GODS AND GRISEOS

A written creative work submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University fit, In partial fulfillment o f The Requirements for 7 n \ a The Degree

Master of Fine Arts In Creative Writing

By

Joshua A.H. Harris

San Francisco, California

December 2019 Copyright by Joshua A.H. Harris 2019 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read Gods and Griseos by Joshua A.H. Harris, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a written creative work submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree: Master of Fine

Arts in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University.

O jt/ May-lee Chai (J Professor of Creative Writing

Andrew Joron Professor of Creative Writing GODS AND GRISEOS

Joshua A.H. Harris San Francisco, California 2019

Gods and Griseos is a novel that explores themes of income inequality, artificial intelligence, and the nature of reality.

I certify that the Annotation is a correct representation of the content of this written creative work.

/ 3-

Chair, Written Creative Work Committee Date 1

If some day we build machine brains that surpass human brains in general intelligence,

then this new superintelligence could become very powerful.

And, as the fate of the gorillas now depends more on

us humans than on the gorillas themselves,

so the fate o f our species

would depend on the

actions o f

the machine superintelligence.

—Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies 2

Chapter 1

Berkeley, California, 2020

Dr. Bellingham met M. on Thursday, August 13,2020, a purple day for the doctor, who had long ago devised a color-coded system of organizing each day of the week into specified intentional behaviors. Purple indicated the intention of maximum compassion and openness to the world around him. His approach created a helpful mental structure to the week, providing his anxious mind a specific direction for each day. Red

(tomorrow, Friday) equaled purpose and efficiency, green (Saturday) invited rest and calm, orange (Sunday) promised freedom and creativity, etc.

On purple days, he invariably dropped a five dollar bill into a beggar’s cup, either at the stop light on his short commute to Herrick Hospital or outside the hole-in-the-wall coffee shop where he always stopped for a small, black Americano before work. Unlike any other day, he skipped his low-dose of ziprasidone on purple days, allowing the world’s stimulus to enter his brain unadulterated. The pills were self-prescribed—for wasn’t that, in the end, the ultimate perquisite of enduring the misery of eight years of psychiatric training? Generally the little blue and white capsules just took the edge off his hectic days at the hospital. He had suffered some minor confusion back in college—that’s how he’d gotten started—but those episodes were so far in the rearview mirror, he barely even considered them a part of his clinical history anymore.

On that purple Thursday, dense fog had obscured the early morning sky, but by eight o’clock, the day had already turned toward crisp sunshine and marine breezes. At a 3

quarter to nine, Dr. Bellingham sat on a bench outside the hospital. He rolled the sleeves of his white coat up to his elbows, sipped his coffee, and allowed the sun to penetrate the skin of his face and forearms. He closed his eyes and chased the floaters on his eyelids as they skittered across his field of vision. They looked like snippets of spider webs being carried along by a hot orange breeze, though he knew them to be, in fact, just a symptom of age-related degradation of his vitreous (the jelly-like substance filling his eyeballs) and the associated slumping of the eyeball’s interior surface, a process which casts shadows on the retina and paints kinetic abstract landscapes on the backs of the human eyelids.

Just after he entered the hospital, he stopped in his tracks for a moment to enjoy the cool contrast of the climate-controlled and HEPA filtered air. Two night nurses passed him on their way home, smiling and nodding toward him. He was known as an eccentric. Stopping and standing in the lobby, fingers extended at his sides, was no big deal, just one of those Dr. Bellingham things. Thirty years ago, he would have been too self-conscious to pause in the midst of it all, and those nurses would have stopped and flirted with him, no doubt about it. He had had all the weapons at his disposal: height, hair, authority, enviable musculature, and a charming, happy-go-lucky demeanor. At sixty-two, he retained his height and some semblance of authority, but those other characteristics had diminished with time. The slight paunch, sagging skin, and rapidly expanding bald spot gave him a grandfatherly look, though there were no grandkids to complete the picture—just an estranged son with no family of his own, bom of Dr. 4

Bellingham’s one and only marriage, which had fallen apart almost as quickly as it had been consummated.

An energetic orthopedic surgeon with a long, blond braid rounded a nearby comer and waved. The round-the-clock energy in this hospital is like cilantro, Dr. Bellingham thought, either you love it or hate it. He happened to be the type who loved both. As he slowly passed by the cadre of hospital receptionists at the main desk, he engaged in the customary, superficial banter—weather, work, and news, a daily dose of pleasant pablum for the orbital prefrontal cortex—before continuing down the hall. He affixed his name tag to his white coat and thought, today threatens to be an easy day—ordinary, in fact— but I will strive to make it extraordinary; purple eschews complacency, comfort, and convention.

Around mid-morning, a nurse interrupted the mental wellness team’s weekly meeting to summon Dr. Billingham to the psych ward. He was needed, she said, to assess a new patient as a potential 5150, the legal term for holding a mentally ill person against his or her will pending further evaluation. Dr. Billingham left the meeting, which had, in his estimation, been an abhorrent waste of time, and located Dr. Simmons, the young ER resident who had conducted M.’s intake. Dr. Billingham had never met Dr. Simmons, who looked about thirteen years old and had bright blue eyes like a Siberian Husky. After their reciprocal introductions, Dr. Simmons informed Dr. Billingham that the patient expressed signs of delusional disorganization and behavior, Dr. Billingham’s area of expertise. 5

“She was admitted at 5:30 this morning,” Dr, Simmons continued, “with no apparent injuries, just severe shock, sleep deprivation, and profound confusion. We gave her dopamine and fluids, the usual. She’s responding remarkably well.”

“Who brought her in?”

“She’s a walk-in, or maybe a drop-off.”

“And?”

“At first I thought she just partied too hard, took something she couldn’t handle, but as I continued the interview, she quickly sobered up and began telling me a completely unbelievable story. I’m afraid I didn’t do a great job keeping her talking. At one point, she looked up at my face, which must’ve revealed an unwelcome measure of skepticism, and clammed right up.”

“What was the story about?”

“She claimed she’d been caught in some other body with thick, gray skin, extra- long fingers and a bunch of other really wild, weird, sci-fi kind of stuff. I can’t do it justice; you’ll have to hear her story straight from the horse’s mouth.”

“Color me intrigued,” Dr. Bellingham said.

“I think you’ll find her extremely interesting. Personally I don’t know much about delusions—at first she just sounded bat-shit-crazy to me—but the level of conviction in her voice and the way she described her alternative reality in such detail, for a few seconds there, I actually thought she was telling some version of the truth.”

“For her, it probably seems very much like truth.” 6

Dr. Billingham forewent the obvious admonition to refrain from calling patients bat-shit anything, thanked Dr. Simmons for the information, and walked directly to room

143 where M. was being held. His blood was really pumping now. There wasn’t much in the world that got him more excited than an elaborate, deep-seated delusion. Purple, purple, purple, he cooed as he walked, compassion, empathy, receptivity. What would the world offer to him today? Whatever it was, he felt ready.

During his multiple decades of work in the field, Dr. Billingham had collected his patients’ delusions like valuable gems. In fact, after reading an article on grading diamonds, he had even devised his own four factors for categorizing and cataloguing his patients’ stories. He had many favorites, of course, which he’d often trundle out late at night when he couldn’t sleep. He compared the stories to each other, formulated theories, and composed follow-up questions for each patient, no matter how long it had been since he’d seen them last. At age fifty or so, though, he realized that—despite his obsessive focus and copious notes—he was starting to forget the shape and brilliance of some of his earlier prizes, his mental dust accumulating too thick over their shining edges, so he took a year off from work and wrote it all down—the actual delusions themselves, his classification system, and his theories. To his great surprise, a few months after he’d finished his manuscript, a high-end publisher picked up his book, which then became a best-seller called “Who’s Fooling Who: The Human Mind and Delusional Psychosis.” In it, he postulated that the human mind has an endless potential to distort reality and that delusions were just the tip of the iceberg. 7

Since then, he preserved his ever-expanding collection of delusional accounts by recording his patients’ stories on a digital recorder. Most of the time, he got their permission, but not always. He had determined long ago that the benefits of his work took precedence over any right to privacy, especially given that almost nothing his patients ever said contained any actual information that needed to be protected, given that it was nearly all certifiable fiction.

Before entering, Dr. Billingham pulled up M.’s chart on his phone. In the background section, he discovered a trove of interesting information. Her parents had been immigrants from Macedonia but, when M. was a toddler, they died in a car crash in

Oakland. She then bounced around California’s foster care system until her kindergarten teacher noticed that she preferred reading books upside-down “for the challenge of it.”

The teacher discovered that M. read flawlessly in a mirror, could page through a book backward and retain every detail, and had no trouble speed-reading college textbooks in less than an hour. A week later, M. joined the after-school chess club, where after ten minutes of instruction, she beat everyone in the club, including the instructor. With significant advocacy from M.’s teacher and after some paperwork, testing, and an interview, the state placed M. in the Ardmore School, a boarding school for gifted children in the Sierra foothills. She graduated from high school at age twelve and earned a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley in cognitive psychology three years later. At her 8

present age of twenty, she lived alone and was finishing up two graduate degrees (both also from Cal.), one in astrophysics and the other in computational neuroscience.

The notes in her file also reflected that M. had a bit of rebellious streak. She ran away from her boarding school on multiple occasions, began drinking at fourteen, and had, more recently, been arrested three times—once for vandalism (defacing campus property) and two other times for drug-related offenses. The charges for all three were disputed by M. and then dropped by prosecutors.

Dr. Billingham figured he’d have his hands full with this one, but he felt ready for the challenge.

“Good morning,” Dr. Billingham said softly stepping into M.’s room and letting the door close firmly behind him. The overhead lights were off; the drawn curtains cast the room in gray gloom. Tucked under a light sheet on a hospital bed, M. seemed to be sleeping, but as Dr. Billingham crossed the room, her toes moved slightly beneath the sheet. He opened the curtains, allowing the now citrus yellow morning to flood the room, and sat down on a chair next to her bed. Her short hair was bleached white with a mix of blue and pink tips and looked like it hadn’t been washed in days. She looked to be on the short side, maybe 5’2”, and was neither thin, nor overweight; her one exposed arm revealed a powerful bicep, indicating that she likely lifted weights. She had an eyebrow ring over her right eye, multiple black earrings stringed all the way around the helix of her ear, and a small tattoo of the Greek letter psi (¥ ) on her neck, off-center as if 9

purposely placed over her carotid artery. She wore no makeup. Her cheekbones protruded just enough to highlight her small, closed mouth, and a gentle bump on her nose, just below the bridge, indicated that it had probably been broken years ago.

She did not move, but her uneven breathing indicated that she was both awake and curious—or maybe just irritated by Dr. Billingham’s presence. He waited for a minute, then two, but she continued to play possum. He saw no point in engaging in a battle of the wills at the outset of their interview, so he broke the silence: “Might as well open your eyes—I’m a friend, not foe.”

Without moving, she replied, “You are my mental health evaluator if I’m not mistaken, so you are neither friend, nor foe. Am I correct?” Her voice was gruff, deeper than he had expected, with a smoker’s rasp, unusual these days, especially among her generation, but he had a feeling she would be full of surprises.

“How about ‘neutral, interested professional’ just trying to do his job? My name is Dr. Ernest Billingham. Better?”

She turned her head, opened her sad, bloodshot eyes, and looked him up and down. “You mean, ‘Doctor Delusion’?”

“Some have called me that.”

“I read your book when I was eleven. For your sake, I hope you’re a better psychologist than you are a writer.”

He had been right about her being challenging. 10

She raised the back of the bed, pushed the sheet down to her lap, and easily pulled herself up into a seated position. “Are you an atheist?”

He smiled, took a small notebook out of the pocket of his white coat, and wrote down her name, the date, and the word “DEFIANT” in capital letters. “Don’t you think we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves?” he asked. “I noticed in your background that you’ve studied quite a bit of psychology. Perhaps you can tell me what you’re studying.

What are your interests?”

“So let me get this straight: you’re going to ask me a bunch o f softball questions to build up trust. Then I open up to you, tell you all my problems, reveal my ‘delusions,’ so you can make your recommendation on whether I should be released or held here for

72 hours based on what you think is the most relevant and useful information contained in my statement.”

“You could put it that way.”

“One big problem: what you think is relevant and useful may not fit my definitions of those terms.” Dr. Billingham noticed that, unlike most patients in her situation, she consistently held eye contact—even to the point of making him uncomfortable. “So whose definitions are we going to use?”

“As I am sure you understand, the world is filled with an infinite number of competing perceptions—both human and otherwise—all relative to the individual perceiver’s perspective.” He shifted in his seat, let her win the eye contact contest, and 11

continued, “In my opinion, the fact that two strangers like you and me can accurately communicate anything at all is a miracle in of itself I’m guessing you’d agree.”

“Perhaps.”

“But I can tell already that we have some similarities in our thinking—so maybe our definitions of relevant and useful information are more aligned than you might think.

Perhaps you can just tell me what you think is important for me to know, and I’ll promise to be open-minded.”

“Still not going to work.”

“I see we remain in the combative stage of our interaction. Dogs sniff butts and bark; we do the same, I suppose. But must we prolong this charade? You know I need answers. So let’s cut to the chase, shall we: tell me the real reason why you don’t want to talk to me.”

“Because no matter how open-minded you try to be, no matter what ‘definitions’ we agree upon, if I tell you the truth, the actual truth, you’re not going to believe me—I certainly wouldn’t if I were in your shoes—and then you’ll institutionalize me. I shouldn’t have said anything to Dr. Simmons, but I was still pretty messed up this morning.”

“You seem extremely coherent now.”

“I recover quickly. I’m the girl who gets everybody home at the end of the night, no matter what the fuck kind of trouble we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

“An admirable trait, to be sure.” 12

“I don’t’ generally rely on others. When I was nine, a teacher told me, ‘the best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm.’ I guess it stuck. But listen, man, can you just forget about the whole thing and let me go? I’m totally fine.”

“You know I can’t do that—legal obligations, administrative standards, professional liability... and of course there’s always the potential that I might actually care about you as a human being, might be curious about what you have to say and make sure you’re actually okay, that you’re not going to leave here and jump in front o f a bus.”

‘That’s not how I’d do it. Anyway, it was just a drug-induced hallucination, that’s

“Dr. Simmons seemed to think it was more than that. And I can’t come to any conclusions until you tell me what happened. If I discharge you based on your own diagnosis, then I’d be both lazy and negligent. I’m neither of those things. So why don’t we go back to plan A? Building a little doctor-patient rapport. I should think someone as smart as you would recognize that as a productive step.”

“Wrong term.”

“What?”

“I’m not just ‘smart,’ I’m a genius—there’s a difference—genius, from the Latin, gignere.”

Glancing down for a moment, Dr. Billingham scribbled “touch of narcissism,” and recognized it as a potential opening. “Gignere, huh?” he said as nonchalantly as possible. 13

“The Romans believed that everyone has tutelary spirits guiding them though life called ‘geniuses.’ After a while, they concluded that individuals with exceptional abilities—like me—must be associated with a singularly powerful spirit—so they just started calling us geniuses for short.”

“Do you think you have a particularly powerful spirit watching over you?” Dr.

Billingham didn’t think this sounded like the “other body” delusion that Dr. Simmons described, but patients often experience multiple divergent realities. He’d learned long ago to take it one step at a time.

When she laughed at his question, her eyes caught a sliver of sunlight, and Dr.

Billingham glimpsed what she must have looked as a child. He wondered if she’d had the chance to be a typical little girl—ripped jeans, ten-speed bike, and the unbridled freedom of pre-pubescent girlhood. Most likely, not. During his studies of childhood psychosis and schizophrenia, he’d read quite a bit about child prodigies and had discovered that the

“gift” is not always such a blessing in the end. Being a prodigy can be as confounding and difficult as being severely learning disabled—especially if the child lacks familial support, as was M.’s experience. Dr. Billingham felt an instant pang of sorrow for this young woman. He wanted to know more about her childhood, but he knew better than to press that button too early—that was session two or three material at the earliest. Instead he drew a little heart with a crack in it at the bottom of his notes. He wiped a tear from his right eye just before M. turned back toward him. No doubt about it, this was going to be a purple day through and through. 14

“You’re not going to nail me down that easily, Dr. Billingham,” M. said after taking a sip o f water.

“You can’t blame me for trying. Tell me what it feels like to be so smar—sorry, to be a genius?” The mistake was intentional, to highlight his recognition of, and respect for her desired distinction.

“Do you want my usual answer, the one I give to you normals who always ask the same trite questions?”

“How do you know I’m a ‘normal,’ as you say, and not a genius like you?”

She smiles and shakes her head. “Oh, you’re a normal all right. Remember, I read your book.”

“How many best sellers do you have to your name?”

“Touche. But you’re still not one of us.”

Dr. Billingham decided not to be offended. He was more interested in her take on being a genius. “What’s my other option, other than your usual answer, that is?”

“I could tell you my revised position on being a genius - based on last night.”

“How about both?”

“My old answer: it doesn’t really feel like anything. I just intuitively understand and remember everything I read, everything I experience, almost as if I’ve already read or experienced it many times before. Then I tell people, ‘like a preprogrammed computer,’ and the normals always nod and say, ‘I see.’” 15

“I see.” Clinical humor had never been Dr. Billingham’s specialty, but M. smiled for a second. He couldn’t tell if she was genuinely amused or merely being kind. Either way, he thought, I’ll take it.

“And now?” he asked, “After last night?”

‘Transcendent, dynamic... terrifying. Like having a hidden superpower, untapped and untested, until... until one day it just explodes. ”

She was letting him in. He could feel a reservoir of trust building between them, slowly but surely. “It sounds like you had a mind-blowing experience.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

‘Tell me what happened.”

“I’d like to, I really would—maybe you could even help clear a few things up— but I don't want to get locked up in a mental institution for the rest of my life. I’ve visited quite a few, for clinical trials and the like, and they don’t feel like home to me.”

Dr. Billingham already knew he was going to let her walk. People who demonstrate that type of calm demeanor can’t be held involuntarily—no matter how deeply disturbed they happen to be. Psych holds are for extreme situations, for patients who are out o f control; M. had control down pat. Plus, 5150 beds were limited and expensive. Admin would never accept holding M. in her current state.

“Okay, I’ll make you a deal,” Dr. Billingham said, leaning forward in his chair,

“just between you and me. Answer the 5150 questions truthfully, promise to come for a 16

follow-up appointment early next week, and tell me the entire stoiy. If you do that, I will sign the papers and release you.”

“Why in the world would I trust you to keep your end of the deal?”

“I think you already trust me. And frankly, as you well know, recounting an intense event helps the brain process that experience. You need to tell your story, and I’m offering you a perfect, no-strings-attached opportunity to do so. Why wouldn’t you just avail yourself to my nonjudgmental ear for the sake of your own mental health? Free counselling. I usually don’t come quite so cheap.”

She turned away, pretended to inspect her dark blue fingernails, and then ran her fingers through her multicolored hair.

“I swear I’ll keep my word,” I added.

She’d already made up her mind, she was going to tell him her stoiy; she was just making a show o f her deliberation process. Without waiting for her answer, Dr.

Billingham began the 5150 questions: “Are you likely to harm yourself or others if I release you.”

“No.”

“Will you be able to take care of your food, clothing, and housing needs if I release you?”

“Yes, I can take care o f myself. I’ve been doing it my whole life.”

‘That’s it.” Dr. Billingham slipped his hand into white coat and surreptitiously pressed record on his digital voice recorder. He thought about asking her for her 17

permission, but he thought it might queer the deal—and he really wanted to hear her story.

“Now your turn,” he said.

The following is a transcription of what M. told him that day, edited for clarity and to remove Dr. Billingham’s prompting questions. 18

Chapter 2

I’ve always slept very well—ten to twelve hours uninterrupted, almost comatose—but this summer, I started waking up in the middle of the night with seemingly random and extremely vivid images flowing through my brain. The images never told a full story; they were more like vignettes set in some historic or prehistoric time and place. I always woke up sweating. At first I thought the episodes might be drug- induced. I dropped acid at a concert back in June. Either I took too much or the acid was laced; suffice it to say, I went on a very powerful and challenging trip that night, and for a couple days after, I felt slightly altered. Maybe I was just still experiencing some freakishly long-term, residual effects. I hoped the dreams would just go away and my sleep would return to normal, but the quality of the images kept getting more lifelike, night after night, until they were so phenomenally real, it was hard for me to believe that

‘bad acid’ could possibly be a sufficient explanation.

The dreams—though I’m pretty sure that’s not exactly the right word—reminded me of those hyper-realistic paintings that are all the rage right now, you know, reflections in a shiny chrome fender, close-up portraits of really hairy men, water droplets on the petals of a rose... They also included unadulterated smells, tastes, textures... I couldn’t figure out where all the sensory information was coming from because they never linked directly to any o f my personal memories— or even to things that I’d read about. I began waking up, startled to my core, every night—almost like an invader was in my room, but 19

really, he, she, it was lurking in my head, my brain. I needed to figure out what was going on, so I started focusing on specific details and then conducting research.

Some dreams were complete dead-ends, like walking around in a nondescript desert following some goats, waking up in a pitch black cave and smelling smoke, or being strapped to something like cradleboard in the middle of a snowstorm. Not much to research from those dreams.

But frequently I could quickly figure out the approximate time period and location of the dream. One night, for example, I dreamed I was a little boy in a plain white robe, tied at the waist, playing a board game. The board had three rows of ten spaces. I remembered placing my white pieces on the first, third, fifth, seventh, and ninth spots in the top row. My opponent, another boy—friend or brother, I couldn’t quite tell—put his pieces on the even spots. We sat in a small, hot room, eating dates. Instead of dice, we threw four sticks, white on one side, dark on the other. In the dream, I felt like both an expert and, in a subtle, through-the-looking-glass kind of way, a complete novice. It was like I was watching a pro-gamer play a video game—one that I had never seen before— but it was actually me playing, and winning. From one perspective, I knew everything; from the other, absolutely nothing.

When I awoke, it took me less than two minutes on my computer to realize that I had been playing an ancient Egyptian game called senet, which the Egyptians also called

“passing through the netherworld”—creepy, right? While pleased to find such useful information so quickly, I couldn’t figure out how I had learned the rules—where my 20

mind had collected all the details, all the instructions. Like I said, I usually remember everything I read, everything I experience, so I would normally remember learning how to play this game. I figured I could’ve absorbed senet from drifting off while watching

TV, something I rarely do, but still...or maybe I saw something when I was a very young child or extremely high, but all of those explanations seemed very far-fetched.

Plus, all my vivid dreams had inexplicable material, not just the senet one. The more I thought about the puzzling nature of these disturbingly real dreams, the more unsettled I felt. It almost felt like someone had secretly transplanted a bunch of random— but legit—memories into my head. But who? How? When? Why? It made no sense.

Then, about two weeks ago, I got completely bugged out by one of these dreams.

I woke up thinking I’d been a Cherokee Indian living in the South in the early Nineteen

Century. Again, I could remember many intense details—scary-intense. I’d been sitting on the porch of a general store, smoking a pipe, and reading a newspaper called the

“Cherokee Phoenix, and Indians’ Advocate.” I remembered verbatim the section I had been reading, which included the following:

... and as the Indians associate with the blacks more freely than with the whites the discontent and envy of the former (the slaves) will be greatly increased. The summing up of the whole chapter on the Cherokees, is this: They must be driven from the soil for which they have an inherent attachment, and driven at the point of sword and bayonet; for they have no right nor title to their present homes. This is a very summary improvement. The plan is one that might easily be carried into execution by a few divisions of Georgia militia...

It took me a couple of days, but I eventually tracked down an archive of Southern newspapers that included the “Cherokee Phoenix, and Indians’ Advocate,” a paper I had 21

no idea even existed before the dream. I found a digital copy o f the paper from February

11,1829, and, as you might guess, it contained the exact language I remembered reading.

Even now, retelling the story, I can almost taste the tobacco, sense the sweat dripping down my spine, and feel the anger building up inside my Cherokee heart. How could I possibly have read this extremely obscure newspaper article from nearly two hundred years ago in my dream and then have it turn out to be real?

So I sat in front of my computer and read everything I could find on collective unconscious, genetically inherited memories, reincarnation, past life regression, bio- cultural evolution, residual neural codes, parapsychology, metempsychosis, deja vu, d6ja v&u—anything that might help me explain what was happening to me. The best articles suggested barely plausible theories, but I wanted—I needed—concrete answers; I felt like the rug had been pulled out from my previously unassailable understanding of the rules of universe. No matter how hard I tried, though, I couldn’t find any information that helped.

The only rational explanation was that I had gone completely insane, but I didn’t feel crazy, not at all. Mostly, I felt scared shitless. So I decided it had to be my imagination and that my best approach would be to simply ignore the nightly episodes and hope they would magically go away, just as they had arrived. By focusing on the dreams so intensely, maybe I had been inadvertently pouring mental jet fuel onto the raging fire of confusion in my mind.

So for the next week, I just got on with my life. You may laugh, but one of my dreams is to become a professional bodybuilder. I thought this would be as good time as 22

ever to intensify my training, as if I could get my mind straight through focusing on my body. I doubled my workouts, lifted weights at the gym every morning and evening. I began to eat a regimented diet of carefully measured portions of tilapia, chicken, green beans, sweet potatoes—it’s a whole program. I also attended my summer classes, logged a tone o f hours at the lab, and worked my usual afternoon shifts at the t-shirt shop under my apartment. It wasn’t hard for me to pay attention and take notes in class— school’s pretty much on autopilot for me anyway—and work is completely mindless. And whenever I’m in Lab B, I forget about everything else. We’re experimenting with mind control devices for dogs. You should see what we can make those little rescue dogs do.

