He stumbles down the stairs, steps on the cat, and turns the corner to the kitchen. The early sun falls varnished, glaring glorious and bitter on the solitary butcher block. Woodsoaked light, stabbing his eyes, pinching his teeth. The dry smell of sleeping air. Next to the block is the freezer. Reaching in, he paws for the waxy paper pouch, the nest of beans. Now it is out, and placed on the wood. Good. Without looking he shakes it, sees there are enough. Hopefully. Grinder plugged in, top removed, he clouds the air with the rich smell of earth, roast, poignant memory. Covering the steel teeth, he knuckles down the plastic top.

The grinding sound seems to saw at his skull, bringing the morning’s first oblique pleasure. The process has begun. Beans ground, filter in, water poured. The lovely red light. Soft and insistent. He can sense the water beginning to warm.

Padding over to the window, he stares at the harsh morning pastels. The nine o’clock crowd ambles by. He knows them well, but only as vague shapes on familiar trajectories. It is too early, of course, to make anything out.

Sits down, admiring the wall. Peaceful and white. Stained in places, but altogether fine. A good wall for the morning. A new crack in the paint, perhaps, or slid over from yesterday, hard to tell.

He could pour the coffee before it is done; the mechanical stop permits it. It seems wrong, though, to interrupt the flow. It’s far better to wait. Paining his teeth he watches the last few drops settle in the pot. Then he waits another minute, lost in his own still.

And finally, he moves to grab the first cup. Bitter and full; in a sense, alive. Or life-filling. And with the hot glaze coating his throat, blanching his gums, browning his teeth, he watches the wall take shape. Or fill out, really. Become fact. The stains and the cracks take on fantastic precision. It is all so reassuring, so certain, so lovely.

And so it goes for the next seven cups. He methodically drinks them, never rushing. There is a rhythm to his mornings; from morning to morning, and within each morning itself. A cup takes about ten minutes, with two minutes in between. The forward march from cup to cup is that of a mental custodian, sweeping sleep’s debris, collecting his scatterpaper thoughts into orderly piles. His muscles relax, his twitching abates, his resolve returns. He takes on gigantic proportions within his own body, a body becoming huge itself. He owns his arms and legs, he sees through his eyes. He is a unified whole, yet part of his room; he feels as real as the wall. He feels strangely ready.

Draining the last cup, he walks to the sink, rinses it out, puts it in the drainer. Checks to see that the red light is out – which, true to ritual, faded between cup six and cup eight. Strolls out of the kitchen to the front door, opening it to sunshine.

He steps through the door and greets the world, right on time. His traditional smiling nod parries his neighbor’s unfailing “Morning, son.” And he walks out of his home, carefully shutting the door, glancing at his watch, wondering how he will spend the lovely day.

Do you ever suddenly feel warm?, he asked, as they walked through the eucalypti towards the sea, saltylipped and sandblown. She returned his gaze, uncertain: How do you mean?

I mean, a sudden, inexplicable feeling of warmth; an imparted heat. I felt one just now. In fact, it still lingers. A photo, maybe, taken from back there, on that hill? See that man in the dark coat? A picture of us. The crouching man, squinting into the lens, capturing us, and in the bargain, diffusing something of himself. Enveloping us, seemingly, pulling us into the lens, and us, here, feeling that pull as heat. Or that push. His push; a gift of his thought, his creation; his life, his heat.

Energy, thought, heat, passion. We pass these on, but in what form? A scream passes heat surely – in the suddenly taut gut of the passerby, the pounding heart within – but what of a loving gaze? Much of life seems to be an emotional imparting of this heat, either noisome or cathartic.

It is much like painting.

For many days I sat in our sun room, back pressed against the pale yellow of the wall, plaster against spine, staring at a feeble oil I had been struggling with. I had plied, pried and played at it, but for so long it had refused to coalesce; instead it leached me.

Then one night I was feverish, whiskey-worn. I threw down blankets, tapestries, newspapers, covering each delicate surface of the room. And filling the clay pots with pigment, arming myself with brush, knife and linseed oil, I attacked the flesh of this planar beast. In the ensuing hours the entire room seemed to melt, transfigure. Rivulets of molten steel coursed down the cloth, blood soaked it, distant screams bounded it in time. When I finally emerged, skin sticky and starved, hands strained, stained and shaking, the painting was finished. As I turned off the bulb the image remained, pulsing through my nerves, coating my tongue, tingling in my teeth. I was clearly delirious, probably drunk. Shivering, I stumbled to my bed, and fell, forever marking the soft flannel with my madness.

