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Copyright ©2000 David F. Bischoff. All rights reserved.

A Wildside Press Original

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PHILIP K. DICK HIGH

David Bischoff

WILDSIDE PRESS

Berkeley Heights, New Jersey

Copyright © 2000 David F. Bischoff.

All rights reserved.

Philip K. Dick High

An original publication of

Wildside Press

P.O. Box 45

Gillette, NJ 07933-0045

www.wildsidepress.com

FIRST EDITION

For Eric Wurzbacher

Chapter One

One moment I’m talking to the principal of Eisenhower High School, the next moment I’m talking to a monster.

No flash, no sparks, no SFX, no Cronenberg-style transformation (hairy mandibles extruding from shoulders, gunk dripping from nostrils and earlobes). Just now you see a portly, red-faced Director of Discipline, making small talk with the football team quarterback, now you see a bug-eyed, chartreuse-skinned abomination of the human prototype.

Freeze-frame a moment. Let’s take it back a little bit, start with the praise after the buttonholing: the part I like.

“Yes, Roberts, that was some game Saturday. I was quite impressed the way you sailed the ball that fifty yards right into Taylor’s palms. Pretty, real pretty.”

Monday. Between class bells. Caught by the wire-glass of the Warden’s office, on the way to 11:00 a.m. physics class after a dreary hour of Ralph Waldo Emerson in English. Portly Paul’s a football fan, a college athletic coach at heart who has somehow found his feet slogging on the path of middle education. Has a habit of wearing his half-frames so close to his eyeballs, he looks like a demented Asian.

“Thank you, sir. It was good to chalk up an Ike-sized win.”

My words were clipped and accompanied by the good-cheer salesman body language I got from imitating my Dad.

Me: Quinn Roberts, eighteen years old, high school jock, letterman supreme, senior class president, with a high IQ to boot. Robert Redford without wrinkles. Female fantasy on both sides of twelfth grade. All the pretty girls in this school have felt his lips. Recently been observed raiding the local colleges for more sophisticated femmes.

Twinkle of perfect teeth, of knowing eye as he grins for his audience.

“But you know, in my gut.” The Principal tapped his girth. “In my gut, I feel the offense would be even more powerful if you relied more on a running game. That end—Mattacks. Now he can dodge and run even faster than some of those college-aged goons Bison’s got over at Northwestern.”

“You better talk to the coach about that, sir.”

“I have. He’s very happy about the passing game. I thought if you said something…”

And I can just hear Coach Hardwick now: “You’re out of your tree, Taylor. Listen, you distribute the tardy slips; I call the plays on the field.”

Flash! Monster-time.

I’ve looked at it from every angle since, and I can pinpoint this exact time: this was when my world—my beautiful fairy-tale existence, American-dreamsville—began to fall apart.

So. A monster, I said.

Maybe I should qualify that. Maybe this was just a matter of first impressions. “Monster,” after all, is an awfully general term, one applicable in a variety of situations. But all these situations arebad situations. So maybe the word has the wrong connotation. Because even though Doctor Paul Taylor had bug-eyes, and odd new colors, and his teeth looked like those of a cannibal walrus, and his ears looked like Mothra’s on a bad day, he didn’t do anything monstrous.

He just kept on talking about the football team’s running game.

“I don’t know, Quinn. In my gut I just feel that we’ve had just too much luck with these passes. Favorable wind patterns. Lucky blocks. That sort of thing. There’s nothing more solid in offensive football than a firm and aggressive running game, and if we don’t exercise that muscle in the team gestalt, I’m afraid it’s going to get flabby.”

He pounded a fisted tentacle into a claw.

And I’m standing there, growing aghast, looking at him, hardly hearing what he has to say.

No, maybe not a monster.

Maybe something extraterrestrial. ET’s high-school principal. An alien.

“Something wrong, son?” asked Doctor Taylor.

I goggled and I choked. I blinked and I turned my head around to see how all the other passers-by in the hall were taking this visitation.

They were taking it very well, actually; they simply ambled by, with proper deference to a high school principal, certainly, but not with the gaga eyes this alien before me surely demanded.

“Here! Roberts, are you ill?”

I stifled the urge to run. I turned back to check one more time.

The monster—no, thealien was gone. Back was the stereotypical chunky, nearsighted high school principal, face slightly flushed with concern.

“Ill?” I repeated.

“You looked like you were having a heart attack for a moment, lad!”

“Oh. Oh, I just had a flashback to when Steamroller Rollins was coming for me. The game, you know.”

“Well, tell the coach to take it easy on you guys. Maybe he’s pushing too hard.”

“Uhm, right,” I said, wanting to disengage this conversation as soon as possible. “And I’ll try to talk him into concentrating on the running game, too.”

“That’s the ticket!” Taylor called after me. “And remember, Roberts! Snark the Gumfoltz!”

I stopped dead in my tracks. I looked around.

The alien was back. For one flicker-second, there again was the horror-mask face, insect ears. Then they were gone again.

I pushed my terrified expression towards the physics lab.

Chalk slashed onto board, fingers gestured, talk filtered through the fog to me at my desk. Ms. Paste was holding forth on the latest set of physics formulas, while I was holding tight to my sanity.

Doc Taylor … An alien?

Quinn Roberts … Crazy?

“And so in this equation, we can see the qualities of the fulcrum…” Ms. Paste was saying, her ankle-length skirt swaying like a bell with her animated lecture, just high enough to betray a pair of sweat-socks oozing over ancient high-topped Keds.

Scribbling down notes, Philippa Norton sat next to me, dowsed with perfume, slathered in make-up, with her secondary sexual characteristics outlined in tight white blouse and jeans, and I didn’t even care. I was scheduled to meet my girlfriend, Amy, for a hot lunch in her Daddy’s Buick, and I wasn’t mooning over the future kisses snatched between Whopper bites. I was thinking about what had just happened to me.

Quinn Roberts … doing the D word?

Never! Ever! I’m a true-blue American idol-type hero. I don’t fool with that stuff, not at all. Who needs to escape the American Dream: Me.

You don’t believe me, huh? Testimony? You want character references? I got character references up the wazoo!

Like, here’s my minister, Rev. Morgan Jent, from the 2nd Reformed Presbyterian Church. “I’ve known Quinn since he was just a tyke of six, and I must say I have never seen a child so angelic. What a pleasure to watch him grow in the ways of the Lord through adolescence into young adulthood. He sings in the choir, he is a sterling backbone in Youth for Christ and he would never ever do anything that would harm that magnificent Temple of God, his body.”

How about my best buddy, Larry Rotzenheimer? “Crap. Old Robots is so straight, it makes me want to puke!”

Okay, now take a look inside my bedroom. Look at the trophies. My heavens, my bedroom looks like a Hall of Fame to every sport I’ve excelled in. See those things stapled to the bulletin board? Look closer. Report cards. Straight As. Yeah, and c’mere. I got one whole wall papered with various Certificates of Merit, Boy Scout Badges, blue ribbons.

Here’s my mom. “I don’t know what’s wrong with Quinn. His father and I raised him to be a free-thinking human being, but he’s become some kind of Ronald Reagan clone. His father cried for weeks after he joined the Young Conservatives.”

Oh, there’s more, but I’ll round this off with my girlfriend. “I’ve no doubt about it, they modeled the young Conservatives after my boyfriend. Only they’re tie-dyed hippies compared to Quinn. I hang out with him mainly because I know I won’t get a disease. We’re still stalled in Necking 101.”

Amy doesn’t know about the college chicks. Myonly indiscretions, honest!

Needless to say, my own personal Encounter of the Third Kind troubled my generally placid psyche. For this reason, I wasn’t paying much attention to the distribution of chalk, so when Ms. Paste asked:

“So what does that do to the inertia, Mr. Roberts?”

I felt as baffled as a Democrat President.

“Uhm, ah,” I focused desperately on the equation in question, mathematical and symbol gears engaging … But it all looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics today.

“Perhaps you should pay more attention, Mr. Roberts.” She squinted at me through bifocals, then seemed to see me for the first time. “Ah … Yes, more attention, I was saying. Mr. Roberts, would you please see me after class?”

I nodded dumbly, happy to be off the hook.

For the remaining half-hour of the class, I desperately tried to get back into the spirit of things. I fiddled with digits in my notebook, I even snuck looks down my pretty neighbor’s blouse, something Quinn Roberts usually never did. But it was no good. I couldn’t for the life of me shut out that awful image of Portly Paul turning into an alien. I knew I was going to have to tell someone about it or bust, so I couldn’t wait to get out of Ms. Paste’s clutches and roar off to heave out my confession into the friendly bosom of Amy Yardling, my girlfriend. So when the bell rang and I stepped forward to take my slap on the wrist, my tongue was all set for a heartfelt apology and maybe a little shoe-licking.

“Mr. Roberts,” said Ms. Paste. “Quinn.”

“I’mreallyterriblysorryMs.Paste,Idon’tknowwheremymindwas—”

“Ever see an extraterrestrial, Quinn? Hmm?” She stuck her jowly middle-aged face into mine, with such intensity, such seriousness, I didn’t get the words.

“—butbesureI’llstudythematerialveryhardandcatchupand—”

A meaty hand shot out and shook my shoulder. “Hey, Quinn. Hey in there. I’m not talking inattention, boy. I’m talkingaliens.”

I stopped dead and just stared at her.

She shook her head. “I thought so.” She clucked her tongue and looked around. The scuffing of the departed students sounded from the hallway. She scampered with great agility for her age over to the door, shut it, locked it. Her great mane of gray-streaked curls vibrated like an agitated sea-anemone as she turned to face me again. Her matronly chest heaved with emotion. She looked like a horse in heat, great nose flared, buck teeth champing off her words. “I recognized the look in your face, Quinn.”

“Huh?”

“I’m not entirely sure they’re aliens, you know,” she said, her voice terse as she strode forward. “Not really. It’s just when the Perpetrators get shorted out on a certain wavelength. Somehow the Construct Field feeds back into the macro, then warps into Jungian reservoir territory. That’s what I call them, you know, the things they stick on you. Perpetrators.”

I did not say “Huh?” My face said it. But this did not faze Ms. Paste. She had seen the alien in my eyes.

“Alien,” she said, approaching me. “You saw an alien, didn’t you? God knows what it looked like, they come in all shapes and sizes at your age. But it was one of the staff, right? Maybe a teacher, maybe a coach, maybe a vice-principal…”

“Doctor Taylor,” I said, nodding. The words started gushing out. “The principal. He just turned … No, not eventurned. One second he was normal, the next he had theseears, thesetusks! He was purple! He—”

Suddenly a hand was clamped over my mouth. “Shush!” she said, her head jerking back and forth holding suspicious eyes. “The walls may have ears. Literally!” She let go. “There. Old Taylor himself, eh? Figures. Prime candidate.”

By then it had sunk in. I wasn’t crazy! Someone believed me. Someone took me seriously. Even if it was the faculty loon, old Archimedes-breath herself.

“You believe me.”

“Of course I believe you. I’m the one who brought it up, wasn’t I?” Her blue eyes glared at me through coke-bottle thick lenses, a double Sherlock Holmes effect.

“But—But why? Have you seen them too?”

“First off,” she said, tapping me hard on the chest. “Get any flying saucer notions out of your noggin.” Her nose twitched. She grabbed at a Kleenex which she kept stored in her rolled-up shirt-sleeve, honked a good one, then stuck it back in. “This is not World Weekly News territory.”

Any relief at a companion in craziness drained away. “Then what the hell did I see?” I whispered hoarsely.

“What you saw,” she whispered back. “What you saw was a Congromulgration of Reality.”

“Huh?”

“I’m still getting frequency resonance from your Perpetrator. That and your look of shock was what keyed me into your recent Experiential Shatter-Frame Disruption. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Quinn, we really need to talk.”

“That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?”

She grabbed my arm and squeezed. “Talk above a whisper I mean. Talk of cabbages and kings. Where it’s safe. My place.”

She waddled over to a notebook, scribbled down an address and phone number, ripped it out and handed it to me. “8:00 p.m. I’ll see you at my house.”

“ButFriends are on tonight,” I said lamely.

“It’s a repeat.”

“Uhm … I missed it.”

“I’ll tape it.” Those magnified and very wise eyes stared through me. “If you still feel like watching this decade’sLeave It to Beaver after what I have to tell you, then I’ll make the popcorn! Now get on about your business. Maintain normality. We mustn’t be seen together too much at school. This is a hotbed of activity. Throw a rock down the hall and chances are good you’ll hit an Inquirer.”

“Inquirer?” I said, numbly. “Is Doctor Taylor an Inquirer?”

“Hell if I know,” said Ms. Paste. She went to a cupboard and pulled out a large brown paper bag. “Hell if I know anything for sure. It’s just all theory. But based on certainphysical facts. Facts I have proven to my own satisfaction.” She took out a large sub sandwich containing what looked to be Polish sausages. “Eight o’clock sharp, mind you.” She took a bite, and murmured around it. “I’m very pleased to have discovered a kindred spirit, Quinn Roberts. Very pleased.”

I nodded, waved goodbye and stumbled out of there, grasping the crinkled paper in my hand as though it was the last handhold onto Reality, praying that my girlfriend Amy wouldn’t turn into an alien too.

Chapter Two

“You’re late.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Hey, you look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“I wish I had.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I wanted to spare her all of this. Maybe it would all just blow over and I could pretend it was all a bad dream smashed against the windshield of my race-car life that my wipers had swooshed off.

“No time for a road trip now,” said Amy, petulantly placing a hand onto her narrow waist and throwing her spray of blond hair back like a model posing for a photo. “Looks like it’s the cafeteria for the Toothsome Twins!”

“Yeah.” I marched on ahead of her down the hall toward food hall and my lunch period.

“Wow, that storm cloud above your head looks as big as your ego!” said Amy, catching up and packing along beside me. “What happened? Won’t I go to the prom with you?”

“Don’t push it, Amy,” I said testily. “Plenty of other girls would trade their Beck record collections to have a significant date with me.”

I said it, but I didn’t feel it. All the ‘ra’ was gone from my bravado, and Amy could tell. “Hey. What’s happened to you?”

“Headache.”

“No, that’s the woman’s line.”

“Look, Amy, let’s just say I’m a bit upset about something now that I can’t talk about and all I want for the moment is a little compassion and understanding. Is that too much to ask?”

“No. I’m sorry, Quinn. I was just worried, that’s all.”

And she had reason to worry. But I didn’t want her to know why. I didn’t want her to call up the paddy wagon. Not yet.

I put an arm around her waist, and she leaned her delicate hair, scented with shampoo, against my head. “Sorry about the prom crack.”

“You are feeling strange,” she said. “You’re apologizing for being yourself.”

“Mr. Arrogance has his redeeming qualities sometimes.”

“My goodness! Introspection. I think I’m getting to—What’s wrong now?”

I had stopped cold. Up the hall, near the entrance to the cafeteria, stood Dr. Taylor, talking to a couple of teachers.

“Isn’t there another way into the cafeteria?”

“Sure. Around the other side, you know that.”

“I want to use it.”

Dr. Taylor still looked normal, but I didn’t want to chance it—besides, I wanted to keep a considerable distance between us. Who could tell—he might decide to do his Halloween number again!

“Quinn, what’s your problem? Doc Taylor is one of your fans!”

“One of these days I’ll explain.” I grabbed her arm and skedaddled. But as we were skirting the enclave of slave-masters, the principal spotted me from the corner of his eye. He waved. “Roberts! Don’t forget the running game.”

I nodded and waved back.

“And tell the Sormplex to Zerpigorm!”

I kept on moving, as though struck in the back by a roll of surf.

“Did you hear that!” I said, reason seeping out of my ears. “What the hell is a Sormplex?”

“Huh?” said Amy, fairly ripped off her feet by my suddenly insistent flight.

“What the hell is Zerpigorming?” I said, taking the corner full speed.

“What are you talking about, Quinn?”

“Is he comingafter us?” I didn’t want to look behind me.

“Dr. Taylor? No, of course not, Quinn. You’re getting soweird! Zerpigorming? What are you babbling?”

“That’s what Taylor said! Didn’t you hear?”

“He said something about your running game!”

“After that.”

“He said, ‘Have a Nice Day.’”

I stopped and caught my breath and looked at her. “‘Have a Nice Day’! He didn’t turn into a Smile-Face, did he?”

“No,” she touched my short-shorn head with concern. “That defense teamdid knock you down pretty hard a couple times on Saturday, didn’t they?”

“Yeah,” I said, playing along. “Dizzy spells. Must be it.”

“You should see the school nurse. Maybe go see the doctor.”

“Doctor! I don’t want—Oh … right. Medical doctor. Sure, Amy. Sure, if I feel whacked out again, I’ll head straight for the infirmary. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, only slightly satisfied. “Maybe you need a good jolt of cold milk and a couple of Vitamin B-complexes.” Amy always had a supply of vitamins on her. Her greatest dissatisfaction was that there wasn’t a vitamin for every letter of the alphabet.

“Give me ahandful,” I said.

We entered the din of lunch period #2 at Eisenhower High.

Heads turned my way as I entered.

For a moment I got a buzz of my old world: the attention, the excitement, the popularity. I tossed off a few waves, managed to answer the “Hey, Quinn’s with cocky wisecracks. Only Amy’s presence restrained the winks and blown kisses to the girls.

Ah, My World!

I filled the niche so well!

Here it is: your average teenage hero, topping six feet barefoot and weighing in with 170 pounds of Nautilus-compacted muscle, bone and tuned-up brain power. A beauty of a Barbie doll girlfriend on one arm, a Rolex gold watch on the other. Bright shiny teeth, a future filled with profit and fame, leading off to a glorious eternity on the right side of God, who smiles down now from pulpit and political platform with pleasure at His creation.

I mean, look at the admiration in those shiny teen eyes. Look at the guy! He could be a doctor, he could be a lawyer. He could be a star athlete, he’s headed for a top college. And with those looks, he could be a movie actor!

He’s the BMOC of High School named after the President who rode the 1950s like a serene guru of God’s own capitalist system.

What a future! What a past!

And wow, what a present!

It lasted all of about the fifteen seconds it took me to get into the chow line. I took the spaghetti and meatballs and waited to pay beside Amy, and suddenly this place didn’t look like the squalid and small place that would soon be my stepping stone to college. All my environment began to look, well,bizarre.

When we emerged, we were hailed by the football team’s table. I squired Amy over and we sat smack dab in the middle, in the midst of good-natured discussion of the merits of the opposing team next Saturday.

I, however, simply could not get involved.

I was looking at my hand.

“You haven’t taken the vitamins I gave you, Quinn,” Amy reminded me. “You haven’t touched your lunch. We’ve only got another eight minutes to eat.”

“Amy, look,” I said, holding up my hand. “Five fingers, or four fingers and an opposable thumb. And I’ve never really noticed … There’s this webbing in between!”

Amy took the vitamins and tried to shove them into my mouth.

“Hello, lovebirds,” said a voice as a figure sat down at the table, across from us. “Now isn’t this sweet. Romeo gets fed by Juliet. Poison, pray tell?”

Instantly I was grounded by reality. Strictly Quinn Roberts reality, mind you, but it’s close enough for rock n’ roll.

It was Howard Casey.

Now, as Ms. Paste tells us in physics class, for every action there’s a reaction. Okay, and so for all the positives there are negatives. And for every Superman, there’s an Anti-Superman. It just seems to work out that way.

So if there’s a Quinn Roberts with all the healthy moral attributes that I have taken pains to previously describe, you take for granted that somewhere in the world there’s an anti-Quinn Roberts.

Unfortunately, he was at the same school as me, on the same football team, and, at one time, with the same girl.

Behold Mr. Howard Casey.

He’s good-looking, if you like the feral, hairy sort. He’s not any taller than I am, but he’s broader in the shoulders. He’s very intelligent: ‘A’s just as straight as mine. But he’s a mean bastard, make no bones about it. And he hated my regular guts the moment he laid eyes on me. The fact that Amy used to behis girlfriend has helped matters lately not at all.

Amy laughed. “Hi, Howard.” Amy harbored no ill-will toward the guy. In fact, she thought he was very amusing. “I mean,” she would say, “I only went out with him for a few weeks, and I only took his ring because I was a dumb sophomore! You guys act like this is Greek drama or something!. It’s only high school. A girl’s gotta have time to flit aboutsome time in her life!”

I looked up at him, certain he’d look like Darth Vader today. But no, he still looked like Howard: horny and hateful.

“Let’s just drop it for today, huh, Howie? I’m not feeling so well.”

“Oh, and so Florence Nightingale is feeding you pills. I see.” He grinned. “Just my bi-weekly check to make sure the Ideal Relationship is still intact.” He cleared his throat. “Amy, how about a date?”

“That’s very nice, Howard, but no. I’m still going steady with Quinn.” She seemed damned pleased to be asked, though—as she always was, no matter who asked. And lots of guysdid ask mainly because getting turned down by Amy was almost better than getting accepted by your average other high school girl.

Howard’s smile froze. “This is really getting monotonous, folks. You two are at the door of marriage! Amy, wasn’t it you who said that high school and college were the time every young lady has to date a lot, play the field as it were?”

“Can it, Howard. We’re in love. Haven’t you figured that out yet?” I said.

“But Robots! How can a guy be in love with both a young ladyand his own reflection?”

“Listen, pal,” I said. “You’ve had your shot. She wants to be with me, not you.”

“Whoa, calm down, Quarterback,” said Howard as he noticed that the whole table was staring at this confrontation. “I’m playing the game straight. I know a good defense when I see one.”

Howard was the team halfback, so unfortunately I got to see his face quite a bit.

“Listen, just drop it,” I said. “I’m in no mood.”

Howard shrugged affably. “Whatever you say, chum. Just remember, you call the plays on the field, but out here, it’s a free-for-all.” He winked at Amy. “So just tell me when you get bored, babe. I’ve learned a few fun things since we were sophomores.”

He got up and left.

“You still haven’t eaten,” said Amy.

“I had the vitamins.”

“You should ingest vitamins with food.”

I picked up my milk, drained it.

“There, will that do?”

“I guess it will have to. Listen, Quinn. Maybe it would be a good idea if you went to the infirmary. Maybe take the rest of the day off. Rest a bit at home?”

The thought had crossed my mind before, and hearing it from Amy strengthened its argument.

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re probably right.”

She seemed shocked that I agreed. Generally I never got sick, and when I did I had to be bursting thermometers to get me to stay at home. Iliked school.

“Good. We’ll take you there right away. I’m sure there will be no problem getting the rest of the day off. I can call up later to make sure you’re okay.”

“Yeah,” I said in a monotone. “That would be nice.”

Chapter Three

So I went home.

The parents were at their respective places of work, and my car was on the other side of Christmas, so I had to take a cab home.

I slumped in the back seat, looking out on a pleasant sunny fall day, just trying to turn my brain off. Rest up, man, I told myself. Ease off. There’s too much machinery whirring in the old noggin. Take a weight off until you can talk to Ms. Paste about all this. She’ll have the answers.She’ll explain everything. By tomorrow, your brain will be on track and today will seem to be a bad dream!

“Where to, buddy?” asked the cabbie. He had a faintly foreign accent. An unlit cigar dangled in his mouth.

“9345 Baron’s Court. Alexander Ridge.

“Gotcha.” He hit the meter. “Not feelin’ so good, huh?”

“No.”

“Hope it’s nothing infectious,” he said after leaving the school and sliding into traffic. The meter clicked, adding on the next ten cents on its large digital face.

“I’ll try not to breathe on you,” I murmured, with atypical sarcasm.

“What do you think about those Redskins, eh?”

“Redskins? Oh, yeah. They’re really doing a fine job. I’m a quarterback myself, so I know what I’m talking about.” Some of my old self-confidence and pride seeped back in, talking about football.

“Hey … yeah, I thought I recognized you. You’re the star quarterback. Queen something. On the high school team. I seen your picture in the local rag.”

“That’s Quinn,” I said, slightly annoyed. “Quinn Roberts.”

“Yeah, right. Says you’re a regular Joe College sort. Pride of the community. Presidential material … They say that if this country stays on the straight and narrow, and if you’ve got political leanings, they wouldn’t be surprised to see you as president of the United States in thirty years!”

I couldn’t help but beam. I remember that article, and hearing it read back to me restored my spirits somewhat.

“Well, I do make it a point to try to embody the principles that underlie this great country.” Nothing like a little lip service to patriotism and ego to set the stars back in the firmament.

“Yeah, and you throw a mean pass, too!”

“All in the wrist.” I gave him my usual mini-lecture on the subject.

“Hey, thanks! I got a kid in the third grade. I’ll teach him that.” I looked up at the mirror and saw a thoughtful look coming over his face. “You know, in this job I get to see lots of kids, all over. And buddy, I’ve seem some punks with plenty of P. It’s good to see a good joe like you. Makes me think it’s all worth while, bringing kids into the world. Gives me hope for my boy Teddy.”

“Thanks. It’s always nice to know you’re appreciated.”

“And serkplatz the mishernoggin … erng enrg ernk!”

“Pardon me?” I said.

“Yeah! Herg liptz zakshaps!”

I was stunned. I couldn’t move.

My God, I thought. It’s happening again!

My eyes were drawn to the meter. The red digits displayed were no longer numerals. Not Arabic numerals anyway … You know, not 1 through 9 … They were bird-tracks, bird-droppings … They were bizarre.

And my attention was drawn to a pair of cables. One was a half-inch metal cable. The other seemed to be covered with air. They led from the meter, traveled along the dashboard and then up the steering column. At this point, they radiated out crookedly, rising up like a webbing to connect with the sides of the driver. Through his ears, his neck and his sides, they connected him like vines to a particularly ripe fruit.

“So what do you think about where this country’s going then, Mr. Apprentice Politician?”

The driver’s head turned. And, oh heavens, the eyes! The eyes bulged like naked eyeballs inflated beyond the sockets of a skull! The face itself was metal, with a silver sheen. Steel jaws clung tenaciously to the unlit cigar. The chest of this robot-like creature pulsed with pink-blue lights, and some kind of fluid flickered through translucent ropes of plastic veins and arteries.

“Not like the good old days, though is it? I’ll tell you what the problem is … We just can’t shake out those damned liberals! They’re the curse of this country! The pinkos, the latent Commies!”

His eyes began to glitter like sparklers.

“Stop!” I said.

“Hey, buddy, this isn’t the place—”

“Just pull over to the side of the road and let me off.” I pulled out a five and dropped it over on the seat. “Keep the change. I just feel like walking the rest of the way.”

The thing pulled over to the curb. “Whatever you say, bub. Hope I didn’t offend you!”

A strangely colored steam was rising from the top of its head. It smelled of rose-buds and cod-liver oil.

I shot out of the door, almost smashing into a lamppost in my haste to get away from the refugee of a grade-Z cyborg thriller.

“Quonch the miktor!” the thing said, and wheels spat gravel as the taxi fired back onto the street.

I stared after it, aghast … And the cab driver from this viewpoint looked perfectly normal.

I leaned against the lamppost, feeling my pounding head to make sure that no brains were leaking out.

After a few moments in recovery mode, I staggered away in the general direction of my home, trying to run. A run would slap some of my shock away … And get me home faster besides, away from the madness that seemed to be closing in on me like a fist.

‘Home’ is a fancy new colonial my parents paid a bundle for. I looked down at the doorknob with trepidation before I stuck the key inside, afraid that it would change into Marley’s ghost or something. Thankfully it didn’t, and I managed to get into the empty house free of any further visitations.

I went upstairs.

My room is a shrine to me: trophies, certificates, report cards, amidst posters of various heroes, including Newt and Gingrich. I did not bother to bask in the glow of the tribute. I did not even turn on the light. I closed the curtains, I locked the door, I got under my blankets.

I would have prayed, but I was afraid that someone would answer.

Dinner at the Roberts’ household occurred at 7.00 pm.

Tonight’s offering from Le Mother Chef was a delicately marinated steak with fresh salad, one of my favorites.

Nonetheless—

“Something wrong, Q?”

“Oh—no … Why…?” I looked up sheepishly from my plate at my father.

“Well, you usually wolf down beef, old man.” He pounded me manfully on the arm. “Gotta keep up the bulk, right?”

“I guess … I guess I just don’t have much of an appetite tonight.” I didn’t want to tell them about the bailing-out at school. If they thought I was sick, they wouldn’t let me out to go to Ms. Paste’s tonight, and that was my one hope for sanity.

“Quinn,” said my mother in a scolding manner. “Have you been eating at those junk-food places again after school with Amy?” She shook her head with dismay, and kept on going without waiting for an answer. “That girl really is a bad influence on you. I mean, what’s wrong with one of those pretty cheerleaders that root you on? They lookvery healthy!”

“Ah, a Big Mac from time to time isn’t going to hurt the guy,” said Dad. “So he’s not hungry … So give him a break.” Dad coveted the privilege of advising his only son. Any comments from Mom were considered derisive criticism, and had to be countered.

Dad is a blue-chip salesman of some sort. Reasonably high mucky-muck in corporate matters. Used to sell cars, used to sell condos, used to sell anything he could, and his background often showed through the high-psych veneer. But he was positive, persuasive and professional and most of all, he had that all-American blond good looks that he passed down to me, chiseled chin and all.

Mom is a magazine art director. She earns a good living, but she’s mostly into the self-fulfillment aspect of the career. Design, graphics … artistic stuff like that. She’s the one who reads, who paints, who decorated the house … She’s short and slender and I don’t know what I got from her … Maybe the irresistible blue of my eyes. Maybe my sparkling wit. Or perhaps my deep spirituality and nobility and integrity.

