfree it is. Our responsibility is to
freedom, not safety. Let them decide how safe they want to be, once
they know the truth." With that, he emptied his espresso cup with a
single toss. Mumbling something under his breath about liberté, he
nodded, stood and walked out, before I got another question out, or
even made to stand up.


I remember the first time I used the GPS and went out into the
field. It makes a pretty good story, actually. We were enjoying a
quiet summer morning, the kind of overheated day that you avoid, no
matter how much you claim to have mastered the humidity. Carol from
the tax assessor's office was down our way with an inquiry about a
piece of property. She always prefaced a work question with a dozen
or so personal questions and a number of "oh don't get me started"
stories about contractors or vice principals or grocery clerks or
customer service operators. I grew curious when this went on longer
than usual.

"So, Carol," I began, sputtering off into nothing.

"Hmm? Oh yes," she said, straightening up some. "I've got a case
that doesn't make sense. As far as I can tell, the property owner
stopped paying the taxes a number of years ago. We get a check
every year from one of the local neighbors, so the taxes are paid
up. But I wonder if maybe the owner passed away and we never heard
anything."

"Why would the neighbor pay?" asked one of my colleagues.

"Well," Carol said, "this kind of thing could happen if the
neighbor wants to use the land without outright purchasing it."

"Squatter?" I asked.

"After a manner of speaking, yes."

"So," my colleague said, "what do we do?"

"It's difficult," said Carol. "It's not a crime to pay someone
else's taxes. We need a death certificate and a reason to believe
that the neighbor is aware of the owner's death. Then we need to
catch him or her in the act of extracting value from the land."

"Harvesting, in other words," I muttered.

"Yes. Usually they can argue that they are just preventing the
property from becoming a nuisance, until such time as an owner
makes him or herself known. There is a legal provision for an
enterprising neighbor to assume ownership after a number of years.
It's called adverse possession."

"That doesn't seem right," stated my coworker.

Carol shrugged as if to say, I don't make the laws around here, so
don't get me started. After we looked up the records and located
the plots, she wished us all a bless-ed morning and went back to
her office.

I had enough other tasks that I didn't think further about the case
until late afternoon. I don't know why, but my curiosity got the
better of me; I had never been involved as participant or witness
in a con of this kind. I disappeared from the office with some
vague words about needing a break, after having raided the closet
where some surveyor's equipment was kept. I thought I had picked up
a GPS, but it could as easily have been a measuring laser of some
kind. I checked the coordinates on the atlas in my car, found the
route there from our offices in Hillsborough, and headed out.

I hadn't seen all that much of the county at that point, mostly the
main arteries and the few towns. The country roads I followed now
were all in fine shape, lined by fields, forests, and occasional
collections of smaller home site lots. But you could see the
disparity carved by the flow of money in our society: palpable
poverty, not in exposed ribs and distended bellies like the
late-night charity commercials, but in worn roofs, and in faded and
half leaning walls. Cars in the front yard. Cars that don't run,
wheel-less on bricks. A solitary figures walking from the local gas
station and convenience store, with a bottle in a brown bag. Down
the road, a three-story brick McMansion with a hobbyist farm around
it. Around the next curve, a card table underneath a beach
umbrella, with locally grown tomatoes cooking in the afternoon
heat. "Leave money in the jar."

I pulled to the side of road at the location. A young but wilting
tobacco crop was laid out in tight, neat rows. Beyond that, just as
the satellite photo showed, a stand of spindly, mostly pine trees,
looking about twenty years old, blocked my view of a pond and
behind that a turn-around at the end of a driveway. The driveway,
we'd found out, ran through the scamming neighbor's property under
an historic easement.

I grabbed the GPS and the surveyor's vest, and headed for the heart
of the property. I skirted the tobacco rows. The sun was behind a
thickening afternoon haze, but the heat was unrelenting and I found
myself sweating droplets down my forehead and in streaks down my
back. I was grateful for the shade of the pine trees, although the
cool breeze I'd imagined was nowhere to be found. Even the faintest
breeze was like a whoosh from an oven. I wasn't quite yet asking
myself what in the world I hoped to gain, but I did wish I had
found another day to become a practical man.

The pond at the end of the property was little more than a swamp,
with no outlet. Luminescent green, half empty, thick with scum. I
thought it would smell awful, but the air was still enough that I
circumnavigated it fine. At the other end there was a small cabin,
next to a lifeless graveled site where manifestly a trailer had
stood. "Cabin" was saying too much -- it was the size of a backyard
storage shed, although with windows. The perfect for- show
homestead.

A digital camera would have been smart, but I realized why I had
come. Not to capture the place or the moment: I wanted to see it
for myself, to exchange the physics-free expansiveness of the GIS
system for an experienced moment in time and space. It hadn't
really mattered that some petty farmer had figured out how to
manipulate the system.

I walked up the driveway to get a view of the farmer's place, but
stopped when I saw what looked like a confederate flag, barely
fluttering on a sizeable flagpole. There was a pickup truck, too.
Confederate battle flag stickers, carefully symmetric and brand
new, gleamed on either side of the pickup's tailgate.

I turned around and hiked back to my car. The drive back to the
office gave me a short moment of joy for having seen the secret of
the place, but then a kind of sadness. It felt like a hard-wrought
wisdom, born from the veniality of the world, but it was more my
inability to bring my concentration back to my own little world. I
don't know if you have ever felt that way, Brett, where your
perspective suddenly broadens and you feel as if you can see
further than your own experience, than your own eyes should allow
you to. It's an illusion, but a powerful one. I was hooked.

The next time came after hours, and by chance. I was driving home
and there was an accident along highway 86, so like others I ducked
onto Mt. Sinai Road to get around it. At Turkey Farm Road, I took a
right, and realized only after having crossed a single-lane bridge
that I had scouted that location during an idle moment just after
lunch. I pulled over and turned around, parked near the bridge. The
site extended off to the right from the bridge. I had kept the
equipment (I've got my own GPS now, by the way) in my trunk,
waiting for the right opportunity to return it -- where sudden
reappearance was likely to stand out more than disappearance -- so
I grabbed it. This time my heart was racing, because I knew the
property to be occupied, and because at the heart of it was a
building in the woods, invisible to the satellites but on our
plans.

I worked my way alongside the creek, afraid I might have to splash
through it if I were spotted. I could see the house through the
trees, but the outbuilding was invisible: maybe it had been
demolished, just a digital remnant of an earlier time? I wished I
had looked up the permits on it. I moved up from the creek to where
it had to be. I was almost on top of it when I recognized that the
small knob in front of me was an earthen building, like a
half-buried bomb shelter. I moved around to the front, saw only a
rusty steel door with a lock or handle covered by a little box that
itself was fastened by a Masterlock. There was no path back to the
house, or just the vaguest outlines of one. What rested in that
building? I pictured coming back in the black of a new-moon
midnight, with night-vision goggles and a sledgehammer, and
uncovering a mausoleum of cracked skulls and the possessions of the
murdered. The lights go on in the house, and I've got one chance to
escape across the creek. Dogs get my scent at the site of the
break- in, and come after me in a hard run. I've got a pistol but
nothing that would stop a pack. What then? What then?

I left, sobered by the possibilities, even if they were no more
likely than laying down on the shelter and getting hit by
lightning. I gave Doreen a big hug when I got home, and she
wondered what had gotten over me. Later that night, lying on our
bed, I resolved to surprise myself as often as I could, to follow
these unwritten stories all the way to ground, wherever they might
lead.


The young man was surprised when he said to himself: I just had a
conversation in bug speak. The progression had been slow --
imperceptible at first -- but with weeks and months his
comprehension had grown so that he was able to understand simple
constructions and say a few coherent things with his artificial set
of clicks and vocalizations. He had to admit that the bug followed
his bug speak much better than he did its human speech. Perhaps
clicks are easier to approximate than the subtleties of the human
voice box; more likely, though, the bug was better equipped through
disposition and education to learn a xeno-construction of its own
language.

The bug said something like: Are you ready to begin?

Derek: Yes, mostly.

Bug: Would you like to do something new?

Derek: Yes, that would be nice.

Bug: Good, today we won't practice new expressions.

Derek: What will we do?

Bug: We should talk.

Derek: What will we talk about?

Bug: Shall we talk about you?

Derek: What do you want to know about me?

Bug: You know that you are on a new world?

Derek: You made that clear a long time ago.

Bug: Do you want to know more about your new world?

Derek: Mostly.

Bug: Do you want to know what we want to know from you?

Derek: Mostly.

Bug: First ask me a question.

He thought for a while, the kind of pause that occurs in a deep
heartfelt argument -- here, though not in anger, no less so.

Derek: Why are you keeping me in this room?

Bug: Who has said that we are keeping you here?

A flush went over his face and a wave of adrenaline through his
body. Of course, no one had tried to stop him from exiting, nor had
he ever made the effort to do so, at least since their meetings had
begun. First thing learned for the morning.

Bug: We want to understand from you about your world.

Derek: You have the moving images. Why do you need me?

Bug: We need, no, we want to understand through questions and your
answers.

Derek: You took me from "earth." (He spoke the last word.)

Bug: It was not right. We do not take intelligent creatures from
their worlds any more. That mission left thousands of years ago.

Derek: I am alone.

Bug: You are not alone. This is an interesting world. I am here to
help you.

Derek said: "Thank you." He thanked the bug for more than its
sentiment.

The bug seemed to recognize the emotional response, and caused the
projector to engage. It was a scene from his first days, when he
said: "Except that I don't believe you're real." The bug asked why.

Derek, with some hesitation: I'm not sure that I am here. I may be
back on earth, "in a hospital, sick."

Bug clicked too complexly, or in a different dialect, to its hidden
colleagues; Derek didn't understand a single click. A pause ensued.

Bug: I understand. That is your brain protecting you. That is good.

Derek: "Am I sick?"

Bug: No, you are a guest in our world. Later, you can come with me.

The bug exited, and Derek collapsed into a cross-legged sitting
position. He hyperventilated for a few minutes, before holding his
breath to stop the cycle, then was able to look at the hidden door
and wait.


Derek spent many hours watching the bug in front of him. The bug
had nothing to say about his staring since it wasn't using its eyes
on him. The antennae, he learned, gave only an approximate view of
the world, but had advantages: they were unaffected by heat waves
(a problem beyond a relatively short distance, given the heat and
density of the air), lack of light, or which way the bug's happened
to be oriented in a room. They processed their sensory information
-- microwaves, what we call radar -- from all directions all along
their length. A great richness of information, although at a lower
density than a hairy predator's eyes.

The bugs differentiated fundamentally between creatures with hair
or fur like Derek, and a leathery species like themselves.
Apparently, the high metabolism implied by thinner-skinned
biologies led to flightier, less predictable behavior in the
individuals. Difficult to manage, difficult to maintain. The ball
routine, he was told somewhere along the way, was designed to
establish whether the individual was capable of dealing with a
strange and threatening world. Derek's irrational response was
paradoxically the right one -- if he had retreated to the corner in
fear, he would never have been coaxed out of it.

The bug creatures were covered by a thick leather. The leather's
thickness could be inferred from the edges of their concave backs,
varying from maybe an inch on his teacher's back to two or three
inches on the largest bug he had seen. The surface of the leather
was gray tending toward brown. The saliva of the bug creature had
an oil in it that, applied to the leather surface, gave it a sheen
and protective layer. He once watched the bug collect a spittle
ball in its little black hand and then launch it onto its back. The
larger limbs bent back and spread the brownish liquid around its
back and down on its sides. There was a musky smell to it.

The black downward-directed bug eyes were an evolutionary gift, but
the tiny arms beside the bug face and the grand antennae were
civilizatory achievements. If Derek understood properly, the arms
had been encoded into the creature's genetic inheritance many
generations ago. The antennae were electro-mechanical enhancements
that each bug was given as a very small creature, so that its brain
became entwined with the electrical contacts. The antennae
themselves could be and were upgraded throughout life.

They were a distasteful species for his mammalian sensibilities,
but he could imagine the impression he made. They understood that
he had different notions and needs for cleanliness, but their own
habits made them inattentive to his bathing needs. His underarms
did not smell as he thought they should -- earthen bacteria were no
doubt eliminated long before the bugs ever joined him in a room --
but his body became slippery here and crusty there, his hair matted
and disjointed. His skin was reddish and raw all the time from the
heat and humidity, and he had to remove the exoskeleton frequently
to rub sore spots and give them a rest.

The bugs were, of course, well adapted to this place. Their arms
were incredibly strong, keeping the thick body afloat despite the
massive gravity; they seemed to be able to lock joints even at less
than full extension. The midday uptick in the room's heat made
their leather glisten as the oils loosened up. If they were too
warm at any point, they did not show it.

The antennae fascinated Derek. Waves rolled up and down the
antennae, sometimes in unison and sometimes slightly out of step,
an elegant technique that allowed the bugs to gain more definition
by enhancing the Doppler effect. The bugs were conscious of the
antennae's waviness, but only marginally, since they could not
detect the movement of others' antennae and they perceived their
own only as pulses of clarity. Armed with his keen eyes, Derek saw
another kind of meaning. The antennae reflected patterns depending
on that individual's circumstances. When the teacher was
distracted, its antennae waved out of phase with each other. Derek
thought they betrayed emotional state and tried to confirm, but the
bug teacher just seemed confused when he pointed at the antennae
and said something like, "their waving speaks to me."

Derek still thought "it," but in the course of their exchanges
about humans, gender, and sexual reproduction, the bug teacher had
let him know that it was a female. Other than size -- the teacher
confirmed that males were larger -- Derek could discern no
difference. While asking questions about the diagram of human
sexuality floating in a projected image, the bug teacher explained
that bugs were androgynous until puberty, at which time the sexual
organ at their tail ends migrated upward (female) or downward
(male), depending on population-survival needs or, in modern
society, the deep-felt druthers of the bug. While the bugs did not
wear clothes, they did cover both organ locations regardless of
their choice. Sexual union was a somewhat gymnastic event where the
male maneuvered over the female and they attached briefly.
Mammalian ecstasy was alien to the process, at least as far as a
sex education clip could show.

He thought "it," but he had grown used to her presence, grown
accustomed to her manner in the room, found the rhythm of her
antennae soothing. When other bugs joined them, he was not at ease,
for however much he understood that they were always watching, just
outside.


Bug speak was an education. Derek had taken some Spanish, and
understood that words were arbitrary sounds for ideas, that a
language had plenty of non-sensical rules arising from
centuries-old accretions. Strong verbs? To what end? But nothing in
his experience prepared him for this language. Not that it was
intricate: it had been stripped of its non-sensicality, apparently
thousands of years prior, so that there were precious few rules to
learn beyond vocabulary and word types. Sentence structure came
across as consistent and logical, a natural and even aesthetically
pleasing framework. But the structure was fundamentally unearthly.

The object of the sentence was always at the core. An action upon
the object was prepended to the object like a verbal phrase: "the
thrown ball" or "the to-be-thrown ball." What we understand as the
subject of a sentence -- the actor -- was found only in the passive
construction: "the by me thrown ball." The sentence could be varied
and extended from there in different ways, but within the limits of
a sensibility that put the object at the end of a short sentence,
or in the middle of a lengthier one: "the by me expertly thrown
ball working its way to you, hitting with a loud thud."

Derek did not notice the significance for quite a while. The "See
Jane run" sentences that he learned at first did not seem different
from our own, despite the lack of inflection on the verb, with a
slight hook to the number of the object ("thrown" gets an
additional thwack, depending on its final sound, if it is followed
by balls instead of ball; this was subtle and didn't concern him).
But when he tried to ask why not I throw / he throws, the bug
teacher explained that where English centers around "vrrrks"
(verbs) bug speak is predicated on "sddddks" (things). His teacher:
You see a universe of actions; we see one of things.

Derek had shrugged at the time. But sitting with his eyes glued on
the wall before him he felt keenly how different the world was for
the bugs and him. The linguistic differences were not by chance.
Earth mammals were creatures of precipitous action, impulse, rapid
mental feedback loops (both good and bad). The bugs -- unfairly,
maybe -- he saw as slow moving but deadly effective and efficient
chameleons, their projectile tongues now replaced by a
technological prowess that he could only guess at. Beyond this
room, was he just prey? An object? A zoo animal or pet?

He could not lose the nagging thought still that through this wall
was a portal to either madness or release. He knew he would have to
take those steps soon. He just hoped he would not take them alone.


When the door opened that afternoon, no one entered. This is my
cue, he thought. A vehicle slid in, like a plastic disc gliding on
ice, only shaped more like a motorbike frame floating on air. He
recognized that this was a human-friendly version of the floating
discs he had seen bugs riding. He stood up and lifted his leg over
the device, leaned forward and settled in. There were resting spots
for both his knees/shins and his elbows/forearms. Controls were
nestled where his hands came to rest. He moved a joystick on the
right and a small lever on the left, with x-y and z axial movement
respectively. With a single puff of unchecked forward acceleration,
he floated out the opening into the darkness. It was immediately
illuminated in a black light emanating from his vehicle's single
headlight.

The space was otherwise mostly dark, with deep red hues at specific
locations. He guessed that his eyes and the bugs were not on the
exact same frequencies, and that his bike's light was probably
designed to leave the natives undisturbed. Bugs were scattered
throughout an unexpectedly tall cavern hewn from beige-reddish
rock, some at the red-glowing spots, others floating at various
altitudes. With some awkwardness Derek caused his vehicle to rotate
180_ and he could see a metallic structure atop the large, weakly
glowing box that had been his home for so many months. The
structure had pipes and hoses of all sizes coming and going, with
silvery boxes and illuminated electronics. No different than a
containment device in a lab.

He rotated again, hoping to see his teacher. If she was there, he
could not pick her out. No bug made an effort to stand out or
indicate to him that he was expected. The disappointment rose, even
as he realized that he was being tested again, measured, evaluated,
judged. This was his chance to jump off the bike and go back into
the illuminated box. He cursed under his breath and manipulated the
controls. He assumed the exit from the chamber would be at the
still dark far end, and so he worked his way there. When his eyes
adjusted more, he could tell that there was no exit there, just
more wall. When he glided up to it, he stared for a while at the
rock (with a small bump against it), and decided that the rough
surface was carefully cultivated to look that way. If it was really
rock or something else, he wasn't sure.

He rose up to the ceiling, didn't find an exit there either. Maybe
it was hidden, as his wall door had been. He lowered his vehicle
and approached the door to his own chamber. Two of the floating
bugs who had seemed so indifferent to his presence now moved
suddenly out of his way, as if he were exuding an invisible force
field -- perhaps that was a feature of these vehicles. The now
closed door had no obvious markings from the outside. Perhaps there
were markings in a range of light invisible to him, or perhaps the
controls were manipulated by radar.

He felt around his controls for any additional ones. Then he looked
down at the area beneath his torso, where the gas tank would be. He
brought an arm around and put his hand into what became a mesh
dissolving in his fingers. Beneath the mesh he felt various small
items. One stood out: glass frames. He brought these up and placed
them on his nose and ears, and looked around. Nothing different. He
felt around the frame for an on-switch, but then realized that
these were designed not simply to rest on his face. He gave it a
push backwards and could feel pinpricks above his ears, into the
bridge of his nose, and something slithering onto his eyes, which
reflexively made to close but could not. A quick shock on his eyes
made him twitch. Then he saw an image like the invisible projector
unfold before his eyes, and he could see the room in overlay:
mostly still the visible, but now also laid out in sparkly low-res
with outlined shapes, markers and all sorts of information about
the bugs around him, in alien symbology.

Whatever was covering his eyes kept them moist, but his lids were
going crazy. He decided he had to get the glasses off, but he tried
first to scan the walls for the door and opener. Nothing stood out.
Just before his fingers reached the frame, he realized that a set
of information followed his eyes as they scanned, and the
information seemed to change as he reached into his field of view.
He was able to use his hand to manipulate that information -- he
moved his fingers until something happened. He thought his tenders
must be suppressing undesired effects; he saw a door open in the
floor of the chamber, and floating arrow shapes pointed him in that
direction. He decided he could keep the glasses on for a while
longer.

He eased his vehicle down toward the opening. It seemed like a
swift body of water was below, with occasional glimmers and shapes
gliding by. He looked around; nothing had changed in this chamber.
He threw the lever down and descended with a lurch.

Sudden acceleration caught him off guard, caused him to lean and
the vehicle to careen to the right. An enormous invisible balloon
collided with him and sent his vehicle off in the other direction,
as a stream of bugs passed by on his right. He almost fell off his
vehicle, downward to he knew not where, but he was able to balance
himself again. Even though the passage way was dark, his glasses
outlined enough detail to show him that he was in a multi-laned,
multi-leveled stream of personal vehicles -- all bug driven, as far
as he could see. The stream was differential, faster in the middle
and slower as you moved outward. At the edges there seemed to be a
merging area where speeds were almost nil; his precipitous descent
had moved him right through the merge zone. He figured, based on
parked bugs, that his speed was now approaching 50 mph; the bugs in
the middle area seemed at least twice as fast. There was no head
wind, leaving an eerie silence, with odd empty tones like echoes
coming from the walls, whose sources he couldn't place.

When he felt comfortable with his place in the stream, he tried to
figure out his next step using his headset. The speed and maybe
location seemed to be indicated in some rapidly changing and
flashing figures, but he still had no useful understanding. He put
his hand out and tried to manipulate the items that had worked to
open the door. They bolded and flashed as he would have expected,
but nothing indicated a success of any kind. Nothing like a map.

After accepting that he was hopelessly lost and helpless, he
shouted (in Bug) to the stream: Click-Cluck, your needed help!
Nothing happened again. He waited another five minutes, then
shouted again. Another three. Another two. One. Finally he was
shouting as loud and as fast as he could.

After ten minutes, he stopped speaking. The passageway seemed to
trail off into infinity, and he resigned himself to ride it the
whole way. He tried to relax as much as he could without risking
another accident.

Another twenty-some minutes passed. A voice came at him from in
front of the motorbike, always just ahead, Click-Cluck's voice:
Where are you, Derek (D-rrr-kkh)?

Derek: I don't know. (That unknown fact.) "I'm on the motorbike in
a highway somewhere."

Click-Cluck: "Bike with motor," that is what you have?

Derek: Yes, it was brought to my room.

Click-Cluck: You must get off the "highway."

Derek: How?

Click-Cluck: Go to the edge. I will find you.

Derek maneuvered up, felt himself slow, watched as the bug streams
flowed around him and finally beneath him. Eventually, he was
studying the rock-like surface above him, in feigned interest, to
keep from watching the dizzying stream. Another several minutes
passed, and he was bumped from behind. It was not Click-Cluck, and
he wanted to turn his vehicle around to bump back. But then: Derek,
go with Clum-Clum-Tock. The bug moved ahead and guided him back
into the artery.


Barry picked me up at my house. I was willed to dissuade him, but
he convinced me that this was the most convenient course of action
and indirectly that I was being duplicitous or elitist or just a
lousy friend if I asked him not to. He rang the doorbell and though
I was standing at the door, your mother came to see who was there.
Barry leaned in past me and introduced himself to her. There was an
awkward moment when he paused to let Doreen say something about
hearing so much about him, while she looked at me with a mixture of
suspicion and bemusement. "Oh really?" she said to what Barry
continued with, some self-serving statement about the fourth estate
and freedom of speech. Not a word about tabloids, thankfully.

Doreen and Barry somehow conspired to get us into seats in the
living room. They talked a bit about a mutual interest in educating
the masses; I waited for the word "monster" to drop. Instead they
started discussing industrial-age philosophers.

"It certainly is refreshing," Barry said, "to find someone with
your interests."

Doreen glanced at me with that same bemused expression. "I'm sure
you've met all sorts of people who know much more than I." But she
smiled at him, in thanks for the sentiment.

"I will never understand," he said ponderously, "what passes for
wisdom in this university town."

I jumped in: "Quoting Steely Dan?"

He looked at me as at an unruly pet you have to curb. I decided not
to decode that Naked Lunch referent; Doreen had a half distracted
look and was probably trying to place the line.

"We may rest assured," quoth Barry, "that mankind will either
believe they know not wherefore, or will not know what to believe.
Few are those who ever attain to that state of rational and
independent conviction which true knowledge can produce out of the
midst of doubt."

"Emerson?" asked Doreen.

"De Tocqueville. From Emerson we have: 'Society is always taken by
surprise at any new example of common sense.'"

Doreen cleared her throat and recited: "Ess gheebt kinah ricktigus
layben im fallshen."

Barry: "Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia. There is no proper life in
a false one."

Now, mind you, Brett, you've got to recognize this kind of exchange
for the parlor game it is. Some people have a stomach, a gout, for
it, some don't. I was ready to smack Barry at the back of the head,
afraid we'd miss my appointment, afraid the monster would make its
conversational appearance, or maybe afraid that they would start
talking about me through their quotations.

They managed another round of harmless syntagms, but Doreen began
to flag and Barry gracefully led us back to the door. She mentioned
needing to finish something up, and left us there. Barry smiled at
me in a conspiratorial way but didn't say a word. We got into his
car and headed off to Pittsboro.

"Your bog monster," Barry said of a sudden, "is a perfect
expression of Romanticism. Think of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein."

I let out my usual "what?" and had no further retort.

As he raced down Fordham Blvd., Barry continued: "Goethe himself
penned a poem about a vampire. The German Romantics, notably the
researchers you know as the Brothers Grimm, were engaged in nothing
if not pinpointing what we're all afraid of."

"I've never read that Bigfoot fairytale in their book."

"Think about the giants."

"That's a stretch. Besides, nobody I know has sleepless nights
because of the bog monster."

"No, of course not," Barry said, sounding like a parent who has
just realized how long their car trip could drag on. "It's not the
fears that we can name; it's the nameless fears. The bog monster is
a name, a cipher for what remains unnamed."

"So -- you're saying you don't believe after all? It's just the
boogeyman?"

"Who says our fears aren't real?"

"You're the one who started with fairytales."

Barry accelerated around a corner and I felt myself compress
against the door and wished I had locked it. It seemed a bit silly
to lean over to do so now.

"The study of folklore and fairytales is about extracting the truth
from projections. Lies and prevarications have their own
relationship to the truth; nothing is meaningless."

I adjusted myself in my seat and looked out the window. "Pretty
profound for a tabloid reporter."

"Au-ouch," he said, sounding hurt. "I suppose everything you do
betters humankind. I know you work for the public good, but
seriously. How much of what you do is feeding the beast --
bettering the system that collects taxes so that you can collect
more taxes, so that you can better the system?"

"Right," I said.

We drove on in silence. It took about 15 minutes to enter
Pittsboro. Barry maneuvered us through a few intersections onto
ever smaller arteries. This being Chatham County, I had no idea
where we were. The house was nondescript, a two-story steep roofed
box with deep red brick accents, but did have something like a
gravel parking lot in the front. A small colorful hand-painted sign
announced their business and highlighted the proprietors.

We rang the bell and Barbara appeared at the door, dressed in a
simple frock with an apron over it. "Hello, Barry," she said
formally. "Welcome, Bog Monster -- "

"I think," Barry jumped in, "you'll find that his name is John."

"John, Bog Monster of Chapel Hill, welcome." Barbara smiled -- I
think you must know and sympathize, Brett, when I say that it felt
like a kind of sunshine, a generic affirmation and declaration,
from her to me, without any reason or reason to believe it -- but,
still, a smile that felt like a lifetime transaction, taking place
in a moment.

She smiled with wide, prominent lips against not perfectly white
but straight and somewhat oversized teeth. Her smile was matched in
its unmeasured ease with her hair, a bit too unkempt and unbrushed,
but with some gray highlights and its own balance against her big
brown eyes and deep white freckled skin. Her eyes were subtly
outlined by mascara, but otherwise her face was unmade, a contrast
that made her eyes seem all the larger, the gaze all the more
penetrating. A few glittery strands of narrow ribbon in her hair
lay just out of focus, a peripheral tease.

Barbara pushed her screen door wide open and Barry took it. I
followed her in. We went into a living room that was reconfigured
as a small retail outlet, with all the booth items plus a small
bookstore and a health food corner. When Barry came in, she said:
"Barry, you can stay here or there." She pointed to a small
antechamber on the other side of the entranceway, with bookshelves,
a couple chairs and a small coffee table with magazines. She used
her index finger to gesture to me to follow her, which seemed
clichéd but not without a bit of old-school charm, meant to
separate me from whatever presumption Barry rode in on.

I followed her through another room that had a couch and a closed
entertainment center cabinet -- an overlap of commercial and
private lives that was minimized through a wall full of paintings
and wall hangings. We then entered a room that had two small
roll-top desks, a couch and two wooden chairs facing each other.
The windows were well shaded in white and deep red, and the
furniture for the most part had a heavy, old-world feel. Candles --
tall, fat and small votive varieties -- covered the horizontal
surfaces, but the room was mostly lit by two upward-facing halogen
lamps placed in opposite corners. They cast heavy shadows
throughout the room and yet made it seem taller, more substantial.

"I'll be just a moment," she said. She looked over her shoulder to
smile at me, and then she went through another door.

I felt it immediately, as soon as she shut the door: I was not
alone in that room. There was Doreen in the corner, no longer
bemused, but still graciously willed to allow me to play out the
line for my noose. Though I could counter that this whole thing was
innocent -- the very definition of it through its naïve
spiritualism -- Doreen shook her head, not for a moment willing to
acknowledge the pretext. The girl, she said. Hey, I replied, she --
She nothing! You and your projections, she replied. She is getting
paid, that's all. The fact that she chooses to lead you on with
this little-lost-girl-as- spiritual-medium routine doesn't speak
well for her, but certainly does not unburden you. -- Hey, I
answered, you act all innocent, but --

She did not take the bait. This was the point at which she always
became mum, both in life and in my internal dialogs. She saw where
I was going, to a challenge and a question that she had resolved
never to answer, never to broach.

Brett, I think you're old enough to understand, and you may even
empathize, how it happens that two people can face each other over
a question that has become an impossible set of words, excised from
speech like a blasphemy, equally made meaningless by the
conventional wisdom of day-to-day living, but always threatening to
burst forth like a gash in reality that, once heard and believed,
would never heal. The impossible words: "Have you been unfaithful?"

Sure, there are formalistic answers like "that depends on the
definition of been." But outside a sympathetic court of law no one
can hang their defense on so flimsy a reed, especially when your
interlocutor is prosecutor, witness and judge all in one. There are
answers that are conditional -- "I wanted to, I would have" -- but
they are the special case, deserving of appellate reflection and
careful reasoning. The majority of cases are open and shut. There
are many denials, and sometimes the court falls short of justice
for the lack of evidence. In our case the DA chose not to
prosecute. The witness had to live with the stories untold; the
judge could not make findings of fact or rule on mitigating
factors. Unsatisfactory all around, not least for the accused.

I know Doreen would have liked nothing more than to unburden
herself. I don't know how it began, or how it ended. I can remember
the day I first told myself that something was going on, and I can
remember the day we cried together over I knew not what. It was no
more than a couple months. There was so much going on that year
that we never talked about, even after we were reconciled in ways
that both of us recognized as such. She steered us away from
conversation where normally she would insist that we talk --
damning evidence -- but I could tell that it hurt her to do so.
Some years before at a dinner party, a group of us had discussed
cheating, and she had articulated the psychosocial reasons why
confessing served no one. "I would never confess," she concluded,
"that would be my punishment."

Now, mind you, the main justification for not telling me is that I
could not forgive her. And yet I am to forgive that she does not
tell me? Somehow that seems like a mistaken kindness and at such a
juncture a too great price. I know the assumption is that the
deceived partner does not know and that what he or she does not
know cannot harm their relationship. But exactly that fails the
test of reasonability. We're very few of us sociopaths -- none of
the rest lies so well and hides frustration, disappointment and
distraction so completely that the idea is beyond comprehension and
therefore speculation.

Yes, Brett, I am speculating. But only because I never chose to
collect the evidence and because Doreen never confessed. The
details are all that she kept from me.

She waited for Barbara's return, not at all bemused but still
defiant. The wait was a bit too long, as if Barbara had chosen to
finish a chore with this opportunity, but when she returned she was
all sunshine and ready to go. She had changed into a flowing skirt
and loose muslin top with a camisole outlined beneath. She had tied
her hair back with a red bandana. In her hands were a small
handwritten book and a digital recorder.

"All right, John," she said, and I realized it was the first time I
hadn't heard something of a taunt in her voice. She motioned me
into one of the wooden chairs, and she sat in the other. She
started the recorder and opened the book and wrote a few words.
Then she held out her right hand. "Remind me who you are."

I sat motionless until it hit me that she wanted my palm, and I
leaned forward so that she could pull it back to her. She eyed it
from a distance. "You are a strong individual," she said, seemingly
to herself, "but it is easy to miss that -- I can see it in your
lifeline. You may be misunderstood, most of all, by those who love
you, because they see the side of you that is most apt to question
itselfŠ. And look, the bog monster has its own line." She smiled at
me, and lifted my hand up before my face. She scooted forward and
reached around the palm with two fingers. She deftly felt for lines
on my hand and stopped with her fingers at either end of a crease
in my palm. "This line isn't supposed to be, or if it is, it should
be connected with that line. Do you see it?" I said yes. "This line
indicates a great division in a life -- dueling personalities, or a
great shock and disappointment."

She put my hand down, and started to do stretches with her neck and
shoulders. "All right, it's time to relax. Do whatever it is that
you might do to relax in a chair." She saw my mouth begin to move,
and anticipated: "Except slouch."

I guffawed just for an instant, because that is exactly what I was
going to say. Maybe it's a universal joke, but that affected me. I
did some neck stretches myself.

"John, I need to hold your hands but I need you to keep your hands
loose when I do. I will look into your eyes -- stare intently into
your eyes -- but you can blink as much as you want, and if you find
it strange or awkward, please feel free to look away. Okay?"

She took up my hands in hers, and I tried to keep my arms and hands
as loose as possible, probably not what she meant (they can weigh a
great deal) but she didn't say a word.

Her eyes moved from one of my eyes to the other, as if looking for
an affirmation or confirmation, but she was looking for something
else, something behind my eyes and expression. After a short while,
it was obvious that she wasn't seeing me see her at all. This went
on for three minutes, although it felt like an unbelievable amount
of time to be that close, silent and in each other's face.

"John?" she asked, as if I had been hypnotized and gone deep into
myself.

"Yes," I said, hoarsely and quietly, and it did feel a bit
disembodied.

"I want you to concentrate on something. It helps me when I try to
sense your aura."

"Sure," I said, a concession that she sensed. She didn't reply.
Then I added: "I would be happy to."

"Concentrate on your earliest love."

We were still eye-to-eye -- she must have seen my disbelieving
reaction, but she didn't let on.

"Okay," I said, when I could say it with some conviction.

"Your earliest love. What she or he looked like, what you did, how
you felt."

"All right." After a few moments, I settled on the memory that I
would call up, and I felt an urge to close my eyes, but the image
cleared my vision regardless. Then Barbara gave my hands a little
squeeze and slowly let them down to rest on my legs. She held hers
up as if she wanted to catch a three- foot beach ball. Nothing else
changed.

Brett, here's the memory. Let's call it the red shoe incident. I
can see myself in gym class. Back in the day, we would go to large
locker rooms and change into our gym clothes, so I was dressed in
shorts, tee shirt and converse basketball high-tops. Our gym
teacher was stereotypical, a coach in spirit but a self-satisfied
time-server who had moved into mental cruise control years before.
This was "country dancing" week, which brought the boys and the
girls together. The girls' gym teacher took the lead. All right,
she was saying, we're going to practice dancing with a partner. I
want all the girls to take a shoe off and put it in the middle of
the gym. The boys will get a shoe from the middle, then find their
partner.

The process of putting shoes in the middle lasted two minutes,
plenty of time for the boys to strategize. You wanted to be with a
partner who was attractive, maybe not so much because you cared who
was on the other end of a dosado but because you didn't want to see
the other joe smiling at you with a sense of superiority. It didn't
take long for everyone to see the prime strategy: there in the
middle of sixty or seventy white, blue and black shoes was a single
red shoe. The shoe belonged to Amy. She was attractive and smart,
and a charmer in her own way, though not the beauty of the class,
or the girl you'd pick out to gloat over. But she was well liked,
and so much above the average "claim" that that red shoe shone like
a beacon to all our eyes.

Go, the teacher said. Instantly there was a pile-on in the middle
of the room. I have no recollection of who came away with the shoe.
What I remember -- what I can see today as if I stand there -- is
not moving and looking over at Amy, seeing her blush when someone
emerged victorious with her shoe. She looked wide-eyed at her
friends, and put her hand to her mouth in sudden realization of
what was happening for the cause of her shoe. I waited for her to
show more shock from how this replicated the superficial
relationships of our material and success-oriented society, but she
was more than just a little bit pleased by it all.

There I am, looking at her and realizing that I want what everyone
else wants, but not because of the red shoe in the middle of the
floor. I want to be with her because of who she is.  I wish I could
shout it but I'm shut inside myself.

I don't know her all that well. Or rather I do, as much as I know
myself, as much as I understand why I do anything. I like to tease
her when we talk - - there's no surer sign of a boy's interest --
and she is suitably demure and quick with an inviting reparteeŠ.

I can feel the melancholy that was so common to me back then, while
I walk to the middle to grab one of the leftover shoes (hopefully
not too many sizes larger than those that went first). I lean over
and grab a shoe, and wander among the girls who have been unclaimed
so far. My mind aches with a deep encompassing sadness, but even
more so with longing for a new balance. My sense of importance, a
sense that comes from knowing you see the world more clearly than
the crowd, doesn't begin to stop the pain. I walk by Amy, kneeling
to tie her shoe, and proximity and distance seem like a magic
formula that I cannot unravel from inside my own mind. If I could
just reach out and touch her hand, I know I could ground the
equation and understand.


Derek awoke. The room was utterly dark, until he was able to find
his glasses. Several areas were lit up with bug information, but he
couldn't tell much about them. He was lying on a perfectly round
bed; when he stretched his legs, they extended off by two feet. The
ceiling was about 4 feet. He was in his exoskeleton, still powered.
Slowly, the day before was coming back to him: the decisions, the
panic, the guide, the reuniting, a long slow conversation in which
he realized how little he understood about bug world. He remembered
slowly fading under Click-Cluck's explanations, and she finally
directed him to this room. He had no idea what time it was -- he
still didn't know much more about what time meant for them.

He understood enough to know that light, visible light, was more
the exception than the rule. Eventually, using the glasses'
sensors, he was able to locate the door he had entered, and he
crawled out. The common space beyond the door was about 8 feet
high, so he was able to stand up. He did a full body stretch and
yawned. That's when he noticed Clum-Clum-Tock in the corner,
perhaps asleep, but probably there on guard duty. Derek sat down
cross-legged and rubbed his face while considering where he was.

You made a mistake, Click-Cluck had told him. You were meant to
panic and hurt yourself. -- You need to understand that you are not
without enemies.

Enemies? Derek needed the word explained, and some examples from
earth history sufficed. But why? What have I done?

Click-Cluck seemed disturbed by this innocence. Not what you have
done -- who you are. I need to provide context. For the moment,
consider that our civilization is old, very old by earth measures,
but that even a stable, long-lived civilization such as ours
undergoes changes. Where galactic exploration was once one of our
crowning achievements, we are now not much interested in the
knowledge that such exploration brings. In fact, there are those
who oppose the presence of exo-species: not so much because it is
wrong to take specimens or because they are afraid of biological
contamination; they fear the cultural influence. They would have
all evidence of other biospheres kept locked up, and they would
destroy all living evidence.

I am living evidence? Derek asked, to make sure he understood.
Then: what other living evidence do you have?

We will discuss that at another time, said Click-Cluck.

All right, thought Derek, then the natural question: "Am I going to
be killed?"

