Did it work?

I wondered after throwing my former leg at the launcher ramp. Then, for about a minute, I felt exultant as the machine halted, groaning and complaining.

FIRING SEQUENCE INTERRUPTED, the small display blared.

Only my triumph was short-lived. For that message was followed by a second that I liked much less.

REPAIRS INITIATED, said the screen as half a dozen maintenance dronelets deployed from recesses in the machinery. Scurrying like worker ants toward the source of the problem, they started tugging and pulling at my bygone ceramic limb. Two of them ignited small cutting torches.

Meanwhile, the first missile hummed in its place at the bottom of the ramp. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it seemed impatient.

Although it was harder to move than ever, I tried using my one arm to drag myself closer. Maybe I could distract the drones by shouting or bluffing a voice of command …

… but only a hoarse croak emerged. Well, after all, I was a wreck.

Helpless to do anything but watch, I wondered about this germ warfare attack — why would Beta want to do such a thing? Yes, a deadly act of terrorism might distract the authorities for a while, making them too busy to pursue a notorious ditnapper and copyright thief. They might even forget all about the prion attack on Universal Kilns …

Still, it made no sense! Only a stupid crook bets everything on the cops remaining ignorant forever. There are too many ways to leave inadvertent clues in the modern era, no matter how careful you are. Anyway, this didn’t sound like Beta.

Maybe it isn’t, I thought. A ditective should always be ready to revise or discard his working theory.

Well? If the pilot of that Harley wasn’t Beta, who else then?

Someone eager to follow Ritu Maharal and discover the whereabouts of her father’s cabin.

Someone who found it suspiciously easy to track down the Volvo, out there in the desert.

Someone who must have studied Beta well, in order to mimic my arch foe’s mannerisms, and who knew all about what happened at Queen Irene’s.

Someone who quickly found out about the meeting that Palloid and I arranged in dittotown with Pal and Lum and Gadarene … someone who showed up surprisingly well prepared.

There seemed only one reasonable explanation for how “Beta” and I escaped from the Waxer attack on Pal’s safehouse apartment. We were meant to get away. It was all arranged in advance, hence the convenient manner that he reappeared, with an air scooter, in the nick of time. That had already been clear to me, only now -

I blinked (though one eyelid was already coming off), feeling close, very close to the answer.

In fact -

I sagged. Did any of it matter now? When those missiles fired, people in the city — maybe the whole world — would care little about the details. Only raw survival.

And it wouldn’t be long now.

REPAIRS 80% COMPLETE, the display read.

Ah, well.

Lying there, I knew it was way past my rendezvous to check out — to stop fighting the insistent call of the slurry bin. Dissolution would come as a relief.

Time to become an untidy stain on the floor.

I made ready to let go …

Then held back as amber words, high above, turned into flashing red.

HARDWARE failure at command source

The missile launcher’s display monitor seemed resentful somehow, as it continued reporting.

UNABLE to confirm reestablishment

OF launch code certificates

REMINDER: protocols demand repeated high-level

VERIFICATION for weapon targeting

OUTSIDE of a publicly sanctioned battlefield zone

RETRY or query alternate server?

Snippy machine. Yet I approved wholeheartedly as the thing began shutting down. Crimson-tipped rockets reengaged their safeties, rolling back into their storage magazine, and I wondered, Does this mean it’s over?

Not quite. The repair drones were still hard at work, carving up my erstwhile leg and disposing of the bits. Moreover, the remote link could be restored, setting all firing codes and proceeding with the countdown, at any minute.

There’d be no way for me to stop it next time.

Oh yes there will be.

Huh?

I thought my imaginary Nag had vanished.

Are you back, then?

Then? Now?

Present and past do not matter.

What counts is that you get moving again.

Moving? Where? And more important … how?

There seemed no point in protesting, though. Anyway, I knew the answer already. I just didn’t like it.

Back.

Back down those awful stone stairs. Only legless now, dragged along by just the one weary arm, with a little gravity assist.

Back to the one place where I still might do some good. As if I had a snowball’s chance in hell of making it.

Well, at least there’d be some illumination this time, trickling from the open window of this narrow room. The light of yet another day I never expected to see.

That’s it.

Look at the bright side.

Now I suggest you move.

If only I could have strangled my badgering scold. But that would take two hands … plus a physical neck to wrap them around.

So I did the next best thing. I moved.

Less than four minutes had passed since Ritu and Beta and realAlbert entered the underground lab to stare down at a soulistic circus — complete with swinging trapeze act, frantic magician-impresario, and a pair of garish clowns pinned to targets at either end. And in between? A growing tangibility distortion made space seem to ripple and flow, like some caged power, pacing and preparing to burst free.

During those few minutes, a battle raged over which personality would imprint the new godwave.

Who would gain ultimate control over the vast, fallow soulscape? The genius who pioneered the way? Or one whose raw talent seemed made for the job?

The combatants never considered a third possibility — that the new frontier may not be as barren as they thought.

Somebody might already be there.

Like most of the audible meaning-squawks that are used by organic men, “already” comes laden with implications. Take past and present tense, for example — narrative deceits that help perpetuate a myth of linear time.

Not for you, though. You who were/was/am/are/will be Albert. Your story is complex, looped, and fractally nested. It calls for a style that’s flexible, confident, predictive.

So here, let me tell you what I foresee.

Before doing anything else, you will relinquish fear.

There. Wasn’t that easy?

Fear is marvelously useful to biological beings. You won’t miss it.

Next, you will realize that your life — such as it was — has come to an end.

Surely you didn’t expect to survive all these experiences unscathed? No anchored mind can gaze upon the soulscape and remain unchanged.

Forget those symptoms that you once thought to be caused by plague — by some war virus. Soon you’ll realize there is nothing physically wrong with the clever animal that carried you around so faithfully, for so long. The sensations you mistook for illness will be recognized as natural separation pangs.

The body will live. Its embedded instincts won’t even complain very hard when you move on.

Anyway, we have chores to do! Such as learning about the nature of time.