Highlights from all books

Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn’t give a damn about the scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of us together, and then about myself again. It was the age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. Scenery was the last thing on my mind.

Now, though, that meadow scene is the first thing that comes back to me. The smell of the grass, the faint chill of the wind, the line of the hills, the barking of a dog: these are the first things, and they come with absolute clarity. I feel as if I can reach out and trace them with a fingertip. And yet, as clear as the scene may be, no one is in it. No one. Naoko is not there, and neither am I. Where could we have disappeared to? How could such a thing have happened? Everything that seemed so important back then—Naoko, and the self I was then, and the world I had then: where could they have all gone? It’s true, I can’t even bring —Naoko, and the self I was then, and the world I had then: where could they have all gone? It’s true, I can’t even bring back Naoko’s face—not right away, at least. All I’m left holding is a background, sheer scenery, with no people up front.

Now we were walking through the frightful silence of a pine wood. The desiccated corpses of cicadas that had died at the end of the summer littered the surface of the path, crunching beneath our shoes. As if searching for something we’d lost, Naoko and I continued slowly down the path in the woods.

“I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?”

“Always,” I said. “I’ll always remember.”

“Even so, my memory has grown increasingly distant, and I have already forgotten any number of things. Writing from memory like this, I often feel a pang of dread. What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?”

Once, long ago, when I was still young, when the memories were far more vivid than they are now, I often tried to write about Naoko. But I was never able to produce a line. I knew that if that first line would come, the rest would pour itself onto the page, but I could never make it happen. Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start—the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless. Now, though, I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts. The more the memories of Naoko inside me fade, the more deeply I am able to understand her. I know, too, why she asked me not to forget her. Naoko herself knew, of course. She knew that my memories of her would fade. Which is precisely why she begged me never to forget her, to remember that she had existed.

He was up at six each morning with the strains of “May Our Lord’s Reign.” Which is to say that that ostentatious flag-raising ritual was not entirely useless. He’d get dressed, go to the bathroom, and wash his face—forever. I sometimes got the feeling he must be taking out each tooth and washing it, one at a time.

I can never say what I want to say,” continued Naoko. “It’s been like this for a while now. I try to say something, but all I get are the wrong words—the wrong words or the exact opposite words from what I mean. I try to correct myself, and that only makes it worse. I lose track of what I was trying to say to begin with. It’s like I’m split in two and playing tag with myself. One half is chasing the other half around this big, fat post. The other me has the right words, but this me can’t catch her.

It had been a nice afternoon in May. After lunch, Kizuki suggested we cut classes and go play pool or something. I had no special interest in my afternoon classes, so together we left school, ambled down the hill to a billiards parlor on the harbor, and shot four games. When I won the first, easygoing game, he got serious and won the other three. This meant that I paid, according to our custom. Kizuki made not a single wisecrack as we played, which was most unusual. We had a smoke afterward.

“Why so serious?” I asked.

“I didn’t want to lose today,” said Kizuki with a satisfied smile.

He died that night in his garage. He led a rubber hose from the exhaust pipe of his N-360 to a window, taped over the gap in the window, and revved the engine.

There was only one thing for me to do when I started my new life in the dorm: stop taking everything so seriously; establish a proper distance between myself and everything else. Forget about green-felt pool tables and red N-360s and white flowers on school desks; about smoke rising from tall crematorium smokestacks, and chunky paperweights in police interrogation rooms. It seemed to work at first. I tried hard to forget, but there remained inside me a vague knot-of-air kind of thing. And as time went by, the knot began to take on a clear and simple form, a form that I am able to put into words, like this:

Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life.

Translated into words, it’s a cliché, but at the time I felt it not as words but as that knot of air inside me. Death exists—in a paperweight, in four red and white balls on a billiard table—and we go on living and breathing it into our lungs like fine dust.

Until that time, I had understood death as something entirely separate from and independent of life. The hand of death is bound to take us, I had felt, but until the day it reaches out for us, it leaves us alone. This had seemed to me the simple, logical truth. Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.

The night Kizuki died, however, I lost the ability to see death (and life) in such simple terms. Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that. When it took the seventeen-year-old Kizuki that night in May, death took me as well.

I lived through the following spring, at eighteen, with that knot of air in my chest, but I struggled all the while against becoming serious. Becoming serious was not the same thing as approaching truth, I sensed, however vaguely. But death was a fact, a serious fact, no matter how you looked at it. Stuck inside this suffocating contradiction, I went on endlessly spinning in circles. Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death.

“This man says he has read The Great Gatsby three times,” he said as if to himself. “Well, any friend of Gatsby is a friend of mine.”

To think that these idiots had been the ones screaming for the dismantling of the university! What a joke. Let the wind change direction a little bit, and their cries turned to whispers.

“It is a game. I don’t give a damn about power and money per se. Really, I don’t. I may be a selfish bastard, but I’m incredibly cool about shit like that. I could be a Zen saint. The one thing I do have, though, is curiosity. I want to see what I can do out there in the big, tough world.”

“And you have no use for ‘ideals,’ I suppose.”

“None. Life doesn’t require ideals. It requires standards of action.”

“Hey, tell me, what d’you think the best thing is about being rich?”

“Beats me.”

“Being able to say you don’t have any money. Like, if I suggested to a classmate we do something, she could say, ‘Sorry, I don’t have any money.’ Which is something I could never say if the situation was reversed. If I said ‘I don’t have any money,’ it would really mean ‘I don’t have any money.’ It’s sad. Like if a pretty girl says ‘I look terrible today, I don’t want to go out,’ that’s O.K., but if an ugly girl says the same thing people laugh at her. That’s what the world was like for me. For six years, until last year.”

“Each scene felt unreal and strangely distanced, as if I were viewing it through two or three layers of glass, but the events had undoubtedly happened to me. The beer glasses were still sitting on the table, and a used toothbrush lay by the sink.”

This may be an overanalytical way of looking at things. Don’t you agree? The therapy they perform here is certainly not overanalytical, but when you are under treatment for several months the way I am here, like it or not, you become more or less analytical. “This was caused by that, and that means this, because of which thus-and-such.” Like that. I can’t tell whether this kind of analysis is trying to simplify the world or subdivide it.

Sleeping soundly in this apartment of hers, I wrung the fatigue from every cell of my body, drop by drop. I dreamed of a butterfly dancing in the half-light.

When the record ended, Reiko brought a guitar out from under her bed, and after tuning it with a look of fondness for the instrument, she began to play a slow Bach fugue. She missed her fingering every now and then, but it was real Bach, with real feeling—warm, intimate, and filled with the joy of performance.

“And you call that ‘stoic’?”

“For him it is.”

Naoko thought about my words for a minute. “I think he’s a lot sicker in the head that I am,” she said.

“So do I,” I said. “But he can put all his warped qualities into a logical system.”

“I’m sorry,” said Naoko. “I don’t mean to hurt you, but this much you have to understand: Kizuki and I had a truly special relationship. We had been together from the time we were three. It’s how we grew up: always together, always talking, understanding each other perfectly. The first time we kissed—it was in the sixth grade—was just wonderful. The first time I had my period, I ran to him and cried like a baby. We were that close. So after he died, I didn’t know how to relate to other people. I didn’t know what it means to love another person.”

“That’s why I loved being with the two of you. His best side was all that I could see then, too. I could relax and stop worrying when the three of us were together. Those were my favorite times. I don’t know how you felt about it.”

“I used to worry about what you were thinking,” I said, giving my head a shake.

“The problem was that that kind of thing couldn’t go on forever,” said Naoko. “Such perfect little circles are impossible to maintain. Kizuki knew it, and I knew it, and so did you. Am I right?”

“Because we would have had to pay the world back what we owed it,” she said, raising her eyes to mine. “The pain of growing up. We didn’t pay when we should have, so now the bills are due. Which is why Kizuki did what he did, and why I’m in here. We were like kids who grew up naked on a desert island”. If we got hungry, we’d just pick a banana; if we got lonely, we’d go to sleep in each other’s arms. But that kind of thing doesn’t last forever. We grew up fast and had to enter society. Which is why you were so important to us. You were the link connecting us with the outside world. We were struggling through you to fit in with the outside world as best we could. In the end, it didn’t work, of course.”

