EDITOR'S NOTE: Pariah is a serial, not just a story. Based on my Timeater stories, we are following the exploits of one specific timeater who is named Pariah. This will give us the latitude to show what Timeaters are, and what kind of world they have.

This is the second page, continued from here.

When life came into focus it was as if a very long dream had passed. Pariah was unusually distorted, and it did not help any that he was in the middle of a conversation with a peasant girl who appeared to be his mother. She noticed him jolt in the middle of a sentence.

"Well, go on," she said expectantly.

"I'm sorry, what was I saying? I seemed to have lost th' thought," he automatically reverted to his most familiar dialect, as this seemed to be near the time period in which he had grown up. The girl, his mother, laughed and shoved him playfully.

"Aye, Ebrick, you've lost something for certain! The wonders of the broken mountain will have to wait, I fear. There are chores to be done, and Father is ill. Will I see you on th' morrow?"

"I... I cannot say, as yet," Pariah improvised, grateful for the timely termination of this awkward conversation. His mother turned abruptly on her heal and issued a merry goodbye before disappearing into the heart of the small village that marked the rolling green hill. By her accent, and by the landscape, Pariah guessed this must be Whales. Pariah searched for some sign of Guide or Manual or the Tracking, but none was present. There seemed to be a great gulf, an absence of any guiding force. His mother had called him by a name, and was talking to him as if he was a familiar. Could it be that he had been shoved into a 'normal' life, where he had an identity, would live in a sequence, and finally die? He thought that he should probably feel some sort of emotion at the idea, but none came. For the immediate present, he was lost, with no guidance in a world he did not understand, and had no idea what it was he should do. Then, the blackness claimed him again.

It was different this time. He hovered in a void, but could hear voices beyond. He was trapped off from his senses. Something was wrong here; suddenly he knew it, but what? The answer should be clear, but his thoughts flowed slowly and lazily. Was he dead? He knew too little of the concept to say. Perhaps... Yes! An interloper! Someone was controlling him. Not like the tracking or the Q-techs had. No, this being, this interloper was controlling him in the most personal way of all. They had claimed his thoughts and body.

He tried to feel outrage at the idea, but it did not come. He should be anxious to escape, to overcome this force that was using him as a tool, but found he simply didn't care. Finally, the tedium drove him to the surface.

Pariah gasped, as he became aware of being again. He was hovering in a translucent tube looking out at a dimly lit cavern. What light there was seemed to come from advanced machinery, the like of which he had seen aboard Death's ship. A dark form was moving about the equipment, wrinkled lips muttered archaic words Pariah could not find a meaning to. A stone pot sat at the center of the cavern, steam pouring over its chiseled lip. Beyond that was a writing table, like that of a monk's, with an oversized ostrich feather protruding from an ink well. Opposite the quill sat a human skull with a burning candle dripping wax onto the crown. The writing table was flanked on both sides by wracks of scrolls. The entire room seemed to be an eerie combination of the ancient and the all-too-futuristic.

Close your eyes.

Pariah followed the nudging suggestion without question, relieved at having been given a direction. Nothing spoke for a long, long time, and Pariah hovered without movement. Finally another suggestion came.

Place your hand against the surface of the tube.

Pariah gently reached out; pulling against the force which held him in place. His fingers found the surface in front of him.

Now release a small amount of entropy. Small. Small. Small.

Pariah noted the emphasis in the suggestion, and held his entropy output to a miniscule amount. He felt the tube disintegrate from his touch.

Open your eyes and step out of the field.

Pariah complied; noting that the dark form he had seen before was not within sight.

To your left you will see a trickle of light from the moon. Follow it until you reach the exit to the cave. Make no noise.

Pariah moved stealthily to the small hole that marked the caves exit. As soon as he had stepped out into the moonlight, he found he could not locate the hole he had just exited from. It seemed to have been swallowed up by the hillside. He looked up at the moon, a sight he had not seen for some time. A small silhouette passed quickly in front of the moon. He followed the tiny object with his eyes. As it neared him, flitting quickly back and forth, hovering, then dropping only to soar skywards again, he saw that it was a hummingbird. It did not belong, therefore it was. As the little bird came to hover even with Pariah's face, he saw it flicker briefly, becoming translucent and then solid again.

"Well YOU'RE a sight for sore eyes!" the bird exclaimed.

"Guide?"

"You got it, Pariah. Look, I'm going to have to make this quick. I'm having trouble projecting myself without the wizard detecting me. Especially with the OM complex in the state it's in."

"What?" Pariah asked, looking down while feeling around his torso. The energy armor and every trace of the OM complex were gone.

"Guide, what is happening?" Pariah asked, feeling a swell of fear start to rise in his chest.

"Settle down, Timeater, now that you're here, we're going to be okay, but let me tell you, things have been pretty hairy. After the incident with that ship and those bogus Dinosaurs, you were pulled into this time period... well; your body was anyway. You are, or were, being controlled by a powerful Q-tech, a matronite, and heaven only knows what else. He's been using your entropy to accomplish various tasks of destruction, outfitted you with a new personality with which he's been trying to lure your mother up here, and, without your will to guard us, he stripped you of the OM complex and re-rigged it for some other purpose. Not sure exactly what. Manual hasn't been talking lately."

All this was a bit much for Pariah to absorb. Finally he asked, "Who... who is this person that is controlling me?"

"Calls himself Merlin."

Pariah felt a cold chill. Parson had told him stories of the Pagan wizard known as Merlin. He had called him the son of the devil. What did Merlin want with him? Pariah realized that whatever he wanted, he had already gotten most of it.

"What am I suppose to do?" Pariah was as close as he had ever been to despair, despite his emotional numbness.

"Allow me to point a few things out to you, Timeater. The OM complex is valuable to more than just Merlin. The Tracking had you construct it, and needs it for some purpose. Now Merlin has it, and he doesn't exactly seem like a team player to me. Nor does the Tracking, for that matter. You know what they say, 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.'"

"So the Tracking will want the OM complex out of Merlin's possession,"

"Yes, and for the time being, you can expect the force that previously was using you to work against the force that is now using you. Isn't it nice to belong?"

"But how do I contact the Tracking?"

"Well you just destroyed his ship, and given the tabs he's been keeping on you, I'd say he already knows."

"I don't know," Pariah faltered, "the Tracking is most likely a matronite himself. I don't trust him."

"Do you trust Joseph Blecky?"

"Absolutely,"

"Well according to my calculations, he should be a strapping young man during this time period. He and Merlin may share much in common. I have gained some knowledge through observation. Merlin ages backward at a slow rate a life span to rival that of a century-man. He remembers the future."

"Then how am I to escape him? If I try in the future, he will remember that I did."

"You aren't bound by linear time, Pariah. You have one other friend who might be of some assistance."

"Who?"

"Death. Merlin seems to be working with the tools of Death's trade. At any rate, we need to get back inside. The old man will be returning soon."

"From where?"

If hummingbirds can smile, Guide did.

"The future."

"Ah, Pariah," the wizened old man raised his wrinkled brow as Pariah slipped silently back into the cave, "I see you've overcome your surrogate personality. Ah, well, such is the wyrding way. It was a weak one at best."

An owl flapped noisily down and perched on Pariah's shoulder. Pariah turned to be confronted by its unblinking, yellow eyes.

"I believe you may know the fowl companion I call Archamedes. I re-programmed your Manual for certain maintenance tasks. You'll no doubt be fond of the new version. He makes a rather silent companion."

"Guide?" Pariah questioned. The owl cocked its head to the side in mute confirmation.

For a while Pariah stood quietly, saying nothing to his cryptic captor or the bird that had so recently been an annoying sojourner. Finally the old man lost interest in Pariah and began scribbling away at a parchment muttering in an ancient English dialect Pariah had only encountered once or twice. Pariah took in his new surroundings. The cavern was a great deal larger than he had originally thought. As he watched a great beast lumbered into view from the dark recesses of the cavern. Moving with mechanical smoothness, it picked up a bulky piece of equipment and placed it gently to the immediate left of Merlin. Having completed the task, it lumbered back into the darkness.

"A... Dinosaur?" Pariah murmured.

"Eh? Dinosaur?" Merlin looked up and laughed, "Latin, means 'terrible lizard.' You'd do better to call it Dinomachina, 'Terrible Mechanism.'"

"That is a machine?"

"It's man-made... or should I say 'being-made?' It's an engineered labor life form. You grew up during this time, no? You'd have heard of them as 'Fire Drakes.'"

"The Dragons... of course!"

"Now you see, don't you?" Merlin smiled, "Nothing like bringing an illustration close to home. Of course in a few more centuries everyone will be 'enlightened,' and stop believing in such nonsense. Of course, by then all the evidence of their existence will be eradicated, buried in prehistory. Then the Modernistic age will come when people start believing in great monsters of the past again. Its funny how time repeats these cycles. Of course I don't expect you've noticed, have you?"

Pariah did not answer. Finally he asked, "May I go?"

"Not until I have your mother."

"No."

"You cannot refuse me, Pariah. You forget, I see the future. I WILL get your mother."

"If there is anything I have learned from my travels, it is that there is more than one future. I will not participate in a future where you possess my mother."

Merlin shrugged and continued his scribbling. After a few minutes Pariah broke the silence.

"Why do you want my mother?"

A low chuckle escaped Merlin's mouth.

"You really don't see, do you Pariah?"

"See what?"

"The true game here. You think it's because of your powers as a timeater, of some unique aspect you have, that everyone uses you. You're so wrapped up in yourself, that you're blind to the fact that it's your MOTHER who is the real prize. It's only by summoning you that your mother can be gained."

"Why? Why is my mother so important?"

"She is the key to the OM complex. She is the final piece that the complex lacks."

"Then why have the matronites all but ignored her?"

"Oh, they haven't noticed her yet. She's rather illusive. She becomes a player in whatever time period you appear in. She's unique you know? I have never encountered another Paraseer in all my travels, and I wonder what makes you different from other timeaters, that you have this symbiot?"

Merlin shrugged the momentary question away and went back to his writing.

"You cannot hold me here," Pariah tested him. Without looking up, Merlin waved him away.

"Leave, go. You will be found when needed."

Pariah sought the imbalance that allowed him to fade into the stream of time, and was shocked at the strain it caused. He fell back, dizzy with the effort.

Merlin laughed without looking up from his parchment.

"You thought I would let you leave this plane of time? I need you here because I need your mother. When I told you that you were allowed to leave, I meant this cave, not this time."

Pariah slumped in the corner.

Sleep was not pleasant. Merlin's power invaded his mind, and as he fell into slumber, he felt his personality being stripped down and re-configured. He had to continually re-awaken himself to keep this from happening. How he knew that the dawn had come in the virtual darkness of the cave was a mystery to him, but he sensed its arrival.

"Pariah, do go into town and fetch your mother, would you? Perhaps you will have more success than the automaton I was sending in your place."

Pariah remained where he was, as if he had not heard the command.

Merlin sighed, "You are wondering why you should do what I ask. The answer is nothing profound. I will allow you to go once I have achieved control of your mother. I will permanently sever the tie that binds the two of you, and you will be allowed to fall back into the dream-existence you have always known until time itself comes to an end. Mind you, I have nothing to lose. The longer I keep you here, the more of your destructive energies I can tap, and study of this OM complex has proved invaluable."

"I will leave now and consider my options," Pariah muttered, willing his legs to raise him.

"Take your time," Merlin shrugged, "Its what you're best at."

At the cave's exit, Pariah nearly missed seeing Guide hovering pathetically as a tiny moth, nearly transparent. When Guide spoke, it was barely a whisper, and half his words were carried away on the wind.

"Guide? Has Merlin reprogrammed you, too?" Pariah asked sadly, with the angry thought that the wizard seemed to like to control things absolutely.

"No... cut from energy source... cannot project..." and the insect faded from view.

Pariah's aimless wondering for the next several hours bore testimony to the fact that he was completely unfamiliar with his new surroundings. It had been the artificial mind that Merlin had placed in him that had directed his comings and goings in this time, and he had no recollection of them. When guidance came, it was in a most unexpected form. The old, familiar urge of the Tracking welled up inside him, and his body went rigid. At first he thought it might be Merlin calling him back, but everything about it suggested the Tracking's guidance. He literally ran for almost three miles to a low grove of trees nestled in the open countryside of a massive valley.

'Dig,' came the command within him. Pariah fell to his knees and shoveled at the earth as if his life depended on it. His bare hands ached at the effort as the soil flew between his legs like some great dog hiding his bone. Suddenly he felt his fingers strike something hard and smooth. He quickly cleared the dirt from around it. What he saw brought a smile to his face.

Euona looked up from her pile of woolen wares and smiled slyly. Here came that rascal Ebrick. He would try to get her to explore the broken mountains with him, and she would find some excuse to send him away like a poor puppy. She never tired of the game. Neither did he, apparently, as he kept coming back. But as he approached, she saw that something was different. His face seemed softer, his eyes sadder, and he walked less stiffly. It was like the change she had seen come over him briefly the other day.

He stopped in front of her booth and looked silently into her eyes for a moment. Then he quietly said, "It will be okay. This one thing I promise: I will not let him take hold of you, I swear it." With that, he turned on his heels and walked away from a very confused peasant girl.

Pariah had needed to see his mother once more for a reason he could not define. The sight was enough, and now he would head back to do what had to be done. He would do it alone, for he saw no other way.

"Pariah!" someone called his name. He spun on his heel and found himself face to face with a teenage boy he did not immediately recognize. The boy smiled a familiar smile, and Pariah felt a sudden rush of relief.

"Joseph! How do you always find me?"

"I knew you would be here. You need my help again, don't you?"

Pariah frowned. Perhaps there WAS another way.

"I don't know, Joseph, the force I face now is great. I don't want to get you in over your head."

Joseph nodded.

"Merlin, I know. I have met the vile creature once or twice in my time. I am prepared to face him again. I won't turn away from you in a time of need."

Pariah considered this, and finally stretched out an arm.

"Take this," he handed an object to Joseph, "Meet me when the full moon rises to the center of the sky tonight. At Merlin's cave in the broken mountain. Do you know the way?"

"I'll manage," Joseph responded, and added, "Oh, and Pariah? Its good to see you again, lad."

Pariah waited outside the cave until the time was almost upon him. He did not want to confront Merlin until the time was absolutely right. Several times he turned to enter the cavern, and the Tracking held him back. Apparently his former master had something else in mind. As Pariah shivered at the chill descending over the land, he checked the position of the moon again. He did not much mind if Joseph didn't show, because it meant his friend was not in danger from Merlin. Suddenly the moon was blotted out entirely. A whooshing of wind nearly knocked him to the ground as an ungainly object descended from a sky that had been clear moments ago. A sliver of light split down the side of the bulky object, and a tall, thin form was silhouetted in the light.

"Figures you'un's 'ould be lurkin' about des' parts," the figure stated in broken dialects.

"Death?" Pariah asked

"In the flesh... heh..." the space-fairer answered sarcastically, "Readins' said there might be a bitta photon crystal's 'round these parts."

"More anna bit," Pariah responded, holding up the handful of crystals he had dug up under the trees.

"What wouldja like fer em?" Death asked, "I'd hate ta have traveled all this way back only 'ta have ya turn me 'way."

Pariah was about to answer when a new voice interceded.

"Mind introducing me to your friend, Pariah?"

Pariah turned to see Joseph coming over the edge of the steep hill.

"Joseph, this is Death,"

"Charmed," smiled the ghastly apparition. Joseph recoiled.

"You make notorious friends, Pariah," he stammered.

"That's only a name he calls himself," Pariah quickly added. Death, for his part, simply continued smiling.

"Shall we not then close 'dis small transaction?" Death asked Pariah.

"If you do me a favor, you can have all the crystals," Pariah answered casually.

Merlin looked up to see the strange trio enter his abode. He nodded in their direction.

"Pariah, I see you've brought Death. Oh, and Joseph Blecky? What a pleasant surprise!"

"The pleasure is all yours," Joseph scowled. Merlin turned to Pariah and sighed.

"What do you hope to accomplish by this, Timeater?"

Pariah, Joseph, and Death each held up a photon crystal. Each crystal began to glow. Merlin looked down to the table where he had partially disassembled the OM complex. The crystal in its interior was also glowing.

"Care to play a little game with us?" Pariah asked.

Merlin smiled as maniacally as he could envision himself being. "I thought we were playing a game."

"You were playing but we brought enough toys for us all."

Pariah could not be sure that he knew the crystals or how the tracking intended him to use the crystals. They were mysterious and as dangerous as they were beautiful. Even Merlin did not know the true nature or extent of their power, which is the main thing Pariah relied on. Death and Joseph stood their ground in hopes that Pariah knew what only the tracking could know.

Merlin then reacted as Pariah, or the tracking within Pariah, had intended him to act. He tried to slip the last glowing crystal into a pocket in his robe to keep it out of Pariah's posession. The crystal, probably with Guide's help, activated the game encoded in it's quantum memory matrix and all four players were pulled out of time-space into a synthetic reality outside of collective reality although it was still a reality.

Death knew the game well. He held his ground on a plateau over the small town where the others were materializing. Merlin was not visible to Death, but Death knew Merlin was around. A signal from Death brought his team together on the open ground above the main portion of the game.

It was Pariah who took the first step and willed himself into the first form. He chose to become Merlin so that he would have whatever power Merlin programmed into the game core for himself. Pariah could think of no other form which would help him in the game as much as the form of his enemy. Death's approving nod told Pariah that he had begun the game well.

Guide had entered the game on his own. His form was that of the silver owl, Bubo. He flew into the field with his compatriots and landed on Pariah's broad shoulder. It seemed that Guide knew pariah in any form.

"You're confusing your legends," Pariah complained.

Bubo's face then melted into a replica of Pariah's so that Guide could smile. It did not matter if Guide spoke even a single word as the smile told Pariah all that Guide had to say. Only Pariah's face fit Guide's smile. Then the original face, unable to smile, returned to Bubo's form.

There was no question that Death would keep the same form which he always used in the game. It was his only form and potentially his favorite form. Pariah relied on Death's familiarity with the game form of Death to beat Merlin as Pariah had never won the game on his own. Death was alone as the star of the game upon which the other players relied.

Joseph started out by assuming the monumental form of Moses.

"Aren't we supposed to use the form of fictional characters," asked Pariah?

Then Joseph selected a new form which he figured best to face Merlin in. Joseph chose the form of Morganna; the one mortal which Merlin is said to fear. It was a good selection to Pariah and Guide, however, Death did not bother commenting. In his Morganna form, Joseph called a dragon for him to ride upon.

"I always wanted one of these," Joseph commented.

"What form do you think we'll meet Merlin in," asked Pariah?

"Merlin," said Death, "will only select his own form in here."

Pariah then noticed that Death had a silver spear in his hand. Merlin had thrown the spear during the conversation and only Death had seen it. It seemed that Merlin knew Death was the real threat to his power in the game and this did not make Pariah happy. Death sensed Pariah's fear and did not let it get to him.

Joseph, as Morganna, rode upon his shining green dinosaur into the greying sky to get a good look at the countryside. He had almost forgotten to put wings on his creation and the dragon climbed to half its cruising height without wings. Pariah noted that the game reality didn't seem to care about the oversight. It's even hard to say if it was the Morganna personna which had placed the wings on the creature or the simple act of Pariah noticing that they were missing.

But, Merlin was anxious and did not wait to be spotted. He materialized in an overly dramatic puff of smoke behind Pariah. Death was his most dangerous recognized foe, however, Pariah was his real enemy. It suprised Merlin that neither Pariah nor Death were visible when the smoke cleared. Merlin learned that his opponents would use his theatrics against him.

Death held his composure. He could have hit Merlin from behind, and Merlin reacted as if he'd expected as much, yet Death had learned to make his enemies defeat themselves. Merlin was an enemy of Death, more than a mere opponent, for reasons only Merlin and Death knew. If even they knew why they were bound to fight.

As Merlin rose into the air, expecting an attack from behind, Death returned the spear from Merlin's front. The silver spear hit Merlin's cloak, on the right side, since Merlin's reaction was slowed because he was not expecting it. Death was good at the game but not as good with his aim. Merlin threw the spear back at Pariah while changing Manual from Archamedes into a metallic dragon.

Pariah was not as good with Merlin's form as Merlin was. He tried to use his magic to gain control of the spear, however, he ended up transforming it into a smaller dinosaur. The model which Pariah had created from the spear drifted safely overhead without hitting any of Pariah's comrades. Merlin was impressed at Pariah's feat, however, Death barely noticed it.

Joseph spotted Merlin and tried to knock him out of the sky with a few bolts of lightning. As he had Death's poor aim and Pariah's weak control over his power in the game, Joseph was more dangerous to Death and Pariah than Merlin was. It took nearely two dozen bolts from the greying sky before Joseph realized that his team was spending more time dodging his attacks than Merlin was. Then he smacked Merlin's fire breathing dinomachina with a wild wind from the starboard side.

Merlin had difficulty maintaining his control over Manual since the wind caused a barrel roll. Realizing his position, Merlin fired off a few fireballs at random to keep Pariah's team from getting an advantage while he struggled to get Manual upright. Death hit a good volley of the blue-green spheres back at Manual and hit the dragon in the tale with at least two of them.

Manual crashed down into the small town. Guide closed in for a good look from the air to see how his compatriot was doing. Merlin was nothing to Guide, yet, Manual matterred. Using the internal channel of comminication between Guide and Manual, Guide was able to determine that Merlin wasn't with Manual when the great beast slammed the ground. It was a feature of the O.M. Complex that Merlin had overlooked.

Guide had to elect between informing Pariah that Merlin was on the loose or checking on Manual. For Pariah's own sake, Guide chose to examine Manual first. Programming made Guide user friendly, although Guide was not meant to be a crutch to his user. Pariah had to do the thinking and Guide had to be sure that Pariah did so as much as he knew so.

Death sensed Merlin's transport across the game reality and had his sickle at Merlin's throat the moment Merlin materialized. This left Merlin with no use of his chosen location, and he vanished again. Experience told Death that Merlin would try to hit Pariah from close range. Merlin was weak in his midrange attacks, yet, Pariah was weak in his will to attack.

Both Merlin and Death underestimated Pariah's will to fight for his mother. He had not had anything to fight for in the past, since a Timeater has nothing. Pariah was a man as much as a timeater and would fight with the will of a dragon to protect whatever he loved. That allowed Pariah to feel Merlin's motions through the substructure of the game.

Merlin appeared behind Pariah, with Death moving in to defend. A bronze staff appeared in Merlin's hand to strike at Pariah. With the blow, Pariah vanished to re-appear behind Merlin and Death was suprised to be hit with the heavy crystal at the end of Merlin's staff. Suprise didn't hit Merlin until Pariah blasted him with a fireball from directly behind him.

Joseph used another lightning bolt to remove the staff from Merlin's unsteady hands. Success got the best of Joseph and he allowed Merlin to get a clean shot at him when Merlin rolled to the ground. The winged beast upon which Joseph had been perched took a direct hit from Merlin's blast and vanished. Falling a few hundred feet knocked the wind out of Joseph's game personna, but did not delete her.

Death was hurting from Merlin's blow and happy with Pariah's improvement. He could concentrate more on playing the game if he didn't have to worry with protecting Pariah. Game reality did not accept that Death could have any broken bones so it recast Death's game object in perfect health. Only a dull ache told Death that he'd been hit.

Guide got Manual airborn just in time for Merlin to mount his trusty steed. It was important that Merlin not see Guide so Guide hid between Manual's talons. At the first available chance, Guide would fly off so that Merlin would not sense that he was more than a simple game sprite. But, Merlin spotted Guide on the outside of a sharp turn and decided to use him for target practice.

Manual could not help his comrad and it's not clear that it mattered to even the original Manual program. Guide dove and rushed Manual to keep from being hit without letting Merlin see him as a player in the game. Merlin's fireballs drew additional attacks from Joseph which were hard for Guide to duck, although Guide did not use his power to avoid detection by Merlin. It was more important to Guide to remain a hidden resource than to be victorious.

Joseph eventually got the hang of fireballs and Manual's breastplate exploded with a brilliant yellow flash. Manual's armor was much stronger than Joseph knew about, but the strike captured Merlin's undevided attention. Two additional blasts convinced Joseph of the futility of his attacks so he shifted back to the whirlwinds. His aim was improving and Joseph was bouncing Manual's wings so hard that Merlin couldn't return fire.

Death called up a flock of virtual ravens to strike Merlin in the face. It lacked the thrill of direct combat, which Death enjoyed, however it was effective. Death knew that Merlin would be left with no choice other than to dismount the winged dinosaur and was feeling for the jump throughout the assault. This time, Death felt that Joseph would be the target.

Merlin was not an amateur at mystical combat and knew what Death was thinking. In other times, Merlin would have taken the challenge to knock the pride out of Death. However, these were not other times and Merlin wanted something from the fight. Loss would cost Merlin more than he was willing to pay. He knew that he had to take Pariah down first and before Pariah learned to use the power he had in the game.

Pariah tried his first fireball, which simply incinerated the rubble where the town had earlier stood. He had the power, plus the will to call it into being, yet his control was as bad as Joseph's aim. Neither Guide nor the O.M. Complex was around to help Pariah through the lessons he had to learn in this game and that may have been the best help that Pariah could get. It was the kind of a challenge which had to be met and overcome by Pariah's will alone and helping him would have been a hinderance.

First, Joseph tried hitting the great dinosaur upon which Merlin rode directly under the main body, however, experience told him that Merlin's steed was more vulnerable to attacks under the wingtips. The wings themselves were not weaker than the rest of the beast, but guidance was far more sensitive there. One good blast under either wing would flip the dragon, with Merlin in tow. This caused Merlin to try returning fire with a few lightning bolts.

Pariah got in a lucky shot, if you believe in luck, and hit one of Merlin's bolts with a bolt of his own. The blast threw Pariah back with what felt like a third degree sunburn. Marlin was not so lucky, since he was airborn during the immense arc. Helplessly, Merlin fell free of Manual to freefall into an exceedingly suprised Joseph.

Death could not strike the fallen Merlin without knocking Joseph out of the game. Aside from this, Death was not the kind of poor sport who would take pride in defeating a fallen foe. He would rather take Merlin from a standing position in which the battle would be hard won and thus truely a victory. It was simply too bad an ending for Death to take part in.

Joseph hurt too bad to stand, when he awoke. Merlin didn't even believe in the material world, thus he could vanish the moment his mind cleared of the burn. Death decided that the time had come for the final showdown and that it was not his battle to fight. Although Merlin was less of a warrior and more of a barbarian than Death, Death could not be less than he was. Pariah had to face down Merlin this time. A later battle would settle Merlin's debt to Death.

Merlin appeared behind Pariah with less smoke than in his earlier attempt. He knew that Pariah would not fear the lightshow as so many of Merlin's earlier conquests had. It was not the lack of belief in magic which fortified Pariah; Pariah knew that reality was only a fraction of all things which are real. This opponent knew what none of Merlin's earlier opposition understood. Even magic is just a tool and it is the men with the tools who do the real fighting.

Pariah would not face defeat, not realize victory, by the might of his weapons but by the measure of whom God had made him to be as a man.

Realization struck Pariah with the force of colliding stars in a pitch black sky. He did not resist Merlin's blow and let the force of the impact pass through him. Merlin's weapon went deep into Pariah and came right out again without causing harm to him. Pariah dropped his weapon to the stony ground.

A rapid pulse of light signalled Pariah's transformation. He chose to assume his own form, wrapped only in the robes of a roman citizen from Galilee. The robes were not ornate, however, they were the kind worn by a comfortable man of his time. Beneath and on top of this robe, Pariah wore nothing at all. He did not carry a weapon, nor did he wear armor.

Guide transfigured into Pariah's mother since he needed legs to control the dinomechina Manual had been converted into for the game. He landed on the red plated beast with a soft thud. As had Pariah, Guide chose to wear only the simple, white cloth robe. But, Guide was not preparing for battle the way that Pariah was.

Looking at Pariah, Merlin knew such fear that he knew nothing else. Merlin spent a few attacks realizing that Pariah could not be harmed by his weapons in his new state before returning to typical Merlin attacks. Pariah didn't even look at Merlin's spells as he dodged them. Then Merlin paused in a vain attempt to return to his composure.

"You're cheating," complained Merlin. "Why should I play by the rules when you aren't going to?"

"I am within the rules of the game," taunted Pariah.

Merlin knew that he too could become invincible if he only knew Pariah's secret formula. "I don't want to play this game anymore. Your victory will be meaningless, Timeater!"

Then Pariah unleashed his attack. He did not use a spell or a weapon object to delete pid objects from the game space. Instead, he reached into Merlin's twisted mind and implanted the feeling that Pariah had for his mother. All that the players were in the game was in their minds and that is where Pariah attacked. He attacked the reality that Merlin took into the game.

There was no defense for Merlin. He went down to the fictional ground and lost his game object format. Pariah reduced him to a thin, weak skeliton of a man which was the true form of Marlin. Without the illusion of being somebody, Merlin was reduced to less of a nobody than he really was.

"You win, Timeater," gasped Merlin through his tears. "But I'll sting you back with the same truth."

Guide dove Manual toward Merlin in a final attack configuration which Pariah could not stop. Manual fired a fireball in his breath toward the crippled Merlin. However, the fireball never hit Merlin. The game had a failsafe and knew that it was not the fictional game object format of Merlin in danger of having his pid deleted. Merlin was really dying.

"Let me have it, then," called Pariah. Pariah didn't think that Merlin really had anything to use against him.

Merlin struggled against the closing of the game and the force of his failing intellect to speak his final blow against Pariah. "The O.M. Complex and he who created it are worse than I am. Your mother's attachment to you is the only reason you don't know what the O.M. Complex really is, Pariah."

Pariah strained to hear Merlin's closing remarks about what the O.M. Complex was, although the game closed out before they reached him. Merlin knew what Pariah was after and Pariah knew, somehow, that Merlin was right. Unfortunately, once the game ended, Pariah couldn't wait for Merlin to awaken and tell Pariah the rest of the story. There was no advantage that Pariah could exploit outside of the game, so he took every part of the O.M. Complex and vanished into the void between moments.

Death was left with the three photon crystals Pariah had promised him and poor Joseph was left alone again. At least Pariah had his mother and Guide.

It is impossible to describe with any accuracy what it was that met Pariah's eyes, as he slumped out of another time jump. It was dark, and it was ugly, and it was sharp and angular. It was a giant machine that, in form, at least, slightly resembled the device the Q-techs used to pull timeaters out of the ether. Sitting in the center of the mechanical nest was a vaguely humanoid form. It took long moments for Pariah to realize its presence, because the form at the center was so grafted with mechanical parts, wires, circuits and protrusions, that it was impossible to tell if this thing had at any time been biological, or if it was simply some humanly shaped robot.

The thing spoke only after a long pause. "If you are sufficiently oriented, we may begin," it spoke. Pariah squinted in the darkened room to try and determine if this monstrosity was speaking to him.

"Information suggests that you require rest after travel. You have been provided for."

A Jolt hit Pariah, and he faded into unconsciousness.

The waking proved as startling as the knockout. Pariah lay flat on a table with mechanical arms and devices moving like a hive of insects, prodding, poking, and scanning his entire body.

"Ouch! Hey! Hello?" he called.

"Deactivate probes," a voice spoke, and the mechanical devices folded neatly back into slots on either side of the table.

"Who are you?" Pariah asked, sitting up to take in his surroundings.

