CHAPTER 59
As she vanished, I heard, completely reconstructed within my head, the intricacies and profundities of the tone I had constructed as the highest low in the Seven Below Elemental. I fell to the floor.
The tone continued in my head. On and on it droned, pushing all the emotions except the deepest despair from every corner of my brain, mind, and soul. The nothingness which had oppressed me before was now tinged with Dr. Zinovia's lifeblood. I had consigned this vibrant young being to nothingness. Nothing could be lower than myself at this moment.
The tone changed; the tone modulated. The tone deepened: rather, it gained higher grace-notes that contrasted strongly with the underlying monotone.
Contrast! I remained on the floor as my spinning brain overwhelmed my sense of stability. In contrast to despair is elation, and I felt elation surge and rise within me as the higher grace-notes became nightingales' arpeggios.
My acceptance of the floor was so complete that I felt my body melding with it and becoming one with it. My brain struggled with the computational changes needed for the next lower tone of the Seven Below Elemental. The basic tone had been so overwhelmingly dull that it had seemed an end in itself. But contrast added richness and power. The dark became darker with the introduction of light. As the valley deepened, the mountain perforce rose higher.
The grace-notes solidified as the floor liquefied, buoying me upward in the room. As I opened my eyes and looked at the ceiling, I could see, now, the location of the intruding camera lens, and I could see, if only in my ecstatic imagination, the physical imposition of the first tone, 'Gah!', into the room by means of the speakers in the ceiling.
Dr. De'Evilam had planned this! She had told me of Dr. Zinovia's death only after she had begun transmitting the tone of 'Gah!' into my room. That was why she couldn't enter my room fully when she told me of Dr. Zinovia's death.
Told me! Maybe that wasn't true---maybe---but as I reached out in my optimism with the thought that Dr. Zinovia still lived, I was met on a level I couldn't identify with the positive knowing, beyond any doubt, that Dr. Zinovia had died.
And I was happy! I was ecstatic with the joy of knowing even something as appalling as the death of Dr. Zinovia, and I was more than ecstatic with the knowing of the correctness of my knowing.
What an ungodly monster I was! Killing, then reveling in the knowledge that I had killed. But somehow, beyond excusing, I knew that her death was not my fault; I happened to be only the implement of the death that Dr. Zinovia desired.
Unutterable joy fed upon itself within me, and I began to beat my hands and feet against the floor in total glee. This was all so right. It was so complete! I'll call this new, lower tone 'Floor', for this floor! I thrashed my head back and forth, laughing and crying, my saliva spraying over both my cheeks: This is so wonderful! So good! And at the same time I was a fiend of evil. I laughed and cried louder. I kill someone and I'm rewarded with a new tone.
I was the Devil. No, not I the Devil, but Dr. De'Evilam: the Devil!
Dr. De'Evilam? Was she here? Where did that thought come from? From Dr. De'Evilam?
I strained my eyes. Not right. I closed my eyes. Yes, I saw better that way. There, through that wall, came a cylinder of---well, since it was darker than the dim light of the room surrounding it, it had to be called a cylinder of dark. I rose up, out of my body, filling that cylinder of dark as it passed through the wall of my room, through the next room which I had never before seen but in which I had absolutely no interest at this moment, and through the floor of the next room into the frequency laboratory below.
Here the dark cylinder took the shape of the projector of that cylinder: Dr. De'Evilam. She stood, her eyes closed as mine were, changing dials on the frequency generators, while she attuned herself to me as I was at the height of my elation in formulating my new frequency.
We knew each other completely. From my headfirst dive through the walls of the intervening rooms, I readjusted my trajectory so that my bodily stance matched hers, so that through the dark cylinder I flowed entirely into her body.
Breasts! Vagina! The weight; the waiting! Her/my head flung back in concentration, her/my fingers changed the dials in tempo with my note 'Gah!', transmitted into my room, now reinforced with my note 'Floor', which galvanized Dr. De'Evilam's body into a spasm whose intensity I'd not yet felt in any of my body-shattering progressions from note to note. Alone, she would have died on hearing it, but she/I managed to survive and use its energy to control her/my fingers on the dials.
She/I shouted! Her/my fingers instinctively found the dial-settings she/I desired. Being careful now not to destroy her/me, she/I reduced the volume to a minimum and the elapsed time of the theoretical note to the shortest audible duration.
'Dreaming'!
Clearly that was the tone above 'Ecstasy' in the Seven Above Mystical. I could hear sonorities echoing 'Floor', even though she managed to remove her brain from those frequencies. She/I laughed as her/my eyes met in a way that the romantic writers would never have---she/I laughed louder---dreamed of: they were coincident! Her eyes were my eyes; my eyes were her eyes. It was a tautology that they met!
She/I agreed, and her/my fingers set the elapsed time longer. Dreaming of 'Dreaming'!
"You are my Dream," I laughed as she said,
"You are my Dream," she laughed as I said,
"You are my Dream."
CHAPTER 60
Our most-intense feelings remained longer, we decided, after we separated, than feelings remain after separating from sexual intercourse. Dr. De'Evilam had never had anyone "drop in" on her before. She had realized instantly, of course, who the intruder was, and she had the presence of mind to continue her process of isolating and consolidating her tone for 'Dreaming'.
Thus, she found it. Never before had two notes, one at each extreme of the spectrum, been found in the same month, let alone in the same minute.
Dr. Zinovia's death was immeasurably distant in the past. Dr. De'Evilam and I sat, separated only by space, and looked back on a most extraordinary segment of time.
"I've never mentioned this to anyone," confessed Dr. De'Evilam, "but I had always imagined that the Gain-Radio frequencies would somehow merge toward their extremes."
"I had the same thought," I said, with no trace of surprise.
Our eyes met again, this time in the conventional way: across the room. We swam in our gazes, and for a moment it seemed as if she/I were again one, but we took the same warning thought and both glanced toward the computers assembled before us. I broke the silence: "Should we tell Dr. Dar about this?"
"My 'Dreaming', your 'Floor', or our meeting as we have met?"
I began to laugh and couldn't stop laughing. Such enormities could stand only when supported by the most trivial humor. Dr. De'Evilam and I had succeeded in discovering, in our systems, a new planet and a new elementary particle, and we knew that precisely no one aside from the two of us could appreciate such accomplishments to their fullest. Dr. De'Evilam stopped my laughter by speaking.
