The Coming of Satan

          Sam prides himself on his variety of oaths.  When a large yacht with stinking diesel exhaust anchored directly off the Monad's bow, Sam mumbled "crud".  When they left their engine running and went below, he spat out "crap!"  When the stench of the exhaust coming into the Monad's forward hatch and blowing down her decks and through the cockpit finally worked him up enough to pull up the dinghy to go talk with them, he said "shit!" — he hates this kind of stuff.  When several loud hails at the companionway failed to bring anyone on deck, he shouted "arggh!" and began pulling himself along the rail beating on the side of the boat with his fist to get their attention.

          When the guy finally came up, Sam explained the situation in a calm voice, not invoking oaths — Sam's actual motive was to cure the problem... so that he could calm down and be happy again.

          When the guy explained that they needed the power to stay in contact with everyone back home and so they can eat, their galley being all-electric, Sam involuntarily muttered "Idiot!"

          The guy angrily answered, "I have the right to run my engine!" and stormed below.

          Sam threw his arms toward the sky and shouted, "Satan, do something!"

          And Satan did.

          Suddenly the stinking gas and blurps of oily water were no longer pulsing from the yacht's transom but from the foredeck, just forward of the open hatch, and oily water was running down the side decks.

          "God damn!" Sam exclaimed as he pushed off to prevent the scuppers from pouring pollution into his dinghy.

          There was a stone-dead silence all about as if God was about to answer, but naught was heard, as if He had lost His Voice.

          It's all there in Nostradamus, of course, all you have to do is read it.  The ancient peoples of the Americas had it all calculated and we now know the message of the Nazca lines in Peru.  It is a theme in the Book of Mormon and the Bible alludes to it... in its evolved-legend sort of way.  It's kind of like the Bible account of the Ark, which He had Noah build 300 cubits long and 50 wide — 6:1, seriously good for pointing high and going to weather.  There is no account of how she was rigged.  And she would be impressive at Annapolis, less than seven millennia away, where even God wants to look good.  He had Noah ground her high on Mt. Ararat to keep her from harm until show time.  Vandals got to her anyway and she was finally burned as firewood.  The original "Noah", Utnapishtim of the epic "Gilgamesh", built a square ark to hold more animals, which the god Ea said would only have to float on the water, then settle again on the land. "We're not in the race," Ea had told him, "You would need crew and we haven't time to train the animals."  [Thus, even today, animals make poor crew.]  "Think of yourself as the committee boat."

          As for now, many had thought 2012 was the appointed time.  But 2012 was just the First Day, so to speak.  Satan's coming is on the Twelfth of Never, foretold in song half a century ago as being the time when even the most profound promises are marked "paid".  (During an audience with God, singer Johnny Mathis had been told of the Twelfth of Never but misunderstood — as sometimes happens when interpreting God's message.)  Sam had thrown his arms to the sky and called Satan at zero hours on the Twelfth of Never.  00:00:00.000,000,003,141,59... actually, 17:23 local where Sam is anchored, 21:23 universal time — the gods, in their arrogance, have not yet adopted universal time.

          "Holy Cow!" Sam declares, and there is a muted flash of something Hindi, as if this moment is of special interest to all of the spiritual world.

          The guy with the diesel exhaust pops out, looking around to see who is doing this to him, realizes that it is somehow coming from his own boat, shuts down the engine, and switches off the oil alarm.

          Sam rows back to the Monad, climbs aboard, kicks the dinghy back, and goes below to roll one up so he can meditate on this miracle in a more spiritual state.  Sam is thoroughly discombobulated.

          "Consternation!" Sam declares as he climbs back to the cockpit to light up.

          There is a garble of talk from the people on the other yacht, now gathered in the cockpit gasping for breath. A seagull hovers above Monad's stern noisily demanding a toss-out.  A watertaxi roars by at full throttle leaving a wake that will audibly slam against the Monad's side in a couple of seconds.  Suddenly the stony silence again, silencing the seagull mid-squawk, stopping its wings mid-flap, and Monad is as still as if blocked up in a boatyard.  Sitting across from Sam is the image of a get-by rag-bagger in old, stained cloths with flyaway hair like a symphony conductor directing the finale, but hair salt-spray matted for that nautical look.

          "Leaping lizards!"  Sam takes another pull and passes it across.  "Who the devil are you?"

          The familiar looking stranger takes a couple of easy pulls, smiles as he hands it back, and says, “I am Satan.  You called My name."

          Sam is at a momentary loss.  Then he gets it.  "This is a joke.  Who are you?"

          "Satan," the stranger repeats.  "Some call Me the god of the underworld, but I am actually the god of another world, over in Andromeda, an Earth class planet called Wizvi.  I'm making a guest appearance on Earth, so to speak, not one that your god approves of."

          "Nonsense.  I have no god.  Who are you?"

          Satan is still smiling.  "You do not have to believe in me, Sam.  In fact, you may disbelieve the very moment we share."  Satan turns his head to follow a sweep of his arm, which embraces the view.  Everything looks normal except that there is no motion of waves, the watertaxi wake, clouds, birds in flight, or the towel flapping in the breeze on the backstay.  In fact, there is no breeze, not a breath.  And there is not the slightest sound except for their own voices and movements.  Sam's own movements seem normal, though the air seems to offer a fluid resistance.  But his environment is fixed in time.  Pretty convincing stuff.

           "Good ganja," Sam mutters, though he's never had ganja that good.

          "We can walk ashore for a beer if you like, you can walk on the water.  But you don't have to believe.  If you want, I'll leave and let things get back to normal."  But Satan breaks out a bag of his own as if supposing himself welcome.

          "Got this from a very spiritual Rasta high in the mountains of Jamaica a couple of seconds ago.  Smoked some of it with a bishop in the States.  He wasn't impressed.  He gets hydroponic.  I like the natural stuff, grown in soil, breeze, and sunshine.  Better connection."

          "Look, Satan, if you're the devil, how come you look and talk and act like me instead of being... being god-like?"

          "I dress to suit.  I was a wizened old man in full regalia for my visit with the bishop and had dreadlocks down to my knees in the mountains of Jamaica.  I speak whatever language is in use.

          "As for the word 'devil', Sam, that's just God's term for the opposition."  Satan leans back and looks at the sky with a smile of satisfaction.  "The opposition is in office for the moment.

          "But I can look like a god if you like," and suddenly Satan becomes a massive old man of bearded wisdom and fiery eyes.  Sam cowers before His presence, as one does.  Then Satan returns to normal... how he first appeared to Sam.  "Want to see what the devil looks like?"  It is a rhetorical question.

          Sam absorbs what he can for a moment, takes a pass and a hit, then asks, "So, what do You want with me?"  Sam has some very scary dogma-based fears.

          "I don't need anything from you Sam.  This is a social visit.  You just won the lottery, kind of.  I have been gone from Earth for hundreds of years, and almost the instant I returned you called on Me by name.  Countless call on Me, few are answered.

          "And let Me say, what I did to those people was a bit of a joke, not the real Me.  I thought that they were being arrogant and wasteful.   And you amuse Me.  It is now less than ten minutes since you hailed Me.  I have done more in that time than you could do in lifetimes.  I just dropped in to say 'hi' and burn one with you.  A few nanoseconds break in My day."

          "So, gone in a flash then?"  Sam's just warming up to the situation and wants this dream to continue.  Sam feels a twinge of grandeur in Satan's august presence, even though Satan is obviously slumming.  This is the first time that Sam has been visited by a god.

          "I don't need to rush off.  I'll leave when I will.  For the time, I like your innocence."

Is that a compliment?  It emboldens San to ask, "So You're an angel or a messenger or something?"

The Conversion of Sam

          Satan dons his God image and roars. "I am the equal of Earth's God!"  Then, returning to his rag-bagger look and conversational tones, "Gods have different approaches to handling people.  I don't need praise or believers — I know who I am.  And I'm not into fear or guilt.  I would rather My people be proud of their lives, as insignificant as they might be."

          "How many gods are there, anyway?"

          "Many billions."

          Well, of course.  "One for every world?"

          "Far fewer than that."

          "How many gods does Earth have?"

          "Just one.  Right now, that's Me."

          "Hold on now, Satan."  Sam might be feeling a bit over-connected now.  "You say You've been gone for hundreds of years, but my understanding is that You've been here all along and causing all kinds of mischief."

          Satan's face elongates and He now has horns, fangs, pointed ears, and a long tail with a barb on the end.  But He's still smiling.  "Don't believe everything you hear, Sam.  It is true that the devil, the opposition, has been here all along, but I've been off tending My own world, which is much more pleasant than yours."

          This makes Sam a bit defensive.  Sure, the world isn't perfect, but it's home and he's fairly used to it.  "So, what are You doing here then, why aren't You minding Your own wonderful world?"

          "Stage check, kind of an exchange program.  Earth's god is meddling in My world for a day, I'm tweaking His world.  Every 666 years.  Cross-contamination, one of Our more interesting evolutionary tools, He corrupts My world, I corrupt His.  This is the tenth stage check since Adam and Eve.  Count back through history, see small effects on the planet following My single day.  I founded the Garden of Eden project.  But I have been involved in Earth's evolution for billions of years, from the First Day through the Sabbath."

          Sam is in an interesting state.  He is mellow, feels secure, and is in good company, a brother of sorts, apparently a friend, yet a god, a real god, unless this is a psychedelic trip.  Sam's attempts to grasp the age and experience of an Immortal born with the Universe, Who lives life in nanoseconds, are whelming.  This is as important a Being as God, Himself.  Yet He seems to get a kick out of hanging out aboard Monad like Sam's regular friends, talking unbelievable things that seem more believable than some of the usual.  And He seems to have all the time in the world, and is willing to give logical truths about anything... logical?  Truths?  Indeed, Sam seems to have won the lottery.

          But what about tomorrow when Satan is off to Andromeda and God is back?  Sam's never paid much mind to godly matters before, should he start now?  "Should I be hanging with You if Earth's real god will be back in power tomorrow?"

          "There are several possibilities, Sam.  Most likely you will go unnoticed unless you bring it up yourself.  Many whom I visit will speak up, others will be evident by their actions.  My advice is for you to continue to be humble and secular.  He's used to most people believing in something other than Him — those who actually believe in anything.  But try this little irony.  You began by declaring that you have no god.  I seem to have converted you."

The Fall of Satan

"But God and I are not the mortal enemies that Christianity preaches.  We do have our differences, which is to say that We each have a mind of Our Own.  But We have known each other and worked together off and on since the nanoseconds and eons of the First Day, long before Sun and Earth.  People and their countless religions are not yet a blink of the cosmic eye, not on Earth anyway.  Our association will outlive Homo sapiens.  We have differing opinions but there is nothing malicious between Us.

          "Human perception of Me is based on the Bible.  The Old Testament says one thing.  The New Testament says another.  In Hebrew, 'Satan' means 'one who resists', fairly close as Old Testament truths go.  Even Bible scholars are less than half certain on their translation of the Book of Job, but it is as close as the Bible comes to telling the human aspect of My visits to Earth — no accounts touch on My work with plants and animals and the planet itself.

          "Anyway, God's briefing had offered Job as His best example of human morality.  My report back said that I thought it was greed, not devotion.  Job was what you'd call an exceedingly wealthy man.  But it was God Who decided to test him — My day was over.  I was back on My own world.

          "My reputation in the New Testament is a study in human nature, along with a quick peek into God's disposition.  Here's what happened.

          "My scheduled visit came early in the Christ Ministry.  Like today, I spent the first few minutes catching up on what had happened since My last visit and seeing how things stood.  That included a long talk with Jesus on god time.

          "Jesus was as good a man as you could meet, humble, considerate, responsible, devout, everything you might think a Christian should be, though there were no Christians yet.  All of his life had been a good example.  He was well known and respected.  So, God sent him to stay with friends in a remote village south of Rome and assumed his image for the Christ Ministry."

          "Wait, hold it.  Are you saying that Jesus wasn't really Jesus?"