"I am a simple gatherer of information. You may call me 'Harvester' if you wish. You have been very active in many timelines. In fact, there seems to be a great deal of activity gearing up across the continuum. But my instruments can only tell me so much. You seem to be the critical element in this entire process, and so I have been calling you for questioning."

The form that had been speaking to him, swept into view, suspended on cords and wires like a marionette. Its eyes were covered with red, glowing lenses staring hollowly out into nothingness. When he spoke, the voice sounded from all around, but the mouth of the figure did not move at all.

"I trust you are well rested?" Harvester asked.

"I'm fine, thanks."

"Then perhaps you would like to tell me about this device?" Harvester held out the dismantled pieces of the OM complex before him. Pariah snatched it from his captor's cold, metal hand and looked at it. It would be simple enough to put it back together. All he had to do was to re-insert the crystal, place a covering device over the gap, and place a circuit back into it's slot. He was not sure, however, how much he could reveal to this stranger. It would help to have the advice of Guide and Manual here, but they seemed to have gone into remission.

"I don't know what it does," Pariah answered, truthfully. Certainly he knew a few of its capabilities. The crystal within it allowed him to play the game. It projected the programs known to him as Guide and Manual. It re-formed into an almost invincible armor. But as to the true purpose of the instrument, he was ignorant.

Harvester's head swiveled slightly to the left.

"You mean to tell me that you traveled through a million different phases of time constructing this device on your own, and you don't know what purpose it serves?"

"I didn't exactly construct it without help," Pariah answered. He felt no shame in revealing the nature of the Tracking. He did not understand the Tracking, or it's true agenda. If this processor of information could decipher such things, perhaps Pariah was right in telling him.

"Elaborate, please," Harvester responded to him.

"I was guided throughout the process of building this by someone else. I couldn't see or hear what was guiding me, but it drove me on in a way that I can't really explain," Pariah stopped, lacking the words to go on. He felt awkward.

Harvester did not respond for a moment. In the silence, Pariah noticed the sounds of the background. There was a general noise of clanking, whirring, and clicking that could be barely heard above the constant sound of air rushing somewhere.

"You must speak of something that falls within the category of emotions," Harvester spoke, finally. "I have studied these at some length. They tend to drive most of the trans-linear movements I have been able to observe and record. I myself have not experienced them, nor can I isolate a constant cause of social-emotional changes or their defining rules."

"I'm not sure you understand what you are talking about."

Harvester ignored this, and continued.

"This force that you say manipulates, or as you termed it 'drives' you, is the key. It could be the force behind the Matrionite movement of late. I have my suspicions. I suppose that is the extent of the information I can glean from you."

"So what will you do with me now," Pariah asked.

"You're free to leave, or explore, or whatever you felt called to do. Now what to do with this device?"

"You're going to take the... device?" Pariah asked, alarmed.

"I considered it, yes. I normally only gather information, but this device begs to be studied. Still, my calculations show that this construct could be very dangerous."

The two regarded one another in silence for a long moment.

"I have some analysis to do," Harvester finally spoke. "I will make my decision in what to you will be about an hour's time. Until then, please do not stray. It would be inconvenient for us both if I were to have to recall you and restrain you."

With that, Harvester rose on his wires and pulleys into the ceiling, and was quickly lost amidst the cords and blocky machinery, which hovered almost beyond sight in the gloomy interior.

Well, Pariah thought, if he decides to keep the OM complex, there is no point in re-building it. Let HIM figure it out.

He lifted himself over the rim of the table he had been sitting on, and looked around. There was one obvious door, and he walked to this. Beyond it was a corridor, which Pariah followed to the end. He had only intended to explore a little, but his wandering soon had him thoroughly lost. He wished he had the guidance of the OM complex, or even the Tracking.

A large pipe stretched across a dim corridor caused him to stumble, and he skittered down a ramp and into a shoot. This carried him tumbling downward in complete blackness as fear rose to a cry in his throat. Finally he landed with a jolt in a long, smooth, cylindrical hall. At one end was a blank wall, and at the other a door. He sighed, and took the door into what appeared to be an elevator. Without waiting for instructions, the lift made a quick start, and then he felt his stomach sink as he was propelled speedily upward.

Even though it seemed to be traveling at an incredible rate, the lift kept rising and rising until Pariah felt that it would never stop. When at last it did, the doors opened onto a long ramp that extended out over what appeared to be oblivion in ever direction but forward. The ramp ended just short of a monolithic structure. It was like an enormous slope bordered on either side by tremendous, glowing orbs.

Pariah walked cautiously out onto the walkway, approaching the structure. It seemed to extend downward into an infinity of blackness. All at once, Pariah knew what he was looking at. It was a giant automaton. The slope and glowing orbs in front of him were its nose and eyes. It was immense!

"It has been so long since I have had a visitor," a low, monotonous voice boomed from before him.

"Who are you?" Pariah asked with a bit of trepidation.

"I do not remember who I am, or for what purpose I was constructed," the robot replied. "My memory banks filled to capacity many ages ago. I have overwritten my earliest memories with new ones."

A sudden whooshing sounded, as if a thousand hurricanes suddenly starting up simultaneously.

"What is that noise?" Pariah nearly leaped out of his skin.

"My intake turbines have started again," the robot replied, "They always start up when I have recharged enough energy to move."

"I don't understand."

"I was designed, I suspect, for some great task. But my designers apparently overlooked the fact that the amount of energy it would take to move such a great mass as mine was much more than I could store in all my many generators. Once ever several centuries, I accumulate enough energy for some small movement. I spend much of the time in between deciding what that movement should be. I hope, someday, to escape to a place where I am not so constricted."

"Did the Harvester build you?"

"Harvester..." the robot repeated in a distant voice. "Oh, yes, the Harvester. No, he is simply one of the many scavengers who have taken up residence inside this great body of mine. They come and go over the centuries, draining my energy, and fighting over the technology and living space I afford them. Most eventually die off, or lose interest and move on. I far predate the Harvester."

"Where is this place that we are now?"

"I don't remember. I could waste my next movement on looking around, I suppose."

Suddenly the light in the orbs that were the robot's eyes died down, and was replaced with the ugly, mechanical face of the Harvester.

"I have made my decision," he said.

Perhaps there was not as much separation between the automaton and the harvester as either Pariah or the big machine believed. There had been many changes in technology since the vast complex had been built. It was as though the main machine had been built in an elegant age of vacuum tubes and steadily populated by transister and later microchip systems. Did the smaller machines actually take up residence within the larger machine or were they being installed by whatever had created the complex?

"Do you have the lattitude to make the decision?"

The harvester hesitated a moment. Like Guide, there was a user friendly interface built into the harvester so that his creator could make use of him. Unfortunately, Pariah did not qualify as a user. Pariah was simply a subject that the harvester had collected for study. There was also little doubt that Pariah was not an interesting subject for the harvester to study.

"I have concluded that I should release you and hold on to the device for additional study. You will be recalled when I have completed my study."

"Why is it logical to let me go during the study? I'm part of the device."

Harvester calculated for a short while. "You are also the part of the device which can be tracked. Keeping you here allows me to be found."

"The others who will come are going to need to be studdied. They are the main source of all the information you require."

Pariah was not doing a good job of delaying the Harvester's actions, yet he felt compelled to stay in this place until he could find his mother. Something told Pariah that the Harvester was no threat to him, even without the charge of entropy Pariah used for defense. The Harvester was dangerous enough to have discharged Pariah's defences, however, Pariah knew that another secret was hidden in the vast maze.

The harvester did not want to hear what Pariah had to say. These machines did not want to become involved in the conflict that they were observing and trying to hold Pariah was sure to attract attention. It didn't even matter to the Harvester that the time Pariah had already spent in this place had marked it as a target. He just willed Pariah to vanish.

Time had taught Pariah that only intelligent minds could hold in corporeal in any time or space. Pariah use this ability as he never had before. It hadn't popped into Pariah's mind to even try jumping sideways to a specific target until the new feeling welled up inside of him. There was a new tracking inside of Pariah and it was Pariah himself.

Enough time passed in the jolt for Pariah to have a single thought, although he could only feel the compulsion driving him onward. With no part of the OM complex on him, Pariah's objective was to always seek out his mother. The two were one in this and all times. Pariah did not know or understand the force which demanded that he obey it.

All the mass which comprised Pariah reformed in the hull of a burned out ship. It was odd how Pariah could feel the ship forming around him in every detail. The craft formed first as an outline in his mind, then moved into more dimensional reality as a wireframe model. Then the craft began to solidify its being into reality around Pariah. Pariah's last thought before the craft was complete, and his first though in his new location, was that there were other living things in this rusty wreck.

"Hello," called Pariah.

A few sparks danced on the deck until a blurred holographic image formed in the air before Pariah. It had no realistic color, seeming as though the color of the image was evaporating into the space around the projection. The overhead lights flickered during the materialization process as though the ship had barely enough power to bring the thing into life. Several of the light panels over Pariah's head bruned out, falling to the deck in a hail of colorful sparks.

The thing before Pariah came from an old myth which Pariah recalled from his youth. Although it was barely able to maintain any form, Pariah could make it out. It had the wings of a bird and the body of a snake. Pariah had only seen this form of dragon in old books.

It's voice had a metallic squeal to it. The words phased in and out so much that Pariah couldn't make out its first statement. "Guide is online," it repeated.

"Is that you, Guide?"

"Question implies sarcasm which is not understood. How may Guide be of service to you?"

"How did you get out of the OM Complex--did the Harvester rebuild the complex?"

"OM Complex not referenced. Please index your identity for relational processing of inquiry."

"Harvester must have damaged your programming. You're not at all yourself."

Guide looked himself over for a moment, then assumed the form of a colorful sphere. The image was still blurred. "Your identity is not listed in the passenger manifest. Are you a scavenger?"

"I'm a timeater. You should know that since you told me."

"No entry in database for timeater."

"We're a group of quantum time jumpers. Since the matter we're made out of is the same entropy level as the time we most recently came from, we can influence the flow of time by discharging it. In effect, we eat time. You told me about all of this."

"Guide suspects that your programming is damaged or flawed. My memory system does not record your identity matrix."

"Maybe you should call up Manual to debug you."

Guide hesitated and the lights dimmed a bit more before returning. "Manual is a secure program. Passengers have no access to Manual."

"There are two possibilities," Pariah began. "Merlin damaged your program or you are not Guide."

"Guide is my name and my function. Please request a legal function."

"Guide seemed to be operational when Merlin was defeated. I'd actually say that you are an earlier version of Guide."

"Guide: Version 216-Chrana; installation Beta to the freighter Quartaz."

"You're a re-install?"

"Guide lists one update at unknown duration earlier than today. System memory is not entirely accessible."

Pariah thought a few moments on his status. Guide appeared to be some kind of a standard program used in this technology, so it made no sense to Pariah that the Harvester's larger companion would not have access to a guide. A few minutes passed while Pariah though about the possibility that he had slipped back into time-space and been taken a long way from both the Harvester and the OM complex. Logic said that the Harvester would have had access to this technology if a ship like the Quartaz was anywhere on the Harvester's planet.

"Can you tell me about the Harvester machine?"

"Guide is not part of agricultural functions. Quartaz is cargo ship."

"Harvester is the information collecting probe near here. Do you know this device?"

"Index not listed in accessible files. Harvester device is unknown to Guide."

Nothing the Guide program said could dissuade Pariah's belief that he was close to both his mother and the Harvester. Pariah tried to be convinced that he had jumped across space and could not break free of the compulsive feeling. There was no entropy within Pariah to confirm a jump through time so Pariah had to be within days of the time he had left. The strength of the feeling drove Pariah down the darkened corridores toward the main computer core.

Somebody, something alive and aware of Pariah, had to be within the ship for Pariah to be held real. Whatever it was had Pariah concerned since he could not feel its essence around him. All the life in the ship felt like the Guide program and the Harvester. Things which were more than mere programs seemed to live in the computer and call Pariah to move onward in the darkness.

Guide darted about in the narrow tunnels, bouncing off of and sometimes passing through walls. The poor program was as disoriented as Pariah and did not have the force drawing Pariah to guide it. Its user interface kept it near Pariah for little more than companionship. Pariah watched Guide in hopes that the technology of the ship was as easy to figure out as the OM complex had been.

Pariah knew that it was unlikely that he'd be able to understand the alien hardware without Guide's help. All the work Pariah had done in the past consisted of solving puzzles and following instructions. Without even Guide to lead him, Pariah was lost for lack of knowledge. Even as Pariah was not deluded, he was driven onward by a compulsion more real than the ship he occupied.

A small door seemed to draw Pariah with its glow in the dim light. Guide darted around the hall with clear concern for what Pariah was going to do in the room behind the door, yet this Guide was unable to do anything about Pariah's choice of action. Pariah's Guide, a trusted friend and advisor that Pariah felt bad for not paying more attention to, could have influenced Pariah with a few kind, wise words. The small red door was more powerful than the Guide program of the alien ship.

Although the room behind the door called to Pariah, he knew that Guide would not open the door for him. Pariah had no entropy to break through the door with and Pariah knew that breaking down the door would destroy his waiting prize. All Pariah could do was call to the force which drove him in hopes that it wished its will done enough to overcome the lock on the security door. The urge called to Pariah from within Pariah's head, so that is where Pariah appealed to it.

With a rapid clicking sound, the door slid open as though it had been intended to work for Pariah's projected wish of entry. Pariah concluded that this was also a Matronite craft and dismissed further thought on the subject. Bright blasts of energy shorting out around the room lit the room as though it had been lighted by a million fireflies. When the dancing electrons returned to their seats within their insulation, overhead lights flickered to life.

Pariah could not see around the room until the acrid smoke cleared from the air. It was as well that Pariah could not see to enter the room since the burning circuitry made the air unpleasant to breathe. Breaker devices snapped open around the room to break up the fighting electrical poles while the fans came to life. Although no single sound would have been classed as loud, all the combined sounds in the room were deafening.

Guide did not have to breathe so he could enter the room before Pariah did. It was part of Guide's program that passengers were not allowed into the computer core, however, Guide had no enforcement power. Security for the ship had long since ceased to function. If he had been programmed with the ability, then Guide would have cried at the thought of not being able to save his ship or himself from the scavenger he took Pariah for. The programs within Guide could not feel, although Guide noticed an emptiness where the feeling should have been.

It didn't take long for the fans to clear the air in the computer core. Space travel requires that fire damage be quicky contained for the sake of lives in the isolated and cramped volume of the ship's hull. All the automation in the fire control system still worked since it had been so deeply embedded into the system. Only Guide ran deeper into the core than the environmental hazard containment programs.

Looking around the room, Pariah noticed a series of chambers stuck into one wall. These large cylinders had no fire damage. Placing his hand over the smoothest part of one horizontle tube, Pariah felt the device come to life and begin to open. Pariah jumped back a small amount of distance to assume a more defensive posture, but the contents of the tubes more frightened than threatened him.

The top tube contained the sleeping form of Pariah's mother. Her mind had been linked into the computer core for reasons that Pariah could only guess about. She was naked beneath the probes in the transparent coffin where she slept between life and death. Somebody had placed her in suspended animation.

A second tube, the bottom of three, contained a more frightful sight. Pariah wiped the frost from the plexiglass to see his own sleeping form sealed into the case. It was enough Pariah to scare Pariah and it was just enough different from Pariah to terrify him. The thing was a variation of Pariah and yet it was not Pariah.

Guide restored the shielding and retracted the three tubes into the wall. The Guide program should have noticed that one of the sleepers was Pariah, yet it was unable to care enough to know anything. With the computer core burned, Guide was lucky to still be running at all. But Guide did not believe in luck.

Part of the computer core opened itself up in the center of the room and a huge crystal rose from the floor. Hardware had been strapped to the sides of the crystal, although the top of the crystal was untouched. Pariah did not know how big the device was as it was only partially sticking into the room through the floor. The force compelled Pariah to look the device over.

Pariah touched the top of the crystal and it reacted by turning its surface into a mirror. The device offered up a great deal of information that Pariah would love to have been able to read. Charts and diagrams flashed into the air above the point on the crystal with every touch. It made no difference what the device knew as long as Pariah did not have Guide to interpret its words. Upon seeing specifications on the harvester, Pariah stopped the projection by moving away from the projector.

"Good news," said Pariah. "The computer memory has not been wiped."

Guide moved to face Pariah before responding. "Guide does not index saying that the records were blank."

"Ok," remarked Pariah.

"Guide has no understanding of your OK."

"The Harvester does not have to hide. His enemies have always known exactly where he is."

"Harvester machine not known to Guide. Is this a priviledged function?"

"Somebody moved the big automaton, Harvester and the planet containing them all into the computer core of this ship. A physical planet is stored in the photon crystal of this ship."

"Guide does not understand."

"Those machines do not want anybody to know that they're still operable. This craft was wrecked just to destroy that planet and its contents."

"Passenger needs medical attention which is beyond Guide's programming."

"It all makes sense."

"Guide calculates that it is nonsence."

"Can a physical body be transferred into a photon crystal?"

"For this information, Manual is needed. Guide cannot process your request."

"I don't know why I feel as I do, but I know what's happening here. My mother is speaking to me through the computer core."

"Why do you hide a planet inside of a photon crystal? Planet indexes as much easier to destroy than to store."

"Unless you fear that something would survive the devastation. Then containment is more logical."

"Guide still feels that passenger is not mentally stable. Seek medical treatment at once."

Pariah was convinced that his off the wall story was more than fictional, yet he could not deny that Guide had a point. Reason made no difference to Pariah. The planet was stored inside the storage array of the Quartaz. It still existed and ran inside the crystal as though it was still in space so nobody knew about it. The force which compelled Pariah would hear no alternative.

The Guide program faded out only moments before Pariah did. Harvester called to Pariah from across the worlds and Pariah could not disobey. Pariah vanished into the blankness between moments and between places to reach the corridore which Harvester had carved through the realm outside of reality. Whatever force had awakened within Pariah compelled him not to resist the Harvester.

Pariah stumbled out onto the floor of Harvester's "nest", and quickly struggled to his feet. This place was not built for human comfort, and the floor was bristling with sharp metal and plastic protrusions. Harvester's form unfolded from the ceiling and descended in eerie majesty until he hung mere feet above Pariah's head.

"You were not where I put you," Harvester commented in monotone, "You somehow altered the course of your jump."

Pariah maintained silence. The sentence seemed almost accusatory, but did not demand a response, so Pariah gave it none. After a moment of silence, Harvester bobbed a bit and continued.

"That was just a point of interest. You have an unprecedented amount of control over your passage in space and time. This is unusual for your kind."

"I'm guessing you finished studying the complex?" Pariah asked impatiently.

"An informed guess. You are correct. The..." Harvester froze in mid-statement. His red eye-plates flashed briefly, and he spoke again, "A situation has arisen elsewhere in my chambers that requires immediate attention. You will await here until I have dealt with it."

So saying, Harvester rose through the ceiling again. Pariah sat alone, and tried to make sense of all that he had been exposed to recently. Harvester resided within a large robot that was essentially immobile and helplessly overloaded in its data banks. The robot stood on the surface of some sort of planet. The planet was stored in a photon crystal which was on a wrecked ship that was heaven-only-knows where. Pariah briefly wondered if all of the universes he knew where not simply programs running inside photon crystals.

"An infinite God need only daydream the universe for it to exist," Pariah remembered having heard somewhere. It was not one of the simple statements of faith Parson had taught him, but he'd picked it up on one of his journeys.

A ladybug fluttered down from the ceiling, a speck of red in a world of shining black surfaces. It landed lightly on Pariah's ear, and gently folded its wings under its speckled wing cases.

"A penny for your thoughts, sport?" Guide's voice whispered in Pariah's ear.

"Guide, is that really you?" Pariah asked.

"Unless you think this hunk of metal is breeding talking beetles," Guide's response came. It was the offbeat, jocular tone Pariah had come to expect from his friend, and not the helpless, mechanical speech the travesty of the Guide program he had just witnessed held.

"Guide, what's going on?"

"Well the OM complex deactivated after you left Merlin's dream world. Manual and I have been turned off until this Harvester character put us back together. Bright lad, that."

"What did Harvester find out from his analyses of the OM Complex?" Pariah asked.

"I don't have that information, I'm afraid. Our stingy friend, Manual, is the one you want to ask."

"Manual is active!" called a cockroach crawling gingerly up Pariah's leg.

"Manual, what did Harvester discover about the OM Complex."

"Harvester has reconstructed the OM Complex's primary function," Manual responded dutifully.

"And what is that?" Pariah asked.

"Timeater does not have privilege to that information. Timeater's ignorance necessary for function to be carried out."

Pariah rolled his eyes and called, "Guide?"

"Don't ask me, I'm just your tour-guide here. Manual handles the inner workings of the Complex. You want to know the ultimate purpose of the universe, ask me. But specifics, such as your purpose in life, I'm less than useful."

"You know the purpose of the universe?" Pariah asked, not sure whether or not Guide was joking.

"No, but I can point you towards someone who DOES."

"And who is that?"

"You're sitting inside him right now."

Pariah thought about this for a moment.

"Harvester?" he asked.

"Nope. He knows a lot, but not THAT much."

"Then you must mean the big robot?"

"His name is Centrus, and yes."

"But how..."

Pariah was interrupted by the sound a form dropping from the ceiling made as it landed heavily in the center of the chamber. It was not the horrific metal frame of Harvester, but a soft, human body. Pariah gasped as he recognized his mother. He rushed to check her condition. She was bruised a bit, but otherwise seemed okay. Harvester descended upon them.

"What did you do to her?" Pariah asked in something close to anger.

"I found this scavenger trying to sabotage some of my equipment," Harvester replied calmly. "Generally, I deal with such scavengers in a lethal manner.

But as I scanned this one, I discovered something that did not fit. She seems in every way to be one of the parasites that live within this structure, yet her movement in the dimension of time is five dimensional. She has a linear pattern very similar to a timeater. Upon further inspection, she has some sort of connection to you. This fits the pattern that I have observed, and completes the puzzle of your existence."

"What are you going to do with her?" Pariah asked in fear.

"That information is only necessary to you while you are on this plane. I will do nothing with her until you leave. Then it is no longer your problem."

But if this is my mother, Pariah thought, who is the woman in the computer core of the Quartaz? Is she connected to the other me that I saw?

"I am finished with you, and with this," Harvester tossed the fully constructed OM Complex into Pariah's lap. It melted and formed into the armored vest around Pariah. Its pressure brought a comfort back to him. "While I do not usually take a hand in the affairs of the timelines around me, I am programmed for self-preservation. For this purpose, I strongly suggest that you dismantle the device, and allow its pieces to flow back to the time-periods from which they originated. Please leave now."

So saying, Harvester was pulled back into his cove above.

It was hard for Pariah to determine if Harvester pulled back into the cove in an emotional fit, unbecoming of a machine, or if Harvester had been forcably retracted by something else. Many mysteries were focused on the strange craft Pariah had actualized inside of. And Pariah knew that staying in the craft long enough to find the answers would mean the end of the answers he knew were hidden in the wreckage.

"Manual," called Pariah. "I need answers."

It was Guide's soft voice which replied. "Manual is refusing inquiries."

"Excuse me, Manual. If we remain here too long, this craft and everything on it will face certain destruction. That includes us."

"Pariah," requested Guide. "That plan bothers me a bit."

"Why doesn't it bother Manual? He has to know that I'll do it."

"Guide does not have that information."

"You seem to know a great deal about this. Why did the people who created all of this go this far to destroy it all?"

"Guide suggests an alternate plan. Get your mother and let us go somewhere else to discuss all of this."

"Then you do have the answers?"

"Guide cannot be sure that the information was entered into my database. It is my fuction to ensure your survival."

"Can we get that ship back into space?"

"Pariah's reasoning is unclear. Why should the repair of a cruise ship matter to a timeater? You cannot use it for anything."

"I'm risking that a moving target is harder both to find and to hit."

"Guide lacks the programming to fulfill your request."

"Manual does not," answered Pariah. "Can we move this craft?"

Once again, Guide did all the talking. "Manual will not reply to this inquiry."

"I think I have a defective Manual."

"Manual is not defective," replied Manual. "Manual is online."

"An entire planet has been moved into a photon crystal. However, the machines on that planet are of a much lower technology."

"Maybe," injected Guide," the people who built this place thought that the lower technology was essential to the function this place was built for."

Manual cut in with a smug tone to his synthetic voice. "It's more logical that the structures on the planet were built first. Over time, the higher technology of the ship was created."

"But the robot was never upgraded."

"Manual is not programmed for conjecture. Consult Guide."

"Pariah," called Guide. "Manual may not mind your destruction, however, I was designed to be user friendly. Please, take your mother and leave."

Overhead, Harvester shook in his cove. He knew that Pariah's reluctance to go endangered his existence as much as it endangered Pariah. Having observed Pariah's behavior, Harvester knew that trying to force Pariah's hand would only result in Pariah delaying further with questions. Pariah was risking ascention.

"I cannot jump as long as I'm being watched. Besides, I don't know how to pull my mother along with me. She's trapped."

"Guide knows better. Pariah can do many things, as a timeater. It is known even to Guide that all Pariah cannot do is understand."

"Ok, old friend," replied Pariah. "What do I do?"

"Nobody's holding you here. Touch your mother and stop existing."

"How do I do that?"

Manual tried to cut in, but Guide shut him off. All Pariah heard of the phrase Manual had thrown to Guide was the word ascention. Intuition told Pariah that Manual was not a friend, yet, even Guide was really a device. Maybe it was not Manual's programming to be user friendly.

Then Guide vanished and Pariah knew that he had somehow actualized himself. Without Harvester, his mother, Guide or even the brash Manual, only Pariah remained to make Pariah real in this time. Something was happening to Pariah and he wasn't sure that he liked it. Time's walls were becomming real for Pariah.

"Just allow your mind to clear," whispered Guide. "Stop the world."

It was the longest flash Pariah had ever had. He touched his mother's arm and the two of them were lost together in the moments outside of time. As long as they landed together, Pariah would not be a timeater. His entropy would be balanced by his mother's presence. Jumping together gave them a short time of normality.

Pariah chose to land in the walls of an ancient, nearly deserted, city. He passed up the many other doors that presented themselves as he passed outside of time, through the overlapping of all instants of time. This was Pariah's jump with his mother. They would have perchance an hour together as themselves before the calling of time's unwillingness to hold either of them rejected them both from that moment.

A peddler turned a corner, hurridly jogging through an alley with his wares. He barely noticed two people, Pariah and his mother, lying up against a wall about a quarter of the way down the passage. Somehow he had expected to see somebody there and he just let the details of the encounter slip into the lost memories of his lifetime. It was the door of expectation which allowed timeaters to enter the timestream.

The numbness that perpetually hung over his head had lifted some, and Pariah felt that perhaps, this was one of the moments he was truly free. As he and his mother wordlessly picked their way over the stone-littered country-side outside a humble town in lower Italy. A thousand times, Pariah began to say something to his mother, and each time he was brought up short.

Who was she, anyway? Was she the woman who identified herself as his mother? Or was she a scavenger from a far distant time, locked away, until now, in the body of a giant robot? Or, even now, as they had jumped into a new time, had she assumed a new identity? And was all this simply a mask placed upon the person who she really was?

"Why do you do this?" the girl asked, startling Pariah from his brooding.

"I don't understand," he replied.

"Why do you," she paused, waving her hands in an attempt to find the right words, "Travel... around so much?"

Pariah shrugged.

"I have no choice. It's who I am. You should know that better than I." The girl... his mother? ...snorted with a hint of bitterness.

"How could I? I don't even know who I am." She shivered, despite the warm sun. "Everything about this feels... wrong."

Pariah frowned. He rarely understood people and his mother least of all. She must be feeling some confusion, strained by what was, for her, an unnatural passage through time.

A distant thundering startled them both, as dust rose over the mountaintop. This was followed by a legion of horses. There was no road apparent, and Pariah could only assume they were traveling across the rocky countryside on the way to some battle. He took the girl by the arm and pulled her up to the top of a rock outcropping, above where the horses would be traveling.

Pariah continued to watch the legion advance until the leader came clearly into view. He was a broad-shouldered and husky man with piercing eyes and a harsh nose jutting from his square face. His muscular frame rippled under his armor along with the horse's as he rode. The girl seemed to cling to Pariah in fear.

"Don't worry," Pariah tried to calm her, "They won't pay much attention to us."

Despite his words, Pariah was startled to see the leader hold up his hand in a signal to his troop. Across the advancing mass, the signal rippled, and they began to slow and halt, until the entire group stood still only ten yards away from where Pariah and the girl stood. For a moment no one moved or spoke. In the distance some bird sang a harsh song, and the horses snorted and shuffled their hooves. Then another signal from the leader and the legion began moving again. It was not exactly an advance, for the troop was splitting in two. For a moment Pariah couldn't tell what it was they were doing. As the movement continued, however, he realized he was being flanked, and before he could decide what to do, a hundred horsemen surrounded him. This accomplished; the leader broke off from the troop and rode toward Pariah. As he did so, thirty bowmen drew their arrows across their bows aiming directly for Pariah and the girl.

"What are they doing?" the girl whispered in fear.

"I don't know. I'm sorry," was all that Pariah could think to reply. The leader rode up until he was face-to-face with Pariah, and perused him with the blank scrutiny that seemed to slide off Pariah's true form. Pariah had received this look many times before, and knew that the general was seeing only those things he chose to see. He wondered if the legionnaire saw him as some great and defiant warrior or as a craven cowardly dog. Finally the general spoke.

"Surrender the emperor's daughter and your end will come easily." Apparently, Pariah thought, my mother is the daughter of the emperor in this time. Why couldn't she be a peasant girl and make things easy.

The timeater really didn't have a chance to reply, for just as he was considering how best to diffuse the situation, one of the horsemen grabbed the girl and slung her up onto his horse. A cry of "We have her!" rose and spread across the group of soldiers like a war whoop. Pariah himself was struck roughly, from behind. Spears of red spread with the pain across his vision, and he fought the need to black out. Who knew where he would wake up? He felt himself being pulled roughly up on horseback, while a nameless voice spoke "Now you will be tried for your treason by the emperor himself!"

Pariah had been through this area of the timeline often enough that he knew something unusual was going on. Traitors to the throne were rarely given a fair trial or any trial at all, if they weren't Roman citizens. This was especially true for military situations, which is what this affair roughly passed for. Under normal circumstances, the Legionnaire would have simply run him through and had done with him. Either he was under special orders from the throne, or some sort of time-anomaly had occurred. Whatever the case, Pariah meekly played unconscious awaiting further development, or such time as he slipped from notice long enough to leave this hostile place.

Through partially closed eyelids, Pariah watched the rough countryside give way to the cobbled streets of Rome. Robed citizens and slaves (it was hard to tell one from the other) gawked and jeered and scrambled to get out of the way of the swift army moving through the street. Eventually, the group moved into a giant courtyard, where the majority of the force rode their steeds to the stables, while all a few, including the captain, remained to escort the girl and the prisoner.

Pariah was pulled from the horse and cold water was poured liberally over his head. He sputtered and went through the motions of waking from unconsciousness.

"Should a clean him before he sees the emperor?" a soldier (the second in command?) asked the captain.

"I doubt he lives long enough to make it worth the effort. And as for the girl, her father will just be glad to see her alive."

