“You must play. Play is the nature of the universe. You must strive to reach Cosmic Consciousness.” He pointed up. “On the row of the Gods Themselves.”
Todd rolled the die. Six.
Applause sounded. “You have entered,” the MC explained, “the Physical Plane. The plane of Maya, of illusion. Here you will be plagued by Anger, Greed, Delusion, Conceit and Lust, depending upon which box you land in. Your roll places you in the Delusion box. Babs, dear. Please take our guest to the appropriate section, where he may begin his journey.”
Bemused, Todd allowed himself to be led into the box. Immediately, a door slammed shut over the section. He blinked. He was back in his mother’s apartment in Deadrock, sitting in front of his three-dee set. He heard the sounds of his mother clacking pans in the kitchen.
The MC appeared in the three-dee set. “Hi, Todd.”
“What the hell am I doing here?” Todd said, panicking. Any nostalgia for the place faded rapidly. The smell of beans and franks wafting from the kitchen turned his stomach—which he suddenly realized had ballooned. He was back in his old body! Fear and anxiety gripped him.
“This is the first stop, Todd Spigot. First stop of many. Such states as Uttam Gati, Dukh, Daan, and Narka-Loka await you. Right now, you’re in Moha—Delusion. You don’t see the Truth. Your mind is beclouded. You’re out of harmony with the Path.”
“Todd!” his mother cried in a voice that raked across his very soul. “Todd, come and set the table. Your father will be home anytime now from the mines.”
“My father!” Panic seized him as he visualized his dead old man traipsing across the threshold like the corpse called back by the Monkey’s Paw.
“The saying goes,” said the MC, “whatever should be adopted, that is Dharma. When one does not follow the law of his own nature, he becomes mired in Delusion.”
“Todd! Hurry! I think I hear the lift!”
The doorknob squeaked. Heavy boots thumped in the hallway.
“Get me out of here!” Todd cried.
“Do you want what’s behind the box or the curt—Oops. Wrong show. Just throw the die, Todd.”
Hastily, Todd cast the die. It landed, showing three dots. Immediately, he was tugged into another section. He caught a glimpse of stars: then the section was closed off, leaving him in fragrant darkness.
“Charley? Is that you?” called a sleepy voice. “How did you get back in?” He realized he was in a cabin on the Star Fall, dimly lit. A figure raised itself in the bed, and all thought raced from Todd’s mind when he realized it was Veronica March.
“Yes,” he said. “I told you it wouldn’t take me long.”
“Hmmmmmmmmmm,” she said sexily. “Come over here.” He could hear sheets sliding over bare skin.
Eagerly, he hopped into the bed and into the insistent embrace of awakening femininity. At the very touch of her smoothness, he felt himself relaxing. Ah, such bliss. He held her, seemed to melt, to blend into her. Lips found lips and exchanged enthusiastic silent discussion. Tongues touched passionately. Feverish ache charged through his body as delicate fingers began to glancingly touch him in exactly the right places.
They rolled about smoothly, exchanging tingling touches. “Hmm!” she murmured. “Have you been off someplace practicing?”
“Only our Dress Rehearsal last time.”
“This time,” she whispered, “no dress.” She commenced parting the shirt he now wore, replacing the buttons on his chest with kisses.
“Warning! Warning!” a voice announced. “Sex will screw you up!”
The MC appeared, translucent beside them. Veronica did not seem to notice his presence. She was working on Todd’s belt.
“You wanna get out of here?” Todd suggested. “I like this section.”
“You are now on the Sensual Plane.”
“No kidding. I thought I heard jets throbbing somewhere.”
“Kama-Loka. The Plane of Desire.” The voice sounded annoyed. “Directly linked with Ignorance.”
Todd gasped as Veronica’s fingers tried to figure out the workings of his magnetic zipper. “I don’t want to know anything.”
The ghostly MC tapped his foot. “Please roll the die.”
Todd suddenly felt the marked cube in his hand.
“Get lost!”