          Another Satanic chuckle.  "Even Christians have trouble with that one.  Jesus was the man, Christ was the prophet, becoming the new god.  Christ was God.  God played Himself.  He had been working on a new image that He had put into prophesy nearly two centuries earlier.  His last major image overhaul had been in Abraham's time and He'd done an update that Moses preached.

          "Anyway, using the Christ Ministry as an excuse, God stayed on Earth during My visit, which left My world with no god at all for the day... which is no problem, it does fine... and actually makes it a tiny bit safer.  For instance, the residual effects of the fields I manipulate during this visit make you a thousand times more likely to be struck by lightning for a while after I leave — call it a billion to one in the current weather conditions.  And sometimes my visits leave mortals a bit distracted for a while... along with fauna and flora ... part of how we work....

          "Later on, when God and I were talking, I made a couple of observations He didn't like.  Then, having talked with Jesus and now seeing what He was doing in Jesus' image, I told Him, Jesus can't come back and follow this act.  He said, Jesus isn't coming back.  I said, not even to say good-bye to friends and family and pick up the stuff he stored with his brothers?  Somehow that got Him off and 'Satan' became the curse of the day.  The righteous picked up on it.  God had been having a bad day anyway.  That's the day he kicked over all the tables in the temple.

          "On my next visit, I learned that He had let Jesus come back to say good-bye after all... and to get the stuff he'd left with his brothers.

          "But the truth is, Sam, that even among gods I am known as trustworthy and especially for being subjectively objective."

          That one might take a theologian to untangle.

          "Anyway, the Disciples glommed onto it like kids in a school yard with a new dirty word.  I became the devil incarnate, Lucifer, the prince of darkness, the author of all things evil.  John the Divine went hog wild.  They even decided that old Beelzebub was just an early edition of Me, an evil of Babylon.  Beelzebub was a visiting god experimenting on getting swarms of flies to come together as a single conscious entity.  Individually, they would be autonomous, collectively, when they gathered on a carcass, they would meet the godly criteria for a person.  A critical mass of fly brains at close quarters would connect sonically to produce a slow-speed brain.

          "But let me assure you, Sam, My Intentions are as good as God's Intentions."

          "Then you are not the great deceiver?"

          "How could My answer to that question be anything other than 'no', Sam?"

Destiny

Sam's Monad remains suspended in time, though for Sam and Satan time seems to roll on.  How long have they been at it now, maybe a quarter hour?  If the flap of the seagull's wings or its squawking bill has moved, it's too little to see.  "You can ask Me to go," Satan says as He makes a move suggestive of a guest about to leave.  "That would play well if God asks."

          "You said if I stay cool He won't notice."

          "Probably.  Another thing that even gods don't know is the future."

          "Well, could we roll up another of Your 'connected' stuff before You go?"

          Satan settles back with a smile.  "That might dilute the illusion of your righteousness in the eyes of God, Sam."  He pulls out His bag.

          "So even God doesn't know the future?" Sam asks.  This is too big to ignore

          "You assume that there will be a tomorrow, even though life is only now.  You make many assumptions based on experience-based thought that largely prove true, yet every moment has an element of surprise as well.  Being a person, even a god, would be pretty boring otherwise, like watching a movie that you know every detail of.  We know magnitudes more than you, but We still know surprise.  Even you surprise Me some."

          "But You knew that I wouldn't tell You to leave."

          "I was fairly sure.  But that was for you to say."

          "So, I do, at least, have free will."

          "'Free will' is what we call the quality of life that feels like free will.  The more consciousness you have, the greater your free will seems to be.  At the same time, it can be argued that the life of every particle in the Universe is predetermined, which necessarily includes any interference by world-building gods.  Pre-destiny is an excellent excuse for doing whatever you want, since that is what you were going to do anyway.  If you don't believe in destiny, that's just what you were destined to believe.  This is all standard stuff among reasoning minds."

          Sam "chose" to let Satan stay because he felt he was getting the straight scoop, but this is a riddle.  Sam's already decided on free will, and already has his proof.  His version of free will is why he has to live at the fringe of society.  Talking him out of free will would be as tough as convincing him that there are real gods.

          "Some ride the fence," Satan comments.  "All good comes from God, all bad is of your own making."

          "As I understand that rap," Sam adds, "You can't even know good from bad unless you believe in the particular Book that they happen to be holding."

          "Can they tell good from bad?  Can you?"

          Sam hesitates.  "I think I can.  I mean if I think about it... if I know what's going on."

          The mirthful Satan chuckles again.  "'What is going on.'  Yes, that is the question.  If the answer is destined, so might be our thinking... or is it?"  Satan bogarts a while, not toking, just holding.  "I'm with you, I'd rather think that I did it Myself.  I do as I will, perhaps as I must."  Satan inspects the number he is holding.  "It's gone out."  He blows lightly on the end.  Sam sees an ember then smoke.  "Here, My brother," Satan hands it across.

          "I can't help it either," Sam says as he takes the pass “You're not the pusher-man, are You?  He's wicked."

          "Have I offered anything you are not already into?  Care for a cup of coffee?"  Satan hands across half a cup of steaming brew.

          Sam takes a sip.  "Good coffee in these parts is a miracle.  Irie."

          "I think we agree, Sam, if we are stuck with destiny, you and I got lucky.  Let's keep making our own luck.  Enjoy the ride."

          There is a realization accumulating in Sam's mind that he is operating way over his head, way out of his league, sitting here blithely comparing philosophies with a god.  Anyone else who looked like Satan, sure.  Is this a trick to open Sam up, to lower his inhibitions?  But Sam isn't known for withholding his thoughts anyway, another reason he prefers life at the fringe.  But something is expanding his mind, maybe what Satan is doing to time — or is it just the connected herb?

          "Well, if You're only here for a day, You seem to be spending a lot of time with me.  What else are You going to do?"

          "I'm doing quite a bit of it now.  Only part of Me is here.  Parts of Me are networking with key humans who can mobilize thousands to motivate millions more against what I regard as Earth's biggest threat, overpopulation."

          "Amen....  No, wait," Sam quickly adds, "You're not talking about war, are You?"

          "No, Sam.  These are sane people of understanding who will act in unison if they have faith."

          "Faith in You over the Almighty?"

          "Faith in themselves."

          "But if they are predestined...?"

          "We shall see.  I expect an unlimited supply of condoms into any place that there are men and women — or adolescents, for that matter — particularly in Earth's slum cities.  Condoms dramatically decrease birth rates and disease.  That is a humanitarian move to the benefit all of Earth's life forms... though not nearly enough.  The per capita consumption on your planet, even with half of humanity in poverty, is many times that of Wizvi.  My compassion is with Earth, not humanity.  Humanity has increased tenfold since My last visit, and humanity's industry by many times that.  By My next visit, life might be more dependent on technology than nature, after which nature will become an ever-shrinking novelty until it is forgotten.  The Garden of Eden and Easter Island — and many other instances, model how it happens."

          "Well, I read about Easter Island.  Sounds like they just used up everything.  What happened in the Garden of Eden?"

The Garden

 "The Garden of Eden project began long before Adam and Eve.  It took many of My visits to tweak its environments and to select and introduce the life forms.  I used a desert oasis not far from the Equator, isolated on a coastal plain between high mountains and the sea.  Downwind of the mountains, real dry.  There were intermittent rivers from the mountains, which I coaxed into feeding the aquifer under the oasis.  Its location was near the far end of humanity's expansion across the planet and would not be discovered for many thousands of years.  The desert discouraged stray creatures.  We let it have thousands of years with just plants and animals to confirm that it was a self-sustaining paradise.  Then God introduced the humans.  He got to choose who they were since He'd have to live with them.

          "God had been secretive about the sapiens He would choose and their modifications, though We'd agreed that they should be vegetarian.  The Garden could support many vegetarians but few carnivores.

          "My appointed visit to Earth came soon after Adam and Eve had been installed. Part of Me spent the whole day observing in regular time, but we also had several conversations such as you and I are having in god time.  Adam was a nice guy, quiet.  Eve did the talking­ – brevity was not an object.  God was particularly pleased with that trait, He's big on intensive language training for infants from the start.  Me too, but I do it differently.  He felt that complex language skills could make the power of the sapiens brain competitive with a computer, even though they think differently."

          "Balderdash, Satan!"  This is some pugnacious herb.  "They didn't have computers back then!"

          "There were computers in the Universe long before your sun was born, Sam.

          "Anyway, life in the Garden was pretty laid back, so Adam, a big, strong man with a full set of chemical systems, might have been bored were it not for Eve.  Eve kept him busy even though there wasn't much to do.  She saw that as part of her job.  He complained about it, I suggested that he not hang around gawking at her so much.

          "See, what God had done, one of His secrets, He made them almost entirely naked — a cushion of hair covering their thin skulls, hairy armpits, and a patch of hair over their crotch, which Adam hung out of.  I thought that they looked grotesque, but you should have seen how Adam stared at her.  Eve had a game with her long hair, playing hide and seek with her breasts, which mesmerized Adam.

          "God's rational was three-fold.  Eve would make cloths for decoration.  Adam would want clothes to hide what he was thinking about Eve — the beginning of craft and industry.  Clothes making skills could then evolve into protective clothing to allow human expansion into colder climates, beginning with the high mountains east of Eden.  Thus, God would have humans migrating from both ends of the Earth towards each other.  The third element was something We had argued about a million years ago, what a female should look like.  He felt she should be a sex symbol, I thought not.  Each of us has since proven our point.  He gets more breeding.  I get less fighting.  Eve had this great hollowness between her chest and hips that somehow begged to be filled.  Adam thought himself just the man for the job... as did many of the men who eventually saw her.  God and Adam thought Eve was amazingly beautiful, and she thought so too.  By their standards, Mary was also quite a fox.

          "Not long after my day with Adam and Eve, He moved them out to a project in the Indus Valley.  There had been some sort of drama in Eden of which there is little record, mostly Eve's account turned into Biblical legend by a succession of men, finally written down by Moses.  The 'subtle serpent' is at the heart of the matter.  Eve found that the serpent was not always subtle, which is how she discovered that she was naked — and that Adam was naked.  She found that a fig leaf apron increased her power over the serpent.  Adam decided he better have an apron of his own.  Then Eve made a full skirt of fig leaves, which bounced off her behind as she walked, which proved even more effective.  That's when she discovered that God, Who had made Adam in His Own image, was also naked.  So, God made coats of skims for them both and took to wearing his own robes, which were hot and heavy and diminished the pleasure of walking in the Garden in the cool of the day.  So, he moved them out.  It's all there in 'Genesis'... kind of.

          "To be fair to Moses, by the time the legend got down to him it was 3,000 years old.  And Moses, who was not a secular man, might have missed some of the nuances.  For instance, 'Genesis' also says 'she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.'  Biology doesn't play a big role in legends.

          "As an aside, an early Indus Valley legend says that Eve originated the rule that no two women wear the same outfit — and everybody knew that the fig leaf mini-skirt was hers.  She also pioneered many of the classic moves that short-skirted women use when they stand up or sit down — the women of the Indus Valley were as attentive as the men on this one, and it was a big boon to God's breeding program.  But all that God ever told Me is that the Garden was making them soft and wasting their potential.

          "The Garden went on for thousands of years more before human expansion finally stumbled onto it.  We had put monkeys in to replace the humans."

          "The Garden of Eden was actually found?"  Sam asks in incredulity — that's not what Mom told him as a kid.  "I thought the Great Flood wiped out everything."

          "That was a local event, the Med flooding the Black Sea.  My visit came soon enough after the Flood to get a firsthand account from Utnapishtim.  It was a colossal geological event, huge landmasses heaving and crumbling, tsunamis, torrential rain, volcanoes, lightning everywhere, the whole nine yards.  The Garden was elsewhere and was found much later, about the time of Christ.  Those who discovered it immediately saw how special it was.  They made it a ceremonial center and over several centuries destroyed the Garden that they worshipped by cutting the Garden's forests of huarango trees, the wood of which they deemed sacred.  The Garden shrank with the forests until there were only temples.  Meanwhile they had been making huge drawings in the desert, pictures of the creatures that had once thrived there.  By my visit in the Middle Ages, the Garden of Eden had become the sand-swept ruins of a forgotten civilization."