Pariah was shoved at javelin-point toward the upper levels of the palace. It was a long walk, but the decadent decorations, borrowed mostly from Grecian art, and were entertaining to watch as they passed. He viewed the tapestries with interest, seeing a heavy Egyptian influence. The Romans never DID have much originality. He had never really considered it, but he had quite an eye for art from various cultures and periods of history. Such a good eye, in fact, that he knew for a fact that the elaborately detailed tapestry showing images of mammoth lizards moving across a primitive landscape was entirely out of place in this time-period. The Romans had no concept of the Cretaceous Period, and only a vague notion of dragons, monsters and sea serpents. They still believed the world was created from the body of a dead Titan slain by Lord Jupiter. These tapestries showed textbook ideals of a pre-historic world. Pariah nearly jumped when he saw this, but nothing could prepare him for what he saw next. In the enclosed porch surrounded with pillars stood a giant Stegosaurus skeleton like the centerpiece of the emperor's collection. The guards leading the two began to shimmer and change. Seeing this, Pariah looked up to notice that as they moved along the decorations of the entire palace were becoming less and less authentically Roman and more and more futuristic. The columns on the inner chambers were no longer marble, but rather the glass and plastic of the Citadels. The guards were no longer Roman soldiers at all, but rather lithe, tall insectile aliens in sleek, plastic armor. Pariah jerked his head toward his mother, concerned that she might be reacting poorly to these strange developments. What he saw surprised him more than his surroundings.

Her face had defaulted to a blank, emotionless state. She seemed paled noticeably, and her harsh features reminded him of that day she gave him his name in the cold woods.

As the massive doors to the main chamber slid smoothly open, Pariah saw a robe-draped figure sitting in a rotating chair, not unlike the ones Q-techs used to summon timeaters.

"Ah, the guests," a familiar voice came from the shadowy figure. Slowly the throne swiveled, giving Pariah a clear view of which he was addressing. Pariah scowled.

"You..."

"Yes, You," replied the voice.

The voice came across the room like a sonic boom, speaking with an authority that could warp reality. Pariah had not been in the presence of such a powerful entity in the past. It had a voice unlike the body within which it hid. Parson had been right about Merlin.

Guide and Manual then approached the foot of the throne, taking on the form of two lions. Manual was a black lion and Guide was a white lion. Aside from color, the beasts held a singular form. At first, Pariah thought of calling off his allies as Pariah knew that Merlin's power was too great for them. Then the mighty beasts and all that they symbolized bowed to the dark harvenger.

"You're not Merlin," shouted Pariah.

A warped facsimile of a smile formed on the emperor's face. "You mean that lowlife fraud that you nearely gave the Optoquadratic Metaneutrino Complex over to?"

"You will not find me saying that."

The voice called out, "what did you think it stood for? Octopus Milk Complex?"

"How should I know? Heaven forbid that anybody should actually tell me anything." Thinking a moment, Pariah recognized the voice apart from the body. Pariah had come to face the Tracking at long last.

"You should have read your contract better, my boy. You're useless to me if you start with this high minded desire to know things. It's costing you the power of the timeater."

Turning to examine the room, moreso to take his eyes off of the Tracking in Merlin's form, Pariah noticed that his mother was nowhere in sight. With the vast power of the Tracking, Pariah was not suprised that he had not noticed her disappearance. This whole illusionary world drew substance from the will of the Tracking and Pariah was hard pressed never to forget that. There was no reality outside the will of the Tracking. The Tracking thought himself to be God.

Pariah calmed considerably before speaking again. "Where is my mother?"

"You need not worry for dearest mumsy," answered the Tracking. "I'll take very good care of her."

Deserted by his allies in the presence of the tracking, Pariah felt his first ghostly trappings of real fear. The tracking knew that Pariah's power did not work when he jumped through time in unison with his mother. Pariah's mother had to follow Pariah on the back side of the quantum probability wave or she canceled out Pariah's entropy. Time would not obey Pariah.

In his head, Pariah could feel the two companions he had traveled through the depths of time with. Manual's thoughts had the cold confidence of a machine waiting for commands. Guide seemed stuck in the first syllable of a word he was forbidden to utter over the telepathic bond he shared with Pariah. Trying to live up to his user friendly interface, Guide was conflicted over obedience to his master and his user. There was no hum in Manual's transmission.

"You have me at an impasse, Tracking." Pariah paused a moment to clear the dryness from his throat before speaking again. "I assume that you called me here for a reason."

"Good guess, Timeater." The Tracking willed his guard to vanish into an irridescent haze before continuing. "I called you here to see you, but this is not the time for you to see me."

Pariah spoke again without thinking first. "That makes no sense."

"That's a good Timeater."

"I just want to go home, Tracking."

"I doubt that I've ever met such a fool in my life," replied the Tracking. "You seem eager to give up all that power for what? To start dying on the day that you are born and race slowly toward inextancy?"

"Is it not better to live a day as a man than all eternity as an insect?"

"That depends on who is keeping the books, my boy."

"Perhaps it is that you wish to live my curse for me."

"Who said anything about living? Neither of us is alive, brother."

"Whatever you are, I'm no brother of yours."

"You may yet be suprised."

Only a moment passed while both Manual and Guide vanished from Pariah's mind. The Tracking willed Pariah lost in the fog where he could be watched, unable to break free from external actualization and jump free through time-space, without being able to see his captor. Pariah was isolated in the glowing mist. He could touch nothing in either mind or body while entrapped in the fog. Time lost its feeling and then Pariah's mind went numb from the isolation.

Pariah lost touch with the ground that should have been beneath his feet. He floated in the shapeless mist while his mind ran out of thoughts to think. The mist was neither warm nor cold. Held in the mind of the Tracking, the mist had no feeling at all to Pariah. It was there only to block out Pariah's sight in a cell of isolation bareft or stimulation for Pariah's starving senses.

Like all Timeaters, Pariah had no sense of self. It was not even close to enough that Pariah could feel his own body. His mind had no concept of being so he could not feel his own existence. As long as the Tracking masked out all external sensation, Pariah was entrapped in the void that gave him his power. Movement had to have a feeling or it was not real for Pariah. Even the flow of air into Pariah's lungs would have been a focus for Pariah and was therefore forbidden to him.

In time, as thought time had a meaning, the voice of rage became all things in the void. The Tracking had reached the end of his patience with Pariah and lashed out into the emptiness. It was everything to Pariah since it was the only thing in his current world. Flowing anger had a taste and a smell to it in the chasm. Pariah defined himself as the uniqueness from the bitter stench.

"Enough," quaked the voice. "Now you pay for your insolence."

The stench was replaced by the smell of mold as a new reality convulsed into being around Pariah. A kind voice cried out from a much weaker mind to ask an audience with Pariah. It was such a weak presence that Pariah could barely sence it. If he had not had the isolation of the psionic prison to enhance his senses, then Pariah would not have known the force of thought he was then experiencing.

Manual spoke first in the new reality. "Your quantum offset through time is negative. You have jumped back through time a long distance so the entropy in your mass is charged to accelerate time. At this time, you can only kill."

Still conflicted between his user friendly design and the commandment of his master's voice, there was a turbulence in Guide's mind that Pariah could feel. "You withstood the isolation cell for better than three weeks and the Tracking was not pleased."

If they had been solid entities, then Manual would have struck Guide. Pariah could feel the tension between the two programs in the O.M. Complex and it was a distraction to the reality forming around him. The programs battled it out with unspoken words along the communication network that included Pariah's tired mind. Reality had no meaning to Pariah as long as the conflict reigned.

Somewhere within the mechanism, the Tracking's will still touched the tangled telepathic union forged within the O.M. Complex. He was not sure, as Pariah could feel, if it would be to his advantage to interrupt the battle. Pariah could also feel that the Tracking was hoping for a decisive victory on Manual's side of the war. Guide's words had stung the Tracking by revealing his defeat. The Tracking's mind wanted to be as cold as Manual's program, although he was too emotionally hot and volitile for such an idealized state.

Pastor called out from his deathbed toward Pariah without looking up to see him. "Is that you, John?"

"It has been so long," answered Pariah," that I've almost forgotten my own name, Pastor."

"No longer a child, my son, you may now call me Peter." His once eloquent voice had grown weak as his failing lungs fatigued. He spoke in short bursts, with no more than three words on a single breath, yet Pariah overlooked the disheveled frame and saw the man inside.

Pariah respected the Pastor and even the Tracking could feel that Pariah loved the Pastor as a son loves a father. "Thank you, Peter."

"It seems you keep strange company, these days, John. There are spirits in this room and one seems to be your truest friend."

Guide's attention returned to Pariah. "Your father has a few days left in this world, Pariah. I will stay with you, if you wish, but the other's fear detection."

"Thank you Guide, but Peter knows you are here," Pariah spoke to the program, now resolved into the shape of a chubby infant with doves wings and a glowing disk around his head. Had the sight of Parson so ill within his bed not shocked Pariah out of his numbness, he might almost have found Guides chosen shape to be amusing. He had often envisioned such cherubs hovering about this house as a child.

Pariah sighed, "There's nothing I can do for him, Guide," he spoke in desperation.

"You can speak to me as if I'm in the same room," Parson... Peter, smiled.

"I think that answers your question," Guide added, "Every man dies. You know that. Not every man gets the chance to say all the things he might have, though."

"Peter, where is Mary?" Pariah asked his adopted father.

"She's waiting for me on the other side," Parson said, and coughed violently. The coughing seemed to wear him out and he settled back in the bed gasping. Pariah remembered the kitchen, and the meals he used to help Mary prepare. Excusing himself, he trod into the other room, and began to try his hand at making a bowl of broth. As he prepared it, he turned to the glowing angel following him.

"What am I doing here, Guide?"

"There is a battle going on," Guide replied immediately. "There always has been. You are a key in this battle. Actually, you are the battlefield. The war can only be decided, in the end, by you. Every place you have been, every character you have met, and every voice that has spoken to you has been a move in this war. The battle is coming to a close now. Very soon, you will look in the mirror and what you see will decide the fate of this universe."

Pariah had grown used to cryptic answers like this, as if everyone he talked to was taunting him with riddles. The Tracking had said that he must remain ignorant to be a Timeater. At any rate, he was almost certain this was not the answer to the question he had asked.

Parson seemed to enjoy the broth, and was a bit stronger after drinking it (he only finished half the bowl).

"So what have you learned since you left us, John?" Parson asked the Timeater sitting silently beside him.

"Very little," Pariah replied, "I only feel more ignorant than ever." There was a long pause. Then Pariah felt drawn to say more. "Peter, you showed me a world in black and white. Right and wrong, lies and deception, were all so clear to identify. But I have forgotten how to see things in that way."

Parson did not answer this statement immediately. His watery eyes seemed to search the room for something. Finally they drifted back to Pariah.

"Do you see that spider?" Parson pointed to the little arachnid settled in its web to his right. Pariah nodded.

"That spider has spent its life building its web. That web is the entire world to that spider, and nothing exists outside the web. Occasionally the web will create food for the spider, and sometimes the web will remain strangely still for a long, long time. If I disturb the spider's world," the Parson reached up and gently touched the edge of the web. The spider skittered across the threads to the point the Parson had touched. "The spider rushes to investigate this sudden disturbance. It is puzzled to find that nothing is there. If I destroy part of the spider's world, it will rebuild it, perhaps differently to accommodate for the destruction. My point, John, is that there is a world outside the spider's web, but the spider is ignorant of all that doesn't fall within its web, and, you see, the spider has built its own web. It did not gain its idea of the world from some wiser, outside source, but it simply felt out its immediate surroundings, and spun the threads of its reality.

"You have an advantage over this spider, John. You have no preconceptions about the world. You simply accept that you are ignorant, and live in reaction to whatever comes your way. But this is not life, John. This is not life."

The Parson began wheezing and could not continue. Pariah sat quietly, waiting for his father to continue. The Parson settled back and his breathing became more regular.

"John, there is a guide that can help you cut through all the confusion to the heart of what is real. You and I can never see the world outside the web, but we accept that it is there."

"What do you mean, Peter?"

"Faith, John. Faith. There is one who lives outside this confusion, and sees the truth. Trust in God to guide you. He has put faith into your heart. Follow this faith, and you will always win."

"I don't know how, Father."

"Good," Parson smiled, "You'll do just fine."

The Parson was fading fast. Pariah could hardly contain his frustration at being unable to save Parson after saving so many others that he could never bring himself to care about. Pariah did not understand death, but he knew suffering, and Parson was suffering.

"I feel like I have forgotten everything you taught me," Pariah told Parson, holding his cold, bony hand.

"What would you like to know?" Parson responded weakly.

"What is death?"

"Oh, John, you know the answer to that. Death is the beginning of eternity. God has shown himself through all the world around us, but soon I will gaze unashamed on His face." Pariah paused to consider this. He could not summon feeling, but he imagined that what he was being told was a beautiful thing. Long ago (or so it had seemed), the Tracking had told him to choose. He had been unable to choose, so he had come here. Soon, he knew, he would be forced into the awful reality of freedom again. He needed to be armed for the decision, and he knew somehow that this was the only place to gain the knowledge he needed. There was something Parson had said or done long ago that told him everything he needed to know. But it had been so long, he had forgotten.

"Peter, someone told me that all my life has been a battle," Parson nodded at this, but said nothing. Pariah continued. "They told me only I could decide how the battle turns out. Father, I don't know how to do that. I can't do this on my own." Parson's grip tightened.

"You don't have to, Son. You have been alone long enough." Pulling himself up, Parson embraced Pariah, and Pariah -John- found himself hugging his adopted father back. The embrace conveyed all the emotion that had so long been absent from Pariah's existence. It seemed to last a long, long time, and just before it ended, Parson whispered in his ear, "I love you, son."

"I love you too, Father."

And as the embrace fell away, Pariah realized that he truly did. The Parson lay lifeless in the bed, his flesh already beginning to chill. But it didn't matter now. Pariah had the answer he had come for.

"By your will and not my own," said Pariah, whose name is John.

Then Pariah dissolved into the warm breeze that flows outside of time and space. The flow was just like Pariah, having no will of its own. Time's web simply convulsed, throwing Pariah out into the mystery that lies beyond the shallow, material world. It was like a sneeze dislodging Pariah from Time's lungs. No longer feeling that time did not want him, Pariah puzzled at the idea that time could be allergic to him.

A force grabbed at Pariah from between the material and real worlds. A force always pulled Pariah back into the shallower reality. As pariah actualized into the place where the force had positioned him, the force became clearer. It was a cross between genuine pity and outright disgust. Pariah had been captured by another Quantum Technician in another citadel.

Actualizing took twice as long as it should have because the mind calling to Pariah lacked faith to anchor it. The force came close to falling from its tower into the infinite with every attempt to grasp Pariah. It was a mind that could barely handle the concept of existing outside of the material world and was close to losing the power to call timeaters as a result. Had he been malicious, Pariah could have pulled his captor back into the void with him. But Pariah surrendered to God's will, holding the lesson of each jump close to his heart.

Pariah did not see the Q-Tech when he awoke from reality into the dream. The Q-Tech had to be carried from the room to a rest chamber after calling Pariah. Along with a few other faceless wanderers, Pariah was taken to a room just outside of the Citadel's main mechanism. Armed guards watched over the group, holding the timeaters more with their eyes than with their weapons.

The room was as nondescript as the void outside of time. All the walls were such a bright glowing white that the room did not feel like a room at all. It was like standing in a fog. The only objects in the room to have any definite color and shape was the series of chairs at the back of the room, facing toward the guards. It seemed as though the chairs were standing in blank, bright white space.

At the front of the room, where the timeaters were required to look by the positioning of their seats, stood a row of four guards in dark blue uniforms with red sashes. It was too bright in the room for Pariah's eyes to see these men clearly. They carried dark red rifles, braced across their shoulders. Pariah knew that the coloration was to make sure that the timeaters saw the weapons in the overly bright room.

In the back of the room, Pariah looked over his fellow captives. There was a guy in plaid sitting motionless in the far right seat and a well dressed man in grey pinstriped suit at the far left of the row. A man in dingy overalls sat uneasily next to the man in the suit. All six of the men in the room with Pariah were of overage height with dark hair and hazel-green eyes. They were as timeless as they were ordinary.

Taking the seat just to the left of Pariah was a man in a kilt. Pariah seemed the only prisoner who actually wanted to talk, yet he restrained as he saw the blank stare in the eyes of each compatriot he had in the room. Their eyes were fixed on the guards in the front of the room. Even Pariah's standing up, obscuring the view of the men, did not distract a single set of eyes from watching the guards. It was as though they could see right through Pariah.

Pariah returned to his seat moments before a bright blue beam passed through every item in the room. The thin beam made Pariah feel weak for an instant as it did something on a molecular level. It took all of Pariah's entropy away, making him a part of the world he had entered. No citadel had done such a thing to Pariah in the past.

Manual fought hard to prevent the O.M. Complex from being scanned. The beam was a threat to the power source of the O. M. Complex and Pariah felt the disruption. A short burst of activity marked Manual's panic at the attack. Pariah could feel Manual blocking out the O. M. Complex from the citadel's scanners.

In his mind, Pariah tried to signal Guide for instruction but Guide refused to respond. The room itself had been designed to expose technology as much as it was to discharge timeaters. Guide could not afford to generate the transmissions required to speak to Pariah without being exposed. All that Pariah could do was play zombie, like his comrades, and let Manual cloak the O.M. Complex from the sensors.

Virtual time restarted for Pariah when a hefty woman appeared in front of him. She wore a white labcoat that touched the floor so that Pariah could only see her head and hands. Her eyes were a washed grey, approaching the color of steel. The red tint to her hair made its color hard to see in the bright light. It was such thin, flowing hair that Pariah couldn't even determine its length in the brightness.

"My name is Ester and I'll be your handler during your treatment."

Pariah tried to wash the blur from his eyes with a series of quick blinks, yet it did not help. "My name is Pariah - John."

"Well, Mr. Pariah, welcome to what we laughingly call 'The Mind of God.'"

"I suppose that's as good a name as any. What am I being treated for?"

She looked down to a tablet in her right hand while speaking. "You are a class B anomaly. We constructed this place to give you, and others like you, their lives back."

"That would be a cute trick, if you don't mind my saying so."

Ester waved Pariah to his feet so that he could follow her through a door that appeared behind the guards. The door had always been there, however, it could not be seen in the bright light while it was closed. Opening the door, exposing the darker hallway beyond, made the door visible. She took Pariah down a series of long, winding corridors to the outer ring of the Citadel. There she took Pariah into a room with a plexiglass door.

"This will be your room during your treatment," she said. "You'll get an opaque door when your treatment has gone far enough."

"And if you cannot remake me in your own image?"

"Some of us hunt anomalies because of the threat they pose. This complex is a test because some of us believe that you can be reformed. If you cannot be reformed, then the first group is simply right."

"Have you ever succeeded?"

Ester looked up, but not directly at Pariah. "I was reclaimed, Mr. Pariah."

Pariah was not sure how to respond to Ester's remark, so he did not respond at all. She was as cold as Manual even though the warm blood of life flowed in her veins. There was a depth beyond the wall she put up and Pariah wondered, but only for an instant, if the same was true of Manual. Manual was a machine and could be forgiven the inhumanity that Ester was imitating.

The room was sparse. Each corner of the room had a camera so that Pariah could feel that he was always being watched. For some, such close observation could be a sense of boundless security, yet Pariah felt nothing about it at all. Both the floor and the ceiling were covered in lighting tiles so that there was nowhere in the room to hide in shadows. A cove had been built into the wall on Pariah's left side so that he could reach the terminal inside of it while sitting on the edge of the bed in the center of the room.

A mirror had been mounted at the back of the room, taking up the complete wall behind the bed. Pariah's captors wanted him to develop a sense of self so that he would gain the ability to actualize himself. However, when Pariah looked into the mirror, he saw the same shadow that the rest of shallow reality saw in him. Somehow, Pariah lived with the fact that he did not recognize his own reflection. It was another illusion in the dream Pariah was just passing through.

Entering the room to sit on his assigned bed, Pariah looked into the alcove where the terminal had been mounted. An image floated in the monitor. It was a candle with an eye floating on either side of it. Beneath it was a very old saying that Pariah had overheard several times in his travels. "Reality is that which does not vanish when you stop believing in it."

Keyboards were new to Pariah as they represented a technology beneath the computers he usually had to work with. Pariah jumped into times that never required him to work with systems that he could not just talk to. With the first keypress, the image vanished from the screen and text began to form on the screen. There had been a point, in the distant past, where Pariah had done some typing so he understood the basics.

Pariah decided to just play with the machine until Ester left so that he could call on Guide for an explanation in his mind. Ester did not leave and Guide remained hidden. Manual kept working on the O.M. Complex at the back of Pariah's mind and it was becoming an irritation to Pariah. So Pariah decided to focus his thoughts on his typing skills until things went his way.

"The terminal," said Ester," is so that you can do your homework during treatment."

"Homework?"

Ester looked off into space, reciting the same speech she had read off many times in the past. The words were just a collection of meaningless sounds to her each time she mumbled them aloud for a new patient. "When we cure you, you will have to be able to function as a productive member of society. To do that, an education is being provided for you. It would hardly be fair to toss you out into the world after your long captivity without the ability to fend for yourself."

"Thank you," Replied Pariah.

Ester sat beside Pariah to see what he had been typing into the terminal. "You have an orientation meeting to attend with Dr. Jonah in a few minutes."

Then she read the words Pariah had been unconscious practicing with. "That which fails to vanish for the lack of faith is our failure to vanquish faith."

She did not respond to the text. Instead, she pushed the idle button at the top of the viewplate on the screen to clear the screen back to the Matronite symbol. The text was not something that Pariah's waking mind had come up with and Ester knew it. Pariah would not notice the work of his own hands unless Ester drew his mind to it and she knew that too.

Pariah turned to Ester, looking into her mind by way of her exposed eyes. They stood up in unison to walk out of the small room. There was a weak voice shouting out in Ester's mind that Pariah could hear yet not understand. It could not focus its words sharply enough to carve them free of the background noise. The unity of Pariah's actions with Ester leaked the depth to which he had penetrated Ester's defenses and Pariah could feel that Manual was not happy about that.

Having touched Ester's mind, even at its outermost edges, Pariah had a knowledge of the complex that he had not enjoyed since losing the power of the tracking. Pariah knew the path through the clean, bright passages to the lesson room where he was to meet with Doctor Jonah. He even knew that Doctor Jonah had a hidden fear of the dark plus a passion for imported candies that only came into 'The Mind of God' once a year. It would have puzzled Pariah if he had thought about it enough to ask what Ester had in common with the Tracking.

The walk to the lesson room was enough to occupy, if not fill, Pariah's mind. Pariah found it easy to absorb the atmosphere of his surroundings, however, he had a hard time holding onto the things he learned. God had given him the power to survive his fate and Pariah was thankful for that. It meant something for Pariah to hold onto his newfound knowledge of the complex floor plan. Maybe all citadel's had the same layout.

Time, as always, was of little value to Pariah. Pariah could feel that Ester had the travel time from the holding rooms to the lesson room memorized. She knew how long it would take to the lesson room, thus when she had to leave Pariah's room to make the appointment. Every so often, Pariah would notice her looking at the time band on her wrist to make sure that they were passing the landmarks at the right time.

Ester had still not learned to live in the limited reality that held her. She may have been uncomfortable to have Pariah realize her limitations or she may have been comforted to not be alone in her prison confinement. Timeaters know that lacking fellowship is the greater hardship of the outcast world. Lacking any belonging in time-space would not be as hardening for the outsiders if only they did not have to endure it alone.

Guide was Pariah's companion but what did the others have that allowed them to go on? Pariah realized that he had not taken his loyal friend's companionship as seriously as it was to him. Even as a machine, Guide tried to be more for Pariah. He had never failed Pariah. Pariah had never thanked Guide.

Reaching the lesson room paused Pariah's introspection. He could almost hear Guide saying thank you for the kind thoughts in the last moments before Pariah entered the lesson room. Pariah wondered if his entry into Ester's mind was as welcome as Guide's access to Pariah's mind had been. In pausing to think, Pariah lost the chance to act.

Pariah turned to Ester, as though he had something to say, but she did not express a desire to talk. She pointed Pariah to a chair in the front of the room, saying nothing. Then Ester sat in one of the three chairs at the back of the room. From her seat, Ester could watch over Pariah and the timeater in front of him. The room had been designed so that half of the keepers could watch the whole class at any one time so that the other half of the group could rest.

The front of the room was bare, with just a pale blue wall between the lighting panels of the ceiling and floor. Six chairs, one for each timeater in the class, had been arranged with three in the front and three in the back row. To allow the timeaters to be watched better, the back row had been shifted half a row to the left. Nobody sat directly behind anybody. Each keeper had to have a clear view.

Pariah did not look back to see the keepers. He could feel their eyes, all except for Ester's eyes, burning their presence into the back of his mind. The feeling reminded Pariah of the fly that had bothered him when he had last gone camping with his adoptive father. It made no contact with Pariah, yet its presence was enough to keep Pariah up half of the night.

Doctor Jonah entered the room through the same door Pariah had used. His footsteps told Pariah that he crossed behind the jailers at the back of the room to the far right side of the room, then came to the front of the room along the wall opposite to pariah's seat. He wore a cologne that was so strong that it made Pariah feel sick. Pariah could identify Dr. Jonah in the future by nothing more than his horrid scent.

The man himself was as unassuming as any timeater Pariah had ever met. However, Doctor Jonah did not feel like a timeater to Pariah. He chose to draw attention to himself with a selection of garish colors in his clothing. It looked as though somebody had spilled purple, pink, blue, yellow and green paint on a white suit. Aside from the blue color to what hair remained on his head, Dr. Jonah appeared to be human.

His gait seemed forced. He had to twist his entire body with each step to throw his right leg forward enough to walk. Both of his feet seemed to drag, getting just far enough off of the hardened floor to move Dr. Jonah forward. Neither of his arms bent at the elbow while swinging at his side along his walk. Pariah saw the irony of this man destroying the resource of timeaters who could have released him from his illness.

Standing erect in the front of the room, the old man willed his voice to carry the full length of the room. "I am Doctor Jonah," he said. "I am the man responsible for this complex, jokingly called the 'mind of God.'"

To look over the class, he had to turn his whole body. His neck seemed too stiff to rotate his head even far enough to scan the row of chairs in front of him. In watching this, Pariah had the feeling that his warden was a prisoner of his own device and not some cruel disease. The idea was clear in Pariah's mind even though the meaning of the idea was not. Doctor Jonah had a sick spirit.

"Many years ago, I was like you. I was what they call a 'star navigator,' and I flew at class two level. My skills at piloting the commercial hoppers gained me a great fortune from the merchants that I worked for. The tricks I did were essential to extending the range of the trader fleets throughout the galaxies. Like you, I was happy and thought that I was helping people."

It was not clear to Pariah if the pause at that point was for effect or simply that Doctor Jonah had run out of breath. Timeaters, generally, are not very aware of the world around them so most of the class was bored nearly to sleep. Dr. Jonah's draw was simply in the empathic nature of timeaters. They cared for this man who seemed to resent them.

"Then a friend of mine showed me the error of my ways. The merchant class is exploiting the resources of the universe and there are billions of worlds in abject poverty because of it. He was a true friend and the league, our union, killed him for showing me the truth. We are not helping people. We are cursed to exploit their simplicity and keep them in eternal bondage."

"You may ask yourselves what this has to do with you. Timeaters are not used for monetary exploitation. Your nature is not in stealing the resources of the weaker worlds. None of you spreads poverty in your wake. However, this does not make you innocent. It is still in your curse to take power from the masses."

"As long as the primitives of the universe can believe in magic, they will not grasp the power of their own perfectability. One of you pops up every so often and they turn back on their path to omnipotence. They see you and they return to the rules that have held them back for billions of years. You return them to the outmoded ideal of God. That stops them from realizing that they are God."

"I've invested my vast wealth in this complex to fix that problem. Like me, I think that you will change your ways once you have been educated in your own faults. We will correct your defects and fill your minds up with the truth until it drives the myths out. Then you will be as free as I am. I promise that you will become as free as I am."

A charismatic leader, Dr. Jonah expected more than the tepid response he got from his class. After all the years, he hadn't gotten used to the apathy of timeaters and he seemed to resent that more than anything. They were never loyal to flag, ideology or mortal leader. All timeaters cared about was people. Timeaters are only loyal to Jahova.

Dr. Jonah's earlier pupils, the watchers at the back of the class, reacted to the speech out of habit. Pariah could feel it over the yards that divided him from Ester and the others. All six of the keepers were in the room for the ending of the speech so that they could pay their respects to the man that they were taught to look up to. Just afterward, the two shifts rotated and the second three watchers took positions in the chairs.

"It was never my choice," Dr. Jonah continued," to refer to this place as 'the mind of God' since that is not where my faith lies. I created this place to give you the same freedom that I have. 'The truth will set you free,' so to speak. My choice would have been to call this place the 'gateway oracle' and I would rather have you refer to it that way."

"Many of you have suffered long with your curse. It is your luck to have come to a time when there is so much truth exposed that I can show you. The others call this 'the mind of God,' although I cannot stand the name, because that is the place where you would expect to find such secrets of the universe. Tomorrow, the odyssey begins."

One of the keepers in the first group brought Dr. Jonah a cup of fluid to drink before collecting his charge. It was not Ester so Pariah didn't pay much attention to him. Dr. Jonah remained standing until the last timeater, the man in the suit was guided out of the room by his keeper. Pariah did not look back to see the door close.

Ester took Pariah back to his room by going completely around the outer ring of the complex. She tried to get him to memorize the layout of the complex by pausing to read a sign to him every so often. Timeaters could not be expected to read the language of the complex, even though the Matronites considered it to be a universal language. It became clear to Ester that Pariah had studied in his travels in the way that he looked at the symbols that formed the words.

"Pay attention to this walkway," Ester said. "Tomorrow, you will have to find me at some point along here. Dr. Jonah says that timeaters need to develop a sense of their environment first."

"And then what?"

"You have about a year of lessons ahead of you to gain your freedom. This is a hard condition to cure."

"So I'll have to find you here tomorrow. The easiest way will simply be to walk the entire ring in the other direction. Unless you plan on playing hide and seek."

Ester giggled. "It's a simple lesson. You just have to locate me tomorrow morning before your class."

"However, I may vanish from time-space if you get too far away from me."

Pointing to a mark in the walkway's joint between the ceiling and the wall, Ester replied. "The entire complex is ringed with monitors. Even if I am not watching you, somebody will be actualizing you at all times. Dr. Jonah has been at this for the past twenty three years and has learned a few things. Eventually, I have to sleep as well."

Pariah smiled at Ester. "I was only reasoning out where you would be."

"Please do not be offended," Ester replied. "With timeaters that is not as humorous as it was meant to be."

"Humor and offense mean nothing to me. It was a simple statement of fact."

Ester masked her thoughts in a pleasant smile. She crossed the hall, looking to a sign above a door, reading it aloud as she had with many other signs on the walk. "Main Computer Lab."

Not to be outdone, Pariah walked to the next room along the corridor and read a sign to her. "Trajectory Alignment," he said. "My words are bigger than your words."

He could not tell if the look on Ester's face was from the sour taste of his childish boast or from surprise that he could read. Pariah had studied under Mary's tutelage and could read almost a dozen languages. It did not come as a surprise to Pariah that he could read the foreign words on the door. If he had been aware of the fact that he should not have had the gift he had, then he would have been unable to read the symbols.