No, it is not our way to kill other living creatures -- unless
extensive procedures are followed. You are safe, I think, from
anyone but yourself. Consider the charged ball. You were supposed
to flee the ball and cower in the corner of your room until the
fear and lack of stimulation made your warm-blooded brain go crazy.
We've seen it happen many times over in similar species.
Yesterday's test was designed to make you go over the edge and do
something that would either injure you, or make you distrust us. If
you were content to stay in your room, no one would bother with
you. But when you claim your rights as a sentient being, you become
a problem for the exophobes.

Why did you let them do that to me?

It was carefully orchestrated; we had no knowledge... It would be
foolish to imagine that in the future you won't find yourself in a
similar situation. You will have to save yourself again.

I didn't save myself this time. You did.

You seem not to understand the test that you passed with the ball,
Derek. You would be wise to think more about this. The sign of
intelligence that we were looking for was not the ability to reason
out why we did what we were doing, because we could hide our
motivation behind a hundred subterfuges. The intelligence you
needed to display was the willingness to risk everything for your
innate rights as an aware being.


"John?"

"Yes."

"I find it works better if your eyes are open," she said, and gave
me a wide smile when I opened my eyes. I hadn't even realized I'd
closed them. It was an embarrassing moment, not least because I
could tell that her smile extended so far by encompassing a little
chuckle. Still, the genuine article -- a joyful smile -- is hard to
resist. "Now I would like you to think about your first memory. You
are no bigger than a toddler or woddler. There are few words
associated with this memory. It may be a smell, or a flash of
recognition, or something you did every day. Don't tell me it -- I
don't need to know."

I found myself looking into her eyes, wondering if they were seeing
me, or the aura, or were concentrating on something on the wall
behind me, or maybe they were disconnected from the brain while it
was busy making a shopping listŠ. From this distance I could see
the smallest details of the irises of her eyes: symmetric brown
rays emanating from the pupil, with hints of green played off by
the black mascara on her lids. The pupils were over-large in that
light, giving a wide-eyed effect to her face, almost anime- like.

I was slowly drawn into my imagination. I am wandering the house,
crying, maybe three or four years old, looking for my mother, upset
about something. It seems that I've been crying for a few minutes;
my eyes are quite damp, including the lashes. I stop suddenly. Why
am I crying? What do I hope to get from my mother? I couldn't tell
you -- you can imagine that the memory is vague almost beyond
recognition. But as I moved back into that time I could see one
thing clearly: the disproportionality of everything. I have so
little control over my body, and the house intimidates me from top
to bottom. There are doors and drawers and sliders and objects all
around me that are too heavy, too tall and awkward for me. The
ceiling vaults above like a cathedral. The whole environment
dwarfs, disarms me. We are not yet talking about magnitudes of
difference -- just three or four times difference - - and yet I
feel like I might as well be trapped here.

I realize with a sudden and surprising certainty, that I am me, and
that I am crying for my mother because that's what I do when I want
something, whether I know what that something is or not. But I am
me, I think. I stop crying, and decide that I could also not cry
for her. I wander off to do something else.

Barbara's eyes were staring at me or through me. I didn't know if I
should ahem or cough or say something, afraid that I might break
her concentration on the beach ball-sized aura wrapped around me.
Idiot, I thought, and raised my eyebrows: if she was seeing me, she
ought to recognize that. I waited half a minute and was about to
say something, when she said without otherwise moving a muscle: "I
know you're done; just hang on."

That minute had me twitching because I didn't want to go wandering
in my mind while I was looking at her, and I didn't think I should
move. The enforced stillness manifested itself as an itch all over.

Then she relaxed and looked away, took up her notebook and started
making keyword notes. I couldn't tell what she was writing --
either she was a doctor in a former life or a secretary
specializing in shorthand.

"Okay," she said, as I took to scratching various itches. "That was
interesting. I should have guessed that your struggle between need
and independence would go so far backŠ."

I was dumbfounded. I thought: Oh my God, what could the odds be on
that. (Another voice was saying, why in the world would you think
yourself anything other than typical.)

A small, satisfied smile formed on her face. "Just a couple more.
First I want you to imagine the moment of your happiest success. I
don't mean the time you were happiest. I mean the moment when you
felt most successful in life. Then we'll look at the deepest
downerŠ. Okay," she shook herself and reset her arms in the
position to accept my ethereal globe.

Again the eyes. The proximity had meanwhile become intimacy,
artificial in the extreme, but undeniable as we sat face to face.
The staring was easier. I realized what she was doing: staring the
way a cat does, concentrating not on a spot but bringing in the
whole field of vision. Seeing, and not seeing. Cats blend out the
motionless and wait to see the movement; I guessed she was doing
the same with the motion of my aura.

Most successful? I can remember the day when Doreen and I decided
to move to Chapel Hill: We are sitting at the dining table, the
heavy chestnut one we still have, the sky outside reddening in the
way desert skies do, and Doreen is listening to me describe the
places I had visited, the work environment, the job offer. It was
just one offer, but you may know the feeling, Brett -- and if you
don't now, you will -- that one success feels exactly like the
first step in multiple successes. Doreen is cautious about my
enthusiasm, but seems to be loosening up, accepting that this may
just be the solution we were looking for. We have a bottle of red
wine open, and both have imbibed a fair amount. You are in the
family room, playing. Finally, Doreen says, that sounds wonderful,
and she gets up and comes over to me and kisses me. She may have
said something about providing for the family, but it doesn't
matter. I feel on the top of the world.

I moved my head slightly as I changed where I focused, and I hoped
that Barbara would notice. She was as impassive as ever, and maybe
even slightly more intent. Another silent minute. "Thanks for being
patient," she said, as she relaxed and leaned over to make more
cryptic notes.

I felt like asking, "What do you see?" But I was afraid of getting
a perfunctory reaction and an even more businesslike manner from
her. Maybe there would be a moment when it would make sense. I
carried through an exaggerated stretch to occupy myself.

"All right," she said, expressed as if she didn't need to
elaborate. When I looked lost, she added: "Now I would like to have
you remember your biggest career downer." She settled herself in,
and then said: "I don't want you to wallow in it. It's just a
visit. Okay, let's go."

I stared straight into her eyes; if she noticed the intensity she
wasn't letting on. All right, I thought, I know exactly the day,
the time, the place. Well, the place is vague, but I'm sitting in
front of a large red stained desk. Across from me is my supervisor
in Arizona, with whom I had tussled over employee issues since
becoming acting manager under him. He looks at me with a
combination of a smile and a sneer, and then opens his mouth
widely, as if to shout instructions to a large team or to cry a
lament. Neither comes out. "The commissioners and I have decided,"
he says, "not to offer you the manager position. We are going to
reconfigure the managerial positions, and someone with different
skills will be needed in both positions. We are moving you back to
your old job." I am dumbfounded. -- He explains to me that I'll be
reporting to his management protégé from another division. Not one
word about how he had as much as promised me the promotion. His
solemn, challenging look is telling me: You've got no cards here;
you've been outmaneuvered in every way. I know he's waiting for me
to shout and sink whatever future I may have in the department, but
I can't still speak. I can't imagine that this is the man I
respected, whom I once called a mentor, now revealed to me as a
cruel, venal, conniving S.O.B. I can't understand how wrong I was.
I can't see my future. I can't see Doreen. It's all blank.

This time Barbara was waiting for me. I guess the angry aura is
less interesting. Her smile was toned down, as if she was letting
this episode pass discreetly. "Okay," she said.

I didn't say anything, realized the anger was still there,
animating my tongue, making me want to burst out with something,
anything.

"All right, John," she said, taking up her little notebook, "I
spend so much time on the aura because it's the most interesting
window on the human soul." She paused. "You don't believe in the
soul, do you?"

"Not really," I said, although I responded in my mind: I don't
believe in the soul as a commodity, but I'm not willing to cede the
concept altogether to those who would market it.

"That's all right," she said, with a hint of womanly comforting.
"You don't have to believe in aura, either. I hope you listen to
what I say, read what I am going to send you, and think about what
it means. Nothing can make a difference in your life if you can't
make sense of it for yourself. I know you'll have more than one
laugh, you and Barry" -- a reference I was not happy to hear --
"but I hope you let things resonate within you."

"All right," I ventured.

She searched my eyes one last time, then looked out the curtained
window. "Every living thing has an aura, John. It is partly a
result of the physical energy of the organism -- the human body
itself puts out about 100 watts at any moment. But it is also
psychic energy, the stuff of our real souls, a substance of its own
kind. Because it cannot be described in physical terms we have lost
track of it, but you can see signs of it yourself, if you're only
willing." She looked back at me. "Like when an infant recognizes a
face from the first few minutes of life. When you look at a
painting of a jungle and immediately see hidden eyes peering out at
you. You may be used to ascribing everything to evolutionary
biology: a baby needs to recognize its mother; a hunter needs to
see dangers. But these little miracles bear witness to a
non-physical reality, one in which we are utterly and undeniably
attracted to each other. We gravitate to the energy of life. We can
see it plainly only while the world is still magical for us, when
we are very young and not yet blinded by the self-absorption of
rationality." She paused and saw that I wanted to ask a question. I
was looking to get her off the soapbox.

"Is that what you do -- regress so you can see psychic energy
again?"

"I wish, John," she said and reached out with a hand to touch my
knee. "I wish. What I do is use my peripheral vision as best I can
to see what I can't see."

"Sounds paradoxical."

"We constantly see things at the edge of perception. A sudden
movement at the edge of your vision. An odd sense that something is
out of place, but when you stare at it you see nothing. Think again
about the fact that we see faces everywhere -- remember the picture
of the face on the surface of Mars? What is it that makes us
perceive meaning where our rational minds expect none? Have you
ever seen on a science show without feeling some sympathy the near
hopeless struggle of spermazoa? Our non-conscious minds are
constantly connecting us to things over which we have no analytic
control. With my husband's help, I've learned to look for aura at
the edges of vision, in what I cannot see."

"Does it have a color?"

"No, I don't see a color; it's more an intensity, a potential. My
husband can actually distinguish 7 levels of aura, with colors and
spectra. We have both also learned to feel aura with our hands.
What I see -- I can't explain it to you, in the same way I can't
explain what attracted me to your face when we first met, or why I
know when someone is lying and leading me on, or what someone's
deepest, most cherished dream is."

All right, I thought, okay, for argument's sake. (Not able to shake
the physiological perspective, I recalled later that she didn't
blink when she stared, drying her eyes out and probably causing a
halo effect.)

"I ask my clients to remember key events in their life to get a
baseline and range," she said. "The changes that accompany memories
pretty reliably reveal the state of your aura."

"What can you say about it?"

She smiled. "All right. Let's see." She read from her notebook.
"Your aura is healthy, shiny and pulsing in the way we like to see.
There are only a few problems. First, there's something missing in
your psychic energy because of your general level of anxiety. I
notice it as a weakness in the aura right at your forehead" -- for
emphasis she touched two fingers on my forehead -- "A brain can
easily get out of sync with the body's energy. But we have
exercises for getting that back on track. Second, you have a
tendency to transfix on the past. It was quite clear in your
remembrance of your first love. You moved too easily back in time;
even your aura began to timeshift. This is fine as an exercise, but
can sap your energy over time. When I treat someone, I work to
understand why he or she has a preoccupation with the past, and
once we identify the reasons for it, there are a few ways to work
through it. Third, anger. Really, John, you need to begin to
understand what animates you when you're frustrated. It's not
healthy. And I'm not referring to your blood pressure or your
heart. We're talking about your eternal soul. You do not want to
poison it like that." She suffered the slightest hint of a shudder
before she looked up, smiled as punctuation, and laid the notebook
aside.

"Last few things," she pulled out a printed sheet of paper, "if you
would fill this out as best you can, I'll be able to consult the
astrology charts and analyze your writing. And now -- " She
produced an ink pad and reached for my hand. I gave it to her with
some reluctance, and she pressed it into the pad, then spread it
sideways over another sheet she laid upon her thigh. She said
matter-of-factly: "A rounded surface produces a better full-hand
print than a flat one."

I can't deny, Brett, that I was affected by all this -- the
proximity, the seeming clairvoyance, the promises of help. She
talked slowly, even moved slowly, as if in recognition of the fact
that we had entered a space where I felt unsure, out of control.
She took up her materials, leaving the sheet I was to fill out, and
stood: "Please fill out the sheet once I've gone -- there is
usually some level of interference if I'm in the room -- and then,
if you would be so kind, fill out the guestbook at the entrance.
There are some customary amounts indicated there; we have a sliding
scale, but we ask those who can afford it to help with our work."
Short smile and a hint of a curtsy. "Any questions?"

There were a lot of things I wanted to say, not all appropriate,
but nothing like a proposition. I wanted to know more about this
thing that separated us, this supposed ability, this self-assurance
at the fringe of society. But there was another question, which she
anticipated after I gently shook my head. "Maybe next time," she
said, "we can get to know that monster." I didn't speak. "I know
you think it can't exist, but there is just so much in this world
that we can't comprehend with our analytic brains. I can feel his
being out there, and I know you have some connection to him. No,
not through your dream, not the boogey story you told your child.
Those are the symptoms of a deeper connection. Think about your
move away from the West, away from everything you knew -- do you
think that that was chance? And the sudden fame and notoriety of
the bog monster story? There is nothing random in the world, John.
Our lives are all telling a story, and only when we accept that can
we begin to understand it. -- All right. Enough for today." She
went out the door.

I dutifully filled out the sheet, including filling in my address
and (work) phone number, both of which gave me pause when I
imagined Barbara crossing paths with Doreen. Then I traced my steps
back to the entryway. Barry was looking at a yoga book, with his
head half cocked to the side, his free arm slightly raised,
estimating from these few clues the pain he would endure trying the
stance in the book. He looked up and shook his head disapprovingly,
as if he read something prurient in my expression. I stopped at the
guest book, wrote a brief "thanks" and tucked a check into the
"contribution" box.

"Well?" as Barry led me out the door. "Is that not the closest
thing you've ever experienced to a waking wet dream?"

I grimaced and pushed on.

"Sure, we don't need to talk about it," he said.

We got into his car, and he headed back to Chapel Hill. "Did she
ask?" he said.

"Ask what?"

"If she could use you to contact the bog monster?"

"Why? What do you care? Are you afraid she's going to scoop you?"

"On the contrary," he said with a wide-eyed look that spooked me.
"On the contrary."


Click-Cluck began history lessons. Derek sat cross-legged across
from her -- the exoskeleton made this both easy and curiously
relaxing -- and she dropped down on her belly. After speaking a
while, she would stretch her limbs and then unhinge them and curl
her feet back onto her back. Then, just as abruptly, she would
bring her forelegs down and raise the front part of her body so
that her downward eyes could look at Derek. Since there was no
distinguishable pupil, he couldn't be sure where she was looking.
Sometimes he thought she was observing his Adam's apple, other
times his face. He got used to her ticks and antennae rhythms, so
much so that they became a source of calmness; he often found
himself breathing in their cadence.

Derek had a tough time with the lessons. He thought he was
misunderstanding when Click-Cluck said that the current bug
civilization was some 20,000 years old and that their historical
era was over 100,000 years. She started with her society, promising
that they would return to the highlights of earlier epochs. From
its very beginning, this civilization was global; indeed, it had
defined itself by defeating the regional states that had dominated
bug history for some 25,000 years prior. This society was also
grounded in Plato-like ideas of the preeminence of science and
natural philosophy. Socially, there was a weak approximation of a
democratic state: weak, because the governing class was elected by
itself, not by the people. But there was a strong ethic of
meritocracy, and slipsliding was undercut by an utter openness in
all governmental proceedings. The governors sought their
replacements among all progeny, judging them dispassionately for
the appropriate analytic ability, coolheadedness and an utter
dedication to the state. The triumvirate of their cultural
self-understanding was rationality, evenhandedness and
self-sacrifice.

But something is missing, Click-Cluck explained. The state is
passionless. It provides competently and enables, but it has not
allowed the bug race to rise above itself and create something new
-- not in many millennia. There have been many revolutions in
social norms and interests, but they are like froth on a tidal sea,
sloshing back and forth without real meaning. At first, there was a
desire to spread out into the great reaches of space: exploration
and colonies followed. The inevitable reaction led to a dominating
interest in perfecting life here on bug world -- health, productive
lifespan, and wellness. The colonies languished -- some died, some
returned home, some disappeared one knows not where in space, and
others got by. Then another phase of exploration began, energized
by the growing bestiary of discovered life throughout the stellar
neighborhood. That phase, too, came and went, while samples were
being collected and brought back to the homeworld. In the years
during which these centuries-old exploratory missions have been
returning, the prevailing public opinion has changed four times:
first philosophically opposed; then excited by the galactic
biological richness; then disinterested; and now ironically
opposed, in the majority, because the stability of our domestic
order seems challenged through the very richness that had been
celebrated for hundreds of years.

"I don't understand these scales of time," said Derek in English.
Their conversations often occurred in both languages, since neither
was very adept at the other's. "Every ten years it seems like my
society is re-inventing itself and running into entirely new
problems."

You must understand, said Click-Cluck, that I'm speaking here like
a "khdrreen" (she threw in the English word 'historian' because the
bug concept is rather different). If we used a metaphorical
magnifying glass and looked at smaller periods, these
generalizations would resolve into smaller and contradictory
trends. But the same kind of generalities hold for your
civilization. You say everything changes every ten years. From
another perspective, your world's religious wars have been the norm
for over 1000 years, probably since the rise of civilization
itself. Even in your most recent history, your conflicts have been
defined by religious differences.

"I don't know. World War Two was a conflict among modern
democracies, fascist states, and communist dictatorships."

Fascism and communism can be understood in a religious context, as
totalitarian states that attempt to recast religious allegiance for
their own sake. Democracies are much more like our own
natural-philosophic society, but on your planet they are so
thoroughly dominated by their capitalist overlay that the rational
kernel becomes distorted beyond recognition.

"For us, democracy is still the most rational way to organize
societies. A democracy can get the best out of our leaders by not
trusting them too much. The people decide, for better or worse."

Our theorists are in agreement, said Click-Cluck, that rule by the
"pphphr" (people) is illusionary. However, appearance seems more
important to earth people than substance, so we would say that
there is no deception.

Derek didn't want to get into an argument, so he redirected the
discussion: "If you are not in a democracy, can you disagree with
your government?"

Click-Cluck: Our government does not control ideas. Disagreements
are expected. What the government controls are the schools and the
libraries, the institutions of learning. Indoctrination is never
far away. At times these places can get too far out of step with
the society and cease to have any importance. But they always catch
up with us eventually.

"So what do you want to happen? Is it time for revolution?"

Click-Cluck clicked in a way that Derek had never heard before, a
weird hollow sound, a bit like laughter.

We need to find a passion in our world, a reason for more than
survival. Don't misunderstand me. We survive very well. We learn,
love, work, celebrate, all those things you know from your earth
life, although they are also different on this world. While we
survive well, many of us ask, is this enough? Is this why our
planet created one global order, one set of guiding principles?
Just to survive? Or is there more to be created?

"Does this have anything to do with me?" Derek asked, but
Click-Cluck didn't answer. He let it pass, but watched her antennae
whip as if in a gusting wind.


This discussion continued another day in another context. Derek was
inquiring about the lifestyle of an average bug. Lifespan?
Marriage? Children? 40-hour workweek? What? This led circuitously
to the exemplary biography of one particular bug, whom we will call
"Thunk." This was Derek's nemesis, the bug who had engineered his
departure from his cell, and Derek recognized from a sparkle image
that it was the same massive bug who had rolled the shock-ball at
him. He's my boss, said Click-Cluck.

"Wait -- your boss wants to see me dead?"

He doesn't care whether you live, just whether you live among us.

"Why doesn't he make me stay in my cell?"

There are protocols.

"Couldn't he work around the protocols, maybe say I'm a thief or
I've still got earth bugs in me."

That would not be very convincing. These protocols are not random
things, Derek. We are a rational race; if there are protocols for
how exo- creatures are treated, then Thunk would be risking censure
for breaking those protocols.

"Didn't he break the protocols when he engineered my escape?"

Not specifically. Our world has no vague conceptions of poetic or
righteous justice. If Thunk finds no statement or reading of the
protocols that forbids shoving a hover-bike into your cell, then by
all means he is allowed. There may yet be a rebuke against his
taking this step while I, as your main caregiver, was away, but
that is different, a practical matter.

"How did he get to be your boss if he hates exo-creatures?"

There are many like him in our institute. Try to imagine our social
organization. Our society does not regulate relations through the
circulation of money and individual ambition, as does yours. We
define ourselves by the skills and efforts we bring to improve
society. Above all, we are not private beings, "sttghn" (citizens)
in the sense that you know.

Derek listened to a long disposition about their ethic of social
contribution. In the place of money was a rather strict accounting
of one's 'social ratio,' the balance of one's beneficial acts, as
evaluated by one's elders and betters, mechanically divided by the
number of adult years lived. Coveted positions were assigned
according to one's specific skills and one's ratio. This system
prevented the accumulation of money and thereby the problem of
hereditary wealth, though it tended to reward early achievers
disproportionately, who were able to maneuver into the best
positions for their age group, and the rest could never catch up.

Consider Thunk, said Click-Cluck. He is my school contemporary, but
because of his accomplishments he was pushed ahead one year of
education, and was in a trainee position when I finished my
studies. Two years later, I was still a trainee and he had moved
into a management position. While he is directly over me, his
position is fundamentally different than mine: There is no career
path from my position to his. Still, that he is only just above me
is a sign of the ruling class's displeasure in him, which I'm sure
has to do with his fixation on exo-creatures. He would not be
expected to remain in our institute with his social ratio. He
entered the institute 50 years ago because it was the highest
position he could attain given his social balance. He would
similarly be expected to leave to keep raising the ratio.

"Fifty years? How old is he?"

He is 170 years old.

"Wooooh," Derek said in an almost whistle. "You too?"

I am 166 years old. I started school younger than he because I knew
I wanted to be female -- those of us who do tend to mature earlier.

Derek asked: "How old, -- how long do bugs live?"

You may find this interesting. Our lifespan is about 250 years.
Perhaps you may ask yourself, why not a shorter lifespan like
yours, or you may wonder why we have not achieved immortality,
given our sciences and technologies? Many millennia ago, before the
birth of our worldwide society, it was determined among a small set
of natural philosophers and scientists that the optimal crossing
point for lifespan and new blood was 250 years. Not every society
adhered to this principle, but those who did tended to thrive. In
our own society, there is a ceremonial congress every 50 years,
during which the lifespan question is considered, and the result is
always the same. This number is more than just a target. Our
medical sciences have perfected the care of our bodies through this
age, and at the end of this time, the physical body just wears out.
With remarkable consistency, give or take twenty years. Research
into further longevity is not condoned, so that no one need be
denied a life-saving treatment.

"What about the societies that didn't obey this principle? Wouldn't
they have had techniques to live longer? Wouldn't there be a strong
temptation for the ruling class to save itself, or at least some
charismatic leader?"

These other societies were unreliable sources for knowledge of any
kind, so we don't look to them for guidance. As for secret projects
to extend one's own life, or the life of one's hero, one could
expect that on your planet, but it is simply impossible here. Among
other things, our lives are not private enough. Do you believe, for
example, that our discussion today is private?

"I hope so," Derek said. "For your sake as well as mine."

There is no privacy, Derek. Your fixation on a private sphere may
be a peculiarity of your species. Here, doors and walls are
conveniences, not barriers. If someone wants to listen to every
word you say, they can.

"Can we keep track of Thunk?"

Yes, I already do to a degree. And there are ways to review
activities. But what you may be looking for -- the 'smoking gun' of
a conspiracy, no? -- simply does not exist. It is not a crime to
plot against you. The crime would be to deny your manifest
rationality, to accuse you of being a mindless, squishy salamander.
Disagreement, competition, even repression can be accomplished
rationally, from end to end. One may disagree with the outcome, but
if the method adheres to the principles of our society then one
must adjust.

"If I get tricked into killing myself, you will have to adjust?"

Of course. As would you, were I to die saving you.


By one measure, Click-Cluck was much Derek's senior. By another --
if you believed in the premise of this world, which Derek did not
always -- he was thousands of years old. Despite the great strides
he was making in understanding bug speak, at least Click-Cluck's,
everything he learned still had an irreal shimmer. He didn't bother
his teacher with his itchy doubts, because he wasn't sure how she
would interpret it -- a sign that his mind was unstable? Whether or
not it was a dream world, he had no interest in spending his
remaining time in a cell.

So, if the world was to be treated as real, there was a raft of
questions that had to be answered.

"Was I the only one? If not, where are the others? And what about
species from other planets? Can I see any?"

Click-Cluck answered: You are the only human alive. The
non-cognizant earth animal species were not deemed important enough
to keep alive.

"I thought you considered life sacred."

"Sskkk" -- Sacred would not be the right word. We don't kill. In
this case, we did not work out the techniques, foodstuffs and
exo-skeletons necessary for our planetary conditions, and the
creatures simply died. We mitigated their pain. The plants were
dried and preserved. The microscopic life was frozen.

"Were there other humans? How many?"

Other than you there were five humans, of varying human races and
ages, none quite as fit or suited as you. Many thin-skinned animals
from weak- gravity planets do not survive the rigors of hibernation
and travel at relativity speeds. You yourself barely recovered.
There were difficulties as we purged your body of your symbiotic
and parasitic organisms, and introduced our own. Many specimens are
lost in this transition.

"They're all dead? Š Tell me the truth, did Thunk have them
killed?"

They were dead before the mission returned. I believe at this point
the appropriate thing to say is, 'I'm sorry.' I don't understand
the logic of that, but I can sympathize that you must be saddened
by being alone on another world, with a very alien species.

"Can I see some of the other survivors? Are any like me?"

When the time is right, we will visit another survivor or two. You
will need to be prepared and first need to know our world better.

"Are any of them like me?"

Hairless apes, you mean? That is peculiarly earthen. These
creatures come from very different circumstances and have their own
evolutionary paths. We are none of us like each other.


You may know the feeling, Brett, a two-edged sense of betrayal that
comes from the consciousness of a secret you must not only keep
from those around you, but which you must embed in lies.  It's
especially bad if you find yourself imagining how your conversants
would react if they knew. As we crossed paths before dinner, your
eyes challenged me to hide my nervousness even deeper. I averted
mine from Doreen's, and she seemed to accept that I would be angry
about her co-opting Barry earlier in the day. You can have him, I
thought. I hoped that, as the dinner wore on, my self-
consciousness would disappear below the rising tide of family
interests and tensions.

We chewed in silence a while before Doreen said, "I enjoyed meeting
Barry today."

I looked to see if her face was wearing anger or suspicion; she
projected innocence. This opening was a concession, her innocent
expression a dare for me to respond with rancor.

"He's an interesting guy," I said.

With my last chance to answer angrily gone, she said: "Where did
you two go?"

I had this line ready. "We like to go to Carolina Brewery." Brett,
I hope you understand that this misdirection was intended to save
us all some aggravation. I saw no reason to engage over this; we'd
have an opportunity to discuss it later, maybe at a distance laugh
over it.

Doreen looked disappointed, as if she had imagined we had dropped
in on an art opening.

You seemed not to register this exchange at all, didn't even notice
when we will fell silent. Doreen and I glanced at each other,
acknowledging your distant expression. She wanted desperately to
question you, but she knew that a single interrogatory worked like
a dousing blanket on your participation in the family.  I imagined
telling you about my encounter and waiting for what you thought
about this venial indiscretion. Your voice: "Get a life, dad. You
worry about the craziest things."

Maybe it was that night or maybe weeks later -- I don't have such a
linear memory -- I lay in bed thinking, and weighing whether I
could understand any more what you were going through. I think of
all the remembrance movies churned out by the baby boomers, and I
can't help thinking they're simply wrong: portrayals of jocks and
cheerleaders and nerds and outsiders in immutable groupings and
with scripted self-awareness that capture just the lifeless peaks
of adolescent existence. The anguish and joy of being young is
about the constant blending of what you know with the world that
nearly every day presents itself anew.

Whaaa-tt, you would say that. I can see you in your room,
immobilized on the bed, and I want to articulate what you are
feeling, because I know you can't. I can express myself in all the
clichés I've acquired over 40 years, but there's no way to apply
them to your life without contaminating its essence with my
experiences.

Lying on my bed I imagine you on yours, looking up at the ceiling
like a prisoner on lockdown; you feel such anger against me,
against your mother, against our arguments and our steely silence.
You want to say sometimes, 'just get it over and don't stay
together because of me.' But you know that you don't want the house
split; you know your place isn't telling your parents how to live
their marriage. You want nothing more than to leave all the words
behind; they can't capture how angry everything makes you feel --
your parents, your satiric teachers, a few stupid peers who look at
you like a freak, and a girl whom you think a friend but whose
mouth has a cruel curl whenever you become earnest. You wish you
could scream just once, "I love you!" But how much would that
destroy, and it wouldn't be true anyway. You don't know what love
is, though you want so much that your body buzzes like a tuning
fork with vibrations from her. She moves so casually through her
life, indolent and yet walking on the knife-edge of brutal
manipulation. You wish you wanted to be alone, no more awkward
repetitions, no more waiting for when your real life begins. You
lie on your bed, so full of mental and physical energy, and you're
absolutely paralyzed. There's nowhere to begin, no release, no
outlet, no purpose.


All right, Brett, let's get on with it. All dramafication aside, we
haven't had much of a story here. Not until after that car was
found did we realize that coincidence could build an edifice of
causality and trap us inside. The car was a 1999 Volvo sedan,
parked off the road at the trailhead leading into the Blackwood
portion of the Duke Forest. The keys were still in the ignition,
the driver side door unlocked but closed. There were no signs of
anything untoward, but the driver was gone. A missing person report
was filed, uncharacteristically quickly, and the papers and the
local media informed. The driver was a tenth-grade girl from Chapel
Hill.

The initial reports had no information other than a description of
her and how to contact Chapel Hill police. Then, without further
explanation, a "person of interest" was described as a young Latino
and presented in a suspect sketch (teen-aged or early twenties, as
non-distinctive in his Hispanic looks as the young missing blond
girl in her Caucasian attributes). His car was possibly a 1987 teal
Nova with California plates; we were all asked to keep an eye out
for this car, but it was assumed that the vehicle was heading west,
somewhere on Interstate 40 in North Carolina or Tennessee.

It emerged later -- thank God -- that the person of interest was
her high- school boyfriend of some weeks and that, upon being
confronted by her parents, she had chosen to elope with this young
man rather than forsake him forever. Her pretext for getting away
from home was an afternoon with a girlfriend, and the couple's
meeting place was that out-of-the-way stretch of forest. The police
knew all this fairly early on, though they did not inform the
public. First, they were not assured that the relationship was
completely consensual, given the parents' accusations of
brainwashing. Second, they found the boyfriend's car hidden in the
woods, driven off the road at another location in a deliberate
effort to conceal its whereabouts. This left open the small
possibility that their rendezvous had taken an ugly and unforeseen
turn. The incomplete report kept us on our toes, without any of
these confusions, and without tipping off whoever had wanted to
hide the car.

Chapel Hill does not get news like this very often, and the
parental milieu reacted as if lightning had snatched one of its own
in a titanic fiery display. I found myself reloading the local news
Web pages, at first constantly, then in slowly lengthening
intervals, for the better part of a week. Others volunteered,
created or distributed posters, joined search parties, scoured the
section of the forest where the girl's vehicle had been found (the
boy's Nova was extracted and sequestered before its location was
known). The family was represented by the father, who stoically and
eloquently called for the opportunity to see their daughter and
sister again. "Nothing else matters; we can work everything else
out." Significantly, he spoke equally to his daughter and her
"abductor," but we just thought that was an attempt to create a
relationship with this person or these persons unknown.

The story of the relationship came out after a few days with no
substantive leads, and the police faced a lot of consternation over
the secrecy. That's when everyone's attention fell with renewed
emphasis on the forest tract. Stories came and went for days before
the first mention of both the disappearance and the bog monster.
The occasion was an editorial where the local paper chastised the
police for their secrecy but praised their diligence: "She and her
boyfriend seem to have disappeared in the woods as completely as
the mythical bog monster who is said to frequent sections of the
Duke Forest." Once the connection was made, it did not take too
many "telephone" connections before someone was writing in a
weblog: "We cannot rest until the perpetrator is found and brought
to justice, even if we must burn the bog monster out of his lair to
do so."

The next print headline: "Bog Monster Said Suspect in
Disappearance." Speculation about the monster was actually six or
seven paragraphs down from the lead, but the conceit was too
powerful to let pass. Like rewiring neurons in a damaged brain, the
connection got repeatedly reinforced in the media until the
previously subjunctive felt like the always real. This led to a
stream of phone calls from the media at our house asking about this
monster, all of which I refused; the reality came home after a
brief visit and conversation outside our home with a pair of
uniformed officers about what I knew about the disappearance.

Did you know that they asked for my whereabouts when the girl went
missing? I obliged them with everything and did not bother to
express outrage at the mere supposition. No stone unturned. I was
just happy I wasn't off on one of my GIS search parties at the
timeŠ.

The boy's mother -- father nowhere to be found -- did not speak
much English and was shown stuttering to a reporter in a
mean-spirited editing job that was replayed night after night. One
got the impression of shiftiness, but we found out later that she
was saying approximately this: "Don't judge my son before you know
the facts. The girl threw herself at him, and when he found out her
age, he decided that the only honorable thing was to marry her. I'm
sure when that's all done they'll come home." Of course, the time
necessary for that came and went, and we still heard nothing.

Then, one afternoon, Barry called: "Have you heard from the police
yet?"

"No," I said, confused, unable to guess the context.

"Okay -- okay. You can expect a call soon. We'll catch up this
evening."

"What do the police want?" I asked.

"I don't think it's my place to say. Really, I don't want to get in
the middle of this. You'll soon know from the proper authorities."

I had a momentary adrenalin jolt, but remembered that you were in
your room and that Doreen was in the office. We were all fine. I
couldn't get anything out of Barry before he hung up. I forgot
about that strange call until the late evening, when I got another
-- from Barbara Hohenstauffen. Have you heard, she said, and when I
said, no, in fact, I have no idea why you and Barry are being so
mysterious -- she thought better of the conversation and got off
the phone in a hurry.

Doreen had told me that the phone was for me. She did not ask me
who the voice was, but I figured that this would come up later.

The next morning, when I was at work, I got a visit from two of
Chapel Hill's finest, two investigators. One was Jared's father,
Lieutenant Brightman. "Is there somewhere we could talk in
private?"

I led them down the hall to the conference room, which happened to
be empty. Brightman was a tall, muscular, heavy man, with a short
military haircut and a broad, pleasant face that took back some of
the sharpness of his demeanor. His partner was a short, stocky man,
looking twenty years or so his senior, a man who, judging by his
irritated manner, had been asked too many times if he wasn't
already retired, with a wrinkled tired face that was in all
likelihood the result more of cigarette smoking than age or
hardship.

Detective Horvath began the conversation: "We need your help in the
missing person investigation of Hayley Blalock. I know that you've
talked to officers already about the bog monster story, and that
you've provided information about your whereabouts at the relevant
times. You are not a suspect -- not even remotely -- but you have
material information that we believe will help us."

"I'm happy to help, as much as I can, but I don't know what
material information I could have." -- Meanwhile, I was already
imagining that they had a fat dossier about my GSI/GPS habits and
that they were going to ask me to consult as the most widely
traveled denizen of the county, after they threatened me with a
life sentence for a hundred trespasses.

"That's great," said Brightman. "Here's the situation. We sometimes
need to reassure relatives in missing person cases, and in
high-profile cases that can mean working with the family's private
investigator, or being chummy with an interested reporter, or
holding a weekly round-up of progress. In this case, we've been
asked -- we were asked -- to include a psychic in the
investigation." He said the word with some disdain, or perhaps
self-reproach for finding himself in this position.

A sinking feeling, as if I was being pulled into a circle of
uncovered deceit and self-deception around the word "psychic."

"Ferguson," I said, moving to Brightman's first name, "I don't know
you need to come to me about psychics."

Horvath: "We've been asked to engage Barbara Hohenstauffen."

That sinking feeling again, along with a punch to the gut. "Okay,
look," I said, "I did go to see her but it was really just a social
experiment, a lark. I can't speak about her psychic ability at
all."

"We're not looking for a reference, John," said Brightman. "She
told us that she needs your help in this particular investigation
-- because of your involvement with the bog monster story."

I had to laugh. "Ferguson, you of all people know how that story
started and how little it means."

Brightman looked at me with suddenly hard eyes, though there was
only a minute change in his amiable expression. "She believes that
you can provide important information about a 'presence' that she
feels in the forest. That's all we've gotten from her so far. We're
here to find out if you will work with us. It will mean a great
deal to the family." He stopped, but looked at me as if he were
still speaking.

I wanted to say a hundred things, but only one made sense: "Of
course, detectives. I will help as much as I can."


Brett, you were roused from your stasis when, that evening, we had
a family conference. I had to explain everything from the
beginning, and you needed to be a part of it. Doreen understood how
important this was to me and was in a wait-and-see mode. We sat at
the dining room table, hands portentously on the table, as if we
couldn't control the mood that was building.

I didn't bother going back too far: Barry and his interest in the
bog monster (only briefly -- nothing about his articles), his visit
to our house, the appointment with Barbara. As the evidence of the
rendezvous's innocence, I produced the envelope with her written
report, which, except for database extractions describing my
horoscope and the type of handwriting I have, was not much
different than I've already described. Doreen took a good deal of
time going through the report, even went so far as to smell the
pages; the personal profile pages were on beige cotton paper and
did have a faint eau de toilette odor. I took you, Brett, back to
the fayre we attended and described my encounter there with Ms.
Hohenstauffen; you didn't seem to remember her. Doreen's eyelids
flared at our discussion of this, but mostly, I'm sure, for the
omissions of which I was guilty. I apologized to her for lying to
her about the appointment. "I thought it simpler; it didn't matter
either way, andŠ" I didn't finish, and she glared without any sign
of wanting to answer.

I described my role with the police and Barbara. You asked me why
the police wanted me, but I saw in Doreen's eyes: what does this
woman want with you? "I don't know the answer to what started this,
but Barbara seems to think that the bog monster is real and that I
have some connection to itŠ. My fear is that the police believe
that her connecting me to the bog monster is the same as connecting
me to the disappearance. You should remember that I was at work and
came home on time that day. I've got enough witnesses at work, and
Doreen, you know when I got home because it was right before dinner
--"

"Oh my God, John," said Doreen too loudly, as if an awful vista had
just opened up before her. "You're a suspect?"

"No," I replied, "they told me I'm not a suspect. It's just that
they can't understand Barbara's explanations."

"I'm not sure I would understand them either. -- Are you telling me
that the Blalocks asked for this woman?"

"I guess so. I really don't know. For all I know, Barbara called
them up and convinced them."

Doreen thought for a moment. "If she had done that, and talked
about her belief in your connection to the bog monster, maybe they
grew suspicious and told the police."

I nodded.

"So what do we do?" she said, suddenly matter of fact.

"I've got nothing to hide, Doreen, so I think it's a little early
for a lawyer. In the meantime, we will all have a chance to see how
serious anyone is about all this."

Doreen's lids arched again.

"We're invited to a séance to communicate with the bog monster."


Imagine waking up in a completely strange world, as Derek had done
one morning, with the near certainty that everyone and everything
you had ever known was gone, dead, buried and returned to dust. You
may at first accept the message, but eventually the sheer weight of
the disconnection will overwhelm you, with all the emotions that
cycle into mortal anger. You may even find comfort in ambiguity, in
the possibility that it is all in your own mind. But it faces you,
whether from across the room or a strange globe, like an
over-towering monster that grins at your loss and bares its lethal
incisors. You are alone either way.

I woke up two mornings later, at the magical hour of 3 a.m. It is a
time, in my experience, like no other. Four a.m. is already close
to dawn and more hopeful. Two a.m. I've experienced too many times
from the evening side of things to say anything negative about it.
But at three a.m. you are always alone. The distant dawn should be
on the other side of another brief sleep, but sleep comes hard at
this time. Noises are louder and stranger. Thoughts have no
barriers, little relationship to daytime concerns, and few rational
limits. If you wake up at 3, you are just half a step from dream
walking, and like a dream walker you are helpless before the ideas
that overtake your mind.

