I

Iddo’s departure mirrored his arrival. The sync. The gears of time ground to a halt. Then, after an unmeasurable length of non-time, they ground back into motion, leaving Ez with the disoriented feeling of awaking from a dream. She stared, along with Wilburn and Gramma, at the empty place where Iddo had been standing. “You can see the far side of the universe from anywhere…” she echoed. “What do you suppose he meant by that?”

“What does Iddo ever mean by anything?” Gramma said irritably. She jiggled some hongos in her palm like dice, then tossed one in the air and caught it deftly in her mouth. It seemed to be National Eat Flying Food Day or something. That puzzled Ez too. Why had Iddo stolen the weenies? Not that she begrudged him them in the slightest—after all, they’d been more charcoal than meat, besides which, she and Gramma owed him big time for the hongos and the Astral bangle. What bugged her wasn’t the loss of the weenies themselves, or even the rudeness of the gesture, but the inconsistency of it—the inconsistency of Iddo. What kind of a person doled out priceless magical treasures and called you Ms. Totkins, and then turned around and stole your lunch? It just didn’t make sense. It hadn’t even been a good lunch! What kind of a person, given the power to bend time and space, would actually choose to eat burnt weenies?

Only a nutcase.

It was a deeply unsettling answer. Gramma had warned her that Iddo was insane, but Ez had taken this for antagonistic hyperbole. She hadn’t really entertained the prospect, because she’d always thought of insanity as a disease, a malfunctioning of cognitive equipment, and thus by its very nature disempowering. But if Iddo, the most empowered person in the world according to Gramma, was insane—and Ez was pretty much convinced of it—well, what did that say about the world...? What did that say about sanity...?

“I think,” Wilburn said, “what Iddo meant was, like, everywhere always is here and now at the biggest level, so there kind of isn’t any far side of the universe, because the whole universe is wherever you are. It’s called um… um…” Wilburn squinted and made a groping gesture in the air above his head, “…omnitemporal presence, yeah.”

Ez and Gramma looked at him. Then they looked at each other. Ez didn’t need psychovatry to know that they were thinking exactly the same thing. Like hell we’re letting Wilburn be that lunatic’s apprentice! It would ruin him. Iddo would pass on his insanity—it had already begun! The question was, could it be stopped? Could anything stop Iddo from doing exactly what he pleased, or as he would put it, following the Path? Not likely, Ez felt. But if there was one person with the stubbornness to do it, it was Gramma Fark, and this time she would have Ez’s full support… for however much that was worth.

“Right.” Gramma slapped her thigh. “Out with it, boy. You tell us every last word that rascal said to you, or thought to you or whatever, and don’t pretend you two weren’t chitchatting on the Astral Plane the whole time, because I know psychovates, and I know Iddo. And don’t go skipping around in time the way you usually do either. Start at the beginning and go straight through to the end, and don’t leave out anything in the middle, okay?”

“Okay…” Wilburn said, “only I’m not sure which part was the beginning. There was a bunch of stuff I kind of totally forgot about for a while, but then Iddo helped me remember… but now it feels like it happened in a different order than it did.”

Ez and Gramma exchanged another glance, full of dark significance. “Fine,” Gramma said, “tell it backward, then. Tell it anyway you like. Just make sure you tell us everything.”

“I’ll try…” Wilburn said doubtfully. “There’s one part I can’t tell you about, though, and I can’t tell you why. And I can’t tell you why I can’t tell you why. And I can’t tell you why I can’t—”

“We get the picture, Wilburn.” Gramma sighed heavily and rummaged in her pocket for her pipe and her tobacco pouch. Ez envied her the habit all of a sudden. For the first time in her life she wondered if perhaps she too should take up smoking—no, of course she shouldn’t—but it would be nice to have something at a moment like this, a little ritual, a button she could press, marked Feel Different For A While. They were in for a rambling tale of madness, Ez just knew it, and the longer Wilburn stood there looking lost for where to begin, the madder she suspected it would be. At last, she said, “Why don’t you start with Iddo showing up? I’d like to hear what that was like from your perspective. It was very strange timing, remember, because I was just asking Gramma—”

“Oh yeah!” Wilburn jumped in excitedly. “So, what happened was, you guys were talking like normal, right? But then all of a sudden, Mom goes, What’s a yyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…”

II

“What’s a yyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…” Mom’s voice deepened as the moment stretched, and it continued to deepen as the moment continued to stretch, descending registers until the sound no longer sounded like a voice at all, only a wub-wub-wub-wub base-laden vibration.