“Gosh, Mom, you know you’re probably right. Those burgers and French fries are maybe getting to me! I’ll really cut down, I promise.” I stuffed some green stuff into my face to placate her.

“You haven’t got your headache back, have you?” Mom wanted to know.

“Headache?” Dad looked up from his steak.

“The one he had all Sunday.”

“Oh, you mean after he got tackled so badly—the facemask penalty…” Dad turned to me. “I’ll tell you, it looked to me more as though that guy reached right in and tried to tear yourface off.”

“How awful,” said Mom, aghast. Mom had not been at the game. She seldom comes … She says she just can’t stand watching me get knocked down.

“Yeah … They had to take him out awhile, check him out in the infirmary. Right Quinn?”

I was dumbfounded. “Uh, yeah, sure Dad.”

I had no memory of the event. Oh sure, I remember the facemask penalty, but I don’t remember the trip to get checked out. But I didn’t want to let on that anything at all was wrong, and like I say, I didn’t want to go to any doctor just yet. I wanted to hear what my physics teacher had to say.

“But Quinn … Is that it? Does your head hurt?” my Mom demanded.

“No. Honest, I’m fine.” I ate a healthy piece of my marinated steak to prove that my appetite was not totally obliterated. “They let me finish the game, so I must be fine, right?”

“Not necessarily,” she said. “I really think that our doctor should take a look at you. These contact sports … It’s only because your father is so insistent that I’ve allowed you to become such a jock.”

“It’s in his blood. Right, son?” I got a good Anglo-Saxon slap on the back.

“Sure, Pop!” I said, giving him a playful clip on the shoulder. Our father—son salutes. “Oh. By the way, would it be okay if I borrow a car tonight? I want to go over to Amy’s to study.”

Dad grinned, gave me a knowing wink and nudge. “Sure, pal. Study, huh? Right. Don’t want to see that 4.0 nose-diving, eh?”

Mom frowned, but she didn’t say anything. As usual, though, I got strong vibes of disapproval about Amy.

“Sure. You can use my BMW, if you promise to be careful.”

A good safe, sturdy car. I would drive very slowly,very carefully.

I cheered up a little bit. “Great. Thanks.”

If I’d known the treats the future had in store, I might have just headed back for bed.

Chapter Four

Middlevale—my hometown—is the sort of American hometown you see in old thirties’ and forties’ movies, you read about in older books. Only here there’s a twist: Middlevale has been swallowed by the hungry suburbs of a Big City. Which city is not important. Let’s just call it Generictown, USA. So while you can get on Route xxx and ride straight into the heart of a modern city, you can also get on Old Twig Gulch Road and twist your way into the past.

I wheeled the BMW onto Old Twig Gulch Road.

Old Twig is an offshoot from the denser town center. The little houses crammed cheek to jowl became big houses spread out here, often separated by stretches of woods, in which nestled the occasional street lamp. The smell of falling leaves and of coming cold seeped into my car as I eased it down the road toward Ms. Paste—and hopefully the solution to my dilemma.

Amy had called earlier, and I told her I’d probably be by her house tennish. I figured I might need a good dose of reality—and hey, maybe even a hug—after the experience. I mean, even high-IQ jocks need hugs once in a while, right?

The night was suitably dark and grim, with a light drizzle just starting to splatter the windshield. I had to squint to make out road signs. Finally I located the one that she’d given me, and made the turn.

A large house stood at the end of the cul-de-sac, looking like something from the Addams Family, in a minor key and a smaller scale. I parked, navigated the dilapidated stone pathway up to a ruin of a porch. The doorknocker, only dimly illuminated by light from smudged and fogged windows to the side, seemed to be in the shape of a gryphon with its wings outspread. I lifted the thing and practiced a central aspect of physics: gravity.

The thing slammed home, and the sound reverberated through the house like a big bass drum.

The door opened immediately.

I almost fell over the edge of the porch; I hadn’t expected such immediate response.

Ms. Paste took a couple of quick furtive looks beyond me, then dragged me into the house, motioning me to remain silent.

“Did anyone follow you?” she asked after she’d slammed the door closed.

“I didn’tnotice anyone, no,” I said.

“Good. Highly unlikely at this point.” She fixed me with a cautious look, magnified by her incredible glasses. “Although you can’t be too sure, can you?”

“No. No, I suppose not.”

She appraised me carefully, doubtless noticing the newly gray hair, the palsied hands, the pale face of pure terror.

“Come on through and have a cup of hot ginseng tea. That should chipper you up some.”

The living room was a collection of too many antiques, too oddly arranged furniture. I counted at least six cats, just there, most of these snoozing at a fireplace where logs burned cheerily. There was the smell of candle wax and camphor in the place besides the wood-smell; that, and old cedar. That, of course, and cat … It all spelled the kind of eccentricity I associated with old British ladies, not physics teachers.

She led me into a kitchen where a copper kettle was just beginning to whistle. China cups and saucers with oriental designs were already set up on the wood kitchenette table. Ms. Paste took a bottle of liquid in which a large, oddly shaped root floated. She poured out dollops into both cups, then poured water over these.

I thought I was having one of my visions. I pointed at the bottle and stuttered, “Wha … what…”

“Oh, relax. I suppose it is a bit odd to Western eyes. It’s just a ginseng root. Very popular in the Orient. Said to have all sorts of marvelous medicinal powers.” She blew on her own and sipped. “But as for me, I’ve discovered that it clears the mind wonderfully … Particularly and uniquely for the kind of thinking that we’re going to have to attempt at this point in our discussion.”

I looked at her, I looked at the brownish-orange tea, and I wanted to just go and get back into bed.

“Just drink up, drink up, my boy, and we’ll get down to brass tacks.”

I sat down. I sipped at the tea. It was bitter, with a weird aftertaste. I looked up at her with alarm.

“No, no, don’t worry,” she said, smiling charmingly. “This isn’t ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’, Roberts.”

Heartened by this, I took another sip, larger this time, and I have to confess, I did feel better. A warmth swept through me, and a soft breeze seemed to blow through my mind, sweeping out the cobwebs. I was more relaxed when I turned to her finally and said, “All right, Ms. Paste. I’m here. Tell me what the hell is going on.”

“Please,” she said, after a sip from her own cup of tea. “Let’s be less formal here, Quinn. We’re both in this together. Call me Emily.”

“Emily, then.” I leaned forward and looked at her. “It’s happened again. Whatever … I think I’m going out of my mind.”

“You’re not.”

“So then tell me! For God sakes’ what’s happening to me!”

She blew steam off her tea, then looked at me thoughtfully.

Then she reached forward, grasped my left ear with her right hand, twisted hard, and tugged.

“Ouch!” I said. But after one quick, sharp pain it was over.

Emily Paste sat back in her chair, staring at what was in her hand with satisfaction. Grasped there was my left ear. Trailing a few wires and flaps of obviously synthetic skin, not at all bloody.

Instinctively my hand went to the side of my head. It was smooth, except for the cavity usually surrounded by lobe, and two small indentations like jack holes in a Walkman.

Emily Paste put the ear down on the table. I stared at it for a moment, then looked up at her. “My God. My God, I’m a robot too!”

She laughed. “No, no, dear boy. You’re perfectly human, I assure you. Just as human as I am. And look.” She reached to her own left ear, pulled it off, set it right by mine. “You see, I’ve got one just like you. You must have had some sort of accident lately to partially detach it—.”

“The tackle. Saturday’s game!”

“Hmm. They must have been in a hurry to stick it back on right.”

“I had to get back to the game. I’m the star quarterback.” I was still stunned, still staring at the two ears on the table. Then the thought struck me. “They?” I looked up at her. “What are you talking about, ‘they’?”

“All in good time, Quinn. Sorry about the abrupt way I did that, but you have to believe what I’m telling you. Otherwise you might run screaming from the house and I’d lose you.”

I gulped. “Well, I don’t know … After today.”

I told her about the cabbie.

She nodded. “Maintenance and transportation. They’re practically all robots, yes.”

“And we’re not?”

“Should I get out a pin and prick your finger?”

“No. No, I’ve bled before…”

“Ah, but that could all be a programmed memory.”

I shook my head, not understanding at all.

“But I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?” She slurped her tea. “Okay, let’s start at the beginning. Ever take a course in psychology, Quinn?”

“No.”

“Hmm. Okay, ever hear of behavioral psychology?”

“No.”

“But you’re such a good student … How did you get past…? Hmm. There’s something I’ll have to check into. Anyway, I assume you’ve heard of Pavlov’s dogs, haven’t you?”

“Oh, sure. The ones who drooled at the sound of a bell, because they were trained to. Right, we had that in science, in junior high.”

“Right.”

“Like rats. Lab rats. A training of animals.”

“A part of behavioral psychology. That’s the science of humanity which explores just how trained human beings are.”

“Pardon?”

“Now look at you, Quinn. The football star. The handsome social and political star of Eisenhower High School. Ever wonder, Quinn, where all the social training begins and where you start?”

“What does this have to do with Dr. Taylor turning into an alien? Or my ear coming off!”

“Have patience, Quinn. We’ll get there soon enough. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, though. I see I’m taking the wrong line of thought. Yours hardly seems to be much of an inquiring mind. You’ve never wondered what the meaning of life is, have you?”

I shook my head. “I thought that just people who were depressed asked those kind of questions.”

“Okay. Then Quinn, I’ll have to be more direct. I’d hoped to ease into these intellectual areas, but I see that you’re a more pragmatic sort. It’s very simple, really. Middlevale isn’t Middlevale. Eisenhower isn’t truly an accredited American high school. I’m not me, and you’re not you!”

“Then who are we?”

“Victims!” Her finger shot in the air. “Victims of some sort of experiment! Some kind of psycho-social experiment perpetrated by scientists without principle, a government without morals!” Her dewlaps quivered with indignity.

My head was spinning again. I tried to speak but I couldn’t.

“These ears … open them up and you’ll find microchip monitors and controls. And judging by the kind of ‘visions’ we’ve both seen, I’d also say you’d also find some kind of mind-cloak device, adjusted to auditory and visual aspects of our brains, normalizing the odd things that may abound in this laboratory environment.”

I blinked. “You mean, it’s all a joke?”

“A bad one. A total farce.”

“You mean, I’m not really a big fish in a small pond?”

“Quinn, you’re a tiny germ in a puddle under a microscope.”

“Have you got anything stronger than ginseng tea?”

“I don’t serve liquor to minors, Quinn.”

“What the hell difference does it—” I looked at her more closely. “This is a bad dream. It must be. I just don’t believe it!”

“You want me to get out that pin, Quinn?”

“You’re telling me … You’re saying that it’s all a set-up? But how long has this been going on, then?”

“Hard to say. Part of your memories could have been programmed.”

“Programmed?” I stared at her dully.

“Like computers.”

“We’re computers?”

“No, but the analogy holds true. Quinn, memory in the human brain is a chemical-electric matrix. Theoretically, that matrix can be altered, changing our recall of things past.”

“What you’re saying is that all this could have been started a few months ago.”

“Or maybe a few weeks ago.” She looked at me sympathetically. “I know this must be very difficult for you to take.”

“Okay,” I said in a dull voice. “If this is true…” I looked down at the ear, evidence I could not refute. “Then who do you say is doing it?”

“The government,” said Ms. Paste, slamming her fist down on the table.

“The government? But which government?”

There was a moment of confusion in the woman’s face, which then righted itself into anger. “Why, the government, of course! The government, with its FBI and its CIA and God knows what secret organizations prying into privacy! They clearly want to know how to control us all better.”

Still in a fog, I had but one word for that: “Huh?”

“Let’s get back to sociology, psychology and philosophy, Quinn.”

“I think I’d rather get back home.”

“Bear with me. Have you ever thought of how many things influence the average human being? Makes him or her the way that they are?”

“I always figured it was your parents!”

“Oh sure, heredity is the bottom line. But I’m talking beyond heredity. Think! The way you are brought up, the language and accent, your environment. Whole huge cultural and social forces mold the individual. Have you ever thought what made you want to become a football star, made you want to become class president, made you want to dress the way you dress, eat the way you eat, think the way you think?”

“Well, my parents brought me up that way, right?”

“But what made them bring you up that way? What made them have those ideals for you. Society. Culture. Strong, strong forces. Take that pop singer, what’s her name? Britney Tramp or something?”

“Britney Spears.”

“Right. She sings a few hit songs, dresses funny and what happens? Hundreds of thousands of young teenage girls want to dress just like her. Oprah reads a book and says she likes it and everyone goes out and buys it. But it goes much further than that, cuts much deeper.”

“So?”

“So what does a totalitarian government try to do?”

“I don’t know. Control things?”

“Right. They want to control everything. They want to control, most of all, the people that make up their country. So, if a totalitarian government really looks deeply into the situation, they can see the forces that really shape their people. And if they can control those forces … Well, who’s to say that Britney Spears isn’t an experiment to see if the government can’t control the way teenagers dress?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you see? All of this is an experiment of a totalitarian government, to see just how they can control a small, normal society with social trends.”

I tapped my severed ear. “This … This is a trend?”

“You’ve got to have your control. You’ve got to have other parts to an experiment … And goodness knows what else they’re doing. But this is certainly a part of it.”

I shook my head. “It’s not a dream, it’s a nightmare!”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

“And everyone is this way? Everyone has fake ears like this?”

“I don’t know. But we have to find out, don’t we?”

“But what about the alien principal?”

“That’s hard to explain, but I’ve had similar experiences. Perhaps it’s because of the scrambling of the auditory and visual parts of the brain … Hallucinations. That’s the best explanation I can come with.”

“How did you get your ear wracked up?”

“I was on a ladder in my study. I fell off, and hit my ear on a side table. I woke up with it dangling … and no blood. You can imagine my chagrin for awhile.”

“But if what you’re telling me is true, can’t they tell if your ear is put out of whack?”

“I’m good at electronics, lad. I figured out what was going on, fast, and I fixed the ear so that it transmitted normally as though nothing had gone wrong for long. All the same, I was certain I’d get a visit for readjustment. But nothing happened. Apparently this experiment is not as totally efficient as it might be.”

“But if this is an experiment, then where are the scientists?”

“You know that new building at the edge of town? The big one, tall, with all the windows?”

“The Donohue Building.”

“That’s right. That’s where the main controls are, I’m almost certain of it.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Well, first we’ll have to fix your ear so they don’t know that something’s gone kafluey with it.”

I chewed on that. “Could you just fix it so that I go back the way I was?”

“Go back! What a horrid idea!”

“I liked my life!”

“Quinn, it was a fantasy, a joke!”

“Not to me! Not to all my friends, and my social set!”

“Truth! The truth shall set you free, lad!”

“If this is truth, you can have it!”

“Come now. You really don’t mean what you’re saying.”

I think there were tears in my eyes. “Yes I do! I do mean what I’m saying! Put me back again. Make it right again, Ms. Paste. This is too freaky!”

“Now just a minute, let’s get you straight here. If you’re such an all-fired hot shot kid … What’s the quality that you most admire in yourself?”

I had to think about that. “I don’t know.”

“Why, isn’t it your pride, your integrity, your courage?”

“I suppose so.”

“Isn’t that what the ideal American male is suppose to be?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, you’re telling me you’re a coward, that you haven’t the courage to face up to reality.”

She had me there.

“But I won’t know I’m a coward, then!”

“But you’ll know now.”

She was right. Deep down, I realized that I had to make some kind of stand, or I’d really go to pieces. And it was a nice thought to believe that somewhere down deep, there really was a person who could make decisions—courageous decisions—for himself.

“Okay,” I said resolutely. “I guess you’re right. You’d better fix my ear.”

“Good lad,” she said, beaming. She patted me on the shoulder. “I knew you’d come round. Mind you, it’s not that I blame you for becoming a bit unstuck about this. I had a few problems adjusting myself. But I thought I saw, somewhere in there beneath all that programming, something original, something individual!”

“Yes. Pure terror.”

“Bring your tea down into my basement. That’s where my workshop is. We’ll get that ear fixed up in a jiffy.”

I grabbed my tea. I grabbed my ear.

Ms. Paste re-affixed her own prosthetic ear, winked at me oddly, then beckoned me to follow.

The basement proved to be a cavernous collection of musty rooms centered around a mammoth Victorian coal furnace, with more modern attachments converting it to the oil persuasion. One of the rooms was indeed a workshop, fitted with shelves littered with all sorts of electronic gadgets and gizmos.

“Now then, Quinn, just have a seat right over there, and I’ll have at your ear. This will take just a moment.”

I propped myself in the stool she had indicated and watched as she turned on lights at the wood workbench and swung a large light magnifying glass over the severed electronic ear. She then selected several instruments of electronic surgery and set to work, humming “Bridge on the River Kwai” of all things.

I, meanwhile, tried to keep a clear head. That is, a head clear of all the terrifying thoughts that were buzzing around it.

Most important, I told myself, most important thing to do is to keep hold of yourself. You’re Quinn Roberts. Quinn Roberts. You’re a great guy. A great guy. Everyone adores you. Adores you.

But a niggling voice kept on answering me back, Yeah, sure, sucker.

An acrid burning smell came to my attention. I looked over and saw that Ms. Paste was just finishing up her work with a soldering iron. She inspected her handiwork carefully through the magnifying glass—almost the type you see in dentists’ offices—grunted, then swiveled around to me.

“There we go. I think that will do it, Quinn. Come over here.”

Reluctantly, I made the trip.

“Bend down a bit. I’ve got to make sure I make the attachments right.”

I stooped. Utilizing the lit magnifying glass, she examined the side of my head. There was a crack and a pop in my ear and the sensation of a strong pressure against the side of my head—and then it was over.

“Right!” she said, inspecting her handiwork critically. “That should fool the bastards well enough. How do you feel? Any different?”

“No.”

“Excellent. A very good sign indeed.” She switched the light off the magnifying glass.

“What now?” I asked tremulously.

“We have to scope them out. We have to check to see exactly what this experiment is.”

“How do we do that?”

“Just go through life normally. Just act as though things were exactly the same. I want you to keep a journal of all the strange things you see now. Expect to see strange things, Quinn. If you do that, you’ll find that what you do see will not affect you so much. You’ll be able to take the rational, scientific analyzing view.”

“Just what will I see?”

“Hard to say. Just don’t freak out, that’s what I’m saying. I shall continue my own efforts. At the end of one week’s time—let’s make that next Thursday night at 8:00 PM. You shall return here, and we will compare notes and confer upon what is to be done.”

“I can’t talk to you after class?”

“Don’t you remember? We’re being monitored. It’s difficult to say to exactly what extent, but we must be prepared and we must be as secretive as possible.”

“I can’t tell anybody about this?”

“That would be foolish. Everyone is monitored with the ear device, Quinn.” She tapped her own device. “Don’t ever forget that. It will be very difficult to predict who exactly will be listening if you spill the beans.”

“Not even to my girlfriend.”

“Not to your girlfriend, not to your parents, not to anybody. Do you understand?”

“A whole week! With God knows what to expect crawling around out there!”

She put her hand around my shoulders. “It won’t be that bad, Quinn. And just remember, most likely much of what you see may well just be illusion. Come on up, and we’ll have another cup of ginseng tea. I’ll tell you what you might expect.”

Chapter Five

Each day before homeroom, some of the early arrivals hang out in the school library waiting for the first bell of the day.

I sat there with Any, not saying much, still quite shaken.

“What’s wrong, Quinn?”

I shrugged.

“Still a little bit under the weather?”

I nodded.

“Head hurt?”

“No.I’ll be okay, Amy.”

The bus driver had been a robot. I’d always thought that Mr. Farrell was a little stiff, a little mechanical, but I’dnever thought he was a robot! I just sat at the back of the bus the whole way to school, taking the occasional frightened peek down the aisle at the metal men working the shift and the steering wheel and telling the kids in the front to shut up.

“You seem very subdued, Quinn,” said Amy. “Not your usual egotistical self at all.”

“Bad dreams,” I murmured. “Couldn’t sleep much.”

That much was certainly true. I’d hardly slept at all. Two cups of coffee were prying my eyelids open now. I really did want to close them, because I knew the nightmares were far better than the daymares I knew would be walking around here today.

“Still a bit under the weather?”

I looked at her closely. “Amy, you were at the ball-game Saturday. Do you remember me getting taken out?”

“Oh yes, right. For that terrible tackle. They checked you up for a minute or two, and then they let you play again. I’d have been worried if it had been longer, but you seem okay now.” She looked at me oddly. “Does your head hurt or something? Is that what’s wrong?”

“Maybe.”

“You should see a doctor then, Quinn. I mean, a real doctor. Maybe you should get X-rays or something. I mean, there could be a crack in your skull or something.”

“Nah. I don’t think so. I’ll be okay, Amy. Really I will.”

What I really wanted to do, of course, was to tell her everything. I wanted to spill the beans. Then, when she didn’t believe me, I wanted to take her someplace private and yank her ear off, just like Ms. Paste did to me—I desperately wanted a companion in all this, someone to weather the experience with me. I knew that of all people I could trust Amy the most. All this business was making me realize how deeply I cared for her, and so it was very frustrating not to be able to tell her the truth. But I knew that this would endanger us all. If I pulled her ear there was no way I could fix it so that the ‘Monitors’ would not realized that it had been put out of commission. And if I told her—well, the Mental Health Department would be alerted.

“Brighten up then, boy! You’ve got a rep to maintain. The Sun King of Eisenhower High does not have a cloudy day!”

“How about just one drizzly one, just for variety?” I said, giving her a little smile.

“Okay. I suppose into every life a little rain must fall.”

Just call me Noah, I thought gloomily.

Yes, it was a head-bowed-into-arms day. Another seven minutes to go before the bell, and that’s the way I was listening to Amy—(“And so I told Janet that if she thinks that Bob is actually going to seriously consider actually going out with Robin, then she’s got to be totally out of her silly head. Bob is really much more the casual, laid-back back sort … not the super pre-yuppie that Robin is sending out signals for … “) —when who should show up but Howard Casey.

With a girl.

“Oh God, Quinn. Howie’s coming this way, and he’s got Ann Morgan with him. Oh, God, Quinn, I’m just going todie.”

Ann Morgan was the head cheerleader. Ann Morgan was also the prettiest, chestiest, most spectacular bomb-shell senior, junior or whatever lady wiggling her well-proportioned body down the halls of Eisenhower High. If there was a thorn in Amy’s side, it was attached to a rose of a girl named Ann Morgan. I’d dated Ann awhile in the formative stages of Amy’s and my pre-courtship, and Amy hated every bit of her perfect face, every curve of her luscious body.

Perfumed memories ran through my head. Yes, it had been pleasant to date Ann Morgan. I’d had a terrible crush on her and she was the one girl to break this stolid and robust heart of mine. Trouble was Ann was about as faithful as a rabbit injected with extra hormones and she’d stayed with me about as long as she stayed with anyone. Still, I knew it was going to hurt seeing her with Howard Casey, my nemesis. My only hope was that she’d nail him as bad as she’d nailed me.

But I couldn’t admit it. I had to be cool. But what a terrible time to try to be cool!

Dreading their arrival, I lifted my eyes from my arms.

Sure enough, there was Howard Casey coming toward us.

But alongside him—

“Oh, God, she looks like she just got out of a beauty parlor!” moaned Amy. “I knew I should have washed my hair this morning! Oh, God, I’m a wreck! Please tell me I look okay, Quinn.”

I couldn’t say anything.

“Hello hello, fading stars of Eisenhower!” said Howie in a hearty and quite phony hail-and-well-met tone. He pulled out a chair. “Please sit, my darling Princess Ann! Let us mingle with the commoners!”

“Thank you so much, my Prince Valiant,” said Ann Morgan, essaying a fake curtsey, and then sitting down.

I could hear Amy’s teeth gritting.

Howie twirled his own chair around nimbly, tucked the seat between his legs and leaned forward with a satisfied, manure-eating grin. “My dear, dear friends, I should like to introduce you to my new steady.” He smiled sadly at Amy. “I’m sorry, my dear lady, but as you can see, I’m going to have to retract the offer I made the other day. As you can see I am quite preoccupied these days. I know you’ll be crying yourself to sleep night after night, but what can I say? Princess Ann and I took in a movie and a shake last night and it all just clicked. Didn’t it, Ann?” He winked at her lecherously.

“Yes, Howie,” said Ann in her quite-recognizable breathy Marilyn Monroe voice. “It was quite a romantic night!”

I was still in a by-now familiar state: shock.

Ann Morgan’s voice was recognizable, but the rest of her sure wasn’t.

Unlike the principal, Ann wasn’t totally alien. Humanoid I think the word is for it in kiddy-TV.

Amy noticed my agitated state, but misinterpreted. “Quinn,” she whispered harshly. Her kick under the table said: “Stop ogling the cow!”

But it wasn’t ogling. It was stark, shocked staring.

“You really can’t blame the poor guy,” said Howie, clearly thrilled with himself. “I mean, Ann does have the prettiest face in maybe the whole city!”

That face! It had eyes and a nose and a mouth, sure … but that was where the resemblance to the Ann I had known of old ended. On her cheeks were small holes that at first glance seemed to be bad pockmarks, but on second proved to be suckers, like from the tentacles of a baby octopus. Her mouth was kind of squarish with loose, purplish flaps for lips, barely covering tiny, splotched pointed teeth. Her nose looked as if it had been cut off, exposing the white and red of cartilage. Her exhalations spluttered flags of phlegm from the pinkish cavity.

“Just look at these eyes. Aren’t they just the most delightful eyes you’ve ever seen?” said Howard.

The eyes were squinted shutters of inflamed squamous tissue, with a single black dot staring out from purple-veined white.

“And this hair!”

Ann’s hair, which had previously looked quite nice indeed to me, now looked like an over-used SOS pad.

“Angel’s hair.”

Ann giggled. “Oh, Howie. You say the nicest things.”

“I’m very happy for you both,” said Amy, her teeth unclenching.

“She’s some kind of wonderful,” said Howie, leaning over and planting a wet one on that suckered-cheek. “You make me so excited, babe. I mean, tell me true, Quinn. This lady could make a dead man excited!”

“Yeah. That’s about right,” I said.

“I mean, look at this body!”

I looked, and I counted not the usual two pert bulges beneath a sweet sweater, butfive rather bulbous ones of various sizes. I saw a stomach that looked as though it had been inflated like a balloon, and hips oddly askew.

“Is this not a classic?” said Howard.

“Stop, Howie, you’re going to make me blush,” said Ann.

“Sorry, hon, you just make me crazy!” He squeezed her, then fondled her arm. She reached up and tousled his hair with what looked like a lobster’s claw.

“I’m very happy for you both, but this is a public place,” said Amy indignantly. “You really shouldn’tpaw each other!”

“Just want to show you what you’re missing,” said Howard.“Both of you!”

The first wave of astonishment ebbed, and I found myself starting to laugh. And to think I’d cuddled this monster, I’d kissed those lips! The joke was certainly on me, but there was an even bigger one on Howard.

“Hey. What’s wrong with you, nitbrain?” said Howard.

“You’re not being very polite,” Ann said coldly.

“Did you just get your hair done, Ann?” I said, trying to keep calm, but with laughter leaking out my edges.

“Why yes,” she answered.

“It’s…. quite…. something,” I said.

And then I stopped laughing, struck by something.

Here before me was what Ann Morgan really looked like, unfiltered by the Reality device that Ms. Paste’s so-called ‘Monitors’ had fitted me with. The beauty queen of the school was really ugly—a humanoid-alien type creature, it would seem. And yet, to Howard Casey, she was a princess—to him, she was an ideal in femininity. Ann Morgan pushed all his buttons, she smelled right to him, looked right to him … And yet all this was kind of a teenage equivalent to the Emperor’s New Clothes.

And yet, what difference did it really make?

Howard was happy. He thought that Ann was beautiful, everyone else thought she was the hottest thing at Eisenhower….

Hey. Which reality was theright one?

Mine? Or theirs?

They chatted on inanely to Amy a couple minutes. Clothes. Social stuff, gossip.

And it all begins to sound like an alien language to me. Maybe as weird as what the principal was babbling.

The bell saved me.

“Time to mosey on to home room,” said Howard Casey with a satisfied smirk toward me. “See you at practice tonight. Right, pal?”

The floppy folds of Ann’s mouth tilted open, showing a warty tongue as she smiled. “Bye, guys.” She scooped her books up and held them against her numerous breasts.

I nodded.

“Bye,” said Amy, and when the couple were far enough away to be out of earshot, she turned to me and said, “You’re acting so weird. You want to tell me what’s going on in your head?”

I wanted to tell her. But I couldn’t, so I kept my mouth shut.

“You were looking at Ann as though she was naked.”

I shuddered. “Thank God, she wasn’t.”

Ann shook her head, and gathered up her books. “I don’t know, Quinn. I just don’t know. We’re going to have to talk about this. At lunch?”

“Um, yeah, sure, Amy. Lunch would be fine.”

I couldn’t wait until physics class. I wanted to see Ms. Paste.

I simplyhad to talk to her.

Chapter Six

A truly odd morning.

Robots. Aliens.

Some of the blackboards were huge computer consoles, winking lights at me. Dr. Taylor waved a tentacle at me between classes, yelling out “Don’t forget karsharkzing, Roberts!”

And there were these little wheeled things I started to notice, about shin high, buzzing about between the rooms, with protruding tracking antennas. Some followed various of the students and teachers. Fortunately, none followed me.