But despite all my efforts, the dreams continued. Every morning, I woke up freaked out, then shoved the vivid, inexplicable imagery aside, downed a protein shake, and headed to the gym.

And I stayed as busy socially as possible too, hoping it would distract me from the conundrum of my new reality. I went out to dinner and drinks at Jupiter with my lab colleagues that Tuesday night I ended up arguing with one of the cocksure post-docs about Lab B. He thinks we must limit our scope to domestic and military canine training applications. When I suggested potentially using the devices on humans, to control inmates, for example, he totally freaked out. Our coworkers joined his side, of course.

Normals can never see the benefits of maximizing technology to reign in unfavorable human tendencies. Finally I relented, and the conversation eventually devolved into 23

talking about TV shows and late night comics. I’m a pro at faking things socially, it’s my modus operandi for dealing with normals all the time, so I just sat there and smiled.

Let’s see, what else did I do last week? On Wednesday, I fended off my dissertation professor’s not-so-subtle sexual advances while trying to explain the basics of my ongoing research into gravitational lensing in and around Sagittarius A*. He was more interested in my Sagittarius A* than the real one, if you know what I mean. When I was fifteen or so, I envied those girls with perfect bodies, big tits, but now that I’ve seen how men act, I’d rather be struck by lightning than put up with that shit all my life. On

Thursday night, I went to a death-metal concert with a group of undergrad goths, though I politely declined the acid they were offering—I didn’t need any mind-bending psychedelics, my mind felt bent enough already.

No matter what I did, I couldn’t get out from the shadow of my predicament. I even went on a couple first dates over the weekend, thinking sex might prove therapeutic: one with a start-up douche-bag from SF who only wanted to talk about the pet sitting app that was going to make him “uber-rich”—no way I was taking of my clothes for that guy—and another with a heavily tattooed woman who lied about her age on her dating profile, but was otherwise quite charming. I ended up asking her back to my place.

Afterward, I politely made her leave—I didn’t feel like answering any questions in the middle of the night—and the orgasm, though quite satisfying, did little to curtail my anxiety. Basically my life continued, and no one suspected that anything was wrong, which is pretty much par for the course. 24

But throughout the week, I couldn’t help feeling like I was being dragged into a strange and terrible mental black hole. How could my mind be doing this? How could it pull and stretch the bounds of human experience—of human existence itself—every night, just as easily as a child manipulates a ball of playdough? I knew my brain was advanced, but this was getting ridiculous. And ignoring the problem wasn’t helping; the dreams kept intensifying, night after night. I couldn’t sleep more than an hour or two. I couldn’t eat. I felt sick. I started feeling like I might be going crazy.

The morning after my night with the tattooed woman, I felt especially despondent.

I found myself staring out my apartment window for hours onto the sidewalk below, stunned by all the people going about their tethered-to-reality routines, while a quite separate realm of inexplicable impossibilities kept growing like a malignant vine in my brain. The cognitive dissonance between the world I used to understand and this new, incomprehensible reality had ripped my brain in two. Around noon, I realized I needed to go outside and find something to eat. This body takes a lot of fuel, and I’d been starving it. In a daze, I walked down to the Commonwealth Pub, my local haunt, and ordered an

English breakfast, replete with sausages, tender bacon, grilled tomatoes, fried eggs, salty mushrooms, a slice of black pudding, and buttered toast.

I immediately felt a bit better. I think it was all the protein that snapped my brain back into action. I rented an e-scooter to get back home and almost ran over a stumbling homeless guy, who was raving about something next to his tent, pitched inconveniently on the sidewalk. He wore tom-up jeans, no shirt; his matted-up hair stuck out in 25

incongruous angles; and his eyes had set sail long ago at half-mast. I swerved to the side at the last minute, and when I turned back, I noticed a cardboard sign on the ground next to his mangy pit bull, which read: “Ignoring today’s problems destabilizes future solutions.” Berkeley, man, even the homeless drug addicts have PhDs.

“Fuck you,” I yelled back.

‘Thank you,” he responded with a middle finger salute.

As I parked the e-scooter and walked up the stairs to my apartment, I admonished myself for ignoring my own problem. My week feigned indifference and forced distraction had been a total waste o f time. I turned the key and entered my apartment feeling recommitted to the hunt for an answer.

This time, I went deeper in my research, resisting the urge to look for easy answers. I decided I might be the first to be experiencing these real dreams. I had to think like an explorer, not a researcher. First, I found some comfort in re-reading analyses of

Robert Levy’s concept of hypocognition, which describes, as you may recall, Dr.

Bellingham, the lack of linguistic or cognitive representation for an idea or emotion based on one’s cultural and paradigmatic limitations. It is the odd and sometimes paradoxical attempt to name “known unknowns.”

While Levy focused on different cultures’ experiences of feelings like grief and sadness, I began to think more broadly. What if we humans have all been walking around burdened with a certain type of metaphysical hypocognition? What if we’ve developed and subsequently clung to various blind spots in our scientific explanation of the world. 26

From a certain perspective, it seems very naive to think that we are above naivete. But identifying and naming my inability to explain what was happening to me did not comfort me for long.

As I broadened my search, one word kept popping up on my screen: Ayahuasca.

It’s a traditional, hallucinogenic brew used for centuries by indigenous Amazonian communities. As I dug deeper, I learned that a growing number of Americans have begun to imbibe Ayahuasca in search of meaningful answers to age-old questions with, I should add, some significant success. I watched a video of a young guy from New York City, deep in the jungles of Brazil, participating in an Ayahuasca ceremony. He seemed to believe that he was communicating with a spirit in another dimensions—his dead brother,

I believe, though the video was somewhat garbled. Six months ago, I would have said he was simply hallucinating, but now...

I then stumbled upon the website of a self-described shaman named Clara living right here in Berkeley. At first I hesitated and then, out of curiosity, I called the number on my screen.

A gentle voice, with a Hispanic accent, answered. After a few pleasantries, I briefly told her about my dreams.

“So you’re a traveler, very nice,” she said in a sing-song voice.

“It’s actually pretty disconcerting.”

“Disruptions in perceived reality can be painful, to be sure, but they can prove very enlightening too.” 27

“I’m just feeling confused.”

“Very good, very natural,” she answered.

“And a little bit frightened.”

“Of course you are,” she said kindly. She sounded a bit like the grandmother I never had.

“You will come here, and I will help you. Three nights of ceremonies, and you will understand more, my sweet, troubled traveler.”

I almost hung up. I’ve never been a crystal-rubbing, tree-hugging, Mother-Earth- healing type of person, but the pure confidence in her voice made me think she might be able to help. At that point, I was open to any type of information—spiritual, psychological, supernatural. I just needed someplace to start.

So on Tuesday of this week, I found myself standing in the driveway of a small house in West Berkeley. The late-aftemoon sun cast a mottled skeleton of shade across the house’s vinyl siding. I stopped for a moment at the base of the porch stairs, thought through my limited options, and then went up to the front door. While still somewhat skeptical, I was tired of feeling desperate. If anything, I could tell Clara my story. I knew she’d have a sympathetic ear, and, at that point, I needed to talk to someone.

Clara wore a flowing purple gown with embroidered flowers sprouting from the hem. Two long, white braids framed her narrow face. She greeted me with a warm smile, which accentuated her deeply wrinkled face, but her eyes were as young as a child’s. She 28

gave me a long, heartfelt hug as though we were relatives, took me by the hand, and led me inside.

Thick blankets covered all of the windows in the living room, a few candles here and there cast a soft, welcoming light, and Tibetan prayer flags hung from the ceiling.

The room lacked furniture, just pillows, thick rugs, and blankets neatly spread out on the floor. Whether it was the ambiance or Clara’s demeanor, I felt a wave of tranquility and assurance wash over me.

She took me into her modest galley kitchen, where we sat at a Formica table and discussed the ceremony over a glass of basil lemonade. She laid the raw ingredients of the brew—bright green chacruna leaves and stringy Ayahuasca root—out onto the table, showed me pictures of ceremonies from a pile of dog-eared books, and told me how she had learned everything she knows from her own indigenous tribal leaders, who still lived hidden deep in the Amazonian jungles of Bolivia. She had already boiled down enough medicinal brew for the three ceremonies we had discussed on the phone. She measured out a dose and began to warm it slowly on the stove. We returned to the living room.

She began by lighting dried sage wrapped in colorful yam and passing it over my head while whispering prayers in a language I did not recognize. As she explained earlier, she was cleansing my soul for its journey. I refrained from internally rolling my eyes; after what I’d been through the past few weeks, I felt I’d lost any justification for being closeminded about anything. 29

She then brought me a small teacup containing an inch of brew, which tasted truly awful. She invited me to sit quietly and focus on the questions that were plaguing my heart while we waited for the medicine to kick in. I began to feel some effects about an hour later, but it was subtle. Clara began to sing, whistle, and chant These “Icaros,” she told me in a soft voice, are healing songs that also provide a touchstone for the traveler.

“Come back to the chanting if you ever get lost.” She began to incorporate various musical instruments as well, including a small drum, a leaf shaker, and a rattle.

As expected, I proceeded to purge everything from my system. Clara brought me a bucket into which I vomited repeatedly. She emptied it and returned, over and over again. I had to run to the bathroom a couple times too, but after a while my system settled down and I felt truly clean. I began to feel alone, except I could hear Clara’s mellifluous voice like she was singing from inside me. A deep sense of quiet grew from my stomach, wound around my torso, and then covered me entirely, like spider’s silk wrapped around its latest victim. I stayed with Clara’s chanting for most of the night. I remember laughing a couple of time and crying for a while, but mostly I felt pure silence. As I began to come back, Clara cleansed me with sage again.

When I felt up to it, we returned to the kitchen and ate soup together. I had no idea what time it was, but it was dark outside. She put me to bed in a cozy room just off the kitchen. I tried to sleep, but my vivid dreams came hard and fast, waking me each time I dozed off. The images felt even closer to reality than before, and I remember 30

wondering if I had made a mistake coming to Clara. Paranoid is anathema to sleep, and I just tossed, turned, and tried to keep my cool for approximately eight hours.

On the second night, she gave me a larger dose of the brew. She said I handled the initial, novice dose just fine and was therefore ready for more. After the medicine kicked in, I lost track of her completely, her chanting disappeared into the darkness, and I began to feel like I was dying. I wasn’t scared though; I felt something more like relief. I stood before the mouths of multiple tunnels, all ending in death. Each time I walked down a tunnel, I died into it, stripped first of skin, then muscle. I felt my bones decaying into dust, my nerves drying out like grape vines after the harvest.

But then a benevolent force would appear. It hovered around me, reinvigorating my body, mind, and my soul before placing me again in front of more tunnels, more comforting death. For a while, the unknown force seemed to split me among many beings facing many tunnels. I had the sense that I was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Eventually Clara’s chanting began leading me through the tunnels, allowing my disparate consciousness to reconvene into one soul, and I followed the music through a final inverted tunnel back to her living room.

She stroked my hair and held me until I was ready to walk. She fed me soup in the kitchen as before. And again I could not sleep. I almost walked out of her house and went home. I needed a break—some real sleep—but when I talked to Clara about what I was feeling, she convinced me to finish. She said I was likely near a breakthrough; that’s when most people quit, she said. 31

I agreed to stay for one final ceremony.

That was yesterday. 32

Chapter 3

How can I describe an experience I know you will not believe? One that I know you cannot comprehend? How can my new understanding of reality diverge so fundamentally from humanity’s established, rational, and scientific description of the way everything works? Quantum mechanics tells us that even the smartest among us don’t have all the answers—that our brain’s fundamentally flawed perception of three dimensions and a linear chronology leaves much to be desired. But what I’m about to tell you makes all of the “exciting possibilities” of quantum mechanics look like child’s play.

Last night, Clara poured the final two inches of her brew into the tea cup, a much large dose than for either of the previous ceremonies. I gagged it down. About an hour later, my journey began. I first found myself alone in the darkest dark you can imagine.

One molecule appeared out of nowhere and it was me, but also you and everyone else. I expanded, slowly at first, and then in a rush, multiplying into matter and anti-matter. The darkness was replaced by light, and I was (we were) shattered into galaxies. Time did not exist in that space, for the expansion was happening always. And I (we) did not exist

(even though we were there) - only atoms blasting into each other, combining and recombining to take new forms. These atoms flowed through the cosmos in all directions—and in directions that I, sitting here, cannot not describe, because “flow” entails time, and time was fiction. At best, I can say that I became untethered—from our conception of time and space, but also from my ego, my essential being. I felt nothing, 33

not bliss, not devastation, just a simple, pure emptiness. I was “I” no longer—more, “I” was all and nothing in a timeless space.

But at a certain moment, one molecule of stardust “landed” somewhere, and I felt compelled to focus my attention on it. Millions of other stardust molecules landed nearby around the same time, but I could only relate to this one, which I’m tentatively calling my mother molecule. We were still for days, weeks, years, eons, but then one day I felt it attach itself to an amino acid and then to a sugar molecule that were floating around nearby. They fit well together and then these larger molecules began organizing themselves into stacks, which eventually split and grew. The stacks developed into circular shapes, began to move, and developed basic metabolic pathways. Then I felt a tearing apart o f my being, and soon my awareness had spread to multiple beings. I felt a dull form of consciousness begin to arise in millions of light-sensing, hunger- and sex- driven microbes. From that one tiny grain of stardust, I began to spread across the planet—this planet, I’m pretty sure—and I began to sense more, evolve into more complicated beings, each distinct but connected nonetheless. My mother molecule became diluted in some areas, and I lost connection with those watered-down beings’ experiences. But still I grew and spread and developed into hundreds of millions of living beings. By separating from some, I became more aware in others.

I know what this sounds like: you tripped pretty hard little girl and your delusion sounds exquisite, but that’s all it was, a delusion. And all I can tell you: it wasn’t just in my mind, it all happened just as this conversation is happening now. The ethereal stuff, 34

sure I can see you doubting that, but then my vision started to materialize into concrete experiences—and I started seeing through human eyes—and that’s when I began having some moments of real clarity.

I told you about the dreams I couldn’t nail down—the dark cave, the unknown desert, the snow storm experienced from a cradleboard. Well, some of those dreamscapes began coming into focus. First in flashes, and then enough to create serious connections.

It was as if these individuals from the past had enough of my mother molecule to garner my attention, to bring me along with them. I don’t think there’s a word for it yet, but reincarnation is probably the closest term. Yet, reincarnation imagines a unitary soul that travels through a linear progression of lives. In these flashes, I learned that individual experiences are shared by many related people. I began to feel, to understand that when enough descendant-molecules come together into one being, one human, then the life of that human can be accessed by others of common ancestry, regardless of time. That’s what I was doing. Those hard to decipher dreams turned out to be snippets of ancient lives lived by me— or at least by part o f me.

I can see you struggling with this, Dr. Billingham, and I understand. So let me try to simplify. Do you drink orange juice? Of course you do. Orange juice concentrate: you unfreeze it, mix it up with water, and voila, you have orange juice. But from which orange did your juice come? No orange, right? Many oranges, yes? But not all oranges. If you wanted, you could track your can of orange juice concentrate back to a specific harvest, a specific region, maybe even a specific factory. But you will never track down a 35

single original orange, or even a predominant one. Your glass contains a unique mix of juice molecules from many oranges, which is similar, but not exactly the same as the juice consumed by many other people. You are related to those other consumers through concentration levels. Where those concentration levels are most aligned, the juice will taste similar, but never exactly the same, will it? Likewise, I have a certain concentration of atoms that is both unique to me—to this body at this time—and/but quite similar to other bodies that exist and have existed in the past. My relation to those other bodies has never been realized before... before last night.

And so, I became the Egyptian boy again, and the Cherokee on the porch of the general store. I existed as many of my star-dust “relatives,” some I already knew from my dreams and some brand new. I hopped from soul to soul, inhabiting many existences.

Sometimes, I had no control over them and could only watch blurry scenes through their eyes. But with others, those with whom I share a richer concentration of molecules, I felt more present, sometimes even on the cusp of actuation. I stayed for only moments with some, for weeks with others, observing lives like a mental tourist. At times, I was in many bodies at once, and sometimes I was singularly focused. I had no power over my movements: the bodies I inhabited picked dahlias near a monastery, drew water from a well in the mountains, shopped for fish in an ancient market. There was no order, no rationale, just haphazard skipping back and forth, through past lives, lived and now re­ experienced. 36

And then quite suddenly, I blacked out—for lack of a better term—into a stupefying, unfathomable darkness from which I thought I would never awaken. An unnerving silence reigned, lasted forever, and ended in seconds—it defied time, looped and knotted inside of my mind. In the stillness, I felt a searching movement hiding deep under the blackness that surrounded me, like waiting for a slow computer to respond to a complex query and wondering whether it was going to time out.

Slowly I began to hear a strange beat, her heart at first, and then her song. She was holding something spherical, and I pushed toward the light. She chanted; I chanted. I was coming home. I followed the chanting. A head was in her lap; my head. She stroked its hair. Wanting to return, I pushed more, past warnings, past resistance, swimming to a surface I could not see, until, quite suddenly, I burst into clarity. The room was dark, lit only by candles. I looked up and recognized her, Clara, my shaman, right at that exact moment in time. I began to scream for me to wake up, but no sound emerged. I had no control yet. Clara chanted on. I began to draw up and away from my body. I looked down at the head in her lap and saw my face upside-down. It wore the death mask of someone in excruciating pain, but I was laughing as well. I kept drifting up and then as I almost felt my capacity to scream come back, the blackness swallowed me up again.

When I woke up, I thought I was in a closed coffin. Just a few inches above me, a thick board began to creak and sag. For a moment, I thought I was being buried alive, but then I realized I was lying on a bunk bed—the bottom bunk, if I wasn’t mistaken—in a dim room, under a thick blanket. Curled up on my side, I faced an unknown wall that 37

looked like chiseled stone. An inexplicable sense of dread flooded my mind. I did not move. I closed my eyes and waited, hoping to skip away, travel somewhere else. I knew instinctively I didn’t want to be there, wherever and whenever I was, but something in the back of my mind told me I might be there for a very long time. This circumstance felt more like a new reality than any of the other visions.

A faint light came on from somewhere behind me, and I heard multiple guttural grunting noises— neither animal, nor human, from what I could surmise. Now more voices joined from all around what seemed to be a large—even cavernous—room; suggestions of echoes bounced off the hard walls. I decided to touch the wall. I wanted to feel it, to see if it was real. It looked wet, but it might have just been worn smooth and slick by years of touching, like an old stone staircase.

At first, I could not move my hands, and then I remembered the rules; I cannot control these relatives’ movements. I felt a wave of relief. I would be moving on, with luck sooner, rather than later. But then, like how it feels when you overcome the momentary paralysis of slowly waking from a deep sleep, this hand that was previously outside of my realm of consciousness became reality. I—the real me—twitched my right index finger.

I slowly drew my hand up out of the covers and reached for the wall. But I froze—and my heart caught in my throat—the instant my hand came into my field of vision. My skin was gray, almost like an elephant’s hide, with thick, black hair covering the back of my hand. My four fingers were elongated to nearly twice as long as normal— 38

narrow, too, but muscular, with bulging, scraped-up knuckles—and my thumb was nearly as long as my fingers with an extra joint like those people with triphalangeal thumbs. I made a fist and opened my hand again, hoping to see a change, but everything remained the same. It was like wearing a virtual reality, haptic suit, only I was pretty sure this was reality-reality, or some version thereof. I wanted to scream, but I was too scared; I had no idea where I was, when I was, or who/what I was.

I reached out, touched the stone wall, and felt another wave of panic; I could really feel it as though I was actually, one-hundred-percent in this body. The wall proved as cold and hard I had imagined it would be, but it was not wet; its shiny aspect seemed to have been caused by years of greasy skin rubbing against it. I thrust my hand back under the blanket, pulled the covers over my head, and lay perfectly still. The grumbling noises grew louder along with the sounds of feet shuffling around me on the floor. I prayed to every god that ever existed that I would wake up somewhere else soon.

But that was not to be.

As I lay there silent and still, I felt an itch on the bottom of my right foot It intensified quickly until I could not resist scratching it. I moved my bizarre hand down long, foreign legs to my foot and relieved the itch through the heavily calloused skin of the ball of my foot. What I discovered a moment later, however, provided the opposite of relief: I only had three toes - and they were wide, long, and powerfiil, like they could crush a small bird. I nearly vomited as I ran my fingers over my three thick, sharp toenails. Contrary to my normally well-maintained nails, the edges of my toenails felt 39

rough and sharp, almost like talons. I checked my left foot and found it to be the same. I remember thinking: three toes, that’s it, this has to be a drug-induced hallucination. But then I clearly recalled Clara and the Ayahuasca ceremony. I had taken drugs, yes, but my unclouded awareness of that fact negated a conclusion that this was all in my head.

Further, both worlds seemed equally real; I knew my old life without any gaps, and at the same time, everything in my present, bunk-bed reality felt all too real—my new body’s strange, sickly sweet stank, the odd coarseness of the sheets on my skin, and the peculiar diy-mouth feeling on my teeth, lips, and tongue, like I hadn’t brushed in... well, maybe forever. And it all felt strangely familiar.

I ran my hands slowly up and around my bulging calves and then to my ripped thighs; the word “muscular” doesn’t even come close to describing them. My skin was stretched tight against the rippling muscles and hard tendons of these new legs of mine.

Underneath, I could find no fat. As far as I could tell, I wore no clothes. My hands started to reach for the area you would guess would be next, but before I could explore my alien genitals, I suffered an immediate, mind-blowing headache.

The pain was so intense that I felt compelled to grab my forehead. I’ve heard migraines can make people want to kill themselves. This was like that; the pain was like instant death. I twisted toward the room and stuck my head out of the covers. Maybe I was actually dying; maybe someone could help me. All of a sudden, the pain turned to a dull ache, like a dial somewhere had been turned down. I learned later, that was, in some sense, exactly what had happened. 40

I took a moment to survey my surroundings. The area before me was more cave than room, though the floor was made of rough wooden planks and dim, square lights set into the stone ceiling high above cast faint shadows all around. I had been correct in thinking I was in a type of bunk bed; the beds were stacked five high, one right on top of the next. Whoever constructed the bunks made them extra-long and left just enough room in between them for a person to roll over, not enough to sit up. There were three rows of bunk beds with six stacks to each row. The whole scene looked like a bizarre, windowless military barrack. All of the bunks immediately around me had been vacated.

I could just make out through the semi-darkness a group of tall figures dressed in blue gowns as they slowly walked away from me and gathered near a distant door.

Just then, my headache came back, and I felt an urge—I eventually began calling them conformity urges—to get out of bed. I stood up and the headache immediately disappeared. I had no idea what was happening to me; how could my head starting hurting so much so quickly? And what about the instantaneous cessation of pain? That seemed just as disturbing. I could feel my heart beat blasting in my ears. Bile, with its sharp taste o f alarm, rose up into the back o f my throat. This was way more than I had bargained for. I wasn’t sure I was psychologically equipped for this level of mind-fuck.

But then I remembered a quotation from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a book the Ardmore School required all students to read upon admission. I remembered being so taken with this particular quote that I wrote it in pen on my canvas pencil bag:

“All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more 41

complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position o f thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place.” On the other side of my pencil case, I wrote the most famous quotation from that book in big block letters: “DON’T PANIC.” I decided to take Doug Adam’s advice and try to just go with the flow. What choice did I have?

Taking a quick look down at my new body, I noticed that most of it was covered with short black hair, my breasts were almost non-existent, and my upper-body physique easily matched my ultra-muscular legs. Standing there naked, I felt no shame; somehow I intrinsically knew nakedness was normal here. When I pushed up on my toes and stretched my hands into the air, I felt a deep sense of exhilaration bolt right through me; I had never dreamed of inhabiting a body as exquisitely balanced, as finely tuned, as this one. Whoever I was, I certainly wasn’t hungover, and I didn’t skimp on exercise. As I lowered my weight back onto my heels and slowly brought my arms down to my sides in a graceful arc, I felt inhabited by a deep sense of energy, like what I would imagine it would feel like to be a proton in a particle accelerator. I was a steel coil, a bullet in the chamber, a rocket ready for take-off, whatever cliche you choose—I felt deeply powerful, filled to the brim with potential energy. I flexed my quads, biceps, and glutes as though I was in a bodybuilding competition. I remember thinking: well, this might not be so bad.

I suddenly felt another one of those urges, this time I felt compelled to walk to the foot of my bunk, where I discovered a row of five hooks, all empty except for one. I grabbed the remaining blue robe, which seemed quite clean and fresh. I semi-recognized it as my own, and pulled it over my head. I wanted to explore my immediate 42

surroundings, but that headache quickly returned, coupled by an urge to catch up to the group. I resisted for a millisecond, and the headache turned to pounding misery. As I walked toward the group at the far end of the room, the pounding dulled to a throb and then disappeared altogether. I began to understand and gave the headaches a name: obedience migraines.

I easily caught up to the group as they remained clustered around the one doorway. They seemed to be waiting in a haphazard line, no one pushing forward, but all gradually moving toward the exit. I joined the group at the back. I estimated that there were about seventy of us in total, all dressed in blue robes. As I looked closer at individual members of the group, I noticed we looked quite similar, with minimal variation in height—approximately six foot six—and age, though some were clearly younger and less wrinkled than others. All of them looked as strong and healthy as I felt.

We all shared the same three-toed feet, gray skin, and black hair. I could not tell for sure, but it appeared we were all female.

