“But we need him.  Surely you don’t deny me that.”

     “No. My point is that it’s too soon to expect him to complete the d--- thing in any fashion that would render him useful to us.”  Coltrane watched Farthing’s incessant pencil-tapping with amusement.  He wondered why the desk’s crystalline surface had not cracked some years ago.

     “We have no one else,” Farthing countered.  “It’s him or no one.  There isn’t time.  And time, you know, is short.  We have one month, and we have no one even close to completing it.  C-----, Simmons is not ready---I’ll admit that.  He would too, if he knew what he’d signed up for.  You know the consequences as well as I.”

     “Yes, I do.”  Coltrane was no longer amused, and turned to leave. 

     Farthing’s tapping tendency increased.  Coltrane reached for the doorknob, and turned back.

     “How many are we going to sacrifice, Jack? Is a commitment from some things we’ve never even communicated with really worth it?  Two thousand and three hundred people already?” 

     He opened the door.  “I don’t think it’s meant to be completed.  Ever think of that?”

     “Three hundred and twenty.  And they were not SACRIFICED.  They VOLUNTEERED!” Farthing said hotly.  But Coltrane was gone.  He winced and dropped his pencil as the door slammed home.  Shaking his head, wondering how he’d be able to convince Coltrane that the program was necessary, he peered again into his desk.

     The last five jumps beckoned.  I couldn’t see anything BUT the stones, laid out in a zigzag in front of me—my peripheral vision didn’t seem to be working.  I considered trying to force my gaze away, but decided against it.  There must be a reason, right?  The last piece of advice I received that morning had been to “go with what you feel”.  Well, I felt like taking those last five steps.

     The stones were flat and dark.  Polished meter-thick slabs of obsidian, sprinkled with silvery flecks.  Problem was, there was nothing above, below or beside them except empty space.  Suspended in midair, they were plenty wide, about a meter square.  Wide enough to stand on, I was sure—I was on one.  The thing is, this stone was only a meter and a half away from the previous one—the next stone was a good three or four meters away.  A meter is not much room to build speed for that kind of jump.

     I heard a scraping noise behind me.  A glance back at the string of fifty or so stones I’d just traversed gave me a jolt; the third one back was crumbling.  The pieces fell, and kept falling.  Mesmerized, I listened for a few seconds, expecting to hear rocks hitting some type of floor, but no sound came.

     A few seconds later, the second stone back began to crumble.  I grumbled something, backed up to the edge, took two steps, and jumped.  I made it.  I made the next three jumps too, each stone crumbling as I left it.  Had I waited any longer, I’d have fallen.  Of that I am sure.

     “Fine—you can’t believe that’s significant.  Almost everyone makes it through this one.  He just did it a bit quicker than others have.”

     “Yes.  Surely you know why?”

     “He never looked into the fog.  Don’t you think that means anything?”

     “No.  How many times do we have this argument?  We do not know why Simmons chooses not to look and Jacobsen chooses to; why women never look and why men look three quarters of the time.  Fool yourself if you want to.  I do not.  He’ll go down.  They all do.”

     I’d never been so tired.  Not from just jumping rocks, that’s for sure. H---, we run fifteen kilometers every morning.  Well, now I should say THEY run that far.  I’ll no longer be joining them.

     I think it’s mental—everyone talks about it so much.  It’s probably the stress of not knowing what’s next.  Wondering if people will see you in the halls the next day.  No one will admit to having doubts, but we all wonder.

     The last stone, once I’d recovered my balance and was sure that I would not fall, turned gradually into mist, and my surroundings did a slow fade until I recognized the simulator capsule.  My arms were straining against the restraints, my body fighting off the effects of the drug.

     The tech I knew as Lisa came in.  I gave her the thumbs-up, and in return she jabbed another needle into my thigh.  I awoke in a classroom.  The teacher was saying something about simulator technology and holding up a helmet similar to the one on my head, wherever the h--- my body was.  Simulator technology was pretty impressive—I knew, for example, that this classroom was not “real”, in the everyday sense of the word.  It was a construct of a combination of my senses, their limitations, and a computer-enhanced version of whatever the programmers wanted depicted.  Most people cannot tell the difference between a simulation and reality, once they’re in the simulation.  They know WHEN they sit down in a simulator capsule, sure.  They also know that a tech is fitting a helmet to their heads and can thereby tell about when someone is going to turn on the simulation.  But once it starts, people, as a rule, do not know, and cannot tell, if they are experiencing anything other than reality until the simulation either runs its course or is shut down.

