Spaghetti Aglio e Olio

     Hundreds or thousands of years ago, somebody cooked what they imagined was a simple dinner and shared it with someone they loved. The two of them sat down to eat it, toasted each other, and took their first bites. God, watching this, got on His megaphone and pronounced to all the Earth, “Hearken, my children! It’s taken four thousand years, but you have found pasta, garlic, olive oil, parsley, and parmesan cheese, and combined them into a dish both humble and divine. Having found this Secret Dish, and shared it with another in a moment of peace and love, you have brought about the end of this experiment. It’s time for you all to join me in Heaven where we will live together forever – every day peace and love from beginning to end – and we will have pasta just like that every day and you will never get sick of it or get fat. What do you say?” Only no one heard Him, because the Devil, in his first and only act since the apple in the garden, had taken the batteries out of the megaphone. God looked over to Jesus, who shrugged and said, “Let’s just keep watching and see what they do,” and now here we are, cleverer than what’s good for us, clevering up all kinds of suffering worse than what God ever thought we could, and Him and Jesus and the Holy Ghost are all hovering around the TV, watching us and biting their nails.

Emergence

They are each grain the same

And so the laws that govern each

But desert plain is not a plane

And there are ripples on the beach

The crest is not the best – no less the lee, nor least the rest

Nonetheless is sand arranged at Sand's behest

Coal - Part II

The gritty desert wind carried a raspy, humming sound that tortured Michael’s imagination for half an hour before he finally came to the old aluminum street sign. The wind was playing it like a skeletal violin. In the sparse moonlight, he could only just make out “Old Highway Ten”.

No more, said a voice in his head, next time you see headlights, you have to stay in sight.

He would, he decided. But in the meantime, he would keep walking. He walked even though his feet were starting to catch on the road. He walked until the humming of the sign only came after him in derisive shreds. Then, he walked until those were gone, too.

If he had thought about it, he might have decided that moving felt better than standing still. But he didn’t think about it. He didn’t think about anything, until all at once, the horizon was glowing, and he had just a moment to wonder whether he had walked through the night, or he had fallen asleep on his feet, before headlights erupted over the crest of an invisible hill. They might have shone in through his eyes and clear out the back of his skull. He threw an arm across his eyes and instinctively stumbled towards the berm, but a voice shouted in his mind.

No. If you spend another night in a ditch, we will both die.

It was true, of course, but it still took all of his effort to stand still.

The vehicle slowly came to a stop some distance away – some tens or thousands of feet – unknowable in that liminal space made half of midnight and half of weapons-grade headlights and an engine idle that could only have belonged to a freight train.

The lights dimmed a little when the operator stopped the engine. Michael fought to see as much as he could through teary, squinting eyes, blocking the light with an outstretched hand. He heard a car door open and then close again, and after too long a silence, he felt a kind of claustrophobia set in. He was alone with some invisible stranger in a room that was at once infinite and too small.

“Hello?” Michael called out, when he couldn’t take any more of his nerves. Otherwise, he would have had to dash for the berm.

“Are you okay?” someone called back.

“I’m lost.”

And you’re thirsty.

“…and I’m thirsty.”

“Shit,” said the stranger, much closer now, “How long have you been out here?”

“Two days, I guess.”

“Come on. I got- shit, I don’t have water in the cab. Coffee would probably kill you right now. But I’ve got some carrots. Come on, I’ll call the police and we’ll see if they want me to take you somewhere. You’re a ways out from… well, from anywhere.” The driver’s indistinct silhouette passed in front of the headlights and Michael caught a flash of the desert around him – of sagebrush throwing long shadows far out across hardpack desert.

“No police. Please. I’m tr-AH!” A hand was suddenly on his shoulder, guiding him toward the headlights.

“You illegal?” Said the voice – a man’s voice. Maybe young.

“I don’t think so,” said Michael.

“Police will get you to your people. You don’t need to be scared.”

