This story contains sexually explicit material.
Please e-mail comments to twalden4 at juno dot com with ASSTR in the subject line.
Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.
The photo from the Dove Real Bodies ad campagne is probably copyright by somebody. I don't know what rights are restricted. I hope they don't mind my using it.
I don't know who the anime character is.

Technical note: A gasp is a rapid intake of breath. In this story, it also means a rapid expelling of breath, since it is close to the sound I mean. Sigh, grunt, groan, pant, and scream don't work.

Lost Eliot

When I was eight I noticed I could hear voices. I had first heard something after we moved when I was three. The bricks in the wall next to my bed sounded funny, they echoed. If I listened, I could hear a noise that sounded white and seemed to be whispering. At the time I thought everyone could hear these things. When I discovered they couldn't, I thought I was making them up because that's what my mother told me. I found it was better if I didn't mention them to anyone. Some of the sounds were of machines and women talking. Some were words that sounded different from the ones I learned from my parents. When they first heard me trying to say Chinese words, they thought I had picked them up on the street and switched me to a Chinese daycare center so I would learn to speak the language like a native, which I pretty much did. Things changed one day in school when I fell and hit my head against the wall. As I lay there before getting up, I heard voices in the bricks asking me questions. When they showed up on a test the next week, I realized something strange was going on.

The questions didn't matter to me since I always remembered all the answers from class anyway. I tried listening to the same wall again, but there was nothing there. My head still hurt and I wasn't going to hit it again. I tried tapping on the wall, and after a few seconds started to hear echoes. They were normal classroom sounds, except from another time. I wanted to hear more test questions, and then did. Some were about things we hadn't gotten to yet, others were old. I wanted questions on the next test. And then I heard them. I could hear what I wanted to hear. I didn't have to know when it was said, just what it was. I told some of the others what they should study, and everyone's grades started going up. I had always been careful not to get too many answers right, and now I was careful not to make my suggestions too accurate. Which was not too much of problem, because some the questions I heard ahead of time were different from the ones actually asked.

The apartment house we were living in was an old brick building on the edge of Chinatown. I had been ignoring the sounds coming out of the bricks for years, but after what happened at school I started listening more closely again. I found that tapping the bricks made the sounds a lot more distinct. Some of the echoes were voices of Chinese people who had lived here. I could now understand what they were saying and follow their lives through days and months and years. It was fascinating. The woman cared for several children, and her husband worked for a cotton trader. But I didn't understand. The building had been a mill before it became apartments. When I wondered what had happened, I heard workmen tearing down her building, cleaning the bricks, and using them to build part of the factory that had taken its place.

Other voices were of workers talking in the mill. There were sounds of the belts and mixers, of the foreman giving orders, of the factory whistle, of the traffic in the street outside. I followed the lives of the women who worked at the machines that had stood near what was now my bedroom wall. I found that if I closed my eyes and let myself go, I could smell the oil and hot metal of their machines, taste the flour dust they were breathing in, feel the wide wooden boards of the floor vibrate as people pushed carts over them, and see what was happening in the dusty sunlight coming in through the large windows. It was like listening to a hologram, or one of those pictures that looks like just random dots until suddenly it shifts, and you see a confetti colored teapot. The lives of these different people were as vivid as anything I heard in the present and seemed pretty much the same. Electrics lights, telephones and flush toilets don't make as much difference as people think they do. What did make a difference was washing machines.

When I was ten we moved to Germany. I heard voices there too. My parents put my older brother and me into a German school instead of the school the other kids in the American community went to, so we would learn the language. My brother was thinner, blonder and smarter than I was, and had blue eyes, but he wasn't as good at languages and had to struggle for longer than me. He didn't like that, and used to sit on top of me and twist my ears and nose. It hurt. He was also bigger and stronger than I was. My mother never believed me when I told her, she said why would he do that, and my father never talked to me except to say you're cruising for a bruising or pow, right up to the moon. He was an engineer and seemed to resent his family taking him away from his work. I lived in fear of being left alone with my brother, which I frequently was. My parents paid him to take care of me when they went out. He had been taking karate lessons before, so my mother found another school for him, but I wanted to learn tai chi. I had seen Chinese people in the early morning practicing it in the park, here and where we lived before, and it appealed to me. I found which teacher I wanted to study with, and my mother signed me up.

Most of the Americans here were in the military. At a show put on at the base, I heard a man from North Carolina play the banjo as part of a bluegrass band. The ringing sounds the strings made sounded to me like the voices I heard echoing through time. I told him at the reception afterward that I was impressed by his playing. I asked if he gave lessons? He said no, but he would if I wanted to learn, and if I could find my own banjo. There weren't a lot of banjos for sale in Germany, but eventually I found a second hand one, seemingly by accident, and started my lessons. It was harder than it looked. I stuck with it for the whole time we lived there and did manage to make some progress.

When I was fifteen we moved to northern Japan. The only banjo teachers I had here were my CDs of Earl Scruggs and Bela Fleck. However, the Japanese shamisen is somewhat similar. It has three strings and a skin covered body that is sort of square. I decided to take lessons and see if I could apply what I learned to the banjo. That worked out differently than I hoped. While the techniques didn't cross over, I did learn a great deal about music from the different genres of shamisen. The other thing I wanted to study in Japan was judo. There were tai chi teachers available, but I had reached a plateau and needed to practice it on my own for a while. Judo was interactive. The outcome of a match depended on what two people did together. I also wanted to learn to protect myself. My parents wanted to put my brother and me into a Japanese school so we would learn the language, but my brother refused. We ended up going to different schools, and a year later he left for college. My father took the train everyday to Tokyo. It was a very long commute, and after a few months he started spending three or four nights a week in the city.

My tai chi instructors had talked about Taoism, my judo instructors talked about Zen. Zen training emphasized discipline, and Taoism went on about freedom. In practice they came down to the same thing. The masters do what they like, and the students do what they're told. Zen takes a peaceful religion and adapts it perfectly to the military. Taoist classics talk about the art of war. I took what I needed and left the rest. I had a head start over the others in the beginner class with my tai chi training, but there is a big difference between finding one's own balance and breaking someone else's. There was a girl in my class who acted as an assistant instructor. She was from Okinawa, and the others didn't seem to consider her a real Japanese. The boys were all bare chested under the jacket and belt of their gi, but she wore a black silk scoop neck leotard under hers. I got excited every time she lifted me onto her hip or threw me over her shoulder. She seemed amused at all the questions I kept asking her about the different throws, sweeps, holds and locks. I'm sure I made a perfect fool of myself. Her English wasn't very good but was better than my Japanese at that point. After several months she finally asked if I was ever going to ask her out. So I did.

We went to a movie that a few years earlier would have been considered racy. I put my arm around her, and during a tense moment she started playing with my knee. During the sex scene she turned her head and looked at me expectantly, so I kissed her. I felt her wet lips slide over mine. Her tongue came out and caressed my upper lip. Mine slid out and flirted with hers. She sucked my lower lip into her mouth and bit it gently. After what seemed like a few seconds but was probably close to a minute she broke off and turned back to the movie. She patted my thigh, then moved her hand back to my knee. I took that as a promise of more to come. We watched the two lovers on the screen orgasm. I could feel that my underwear was already wet, and a musky aroma, different from mine, told me hers was too.

Neither of us had a car, but one good thing about living in a small town is that you don't have to go very far to find some privacy. We found a place under some trees by the river that was behind some brush, and where the only people likely to come by would be those who had the same idea we did. We sat and looked at the water. I put my arm around her and kissed her. I felt her grip on my knee tighten. I put my hand on her stomach. I felt her breathing and the rapid pulse of her heartbeat. I inched upward toward her breast. She sighed when I got there. I stroked it and fumbled around trying to find the nipple. She gasped when I rolled it between my thumb and forefinger and squeezed it. She mumbled harder through our locked lips. I squeezed harder. She said mmm and moved her hand up my inner thigh. She traced the outline of my balls and penis. It was caught in my pants and couldn't straighten. I wasn't about to stop and adjust my clothing. Realizing the problem, she reached her hand under my belt and inside my pants and underwear to fix it. Her fingers came out wet. She licked them off, put her arm back around me, and continued feeling me through my pants with her other hand. She apparently wanted to do things in the proper order.

That was okay with me, but I knew we didn't have a lot of time. I was inexperienced and uncertain what to do next. I paused and listened for the branching echoes of time. I saw that she had already decided what she wanted, and there wasn't a lot I could do to mess it up, although a couple of the things I had been considering would have. I also saw how incredibly patient she was being with me and what she wanted most. I reached down and unbuckled her belt, unbuttoned her pants and pulled down her fly. I pulled up her shirt, and she put her hands over her head. She'd purposely worn a shirt with a low enough neck that it didn't catch on her chin or nose when I pulled up and off. I wasn't the only one who looked at possibilities. She took off her shoes and socks, then stood up and slid her pants off. I made a point of admiring her underwear and saying how pretty it was. She was so pleased she glowed. I think it was the high point of her evening.

She reached behind her back and took off her bra. Her breasts popped out. I put my thumbs over the edge of her panties and slowly pulled them down, staring at her thick and completely natural bush in the dim light. She stepped out of them and waited while I got undressed. I got out a condom, and she took it from me and unrolled it over my penis. We lay down carefully on the leaves and uneven ground, and she spread her legs. I hesitated, then put two fingers over her crotch while I kissed her again. I spread her nether lips and slipped one finger inside. She was very wet. I stroked her vagina and then came out and found her clitoris. She gasped. I rubbed it slowly, and then faster in time with her breathing. She thrust her hips against my fingers, and gasped and clutched at me as she came. I moved on top of her and guided my penis into her. I felt her chest heaving in my arms as she tried to recover her breath. I stroked her vagina and kissed the side of her neck. We moved together slowly, and then faster, and faster, until she exploded one more time, and we kept thrusting and thrusting against each other until I felt the cum moving up from my balls and splashing inside of her.

We continued seeing each other. I don't think there was a limit to the number of orgasms she could have in sequence. Her parents knew about and accepted our relationship, but we didn't tell anyone at the dojo. If anyone there noticed, they didn't say anything. The Japanese are nothing if not discreet. My Japanese and her English improved. I had learned to use the voices to find the meanings of words by searching for when I would hear them again in the future, after I understood them. It helped some, although it only seemed to work for words I had already been exposed to. One thing that I was surprised to learn was that, under her gi in back, she kept a loop of shoelace tied around the straps of her silk leotard to keep them from sliding off her shoulders.

Later I asked her if she wanted to get married. She said she loved me but her parents would only let her marry someone who was Japanese, and preferably Okinawan. They had a nice boy all picked out. I asked didn't she get any say? She said not much. He was a good person but not too bright. She said that was okay, she liked them dumb, and looked at me innocently. It took me a couple minutes to work out the implications of that, which I guess proved her point. She said her parents wouldn't mind if I got her pregnant, as long as it didn't show until after she was married, but she didn't think it was a good idea. Half Caucasian babies were considered beautiful. I asked what would her husband think of that? She said he wouldn't care who the real father was if she gave him a son, and it wouldn't matter if it was a girl. She changed her mind later but wouldn't tell me if our attempt had been successful. The pathways of time said it had, and that she would have a daughter she would be proud of, but I couldn't tell her that.

I decided to go to the University of Alaska when I was eighteen to get away from the voices. The area was isolated, underpopulated, and didn't have a history nearly as long as that of Asia or Europe. It didn't work. Anchorage is a big city and is old enough that I heard just as many voices as elsewhere, there just weren't as many that got drowned out. I wanted to major in math and literature, but after a semester learned that the professors weren't interested in my ideas about books, only their own and those of other academics. I switched to math and history. I already knew calculus and linear algebra, so I could skip the first year math courses. In the evenings I worked at the snack bar in the student union. I started out bussing tables and cleaning up, then serving, and then cooking. It wasn't hard, they served mostly pizza, burgers and ice cream. At the end of the second year, a friend asked if I wanted to go to Maui in july and stay with his family. He said he could get me a job. I accepted.

I worked with my friend at the Kihei Bakery waiting tables and making sandwiches and plate lunches, which were two scoops rice, one scoop macaroni and potato salad, and either chicken katsu, kalua pork, teriyaki beef or mahimahi. The place only had a few tables and was on the main street near a beach of white sand, lava rocks, rolling Pacific waves, brown local kids, and either white or sunburnt tourists. A lot of orders were takeout. When it was slow in the afternoon I would ask the baker to teach me what he did. All I had made previously were pizza and breadsticks. He didn't mind. He showed me what he could but said if I really wanted to learn, I should come in early and help out. So I did. I learned about mixing, kneading, baking and timing. It reminded me of lying awake at night when I was young and hearing the women who used to work in the flour mill.

In early august I flew to Seattle, Washington. I hadn't been in the lower forty eight states since my family had left when I was three, and I wanted to see them before I went back to college. I still needed a job, so the morning after I arrived I went out on the sidewalk and listened. It was after rush hour and not too crowded. I knew I would find something. Restaurants always need people who are willing to work cheap. I slowed my breathing and listen for the branching pathways of time. I found myself walking, and in a few blocks was in an area of downtown restaurants. Several of them could have used me but none of them needed me. I kept going. I entered an old arcade building that had places to eat. Same thing. I went back outside and continued walking. I found I was heading south, away from the city center, and stopped. I listened. Directly ahead there was nothing different, but I did have a direction. I could feel it now. I waited for it to become clearer. There was a place that needed me, but it was farther south. I went back to the hotel to retrieve my backpack and suitcase, then headed for the bus station. The one I wanted turned out to be headed for Olympia.

It was afternoon when I got there. I left the bus station and found my way to a place called The Cloud Forest. Since it was the slow part of the day I walked in, said I was an experienced waiter, short order cook, and baker's assistant. Did they need anyone? The manager came out to speak to me. We sat at a table, and I told him what I had done. He said their baker had had her baby a month early, and the temporary replacement they had arranged wasn't available yet. Her assistant was filling in but desperately needed someone who knew what he was doing to help out. When could I start? I said as soon as I found a place to spend the night. He said done and sent someone to the bus station to get my bags. In five minutes I was up to my elbows in flour.

I slept on the sofa in the manager's apartment for three nights before I found someone who needed a roommate for a month. During the day I made bread, rolls, cookies and brownies as directed by the real assistant baker and learned about the more complicated pastries when I helped him make them. There was indirect lighting in the dining area, and the walls were painted with wet spruce and hemlock trees that disappeared into the fog. There were different kinds of mushrooms, four crows on branches, two large pileated woodpeckers, three dark gray juncos on the ground, and a tree frog. The ceiling was painted with overhead branches of the nearer trees and of trees that would have had to have been growing in the middle of the floor, but weren't. There was blank gray sky above, and sounds of water dripping mixed into the ambient music, along with the chirping and croaking of frogs. There were three deep green moss gardens under what looked like cheese domes. In keeping with the sustainable ecology theme, the restaurant had an international vegetarian menu. Some of the popular items were fresh fruit salad, stone soup, mushroom omelets, vegetable fried rice, bean tacos and enchiladas, falafel sandwiches, and carrot cake.