The next day I had ventured, timidly, into the room filled with morning's light, and looked up at the battered, color-soaked canvas, and its expected gleam was gone. Odd, I thought; it had dried in a day. Or less than twelve hours. When it should, certainly, have taken weeks…

He paused in voice as they did in body: they had reached the water. Stroking her soft cheek, he turned her head towards him, her eyes to his. Pupils of lead met pupils of fire. And leaning to the side, slightly, he pressed his lips to hers, delicately.

Those nearby saw him collapse in the arms of a woman, an image they would never forget, two antithetical figures next to a pounding sea, framed by the day's last light. His limpness slung ropelike across her solidity. In time the medics arrived.

The pneumonia led to complications and eventual death. She came to his bedside once, to remember his marble face, a simple term in her evolving series. Tracing a path down his arm, she stroked his finger, kissed his cheek, and turned away, looking forward to tomorrow, the next day, and all the moments of warmth to come.

It started with recycling. The question of whether to. He was an intelligent man, and wanted truth instead of slogan. He began the construction of large logical models, and hoped to evaluate them. In the process of this construction, he saw many of his other actions were based on slogan, not fact. So he began many parallel models; whether to drive to work, whether to eat beef, whether to have many friends or few, whether to kill. But all of these models were interlaced with assumption and they overlapped each other; or rather, each model was the same in that it attempted to incorporate the world.

As the complexity of these models increased he soon had no choice but to abandon them. Within each model was a particularly perplexing feedback loop; what people assumed he would do helped to determine the effects of what he did. Example: his expected recycling offering was a bit in someone else's model dictating the timing of the next pickup. Dwelling on such feedback, one night he had an epiphany: until the authentic mode of life is found, the pseudo-authentic life is living as one is expected to. In addition, this would make the jobs of those who managed earth all that much easier.

So this man emulated those around him. To disappear into the statistics without affecting the skew he repeated the actions of his neighbor; if his lunch-date ate meat (or agreed with it) he was apt to do the same. Repeating this process in all walks of his life he was removed from the equations of life entirely. In this removal he was free to think about how he (in complete authenticity) would prefer to act.

Then one day his mathematical isolation from the governing equations of the world had an odd consequence. This time he was physically isolated, alone in a park. For years he had surrounded himself with people, a family, a burgeoning business; but suddenly he was without company. Perhaps he had never really been alone before; perhaps for years he had never not been alone. But when faced with a decision among these trees (do I get up and leave now?) he was unable to act. He searched the periphery for a model to emulate, but saw only statues, benches, and paths made of stone. And this state of indecision became a state of unthought. Though it lasted only minutes, to the man it extended indefinitely, or not at all, unmarked in its time-passage by any recognizable events. Then he fell to the grass, and the first unencumbered smile of his life crept across his face, and he understood the only solution-set to the series of equations that others called life. In his rapture the man exhaled his breath, closed his eyes, and then unleashed his atoms from their cellular confines, and he disappeared into a swirl, a haze, a slowly settling cloud of dust.

I’d be willing to ignore it, perhaps, if it hadn’t happened so many times, in so many places. Taken separately, I could dismiss… but here I am, fumbling with words, repeating myself. I have trouble with the implications, really. What it all means for me. But, at least now… now, I’ve come to accept what I think I know. That these aren’t random visions, misled individuals. That all of the testaments that I’ve heard, all the supporting sets of data, they clearly… well, you’ll very soon see.

We already knew, for instance, that strange things could happen to complex systems. We discovered that in Los Alamos. At Lawrence Livermore. We suspected it in every American city. But the first real shock was with the boys and the particle accelerator. I mean, that was a project like any other. You had to prove the potential before you knew the potential. Of course it’s gonna work. We can guarantee results. You see, that’s how you get the funding. There’s no other way. Sure, we can step foot on the moon in time and under budget. The risk will be minimal. All that crap. You know what I mean: you snow em, and hope it works out.

And more than not it does. Think back to growing up. A six pack too many, the corner comes up fast, and you hit the gas pedal even harder, tear into the curve, shrieking wildly, hell-bent on scaring the girls. And the unseen gap between the unseen cars, it slides right in front of you and through you go, a ton and a half of steel a couple of feet on each side of you. Fuck if you planned that. But you took credit, owning up to your own amazing driving skill. How many bullshit times should we each have died? Why do you think we’ve grown so cocky?

Anyway… So we’re under budget and on time and we land on the moon, and America roars. Pride, baby, is deservedly ours. And each man goes to work the next day instilled with a little more undue confidence. The landing was a lark, but we don’t tell them that.