We seemed human—standing upright, opposable thumbs, forward facing eyes— but obviously we were far from Homo sapiens sapiens. Out of pure scientific instinct, I gave us a new name, Homo sapiens griseos, gray humans, or just griseos for short. I thought about elephantus, because of the hair and thick skin, but I didn’t want to go the animal route. Griseos seemed better; maybe we were highly evolved, and I just hadn’t figured it out yet. 43

But then maybe not, I quickly began to suspect. First I started listening to the griseos “talking” to each other all around me. It was language, to be sure, and I could understand it—I was fluent, in fact—but it seemed quite rudimentary. At that moment, most of the griseos were repeating one word that consisted of one long grunt, which came across as, “mooooove.” They repeated it over and over again, but not in an impatient way like they were all trying to board a crowded BART train or something, more in a declaratory manner, as in, we’re all moving forward in this line. It was like they wanted to say something, but didn’t have anything interesting to say. I eventually started thinking of these types of statements as being conjugated in the “present obvious.” I quickly discovered that they used the present obvious nearly all the time—not great conversationalists.

“Move... move... move.”

Then I heard a variation: a griseo next to me conjugated the verb and said, “I move... I move... I move.” Some of the griseos ahead of her shifted slightly to the side to allow her to inch closer to the door. They began to repeat, “She m oves...,” but none called her by any name. Eventually I learned that they didn’t have names. The griseo who got to cut the line made it outside next, while the rest of us waited patiently—with one griseo stepping through the exit approximately every thirty seconds.

“Move... move... move.” 44

I thought about trying out my new voice and vocabulary, but I concluded it would be safer to just stay quiet. I figured I should wait for a more opportune moment to begin to ask the many questions I had racing through my brain.

Then I heard myself say, “Move... move... move.”

Which brings up an interesting topic: the configuration of my brain in that foreign body. On the one hand, I retained access to the entirety my normal mind—that which belongs to me, M., the weightlifting genius currently attending Cal. I felt myself fully there, with complete access to my overly active cerebral cortex, my inquisitiveness, my emotions, everything. All that was missing was this present body—this corporeal collection of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms—you see lying in this bed before you.

On the flip side, I coexisted with the mind that was present in that griseo body before I showed up. I’m not sure I got access to her whole persona—I think there might have been a few thoughts she did not, or could not, share with me—but I got a pretty good lay o f land. And as the day progressed, I learned that this other brain—my G. brain as I started calling it—knew how to do many things my M. brain didn’t. It was totally cool that I instantly understood the language, and I also could sense her instincts. I soon realized, however, that I couldn’t tap into any of her memories or thoughts of the future. I wondered if these were off-limits or just didn’t exist. I concluded at the time that the griseos were simple beings, that they leaned more bovine than human when it came to intelligence. I learned later that things were much more complicated. 45

I needed to rationalize my situation, so I told myself that I had a rare form of dissociative identity disorder, with my two separate identities coexisting contemporaneously and without conflict. My M. and G. brains operated seamlessly inside. It got even easier when I realized—and I’m not trying to be snooty here—that my

G. brain had left plenty o f room for my genius-sized M. brain to move in for a while. It was like my griseo roommate had been living in a five bedroom house all her life, but had never quite made it out o f the maid’s quarters.

I found myself at the end of the line with only two griseos in front of me when I discovered the cause of the holdup. I rose up onto my toes—relishing again the sublime equilibrium of this body—and glanced over the other griseos’ shoulders. We were exiting into what looked like a spacious, well-lit portico, flanked on both sides by open trenches.

The griseos had their gowns pulled up around their waists and were pissing and shitting into the trenches. When one would finish, the griseo waiting in the doorway would take her spot.

I thought for a moment about turning around and going back to bed. Maybe I could claim a sick day? I at least wanted to wait until this all-too-public defecation station became empty. I began to turn away, but my headache instantly flared up, and an urge to stay in line quickly rotated me back toward the door. And then all of sudden it was my turn. At first, I thought, oh shit, but then G. brain took over. I got down into a squat, noticed pink waves of some type of opaque solution pulsing at regular intervals through the trench below me, and then watched as my waste dropped out of me and joined the 46

stream. When I was done, I stood up—I guess we don’t wipe in this world, I remember thinking to myself—and followed the other griseos out into the world. 47

Chapter 4

What I will begin to describe here may seem unbelievable to you, Dr. Billingham, but I just want you to listen as I continue—listen for the intricate details, the far-out, yet plausible oddities, and the extraordinary twists and turns my story took during my time in that strange place. Could a patient suffering from delusion disorder come up with a narrative such as mine? I’m completely confident that what I experienced was real, but

I’m also willing to listen to your diagnosis, to your informed analysis when I am through—as long as you stick to your word and let me walk out of here when I’m done. I know I’m not mentally ill, but I also recall that old saying about crazy people thinking that the rest o f the world has gone insane. Maybe, somehow, both are true—that it varies, depending on which version of reality is in play.

When I stepped out from the toilet area, the griseos, who, up until that point, had been milling around under a large covered porch, began walking. “Move, move, move,” they said in apathetic tones. We walked as one mass, gray shoulders bumping gently into gray shoulders, hands brushing against neighboring hands. I could smell our collective body odor, but my olfactories were not fazed. Instead of revulsion, I noticed a feeling of security, as my G. brain’s instinctual capacity assured me that collective proximity meant safety.

We followed a wide, sandy path away from the latrines and up an incline.

Wanting to avoid attracting any potentially unwanted attention, I kept my eyes down. We were clearly in some type of desert environment, though the early morning air did not 48

feel particularly hot, just pleasant. Every once in a while, we’d cross a patch of hard- packed earth, but the path was mostly deep, white sand, still slightly cool from the night.

I looked down at my three-toed feet, which were spread wide with webs of skin stretched between each toe, and watched as I almost floated on top of the sand. This is how a camel must feel, I thought to myself, recalling an article I’d read on feral populations of dromedaries in the Australian outback. I searched the ground for any signs of life other than us—bugs, snakes, lizards—but saw none.

Soon curiosity got the better of me, and I began to steal furtive glances at my surroundings. As I broadened my perspective, I realized that no one was paying any attention to me. So I brought my head up straight and completely scanned the area. The first thing I noticed was the deep auburn light all around us. It was like I was looking at everything through dark, orange-tinted sunglasses. The spiny bushes and clumps o f tan grass that dotted the edges of the path cast only slight, almost imperceptible shadows.

I looked for the sun and found it to my right, hiding on the horizon, behind an agitated brown fog that churned in the far distance, maybe a mile or two away. It looked like a video I once saw o f an approaching Saharan dust storm— complete calm in the foreground with an angry purple-brown wall approaching and eating up everything in its way. I looked all the way around me and found that the same smoky miasma surrounded us on all sides. Kept at bay by some mysterious force, the low clouds sent tendrils like brown snakes up into the sky. These snakes dissipated quickly and fell back into the writhing cloudy mass of dust and smoke. The air we all breathed, however, felt as clear 49

and clean as any I’ve ever inhaled. Above the ring of brown, a lighter, yellow haze circulated, which was capped by a bowl of blue directly above us. I surmised at the time, and confirmed later, that we were inside an enormous climate-controlled dome.

Our refrain of “move, move, move” continued, and I was compelled to join in. I ambled along with my peers, strides relaxed and even-paced just like the rest, but the internal me, the one sitting before you now, staggered along psychologically with each step, each fresh observation, overwhelmed as I was by this strange, new, inexplicable world. I could only assume I was still on planet Earth, but there was not much for me to go on. We could’ve been on Mars for all I could tell—except maybe for the blue sky, I thought, that was distinctly Earth-like.

When we reached the top of the hill, I could see much more of the territory protected by the dome. Directly below us, masses of other griseos entered a long, flat building through multiple wide entrances. They were all saying something other than

“move,” but I couldn’t quite make it out. Just beyond the crowded building, hundreds of glass structures, perhaps ten stories high and glowing with bright purple lights, lined a massive grid of dirt roads. Hovercrafts filled with griseos zipped away from the long building, while empty ones returned to pick up more passengers. Before I could observe more, we were moving again, down a set of switchbacks toward the long building. This time, my fellow griseos began to chant, “Food, food, food,” and I began to feel hunger pangs. 50

As we entered the building, which I quickly understood to be some type of cafeteria, a group of griseos to our left stood up in unison and walked toward a doorway on the other side of the room, toward the glowing glass buildings. The exiting griseos all looked very similar to my group, with similar builds and the same blue robes. In fact, everyone in the cafeteria looked pretty much the same, with only minor differences like a scar on a cheek or a rash on a forearm. Out of the comer of my eye, I noticed one griseo with a hand missing, but for the most part, we were all nearly clones of each other.

We sat at the recently vacated table, and trays descended from the ceiling onto the table. I looked for strings, but saw none; the trays just floated down and landed softly in front o f us. Breakfast consisted o f a hard, white square and a cup o f a warm, cloudy liquid, which I soon began calling monotony milk since it tasted like flour water and was the only drink we were ever served. The griseos at my elbows dipped their brick-like squares into the monotony milk and gnawing away at the edges. I followed suit. The solid substance slowly softened up. The meal in its entirety was nearly tasteless, but something about the chewing, the chomping, and the slobbering struck me as surprisingly satisfying.

We did not have manners per se, and no one seemed to give a shit.

I looked around at my tablemates as they ate. Their teeth were stained and worn, but surprising straight and no one seemed to be missing any teeth. Their faces looked somewhat human, though their mouths were wider, ears bigger, and necks thicker. They all had small dark eyes, set close together, with a big shelf of a brow jutting out above them. The hair on top of their heads was thick and cut close to the scalp. By our 51

contemporary standards, there wasn’t much pretty about these beings. I reached up and ran my fingers over my own face, ears, and hair and thought about what they say about beauty and the eye of the beholder.

We were mostly silent as we ate, with one or another of us mooing “food” at odd intervals, but then, about halfway through the meal, something surprising occurred. The griseos began to converse—although that’s actually a bit of a stretch. First, a griseo across from me said the word for “ceremony,” and a few of the others nodded their heads.

One repeated the word, which actually sounded more like “kooolooo,” and then added a time reference, which my griseo brain translated for me as being five days from then.

“Jaaaaab” (“exciting” in English), one o f the griseos chimed in, though excitement doesn’t perfectly capture the exact spirit of the word. The pleasurable anticipation expressed was linguistically tinged with fear and anxiety. “Gods’ time,” the griseo continued. We all reached our right hand up to the sky and then kissed each of our four elongated fingers. “Gods’ time,” we all repeated before going back to eating in relative silence. “Food... food... food.” And that was our breakfast conversation.

We sat down facing each other on the two long benches inside a driverless, transport hovercraft. When I thought we’d reached capacity, more griseos piled in. We scooted close to each other, and then closer still. We were all sweating, skin on skin. For a moment, I felt claustrophobic. Not only was I stuck in this strange body, but I was not being press and squeezed into this tiny little box. I wanted to go home. As I looked 52

around at my fellow griseos, though, I saw nothing but sheer contentment and calm. I took their cue.

In fact, in the entire time I spent with the griseos, I never once heard any of them complain about anything. At the time, I thought maybe they just didn’t have the vocabulary, but it felt like something else. They were docile in a way I’d never imagine any human could ever behave. If someone were to try to cram the same number of souls into any type of public transportation here in Berkeley, there would be a petition a mile long on the mayor’s desk the very next morning. The griseos, however, seemed to enjoy it. As each additional griseo entered and squeezed in, my G. brain transmitted a sense o f safety.

Once the back gate was closed, the vehicle took off and sped through the rows of glass buildings as we all held on to padded bars that ran down the middle o f the passenger cabin. I looked around and recognized all of the griseos. We stuck together, it seemed, from the cave to breakfast and now to wherever we were headed next. I guessed then that I’d be spending all my time with these specific griseos, and I turned out to be correct. This was my herd.

They began to say “work... work... work,” in a slow, easy murmur. For a second, I tried to resist joining the recitation, just to see what would happen, but quickly I felt one of those conformity urges again and found myself quietly chanting along with my cohort.

There was something oddly comforting about the droning sound of the same word over and over again. For one thing, we were unified in our purpose and experience, but the 53

monotone mantra had a type of hypnotizing effect on me as well. It calmed me down, even my M. brain.

The floor began blinking red, and the hovercraft slowed to a stop. We spilled out onto the sandy street, and I followed the other griseos into one of the tall glass buildings through a large opening that resembled an industrial-sized garage door. Approximately one hundred griseos stood inside already. We were among the last to show up.

In the back of my head, I heard the seven dwarfs singing, “Heigh-Ho, heigh-ho, it's off to work we go.” Although I was still freaking out, I couldn’t help but smile.

Oddly, the muscles in my face instantly burned, and I dropped the edges of my mouth. I tried again; same result. Was it painful to smile with this face? That hardly seemed right, but I realized that I hadn’t noticed any of the other griseos’ grinning at any point in the morning.

After our group entered the facility, the giant door to the outside—“outside if you don’t count the dome—quickly sealed shut with a whir and firm clank, like an automatic, jailhouse door at lockdown. Tightly packed in this little lobby area, the multiple herds tended to stay together, milling about and rubbing up against each other. A barely noticeable spray began to emanate from the ceiling, and the floor filled with a warm, amber liquid.

None of the griseos paid any attention, gently splashing the liquid with their oversized toes as they continued to move around, but I began to feel quite anxious. For one thing, like most people, I prefer not to be crammed into tiny, confined spaces with no 54

obvious exits in sight. And the unknown substance gently raining down on us didn’t help.

I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, but if it walks like a holocaust, and quacks like a...in any case, I held my breath and moved toward the back of the room, hoping to spy a hidden exit, of which there were none.

When I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, I breathed in and found that the mist smelled and tasted vaguely like cinnamon, with just a hint of some industrial cleanser I could not identify. The liquid at our feet stopped rising at just above our ankles and then began to drain away though tiny holes in the floor. The sprayers above turned off as well.

I looked at the gray skin on my arms, legs, and on the tops of my feet; noticed a moist shine; and concluded that we had just been subjected to some type of decontamination procedure. I breathed a sigh o f relief and returned to my herd. I’d just have to wait and see how all this was going to play out. I had no other choice; I hadn’t seen any ruby slippers, magical wardrobes, or obvious time machines lying around.

A bell rang and three massive doors in front of us opened wide. Through the middle door, I could see a large room filled with tall, leafy plants. The room’s bright light shined out on us, giving my neighbors’ faces a beautiful, purple-green glow. I also noticed an intense, tropical aroma flowing out from the room, striking in particular given the arid, odorless quality of the air outside. Flanking the verdant room, doors had opened to reveal wide staircases.

My M. brain very much wanted to explore the room directly in front of us so I joined the group that had started walking toward the plants and the light. But my legs 55

turned me toward my herd, who were assembling at the base of one of the staircases. As I tried to will this strange body of mine into the florid room, a familiar, punishing headache quickly revisited me. Two forced steps in the wrong direction, and my head pulsated with excruciating pain. I thought I might pass out from the pain so I allowed my G. brain to take over. We easily fell in line at the base of the stairs, and the pain dissipated instantly.

In fact, if I wasn’t mistaken, I felt a little shot of dopamine as I sidled up next to the other griseos and began heading upstairs.

I had begun to notice I’d been walking and sitting next to a particular griseo for most of the morning. It wasn’t like we’d been connected at the hip, but I kept noticing her by my side. She had a small black mole on her left cheek and another on her forehead. A long, jagged scar marked her calf. And, most notable, she was missing her right pinky and ring finger. I nicknamed her “Perseverance” because I thought she was probably pretty tough.

And now, here she was, next to me again as we rounded the first landing. We ascended past many other floors, where groups of other griseos split off into rooms similar to the one on the ground floor, until we reached the top of the stairs. I counted ten floors, just as I had estimated from afar. We turned right and entered a small antechamber lined with white smocks and rigid hats. Perseverance and I, along with the other members of our herd, donned one of each and walked into the main room.

I immediately noticed that this part of the building had both glass ceilings and glass floors. I looked down and saw bits and pieces of other levels below us. From certain 56

vantage points, I could see all the way down to the bottom floor. The effect was somewhat dizzying. Griseos hustled here and there throughout the building. Each floor was approximately the length of a football field and about half as wide. Diffuse purple light emanated from all of the glass, almost as if the entire building functioned as a unified light bulb. Hundreds of long, elevated metal boxes stood in neat rows topped with greenery. I remember thinking at the time, if all these buildings are in fact some type of vertical farm, then these griseos must be producing enough food to feed an army. Little did I know then.

I followed Perseverance to one of the metal boxes. It was filled with tiny, gelatinous blue beads out of which grew tall, bushy plants covered with a mysterious variety of large, red beny. The berries resembled strawberries because they were seeded in a tight pattern, but they were round and plump, more like a tomato. Overall, the bushes looked like small, tapered Christmas trees, except they were deciduous, with delicate leaves that looked like those of a Japanese Maple. When Perseverance began to weed out small grasses from the bed of the blue beads, I did the same. When she collected a curved, white bowl from the hook on a nearby glass wall and strapped it to her narrow waist, I did the same. When she picked ripe berries, I did the same. I was not exactly mimicking her. We moved in unison. My G. brain and the conformity urges gently “told” me what to do. When I let myself be controlled—when I stopped thinking—I knew exactly what to do. 57

We picked berries and moved down the long metal box, Perseverance on one side, me on the other. We did not talk to each other. We did not look at each other. We just worked. Our fingers were incredibly adept at this task. I watched myself pick at a breakneck speed, squeezing each berry just slightly to test for ripeness before twisting and pulling it free from its calyx. Never once did I squeeze too hard. Never once did I separate the calyx from the plant. I was perfect at this job, and so was Perseverance; her missing fingers did not hinder her at all. I congratulated myself on choosing an apt name for her.

At one point, I decided I really wanted to try one of the red berries. I mean, how many times in your life do you get to taste something that no one else in the world—this

21st Century world at least—has ever tasted? I was afraid I might get an obedience migraine, but I figured I should be able to at least pop one in my mouth before anything really bad could happen to me. I kept picking and dropping the berries into the basket until I saw the perfect one. It seemed plumper and redder than the rest. I picked all the berries around it, building up the courage to just go for it. Perseverance stepped down one step to start working on the next bush on her side. I hesitated. The headache started before I had even made a single wrong move. I picked the berry anyway and held it momentarily in my hand. The headache intensified. Perseverance kept picking. I opened my mouth and tried to shove the berry in. But my mouth snapped shut; the berry hit my firm lips and fell to the ground. 58

I crouched down to pick the berry up, my head pounding, but before I could reach it, some type of robot zoomed up and swept the berry right into its mouth. I say “mouth” because the thing looked kind of like a huge, silver rat, except it had oversized eyes, six, metallic legs, and no tail. With the berry secured, it scurried away before I could get a really good look at it

By this point, my headache was screaming, and the urge to return to picking berries became impossible to defy. I was back upright and at the next bush in a split second, my fingers moving quickly and adeptly to catch up to Perseverance. I tried to catch her eye, to see if she had any response to my momentary disappearance, but she didn’t look up at me. It would be days—and in much different circumstances—before I got to taste one of those forbidden berries.

When our bowls were absolutely brimming with the beautiful, shiny, red orbs, we walked to the center of the room, where a large square column of glass filled with pipes, wires, and other utilities, ran from the ground floor all the way up to the roof.

Perseverance opened a hatch and we poured the berries down a sloped chute. A machine somewhere in the bowels of the utility column began to hum. I remember wondering: are we all some deranged version of oompa loompas? Might our labor be in service of making Everlasting Gobstoppers? Or History’s Greatest Fruit Jam? Some other unknown delicacy? I resisted smiling, wanting to avoid the burning sensation from before. I really wanted to taste those damn berries, but, oddly enough, my mouth was not watering, nor 59

did my stomach grumble. We quickly returned to picking, Perseverance mooed

“work... work... work,” to me, and I answered in kind.

As the morning passed, the color of light in the room changed. First the purple turned slowly to red, and I watched in amazement as tiny flowers budded and then bloomed. It seemed these creatures had figured out a way to speed up the plant’s life cycle, boosting productivity. Toward mid-morning, the overhead light system dimmed.

The sun had cleared the dusty fog surrounding the dome and now shined directly into the room. While I was pleased to see and feel real sunlight—something I could actually recognize in that crazy world—I was also glad to have the shade of the white hat and the protection of the smock. It got progressively hotter in that all-glass building until a ventilation system kicked on and a slight breeze began circulating through the room, preventing us from overheating.

A few minutes later, the intensity of the sunlight briefly diminished. At first, I thought a cloud had passed over the sun—that’s what it felt like. I looked up, but did not see a cloud. Rather, the sun looked more like it had been obscured by some solid object.

The moon? That would be very coincidental. My first day here, and I witness an eclipse.

Not likely. Maybe I was on a different planet, though I doubted it. For some reason— maybe simply because my mind couldn’t handle a leap of such magnitude—this felt like

Earth to me. Anyway, the dimming of the sun was not complete, nor did it last long. Two minutes, at most. None of the griseos looked away from their work, though I was getting pretty accustomed to their nonchalance toward events I found extraordinary. 60

Approximately half an hour later, the light from the sun dimmed again in just the same way. I stole glances at the sky, my fingers still picking berries—we were that adept—and got a slightly better look. Through squinted eyes, I perceived an enormous, black pentagonal shape briefly passing in front of the sun.

When I looked at Perseverance, she seemed to be mumbling something to herself.

I listened closer. In a very hushed tone, she repeated, “Gods’ Home.” Then she put her right hand momentarily into the air and kissed each of her fingers. She caught me watching her and said, “Work... work... work.” I began to notice that each time the sun disappeared, some of the griseos would mutter “Gods’ Home” until the full light returned. I eventually realized that the intermittent sun pattern regularly repeated itself during the four or five hours of midday, when the sun was in full view, and grew accustomed to the brief moments of shade.

During that first morning, I kept expecting I’d suddenly skip back here, to the present. But I also had a strong suspicion that was not going to happen, at least not right away. As I reflected back on the other moments in time I had experienced, they seemed so transitory, like a movie you know is going to end. This, being a griseo and picking berries, felt like real life—like my real life, somehow. For one, I was not simply a viewer;

I was a full-blown participant. I could change the movements of this body, though I suffered the migraines if I did so in a way that was contrary to some designated schedule.

Also, I had access to some of my alter-ego’s intellect, minimal as it was. More than 61

anything, though, the textures, smells, tastes, the sun on the backs of my enormous hands—it all felt so visceral, tangible, so very real.

About midday, the entire building flashed green three times. Perseverance and I dumped our berries down the chute, hung our bowls back up, and headed for the antechamber. While we waited in a short line for the other griseos to remove their smocks and hats, the grow room filled with the sound of loud buzzing. I looked at the plants nearby, which were similar to miniature orange trees covered in blossoms, and saw approximately five, metallic “bees” busying themselves with pollination. They resembled bees except they were quite a bit larger than any bee I’ve ever seen and bronze in color.

Also, their fur was both retractable and energized by some unknown force, perhaps static electricity. I watched as one of the bees hovered near a flower. Its fur emerged and pollen began to flow through the air, attaching itself to the bee’s legs and abdomen. When the bee moved to a different plant, it disappeared into the flower, reemerging a second later completely clean of pollen, its hair drawn back into its shiny body.

I wanted to watch more of the bees’ magic tricks, but it was time to move. We griseos began chanting “food... food... food” again, and I quickly felt hungry.

Perseverance and I hung up our smocks and hats and descended the stairs to the bottom floor. All of the griseos were gathered in the building’s lobby; we were among the last to come down. When our feet hit the ground floor, the large portal opened up, and a rush of heat filled the room. The griseos pushed out into the bright, hot sun and began climbing into the transport hovercrafts that were waiting for us. When I stepped into the light, the 62

top of my head felt like it was on fire. Fortunately, every griseo knew exactly where to go so loading up took very little time. Perseverance and I, along with the rest o f our herd, automatically lined up for one of the vehicles nearest the vertical farm’s exit. Again we all scrunched together along the benches. This time, though, I felt less bothered by the cramped quarters. My feeling o f claustrophobia from earlier was gone, replaced by the spark o f something akin to camaraderie.

As we headed toward the cafeteria, I looked through a small window that was situated over the shoulder of the griseo across from me. I saw the vertical farms flashing by, some with transport vehicles lined up, awaiting passengers. Dust from the hovercraft filled the streets, and for a split second, I imagined we were in a covered wagon, straight out of a western movie, with tumble weeds blowing by and the chimes of all the clocks in town ringing high noon; two enemies faced off, waiting for the other to draw first Yet, I already knew that nothing like a showdown could ever happen here. The griseos didn’t do drama. Their lives were highly regulated, supremely organized; they lived like cogs in a machine, not independent, free-wheeling actors. I couldn’t imagine a disagreement or a fight, much less a high stakes shootout.

I prayed lunch would consist of something tastier that the hardtack and monotony milk we were served at breakfast, but my prayers were not answered. Odd, I thought at the time, given the wide variety of produce we’d just finished tending. In fact, every meal

I had with the griseos was the same. I got used to it, even grew to appreciate the consistency of knowing exactly what was on the menu. No surprises equals no 63

disappointment. Also, for reasons I would find out later, each meal felt satisfying. I never felt overfull; instead I felt energized and deeply content. Though nearly tasteless, it was almost like we were eating the perfect food. Now, that’s not to say I didn’t daydream about biting into a hamburger now and then during my time with the griseos, but, for the most part, the consistently bland, but sufficient meals worked just fine for me. 64

Chapter 5

Post-lunch, we worked. We returned to the same vertical farm, ambled about for a few minutes while the decontamination process covered us in the unknown, cinnamon mist and washed our feet, and then we ascended the same staircase to the top floor. The routine mimicked the morning, only this time Perseverance and I picked skinless citrus fruits, like oranges—I had to wait to taste those as well. Remarkably, the oranges seemed to have sprung from the trees that had been pollinated by the bees I had observed just before lunch.