I knew I had to talk to Ms. Paste, no matter what the risk, no matter what she had told me before. She had not warned me to expect all of this!

So it was, to say the least, somewhat of a surprise to me when I walked into physics class.

Ms. Paste was not standing in front.

My first instinct told me to bolt, but I managed to keep control. I walked to my desk, I sat down, I took out my physics book, my notebook, and my sharpened pencil.

The bell rang.

“Good morning, class. My name is Mr. Phillips. I’ll be substituting today for Ms. Paste, who is not feeling well. She has asked me to refer you to page ninety-five of your texts, and requests that you complete the problems there, as per the instructions in the chapter you were discussing yesterday.”

Mr. Phillips was a robot.

Nor was Mr. Phillips just any old run-of-the-mill robot. He was Robbie the Robot. If you’ve ever seen Forbidden Planet or any of the other movies and TV shows repeated over and over again on independent stations that Robbie’s been in, you know who (or rather what) I’m talking about. Kinda wide, with a dome-shaped helmet revealing mechanical workings. Body like the Michelin man.

I slid down into my seat, terrorized.

I opened the textbook and pretended that I was hard at work.

Ms. Paste? Sick? Highly unlikely.

They had her. I just knew they had her. But did that mean that they knew about me too? I shivered at the thought. Would they come for me too?

And really, would that be so very bad? I mean, I used to be a happy kid! They’d fix my ear, and then they’d make me happy and well-adjusted again, star of the scene.

But then I thought of that hot night by the lake with Ann Morgan last spring, and I thought about what she really looked like … And I knew for sure that I didn’t want them to take me back.

I stuck my nose in the book and started scribbling nonsense into the notebook, darting furtive looks from time to time at the substitute robot.

After a while, the robot whirred to attention. The gears and gizmos within its dome began working, an occasional spark flashing. It ambled down from the teaching dais and began to patrol the aisles, examining what the physics students were writing on their paper.

Quickly, I turned the page and began to jot down a real problem. No way I could solve it, now, with the load on my brain, but at least it was better than scribbles.

By the time old Robbie ambled up my way, I felt as though I was drenched in sweat. I heard the crank of its joints, I smelled its lubricating oil and you can bet I tasted fear.

With a clank, the robot stopped.

A squeak. It bent down toward me.

I waited for the metal hand to grab me on the arm, I waited to be dragged down to Doctor Taylor’s office where a room full of Outer Limits rejects would point accusing mandibles at me and Doctor McCoy of Star Trek would rip off my ear, saying, “He’s dead, Jim,” while the queen from Aliens would sashay in to lay a few eggs in my head.

Robbie the robot paused for what seemed half an eternity … Then it said, “Gormph flix qix?”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, do you have the time?”

I glanced at my watch. “Uh, it’s eleven thirty.”

“Whox utu,” said Robbie the Robot, and it proceeded to wobble on back to its dais.

I was puzzled. There was a great big electric clock on the side of the room, displaying exactly the same information.

Why had Robbie the Substitute Teacher Robot asked me for the time?

But as they weren’t hauling me in to be strangled by Darth Vader, I was so immensely relieved, I didn’t think too much about that. I only knew I wanted to get out. I only knew that as soon as that bell rang, I was going to hightail it to my rendezvous with Amy. I had a feeling about where Ms. Paste had been taken, and I needed to do a little reconnoitering in that general vicinity. And I needed someone to help me. Someone who had a car….

“I need to use your car. And I need your help,” I told Amy flat out.

“Well of course you do. We’re going to Burger King for lunch like we usually do.”

“No we’re not. I’m checking out of school on sick leave again.”

“But Quinn. Practice tonight … The game tomorrow.”

“I’m canning practice. We’ll see about the game.”

“Well, you can’t expect me to get sick too.” I thought about that. She was right. I might need her help later, but for right now, I suppose I could do this next bit on my own.

“Okay. Then I just want to let me use your car. I’ll have it back to you before the end of school. Who knows, maybe I’ll even make practice.”

We were standing at our usual rendezvous, just outside the student parking lot. A fall breeze was tugging on her curls and she looked awfully cute with her perplexed frown. “Just what is going on here?” she demanded.

“I’ll tell you later. I need the car now!”

“You’ll tell me now!”

“Look, if I promise to tell you tonight, would you let me use your car?”

She thought about that. “So there is something…”

“Yes, and it’s very big, and I’m going to need your help, definitely. But I’m in a hurry now.”

She looked me directly in the eye and she must have seen my desperation and sincerity.

“Okay. But you’ve got to have it back by 3:30.”

“Yeah, yeah, I will!” I said and I gratefully kissed her.

“I guess this means I’m stuck with the cafeteria lunch again,” she said resignedly.

“I’ll make it up to you. We’ll go out to dinner. I’ll buy you filet mignon!”

“Okay.” She fished out her keys from her purse. “Just drive carefully.”

“I promise.”

After another quick kiss, I loped down to where her old VW bug was parked.

“Hey, aren’t you going to the nurse’s office?”

“Oh yeah,” I called back. “Would you do that for me?”

She shrugged. “Okay.”

“Tell them I had a relapse.”

“I’ll tell them you’re pregnant!”

“Sure, sure, whatever.”

I got in the car and chugged off, knowing exactly where I had to go.

Somehow, I had to see what was inside of that building that Ms. Paste had been talking about.

The Donohue Building.

That was where it was all happening, it would seem.

And I had to have my shot before they pegged me.

Chapter Seven

The Donohue Building was one of those huge suburban office buildings that hang around freeways and beltways, sucking up businesses and commuters and spewing out God knew what. Its collection of cantilevered glass and metal shone brilliantly in the cool autumn sun as I wheeled into the outside parking lot, avoiding the underground garage. That would be too much like getting swallowed up; and I wanted to make a quick getaway, if necessary.

It looked normal enough. As I walked up to the huge glass doors I saw no aliens, no robots. I saw only the usual secretaries and pinstriped corporate boys heading out for lunch, paying me no notice at all.

Past the usual potted palms I strolled, looking around. Just a little store that sold mints and magazines, a row of elevators, and a large glassed-in pegboard with white letters describing the cornucopia of businesses that resided here, like cells within a hive.

I walked up to this and read it.

As soon as I started reading it became apparent that I was quite wrong: instead of a number of businesses, all the listings seemed to be subdivisions of just one major corporation—something called Ajax Dynamics.

Reception for everything was, it seemed, on the first floor, one flight up.

Right. So what next? I asked myself. Stroll on up to the receptionist, say, Hi. I’m Quinn Roberts and I know you’ve got Ms. Emily Paste somewhere in here and, hey! Just what is going on in this place anyway?

No, I didn’t think that would be exactly the wisest idea. So I just stood there at the board, reading and thinking. I had reached the Rs when a heading shot out at me: Records.

Records of the activities of Ajax Dynamics? Sounded good. Floor 13.

They had a thirteenth floor in this place? I always thought that large buildings didn’t have thirteenth floors, you went straight from 12 to 14. A definite bad omen.

But I was here with a purpose, and I intended to stick it out. I walked to the elevator and was about to take it when I noticed a bright red Exit sign next door. Those would be stairs. Usually in such buildings, to avoid robberies and such, the doors would be locked from the outside. No harm in trying, though.

I went to it and twisted the knob.

It was open! What good luck. A janitor must have been cleaning the steps or something and left this door open.

I quietly closed the door behind me and began to navigate the steps. Records was thirteen floors away, but I was in pretty good shape. The reason I chose Records was because I figured that was where I might find some clue as to where Ms. Paste had been taken. Also, it might have some kind of hint about what was really going on here in this madhouse town.

I was in good shape, so I was scarcely breathing hard when I reached the Records floor. I’d managed to resist the temptation of peeking into the other floors on the way up. God alone knew what kind of sentinel robots might hover there, ready to nab me.

Then again, God alone knew what was waiting to nab me on the other side of that big number 1131.

I took a deep breath. Well, no backing out now.

I grabbed the door handle. I pushed it open. I peeked inside.

Surprise of surprises. An office!

Actually many little offices: those little cubicles they use, the ones with red or beige rug-siding. They stretched out down to the other side of the building, separated by neat aisles. I saw a few office workers crossing the aisle. But there was no one I could see down this way.

I closed the door quietly behind me, and walked to one of the cubicles. No one was there. It consisted mostly of a desk, a chair and a computer.

I went in, grateful for all the computer classes I’d taken, grateful for the computers my father had bought me, grateful for the natural mechanical and mathematical ability I had. This particular number here looked to be of the IBM persuasion, but instead of the Big Blue’s insignia Ajax Dynamics was printed on the side. Still, the operations were similar enough, and the on switch was in the same place, so I settled down and got to work.

It was all amazingly easy—or perhaps I’m even more of a whiz than I thought I was. Within just a few minutes, I had accessed their prime computer.

I entered the name, Emily Paste.

The computer was silent for a moment, and then spewed out all the vital statistics about Ms. Paste. There was a whole section in technical language I did not understand … And a whole section in totally alien language.

Appended though to all of this was an addendum dated today.

Repair work, it read. Subject taken to floor five, Biomechanics.

Well, there it was. Floor 5. That’s where I had to go.

I turned on the nearby printer for a printout.

On the spur of the moment, I also entered my own name for the printout. Whatever they had on me would go on the paper along with the material on Ms. Paste.

The printer started rattling away, and I took the opportunity to snoop around this floor some more in the couple minutes it would take for the machine to complete its job.

I snuck into the aisle and took a look around.

Nothing. Nobody.

Hmm. At the end of the aisle, near the center of this very large room, was a more traditional office, enclosed all the way up to the ceiling. This appeared to be the hub of the whole area. As most of the workers seemed either hard at work in their cubicles or away at lunch, I figured it would be safe to see what was inside this office.

I walked down the aisle.

As I neared the side of the office, I heard the sounds of paper-shuffling, the sounds of disk-drives, a peculiar rustling and something liquidy that I assumed to be a percolator. The whole area was beginning to smell like copy machine fluid.

A moist flopping sounded, like a careless child sucking on a Popsicle.

The door was open. Hesitantly, I peered inside.

It was not a small room, but almost the entirety of its space was filled by the thing.

It looked like a giant, rotting rainbow Jell-O mold. It quivered and it spasmed, and I could see odd-shaped organs roiling within. Its skin was covered by computer paraphernalia: keyboards, monitors, flashing lights and digits. Metal coils connected it to the wall.

I stood there transfixed by this gelatinous mass of horror.

And as I stared, a single foot-high eye, complete with lashes, opened in its middle and stared back.

The next thing I knew, I was running back down the aisle toward the steps. I took exactly two seconds to run into the cubicle where I had previously fiddled with the computer and rip the printout off the printer. Its ends fluttered after me as I raced for the stairs, afraid of what might be after me.

Along about floor six, it occurred to me that I ought to be slowing down to check floor five, where Ms. Paste was being kept.

The door was locked.

I tried door number four.

That was locked too.

I was trying number two (locked) and was thinking about going up and finding another way in, when a damp flapping begin to echo in the staircase.

Rustlings.

Scrabblings.

The smell of copy fluid.

Something snapped in me and all my courage drained away.

I took the rest of the steps five at a time and got the hell out of that building!

Chapter Eight

I got back to the high school parking lot in plenty of time to have the VW back to Amy.

All the time thinking: I failed her.

I failed Ms. Paste. I’d gone to get her, and then freaked totally.

But when I pulled in, I thought about the printout.

I had that, anyway. Maybe I’d be able to figure out what was going on from a careful study of it.

So I got into school and I headed immediately for the library, where I found myself a study cubicle way to the back, and sat down.

For a while I just sat there and calmed myself down. I’d gotten away from that place, anyway … And what the hell had that thing been inside the central room? Was it real, or just my illusionary imagination?

One thing for sure: Ms. Paste hadn’t been able to call the shots totally. Apparently her own manipulation of her ear attachment had not worked properly. The Monitors glommed onto her soon enough, clamped down on her, hauled her off for a refinish. Which probably meant that I didn’t have all that much time before a similar fate descended upon me.

I had to find out what I could, so that I could defend myself.

I unscrolled the printout, skipped Ms. Paste’s chicken scrawling down to where my name was etched.

Roberts, Quinn David

Reality stasis implementation: XZN9834

Duration of routine: 3 units

Socio-cultural role—high school athlete, socially adept, popular. See text, entry 843

Status: okay

IQ: augmented but limited

Performance: adequate

Impact on reality stasis: undetermined

Comments: a minor functionary of stereotypical nature. Control for more complex experimentation of units of greater intelligence, but less social aptitude

Withdrawal date: 67-34-435

Comments: reusable body, but brain can be replaced.

Persona: inadequate. Greater attention to personality

Design from Section Q for future BMOCs

Monitor level: minimal

The rest of the readout was the same sort of chicken-scratching and undecipherable garbage that Ms. Paste’s was composed of.

But I’d read enough.

I stared at the printout for long minutes.

Inadequate? Stereotypical? Not only did I appear to be a construct, but a very lowly one. Not only was my reality a false one. It was also very shoddy.

It was too much to take. I think I blanked out for a while into a kind of a defensive fugue. A state of shock to preserve what shreds of inadequate individuality I had left.

And when I came out of it, I realized that they’d get me eventually. But then again, maybe not.

Maybe they didn’t even care! I was that unimportant!

Ms. Paste could have been a problem. But maybe they knew all about me, all about my discoveries—but they had other, more vital matters to deal with. They would just let me stew for a while before they picked me up and straightened out my programming.

I was just a cipher, a nobody.

Yes, and they’d seen me—that computer creature … It had seen me. It knew who I was.

Or had it really existed at all? Was all this some sort of malfunction in my brain?

One thing I knew for certain: if I started talking about it first of all I’d end up in a shrink’s office. And then I’d end up back at the Donohue building, getting worked on again.

But what difference did it make? They’d get me eventually. What could I do about it? Absolutely nothing.

I think I would have felt something, if I didn’t realize that my feelings weren’t really mine anyway.

What was mine?

Who was I?

I wasn’t who I’d thought I was, and that was the real killer, because who I thought I was a dynamite guy.

And the truth was, I wasn’t even a firecracker.

“Hey, burn-out,” said Amy. “You haven’t even touched your sundae. You usually polish off two of them at a sitting, and you’ve hardly touched number one. What, are you on a diet or something?”

I stared down at the cherry atop the Hot Fudge Sundae, which was rapidly becoming a Cold Fudge Sundae.

I shrugged.

The only reason I was here at all at Brunkhorst’s Ice Cream Parlor was because Amy had dragged me here after our Friday Night Movie Date. I was pretty much feeling like the z in the word Zero. Namely, comatose.

“Well, you’d better snap out of it, pal. I like a lively conservationist for a boyfriend, not a reject from Night of the Living Dead.”

“Okay.”

I’d been a zombie at practice as well. Fortunately, we just ran through a few plays and ran some laps: the coach was pretty confident of success tomorrow against Northwestern. I was able to zone out. The exercise was actually rather therapeutic.

I’d met Amy and we’d headed straight for the latest movie, a Clint Eastwood police thriller. I was grateful for it, because I didn’t have to talk.

But now I did.

“Amy,” I said, playing with some whipped cream with my finger. “Why do you wear your hair like that?”

“What?” Amy self-consciously reached up and touched her bobbed blonde hair. “Something wrong with it?”

I shrugged.

There was a moment of silence as she mulled the question over. “Well, I guess because it makes me look good, of course, Quinn!”

I shook my head. “No, it’s because a lot of other girls wear it that way. It’s because you’re conditioned, programmed to wear your hair that way. It’s because you don’t think for yourself. None of us do.”

“What?”

“Ever wonder, Amy, why you do the things you do?”

“Well, yeah, sure! Sometimes, especially lately, I’m wondering why I go out with you, Quinn!”

“No, really, seriously. Have you ever wondered if you’ve ever had an original thought in your brain? Or even if you’ve had that thought, who’s to say it’s yours and somebody didn’t really stick it in there, or it is just something you read a few years ago, bubbling up now from your subconscious?”

“Quinn—”

“Ever wonder where our programming stops and we begin? I mean, do we really exist at all, or are we just socio-cultural biological robots, wiggling through the ant-hill of life for a few years and then turning back into fertilizer?”

“Quinn, I meantconversation, not morbid nonsense!”

“You mean insipid chatter, amounting to nothing. You mean just mouthing tired phrases every other couple is using tonight.”

“What are you talking about, Quinn? Is this what you’ve been dragging your tail about these past days? Philosophical depression. Angst. Yes, I know those words too, and I really resent being called … being called ‘like everyone else.’”

“So then. Why areyou different, Amy?”

She flustered over that one. “Well, I guess because … well, because I’m me.”

“Yes, but you’re just like all the other teenyboppers running around! You dress the same, you look the same, you listen to The Backstreet Boys and you eat ice cream sundaes after you watch the annual Bruce Willis movie. You’ll go through college, you’ll get married, you’ll have one and a half kids and you’ll be just a number in the census.”

Her face was red. “But Quinn … It’s like they say in church … Everyone has free will.”

“Free will!” I laughed in her face at that. “Free will! You’ve got to be kidding me. What real choices are there in life, Amy? Where you’re born, what sex you are? Do you choose those? Do you really choose the clothes you wear, the way you talk, the way you think?” I leaned over closer to her. “How do you know that there’s not something or somebody whocontrols you, makes you do everything that you do—and makes you think that you’re the one who chose it?”

Amy looked at me as though I was something that had just crawled out from under a rock.

“I’m not joking! How much thought have you given the subject.”

“What subject?”

“The nature of Reality!”

“Well, I know one thing for sure … You’ve taken a dive off the deep end of it!”

“Maybe I’m just getting away from the superficial things. Football, dating, ice cream sundaes … Bruce Willis movies! What the hell difference do all these things mean in the Great Scope of things?”

“Quinn,You’re the one who’s nuts about all that stuff, not me!”

“Like, take the sky…” I pointed out the front window we were sitting by, up into the night. “Like, how do you know that’s real? How do you know it’s not some kind of painted or even electrical canopy hanging over us?”

“Quinn—becausescientists tell us what the stars are and where they are and what they mean.”

“But how do you know they’re telling the truth?”

She shook her head and stared at me for a moment. “How do you know that I’m not Darth Vader in disguise?”

It was my turn to stare at her. I mean, maybe she was!

Maybe she really looked like Darth Vader.

How was there really any way of telling?

“Quinn, you’re spooking the hell out of me,” Amy said.

“How do you think I feel? Do you think I like to be obsessed with all these questions floating around in my brain?”

She was looking at me with a worried expression. “Maybe we ought to get some professional help for you. You’re beginning to sound paranoid. Maybe even a touch schizophrenic.”

“No. I’m not crazy … Besides, you don’t even know what you’re talking about!”

“I took a psych course!”

“Doesn’t make any difference. I’m not crazy.”

“You sure are talking crazy.”

“Well, I’m not, take my word for it.” I stared down glumly at my melting ice cream. Was this the right time? Should I just open my mouth and let it all come gushing out like backed-up vomit? Could I trust my girlfriend to believe what I was saying without wanting to ship me off to the local asylum for deranged juveniles?

No. Of course not. There was no way she’d believe me: how could she? Everything looked to her like it used to look to me. Namely, normal. How was she ever going to believe that robots and aliens were walking around everywhere, that we were all being controlled and monitored?

But then, maybe there was another way. It was a long shot, but it was worth the chance. Not just with Amy, but with everyone. And maybe by the time I was done, the damage would be too extensive to fully repair!

“Amy, you’re right,” I said finally. “I am being morbid. I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s come over me. Maybe I did get hit a little too hard last game. Maybe I’ve been taking some church stuff and philosophic stuff I’ve been reading too seriously.”

Amy looked at me suspiciously. “You haven’t been reading that science fiction stuff again, have you?”

I held up a Scout’s Honor sign and grinned. “No. Honest.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“I’m sorry. Maybe I’m just going through—I dunno, hormonal changes or something. Tell you what. Let’s go back to my house and listen to some records and sit on the couch in the family room. I’ll make a fire in the hearth and pop some popcorn … just like you like, okay?”

She smiled. “Now, that’s the sort of hormonal changes that I can get into!”

I knew that it would be the perfect opportunity.

My parents had told me that they’d be out late. Amy and I would have the whole house to ourselves. She really enjoyed the family room, and she adored our stereo. She loved to crank it up and just immerse herself in volume … And immerse herself in me.

Once I had her in the clinch, I would pounce.

Only not quite in the way males usually pounced…

“You’re sure your parents are not going to come barging in like last time?” she said nervously as I let into the silent house.

“Big long party on the other side of town … Business clients, and you know how my Dad is with business. There’s simply no way that they’re going to be back until the wee hours … And look. It’s only 11:30 now!”

She relaxed noticeably, and floated with feminine grace into the family room. She thumped on the 100 watt stereo, hit the CD button, then examined the CD selection.

“Oh, Quinn, you didn’t tell me you had the new Kid Rock on CD!” she exclaimed, enthusiastically examining the cover.

“Forgot,” I said, throwing an artificial log into the fireplace.

“How could you forget…? You know how much I like them. It’s going to sound so good.”

She put the disk on, and within moments crazily syncopated percussion was crashing out of the speakers and the flames were beginning to prick up along the length of the log.

“I’ll just go make the popcorn,” I said.

“No. That can wait. We just had some ice cream.” She patted the sofa cushion beside her. “Come sit for awhile. I feel like being close to you!”

“Sounds good to me!” I said, putting on an artificial smile. It was tough acting like the Quinn of old when I had changed so much in so little time.

I sat by her, and she leaned back beside me, eminently available, looking soft and sexy and smelling just great, her eyes sparkling invitingly in the glow of the flames aflicker in the hearth.

“We haven’t done this for awhile,” she said, barely audible above the din.

“No,” I said, putting my arm around her.

“It’s nice,” she said.

“Yes,” I said, leaning closer.

Her eyes closed as she saw me zeroing in on her gently parted lips.

I kissed them gently, just to keep her going, just to get her into position.

Then I reached around with my right hand, grabbed her right ear and twisted hard.

I fully expected it to come off, just as mine had into Ms. Paste’s hand.

However, unfortunately, Amy’s ear did not come off.

She screamed, and she scrambled to get away from me.

I tried the other one. I twisted. Amy yelped. Tears started from her eyes.

She hit me hard and then she wrenched away from my grasp. “Quinn! What are you trying to do?”

“Just stay still a moment, Amy!” I said, leaping to my feet. “I have to show you!”

“Show me? Show me what … That you can kill me!”

“No. That one of your ears comes off! Just like mine! Watch!” I grabbed my ear and began to twist.

But although I felt no pain, neither did the stupid ear cooperate: it refused to come off.

Amy took only a few moments to recover. Then she ran off like a rocket, barely taking time to grab up her coat before she was out the door.

I ran off after her. “Amy! Amy come back! I have to show you! My ear comes off, Amy! It was what they were using to control me. Just like they control you!”

“You never should have seen that Vincent van Gogh exhibit this summer!” cried Amy, tears flowing down her cheeks as she swept out of the house and headed for her car.

“Amy!” I cried after her. “Come back! I have to explain! I have to explain to you!”

But she didn’t come back. She zoomed away from my house as though the Devil were after her.

.

Chapter Nine

It was one of those fall days that cling to the memory long afterward. The cold was of the bracing kind, not obnoxious at all. Sweater weather, touched with a golden sun. A cloud or two hung in the sky, but only as though for ornamentation. The leaves were just at the right range of colors.

It was, I thought, just like a perfect three-dimensional landscape painting.

And maybe it was.

I sat on the edge of the football field, on the bench, waiting for the game against Northwestern High School to begin, and I looked out over all this, and I looked out over the crowds in the bleachers, and my fellow players milling about in their red and white jerseys, their cleats kicking up divots, their helmets off, and I thought, I can’t do this. I can’t play this stupid, silly game.

It’s all so inconsequential.

The fact that, across the field, I had noticed that all the players of the Northwestern team had noses like elephants may have slightly influenced this opinion, I admit.

The Coach sat down beside me and patted me on the back. “So, how do you feel then, Champ?”

“Okay.”

“You don’t sound so good.”

“I’m all right,” I lied.

“What’s the problem.”

“Argument with my girlfriend.”

“Ah. Too bad.”

Coach was a beefy guy, a football player of yore gone to seed, body by Budweiser. I looked at him now, with his short hair and his windbreaker and it occurred to me that he looked like most other football coaches I’d seen on TV. So was this coach just as stereotypical as I? Were the Programmers simply bored when they’d created me and the Coach? Or were there indeed some odd method to this madness?

Hey, I thought morosely. Maybe this is just a perpetual movie set, producing all kinds of motion pictures for the amusement of all creation. And we’re all in the Dumb Teen Division. And now, we’re in the middle of the Big Football scene.

“So you remember the plays?” he said.

“Sure,” I said. I took a sip of my Gatorade and adjusted my shoulder pads.

“I got buttonholed the other day by the Principal.”

“Yeah. He wants to see the ball on the ground more.”

“How do you feel about that?”

I shrugged. “You’re the coach.”

He slapped me on my butt. “That’s the spirit. You just call my plays, and throw those bombers and we’ll beat this team.”

“Yeah?”

God! Even the dialogue was dull! I just couldn’t get the spirit up for this farce! I couldn’t even get up the spirit to throw my helmet down and head for the showers. I was just going through the motions. Just going through the motions like the robot that I was.

I was upset about Amy. This was the limit of my emotion. A deep ache of twisted feeling. How could I ever explain to her why I had done what I had done? How could she possibly ever get close enough for me to try?

But I knew I had to. I realized that if there was anything important clinging to this sham of a life that was mine, it was my emotional attachments. To Amy. To my parents. They were what was keeping me going.

Now I just had to keep on going, and get through this game with a team of players with elephant probosci.

As we were called out onto the field, and the Eisenhower cheerleaders began to strike up their chants, to tumble their colors and skirts and hair about madly, I looked at those ridiculous Northwestern players more closely.

Yes indeed, those looked like elephant noses … but otherwise they all looked humanoid enough in their black and green jerseys. Still those noses looked awfully weird hanging out over their face guards, flopping around as they walked.

The coin was flipped, the ball was kicked, Eisenhower receiving.

The team huddled. I called the play. And I noticed that Howard (assigned role: arch-nemesis) had a funny looking smirk on his face. Maybe a little more obnoxious than usual.

Vaguely, I wondered what he was up to.

Mostly, though, I really didn’t care.

The ball was snapped. I threw it. The receiver caught it.

Again. Again.

Rote stuff, all of this. Boring.

Ridiculous.

By the end of the first half, we were a touchdown ahead of Northwestern. Those noses (which clearly none of the Eisenhower defense noticed or they’d be tugging away at them) did not seem to be impeding their game at all.

All of my quarterbacking was on automatic pilot. So in the second half, when we started losing, I hardly cared.

When, by the end of the third quarter, we were trailing by two touchdowns and a field goal, I got replaced.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Roberts?” Coach screamed in my face in the stereotypical Vince-Lombardi-winning-is-everything fashion.

Have you got a couple hours, Coach? I thought grimly.

“I don’t know, can’t seem to throw the ball right today, Coach,” I mumbled apologetically.

Especially when I’m staring at a bunch of monsters. Especially when I realize that whoever wins this silly, stupid game makes about as much difference as the next installment of ‘Providence.’

The Coach shook his head with disgust, then stalked away from me, his eyes surveying the hundred yards of catastrophe before him. He changed his mind and strode back and fixed me with a finger … “You … I want you in my office, first thing Monday morning!”

I nodded. This meant, of course, that I could possibly become that pariah of pariahs at Eisenhower, the Monday morning quarterback. News would get out fast. I would get shunned for the rest of the weekend, so that I would have plenty of time to consider my folly. By the time Monday dawned, I would be supposedly a changed guy, kissing the Coach’s feet to get back into position, and training like a speeded-up Rocky Balboa.

Little did Coach know, little did anyone realize that I just didn’t care. I sat on the bench, watching the game passively, simply not caring one iota what score the electronic board showed at the end of the tussle.

The new quarterback, Jimmy Askew, tried hard, but we lost anyway by a significant number of points. The Northwestern fans were jubilant, but there was a pall hanging over the Eisenhower boosters. No one talked to me much, and I got the silent treatment in the locker too. Even from Howard the Halfback.

Now that was strange.

I realized why later, after I’d showered and dressed and was moping along toward where my Dad was supposed to pick me up.

Standing by Howard’s classic Mustang was Amy, right next to Howard.

In fact, she wasvery next to Howard.

“Hey loser,” said Howard hailing me with a cheerful wave.

Amy hit him in the arm, and looked away, embarrassed. That gesture told me more than Howard’s had.

For the moment, I felt nothing.

Then suddenly a small pain crept over my solar plexus as though someone had just pegged me there, and my body was reluctant to admit that the blow was significant.

“Amy,” I found myself saying. “I’m sorry about last night, I’m sorry about everything. If you’ll just give me a chance to explain—”

She turned her back on me.

“Please, I’m having a hard time, I really am!” I said, and my voice cracked with the imploration.

“I can’t help you, Quinn,” she said. “You need professional help.” She half-turned to me and I saw the glimmer of a tear. “After that, maybe we can talk.”

“Right,” said Howard. “Get away from her, psycho!”

