CHAPTER VI: THIRD INTERLUDE

She woke to a warm gray formlessness. The gray stuff was a division of sorts, she felt, between true “awareness” and the sub-conscious, which was how she had come to understand this quasi-dream world. She found herself floating in nothingness, limbs outstretched. The tang of September evenings on a main street filled the air, mingled with a subtle scent of mint.

She opened her eyes to a blur. Blinking, she struggled to bring her surroundings into focus. As if by an act of will the nothingness collapsed into what passed, here, for reality. Smooth tubular columns like stupendous stalks of asparagus rose before her, growing closely together…yes. Their pointed tops thrust darkly against the lavender sky. As before, Violet sat on an intricately designed carpet-like ground. Patches of something rather like grass grew here and there, though each individual blade was coated with a transparent glaze. Vegetation surrounded her, except in one direction: behind her.

There, a passage had been smashed through the undergrowth along a straight path ending in the small clearing where Violet dazedly sat. Some sort of object must have hurtled through it, like a huge bird or a fighter plane, at great speed. She realized that she was that object: she’d crashed into the “forest,” at an angle.

Sure enough, just visible at the end of the passage through the strange trees hung the lavender gulf of the Cognitive Void. As before, time here and time in the real world showed seams of discontinuity: No more than a few moments could have passed since she lost unconsciousness here as she tore through the trees pursued by Guilt. And also, as before, there was no sign of Guilt.

A branch fell in the smashed corridor. She blinked at the sound.

“I'm not hurt!” she said aloud, amazed. Slowly, she stood. The glazed grass crunched under her boots. Inspecting herself for damage, she found none. Not to have been badly hurt was incredible. “Well, shit.” She stepped to one of the ten-foot asparagus trees and touched it. The stalk was like rice paper, thin cottony rice paper. She found that she could tear the thing into fluffy fragments with very little effort. More experimentation convinced her that all the vegetation around her was comprised of this flimsy material; she would have to plow through a hell of a lot of it before gradually coming to a stop. Either that or she hadn’t been traveling as fast as she’d thought.

She shrugged. What mattered was that she was back in this lunatic place and would doubtless soon be set upon and pestered in some fashion by the loony local inhabitants. She looked around, trying to orient herself. Having been on her way to something called the Introspection Station, she should most likely continue this plan; at least, until she woke up.

Just the idea of having to sojourn on, however, exhausted her. With a sigh, she took a few steps in the direction away from the Void.

Other than her footsteps there were no sounds. No birds, no insects, no traffic, no radios or TVs or airplanes or stereos.

The noise of her feet breaking the brittle grass made her feel like a clumsy giantess. Maybe she should stay where she was. After all, intentions aside, she didn't know in which direction the Introspection Station might be. Nor did she like the idea of being lost in the weird foliage when night fell; and night did fall here, at intervals. Should she make camp? Standing at the edge of the little open area, unmoving, she ping-ponged between uncertainties, and didn't really hear the sound until she suddenly realized that there was one to be heard. Something approached, perhaps walking along or near the edge of the cliff facing the Void.

The sound grew louder.

It was, she realized with a grunt of surprise, undeniably music of some kind, in a major key but with no discernable repeating melody, like an extended improvisation. It seemed string-heavy, with percussive punctuations and piano arpeggios.

She could see nothing of the music maker…or makers, because clearly more than one instrument was being played. There was, likewise, no sense of listening to a recorded performance; something, some elusive quality of timbre or resonance, told her this music was live. If there was ever a place where it wouldn’t be peculiar to find a small group of musicians wandering troubadour-like through the woods, this was it. The tune was a series of melodic lines, intertwined, inventions self-replicated. The tempo was that of ragtime, the style that of the jazz vanguard. The music seemed to question itself and, after pausing for reflection, return an answer.

It was unexpectedly moving, generally light but with darker passages, like no music with which she was familiar, but her throat wanted to close upon these sounds and blend wordlessly into the web of them. She had never sung scat like Eddie Jefferson or Ella Fitzgerald’s jazz, never sung much save in church choirs and in accompaniment her own mediocre guitar playing, yet she enjoyed many kinds of music, a friendship based on respect with little understanding. She had no theory, no training; yet this music made her feel that she could, if she would, sing well. Its familiarity made her wonder if she had somehow, somewhere, heard these melodies before. Bach? Mozart?

Then the source of the sound came into view. Belatedly, the impulse to run hit her, but she was so amazed by the thing’s appearance that she couldn’t move.

The head was about the size and shape of a pillow, bearing two saucer eyes on segmented stalks and topped by a cluster of bright red growths like curved horns or spikes. These horns flared to trumpet mouths from small bases.

This strange head was mounted on a neck, jointed in the same manner as the eyeballs, which connected to a long centipede body of ovoid segments connected by thick pads of muscle or gristle. Two spidery legs ending in rubbery four-fingered hands supported each body section.

The creature was so long that its back end was lost somewhere amid the fragile vegetation out of Violet’s view.

From the trumpet-like horns on the being’s head came the music, singing/humming/wailing/bleating/whistling accompanied by an ensemble of instrumental orchestration. This sound ceased in mid-ostinato when the creature caught sight of her.

It made a noise like an expiring bagpipes. It pointed its amazing head straight at her, its huge eyes (small turquoise pupils) gleaming with lubricating fluid.

“Whooo are you?” the thing wheezed, all the stops out on its organ of speech. “Name your tune!”

She took one tentative step forward, only because the beast was obviously intelligent and didn't appear savage or unfriendly. It reacted to her step with a sharp crash of sound like an old Fender Reverb guitar amplifier being kicked. The first four sections of its body reared up, bending the neck into an S curve.

“Can, uh, you tell me where I am?” she asked weakly.

It blatted out a series of bugle notes. “You frightened the demi-semi-quavers right out of me! What manner of monster are you?”

“Monster?” She couldn't help smiling at the thought of this thing referring to her as a monster. “You're the monstrous one. I'm Violet Meldon…uh, the conscious,” she added, feeling foolish.

Her companion emitted a violin crescendo. It folded its first four pairs of legs with snare-drain rim-shots, and blinked its eyes to the sound of plucked, muted guitar strings. “The conscious!” it said. “The conscious! I always thought the conscious was mythical!”

“You aren't the only one around here who thinks that…anyway, as far as I can tell, I am here by some sort of weird fluke. But who, what are you?”

“I'm an earworm,” it said with some pride. “I tour the mind, I cheer everyone up.” It paused. “Well, most people. I remember once I had the Third Brandenburg; that was fine. But ‘Grandma Got Run Over by A Reindeer’ caused a hell of a ruckus. However, no matter!”