Timeaters did not come from anywhere in specific so they spoke a multitude of languages. It seemed that they came to know the tongue of any land they visited in a short time as a side-effect of their actualization. Literacy, however, was a different matter. Ester had learned by observation that most timeaters had not even learned to read their own language. Only verbal language was absorbed from the mind that actualized the timeaters from the quantum probability curve of the void.

Ester's pace picked up when she stopped reading off signs along the way. Something in Pariah's company made her uncomfortable. She did not dislike him. Contrarily, she felt drawn to him as more than a brother amongst the outcasts. Her mind longed for the secrets that Pariah carried in his heart and in his head.

By the time that the two of them reached Pariah's room, Pariah could barely keep up with Ester's pace. Pariah was uncomfortable to have offended his host, even though the words meant little to him. He could feel in his heart the things that Ester expressed in her actions. His palms became sweaty as the moments passed.

When he turned to speak with Ester, trying to make good the interaction that he had soured, she had already left. The precious minutes that Pariah needed to maintain his friendship had slipped between the digits of the clock on the computer. Pariah knew that he did not have a plethora of friends in any portion of time-space. Any allegiance lost to Pariah by his own actions cut deep into him. This was not a time that he could run from.

Unspoken words streamed through Pariah's mind for a long time after that. He paced about in the room as though it was too small for his comfort. Lost in thought, Pariah's body went through the motions of a conversation he had lost the chance to have. Pariah lost time after an eternity of time losing him.

Then the citadel moved into sleep mode. The lights could not be shut down since the timeaters had to be watched even while they slept. Instead, the lights were shifted over to a red spectrum that was less obtrusive. Pariah continued to pace for some time, too energized for resting. Eventually, Pariah slipped into his bed for a nap.

Pariah had been issued blankets that were transparent under the orange light. He curled himself up into an uncomfortable ball to get whatever rest he could collect. The challenges of the new day would not be easy to meet if his mind was not ready for its labor. It took a long time before Pariah drifted out of his prison so that his body could recharge. Sleep came to him only as Guide whispered a hushed, " good night" into the back of Pariah's mind.

Morning came up with the lights. The citadel had no natural lighting that Pariah could have seen so the lights alone told the time. Switching from the night lighting to the day lighting was a sudden transition that disturbed Pariah enough to wake him. It did its job well.

Pariah was not fed when he got out of bed. He followed one of the uniformed guards down the hall to stand in line with the others. There he was issued a few items and a suit of clothes. When it was his turn, he showered and changed into his new clothes in line with the others. Each step in the line was another morning function that the timeaters did in sync.

At the end of the line, dirty clothing was collected. Then each timeater was told to seek out his keeper. Great care was taken to ensure that each timeater was told to seek out his own keeper by name and that each timeater was addressed by name. The lists were checked twice by no less than two guards at each meeting. John Pariah was to find Ester.

There had to be a pattern to where the keepers were hiding, however Pariah did not have the inclination to try figuring it out. Manual could have accessed the citadel's computers to find her, yet he did not. Guide had spoken only a single sentence to Pariah since the processing. In this one thing, Pariah was on his own.

The easiest way that Pariah knew to find anybody was to search every possibility in a pattern. He looked into all of the cells in his row, then walked out into the outer ring of the citadel. Pariah searched deep into every room with an open door along his path. Each room was full of things that Pariah did not understand, yet Pariah ignored anything that was not Ester. Dr. Jonah wanted the timeaters to experience things in the search and had set up stimulation in every place he could think of along the outer ring. None of the keepers had hidden in the rooms closest to the cells. Logical though it was, the brute force search would take much too long.

When Pariah stopped looking with his eyes, trusting his feelings, he found Ester. She was sitting quietly on a bench in a dark corner of the museum. Her eyes stepped into the section of the past represented by a single exhibit and it seemed that she could sit on that particular bench, lost in time and thought, all day. Pariah did not understand the collection of reassembled old bones that formed the exhibit. Ester's muse did not speak of worship of the assumed ancestors behind the plastic wall.

Pariah had a hard time with museums. How can an outcast from the confines of time appreciate the wonders of antiquity? The feeling inside of Pariah's backbone was almost eerie in that effect. Time was all that split the insect creations within the case from their worshipers in the present moment. Time had no meaning to Pariah.

Within the display, a number of upright insects of extreme size had been set up around a campfire. They were depicted as looking off, with newfound wonder, into a painted sky on the ceiling of the display case. Pariah could understand Ester's muse only in terms of the simplicity that life would have held for those creatures. Large boulders formed the whole of their living room furniture and they did not seem to care. The creatures did not have reason for conflict, nor need of thought, beyond survival.

"I often come here," said Ester.

Pariah was not sure if Ester was talking to him or to herself. He settled for the belief that her words were meant for both of them. Ester looked so comfortable, curled up on the bench that Pariah was hesitant to disturb her with his presence. His eyes touched hers, momentarily, and he saw a warm glow in the grey rings around her deep pupils. Until he saw the warmth that he could feel in his own spine, Pariah had not thought of Ester as a living being.

"As a timeater," Ester continued, " life was much simpler for me."

Pariah took a seat beside Ester before speaking to her. "Is that the truth of the matter or just how it looks with your new eyes?"

A smile tried to part Ester's lips, failing only at the last moment. She pulled her legs up onto the bench, curling up a small amount for warmth and protection. "Is there a difference if I cannot see one?"

"All of creation has been our classroom and yet we have gained nothing for all is vanity."

Ester wrapped her arms around her knees, with a sigh. "I suppose that the two of us could debate almost anything after all this time. And time is the one thing that neither of us knows anything about."

To comfort Ester, Pariah smiled an uneasy smile with the edges of his lips. "So," Pariah began. "What are you looking at so intently?"

"At one time, Matronites believed that those things became us. Having dropped the mysticism, most of us now know that these things didn't turn into anything. They're just dead and gone forever."

"That's a bleak outlook," commented Pariah.

"It's a realistic outlook," replied Ester.

"I'm familiar with evolution," answered Pariah. "May I ask what changed your mind?"

"A century or so ago, we discovered the Zen Oscillation," she answered. "I don't mean to sound as if all Matronites have caught up with science. Some still hold their faith in evolution."

"Those words sound almost painful to you."

"Most Matronites hold the belief that anomalies like us have to be destroyed. We reinforce a mystical view of reality that makes reality hard for the universe to embrace."

"But not here," added Pariah.

"This group believes that we can be reformed. We can be made productive and less threatening to the truth that our presence would otherwise hide."

"And if we are the real truth that is denied?"

She tried to smile at Pariah, but her lips would not move into the right shape. Her cheeks alone obeyed her command. "You're going to be harder to heal than I was."

"Is there a problem with being who I am? I do, after all, exist."

"Your presence binds minds that should be growing past childish myths. They see you and believe in magic again."

"Faith is not a bad word," Pariah responded.

"Faith is the crib of the child's mind," replied Ester. "A child must grow up at some point."

"What is the 'Zen Oscillation?'"

"I could hardly do the theory justice," commented Ester.

Pariah sneezed to clear his throat and restore his calm. "A wise man once said that you don't really understand anything you cannot explain to your grandmother."

"I had a bright grandmother," Ester snapped back.

"However," responded Pariah," I know that you cannot remember her."

"That's a low blow, John," answered Ester.

"It's a truth that we both share."

"The 'Zen Oscillation' is a quantum principle. It says that the universe can reach any degree of complexity as long as the quantum probability wave cancels itself out."

"That explanation has an antiseptic feel to it," Pariah answered. "What is it in your own words?"

"As long as everything has its opposite to maintain balance, the universe can create anything. Anything that creates an imbalance in the universe causes its opposite to materialize."

"That sounds like magic to me."

Ester managed a real smile, stretching from her embryonic posture. "The Oscillation is getting bigger with each convulsive resolution, but the sum of the universe is still at zero. It's all flawlessly logical and you will come to understand as the others teach you the truth. I told you that I couldn't do the theory justice."

"Your theory disavows justice. In time, I hope that you tell me the truth."

"I just did."

"Not the Matronite truth," Pariah responded. "I want to hear your truth."

"I'm afraid there's no difference."

"Is that the reality of the matter of just how it appears to your new eyes?"

"What answer would you like to hear?"

"The battle of wits has begun," quipped Pariah. "However, I'm sure that we have something else of the schedule for today's recreation."

"Everything in 'The Mind of God' is a battle of wits."

"Just tell me, truly, if you are as uncomfortable in this place as I am."

"At one time," answered Ester," I was. But the truth has set me free."

"Truth is that reality is the ultimate delusion."

Standing erect, Ester motioned Pariah to his feet. "You have an appointment with Doctor Jonah this morning to begin your reform. Take it up with him."

Ester's evasion told Pariah to back down for awhile. He turned his eyes away from Ester to a see a woman in green coveralls moving crystals around in a panel beside the display. As she moved the glowing rods around in their sockets, the images in the display deformed for an instant. It wasn't like the lights dimmed, but the solid makeup of the objects in the display momentarily dissolved. The objects in the museum only appeared to be there.

As the woman turned to leave, Pariah caught sight of a familiar face. Pariah's mother had come into the complex as the curator of the museum. The woman didn't recognize Pariah and he did not want to disrupt her cover by letting anybody know that she was familiar to him. She may have been the only paraseer in the complex and, even if she was one of many, Pariah was most comfortable to know that she was safe there. Pariah took it as his responsibility to maintain her protection.

She moved on without looking at the patrons in the front of the room. Pariah found it hard not to show any response to her presence and Ester may have seen more than she should have. Ester noticed Pariah's delay in leaving the place although she had too much on her mind to bother with questioning it. The objects in the display case returned to their solid form and remained corporeal until Pariah's mother cleaned the circuitry again.

It was a silent walk to the lesson room where Pariah was scheduled to meet with Dr. Jonah. Pariah and Ester were the second group to enter the room prior to the lesson and Dr. Jonah made a note of that. He always assigned the best patients to his favorite student, David Kellham, and Pariah performed better than Dr. Jonah had expected by coming in second. Ester thought that David was cheating somehow.

Ester assigned Pariah the seat in front of where he had been placed during initiation. Reading the confusion in Ester's tired eyes, Dr. Jonah confirmed his belief that Pariah was trouble. For a moment, Ester placed her hand on Pariah's right shoulder, rubbing gently. She didn't see Pariah smile at her act of kindness before seeing that Dr. Jonah had seen her motions. Uneasily, she walked away from Pariah to her seat in the back of the room.

"Mr. John Pariah, I presume," said Dr. Jonah.

"Most people just pick one name, sir."

With a sharp cough, Dr. Jonah approached Pariah, stopping just close enough for Pariah to notice his bad breath. "And which name do you prefer?"

Pariah thought a moment. It wasn't often that anybody cared what a timeater thought and Pariah knew that Dr. Jonah really did not. "I can live with your choice, sir."

Motioning to Ester, seated silently in the back of the room, Dr. Jonah continued. "What does she call you?"

The truth he was not willing to admit to was that Pariah could not recall how Ester referred to him. "I'm most used to Pariah."

Dr. Jonah turned back to Pariah with a sudden thrust. "How does that make you feel?"

"To tell the truth, it doesn't. One name is as good as any."

"Then I can call you Suzie?"

"You can call me such, although I wouldn't be like to respond to a name I do not recognize as mine."

"Introduce yourself to the class, then."

"The class isn't here yet."

"You're trouble, Mr. Pariah." Dr. Jonah turned his back to Pariah before going on. "Just don't get Ester into anything she cannot get out of."

"Man's destiny is his own affair," replied Pariah.

Dr. Jonah had a response ready, yet he kept it to himself. It didn't look good for his prize pupil to see him dragged into a philosophical discussion with a patient. Pariah was a tough student that would take a lot of work to enlighten. "Maybe," through Dr. Jonah, "it would be better if Mr. Pariah had an accident and didn't finish the treatment."

Over the next few minutes, the rest of the class assembled in the lesson room. Pariah waited patiently for the remainder of the students to enter the room and be seated. He knew that it was, more likely than not, a bad idea to challenge Dr. Jonah's intellect. The silence between Dr. Jonah and Pariah spoke volumes to anybody who cared to see it. It wasn't easy for Dr. Jonah to survey the class without looking directly at Pariah.

The last student had to be guided in, having failed the lesson. He hadn't found his handler. A hairline smile sketched itself onto Dr. Jonah's face, although he was careful not to be facing the class when it slipped into view. It would hardly have bothered the student to know of Dr. Jonah's condescension. Apathy is a timeater specialty.

"Good evening," opened Dr. Jonah. "This time of day is called evening, even though the time of day still has little significance to most of you."

Dr. Jonah took his time turning to face the class. It was just another half dozen patients out of the millions who needed his treatment. He felt that this class was lucky to have his wisdom as he did with each class that he taught. Even though none of his pupils mattered to him, Dr. Jonah tried hard to actually care about timeaters as a group. After all the years, he had finally succeeded in not blaming them for their disease and he was proud of his attainment.

"To start with, do any of you know what a timeater really is?"

Pariah was one of the two students who actually paid attention to the lesson, so Dr. Jonah avoided asking him directly. He tried almost all of the students before coming to Pariah. It was not the way of any timeater, especially Pariah, to draw attention to himself. The first two students that Dr. Jonah directly approached did not answer at all.

A third student simply replied," I don't know."

David Kellham's patient replied with the words that Dr. Jonah wanted from his students. "That's what we're here to learn from you," he said.

This time, Dr. Jonah did not hide the smile on his face. He took it as a seal of approval from his prized pupil's pupil. Dr. Jonah believed that the reply was hard to follow and decided to move on with the lesson. Before going on, however, he pointed to Pariah and Pariah had an answer ready.

"Timeaters," answered Pariah, " are a class of time travelers who have been given the ability to use the fact that the matter they are made of still belongs to the time that the timeater most recently left. It allows us to disrupt the flow of time for short bursts, during which the spirit is more important than the material state of the body and entities caught in the blast will snap back to their purest form."

"It appears that one of you has studied," replied Dr. Jonah. "However, only some of that is right and most of it is superstition." Dr. Jonah paused to take a sip from his cup and replenish his breath. "It's now time to separate fact from fiction."

David Kellham's patient was the only other timeater to react to Pariah's comment and his reaction was muted. If Pariah's response had been more to Dr. Jonah's liking, then it would have made Dr. Jonah happy to be teaching the class. Dr. Jonah had learned that most timeaters to take an interest in the lessons he taught were at odds with the truth that he was preaching. It was their ignorance that convinced Dr. Jonah that his teaching was still necessary.

"All real things are comprised of energy in one form or another," Dr. Jonah continued. "Even matter is just another form of energy. When you move forward through time, your material form contains less energy per volume of space than the surrounding universe at that point in time. It's like a pothole in a road. You carry a charge because there is a difference in potential."

Dr. Jonah had an animation of the idea that he showed in the background while he continued his speech. A white board formed in the light blue wall at the front of the lesson room. The animation was a shallow hologram formed in front of the white board in the wall at the front of the lesson room.

"You have the power to select when to open that void up and absorb energy from the universe around you. Because the flow of energy associated with time has an inertia controlling its rate of flow, this reversal in the flow of time is limited to a small bubble of space for a short period of time. Time reverses to allow living things in this bubble to grow younger and healthier."

Pariah interjected. "Why, then, do these things un-age only to the point at which they are healthy? They could all un-age back to childhood."

"There is an inertial cap on the flow rate. You can only reverse aging so fast and for so long before your energy is used up."

"Each of us has healed patients that were not healthier in their youth," said Pariah.

"When you move backward through time, you have an excess of time energy. The result is that you speed up the flow of time. Mr. Pariah, how would you explain the effect of destroying life when you discharge this kind of energy surplus?"

"Dr. Jonah," began Pariah. "The things I have used my entropy against were evil and the pure state of evil is death."

"I rest my case."

Pariah smiled, almost giggling out of the stress of the moment. He considered the conflict to be childish and was embarrassed to have been drawn into it so easily. There had been many cases in Pariah's history where he had been thought wise because he sidestepped such foolish confrontations. History was Pariah's schoolhouse and God was his teacher.

Dr. Jonah took Pariah's response as a mixture of defeat and disrespect. Disrespect was the stronger of the two ideas in Dr. Jonah's mind. His left eye twitched at Pariah in anger, as Dr. Jonah tried to suppress his emotions. No student would force him to admit defeat. This was Dr. Jonah's home turf.

"Who is it that you feel allows you to use your ability, Mr. Pariah?"

"It is by the will of God that all things are done, Dr. Jonah."

This time, Dr. Jonah smiled. "Prove that your God exists."

"Gladly," Pariah countered. "As soon as you prove that you exist."

"I must exist because I knew enough to ask."

"Actually," Pariah interjected," I asked."

"Independent will, the ability to think and act on my own and in contrast to external desires, proves my existence."

"To you, perhaps. It proves nothing to me."

"Your delusions run deep, Mr. Pariah," said Dr. Jonah. Then Dr. Jonah took another drink and continued," but there is still hope."

The class continued for a long time and Dr. Jonah avoided any additional interaction with Pariah. He felt that he had a stalemate with his arch rival in the class and that was good enough for now. Dr. Jonah had dealt with Pariah's kind before. Only one of the four had required an accident to set him free from his disease. Pariah would not be Dr. Jonah's second failure.

Pariah had studied in his travels and was bored with most of the lessons that Dr. Jonah was teaching. History is the last class that a timeater really needs to take. Aside from learning the order in which events are presumed to have occurred, timeaters know more of history than any mortal teacher. By the end of the lesson day, Pariah was the numbest of the timeaters in the class. A hundred years would not be enough to teach all the basic skills that the timeaters lacked and a plan of study that long was sure to erode the minds of the advanced students.

Dr. Jonah almost caught Pariah falling asleep in his class. Guide sent an alarm pulse through the back of Pariah's mind just to keep Pariah from living down to Dr. Jonah's expectations. Every fifteen minutes, the handlers at the back of the lesson room would be swapped and Dr. Jonah would pause for the interruption. Boredom was a form of torture too inhuman for the Tracking to contemplate. Causing the timeaters to lose track of time threatened Dr. Jonah's hold on them, however, it allowed him to feel that he was above them enough for his task to be necessary.

After five or so rotations, one of the handlers brought drinks for the timeaters. It would have been more comfortable for Pariah if Ester had interacted with him at that point, yet Dr. Jonah did not want that. Even discomfort brings awareness of his surroundings to a timeater. The fluid provided to the timeaters had a strong, bitter taste for the same reason. Dr. Jonah knew what he was doing from experience.

Pariah was thankful for the strong taste as it kept him alert. He was not thirsty, but he needed something to break through the numbness. Sitting still for such a long time was physically painful for Pariah. When Pariah was finally allowed to stand, he had a hard time getting his joints to move. It felt as though Pariah had aged all the centuries of his life in that closed room.

Ester's presence comforted Pariah on the walk back to his cell. Pariah had been sitting for so long that he did not wish to ever sit again and Ester seemed to know the feeling. His joints groaned under the strain of tense muscles along the entire trip. He walked slowly, moving from side to side along the walkway for the exercise and was finally comfortable just before he reached his cell.

Standing with Ester, just outside the transparent gate that sealed Pariah's room off from the walkway, Pariah did not want to enter the room. He did not even get close enough to the door for it to sense his presence. It was not that Pariah found the space cramped. Pariah's childhood room had been a little smaller than the cell he had been assigned in the citadel. Being aware of the small slice of time he had been imprisoned within was simply uncomfortable to Pariah.

The discomfort was not unfamiliar to Ester, although it was the first time she had seen it in the eyes of another person. She had once been a rider on the quantum probability waves, immune from the bars of physical confinement. Ester had run with the starlight, sliding down moonbeams with all of God's creation as her playground. Even being owned, a toy herself, Ester had enjoyed living the game enough to miss it when it was taken from her.

After standing silent in the hallway for a few immeasurable moments, each afraid to face the eyes of the other, Ester was compelled to speak to Pariah. "You found your way back to your cell," she said. "Are you ready to try finding the mess hall?"

"If it means that I don't have to sit down right away."

Ester giggled, not looking directly at Pariah. "Not unless you want to ride a chair."

Pariah walked back into the outer ring of the citadel, moving back along the way he had come. He could have traveled along the walkway much faster than he did. Speed was not important to Pariah as much as being in motion and not being alone. Guide could not come out into the open while Pariah was under such close surveillance and Pariah missed the companionship. Ester was all Pariah had and she was enough.

In time, the other timeaters were guided to the dining area for their evening meal and Pariah could just follow them to his destination. He did so only to avoid the prying eyes of Dr. Jonah. The basic needs of sustenance were not a strong draw to timeaters as they lived without existing. Pariah did not know that he felt hungry after his long life in the void.

Both timeaters, one former and the other yet to be, ate in silence before the monitors of the citadel. They could not speak the thoughts in their minds for fear of their master's wrath. Pariah had been given the strongest tasting meat and drink in the citadel in order to mark the experience in memory. Ester ate the bland nutrients that all of the keepers were fed. The meal passed into memory as Pariah was returned to his cell for the evening.

Pariah slept restlessly after the first dream that he had dreamt in many years. Timeaters usually do not dream and the experience, although the dream was not memorable in itself, shocked Pariah. He had once been a mortal and had dreams like anybody else. Parson and Mary had been there for him when they turned dark. But, Pariah was now completely alone. After all the time Pariah had gone without time, Pariah had to face the reality that he could be trapped in this one small section of time-space forever.

A friendly voice called out at the back of Pariah's head. "Care to rise to a little taste of irony?"

"Sure," Pariah spoke aloud.

"Caution is advised," answered Guide. "They're watching us closely, Brother John."

"Sorry," thought Pariah.

"Turn to the computer and select the system manual."

In his groggy state, Pariah took a long time to find the small picture on the edge of the screen. He wished that the computer could accept voice commands and felt Guide's mental smile at the idea. A few minutes passed while Pariah figured out the commands on the keyboard to select the small picture. The keys that Pariah needed were entirely labeled in symbols that Pariah did not recognize. Eventually, Pariah found the key that looked like a pinwheel.

Immediately, a password window appeared on the screen and nothing else on the screen worked. Pariah backed off and took a deep breath. If anybody was monitoring, he still looked like an innocent child playing with the hardware he had been given. He knew that he was being watched, yet Pariah could not say if the computer was tapped. All Pariah could do was believe in his old friend's guidance.

"The password is 'Delusion,'" replied Guide.

Typing the word that Pariah could somehow spell in the alien tongue, Pariah mistyped it from nervousness. Another deep breath calmed Pariah considerably although he believed that Guide had a psionic hand in it. Pariah could have taken the experience as exhilarating or as upsetting. Parts of him took it in each way and Pariah did not know which to listen to. In the end, Pariah listened to Guide.

"The fifth picture in the third row is the citadel layout."

Trusting in Guide felt good. Having Guide to trust in felt better. Another dozen keystrokes brought up the password window for the map. The top level, where the image was just a layout of the building, didn't have any security, however, when Pariah zoomed in on what Guide wanted him to see, he needed another password.

"Dr. Jonah is obsessed," replied Guide. "The password is l1es. You need a password because the internal systems of the citadel can be seen at that resolution."

The map resolved in seconds, showing the layout of a small chapel. Pariah used the arrow keys to move the image around on the screen. It seemed to be the room and not its mechanisms that Guide was showing Pariah and it didn't register immediately. Guide wasn't trying to show Pariah how to break out of the citadel. The chapel was in the same location that Pariah had met Ester in on the previous day.

"That's a long way to go for irony," Pariah voiced aloud.

A voice called out from the doorway. "What do you mean?"

Pariah recognized the voice as belonging to Ester, even though he did not look up from the screen. The chapel almost had the same layout as the place where young John had lived before becoming Pariah. "That museum where I found you yesterday is a chapel in these blueprints."

"You don't need a chapel if you don't believe in God. I don't understand the irony."

"I was uneasy in the museum."

She came closer to Pariah so that she could see his eyes. "I remember that."

"But, I was reared in a church that looked almost exactly like this."

"Why is that ironic?"

"Because it is the place where I should have been the most comfortable. My home was made into the place where I can least endure being."

"You know," she said," most timeaters cannot read."

"Then why put keyboards on these computers. They can be voice controlled."

"Dr. Jonah knows that timeaters have to interact with their environment in order to learn self-actualization. I'll admit that I didn't understand it either."

"Using these things isn't as easy as it looks."

Ester finally looked at the screen. "It didn't take you long to break into our system."

"You know Dr. Jonah," replied Pariah. "He's obsessed."

"Once you get to know him, he's not such a bad guy."

"If this is wrong, I'd say that there's nothing secure in these systems."

Turning to face Pariah, Ester entered the system reset code, dropping Pariah back to the main screen. Ester tried to look into Pariah's mind through his eyes, but she couldn't see past his eyes. Secretly, she liked the mystery. Her new world lacked anything that could not be explained or excused. People around Ester were obsessed with explanations so much that they lost the fleeting beauty inherent to life.

Pariah was still a part of the distant reality that had been lost to Ester. He held his ground against rationalization on the battlefield of reason. Even on the home field of his enemies, without a single friend to count on, Pariah neither bent nor broke. His armor was as pure as his view of the universe around him. Pariah had not lost his sense of wonder in the simplistic complexity of creation.

It was not long before the lights reset into daytime mode and Pariah had to fall into line with the other patients. Ester hoped that John Pariah would forgive her for what she was doing to him as part of the world that had crushed her. The few moments that they had together in the dim lighting took hours to pass between them, yet it did pass. A line formed in front of the cells, leading through the morning routine, and Pariah fell in with the ranks.

Ester met Pariah again as he left the showers. That morning, Pariah would not have to seek out Ester so he had time for breakfast. Both of them ate the handler mush that morning, although it wasn't as bad when shared as it was when eaten alone. Silently, Ester tried to bring Pariah into the morning routine as Dr. Jonah required of her. She saw no reason why she could not get a small measure of joy out of the task.

She had been a handler through nearly nine classes and Pariah was the first kindred spirit she had found. The other patients were largely zombies and the better ones were assigned to David Kellham. Every three months, the cycle started again. By then, Pariah would not need her as much and she would rarely see him. Unless he became a handler, Ester would not see Pariah again after the next class arrived.

"The others begin sirrigation this morning," Ester said.

"Sirrigation?"

She drank down the last of her morning hydration. "You've probably realized that it would take decades to teach the patients enough to operate in normal society."

"For some of us, decades would not suffice."

"We have a process that can speed up acclimation. Although you will not require it for awhile, that's where we're going this morning."

"That sounds interesting."

Lifting her tray from the table as she stood, Ester waved Pariah to follow her. "With your interest in our technology, this should fascinate you."

The education unit was two doors past the main computer core in the outer ring of the citadel. Ester only had to guide Pariah through about an eighth of the outer ring from the mess hall to the chamber. It was such a short walk that Ester slacked off of her pace to prolong the walk with Pariah. Relaxation was an unusual treat for handlers.

Halfway through the trek, Ester and Pariah were passed by last season's class. Six students, one of them having been assigned to Ester in the past cycle, marched back from sirrigation in formation. They passed between Ester and Pariah as they returned to their own bank of cells at the far end of the outer ring. Pariah stood patiently against the wall, waiting for his guide to become visible again. Ester also moved against the wall on her side, however, she just went blank.

Ester was the last handler to bring her patient into the education unit. The other former timeaters were seated in translucent blue tinted chairs along one wall of the chamber when Ester brought Pariah into the room. Pariah's mother, this time in a hot purple set of coveralls, took Pariah's hand at the chamber door and maneuvered him into the seat at the end of the row. Gently, she pushed Pariah's head back into the mesh pillow at the top of the seat.

As she backed away from Pariah, Ester approached. She knelt beside Pariah, just off to his left side. A small green cube had to be inserted into the arm of the chair to enable the mechanism and Ester was responsible for that. Pariah could feel her hesitation at locking the cube into place.

"This mechanism is for sirrigation," she said. "It will lock your neural pathways to the networks in the central computer so that you'll have complete access to the installed libraries. When activated, we hope that some of the information you have access to will form memories in your brain."

"It sounds like some kind of brainwashing."

"Not exactly," she replied. "This cube acts as a converter between the male brain and the quantum banks of the computer core. Female brains need the yellow mirror. You'll have access to the core, but your brain's only going to take what it wants. Images will flash on the far wall in an attempt to stimulate you into asking the core for knowledge."

"Then I can research anything I think about?"

"You'll see," she concluded.

Pariah's mother signaled Ester to step away from Pariah before enabling the device. Ester had been mistaken about the placement of the images, though. When the device locked onto Pariah's mind, the projections were injected into the back of Pariah's brain by the antenna array in the pillow. It was an easy illusion for Pariah to break free of.

Almost without intent, Pariah thought that the device was just like the O.M. Complex. The core did not reply, having no knowledge of the O.M. Complex, yet Manual cautioned Pariah against breaking security. Pariah's thirst for knowledge was enormous, however, the limits of the attached libraries were more profound than their depths. Dr. Jonah only included the dullest of textbooks in the computer core's libraries. Nothing that Pariah learned went far past the things that Pariah had learned from experience.

It only took an instant for Pariah to drink in the whole content of the attached libraries. The most important thing that Pariah learned was that there were additional libraries locked out of the computer core by Dr. Jonah. Nothing in the quantum memory could be removed so Dr. Jonah had to shut down the offensive sections of the database. What remained in the system was such a small library that it was of no use to the advanced students.

Ester saw the load on the core as Pariah vacuumed in all that the library knew. She hoped that nobody else had noticed the pulse, even though she knew better. Looking to the operator, she got no feedback. To Ester this was a sign that the secret was safe with Pariah's mother. Nobody else knew how to read the displays.

Somewhere in the complex, another operator already had informed Dr. Jonah of the drain that Pariah had placed on the system. Immersed in an endless list of lessons that he had to deliver to his classes, Dr. Jonah was already planning for how Pariah would meet his end in an unfortunate accident. Dr. Jonah knew that he had already failed for the second time in twenty seven years and he took it no more seriously than when he walked the cold floors of his citadel. There were millions of other patients who needed the resources being wasted on the one hopeless case in his care.

Moments passed while Pariah passed from the outer realm of cyberspace to the material confines of the citadel. Some of the timeaters took longer in coming back down from the treatment than others and Pariah was only typical on that scale. Disconnecting from the vast mind of the quantum core was not easy for Pariah. Guide popped into Pariah's mind to nurse him through the withdraw. Manual marked that he had to protect the O.M. Complex from Pariah's mind.

Ester gave pariah a cup of sweet, blue fluid to drink when he next opened his eyes. Without the stabilizer, Pariah would be unable to handle the transition. When Ester had been in her second class, just before becoming a full handler, she had seen the effects of a mind that was not replenished after the strain. It still gave her nightmares when she was alone in the night. The man's nervous system froze up and he shocked hard.

Rumor had it that the patient had not died by accident, but Ester didn't go in for rumors. She tested the fluid before giving it to any of her patients to be sure that none of them died on her watch. Ester never wanted to see a man die in that way again. His face had melted as his capillaries burst from the strain. Rigor mortis claimed his body before death had claimed his spirit.

Pariah came through the experience and Ester could breathe again. She did not understand why Dr. Jonah had risked the life of a patient that she had told him would not need the skills that sirrigation provided. Ester had documented that Pariah did not need anything in the libraries. Her logic was flawless in her mind.

"We're due for your next class in a few minutes," said Ester.

Pariah's first few breaths past sirrigation came as short sneezes. "Do I have a few minutes to rest first?"

Ester was pleased to hear those few coherent words. "A few minutes late shouldn't matter that much."