I nodded and I turned and I trudged away. The pain was on hold, but it was definitely there, in a big way … and it was a pain deeper and more substantial than anything yet. It’s one thing to have your physical reality screwed about. But when the emotional plane gets shattered … well, that hit nerves down pretty deep.

Dad picked me up. He was real good about the game, saying stuff like “Gotta lose sometimes to appreciate the wins!” Halfway through the drive, I said, “Dad, maybe I better go and see—”

I was going to say “Dr. Rogers,” but then I caught my tongue. I knew that it wouldn’t do any good. I knew I was faced with a pretty hairy choice here, and Dr. Rogers did not come into the picture at all.

“Go see who?” Dad asked.

“Never mind.”

“You’re not looking very happy.”

I had an easy answer for that one. “Amy and I—well, it looks like we’re not seeing each other for a while.”

He nodded. “I thought I read romantic disappointment in your face, Quinn.” He reached over and tapped me on the shoulder. “Happens to the best of us.”

“But things were going so well, Dad.”

He got a strange look on his face. “That’s just exactly when they can really start going awry, son. Like in Greek mythology … the Gods strike us down if we show too much hubris.”

“Hubris? What’s that?”

“A kind of astronomical pride, way out of bounds.”

I nodded. Yeah, that was me. “Oh,” I said. “I guess maybe things were going too well for me.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I was worried about that frankly. Not that I minded having such a successful son.” He braked for a light, then turned and faced me with a thoughtful expression on his face. “But son, you don’t want to peak too early.”

“What?”

“Get too much success, too soon. This is probably good for you. I know people who were very popular and successful in my high school who are plumbers or real estate agents now. You want something more than that, don’t you?”

“I just want to feel better, Dad.”

I just want the world to get off its headstand, I thought to myself. I just want things to get back to normal.

And then, as my father pulled away from the light, face looking pensive, I had a sudden realization.

Things would never be normal now.

I looked at the passing cars and the houses and business buildings, the street, the signs, the sky, the clouds, the trees and the people scattered hither and yon. All of these seemed incredibly bizarre … every bit as weird as the strange things I’d been seeing.

“We’ve all got to go through crap,” said Dad finally. “It’s just a part of growing up. Maybe you’ve just had it too easy. Maybe you’re just getting all of yours in one dump.”

“You just don’t know.”

“It always seems that way, Quinn,” he said, getting out his pipe, which signaled some really deep pronouncement on The Way of Things. “Especially when you’re young. I can remember back when I was your age. I thought every day was the most important day in my life. Everything simply mattered so much, every mole hill seemed a mountain, every speck of trouble seemed a boulder crushing me. But you know, when you get older, you’ll realize a very important aspect of life. Everything passes. Stick around long enough, bad things will get better. And sometimes good things will get worse. Know what I mean?”

I nodded. “I’ll say.” But there was no way to tell him that what I was going through was quite simply bad beyond imagining.

“Say. How about you and me—well, maybe we should go bowling tonight or something?”

“Thanks Dad,” I said. “I think I need to be alone tonight.”

“Sure. I understand.”

“But I’d like to … I mean, do something … But some other time. We haven’t done anything together for awhile.”

“Yeah! Darn tootin’!” He gave me a friendly slap on the knee. “We’ll do that. Rain check then?”

“You bet.” I felt a lot better. Here was a surprise. My own father had changed from an alien into a human being.

It made me feel even better when we got home and the dog followed me into my room and licked my face, happy to see me.

That was until I realized we didn’t have a dog.

Chapter Ten

“Time to get up, dear,” said my mother. “We’ve got to go to church.”

I slipped up reluctantly from unconsciousness. I was suddenly aware that the dog—Sandy, my parents had called him—was lying on my bed. He looked up at me with a doggy smile, tongue drooping. He was a handsome dog. He had the body of a boxer and the head of a Great Dane. A cross-breed.

“Mom, how long did you say we’ve had Sandy?” I said, looking at him skeptically.

“Five years, dear. Don’t you remember?”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah.”

The reason I hadn’t kicked up much of a fuss over this new wrinkle in Reality was that Sandy was actually a welcome change. I’d always wanted a dog, since as long ago as I could remember, but my Mother didn’t like pets. Now, it seemed, she did. And Sandy had helped me a great deal last night, alone with me in my room. I had intended to just shut the curtains again and blank out everything. Sleep a lot maybe. Definitely put up a wall of black and white against all the crazy colors leaking into my life. But having a dog there—a friendly, thoroughly sensitive and domesticated dog—was quite comforting. I’d talked to him for a long time. And it seemed as though he was actually listening!

“So there it is, Sandy,” I’d said. “What do you think?”

The dog had said nothing, just turned its head in an inquiring manner.

“Surely you have something to say on the matter…” I said, standing and pacing, my long bathrobe flapping.”I mean, you’re a part of the whole business.”

The dog lay down and looked up at me with sad eyes, making a tiny whine.

“Sorry,” I said, kneeling beside him and petting him. “Agood part. The rest, though, really sucks, wouldn’t you say?”

The dog didn’t say.

“I’ve just got to hang on.” I told Sandy, smacking a fist against a palm dramatically for my new audience. “You, Sandy, are an omen. Things are changing, yeah. But you’re the first thing that’s changed that I wanted to change or maybe,” I seized the thought. “Maybe I wanted all of this to change! Subconsciously, I mean. It’s like, what did Mrs. Hawkins call it in English? Yeah, solipsism! I’m the center of everything. Like the third part ofThe Twilight Zone, the section directed by Joe Dante. What do you think, Sandy?”

Sandy looked up with woeful eyes.

I shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe not.”

I rambled on a little longer. Then I realized the dog had fallen asleep. It took me a while longer than Sandy to konk out, but eventually I followed into dreamland, a place a little more reassuring than the territory I’d been traveling lately.

And awakened to Mom nagging me to get up. Some things never change.

I drank a cup of coffee, I stared awhile at the eggs (requested scrambled so that they would not stare back) and then suggested that I might skip church that morning.

“No, I really don’t think that would be a very good idea,” said Mother in her most compassionate yet somehow commanding manner. “Your father told me about your problems, and I think that whether or not you care to realize it, an hour in a pew will do your soul some good.”

I thought about it. “I think a morning in bed would be even better.”

“Is thismy son I hear talking? Is this Quinn making these negative, defeated noises?”

“Yes.” I said.

“Give it a try. I can remember, when you were younger, you’d be sad and you’d go into Sunday School and you’d sing the songs and hear about how much God loves you and you’d come out smiling like the sun.”

I wasn’t in the mood to argue. In fact, I was ready to try just about anything. Mom was quite right. I’d always taken comfort in my faith. I’d always very much identified with Jesus—son of the Big Guy, favored by God and all that. Now my experiences were getting similarly thorny to His, if not quite as physical. Yet.

Shudder.

“Okay,” I said, and gulped some more coffee.

“Now, I am your Mother, and I don’t often make demands but—” Suddenly, Mom realized that I had given in. Her mouth hung open for a moment, then she recovered nimbly, her face reassuming its normal pretty look of composure. “There, you see you already seem more the old Quinn.”

This was pure wishful thinking, but I was willing to go along with it for a while. So I ate my eggs and I took a quick shower and I shrugged into my best suit, and hey, like Billy Crystal says, Better to look good than to feel good. And I looked mahvelous! Three pieces of heaven, this suit. A top executive shine on my shoes, some mousse in my hair and voila! God himself was going to take notice when His Pal sauntered beside his stained glass.

And He did.

Well, sort of.

Actually, it was an archangel.

Gabriel.

I was sitting in the back pew. This was my mother’s concession to me. Usually, I sat way up front, near the front of the church. Today, I felt like staying quietly in the background. “To more properly meditate on things,” I explained.

I had the back few pews to myself, and the preacher was in the middle of a sermon when the angel walked in.

In case there is any mystery still hanging in the narrative air, I’m a WASP. My church is Presbyterian, but it could have been anything else of the liberal, moneyed bent—heavy on tradition and respect and ceremony and theology, short on Fundamentalist Theology and Bible Thumping. Tasteful is the keyword here, so the actual sanctuary is draped in subdued blacks and browns, accentuated by the bright colors of the trad windows, the flowers, the occasional red in the minister’s robes, the choir’s songbooks. Today, the Reverend Doctor Martin was droning on concerning the netherparts of Faith and Charity while the congregation sat in stasis and the lovely scent of poinsettias drifted like living incense over the carpet aisles, all the way to my own nostrils.

This angel that walked in, he had a nice set of wings rising from his back, its feathers nicely kept. Instead of the white robes—the sort you usually see in Biblical illustrations—he wore a tweed three-piece. And no long hair on this dude: his was pure conservative short, and on a stern face he wore a well-clipped mustache.

The angel tucked his horn—trumpet, shiny as you get, actually—beneath his arm, then pulled out a watch on a chain and examined it, pursing his lips.

He looked around, then clicked the watch case closed and tucked it back into his waistcoat.

I checked to see if I was the only one who had noticed this guy. I should have figured: the minister rattled on, citing chapters and verses of the Epistles, ignorant that a denizen of the heavenly realm was walking in their midst.

I, alone, in my demented state, saw him.

“Hmm,” he said. “Well, there always was the chance I wouldn’t find him here. Never can tell anymore. Never can tell at all.”

“Excuse me,” I said leaning over and whispering. “Can I help you?”

The poor angel jumped about a mile into the air.

With a great gust of flapping wings, he settled back down looking at me with an odd expression. “You can see me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And you’re not upset or excited?”

“Believe me, you’re a comparatively welcome sight.” And that was the truth. Here was something of my new Reality, like Sandy, that was actually comforting. After a few years of ignoring religion in favor of more secular pursuits, it was actually rather pleasant to see a representative of a Greater Authority actually touring about amongst the aliens and the robots.

“You’ve seen angels before?” he said in a lowered voice.

“No. But I’ve seen stranger things.”

His bushy brows arched. “Have you now. Well then, I don’t suppose you’ve seen a White Rabbit charging through here, then?”

“No,” I said, a little concerned. “You mean like the one inAlice in Wonderland?”

“Precisely. And I’m on my way to Wonderland at this very moment and we were supposed to meet here. I do need his help to deal with the blasted doorway down.”

“Doorway?”

“Yes. It just so happens to be over there in this church’s nave.”

“Does that make it naval?”

“Yes, I suppose it rather does, doesn’t it?” The angel smiled at me. “I’m sorry. The name’s Gabriel.” He proffered his hand and I shook it.

“I’m Quinn. Quinn Roberts, that is.”

“Yes, of course you are,” he peered at me as though he was nearsighted. “Quinn, I don’t suppose you’d be willing to do a servant of the Lord a big favor, would you?”

“If you’d do me a small one.”

“Perhaps. You must forgive me, I have to be wary with you humans. No telling what you’d want from an angel.”

“Yes. I understand,” I assured him. “But I just want a little bit of advice. And information.”

“Oh, advice! We angels and heavenly beings are chock full of advice! We’ve got whole books of advice!” He straightened his silken checked tie proudly. “I’ll reel it off for you chapter and verse, if you like!”

“No, I think my minister is already doing that. No actually, maybe it’s the information I’m more interested in.”

“Oh, well now you’re getting into slightly more dicey territory. Information we’re always quite a bit more mysterious with.” He fingered his mustache and looked at me appraisingly. “But shoot, my friend. If you can see and talk with an angel, then you must be a young man with very special qualities.”

“Special as in ‘Euphemism’?”

“That could be. But I’ve little time. Let’s get to your question, if you would. I’m a busy being.”

I told him about the events of the past few days, in as abbreviated a fashion as possible. His face remained immobile throughout the whole thing, until I finished up with: “And so now I see an angel!”

“Hmm. You seem like a sound enough fellow to me, if I may say so!”

“I always thought so!”

“Yes. I can understand your chagrin. You lose your girlfriend, things fall apart. Odd beings seem to be monitoring you … I’d look it up in a book if I were you.”

“Pardon?”

“A book, I said. That’s what libraries are for.”

“You mean, a Bible?” I asked suspiciously.

“No, I mean a psychology book, fellow. I don’t think you’re crazy, but you may have a bit of a problem.” Gabriel rubbed his jaw a bit, pondering that one for a moment. “Yes. Well, I wouldn’t worry too much, though. I’ve seen things quite a bit odder than what you’ve been describing.”

“Is that possible?”

“Oh, yes, on the dementia levels, I’d rate yours merely as a very mild low.”

“Dementia?”

“Oh yes, there’s definitely something wrong with the noggin. But more specifically, even if all of this that you describe is real … Well, then, you can’t expect not to experience it all and not suffer a teensy weensy balance of the mental apparatus.” His wings flapped a bit, stirring up the Sunday bulletins lying on the pew seat. “But let me tell you, what you’ve seen is very mild. Come on, I’ll show you, and we can strike two birds with one stone, so to speak.”

He wiggled a finger. This was gesture to follow him. Then, he swerved around, slapping the pew and my face with soft feathers and strode off from the room to the side of the church.

More afraid to disobey an archangel than to follow, I got up and followed him.

When we were in the room, he stopped and he closed the door.

“There,” he said. “We’ve got some privacy now.”

The church sounds were muffled here; presumably our sounds were as well, though it didn’t seem to make all that much difference: the rest of the congregation hadn’t heard us when we were in the wide open amongst them, had they?

Gabriel blew a couple notes on his horn, limbering up his fingers and lips. Then he blew a slow cool series of jazzy riffs toward the rug.

A square outline of light suddenly sprang up from the rug. Red light. The shape of a trap door four feet by four feet.

“That’s it. Now all I ask, my poor bedeviled human, is to open it for me and hold it while I descend. It’s damned hard to do it without help, and I’ve resolved not to try ever since I bashed myself on the noggin last millennium attempting it.”

“Oh. Which side?” I said.

“Right here.” The angel tapped the north side with a patent leather shoe. “You should be able to lift it up with your fingers.”

I slipped my hands down and just as promised my fingers slipped easily under the edges of the rug. The light was warm and oddly calming. As I lifted the new trap door, more light sprang out like a splash of liquid over me. I almost let go of the door.

“Don’t worry, there’s no harm here,” the angel said, and already the calming of the light was soothing my rattled nerves. I lifted the door more and it seemed lighter and lighter as I did so.

“There’s a good lad. You know, this is really a good sign. Only the essentially good of heart can lift this door to Wonderland.”

“Thanks. That’s nice to know.”

“It’s more important than you know,” said Gabriel., patting me on the back. “Because, in the end, you can’t be sure of anything … anything, except what’s inside of you.” He sat at the lip of the trap door. “Now, as to weird things … Why don’t you just have a look down here, lad. Just think, you could be passing through there instead of having to hold on up here.”

A well-manicured finger pointed downwards.

I ventured a glance.

I could only take about three seconds of it: the view was too mind-boggling.

It looked like a collaboration between Escher and Bosch. I saw descending levels, curiously juxtaposed, like a mirror-facing-mirror infinity: only each level was different. Each seemed populated with minute jungles of beings, of colors and pulsating lights. I had the sense of the totally alien.

I had a whiff of ambrosia mixed with sulfur.

“Well then. Care to come with me?” said Gabriel in a mocking tone.

“No, thank you very much,” I whispered back.

“I didn’t think so.” He tucked his horn under his arm. “Well, we’re off then. Do me a favor, though. Should you see a White Rabbit coming through, tell him he’s in the wrong book, won’t you? That should cook his head a bit.”

‘Uh, yeah, sure.”

“Well then, Geronimo!” He slid off the end of the door and he fell into the chasm. I had a glimpse of his wings unfurling and him flapping to halt his descent. That was all I could take.

I slammed the door, and I headed back for my pew.

Chapter Eleven

Right, I thought as I sat in the pew. An angel in church. An archangel at that. Gabriel, no less.

We’re talking serious problems here, no question.

But maybe the guy really did have a good suggestion. Maybe I should go ahead and look all this up in a library. I mean, what harm would it do? I felt like everything was destroyed anyway, the floor of my existence opening up beneath my feet. What harm would it do to just head for the nearest library (thankfully always open on a Sunday) and crack a few psychology books and see if maybe I wasn’t in the middle of a syndrome or something.

It would be a great idea, I thought, and I could hardly wait to get home.

I told the parental units that I just wanted to borrow the car to go to the library to do some serious studying. They thought this was a great idea. “The library is such a calming influence,” my mother told me. “Maybe you should read some inspirational works or something.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”

So I went to my room to find my library card. I might want to check something out, you know. And my dog, my new dog Sandy, was sitting on my bed. As I looked through my cluttered desk drawers, he said. “So what are you looking for, Quinn?”

“My library card” I told him.

“What for?”

“I want to go to the library. I want to look in a psychology book. No, make thatabnormal psychology book.”

“Why?”

“I’m having big problems, Sandy, and I figure that maybe checking out previous case histories might…”

Then it hit me.

My dog … He was talking to me.

“What are you staring at?” the dog asked, his mouth moving in a similar fashion as Mr. Ed.

“You … You’re talking!”

“Well, I have to say something! You freighted me with a hell of a lot of stuff last night.”

I sat down at my desk, unable to say anything. I didn’t know if I should laugh, cry or start drooling.

The dog walked up to me and put his head in my lap. “There, there, Quinn. It could be much worse. I guarantee I’ll say sensible things. I want to help you, I really do.”

I mulled this over as I automatically petted Sandy’s head.

“Okay, so maybe you’ll tell me why you were here yesterday and you never were around before?”

“Quinn, I have memories of always being around.”

I nodded. “Right. Well, I guess that just proves it. We’ve got to go the library and examine that abnormal psychology book.”

“You’d better let me come along. Just to keep you calm. Okay?”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

The old man let me borrow his car in a snap: after all, it was for a legitimate purpose, and apparently my mother had laid preparations. “Sure,” he said, tossing me the key. “Study hard, okay? Get your mind off things.”

Sandy hopped in the front seat.

In the library parking lot, I pointed out a pair of robots and an alien. “Do you see those, Sandy? I mean look at that robot! It’s got wheels for feet! And that alien. It’s different than any I’ve ever seen. Those ears—they look like Mr. Spock after getting caught in a rice-picking machine!”

“You’re referring of course to the episode ‘City on the Edge of Forever’, correct?”

“Uhm, yes of course! But tell me the truth, Sandy. Do yousee them?”

“Yes, I see them. Naturally I see them! I have eyes. Dogs have very good eyes indeed!”

“But do you see them as I do.”

“Two robots and one alien. Yep. That’s what they are.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

I had a terrible suspicion that the dog was humoring me. “Okay then, what color face does the alien have?”

“A curious shade of green, I’d judge.”

“And how many wheels do the robots each have?”

“Three.”

I was overjoyed. “Sandy, you do see them!” I kneeled and hugged the dog. He licked my face. “I’m not crazy!”

And then I stiffened as the thought followed: yes, but of course, if the dog is an illusion or a delusion, thennaturally it would see exactly as I see. It might just be an extension of me!

“Ah! Well then! No need to check the psych books. We can go play catch or something,” said Sandy, wagging his tail.

“Uhm, no, Sandy. Let’s just check … Just as a cure to my ignorance of the matter.”

The tail drooped. But as I started walking toward the door, the dog skipped after me, suddenly gay again. “And afterward can we play catch?”

“Sure, Sandy, sure.”

The reference librarian had tusks the size of a walrus.

But I was getting used to these odd appearances around me, so I had no problem whatsoever striding over and asking, “Pardon me, how do I find out about schizophrenia?”

The reference librarian blinked up at me through tortoiseshell glasses. “What’s a nice young boy like you doing with a subject like that?”

“Uhm—school paper.”

She shook her head. “What’s our educational system coming to?” She sighed and pointed. “It’s, like about 170 or something, Dewey decimal. In the reference section, you’ll find a number of psychological encyclopedias and dictionaries. If you need any help, let me know.”

“Thanks.”

“Is that your dog?”

“Yes.”

“Dogs aren’t allowed in the library.”

“Well, hemight be a delusion, so he comes everywhere with me and he won’t do anything nasty I promise.”

She looked at me sympathetically. “Okay. But just this once.”

“Hey,” said Sandy. “What’s all this business about me being a delusion!”

“It got you in, right?”

“True. It’s just unsettling that’s all.”

“Sorry.”

We entered the reference aisle that the tusked lady had pointed to, and I found the collection of psych books. I got out the one labeled ‘R, S and T’ and hauled it over to a table. Sandy hopped onto a chair and peered over my shoulder as I flipped the pages to ‘Schizophrenia.’

We read quietly for a few moments.

“Hmm,” said the dog. “A complex pyscho-biological illness with resultant disorganization to such an extent that the individual experiences major changes in personality and major liabilities in conduct of his/her life.”

“Gulp,” I said, skipping on rapidly to the list of symptoms.

“Hey, not to worry, Quinn!” said Sandy. “You seem perfectly organized to me!”

“Listen to this,” I said. “Some of the aspects of schizophrenia: Numero Uno is ‘Bizarre Delusions.’”

“But maybe they’re not delusions. Maybe they really are reality. I mean, I see them as such!”

“Auditory hallucination!” I read. “That, and visual to boot in my case!”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit, Quinn,” objected Sandy. “Start having a little faith in yourself!” The dog scanned the list. “Now look at this one. ‘Delusions with persecutory or jealous content.’ Hmm. Well, let’s skip that one. How about this: ‘Incoherence, marked loosening of associations, marked illogical thinking or poverty of thought.’ Well, Quinn, that’s not you at all, now is it?”

“Argghh,” I said. “Listen to this one, though: ‘The typical course of the illness begins with an acute episode, usually in adolescence!’” I slammed the book shut, almost nipping Sandy’s nose in the process. “That’s it. Tomorrow I go see the nearest shrink. I’d better make it a psychiatrist so I can get some serious medication.” I turned to the dog and stared directly at his brown eyes. “I’m crazy, Sandy. That’s why all of this is happening to me. I’m crazy, and I need help. I have to acknowledge that before I start doing crazy things.”

I put the book back in its place.

Sandy dogged my tracks as I traipsed from the library. “Uh, Quinn, why don’t you pick up a good SF book. It will get your mind off this stuff!”

“Right!” I said, pushing through the glass doors. “That’s all I need!”

“No, really, you need something to distract you! You’re getting much too obsessed!”

“What do you expect! My world falls apart and you expect me to act in a sane fashion!”

“Hey,” said Sandy, “how about my game of catch! You promised me a game of catch. You’re still a healthy kid, Quinn. A game of catch will take your mind off things!”

As we got into the car, I thought about it. Maybe the dog was right. A little exercise always tended to get my spirits up. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll play catch with you. Where?”

“Oh, the back yard will do just fine!” Sandy said eagerly. “That’s the spirit, Quinn. I mean, even if you do have a mental illness, you’ve got to have a positive attitude toward it!”

“Yeah!” I said. “Darn it, you’re right, Sandy! A positive mental attitude.”

“You bet,” said Sandy. “Turn on the radio and let’s listen to some rock ’n’ roll.”

I blasted the radio and Sandy barked along to Creedence Clearwater Revival ‘Bad Moon Rising.’ Which seemed rather ominous, but I ignored it.

“Okay,” I said. “Wait out back and I’ll go get changed,” I said as we pulled into the garage.

“You bet,” said Sandy. “I’ll be ready.”

I put on a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans and tattered tennis shoes and then I headed outside, ready for a good old fashioned boy-and-dog game of catch. I’d found an old rubber ball with tooth marks on my dresser and I was carrying it with me.

“Here you go, Sandy,” I called. “Got the old ball. I guess maybe you’re right. I—”

I stopped cold in my tracks.

“What’s wrong?” Sandy said.

The dog was standing on his back legs. He wore a striped baseball uniform, red and white. On his head was a hat with a New York Yankees decal. He wore a baseball mitt on his right paw.

I ran back into the house, raced into the bedroom and locked the door.

Chapter Twelve

It took him a while, but Sandy finally talked me into coming out and playing catch, and it honestly did make me feel better, so by Monday morning, I was feeling okay, if a little subdued. I called up the family shrink—the one my Father had used when he went through a brief period of depression a few years before—and made an appointment for five o’clock, after school.

So I was feeling a little better, if not exactly on an even keel, when I walked into physics class that day, expecting to see the substitute teacher.

If I’d known what awaited me, I don’t think I would have felt quite so good.

In fact, that was the Monday when thingsreally started getting out of hand.

Standing in front of the class was Ms. Paste, looking just about the same as ever.

“Hi, Ms. Paste,” I said, cautiously.

“Hello, Roberts,” she said briskly, proceeding to launch into the day’s lesson without giving me a second glance.

I kept trying to make significant eye contact during the hour. The one time I succeeded, raising my eyebrows Groucho Marx fashion when I did, I received only a baffled look in reply.

I stopped trying to do it. It was true then. She’d been taken. Taken and changed.

Or had all the business before—the visit to her house, the ear, the plans—had all that been one of my delusions that I’d have to tell the doctor about?

It was highly possible.

But I’d been dragged down to about the limit, no,past the limit, of my essential being, and I was still me. So I owed that me one more shot, one more go before I gave myself to the medical profession—perhaps turning myself into the Monitors in the process.

After the bell rang and the class scurried away, I walked up to Ms. Paste, who was erasing the boards. A fine cloud of chalk-dust hit me in the face, and I sneezed.

She turned to me, scowling, “Yes, Roberts?”

“I don’t suppose you remember about last Thursday night, do you, Ms. Paste?”

“Last Thursday night?” she returned gruffly. “What about last Thursday night?”

“Our meeting. You know.” I tugged my ear lobe.

She looked at me as thought I’d crawled out from beneath some rock. “Have you lost your mind, Roberts? We had no meeting Thursday night.”

“Why were you absent on Friday, Ms. Paste.”

“I had a 24-hour flu virus, that’s why!” She glared at me from behind the thick lenses of her bifocals. “As if that’s any of your business!”

“Believe me, Ms. Paste—it is my business.” I looked at her entreatingly. “You’ve got to remember, Ms. Paste! You’ve got to remember!”

“Remember what, Roberts?”

“The Monitors. The robots, the aliens!”

“Roberts, you’re having some sort of mental lapse!”

“No, truly, you were the one who told me all about what was really going on!” I almost yelled. “You were the one who noticed I’d changed!”

“I truly don’t know what you’re talking about. Now please leave me or I’ll have to call Security.”

Security? I thought. What did she mean by Security? We had hall monitors and disciplinary vice-principals and gym teachers to pull battling teenagers off one another and stuff like that—but nothing called Security.

Desperation seized me.

I stepped over and grabbed Ms. Emily Paste’s right ear.

I twisted and tugged.

It stayed in place.

“What do you think you’re doing, you little hoodlum!” she cried, trying to push me away. “You’re insane.”

“No,” I cried. “I’m not insane!” I pulled harder on the ear, twisting all the while. “This world is insane! I’m just fine! Just fine, thank you! I’m just fine!”

Her bifocals flew off her face and smashed onto the floor, shattering. Ms. Paste struggled in my grasp, flailing about, but I clung, tugging at her ear all the while.

But the curious thing was, she didn’t seem to be in pain, even though I was really doing a number on her. This reassured me.

With a strength born as much of determination as desperation, I renewed my hold on her ear. Ms. Paste suddenly changed the direction of her own force, and we obeyed some rule of physics: the force was so strong that she was flung from my grasp at quite a speed. She tripped and her head hit the edge of the lab table.

Her ear did not come off.

Herhead came off.

Her head popped off with a great “Pop!” and bounced along the lab table, then fell onto the other side, out of view. Her body fell to the scuffed tile floor and proceeded to flop around like the proverbial headless chicken.

I stood there amazed after all that had happened that I could still be surprised at the turn of events. But amazed I was.

Sparks snapped from the top of the body from cut wires.

This wasn’t the real Ms. Paste, I realized. It was a robot!

The body suffered one final seizure, then froze and was still. I went around the lab table to check out the head.

It was lying there, and it was staring up at me, a dim light still in its eyes.

“…Quinn,” a distant voice said, though the lips did not move. “Quinn.”

I bent down closer so that I could hear what it was saying, noting that wires trailed out of the neck here as well.

“…Quinn.” said the voice again. “…help me … Quinn!”

“I’m here, Ms. Paste!” I said to the head. “I’m here!”

“ … Donohue Building,” said the head. “Seventh floor … Room 710 … Help me!”

And then the lights in those eyes died.

I stood there for a moment, staring down at the still, severed robot head. And a sudden terrible fear rushed through me, light-speed.

I had to get out of here, I thought.

Now, truth to tell, this sort of thought had fluttered through my mind from time to time in my twelve-year school career—but never with such urgency. So urgent, in fact, that the thought seemed to grab me by the scruff of the neck and hurl me headlong from the room. It tossed me into the hall and it gave my legs such a burst of power that I was doing a 50-yard dash speed very soon, dodging students and barely missing them. I climbed a set of stairs, and hurried along toward the main foyer, where the main bank of doors awaited my exit. Other exit doors might be locked. Instinctively I knew they would be and equally instinctively I knew why.

Security.She had called for Security.

After everything I had seen. I shuddered at the very notion of what Security might be!

No, the front foyer doors were open. They had to be. They always were, except at night. It would look far too strange if they were locked…

Strange. The word made me shudder even as I dashed madly through the gawking scatters of students. What was so unusual then aboutstrange?

But I couldn’t think about that. It would slow my speed, prevent my crazed run, the energy of which was the only thing I could count on in getting me out of this insane high school. I whipped past the last stretch of hall, past a bulletin board proclaiming Eisenhower High: a real fun place! and then out into the foyer.