Wub wub wub… wub………… wub……………………

In the few short hours since his initiation into Her Majesty’s service, Wilburn had grown accustomed to the feeling of the hive-connection, so much so that he’d stopped noticing it. Now, however, as the world around him decelerated to stillness, he became aware of it again, a buzzing energy running from his tailbone up the length of spine to the very peak of his skull, not quite a sound, but a vibration much like sound, unwaveringly steady and awake.

“Um, guys...?” Wilburn turned to Mom and Gramma. They sat shoulder to shoulder at the base of the old sycamore, their heads angled toward one another, Mom’s mouth frozen in a silent aaa. Wilburn was too alarmed to find it funny. He hurried over and waved a hand before Mom’s eyes. She didn’t blink. He grabbed her arm—he gasped. There was no warmth or softness in her flesh. Her arm felt nothing like an arm; it felt like stone. He touched her face. Stone. He touched her hair. Stone. He couldn’t budge a strand of it.

Wilburn glanced about in desperation, hoping to spot some clue, some solution to this nightmare. What he spotted was himself standing motionless by the fire, still holding the stick of weenies in the flames. The motionless flames. But… Wilburn checked his hand. He was holding the weenie stick. There were two weenie sticks, and there were two Wilburns, and the other Wilburn had been turned to stone just like Mom and Gramma and—yep—Thoralf too. The statue of the black horse stood some distance down the hillside, a sprig of grass protruding from his muzzle. What was going on? Well, nothing, of course—but why was nothing going on? A terrible thought occurred to Wilburn. Am I… dead?

……………………wub……………………

Wilburn jumped. He’d thought the wubs were finished. This last had been so bassy he’d more felt than heard it. Now he felt something else, a cold tickle on the backside of his eyeballs. He saw a shimmering like heatwaves, and then a geometric latticework of light traced itself in the air, forming a seven-sided polygon some seven feet across—a heptagon, with smaller heptagons within it, with more and more and more smaller and smaller and smaller heptagons within those, interlocking and receding to a single point of dazzling brightness at the center. A portal—yes, it had to be a portal. It was simultaneously flat, like a picture, and deep, like a corridor stretching into infinity… and out of that infinity came lumbering a shaggy, horned mountain of a creature.

Wilburn shrieked.

The creature cocked its head. It plodded toward him slowly through the fallen yellow leaves, which somehow didn’t crunch under its hooves. Wilburn stood his ground, breathing heavily. He felt a twinge of embarrassment about the shriek. This creature was no monster, he could see that now. It was an ox, big, but kind of cute, with cream-white, luxuriantly soft-looking fur that practically demanded to be stroked. The ox halted in front of him and stuck a hoof out. Wilburn looked down at the hoof. Then he looked up into the shaggy face, into the eyes, black as Wilburn’s own eyes and fathomless as outer space. In the background, the portal untraced itself and vanished.

“I know you…” Wilburn said.

“Hmm. So you say,” the creature replied, in a rich baritone voice. “I, for one, am not convinced. It seems to me you scarcely recognize me and have entirely forgotten our acquaintance.”

Wilburn nodded. But actually… he did remember something… he remembered... people… lots of people… chanting, in a circle… and… a fire… and… a white ox…

“Aha!” The ox made a hooking motion with its horns.

Wilburn felt a tug right at the center of his brain, then a sensation of unraveling, and then— “Whoa!” A brightly colored snake exploded out of the top of his head. But no, it wasn’t a snake, it was a rope, woven from fibers of rainbow light. “Coool.” The rope slithered beautifully through the air, lengthening and lengthening as it unspooled from Wilburn’s brain.

The ox observed the process keenly, nodding to itself. “Mmhm… Mmhm… Yep… Mmhm… Gotcha!” It flicked its horns. The rope ceased unspooling at once. The last section that had emerged from Wilburn’s head contained a tangle—a dreadful tangle. Not only was the rope itself tied in a complicated pretzel, but the tiny rainbow fibers of which the rope was woven were themselves snarled up in ferocious rat’s-nests. The ox gave an appreciative whistle.