"I don't mean to be so much trouble, Ester."

"You're no trouble, John. I get very few good students."

"Dr. Jonah would not agree about my potential."

"He doesn't have to be your handler, John-I do."

"Thank you for such kind words, Ester." Pariah drifted off into a shallow nap where Ester allowed him to remain for nearly half an hour.

Nobody is entirely sure if Pariah awoke of his own accord or if Ester roused him when she saw the time. The education room was empty except for the two of them when Pariah finally left the chair where his mother had placed him for sirrigation. It was the first time that anybody had allowed him to sleep in a room that was really dark in the citadel. Pariah hadn't realized how much better it felt for him to sleep in the dark.

The lesson room wasn't far from the education chamber, however, Pariah was still too tired to know how long the walk was. He knew that the class would be hard to remain awake through if he didn't recover his strength. Even though he could have, he did not blame Ester for allowing him to oversleep. Pariah knew that she did not want Dr. Jonah to see Pariah in his weakened state. She just knew that Pariah needed the rest after sirrigation.

"How nice of you to join us today," announced Dr. Jonah. "Time still means something to the normal people of this universe."

"It's my fault," answered Ester. "He needed a nap after sirrigation."

"You know better," answered Dr. Jonah. "I want to speak to you after the class leaves."

Dr. Jonah's eyes remained locked onto Pariah face, yet Pariah knew enough to remain silent. Anything that he said to Dr. Jonah would only make him less pleased with Ester. Pariah simply accepted guidance to his seat in the front of the class and remained silent for as long as he could. It was ok for Pariah to draw Dr. Jonah's anger to himself, but Ester had to be protected.

Another animation began at the front of the room. This time, it showed a wave form moving across the white plane on which it had been drawn. The wave grew bigger each time it vibrated. Each peak of the wave was labeled as 100% and each valley was listed as -100%.

"In the beginning," began Dr. Jonah," there was nothing. Nothing but the ability of all things to be or not to be. This is the most primitive and purest of all quantum probability curves. Pop this curve into a definite state and the universe itself begins to be. But, if all the states remain superimposed, the zen state of being can be preserved."

"Both the positive and negative edges of this probability curve are entangled as long as the zen state is preserved. In short, as long as the universe entangles everything and its opposite, the sum of the universe is zero. No matter how complex the universe appears to be, it can spontaneously be resolved from the quantum probability curve without violating the laws of conservation in the universe. The sum of the universe always returns to a zen state of zero."

It didn't matter to Dr. Jonah that he had already lost practically the entire class. He was preaching the genesis of his universe with all the charisma of an evangelical monk. "As time goes on, the curve can get bigger. Just entangling the two edges of the curve, allowing the probability to add up to a zero in the end, will overcome any matter of scale in the system. In this way, the Zen Oscillation can explain everything in the universe."

"But," interjected Pariah. "How do you allow for the energy required to separate the states from each other?"

"You're not ready for the math of this universal truth, Mr Pariah."

"Some say that a flux in a vacuum would add up to a zero in the way that you've mentioned. Add the positive 100 to the negative 100 and the result is a zero, so it could result without violating the conservation of energy."

"That's a good way of putting it, Mr. Pariah."

"However, if I connect a wire between a positive 100 volts and a negative 100 volts, I get a difference in potential of 200 volts. Although the voltages add up to zero, it takes a total of 200 volts to create the original two voltages."

"As I said," replied Dr. Jonah, "You are not ready for the math."

"Math cannot make something from nothing. Math is not magic-is it?"

"You're still stuck up on the idea of a prime mover, aren't you?"

Pariah looked back to see Ester was not in the room. He was comforted in her not being around to see the additional friction. "Actually, the prime mover idea is better represented in the 'Big Bang' dogma than in theology. Theology doesn't need an uncaused cause because we have a cause of creation."

Dr. Jonah took a glass vial from his jacket pocket and showed it to the, now fully awake, class. "If there's a God, then I challenge him to prevent this from shattering when I drop it on the floor."

"Stand on your head," challenged Pariah.

"What?"

"By your reasoning, refusal to obey me is absolute proof that you do not exist. Stand on your head."

The vial did not shatter when it struck the floor. It broke in Dr. Jonah's hands. Pariah knew that he had gone too far to fall back and he was sorry for what he had done. In Pariah's mind, he wished that he had stood on the verse stating not to put the lord your God to the test.

Dr. Jonah expended great effort in turning away from the class. He did not find it easy to move even though his remaining pride required him to do so. The class rested through another changeover of the handlers before Dr. Jonah was calm enough to continue with the lesson. Any hope that Dr. Jonah had for Pariah ended in that public conflict.

All six hours of the lessons passed with Pariah in silent reflection. Pariah did not hear another word that Dr. Jonah said and Dr. Jonah did not mind having Pariah mentally absent from the class. Four of the other students were interacting for the first time. Only Pariah was inactive for the remainder of the class day. In the end, Pariah made a pact with himself to keep less confrontational if Dr. Jonah allowed him to stay in the class.

Ester did not understand why Dr. Jonah had reacted as strongly as he had. It was unusual for Dr. Jonah to be so much on edge. She did not know that Dr. Jonah knew about the incident in sirrigation. More importantly, she did not know that Dr. Jonah had learned of a transmission made from within the citadel to an unknown agency in deep space. Pariah had done nothing that Ester considered to be worth the response Dr. Jonah had given.

At the end of the class, Dr. Jonah forgot to speak to Ester. He left the class directly at the end of the lessons without speaking to anybody. Dr. Jonah had already decided Pariah's fate and was more interested in finding the source of the transmission than anything else. Even David Kellham wasn't hearing from Dr. Jonah in the way he was used to. David had to dine without Dr. Jonah that night.

Pariah and Ester remained silent in the mess hall, seated on the opposite side of the room from David Kellham and his patient. Ester knew that Dr. Jonah had overreacted with Pariah and was planning what she would say when they finally did speak. She was determined to protect Pariah's place in the class. But Pariah was sure that he was about to be expelled from the class. Neither of them spoke from the end of the class until Pariah was returned to his cell for the night.

More sorry than tired, Pariah prayed hard before going to bed. It did not serve God well for Pariah to harden Dr. Jonah's heart to the truth. Ministry is not a battle of strong wills and sharp wits. Pariah meditated for most of the night on what he had done. He knew what he had done, even though he did not understand why he had done it.

"Wake up," called a voice in the night.

Pariah rolled over in his assigned bed to see his old dog Luke sitting at his bedside. Luke had been Pariah's first experience with death, yet he was still too groggy to realize that. The old mut had been another orphan taken in by Pariah's family when Pariah had been part of a family. With a lame paw, Luke hadn't been much of a hunter and was of no value to the people who owned his mother.

"What do you want, Luke?"

"Pariah," called Guide's voice. "A league detachment is about to strike the outer perimeter of the citadel. You must jump when that happens."

"Where's Ester?"

Manual cloned Guide's chosen form and the effect of seeing two Luke's confounded the tired Pariah. "Guide has spoken with tactical sense. The others will jump when the first strike comes."

The first jolt knocked Pariah out of bed into Guide's paws. Every light that Pariah could see lost power for an instant and Pariah could feel the other timeaters vanish from the small slice of time-space where they had been held. Several of the overhead panels burst from the surge as the power came back online in the holding area. If Pariah had not been shaken from his bed, shards from one panel would have burned into his skin.

Even on the floor, Pariah did not escape injury. Hot splinters rolled over his back, burning through his shirt and into his skin wherever the O.M. Complex did not protect him. Pariah had forgotten that he was still wearing the complex. Somehow, Manual had moved it into Pariah's skin so that it wouldn't be seen and that left a large amount of exposed skin on Pariah's back.

"Where is Ester? Did she jump?"

"You don't have time for this," shouted Manual. "Jump before the first wave comes in."

Jumping to his feet, Pariah busted down the door to his cell. It hadn't been built to hold anything in and took little effort to push it free from the frame. The complex held up over the next series of blasts before parts of the citadel began falling to the floor around Pariah. Nothing that Manual said registered in Pariah's head. Pariah was determined to find Ester.

"Ester was dispatched to your cell when our presence was detected," said Guide.

"He'll listen to you," replied Manual. "Tell him to jump now."

"Turn the other way, Pariah. Ester was knocked to the ground two divisions along this ring."

"Guide," challenged Manual. "You are malfunctioning and should be shut down."

"But," replied Guide," You cannot do that."

Both holographic dogs flashed for a moment as Manual found out that Guide was right and wrong. Manual had to shut his own projection off in order to lock Guide away in the core memory.

Pariah had trust in Guide's words and followed his instructions. The citadel had been breached in several places from the bombardments and it was hard for Pariah to move along the corridor. A series of short shocks piled a small section of the ceiling in the middle of the walkway. Most of the broken conductors were photon conduits, therefore Pariah was in no danger of electrocution. However, the pulses in the cables, unaware that their journey had been interrupted, were bright enough to punch holes into anything that they came across.

Several dark forms raced about in the shadows. They did not seem interested in Pariah so Pariah made what headway he could through the falling debris. Lights flashed and solid objects all around Pariah evaporated into bright balls of light. Nothing was real in the unstable reality of the citadel. League Enforcers knew how to deal with the disintegrating realism of the world and continued their fight in the widening void.

A section of a wall beside Pariah popped from the intense heat of a near miss. The O.M. Complex came quickly into play, blocking the molten synthetic materials from burning their way into Pariah's mortal form. Pariah was knocked to the ground while several armored enforcers stepped right over him. Guide had a hard time holding his illusionary form, telling Pariah to stay where he was for a few moments.

"You are a better student that we estimated," called a voice from beside Pariah.

"David something?"

He coughed dust from his lungs, rasing a rifle shaped weapon onto a pile of fallen junk in front of him. "My patient jumped in the first blast."

"Have you seen Ester?"

David blasted about the room trying to hit targets that he could not see in the failing light. "Nope. Last I heard, she was sent to see you."

"I didn't see her."

"You're not going to cover much ground through here without a weapon," David replied. He took a sidearm from a crate beside him and handed it to Pariah.

Pariah had not handled a weapon in a long time. He knew how to unlock the trigger with a swift motion of his thumb over the safety, however, he had never handled a pistol like the one he had been given. It was an energy weapon of some kind and Pariah did not know how much of a charge it had on it. Handling the weapon did not make Pariah any more comfortable. If Ester was also armed, she could have been targeted by the enforcers.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"God Speed," Finished Pariah.

"Yeah, whatever."

Placing the weapon in his pocket, Pariah slipped around the fallen wreckage to the doorway and back into the main hall. Something in the back of Pariah's mind said that it had seen David die. Two or three rapid pulses and David Kellham ceased to be alive. He had hit one of the enforcers and that part of Pariah now knew that the blasters were useless against the armor of the enforcers. Pariah knew that the pistol was a toy that could only get him into trouble, yet he kept it in his pocket.

Another collapse pushed Pariah into a room before he could reach Ester's position. This time, the room was full of high voltage equipment painting the room in its blood. Hot arcs burned their way into anything that they touched. Display panels, once used to hold the prisoners of the citadel, threw out bursts of bright plasma with each jolt from the dangling wires. The lights remained constant and bright.

Dr. Jonah stood his ground under one of the consoles. The enforcers hadn't come into the dangerous room yet, however, Dr. Jonah was prepared to take them all on with a weapon just like the one that had failed David Kellham. He took two shots at Pariah before realizing that Pariah wasn't an enforcer. Although Pariah wasn't an ally to Dr. Jonah, Pariah wasn't worth wasting ammunition on either. To Dr. Jonah, Pariah was just another patient.

"Dr. Jonah," called Pariah.

"What?"

"I just saw David Kellham and I know that those guns do not work against the enforcers."

"There's nothing that you can teach me, boy. Go away."

"David Kellham just died."

"The League's very good at killing, boy. Why don't you jump now? It's what you want; isn't it?"

"I'm trying to reach Ester. She's a few doors down this hall."

"You undid four years of treatment with her," replied Dr. Jonah. "Maybe she's already jumped."

"I doubt it."

"The League sent you, didn't it? Somehow, the League slipped you into the complex with some kind of a tracking device. I just know it."

"You called me here," replied Pariah. "I doubt that the League knows anything about me. You know the nature of timeaters."

"Those barbarians have been after me my entire life. You'd do anything to keep me chained to your God-wouldn't you?"

"I thought you didn't believe in God, Dr. Jonah."

Pariah knew that he was in a tight position with no real escape. If he jumped to avoid Dr. Jonah's rage, then he would never reach Ester. The League Enforcers did not know Pariah and had shown no loyalty to him since entering the citadel. Guide was still projecting into the hallway, watching for a way to get to Ester and Manual's only advice was for Pariah to jump. Pariah's only comfort was in his ability to surrender to God's will.

Dr. Jonah leveled his weapon, aiming directly between Pariah's cold eyes. It was the look of a true believer which Dr. Jonah resented most. Pariah could be calm, relinquishing his drive to dominate all of creation and hold the total of absolute truth in his weak organic mind. Dr. Jonah resented the simplicity that liberated Pariah from the labor of being God. In the end, all the power Dr. Jonah gained in the murder of God was vanity.

"I do not believe in your God," called Dr. Jonah. "Why won't he let me not believe?"

"You don't have to be afraid," said Pariah. "Even you can seek his mercy. Even you can be forgiven."

With a nervous brush of his thumb, Dr. Jonah unlocked the trigger on his weapon. "Never," he called. "You and your League buddies will never break me. Why will you not just leave me alone?"

"Has it occurred to you," asked Pariah," that the League is only after you because you're attacking it?"

"Your League is unjust. It oppresses the populations of galaxies economically and intellectually. You rob people of their true perfectability and power with your foolish superstition."

"The illusion of omnipotence is the ultimate in impotence."

"Let's see your God save you now, Mr. Pariah."

The blast from Dr. Jonah's weapon was completely disbursed by the armor of the O.M. Complex. Manual did not want Pariah dead. Looking into the bloodshot depths of Dr. Jonah's troubled eyes, Pariah was ready to die if that would have set Dr. Jonah free from the torments of the cruel master Dr. Jonah served. Even Pariah knew that he could not set a man free from himself.

With a tear in his eye, Pariah dove back into the hallway to reach Ester. The room containing Dr. Jonah caved in with a bright flash and a shower of sparks that filled the walkway with light. Molten metals burned into the walls of the citadel's walkways, causing light panels to shatter into Pariah's path. Pariah did not feel the warmth through the defenses of the O.M. Complex. His mind was numb.

Dr. Jonah's final words were," You didn't get me-I win."

Guide helped the stunned Pariah to find Ester. Much of the walkway through the mechanical section of the citadel had caved in from the assault, although the section around Ester had been most devastated by the explosion that killed Dr. Jonah. Things were going too fast for Pariah to keep them strait in his mind and he was almost numb enough to jump like the other timeaters. Pariah would not have reached his objective without Guide's help. Manual remained silent knowing that Pariah would soon jump.

Glowing shards of crystalline machinery provided the only remaining light in the corridor and that was fading away when Pariah reached Ester. Ester had been hit by the debris when the control room disintegrated. Even with her wounds largely sealed by the heat, she was still in very bad shape. Her skin was pale from lack of blood. At first, she didn't even seem to notice that Pariah was there.

Pariah dragged Ester's body from the battle zone into a nearby room that Guide selected. It had been some kind of a holding room with a bed and terminal like Pariah's cell. Guide had chosen it for the relative lack of critical damage and the remaining light. Manual had scanned the citadel well enough for Guide to know that the power core had been ruptured and was dying. Soon, Pariah could feel in the overlap between his mind and the O.M. Complex, the retaining crystal would burst.

A quick survey of the area showed that the League Enforcers had fallen back from the citadel. Guide no longer had to keep watch on the walkways, yet he did not want to intrude on his loyal friend's remaining intimate moments. Manual just projected a clock in the back of Pariah's mind so that he could sense how much longer the power core had left. It was the kind of intrusion that Guide would have chastised Manual for.

Explosions in the rubble took on an eerie silence in the growing darkness. The only light in the room was the computer screen beside the bed beside which Pariah placed Ester and it was hard to make anything out by it. Without the computer, the display was just a collection of random lines and noise bars. It was like the candle light back in the parsonage when Pariah was a child named John. Not placing Ester in the bed because of the junk that had fallen into it, Ester rested on a floor that felt much like Pariah's childhood bed.

Manual eventually had to give up his projection of the clock. Each blast was a shifting of power consumption and strain on the bleeding core. Any movement in the downed wiring in the citadel changed the amount of time the core had left until the calculations Manual had to make took longer than the results were valid for. Pariah actually felt the mechanism of Manual become frustrated.

Pariah wandered why poor Ester had not jumped. All she had to do was leap back into the void between the moments of time and she would return to her healthy form. It could not be Pariah's gaze that actualized her into her corporeal, mortal form. He had only been there long enough to remove her from the rubble. Dr. Jonah had truly taken away her ability.

"It's time to go now," Pariah said.

Ester tried to speak and Pariah tried to keep her quiet.

Weak and knowing that her life was nearly at an end, Ester was compelled to speak her peace with Pariah. She knew that the time would not come back to her so that she could say the things she had to say later on. Pariah had been in the Mind of God too long to heal her and she knew that hope was fast becoming as scarce as her remaining blood. Her mind flashed back, like that of a more normal person, on all the things that she would never have a chance to do. Her time with Pariah was the closest thing she would ever have to love.

Pariah could feel Ester's compulsion to speak the things bottles up inside of her. He knelt down along her right side, gently lifting her head into his lap. With his left hand, he cradled her head close to his heart, stroking her blood-soaked hair with his right hand. Every atom of his being wished that he had the entropy within him to eat time around the two of them so that Ester could return to her pure, healthy form. Both of them understood that he had no entropy left within him.

"John," called Ester with her fading breath.

Pariah lowered his head, looking deep into Ester's still warm eyes, to hear her words. "Rest now, Ester. You don't have the strength to talk."

"I lied to you earlier, John."

"Please save your strength." Pariah was not sure if Ester could see it, yet Pariah was shedding actual tears as he rarely had the need to do. Ester had become somebody to him.

"Museums do make me uncomfortable, John."

Blasts from the battle around Pariah and his fallen comrade were getting lost in the void forming within Pariah. What sound entered Pariah, none of it heard by his mind, found the space too empty to echo in. The noise died of isolation. "Why is that, Ester?"

"Because, " she answered," They remind me that everybody I have ever known has died."

"That is the curse of a long life," said Pariah.

"You do not understand, John. I left these people behind and now they are dead while I am still alive."

Pariah tried to comfort her with a sloppy embrace. "It's OK, Ester. You didn't kill them. We did not kill them."

"I've tried to give up my faith because it meant that I was not accountable for my sins."

Pariah wiped the tears from his own eyes, then dried Ester's tears. "I lied to you as well, Ester. I do recall my grandmother."

"I wish that I could remember mine, John."

"The people we love and the people who love us want the best for us. They do not condemn us for living when they are dead."

"It's easy to say, John. It is hard to feel."

"God forgives us all, Ester. He doesn't want us condemned any more than any other father does."

"Thank you for the kind words, John."

"Please let your faith give you peace. We will meet again in another place, Ester."

With a cough, yet more through fear, Ester spoke one last phrase. "I love you, John."

Pariah kissed Ester on the forehead as her last breath flowed into his ear. His mouth was then full of her blood, however, Pariah did not taste it. He tasted Ester's spent hopes and dreams. Her life flowed through him as they both left the cold reality of the burning Matronite complex. For an instant, the two of them were literally fused into a single entity outside of time-space. Then Pariah and Ester parted through doorways into different realities.

Ester's door was opened by a love so great that Pariah felt it could only be the hand of God. Pariah fell backwards through a trapdoor created by an absent minded, mortal wish. While Ester went home at long last, Pariah's curse continued on. He landed where a mere mortal man expected to see somebody in the shadows. The quantum potential for that unspoken wish to become real was actualized by Pariah's potential to be there.

Sal's head snapped up from the proposition she was working on when she heard the inner office page.

"Will Sally Gardens please call extension 5438? Sally Gardens, call 5438." Sighing, Sal picked up the receiver and dialed the extension.

"Densel," the deep male voice on the other end spoke.

"Yeah, Ted, this is Sal. You had me paged?"

"Sal! Thanks for calling. Listen, can you do me a huge favor? You still have the file on the Texcorp deal, don't you?"

"Umm…" Sal pushed piles of paper around her desk desperately, wishing not for the first time that she had her mother's organizational skills. Her eye caught the 'Texcorp' logo on a decorative olive-green folder.

"Yeah!" she exclaimed, triumphantly retrieving the file.

"Great," Ted said across the line, "You're a life saver. I need to get a hold of that file."

"Want me to stick it in inner-office mail?" Sal asked.

"Actually, I need that right now, Sal. I hope its not asking too much for you to run it down to me."

"Yeah, sure, I'll be right down."

"Great, see you then." Sal cursed as she hung up the connection. Why did people always assume their priorities outweighed hers?

"I'm not your delivery-girl, Ted," she said out-loud, "I've got important work too, you know."

Still, complaining wouldn't get this over with. "If he keeps me in his office trying to flirt with me, I swear I'll bring some kind of suit against him."

Sal grabbed her purse on the way out. She might as well pick up something from the vending machine while she was down there. She walked quickly down the hall ignoring the people around her. Gary, the intern, and Rose, the secretary both waved to her while calling her unpleasant names in their heads. Only Ed, the janitor, seemed not to notice or care that she had left her office.

She had to wait a long time for the elevator, but she was NOT walking down five flights of stairs in high-heels. Of this, she was certain. When the doors opened, there was only one guy standing there, and she immediately blamed him for the delay. She didn't know the guy. He was medium height and had no note-worthy features; save for the long coat he was wearing. He didn't even seem to notice she was getting on.

"Better than being leered at," she thought. No buttons were pushed, which was odd. Apparently this guy wasn't going anywhere. She pushed the button for the third floor, and stood quietly as the numbers on the board overhead counted down.

They rode five floors together in silence. Finally a friendly ding, and the elevator crowded with people as they reached the third floor. In the confusion of the rush, she failed to notice that the man had exited the elevator with her.

When she walked into his office, Ted was on the phone. She held up the folder and he nodded and signaled toward his desk. She lay the file down, relieved she didn't actually have to engage him in conversation. She started turning to leave, when Ted held up a hand signaling her to stay. She waited until he wasn't looking to roll her eyes.

Finally Ted replaced the receiver and smiled at her.

"Thanks a million, Sal, I really owe you."

"You're welcome, Ted, but I really have to get back to my office."

"Yeah, okay, I'll make it brief. Did you have plans for this evening." Please tell me he's not asking me on a date, she thought.

"I was going to visit my parents," she replied.

"Mm," Ted responded thoughtfully. "The reason I ask is that we are having a late meeting this evening, and I was hoping you could attend. It could very well mean getting a spot on an important project."

"Oh," she said, not sure what to think. "Well, let me get back to you on that, okay?" "Sure," he smiled again, "If you decide you want to come, it will be in conference room 12 at 6:30. I don't know if there will be coffee and donuts, sorry." Sal laughed politely at the joke and then excused herself. As she walked back toward the elevator, she thought about the proposition. She WAS very busy, but getting a spot on an important project could mean promotion or at the very least a bonus or a raise. She could use the money, and it would look good on a resume. Still, it was odd to have an unannounced meeting that late.

So absorbed was she, that she didn't catch sight of the pigeon flying through the hallway. She stopped at the vending machine cursing her weak will for letting her buy a candy bar when she was trying to lose weight. Just then the pigeon alit on top of the candy-machine. Sal let out a scream.

"No need to get worked up," the pigeon said in a reasonable voice, "This isn't an Alfred Hitchcock movie."

"Who…" Sal gasped.

"Yes, I, the pigeon, really DID just talk to you. No, this isn't some parrot trick, and yes, you're right, pigeons can't REALLY carry on conversations. No I'm not a hallucination. Yes, I AM an illusion."

"What are you doing here?" Sal said, still very shaken. She wasn't sure why she wasn't just walking away from this absurdity, except that she couldn't leave without having an explanation. Her human mind wouldn't allow her.

"You could call me a carrier pigeon. I'm a messenger from a mutual friend of ours. You wouldn't mind stepping into the employee's lounge just over there, would you? This shouldn't take long."

"What's this all about?"

"I'm sorry, you've exhausted your twenty questions. Listen, this will all be much easier to explain with the visuals. Come on, its only just around the corner. You trust me, don't you?"

Sal wasn't sure why, but she DID suddenly trust the talking bird. She reluctantly headed around the corner and into the lounge. The bird took off and flew behind her. As she opened the door, the bird flew through and alighted on the shoulder of the man in the long coat that she had seen on the elevator.

"Hi, Mom," he said.

Pariah had been distorted as always by his tug into this time and place. The sorrow of Ester's death was still fresh on his heart, though the streams of time had wiped the streams of tears from his eyes. It was an additional shock that the first face he saw, as the elevator door opened, was his mother's. She was wearing some sort of business attire. Pariah's exposure to such things was minimal, so he really couldn't place the outfit. Her face showed a preoccupied self-absorption. He wanted so desperately to talk to someone about his sorrow. First his surrogate father and then Ester had died in his arms. The man who called himself 'Death' had asked Pariah if he feared death. Pariah hadn't really understood the question at the time, but it was becoming clearer to him. Right now he didn't fear death, but he was beginning to hate it.

As he was riding the elevator down with his mother aggressively ignoring his presence, a poem leaped to his mind about preserving all of the ones he loved in Photon Crystals forever. He immediately cursed himself for being childish. Ester was dead in a time that was beyond this time. But was she really dead? All people were dead in some time period while alive in others. Ester had been a timeater. She had manifested herself a finite number of times. Say an even one million. So there was a chance that Pariah may see her again in another time, in a previous incarnation to the one he had held in his arms as the life left it. Pariah was suddenly very afraid of such a meeting. He shook his head. This wasn't helping. He wished he could gain some sympathy from his mother, some word of motherly advice, some sign of affection. But she stood there cold and dead to his presence and need. The elevator gave a friendly ding as it exited onto the floor she had selected, and people crowded around them. Pariah followed her on instinct, afraid to lose her. As he wandered the hall behind her, a pigeon appeared on his shoulder.

"Coo," it said in an absurdly human voice.

"Guide," Pariah sighed, "I wish I could talk to her."

"Then talk to her," Guide answered mildly.

"But Guide, she can't ever be my mother. She's just whatever character exists in this time and place."

"Have you ever tried?"

"What? Of course I've tried. You should know."

"No, what I've seen is you addressing your mother as whatever part she happens to be playing at the time. So, of course, she responds to you as that person would a total stranger. But behind that stranger is the person you call mother. And I've also seen that. Otherwise, the part that is your mother only goes skin deep, and you are simply meeting up with a series of women who you project the image of your mother upon." Pariah looked doubtfully at Guide.

"You really think she'll talk to me?"

"We won't know if you don't try."

The timeater remained silent for a long time. Guide noticed that he was trembling.

"What is it, my friend?" Guide asked. Pariah did not immediately answer, but rather retreated to the staff lounge. The lady pouring coffee for herself didn't seem to think his presence strange. Nor did she find it odd when he began talking to thin air.

"I'm afraid," he told the projection.

"Then let me help break the ice," Guide suggested.

When Sal heard the man call her 'Mom', a part of her fell away. Or perhaps, came awake. Something within her clicked, and she watched with utter incomprehension as she began speaking to the stranger.

"Hello Pariah," her voice said. She did not think this strange. She simply stopped thinking. The pigeon faded from sight.

Mother and son stood a few feet from one another. The silence stretched. Pariah noticed that her eyes seemed a bit bluer, colder.

"Something is troubling you?" she asked almost casually.

"Mother, I… I just lost someone I had grown close to. I don't know what to do or say. It hurts, this death." Her response was a slight tilt of the head. Pariah did not know what to do, so he went on.

"I've never felt this way before. I hardly know what feeling is like. I know that all mortals occupy a very brief section of space/time. I know that. But death, in reality, seems so cold and pointless. Or perhaps it's the separation. After all, that's what death is, isn't it? Separation. And I have been separate for a very long time."

"What did the Parson tell you?" Pariah cringed with the memory of Parson's death. He seemed so peaceful, so at-rest when he had passed on. What were his words again?

"Death is the beginning of eternity. The doorway to the unhidden face of God." His mother seemed to smile a bit.

"That's better wisdom than I could ever give you," She shrugged. Pariah looked at his mother with an unspoken and unending sadness in his eyes. Her own eyes softened. She walked to her son and embraced him. He suddenly found himself sobbing like a child and clutching her as if any moment she might disappear. They stood for a long time like that. Finally, the woman whispered, "I'm sorry."

"I forgive you," was Pariah's immediate response. In many moments more, his tears dried and he dared to release his mother. She stepped away and looked down at her now-rumpled business suit.

"You cannot hold me here longer," she stated, "I have another life to lead."

"I know," Pariah mumbled. He looked up and pointed at his mother's feet.

"This one is in trouble, I can sense it," he said. His mother smiled. "I have a very protective son." The blue in her eyes dimmed and she suddenly looked a bit embarrassed.

"Sorry," she muttered, "wrong room." Pariah followed her out into the hall and watched her go.

Pariah knew that following his mother, at the moment, was futile. He was gaining more trust in his own instincts, and he knew that something, fate, faith, God… or the combination of those, would lead him back to her when the time was right. Guide flitted off when Pariah strolled out into the sunlight in the streets outside the office building. Pariah did not object to the flight. Guide would be back the instant he was needed.

Pariah felt a great weight had been lifted in the all-too brief talk he had had with his mother. Now the numbness of soul had returned, and he needed centering. Without being conscious of it, he found himself strolling toward a decorative chapel on the far corner of the street. A large sign out front gave information about service times and denomination. None of this meant anything to Pariah. The chapel was just a symbol. This was the house of God. Parson had spoken of faith as the ultimate guide, and "Faith comes by hearing."

Pariah ignored the choir practicing their empty chorus, just as they ignored the strange man who walked in off the street and kneeled before the alter. On his knees, the hours faded into nothing.

Sal had decided to scrap the visit to her parents' house in favor of the meeting. She felt bad, sure, but mom and dad seemed to understand when she called them. This was the forth time she had canceled dinner with them, and her guilt was building. Nevertheless, Ted had invited her to this meeting and she couldn't miss an opportunity.

The first thing that hit Sal as she entered Conference Room 12 was the stench of cigarette smoke. Personal habits' aside, smoking was forbidden within the building. Sal was even more shocked when she realized that almost everyone in the room was smoking. A gray cloud hung over the large, shining table. Sal's discomfort deepened when she realized that she didn't recognize a single person in the conference room, except for, oddly enough, Ed the janitor. He was one of the few NOT smoking, and he sat quietly in the corner, out of place amidst the aged men in business suites. It reminded her of a bad dream she used to have in college of walking into the wrong classroom at the beginning of the semester.

"Sal, so glad you came," Ted's false cheer wrung out behind her. Sal jumped at the voice, and turned to see Ted emerging from the corner to her right.

"Oh, sorry if I startled you," Ted grinned and held out an expensive golden case, "Cigarette?"

"Ted, what is going on here?" Sal demanded, ignoring the offer. Ted shrugged off the question and stuck the cigarette in his own mouth. Sal had never seen Ted smoke before.

"Have a seat, we're getting started in a second."