          "That must have been an awful disappointment."  The Garden of Eden destroyed by humans who worshipped it.  It's certainly a disappointment to Sam.

          "The Garden was a utopia experiment, Sam, and a tiny one at that.  The monkeys We replaced Adam and Eve with did well for over four thousand years before humanity stumbled onto the scene — then they were eaten.  We've done variations of the experiment on Easter Island and other places.  The results are always the same.  Where humans congregate, nature's balance is destroyed.  You should have seen the forests of Lebanon before the Phoenicians.  These are standard experiments that We do when peopled worlds turn to 'civilization', cities and economies.  The abundance of the Levant was a deliberate sacrifice to facilitate the collection of human skills including diverse art forms."

          Sam sits slack jawed for a moment then asks, "So, that was good?"

          "Good?  Bad?  Indifferent?  The answer is an eternity away and subjective.  It furthered God's purpose, creating another foundation block for world civilization and human industry."

Satan's Chosen People

"God and I disagree on the Big Question, but paths forward are often parallel.  I also want My chosen people to be intelligent, linguistic, and learned.”

          "Who are Your 'chosen people'?  What are they like?"

          "My People are the species zarfu — zarf for an individual, zarfi for more than one."  Like a human turning into a werewolf when struck by the full Moon, the rag-bagger sailor sitting across from Sam transforms into a hair covered creature, one of His people, much like a big monkey but much broader and shorter than Sam with a thick, long tail and huge ears.  The animal is almost entirely covered in a pelt of brown fur.  Satan's new image whistles something in a tonal language to which Sam hasn't a clue, then translates in a human voice, "My people live good, hard lives full of challenge in a world that provides all that we need.  We are thankful."

          "Is that a prayer or something?"

          "In a way.  But they aren't thinking of Me, that's how they feel about the lives they live and the world that they live in."

          "Doesn't that make you jealous?"

          "Jealous that they worship My Work instead of Me?

          "Watch carefully, Sam, I'm going to become a female."

          Sam sees some small changes such as differences between individuals but no indication of a sex change.  "I can't tell," he says.

          "I'm only female because I'm pregnant."  Satan becomes more pregnant, stomach bulging then, as the swelling approaches its limit, two small breasts protrude.

          "And that's how they dress?  They go around naked?"

          "You are naked, Sam.  They are covered with fur.  But this is what they wear."  She now has a bandolier and belt with a close netting that has various small items, foodstuff, and two small corked gourds.  There is a coil of braided rope crossing her chest from the other shoulder.

          "The zarfu of Wizvi are mostly arboreal and extremely nomadic.  They seldom sleep in the same tree twice.  They carry the little that they own.  Their lives have four stages.  The first, of course, is childhood, learning to use their bodies and brains, learning to make the sounds that their language uses and beginning to learn the ways of travel.  Their parents, who have already survived many restless years following childhood and have a lifetime of travel experience, tell stories of places, pleasures, hardships, friends, predators, and dangers — a zarf's life has many dangers — as they continue to travel as a family but at their children's pace.

          "The technology of the zarfu is fiber.  Rope is their primary tool.  Making rope, from string size up to this," indicating the zarf's working rope, which Sam reckons at about ten fathoms of 8 mm, "is their primary craft and one of their art forms.  Working ropes can be braided together into long, heavy cables for routes across gorges, rivers, and other obstacles.  The macramé of which their bandolier and belt are made is articulate, not decorative.  It is the recorded language of the zarfu, their writing.  A zarf's first toy is a fist full of fibers.  That toy becomes strands, braids, and knots.  About mid childhood they begin tying their own outfit with fibers they have learned to select and prepare, tying in the language characters they are learning.  Their outfit records quotations from the countless stories they hear, local knowledge of many environments, highlights of their parents' adventures, and legends.  This is their reference book.  When they become "Restless" their journal will be added.  Zarfi may sit silently looking at each other, reading sketches of the other's lives, then one will say, "tell flash flood at volcano mountains", for their favorite art form is exchanging spoken stories.  When they must be quiet to listen for predators, they catch up on their reading.

          "Zarfi become 'Restless' when their bodies are mature then take off on their own, never to be seen by their parents again.  The Restless zarf may be on the other side of the world or even circumnavigate by the time they sexually mature and become 'Family', though they still make no home and continue to wander.

          "'After' is the final stage, after the children have gone, in which they return to restless wandering with diminished strength but greater wisdom until time and nature finally overtake them.  It is a satisfying life.  They see much of their world, have many adventures, flee many dangers, and all whom they meet are brothers, mostly strangers, who love telling each other stories and legends."

          "Parents don't ever see their kids again?  No grandchildren?  No home?"

          "The species is the family.  They are all fellow travelers."

          "So, your people just wander around telling stories all of their lives, raise a few kids, and wander some more?"

          Satan has done quite a bit of chuckling and does so again.  "Quite so, but not nearly that simple.  For a zarf to survive to sexual maturity requires much learning, communication, intelligence, athletic excellence, and a bit of luck.  Watch, Sam, quick eyes."  Suddenly Satan, pregnant and all, springs from the cockpit to the foot of the mast, climbs to the masthead like a monkey, does a cartoon-like scan of the horizon, scrambles head first down the mast on all fives (including her tail), then back to her seat in the cockpit.

          "Awesome."  Sam is slack-jawed again.

          "Thank you.  When a zarf has a cragh-whff  [that's kind of the sound Satan makes] on its tail, it's do or die.  One danger or another, about one in four zarfi don't survive being Restless.  And a pregnant zarf is at much greater risk."

          "They accept that kind of odds?"

          "Accept?  That is the life they live.  But they usually go down trying, thinking they'll make it — they always made it before.  Still, they know that some day they won't.  Sooner or later.

          "While I'm showing off My beautiful people, let Me show you how they hang out."  And in a fluid set of moves, Satan, the pregnant zarf, is hanging by her tail from the end of the boom facing Sam upside down.  "This gives me four free hands."  The zarf takes the light rope from her shoulders, takes one end in hand, hands the other to her feet, and begins tying and untying knots in both ends.  Her inverted face is smiling at the expression on Sam's face.  Within the zarf, Satan is smiling at the happy hues of Sam's aura.

          "They should be sailors," Sam exclaims.

          "They are more like flyers, Sam, they live in three dimensions.  But yes, they are expert with rope."  The zarf's foot hands Sam an end to inspect.  It is about 8 mm, tightly braided, smooth and supple.  The color is many shades of brown, variegated, a pretty pattern of colors when looked at closely.

          "Very nice."  That sounds pretty weak to Sam, but he is nearly dumfounded.

          While one cannot imagine Sam believing in a Heaven in which the faithful sit at God's Right Hand and spend eternity singing His praise, believing in the world that Satan is portraying is a natural for him.  As a get-by single-handing rag-bagger who has, as seasoned salts say, "been a couple of places", he fancies himself nomadic by human standards.  And compared to the norm in the developed world (though not to the half of humanity that has far less than him), Sam is something of a minimalist.  Presumably, these are qualities that Satan discerned when He looked through the small and engineless Monad before deciding to bless Sam so profusely.  And if you want to mesmerize Sam as thoroughly as Eve's hide and seek with Adam, try a prehensile tail... not to mention tying two knots at the same time — Sam, a sailor, has had occasion for such a skill.

          The zarf re-flakes the rope under her shoulder, across her chest, and tucked into her belt.  Reaching a leg across her back, she removes a foot full of cubit-long fibers from her bandolier, swings the foot in front of her, and quickly flicks out a dozen fibers.  She tucks the bundle under the bandolier then, with all fours, separates the fibers into four strands of three, which she wets with her mouth, twists, and begins weaving into a cord a quarter the diameter of her working rope.

          She talks as she works, in a whispering whistle.  Sam leans forward to hear and cups his hands behind his ears in imitation of her large ears.  There is a soft, cat-like purring accompanying the whistle, a purr of variable pace and amplitude with a small range of pitch.  The whistle is punctuated with clicks and chirps.

          "Let me join you," Satan says as a vapor suggestive of image emerges from the zarf and solidifies into the original Satan as it drifts across the cockpit and settles into the corner across from Sam, facing the zarf.  Satan is a rag-bagger again except with the huge ears of a zarf, flared wide open.

          "She is describing qualities of the fibers and strands, where they are found, how they are prepared, their stretch, strength, flex, and texture, and is telling us about construction, care, and intended use — this will be a trail marker for a water source.  This is music to my ears."  Satan falls silent and they listen and watch.

          Her song continues as she draws more fibers from the bundle, wets and twists them, and feeds them into the weave.  The cord grows quickly as she sings its lessons and in just a few minutes of god time — no time at all in real time — she has a cord about three cubits long.  She carefully inspects her work, making a few small adjustments with a thorn-like tool, a miniature fid, while whistling on.

          "She is telling us that good workmanship is its own reward."

          Then she ties a series of complex knots in one end.  Her feet take the finished trail marker, reach up to the boom, and tie it near her tail.

          "Much information here," Satan says.  "There is a small spring a third of the way left of the rising sun, an hour's travel in easy conditions.  Several named predators drink there."

          The zarf reaches a hand and a foot around the boom and pulls herself up to adjust the marker.

          Sam, blown away, picks up the spliff and the lighter as if needing to be more blown away.  As he lights up, the zarf lets out a shriek and leaps to the stern rail, leaning out holding the backstay, desperately looking for an escape route.  Suddenly there is a large tree with low limbs just astern of the Monad. The zarf leaps into the branches and disappears with the tree into thin air.

          "Zarfi are terrified of fire.  They'd rather be eaten alive by a cragh-whff."

          "Oh mon, I'm sorry...."

          "Just part of the lesson, Sam.  The Zarfu will never make it to the bronze age."

          "I didn't mean to scare her away...."

          "She had her show.  Take your hit."

          Sam does, then says, "I like Your people, mon," and bounces Satan.

          "God feels as He did about the Garden of Eden project, that My people are wasting their potential.  He thinks they need to assert themselves, take more control of their world, master fire, establish a presence on the ground, and as Genesis puts it, 'have dominion over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.'"

          Satan beckons for a hit, just to be sociable.  "Oh, and multiply.  Wizvi could support a far larger population of people."

The Big Question

"Why more?"

          "My world has less than half a billion people.  God's world has seven billion.  There are worlds of trillions where there is no nature, only technology.  Such worlds give life to thousands of times more people than Wizvi does, hundreds of times more than Earth."

          "Son-of-a-gun.  Trillions?!"  That sounds like a national debt.

          "With sufficient technology a person can live a full and active life within a two cubic meter box."

          "Sufferin' succotash!"  And so it sounds to Sam.

          "Which god is more generous with life?"

          "Golly.  Put that way...."  Sam's not sure he likes the answer.  "Does nature count?"

          Satan smiles and offers Sam a bounce.  "The collective consciousness of a world includes everything from the highest life forms on down.  You are equal to about nine hundred tons of granite, three hundred tons of molten iron in a magnetic field, or a quarter of your weight in beetles."

          That might be better than it sounds, Sam thinks, that is a lot of beetles.  Actually, it makes him feel kind of important.

          "Per gram, you rate a little lower than a dolphin because water is a better conductor than air."

          That makes sense.

          "When you do the totals, humanity is a very small part of life's total, life is a small part of a planet's total, and Earth is a speck of dust in the cosmos."

          Guess that puts Sam in his place.  Guess that puts God in His place... Satan too, for that matter.

          "So, is making as much life as possible what a god is supposed to do?" Sam asks.

          This time Satan's chuckle is more of a laugh.  "And the Big Question is, do gods have a purpose?  If so, is that purpose to enable as much life as possible?  If so, how would that be measured?  We have discussed it to boredom.  Why are We here?  I tend toward the camp that says, 'Because it seems to be so.'  Others argue, 'If there is no purpose, what is the purpose?'  Most of Us have come to Our Own conclusions.  We range from atheist to agnostic to believer.  Believers and agnostics maintain that One can't prove there is not a higher purpose or even a higher god.  Atheists have the faith to say that there isn't.  Most of Us are agnostic with slight bends in either direction as convenient."