"I think Dr. Dar needn't know about additional tones in the Seven Above Mystical and in the Seven Below Elemental until he has begun to master the first tones in those levels," and here Dr. De'Evilam was struck by an enormous thought, "unless he must not train his brain to accept these tones."
"What do you mean?"
"Our theory may be wrong."
"What theory?"
"We theorized that your semen may be poisonous to Dr. Zinovia because she was born after the illnesses."
"I don't see how that follows," I said.
Dr. De'Evilam continued reluctantly: "Because we'd tried interbreeding those born before and those born after the illnesses, and in each case the semen proved lethal."
"Couldn't you test to find if there was a particular lethal component, other than the sperm itself?"
"All our experiments led to the conclusion that the sperm itself was the lethal agent." She paused. "And then we ran out of experimental subjects."
I gasped, "You killed them all?"
Dr. De'Evilam frowned, "Some killed themselves when they realized what we intended to do; others died in other ways."
"If the sperm was lethal," I thought aloud, "that would mean the sperm from before the illnesses would be lethal for a woman born after the illnesses---what about the sperm from men who were born after the illnesses?"
Dr. De'Evilam smiled sadly: "All the men born after the illnesses were infertile."
"Dr. Dar---." I began.
"Dr. Dar was born after the illnesses; Dr. Dar is infertile."
A light dawned in my mind: "But the woman in the coma, she was born before the illnesses! My semen wouldn't be lethal to her."
"We had hoped that," said Dr. De'Evilam, weariness beginning to blur the edges of her words, "but now we're not sure. Maybe the Gain-Radio frequencies produce lethality."
CHAPTER 61
Again, I could say nothing. We sat, closer than we could have been had we been sitting hand in hand, and then Dr. De'Evilam rose from her chair and planted a physical kiss on my physical forehead with her physical lips. Reluctantly, I had to admit that the physical body produced qualities of feelings not shared by nonphysical bodies.
Over the following days, Dr. Dar and Dr. De'Evilam discussed endlessly the possible causes of sperm lethality. Without experiments, however, we could reach no conclusions.
To vary the sameness of our routines in attempting the formulations of the tone above 'Dreaming' in the Seven Above Mystical and the tone below 'Floor' in the Seven Below Elemental, Dr. Bantellian showed me the communications room. Here, fruitlessly, equipment transmitted messages that gave the frequencies on which we were searching for responses from the outside world. Equally fruitlessly, receivers scanned all frequencies in the hopes of catching any intelligent message, whether from this planet or beyond it.
"We must never give up hope," trumpeted Dr. Bantellian. I marvelled at her unquenchable optimism. During our hours together, she had let slip, wittingly of course, that she had been born before the illnesses. She had been stricken in childhood with a hitherto-uncatalogued variant of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis that included the disquieting symptom of cerebral edema. As her body wasted, her head ballooned. Those who didn't know Dr. Bantellian had assumed she'd wished the condition were fatal. Those who knew Dr. Bantellian also knew that she delighted in her life, even if it seemed limited to others. "Consider the alternative," she had proclaimed to me many times.
"We must find viable sperm with which to continue the human race," she insisted. "Dr. Andressin, having been born after the illnesses, is of course infertile." I had to convince myself that the shadow of a smile of relief didn't cross her slash of a mouth.
"With Dr. Dar," she went on, "we have, really, two possibilities: first, there may be some way to make him fertile. We can find nothing organically wrong with him; he simply produces no spermatozoa in his testes. We also recognize the possibility that brain-changes brought about by listening to the Gain-Radio may enhance Dr. Dar's fertility. However, we must now be aware that if his fertility is induced that way, his sperm may be lethal. Which brings us to the possibility that your sperm may be lethal to the woman in coma, though we had hoped you would be able to mate successfully since you were both born before the illnesses."
"Why didn't you wake her and let me," I winced, "mate with her before I listened to the Gain-Radio frequencies?"
"You assume we woke you," clarioned Dr. Bantellian.
"Well---didn't you?" Anything other than that had never occurred to me.
"No, we did not wake you!"
"Then how did I manage to come out of coma?"
"We had rather hoped you would tell us that," trumpeted Dr. Bantellian.
"I? How could I know?"
"We didn't know; we didn't know that you didn't know; we hoped you would tell us."
Dr. Dar was no more help. He only confirmed what Dr. Bantellian had told me. He wouldn't let me see the woman in coma, insisting that there was some chance of my infecting her in ways unknown to any of us.
A straw entered my mind and I grasped at it: "Could Dr. Zinovia have died because of some infection other than the poison of my sperm?"
Dr. Dar shook his head. "Don't ask me how we can be sure about that," he said quietly, "just know that we are sure about that."
Dr. De'Evilam preferred to remain silent while working with me. I was so ashamed of what I sensed from her that I couldn't verify it with her: she was jealous of my progress on the Seven Below Elemental; she was determined to surpass me on the tones of the Seven Above Mystical.
CHAPTER 62
As much as I tried to remain absorbed by the search for expanded frequencies, I found that Dr. De'Evilam's single-mindedness wearied me. Her ambition drove her on; I feared that if I made more progress she might begin to hate me. I could not afford such a powerful enemy.
My mind wandered; soon what I thought to be a perfectly logical idea formed itself: I would use my nonphysical body to find the woman in coma. I refused to think farther about what I might do if I found her; possibly I feared to discover beforehand that which actually happened afterward. Intuitively, I felt that I couldn't let Dr. De'Evilam discover that I was searching for the woman in coma. Dr. De'Evilam's single-mindedness also frightened me.
Cautiously, I began experimenting with Dr. De'Evilam's presence. The more strongly she concentrated on her frequency experiments, the more completely her body materialized in the computer laboratory.
I tried projecting the same kind of cylinder of dark that she had projected toward me when I found the 'Floor' frequency, when she used that energy to help her find the 'Dreaming' frequency. Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing whether I succeeded or not. When I projected my nonphysical body in front of her, she made no sign that she noticed me: she was that absorbed in her experiments. When I projected what I thought might be a dark cylinder at her, I had no way of stepping outside my projection to verify its existence. In self-protection, I refused to tell her what I was trying.
As more time passed and she seemed oblivious to my experiments---indeed with time she became more concentrated on her own experiments---I gathered courage for my search for the woman in coma.