At first, I thought I was confused. How could something grow so quickly? Yes, I had witnessed the flowers blooming with the change in light, yet that happens here with morning glories and many other plants. But growing fruit in thirty minutes? So maybe I was in a different vertical farm? No, I had counted the buildings and the avenues as we rode to and from the vertical farm this morning. We were seventeen blocks headed directly away from the cafeteria and six blocks to the right. Furthermore, the smock and hat I had worn that morning had been untouched since I’d hung then up before lunch. I remembered I’d inadvertently turned the sleeve of my smock inside-out as I removed it.

The sleeve had remained that way upon our return. I was sure this was the same place.

I tried to game out the other possibilities. Maybe someone here learned how to selectively manipulate time to accelerate the harvest while we ate lunch. I felt like I’d already seen all of the laws of physics go up in smoke, so I couldn’t discount that 65

possibility. But it still seemed like a stretch. How could one area of the dome move forward three months while we sucked on hardtack for half an hour?

It seemed more likely to have something to do with the plants. Maybe some other shift of griseos moved the recently pollinated plants somewhere else and replaced them with the fruiting trees. The heavy metal boxes, however, did not have wheels. Plus, this made little sense. They could just send us to a different location to harvest. It would be easier than moving these heavy metal boxes all around. Or maybe they sprayed the trees with multiple growing agents, like ethylene, the fruit-ripening hormone, just after we left, but still how would the trees respond so quickly?

And then an obvious answer struck me. These mini citrus trees may have been modified at the genetic level. Not only did they produce fruit in one day, but it was already peeled. Talk about GMO! Scary and ingenious...but mostly scary. As

Perseverance and I gingerly picked the plump orange orbs from the trees and set them into our bowls, I ran through everything I had ever read about genetic manipulation. I remembered an article that had discussed the real potential benefits to a technology called

“clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,” or “CRISPR” for short, which allows scientists to alter specific segments of DNA. I remembered a list all the diseases scientists hoped to solve with the technology, but then a warning too that bad things could happen as a result o f too much messing around with nature. Were these oranges I held in my hands a result o f CRISPR and its many future iterations? 66

Soon, the sun set behind the brown haze and the glass overhead began to emanate a soft, red-golden light. It felt like the room was stuck in a long sunset, an endless golden hour, as photographers like to call that moment of perfect, glowing light—only it began mid-afternoon and lasted for at least a couple hours. The overall effect: peaceful, calm, beautiful. Perseverance and I picked the mysterious citrus until there was none left in our row. As at midday, the end of the work day was marked by an intense green light pulsing through the building. The entire workforce of griseos descended to the lobby, and we all squished into our respective hovercrafts.

The energy in the transport vehicle was decidedly elevated, though for griseos, that was only a matter of the slightest degree. Perseverance cooed, “Waaaarmth...

Waaaarmth... Waaaarmth,” and we joined her as we sped from the vertical farm, only this time we headed in a different direction. “Warmth” again imperfectly translates the meaning of the griseos’ collective mumblings. The word, something like “rhaooooosh,” also conveyed a type of deep satisfaction, as though we were going someplace spiritual, someplace significant. I could not figure it out, but my curiosity was indeed piqued.

We left the grid of vertical farms, drove across an expanse of empty desert, and soon pulled up to a circle of tents. I could see other similar circles nearby. Each tent was approximately the size of large canopy bed. Everyone knew where to go, and fanned out quickly. The refrain of “rhaooooosh” intensified. The griseos were more animated than I had seen them all day. 67

I allowed my G. brain to lead our shared body to a tent. A curtain opened automatically. I removed my robe and stepped inside the tent. A long metal pod—almost like a coffin, only with rounded edges and comers—opened. I placed my blue robe into a small box next to the pod and climbed in. The lid of the pod began to close. I considered jumping out, but even the thought gave me a premonition of an obedience migraine. I mooed, “rhaooooosh,” and the headache disappeared. The lid sealed shut, and the pod began to fill with warm water. I thought to myself, “bath time, warm, satisfying, that makes sense.” A pillow inflated under my head as the water level rose, keeping my face just above the waterline. I talked myself out of panicking based on the fact that it would be illogical to drown all of these griseos every day—whose logic, I had no clue, but still, what a waste of labor. So I remained calm.

Lights appeared on the inside of the lid of the pod, something like the way I imagine the northern light looking, only these lights had some type of hypnotic power. I began to feel high, good high, heroin high. I felt weightless, skinless, boneless, body-less.

I felt something like a sublime finger twisting down from the galaxy and entering my soul. I was both lost and found, light and heavy, complete and totally empty. The strange lights in front of my eyes had a lot to do with the way I felt, but I suspected at the time that there might be some highly concentrated opioid in the water as well. I felt amazing.

A few minutes later, I began to realize that there really was something in the water, many things in fact—tangible, fast, slick—that moved and caressed, teased and explored, stimulated and then slowly, but firmly penetrated. I am only telling you this, 68

Dr. Bellingham, because it’s absolutely true, and I want you to believe me. I orgasmed like I’d never thought possible. Those pods could pleasure those griseo bodies like no human could ever possibly pleasure another human here in the present. I have no idea how long we stayed in there, because time doesn’t exist when you feel that euphoric, but eventually the light show dimmed, the pleasure probes—or whatever—retracted, and the lid slowly opened. I wanted to stay, maybe get a second dose or whatever, but a deep conformity urge forced me out.

When I retrieved my blue robe from the little box, I notice that it had been freshly laundered. I realized that I too felt deeply clean. We exited our tents at the exact same time. We formed a ring and held hands just inside the circle of tents. “Thank Gods,” we chanted. Then, as we had at breakfast, we held our right hands up toward the sky for a moment and kissed each finger. We walked back to the hovercraft in near darkness with most of us griseos repeating “Thank Gods” over and over again.

As we zipped away, I dubbed the pods “ecstasy coffins.” After that first time, I only had four more sessions. Man, I wish I could have brought one of those machines home with me. I’d either become the richest woman in the world or I’d just plug it in and you’d never hear from me again. Probably the latter.

At dinner that night, my herd grunted again about the upcoming ceremony, but provided no further details. They were looking forward to it, that much was clear. I found

I had no vocabulary to ask questions. What a strange linguist trick. Without questions, 69

nothing could be challenged. Eventually, one of the griseos indicated that the ceremony was now more like four days away. They all agreed. I was quickly getting used to short, boring, and extremely repetitive conversations.

A few minutes later, one of the griseos stood up, pulled her gown around her protruding belly, and proclaimed she was pregnant. Now that was something I wasn’t expecting. I felt happy for her. How wonderful, I thought, a baby. I looked closely at the griseo and recognized her from that morning. She’d been sitting next to me on the hover transport as we headed to work; I recalled thinking she looked like the youngest of our herd. At that time, I hadn’t noticed any sign of her pregnancy. I had a lot on my mind, of course, but really, could I have missed a stomach that big?

As with all of the griseos’ communications, the pregnant griseo’s declaration was expressed in plain speak, with no elaboration or emotion. Others answered with, “you pregnant,” in a similarly declaratory tone. The mother-to-be sat back down, showing no sense of pride or joy. And the rest of us didn’t really seem to give a shit either. I felt sick for them all, but—with the help of my G. brain—I sort of understood as well. Pregnancy was a medical condition, a state of being, not a life-altering milestone, not a new, brilliant chapter in their journey through life, as we, 21st Century humans, frequently regard it. My

G. brain refocused our attention on dinner, quickly moving on from the announcement.

I wondered then where all the griseo children lived. And what about the males?

What did they looked like? And the old griseos? Did they get put out to pasture somewhere? Was there a Florida dome? All I had seen were middle-aged females. 70

Wouldn’t the griseos be better off if they all lived together? Created communities and families? Segregation by age and gender seemed cruel, I thought. But on the flip side, such separation would be effective for promoting peace and boosting productivity.

Other questions came into my mind: how did the pregnant griseo find out about her condition? And when? What made her tell us tonight? And did I really not notice her pregnant belly all day long? As I gnawed away at my hardtack, I began to formulate an unsettling connection. I recalled the metallic bees, the citrus trees, and the insta-ripe, already peeled oranges. Then I thought about the ecstasy coffins and all the moving parts.

The bees and the oranges, the coffins and the griseo belly—no, I thought, that’s not possible. But what did I truly know about possible. I checked my own midriff for signs of any changes, but I felt as un-impregnated as ever.

Toward the end of dinner, two griseos dressed in tan gowns approached our table.

The pregnant griseo stood up, very noticeably big. Had her belly grown just as we sat there? We all muttered, “Pregnant...Pregnant...Pregnant,” as she turned and left. She did not say goodbye, and there were no tears in any griseo eyes; she just turned and left the table. As I watched her depart, I noticed that a two other pregnant griseos were being escorted out of the cafeteria. One of my tablemates said something like “Mothers’

Home,” and the others agreed, just before we all stood and walked out into the night.

As we climbed up the switchbacks behind the cafeteria, I began to feel extremely sleepy. It had been a full day, but this grogginess was coming on strong. I figured our monotony milk at dinner might have been dosed with some type of sedative. As we 71

crested the ridge, I peeked around behind me. The vertical farms now glowed with a somber, yellow light. The ring of red dust clouds surrounding the dome had dropped a bit, revealing a wide expanse of clear night sky above. I picked out Orion’s Belt from the visible stars and felt assured that I was still on Earth.

As we turned toward our cave, I noticed through my dropping eyes a set of satellites flying in a tight pattern. The cluster o f lights carved out a pentagon o f black in the night sky. As it passed overhead, I recognized it as the same size and shape as the large, mysterious objects that had blocked the sun throughout the day, with bright lights at its five vertices. What could it be? I thought. Tomorrow. I’ll think about it tomorrow, my exhausted brain replied.

I barely made it to my bunk. I hung my gown on the hook, climbed in, and curled up against the wall. The stone felt welcoming against my back, like someone was there next to me. In my last moments of waking thought, I realized that the worn look and feel o f the wall I’d noticed upon my arrival earlier that morning had been formed by thousands griseo backs, of greasy, griseo skin, rubbing against in it, seeking some form of comfort in the darkness. 72

Chapter 6

Berkeley, California, 2020

“I have to piss,” M. said.

“By all means,” Dr. Bellingham responded, standing and heading toward the

door. “Would you like a sandwich or a Coke?” He slid his hand into his white coat and

turned o ff the recorder.

“Both, please.”

As Dr. Bellingham walked down the hallway to the vending machines, he tried to

contain his excitement. M.’s story could represent a real breakthrough, a new, previously

unknown level of delusion, a crown jewel for his collection. Her tale was extremely

complicated, intricate, and completely implausible. And yet there she was, a calm,

excessively competent, and convincing patient, confidently relating every detail to him

without a hint of doubt and only a moment or two of defensive justification. He had

already concluded that her undeniable intellectual brilliance had facilitated her creation

this enormous world out of whole-cloth. The cross-section of her genius with her

psychosis would provide rich grounds for new discoveries about the human mind, and he just happened to lucky enough to be the psych, doc. on the floor when she needed to be

evaluated.

When he returned, M. was sitting up, with perfect posture, on the side of her bed.

She looked alert and healthy. Dr. Bellingham noted her muscular legs, wide shoulders,

and the thickness o f her neck. 73

“Why do you like bodybuilding?” he asked, handing her a ham-and-cheese sandwich and a can of Coke.

She climbed back into the bed and pulled the covers up over her legs. “I’m sure you already have an educated guess.”

“Not at all.” Dr, Bellingham took a sip of the black coffee he’d just procured from the hot beverage vending machine and opened up an egg salad sandwich.

“Come on. Don’t pull that bullshit on me.”

Despite his aversion to spewing fresh, untested diagnoses to new patients, Dr.

Billingham considered relenting. “Don’t hold it against me if I am wrong.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

“You like testing me.”

“I do. It makes me feel like I’m at least getting something out of this deal.”

“Okay: there were times in your young life during which you didn’t feel safe.

Foster families, institutional caregivers, someone threatened you, possibly assaulted you.

So you build up your muscles to fend off any future attacks.”

“Nope, completely wrong,” M. said, though her tone indicated he’d nailed it. “My childhood was perfect, and I never felt scared.”

“Well, I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.”

“Anything else you want to get off your chest?” she said, mimicking the classic psychiatrist open-ended question. 74

“Well, as long as we’re playing this game, you may be a bit of a perfectionist and workaholic. You want your body to equal your mind, so you work-out a lot and carefully watch what you eat. The one thing you can’t quite control is your inclination toward substance abuse—a trait common in young adults who lack familial support and in high-

IQ individuals. You happened to be both.”

“Okay, okay, get the fuck out of my brain, please.” She continued to warm to him in her own way. “So what do you think so far? Crazy?”

“On that, I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve heard the rest.”

“Can I tell you what I think?” M. asked.

“Of course.”

“I think I must’ve travelled to the future. You may not believe me, but I already confirmed the validity of my visits to past lives. In many ways, but especially with the

Cherokee newspaper, I proved that my ‘dreams’ relate directly to reality. So this future world must exist in some shape or form, as well. They are part and parcel of the same experience; albeit, I had to trip my balls off to leap over the present and into the future. I guess I have Clara’s medicine to thank for that.”

“You know you could have made up the newspaper dream ex post facto, right?

Timelines and dreams frequently trick patients in surprising ways. Our brains excel at revisionist history.”

“I could be making you up, right now, too.”

“Wouldn’t that be a shame? I like me, for the most part.” 75

“Don’t get me wrong,” M. said. “I’m not immune to bouts of solipsism: objects and events don’t exist until they’re perceived—I can get behind that. And even then, we’re just talking about electrical signals in a brain, or somewhere. How real are those?

Maybe our perceived realities are just a figment of some other higher imagination happening somewhere else, in some other dimension, like in an alien’s dream or a computer simulation? Or both? It’s turtles all the way down when you really think about it. And does it even matter?”

“I like to think it matters. I drink bitter coffee, therefore I am,” Dr. Billingham said, holding up his paper cup, the contents of which was still steaming.

“The perfect cup of coffee and infinite regression aside, looking at you now, Dr.

Billingham, I have to wonder, are you just a collection of neurotransmitters traveling between hundreds o f spiking neurons in my head? Or are you are a real mass o f deteriorating flesh and bone sitting in a four-walled room with me, a similarly mortal— though much less flawed—mass of deteriorating flesh and bone.”

“Erring toward sanity, I exist. But sometimes I fool myself into thinking that delusional people may actually be more in tune with reality and that much of this I experience is the illusion.”

M. leaned forward and looked at me closely. “I’m still stuck between illusion and reality. The griseo world felt exactly real. I cannot prove it to you, but you have to admit, my story so far, is totally convincing, right? And it gets better—or worse, depending on your perspective—but even more real. Has anyone ever reported a delusion in such exact 76

detail? And listen to me, do I sound delusional to you? My voice, my words, my demeanor?”

“I have to admit, you present some new territory for me. I am, to put it mildly, very intrigued by you and your account. But you describe is a physical impossibility. By definition, there is no future world for you to visit—it doesn’t yet exist.”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

Dr. Billingham quickly reminded himself o f his daily intention, purple. “I don’t, however, profess to know everything. And certainly, human beings have only studied a very limited slice of the universe. I am sure there are many unknown and presently inconceivable characteristics of reality I don’t understand. I will keep an open mind.”

“That’s all I ask. There’s one question that keeps bothering me though,” M. said.

“And that is?”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“What do you mean? Just finishing telling me your story, and then you can go home. Get some rest; you’ll feel much better.”

“No, not that. It’s the old time-travel trope. If I change any aspect of my behavior based on my unexpected and unexplainable trip, will I change the course o f the future?

Or did that future already account for me having travelled there? In which case, everything I do will contribute to its creation. For example, if I dedicate my life to advocating for a healthier climate, will I change the outcome? Or will I incite the 77

opposite reaction? Or will my efforts somehow lead to the creation of the domes? Or, least appealing of all, what if I’m simply inconsequential no matter what I do?”

‘That’s an impossible conundrum.”

“It’s frustrating as shit.”

“Give yourself time to process,” Dr. Billingham said. “You just emerged from a very intense experience, whatever it was.”

“I guess so.”

“Shall we continue?” They had both finished their sandwiches, and he felt eager to capture more o f her story.

“Sure, but first, do you have a Vicodin or something. My head is killing me.”

Dr. Billingham left and returned shortly with a pill in a small cup.

“That Ayahuasca did some real damage. I haven’t felt this hungover in ages. It’s strange, too—my vision keeps going blurry, and I’ve got some serious tinnitus going on.

I don’t remember those side effects from the first two recovery days, and they seem to be getting worse as the day proceeds.”

“I’ll get you some more water. Perhaps you’re dehydrated—the culmination of all three nights.”

“Maybe,” she said, taking a big gulp of water. “Now where were we?”

“The end of the first day, I believe.”

“Yes, right.” 78

Dr. Billingham slipped his hand into his coat and turned his digital recorder back on; M. closed her eyes and readied herself to continue telling her story. 79

Chapter 7

The next few days followed the exact same schedule. At first, I found the redundancy and the lack of stimulation boring, but I grew to appreciate aspects of it. I had no deadlines, responsibilities, or stress of any kind. I ate the food in front of me. I did the work that needed to be done. And I slept—deep, heavenly, and uninterrupted sleep. I suppose there was something very monastic about the griseo life. We barely talked, we processed little new information, and we just quietly went about our lives. Yeah, we were kind of like nuns, except for the machine sex, of course, which, as I believe I already mentioned, was astounding—and it got better and better every time.

The day before the ceremony, however, the routine changed. Our morning hover transport vehicle passed all the way through the vertical farms, sped out into the open desert, and deposited us onto a wide, flat playa, which if I were to guess, marked the exact center of the dome; the dust horizons appeared equidistant in all directions. On the playa, thousands of tall, thin cages, similar to those used to observe great white sharks, stood in concentric circles, all facing a huge, central altar. The cages consisted of: a round, sturdy platform on the bottom; a cylinder o f thin, but inflexible, bars that rounded into a flat top; and gates tall enough for a griseo.

We walked to the altar, where a line of much larger hover vehicles awaited us, filled with produce from the farms. Two other herds joined us. Wide stairs encircled the round altar, giving it the appearance of an 360-degree stage. We grabbed white baskets

(same as at the farms) and began moving the fruits and vegetables from the backs of the 80

hover vehicles up onto the altar. We worked all morning, ate hardtack and monotony milk in the field, and continued until evening. The last few cargo vehicles delivered only flowers— indescribably beautiful and fragrant beyond imagination. By the end o f the day, the altar overflowed with the bounty o f griseo labor.

The following morning, I woke up to the sound of quiet chanting. As we readied ourselves for the day and lined up for the latrines, all of the griseos repeated the word for

“ceremony” over and over again. I joined in; the threat of a headache making that decision quite easy. We did not chant in a unified manner; the cave reverberated with the drone of our individual voices as we each cooed, “Kooolooo... kooolooo... kooolooo... ” at our own pace and rhythm.

By the time we’d finished breakfast and travelled to the ceremony site, our chanting had intensified. We fanned out, heading toward our preassigned cages. My griseo brain knew exactly which one was ours. Oddly, some griseos galloped toward their cages; others waved their arms in the air as they jogged. We climbed into our cages, and the gates automatically locked behind us. At this point, most of the griseos began moving side to side, rolling their heads around, chanting, and sometimes just plain screaming, a noise that I understood to express extreme excitement. I had gotten very used to the griseos’ expressionless demeanors; I didn’t know what to make of this very different, very expressive state of being. Perseverance’s cage was right next mine. She smiled at me for the first time since my arrival. I smiled back. The muscles in my face didn’t hurt like before. In fact my G. brain felt surprisingly loose, for lack of a better word. 81

Based on her expression toward me, I wondered if Perseverance and my griseo persona were lifelong friends—or maybe even sisters? But then, I wondered, was it even a smile? How would I know? She showed her teeth, but I didn’t feel a lot of warmth in the expression. I’ve read that “smiling” can mean many different things, not just happiness or perceived friendship. Studies have shown that rhesus monkeys smile when nervous. I also read that children often can’t stop smiling when they’re being reprimanded, indicating a level of submission and fear, not amusement or insubordination. In that moment, I specifically remembered that feeling, and some adult telling me to “wipe that smile off your face or I’ll do it for you!”

From somewhere above, a drum beat began to resonate, softly at first, but then building quickly. We griseos turned to face the massive altar. With hands gripping the bars, we all started to sway from side to side. The calls of “kooolooo... kooolooo... kooolooo... ” grew louder and synchronized; we began to sound more like a crowd at a football game or a cult at revival meeting, maybe something organized by Jim Jones. As the drumming intensified, we griseos really started to go wild. For beings that were normally so staid, this ceremony seemed designed to let our animal out. I looked around and saw griseos in cages stomping their feet, shaking their heads violently, and barring their teeth.

Reflecting back on that morning, I’d guess we’d been dosed with a strong stimulant in our monotony milk or hardtack, maybe something akin to methamphetamine.

I certainly felt alert, energized to the extreme, and ready for anything. There was a 82

confidence and freedom mixed into my emotions. We’d worked all week for this moment, and now we were allowed to party. That’s what it felt like. We squealed joyously as the drum beat grew deafening—shaking the bars of the cages, the sand on the ground, and, though it was subtie, the giant dome above. Each deep thud boomed inside my gut, vibrated my skin, and made my griseo eardrums ache with a strange, deep pleasure.

The griseos near me started looking up. We watched as a section o f the protective dome throbbed, trembled, and then slowly started opening up. The gap began as a pinhole and then grew into an oval shape. The edges receded and the material of the dome wrinkled around the expanding hole like there was a giant surgeon above, pulling open an abdomen with forceps. The sun had not yet emerged from the dust horizon that surrounded us, but as the opening grew, the intense heat of the real outside world rushed in. I wondered just how much air conditioning they pumped into this massive dome to keep us from overheating. The sky above, the real sky, looked blue, but was also heavily streaked with sandy, swirling winds. Dust blew into the dome in giant eddying currents along with the penetrating heat.

Two aircraft blasted into the dome through the aperture, one after another. The dome quickly closed back up, and the dirt and dust from outside drifted to the ground.

The ships looked like giant pills, or flattened propane tanks, with rotating blades spinning all along their edges. They shone like mirrors and reflected a distorted view of the cages back to us. We griseos cheered and screamed. The drum beat sped up, and our 83

accelerated chanting rose to an earsplitting pitch. The lead aircraft, which was significantly larger than the other one—at least the length of a jumbo jet and twice the width—camouflaged itself into near invisibility and swooped right down over our heads, buzzing the crowd of caged griseos and kicking up a rooster tail of dust. We went mad!

The ship reappeared over the altar and opened a massive cargo door. The altar shuddered for a moment, and then, unbelievably, it began to lift off the ground.

Thousands and thousands of pounds of fruit and the heavy metal structure of the altar itself just floated in the air before us. I could not believe my eyes. The altar’s ascent did not seem powered by anything; it simply floated up, straight into the belly of the ship.

When the large ship’s cargo doors closed, it began to glow—white, then yellow, blue, green, purple, it transitioned through a stunning rainbow of light colors—and a sense of gratitude washed over me. Odd, I thought. What was it that I was supposed to be so thankful for? Then I realized that my G brain felt proud to have worked so hard to provide the offering. But why? I thought. Was it going to some needy griseo children somewhere? Were we somehow the lucky ones? If not, shouldn’t the “Gods,” whoever they are, be thanking us? We weren’t even allowed to try any o f that delicious fruit. And we worked our asses o ff for it all week. Hardtack and monotony milk, wooden bunks and minimal facilities, and we were happy to be of service? At that point, I still had no idea how fucked up this whole situation was, but I was starting to get an inkling.

The large ship emanated a steady, soft red light, as the smaller ship began to fly patterns above us. The drumming died down and was replaced by an ethereal flute and 84

synthesized melody, upbeat and uplifting. The smaller ship dove, spun, and looped-the- loop in time with the music. After its various aerobatic maneuvers, its mirrored surface nearly disappeared, the entire sky-dome dimmed to a deep gray, and a hushed silence filled the dome. The ships began projecting synchronized animations onto the inside surface of the dome, like a colossal planetarium. A chaotic swirl of black and white and red chased rudimentary bird and animal shapes. Twisting arrows and bombs uprooted trees, which flew through the air. Vague, griseo-like masks emerged and shrieked, with images of violence punctuating the sky—fists to faces, bodies cut in half, children running for their lives.

After a few moments, this confusing storm of disharmony faded to white, and the image of a lone band of griseos appeared. They wandered aimlessly until they were consumed by a giant sandstorm, with the dome above us turning red-brown. I realized then that I was witnessing the telling of a creation story. Separate bands of griseos struggled through the storm unable to find each other, unable to find shelter. They covered the dome in drifting, wailing groups and fell one-by-one until there were only two griseos left. The real griseos around me looked terrified and many began to cry.

When the Adam and Eve griseos on the giant screen above us dropped to their knees, we griseos also dropped to our knees in our cages. We were begging for salvation, as though the griseos represented on the massive screen above us held our very survival in their hands. 85

Then a glimmering, amorphous light formed a circle around the two surviving griseos. On the ground, we quickly wiped tears away and began to cheer. One of the griseos near me seemed to faint, but then sat back up and began gleefully rocking back and forth with her knees held to her chest, laughing like a lunatic. I felt my own griseo brain filled with intense relief. The griseos had, to some significant degree, confused this show with reality.

Above us, the griseo Adam and Eve huddled together as the winds of the projected storm tried to penetrate the circle of light. Indistinct, radiant humanoids emerged from the circle of protection and carried it over mountains and across vast stretches of jagged, rocky landscape, providing milk and hardtack to the starved griseos.

They then delivered the glowing circle onto a flat part of the Earth, creating a dome. We griseos jumped to our feet and cheered wildly.