And the working man, chest filled, tells his boss, yeah, if we build it well enough, sure, it will work. I mean, why not? Of course we can do it. Look – I give you my word. We’ll get results.

And the man, call him you, you put together ten thousand parts that each fail every now and then but you have CONFIDENCE in them and you flip the switch and it’s NOT WORKING so you need to tweak a screw and double a frequency and then you flip the switch again, KNOWING it will work, and okay, one more fix, a little oil, and YES. It works, just like you expected. Just like you knew it would. And you chain a thousand of these fuckers together, and that works too. And it’s just like the childhood post-beer thrill.

You made it around the turn. Because you know how to drive.

But how could it be that ten million parts that fail every now and then work together so well? How? Any intelligent individual running a corporation or a family or a country, or some such bullshit, should wonder this every day. And many, I’m sure, do. But it’s so vague, so undefinable a fear, that it’s lost in the bottom of a glass, or swallowed by pride. And only in the last years we’ve been getting the data in – the data that will, in time, help to define the fear, the inexplicable…

But back to the story, the text, our subtext. It’s flowing through our everyday, me and you.

You see, if it’s true, if this feeling has validity, then life changes shape. The animal we are changes. We lose our power but we gain our place. We… we…

Yes, go on.

We must find out… we simply must.

Which brings us to my perfect example, my test par excellence. The phrase is punctuated with the thud of an old model revolver on the table. My grandfather’s piece. A couch hero, him. Or I guess everyone had one then. Found it long ago, kept it as a keepsake. Excuse my redundancy. Some appropriately sized bullets were with it, found damp. He carefully places the bullets on the table, a much lighter thud. So I ask you: if I load this gun, place it to my head, and pull the trigger, will we finally know for sure?

Will we know what for sure?

Will we know whether I can go on. Look – I’ve convinced myself that our very presence in this room is a series of probabilistically indefensible accidents – we simply should not be here. Predestination defeats me. And yet… and yet I must know where I stand. I must know whether to take pride. Do you see? The gun – the gun, it has so many reasons not to… it has so many inherent escapes. The powder, it is old… the mechanism, it is rusty. Look – I can hardly spin the chamber. If the hammer hits and I die, then I die in peace and the world is restored. Because I very much want to live. And if this death-event, this death-event with a very questionable probability, if it kills me, well then, I’m wrong, but at least I’ll know for sure.

Well it seems to me you’ll be dead.

Well, yes, sure… but in the dying I’ll know, I’ll know that my achievements were mine, that I am me, that I can see the things that I see. Don’t you see? If I live and prove to you, and more importantly, myself, that the world is entirely arbitrary, unstatistical, then I will be crushed… but only for a while – and soon, soon I will have the strength, resting on this proof, to get at setting things straight. My conviction will be firm. I will know, and I will be able to do…

The bullet, it goes in like this, yes? And then this goes back like… but wait, will that skew the results? No, no, I don’t think so… So if I were to hold it just so, and if I… if I…

The explosion takes out a good section of his face, and he falls back to the floor, a mess. When the detectives come the doctor explains everything. The detectives look at each other, shaking their heads.

The first mutters coldly: Planes fly, guns kill.

A pause, a response: Yep. Some shame, that.

When the detectives and police leave, the doctor lights a cigarette, and looks at the fallen chair. After a time the cigarette is finished. The doctor thinks: the gun, at that age, with those bullets. It should never have worked.

He cancels the next week’s appointment, and turns off the light, full of respect for the quieted man.

Yes, the hero of the drama was identical to me, was me, but that didn't explain the fascination, not completely. From the very first words the story had gripped me like no other. Although no event in the story was entirely familiar to me, it remained my story. Beneath the unrecognizable rubble of the facts lay the same intended structure. And from the first page turn, I was captivated. I read on the bus, during breaks, as I walked along the winding streets. And nightly, as I shut off the light, I had another chapter or two to contemplate in my dreams.

So you see, I had very little choice. Or rather it was not a question of choice; there was no time for questions at all. The book was in the briefcase, the briefcase was in my hand. How could I possibly have let go? True, it was but a book, a sheaf of papers. But it had occupied my thoughts for days, weeks, it had replaced the dull, dead pieces of my life with a new purpose – a heroism revealed. A small thing, you think, a book. But a great thing indeed.

And perhaps the drinking was not such a good idea. The strength has returned to my mind only, my body remains frail. I cannot handle liquor like the old days. But the yellow glow of the awning, described so eloquently in chapter five, drew me in. And those glasses of scotch felt so damn good.