Shortly before I was supposed to leave for school, I heard from the owner of the bakery on Maui that his wife's brother would need a new baker and was willing to train me. If I wanted to start in a few months there would be a job for me in Las Vegas. This was an interesting offer. I wasn't sure I wanted to go back to school. I already had half of the upper division history courses I needed and all the math courses. I was caught up on science and behind on distribution requirements. I might or might not be able to get my degree in one more year, but there wasn't anything else I wanted to learn there. Americans have strange ideas about other people's history and even stranger ideas about their own. I didn't see how they would be of any use to me. I wasn't interested in teaching, business or industry. I didn't hear any useful paths branching off in those directions. I felt I could learn more if I continued to travel. I decided to visit a few more states and then see what happened in Las Vegas.

I had been living in half a dorm room. Since I didn't have anywhere to store stuff, I had sold or given away everything that I hadn't brought with me. All I had acquired since were a few aloha shirts and a fan to cool down my room. When the replacement baker arrived and I lost my position, my boss offered me a job as a waiter. I thanked him and said that, even though I wasn't going back to Alaska, I had other things I wanted to do. I bought a small used Japanese hatchback that I saw wouldn't break down anytime soon and loaded everything into it. I had a shoebox of CDs (banjo by Scruggs, Hartford, Garcia and Fleck, piano by Scarlatti, Bach and Ives, quartets by Beethoven, Bartok, Shostakovich and Carter, trios by Mendelssohn, ragas by Ravi Shankar, some Beatles and Eric Clapton, and Spanish lessons), a CD player, laptop, box of clothes, some poetry and the Tao Te Ching, and the fan. I had made up an itinerary but had to stop in Seattle before I took off. I hadn't done much food prep, but still it was enough to learn the value of a good chef's knife. I wanted to get one before I left the city. It wasn't a samurai sword but it would do. My other stop was a pawn shop. I had sold my banjo before I left Japan. Now that I would be traveling with a car and would have some extra time, I wanted to get another. I looked at the phone listings of the pawn shops in the city and considered each of them as I listened for the branching pathways of time. Listening for a musical instrument was so easy it almost felt like cheating. One of them had what I wanted, and I went and picked it up.

At the beginning of september I took the interstate to Butte, Montana, and found a room. I got a job as part time morning cook and assistant dishwasher at Orion's Three Star Deli, plus I had to help out evenings on friday and saturday. Their menu included mushroom and barley soup, hot pastrami, ham and Swiss, turkey clubs, french fries, lemon meringue pie, and banana cream pie. I had to learn to make some new things, but it wasn't hard. After it slowed down in the morning, I tried to watch the baker and learn what I could. The dining area ceiling was painted with stars on a background of blue. Featured prominently on one side was Orion's belt, with red Betelgeuse and blue Rigel above and below. Close by were bright Sirius, the twin stars of Gemini, the horns of Taurus, and the stars of the Pleiades cluster, and toward the other side were the dipper and Polaris. In october I drove down to Idaho Falls, Idaho, and got a job as waiter, backup cook, and second bartender at The Wasteland Bar and Grill. I had never tended bar before, but it was mostly pouring beer and shots. I learned how to mix the most popular drinks such as rum and coke, seven and seven, and vodka tonic, which were all pretty simple. One time I had to serve as third assistant bouncer. It wasn't that different from working the soda fountain and serving college students, who had often been fairly wasted.

In november I headed back west. It might have made more sense to keep heading south, but I wanted to see more of the coast. By this time I had acquired a reading light, baking sheet, square cake pan, two sauce pans, and a tent and sleeping bag for camping out in the hills. In Eugene, Oregon, I worked as a dishwasher at Andy's, a Peruvian restaurant. It was what they needed. Peru has one of the world's most diverse cuisines, with influences from Spain, Africa, China, Japan, Italy, France and the UK, as well as from the native Incas. It has fifteen varieties of corn and two thousand varieties of potato. It's where they both came from. The only actual Andean dish they served was baked chili peppers stuffed with beef, onion, garlic, olives and chopped egg. From the coast there were grilled pieces of beef heart served with potatoes and corn, tamales of corn with meat or cheese that were wrapped in banana leaves, and pieces of white fish marinated in lime and chilis and served with onion, sweet potato and corn. From Lima there was lima butter bean salad with onions, tomatoes and green chilis.

In december I drove down the coast and camped under the redwood trees for three days. I had acquired a toaster, and before I left I had gotten a queen sized futon that filled most of my tent. It also took up a lot of room in the car but was a lot more comfortable than the air mattress. Now I could rent an unfurnished studio. I found one in Santa Cruz, California, and got a job as a cook at Fusion Noodles. They served what you would expect, from various parts of Asia, plus avocado and sprout sandwiches and other Zen hippy food. Their slogan was Peace Avocado Sprouts, and there were bamboo leaves painted on one wall and the ceiling. When I wasn't working I liked to go out and sit by the bay, so I could listen to the waves come in.

I got a decent small speaker system for my CD player and laptop, and a faceted glass ball so that in the mornings I could have rainbows in my room. I also got a chabudai, which is a low Japanese dining table with legs that fold up so it can be stored at night, when the room would normally be used for sleeping. The larger ones are round so they can be rolled, but mine was small and rectangular. Two cushions for seating completed my furnishings. I wanted to get a tattoo. If I was going to be a wandering Taoist priest, then I wanted something cool that indicated the fact. I thought I'd get a tortoise on the inside of one wrist and a waterfall on the other. The waterfall was divided by projecting rocks into streams that separated and merged. The first artist I went to in San Francisco refused. When I asked why, all he would say was that it was a sacred image with a special meaning. The second artist wouldn't even talk to me.

I was confused. I could go to a tattoo parlor that wasn't Chinese, but I didn't want to. I didn't hear any particular problem with this pathway. I didn't hear anything at all. I sat down on a bench and closed my eyes. I heard the sparrows looking for crumbs next to me. I considered forgetting about it. That sounded wrong. All the pathways in that direction led downhill or away from the path I had been following all my life. Had I been following a path all my life? It had never occurred to me before. When I looked back, I could see many different branchings all leading to this place. All the ones that had led in other directions ended. How could different branchings of time lead to the same place? I got out my picture of the waterfall tattoo I wanted. Obviously the pathways did separate and merge together again. I could see there was a path. I could see I had followed it correctly. I could see I was in the right place. I could see where it didn't go. I just couldn't see where it went from here. Path is a translation of Tao. Another translation that is used in a different tradition is Word. The Tao didn't have any properties, but the chief property it didn't have was Silence. You might ask how Silence can be a property of the Word? It made sense if you didn't think about it. I sat and didn't think about it for a while. It's not as hard as it sounds, it's just impossible to explain. Don't think about it.

Logic doesn't apply to the Tao. So of course the thing to do was to apply logic. If I could see the paths I shouldn't follow, then I should follow the path I couldn't see. I needed to follow the silence. It led down three blocks and around the corner. The storefront had nothing to indicate whether it was open, what it was, or if it had ever been anything. I opened the door and went in. The shop was dim and cluttered. I said hello. This released a stream of insults that indicated the speaker assumed I couldn't understand Chinese. I said hello in Cantonese. An old man came out of the back and asked what I wanted. He didn't have a long white beard, just ordinary clothes. I said I wanted to get a tattoo. He looked at me and sighed. He said I didn't know what I was getting into. I said I knew that. He said I must be stupid. I said probably. Then he reached out and turned off the silence. I fell into time.

You've seen it in movies, read descriptions of it in novels, heard it in music, and maybe even experienced it for yourself on drugs. It's not like that. Think of everything. No really, think of everything, in all three dimensions. Then add all that ever was and all that ever will be. Then add all that might have been and all that ever could be. Then add everything that's impossible. That's not it either, but six dimensions is as close as you're going to get in words. No one ever goes there and comes back sane. This would have worried me except for three things. One is that there is no sanity. It's just an overrated myth. Another is that no one ever comes back. It's where we all are all the time, we just don't usually realize it. The third is that there's no there there. Existence would be an illusion, if there were such things as illusions. The problem with asking what is the meaning of life is not that the question has no answer. It's that the question doesn't even exist, except as a collection of random sounds. Think about it, if you dare.

The old man offered me tea. He led me into the back, and after we sat down at his table to drink it, he told me other people were aware of what I could do. I asked him if he would train me in the use my ability. He said no, it was not possible. Everyone had to learn on his own. If I failed I would die. Other abilities would dissipate if abused, but this one was too dangerous. I said I had just seen that. All the other paths ended. He said there were others who would help when they could. Going to the tattoo parlor and coming here had been the right things to do. Now that I had seen what I needed to about time and found out that I was not alone, I could go back and get the tattoo I wanted. He would phone the man and tell him it was okay. I would have to insist that he accept payment. Which I did.

At the beginning of january I drove out to Las Vegas, Nevada. The experience of Southern California would have to wait for another time. When I arrived at the place where I was supposed to work, I could see that it wasn't going to work out. The owner raised and fought roosters. It was no more legal to fight them here than it had been on Maui, although the law there was seldom enforced because it was perfectly legal to raise them. Many upcountry houses had a yard full of roosters chained up so they couldn't get at each other. I found a job at a tiki bar and Cantonese restaurant called Brudda Bing run by another Hawaiian. I don't know how they were able to use the name. There were pictures from Road to Singapore on the wall with Crosby and Hope and with Dorothy Lamour in her sarong. The wall also had carved tiki masks, bamboo matting, and a fishnet with glass floats. One of the Aku Aku masks looked like Bob Hope. While helping out tending bar I learned about mixing mai tais, zombies and pina coladas. Their signature drink was a suffering bastard, with 1 oz light rum, 1.5 oz dark rum, 1 oz fresh lime juice, 4 oz ginger beer, dash orange bitters, served over ice with a cucumber peel. They wouldn't let me do scorpions or volcanoes.

I wanted to keep on visiting different states and so worked on extending my itinerary. After several failures I gave up. I knew I didn't want to spend august in the south or january in the north. I saw that at the end I would meet some people and that I would go somewhere else, although I didn't know who or where. No matter how I changed things around, every path I looked at was a dead end. I knew there was a way but couldn't find it. I finally realized I would have to travel blind, and left at the beginning of february for Tuscon, Arizona. I worked at the Road Runner Cafe serving quesadillas, burritos, enchiladas, guacamole and Spanish rice. There was a sombrero hanging on the wall.

In march I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and worked as a cook at The Sands of Mars. One wall had a mural of the Martian landscape with a rover, and the ceiling had a red sky with two moons and a flying saucer. They served mashed potatoes shaped into mountains, Roswell burgers with blue cheese and mushrooms, Area 51 radioactive chili, and something called alien worms that was made with clear vermicelli. It was there I met Sureshot. She was an attractive young Navaho woman with an attitude. One of my coworkers warned me about her. She did not suffer fools gladly and could be sarcastic, but I noticed she was friendly toward those who treated her well. She dressed as if she were ugly, with baggy clothes and colors that didn't seem to match, so those who weren't paying attention or whom she offended assumed that she was. One morning, when I took her her scrambled eggs and pancakes, she looked at my wrist, then called me brother Turtle and asked if I wasn't a little far from home. I was surprised and allowed as how I was, but that if she wanted to get technical we could argue about the meaning of home and far. She said she'd rather not and asked what time I got off. I said two. She said she would pick me up and gave me a strange little smile. I smiled back and returned to work not understanding what was going on.

She showed up in her four by four, and we drove up into the hills. She said she wanted to talk to me about sovereignty. I said what? She said she thought it would help me. I said what? She said as part of my training. I said what? She took a deep breath. She said her grandfather was a shaman and had been training her. I had interested her. When she saw my tattoo and sensed what it meant to me, she had wanted to help but hadn't realized just how lost I was. I said oh. I said I thought training was impossible. She said like everything else, that was true and not true. She could show me some things, and I could make of them what I would. I asked didn't the Indians have sovereignty? Wasn't that why they could have casinos? She said the gambling concerns wanted casinos and used the reservation as a way around state laws. Aside from a relatively small payoff, her people didn't get anything out of them except a few jobs as clerks and cleaners and a museum that was mostly a tourist attraction. I said oh.

She told me about the Black Mesa Coal Field. In 1882 President Arthur turned it into an Indian reservation that took up a large part of northeastern Arizona in order to keep the Mormons from homesteading there and getting the mineral rights. However, no one had clear title, and the fields weren't developed. In the 1950s the Navaho refused to grant John Boyden the rights, so he created a Hopi tribal council and a special court. In 1966 the Peabody Coal Company leased the land over the objections and protests of both tribes. Because the government had granted the Indians sovereignty, it could deal with whichever members of the tribe were most cooperative and claim they represented everyone. It used reservations for weapons research and development that wouldn't have been allowed on US soil. Sovereignty meant you had no rights or protection, anybody could do whatever they could get away with to you.

By the time she finished her story we were sitting on the ground inside a rough circle of stones somewhere in the mountains, and the sky was getting dark. We unrolled a sleeping bag and lay back to watch the stars come out. She asked me to tell her about the Turtle. I said the Black Turtle was one of the four celestial animals or guardians of China. It represented north and winter and longevity and support and water. Its upper shell is the vault of the heavens, and its lower shell is the plain of the earth. Because it helped Yu tame the Yellow River floods, turtles were granted a life span of ten thousand years. Turtle shells were used for divination by reading the cracks that formed when they were scored and heated. I used the turtle to represent protection and time. She asked whose protection? I said mine and everyone else's. There wasn't really room for two people to lie on one sleeping bag, which was sort of the point. Now she leaned over and looked into my eyes. Hers were dark, but I couldn't see much in the dim light. I don't know what she saw in mine, but whatever it was she must have liked it. She bent down and kissed me.

There are certain advantages to baggy clothes. She leaned onto me, and I slid my hand up her back under her shirt. She was wearing a sports bra to make her breasts look smaller and to keep them from moving around. She had strong shoulders. When she paused for breath, I rolled her over and slid my hand into her jeans. She was hairy and wet and wasn't wearing underwear. I stroked the side of her opening and said she was beautiful. Why did she dress the way she did? She said it was because of her name, Sureshot. Did I know what it meant? I didn't want to guess. She said she liked sex. There were men she'd say no to, but so far none of them had asked her. She wanted to keep it that way. I asked did she worry about AIDS? She said she didn't have to. She could tell who was HIV positive and who wasn't. I wasn't the only one with a special ability. She could also tell exactly where she was in her cycle and when she didn't need to use contraception. Such as tonight.

We got out of our clothes and squirmed into the sleeping bag. It was getting cold. I kissed her on the neck and the shoulder and tried to get down to her breast, but there wasn't room. She slid up. I lay with my chest between her legs and sucked her nipple into my mouth. She moaned as I ran my tongue over it and nibbled it with my teeth. My fingers pressed into her other breast and felt the nipple there that was just as large and erect. She slid back down and turned, and I slid myself into her from behind. I started moving slowly in and out of her wetness. I moved her hair out of the way and stuck my tongue into the corner of her jaw below her ear. She moaned and thrust her buttocks harder against me. Time stopped moving and expanded. The rocks that surrounded us were alive. I could sense the fire that formed them when they were deep inside the Earth. I could sense the Earth buckling and thrusting them upward. I could sense the pressure that lessened over the millennia as the Earth above them eroded away, until at last they were exposed to the sun and the wind and the stars. Our own heat and thrusting and pressure increased as we moved together on the ground under the stars. We paused for a moment so she could unzip the sleeping bag more and then resumed. We felt the cold air on our exposed bodies. Her breathing got deeper and our thrusting got harder and she started gasping as she came in the night and the darkness inside the circle of stones. I felt the pressure inside me increase and uncoil and splatter the inside of her naked womb.