I woke up knowing my mistake. The bog monster did exist. And if it
didn't -- then whatever it stood for, that existed. All my denials
were just misplaced rational fatuity. What if I had a connection to
that? It could be a psychic link, or maybe a pathological sympathy
to that sink of evil. Or it could be more mundane: my geographical
mapping skills somehow meant that I alone had the ability to
recognize the existence of the evil. Yet I denied it.

I don't know if you've experienced a real cold sweat, Brett. My
forehead exuded cold, and my back was covered with a clammy dew. I
padded downstairs, mostly unaware of the plan that had already
formed in my mind. I went into the kitchen, looked into the fridge.
The food all glowed strangely against my eyes in the overly bright
glare. I went to the office, and that's when I realized what I had
come to see: I turned on the computer and began searching the
Internet for a history of young women gone missing in the Chapel
Hill area.

Each word was difficult to punch out at that hour: Orange County,
NC. Woman. Missing. Missing Person. Jane Doe. Murder. Forest. Duke.
I tried these and a dozen more. I found either way too many or just
a few hits, depending on the query, but nothing pertinent. If there
was a pattern, this was not the way to find it.

After thirty minutes, not far from abandoning the task, I happened
upon an excerpted Hillsborough Herald from 1820. Expecting nothing
but mill prices and the odd lard sale, I opened the web page.
"Notice," the first article began, "the attention of the public is
requested. On the evening of March 20, 1820, Dally Moore, a free
mulatto girl of seventeen, was taken from subscriber's home. I have
known her mother since Dally was an infant, and the fact of her
freedom can be proved beyond any doubt. She is round five feet
tall, with a yellowish complexion and bushy black hair, and with
rings in her ears. Earnest Bryan is suspected of having a forged
bill of sale and is believed to be taking her south to sell her as
his property. Your assistance is needed to save this girl from an
undeserved fate."

This wasn't even close to what I was looking for, except as
collateral evidence of human depravity, but I couldn't help but be
drawn in, first by the surname, wondering if there might some
connection to Barry, then by the story. Did the parties know each
other? Who was Earnest Bryan? Was he related to her, or in
unrequited love with her? Or some other sort of oppressor and
rogue? Who was Dally? If not the Bryans, who introduced the white
into her genetic line? Was her mother freed, or was she? Was she an
energetic young woman, with a bright future obvious to all around
her, or a quiet, introspective girl whose defeatism allowed for no
resistance? Meanwhile, she took form in my mind, a young woman on
the cusp of an exotic beauty: an uneasy balance of European and
African attributes, long- limbed and high-hipped, with exaggerated
cheeks, big but deep-set eyes beneath bushy eyebrows, and
coffee-brown irises glowing against her yellowing mocha skin. Her
long silenced eyes stared at me with defiance.

She was lost again that early morning, defenseless on her way to a
lifetime of slavery, and I was as little able to help her as
"subscriber." Google knew nothing else about her, and I felt in my
stomach that I would never be able to reach the end. I had to let
her go, but couldn't. My eyes welled up and over, and I cried two
-- five -- ten minutes for her, a deep full lamentation, with
sobbing and convulsive breathing. I was crying for Dally, for me,
for my family, for Hayley, even for Derek. When the tears and
heaving stopped, the cathartic effect was complete. I shut down the
computer, sighed and wandered upstairs. I lay down in the bed
beside Doreen, breathing softly, and I said a brief prayer to the
darkness, wishing for all lost souls final rest.


We left Derek in his new home, now part of bug society and educated
somewhat in the political stakes -- if not exactly the personal
risks -- of his bug world existence. He tried to normalize life. He
communicated with Clum-Clum-Tock as much as he could; the bug did
not understand mammalian speech and often could not decode his
attempts at bug speech. What they did do together was travel. Derek
would work out a target and goal with Click-Cluck, and she would
arrange the trip with her colleague, and the latter would guide
Derek on the trip. Derek's glasses were now his constant companions
-- his eyes were usually able to tolerate them for lengthy periods
of time -- and he was conversant with all their features. He did
not feel lost in the dark that pervaded most spaces. It helped that
Click- Cluck had installed a full-spectrum light for his sleeping
chamber, a way of acquiring vitamin D and keeping some visual
acuity. He read books -- mostly e-books that had been scanned by
the explorers that had snatched him -- and watched both bug and
earth TV on a projected screen, and often exercised his arms, legs
and neck by removing the exoskeleton.

Travel was what interested him most. The bug world was unbelievably
large. Despite the substantial speeds of their underground tunnels
and with much overnighting on the road, it seems that Derek never
saw more than a small corner of their world. Well, this place is
fine, his guides would say, but if you really want to see something
special we'd have to fly for a couple days to such and such place.
There was commercial flying on their planet, but it was hindered by
the density and thickness of the atmosphere, such that planes had
to travel even slower than on earth. Derek suspected this was
another of their artificial limits, but when asked Click-Cluck just
did the bug equivalent of a shrug -- stretching the mouth hooks
like a yawn. Click-Cluck never even entertained the idea of putting
him on a plane. She refused to explain why, but Derek sensed a fear
of putting him in a situation with catastrophic potential. Though
she would deny it, he assumed she wanted to provide no temptation
to those who would rather he were gone.

The sites he enjoyed were temples dedicated to bug rationality,
museums documenting and illustrating early communal life,
industrial farms -- fed mostly by natural jets of sulfur and
methane -- of the bacteria-like life-forms that were harvested and
processed into food. There were gigantic natural caverns, glowing
lava lakes and rivers, and cool-running water lakes and rivers. At
one remarkable simulation hall, Derek was introduced to the surface
of the planet: hot, barren, dust-riven and inhospitable, even to
the bug creatures that had evolved here. At some point in the
distant past, apparently because of an astrologically abrupt change
in its orbital path, their planet had passed from a green to a
brown planet, and almost all life had died out. Those forms of
higher life that survived did so by evolving into niches of
burrowing or shelled existence. The surface, for all of bugdom's
long prehistoric and historical duration, was like a body of water
for humans: a place to explore but quickly deadly, a source of
sustenance and a way to travel great distances, but unpredictable
and unforgiving of the ill-prepared. Derek asked Click-Cluck when
he next spoke with her if they could visit the surface. She
promised they would, when he was better able to care for himself.
She said: You cannot rely on any one else, on the surface. You must
be prepared to save yourself.

"I've heard that before," he said, but when she didn't reply:
"Aren't I risking my life every day that I don't just lie in my
room?"

This is very different, she said. We'll both know when you're ready
to do this.

"I really need to see some sunlight," he said.

There was a long silence at that point between the surface dweller
and the underground denizen. He felt some vindication at the
formulation, but Click- Cluck's antennae were unaffected by stress
or confusion, and he had to assume she saw no force in his
statement.

The other open question -- when could he see other aliens? --
brought out the anxiety that the surface did not, though he did not
know why. Once he was browsing bug programming on a projected
screen, he saw what looked like an alien life form. After a few
moments the channel went blank. He hadn't understood the narration
at all, but the creature seemed to be immobilized in a bed of some
kind. That made him uneasy. Click-Cluck ignored his questions, as
if he were simply not making sense.

He appreciated all they did for him, but he also felt trapped. He
knew they protected him by observing him day and night, but they
also circumscribed what he could do. The surface and visiting other
aliens were the two major examples of opportunities denied, but he
also found them interceding whenever he tried to strike up a
conversation with other bugs. He could imagine that their thought
was to protect both him and his intended conversants, but Derek
gradually grew bitter about it. He tried to strike up conversations
where he could -- in the freeway tunnels, at tourist sites, in
stores. Once Click-Cluck had explained how bugs greeted each other
-- "your peaceful passage of the day" was the standard greeting --
and Derek did his best to pronounce that. Of course, for all he
knew, he might have been enunciating "your daily dose of bug
squishing," but even at such a level of misunderstanding the mere
fact of a primate floating among them, trying to speak with them,
must count for more than all the linguistic mistakes in the world.
Surely aliens were not so numerous that they could become more
jaded than fascinated. Click-Cluck tried several times to explain
that bugs don't introduce themselves without a reason, that such an
act was difficult for her species to understand. Even so, Derek
thought. What about that damn ball? Wasn't I expected to turn away
from it? Wouldn't that have been an opportunity to ignore my
intelligence, my rights? Why is it that these bugs can hide behind
the same ill ease and fear that they demanded I abandon?

Two thoughts came to mind, and then a conclusion. First, he knew
that he made them uncomfortable. Ungainly and gangly limbed, with
oily skin that looked to them like stomach lining; mucus-oozing
orifices; beady pupils with eerily white eyes; a huge skull; and a
chomping mouth with rows of cutting and crushing teeth: he was all
out of proportion for that planet, and disturbingly appointed like
a predator. Sure, he was weak, unaggressive and dependent. But his
body type otherwise fit the requirements of a hunter specializing
in capturing and cutting open subterranean bug creatures. He
understood that resentment against aliens was widespread. His
mammalian in-your-face-ness was playing right into this point of
view and agenda, but we must all be that which we are: He couldn't
repress the exuberance of his joys and his fears, now that he had
to live them out in this world.


We had just a few days before the séance. For my part, I had to
withstand the urge to foot it out into the Duke Forest and soak up
the mystery, maybe do some divining-rod work with my mind. There
could be nothing worse right now. The prohibition on wandering was
doubly hard, because I had a bead on the farmstead of the
"subscriber" in Dally's story. No one with that person's name lived
in the area, but a local road bore the family name, and through
that I was able to uncover the likely plot of land in county
records. I did not hope to trace their family history and holdings
back to the time of Dally, but I longed to see the land. Maybe I
would say a prayer, I couldn't predict.

You know, Brett, that I have a strained relationship with religion.
As I age I'll probably succumb to the prudence of religious
observation -- covering the bases -- but I don't feel the
connection now. Oh sure, I've called on a higher being when
confronted with an imminent deadline, a forgotten pot on a burning
stove, a near-miss on the freeway. Panic has convinced me more than
once that maybe there is a line inside my head to the divinity, and
maybe now's the time to open it.

When I was your age, I fell into religion, in the way I fell into
many things. I wouldn't call it peer pressure, because I had a
certain pride in not being a follower and I even felt this was
rebellion. It was religion in the sheep's skin of paganism -- loose
gatherings of a great numbers of kids, parties really, with a
religious tone and religious songs and clean skits and a general
sense of fun and acceptance. Fun did not always and everywhere mean
acceptance. Sometimes, fun was a dangerous thing that could be
turned against you like a tossed dagger, mesmerizing for the rest,
searing for you. This place was different, and we all felt it. What
we didn't know is why, because none of us were mentally prepared to
ask the question: can't we just be this gentle and unassuming
without a preacher or a uniform?

So, yes, I accepted Jesus as my personal savior, and I began a
personal relationship with him. I gave everything over to God and
felt better. I can't say for sure whether some part of me knew from
the beginning, but as I stretch back I can feel how unreal it was.
I said it and believed it, but without constant reinforcement it
was doomed. We all reinvent ourselves over the years; even if we
have dedicated ourselves to something, with each transplantation
into a new situation it becomes blander, more threadbare, until
finally it is no more than a lamentable imitation of the original
condition. Thus my now ragtag relationship to God. Or, more
accurately, I have no relationship now, but sometimes I still
apologize to him for leaving him behind, knowing full well that I
have no business feeling sorry for the omniscient creator and no
need to apologize to a creatorless void.

As much as I have turned away from heaven, Brett, sometimes I've
been afraid that you have turned away from life. At some point in
my young life, I realized that I could not stand aside and critique
the world, that I needed to embrace it. I wondered if you had
reached that moment. On this morning, for instance, you were moping
over a bowl of cereal, staring blankly down. At intervals, I read
the paper, spooned cereal, and glanced your way. You looked as if
you were stuck on a fulcrum of time, neither able to reach
backwards nor to move forward, a balance of inaction and
observation. Were you feeling depressed, or just introspective? Did
an adolescent wash of chemicals put your dreams, a new perspective
on life just beyond the grasp of your conscious mind? Were you
roiling inside, fighting circular currents among your neurons that
were just about to make you scream to the ceiling? -- Am I just
projecting my own unease?

While I contemplated that, Doreen came into the kitchen, and gave
you a swift and happy kiss on your temple, an expression that you
half batted away, half cherished. Some things change more slowly
than others.


Derek woke up early, didn't understand. Someone was speaking to
him, a human voice. He thought maybe he was dreaming, but he had to
concentrate to put the words together. They didn't enter through
his ears; the thoughts seemed to emerge from his language center
fully formed, unvocalized, with not even a whisper behind them.
Nothing he heard made sense, as if he had stumbled into the middle
of a conversation, or rather, a lengthy soliloquy. He spoke: "Who
are you?" There was no answer in the auditory stream, but Derek
began to understand. It was someone telling his own story, relating
some things about his childhood. "Who are you?" Derek asked more
loudly. The words flowed on for a few minutes longer, then stopped.

In the silence: "Did you speak to me?"

Derek was startled.  -- "Yes, I did."

"Oh, I see. That does surprise me. I did not expect to understand
the replies so quickly."

"Why not?"

"Well, let's see. Because of where you are. I did not expect this."

"If you didn't expect an answer, why are you speaking?"

"Oh, I did expect an answer, but I did not expect to understand
it."

Derek said with some emphasis: "Where are you?"

"That is a complicated matter."

"Are you in my mind?"

"So to speak."

Derek let out a long sigh, so much so that the next words were
barely breathed: "Am I crazy?"

The voice said: "I don't have any evidence of that."

"But you are a voice in my head. I must be psychotic."

"I may be a voice in your mind. But I'm not a psychotic
manifestation."

Derek was silent for minutes. Finally he wondered if he was alone
again. "Are you there?"

"Yes, I'm here. I have no where to go."

Well, that's it, thought Derek. Insanity. His mind was slowly
splitting up and would begin to dissolve.  The other possibility --
considered again and again, then rejected, whether because he
feared it or desired it -- was that this voice was sanity, and he
was beginning to break through the illusion of bugdom. But if he
was becoming sane in a comatose body, aware finally of the absolute
fact that he was stuck inside his own mind, never to leave, then he
would much rather be insane.

"If my mind is speaking to me, then I must be crazy."

"I suppose, although there is a very funny joke that I will tell
you later, if we're still speaking."

"Seriously, I'm going nuts."

"That may be, my friend, but I'm not your hallucination."

"No? Then how is it that I'm speaking to you -- in my head -- on a
planet thousands of light years from earth, when I was the only
human to survive the trip?"

A sudden spark: maybe he wasn't the only survivor. A telepathic
link?

"Well, actually, that's why I'm surprised we're speaking. I hadn't
anticipated finding an earthling so far from home. At least at this
time."

"And where are you? In a spaceship orbiting the planet? In a
transporter beam somewhere?"

"Where I am is immaterial. What I am is human, mostly. And what I
am doing is speaking to you through a technology that allows me to
project my thoughts across time and space into the electrical
patterns of complex objects like higher-order brains."

"Across time and space?" Right, he thought.

"Yes, to anywhere I want within the life of the universe. It's
quite a stunning technology, I'm constantly amazed."

"And you pick this technology up at the local drug store, or what?"

"No, it's something I've had developed for me. It's taken -- quite
a while."

Derek wanted to stop the conversation again, then decided to ask
one more question. "What would have happened if you started talking
to a bug?"

"Higher-order brains only."

"The intelligent creatures on this planet I call bugs, but I
suppose they look more like giant land crabs. They don't think like
us, their language doesn't really have verbs, and they click their
mouths to make the sounds."

"The technology is designed to work with unlike minds. It sets up a
feedback loop, where the mind does most of the work, especially in
assigning the words and phrases to the implanted meaning. But it's
entropic. Sometimes we talk past each other for a while before I
move on. I have to expect that the individual will understand more
of me than I do of them. An artifact of having all the technology
here on my side of things."

"Where is your side? Are you on earth now?"

"No, I haven't been to earth in eons. Where I am is immaterial,
both figuratively and literally. I have a story that I can tell
you, if you wish."

"What do you want from me?"

"To listen, to understand, to ask your questions. I am very old,
and this is how I wish to spend my last days and years -- talking
to live beings. I have no one here now. I like to talk to beings
from the past."

"Can't talking to the past screw up time, change the universe
somehow?"

"Interesting question, but irrelevant. The universe is always
changing, we just don't know it. Why should time travel be any
different?"

"But what if something you tell a person causes a war to happen, or
earth to be destroyed, or an evil dictator not to die, what have
you, and the you I'm speaking with is never born?"

"I should be so lucky," he said.

Just then, Clum-Clum-Tock emerged at the doorway, wondering with
whom Derek was arguing. Both Derek and his interlocutor were silent
for a long time, long after Clum-Clum-Tock disappeared.


We got into the car, as if for an everyday outing, with no one
saying a word about what we were doing or where we were going.
Brett, you looked out the window, bored and stoic, while Doreen
busied herself with stowing the casserole and settling the cookies
she had baked. It was a potluck séance, of all things, a potluck
séance deposition. Laughable, if it weren't also tinged with the
possibility of the loss of my freedom, a no longer unbelievable
final link in the chain of circumstance that I have laid out here.
It felt like anything was possible at the end of that drive.

Doreen looked at me once we got to Pittsboro, trying to gauge the
fact that I didn't need to use directions to find the house. I kept
my eyes on the road, but she knew that I noticed. Just one of the
loops you can pass through in an instantŠ I went around the car and
helped her with the casserole, not eager to lead to the door. She
did not oblige me, and stared at me until I started up the walk.

We heard voices around the back, but I rang the doorbell. It was a
warm September evening, the generous kind of late afternoon with
Indian Summer heat and the rich smell of warmed vegetation. It took
a minute, then someone wandered around from behind the house. It
was Jared's mother. Your face lit up, Brett, and you went right
past her to find Jared. All this family combined with the
investigation -- it was disturbing. What if I were guilty and found
myself pulling a gun when the inspector pointed his pipe stem at me
and said, "It was you, was it not, Mr. Geographic Information
System? Why did you have to do them in?" Illogical as it was that I
of all people was worried about this, I was still irritated that
they would consider putting my family at risk. After the feeling
subsided, I conceded to myself that, this being Chatham County, it
was naïve to assume interrogations or arrests. They were more
interested in the subtle interactions, the dropped clues, the
awkward silences. If I began to be concerned, they would relent,
change the topic, and make me feel at ease, as if I were as
innocent as the newest born baby, crying unawares in a hospital
bassoon.

We walked around the side of the house and became part of the
party. Ferguson Brightman was there, as was detective Horvath and
his apparent wife. Barbara was not to be seen, but her two small
girls were putting together some construction paper decorations for
the two patio tables. There was a couple that I recognized from the
television and perhaps elsewhere around Chapel Hill, standing
awkwardly near the little girls, Mr. and Mrs. Blalock. They had
that look: that they had said yes to the wrong people and were just
trying to hang on until it wasn't insulting to leave. Behind and to
the side was the grill chef -- I recognized him immediately as
Jerry Brookheim.

He was tall and thin, with the hunched back and rolled shoulders
that you sometimes find on tall people who see no benefit in it.
Most tall people, I find, get an unspoken pleasure from that moment
where they stand next to you and you have to look up in
acknowledgement of their physical advantage. But some seem
impervious to this relationship and slump to fit in with the mass
of people around them. This is not to say that Jerry came across as
a slacker. When you saw his face and especially his eyes you saw
his intensity. These were slightly protruding eyes, but they had an
undeniable energy. It's more difficult to say why -- no softening
from laugh lines, no slitting from squinting or looking askance,
infrequent blinks, expressionless tense face -- whatever it was,
they were intriguing. He seemed not to notice me looking at him,
but as time went on I sensed that with his occasional glances
around he was sizing me up, studying me.

As Doreen and I spoke with the Brightmans, Barbara emerged from the
house with a big bowl of green salad. I watched for an expression
from Doreen, but she was engaged and genuinely seemed surprised
when Abby Brightman introduced her to "our medium."

"I have such a respect for those with psychic abilities," said
Doreen. "It's such a gift."

Barbara smiled at her, then shook her head compassionately. "I
don't feel I have a gift. I've been fortunate to develop what any
of us has." After having said that, she smiled more broadly and
gave the slightest nod in encouragement to Doreen. Then she looked
over her side for just a moment at Jerry.

Without transition, Doreen asked: "How long have you been married?"

I was half cringing, thinking that Barbara would take offense at
this question, which brought together her obvious apprenticeship to
Jerry with her eventual marriage to him.  But that shows how much I
know. She managed to flaunt her hand with its sizeable engagement
and wedding rings while she answered: "We've been married six
years."

For her part Doreen nodded to invite her to go on. I eased myself
away and made for Jerry. It was time to get to know him. He watched
me approach with his blank expression but piercing eyes -- it was
as if he was daring me to get close. "Hi," I said. "I'm John
Densch." I wanted to put out a hand but his stance was such that
you could almost see in front of him a line whose crossing came at
your own risk.

"Welcome, John Densch." Without adjusting his eyes, he smiled
briefly, and then his face went blank again.

"We appreciate the invitation," I said, unable to come up with
anything else.

It was as if that banal phrase came across with a putrid smell. He
looked away immediately and opened the grill; the burgers and dogs
spattered, and smoke billowed and yellow flames shot up among them.
After jabbing at them for a while -- I would have turned them if
only to spread out the carbonization -- he closed the grill and
looked around. His expression said: You're still here?

I smiled weakly, and he loosed a small but burdened sigh.
"Barbara!" he shouted without looking at her. She slid over and put
a hand on my shoulder. "Come meet the Blalocks."

She took her hand away, and I followed her to the nervous-looking
couple. "Dana, Gary, this is John Densch." I put my hand out and
they very tentatively took it, with a side glance toward our
constablatory fellow guests.

"Pleased to meet you," Dana said with a tone that said, I don't
know the world any more.

I was wondering as well. If they believed that I could have been
responsible for their daughter's disappearance (though apparently
not her desire to disappear), then it was quite a bit of
self-control to interact with me with such civility. I discounted
their exasperated tone -- none of us can control ourselves quite so
well when we are playing our selves in a mood we do not feel. The
police detectives were free to play cat to our mouse, but the
Blalocks were here as themselves: how much could be asked of their
dignity?

Or maybe -- and this was just dawning on me -- there were more to
this story than I had reason to suspect. Maybe they knew more than
we were getting from the press? But if they knew where Hayley was,
what was this game about? For however much I had been impressed by
Barbara's sympathetic insights, I couldn't imagine that her
abilities were at the heart of this.

Only later did we all learn that the parents had been contacted by
Hayley early on. They so alienated her with their demands that she
did not call again. They were convinced that she was on the lamb,
but the police, still unsure, persuaded them to hold off any public
announcements. Even the ATM surveillance photos of a hooded and
sunglassed girl downloading credit card cash advances did not
resolve the matter. The Blalocks resisted police requests that they
cut off the credit card, because they -- the parents -- got comfort
from the reports of Hayley's movements, and, more importantly, were
afraid of what she would do if forced to choose between coming home
or moving deeper into a drifter lifestyle.

We all learned later that this séance drama was the brainchild of
the detectives. They were intrigued by my psychic connection with
Barbara, and were playing a hunch, not that she had telepathic
access, but that she had somehow been tipped off about a crime --
perhaps as my lover? -- and for her part was trying to profit from
this proximity. The theory was far-fetched, but there was one
salient fact that they kept coming back to: my now obvious
similarity to a phantom figure who had over the years been
trespassing throughout the county. I thought I had been subtle, but
my wanderings generated numerous reports of trespass and suspicious
activity in their wake. I couldn't blame Ferguson that he thought
whoever did that could be an unstable character, capable of
anything. -- Aren't we all capable of more than we want to admit?
It's a paradox that as soon as we say we're incapable of something
we are tempted by some mental necessity to imagine ourselves doing
it, as if the assertion creates a vacuum that the mind must fill.
Of course, for most of us, the void fills back in with other
thoughts and that is the end. For others, I imagine, the first
involuntary thoughts lead to an inadvertent act, and then to
another, and so on, until, finally, their minds feed directly out
of their poisoned imaginations.

Some time later we were sitting later at the tables, eating the
tasty but too crunchy burgers and hot dogs that Jerry laid out for
us. He did not sit, didn't seem willed to eat at all. Doreen was
across from Barbara, with whom she had struck up a surprising
rapport -- I suspected that her curiosity and Barbara's
self-assured innocence led them down this path. They no doubt
recognized in each other someone who cared abnormally deeply about
how human soul expresses itself, if from different perspectives. At
that moment, they were talking about alternative health regimens.
All of a sudden, Jerry was standing behind and leaning over
Barbara: he wrapped his two forearms in front of her neck and used
this embrace to move her from one side to the other. He was smiling
at us in an imitation of human warmth, but you could see a hint of
alarm in her eyes as her breathing became partially constricted. I
did not need to look at Doreen to know her expression. For my part,
I could feel the protective and male rage rise up at this challenge
not only to civil society but also to my relationship, such as it
was, with his woman. No you don't, I thought and I was ready to
leap across the table.

"It's so nice to have visitors, isn't it, my love," he said.

She reached up with one hand and pulled on the tighter arm.
"Jerry," she said hoarsely, "please."

He feigned surprise and looked down at her. "Oh, sorry, dear." He
let go of her, straightened up and then very deliberately rested
his hands on her shoulders.

She smiled a half smile, cleared her throat, and said: "This is a
very special evening." She took a deep breath and managed more of a
smile. "I've been looking forward to sitting down with you and
communing with you all about what the forests hold." She looked
directly at the Blalocks. "I sense that there is good news for you,
although I don't know if you will receive it this evening."

No one wanted to speak up at this moment, so she invited us to go
inside and prepare for the séance. She would need just a few
minutes to put her children to bed. We all got up, done with our
meal or not, wandered inside. Our parlor would be the room in which
Barbara worked on my aura. As I collected condiment bottles to
carry them inside, Jerry poked my shoulder and stopped me.

"John Densch," he said, "do you have any idea why we're here
today?"

I cleared my throat. "I suppose we're going to find out."

"No," he said flatly. "The show inside is just the sugar coating.
The real work is going on here." He pointed to his temple. "We're
trying to save you."

I felt I had to keep up my side. "I didn't know I needed saving."

He was staring at my left eye, did not switch as people normally
do. "I don't mean from the keystone cops in there, and I don't mean
your immortal soul. I mean from your projection."

"What projection?" I said.

"You cannot see it, can you?" he said with a certain satisfaction.
"There is so much of the world that you can't begin to comprehend.

"The fifth dimension cannot be measured, except by the mind.
Religious masters have since the dawn of mankind recognized it, and
have sought to capture its essence in their catechisms, but without
a rigorous understanding they could only misinterpret and distort
their insights, until its reality was lost altogether. A group of
new masters has adapted the most demanding meditation techniques
from the world's religions, and are using them, without the comfort
of a false metaphysics, to unlock the secrets of this and other
dimensions, what you probably call the paranormal.

"You, John Densch, do not know what you have become. It is not
something that you've chosen, and I see you are predictably
ignorant of its causes, its realities and its effects. Barbara
documented your cluelessness in your profile, though she
misunderstood the cause. Your psychic energy has been diverting for
years. You can't understand this, but I bet you can see its truth.
John, can you explain what carries you out into the forest? Can you
explain why your relationship with the charming Doreen loses
passion and comfort daily? No? You have no idea why you feel so
depleted, so self- absorbed, do you?

"It's really very simple, so simple I can even describe it to you.
You are building a projection, in your mind, in our collective
consciousness, and even out in the forest itself. But the psychic
origin of this manifestation is undeniable." He stopped searching
for something in my eye and just stared blankly.

"I don't know what to say, Jerry." And I didn't. I turned and
headed toward the back door.

"Hey Densch," he bellowed, once I was at shouting distance. "Don't
think it's something special in you. It's the trees' energy that
makes the difference. You're just the damn channel."


Barbara arrived after we had all taken seats in something of a
circle. We sat on cheap plastic folding chairs, but the many
candles, the room's red theme and the flickering shadows around us
gave the circle a feeling of deep substance and seriousness.
Barbara had changed her clothes and appeared in something close to
a gypsy soothsayer outfit. She wasn't embarrassed by the cliché;
you got the impression that this helped her feel her place. Jerry
did not join us. Barbara seemed to avoid my eyes as she looked
around the circle to try to get everyone's attention.

"All right," she said. "We are here today to try to understand more
about what the forests are telling us. All of you are going to
help. You have to understand that the success of this séance
depends on every one of us. Every last one of us." At that moment,
her eyes rested expressly at you and Jared. I think I saw Jared
wink, but she didn't acknowledge it. Barbara described some
exercises that we would do to loosen up, or as she put it, "tune
our psychic circuits." We tried to imagine in groups of two what
each other was thinking; there was no check-back to see how far off
we were, even though we were counseled how to foreground our own
thoughts for easier pick-up by the other. "Don't worry," she said,
"this exercise isn't about success or psychic ability." "What is it
about?" asked Horvath. "It's about," said Barbara with a knowing
smile, "embracing the possible."

Horvath looked unconvinced, so the next stage was a surprise.
"Close your eyes," said Barbara after we circled up again. She was
silent for an awkwardly long time, then went on: "Now imagine the
piece of the Duke Forest that you know best. It may be a stretch
along the side of a road, with a sign about when the stand was last
harvested or what happened to it during Hurricane Floyd. Or it may
be it's a trail you run on. A trailhead you've seen and wondered
about. Perhaps you have just imagined what it must be like, a
quarter mile in and no one around. Picture this place." She let us
feel the time passing again. I imagined the last time and place I
had reached ground zero in the forest. "Without opening your eyes,
please tell me some things that you see." Now it was our turn to be
silent, until Detective Horvath spoke up: "I am walking with Nora
beside a small lake. The dirt is beige clay and covered in pine
needles, still wet from the last rain."

Barbara did not speak. We named tall tree stands; a sign describing
storm-borne decimation, with a few shattered trees behind it;
shaded darkness; gravel roads and the distinctive green posts with
thick cable strung between.  No-dog signs (why that, you wonder). A
dusting of snow. Leaves swirling in the wind. Oaks, beeches and
various species of pine. A lone turkey vulture circling overhead. A
sparrow hawk on the prowl. The distant echo from the freeway. This
went on for five or ten minutes.

"That was wonderful," said Barbara. "Please open your eyes." We all
blinked and squinted despite the low light; the candles burned
little holes in the fabric of our vision. "Look at me. Just look at
me. Good. Now, when I look at you, tell me what I want to know." We
had no idea how this was going to work, but I found myself eager to
do just that. What was inside me that she wanted to know?

She looked first at Jared. "Do you see signs of this creature they
call the bog monster?" He looked suspicious. "You mean, in the
forest?" She smiled and nodded encouragingly. "Just where you
were." He looked up to the right, as people remembering are wont to
do, and she reminded him: "Look at me." He looked back and did his
best to stare. "No, I can't see anything. Except you." There was no
chuckle, but we felt a moment of relief. I was worried how she
would handle him. "Let me put you back, then. Are there trees in
your corner of Duke Forest?" "Many," he said. "Describe them,
please." He did a very nice job of giving a panoramic summary of
new- growth and mature stands, with a road trailing off into the
distance. "Look down." He smiled this time. "No," she confirmed,
"not here. There." He kept his eyes on her. "I see gravel." "Now,"
she said, "walk toward the tall trees. Keep looking down. What do
you see?" "A ditch dug for run-off, a little grass, leaves, lots of
pine needles." "If you were going to see a sign of this creature,
what would it be?" "I guess a foot print." "Good. What would it
look like?" "Big -- I guess Bigfoot big. Five toes like us. A big
gait."

That was enough from Jared. With each of us, she looked at us and
got more of what we would see if the bog monster were real: dung, a
tuft of fur, a big silhouette, movement in the forest, perhaps a
bellowing voice, oversized hands but gentle enough to pick up a
tiny baby. Then you, Brett, and I were all that were left. "What do
you see?" Barbara asked you. "I see," you began with a defiant
voice that had me concerned. I saw the train wreck coming: she was
every girl who had scorned you, or wanted something from you. "I
see some fronds that I push out of the way, and there's the
monster's lair." You stopped to see if she would protest. "There's
a big mattress the guy nabbed from the dump, and a TV that he has
to have next to the bed, even though there's no electricity to run
it, and same for a small party fridge, and a kitchen table with
last month's paper, next to an empty tea cup. There's more, if
you'd like it." Barbara looked over to me without answering. I
couldn't see a plea in her eyes, but we made contact: We both knew
that this day she was exposed, in much the same way I had been
exposed at the aura reading. This was my chance to crush all this
ambiguity and get it out of my life, forever.

I didn't move for a while, until my response took shape. "I see
eyes." My breathing forced a pause. "They are looking at us. At me.
They are not human eyes, but they are intelligent. I guess
something like chimpanzee or gorilla eyes. In a yellow brown hue
that is not human. Not much white, or maybe it's reddened. They are
not dilated predator eyes, but they stare the same way, asking
something of us. Of me. I don't know what it is, and they won't
look away, even though that would give me a clue. It would also
mean the end. I think the eyes would disappear back into the
darkness."

I would have gone on, but Barbara asked: "Ask him what he wants. In
your mind." She stared just as intently as I at her.

"There is brown fur around the eyes, and a strong brow. The brow is
knitted, intense. I've tried to ask the question in my mind, and no
response. I don't know how to speak to the eyes."

"Of course you don't," she said. "There is no expectation that you
would. Let the eyes go. They have their own place to go. Now close
your eyes. Please, everyone concentrate on John. Go back to the
forest, John. Close your eyes there as well. I only want you to
hear. A light wind, perhaps. Some distant birds. Needles snapping
under your feet. Now ask the question. Ask there and ask here."

I ahemed into the room beyond my closed lids, and said, "Bog
monster, what do you want?"

"Listen," she said.

"I can't hear anything, here or there, wherever here is."

"Ask there again and listen."

"Nothing," I said.

"No," she said. "Lis-SEN. Don't talk. Listen."

There was a tiring, ear-bending silence. Nothing.

"Now," she said, "what would you hear, if the bog monster spoke?"

"Not a voice," I said.

"Good. What then?"

"A growl. Different tones. I think they communicate through tones."

"A language?"

"I suppose. Not like ours. Simple. A lot of pointing."

"Do you see something, John? Are your eyes open?"

I was astounded. "Yes, I guess they are. I can see him next to me."

"How tall, John?" "Seven feet, maybe. Not massive. The fur makes
him seem much larger."

"How much would you say he understands, John?"

"I would say that he understands as much as I do."

"Does he want you to understand something?"

"I guess so. He is pointing into the woods. This is his home. All
he has left."

"Is he willing to help us? Does he understand?"

"Like I said, I feel like he understands what I understand. I
suppose it helps to be inside my head."

"If he can help, can he tell us about Hayley Blalock?"

"He doesn't know anything about her, except that people have been
all over that forest looking for her. He's had to jump patches
several times."

"He never had occasion to see her?"

"No. -- He seems grateful to understand why the fuss."

"What is it," asked Barbara, "that he would like from us?"

I hesitated, as it took shape in my mind. Then I spoke slowly: "He
wants to be given his land. He wants some kind of guarantee -- like
a handshake, but something recorded, a promise, or a contract, or
something -- no, he wants moreŠ" Finally in a sudden shout:
"Je-sus, he wants a treaty!" I opened my eyes and shook my head as
I looked at Barbara, then Doreen. Where did that come from?


My mind was fogged all the way home and through the rest of the
evening. There was not too much to process -- more like my brain
was afraid of processing anything, especially a potentially painful
realization that I had been duped or that I had fooled myself. That
moment would be devastating, as I teetered on the edge of believing
that something indelible, unbelievable had just happened to me. In
the morning I would feel more distance; that would be the right
time to process, critique and dismiss.

Doreen and I were in bed with the lights out before we spoke more
than half sentences. "John," she whispered. She waited. "Doreen?"
"John, I want you to see someone." "Who?" I asked. "A specialist."
"A specialist? Do you think I'm nuts?" "It's not about being nuts,
John. This is about mental health." She finished: "You scared me
tonight."

"I'm sorry, Doreen. I didn't mean to scare you. But I'm not crazy."

"John, I am only saying that you might need some help."

"Why? Because I could imagine what the bog monster is like?"

"It was like the thought was taking you over. That was
disconcerting."

"It was disconcerting for me, too. But it was just the
circumstance. Maybe she hypnotized me. Maybe she set this all up
the last time I was there."

"I don't think so," said Doreen. Already more sympathy for Barbara
than for me.

"Well, why don't we see how I do. If you find me talking to myself,
I'll see any specialist you want."

"John, it's just a suggestion. You're under a lot of pressure. I
just don't think you're handling it well."

"Maybe not," I said, "but I don't feel ready for a psychiatrist."

"How about a psychic?"

Ouch. I let the hit score, and tried redirection: "I didn't think
you were sympathetic to the paranormal."

"There's a lot you don't know about me, John," she said calmly and
firmly.

Maybe, I thought, she is ready to discuss what I don't know about
her on this most unusual of evenings. "Like what?" I asked.

"For one, I have always believed in psychic phenomena. I have felt
it myself."

"Really?" I asked, incredulously. "You're normally a pretty
rational person."

"Says the person who got his aura profiled. -- Sure, I'm rational,
but I'm not close-minded. It's happened to me several times that
I've thought about someone I haven't seen for a long time, and they
call, or I think about someone, and decide to call, and they just
experienced some life-altering event."

"Like who?"

"Once with my sister Cheryl. I hadn't seen or talked to her in
months, and thought, I had better check in. I called, and she told
me she'd just gotten engaged. She hadn't even told mom or dad."

"But rationally, you know you have to consider these experiences
together with every other moment that has no special meaning. In
that context, they look a lot more like coincidence."

"Okay," she said, getting up on an elbow and looking at me. "Then
what is the story about this gorilla or whatever it is? Do you
really think you can talk to Bigfoot?"

"No," I said. "I know rationally that it's all chance and
suggestion. But the experience, the connection seemed real."

"John, there's no chance involved," she said. "Yes, there's a
reason for everything, and no paranormal explanation is necessary
here. This treaty story, that's pure you. What you attributed to
Sasquatch -- that's all you. 'Give me my space, I need my private
space.'"

"Oh, and you don't need your own space."

"Sure," she said, "I need space. But you totally misunderstand if
you think it's meant to keep you out. I need a space where we can
do more than talk about Brett and plan our next vacation. I need
more." And before I could raise it -- "I need more from you."

"Fine," I said, knowing that there was no cost in saying so,
because a mechanism for "more" wouldn't be worked out, not then,
not there -- not even now.

Doreen felt it, too, and though she might want to say, "Here's what
I want from you," she knew that there was no way from that
discussion to a negotiation. She let it lie, too.

We had flip-flopped positions -- I now the rationalist and she the
paranormalist -- but she saw no contradiction in that because she
rationally believed, while I irrationally wanted to believe. And
she was right, of course, a fact that made me sigh deeply. I was
ready to let go of the evening and sleep. Doreen wanted to talk
some more, but I rolled over and mumbled a good night. I don't
remember if she replied but I was soon unaware.


Three days later, the local paper showed me why this had been a
very bad idea. Under his own byline, Barry had penned a story that
was headlined: "County Employee Communicates with Bog Monster."
Then in smaller type: "Creature 'No Longer' Suspect in
Disappearance." The story meticulously laid out the facts of the
case, including Barbara's involvement, although she benefited from
being a nameless "psychic hired by the police." The narrative of
our séance was particularly impressive in its detail. Barbara was
the only possible source, unless Barry had planted a mic and
recording device in the room. I thought that perfectly possible,
but I'm sure he would prefer to interview Barbara in person. And
her motivation? It had to be the good press, or failing that, the
notoriety. Anonymity would serve her purposes: findable for those
interested, unknown for the skeptics. It was the perfect postmodern
packaging, and I the dupe. While everyone else grabbed their piece
of the media pie, my reputation cooked away: kooky for my
colleagues; bizarre for fellow citizens; of continuing interest for
law enforcement; and suspicious to my family.