So when I walked out of the bar, I was bigger than myself, I felt so wonderful, if a bit wobbly. The shortcut through the alley would trim off a minute or two, and this time of night, no one would trouble me…

Yet the shadows came alive and thrust out a gun. A simple robbery. The firm voice asked for my briefcase, which itself was nothing to me. But it contained the book. And whether due to the whiskey, the gun, or laws of physics, these two things seemed inseparable. That is, I couldn't sort out my words: "Yes, yes, but the book, don't you see, if I could just remove the…" I suppose that given time I could have explained properly, but time was not given. When my knuckles clutched white and I heard the shot – precisely as the handle was torn from my grasp – I knew for certain that the theft was complete, of leather, of papers, of my cherished story. And my blood now as well, flowing freely across the darkening concrete, absorbing all light.

I sat on the stone steps, rigid and cold. The precision of the night was photographic; a carefully wrought, richly detailed print. This night-image hung inky and low under a stucco arch, the arch stretching above me, above our entryway, like a caravan's canvas roof. It was here that I often obliged myself with a habitual smoke. And here I was: under a snake-bellied archway, itself murky and gray, and set before a city's scattered fire of far-off lights. Beside the crouching city-hill was a dark pool of bay, a hint of pale moon, and shadows of vessels unnamed. The whole thing was so wonderfully composed, carefully focused, well-framed and soothing.

The opening of this archway lay about five feet in front of my knees; that is, I could see straight ahead rather well through the end of this anteroom tunnel, but to either side, in the alley running perpendicular to our door, I could see nothing. And in turn I was hidden from view, perched in front of my house in this stone vestibule. Aligned as such I inhaled my miniature deaths, observing future travels, things far-off, and intrigues non-immediate.

So it was that the new neighbor, by all shadow-accounts a sensually lithe brunette (this last evident by the tight curls atop her shadow's billowy form, an unblonde attribute, at least in this town), remained entirely unseen, and blind to my self. In these nights of work-break repose, as I incrementally shed my mind-parcel's packing-straps, she often appeared (or, rather, approached) in the company of quiet winds and salt filled otter-barks. She abided by her inner patterns, pausing for a moment, then slowly turning the key-lock. A prolonged scrape-click. In coming, this was preceded by tantalizing footsteps, then her arrival, a second-long (perhaps two if she missed the key) shadow-play, her beauty jumping in and out of proportion, feeding my imagination. In her departures she was preceded only by the taste of smoke; her sudden sound at the door, the disengagement of doorknob steel, her alley-birth. Then the footsteps faded, until I couldn't discern between their individual patter and my own vivid memory.

Through these little encounters our relationship became solid, in a way. It was a relationship of potential. That I could simply shuffle down a couple of steps, and extend a hello – this was overwhelming. That I could sit on the curb itself during my puffing, so that an inevitable dialogue ensued – this was fascinating. Of course, these were both impossible branches of the tree, that is, they never occurred. But the fact that I imagined these branches, this made me shiver, made me smile, or made me swoon, depending on what I had eaten.

Tonight I sat in silence; the cigarette dangling unlit from my lips.

She would surface into my nightscape. This had been foretold, as I closed my own door, as I sat down; it was written in every move that I made. Just like the parrots in the park. Washington Square Park, that unlikely place for exotic birds, and the tattered bum that had summoned them. One day, sandwich in hand, the man whispered to me, "look at the parrots," and I looked up at the conspicuous birds, hundreds of them, bright green clusters of feathers in a tree. The air was in that moment filled with deafening squawks. Were they there before he mentioned them? Had I simply filtered them out? The parrots became my lunchtime distraction. A week later, the same man stood beneath the tree, arms in the air, and shouted, "I see you, my parrots, I see you." At this name-call they were completely actualized, no longer confined to illusion. They rose, en masse, from the tree, hundreds of birds darkening the sky, hovering over the park, and then they flew off to the horizon of their freedom. I never saw them again.

At my thought of the birds, of the mystical bum, of the things that had been and the things that would come, of all the fanciful truth in between, I heard a soft patter. This was her hall-walk, much subtler than her alley-step. In a second, the lock-click, in another, the door swing. The angle of her body, this time, prevented any shadow, but she cleared her throat and she closed the door, or she emulated the sound of a closing door, or I cleared my throat and she shut my eyes, or she left the door behind, swaying in the breeze. An instant later she was heading down the alley, away from my door, from my three sided room, always away. And I lit the smoke, inhaled destructed perfume, and enjoyed the night sky. After the cigarette breathed its last sigh I slowly stood up to return to my desk, to its small cone of light. And I carried with me the memory of her smile, her full lips, and her eyes, eyes that were, and always would be, only for me.