She stroked her chin. No wonder its music had seemed familiar. She'd heard it before, its many melodies bubbling in her forebrain as she lay in bed or did the dishes. A sudden thought struck her. “If that's true,” she said, “then you must come closer to consciousness than any of the other alien crazies I've run into.”

“I go everywhere.” The earworm shrugged, an oboe note extended through a bar. “Why do you ask?”

“I've been told that I have to go to the Introspection Station,” she said, feeling a little foolish. “I crossed the Cognitive Void and nearly got caught by Guilt, then I woke up and when I finally got back here again, I was still in the Void, and then Guilt found me again. So when I crashed into the trees here—” she gestured at the wreckage “—I didn't know where I was. Can you tell me how to get there? To the Station?”

“What? What? Guilt in the Void? I'm confused.”

“You think you're confused…”

“Conscious, you have no business being here. It's very dangerous.”

“I’m finding that out. But what else can I do? I mean, here I am.”

“Well…yes. Who told you about the Introspection Station?”

“One of the Association of Ideas.”

The earworm pondered that. “Hmmm,” it said after a moment. “Yes, they’re good folk, for the most part. How did you happen to get into the Void in the first place?”

“I'm not sure…I mean, I know how I got in there, but not how I got in here, at all. I woke up, the first time, and there was an Impulse with me…”

“An Impulse?”

“That's what it called itself,” she said. She was beginning to feel comfortable talking to this funny musical being. It seemed willing to help her, and she needed all the help she could get.

“It was sort of like a snake, with a blue halo around its head, and giant orange eyes.”

“That wasn't an Impulse,” said the tune, sounding grim. “Impulses are like tiny green badgers. No, what you ran into is one of the strongest and most dangerous things here.”

“Yes?”

“It's an Urge: the Urge to Self-Destruction: the Death Wish.”

Shocked, she could not speak. Her intuition, heightened in sensitivity, told her immediately that the tune was being both truthful and correct. Self-Destruction! She shuddered. That explained the thing’s strange power and threatening manner.

“You'll have to face it,” the tune said decisively. “Obviously that is why you are here in the first place, Conscious. I felt the nearness of Guilt not long ago…it must have been looking for you. If it feels your fear again, it'll come back! Guilt and the Death Wish would love to get their claws into you. Do you know what would happen if they did?”

“Nothing I would like, I’m sure.”

“Indeed. It would be like being locked in a small airplane piloted by suicidal murderers.”

“I'd rather not think about it.”

The tune became agitated. “But you must! You have to! If you give in now and surrender, you're doomed! Come on, you have to start walking.” It gestured in a direction that would take her on a course parallel to the cliff edge beyond the trees. “The Introspection Station is that way. I'll go along with you for a while, but I can't get too near the place.”

“Why not?”

“I'm not allowed into the Station…I haven't got security clearance.”

“Well, neither have I,” she objected. “So how am I supposed to get in?”

The tune looked at her for a few moments, and then said, “My dear Conscious, they can't keep you out. It's yours.”

“Oh.”

They set off, Violet walking slowly and the tune producing a bolero in time to her gait. She said nothing, content to listen to the strange music. Gradually she felt herself buoyed up by it. “Do you think,” she asked, dreamily, “that I'll be able to get out of here?”

“Out?” replied the tune, singing its response along with the music. “There isn't any out. You may find your way in, which would be the same thing.”

Now, what could that mean? Could out be in? Or in, out? To go out, why go in? In where? Here? But there wasn’t any here here. No matter…she let the music flow into her mind, unconsciously pacing her steps and breathing to the seductive rhythm, experiencing a growing empathy with the odd being at her side. This went on for some time; she was never able to tell, afterward, exactly how long. Hours, certainly; perhaps much longer.

At last, the compelling music faded away after an abrupt resolution. Blinking, she returned to awareness of her surroundings.

The forest was similar to ones she'd been in (back on Earth, she thought)…Most of the asparagus- and cauliflower-like growths had been supplanted by more normal-looking trees, beeches and silver birches for the most part, she thought. Light like normal sunlight filtered through greenish-gold leaves, dappling luxuriant mosses and graceful ferns. The ubiquitous minty scent mingled with a thick loamy odor redolent of moist summer afternoons in forest clearings. She felt relaxed, at peace, for the first time since ― since she and Calder had split up.

That thought broke her sylvan mood. Now the woods, but for the earworm galumphing along at her side, masked a soul-searing loneliness. “You're not going to leave me here,” she said.

“I must,” said the tune, not unkindly. “Straight ahead…see the path? We've been following it for some time. Just keep going. The Introspection Station isn't far. I have to warn you, it won't be easy on you once you’re inside.”

“I don't understand.”

“You will…I hope. It's been an honor for me, to meet you, conscious Violet. I owe you a great deal, you know. All that wonderful music you’ve listened to! I just wish you’d put more Chuck Berry into the mix once in a while. I'll have to compose a piece about this encounter. Now, I have to be getting about my rounds, so to speak.”

Violet wanted to chuckle, to show the tune that she appreciated politely its pun, but she felt tears filling her eyes. This was the only denizen of her inner world who had been kind to her.

The tune pretended not to notice her discomfort, rearing up to give her a fanfare and drumroll. Then it lowered itself to the ground and moved off into the underbrush, with a final “Farewell!” She waved and stood watching its long segmented body pass by to a brisk march. As the final segment passed her several minutes later, it flipped its tail in salute. Gradually the vaguely familiar music faded into the distance. The silence of the forest was more than she could bear. She found herself slouching along the path, scuffling her feet to fill the quietness.

The affable and helpful tune gave her hope that she’d meet other well-meaning personality components. After all, she was a nice person―wasn’t she? Surely some parts of her psychology would turn out to be pleasant.

She resumed walking, slowly, along the path indicated by the departed tune. Of course, the entire concept of sharing her mind with other people was most unnerving. To have her every action watched and commented upon by a Greek chorus of cartoon characters! Guilt and the Death Wish were like vultures, waiting to fall on her at the first sign of weakness. Were they typical human frailties, stronger in some people than in others? In her rehab, she’d heard that many drug users were overly sensitive souls seeking only to deaden the pain of intolerable living circumstances. Now, though, she wondered if that was too glib or self-serving. Even if it was, how could she live the rest of her life knowing that other deep-down aspects of herself were plotting a take-over? She thought she’d never dare sleep again for fear of one of them gaining control. It was literal madness (probably) to suppose that she could survive if one did, locked away in some secluded cell, screaming for release. Maybe the best thing to do was to end the problem once and for all. If there were no body, no self, then there would be nothing to gain control of.