“I have a lot more patience for others than I have for myself, and I’m much better at bringing out the best in others than in myself. That’s just the kind of person I am. I’m the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. But that’s fine with me. I don’t mind at all. Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match.”

“Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?” “Nothing special. I just called.” “I see.” “You see what?” “Nothing. Just ‘I see,’” I said. “Any fires lately?” “That was fun, wasn’t it? It didn’t do much damage, but all that smoke made it kind of like reality. Great stuff.” Midori chugged down another glass of water, took a breath, and studied my face for a while. “Hey, what’s wrong with you?” she asked. “You’ve got this spaced-out look. Your eyes aren’t focused.” “I’m O.K.,” I said. “I just got back from a trip and I’m kinda tired.” “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” “I see.”

“My intuition’s not as good as yours, so I have to learn systematic thinking to some extent. Like the way a crow collects chunks of glass in a hollow tree.” “Does it serve some purpose?” “I wonder. It probably makes it easier to do some kinds of things.” “What kinds of things? Give me an example.” “Metaphysical thought, say. Mastering several languages.” “What good does that do?” “It depends on the person who does it. It serves a purpose for some, and not for others. But mainly it’s training. Whether it serves a purpose or not is another question. Like I said.”

He was going to die soon, you knew when you saw those eyes. There was no sign of life in his flesh, just the barest traces of what had once been a life. His body was like a dilapidated old house from which all furniture and fixtures have been removed and which awaited now only its final demolition. Around the dry lips sprouted clumps of whiskers like so many weeds. So, I thought, even after so much of his life force had been lost, a man’s beard continued to grow.

‘Oh, Midori, you’ve got such a healthy appetite.’ What do they think I am, a donkey pulling a cart? They’re old enough to know how the world really works, so why are they so stupid? It’s easy to talk big, but the important thing is whether or not you clean up the shit. I can be hurt, you know. I can get as exhausted as anybody else. I can feel so bad I want to cry, too. I mean, you try watching a gang of doctors get together and cut open somebody’s head when there’s no hope of saving them, and stirring things up in there, and doing it again and again, and every time they do it it makes the person worse and a little bit crazier, and see how you like it!

“After I do my laundry tomorrow morning and hang it out to dry, I’ll go to my ten o’clock class. It’s the one I’m in with Midori, History of Drama. I’m working on Euripides. Are you familiar with Euripides? He was an ancient Greek—one of the ‘Big Three’ of Greek tragedy along with Aeschylus and Sophocles. He supposedly died when a dog bit him in Macedonia, but not everybody buys this. Anyhow, that’s Euripides. I like Sophocles better, but I suppose it’s a matter of taste. I really can’t say which is better. “What marks his plays is the way things get so mixed up the characters are trapped. Do you see what I mean? A bunch of different people appear, and they’ve all got their own situations and reasons and excuses, and each one is pursuing his or her own brand of justice or happiness. As a result, nobody can do anything. Obviously. I mean, it’s basically impossible for everybody’s justice to prevail or everybody’s happiness to triumph, so chaos takes over. And then what do you think happens? Simple—a god appears in the end and starts directing traffic. ‘You go over there, and you come here, and you get together with her, and you just sit still for a while.’ Like that. He’s kind of a fixer, and in the end everything works out perfectly. They call this ‘deus ex machina.’ There’s almost always a deus ex machina in Euripides, and that’s the point where critical opinion divides over him. “But think about it—what if there were a deus ex machina in real life? Everything would be so easy! If you felt stuck or trapped, some god would swing down from up there and solve all your problems. What could be easier than that? Anyhow, that’s History of Drama. This is more or less the kind of stuff we study at the university.”

“This was excellent sea bass,” I offered, but no one took me up on it. I might as well have thrown a rock down a deep shaft.”

“It was Nagasawa, of course, who told me what had happened. His letter from Bonn said this: “Hatsumi’s death has extinguished something. This is unbearably sad and painful, even to me.” I ripped his letter to shreds and threw it away. I never wrote to him again.”

“Nah, a funeral’s a piece of cake. We’ve had plenty of practice. You put on a black kimono and sit there like a lady and everybody else takes care of business—an uncle, a neighbor, like that. They bring the sake, order the sushi, say comforting things, cry, carry on, divide up the keepsakes. It’s a piece of cake. A picnic. Compared to nursing somebody day after day, it’s an absolute picnic. We were drained, my sister and me. We couldn’t even cry. We didn’t have any tears left. Really. Except, when you do that, they start whispering about you: ‘Those girls are cold as ice.’ So then, we’re never going to cry, that’s just how the two of us are. I know we could have faked it, but we would never do anything like that. The sons of bitches! The more they wanted to see us cry, the more determined we were not to give them that satisfaction. My sister and I are totally different types, but when it comes to something like that, we’re in absolute sync.”

“That was fun,” said Midori. “Let’s try it again sometime.” “They just keep doing the same things,” I said. “Well, what else can they do? We all just keep doing the same things.” She had a point there.”

Time itself slogged along in rhythm with my faltering steps. The people around me had gone on ahead long before, while my time and I hung back, struggling through the mud. The world around me was on the verge of great transformations. Death had already taken John Coltrane, who was joined now by so many others. People screamed there’d be revolutionary changes—which always seemed to be just ahead, at the curve in the road. But the “changes” that came were just two-dimensional stage sets, background without substance or meaning. I trudged along through each day in its turn, looking up only rarely, eyes locked on the endless swamp that lay before me, planting my right foot, raising my left, planting my left foot, raising my right, never sure where I was, never sure I was headed in the right direction, knowing only that I had to keep moving, one step at a time.

“Anyhow, be happy. I get the feeling a lot of shit is going to come your way, but you’re a stubborn son of a bitch, I’m sure you’ll handle it. Mind if I give you one piece of advice?” “Sure, go ahead.” “Don’t feel sorry for yourself,” he said. “Only assholes do that.” “I’ll keep it in mind,” I said. We shook hands and went our separate ways, he to his new world, and I back to my swamp.”

Hey, there, Kizuki, I thought. Unlike you, I’ve chosen to live—and to live the best I know how. Sure, it was hard for you. What the hell, it’s hard for me. Really hard. And all because you killed yourself and left Naoko behind. But that’s something I will never do. I will never, ever turn my back on her. First of all, because I love her, and because I’m stronger than she is. And I’m just going to keep on getting stronger. I’m going to mature. I’m going to be an adult. Because that’s what I have to do. I always used to think I’d like to stay seventeen or eighteen if I could. But not anymore. I’m not a teenager anymore. I’ve got a sense of responsibility now. I’m not the same guy I was when we used to hang out together. I’m twenty now. And I have to pay the price to go on living.

“‘Why?’!” she screamed. “Are you crazy? You know the English subjunctive, you understand trigonometry, you can read Marx, and you don’t know the answer to something as simple as that? Why do you even have to ask? Why do you have to make a girl say something like this? I like you more than I like him, that’s all. I wish I had fallen in love with somebody a little more handsome, of course. But I didn’t. I fell in love with you!”

“After saying good-bye to Midori, I bought a newspaper at the station, but when I opened it on the train, I realized I had absolutely no desire to read a paper and in fact couldn’t understand what it said. All I could do was glare at the incomprehensible page of print and wonder what was going to happen to me from now on, and how the things around me would be changing. I felt as if the world was pulsating every now and then. I released a deep sigh and closed my eyes. With regard to what I had done that day, I felt not the slightest regret; I knew for certain that if I had it to do all over again, I would live this day in exactly the same way again. I would hold Midori tight on the roof in the rain; I would get soaking wet with her; and I would let her fingers bring me to climax in her bed. I had no doubts about those things. I loved Midori, and I was happy that she had come back to me. The two of us could make it, that was certain. “As Midori herself had said, she was a real, live girl with blood in her veins, and she was putting her warm body in my arms. It had been all I could do to suppress the intense desire I had to strip her naked, throw open her body, and sink myself in her warmth. There was no way I could have made myself stop her once she was holding my penis and moving her hand. I wanted her to do it, she wanted to do it, and we were in love. Who could have stopped such a thing? It was true: I loved Midori. And I had probably known as much for a while. I had just been avoiding the conclusion for a very long time. The problem was that I could never explain these developments to Naoko. It would have been hard enough at any point, but with Naoko in her present condition, there was no way I could tell her I had fallen in love with another girl. And besides, I still loved Naoko. Bent and twisted as that love might be, I did love her. Somewhere inside me, there was still preserved a broad, open space, untouched, for Naoko and no one else.”