     I, apparently, am one of the few that can make the subtle distinction between sim-reality and real reality.  I cannot define what visual, tactile, or aural cues give it away as not completely authentic, because everything seems perfectly real.  I can just tell.  Which doesn’t mean that the EFFECTS won’t be just as real.  Simulations are like old wives’ tales—some truth and lots of hot air.  But simulations MATTER—if you get hurt in simulation, you’ll be hurt to the same degree when you come out of it.  I would have been just as dead if I’d missed a jump on the stones as I would be falling off the World Trade Center.

     The “capabilities of the programmers”.  Hmm. Ten years ago, fax machines all over the world received a message that repeated itself every hour for two weeks.  “War,” it had said, in a nutshell, “has reached the galaxy in which you are shortly to become a contributing member.  Your planet is not capable of contributing materially; your world does not have the necessary raw chemicals.  You will help, however, by making a representative available to us.  This representative will be the first being from your planet capable of completing the patterned-specific amalgam included in this sending.  Until such a time, we will try to keep this conflict away from your planet.”

     The message went on to describe, in painstaking detail, how to enhance our current computer capability in what was currently being called “artificial reality” to a level sufficient to read the software bubbles they later dropped on all continents.  There were millions of them.  Non-participation was not an option, it claimed, since the beings they (we?) were soon to be battling valued intelligence only to the extent that it could be used as feed.

     Humanity did not have much to go on.  Nobody knew what a “patterned-specific amalgam” was.  Six months were spent in the effort of determining if the sending was real or an epic hoax.  Another six were spent deciphering the bubble binaries they’d sent.  Once the data was understood, the message was deemed authentic.

     The sim-labs followed in three more years, once scientists figured out how to make the materials necessary for construction.

     Volunteers were not hard to come by.  Hundreds of thrill-seekers flocked to the stations, begging for a try.  The problem was, people kept ending up dead. 

     Not until the first person awoke straining from the first stage did scientists learn about the crumbling stones.  It is now assumed that the stages are the same for everybody, although some aspects change materially from person to person within the same stage. 

     After thirty or forty people died, the governments of the United States, China and Japan got together and set up a worldwide program to control the administration of applicants interested in trying the structure, and to share any information individual stations had collected.  Precious little, at that time.  Not much more now, come to think of it.  The basics of the first three stages are known, and that there are ten.  The transmission implied ten stages, and that only a being who could navigate all ten would be useful to them in the battle to come.  They would take as many “beings” as could complete the Structure, but demanded the first.

     We know that the first stage is a general test of physical ability under pressure, the second of general knowledge, the third of pain thresholds.  Four through ten? Anybody’s guess.  The instructor was passing out what appeared to be an exam.  I’d been reminiscing, paying only partial attention, and had missed any instructions that had been given.  Well, to h--- with it—I was still pretty tired from the first stage, and had expected some type of break before the second.  The person in front of me passed an exam back.  I turned it over and started reading.

     “What made you derive the mass-time relationship via the logarithmic scale instead of the traditional linear approach?  The math involved is much more convoluted than logarithmic.”

     “I don’t know.  It seemed more direct.”

     “Maybe, but it takes a broader view of the problem to see that.  You just told me you’d never seen the derivation of this branch of mathematics before.  That makes no sense.  Please tell me again why you branched around the partial derivatives to get to…”

     “Wait,” I growled.  I’d had enough.  The test had taken me twelve and a half hours to complete, with only five minutes’ break every two hours.  I was beat.  “I need some sleep.  Can we do this a few hours from now?  I’m extremely tired.”

     “I’m sorry,” Lisa replied.  "Your next stage begins in thirty minutes, and it is crucial for us to understand why you chose this route out of the test.”  She must have hit a button, since Coltrane came in a few seconds before I’d reached the door.  He was the first person I’d met in the Complex.  He’d given the requisite rah-rah lecture to twenty-five hopefuls.

     “Simmons, you don’t understand.  The last five that have attempted stage three have been able to send back some information about it that…”

     “Send back?!!  You’re getting feedback?”  I had assumed the information Coltrane had imparted during orientation was true—the only way to know was from someone who made it.

     “Implants.  No choice.  You’re on in thirty minutes.”

     Coltrane faced Farthing again across Farthing’s shimmering desk. 

     “Interpreted one way, it can be construed as a positive development.  He doesn’t perceive the time lag between going under and actually starting a scenario.  Our seeming to be with him is an encouragement.  We don’t know enough about what happens to talk intelligently about it.”

     When, later, Farthing punched a button, the tension still existed.  A hologram arose between the two men—it showed Simmons facing a forked road.  He appeared confused.

     “Any ideas?” Farthing asked.  “What the h---‘s happening?”

