done the same for me, though in a different manner.
And yet, I did not know her. She seemed like a crippled
doll, speaking with the voice of some hidden puppet-master
who was a terrible craftsman and who was even worse
at writing dialogue for his wooden creatures to perform
on stage.
Everything she said seemed witless and stupid and—
perhaps most unforgivably of all—utterly boring. I could
not understand how such, a woman could ever have inter-
ested me, even for the brief moments of lovemaking.
Surely I had never been so anxious for the feel and taste
of flesh that I had wooed and taken this creature in my
arms! That seemed, now, like nothing more than animal-
loving—bestiality.
In my arms, she was a pet
And nothing more.
Yet I knew what she had once been, and I understood
that she could again be important to me. I was certain, all
at once, that all that was required was a change of her
personality, a growing up. I put her into the same sus-
pended animation I had used with others, delved into her
mind with my omnipotence and straightened out the
quirks there, brought her swiftly to her full human poten-
tial.
I woke her.
And I sorrowed.
Her full human potential was not enough.
She was strikingly beautiful, filled with a sensuality that
made my loins stir, that would make any man sit up and
take full notice of her. She was the essence of femininity,
full-breasted, round-hipped, and long-legged, with honey
hair and wide eyes, Ml lips and quick pink tongue. But
she was no more than that to me. Even a beautiful
woman who outshines all other females is of no interest if
her mind seems as sawdust and her words strike you as
the rambling proclamations of an idiot.
And so she seemed to me: an idiot, a thing, a moving
construct of flesh. But not a woman I loved.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. It pained me even to be forced to
speak. Couldn’t she understand me, without verbaliza-
tions? Couldn’t she eke out even a hint of my thoughts
without my having to spell them out for her in clean, crisp
words and phrases?
“Something is,” she said.
“Nothing.”
“You’re so distant. I can’t tell if you’re really there or
not.”
Oh, God, oh, God, I moaned to myself. But there was
no use in that. It didn’t help to pray to myself.
“It’s as if,” she said, “it’s not you inside there. Maybe
Child has taken over. Maybe just a little part of nun has.”
“No,” I said.
“But if Child had taken you over, he would make you
say that to satisfy me, wouldn’t he?”
I said nothing.
“So maybe that’s it.”
“No.”
I was very weary, very old.
“Something, anyway,” she said.
“Yes. Something.”
“I haven’t asked you how you got here? How did you
shake the cops?” She was smiling through all of this, though
her face belied her true feelings beyond those brightly
flashing teeth.
I did not answer her. I merely looked at her with a
deep and melancholy sense of loss. And with a fear of the
future that was to be mine from this day forth.
I saw, now, why God had eventually lost all touch with
reality, had stepped across the thin red line into utter
madness. He had begun as a super-intelligent creature able
to set the precarious movements of the universe in perfect
harmony, able to structure the balance of all creation. But
as time had passed, He grew introverted because of His
lack of company. There was no one worthy of Him, equal
to Him, and He had stagnated with this lack of personal
conflict and motivations.
The same would happen to me in time. It might require
millennia, but it would happen all the same. Some day, I
would whirl across the universe from one dark point to
the other, insane, and babbling, my manipulatory mechan-
isms unable to harness the great psychic energy inside of
me.
“I think I’m afraid of you,” she said.
“I’m afraid of me too,” I said.
“What’s happened?” she asked.