Suicide. She had tried to escape depression that way, once, after having found herself marooned in California after her breakup with Terry. Similar despair-soaked thoughts had driven her to take drugs to escape from her own fear, even as she began attending church. She had believed what she had heard about LSD being capable of opening inner doors to understanding, and she wanted to believe that the power and love of Christ could bolster her flagging self-worth and faith in a better life. The drugs brought her chemical euphoria and frightening imagery, bulging walls, staring eyes, simmering blue plains of star-wracked jelly. At first, she had not realized that the effects of the drugs were nothing more than the misfiring of short-circuited brain cells and tortured neurons. For months she had tripped, two or three times weekly, becoming lax in her personal hygiene and fuzzy in her thinking. Toward the end of this period, despair swamped her. The dingy rooms in which she lived became oppressive. The daily routine of waking up—eating tofu with dirty chopsticks, trudging downtown to her part-time job, standing for six hours in a copy shop slapping papers and books across the thick curved glass of the Xerox machine and stepping on the foot trigger, then dragging herself back home after her shift to eat brown rice and acorn squash, and watch TV—quickly grew intolerable. Drugs provided a glittering escape, and chemical infinity promised peace. At the same time, her growing interest in the Church assured her that Jesus would welcome her. All her sins would be forgiven, her despair would be wiped away, and she would be happy forever. But for something inside her—and she couldn’t help, now, but personify that “something” as the Death Wish or some other malevolent aspect of her negative self—that wasn’t nearly enough. And so, while stoned on hash at a party, she had attempted to take her life.

In the subsequent wash of counseling and therapy she came to realize that her life was not hers to terminate. Life was positive, not negative. She should, she was told, become more involved in life-affirming activities through the church. The people there were kind, understanding.

They listened to her, they reassured her. She was not alone. She came around to the idea of sobriety and cleanliness and swore off drugs and alcohol. Everything was forgiven by Jesus. She became reborn, and every other sentence out of her mouth had “praise Jesus” in it somewhere.

In a way, she thought now, being in church had been a bit like being here in her own mind space. There had been the majestic music of the hymns like rivers of poetry, the strings' precision of tone suffusing her like the rich stained-glass colors glowing in her eyes. Singing and swaying with the others she felt the Spirit enter her, and she had been happy.

Her feet scuffed the forest path. In the cathedral quiet, the past was easily summoned. By letting her vision go out of focus the trees around her became the pillars of a church, and the underbrush became pews. Her dragging feet and the varying sough of breeze became the breathing of a multitude.

Beyond her, through the trees, loomed something like a colossal altar. She blinked. It was a building, visible ahead between the trunks, and large, very large. She halted in her tracks.

This had to be the Introspection Station. She could see no windows from this vantage, so it was impossible to know if she had been spotted. She realized that she knew nothing about who ― or what ― was inside, what they did, why they did it, when, or how often.

She was reluctant to walk up the path to the door and request entrance, but surely it couldn't hurt to get closer. A cautious approach would be best, she decided, so she resumed walking, more slowly than before, ready at any time to retreat at a run.

The building resembled an immense crumbling castle or fortress, circular and constructed of weathered stone. It appeared deserted, yet her sense of uneasiness grew as she neared. Soon she stood before a sheer gray stone wall that rose far above her head, crenellated at its top and forbidding withal. A narrow path had been cut through the undergrowth along the Station’s base. Seeing no hint of an entry, she began walking along the path to her right. The building bore no windows, no doors, and not a sound came from inside.

If this was where she was supposed to be, how the devil was she to get in? She shrugged. Well, there had to be an entrance somewhere along the circumference. She continued in a sour mood.

As she neared the next corner, a hiss from the underbrush to her right startled her. Peering in that direction, she could see a peculiar shape hiding in the glittering vines.

The hackles rose on her neck.

“Sssst!” again.

“Whuh, who's there?” she asked.

Up from the underbrush popped a perfectly outrageous being. It was an enormous eyeball, as big as a hassock, with two spindly arms and two long legs, standing about three and a half feet tall.

“My god!” she said.

“Hey, dipshit!” whispered the eyeball, urgently. “Are you nuts, walking around out in the open like that? Come on, get under cover!” It gestured with a long hand to the plants in which it stood. “Come on!”

Cautiously, she approached it. Close up she saw that its amazingly blue iris was slightly greenish, with some flecks of hazel and gold, with a pupil of deep glossy black. She could not tell how it talked, because it had no mouth that she could see.

She crouched down in the foliage a few feet away from it. “Who are you?” she asked softly. “And what's so dangerous about this place? It seems to be deserted.”

“Hah ― that shows you what you know about it. They'd like you to think it's deserted. There are only a couple of them in there, but they've got all these machines and things…really keep us hopping.”

“Us?”

“Of course!” It sounded annoyed. “You don't think I'm out here by myself, do you?”

“Well, I…”

“Never mind. Look, aren't you the conscious?”

“Yes, but how did you know that?”

It made a self-satisfied gesture. “An educated guess. You asked me who I am. My associates and I are elements of maturity. I'm Acceptance. Right next to you, there―”

“Oh!” Another eyeball-thing, but with a brown iris.

“Hiya.”

“―is Experience, and this―”

“Hello.” A hazel iris.

“―is Responsibility.”

The three eyeballs were closer to her than she liked, but they seemed friendly enough. To cover her nervousness, she asked, “What, what are you doing here?”

“Trying to get in, genius!” said the one identified as Experience. It sounded like W.C. Fields. “We should have been in there years ago.”

“Yes, and it's your fault we're not,” added Responsibility.

“What are you talking about?”

“It's no good scolding her,” Acceptance said to the other two. “She doesn't know what we're talking about. She won't, until she gets in.”

“Do you suppose that she can get in if we can't?” asked Experience sarcastically. “We've been out here for years!”

“Maybe we've softened them up enough,” mused Acceptance.

“Listen, you need to tell me what’s going on here,” said Violet as strongly as she could. It seemed that the only way to deal with these inner creatures was to be very firm with them.

In answer, Acceptance pointed to her left hand. “Look.”

Violet gasped. Her shirt cuff was empty: her hand had vanished.

Experimentally she wriggled her fingers but felt nothing. From her wrist down she felt just numbness, no sensation of motion or “there-ness.” There was no blood, no sign of injury, and no pain; yet her hand was gone.

“You’re discorporating,” said the brown-eyed Experience. “The process has finally started. Unless you get inside the Introspection Station and let us in, you’ll continue to discorporate until…” It shrugged.

Unwillingly, she reached out and passed her right hand through the place where her left hand should have been. She could feel nothing. “You mean I'm melting away?”

