Ritu ignored my interruption.

“People think the caterpillar changes into a butterfly, but that doesn’t happen! After spinning a chrysalis around itself, the caterpillar dissolves! The whole creature melts into nutrient soup, serving only to nourish a tiny embryo that feeds and grows into something else. Something altogether different!”

I glanced back nervously, weighing the distance of marching footsteps. “Ritu, I don’t get what you’re—”

“Caterpillar and butterfly share a lineage of chromosomes, Albert. But their genomes are separate, coexisting in parallel. They need each other the same way that a man needs a woman … to reproduce. Other than that—”

Ritu stopped walking because I had stopped, halting suddenly, my feet unable to move as I stared without blinking. Her revelation burst in my brain at last, just like a bomb.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m usually calm about new ideas. In fact, I’ve always tried to be a skeptic, especially when I’m walking around in realflesh. An archie-debunker, you might say. But right then, her words and their implications hurt so much that I wanted desperately to push them away, and all understanding with them.

“Ritu, you … can’t be saying …”

“… that they’re paired creatures. Caterpillar and butterfly need each other, yet have in common no desires or values. No loves.”

I could hear the second contingent of war-golems coming up from behind, even more intimidating now that I had some inkling of their inner nature. Still, I couldn’t move without asking one more question. I met Ritu’s eyes. In the dimness, everything was gray.

“Which are you?” I asked.

She laughed, a bitter sound that bounced harshly off the tunnel walls.

“Oh, I’m the butterfly, Albert! Can’t you tell? I’m the one who gets to flutter in the sunlight, reproducing in blithe and blissful ignorance.

“That is, I used to be. Till last month, when I started to realize what was going on.”

My mouth felt dry as I followed up. “And Beta?”

The strain showed in her short, barked laugh. Ritu’s head jerked toward the sound of marching feet.

“Him? Oh, Beta works hard, I’ll give him that much. He’s the one with hungers. Ambitions. Voracious appetites.

“And one more thing,” she added. “He gets to remember.”

I should feel honored. This really is genius-level stuff.

It’s apparent in the amplified Standing Wave that I’m now part of, filling a space far greater than the body-limited ripples that are contained within a typical golem. It pulses and throbs with power that I never before imagined.

Yosil Maharal must have known that he was on the verge of an epochal breakthrough, both beautiful and terrifying. And that terror did its work on him … on the solipsistic cowardice that comes embedded with Smersh-Foxleitner syndrome. Naked fear battled the awe-drenched draw of an unparalleled opportunity to change the world, and that conflict tipped him the rest of the way into madness.

A madness that his ghost manifests in spades, ranting as he cranks up the soul-stretching machinery, preparing me/us for my/our assigned role as a carrier wave — a finely tuned vehicle for transporting the Yosil-soul to Olympian grandeur …

… even as echoes of distant gunfire penetrate from some nearby subterranean passageway, creeping closer by the minute.

“You know, Morris, it’s awful how people take miracles for granted. TwenCenners adapted to faster lives, because of jets and cars. Our grandparents could fetch any book by Internet. We got used to living in parallel — the convenience of being in several places at once. For two generations we’ve just tweaked golemtech, making minor improvements, never pushing beyond the physique-limited vision of Aeneas Kaolin’s clay dolls.

“Such banality! People receive a splendid gift, then lack the will or vision to exploit it fully!”

Ah yes, contempt for the masses, one of the lovelier Smersh-Foxleitner symptoms. Better not answer, though. He thinks I’m already largely subsumed into the giant, amplified waveform of the glazier beam — the augmented spiritual field that he designed to utilize the perfect duplicating talent of Albert Morris, while deleting the ego-consciousness that made Albert special to himself.

Something’s gone wrong with his plan. It must have, since I am still here. Smeared thin, rolled up, sliced, and then mirror-multiplied ten thousandfold … in fact, there seems to be more me than ever! Tickled and driven by electric currents. Vibrating in a dozen dimensions and sensitive to countless things I never before noticed before — like a myriad flakes of crystalline mica, floating like glittery diatoms within the surrounding ocean of stone.

It is an ocean, of magma that flowed here ages ago. The mountains are waves. I feel this one still moving, slower now, having cooled and congealed. But everywhere, still in motion.

I can even start to stretch my perceptions beyond this mountain, reaching out toward polyspectral sparkles that seem to glimmer in the distance, just beyond clear reckoning, like tendrils of delicate smoke … or like fireflies that tremble at my touch …

Metaphors fail me. Am I sensing other people? Other souls beyond this underground lab?

It’s an austere, terrifying sensation. A reminder of something we all suppress most of the time, because it hurts so much.

The stark loneliness of individuality.

The essential alienness of others.

And of the universe itself.

“The real driver is pleasure,” ditYosil continues while nudging instrument settings toward perfect synchronization. “Take the entertainment industry back in one-body days. People wanted to watch what they wanted, when they wanted. Demand brought analog videotape into being, three decades before digital technology was ready to do the job right. A ridiculous, kludge solution using magnetic heads and noisy whirling parts, yet VCRs sold by the millions so that people could copy and play whatever they desired.

“Doesn’t that sound like dittoing in our time, Morris? A clumsy, ornate industry that ships hundreds of millions of intricate clay-analog devices all over the world, every day. The complexity! The resources and cash flow! Yet people pay, gladly, because it lets them be wherever they want, whenever they desire.

“A fabulous, flamboyant industry, and my good friend Aeneas Kaolin counts on it going on forever.

“But it will end soon, won’t it, Morris? Because the crucial breakthroughs are ready at last. Like digital finally overwhelming analog recording. Like jet planes outracing the horse. After we’re done tonight, things will never be the same.”

The pendulum sways, rhythmically cutting through my/our amplified Standing Wave, plucking complex harmonies with every sweep. Soon, ditYosil will climb aboard and his ghastly personality will start drawing all the stored-up power, taming it, preparing to ride the glazier beam toward deification.

If only that were all that lay at stake, I’d almost be happy to help. I’m expendable — a golem knows it. And much as I dislike Maharal’s ghost for its callous smugness, the scientific wonder of this experiment might make my sacrifice seem almost reasonable. At one level I know he’s right. Humanity has been marking time, mired in an orgy of self-involvement, squandering vast resources on teeny personal satisfactions that don’t add up to much at all.

There’s something much bigger awaiting us. I can tell, sensing it now with growing certainty as the glazier amplification mounts. Maharal — no matter how twisted by sickness — had the vision to know this. And the brilliance to hunt down a hidden door.