“That’s my memory... isn’t it?” Wilburn asked. The ox nodded, ducking under the rope to study the tangle from the other side. “And where it’s all messed up… that’s the stuff I can’t remember?”

“Bingo.”

“Wow. How’d that happen?”

The creature scanned Wilburn up and down with an appraising eye. “I think we can rule out traumatic injury,” it said. “So, unless you’ve been ingesting powerful amnestic drugs of late…? No, you don’t even know what that means. Then, I’m afraid the only remaining possibility is sabotage.”

“Huh?”

“Someone has tampered with your memory, my boy. And I have a fair guess who. But what I can’t fathom is when… When did she have the opportunity? It must’ve been after the ritual… but I was there—I saw you telefract with Alfajean and Buttrom. And she can’t have traced you, can she…? Not to Dreamspace. No… so… hmm.” The creature shook its massive head. “We’ll see. We’ll just see, Wilburn. I think we may have gotten lucky. It appears this memory is recoverable.”

“You can fix it?”

“Not I. You must fix it. But I will assist as best I can.”

“Oh, all right.” Saying this reminded Wilburn— “Hey, what about them?” He gestured to his frozen family members and his own petrified replica. “Are they—er—are we… all right?”

“Right as rain,” the ox replied. “Nothing has changed for the others, you see, because you and I are in a private closed-loop sub-dimension of Higher Astral Sector-1 Parallelaspace, courtesy of an old friend of mine in the Temporal Infrastructure Maintenance and Engineering Department. This dimension contains nothing whatsoever save our two minds; hence, there is nothing here to obstruct our view of Real Life all around us. We can observe Real Life, but we are powerless to change it, because change happens in time, and this dimension begins and ends inside a single Real-Life instant.”

“But then… how come there’s two of me?”

The ox chuckled, low and rumbly. “That,” it said, pointing with its horns at the frozen Wilburn statue, “is your Real Life avatar, my boy. It is no more you than the clothing it wears. The locus of your awareness is not with your Real Life avatar at present, because it is here,” the horns pointed straight into Wilburn’s face. “This is your Astral avatar. It is not a body in the physical sense, but an idea of a body, a manifestation of your physiognomic expectations in metaphysical space. That stick you’re holding, for example—it isn’t wood. It is nothing more or less than the pattern of your personal experience of holding a stick. Were you to bite into one of those appealing looking sausages skewered on it, you would find the flavor, temperature and texture to be exactly as you expected, not because you would in truth be eating food, but because you would be directly experiencing your own expectation of the experience of eating food, you see?

“K….” Wilburn said uncertainly.

“Indulge me, if you will, in a brief exercise. Try imagining what it would be like if that stick were suddenly to vanish. Picture it. One moment, a stick in your hand… next moment, hand empty.”

“Holy smokes…” Wilburn boggled at his empty hand.

“Excellent, Wilburn, excellent. You have a strong imagination. Now, the key: there is no fundamental difference between that stick and your hand. Believe that, understand that, and you’ll be able wear any shape you like on the Astral Plane.” And just to prove it, the ox became an enormously fat pumpkin.

Wilburn hooted in delight. He wanted to be a pumpkin! He tried… he pictured himself growing fat and turning orange… but nothing happened.

The pumpkin became an ox again. “Something for you to practice later,” it said, “once you’ve remembered who I am and what transpired on your first Astral excursion. For now, I suggest you begin by loosening this loop, then pulling this wrap back through here…”

Untangling the memory proved a tedious endeavor. The rope was easy enough to manipulate, Wilburn found. All he had to do was choose which way he wanted it to move and it would move. The tricky part was figuring out where he had to move which part of the rope when; it was all too easy to tie extra knots by accident. The ox coached Wilburn through it, pointing out various twists and snarls with the tip of a horn and giving errorless advice. Even so the project seemed to take all day, or the equivalent, if time had actually been passing. Hours dragged by with the world embalmed in stillness, a permanent midday, as if the sun were printed on the sky.

Gradually, agonizingly, knot by minuscule knot, the chaos of Wilburn’s memory was untangled, until, with a final twist, the rope pulled straight, and then retracted back into his head. Wilburn nodded slowly. He remembered.

He remembered everything.