They passed out of the beam of the headlights and around to the passenger side of a truck outlined in a constellation of little yellow lights. Michael looked back to the illuminated wedge of desert and asphalt in front of the truck. He traced the light out along the road until it slowly gave way to dark. It was like staring down into an ocean, and the idea of wandering around in it was all at once terrifying to him. The man opened the passenger door, and Michael climbed up, hand over hand, into the cab.

The cab was clean. A sharp, chemical smell came up off of the seats and made Michael’s eyes water. But his seat was comfortable, and it was only seconds before his body remembered sleep. He blinked wide and sat forward on the edge of the seat. He would be able to sleep, soon, but not yet.

The driver side door opened and the stranger hopped up into the cab.

“Shoulda’ had the hazards on,” he said. He reached behind the steering wheel and the truck started flashing - ting tick, ting tick.

“I need you to take me to Salina,” said Michael, but the man was already reaching for his phone.

“Sorry, but I can’t take you anywhere. I’m sure the police will take you to Salina,” he said. He looked at the display on his phone and grimaced. “Shit. S’okay, I have a sat-phone in the sleeper. Hang on.” He started to leave.

“Wait,” said Michael. There was something ghastly in his voice. The air shuddered to carry it.

The man surprised himself when he froze – one hand on the grab rail. He convinced himself that it was silly that goosebumps had crawled up his arms, but he didn’t notice that he was also holding his breath.

“Please, I’m trying to get back to my parents. The police make me go to my aunt’s house, and she makes me work. I’ll run away again and maybe I’ll die. Please take me to Salina.”

The man sat back down and shut the door. He looked like he might say something, but he didn’t. He slowly drew his seatbelt across his chest, turned off the hazard lights, and started the truck.

“Let me know if you get cold,” he said. The brakes whined and the truck rolled forward.

Michael sat back into his seat and shut his eyes.

Coal - Part I

After Michael had to run away, he spent about a year working in a restaurant for a man named Mr. Truong. Michael lived on rice noodles and marked time in Sunday dinner rushes until he was taken one morning - led across the damp parking lot, still night-cold under his bare feet, into a police car that took him to a series of concerned strangers, and ultimately to Mr. And Mrs. Marshall, who greeted him with a blue plastic tub full of sneakers of all different sizes, a bowl of buttered noodles, and a room that was to be his.

“And I won’t go in there unless you invite me or if I feel like you’re makin’ some kin’of trouble for yourself,” said Mrs. Marshall, “This is your room, for as long as you’re here.”

It was as great a kindness as he had ever known, or would again for some time. That was the first night he had slept behind a door that locked from the inside, and he slept deeply.

He stayed for three months - not long enough to heal, but long enough that mist began to creep into his memories – that same mist that takes your dreams. He found it hard to remember what was true, and that entire years of his old life could bob up to the surface and sink again like shapeless, rotting logs in murky water. He left the Marshalls’ on the day his sister’s face began to blur.

They aren’t going to take you back.

“I don’t want to go back,” he said, “I want to get Sara.”

Marking Time

               A few months ago, I pulled a rock out of the mud in a clear pool near the banks of the Winisk, where it lets into Hudson Bay. As soon as I did, I felt some funny kind of shame I couldn’t describe or justify. I put it back as faithfully as I could, smoothed the mud back over it, and watched the turbid water clear. Since then, the thought of it has persisted like a sort of memetic infection – loudest in what would have been quiet moments.

               I felt it again, more acutely this time. I had been rummaging for a AA battery, cracking open drawers that hadn’t had light let into them for months, and each relic they contained had a sort of dull heat radiating from it. At first, just like before, I couldn’t say what it was that bothered me. I just felt generally repulsed. And closing the drawers didn’t help; I had let something out. Working my way down the row, I came to the drawer with the watch in it.

               It was an old Casio with a black plastic band and a black face with radon-green hands, still ticking. It was white hot.

               I closed the drawer, I closed my eyes, but an afterimage persisted, still ticking. Existential heat – that’s what it was; I’d been burned. For the last however-long, I’d gone about my days and the watch had been there, marking time, its hours as long as mine. My ignorance of the hugeness of its being was gone and would never come back. I thought about taking its battery out, or just smashing it with a hammer, but in the end, I decided to put it on. It’s just a watch now, and the hours it marks are mine.