There were the doors! Yards away!

“Quinn!” I heard a voice say. “Quinn!”

Peripherally, I saw a girl walking towards me. A small part of my mind realized that the girl was Amy. But the larger part of me kept on running like a madman for the doors.

“Quinn!” Amy said again, but nothing could distract me from my goal: outside. Anyway, the way things were going, maybe this wasn’t the real Amy. Maybe this was some false Amy, some simulacrum, that they had thrown up against me. To lure me from my goal.

I hit the latch of the nearest door.

And was stopped dead.

The door was locked!

“No!” I cried, and I went to the next in line. But between that and me was Amy and I slammed into her, hard. Amy was propelled back and she hit the next door. The push handle responded by immediately opening, propelling Amy through and out onto the concrete.

“I just … just wanted … to talk … to you,” Amy groaned from the ground, perhaps even half-conscious.

I saw that she was carrying her purse. Some of the clouds passed from my brain. Enough anyway for a realization to creep in: Amy’s keys were in that purse. The keys to her car. The car that would get me away from here—and get me where I needed to go.

As I reached down for the purse though, I looked at Amy’s face, felt her presence—and I realized how much I cared for her, how much I missed her.

“No,” I said. “I just can’t leave you here, Amy. Not with them.” I hauled her to her feet, then half-dragged, half-supported her toward the parking lot.

“What—What are you doing, Quinn?” she murmured.

“We have to take your car someplace, Amy. Okay?”

I walked slowly now, wanting to attract no more attention than I already had. People who looked our way I just smiled at. The last thing I wanted or needed was to be pursued. I hadn’t even thought about that during my mad dash, but now some semblance of reason was leaking through my crazed consciousness.

“I … feel … dizzy. I feel like going to sleep.”

“Plenty of time to go to sleep, Amy,” I said, grateful for the strength years of sports had granted me. Otherwise I doubt I could have carried Amy as far as I did.

“Where are we going?” she asked groggily.

“You’ll see. You’ll have time to talk to me, Amy,” I looked around. “Lots of time.”

“Oh…” she said, dropping against me, half-sliding down my side. No blood was oozing out of her scalp or anything, so I knew she wasn’t that bad off, like a concussion or something. I just had to get her into the parking lot and into her car.

“Excuse me, young man,” said a teacher-type walking up the sidewalk. “Is something wrong?”

“Uh, yes, Ma’am,” I said, nodding at Amy. “The Salisbury steak for lunch was just too much for the dear girl’s system. Nurse suggested I take her home.”

“Ah, yes—” the lady touched her stomach. “I had a bit of a problem last week with the meat loaf.”

She stepped off, and a wave of relief swept over me that she hadn’t turned into an alien or something.

I found Amy’s car where she usually parked it and managed to pour Amy inside after I fished out her keys. The car fired up easily, bringing me great relief, and I eased her out of the parking lot into traffic without further incident.

A couple miles down the road, Amy roused fully from her daze.

“Quinn!” she said.

“That’s me,” I said grimly, keeping an eye on the road for flying saucers or marauding sea creatures.

“Quinn, we’re in my car!”

“Yes, we’re in your car.”

“How did we get in my car?” she said, rubbing her head.

“I put you in here. I’m borrowing it. Just for a while. You’ll understand. You’ll understand, Amy, just as soon as show you what I have to show you.”

“Show me—”

“You wanted to talk to me anyway … You said you wanted to talk to me.”

“I just wanted to say I was sorry the way I’d acted and that I still cared about you and that I wanted to help you. I didn’t want to get knocked over.”

“Sorry about that. So now we can talk.”

“You really are going crazy, aren’t you?”

“No,” I said emphatically, gripping the steering wheel. “I am not crazy. This world is going crazy. I am a well-adjusted young American male with a healthy family love who loves his mother and his father and has had no previous psychological difficulties.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too. Until you started acting like Tony Perkins in Pyscho!”

“I have my reasons,” I said calmly. “I apologize if I upset you. You have to realize that I’ve been pretty upset myself.”

“Apparently. So we’ll talk about it later, after we take you home.”

“No, I’m sorry, Amy. If this is going to stop I have to use your car to get where I have to go.”

“Use my car … Okay, use my car, Quinn. You’re very responsible with cars, I’ve no problem with that. But could you let me off at my house first, okay?”

“No, I’m sorry, Amy. You have to come with me.”

“You mean you’re … kidnapping me?”

“Let’s just call it borrowing you.”

“Quinn—I’m not lending! Take me home, I said!”

“No, Amy, you have to go with me, you have to believe me—just take two minutes of your life and listen to something serious, would you!”

I think the sincere desperation of my tone—and the clear reason shining through—convinced her to give me those two minutes.

“Okay, then,” she said after a long breath. “First, though, could you please tell me where you’re taking me?”

“The Donohue Building.”

“That place … That’s where you went before, right?”

“Yes, and I’ve been trying to tell you about it ever since.”

“No you haven’t. You’ve been trying to tear my ear off—and acting like a madman!”

I considered that as I eased on the brake and waiting for a light to turn green. She was absolutely right.

“You’re right. I suppose I have. I apologize, but I truly wonder if you’d have acted any differently if you went through what I went through.”

She was eyeing the door handle, considering.

“Go ahead,” I told her. “I’ll understand. But you’ll never know if you do. You’ll never know what happened to me—and just maybe, without your help, you’ll never see me again.”

Her hand went back into her lap. She chewed her lower lip a moment. Something changed in her hazel eyes as she looked up at me: they seemed to grow a little deeper. She looked at me as though she was seeing me for the first time. There was a moment of timelessness there between us…

Interrupted by a horn blaring behind me.

I looked up. The light was indeed green, and I hit the gas and zoomed off down Elm toward the Donohue Building.

“I’m listening, Quinn. I’m going with you, and I’m listening to you, though to be honest I’m not sure why I’m doing either.”

I grinned at her, some of the old confidence starting to flow back. “Cause you’re crazy about me, that’s why,” I said. “This thing with Howard—it’s just an aberration.”

She shook her head. “That’s true enough I suppose.” She tapped the dashboard. “But Quinn, the Donohue Building is about ten minutes away. Are you going to be able to tell me everything in that time?”

“I’m going to try,” I said.

And I tried very hard.

We pulled into the Donohue Building parking lot.

It took me about five more minutes to finish my story, but that didn’t seem to bother Amy. She was entranced.

There was a long pause after I finished, and then she said, “Her head came off.”

“Yes. She’s a robot. And she called for me … The real Ms. Paste is in the Donohue Building!” I stared out at the cool gleaming monolith. “And that’s where the answers are to this business … I can just feel it! The seventh floor … Room 710.” I could feel my voice fading to a whisper.

“Let me make sure I’ve got this right,” said Amy, shaking her head as though to dispel fumes of disbelief. “You’re saying that we’re all in some kind of government experiment?”

I nodded emphatically. “Yes, yes, all a fake.”

“But what’s all this aboutaliens? Quinn, it’s all just too bizarre.”

“I know. And I can’t begin to understand it, Amy. And I understand how it’s real hard to believe me. I don’t ask you to believe me. I just want you to help me. You know, I have an appointment this afternoon with my Dad’s shrink.”

“You do?”

“Yes, so if this in fact turns out to be delusions piled upon illusions—well., the paddy wagon is parked right outside and you can hold my hand. But if it’s not … you’re going to have to be ready for a wild ride. Either way, Amy … I need your help, desperately”

“But my ear…” said Amy. “My ear wouldn’t come off.”

“I thought about that … who says it’s always the ear? It could be something else.”

“Bu if I’ve got an implant … They could be listening.”

“Not likely. I don’t think you’re important enough in the scheme of the fabric.”

“Thanks a lot!”

“Hey, that’s what I had to learn about myself as well—I’m a pawn, a nobody—a goddamned stereotype. Or so they thought. But I tell you, Amy, I’m going to show them.”

“So what do you want me to do, Quinn?”

“I want you to come inside with me.”

“Inside there…?” She looked at the place and I could tell that she regarded it as more than a mere office building now.

“Yeah. We’re going to go through, and you’re going to tell me what you see and hear as we go. I’ve got this feeling that maybe some of what scared me away last time … Maybe it wasn’t real.”

“I guess that’s what this is all about, isn’t it, Quinn? What is really real?”

I nodded. “Amy, I guess that’s what anything has ever really been about.”

Chapter Thirteen

The Donohue Building seemed just as normal as ever. Nothing out of a sci-fi movie at all, just suburban metal and concrete and glass like before. There was a hint of storm in the air: a taste of rain, with ominous clouds touching the horizon, all adding to my trepidation. Still, I opened the door, I opened Amy’s door. I squared my shoulders in the time-honored American tradition, tried to pretend I was Clint Eastwood, and I strode up the steps and through the glass doors, Amy in my wake.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Shirts and pinstripes. Secretaries and executives, with the odd flash of salesmen color-brushing past me.

“Looks normal enough to me,” Amy said, echoing my thoughts.

“The more normal, the better,” I said, heading for the steps.

“Quinn! Why not the elevator?”

“That’s what they’d be expecting.”

“They’re expecting us? You didn’t say anything about—”

I shushed her, but I didn’t say a thing about my previous experience here in this building. That time, my main enemy had been fear. I’m sure of it. This time, with my metaphorical back against the wall, I had to face up to that fear. I had to conquer it. For Ms. Paste’s sake. For my sanity’s sake.

“Just take my word for it, huh?” I said, looking around in what I hoped was not too furtive a fashion. “We’re going up the stairs.”

I opened the door with the big red exit sign on top of it.

“Yes,” said Amy. “I guess we are going up the stairs.”

We started going up. Our footsteps echoed in the stairwell, like a phantom army in pursuit. I kept the march steady, eyes straight ahead, leading Amy up, past two, past three, past four.

“Hiiiiiissssss!”

“What was that?” Amy said.

We stopped.

The sound seemed to have come from everywhere, from all around us. It could have been just some hydraulic system in the elevator.

Then again, it could have been a gigantic viper waiting to devour us on the seventh floor.

“Hydraulics,” I told Amy. I didn’t tell her about that other thought.

“Oh. Yeah.” But her eyes told me she was thinking about it.

Still, she proved a trooper, and she advanced along with me step by step by fretful step. Fourth floor, fifth floor, sixth floor.

Seventh floor.

The knob at the fire door turned easily beneath my hand. It squeaked slightly as I pushed it forward and peered into the corridor beyond.

Nothing.

No one.

“What’s inside?” Amy whispered.

“Offices,” I said.

“That’s all?”

“Yea. C’mon.”

We crept out into the emptiness, onto the carpeted floor of the hallway. The lack of echoes was a relief, but the quiet was almost unnerving. After all, this was an office building and here was a floor where I could hear no apparent work activity.

“Seven hundred,” read Amy off a door. “So the room should be just down the hall.”

“Yeah. And around the corner.”

We walked slowly and warily, explanations for our presence there ready on my tongue.

But there was no one to give them to.

A sweep around the corner brought us to a door, neatly labeled ‘710.’

“Just a sec,” I told Amy as I leaned an ear against the polished oak.

Inside, I heard breathing. Regular, relaxed breathing, of someone sleeping.

“Okay, this is the one, all right,” I said.

“Uhmm, Quinn, if they captured Ms. Paste, like you say—how come they’re not guarding her?”

“Maybe they don’t have to. And I would guess they’re not exactly expecting us, right?” I mean, what harm could I do them, they’d probably think.

“Okay, whatever you say,” Amy said, trepidation and doubt written on her face.

“We’re just playing this by ear,” I reminded her.

She tugged her ear and grinned. “So to speak.”

I chuckled ruefully and then I turned my attention back to the door. It opened with a click and I pushed it in.

The room was a small one. It had a chair and a bed. In the bed, dressed in a hospital gown, was Ms. Emily Paste, decked out in a weird contraption. A helmet, to be exact: a helmet attached to all sorts of wires running off to a horror movie machine hanging on the wall next to the bed.

“Dr. Frankenstein is on call, I see,” said Amy nervously.

“C’mon,” I said, pulling her in. “We’ve got to get her out of that thing. Weren’t you in Future Nurse of America or something?”

“Yeah, for maybe one or two meetings. I figured changing bed pans is not exactly my idea of a good career.”

We went to the bed, and I looked down at Ms. Paste. She looked healthy and well—only quite zoned out. Gently I lifted the helmet, making sure there were no pins sticking into her brain or something. It came off quite easily, with no resistance or objection. Ms. Paste’s skull had been shaved on top, making her look like a very silly monk.

I shook her. “Ms. Paste. Wake up. We’ve got to get out.”

“Euuughhh,” she responded. She fluttered her eyelids lightly.

“Yeah, that’s right. It’s Quinn. And this is Amy. We’re here to help you, Ms. paste. We’re here to get you out of here.”

Amy went to the other side of the bed, and helped me lift Ms. Paste up. The woman blinked, shuddered woozily, and clearly just wanted to give back into her pillow. But we wouldn’t let her. We helped her to a sitting position. I patted her cheeks lightly, just short of a slapping, and that seemed to rouse her a little more.

“Okay, Amy, now you get around under her other arm and together we can carry her.”

“Can we use the elevator this time?” said Amy, obeying.

“Sure.”

Together we pulled Ms Paste up. Miraculously she was able to support herself pretty well, and all we really had to do was to guide her.

We guided her out the door. We guided her down the hall, toward the elevators.

It was all entirely too easy, I thought.

That was when we heard the noises.

“Down this way,” said a man. “They’ve detached the helmet and they’re escaping.”

Amy shot me a fearful look.

“The other way,” I said.

We dragged Ms. Paste along, and we turned the corner down the corridor, toward the stairway.

The hissing began again. The stairway door began to creak open.

“Quick!” I said. “We’ll have to hide inside one of the other offices.”

“Okay,” Amy agreed.

I redistributed my weight so that I could turn the knob. I pushed it forward, expecting to find a darkened office.

I nearly stepped through, even as Amy gasped. I looked around and grabbed hold of the door jamb, stopping myself just in the nick of time.

Beyond the door was nothing but space. Space and stars and nothingness, a breathless shivery panorama of the universe.

I dangled there, filled with astonishment and fear.

Chapter Fourteen

I dunno. This should maybe be Chapter thirteen.

God. Maybe it is Chapter Thirteen. Who can tell anymore?

No. It’s Chapter Fourteen. I say it’s Chapter Fourteen, no matter what it truly is…. And it starts off with me and Amy and Ms. Paste teetering on that ledge.

Looking into star-scattered vacuum.

It was astronaut sense of wonder time, teetering there for a split second, looking out at Carl Sagan territory. Unfortunately, as Ms. Paste would have pointed out in an average physics lesson, our run had generated a good deal of momentum, which threatened to keep us going right over the edge into the star-clotted nothingness.

“Watch out” I screamed, flailing wildly.

Fortunately, Amy had somehow kept her wits about her. She pushed Ms. Paste to the side, deflecting her into the wall. She grabbed the door jamb, hooked the back of my shirt, and pulled me back.

“Geez … Geez … Geez!” I said, gasping at the sight, stunned. “How did this get here?”

“The question,” Ms. Paste said, clearly not in her right mind, expansively alluding to the cosmos before us and speaking in philosophic rhetoric. “Is how did mankind get here? One might take the Aristotelian…”

I spun around. “Shhh!”

“What?” said Ms. Paste, blinking oddly. “I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s just it,” I said. “I thought we were being pursued.”

It was Amy’s turn to blink. “Yes. That was the general idea.”

Behind us: nothing but silence and empty hallways.

Now don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t that this turn of events wasn’t welcome. It was just a bit jarring. Yet think: the baddies are after you, you almost fall off the edge of the universe and, well, this experience generates a goodly amount of adrenaline. So there we were, standing at the Door into Nowhere, huffing and puffing, with no sign of our pursuers.

“Could have been a trap,” said Amy.

“To get us to run out there?” I pointed out into space, got an immediate attack of vertigo and decided a slamming of the door would be propitious at this moment.

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t make sense. They apparently want us,” said Amy. “Ms. Paste is still alive.”

Something like jubilation overcame me: buoyed up, I suppose, by the presence of massive amounts of adrenaline.

“You believe me!” I said. I grabbed her and I kissed her. “You believe me now.”

“No. Not entirely,” said Amy. “I still think you’ve got big problems, Quinn.” She looked at Ms. Paste, then around at the hallway. “But I can’t deny that there’s something weird going on here.” She spoke in a monotone, indication doubtless of her stunned state.

But I wasn’t complaining. I had my vindication. I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t schizo or psycho or brain-fried. I had experiential corroboration.

Or something like that. Anyway, whatever it was had an emotional kick to it that gave me some of the old Quinn Roberts self-confidence back. I was in charge again. And here were two people just waiting for me to tell them what to do.

“We gotta get out of here.” I said.

“No kidding,” said Amy.

Not exactly brilliant on my part. but it was an effort.

“Which way should we go, Ms. Paste?” asked Amy.

Ms. Paste pursed her lips, looked around and said, “Where are we anyway?” She squinted at me. “Roberts? Quinn Roberts? Is that you?”

“She’s still kinda out of it, I guess,” I took her by the hand and started walking.

“And where do you think you’re going?” Amy demanded, hands on hips.

“Back the way we came, I guess. We’ve got to get out of here. I have the feeling that Ms. Paste is going to be able to tell us a good bit more about this place. But we’ve got to get her back to her house and give her some ginseng tea, first.”

“Ginseng tea?” Amy said incredulously. “What’s ginseng tea got to do with anything?”

“You should have some too,” I said. “It’s good for you.”

We were halfway down the corridor when we ran into one of the keepers of the place.

Seven eyes? Long snaky tentacles, wiggling about like a bottom-of-the-sea nightmare? A foul stench, wafting ahead of its gruesome shambling? Was it some H.P. Lovecraft fresh-from-the-sacrifice beastie I expected, with the wind from between the worlds ruffling its extra senses?

Actually, after all that had happened: yes. That’s precisely what I would have expected.

Instead, standing in front of us as we turned the corner, stood a balding fat guy in a suit.

“Pardon me,” the suit said to our momentary expressions of astonishment. “Could I talk to you for a second? It’s pretty important.”

He had the middle-management-executive look about him: the loose tie, harried expression. The eyeglasses. The coffee stain on the shirt. His suit was expensive, but it looked as though it was the only one he ever wore.

His pudgy hands were folded over his stomach in a gesture of harmlessness.

“I suppose you think we’re going to use force,” he said.

“That was a distinct possibility,” I said.

“ No. That’s not in our methodology at this point.” The man smiled wearily and glanced over to an open door. “Why don’t we step into my office so we can be more comfortable as we chat?” He took our hesitation as suspicion, and not without caution. “I assure you, it’s not a trap.”

“Out here would be just fine, I think,” I replied, still a bit astonished at the way he looked.

He shrugged. “It’s your aching feet.” He stepped briefly into the office, rolled out a chair, eased himself into it. “Now then … Our chat.”

Ms. Paste was still fairly comatose, but Amy shook off her surprise. “What’s to prevent us from just walking right past you and out that door and straight to the local authorities?”

“You want to know,” said the suit, pulling a pack of Merits from his side pocket. As he smiled, the filtered cigarette jerked up at the corner of his mouth. “Besides, we are the local authority, ma’am.”

He lit the cigarette with a Bic.

I thought about that for a moment. I looked at Amy, who just looked baffled and bemused. “All right then,” I said. “What have you got to say for yourself?”

The fat man chuckled, coughing out smoke. “An interesting challenge, son. You act as though we’re doing something wrong.”

“I don’t even know what you’re doing.” I gestured wildly. “What is this?”

“Son, are you patriotic? Do you love your country?” The guy’s voice was suddenly real serious, with the snap of a drill instructor.

I responded automatically. “Well, yes, of course I am.” An imbedded knee-jerk reaction, straight from grade school and scouts.

Amy caught the drift of the man’s argument immediately. “Are you going to say that you’re with some secret government agency? That this craziness is part of some government program?”

The man leaned forward in his chair confidentially. “That is correct. And if you three are patriotic citizens of the United States of America, you’ll cooperate fully here.”

He turned his gaze on me, and I saw all my ministers, my parents, my teachers, the President, my scout troop leaders—all the personages of authority in my life, staring out of that look. This was psychological intimidation here, plus.

Oh well. Better than getting tortured.

I turned to Ms. Paste. “What do you say to all this, Ms. Paste?”

She was still a little groggy, but she didn’t need us or the wall to support her now. She just kind of glared a minute at the man in the chair, reared back and looked at me as though she were deeply disappointed in me.

“Poppycock,” she said. “Absolute poppycock.”

“Treason,” the suit said immediately. “Did you know that your beloved physics teacher was active in the Communist party in the fifties? Did you know that, Mr. Roberts?”

“What does that have to do with ears falling off and a room full of the universe back there?” Amy demanded.

The man folded his fingers into a tent and placed them against his chin. “It’s a massive experiment, ma’am. A massive socio-psychological experiment. My name, by the way, is Ed Smith. Lt. Ed Smith, deputy, director of Security for the Project.” He flashed a badge. “Just think of me as kind of scientific FBI.” Without giving us a good chance to look at it, he stuck his wallet badge back in his jacket and flicked his cigarette onto the floor. “It’s a matter of national security we’re dealing with here.” He ground the cigarette out with the heel of his scuffed shoe.

A massive socio-psychological experiment! This was a possibility that Ms. Paste had brought up before. A way to control the very culture, the very substance of society. I looked at the recovering physics teacher and there was the glimmer of interest in her eyes.

Nevertheless. I was still incensed, government or no government. “If that’s true. It goes against everything that the Constitution of our country stands for—”

“It’s a whole different world now,” said Lt. Ed Smith. “We have to deal with it in whole different ways. We have to learn how to adjust our society to survive … Otherwise, we’ll be crushed by our enemies.”

“So what you’re saying then,” I said, “is that this whole town is controlled. It’s populated with monitored people who interact according to your needs?”

Lt. Ed Smith nodded. “That’s about it.”

“Okay,” said Amy. “Just supposing that you’re telling the truth. Where does that leave us? What do you propose to do with us? Let us back into normal society?”

“No. Not normal society,” the man said. “Tell me, Quinn Roberts … Amy Yardling … Were you happy … Happy in your lives before?”

“Thrilled,” I answered without hesitation.

“Well, not exactly ecstatic…”

“And I’ll answer for Ms. Paste … She was quite content with her eccentric ways … And I can prove it with the records on her.”

Mrs. Paste’s eyebrows knitted, but she said nothing.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m going to make you an offer. You can cooperate, and we will merely—readjust you. Erase your memories of all this. Place you back in your satisfactory milieu as though all of this unfortunate business had never happened. Then you can go on about your business, and so can we.”

“And if we don’t…” I snapped.

“What we’re offering you here is a choice. We are testing your loyalty to the United States of America. Your answer here will determine your fate. Should you resist us … Well, we’ll have to consider that treason. Try you and sentence you accordingly…” He shifted uneasily. “There are other experiments our department is carrying out. Less pleasant experiments, I’m afraid. But we use only criminals in these experiments.” He pursed his lips. “Don’t become criminals, my friends. Please.”

“So. You’re giving us a choice of a rock or a hard place.”

“You said you were happy back in your old life,” the man said.

“True … But that was a happiness filled with ignorance.”

“You’ll never know, I assure you. Our machines are very thorough…” said Ed Smith. “And just think: you’ll be serving your country…”

Ms. Paste shuddered. She worked her mouth as though she was trying to speak. Of a sudden, words erupted. “Don’t believe the slime … There’s much more going on here … Much more … The aliens … The interdimensional frictions … The generated karmic vibrations … Oh God, I had no idea.”

A seething anger had been creeping up in me.

“No!” I cried. “We’re getting out of here! And you’re not going to stop us!”

I leaped with all my might at the man in the suit, meaning to pummel him senseless so he wouldn’t interfere with our escape.

And I fell right through him.

Amy screamed as I hit the floor. I rolled over and looked back with astonishment.

“How very foolish of you,” said the man.

Then he wavered and he disappeared.

“A holographic image,” I said, getting up. “Incredible. He looked so real … Acted so real….”

I rejoined the other two.

“What do we do now?” asked Amy, eyes wide.

“Exactly what we were doing before,” I said, taking Ms. Paste by the arm. “We’re getting out of here!”

Amy took the other arm and we helped the older lady along down the hall. We passed a series of closed doors in silence. There was no sound whatsoever but the sounds of our own breathing.

“You think we’re being watched?” Amy asked, looking around with trepidation etched into her features.

“They’ve got some awfully sophisticated stuff here,” I replied as we reached the elevator. “I don’t doubt it.”

“Then why don’t they do something to stop us?”

We stopped and regarded the closed elevators.

“Maybe they intend to,” I said.

The elevator opened. Amy started to get in.

“No.” I said. “No telling where that may take us. We’d better take the stairs.”

Amy nodded. The elevator door shut immediately, almost huffily as though thwarted.

“Yeah,” I said. “Definitely the staircase.”

Ms. Paste had a little problem on the stairs, but with both of us helping, we made the flights down without incident.

I pushed the lobby door open, expecting anything.

It was just business as usual there, though: the odd normal-looking office worker walking back and forth, heading home or whatever.

We got outside and the sun was shining. We walked to Amy’s car without interference.

“What now?” asked Amy.

“We’d better go to Ms. Paste’s and talk this over … And drink some ginseng tea. What do you say, Ms. Paste?”

“Yes. Yes, that would be wise,” the older lady answered.

She got in the back seat of the car and promptly fell asleep. There’d be nothing much forthcoming from her for a while, that was clear.

When Amy fired up the car and we were driving away, she said, “Why are they letting us go, Quinn? I don’t understand.”

But I did.

“Where are we going to go, Amy?”

“We can drive out of the state or something—maybe even get out of the country!”

“Can we? Do you really think they’d have let us go if we could have?”

She stewed on that for a moment. “You mean—”

“That’s right. They can get us now … Anytime they want to!”

“But how? We can go to the police!”

“Maybe they are the police!”

“We can go to our parents!”

“Like I went to you?”

She was quiet for a moment. “Yeah. I see what you mean. Not precisely a believable story. Even right now, I’m not sure if I’m dreaming or what’s going on!”

“Yeah. Right now, we’ve got enough time to plan, to think … To figure out what’s our next move. And they’re giving us that time … Because maybe they’re trying to figure out what to do with us.”

I looked out the window. Up ahead, to the east, thunderclouds were building.

“Yeah,” I said. “’Cos they can get us back anytime they want…”

Thunder rumbled, and I had a terrible thought. “Or maybe this is just a part of their experiment.”

I shuddered.

Chapter Fifteen

The rain was coming down pretty hard when we got back to Ms. Paste’s. She was snoring in the back seat when we pulled into the driveway. Amy nudged her gently awake, and then we let the rain do the rest of the work as we helped her up to the awning. She didn’t have her keys, but she was awake enough to indicate that there was a spare one taped to the bottom of the mailbox, just to the side of the front door. Sure enough, there it was. I stripped off the electrical tape, took the key and used it to open the door.

It was dark and silent and comfy in the house, and Amy managed to knock over a lamp on her way to turn one on—but by the time there was light in the house, I for one was feeling so much better for the effort.

We put Ms. Paste down in a comfy chair and Amy found a blanket to wrap around her. I went to the kitchen to see about that tea. I put the kettle on, and by the time it was whistling I’d checked out Ms. Paste’s tea collection. I figured that ginseng wasn’t appropriate at this time, and I selected, anachronistically, some English Breakfast tea. Something stiff and hearty and bracing to revive Ms. Paste’s senses. After all, she was the star of the show at the moment.

I stuck a steaming cup under her face, and Amy cooed, “Here’s some nice hot tea, Ms. Paste. Drink up and you’ll feel much better.”

This homily didn’t seem to do much for her, but the steamy aroma apparently did: Ms. Paste’s nose quivered and her eyelids fluttered. She wrapped her hands around the tea, sipped it a moment, grimaced.

“Be a dear, won’t you. There’s a bottle of whiskey in the second cabinet. Scotch, single Malt—Dewars, I believe. Give me a tot in here, and I do think that I shall actually recover from these travails.”

I went to the kitchen cabinet, found the scotch amongst a collection of obscure brandies and bottles of wine. Back in the living room, I opened the bottle and poured a healthy shot in the tea, grimacing at the wave of alcohol smell wafting up from the open bottle. Hastily, I plugged it back up.

Ms. Paste eagerly gulped down fully half the contents of the large cup, then looked up at us, shaking her head.

“Who would have thought that a student with so little aptitude for physics would be my salvation? Thank you, Quinn Roberts. Thank you very much.”

“It’s not over yet, I’m afraid, Ms. Paste,” I said. “They could have nabbed us at any time.”

“Not necessarily,” she said, after another sip of doctored tea. “You know, they probably aren’t prepared for this kind of thing to happen.”

“Quinn said that letting us escape could have been part of their experiment. Who are they?” Amy said. “What are they doing?”

“I have a dim recollection of encountering a man who claimed he was a security officer for an obscure branch of the US government,” Ms. Paste said.

“He was just a holographic projection,” I said.

Ms. Paste nodded. “Like much of his story.”

“So just what happened to you, Ms. Paste?” I quickly related to her the whole biz with her disappearance, the substitute Ms. Paste who was really a robot, et cetera.

“Ah ha! Most interesting,” she said. “Well … I wish I knew the whole answer. Clearly I was kidnapped because of my increasing understanding of the webwork of this particular net. I have recollections of them fuddling about in my brain. Hallucinations, visions … God, I think I almost went mad.”

