As journeys go, this one was even worse than that miserable slog along the river bottom, back on Monday night. I didn’t so much crawl downstairs as tumble most of the way.

What else could I do, with just an arm, a battered head, and a torso that kept dropping off bits with each bump or hard landing? I had no sense of smell, of course. (I could barely even remember the concept.) But oily vapors oozing off this body were easy to see. One reason for haste was to stay ahead of those fumes, which tend to accelerate final decay — it’s why dissolution usually happens all at once, swiftly and mercifully.

No such luck for me. Too obdurate to give up, I guess. How strange that frankie mutation made me more like Albert than even he was!

Finally, and rather to my surprise, I ran out of stairs, arriving at the same landing where I chose the least traveled of three forks in the road. Was that half an hour ago? I didn’t regret the decision to climb those dark steps. Stopping the missile launcher, even temporarily, was the greatest achievement of my bargain-basement life. Only now I faced another trio of options.

Back to the cave entrance and the vacation cabin, where maybe a working telephone might be found amid the debris?

Forward, toward Maharal’s inner sanctum? That’s where the pilot of the Harley scooter went — though now I doubted that he was ever Beta, after all. No doubt big happenings were going on, down that way.

But those two alternatives were out. I’d never make it more than a few meters. My sole choice lay across the corridor, in a niche containing that all-in-one home copier machine, warm and ready with its hopper full of fresh blanks. What I was about to try went against custom. You can even get fined if you’re caught, though everybody tries it once or twice. In my state, I’ll probably make a slobbering monster.

Still, the poor thing won’t have to remember much. Step out of the kiln, run upstairs, and smash the launcher beyond repair. Easy!

All of which was moot until I reached the padded spot where an original must lay his head. Staring up, I wondered — How the hell do I do that?

My enzyme clock was ticking out, the missile codes might be restored at any moment … and now I had another reason to hurry. Through my battered abdomen I picked up vibrations, rhythmic and growing more forceful by the second.

Motors and wheels, I thought, recognizing some.

Other thuddings reminded me of running feet.

Next you’ll discover the soulscape is far larger than you imagined.

And yes, inhabited.

Did you arrogantly expect that the entire universe was waiting upon man to arrive?

Well, in a sense, that’s true. Our cosmos is but one of trillions spun off by a single fertile singularity, whose daughter black holes spawned countless more baby universes, each of them exploding and inflating and cooling into billions of galaxies, which in turn made their own black holes and more singularity-spawned universes, and so on … Among all those experiments, intelligence surely occurred, though far less commonly than you imagined.

Even scarcer still are creatures made of earthly flesh who look up at the stars and covet them across huge gulfs of empty space.

Most exceptional of all are those who find another way, bypassing cold vacuum, uncovering shortcuts to far richer fields. Exceptional almost to the point of uniqueness. Hence the vast emptiness of what Maharal dramatically called the “spiritual plane.” A deeper continuum, made of stuff more basic than energy and matter. A frontier he meant to stride upon like a god, using all that raw material to cast paradise in his image.

Oh, you are rarities, you hot-souled humans. So flawed. Wondrously bright. It’s a privilege to watch as you begin to waken. As you start to choose.

Have you begun to suspect who and what I am?

This voice that you mistook for a guide … you’ll soon notice that “I” never give commands, or even suggest very much. For the most part I only foresee, comment, and predict.

No, I’m not your Virgil. No mentor or font of wisdom. I’m your echo, you-who-were-Albert-and-more. A way to remember things that you haven’t yet learned. One of many conveniences you’ll soon grow accustomed to, where paradox is a normal fact of life.

Back in the ortho-moment — still moving forward in jerks and sudden stops — events will soon be coming to a head. Just three more swings of Yosil’s pendulum while the glazier stores energy, preparing to burst forth whether or not a human imprint gives it personality. Whether or not a city full of dying souls awaits to feed it, in an orgy of necrophagia.

What, you still care about that? Very well then, let me predict that you will go back again to nudge events a little more. Go ahead.

You will find the green Albert who calls himself a “frankie” … what’s left of him … less than an hour before the ortho-moment. Yes, right over there. Moments after his arm was snapped off by the closing scooter-canopy, sending him plunging through the roof of Yosil’s cabin into a debris-strewn living room.

He might use a little encouragement at that point. What approach will you use?

Will you scold him for lying there in the dust, watching the Harley fly away, feeling defeated and ready to expire?

Well, then, try imitating my vatic tone, then listen as the green reacts!

Except that Clara will never get to hear the whole story … and now the bad guys will win.

Aw, man. Whatever nagging inner voice had to put in that last bit? What guilt-tripping nag? If I could, I’d tear it out! Just shut up and let me die.

You gonna just lie there and let ’em get away with it?

Crap. I didn’t have to take this from some obsessive soul corner of a cheap-model golem who was misborn a frankie … became a ghost … and was about to graduate to melting corpse.

Who’s a corpse? Speak for yourself.

Stunning wit, that triple irony. And though I tried hard to ignore the little voice … my right hand and arm moved, lifting slowly till five trembling fingers came within sight … Then my left leg twitched … Reacting to imprinted habits a million years old, they started cooperating …

Oh well. Might as well help.

The bedraggled greenie moves! And just to be sure, you’ll nag him again during that long drag through the grotto, then climbing the dark stairs, and so on.

Just don’t exaggerate the importance of your badgering — or the reification triggered by your presence as an observer. These things matter far less than physical action in the “real” world of cause-and-effect. The green might have made it entirely without your/my/our interference!

No matter. You will do this and it will aggravate him. It may help save a million lives, and divert the Standing Wave toward a different destiny. So by all means go ahead.

Now perhaps you will also go back a few hours, to a moment in Pal’s apartment, whispering for the green to turn his head and listen at a crucial moment. Perhaps … oh, of course you will.

You always meddle at the beginning. It is part of learning. Becoming.

Back in the ortho-moment — another pendulum swing has passed, like the ticking of a titanic clock. Surprising resonances perturb the amplified Standing Wave, raising concern in the two stalemated combatants. Probability amplitudes are collapsing like quantum dominoes all around.