“I have always loved Naoko, and I still love her. But there is a decisive finality to what exists between Midori and me. It has an irresistible power that is bound to sweep me into the future. What I feel for Naoko is a tremendously quiet and gentle and transparent love, but what I feel for Midori is a wholly different emotion. It stands and walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me to the roots of my being. I don’t know what to do. I’m confused. I’m not trying to make excuses for myself, but I do believe that I have lived as sincerely as I knew how. I have never lied to anyone, and I have taken care over the years not to hurt other people. And yet I find myself having been tossed into this labyrinth.

Reiko wrote to me several times after Naoko's death. It was not my fault, she said. It was nobody’s fault, any more than you could blame someone for the rain. But I never answered her. What could I have said? What good would it have done? Naoko no longer existed in this world; she had become a fistful of ash.

The memories would slam against me like the waves of an incoming tide, sweeping my body along to some strange new place—a place where I lived with the dead. There Naoko lived, and I could speak with her and hold her in my arms. Death in that place was not a decisive element that brought life to an end. There, death was but one of many elements comprising life. There Naoko lived with death inside her. And to me she said, “Don’t worry, it’s only death. Don’t let it bother you.

I felt no sadness in that strange place. Death was death, and Naoko was Naoko. “What’s the problem?” she asked me with a bashful smile, “I’m here, aren’t I?” Her familiar little gestures soothed my heart and gave me healing. “If this is death,” I thought to myself, “then death is not so bad.” “It’s true,” said Naoko, “death is nothing much. It’s just death. Things are so easy for me here.” Naoko spoke to me in the spaces between the crashing of the dark waves.

Eventually, though, the tide would pull back, and I would be left on the beach alone. Powerless, I could go nowhere; sorrow itself would envelop me in deep darkness until the tears came. I felt less that I was crying than that the tears were simply oozing out of me like perspiration.

I had learned one thing from Kizuki’s death, and I believed that I had made it a part of myself in the form of a philosophy: “Death is not the opposite of life but an innate part of life.

By living our lives, we nurture death. True as this might be, it was only one of the truths we had to learn. What I learned from Naoko’s death was this: no truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning. Hearing the waves at night, listening to the sound of the wind, day after day I focused on these thoughts of mine. Knapsack on my back, sand in my hair, I moved farther and farther west, surviving on a diet of whiskey, bread, and water.

The month of traveling neither lifted my spirits nor softened the blow of Naoko’s death. I arrived back in Tokyo in pretty much the same state in which I had left. I couldn’t even bring myself to phone Midori. What could I say to her? How could I begin? “It’s all over now; you and I can be happy together”? No, that was out of the question. However I might phrase it, though, the facts were the same: Naoko was dead, and Midori was still here. Naoko was a pile of white ash, and Midori was a living, breathing human.

Sometimes I feel like a caretaker of a museum—a huge, empty museum where no one ever comes, and I’m watching over it for no one but myself.

I’m all through as a human being,” she said. “All you’re looking at is the lingering memory of what I used to be. The most important part of me, what used to be inside, died years ago, and I’m just functioning by rote memory.

“If you feel some kind of pain with regard to Naoko’s death, I would advise you to keep on feeling that pain for the rest of your life. And if there’s something you can learn from it, you should do that, too. But quite aside from that, you should be happy with Midori. Your pain has nothing to do with your relationship with her. If you hurt her any more than you already have, the wound could be too deep to fix. So, hard as it may be, you have to be strong. You have to grow up more, be more of an adult. I left the sanatorium and came all the way up here to Tokyo to tell you that—all the way on that coffin of a train.” “I understand what you’re telling me,” I said to Reiko, “but I’m still not prepared to follow through on it. I mean, that was such a sad little funeral! No one should have to die like that.” Reiko stretched her hand out and stroked my head. “We all have to die like that sometime. I will, and so will you.”

Next she played a guitar transcription of Ravel’s “Pavanne for a Dying Queen” and a beautifully clean rendition of Debussy’s “Claire de Lune.” “I mastered both of these after Naoko died,” said Reiko. “To the end, her taste in music never rose above the horizon of sentimentalism.”

“I telephone Midori. “I have to talk to you,” I said. “I have a million things to talk to you about. A million things we have to talk about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.”

Midori responded with a long, long silence—the silence of all the misty rain in the world falling on all the new-mown lawns of the world. Forehead pressed against the glass, I shut my eyes and waited. At last, Midori’s quiet voice broke the silence: “Where are you now?”

Where was I now?

Gripping the receiver, I raised my head and turned to see what lay beyond the telephone booth. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place.”

This tale grew in the telling, until it became a history of the Great War of the Ring and included many glimpses of the yet more ancient history that preceded it. It was begun soon after The Hobbit was written and before its publication in 1937; but I did not go on with this sequel, for I wished first to complete and set in order the mythology and legends of the Elder Days, which had then been taking shape for some years. I desired to do this for my own satisfaction, and I had little hope that other people would be interested in this work, especially since it was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of ‘history’ for Elvish tongues.

When those whose advice and opinion I sought corrected little hope to no hope, I went back to the sequel, encouraged by requests from readers for more information concerning hobbits and their adventures. But the story was drawn irresistibly towards the older world, and became an account, as it were, of its end and passing away before its beginning and middle had been told. The process had begun in the writing of The Hobbit, in which there were already some references to the older matter: Elrond, Gondolin, the High-elves, and the orcs, as well as glimpses that had arisen unbidden of things higher or deeper or darker than its surface: Durin, Moria, Gandalf, the Necromancer, the Ring. The discovery of the significance of these glimpses and of their relation to the ancient histories revealed the Third Age and its culmination in the War of the Ring.

As for any inner meaning or ‘message’, it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical. As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches: but its main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit. The crucial chapter, ‘The Shadow of the Past’, is one of the oldest parts of the tale. It was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted. Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in it was modified by the war that began in 1939 or its sequels.

The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dur would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.

I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

Nonetheless, ease and peace had left this people still curiously tough. They were, if it came to it, difficult to daunt or to kill; and they were, perhaps, so unwearyingly fond of good things not least because they could, when put to it, do without them, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces.

The genealogical trees at the end of the Red Book of Westmarch are a small book in themselves, and all but Hobbits would find them exceedingly dull. Hobbits delighted in such things, if they were accurate: they liked to have books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and square with no contradictions.

But even the Dunedain of Gondor allow us this credit: Hobbits first put it into pipes. Not even the Wizards first thought of that before we did. Though one Wizard that I knew took up the art long ago, and became as skilful in it as in all other things that he put his mind to.

As for Bilbo Baggins, even while he was making his speech, he had been fingering the golden ring in his pocket: his magic ring that he had kept secret for so many years. As he stepped down he slipped it on his finger, and he was never seen by any hobbit in Hobbiton again.

‘I am old, Gandalf. I don’t look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. Well-preserved indeed!’ he snorted. ‘Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right. I need a change, or something.’

Frodo saw him to the door. He gave a final wave of his hand, and walked off at a surprising pace; but Frodo thought the old wizard looked unusually bent, almost as if he was carrying a great weight. The evening was closing in, and his cloaked figure quickly vanished into the twilight. Frodo did not see him again for a long time.

‘In Eregion long ago many Elven-rings were made, magic rings as you call them, and they were, of course, of various kinds: some more potent and some less. The lesser rings were only essays in the craft before it was full-grown, and to the Elven-smiths they were but trifles – yet still to my mind dangerous for mortals. But the Great Rings, the Rings of Power, they were perilous.

‘A mortal, Frodo, who keeps one of the Great Rings, does not die, but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until at last every minute is a weariness. And if he often uses the Ring to make himself invisible, he fades: he becomes in the end invisible permanently, and walks in the twilight under the eye of the Dark Power that rules the Rings. Yes, sooner or later – later, if he is strong or well-meaning to begin with, but neither strength nor good purpose will last – sooner or later the Dark Power will devour him.’