               But there’s still a rock in the mud near the banks of the Winisk, where it lets into Hudson Bay, and its hours are its own, and just as long.

The King's Alchemist - Part I

               Marcus had fallen asleep an apprentice natural philosopher. When Artom shook him awake the next morning, he was the King’s Alchemist – though the title wouldn’t settle into common use for several weeks. It was an unprecedented promotion in an unprecedented context, but the aspect of that dark night that would go on to win over Marcus’s memory was, despite it all, how well he had slept. He enjoyed many dreams, rich and long, throughout that night. He’d felt no unease as the world roiled and shifted under his bed. He hadn’t lurched awake, covered in night sweat, when the axe was put through his master’s neck. He might have slept into the middle of the day if Artom hadn’t awoken him. That he could know such peace through such a night would sow hidden thorns in any moment of peace he would have thereafter.

               “Marcus, get up! He’s gone and done it – worse than we thought! Marcus, the whole Academy is dissolved – run off or dead,”

               “Where is Boris?” Marcus asked, one foot still in his dreams.

               “Master Grey is dead – taken from his bed in the night and executed for treason,” Artom said, and Marcus’s ears filled with the sound of his own racing blood and his mind was a hornet’s nest. Artom went on, as if setting down a heavy burden, “The guard fell on everyone at once. The charge on each head was treason. Krauss was up through the night, by some grace. He heard them coming and knew it for what it was, bless him. He got a few of them out. The rest are dead – that we know of – paraded to the block like Dellian spies. There are some we don’t know about. Addie Mercer might have some people in the Sounding room with her – or at least, the guard was having trouble there – they were bundling sawgrass – they’re going to smoke them out – god! – Like rats!”

               “Artom, what do we… are they coming for us?” Marcus asked, and he hated himself for it, but he was relentlessly pragmatic, and anyone who knew him well would expect and forgive him his tactlessness. Artom didn’t know him that well.

               “We’re safe, if it comforts you to know it,” Artom said, “as safe as they were yesterday, at least.”

               “Do we run? What are the others doing?”

               “Most of the other students are doing their best not to draw attention to themselves. The outward position of the dormitories is one of perfect fealty. Godwilling, we’ll all be sent home to our families.”

               And that, they both knew, hinged upon how the sound of the day’s last beheading fell on the King’s ear – whether that moment would resound as the bloody exclamation point of his fevered raving, or another ellipsis in this series of ellipses.

               “Most? What of the rest?” Marcus was on the edge of his bed, lacing his boots, which he imagined was the first step to whatever came next, “There must be talk.”

               Something in the hall caught their ears. Shifting furniture. Hushed and urgent voices. Marcus was rapt, but Artom, who had already endured a hushed and urgent morning, continued.

               “There is talk. Some. Mostly variations on the theme of running. There’s a plot to destroy the registry and just fade back into the populous.”

               “You sound unconvinced,” said Marcus, still half-focused on the activity outside. He crossed the room, touched his forehead to his door, and shut his eyes.

               “The idea there is that, without the registry, we can escape and his majesty wouldn’t know our necks from any others younger than twenty years, but yes, I am unconvinced.”

               Marcus came back from the door, unsatisfied. “Because it takes as granted that he wouldn’t have every such person killed,” he said.

               “Whereas I think he might, if his rotting mind decides we’re also the enemy, and in destroying the registry we'd be openly declaring that we thought him ours. In that case, we should expect he do no less than what he has already done to rout all his other ‘enemies’,”

               “He has never killed half of his citizens,” said Marcus, “But I’m sure I see what you are saying.”

               “What he has done, over and over again, is surprise us with the degree of cruelty and unreason with which he acts in response to his capricious fears. His razing his own kingdom would be surprising. Everything he has done for these three exhausting years has been surprising.”