          Somehow Sam had thought that gods would be above that kind of stuff.  "How 'bout 'life is just for living'?"  That's not Sam's, he heard it, thought on it, and it rang true.  Kind of akin to Bob Marley's lyric that if you know what life is worth, you will live yours here on Earth.

          Undetectable to Sam, Satan has called more of Himself to the Monad, sparked by Sam's reaction to His people.

          "You might do well as a zarf, Sam.  Or as one of Zeus' centaurs."

          "Zeus?  The Greek Pantheon?  Are they still around?"

The Pantheon

"The Greek Pantheon was actually just one god, Zeus, though that isn't his real name — just as 'God' isn't His real name.  Zeus has a nice little world near M-42, the Orion Nebula — you should see the night sky there — that had a mass extinction by an asteroid strike a little over ten million years ago.  He'd been nursing Her back to health ever since and was ready to re-introduce people.  Normally a world's people are evolved from the life forms at hand.  Zeus' world had been heavily peopled with good, well-adjusted folks — it was a tragic loss even though it had been in the orbits all along.  So, He gave Himself fast-track authority, took advantage of the fair use policy We have on Our life forms, and set up on Mt. Olympus prototyping with Earth's latest — basically lab work.  He took home several creatures that might seem unlikely on Earth but fit well into His world.  The centaurs are among His new chosen people."

          "Well, what I understand of the legends, it was a whole bunch of little gods acting like spoiled brats, and a lot of hanky-panky."

          "Zeus is a god, he can take on as many forms as I can.  They might have seen many gods.  And they would have seen some of His field-testing.  As for hanky-panky, women of the Amazon have river dolphins to blame.  But human sex isn't much on a god's list of thrills."

          "What is?"

          "Have you ever felt the full force of a supernova?"

          Sam hasn't.

          Presumably, Satan has.  His eyes take on a faraway look for a moment.

          "What about all the other gods that various cultures believe in?  Were they real gods?"

          "A few were and others are legends derived from the Few.  But most are just natural progressions of complex thinking.  People need hope and excuses.  The picture beside your cabin lantern, below, fits nicely into the answer."

          The picture on the bulkhead between the lamp and the hand bearing compass shows the head of an ape, finger to mouth and eyes off to the side in a wonderful image of bewilderment, captioned, "I think... therefore I am confused."

          "Got that from Pop," Sam proudly declares.  His father was eulogized for humor.

          "But wait," Sam says.  "You went through my boat without a search warrant?"  The picture cannot be seen from the cockpit.

          "Probable cause, Sam.  You called on me, I wanted to see whether to bother."

          Well, Sam's glad that He did bother, but should he protest the privacy issue?  Sam has that sense of violation you get when your email is hacked.  Still, Sam rationalizes, he did ask for Satan's help even though he hadn't realized it.  Now Sam's getting confused.   Dang.

          "There have been countless visiting gods over Earth's billions of years," Satan continues, "but only a handful in historical times — gods working on projects here.  Samplers are more frequent.”

          "Samplers?"

          "UFO's."

          UFOs are gods sampling Earth?  Is there nothing that Satan will not reveal to Sam?

          "So, what is Zeus' take on population?" Sam asks.

          "We are close friends on that one.  We prefer people to be another of the creatures, not the main event or the whole show.  We love visiting each other's planet.  Wizvi is mild adventure, gentle geography, circled by forests abundant in food.  For Zeus, a visit to Wizvi is restful.  Night Sky is a world of higher adventure, geologically active.  Centaurs are hunter-gatherers, omnivorous, nomadic in family groups.  So, much of their travel is on steep mountains and cliffs — they are more mountain goat than horse.  The sun of Night Sky is dim, but there is day and night light like a worldwide aurora, amazing patterns and colors as the planet's outer reaches react to radiation from the nebula.  I visit Night Sky for classic adventure.  Zeus also has a water people and a sky people — none, so far, in conflict.  Zeus is a good god.  There are a million or so centaurs now and Zeus intends to keep them well under a billion."

The Will of God

"So, what is God's take on population?"

          "Something happened to Him after He lost the dinosaurs.  All of Us Who visited Earth during the latter days of His great lizard project delighted in Earth's abundance of life and the colossal creatures it could support. It was his last hoorah before the asteroid — which, of course, had been on its way all along.  When One's world takes a hit like that, One loses all the complex stuff and starts again.  Like Zeus did."

          "Are you telling me You Guys don't even try to divert asteroids?  Even if it's going to destroy Your Work?"

          "Think of that as Our prime directive, Sam, We don't interfere in cosmic events.  We can't do anything about the life of a star anyway.  We could nudge an asteroid's orbit.  But mass extinction is part of life and has its place, kind of like winter.  Then We have ten or a hundred million years of spring to try out different things — for instance, One can't have dinosaurs and humans at the same time, the dinosaurs wouldn't make it.

          "God was wonderfully proud of his dinosaurs, and rightly so, but they were low on collective consciousness.  You're about equal to a brontosaurus but eat much less.  And their small brain in charge of such a large body made them low on sentience — around four percent.  Humans are nearly thirty percent sentient — I mean, the ones who are paying attention... on a good day."

          Sam had thought consciousness and sentience were the same thing.

          "Anyway, God had lost all of his macro-life and was feeling He had nothing to show for it when Edsel, a god who is a Believer, stopped by.  Edsel is an evangelist, a Believer in God Above Gods, with a trillion-plus world he calls Grey Havens on which people — souls — are mass produced. This is basically what the Believers believe the game is, accumulating an ever-increasing congregation.  They are collecting fame, which is a kick.  Edsel's been doing hyper-populated worlds from early on and claims a huge cheering section.  He currently boasts ninety-nine point six percent believers.

          "Now, the main thing about a Believer's heaven is that it rewards faith.  Therefore, there must be no evidence at all that heaven exists.  That being so, and since there is, in fact, no evidence at all that heaven exists, the existence of heaven is self-evident to the faithful.  And, of course, there is no evidence of God Above Gods either.  It's hard to dispute that kind of evidence.

          "Edsel knew God would be susceptible after the wipeout, and He was.  God now believes in God Above God.  Like I say, We gods don't have to worry about any sort of afterlife for quite a while, We've got forever.  But if You've got people with enough sentience to think they can imagine forever and believe, when they die, they can go to heaven and sing Your praise.  Makes You feel less lonely after a mass extinction.

          "If a god believes in God Above Gods, then He is HIS liaison to the planet — like a Pope.  One feels the responsibility to... well, Believers 'rule', that is the word They use.  After all, They are acting on behalf of GAG, They are doing HIS will...  By the way, don't do the GAG gag with God, He hates TLA's, that one in particular."

          Satan beckons for the number.  Sam wonders if maybe He's had enough but passes it anyway.

          "God had believers long before Adam and Eve, thousands of qualified souls per year.  Thousands and hundreds of thousands are a lot at first but are rather small numbers once a god gets a taste for praise.  It's like cocaine or money.  After a while, a little doesn't seem like much.  Then much starts feeling like less.  Finally, no amount is enough.  Humans who worship God may be seen as complicit in His Vice, but that's like blaming atoms for an atomic bomb.

          "Earth's Homo lines were a normal and healthy progression.  Most gods get a kick out of watching intelligent creatures interacting in a world's environments.  But when I met Adam and Eve, I knew that Edsel had done His job. God had decided on a world dominated by people — a world-dominating people — the more the merrier.  The fifty billion that environmentalists warn of will be only a milestone."

          Sam's aura is wreathed in revulsion, so Satan softens it some:  "That will be beyond your time, Sam."

          "So, what's God's plan?"

          "Maximum population of people.  Forget about nature once technology can do the job.  As high a birth rate as possible in the meantime."

          "Conflagration," Sam says, "Doesn't seem like all of our wars help population growth."

          "Wrong, Sam.  It is integral.  Military drives technology — structural, biological, virtual, energized, you name it.  Balanced against, say, the Vietnam era when more Americans died on the road than in war.  Tradeoffs."

          That sounds... cynical comes to mind, but maybe pragmatic.

          "Technology — air bags — save more lives than peace.

          "Warfare in someone else's land also helps homogenize the gene pool... though not as well as My nomadic zarfi.  Warfare, both waging it and avoiding it, is how sapiens emerged from a single region to occupy all of the habitable planet.  Warfare is the history of humanity."

          That sounds pejorative.  Sam takes a moment to think if he can deny it.  Instead Sam's mind hands him this:  "So there will always be war?"

          "War has been bred into Homo sapiens for a hundred thousand years.  But the end of bloody warfare is, as Christ might have put it, 'at hand' — mere thousands of years from now.  Warfare will become a technological process to cull the non-productive and spur on the reproductive.  The eventual result, assuming He follows Edsel's model, will be Earth encapsulated in a kilometers-deep shell housing trillions of people in capsules providing all their needs.  Almost everybody will be well adjusted and presume that they are happy."

          Sam is glad that he is now and not then.  But he suspects that those then might prefer that over now — Sam realizes that technology is addictive.  For instance, he would not want to go back to the days of navigating without GPS.  And certainly not before ice cream.  Now that he knows.

          Satan is about to violate the promise that His visit is purely social.  A coincidence of realizations has dawned upon Him.  The Satan Who has been visiting Sam and the perspectives of other Selves of Himself now in attendance agree.

          Sam is still silent, but Satan reads his colors.  "The future of which I speak is a life that many or most humans would sell their souls for."

          "Sell their soul?" Sam weakly replies.

          "What do you know about souls, Sam?"

          Now there's a question.  Such as he has heard about them is one thing, what he believes is another.  "Well, a Christian would say that soul is a part of us that lives on after we die and goes to Heaven or Hell.  I don't believe that any more than I believe in God.  Others say that 'soul' is just another word for mind, as distinguished from brain.  I can buy that one."

          "Both are essentially true, though you've got to take the word of a god as to what it is and how it works.  Soul is multidimensional patterns in time, which cannot be detected in the physical universe where time has only one dimension.  Only linear time can exist in fields of matter and energy.  Monads of consciousness network as molecules become complex.  As molecules organize into life forms, continuity begins to organize into consciousness, the beginning of self-awareness.  When networked monads of time fall within the field of a brain, continuity sends consciousness to the brain's functional center where it collides from all directions and fuses into a pattern, a memory of time — soul.  Soul accumulates like a seashell or a pearl, layer upon layer.  Think of it as having a translucence of great depth into previous layers."  Satan has reason for Sam to understand this part of it.  "When the host brain dies, soul has lost the funnel that bombards it with experience.  Soul becomes dormant but retains a complete record of its times.  In your realm, soul is a short piece of one-dimensional time.  In Our realm, soul is a beautiful structure of unimaginable complexity, gemstones of the gods.

          "When soul loses its bond to the physical world it drifts in Our dimensions on paths determined by its shape and texture, which might or might not take it to 'Heaven'."

          Ridiculous conversations are not unknown aboard the Monad.  In general Sam puts up with them as long as everybody is having a good time.  But Satan is edging perilously close to an issue sacred to Sam, his disbelief in religion... rather, perhaps, his belief in free will.  Boy, is Sam about to be tested.  Still, what ya gonna do?

          "You're talking about an afterlife?  Heaven and Hell?"

          Satan nods.

          "So, which is it, Heaven or Hell?"  There is a kind of defiance in Sam's voice, but Satan sees distinct tones in his aura of defensive impatience, hope, and fear.

          "The afterlife of a soul replays the patterns that were lived."  Satan sees Sam's impatience ebb but not his hope or fear.

            "Is that Heaven or Hell?"   Satan continues, "Or purgatory?  Between life and death... but you are judged, so that you will know, only by yourself."  While that adds depth to the color of hope it also darkens Sam's fear.

          "Purgatory?  So, what is the deal on an afterlife?"  This in reluctant tones.