“You can put it that way. You are here in the mind, where you have no business being. It's a physical and metaphysical paradox. The continuum can't handle it. More than that, though: when you finally discorporate completely, we'll all vanish, too. Everything here will simply not be.”

She pulled back her sleeve. The transition from arm to emptiness was gradual…her wrist faded off into transparency. As she stared, shocked, she saw the zone of discorporation move slowly up her arm. The rate of progress seemed to be about as fast as the minute hand on a clock.

“You haven’t got long,” said Acceptance, rather pointedly.

There was, simply, no time to give in to shock and despair.

Already the eyeballs were moving stealthily through the underbrush, beckoning her to follow.

For a moment, she felt ready to collapse. Her own mind was eating her alive! Everything was too confusing, too horrible. She felt that she could not cope. Her muscles became like jelly, and she felt lightheaded. The idea that she could simply melt away, like a statue carved from dry ice…she shuddered.

Like the dry ice, she was cold. The light from the sky seemed watery, dimmer.

“What are you doing?” hissed the nearest eyeball (Acceptance, from its blue iris). “You'll bring Guilt down on us!”

Hesitantly, she set out after the three creatures. Acceptance dropped back to whisper to her.

“Here’s the plan,” it told her. “Up ahead there’s a crack in the wall. It's a tight squeeze, but you ought to be able to get in. Now, normally it's monitored by the Keepers, but what we're going to stage a diversion at the main gate. When you hear us shouting and hollering, you duck inside that crack.”

“But what do I do when I'm inside?”

“You have to get to the control room. It's at the top of the tallest tower. The inside of the Station is like a big maze, but all you have to remember is, once you get in, keep turning right. One of us will be a couple of minutes behind you and will catch up before you get too far.”

“I don't know…it sounds awfully risky and uncertain.”

“Look at your arm.”

Most of her forearm was gone now.

“You want to waste time arguing until you’re just teeth chattering on the ground?” asked Acceptance.

She gulped. “I, I suppose not.”

Before them, now, was a narrow irregular crack in the wall. “This opened up a while ago after one of the acid storms,” said Acceptance. “We almost got in, but then you found Jesus and the damn thing closed back up most of the way. They've had to keep it guarded since then.”

“Guarded?”

“Yes, but don't worry about that. Once we start to raise hell at the front gates, the guard will be withdrawn to patrol there.”

“I hope you're right about that,” Violet said earnestly. Guarded? By what?

The other two eyeballs slipped past them through the undergrowth. Acceptance paused a moment to stare unblinkingly (not that any of them blinked, having no eyelids) at her, and then turned to follow. It hesitated, turned to face her, and hissed, “Good luck!”

“Thanks,” she stage-whispered. Within moments, Acceptance had vanished, and again silence closed in around her. She stood, arms folded across her breasts, staring at the black crack in the wall. A short time later she heard distant yells and screeches. That, she thought, would be the diversion. She took a deep breath and stepped toward the wall.

The crack was most ominous. Strange odors and odd, half-heard sounds like muted vocalizations floated through it. She hesitated. A deep shadow descended on the surrounding vegetation as a chilly breeze ruffled her hair. She looked up. Through the trees, she saw a vast shape descending out of the sky, and her heart slugged. Guilt? Facing the crack, she took another step and suddenly froze with fear, unable to force herself into that black unknown.

It was the worst moment of her life. Terrified, she could not go forward ― while something horrible beyond her ken slowly groped for her from above. Branches above cracked and twigs fell. Rigid, she quivered with frustration, her right hand clenched hard, the muscles of her nonexistent left arm straining to duplicate the fist somewhere in another dimension. She willed the two-body sensation to return to her, hoping, in desperation, for some glimmering of control over her vast other (real-world?) self―but in vain.

The air around her plucked at her skin, flickering with black sparks. She gave way before these excruciatingly cold diamond flashes, sheltering within the crack in the Introspection Station’s wall.

As she reluctantly pushed in, the black sparks merged into the transitional gloom of the rough sides of the cleft, and night fell outside with alarming swiftness. Much sooner than she expected, total blackness swallowed her. She heard no sounds from outside, as if the air across the crack had frozen solid.

And the temperature inside supported that conclusion: she began shivering at once and had to hug herself to keep warm. Three more steps took her completely through the imperfection in the wall. Her boots clunked on flagstones. Two steps brought her up against a stone wall. On either side, however, she felt nothing. Apparently, she was in some sort of corridor. She tried to decide which way to go, not really wanting to move from the spot in the darkness. Remembering that one of the eyeballs would soon (hopefully) be along to help her, she decided to simply wait where she was.

Something fluttered in the blackness to her left. She gasped, feeling her skin break out into a concert of goosebumps. Standing rigid, she started to shake in fear as the odd whickering drew nearer. Then it was in the air, over her head―something struck her, emitting a yowl of surprise from it.

Automatically she ran, heedless of the direction, and within a few steps she collided with a large flat surface. The pain simply added a minor note to her utter terror.

The fluttering thing followed the sound of her running, and was all about her, growling. She batted at it, gasping in terror.

“Violet! Where are you?” cried a familiar voice. Acceptance!

“Here!” she called in a strangled voice, and there came a blessed beam of light from the direction of the original call. Bobbing around as the eyeball trotted forward, it swept the volume of darkness, catching highlights, dull off stone, here and there.

As the beam whipped across her, it caught the fluttering thing in full glare and stayed on it.

Violet gasped again.

Gourd-shaped, blue, perhaps five feet long, with a ludicrous propeller on the large end, and one large bulging eye on the other. Under the eye, two grasping, armless hands framed a wide grimacing mouth. Blinking in the glare, it swooped at her. She flung up an arm, catching the thing across its horrible face. The monstrosity had a texture like warm rubber.

Acceptance yelled wordlessly and charged, its projected beam of light gyrating crazily around the empty stone passageway like a fitful stroboscope. Violet moaned and closed her eyes as Acceptance leaped at the weird flying monster. The sounds of struggle echoed in the stone walled chamber. Violet lay in a heap by the wall into which she had crashed and gave herself up to the ache in her face where she had run into the wall.

At one point the fluttering monstrosity zoomed directly over her head, and she flinched. Acceptance, pursuing with a war whoop, ran into her and tripped, slamming into the floor with such violence that its light went out.

The one-eyed creature flew off into the distance, yammering, the whickering echo of its tail propeller dying away.

She and the eyeball lay breathing heavily, catching their breaths “Can, can you turn your light on again?” she asked, after a while.

“It takes…a while to…recharge the Inner Light,” was the reply. “Let me see…” A wavering, yellow glow diffused out from Acceptance’s pupil. “Best I can do…” The eyeball sounded exhausted.