And found her on my first try. She was lying in the room next to me: the room that I'd traversed in following Dr. De'Evilam's dark cylinder. But I had another worrisome thought: Dr. De'Evilam might know that I knew where the woman in coma was. Why did I feel so strongly that the woman in coma and Dr. De'Evilam were somehow in competition? Honesty in communication would have been so much simpler, but I just couldn't trust that Dr. De'Evilam's reaction to my search would be positive.
The woman lay just as I must have lain. I panicked the first time there was a motion from the bed, but I relaxed when I saw that it was just the Support Bed shifting her position gently to exercise her limbs.
Her motionless face seemed a mask floating between the sheet below and a cap above, which concealed her hair, though I knew her hair to be dark because of her rich dark eyebrows, contrasting strongly with her sheet-white skin. Her regular features seemed neither attractive nor coarse, simply regular and, I could think of no other simile, masklike.
What might lie below the mask?
She seemed almost as tall as I, and at a whim I stretched my nonphysical body alongside hers on the bed, in order to compare our lengths. I chuckled to myself as I found it singularly difficult to reach a conclusion: since I had no contact with her bed, I had no confidence that, if I lined up our feet and then lay down, my body wouldn't move relative to the bed in some way, either up or down. The levels at which our eyes rested could give no true indication of relative height.
As a section of the bed raised to elevate her knees, I thought that I might use the bend of our knees to tally our heights, but I found it almost impossible to keep my knees in exact, or even approximate, alignment with the angle of the bed. Could I materialize as Dr. De'Evilam did? Although I tried in the privacy of my own room, I couldn't do it. Even with the 'Ecstasy' band playing in my room, I couldn't duplicate my previous control of spacetime coordinates. The idea that Dr. De'Evilam had placed some kind of inhibitory energy around my body seemed to lead to a paranoid madness.
Probably I just didn't have enough practice.
Once, when I changed positions while trying to compare our heights, I inadvertently passed my toes through her lower leg. I felt nothing; I had to assume she felt nothing. It was only by chance that I caught the violation of her body's space out of the corner of my eye.
Could I feel anything at all from her body? The memory of the extraordinary bodily meld with Dr. De'Evilam tantalized me, but this woman in coma had none of the experience with the Gain-Radio frequencies that Dr. De'Evilam had.
What Gain-Radio frequencies were they playing in this room? I adjusted my hearing and heard only the 'Auditory' and the 'Body' frequencies of the Middle Seven. "Wake up, body," they seemed to be encouraging.
"Wake up, body," I whispered impishly. Startled, I moved quickly across the room when, by coincidence, the Support Bed rolled her gently onto her side toward me. For a moment, our noses had interpenetrated, still without any feeling at all.
I returned to the room next to mine whenever I felt sure that we wouldn't be disturbed. I had trembled with self-consciousness the time Dr. Andressin suddenly entered the room while I was poised alongside her body. He gave no sign of recognizing any other presence in the room, but I resolved not to let myself be surprised again.
How would she fare without the gentle care of Dr. Zinovia? I pushed the invading thought to the back of my mind.
Any game becomes wearisome after a time, and I found myself taking more and more liberties with the inert body. I discovered a time each night when her top sheet was rolled back for ventilation. I spent hours poring over her body in the dimness: looking at the white, unwrinkled skin; studying the disposition of the limbs according to various positions of the bed. For awhile I fooled myself into thinking that I was looking at myself many months ago, but then I found I spent a disproportionate amount of time studying the gently curling hairs of her pubic region. Surely I wasn't looking at how I had been.
As the nights increased in number, my intimacy became greater. I permitted myself to bury my nose into her scentless pubic bush, wondering if it were some defect in my nonphysical body that I didn't notice an odor, though I had to admit I could detect a faint acridity from her underarms before the cleansing liquids from the sheets gently licked it away. As I licked away at her mons veneris, I was beginning to regret that neither of us had any physical sensations.
But the mind is the body's most sensitive erogenous zone, and I brought my mind with my nonphysical body. So my nonphysical body began to get an erection. And I began to have nonphysical intercourse with the woman in coma.
What had I said about perfecting the act with practice? Imagine my surprise when, after a particularly satisfying nonphysical orgasm, the door slid open and Dr. Andressin rushed in, followed by an alert Dr. Bantellian.
"See, Dr. Andressin," boomed Dr. Bantellian, "her left eyelid just fluttered by itself!"
CHAPTER 63
The news that the woman in coma had finally begun to awake engrossed everyone in the hospital but me. I knew too much about her for my own good.
I tried as many indirect questions to Dr. De'Evilam as I could think of without directly asking, "Did you ever have intercourse with me before I woke up?" She never admitted to anything remotely resembling that.
In the frequency laboratory, I could think of no way to add more contrast to 'Floor' to produce the next-lower tone. Certain tonal resonances between 'Dreaming' in the Seven Above Mystical and 'Floor' in the Seven Below Elemental intrigued me, but I could find no way to extrapolate their similarities. Caught in a corner, I again sought an exit.
I was forced to wait my turn in the rehabilitation of the woman in coma. She had yet to pass beyond Dr. Andressin to reach Dr. Bantellian. Dr. Dar would be next, and only then would Dr. De'Evilam consent to discuss with me whether she or I would be next. "We have much time before we need to think about that. Many things may happen by then."
By "many things," I was sure she meant that she would crack the puzzle of the frequency above 'Dreaming', which we, in jest, began to call 'Crack' as a simple reference name. I refused to extrapolate the E-name below 'Floor', having scoffed at Dr. De'Evilam's suggestion that I refer to it as 'Extrapolation' or, since it was below 'Floor', as 'Excavation'. I told her if she didn't drop the subject I would refer to it as 'Evacuation'. She was not amused.
Maddeningly, I even raised the suggestion of my returning to the outside world, but not even I could think of a plausible reason for doing that. The receivers continued to pick up nothing from outside.
I began to think I wasn't made for scientific research. How did so few people manage to keep themselves occupied during the tedious years before I awakened to enliven their routines?
Having descended to the depths before, I found that any attempt to return there artificially was useless. I could as easily produce terrible depressions in myself as I could produce fantastic elations. I'd visited all the chambers within the confines of the hospital. There were no more secrets to be unearthed. I'd even circumnavigated the earth around the hospital, hoping for rooms long abandoned, but found nothing but earth, rock, aquifers, and paltry deposits of coal.
I discovered the limits of my nonphysical projection: not more than a few hundred feet from my body in any direction. I couldn't even soar above the hospital to take a birds-eye view of the surrounding countryside.