          Satan makes a ceremony of it, picks up the still sizable roach, contemplates then lights it, takes a couple of leisurely pulls, then hands it across.  Between tokes, so as not to catch Sam with a lung full, He declares with a broad smile, "Everybody is right."

          Sam seems to have frozen into his fixed environment, holding the number inches in front of his mouth, which has dropped open, his eyes locked on Satan's.

          "Heaven or Hell, reincarnation, cold storage for future use, recycle as the molecules spread..." Satan gages his pause to a shift in Sam's aura... "even transfer to another world."
          The hand holding the number has fallen into Sam's lap, his body's aura smoothes to small ripples of heartbeat fuzzed by background nervous activity, but the halo around his brain, centered on his soul, has flared like an image of Christ.  It is a riot of contradiction.  Sam begins to say something several times, then, "Who decides?"

          "Your soul.  Its outer patterns direct it in our dimensions.  It goes where it will... or is destined."

          "How does the soul decide?"

          "Approximately in accordance with your expectations and sometimes your hopes.  Your soul may reincarnate here, go to Heaven, store for the future, live the life of a zarf or a centaur, or be recycled, dispersed with the matter of the creature that hosted it, which is the default setting.  This is where faith plays a role."

          "Meaning, I'll get what I believe in?"

          Satan nods.  "'Seek and ye shall find.'  But not everyone knows what they believe.  And not everybody likes what they believe."

A Walk On the Water

"Look, Sam." Satan says as if finished with souls, "I'm about to leave.  Let me help you move your anchor, so you won't be right behind the stink pot when normal time resumes."  The exercise will give Sam's brain, body, and soul a chance to get back in balance, too.

          They walk to the bow and Sam explains how she is anchored, thirty meters of rope and ten metres of chain with a plow on the end in seven metres of water.  Satan suggests that un-cleating the rode and taking it out to the anchor would be easiest.  That will leave the Monad unanchored, but she has not moved an inch in what seems like an hour.  Sam un-cleats the rode and lays the coil on the rail beside the chock, as he would if recovering the anchor with a dinghy.  Satan climbs over the side onto the water and indicates for Sam to follow.  Sam is not a fool but follows.  The surface feels soft but not liquid.  Sam leaves footprints as if walking in wet sand.  Satan leaves none.  Sam wonders if Satan's reflection can be seen in a mirror.

          Satan has Sam pull the rode to the surface and coil it as they move towards the anchor.  "Take your time," He advises, for the rode pulls up through the water as if it was jelly.

          "Do you know why you were named Samuel?" Satan asks.

          Samuel?  Only Mon ever called him that.  "My father was a big fan of Mark Twain," Sam answers.

          "There's a coincidence," Satan replies. "Mark Twain claims to have met Me a hundred years ago.  Do you know who Samuel was in the Bible?"

          "Huh?" Sam answers.

          "Old Testament, two Books of Samuel.  In the first he was a judge.  In the second, he was a prophet.  Care to make a guess what 'Samuel' means?"

          "Means?"

          "Back then names were made up to have a meaning and Samuel was the original Sam.  It means either ‘asked of God’ or ‘given by God'.  Just as you asked of a god and I gave."

          That stops Sam in his tracks for a moment, then he continues lifting the rode and coiling it as if he had not noticed.

          "Samuel handed off to his two sons, but neither made the grade."

          "Tough act to follow?"

          "No.  The Bible says 'greed'."

          The speeding watertaxi is passing close off the Monad's bow halfway to the anchor.  It is frozen bow high, stern down in the trough of the meter-high bow wave.  The driver is at the console leaning into the wheel and throttle, shirttail frozen in flight.

          Sam, reminding himself how remarkable coincidence is, steps up on the watertaxi's spreading bow wave and down into the churned trough pulling rope up through the viscous water when Satan asks, "Do you have any number superstitions?  Seven, eleven, that kind of stuff?"

          "Well, seven of course.  And I believe in seven-year cycles in life... and I'm 49 now."  Seven squared — that realization seems to have come from nowhere.  "And forty days and forty nights seems to be the standard wilderness test for humans."

          "And in the Bible, '666' shows up in several contexts," Satan adds.  "My Garden of Eden visit was ten cycles of 666 years ago.  Emperor Jimmu was four visits ago.  Any idea how old the Earth is?"

          Sam flips some slack in the rode over a breaking wave on the weather face of the bow wave where it had snagged as he considers.

          "I think the current guess is four and a half billion years."

          "Close enough according to what you call a beginning.  God cut the ribbon on His inchoate Earth project four billion years ago today.  Four times ten to the nine.  How much is that divided by 666 years?"

          Well, Sam knows scientific notation well enough if he can keep track of the decimal place.  "Uh, four thousand divided by 666 times ten to the..." dang, already lost track of the decimal.

          "Six million, six thousand, and six, Sam."

          Awesome.

          Satan goes on to explain why gods don't use universal time on Earth, which makes perfect sense once you know, then explains the Twelfth of Never, which apparently is both now and later because of a quirk in time — each nuchron of time consists of three quirks — in, out, and indifferent.   The metaphysics are well beyond Sam as he stands half dazed on the windward crest of the watertaxi's bow wave coiling slack from the rode, realizing that this is a far more important instant in time than just an ordinary Satanic visit.

          Satan gives Sam a few moments to get in motion again, down the wave onto the surface of small wind waves, slowly pulling and coiling.  Then Satan concludes, in an understated tone, "This is a day of great prophesy."

          Sam is now on short scope, the end of the chain has surfaced, and the heavier and more vertical pulling is making his footprints ankle deep.  Once above the anchor, he pulls himself knee deep in the water while tripping the anchor, steps up to the surface, and begins lifting chain and anchor vertically, piling the chain on the water beside him.

          "Have you heard the quantum theory that all of the elements of now, this instant, come to us via all possible histories?"

          Sam has heard tell of such a theory, but it didn't seem real relevant to his lifestyle.  He considers whether this might shed any light on the mysteries being exposed, continuing to mindlessly pull up the anchor and chain until he suddenly realizes that he has pulled himself crotch deep into the water.  He lays the chain down on the water and pushes himself up with his hands to where he can sit on the surface with his feet dangling in the two holes where his legs had been.  The anchor is hanging a couple of metres beneath the surface, waiting.

          "Thus, instead of hearing prophesy and looking forward to its fulfillment, one sees the event then looks back to find the prophesy.  That is quantum theory, science.

          It's good that Satan clarified the science part. It was beginning to sound like religious doubletalk to Sam.

          Sam climbs back to his feet, pulls the anchor the rest of the way, bundles the ten meters of chain to carry with the anchor, and indicates for Satan to carry the coil of rope.

          "Sorry, Sam, you have to do all the work.  I am just an illusion."

          So, yet another unexpected truth, which begs the question, is any of this real?  But it is like situations at sea, you just do what conditions require.  Wonder later.

          Sam puts the coil of rope over his shoulder to free both hands for carrying the anchor and chain.  He starts across the water, up, down, and over the watertaxi wake, and to a spot thirty-odd meters abeam of the Monad's bow.  There he sets the anchor into the water as if setting it into the bottom and begins laying out the rode towards the Monad's bow.

          Satan, meanwhile, wants Sam to know more about the options that souls have.  Zeus' planet has much ocean in addition to its young and mountainous continents.  Cetacean souls are welcome.  Thor is looking for hearty souls that thrive in the cold.  Ra's world is popular with pharaohs and sun worshippers.  For souls who want to choose from anything and everything with the option to change their mind at the click of a thought the hyper-virtual reality of Edsel's world is the way to go.  And, of course, there are reincarnation options on Earth.  Another round as a human is the usual choice, but there are also those who would like to try grizzly bear, mountain gorilla, orangutan, or elephant, though those have waiting lists due to their vastly decreased numbers.  Almost nobody wants to come back as a cow anymore, even though it is still a step up from some human conditions.  If instead you want a Heavenly afterlife — or Hell if you choose — the local heaven is your only choice.  If you want another's god's heaven, you must do an incarnation on His world first to become a believer.  The soul will find its way according to your beliefs — not what you think you believe, what you really believe.  That all sounds like good news ... if you like what you believe... if it really is what you believe.

          Satan lets Sam run the rode through the chock and make the cleat before finishing His rap.  "You must make as many people as possible understand their options.  I see your destiny.  You are their prophet."

          "No!" Sam answers instantly.  It is not a "no" of resigned acceptance, it is a no of firm rejection.  Prophets become martyrs.  When prophets aren't loved too much, they are hated too much.

          "Say as you will, Sam."  There is a note of sympathy in Satan's voice.  "There is only one way to deny destiny."

          Out of desperation and uncautioned by his imagination, Sam blurts, "I'll take it.  What is the way?"

          Satan has genuine empathy, but truth is truth.  "I have seen the past, Sam.  You are prophesized.  That is your destiny.  The only way to thwart destiny is to do it of your own free will."

          What the hell kind of an answer is that?  It is as ridiculous as quantum theory, right in there with religion.  In a sudden burst of rational thinking Sam decides that he has had enough of Satan — he's going back to his regular life in the real world.

          But that also seems to be destined.  "I will be going now," Satan says gently.  "I wish you well in the mission you face.  Normal time will resume once you are back aboard."

          The rag-bagger Satan takes a step back, stands tall with a dignity belied by his sailor-esque appearance, comes aglow in a holy aura, and, with a blinding flash and an audible "poof", disappears.  That might seem a bit theatric, but it is reassuring proof of the authenticity of this visitation.

          Sam is standing on the water beside the Monad's bow.  Feeling a bit shaky, he walks out to the wake that will soon slam the Monad, sits on its crest with his feet in the trough, and props his chin on his hand in a pose suggestive of Rodin’s "Thinker".  But what plays through his mind is more chaos than thought, a fragmented turmoil of dread.

          The sun, an hour above the western horizon as it was an hour ago, and the clouds and waves remain fixed.  He has no thought of the consequences should time resume.  But that's okay, he can swim.  And a dip in the sea might be just the thing right now.

          Sam's aura, if you could see it, is a sickly green around the body, thin and watery.  His halo has fragments of many colors but clashing and combining in so many ways that the overall impression is of a dirty brown.  The fabric of Sam's former beliefs and superstitions, now threadbare and full of holes, is trying to obscure new understandings that are not understood.  Each thought that surfaces is swept back into the soup before he can grasp it.  Simply put, Sam's mind is boggled.

          Mired in a murk of confusion, Sam lifts his head and belts out his father's ultimate cry of frustration, word by word for emphasis.  "GOL... RAM... CINNAMON... DINCH!!"  In the still air his voice bounces off the smooth water on the facing side of the watertaxi wake with an empty-room echo that adds power to the words.  So, he adds, with defiance, "SATAN!!  GO TO HELL!!"  It feels and sounds so good that he shouts it again.

          Finally, he gets up, walks back to the Monad, and climbs into the cockpit, absentmindedly pushing with his hind foot as if kicking the dinghy back.  He stands looking at the trail marker tied to the boom, his hard proof that all of this was real.

          Suddenly there is a breeze and the air is full of noise, the flapping towel, the squawking seagull, the roar of the watertaxi.  The Monad lurches as the watertaxi's wake slams her and Sam grabs for a handhold.            Sam looks up at the trail marker, but it is gone.  So, it also was an illusion

The Forests of Wizvi

Sam slowly awakens to a world of sounds, mostly small sounds nearby within the tree itself, movements of small creatures that live here, the rustle of leaves, the occasional soft plop of a small creature landing on a limb, even, close at hand, tiny teeth gnawing, tiny claws scraping at leaves or digging zinsects from the bark.  From the crown of the tree, still high overhead, comes the whisper of a breeze through the limbs and leaves.  Most of the distant sounds, some also in the tree, are various bird-like calls, some solo, some answered.  Every so often there is the sound of a larger creature on the forest floor far below.

          Sam can also hear the light padding of his zarf hands and feet climbing branch-to-branch, and other sounds that no creature but a zarf can hear.  He can hear, as well as feel, the bending of the limbs and the texture of their bark.