When we woke up a little later she drove me back to the restaurant, and I drove home to get a little more sleep before I had to start my shift. In april I moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, and got a job as a bouncer at a gay bar called Lavender Green. Their signature drink was a rockslide, with 1 oz Irish cream, 1 oz Kahlua, 1 oz vodka, served over ice. Thursday was transvestite night. In may I moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, and worked as a cook at a dive called Blue Coyote. There was a full moon with a large ring around it painted on the ceiling.

In june I moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and got a job as a cook at the Morning Star Cafe. They served trout tacos and Indian fry bread. Painted on one wall was a picture of the mountains with Venus rising in a clear blue sky which extended across the ceiling. The manager and cook was an easy going young man from the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana. One time as we were leaning on the counter during the afternoon lull, he started talking about Bear Butte, where the culture hero Sweet Medicine had been instructed by the Great Medicine and given the four sacred arrows. I asked about the story. He said listen, as a boy Sweet Medicine had shown special powers and was chased from the tribe by Young Wolf and his warriors, whom the people feared. The boy traveled east into the Black Hills. When he came to Bear Butte, a large rock door opened and let him into the mountain. There, four grandfathers welcomed him, and he stayed many moons to study with other young men who had come from many places. The Great Medicine, who had made the sun and earth, was also there. Sweet Medicine learned sacred songs and dances and to see into the future. During the last moon of his stay he was told to unwrap the foxskin bundle by his seat. It contained four sacred arrows, and he learned the ceremonies to renew their power. He returned to the Cheyenne and found them weak with hunger. Young Wolf had died trying to raid another camp for food. That evening he brought out the four arrows and sang songs to bring back the buffalo. Later he instituted four warrior societies, each with individual symbols and songs, and the council of forty four chiefs so that no one man or group would be able to dominate the tribe. Some young men were not chosen by others to join the warrior societies. When Sweet Medicine saw this, he told Little Hawk to go through camp calling for followers. None joined him, and that night he left. In the morning all the camp's dogs were missing. Two men found them on the river flats seated in a semicircle around Little Hawk. Sweet Medicine said a new group, the Dog Soldiers, would be the strongest and bravest of all the Cheyenne societies.

In july on my way east I stopped at the Bear Butte sacred site to pay my respects, and camped at the state park across the highway. In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, I worked as a bartender at a biker bar called Rumbles. In august I moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota, and worked at Black Pete's, where they featured black bean soup, fried mushrooms, black olive pizza, blackened catfish, seared steak, pastrami on dark rye, black plum cobbler, black forest brownies, espresso, Guinness, pinot noir, and black cherry soda. Their signature drink was a black Russian, with 1.75 oz vodka, 0.75 oz Kahlua, served over ice.

In september I moved to St Paul, Minnesota, and worked at Yggdrasil. There was a picture of the world tree painted on one wall and the ceiling with a ptarmigan below it and a musk ox in the background. The other waiter on the evening shift was Larz. He was from Norway, and dark haired and well tanned with a moderately athletic build and not much of an accent. He said the tree connected the nine worlds, but no one was really sure what those nine worlds originally were or what they represented. The surviving legends were vague, although they mentioned a well or spring of knowledge. All we were left with was a poetic image. I asked if they might be the branching pathways of time, and showed him to waterfall tattoo on my wrist. I normally kept it covered. He said he didn't think so. Another time he told me about a sailing voyage he had made with two friends to retrace one of the routes of the Vikings. They started in Oslo and sailed around the coast to Bergen, then west to the Shetland Islands and south to the Orkney Islands, along the west coast of Scotland to the Isle of Skye, and down into the Irish Sea. Most maps show either England or Ireland, but the sea between them used to be the center of British civilization and the main trade route. He and his friends had bounced back and forth between the major ports, Belfast, Liverpool and Dublin, before rounding Land's End to Plymouth and sailing down the channel to Calais. They went up the east coast of England to Lowestoft, Scarborogh and Lindisfarne, called in at Edinburgh and Aberdeen in Scotland, then headed back across the North Sea. I said I had lived in Liverpool when I was young. He asked if I remembered it. I said yes, pretty well. I didn't tell him I could go back through time and relive anything I had experienced, but didn't always end up in the same past. It got confusing.

In october I moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, and got a job at Able Baker Charlie. I learned to make brioche, rich egg bread from France often shaped something like a large muffin with a little knob on top. Outside of town there was an underground bunker formerly used by SAC that the locals knew about. I went to see it out of curiosity. I could learn all sorts of things from old buildings. The site looked like a big open field that ought to be growing soybeans. There was no one around and not much traffic so I wandered out into it. Picking up impressions from dirt was harder than from stone or brick since it didn't hold its shape, but a few inches down I sensed was clay. The clay under where I was standing hadn't moved much in the last thousand years. I headed toward some abandoned buildings with a fence around them. The fence was in good repair without any obvious way I could get over or through it. I walked around it. The missile silos were under the far side and hadn't been used in years. I could hear the personnel that worked in them over time. I walked out in the direction they extended and found something I didn't like. There had been children down there, and they had not been happy. Their screams had been contained in soundproof rooms, away from the rest of the complex. It was like trying to look at an entire reel of film all at once instead of looking at the images in sequence, only longer and in more detail. But I had done this before and was good at it. I was distracted by major shifts of pathways into the future. That told me this was important. I lay down in the dirt. All anyone could see from the road was a parked car. I listened. After two hours I knew what had happened. Another government organization had also been here. The children were being tortured to fragment their personalities so that they could be programmed as spies and assassins. They would have no direct knowledge of what had been done to them or of what their assignments were. They were supposed to think they were normal. The failures had been disposed of. The next day someone at work asked me what was wrong. I said I wasn't feeling well. I thought it was something I ate. She didn't look convinced but let it drop.

In november I moved to Wichita, Kansas, and got a job as day bartender at Timothy Green's. It was an Irish bar with a rainbow painted on the ceiling. I was a third of the way through my tour of the states and had reached the geographical center of the US, or at least one of them. Most people don't know it, but there is an official correspondence between the states and the stars on the flag. It was included in the regulation that changed the flag from forty eight stars to fifty, but many senators, representatives and governors objected to where their states ended up. When they put the states into rows and columns they got this.

ak
   wa    mt nd mn wi mi       vt nh me
            sd             ny ct ri ma
   or id wy ne ia il in oh pa nj
                        wv md de
   nv ut co ks mo    ky    va
   ca az nm ok ar    tn    nc
                  ms al ga sc
            tx la       fl
hi

There was no good way to distort this arrangement so that it fit on the flag. They had to push in the northeast and pull out the southeast and restack part of the west. The best correspondence they could find was this.

   ak    mt    nd    mi    vt    me
      id    sd    wi    ny    nh   
   wa    wy    mn    oh    ct    ma
      ut    ne    il    pa    ri   
   or    co    ia    in    md    nj
      nv    ks    mo    wv    de   
   ca    nm    ar    ky    ga    va
      az    ok    ms    tn    sc   
   hi    tx    la    al    fl    nc

Utah was too far north, Minnesota and North Carolina were too far south, New York was too far west, and Connecticut was on the wrong side of New Jersey. Some adjacent states got separated, and other states got moved together. In order to fit onto the stars, every state had to be out of place to some extent. The correspondence was never used, but the regulation that created it was never changed. I learned all sorts of strange things.

In december I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and got a job as a short order cook at Tiffany's Diner. The dishwasher said his mother was a full blooded Cherokee. And of course he told me another story. It was the one about Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears, but it wasn't just Jackson. The Indian Removal Act was popular with the electorate and helped him win the presidency. Twenty thousand Cherokee set out for Oklahoma over a three year period, and around sixteen thousand of them survived, maybe less.

In january I moved to Austin, Texas, and worked at The Cajun Cook. They served gumbo, fried catfish nuggets, and french fry potato salad. There was an alligator playing the accordion painted on one wall. Chuck, who'd lived there forever, told me about the African gods who came over with the slaves, combined with the saints of the French Catholics, and become the loa of Vodun. There is Baron Samedi, who has a top hat, white or half white face, and dinner jacket, and is a loa of sex, death and resurrection. He is charming, disruptive and obscene, and likes tobacco, rum and peanuts. One of his symbols is a cross. In French samedi means saturday, so he is connected to Cronos, whom the Romans called Saturn, and thus to the Jewish and Christian god, who came from the same Babylonian source. (The French don't capitalize days or months, which seems sensible.) Anaisa Pye is a loa of love, money and joy. She is flirtatious, generous and playful, but also jealous and vindictive. Damballa is the sky god and creator of life, but not the ultimate god, and he protects idiots, cripples, albinos and young children. His symbol is two snakes, his color is white, and his offering is an egg on a mound of flour. There were many others and relationships between them, and they seemed to grant requests in return for offerings or favors, but I didn't really understand.

In february I moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and worked at The Olive Tree, a Greek place that served tzatziki, stuffed peppers, moussaka, and baklava. There were pictures of Cyclades sculpture on the walls, and Zeus, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Hermes and the rest of the Twelve Olympians looked down from clouds painted on the ceiling. Aphrodite's two swans, Castor and Pollux, flew next to her. They were sons of Leda and the swan, who was Zeus, and brothers to Helen, who had to be retrieved from Troy. Dionysus later replaced Hestia. The gods had separate temples and were worshipped one at a time, so it was serial monotheism. Greek cites had different gods and fought each other like the Muslims and the Christians. The concept of twelve gods predated this group, and an older list included Cronos and Rhea. The Romans later reduced the number to three. In march I moved to Jackson, Mississippi, and worked at Stella Blue. They served the standard salads, sandwiches and burgers, but the chicken sandwich did have avocado and sprouts. There was a picture of a voluptuous woman with blue black skin, which was actually a very dark brown although she was wearing a skimpy blue dress, painted on the wall. She was singing on front of a long haired rock band.

In april I moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, and worked as a dishwasher at Chilly Chile Chili. From Chili they had Caldillo de congrio (an eel stew with onion, potato and cream), Paila marina (a fish and shellfish soup), and Pastel de choclo (a ground beef casserole with olive and boiled egg, topped with corn). They had Texas chili without tomatoes and Cincinnati chili with cinnamon and cocoa, topped with grated cheddar. They had mango chili ice cream from Malaysia and chocolate chili ice cream from Mexico. Andy, an Inca girl from Peru, worked as a waitress, and a Mayan boy she had met in Guatemala on her way north did food prep. When I found out they were homeless I invited them to share my room. They spread their blanket on the other side of it. When I woke up that night they were having sex. I could see them clearly in the not so dim light from outside. He was on top thrusting carefully into her, she had her arms around his shoulders and I could hear her breathing, even though it was no louder than normal. I fingered my balls and frustrated erection under the sheet while I pretended to sleep, but was careful not to go very far. Watching discreetly if they weren't being secretive was one thing. Joining in without being asked, even from over here on my futon, was different and seemed rude, even though sex, by its nature, is a social activity. She had her orgasm, then he came, then they snuggled back together.

I hadn't gotten back to sleep when I felt her get into bed with me and her bottom press into my groin. After a while she reached behind herself and started stroking my already interested penis. I whispered maybe this wasn't a good idea, except in Spanish. She said she thought it was and she wanted to. She wasn't asking me, and I couldn't truthfully say I didn't want to. She turned around and I kissed her. She seemed glad I had decided to cooperate. Our tongues intertwined gently. I moved my hand over her shoulder blade. She pressed up against me from this side. I slid down and sucked on her breast and felt her smile. When I slid back up she rolled me onto my back and asked if I had a condom. She took it from me and put it on. She pulled me up into a sitting position, then straddled and lowered herself onto me. I supported her back and she held onto my neck as she moved up and down. I felt myself thrusting all the way into her at the bottom of each stroke. I didn't know if I could hold out. I also didn't know if either of us could come in this position, but she seemed to be enjoying herself. She pressed down more firmly and started to come, panting softly in my ear for several moments. A little later she came again. She asked if I needed to change position. I said not yet, unless she was getting tired. She kept going. Maybe she was waiting for me, because when I felt my cum starting to move and started breathing more deeply, she joined me. We kissed for a while after that, then she carefully pried herself off and rejoined her companion. After that we all slept on the futon, and she would choose whichever of us she wanted.

In may I moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and got a job as a waiter at Falling Rocks. They served grilled steak, chicken, and eggplant, spicy green beans, and exploded potatoes. There was a concrete house like something from Le Corbusier painted on the wall, set among some rocks and with trees around it. There were more rocks at the bottom of the slope below the house as if they'd rolled there, and many suspended in the air above it like Rene Magritte's Bankers. I later learned there had been floating rocks painted on the ceiling, but they made people nervous. In june I moved to Davenport, Indiana, and worked at The Last French Fry. Use your imagination. In july I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, and got a job as third assistant baker at the Storm Tossed Whipped Cream Pastry Shop, which meant I often worked the counter and cleaned. They had cream filled chocolate cupcakes and ladyfingers, chocolate whipped cream cake, Boston cream pie, gingerbread, cherry vanilla pudding, strawberry short cake, parfaits, and used to have peaches and cream but couldn't get peaches that weren't hard and tasteless anymore. There was a picture of a thunder storm moving across the plain painted on the wall, and more storm clouds and lightning painted on the ceiling. On the left side you could see the thunderhead in the middle distance, the storm got closer as you moved across, and the right side had its full fury. Stan, the second assistant baker, was from Poland and had moved here to live with his aunt and uncle. He taught me to make cream puffs.

In august I moved to Joliet, Illinois, and got a job as a bartender at Trader Tim's, a tiki bar with a Chinese and East African theme. We severed the traditional Cantonese food, and from Africa there was coconut bean soup, vegetable curry, Persian spiced rice, banana beer, and papaya and guava pie. Painted on the wall near the piano was a Black man in a suit and fez who looked like Sidney Greenstreet and a vaguely Asian woman in a long red dress. There were ceiling fans, and on the walls were masks from Kenya and Mozambique, tiki masks, a Chinese fan, and a shield from Tanzania. The staff wore aloha shirts that looked like dashikis, except some of the waitresses wore Chinese silk blouses. One of them was a Black woman who was friendly with the customers and shy around the staff. I talked to her and found out she had lived in the same neighborhood of Chicago all her life. She had moved here for the job but felt lost. I asked if she would like to go out to dinner on our day off, and she said yes. I took her to a pancake house. It was a compromise. McDonald's would be insulting, but she was suffering from culture shock and I thought this would seem more familiar than our other options. She seemed to like it, and it wasn't supposed to be a seduction. I had scrambled eggs and pancakes, and she had a cheeseburger and fries. I told her about traveling around the country by myself and not knowing people, and about growing up in Germany and Japan and not understanding the language at first. But people were people and most of them were okay once you got to know them. If she objected to me lecturing to her, she didn't show it. She was actually a more social person than I was and told me about growing up and living in the city. It sounded something like Japan with its network of social obligations. The gangs sounded like the Cheyenne warrior societies. Afterward we went to a bar and talked some more. I had ginger ale. When it got late I said I would drive her home, or she could come over if she liked. In any case I would like to go out with her again. She wanted to come over.