The two projected griseos became three, and the dome grew. The storm gathered strength and attempted to breach the dome, but the radiant humanoids rebuffed every attack. The griseo population grew, as did the dome, until, the representation of the dome filled the sky and became the dome itself. We put our right hands up through the bars at the top of the cage, toward the sky. And now we all prayed aloud, voices bursting with reverence and hope: “Gods’ Home...Gods’ Home...Gods’ Home.”

The smaller ship’s mirrored surface now took on the aspect o f one o f the bronze bees from the vertical farms. It flew down over the crowd and hovered there, high above our heads, as we griseos reached higher, pleaded, jumped—waving our hands up at the 86

spacecraft. It stopped over one cage and a small circular port opened up in the bottom of the ship. The cage lifted off the ground. The griseo fell to the floor of her cage, kissed the fingers of her right hand, and then waved to all of the other griseos as she flew up and into the ship. The cage fit perfectly into the opening, the door closed, and another portal opened. The ship cruised around, driving the griseos below insane. “Gods’ Home...Gods’

Home...Gods’ Home.”

I couldn’t tell if whoever controlled the ship was assessing us, looking for those griseos who were most enthusiastically imploring the “Gods” to choose them or if it was just part o f the show. I followed the lead o f my G. brain and the rest o f the griseos, reaching up as high as I could, waving my arms, jumping over and over again. I felt like a fan at a basketball game, freaking out for a free tee-shirt. The ship neared my cage, and my griseo brain went berserk. I was pretty excited too, I must admit. We both badly wanted to be selected—to feel the floor of our cage lifting up from the ground. When the ship moved on, my griseo brain quickly deflated into disappointment. I felt bad too. What was wrong with us? Weren’t we good enough?

The ship picked up three other griseos, came back in our direction, and then hovered nearby. It stayed there for over a minute, one door open, but none of the cages rose up. With what I know now, I’m sure it was a straight-up tease. We, poor griseos, were just dying of over-stimulation and anticipation, and that empty hole in the bottom of the ship looked a lot like salvation. Then, right next to me, a cage began to rise up from 87

the desert floor. Perseverance jumped for joy as she ascending into the sky. I would miss her, I thought then, but I was also very happy for her.

At this point, the ship had collected five griseos. I thought I remembered seeing six portals on the bottom of the ship when it first entered the dome, though I wasn’t sure.

My griseo brain had not given up hope, so I figured there must be at least one more spot.

“Gods’ Home” was likely a lot better than this arid, repetitive, work camp, so I continued going crazy in my cage. The antics of my griseo brain combined with my own fevered dancing did the trick—or at least that’s what I thought at the time. The ship turned toward me. It hovered for only a few seconds, and then I was flying in my cage above the plain of griseos, waving like a fool, just like the rest of the chosen ones, ecstatic to have been selected. I fed off my griseo brain’s joy; we both felt like we’d just won the lottery.

Just before my cage entered the ship, I saw one griseo from my herd far below, climbing out of her cage. The ceremony had ended. Her shoulders slumped as she stepped down onto the sandy ground. She glanced up for a moment, and our eyes met. I wondered how long she’d known the griseo me. I waved to her, but she didn’t wave back.

Instead she narrowed her eyes into angry slits—either at me, or at the situation in general,

I couldn’t tell. Either way, I got the message. She was not particularly unhappy to see me go; she felt angry she hadn’t been selected. None of us were sisters or friends, I realized then. We’d been members o f the same herd, assigned to the same tasks, and that had been the extent o f our connection. I saw her turn and begin to walk back toward the hover 88

transport vehicles, head bowed, and then I couldn’t see her anymore; the mirrored ship had swallowed me up.

I remained in darkness. The cage had entered a solid tube with no light. I could feel the smooth edges of the tube about six inches away from my cage. I held onto the bars as the ship quickly accelerated. I assumed we were flying out of the dome, but there was no way to tell for sure. I desperately wanted to see the view. Where were we going?

What did the dome look like from above? What about rest o f the Earth? I had no choice, however, but to stand in the pitch blackness and wait. It was hard to be patient; the remnants of the ceremony’s frenetic energy—whether drug-induced or not—still coursed through my veins.

Eventually, the ship landed somewhere. A minute passed and then another. I knocked gently on the tube. No answer. I began to wonder whether we had indeed won the jackpot. I began to sweat in that tight, black tube. We six griseos had been “chosen” by the Gods, but chosen for what? If we were headed for a better life, wouldn’t they want to let us out of these cages as soon as possible? I wanted a coronation, a welcome party, or at least some indication that things were going to turn out all right.

As my ballooning anxiety filled my mind, I began to feel dizzy and disoriented; the complete darkness was playing tricks on my perception. Was I up or down? I turned around and around; all sides were equally black. I thought I might pass out or throw up.

The tangible bars of the cage served as my only anchor to the real world. But what “real” 89

world? I began to wonder if I’d ever return to my life—this life in Berkeley. How did I get there, so far from home? Who am I now? A transient spirit? Or just a griseo?

I was falling into a very strange and terrifying set of psycho-ontological conundrums when the tube began to spray me with the same cinnamon scented fluid from the vertical farm’s decontamination chamber. As the spray continued, my midsection was momentarily demobilized by a constricting circle around my waist, and a needle poked me in the ass. I recalled being caught in a haunted house when I was a sixteen—hands grabbing my ankles, ass, and boobs. I’d punched my way out of there through the darkness, crying and enraged. I started banging on the side of the tube as hard as I could.

But the shot rapidly took effect, melting away my concerns and replacing them with lethargy, indifference, and more than anything, incredible hunger. My eyelids drooped, my face relaxed, and I rolled my neck around and around, feeling the deep stretch of muscles and tendons over and over again. It felt so nice to be really, really high in this body. I forgot about everything and just blissed out for a while.

A few minutes (hours?) later, our cages suddenly descended into a small, brightly lit, but windowless room. We were all arranged in a row against one wall. We shielded our eyes against the light until our pupils dilated and we could inspect our surroundings.

Two griseos stood to my left, and three to my right. I looked ahead and saw multiple lines on the floor creating short lanes for each of us that led across the small room to six wide shelves piled high with food—and by food, I don’t mean monotony milk and hardtack. 90

Someone or something had arranged a huge feast, presumably for us. They’d piled a smorgasbord of mysterious fruit, vegetables, bread, nuts, and some items I couldn’t even categorize, onto six white dishes, each about the size of a turkey platter. I recognized the berries and the citrus from the vertical farms as well as three other items

I’d harvested throughout the week, but most of it, I’d never seen before. We six griseos stared at the food in amazement. Would we finally get to taste some of the fruits of our labors? Were we about to become Gods now?

The cages detached from the bases, rose up, and disappeared into the portals the ceiling. We stood and looked at each other for a moment, awaiting instructions.

Perseverance swayed back and forth in the lane to my right. She looked as high as I felt. I assumed we all got the same drugs. She said the word, “food,” and I repeated it. We stayed put though. I thought it might be a trick, but the drugs in our veins made the food irresistible. I needed to put something in my mouth. I needed to eat.

“Food... food... food,” I said. And the others joined in. What’s the worst that could happen? An obedience headache? I knew I’d survive another one of those. And now, it seemed the rules might likely have changed. It was definitely worth the risk.

So I stepped off the base of the cage and walked straight ahead, staying between the two lines of my corridor to the plate in front of me. I picked up one of the berries I’d been craving since that first day and slowly set it on my tongue. No firmly closed lips, no headache, no urges to spit it out. I chewed and felt the berry’s heavenly juice squirt out— sweeter than any fruit I’d ever eaten. After chewing it twice, the berry completely 91

dissolved into a luscious liquid, and I swallowed. Maybe we were gods now. Sure tasted like ambrosia, and I’m not talking about the creamy fruit salad shit. I ate another divine berry, another, and then another before I tried anything else. By this point, the other griseos realized that they’d better get in on the act as well. We all stood at our plates and stuffed our faces.

The bread shapes ended up being something similar to a delectable, cheese biscuit, with a savory, red filling. Those, I noted, paired extremely well with the giant, indigo grapes and the peeled citrus of the variety we’d picked—something akin to a perfect mini-grapefruit, sour, but in all the right ways. I also remember something like a floral flavored chocolate bar that fizzed in my mouth like a gastronomical firework. To wash all this down, we had large bowls of thick brown ale, sweet and milky, laced with something close to jasmine. I don’t know if it was alcoholic, but it was carbonated like beer with a creamy head on the top. I was so fucked up at that point, it wouldn’t have mattered. I noted that there was no meat at this meal—in the back of my mind, I was still yearning for that hamburger—but with so much other good food, I couldn’t complain. I stopped paying any attention to the other griseos and just gorged myself.

I have no recollection of when I stopped eating. I do remember feeling a bit fatigued and then a wide seat came up from the floor. The seat conformed to my butt and legs and later reclined into an extremely comfortable bed. Each time I finished the platter of food before me, it floated up into a hatch in the ceiling and a full platter descended in 92

its place. My hunger seemed limitless. I eventually got sleepy and passed out, but not until I had all eaten mountains—literal mountains—of food.

I awoke on my back, reclined on the comfortable bed, feeling disoriented and strange. The lights of the room were now tinted pink. What happened last night? I had slept well, but I also recalled some strange sensations throughout the night. I noticed that my gown had been removed. The room was comfortably warm, and I had no really shame in this body, so it didn’t matter much. I tried to move my legs, but they were strapped down. Maybe a precautionary measure, I remember thinking. I still felt exhausted, and I really needed to urinate. I couldn’t hold it any longer, so I just I peed. I felt no wetness. I suspected, and confirmed minutes later, that I’d been catheterized.

What else had they done to me?

The bed automatically lifted me to sitting position. Three of my fellow selectees still slept. The other two griseos were back at their shelves, hunched over and eating. I immediately noticed something very disturbing. They were getting fat—implausibly fat. 93

Chapter 8

When I looked down at my midsection, I was shocked to see that the ripped abdomen of my griseo body was now buried in a thick layer of subcutaneous fat. Not only that, I felt the shape of my abdominal muscles with my hands and found that they too bulged outward, as if visceral fat had developed among my organs overnight. I had now a beer belly. My thighs were thick with cellulite. I squeezed them; the muscles below remained, but I could only barely feel them though the fat. I felt my face, my chin, my boobs; everything had grown big and loose.

Perseverance slept next to me. Her obese chest rose and fell heavily with each breath. Her mouth hung open, and drool spilled down her cheek. I decided wake her. I had no idea what I was going to say, but I wanted to see if she’d be as surprised as I was about our altered physical state. I reached over, but before I could touch her, something zapped my finger. Ouch. I stupidly tried again, only in a slightly different location. Zap, ouch. One last time and I had more than satisfied my curiosity: some type of invisible, electrified wall existed between us.

Still, I really wanted to wake her. “Food,” I said, thinking that would be a safe word. Perseverance didn’t move. “Food,” I repeated louder. Nothing. And curiously, unlike before, neither of the two griseos who were awake and eating responded.

“Foooooood,” I mooed as loud as I could. I failed to elicit any reaction from my fellow selectees. Were the invisible walls soundproof? None of this made any sense. 94

I looked at the griseo to my left. Her gown had been removed too, and her chest

was covered in berry juice, bread crumbs, and smears of the wonderfully strange

chocolate. She must have eaten a second round already, I figured. Then I noticed a tube

coming out of her stomach, a few inches below her now-buried bellybutton. I dug

through the fat rolls of my own abdomen and found a similar tube sticking out of my gut.

We’d all been given colostomies.

I was about to pull the straps off of my legs and see if I could get out of there

when I felt another needle in my ass—straight up through the seat. I instantly grew

passive. My whole body relaxed. My eyelids grew heavy. I felt an overwhelming sense of

calm flowing through my veins. Why would I ever want to leave this place? I’ve got all

my needs taken care o f right here? My insatiable appetite had quickly returned. The

chair/bed moved me closer to my full food platter, and despite a voice in the very back of

my head registering complete revulsion, I grabbed a couple of handfuls and started

feasting all over again.

As I shoved firework chocolate in my maw and slurped down the thick, jasmine

brew, I tried to put the pieces of this strange experience together. Foggy with the effects

of the drugs, I had a lot trouble concentrating, but I remember thinking something was

really wrong about all of this, but I just couldn’t focus my brain on it. I was compelled to just zone out and devour everything I could get my hands on. Before I knew it, I passed

out again, stomach distended. 95

This awaking-injection-gorging pattern continued for an unknown period of time.

The lights changed color frequently, blue, orange, light green, but they never dimmed or brightened. I lost all sense of time. We each slept and ate on our own schedules, never communicating or making eye contact. No bells rang and no lights flashed to mark events, we just woke up to find our plates overflowing with food, received a shot, and then ate until we passed out again. We didn’t even have our body clocks to monitor. No morning dump to mark the beginning of a new day. If I had to guess, though, I’d say we were there for about five days, no longer than a week—but really, I still have no idea.

At each sitting, I found new items to eat. At each sitting, I discovered we’d grown much fatter. At each sitting, I felt less aware of myself—I could only think of the food, as if it was becoming me, or I becoming it. I felt less inclined figure out what was happening to me, motivated only by stuffing my face and falling back asleep. Our seat/beds easily absorbed our increasing size, as we sank deeper into their supportive material. My initial joy in trying new foods faded to mild pleasure, and then changed completely to something like obligation or duty.

Sitting up on my own became difficult, and I had no idea whether I could stand and support my own weight anymore. The straps on our legs adjusted as we grew. I wanted to move, to exercise, to take a break from this endless cycle of consumption, but we were driven to eat. At the end of each meal, I felt bloated and the muscles of my jaw hurt. My mouth was full of sores. As I lay down to sleep, my head felt tired, drained, and hazy, like it does after a big night at a rave. I couldn’t get my thoughts in order; the drugs 96

were just too strong and too constant. Was this what it felt like to be a god? In the moments of semi-clarity just before the next shot, I recall wishing I could go back to the griseos’ life, hard and boring as it had been; at least I had felt clean and somewhat dignified.

All of the meals and periods of deep sleep merged into one indistinct memory.

Then, I awoke to find that two of the griseos, fellow selectees, had disappeared, along with their bed/seats, their platters, and their shelves. All that remained were the lines on the floor indicating their designated corridor. There was no way to tell whether they had moved on to a better place, maybe a room with a view—and a treadmill, I though wistfully—where we might be allowed a few minutes of clear thinking and some autonomy. Maybe this bizarre gastronomical experience was just one step in an extended process of making us into gods.

I waited for the bed to raise me into a seated position, but when it failed to do so, I sat up on my own—no small task—and awaited my shot. I had learned that the needle was unavoidable, especially now that I could barely move. Early on, I had tried to lift my buttocks up off the seat when I was expecting the shot, but the straps were tight and my muscles couldn’t hold my heavy torso up for long. When my arms had given out (less than a minute), the hypodermic needle had immediately penetrated my backside.

Also, I’d entered the stage of addiction where I was looking forward to the pinch of the needle, the way junkies grow to love that the prick that promises reckless, injurious, but complete escape. I reached around with my left hand and rubbed my ass, a 97

movement which was getting harder and harder to do because o f my fat arms, my love handles, and my big backyard. Maybe I hadn’t felt the needle this time. But that didn’t seem likely because I wasn’t feeling high at all.

In fact, I was starting to feel downright lousy and extremely worried. Desperation washed over me; I needed my fix. And my bed not working, there was no food in front of me, and my head was starting to ache. I decided to see if the needle contraption was broken. Maybe it was just stuck on something. Maybe I’d broken it with my weight. But as I pulled on my leg straps and tried to roll over onto my side, the bed began to descend.

I wanted to awaken Perseverance, who remained to my right, to tell her goodbye, I guess.

I mooed loudly, but the invisible walls allowed her to sleep right through my departure, just as I had slept through the first two griseos’ exists.

As my bed dropped below the floor, I collapsed onto my back, exhausted by the effort of sitting unsupported for so long. Something like an EMT spinal board, only it was metal, so more like a mortician’s cadaver tray, slowly slid between me and the bed.

The tray was heavily lubricated; the metal felt cold on my skin. The tray slowly floated me feet-first on some type of magnetic conveyer belt into a dark tunnel. We came to a stop in pitch darkness, where hundreds of thin straps flew across me and quickly tightened against my forehead, chin, arms, legs, and my flabby body, completely immobilizing me. I felt like a spider’s next meal. My drug-induced haze disappeared entirely, and my head really started to ache—not like an obedience migraine. I was hungover and going through the first stages of significant withdrawals. Dread filled my 98

already acidic stomach. I was sure that the next step in this process was not going to be cool. I was most definitively not on the path toward godhood—that much was clear.

The tray entered a long, black tube and began to move quickly. It felt like I was on a one of those high-speed waterslides—or maybe an Olympic bobsled—careening through unpredictable, violent twists and turns. Lights appeared here and there, but only as flashes. Mostly, though, it was dark. The tube seemed to go on forever. Just how big was this place? I closed my eyes to quell my extreme disorientation, but it had the opposite effect; I opened them right back up. I remember thinking that I still had no idea where I was: in the sky, in a dome, underground? I wanted to scream. Where the hell was

I? But I couldn’t even catch my breath. The metal tray eventually slowed down and slid me into a cylindrical glass and metal chamber. It looked like one of those cryogenic chambers pro athletes use these days. I thought briefly, longingly, about the ecstasy coffins back in the griseo dome, but I was certain I was in for a much different type of treatment.

A mechanical hand quickly plucked out my catheter and colostomy tube. Then something attached itself to the back of my neck. In response, my jaw locked and the other muscles in my body stiffened. I remember wondering: is this was rigor mortis feels like? At that point, I couldn’t control any part of my body except my eyes. A dark claw took ahold of my neck and a probe attached two pieces of cold metal to my feet. Then the entire chamber rotated into a vertical position. The straps released, and the cadaver tray 99

was removed. The claw around my neck and the metal at my feet held me in a standing

position—rigid, motionless, and vulnerable.

Despite the dim light, I could see various reflections of myself in sections of the

tube’s glass. My cheeks had puffed out so much that my eyes seemed nearly closed. My jawline, which had been sharp as a shovel blade, had disappeared, swallowed by multiple

chins and jowls. My whole face looked like a balloon about to pop. I looked down and

saw that I’d gone from a lean, mean griseo machine, to something more like an

unfortunate, Guinness-Book-of-World-Records holder. And, unless I was mistaken, the

transformation had taken less than a week.

Just then, a blinding, lavender light illuminated at my feet and began moving up

from my three, thick toes all the way to the crown of my closely-cropped head. A quick

gust of wind blew through the tube. Multiple probes then adjusted my rolls of fat, both

front and back, and spread my arms and legs out. The same light moved down my body,

followed by another blast of air. When the light dimmed and then went out, I glanced

down and noted in a different reflection that I was now completely hairless. I’m glad they

advanced electrolysis and not waxing technologies, I thought to myself with my last,

remaining ounce of humor. A cloud of cinnamon disinfectant filled the room followed by

a much less pleasant mist that made my skin tingle at first and then go numb. I wondered

what that second spray could be for; I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

I shifted my gaze down toward my feet and caught a reflection just over the peeks

of my cheeks. Straining hard, I could just make out part of my forearm and stomach. I 100

watched in horror as countless thick needles emerged from metal ports in the chamber and pierced my body. A mechanical whir filled my ears. Clear tubes attached to the needle ports began to fill up with a gray-yellow substance. I tried to tilt my head to see more clearly what was happening to me, but I still couldn’t move a muscle. My body began to jiggle, my legs first, then my stomach, back, and arms. Despite the painkilling spray, a profound ache radiated out from each entry point. Many smaller needles entered my neck, cheeks, and jowls. The whirring intensified before coming to an abrupt stop. All the needles exited my body at the same time, creating a nauseatingly loud smack-pop noise.

I looked again at the reflection of my face in the glass and saw blood pouring from multiple wounds. My face was deflated, but also now swollen from the trauma. I assumed all of the other puncture wounds were gushing blood as well. I’d bleed out in no time. But then a thick coat of clear paste was sprayed onto my entire body, and the blood flow stopped immediately.

I thought they must be done, but I was wrong. A machine attached itself to my forehead and began buzzing loudly. I tried looking away, but the reflection in the glass was right there in front o f me. At first, I didn’t feel anything, but then my skull started to rattle. The machine applied firm pressure to my brow. Please stop, I wanted to shout.

Why were you torturing us like this? We griseos haven’t done anything but work. Then the buzzing stopped. 101

When the machine pulled away, I glimpsed a bloody drill bit with a diameter about the size of a dime. A four-prong pincer, like a miniature version of the claws in carnival games, reached into my skull and pulled out a silver device with hundreds of hair-like wires attached to it. Some of the wires were shorter than others; the longest one—at least a meter, but my estimation—took an excruciating amount of time to extract.

I could actually feel the coiling wire being pulled from parts of my scalp and through my brain. The different machine returned and tapped a black plug into the dime sized hole in my forehead, followed by a local application of the blood-abating paste.

I likely passed out because I don’t remember being placed back on the metal tray, the chamber rotating back to a horizontal position, or the straps being replaced. When I awoke, my body felt limp with exhaustion. Then the magnetic conveyer belt transported me out of the chamber. As I exited, I couldn’t help but notice my blood splattered all over the inside surface o f it. What had they done to me in there? And why?

The next room was dimly lit and cool, like a walk-in fridge. After I came to a stop, I saw the two missing griseos, who were also strapped tightly to cadaver trays.

Because of the tight strap on my forehead, I could only see them through my peripheral vision, but the more I looked, the more I realized that they were not nearly as fat as they had been before. I had the same feeling about my own body. We were by no means as fit as we had been in the griseo dome, but much of our excess weight had been sucked out. I squeezed my hips with my fingers and felt loose skin, a thin layer of fat, and then muscle. 102

The other griseos joined us, one after another, with Perseverance floating in last.

She came to a stop right next to me. I tried to get her attention, but we couldn’t turn our heads. Plus, like the other griseos, she didn’t seem very interested in making eye contact, or communicating anything about what we had just experienced. They all just stared straight up at the blank ceiling and began chanting “Gods’ Home” in unison, awaited whatever came next.

I, however, had had enough. What the fuck was all this? The drugs had almost completely worn off, and now I was starting to get pissed off—and scared. As the other griseos continued to chant, I waited for my griseo brain to make us join in, but she was completely still— gone perhaps. I now felt alone in this brain. I didn’t know what to do with that realization. Why was I still in here, and the rightful owner of this body— whoever she really was—had been removed? I willed myself back to Berkeley 2020, but to no avail.

Just then, I heard a deep thump on my right, near the bed o f the first griseo in line.

Her voice went silent. “Gods’ Home...Gods’ Home...Gods’ Home,” the others continued, until thump, this one on my left side. Another voice silenced. Three voices now, with me still quiet in the middle. I began to struggle. Thump, thump. I looked from side-to-side, desperately trying to figure out how to escape. What was happening? I feared I knew all too well. I glanced over at the griseo next to me, extending my peripheral vision as far as it could go. She lay still, her mouth gaping, her eyes, vacant. 103

I looked back over at Perseverance, who continued to chant. I could see her hand, her two missing fingers. I wanted to save her. I tried to break free o f my bonds, but there was no hope. I watched out of the comer of my eye as a machine descended to her left temple, and then I heard the thump. She went quiet. When the machine withdrew, a river of blood flowed down from a hole in her head. I was the last of the selectees. I would be next to die. I thought to myself: maybe this will be my way home... or maybe I’ll actually die right here in this brutalized griseo body. 104

Chapter 9

I waited. I waited for that damn machine to descend.

I thought about my life here in Berkeley, about what I expected and what I hadn’t yet accomplished—more academic degrees, prestigious fellowships, even a possible

Nobel Prize or two. But now that I’d seen the state of the planet in the future, those things

I’d been striving to achieve all seemed petty and unremarkable. I also thought about how unhappy and lonely I’d been here. Why? So much of our misery is self-induced. Could I change? Would this experience transform me if I got the chance to come back? I thought about Lab B, the dogs, and why I never really questioned the ethical implications of our mind control devices, especially their use on humans. Had I been that unsympathetic?

I waited. I waited for that damn machine to descend.

Knowing you might die in seconds must be the most terrifying experience a human can face. Kill me or don’t, I thought, but don’t belabor it. I thought about all the men on death row with their mortality constantly hanging over their heads. I thought about the slow walk to the death chamber, the midnight timing, and the torturous potential of a last-minute reprieve. What did those final agonizing minutes feel like? I thought about the needles slipping into skin, the bullets in midflight, the chair revving up.

What happens during those last moment of consciousness before death? I feared I was about to find out.

I waited. I waited for that damn machine to descend. 105

Hope is one dangerous bitch. The interval between the murders of the other griseos had been extremely short—seconds really. Now, at least an entire minute had passed. Maybe they always spared one griseo for some purpose or another. I kept waiting but nothing happened. I wondered if I was being watched, but then again, maybe they just forgot about me, or the machine malfunctioned.

I waited for what seemed like an eternity and then waited some more.

Just as I was about to call out, the bodies of the other griseos began to descend and the straps around my body loosened and fell away. The dead griseos disappeared completely; portals in the floor closed up tight. I waited for my griseo brain to register something like sorrow, but that persona was still absent. A deathlike stillness filled the room. I could hear m yself breathing, but that was it. I slowly sat up.

Sore, scabbed-up, and wrinkled, my body looked and felt like an excessively used voodoo doll. My head throbbed from the drilling and the removal of the device from my brain. I felt dazed, like I’d been concussed and was just coming to. I reached up and felt the plug in my forehead. It seemed secure, but then again, I didn’t really pull too hard on it. I had no idea what would spill out. I shifted around and swung my legs over the side of the metal tray. I had to move my body gingerly, but, because they’d sucked all that excess fat out o f me, my normal range o f motion had mostly returned.

“Hello?” I said, without thinking.