III

It was the previous afternoon, before the first vexpid attack, and Wilburn was sitting on the guest cot by the fireplace scarfing his third bowl of Mom’s broth. He hadn’t known he was a wizard yet. All he’d known was he could fly, and that was pretty darn awesome. Except apparently he’d passed out in the air and almost died… well, that was pretty awesome too, but he knew better than to express this point of view in front of Mom. For the first few seconds as the memory began, Wilburn’s consciousness was split, with one side of him remembering that he was remembering, and the other side fully invested in the memory, experiencing it all as if for the first time. That side quickly won out. It was so real… maybe it was real.

And then it was real. The fire crackled and the cauldron bubbled. Wilburn tipped his bowl to slurp the dregs. He belched. “Scuse me.”

“Would you like more broth?” Mom asked anxiously. “How about more bread?”

“No thanks…” Wilburn’s eyelids felt magnetized. The cozy interior of the cottage swam in and out of focus as he struggled, unsuccessfully, to keep them open.

“Are you sure?” Mom hovered by his elbow. “There’s still half a loaf left. And I can always bake another. Here, I’ll butter one more slice for you.”

“No, Mom, really… thanks, but…” Wilburn lay back on the cot, folding his hands over his bulging belly. “I’m stuffed,” he mumbled. “I think I’ll just… just…” A massive yawn expanded out of him.

IV

The next thing Wilburn knew, he was standing before a weatherbeaten signpost at a crossroads in the middle of what appeared to be a wasteland. A flat, blue block of sky sat on a flat, brown floor of earth whose only feature was the cobbled X of the two roads. Or was it four roads? There were four arrow-shaped signs nailed to the signpost, presumably identifying the nearest town in each direction… except… the silvery script was playing tricks on Wilburn’s eyes. He squinted. The writing seemed to slither and distort as he attempted to decipher it, and finally, in frustration, he gave up—at which point, the meaning became clear. He couldn’t read the signs, and yet he somehow understood that they said, Lower Astral, Higher Astral, Real Life, Open Dreamspace.

Up to this point, Wilburn had accepted the scenario with the inexhaustible credulity of the unconscious dreamer. Now, however, as he set off up the road to Open Dreamspace—which, of the available options, struck him as least likely to be lame—a tremor of doubt began to nag at him. It was his shoes: the problem was, he wasn’t wearing any. He was otherwise dressed normally, in overalls and a long-sleeve shirt and woolen socks. But what had happened to his shoes? How had he managed to get all the way out here without them? Wilburn halted in his tracks. How had he gotten here? He didn’t know. That came as a surprise, and an even bigger surprise came when he glanced back over his shoulder and could no longer see the crossroads or the signpost. He’d only taken a few steps away from them, of that much he was sure, and yet before him and behind him there was nothing but the road, shrinking away to kiss each opposite horizon. He decided to press on. But first, he took his socks off so as not to wear holes in them.

How much farther he walked barefoot he had no idea. The scenery never changed. Nothing changed. Nothing happened. And then, just when his boredom was nearing terminal intensity, a person made of solid golden light, nine-ish feet tall with identical faces wrapping all the way around their head, swooped down from the sky on a pair of aquamarine butterfly wings and landed in the road in front of him, and said, in a chorus of harmonizing voices, “Fear not! I am Lieutenant Angel Alfajean of the PROVED!”

It was a good thing there weren’t any crystal goblets lying around, because Wilburn’s scream would instantly have shattered them.

“Fear not, I said,” Lieutenant Angel Alfajean said, somewhat testily. “You know, you mortals could save yourselves a lot of trouble if you’d just listen once in a while.” It was a fair criticism, but Wilburn wasn’t listening. He was too busy sprinting for his life. The angel flew in front of him. “You are Wilburn Fart, the wizard are you not?” they asked, consulting a thin rectangle of glass that they were holding like a clipboard. Wilburn swerved aside. The angel flew in front of him again, cutting him off. “Please confirm your name for the record. The operation cannot proceed until you have done so.”

Wilburn remained crouched in a runner’s stance, shifting his weight from foot to foot. His eyes darted every which way, searching for an escape route that did not exist. There wasn’t so much as a scrap of cover for miles in all directions. The many-faced angel towered over him. “Wilburn Totkins Fart?”