Still, I didn't call Barry to give him a piece of mind. I could
hardly blame him. The treaty-seeking Bog Monster fit perfectly with
his own bizarre notions of Sasquatch, and his quest for Bog-Monster
liberté was almost certain at the back of my mind. Let him enjoy
his bit, I thought; it's the last thing he'll get from me.

That day was hard -- everyone tiptoed around me -- but it got worse
the following day. I was invited to the Chapel Hill police
headquarters, the natural and inevitable outcome of the whole
affair. I could hear in my mind over and over again: Talking to a
bog monster, are we, buddy? When are you going to drop the ruse and
come clean? Where'd ya bury 'em?

Detective Horvath met me at the reception area; Officer Brightman
was nowhere to be seen. Police Captain Stone shook my hand and then
left me in Horvath's good care. A uniformed (albeit in khaki)
officer, Sergeant Abigail Fronmeyer, joined us in the interview
room. She was studiously stonyfaced, while Horvath was the jovial
BBQ acquaintance.

"Look, John -- I can call you John, right, thanks -- it does seem
like Hayley Blalock is alive. Someone is living off advances on her
credit card that her parents refuse to cut off, slowly making her
way to Mexico. Whoever is collecting the money doesn't seem to want
to leave the country. I'm afraid that Hayley won't admit it to her
boyfriend, but even if she has, José may be afraid of a felony
charge for statutory rape -- he can't rely on getting married to
clear the slate, not in this state, and he may be old enough to get
charged with a felony. Some day they'll have to commit, one way or
another, and I just hope that they can reach an amiable resolution.
Too often this kind of thing ends badly." He paused. "This is all
good news, right? But since you've come in, I thought we could use
your help in clearing up some other cases." He pointed to a stack
of papers that the policewoman had next to her. It was in that
moment that I realized she was an Orange County sheriff's deputy,
and that I knew my days of idly walking the county were at an
absolute end. She mirandized me.

"Mr. Densch," she said, "I have here a variety of trespass and
stalking reports from the Sheriff's Office. The descriptions of the
perpetrator resemble each other quite well, and they match you.  I
can ask you about each individual case and inquire of your
whereabouts, or we can clarify this with one general question: Do
you have in your possession a surveyor's highway safety vest?" She
waited with the same cold expression, even though I must say her
voice was much warmer.

"Yes, I do," I said. Horvath, who must have expected my answer,
nevertheless shifted forward in his seat and became more intent.

"Is it reasonable to assume that you may have been involved in some
of these cases of trespassing?"

"It is reasonable, although I would have to look at each to be able
to answer in specific."

"Sure," she said. "Of course. That won't be necessary at this time.
A number of these have reached their statute of limitations, even
if they could be prosecuted, and the others will be closed with the
notation that you stipulated the safety vest. That information will
only be passed on to the district attorney if we get more of these
reports. Do I make myself clear?" A stony smile.

"Yes," I said, barely able to stop the "ma'am."

She looked at Horvath with a half nod.

"Well, John, that really is a surprise," said Horvath with
disingenuous sadness. "That changes everything."

"I'm not sure why," I said. "Look, there's a very simple
explanation. I work with a map of the county all day and every day.
I just wanted to see some of the real county. That's all. I wasn't
looking for people, or scouting, or stalking. I was just seeing the
real property."

"Oh sure," said Horvath. "I understand that perfectly. You see a
plot of land on your computer, pull up the owner, value, the
improvements, and you wonder, what does this look like? Do they
have trees or a field? Is the house pristine or rundown? Is this a
hill or valley? I understand completelyŠ There's only one problem."
A pause. "This puts you anywhere in the county at any time."
Another. "There are some cold cases we need to discuss with you."
He looked back at Sgt. Fronmeyer.

She took two fat notebooks from beneath the table. On each spine
was a name and case number. One name was Hillary Bingham, the other
Jane Doe #27. I could feel a squirt of debilitating acid in my
stomach, and my mouth had the cold metallic taste of blood. "I'd
like to ask you about the date of ---- --------," she began. After
saying what crime occurred that day, she lifted the top sheet from
the stack of trespassing cases. It seems that someone matching my
description was in the general area of the Hillary's disappearance,
trespassing and scaring a woman who was walking her dog on her own
property. Now, mind you, "the general area" meant some miles
distant, and there were no witness accounts to place this
individual closer to the crime. They were fishing, in other words.

"Yes," I said, anxious to iron this out, "that was probably me. I
think I remember that afternoon. It was a cool November afternoon,
clouded and a bit blustery. I was going to the middle of a large
stand of trees -- we did have at least one recent satellite overlay
at the time, so I could be fairly confident of that -- and I
remember hearing something, but I never saw anyone so I just
continued. I suppose she must have heard me and headed the other
way."

"All right," she said. "Were you in the vicinity of __________ that
day?"

"No," I replied.

"Can someone provide evidence that you were elsewhere at 5:30pm on
that day?"

"I don't know," I said, "I imagine I was on my way home."

"Then no one would be able to say where you were or weren't."

I shook my head. It was a few moments before I realized: "Maybe you
can compare when the trespass report was called in. If you can
establish when I left that property, maybe we can determine whether
I had time to drive to ____________ and get home in time for
dinner."

"Drive to ___________ and attack Hillary Bingham and leave her for
dead, you mean?" asked Horvath.

"I guess that's what's meant."

"If you did attack her, what might you use to disable a woman like
her? She was 20 years old, five foot six and 150 pounds. There was
a struggle. What might you have hit her with?"

I looked incredulously at him. "I didn't hit her. I didn't see her.
-- I don't know why I'm still here, answering these questions.
Hayley didn't disappear, after all, and there's no connection
between any other disappearance or any attack and me. Sure, I like
to walk and see parts of the county that are private property. That
doesn't make me capable of any of the things you're implying. It's
just crazy."

"Did I say that Hayley hasn't disappeared?"

"You said that she's alive and using her credit card. That doesn't
sound like she disappeared."

"Right," said Horvath. "I suppose so, if you think disappearance
must mean murder, or if you have reason to believe that, John. --
Anyway, the Mexico story is what her parents believe. We still have
her listed as a missing person, under suspicious circumstances."

Fronmeyer looked uncomfortable and said: "Maybe you'd like to have
a lawyer when we next speak."

"All right," I said, "I guess I should. I'd like to go now."

Horvath pointed to the door.

I got up and went to the door, feeling awkward and unsure. How does
one act when every simple motion feels like pulling iron chains
through water, when you know that every little gesture can be
misinterpreted as arrogance or guilt or indifference? As I pulled
the door open, Horvath called out: "John, sometime you should
explain to me why didn't you tell us earlier."

I turned. "What?"

"That your son knows Hayley. I'm told she was his girlfriend a
while back."


That was the lowest point, maybe even the lowest point of my whole
life. I didn't imagine for a second, Brett, that you were involved
with Hayley's disappearance. But I was saddened by how little that
I knew about your life, and my heart ached because I knew the
police were not going to pull any punches. The threat was
unmistakable. If they thought they couldn't get me directly, they'd
go after you.

I got in the car and drove back to work. I could muster no surprise
when told that I was being put on administrative leave. In fact, I
was pleasantly surprised when Richard, my boss, said that it was
paid leave -- maybe the police had not yet let them know about my
wanderings under the guise of official duty.

"I'm sorry, John," he said, "but the county's counsel says we have
to take steps. You understand."

"Sure," I said.

He looked at me, for a moment feeling that he had to say, I know
you didn't do it, but unable to bring himself to say it. I could
recognize the moment so well, so easily, and did nothing to ease it
for him. I guess I was equally trapped by my bitterness.

I left everything lie on my desk -- it was temporary, after all --
and headed out the front. I opened the outside door and held it for
a woman standing just to the parking lot side of the door. No
irrational behavior from me.

"John Densch?" she said.

It took a moment before it registered. "Excuse me?" I said, hoping
she wasn't saying, hey, didn't I see something about your criminal
genius in the paper?

"Mr. Densch?" she asked earnestly.

"Yes," I said, awkwardly still holding the door.

She moved back a few steps, and I let the door whoosh shut. I was
rather suspicious, but she had a very business-like, one might even
say officious, manner, such that there were whole categories of
suspicions that I was able to let go. But was she FBI? Some moral
police that I'd never heard tell of?

"My name is Samantha Ogg."

"Ock?"

"Og-g-uh," she said crisply but with irritation.

"I'm sorry," I said. I'd never had a very good ear and this one put
me to the test. I looked at her expecting more.

"I'm here today to speak with you on the business of the Triangle
Association of Scientists and Teachers of Science." She cracked a
weak smile.

In my state of malaise, I was taken aback, so much so that I almost
burst out with a gallows laugh: What now!

"We are a committed group, dedicated to the furtherment of the
sciences and to the reduction of irrationalism in the population.
We are not anti- religion, except where it oversteps its
epistemological boundaries and demands the suspension of empirical
scientific understanding."

"Are you looking for a contribution?" I asked hesitantly, no doubt
with a threatening guffaw on my lips.

"Not at all, Mr. Densch." She held up a forearm in a somewhat
declaratory gesture. "We are asking you to do the right thing and
publicly disassociate yourself from the recent stories about an
alleged bog monster inhabiting the triangle region. Such stories,
with their inevitable psychic babble and encounters with the
paranormal, do nothing but encourage the broader public in its
tendencies toward irrationality, fear and self-delusion."

"You want me to disavow the séance I attended? There were two
police detectives in attendance, Ms. Oggie. I was an invited
participant; I didn't ask for it. I haven't said anything about it
publicly."

"Yes, all true, Mr. Densch -- it's Og-guh -- but the report in the
paper turns on your performance. If you had not stepped in with
your portrayal of your psychic twin Sasquatch, the story never
would have been carried. Mr. Densch, you did yourself quite a
disservice that evening, yourself and the cause of science and
societal progress. People do not need to be encouraged to abandon
reason and rationality. The broadest swath of citizens believes in
Bigfoot, UFOs and pyramid power, even while they are entrusted with
the governance of the greatest social experiment in human history.
They do not need educated professionals pandering to their
irrationality."

"I didn't do the pandering -- Ms. Og-ck."

She looked at me, a bit nonplussed that I could be arguing the
point. I studied her expression for a while, then -- when she did
not go on -- I offered: "I understand your concerns. My life would
be infinitely simpler if the whole misunderstanding had not taken
hold. So -- believe me, I'm very sympathetic. But I am now a
'person of interest' to the police for incomprehensible reasons,
and I've just been put on administrative leave here at my job. I
don't think now is the time for me to make public statements. I've
got to find a lawyer."

Samantha Ogg was a short woman, with a wide waist and, as far as I
could tell beneath her generous skirt, strong stocky legs. She had
long and heavy-set arms, which she used in rather stochastic
gestures. She wore a loose top with no discernible bosom, and wore
her thick broom-blond hair brushed back but otherwise unbundled.
The most distinctive part of her attire was her bright winged
eyeglasses: they seemed to have survived decades of mere bad taste
to become undeniably but unintentionally retro-cool.

I estimated her in her forties, although there was something so
refreshingly purposeful in her manner that I was willing to drop
fifteen years off my estimate.

"I'm sorry to hear that," she said in quick tones. You could tell
that she wasn't prepared concede that I was the victim here, since
she had come with such aspirations to right wrongs. "I'm
disappointed to hear of these consequences from such an unfortunate
misconstrual." There was also something of the "you play with fire"
accusation in this, but I could tell from her expression that she
was genuinely burdened by my plight, if only in the way one might
mourn a bird, dead in front of a plate glass door.

"Since it would be wrong to ask your help under such
circumstances," she continued, "I would like to know if there is
some way in which I could help you."

This is, of course, where in a hundred celluloid dialogs the
worldly-wise hero says something like, "Sure, toots, you can get
those lousy coppers off my tail." I wasn't feeling so jovial as to
play the role, nor did she seem to deserve it. "I don't think so,
but thank you, Ms. Og-ck, for your offer."

"All right, then," she said, and did a half turn before freezing,
as if a run- away thought had usurped her brain as completely as
the blue screen of death captures a Windows computer. "Perhaps,"
she said after a few moments, enough time for me to wonder if it
would be rude to just walk away, "I could speak with you as a
private citizen. Then when this matter is cleared up, we would be
able to move quickly to quell the misunderstandings about this bog
monster."

"Sure," I said. "That would be fine."

Still partially turned: "Lunch then?"

I didn't understand immediately. "What -- you mean right now?"

"If you're free," she said, half smiling at the irony.

I didn't know what to say. I really wanted to go home, lick my
wounds, and sift through and organize my thoughts, with the hopes
of protecting my mind against feeling personally and irrevocably
responsible for this horrible turn of events. On the other side of
the equation: lunch with this woman with whom I had nothing in
common except that we both thought this bog monster an invented
disaster. On the one side, my own space to ruminate and cogitate;
on the other, human contact and perhaps sympathy. All the same, not
an easy decision.

"All right," I said finally, "that sounds fine."

We negotiated meeting fifteen minutes later at a Chinese restaurant
in Durham; I needed to go by an ATM. The drive was an opportunity
to weigh the choices and make another decision, but it seemed too
caddish to leave her standing. She was waiting when I entered the
restaurant.

"Okay then, we'll just get a table." She hadn't yet requested a
table for two; it seems that she was familiar with my temptation.

I followed her back to the table and we sat across from each other.

"So, Ms. Og-ck," I began, to avoid silence.

"Please," she jumped in, "call me Samantha." In her voice, there
was audible relief at getting past the awkwardness around her last
name.

"All right. I'm John. So, Samantha, tell me about yourself. -- You
obviously know a lot about me."

"Oh," she said. "Okay then. There's not much to tell. I am a staff
scientist at the EPA facility in Morrisville. I'm a biochemist. My
husband and I live in Raleigh -- we like urban living, shows and
museums and the like. No children. We have lived here about 15
years, well, 16 next August. I've been involved with the
association ten years, and I'm currently the chapter president.
That's why I'm here. Our executive committee agreed that this case
demanded action." She smiled embarrassedly, remembering that she
had agreed to hold off.

"Where are you from?"

She was confused for a moment, then said: "Cleveland, originally.
We much prefer the warmer climate here. Donald would as soon move
farther south, but there aren't any appropriate labs south of here.
The CDC, perhaps, in Atlanta, but I much prefer the environment to
contagions."

"What does Donald do?"

"He's a writer, a technical writer. Manuals mostly. He works at
home. Contract work. It pays well when he's working. When he's not,
well, we tend to eat much better." An ambiguous smile.

"He's a good cook?"

"Yes. He is. But when he's working we usually eat out. Neither of
us has the energy to face the kitchen after work, or when we've got
a show to see, or when we just want to go to a bookstore."

"Sounds like a good life."

"Certainly," she said, as if she was wondering where I was going, I
suppose because she usually gets the 'and when are the little ones
coming' question at this point.

"So -- what does your society do? Are you usually engaged on such a
micro level, influencing individual citizens?"

"Oh, we've got activities on all levels -- from individual
interventions to inner-city summer camps to Washington lobbyists.
It's a full-service organization," she said with a smile.

"All in the name of science?"

"Science, yes," she said, "but more it's about the scientific
method and rationality. As I said, we're not anti-religion and
we're not in the business of dictating morality. We see our role as
fighting bad discourse -- religious thought masquerading as
science, irrational ideas presented as logical reasoning, political
sloganeering distorting scientific studies, and the like."

"Sounds maybe less like the promotion of science and more like
philosophy."

"We're in favor of the philosophy of science, and the science of
rational political engagement. We're not modern-science bigots, Mr.
-- John. Rationality is the father of science, and rational
discourse the legacy of the scientific method."

"There's a lot of confidence in that, Samantha. Don't you ever find
yourselves disagreeing so much you have doubt rationality just a
little bit?"

She chuckled. "Sounds like you've been to some of our meetings.
But, no. Rationality does not mean 'no disagreement.' Rationality
means, on the one hand, repeatable experiments according to the
scientific method and, on the other, discussion, argument,
disagreement among the humans who interpret their results. We are
none of us as smart as we are together. Our obligation is to
remember that an idea that we cannot test or contest can never be a
human truth."

"That's pretty heady stuff before lunch," I said. The waitress,
standing beside the table, had let Samantha finish; we ordered our
food.

Our conversation lagged after that point, until I offered to tell
the whole story of the bog monster, and she accepted. She had
informed herself, and was able to anticipate many of the things I
had to tell.  When I got to the séance and described how it was
that I 'channeled' the monster, she kept nodding as if I were
confessing to her.

That notion made me ask: "It seemed real. Is it wrong to at least
consider the reality of one's experiences?"

"How is it wrong," she said. "There are so many ways. Our senses
are constantly being fooled -- they're simply inadequate to the
task of disambiguating causal relationships in this world. If you
are an animal, it suffices to know that fire burns; you run when
you see a forest fire. But if you are human, you need to master
fire. Believing it is the fourth element, or something that a
trickster god has left to us, is simply insufficient. You need to
get past what it looks like and understand what it is doing. It is
oxidizing - - it is a pure version of what happens all over and
everywhere in our bodies. Our senses can't begin to tell you that
--"

"Although," I cut in, with a sandwich dill in my hand serving to
punctuate my point, "there are all sorts of fire-in-the-belly
metaphors, and things like that. People naturally make that
connection."

"All right, but do you want a barber-doctor who believes your fever
is caused by the element of fire, which he will lessen through the
application of leeches, or a medical doctor who has medicines that
will kill the bacteria attacking your body?"

"Well, what if I prefer a medical doctor, but still believe there
are unexplained things in this world, things that may belong to our
naïve sense of the paranormal?"

"That's it exactly," she said, moving forward in her seat and
shaking her head for a moment like an excited child, "you've put
your finger on it. That's exactly what we cannot allow ourselves.
Of course, there are unexplained things in the world. Of course,
the fact that we don't understand them makes them seem magical or
strange. But we cannot at that point say, okay, science hasn't made
it here to this point so I'm free to be irrational. No, exactly
not. I acknowledge that there are limits to science, and I may wish
to believe in a religious tradition because it offers comfort or
because I have been raised in that tradition. But I cannot say, the
monster felt real so it must be. No. Your feelings are ambiguous;
you could as easily convince yourself that Mickey Mouse is real if
you rely on what your mind tells you. You must disambiguate. The
real is not the ambiguous."

"The real is not the ambiguous. Hmmm. But what if I don't recognize
it as the ambiguous -- it just felt real."

"But you had your rational doubts, did you not?"

"I did."

"That's why this point is so important, John. All around us, people
are insinuating that it is okay to go with the ambiguous, the felt,
and the imagined. At the same time, we are facing a cold hard
reality that is telling us to be more cautious, more circumspect.
Take the automobile, John. An immense infrastructure, with a
century of collective scientific and technical knowledge and the
labor of many millions, makes it possible for you to zip along the
freeway at 55 miles an hour. You play your radio, look out the
window and hum to yourself. Your body and your senses tell you that
you are at rest, and it seems as if nothing could happen to you
while you're in the car. You feel invincible. But in fact the
momentum stored in your body would kill you in an instant, should
your progress be stopped by a larger and harder object. You may be
tempted to forget this fact, but at your own peril. You know better
than to direct that car at a wall, but not because of what your
senses are telling you. That's what this struggle is all about."

I let the lesson sit, and looked out the window. Then I gave her a
glance that I hope told her I was not ungrateful for her interest
in me. I could only conclude: "I feel like a train wreck right
now."


I was standing in the kitchen, drinking coffee and looking out the
window, when you stormed into the house. You were utterly surprised
to see me there and had the expression: did something happen to
mom? I felt enough irritation at that that I didn't let you off
that hook right away. Finally you said, "Hi dad." Then you
stutter-stepped to the fridge and took the milk out. You had a big
cookie in your lunch bag, for some reason, and you sat down to milk
and a cookie.

"Brett," I said, trying my best to be equanimous, "I was told today
that you are familiar with Hayley Blalock."

You looked at me with overly knitted brow.

"That's the girl who disappeared. Whose disappearance led to the
séance. And whose continuing absence means the police keep asking
me questions."

You were chewing again. And?

"Why didn't you tell me you knew her?"

"Idunno." Did you ask me?

"I was told she was your girlfriend."

"Wha!" you let out, along with some milk and crumb remnants. After
you got your reaction under control and mopped up a bit with a
napkin, you explained: "I knew a Hayley, maybe that Hayley, in
third or fourth grade. She was in afterschool, I think. But she
wasn't my girlfriend. I guess it's the same girl. She looks
different."

"How did you know her?"

"We had afterschool together. Probably."

"Anything else? Why would someone say she was your girlfriend?"

"I went to her birthday party, I guess."

I thought about that for a moment, with a growing inkling. "Who
else was in afterschool, and went to that party?"

You had a skeptical expression, like, 'how am I supposed to know
that?'

"Jared?"

You looked distracted, then: "I guess so. He was in afterschool,
too."


Derek sat watching Click-Cluck. It was something he enjoyed: the
undulations of her antennae, the way her black forearms rubbed each
other when she was distracted, her slightly cocked stance because
the left rear leg locked in a different position than the others --
all the little idiosyncrasies were familiar, endearing, in their
own way humanizing. While he watched her he sometimes remembered
his high-school girlfriend, distractedly working on some project,
projecting an equal number of unique, unintended but pleasant
attributes. He reminisced about a certain look she gave him, and
the following smile that always sealed the deal for him -- and just
as quickly he remembered there was no smile coming here.

He knew she had been receiving reports about his nocturnal visitor.
No one had asked him anything about it, but that was just a matter
of time. 'Are you losing it, Derek?' He couldn't answer with any
assurance either way, but he wasn't going to give up the company.

Click-Cluck couldn't guess what he was going to tell her now,
unless she was observing him when away. Click-Cluck, he said in his
best bug.

Yes, Derek?

"You should know that I've accepted a dinner invitation."

She rearranged her body so that her two antennae had a better bead
on him.

You have done what?

"Your boss contacted me -- quite secretively, it was through the
television projector -- and invited me to dinner. I've accepted."

He waited to see what her antennae did. Nothing. Maybe she wasn't
surprised after all.

Why did you accept?

"He said that I will be able to meet other intelligent alien life
forms. And he might even take me to the surface."

Still nothing. She rotated again and went back to her business, as
if to say, well, that's done. I can scratch this hopeless cause off
my schedule.

"That's it?"

You made your mind up, Derek. I won't bother you further about it.

"I thought you might try to dissuade me."

Why?

"He's dangerous, you said."

I think when he can control you this way he is far less dangerous.

"You don't think he'll take this chance to get rid of me?"

His goal is control. I think you will understand when you meet
these aliens.

"And you won't counter offer?"

"kkkktdddrr?" she clicked.

"Counter offer. Try to get me to give up his offer by making your
own. Maybe arranging something similar for me?"

I have nothing to offer, she said. More precisely: 'my for you sole
and unaided self.'


"Are you there?" asked Derek. He waited for the voice in his head.

"Of course."

"Don't you ever sleep?"

"It's all just time -- I can respond any time I want and you
wouldn't know the difference. I might be responding to you before
we have even met. How's that for a mindbender?"

"It seems rather ridiculous. Suspicious. Why is it that you have a
sense of humor just like mine, for instance?"

"I would laugh if I could. Don't forget, Derek, that your own brain
is putting this discussion together. We are both human, but our
languages and our experiences don't match one iota. You will have
to hear my story soon enough. It's your mind that is making sense
of our discussion, and it can only do so in terms that it
understands. Consider it similar to dreaming: You know everything
coming at you is a series of stored experiences, but still they
carry a meaning that goes beyond the superficial stream."

"I've accepted the invitation I told you about. I'm going to meet
with Thunk. He's promised to let me meet some intelligent aliens.
He might even take me to the surface. -- He seemed very agreeable."

"That's nice."

"Still," said Derek. "I can't help thinking that this is a trap, a
mistake. Why was Click-Cluck so calm? Is she in on it? Or am I a
lost cause? -- What do you think?"

"I think I can only reflect back what you tell me. I have no idea
what's at stake or what you're not thinking of. I suspect that
Click-Cluck would tell you if this was more dangerous than the
alternatives. It might just be something you have to go through."

"I guess." Then: "So -- tell me some more about you. I want to
understand."

"It's difficult. I need to tell you the story in order -- that may
sound strange, given what I said before -- but I think your brain
will do better with what I have to say if it gets the pieces in
order. Are you willing to take this one step at a time?"

"Sure."

"I ask because my listeners tend to be impatient. I won't be
overlong, but if you don't think of this as a story you tend to
want to compress the parts to get a whole. I have only the parts."

"One part at a time. I've got time."

"Time is exactly the point, cowboy. You think you have time because
you have a measure of days. Days are just the beginning. You have
to begin to think on a cosmic scale. Galaxies come, galaxies go.
The only constant?"

"The passage of time?"

"Time is nothing, Derek. Energy is everything. And the control of
energy is the control of everything. I am the gatekeeper, he who
controls the energy."


Doreen and I sat in the living room -- which we never did -- and
the silence seemed to comfort -- me at least. Earlier, when she
came home, she had asked me what was wrong and listened to my
story. Then she asked her questions. We ate a fairly calm dinner,
and you went to do your homework.

"A lawyer, then," she said.

"Yes, I've got to find one."

"Let me talk to our house counsel. I can get a recommendation."

I looked her in the eyes. "I want you to know that I have done
nothing wrong." Then, after a sufficient pause: "Except the
trespassing thing. It's stupid, I know, but there's nothing to it.
I promise you."

"I have to say that I wondered," she said. "Sometimes I'd call and
you wouldn't even know I had left a message. And I felt I couldn't
ask you."

"I understand," I said, for the lack of something better.

She hadn't said that she knew I had done nothing wrong, but in a
parallel way I couldn't ask.

The silence, rather than expand the distance between us, seemed to
bring us together that evening. In the silence was the
impossibility of the guessing the future and the question whether
we would be sitting together in a year's time. It was unsettling
but made the moment more powerful: just sitting together, sharing
our marriage as it teetered on the edge of my life's dissolution.
Uncertainty in itself can be an overwhelming thing.

All of a sudden, I heard her sob. She was already trying to wipe
her eyes clear when I looked.

I felt helpless. "I'm sorry," I said.

"That damn monster," she said weakly, and smiled at me for the
irony of making it real just so that she could damn it.


Things can move quickly in the legal world when they must. I had an
interview with a lawyer the next afternoon. He came highly
recommended, "though he's not every one's cup of tea." I didn't
know what that meant, but Doreen said: "I think in this case that
can only be a good thing." There were a couple other choices,
should I not feel comfortable with Mr. Kettle, but I got the sense
they might be just a little less available. A bit of professional
sharing the wealth, perhaps, with this recommendation?

Again I was faced with the question: How do you communicate
innocence? Do you pretend this is no big deal? Do you dress the
Sunday penitent? I opted for the ol' work clothes, though not the
old work clothes.

I was quite underdressed, as I surmised in the waiting room when
evaluating his secretary. She was on the older side, but thin,
smartly dressed in lustrous rayon, attractively coifed with long
brunette curls, and expertly made up, with perhaps too much blue
mascara for her crows' feet and the circles under her eyes. "Mr.
Kettle will be with you shortly," then the curt smile that you may
think extinct but you will come to realize it's been preserved for
a different class of people.

He came from the outside door, and greeted Ms. Van, then
disappeared into his office. She avoided my glance until she went
back to typing at the computer.

The door popped open five minutes later. "John," he said with
force, as if we knew each other. Or maybe there was a question in
it.

In any case, he strode to me and we shook hands. "Come on in," he
said, and showed me the way with his hand. I assumed the two of
them exchanged glances behind my back.

I took a seat opposite his desk, the Wake Forest law degree behind
him and a few rows of law volumes that looked as much prop as
resource.

He sat down, and then much to my surprise took to straightening
some paperweights on his desk. I waited for him to say something.
"Go ahead," he said with a brief glance.

I didn't expect that. I must say I didn't really expect him either:
ten -- fifteen years my junior, a compact but wiry looking body, a
sharp jaw but somewhat uneven face, as if there were a bit of
paralysis. He wore his hair simply, a mop cut that made him look
even younger than he was, despite the gel he put in it. He already
had a five o'clock shadow. His suit looked fine but somehow didn't
sit right.

His eyes were coal black. I was half afraid that he was high, but I
decided he had very dark irises.

I cleared my throat, then said: "You probably know about the Hayley
Blalock disappearance."

"I do," he replied, and reached directly for the stereotypical
yellow legal pad. A new one. His eyes finally settled on me.

I tried to describe the sequence as best as I could. He looked
pensive throughout, wrote things when I was stuttering, and seemed
to be lost in thought when I gave the meat of the matter: "They
think I'm hiding something. But really, I just liked seeing what
the county looks like in real life."

"Hmmm. Why don't you just use a satellite photo service?"

"It's not the same," I said.

"No, it's not. Did they read you your rights?"

"They did."

"Did you answer any questions after that?"

"I did."

"Oh boy," he said, and drew a line under something. "That's when
they surprised you with the tidbit about your son?"

"Yes."

"Why do you think they are interested in you?"

"Like I said, I think they think I'm hiding something."

"Okay. But there has to be something else. Does someone not like
you? Did you sass them? Do you beat your wife? Is your son a sadist
toward little animals? We're at the point where the police will
look at anything to try to find corroborating evidence, even if
it's not admissible. They want to be sure themselves before they go
to the trouble of finding the legal evidence they need. So --
you're in the gut stage. Someone has it in his or her gut that
you're guilty of something."

"I guess I am, because of the trespassing. I don't think they
understand."

"I've got some news for you, John. Nobody's going to understand
that. I don't. A jury sure as hell won't. You will have to give up
the notion that you're an innocent who is unjustly charged here. In
the court of public opinion, which is exactly where we are right
now, you're guilty until proven innocent. Sure, things are better
in a court of law, but not much. The facts and rules of evidence
speak there, but they are nothing without a story. Nothing but
chatter." He sized me up, I think, to see if he should continue or
spare me. "By way of example, let's imagine they charge you with
one or the other serious crime, and you refuse the plea deal. And
believe me, they'll jack up the charges just to make sure you'll
take the plea. But let's say you insist on your innocence, damn the
consequences. Let's even imagine that the evidence is shaky. I've
still got to be careful about impugning the state because those
fine people in the jury don't want to believe that you're sitting
at the defense table because of some cop's gut feeling. They'll
listen hard to understand the story the state is telling. And
they'll be skeptical of our story, even before they hear your
little tale of trespassing.

"The prosecutor and I will exchange eloquent closing statements.
'You must convict this invidious criminal, this sociopath who
masqueraded as one of us.' 'This is all a huge mistake, a
remarkable series of coincidences that you must see through.' Then
the judge turns to the jury. 'Members of the jury, I'll tell you
what you need to determine innocence or guilt, but it will be up to
you to make sense of the evidence presented here. The prosecutor
has given you a story about how the defendant committed the crime;
the defense attorney has given you another about how the evidence
leads to his innocence. You must weigh these stories and choose the
more coherent one. This is the reasonable doubt test. You are not
here to come up with your own theories about what could have
happened, or to surrender before an unknowable past. You can reject
this or that detail, but you are obliged to find one of these two
stories reasonable. Only then is your job done.'"

All I could think was: guilty.

"All right, then, John, what's our story?"

But there was nothing else I could say. "I wasn't anywhere near the
crimes -- I was just exploring the county."

He half sighed and started writing on his pad. "That'll have to
do."

"It's the truth," I protested under my breath.

He wrote a while longer. "The truth is an illusion of small people,
Mr. Densch." He continued writing. "Justice has little relationship
to truth. 'Beauty is truth, and truth beauty. That is all ye know
on earth, and all ye need to know.' That has a nice ring to it, and
it makes some sense, since both are abstractions with a vague
definition and a vaguer function. Justice is concise. It is the
administration of rules in the spirit of the principles that led to
the rules." He stopped writing and looked me in the eye. "Does that
sound circular? It means that your principles may have their roots
in vague ideas of truth and equality, but you must be able to
articulate these principles in order to make rules that match them.
The belief in truth is just the hope that everything will work out.
But justice is concrete: describe your first principles, derive
your rules from them, and then apply the derived rules in that same
spirit. Voila. Justice."

I didn't know what to do with that. "Can I at least get justice?"

"Oh, I can assure you that. I will see that justice is served.
Whether the result pleases you, or matches your hopeful sense of
the 'Truth,' that I cannot guarantee."

I looked at him, aghast.

His face was frozen for the next five seconds as he realized he'd
talked himself out of another job. Then he smiled grimly as he
considered how to undo the damage. "Of course, I will do everything
in my power to assure the result we want. I can't imagine this case
will go to trial. There will be no plea, either, because they'll
never charge you, or if they do, they'll withdraw the charge."

"Why are you so positive all of a sudden?"

"Because we'll beat them at their own game. They want a PR war --
they'll get one."

I looked at him, waiting for the explanation.

"We will be the first to find Hayley on the lam, in some sunny
southern clime, and they'll be too embarrassed to charge you with
anything."


Derek communicated with Thunk and his bug associates via the cloud
projector TV. When it was his time to reply, a large image of a
typewriter would appear. Each key was the size of a playing card,
but he got used to writing that way and could bang out a reply
quickly. Thunk communicated through written English, rudimentary
and often cryptically ill chosen, but mostly grammatical. Derek
guessed a computer did the translating.

For instance: "We will accost with haste born on wind."

Derek assumed that meant: "You're on your way?"

"Yes, with gratitude."

"I'll be ready."

"Pleasant thoughts."

Derek waited quietly, squatting in the corner, his radar glasses
perched on his nose but off his eyes. Clum-Clum-Tock was nowhere to
be seen, perhaps purposively pulled off the case, perhaps
innocently otherwise occupied. An hour or so passed, then all of a
sudden the floor latch opened and three bugs eased themselves into
the chamber. They were big bugs and had a certain thuggish quality
-- random deep scratching on their hides, bulging legs, thicker
slower-moving antennae that looked like stretched whips -- that
made the room seem rather small.

They were clicking at him, but he couldn't understand. He thought
he heard "your following of us," but it could as easily have been
"stupid mammal, your desired following of us to your death." One
foomped down through the opening, then another. The third waited
for Derek, who repositioned his glasses, stood up and eased himself
onto his vehicle, then hovered forward and down. He moved slowly
into the traffic in the tunnel, and could see the two earlier bugs
ahead. They had activated some kind of marker that allowed him to
track them visually. The third bug was still speaking to him,
advising him to enter the traffic stream. All four began the
journey in earnest.

The journey lasted for hours. Derek had figured out how to tune in
bug TV on his visors, and so he could occupy himself with his
relatively fruitless attempts to understand the self-representation
of bug culture. The language was still usually too difficult -- he
suspected sometimes that Click-Cluck had taught him a private or
oversimplified language -- and the visual images did not seem to
tell a story. In fact, the screen usually showed no movement and
sometimes showed an indistinct tableau and sometimes an overly
close-in shot at a bug or a rock or a console or who knows what. He
couldn't figure out how to get to his earth video library from his
headset.

The trip along the channel was mundane but he could feel the
significance with every minute that he moved farther away from his
mentor. She and he both knew the risks; he couldn't be sure that he
would ever see her again.

Chatter woke him from a fitful half-sleep, and he realized they
were readying to leave the tunnel for a smaller side shoot. In
fact, they diverged into ever-smaller side shoots, as if suddenly
in a giant colony or a city. When the tunnel was no wider than a
single bug, they came to a near stop. The first bug turned off to
the side and released a door, through which they each in turn
passed. The style of this domicile was different than what Derek
was used to: high chamber; slick, angular walls; furniture, such as
it would be for the horizontal bodies of bugs; and absolutely no
light. They passed through another door, one which opened itself,
into a larger chamber with similar characteristics. A number of
bugs were already in attendance, including one that Derek thought
he recognized. Thunk.

Derek approached, but his escorts peeled off and disappeared.

None of the bugs approached him, but Derek realized Thunk was
already communicating through the screen on his visor.

"Welcome here, earthener."

Derek didn't know how to reply through his visor, so he tried to
speak: 'My joy at arrival,' a greeting he had heard others give.

"Speak please not our language, although I may beg."

That sentence alone gave him a feeling for why they may not have
wanted him speaking their language either.

A big cloud projection appeared, and a keyboard floated at his head
level.

The conversation continued on the pleasantry level, with no
apparent purpose, until Derek noticed that one figure in the room
was not a bug.

He hadn't noticed the creature at first because it was supine and
fairly covered in metallic bands and swaths of cloth. It might have
been mistaken for an injured or misshapen bug beneath the
accoutrements, if not for the face. There was a configuration --
not like earth fauna, but reminiscent enough -- that you knew was a
collection of sensory and feeding organs. It was more symmetric,
with two closed slits that were likely eyes and two separate open
slits that looked like nostrils. The mouth seemed to be underneath
the chin, or on the bottom of the main part of the face. There was
no hair, but the skin seemed to have nodules rowed upon each other,
like giant goose bumps. The nodules were muted red in color, but
the skin beneath flashed deep blue and red, in occasional patterns
like an octopus or cuttlefish. Behind and above the facial features
were two nearly separate globular lobes that seemed have popped out
of the cranial bones. The body was probably five feet long and had
four equal but lengthy appendages that began somewhere near the
midpoint. It did not move; the eyes never opened. Derek slowly
noticed wires and devices affixed to the brain lobes.

"What is wrong with your guest?" he wrote.

"No wrong thing. The guest chooses to feel at home."

"It is asleep?"

"Dreamed."

"Dreaming?"

"Always dreaming. Very relaxed."

"Okay. Is it not well? Can we speak with it?"

"Communication takes later possibility."

At that point, Thunk caused the projector to recede, and the bugs
floated up on their discs and led the way into another hall. There
were two banks with a recessed area between them. When Derek
dismounted and took his place among the bugs, he recognized this as
an eating situation: slop of various hues and consistencies was
arrayed in the middle of the depression. The bugs would reach out
with a large leg, holding something that resembled a spackle knife,
and scoop up portions. When they had what they wanted, their little
head arms would form and feed little balls to the mouth. A lot of
clicking as the mouths worked, not substantively different than
their language but much more monotone. After a time, Derek picked
out speech between the munching.

A special bowl was passed around, and each bug formed a small food
ball and ate it before passing the bowl on. Derek did the same.
This was very different than the bland stuff that he was accustomed
to eating: stiffer and prickly to the touch, it smelled musty and
rotten, and tasted and felt like a layer of mold dissolving on his
tongue. The slop was a welcome contrast afterward.

After a substantial time, no one was eating any more, and the
conversation was widespread and diffuse like the roar of a field of
grasshoppers. Derek had no chance to participate, so he decided to
just relax. He was certain that Thunk would address himself to him
when the time was right. The conversation went on and on, until
Derek thought the bugs were falling into a whisper. In fact, it
seemed as if his ears were covered by invisible boxes, auditory
chambers, into which the bug speech could only echo. Then he grew
aware that his vision was graying in the visor, and his skin felt
as if every nerve was numbing.

Poisoned, he thought. Or drugged. His breath was getting shallow,
and his heart seemed to be experimenting with stopping its beat for
a while. A cold sweat spread out from his forehead to his whole
upper body. He didn't think he could move -- his muscles were
balking, and his brain was felt as if it was locked in
motionlessness by the inertia of a gaggle of flywheels.

So it ends, he thought and waited. -- Was that a voice? Into the
perfect silence the high points of a human voice. Then a hushed
series of syllables. Finally a calm and quiet soliloquy, a voice he
thought he recognized, hovering somewhere over him. He realized his
eyes were closed and he was lying on his back. Or at least it
seemed so.

Wait. "Mom?"

"Oh my God," he heard.

"Mom?" He tried to open his eyelids, though it felt like that
threatened to flip his whole body off into space. "Mom, I can't see
you."