“That's fine,” she said warmly, sitting up and taking stock of her injuries. Aside from a swollen and possibly broken nose, she was unharmed, but her face ached terribly. “What was that thing?”

“The guardian. It isn't alive, in the same manner you and I are. It's nothing more than a few random associations strung together on a network of ideation. It's maybe smart enough to run for office, but not much more than that.” Acceptance stood up and looked around. “Why didn't you try to find your way to the control room?”

“That thing attacked me, of course!”

“You could have fought it off. It really isn't dangerous. The Keepers aren't capable of fashioning anything lethal.”

“How was I to know that?” she demanded angrily, the pain in her nose contributing to her snappishness. “This damn thing flies at me out of the dark ― you told me that it would be withdrawn!”

“Well, I was wrong about that, I admit,” said Acceptance. “But look, we've got to get out of here…the diversion won't be any good once the guardian gets up to the control room and tells them what’s happened here. And you can bet that's where it’s headed. It'll be there in a few minutes.”

“Which way to the control room?”

Acceptance cast about a few paces down the length of the wall. “Hmmm.” Its beam wasn't bright enough to illuminate the full extent of the chamber, or hallway. “Let's follow this wall. Sooner or later, we'll come to a cross corridor or intersection, and we'll go from there.” It set out at a brisk walk with Violet trotting along after.

“I thought you knew your way around in here.”

“I do, I do…I just need to get my bearings, first. Judging by the position of the crack in the outer wall, back there, we'll come to a staircase leading up if we follow this wall in this direction.”

“How do you know that?” she asked, uneasily in the blackness gathering at her back as Acceptance’s searchlight beam illuminated the way ahead.

“The information stems back from years ago,” replied the eyeball as it paced along the stone flagged corridor.

“Around then some of us made preliminary excursions into the Station, but then you shut it down.”

“Me?”

“Well, certainly. You didn't think to blame us for this, did you? We all tend toward increasing self-awareness in here. That's the ideal, if you'll excuse a little shoptalk. Your refusal to introspect has caused many problems.”

She said nothing, too surprised and dismayed to respond. There’d been no conscious decision to cease questioning herself that she could recall, ever. No: this dream, fantastic in its bizarre detail and apparent concrete objectivity, was still only that: A dream. And no figment of a dream, such as the eyeball-thing calling itself Acceptance, could by any reasonable means be expected to speak anything other than dream-words: Nonsense.

As if to punctuate this thought, a distant rumble, like thunder across the Blue Ridge Mountains, flexed the air. She felt it resonate in the guts of the Introspection Station: The flags beneath her feet thrummed briefly before subsiding.

She halted. “What was that!”

“Guilt, trying to get in,” replied Acceptance matter-of-factly. “It knows you're here.”

Fear and rage straddled the ache in her nose. “Don't I have any say over what happens to me, in here?” she demanded, as Acceptance turned round to face her. Looking down at her wrist, she saw half the sleeve of her shirt flopping emptily. Her arm was gone past the elbow, halfway up her biceps. The sight brought a fresh rush of self-pity, and she felt her eyes stinging. “There's nothing I can do! Nothing! What is it you want from me? What do I have to do to get out of this nightmare?”

The eyeball approached her and reached out to lay a hand on her arm. She recoiled. “I want what's best for you, what's best for everyone,” it said softly.

“All my life, everyone's always said that! Everyone wants what's best for me, but they've always been the ones to define what the best is!”

“You've let them do it,” Acceptance pointed out, folding its arms lust under the curve of its enormous pupil. “It's why the Introspection Station, here, is in such a sorry condition.”

“So, the one to blame is me, huh?” she asked, irritation drying up her self-pity.

“Well, it’s not as if there’s anyone else.” The eyeball resumed walking.

For a few seconds she stood in the thickening gloom without following. As much as it stung to admit, the damn thing was right. Somehow the concept of taking responsibility for internal screw-ups hadn’t gotten through to her in the same way that her willingness to accept her external actions had. Why? Because I always thought it was chemistry, or genetics, or just the way I was, or what? She began following Acceptance. Her pride hurt her, but that didn’t seem as important considering these new realizations.

She quickly caught up with her companion and walked beside it, scowling. Acceptance said nothing, for which she was grateful in a sour way.

Preoccupied with her own roiling thoughts Violet paid little attention to where they were going, but after a time she noticed were trending upwards. While they passed through an echoing chamber, she realized that she could see the dim outlines of the place. There’s more light here, she thought. It was apparently a gallery: Huge framed paintings adorned the walls, but the illumination was still too dim for her to see their subject matter. Leaving this room, they entered a winding corridor lined with windows. She slowed down to look out the windows, but behind each one was a brick wall. The casements were framed with dusty curtains like old fishnets. A series of unlit chandeliers, draped with cobwebs, depended from the high ceiling.

She could not imagine what function such an apparently useless passageway could serve, nor why its windows were walled up from the outside. It was as if something out there did not want to see in or have itself seen by anyone passing through the hallway. Her abstracted mood gave way to uneasiness, which grew with each step she took.

The bipedal eyeball turned. “What are you lagging for?” it asked in an annoyed tone.

“I-I don't…nothing,” she mumbled, hurrying after it. The further they went along the hallway, however, the more anxious she felt.

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying in vain to clear the oppressive feeling from her mind. Opening her eyes, she saw a blur in the air between Acceptance and herself. Frowning, she rubbed at her eyes, but the blur persisted. In fact, it became more distinct. Acceptance had turned again and was walking away from her. Violet's dragging steps came to a halt as the blur resolved into a human form standing in the corridor, facing her. The round face and thick curly hair looked oddly familiar―

It was herself.

She gasped. Hearing this, the eyeball turned to face her. “Now what?”

“Can't you see?” she demanded, almost giggling hysterically at the idea of asking an eye if it could see.

“See what?” Acceptance replied.

By now the doppelganger had solidified. It (she! she2?) stood with its (her2!) arms folded, regarding Violet disdainfully. “It can’t see me or hear me,” she2 said. “Only you can. I 'm your self-image.”

Violet squinted. Was this how she saw herself? Was she really that dumpy? Was her hair really that thick, that dull and lifeless? Was her face that pale, her eyes that shade of dim blue? Was her nose that large, her mouth that crooked? Did she really hold herself so loosely?

“Are you all right?” asked Acceptance, stepping toward her. One more pace would take the eyeball into the volume of space occupied by the self-image.

“No! I'm here!” Violet blurted, unable to find the words to explain the presence of her duplicate. She gestured at it, groping for a way to explain the idea for the eyeball.