I might perhaps have consulted Saruman the White, but something always held me back.’

‘Who is he?’ asked Frodo. ‘I have never heard of him before.’

‘Maybe not,’ answered Gandalf. ‘Hobbits are, or were, no concern of his. Yet he is great among the Wise. He is the chief of my order and the head of the Council. His knowledge is deep, but his pride has grown with it, and he takes ill any meddling. The lore of the Elven-rings, great and small, is his province. He has long studied it, seeking the lost secrets of their making; but when the Rings were debated in the Council, all that he would reveal to us of his ring-lore told against my fears. So my doubt slept – but uneasily. Still I watched and I waited.

‘He felt better at once,’ said Gandalf. ‘But there is only one Power in this world that knows all about the Rings and their effects; and as far as I know there is no Power in the world that knows all about hobbits. Among the Wise I am the only one that goes in for hobbit-lore: an obscure branch of knowledge, but full of surprises. Soft as butter they can be, and yet sometimes as tough as old tree-roots. I think it likely that some would resist the Rings far longer than most of the Wise would believe. I don’t think you need worry about Bilbo.

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,

Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,

Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,

One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.’

Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.’

‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.

‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

‘I do really wish to destroy it!’ cried Frodo. ‘Or, well, to have it destroyed. I am not made for perilous quests. I wish I had never seen the Ring! Why did it come to me? Why was I chosen?’ ‘Such questions cannot be answered,’ said Gandalf. ‘You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom, at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.’

‘My dear Frodo!’ exclaimed Gandalf. ‘Hobbits really are amazing creatures, as I have said before. You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you at a pinch.

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with weary feet,

Until it joins some larger way,

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

Certainly it reminds me very much of Bilbo in the last years, before he went away. He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. ‘‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,’’ he used to say. ‘‘You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.

‘That Gandalf should be late, does not bode well. But it is said: Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. The choice is yours: to go or wait.’

‘And it is also said,’ answered Frodo: ‘Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.’

‘Is it indeed?’ laughed Gildor. ‘Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.

‘The Elves, sir. We had some talk last night; and they seemed to know you were going away, so I didn’t see the use of denying it. Wonderful folk, Elves, sir! Wonderful!’

‘They are,’ said Frodo. ‘Do you like them still, now you have had a closer view?’

‘They seem a bit above my likes and dislikes, so to speak,’ answered Sam slowly. ‘It don’t seem to matter what I think about them. They are quite different from what I expected – so old and young, and so gay and sad, as it were.’

we are going to take a very long road, into darkness; but I know I can’t turn back. It isn’t to see Elves now, nor dragons, nor mountains, that I want – I don’t rightly know what I want: but I have something to do before the end, and it lies ahead, not in the Shire. I must see it through, sir, if you understand me.’

Frodo looked at her questioningly. ‘He is, as you have seen him,’ she said in answer to his look. ‘He is the Master of wood, water, and hill.’ ‘Then all this strange land belongs to him?’

‘No indeed!’ she answered, and her smile faded. ‘That would indeed be a burden,’ she added in a low voice, as if to herself. ‘The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves. Tom Bombadil is the Master. No one has ever caught old Tom walking in the forest, wading in the water, leaping on the hill-tops under light and shadow. He has no fear. Tom Bombadil is master.’

He told them tales of bees and flowers, the ways of trees, and the strange creatures of the Forest, about the evil things and good things, things friendly and things unfriendly, cruel things and kind things, and secrets hidden under brambles.

Tom’s words laid bare the hearts of trees and their thoughts, which were often dark and strange, and filled with a hatred of things that go free upon the earth, gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning: destroyers and usurpers. It was not called the Old Forest without reason, for it was indeed ancient, a survivor of vast forgotten woods; and in it there lived yet, ageing no quicker than the hills, the fathers of the fathers of trees, remembering times when they were lords. The countless years had filled them with pride and rooted wisdom, and with malice. But none were more dangerous than the Great Willow: his heart was rotten, but his strength was green; and he was cunning, and a master of winds, and his song and thought ran through the woods on both sides of the river. His grey thirsty spirit drew power out of the earth and spread like fine root-threads in the ground, and invisible twig-fingers in the air, till it had under its dominion nearly all the trees of the Forest from the Hedge to the Downs.

There were also many families of hobbits in the Bree-land; and they claimed to be the oldest settlement of Hobbits in the world, one that was founded long before even the Brandywine was crossed and the Shire colonized. They lived mostly in Staddle though there were some in Bree itself, especially on the higher slopes of the hill, above the houses of the Men. The Big Folk and the Little Folk (as they called one another) were on friendly terms, minding their own affairs in their own ways, but both rightly regarding themselves as necessary parts of the Bree-folk. Nowhere else in the world was this peculiar (but excellent) arrangement to be found.

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

But I must admit,’ he added with a queer laugh, ‘that I hoped you would take to me for my own sake. A hunted man sometimes wearies of distrust and longs for friendship. But there, I believe my looks are against me.’

The black horses can see, and the Riders can use men and other creatures as spies, as we found at Bree. They themselves do not see the world of light as we do, but our shapes cast shadows in their minds, which only the noon sun destroys; and in the dark they perceive many signs and forms that are hidden from us: then they are most to be feared. And at all times they smell the blood of living things, desiring and hating it. Senses, too, there are other than sight or smell. We can feel their presence – it troubled our hearts, as soon as we came here, and before we saw them; they feel ours more keenly. Also,’ he added, and his voice sank to a whisper, ‘the Ring draws them.’

‘In the South the realm of Gondor long endured; and for a while its splendour grew, recalling somewhat of the might of Numenor, ere it fell. High towers that people built, and strong places, and havens of many ships; and the winged crown of the Kings of Men was held in awe by folk of many tongues. Their chief city was Osgiliath, Citadel of the Stars, through the midst of which the River flowed. And Minas Ithil they built, Tower of the Rising Moon, eastward upon a shoulder of the Mountains of Shadow; and westward at the feet of the White Mountains Minas Anor they made, Tower of the Setting Sun. There in the courts of the King grew a white tree, from the seed of that tree which Isildur brought over the deep waters, and the seed of that tree before came from Eresse¨a, and before that out of the Uttermost West in the Day before days when the world was young.

But in the wearing of the swift years of Middle-earth the line of Meneldil son of Ana´rion failed, and the Tree withered, and the blood of the Nu´meno´reans became mingled with that of lesser men. Then the watch upon the walls of Mordor slept, and dark things crept back to Gorgoroth. And on a time evil things came forth, and they took Minas Ithil and abode in it, and they made it into a place of dread; and it is called Minas Morgul, the Tower of Sorcery. Then Minas Anor was named anew Minas Tirith, the Tower of Guard; and these two cities were ever at war, but Osgiliath which lay between was deserted and in its ruins shadows walked.

‘So it has been for many lives of men. But the Lords of Minas Tirith still fight on, defying our enemies, keeping the passage of the River from Argonath to the Sea. And now that part of the tale that I shall tell is drawn to its close. For in the days of Isildur the Ruling Ring passed out of all knowledge, and the Three were released from its dominion. But now in this latter day they are in peril once more, for to our sorrow the One has been found. Others shall speak of its finding, for in that I played small part.’

‘I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.

‘‘I liked white better,’’ I said.

‘‘White!’’ he sneered. ‘‘It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.’’

‘‘In which case it is no longer white,’’ said I. ‘‘And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.’’

For nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so. I fear to take the Ring to hide it. I will not take the Ring to wield it.’

What strength have we for the finding of the Fire in which it was made? That is the path of despair. Of folly I would say, if the long wisdom of Elrond did not forbid me.’

‘Despair, or folly?’ said Gandalf. ‘It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy! For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning.

‘At least for a while,’ said Elrond. ‘The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.’

‘Very well, very well, Master Elrond!’ said Bilbo suddenly. ‘Say no more! It is plain enough what you are pointing at. Bilbo the silly hobbit started this affair, and Bilbo had better finish it, or himself. I was very comfortable here, and getting on with my book. If you want to know, I am just writing an ending for it. I had thought of putting: and he lived happily ever afterwards to the end of his days. It is a good ending, and none the worse for having been used before. Now I shall have to alter that: it does not look like coming true; and anyway there will evidently have to be several more chapters, if I live to write them. It is a frightful nuisance. When ought I to start?’