Wilburn licked his lips. “It’s… Fark, actually…” he whispered, “…like with a k…”

Alfajean nodded. “That must have been a scrypo.” They tapped the pane of glass with a golden fingertip, and said, “Insert note. Heading: File update, insert current dimensional coordinates. Sub-heading: Subject name spelling correction. Body: Subject claims subject’s surname spelled F-A-R-K, previous entry F-A-R-T. Remember to submit info-edit request form with after-action report.” Alfajean tapped the glass again with satisfaction. “You see? This is why we have protocols. I’m afraid your Master Bungflower is notorious for his, ah… shall we say, casual approach to protocols, but if ever you are tempted to emulate his example in this, I just hope you’ll remember that a protocol once spared you a great deal of heckling. Oh my, yes. Imagine if your badge had come out saying, Cadet Fart!” The angel chuckled in polyphonous harmony, an extremely disconcerting sound.

“Are you… really an angel?” Wilburn asked. The ones depicted in the church’s stained-glass windows had white, feathery wings, not blue-green butterfly wings. They also had yellow halos floating over their heads—Wilburn remembered these especially well because he’d always imagined them tasting lemony—he liked lemon. But Alfajean had what appeared to be some kind of plant growing out the top of their head, a plant with long rubbery tentacles, and then, perched atop the tangle of tentacles like a bee on a flower, a shiny yellow helmet. It was yellow, at least, but it was certainly no halo, and in place of the flowing white gowns favored by the church’s angels, Alfajean wore a sleek military uniform of gold… ruined, unfortunately, by the addition of a fluorescent orange vest with silver reflective trim and the word PROVED stamped in all caps above the breast pocket. “That’s right,” Alfajean said proudly. “I’m a Lieutenant Angel, though, not as exalted as your seraphim or cherubim. But we all need something to aspire to, don’t we? I’m hoping to make archangel by the turn of the millennium. Not that rank really matters in the grand scheme, because the Great Creator loves all creatures equally, even the very lowliest of lifeforms—which reminds me—Wilburn, this is Buttrom, the prophet. Buttrom, meet Wilburn, the wizard.”

Only then did Wilburn notice the short, round, balding, dirty-apron-wearing man, cowering in the shadow of the angel’s wing. His hands were cupped around a wet clay bowl which appeared to have come freshly off the wheel. “P-prophet?” he asked in a terrified half-whisper. “There must be some mistake. I… I just make pots…” He brandished the dripping bowl at Alfajean imploringly.

“You really think an angel would make a mistake?” Alfajean scoffed. “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to double check.” They tap-tapped a golden finger on the little pane of glass. “Nope. Says right here, Buttrom Hoglesby of Prozapple Province, Nalafarnalus. Occupation: ceramic artisan and holy prophet of ages. So there you go.”

“But… I’m not holy… I’m—” Buttrom blushed, casting a nervous glance Wilburn’s direction. “I shouldn’t say in front of the kid,” he muttered, “but you can take my word for it, Mr. Angel—or Ms. Angel—I’m a sinner. I’ve done wrong. I’ve got the devil on my shoulder.”

“Have you repented?” Alfajean asked sternly.

“Oh yes,” Buttrom said quickly. “Yes, I’m constantly repenting. I’m repenting right this minute.”

“Very good. We wouldn’t want you to end up in the bad place, would we?” Alfajean gave a musical tinkle of a laugh, more disconcerting than anything else they’d done up to that point.

Buttrom blanched. “You’re saying… damnation… is real?”

“No, no, I can’t say that officially. All I can say is, if there was a Damnation Program, its existence would be highly classified… so you might want to behave as if it is real… just in case.” The angel winked with half their eyes. “However, there’s no rule against sinners becoming prophets. It’s a bit of a tradition actually. The integrity of the flawed vessel and so forth. And speaking of flawed vessels…” Alfajean tapped the pane of glass again, and said, “AV scry Master Bungflower.”

There was a pause, and then a chirrupy ding-dong tone, and then another pause, and then a robotic female voice issued from the glass. Did you say, telefract to LA Sector 33-B, sub-realm Xiatakron?

“No!” Alfajean said sharply. “I told you to audio-visual scry Master Bungflower, please.”

There was another pause, another ding-dong, then: Telefracting to LA Sector 33-B, sub-realm Xiatakron

“CANCEL!” Alfajean screamed, hammering on the glass with a golden fingertip.

I’m sorry, I’m unable to assist with that right now.