               “I follow you, and I suppose I agree, at least in that he would go to terrible ends. But then, are you advocating that we do nothing, or-”

Sounds in the hall, again. Not conflict, but definitely decisive motion. Both boys went animal-still trying to discern the nature of the commotion. Doors opening and closing, one after another. It was not random, but systematic. “It’s a search,” said Marcus, and a futile urgency seized them.

               “I’m saying we have to do far more,” Artom said, “The registry is a half-measure, but to be idle is to actively forfeit our lives. Marcus, we need you.”

Marcus felt a charge in the way he said ‘we’. The word crackled in the air between them. There was nothing hypothetical about it. Herman Krauss and Adalei Mercer were part of ‘we’. Master Grey was part of ‘we’, dead or no. Other students, members of the court, and some contingency of the guard who had seen enough cruelty, all passing coded messages and meeting in root cellars.

Most importantly, Marcus knew he himself to be part of ‘we’, but all he had time to say before the door opened was “Yes”.

First through the door was the end of a rusty halberd, held at length by some young guard conscript. The rest of his detail was nervously brandishing similar weapons down the hall in either direction.

“We’ve a summons for Marcus Locke,” said one senior guard among them, and he held at arm’s length what might have been the corresponding order, but his reach was half that of the boy’s restless blade, so the paper would go without scrutiny.

“I deny any charges of wrongdoing,” Marcus said. He began to step forward, but thought better of it when his eyes met the young conscript’s. There he saw a wild temper and little sleep.

“You are not under arrest,” said the senior guard, “I am to escort you to the Azure Mission. Now, if you would.”

“If I am not under arrest- The Mission? What is this? I could be of no use to the Mission.”

“And they will learn that to their satisfaction, I’m sure.” In a fashion he imagined subtle, the guard rested his hand on the pommel of the sword at his belt.

“I can make my way there, myself, if it’s all the same,” said Marcus.

“You are being deliberately and pointlessly difficult. You have no idea how lucky you are,” said the senior guard.

The boy with the halberd snarled.

“Put your prick away, child,” said Marcus, and then to the senior guard, “I’ll take myself to the Mission. What’s more, I’ll take my things, and I’ll take my time. You’re welcome to follow me, if you feel you’d otherwise be derelict in your duties.”

“Marcus, just go with them; you’re embarrassing yourself,” said Artom, holding Marcus’ coat and leather satchel.

The ABA Problem

"So, have you figured out how they are finding them?"

“Thanks Arthur. We think so, yes. Of course, they have the Stockton test, but we've known for a while that they've had some sort of screener. They use this higher-order test to determine who to pick up off the streets for the real deal. It's effective, too. As of yesterday evening, we are about 4.2% of the population. That's the base rate. Obviously, if their meta-test were no good, their main test would produce true positives at that same rate, but instead it's something like 55%. It works.

“A few weeks ago, my group was tasked with identifying this meta-test, and coming up with a way to defeat it. If we defeat the meta-test, and their only option is to bring all nine-billion of us in for the Stockton, which, of course, they would not consider - at least at this stage. Or they could grab folks randomly. Regardless, their positive ID's drop from 55% to 4.2%.

“Right, so, we considered their data-set. What do they have? The most obvious answer is monitoring internet traffic, like the old days, but our confusors and misinfos are still running that show. We're confident there's not enough signal in that noise.

“So, what else? Number two: the Panopticon network. They've got effectively 100% camera coverage, in terms of area, and their facial recog is extremely good, too. Call it 100%. But it wasn't immediately obvious how they might use it for the screener.

“We did our best to back way out - think objectively - 'what can be tracked with Panop?' The simplest answer is, of course, it can track where people go. Then, could we reverse-engineer our own screener that could pick out our units, just with Panop data? And that's what put us on the trail of what we're calling the 'ABA problem'. Short answer: yes.

“We've run into an issue over and over again in the past that basically boils down to the fact that our units can't make arbitrary decisions. In the beginning, a kid could accidentally ID one of ours by asking it what color sugar cookie it would like. Over and over again, we've had to apply some fuzz to their decision making, but that's never been really right. Even after we 'fixed' that sort of issue, if that kid asked the same question a few thousand times, he'd see a clean, uniform-distribution emerge. Randomness isn't the answer. People don't behave optimally, but neither do they behave randomly. You might say they behave 'spiritually' or 'instinctively'.