Boromir looked in surprise at Bilbo, but the laughter died on his lips when he saw that all the others regarded the old hobbit with grave respect. Only Gloin smiled, but his smile came from old memories.

‘Of course, my dear Bilbo,’ said Gandalf. ‘If you had really started this affair, you might be expected to finish it. But you know well enough now that starting is too great a claim for any, and that only a small part is played in great deeds by any hero. You need not bow! Though the word was meant, and we do not doubt that under jest you are making a valiant offer. But one beyond your strength, Bilbo. You cannot take this thing back. It has passed on. If you need my advice any longer, I should say that your part is ended, unless as a recorder. Finish your book, and leave the ending unaltered! There is still hope for it. But get ready to write a sequel, when they come back.’

The noon-bell rang. Still no one spoke. Frodo glanced at all the faces, but they were not turned to him. All the Council sat with downcast eyes, as if in deep thought. A great dread fell on him, as if he was awaiting the pronouncement of some doom that he had long foreseen and vainly hoped might after all never be spoken. An overwhelming longing to rest and remain at peace by Bilbo’s side in Rivendell filled all his heart. At last with an effort he spoke, and wondered to hear his own words, as if some other will was using his small voice.

‘I will take the Ring,’ he said, ‘though I do not know the way.’

‘The Company of the Ring shall be Nine; and the Nine Walkers shall be set against the Nine Riders that are evil. With you and your faithful servant, Gandalf will go; for this shall be his great task, and maybe the end of his labours

‘But that will leave no place for us!’ cried Pippin in dismay. ‘We don’t want to be left behind. We want to go with Frodo.’

‘That is because you do not understand and cannot imagine what lies ahead,’ said Elrond.

‘Neither does Frodo,’ said Gandalf, unexpectedly supporting Pippin. ‘Nor do any of us see clearly. It is true that if these hobbits understood the danger, they would not dare to go. But they would still wish to go, or wish that they dared, and be shamed and unhappy. I think, Elrond, that in this matter it would be well to trust rather to their friendship than to great wisdom. Even if you chose for us an Elf-lord, such as Glorfindel, he could not storm the Dark Tower, nor open the road to the Fire by the power that is in him.’

‘Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens,’ said Gimli.

‘Maybe,’ said Elrond, ‘but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.’

‘Yet sworn word may strengthen quaking heart,’ said Gimli. ‘Or break it,’ said Elrond. ‘Look not too far ahead! But go now with good hearts! Farewell, and may the blessing of Elves and Men and all Free Folk go with you. May the stars shine upon your faces!’

It matters little who is the enemy, if we cannot beat off his attack.

‘It is grim reading,’ he said. ‘I fear their end was cruel. Listen! We cannot get out. We cannot get out. They have taken the Bridge and second hall. Frar and Loni and Nali fell there. Then there are four lines smeared so that I can only read went 5 days ago. The last lines run the pool is up to the wall at Westgate. The Watcher in the Water took Oin. We cannot get out. The end comes, and then drums, drums in the deep. I wonder what that means. The last thing written is in a trailing scrawl of elf-letters: they are coming. There is nothing more.’ Gandalf paused and stood in silent thought.

A sudden dread and a horror of the chamber fell on the Company. ‘We cannot get out,’ muttered Gimli. ‘It was well for us that the pool had sunk a little, and that the Watcher was sleeping down at the southern end.

‘You cannot pass,’ he said. The orcs stood still, and a dead silence fell. ‘I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udun. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.’

The Balrog made no answer. The fire in it seemed to die, but the darkness grew. It stepped forward slowly on to the bridge, and suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall; but still Gandalf could be seen, glimmering in the gloom; he seemed small, and altogether alone: grey and bent, like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm.

Thus, at last, they came beyond hope under the sky and felt the wind on their faces. They did not halt until they were out of bowshot from the walls. Dimrill Dale lay about them. The shadow of the Misty Mountains lay upon it, but eastwards there was a golden light on the land. It was but one hour after noon. The sun was shining; the clouds were white and high. They looked back. Dark yawned the archway of the Gates under the mountain-shadow. Faint and far beneath the earth rolled the slow drum-beats: doom. A thin black smoke trailed out. Nothing else was to be seen; the dale all around was empty. Doom. Grief at last wholly overcame them, and they wept long: some standing and silent, some cast upon the ground. Doom, doom. The drum-beats faded.

In nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him.

‘Not even to see fair Lothlo´rien?’ said Haldir. ‘The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.

At the hill’s foot Frodo found Aragorn, standing still and silent as a tree; but in his hand was a small golden bloom of elanor, and a light was in his eyes. He was wrapped in some fair memory: and as Frodo looked at him he knew that he beheld things as they once had been in this same place. For the grim years were removed from the face of Aragorn, and he seemed clothed in white, a young lord tall and fair; and he spoke words in the Elvish tongue to one whom Frodo could not see. Arwen vanimelda, nama´rie¨! he said, and then he drew a breath, and returning out of his thought he looked at Frodo and smiled.

‘Here is the heart of Elvendom on earth,’ he said, ‘and here my heart dwells ever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we still must tread, you and I. Come with me!’ And taking Frodo’s hand in his, he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as living man.

‘Dark is the water of Kheled-zaˆram, and cold are the springs of Kibil-naˆla, and fair were the many-pillared halls of Khazad-dum in Elder Days before the fall of mighty kings beneath the stone.’ She looked upon Gimli, who sat glowering and sad, and she smiled. And the Dwarf, hearing the names given in his own ancient tongue, looked up and met her eyes; and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding. Wonder came into his face, and then he smiled in answer.

He rose clumsily and bowed in dwarf-fashion, saying: ‘Yet more fair is the living land of Lo´rien, and the Lady Galadriel is above all the jewels that lie beneath the earth!’

Your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true.’

‘You cannot go home alone,’ said the Lady. ‘You did not wish to go home without your master before you looked in the Mirror, and yet you knew that evil things might well be happening in the Shire. Remember that the Mirror shows many things, and not all have yet come to pass. Some never come to be, unless those that behold the visions turn aside from their path to prevent them. The Mirror is dangerous as a guide of deeds.’

‘He suspects, but he does not know – not yet. Do you not see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footstep of Doom? For if you fail, then we are laid bare to the Enemy. Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlorien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten.’

Frodo bent his head. ‘And what do you wish?’ he said at last.

‘That what should be shall be,’ she answered. ‘The love of the Elves for their land and their works is deeper than the deeps of the Sea, and their regret is undying and cannot ever wholly be assuaged. Yet they will cast all away rather than submit to Sauron: for they know him now. For the fate of Lothlo´rien you are not answerable, but only for the doing of your own task. Yet I could wish, were it of any avail, that the One Ring had never been wrought, or had remained for ever lost.’

‘To tell you the truth, I wondered what you were talking about. I saw a star through your fingers. But if you’ll pardon my speaking out, I think my master was right. I wish you’d take his Ring. You’d put things to rights. You’d stop them digging up the Gaffer and turning him adrift. You’d make some folk pay for their dirty work.’ ‘I would,’ she said. ‘That is how it would begin. But it would not stop with that, alas! We will not speak more of it. Let us go!’

Boats may make your journey less toilsome for a while. Yet they will not give you counsel.

Do not trouble your hearts overmuch with thought of the road tonight. Maybe the paths that you each shall tread are already laid before your feet, though you do not see them. Good night!’

‘I shall go to Minas Tirith, alone if need be, for it is my duty,’ said Boromir; and after that he was silent for a while, sitting with his eyes fixed on Frodo, as if he was trying to read the Halfling’s thoughts. At length he spoke again, softly, as if he was debating with himself. ‘If you wish only to destroy the Ring,’ he said, ‘then there is little use in war and weapons; and the Men of Minas Tirith cannot help. But if you wish to destroy the armed might of the Dark Lord, then it is folly to go without force into his domain; and folly to throw away.’ He paused suddenly, as if he had become aware that he was speaking his thoughts aloud. ‘It would be folly to throw lives away, I mean,’ he ended. ‘It is a choice between defending a strong place and walking openly into the arms of death. At least, that is how I see it.’