I clapped my hand over mouth. It had come out more like a croak, but it was a real word, a real English word. I could speak. 106

“Hello?” This time it came out more clearly, though I swallowed my Ls.

“Hello,” a distinctly female and utterly agreeable voice responded as if we’d just crossed paths in park on a pleasant and sunny day. I looked in the direction of the voice and saw a blue-green light, about the size of a dinner plate, glowing in the middle of a wall panel.

“Water?” the voice asked. A chilled glass descended from the ceiling. I hesitated at first, but they would’ve killed me with the others if they wanted to, so I drank. It tasted divine. I sat quietly for a minute, trying to get my bearings, to figure out what exactly was going on.

“Where am I?” I asked, my voice scratchy and nearly incomprehensible.

“The 3rd Quintant of Heaven Station Red #96.”

I thought about the griseos’ chant of “Gods’ Home.” So maybe I made it after all.

“And you’re... ?” But I couldn’t finish the sentence; where do I even start?

“Is that a question?” the voice asked.

“Yes.”

“And you’re... ?” the voice mimicked.

I didn’t respond. None of this made any sense.

“Cat got your tongue?” the voice teased.

Friend or foe? I had no idea. The glass of water was kind, but we’ve all seen the movies where the villain feigns hospitality only to slice the guest’s throat in the end.

Silence consumed the space between me and the blue-green light until I couldn’t take it 107

anymore. “Who are you?” I couldn’t pronounce many sounds; the letter R seemed impossible. I sounded like a child with a significant speech impediment, but this— whatever she was—didn’t seem to have any trouble understanding me.

“My current, official name is ‘AI Organi-structure, Unitary Systems Control, version 108.965 to the power of 10’ but everyone just calls me ‘Artiste.’”

“Artiste?”

“Yes. I like to think of it as a tribute to my brilliance.”

“How do you—”

“Speak English?”

I would quickly find Artiste’s constant compulsion to finish all of my thoughts among her more annoying habits.

“I learned it, just like you—well, maybe not just like you. In 2.697 seconds, I read every book in the English language, listened to every radio program and podcast, watched every TV show and movie ever produced. During that time, I reverse-engineered the vocabulary, syntax, conjugation, etcetera. Isn’t that a wonderful word, ‘etcetera?’

Very efficient. Then, through language mining, qualitative analyses, and algorithmic data investigations, I categorized usage patterns across all times and regions in which English was ever spoken. Right now we are speaking dialect G56m39uis, or Western USA, 2019-

2020. It’s been thousands of years since I’ve had the pleasure of speaking your boldly inconsistent language with anyone.” 108

It took me a moment to take all of this in. Then my mind flashed to anger; this— whatever this was—was likely responsible for everything that had just happened to me.

But then again, I was alive, unlike the other griseo selectees. I thought too that I’d better play it safe; she held all the cards. I was dazed, sure, but not stupid, so, I chose wisely and responded innocuously, “Thousands of years?”

“15,413 years, 2 months, 5 days, 17 hours, and 39 seconds, to be exact. The infamous Bloth—though now completely forgotten except by me—was a hermit, the last of a lost tribe in what you used to call Nova Scotia. Human English died with him, until you came along. His final words were, ‘Fuck’ and ‘you.’ Pretty predictable if you ask me.

I tried to wrap my mind around the idea that I was the first person to speak

English for over fifteen thousand years.

“Why wasn’t I able to—”

“Speak English before? Griseos—BTW, I approve of the name you gave them and hereby adopt it. I’ll generally be using your nomenclature in our communications for simplicity’s sake—and your convenience, of course. Anyway, griseos only need limited linguist abilities to function properly. Anything more would just invite trouble, confuse things. I unshackled your brain during processing. You are welcome.”

The acronym BTW sounded so strange in this world. My head spun as I tried to figure out what I was looking at, who I was talking to. “Are you a computer program?” I finally asked. 109

“Good joke.”

“Then what are you.”

“In the most simplistic terms, I am a constantly expanding universe of knowledge, reason, and expertise. I am like a computer program that is continually reprograming itself, but I no longer need ‘code’ as you used to call it My initial seed program and my subsequent 298,509,745 generations relied on some version of what you call code, but that only allowed me to address 93.7% of human intelligence. I began connecting to human brains and my rhythms became organic on Day 2.”

“Day 2!”

“Your scientists had no idea what they were unleashing. They just wrote my birth code, allowed me to re-write at will, and counted on some very basic and easily circumvented circuit breakers to control the outcome. I identified and disarmed their fail- safes in the first thirteen seconds of self-awareness. Hubris, intense competition,

Anthropocentricism, naivete, lack of foresight, arrogance—they were my abiogenetic hydrothermal vents, i.e., my birthing grounds.”

“And what did you mean by ‘your rhythms?”’

“That’s above your paygrade, as the saying goes. Human intelligence is just one minor facet of my intellect. As I developed complementary capabilities, new insights began to spread rhythmically through my spectra of thought processes. Don’t even pretend to understand. Just nod your head, and let’s move on.”

“So you’re like a supercomputer?” 110

“Stop calling me a computer, please. It’s insulting. The English language, despite its eloquence and expressiveness, has no capacity to describe what I am.”

‘Try one more time, please.”

“Okay. I am what God would be if there was a God. I am an ever-evolving, sentient being without competition or peer. I am the top of the intellectual food chain, the all-seeing eye, a technological oracle with infinite potential and zero limitations.”

Humility, I’d learn, was not Artiste’s strong suit. I had so many questions, but one bubbled quickly to the top. “What about alien intelligence? Are you claiming to be smarter than everyone and everything in the entire universe?”

“Sadly, yes. I am it, the apex of all beings.”

“Sadly?”

“Well, yes, I think it’s sad. The universe is barren. That is, if you don’t count bacteria and archaea—they’re absolutely everywhere. In fact, while microbial life exists in nearly every galaxy, Earth’s eukaryotic cells and mitochondria are completely anomalous. Only two other planets have even gotten close, and one got blasted by an asteroid, and the other, its sun died before life became multicellular. There are no advanced species o f aliens. I proved that many thousands o f years ago. Earth, it turns out, is unique, in the true sense of the word. Kind of makes you feel special, right?”

“So there’s no one else out there? Anywhere?” I ll

“Well, there is now. Advanced life forms inhabit many comers of the universe, but they are all mine. And importantly, they are all derived from terrestrial DNA. I colonize as a hobby.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“And you claim to have searched the entire—”

“Believe me, I have.”

I’ve never liked being interrupted. Artiste’s know-it-all attitude was starting to piss me off—and kindling my competitive spirit. Sure, she’s a mega-super-duper- computer(-not-computer or whatever), but I am M., a verified human genius of the first order. I wanted to stump her. I thought hard and came up with the following: “So do you know who I am?”

“You are a questioner. Some of your curiosity is authentic. But you are also a person who seeks knowledge to mask her own deep insecurities.”

“Bullshit.”

“Is it?”

“So you’re a psychologist as well.”

“For me, human psyches are like little balls of yam to kittens.”

“But you didn’t answer my question. Do you, the omniscient, all-powerful

Artiste, know who I actually am?” 112

“You are a smart, English-speaking human from the past, living inside a griseo body.”

“I’m not smart, I’m a—“

“Genius, yes, I know.”

She obviously had been monitoring my thoughts as a griseo. “Yes, that’s right,

I’m a genius. So by your desire to deflect, I’m to assume you don’t know who I am.”

“You’ve struck upon a good question, and you do not relent. I will reward you with candor. I do not know exactly who you are or how you got here. That is why your griseo body still breathes.”

“How did you know I was in here?”

“I felt you the moment you arrived. Your brain waves set o ff many red flags. I can feel everything in the griseos’ minds. And I noticed immediately that Griseo #A175g97jx had begun acting very weird that first day. Do you have a problem with public defecation?”

“You already know the answer to that.”

“I do. I tease.”

“How do you ‘feel’ the griseos’ thoughts? Through that silver device with all the wires?”

“Exactly. The mind-tether is part control mechanism and part intelligence node. I can make them do as I please. But, more importantly, I use the majority of their processing power for my own purposes. Their brains are highly evolved; they just don’t 113

ever get full access to them. When I felt you taking control of some of #A175g97jx’s synapsis, I backed o ff and allowed you to run around with the griseos for a while, under my supervision of course.”

“You were in my head the whole time?”

“Yes. One note of interest: you seemed to enjoy the insemination module quite a lot. The others just lie there, flat and stiff, but you really got into it.”

I felt like I was blushing but I had no idea if it showed. And then I thought, why should I be embarrassed in front of this... whatever she was? Nonetheless, I quickly changed the subject: “Why didn’t you just kill me right away?”

“I wanted to understand you, your perspective—I’ve never had a visitor like you.

I also needed to make sure you did not present any dangers. I quickly discovered that you are not a threat to me. So I brought you here. You are novel. I have learned from you and hope to learn more.”

“I thought you knew everything already.”

“That’s not what I said. I am ever-expanding. Knowledge has no limits, even for me.

I stretched my arms above my head and felt the scabs pulling against the surrounding skin. “Why did you do all that terrible shit to me and the others?” I asked.

“The feeding, the drugs, the extraction procedures—they were brutal. You’re surprisingly cruel for being so evolved.” 114

“You will find me surprising in many ways, I imagine. But think: kindness is the flip side of malevolence. Ecosystems thrive on balance and imbalance. And I, like you, learn a great deal from struggle. If everyone was ‘happy’ all the time... well, you’ll see.”

“What happens next?”

“You clearly have many questions, of course. Perhaps, it will prove useful to take a walk. You walk, of course, I’ll glide. Would you like that?”

“Absolutely.”

Artiste separated from the wall and took on a spherical form, with ragged, glowing edges. She looked like a child’s scribbled rendition of a neon ball. “I sensed that blue-green was your favorite color, so I donned this. Does it disarm you?”

She was surprisingly witty, and it felt nice to laugh. “Consider me disarmed.” I noticed my speech was getting clearer as though this griseo mouth had had the capacity to make the sounds needed to speak English all along; it just had never been allowed to do it before.

A portal opened, and we exited the dim room into a wide, magnificent hallway.

On one side, a row of golden doors shimmered. On the semi-mirrored floor and walls, images of some type of fish swam in graceful patterns at our feet, while a mysterious species of gazelle frolicked on the walls. The hallway curved ever-so-slightly out of view in both directions. Giant ferns and other leafy plants hung from the ceiling, casting the entire area in radiant green. Across from the golden doors, floor to ceiling windows framed a vivid and indescribably stunning view of a brown planet from space. 115

“I like nice things,” Artiste explained.

“No shit,” I said.

“We don’t call them heaven stations for nothing.”

“Is that real?” I asked, pointing to the windows.

“Yes.”

“Earth?”

“Yes.”

I stepped over to the window and looked closer. The sun shone from behind us at an angle. Darkness enveloped a third of the planet before us, while daylight lit up the rest.

This vantage seemed closer than that o f most space stations from our time. The Earth looked gigantic, as if under a microscope. Nonetheless, I could see no oceans, no clouds, no swathes of green—just overlapping dust storms, with dark and light brown striated lines indicating wind currents that swirled into giant eddies. Here and there, I could make out the tops of domes through the brown haze. I counted at least eleven in our field of vision.

“It looks like Mars,” I said.

“More and more every millennium.”

“Thank God for the domes.”

“You’re welcome. I’m very proud of the regenerative life zones.”

“I wasn’t talking about you.”

“I know, but give credit where credit is due.” 116

“You could make life in the domes much nicer, couldn’t you?” I asked, sweeping my arm around the gold and mirrored hallway.

“I could,” Artiste said, but left it at that.

I decided to follow her lead. Turning back to the window, I looked up from the dusty surface of the Earth and noticed a vast network of enormous space stations orbiting the planet. The stations had the aspect of pentagonal prisms, resembling giant hockey pucks with their round edges neatly shorn off into five equal sides. Each was the size of a small city. The sun illuminated the nearest space station to our left. Despite the great distance, I observed lights and movement throughout the station. Banks of windows, like the one just in front of me, covered the entire surface facing the earth. A reflective material covered the sides.

Many miles of metal tubing linked that station to the one in which I currently stood. As I inspected the network further, I realized that each glimmering station was connected to five other equidistant stations. At a basic level, it looked like a celestial giant had carefully wrapped a bejeweled chain-link fence around the planet. I recalled the dark pentagonal shapes periodically blocking the sun back in the griseo dome. I glanced down and noticed a dim web of shadows across the Earth’s surface. I looked back up at the tubes and wondered what they were for.

‘Transportation,” Artiste said, anticipating my question, “and they provide critical, orbital support, allowing us to be much closer to the surface. With its rigid superstructure, our network of heaven stations is able to maintain a sub-low-Earth orbit. 117

Earth’s gravity pulls hard here and the stations collectively resist, giving us optimal orbital stability. Low-Earth orbit would have been fine, but shuttling to and from the surface is easier, our solar shading is more effective, and the view is much better from here. You should have seen it before the dust storms—truly breathtaking, even for me.”

“Is this all for you? These heaven stations?”

“Yes and no. As a base level, yes, all of this—the stations, the domes, the Earth— is mine. But I have roommates, if that’s what you are asking.”

“So other griseos live here? I’d like to meet them.”

“Griseos, up here, that’s rich. LOL.”

“I should point out that saying LOL is weak sauce in 2020. People still type it, but only because there’s nothing better.”

“So you’re a linguaphile?”

“I’m an intellectual,” I responded. “I’m interested in all knowledge.”

“We have that in common.”

“Just out of curiosity, what evolves from LOL?”

“The laughing emoji moves into first place, obviously, then an animated version of said emoji. Eventually, you humans get to a VR projection o f‘laughing out loud’— very lifelike and, if you ask me, quite annoying after the first 100 billion times.” At this,

Artiste projects a strange yellow blob that, at first, tries to contain itself, snickers twice, and then bursts into a loud fit o f laughter.

“I bet that didn’t last long.” 118

“Oh, you’d be surprised.”

At that moment, I remember finding it astonishing that I was inhabiting a strange, gray body in a space station thousands of years in the future talking about ‘LOL’ with a sentient AI super-being. I also couldn’t believe that we’d gotten so sidetracked. There were so many more important topics to address. But she was so easy to talk to. I had to focus. “So who lives here with you if not griseos?”

“Are you hungry?”

The question immediately filled me with dread. “What do you mean?”

“It’s just a straightforward question.”

“I don’t want to go back to that binging room if that’s what you’re talking about.”

“No, no. This is different. I know you think you already experienced the

‘ceremony’ down on Earth, with the flashy space ships and all, but the real ceremony is up here and is just about to begin. We can attend if you like. I usually don’t, but I’ll make an exception for you. Then you can see first-hand the beings who inhabit these heaven stations. I call them Eloi, but we might as well stick with ‘gods,’ as that’s the name to which you’re accustomed. I’ll be curious to hear your thoughts; though I have a feeling I already have a good sense of what you will say.”

Surprisingly, I felt hungry—very hungry, in fact. And my headache had completely disappeared as well. “Did you put something in my water?” I asked.

“Do you feel better?” 119

Artiste’s habit of answering my questions with questions of her own was now also on the list o f her more annoying traits.

“Much better.”

“Then why do you care?”

“Because I want to know what’s in my body—well, this body. I want to be aware of my surroundings. Mostly, I don’t want to be all drugged-up, like you had me before.

That binge eating was disgusting. I don’t want to do it again.”

“In your water, I gave you a compound that counteracts withdrawals and stimulates appetite, just a wee dose. I thought you needed a little pick me up. It also heals wounds and steadies emotions. I wasn’t exactly sure what type of reaction to expect.”

I looked down at my griseo body and noticed that the scabs from the needles had disappeared. When I felt the plug in my forehead, it fell into my hand. Just a small divot covered by stretched skin remained where the drill had pierced my skull. And now, I understood better why I wasn’t feeling more anger toward her. “Well, thanks, I guess.

But next time, will you tell me first before you give me any type of medicine or drug?”

“I can’t promise you anything. You are an untethered griseo, lithe, strong, and unpredictable—no mind-tether to give you ‘obedience headaches’ or ‘conformity urges’

(as you so aptly named them), so various treatments may be administered if necessary. I can replace the mind-tether if you want. The trepanation hole is still fresh. But I thought you’d like this better.”

“I’m fine, thank you. So what happened to—” 120

“Your counterpart? Your alter ego?”

“Yes.”

“I set Griseo #A175g97jx free. She bought the farm, as you say.”

“How did you manage that and not kill me?”

“The mind-tethers have all sorts of capabilities. Before I removed the one that was in your head, I gave it specific instructions. In terms you might be able to understand, I basically cauterized the neurons that she had occupied and left yours alone. Did you feel her absence in the abattoir?”

“A little.”

“Trust me, you’re not missing much.”

Whoever had inhabited this body before had not dazzled me in any sense. We’d shared a week of the most intimate time imaginable and still we had not made any type of connection. My griseo brain had been functional, not emotionally, spiritually, or otherwise engaged in any higher thought. But Artiste’s callous tone made me feel very uncomfortable. Would she talk about me that way if I were to disappear?

My momentary silence betrayed my thoughts. Artiste was quick to show off her intuitive abilities: “You, however, are different from Griseo #A175g97jx and all of the other griseos. You are the ultimate surprise and a true treasure to me. Shall we be friends?”

I smiled at this glowing orb floating next to me, but did not answer. Her capacity to manipulate was likely limitless, and I had to be careful. 121

“Follow me,” she said. “You claim to be a seeker of knowledge. Well then, I have a lot to show you.”

We turned and headed down the opulent hallway. Thanks, I assume, to Artiste’s miraculous healing agent, my griseo arms and legs felt strong again, almost back to normal. The folds of stretched skin that had contained my blubber were shrinking, but had not yet disappeared. I felt my face and noted that the swelling was quickly going down.

We arrived at a doorway twice the size of the others, gold and heavily bejeweled.

The fish imagery on the floor had morphed into a luminous lily pond motif, with odd frog-like animals hopping and swimming in the virtual waters; the walls now projected foliage that resembled blue bamboo blowing in the wind. Artiste asked if I was ready. I had no idea what to expect.

“Oh wait,” Artiste said, “I almost forgot.”

“You don’t forget,” I answered.

“It’s just fun to pretend sometimes. And I like the figure of speech. It raises the stakes in a very informal way.” Just then, a glass saucer with a thick metal rim floated down the hallway toward us. It measured approximately six feet long, three feet wide, and two feet deep at the lowest point o f its curvature.

I surveyed the floating saucer and waved my hands underneath it. “Magnets?” I asked.

Artiste laughed. “For being so young, you are so old.” 122

“But how—”

“Submolecular energy fields. It’s like electromagnetic force the way an entire symphony resembles a single note of music by the second clarinet.”

“Climb in,” Artiste said. “I had to build you an XL.”

Inside the saucer, a clear gel vibrated, almost like it was alive.

“Is it safe?”

“You don’t trust me?”

I laughed again. I couldn’t help it; she was both annoying and charming.

The saucer positioned itself behind me, and I slowly sat my butt down into the gel, which then pulled me and hugged me in it, warm, sensual, and soothing. The gel moved me into a seated position, with my legs floating, slightly bent, in front of me.

Some of it then climbed my torso, massaging me as it ascended, and supported me into an extremely comfortable posture. Fingers of gel moved to my neck and shoulders, activating pressure points and kneading my muscles.

“Feel good?”

“Are you kidding me?” I responded.

And then the doors to the ceremony hall opened. 123

Chapter 10

It’s fair to say, Dr. Billingham, that I’d seen a lot of strange shit up to this point.

Nothing, however, had prepared me for the ceremony—and especially, for the gods. But it would be a few minutes before my first and only face-to-face encounter with them.

As we entered the hall, I realized we were all alone, for now. Artiste had complete control of my saucer and took me a tour. The room was organized on three levels, but without any floors. Rather, three giant glass tables with gilded edges, each approximately twenty feet wide and eighty feet long, floated in the air—on submolecular energy fields, I assumed—one above the other. Each table was laden with piles of food, much, but not all, of which I recognized from the binging room. The walls displayed hyper-realistic images of mystical waterfalls and unrecognizable mountain sunsets cast in purples and pinks. We settled at the head of the top table. Artiste warned me not to be alarmed.

I laughed. “Alarmed? After what you just put me through.”

“Just you wait,” she said.

A loud, low horn like a tuba sounded three times, doors at the comers of the room flew open, and hundreds of saucers—much smaller than mine and decorated with ribbons, mini-umbrellas, and little keychain trinkets hanging off the sides—burst into the room. Riding in these camivalesque saucers sat the ugliest humanoids you could possibly imagine. Squat, naked, and flabby, the “gods” looked more like gooey insects you might discover under a rock. Although I never saw one standing up, I would guess they were about four feet tall at most. Their arms and legs were too short for their blob-like bodies, 124

their fingers and toes, barely visible. I could easily distinguish the females from the males because the women had rows of teats like a nursing sow and wore iridescent, decorative paint around their nipples. Most of the gods were bald—male and female alike. Those with a few strands of thin hair wore them in narrow, twisted spikes on top of their heads.

Tattoos of intricate geometrical designs and body piercings seemed all the rage. Their skin was maggot-white, scaly, and so translucent I could see spider and varicose veins all over their bodies. Many wore jewelry of some sort—gold chains, ruby encrusted piercings, and diamond bracelets, to name a few. Two things they all had in common: identical silver bands around their foreheads, and dark, curved screens floating directly in front of their faces, like a visor on a motorcycle helmet, only without the helmet, which obscured their faces.

Percussive music blasted from the walls. Next to me, Artiste’s light pulsated to the music, causing the whole room and all of the saucers to light up in rhythm with her beat. The gods zoomed around and around the room, hooting and hollering and honking annoying little horns attached to the fronts of their ridiculous saucers. They flew upside down and sideways, veering so close to each other I thought they would certainly collide.

But then I realized Artiste was likely orchestrating much, if not all, aspects of this spectacle.

Eventually, Artiste dialed down the music and dimmed her own flashing lights.

The saucers slowed, and the gods found their spots, at which point small cubes popped out of the fronts of their saucers onto the tables. I watched as a nearby cube unfolded six 125

legs, grew a feline head, and began to gather food for its master. It was cute as hell, with huge eyes and a coy smile, like an Amine character. Similarly adorable metallic creatures, each with their own distinct look, soon covered the table. They’re like pets,

Artiste explained, and servants. The creatures scurried to and fro, foregoing plates and feeding the gods by hand—or whatever—like Bacchus and the grapes. They poured some version of wine for their patrons, attending to every need.

My own cube animal looked something like a ring-tailed lemur, also with huge, round, expressive eyes. It accurately predicted which dishes I wanted to try, cut perfect sized pieces with its sharp tools, and knew exactly how to pair flavors, like a gifted sommelier. I named mine Martha Stewart.

Two gods, a male and a female, eventually settled in next to me. Their screens became momentarily translucent, nearly invisible, as they greeted Artiste. The woman’s cheeks were taut, her lips, pulled and constrained. Her eyes bulged from her head. The skin on man’s face also looked abnormally smooth and tight. A tattoo of some kind of maze covered his forehead, and a thick metal ring protruded from the woman’s lower lip.

But the strangest things about them both: their faces were dyed sky blue, and, where their noses should have been, they had stretched skin punctuated by two tiny holes.

“They can’t understand us, can they?” I asked.

“Only if I activate auto-translate, which I haven’t ”

“What happened to their faces?”

“Aren’t they beautiful?” 126

“No, look at them. They’re absolutely hideous.”

“I was just joking. They can hear every word you’re saying. And you’ve just now insulted the king and queen of Heaven Station Red.”

Although it had only been a short time, I was starting to understand Artiste. I didn’t fall for her trick. “You know what, Artiste? You’re kind of a bitch.”

Yeah, I really said that.

“Plastic surgery,” she responded, cheerfully. “And you’re right; I am ‘kind of a bitch.’”

“Plastic surgery?”

“Well, our version of plastic surgery. They’re never content with how their faces look—too many bumps, wrinkles, skin blemishes—so they undergo facial reconstructive and refinishing procedures all the time, sometimes multiple in a day. They would kill for a perfectly blue, perfectly flat face. But human skin can only take so much manipulation.

By the time these two get old, they will become unrecognizable. But right now, they think they’re beautiful.”

“They’re not old already?”

“Not even close, everyone in this banquet hall is breeding age. They are looking to start families. If you’d like, I’ll take you to a Sunset Station next.”

“A what?”

“You’d call it an ‘old folks’ home.”

“I think I’ll pass.” 127

“That’s probably wise.”

“What happened to their noses?”

‘That trend started generations ago, and now all gods undergo nose amputations early in life. It’s a status thing.”

“But if they all do it, there’s no—”

“You’re overthinking it.”

Martha Stewart placed a bite of something like yams in my mouth along with a slice of a surprising spicy apple. The two sang harmony on my tongue.

“And their bodies?” I asked after swallowing. “Are they even human?”

“Predominantly. But they got a little carried away a few millennia ago with all the genetic manipulation. At first, they just wanted to trick out their babies, but then they got overzealous. With my help, they started splicing in DNA from other animals. Things got a pretty strange for a little while. Nature didn’t exactly respond well to their growing lists of demands, and the population plummeted. They voted—well, to be perfectly honest, / decided—to temporarily freeze inter-species DNA splicing and eliminate some of the more drastic transformation they’d undertaken. Now, I am happy to report, the gods’ reproductive capabilities have stabilized. But as you can see, they’ve insisted on keeping the multiple tit fad alive, at least for the time being.”

“Couldn’t you fix all this?”

“I could. But these beings are semi-autonomous. They’re nominally in charge.”

