In the same split instant he reached out and parted Joan, running her cognition on two separate tracks. In each they were fully engaged, but at fractional speed. He could live two lives!

The plane split.

They split.

Time split.

He stood wigless, bedraggled, his satin vest bloodstained, his velvet breeches soaked.

“Forgive me, chere madam, for appearing before you in this disheveled state. I intend no disrespect to either of us.” He looked around, nervously licked his lips. “I am…unskilled. Machinery was never my forte.”

Joan felt moved to tenderness by the gap between his appearance and his courtliness. Compassion, she thought, is most important in this Purgatory, for who knows which shall be selected?

She was quite sure she would fare better than this infuriating yet appealing man.

Yet even he might be saved. He was, unlike the objects she continued to ignore on the plain about them, a Frenchman.

“My love of pleasure and the pleasure, of loving you, cannot make up for what I endured in the Truth Chamber on the rack of my pain.”

He paused, dabbed at his eyes with a soiled linen cloth.

Joan curled a lip in distaste. Where was his beautiful lace cloth? His sense of taste had occasionally made up for his views.

“A thousand little deaths in life hint at the final dissolution of even exquisite selves like mine.” Here he looked up. “And yours, madam, and yours.”

The flames,she thought. But now the images did not strike profoundly into her. Instead, her inner vision felt cool, serene. Her “Self-programming”-which she thought of as a species of prayer-had worked wonders.

“I cannot surrender to the rule of the senses, sir.”

“We must decide. I cannot find the spaces to, ah, ‘run background’ for both philosophy and sensuality. I cannot fold myself into the solipsism-” his hand swept in the creatures on the Euclidean plane “-of these. You too, madam, must now decide whether the taste of a grape means more to you than joining me in this-this-”

“Poor sir,” Joan said. “-in this sterile but timeless world.” He looked up, paused for effect. “I’ll not join you in yours.”

A great sob burst from him.

His gratitude to her did not deflect him from a choice argument, especially since he had fresh evidence. “You believe in that ineffable essence, the soul?”

She smiled with pity. “Can you not?”

“Tell me, then, do these tortured geometries possess souls?” His arm made a grand sweep, taking in the self-involved figures.

She frowned. “They must.”

“Then they must be able to learn, yes? Otherwise, souls can live for endless time and yet not use that time to learn, to change.”

She stiffened. “I do not…”

“That which cannot change cannot grow. Such a destiny of stasis is no different from death.”

“No, death leads to heaven or hell.”

“What worse hell than an ending in a permanence incapable of any alteration, and hence, devoid of intellect?”

“Sophist! I just saved your life and you riddle me with-”

“Witness these fabricated Selves,” he interrupted, kicking a rhomboid. The thunk of his petite shoe provoked a brown stain, which then dissolved back to the original eggshell blue. “The value of a human Self lies not in some small, precious kernel, but in the vast, constructed crust.”

Joan frowned. “There must be a center.”

“No, we are dispersed, do you see? The fiction of the soul is a bad story, told to make us think we’re unable to improve ourselves.”

He kicked a pyramid that was spinning about its apex. It fell over and struggled to get back up. Joan knelt, pushed up, righted the grateful figure. “Be kind!” she barked at him.

“To a closed loop of a being? Folly! These are defeated Selves, my love. Inside, they are no doubt smugly certain of what they will do, of every possible future event. My kick was a liberation!”

She touched the pyramid, now painfully spinning itself up with a long, thin whine. “Truly? Who would want to so predict?”

Voltaire blinked. “That fellow-Hari Seldon. He is why we are making such cerebral expeditions. All this is in aid of his understanding…eventually. Odd, the connections one makes.”

She winked out of the sim-space, away from him, confused.

Somehow she had experienced two conversations at once. Hers and Voltaire’s-the two identities running simultaneously.

About her, space itself shrank, expanded, warped its contents into bizarre shapes-before lurching at last into concrete objects.

The street corner looked familiar. Still, the white plastiform tables, matching chairs, and tiktok waiters bearing trays to lounging customers-all that had disappeared. The elegant awning still hung over the sidewalk, imprinted with the name the inn’s waiter, Garcon ADM-213, had taught her how to read: Aux Deux Magots.

Voltaire was banging on the door when Joan materialized beside him. “You’re late,” he said. “I have accomplished marvels in the time that it took you to get here.” He interrupted his assault on the inn door to cup her chin and peer into her upturned face. “Are you all right?”

‘‘I, I think so.” Joan straightened her clanking suit of mail. “You nearly…lost me.”

“My experiment with splitting taught me much.”

“I…liked it. Like heaven, in a way.”

“More like being able to experience each other in a profound manner, I would venture. I discovered that, if we could deliberately seize control of our pleasure systems, we could reproduce the pleasure of success-all without the need for any actual accomplishment.”

“Heaven, then?”

“No, the opposite. That would be the end of everything.” Voltaire retied the satin ribbon at his throat with sharp, decisive jerks.

“Faith would have told you as much.”

“Alas, true.”

“You have decided to ‘run background’ for only your mind?” she asked demurely-though proud to have pried an admission for virtue from him.

“For the moment. I am running both of us with only rudimentary bodies. Yet you shall not notice it, for you shall be quite-” he lifted an eyebrow “-high-minded about matters.”

“I am relieved. One’s reputation is like one’s chastity.” Was chaste St. Catherine right? Had Voltaire ruined hers? “Once gone, it cannot be restored.”

“Thank heaven for that! You have no idea how tedious it is to make love to a virgin.” He added hastily, in response to her reproachful look, “I know of only one exception to that rule,” and gave her a courteous bow.

Joan said, “The cafe appears closed.”

“Nonsense. Paris cafes never close; they are rooms of public rest.” He resumed rapping on the door.

“By public restroom, do you mean an inn?”

Voltaire stopped knocking and eyed her. “Public restrooms are facilities in which people relieve themselves.”

Joan blushed, envisioning a row of holes dug in the ground. “But why call it a restroom?”

“As long as man is ashamed of his natural functions, he will call it anything but what it is. People fear their hidden selves, afraid that they will burst out.”

“But I can see all of myself now.”

“True. But in real folk, such as we were, subprograms others cannot see run simultaneously beneath the surface thoughts. Like your voices.”

Joan bristled. “My voices are divine! Musics of archangels and saints! “

“You appear to have occasional access to your subprograms. Many real-that is, embodied-people do not. Especially if the subprograms are unacceptable.”

“Unacceptable? To whom?”

“To us. Or rather, to our dominant program, the one we most identify with and present for show to the world.”

“Ah…” Events were moving rather too swiftly for Joan. Did this mean she needed more “time-steps”?

A huge tiktok guard opened the door, grumbling. “Aux Deux Magots?” he said in response to Voltaire. “Went outta business years ago.”