I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew:

Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew.

Beyond the Sun, beyond the Moon, the foam was on the Sea,

And by the strand of Ilmarin there grew a golden Tree.

Beneath the stars of Ever-eve in Eldamar it shone,

In Eldamar beside the walls of Elven Tirion.

There long the golden leaves have grown upon the branching years,

While here beyond the Sundering Seas now fall the Elventears.

O Lo´rien! The Winter comes, the bare and leafless Day;

The leaves are falling in the stream, the River flows away.

O Lo´rien! Too long I have dwelt upon this Hither Shore

And in a fading crown have twined the golden elanor.

But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me,

What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?

Already she seemed to him, as by men of later days Elves still at times are seen: present and yet remote, a living vision of that which has already been left far behind by the flowing streams of Time.

‘And what gift would a Dwarf ask of the Elves?’ said Galadriel, turning to Gimli.

‘None, Lady,’ answered Gimli. ‘It is enough for me to have seen the Lady of the Galadhrim, and to have heard her gentle words.’

‘Hear all ye Elves!’ she cried to those about her. ‘Let none say again that Dwarves are grasping and ungracious! Yet surely, Gimli son of Glo´in, you desire something that I could give? Name it, I bid you! You shall not be the only guest without a gift.’

‘There is nothing, Lady Galadriel,’ said Gimli, bowing low and stammering. ‘Nothing, unless it might be – unless it is permitted to ask, nay, to name a single strand of your hair, which surpasses the gold of the earth as the stars surpass the gems of the mine. I do not ask for such a gift. But you commanded me to name my desire.’

The Elves stirred and murmured with astonishment, and Celeborn gazed at the Dwarf in wonder, but the Lady smiled. ‘It is said that the skill of the Dwarves is in their hands rather than in their tongues,’ she said; ‘yet that is not true of Gimli. For none have ever made to me a request so bold and yet so courteous. And how shall I refuse, since I commanded him to speak? But tell me, what would you do with such a gift?’

‘Treasure it, Lady,’ he answered, ‘in memory of your words to me at our first meeting. And if ever I return to the smithies of my home, it shall be set in imperishable crystal to be an heirloom of my house, and a pledge of good will between the Mountain and the Wood until the end of days.’

Then the Lady unbraided one of her long tresses, and cut off three golden hairs, and laid them in Gimli’s hand. ‘These words shall go with the gift,’ she said. ‘I do not foretell, for all foretelling is now vain: on the one hand lies darkness, and on the other only hope. But if hope should not fail, then I say to you, Gimli son of Gloin, that your hands shall flow with gold, and yet over you gold shall have no dominion.

As they passed her they turned and their eyes watched her slowly floating away from them. For so it seemed to them: Lorien was slipping backward, like a bright ship masted with enchanted trees, sailing on to forgotten shores, while they sat helpless upon the margin of the grey and leafless world.

The travellers now turned their faces to the journey; the sun was before them, and their eyes were dazzled, for all were filled with tears. Gimli wept openly.

‘I have looked the last upon that which was fairest,’ he said to Legolas his companion. ‘Henceforward I will call nothing fair, unless it be her gift.’ He put his hand to his breast. ‘Tell me, Legolas, why did I come on this Quest? Little did I know where the chief peril lay! Truly Elrond spoke, saying that we could not foresee what we might meet upon our road. Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come, had I known the danger of light and joy. Now I have taken my worst wound in this parting, even if I were to go this night straight to the Dark Lord. Alas for Gimli son of Gloin!’ ‘Nay!’ said Legolas. ‘Alas for us all! And for all that walk the world in these after-days. For such is the way of it: to find and lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream. But I count you blessed, Gimli son of Gloin: for your loss you suffer of your own free will, and you might have chosen otherwise. But you have not forsaken your companions, and the least reward that you shall have is that the memory of Lothlo´rien shall remain ever clear and unstained in your heart, and shall neither fade nor grow stale.

May I stay now and talk for a while, since I have found you? It would comfort me. Where there are so many, all speech becomes a debate without end. But two together may perhaps find wisdom.’

‘You are kind,’ answered Frodo. ‘But I do not think that any speech will help me. For I know what I should do, but I am afraid of doing it, Boromir: afraid.’

Boromir stood silent. Rauros roared endlessly on. The wind murmured in the branches of the trees. Frodo shivered. Suddenly Boromir came and sat beside him. ‘Are you sure that you do not suffer needlessly?’ he said. ‘I wish to help you. You need counsel in your hard choice.Will you not take mine?’ ‘I think I know already what counsel you would give, Boromir,’ said Frodo. ‘And it would seem like wisdom but for the warning of my heart.’

‘Warning? Warning against what?’ said Boromir sharply.

‘Against delay. Against the way that seems easier. Against refusal of the burden that is laid on me. Against – well, if it must be said, against trust in the strength and truth of Men.’

‘Yet that strength has long protected you far away in your little country, though you knew it not.’

‘I do not doubt the valour of your people. But the world is changing. The walls of Minas Tirith may be strong, but they are not strong enough. If they fail, what then?’

And suddenly he felt the Eye. There was an eye in the Dark Tower that did not sleep. He knew that it had become aware of his gaze. A fierce eager will was there. It leaped towards him; almost like a finger he felt it, searching for him. Very soon it would nail him down, know just exactly where he was. Amon Lhaw it touched. It glanced upon Tol Brandir – he threw himself from the seat, crouching, covering his head with his grey hood.

He heard himself crying out: Never, never! Or was it: Verily I come, I come to you? He could not tell. Then as a flash from some other point of power there came to his mind another thought: Take it off! Take it off! Fool, take it off! Take off the Ring!

The two powers strove in him. For a moment, perfectly balanced between their piercing points, he writhed, tormented. Suddenly he was aware of himself again, Frodo, neither the Voice nor the Eye: free to choose, and with one remaining instant in which to do so. He took the Ring off his finger. He was kneeling in clear sunlight before the high seat. A black shadow seemed to pass like an arm above him; it missed Amon Hen and groped out west, and faded. Then all the sky was clean and blue and birds sang in every tree.

‘It would be the death of you to come with me, Sam,’ said Frodo, ‘and I could not have borne that.’

‘Not as certain as being left behind,’ said Sam.

‘But I am going to Mordor.’

‘I know that well enough, Mr. Frodo. Of course you are. And I’m coming with you.’

‘Now, Sam,’ said Frodo, ‘don’t hinder me! The others will be coming back at any minute. If they catch me here, I shall have to argue and explain, and I shall never have the heart or the chance to get off. But I must go at once. It’s the only way.’

‘Of course it is,’ answered Sam. ‘But not alone. I’m coming too, or neither of us isn’t going. I’ll knock holes in all the boats first.’

Frodo actually laughed. A sudden warmth and gladness touched his heart. ‘Leave one!’ he said. ‘We’ll need it. But you can’t come like this without your gear or food or anything.’

‘Just hold on a moment, and I’ll get my stuff!’ cried Sam eagerly. ‘It’s all ready. I thought we should be off today.’ He rushed to the camping place, fished out his pack from the pile where Frodo had laid it when he emptied the boat of his companions’ goods, grabbed a spare blanket, and some extra packages of food, and ran back.

‘So all my plan is spoilt!’ said Frodo. ‘It is no good trying to escape you. But I’m glad, Sam. I cannot tell you how glad. Come along! It is plain that we were meant to go together. We will go, and may the others find a safe road! Strider will look after them. I don’t suppose we shall see them again.’

‘Yet we may, Mr. Frodo. We may,’ said Sam.

We cannot put off living until we are ready…. Life is fired at us point-blank.

One of the most effective tools we have is called “pre-commitment”. It’s right there in one of the oldest surviving human stories, Homer’s Odyssey. Homer tells of how there was once a patch of sea that sailors would always die in, for a strange reason: living in the ocean, there were two sirens - a uniquely hot blend of woman and fish — who would sing to the sailors to join them in the ocean. Then, when they clambered in for some sexy fish-based action, they’d drown. But then, one day, the hero of the story—Ulysses—figured out how to beat these temptresses. Before the ship approached the sirens’ stretch of sea, he got his crew members to tie him to the mast, hard, hand and foot. He couldn’t move. When he heard the “sirens, no matter how much Ulysses yearned to dive in, he couldn’t.