“I know what you’re talking about,” I said, nodding in agreement.

“You just have to hang on,” she said. “Hang on tight to your sense of yourself, your sense of sanity. Do that and they can’t touch you!” She pounded the arm of the chair beside her and her eyes went wide with defiance.

Amy leaned forward in her chair. “Just who are they, Ms. Paste? Are they really with the government, like they say?”

Ms. Paste took a moment considering that one. She picked up her tea and she drank the rest of it, her eyes de-focusing a moment. “I have to collect it all, evaluate—it’s all so confusing.”

“Perhaps if you took it step by step.’ Amy suggested. “From the time they kidnapped you to the time we rescued you!”

Ms. Paste gave Amy a funny look … “It just doesn’t work that way. The whole experience—it was terribly non-linear. It was a jumble of set-pieces—a mosaic of realities.”

Amy shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

I nodded. This business had finally gotten to old Iron Brain herself—just as it was getting to me. In one sense I felt compassionate toward the older lady. She’d gone through brain-dissolving stuff just like I had. But in another sense, I had a tremendous sense of relief. In short, it absolved me of the psychological disorders I thought I’d been experiencing. Reality could pretzel around your head. At the very least, I wasn’t the only lunatic in the asylum. Even that thought brought me a warm sense of comfort.

“I understand,” I said. “Amy, you’ve got to stop thinking about things in a normal fashion. I’ve learned that. Things aren’t as they seem, and they don’t work in an orderly fashion—at least not in this particular town!”

Amy started crying. “I just … I just don’t know what…”

She put her hands over her eyes, bent and gave a good sob.

I went to her and put my arm around her. “Hey, we’re here. We’re going to sort this mess out as best we can. We’re going to try to understand … Right, Ms. Paste?”

Ms. Paste belted back the rest of her doctored tea and held her cup out for more. “Yes!” she said. “Yes indeed!”

I went out and got her more, and returned to see if I couldn’t drag some more facts out of her.

“So, are you giving the matter some thought?” I said as I handed her the brimming cup.

Without drinking any of it, she placed it to one side and she said, “Yes, it’s starting to come back. At least, I seem to be making some kind of sense of it.”

“Let’s try and start at the beginning, or at least the beginning as we perceive it: when they picked you up. Was it on the way to school?”

“No. It was here. In my house.”

“Here! In your house?” Amy said. “Why … That means they can come back…. Any time.”

“Oh, yes. In fact, they probably know where we are … Maybe they’re even listening in through some device they implanted in me. But goodness, I don’t think I have the energy to look for it right now!”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said in a calming voice. “We already decided that if they wanted to get us, they could have back at the Donohue Building. We have to do what we have to do now—and we can’t let fear trip us up.”

“Yes,” said Ms. Paste. “Splendidly said, Quinn Roberts.” Some of the old fervor was coming back into her expression; some of the light was coming back into her eyes. “Yes, right … I think it’s coming back to me. It was the morning after we had our talk…”

“Friday morning, then,” I said.

“Right. I was having a leisurely breakfast. I like to get up very early, you know, putter about, then relax over a poached egg and lots of tea. Well, I was just buttering some scones, when there was a knock at the door. I went to answer it. It was a pleasant-faced man—rather short, as I recall, with ears sticking out from the sides of his head. Altogether ordinary, actually. ‘Ms. Cordelia Paste,’ he says. ‘Yes,’ says I. ‘Ms. Paste, I’m with the local management here. We’ve reason to believe that you’re interfering with the Program. We’ll have to ask you to come down to Headquarters with us.’

“Well, as you know, I pretty much knew exactly what he was talking about. But of course I didn’t expect to be confronted with a mild-mannered man in a gray suit concerning the subject.”

“I’ll say.”

“Well, I said I didn’t know what he was talking about, naturally. I invited him for a cup of Earl Grey, but he just shook his head sadly, reached into his pocket and slid out this wand about a foot and a half long.”

“A wand? Like a magician’s wand?” Amy said.

“Exactly like a magician’s wand. Well, the next thing I knew this wand … well, he’s slid it up my right nostril. He gives it a little twist, and the next thing I knew, he’d pushed it up another four or five inches.”

“Yikes!” said Amy, grabbing her own nose in sympathy.

“I was rather alarmed myself. ‘Take that thing out of my nose!’ I said. ‘Immediately!’”

“But then things got rather peculiar. I felt my extremities stiffen … And I felt my own voluntary muscular control go right out of them! But even though I felt quite limp, I remained standing. The plump little man slid the wand from out my nose—quite professionally, as though he did such things everyday and stuck it back inside his coat. ‘Yes, Ms. Paste,’ I heard him say. ‘You’ll come along quietly now, won’t you?’ He turned around and marched back to the little black car in the driveway. I found my feet involuntarily picking themselves up and following him, dragging my numb body along with them. He opened the passenger side door for me, and I got in.

“Then it got very strange.

“Ever have sodium pentathol to get a tooth out? Well, it was like that. I must have been unconscious, but there was no sense of time passing. The next thing I knew, I was in a small room, sitting on a plain gray couch. The space between was absolutely seamless. There was no grogginess involved whatsoever. My limbs still felt slightly numb, but otherwise I was quite comfortable. In fact, I felt calm and quite serene. I had a lovely presence of mind.

“I sat like that for a short time, not terribly concerned. Then the door opened. Another man in another gray suit stepped in and sat on the other end of the couch.

“‘Hello there,’ he said brightly.

“‘Hello,’ I returned automatically.

“‘So. We’re feeling a little fuzzy lately. A little confused about the nature of reality? Perhaps even fraught with a touch of paranoia?’

“‘Yes,’ I said, even though it didn’t feel like me that was answering him.

“‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Just as I thought. Perhaps you’d like to talk about it.’ He was a small man as well, with blond hair and faint blue eyes. He never looked at me directly. He just focused somewhere past my shoulder. He was acting like he thought a psychologist might act. But the performance was wrong.”

“Did you tell the man … everything?” I was thinking—well, that’s a lot more than she ever told me.

“No! You’d just think, in my hyper-suggestive state, that I’d spill my guts—figuratively speaking. Of course. But I said nothing. I felt no alarm. The man did nothing. ‘Ah,’ he said, after a few moments. ‘Quite curious.’ And then he left.

“Right, I think. So what’s next? I’m totally relaxed, mind you, with no fear, no trepidation.

“Then the walls started to move.”

Ms. Paste took a moment to sip her tea, before she started talking. She shivered slightly, and looked at me.

“They kind of bowed in those walls—and faces started to press out of them—like death masks. But then the lips of the masks started to move. Fortunately, I was still pretty much in my apathetic state. It scares me more now than it did then. But I admit, I was a touch disconcerted.

“The walls settled back, and a face appeared on one of them. It was the face of the man who had just personally been in the room.”

“‘Now then, Ms. Paste,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to think of this as an interrogation. But you’ll have to be prepared for some rude shocks. We have some rather unpleasant suspicions about you. And we’ll have to experiment in the methods of extracting the tru—’”

Suddenly, Ms. Paste became deathly quiet. She just stared ahead of her, eyes glassy.

“Yes, Ms. Paste,” said Amy. “Go ahead. We’re listening.”

Silence. No response.

Ms. Paste just kept on staring ahead of her, as though she’d just turned into a statue.

“Oh no,” I said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” I stood up, went to her and put a hand to her arm. She felt very cold. I shook her a bit. “Ms. Paste? Ms. Paste, are you all right?”

“God, she’s not another robot, is she?” Amy said, echoing the exact same thoughts in my head.

“I hope not … I don’t think so … She seemed so … soMs. Paste!”

I turned back to her, and her eyes were alive again. “Oh, dear.” she said. “I’d quite forgotten … My goodness. It’s all coming back now!”

I knelt down beside her. “What’s coming back, Ms. Paste? What are you talking about?”

She turned to me and grinned a silly grin. “But they never found out! The bio-neurological shields. The persona overlay—it was absolutely perfect! They were close, mind you! Close, but no cigar!”

“Please, Ms. Paste,” I implored. “What are you talking about?”

Ms. Paste seemed absolutely babbling with enthusiasm.

“You’ve been through a great deal already, my boy. I suppose you can take it.”

“Take what, for goodness sake?” Amy said, standing up.

“This,” said Ms. Paste.

She grabbed her nose, twisted it and used it as a tab to unzip herself.

Chapter Sixteen

“Unzip” is maybe not the proper analogy to use to describe exactly what Amy and I watched Ms. Paste do that evening.

But it comes awfully close.

The whole of the front part of her body shed away like a funny cocoon. I had a glimpse of vein-like wires, glistening with internal fluids, attached to something within the woman, and then mist hissed from inside, issuing up in a cloud, obscuring what was going on. I turned away from the acrid smell, stepped back a yard, pulling Amy along with me.

“What … Quinn … Oh my…”

“It’ll be okay. Ms. Paste is…” I groped for a term. “Remembering.”

Within the white mist were sudden sparkles, like the inside of a diaphanous brain thinking overtime. The mist faded a little, and we saw the outline of a figure shedding the exterior of Ms. Paste like a clown sheds its suit.

“Drat!” said the figure. “I hate this part the most. It’s so awfully sticky and embarrassing!” said a high-pitched voice which squeaked on almost every other word. “I’ll be myself any nanosecond now.”

“Are you absolutely sure?” I said, finding myself more incensed than surprised. The twists and bends of this experience were getting to me!

Amy just gasped.

The figure flapped away the mist with flipper-like appendages and was suddenly standing before us with an almost human smile touching the lobes of elephant flaps that might have been ears.

“Uhm, Amy…” I said. “You see what I mean about aliens?”

I felt her hand grab my arm and squeeze with alarming strength. “Quinn! I think I’m going to faint!”

“Oh, don’t do that!” said the creature who had once been Ms. Paste. It scurried forward on flip-flop feet and grinned up at us. “I’m still me, Ms. Paste. I just didn’t know I was really me. Umsquatch of the Galactic Investigative Police. My true identity had to be submerged within the personality grid of my host/construct to such an extent that I actually thought I was an eccentric teacher of physics in a stodgy high school in a medieval society on a silly planet!”

She was about four feet tall now, and she was vaguely humanoid, with hard emphasis on the adverb and theoid. The eyes—only two—were blue and intelligent, with a warmth shining from the irisless pupils. The nose was long and more like a proboscis, since it seemed to be quite capable of bending at odd angles. The mouth was an expressive wide gash in the rubbery face with no teeth but with lips that seemed quite plastic in their capabilities—at one moment soft and gummy, the next forming into sharp tooth-like features. Her body was thin, with wobbly arms and legs. From the top of her spherical skull sprouted a tuft of orange hair, which spread out in a corona.

Ms. Paste—or rather, Umsquatch, as she had called herself—looked like the real-life model of a Dr Seuss character!

She waved a three-fingered hand, exuding a slight crack of soft electricity which zipped to both Amy and me. Immediately I felt a sense of extreme relief from any residual fear from this latest development. Amy sighed, and looked at me with a surprised expression.

“There we go!” said Ms. Paste, her voice soundly slight more like it had in her human guise. “You needn’t have any fear. I’m entirely on your side. And now that I know what I need to know … I can act!”

“Act?” I said.

“Yes!” A wobbly finger smote the air. “Bring these cruel ruffians perpetrating this horror to justice! End this hopeless charade of reality bashing!”

“Okay, wait a minute,” I said. “You really are going to have to explain. I don’t—”

Suddenly, from outside, came the bellow like a voice through a megaphone. “Attention! Attention, occupants of this house! We know you’re in there. Come out, surrender, and no harm will come to you!”

“Yikes!” said Amy, and her face went white, any peace Ms. Paste had bestowed upon her disappearing rapidly.

“It’s them! They sense my change!” said Umsquatch. She scampered to the curtains and pulled them wide. A glare of spotlights shot through from the road and from the sky: a car and a helicopter? Funny, I heard no beating blades.

“How would they know so soon?” I said.

The creature swung around and gave me a pure Ms. Paste glare. “That’s why they let us go! They couldn’t unglue me inside their headquarters. But here … relaxed…”

The barked staccato of the megaphone swept over her words. “Occupants of the house! Emerge! Dire consequences shall result if you do not heed this command!”

“God!” said Amy. “Talk about imperious!” She frowned. “What do they mean, ‘dire consequences’?”

“We shall destroy the house and all inside if you don’t come out!” the voice thundered as the penetrating searchlights bobbed about like a Hollywood opening night.

“Enough of an explanation?” Umsquatch returned. She flung the curtains closed and flopped toward us. “There is no time to waste. We must take immediate evasive action!”

“Yeah? Like how?” I wanted to know.

“Just follow me,” said Umsquatch, scampering from the room. “And quickly.”

I shot Amy a look, shrugged and motioned Amy to follow me as I in turn followed the alien version of Ms. Paste into the kitchen.

“What, we’re going to bake them a pie?” I said as she opened the refrigerator.

“The last thing I need, Quinn Roberts, are smart remarks,” she said, taking something out of the freezer box. She spun about and raced for a door, and flung this open. “Come on, kids. Their storm troopers are gonna be charging in any moment.” She started up the steps to the second floor.

“And we’re going to hide in the attic?”

“Shut up and get your rear ends up here!”

We followed.

Umsquatch was working on the handle of a concave metal door, heaving it open. “Here, Quinn. Give us a hand!”

I got between the metal and the door jamb and pushed hard.

The door grudgingly gave way.

“A bomb shelter in the attic?” Amy said.

“Sort of,” said Umsquatch. “Let’s just say it’s a Portable Bomb Shelter. Now go on in, folks.”

We entered the room. At first there was just darkness and blurred banks of lights. We bumped into a few things and into each other. There was the sound of hydraulics as the door shut behind Umsquatch.

Then the lights came on.

“Wow!” said Amy.

Wow, indeed. We were standing in the control room of something.

“It’s my ship,” said Umsquatch, answering my unasked question immediately. She hopped into an oyster-shell shaped chair and started pounding on buttons and switches. An array of wires and screens popped up from the consoles. Lines wiggled, lights popped, electricity crackled.

“Now,” said Ms. Paste/Umsquatch. “Let’s have a look at what we’re up against!”

Screens slid up, immediately awash with a montage of pictures. Vague forms of cars showed. A block-like thing hovered in the air, definitely not a helicopter. It had all the feel of a collection of black and white TVs showing old ’50s monster movies, viewed from another room. But Umsquatch seemed to understand it readily enough.

“Yes,” she said. “I was afraid of this. Please strap yourselves into those seats over there, children.” She pointed to a pair of similarly shaped chairs which had sprouted unseen from the wall. “We’re going to take some serious evasive action!”

“Oh,” I said, hustling Amy along. “Like what?”

“Like getting the hell outta here! They’ve brought in their big guns! Evidently, they’ve figured out how potentially dangerous I am!”

The screens dived for cover and Umsquatch’s hands moved like lightning. Within seconds, the Universe tilted. Then suddenly we were on an amusement park ride, full of rocks and dips and G-force.

After a few minutes of this, the ship’s floor righted, Ms. Umsquatch hit a couple of buttons, swiveled around, and grinned at us. “Well then, children. It appears that I’ve evaded them for the time being. I’ve also erected a cloaking device around the ship, so we’ve bought some time.”

“Time?” I said, more than a little bemused. “Time for what?”

“Well, for one thing, I’d better signal my superiors,” Umsquatch said, looking down at his control panel.

“Uh—do you think you can take some more time for—” I searched for the proper term.

“Exposition?” suggested Amy.

“Precisely!”

“Yes, yes. I will have need for you two humans … And you’ll need to know the score, won’t you?”

“Where are we now?” Amy said. “Besides in a flying saucer!”

“We are presently several thousand kilometers away from Designated Warp Coordinates of the Klisvassi Illegal Experiment,” said Umsquatch, fiddling with the controls. “Hanging in neutralized stasis and—Great Ziggurats of Zingnost!” Her large eyes seemed to bug from her face like the cover of an old pulp magazine.

“What?” I looked down at the controls, but the configurations of lights and numerals were unreadable to me.

“We’re jammed! No communications are possible.”

“Can’t we go out a few more thousand kilometers?” I suggested, hoping to be helpful, this particular new reality not entirely registered with the old consciousness yet.

She gave me a funny look, then shook her head. “No. Of course you wouldn’t understand. We’re not in normal space, Quinn Roberts. We’re extradimensional … Somewhere between the interstices of space and time….”

“Okay,” said Amy, clearly not totally connecting with this particular fact. “Ohhhhhh … kay….”

“And we can’t get out?” I said.

“No. We’d never get back in again … Never find them again. And I must remain here, carry out my mission.” Her words faded away into pure thought as those huge limpid eyes stared away in front of her.

Amy tugged my shirt. “Quinn, pinch me. And please God, let this just be the worst nightmare I’ve ever had in my whole and entire life!”

“Believe me, Amy, it’s real. Wanna see my own black and blue marks?” I said.

Suddenly I found my arms full of sobbing teenage femininity. “Oh Quinn, then just hold me … Hold me…”

So I held her and stroked her and soothed her, taking a great deal of comfort in her presence. “There, there…” I said.

“‘Where … where?’ you mean, don’t you?” moaned Amy.

And she certainly had a point, didn’t she?

“Stop that, you two!” said Umsquatch/Ms. Paste. “No osculating at this time of decision!”

Amy blinked and looked at the alien in horror.

“She just means kissing,” I told Amy.

“But we weren’t even doing that!” said Amy.

The alien motioned us apart. “We can’t afford a hatchling at this time … I sense pheromones exuding…”

“So what did you come up with, great leader?” I said feeling all the sarcasm in my tone.

“A very tricky maneuver is necessary,” said Umsquatch thoughtfully. “A maneuver, I confess, I had not thought necessary.”

“And what, pray tell, is that?” I asked.

“I’m afraid,” said the alien, somehow managing to look extremely sheepish as she took a long breath and sighed it out. “I’m afraid that we’re going to have to go back down there.”

Chapter Seventeen

It was at this second of time that the events of the last few minutes finally sank in.

Reality, which I had thought had finally solidified, once more had brassily shattered. My heart was pumping, a kind of mist hazed my eyesight.

The next thing I knew I had grabbed Umsquatch by the thin material she wore around her torso, pulled her up in the air, (I’d only vaguely noticed the dimming of gravity here) and started shaking her.

“What!” I said. “What? You’ve got to be crazy!”

“Quinn,” said Amy. “No.”

“Ifffff yoooouuuuu’d give mmeee a sec….” gurgled Umsquatch.

The jolt of Amy pounding me a hard one to my side brought me to my senses. I put Umsquatch down, horrified.

“God. I’m sorry,” I said.

The ruffled alien, eyes wide, backed up a few seconds. “No harm done,” she said, looking at me warily.

“It … It just seems so … so loony,” I said, shaking my head. “Go back … We should be going for help.”

“Perhaps if I explained…” said Umsquatch. “If you’ll just give me a few minutes to explain, perhaps you won’t be so … excitable, Quinn. I can readily understand your difficulty in adjustment…”

“Do we have that much time?” I demanded, still feeling extraordinary exasperation. “I mean, before our friends the Masters of Reality catch up with us.”

“Yes. I believe so. But Quinn, part of the reason we must go back, is that we can never really escape them. Oh, for a few hours at a time, maybe, but now they’ve got our bio-magnetic frequencies.” She looked over to Amy as though for support in dealing with this raging maniac.

I slumped back into the chair and raised my hands in surrender. “Okay. Okay, we’re totally under your power, oh Great Mystery Creature. We’ll do as you wish. But please, do try to choke out this long-awaited explanation!”

“Yes, she said, gazing down at her instruments. “I do believe that we have sufficient time for that within these coordinates…”

“And then we go back and face the Music … but only after a few music lessons,” I put in.

“Right. Very well said! Now then,” she said, gesturing for Amy to sit down as well for this, another turn at lecturing. “As I said before my name is Umsquatch, and I am an official with the authorities of this part of the galaxy.

“I suppose I could supply you with a very detailed, complex explanation—but this whole affair teeters on the indecipherable, so I’ll have to simplify things greatly.

“Despite the doubts of the scientists of your planet, there are numerous races of beings in the galaxy. There is even a loose-knit government linking the races, to help prevent wars. However, as in all societies and governments, there are outlaws. Unfortunately, the galaxy is so diverse that these outlaws come in whole claque, whole cultures, whole professions even. Now in our particular case, we are dealing with a group of scientists.”

“Outlaw scientists?” said Amy.

“Yes. Centuries ago, intradimensional experimentation with the splicing of reality and personality was made illegal. However, from time to time, another group cannot help but make the effort of secret experimentation—”

“But why?” I asked.

“I’m sure that your limited grasp of Earth history is sufficient to allow you to understand. Control. Power. That’s what they want … If they can unlock the secrets, the very nature of reality’s interaction with individual consciousness, they’ll be able to conquer the galaxy.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Amy. “You’re telling me that ‘Down There’—Our Town. It’s not on Earth?”

“No. Haven’t you been listening, Amy?” I said. “Why do you think we saw that starscape when we opened the door in the Donohue Building? Down there … It’s an altogether different dimension.”

“You mean … Like the Twilight Zone?”

“Close enough … shadowy enough, apparently.” I said. “Go on, Umsquatch.”

“Yes … right. Well, as I was saying, I serve with the Galactic Enforcement agency as investigator of possible attempts to break these experimentation laws. Preliminary readings showed possible problems in this sector. I came to investigate, and had to assume human form, and overlay my own identity properly to avoid detection. Things happened very fast though, and the identity timer I’d installed was not due to bring the real me from within Ms. Paste out for another few days.”

“Wait a minute. We are human beings, aren’t we?” I said.

“Oh, most assuredly.”

“But where did we come from then?” Amy said, desperation clear in her voice.

“Why, from Earth, of course.”

“And on Earth … It’s the 21st century?”

“Yes … 2000 if I recall correctly…”

“Whew … Well, at least we’re in the right decade,” I said. “Even if it is an the other side of the galaxy.”

“But how…. How did they steal us all from Earth, then?” Amy asked.

“Contortions of reality…” said Umsquatch. “The Ishwhile also use what your culture calls ‘flying saucers’ to make pick-ups.”

“Oh no,” I said. “Flying Saucers.”

“So what you’re saying,” continued Amy, “is that we’ve all been kidnapped, brainwashed, and used as guinea pigs—but why would they be using human beings?”

“The races of the galaxy are largely humanoid in nature,” started Umsquatch, who was interrupted by the snapping of my fingers.

“Wait a minute … But they’re not all human beings. Some are aliens,” I said, all of it dawning finally upon me. “Just as you are, Ms. Paste, or Umsquatch, or whatever you want us to call you. And that’s why, when my control device was damaged at the football game, I saw the Principal as what he really was: an alien!”

“Precisely. You’re beginning to understand.”

“And even then you didn’t really understand. Because you were in deep cover. Deep deep cover. So deep, you didn’t even know who you were.”

“That is correct.”

“But what about all those hallucinations I was having?”

“Could be withdrawal from the chemicals your monitor device was feeding you … Could have been part of the experiment. It’s hard to say at this distance—But the important facts, the ones must accept if you are going to be of aid to me now, is that we must go back and confront these creatures. Confront them and end this Galactic Atrocity.”

“I suppose we’re going to have to be with you,” said Amy. “But will we return to our real homes after all this is through?”

“I should hope so … Although it will take some doing, I promise that the very best will be done toward that goal.”

“Sounds very good,” I said. “And I’m glad that something is actually starting to make sense in my life again…” Although I didn’t care to look too closely at the exact nature of that sense, no sirree. “So what exactly is it that we’re supposed to do now?”

“This,” said the alien.

And she told us.

Chapter Eighteen

We landed at night.

We landed in a park. just outside of town, and Umsquatch left the cloaking device on, promising that it would be a while indeed before the Bad Guys homed in on it.

It was past midnight, and the park was quiet, save for the whistle of the wind in the tree branches, and the occasional hoot of an owl somewhere. We made our way through the woods, only lightly burdened by the equipment that Umsquatch had placed in packs on our backs. I felt like a recruit from a GI Joe cartoon by this time, and I could tell that Amy felt very odd as well: she said absolutely zip the whole walk to the edge of time. Which was okay, since we’d been told to keep as quiet as possible.

We walked a ways into a housing development. It didn’t take me long to recognize it. Oakwood. The upper-class area of town, where the well-to-do tended to settle.

“Here it is,” said Umsquatch, flashing a small light on a mailbox and address. “This is the place all right.”

“I don’t know. This sounds awfully chancy,” I said, looking up at the three-story house. The windows were dark, but the snazzy-looking house gave off the impression of preparedness. “I’d bet dollars to donuts this place has a sophisticated security system.”

“It most assuredly does,” said Umsquatch. “But we come technologically prepared!” So saying, he pulled a device from his own pack that gleamed faintly in the street lamp. “Follow me, children.”

We walked directly to the front door.

“Fortunately, the Hendersons keep no domestic guard animals,” said Umsquatch.

“It lightens the load a bit.”

The thing in the alien’s hand was long and cylindrical. Umsquatch traced the periphery with a finger and lights at either end sprang on—one red, one white. Umsquatch waved this device over the door fixtures as though it were some magician’s wand. With a softclick the door locks opened.

Umsquatch waved the wand once more for good measure, then pushed the door open. She held a long slender finger up to wide lips. “Shh,” she said.

We walked into a plush sunken living room. Silence draped the furniture like dust covers. Umsquatch consulted his faintly purring device by placing it next to his ear. “Ah,” she said. “We haven’t roused the occupants.” He pointed to the staircase. “That way. Their bedroom is upstairs.”

We followed our friendly neighborhood alien up those carpeted steps to a landing. One of the lights turned blue. “There,” said Umsquatch. “That way.”

The bedroom was at the end of the hallway. I could hear the sound of male snoring from inside. When Umsquatch opened the door, I could smell sleep. In the dim light provided by a Mickey Mouse-shaped night-light, I made out two forms lumped on the bed beneath a quilted comforter.

General Fredrick Henderson and his Suzette.

We need this guy’s help, Umsquatch said. We needed his help and his “tools.” But first we needed toadjust him. And that was why we were here.

Umsquatch put the wand back in her backpack and pulled another out—gun-like with something like brass knuckles at one end. She aimed the device at the sleeping couple and just as she was about to fire, the wife stood boldly upright and began to scream.

“Oh dear,” said Umsquatch, and her finger tightened. A beam hummed out, enveloping the entirety of the bed in a golden bulb of glow.

The woman’s scream was cut off and the general was caught in a frozen position, turning over to look at us intruders.

“We must hurry,” said Umsquatch. “The permeable stasis will only last a few minutes. Quick, Quinn. Give me your book backpack. A hasty operation is going to be necessary.”

“Do I have to watch?” asked Amy.

“No. As a matter of fact, Amy, I would prefer if you would go back downstairs and stand guard,” said Umsquatch.

“And yell if any of the bad guys come loping up the front walk?”

“Exactly.”

Amy beat a hasty retreat as I pulled off my pack and handed it to our commanding alien. She pulled out two devices that looked like earphones for Sony Walkmans and slipped them over the heads of the General and his wife. Just as the nimbus of light began to fade from around their beds, Umsquatch took out a control box from my sack and punched a button.

The couple on the bed relaxed into prone positions immediately.

“Right,” said Umsquatch, obviously quite pleased.

“What did you do?”

“Just cancelled out their reality filter mechanisms,” she explained. “Much as I did to you when I removed your ear!”

“And you’re sure that this won’t register with the Bad Guys?”

“All taken into account in the damping mechanism. I—er believe…”

“I’m less than thrilled by your self-assurance!”

The couple on the bed groaned, began pushing themselves up to sitting position.

“You’d best leave this to me,” whispered Umsquatch.

I thought that best, since I knew the shock these people would experience, coming out from under their control. I mean, I did it, and it flipped me right out!

Umsquatch made a hasty change of wands. The new one glowed purple and whined at a high frequency as she passed it over the Hendersons. A kind of lit fairy dust seemed to sprinkle down over them. They shivered as it touched them. The smell of pansies and lavender and cinnamon. And then it was over.

Something like a smile was on Umsquatch’s face. “Over! And it worked like a charm!”

“That’s nice,” I said. “What’s next?”

“Like I said, we need this fellow. He’ll help us.” Umsquatch indicated the zonked-out General. “He has the technology, the contacts, the knowledge. Don’t you, General Henderson?”

“That is correct,” said General Henderson.

“Why don’t you get up, General?” Umsquatch suggested.

“Yes, I will,” said the General. He sat up, and looked at us calmly. “Hello. How may I be of service?”

He was the prototypical general. Short hair, gray and what the war novels called “grizzled,” whatever that means. He was wearing pajamas with a bright red polka dot pattern. He had a big nose and faded blue eyes, wiry old muscles and the beginnings of a Burt Lancaster gut: muscle gone to flab.

“You can take us to your basement, General. There are things we must talk about, things we must do.”

“Yes, of course. Follow me.”

He got up and began to tread away from us.

“Wow,” I said. “What about the wife?”

“Let her sleep for the time being,” said Umsquatch. “Come on now. We’ve got to follow the General. Everything we need is in the basement, and we’ve got control of the nexus individual in the experimental reality web.”

“No kidding.”

Actually, I half-suspected that Umsquatch was going to herd us all into the General’s tank or B-52 out in his garage and deal with the enemy in a military fashion. But this would have to do.