“Todd,” Veronica said. “How do I—” She raised her head suddenly. It struck Todd’s hand, knocking the die onto the floor.
It rolled, stopping on the number six.
“Damn, damn, damn,” Todd said, even as the room and Veronica dissolved.
He found himself in another large box, open to the celestial vista. The MC stood outside, silhouetted by starlight. In one hand was the die, glowing infernally from within. In another hand was a Disbelief Suspender.
“A perfect roll, Todd Spigot.” Slowly, the affable MC began to metamorphose. His trunk became squat. New arms grew. “This is precisely where we want you.” Its oculars glimmered evilly. “Narka-loka. The Plane of Fantasy. But instead of a die, we have a little addition.”
The biobot tossed the Disbelief Suspender into the small room.
“Have fun!”
The door slammed shut.
The walls glowed as though with phosphorescence.
The Disbelief Suspender jerked. Wings unfolded.
Terrorized, Todd backed away. Suddenly, the thing began to grow. Steel became mottled green skin. Needles became fangs. Oculars became cold serpentine eyes.
He suddenly remembered the other name for this game he used to know as Chutes and Ladders, without the metaphysics.
Snakes and Ladders.
The gigantic serpent hissed twice, then struck, swallowing Todd Spigot into Darkness.
“I MUST admit,” a voice said, “I was rather impressed by that fellow Kant’s Categorical Imperative.”
“What? You mean, ‘An action is morally right if one can will that it become a universal law which all should follow; otherwise it’s wrong’,” another responded.
“You must admit he had a persuasive argument.”
“Look. All these jokers have got fantastic arguments. They’re smart. But being smart doesn’t make you right. It just makes you come up with a fascinating theory that seems to fit the human condition, and then produce rigorously worked-out systems of argument to support those theories.”
“Is that your theory?”
“Yeah. I ought to write it down for posterity or something.”
Total relaxation, as though he had just come into existence for the first time. The sensations came slowly, as did awareness.
“You know, we might not be able to save humanity this time. But at least we’re getting a good education.”
“What? With all these famous scientists and philosophers and other luminaries bumbling around, babbling? They’re just as confused as we are. At least we have a vague notion what’s going on.”
“You know, I hope we run into William James. There are a few points of Pragmatism I’d like to discuss with him. Besides, I’m sure he’s counting all this as a most sensational religious experience to add to his Varieties of ...”
The air that touched his nostrils had a sweet touch to it: grass, hints of flowers. Mountain, redolent of fresh glacial streams, of evergreens.
“I’m sure glad we shook off that chap St. Augustine,” the deeper voice said. “Dreary guy!”
“Yes, by and large the religious philosophers are the most puzzled by this state of being. Won’t listen to my explanation at all. They’re taking this pseudoresurrection very hard.”
“I thought that Descartes fellow was going to die, the shade of purple he turned when he said, ‘I think, therefore I am,’ and you said, ‘Yes, but you’re not who you think you are!’ ”
A sort of “hawing” sound knocked Todd from his blissful reverie. He sighed
heavily and pushed himself up on his arms.
“Well, Sleeping Beauty has been touched by Prince Charming’s lips, apparently,” the deeper voice—almost a growl—said wryly. “I wonder what great mind inhabits him. Sartre? Raspro? Sheffield?”
“Looks like it’s plain old Todd Spigot to me,” replied the other voice.
Face sweeping through the high grass, Todd Spigot stared blearily up. He was lying in a copse of conifers. Above was blue sky inhabited by puffy cream clouds that scudded across the heavens like an animated masterwork. Somehow, the depth, though beautiful, was all wrong. He lifted a hand, stared at it. It looked like a beautifully rendered two-dimensional acrylic-covered drawing of his hand. He turned it over and the edges blurred faintly as the palm came into view, like rotoscoping.
Startled, he looked up toward where the strange voices emanated.
Sitting by outcroppings of rock that looked almost papier-mâché were two creatures seemingly in a pose from a sense-surround View Master clay animation movie. The colors were all deep-hued, rich and bright; unnaturally so.
