At first, I thought--

Thought. Hmp. That's funny. Thought. How can you think about thinking without thinking? Thinking is its own trap. But I wasn't thinking any more. I was just... looking. Looking to see what was happening.

It was very peaceful.... It was ...

Like--

When I was sixteen, my dad took me to a programmers' convention in Hawaii. Globall paid for it. That was Dad's rule. You could do anything you want, if you could afford it.

The first night we were in Hawaii, we were taken out to dinner by three of the members of the convention committee. We went to one of those revolving restaurants that they always have on top of the tallest hotels. I remember, one of the ladies asked me what I thought of Honolulu, and I told her, I couldn't figure out what it was-but it was different somehow. But I couldn't figure out what the difference was.

She smiled and told me to look out the window. I did. I spent a long time studying the twilit streets of Honolulu below us. The cars were the same cars. The buses were the same buses. The street signs, the streetlights, all looked the same as I was familiar with in California. Even the style of architecture was familiar. It could have been a suburb of Oakland or the San Fernando Valley.

"I'm sorry," I told her, "I can't tell what it is."

"No billboards," she said.

I turned back to the window and looked again. She was right. There was no outdoor advertising of any kind.

She told me that there was a state law prohibiting signs larger than a certain size. She said that was one of the reasons Hawaii always seemed so quiet to tourists. You walk down a city street anywhere else in the world and you're bombarded with advertising, so you learn to "tune it out." All that advertising is like a steady chattering noise in your ears. In order to function, we have to make ourselves deliberately blind and deaf to that part of our environment. The advertisers know that we do this, so they increase the size, the color, the intensity and the repetitions of their ads. They give us more, better, and different ads. And we tune them out even harder.

But... when we get to a place where that channel of mind-noise is missing, the silence is suddenly deafening. She told me that most people don't even notice that the signs are there, but they notice that something is wrong when they're not. Like you did, she said, they experience it as quietude.

"I like it," I said. The herd is quietude.

Until you've experienced quiet, you can't know how loud the noise is. It's all the mind-noise in the world that keeps us crazy. All that constant mind-chatter is so distracting that it keeps us from seeing the sky, the stars, and the souls of our lovers. It keeps us from touching the face of God.

In the herd, you detach from all that noise-it floats apart from you-and all that's left is a joyous feeling of emptiness and light. It's so peaceful.

I think that's why people go to the herd. For the peace. That's why I did. That's why I want to go back.

I REMEMBER the screaming.

All that screaming. Everyone. And running too. I remember the running. All of us. Why? Melted canyons. Broken pavements. Scattering. Gunshots, Sirens. Roaring sounds. Purple sounds.

I remember hiding.

I remember a dirty place, bad smelling. Brackish water, gathered in pools. I remember hunger. Wandering. Searching. Looking for the herd again.

I remember someone screaming at me. Making loud sounds in my ear. Slapping my face. Hurts! Piled-on hurts! Don't slap me! I remember crying--

And slaps-more slaps--

Until finally, I screamed- "Goddammit! Stop that!"

"Oh, thank God! He's coming back."

I remember

"Jim! Look at me!" Someone grabbed my chin, tilted my face up. A--female. Dark hair. Grim face.

"Jim! Say my name!"

"Wha-? Wha-?" Make sounds. Drown out meaning. "Wah-?"

Slap! Tears in my eyes.

"Wah-?" I try again.

"Wah-?" Another slap!

I remember screaming.

She holds my face and screams right back at me.

If I can only find the right scream-I had it once- "Goddammit, Fletcher! Stop it already! You're hurting me!"

"Who am I?"

"You're--Fletcher! Now leave me alone!" I want to climb back under and pull the covers over my head again.

"And who are you-?"

"Uh-"

"Come on, James! Who are you?"

"I-I... name?"

"Come on, you're doing fine! Who are you?"

"I was ... Jame-"

"Who?"

"Jame-no, James. Edward."

"James Edward who ... ?"

"Who?"

"That's right. Who?"

"Who? Who?" It's soft and warm down here. "Hoo? Hoo. Hooo-"

Slap! My face rings, stings-

"Who are you?"

"James Edward McCarthy, Lieutenant United States Army, Special Forces Warrant Agency, on special assignment! Sir!" Maybe that will satisfy her. Maybe now she'll leave me alone.

"Good! Come on back, Jim. Keep coming back!"

"No, goddammit! I don't want to come back! I want to finish my dream!"

"It's over, Jim! You're awake! You can't go back to sleep!"

"Why-?"

"Because it's Saturday."

"Saturday?!! You were supposed to pick me up on Thursday."

"We couldn't find you!"

"But the collar-?" I looked at her. Confused.

"Yes, the collar. Where is it, Jim? Do you remember?"

I reach for my neck. The collar is gone. I'm naked. Shivering. Cold. "Um-" More confused now.

Fletcher is wrapping a blanket around me. I'm starting to fade again. I have to say something, quickly. "I-uh-how did ... you find me?"

"We've been watching the herd. We've been hoping you'd find your way back. Luckily, you did."

"Find ... my way back?"

"Some yahoos from down the coast came in looking for some cheap and dirty sex. They ended up stampeding the whole herd. We've had deaths and injuries. It's the worst. Are you following this?"

"Yes!" I say quickly.

She lowers her hand. Lowered her hand. My time sense is-was-coming back.

Somebody put a mug in my hand. It was hot. I drank automatically. Bitter. Coffee? No. I made a face. "What is this shit?"

"It's ersatz."

"Ersatz what?"

"Ersatz shit. We couldn't afford the real stuff."

"This is offal," I said. And grinned suddenly, "Hey-I'm alive again. I made a pun. This is offal. Get it? O-F-F-A-L?"

Somebody behind me groaned. Fletcher grinned. She said, "I never thought I'd be happy to hear someone make a pun that bad. It's a good sign. You're coming back into the language again."

I looked into Fletcher's eyes. As if I'd never seen her before. They were bright and deep. I spoke directly to her. I said, "Fletch. I understand what's going on here. I don't know if you can understand it without experiencing it, but I know what it is now because I've been through it. It's terrifying-and it's wonderful-and I want to go back-and I want you to keep me from going back. It-" I pointed at the milling bodies behind us. "That-could be the end of the human race. That could get out of control. Very easily. It's got to be broken up, Fletcher. I don't know how, but it's got to be broken up."

"What is it? Can you explain it?"

I took a breath, I looked at the herd, then looked back to Fletcher. "No. I can't. I can make some guesses. I can describe what happened to me. But-any explanation would only be a tiny slice of the truth, not even a cross section of it. But-somehow, when you're in the herd, you know that words don't have any meaning any more. They're just sounds. All the meaning falls away. It gets detached. You can find the meanings if you have to, but-no-" I shook my head and waved my hand as if to erase everything I'd said. I took another drink of the terrible ersatz. "That's not right either."

I looked back up into her eyes. She was beautiful. I could mate with her. Now why did that thought come up? "It's-it's a kind of primal humanity, out there. Listen-there's a ... space that's been created and defined over there. And in that space, you stop being a human being like we know human beings and start being a human being like they know human beings. Over there, the apes have the agreement.