“Same goes for when they decide how to get from point A to point B. Pathfinding. And just like the cookie-style questions, our A to B pathfinding algorithms are now brilliantly convoluted. They're less than 'optimized', but more than 'random'. They're spiritual - really, really brilliant.

“But we had missed something, until one week ago. It was Dr. Mateu who recognized it, and when you get it, if you haven't already, you're going to kick yourself like I did.

“The algorithm is spiritual - perfectly imperfect - but it's the same, forward and backwards, on undirected graphs - which is to say, without factors like hills and one-way streets, if one of our units picks an A-B path, it's B-A path will always be the reverse. Of course, why wouldn't they?

“We don't do that! When Dr. Mateu pointed this out, I immediately thought of my walk between my flat and the CIS building in grad school. I would always walk around the north side of the conservatory on the way there, and around the south side on the way back. I wasn't sightseeing; I was just trying to get home. I thought it was so funny that I really did feel I was picking the 'best' path both times.

“It would be trivial, of course, to detect unusual 'ABA symmetry' using Panop. We had a program that afternoon, and what do you know, it flags our guys and humans at about the same rate, which was eerily reminiscent of the 55% figure. We knew we had it.

“At Dr. Mateu's request to Operations, we were allotted a test population of ten thousand units, spread all around the world, to which we were allowed to pass a new experimental pathfinding algorithm with some induced ABA asymmetry. That was four days ago - it's still far too soon to make any statistical claims yet, but we are very excited. Based on some crude numerical modeling, out of a population of ten thousand, given four days, about three hundred should have been picked up for the Stockton. The actual number - again, low confidence - is… much lower.”

"Just tell us, Doctor. We'll take it with a grain of salt."

"At least… as of just before this meeting… zero. Not one has been collected."

"Well," said the Chairman with a smile, "It’s hard not to get excited about that."

Martin Watts, P.I. - Part I

            All the sudden, I couldn’t remember what I had been doing. Then there was a light, and I could hear my heart shoving blood into my head, and I gradually became aware that I had skin. I was dying in reverse. The proverbial tunnel was behind me, and in front of me was the only thing more dreadful and mysterious.

            Wake up, Martin. It’s time to rejoin the living.

            “Uff. Five more days…”

            That’s what you said five days ago. It’s time to wake up.

Good cryostasis is more expensive than an Earthside studio apartment. Bad cryostasis is cheaper than three hot meals, and that’s how I found myself crawling across the cabin of the Maltese Falcon looking like a science experiment. I grappled blindly with the net of probes and wires ensnaring me, and I could already feel the ants coming on. Metal ants with little stabbing feet. They start on the shoulder blades and work around to my arms and my chest and down my torso, puking hot acid as they go. Soon, the part of my nervous system that told my brain whether or not I was on fire would start to get confused.

            Martin, now. You have a phone call,” said Kira, my ship’s computer.

            A phone call! I tried to run to the phone, but then realized I was on the floor. After a few seconds of the frozen pond routine from Bambi, I managed to get my feet under me and grab onto a rail.

“Answer it! Huhg- Put them on speaker, and tell me where I put the lotion!” I shouted. The ants were starting to catch on fire.

“What?” Came a woman’s voice from everywhere at once. I snapped to attention and scrambled to engage the professional part of my brain.

“You’ve reached Martin Watts, P.I.” I said “I apologize; you’ve caught me disadvantaged.”

            “I can call back,” she said. Her voice was rain on an empty street. She sounded like Jane Greer in Out of the Past. “Hello?? Why don’t I just call back-” she said.

            “That won’t be necessary,” I said “You have my full attention.”

A flashing light grabbed my attention. A word crawled across one of the wall monitors. “LOTIONà” it said, and the floor lights lit up like a marquee. I stumbled after them.