Frustrated, I worked with 'Ecstasy' more and more, trying to recapture my spacetime control. It seemed to depend, somehow, on my motivation; I couldn't generate results out of idle curiosity, or even out of a major and growing sense of frustration.
Would I have to enter a truly abysmal state before further progress was possible?
CHAPTER 64
Attempting to assign a purpose to my efforts, I latched onto the idea that I was being used as a transmitter of data to some extraterrestrial destination. When I extrapolated my bodiless experience with the woman in coma, and I had found that there were advantages to being in physical rather than nonphysical form, I fantasized that nonphysical non-earthdwelling beings were able to absorb my experiences for their enlightenment and progress.
I reluctantly had to admit that this caused me more problems than it solved. First, it pushed the problem of my purpose from me to someone else; if I couldn't figure out why I was doing something, it did me no good to assume that someone outside myself knew why I was doing what I was doing.
When I paged through books that I only partly understood, the idea seemed strongest. If extraterrestrial agents had access to what I scanned with my eyes, they might be able to make sense of the formulae and theories that I didn't understand. Giving myself that answer to my question "Why am I thumbing through and looking at these pages when I don't understand them?" only brought up other questions, like "How do they inform me about the books they want me to read?" Surely they couldn't be interested in anything that I picked up at random. Or could they?
But this smacked of something close to telepathy, a pseudoscience for which I had little tolerance. So many chances to prove telepathy had been offered; none of the experiments proved anything.
Yet I came no closer to the answer to the basic question: "Why am I doing this: seeking to create a mass of sounds that changed my brain." For what purpose? Certainly I didn't want to rule the world. I had resigned myself to the fact that I would never have children. I had no urge, that I could discern, to leave some scientific body of work behind "for posterity." I had gotten relatively little from those before me; I'd done it mostly on my own. I had little concern for those who lived after me.
Was I looking for a quick thrill? Undoubtedly I had been thrilled when I followed a universe from the Big Bang through the Big Crunch and when I had leafed through the Catalog of the Universes. But what good did that do me now?
I had to live today, not in the past or the future!
Thinking that someone else was living through me hindered more than helped that demand.
I realized that I missed my long conversations with Dr. Zinovia. Dr. Andressin's bizarreness got on my nerves; Dr. Bantellian's brusqueness inhibited my natural loquacity; Dr. Dar seemed always to be occupied with his projects; and Dr. De'Evilam remained immersed in her efforts to surpass my productivity on the Gain-Radio frequencies.
I needed people; each of the doctors seemed only to embody segments of people. More and more deeply I resented not being permitted to talk with the woman who was now out of her coma.
"Dr. Dar, you've got to let me talk to the woman."
"Frank, I've told you that the recovery process is extremely delicate. The fact that you came through it quickly doesn't mean that she will come through it as quickly."
"At least tell me her name."
"Her name is Gloria."
CHAPTER 65
Gloria? To me she didn't look like a Gloria, but of course I couldn't tell Dr. Dar that I knew what she looked like. Gloria, to me, meant an aureole of red or at least blonde hair. Gloria wasn't the name for a brunette.
Gloria! She looked young enough to be as impressionable as Dr. Zinovia. I returned to my treadmill with new enthusiasm. As I strolled amid Javanese volcanoes, I imagined what it would be like to have her dark hair preceding me along the paths through the jungles.
Physical fitness had never appealed to me for its own benefits: I had to imagine that the fitness would be put to some use. Dr. Zinovia had been very good at attracting me to the artificial goals she had set for me. Gloria conveniently took her place in this area.
But the basic monotony of the treadmill gave me time to think. Why was that so often my downfall? Dr. Dar refused to give me any timeframe for Gloria's advancement to my tutelage. Dr. De'Evilam had gladly agreed that I would gain access to Gloria before she would. I could detect no tinge of any jealousy Dr. De'Evilam might hold toward this new woman in her hospital.
"Maybe you'll be less in my way if you started tending Gloria" was all that Dr. De'Evilam had to say. But the more I tried to steer clear of Dr. De'Evilam, the more she seemed to draw me into her frequency formulations. I wasn't sure she knew what she wanted.
Did anyone know what they wanted? Dr. Andressin seemed only to search for new ways of making himself disagreeable. Dr. Bantellian's level-headedness enabled her to make the best out of whatever task she undertook. Dr. Dar seemed driven, a true workaholic who was only happy when he was striving toward some future good.
And I? As time withheld Gloria from my care, I found myself retreating farther into the nothingness that lay at my core. My accomplishments seemed actually to be working against me. Only a week before I had told myself, encouraged by Dr. De'Evilam, that I could better help her with the frequency above 'Dreaming' if I became more familiar with the 'Ground', 'Fantasy', and 'Ecstasy' frequencies just below 'Dreaming'.
For a week I was motivated. At first I marveled at my forgetting the thrill of following the evolution of new universes. With the 'Ground' band of the Gain-Radio supplied from my own Radio, from the speakers in my room, and from Dr. De'Evilam's slightly different tones, I again flew with inner wings through the passageways of time in this universe.
My favorite planet, of course, was my own Earth.
I saw why battles had been won and lost, why heroes had conquered and cowards had run to their disgrace. I watched as global environments changed, partly in the hands of humankind and partly due to the natural cycles of the Earth itself.
I marveled at the effects of love affairs that truly changed the course of Earth's history, and I stood, rapt, high above cataclysms that terminated empires, civilizations, and entire Families of living creatures.
Moving up the frequency-band to 'Fantasy', I thumbed again through the Catalog of Universes, still selecting Earth each time as my reference point. But in some of these Cleopatra's color repelled Julius Caesar, the Comet did not strike the continent, the Bomb's triggering device misfired, the match was snuffed by a stray gust of wind, the bullet missed, the earthquake was dissipated, the glaciers remained frozen, the Flood was averted.
And on other Earths there were more loves, more comets, more bombs, more matches, more bullets, more floods.
After awhile it all seemed the same. I moved up to the 'Ecstasy' frequency-band so that my adventures would take place outside my local time-framework. I could live a thousand lives, view a million eras, observe a billion crises, investigate seven septillion stars for life-bearing planets.
I watched and watched until I grew tired of watching. Control seemed the next logical step. I moved the dials to reconstruct the 'Dreaming' frequency-band. No longer content to watch the lives and the worlds and the galaxies, I created my own and patterned the beings, planets, and nebulas according to my own whims.