One was a donkey with a unicorn’s horn spiraling up to a point that occasionally gave off a stylized gleam.
The other was a large lion who reminded Todd of Aslan of C. S. Lewis’ Narnia books.
They both moved like Ray Harryhausen monsters. What was it called? Dynamation, that was it. The movements had a faint jerkiness.
All his life Todd Spigot had been a film buff. He knew the history of film and three-dee forward, backward and in slow motion. He suddenly realized that he was in a strange three-dimensional collage of animation styles.
A character in a colossal cartoon.
“Talk about karma,” he muttered, getting to his feet, trying to rub out a headache at the back of his skull.
“Welcome to the Fabrication, kiddo,” the unicorn said.
“Yeah, thrills and chuckles galore.” The lion stuck a paw at Todd and addressed the uni-donk, “How come he’s not symbolic, huh? Some gangling ape or something? It’s not fair.”
Both voices were spookily familiar.
“Sleep well, Todd?” the uni-donk asked.
“How do you know my name?”
“He doesn’t recognize us,” the lion said. “Fancy that!”
The unicorn paced forward and stared Todd in the eye. “Hang on to your pants, fella. I’m Angharad Shepherd. That burly beast with the smart mouth is our pal Philip Amber.”
“Fancy meeting you here,” Amber drawled.
“I thought you were ...” Todd broke out in a relieved grin. “Dead!”
“The rumors of our deaths are entirely exaggerated. Actually, right now we’re just brains in nutrient baths—private, I hope”—she sniffed—“plugged into this Fabrication.”
“Yes, Fabrication! Cog used that word. I remember now!”
“Cog?” Amber growled. “Where is he when we need him?”
“Trapped, I’m afraid. We were going to try to destroy the mobile Disbelief Suspenders before they started attaching to people.”
He shook his head, astonished as he walked to a break in foliage and stared down a hill at a river that swirled, pen and pencil lines still evident. “This place is bizarre.”
“Used to be a little more realistic, until the Change,” Angharad said. “Apparently all the new souls added were a bit of a drain even on Hurt’s mammoth computers, so various shortcuts were implemented.”
“Yeah,” said Amber. “I’m still looking around for Bugs Bunny. He’s my favorite.”
“My God, exactly how is he doing this? I mean, I feel, taste, see, smell ... and yet in actual physical reality this place doesn’t exist.”
“Right. It’s a mammoth collectively generated illusion. For all practical purposes it’s real, though, Todd. If you start doubting your senses, you’ll go bonkers.” Angharad whisked away a fly with her tail. “As to how ... well, Amber and I have been puzzling that out for some time.”
“Yeah,” Amber said, sauntering up to Todd. Around his neck he wore a collar with a pouch. “We figure that it works like a gigantic real-fic landscape, though more complex. The mega-computers feed an immense amount of information into the new brains that Hurt’s acquired, sculpting a reality merely by common agreement. For example, when I do this—” Amber scooped a divot from the greensward. “The computers have to make adjustments. What’s happening is that my brain in its nutrient tank is willing my limb to move, a cause, and has to make effect changes in the reality set. The computer adjusts the sensory output from its landscape appropriate to my permitted action so that you, wherever you are on the Star Fall, linked in whatever fashion, see what I do. If you picked up that bit of grass and dirt, it would smell earthy to you. Maybe an earthworm would fall out. We’d both see that. But our brains in the actual physical locations are merely being manipulated.”
“And yet,” Todd said, “our brains are actually communicating.”
“Yes,” Angharad said, “but only within the context of this mock-reality. I was onto Hurt’s plans. That’s what I was doing for Central: investigating Hurt’s research center.”
“And ignoring me,” Todd said, hurt.
“Todd, it was important. Let me finish.” She tossed her mane in exasperation. “You know about the Morapn mindfields, don’t you Todd? Well, Hurt studied them, and mechanically has built a distorted and perverse mechanical version, uniting all the minds on board the Star Fall into an unconscious collective, overlaying the majority with Identity Crystals of famous thinkers of history.”