"I'm not sitting ANYwhere until you tell me what this is all about! Who ARE these people?" Sal demanded. Ted lit his smoke, took a drag, and exhaled in Sal's face.

"Relax," he spoke in mesmerizing tones, "Its all okay." Sal couldn't help it, something in the smoke, or maybe in his voice, made her reconsider. It was just a meeting, right? No harm in attending a meeting. She sat heavily in a leather-lined chair. What was she thinking a second ago? Oh well, it couldn't have been important. The doors to the conference room clicked shut with the sound of a lock. A man began speaking.

"This world is experiencing a change at the deepest level," he began. "This change has frightened some, and they respond to this fright by attempting to fight against it. But gentleman, I think you'll agree that this change is for the best."

Yeah, Sal thought, change is always good. Wait, where did that come from? The atmosphere was getting to her. She felt suffocated and tried breathing more deeply. It made her dizzy. Someone was offering her a cigarette, and before she knew what she was doing, she was accepting a light, and inhaling the burning corruption into her lungs. It made her cough and sputter. Then all at once, everything made sense.

"We are being offered the opportunity to become part of something larger," the speaker continued. "Larger than this country, larger than this company, and larger than this planet. In fact, our reach may become unlimited through this union. So, without further adieu, I present the representative of our new partners. Please welcome Mr. Surus."

The man that strode forward to the enthusiastic cheers was not a man. He appeared human, and he wore a normal suit, but something about him seemed immediately alien.

"Gentleman," he began after the dying applause, "I ask you to look beyond yourselves for a moment to the universe. Everyone in this room is aware that life goes beyond most people's primitive understanding. Over the ages, humans have slowly realized that they were not the center of all things, and that, indeed, the universe operated by mechanical principles that could be measured and defined. I ask you to free your minds of the last vestiges of primitive superstitions and fantastic ideas of magic.

"If you can accept what I have said so far, then you can also accept what I am about to tell you. Earth is currently a planet held captive. The persistent universal power, which calls itself 'The League,' has taken on itself to restrict technology that should be open to all. Technology that could ease lives and eliminate suffering, hunger, poverty… any number of barbaric problems experienced on this and other planets.

"Now many of you are already aware of the facts I am laying before you. Word in the corporate market travels quickly. We have been working for some time with this and other industries to gain a foothold in the technology market on this planet. The organization I represent is humanitarian. We are making this offer not for any gain it might yield us, but for the universal principle that all life is sacred and should be given the utmost opportunity for advancement.

"Nevertheless, we need technology organizations such as this one in order to distribute. I needn't remind you all that there is substantial profit to be made from these trades. Already, we have begun installing and demonstrating our technology. This is the last step in a process that has been going on for decades now." Surus stepped back as the panels behind him parted. An eight-foot cylindrical device was mounted on a pedestal behind him.

"We need a volunteer from the audience," he smiled charmingly. Sal stood as if on command, and walked forward.

"Pariah," Guide's voice was gentle in his ear.

"Mmm…" Pariah mumbled.

"It's time. In fact it's getting quite late." Pariah needed a moment more, and then he was at peace. He imagined that this is what father Parson had felt like every morning after the three hours he spent in prayer.

"Okay, Guide, let's go."

He rose and walked out of the door of the church. The street-lamps were on, and the cool evening breeze was blowing over the pavement as traffic rushed all manner of commuters home to their children and lives. Not surprisingly, the front doors of the office building were locked. Pariah touched the handle gently and released some entropy. The lock rusted and crumbled. When Pariah entered, the halls of the building were deserted, secure under the blinking cameras that watched over them in the night.

"Which way, Guide?" he asked, peering down the hallways that branched off from the lobby.

"Choose one, Pariah. You need to have some faith." Pariah decided not to argue the point. He picked a corridor and began walking down it. It seemed to be a series of doorways, each neatly labeled with a number and nothing else. The hallway turned with the angle of the building and as he turned the corner, he noticed two dark-suited men standing at silence on either side of a door.

"That's your spot, Pariah," Guide stated.

"Okay, but what's in there?"

"Trouble."

"Do we have a plan?"

"No."

"Oh."

Pariah walked up to the men, and tried to get through the door.

"Sorry, sir, no admittance. The conference is already in session." A Dodo bird lollopped up to Pariah's feet as the men spoke.

"Manual is online," the dodo said. Pariah stepped back and walked into the recess in the wall housing a water-fountain. He bent down pretending to drink.

"Okay, Manual, if you're talking to me, there must be something going on. What's up?"

"Manual has identified the units guarding that door as 'Xenotrats.'" Pariah looked questioningly to Guide (perched on his shoulder).

"A little bit of trivia you might find interesting," Guide replied to Pariah's look, "Xenotrats are synthetic fighting units used by some illegal groups outside the League. They can mimic the appearance and characteristics of biological life-forms and their cheaper than renting the services of a mercenary. You ran into a couple a while back when you came face to face with the Tracking, I believe. They were disguised as Roman soldiers."

"Further scans of the area reveal the presence of a great deal of advanced technology in the area. Evidence suggests a Matronite presence."

Pariah thumped the water-fountain angrily.

"Why are the matronites showing up throughout time all of the sudden? For most of my travels they didn't even exist and now they are everywhere I go!"

"That's not easy to explain, Pariah," Guide replied. "If we see the timeline as a three-dimensional, then time advances sideways as well as forward and backward. At one point along this sideways journey, the Matronites did not even exist. Now they inhabit all parts of the past and future, just like the League. Eventually, they may die out and the timeline will be free of them again. Another explanation is perception. The Matronites, now aware of your existence, expect you to start popping up, and so you do."

"Okay," Pariah sighed, "but what are they doing HERE?"

"At this time period, Earth is as heavily controlled by business enterprises as it is by governments. Perhaps even more so. Perhaps the Matronites are attempting to turn Earth against the League."

"To help in their resistance?"

"More likely to have Earth destroyed."

"I'm just here to rescue my mother," Pariah stated.

"Do what you must. You may be accomplishing more than you think."

Pariah walked toward the suited guards and released a wave of entropy. The guard's skin melted away revealing the insectiod features below, which crumpled, fizzled, and fell to the floor. The door sagged on its hinges as if besieged by a great weight. Pariah pushed them opened as quietly as possible, as a wave of smoke poured over him.

"Warning: smoke comprised of heavy amounts of soilon particles," Manual barked.

"What?" Pariah coughed.

"Just don't breath too heavily," Guide cautioned. Pariah looked around the room. Sharply dressed businessmen and women sat in cushioned chairs facing the elevated presentation stage. His eyes zeroed in on his mother who was advancing her way up the stage in a mechanical plod. The man waiting for her on the stage was smiling gently as he guided her into some sort of contraption that sat in the center of the platform.

"Mother!" Pariah hissed.

"Manual recommends discretion. Opponent may be heavily armed."

"What's he doing to her?" Pariah asked.

"Device on stage corresponds with design of containment capsule." Pariah wasn't sure what that meant, but it didn't sound good. He began edging his way along the dark wall of the room toward the front. His mother reached the capsule, stepped inside, and it sealed upon her.

"And now," the speaker turned toward his audience, "A little sample of what I am offering!"

"Hardly!" another voice called from the side. Everyone turned to see who had spoken. A man in a janitor's uniform was advancing up the stage, a sly smile on his young face. Pariah felt that the speaker looked familiar.

"I must warn you to stand back," the speaker frowned, pulling a cube-like device from his suite-jacket.

"Bah," the janitor dismissively waved his hand, and the speaker froze in a field of shimmering purple light. "You have done a favor for me," the janitor spoke, "and I suppose such favors should be repaid with kindness, but I haven't the time for that." With those words, a blinding flash of light followed by a deafening boom flooded the room. When his vision cleared, Pariah saw that the speaker had disappeared leaving nothing but a charred spot on the stage to mark his absence. The janitor stepped up to the pod containing the inert form of his mother. Suddenly Pariah knew who the man was.

"Merlin!" he cried. ` "Hmm? Oh, you must be Pariah. Where your mother is, there you shall be also, eh? Well let's see how true that is."

Merlin held up a hand, and with another blinding flash of light, was ushered into the time streams.

"NO!" Pariah shouted. In the moment the light flashed, he was free from the observers holding him to the universe. He released this time and followed his mother wherever Merlin was taking her.

Pariah actualized in an uncharacteristically odd position. Firstly, the room into which he materialized was completely empty. He could not even feel another presence in the adjacent spaces to the room where he came to rest. Nobody had actualized Pariah into the room. His appearance was driven by something else.

The second odd thing about Pariah's actualization into the room was that he did so standing two feet off the deck beneath his feet. Pariah came into being in mid air. Gravity seemed just as surprised as Pariah was in that Pariah didn't fall out of the air. He coasted down the first eighteen inches or so before gravity caught the mistake and rectified it. Then Pariah dropped to the hard metallic catwalk that formed the room's floor.

Merlin was a more powerful opponent than Pariah had ever faced. This time, Merlin would not allow Pariah to face him in the game. Pariah had earned Merlin's caution. He was sure to face Pariah in the world that passed for reality this time. The Merlin entity was strong enough to keep Pariah at a distance from himself.

"Guide," called Pariah. "We need a plan."

It took Guide a few seconds to materialize. Pariah could feel that Guide was having a hard time selecting a form to occupy in the strange structure. Eventually, Guide chose the form of a squirrel and came to rest on Pariah's shoulder. "There are things we need more, Pariah."

"Such as?"

"Merlin bounced you here so you would be unable to hold onto this part of time-space. There's nobody in range to actualize you except for Merlin himself."

"But Merlin knows I'm here. He'll hold me himself."

"In actualizing your mother, he actualizes you."

"Sympathetic magic?"

"Quantum technology, actually. However, he's not holding you to a place and you'll be unable to face him in this state."

"Where is this place?"

"Merlin is hiding from the Matronites so he jumped to a League Drop Station."

Pariah began to pace around the small room. "The Matronites. I'd nearly forgotten about them. How long before they follow us?"

"You should know by now," said Guide," that the Matronites consider some technologies to be sins. They're unnatural and they violate the natural order."

"However," interjected Pariah," the League does use that technology."

"The Star Navigator's League is a trade union representing people who understand and use this technology."

"So the Matronites cannot follow us?"

"Not the way you came. And, this is a shielded structure."

"Why is this place abandoned?"

"It isn't," replied Guide. "The best way to keep this place a secret is to go back and built it before anybody lives in the land above us. This place is just waiting until the League needs it."

"So we'll be safe until then?"

"Let me show you what this place is," said Guide.

Guide jumped down from Pariah's shoulder and ran to the small door at the far end of the room. Either Manual or Guide electronically picked the lock on the door and it slid open in a quick blur. With Pariah in tow, Guide walked down the large walkway just outside of the room and stopped in front of a huge doorway. The walkways, lined with numbered doors, must have gone on for miles, but Guide chose the closest of the hangar doors to show Pariah. Picking this lock as well, the huge doors parted, noisily.

Beyond the doors, the room was at least twenty stories tall. A huge metallic sphere hovered in the middle of the room, between metallic rings in the ceiling and floor. Just entering the room put Pariah on the ramp leading up to the door in the middle of the sphere. At the top of the ramp, a walkway had been built completely around the spherical craft. The room's entire purpose was to contain the sphere.

"What is this?"

Guide jumped back up onto Pariah's shoulder. "That is a drop shuttle. It has no engines. The rings above and below the shuttle are wormhole targets. Cargo is taken into this shuttle and, when loaded, the wormhole target below it is enabled. When the magnetic locks in the walkway are disabled, the shuttle drops through the wormhole to the cargo hold of a ship in orbit."

"I don't understand why this is important for me."

"Wormholes are used because they are nearly impossible to trace. With a Pionization Field Frame, Merlin could go almost anywhere from this station and not be followed."

"How do you know all of this?"

"It's need to know," said Guide. "And I needed to know."

"With you opening doors all over this place, the League has to know that we're here."

Guide crossed Pariah to his left shoulder. "Death got you a League registry, Pariah. You have the permits to be here."

"Is Merlin with the League as well?"

"That's not something that I'd know. I didn't need to know."

Pariah found it hard to accept that he was part of the group that had killed Ester. His mind did not catch the significance of the statement and, when it did, it chose not to tell him. In the dark echoes of Pariah's unconscious mind, Pariah rationalized that Ester was part of the group that was trying to kill him. Maybe Pariah's group in the League opposed the attack that had killed Ester.

"You've told me a great deal, but nothing that will help me."

"On a side note, this is probably the station that Death was going to when you met up with him in the future."

A wave of fatigue swept over Pariah and he nearly fell back out of time. Guide instructed the O.M. Complex to catch Pariah before he hit the hard deck plating beneath his feet. Pariah hovered at a forty-five degree angle for a few minutes while he recovered his strength. If Merlin had not been holding Pariah's mother in that period, then Pariah would have de-actualized. Even Pariah knew that he had to find some people to hold him corporeal.

Opportunity presented itself in the form of a small village a few miles away from the complex, on the surface of the Earth. Pariah was almost comforted by the realization that he was on the Earth. He released a little bit of his senses and jumped toward the village. It was a hard, uncomfortable leap sideways in space. Nothing prepared Pariah for the drain.

Three or four presences surrounded Pariah when he materialized. Pariah could only feel that they were around him and lost himself into sleep just after feeling the first mind lock onto him. One of the villagers had found Pariah and he was safe from time's rejection enough for a nap. Lacking the strength for an alternative, Pariah collapsed to the hard ground.

When Pariah came to, his forehead was cold. His eyes took a few minutes to open and even longer to focus in the dim light of the room. He was in some kind of a sod hut, lying in a bed of cut grasses. A young boy with long, dark hair was bent over him, placing a wet rag on Pariah's head. The boy's face was covered by a white rag.

Upon seeing Pariah's eyes open, the boy pulled the rag away from his face. "Is your village struck with plague as well?"

Pariah lacked the strength to speak and he thought it best to let the boy fill in the details from his own assumptions.

"We did sent our own massagers to beg Merlin to take off his curse, we did. Figures, I did, that the rest of the valley would do the same."

"I just came back from Merlin's cave."

"Sorry, I am, about this rag thing. Me lord, Doctor, say some such nonsense about little bugs causing the plague, he does. Thinks these cloths protect me, he does."

The boy lifted Pariah's head from the makeshift pillow so that Pariah could sip the strong tea from the cup in the boy's other hand. Whatever was in the tea had a strong taste of burned leaves. By the way he handled the cup, Pariah knew that the boy had been treating the sick with the tea for a long time. He knew how fast a patient could sip the hot fluid and did not offer the drink too fast or too slow.

Pariah knew that he didn't have the right entropy to heal the villagers who were trying to help him. Timeaters did not spread plagues, from Pariah's experience, although Pariah did not know why. He just figured that death was as disinterested in him as time was. However, that was only good news for Pariah.

"Thank you," said Pariah.

With a smile, the boy withdrew the cup. A large shadowy figure entered the hut and the boy's hair seemed to stand on end. He pulled the mask back up over his face, trying hard not to be seen. Pariah could feel the fear within the boy and the hostility in the shadow in his own groggy mind. The boy stood up and was happy that the shadowy figure did not speak to him as he left the hut.

"Stupid boy," said the figure. "Half the village is dying of the plague and he thinks it's a joke."

There was always a protective streak in Pariah and Pariah would not have been himself without it. "You shouldn't be so hard on him, Doctor."

"I keep telling you people that Doctor is not my name," replied the figure. "My name is Steven."

"Please excuse me," said Pariah. "Doctor is all the boy referred to you as."

Steven entered the hut slowly so that his eyes could adjust to the gloom. He was every bit as out of place in the village as Pariah, but Steven did not hide his strangeness. In fact, Steven seemed proud that he wasn't like the villagers. Holding his head high, Steven liked to look down at the people around him. Even if he had to tilt his head back, he refused to look at anybody at eye level.

"You'll be pleased to know that your blood tests came back negative," said Steven. "The plague hasn't hit you yet."

When Pariah could finally see Steven's face, he saw the same cloth mask over his face and mouth that the boy had been wearing. Steven had been in the village a long enough time for his hair to have grown a few inches and tangled into the straps of his mask. Unlike Steven himself, Steven's robe fit in with the time period. The cloth he wore was right, but Pariah had the feeling that it had been woven by a machine.

"That's good to hear, doc."

If Steven had been paying attention, he would have noticed Pariah's slip of the tongue. Instead, Steven offered Pariah a mask. "You can ask Merlin to renounce his curse all you want," he said. "His magic is only going to work as long as you wear this. Maybe you'll want to mark a few magic symbols on the cloth."

"You don't know Merlin the way I do."

"Well, you don't know science."

"Having faced both, I'd say that Merlin is the stronger."

Standing to leave, Steven let out a long breath. "Suit yourself. It's your funeral."

Guide did not appear to Pariah until after Steven had departed. Taking his familiar chipmunk form, Guide stood at Pariah's bedside. The O.M. Complex scanned Pariah on Guide's command and Pariah felt the warm scanning beam pass through his body. Then Guide scanned the area of the hut. Even Pariah could feel the power generator in the village. Guide's concern was that he was being monitored.

"Don't tell me that Steven is another timeater," said Pariah.

"More than likely, he's a Matronite."

Pariah considered sitting up, but he liked looking Guide in the eye when they spoke. "Does he know anything about Merlin?"

"You saw him," said Guide. "He believes that Merlin is some kind of superstition."

"Can Manual estimate how long it will be before the Matronites inform him of what Merlin is?"

"They cannot. Matronites avoid time travel as much as they can. They need Star Navigators in order to do it. Besides, the Xenotrat remains at the edge of the village implies that Steven is lost."

"Xenotrats here?"

"Buried at the edge of town. They must have been caught in the plague. Maybe, they were carrying it."

"I know that I cannot heal the town. Can I catch the plague?"

"Not as long as the entropy charge remains in your quantum matrix. Timeaters are very hard to kill."

"That's good to hear."

While Pariah and Guide were talking, the young boy returned to the hut and was standing in the doorway long enough to hear only the last line. "What's so good to be hearing, me lord John?"

"Me boy, Doctor Steven reports that I don't have the plague."

"There'd be no reason for Merlin's curse to fall upon you, there would."

"Why ever did Merlin's curse fall upon your people, me boy?"

"It is me fault, it is. The wood I chose for last month's festival came from Merlin's lands, it did. Offered myself to Merlin, I did, in exchange for breaking his curse. Refused, he did."

"Me boy, it is not your fault. Merlin has been busy with other things."

"Me lord John," said the boy. "Would you take me to plead me case before Merlin, me lord John?"

Pariah did not know how to answer. Merlin had not caused the plague and would not renounce it if he had. The boy did not know that Merlin had a personal problem with Pariah and was honest in his asking. Guide kept silent, invisible to the boy, leaving Pariah to handle the problem on his own.

"Merlin cares little for such things," answered Dr. Steven.

"Me lord Doctor," said the boy. "I cannot sit about while me village dies off. I cannot! Your bug thing idea isn't working. It ain't."

"Just stay out of my hair while you do it."

The boy took that as a dismissal and left the room without an answer from Pariah. He seemed to follow the doctor's commands out of fear and run away at the first chance. It was not unlike the child of a man that Pariah knew in his youth. This boy expressed a desire to please a man who could not be pleased.

Doctor Steven picked up the cup that the boy had given Pariah his tea in. It had been carved from a single piece of wood over a long time. Although simple in design, the cup's symmetry showed the workmanship involved in making it. There had once been great skill in this village. The doctor was too cold to feel the love that had gone into the wood that became the cup.

He didn't speak to Pariah. Doctor Steven didn't even look directly at Pariah while he was in the hut. Carrying the cup in his tight hand, he just walked back out of the hut as though the hut was empty. At the door, he even straitened the collar of his robe for presentation to the public beyond the hut.

Pariah rested another hour before Mary's quiddity got to him. She'd been a good mother to Pariah, in his childhood days and had given Pariah the work ethic of a mule. He just couldn't sit still in the hut. Somewhere, the village needed another pair of hands and a strong back. These villages always needed somebody and God had given Pariah the need to help.

Walking around the village, Pariah heard Doctor Steven's voice swearing from one of the huts. The simple hardware that he had with him was not good enough for his needs. His skills required a well developed society with machines that had not yet been invented. Pariah looked into the hut, quietly, and saw Steven trying to isolate a virus with a microscope. It was an advanced microscope and Steven swore that it was almost good enough.

The village had a large plot of land on which crops had been planted. Pariah took to weeding the crop in the untended field so that the population would have food when the hard winter came. It was almost like the town where Pariah had grown up. Most of a day's labors were spent in just staying alive and the people barely survived.

Eventually, Pariah finished the field. After the evening meal, which was attended by only five people, Pariah joined into the group building the funeral pyre for the day's dead. Pariah could not tell and did not ask if cremation was a common funeral custom for these people or if it was something that Steven had instructed them to do. It was Pariah's way to work without asking questions. Timeaters do not involve themselves with their fellow men.

Before the week was done, Pariah worked alone on the funeral pyres. In all the town, only Steven and Pariah remained healthy. Pariah caught himself thinking about discharging his entropy to end the suffering. He could wipe out the town in a flash without causing pain. However, it was the kind of an action that Pariah knew he could not live with.

Only Pariah remained to mix the tea for the sick and he modified it more to Mary's formula. With it, the people seemed to last a day longer, but the death did not end. Pariah started delivering masses to the empty fields with each funeral fire. These people were not Christians, yet Pariah was. Doctor Steven was too busy to notice.

Each sermon Pariah delivered gave him the strength to get out of bed in the morning. Dr. Steven was animate that Pariah's blood held the key to immunity, although he didn't notice that Pariah was a timeater. Guide scanned carefully to make sure that the lab did not contain the quantum disruption probe that would have exposed Pariah's nature. None was present.

"You seem to have an immunity to this virus, John," said Doctor Steven. His voice was almost an octave higher than normal with nervous energy.

"Excuse me, Doctor Steven, but don't I have a limited amount of blood?"

"If I can isolate the protein or enzyme that kills the virus, then I can transfer your immunity to the rest of the village."

"This is the fourth sample that you've taken from me today and I'm beginning to worry about losing too much blood."

Dr. Steven didn't look at Pariah. He simply stuck the needle of his syringe into the sterilizer next to his microscope. All of the genetic profiles and DNA sequencing hadn't revealed the source of Pariah's immunity and Guide was pleased that Steven's lab lacked the one instrument that Doctor Steven would have needed to find Pariah's immunity. Each sample of Pariah's blood held the key and Doctor Steven was sure that he'd find it.

Pariah's arms were tracked from the frequent blood samples. Dr. Steven had a hard time finding a place to take the additional sample. When the syringe was full, Pariah grasped Dr. Steven's arm. Without contact, the doctor would not have heard Pariah's words.

"That's the last one," Said Pariah. "You're jeopardizing my health with these tests."

Without an additional word, Pariah left the hut. He didn't care how Doctor Steven reacted. Pariah knew that the tests were a dead end and wanted to tell him, but could not.

One case hurt Pariah more than any other. The boy who had nursed Pariah back to health after his jump fell ill just after Pariah took over building the pyres. He was the last patient to fall into bed with no hope of ever emerging. With him, the plague would end. Once he was gone, there would be nobody else to get sick.

Walking through the empty village, Pariah passed Dr. Steven's hut just after the sun rose into the sky. Dr Steven had been working for so long that his eyes were blurred for lack of sleep. They were so red that Pariah, upon seeing them, was almost surprised that Steven could see at all. Turning to look at Pariah, Steven knocked a sample dish off the makeshift desk on which he was working. Steven knew that the disease had beaten him.

Not a word was spoken, aloud or in the depths of mental privacy, between the two remaining healthy inhabitants of the village. Pariah picked up the dish with his left hand and placed a cup of the strong tea on the desk with his right hand. Steven's hand shook too badly for him to pour the warm liquid into his mouth without Pariah's help. Try as he might, Steven could only drink the tea with the help of Pariah's gentle hand. Even both of Steven's hands combined only dumped the tepid fluid onto Steven's robes.

Each of the men wanted to speak with the other, yet each knew that the other would not hear his words. Dr. Steven's voice was too weak to cross the air gap to Pariah's ears and Pariah had words to say that Dr. Steven had long since denied. When the cup was empty, half into Steven's stomach and half onto his clothing, Pariah pushed Dr. Steven's head back. Pariah gently placed Steven into his bed and prayed for him as he drifted into sleep. Then Pariah was alone in the daylight.

Dr. Steven had been failed by his faith and found no solace in the part of reality that he wished to accept. He had come to the village to preach the miracles of his way of life. Natural Philosophy would set these people free from the dark ignorance of their old ways. All the wonders of the technological revolution would be theirs if only they would follow their chosen shepard, Dr. Steven, into the promised land of belief. The Matronite way would bring science into the life of these people.

But the gospel Dr. Steven had been sent to deliver to these backward people had failed to save them. Science had no salvation to offer Dr. Steven. It was a cold path that had no comforts to offer. When Steven cried out for justice, only the justifications of his own mind echoed back in reply. He needed the miracles that he was compelled to deny. Dr. Steven was a broken man and he knew it.

Pariah saw no reason to tend the village garden. He wandered about the empty huts, listening to the ghosts of the people who had once lived there. Those ghosts kept Pariah in his solid form. When the last embers of the funeral fires dies low enough to be safe, Pariah went to see the boy who had come to save Pariah. Faith comforted Pariah when he prayed, calling out to it. Yet Pariah needed faith to burn brightly within him so that the peace he found in God's love would not fade. It was not enough for Pariah to preach to the animals around the ashes of the graveyard.

The boy, without name, sat up as much as he could when he heard Pariah enter the hut. He could not see with his bloodshot eyes in the gloom of the hut where he knew that he was bound to die. His mind echoed with thoughts that he deserved the pain in his tired joints for the curse that he had brought down upon his neighbors and kin. Within his dying form lamented a broken spirit. Pariah was his last comfort.

His voice was weak, although Pariah heard him clearly. "Me lord John, is it?"

"What can I do for me boy?"

"Why is it, me lord John, that you do those spells for the dead, you do?"

"I know not what you ask, me boy."

He reached out for the cup in Pariah's hand and Pariah placed the cup in his hand.

"When I lay here, I hear your voice on the wind, I do. Speak spells for the dead, you do as I listen."

"I pray to me lord for the lost. I ask me lord to forgive their transgressions and not condemn them for their ignorance."

"Will you pray for me as well when I am gone, I am?"

"Me boy, I pray for all the lost of the world."

"May chance, me lord John, you beg Persephone to, like for Tiresias, give them mind in the underworld, you do?"

Pariah placed his left hand on the boy's head, mopping up his sweat with a rag from his pocket. Looking down into the boy's dim, hazel eyes, Pariah thought back to his own childhood. In another life, Pariah thought, that boy may have been Pariah's own son. Would God allow Pariah a family of his own in time? Not thinking of such things is what allows a timeater to go on in the shadows.

"Me Lord rules a much better place than the underworld. I ask the Lord to grant these lost souls forgiveness and entry into his kingdom, me boy."

"Me lord John, why has your lord condemned you to this place, he has?"

"Me boy, we condemn ourselves by our own free will. It is to serve my lord that I was sent to all the places I have been."

"Will you show me the way to your lord? Will you, me lord John?"

The boy's strength ran low from the strain of mere speech. Pariah could feel the life running out of the boy's body and Pariah knew that there was nothing that he could do. Timeaters have their limits and Pariah was at his. It hurt Pariah in places that Pariah had never felt before. Maybe the loss of Ester had awakened more than Pariah knew.

"I will show you what I can, me boy."

"Will your lord forgive me, will he?"

"There is but one Lord, me boy. If true is your faith, he will forgive you."

"It will be hard, it will. I know not your lord, I do. Can you show him to me, can you?"

"That is what Doctor Steven fails to understand, me boy. Proof changes the world around you. Faith changes you."

"I will, for you, try. I will."

"Rest now, me boy," said Pariah. For the first time, Pariah administered last rites. He knew the words from his youth, yet he had never spoken them. And, for this boy, he meant them.

Praying above the boy, Pariah heard the boy repeating the words back to him. It was beyond Pariah's knowledge if the boy was parroting or if he had been truly moved to believe. All Pariah knew is that the boy desired forgiveness as much as he needed it. Guilt was killing his spirit faster than the disease was killing his body. Forgiveness is what Pariah was offering.

Slowly, the boy's eyes drifted shut. There was a new brightness to his skin now that guilt had released its grip on his soul. Pariah was happy to have given him even that little comfort. The disease was beyond Pariah's power, however, the dark prince had been denied victory. Prayer was all that sustained Pariah in the darkness.

Pariah knelt at the young boy's bedside. The hay serving as his mattress had a musty smell and Pariah had to work hard to avoid sneezing. In the end, Pariah turned his head to release the dust from his lungs. His sneeze tried to break loose all the pent up anxiety of a timeater who had jumped the wrong way. That boy needed the healing touch of a timeater and Pariah, having been dragged backward in time, was only charged with destructive entropy.

The Matronite medic knew a great many things of alchemy and microbiology. His medical skill was at least as good as any medical doctor Pariah had ever met in his travels. However, the doctor's healing gift was vacant. Microbes were the mechanism of the plague and not the disease of it. All the vast knowledge that the Matronites had copied into their medic was not saving the boy.

Pulling the covers up around the boy's neck to keep him warm, Pariah wept. Maybe in a thousand years doctors would find a cure for this plague. If hospitals were as well equipped as they would be in the future, then this boy would have a fighting chance. Pariah knew that the boy, as with the rest of the small village, was going to die and it was hard for him to take.

"Satan's actions agree with him," said a voice behind Pariah.

"What?"

Guide ran around Pariah, jumping up onto the bed before he spoke again. He sat up on the boy's chest, looking deeply into Pariah's eyes so that there would be only honesty between them. "You're asking yourself why a group that is so devoted to the destruction of timeaters would work so hard to heal these people. Why would Doctor Jonah condemn himself to a torturous existence when his group was this devoted to healing?"

"Something like that," replied Pariah.

"Man is not Satan's enemy-God is. The Devil will heal as long as it takes something from God in the process."

"Preaching at me will not save this boy."

Guide turned his chipmunk head to look at the boy's face. "Your power to be a timeater comes from a deeper source than entropy, John. You can survive when you stop existing because you have a strong faith to overcome your fear. Have you tried asking God to do what you cannot do yourself?"

Pariah reached out with his left hand and stroked Guide's furry back. "I'm not a saint, Guide. My entropy is charged the wrong way and I know that I'd kill this child if I tried."

Turning his eyes blue in the process, Guide turned back to face Pariah. "You're relying too much on yourself. Rely on God in this as you do when your life counts on it."

It wasn't an easy thing for Pariah to do. He placed his right hand on the boy's forehead and his left hand on the boy's chest. Taking his eyes away from their contact with Guide, Pariah closed his eyes and bowed his head in prayer. Silently, Pariah prayed as hard as he ever had and then prayed harder. The energy within him was destructive and the voices in his head were worse.

Knowing how to use his gift did not help Pariah. The voices of doubt were loud and they rung true within Pariah. Pariah could not force them out, so he chose not to hear them. He let them echo out of his body and into the space surrounding him. Beyond them, Pariah felt a warmth and saw a light that did not speak to him. It did not have to speak to him to be understood by him.

Through his eyelids, Pariah could see the light in the room get brighter. Pariah did not open his eyes to the light outside of him. It was so warm in the room that Pariah wanted to remove his shirt, yet he did not. The warmth was intense, although it did not burn Pariah as long as he did not listen to the darker voices. All that Pariah felt was the love he had last felt surrounding Ester.