She thought my futon and Japanese table were strange but liked my banjo. We sat down and I kissed her. She looked at me for a moment afterward, then put her arms around me and kissed me back. It started out tentative. I brushed my tongue lightly across her lip and found hers waiting for me. They played together. Other white men might not have considered her beautiful, but I did. It wasn't just her features. There was something in the way she moved. She actually inhabited her body instead of just using it to do things. Her skin was dark but not blue black. She was wearing an ochre colored leotard under her clothes that supported her breasts without a bra. I watched them emerge as I took off my own clothes. It was impressive. They were large and had darker areolae and nipples. When we were naked I paused again, this time to catch my breath. I had seen other striking women, but for a moment I wished they all could be African. Maybe it was a genetic memory from our early ancestors. Her pubic hair nearly matched her skin and, since the individual hairs were curly, was flat and close rather than sprawling. Her other hair was brushed out but had tight curls. She looked healthy, like a model for a real bodies ad. I stepped over and put my arms around her and kissed her again. My hands slid down to her buttock and up to shoulder blade. My penis poked her. Her breasts poked me, differently. Our tongues enmeshed.

We lay down on the funny futon and continued kissing. My fingers buried themselves in her vagina. My penis humped against her thigh. I sucked on her wondrous breast. She groaned and humped against my chest. Eventually I moved to the other but brought my hand up so I wouldn't have to let go of the first. I reached for a condom. She rolled onto her stomach but kept her legs open, arching her rear up slightly to give me better access. I moved into position and paused admiringly for a moment as I held my penis. Then I lined up and squished my way into her. She brought her legs together under me so that I straddled her thighs. The sound of our lovemaking filled the room. I felt the beauty of her buttocks pressed against me and the rhythmic cooperation of our hips. I tried to be deliberate. She didn't have to try. She soon started a succession of soft orgasms. I enjoyed her and wanted to keep going forever. Women can do whatever they want. Men are stuck between the desire to keep going and the desire to get somewhere. The scent of her skin and her sex enraptured me. I felt the energy swirling inside me start to focus. I held it back for a time, then let it. It gathered in my abdomen, narrowed to my perineum, moved out from near my testicles, up my vas deferens, circled over my bladder, down past my seminal vesicle and prostrate, over to my penis, out through my urethra in a series of giant spurts, and into her eager and waiting vagina as I grunted savagely.

We found other places to eat. She started staying over with me most nights, and we would give a repeat performance of some sort. There are only two basic positions you can use in bed, although they can be turned one way or another. The rest are variations, novelties or foreplay. I found she had different color leotards. I started including her in conversations at work. I could be social if I tried. I hoped she would get to know people and stop being shy. She did. People liked her once she started talking to them. I left in september. I told her I was on a spiritual pilgrimage and couldn't ask her to come with me. She said she knew about religious obligations. And while she would like to see other places someday, she didn't want to be homeless. She was okay with it, but everyone else was mad at me for abandoning her. I told her she should stop defending me and accept their sympathy. They wouldn't understand, but I knew she did.

I moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, and worked as a bartender again at Blueberries, a fern bar and singles bar. Since I could usually tell when things would work out I sometimes served as a matchmaker, suggesting whom someone should buy a drink for. I felt funny about accepting the tips afterward but decided I was more like a dating service than a pimp. Some of the women figured out what I had done. They are usually brighter than the men. I felt even funnier about accepting their tips but decided I was being chauvinistic. A couple of times I let a woman pick me up. In october I moved to Bloomington, Indiana, and got a job as a chef at Wimpy's Blintzes and Pie. They had potato, cheese, and apple blintzes and knishes. They had vegetable, shrimp, and chicken eggrolls. They had shepherd's and chicken pot pie. They had apple, cherry, peach, and rhubarb pie. They had curried pumpkin, pecan, banana cream, lemon meringue, and key lime pie. They had strawberry, blueberry, and kiwi tarts. They had spinach, mushroom, and broccoli quiche, and quiche Lorraine. It was the only place I worked where I gained weight, but I was able to lose most of it before I left.

In november I moved to Louisville, Kentucky, and worked as a cook, bartender, dishwasher, and sometime bouncer and dancer and the Kitty Kat Club. Their signature drink was a Dixie screwdriver, with 1 oz spiced rum, 1 oz bourbon, 2 oz orange juice, 0.5 oz lemon juice, 0.5 oz banana liqueur, dash grenadine, served over ice with a cherry. There were pictures painted on the ceiling of randomly placed mirrors that held images of couples having sex down below. One showed a man on his back with his eyes closed, and the top of the head, projecting breasts, and creamy thighs of the woman who straddled him. Another showed a woman staring upward and the backside of the man between her upraised legs. She had her arms around his neck and was smiling. Another showed a bent over woman on her knees with a man taking her from behind and holding her by the hips. Another showed a woman on her back with an ecstatic expression on her face, freckled breasts spread across her chest, and her hand buried in red pubic hair. The fingers of her other hand worked at one of her breasts. The nipple of her other breast was large and pink and the only one clearly shown in any of the pictures. A similar picture had a brown eyed woman with a man's head buried in her crotch, his hands cradling her buttocks, but both her hands were on her breasts. Other mirrors showed other people in similar or different positions. A couple of the women were middle aged and one looked eighteen. Some of the people were lighter or darker than others, but all were white. No penises or clothing could be seen anywhere. All of the men might have been using condoms. The only parts of the beds that could be seen were a few brass rails and the mattresses, on two of which slept curled up cats. In the center of the room you appeared to be looking nearly straight down on the people in the painted reflections. Near the walls you were looking down at more of an angle, as if you were standing midway between the room's center and the painted mirror. The transition was gradual and smooth, and it made the reflected room seem half again as wide and long as the real one. The effect could be disconcerting if you tried to look up while walking. It was a brilliant illusion skillfully done. The paintings, except for the juxtapositions of bodies, looked like something you might see in a museum.

Some men brought their wives or girlfriends to the club. They appreciated the art and the dancing, which was ballet, modern, jazz and freestyle done solo on a small stage, except none of the dancers wore hats. They took off various articles of clothing but never ended up in less than bikini briefs with a top of some sort, or a leotard. People could feel naughty without feeling guilty unless they wanted to. We seemed to be popular with swingers. Monday was Ladies Night. All the dancers were male, some recruited from the regular staff. I agreed to perform but was required to wear boxers and to keep my urges under control. I learned what sort of dance they wanted and was able to use some of my tai chi moves. Thursday was Silver Belles night. All the dancers were thirty four or over with little or no make up. One had long prematurely white hair halfway down her back, and some were the same as on other nights but with different hair, clothes and underwear. Most of the men didn't recognize them. All of them were fit and graceful and surprisingly flexible.

In december I moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, and worked behind the counter and as back up delivery person for MCDXCII, which was 1492 but also a cute way of spelling McDixie so that it didn't look too much like McDonald's. They sold pizza spaghetti subs, or at least that's what their sign said. The owner had wanted to paint giant meatballs on the ceiling but was afraid of being sued and didn't want to chance it. I found some banjo pickers who let me sit in with them. I learned a great deal in a short time. In january I moved to Birmingham, Alabama, and sold sandwiches at Poor Boy's. In february I moved to Fort Myers, Florida, and got a job at Eydie and Min's, which specialized in tiramisu and key lime pie. The place seemed to be populated mostly by widows who would marry an old man with money who was going senile, and then write his family out of the will. In march I moved to Athens, Georgia, and got a job as a cook at Athens Pizza. There are run down places called Athens Pizza all over the country that look like they are barely getting by. The look is deliberate. Most of them are actually part of a chain, and this was the original restaurant and the world headquarters of a multi million dollar corporation, even though the roof looked like it leaked. The menus and decor are all different, but you can tell if an Athens Pizza is part of the chain because they have little or no Greek food on the menu in spite of the name and the accents of the people who work there. I was coached on the accent and told about wonderful franchise opportunities with little investment.

In april I moved to Baltimore, Maryland, and got a job as a baker at The Alchemist Spice Bar and Chocolate Shop. They sold dark chocolate truffles, chocolate turtles with pecans, chocolate geckos with macadamia nuts, black forest cake, orange chocolate brownies, and curried pumpkin pie. There were lots of cookies, including carrot nutmeg, fat gingerbread, coriander peanut, clove spice, apple cinnamon, cayenne chocolate, and cardamom mocha. There was an underwater picture of a stone castle foundation painted on one wall with fish and schools of fish, a newt, and a lost wooden bucket. The bottoms of lily pads were painted on the ceiling. The other walls had framed pictures of fish, two by the muralist. The restaurant owner and manager was very proud of his mural. He told me the woman who painted it had done it in one day, and all his customers had been amazed, although the lily pads had been done earlier by someone else. He found out later from her father that there had been a problem with drugs the night before, and he had fired his night manager and part of the staff. After hearing his story I decided I wanted to see for myself, so a couple days later during my break when it wasn't busy, I sat at a table near the mural and gently tapped the wall. The colors were brighter. It didn't seem like they should have faded in six years. Maybe the owner was afraid of scrubbing the wall too hard and dirt had accumulated. It was old and had been patched in a couple places. I saw the artist, Anya from her signature, transferring sketches she had done to the newly primed wall. She put in the stones of the background first. She added schools of fish. She studied the pictures of fish done by other artists and added some that were similar. She did the newt and a turtle, and the feet of a swan near the top. She added the bucket and half a sword to the bottom of the moat, and indicated rays of sunlight shining through the water. She studied her work and made changes, then opened the cans of wall paint and laid out her brushes. She worked rapidly adding color but spent time on details in some places. Customers came and went. Most were interested in what she was doing, and some stayed and watched her work. She used lighter shades of color for the water the rays of sunlight were shining through and the things they illuminated. As we sat looking at her work after she was done, something strange happened. I heard an echo of the tumble through time I had experienced with the old Chinese man in San Francisco. I had thought about it sometimes but couldn't remember much of it. Now parts of it came back. And then they were gone again. I didn't know what caused this unexpected flashback or why it happened now, but it had seemed somehow connected to the painting. Time must be even more dangerous and complicated than I had realized.

I had reached the east coast but was only two thirds of the way through my journey. Half the states left were small and none of the rest were giants. I still didn't know where I was going. I could see other people's future better than I could see my own. It was a paradox. Seeing my own would change it so that it would no longer be my future. I tried again with the same results. At least I seemed to be on the right path and had avoided dead ends so far. I decided to take a break. If I didn't have an itinerary then I didn't have to follow it. Baltimore was a shipping port, and I wondered if I could find a job on a freighter. I used my trick with the phone listings and found a company that felt promising. When I got to their office I asked if they had an opening for a cook on any of their ships. The man said they had crew members filling in as cooks, and if I was a cook who could fill in as a crew member, I was hired. Food was important to sailors. I had a choice of destinations and chose Liverpool.

In may I loaded my stuff back into my car, put it in storage, and set sail. Running a ship is a complex and specialized business, but the men appreciated my cooking even though there wasn't much I could do with what I had. At least the meals were well prepared and on time. They were patient with teaching me and finding other work I could do. I left the ship as planned when we reached port and walked around the streets of my childhood home. I no longer sounded like a local but could put on some of the accent if I wanted. The Mersey was still there but much of the waterfront was new. There were many new buildings throughout the city, but Penny Lane still didn't have a street sign. It was stolen so often that the police had long since given up replacing it. If you wanted to see it you had to go to a souvenir shop. The renovated factory where we had lived had been renovated again. Chinatown looked mostly the same.

The ship I was returning on sailed from Antwerp, so in june I took a train there to wait for it. I visited some bakeries in the city and asked some questions. They were willing to talk to me when I showed an intelligent interest in their work. In one of them a woman let me see the kitchen, so I asked her out to dinner. Her name was Hendrike. She took me to a little place and we had waterzooi, a stew with chicken, carrots, onions, leeks, potatoes, parsley, thyme, egg yolk and cream. She spoke English but her French was better, so we used that. After the first two or three, picking up languages gets easier, especially if you start young. I was up to Greek and planned to work on Swahili next. She was soft voiced and not too tall, with thick black hair and a slightly turned up nose. Afterward I walked her back to her apartment and she invited me in. I don't drink much and hadn't had beer with dinner, but I accepted one now. We sat on her sofa and talked some. I waited until she got a little impatient, then kissed her. We wrapped our arms around each other and I felt her tongue seeking mine. I lightly sucked it into my mouth and obliged. She squirmed her breasts against me. A little later I leaned back and started unbuttoning her blouse. It was white with long sleeves. When I got to the bottom, she stood up in her half exposed bra and led me into the bedroom.

I sat on the bed and watched her finish undressing as I took off my shoes and undid my pants. She pulled out the bottom of her blouse, then unzipped the side of her skirt and stepped out of it. She shrugged off the blouse, reached behind herself, unfastened her bra, and laid it on the rest of her clothes. She hooked her thumbs into the sides of her skimpy panties and pulled them off. I stared at her naked body. She turned from side to side in the lamplight. I stood up and finished undressing. We lay down on the bed, and I ran my hand down the front of her body, over her belly and between her parted thighs. I kissed her and squirmed into her wetness. I pressed my erection against her hip. When I started to move my hand away, she reached down and held my fingers against her clitoris. I rubbed it and squeezed it. She pressed harder and so did I. She broke our kiss and started panting. I leaned down and sucked her hard pink nipple. She moved her hand up and squeezed the other. I nibbled. She bucked. Her breathing deepened and she gasped out her orgasm as I held on to her.

After a few moments, when I started to reach for a condom, she pushed me back on the bed and grabbed my penis. She leaned over me and sucked it into her mouth, her tongue lapping up my wetness. She traded hands on my penis and caressed my testicles. I moved my hips and started panting. I held on. She kept going. I waited until she got a little impatient and eased up on my control. I felt the energy start to build. She watched my responses carefully. My breathing deepened. Just as I felt my cum start to move, she leaned up, threw her leg over, stuffed me inside, and filled herself with white sticky goo. She never let go and didn't spill a drop. I was aghast and amazed. I had just been raped. She told me not to worry, she wasn't ovulating. I said maybe not, but she was going to get pregnant anyway. She said sperm didn't last more than five days, usually three, and less than one if they don't make it to the cervix. I said these would, and she would ovulate early. Time did funny things around me. She lay forward on top of me and said yeah, right. As she dozed, I held her and listened. I followed different pathways through time and saw that things wouldn't be easy for her. She wouldn't believe she was pregnant until it was too late to terminate it. If I stayed I would die. She would burn through the insurance money and be worse off than before. But things would eventually work out if I told her to wait for the one who said he had never seen eyes like hers. So I did, three times, after I roused her. She mumbled something in Dutch and went back to sleep on my chest. But she smiled.

I caught my ship back to Baltimore and retrieved my car. In july I moved to Morgantown, West Virginia, and got a job at Glimaloc and Skye's. The owner said the name came from the song Marrakesh Express. I said I didn't remember that phrase. He didn't say anything. I thought about it. They served salads, sandwiches, burgers and steaks, and had an extensive bar. The interior was red vinyl and black wood. The place was near the courthouse and lots of lawyers and staff ate lunch there. Two days later I told the owner the phrase was supposed to be clear Moroccan skies, not Glimaloc and Skye's. He said yes, that did make more sense, but he'd been hearing it the other way for years before he found out his mistake, and he liked his version.