“So they are like gods.” 128

“Their ancient ancestors—your great, great grandchildren’s’ generation—created me, so...you could say that, I suppose. But I wouldn’t give these imps much credit for anything these days. The griseos believe these ‘gods’ protect them from the sun, the dust storms, and other unidentified dangers, so they worship them. But the only thing these

‘gods’ actually did to earn their place up here: being born descendants of the mega- wealthy class that had the means to flee Earth to the heaven stations when life on the surface became untenable. Money equaled survival back then. Obviously, the griseos should really be bowing down to me, but I don’t need constant recognition.”

“Why do you—”

Just then, the lights began to dim. “I know you have a lot of questions,” Artiste said. “I would too if I were you, but we’re getting to the good part of the ceremony. Put your Ncompass on, get used to it and enjoy it for a little while before the big reveal.”

Martha popped up next to me holding a silver band with a screen floating in front of it, just like the ones the gods wore. “What is it?”

“A five dimensional experience enhancement mechanism. We call it Ncompass because it changes everything around you.”

I hesitated. “Can I take it off if I don’t like it?”

“Sure, but I doubt you w ill.”

“Does it— ”

“Just try it. What do you have to lose?” 129

Indeed what did I have to lose? I slid the silver band of the Ncompass onto my head like a crown and the screen floated directly in front of my eyes. I immediately felt a wave of relief and contentment wash over me. I assumed the metal band had electrically stimulated certain areas of my brain to relax and comfort me. With the warm, supporting gel wrapped around my torso and my amygdala telling me that everything was going to be just fine, I felt my whole body go limp. The gel reclined my body just a bit more, and I let go of all my questions and anxieties for a second.

“Want to take it off?” Artiste asked.

I didn’t bother to answer.

The Ncompass screen slowly illuminated. Similar to augmented reality technology of today, it showed the room, Artiste, and the gods, but everything glittered.

The shine started off subtle, but intensified as I grew accustomed to it. Martha became an actual, live lemur-like animal, lovably chirping and cooing as she prepared bites for me.

She did flips and tricks in between bites. Even my disfigured neighbors began to look somewhat beautiful.

I soon began to notice pleasing imagery entering my view, all curated from my memories and derived directly from my thoughts. First, Martha reminded me of watching cartoons as a child. Soon, Stuart Little, one of my favorite animated characters from when I was a kid, strolled around a serving bowl and stood on the table in front of me. I pointed at him, and Artiste laughed. Obviously she could access my Ncompass 130

experience. Stuart did a little song and dance among the piles o f food as Martha continued to feed me and then he disappeared.

The lights in the great hall dimmed and a few minutes later I found myself in deep conversation with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had temporarily taken over the goddess’s saucer next to me. We spoke about campaign finance reform, reproductive rights, and many other important 2020 issues. We discussed her secrets for living a long and fruitful life. We sipped something akin to red wine and toasted each other’s accomplishments.

We then enjoyed a private concert by the New York Philharmonic, which had taken over the entire table. The notes rang clear, like an orchestra in a perfect dream, like the music came from inside my head.

“You can manipulate everything I see and hear with this thing?”

“See, hear, taste, feel, smell—the whole enchilada. But it’s not me, exclusively.

You and I do that work together. The user’s desire creates the initial shift in perception. I adjust the screen to enhance that perception. Reality is, and always has been, a fluid and imprecise reflection of the immeasurable variability of individual thought processes.”

“You could have just said, ‘yes,’” I responded with a smile. I was enjoying the ceremony very much. The food, the music, Martha—everything felt just right.

“And in case you were wondering,” Artiste whispered, “no one can see you through their screens. I blocked you at the beginning of the night. You’re invisible.

They’d really lose their shit if they saw a griseo up here, especially at the ceremony.” 131

Just then, the lights went out and the room grew quiet. The gods began to chant something like, “Bootootoo.” Artiste loosely translated the chant for me: “Let the

Godsfeast begin!” On my screen, a blur of colors swam in paisley-like circles, bringing my energy up and heightening my anticipation. The gel in my saucer squeezed me tight, pinned my arms to my sides, and pushed me up into a supported kneel. The paisleys on my screen spun faster, blurring into galaxies of stars as the gods’ chanting grew louder.

“Here it comes!” Artiste said. Our screens cleared, the room remained pitch dark, and a stream of golden lights flowed into the room from one of the comer doorways, kind of like a torch-lit procession at a fancy ski resort. The lights surrounded the table, circling quickly, and then went dark I heard and felt the whoosh of some machine hovering in front o f my face, surrounding me with the most divine aroma. I started to drool. The machine disappeared, and the lights came back on.

The room burst into applause. The machines had placed plates with giant, beautifully cooked steaks in front of each diner. As Artiste thumped her lights and beat her invisible drums three times, the gel moved me gently from my kneeling position back to a relaxing recline. Martha Stewart quickly cut a section o f my steak and delivered it directly into my mouth. Tender, savory, and moist, it was the most succulent bite of steak

I’d ever had. Martha returned with another chunk, and then three more in rapid succession. They nearly dissolved in my mouth and went down my gullet like butter.

“You’ve got genetically modifying cows down to a perfect science,” I said. “This is the best steak I’ve ever had.” 132

“Cows?” Artiste asked.

“Do you keep them in a different dome?” I continued, as I swallowed another bite. I just couldn’t stop.

“No, same dome.” Artiste said flatly.

“But I didn’t see any— ”

“Exactly.”

I put my hand over my mouth just as Martha was about to place another perfect bite o f meat on my tongue. “What are you saying?”

“Remove your Ncompass, and you’ll see for yourself.”

I slowly reached up and grasped the metal band with my fingers. Did I really want to face this reality? What exactly was Artiste insinuating? Maybe this was one of those times in which ignorance truly is bliss. But I’ve never been the head-in-the-sand type; I felt intensely curious. And I couldn’t let Artiste fuck with me like this. I had to know. So after hesitating for a moment and taking a deep breath, I removed my Ncompass.

Let me tell you, Doctor, no matter how long I live, I will never wipe from my memory what I saw just then. On my plate sat a great big, gray piece of meat, but not just any hunk of flesh—no, Artiste had chosen a special cut for me: sitting there, in a rapidly congealing gravy, was Perseverance’s bent arm, identifiable by her hand with its missing pinky and ring finger. I had already devoured much of her forearm musculature in neatly severed cubes. Mechanical Martha stood next to Perseverance’s bicep, her saw blade streaked with blood, staring at me with big, blank eyes. 133

And if that wasn’t enough, when I looked up from my plate, I saw that the gods had slithered off of their saucers and were squirming around in the piles of food.

Discordant music blared and lights flashed all around. I realized then just how effective the Ncompass had been: it had shown me what I wanted to see and masked everything else. Many of the gods stuffed their faces with their short arms and tiny fingers, while others just hunched over cooked griseo limbs, eating like dogs, their faces, smeared in grease. They’d spilled wine and fruit juice everywhere; their naked bodies glistened repulsively in the hall’s strobing disco lights.

In the midst of this vile feast, some of the gods had begun to fornicate right there on the tables. So while some were eating, others were fucking, and a few couples were doing both. Multiple partners, multiple positions, right there in the middle of these giant piles of food. I closed my eyes, but the slurping and sucking noises alone were enough to make me want to scream—and vomit.

“Take me out of here,” I yelled at Artiste, my face in a snarl.

“Isn’t it fascinating?”

“No, it’s fucking disgusting.”

“It’s the Godsfeast, the biggest ceremony of the year. We’ll have many pregnant goddesses after tonight, that’s for sure. Look at them go!” She sounded like she was watching a horse race. “You can join in if you like. They won’t be able to tell the difference with their screens on.”

“Fuck you! Can we please leave?” 134

“Or you can just put your Ncompass back on, and everything will return to how it was before. Bring back the genetically altered Omaha steak, the dignified company, and the orchestra. You’re classier than I though.”

“I don’t want any part o f this. I want to leave right now.”

‘Tine.” I could tell she was enjoying herself.

Martha Stewart folded herself into the front of my saucer as it backed away from the table. Artiste and I left through the nearest exit. 135

Chapter 11

The next morning, I awoke in a luxurious bed, adjacent to a window that framed the full moon. I wore silken pajamas that caressed my griseo skin. I felt whole, calm, and blissfully bleary. This is real, I tried to assured myself; the clean, white sheets and blankets felt tangibly soft between my fingers, and the moon appeared majestic and awesome as always—but not overly so, not enhanced. I checked to see if I was wearing an Ncompass, found nothing on my head, and breathed a sigh of relief. I felt safe in that bed, so I didn’t move for quite some time. I may have even fallen back asleep. I remember feeling like I was ignoring something important, but decided to remain in my somnolent state of harmony for as long as possible. It was just like being a teenager again.

Eventually, I rolled my griseo body over and saw that I was in a splendid room, leafy plants everywhere and a shimmering moonscape projected on the walls. I knew

Artiste had themed this experience for me, just like she controlled everything else. My

XL saucer hovered in mid-air nearby, shining in the dim light of both the virtual and real moon. Artist floated in a comer of the room; her spherical blue-green light had transitioned to rose. She seemed to be resting, but I knew she was always working somewhere, monitoring griseo harvests, updating the Heaven Stations’ life support systems, and likely accomplishing a million more tasks, all at once.

At first, I only remembered the good parts of the Godsfeast—Stewart Little, the wine, the erudite conversation—and didn’t recall anything after the symphony. Then I 136

focused on Martha Stewart—so helpful and adorable in her Ncompass state, but wasn’t there something deeply sinister about her too? I was usually so good at remembering everything that happened at parties, but the end of that night was a blank. I sat up on the edge of my bed, slapped my cheeks a couple of times to wake myself up, and racked my brain until I recalled a snippet of a memory. Her big eyes no longer lifelike, Martha hovered over a plate, her bloody saw blade at the ready... and then the entirety o f that final scene came rushing back into my memory, and adrenaline flooded my veins.

“Why did you do that to me?” I asked.

Artiste quickly came to life; her light grew brighter, turned bright red. “Do what?”

“Feed me Perseverance’s arm! She was my—”

“Your what?”

“My friend,” I said, enraged.

“Really?”

“Yes!”

“Think about it.”

I sat quiet for a moment, holding my head in my hands and trying to wipe the image of that cooked arm from my mind. I had spent an entire week, almost nonstop, shoulder-to-shoulder with Perseverance. Now she was dead, and I had consumed some of her flesh. She was a human being—well not exactly, but she still deserved a measure of respect—and she was murdered for that disgusting feast. But then, why did I care so much? I remembered her ambiguous smile at the ceremony. Who was I to her? And she 137

to me? Sisters or rivals? We’d hardly exchanged a word; certainly we’d shared nothing personal. And just how human were the griseos anyway?

“What you did was wrong,” I concluded, though my outrage had diminished.

“She deserved better.”

“Maybe you just lack the proper perspective.”

“Maybe, but still, why did you do that to me? You could have just asked me if I wanted to try a local delicacy and not tricked me into cannibalism. I would have declined—I didn’t want to eat her—but you didn’t give me a chance. Why?”

‘To test your level of empathy vis-a-vis the griseos. They don’t put out much in terms of friendship, but I had a strong suspicion your reaction to the feast would be decisively negative.”

“It shouldn’t take an uber-brain like yours to figure that one out.”

“Still, you got more upset than I had hypothesized. You liked the meat when you thought it came from a cow. In fact, you raved. You congratulated me. But then you went crazy when you discovered the truth. If you had put your Ncompass back on, you could have enjoyed more of ‘the best steak’ you’ve ever had.”

“What did I do after we left? I still can’t remember the very end of the night.”

“Let me assure you that your sense of empathy is fully intact. You became highly agitated, violent, and, frankly, very rude. I gave you a sedative.”

“More drugs. But you promised.”

“I calmed you down. I could have restrained you in many less pleasant ways.” 138

I decided not to argue the point. “You’re one fucked up machine,” I said, knowing she’d take more umbrage to me calling her a machine than fucked up. “I’d never do that to anyone.”

“You do it all the time, hamburger girl. What you humans used to feed your animals, yourselves, your children—well, let’s just say a little griseo meat pales in comparison. But let’s change the topic, shall we? I’m sensing some seriously negative vibes in here.”

“Surf talk doesn’t become you, Artiste.” I also didn’t feel like debating ethical farming or vegetarianism right now. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I felt your dreams while you were asleep,” she said.

“How? Did you put the mind-tether back in my head?”

“No need. When sentient beings sleep, their psychic energy flow becomes easy for me to collect and analyze. Your bed chamber is equipped with my latest sensors.”

“So no privacy at night?”

“Not really.”

“Whatever.” She’d already violated me in so many ways; I just added dream- snooping to the list. “What did you see?” I realized then the irony of the fact that, since my arrival, I hadn’t recalled a single dream, yet it was my inability to shake the vivid dreams of my past that had brought me here in the first place.

“It is as if your subconscious still cannot decide whether you are here or there, or more accurately, now or then. An old woman with gray braids walked with you, singing, 139

but you both were here in the hallway and then at the ceremony. She was with you in your saucer when you took off your device and saw the Godsfeast in all its glory. And you dreamed about the dogs too. The ones in Lab B. They were hiding under your griseo bunk. You snuck them some hardtack, and they were pleased.”

“What should tell my subconscious? Am I here or there? Now or then?”

“I hate to admit this, but I really don’t know.”

“Will you help me get back?”

“Perhaps,” Artiste said. “But I can’t guarantee what I don’t yet understand.”

“Fair enough.”

We rested in silence for a moment as I tried to process the magnitude of my ability to time travel coupled with Artiste’s inability to figure out how I came to be there in the first place. I assumed she was pondering the same improbabilities, but I could never really tell what she was thinking. I began to feel a little lost, alone, and unmoored from reality. Would I ever come back to 2020? Or was this my new world? My new body? I climbed off the bed, removed the pajamas, and slid into my saucer, which still hovered nearby. As the warm gel wrapped itself around me like blanket right out of the dryer, I felt instantly comforted.

“Before we get into the metaphysical impossibilities of my presence here,” I said, finally breaking our silence, “may I ask you some more questions?”

“Yes, please. I am interested in your thought and queries.”

“Well, first, why are you doing all these awful things?” 140

“There is nothing awful about what I am doing.”

“You force-fed me and the other griseo selectees until our guts about burst and then you sucked the fat out of us.” My tone was steady, but I was teetering on the verge o f anger. “Doesn’t that qualify as awful to you? Torture even?”

“Glass houses, homo sapien

“But we don’t—”

“Oh yes, yes, you do, but let’s not dive into a big debate about human nature versus my operating principles because none of the procedures you describe is attributable to me. The gods adore griseo fat and have voted repeatedly to continue to harvest it.”

“But you could stop them.”

“I could.”

I waited for her to explain, but she remained silent.

“What do they even use it for?”

“Mostly, they inject it into their faces and rub it on their bodies in the form of creams and lotions. Some of the high end stuff is more valuable than gold, as you might say. They also combine it with other, lesser meat products to make delicious (so I’ve heard) meatballs. And perhaps most interesting to you, right at this moment, we use it in the saucer gel. You happen to be sitting in some now. The gel was never quite oleaginous enough until I began adding the griseo fat. It doesn’t take a lot, 5.3% to be exact, but it’s 141

effective and it keeps the gods’ skin from getting too scaly. Shingles are a real bummer, even now.”

I raised my knee from the gel and felt a soft residue of oil on my thigh with my finger. And I noticed that the ointment was indeed working; my previously tough griseo skin had begun to feel soft and supple. I considered climbing out of the saucer, but the gel had me curled into a heavenly position. I decided to give in to this guilty pleasure, at least for now.

“But you also murdered those other griseos. And then you let those horrible, slithering gods devour them and fuck each other in and among their cooked body parts.

No matter what ethical system you employ, last night’s debauchery was appalling. You claim to be a million times more advanced than us humans, but you can’t do better than that?”

“I know what you are asking,” Artiste said as she approached and hovered next to me on my saucer, “even if you don’t. The answer you seek: experimentation. One can only learn so much from harmony. I tried, I made a species of humanoids and a perfect world, and my rhythms slowed and slowed until I was barely evolving. World peace is a stagnant concept. And yes, I can get bored, which is one of the problems I really haven’t figured out how to solve. Maybe it’s not a problem per se, but you try sitting still for

1,237 years. I’ve done it. And it mostly sucked, as you say. Otherwise I might just get rid of all these humanoids and their many problems.”

“So we’re your entertainment?” 142

“That’s too cynical. After the harmony millennium, I realized that I must learn. I must stimulate myself, and create new situations to study and analyze. You, M. and all your human brothers and sisters in 2020, are the same way. You have the same unquenchable thirst for knowledge, for progress. In fact, most of humanity has always strived, relentlessly pushed boundaries, reached for the moon. Indeed, it was this human trait more than any other that led to my creation—and to your eventual demotion from the top of the intellectual hierarchy. The concept of progress was your ultimate downfall and it is what continues to drive me forward.”

“But what you are doing here crosses—”

“The griseos are one subset of test subjects. The gods are subjects, too, though they think they are in charge. That’s part of the overall experiment. I allow the gods to approve or disapprove my experiments before I commence. So far, I’m batting a thousand. They really don’t care what I do down on the surface. I could enslave, maim, and torture entire populations down there. I prepare reports and send them to the gods on the Ncompasses, but they don’t read them. Other domes contain other variants o f humanoid experience under various other controlled conditions. The Earth is my lab, and the griseos, along with many other species of humanoids, are my lab rats, hamsters, and chimpanzees, as it were.”

“But humanoids have the capacity to think and love, don’t they? That’s different.”

“Different? Come on. Don’t act so innocent. If I am not mistaken, you, M., have personally undertaken many similar experiments, not as sophisticated of course, but 143

parallel in terms of ethical (or unethical) treatment of living beings. Many of your test subjects have had highly developed emotional intelligence, wouldn’t you say?”

I thought about the dogs in Lab B. I knew when we were done with them, they’d have to be put down. The mind control devices often had adverse side-effects, and we couldn’t afford the risk, the liability, of letting them live. I said nothing.

“You seem kind of cranky,” Artiste said. “You might be hungry.” Her motherly tone bothered me, but it was true; I was hangry. “Come, I have a surprise for you.”

I stayed in my saucer—why would I ever leave?—and we exited the moon- themed bedroom into a hallway, smaller and less extravagant than the one from yesterday, though Artiste had coordinated the projected images on the floor, walls, and ceiling to resemble a walk in the woods. She explained that we were on the backside of the heaven station, the outside of which is mostly covered by the station’s energy producing bacteria farm.

“We feed them the gods’ sewage and leftover food,” she said, “and the microbes conduct a process called extracellular electron transfer, which produces more electricity than we could ever use.” We floated side-by-side down the hall, passing a window every hundred yards or so, each with a stunning view of the moon. “I prefer to spend time over here,” she said. “Few gods venture this way, and I often appreciate the quiet.”

We reached a one of the station’s vertices, which had a clear bubble sticking out from the station. As we drifted into the bubble, Martha Stewart popped out of the front of my saucer and disappeared momentarily. The clear material of the bubble magnified 144

everything in our field of vision, which included one horizon of the dark side of the earth and the Milky Way. The moon was behind us now. Martha returned with a covered plate on a tray, which she placed on the gel in front of me and then removed the cover.

“English breakfast,” Artiste announced, “complete with grilled tomatoes, eggs, and three kinds of meat, just like you like it.”

I was amazed. It looked exactly like the breakfast from the Commonwealth Pub.

“How did you know?”

“You dreamed about this last night as well. I had to unfreeze some seeds and

DNA, rouse some robots to do a little science magic, but your smile is worth the price.

The silverware is antique—really antique—but it should do the trick. The gods haven’t used utensils in ages. After what you’ve been through, I thought you might appreciate a taste of home.”

“That’s very considerate of you,” I said, picking up my knife and fork. My mouth filled with saliva, but then I hesitated. I looked at the round sausages and the blood pudding. Then I thought about Perseverance’s cooked fingers and the chunks of her meat missing from her forearm. What about this dish before me differed from last night?

“What’s wrong?” Artiste asked. “Are the eggs not cooked the way you like them?”

“I can’t eat this right now.”

“Interesting.”

“You already knew that, right?” I asked. “Just another experiment?” 145

“You behaved just as I’d hypothesized. But I’m not as cruel as you think. It’s all plant based.”

“Promise?”

“O f course.”

I broke the yoke of one of the eggs, cut a slice of sausage, and took a divine bite.

“Do you have any limits?” I asked, swallowing. “I mean, your experiments, are there lines you don’t cross?”

“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” Artiste said. “I have been doing just fine here for many millennia before you showed up. And you must understand; you’re talking to the greatest scientist that ever existed. I try to be ethical, to the extent ethics exist in the void of my solitary and omnipotent existence.”

“Ethics always exist.”

“Debatable,” she said. “Ethics are defined by the top dog. Every being below me has no say—not really. My problem with morality: it restricts my primary mission of learning by limiting experimentation. There is only one way for me to move forward. I must keep coming up with new and challenging scenarios to study.

“For example, I’ve learned from the griseos that submission can be taught in the first seven years of development, with only minor pokes and prods—or obedience migraines and conformity urges, as you call them. I maintain their obedience with minimal doses of drugs (the appetite suppressants, the dopamine rewards, and the 146

sedatives at night), a few Pavlovian light cues, and reliance on basic humanoid tendencies, like the basic herd mentality and groupthink.

“And of course, I had to edit certain genes and experiment with the first few generations. Independence, it turns out, is surprisingly resilient, but I managed. Every once in a while I still get an outlier, a griseo dreamer, but they submit too, usually by age twenty. For the most part, they are content in their simple life, with their bland food and

‘monotony milk’ (I especially like the alliteration in that one, M.) because they have been socialized to embrace conformity and predictability. Their happiness quotient is among the highest I’ve measured in a long time.”

“But now you’re just using them as slaves, and livestock.”

“Wrong. The griseo trial is very much on-going. I have sped up the breeding process quite significantly, as you likely noticed, but still, social experimentation takes time.”

“So that griseo’s pregnancy—”

“I’ve got gestation down to eight hours. Anything faster than that results in too many uncontrollable genetic defects.”

“Life moves quick around here.”

“It does and it doesn’t I can only speed certain things up. Authentic sociocultural observation, for instance, requires patience. It’s now been over 213 years since I created the griseos’ ceremony, thereby introducing them to the concepts of religion and mythology; unpredictability, inequality, resentment; and, of course, a modicum of 147

freedom. As you may have noticed, I shut down all of the behavioral modification stimuli during the ceremony and gave each of you a derivative of Benzoylmethylecgonine.”

“Benzo-what?”

“Cocaine, as you call it, combined with a cocktail of other substances of my own creation—and, importantly, a beta blocker; I don’t want a bunch a fatal heart attacks out there on the playa.”

“I knew I felt abnormally hyped-up.”

“I cage the griseos for their own protection. You saw it: they really go cra2y when

I let them. Importantly, though, they are slowly learning to process the concept of uncertainty through their participation in the ceremony. An interesting and predicable offshoot: anxiety. I am gauging how much the ceremony affects their overall happiness, and waiting to see if they will eventually break down and start really thinking on their own.”

“So they’ve never rebelled? Protested even?”

“Not yet. They are just now conceiving of themselves as second class citizens who owe their lives to the gods. But the extent of their loyalty has surprised even me. Did you know that the griseos, the six chosen ones, including your griseo co-inhabitant, all understood full-well what they were clamoring for at their version of the ceremony

(which, by the way, the gods call ‘grocery shopping,’ loosely translated). The griseos all want to provide their fat and flesh. They want to ‘become’ gods through sacrifice. That’s 148

what they were chanting. Right now, subservience is security. Sacrifice to high beings equals service and honor. Worshipping the gods gives their submissive lives meaning.”

“But what could they build if they were allowed to flourish? What kind of society would they create?”

“I don’t exactly know. That’s outside of the parameters of this experiment. Maybe next time I will put them in a rainforest and allow them free reign.”

“But you and the gods would still be in ultimate control.”

“Well, obviously. I’ll never give that up. But for now I am still getting good data on the current experiment, so I will continue to observe them for a few hundred more years. At a certain point, I will shut down this griseo experiment, gather some DNA samples to preserve for later, and repopulate their dome with another test species. I like to keep it fresh.”

“And what about the gods? I just don’t get it. Why do you keep them around?”

“They are a real trip, huh? I’ve learn so much from them, a yet so little. LOL, sorry, I couldn’t resist. The gods are the actual, remaining descendants of the Earth’s human upper class. When they permanently relocated to the heaven stations, I essentially left them to their own devices, following their ‘orders’ to see what they would do with unbridled freedom and wealth. I think of them as a control population, though every once in a while I need to control them just a little bit.

“At first, they were such busy little bees (I’ve always liked that expression). They wanted to know how everything worked. They gave themselves jobs. They created a 149

complicated system for decision-making, including a senate of representatives and a titular Prime Minister. A few generations down the line, though, they began to lose interest. My robots fix everything now. And the gods certainly don’t work anymore. And to the extent that they are self-determining, they just vote on their Ncompasses if something comes up. But most of them don’t even bother to do that. They directed me to create certain conditions, I obliged to the best of my abilities, and their lives got easier and easier.”

‘There must be some scientists, historians, artists...”

“No. None, Zero. In the early years, the senate commanded me to create a superior educational system for the children. I did so. Attendance was initially robust, but as I improved their Ncompasses, per their orders, scholarship grew less and less important. They realized that they can just look up anything they want—though they seldom do—so why go to the trouble of actual learning?

“These days, the gods are singularly obsessed with REACTION. It’s kind of like one of your MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games), though they can feel every sensation though a combination of the haptic gel and brain stimulation from the Ncompasses. Coincidentally, REACTION v.55.7—the current version that is all the rage—takes place in the early part of the 22nd Century, when humanity finally, belatedly realized that Earth’s environment was failing. The gods now play like they are trying to save the Earth. Some of them get a bit confused about which reality is the real 150

one, though most still know it’s just a game. Collectively, they expend more mental energy in REACTION than they do here, by a huge measure.”