“Why you stupid little piece of—” POOF. The angel disintegrated into a cloud of swirling particles of color and was gone.

V

Wilburn and the prophet, Buttrom, looked around. There was no sign of Alfajean, no sign whatsoever of anything at all except the road and themselves standing on it. After an awkward silence, Buttrom cleared his throat. “So… uh… where you from, kid?”

“Fenlin Duchy. Over by Hambserg Village, if you know where that is.”

“Nope. Can’t say I’ve heard of either of those places. What province are we talking about?”

“I… think they’ve got provinces in New Trapoban. We just have duchies in Argylon.”

“Argylon? What’s that?”

Wilburn eyed Buttrom skeptically. The man didn’t act like he was kidding, but some grownups could be really good pretenders. “Argylon,” Wilburn said, careful to articulate each syllable “You know... the Kingdom of Argylon? …the biggest country in the world?”

Buttrom gave him an okay, I’ll humor you, little fellow sort of smile. “That’s a very patriotic thing to say,” he said, “although I wouldn’t go around repeating it within the borders of the Empire, not unless you want to face the lions in the arena. I’m curious, though… where is this Kingdom of Argylon relative to Nalafarnalus? It must be a remote island. I don’t remember ever seeing it on a map. Mark you, I can’t read the sign on my own shopfront, so that isn’t saying much.”

“Relative to… where?”

“Nalafarnalus,” Buttrom repeated.

Wilburn shrugged. “Dunno. Never heard of it.”

“You’re twisting my nose,” Buttrom said angrily. “Gosh darn it, kid, that isn’t funny. I’m having a tough enough time telling what’s real and what isn’t without you messing me around. There’s no such place as the Kingdom of Argylon, is there? You just made that up. You’re from Prozapple Province, same as me. I can hear it in your accent!”

Wilburn took a small step backward from the man, slightly alarmed. “Um, dude,” he said, “I mean, Mr. Prophet—”

“I’M NO PROPHET I JUST MAKE POTS!” Buttrom bellowed. His face was scarlet.

“Sorry, sorry!” Wilburn said quickly. “All I meant was, I’m not twisting your nose. I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about Nalafarnalus! The Nalafarnalian Empire! Oh, come on—Nalafarnalus is actually the biggest country in the world!”

“Okay… well, I dunno. Maybe we’re from different worlds.”

Buttrom’s broad shoulders rose and fell with his rapid breathing. “No,” he said. “For one thing, that’s impossible. For another thing, we’re speaking the same language. How could you speak perfect Nalafarnal if you’re not from Nalafarnalus? That’s ridiculous. And yet you claim you’ve never even heard of Nalafarnalus. Know what I think, kid? I think you’re a rotten, twisted little liar. You’re sick. I see what you’re trying to do—you and that phony angel are in on it together! You’re trying to make me lose my mind! Well, it won’t work, because I’m wise to your scheme now. I see past that honest face. You’re evil! You and that angel both!”

“Oh yeah? Well, you’re a pee-pee poo-poo stupid butthole head!” Wilburn shouted. It was the meanest thing he could think of, and perhaps he’d overdone it, because Buttrom staggered backward as if shoved by someone much stronger than Wilburn—who, in any case, hadn’t touched him—staggered, stumbled, sat down hard in the dirt, blinked helplessly for a few seconds, and then began to cry. Big, sorry crocodile tears rolled down Buttrom’s cheeks. He wasn’t a super noisy crier; he just whimpered softly like a puppy. After a while, he lay back and perched his wet bowl on his belly, where it jiggled with the rhythm of his weeping. It was too pathetic. Wilburn turned to go.

The problem was, when he looked first one way down the road and then the other, he couldn’t tell which way he’d come from or been going. Did it matter? Kinda, yeah, he thought. There were some rules to this unnatural wasteland… not the same ones he was used to, but consistent rules, or at least… somewhat consistent-ish, and one of them, he sensed, was that the way you went changed where you ended up. The way you went… the way… was there more to it than directions?

As Wilburn stood scratching his head, trying to work out what to do, he began to feel a cold prickle on the backside of his eyeballs. Then, not twenty paces up the road, there was a shimmering like heatwaves, and then a glowing latticework of heptagons inscribed itself in the air, forming a seven-sided corridor that stretched into infinity. This was, Wilburn later realized, his third first-impression of Iddo, technically speaking, since he’d forgotten their actual first-meeting, then met Iddo again in the closed-loop sub-dimension of HA Sector-1 Parallelaspace, and was now remembering their first meeting without remembering that he was remembering it.