Pariah released the warmth into the boy's body and the two of them joined in the light. The light was always there; Pariah had just never chosen to see it before. Everything in the room seemed to glow as Pariah's eyes drifted open. Then the light dimmed back to the room's former gloominess. It seemed that the boy was asking Pariah if he was an angel without moving his lips.

Guide smiled at Pariah. "Now you are ready to face Merlin."

"Will the boy be alright?"

"Have you no faith, Pariah?"

"The boy will be fine."

"Now we must go," said Guide. "The Matronite knows that you are a timeater."

"How about the rest of the town? How can I leave when there are so many more to heal?"

"The boy is the last, John. You sacrificed your safety to spare him."

When the boy's eyes closed, Pariah felt himself pulled back across the fabric of time-space to the compound where Merlin held Pariah's mother. It was a fast trip. The jump seemed to come of its own and Pariah allowed it to happen. Guide was right.

Pariah's essence shot through a gateway and into the heart of what must inevitably have been Merlin's control booth tucked away somewhere in the multiverse. In a moment of materialization he found himself all at once damp of soul and body.

The room was musty and small, and it smelled overall of death. It was constructed out of planks with a single three-by-three square hole in the wall that was solidly barred. The door was also wooden, and looked very solid and also very closed. He was sitting on a soggy straw cot, one of two in the room. The one immediately across from him was also occupied by the bedraggled bundle of rags that was his mother.

"Mother?" Pariah asked, attempting to tap the deeper consciousness that knew him within whatever person his mother was now playing. The woman arose from her bed, smiling insanely. She tapped her head and spoke.

"Sorry kiddo, she's temporarily out of service."

Pariah frowned.

"Who are you?"

"None other than your old buddy, Merlin."

Pariah felt fury growing in his chest.

"You've taken her away, and now you've entered her mind! What do you want from me, Merlin?"

The woman shrugged.

"I told you before, I really don't want or need you. You just happen to be attached to the real prize, your mother."

"What do you need HER for?"

"Your mother is like the stock market, Pariah. She collects power, just like you, but she never discharges because her conscious will is so far beneath that she isn't capable of tapping her true power. Now as she moves from future to past, some of that power is lost, but there's an overall net gain that steadily compiles. If I can separate the two of you, I will have an almost unlimited power source at my command."

"I can't allow you to do that."

The woman arose and started pacing the tiny cell. A frown crossed her face.

"I'm tired of playing games with you, Pariah. I really have nothing against you, but my purpose brings us into conflict. Have you ever stopped to consider what you stand for?"

"What do you mean?"

"You've spent most of time assembling a device you don't even know the purpose of. Vast forces manipulate you, and it's nothing but your gut sense that tells you which is right and which is wrong. Do you want to know what the ultimate purpose of the OM Complex is? Do you want to know what your entire existence has stood for?"

"How can I trust what you tell me?"

"You can't. That's the irony. You'll have to judge it like everything else in your life. By your gut."

"I have a better guide in my faith."

"If you think so. The OM Complex is an anomaly in time. It was constructed from time and then spread through time in a never ending, or perhaps I should say never-beginning cycle. Its purpose is the total and absolute destruction of the universe. And it needs you as its trigger. It won't operate for anyone else. Not even your dark double."

"My double?"

"You call him The Tracking. He is an alternate version of you. That's probably why he feels no regret in using you like a tool."

"But why would anyone ever want to destroy the universe?"

"Why did anyone choose to create the universe in the first place? There's no way I can answer that question."

"So now I suppose I'm suppose to just hand my mother over to you because my life is pointless."

"That's not all of it, Pariah. Beyond just abandoning your mother, you must also abandon your own existence. In order to release her power I need you to discorporate."

"No."

The woman shrugged and sat down.

"I caution you, Pariah, that when you journey from this place and discover that what I've told you is true, you may find you suffer a change of heart. As long as you remain a timeater, the universe is in jeopardy. And the only alternative to being a timeater is nonexistence. Or perhaps you could join a Matronite reform camp. Linear reality is a harsh awakening from the freedom you have now. And if you ever give up existence, I win. Because even when you travel on, I have this moment in time when I am in complete command of your mother. I can access it whenever I need to. And your nonexistence will give me the power I need."

"So you will not fight my leaving?"

"I would if I could. Unfortunately, I find my fate has taken an unexpected turn."

"I thought you could see the future."

"I remember the future. There's an important difference. I can only remember as much of the future in any one timeline as I will spend in that timeline."

"So what is the unfortunate event of which you speak?"

"I've been imprisoned in this timeline by my enemies. I'm not sure which ones yet. But I'm not popular to the League OR to the Matronites. And several other powerful rogue forces don't care for me, either. Including The Tracking. In tampering with you, I have roused his ire. I believe it may be The Tracking that has trapped me here. It was unwise for me to enter your mother's mind."

"So it is as I was told," Pariah smiled, "The Lord has fought the battle for me."

The woman cocked her head, "You have an odd perspective, Timeater. Especially for your kind."

Pariah searched the walls of time around him, and found that he was not bound.

"It's been an interesting battle this round, Merlin. I have a question for you before I go."

"Yes?"

"The town I found myself in when I jumped after you, were you in anyway responsible for the disease on that village?"

The woman seemed to consider for a moment.

"The gate I jumped to was under one of my former dwellings. I may have come there in a time of plague in order to claim credit for it. Much of my perceived power comes from charlatanism and a very good memory for the future. But since the past is a dim blur to me, I cannot say more."

Pariah nodded and floated out through time, his mother close behind.

Time flowed with its own turbulent rhythm, twisting and turning about violently as Pariah rode on its back. Pariah's trip was more guided than usual. He bucked the tide of time that usually tossed him around on its own whims. His troubled mind had a mission. There were answers that Pariah needed to find while the will to know remained within him.

Merlin held onto Pariah's mother through every corner. She was not battered by the raging currents of time's rapids as she was given over entirely to them. The same could be said of Merlin only for as long as he could keep his ego in check and become as his host was. It was not easy for Merlin to allow himself to be nothing and even harder for him to surrender to the protective assimilation that gave paraseers their purpose in each event of time. Pariah's mother was meant to make this and every jump with Pariah and Merlin was not.

Pariah's will coalesced merely as a shadow on the edges of reality as a much larger object actualized around him. All the scattered parts forming from the mere potential to be was overwhelming to Pariah's tired mind. It was like witnessing a small part of creation itself. These were the kind of sights known only to star navigators when they do their tricks. Having once jumped a hopper through Perihelion, Pariah knew how to relax, trusting in God, to withstand the strain. He was not the focus of the event.

All things came to pass in an instant and the hopper materialized around Pariah and his mother with Merlin in tow. Pariah was tired from the instant of the event, though not as tired as the quantum anomaly at its focus. The wood sheathed deck of the vast craft hardened beneath Pariah's body just after he softly, landed on it. In his mind, Pariah apologized for knocking the molecules of the deck out of place for the instant in which he had landed. Then Pariah drifted into a nap.

It was a different experience for Pariah's mother. She had to be edited into this event of time by kindly forces in the real world above. They could not displace a life to insert her or they would lose their charge to the permanence of the displacement. The timeless woman had to remain a shadow as long as her son did. Merlin was a minor detail to these higher wills and knew well enough to be in awe of their labors.

For Pariah to remain inside of the hopper, anchored to any set of moments in all of time-space, he knew that somebody must be watching him. And, he was open to this experience both because he knew that the force came from the mind of another like himself and because it was a place that he actually wanted to be. After a billion random leaps through the whole of creation, at the whim of mortal desires and the Tracking's forceful drive, Pariah had again come to a place that he chose to be. Pariah was becoming John.

Another jump came to Pariah and took him to his goal. The noise inside of Pariah's mind cleared and he was part of the place where he had landed. He spoke the language as though he had spoken no other tongue. Pariah took a deep breath, relishing the scent of home in the air which he had never breathed before. Maybe, he thought, there is such a place as home.

Pariah was sitting in a chair at one end of a round table. Across from Pariah, there was a single, muted yellow, chair. The entire ceiling of the room was a large window, showing a very large and very busy planet above the room. It was almost never comfortable for Pariah to look out into space and see the planet that he was orbiting. He always felt the pull of gravity pulling him downwards toward the planet.

The window faded into a murky white solidity and Pariah was again comfortable in the room. A familiar voice called to Pariah. Pariah did not have to turn to see Death mixing drinks at the counter to his left, but he did so out of respect for his old friend. Timeaters have few friends.

"I know how you guys feel about overhead windows and planets."

"Thank you for caring."

"Think nothing of it, John Pariah. The trick you pulled for me all those years ago set me up in this business. I owe my fortunes to you, old friend."

"It is pleasant to see that you have done well."

Death hastily mixed up a second drink and returned to the table without taking his understated eyes off of Pariah. "I've been worried that you wouldn't show up again."

"Death isn't somebody that most people go looking for."

Placing the cool, brownish yellow glass in front of Pariah, Death finally relaxed a bit. "I take it that you know about wermjuice?"

"Only that it doesn't sound appetizing."

"It's kind of a pet name, actually. Star Navigators drink it to restore their metabolic balance. I figure that you'll need it after your trip."

The drink was cool but not so cold as to hurt Pariah's teeth. It had a strong taste. More than anything, it tasted like a form of tea. Pariah sipped the beverage, drinking slowly in the presence of his host. "It's actually not bad."

"It was brought to my attention that you were in the asteroid colony of Gehenna. I've been afraid that you were lost. You have a bright future, Pariah."

"I was wondering how you knew my name. There were many casualties in that complex, although I wasn't one of them. Some of those people were my friends."

"It's far from my place to make excuses for the League's actions. You know that it was hunting me when we first met."

"Somehow, I had forgotten that."

"This is a fallen universe, Pariah. None of us is perfect."

"People that I cared about are dead. Rationalizations will bring them no peace and me no comfort."

"When I was a small child, my world was ruled by the Matronites. They came in peace to liberate us poor ignorant savages from our own stupidity." Death's voice fell off and he sipped his drink to restore it. He tried hard to hold back a dark memory that was not meant for Pariah's ears.

"They believe that they have the answers, Death. I've seen no malice in their intentions."

"When they built their schools, I believe that they were sincere. But, they crushed our spirits when they tried to give us faith only in ourselves. My people had no hope for five generations. The council they built had its slide rules and its inhuman, subjective facts. We were just clay for them to mold into their own form. Worlds die when they stop dreaming."

Pariah remained silent a few additional seconds to be sure that Death had finished his thought before speaking from his own mind. "I do not mean to imply that I'm defending the Matronites. It's the League's methods that I'm questioning."

"When the League set my world free, I was asking the same questions with my mind unused to doubts. The League is not like us, Pariah. It can use its class fives to access any point of space in any instant of time. I spent a long time asking why the League hadn't set us free when the Matronites first came."

A slim smile crept onto Pariah's face and he worked hard to hide it from Death. Death did not know that Pariah was a timeater. Pariah had forgotten that Death didn't know. It was only when Guide thought into Pariah's mind that Pariah realized the wisdom of not letting Death in on the secret. "Did you come to any conclusions?"

"In the end, yes. But I'm sure that you didn't come all this way to talk philosophy with me."

"You might be surprised, my old friend."

Death may have smiled, yet Pariah had not learned to read the expressions of Death's slim, alien face. "I do believe that I owe you a rematch in the game. Maybe you've even learned enough in your travels to win this time."

"Let's find out."

Death stood behind his chair, waiting for Pariah to stretch out his tired legs before moving. Somehow, Death looked more dignified as he stood on the wooden deck of the elaborate room. Success had calmed Death. Life itself seemed to agree with Death in the few moments that Pariah watched him standing at the edge of the table.

A shadowy form seemed to be grinning at Pariah from what little darkness there was in the room. It was more a feeling than a man. The specter was very familiar to Pariah although Pariah saw very little of him in recent times. He was a cold, cruel master that none of Pariah's kind were without even though they never seemed to notice it. Loneliness came back into view for Pariah as he stood in the presence of his friend's achievement

As he knew that he would, Pariah saw his mother as Death walked him to the gaming room. She was one of the doctors attending to Death's new Star Navigator. Pariah could almost feel Merlin's mind struggling for control under the force of the personality that he had been given within Pariah's mother. Merlin would release his hold on her body as soon as Pariah jumped next. It was something that Pariah could feel.

The man was wearing a dark robe, similar to Death's. He seemed to be as human as Pariah and was almost the same size. After his trick, his mind was drained and he needed to rest on the medical table until his strength returned. As long as he was there, he was the center of attention for all the medics in the room. Deep in sleep, he wouldn't even know that the group was there.

Pariah understood Death's need to check on his charge. Loneliness stood erect in the darkest corner of the room, bearing his teeth at Pariah with the knowledge that nobody would notice when Pariah moved on. Even Guide stayed out of sight while Pariah was on the hopper. Only Pariah's mother stayed with Pariah and she never knew him.

"What do you think, Pariah?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"I got me an actual class three there. He may make class four in the next few decades. You could go further, from what I've seen."

"I'll think about it."

"No you will not. I can see it in your eyes, Pariah. This is not what you want out of life."

"I've already been further."

Death expressed what Pariah would have called a smile. "With anybody but you, I'd call that bragging. You I believe."

In lieu of a reply, Pariah returned the smile. Death's words hit their mark within Pariah although even Pariah did not know what it was he wanted from life. Any other life would have seen Pariah take the deal. The choice was just not Pariah's to make.

It was not a long walk from the recovery room to the game room. The game room was linked through the hopper's central computer core and located only a few rooms from the drive core. Pariah almost found himself amazed by how well he understood the layout of the huge commercial ships. In another life, these ships would have been his destiny. But Pariah had no life.

Death waved the door to the game room open. The room had a slight pressure difference between its interior and the hallway beyond so Pariah felt a slight breeze as though the room sneezed at his entry. It was a reasonably large, circular room with its walls lined by form fitting beds. Overhead, the ceiling was domed. Most of the lighting was provided by the display panels which lined the walls.

Overhead, there was a series of dim lights, like the spokes of a wagon wheel. The lights may have been power conduits, however, Pariah didn't know much of the mechanical systems of the ship and Death didn't care enough to ask. From the feeling of power flowing through the room, Pariah realized that he was standing at the head of the ship's main drive unit. Death had lived on the hopper so long that the wonder of its design had been lost to him.

Crossing the room to a space between two of the beds, Death activated a panel in the wall. A door, just above waist height and beneath the panel, slid open to reveal a carton of small tubes. Each tube had a color tint to it for indexing and they had all been placed in rainbow order. Death selected a blue and a green tube before closing the panel. He returned to Pariah, giving him the green tube.

"Our q-techs were never quite able to duplicate the crown mechanism of your game system. I'm sure that you will find this system adequate."

It pleased Pariah that Death was using a technology that Death considered Pariah to be ignorant of. "I trust you, Death."

"This device is called a mirror. I'm not sure what color codes your people used, but green is the color that matches the layout of your brain. If you use the wrong mirror, then the data will be injected into the wrong neurons and you will have a seizure. Surfing ugly may sound like fun, but 'shocking hard' is no joke."

"Shocking hard?"

"Rigor - mortis sets in before you're completely dead. At your level, you probably don't use our slang."

"After awhile, you forget that this stuff was once that dangerous."

"Would you consider teaching our q-techs some of that old imperial technology you were trained in?"

"I doubt that you have the industrial base to support that."

Death slipped his tube into a slot beside his bed and a light passed into it. "I had to ask."

Pariah turned to the bed next to him and found the same slot in his bed. The mirror device had a multifaceted point at the bottom and Pariah slipped that end into the slot. Then, his mirror lit up as well. Getting into the bed, Pariah noticed that Death had centered his head on a stripe at the head of the bed.

Within the horizontal stripe, the bed had a phased array antenna matrix designed to project signals into the player's brain. It formed a quantum measurement field that allowed the players body and mind to be split. His body was maintained by the life support system in the table. Everything else in the spiritual connection to the brain was redirected into the mirror device. Pariah's mind was transplanted into his game body.

Pariah's mind was mapped into the mirror on the side of his table only moments after the crown devices began transmitting into his head. The system was more primitive than the one use by the O.M. Complex, however, it did its job well. With a few extra moments into the process, Pariah's mind was split from his body and all of his senses were replaced by computations. All that Pariah was had been duplicated inside of the game reality.

Reality actualized around Pariah. He chose to return to his simple robe although he added a walking staff to his game costume. Death would be waiting for him, inside the simulated reality, wearing the same costume he always wore. It was Pariah's turn to assume an identity of his own. The Game allowed Pariah some of the first simple choices he had known in centuries or more.

Flying through the wall, through the game's entry portal, Pariah allowed himself to coast through the air for a few minutes. He reached out with his senses to feel how much of reality could come from a simple injection of data into a mind willing to accept it for more than it was. Pariah was used to taking reality as it was handed to him. Everybody that Pariah had met in his travels was the same way, however, Pariah's eyes were opening. Even Guide could feel it.

Death also chose to enter the game flying. However, Death had mounted himself upon the back of a winged serpent for his entry move of the game. All that Death wanted from the game was fun. As long as Death enjoyed playing the game, he would never truly be defeated. He missed the fun of the game in Pariah's absence. It had been lost to the cold demands of the world that wished to see itself as more real than the game.

The game did not allow Pariah to remain flying without limits. Its rules and limitations would require Pariah to call forth a beast upon which to remain in the limitless space above the playing field or it would coast him down into the town. Pariah surrendered, as he was used to doing, and came to rest in the middle of the town's main street. There he waited for Death's first volley. His body was a tool of his mind.

Death's attack did not take long to arrive. Even coming from behind Pariah, the hot breath of his valiant dark steed did not hit its mark. Death did not underestimate his opponent and found joy in the challenge. His charge down the street incinerated three buildings, scattering rubble into the unpaved passage. Speed reduced the accuracy of Death's blasts.

Pariah dodged the blasts with the minimal movement necessary. He knew that the beast had come in fast and would have a hard time aiming for a small object at that speed. Pariah's reflexes allowed him to jump aside and turn before he touched the ground. The game was a battle of wills. As Pariah rolled back onto his feet, he passed through the shadow of the great monster overhead.

None of Death's proud display amused Pariah. He had learned a bit about flight in his journeys and he used the fires around him to his own advantage. The heat funneled under Pariah's command, forming three thermels and a bank of wind sheer. Pariah saw the game with his mind alone and that is how he played it.

The dragon beneath Death took the unsteady air currents like a stone skipping across a still lake and Death had a hard time holding on. Death enjoyed the ride for as long as it lasted. He could not keep the beast airborne with all the skills that he had amassed. As the well shielded animal struck the ground at the end of the street, while coming in for another run, Death leapt back into the air. It was the kind of play that Death had missed in the years of Pariah's absence and he enjoyed every second of it.

Landing on the outskirts of town, Death did not have time to react to Pariah's approach. Pariah touched Death in the middle of his back with his staff, then ran back down the street. Death was more amused than intimidated by his friend's bravery. It was the kind of move that Death would have made in an earlier game.

Death willed himself back to his feet with the alien equivalent of a smile on his face. He used a whirlwind to brush the dust from his robes. His own staff jumped into game reality and then into his left hand. With the press of a knot on the wooden support, the curved blade of his sickle emerged.

Pariah emerged from his hiding place at the far end of the street to face Death. He seemed to agree with Death that this showdown should occur at high noon and the sun complied with the instruction. Still holding his staff, Pariah stretched to touch his toes, then twisted side to side. The staff was well balanced and Pariah twirled it about to get it ready. It felt good to Pariah in either hand.

None of Pariah's display interested Death. He practiced with his sickle while Pariah did his routine. His mind prepared for the coming conflict as he had not been required to do for any opponent in recent history. As a fighter, Death knew that Pariah did not have a physical fighting style. Death understood that Pariah fought the same way that Death did.

Only moments passed while the combatants prepared their weapons. Pariah did not wish to face Death while Death was at less than his best. It would have been dishonorable for him to do so. Death was hoping that Pariah had matured enough in his travels to let loose the spirit within him. Both men stood quietly at opposing ends of the broad, rubble strewn street.

The first shot was all Death's. He focused his blast down the sickle and arced it toward Pariah. Pariah used his staff to deflect the blow without moving from his spot. Death's energy bolt cut through a building at one side of the street and Pariah did not turn to see it. It pleased Death that Pariah was using his gifts at long last.

Pariah chose not to return fire. He leveled his staff in his left hand, holding it easily out in front of him. Parallel to the unimproved walkway that was the town's main street, the walking stick was ready for Pariah's next command. The next shot would also belong to Death and Pariah had learned how to watch Death with his mind more than with his untrustworthy eyes.

Almost smiling, more nervous than anything, Death fired off another blast. He counted on Pariah blocking the bolt, so he angled it to knock Pariah off balance for the third shot. Pariah dropped to his knees and repositioned the staff to hold his ground. The returned blast singed the bottom of Death's sandals as he jumped at the last moment. It was so fast that Death did not see it coming.

In the smoke, Death chose to transport himself behind Pariah's defensive stance. Pariah was ready for it and turned as he stood up, catching Death behind the knees with the end of his staff. Death went with the flow, catching his sickle blade under Pariah's staff as he rolled back to his feet. The other end of Pariah's staff nearly crashed into Death's head as Pariah turned again, however, Death was ready and blocked it with his sickle.

Another leap across the gamescape caught Death off guard as Pariah mirrored the jump. Both players materialized standing on top of a flat rock overlooking the town. If Pariah had attacked, he would have won in an instant. Instead, he chose to give his worthy opponent a break. Pariah was no longer afraid of losing the game.

"Check," called Pariah.

Death only half heard the call. "Where?"

"Oh, here abouts."

"So sure, are we?" Death called his winged beast back and leapt into the saddle as it passed by. He soared above the game matrix, turning at the end of a gentle, climbing glide to look for Pariah in the landscape below him. Even the synthetic beast knew better than to take Pariah at face value.

Pariah chose not to wait for Death. He considered, for an instant, that it would be a real advantage in the game if he turned Guide into a dragon of his own. Guide's intellect was superior to that of Death's game sprite and that would have been an advantage for Pariah. But Pariah could not win the game by cheating. Even if Guide had not refused the thought, Pariah was a man who would not stoop to such measures.

Death covered ground quickly and Pariah knew it. It was too much ground to scan for Death to look into every detail of it. Pariah knew that he just had to lay out of sight for Death to overlook his simple form at such a speed. He moved only when Death turned at the end of each pass. When he saw an opening, he took it.

The dragon was coming in low so that he could scan the town better. His turn carried him only a few feet above a flat rock at the far end of town. It seemed that the entire town was ringed with foothills. Nothing in the town could remain hidden from the air with all the vantage points afforded by the rough terrain.

As Death turned, Pariah materialized himself behind the dragon's tail. He was close enough to reach out and touch the animal while Death was facing the wrong way. Death felt Pariah well enough to swing his sickle from the saddle of the great beast, but Death was not Pariah's target. Pariah turned his staff to strike the beast on the left side of its tail.

It was a small, well placed blow. The animal was in a crucial part of its turn and could not remain airborne with the otherwise insignificant slap that Pariah had delivered to it's tail. Both Death and his dragon rolled down the side of the mountain in a ball of flesh. A building at the far end of town gave up its structural integrity when it stopped the spinning mass. Pariah felt Death jump to another point in gamespace before his winged steed was deleted by the game program.

Death was breathing hard when his world stopped spinning. He looked behind him, from the edge of a plateau, to see Pariah standing in the middle of the street. It had been the hardest fight that Death had ever had in the game and Death hated to see it end. Playing the game by the rules required him to strike at his foe whenever the opportunity presented itself. Looking at Pariah, Death saw a mistake that he had to take advantage of.

Raising his sickle to the heavens, he called down a rockslide. The debris came from everywhere at once and Death knew that Pariah would have nowhere to go. Death respected Pariah for the skill he had shown in the game and hoped for another round. There would be another round between the two of them as long as Pariah was Death's apprentice in the game. Even Pariah knew that.

Pariah had no fear of losing. He knew that Death would strike out at him from a secure location as soon as the chance arose. It was Death's style to use theatrics and mystery. Death's image was the heart of the game. The noise of the mountains disintegrating around him did not upset Pariah. One decisive jump put Pariah in a cave directly behind Death.

"Check Mate."

It was not like Death actually had to turn to see who had spoken at him. He felt the bedrock beneath his feet give way under Pariah's will. Death chose to face his opponent as the whole game matrix collapsed into the center point of the town. The dust and vibration broke the focus of Death's mind and he could run no more. Another jump would mean nothing as he knew of nowhere to land.

Death meant his words as he slid into the collapsing vortex at the center of gamespace. "Well played, Pariah." Although his game form had lived as a monster, he died as a man.

All Pariah needed was to outlive Death until the game stopped caving in. A tear spoke the feelings of Pariah's loss instead of the glee that a lesser man would have felt at such a victory. It was a hard won game. It was a well played game. Pariah stood on the last stone of stable ground as the game computer stabilized the scenery.

The landscape within the game changed with Pariah's first victory over Death. Pariah found himself standing at the intersection of two huge walkways, each of which was lined with rows of statues. Some of them were like Death and others were like the insects that Pariah had seen inside of the xenotrat forms. A third set of statues looked like the League Representative that Pariah had seen when Pariah had jumped Death's hopper. But, the eight statues standing on the corners of the intersection were as human as Pariah thought himself to be.

Death reappeared to Pariah inside of a puff of smoke. He walked down the corridor in front of Pariah as though he was being inspected by the synthetic eyes lining the walkway. There was almost a tear in Death's eye as he turned to face the fourth statue from Pariah along the right side of the bright white walkway. The statue was one that looked a great deal like Death, yet Pariah's eyes were not used to Death's people enough to differentiate between them.

Pariah concluded that he was in part of the game's hall of fame. Knowing that the events before him were of great significance to Death, Pariah held silent and still. Deep within Pariah's mind, he felt Manual turn over in his synthetic sleep. Neither Guide nor Manual could speak to Pariah while he was in this part of the game without being seen by Death.

"There are not many of your kind that I respect, John Pariah."

"I am pleased to be amongst them, Death. Thank you for your kind words."

"My name is Adonel, Pariah."

"You may call me John, Adonel."

"Adonel is a name that the missionaries brought to our people."

"I was named after an Apostle."

"We built this monument to a group of missionaries that came to our world just before I was born. They'd be too humble to want this, yet they meant this much to us. Only the best of our people have been represented in this display over the last two centuries."

"I am honored that you would let me stand here."

"These missionaries brought us hope. My parents were so moved by their preaching that they named me Adonel. It means,' our lord is God.'"

"Your parents sound like wonderful people, Adonel. My father was a priest."

"My father was one of the first priests amongst our people. You might call him a saint."

"I'd like to meet him someday."

Death could not look at Pariah. His mind would not let him turn from the statue to face Pariah. "The Matronites hunted him down with the missionaries and had him executed. They did not want to waste the power in their ion-whips, so they made us all watch the executions. They made me watch."

Pariah could not hold back a few tears, but he tried to be strong for his friend. In the end, it was a useless endeavor simply because Pariah was human. "Is that statue a likeness of your father?"

"Yes." Death reached out to caress the arm of the cold form. "I blamed God for not saving him. Then I turned my rage, along with many others, to the Matronites."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know that when I came here. Please forgive me."

"I understand, John. The League came to us during the revolt and helped us to expel the Matronites from Siterra. When I learned about the true power of the League, I blamed the League as you do. They could have prevented the slaughter, even if they only knew about us after the fact."

"It's a reasonable complaint. Those people didn't have to die. Ester could have lived."

"What it's taken me all this time to learn is that even the League cannot save a man from himself, John. We didn't want to be saved until we saw what the Matronites were. God had saved my father."

"So, your saying that the League couldn't attack Gehenna until we were ready to be saved? There still had to be a better way."

"Some people think that the Matronites are out to destroy the universe. I'll grant you that they are misunderstood at that level. They want to rule the universe as though they could replace God. We choose our own masters and, if you're not willing to fight as hard as the Matronites, they will be your chosen masters."

"Did you find the League that easy to forgive?"

"No, John. Part of me still hasn't. But it is the best part of my people that doesn't hold grudges. My father taught me that."

Pariah smiled. "You would make a good preacher yourself, Adonel."

Death looked up into the eyes of the statue of his father for the first time in Pariah's presence. "I could never compete with his legend, brother John."

"It's not a competition, Adonel. The priesthood is a service to the flock."

A few moments passed and Death turned his eyes from the statue to look at Pariah. In the game, Death's eyes were as blue as the sky on a warm summer's day. There was an unmistakable luminescence to Death's thin form. Although Death's worn exterior looked like the form of a monster to the uninitiated, within his chest beat the heart of a man purified by the trials of his faith. He was no longer the dark stick figure that he had been when Pariah had first met him.

The tear from Pariah's eye dried instantly away in the warmth of the synthetic atmosphere. Pariah's clothing drifted back to the only suit of clothing he had worn in his being as a timeater. It was the last gift that Pariah had from the people who had accepted him into the time that Pariah still called home. Nothing of a timeater ages or decays as he wanders about in the current's of time. People usually pay no attention to timeaters.

Death allowed his game costume to drift back into the more stately, dark robes that he wore in the world that many called reality. Looking one last time to the statue in the garden, Death allowed the game program to terminate. The loading program detached and the mirrors that drove the translation between machine mind and organic brain settled back to an idle. Finally, the crown devices stopped transmitting into the player's brains and both awoke.

Pariah sat up in the control room to see Death already standing in the room. In an instant, Pariah knew that he would never have to return to see his old friend. His dealings with Death had come to an end. He could almost feel that Death knew it as well. Death had found his destiny and it was now Pariah's turn to do the same.

As Pariah stood up, Death approached him one more time. He had taken something out of a drawer on the far side of the room and was finally ready to return it to Pariah. It was a vial of yellowish green fluid. At first, Pariah though that it was another cup of the ubiquitous wermjuice. Then Pariah recognized the vial.

"When I assembled your device, I didn't know where this went. I've had it all this time and I keep forgetting to return it to you."

"I hadn't realized that it was missing."

"Our q-techs say that this is an entangled collection of nanoids. It's like an unused brain in a flask."

"Well," quipped Pariah. "Who couldn't use a spare brain?"

"Would you mind if I asked what this is used for?"

"Go right ahead."

Death had a hard time with Pariah's attempt at humor. Timeater's have little use for humor and Pariah was out of practice. "Do you want me to ask again?"

Pariah had a hard time lying to his friend. He tried to get Guide to respond to the request, however, Guide didn't have the answer. Manual seemed to take pride at having the option to not reply. It was something that Pariah had to do on his own and he did his best. "It's kind of a manual."

"My people do not like this technology. It's Matronite and it looks like a mechanism that they used to take control of dissidents."

"I'd hazard a guess that you didn't forget. You didn't feel that I was ready for it until just now."

"After forgiveness, I had to learn to trust people to think for themselves. The Matronites didn't give us that option. They always knew what was best for us and said as much."

Pariah opened his left hand for the vial, but did nothing to take it from Death. Death placed the fluid in Pariah's hand. The nervous, unsteady hand that placed the container in Pariah's hand spoke of a mind that was in conflict with itself over its actions. It was easy for Pariah to forgive Death.

"Thank you."

"Good bye John."

"Good bye Adonel."