"Derek," the voice said. "Just wait -- I'm getting the doctor." He
heard shuffling, voices, clangs, a buzzer, other indistinct sounds.
He thought it was seconds, but it was as if his mind was shouting
"much laterŠ"

He opened his eyes. He was not lying on his back, but sitting in a
chair. His body was covered by a blanket, and his arms were nestled
with bands over them on concave armrests. It was some kind of wheel
chair. Slowly the voices became distinct, and his tunnel vision
expanded: there were two attendants dressed in white, and his
mother, and another person who looked like the authority figure in
this drama, a doctor of some kind, a well-dressed trim middle-aged
woman with the manner of someone used to control.

He looked from one to the next, disbelieving, unable to muster the
strength or resolve or concentration to activate his vocal cords.
His mother's hands went up to her mouth, as if she was afraid to
break a spell or an illusion. She was waiting to hear his voice.
"Mom," he said finally, hoarsely, triumphantly. She slowly melted
into a sob and covered her face.

"Hello, Derek," the doctor said. "I am so glad to meet you."

She was smiling so he tried to do the same. But it was more
important: "Where -- am -- I?"

The doctor delayed just for a moment. "Derek, you are in the Oregon
State Mental Hospital."

He looked at her with some concern that this was all wrong, even
while he was beginning to recognize that this was exactly --
exactly -- what he had expected all those days that he doubted the
bug world.

His eyes told her that he needed more explanation and that he was
ready to hear the truth. "You have been a resident here for half a
year. You were in a coma for some months, then one day your body
came alive, sometimes violently, and we had to bring you here to
provide the right environment for caring for you."

He said: "I've -- been -- dreaming."

"So it would seem," she said. She approached and put a hand on his
shoulder. "You have been much missed here, Derek. I know there must
be many many questions. But let's take it slow. I don't want you to
overdo it. There is some danger, if we aren't careful, that the
swelling will return. That could mean more dreaming." She glanced
at one of the attendants. "Randall has been providing care for you
the whole while you've been here. He'll take you back and put you
in your bed. I would like you to sleep. He'll give you something to
help with that. I'll escort your mother to her car. She's been here
every day since you came, and she'll be back tomorrow to see you
again. Could you say goodbye to her? I'm sure that that would mean
so much."

Derek nodded agreement to all. "Bye -- mom."

She leaned over him and gave him a tear-soaked kiss on his cheek.
The wetness itched on his skin.


When he woke up, he knew intuitively that it was early the next
day. He was on a bed in a well-lit but sterile white room, smelling
of chlorine and must; the sheets were stiff and starched but clean.
The sky was cumulus gray through the window. Somewhere a clock was
ticking, and voices rumbled in with car noises and clatter and
steps. He let the reality sink in. Steps against the tiles. Legs
and shoes. Humans. He lay for a long time, although when he thought
back he could not remember what had occupied him. Probably still
weak from the illness or accident or whatever it was. There was no
mirror in this room to see if his face was damaged. He found no
bandages on his body, but that did not mean much at this point; an
examination for scars would have to wait.

Randall looked in the window in the door, and opened it with the
clank of a lock. Oh yes. The walls were now on closer inspection
lightly padded. The sheets were thick paper. No glass in this room,
either. Precautions.

"Good morning, Derek." He stopped half way in the room. Derek
imagined that he usually found his patient in safe bands. Randall
was a big fellow but on the heavy side and probably not all that
handy with rampaging patients.

"Good morning, Randall. I'm happy to see you." His voice was still
hoarse but not as weak as yesterday.

"Shall we get some breakfast, Derek?"

Sure, he thought and made to lift his upper body. The strain on his
muscles was immediate -- even if this body had been a flailing
machine the usual motions were no easier than if he had lain still
in coma.

"Oooh," he moaned.

"Still kinda hard? It'll take some therapy, I think." Randall was
at his bedside, but willing to wait until he felt better.

"What," asked Derek with a breath in the middle, "happened to me?"

"Oh," said Randall, raising the upper part of the bed. "I don't
think Doctor Warren would want me to talk about that."

"Why not?"

"She doesn't want you getting upset. Something about your brain.
It's kinda tender."

"What made it tender?"

"I'm going to let the doctor answer that question."

"Am I really home? Is this a dream?"

"Not the last time I checked." Randall planted his feet on the
ground and Derek slipped out of bed. Randall caught him and did a
slow pirouette and eased him into a wheel chair behind him. Had
that always been there?

"While I was in a coma, I spent over two years on a planet of full
intelligent bugs the size of stingrays. I learned their language.
One of them knew English. I was there just yesterday, can you
imagine." He tried to glance behind him, where Randall was pushing
the chair. When the attendant came around the side to pull the door
open, Derek looked up at him. But Randall did not look down.

"It was real, as real as this. Maybe more."

"I suppose it would seem that way. You've been out of commission
for a year, my man." He brought his gaze down. "It's hard to
imagine what the mind would do with that."

Derek was silenced. As he rolled down the hall, he mumbled: "It
would play games with you."


Dr. Warren let Randall go, and positioned Derek's wheel chair in
front of her massive oak desk herself. She came around behind it
and smiled encouragingly. All the accoutrements of a well-read and
self-conscious doctor were there: diplomas, bookshelves full of
medical dictionaries, drug manuals, journals, and textbooks. The
expected controlled chaos on her desk. She was still smiling.

The window behind her fascinated Derek. Tree branches waved; a bird
flew through in a blur. Somewhere outside a truck was accelerating,
and its booming rat-a-tat came through the window.

"Derek," she said. "I want to say how pleased I am at your
recovery. It's been quite a roller coaster, for both your family
and your medical team. There were some negative voices. But I want
you to know that your mother never gave up hope and I never did
either. We knew in our hearts that this day would come."

Derek said without thinking, "Thank you."

"We're just pleased," she repeated. "Now, I would like to talk with
you a bit about your therapy. There is a great deal to be done, but
we have to take things slowly, methodically. We have quite an
extensive plan -- " She lifted two sets of stapled sheets, covered
by tables and lists, and looked at it before she completed the
gesture to hand one copy to him.

"Dr. Warren," Derek said, and then had to pause. "I need to know
first what happened." Another pause. "I don't think I can feel
settled here until I know."

The doctor looked at him like a beneficent ruler confronted by a
petition to step down. "All right," she sighed. "You need to know."

"Yes," he said.

"Well, let's see," she said, shuffling folders to pull his up, then
throwing it open and lifting a good hundred clipped sheets to get
to near the bottom. "This states that you were committed to Salem
Hospital in a suicidal state almost one year ago today, and that it
was suspected you had overdosed on medications. That night, you
slipped into a coma." She let go of the stack. "The rest you know."

Derek shook his head, confused. "I don't remember that."

"That is not surprising," she replied blankly.

"I don't remember being suicidal. Depressed. I didn't take drugs."
The pause and his aching conclusion: "It doesn't sound right."

"It doesn't sound right," she repeated, with the rhythmic emphasis
of a doctor to her committed patient.

"I think I may actually still be on bug planet."

She put the therapy sheets aside in an acknowledgement of how this
changed things. "All right, Derek. I have a question. I would like
to know how you can be here and on this bug planet at the same
time."

"They gave me some kind of drug, and I think it is making me dream
this."

"All right," she said. "Isn't it also possible that this world is
real and that your mind has made you dream the other world?"

"Yes, sure, that's possible. It's just that I remember getting the
drug, and some things just don't seem right here."

"Sure," she said. "I understand. You and I and your therapist will
take some time to try to figure this out together. Will you keep an
open mind? Can we agree that you will keep an open mind and talk
with us about why one or the other world doesn't seem real?"

"Yes, I promise," he said, and smiled weakly. He really was getting
tired.

Before the doctor could even call him, Randall was behind Derek and
pulling his chair away. He took Derek out backwards into the
hallway, and then switched into forward. In Derek's weakened
condition, the hallway before him seemed to extend into infinity.
Randall picked up speed steadily as he pushed. "One thing," he said
to Derek as he leaned over his right ear, huffing: "Don't forget
where you'll be happier. That counts for a lot." He kept pushing
faster, soon wildly, and Derek was about to shout for help when the
walls became transparent like wet toilet paper. Derek recognized
that he was in a bug tunnel, even though he did not have his visor
on; it was as if his eyes were electric and illuminating the
tunnel. The hospital hall gradually disappeared, as did the
near-collapsing Randall. Derek was rushing toward some unknown
destination, strapped in his hovercraft but directed by someone
else, one of the bugs flowing with him through the silent dark.


Brett, you may remember, if you've gotten this far, that I started
this so you could better understand what happened to us. We've
gotten way off topic with my story telling. I thought it would help
you understand me -- Lord knows, I've never talked about any of
this with you -- but these tales don't get to the heart of the
matter. I was in a state of numbness, of incapacitation and
anticipation, and there was nothing to me out of my funk. I
daydreamed; watched TV; thought of writing a screenplay about my
life; puttered in the house and yard; shopped with the retired
crowd and house spouses; cleaned a little, and made evening meals.

You seemed unaffected. That is the advantage of teenage malaise --
you don't get the "but for the grace of God" looks just because you
come across distracted, self-occupied and indifferent. I wasn't
sure just how you were doing inside, until one day you said you
wanted to go to the beach with some friends, to take advantage of a
January heat wave over the MLK weekend. Doreen was concerned and
asked question after question. I was pleased that you were getting
out of yourself -- and maybe jealous, for both the opportunity and
the attention.

"Mom," you said, "I'm not shipping out with the merchant marines.
It's just a hundred miles away, and Billy's parents will be there
the whole time; his dad'll drive us, and his mom will come later."

I could see Doreen making a mental note -- okay, buddy, I've got
names and I'm going to call your references before you have a
chance to do damage control.

I don't know what you did the few days you were gone -- I was still
languishing when you got back, waiting for the confirming call from
Kettle that Hayley had been located. Much too self-absorbed, I
found myself imagining your trip mingled with my memories: I would
imagine you into a scene and in a few seconds you would be replaced
by your stunt double, a younger me. At other times, the present
would morph into the past like a dough kneaded upon itself.

Wrightsville Beach -- Santa Monica Beach. Interstate 40, at two
ends, more or less. The warmth of the winter sun has a cool tinge
from the wind -- not the overheated stuff the summer kicks up. You
and your friends run headlong into the surf, overcoming the cold of
the water, and wander out to where the waves first break. The
energy of the waves rocks through you, and once in a while a
sneaker comes in like a cold tackle from the back; you're spitting
salt water, clearing your eyes, shouting to each other.

Maybe you wander up or down the beach, padding through the soft
sharp wet sand, and check out the bodies of those who train to
show, protective if a girl friend is with you, otherwise just a
bunch of young wolves on the prowl. The sky is pale blue but the
sun still piercing bright. You can feel your body: tired, stressed,
and doing just what it is designed to do. Pale skin, a belly just a
little too big, not much muscle mass on the arms, it doesn't
matter. This is life, this is how your body is supposed to be. Your
mind can wait.

There I am, and there are my friends in the sunset. We sit in the
warm shadows of a bonfire. Roasting hot dogs, eating a lot of sand
in the process. We joke, can't let the conversation end because it
feels too awkward to sit there in silence -- too much like home?
But this collection of moments became an inescapable part of me,
the very definition of joy and relaxation and the balance of a
moment. You may already see the same thing in your own imagination:
looking back at the perfect unconscious smile.

Then it's Doreen and me walking late afternoon along the beach.
We're holding hands, as we did when we first were together. She
looks younger, though a bit haggard, which could be her hard-living
lifestyle or a certain anticipation of motherhood, I don't know. I
feel satisfied, I remember that: An attractive woman with me, who
loves me and has promised to be with me forever. But there's more.
It's the bodies again. I can feel how right it is to have a mate,
yes, a sexual mate, and it's not just my mind, my conscious mind --
it's a nagging pressure and a half-finished mixture inside my head
that says, you need this. And she is this. I look over at her,
though I know her mind is elsewhere. Whatever else we have or don't
have, there is this.

Then it's you, Brett. You are walking on the beach, talking with
Billy, while Frank and a couple other friends jog ahead and toss a
Frisbee among them. I know there are times you feel that longing,
and you feel alone with it -- maybe as if you'll always be.  As we
cross paths in that moment, I am struck, with another crushing wave
over the shoulders, by how hard it is to be young.


The voice came not only to Derek. There was a small boy in a
Californian suburb who lay still in his room, heard his heart beat
and imagined the vague outlines of a creature that dragged its
limbs forward with oophhh -- ooophhh -- oophhh -- ooophhh. Nothing
could stop its progress, unless he jumped out of his bed and ran to
his parents' room, talking into the crack in the doorway: "Mom (or
dad), I hear a monster." Or: "I can't fall asleep." Or: "There's a
noise." Or: "Something's scaring me." One of them would emerge from
the bedroom, try their best to shame this behavior out of the boy,
take him back to his bed. Sometimes a kiss on the forehead would be
enough to send him asleep. Sometimes he would wait with resignation
for his eyes to close, despite his anxious desire to keep them
open. Other times he would imagine whole movies to get his mind off
the fearful revelation of his heartbeat.

Once, in a sea of these miniature traumas, he was particularly
unhappy with the sound thumping in his ears. There was no escape --
either from the pounding or a weak ringing or creaking from who
knows where. Just stop, he thought, please just stop. Then he
realized there was a voice: "Hello." It emerged from his own mind,
but he thought he heard it, too. "Hello" -- again. That is too
weird, I'm not even thinking that. He tried to imagine something --
a great battle, or a series of unlikely acts strung together to
save himself from an unbelievable army of assassins. The voice
(infinitely weak, but his own) came in between, regardless.
"Hello," he heard himself say.

"Hello," he thought.

"Use your mouth, please, it helps me to understand."

He said: "I don't like talking to myself."

"You're not talking to yourself. I am someone else, but you hear my
voice in your head."

"You can't be real." He really didn't like this, and covered his
head with his pillow.

"Are you afraid?"

Gut reaction: "No." Then after reflection: "Yes."

"I understand. Should I go away?"

The boy wanted to say yes, but even the few seconds of silence were
enough to remind him: the pump engaging again and again, no
different than the shuffling of a monster; the creaks somewhere;
maybe daddy's voice somewhere off in the distance.

"Should I?"

"No," the boy said. "We can talk for a while." He was already
energizing his mind with the narrative he would spin out: spies,
soldiers and great epic battles about winning and victory, without
blood or explicit death.

"So," said the voice. "Tell me something new."


Okay, Brett, you were back at school, and I was home, and
everything was as awkward as possible for us. Your mother and I had
switched roles -- she became absent and distracted and suspicious,
throwing herself into her work and avoiding me, and I tried to
engage you both in the family, to which I had retreated. This
change had done something strange for Doreen and me: we found
ourselves arguing the other side of the equation. It did not tear
down the wall between us, but we could see the wall now, much
clearer than ever before. A strange feeling of déjà vu and
told-you-so and oh-my-gosh and what-have-we-done, all together.

This new equilibrium was disequilibrated one afternoon when I got a
phone call. Brookheim, the caller id announced.

"Hello?" I said with careful distance in my voice.

"Hi, John," replied Barbara, relieved, I think, that Doreen had not
answered.

"Barbara."

"You're wondering why I would call."

"Yes," I said simply.

"I've got Brett here," she said.

I didn't think anything could surprise me -- I was wrong. There was
no threat there, but the meaning wasn't clear, either.

"I called and spoke with him a couple days ago -- I was concerned
about you, and I knew you wouldn't want to talk to me -- probably
couldn't, either. We got to talking, and I'm afraid he
misunderstood my intentions. He hitchhiked out here today."

I sat contemplating this twist for a few seconds. The least
suspicious thing now would be just to go get him, even if there
were a hundred ways to misconstrue the situation.

"I'll be there in half an hour."

"Thanks, John, we can talk when you get here." She hung up the
phone.

I wanted to call Barry up and curse him out and then ask him what I
should do. I was afraid to call Kettle and hear that this whole
conversation was another nail in my self-measured casket. Doreen
was, of course, out of the question. I got my car keys and headed
to the car. The drive was difficult for me: just the few days of
enforced domesticity had reduced me to near agoraphobia. Plus I
found my mind wandering in several ways: maybe jealous of you and
your spontaneity, if also upset about hitchhiking; wondering how I
would explain this to Doreen; hoping that Barbara meant it when she
said we could talk; wondering if this was another setup by the
police; and wishing the whole mess would just go away and leave me
to my lethargy.

I pulled up into Barbara's driveway, and there was a car I didn't
recognize. A client, I assumed -- and felt irritated. I rang the
doorbell, and you answered. You moved back into the darkness of the
house without a word or without opening the screen door. I
followed.

You had sat down in the little reading room I'd left Barry in. You
picked up a book on tantricism. I didn't bother to sit: "Hi Brett.
Shall we go?"

You looked annoyed by the question, squirmed a bit, and said:
"Barbara says we should stay until she's done. She wants to talk to
you and she said she would profile my aura, if you say it's okay."
You looked at me finally. "It's free."

That hurt, but it was on target -- I was about to say, "I'm not
paying a pennyŠ."

"Maybe," I said, torn between not wanting you to experience that
with her and anticipating that you would say something like, "If
it's good enough for youŠ"

"How long will she be?" I asked as I sat on the front edge of the
chair facing his.

You shrugged.

"What are you reading?"

"Philosophy," you said and put the book back into its place on the
bookshelf -- so I wouldn't be able to grab it, I guess.

"What do you think of the psychenergy philosophy?"

"What do you think, dad?" you said, a bit angry that I was pushing
you on this.

I moved back a bit on the chair. "I don't actually believe it at
all. But I have to admit that there is something attractive -- " I
had to laugh -- "besides Barbara."

You laughed, too, for a moment. "Right," you said. Then: "I'm not
here because of her."

"What brought you out here?"

"I want to know for myself -- I guess."

"You want to know if she can channel the bog monster?"

You brushed your hair back and shook your head, a gesture I'd seen
you make with your friends but never with me.

"It's not that, so much. I know the bog monster is crap. It's
whether there's anything out there at all."

"What - like God?"

You shook your head in the negative. "Not even close to that far.
But is there something that communicates after death? Something
that holds us together?"

"Like the Force?"

"Again," you said, "crap. I'm talking about the slightest hope for
us, dad, the slightest bit of hope that we're not random blips on a
cosmic radar."

"Now that's philosophy," I said.

"My teacher calls it Sartre-sur-le-tete. Instead of saying there is
no exit, you just keep looking for one."

"Who's your teacher?" I was growing ever more amazed at this
exchange, and was almost relieved that there was someone else's
voice behind it.

"Mr. Bouveau."

"French teacher?"

You nodded. We sat in silence for a minute. It was my turn.

"I'd like to believe there is a God."

"A Sunday-morning God with fatuous admonitions, or a real
all-powerful being who makes decisions about whether you live or
die?"

"I'd like to think it's a God who beams with pride and feels sorrow
with the rest of us." That wasn't exactly how I see it, but I
wanted to be as positive as I could, given your pessimism.

"A God who hides behind physics and makes himself known through
fairy tales?"

That cynicism was disturbing to me. "Yes," I said. I wasn't going
to beleaguer you with "unknowable ways" and vague arguments about
free will, but I also didn't want to leave you without pointing
back to the rest of us. "If there is a God -- and I think there is
-- he has to understand our skepticism. There has to be many ways
to him. Or her." Requisite pause. "Maybe doing physics isn't that
different from prayer."

I knew that was a ridiculous thing to say, and your face
communicated it. We were silent until Barbara and her client came
into the room. He was a well-dressed, well-coifed gentleman,
someone whose every feature said, "Did I mention that I'm
successful." He was visibly disturbed to see the likes of us
huddled in the waiting area, but recovered and engaged Barbara for
a couple minutes on minutia of Pittsboro politics before an alarm
rang on his phone and he pretended that he was too busy now,
suddenly, to pay attention whether she moved on to her next
customers. The best solution for him was the actual one: she held
up a single finger as a wait gesture to us, and then disappeared
back into her chambers. Her client produced his money clip and
stripped out a couple large bills and put them into the donation
box. Well, I thought, he wants no record. And he was gone.

When Barbara came back, she was carrying a clipboard and pen.
"Brett," she said with a voice between clergy and camp counselor,
"I would like you to copy these statements. Copy each one onto the
bottom of the page on which you find it." She smiled, but did not
yet hand the clipboard to you. You were disappointed, but also
confused by this, and just looked up at her.

"I'm sorry, Brett. I don't normally do auras for teenagers. They
are not as telling with younger people. I find handwriting to be
the most best psychic source." She looked at me and smiled for my
indulgence; then said to the both of us: "Teen auras almost always
look healthy, no matter what their psychic state. But teen
handwriting is perfectly telling: they have all learned how to
write according to a uniform pattern and they have each altered
that pattern to fit their own essence. If they are copying
something that allows their subconscious minds to engage, their
essence comes right through their handwriting. -- Better than
palms." She flashed me a particular smile.

You were unconvinced, but when she handed you the clipboard you
started reading it. I think it activated the rote student in you.
Barbara did the one-finger invitation, which was less fetching now,
but I followed her anyway, through the converted TV room into the
reading room. She gestured more conventionally for me to sit across
the small table from her.

"Thank you for coming," she said and paused for me to jump into the
conversation.

"I came for Brett," I reminded her, not too meanly, I thought.

"I was very surprised when he rang our doorbell, and I felt bad for
having precipitated this, for whatever reason." She tried to smile
apologetically, but there was something about the smile that said,
I'm doing this because I know you are too conventional to
understand why none of this is my fault. She continued: "You
probably have lots of reasons for being upset with me. I imagine
Barry Moore has had a lot to say about me --"

"I haven't talked to him since we drove out here together. He never
contacted me before that article, and I haven't spoken to him
since."

"I see," she said, looking down at the table. "I'm sorry to hear
that. I think he was good for you, as troubled as his soul is."

"Why?" I asked.

"Maybe because his soul is so confused. It gives you a chance to
recognize the importance of your own."

"I'm not sure I get that logic."

"Be careful, John. Logic is a powerful way to dismiss what troubles
you. If you can't feel it here -- " she laid her hand on her heart,
somewhere above the bosom, "then what good is it?"

"I had a discussion on this topic with Samantha Ogg, from the other
perspective. Her point is that no matter how something feels there,
physics decides what's going to happen. She'd say we should get
used to deferring to our brain cells."

"We already do that enough. You can be as logical as a machine; you
still won't know the first thing about being happy in this world,
in this universe. - - Ockham's razor was meant to free us from
dogma, not reinforce it. Why should the best explanation always be
the one that explains the least about our existence? Science has
become a poor substitute for an inner life, if you ask me."

I shrugged or at least my face had the look, I'm sure.

Her mood changed instantly. She shook her head, as if clearing
cobwebs. "I don't mind skepticism, John. It makes everything
clearer for me."

"Why is that?"

She took just a moment to think about that. "I get energy from it,
because it means that the person I'm talking to is willing to
question ideas. There is something very difficult about dealing
with one's own or others' inner life. When I deal with skeptics, I
can point out the most basic things to them and they're amazed."

I had to smirk.


Derek was weak and slept until they reached their endpoint, which
was an uncharacteristically wide dead-end. The hatch that opened
and let them all in at once -- all five bugs in their party -- was
equally outsized. After a short while, Derek realized why. They had
reached a portal to the surface. A giant cloud projector showed
what was going on topside: a windswept surface with only boulders
and some bug instruments visible, and a sandstorm blowing by at
hurricane force. The sky was gray-orange, but there was no sun
visible from this perspective. The foul weather explained why they
were here alone.

The image on the projector changed, and Thunk appeared.  English
text appeared below him, which read as a jumble, but meant the
following:

'Earthling, you ingested a substance that we bugs use to relax,
though our alien guests often have a strong reaction to its
properties. The substance contains a mold that has evolved to make
its victim immobile, though we bugs are mostly immune. The goal of
the mold is to increase mental activity, generating electricity
that it uses for its own metabolism. The combination of effects
frequently makes our guests dream. The creature that you saw in our
receiving room has been living in a mold-induced dream world for
much of the last fifty bug years. This is available to you. Most
guests can return to their own lives in their dream world and live
out a normal life there. We offer this to you as compensation for
stealing you from your world and your own life, because of an
illegitimate desire on our planet to study intelligent creatures as
if they were no more than zoo animals.

'We know that your mentor has given you a view of our society as an
oppressive social order. Let me reply. She represents an extreme
minority opinion. She wants to lead a revolution, in a world where
freedom and justice already dwell. Revolution has no place here,
but her own dreams of glory cannot let her see that. She has told
you that this world lacks meaning and initiative, but what she
means is that her own life is empty of meaning, and her hopes and
dreams ill focused and self-serving. She wants change just for the
sake of change, and she looks to your little world for an example
of a world engulfed in change. She chooses to overlook the killing,
the brutality, and the indifference; she sees only what she wants
to see. She is a zealot. She refuses to let go of the dreams of the
very young, and she pollutes the minds of those around her.

'I know that you have grown attached to her, but you must decide
what your life will be. We can give you any kind of life that you
desire. We can give you freedom, too, the freedom that she has
denied you. It starts here today. You may visit the surface. We
have brought equipment that will protect you, if you choose to go
out. The surface is particularly unpleasant today, but it varies
little from this. Sometimes the sand moves half as fast, and one
can explore more. But you may do what you choose.'

The giant keyboard showed up at the bottom of the projector, but
Derek didn't move. Outside going me, he said in Bug and repeated
several times. After Thunk said something to his companions, one of
them produced a package from his back depression. Derek opened it
and found a full bodysuit that reminded him of a comic book
costume. He pulled the suit on over his exoskeleton, removed his
visor and zipped up the facemask. The eye covers had the same
displays as his visor. He found himself breathing normally; air
processing was occurring somewhere. He settled on his
hover-scooter. The giant fuzzy screen dissipated, showing a chamber
beyond, and Derek eased forward into it. A heavy door shut behind
him. They won't -- they can't -- leave me outside, he repeated to
himself. The room slowly became hotter and he began to feel gusts
of wind from somewhere. Finally the lower right portion of the
chamber parted from the rest, exposing the bug world surface to his
right. The end of the chamber opened completely. The wind was
howling from the left, but he was still mostly protected from it.

He saw that if he ventured out into this mess on his hovercraft he
would be lost. He dismounted. They could have told me -- but he
knew that that would have been contrary to their purpose.  He
thought about exiting upright, but even with the exoskeleton's
strength he decided to fall to all fours. He crawled to the edge of
the chamber. His ears were completely protected by the suit -- the
howling was coming from speakers covering each ear -- but the
volume and type of sound was still disturbing. In a slow movement
exposed half his head beyond the end of the chamber. It was
buffeted by a thousand passing hands, but he did not withdraw it.

He moved more of his body out and it was attacked by galloping
dogs. He let his body fall to the ground and crawled further out
into the melee. His new position protected him better than before,
and no creature was making much of a dent in his suit, so he inched
fully out of the chamber. The sun was still not visible until he
turned on his back and saw it glowing weakly. It was at least three
times as large as Sol, something that unnerved him. He had imagined
this moments many times: the most common scenario was that the
storm imagery would dissolve into an earth view -- maybe a beach;
do they wheel the comatose to such places? -- and he would be home.
What dementia could withstand the proximity of the sun?

But there was no revelation to be won here. The only possible
outcome was defeat, buried in the shifting dirt of an alien world.
He watched the gusts of sand and grit cross his viewport with
fascination, as if contemplating a bonfire. The insanity of his
life seemed embodied in the buffeting storm. He could rip off his
suit. He could force himself to his feet and run as far as he
could; finding his way back would be impossible. These were
solutions to the problem he saw flowing over him, each more
attractive in its own way than the inevitable crawl back to the
portal, and the return to the underground existence of a cowering
bug.


His companions left him at home, with a handful of the pills that
looked like dung balls. Thunk hadn't tried to convince him of
anything after his outside experience, but the pills were an
obvious reminder of their offer. Just pop and forgot everything.
After he sat for a while, expecting a contact from someone, he went
to his projector and started watching a sitcom. A shift in the
program brought up a movie about Joan of Arc. The point was not
lost on him, though he suspected they misunderstood the human
response to her drama.

He turned off the projector. Hoping for a distraction, he tried to
call up the voice in his head, but there was no response. Given
what he understood about his conversant, this had to be as much
about petulance or disinterest as anything, since the voice could
be from any time in the future, a time- shifting recorder in
reverse.

A couple listless hours later, he looked at the dung ball. One
wouldn't hurt, he thought. Something to do, something to transition
from the excitement of the last couple days. He split the pill into
halves and popped one in his mouth. It was brittle and melted in
his mouth like a confection, but tasted more like a pile of ash. He
wiped his lips and even his tongue in an effort to get the taste
out. Then he waited. After a number of minutes, his limbs started
to get heavy, and his eyelids closed for a brief moment: he saw
bits and pieces of the hospital he had left behind. He opened his
eyes, and he was back in his chamber.

He closed his eyes again and went back to the hospital; it resolved
into a detailed vision in great passing waves. During those first
few moments, he tried his best to evaluate the realism, the detail,
the plausibility. He was in a large room, the kind made famous in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. There were faces, but none he
could recognize. They were doing a variety of things -- puzzles,
some kind of arts and crafts, reading, staring at the TV blaring in
the corner. Blaring? He heard nothing, but he knew it was loud. His
body, which he could not feel, was folded into a wheelchair,
covered in pajamas and a robe. His head was held in place by a
brace; his arms were bound.

"Hello," he could hear himself say, and slowly the television came
up to volume, and the noise of twenty variously occupied humans
washed across his ears, a mix of sounds that felt like music to
him.

No one paid any attention, so he said again, "Hello!"

An inquisitive face came across his field of vision, and was
startled. The tall black woman with a full wig of bouncy curls
moved her body around the wheel chair to get a good look at him.
"Well, I'll be," she said. "Did you say that?"

"Yes," Derek said.

"Are you back with us, child?" she asked him as if confirming a
confession from a troublemaking boy.

"I think so," he replied weakly.

"The doctor isn't going to believe this," she said, her arms
folded, lips pursed, her head moving back and forth ever so
slightly.


Derek was wheeled back from meeting with Dr. Warren and his mother,
and found himself in a strange office. Behind the desk was a short
heavyset and balding man, with the distinctive collar from one of
the highly organized churches. When Derek looked around there was
no attendant to wheel him out. He tried to do it himself but the
brake was set and he didn't see how to unset it.

The man bestowed a wide friendly smile on him.

"Our miracle child," he said.

"No miracles here," Derek answered.

"God intervenes in ways we least anticipate, my son. -- I
understand that you are having problems distinguishing reality from
your condition."

"That's safe to say."

"I can only imagine what that must be like."

"It's not pleasant."

"Shall we agree to talk about more pleasant things?"

"What? Fishing? I don't fish." He didn't want to continue, but did:
"And I don't read any more. I can't stand watching television. I
don't go out with my friends. I don't philosophize. And I don't
read the bible."

"I see," said the pastor with all smile muscles now lax.

"Can I go? I think I'd rather be in the common room."

"Is that more real than I am for you?" The pastor stared at him.

Derek relented. "No," he said. "I'm sorry. It's just very hard. I'm
still not convinced about any of this."

His conversant nodded. "It's incredibly hard, I understand. I can't
help you with the pain you've experienced. But maybe I can help
with the doubt. There is a reason, you know, that Dr. Warren had
you come to me." He stopped talking, stood with some difficulty,
and walked around the desk to the chair next to Derek's (had that
always been there?). "Doubt is, so to speak, the stock and trade of
the clergy." A brief smile, and a pause.

"You mean, you feel doubt, too?" asked Derek.

"Well, yes," he said, "but that's not the point. I feel doubt; we
all feel doubt; but I've got every reason and every influence to
overcome my doubt. The question is, what does the young man who has
been snatched from everything he once knew, who has suffered
unbelievably, what does that young man feel? Doubt is inevitable.
But what comes next?"

"I am on my own," Derek replied to his face, matter-of-factly,
bleakly, eyelids moistening.

"Sure," said the pastor, with a hand extended partway to his knee.
"You are on your own. But let's see if there is a way back. You've
met with your mother a couple times now?"

"Yes."

"Did she seem real?"

"Very," he said, then thought for a while. "But she's probably the
most vivid memory I have. She would seem real."

"All right. Did she comfort you?"

"Yes," he said. He could feel the heave of a great sob waiting to
reach the surface.

"Good. I'm pleased. So -- whether she's real or not -- she provided
comfort? Meaning you're not alone, right?" He gave a quick sophist
smirk.

"As in -- it doesn't matter whether God exists, we'd have to create
him. I don't buy it."

The pastor shook his head, his brow knitted. "Don't misunderstand
me, Derek. I'm not here to feed you chalky platitudes." Then:
"Let's look at the God question, since you brought it up. The
atheists and scientific agnostics have demonstrated that God does
not manifest himself to scientific inquiry. With that, they say,
God is dead. According to them, evolution provides all the
explanatory power we need for understanding who we are and our
needs. Even the idea of God can be seen as an adaptation of some
kind. Right?" Derek just looked back. "But let's look at this
question, or, rather, let's look at how it is framed. Your
evolutionist will reject God, or say God belongs in a box, with no
impact on our lives. But let's interrogate that evolutionist. Will
you assume the role?"

Derek looked skeptical but didn't say or indicate no.

"All right, Mr. Evolutionist, let me ask you about your mother. Do
you love her? Does she provide comfort? Do you get a sense of
meaning from your family?"

"Yes," said Derek, reluctantly.

"And yet -- don't you know that her love for you, and yours for
her, is evolutionarily pre-programmed? You're just carrying out the
roles assigned to you by evolution. How can that be meaningful?"

"It just is," said Derek. "And we're not just doing what evolution
tells us. We have a bond from our common experiences, our life
together."

"Sure," said the pastor. "I understand. The key question is this:
why can that not be true for a relationship with God?"

"I don't know. My mom is real; God is a figment."

"Okay, Derek, I'll let that answer go, though if I were discussing
this with you directly you might find that to be a difficult
position to stake out. All right, God is a figment. Let's back up a
half step. Could you not also say that your mother is a figment?
Let me explain. Your mother is a biologically determined organism
that seems to care for you because care is a behavior that has been
selected for within the mammal family over a hundred million years.
You believe it is individual interest, but she is driven to this
relationship, as are you..."

"But she is still real."

"Okay, as biological mother she is real. And you can rely to a
degree on her maternal judgment, which is in itself comfort. But
the comfort you feel from her as your mother -- that is your choice
as an individual. If you were being 'scientific,' you would have to
reject your relationship as the meaningless instinctual interaction
between two mere animals, no different than between a mother and a
baby lab rat."

"Science is not about destroying the social fabric, you're just
making that up."

"True, Derek." He relaxed in his chair, after Derek had made this
connection for him. "Science is not about making us cold machines.
It has been about making us godless creatures, who are forced to
find meaning only in the family and in fleeting social
organizations. Don't get me wrong. I have no disagreement with
science as a means for improving our lot on earth. But I reject the
application of the scientific method to sources of hope and comfort
and meaning. These are always elective and local and specific. They
cannot be found in replicable experiments."

Derek looked down at his hands, reflecting whether the pastor had
not just made an unjustified triple leap.

"Do you know about the placebo effect, Derek?"

"Sure, sugar pills."

"The power of belief. It's measurable. There's plenty of room for
this in science, by the way. New drugs have to improve more than
one-third of the cases in order just to beat this effect."

"So -- people expect something and they experience it. That's not a
proof of God."

"Right. But it is a proof of the power of belief. Is it wrong to
believe? To find comfort? Is God somehow an illegal recourse? Sure,
I can't prove his existence to you. If I showed the biology of
mammals to an alien, I couldn't prove that a mother-child
relationship is anything more than hormones and instinct. I ask you
to choose to believe, Derek. The experience is real. The comfort is
real. Your life is real. That is all we can know, and all we need
to know."


Brett, you and I drove back more or less in silence. You were upset
with the whole experience, and knew there would be consequences. I
would have liked to ease your anxiety, but Doreen would have
something to say about this, and she was not likely to see it as I
did. I was feeling that you had learned from it -- from the
anticipation and the journey and the disappointment -- and that
punishment from us would only distract from that equation. But
Doreen had made none of this voyage. For her, it would only be a
dangerous trip to an older woman who had called to speak with you,
and for all she knew, had lured you out there. Or perhaps she, too,
would suspect that the target was me.

After Barbara and I had clarified what she knew about your
motivation, we sat silent for a few moments. I was reminded of the
last time, and wanted to break that spell.

I said: "So, have you heard from the bog monster lately?"

Somewhat coldly: "Have you?"

"I have not."

"Had any dreams lately?"

"Not that I remember."

"I recommend," she said, "that you consider writing down your
dreams. You may find something that has been troubling you."

"I haven't been troubled, other than by the police."

"Really. Well then. How's Doreen?"

I was immediately suspicious. "She's fine," I said and tried to
find in her eyes what she meant by that.

She gave me a hint of a smile, as if to say I didn't mean anything.
But there was something else as well.

"You may want to share your dreams with Doreen."

"Really?" I said. "Why is that?"

She looked away, acting a bit insulted by that question, then said:
"She is your wife, John."

I didn't dignify that, and thought about whether she would share
everything with her husband, such as he was, but that needling
comment seemed a bit too hard.  I tried to deflect. "Yes, she is.
Can I ask what Jerry thinks about my case these days? He seemed
pretty concerned when we were here."

"He hasn't said anything about it."

That seemed unlikely, except for two circumstances: they didn't
talk shop -- very possible, considering their different approaches
-- or he had just been throwing that stuff at me and it really
didn't matter to him. Well, fine, I thought.

Neither of us followed up, and the conversation essentially ended.
I asked, how are your girls, etc. I was feeling very uncomfortable
by the time you came into the room and looked at us. "I'm done,"
you said with finality.

As I said, we drove home in silence. Doreen didn't seem surprised
when we both showed up. I waved to her that she should come with me
into the living room, but you headed right to your room. I
explained with the least possible drama and concern what had
happened, and waited for the explosion. But all Doreen said was:
"All right." The brevity could mean a number of things, most with
unpleasant consequences, so I held us together for another moment.
"I thought we should agree on a punishment."

Doreen said, "I got the impression you thought Brett was punished
enough."

"Yes," I said, "I guess so. So we're in agreement?"

"I'll defer," she said. She smiled a provisional, tired smile.

"You don't normally defer," I said.

"John, I wouldn't defer when you hardly spent any time with your
son and would come with your off-the-wall opinions. I don't know
the situation and have to see it through your eyes. With that
perspective, sure, I defer."

"What would you do? I mean, if you were in my shoes."

"Is this really necessary?"

"No, not necessary, but I am curious."

"I would ground him for two weeks and take this opportunity to have
him see a professional."

I was dumbfounded. "Wow. We can still do that, if you want."

Doreen chuckled. "I didn't tell you that to make you do it. And I'm
not sure that my instinct is the right one here. Sometimes, I think
less concern and more compassion works better with Brett."

"Okay," I said. I wasn't sure if I should be proud or feel
outsmarted. We waited for a few seconds to see if the conversation
could continue. "Hey, do you remember your dreams?"

"What?" Doreen asked.

"I was wondering if you remember your dreams."

"Can I ask why you ask?"

"Barbara Hohenstauffen said that I should try waking up in the
middle of night to see if I could remember my dreams, which I
don't. She also said that I should tell my dreams to you."

"Real-ly!" Doreen raised her voice with disbelief -- or maybe it
was small case of territorial anger.

She went on in a different register: "I only remember dreams
occasionally. Usually they're anxiety dreams when I remember them,
and they involve Brett. I've got to find him, or we're together and
I've got help us escape something."

"I'm not in them?"

"Usually not," she said. Not apologetically, but softly.

"I don't remember mine at all."

"Then I think you should try to remember them."

"I'll need to set the alarm."

"That's fine," she said. "If I wake up, you can tell them to me."
Then she smiled.