“What?” Acceptance was clearly puzzled.

“Give it up,” said her self-image in a tired voice. “You can't explain me to him…it's no use at all. You're lost in here, there isn't any hope for you.” Her2 voice was utterly convinced. “I tried to tell you before, when we met over the Noetic Ocean.”

“Oh!” Violet remembered the self-motivated reflection. “So that was you?”

As Acceptance watched, obviously baffled, Violet said, “Well, get out of my way. Whatever you are, whatever you're trying to tell me, just leave me alone.”

“Violet ― what are you talking about?” Acceptance asked, concern and (could it be fear?) blending into its voice. Stepping forward, the eyeball mixed into the self-image. Both figures became slightly translucent, and Violet could not quite focus on one or the other. Closing her eyes and turning away, she clenched her fists (fist) ― but there was a strange distant sensation where her left hand should have been. Momentarily forgetting the self-image, she looked down at her hand. It was still gone. In fact, her sleeve hung loose almost to her elbow. Yet a ghost-image of her arm persisted, feeling now as if it were bent back at an acute angle. This sensation was painless but most disorienting) and let out a long shuddering sigh.

She looked up. Her2 was staring at her with an expression of mixed exhaustion and melancholy. Violet could not bear to look at the lined, pale face. Her gaze dropped to her hands.

They were smooth and pale. Violet was close enough to touch the apparition now if she willed. Acceptance reached up a long skinny hand out of the self-image's chest, clasping Violet’s shirt front and trying to draw her forward. Violet resisted, then, in a sudden eruption of anger, she blindly pushed forward to knock the self-image over. She passed directly through her2, stumbling over the corporeal form of Acceptance, and sprawling headlong onto the corridor’s cold stone floor.

Acceptance protested vigorously, its voice muffled, and as she got clumsily to her knees, able to use only one arm to right herself, she saw that the self-image had vanished.

“What in the name of the Cleveland Conservatory of Music is wrong with you?” snapped Acceptance, its pupil flashing with anger. “We don’t have time for shenanigans—there's only a short way to go! And just look at your arm…where it used to be, that is. Come on!” It scrambled to its feet and waited until it was sure that she was going to follow, then jogged ahead. She did her best to keep up, greatly exhausted. More than anything, she wanted to simply lie down on the floor and go to sleep, to forget everything that had happened to her since she woke up in here, inside her mind.

Her body had not ached this much since her first backpacking trip with Calder, years previously, in the Adirondacks. There, at least, the mountain scenery had been compelling enough to help her forget her bodily misery. Here in the endless, dusty, dingy, walled-up hallway of her inner self was no such source of distraction.

At last, much later, the hallway ended, opening into a cavernous room lit only by the slowly brightening beam from Acceptance's pupil. The chamber was almost filled by the base of an enormous staircase, its steps of a marble-like stone with red and orange veins, with a banister of some dark wood upheld by posts carved from coiling ivory. This staircase led up, up, up into the zenithal reaches of the chamber, where its upper recesses were lost in darkness.

Violet did not like the look of it. “Oh, Lord,” she breathed, sinking down slowly on the dusty bottom step. “I can't climb this.”

“You better try,” warned Acceptance. “I’ll need you to help me once we get to the control room. If my information is correct, it’ll be at the top of these stairs.” At once it mounted the stairs.

With a groan Violet dragged herself to her feet and lifted her right foot up onto the second stair. She glanced up, at Acceptance ascending into the darkness, its eye-light shining on the steps above. She did not think that she could make it.

On the other hand, she did not want to be left alone in the dark. Perhaps there were more cyclopean flying creatures like the Guardian wandering around, or worse things. As this thought occurred to her, she felt a cold breeze waft up the legs of her jeans. Turning to locate the source of this draught, she realized that it was coming from the mouth of the hallway through which they’d entered the staircase chamber. Somehow, she knew, Guilt had gotten in through the breach in the outer wall of the Introspection Station and was pursuing them. Shocked now, she tried to hurry after Acceptance.

The ensuing period seemed like years to her. Her world shrank to a labored pounding in her ears and the glistening of the stone steps rising before her tired eyes. The air around them grew ever more frigid. Her chest ached, and her phantom left arm felt as if it were raised above her head.

This sensation threw her off balance as she tried to compensate, and she had to concentrate on each step. Shortly she was dizzy and disoriented and could do nothing more than lift one heavy leg after the other, mechanically and endlessly. More than once she thought of stopping, but each time, the increasing cold and the barely heard hiss in her ears dissuaded her. Her fear grew as the temperature fell.

“Only a little further!” exhorted Acceptance, after what seemed a long time.

Even so it seemed to be hours, painful hours, later when she stepped heavily onto a small platform at the top of the stairs, facing a cracked plaster wall. The chamber’s ceiling was directly overhead, bare inches from her sweaty curls. Her vision swam, but Acceptance wasn't waiting for her to recover; it was already pushing and straining to thrust aside a huge fallen timber blocking a metal-studded door set into the wall.

The eyeball's beam of light danced across the door and the floor alternately. “I need your shoulder!” it groaned.

“Something’s coming up the stairs after us,” she muttered, stepping forward to help.

“Ignore it,” said Acceptance as she bent to lever her good shoulder under the end of the timber. “Now, lift!”

She strained, feeling her face flush and grow hot with thick blood. “Can’t do it,” she moaned.

“You have to!” Acceptance threw its weight against the other end of the timber, which moved a little. “More! More!”

Violet's thoughts congealed as her awareness phased down to a purely physical level. The harder she strained against the door, the more her body and face ached. The left side of her torso, unbalanced due to the ongoing discorporation of her arm, felt paralyzed. Fuzzy red shapes collided slowly behind her eyelids.

A freezing blast of wind from below shocked her back to consciousness. Acceptance shouted something as she turned to face the source of the draught sweeping up at her.

Acceptance's beam of light swung crazily about the stairway as it too turned and gazed down the steps. Far below, at the very limit of visibility, something amorphous was roiling slowly upward, step by step.

“Guilt!” hissed the eyeball.

Fear erupted in her, but then something occurred to her. All this, everything around her: it was of her own making. So far it hadn’t been pleasant, but maybe if she tried to direct the experience, she could save herself.

It was worth a try.

“Listen,” she said to the eyeball, “You distract it, and I’ll get inside and try to start the machinery.”

“But I can't face that!” Acceptance moaned, holding back.

“Like you always tell me, you’ve got to!” Snatching up a stick from the litter at the base of the old door, she thrust it into the eyeball’s hands.

Acceptance gripped the stick then straightened up. It let out a whoop and without hesitating charged down the stairs. “Open that door!” it shouted up at her.