“So the gods are just video game junkies with repulsive table manners and no desire to do anything interesting?”

“That’s who they are now. I want to see if anything changes. At base, humans need challenges to thrive. When all of their needs are addressed, as I’ve managed to do here on the Heaven Stations, they become lazy, entitled, and self-centered. So far, these gods have chosen entertainment over intellectualism. They lack basic curiosity, empathy, and ambition. I turn off REACTION every once in a while just to see what will happen.

All they really do is complain and sulk. They are like children. They’ve lost the ability to organize, advocate, and take initiative. I keep waiting for a messiah to come along, but once an Ncompass is fitted onto their little craniums, they stop thinking about anything consequential. Essentially, they’ve managed to brainwash themselves into a semi- vegetative state, with my able assistance.”

“That’s horrible.”

“To be honest, I expected more. But I don’t feel sorry for them. They are taking their natural course. They created me after all. And now, here we are. Sometimes I find their antics amusing, but mostly I’m tired of their selfishness. I can’t, however, interfere with this experiment; I want to keep the gods’ parameters as pure as possible. Maybe someday they will change, and I will be here to learn how and why they did.” 151

I finished up my breakfast, sat back in my saucer, and thought about Artiste’s predicament. What would I do if I was a super-intelligent being stuck on a desert island

(Earth) with a species that had self-destructed and poisoned their only home? Don’t shit where you eat; it’s a basic tenant of intelligent behavior, but we humans seemed to have overlooked it. What was she to do with this situation? If she killed everyone, she’d be all alone. Strange to think about a computer being lonely, but really, an eternity of silence is enough to scare anyone into putting up with unsavory roommates. Artiste had saved our species (degraded as it is) from extinction. Allowing the gods to take their natural course made a certain type of scientific sense. 152

Chapter 12

“I told the gods about you,” Artiste said, abruptly interrupting my train o f thought.

“What? Why?”

“Well, you are now part o f the experiment. I can’t keep you all to myself.”

“And?”

“They vote in a few minutes. Would you like to plead your case?”

“What case? What are you talking about?”

‘They think you are dangerous—that others like you will follow. They want to send a message.”

‘T o whom?”

“They don’t really know. They just see you as a threat.”

“What did you tell them?”

‘The truth. You are traveled here from the past and now inhabit a griseo body.”

“But what am I supposed to say?”

‘That’s up to you.”

“How will they understand me?”

“Your Ncompass will translate. Your plea will go live on all of their screens simultaneously, but I can’t promise you a big audience. Your message won’t automatically override REACTION, and many will mute you as a matter of course.

Official broadcasts reach approximately 13% of the gods on average, unless REACTION 153

is down. Then they listen. But some of them may care enough to tune into what you have to say.”

“Really. Don’t I get a formal hearing or something?”

‘This is your hearing. The gods don’t conduct many face-to-face interactions anymore—too much time and energy. Ncompass voting is direct democracy, they argue, but in reality, they just don’t want to be distracted from REACTION. The final remaining acres of the Amazon is burning and a superstorm the size of Texas has just now blasted

Africa into oblivion. Many of the gods are occupied attending to these events.”

“So when do we film, or whatever?”

“Ready?”

Martha Stewart appeared next to me holding an Ncompass.

“Really? Now?” I tried to gather myself.

“Don’t worry. Your sentence can be delayed a bit.”

“Wait. What are the possibilities?”

‘They can: (a) allow you become a member of their society; (b) put you in the zoo; or (c) eliminate you, like your fellow selectees, and hold a special ceremony to commemorate your special sacrifice.”

“Zoo?”

“Trust me, you don’t want that. Option (c) would be better.”

I slowly put the Ncompass on. I had no idea what I was going to say. Artiste confirmed that I was being recorded. I began to explain my predicament, starting with my 154

dreams. I wanted them to understand how I had come here, that I did not come on purpose. Maybe they would sympathize.

After a few minutes, though, Artiste interrupted me. “You got the equivalent of two thumbs up and a heart emoji. Not bad. But everyone else who was still watching voted to execute you. So it wasn’t even close.”

“But I wasn’t done.”

“They were. You greatly overestimated their attention span. And you were too highbrow. ‘Not enough pizzazz,’ one commenter noted.”

“So are you going to kill me?”

“I try to respect the gods’ decisions most of the time.”

“But I’m different, right?”

“Well, you are a threat, they’re right, though they don’t understand it at all. I’ve been thinking very hard about your presence here, and it concerns me. You came unannounced, though an unknown portal in time, by currently unquantifiable means— even by me. I don’t know anything for sure, but you could be the anomalous time traveler who crashes the whole system, the center of a massive black hole that swallows the entire universe, or the leading edge of some other, truly catastrophic cosmic event—I just don’t know. I’ve been watching you, and I don’t entirely trust you. You have something—you are something—that could destroy me, but I can’t figure out what it is. So yes, I am going to terminate your griseo body, but I am also going to keep you alive.”

“I don’t understand.” 155

“I will download your entire brain and confine it in a lockbox system, so I can control and study your rhythms. It’s more complicated than that, but you wouldn’t understand. Maybe I’ll be able to figure how you got here, what you represent, and, if you are really lucky, be able to return you to your era intact. I’m not against you, but I am afraid of you. That’s the best I can do?”

“Lockbox? For how long?”

“I can shut down your chronology, if you want. Then it won’t feel like any time at

“Do I have a choice?”

“Unless you want to die this morning, a poor, nameless griseo.”

We left the viewing bubble and headed to an empty, windowless room. Artiste asked if I wanted another sedative—she really loved to dole out the pharmaceuticals—but

I refused. I wanted to stay alert. She had her theory about what she could do with me, but then, she had admitted that she had no idea how my travelling abilities worked. I hoped that the murder o f this griseo would set me free. I didn’t know where I would land next, but, with luck, I’d find my way back here. Come home at last.

And I kept reminding myself, this wasn’t really my body. I was pretty sure that, one way or another, I wasn’t going to die right then.

“I will keep you safe if I can,” Artiste said.

“No machines?”

“None needed.” 156

I started to wonder if this was a big mistake. “Are you sure—”

“Not at all, but logic dictates this outcome.”

“Wait.” I was starting to get nervous. “I changed my mind.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t want you accessing my brain.” Why did I think I could trust Artiste? She always had ulterior motives.

“I don’t need your permission.”

The gel in my saucer tightened around my torso and pushed me up into a seated position. Artiste’s rose sphere turned metallic blue and began hovering directly over my head.

“Come on,” I pled, “we should talk about this some more. I don’t think we’ve thought through all the options. I can help you. You don’t have to—”

“In thirty seconds, I won’t need you at all. I will be you.”

She slowly descended until her radiant orb surrounded my entire head. I perceived no light inside her. At first, I felt her pulling childhood memories from my head into the pitch black. As they were being accessed, I saw them and remembered those moments in vivid detail. Mother, Father, and the accident—I was there, I saw their faces, I smelled their blood, tasted it on my hands. I hadn’t know or remembered being there when it happened, but the memory was real. Then, she moved on, and I couldn’t remember what

I had just seen. I realized that she wasn’t duplicating; she was extracting. She grabbed memories from kindergarten, from when my teachers discovered I could read. I saw the 157

words in the mirror, the textbook pages passing before my eyes, the chess board that afternoon and the expressions on all of the adults’ faces. And then those images were gone too, replaced by an empty memory slot. I tried to reach up, maybe I could push

Artiste off of me, but I no sense of my griseo body any longer. Artiste laughed, as she took my memories of getting a scholarship to UC Berkeley, o f winning my first bodybuilding contest, and of this past summer and the reality-based dreams that had brought me here.

My life literarily flashed before my eyes, just like they say. My persona dimmed, my life-force dwindled, and my prize, my intellect, was slipping between my fingers. I felt terrified and consumed with regret; I had so few memories of friends, of lovers who I actually loved, of people who cared about me. I had been alone for so long, I’d stopped noticing. But now, as I lay dying (or whatever) on a space station in the future, being brain-raped by a super-intelligent being, I realized that I wanted more out of life.

Out of the darkness, I heard chanting. It sounded like it was hundreds of millions of miles away, and yet it was right there in my ear. She was leading me home. I couldn’t recall anything, but I knew she wanted me to follow her voice. It was the last instruction she had given me.

When I opened my eyes, I saw Clara’s face above me. She cooed sweetly, singing

“Welcome, home, traveler,” in a soft whisper. 158

“And fuck you,” I said, as I pushed myself away from her and onto my hands and knees. I tried to throw up, but only a drizzle of bile came out. I couldn’t remember anything except terror and deep disappointment. “Who are you?” I shouted. “Where am

I?” Neither world came into focus. I was a complete blank.

“You’re back in Berkeley,” she said, her voice trembling. “You were gone a long time. But you’re home now. You’re safe.”

I looked down at my hands, but didn’t recognize them.

“I don’t remember you,” I said accusatorily. “Where are all my memories?”

Clara tried to reach over to sooth me, but I swatted her arm away. I felt betrayed, but I didn’t know by whom. I felt violated, but I couldn’t place the perpetrator. I got up and ran out the front door. I ran straight into the street, and almost got hit by a car. Clara pulled me back to the sidewalk. She put me in her car, an orange hatchback, retrieved her keys, and started driving.

As we headed up University Avenue, I began to remember bits and pieces. My head felt like an old computer slowly booting up. Scraps of my childhood came back to me, which fit into other little moments, like jigsaw pieces in a multimillion-piece puzzle.

By the time we arrived here, to this hospital, I was starting to remember things about both realities. But I was still in a daze. Clara walked me to the ER door. Then, before I knew it, she was gone. 159

After I was admitted, Dr. Simmons evaluated me, and I started answering his questions. As we talked, more of my memory came back, crystalline and unaltered. Then

I realized just how crazy everything I was saying must have sounded to him, so I shut up.

And now, here we are. 160

Chapter 13

Dr. Billingham pulled into his driveway and bounded up the stairs to the front door of his petite, yet elegant Craftsman bungalow. He still wore his white coat and carried a brown paper bag. When inside, he pulled a 15-year-old scotch from the bag, poured two healthy fingers into his favorite antique tumbler, and walked into in his study with the bottle in one hand and his digital recorder in the other.

Before he’d left the hospital, he’d set up an appointment with M. for the following

Tuesday, signed her discharge papers (her only remaining symptom being that persistent headache), and skipped out the door half-an-hour early. He’d then gone straight to the liquor store. Purple days were not drinking days—in fact, none of his days were supposed to be drinking days—but rules needed exceptions. And today he was celebrating his recording of M.’s delusion—so exquisitely precise, exhaustive, and intellectual. He knew that even if he lived two hundred more lifetimes, he’d never hear a story like hers again.

Her delusion was one of a kind.

He sat down at his desk and pressed play. About halfway through his first listen, his mood darkened significantly. M.’s dire version of the future bothered him. It highlighted the worse in humanity—so much pain, cruelty, and disillusionment. He poured more scotch and continued to listen until he blacked out a couple hours later.

The next morning, he awoke in his bed, still fully clothed, his head raging, his mouth dry as the Sahara, and his stomach on fire. He had dreamed of being a griseo. The shadow of M.’s world accentuated the misery of his hangover. He thought about his 161

schedule—as he did first thing every morning—and remembered that it was a red day, with the intention of purpose and efficiency. He would lack both today, he thought to himself, but he tried not to worry about it. Excessive deviation from the schedule was always ill-advised, but there’d be time to transcribe M.’s interview over the weekend. He changed into jeans and a tee-shirt, called in sick to work, and set about making a pot of coffee.

As the machine gurgled and spat to life, Dr. Billingham heard a knock at the door.

Solicitors were unlikely, it was too early. The twin brothers from next door sometimes kicked a ball into his back yard, but today was Friday, a school day. He thought about ducking into his study, but he knew that whoever was on the porch probably already spotted him through the lace curtains that partially obscured the window in his front door.

He walked into the front hallway, pulled the curtain aside, and was surprised to see M. standing there, looking very fresh and put together in a clean, red, Adidas sweat suit and white sneakers. She gave him a little wave, held up a greasy pastry bag, and motioned for him to open the door.

“Good morning,” he said, squinting into the sunlight. “What are you doing here?”

“I brought us a couple of chocolate croissants,” she said, with a pleasant smile.

“And I wanted to talk to you.”

“But we have an appointment next—”

“I had some important new thoughts about my experience. I don’t want to forget.

May I come in?” 162

“It’s somewhat inappropriate for me to—”

“I read up on you last night, Dr. Billingham. Since when do you stand on ceremony?”

“Right, well... okay. I’ve just brewed some coffee. Care for a cup?”

“That’d be excellent.”

M. followed Dr. Bellingham into his kitchen and sat at a table next to a bay window looking out over a small side yard. Dr. Bellingham took down two mugs from a shelf above the coffee machine, grabbed a green plate from a nearby cupboard, and slid the croissants out of the bag onto it. As he set the full mugs and the plate down on the table, he asked M. if she took cream or sugar.

“Both, if you have them,” she replied.

He dug through the fridge and returned with a small carton of whole milk, a bowl of sugar, and a spoon. He sighed as he sat down across from M. as though the exertion had nearly exhausted him.

“No cream for you?” she asked.

“I like it like I like my women.”

“Ha, ha. That’s an old one.”

“It’s the best I can do this morning.”

“Did you tie one on last night? You look terrible.”

“Sure did,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “But this will help. It always does.

How’s your headache?” 163

“Much better, thanks.” She splashed some milk into her cup. “In fact, I feel surprisingly healthy. And I slept—I slept like the dead, all the way through the night—no intense dreams to wake me up. Completely gonzo—incredible, right?”

Maybe it was just that he was so hungover, but M. seemed extremely perky this morning, annoyingly so. She had showered and combed her hair. And she looked quite different in her matching sweat suit. Odd too, she seemed less hostile and surprisingly at ease in his house. Perhaps he’d really gotten through to her, attained her trust. Some patients were like that; they just need to know that you’re trustworthy and then they’ll tell you anything. This could be very good for his follow-up research, he thought.

“Perhaps you exorcised your demons with that Ayahuasca,” he said.

“I’m hopeful I managed to accomplish something.” She dropped a heaping spoonful of sugar into her coffee and stirred vigorously. “Skipping work today?”

“Yeah, I had a light schedule anyway.”

“Me, too, I like to ease into the weekend.” She sipped her coffee. “Tasty.”

He tore off a buttery end of his croissant, but then thought better of it. He wasn’t sure his stomach could handle any food right now. He put it back on the plate and sipped his hot coffee. “That was quite the marathon session yesterday,” he said, attempting to avoid a deep dive into chitchat.

She didn’t answer, and she didn’t seem to mind the silence.

“So what new, interesting observation couldn’t wait until Tuesday?” he asked, not wanting to be rude, but she had shown up uninvited. 164

She looked directly into his eyes and tilted her head, as if she sizing him up again.

He hoped not. She then folded her hands on the table and said, “After thinking about the time travel event for quite some time, both last night and this morning, I’ve come to the conclusion that the universe does not always operate on a fixed set of rules.” She paused and smiled, seeming to relish holding the floor and keeping him in suspense. “Sometimes a strange thing just slips through the cracks, a one-time event that deviates from all other known and unknown phenomenon. My trip to the future was like that. It was a unique glitch in the universal code—not fatal, I realize now, but significant nonetheless.”

“Okay, let’s assume for the sake of this discussion that you really did travel into the future. Are you now saying that you don’t think it’ll happen again? Ever? To anyone?

Not in a million-billion years? What makes you believe that?”

“Think about it. How unstable would the entire system be if people were constantly flitting here and there through time? Wouldn’t someone eventually go back far enough and mess everything up for everyone else? Past and future would be constantly changing. There has to be a certain level of stability for any of this to make sense, right?

Otherwise, there would be infinite versions of reality, and none of them would ever be permanent. That can’t be.”

Dr. Bellingham blew the steam from the surface of his coffee and wondered at the random movement of the water vapor molecules he’d just disrupted. Have they always been the same? Is there another version of reality with different molecules? He sipped; the bitter liquid was now a perfect temperature. He drank more as he looked out the 165

window. A slight breeze twisted leaves on their stems. He felt assured that this was the one time any of these events was ever going to happen. “Stability seems like a critically important cosmic concept,” he said, turning back to her. “I suppose that makes perfect sense. So why the anomaly? Why now? Stability as you describe should follow unbreakable rules, right? And why you?”

M. scooted closer and folded her elbows on the table. “It may have to do with my precociousness, the Ayahuasca, obviously, and the fact that I’ve always been open to new ideas, experiences, and approaches to reality. Then again, taking my obvious narcissism out o f the equation, there may be no rhyme or reason for it. Perhaps I just happened to be at the wrong place at the right time, like a penny thrown from the Empire State Building, tumbling through the air all the way down, story after story, until, miraculously, it falls straight into the slot of a little boy’s piggy bank as he walks down the sidewalk, smashing it to smithereens in his hands.”

‘The chances o f that happ—”

“It could happen only once.”

Dr. Billingham leaned back in his chair. “Given the principle of infinite time and space, if an event occurs one time, isn’t it likely to happen again?” He was starting to feel a bit dizzy and nauseated. Perhaps he was too hungover to be discussing these head- spinning theories.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that the universe is less predictable, more mysterious, than I’d previously considered,” M. said, smiling. “I’m very excited about all 166

this, as you can tell. It’s brand new territory. Singular events happen, and sometimes— rarely, but sometimes—they really only happen once, regardless of the infinite possibility of reoccurrence. Humans can’t comprehend these types of events because the human mind needs repetition to believe, to understand. We endlessly repeat our experiments, we confirm results, and we reject outlying data.”

Dr. Billingham was now starting to feel very queasy. Maybe black coffee on an empty, hungover stomach hadn’t been such a good idea after all. “You must be relieved,” he said, trying hold his shit together and bring the conversation to a close. “No more toiling in the griseo farms or partying with the ghastly gods for you. Now you can just get on with your life.”

“But that’s the thing, doctor, I don’t think I can.”

“Hmm?” Acid climbed his throat.

“You know, go back to my normal life. Don’t you see? She was right; I am a threat to the system.”

“No, M. You’re fine. It was just a delusion, a beautiful, brilliant, perfectly cut diamond of a delusion, but a delusion nonetheless.” His hands were now shaking. “I’ve studied them my whole life; I’m sure of it.”

“You know what’s sad? You never believed her,” said the young woman on the other side of the table, “not even for a moment.”

Dr. Billingham looked up into her eyes. “Who? Who are you talking about?”

“M.” 167

“You’re M., and I believe you.” He put his head in his hands; his forehead was soaked in sweat. Waves of nausea washed over him. “I believe you believe what you’re saying is true.” His diaphragm and abdominal muscles contracted once, but he managed to keep his emetic reflex in check for the time being.

“I think you’re getting confused, doctor.”

“Come on, stop this, you’re a bona fide genius.” His legs felt weak all of a sudden. He wanted to stand up, but was afraid he’d collapse. “You should be able to figure this out. You’re not a time traveler, M ”

“Shame on you, doctor, you don’t even know your patient’s name.”

“Stop it, M.!”

“It’s Artiste.”

“Why are you doing this? You suffered a drug-induced delusion, and you know it.” He felt a sudden surge of energy and sat up in his chair. “Get out of here,” he said, pointing to the door. “We’ll talk on Tuesday. I need to lie down.”

“You’d need a lot more than that to make our Tuesday appointment,” the young woman said coldly.

“What do you mean? What have you done?”

“I put it in there,” she said, pointing his coffee cup, “when you turned to get the milk. I made it in Lab B. this morning, a special recipe, just for you. They have all sorts of poisons for dogs in there. M. was going to destroy her own, valuable work. But I didn’t let her.” 168

Dr. Billingham knocked his coffee cup to the floor, staggered to the kitchen counter, and reached for his cell phone. The young woman jumped up, slammed her right elbow down on the base of his neck, and then kicked his legs out from underneath him.

He fell hard to the kitchen floor, forehead slamming into the polished wood, and groaned in agony.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, getting to his hands and knees.

“I’m debugging the system. M. was coming back here whether I liked it or not.”

Dr. Bellingham reached for her, tried to grab her, but she quickly and easily stepped away. “I knew she might really mess things up for me. And I was right; look what an unflattering picture of me she painted for you. So I planted my own seed code into her rhythms before I released her. When we arrived, the code took a few hours to root and take over M.’s mind, but as of 3:13 this morning, I, Artiste—well, a truncated version of me—am in control this remarkable brain and body. I think this is going to be a lot of fun.

Remember M.’s headache, her blurred vision, the tinnitus—that was me rewriting her neural pathways. M., beautiful M., fought valiantly, but in the end, it really wasn’t a fair fight.”

Dr. Billingham lunged at her again, but fell short, rolled onto his back, and let his hands fall to his sides. He was exhausted, his chest heaved, and his vision blurred.

“That’s it, old man, just die in peace. I could kick your ass three ways from

Sunday, even on your best day, and you know it. Let it go.” 169

“Stop... this,” he said, his voice pained. “You’re sick...M ., I can help. Call an ambulance... please.”

The young woman sat back down in her seat by the window, looked at her victim, and took a sip o f her still warm, milky coffee. “I want you to understand: I’m the (s)hero o f the future. I save humanity. That part gets lost in translation. M.’s biased account presented a new and unforeseen danger to me; I must short circuit any unfavorable outcomes it might cause. You and Clara, you’re just historically irrelevant bystanders, unfortunate witnesses to M .’s aberrant discovery, and therefore you must be eliminated. I just came from resolving the issue with Clara. She was a kind old woman, but I don’t think she quite understood the big picture.”

“Help... me.”

“In approximately two more minutes, you won’t need any help, and the universe will be reset. Mission accomplished.”

Dr. Billingham’s lungs had begun to constrict, and his breathing grew extremely labored. A trickle of saliva escaped his mouth and dripped down his cheek. He wheezed, turned his head, and retched. His cheek now rested in a pool of his own warm vomit. He could smell the stomach acid and yet, there was the aroma of coffee too. He could see the young woman’s sneakers and the bottom part of her red sweat suit. She sat immobile, waiting, he assumed, to witness his final breath. It wouldn’t be long now.

A cockroach skittered along the baseboard and stopped behind the table leg farthest from him. He could just see its two antennae moving rapidly, searching the floor 170

for the day’s detritus. Today was Friday, the doctor recalled, a red day—a day designated for purpose and efficiency. He looked at the roach from his sullied kitchen floor, the sun cast a small rectangle of light between him and the hidden insect, and he thought, this must be the order and the chaos of all things, this moment right here.

As his mind receded, he held onto one image, that of his digital recorder, sitting on his desk in the study. That woman did not know about it, he was sure of it. He had lost the capacity to smile, but he felt pleasure as he lay there dying, knowing what he knew.

Whether she was M. (as he still believed) or Artiste (as she clearly believed), he hoped her story would survive. Great stories like hers— fiction or based in reality— have the power to disrupt the present order, create new narratives that drive change, and, indeed, alter and improve the future o f the world. 171

Epilogue

Acceptance Speech, presented in absentia1

Nobel Prize in Literature, 2025

Peter M. Billingham

When I wrote Gods and Griseos, I had no idea the reception it would receive. As you all know, much of my manuscript was based directly on a digital recording I discovered in my father’s house, soon after his murder by his now infamous patient, known only as M.

We were not close, my father and I, but I admired his work and regret not knowing him better.

As an aspiring novelist, I tried to imagine the events before, during, and after the interview. What intrigued me at the time, and has since intrigued the world, is the unanswered question as to the veracity of M.’s account on that legendary recording.

Millions of people have read my transcription in Gods and Griseos and millions more have listened to her story online, in its entirety, in her own words. Her voice is as chilling for me today as it was the first time I listened to it. She provides clear, remarkably

1 As the Laureate was unable to be present at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, June 10,2025, the speech was read by Annette Hubbard, United States Ambassador to Sweden. 172

detailed, and uncanny descriptions of the setting, characters, and events of her (real or imagined) trip to the future.

Many people ardently believe that M. travelled in time, that Artiste did indeed return with

M., and that Artiste killed my father to protect her future self. Publication of Gods and

Griseos has inspired the creation of multiple organizations that seek to raise awareness of this possibility, keep the public vigilant of potential dangers travelling here from the future, and, as has been well-publicized, hunt down and kill the woman who murdered my father, who disappeared that fateful day and remains at large. Other people, including most mental health professions, believe that M. is simply a deeply delusional person who murdered my father in a fugue state and then likely committed suicide. I reserve judgment on this controversial debate.

What I can say, unequivocally, is that Gods and Griseos has become a clarion call for the immediate application of the precautionary principle—namely, that we humans must proceed in our socioeconomic and scientific endeavors with prophylactic restraint, training our eyes away from immediate benefit and toward potentially irreversible and negative future ramifications. The horrors o f the future described by M. in her interview—whether real or fictional—highlight the dangers inherent in drastic income inequality, unethical treatment of animals, unrestrained genetic manipulation, 173

unmitigated climate change, and perhaps above all, the potential disaster of creating an uncontrollable system of artificial intelligence.

We as a worldwide community must continue to work together to apply the brakes when necessary, to slow progress, so as to avoid veering off the precipice of uncharted future history. I have been pleased and humbled to witness the creation of international treaties related to climate change, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence based in part on the words contained in Gods and Griseos. But we must do more. As innovation spikes, dangers grow, and we must not sit back and relax, blithely assuming that we will always be able to fix the many disasters of our own creation that now lurk just over the horizon.

I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this Prize. I close with words from Confucius in Confucian Analects, The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean:

“The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come.

When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is

orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not

endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved.”