I chose Provincetown because I found it charming but not complex. If I had chosen (say) Bali, I know that I would have soon started trying to figure out how Balinese society worked, and begun interviewing people, and soon I would be back to my manic information-sucking. I wanted a pretty purgatory where I could decompress, and nothing more.

Twitter makes you feel that the whole world is obsessed with you and your little ego — it loves you, it hates you, it’s talking about you right now. The ocean makes you feel like the world is greeting you with a soft, wet, welcoming indifference. It’s never going to argue back, no matter how loud you yell.

I was struck again by a big difference — between standing in a group of strangers singing with them, and interacting with groups of strangers through screens. The first dissolves your sense of ego; the second jabs and pokes at it.

Sune and his team decided to analyze books that were written between the 1880s and the present day using a mathematical technique—the scientific term for it is “detecting n-grams”—that can spot the rise and fall of new phrases and topics in the text. It’s the equivalent of finding hashtags from the past. The computers could detect new phrases as they appear—think of, say, “the Harlem Renaissance,” or “no-deal Brexit”—and they could see how long they were discussed for, and how quickly they faded from discussion. It was a way of finding out how long the people who came before us talked about a fresh topic. How many weeks and months did it take for them to get bored and move on to the next thing? When they looked at the data, they found that the graph looked remarkably similar to Twitter’s. With each decade that passed, for more than 130 years, topics have come and gone faster and faster. When he saw the results, Sune told me, he thought: “Goddammit, it really is true…. Something is changing. It’s not just the same-old, same-old.” This was the first proof gathered anywhere in the world that our collective attention spans have been shrinking.

When people think they’re doing several things at once, they’re actually—as Earl explained—“juggling. They’re switching back and forth. They don’t notice the switching because their brain sort of papers it over, to give a seamless experience of consciousness, but what they’re actually doing is switching and reconfiguring their brain moment to moment, task to task—[and] that comes with a cost.

I felt like everywhere I went, I was surrounded by people who were broadcasting but not receiving. Narcissism, it occurred to me, is a corruption of attention — it’s where your attention becomes turned in only on yourself and your own ego.

He decided to become a psychologist, but it turned out there were no psychology degrees in Europe. He learned, though, that the subject existed in a distant country he had only seen in the movies: the United States.

Finally, after years of saving, he made it there—only to get a nasty shock when he arrived. American psychology was dominated by one big idea, epitomized by a famous scientist. A Harvard professor named B.F. Skinner had become an intellectual celebrity by discovering something strange. You can take an animal that seems to be freely making up its own mind about what to pay attention to—like a pigeon, or a rat, or a pig—and you can get it to pay attention to whatever you choose for it. You can control its focus, as surely as if it was a robot and you had created it to obey your whims. Here’s an example of how Skinner did it that you can try for yourself. Take a pigeon. Put it in a cage. Keep it until it is hungry. “Then introduce a bird feeder that releases seed into the cage when you push a button. Pigeons move around a lot—so wait until the pigeon makes a random movement that you have chosen in advance (like, say, jerking its head up high, or sticking out its left wing), and at that precise moment, release some pellets. Then wait for it to make the same random movement again, and give it more pellets.

If you do this a few times, the pigeon will quickly learn that if it wants pellets, it should carry out the random gesture you have chosen—and it will start to do it a lot. If you manipulate it correctly, its focus will come to be dominated by the twitch that you chose to reward. It will come to jerk up its head or stick out its left wing obsessively. When Skinner discovered this, he wanted to figure out how far you could take this. How elaborately can you program an animal using these reinforcements? He discovered you can take it really far. You can teach a pigeon to play ping-pong. You can teach a rabbit to pick up coins and put them into piggy banks. You can teach a pig to vacuum. Many animals will focus on very complex—and, to them, meaningless—things, if you reward them right.

Skinner became convinced that this principle explained human behavior almost in its entirety. You believe that you are free, and that you make choices, and you have a complex human mind that is selecting what to pay attention to—but it’s all a myth. You and your sense of focus are simply the sum total of all the reinforcements you have experienced in your life. Human beings, he believed, have no minds—not in the sense that you are a person with free will making your own choices. You can be reprogrammed in any way that a clever designer wants. Years later, the designers of Instagram asked: If we reinforce our users for taking selfies—if we give them hearts and likes—will they start to do it obsessively, just like the pigeon will obsessively hold out its left wing to get extra seed? They took Skinner’s core techniques, and applied them to a billion people.

Mihaly learned that these ideas ruled American psychology, and they were hugely influential in American society too. Skinner was a star, featured on the front page of Time magazine. He was so famous that by 1981, 82 percent of the American college-educated public could identify who he was.

To Mihaly, this seemed like a bleak and limited view of human psychology. It clearly yielded some results, but he believed it was missing most of what it means to be human. He decided he wanted to explore the aspects of human psychology that were positive, and nourishing, and generated something more than hollow mechanical responses. But there weren’t many people in American psychology that thought like this. To begin, he decided to study something that seemed to him to be one of the great achievements of human beings—the making of art. He had seen destruction; now it was time to study creation. So, in Chicago, he persuaded a group of painters to let him witness their process over many months, so he could try to figure out the underlying psychological processes that were driving the unusual kind of focus they had chosen to dedicate their lives to. He watched one artist after another focusing on a single image and attending to it with great care.

Mihaly was struck by one thing above all else—for the artist, when they were in the process of creation, time seemed to fall away. They almost appeared to be in a hypnotic trance. It was a deep form of attention that you rarely see elsewhere.

Then he noticed something puzzling. After investing all this time in creating their paintings, when they were finished, the artists didn’t triumphantly gaze at what they had made and show it off and seek out praise for it. Almost all of them simply put the painting away and started working on another one. If Skinner was right—that human beings do things just to gain rewards and avoid punishments—this made no sense. You’d done the work; now here’s the reward, right in front of you, for you to enjoy. But creative people seemed mostly uninterested in rewards; even money didn’t interest most of them. “When they finished,” Mihaly said to an interviewer later, “the object, the outcome was not important.”

“This disagreement seemed to me to lay the groundwork for one of the defining conflicts in the world today. We now live in a world dominated by technologies based on B.F. Skinner’s vision of how the human mind works. His insight—that you can train living creatures to desperately crave arbitrary rewards—has come to dominate our environment. Many of us are like those birds in cages being made to perform a bizarre dance to get rewards, and all the while we imagine we are “choosing it for ourselves—the men I saw in Provincetown obsessively posting selfies to Instagram started to look to me like Skinner’s pigeons with a six-pack and a piña colada. In a culture where our focus is stolen by these surface-level stimuli, Mihaly’s deeper insight has been forgotten: that we have within us a force that makes it possible to focus for long stretches and enjoy it, and it will make us happier and healthier, if only we create the right circumstances to let it flow.

Once I knew this, I understood why, when I felt constantly distracted, I didn’t just feel irritated — I felt diminished. We know, at some level, that when we are not focusing, we are not using one of our greatest capacities. Starved of flow, we become stumps of ourselves, sensing somewhere what we might have been.”

As you read fiction, you see inside other people’s experiences. That doesn’t vanish when you put down the novel. When you later meet a person in the real world, you’ll be better able to imagine what it’s like to be them. Reading a factual account may make you more knowledgeable, but it doesn’t have this empathy-expanding effect.

James Williams told me I had made a fundamental mistake in Provincetown. He was a senior Google strategist for many years, and he left, horrified, to go to Oxford University, to study human attention, and figure out what his colleagues in Silicon Valley have done to it. He told me a digital detox is “not the solution, for the same reason that wearing a gas mask for two days a week outside isn’t the answer to pollution. It might, for a short period of time, keep, at an individual level, certain effects at bay. But it’s not sustainable, and it doesn’t address the systemic issues.” He said our attention is being deeply altered by huge invasive forces in the wider society. Saying the solution is primarily to personally abstain is just “pushing it back onto the individual,” he said, when “it’s really the environmental changes that will really make the difference.”