“To puzzle out the portal to the actual Collective Unconscious Energy Field of mankind in Underspace,” Todd finished. “Yes. Cog told me all that.”
“Too bad the leg is trapped. We could use him,” Amber said.
“But why have we kept our identities, even if you’ve been changed into absurd creatures?”
“Apparently this mass-mind that’s been jerry-built by Hurt can’t just automatically jell into perfection. It has to grope its way to wholeness and completion, even as its individual components seek the Truth in their own separate ways. When this wholeness, this Individuation occurs, then the super-mind will perceive or perhaps even create the portal into the Collective Unconsciousness field, adhering to it. All this is apparently occurring, to our awareness, symbolically—with the symbols coalescing merely the shadows of strange and unnameable things occurring on a much deeper level.”
“And thus Hurt rides his way to immortality.” Todd shivered as he gazed around. “He could be watching us, listening to us now.”
“Absolutely possible. Most likely, however, he has more important things to do.”
“Why did he throw us together?”
“That, I think, has less to do with Hurt than with the current incarnation of our old friend Ort Eath,” Angharad said.
“You know about the biobot then?”
“No.”
Todd explained.
“Curious,” Angharad said thoughtfully. “That would explain a great deal. Meshed in the Core of the Star Fall. Not really my alien brother, but a melding of all those brains he assimilated.”
“You think he threw us all together so that he could extract some kind of vengeance?”
“That’s exactly what we think,” the lion snarled harshly. “But God knows how.”
“What can we do?” Todd said plaintively.
“Apparently you’ve been set down with us because you’re meant to be on our particular mission.”
“Mission? What mission?”
The lion tapped a paw to its collar. “Open this pouch here.”
A little leery of the massive beast despite its claimed identity, Todd Spigot ventured forward and obeyed. From the pouch he picked out a folded-up piece of yellow parchment.
“You’ve got hands,” Angharad said. “You can be our navigator. I can’t t
ell you how hard it is to hold that thing with hooves—”
“—or paws.”
Todd unfolded the paper. Archaic script flowed among representations of mountains, rivers and castles. A spot marked X was accompanied by the words THE WASTE LAND and CASTLE OF THE FISHER KING.
“We’re looking for the Holy Grail?” Todd said incredulously.
“Good,” Amber said to Angharad. “He knows his Arthurian literature. We certainly don’t. Not very well, anyway.”
Todd brightened, suddenly feeling one step ahead of his colleagues for once instead of paces behind. “Yes. I was always fascinated with everything about King Arthur.” He rubbed his chin. “And you know, this is perfectly appropriate, too.”
“Oh? Why?” the lion asked.
“The Grail Legends are very confused—”
“And we’re very confused too, huh?”
“No. Let me finish. The Holy Grail was sometimes the cup from the Last Supper of Christ, sometimes the vessel which caught the blood from Christ’s side when he was nailed to the Cross, sometimes a plate or stone. But always its symbolic nature is the achievement of a mystical oneness with the Creator.”
“Which correlates with Hurt’s ambition. Only he’s storming Heaven, so to speak,” Angharad said thoughtfully.
“Why are we assigned to seek out the Grail, if the new version of Ort Eath is masterminding some kind of revenge on us?”
“I think I can answer that,” Todd said. “Of all the ‘Quests’ for spirituality in history and literature, the one for the Grail was always fraught with the greatest danger to the body and the soul. Nonetheless, its symbols have struck a sympathetic chord in mankind for ages.” He looked up at the two. “Hey, but we’re together again, right?” he said with a feeble smile. “We made a great team last time.”
“You seem to forget, Todd, that we lack the support of a certain crucial leg,” Angharad said through a mouthful of half-munched grass.
Todd stuck his hands in his pockets. “Well, there’s nothing to do then but follow this map. Perhaps something will come up along the way. Besides, there’s nothing that’s making us search for this false Grail any—” He felt something in his pocket. “Here. What’s this?” He dug out a letter, unfolded it.
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