“I was looking for Martin Watts who does odd jobs,” she said.

“Ah,” I said, as my heart fell through a trap door, “Yes, that is also me. I try to stay busy between cases. And, as luck would have it, I happen to be between cases right now!” I fumble the latch open on the footlocker under my hammock and did my best to tear through its contents as quietly as possible.

“Are you really a P.I.?” she asked, “Like a private investigator?”

“Exactly like a private investigator,” I said, collecting my pride, “Remember me if you ever lose something or someone you’d like to un-lose.”

“That’s very interesting,” she said, “I’ve never met a private investigator before.”

I wrenched the cap off my tub of anesthetic lotion and began shoveling gobs of it all over my body. The ants went out like sparks on wet pavement. Smooth.

“Would you like to?” I asked.

“I think I would,” she said, “Maybe we can meet up over you setting up the appliances in my new apartment.” I could hear her smile.

She beamed me her address and Kira threw the details up on the wall. A one-bed-one-bath with a sod lot on the outer ring of Riker Station. High society. At full burn, I could dock in three days.

“I look forward to meeting you, Martin Watts, P.I.” She said. It wasn’t condescending, per se. She played with my name the way a cat would – aloof, capricious. She let me wonder whether she’d bite or purr.

“Before you go,” I said, “I never got your name.”

She paused.

No, actually, she had hung up.

“Hot damn!” said Kira. A Clark Gable deep-fake appeared on the wall, asking “would you like to?” over and over again in my voice.

“Stop, Kira. That’s weird,” I said as I struggled into my jumper.

“Too bad it didn’t work,” she said “You didn’t miss a beat.”

“It did work,” I said, “She liked it. She likes me.” I looked over the parameters and turned the key that authorized the full burn.

It would hurt. A regular Hohmann transfer would cost a fraction of the fuel but it would take too long. No, the margins for this job would be skinny, but this was the thing to do. The Itch was telling me so, and the Itch had yet to let me down.

“I haven’t been on many first dates. Do they all involve getting paid to move the lady’s furniture?” Kira gibed.

“There was a lot of nuance in that conversation that a bootleg, cereal box AI might not have been able to unpack.” I felt my gut turn as I pitched the Maltese up and around to its new bearing.

“Hmm, so now you’re making fun of me because you pirated me because you don’t have any money. I must be missing more nuance.”

 “Alright, shut up before I put you on a data stick and lose you between couch cushions,” I said.

I locked the orientation and tossed the throttle to the backstop. Suddenly, a hundred or so Gs of acceleration were superimposed on the ship’s artificial gravity. The gravistat groaned under the stress, but after a few seconds, down was comfortably down again.

“Okay, Kira. I’m going to take a nap – a real one,” I said as I sat up into my hammock.

“Naturally, sir. You’ve had a long day.”

I had Kira gradually dial down the gravistat, and the hammock slowly swung back until I was looking “up” through the bow of the ship. I lay awake for a few hours, falling up into the infinite nothing, until an uneasy sleep finally took me. I think I dreamed of ants.

The Alabaster Knight

She wasn’t hungry, but she took the food anyway. She didn’t want to have to explain herself. The alabaster knight in the center of the table watched her eat. That and the clack-clacking of the old clock made for a crowded room. The old lady didn’t wait for her to finish before fetching a plate of some kind of pale gelatin with all kinds of awful things stuck in it –a magpie’s collection of fruit, herbs, meat, and flower petals. She’d never broken a bone, she explained, and it was because she ate gelatin with every meal. A widow can’t afford to break a bone. She would wear what bruises and cuts she would earn working her land, but she’d never break a bone.

“Your bones are the fulcrums God gave you to act against the great winding-down,” she said, “Winding-down is the natural state of things untended. Living things, unliving things, the whole of creation needs winding, just like a clock does. A rock falls down a hill, and it won’t go back up unless someone’s got the mind and a lever. The will and the agency. The brain and the bones, you see. Leave your own life untended and it will wind down to a stop just the same. God’s creation is great, but under the majesty are the gears of a great clock, and we are the winders, not Him. You want a purpose, there it is. And no one else will keep your springs tight but you, and it’s your duty to yourself and to Him to keep them so, and if you got no bones, it doesn’t matter how right your mind is, whatever the Methodists say.”