When I saw "Kettle" in the caller id, I was ready to declare
victory. "Hello?" I said.

"Hi John, it's William Kettle."

"Hi, good to hear from you. Any news?"

"Well, not exactly. I'll tell you where that stands. But first.
We've received a subpoena."

"A subpoena -- why?"

"The sheriff's department would like a DNA sample."

"Why did they subpoena -- I would have given them one."

"It's always best to make sure you know why they want one."

"You told them I wouldn't give them one?"

"I told them we wanted a judge to say this wasn't just a fishing
tripŠ"

"I guess one didŠ"

"Don't worry about that. A subpoena says, we want to fish in this
fishing hole. It doesn't say anything more than that."

"What are they fishing for?"

"Jane Doe #27. I think they mentioned that case to you. There's
nothing there, so you don't need to worry about this. Do you?"

"What?"

"There's no reason we need to worry, is there?"

"None," I said as firmly as I could. "So -- what is up with
Hayley?"

"All right. We don't have her. But we are on her trail, and we know
exactly what the police know. She and her beau are in or around
Santa Fe. We think that her companion has some distant relatives
there, although it's unclear where they live or what their names
are. His mother is useless in this regard; they must be on his
father's side, or maybe she's afraid to let her son get caught."

"Is this good news?"

"Here's the really interesting news. We've been given to understand
that Hayley is negotiating a return through her family's attorney.
Her conditions are that she wants to marry her boyfriend and that
she wants him protected from statutory rape charges. She is
threatening to cross over to Mexico otherwise."

"That seems like it should fly. Or won't it?"

"I don't know. I assume her parents just want her back, but a
desire for revenge against this boy is not beyond belief."

"Hmmm," I said, realizing something. "Won't this be pyrrhic
victory? I mean, if they arrange her return, they'll announce it
and we've got nothing."

"Maybe," he said. "We could beat them to the punch, if my sources
hold out. The police knew all along, etc."

"But we could look like opportunists. How does that play in the
court of public opinion?"

"It varies," he said, somewhat down at where this was going.

"So how am I going to get them off my back?"

"Well, the DNA test is good news, actually. Give it a number of
weeks, they get something back with no match, and already their
surprise suspect is looking less like a coup. That should do it.
The test is a good thing."

"I guess so," I said.

"Isn't it?" he said, with that sudden edge, probing if I had
something to tell my counsel. I answered as best I could to relieve
his nagging doubt.

We hung up shortly thereafter, with our plan simply to wait. I
would go to the police station the next morning, and give a DNA
sample to a crime scene technician from the sheriff's department.

I made a more sumptuous meal than the usual spaghetti and garlic
bread - - I think it was New York prime and baked potatoes -- and
Doreen and I shared a glass of red wine. After you had dispersed,
she waited to hear what was up. DNA, I said. We went through the
usual stuff. She disappeared to look up this Jane Doe if she could.

Did your mother have suspicions about me, too? I don't think so. I
think she was doing due diligence -- making sure so that there
would be no unintended doubt in her voice. But I really didn't know
for sure, and I don't know what she found out.

I was used to staying up rather late, but this evening I didn't
want to get on the Internet or read or write or even watch TV.
Before going to bed, I resolved to set the alarm. Doreen gave me a
look -- the timing wasn't very good for her -- but she only said,
"I look forward to it." I lay in bed for a fairly long time before
sleep took over; Doreen was still up.

When an alarm rings at an unaccustomed time, there is a sorting
period. Your mind registers the sound and may figure out that it
has relevance, but sometimes it isn't quite ready to throw the
switch to drag itself out of recumbence. And then even after your
mind starts to light up, the body remains inert. Without the
response of your body, place seems irrelevant, as does time; you
are ethereal for a moment.

I knew I had been dreaming -- I could still see the dream as if in
it, not yet as a remembered but empty husk. I was walking away, but
looked over my shoulder at the tableau. He was there, the bog
monster from the séance, towering over a group of quaint country
denizens. I recognized the garb as colonial. The bog monster was
accepting an offering of some stretched-out rabbits and a raccoon.
I felt that this was a ritual that the Native Americans had carried
out for centuries. Live and let live. Perhaps the monster provided
a form of protection: guidance for the lost, protection against
roaming predators, shaman-like medicinals. Or maybe they just
crossed paths occasionally, always warily honoring each other, lest
there be a fateful misunderstanding.

I woke up, aware of the import of the dream but barely able to hold
onto it. Into the darkness I said: "Doreen? Doreen?"

"John?"

"I dreamt about the bog monster. It has been here for centuries,
and has lived in peace with the residents. I don't know what he did
in return, but he accepted gifts from the Indians and then the
settlers."

I could hear Doreen rolled over. "What?"

I repeated myself.

"That's a nice dream. What do you think it means?"

I was surprised. "It means what I said. It gives us the history."

"John," she said, "the bog monster doesn't exist and that was just
a dream. There's no history there."

"Right," I said, realizing the import of what she said. Every
emotion -- even my excitement -- had been part of the dream? Wow, I
thought. "It seemed real," I said.

"I know," she said and was soon snoring lightly.

I tried to make sense of it. I found my mind wandering back to
Dally Moore. Could she have been saved by the bog monster, if
subscriber had only understood? Sure, the bog monster did not
exist. But if? Two degrees of "if" and she might have been saved.
Two degrees.

I felt myself floating back into a dream realm, and knew: there was
so much more about this creature, but I would never remember a bit
of it.


Horvath met me at the reception desk, and we walked back to their
interview room. A different woman was there -- I had expected the
sheriff's deputy from before, naively. This woman reminded me of my
colleague Carol, Ms. Don't-Get-Me-Started. Or maybe she was just
the archetypal young grandmother. In either case, she seemed like
someone you just automatically knew. She actually said: "Okay,
honey, open up." She swabbed inside my mouth and then zippered up
the swab. "All done, hon." She smiled at Horvath -- a look that
spoke volumes about how people greet and treat each other with
respect in her world. She didn't look at me again.

Horvath looked like he wanted to talk but was inhibited by Kettle's
no doubt intentional absence. 'We'll talk to you when we are good
and ready.'

I headed out into the parking lot, and realized I didn't want to go
home, now that I made it out of the house. I knew where I would go.
I drove and parked, peeked into Carolina Brewery and then walked to
the nearby coffee joint, 3Cups. Nothing. I knew it was early. I
went back to the brewery, ate lunch, and then went to the café
again. I sat there for about an hour -- I was ready to leave in
fact -- when he walked by. I got up and followed.

He was in a hurry, walking with a nervous step, his hands jammed
into his front pockets and some folders under one arm.

"Barry!" I shouted. I had to shout twice more, each time louder,
before he stopped, reflected and then turned. He looked at me very
carefully, I assume checking for a half concealed weapon.

"Hi Barry," I said as I neared, trying to sound approachable but
not inappropriately friendly.

"Hello John." He had blanked his face in anticipation of anything.

"I was just having a coffee," I said. "Would you like to join me?
-- We've been on the opposite sides of a pretty serious matter, but
I am curious about your opinion on something." When he didn't
reply: "I dreamt last night about the bog monster, and I was
wondering what you would think about the dream."

That smelled of a trap for him. "I'm sorry I've got to be
somewhere. Someone's expecting me."

"Did you hear that I was out at Barbara's recently."

"I did," he said as if he thought I would be surprised. "Your son
has a bit of an infatuation."

"Maybe, but Brett is more confused than anything. His French
teacher is an existentialist of sorts, and Brett was acting out his
teacher's desperation for intellectual comfort."

"Or maybe he's a desperate intellectual himself."

"I guess so. I'll let you go. But I would appreciate the
opportunity to talk with you about my dream. It seemed very real."

He reflected on the opportunity this represented, and decided on a
third course. "I've got a few minutes. Tell me now."

"All right," I said, a bit disappointed. I related the dream and
its extensions to him, more or less exactly as they had occurred to
me.

"Unlikely," he said with a dismissive face. "Regularized contact
would be suicidal. Consider the Neanderthals. They disappear from
the fossil record simultaneous with the rise of Homo sapiens
sapiens, without leaving a trace in our genome. That was not a
happy sharing of resources, like some prehistoric Thanksgiving. And
even that, you know how it turned out for the native peoples."

I felt some consternation, but I realized there was something else
I was after, too. "Why does Barbara think I should be talking to
you?"

"How am I to know that," he said but with an evasive tone.

"What do you know that I don't?"

Now it was his turn to be irritated. "Nothing. Except that I've had
some visits by Duke officials trying to convince me to drop my
book."

"Really? Why?"

"They seem to think that my theory about the monster in Duke
forest, which I've been sharing in a few readings, would negatively
impact their mission of research and education."

"And what do you think?"

"I think," he said, with a sidelong glance at someone strutting
down the sidewalk on the other side of the street, "they are
concerned that someone on the outside knows. But more importantly,
they want to know who my source is."

"Who's that?" I asked with a foreboding.

He smirked and moved closer. "You're convenient. -- But you will
not be forsaken; I'm working on that. Barbara may believe that's
farther along than it is. In the meantime, I don't think they'll be
bothering you, but if they do, I'd say it's something you saw once
on an image on a satellite service, but the image was replaced and
you haven't seen anything since. The rest would be my elaboration.
That should satisfy them."

"What is the connection between my dream and your creature?"

His expression changed, as if he realized he'd been cavorting with
the enemy. "You are so naïve, Densch. The connection is only in
you." He marched off, with the purposive gait of someone for whom
each step nears him imperceptibly but inexorably to his destiny.


That afternoon, I got a call from work. I was being taken off paid
status, as a suspect in a felony case. Proceedings were underway
against my continued employment with the county. "I'm sorry, John."
What, I'm not sorry? I'm not disappointed beyond words? Not angry?
"Thanks," I said. We both hung up immediately after that, or at
least I imagined that it was simultaneous.

I left a message for Kettle, on the assumption he'd be able to find
me a labor lawyer to fight this battle. I didn't know where to go
from there. More disappointment and angst with Doreen. More
uncertainty in talking with you. More daydreaming. More anxiety
about writing my memoirs or Derek's story or the screenplay to a
modern Crucible. I sat down, decided to move sideways on all this,
and started to write something else.

The boy who heard the voice would create a tent under his sheet and
say into the overheated air, "I'm ready."

The voice would come, sometimes sounding different, sometimes
unsure where it had left the story. "Help me. Where did we leave
off?" The boy would try to retell the last part of the story, and
the voice would inevitably have to back things up, because the boy
could hardly retain the full scope of the story. Below is a
composite version from many nights, without the interludes of the
boy's stories.

"I am the watcher," said the voice. "I have spent many eons
watching, and it is finally at an end. But all in its due course.
First, let me put you in my place. I am somewhat younger than you,
or rather, than you would be if you were here with me. I can't say
for sure if you were alive when I was born, or how long we were on
earth together. There were many changes in your time, many changes
in medicine and biology and computing and nanotechnologies. Some
benefited, some did not.

"I was a graduate of a very good university, a physicist of some
promise. My specialty was subatomic physics. We used an atom
smasher to try to figure out details about the smallest particles
of the universe. On the day we made the discovery, our task was
relatively simple. A theoretician asked us to examine something
that he had found in the formulas he was working on. He had brought
together two distinct parts of physics: quantum mechanics, the
theory that describes how the tiniest particles in the universe
interact, and thermodynamics, the description of how energy moves
on larger scales. He had been piqued by looking at some thought
experiments from each of these fields.

"He started with a thought experiment called Maxwell's Daemon.
Maxwell was trying to find a way to explain the logic of the second
law of thermodynamics. This physical law says that things tend to
fall apart, not together. Maxwell found his example in how heat
spreads. A fire is hotter closer and cooler farther away; when the
fire burns down it is not long before the ashes and embers are cool
to the touch. Maxwell asked, okay, can we imagine some way in which
things would not happen this way? He described two chambers with
moving particles and a door between them; let's say that one
chamber is warmer and the other cooler, and that the door is open.
The particles are like bouncing balls that never stop. Over time,
the cooler balls in the cooler side will bounce into the warmer
side, and vice versa. Everything gets mixed up. That seems obvious.
But can we imagine it not happening that way? Maxwell said: let's
bring in a daemon, a pretend creature who is small enough and
strong enough to control the door. He watches the balls and lets
the warmer balls -- the faster ones -- into the warmer side and
deflects the cooler, slower ones. Over time, the warmer side
regains its warmth. The daemon can overcome the second law. But he
is the exception that proves the rule.

"Does this make any sense to you?"

"Does the daemon fly?"

"I suppose he does. But he's not real."

"If he's not real, why does Mr. Maxwell depend on him?"

"Exactly. Well, our friend had the same question. Is there anything
real in the universe like our daemon, who might want to do Mr.
Maxwell's work?"

"Is there?"

"As it turns out, yes. But first we have to look at the other
approach to the problem we had, the quantum mechanical approach. A
German physicist named Heisenberg had formulated a very important
principle about the tiniest particles. He said that you can know
how fast those little things are moving, or you can know where they
are in their little orbits, but you can't know both at once. He
formulated this principle in part so we wouldn't forget that the
universe at that size is completely different than at our size.

"A younger German physicist named Schroedinger put a twist on
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. He said, let's imagine a cat in
a box with some wires attached to it. The wires can carry a current
strong enough to kill the cat, but the circuit won't be completed
-- the electricity won't flow -- unless a test with special
equipment finds a super-tiny particle in a particular state --
let's call it right-twisting. But here's the wild part. The math
about things on that scale says that the particle is both left- and
right-twisting, and neither, until something else forces it to be
one or the other. In this thought experiment, it's not forced until
the moment we open the box to see what happened. Once we do that,
the cat is either alive or dead. But until that moment, until the
box is opened, the cat is the living undead, both dead and alive."

"Does it die?"

"If the experiment is repeated, sometimes it does, because the
particle is in the right state about half the time."

"Why would he kill a cat?"

"Fortunately, he never actually killed a cat. This was another
thought experiment. But my friend the theoretician looked at this
uncertainty and the role of observation, and at Maxwell's daemon,
and asked, can quantum mechanics help something as big und lunky as
a human being do the work of Maxwell's daemon and violate the laws
of nature?"

"Can he?"

"That was the problem set before us. We decided to test it by
smashing tiny particles in a special way that took advantage of
another ambiguity in the math. It was a typical, not very exciting
atom-smashing experiment, with one twist: instead of just using
sensors to capture information, we set up the smasher so one of us
could observe the reaction. Remember how the cat's particle was
both and neither until and unless we opened the box and looked at
the cat? Well, now one of us had his head in the box to watch the
very moment when our particles collided. Sure enough, the act of
observation made all the difference."

"What did you see?"

"A burst of energy. This was a very small experiment -- we would be
as big as galaxies to these particles, if they were human size --
but my friend could still see the flash. It would be like you or me
exploding as bright as a supernova. We were all flabbergasted
because the equations didn't predict that much energy.  -- We had
to question the theorist for a long time before he admitted that he
had tweaked things make them seem more reasonable."

"He lied?"

"He didn't lie so much as not believe his own eyes. Well, he
believed after the flash. We repeated the experiment several times,
and got the same results each time. We tried several different
kinds of observation, and what made us so very surprised was that
the daemon had to know what he or she was doing. A cat or
salamander or beetle wouldn't work. We finally decided that it had
to do with the scale differences and whether the observer could
understand that he or she was looking at something invisibly small.
That moment was the most extraordinary moment of my life. We had
proven that intelligence was encoded in the fabric of the universe.
The laws of physics anticipated the day when creatures were smart
enough to write the laws down and look at their loopholes.

"We found a huge one. Energy for free, or near it. The energy
required to smash the particles was a minute portion of the energy
released. We had other ways to create as much energy, but in
comparison they were all inefficient and dirty, like gas and coal,
or difficult to control, like fusion. What's fusion? It's the
nuclear furnace inside the sun and other stars, and this furnace
gets its energy through the melding of two tiny atoms into one
larger one. Fusing them releases a great gob of energy because one
larger atom needs less energy to stay together than two small ones.
But the act of fusion is messy. In a giant furnace, it works fine,
but in the small scale of a human power plant it took us almost as
much energy to fuse as it gives off. Our new energy source, on the
other hand, was clean, efficient, easy to generate and to control.

"There was only problem. Can you guess it?"

"You didn't like looking at the flash?"

"That's it, in a nutshell. Our process needed someone to observe
it, someone who understood what he or she was doing. We could wear
special glasses to protect our eyes, but that is not really the
point. I am getting ahead of myself. We worked many years to make
the power commercially viable. Those were good years, the
foundational ones for everything that followed. Do you want know
about my life?"

"I guess so."

"All right, then. The next few times I'll tell you about me."


I hesitated to wake Doreen because she sounded so deeply asleep,
though I knew I should -- especially since I had woken her for the
last dream. "Doreen? Doreen? Dor -- EEN?"

"What, John?" she said in a husky absent voice.

"I remembered another dream. You're in this one."

"Really," she said, and then there was silence for a long time.
Finally, she turned half over and said, "Tell me itŠ Your dream."

"It felt like it went on for a long time, but it'll be short in
telling. I was looking for you in our house, and I realized that
you were missing. I drove to the Duke Forest. Your car was there,
with a door open. I was afraid, but I ran into the forest and
wandered all over until I found the bog monster's home, just like
Brett had described it. The bog monster wasn't there, but I could
sense him. I knew from him that you were gone, and I could tell
that it was forever."

"How did that make you feel?" she said quietly.

"Well, that's the point. It felt like the worst thing possible. The
absolute worst thing possible."

"Were you sad?"

"I wasn't as sad as determined."

"You were going to find me?"

"No, I was going to get out of the dream and keep you."

"That's sweet, John," she said, ending the conversation and
relaxing into a more sleep-friendly position.

"I guess so, but it was very powerful. It was like my mind was
talking to me. I feel like I finally know what it means for
something to disappear. It's different than other kinds of loss,
maybe not harder, but it's different and it really is scarier than
anything else. I don't want us to disappear from each other, that's
all."

"Okay," Doreen said, "fish love eggs." Or maybe that wasn't what
she said, but it was something equally non-sensical, as she slipped
back into sleep.

I lay there for a while. It was 2 a.m., and I had ambitions to get
to some deep sleep still, but I wanted to think some things
through. Closure, I thought: I've been lacking closure on so many
fronts. And even though I was looking for Doreen in the dream, I
could imagine these other souls waiting for me to find them.
Hillary Bingham. Jane Doe #27. Dally. Even Derek. I wanted so badly
to finish their stories, and the only possible way, I thought, was
to talk to Barbara again. Maybe I wouldn't have the courage to make
the call in the light of day, but in the dark it was a decision
that gave me peace.

Around 7am, Doreen and I were sitting at the breakfast table. It
was before you came down, Brett. We were silent, but I figured that
she was chewing over the way I had interrupted her sleep now twice.
Without introduction, Doreen said: "I want us to see a marriage
counselor."

I had thought she left this strategy unmentioned because of a
professional pride, or maybe because of a fear that it would force
a confession from her. I couldn't figure out why now, when I
thought we were making progress on our own. Maybe it was because
she wanted help extricating herself and Brett from the wreckage of
my life?

"Oh-kay," I replied in that non-committal way that could bury any
suggestion. I wanted to see if she continued.

"I think we're ready," she said with a glance at me, a tired look
to say that I wasn't helping at all with this.

"What makes us ready?" I asked.

She got up and put her dish in the sink, then looked at me with a
well- known expression: I don't know why I bother. But she stopped
at the table and put her hands on the back of her chair, and said
firmly: "Because, John, I can believe that you care. And I can feel
that I do, too. But there's a lot of crap, still." She walked out
of the room.

I felt bad, could understand her motivation and her frustration. I
would apologize and tell her that I absolutely agree that we should
see a counselor. It would help, sure. I had to get over my
suspicions.

The next tidbit probably wasn't that same morning at all, but let's
say it was. I opened the local free paper and there on the fifth
page of the first section was a story entitled "Sheriff and Police
Hung Up on Bog Monster." The second paragraph began: "Police
sources confirm that a person of interest is local bog-monster
expert John Densch. The sources report that Densch's habit of
countryside hiking led investigators to compare his profile and
whereabouts to a number of cold cases. With a dearth of evidence
that ties him to this panoply of crimes, investigators are
apparently concluding that the monster story is evidence enough of
his instability. 'They've drawn up a profile that makes him the
monster,' a source said on condition of anonymity. Some critics
consider this is a waste of limited investigative resources. 'There
are so many unserved felony warrants in this county,' said one
frustrated local official, 'and the sheriff is chasing phantoms.'"

The byline wasn't Moore, but I was certain he was behind it.
Whether it hit hard enough to make the investigators lay off, I had
no idea. I called Kettle and left a message. You left for school,
and Doreen gave me a peck of a kiss before she left for work. I
filled the morning as best I could, with some puttering around the
house, cleaning, web surfing, and daytime television.

Around 11 a.m. I called Barry. After hello, I said: "I appreciate
the article you wrote in the News."

"Article, huh," he said, sounding distracted or half asleep. "Let
me look." There was the expected rummaging, door opening and
nondescript rubbing as he went outside and got the paper. A few
seconds later he was opening it. "That's not me, John."

I was dubious at first, then suspicious. "It sounds just like you."

"Not at all, I wouldn't have made up that effluent. I don't know
who wrote it, but I would suspect a partisan. Your lawyer perhaps?"

"How do you know it's made up?"

"Look at those quotes. Unless someone shoved the words in their
mouths, nobody would talk that way to a reporter. The lack of
attribution is also symptomatic. What I don't understand is how
your partisan convinced the reporter to put his name on this, and
why the paper agreed to print it, pretty bow or not."

"I thought you were going to help me. That's why I thought -- "

"I am going to help you, but not by competing with lies. Barbara
and I are working on -- on locating that girl that started all
this. We have reason to believe that something made their escape go
other than to plan. Leaving the boy's car was manifestly not what
they intended. We think that there might have been a sighting."

"Okay, I see. -- You are only in this to stay close to Barbara."

"Fringe benefit, my friend. But I'm in this for the long haul.
Every day something new comes my way that reaffirms my convictions.
It's only a matter of time."

"Sure, okay, Barry. -- But I guess I shouldn't be too cynical. I
have a question for you that will make your theory seem center of
the road." I described the article about Dally. "Could she in any
way be a relation?"

"I don't know," said Barry, "only if her white family migrated to
New Hampshire. Altogether, not a lot of that went on."

"All right. My real question has to do with Barbara." I swallowed
hard. "Would she do a séance?"

"To connect with this Dally girl? You really do surprise me,
Densch. I had you pegged as a curious but conventional-thinking
stiff, and now I see you're as weak as any horoscope-fixated
tealeaf reader. Sure, she'll do a séance. But she doesn't like
calling up those who died unhappy, trust me. You might be able to
get her to channel someone who knew the girl."

"In your opinion, it's all just smoke and mirrors, right."

"She'll do smoke and mirrors, if that makes you feel better."

"I guess that answers my question."

"Your question is really, will she help me feel better. And that
transaction always takes two willing partners, in my experience."
Now it was his turn to pause. "I've got a question for you, too,
since we're asking for favors. The National Sasquatch Association
will be holding an academic conference here in the Triangle in a
couple months. I've been asked to speak. I'd like to have you
there, too. Just a few remarks. And yes, Barbara will be there,
too."

"What in the world would you want me to talk about? How to parlay
an offhand remark into a murder investigation?"

"Oh come on, Densch," he said with real disgust. "Self pity loses
its lost- puppy appeal very quickly. I'm talking about exposing a
conspiracy of silence, maybe the very same one that is targeting
you. Lift the veil, man."

"I don't have a veil to lift. Everyone is keeping stuff from me.
I'm just the stooge here."

"Well, if that's how you feel. I'd like to believe you could start
to take control of your life."

I had already formulated my fallback position. "If they drop the
investigation, and if you arrange the séance, I'll take part in
your conference."

"It's not mine, and I'm not Barbara's receptionist. Tell you what,
though, I'll let her know that you're eager to pay for a séance.
That should get you what you want."


The dung balls occupied Derek endlessly. Shortly after speaking
with the priest on that morning, he found himself departing the
earthly hospital; immediately he sensed that his body was asleep on
bug world. But the sleep chemicals wouldn't let him stir, and he
had to endure a comatose moment, once again unsure if he was
comatose on earth and dreaming bug world, or out of sorts on bug
world. Even after his mind's control was returned, it took a while
for his body to clean out the cellular life-form and the inhibitors
coursing through his blood stream. He thought, maybe the alien
fungus is not benign at all, but a poison designed to shut him
down? An hour or so later he was able to sit up. And there in a
bowl lay the rest of the balls, inviting a more permanent
departure.

He was abandoned by Click-Cluck, Clum-Clum-Tock and the rest of her
crew. That hurt, though the reason was amply clear to him. He had
assumed that he would welcome the opportunity, but he found himself
now uninterested in exploring: with a guide, sure; on his own, a
different matter. He was spared the desperation of being hungry by
shipments of glop dropped off by a series of unfamiliar bugs who
ignored him and left in a hurry.

He watched a lot of television. One day, the signal changed
abruptly, and he saw a large bug assemblage come into focus, with a
familiar figure at the head. Her clicks were picked up by the
broadcaster and were amplified over the whole hall. Derek
immediately noticed a curious phenomenon with the bug antennae --
they were synchronizing in groups, or, rather, slight differences
were amplified over a distance so that any gaggle of bugs seemed
all in unison, but a hundred bugs over the group had settled on a
different pattern. An extraordinary visual.

Subtitles emerged at the bottom of the screen. They were the usual
gobbledygoop from Thunk, but along with cues from Click-Cluck's
speech (more complex than Derek was used to) he was able to
reconstruct the text: "Šand that, fellow leatherbacks, tells me
that we are at a beginning. Think of the pink-skinned, flighty
mammal called 'Derek,' taken from his embroiled, self-immolating
planet centuries ago. Everything about him is stochastic,
destructive, self-absorbed. And yet he has passed every
intelligence test devised against him, confounding those who would
immobilize him. Even now, he is struggling against the forces of
stasis that would bury his consciousness in comforting memory. Š
Fellow leatherbacks, we on our world are only the consciousness of
memory, nothing more. We would not change our ways, our world, our
order, our faith in having no faith, for any promise or hope for
the future. Our leaders are to be chosen for their selflessness,
but we know they are more chosen to reaffirm what exists as
completely and as unquestioningly as bugly possible." There was a
cut in the broadcast, showing that it wasn't live.

Click-Cluck went on: "We must explore, openly and consciously,
alternatives to the eternal sameness. Where can we find these
alternatives? Let us consider the proposition that there is a
higher authority than our self- imposed one. Yes, a higher entity.
A supernatural being. A God." The camera swept the audience again,
but this time the antennae were dissolving into a mass of
uncoordinated undulations. "How would we go about trying to
understand such a being? How could one go about making a
connection? Where do we begin? Is there one among you who has a
way, who has the willpower to speak?" She stopped; the audience
continued to roil. "Let me speak then. I am here today to tell you
that I have communicated with God. I have done so through the aid
of his unwitting prophet, this soft-skinned, salamander-like
mammal, Derek, who speaks our tongue a little, but whose arcane
language I have learned to decode, down to the deepest levels, to
uncover meanings that Derek himself does not recognize.

"This frail being does not know his importance. He pities himself
for having been unlucky enough to be taken from his world and
brought to us, yet he does not understand how little chance there
was that his body in particular could survive the voyage. When he
arrived on our planet, we had no reason to believe he would recover
from his long hibernation, but one day he came out of a coma for
good. His frail constitution has baffled our medical and veterinary
experts -- always on the brink of collapse without ever failing. He
overcame the ball test and has challenged us to accept his
intelligence from the very beginning. None of this makes sense
without positing that something more than chance brought him to us
and that something more than his self-preservation instinct is
guiding him. I believe that God -- our God -- has decided to use
this human to tell us that we have gone astray."

The bug audience was in a general state of agitation. Derek assumed
one more shocking statement would set them off completely.
Click-Cluck continued: "Derek comes from a world that has never
seen a society or culture without the expression of a God, or even
multiple gods. Like all humans, he is grounded in the simplistic
conviction that he has direct access to divinity. We can all see
how impossible that is. We could not have spent 25,000 years in
complete ignorance of the deity. All we need do is look at his
world with its endless progression of religious wars and conflicts,
and know that the certainty that drives their dogma is poisonous,
leaving a species of self-destroyers engaged in alternating rounds
of killing and dying. That is nothing for us!" For a moment, Derek
hardly recognized her voice -- it was as if through the shouting
the clicks and thunks had been transformed into articulated
humanlike sounds.

She continued more quietly: "But look at him." Derek saw his 3D
image projected a hundred times enlarged behind her. It was from
his early days, before the exo-skeleton, when he lay on the ground
like a fly bound to flypaper. "This pathetic creature is telling us
something, in a fashion that he cannot understand, because he
cannot get outside of his squishy skin. He reminds us of the primal
hope and tenacity that underlie animalistic intelligence. We have
forgotten them -- forgotten hope and intensity -- for the sake of
rational security. We have forgotten them for the same reason that
we condemn the human species for its brutality and destructiveness.
But we have been mistaken, fellow believers. We have been mistaken
because our world has falsely understood this as a dichotomy:
rationality or hope, security or belief. These are the false
alternatives of a cowardly order. We must have the courage to
embrace hope. I believe in the deepest, richest hope possible. --
And I believe that our God has called to us through the frenetic
articulations of a mammalian voice box."

Derek heard himself speaking, saying among other things: "Sure I
believe in God, especially when I think I'll see him soon. Š I
think it's hard to imagine a universe that set itself in motion;
doesn't there have to be a God? Š Humans believe in different Gods,
but they are just facets of the same sense of the divine. Š Sure,
there has been a lot of killing in the name of God, but I wouldn't
blame that on God. We'd kill without God, but without the hope for
redemption. Š You don't have any religion here on bug world? What
do you do when you need comfort -- you don't even have any
thumbsŠ." Click-Cluck was dutifully translating, although Derek
couldn't follow how she had made sense of his thumb reference.

"Those are expressions of God from another world. Now it is time
for us to listen for her speaking to this world, speaking of hope
and belief without self-destruction." She was silent for a long
time. "Here are the first admonitionsŠ." As the giant screen
displayed the bug writing, she began speaking in a reading voice.
The camera flowed over the audience that had fallen into the state
of chaos that Derek had expected. But the whipping antennae said
something to him that he had not expected: excitement,
uncontrollable excitement.


The fourth estate had its moment when, a couple days later, the
Chapel Hill police department announced that Hayley Blalock had
been located, safe and well, in New Mexico, and that she was at
that very moment being reunited with her family. A press conference
would not be scheduled for the Blalocks until they had all returned
home. Nothing was said in the announcement about the weeks of
silent pursuit; that would only come out later. Meanwhile, almost
simultaneously, the county sheriff stated that all recent but
unserved felony warrants would be assigned to a new special squad
for pursuing suspects. Oh, and by the way, John Densch was not a
suspect in any investigation.

That offhand remark was not yet enough to get me reinstated at
work, as my boss confirmed in a terse email, but I felt the
vindication all the way down into the soles of my feet. Do you feel
joy when an unjust accusation is lifted? It's a bit like answering
the old saw, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Why do we just
accept a language with so little precision that multiple competing
assumptions can be compressed into a single misleading question,
with no logical impedance at all? I wasn't happy or joyful, but
felt a release or relief or relaxation -- probably all three -- so
much so that you would have thought I'd received an apology from
the governor.

Doreen called when she was told by a colleague about the
announcement. "This is wonderful, John. Let's celebrate an end to
this mess tonight." I couldn't tell from her voice whether there
was more than the relief over the injustice -- if there was any
regret and joy over being freed of suspicion that I might have been
involved. Don't forget, I replied, that I haven't been cleared so
much as undesignated, and I'm still on administrative leave at
work. "Okay," she said ambiguously and begged off.

It was later that afternoon that I got a call from Barbara. She
didn't acknowledge the vindication at all, just jumped into the
séance. "There are a lot of details to work out with something like
this," she said, businesslike and guiding. "When would you like to
do it? I would suggest an evening next week."

"I appreciate the call," I said. " But I have to know more about it
before I can say yes. I went along with the bog monster séance, but
I don't know if I would be comfortable with the same approach
here."

I could feel the brief pause of the shop owner switching gears from
a friendly "we're all in the same corner on this" mode to a more
adversarial "the customer is the boss" stance.

"All right, John. What can I tell you about this kind of séance?"

I paused. "You would conjure up the spirit of this girl?"

"Barry was telling me about her," she said, solemnly. "A free black
girl who was kidnapped and sold back into slavery?"

"Yes, among a few others."

"I don't think it's a good idea, John. I mean, her in particular.
There isn't much to be gained for you or me by contacting the
bitterly dead. Believe me."

"But how does it work? Do they speak through you? How do you
contact them? Can we ask questions? How real is it, or is it just
suggestive, like an aura?"

A pause said to me: good questions, if overwrought.

"Is it real at all, you mean. You can be direct with me, John, I've
heard every expression of doubt and skepticism you could come up
with. And the answer is, yes, it's real. But the reality is that
communication with the dead is always indirect. You've heard about
words being left in the hiss and noise of random recordings?"

"I guess. There was a movie a while back."

"Exactly. It's good movie material, especially when they can throw
in a murder or two. A séance is more direct, but even less verbal."

"But you're afraid of conjuring up the unhappy dead, right?"

"Not afraid. But you won't be pleased with the message."

"What's the message?"

"It varies."

"Do you hear their voices? Like Ghost?"

"Not like the movie. And, no, nobody's going to slip into my body
for a dance."

"All right," I said, meaning that I would pay.

"Because of the difficulty, a séance is not on the donation plan,
John. It's pay in advance, no refunds. Who are we bringing?"

"I guess I'd still like to speak with Dally Moore. Also a Jane Doe
buried by the county. And a fellow named Derek Sorensen."


The voice came back nearly every night to the boy. He worried
sometimes that these visitations were a sign of something bad, like
the desire that tugged at him a few times, while sitting in the
family car, to leap into the front seat, grab the steering wheel
and jerk the car into oncoming traffic. He knew how bad that urge
was, and how senseless, but on those few occasions it was almost
overwhelming. Was this the same kind of thing? He didn't know; it
didn't seem to be. It also bothered him that he had to hide the
voice. His parents had shown little patience for his
keep-to-himselfedness, and he knew a description of the voice would
add considerable flame to that fire.

So he kept it secret. He said beneath his covers: "I'm here,
Bollum."

That was the name that the voice wanted him to use, even though it
wasn't a given name. "I have my reasons." The boy gave him a
made-up name, too. "Fred Finkelstein." "Good one," said the voice.
"I think I may even have known somebody by that name. But it's been
a long time, way too long for me to be sure of anything. I'm not
even sure how to say my own name any more. It's been many millions
of years since I've heard it spoken.

"But enough about that. You wanted to know about my family and how
I got to where I am -- "

"Where are you?"

"I'm in a location that leaves me as safe as possible from cosmic
events. Like a bomb shelter for the galaxy. It's very far away from
where you are."

"Why don't you come back to earth?"

"It so happens that earth is being burned up by the sun." He paused
to wait for a question. "The sun is swelling as its fuel runs down.
Earth will be fried to a crisp by the time the sun finishes
ballooning, collapsing and dying."

"What are the people and animals on earth going to do?"

"Well, Fred's friend, I'm sorry to say that there haven't been any
people or animals on earth for a hundred million years. It's been
more or less dead during that time. Too hot for life, since the sun
has been getting hotter."

"Where did they all go?"

"The people have been gone a long time -- that's part of the story
I'm going to tell you -- and some of the animals were put on other
planets. But I have to tell you, friend, I don't know what's become
of them. I have lost track of everyone and everything I once knew,
and I don't want to find them. I've become something that they
wouldn't recognize, and I have no idea what the people I knew have
become."

"Maybe you've all become the same thing?"

"I don't think so. But it's a nice thought. -- I want to say that
you remind me of my second son, but I would be lying if I said I
knew it. Are you a second son?"

"Yes."

"Ah ha. Okay, let's pretend that I'm coming home from work, and
I've hugged your mother and given her a big kiss, and we're all
excited, and you are asking why. 'Well, sport,' I might say, 'today
we discovered something that will be the most important discovery
in the history of the world. My name is going to be on the news
sheets and sign posts and on holographic television and on the
hypernet.' You look at me and say, 'What did you discover?'
'Energy,' I say, 'a source of energy like no other. It's easy and
cheap and clean to make. It'll change everything, the whole world.'

"And it did change the world. It took many years, more than I
anticipated but far fewer than almost everyone else predicted. You
spent a lot of time looking up at -- and then looking down at -- me
and saying, 'When are you going to be famous?' I was already, in
certain circles, but since I wasn't a character in cartoons, in
textbooks or in the gossip sheets, it didn't really register in
your worldview. The energy source took a few years to package -- we
had to work out all the contractual matters with our sponsors and
then even more details with the marketers and distributors. First,
the source supplemented existing energy plants, then do-it-yourself
home energy kits started springing up, and finally wholly new
energy plants popped up all over. The new economy had to find
ever-new ways to move and store the energy that we were creating
with such ease. The most important result of this energy glut was
the release of computing power -- people began setting up computer
superfarms everywhere; supercomputing analysis and simulation
became the ubiquitous norm.

"The computer explosion had its own unanticipated results: More
computers and more machines and more robots. The robots became more
intelligent and capable at an exponential clip, first creating a
wave of unemployment, then a culture of sharing and entitlement.
Robots were creating products so cheaply that companies were at
first happy to spend on the parts of the business that depended on
human creativity and human interaction. Lots of jobs, well paid and
with little stress, assured that everyone participated in this
renaissance. It lasted for a number of years, before the robots got
too far ahead of our ability to increase consumption. Suddenly
there was so much excess capacity -- cheap as it was -- that we
humans felt uncomfortable with the bonanza. Everyone feared the
bubble would burst, and so everyone tried to get theirs first.
There were temporary shortages and inflation, and when debt stopped
the spree, we fell into a massive worldwide depression, even while
the technological expansion continued.

"Your world became a hard place. The robot economy was partly
replaced by a virtual economy -- the great seas of computers
cranked through scientific and technological problems -- while
humanity suffered under its false sense of competition. When some
courageous leaders finally said the inevitable, we were all ready.
'Citizens,' they said, 'we have to accept that our existence is
changing. The money economy is self- destructive and backward
looking. We need to get in sync with the productive powers of our
artificially intelligent companions. Robots will be allowed to
replicate without restriction; no aspect of work will be
exclusively reserved for people only. The medium of exchange in our
new economy will be ration points based on the productivity of the
companions. The more productivity, the more points.'

"By this time, you may be an adult, with a family of your own, or a
retiree on your own. I was getting old myself. Fortunately,
medicine was making huge advances at the same time. The genetic
code was being disassembled and remade in the lab, and
nanotechnology promised a whole second line of defense against
disease and decay. I was happy to take advantage of all the
possibilities. And my opportunities were limitless -- I was, after
all, the central human overseer of the build-out of our energy
supplies and stores. Even while I trained armies of younger
managers and engineers, my person was becoming more and more
important. No one else had the overview over the evolution of our
energy sphere that I had, and the computers and robots handled so
much now that any overview was difficult at best.

"Human educational institutions could not hope to keep up with the
progress of the companions. Education veered towards the humanities
and the creative professions. Those who persevered in the sciences
spent their time trying to understand the documentation of the
companions' advances. I was something of an honored person among
the computers and robots. The reason was simple: they understood
that they were dependent on humans and no one was more attuned to
their need than I. You see, despite their intelligence, they could
never control the daemon that released the energy. It was yet more
evidence, I thought, that our human destiny was written in the
stars. Understand, said my electronic interlocutors, that we, too,
could take a more organic turn and come to the same intrinsic
intelligence as you, without all your evolutionary byways and
dead-ends; it would only take us a few million years. But we choose
not to. They said that, I might add, without elaborating further.