We followed the general down to the basement, collecting Amy on the way.

Thus far I’d been feeling slightly better. The momentum of action is a terrific antidote to the poison of confusion and disorientation. I mean, at least now I had not only my girlfriend believing me, but an alien who had an explanation of the whole thing.

But then we went down to the General’s basement, and things got kinda weird again.

Chapter Nineteen

Machines?

Machines, did she say?

Machines in the General’s basement. Right. Why, of course there would be machines in the general’s basement. Naturally, there would be machines there. He, after all, was the Nexus of this illegal experiment. And naturally, Umsquatch, née Ms. Emily Paste, knew exactly what she was doing.

But then the lights switched on and I goggled at those so-called “machines.”

“Toto,” said Amy. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more.”

“Amy,” I whispered, “I think I’d much rather be in Oz, actually.”

Machines are supposed to be square hunks of metal bolted together, right? Maybe a few cogs and flywheels, electrical cords, and pistons and exhaust if there’s internal combustion involved. Throw in a few blinking lights and some keyboards, presto, you got yourself a computer!

Well, this conglomeration of confusion did not fit into the round hole above. In fact, it didn’t fit anywhere into the world as I knew it—expanded as it was in the past few days.

Visualize soap bubbles. Yeah, soap bubbles clinging together the way they do. Now throw a scatter of crystals—crystals of all kinds of shapes and sizes, red crystals, green crystals, a huge rainbow of crystals—throw these crystals into this collection of bubbles and let them hang in colloidal suspension.

Got that? Good, now forget it. The “machines” we were looking at now were simply something like that. Plus various sparkling and shining electrical filaments sparking and speckling. And there were mirror-like things. Screens. High-resolution screens, lit with images: parts of town and individuals and alien landscapes, mindscapes…. Sheesh, all kinds of weird stuff.

There was a soft hum in the air, like peaceful bees floating contentedly over a bed of flowers. The air smelled a strange mixture of lilac and electricity—a thunderstorm over an antebellum Southern mansion. I could taste the power in the air. The power of possibility. The power of eventualities and alternatives and time distortion and of endless imagination, squared.

Talk about the Twilight Zone, man. This was the Twilight Zone, zoned out.

“I am the Keeper of the Continuum,” said General Henderson, gesturing to the fabulous outer limits machines filling the huge basement. “Welcome. What may I do to help you?”

“Well, General, it’s like this,” said Umsquatch, whipping out something that looked like an alien version of an id wallet. “I’m with the Galactic Authorities. You’re the victim, I’m afraid, of illegal dimensional/reality manipulation. I’m going to have to shut this operation down, and arrest the beings that have victimized you so.”

The General blinked. He looked at his pulsing, quivering, plasmatic machinery, and he said, “I am only the keeper of the Continuum. This is only a small part of the operation.”

“I am well aware of that,” said Umsquatch. “But by manipulating this aspect of the operation, I can suspend operations long enough to send out for reinforcements.”

“I am grateful,” said the General. “My masters are cruel, evil beings. They must be stopped.”

“Excellent. I’m glad you’re in agreement. What we’re going to need, then, is your cooperation.”

“You have it.”

“Please tell me how to use this contraption to stop the operation temporarily—and most particularly, to remove the wide shielding which prevents the penetration of galactic radio bands.”

“That will take some doing. And in the matter of stopping the operation—there is danger involved here. This is only a back-up monitor and solidifying station. Using it for anything else may cause it to self-destruct.”

“Hmm. We’ll just have to be very careful, then, won’t we, General?”

“Yes. Yes, we will.”

I tapped Umsquatch on the shoulder. “So what can we do?”

“Why don’t you and Amy go upstairs and take a nap? This could take a while.”

I looked over to Amy. She did look quite tired, I thought. Come to think of it, I wasn’t in the best shape myself. I’d not slept well the previous night, and my body had been so riddled with adrenaline the past few days that I felt truly strung out now. Nope, a few winks would do me no harm at all.

But most of all, this way I could get away from this weird machine.

“What do you think, Amy? A quick snooze?”

Amy, wide-eyed, nodded. “Yes. That would be very nice.”

“I would appreciate it if you’d station yourself in the living room so you’ll keep at least some kind of watch on possible entrance from outside.”

“You think that’s a likelihood?”

“No. Not if we do our job right down here. But still, it’s not a bad idea, is it?”

No, it wasn’t. I didn’t like to think about the possibility of another repeat of the earlier incident at Ms. Paste’s house, but I had to agree that being prepared for it was not a bad idea.

“Okay,” I said, and grabbed Amy’s hand.

Umsquatch gave an alien smile. “Now, you two be good.”

“Oh, we will,” I said, and led her up to that previously mentioned living room of the sunken persuasion.

Fortunately, there were two couches there, so I didn’t have to use the rug. I made a quick check through the drapes. The front yard was clean of invading bad guys. I went back to the couch where Amy slouched, staring straight ahead.

“How are you doing?” I said softly and sympathetically.

“I don’t know. I’m stunned. No, stunned isn’t the right word for it.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Quinn,” she said, “would you just…. just hold me for a while?”

“Sure.”

I sat down beside her and put my arm around her. She snuggled her head into my chest and sighed. We didn’t say much for a while, just sat holding each other in the shadows of the living room and the shadows of our thoughts.

“As long as I have you,” she said. “As long as I have someone…”

“You still have others … You’ve got your parents…” I said.

“How do I know … How do I know they’re not aliens or something?” she said, her voice quivering at the very thought.

“No. No, I don’t think so. Besides … I have to tell you, the only thing that kept me sane for a while was my parents … Well, not totally my parents. I guess it helped a lot that they acted just like my parents normally do. I guess what I’m saying was that they’d given me a good enough grounding in self-esteem, self-confidence, identity, that I hung on to my sense of self … God, even my sense of humor, come to think of it!”

“Yes. And to think … I was of no help at all.”

“Well, it was all pretty wild.”

“It still is.”

“We should get some sleep now. For however long we can.”

“Do you think that Umsquatch will be able to straighten this whole thing out?” Amy asked hopefully.

“He’s got to,” I said fervently. “We’ve got family and friends here, and we can’t desert them.”

“I’m glad you said that, Quinn, because that’s the way I feel.”

“And how do you feel about me, Amy?”

“That hasn’t changed, Quinn,” she said, and she kissed me softly on the cheek.

“I thought it had changed. A lot.”

“Your top feelings can get all contorted, all muddled. But your bottom feelings, the strong ones … they stay the same.”

Yes, I knew what she meant. And I told her as much. And then I kissed her some more, and we cuddled and I think I fell asleep because when the commotion from downstairs came, I was distinctly startled. And distinctly distorted.

“What?” I said, jumping to my feet, trying to figure out what the hell I was doing in a shadowy sunken living room. “What was that?”

What it was was the floor. The floor was vibrating. A dull roar was coming up out of the basement like a jackhammer, a dentist drill and the start of World War III doing a barber-shop quartet in harmony with a cat. The pitch was rising.

“Quinn!” said Amy.

I recovered sufficiently to pull my girlfriend off the coach and hold her for a moment as the rug trembled beneath our feet.

“What’s happening?”

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound good!” Then again, I thought, maybe it was all a part of Umsquatch’s plan. I said as much to Amy, somehow getting the message across over the sounds emanating from below.

“We should go check!” shouted Amy.

I nodded. We should check indeed. First, though, I gave a quick glance outside to the front yard. Lamp-spotted suburban night: all clear.

I grabbed Amy’s hand and together we went toward the downstairs door. Keening frequencies had begun to play havoc with my ears, and they ascended in fingernails-on-the-blackboard pitch as we neared the cellar.

“My God, Quinn,” said Amy. “My God!”

The door at the end of the hall—the door that led down to the level where Umsquatch was working with General Henderson—was bowing toward us as though pushed from behind with great pressure. Lights leaked through the gaps between door and jamb; a kaleidoscope of colors fanning out, dappling us. Smoke breathed up from the top. Was there a fire down there? Funny, there were no alarms going off.

“We can’t go down there!” Amy continued.

“We’ve got to!”

“Why?”

“Umsquatch is our only hope!” I said, desperately. “And besides—she’s…he’s my friend!”

Amy paused with that one. She looked into my eyes and I’m sure she found fervent sincerity there because she immediately said, “Yes, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight.” She took another look at the door. “Still—”

“Yes. We’ll just have to make the best of it.” I stepped nearer the door, holding out my hand. The air directly by the door bore no trace of heat. “Air’s still cool. No fire! C’mon!”

I turned the knob, and the door immediately crashed against the wall. Something like wind blew out from below, pushing us back, spraying Amy’s hair back.

I pushed against it and urged her on. “Turn sideways!” I cried.

Sure enough, the ploy allowed us to advance against the force. We had just begun the descent down the stairs when suddenly the force simply stopped.

Such was our effort pushing forward that we almost fell headlong down the stairs. Fortunately, we had both gripped the side railings. That alone kept us from tumbling.

Recovered, we stepped down at a normal rate.

What we found at the bottom made me wish we hadn’t come down. We were both too paralyzed to even think about trying to run back up the steps.

The alien machinery was still there, and the General and Umsquatch were desperately working at the controls. Their attentions, though, were directed mostly toward the wall just opposite the machinery.

The wall was—opening up!

Electrical charges zipped and zapped about the periphery of a widening oval like tiny animals chasing one another. The air smelled of burnt brick and a soft mist like white satin hovered within the hole.

Beyond this, shapes moved. Shifting and shivering—glimpses of things like a scene taken from an H.P. Lovecraft story.

“Umsquatch!” I shouted. “What’s happening?”

The alien glanced our way. “Run!” she cried. “Get back to the ship!”

I took another look at this widening rip in the wall.

They’d found us.

They’d found us and they were coming to get us.

“Get back to the ship,” Umsquatch repeated. “When identification procedures begin, say, ‘The Moon is full of Blue Cheese.’ I have programmed for this eventuality. Instructions will appear in the front screen. Follow them.”

I knew what I had to do.

I turned to Amy. “Did you get that?”

“Get what?”

“‘The Moon is full of Blue Cheese.’”

“Yes.”

“Good. Go, then.”

“You … You’re not coming with me?”

“No, I’m not going to leave Umsquatch. You can handle her ship as well as I can. No go!”

It must have been my commanding voice and the look on her face that made her not argue. “There’s a good chance we can hold them back. But get back to the ship … Now!”

She gave me a quick kiss, and then ran back up the stairs. It could have been as much her desire to get out of that basement with or without me as anything else … I figured I’d ask her that later.

When she was gone, I hurried over to Umsquatch.

“Amy’s going back to the ship. She’s just as bright as I am. She’ll be able to handle the instructions.”

Umsquatch nodded. “Brave fellow. You’ve stayed behind to help.”

“That’s right. And also … I guess I’m tired of running from these bastards. I want to face up to them. What can I do?”

“The General and I are busy with the machines. There’s a gun rack over there. See it?”

I looked. A glass case housed a whole arsenal.

“Yeah.”

“Get a gun, and use it as best you can.”

“Right.”

I went to the case. The latch was open. I slid back the glass, and pulled out a shotgun. The shells were at the bottom of the case. I pulled the gun open, inserted two shells, and them clamped the gun closed. I filled my pockets quickly with more shells, and then turned my attention to the events unfolding before me.

“They’ve used an interdimensional transport tunnel,” Umsquatch cried. “We’re fighting to keep the entrance closed here, but it’s a losing battle. Quinn, if you can hold them off for just a short while, we might have a chance to reroute some of the power draining off here!”

In other words, I thought, fill the damned hole with lead.

I switched off the safety and commenced to oblige.

My finger stiffened on the trigger and I sighted down the length of the gun. Within the mist-filled, widening gap the creatures moving within were slowly becoming more visible. I caught a glimpse of greenish skin, a whip of tentacle, a shiver of antenna. Or was this all merely tendrils of the fog, and my imagination? Whatever it was, the bad guys were definitely trying to come through, and I had something that might stop them.

I squeezed the trigger.

The recoil almost knocked me off my feet. But I held steady and hit the other trigger of the twelve-gauge and shot blasted through the smoke from the previous firing. This time I was ready. I held my position and as I released the shotgun, I looked up to see if I had done any damage.

The hole remained the same, and I could still see figures moving within. But the hole was not widening! I must have done some good!

Umsquatch and General Henderson were still working frantically at the controls to the weird machinery. “That’s right, fellow!” said Umsquatch. “Keep it up!”

“Did I … did I kill any?”

“Of course not! They’ve probably got their energy armor on. It just takes time to absorb the shot—which gives us more time! So keep it up!”

I kept it up.

I fired two more rounds into the hole in space. The smoke by then was so thick, I could barely see the buzzing electrical outlines of the periphery. The stench of cordite clung to my nostrils as I dug into my pockets for more shells.

Suddenly, General Henderson screamed, “Oh my God! It’s going!”

“Quinn!” Umsquatch cried. But she was unable to finish the cry because suddenly, from the foggy hole, a burst of energy washed out like a breath from hell and it filled my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my nose with searing white.

That rapidly turned to the black of nothing of unconsciousness.

Chapter Twenty

I’m a great fan of waking up, but I prefer to wake up in my nice comfy bed, with birds trilling in the trees outside, and the smell of coffee lacing the air. You know: after a good eight hours and you’re completely relaxed, with a trace of lethargy hanging over you like a pleasant natural medication.

I woke up and knew I wasn’t in my bed immediately. No cushion beneath me. No sheets over me. No soft feather pillow squooshed beneath my head.

In fact, there was nothing above me. Nor was there anything below me, for that matter.

I opened my eyes.

I was floating.

I think I screamed, because the next thing I knew there was a hand on my shoulder and a comforting voice in my ear.

“Steady on, Quinn. You’re okay.” Umsquatch’s voice.

“I am?”

I looked around me. Hanging all about were weird star-like configurations, like constellations. I looked over to Umsquatch, suspended beside me.

“I’m afraid we’ve been captured by the enemy, dear boy.”

“We’re … we’re weightless.”

“Yes. It’s an interrogation tank.”

“An interrogation…” And then I noticed the stuff hanging from Umsquatch’s body.

Wires.

Wires from her head, from her torso. Lit by the star-like lights.

“But … But I don’t know anything.”

“A good attitude. But they’ll experiment anyway.”

“Experiment?”

“Oh yes, upon the effect of reality distortion upon personality. I’m sure they’re quite fascinated by you already. In fact, I rather think that they detect that we’re both awake by now.”

“So what will they do?” I said, trying to prevent myself from panicking.

“Perhaps—Yes, I think we’re having a visitation right now.”

A few feet from us, a star detached itself from its fellows and “swam into our ken,” as Keats might say. In other words, it floated up to within a yard of us. Slowly it grew into a crystal ball-like thing, glittery and translucent.

Within this crystal ball, a face appeared.

“Oh! Hullo Mivvens!” said Umsquatch. “Long time no see.”

“Umsquatch, you scoundrel. How are the mate and brood?”

“Just fine, thank you.”

The definition of the hologram within the crystal ball resolved into clarity. It was a melon-type head, with three eyes, a long proboscis, and tiny pinpoint ears. A wriggly mouth flapped as it spoke.

“Sorry to have to meet you on these terms.”

“We do keep on bumping into each other on unpleasant terms, don’t we?”

“Oh, I am so sorry! You are uncomfortable? I have made every effort to ensure your comfort!”

“Physically we’re quite fine,” Umsquatch responded. “However, I do admit to a certain mental stress.”

“Hazard of your trade, dear thing,” chortled the creature. “You shouldn’t come snooping where your sensory apparatus doesn’t belong! But don’t worry. Your sanity will be serving the greater good!”

“Greater good!” I blurted.

“Yes. Our good is so much greater than yours, experimental animal!”

And it hit me. That, of course, was the way they saw me! As an experimental animal! A guinea pig! Some monkey in a cage to set electrodes to! How will it jump when you turn on the juice? What happens when you dump these chemicals in its chow?

How sane can it stay when the world goes crazy?

“Why? I don’t understand.”

The creature somehow managed an almost inhuman smile. “Well, I don’t think at this point it will be of any harm to tell you! Besides, at this point, how can you actually tell if it’s real or not? It could be just another flight of fantasy, no?”

“Why don’t you just give up and turn yourselves in?” Umsquatch demanded valiantly. “The girl escaped in my ship! Doubtless she will find a way to contact my superiors, and they’ll be down on you like a horde of angry comet!”

A terrible chittering sounded from the spheroid. It took me a moment, but I suddenly realized that the sound was the alien laughing.

“Oh, poor Umsquatch!” it snuffled. “Deluded Umsquatch! The Earth thing?.. Function properly in that dilapidated hunk of junk you call a spaceship! She’ll run into some moon somewhere before she even finds the inter-spatial communicator! We are hardly worried about the pathetic critter! Hardly worried at all!”

Something deep within me plunged low. Worry for Amy suddenly pushed everything else out.

I shook my head. “No. No, I think you’ve built up too much bad karma. And I’m going to be very amused when a teenaged girl from Earth manages to foil your high and mighty plans toward whatever twisted goal you have in mind.”

The alien just stared at me for a long time, as though I was something that had just crawled out from under an asteroid somewhere.

“Umsquatch, my beloved enemy! Wherever did you find this delightfully arrogant cipher?” the thing said finally.

“Hey! Don’t ask me! You were the one that was using him, not me!”

“A most fascinating personality mutation! Noted!” said the alien. “We shall make sure the Reality Warping process is suitably adjusted! I envy you, cipher! Your mind shall be bent and ripped into permutations where no other mind has gone before!”

“Look,” said Umsquatch. “He’s just a child. Do what you like with me. I came into this gladly. It’s part of my duty, part of my job. But Quinn Roberts here … He’s an innocent!”

“Which is precisely why his mind is so suitable for experimentation!” said the alien, almost brightly.

“I don’t understand,” I said, stalling, hoping against hope that something, anything, would rip this nightmare apart and I’d wake up clutching my feather pillow with only a light sweat to show for my ordeal. “Experimentation? What do you gain out of experimentation?”

“Control of the entire universe!” the alien pronounced gleefully. “A small ambition, true, but the universe will just have to do.”

“But how can warping my mind control the universe?” I was actually starting to get curious despite the out-of-control adrenaline that was pumping through my body.

“Mind control. Reality warping—a deep principle of bio-physics, Quinn,” said Umsquatch. “Participation of individual viewers in the shaping of activity on a quantum mechanical level.”

“Quite,” said the alien that Umsquatch had called Mivvens. “Let me give you a simple example from your own Earth history. When the Spanish arrived in a part of South America, they entered one particular harbor where the tribal Indians literally could not see the sailing ships they traveled in. It was so far beyond their experience—their reality—that their minds could not handle it.

The Universe is apparently not merely a cold gathering of physical laws governing matter and energy. Intelligence and consciousness are the invisible bonds that shape its very nature. Intelligent beings always shape their reality by utilizing matter and energy. We have the foresight to see that it can also be shaped by mind.”

“You mean you’re going to brainwash the universe?” I said.

“Oh no. We shall simply reshape the consciousness of the cultures, the individuals of the universe—and so alter reality to our means! Imagine the heights of achievement we shall render across the face of the cosmos! Ours shall be the very highest achievement of awareness against the cold of the void. Ours shall be the ultimate victory of life over death! But the keys are not yet within our grasp—and so, we must experiment.”

“Against galactic law!”

“Fools! Idiots!” fumed the creature. “We do not wish to be outlaws … Indeed, we do not perceive ourselves as such. Ours is a conclave of individuals from many cultures, many races. This is no primitive effort for domination by a single race. It is an effort for control by a group with superior intellect and vision. It is the next logical step in galactic evolution!”

“At the expense of free will!” Umsquatch said. “At the expense of all that is sacred to citizen rights!”

“Why so many humans, though?” I said, a sudden suspicion crossing my mind.

“You are so much more … accessible. Yours is not a race which has been admitted to the Gathering of Intelligences. Our plan is to understand the nuances of your psyches and then use Earth as our first experiment in … er … consciousness expansion.”

“You … You’re the aliens that have … You’re the UFO people! You’ve caused all the weird things to happen, all the disappearances!”

“At your service!”

“And you want to conquer Earth?”

“Please, your paranoia overwhelms your judgment. No, we wish to save Earth and its race of human beings from themselves. Because of our efforts, a nuclear catastrophe may well be averted! So you see, we’re your friends. We want to help you! And with your cooperation, we will understand you so much better.”

My head was swimming.

These were the UFO people. Whatever my previous life had been on Earth, I had been plucked from it and placed in this experimental community with others! This was best-seller material. Too bad I probably wouldn’t get to publish my memoirs before my mind got splattered all over creation!

“You won’t get away with this,” said Umsquatch. “My force has sophisticated monitors to detect just this kind of activity. They’ll be down on you like a swarm of avenging angels!”

“Which is why they sent a sole officer to investigate! Come, come, Umsquatch. You pull my tentacle! We’ve done this sort of operation countless times in the past years with no interference from your vaunted law enforcement!

“Well then … Enough talk. In truth, we’re only letting you in on a few of our secrets to see what effect this has on your eventual … dreams. And so, good night to you both. A very good night!”

“Nooooo!” I cried as the crystal faded away.

“Repeat your name over and over and over. Repeat your name!” said Umsquatch as everything started fading away in the same direction as Mivvens.

“Quinn Roberts!” I said. “Quinn Roberts! Quinn Roberts!” I repeated the name like a litany until reality shifted and dissolved like a tablet of Alka Seltzer in a tumbler of water.

Chapter Twenty One

“Quinn Roberts! Quinn Roberts! Quinn Roberts!”

A shimmer. A shake. Butterfly wing tremble. Color throb, sound muting: the last sibilance of cymbals.

Not floating any more. Gravity. Falling.

“Hallo,” said the chair. “I’m your friendly neighborhood supporter of butts and bodies.”

I looked up from the crater I’d made in my meteoric crash. Faintly, something in the dim background of my mind, I recalled impacting, but instead of noise, flowers had blown from the ground. And instead of pain, I felt rather comfortable.

“Quinn Roberts,” I told the chair.

It was of the rocking variety, polished oak that smelled of Lemon Pledge. It had a couple of quilted cushions strapped in place and—all in all—it looked very comfortable.

It also had two blue, lashed eyes staring at me from its back.

“Nice to meet you, Rin Morberts. I’m Rocker of Chair Land and I’m here to officially welcome you to this branch of twisted reality. Are you feeling a touch insane yet?”

Mostly I felt a touch annoyed.

“Quinn Roberts,” I said, correcting the chair. “Don’t try to confuse me. And I’m as sane as I ever was.” I looked up at the sky, expecting Lucy with Diamonds and all, but all I saw were cumulus clouds and a faint rainbow in the cottony distance. “Maybe that’s the problem, Mivvens! I’m already a bit insane, and you can’t pull anything on me that will actually destroy this huge ego of mine!”

The chair said, “Here. Sit down. Take a rest. Chairland is for rest and relaxation. And have a cuppa.”

Magically, it seemed, a steaming cup of tea appeared, resting politely on the arm. “With milk or lemon?” it piped at me.

“Milk,” I said. “And sugar.”

“Sugar it is, mate.”

I sat down in the chair and sipped at the tea, which was Earl Grey, my favorite.

“Chairland,” I said, looking at the misty mountains in the distance, the rolling meadows. “Anything like Wonderland or Elfland? Seems a bit fantasyland.”

“Oh, yes,” the chair cooed in my ear. “We have our share of pesky unicorns and ornery dragons if that’s what you mean. And Alice is about somewhere. Cheshire cat for dinner if you decide to stay. But then that’s not why I’m here, is it, Rin Boberts?”

I let the name slide and took issue with other aspects of the situation. “What’s this? Some sort of quest? Riddles to answer? An animated adventure?”

“If you like. Actually, it’s all that and more. For right now, we’re just resting here, taking your full measure.”

A gust of ghosts sailed nearby, some dragging Marley-like chains, trailing groans that sounded more caused by indigestion than by damnation.

“So. Sort of a waiting room to Hell, then?” I said after a sip of tea.

“Hell? No. Nor heaven. Just the interaction of perception and mind-twisting upon personality.”

“Well, I guess I’ve got plenty of personality to spare. Lead on, MacDuff.”

“Shakespeare! How literate! Has it occurred to you, Din Doberts, that you know a great deal more than you once knew?”

“I’ve had lots of explanations!” I said, watching a clutch of rabbits flap their ears and fly off over Christmas trees under which lay all manner of wrapped presents.

“Layer upon layer, like an onion. But is it going outward … Or is it going inward? Maybe you’re not less than you thought you were … Maybe you’re more!”

“More? Like what?”

“Come. Time to go. Buckle up, please!”

“Buckle…?” I looked down and sure enough, there was a safety belt dangling from the side of the chair. I put down the tea and I put on the seat-belt. “Do we really have to?” I said petulantly. “I was rather enjoying it here.”

“’Fraid so, sport. Now then…”

The scenery opened up as though some invisible hand had unzipped it and the chair, holding Din Doberts…

…no, no … Quinn Roberts … quinn roberts!

…slid down into a tunnel at the speed of night.

I felt the pressure of wind against my face, the scream against my ears as the chair loop-de-looped like a broken amusement park ride.

Gravity checked out, checked in, checked out again as though Mr. G was trying to get the hell off this loony chair. My sentiments precisely. I stayed put, though, as the chair babbled in my ear unintelligibly, providing a suitable commentary on this lunacy.

…and then up, up, up, three gees kicking me in the face and gut—Until we broke through another tissue of reality into the night sky.

A fleeting sensation of falling…

…and we settled comfortably onto the rocky peak of a very tall mountain.

“How’s this for a view, then?” the chair said. I unstrapped myself and stepped to the ledge. It seemed as though below me stretched not terrain, but a conglomeration of worlds. Red worlds, green worlds … planets of ice, planets of fire. Planets with rings that would make Saturn envious, worlds where colors twinkled and gases seethed and life pulsed like veins through bodies.

“Now then, about what I was saying,” the chair whispered, its voice becoming harsher, growing an edge. “The layers—”

What lay beyond me, below me, still held my attention. “Layers…” I whispered.

“Yes, layers. Perhaps you are more than you think you are.”

“More. Not less.”

“Quite,” said the chair.

“Like what?”

There was a pause, and then the voice croaked out an answer. “Perhaps…. God!”: I thought about that.

“Yes,” I said. “Definite insanity going on here!” I looked up to the sky, the color of blood and scotch. “All right, aliens! Okay, Mivvens! You’ve done it! My mind is truly messed! You can turn off your machines now! I give up!”

But nothing turned off, except my sense of awe at the majesty spread out below, this quilt of creation.

A creepy-crawly sensation spread up the back of my spine, like spiders and caterpillars cavorting in a disco. I turned around to look at the chair…

A stink hit me in the nose. It smelled like something dead … Something dead for a long time.

In the shadows, the chair was beginning to metamorphize. The wooden legs were becoming real legs, coated with hair. The arms were widening into reptilian flesh. Wings spread out behind it: bat’s wings. Eyes shone like smoking pits from this skull head.

“Okay,” I said, a little tremor of fright in my voice. “So next comes a stirring rendition of ‘Night on Bald Mountain’, right, Walt?”

“Fall down and worship me,” said the Phantasia-style Satan. “And I shall give you all this.”

“Yeah, well, it’s very nice and majestic, but what’s to worship?”

“Rats.”

And the chair was just a chair again.

“I’m not going to be dumb again, and sit on you!” I told the thing.

“Just a little exercise, dear boy.”

“I take it that you’ve given up trying to make me believe that I’m God.”

“Heaven help the Universe if you were. But maybe there’s a little bit of God in us all.”

“Maybe there’s a bridge in Brooklyn you’d like to sell me.” I shivered, suddenly cold. “Getting a little frigid up here, don’t you think?”

“Come. Have some hot tea. We must continue the ride.”

I thought about that for a moment, getting colder and colder. I sure didn’t want to get stuck up here, and that chair suddenly did look very comfortable, and I could use a nice cup of tea and—“Okay.”

“Excellent. And away we’ll go for our ride through wonderland again, eh?”

“I suppose so, though I’d much rather not.”

I went to the chair. I turned and I sat down. But where I expected solid wood to meet my butt, I found only air.

I fell.

Nor did I just fall on ground. The ground seemed to open up and I fell through.

Mist and clouds and dizziness.

And I think I passed out, because the rest was well below blackness.

I awoke.

At first I thought I was in bed.

Anyway, there was the softness beneath me that seemed to indicate a mattress. I looked around me. A swirl of colors resolved into a patchwork of trees and flowers. Perfume of fern and flower scented the air—a hazy good feeling passed over me as it often does just awakening.

I seemed to be upon some sloping platform. I leaned over the edge and I looked down. A stalk of white supported this platform. The underside was dark and ridged, and had a distinct musky smell.

I was sitting on a mushroom.

I looked up to the top, expecting to see a caterpillar, chomping on its hookah and eating Alice pie.

Instead, there was just a caterpillar.

“Who,” it said without a shred of originality, “are you?”

“Quinn Roberts,” I said quickly.

…Quinn Roberts…. Quinn Roberts … I said over and over to myself, keeping my identity intact and close to my heart.

“And what are you doing on my mushroom?”

It looked just like the Tenniel illustration, and spoke just like the Disney cartoon.

I looked down to make sure I didn’t have a dress on.

Nope. Just my usual jeans.