          Sight joins Sam's vision and he sees zarf arms reaching hand over hand into the route ahead and, in peripheral vision, feet drawing forward one after the other to their next purchase, branch after branch, ever upwards at a steep angle, to the right or the left, sometimes vertically, at a leisurely pace that either a young juvenile or a long-after could follow — a zarfu stroll through the woods.

          Sam can feel the movements, but they are not under his command, this is a dream, he is a passenger.  But he is also privy to the mind controlling the muscles, the zarf within.

          Somehow Sam knows that this is a "family tree", not a specific species but a tree of certain qualities.  There are no thorns, toxins, or dangerous zinsects problems, the branches are well spaced and reliable, the leaves are edible, and typically a family tree will have edible fruits or nuts, sometimes grown by other plants that grow on the tree.  Generally such a forest will be dense enough for a family to travel tree to tree without descents to the more hazardous forest floor, trees nearly touching, where leaps can be easily made by pregnant zarfi, an adult carrying an infant on its back, and even children.

          Sam's zarf spirals outward from the trunk to where the reach between limbs is longer, then out to where small leaps are necessary, finally out to where the limbs become springy and the leaps are longer.

          Something in Sam's mind says, "Ready?" but it is not a question.  The zarf springs upward then tucks into a dive for a branch several body lengths below, which it catches hands first, then feet, crouching for the next leap as the branch bends downward then recoils upward.  Sam feels a heavy deceleration as the limb bends to absorb the momentum then the upward recoil thrust and an additional push as the zarf leaps upward and outward into the space between the trees, arching its body into an airfoil shape, which tilts forward then downward with the arc of the leap.  As they hurtle into the outer reaches of the next tree, the zarf reaches forward to pass a limb under its body to its feet, which are now pulling forward under its chest ready to catch the limb and drive the jump to the next limb, angling closer to the tree trunk where the limbs are more firm, arms reaching forward to fling the next branch back to the feet, which are coming forward to push off again, feet reaching forward of the hands.  The zarf is at full gallop and passes through the tree in a few strides, then launches again into the void between trees.  This leap is entered from the gallop and is more outward than upward.  Then the sprint through the next tree to the next leap, which is longer.  This time the arc of flight has more time to curve downward and the catch is approached in a head-down dive.  As they plunge into the tree Sam is aware that the tail has come forward to grab an outer limb in passing, feels a slowing by the bending of the branch for a split second before the tail releases, outstretched hands now forward to catch the next limb, and the gallop resumes, this time angled upward to regain lost altitude.

          Suddenly a new scene, they are in a different kind of tree in which the branches are more congested, now mostly scrambling through the trees, few jumps.  The next tree is such a tangle of branches that the zarf passes under, swinging limb to limb like a monkey.

          And now another kind of tree, a dense, low scrub, so dense that there is no hint of the ground beneath.  The zarf is literally running across the top of the canopy on all fours in its airfoil arch and, Sam realizes, moving into the wind.  "If I stop, I will sink into the treetops and will have great difficulty getting on top again."

          Then they are moving through what Sam takes to be mangroves, though the biggest mangroves he has ever seen, in leaps and bounds over the prop roots with occasional arm or tail swings from overhead branches.  Sam senses an apprehension because they are over water and the waters of Wizvi harbor creatures that are strange and sometimes dangerous, some of which are amphibious.

          The scene fades to one of pure pleasure as the zarf jogs through the mid levels of tall trees that are typical of the vast forests of Wizvi, with sounds all around, sights ahead, a sense of belonging, the satisfaction of travel, and on an exercise high.  This is the life!

          But now the zarf is cold and wet, it is raining — not just starting, it has been raining, the zarf and its environment are soaked and dripping, traveling more slowly and carefully on the slippery limbs with extra care in squaring for jumps and managing momentum, like driving on ice.  Things aren't so pleasant, but it has its satisfaction.  A sudden intense flash of light and the zarf falls to a limb wrapping its arms, legs, and tail around it as the crash of thunder rolls through the air.  Close thunder is deafening to a zarf and can temporally destroy its equilibrium like a flash-bang stun grenade does to a human.  Zarfi know that lightning can cause forest fires, which are among their worst fears.  But none know where the lightning will strike next, whether here or there, so the zarf resumes its careful travel through the slippery trees.

          Sam's next scene is uncomfortable in a new way, vulnerability.  He is on the ground in the open halfway across a kilometer-wide gap between forests.  The trail markers say that this is the narrowest place to cross for a day's travel in either direction.  Three predators are named.  One, the zy-ina, is common.  Zy-inas are hunter-scavengers that roam in small packs.  They can run fast.  A zarf can walk upright on the ground, even jog, but if it must flee it drops to all fours and gallops as it does through the limbs of a fast forest.  Even so, ground predators are generally much faster than a zarf.  The good news is that zy-inas are noisy, a zarf hears them early — same for a vort-sog.

          A chilling sight confronts them, the skull of a zarf and several of its bones, picked clean.  There are other bones scattered nearby.  Its belt is seen a bit farther away.

          That is when they hear the zy-inas.

          Sam's vote is lickity-split for the forest ahead, but the zarf races to the belt first, quickly dons and fastens it over its own, then it is lickity-split for the forest.  The zy-inas are in hot pursuit and being faster, are gaining.  Zarfu hearing makes Sam think they are right on their tail.  The zarf's body is flat, streamlined, no lift, no glide, it wants traction.  There is no adjusting for distance between limbs, it is reaching as far as it can.  This is hard duty for a zarf's hands and feet, but that is for later.

          They are halfway to the forest and the zy-inas are halfway to them.  The detour to pick up the belt might prove fatal.  Sam is willing all speed to the zarf — perhaps that helps, one never knows.  Then a sudden gully for which the zarf angles its jump upward, arches its body, and soars across, perhaps gaining a second on the pursuers who must go down and scramble up.

          The zarf is studying the approaching trees for its entry point, which must be a limb it can leap to.  There will be no time to climb a trunk.  Distracted, its hands miss a purchase and stumbles.  The zarf tucks into a forward somersault, head under heels, extending again as it comes upright, reaching for ground, continuing its gallop.  There is no time to fall.  To Sam the noise of pursuit seems right on top of them.  The zarf, already at maximum exertion, is urging its body for more.  The limb is chosen.  The trees are close.  So are the zy-inas.

          A long leap, too soon Sam fears, streamlined, arms and fingers extended, streaking for the branch.  At the last instant, the hands reach up and grab, the zarf swings under and upward, feet and tail grab a higher branch, and they are hanging upside down looking down at eight angry zy-inas several body lengths below, jumping and snapping, howling, barking, and growling.

          They have escaped, they are safe — zy-inas can't climb trees.  But the angry cacophony is hell to the ears of a zarf.  Ignoring fatigue and pain, they climb halfway up the tree, jump to the next tree, and rapidly move deeper into the forest.  As the noise fades, they climb to the top of a tallest tree where a breeze across the canopy further dilutes the noise.  There they stop to rest and take inventory.

          Hands and feet are bruised and aching.  There is some blood, but nothing is broken.  One shoulder is throbbing in pain from the tumble.  Time and rest will heel all.

          They look down upon the forest around them.  This is a good forest.  The zarf is at home again.  Turning to view the treeless void they had crossed there is a jolt of pain from the injured shoulder.  An old zarf adage comes to mind:  "It is a pleasure to still feel pain."

Tree of Lives

          The pain is now gone, and Sam is moving through the trees.  He has had his dual discovery flight in the forests of Wizvi and is now solo.  He still wears the second belt of the fallen zarf and knows what he must now do.

          Sam stops to read a trail marker, which tells of a nearby tree of lives.  In a tree of lives hang the belts of zarfi whose days ended nearby, who finally fell.  The belts are usually found on the ground, as Sam had, sometimes in the trees, days or years later, if at all.  When spotted by a fellow traveler, it is carried to the next tree of lives.  The tree will be prominent and near a natural crossroads, a community center of sorts at which zarfi passing from several directions will pause for a day or more.  Here they read of the many routes by which others have come, the pleasures, hardships, and ways of the trails followed.  Looking back through the knots gives the history of the fallen zarf back to childhood, highlights parents' adventures, and records favorite legends.  This is the autobiography of a zarf.  For a zarf who does not survive being restless, this is the only immortality it has on Wizvi.

          Now suddenly there, Sam leaps from the upper reaches of the forest trees into the mid level limbs of the great tree and quickly climbs to higher branches where several other zarfi are gathered, passing many belts carefully tied to the tree.

          Introductions are by name and direction from which they came.

          Sam removes the dead zarf's belt, tells where it was found and of his close escape, and notices that the tale of escape is now tied into the end of the belt.

          "That is a heavy belt," Toes says, requesting to read it.  Toes scans the knots, carefully unfolding the outer band, then a second layer and part of the third.  "Ah.  This zarf was an after, mother of three — she lives on.  She has traveled much since.  She had a full life.  May we all do as well."

          Talk returns to the message told by the belt that Swing Low was holding when Sam arrived.  It is the belt of a zarf whose companion survived, so its final tale is tied in.  "There is a new danger about.  The cragh-whff have come to this forest from the north.  At least two zarfi have been eaten in the past moon."

          "Is it just chance?" Toes wonders.  "Sometimes things are more, sometimes they are less."

          "Cragh-whff are roaming farther south," Overhand declares.   "It is happening to the east as well."

          "I believe that is so," affirms Long Branch.  "And also, to the west."

          "Belts of past years say nothing of cragh-whff  here," Swing Low adds. Swing Low has been here reading belts for several days — lingering zarfi joke that they have grown to the tree.

          "Then perhaps it is so," Toes concedes.

          "So, travel here has become more dangerous," Overhand concludes.

          "What is to be done?" Sam asks.

          "Done?" answers Long Branch.  "We may leave the area, or we must accept the risk."

          "We must be alert and ready to flee.  We must stay near fast trees where we can outrun them," Swing Low adds.

          "That is for the young," Toes says.  "I will travel south and begin to think of family."

          "Can we drive them back to the north?" Sam wonders.

          "It is we who flee from them.  They do not flee from us."

          The zarfu have no weapons, so that cannot be their equalizer.  "What are cragh-whff afraid of?" Sam asks.

          "No creature that I know of.  They, like all creatures, are afraid of fire."

          But so are the zarfu, as Sam well knows.

          "The way to deal with a cragh-whff is to escape."

          "Or to be where they are not, as with the great storms that sometimes come from the sea."

          "Two zarfi traveling together can stop an attack if they are clever."

          "How is that done?" Sam wants to know.

          "They separate.  Whichever the cragh-whff follows does a large circle back to where they separated, where the other has rigged a noose to rope the cragh-whff.  Then both can escape as it chews through the rope.

          "If you can capture it, then you can kill it," Sam says.  "Then it won't eat any more zarfi."

          "Kill it?" Toes asks to confirm.  "But we do not eat cragh-whff.  Cragh-whff  eat us."

          "If you kill it, the cragh-whff cannot eat you."  That seems simple enough to Sam.

          "Sometimes cragh-whff fall and die when we make a longer leap than they do.  Sometimes they break their neck or strangle when we rope them.  But that is accident.  We do not mean to kill them."

          "They are trying to kill you."

          "They eat flesh.  That is their way."

          "But you don't want them to eat you."

          "That is why we flee."

          "If you kill them, you won't have to flee."

          "Zarfi do not eat cragh-whff," Toes patiently repeats.

          "You don't have to eat it.  The scavengers on the forest floor will eat the cragh-whff."

          Swing Low thinks he sees where Sam's logic has failed him.  "The cragh-whff does not eat me so I will die.  It eats me so it can live"

          "But you must not let it eat you."

          Swing Low smiles and pumps his tail in agreement.  "That is why we flee."

          Well, as far as Sam's concerned, Wizvi could do with fewer cragh-whffs.  But Sam is a visitor.

          The idea of killing now dealt with, the discussion turns to Sam's original question, what is to be done, whether to leave the area or accept the risk.  This is a fast forest in which a zarf in good shape can outrun a cragh-whff if it makes no mistakes.  And six days travel to the northwest, half right of the setting sun, presumably towards the cragh-whff danger, is said to be a wonderful place where the forest climbs a tall mountain from which one can see a vast distance.