Violet turned and put her shoulder to the door as the sounds of echoed up from below. She knew that the eyeball didn't have a prayer against the enormous monster. She’d sent Acceptance to its death. “It’s not fair!” she muttered between her teeth. Summoning her strength and suffusing it with all her rage and frustration and fear, she made a final effort to move the door. She dug in with her feet, and pushed as hard as she could, willing herself to sustain the force.

Abruptly all resistance disappeared. The door swung open, and she stumbled forward into a musty dimly lit room, circular in shape. She grabbed the edge of the doorway with her remaining hand, in a panic to lest Guilt could seize her. Off-balance, she pivoted on her heel, managing to fall against the door. As it crashed shut, Violet registered the fact that she wasn't alone in the chamber. Alone or not, she told herself grimly while groping for the lock, nothing could be as bad as the thing on the stairs.

She kept her back to the door, somewhat comforted by the solid feel of heavy wood and strong hinges of iron, and squinted into the gloom, trying to judge her companions.

Neither one could be called human, she realized, as a shiver crawled across her shoulder blades. She wished for a little of Acceptance's Inner Light so that she could see the things more clearly. One was tall, the other was short. They stood in front of a crazy assortment of monitor screens and gauges and switches and modular electronic units, all interconnected by patch cords and a veritable circulatory system of wires. An acrid odor of frying insulation hung in the air.

“You let it in!” hissed the tall one accusingly to the short one. Its voice gave Violet a weird thrill: like silk over warm, pliant flesh, like a tongue slowly and meaningfully licked along the soft skin under the jaw, it was unexpectedly erotic.

Despite her fear she was amazed to feel her body respond to the voice. The creature that had spoken was somehow feminine in form: it had broad hips and a pair of small but beautifully shaped breasts, but it also had obvious male sexual equipment. It was at once male, female, youthful, and mature. Violet pressed her back against the door. Whatever this thing was, it certainly had a power stronger than anything she had yet encountered in her mind-space save for Guilt.

“Oh, Libido, how can you say that to me?” whined the smaller creature. “I didn't let it in, Guilt chased it up here. Maybe—” It broke off, staring at Violet, who had not yet made a move after almost falling into the room and slamming the door. “It's listening to us!” it whispered. This being was about the size of the eyeball-like Elements of Maturity, but otherwise dissimilar, having a pear-shaped body and a cubical head almost as large as its torso.

Its hands were human, although quite large, but the feet were like swim fins. Two round staring eyes dominated its head, rimmed by sockets of bone or cartilage. Instead of a mouth or nose, the thing had a vertical slit between the eyes, curtained by fat dewlaps.

“Of course, it's listening,” said Libido. Its head, which was a large hairless oval, bore two small eyes with heavy lashes and an enormous mouth with soft flexible lips. “It's the Conscious Mind!” Libido stepped forward in a fluid gesture. Violet's eyes were drawn to its genitalia.

“It's fascinating, Anxiety,” breathed Libido, staring hungrily at Violet.

“There's nothing fascinating about that,” said Anxiety, cowering as something huge pressed against the door at Violet's back, making it creak alarmingly.

She dug in her feet. “You’ve got to help me!” she said, hating the crack in her voice. “If I don't get this place working, that thing behind me is going to come crashing right through this door!”

“Ooooh, baby, you’re so tense,” cooed Libido, sliding toward Violet, hands raised with palms up imploringly. “You don't understand, do you? We were assigned here because we hinder clear thinking, not because we assist it! Why else do you think we've been here so long?”

In something of a daze. Violet looked around, feeling the door quiver again at her back. Her eyes had gotten used to the poor light, and even as Libido’s unctuous voice raised the gooseflesh on her arms, she saw that the control room was octagonal and that the walls behind the dusty consoles and machines were lined with mirrors. All the panes of glass were dirty and cracked, and so splattered with blackened silvering as to be useless for reflecting.

Is this really what it's like inside my head? she asked herself in despair. Then there isn't any hope at all! The door vibrated to a powerful blow. The hinges held, but she was literally knocked forward. What, she wondered, had that thing done to Acceptance?

Libido touched her solid hand, and the shock of physical electricity flowed up her arm. Violet felt a twitch in her groin. This thing was making her horny right in the middle of a situation! “Don't worry!” whispered the creature, sliding a warm arm around her shoulders. “I can make you feel good!”

Violet looked across a foot of space into limpid brown eyes. They were lovely, so moist and sensitive; a lovers' eyes. Violet swallowed. “Let go,” she said, trying to pull away.

“Oh, don't do that,” chided Libido. It pressed close. “Ummm! You feel good!” The creature's firm breasts felt undeniably marvelous against her own, and despite her unabashed heterosexuality a wave of desire ran up through Violet's torso. She felt her nipples react, and she wavered.

Guilt slammed into the door again. This time dust rose from the hinges.

Anxiety shrieked. “We'll die, we'll all die!”

“You won't die, you little twit,” snapped Libido, winding its arms around Violet and grinding against her hip.

“How—how can you be sure that?” Violet managed to say. Catching sight of her handless arm, she managed to bring herself most of the way out of the erotic spell Libido was weaving around her. “Guilt wants all of me, and you're of me! Look!” She pointed at the door, where a thin mist was drizzling up from the narrow crack between it and floor, and along the edges of the jamb. “It won't be long, now! Can you help me or not?”

“Don't you understand?” Anxiety wailed. “There's absolutely nothing we can do! We have no power! We don't know how to work these controls!” Anxiety wrung its hands, glancing around at the panels and banks of extinguished indicator lights.

There were labels on the controls. Violet leaned over the nearest panel to read some of them. “Floodgates,” she said after rubbing her finger on one label to clear the dust off it. “For what?” she asked Libido.

“What difference does it make?” The creature ran its hands slowly up its flanks, over its hips, and cupped its breasts, leaning back with a groan of pleasure.

“It's for the Noetic Reservoir,” Anxiety said, with a disgusted look at its sexy companion.

“What's that?” asked Violet, glancing at Libido’s growing erection.

“This?” it asked playfully, encircling its penis with its fist.

Anxiety made a rude noise. It seemed to have calmed down a little. “The reservoir, fucknuts!” To Violet, it added, “It’s liquid Understanding, like the cooling pool in a reactor. All the nasty stuff is kept in there, under pressure, so they can’t get out. Rage, fear, all that sort of thing. They’re real bottom feeders. Every so often they slip out through a crack, so you have the Elements of Maturity down there a lot, walking along the bottom and sealing them. That’s why they have searchlights.”