“I just fell here. Aliens are testing the result of warping reality upon my personality.”

The caterpillar sniffed and sucked a bit on its pipe. Water gurgled. Smoke streamed from its mouth.

“Why, oh why do I always end up with the normal folk?” it said. “It’s getting to be such a cliché. So. Tell me. What is the effect of reality warping upon the personality?”

“I don’t know. I feel like the same old loveable guy, I suppose.”

“Not fragmented?”

“No.”

“Would you care for a puff?” it said, offering me the pipe to suck on.

“No thanks.”

“How about a bit of mushroom then?”

“One side makes you larger, one side makes you small?”

“That’s right. Grace Slick told you that, I suppose.”

“Yes…”

“Well, if you don’t mind, your added weight creates a hazard. Might crack the stalk and send us both tumbling, you know.”

“Oh, sorry.”

I slid off, jumping down a good six feet onto the ground.

“Thanks very much,” said the caterpillar.

I stood now knee-deep in grass and daisies, peering up over the edge of the mushroom. The caterpillar undulated a ways down, his eyes focusing on me.

“There now,” it said. “Much steadier, I believe. I’ve a time to go before I molt. I don’t wish to lose my throne.”

“No, of course not!”

“You sure you don’t want a little taste of my fungus?”

“I’m fine, thank you. I could use a little advice, though.”

“Oh, I’m more than happy to oblige with advice!”

“Could you tell me the fastest way back to the planet Earth? I seem to be very lost, and I’d like to get back home.”

The wrinkled face creased further, honestly considered the question. “The planet Earth. Let me see. Have you got a few clues … A little description?”

“Well, it’s green and blue. Third planet from its sun, called Sol, in the edge of the Milky Way…”

“Oh, Earth…. Yes, of course.” The caterpillar glanced away, searching. “You see that pathway by that fallen tree?”

I looked and I found the fallen tree. “Yes.” It was a thin path, almost overgrown with vegetation, but discernibly a path to somewhere other than here.

“Good lad! Well, you travel down that path a couple of miles. Then there will be a fork in the road. You go left for another five miles. That will take you to Earth.”

“Thank you!” I said, waving as I started for the path.

“Good luck!” the caterpillar called to me. “You seem like a solid lad. Don’t let the bad guys mess with your mind.”

My mind, I thought, as I strode along the path through these wondrous woods. My mind still seemed intact. Still seemed properly hinged in place. I still remembered my name … Quinn Roberts. Quinn Roberts. Quinn Roberts…

“It’s not working, Mivvens!” I cried, shaking my hand up to the sky defiantly. “Do what you like. My ego is much too strong! My sense of self is too good. I am Quinn Roberts, ace high-school student, captain of the football team and student body president. I am me! I am Quinn…”

The dragon that rose up in the middle of the pathway was green, ugly and had a tremendous set of choppers.

“Yum!” it bellowed. “I love football teams!”

And it promptly swallowed me up.

Chapter Twenty Two

… click … click …

I slide stealthily across the spaceship floor. I creep in the shadows. I click amongst the machine sounds. I stalk my quarry.

“Hello, hello! Oh someone, please help me. I think this is a radio and I’m transmitting now, as per the instructions I received from this spaceship. My name is Amy and I’ve escaped from some sort of strange alien experiment and right now I’m somewhere in space, desperately seeking help and trying to call on the frequency that Ms Paste … I mean, Umsquatch … gave me. And…” Sobs. “Oh, please help me!”

I am the Destroyer, the Avenger, and I seek my prey and I recognize the sound of my prey’s fear. I clack along on mandible feet, my pincers at the ready, my machine mind calculating the trajectory of my leap at this intended victim. She is less than two meters tall, she is humanoid, and I sense that her demise will be a quick, if bloody, one, beneath the onslaught of my razor-sharp range weapons and …

…Quinn Roberts … Quinn Roberts…

I shrug off the strange name percolating through my consciousness, concentrating on my programmed mission: terminate the female humanoid. I scuttle along the floor across the bridge of the interstellar vessel, full-charged and prepared to complete my transmitted goal.

“ … I don’t know what else to do! I don’t know where I am. I don’t even know if I’ve got the right frequency! Oh, I’m so alone.”

I sense the flutter of her heart, the heat of her body. I calculate the exact spot to rend and tear for a quick extermination. I am less than three meters distant from quarry. I poise to leap …

“Oh, Quinn. I wish you were here.”

…Quinn Roberts. Repeat the name. Quinn Roberts. quinn roberts. quinn roberts!

Something causes me to stop, just on the verge of my killing leap. The name she has used … Quinn Roberts. Strangely familiar …

… terminate … over-ride … terminate immediately! destroy the female humanoid!

“I don’t … My God, what is that … The maintenance robot? The robot maid. Of course. You scrub the decks. Well, hello there, cutie. It’s nice to have at least some kind of company. Do you have a name, little maintenance robot?”

… quinn roberts … quinn roberts …

And suddenly I remembered her smell, the touch of her soft flesh and the brush of her blonde hair … the twinkle of her eyes …

“Amy!” I said.

“My God!” she said, taken aback. “You know my name!”

“Of course I know your name! It’s Quinn. Quinn Roberts, your boyfriend!”

“Quinn … Wait a minute. Is this some kind of joke? You … You’re a robot!”

And I thought, well. This is a new twist.

I went over to a metal cabinet with a reflecting surface. Sure enough, the image that reflected back belonged not to the handsome young man known as Quinn Roberts, but rather to a robot about two feet high, with two ocular units and many bristling units it clearly used as arms.

“It does look that way, doesn’t it?” I said.

“Yes. So, like I said, is this a joke? Some new twist to reality?”

I thought about that.

“Yes. Entirely possible.”

“No, I was just kidding. I’m real. I’m Amy. But you certainly aren’t Quinn Roberts!”

I thought about this for a moment.

“Yes. I am. And I think that this is a fixed reality. They beamed me here … My consciousness, that is. They caused me to possess this maintenance robot. And they wanted me to kill you … To prevent you from notifying the authorities. And then … The monsters … Then they were going to wake me up, and let me see what effect having just torn up my girlfriend had upon my sanity.”

“You don’t sound like Quinn Roberts … But maybe you do. Say ‘B-a-l-t-i-m-o-r-e.’”

“You mean, as in the city?” I was suddenly aware of the machine sound of my new voice.

“Yeah.”

“‘Bulmer,’” I pronounced without hesitation.

Amy looked down at me goggle-eyed.“You just might be Quinn. God knows, queerer things have happened this past day—but then, you might be a trick…”

“Look, you wanna hear about the three moles on your back, the birthmark on your left foot? Or do you want me to describe our favorite parking spots of last month?”

“They could have taken apart your memory! Yeah, and now they’re using it to fool me!”

“Paranoia worthy of yours truly. Now, Amy, it’s me—and I love you. That’s what saved you. My emotion for you. Memories don’t have emotion.”

Tears brimmed in her eyes. “Oh Quinn. I miss you. I’m scared. I wish you were here to hold me.”

“I’d do it now, only I don’t think either of us would enjoy it much.” My head swiveled around, taking in the information available to me visually. “Well, you made it into space at least. And the bad guys don’t have you.”

“Yes, I did exactly as Umsquatch said. And I sent a call for help, I think. But Quinn, I don’t know how to use any of this stuff. Not really! I’m stuck here! There’s been no response … And those awful creatures … They could be on their way.”

“No. if they could have intercepted you, they would have by now,” I said, calming her. “That’s why they sent me—or anyway, my consciousness.”

And I wondered how long they would let me stay, but I didn’t mention this to Amy.

Or if all this was even real, or just a wire-induced non-reality. But no, Amy was much too real, and it all made sense—those bastards would test my personality by having me kill Amy. That was their style.

“Okay,” said Amy, after drinking in a deep breath. “So what do we do now?”

“I don’t—”

Whirlings, interior shuttlings of digits suddenly crossed behind my ocular units. Little red lights blipped on the periphery of my screen, and I suddenly realized I was seeing through graphed coordinates.

“Quinn!” Amy cried. “Quinn, what’s wrong? Don’t leave me now, you ninny!” She started to shake me.

“I’m still here,” I said. “I forgot, though. I’m in a machine now. A machine that is a part of this spaceship. I wonder—”

“You think you can fly this thing?”

“If I interface properly, I might be able to do just that. You’ll have to excuse me, though. I might zone out.”

“Zone out, zone in—do what you’ve got to do, but get us some help!”

“I’m not so sure that your SOS wasn’t enough, Amy. But just the same, our priority now is to spring Umsquatch from that reality manipulation tank. To say nothing of my handsome bod … “

“But Quinn, Umsquatch wouldn’t want—”

“He had no way of knowing I’d be in this position,” I waggled some mechanical digits in her face. I was feeling a peculiar power welling up in me. “No way of knowing I could tap into his ship’s power.” I waddled over to the control chair, plopped my mechanical self in it and surveyed the board before me. It was all Greek to me, but a hunch brought out a screwdriver device. Sure enough, a few whirs and buzzes in likely places loosened the thing. I shove-sprang the release, and I was staring into an Italian restaurant’s worth of spaghetti and meat balls.

“Jacks, jacks, there must be some jacks!” I murmured mechanically, waving about connectors over my head. Suddenly the red blips obligingly beeped over the appropriate holes. It seemed like nothing less than instinct that drove my own plugs and connectors to meet the alien fixtures below. “Here we—”

Suddenly I felt my consciousness expand. From maintenance robot it slipped into the ship itself. A surge of power like I’ve never felt before went through me like lightning. Beyond me were stars, a universe of stars. And within me, like a child in a womb, was Amy.

“…go!”

I felt my voice throb through a speaker, and it sounded more like a biological voice, but with a touch of Godlike bass as well.

I felt/saw Amy jump.

“Wow, Quinn! Where are you now?” She looked around her, total bafflement in her face.

“I’m here, Amy! I’m all around you. I’m the ship!” I felt power surge through me, power and knowledge and ability and possibility. “I’m Umsquatch’s ship! And I’m in total control!”

“Well, that’s nice and all, but I can’t see you!”

“Just sit back and relax,” I instructed. “I’m going to make a cursory check of the situation, Amy. Might take a few moments. Have one of the drinks in the fridge. I see nothing in them that would hurt you … and they are carbonated!”

“Great! Outer space Pepsi Cola! But where’s the refrigerator?”

I opened the door for her. She was so surprised she just obediently went, took out one of the bluish bulbs that sat within, unscrewed the cap and drank.

While I explored.

I had indeed tapped into the command computer of Umsquatch’s spaceship. For all intents and purposes, I was Umsquatch’s spaceship. First I made a quick survey of the ship, the drive, the navigational system, the weaponry armament. Augmented by the memory banks available to me, I knew that the drive was some sort of antimatter device which could be utilized to burn a hole into subspace. I obtained a feel for the gyrohex navigational system. I obtained a cursory knowledge of the ion beamers protruding from the ship’s hull. These things and a thousand thousand more shuffled through me on the wings of a moment, and I knew what I had to do first.

I found the subspace radio.

Instantaneously, I determined that Amy’s message—along with several other messages prepared by Umsquatch—had been shot off to Galactic Central. A return message had yet to arrive. Which meant that time was indeed of the essence. We couldn’t wait for the Cavalry. Amy and I and Umsquatch’s ship were going to have to go in and save Umsquatch’s tortured mind and my poor dangling butt.

“Right,” I said to Amy, who was just finishing the soda and fishing for another one. “Good enough. How ya doing there, kid?”

She saluted me with her drink. “This stuff doesn’t taste bad. Cosmic cola, kinda.”

“One more check, and we’re on our way,” I told her, and submerged myself within the sensors and the navigational systems. A quick study of the star maps, combined with a sensor sweep, gave me our location in reference to the bit of space and time we had come from. We were several hundred thousand miles away. But I calculated that a quick subspace jump would bring us there in no time.

“Okay,” I told Amy. “Would you be kind enough to strap yourself in, dear heart? The pilot has turned the no-smoking sign on, and we’re preparing for take-off!”

“How about telling me what to expect?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. I’m sort of winging this, so to speak.”

“A wing and a prayer. Well, you can believe I’ll be praying.” Amy obediently went to her chair and hit the button which strapped her in.

For my part, I made a cursory scan of the instrumentation, the fuel supplier, our course and found, with the aid of the stored information in memory concerning the craft’s experience of the renegade alien scientist’s place, that I had a good idea of where I could find Umsquatch and myself. I made the appropriate adjustments to the flight plan, and prepared to instigate them.

“All set?” I asked Amy.

“No, but I guess I’m ready. What do I do when we get there?”

“Just don’t go anywhere. Hopefully it won’t be very long before we’ll be back out here.”

I hit the gas pedal.

Chapter Twenty Three

It was like riding a bike.

I felt as though I’d driven this spaceship a thousand times before. The controls felt simply right. I felt in perfect balance.

The problem was, I really didn’t know exactly where we were heading. I was leaving that up to the computer, and although I could reel off a page-load of coordinates on the subject, that still didn’t tell me exactly where we were headed.

I suppose I expected a planet to loom on the screen. Or a moon, or a comet, or substantial heavenly body.

Instead, minutes after the flicker/whisper jump through subspace, when my coordinates claimed we were almost on top of the place, I perceived it as color.

Many colors, actually, swirling in a ring. Azure and vermilion, spiked with orange and crimson, with highlights of sapphire and gold twinkling in their midst. An occasional diamond wink.

I put it on the screen and I told Amy, “That’s it?”

“Yes. That’s what I glimpsed on the way out,” she said, watching the swirl of energies on the screen thoughtfully. “Of course, I was in such a state I barely noticed…”

“How come we didn’t see this when we left the first time? I mean, when Umsquatch took off from the attic?”

“Well, the screens weren’t on, were they?”

Oh yeah.

“So what are they, anyway?” she continued.

“I don’t know…”

“Well, you’ve got to have some information on the subject in that memory bank of yours!”

I scanned. I found myself automatically making a spectro-analysis, and a flood of data from computer memory matched and corroborated it.

“What we’re seeing are the visual results of the space/time distortion resulting from the presence of the little chunk of matter which our aliens and ourselves and our little town were perched on.”

“Okay. And we just have to go through it again.”

“Yes, I see no harmful effects there. But when we get to the reality warpers … well, there’s another matter altogether!”

“I just hope when we rescue you guys, Umsquatch doesn’t want to go back again.”

“Hopefully she’s learned her lesson by now,” I said, but even as I pronounced those words, I doubted them. Our friendly alien ally seemed to be far too dedicated to duty to let a little mind torture nudge her off track. But I knew that my course of action was irrevocable. I had to rescue Umsquatch. I had to rescue me!

The starship that was me dived into the splashes of color. Slashed through them. The course was pre-plotted and for all practical purposes the ship was automatically piloted. We flitted through the strands of color for a few minutes, and then it was suddenly as though a bank of clouds had lifted.

Below was the sleepy suburb of my home town.

“There it is!” I announced to Amy.

“Yes. But where are you and Umsquatch?”

I let my sensors and detectors work over that problem for an instant, and then had the answer.

“You know the old warehouse on the south side of town?”

“You mean the one that looks like an airplane hangar?”

“That’s the one. Well, according to my readouts, that’s where we are.”

Amy swallowed and sighed. “Okay. I’m ready if you are!”

The ground whisked by beneath us.

I had my force-field armor up, just in case the bad guys decided to zap us with a death ray, or heave an atom bomb our way. But nothing happened. I got absolutely no danger readings. I didn’t even get any kind of readings on the aliens—no sign of their machinery, the reality warping they were creating. Nothing.

I did, however, get a reading on Umsquatch. His starship seemed to sniff him out like a bloodhound finds its master.

As the gray metal and brown wood warehouse hove into view below us, I said, “Yep, Amy, he’s in there.”

“How about you?”

There was nothing on me.

“Just because I can’t sense me, doesn’t mean that my body isn’t in there,” I said, immediately regretting my choice of words. “I mean, it doesn’t mean that my physical sense isn’t in that tank right alongside Umsquatch.”

“Let’s find out,” said Amy, unfastening herself. “I’ll go on in.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort. I detect a sophisticated laser system in this starship. All we have to do is this.”

Hovering above the roof of the building, I unleashed the focused energies beneath me. Laser beams shot out. Within seconds, I’d cut a hole in the roof of the warehouse, and removed it carefully, utilizing tractor beams.

“That’s it,” I said, putting the visual on the screens. Below the ship now was a large metal and plastic tank riddled with wires. “Now let’s get us out of there.”

With surgical precision, I sliced off the top of the tank and lifted it up. There was a ‘whoosh’ of escaped gases, and a mist drifted off.

Sure enough, there was Umsquatch, on the floor of the tank, just lifting herself up and blearily gazing at all the lights above her.

But as for me…

I was nowhere to be found.

“They must have taken me somewhere else!” I said, even as I gently lifted Umsquatch with my tractors, carefully detaching the wires from her body. I opened a cargo door on my underside and gently eased my alien physics teacher up and through. I slid the door shut, and put her down.

“Amy,” I said. “She’s in the room to your left.” I irised open the door. “Bring her in here.”

“Sure!” said Amy, clearly glad to be of help.

When Umsquatch was pulled in, she was just waking up, groggily. She emitted a few squeaking sounds, and then a short burst of what must have been her own language.

Suddenly her eyes snapped wide open.

“What … Where…” she looked around her. Then she felt the bruises on her body, where the wires had been attached. “Is this another reality warp?”

“No,” I said.

“No,” echoed Amy. “We’re real enough. We just sprung you from the alien chamber where you were hanging. But where’s Quinn?”

Umsquatch blinked, getting up wearily to her feet.

“Didn’t I just hear his voice?”

“Yes, you did indeed,” I said. “My consciousness is presently inhabiting your starship. Nice little boat you’ve got, by the way.”

“Thank you. But how—”

I explained that the aliens must have beamed me up to the maintenance robot, to get at Amy and prevent her from calling for help.

“Oh! Yes, of course! Entirely possible.”

“But the question remains … where am I, truly?”

Umsquatch dusted off her hands. “Well, we’ll just have to find out, won’t we? Meanwhile, we’d best get out of here, eh?”

“Oh, yes. Of course. But I’ve got the force screens up. I think we’ll be okay if we want to stick around and look for me.”

“Just do it!” Umsquatch commanded. “You can never tell with this bunch.”

“Right!”

Without further ado, I engaged the engines and shot away from the warehouse building.

When I was a couple miles up, I stopped and checked back with Umsquatch and Amy. They were sprawled on one side of the cabin, just now picking themselves up.

“I meant, after we belted ourselves in, Roberts!” Umsquatch said, annoyed.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“That’s okay. You’re assuming the role of a machine program. I should have realized that you would take my orders hyper-literally.”

“You know, it’s kinda fun being a spaceship!” I said. “I could get into this. See the universe!”

“Quinn, you’re amazing!” Amy said.

“It is said that the human animal is the strangest in the universe,” said Umsquatch. “I’m just beginning to believe it!”

I did a quick sensor shuttle of the area below, looking for myself. But I got nothing but indecipherable readings.

“I’m starting to miss my body. It’s a very nice body, you know. Healthy, well-exercised, top physical condition. I hope they’re not dissecting it or anything.”

“Morbid fellow,” said Umsquatch, clicking himself into place at the controls. “Hmm. It seems as though you two were able to send off a message to Central. Excellent. Maybe they’ll arrive here in a year or two.”

“What?” said Amy.

“Just kidding.”

“Seriously, when do you—”

Suddenly, I felt myself withdrawing. It was just like a TV tube going out, but painfully slower. They just faded away…

…faded…

…“Quinn!” Quinn! Talk to us!”

…faded…

Faded to black.

Chapter Twenty Four

…and faded in…

I felt the familiar tensions of a musculature, the support of bone, the pulse of blood.

Groggily, I woke up. I knew I was back in my body now. I was fully Quinn Roberts. I was no longer a spaceship.

I also felt the tug of gravity. I felt the familiar twinges of wire contact against my skull and the side of my face.

I was back in my body.

I was back with the aliens.

It was nice to have my good old packet of flesh and blood around me. It wasn’t so nice to be back with the bad guys.

“Hi!” I said out into the darkness. “I can’t see you, but I’m back!”

I wasn’t actually feeling too bad. In fact, I felt pretty good.

“Yes, so you are,” came the sound of the creature called Mivvens. “As for seeing, I strongly suggest that you open your eyes!”

“Oh! Sounds good!” I did so, and although the room in which I sat was darkish, I could see a figure, hunkering back in the shadows, like a wraith. In the distance pools of light bubbled on the floor silently.

“You are a most remarkable specimen, Mister Roberts. You are still quite sane, even after a most rigorous reality-scrambling exercise!” The voice, though holding its usual ominous quality, seemed touched with amusement.

“Thanks. I hope you’ve learned your lesson!” I stated proudly, perhaps even arrogantly.

“Lesson?”

“Yes!” And the words tumbled out even as the truth dawned on me. “I am reality!”

“Oh! How solipsistic!”

“Pardon me?”

“A word coined by the philosophers you called Greek—a belief that all the universe is the perceiver’s creation.”

“Well … no, that’s not what I mean at all,” I said, annoyed. “I just mean that I am I, and I’m me, and me is I. Know what I mean?”

“Unfortunately, you seem to be correct. Even that last fantasy did not do the trick. In fact, you seem much the stronger for it. You seemed to actually revel in the experience of becoming a spaceship.”

“Fantasy?” I said.

“Yes. The whole business aboard Umsquatch’s vessel. But of course it seemed real. Just as real as the other reality warps. But Quinn Roberts—believe me. It didn’t really happen.”

Now by this time, you’d have thought that my brain would really have been scrambled. But instead, I shot back immediately, “How can you be so sure, Mivvens?”

“My dear human being … We do have a large amount of control over your mind. We’ve been monitoring everything that’s been going on. We know where your mind has been and where it hasn’t.”

“You’re saying that you know what the real reality is, and I don’t?”

“Absolutely.”

“But Mivvens … You’ve been warping reality.”

“Not really. We’ve been warping perceptions of reality.”

“But can’t that be the same thing?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not following you.”

“I mean, how do you know that my perception of reality isn’t stronger than yours? How do you know that even if your perception of what I went through seems to be a fabrication … it didn’t really happen? Yeah! And how do you know that I haven’t developed mind powers sufficient to warp reality so that even as we speak, there’s a starving leopard about to leap on you from behind?”

The alien quickly looked behind him.

I laughed.

“You see … You flinched! You haven’t really got control of reality! Reality is in the eye of the Beholder!”

“Hmmm. Perhaps Directional Proviso 4 is the best method of dealing with you, Quinn Roberts.”

“What, a lobotomy?”

“No, termination.”

“So I’ve really got you worried, do I?”

“No, of course not. Worried? Why would we be worried?”

“Something is going wrong, isn’t it?”

“No. Nothing is wrong!”

“You wouldn’t have flinched if you didn’t … Yeah. That’s it! You’re trying to convince me that my perception of reality is wrong, so that it becomes wrong. Well, let me tell you, Mivvens. You’re dead meat. My buddies are coming to get me. And there’s nothing you can do to stop them!”

Suddenly there was a gun in Mivvens’ hand. “There shall be no more of this talk! Silence, or I shall not consult my superiors concerning Proviso 4. I shall terminate you myself!”

“Oh, will you? Like, how do you know that gun won’t blow up right in your face if you fire it? I say it will … And there must be something about me that scares you. Some power you haven’t reckoned on!”

“You hideous creature!” Mivvens aimed the gun.

I looked at the gun. I concentrated. Hard.

Mivvens pulled the trigger.

A flag popped out, reading “zap!”

Mivvens made a little mewling cry of shock.

“Damn, it was supposed to blow up!” I said playfully. “Oh well, you wouldn’t have died anyway. That’s because you’re not alive … You’re just a figment of my imagination!”

“Nonsense! I do admit that you’re a strange one, you do have odd powers…”

“Yeah. And you’re scared witless of me. And I don’t blame you. I mean, look … In my reality I’m not tied up anymore.” I stood up, free. “Yeah. And in my reality, I think I’m gonna come over and put my fingers around your little green throat!”

“No!” cried Mivvens. “Escape!” he cried. “Escape directive…”

He turned, and suddenly the whole wall in front of him caved in. Oh, it was glorious. Spumes of dust, noise, the whole incredible spectacle was deliciously on time.

Lights peeped in from the darkness outside. A searchlight swept through, blinding the alien.

“Hello!” cried a familiar voice. “Hello in there! Quinn Roberts! Calling Quinn Roberts!”

“Yo!” I cried. “Over here.”

A figure stepped down, and ran to me. Amy. She threw her arms around me, and there was no question in my mind at all that she was real.

“Oh Quinn! Quinn! Is it really you?” she said.

“Yeah. Far as I know.”

“Halt! In the name of the Galactic Central Authorities, you’re under arrest!”

That didn’t stop Mivvens, though; he just kept running.

But the tractor beam stopped him though.

“You have the right to die if you disobey!” called Umsquatch’s voice tersely from the ship.

The alien was lifted into the air, squirming and screaming.

“Now then … about your confederates,” said Umsquatch in his/her booming authoritarian tone.

“Just one question, Amy. I was that spaceship for a while, wasn’t I?”

She looked at me quizzically and I had a brief moment of doubt. “Well, of course you were! But you know … I was going to ask you the very same question!”

I caught her up tighter in my arms and hugged as though for dear life.

Or for dear reality.

Chapter Twenty Five

The ball was snapped

I grabbed it from the center, back-pedaled, and looked out of my helmet for the opening to my halfback.

The defense team poured past the right guard and tackled me hard.

When I managed to get up, the coach called a time out.

I limped over for a chat with him.

“Roberts, maybe we’d better do a little running,” he said.

“Yeah. That sounds good.” Right. Good common sense. Principal Taylor had been talking to him, I could tell.

“Okay. I’m counting on you, kid. Give it to Casey. He’s a good runner.”

“Sure, coach.” I glanced over. Someone, I thought, was waving at me. It was Ms. Paste. She was gesturing for me to come over and talk to her.

“Coach, how much more time we got?”

“Two and a half minutes,” he said.

“I’ll be right back.”

“Roberts! You can’t—”

But I did. I went over to Ms. Paste and we talked quietly, our voices masked by the buzz of the crowd.

“So, what’s the scoop?”

“Well—” She looked rather sheepish, which for a leonine character was pretty funny-looking. “Actually not quite the best news, Quinn.”

“So spill it. My seconds are ticking. I’ve gotta get back and quarterback!”

“We’re having a bit of a problem finding out where you folks are from, exactly. So naturally, we can’t return you if we don’t know the contact from which you were drawn by the renegades…”

The “we” she referred to were her and her associate Galactic Police creatures. They’d arrived far after the nick of time—but in plenty of time to nab the bad guys and ship them off for whatever kind of justice was waiting for them. All this was possible because Umsquatch—AKA Ms. Emily Paste—had managed to penetrate the control center and make sure that the status quo of the town remained. So, in effect, everything was the same. Amy and I assumed our proper places, and we kept our weird little secrets, waiting patiently for whatever came next….

Which, it would seem, was going to be anticlimactic to the extreme.

“You couldn’t have waited to lay this bit of news on me, huh?” I said, again marveling at how perfect Umsquatch’s disguise was. The alien looked every millimeter a middle-aged lady, from crow’s feet to flat feet. Umsquatch had reassumed the role to keep contact with Amy and me, and to watch for problems in the social schematic.

“I didn’t want to keep you hanging,” she said.

“So what are we supposed to do?” I demanded, angrily. “This isn’t Earth! Amy and I deserve to be allowed to return—to say nothing of all these poor slobs, stuck here in totally programmed ignorance.”

She looked around at all the people in the bleachers, at all the players drinking Gatorade and warming up, and she patted me on the shoulder pads.

“Quinn, believe me. They’re probably far happier here than back on Earth.”

“Maybe. But what about Amy? What about me?”

She smiled. “Hmm. Maybe we have other plans for you—and for Amy. That is, if you want to go along with them.”

“Yeah?” I said. “Like what?”

She winked. “Stay tuned.” She faded back into the crowd.

“Hey Roberts! Get your tail back here! Time out’s over!” called the coach.

“Run with the ball! Run!” said Principal Taylor as I passed him.

I sighed and jogged out to the field with the rest of the players.

“Quinn!” called a familiar voice from the sidelines.

I looked over to where Amy sat on a front bleacher, looking as pretty as the bright fall day we were wrapped in, wearing a green blouse and brown skirt. She had taken all this remarkably well, considering. In fact, I’d have to say that after this whole business, we were much closer than before. Our relationship made me feel very good indeed.

“Yeah?”

“Give ’em hell!”

I smacked her a kiss and joined the huddle.

“So, the coach talked to ya, huh?” said Casey, grinning. The creep probably knew exactly what Coach had said to me, and probably thought he’d be the running hero of the game today.

“Yeah, I—” And I was about to call a running play.

I guess we all have times in our lives when everything just seems crystal clear, spread out before us in radiance, with our shining egos the very center of the whole business. It was that way now. I’d passed through some kind of barrier, and suddenly everything seemed peaceful—and I felt playful.

Who cared where the hell we were in the universe?

I was here. And that, as always, was the precise universal/dimensional center.

I called the play, and the guys fanned out. I could feel the coach’s anxious gaze burning me in the back as I called out the numbers.

The center snapped the ball neatly into my hands. I stepped back a few paces…

And then, laughing like a maniac, I sent the pigskin sailing for the stars.

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