Mother screaming. Father screaming. Brother screaming. Tables overturned, terror on faces, and screaming. A moment before a quiet game of cards. And suddenly, the three of them, looking, in torment, at the world around them, at each other, at me, and screaming. They run out of the house, to nowhere.

I am alone. I walk to the window, and everyone, everywhere, is screaming. Howling. Weeping. I walk back and sit on the sofa, exhausted, and listen.

When things calm down a little I go out. The screams have been replaced by hollow eyes, stone calm, dead stares.

It is a year before I have the answer. It took months of diligent work. At the beginning one thing was clear – in an instant, everyone, everywhere, became someone else. Transported. Transformed. He was a clerk in Bulgaria and suddenly a pizza boy in Tennessee. She a stripper in Texas and then a taxi driver in Belize. A worldwide shift of souls. On that first day I heard so many languages. So many dialects of confusion. In a week I guessed at the shift. It made the papers, eventually, and most people seemed to like the change. Many went back, killed, were killed, you know. In some cases a man became a woman, or a woman became a man, and in journeying back to their previous selves, fell in love. Or killed. In anger, jealousy, or both. Only one man can be that man, of course, and on top of it all, who wouldn't grow to hate themselves?

The academics postulated multitudes of theories, of varying quality and obtuseness. The private positions of each individual changed constantly, of course. But great institutions integrated the average opinions to such an extent that trans-shift positions were possible. Dr. T---'s explanation was based on atmospheric phenomena: we were changing our world, and our atmosphere to such an extent, that the recurring phenomena is inevitable¹. His associate proffered the most convincing argument: we have many dream selves, in which we sequentially wake; this is a tedious process that occurs each night. We simply forget it in the morning, a morning that while distant only eight hours could be hundreds of compressed lives away. This fellow perhaps never struggled with jet lag: or at least, he thought our diurnal rhythms and mental flights were mythically universal, un-tethered by the clicking of clocks. Either way, he had many followers. But there were, truly, many to follow; ridiculous explanations abounded (most dealt in some way with God, the end of the Cold War, the impotence of antibiotics, divergence and fragmentation of language dialects, violence on television, or the ubiquity of technology in modern life). The solipsists rejoiced; the apocalyptics ranted, the Freudians felt Jung, and the various religions, in their inter-shifts, soon became one, and realized immediately after that they had always been one.

Strangely, most people dealt remarkably well. Especially with me; I think my calmness amazed them. Until they realized I had been continuous throughout.

When the hunt began I was forced to shift myself. Sentiently, of course. To others' eyes, many men passed through my clothes and skin. I cleverly betrayed others, myself, to save the same. I wanted to discover – the key. The principle to the shift, and why I remained untouched. Why I was so alone in my temporal sameness.

The mathematics alone fill pages. I'm sure it reduces to a line or two, but I'm not up to it. All that I've discovered is that through all the iterations, I remain the same. I'm not quite bright enough to follow every one of the near-infinite soul-paths, though. I had assumed that they, too, would resume their original shape, would re-cross their origin, would collide with that which they truly are. But I saw (willed?) change after change, and always a completely new shift occurred. Occasional crossovers, but by and large, a new soul-map. And each time, the people keep the manic edge, the residual panic, to a greater degree. Their eyes grow madder. Yet they, themselves, almost don't notice anymore. They never now hunt down their pasts. It has become almost an accepted rhythm of existence. The semioticians have devised a term for the decreasing length of time between shifts: they call it a 'day'.

These days I appall them. A freak. A dwarf, they say; my essential continuity terrifies. I have no chance against their number, yet evasion has sapped all of my strength.

So they will surely find me soon. And they will ask how I do it. How?, I will respond. I don't do anything, I simply live. I just got the unlucky number, became the ultimate singularity. That I will it is nothing. It's like a flower catching my eye, a conversation tickling my ear. The calculations are underneath it all and I remain untransformable to myself, but a changeling to the masses.

As I listen I hear them coming. So I leave this note to them, the rest of me, insatiable, closing in on their prey, myself. Tomorrow, it seems, I will join the others, and we will, finally and irreversibly, become whole.

And as I sat there longer, the silence deepened, became thick with soft sounds. Every leaf, it seemed, spoke distinctly. I lay back on the grass and closed my eyes and in time my quick breath slowed. To the left, above my limp head, a small-leafed tree chattered gaily, while to the right giant tobacco-like leaves answered with their slow murmurs, their measured rustlings. New cadences joined every moment, until time itself was but a progression of these many measured leaf strokes.