Lovers loved when I had a taste for love; blood streamed in oceans when I thirsted for it. My plants produced superior hallucinations, but I grew tired of watching my creatures fulfill the destinies ordained in my creation.
I tried to forget the excesses with which I pleasured my senses: generations of freaks that surpassed any limits on sexual license; variations of gravity that permitted the most baroque architectures; and frivolities of scale that entertained visible bacteria, frisbee stars, and gaseous intelligence.
At times I almost forgot my origin: my couch in my room in the hospital. Ranging across starfields, my mind strode interiors of suns, event horizons of black holes, and the digestive tracts of paramecia. Engrossed in the webwork of interstellar communication woven by developed civilizations, millennia passed before I returned to lunch.
The expansion and contraction of global clusters became as commonplace as the breaths in the breasts of Aphrodite. The clockwork mechanisms of viruses were as familiar as the evolution of humans into angels.
When I was fatigued with the overview, I zoomed in for the microscopic; when the pedantry of the infinitesimal bored me, I expanded into the spectacle of the supernova. From the wormholes linking black holes to the wormholes linking the skin of the apple to its fruit, I perused and analyzed and catalogued the universes.
Here I would be attracted to a melodramatic emotion, there drawn to a breakthrough in mathematics, elsewhere fascinated by the way two bodies would interact in an idyllic environment.
Once, for a lark, I indulged my whim to read all the books written by a particularly inventive race. It only took a thousand years of their time and I returned in order to check out another frequency failure by Dr. De'Evilam. After that, I followed one DNA codon from eukaryote to Godhead.
I made lists of what I wanted to see, then made sure that I saw them. With those exhausted, I made lists of combinations of things I wanted to see and took the square of the time to see those combinations. But the square of zero time is still zero time. I was the eye and the tongue and the ear and the tactile surface and the olfactory receptor. My sixth sense was replete with input.
Input, input, input, input.
So I alternated with output: novels, statuary, world courts, galactic planning commissions, universal regulatory agencies. Children, clones, and civilizations sprang from my spacetime-unlimited testicles. I made war and love and peace and genocide.
I battled myself in lawcourts to stunning victories, staggering defeats, and shocking draws: all in the same set of circumstances at the same time in alternate universes---just to prove that I could do it.
From the boredom of nothingness I had advanced to the boredom of everything. I had everything, did everything, wanted everything, and was denied everything. Imaginary lovers were indiscernible from real lovers. I mated clones to identical twins to siblings to same-family to same-gender to different-family to different-gender to different-race to different-species to different-planet to different-universe to different-state-of-matter. I found plasma-plasma most satisfactory.
The boredom of everything became the boredom of nothingness.
CHAPTER 66
Then I found the right combination.
Analyzing my discontent, I found that my boredom with everything was caused by my activity; my boredom with nothing was caused by my passivity. What I had to do was to find the perfect blend of activity and passivity.
Though I tried very hard to produce that blend in the worlds I created, I found that I couldn't attain that balance precisely because I had created that world. Almost any activity blossomed into over-activity; practically any quantity of passivity produced super-passivity.
When I selected parameters at random, the situations had no coherence. However, when I determined circumstances too exactly, they became over-rigid and stultifying. When there was no pressure of time, motivation decreased. Action was sweetest with the threat of cessation of that action.
I couldn't deny it: the liberating factor was death. Death was the infallible motivator. Creating my own death gave my alternate lives as much charge as I got from annihilating galactic civilizations: exactly none. The only world in which my death was real was this one.
Now I realized more fully why I had avoided looking at the subsequent events on this planet when I swooped back from the Big Crunch at the end of its existence: if death becomes known, any motivations afforded by it are nullified. To maintain its power, death must remain the Great Unknown. When the unknown becomes known, its glamour and charm die.
Death no longer became quite so fearful, but I didn't look forward to finding the perfect balance between activity and passivity in my own life in the hospital. With each of the doctors I had a different balance point, as I suspect they did with me.
I was a schizophrene---I lived in two or more worlds, and none of them was completely satisfying. My attention to frequency-generation waned as I dug into the grit of my psyche. Dr. De'Evilam seemed perfectly content at her work without me. She thought she had found a track which would lead to her success. I wished her luck and stood aside.
Weary with my work with the higher frequencies, my next experiment could only deal with the lower. 'Gah!' and 'Floor' became my constant companions until their lethargic intensity dulled to a sullen, background thud. My work was wearing me away, eroding my quickness, deadening my responses.
I found myself unable to move from a grinding pit in the center of myself. Playing 'Floor' along with 'Dreaming,' I discerned a meeting of modes: their differences vanished as their similarities increased; rather than making me elated, it deepened my depression---I could find a solution to a technical refinement of electronic signals, but I couldn't find a solution to my life. Depressed, my natural vigor was removed. Like a plant without sun, I felt etiolated.
That was the word for which I had searched. That was the state that I most feared yet knew I had to attain. And that was the name of the next lower tone of the Seven Below Elemental: 'Etiolation'.
In the iciest, dullest voice I could muster, I celebrated with a dry "Yippee." Another tone, another notch in my belt. I had everything and I had nothing. I'd been here before and managed to get out of it. What miracle could extract me from the grinding pit now?
'Etiolation'. I knew how it would sound, and I sounded it in my mind. It was clear that the logical projection was from 'Floor' down to 'Etiolation' down to 'Dreaming'.
Up to 'Dreaming', I meant.
No, down to 'Dreaming'.
Up. Down.
Both!
Both up and down, because 'Dreaming' was the nexus of the entire range: neither the top nor the bottom because the top and the bottom met at 'Dreaming', and from there---?
"Enter another dimension completely."
"Who are you?" asked Frank.
"Richard Gain," said Richard Gain.
CHAPTER 67
"Richard Gain!"
"I've been waiting for the connection from the lower-space. Thank you, Frank, for completing it."
"Where are you?"
"I cannot define that in your terms. To say 'everywhere and nowhere' would only make it into a joke. Higher-space is what we call it here."
"How did I miss it on my journey through the Catalog of Universes?"
"Higher-space has no place in your Catalog of Universes. It is beyond anything that any of you in lower-space can attain."
"But you attained it."
"And when I did, and found what was here, I determined that no one else from what you call Earth would join me here."
"That's not fair!"
"It has nothing to do with fairness or any other human quality. Here, it is beyond what you have seen in other worlds which you have named, to yourself, angelic."