     “None.  This would appear to be an instance where we’ll have to wait and get it right from the candidate.  No conflict, no stress, no endurance, nothing.  Is it accurate?”

     The third fork approached in the distance.  My knees decided they didn’t want to go on any more, and wobbled uncontrollably.  I took their advice and stopped a moment resting.  I had approached it with trepidation.  I told them plenty about the other stages, but I won’t talk about stage three.  Let them get it monitoring.  I felt great starting—sleep will do that.  The desert was d--- hot; muggy, too.  No signs greeted me; nothing visible in either direction hinted at the right way to go.  Assuming there was a right way.  I stood there for a while, the pressure to make a decision abating as had my forward motion.  Every step I’d taken increased the urgency I felt to make a decision.  It felt good just to stand for a moment.  The right fork won, based on nothing but that I’m right-handed.

     Twenty dusty minutes later, another fork approached.  This time the pressure was even more intense.  Someone I cared for surely lay dying down one of the forks, and I had to get there, but there was only time enough to try one of the paths…I went left.

     Now the third fork faced me, and I seriously considered sitting down right where I was.  Screw ‘em.  Just call in the dogs and quit.  I could no longer stand still, though—I had to go forward.  The butterflies in my stomach had little anvils, and they were being pounded with big hammers.  I went right.

     Each step was an agony of indecision.  I saw another fork approaching, and started to cry.  Two forks later, I couldn’t think at all.  Only walk.  I don’t remember anything after.

 

     “He should be awake,” Lisa said, as she checked the monitor on the back of Simmons’ chair and made a notation on a pad.  Coltrane leaned over and lightly slapped his cheek.

     “Tell you what.  If he’s not conscious in the next fifteen minutes, start him up on five.”

     “You must be joking.”  Lisa almost dropped her pad; these people needed their rest.

     “Just do it.”

     I awoke.  Sunlight was coming down through many layers of leaves.  Someone was rubbing my right hand.  It was Tamara.  The only thing that kept me sane in that one moment was my bizarre knowledge that the simulation wasn’t real.  I’d have done anything for her.  Anything at all.  That’s why she left me.

     “Hi,” I said, raising my head off the grass to take a look around.  We were on a hillside, looking out over a valley I’d never seen.

     “How are you, Sammy.”  A statement, not a question. 

     This was off to a great start.

     I knew she was a simulation, but was still drawn to her.  I drifted off again, dreaming of many things, but mostly Tamara.  We’d met a few years back at a bookstore.  I was browsing the sciences and she was the cashier.  I woke.  Going through that again was painful. 

     “Good morning to you, too,” Lisa said.

     This time I awoke in a black cube, about ten meters square.  The walls were shrouded in mist, but I knew they existed.  I was standing, dressed in white robes with a multi-colored sash around my waist.  A few meters in front of me the mist began swirling.  Slowly it coalesced into another figure.  His garb had a dark sash.  “En garde!” he rumbled in a bass voice, and made a throwing motion.  His hand was empty, but I felt a sharp pain and saw a dagger in my arm.  I pulled it out and threw it back. 

     The pain was intense, but after the third session I could handle it.  The dagger disappeared.  He made another motion and I dove to the side.  I made the motions of throwing a spear.  Nothing happened.  He laughed, and made his own throw.  A rock hit me on the right shoulder and bounced to the floor.  I didn’t bother picking it up.  “C’mon!” he growled.  “Make it fun!”

     I got an idea.  I pictured a bow and arrow in my mind, and rolled to a kneeling position.  I drew back its string in my mind as my hands did in the air, and released it.  The arrow appeared seconds later, right through his chest.  He screamed, fell, and disappeared.

     Beginning to get the idea, I imagined my arm untouched.  The pain stopped almost immediately, as did the bleeding.  I fixed my bruised shoulder next.  The mist started swirling again.  Not wanting to get pelted any more, I imagined an invisible, impenetrable barrier between the quickly-forming woman and myself.  Solidifying, she had amber-colored robes, pointed hat, velvet sash.  She squinted, frowned, then relaxed.

     “Nice shield,” she said.  “Try this one.”

     She made a fist, and my insides felt as if crushed.  I couldn’t breathe—it was as if my body were internally frozen.  Lying there watching her float closer and land a couple meters away, wondering how she did it, I understood, and thought about extending my shield to guard against non-physical weapons.

     The crushing stopped.

     “Pretty good,” she admitted.  “I don’t think you’ll be able to….”  Then she stopped and fell over dead.  I had imagined a poisoned, sharp plant growing very quickly under her bare feet.