I knew the wind caused the movements that made these sounds. I had no notions of self animated vegetables. But sentient vegetables, perhaps. It was possible that I had been looking at these leaves wrong my whole life – that, in fact, we held more in common than I had supposed. Many times my own mind was pregnant with thought, yet my lips were cold and still, or at most moist and trembling. My voice-giving breath was blocked, my gullet, my lungs, my stubborn sinew, my blood lack. A high pressure soul, bound by this mountainous, forceful world. And during these unwanted moments of still the world found me… cold. But the words would eventually come, the inner pressures finally shifting, hurling forth verbs, nouns, conjunctions, all acidified and spite-worn from their bilious cage. And who was to guess at the cause of this out-rush? It is reasonable, I'd think, to call it, too, the wind.

So the sun set, the air stilled, and the dangling leaves echoed my silence. Getting to my feet for the walk up the hill, I listened to the world acted upon. Under my greening toes slid the soft grass, the sensual sounds of its silky blades. Tilting my head, I heard the pavement's response to shoes of rubber and shoes of leather, I heard the asphalt tugging along at a bicycle wheel, I heard brakes moaning angrily at the cabdriver. And as the world voiced response to our yanking, our shoving, our blistering humanity, I grew increasingly melancholy, and my steps progressively slowed until I finally returned home, lovingly rested the door against the doorframe, and fell into a long, troubled sleep.

I think it worked out okay. Sorvino always was and always would be the same. He laid my manuscript on the table, and then, uncharacteristically, he smiled. And then he laughed lightly, I think.

One hour earlier I had stepped into his office, unannounced. "Do you have a minute – I need to talk," I said, or some such thing. He had been plainly irritated, marking his spot on the page with his forefinger (were he to mark it with some inanimate object my tension would have been lifted). "What is it?" he replied, without even sliding back his chair. What was it? I had no idea.

My mind was a jumble and my purpose had vanished.

Meekly I pulled out a sheaf of papers. "Well, I've been working for some time on a sort of book…"

"Fine," Sorvino said, briefly looking up. "I'll read it tonight."

"No, no… I mean, thank you. But I want to preface it. I mean, I want to suggest some ideas. Not about it, but for it. I mean, I have very specific ideas about its production. To tell you. I'd like to explain them. The ideas, you understand. I mean, I think that you will."

He paused, his mind spinning orthogonal to my own. We had been friends for years. We made miserable associates, though, when it came to any business dealings. His manner was very different than mine. That is why, I suppose, he could sell books. He would probably refuse dealings with me altogether, but occasionally I had the fortune to interest a reader or two, to get a good review, to generate some profit. Never a lot, but enough to make his efforts justified by more than the inevitable charity he felt towards a longtime friend.

"I'm sorry, David. I'm really rather busy today. But give me a brief overview. Tell me your brilliant plans."

Strange the sensations one can feel. But I checked my spite and began.

"It is a collection of stories. The longest is a couple of pages. I would like to put selections of them together into books. But they are all of a period. They came in spurts. There is no logical order, you understand. So I thought that somehow the… dynamics of their creation should be reflected in their production. Let me tell you what I envision."

I began to regain my confidence.

"Say for sake of argument that I have ten stories. Each of these stories has four 'versions'. Different versions simply change a bit here and there to effect a different spin on the underlying notion. The goal of this versioning is to remove the arbitrariness of my thought processes. That makes no sense. Let me describe the proposed production process in greater detail.

"Each book would be comprised of the ten stories, each story of a random version. By this method one could produce roughly a million different books. In addition, the order of the stories would change from book to book. But that would not be reflective of any content-change. What I'm saying is that if I give you ten stories of four versions then you would have to print all 1048576 possible books. Or, contractually, you would have to print a sufficient number to ensure that each version of each story occurs in at least one book."

He countered: "So I will print four books."

"No, no, no… they must be combined randomly. So with four and ten, as I proposed, it would take quite a few. But, of course, with editorial control, you can request instead three and nine, or two and five. This will reduce the number considerably. But you run a risk. Say that you read what I give you today, and propose printing three versions of six stories. The number of printings that you target will be based on the stories that you read. But you have no way of knowing which six stories, or which three versions of each, I will then submit to you. You lack knowledge of the underlying pattern. So as I re-submit again and again your target number will shift and shift, and this series of negotiations may never converge."

Sorvino looked frustrated. "I will read them, and then wish to print one book, no more. I will then ask for one version of ten stories. This will teach you a good lesson: self-editing. Later (perhaps a day) I will put these stories in an anthology with maybe another poem of yours and I will print however many copies I like."