          Overhand and Long Branch decide to accept the risk and travel to the mountain together.  "One of us shall return," Long Branch says, a common reassurance zarfi give each other when they deliberately court danger as a pair.  If one is lost the other must live to tie its final tale.

          While Overhand and Long Branch discuss teamwork strategies and Swing Low reads farther back on the fallen zarf's belt, Toes comments to Sam, "The cragh-whff also has a right to life.  But he does not need to eat zarfi to survive.  That is why we flee."  Part of Sam understands.

The Fall of Sam

As evening darkens, the zarfi choose their places to hang for the night.  Zarfi typically sleep hanging with their tail close wrapped around a limb, their arms draped over their hanging legs, and with their ears wide open.

          The instant Sam falls asleep he awakens to a bright morning breaking in the chill of altitude.  Sunlight is upon him and chasing Wizvi's shadow down steep slopes to fall bright upon the land far below and beyond.  There is a sparkle here and there where a river or lake peeks out from the forest.  It seems that Sam can see forever, the horizon is many days away.  Sam feels he is at the top of the world.  Where does one go from here?  This is a tree of lives, where such questions are decided.

          Sam begins to study the belts.

          There is an interesting range of mountains to the west, many days away.  They can just be seen from here through the haze of distance, a smudge beyond the horizon.  There are deep gorges with noisy rivers, high rock faces, and peaks of boulders many trees high.  It is the most spectacular place that High Leaf, the belt's author, has seen in many years of travel.  Reading back, Sam sees that High Leaf also passed north of the great north-south sea, a land of much adventure.  Generally, zarfi do not plan beyond their next destination but Sam, being a sailor, feels that he should visit one of Wizvi's seas.

          Even as Sam's mind imagines the sea, he finds his body, instead, scrambling tree to tree up the side of a deep gorge in High Leaf's spectacular mountains.  This is a new variety of trees, a two-tiered forest with a broken canopy in which one chooses between detours or long leaps, with occasional routes that become dead end and require backtracking or descending to the lower forest.  Sam is familiar with a two-dimensional version of such navigation from sailing the extensive reef systems off lying Shekima Creek.  Still in the lower trees, Sam moves carefully, learning which have thorns or other unpleasant surprises.

          Atop the ridge, Sam continues up into the canopy, high up a tree overlooking the gorge.  There he pauses to rest and take in the view.  The gorge is very deep and very steep.  Its river is a white line in the bottom under a shallow graying of mist.  Except for vertical rock faces in wet black, everything is green, rich, lush greens.  The sounds of the rapid river, the bird calls, echoes form the rock faces, and a brisk breeze through the leaves and limbs above him are a surrounding symphony to his sensitive ears.

          Amid the music, what he does not hear, at first, is the approaching cragh-whff.

          A zarf's usual route averages near horizontal or a long grade, but Sam has had a long climb up the vertical and can feel that his zarfu muscles have worked hard and could use a brief rest.  Such thoughts vanish from a zarf's mind when they hear a cragh-whff.  Recognizing the sound of an approaching cragh-whff is nearly instinctive, though most zarfi have not actually encountered one.

          Sam's ears tell him where it is, at half the distance that he should have heard it.  The zarf within knows that if he turns his head to look, the cragh-whff will know it has been discovered.

          Sam spies the first limbs of his escape route, orients his body, then springs forward like a runner out of starting blocks, ears folded flat back against his head to better hear sound behind and to decrease windage.  The aural confirmation is instant, the cragh-whff is in hot pursuit.

          A cragh-whff is the king cat of Wizvi, long and lean with arboreal paws that can cup the limbs and claws that dig for traction.  It can keep up with a zarf in open conditions and can overtake one in close quarters.  A zarf can make longer leaps.  Once a cragh-whff catches a zarf, it is no contest, the zarf is eaten as it struggles.

          Sam is fleeing for his life.  He has no companion to help rope the cragh-whff and there will be none to tie the final adventure into his belt.

          Sam flees through the outer limbs where his speed is greatest and the leaps are longer.  He does a long leap to a next tree where the cragh-whff must detour closer to the trunk, opening his lead.  But then the zarf in Sam sees a leap that he dare not try, forcing him trunk-wards, and the cragh-whff has gained.

          "The cragh-whff does not want to kill me," Swing Low's assurance rings in Sam's mind, "it only wants to eat me."

          This is do or die.  Sam makes a quick turn towards the outer limbs and reverses course back towards the leap that he had not dared.  The cragh-whff, cutting the corner, is now close on his tail.  Sam summons all the zarf's strength to speed him towards the final branch before the leap and flies into the void between the trees.  His awareness goes into overdrive as he realizes he is not going to make it.  Maybe the end of that low branch to the side, and he adjusts his flight towards it.  Outward and downward he plunges in slow motion time, streaking towards the last branch, willing his body to fly farther.  He will just make a cluster of leaves on small branches at the end of the limb.

          Smack!  On impact, all fours and his tail grab, there is a tiny deceleration as he hears and feels the limb bend, crack, then snap, the limb breaks, his legs seem to tangle in the small branches, there is a sudden panicked instant of falling, then whump!

          Sam's body is lying in his berth aboard the Monad, feet tangled in the sheet.  His mind slowly awakens to his new reality.  Sam lies quietly holding to the dream, not wanting to lose it.  His memories remain clear, the vision seems to be fixed in his mind.  Being careful not to disturb the memory, Sam rises from his berth, breaks out two hanks of small, small stuff, and begins tying his tale.  The knots flow quickly and are well made, as if he were still the zarf of his vision.

          Yea verily, Sam's hand was guided by a god, for the tale he tied is good and true.  Let no person doubt or change a single knot.

          Amen.

Epilogue

It is now full light, well into morning.  The Monad is rocking lightly at the outer fringe of the anchorage in a moderate breeze, bobbing in a mix of six- to twelve-inch waves.

          Even with divine guidance it had taken hours for Sam to tie his tale.  It was becoming first light when he finished.  Since then he has been in the cockpit alternately picking up the tapestry of his story, reading the knots by sight and touch, and laying it back on the bench across from him, admiring it.  And thinking.  Sam has quite a bit on his mind but happily lets most of it churn in the background as he basks in reliving how it felt to be a zarf.

          The tapestry is tied in new-white nylon small stuff.  Its imagery is a story told by a thousand knots, beginning top right, running down for two cubits, then up again to the top, then down and up again until the entire telling is done, about a cubit wide.  Were a zarf to tie this story into their belt it would be less than the size of a hand and the knots would be tied in much finer cord.  But Sam, even guided by Satan, has neither the fingers nor the touch of a zarf.  His work and his pride in it are about at the level of a six-year old juvenile zarf.  And well done, indeed — any zarf on Wizvi would be able to read it.

          Prophet.  The word pops up in his brain, congealed in a dark murk that would become panicked thoughts if allowed.

          Oh, here's the sequence that tells of fleeing the zy-inas.

          As morning light had filled the sky, the distant barking of the night watch had been joined by the general morning bark, roosters, distantcars, and an occasional squealing tire.  The morning lull had given way to the breeze.  The stinkpot, broad off the Monad's bow at a respectable distance, was running its engine, making breakfast.

          Sam had not noticed any of that.  He did notice the early morning’s colors cast in the sky by the rising sun and the golden tint that film makers call the magic hour, which seemed to gild the white small stuff and its story in an aura of its own.

          And now he has read again from the zy-ina escape to the cragh-whff and Sam's long leap, bottom left, end of story.

          Sam adjusts to a more comfortable position in the corner of the cockpit with the tapestry on his lap and closes his eyes.  The vision was his, he had been there, done that. Being a zarf of Wizvi was now part of his past.  Is it part of his future?  Sam believes that it will be.  Must it be somehow earned?  Must he become the prophet that Satan expects of him?  No!  For the prophesy that he is to profess says that belief is all that it takes — nothing else actually matters.  Why would you bother to tell people that?  But what if it had been, say, Gizmo or Phil, even Crabby, who had been blessed with such visitation and vision, and whichever the fortunate one had been, they had failed to share the news, and Sam and the others had been left to their rather somber belief (or so it seems now) that when they kick the bucket it's all over?  (Thus, causing it to be so!)  They would never forgive him, of course — they would never know.  Sam can hardly believe that any of these friends would be that selfish.

The Epistle of Sam

Ahoy Phil and Gizmo!  And Crabby if you ever check your email,

          Watch.  I know how you guys go, and you are not going to believe this.  But you've got to.  So, hear me out.  I have had a revelation.  I have seen a truth that is far beyond what you or I would normally believe or even image.

          Let me start with a truth that we can all buy into.  Our soul is not our brain — it is part of our mind.  And yes, when the body dies, the brain dies and the mind quits.  All of it decomposes and returns to the food chain — unless you are cremated or embalmed.  We are recycled, that is the default setting.  I think we can all take that as a viable working theory.  And here is one of the revelations: that is actually the literal truth.  That part won't surprise any of us.  And it won't, by itself, seem like any great discovery... although knowing that for a fact might humbug some of our personal fantasies.

          But soul is mind plus.  It is continuity, the thing that gives us the sense of “I" — me and you.  It is a history of our perceptions, both physical and mental.  Yes, animals also have soul, but here is the difference.  The human brain (and certain others) is capable of imagining soul.  Once you can imagine soul, you can imagine different destinies for it — humans have been doing that all along.  But here is the surprise, guys.  It works!  What you believe shapes your soul and that determines what it will do when you die!  It doesn't have to disburse with your organic matter and scatter the history you lived into particles that have lost their context — unless you choose to believe that's what happens.  Who we were can live on... which is also not a new idea... and perhaps part of why all of us are skeptical about this kind of stuff.

          But here's the thing, mon.  You don't have to believe all the nonsense of the local religions, or even believe in the right religion.  You can believe whatever you want.  For instance, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and even atheists will get what they believe — though maybe not what they want... life's like that.  Even the Catholics are right!  Only agnostics are at risk.  Some of that might sound a bit grim.  But remember that some religions believe in reincarnation.  And watch: those aren't the only ways your soul can go.  You can reincarnate as a person of another world!  I'm going to be a zarf.

          When you think about it, most of this is just common sense.  I mean, if we were going to believe, this covers everything we’d want to believe, right?  But I can imagine you guys resisting the truth because it sounds like something you've heard before.  So that you won't think that I've lost my mind, I'll tell you what happened.

          I was having a problem with a boat off my bow farting continuous diesel exhaust on me — we all know that one.  And the guy decided his convenience couldn't be bothered by what he was doing to someone else — we've met them too.  So, I threw up my hands and screamed, "Satan, do something!"  And He did!  I might have shouted "Jesus Christ!" or "God damn!" but that wouldn't have helped because They were off planet for the day.  But Satan was right there!

          He tricked the stinkpot into shutting down its engine then paid me a visit.

          Satan isn't the evil dude they say He is.  He got a bad rap in the New Testament from disciples parroting what they thought Christ had said.  Christ later chewed them out for preaching things they didn't have a clue to — which didn't stop them.  It's all there in the Bible.

          Satan isn't just a fallen angel either.  He is a full-fledged god.  He has his own wonderful world over in Andromeda.  And even among gods, Satan is known to be trustworthy.  He said so Himself.

          I now believe in my soul that I will one day be a zarf, one of His people.  Guys, they are freer than a single-handed sailor on a well-found boat with money in his pocket.

          Satan granted me a visit to His world in a vision.  Then, guided by His own hand, a record of the vision was made in zarfan, their written language.  I have the original tapestry as proof and have translated it into English.  And by the way, guys, it wasn't a dream.  I can tell the difference.

          Here's the other thing — Gizmo, you can probably verify this.  According to quantum physics, the universe is infinite, there are infinite universes in the multiverse, and every instant in time has all possible histories.  So, you can believe absolutely anything you want and know that it is so.  This is not superstition or fantasy.  This is science.