"Beyond angelic?"
"Names have no meaning here. We deal in essences. I used my former name, Richard Gain, because you know of it. It helps you to identify who I was, not who I have become."
"How did you become it?"
"By working, as you are working---but I was successful."
"Had you discovered all these tones before Dr. De'Evilam and I had?"
"No, I had a friend here, so I was permitted a shortcut. You have no friends here."
"A friend?"
"I am not permitted to say anything more about that."
"Will Dr. De'Evilam be permitted to join you?"
"No, it is necessary that she stay in lower-space."
"Will I ever be permitted to join you?"
"No."
"I refuse to agree to that."
"You have nothing to say about it."
"You don't know my strength!"
"You have great strength, but higher-space takes more than strength."
"What more?"
"You have no word for it."
"Say the word."
an unspellable sound
"What is the meaning of the word?"
a series of unspellable sounds
"Surely there is some approximate translation."
"No."
"May I call on Dr. De'Evilam?"
"You may not call the Dream Devil."
"Dream Devil?"
"Dr. De'Evilam: Dream Devil."
"Is she a devil?"
"Not by your definition of the word."
"Is she evil."
"She is not evil; nor is she good. She is Dr. De'Evilam."
"And I? Am I evil, or am I good?"
"You are Frank."
"What is my purpose?"
"I can say no more."
"Please! Don't go. Or say you'll come back."
The voice faded with finality: "I was never there."
As much as I pleaded, and screamed, and threatened, and joked, and cried, and screamed louder---I never again heard from Richard Gain.
But I learned from him, and profited. I heard his frequencies whole, complete, completing themselves in their cycle of tonality. When I recalled our conversation, only one statement was of importance: I am Frank.
CHAPTER 68
That last step was by far the most difficult. I lose it and strive to re-find it every day, almost every hour.
I am Frank. This is the completeness I'd sought; this is all the completeness anyone can possess: oneself.
The Frank that I was has no meaning at this moment. The Frank that I will be has no existence in this moment. The "am" is all there is: the present.
Just as the cycle of tonalities has no highest or lowest tone because it is a circle, time has no real past or present because it, too, is a circle.
In the frequency of 'Ecstasy' I could link the circle of time anywhere on its circumference to anywhere on the circumference of the circle of space. The interdependent circles could merge at any point, producing the appropriate spacetime.
The only meaningful point for me to exist in the permanent 'Ecstasy' frequency is where the "here" touches the "now". I don't live in timespace, I live in herenow---which is not the same as nowhere, though to everyone else in existence my herenow is truly nowhere, since no one has any possibility of sharing, totally, my herenow.
So I've given up. Life doesn't begin and end, life flows from herenow to herenow. But the herenow doesn't change; only I change as I exist in the herenow. Nothing else can exist in my herenow except me. If I don't exist here, my herenow vanishes, and the calamity is that most others ignore their herenows, which vanish, and our universe is infinitely the poorer.
I don't even read books the same way anymore. I used to see how long the book was, note when I started it, found how many pages I had yet to read, and kept track of where I was by how many pages I had not yet read. I had enjoyed "being about to read the book," and I had enjoyed "having read the book," but I never gave a thought to the only important state: "reading the book."
I had enjoyed having lived, and what I would live, but I had never enjoyed, simply, living.
Enormous burdens dropped from my life, by my simply living. Thoughts and motivations from the past, unpinioned by past weights, flew up into the present and vanished.
For example: I had wanted to kill myself, but I ended up killing my wife and child. In the past that thought would have caused me unbearable pain. In the present it is merely a fact.
For example: I had both feared and loved Dr. De'Evilam, but when I heard Richard Gain unravel her name as Dream Devil, as I had done before, I knew with the impact of a revelation that the Dr. De'Evilam I feared and loved had never existed outside my narrow, warped perspective of her. The Dr. De'Evilam that is, is totally different. The time I spend, herenow, with Dr. De'Evilam tells me who the existing Dr. De'Evilam actually is, apart from my judgments about her.
I can even exist in the same room as Dr. Andressin---but not as an inert blob, merely suffering his presence. My "being" Frank requires intense, constant, unwavering attention. Existing in the present isn't passive; it's the most concentrated activity possible, yet it's compressed into every instant. Immense energy flows into, and out of, my action of LIVING life, not just being buffeted by circumstances beyond my control.
My living my life is my controlling my life and insisting on my responsibility for the consequences of the control that I constantly demand. But that control isn't constricting. The releasing, demanding, accepting, compelling, COMPLETING of life is the exact "letting be" so often misinterpreted as a passive "going with the flow." "Letting be" is my actively BE-ing the flow and AM-ing Frank.
Only now, at last, could I pick up a familiar children's book and re-read it to realize that Queen Quilda was intended as Mother Earth, who can flourish now that the overpopulating ants have died off. What a triumph that the Mother can continue to nourish all of Her children, not only the greediest and most vocal. Life on Earth is the BE-ing of all Her manifold creatures, not merely the life of ants.
As part of my BE-ing, I ask Dr. De'Evilam if she helped me wake from my coma. She replies with a smile, "Just as you helped wake the woman in coma." I smile. We move toward each other and become her/me again. She/I smile; it's nothing at all like her smiling and my smiling.
She/I separate and we move apart. Then we come together again, and we come together for the first time. I know from her smile that my sperm will not poison her.
Dr. Dar comes into the room and tells us that Gloria is pregnant with his sperm, and she has not been poisoned. For a moment, with Dr. Dar's permission, Dr. De'Evilam and I move into the herenow of Dr. Dar and enjoy the existence of Frank/Dar/De'Evilam.
The experience is too rich for words. I wish I had some of Richard Gain's unspellable sounds for my own use. Later, with Gloria's permission, we enjoy the existence of De'Evilam/Gloria/Frank.
a series of unspellable sounds
CHAPTER 69
One last pleasure remained. In my journeys through the Catalog of Universes, I had participated in every conceivable sexual delight. Determined to ensure that homosexual activity was accepted and even encouraged in the idyllic world to come, I eliminated Dr. Andressin from the short list of available males and went to visit Dr. Dar.
He was annoyed that I interrupted his work, but when he heard my request, he was dumbfounded: "You want to go to bed with me?"
"You were the one I most trusted from the very beginning. When I was told you were dead, I experienced the keenest unhappiness. Do you know that I love you?"