The shaggy creature lumbered from the portal and proceeded up the road toward him. Wilburn stood rigidly still, experiencing something he had no words to describe. The words he didn’t have but would have used if he had had them were—electric—and—radar—and—download. Psychovatric signals pinged between him and the creature at a speed far faster than conscious thought. It was a conversation less of minds than hearts, a mutual testing of intentions, dispositions, emotional reflexes‚ a thousand tiny questions asked and answered in the blink of an eye, progressing like a chemical reaction, like two oceans flowing into one another.

The result was that in the time it took the creature to arrive in front of Wilburn, the creature had become Iddo, the person Wilburn knew, and who knew Wilburn, better than anyone else in the world apart from Mom. Yes, better even than Gramma Fark, whose harsh demeanor had always precluded total intimacy. Wilburn and Iddo knew each other. Not in the sense of details and facts, although they did exchange a few of those, but with the knowledge of old friends greeting one another after years of separation. Deep down, where it really counted, the two of them understood each other perfectly. On the surface of things, however… well, perhaps not quite so much.

When Iddo halted in front of Wilburn and offered him his hoof, Wilburn just looked at it, then up into his face. Iddo’s eyes twinkled. “Lesson One,” he said, speaking both aloud, in his rich baritone, and silently, in a language of pure meaning that filled in where Wilburn’s limited vocabulary fell short. “It’s a nearly ubiquitous practice across the length and breadth of spacetime to greet new and old acquaintances alike with a cordial touch… the precise nature of which touch depends on the physiognomies of the parties involved. A handshake, for example, only works if both of you have hands, a statistical unlikelihood given the endless diversity of lifeforms in the universe, and thus—as well as for many other reasons—the Astral traveler must always be prepared to improvise. I have a hoof, you have a hand. Two hands, and a pair of feet if you want to use them. Who knows what you’ll do, you see? Not even you. That’s what keeps life entertaining. Every moment is a collapsing of infinite possibility into finite actuality. Every single moment. Which brings us to Lesson Two: the spacetime continuum is an illusion.

“Oh, it’s real, in so far as all illusions exhibit the basic quality of existence, but it is a subordinate reality, it does not ultimately exist. The fundamental fact of the universe is—ready for it, my boy?—omnitemporal presence. Here and now everywhere always. That’s the whole shebang. Before and after now… nothing. Not even nothing. An un-thing un-is-ing, the absolute antithesis of being, so much so that to even attempt to talk about it, to call it an it at all, is to attribute more reality to it than it deserves. Note, this hasn’t stopped me from publishing several lengthy volumes on the subject, which leads us at last to Lesson Three. Actually, scratch that—no more numbering your lessons. The motif grows stale. Where was I…? Oh yes, obstinance and blatant self-contradiction. Yes, these are essential tools for the practitioner of metaphysical arts, particularly with respect to academia. You must harness the absurdity, my boy, or the absurdity will harness you. And right now is the perfect opportunity to practice. Right now is always the perfect opportunity to practice. I’ve made the first move by sticking out my hoof. So, now it’s your turn. So, go ahead. Improvise.”

Wilburn, still not altogether comprehending, reached out to grasp the proffered hoof, but at the last second he changed his mind and closed his hand into a fist instead and delivered a solid punch to it—there was a friendly pulse of mutual exaltiture, bathing the two of them briefly in golden light.

“Exactly,” Iddo said.

VI

“Now, where’s that angel?”

“Gone,” Wilburn said, “on accident, I think. They had this little window they were talking to, and then the little window thing talked back, and then the angel guy was screaming at it, and then they just, like—POOF.”

“Hnggrrnt hnggrrnt hnggrrnt. I know exactly what must’ve happened. These little window things are called wizidexes—” another glass rectangle, identical to Alfajean’s, emerged from the cascades of Iddo’s fur—“they’re extremely useful devices when they aren’t malfunctioning, but unfortunately that’s their favorite thing to do. I expect our angel will be poofing back any minute now. In fact, I’ll hazard a guess that they will reappear… right… about… nnnnnn—now.”

Wilburn glanced around expectantly. But nothing happened. There was only Buttrom, lying pathetically in the dirt.