Violet stared at the begrimed labels. The Noetic Reservoir sounded like a place where Guilt should be, too, and she wondered if it had got out through some flaw missed by the Elements. It did seem to be good at squeezing into and out of fissures.

Another groan off to one side attracted Violet’s attention. Libido, she saw, was masturbating furiously onto the control board. Violet tore her gaze away from the thing's sex play and began pushing buttons. To her surprise, some of the indicator lights blinked on, though dulled by years of dust. Somewhere, something whirred, and a vibration became noticeable in the floor The door shuddered once more, as something outside raked down its surface, tearing out long gashes in the wood.

“Don’t play with those controls!” gasped Anxiety, upset anew. “You don’t know what you're doing! These aren't toys, they're intricate mental processes! You'll tip us all over into insanity!”

“Yeah, intricate processes like you and the Slut Queen, here? I don’t think so!” Violet glanced fearfully down at her arm. It was gone now almost to her shoulder, and she was feeling very peculiar, as though strange fumes were floating up into her head. But I am in my head already, she said to herself.

Or at least I think I am…At that instant she stumbled, falling off to her left, and her leg separated entirely from her boot. Her foot left foot was gone: it had discorporated. Somehow this was less of a shock than it was an annoyance.

“If you open the floodgates, you'll cause a flood of Understanding into the Wastes of Meaninglessness!” cried Anxiety, trying to grab her hand. “All, all that fluid is polluted by seepage from the Desert of Loss!”

“You didn’t say that before,” Violet snapped, steadying herself on the instrument panel, one finger poised above the floodgate control.

“He's right,” said Libido, winding its arms around her neck from behind and kissing her hair. “It's distilled Love, you see, but contaminated by Bitterness and Wisdom. If it floods the Wastes, it'll precipitate a personality dissociation. You'll go mad.”

“So, I lose either way, is that it?” Violet pushed Libido away and kicked out at Anxiety with her footless leg. “If Guilt doesn't destroy me, Insanity will. Maybe that's true, but at least this way I won't be sitting here waiting for it! I can destroy myself!”

The air grew colder as the mist seeping under the door pooled out across the floor and began inching up the wall. Violet had the crazy thought that this was the best way: If she had to go, better to choose active psychosis, with the screaming horrors, than to slowly dematerialize while awaiting the onslaught of Guilt. She grasped a large silver lever to one side of the corroded console and pulled on it with all her strength, but it refused to move, jammed tight. A great many lights had come alive, however, and the distant whirring and clunking of unused machinery increased in tempo. As if in response, the thing outside the door redoubled its efforts, slamming into the panels at regular intervals. They would not hold for long, she knew.

“It’s my own damn choice!” she yelled at the shuddering door.

Then there came a distant star-like twinkle before her eyes in the frigid air between herself and the door. This grew to near-blinding brilliance within seconds, a crystalline confusion on the air like the visual obscurity brought on by a migraine headache. Out of it resolved the head and nimbus of the saucer-eyed Death Wish. Violet’s left eye went dark. She knew that her head was beginning to melt away.

“Come to join us at last!” it said. “Wonderful! No one can fight their tendency to self-destruction when they've suffered as much as you have. I will take such good care of your body for you. You'll never have to worry about it again.”

Madness, she thought, slumping back against the control panel. But it would be so good to give in at last. No more tears, no more misery or loneliness. Her head throbbed with pressure, and tears filled her eye. To give in was so good, so very good…to give up all responsibility, never to have to care for anyone again, never to have to fear…

The door gave way and crashed inward. Anxiety and Libido shrieked and crammed themselves into a corner between two consoles. Violet, barely noticing them, sank to her knees. Her nose began dissolving.

Something, some pseudopod of glittering smog, reached through the Death Wish and stroked her good arm. The touch was slight but agonizing, a flare of ravening greed so strong as to char her sleeve. Smoke drifted up from it and the pain shocked her to her senses. She flung herself to one side, away from the groping, smoky tentacle. Outside the door, the main mass of Guilt emitted a guttural sound of rage and desire.

Events slowed. She was twisting in the air, straining to move quickly but unable to force her body to react properly. She saw the stuck lever on the board and grabbed for it, realizing as she did so that her one remaining hand was fading away even as it slid through the congealing air. A bizarre sensation flooded up her wrist as her disintegrating forearm jammed against the lever. Deep in her neural network, energy flowed across the semi-corporeal boundary of her body and the half-living circuitry of the Introspection Station. Her central nervous system, inner and outer, blended. Her head blossomed with colors, lights, sounds, odors, and tastes. With her senses flickering on and off, she again tried to throw the switch, but her effort tore it out of her arm. Small chunks of her flesh broke free, vaporizing in the arctic air.

Something touched her back and agony spread there like a flame over a glass of brandy. She screamed and tried to dive forward across the board to escape. Her face was inches from the lever.

It settled on her back.

“Aaaaaaahhhhh,” sighed Self-Destruction. “Welcome.”

Crushed into the board, the breath was driven out of her. She couldn’t even scream as her ribs cracked against the dials and gauges beneath her. She opened her mouth but only a grunt emerged—and a single drop of bright red blood, which dripped down onto the dial in front of her eyes.

She moaned again, producing more blood. It drooled out of her gaping mouth. The unmoving lever filled her vision. Against the pain she slowly lifted her head and bit down on the lever. Hot salty fluid welled in her throat, and she gagged it out around the cold plastic grip. Her eyesight dimmed, and she pulled back as hard as she could, aware of but ignoring the fact that she couldn’t breathe because her lungs and ribs were smashed.

I'm dying. I'm dying. Oh my God. oh my sweet Jesus I am dead.

Her neck gave way, her head fell forward—but the lever had moved! I did it, she thought dimly. I did it. The Floodgates…

Nothing happened. The machinery of the Introspection Station had failed, having lain too long unused. There was a terrible rending sensation in her chest—and she died.

Something happened. Her vision went black then she saw herself from above, a torn, bleeding ruin crushed into the broken control board, deliquescing like dry ice; the astral body she had inhabited couldn’t exist without an empowering mind. A paw of sparkling smoke ground her vanishing body into the machinery. Orange saucers filled her vision. Everything turned orange.

No body, she thought. I am nothing. Oh, but I am free!

“So nice,” said Self-Destruction, looking up her.

Oh my God, it can still see me!

“Shall…we…go…?” The snaky body rose before her, toothy jaws agape.

Something happened: she had a precognitive glimpse of the eons ahead: gibbering, filthy madness, fingers scrabbling in the corners of the room, excrement smeared on the walls, chewed insects—

Then everything vanished in a flare of moonlight so strong that it washed away her thoughts. Something, she realized with her last shred of consciousness, had happened.