In august I moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and got a job as a waiter at Adam's Ribs. It had started out as a barbecue place but now was more of a steak house. I wouldn't have worked there if I'd had to cook all that meat. I wasn't exactly a vegetarian, but eight ounces was as much meat as I normally ate in a week, including chicken and fish. Four ounces was all the human body could use in a day. Salads (without chicken or ham), potatoes (without bacon) and the occasional plate of four way chili were all I ended up eating while I was there. One afternoon soon after I started an attractive young woman came in. The sign said to please seat yourself, but she looked around as if she were meeting someone. After a few moments I walked over and asked if she would like a table or booth? She said she didn't know. She thought she was supposed to meet someone but didn't know who. I said she could have a seat and wait if she liked. I would get her something if she wanted. She thanked me, and then we looked at each other. I said maybe I should take my break. She said maybe I better had. I led her to a booth, told the manager, got her a glass of water, and said I was Eliot. No one else was there. She was five foot six, 150 pounds, and Black, with moderately dark skin, a runner's body and small breasts. Her hair was short on the top and sides and gathered into a single braid in back. Her heart rate was 42, her blood pressure 110/70, her cholesterol low, and she was wearing a purple tee shirt with spiders, khaki shorts and pink underwear. I didn't know how I knew all this. If I wanted to I could see back through time to when a person was getting dressed, but hadn't done so very often in the last couple years. It was a solitary pleasure, and it took the excitement out of getting to know someone.

Her name was Jinx and she asked me why she had come in here. I said um, destiny? She hmphed, but seemed to take me seriously. I asked if she often had premonitions? She said no, this was first time. Did she see visions? She said no. Did time ever do strange things around her? She looked at me for a moment. Then she said maybe. I said ah. I asked if she had a story to tell me? She said no, why? I said people I met that had strange abilities usually told me stories. She said no and looked at me again. Then she said maybe I had a story to tell her. I looked at her. I said I could tell her that with great power comes great responsibility, but she already knew that. We all did. She said also great frustration. The power was useless most of the time. I said that was true. I couldn't see much of her future, which probably meant we were connected somehow. She said she was a lesbian. I said no she wasn't. She said well, she was mostly lesbian. I didn't argue. I said a physical object sometimes helped me to see things better, preferably something hard. If she wanted, I could try it. She said she had recently graduated from college and could use some hints about the future. I asked if she had anything she expected to keep for a while? No, she didn't carry much stuff. It got in the way. I said we could try touching hands. So we did. It happened again. I heard an echo of my tumble through time. Things were clearer this time. My mind worked much faster and I could follow more of the vision. Timelines exploded around me and the whole thing collapsed. We could see we were both supposed to move east and that we would meet again someday. The rest of it was gone. I could remember that I had seen it but not what it was. She said oh. I nodded. We talked a little more. I told her about my trip. She told me she had grown up in Cincinnati and gone to school nearby. I should visit the art museum and listen to some paintings. It was an amazing place. Then she left. There wasn't anything else to say. I couldn't touch the paintings and other objects, but they were loud enough that I didn't need to.

In september I moved to Rochester, New York, and got a job behind the counter at The Square Banana. They served banana bread, banana nut muffins, fried bananas, banana cream pie, banana peach cobbler, banana vanilla pudding with their own wafers, banana splits with two Bing cherries and a warning about pits, banana ice cream oatmeal cookie sandwiches, banana smoothies, and more normal food. Their signature drink was a banana daiquiri, with 1.5 oz light rum, 1 tbsp triple sec, 1 ripe banana, 1.5 oz lime juice, 1 tsp sugar, blended with crushed ice and served with a cherry. There was a yellow banana that had been morphed into a square painted on the wall. It had round glasses and a few black spots. There were sunlit banana leaves painted on the ceiling. One of the women who worked there noticed my turtle tattoo and asked about it. I kept it covered but you could sometimes see it if you were observant. I said it was a sacred symbol. Was it the turtle who carried the world on his back? I said sort of. It was the turtle from which the sky and the earth were created, one of the four sacred animals of China. She was called Summer but said her actual Indian name was Winter Summer Fall. We talked a little, and I asked her out. We went to a Thai place. We shared some samosas, I had pineapple fried rice, and she had pad Thai. She was Mohawk and said her family had lived on the reservation in Canada before moving here. She lived with her parents. I told her about meeting Navaho, Cheyenne and Cherokee. Afterward we walked around a bit and looked at the river. I asked if she wanted to come over. She said yes, but she wouldn't have sex with me. I said that was fine. I made coffee and we sat on the futon. She liked my low table which could also serve as a coffee table. She said she didn't want to have sex because I didn't plan to stay long. Otherwise she probably would. She liked making connections with people, but needed more time. There was something about the way she said it. I asked if there was more to it? She asked what I meant? I said I had met some unusual people and was a bit strange myself. I could sometimes see things. She said like what? I said the past, things I shouldn't have known about, different things that might happen in the future. She looked at me seriously. She asked if I could give her some sort of demonstration, so she could understand what I was talking about. I looked at her. I said she was going to move back to Canada, and it had to do with her special ability. She said she did plan to move back. Could I see what her ability was? I said no, but it had to do with connections.

I could see her decide to trust me, at least for now. She said could she see into people's past. It was just a vague feeling unless they had some kind of connection. Connections gave her strength and the strongest was sex. But that much power did more harm than good unless she could stabilize it, which took a year and half to two years. I said she didn't look old enough to have been having sex that long. She said I would be surprised, and that she could feel how long it was taking. With other sexual activity she needed less time, but still at least four or five months. The fact that we both had special abilities helped, but not enough. And she wouldn't be eighteen for a couple months, which meant it would qualify as rape. Perceptions mattered, and that would make it more difficult. I said the age of consent in this state was seventeen. She said yes, but most people still believed it was or should be eighteen, so that was the general perception. I said the difference between sex and sexual activity was pretty arbitrary. She agreed, and said in this case it was her own perception that mattered. I asked if sharing abilities could create a connection, and if it would be stable given the time we had? She said that was a good question and thought about it. Then she said it ought to work. What did I have in mind? I said a trip to the museum.

So thursday we headed over and strolled through the galleries. We looked at the paintings, and I tried to decide which one to use first. I selected the portrait by Rembrandt and moved back far enough to be out of everyone's way. I said I hadn't ever tried taking someone with me like this. We should hold hands. If it was too disorienting or powerful I would break contact, and she should try to come back. She said okay and slipped her hand into mine. We could see the artist as an old man in the daylight streaming through the open window into his studio. Noise from people in the street below came in. He wore a white cloth hat over white curling hair, and a long dark coat hung from his shoulders. He stood and studied the young man sitting across from him. One hand held the brush that moved across his canvas, and the other held the rectangular pallet filled with muted dabs of brown and red and yellow to which it returned. He frowned as he worked, as if unsatisfied.

We came back and moved to a bench to sit down. She looked at me and said thank you, that was amazing. After a while I asked if there was a picture she wanted to try? She said yes, the landscape by Winslow Homer. I said ah. We walked back to the American gallery and looked at the painting again. Then we stepped back and held hands. The aging artist was seated at his easel in the afternoon fog on a bluff by the ocean. He faced west along the shore and across the water toward two summer houses, which were silhouetted against sky. He was thin, nearly bald, and had a large mustache. The gray of the rocks in front of him and the fog had turned to brown and buff on his canvas. He could see a small slice of the sea lapping on the rocks below one of the buildings. A neighbor came over and watched him paint for a while. He continued painting the scene as the light shifted, and added the sun when it sank into the frame of his picture. He stopped when the light failed.

We sat down again, and after another while she offered to help me look at my ancestors. It was what she could do. So the next week she came over and we sat on my futon again. I didn't have any chairs. We held hands and closed our eyes. We journeyed backwards through my life seeing some of the highpoints and odd moments, not always the ones of which I was most proud. Privacy was for other people. We reached my birth and continued back, through my development in the womb to the moment of conception, when the sperm cell and egg cell merged and I became me. This was as far as I had ever been able to go back on my own. We followed the unfertilized egg cell back up into the ovary, to the split that formed it from one of my mother's cells. We followed my mother's life back, and my grandmother's, and several generations into the female line. They were ordinary lives with extraordinary moments. We came back and talked about what we had seen. She had seen many people's lives and they were all different. I asked if we would follow the male line? She said not yet. She wanted to do all the grandparents and great grandparents first. They told the most about where I came from. When back and saw the life of my grandmother's father, then of my grandfather and his parents. We learned something unexpected, at least for me. My legal great grandfather was not my real great grandfather. My great grandmother had had an affair. Summer said that such things were a lot more common than people thought. My real great grandfather had been a steel worker in New York City, working high steel and building skyscrapers. He was Mohawk and was also her great grandfather. Her grandmother was his daughter by his wife. We were half second cousins. I said meeting people to whom you had a connection was a lot more common than people thought, at least for me, and probably for others with abilities like ours. I thought it was part of reality protecting itself. She said her great grandfather had played around quite a bit, and we must have many more second half cousins scattered about. When my legal great grandfather saw his son didn't look like him, he told people his mother had been a full blooded Cherokee, and sometimes these things skip a generation. People may not have believed him, but no one said anything. We also discovered that my father was one quarter Chinese, so that the daughter I had left behind in Japan was only three eighths Caucasian.

We continued going out, and I showed her some of the history of the city. She showed me some of our ancestors living off the land before the white men. She said being one eighth Mohawk was enough to apply for membership in the tribe, but nowadays you had to have documentation and a commitment to the culture. When I told her I could see the future as well as the past, she said it sounded dangerous. I said it could be, but it had some built in safeguards. I would see more than one possibility, although one might be more likely. I had trouble seeing my own future and that of people connected to me. Sometimes unexpected things happened, different from what I had seen. If I didn't learn the proper use of my ability I would die. Reality protected itself. I had spent the last four years being careful. And if I tried anything too stupid I might just be deleted. She said she was glad. I didn't think she meant that like it sounded.

One time when she was over I asked if she had reconsidered having sex after what we had experienced? She said yes, she had. Being a blood relation that wasn't too close helped a lot. She was tempted and it might be okay, but she thought we shouldn't risk it. However, I was the one who could see the future. What did I think? Could I at least finger her? If she didn't drop her drawers, and it was something that could be done just as well by a woman, she didn't think it counted as sex. And then she could do me. The same rule applied. If I didn't lower my pants and it could be done by a man, it didn't count. And since men are built differently, she could give me a blow job. I said if it was all the same to her, I would prefer a hand job as well. She said what, she gave great blow jobs. Lots of people liked them. And even more seemed to want them. I said I was sure she did, and she could if she wanted to, but it was a sort of kink of mine. She asked if that meant it would be okay? I said um, I hadn't looked yet. I was afraid to. She said oh, and seemed to deflate. We were partly serious and partly joking, and I couldn't tell how much of either. I considered taking her with me while I checked, but she might be even more biased than I was. So I closed my eyes and listened. Nothing. Not even a hint. Which was what I expected. What could I tell her? I said I couldn't see anything. Her judgment would have to stand. She said thank you. Then she leaned forward and kissed me. It only lasted a moment, but it was a long moment.

In october I moved to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and made sandwiches at Super Heroes. They should have had Superman and Thor, Green Lantern and the Human Torch painted on the ceiling but didn't. Real powers aren't like in comic books. Superman can do anything. The only time he showed strain was when he needed to be dramatic, but everyone knew he was faking it. A hero might fail at the beginning of a story, but he wins through sheer willpower at the end, implying that you can have anything if you just want it badly enough. Superheroes in their current form came out of the pessimism of the Depression. The idea of supervillains came from newspaper accounts of bank robbers and train robbers. Jesse James, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde. Now they don't make any sense. The only successful criminals are the ones nobody knows about. And real powers stop working if you use them to take advantage of others.

In november I moved to Elizabeth, New Jersey, and made sandwiches at Pickle Pickle Dwarf. It was a fern bar and deli that served nachos, onion rings, knishes, split pea soup, bagels and lox, chicken salad sandwiches, Reuben sandwiches, bratwurst, apple strudel, and black and white cookies. In december I moved to Newark, Delaware, and worked at the Underdog Cafe, which was something like the snack bar at college, except with beer and more desserts. In january I moved to Charleston, South Carolina, and worked as a cook at Lillie's Lunch Burgers. In february I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, and worked as a bartender at Scuppernong. It was a down home wine bar with vines, leaves and grapes painted on the ceiling and bluegrass music on weekends. One of the bands wore white shirts and neckties. I started going to a bluegrass jam I found out about, and I found a fiddler and a bass player to work with. We all learned a great deal about playing with other people, which was something I hadn't done much of. Besides the sessions in Tennessee, there had only been a few in Colorado. In march I moved to Harrisonburg, Virginia, and worked at a Thai restaurant called Ginger Basil Starship. The Millenium Falcon and the Enterprise were painted on the ceiling among the stars. In april I moved to Middletown, Connecticut, and got job as a cook at Fred's Falafels, a Middle Eastern restaurant popular with students.

In may I moved to Montpelier, Vermont, and worked as an assistant baker at the Spice of Life Bakery. They sold whole wheat bread, cornbread, bran muffins, apple crisp, carrot cake with an orange glaze instead of cream cheese frosting, and ice cream made with honey instead of sugar. There were ivy leaves painted on the ceiling. There was a young Chinese woman there who had grown up in Toronto's Chinatown. She had learned Cantonese from her grandparents, and when she found out I spoke it, she asked me for lessons. I said I would be happy to teach her, but I would rather go out with her and talk to her. She blushed, and said that would be acceptable. It had been a long time since I had spoken much Cantonese. I went back through time and listened to myself and others speaking it. I hoped I didn't make an idiot of myself. We met on our day off and walked along the main street, talking about things we saw. She called me sifu, which means teacher and is used something like sensei in Japanese. She was good and needed mostly practice and a more adult vocabulary. I had spoken Cantonese to some of the people in my tai chi class in Germany up until I was fifteen and so was a little better off. Mostly we taught each other. We went into a coffee shop and sat down. We went somewhere else and had dinner. Afterward we walked some more and held hands, which is something people do in China. There, it is usually not people of different genders, but this was here. Both of us had found something familiar we had missed, and neither of us wanted to stop. She invited me up to her apartment, and we had tea. After we had sat on the sofa for a few minutes she leaned forward. So I kissed her. It was brief and unexpected. When she didn't lean back I kissed her again. I put my arm around her, and she put her hand carefully on my knee. I touched her lip softly with my tongue to see what would happen. Her tongue came out to meet it briefly, like a peck on the cheek. I wasn't sure what to do. After several minutes like this, she leaned back and said it was getting late, we should go to bed. I stood up when she did, and she took my hand and led me to the bedroom.