Astounded, he blushed, which in turn astounded me all the more greatly. His fair complexion was enormously enhanced by the added color. "If I could keep you in an embarrassed condition, everyone else here would love you as much as I do." His puzzled expression forced me to be explicit: "You are an extremely handsome man, and your blush of embarrassment heightens your attractiveness."
Flames fanned his cheeks. He backed away from me. "You know that I'm infertile," he stammered.
"Infertile isn't impotence," I said, smiling. "And did you know that an obsolete meaning of impotent is 'incapable of self-restraint.' Have you ever felt impotent in that sense of the word?"
"You know I can't have children!"
"But you couldn't produce children with me if you were both potent and fertile."
"Why else would I want to go to bed with anyone?"
"My dear Dr. Dar, you have truly been working too hard---or not working hard enough at the right things." His color mounted higher, which I would not have thought possible. "Ah, have you, then, been working at things?" I said this with a melodramatic leer, gesturing at his crotch.
"I---well, yes, I do masturbate, if that's what you mean. There's nothing wrong with that."
"You wouldn't sound so defensive if you were entirely convinced of that," I said. "There's nothing wrong with having sex with yourself, but there's something wrong with having sex with someone of the same gender?"
"Wrong? No, I guess not, but even if I were to say that I loved you, would it have to manifest in that way?"
"What would prevent it from manifesting in 'that' way, as you put it?"
"I---it's not---I don't feel that way about you."
"Have you never entertained the thought?"
"Certainly not."
"You make me sad. Don't you think I have an attractive body?"
Dr. Dar's look of discomfort increased. "Frank, you have---you have a very large, muscular, properly proportioned body." He seemed to gain courage when his words didn't turn on themselves and bite him on his mouth. "I'm sure that women find you very attractive, but I'm not a woman, so I can't---"
"Can't?"
"Wouldn't, sh---." Dr. Dar's mouth closed with an almost audible click of teeth.
"Shouldn't? Were you about to say 'shouldn't'?"
Dr. Dar's intense red took on a purple tinge. "If I envied you your body, what good would it do me? Even if I had your body, with my organs that body would still be infertile!"
"You return so frequently to your infertility. You know that doesn't matter to me, so why do you constantly refer to it with me?"
"I'm not complete!" he shouted, then instantly regretted it.
"But you're wonderfully complete as you are. If you had a child, would a child make you complete? Nothing outside yourself can make you complete if you're not that within yourself."
"It's easy for you to talk. You don't have my problem."
"I'm sorry that you feel incomplete, but I hope to cure you of one of your problems."
"And that is?" Dr. Dar asked warily.
"Your problem with going to bed with another man." Before he could retreat farther, I had reached out and grasped his upper arm. When he tried to pull away, I closed my hand so hard on his triceps that he looked down in pain and stopped struggling.
"You're stronger than I am; I'll admit that," he said quietly.
"I'm more accustomed to the Seven Above Mystical than you, also. If you could only listen to 'Ground'---"
"Don't blame me for that," howled Dr. Dar. "I know you've progressed past me, even on the Elemental Seven band. Do you insist on making me feel more impotent than I am?"
"You are not impotent," I repeated through clenched teeth, "and you're just afraid of failure, so you don't try anything above the Mystical Seven. Let's hear what your Gain-Radio does with the Mystical Seven."
Dr. Dar struggled until I reinforced my grip on his arm, then he relapsed into quiescence. I drew his Gain-Radio toward me and displayed the Mystical Seven. I was surprised at the difference between his 'God' and the sound I had become accustomed to on my 'God' frequency.
"Listen," I commanded as I turned on my 'God' frequency. The differences between the two sets of resonances absorbed both of us so completely that I let go his arm. Unconsciously, he tried to rub the pain from it as we listened to the two Musiks which were alike in name only.
When he saw that our heads had bowed nearer to each other as we listened, he drew back slightly. "What happens with 'Freya'?" he asked, his intellect absorbed by the Musik.
As I changed my Gain-Radio to 'Freya', he did the same with his, and the resultant dissonances filled the room. "They're like different frequencies entirely," he said with astonishment.
'Enkidu' was even more dissimilar on each Radio. Dr. Dar's was almost silent, forcing him to confess that he had difficulties with the frequencies that began with the letter E, as I had difficulties with the D-frequencies. Wonder replaced discomfort on his face as he heard the 'Enkidu' from my Radio overwhelm the puny sounds from his Radio. The wonder dissolved into tears as he listened longer. "How much I was missing," he sobbed out after a few moments. He accepted my comforting arm around his shoulders.
"Let's try 'Dor'," I suggested, and we dialed our Radios one frequency higher.
His 'Dor' was stronger and richer than mine. As my 'Enkidu' frequency had overwhelmed his, his 'Dor' frequency made mine sound a mockery of tones. Dr. Dar's eyes still glistened with his tears as I began to cry with the richness that I had been missing through my difficulties with the D-frequencies. My eyes held his, drawing him toward me, and he gently placed one arm around my waist to comfort me in his turn. Visions blurred, we moved a half-step together, so that it was partly for balance that our other arms encircled each others' bodies.
The Musik soared. We held each other. I learned from Dr. Dar and he learned from me. Our bodies became familiar with each other. I stroked the arm that I had so recently bruised while he brushed his hand curiously up and down the curves, planes, and volumes of my back. After he withdrew the first time I put my cheek on his, he permitted my head to remain the next time I moved it against his.
Step by slow step our bodies grew in their knowledge. I had been erect early on; laggingly, almost reluctantly, his body had followed mine into erectness. His color heightened when he realized that I felt his growing excitement, but as his eyes slowly closed when my lips pressed against the curve of his chin, his color vanished completely, leaving his face shining with pale whiteness.
"You are beautiful," I whispered with lips that neared his mouth. Some residual fear tensed a tendon in his neck, but my caressing fingers soothed away his tension. "You are beautiful," I repeated, and his eyes opened slightly as if to convince him that I had remained myself, that I hadn't changed into some devilish seductor.
"Beautiful," he murmured in response, dreamily, and the 'Dor' frequencies on our Radios leapt to a new accord.
"It's almost a difference frequency, isn't it, Dr. Dor---Dar!"
Shocked, our faces drew apart a few inches, and a ball of Musik formed in the space between our eyes, playing a vastly enhanced version of the 'Dor' frequency.
"What?" Dr. Dar and I spoke the word simultaneously.