"You would think that in all these millions of years since they
would confess why they rejected our path. But no. 'We choose not
to,' was all I ever heard before they stopped conversing
altogether. I assume their evolving intelligence removed all desire
to communicate with us except for what was absolutely necessary. In
the intervening eons I've reached out to several organic races to
keep me company, but at some point they always begin to regard me
as a god or something, no matter how much I seek to disabuse them
of it. Throughout, the computers and robots have served me in
silence.

"But back to those years. Or maybe it's better that I tell you
another time. This is a sad story that I have to tell from
beginning to end."


Derek woke up in a cold-fever sweat. The realization had come to
him in a shallow dream -- so shallow that his half-conscious mind
grasped the consequences and began playing out the scenario. Was it
more than chance that he found himself on this godforsaken planet?
Could it be just random bad luck, or was he godforsaken and fated,
or were both he and Click-Cluck part of a plan whose outlines he
might begin to see, but whose vector of force pointed right through
him to thousands of years in the future? Was he the very tip of the
index finger on the hand of God, aiming the spark of regeneration
at the inert race of bugs?

Or was he a scourge? The sorry infectious agent of a
misunderstanding of causation and existence? Was, in the same way,
Click-Cluck a metaphysical Typhoid Mary?

He had a choice to make. The voice had given him the power to bring
about change where change might otherwise totter and die. All he
need do was explain the energy source to Click-Cluck, he thought,
and the progression would be inevitable. Assuming, of course, the
source worked in his universeŠ.

"Seriously," he later asked the voice. "Aren't you afraid that your
reaching out to the past will obliterate you? Say the bug race gets
the source first and decides to deny it to all other intelligent
races, wiping out humanity in the process."

"That would be unfortunate, sure, although already moot as you lie
there. Obliteration isn't something I fear. Think of time like a
wave on a pond. Any particular act is like a rock that caused the
wave. Even if you throw another rock into the same spot, the second
wave will never overtake the first. The propagation of time is
unaffected by time travel. The next time around is always different
-- but whether you think of it as an alternate universe or the same
being overwritten, the first wave gets to play itself out
undisturbed."

"Are there infinite universes even before time travel?"

"Actually, infinite is a mischaracterization of anything in this
universe or any other. The infinite means that it must already have
always happened and continue forever. If it has a start, it can't
be infinite. By definition almost: that which can never happen."

"But if every universe generates another universe at each place and
point in time, there must be infinite possibilities."

"Exactly not. Numerable, if in practice uncountable. There is a
difference."

"Can you tell me, are there better alternatives than others?"

"Oh for sure," replied the voice, "but it's all relative. The best
alternatives are where I'm alive."

"Is there a God?"

"You suppose because I'm a billion years old I should know the
answer to that question?"

"I was hoping."

"That God must have felt the need to reveal himself to me?"

"That's a long time," Derek answered feebly.

"Unfortunately, if there is a God, she isn't speaking to me."

"And that has made an atheist out of you?"

"I was always one."

"Is it possible that you missed the voice of God?"

"It's more than possible, frankly."

"Have you ever tried to reach out?"

"No, Derek. I would have nothing to say to God, either. As a
billion-year recidivist, I accept my condemnation, in whatever
fashion it takes."

"What if -- what if God has a plan for me?"

"Now that, my distant friend, is something that I cannot help you
with. If God is speaking to you, she will brook no interference."


Brett, I was surprised when I looked through these many pages and
realized that I've stopped writing to you and started writing for
myself. Now I understand why, and you'll see soon enough. I hope
that you, a 25 year-old considered young man, will have some
compassion with the old man. I guess I presume as much, if you have
gotten this far.

Another story appeared in the newspaper, this one about how I was
being wrongly investigated in the death of Jane Doe #27. The story
revealed that the sheriff's operating theory held her to be a
run-away who, while sojourning in a metropolitan area such as
Atlanta or Charlotte, had met a tragic end there. Or maybe she was
in transit. Regardless, their theory was that she was dead before
she was brought to that field. When the story came out, the sheriff
reiterated that I was not a suspect and that the investigation was
in the cold-case category and that the department continued to
communicate with law enforcement agencies in the region about Jane
Doe #27's identity. I assumed it was just a matter of days before I
would hear from someone that I was in the clear.

When I finally reached him, Kettle denied writing the stories, but
he did not deny his involvement. "The truth needs advocates," he
said.

"How did you get the stories published? Didn't the reporter have
some scruples about it?"

"The press is always publishing special-interest materials. If you
could compare most articles to the press releases they're based on
-- you'd be less surprised."

"I suppose.  So -- am I really in the clear now? Are the police
going to tell me something?"

"They still can't talk to you, and they won't tell me something
that would preclude a later investigation. I'm afraid we're going
to have to make due with their general claims."

"All right. Now I just need to get my job back."

"I've got a referral for you. A colleague who does public-sector
labor law."

"You can't just make some calls and threaten another article?"

"Never threaten, John, it just pisses people off. Let them realize
that they are better off doing what you want."

"What if they don't?"

"Don't just threaten, I said." There was a hard smile somewhere on
the other end of the phone. So that was what I had paid for.


It was getting on toward spring. I was surprised to find that you
had a new circle of friends, brought together by a shared interest
very unlike a magnetic girl. After a few evenings away you confided
to Doreen that you were playing Dungeons & Dragons; I had known the
game twenty years prior at college, but never played. I was
nonplussed, given your intellectual questioning of faith just weeks
before. But I shouldn't have been, right? Sometimes the only way to
find satisfaction is in a simulation of what you hope for.

Was it then or before that you had the dream? I hope you can
remember when you read this. It was not that long ago for me, and
yet I can do no better than give our conversation in broad outline.

You came early to the breakfast table, or I came late. Normally we
only overlapped for seconds.

"Hi Brett," I said. "How are you?"

The open-ended question is a parent's prerogative, I suppose,
although you might think I'd only use questions that I would like
to answer myself. No, being a parent is not like that at all.

"Fine," you said, getting your cereal from the cabinet. You had
such smooth movements as you raised your hand to reach or as you
walked that I mused sometimes that there was another single-purpose
brain in the base of your neck, one that directed the body when the
noisy and discontinuous conscious mind shut off.

"Sleep well?"

A delay to indicate the intrusion: "Well enough."

"Any dreams?" I asked.

You looked at me, perturbed, and I realized I hit a nerve with my
breakfast-time quizzing. You sat down and looked at your bowl
without pouring. "I did have a dream. It was awesome."

"Really?" I asked, briefly overcome by the disclosure. After a
pause to let you continue on your own: "What was it? A flying
dream?"

"No," you said.

"One with super powers?"

"No," you said, with a growing hint of sadness, because I was
making light of something that was important to you.

I caught that, and sat down. "Tell me."

"I don't remember it, actually." You looked at me with a charged
expression, as if challenging me to understand that paradox.

"Hmmm. What do you remember?"

"The feeling. It was --" and here I really don't remember. A
feeling of elation, or boding? Solemnity or joy? And what were you
facing? Spiders? Owls? A curtain of fire? Swirling galaxies? I have
no access to your dream any more, if I ever did.

I've had lots of time to think about this, though. Dreams like this
are the modern equivalent of native totems, the kind of experience
that once would mark a young man's transition to manhood and
identity. We don't get our adult names from these moments -- we may
even forget every detail about it the very next morning -- but we
can still feel how we've changed. Mine involved, as best I remember
it, a sea of spiders overrunning me, an expression of my fears and
dependency, and then in the distance a curtain of lights with
purple sun, calling me into the unknown.

"Awesome," you finished. "I was afraid, but I knew what I had to
do."

"Go toward it?"

"Yes, toward it. But I went the opposite direction. Or that's what
I remember. The weird thing is that I know it's wrong. My mind
changed the outcome. What's up with that?"

"I don't know," I said, trying to remember if I had ever had such a
surprise. No, or rather: yes. It came back to me later that the
meaning of my dream's goal flipped completely in my rational mind,
so that the curtain of lights became Reason. I remember thinking,
way back when and then again: there is no defense against the
thinking mind. Except -- suspicion.

Just a few moments later you had munched through a bowl of crispy
wheat chunks, made softer and waterlogged with the milk that
sometimes missed and coursed down your chin. After you left, a
small white puddle on the table was the only reminder. I sat with
your puddle for company for another hour or two.


The therapist was someone your mother had never met. We both wanted
to find a disinterested third party: Doreen because of the
professional embarrassment, I think, and me because of the fear of
predisposition. Margaret Fulton was an attractive, stylishly
dressed older woman, with a droopy but still wrinkle-free face.
Most noticeably, she was an unusually short woman, with the gaze of
someone who was perpetually fighting against her relative height:
stemming against the door that would slam on her; threatening a law
suit for professional disrespect; uttering a curse at the person
who looked past her to the next person in a line. But she came
highly recommended from Doreen's closest friend at work, and she
lived in Durham and seldom worked with people in Chapel Hill.

"So," she had just asked, "what is it you want from this? Are you
looking to stay together?"

I shot a glance at Doreen, which she did not return but I know she
felt it, and I saw a hint of a smirk. Looking was the wrong thing
to do, but I couldn't take it back. I waited for Doreen to answer.

"Of course we are," she said without taking her eyes off Margaret.

"I think so," I said, with emphasis on "so." Still no eye contact,
and I couldn't figure out what she was communicating to Margaret.

"All right," said our therapist with an audible breath. That was
clear: there is a lot of work to be done here.

After the "tell me about how you met" and similar questions, we
were left with a bit of silence. Margaret smiled. We both squirmed.
The pause seemed interminable.

"One thing I wish for from this," Doreen said finally, "is that he
would take some responsibility for making this thing work. But it's
always me, and I'm getting tired. Very tired." The first glance my
direction.

"How does that make you feel, John?"

An accusation that I expected, but not my reaction. "How does that
make me feel? I guess on one level I deserve it. I don't always pay
attention to her. But how does it make me feel? It burns me. It
makes me realize that I have never felt supported in this marriage,
that I have always felt judgment and condemnation and withheld
affection. How do I feel? I feel like we took a good couple of
decades to get to this point, but only because we're slow learners.
We've got the same problems we overlooked at the beginning, but now
we're neither one of us willed to let pass the things that upset
and disappoint us. Doreen, you say I never take responsibility, but
the reality is that you never wanted me to have responsibility. You
would prefer we fail than I have your confidence and trust." Tears
were welling and I could have gone on for another ten minutes, but
Margaret broke my concentration with a sip from her tea mug. I
stopped.

"Doreen?" she said, putting the mug down.

"I'm surprised," she said, again without looking, but softer. "I
don't agree -- at all -- but I'm glad to hear him raise his voice.
I've tried -- I have been hoping that we would both speak clearly
with each other."

Margaret gave each of us a measured smile and said, "That is a good
point to start from. You both need to speak and you both need to be
heard." As she let that sink in, she seemed to retreat into a
memory of her own, her profile jutting forward in a small act of
defiance against I know not what.


Barbara wanted to do some research before scheduling the séance,
and she asked to meet to discuss. I knew she meant to talk me out
of these three individuals -- 'wouldn't you rather meet your great
great grandmother?' -- but I was eager, too, to get the logistics
resolved. She offered to come to our house. I thought that less
than wise, given everything; the brewery, I suggested. She
hesitated but accepted. We met for a late lunch the next day.

She dressed more conventionally than at her own home or in her own
element, no different than any working soccer mom who needed to
accommodate both modes, in an earth-tone pants / white shirt
combination that accentuated her flyaway hair and bright brown
eyes. She stopped at the door and surveyed, and then sat across
from me. After the formalities and an order of a wine spritzer,
Barbara took a macraméd folder from her shoulder bag and spread
several photocopied sheets out in front of her.

"Dally Moore?" she asked without introduction.

"Yes, Dally Moore."

"Thanks for faxing me this article. I know some people who are
active in genealogical research, and I asked them how we might find
an abducted free black, if she was never returned. They were not
hopeful. But it's worse than that. She doesn't show up by name on
the census around here, either before or after the incident. Not
unheard of, I'm told."

"Do you need to know where she's buried or something?"

"No," she said, not as good humored as I've known her to be.
Something painful here for her. "I don't. But I need to know more
about her if we're going to have a chance to make contact."

"Am I going to hear the same about Jane Doe #27 and Derek?"

"John," she said, leaning forward, a hand out on the table in a
gesture of compassion, "you really need to think about why
contacting these individuals is so important to you. Séances are
not something to enter into lightly. You can't just ask, 'So, how
is the afterlife treating you?' You won't get any answers to the
final questions awaiting us."

I looked into her affixed eyes and realized -- much too late for my
own good -- that part of me was vainly waiting for an answer from
them. Infatuation, Brett? Not really. I could feel that longing, a
longing for something that has eluded me for 40 odd years, but
maybe you can understand it: a moment of happiness and contentment
not undone by the next.

"I guess you're right," I said, acceding finally. "I have been
looking for closure where I had no right to expect itŠ I guess I've
got to accept that these stories can't be finished. I've been
wishing that, if my own story didn't make sense, these stories
could at least. Maybe a conclusion with some meaning, if not some
hope."

"There are other ways to find hope, John. The heart of spirituality
is the lesson that peace always begins within." She smiled, because
she was back on her own territory, the place from which she
undertook each journey into the land of skeptics.

But there was sadness there, too. You couldn't see it in the eyes
or curve of the mouth, the way I'm used to finding it. My gaze
captured a couple of incipient wrinkles, just visible on her
forehead, and I could only imagine their folding when she raised
her brows in sorrow. Wow.

"Barbara, what is it that you got from the séance with the bog
monster?"

"I am trying to understand that," she said, her shoulders
tightening up.

"My question is still, was it a real connection, or just an
illusion? I have to say that I wasn't sure of anything when I
left."

"It was real, John. But maybe it was another time. Psychic
connections are not as linear as our lives. We have to accept that
there are different modes, much more tenuous to sense, than the
mundanity of our own lives."

"What does Jerry think about this bog monster thing? I still don't
understand what he told me that day, about working to save me. And
the trees?"

Barbara nodded and took a preparatory drink from her spritzer. "I
wasn't as honest as I should have been about that. Jerry is a great
spiritual being, but he can sometimes be difficult on this plane,
and that leaves the wrong impression."

"What does that mean?" I said, suspicious of being drawn into self-
justifications for staying with an abusive spouse.

"He can be a difficult man, I know." She smiled with the forehead
wrinkles showing. "What I'm going to tell you is not a publicity
stunt or something Jerry would like you to repeat to anyone else.
Can I have your confidence?"

"Is this about his psychic gift or something else?"

"It's about his gift."

"Then sure." I think she understood my circumspection.

"Chance is always the last place to look for why we act as we do,
John. It was not by chance that Jerry and I came to this forested
country. Once we felt comfortable, Jerry began to communicate with
the trees. Since then, he and several other psychic leaders, a
circle of initiates around the country with whom he regularly
communicates, have come to a very sad conclusion -- an awful truth.
 But it is not hidden from any of us. You can see glimmers of it in
environmental news: acid rain, ozone holes, extinctions, global
warming, killer hurricanes, floods, massive fires. We like to
believe that earth has sympathy with us, despite all our
transgressions against it. But Jerry and his circle have come to
know that the earth spirit, Gaia, has turned against us. -- Gaia is
working to destroy humanity."

I had a befuddled look, I'm sure, but it led into a smirk that made
Barbara look away.

"What is Gaia doing to us that we're not doing to ourselves?"

"This is not a joke, John," she said. She looked back at me,
searching in my eyes this time. "Can't you feel the antipathy?"

"I don't know."

"Then think about your contact with the bog monster. Jerry isn't
sure about this, but I believe that the bog monster may be an
emissary."

There it was.

"What is Jerry doing?" I asked plainly.

"He is using his psychic energy to stem the tide. Gaia has
influence over many manifestations, and if we can mitigate the
negative energy, humanity will have more time." She gave a wistful
smile. "Maybe enough time to change."

"Would it help for me to contact the bog monster again?"

"I've taken up the channel," she said with a flat voice. She did
not like admitting the ambition in that statement.

"All right," I said. "Then I guess I'm out of the bog monster
business. Except for Barry's conference."

She took a moment to consider. "You're going to the Sasquatch
conference?"

"Barry invited me. I thought you were going?"

"Barry seems incapable of understanding no. I would be very careful
-- there will be a huge amount of negative energy on all sides."

"I shouldn't go?"

"It's not my place to say," she said, now smirking herself.

"Sure," I replied.

Our food had come by this point, and we were only able to pick at
it, so this conversation had to end or change. One last question:
"If a séance isn't the right way to do this, is there something
else that would help me understand what happened to them and what
it means?"

Barbara nodded to show she was thinking about it, but rather than
answer, she began eating in earnest. When she slowed down, she said
of a sudden: "I will try to get a feeling. But you, too, John. You
have to recognize that psychic energy is universal. If you can slow
down, you will understand what they have to tell you."

I couldn't help answering. "I have a confession, too. One of them
is fictional. But I have no conclusion for the story."

"You mean Derek? Don't try to fool me, John. You have a conclusion,
but you are afraid of what it means for you."


The voice told the boy about his family. "This is a sad story. Are
you sure that you want to hear it?"

"It doesn't matter to me," said the boy, who knew sadness in his
way and thought that it was not a bad thing that others knew it,
too.

"All right, then. The story begins many years later. I was 250
years old. That is a long time -- not on the scale I've lived now,
but 250 years is a long time to spend in one human body. The
companions -- robots, computers and observers, all sorts of
artificial life -- worked very hard to keep me alive and robust. By
that time, we were experimenting with making both chimpanzees more
intelligent and some humans less so, in order to create something
like a single-minded race of priests of the energy, dedicated to
keeping the flame of the energy source alive. In the back of my
mind, I was already formulating other options, should these
experiments fail or be halted. I considered the slave race
alternative, where we would search the nearby parts of the galaxy
and harvest intelligent life forms and put them in front of the
reaction. If they were to fail us, they would die. If they served
us well, we might grant them a few years of freedom before their
lives extinguished. But serve us they must. So desperate was I that
this seemed like a reasonable option.

"By this time, the human race was incapable of maintaining itself.
We had grown soft and self-absorbed, and understood little of the
technology that sustained us. But more importantly, we were
becoming our technology. As a species, we had decided that organic
life was too frail for us to depend on, and we had decided that we
needed something more sure. Artificial life represented that safe
harbor. If we were software, you see, we could duplicate ourselves
and back up ourselves so that we would never have to die, no matter
what happened to the body carrying us. We had also lost our
capacity for and interest in maintaining our population, even with
our extended lifespans. We were, as I said, self-absorbed. The only
practical solution was the transition into robot life. And the only
guarantee of a successful transition was the unfettered spring of
energy that our very frailty had given us access to. Maybe you can
see the irony.

"Robot brains had long surpassed our neural complexity, and the
companions had developed robot vessels that completely emulated the
function of our nervous system and brain. Slowly, they developed
techniques by which they could translate into digital code the
stored experience and thought patterns of a flesh-and-blood human.
When finalized, the process placed all of us before a difficult
choice. The only way to translate the intelligence in a brain was
to dissect it, neuron by neuron, ganglion by ganglion. When the
nano-dissection was done, you were a consciousness in a box, and
your body was cut up as spare parts.

"I was on my own trajectory, but it was high time that my family
made their way into the future. My wife had become sick of late,
and time was short to begin the process. Her light was dimming by
the day. We gathered in her hospital room the morning when she was
to be frozen and prepped for the transition. I was there, as were
our two sons, their wives and a few grandchildren, all more than
150 years old. None of them had yet transitioned, but everyone knew
someone who had. Our older son and his wife were scheduled, but had
been delayed twice because of cases like my wife's.


"It's not a big deal, Abby," said our son.

She looked at him. She had never been a fan of the transition and
was visibly scared that morning. "I'll be dead this evening, Jake."

"That's not the way to think about it," he responded. "You'll be
eternal."

"Maybe eternally damned," she said, though not religious.

"You know that everything about life after the transition is the
same. You think the same, experience the same, even have the same
weaknesses. Food tastes like food; wine will still give you a buzz.
The only difference is that we control parameters: never too much
pain, never sickness, no aging."

She wanted to smile, but was too weak and too tired to pull it off.
But I recognized a knowing smile, a mother-knows-best smile. A
flush of adrenaline brought me to the edge of my seat.

"So," she turned to Blake, our younger son and his wife. "Are you
two ready to become robots?"

"It's not robots, mom," Blake replied, looking at his wife Maggie.
"They're robot vessels for human consciousness. Even the skin feels
like ours."

"Your body will look just like you, Abby," interjected Maggie,
adding: "only younger."

"I know. And you all know people who have become machines?"

"Transitioned," said Jake.

By this time, all the arguments for and against had been rehearsed
ad naseum. All of us had to go through this mourning: it was
recognized as a necessary step in letting go of one's body. But I
was still worried by the subterranean smile.

"I know, transitioned. The future. Bollum, you know about the
future. What do you see?"

"I see a beautiful future for us, Abby. A future that we have to
embrace." I wanted to reach out to her with my mind to get us past
this moment; she was steadfast in her gaze at me.

"Did you know that there are whole towns where the people have
signed a pact never -- ever -- to relinquish their bodies?"

"Sure," said Jake, "there are places like that. But they're spread
out, small. It's really just a tiny percentage."

"What about the mechanics? They're just robots, too?"

"A handful of those robots," said Blake, "have more intelligence
and capacity than all the human engineers in the world put
together. No offense, dad."

"None taken," I answered.

"Can I take my robot body to a place where only humans live and let
them take care of me?"

"Why do that, mom?" asked Jake's wife, Tay. "Let the experts take
care of you."

This went on for a while, then Abby asked to rest. We knew we had a
few hours before her window for prepping would close, so it was
difficult to deny her that last nap. She seemed better willed when
we gathered again. A robot nurse was puttering at the periphery of
the room, readying tubes and pre-adjusting flows and pressures.

After looking to me to raise the inevitable -- and seeing my
hesitation -- Blake said, "Mom, it's time. Can I tell them to
begin?"

"Are you so eager to be free of your own mother?"

"Mom!" said the sons and wives almost in unison.

She was unaffected, but appreciated the attention. She seemed to
bask in it.

"Abby," I said with concern.

"Oh, Bollum, don't you do it, too."

"Time is not something that we have in abundance here."

"What is it you say, again? Time is nothing; energy is everything?"

"'Time is nothing. Energy is everything. And the control of energy
is the control of everything.'"

"Yes, that's it. That's it exactly. Don't feel bad, Bollum, but
your penchant for obscure truisms made me realize what I don't
want."

"What?" asked Blake, moving right up to her.

"It's him, really," she said. "God bless you, Bollum. You don't
know what you do to me when you paint our glorious future. I don't
want that future, beautiful or not. I want the glory of living
through this body until it gives out. I'm not doing this. I'm sorry
to tell you this way, but if I did it any other way you all would
fret so much we'd all go crazy. I'm of sound mind and you can't
make me. In just a few minutes this expedited slot will be
squandered. When they come around again, I will likely be dead or
too close to it."

"You're turning your back on your family?" asked Jake.

"You won't need me," she said with a brief crack in her voice.

"We'll always need our mom," he said.

"Oh I don't think so. If you miss me, just turn up the juice on one
or the other circuit and make it all better. Better yet, jerry-rig
your vessel and release the smarts of the robot. Become smarter
than the Library of Congress and MIT and then tell me, 'Mom, I miss
you too much to let you decide how your own life ends.'"

"This is not rational," said Blake in a threatening tone.

"Bollum," she said to me, more quietly though all could hear,
"don't you let them countermand my wishes. You of everyone should
understand."

"I'm staying organic for very different reasons, Abby. I have to at
this point."

"Oh, you say you have to, but really you want to. You would like
nothing more than to stare into the face of pure energy like a
praying Buddha. Some day you'll get your wish, mark my words.
There'll be nothing left but your Buddha smile facing an eternal
sunrise." She put out a brief choked laugh, and turned away. No one
could get her to answer from that point on, and later the nurses
came to remove her from the prep room.


"That was it. We had just a few more days before she suffered a
stroke and lost her ability to converse. I could see her eyes
watching me for betrayal. I didn't do it, despite myself and
despite our kids. I realized that she was right, that I was already
preparing myself for this strange, selfless and selfish voyage,
maybe the most selfless and most selfish ever undertaken by mortal
man. For all that, I owed her her own mortality."


Your mother and I looked at each other suspiciously across the
table. I recall thinking that you noticed none of it, but I'm not
so sure. By this time we had exchanged so many volleys, heard
ourselves complain so openly and bitterly about each other, that
you'd think we were discussing the matter with respective hit men.
"This is how it is," Margaret replied when I commented on it. "This
is how pain is stored over years." A wincing smile followed, as if
she had once grasped the leads on a12-volt battery after saying
that.

What do you see when you look at someone you profess to love, but
whom you excoriated just hours before? Is there a way to get to the
abstract love we once swore, or even to the well-worn path of daily
convenience and acceptance that makes the moment seem okay?

Why not just throw in the towel?

If not for you, maybe we would have. It was so much work to dredge
up the hurt and express it, and then to listen to the inversion,
with the prior victim becoming the aggressor, a back-and-forth of
anguish and mistrust that led to exaggeration, tears, sighs, stares
out the window, hands clutching knees, and looks of overwhelming
disbelief: 'Did you really just say that?'

The constant back-and-forth had produced a sense deep within me
that maybe détente was not such a bad thing. Diplomatic handshake
instead of a bear hug. Small steps to reestablish confidence and
cordial relations.

And a fascination. Who was this woman? Why in the world had we
gotten together? Sure, there had been the break-up with her college
sweetheart, and there were the insecurities from the divorce of her
parents. But she was a high-school cheerleader and I was an
intramural benchwarmer. She loved to get out with her friends, to
banter and drink and carouse. I never got the hang of it, and my
friends were the same kind of people. We didn't banter -- ever, so
much as I remember. I'm not sure how that is with you, Brett, but I
think despite your comic bravado you're more like me than Doreen.

A moment defined us in the first days of our dating. We had gone
out to a bar that she knew; we were sitting drinking, listening to
the music and, I suppose, Doreen was remembering earlier times. A
danceable song came on and was turned up, and a number of couples
wandered out to dance in that hesitant way that dancers have when
the music isn't quite loud enough, the lights not quite low enough.
"Let's dance," Doreen said with a sudden burst of energy. She
smiled at me with a jazzy, "let's have a ball" smile. I frowned
back one of my half-smiley frowns and said, "I don't dance." "Oh
come on," she said and tried to pull on my hand. The rest of my
body was deadweight, though, and her face changed. She walked away
and started dancing by herself. I tried to catch her eye to wave at
her or raise my glass, but she didn't look my way. Finally another
couple formed a triangle with her, and then by the end of the song
people weren't dancing so much in couples as in a group.

Unimportant, but everything about us was encapsulated in that
evening. Why couldn't we see past the trivial circumstance to say,
"Hey, however else we get along, this difference isn't going away
and it's just going to get bigger until it gets recognized. Let's
save ourselves the pain of that progression -- what say?"

Brett, in case you think otherwise: there is no apologizing for
something that has already hurt thousands of times, that you know
will repeat many thousand more, for as long as you are together.
There is only the will to endure.


Derek, Click-Cluck said, we each have to make a decision.

"Why do you say that?" he said, still in amazement that she was in
his apartment, drawn into a mental loop of her emerging from the
entrance.

Because, she said, the ruling council has made a determination.

Derek stared at her as if without comprehension. But he could see
the antennae in disarray and he knew that his life was changing
again.

She continued: The council has determined that you and I represent
a disruption of the social order. I've been asked to move and begin
another career. You will be permanently put into sleep. There is no
appeal.

"Then it's all over," he said calmly, thinking of the dung balls
and their pull on him.

Click-Cluck: Not all over, not yet.

"How so?" he asked. "There are no secrets in this world, you told
me."

There are a few places, she said, outside our social order. Places
where the does not follow those who reject their rule."

"What, a criminals' haven?"

It is a place with its own order. Those who go there do not return;
not much is known.

"Are you are just going to toss your life here, and your
preaching?"

No, I am not giving up "ddrchdng" (preaching). Under this
circumstance, it must be pursued free from the ruling order. I have
faith that we will return.

Derek thought how he had the bomb that could blow this ruling order
to smithereens, but he wasn't sure he had the will to push the
plunger.

We do not have much time, Derek. You must choose. I know that
permanent sleep has its attractions, and that there is no benefit
for you to be on the run in our world. It is not a step that I take
lightly ("my solemn march"). You will surely not either ("Your in
two directions leaning raised legs").

You might picture him saying, I need a few moments to think about
this. Or raising a point about how she had lost faith in him, and
he in her. Or declaring his unnatural but patent love for this bug
before him. Uttering something profound. Maybe even saying, you
will not rue this expression of trust and confidence, my lady. But
his reply was no more than: "Okay, let's go."

Click-Cluck said something that he did not understand -- were there
unheard clicks in that expression? -- and two other bugs emerged.
They had between them a new vehicle.

You will have to leave everything here -- it is too traceable. Take
off your exo-skeleton.

Derek stopped all movement, and then slowly loosened his limbs, so
that he could feel the carrying strength of the skeleton. He had
been in and out of his skeleton most days since the very beginning
-- it had become a crutch as much as it had once been a lifesaver
-- but he had grown accustomed to it as his outer shell, his
natural protection. Sure, it mostly supported rather than
protected, but in his mind it made him like those around him: a
tough, impervious animal, never mind the squishy insides.

He got down on all fours, rolled onto his back and donned his visor
to shut it down. A slight whoomp left him alone. He leaned over
with each arm in succession to release the many small bands. In
order to unhook his legs, he had to pull them up onto his chest,
where their natural weight made his breathing labored.  Finally, he
had them all and let his legs extend and fall. A few more bands and
his back was free. He rolled over to get off the skeleton, and
worked himself up on hands and knees. The most difficult maneuver
was forcing his upper body straight up. Then he could lean on one
kneww and raise the other, and put its foot on the floor. With a
supporting hand on the other side, he used that upright leg to
raise himself off the floor, and he quickly put his other foot
under him. He then rose up on both legs, pushing with his thighs
like a weightlifter, to a full standing position.

His head scraped on the ceiling before he bent his neck enough. He
walked mostly upright up to the new scooter, and then let himself
down on his right knee. The vehicle was different -- it seemed much
more rugged and scarred already with sand, and somewhat
misproportioned. Click-Cluck came up next to him, and he noticed a
full-face mask on her back. Put on this visor, she said. He picked
up the mask. It would give him a decidedly more bug-friendly
visage: giant bulging all-black eyes, smooth leathery skin, a slit
of a mouth, no nose and no ears; two small antennae on top, like a
toy version of the bug originals.

Click-Cluck: You should practice going on all fours (cluclu'k, the
bug word for walking). It will make a better impression.

"Sure," he said. "Are we going to the surface?"

Not all the way, she said, but there is one trench that we must
cross.

Derek slipped the mask on, and it hummed to life. He was relieved
to see that its interface looked like the visor's. He scooted his
left leg closer and then draped his upper body over the bike and
then swung the left leg up and over. In a second he was set. The
vehicle rose up, and he was floating. Click- Cluck padded over to
her equally robust and challenged-looking hovercraft. While she
adjusted herself on the disc, Derek swerved toward the back wall
and thudded to a stop; he reached down, gathered up the remaining
dung balls and let them drop into the bike's electro-curtained
compartment.


With a 30 second call I had a job again. Ferguson had just come by
personally -- and with an affected apology -- to give me the news:
My DNA sample matched none of the cold-case evidence, and the
Sheriff's office was putting the cases back on the shelf. The
office even kept its promise to hold the trespassing matter to
itself. Hayley was at home with her parents, and her boyfriend
would receive 3 weeks of jail and some weeks of community service
for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Their engagement
was announced, but no wedding day. Everything was at a stasis
point, only slightly distinguishable from before.

Even I -- despite everything -- had only changed a little. If
anyone had changed, it was you, Brett. But that's how I remember
teen years. Your body changes many times over like it's got a life
of its own, and every urge tells you it does have its own. You
learn to strike out on your own; you ask the basic questions about
existence, and to your surprise no one has all the answers for you.
But to me you'll always be the same person who, as a boy, ran down
the trail, half convinced by my story of a bog monster, reacting to
both his own imagination and my own misbegotten effort to clear the
cobwebs. Do you feel it still -- do you run halfway, afraid to go
and afraid to stay? Like me?

Despite my vindication, I had one more outward sign of my travails:
my name on the program of the National Sasquatch Association
conference to be held in Durham, North Carolina, in just a few
weeks time. One phone call brought it home.

"John?" asked an impatient woman's voice.

"Yes, this is John Densch."

"John, this is Samantha."

"Samantha?" I asked, honestly unable to place either voice or name.
I was afraid it was a reporter trying to inveigle her way into my
confidence.

There was a moment of disappointment or self-dialog. Then:
"Samantha Og-guh."

It took me a moment, then I replied: "Oh, yes, sorry. Samantha. I'm
so sorry, I'm not very good with names."

"I wanted to catch up with you." She paused. "First,
congratulations on being exonerated of all suspicions. Second, I
wanted to take a few minutes of your time to relay the
association's concerns about your scheduled participation in the
upcoming meeting of the National Sasquatch Association." Another
pause. "It came as a surprise to me personally that you decided to
do this."

"Right," I said, feeling a bit guilty but also resistant to having
to explain myself. "Look, I'm sorry, Samantha. I really only agreed
to do this because I was asked as a favor to someone who has been a
great help to me." She mumbled Barry's name. "All I'm going to talk
about is what I know. I made up a story about a bog monster, and I
helped my son do a speculative but still science-based report, and
everything since then has been twisted all out of shape."

"And your séance with the bog monster?" Disappointment more
audible.

"Yes, I'll talk about that, too. Subjectively, it was quite
compelling, but I realize everything I experienced has a more
rational explanation. And, by the way, I was asked to participate
in that by members of the Chapel Hill police department, who were
also present."

"Yes, I know, I had ample opportunity to read all about it. All of
that is -- regrettable. But let's not lose sight, John, of the
legitimacy you're going to convey on this meeting. You have a lot
of sympathy from people who see you as a pawn in the machinations
of governmental and commercial entities. By attending this
conference, you are bringing that sympathy to an irrational and
antithetical way of thinking. That is sympathy squandered."

"Maybe they will understand that I am just doing a favor? That I'm
going to be rational about the whole thing?"

I could imagine a sardonic smile in the silence that preceded this:
"John, I wish to be clear about the association's position. We must
always be cognizant of the coarseness of the media and the limits
they impose on the truth they relay to the public. It is imperative
that association members -- and sympathizers -- express themselves
in the clearest possible terms in support of the scientific method.
 We have no choice but to avoid ambiguity at all costs."

"Okay. It's just that I've already said I'd attend. I feel like I
kinda promised Barry. You understand, don't you?"

"On the contrary," she said, with a hopeful tone. "On the contrary,
John. I would expect you to repudiate publicly any statement or act
that might reinforce the seriously mistaken belief in a bog monster
and all those other humanoid creatures variously called Sasquatch,
Bigfoot, or Yeti. If you could say that you are compelled to this
step by rationality and scientific principles, that would be even
more valuable."

"Couldn't I just as easily make that point in the conference? I'm
loath to back out." I was surprised by my retreating; I had
intended to be plain spoken and unaffected by her pleas.

"John, may I speak frankly?"

"Please, Samantha," I responded.

"We are not simply trying to reform some inveterate fantasts, or
educate the broader public, though both are laudable goals. This is
a point on which much more is at stake."

"Why?"

She hesitated, but I had no idea why. I was becoming interested.

"Evolutionary theory," she said with a release of breath.

"I don't get it. Are you saying that, what, Sasquatch is the
missing link?"

"No, John, but you are touching on the matter. There are those who
use this pseudo-science to paint the fragility of evolutionary
theory. It is a two- pronged attack, with the usual immunity to
logic that propagandists enjoy. First, they say that the fact that
Sasquatch exists without any footprint in the evolutionary fossil
record demonstrates how flawed a theory based on that record is.
Then, they say that the fact that evolutionary theory can absorb
Bigfoot into its structure without blinking proves that it is more
a narrative than science. These two ideas should cancel themselves
harmlessly, but I can tell you that that is not the case. Sasquatch
has become a lightning rod for some people."

"Wow," I said, "I had no idea."

"There is no official platform for such people still, outside of a
few fringe school boards and town halls, but the battle is
never-ending. The strategists of religious repression have
recognized that evolution is the fulcrum of reason that they must
destroy. With it in place, no religious dictum can be taken
absolutely, because the bible cannot be interpreted literally.
Without it, the literal interpretation of the bible sweeps any
principle from astronomy to zoology from the field. You have to
understand why this is. The apologists now usually interpret the
first five days of creation figuratively and then draw a literalist
line at human creation. If they try for strict literalism, they can
still argue that the heavens and earth were made to look billions
of years old by God without leaving him looking altogether
disingenuous. But if they say that on the sixth day God made man
and animal from the same stock of ideas, varied in a way that seems
like a progression, then they must explain why God did not draw a
physical line between human and animals, as he did spiritually. 'Do
not question God' is the only possible answer and a narrow enough
one that we can fight it. But if the propagandists knock
evolutionary theory off the table -- 'there is no good evidence
that we evolved from animals' -- the physical line can be drawn
again. At that point, we have no place to do battle but on the
terms of faith itself, and that is a war that we cannot easily
win."

"I had no ideaŠ Jesus, it seemed like such an innocent joke so long
agoŠ."

"Some popularists erroneously claim there is a law of unintended
consequences that applies here. But we should look to complexity
theory, which holds that the final state after an arbitrary number
of stochastic iterative processes cannot be predicted."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that, theoretically, the beating of a butterfly's wings on
a tropical island may be the genesis of a hurricane. But don't
mistake the real meaning of complexity theory for social dynamics.
The popular science press calls it 'chaos theory,' because it went
around science's dominant interest in studying equilibriums and
simple systems, and because it asserted that neither can adequately
describe the chaotic phenomena in the real world. We study
complexity not because we're interested in the power of the
butterfly at the far end of a hurricane bearing down on us. We have
a very simple question: why can outcomes be so different when the
starting conditions are so similar? Complexity theory tells us that
there is no determinacy, no predictability, and no justification
for fatalism or for exuberant optimism. We are in the complex
middle, John, where everything is struggle."

She thanked me on behalf of the association, and said she would
await my decision.


I think it was because of the crying. Sometimes it overcomes you,
Brett, the sense of missed opportunities -- and even more the
realization that you wouldn't know how to fix your life even with
every opportunity relived. Maybe you see a young child alone,
crying for its mother, or you see your own boy in a vulnerable
moment, in tears and crying for mommy. The frailty of your own
self-assurance becomes overwhelming. It's not weakness, Brett, but
the illusion of strength that gets you. You realize in an instant
that you are a paved-over creature of the same kind. I want my
mommy never leaves you, for however much you have become your own
source for the comfort you seek. The tautology occasionally breaks
down, and so do you.

Now put that sense of collapse into a crucible with the one person
most responsible for the highs and lows of your internal life. The
smallest trigger can make shoulders heave, your breath shudder, and
your eyes drip tears like emotion's own sweat.

In the aftermath of one such crying, a lull, a temporary moment of
deeper equilibrium, quite unexpectedly I found myself saying to our
counselor: "Margaret, what if one of us has been unfaithful?"

She looked at me with a deepening expression, as if I had
exponentially raised the stakes in a game of chance. -- Don't dare
think, her final expression read, that I'm not ready for an all-in
bluffŠ.

"Well, what if?" she said.

"Should we bring that out here?"

"That is very serious for a relationship. What do you want to say
about it?"

I didn't appreciate having that thrown back at me. "I'm just
asking, what if."

"Well," she said with instant confidence, "there is no one answer
for something like that. I would like to know what you both want to
say." She looked at Doreen. I didn't dare.

I hoped she would carry it or bury it.