She started to get undressed and put away her clothes, so I took mine off and set them on a chair. I didn't get much of a chance to look at her because she got into her very high bed and slid over. I followed. I was grateful she didn't go brush her teeth and leave me twiddling my thumbs. I won't have known what to do. She seemed to. She put her arm around me and kissed me some more. I nibbled her lip. She sucked on mine. Our tongues got acquainted but remained shy. I held her more firmly and moved my hand down her back. She pressed her body against mine. She was formal, but that didn't mean she wasn't enthusiastic. I found her passion held in check was very exciting. I moved my hand from her hip and massaged her buttock gently. She purred into our kiss. I moved my hand down her thigh. She turned slightly and somehow managed to open her legs modestly. I don't know how she did it. I moved my hand between and held her, the heel of my palm pressed into her pubic hair. Two fingers slipped into her folds, slid up, and gently massaged her clitoris. Her purr moved to deeper in her throat. I kissed the side of her jaw, down her neck, over a very nice clavicle, and onto her breast. I sucked her nipple into my mouth. I massaged it gently with my teeth and tongue. She gasped, and her clitoris now seemed to be massaging my fingers. She pulled me back up and reached for my testicles, pulling on them with fingers while her thumb was hooked around my penis. I moved my hand up to her shoulder blade. When she judged I was ready she reached under her pillow and handed me a condom. She rolled onto her back and shifted over while I put it on. I moved between her legs and guided myself into her. I stroked slowly, and she tried to move her legs together. I lifted one knee and then the other so she could. She was small enough that it worked. If she had been taller she might have been skinny, but she wasn't so the proportions worked out. I straddled her hips and felt her gripping and engulfing me. We moved together. I kissed her, and she sucked eagerly at me, until her breathing deepened and she broke off. I listened as she grunted in a separate rhythm. I couldn't understand it, so I followed the movement of her hips. Her arms held on to my neck. Her rhythms approached each other, separated, then locked together as she forced herself against me and grunted fiercely. I held on as she struggled. Finally she slowed, and I heard her panting in time to her thrusts, still seeking. The pants turned back to grunts, sometimes louder, sometimes softer. I felt something stir inside of me, and rise up, and burst forth as I came into her with a few well placed grunts of my own.

We spent more time together and got lots of practice. Then in june we said goodbye, and I moved to Manchester, New Hampshire, and got a job doing food prep and as apprentice cook at Fast Fast, a Chinese lunch counter and take out restaurant. It was sort of a chain, with a several restaurants in different places throughout the area. Normally you wouldn't hire someone as an apprentice if he was only going to stay for a month. They did because I spoke Cantonese, they wanted me for food prep and it was part of the position, and they saw my tattoos. Hiring a wandering Taoist priest was good luck. They didn't know what to make of me, so one of the cooks adopted me and became my uncle. He named me Chopchop. Everyone was amused. Respectful, but amused. I learned to toss vegetables around in a wok, throw in handfuls of stuff, and be free with the soy sauce. It turned out states were a lot smaller up here. Manchester is only two hours from Montpelier, so I was able to visit and share the Cantonese that I was learning. In july I moved to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and worked at The Sub. They served school cafeteria type food done right and some less healthy or more expensive alternatives. There was a picture of a frazzled looking woman with a pencil behind her ear painted on the wall. Besides students, many of their customers were shipyard workers. In august I moved to Portland, Maine, and got a job at a place called At a Cambrian Fish. They served pancakes, baked beans, stuffed mushrooms, hot broc, vegan lasagna, corn chowder, mussels, clam fritters, baked scallops, lobster pie, crab cakes, and fish and chips. The owner hired me as temporary help during their busiest month. I asked him about the name. He said it referred to a clothing store. I said I didn't understand. He said Abercrombie and Fitch. I said you're kidding. He allowed as how few people had understood the pun, but maintained that a meaningless phrase as a name worked just as well. I said there weren't any fish during the Cambrian. He said that was part of the joke, and there were trilobites and brachiopods, which were sort of like lobsters and mussels, which were at least shellfish. I tried listening to one of the fossils they had on display. A trilobite is an oval shaped segmented creature, but there was an amazing number of kinds of trilobites on the sea floor and moving through the water, along with things that looked like centipedes, scallops, mussels, snails, worms and sponges. I had read that there were supposed to be giant killer shrimp, but I didn't see any.

In september I headed toward Northampton, Massachusetts, and stopped at a place out in the woods called Tao Book Muffin. This was the last state in my pilgrimage, which was a good thing, because I had driven my car about as far as I could. The sign said it was a used book store cafe, but the cafe area was small and had only half a box of donuts from a chain. I asked if they would like to hire a baker. The clerk said they couldn't afford it, and they only moved two dozen donuts a day at most, or six dozen cookies during a concert. I said I was a baker and knew something about running a cafe. I thought they could do better. She said she had grown up in a bakery, and she didn't think so. I went around and looked at the rest of the store, around being the operative word, since it was some sort of three dimensional labyrinth. I found a good selection of books and a small art gallery. Someone cared about this place. And there was something else. I went back and looked at the cafe again. It was very nice and bright and made the most of its space. Natural light came in from above. The service area was across from the register, by the door, so there was one whole small level for seating. It had two small tables and one slightly larger one, and could seat eight, or eleven with a little crowding. I looked at the pictures hung there. The one of the fish told me where I had seen the artist even before I checked the signature. I went back to the checkout and asked if she was Anya? She said yes. I said I liked her work. I had seen it before at The Alchemist in Baltimore. She got excited and asked me about it. We moved up a few steps to the cafe and sat down.

I could still see it, so I described the mural exactly and answered all her questions. When I had asked the owner if it was a little faded, he said it was from people smoking, before he had banned it, and he was afraid to clean it. Anya muttered that she could clean it. She said I was very observant and had a good memory. I said I did. I hadn't meant to say so much, but she kept asking questions. I asked about the cafe. She said she liked to get goods from a bakery, or failing that, at least from the grocery story. But the donut shop was more convenient, so that's what she often had. She wasn't that far from town, but she wasn't that close either. The store didn't do much better than breaking even, so she couldn't afford to hire someone or make improvements. I asked if she would be interested in leasing the cafe area? She asked what I meant. I said maybe I could run the cafe myself, then she wouldn't be assuming much risk. And it would probably help sell more books. She said she didn't know, she would have to talk to the owner. I said I was headed into town and needed a place to stay. Did she know where I might look? It didn't have to be very big. She said if I wanted to help out in the store, she could give me some floor space for a few days. I asked how she knew if that would be safe? She said she had her ways, and I probably didn't want to know about them. I accepted her offer.

It turned out she lived in the bookstore. She slept in a shed in the back, but would move inside when it got cold later in the season. I could stay here for now. I mostly worked the register and ran the cafe, while she helped customers, bought books, and arranged stock. I thought about the space. There was a small performance space with seating on either side and where the store wound around and looked down on itself. There was a large bay window that might hold two small tables. There were large floor cushions. There were wide steps people could sit on without being in the way. I could add drink holders. There was an outside deck that could be expanded. There was no space for a kitchen. I asked Anya how they got around the accessibility requirements? She said they had been grandfathered in with a special exemption. I asked about fire codes? She said there were lots of emergency exits. Leon, the owner, came out from the city to meet with us. He liked my ideas but asked if the schedule was realistic? I admitted it was optimistic, but I thought I could meet it if I could find financing and the right people. While I hadn't been earning much for the last four years, I had been spending even less and could pay for much of it myself. Even if the schedule slipped, it wasn't that large a project and should still work. Leon thought he knew some people who could help. Anya said she might be able to find a crew. I drove into the city to meet with Paul and Mark. They went over my figures and liked them, but wanted a stake in the business. Mark said I could buy them out if it was successful. I said that seemed backward. Paul said yes, but they had a personal interest in the bookstore. They would be satisfied with a reasonable return on their investment.

So we signed the papers, and I leased the cafe and associated property at one dollar a month for two years. These people moved very quickly. We already had the site, well and septic system. The bookstore was well liked, this counted as a business expansion, and Anya had connections, so the permits didn't take any time. I found someone to put in the crawl space foundation next to the store who could start immediately. A week later it was done. Commercial ovens are expensive. But bakeries like to upgrade when they renovate, and used ones are available at a reasonable price. I found a double deck convection oven I liked, a range, a mixer, and a fridge that was big enough. I arranged a delivery date and hoped we would be ready. Anya had been getting by with just the small bar fridge, toaster, and hot plate in the cafe since she had taken over management of the store. And she frequently had guests. Stephen sometimes came out and stayed with her. Other times Angela did. It was none of my business. She told me if the schedule slipped it would be more than just her sharing floor space with me when winter came. On monday the crew from the building supply store put up the sixteen by sixteen two story prefab shed on my foundation. By thursday the electrical and plumbing hookups were ready, and I had finished what prep work I could. Everything we would need had been delivered. On friday Anya's crew started to arrive. The weather held, and the first tents went up behind the bookstore. We started on the insulation, sheetrock, flooring, wiring, and plumbing. The rest of the crew arrived that evening and early the next morning. There were Anya, Angela, Stephen, Leon, Paul, Mark, Judy, Jose, Frank, Owl, Thom, Kamau, Parveen, Lisa and me. Karen and Diane were in late pregnancy and couldn't make it, and Linda had stayed with them. Jose and Frank were experienced construction workers and directed everything. Some were skilled, some could follow directions, some could carry and hold things, some could run errands, some could prepare and serve food.

With a normal crew much of a person's time is spent standing around and waiting. With this crew everyone knew where to be and when. It was impossible. I would see through the pathways where someone would be needed, and before I could say anything they would already be headed there. Places I worked always ran a bit smoother, but not like this. Either someone else had an ability like mine, or they were somehow reading my thoughts. Anya, who just happened to be standing beside me, said it was about time I noticed. I said huh? She said I had all the pieces, now put them together. So I did. With Summer, and also with Sureshot, when we shared abilities we each saw some of what the other saw. If someone was sharing my ability, or was using one like it close by, I should be able to tell. I looked into my mind and found thoughts. Okay, what else? Lots of thoughts. They weren't all mine. They were those of the people working all around us. One of them was Anya's amusement. I didn't begrudge her her little joke. It was like when I discovered my own ability. I had been hearing voices for five years before I noticed them. Now I had all these thoughts and had just realized it. But if I shared their thoughts, and everyone else knew what was going on, then. I turned to Thom, who just happened to be standing next to me on the other side. He smiled a little and said bingo. Thom linked everyone together. Jose and Frank directed the work mostly through him. I was letting people know where they would be needed. They worked together because they chose to and because they could. And because I needed them. That was humbling. Thom said yes, but you get used to it. Some of us had special abilities, some didn't. Two people weren't part of the link. And now that I saw all this, what? Jose knew. We got back to work.

I had faced the building north and added a row of three windows to the front of the second floor. It could serve as Anya's art studio. She had nearly cried when I told her my idea. The first floor had my kitchen, a pantry, a table, and a tiny bathroom under the stairs. There were laundry hookups upstairs. I had replaced the shed doors with regular doors. I had wanted to put a cupola vent on top but decided it was an unnecessary and expensive complication. I did change the shingles from black to light gray. It had a gambrel roof and was painted white with black trim. We finished sunday evening, and not being shy, some of us tried out the shower. It seemed to work. Others used the shower in the bookstore. Those of us still here had a last meal together, and I thanked everyone as best I could. They all wished me well, packed up their tents and sleeping bags, and headed home. Anya told me she had dreamed she was pregnant, and invited me to spend the night with her in her new studio. I accepted. There was a strong smell of drying paint, but it was tolerable with the windows open. I carried my futon upstairs and we went to bed. It had been an emotional and exhausting several weeks. After all this time I was finally where I was meant to be. I cried. Anya held me and rocked me gently. When I calmed down she kissed me.

It was a soft deep kiss. Her hand moved down my back, feeling the state of my muscles, until it rested lightly on my hip. She broke off the kiss, reached for a condom, and unrolled it over me. Then she rolled me onto my stomach and straddled me. I didn't see how this was going to work. Then I felt her hands start massaging my shoulders. She had an artist's strong and sensitive hands. There are fifty six muscles in the human back. Large ones in the shoulders, long ones down the back, and small ones in the spine. Tai chi taught me to be aware of them. She knew exactly where each one was, what it needed, and how to provide it. Except maybe she missed some of the lateral flexors. They are small and hard to reach, and I hadn't used them very much. I am careful how I lift things. My muscles relaxed and softened. The blood flow increased with a tingling sensation, bringing in oxygen and washing out fatigue poisons. I felt her naked rear squirming around on top of me as she worked. Not all of me relaxed. She leaned forward and kissed along the side of my neck. She lay down next to me and pulled me on top of her. I guided myself into her. We had been working and living together, and I wanted this. She was excited and ready for me. I felt her enclosing me and responded to the arch and thrust of her body. After a while she started having orgasms and grunted softly with each one. Sensations flowed back and forth between us. Then they gathered inside of me and swelled and rushed back into her as I felt myself come with a series of jerks.

Anya told me about her other relationships while we were sitting in the cafe the next evening. The kitchen was still empty. I had a carrot muffin and she had an almond croissant. Besides Angela and Stephen, there were three other people, Thom, Owl and Max, two of whom I had met. It was a little unusual in that it was a group relationship, something they called poly, and in how they visited each other. Thom could share thoughts with people. He had to be within speaking or shouting distance to do this, except that with a woman with whom he'd had an extended sexual relationship distance didn't matter. Anya said they could contact each other whenever they wanted, and that she always had some degree of awareness of him. There was something else, but she said it would be easier to demonstrate than to explain, if that was alright. I didn't understand but said yes. Thom and Owl were standing beside her. They pulled out the two other chairs and joined us. It took me a moment to realized what had happened. They had just suddenly appeared out of nowhere, like an image from the past, but it felt as if they had been here the whole time. I said hello and asked if they would like an apricot Danish? Thom took it. I asked how they had done that. He said they were here in the dreaming. Their real bodies were sitting down at home, even though I could hear and see and touch them. I said that must be convenient. He said yes. I was in mid sentence when I suddenly got what else Anya was showing me. I said she'd had other guests besides the ones I'd known about. She smiled and said yes. I stopped myself before I could ask if it was both at once, but since we were sharing thoughts it did no good. Anya said sometimes, plus there was Max. Owl said she would have to go get him and asked if I wanted to come along. I would get to see her ability. I said yes.

She said I should relax and close my eyes. I was sitting in a different chair when I opened them, and everything had gotten bigger. She said my viewpoint was only slightly lower. Most of the size difference came from her body consciousness. I was seeing myself from outside my body, as I sometimes did when I looked at events from when I was younger. I was sitting there with my eyes closed and somehow didn't fall out of my chair. Then there was a dizzying shift and I was back in my own body. Owl was surprised. She said that hadn't happened before. I had moved back when I'd thought about myself sitting in my chair. I said I would like to try again and would be more careful this time. I closed my eyes, and there were four of us in Owl's body when I opened them. Thom and Anya had joined us. Sharing a body with Anya felt familiar. She said it came from how her own ability worked, and we could talk about that later. Owl asked if I was ready, and I said I needed a minute to get used to this. She stood up and got a glass of water. The movement and familiar sensations helped. It was like when someone in a story enters a magical realm. She needs to eat or drink something there to stabilize herself. When Owl sat back down I said I was ready. I felt her push gently. And we stepped out into the green.