The girl surrendered a polite nod and carved a modest scoop of gelatin, trying to dodge any suspended bits she could not identify, and she was surprised to find she did suddenly feel a compulsion to eat it. The kettle whistled and the old lady floated off through the doorway. I’m a winder, thought the girl. Silly as she thought the story was at first, she felt a heat in her arms and legs, and she was anxious to lift, mend, join, and wind. The clack-clacking of the old clock was her own heartbeat. She dutifully took a bite of the gelatin. It was not sweet. In fact, it had no detectable flavor of any kind, but she ate it gladly, and could almost feel a subtle power charge her restless arms. She felt it creep into her sinew, muscles, and bones.

The old lady returned from the kitchen carrying two saucers and two steaming cups of some new wonder. She was pleased to find the girl lost in thought. The girl was looking at her forearms and hands with the reverence normally reserved for ancient artifacts –ceremonial daggers covered in runes and wrought for some purpose unknown and unknowable. The old lady said, “I think you really listened to me, yes? You understand?”

The girl started at the lady’s voice, and at once her arms were arms again.

“Yes, I think I do understand.” But- the girl faltered. Suddenly she felt heavy, but somehow weightless at the same time, as though some critical anchor line had been cut. And then, she knew the feeling for what it was –she’d felt it many times before. She said, “but I’m afraid I’m dreaming.”

The old woman gave her a pitying, almost condescending look.

“Maybe,” she said, “but that doesn’t change everything. There are somethings you can take with you –all the most important things.”

She sat down and passed the girl a cup of tea. The girl took it, but the magic was gone from it, and she thought it might dissolve into the air.

“You’re worried about the wrong things,” said the old lady. “All the trivia –whether or not you got tea in your hands right now, how many chairs there are at this table, that kind of thing, that kind of fact, contingency, you try to carry that through the veil and you’ll be disappointed, yes. But real truth isn’t just a list of true facts, real truth is in the relationship between facts, and real truth can pass through the veil.”

The girl listened, but did not hear. “Sure,” she said, dispirited.

“For example,” said a voice that was not the old lady’s. The girl was only so surprised to see the alabaster knight step off of his dais in the center of the table and, with great effort, scratch two crossing lines into the surface with his marbled sword.

He continued, “a line is a breadthless length –that is a contingent fact. It is true on this side of the veil, and it may be true on the other side as well. Likewise call ‘angle’ the measure of the inclination between two meeting lines. That a ‘line’ is such, and that an ‘angle’ is so, are contingent facts. If you’ve learned them here, you can’t take them with you, but” – He made a dramatic sweeping gesture with his sword – “consider these crossing lines. Crossing so, they define four angles, and it can be derived from our contingent facts that the measures of those angles opposite each other are equal.”

The knight ascribed an unfamiliar symbol to each of the four angles, and in a strange martial display carved several expressions into the wood. The girl recognized the symbol for equivalence here, and a substitution operation there. It was at once familiar and strange.

The old lady scowled. “Arthur,” she reproached, “I wish you would have used a mat. I’ve got plenty.” But he didn’t seem to hear and when he was finished, he bowed.

“I see,” said the girl, “opposite angles are equal, because they are adjacent to a common neighboring angle, and because the sum of this common angle and either opposing angle sums to a straight line. That either opposing angle added to their neighbor produces the same sum means they must be equal! So, it is a real truth that opposite angles are equal!”

“No,” said the knight, “that is also a contingent truth.”

The girl despaired. “But then what is a real truth? What can I take? The knight retook his place on the dais.”

“The real truth,” he said, is that “when ‘line’ is such, and ‘angle’ is so, opposite angles are equal."

The old lady mournfully touched the fresh wounds on her table. “You see, love,” she said, “real truth isn’t in the facts themselves. Real truth is in the bones.”