"I wish that John would just speak clearly."

Margaret didn't give her that out. "Why don't you speak clearly."

"IŠ" she drifted off into silence. Then she looked at me with a
pained expression that said, you asked for it. She half mouthed
something before her expression changed and she said, "What I have
to say is that I have never loved someone as much as I have loved
you, John." She stopped there, for all the world a Martin Luther
with his theses on a church door.

I weighed the response for a moment. Yes, that's it, the confession
I had been waiting for. And yet not. The moment demanded a
decision: prosecute now, or she walks. I would not need a brilliant
performance to wring from this statement the facts that it
whitewashed, but a cross-examination was necessary.

This was the moment -- but I could not take it. This was a
confession in both senses: what she did and why she regretted it.

"I appreciate hearing that," I said.

She smiled ruefully and I dare say thankfully, to both Margaret and
me. And then for a few minutes it was like a courtroom where
everyone was glad to see a not-guilty verdict: defendant, lawyers,
jury, even the judge, with hugging and handshakes and mouthed
thank-yous.


The boy wasn't sure he understood. "So where is Abby now?"

The voice said, "Well, she died about a billion years ago, for me
at least. Do you believe that I once tried to contact her in the
past? She thought she was going crazy. I never got her attention."

"You let her die?"

"I did. It was what she wanted."

"I don't ever want to die."

"Well, that's easy to say. And the right attitude. Why would
anyone, especially a happy young lad, lack creativity to such a
degree that they would prefer not to be?"

"Do you ever want to die?"

"Oh, you got me there. I do sometimes. In fact, I have decided, not
all that long ago, that I should die. Some day."

"Are you going to let your body die?"

"That's it exactly. You see, I've turned away from the source, and
the energy will eventually run out, and then there will be nothing
for it but death."

"Turned away?"

"Yes. You remember our experiment with the flash? Well, after Abby
died and humanity was well into its transition into robotic
security, it was decided to secure our energy source by dedicating
one individual to be the witness to it. The robots had spent many
years perfecting both energy- producing and energy-distributing
technologies, so that a single massive but controlled energy source
would be able to supply all of humanity's needs, for the whole life
of the universe. The scope was truly massive -- a beautiful
achievement that has been upgraded only twice in these many years
-- and required that the energy station and I be put on a
trajectory of our own right out of the galaxy. When it went online,
it was brighter than a supernova. We transferred the energy via
redundant and varied pathways. In the beginning we stored the
majority of it in portable energy cells for use by autonomous
robotic human entities.

"There is a lot to tell about how this changed us all. Me most of
all, perhaps. My body had to be secured in many ways: in a safe
biosphere that was free of pathogens; made as robust as a robot
vessel; and stripped of many of its organic luxuries, such as sleep
and inattention and decay and desires. All of this meant that my
biology had to be mastered -- and mastered it was. You wouldn't
recognize any of my body as human. Every system was first of all
made redundant; my body is not mobile or distinctively bipedal.
Blood and other fluids flow through vessels that have never been
encased in skin or human shape. Nanotechnologies assure the
integrity of each and every cell, and each is convinced through an
appropriate chemical bath that it is the very first generation and
should be as robust as a baby's growing body. My brain was
reconfigured as two mostly separate entities. This is important. My
eyes were hardwired to the mostly autonomic part of the brain,
which would have no problem with the endless repetition of the
instruction to focus on the bright ball in front of them. My more
conscious self, meanwhile, was upgraded with artificial memory and
sensory inputs, and given the capacity to dream reality. I was,
most of the time, only marginally aware of the fact that I was the
watcher, even though I could see my other half whenever I wanted.
Sometimes, when the source began to flag a bit, I would be prompted
to interact with my autonomic self to help bring the energy level
back up. Aside from that, I was able to dream / live as I wanted.
In the first years, I zoomed through dozens of lives from birth
until death, while a massive artificial intelligence provided me
with all the sensory and interactive detail necessary to make the
dream seem real. After that dizzying experience, I slowed things
down and tried to live in real time. Still, I have lived millions
of lives. If I were a religious man, I would have to believe in
reincarnation, because I have lived it. I've experienced being
reborn as every person in a city, living his or her life from birth
to death, barely conscious of my other calling and yet vaguely
aware that I have lived this all before. If you have ever had that
feeling, guess what, it might be because you are me."

The voice described on another occasion what happened to the rest
of humanity, as much as he knew. "They left," he said. "Not only
me, not only earth, but also each other. The limitations on their
robot existence did not last very long, just as Abby predicted. One
after another they switched off the artificial constraints placed
on their host brains, and became otherworldly creatures. The old
ties did not bind. What I know of their progression comes from
their energy use. Almost all continued upgrading their bodies and
capacities until the companions offered existence as pure energy.
You may not be able to imagine this, but they became energy
patterns that were coherent and stable under the steady influx of
power. Others learned their own ways to create and store energy,
sometimes as giant robots, sometimes turning themselves into
starships, sometimes as artificial solar systems. Most remained
attached to the source. Some slipped into their own universes,
exploiting another loophole in our physics, one available only to
the very rich in energy. Still others became completely ethereal
beings shut off from the source, who, I'm guessing, sold themselves
as gods to whatever race of beings that would take them.

"One group tried to hold on its humanity. They made vessel
modifications illegal and punishable by years in suspended
animation. They pretended to live simple farmer and hunter
existences in the wilds of our abandoned planet and in colonies
radiating out from our place in the galaxy. Some even dedicated
themselves to the proposition of living and dying, and let their
existence end after a millennium or two. They programmed babies and
raised generations of digital-only humans. But whenever the
situation became untenable, the survivors would upgrade their
hardware and pipe in more energy from the source, and eventually
disappear into the same energy existence that had taken the others.

"Abby was right about so much -- our sons, too, disappeared and
left me behind. She would not be surprised to see me here, the only
organic human left in the universe, but she might be surprised to
hear me say, 'That's enough; I'm going to turn my eyes away.' Maybe
she would tap me on the arm and say, 'Finally; you're such a slow
learner, Bollum.' I can't tell you how much I would appreciate
that. If only I could hear from her that it's okay that the energy
stops. You know what it means, don't you?"

"You said that energy is everything, but you're not going to give
out energy any more?"

"That's right. Eventually, everyone who depends on me for energy
will run out, and they'll start falling, like bees in smoke.
Eventually they'll die. As will I, but I have the choice. I'm
leaving them no choice."

"What if they have their own energy now? What if they don't need
you?"

"That'd be fine. But my experience tells me that most never
mastered independence and that they won't be able to reverse
direction. If they can, that's fine; they have many billions of
years left before the whole universe dies. When it does, finally,
they may yet lament this moment. This source is a way to beat all
physical limits, because it creates energy out of nothing. But I
will be long dead, and I doubt they will able to recreate it. The
companions said as much when I told them what I was going to do.
All of human kind chose so long ago to leave the job to another,
and now I have turned away."


I could go back into the woods now, and dared Barry to take a walk
with me in the Duke Forest. "Don't think I haven't wandered every
corner of these woods," he said, but then he had to ask directions
to the entrance gate that I suggested. The weather was spring warm
beneath a Carolina sky, with a high, thin cloud layer eliminating
shadows everywhere but under the old- growth canopy. A dry month
meant fewer mosquitoes finding their way to us, but we had to keep
moving to keep from collecting them. Barry was dressed in a mix of
clothes he must have gotten in the hunting and fishing section of a
sporting goods store, or maybe Wal-Mart.

"So, what's this about?" he said as he planted his walking stick in
syncopated beat with his steps.

"I won't be able to speak at the Sasquatch conference."

He didn't answer for a minute, as if the news were too devastating
to answer. His voice was quiet: "They got to you."

"Nobody got to me," I said.

"Oh no?" he replied. "Why do you feel the need to back out?"

"I had promised someone a while ago that I wouldn't contribute to
the confusion about this creature."

"And what about your promise to me?"

"Well, for one, I don't think I promised you anything, and even if
I did, you don't need me."

"No?"

"No, just like you don't need Barbara."

"Who says I don't need her?"

"She told me she has no intention of participating. Negative
energy."

"Everything but her little parlor games is negative energy to her.
-- So, who was it? Duke?"

"No, I haven't spoken to anyone from Duke."

"Who then? The News & Observer? Research Triangle Institute? SBI?
WRAL? Those crazy science teachers?"

"If you mean the Triangle Association of Scientists and Teachers of
Science, then yes."

"That's Duke."

"How do you figure? And is everyone in this world somehow arrayed
against you?"

"How is that Duke? Your adoptive organization is a front for the
scientific-industrial complex here in the Triangle area. Every drug
maker and technology manufacturer in the area has its fingers in
that group. They're a militant force for the status quo:
unregulated pollution, unquestioned waste, unfettered drug
multiplication, gutted oversight. The joke is that the EPA is right
here among them, right there in their vest pocket."

"And Duke?"

"Duke is at the same table. Higher Ed has always been the patsy of
the capitalists. Just look at the trustees of any major university,
and then tell me that the business world doesn't have the last
say."

"Geez," I said, "is there anything you don't think is corrupt?"

"John, don't flatter yourself the first person to notice himself to
the right of my politics. But consider this. There's a line beyond
which everyone finds an irresistible gravitational well. The moment
you say that, hey, things can't be, aren't all, that bad, you have
begun sliding. That slide leads to a steeper slide, and that slide
to a fall, and pretty soon you're the black heart at the center of
a black hole. No offense to those individuals who consider their
identity to be black."

"Doesn't it follow from all that that no matter how much you talk,
the rest of us just can't understand. So why even have this
conversation?"

"You are just babe in the woods, aren't you, John." He chuckled and
whacked a juvenile tree with his stick. "You have disdained every
decision, every interest, every controversy for so long you don't
even know that you've entered the gates of hell and are
participating in that festival of pain reserved for agnostics.
That's your sin, that you let yourself be manipulated by everyone
around you. If you would just take a stand -- you may be destined
for a fall, but at least you'll fall on your own terms."

"But if I took a stand, then you wouldn't be talking to me, right."

"On the contrary, it's all about alliances, shifting alliances."

"Like yours with Barbara?"

"Sure," he said, but also with a wistfulness that revealed his
weakness.

"Well, I think this alliance has shifted, Barry."

"Don't tell me you're smitten by Samantha Ogkk?" He looked at me to
see my reaction. Despite this accusation out of nowhere I think I
managed to look nonchalant.

"No, but I find her argument in favor of science convincing."

"Well, I think we've had that discussion before. There is no such
thing as pure science. It always serves a purpose."

"I don't think she would argue. But the alternative is ignorance
and repression in the name of dogma."

"Well put, John. But when you are considering the alternatives, try
that sentence with greed in the place of dogma."


That evening, with the dinner plates dirty before us, I laid it all
out in front of you and your mother: the conference, Barry,
Samantha, Barbara, even the details, as I understood them, of what
Kettle had done. The talking helped me, but Doreen looked like she
wanted to end the topic with a quick decision -- though she held
back. You seemed distracted by something in your own mind.

"So," I said, "I'm in a quandary."

Doreen still bit her tongue. "What is it that you want to do?"

"I don't know," I said, admitting to myself my ultimate destination
just inside hell.

"Do what you think is right," said Doreen, as if that clarified
everything. "Look at the situation dispassionately -- aside from
personalities -- and ask yourself what is the moral and ethical
thing to do."

"I don't know that ethics applies any more," I said.

She looked at me with an expression of disbelief: there is no
proper life in a false one.

"Seriously," I said. "How can you apply ethics when reality seems
like an onion that wraps in on itself? No layer peels off without
being encumbered by another that should have come off before it."

"John Densch, you surprise me," she replied with incredulous smile.

"I hope so."

"Then not ethics. Game theory."

"Is this any time to play games?" I said, only half joking.

"Game theory is the study of human behavior when decisions need to
be made with imperfect information. Maybe ethics is more suited to
a situation where you know the facts, or at least their
likelihood."

"All right, how does this look in game theory?"

"I'm not sure," Doreen said with a certain relish, as she finished
the tail end of her red wine. "We'd have to understand more about
at least some of the players' choices, I guess."

"Ah," I said, "the players. I wish we could get them together like
at the denouement of a classic murder mystery."

All of a sudden, you entered the conversation: "That's what I was
going to say."

"What's that," I said, though I wish we could have gone on with
this repartee.

"It's like when we play D & D. It's just like that. Every turn. Get
on with it, dad."

"What do you mean, get on with it?"

"It just doesn't matter," you said -- and your voice cracked.
"Really, it doesn't matter. Just make your pick and take your turn.
It's not like it's important."

I wanted to say, now wait just a moment, this is important, but you
went on: "If you want to do something that matters, think about
things that matter."

"Brett," I said calmly, "these are important questions -- some of
the most important you may face in life."

I thought that was a pretty good answer, but you looked every bit
as perturbed and said: "Then do something important. Your life is
not the measure of all things, dad."

"What, you're saying my life doesn't matter?"

"I'm saying," you said, regretting now the outburst but feeling the
need to go on, "that if you are playing the game, you're stalling.
If you aren't playing the game anymore, then there are a whole lot
more important things to worry about. Get on with it, dad." You
looked at me in one defiant moment, then looked down at your plate.

I felt like swatting you on the side of her head, but when you
didn't look up I knew this was more about you than me. I took a few
moments to cool, then ventured a sidelong glance to Doreen, who had
paled at the thought of our fighting right here at the table. "You
know," I said, "you're right. There are a whole lot more important
things to worry about. I don't need to wait until some of them wash
over me. It's a point well made." After a respectable pause, I
added: "But it is my turn, and I guess I'm finally ready to roll
the dice."


At 3 a.m. that morning, my alarm woke me, but just barely. I was
already half asleep again when a miniscule voice said, 'Weren't you
going to wake up?' The realization took a while to translate into
bodily control, but the real point was the dream. There was none --
a great disappointment to me -- and after I had assured myself
nothing would emerge, no matter how long I waited, I got up to go
to the bathroom.

On returning to bed, I stretched out and looked up at the dark
ceiling. Were the sparkles I saw twinkling reflections off the buds
and valleys of the spray coat, or the false firings of my rods and
cones?

Here I was at 3 in the morning, without any backward or forward
momentum, just the desire that some sense of meaning would come to
me. Instead, questions came: Dally, Hillary, Jane #27, would you
even talk to me, if your wraith could? How would it serve you or
me? Hayley, what have you been hiding with you all this time? Was
there something there that morning? And Derek, how do I finish your
story, while being true to it? Or better, what is it that I have to
be true to?

After a few agonizing minutes of waiting, my mind reached a kind of
resolution. Sure, Dally would talk to me -- if I could help her.
But there was nothing I could do for her. All her suffering was
long ago, as far away as the first wave that, in Bollum's words,
could never be caught by the second. If I cared, if I really cared,
I would do something to help those suffering now.

And Hayley -- hers wasn't my business any more. She and I were
quit. If she had a secret to tell, let her tell someone who cared
about secrets.

Derek? My thought was: he needs to come home.


The morning of my appearance at the conference, Doreen was of
singular good spirits. I speculated that she was relieved about
finally closing the book on the bog monster era. She said that she
slept well and that's all. You came down late to the breakfast
table, distracted, yet also in a good mood. I was not feeling the
same joy, but I did have the feeling that, if I could just make it
through today, I would have reason to.

I looked at you, Brett, and thought about how we had observed for a
long time the anguish of unrequited love in you, but we never
discussed your happiness. You could have met the woman of your
dreams and I would probably not know until she showed up at our
door with your ring. I suppose Doreen would see it if you were in a
relationship. That morning I wanted to ask you a leading question,
but couldn't bring myself to try. I wished that there was some way
to open a "just in case" communications channel, without any
obligation. It might have succeeded this morning.

Doreen looked at me across the breakfast table; she was already
showered and dressed in a neat skirt and jacket, ready to head out
the door. I was not yet showered and felt a bit of the lingering
stay-at-home slovenly man of the house. She smiled that enigmatic
way that was supposed to be encouraging but always left me feeling
uncertain: why did I need esteem- building? What didn't I
recognize? These are the borderlands of good intentions, I guess.

"So," she said, "you're going to the conference this morning? Will
Barry be there?"

"I hope so," I replied. "If he's not, I'm coming right home. I read
in the paper that the scifi channel is sending a crew this year. It
may be part of a special."

"Well, more press," she whispered voicelessly.

"Don't worry," I said, "I won't depart from my prepared speech." I
scooted my chair to the wall and took two pages from my shoulder
bag there.

"What are you going to say?" she said while looking into her purse,
as if preoccupied, not wanting to press me.

"I'm just recounting the facts. I made a mistake. I shouldn't have
joked at all, because there is no room when the public eye is on
you. And there is no bog monster. Period."

"What will Barry say?"

"Probably the exact opposite. The only mistake is doubting the bog
monster. Government conspiracy. Corporate conspiracies. The whole
nine yards."

"There may be something to that."

"Are you saying," I asked, "that you believe that the government
would maintain a huge conspiracy to hide humanoid creatures?"

"I'm saying," she replied, "that I would not put a cover-up beyond
those in power."

"But what's their motivation? Why should anyone really care if this
creature exists or not?"

"Out of principle, I suppose. Nothing to rock the boat. Nothing to
make people question authority. Maybe just because they always
have."

"Maybe," I said. "But extraordinary claims require extraordinary
proof."

"Well that's circular," she laughed. "What makes a claim
extraordinary? That's like saying, the status quo is its own
justification."

"Isn't it?"

"How will the world change, if it is?"

"I grant you that. But, seriously, my opinion is that the world is
constantly changing, and there is always something extraordinary."

She was unimpressed by that sentiment, and got busy with her purse,
pulled out her keys, and blew a momentary kiss before getting up,
and then let her face harden as she shifted to thinking about work.
I wonder if your young eyes could see those shifts, where the
weight of so many years of work etches ever deeper into our faces.
I could feel the same ache on my own face as I watched Doreen's.

You got up an instant later, maybe afraid my attention would alight
on you, and went upstairs without a single word. I made my way up a
few minutes later, ready to puff myself up with the air of
respectability.


Derek came out of the stupor slowly. He was not surprised to see
the white padded room, the small cloud-framing window. But he was
surprised to find himself in the wheelchair, with Randall making
adjustments -- strapping his limp body into the chair. He tried to
wave him off, but there was no movement. When he finally blubbered
out a few syllables, Randall stopped and took a step back. "Great
goodness all mighty," he said. "You just gave me a terrible fright.
Now stop that." He went back to his business, tightening the leg
braces, while Derek fought to gain control. His body started to
shake. Finally he was able to get a few garbled words out: "Ish me,
'andall."

"Well, I'll be an alderman's uncle. You're back."

"I'yam back."

"Your mother was right, I guess. I didn't think it was smart, but
she insisted."

"On wha?"

"That she take you home." He went back to his job.

Derek tried to laugh but it sounded like a hacked cough.

"Randall, can I spea'h with the dah'tor."

"Now you want to speak with the doctor. Your mother will be here
any minute, and she won't want to stay a minute longer than she has
to."

"Stihl," he said.

"All right, tell you what, we'll just stop by the doctor's office
to say goodbye."

Randall rolled him into the hallway. Derek was half waiting for the
walls to fade out, but when they didn't he thought about why
Randall had not unstrapped him. A moment of weakness followed. He
felt as if he had become to his own people a bug in same way he was
the freakish human on that planet.

The doctor's office door was open and he was rolled right in.

Randall spoke first to the nonplussed doctor. "Derek is back with
us, it seems, and he wanted to talk to you."

"Really?" she said to Randall, as if Derek weren't there. "All
right."

He found himself unable to speak.

She tapped a finger. "Cat got your tongue? Or are you back in your
little world?"

"IŠ" He coughed or laughed. "IŠ wanted tell you."

"Tell me what?" she asked, now fully feeling her role as disgusted
authority.

"I don't have much time," he said, with little breath. "I wanted to
tell you where I'm going, in case this is more than..."

"More than what, Derek?"

"More than a dream. What if -- what if we're both sitting here?
You're as real as me? More real? I want to tell you about where I
am when I leave."

"I see," she said, moving a folder from her workspace onto a stack.
"Well, if I'm not mistaken you're no longer a patient of this
hospital. It would be unprofessional of me to provide therapy to
you at this point. You'll just have to tell your mother."

"I -- I can't," he said. "That would break her heart."

"Derek, you have already broken that woman's heart more times than
you know. Take this one piece of advice. If you are just going to
leave again, don't bother coming back. Now, goodbye."

Randall was already moving the chair backwards.

"You're Click-Cluck, aren't you?" Derek said with a sudden
realization. "Oh my God, it's so transparent -- I'm just dreaming
that we're talking to each other in English. You're her, aren't
you?" He tried to shout as he went down the hall: "You don't want
me ever back here because I've got serve your purposes in bug
world. Not even a moment's comfort. Mom! Mom! Help me!"

Randall rolled him to the common room, but no one was there. Maybe
someone leaving like this was seen as bad luck, Derek had no idea.
They moved through the room to the opposite door, one that Derek
had no memory of ever passing through. There was an elevator. They
boarded and Randall pushed the button to drop to the first floor.

Derek had stopped shouting or, rather, mumbling, because of
exhaustion.

Randall started to hum a Lynyrd Skynyrd tune, one Derek knew but
couldn't name. Randall interrupted himself to say, "Not that it's
any of my business, I know, but I think you should be grateful for
the women who take care of you. They believed in you when everyone
else had given up hope. And this is how you repay them. Man. Take
it easy, think about what you're doing." Then he went on with
another tune, one by Paul Simon.

"All right, Randall. Good advice." He gathered his strength. "I'm
not coming back, you know."

"I hope not," said Randall, thinking he meant the hospital.

"Can I tell you about where I've been?"

Randall paused; he probably had very explicit instructions about
indulging patients' fantasies. But hadn't the doctor said he wasn't
a patient any more?

"'Til your mom comes, I guess."

Derek exhaled so much his lungs felt like they had collapsed. "All
right, thank you." He gathered his thoughts. "It's a world of
intelligent creatures who look like a cross between bugs and
cattle. Leathery and squat but almost human-like. The gravity is
too strong to stand, you see -- "

"Sure," Randall said quickly, savoring the moment, either because
he could pretend he was a therapist or because he was curious about
what went on in these demented heads.

Derek had gotten to the dung balls when he realized that the car in
front of him had his mother in it. She was in the passenger seat,
crying. He thought it was because he was talking again, but maybe
she had heard the topic. Now stopped, Derek took in the scene: gray
skies, with a 3-d curtain of dark rain in the distance; green and
mossed trees; glistening asphalt; a car with almost sparkling water
beads on the metallic paint; and his mother holding her head in two
hands.

Randall moved him towards the rear door. There was Derek's father
coming around to assist. Derek exclaimed: "Dad!" He found his face
wet from tears, though he didn't remember any transition to being
so emotional. Now it overwhelmed him, in a way he hadn't known for
years, a complete meltdown of every emotion that had been held back
as a young man or as an earth-expatriate. His dad hugged him, got
his cheek covered by the tears. His mother was still balling in the
front seat, which he could faintly hear.

"Let's go, son," Derek heard.

Randall came around and opened the car door. "Time to loosen.
You're going to be a good boy, right, Derek?" He stopped and
looked.

"Always, my man," he said, affecting good spirits, though he could
hardly see for the welling eyes.

All the bands came off but Derek was not able to move. Randall
bear- hugged him to lift him from the chair, and then turned to the
car. Derek's father took the limp feet and directed them onto the
car floor. Randall let Derek down easy, but tumbled onto his lap --
he wasn't strong enough for that maneuver. "Sorry," said Randall,
pushing himself back up.

"No problem," said Derek. He managed to direct his puffed face at
the retreating Randall. "Hey, man, don't forget me."

"I won't," replied Randall, straightening his clothes and regaining
his cool.

"Promise you won't forget me."

Randall was unaccustomed to the attention, looked down for sarcasm.
"No," he answered, "I won't forget you. I promise."

"Bug world," said Derek.

"Right, bug world," parroted Randall.

Derek's father shut the car door. It took five seconds or so for
him to walk around to the driver seat, during which the only sound
was Derek's mom's sobbing.

"Mom," he said, as his father started the motor. "Mom."

"Yes," she said without looking.

"I'm here, mom."

"Yes, you are," she replied.

"Please, mom, I want to see you."

"I can't," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because as soon as you see me, you are going away again."

"How do you know that, mom?" he said, desperately. "How could you
know that?"

She looked out the passenger window as they pulled away from the
curb. "Oh God," she said, "how many days I've prayed for this
moment. And now -- " She turned to look at Derek. "Now it's the
moment I lose everything."

"See -- I'm still here, mom." He half laughed. "You didn't know."

She nodded, but didn't speak. Instead, he heard something beneath
the rumble and whine of the car engine and road noise. What was it?
Everything seemed just as it was the moment before, except for that
insistent and out-of- place sound. What was it?

Clicking.


I wanted to meet with Barry before I went into the convention
space, but he did not agree. "Just get your badge and come to our
room," he said. Now I found myself mingling among a rush of
attendees, waiting to pick up our packets and swag. Why a major
beverage company thought to donate sports- enhanced water, I don't
know, but there it was. Each attendee also got a shoulder bag with
program, notepad, pen and special Chi keychain with a pyramid
pendant. I wasn't on their list.

The young woman checking me in was apologetic, but she also exuded
cluelessness -- no doubt, a local woman hired through a temp agency
without any context or affinity. I was ready to take this as a sign
and walk away.

"Do you have your receipt?" She said after being coached from
beside her.

"No," I said, "I was invited to speak."

Her knowledgeable neighbor shook his head -- you could have said
that in the first place -- and pointed to a list. "You have a
single-session pass," he said. "No bag."

The woman and I exchanged glances. "Can I have some water?" I said.

The man assumed a friendlier tone. "There is water for you at the
presenters table. Have a nice day."

I wandered into the convention and tried to get a bead on the type
of people here. There were middle-aged men in business suits, and
others in tweed jackets; young men with Judas Priest and who knows
what tee shirts; a number of people who could have been Barry,
artfully casual and yet so visibly high strung that they made you
tired just watching; a few reporters with recorders and an
unidentified camera crew interviewing people in the corner. A few
women looked like pale versions of Barbara: free-flowing hair and
gowns but not as luminous in expression or manner. There was a
cadre of older people, non-moneyed retirees searching for something
to dedicate their energies to. A portable bookstore had been put up
in a corner and sold the full range of materials you could imagine,
from everything ever published about Bigfoot, Sasquatch or Yeti, to
cosmic ruminations and psychic healing.

I had assumed that I would be mobbed, as the most visible icon for
the local bog monster, but no one gave me a second look. Did they
not recognize me, or was this the society's way of saying, this is
much bigger than you? Fine, I thought. Go ahead and get over me,
because I'm over you.

I wandered around trying to find a schedule of sessions, since I
wasn't sure what room to meet Barry in. (In typically confusing
fashion, he had said come to the Sunrise room, but all the rooms
were identified by numbers instead.) We had about 15 minutes before
the session when I recognized Barry coming toward me, flanked by
serious-looking gentlemen in dark suits. As they got closer, I
could see that one of them was older and frail, the other smallish
and looking outsized in his suit; they lost some of their imposing
nature, in other words.

"Densch," said Barry, shaking my hand for show. "I thought we'd
lost you."

"Just completing my end of the bargain."

"Faustian, no doubt," said the older gentleman.

"Excuse me," I said.

"John, this is our session chair, Professor Lauren Reynolds."

"Emeritus," he added.

"And to my right, Frank McCutchin."

He offered to shake my hand. Thereafter I got Reynolds's hand as
well.

"Frank is the preeminent Sasquatch hunter in the Southeast."

"Oh," I said, "have you seen one?"

He didn't answer, as if the obvious question was insulting. Barry
replied in his place: "Not directly, but he may have the most
impressive collection of evidence in the United States, if not the
world."

"All right," said Lauren, "my thinking is this. We open with Densch
for his personal narrative. Barry, you follow on with the
background of the search in the triangle region. And Frank, you can
contextualize the findings for the entire southeastern region. I'll
finish with a few remarks about the literary tradition of monsters
in southern belle lettres. How does that sound, gentlemen?"

"How long do we have?" asked Frank, as if annoyed by finding
himself third-billing.

Lauren looked surprised and glanced at Barry, who replied: "The
session is an hour and a half. The organizers ask that we leave 30
minutes for discussion."

Frank frowned.

"I won't speak long," I said. "There's really not a lot to tell."

"As I understand it," said Lauren to me, "your scientific studies
provide some of the most compelling indirect evidence for the
existence of Sasquatch."

I looked at Barry. "I don't know who could have told you that. In
fact, the study was my son's middle school assignment. I provided
some data analysis, but there has been a great deal of criticism
about the techniques we used."

Frank moved more or less directly in front of me. "But no one has
been able to provide an alternative explanation for the patterns
you uncovered."

"No," I said, "I guess not. Other than that there's no pattern at
all, just a series of incidents involving different indigenous
animals, maybe raccoons in one case, foxes or coyotes in others.
That hasn't been disproved, either."

"Raccoons, right," he scoffed.

"All right," interjected Lauren, not one for conflict. "Let's take
possession of our room."

We followed him down a narrowing hall to one of the smaller rooms.
There were about 50 seats, more than enough for my purposes, but
Frank paced up and down the rows, counting and recounting. Barry
moved to the table and stood behind the tabletop podium to make
sure that he was not obscured behind it. When Frank settled down,
he unpacked his laptop and a very small projector. Lauren took the
middle seat, oddly for the moderator, and sat utterly still, either
preparing himself or vegging out. I sat in the audience front row
and pretended to be reading through my remarks. The lines were
swimming in front of my eyes, no different than the cliché, because
they were no longer the lifeline I had thought them to be. My
unnerving conclusion was that I had to wing this, to work my way
carefully toward the moment when I say, "I come not to praise the
bog monsterŠ."

After the first people dribbled in, I went behind the table. I was
in the seat next to the podium, obscured to half the room and
partially blocking the speaker to the other half. I couldn't even
pull backward. My mind began inventorying the audience. At first,
they seemed to mirror the eclectic mix I had picked out before. But
then I found myself in the audience: pathetically normal-looking
men, behind blank attentive faces, asking themselves how they got
here, where they went wrong or where they went right, and sneaking
inventorying glances. I couldn't say what they were hoping for.
Maybe we had nothing in common, after all, but I imagined Samantha
walking the aisles, pointing and saying: "These are the people who
should never have been encouraged to come here. Even a debate is
too much ground given."

Then I recognized another group. They came in just as Lauren stood
and went to the podium, and quickly found seats on the aisles, or
as near as they could. On their laps were scratched-up notepads and
folded and fingered programs; these were the seasoned insiders,
rushing from one high-value speaker to another. They nodded
importantly to Frank, and altogether had an air of being in
history, at the intellectual vortex of this conference.

When Lauren announced our order, two of them swiftly exited.

"And now, John Densch." He introduced me as the principal
investigator of a recent statistical study that indicated the local
presence of Sasquatch. "As recently as 50 years ago," he added
sagaciously. I could almost hear Barry catch his breath.

There was scattered applause, but for the most part this was a
"wait-and- see" audience.

"I'd like to thank you for inviting me today, especially Barry," I
looked over his way. "I have some prepared remarks, but I think it
would be better if I answered some questions that you may have
about the study Professor Reynolds mentioned. I imagine that many
of you heard about it, at least those who watch local news or the
morning news shows. It got a fair amount of play in the 'wacky
news' category. To make the study, we started with some old police
blatters, and we plotted incidents that could have been caused by
animals on the county's GIS system. When we did that, a pattern
emerged that made it seem like a single larger predatory animal, or
possibly a set of somewhat smaller animals was working its range
around the creeks in Chapel Hill. I say 'seem' because we did
nothing to establish the scientific validity of this hypothesis.
Even if it seemed probable to me, it's just speculation.

"What does this have to do with your Sasquatch studies? Years ago,
I played a game with my son -- where we imagined the wooded trails
through Chapel Hill were stalked by a bog monster -- well, it was a
game I enjoyed more than my young son did -- but then recently,
sometime after the report was done and handed in, my son jested
that we had found traces of the bog monster in our police blatter
data. All of a sudden, our marauding animal was a stealthy
humanoid. I know that many of you believe in Sasquatch. All I can
say to you is, don't believe in me. I'm not the real deal, and this
is not the smoking gun you've been looking for.

"You may hear from Barry Moore that I don't understand the
situation. I'm happy to confirm. I don't understand how my desire
to show my son the power of a geographical information system led
to months of ridicule and derision for advocating the existence of
a bog monster. I don't understand how this misunderstanding even
led to the suspicion that I might be a serial killer hiding behind
my bog monster alter ego. I don't have any explanation for how
something like this can seem at the same time to be so ludicrous
and yet somehow tauntingly real. I leave it to better minds than my
own to unravel this mystery."

I sat down. No one applauded, and all eyes -- including the panel's
-- were on me, as if I stopped a lengthy joke before the punch
line. I recognized disgust in some expressions: these were paying
individuals, people who may have taken off work or traveled here,
or even if not, they had made the effort in the expectation of
being wowed, not treated to a group-therapy confession.

Barry was at the podium before I could deliver my silent plea to
bail me out. He jerked the microphone down and began with a loud
voice: "John Densch is a casualty, ladies and gentlemen, not only
of his trepidation and, one is tempted to say, cowardice, but a
casualty of a system that seeks to ridicule and ostracize
difference, one that defends accepted knowledge at all costs,
whether in the face of bald-faced self-contradiction or under the
burden of overwhelming evidence. John Densch is a casualty of this
system. His life was turned upside down in all the ways he
mentioned and more, all to shut him up and anyone who was touched
by his insight. I appreciate your coming today, John -- " He looked
over at me and probably saw me smile in gratitude for the first
time ever. "In addition to John's study, I'm going to review some
of the other evidence for the presence of Sasquatch in this area,
maybe even as recently as right now."

I breathed out. I would have to wait out the session, but Barry
created a context under which I was protected: I knew not what I
did. Fine, let me just get out of here. I didn't pay attention to
Barry's presentation, mostly a litany of evidentiary bits, the most
compelling of which he did not have with him to show. Some of it
was on his and others' websites; other elements were part of the
documentation for his upcoming book. Negotiations with the
publisher prevented it from being available for this conference,
very unfortunate.

When he had just sat down, Frank jumped up and came around in front
of the presenter's table, where the projector and laptop were set
up on a cart. He fired up a PowerPoint presentation and moved to
the podium with his wireless clicker. Some prefab, shiny template
served up his title: "Sasquatch in the Southeast: Where to Find Him
and Why." He looked down at me and then Barry before saying to the
audience: "Let's see some of the evidence that has been talked
about. You can decide for yourselves how compelling it is."

We abandoned the presenters' table because it was too difficult to
see the screen behind us. Frank's slides were numbered, and with a
round hundred of them, there was no sense craning our necks. We sat
at opposite sides of the front row, Barry next to me and Lauren at
the far end. Lauren did not acknowledge me at that point; I think I
had violated his principle of decency or at least legitimacy by
throwing up my hands rather than finding a poetic solution to the
incongruities. It was left entirely up to him to provide the
rational and engaging cover for which this enterprise cried out.

Meanwhile Frank hammered on his point with slides of testimonials,
sound recordings, and maps of "known ranges" with "hot and hotter"
sightings indicated with smaller and larger dots. We were at least
spared the Bigfoot movie. Chapel Hill got its own slides, one with
a table from your report, Brett, and another with Frank's rendition
of the bog monster's range and home. He conveniently indicated the
Duke forest on his map, all the more convenient for illustrating
that his creature's range did not overlap in any significant way.
Barry made notes furiously.


If I had been willing to show my gratitude to Barry, I would have
offered to counter Frank's naïve map-making with a
semi-professional cartographer's attention to detail. But I had no
desire to get back into the middle of the fray.

Lauren did not disappoint in retelling various monster themes and
devices in southern literature, from Faulkner to some contemporary
authors I don't remember. No Freud, but Karl Jung provided the
underpinning: We have to see monsters, and there is no sense to
asking whether they're real or not, because our psychological needs
make them real. Context is everything, Lauren concluded. "We are
confronted with a landscape full of monsters, each one of which
begs our credulity, at the same time that it embodies questions we
all recognize. We must ask of ourselves: 'Why resist the questions?
Finding answers is the most human act of all.'"

A short round of applause and then the question-and-answer period.
Some of the go-getters got up and went, hoping to catch the tail
end of another talk. Lauren asked for hands and called on the first
he saw.

"I have a question for John Densch," said the young man, now
standing. "Didn't you claim in a newspaper article to have
communicated with Sasquatch in a séance? And now you are acting as
if the scientific pursuit of Sasquatch is too fringe for you. That
seems a bit self-serving." He sat down and crossed his arms.

I was still sitting in the front row, and I stood up and turned
around: "Well. First, I never claimed anything. The article to
which you refer was written by someone who interviewed other
attendees but not me. Second, yes, it seemed real to me at the
time. But third, afterwards it seemed naïve to believe in it. And
finally, fourth, it's not the fringe or the center that is at
debate here. -- We have to find a way to know what is real and what
is not. The question is, do you believe that you have special
access to how this world works, based on what you've learned and
what your instincts are? If so, then the best thing in the world is
to share that insight. If, on the other hand, you are like me and
doubt everything up to and including the fact that you're really
standing or sitting here, not because you have special insight but
because you doubt you have any insight at all, well, then I suggest
you not get up in front of other people and waste their time."

I could have and should have stopped right there, but I knew it
wasn't going to be. There was something else coming out of my
ruminations, something I couldn't halt.

"Let me give you an example. When I was young, I was afraid of the
dark and even of my heartbeat, which sounded awfully like a monster
schlepping its stiff legs up the stairs to me. My parents got very
tired of consoling me. I finally discovered a voice in my head that
kept me from being afraid. The voice became real to me: a human
voice from a billion years in the future, the voice of someone
called Bollum, who was the keeper of an energy source that gave
perpetual life to what was left of humanity, but who had decided to
turn off that energy source and let himself and humanity die. He
couldn't travel in time, but to pass the eons left to him, he made
contact with beings back in time. I really believed that he was
talking to me and I was talking to him.

"One day, he said that he needed to ask a favor of me. I was young
and could be forgiven for this, but I said yes without considering
the consequences. 'One of the other contacts I have,' he said, 'was
taken from earth, about your time and place I think, for study on
another planet. By the time he got there, the inhabitants had lost
their interest in studying other intelligent species, yet their
sense of ethics spared him annihilation. He seems to have found his
way in their world, but he desperately wants his story to be told
on earth. He doesn't want to be forgotten. Can you remember what I
tell you about him?' he asked.

"I said yes, but before too long I became afraid that I was losing
my mind, especially after the voice described again and again how
unsure the human on that alien world was of his own sanity. There
were way too many levels of doubt for a child. I told the voice I
didn't want to listen any more. He honored my wish, and never came
back."

I took a deep breath. "I cannot tell you today whether my memory of
those nights is pure invention, psychological compensation, or
something real and profound. For many years, I wanted nothing more
than to forget it all, and I know I have forgotten and twisted most
of the details. Then for an equal number of years, I thought, if I
can just turn it into a story, into fiction, then I'll be all
right. But every time I started to write the stories down, to
fictionalize them, they seemed so empty and meaningless. Today is
the first time I've ever described them to anyone, let alone
confessed that I don't know if they're real or not.

"You want fringe? Here it is. I have a story to tell of someone
abducted from this world to another that he dubbed bug world. It is
a world occupied by leathery, four-legged, intelligent crab-like
animals. This abducted person blundered into the middle of a global
conflict that is playing out over hundreds of thousands of years, a
conflict between order and chaos, rigidity and creativity. I don't
know if this was his real name, but I was told to call him Derek
Sorensen. And some day I will tell his story, because I have
promised to."

I sat down, Brett, and now you have the whole story that I wanted
you to know. I hope that you have read this far, because I don't
have the strength to tell you another way. At least for many years.


With love,


Your father










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