     I was getting the hang of this. 

     Nothing else materialized immediately, and I didn’t pop out of the sim, so I started experimenting.  I made rocks, hills, trees.  Then rivers, oceans, and islands.  I created weather, formed cities, then crushed them.  It took some energy.  No sooner had I started thinking about how to handle my next visitor than she appeared.  Gold robes, no sash.  She started speaking.  Then I was gone.

     “Call Coltrane!” Farthing bellowed frantically, leaning over the corner of his desk that ran the complex’s audio network.

     I created/imagined a path backwards out of the sim, then jumped into it. 

     Fully expecting to find myself awake and looking at Lisa, I was surprised to see the complex slowly falling away beneath me. 

     This was definitely not part of the sim.  I had no weight, and felt somehow connected to my body, which I could still see, drugged and resting in a chair.  I would rapidly lose sight of it, given my rate of ascent.  I found I didn’t need to breathe.  Actually, my body didn’t seem to be with me at all.  It seemed my consciousness alone was rising through the clouds.  I left the atmosphere.  My view was spectacular.

     “And where, pray tell, is your boy now?” Farthing demanded, beating the pencil on the desk with each syllable.

     “I don’t know.”  Coltrane was very calm.

     “Find him!”  Farthing jumped in his seat as the pencil snapped in two.

     “Alpha waves are all flat.  There’s nothing to find.  He’s gone.”

     I was deposited in a chair, not much different from the one my body rested on far below.  Still calm, I resolved to wait.  A voice in my head said, “How do you feel?  Drained?”

     “Yes.  Who are you?”

     The voice was right.  Drained was exactly how I felt.

     “Someone you’d rather be aligned with.”

     A portal shifted open, and a screed dropped.

     “You’ve just activated monitor station X232-15, and may have saved your planet.  Surprised?  We install monitor stations near every system the Glavin invade.  We track them very closely—they’re an upstart race, but very strong.  We steal back any we can.  They feed on them. Grok-stem—you’d call it emotion.  Did you notice it during your journey?  Are you not almost void of emotion?  They’ve drained entire systems of such reaction.  Your race is very adaptable.”  It paused.  “Yes, I feel they’ve instituted their ten-step depletion paradigm on your world.  You should feel somewhat honored.  Your race can feel sixty percent of the emotions they feed upon.”

     God, the pulses. I felt faint.  I thought back to the strong emotions I had felt negotiating the stages:  adrenaline, fear, anxiety, pain, love, power.  All the people who had died already.  The strength of their emotions as they must have fallen off the stones, failed the exam, been tortured to death.

     “I have two questions,” I managed, suddenly glad I had made it through only four and a half stages.  “How did I get here?”

     “You used an escape hatch we’ve managed to install in their ten-step paradigm. We also have them in the three and seven step paradigms,” it said proudly.  “It is most important we install the hatch before they feed on bracken—sorry, that’s ‘hate’ in your terminology.  That particular feeding seems to leave the target race with insufficient motivation to join us.  We offer another way.  My race is also dependent upon races such as yours.  We, however, have too much grok-stem.  Your race can help us deplete it by willingly taking on a ‘rider’.  The rider intensifies any emotion you feel, as strongly as you want it to be.  A mutual understanding is often developed, with the rider adding that amount of grok-stem the host feels is optimal for a given situation." 

     “Why don’t you just get with those other guys,” I said.  “You provide, they eat.”

     “No—they destroy, not dissipate.  What’s your second question?”

     “What happens if I turn you down?”

     “You may certainly choose to deal with the Glavin on your own.  There are many, many races we can bond with.”

     “What can I do about the Glavin, if I accept your offer?”

     “We will take care of them.  We will groom another candidate for their paradigm.  She will be ‘poisoned’ to the Glavin.  They will determine the source as unstable, and leave.”

     “You will kill someone, in other words.”

     “You will likely want to destroy her after she’s used, yes.  We will create someone without the capacity to feel emotion.  Essentially, we will burn it out of her during her journey to the paradigm.  Most of our clients find it necessary to destroy such people.”

     “Why do you say ‘her’? Why does it have to be a woman?”

     “The female of your race experiences emotion in a more, how to say, peaky fashion than the male.  We can infest those peaks with poison grok-stem and leave a bad taste.  We cannot be sure they’ll leave, but they’ve left other pastures under similar circumstances.  You will be returned to the surface as our ambassador. 

     “You have two tasks.  First, you must convince a female to volunteer.  Second, once the Glavin are gone, you must convince others to bond with us.

     “We do not bond with unwilling hosts.  Willing grok-stem is tastiest.”