Realware

He hadn't slept for long when his prayer seemed to get a very literal answer. The hypersphere began talking to him. "So you're ready to move on?" came a rich, thrilling voice, the voice of Om. "Here we go." A dream: But then Phil woke to the sound of a pop near his feet.

When he looked down he saw a tiny ball with some people in it. Was he coming back to Earth? The little ball grew up toward him very fast, and as it engulfed him, there was another stretching sensation in his viscera, though not quite so violent or prolonged as before. And then the queasy pain was over. But Phil wasn't back to Earth. He was still in a hypersphere, only it was six or seven times bigger than before. Phil's hypersphere and a larger hypersphere had joined together like a pair of soap bubbles merging. Like two fingers of Om's "hand." The new space smelled of dog, moldie, sweat, and alcohol. It held half an oak tree, and perched in the tree were a bony crone in overalls and a plump, nude matron. There was a big bright wowo, an egg-shaped moldie, and an orange and white collie-beagle dog as well, the egg with a colorful belt--or cravat?--around his middle. But all this was just a flash in the background, for right up in Phil's face was none other than --

"Da!"

"Phil! Oh no, you can't end up here too! Your poor mother." Phil's naked father gestured awkwardly. His left hand ended in a scabbed stump. "I'm scared about what comes next."

Phil spoke the biggest thing in his mind. "I'm sorry I was mean to you the last time we talked, Da."

"Oh hell, I started it by picking on you. What you said to me was nothing. I wouldn't have taken it so hard if I hadn't been drinking. Of course I forgive you! But, hey, you can't very well say the fourth dimension's bullshit anymore, can you?" There was alcohol on the old man's breath.

'Tour poor hand," said Phil. "Jane says your wedding ring is already proof of the fourth dimension."

"What do you mean?" asked Kurt.

"You didn't know? When this ball chopped off your hand, your wedding ring got knotted. And then later it flipped into its mirror image."

"Gnarly!" Kurt looked ruefully at his stump. "It's healing up really well. Maybe it's like the way a corpse's fingernails grow fast. Old Tempest helped with it a lot. Let me introduce you. Darla, Tempest! This is my son!"

The two women scrambled closer through the oak tree, which provided a handy method of moving around in the hypersphere. Though Darla was nude and a bit overweight, she seemed unembarrassed about it. She had a wound on her foot; it looked like one of her toes was missing. Tempest was a lively old woman in overalls. She was carrying a half-empty squeeze-bag of wine. The woman greeted Phil with avid interest. Clearly everyone in here was getting cabin fever.

"Your old man's been telling me about you," said Darla. She talked like a hipster. "That's wavy that you've got alky-junky genes. I can really relate. And hats off for being Straight Edge. I'm go

"I did meet Yoke," said Phil. "At Da's funeral. She came with Tre and Terri Dietz. In fact I was just now visiting her in Tonga."

"My funeral!" interrupted Da, totally into himself as usual. "Was it big?"

"I think I dreamed about you asking me this," said Phil. "And maybe I dreamed about me asking you," said Kurt. "I've been having crazy, lucid dreams in here. It seems the whale talks to Jonah." He looked around, a bit wild-eyed. "I think this hypersphere is alive, and it comes into my brain when I'm sleeping. But now we're awake. Tell me about my funeral!"

So Phil told his father all about it. The part Da liked the best was how Phil had buried the ashes by the oak tree.

"You're a good son to have done that. I bet some of the ashes were Friedl's. That dog." He gestured at the great twisted trunk with its branches and dead leaves. "So this is our special tree? Small world."

"Too dang small," said Tempest in her Florida cracker accent. "Can I finally get past howdy and ask some questions? I happen to know Darla's Yoke too, Phil. Just before this here ball done gobble me up, I was a-visitin' my niece Starshine in Santa Cruz while Yoke was a-stayin' with Starshine's neighbor. You sweet on that little Yoke, Phil? She's a honey. Smart as a whip too."

"I like her a lot," said Phil. "We were about to have a really great time in Tonga."

"What's Tonga?" asked Darla.

Darla was so nude and female and voluptuous that Phil was embarrassed to look directly at her--but Da was staring at her all the time. And now Da put his arm around her waist as if to steady her. Gross.

"Tonga's a ca

"Back off!" said Phil, desperate to change the subject. This was turning into real torture. And there was no way to escape. Desperately he fixed his eyes on the hypersphere's other two occupants. "You got a dog and a Silly Putter in here?"

"That's Planet and Humpty-Dumpty," said Tempest. "Planet's my good boy. Come here, Planet, come to Auntie Tempest." Clumsily the dog clawed his way through the branches of the oak tree, finally losing his footing and flying through the air to bump into Phil, tongue and tail wagging. Phil and the dog drifted around the whole hypersphere, coming to rest back at the splintered base of the oak tree with the others.

"What were you and Yoke doing in Tonga?" asked Darla as soon as Phil caught his breath.

"We've only just met," said Phil. "We were getting to know each other, and snorkeling, but then I ran into Shimmer and some other Metamartians."

"Metamartians?" spat Darla. "Is that what they call themselves?"

"Shouldn't there be one of them in here with us?" asked Phil, continually avoiding looking at Darla. "A Metamartian named Ptah?"

"Darla and me done chased his ass outta here!" cackled Tempest. "I got the magic wisher to make us some grain alcohol to set him on fire." She patted the uvvy on the back of her neck. Phil noticed that Da and Darla didn't have uvvies. They'd both been abducted at night. "Couldn't catch him nohow," continued Tempest, "but he got so sick of it that he done took off out the hole. Ptah said pfuck it!"

"There's a hole up there where you can stick your head out," explained Da, pointing toward the other end of the tree. "Into raw hyperspace. Very creepy."

"You said you dreamed this hypersphere talks to you," said Phil. "Does she call herself--"

"Om," said Kurt, just as Phil said it too. "Yes, she calls herself Om."

"The Metamartians call her that," said Phil. "She's their god. Wherever they go, Om comes too. She scooped you up because she was curious about the wowo."

"So it's true?" said Kurt. "I hadn't been sure. Om only talks to me when I'm dreaming. But it's slow going because I'm always drunk. Hard to think logically. The shock. I keep thinking we're all dead."

"Pass around the wine, Tempest," said Darla. "It's time for a drink."

"I'm half in a bag already, Phil," said Kurt apologetically. "I should explain that we've been partying hard. Tempest figured out how to make wine. Well, it's similar to wine, anyway. We've been drinking enough of it."

"Could you make me some food?" asked Phil. His stomach was rumbling. "I haven't figured out how to find it."

"These things are tolerable good," said old Tempest. She made a gesture and a bright alla mesh pattern formed to whoosh out a big crisp golden shape, fat in the middle and pointed at both ends. Phil nibbled at it. It seemed to be something like a deep fried sweet potato. Fibrous, oily, not too bad. He took a big bite, and then another and--crunch -- hit something like a vein of wiggly cartilage.