I felt her grief at familiar trees cut down to clear the site for the kitchen. We hung there in mid air where they had been, then the small trees were back and my new kitchen had become a phantom. Owl said she was sorry, she hadn't touched the actual structure. She had often used the trees to reach others nearby. She had shared their being and they felt like friends. She had recreated them in the dreaming so they could continue to act as a bridge. I said I was sorry. I didn't know. She thanked me and said it was part of life. She couldn't forgive the wholesale destruction of forest ecosystems, but humans needed space and food. We moved to the hemlocks along the small river that bordered the property. Then into the oaks and hickories of the surrounding forest. We moved from tree to tree, sometimes inhabiting a small number that were sharply defined, sometimes a larger number with a more vague sensation. The bright beings of insects were all around us. As Thom could share thoughts and sensations with other people, Owl could share in the existence of plants and insects. Also fungi, worms and shellfish. Anything large enough for her to see and without a backbone. Except for octopus and squid. She said their minds were too complicated. We moved down river valleys, over hills, and through towns. We moved over a wetland and a fence topped with razor wire. We crossed the prison yard in a row of pine trees Owl had placed there in the dreaming. Max was standing in his cell waiting for us while his body slept. I shook his hand and said I was glad to meet him. He said he was sorry he missed the kitchen raising. I said we had managed without him. The next moment we were back sitting in our chairs in the cafe. Max pull another one over and joined us.

He picked up the apricot Danish, which was now whole again, and said he looked forward to trying my baked goods. We talked a little, and I asked if they would like to see my ability. I hadn't shown it to Anya yet or seen hers, but it seemed appropriate after Owl's demonstration. There was a pause. Then Thom said yes, he would like see it, and the others nodded. I said to Thom that his ability seemed most like mine, since I mostly looked at what people did. Was there anything from his past that he would like to see? He said I should choose. That seemed a little strange since I didn't know anything about him, but I said alright. I took his hand and Anya's and waited. The others joined us and we formed a lopsided circle. I looked for a moment that was important to him but not traumatic, something that had made a difference in his life.

I saw a younger version of Thom sitting at a desk reading. It was small room with a bed and dresser. He hadn't been moving very much, but now he sat very still and seemed to be waiting. After a few moments I realized that he was somehow aware of me. I thought oops. I thought it very softly and to myself, but I could tell he still heard me, even though he hadn't moved. We both waited. He asked softly if I was Jesus? I didn't know what to do, but I couldn't just leave him hanging there. I said um, no, I wasn't. He asked if I was a prophet? That was a tricky question, and I didn't want to lie to him. I wasn't one in the sense he meant. I said I had never thought about it before, but supposed I might be. I had seen some of nature's plan. But really I was just a lost soul trying to find my way. He asked how I was doing? I said I thought I was making a little progress and doing okay, relatively speaking, since most people didn't realize they were lost and few made much effort to find their way. He said that was true. I apologized for disturbing him and said that meeting him had been an accident. No one else had ever noticed me, but I should have realized that he might. I decided that this was the best I was going to be able to do, and that it was way too dangerous to continue.

We were still holding hands, and they were all looking at me. I said they knew. They all knew this would happen. Owl said yes. I said they couldn't tell me, not without creating a paradox. Owl said no. If I had known how dangerous it was, that I would be tampering with the past, I wouldn't have done it, or I would have only because I knew I already had. It was a paradox either way. They couldn't warn me. Anya said yes, she did. Thom wasn't really the first person who had ever noticed me. She had, and she had seen time nearly collapse in on itself. I said at The Alchemist, that time after she had painted her mural. She said yes, she had told me to take care, time was even more complex than I thought. I said I had heard her. I had heard her without realizing that I had. She said that was the only way. Reality protects itself. Thom said they had known about me and that they would meet me, but hadn't known when or where or who I was. Anya said she had recognized me after I started telling her about the mural. She told the others she had found me, but she never told them about our encounter in Baltimore. It would have been too dangerous. She said she wanted me to join their group. She thought I was supposed to. I said yes. I got the idea that there was something else, but I turned away and thought of other things. Thom said they had to go, and it was just Anya and me. It seemed as if they hadn't been here. There was an uneaten apricot Danish on the table and not a chair out of place.

The upper room became our bedroom at night. Except by prior arrangement, we did our private entertaining elsewhere. It remained her studio during day, although I had visitation rights. My ovens and other appliances were delivered and installed. I bought supplies and equipment, and tried everything out. The inspectors came and went. I was ready to start. I had made announcements and done publicity but hadn't known when I would get final approval. I had been making trips to different bakeries so customers would get used to having good things in the cafe and to see what sold well. So I started out with muffins and pastries and cookies. Customers bought more and the locals liked us. It wouldn't be enough, but it was a start. I could do special orders. We could have more concerts. I would try farmers markets. I hoped to eventually place goods in grocery stores and restaurants. I had some time and not much overhead. I checked the map and found that Montpelier was two and a half hours away. Close enough for overnight visits, but I wouldn't have time while I was starting a business. In late october we arranged one in the other direction and used the top level of the bookstore. I made brioche.

Halloween is an American children's holiday that celebrates blood and gore, death, torture and evil. It is the evening before All Saints Day, a Christian holiday that was moved there to dispossess an earlier Pagan one. It used to be called All Hollows Day, hollow meaning holy and referring to the blessed dead in heaven. The name was chosen because it sounded something like that of the Pagan holiday, which is pronounced Sauwin even though it is spelled Samhain. Samhain is the day of the last harvest. Anything left in field afterward was considered poison. It is a cross quarter day, midway between the summer solstice and the fall equinox. It was the last day of the lunar month, and thus fell on the new moon. When the solar calendar replaced the lunar one, it was moved to the true cross quarter day, which is really a point in time rather than a day. Before the solar calendar was stabilized, it drifted. The true cross quarter day occurs in early november, when the doorways between the worlds open and those lost can rejoin the living. But it works both ways.

Anya's poly group wanted to hold a ritual to celebrate my joining and make my membership in some sense official. Since it was a marriage ritual it would of course involve sex. Older marriage rituals, especially those involving royalty, had witnesses. This one would be only us. I could hear some of my pathways through time better since I had closed Thom's time loop. All of the ones that weren't dead ends converged. After that I couldn't hear anything. The ritual had to be held after the point of Samhain, which was mid afternoon on a friday, and before the point of the full moon, which was saturday evening, a little over twenty nine hours later during a total lunar eclipse. Eclipses are times of endings and beginnings. Friday evening Owl and Thom drove out from the city so we could hold our ritual here. We fetched Max after lights out. Owl said there was something she needed to tell me. When she and Max had first had dream sex, she had gotten pregnant. Not in the real world, only in the dreaming. The embryo had stopped developing soon after, but had remained healthy. They had communicated with it and found out it was waiting. It had been three years now and they still didn't know for what. She had used protection when she'd first had sex with Thom, but he'd become a second father anyway. Since Max had the ability to see inside things and to see very small things, he had shown her Thom's chromosomes in the embryo. It had grown a little more and stopped again. The embryo had even gotten chromosomes from Eliska, and then Kamau. Now it had somehow moved over to Anya and had some from her too. I would probably become one of the fathers tonight. I said I'd already had sex with Anya. Owl said so had Stephen and Angela, and nothing had happened. Maybe it took more people being there. And maybe they should have told me sooner. I said Anya had tried to and I'd misunderstood, but if I'd known what I was doing I would have done it anyway.

For the occasion I had made a tower of sixteen medium sized cream puffs held together with chocolate. The big ones the French make need a caramel glaze to hold them together and sometimes a cone shaped support inside, but this worked for a little one. They are traditional at French weddings, probably because of the cream filling. We ate it at the table in the kitchen before the ceremony and toasted each other with ginger ale in flutes. Owl had brought Max's kalimba, and he serenaded us with the sounds of Telemann and Bach. Then we when upstairs and got undressed. Anya had olive skin, black hair, and fair size breasts with large dark areolae. Owl was short with lightly tanned skin, brown hair, and very small breasts. Max had dark brown skin, short black hair, and was in good shape. Thom was smaller with light skin and dark hair. I was just me, a little bigger and slightly darker than Thom. We had moved the futon under the window so we could see the stars over our heads. Max and Anya kissed and lay down on one side of the already open bed. Owl put her arms around both Thom and me and kissed us alternately as we watched them. Thom had his arm around her waist so I put mine around her shoulders. We both had erections sticking out in front of us.

It was strange watching Anya with Max. I had seen Andy with someone else, but she had been with him first. Anya had been with the others first, but I had never seen or heard her with someone else. I lived with her, and it felt like we were a couple. Well, we were a couple, but she had other lovers too. And here I was with Owl. I turned back to her. She was watching me with deep green eyes. I smiled, and she smiled back and kissed me again. Then she asked me to turn out the light. I did and came back. The full moon wasn't shining in the window but did provide enough light to see clearly. There were no colors. We stood there. Max moved on top of Anya and entered her. We had all been checked and didn't need condoms. Owl and Anya used diaphragms. I heard them squishing and saw Anya's legs waving. I decided I liked her being with Max. Anya was able to share with fish and birds like Owl did with plants. Her ability worked more through touch, as mine did through sound and Thom's through scent. Owl's ability with plants worked through light. Since Anya's ability used the reptile part of the brain, she could share physical sensations with people as well. During sex I could feel her with myself inside, as well as myself inside of her. Thom being here increased the effect. I could feel her with Max inside, and Max inside of her. His sensations during sex were the same as and different from mine.

Owl led me to the other side and pulled me down onto my own bed. Thom went around and sat on the floor next to Max and Anya. We would have our witnesses. I turned back to Owl and kissed her. She drew me into her body with her tongue. I don't know how she did it, but there I was, between her legs and swallowed whole. I pulled out a little and pushed back in. She pushed back firmly and nibbled my lip. We moved through eternity together and waited. I felt the syncopated rhythms of our four bodies. I tasted the flow of blood and bone and muscle and sex. Anya arrived with spasms and shudders, and Max arrived with a gusher of cum. Owl arrived with a glow and a grimace, and I arrived with a crescendo of gasps. Max slid off Anya, and Thom lay down next to her. I moved off Owl, and Max put his arm around her. She turned and kissed him. I got a towel, and a couple extra, and sat on the floor. There wasn't much movement for a while. Then Thom moved onto Anya. Later Owl let go of Max's penis and he mounted her. It was all clenching buttocks and loud breathing. I moved around to the other side of the bed. There was some large number of orgasms. I lay down next to Anya and wondered if she was going to sleep. I closed my eyes. I opened them when I felt her pulling on my erection. She kissed me. Her back felt damp under my hand. So did the breasts that were pressed against me. She straddled my hips and guided me home. I felt myself entering and filling her. Thom was with Owl, and Max was sitting on a towel. I could see the stars outside. I thrust upward and watched Anya sway and gyrate. She was wet and soft and warm. After a while things started to happen. I felt energy moving inside of her, different from mine. It spun and gathered. It moved downward and coalesced. Her breasts jiggled as she shuddered and came on top of me with a grunt. Owl came next, then Thom. I was the last man standing. More jiggles. Then I felt heat rush through my body, gather in my hips, and fountain up into her as I came. I thought of the leftover cream puffs.

Owl and Max checked on Anya's pregnancy. Thom helped us look into the dreaming without going to sleep. The embryo was growing again and now had eight of my chromosomes, along with eight from each of them and three from Eliska and Kamau. We watched it. The Y chromosomes came from Owl and Max, and now all the mitochondria were from Anya. Owl said it seemed to be growing faster than normal. Max said it was. Biochemical reactions didn't happen at that rate, and they were accelerating. I listened. I said the growth only appeared fast. The pathways of time were folded around the embryo. That must have been what stopped its growth. Now they were uncollapsing, and the embryo was making up for lost time. Owl said it had reached the twelfth week of development and was now a fetus. At nineteen weeks it started to slow down again. At twenty eight weeks in was at normal speed. She weighted two pounds, and was thirteen inches long and moving around. Anya's dream body had a sizable bump, and she had fallen sleep. We all lay down or meditated so we could join her in the dreaming. We saw the fetus open her eyes and blink at us. The first contraction hit like an earthquake. Anya gasped. Owl said it was too early. Max said things worked differently in the dreaming. Thom said the fetus had stopped waiting and intended to be born. She was doing this intentionally. We should trust her. There were no doctors to call. Owl said Judy was a nurse, and she left through the green to get her. Thom contacted Eliska, one of the parents, through the permanent link they shared. She, Jeremiah and Grace blinked into the room. Kamau hadn't been with them. Owl blinked back into the room with Judy, Linda, Paul, Mark and Jose. It would have been crowded, but this was the dreaming, so Owl pushed back the walls and made more room, and chairs for those that wanted them. Judy and Linda knelt by Anya and reassured her. Thom held everyone in a link. He could only hold certain numbers of people in a stable link. It had to do with the energies involved. Groups the same size were to evenly balanced to merge. If they were to different in size, the smaller one didn't have enough energy to merge into the larger more stable one. One person couldn't join a group of three, and two groups of two couldn't merge, so any group of four was unstable. But groups of two and three could merge. So could three and five. We had thirteen people, so Thom could form groups of five and eight and merge them into a stable link.

Anya's dream body had changed rapidly to accommodate the growth of the fetus. Now her labor was progressing much faster than in the real world. Her body was still changing as needed. It was just over an hour later, early saturday morning, when the baby was born. She screamed her first breath, and Judy handed her to Owl. Owl bathed her and wrapped her in a towel and handed her to Anya to nurse. We all congratulated each other and tried to decide who she looked like. She finished nursing and went to sleep. Then she started to grow again. The time folded around her was unbinding itself. She stopped when she had caught up and time had flattened out, at twenty six months. She opened her eyes, looked up at Anya, and said hello. Anya said hello back. Kamau had told them she was a god, but not one he knew. Owl asked who she was? She said Tara. Thom said the bodhisattva of compassion? She said yes, she had chosen us so she could manifest in the world again, or near it. She told Anya she had something for her. Several bluegill appeared floating in the air. Anya said oh. She hadn't seemed very surprised by any of this, perhaps it was dream hormones, but now she was. She hugged the child to her and said thank you, she had missed them. Tara thanked her for the use of her fish. Five of her parents were White and two Black. Her skin was somewhat darker than Anya's. But as I looked at her she seemed somehow to also be a pure white color, with markings on the palms of her hands. I could see her as the others did since we shared perceptions. Owl saw her as green through the same effect. Max as blue, and Thom as red. To Anya she was as black as the depths that surrounded her, with dark blue ornaments. I now noticed that the different colored versions of her did seem to be wearing jewelry of some sort, necklaces and earrings and something around her waist.

Thom asked about the children. Tara said yes, now it was time. I asked what they meant. He said he and Owl had rescued Zachary, a child from his church, from the men who had kidnapped him, but they had been unable to save three others. He had been waiting until they could. I wanted to know more. He hesitated. Tara said go ahead, but be careful. He said some secret government organization had wanted children, and had hired the men. Other men had come to his church afterward and told people that the unknown rescuers were actually the terrorists who had taken the boy. There had been very little about it in the papers. Now it was safe to start looking for the other children. I said I knew how to find them. Everyone looked at me. I said I had visited an abandoned missile silo in Nebraska and followed it back through time. Part of the complex had been used to hold and torture children, so they could be programmed as spies and assassins. With their help, I thought I could follow the timelines forward to where those people were now. Tara said we couldn't rescue just the three children. Anyone who tried to leave the program would be killed. They all had self destruct programming. We would have to rescue everyone, remove their conditioning, and shut down the program. And it had to be done now. Nobody said anything. I asked if she meant we had until the central point of the eclipse? She said it might be a few minutes either way, but yes, that was what she meant. The energies were aligned and the doorways held open. That was why she had chosen this time. They would close this evening. We had eighteen hours. I asked how many people were there? She said thousands. We would need more help, and she had told us all she could. She said all this with a two year old's voice.