“Ah well,” Iddo said. “You’d be surprised how often that does w—”

POOF. Alfajean reformed out of a cloud of swirling particles of color. “You’re late, Master Bungflower!” they panted, hands on knees as if they’d just been doing wind sprints.

“A wizard is never late that he’ll admit,” Iddo said cheerfully. “Your name is…?”

“Alfajean,” Alfajean panted, “Lieutenant Angel Alfajean—didn’t you get my memo?”

“Possibly,” Iddo said. “Let’s circle back to that, Lieutenant Angel. First, I feel obliged to point out that there’s a bit of a sword stuck in your helmet.”

This was indeed the case. Alfajean’s once-shiny yellow helmet was now severely scarred and dented, and impaled by a huge sword with a shard of milk-veined crystal for a blade. “Saved my life, this helmet,” Alfajean said proudly, “or it would have if I wasn’t already immortal. Those—blessed—Xiatakron goblins… but this is a perfect example of why we must always follow protocol!”

Rather, a perfect example of obstinance and blatant self-contradiction, Iddo thought to Wilburn, who had to stifle a snicker.

Alfajean straightened their uniform and primped the tattered remnants of their high visibility vest with dignity. “I notice you’ve forgotten your safety equipment, Master Bungflower,” they said, arching several disapproving eyebrows Iddo’s way.

“Oh no, I haven’t forgotten it,” Iddo said. “I remember that equipment quite fondly, as a matter of fact, because I traded it to a tavernkeeper for a cask of remarkably fine beer. I’ve been meaning to requisition a replacement set for ages… I just hope I can find that tavern again.”

Alfajean looked mortified. “Master Bungflower, think what you are saying! You have an apprentice now!”

“Hm. Fair point. I hadn’t considered that.”

Alfajean relaxed.

“I shall need to requisition an additional set of safety equipment for young Wilburn,” Iddo continued. “That way I can get two casks of beer.”

One, two, three, four, five… Wilburn shuffled around the side and craned his neck… six, seven, eight. That was how many faces Alfajean had, and all eight of their golden mouths were hanging open.

“Now, about that memo,” Iddo said. “The copy I received was so redacted I was surprised the censor bothered to pass it on to me. From the desk of Lieutenant Angel REDACTED, Prophecy Retrocausation and Omen Validity Ensurance Department, REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED. Your apprentice REDACTED. The REDACTED ritual will REDACTED. Please remember to REDACTED. A set of universal coordinates. Then, Yours sincerely, Lieutenant Angel REDACTED.”

“Yes, well, we do take operational secrecy very seriously at the PROVED. It’s our third highest priority after safety and fostering a culture of collaboration, and um,” Alfajean withdrew their wizidex from a pocket of their uniform and gave it a few taps. “Let me just double check your file in case they’ve updated… ah, no. Well, unfortunately, due to our rigorous vetting process, it appears your security clearance for this operation is still pending, Master Bungflower. I’m… sorry about that.”

“No, no. No need to apologize. I just want to make sure I understand you. Are you telling me that my clearance for the operation in which I am participating as we speak is pending, and that it would therefore constitute a breach of official secrecy for you to disclose to me such details as the plan, the operational objectives, or in short, any information that could foreseeably prove vital to our success?”

“That is correct, yes.”

An absolute professional, Iddo thought to Wilburn. The wizidex leapt from Alfajean’s grasp and rocketed toward him—then slowed, as if reaching the limit of an invisible elastic tether, and sprang back.

“Soul-ID,” Alfajean said smugly, catching it. “Beta version. Only available to essential Higher Astral personnel. I’m glad to see it works on yaks as well as the goblins of Xiatakron. I’ll be sure to make a note of that in my after-action report. All right everyone, gather round. We all need to be touching when we telefract. That includes you, Buttrom.”

The prophet groaned. But he sat up, and, meeting no one’s eye, shuffled over with his bowl to join their huddle.

“Touching? Touching? Touching? Great. Oh, one moment, I’ve disabled voice commands on my wizidex…” There came the sound of a golden finger tapping glass. Wilburn, who was gripping Alfajean’s pant leg, felt a tingle crawl over his body. And then everything—the land, the sky, Iddo, Alfajean, Buttrom, and Wilburn himself—disintegrated into swirling particles of color.