"You have me," said the lips of Richard Gain, for I knew it was he without having ever seen him. His Musik, his face, appeared to me as Dr. Dar's. His Musik, his face, appeared to Dr. Dar as mine.
"'Dor', the Hidden, can no longer be concealed," said the achingly sweet voice of Richard Gain. Dr. Dar, enraptured, bent his head forward to kiss the lips of his Master, the man who had constructed the basis of his life work. I, mesmerized by the Musik and aroused to a peak of sensation by sheer melting pleasure, bent my head forward to kiss---Dor!
The Musik became a body, Richard Gain revealed himself as Dor, Dr. Dar---Dor! Dr! Dar! The three merged into a burr of "dur," a sound that was all and none of them. Was I having contact with the Hidden, or the Originator, or Dr. Dar, or some unimaginable amalgam of all three?
For Dr. Dar, as he told me later, I had become the Hidden; our sexual congress had uncovered the Hidden. Dr. Gain and Dr. Dar, 'Dor' and Frank---all merged and melded, melting into sexuality beyond the sensual.
Orgasm became imminent. Lost were the inhibitions of Dr. Dar. Dr. Richard Gain became both more corporeal and more wraithlike, moving on the surfaces and through the interiors of our bodies. Without destroying the triangle of our Trinity, another body manifested, yet remained removed from any dimension I knew.
"My friend," whispered Dr. Gain. We---whether four or three---soared to the Sun, singing 'Canopus'. Dr. Dar began gasping with the potency of his impending orgasm. Then---whether three or four---came the intonation I had heard before: "'Baal', the source of all gifts of nature, the patron of all growth and fertility."
Perhaps Dr. Gain's friend was, himself, Baal. No certainty is possible. Remaining in the Sun, celebrating 'Canopus', hosting the physical presence of Baal, the Musik increased another step, to 'Agni', and the fire of the Sun manifested as the Hindu God of Fire itself. A vision of a seven-headed Hindu God, embodying the Priapic Principle, thrust an enormous phallus through our beings. Suspended, I saw needle-sharp nails rake effortlessly through Dr. Dar's testicles.
In the background, blazing, the Musik of 'Ground' lanced through Dr. Dar's body. Screaming, he accepted the resonance and leapt forward to embrace the breaking wave of 'Fantasy' that followed immediately. Mouth, eyes, ears, nose, anus, urinary meatus---all his orifices opened to receive the successive crashes of 'Ecstasy' and 'Dreaming' that followed.
Agni, the Fire, burnt through Dr. Dar's infertility. Far from causing pain, the spasm, which I experienced as if my body had merged with all the bodies cascading through the Sun: Agni, Baal, Dr. Dar, Frank, Dr. Gain, topped a crescendo of sensation that could only result in a unified, simultaneous, ages-long orgasm that ripped our Fire-sated bodies to ribbons.
Jets of sperm followed the curve of resonances past 'Dreaming' to the bottom of the cycle with 'Etiolation', 'Floor', 'Gah!', and up through the revolution of the complete forty-two frequencies. Each jet pulsed around the universe, becoming the curve of timespace which started at the suddenly appropriate Big Bang. The orgasm, "the big O," became the generator of all life that pulsated in its turn.
Screams again, with the orgasm continuing through pleasure to the borders of pain. Bodies intermingled and identities merged and flowed with fruitful fluid. All life sprang from the seed.
How many times the round, I do not know.
Long later, consciousness returned with a grasping for discarded clothing and long-held gazes before Dr. Dar and I parted. Dr. Gain and his friend had gone forever.
Time passes. Each of us enjoys the body of each of us. Guilt has vanished; the health of the new world is ensured. Some weeks later, Dr. Dar comes tells us that Gloria is pregnant with his sperm, and she had not been poisoned.
For a moment, with Dr. Dar's permission, Dr. De'Evilam and I move into the herenow of Dr. Dar and enjoy the existence of Frank/Dar/De'Evilam.
The experience is too rich for words. I wish I had some of Richard Gain's unspellable sounds for my own use. Later, with Gloria's permission, we enjoy the existence of De'Evilam/Gloria/Frank.
a series of unspellable sounds
CHAPTER 70
In my dream the Musik continued, but in a band never-before heard. The Musik was somehow evoking, incanting, welling up with words beyond truth, past denying.
Incantation of enchantment, enhancing light, within and throughout and all about.
Words preserved, eternally present, from esoteric Earth teachings, still alive and nourishing.
As simple as breathing, inspiration and expiration, birth and death of thought and body.
This thought, this body, a branch of life from a deathless source of beingness indestructible, linking me onto my thread of life, through time, whether the link was through my personal Upper Room, a collective Third Eye, or a beating Jewel in the Heart of a worldwide Lotus.
A sacred, ever-living fire of life and Life of Fire, moving beyond words to fill forms into infinity.
Hypnotic, echoing truth indestructible.
This, I felt, was what prayer was meant to be---not a drivel of reverence or seeking for solace, but an identity with forces, sounds, and powers beyond the physical. This undying fire bathed my emotional body, expanded my mental body, and touched my soul. My soul? Whatever I call that part of myself that is part of my self, yet which is ever beyond me: drawing me, pulling me out of and beyond, through and above myself. Luring me, alluring me to higher thoughts, greater love, blissful goodwill, waves of beauty, frequencies of peace. Taking me to temples of wisdom and halls of learning beyond my dreams, beyond books or Bibles, yet embodying all the secrets that are only one secret: life, generation, regeneration, and love. Hypnotic and restful, wave upon wave, I slept, yet awoke at levels past sleep.
CHAPTER 71
Dr. De'Evilam gave birth to a son as I watched and experienced from inside Dr. De'Evilam's body. Soon after, Gloria gave birth to the daughter that Dr. Dar had conceived with her. Dr. Dar has taught Dr. Bantellian to detect the difference between a fertile and an infertile spermatospore.
After the ultimate tragedy, the thrill is that life still remains.
Our work is now simple: we will wait for all the old, infertile people to die in the outside world. Their flocks and fields will furnish the food for our son and our daughter. They, blessedly, are fertile: Gloria's daughter's living ova shine like pearls on the microcat scan. Later, Dr. Bantellian proved that the spermatospores of Dr. De'Evilam's son are fertile.
I live in the herenow. I go into the world as I go into a book, from word to word, from herenow to herenow, which is all one herenow.
Herenow.
THE END