Death left the room through the main door, leaving Pariah unsupervised and ready to jump. He respected that his friend's mysterious way of coming and going was not his concern. It did interest him, knowing nothing of timeaters, but Death was not the kind to pry. A youth spent under the ever-spying eyes of the Matronite occupation had given Death a respect for privacy. Even with as much as he wanted to know how Pariah got into and out of the hopper, he would not have Pariah watched.

In the shadows, the ever-present phantom of isolation awoke new in Pariah's eyes. Time to part from yet another friend had arrived. The grinning phantasm had lost much of his sting although there was always a sadness where he chose to manifest. Pariah, the sleeper John, had awakened only enough to feel the cost of his gift and not enough to take the last step, making his own choice. Loneliness felt a sting of his own in the weakening of Pariah's chains.

Darkness was part of a timeater's life and loneliness was his faithful companion. Isolation was a threat only to mortals who lived in time from moment to moment. Timeaters are as immune to its effects as loneliness himself. It was an amusing thought, to Pariah, that loneliness was about to lose a friend in Pariah. Without Pariah, loneliness would be a little bit more lonely.

Guide chose that moment to actualize into the room. He returned to his chipmunk base form just to let Pariah see him smile. It was Guide's way of telling Pariah that he would never be alone. Even Guide could feel the new restlessness within Pariah's head. But Guide was there for Pariah in more than just his programming to be user friendly.

Merlin started the jump. He was restless trapped in Pariah's mother. Without his discomfort, he would not have had the power needed to move Pariah back into the shades between the instants of time. The jump drained him completely and time threw him back to where it wanted him. All the power he had held was not worth the price of the endless illusion that a paraseer calls life and he was happy to leave it all behind.

Pariah thought for a moment and then chose his next destination. The cost of free will is indeed death, however, Pariah had to know if it was worth the price. John was no longer contented to be just Pariah. Like Merlin, he felt trapped by his own power. A question gave rise to action and Pariah actualized where he felt most likely to find his answer.

"I have an estate in the city," the voice was saying as Pariah stepped through the door. The door was, of course, his passageway into this time. The matter of the timeframe molded together into the mass of a man that was Pariah. The universe would not be disturbed by his comings and goings. It just happened, though, that the door was also a physical door to a rough-hone stone hut on a green plateau overlooking a misty valley. It was like the countryside that Pariah so often found himself in. His internal chronometer told him that this was somewhat close to the time period in which he had been born, give or take a hundred years. It was a period that he laughingly thought of as 'the present', and his journeys through time seemed to take rough swings around its axis like a comet orbiting a sun.

The voice came from a humble straw mat on the dirty floor of the stone hut. The mat was illuminated by a pool of light spilling from a crack in the stone wall. For a moment, Pariah imagined that the voice was Parson's, but the time was all wrong. When he saw who was speaking, he realized his mistake. He thought of Joseph Blecky, the century-man with almost as much reverence of wisdom as he accorded his adopted Father.

"I don't think of myself as a material kind of man, but, like ancient Solomon, it was something to try in my spare time." Blecky went on. Pariah looked around and realized that there was no one else in the room.

"Are you speaking to me?" Pariah asked the man.

"John, my friend, please stop asking pointless questions and listen. I'm dying, you see, so this is my time for special treatment. Much like a birthday. I've been celebrating my death-day for years."

Pariah hurried to the edge of the straw mat and knelt before his ancient friend.

"I love birthdays, John," Blecky turned his wrinkled head to Pariah and smiled toothlessly. "But death-days are necessary. That's why every time around, I live this day out second. Welcome," he motioned to the simple surroundings, "to the second day of my life."

"You were born, and then you die?" Pariah asked in confusion. Joseph nodded happily.

"And then live the rest of it. It's a fascinating experience, you know. I highly recommend that you try it if you get the chance."

"Wait, try what? I'm still not sure what you are talking about."

"Try being born and then dieing right together. The being born bit is actually more painful, believe it or not. When you are born you go from a place of comfort and warmth to a place of pain in several agonizing hours. When you die, you go from that same pain to an eternal warmth and comfort. When you juxtapose the two, the death part is much, much easier."

This longer speech made Joseph spasm with coughing and writhe on the mat for several minutes. Pariah waited, unsure what to do.

He thought of what Joseph had said, and it made him remember his own birth. True, his mother's womb was warm and safe, but thinking back on it, he remembered a kind of constant stress, a pressure, a sting, as if he was unwanted where he lay. His stay in the womb had been woefully short, and he could not remember it without the thought of its excruciating termination. It was like trying to remember a pleasant dream only to be confronted with the memory of the harsh alarm clock ripping you from the warmth of sleep.

When his friend had settled and was breathing raggedly, Pariah decided to spur him to conversation for a little longer.

"What are you dieing of?" he asked Joseph.

"Nothing serious. Extreme age is the best diagnosis. I made a few investments a little while ago. They are now paying off. My mansion is the envy of the upper crust."

"Is this your 'mansion'?" Pariah said, brushing some cobwebs from his shoulder.

"Heavens no, lad. Who would want to die in a foreign land surrounded by pointless objects of shame? This is the place I was born in, or a reasonable substitute, anyway. It helps complete the effect. No, I sold everything I had and gave it to the poor as per the advice of a respectable fellow some one thousand nine hundred and forty-two years ago. Just before I came here, actually. Not many people have the luxury of planning out their own death so well."

"Joseph, death is a subject that has been weighing very heavily on me of late. I think I may have fell in love."

Joseph nodded.

"Falling in love is nothing like death, believe me. I'm an expert on both. On the whole, death is a much more pleasant experience."

"She died, Joseph."

Joseph nodded slowly.

"John, have you ever heard a fairy tale?"

"Fairy Tale?"

"It's an overly sentimental story involving magic and love. For example: Once there was a lovely maiden who was locked in a tower by an evil sorcerer. Many gallant men came to rescue her, but the sorcerer's magics turned them all to his slaves. The maiden grew faint of spirit and gave up all hope. Then one day a simple peasant came to the tower. His heart and soul were so pure that the sorcerer's magic had no affect on him. He walked through lock and bar and carried the maiden down from her tower prison to the freedom below. The two lived happily ever after."

"That is a good story, but I am sorry to say I don't understand what you are trying tell me."

"Simply this. A fairy tale is a parable of any two people falling in love. It's the end that is the important part. What does it mean 'they lived happily ever after?' Does that mean that they lived forever?"

"I did not take it to mean that."

"Of course not, because that's not the meaning. Nor were they always happy. But so long as their life and their love continued, they were happy in that love. Did this woman love you Pariah?"

"I believe that she did."

"And would she have wanted you to be unhappy?"

"Certainly not."

"Then if you love her you must honor that wish. Find your place and honor her death by living a contented life."

"I am not sure that I can ever be content."

"Have you lived so long without time and still not learned to be free from its constraints, Pariah?"

"I don't understand."

"If someone were to give you a choice, if you were to control your own destiny, what is it that you would do?"

"I've been asked to choose before. I do not think I am capable."

"You are more than capable, Pariah. Your faith gives you freedom to choose, because you already know the right choice."

For some strange reason, Pariah thought of Dr. Jonah. The thought had no hatred or ire that came with it, surprisingly.

"I met a man recently," Pariah said thoughtfully, "Who had devoted his life to freeing my kind from their timeless existence and giving them back reality. He was, I know, misled in his efforts, but his intention was to give freedom to others. Another man I recently met was trying to heal others. Both men failed because they had placed their faith in their own abilities rather than in God. I think I would like to make right their mistake by freeing people and healing them the way my father did."

Joseph smiled.

"You know, Pariah… John. Whenever I look at all the years I live in, and think that I will not accomplish anything of worth, it helps me to think of you. You don't realize it yet, but you have already helped to heal and free so many people."

The thought of what Joseph had said gave Pariah an odd sense of joy, followed immediately by one of shame, because he felt the praise was largely undeserved. On an impulse, he held a hand to Joseph's chest and released the healing power of his negative entropy. When he opened his eyes again, Joseph lay unchanged and frowning slightly.

"Now why did you do a foolish thing like that?" Joseph asked in a soft rebuke.

"I don't understand," Pariah stammered, "That should have healed you!"

"Pariah, we both know that your negative entropy returns the recipient to their purest spiritual form. You didn't heal me because I have no desire to be anything more than I am right now. If I wish to be young and strong, I will return to an age when I am young and strong. Right now I want the experience of death."

Pariah bowed his head shamefully.

"Forgive me Joseph, I don't know why I did that. I made myself a promise to never cure someone without their permission. I was wrong to do so to you."

Joseph did not answer immediately. His face was grimacing in pain. Finally he grunted and spoke in a ragged whisper.

"I'm… afraid I won't… be able to speak with you much longer," he gasped. "The end is coming quickly now. You have more questions?"

"Many more."

"Find the important ones. I'm afraid we won't be meeting in this life again."

Pariah thought for a moment and then took Joseph's hand in his own.

"You've helped me enough, old friend. I won't spoil your death with any more of my questions. Thank you for honoring me with the privilege of celebrating your death-day with you."

Joseph squeezed his hand and grinned through the pain.

"That's what I've always liked about you, Lad. In the end, you always do the right thing."

Together, the two men wordlessly celebrated a death together, watching it blossom until twilight heralded the dawn of eternity.

Joseph was the second soul that Pariah followed through the parting of the nightshades at the boundary of mortality. However, as the ending of all men's lives are not written by the calendar but by when they have run out of days to live, Joseph simply bounced back from the point of his death into another day of his life. The angels guarding the greater beyond checked the scores and blocked Joseph's path at the door. Like Pariah, Joseph had not reached the end of his journey so he was given no rest. Even Pariah threw his mass at the door only to find it solid as a wall.

Pariah parted from his old friend's company at that point. He did not know how to live for the love that had been taken from him. Solace would be found only in the end of Pariah's voyage. Not all that Pariah loved was dead but all that loved Pariah seemed to be in death's embrace. A timeater is as eternal as the streams of time which endlessly deny him comfort.

No longer in fear of death, Pariah went to the one place that was left for him. At last, he would face his jailor. His mind had grown strong in the lessons of his endless wanderings. Pariah knew that the vast power of his being as a timeater was soon to be denied to him. He had to face the Tracking while life remained within him and before fear eclipsed his faith.

Reality materialized around Pariah in the form of a large round room. The room was bright white and seemed to house a greyish fog. Looking skyward, Pariah saw the walls curve inward to form the top of a dome so high that Pariah could not see the top of it. Light came from everywhere and nowhere. Nothing in the room cast a shadow.

The forces that guarded the great plan and the flow of time found no reason to do their job in the vast room, so Pariah's mother was again herself. Pariah did not wish for his mother to be placed naked in the end of the room so he willed her into an ornate gown, as Cinderella before the ball, reflecting the love that he harbored for her. She had been forgiven her transgressions and reflected the beauty of a pure soul. It was clear to Pariah that he had willed her clothing into being.

There was one type of nakedness that Pariah could not cover for his mother. She was terrified, stripped of the protective illusion which had shielded her through a billion moments of time. It had been so long that she had forgotten who she was. Her mind pulled back, trying to become part of the scenery to escape detection. Pariah had been given a mother who had been given no name.

Two strong knights emerged from the fog to stand watch over her. To her right, was a shiny knight who bore on his breastplate the sash of a fighting monk. In his hand was a silver staff topped in a golden crucifix. On her left, was another knight who had the mark of the Matronites on his chest plate. This second knight held a brass sickle in his left hand.

Pariah called to the first knight with the name of his remaining friend. "Guide?"

Guide did not speak, however, he bowed slightly in acknowledgment.

"Where is this place?"

"Don't you know?"

"I think that I am afraid to know, Guide."

"The time for fear has ended, John."

"I do not want to be alone anymore."

"You have never been alone, really."

"Only my closest friends could even know that I existed, Guide."

"So it is for all men, John. You must fight this one battle for the right reasons. This is not a battle for your comfort but for the lives of all who are like you."

"Are lives like mine really worth that effort, Guide?"

Guide's warm hazel eyes gazed through the helmet of his armor and deep into Pariah's mind. "Is it our choice to make or is it theirs?"

"What happens to my mother in all of this, Guide?"

"Oddly enough, both sides want Sara's life to be spared. Whatever happens to us, she must be protected."

"Is that our choice to make, Guide?"

"Ask her."

Pariah chose to speak to his mother face to face. He walked toward her slowly, unsure of each step he took in her direction. She had aged a few moments in the void outside of time and her hair was streaked with grey like comets through the sky on a dark, cold night. Her skin was radiant and warm, flowing with more life than Pariah had ever seen in his journeys. Sara's eyes were spotted with fear.

He put his arms around her, trying to hold her until the fear within her stopped quaking. At first, she was reluctant to touch him, even as the spawn of her flesh and spirit. When the rage within her effervesced off into the room, Sara embraced her son for the first time. All had been forgiven between them so that the bond could be forged anew.

"It is good to finally meet you, mother."

"It has been a stony path, lined with thorns, but I am proud to have walked its length with you, my son."

Pariah released his embrace, stepping back a few paces so that he could see his mother whole in a single glance. He had grown well in the trials of a thousand timeless years. Sara could not help being proud of him. Whatever happened, she trusted her son's judgement.

"What do you want me to do now? Unless I face the Tracking now, chances are that I never will."

"You've grown into quite a man, John Pariah. It's not my place to make this choice for you."

"Your fate is in this too. You are the prize that both sides want. Even Merlin wants you."

"My choice was made a long time ago. Taking your life cost me mine. Only you can satisfy that debt."

"Then I should face the Tracking now?"

"If that is your destiny, then embrace it."

"Destiny is the will of God."

Manual then stepped forward. "Destiny is in the fluid Death returned to you. Consume it and you will reach the end of your path. It is time, Pariah."

John Pariah took many deliberate steps to the center of the arena. His senses scoured the arena for anything that disturbed his peace. Once in the center of the vast room, Pariah knelt down and meditated. Full circle, Pariah had returned to the Colosseum. It was not the scene of his first fight, however, it was the scene of the first showdown Pariah had fought for an audience.

The Tracking had not lost his touch. He willed a gladiator into being at the edge of the vast ring. His fighter had the outfit of the Sparticus that Pariah had faced in the ring all those millennia in the past, however, his body was that of the young Merlin. It was a strange mix of forms which had faced up to Pariah, yet there was no soul to the puppet sent against Pariah. Victory was not what the Tracking wished of the conflict.

Pariah opened his eyes and did not stand before his foe. All the greatest foes that Pariah had faced did not fight in body but in spirit. He knew that the Tracking was only toying with him so he did not surrender his advantage by being led to action. His body was fluid as the calm seas which flowed through it.

Merlin, champion of the Tracking, rolled ever closer to Pariah. He used a technique that would have been known to neither Merlin nor Sparticus. Each roll forward kept this Merlin in a defensive posture. His vulnerability was in being committed to the first strike.

Pariah's opponent knew better than to make a direct assault. Pariah could have thrown off any attack from his constant defensive pose. Spinning sideways, the gladiator hybrid extracted two knives from his cloak. He threw the first at Pariah with the force of his roll and turned while releasing the second blade from his left hand. Both movements were perfectly fluid in execution.

A simple lunge to the right moved Pariah free from the incoming threat. Yet, the monster that the Tracking had given the form of Merlin knew how Pariah would react. With a motion of his hands, he signaled blades, like the wings of a silver bat, to extend from the sides of the knives. Closing his hands as he retracted them toward his body, the fake Merlin called back his knives for a second pass at Pariah.

Any technology that Merlin could handle was not beyond Pariah's ability. He grasped the blades with his mind and forced his will into them. The Tracking was a hundred and more times the power of Merlin so Pariah could not stop the weapons in flight. Thinking quickly, he pulled back from trying to control both blades, focusing on a single blade and using it to fight off the other blade. His opponent had to spread his power over many items so Pariah could pull one of them under his own control.

Then the Tracking threw Merlin at Pariah. The disruption of Pariah's focus allowed him to blast the two blades into a shower of sparks. Merlin came at Pariah from behind, but Pariah knew how to defend himself. He grasped the illusion of Merlin by the arm as he passed by and pressed the whole Merlin puppet into the floor with his other hand.

A loud voice came from the ceiling, flowing down the walls and enveloping Pariah in sound like a cold mist. "Time has never been here, Pariah. Without a difference of potential, there is no movement. You have no entropy here."

"Do you really think so little of me?"

"Pariah, I know you as no other can."

"Improve the man and you will profit a million times over, Tracking. This thing has no life and I will not take even what it does have."

The fictional Merlin's form ran into the floor as a shadow chased by the sun.

"In this place, there is only you, dearest mother and the brother who had no choice in giving up his life to you."

Part of Pariah knew what the Tracking had said and had been ashamed for as long as Pariah had lived. It all made sense within Pariah's own mind.

"With all the millennia of my life, I have seen many things over and over again. One of the most pervasive is the chaos supposition. I believe that the common man needs to believe that things are incomprehensibly chaotic and complex because, as an enigma, he is special in his own right. The truth is that reality is artistically perfect in its order and all of us are as predictable as the tides. You are no longer a mystery to me, brother."

"If 'Tracking' is not to your liking, then you can call me Judas. It is not my name, but we got the same shaft in history. What each of us did had to be done for the sake of the universe and everybody within it."

"Judas was condemned by taking his own life, Tracking. Only your own actions can condemn you, Brother."

"Think of this as you face me, Pariah. Would you have done the greatest good that you have done without me?"

"I would owe you my thanks in any case. You drove me to be my best."

"You brought the cross that I fashioned for you. Are you man enough to bear it now?"

"Is the role of Pilate more to your liking?"

First, a wide smile came into being in front of Pariah. Then, as it laughed, a body like Pariah's formed around the grin. Judas, the Tracking, was a taller version of Pariah in dark black robes. Even as Judas was the younger of the two, the darkness within him had eaten at him until he looked like the older brother. If his form was true, then he was more a twin of Pariah than a brother to him.

When Judas replied, he did not use words. He tried to force his will into the emptiness deep inside of Pariah. All of the longing, the lack of love and the isolation that had hewn a timeater out of John had eaten a void into Pariah's gut. Judas knew Pariah's mind and used it as a weapon. The feeling inside of Pariah's head was not like willing atoms into forms.

Pariah could not throw the phantom out of his body for it had no solid handle or form to grab onto for the task. It was not the first time that a will other than Pariah's own had lived within Pariah's body and Pariah knew how to resist it. What Pariah had never learned was how to defeat the will overpowering his thoughts. His body grew heavy in obeying Pariah's commands until even simple tasks were impossible.

Judas found pride in the way he so easily overpowered his brother. What was Pariah to Judas except for a vessel for the essence of time? Was Pariah more than a simple toy for the amusement of people as real as Judas felt himself to be? His smile did not disrupt the focus with which he forced Pariah's body into his employ.

Timeaters are not used to having a will of their own. All of their extancy finds them obeying the whims of whomever they meet in their banishment. Pariah's body seemed to melt into numbness as Judas brushed him aside within his own body. A prisoner within the very form that God had fashioned to house him, Pariah was forced to experience all of his senses second hand. His vision was distant as a movie viewed from the back of an empty theater.

As the Tracking, Judas had spent thousands of years planning out the moment that he was then living through. He did not wish to let Pariah know that his rush was a way of hiding his own trepidation. Even the Tracking's vast power could not extend the single moment for which the Tracking had lived every moment of his life. All the marvels that Judas had built existed for only one instant in all of time.

The experience exceeded the expressions of mere terror for Pariah. All of Pariah was the Tracking save for the few feeble thoughts that Pariah had the remaining strength for. Pariah's hand took the flask from his pocket and prepared to pour the liquid into Pariah's mouth. Words formed within Pariah's mind and slipped out through his lips. "Your name is Joshua."

An instant saw the Tracking as a mere man. Given his name, the Tracking began to lose his power over Pariah. Pariah had even been into the Tracking's mind. It made no sense to the Tracking, calling himself Judas and then known as Joshua, that Pariah had overpowered him so easily.

To Pariah, it made perfect sense. Pariah did not fight the Tracking. He knew enough to ask God for his freedom. Faith can fight what the body cannot touch.

"What did you say, Pariah?"

"Your real name is Joshua. You were never Judas nor were you Pilate."

"A name is but an index marking a file. How does this give you such power?"

"When I was a child, I saw my father perform an exorcism. He told me how to face possession."

"Myths and folk magic are not that strong, brother. You stand no chance against me here."

"The proof is in the pudding, brother."

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

Pariah thought a moment to regain his composure. The Tracking was still dangerous. Without the protective cloak of his faith, Pariah would stand no chance against the Tracking and Pariah knew it. "It is something that my father used to tell me when I was a child. It means that my actions will plead my case."

"I happen to know that you never met your father. He took no interest in you."

"I was given a new father and I learned much from him."

"You know, Pariah, that you will always be an outcast. What I offer your kind is a way out for you as well. Give yourself to me and I will set you free."

"Dr. Jonas tried that, as I recall. It doesn't work Joshua."

"Alfred Jonas was a fool. I told him exactly that. This is the measure of freedom that his kind could offer to me and I can tell you that my plan for you is far better."

"As I recall, you sent me into the void beyond time to find the parts of your bomb."

"And, as I recall, your substitute father taught you that some lessons can only be learned the hard way. Don't you want to see him again? Is your faith so weak that you fear for your mortal life?"

"I forgive you, Joshua."

All the rage of a thousand and more years exploded from the Tracking's mind. He had reached a point where he could feel nothing left to lose. When nothing matters, nothing can be wrong. Every second of Joshua's imprisonment beyond a universe that he could only watch burst free from his virtual form as the currents of a hot wind against Pariah's soft flesh. If he could not break Pariah's mind, then he would physically enter Pariah's body.

The blast was more than Pariah had bargained for and he gasped out his breath at the domed ceiling while the numbing waves danced over his skin. Neither Pariah nor his brother were physical men. They were both ghosts, phantom spirits called out of the numbers of creation for a duty that only spirits could handle. It was in that form that they could overlap in whatever passed for space in that place. Pariah allowed himself to exist without form.

Joshua rejected his own true nature even as he embraced the power he obtained from it. He tried to become Pariah to carry out the final step in his plan. Nothing physical remained of Pariah for the Tracking to gain dominion over. The attempt wiped out the Tracking's strength.

In the end, it was by Pariah's own hand that his lips touched the rim of the flask. As long as the flask continued to contain the strange liquid, another could be found to wear Pariah's shoes. The Tracking had put all of his power into the O.M. Complex. It was the key to salvation for reasons beyond either the Tracking or Pariah's understanding.

Falling free of the space containing Pariah, Joshua was surprised to see Pariah drink the fluid. Somehow he knew that getting his way was not a victory. There was more to the plan and the Tracking had overlooked a detail that Pariah had seen. Something in Pariah's actions said that Joshua was on the brink of defeat through victory.

The fluid drained down Pariah's throat like molten rock. It flowed down into Pariah's bowels and then spread out like lead in Pariah's blood. Then the Optoquadratic Metaneutrino Complex ceased to be a shirt beneath Pariah's clothing. It's atomic components merged into his outer flesh becoming one with Pariah. All the things known to Manual became Pariah's in an instant.

Power that seemed to have no limit flowed into Pariah. He could feel the lines of time contacting into a tapestry of history. The quantum probability waves upon which all who are like Pariah ride became visible to Pariah. Time realized Pariah for the first time and it was Pariah's turn to reject time. Speed enchanted and terrified Pariah.

It was more than Pariah's mind could handle. The detonation sequence was more draining than doing a trick for the League. Pariah could grasp an infinitesimal measure of God's creative power. All of the universe that had held Pariah became insignificant at the level where reality became visible. An instant of greed in that place could have brought an end to all of creation.

Pariah had been both well chosen and well trained as an agent of protection for the plan. A white hole formed in the void, building up to infinite entropy in the narrow channel. All of its power belonged to Pariah and was real only within Pariah's mind. It could have been anything for Pariah. It could have done anything for Pariah.

Ester's essence passed through the tangle of probability curves beneath Pariah. When she had been, she had passed through the same tunnel that all of the anomalies use. Within it, there was no past, present or future. Feeling her unending life at that point hurt Pariah. She didn't know him then.

With his will alone, Pariah could redirect Ester. It was a tempting feat, although Pariah's feelings had been so real that he could not bring himself to prevent their meeting. He wanted to give her back her unending life, yet he had to give her love. Pariah understood that no mortal was worthy of the decision that he now had the power to make. Both choices meant life for Ester in a different way.

All the time found the fuse burning shorter. The bomb was building up its entropy by tearing into the fabric of creation and feeding on its blood. If Pariah failed to act, then he would wipe out Ester in the only time she had ever known. Time itself was at Pariah's command.

Pariah knew then that the Tracking was right. He would always be an outcast. Being an outcast was not as bad a proposition as Pariah had once seen it. The outcasts in Pariah's life were known only to other outcasts and they were worth knowing. A smile came to Pariah's face and broke the spell.

He stepped from the void into a place with a more controlled chaos. There Pariah saw his mother lying on another surgical table. An older gentleman was holding her hand as doctors called for her to push. The room held no sounds for Pariah. All Pariah felt was the joy of being alive.

The man bent down at Sara's side as the newborn boy was handed to her. He smiled at the miracle which had been presented to him. Sara was tired, but she almost glowed between the two men who meant the world to her. She named her child Joshua after his father. With that moment, the last of the condemned in Pariah's life had found forgiveness.

"Dearest brother," said Pariah," I give you back your life. Live well."

No ear in the room had heard Pariah's blessing. Young Joshua just knew that he had been given a great gift. He did not live in Pariah's universe, however, his universe was just as real. It was Joshua's birthright.

Then the last jump called out to Pariah with the feel of a kind voice calling a well loved child. It reminded Pariah of Mary calling him to breakfast on a lazy summer day. She would not allow Pariah to be lazy, but she always wanted the best for her son. Pariah's fond memory was the last thought he had in the void. At last, Pariah was going home.

When the smoke cleared, Pariah was standing before the open pit of Peter's grave. But, it was not Peter, Pariah's earthly father and the pastor, in the pine box descending into the womb of the Earth. Peter had ascended to meet with Mary in the place where they had retired to after long lives of service. Pariah tossed a handful of Earth onto Peter's casket hoping that he too would leave the world a better place than he had found it. Ashes returned to ashes and dust became again dust.

Pariah, now John, found his birth mother more beautiful than ever in her black gown. She stood in the shadows behind the rest of the town, like the outcast that Pariah had been. He thought of motioning to her, showing that she was welcome in the town, yet he hoped to free her from the memory of who she had been and remained motionless. Her gown was as plain as the rest of the village where Pariah had been reared, although John now saw with the eyes of a man granted wisdom by the Holy Spirit. John had returned home, never to wander again.

John looked down to find the crucifix that was once the O.M. Complex hanging around his neck as it had the day that Peter had placed it there. Standing there in his black suit, Pariah became John by accepting the inheritance of his adoptive family. He took the empty pulpit to deliver the sermon. It was a humble job, having no equal in significance. God placed the words in his heart and John gave his voice to them and the combination of both to the village.

It was almost noon before the gathering retired from the cemetery. John stayed behind,

thanking each parishioner for his kind words while sharing the loss with John's extended family.

When she passed by in silence, John invited his mother to dinner on the following Monday. She had to find an identity of her own after all the wandering and the Pariah part of John felt guilty at

having made the choice for her. Eventually, John was left alone at the grave site.

There Pariah said goodbye to the man who had taught Pariah how to be the man John. The separation had been long and cost each a great deal. Even the Pariah part of John remained silent for there were no words left unsaid. John regretted only the actions of a life not yet lived which could not now be shared with the man who had been his only earthly father. It was for all the dead in Pariah's journey that John shed silent tears at the grave site.

Not limited by his mortal cage, even as the man John, Pariah sensed movement amongst the stones representing the lives lived out in the small village. A small boy, not unlike the young John who had been taken from his home by the Tracking, hid behind one of the tombstones at a distance from John. John did not need his eyes to see the boy shivering in the grim shade behind the humble monument. His mind was not so clouded that he denied the extancy of things he could not rationalize.

John took an indirect course to the boy as not to spook him. He walked by Guide, the program in chipmunk guise, perched upon a headstone at the far end of the hallowed ground. Their long journey had come to an end together. Even Guide did not know for sure if he mourned Peter's death more than Pariah's. The long road ended where it had begun.

There would be no guiding John through his new life so Guide had been stripped both of purpose and of bondage with Pariah's victory. This time, Guide had to rely on John's guidance. Pariah was gone for all time. Guide had not realized that he too was an outcast until he had time to realize himself. A choice finally belonged to Guide.

Their eyes meeting in the midday light spoke volumes in the touching of their minds. Pariah was sorry for having made the choice that would prevent Guide from going on in the only life he knew how to live. Becoming John took Pariah's life away, yet it was of Pariah's own choosing that his former self had died. Guide knew that it was a hard choice. Having nothing else, Guide wanted to stay with his only friend.

The boy in the brush did not know of the things going on around him. Few people know more of their worlds than the parts that they deem real by sight and touch. He would never know what Pariah and Guide had given up to live in his world. His mind was not ready to grasp the value in the things around him. Although John envied the boy's ignorance, he never wanted to share in it.

Before his mind put a period at the end of the last echo of his thoughts, John was upon the boy. His words were the confident tones of a man. "Did you lose something in the brush?"

"No sir, Mr. Reverend."

"I am but a brother to all God's children."

The boy did not look up to John. "I am an orphan without a name, Reverend. I cannot be your brother."

"We are all orphans when God claims us, brother. He leaves none of us without name."

"But the other kids push me around. I was hiding from them when you found me."

John placed his hand on the boy's shoulder. "You need have no fear when the Lord sends his shepherd to watch over you. They will leave you alone while you are with me."

"Is it true, Mr. Parish, that you were an orphan like me before you went away?"

"Yes it is."

Then the boy stood up, looking for truth in John's hazel, green eyes. "Why did you go away?"

"Why does a leaf drop to the ground in the fall? I had to go where God sent me."

"When I grow big, I want to go away and see the world like you did."

"If that is the path God places your feet upon, then walk it with pride in the good times and the bad."

"Someday, I will find the place in this world where I belong. Just watch me, Mr. Parish."

"I hope that you find it, little one. Just remember that we are all outcasts some of the time. It's the good parts of life that make it worth taking the bad."

John Pariah did not worry when the boy wandered off. When Peter had given young John the same lesson, it bored John as well. It was a lesson for which life was the only effective teacher. The only value in some trips is the lessons of the journey.

With his last act as a Timeater, Pariah both gave and took life. Not unlike the paradoxical fluke which gave Pariah his life by taking it, he discharged his last dose of negative entropy to create the timeless void which gave form to thought. Guide, a chipmunk in mind, melted into his chosen form while Manual, the evolved ape, was dissolved into the fantasy he had always been.

True to the lesson Peter could not teach John, there was always a pariah within John. John knew how to recognize the pariah in everybody he knew. Everybody is an outcast from time to time and John had taken the job of helping the rest of the world cope. Still Pariah deep inside, nobody knew outsiders like John did.

The generations of family descended from Pariah gave tribute to God in loyalty to the Parson's church where Pariah preached. Only the crucifix remained of the O.M. Complex and it has symbolized all who are descended from Pariah's seed ever since.

Had Pariah not died in the generation which gave reason to his being, solace to his life and rest from his incessant wondering, he never would have. He had chosen to be a man for the mere moments of time that he could live rather than merely existing for all eternity in the void.