Realware

"Come here," he said, beckoning ingratiatingly to the Humpty-Dumpty. The fat egg smiled uncertainly. Phil decided to try uvvying into it. The mind of the Humpty-Dumpty was what one would imagine the mind of a dog to be: a simple, affectless reflection of the passing scene. "Come here," repeated Phil. "I need for you to help me. Come on, Humpty. Come to Phil." Slowly the egg inched closer along the branch.

"Can you wrap one up?" asked Phil, forming a mental image of a man in a bubbletopper. "Can you act like a spacesuit and give me air?" Humpty-Dumpty's face split in a big smile, and it uvvied back something that sounded like prerecorded ad copy. "Yes, Humpty-Dumpty can act as a spacesuit. Every genuine Corey Rhizome Silly Putter doll is usable as an emergency bubbletopper. It's just another reason why every loonie family should own at least one!"

The egg waddled closer, opened its mouth wide and gently bit onto Phil's arm. And then its plastic flesh liquefied and flowed all over Phil, sealing him up inside a full-body suit. Cheesy-smelling air trickled out of an indentation over Phil's nostrils, and the imipolex over his eyes became a transparent visor. Grabbing the branch again, Phil stuck his head out into hyperspace for a second time. Again, the first thing he saw was a great expanse of pink --it had to be the body of Om.

In an effort to keep his viewpoint from thrashing about, Phil made every effort to hold perfectly still, even though he was holding onto a drifting tree with a dog and three drunk old people at the tree's other end. Phil tried to compensate for the jiggling by turning his head this way and that, but he couldn't quite put it together. No action seemed to have the expected consequence; it was like trying to do something with his hands while watching them in a mirror. Everything was upside down, backward, and maybe even inside out. Even so, he was able to get a better look at some of the things he'd seen before. He found that when he unexpectedly lost sight of something, he could wobble his head to scan back and forth to find it. Wobbling had the additional effect of sometimes showing him a series of views that his mind could integrate into a solid whole. Some of the endless pink surfaces were spheres that seamlessly blended together--surely these were views of the hyperspherical powerball finger of Om whose hypersurface enclosed the rest of his body. And the pink curves beyond the spheres? Further sections of Om's body--Phil got the feeling she was astronomical in size.

When Phil glanced down at himself, he discovered a truly gnarly sight. Where he'd expected to see his chest and shoulders, he instead saw a cross section of his body. One part of the image was regularly twitching, and the twitches matched the beating of Phil's pulse, clearly audible in the hush of hyperspace. The twitching thing was his heart. But in this odd view, his heart appeared not as a whole organ, but as a cross section, a muscular ring filled with surging blood.

Next to the heart were cross-sectional views of his flexing lungs, which looked like ovals of fractal broccoli. And arranged outside his i

But now heavy hands grabbed Phil's waist and pulled him back in. It was Da, drunker than before. Phil felt like hitting him. Stupid old man.

"You have to be more careful or you might fall out," Da was saying. "Good thing I thought to check on you."

"I was doing fine," said Phil, pushing the cowl of Humpty-Dumpty off his face. The Silly Putter assumed its duties were over and crawled off, firming itself back into its original form. "Leave me alone, Da," continued Phil. "We'll talk after you sleep."

"I'm tired of sleeping," said old Kurt. "That's when Om always comes for me."

"Just get away," said Phil, and pushed himself off from the tree, floating out into an empty region of the hypersphere. It had been a long day, and he was exhausted. He used Om's invisible alla to make himself a cup of water, and drank it greedily. That lightened the unpleasant load of the yam-snoot in his gut. He closed his eyes and let his limbs go slack, missing Yoke and thinking about the new things he'd seen. Before long he was asleep.

TUESDAY

Tempest woke Phil by tapping his mouth with one of her greasy food-spindles.

"It's a new day, Junior. Hope you ain't still mad at your Dad. Here's a naahce yam-snoot for your breakfast."

"Xoxx it, Tempest, I can't eat this scuzzy kilp. Show me where in the alla catalog you found it. There's got to be something better." Though Phil was quite hungry, his queasy stomach categorically forbade any further yam-snoot.

"Hyar 'tis," said Tempest, and she uvvied Phil a bookmark into Om's alien alla catalog.

None of the objects near the yam-snoot seemed to be food at all; indeed, Phil soon got the impression that the yam-snoot was in fact a Metamartian cleaning product. "God help me," he sighed.

And the instant he said that, the catalog altered its display to show a veritable buffet table of pleasant, normal-looking breakfast food: fruits, breads, cheeses, and pouches of juice.

"Actualize," said Phil quickly, and the cornucopia of food floated around him and Tempest. "Thank you, Om."

Phil listened for an answer, but he couldn't seem to hear Om while he was awake. The dream conversations with her last night had been intense. Yes, Om had been talking to him most of the night, avidly going over all of the memories and impressions that she could dredge out of his twenty-four years of life. It was like the time he had tried camping out with Kevvie, and she'd stuck a methedrine patch on herself for the hike and then forgotten to take it off. Though unlike Kevvie, Om had wanted him to do most of the talking. Tell me this, tell me that, and when you said that other thing, what exactly did you mean? No wonder he still felt tired.

But the breakfast foods were delicious. Tempest, Darla, Kurt, and Planet the dog joined in. And afterward, when everyone skulked off to relieve themselves, Om turned their waste right into air. Phil could pee, and the stream would just vanish into breezy nothingness a few inches from the tip of his dick.

"No drinking for me today," intoned Da solemnly when they drifted back together.

"My son and I have to talk."

"The fourth dimension," said Phil. "It's real."

"That was a good idea of yours to use Humpty-Dumpty for a spacesuit," said Da.

"I didn't think of that. I've only grabbed two quick peeks out of the hole so far. It scares me shitless."

"But it's what you've been talking about your whole life," said Phil.

"Hyperspace! Some of the things you taught have been coming back to me. I was seeing cross sections of my body, and I saw a whole lot of different spheres that must have been sections of this hypersphere."

Kurt looked uneasy. "I -- I don't remember if I brought this up yesterday, but--don't you think it's at least possible that we're dead? That this is an antechamber before we go on into the Light? That's why I can't get too enthused about anything. You know I hate religion, Phil. It's not my bag. I thought that when I died everything would be over. And now it looks like I might end up facing the fucking God of the rednecks."