"Okay, okay. You've made your point. Somehow I don't feel that I've made my own. Let me take one more stab at things.

"An instance of writing is like an argument in bed; you know that the perfect words will never come, but something needs to suffice, to quell the anger and misconceptions of the other so the final spasms can be wrought. We twist and turn with our minds and hope that in the end the other understands. Perhaps after all it comes down to our eyes. But the reader has no beneficial gaze. What I'm saying is for the same communication to occur between you and I any combination of words will do, or none will. It's largely luck, this simpatico of the soul. With repeated attempts perhaps I'll strike a chord and convince.

"So the several versions are like several refractions of the same light. We both know that certain books, Notes from Underground, Hunger, The Fall, these books are repeated time and again by hundreds of authors. For me these books are perfect, for others they may be limp. I want to strike from several angles at once.

"And there is another dimension to it. Over time a book evolves and transforms. Its meaning mutates. It would be fun to compress the quanta of time, to accelerate this process. By my multiple seedings perhaps the time-integrated work in its fullness will be realized sooner."

"Are you finished?" Sorvino asked.

"Because I'd like to reply."

I supposed that I was.

"First of all," he began, "your earnestness is out of proportion to your talent. You are aware of this, so I don't hold it against you; we know talent is easily faked and often unimportant. I accept your arrogance. I do not, however, accept your underlying metaphysic. It is severely flawed, as I'll explain…"

This was the Sorvino that I liked.

He continued. "Suppose you present a different side of yourself to every woman that you meet. The third woman in the series could have liked the first impression in the series. The second woman could have preferred the fifth impression, and so on. You could have five perfectly matched women and sides of yourself that they could identify with, and you may come away with each of them thinking you a scoundrel. The only chance is to unintellectualize such things; don't treat ideas as you do clothes. If you simply let the many sides of you evolve to an individual, then he or she will see you for what you are, and love or hate you authentically. There is no room for trickery in literature. Good stories are not games for the parlor.

"And this continues into your argument concerning time. Time is continuous as is meaning. You belittle this continuity with your seedings. I know your reaction; What do you mean, meaning is continuous? You love me one minute and hate me the next, is that it? That's crap, it is. Some underlying fact, perhaps, some nugget of information shed light on me, causing you to about-face, as they say. But when you about-face you come around, you physically pass through all the points on a compass. Watch a smile turn into a frown – it is the same, it is continuous. It is a flow.

"Our culture arrives at new meanings, it does not suddenly appear at them. We see this in every individual's 'Aaaah, so that's what you mean.' You get nowhere by placing different people at different places on this continuum, especially if it's a random process. Or, rather, I will not say you get nowhere. I will argue that you get to exactly the same place."

He seemed finished, or rather my ideas did. "So you don't intend to publish the stories as I suggested."

"I will," he chuckled, "I will. Together with time and the infinite variety of listeners I will do exactly what you say. But every book will be physically identical. Go buy a red pencil and get to work. Tell me when you have isolated the perfect ten. Or if you like, reduce the whole thing to one story, or a paragraph, or a single word. Better yet, reduce it to perfection, that is, an infinite silence. But that, dear boy, is not how we make our money. Tell me when you think you are… somewhere."

"Okay, okay. I accept nothing you say, I refuse your continuum, I delight in my polarity, my discreteness, but I'll get to work. Thanks for your time. Oh… and tell Sally that I expect you both for dinner around eight." I held my smile until I got to the door, cherishing the pleasant quietude of his defeat. The bastard was getting harder and harder to intrigue every day. We all were.

My bedroom is perched on the corner facing the bay. Its oblong windows offer what life lacks: a boundless horizon of soothing sounds, pacifying colors (etymon of Pacific?) and salty-sweet sea-smell. When my head is hot with chaos I open the windows and the cold salty mist blankets me with dew: this is my frequent respite from all that is wrong in my city.

Lately, however, there is a strange intruder in these moments of still.

I must begin by describing my room in greater detail. The room is essentially a rectangle, one end dented by a great bay window, leaving a blunt bullet-like footprint of heavy oak floorboards. The bed is placed where it ought, the missing headboard flanking one side-slant pane. This allows my waking to the sleep-caked bay and its infrequent sun, and my sleeping amidst drifting fog and boats' mournful cries. After the bed little room is left; this is filled with the necessary crates and wooden boxes that help to package my life.