          Believe me, all you need is faith.

One Love, Sam

P.S.:  Here's a bit I'm hesitant to mention.  As straight forward as the rest of it is, this part might be hard to believe.

          Satan says I will become a prophet, that it was prophesized long ago.  He wasn't real clear what a prophet is or what they should do, only that I would be one.  It's kind of like when Phil talks someone into something, and they don't quite know what happened or how.

          But I won't let it change me, guys, you won't have to treat me special or anything.

— END of "The Book of Sam" —

Introduction to “The Parable of the Lost Sailor”:

A Good Book will, of course, answer all questions, regardless their nature.  The accepted method is careful study of the text bearing in mind what you already know to be true.  The closer you study such a Book the more it will confirm what you already know or suspect.

          Even so, there will be some who lack the diligence to properly pursue such miracles in understanding.  For them, the infinite benevolence of It Is provides a shortcut.  One perceives the question to be answered then opens the Book at random.  One wonders, for instance, “What is that funny noise my car is making?”  then opens “The Book of Sam” at random and the eye falls upon, “…when Edsel, a god who is a believer, stopped by.”  There you have it.  But suppose instead the Book falls open at, “Satan has done a lot of chuckling and does so again.”  Precisely the same answer.  Don’t see it?  Study it until you do.  Hint: it will confirm the truths that you already hold sacred.

          But the ways of It Is are mysterious, and many a proletarian has difficulty even with plainly stated truth.  Therefore, Christ, instead of merely telling the truth of the Hebrew god, I Am What I Am, taught in parables.  Christ was not the first or the last to teach in parables but is the most familiar example in our cultural niche.

          A good parable has seven levels of meaning.  But the truly righteous can see beyond even that, into the nth levels of truth.  Thus, a good parable, like a Good Book, answers all questions – it is simply a matter of determination.

          For those who have unaccountably failed to understand “The Book of Sam”, “The Parable of the Lost Sailor” is now offered.

          As the seriously savvy will soon see, Sam and the lost sailor sail the same waters.

            The Parable of the Lost Sailor

          A certain sailor cruising in the out islands of the Bahamas ventured into a void between the charts, into an area wherein lay mangrove creeks of unknown depth.  A fishing boat with an outboard first led the much deeper yacht across the shallow bank.  The yacht brushed the bottom and nearly grounded several times.  Be warned, O righteous navigator, follow not one whom draweth less than thee.

          Up the creek this sailor went, rounding bends until entering a basin near a scattered settlement of which he knoweth not the name.  The basin was as shallow as his boat was deep – and it was high tide.

          Thus, lieth the yacht down upon her side as the tide ebbeth away, causing the walls of her cabin to recline into the position whence her cabin sole had been.

          Rather than walketh upon the walls while awaiting God's command for the tide to flood, the sailor roweth ashore to seek provisions.  At the first house he came to he was given a whole handle-bag full of limes.  The Lord provideth for all our needs.  If you can get by on limes alone, you are covered in the Bahamas.

          Being a greedy man, however, the sailor also inquired where he might get cheese and bread and was told that the main road was just up ahead.  Which way?  He had been answered, "The road goes north and south."

          The sailor had learned from personal experience that when coming to a double door, one of which is locked, there is about an eighty percent chance that the locked door will be tried first.  This is because such wrong choices tend to stick in the mind, whereas a door that opens as expected is barely noticed (plus, you aren't even aware that the other door was locked until you leave).  But our sailor has a theory to beat those odds.  When he comes to such a choice, he decides upon the right way then goes the other way.  Some people do this instinctively.

          "Just up ahead" turned out to be quite a piece.  The sun was high with no shade along the way, the breeze was nil, the bag of limes was heavy, the sailor was sweating, and the imperative to make the right choice, that he might then go the wrong way first, grew strong.

          He dimly saw what first appeared to be a policeman directing traffic where the main road crossed, which resolved itself into a boy practicing Michael Jackson poses.  He would freeze in a triumphant pose with one arm stretched high in one direction then he would tuck into a pirouette and become an iconic statue pointing another way

          The sailor repeated his inquiry as to cheese and bread.  The lad did a superb little "moon walk", spun, and came out in a pose pointing north.  Thus, the correct choice seemed to be north, so the sailor decided on south.  The boy then spun around into a statue facing south, which seemed to confirm the decision.  Having seen such a sign, our savvy sailor sallied south.

          Presently he came upon a man liming beside the road with a homemade cigarette and asked the way to cheese and bread.

          The man pointed in the direction that the sailor was already walking and said, "'Round the curve, past where old Miss Lillian used to live, and on to the shop beside the big mango tree.  Say you are friend of Pumpkin."  The sailor asked how far it was, hoping for a number by which to estimate the walk ahead of him plus the walk back.  "Quarter mile."

          The sailor walked on, around the curve, past a rundown little house that might have been old Miss Lillian's home, around another curve, down a long straight stretch with another house she might have lived in, and around another bend, surely well over a mile, with no sign of a shop beside a mango tree.  Just as he was resigning himself to the possibility that this was one of the rare occasions when the wrong way wasn't the right way, he came onto a straight piece of road about a quarter of a mile long with a little building beside a large mango tree at the far end, whence to he trudged.

          The old building resembled a one-car garage and there were two men sitting in front liming.

          "I'm looking for cheese and bread," the sailor announced.

          One of the men nodded.  Then, indicating his companion, said, "This is Green Heart.  Welcome to Deadman's Point."

          "Do you also sell cigarettes?" the sailor asked.  Yep, he's one of those.  But they're a dying breed.

          The man shook his head.  "I fix televisions and toasters."

          "I'll just settle for buying some food then," the sailor said, then dutifully added, "Pumpkin sent me – but he said it was real close."

          "Visitors don't come here if they know how far it is," the man nodded in agreement.  "But I don't have a shop.  I'm a fisherman.  I'll stop by you when I come in."

          "But I was looking for cheese and bread," the sailor doggedly replied.

          "I am Cheese 'n Bread," Cheese 'n Bread answered.

          Our misguided sailor, having deceived himself at each turn, had found precisely what he had asked for.  Take heed.

          "But if you want good things to eat," Cheese 'n Bread continued, "I'm a farmer.  I have some lovely pines."

          First Cheese 'n Bread fixes televisions and toasters, then he's a fisherman, and now he's a farmer.  What are we to believe?  One wonders what else this man might do to get by – but it certainly isn't making him rich... still, he seems happy enough.

          Our sailor is sufficiently savvy in local knowledge to know that "pine" means pineapple, and he is shown a neat pile of freshly harvested pines.  They are beautiful, truly a gift of God, even though it is the farmer who seems to water them and tend them.  One who thinks of pineapple as a stack of two and a half inch yellow discs with a hole in the center might be surprised.  Even the picture on the can doesn't do it justice.

          The sailor, being a single-hander, selects three of the smallest, which are purchased at what seems a reasonable price – though doubtless more than a local would pay.

          Then the sailor asks, more carefully this time, "Is there a place where I can buy bread?  And a place where I can buy cheese?"

          "Yes," Cheese 'n Bread replies.  "At the supermarket.  Go the other way from the cross, to the north, about a quarter mile."

          Hoping to recalibrate his assessment of distance to the local standard, the sailor asks Cheese 'n Bread how far he reckons the cross that he had come from, which seemed nearly two miles, was from here.

          "'Bout a quarter mile."

          As the sailor prepared to begin his walk home, Cheese 'n Bread reached behind him to an unseen selection of pines and produced one of such golden ripeness and aroma that it begged to be eaten as an offering to the gods.  The sailor protested that he had already bought enough.  But the farmer handed it to him anyway.  When the sailor, being a moral fellow (is that the right term?), tried to pay anyway, the farmer indicated no, this one was free.  "Eat this one today," the farmer smiled.

          The reader will not be further tired by an account of the sailor's long, shadeless, breezeless, hot, boring walk home, burdened (but now balanced) by a handle-bag of limes on one side and a handle-bag of pines on the other.  But he reflects as he walks on the wisdom that man does not live by bread alone, and tries to remember if there might still be a can of condensed cheddar cheese soup aboard, which he sometimes uses to make a box of macaroni and cheese taste cheesy, or even uses as a sandwich spread – when he has bread.

          As time in these islands would have it, the sailor rowed back to his small yacht after high tide had come and begun its ebb, and she sat firmly upon the bottom again, beginning her slow repose toward lying on her side until the next high tide, which will be at night.  But God will also command the tide to be high again tomorrow afternoon, about an hour later than today – trust Him.

          That also means an hour less daylight in which our sailor can escape the wandering maze of shallow creeks back onto the charts and known soundings.  God has humor, too.

          But God also, in his Mercy, had scheduled our sailor's arrival at the beginning of a spring tide cycle, rather than at the end when depths decrease to neap tide levels, which would have made this parable two weeks longer –  all praise be to Him!

          As his vessel layeth down upon her ear, the sailor arranged cushions in the cockpit such that he sat in the legwell with his legs over the "lee" cockpit bench, feet resting on the coaming, as comfortable an easy chair as one could ask for, with a view across the waters to the mangroves and of the blue sky above.  Through Providence (for He attends to all the details as well, at least in this case), the yacht reclined towards the setting sun and the cockpit shade kept the sailor in its shadow.  A pleasant breeze crossed the water.  With a sharp knife and reverent strokes, the sailor carefully removed the armor of this most wonderful pineapple and buried his face into its essence.  He felt as if he were in Paradise.

          Nay, oh fickle friend, Heaven be not of this Earth.  How easily this sailor, a mere mortal, satiated in his sins, had forgotten the mosquitoes of yester-eve.

 About the Author

     James Lord is the spiritual giant of our times.  His lifetime of good work has yielded untold benefits to humanity, utterly incredible accomplishments.  His righteousness is beyond belief.  Lord, or as he prefers, James ("... I will shew thee my faith by my works." James 2:18), holds many honors and degrees from the University of Universal Truth.  He is a Master of Humbleness and a Doctor of All Spiritual Matters.

     "All Questions Answered", UUT's unrivalled alumni magazine, calls James Lord "the most worthy human to pass through our doors.  A prophet's prophet."

     James clearly sees humanity's desperate struggle between faith and reason.  "People must test their faith with reason," James says with his knowing smile of infinite compassion.  "They will see that life itself is the reason one must have faith.  I mean, look around you."

     Perplexed that he had not yet brought humanity to its knees, James exiled himself to the wilderness, yea, even beyond the Internet, where he spent forty days and forty nights in very high meditation.

     There he communed with God, Whose world this is, with Satan, Who has a hand in things now and then, and with Zeus, the god of a world in the Orion Nebula, a neutral observer with recent experience on Earth.  Dedicated to learning the Objective Truth, James had separate visions with each god.  "It was uncanny," James says of the audiences.  "We all wanted the same things, peace, love, cooperation, compassion, even empathy, that kind of stuff.  God has tried to show the people, of course.  He has given us amazing sunrises and sunsets, awesome rainbows, bad weather on bad days, even good weather on good days.  But those who notice seldom understood.  If He puts an enormous cloud on the horizon that is clearly the image of God, you will have unrepentant sinners seeing Daffy Duck or some creature never seen before or since.  And gods cannot just come out and tell you – that spoils the faith test.  The gods needed an agent on Earth, someone they could trust, to tell the people the Truth directly."  The crux of the strategy this time is that the designated prophet be a mere mortal, the son of man (not to be confused with "the son of man", Christ's answer to Pilate).  Perhaps the people will listen to one of their own.  Realizing how daunting the task, James humbly suggested that such a prophet should have executive powers, which, in Their wisdom, the gods granted.  The Word of James may be taken as the Word of the gods Themselves.  Doubt not.

     Thus, it is time for a one-time-and-done solution.  Under the auspices of the gods Themselves, James founded the University of Universal Truth, of which He is currently president and board of trusties.  "In today's world," James says with a smile of confident enlightenment, "credibility is crucial to faith."

          Trust in Lord.

          Even today, more than a year after its founding, the University of Universal Truth remains entirely untainted by any form of secular accreditation.