Thom said we should gather our forces and find their base. Owl was the only one of us who could travel fast enough. She should get Karen's group, then help me search. I said there was something I needed to do first. I asked Thom if he could keep me in the link while I time traveled? He said he could try. I sat down, closed my eyes, and listened. I followed my timeline back to Cincinnati. I found Jinx and myself, and was very careful not to be noticed. I listen for Jinx's timeline. I hadn't done this much before. Yes, I could hear it. I followed it forward from the past. I couldn't have followed it far enough on my own. But when two people connect, the result is more than the sum of their individual energies, and we had thirteen. Thom had held the link. Jinx had moved east, to the same city where the others lived. I appeared in her bedroom in the middle of the night and said there was need. Her dream self looked at me, stood up in her nightshirt, and asked what could she do? I held out my hand, noticing I hadn't bothered to put on any clothes. This hadn't work so well the last time, but she didn't hesitate. Thom blinked us back to the others. Owl had found both Karen and Diane in labor. They, Frank, Stephen and Leon wouldn't be able to give us much of their attention, but were all willing to join the link and give us some of their energy, which right now was considerable. Thom had contacted Lily and Rose, two former girlfriends with whom he still shared a link. With Jinx, that made eight. Thom combined the eight and thirteen without a ripple. I noticed the surge of increased energy because I was looking for it. The effect of Jinx was obvious. We could think. Our minds worked much faster, and we could see ideas and events more clearly and how they fit together.

We were ready to start reconnaissance. Owl moved us through forests and across the plains to the underground silos. I moved us back to when they were occupied, and followed people forward looking for where they had gone. They had gone a great many places. Parts of the program were scattered all over. We would need to backtrack to its beginning. This was going to take much longer than I thought. Even with the number of people we had and the speed at which we were moving and thinking, we wouldn't have nearly enough time. Unless. My tattoo showed a waterfall branching and merging as it flowed over rocks. It represented the pathways through time. We were finding different places and people. It wasn't a linear process. Could we do it all at once instead of everything in sequence? When pathways merged, most details were forgotten, and different people remembered events from different pathways. The relatively few contradictions that were noticed were considered faulty memory. Could one person travel different pathways and converge with all the memories from each, if he knew what he was doing? I didn't have time to experiment. I let people know what I intended and started moving them sideways through time, as well as backward and forward. Some people had trouble with it at first, but we all supported each other and everyone quickly adapted. A person felt he was doing something once, then found he had done many different things at the same time.

The program had started in the fifties as part of the CIA. Colleges, hospitals and prisons were used to recruit young people, children and adults for mind control experiments. They had tried hypnotism and electro shock, but found that drugs, torture and abuse worked better. They learned to fragment personalities and program different levels for memory, sex, violence, telepathy, suicide, and deception. The subjects were returned to society unaware of their conditioning. Handlers used them as agents against foreign governments and domestic organizations. The program had been partially exposed in the seventies and forced deeper into the shadows, where they supported themselves with drug and arms trafficking. Prostitution and pornography had too much competition and were used only for blackmail. They had killed, blackmailed, and sabotaged presidents. Now they were spread all over the country and around the world. You can't keep something that big a secret, and they hadn't. The killed whom they needed to and either intimidated of discredited the rest. We found all their current locations, and where each subject was. Anya, Thom, Owl and Max examined the minds of some subjects, including the three Thom had been concerned about. Jinx and I kept track of everything.

Now that we knew what we were up against, we returned to the room above the bakery to consider our next step. It was still dark, but would start to get light soon. Tara sat to one side and observed. She hadn't manifested in the real world, only in the dreaming, and didn't require our care. Anya's dream body had returned to its normal state. She said the minds of all the subjects were connected on some level. It was how they had survived as well as they had. The handlers and their bosses had very little idea of what they were doing or the forces they were playing with. Thom and I had seen that the telepathy and clairvoyance that some subjects had was rudimentary. It had been triggered but was blocked by the conditioning. If we could heal their minds, Thom thought they would be powerful enough to take over the program from within. Most people who worked there didn't like the program but couldn't do anything. They were trapped by fear and by not knowing who to trust. The major weapon of those in charge was their control of the subjects. The question was how to free them. Anya said she thought they could heal themselves. Her brain had been damaged when she was young but had been able to find a work around and heal itself enough to function. The subjects brains weren't damaged. If Thom could link the fragmented parts together long enough, that should be enough. Thom asked how long would it take? Owl and Max compared what they had seen when they examined the subjects to what they knew about a normally functioning brain, which was considerable. Max could see atoms and molecules reacting in real time, and had learned a great deal about chemistry and biochemistry. He could literally watch himself think. Owl had been trained in biology, and had learned much more working with Max. If they had been able to publish their findings, they would have transformed medicine. They considered the number of new pathways needed and the speed of chemical reactions in the brain. They thought it would take four or five days, more time than we had according to what Tara said.

Jinx said she might be able to help. She asked Owl and Max to look at her brain. Thom took them through the link to her real body that was still asleep in her bed. They came back and said no brain could work that fast. Jinx said she could move fast, but she could think even faster. We had all just experienced it for ourselves. With the energy provided by the link, she had moved even faster than she usually could. Max said it felt like it ought work, depending on how much of her ability she could share with others, but they had no way to quantify it. Abilities like ours worked outside of normal reality. We wouldn't know if it would work until we tried it. Thom asked if I could step everyone far enough sideways through time to reach all the subjects at once? I considered. Branchings through time are different pathways with different events, but I had chosen ones that were close enough. We had been able to learn what we needed to. But observing events and changing them are two different things, even when the changes are made in the present. It would cause the the pathways to diverge. Except, with the doorways between the worlds open, Thom's link should be able to hold them together. I said yes, based on what I had just done, I thought I could.

Thom and Jinx and Owl carefully went over what we needed to do so everyone understood. We had been sharing abilities but practiced a little more. We were as ready as we were going to be, and our time was limited. Thom asked Tara for her blessing, and she nodded. We stepped out into the unknown. Owl moved everyone into position. I moved them back through time and pushed sideways, then moved everyone forward again. There were, in some sense of now, thousands of us. We started our assault on the program. Using Thom's ability, we to set up links in the dissociated brains of all the subjects. We shared Jinx's ability with all of them. Max could see them start to reconnect and set up neural pathways of their own. The subjects somehow saw and understood what was happening. Not all of them, not at first. Those that did shared their understanding with those nearest them through the connection they shared. It wasn't a close link of everyone to everyone like ours. It was an an intermittent and unstable network. But it worked. They would cooperate. Max said there was a problem. The healing wasn't happening fast enough. Jinx said with all these people the energy was spread too thin. It wasn't increasing her speed as much as it had before. The effect of having many copies of herself was diluted by linking them all together as one. I said the linked pathways wanted to recombine. I needed energy to hold them apart until we were done. Some subjects understood the problem and relayed the information. They started added their own energy. It helped.

But it wasn't going to be enough. Tara was still observing us. Now she told me to ask my friends, to call upon those who were sworn to come to my aid in time of need. I said I didn't have any more friends. She said I needed more faith. Ask, and it shall be given. So I did. I said please, help us. There is need. And a voice came, and asked if I wasn't a little far from home, and called me brother Turtle. It was Sureshot, the Navaho from New Mexico, and with her were the Cheyenne I had worked with in Wyoming, the Mayan from Arkansas, the Cherokee from Oklahoma, and Summer, the Mohawk from New York state. The five of them were joined together in a circle of power that encompassed the entire country, tapping into the land that was still theirs in spite of the white men who thought they owned it. Another voice called me Chopchop and asked if Ladyhawk and I had thought they would let us down? It was Chuck from Texas, and Andy and Stan and Larz, and Hendrike with her eight month old, joined in another circle of five. I said what? Anya said they were warriors whom she used to lead in another existence. I had been her cook. My finding them had reopened connections between them and with her, and my call had activated those connections. Another voice said she heard me call. What could she do? It was my girlfriend from Illinois. Another voice asked if I thought she wouldn't see me spying on her from that time before she was born? They could help. It was my daughter, whom I had never seen, now grown into a precocious six year old. She and her mother were a group of two, who joined with the one to form three, who joined with the five to form eight, who joined with the other five to form thirteen, who joined with our group of twenty one to form thirty four.

The energy levels increased. It might be enough. Kamau finally showed up, with his teacher from Kenya and shamen from Tanzania, Botswana, Congo, Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal, in a circle of eight that encompassed one of the largest continents. Raven from the prison ministry Owl had worked with appeared with her coven of thirteen. They joined with the eight to form twenty one, who joined with our thirty four to form fifty five. Another voice said that he had told me that others would help when they could. It was the old man from San Francisco, with twenty one sages, some older and some younger, from Chinatowns in Liverpool, New York, Toronto, Honolulu, Nagasaki and other cities, and from Nanjing, Luoyang, Xi'an and other cities in China. They formed a circle that encompassed the whole world. The Swan Lady who had once picked out Stephen appeared as Aphrodite, one of the thirteen Olympians, which included Hermes, Ares and Dionysus. I had thought they were myths. Stephen, at the hospital but still in the link, said they were, but there was always an incarnation of them somewhere. The only one who was really a myth was Hades, but I shouldn't tell him he said so. They joined with the twenty one to form thirty four, who joined with our fifty five to form eighty nine. Another voice asked could he help? He'd known kids who had disappeared. It was Anya's friend Ice from the asylum. I said that depends. Are there fifty five of you? He said no. Thirty four? No. Twenty one? He said at least. Thom joined them into a group. Another voice said he had heard there were kids in trouble. He and his friends wanted to help. It was Dozer from Max's prison, who had helped free Zachary. I asked were there thirty four of them? He said yes, there were lots of guys who were worried about their kids or about friends who'd disappeared. Thom joined them with the twenty one to form fifty five, who joined with our eighty nine to form one hundred forty four.

The healing process accelerated. It was going to work. Everyone was getting tired but it was going to work. As it neared completion, I felt an extra surge of energy in the link and heard a newborn infant cry. A few minutes later there was another. The healing had gone faster with some people than with others. It finished in some of the subjects, then in others, and before long the process was complete in all of them. Now I needed to let the pathways merge. I let go as gently as I could. It didn't matter. When all the changes we had made recombined, the backlash knocked me loose from time. The last thing I heard was Anya's scream.

The self is a field of possibilities. No more, no less. Like one of Heisenberg's particles. We think we are something solid, like a rock, or like we imagine a rock to be, but we aren't. We are the left over vibrations of a plucked string. Normally, pathways merge when different events lead to the same outcome. Our link had held together pathways with different outcomes, and I had chosen which outcomes were preserved and which discarded. It was impossible. The only things that had prevented reality from shattering, if in fact it hadn't shattered, which I had no way of knowing, were the special circumstances under which we had worked and the grace of God. Reestablishing one known present from the different possibilities we had created had left me in some unknown state, a Heisenberg uncertainty, no longer on a pathway of any kind. I wasn't tumbling through darkness. Tumbling requires some fixed object or orientation compared to which one tumbles, and there wasn't any. Darkness requires an alternative. I didn't seem to be anywhere, but I was still me. For at least some definition of me. And if there was me, there ought to be something else. I tried looking over the edge.

I heard the clink of armor, a murmur of voices, and a banner flapping in the breeze. I saw Anya standing on the side of a hill that overlooked a village. She had a metal bra tied over her leather shirt, which would certainly keep her breasts from bouncing around. A dark red cape was tied over one shoulder, billowing out behind her, and the hilt of a big honking sword stuck up from behind the other. She wore fur boots. Her device was a fish, and it floated on a banner next to her. Larz, Andy, Hendrike, Stan and Chuck were nearby, standing around and talking to each other. Three of them also had swords. Lars had a hammer, and Andy had a double bladed axe. I heard a loud screech. Anya looked up and held out her arm. A large hawk glided down and landed on her wrist. I remembered. I was her cook, and her appetites were legendary. Sometimes she would exchange partners with Andy, sometimes with Hendrike. Sometimes she sent for food late at night, and I would bring it to her. She would have me whipped if I came too soon. The scene started to fade. As it disappeared, I heard Stan's voice coming from somewhen else saying to Hendrike that he had never seen eyes like hers. In another time and space Sureshot, Ice, Dozer, Wild Man and the Rock walked down a road through darkening woodlands with the setting sun behind them. Then I was lost again.

I saw a bright light and moved toward it. It was a white room with rainbows and multicolored cushions. Thom and Owl and Max were eating corn chips and tuna salad. I heard part of Thom's mind planning the events I had just taken part in. They had been searching and would start their assault as soon as they found anything. They would have no chance against these people. Thom detected me. I said I was sorry for disturbing them but needed to tell him something. He should not try to do anything more about the child abductions yet. The men responsible were well organized and powerful. He would only endanger himself and others. He had shown them they were vulnerable, and that was enough for now. He said he had to find some way to help. He couldn't just sit there and let it continue. I said I knew that. Just as he had known when his time had come, he would know when it returned. He asked what I meant, and I gave him a reference, something that had stuck in my mind. Isaiah thirty fifteen.

"In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength."

Then they were gone. Once again I was lost. I prayed to Kuan Yin, the many named, goddess of mercy, and another form of Tara. I asked her to save me, she who never lets a prayer go unanswered. I saw two eyes of infinite compassion looking down on me. I heard her smile of sadness and disappointment. I had known it was forbidden to interfere. She said time is resilient, it can take a little tampering. But there are limits. When it collapses, it leaves a very large hole. I felt ashamed of what I had just done. I said not my will, but yours, and heard the silence close around me. If a sacrifice had to be made, it might as well be me as anyone else. I gave myself up for loved. I opened my eyes to Anya, Owl, Thom and Linda looking down at me. I said gah. They said I had fainted and been out for a few seconds. In this present, Anya hadn't screamed.

We had been successful, and the former subjects were now in charge of the project. Resignations would be announced to the staff, and sympathetic managers put in place. Everyone who had helped us blinked home. I thanked Jinx before she left. She asked if she could have one of the cream puffs? I said yes, but she should eat it here. I had one too and decided I should make some for the cafe. Tara went off about her own business but said she would be back. I didn't know how much some people would remember from their dream. Max said Dozer remembered some things but thought they were just his own dreams. Anya said she thought Ice understood, but that most of the others from the asylum wouldn't. They accepted a lot of strange things that other people dismissed, but this seemed too complex. That afternoon Thom asked me when I was born? And where? I told him and asked why he wanted to know? He said he'd had a twin brother who had not survived for very long. Sometimes he heard echoes of thoughts he couldn't make out and wondered if it was him. My thoughts sounded a little like those echoes. I had been born a few hours after Thom in the same state. I asked what his brother's name had been? He said his parents hadn't decided between Philip and John. I said I preferred Eliot. He asked if I believed in past lives and reincarnation? I said I didn't know but thought it made sense. He said if awareness and the soul were the same thing, maybe we could combine our abilities and follow a soul back through time. I said it was an interesting idea.

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