On this bed I read, write and sleep. And open the window to suck in the air. It is my nest of tranquillity and homecoming haven. Or it had been for so long. But the other night as I lay, flipping a book page, I heard a non-specific noise; some sort of click. Absorbed in my pages I dismissed it until it became rhythmic. Suspecting my crumbling clock (I cannot spend significant sums on night clocks or alarms, for some deep psychological reason; this leaves me constantly patching and tweaking plastic clockwork in late hours to suppress the inevitable buzzings and whirs of such devices, an activity which usually results in an angry wall-dent and many plastic shards – the next day I replace it with whatever is cheapest) I held its innocent face to my ear. What else could be at fault?

Through concentrating on the repetition of this 'click' I was able to shorten the list of mechanical suspects. In time I knew it was some sort of metallic impact. Careful peering and twisting unveiled the mysterious culprit – when I fell on my bed with my head hanging over, I witnessed a corner of my bedframe move by millimeters and emit the sound. A bend of steel impacted its twin, and emitted the click.

So the bed was in fact clicking, but by what motive force? Finally here I suppressed my laugh. The metronome beneath me, at first a solitary sound, was soon joined by others. A subtle metal creak across the apartment, a heavy breath, a stifled moan. So that was it. Like the alluvial plains my bed magnified shocks; where the buildings would crumble my bedframe would click! And the love-strokes of others entered my nights like pebbles upon glass, or, rather, like rainfall from some heavenly warm front. Either way, I was sated; the problem was solved and we would all laugh over morning coffee.

But the humor ebbed like such humor does, that fueled by an initial lacking, a bitter need. For weeks and weeks this continued. Occasionally on the verge of sleep I heard the noises again. The clicking mesmerized, feeding me with visions unsought. And lying there alone! The expanse of the sea and the horns in the fog wouldn't populate my bed; the women in the books knew nothing of my flesh. But these instances were few and, in time, I grew to ignore them.

Until the day when the avid couplers left town. The room to myself, half awake, my mind intertwining with shadows on the wall. And then the click. But where from? Instantly alert, I leapt up off the bed. And still it continued its demonic tap. I tore off the mattress, turned on all the lights. And as is my custom I retreated, deep into my analytical self, and knelt down to decipher the beast.

Its form is fantastic, designed by a madman. A simple structure, yet so profound in its… abilities. Four steel bars form the frame, locked together with one nut and one bolt at each corner (the choice of just one!), and supported by six feet (not four! not eight!). And to think that all I laid upon at the store was the mattress. The frame was but an afterthought, included in the price. That the frame could implicate the world, this was never discussed – not by the smiling woman, the eager clerk, or the delivery boys (is it strange that the delivery boys did not complete their job, leaving it at the door complaining of steep stairs? is it because they did not want to be implicated?) And so in the end the delicately demonic carcass was mine.

And this, my beautiful bed. Cursed bed!

I recall a fragment of a poem:

Yes: but in truth we manacle ourselves. And in the nights this bondage begs its price. We search for solace and a place of peace and… insulation. But insulation's imperfect and in time… in time…

For brevity I'll tell you this: my room can no longer afford me the necessary pleasure of escape. And so I must lie here, holding my head, listening to the endless clicks from parts of the world that work. At some point I'll drift off, and my hands will relax. But there is no longer the option of a pleasant night's sleep, a cool gaze at the water, or a life-giving nap. You see, I had shopped poorly for my bed. I chose one in haste. It has much too sensitive a frame.

A boy. Among friends. Suddenly his world shifts: deconstruction, derealization, confusion. Panicking, he flees.

Alone now, calm, contemplative. Strong desire to understand. Retraces thoughts, discovers possible source: delves in, examining memory.

In this mental deconstruction, he removes himself from himself. Now inside, his perspective vanishes. He isolates himself further, and further, until everything disappears, time halts, chaos reigns.

Hours later. Recovered once again, the boy rolls over and turns on his bedside light (outside – the beauty of the night, the barks of otters, a drifting tranquillity). He grapples with the day, searching for integrity. Finding none, he falls to his usual recourse; abstraction. Opening his notebook, he sets down the words, "A boy…"

It was a book like any other; a limp, tattered copy of -----. Or so it first appeared. I crouched in the corner of the bookstore, glancing around at the other pale faces shuffling through shelves, searching. Again I looked at the last pages of the book. Normally blank, these pages were now filled with dancing ink, rhythmic arcs and dips, a maddened plea. I re-read the oft-mangled, swift-inked words:

I slowly shut the book, trembling.

Looking around, sure that no quick eye is upon me, I place the book on the shelf, and slowly walk out of the store, into the bright San Francisco day.