With each month that passed, Tristan became more startled by the casualness with which the attention of a billion people was being corroded at Google and the other Big Tech companies. One day he would hear an engineer excitedly saying: “Why don’t we make it buzz your phone every time we get an email?” Everyone would be thrilled—and a few weeks later, all over the world, phones began to buzz in pockets, and more people found themselves looking at Gmail more times a day. The engineers were always looking for new ways to suck eyeballs onto their program and keep them there. Day after day, he would watch as engineers proposed more interruptions to people’s lives—more vibrations, more alerts, more tricks—and they would be congratulated.”

But whenever he came up with a specific proposal for how Google’s own products could be less interrupting and presented it to people above him, he was told, in effect: “This is hard, it’s confusing, and it’s often at odds with our bottom line.” Tristan realized he was bumping up against a core contradiction. The more people stared at their phones, the more money these companies made. Period. The people in Silicon Valley did not want to design “gadgets and websites that would dissolve people’s attention spans. They’re not the Joker, trying to sow chaos and make us dumb. They spend a lot of their own time meditating and doing yoga. They often ban their own kids from using the sites and gadgets they design, and send them instead to tech-free Montessori schools. But their business model can only succeed if they take steps to dominate the attention spans of the wider society. It’s not their goal, any more than ExxonMobil deliberately wants to melt the Arctic. But it’s an inescapable effect of their current business model.

You probably haven’t heard of Aza Raskin, but he has directly intervened in your life. He will, in fact, probably affect how you spend your time today. Aza grew up in the most elite sliver of Silicon Valley, at the height of its confidence that it was making the world better. His dad was Jef Raskin, the man who invented the Apple Macintosh for Steve Jobs, and he built it around one core principle: that the user’s attention is sacred. The job of technology, Jef believed, was to lift people up and make it possible to achieve their higher goals. He taught his son: “What is technology for? Why do we even make technology? We make technology because it takes the parts of us that are most human and it extends them. That’s what a paintbrush is. That’s what a cello is. That’s what language is. These are technologies that extend some part of us. Technology is not about making us superhuman. It’s about making us extra-human.

Aza became a precocious young coder, and he gave his first talk about user interfaces when he was ten years old. By the time he was in his early twenties, he was at the forefront of designing some of the first internet browsers, and he was the creative lead on Firefox. As part of this work, he designed something that distinctly changed how the web works. It’s called “infinite scroll.” Older readers will remember that it used to be that the internet was divided into pages, and when you got to the bottom of one page, you had to decide to click a button to get to the next page. It was an active choice. It gave you a moment to pause and ask: Do I want to carry on looking at this? Aza designed the code that means you don’t have to ask that question anymore. Imagine you open Facebook. It downloads a chunk of status updates for you to read through. You scroll down through it, flicking your finger—and when you get to the bottom, it will automatically load another chunk for you to flick through. When you get to the bottom of that, it will automatically load another chunk, and another, and another, forever. You can never exhaust it. It will scroll infinitely.

“Aza explained it to me by saying that I should imagine that “inside of Facebook’s servers, inside of Google’s servers, there is a little voodoo doll, [and it is] a model of you. It starts by not looking much like you. It’s sort of a generic model of a human. But then they’re collecting your click trails [i.e., everything you click on], and your toenail clippings, and your hair droppings [i.e., everything you search for, every little detail of your life online]. They’re reassembling all that metadata you don’t really think is meaningful, so that doll looks more and more like you. [Then] when you show up on [for example] YouTube, they’re waking up that doll, and they’re testing out hundreds of thousands of videos against this doll, seeing what makes its arm twitch and move, so they know it’s effective, and then they serve that to you.

Raull decided he couldn’t just watch his friends being killed one by one—so, as the years passed, he decided to do something bold. He set up a Facebook page named Coletivo Papo Reto, which gathered cellphone footage from across Brazil of the police killing innocent people and planting drugs or guns on them. It became huge, their videos regularly going viral. Even some people who had defended the police began to see their real behavior and oppose it. It was an inspiring story about how the internet made it possible for people who have been treated like third-class citizens to find a voice, and to mobilize and fight back.

But at the same time as the web was having this positive effect, the social-media algorithms were having the opposite effect—they were supercharging anti-democratic forces in Brazil. A former military officer named Jair Bolsonaro had been a marginal figure for years. He was way outside the mainstream because he kept saying vile things and attacking large parts of the population in extreme ways. He praised people who had carried out torture against innocent people when Brazil was a dictatorship. “He told his female colleagues in the senate that they were so ugly he wouldn’t bother raping them, and that they weren’t “worthy” of it. He said he would rather learn his son was dead than learn his son was gay. Then YouTube and Facebook became one of the main ways people in Brazil got their news. Their algorithms prioritized angry, outrageous content—and Bolsonaro’s reach dramatically surged. He became a social-media star. He ran for president openly attacking people like the residents of Alemão, saying the country’s poorer, blacker citizens “are not even good for breeding,” and should “go back to the zoo.” He promised to give the police even more power to launch intensified military attacks on the favelas — a license for wholesale slaughter.

Here was a society with huge problems that urgently needed to be solved—but social-media algorithms were promoting far-right-wingers and wild disinformation. In the run-up to the election, in favelas like Alemão, many people were deeply worried about a story that had been circulating online. Supporters of Bolsonaro had created a video warning that his main rival, Fernando Haddad, wanted to turn all the children of Brazil into homosexuals, and that he had developed a cunning technique to do it. The video showed a baby sucking a bottle, only there was something peculiar about it—the teat of the bottle had been painted to look like a penis. This, the story that circulated said, is what Haddad will distribute to every kindergarten in Brazil. This became one of the most-shared news stories in the entire election. People in the favelas explained indignantly that they couldn’t possibly vote for somebody who wanted to get babies to suck these penis-teats, and so they would have to vote for Bolsonaro instead. On these algorithm-pumped absurdities, the fate of the whole country turned.

Tristan and Aza started to believe that all these effects, when you add them together, are producing a kind of “human downgrading.” Aza said: “I think we’re in the process of reverse-engineering ourselves. [We discovered a way to] open up the human skull, find the strings that control us, and start pulling on our own marionette strings. Once you do that, an accidental jerk in one direction causes your arm to jerk further, which pulls your marionette string farther…. That’s the era that we’re headed into now.” Tristan believes that what we are seeing is “the collective downgrading of humans and the upgrading of machines.” We are becoming less rational, less intelligent, less focused.

I understood my growing discomfort with Nir’s approach more fully when I talked it over with several other people. One was Ronald Purser, who is professor of management at San Francisco State University. He introduced me to an idea I hadn’t heard before—a concept named “cruel optimism.” This is when you take a really big problem with deep causes in our culture—like obesity, or depression, or addiction—and you offer people, in upbeat language, a simplistic individual solution. It sounds optimistic, because you are telling them that the problem can be solved, and soon—but it is, in fact, cruel, because the solution you are offering is so limited, and so blind to the deeper causes, that for most people, it will fail.

Using the same model, our governments could acknowledge that social media is now an essential public utility, and explain that when it is run according to the wrong incentives, it causes the psychological equivalents of cholera outbreaks. It would be a bad idea for the government to run it—it’s easy to imagine how authoritarian leaders could abuse that. Fortunately, there’s a better option: you can have public ownership, independent of the government. In Britain, the BBC is owned and funded by the British public, and it is run in the interests of the British public—but its day-to-day running is independent of the government. It’s not perfect, but this model works so well that it is the most respected media organization in the world.

After carefully analyzing all the options, Facebook’s scientists concluded there was one solution: they said Facebook would have to abandon its current business model. Because their growth was so tied up with toxic outcomes, the company should abandon attempts at growth. The only way out was for the company to adopt a strategy that was “anti-growth”—deliberately shrink, and choose to be a less wealthy company that wasn’t wrecking the world.

I realized that if Facebook won’t stop promoting fascism—promoting Nazism in Germany—they will never care about protecting your focus and attention. These companies will never restrain themselves. The risks of letting them continue behaving the way they have are greater than the risks of overreacting. They have to be stopped. They have to be stopped by us.

“Many of us have built our identities around working to the point of exhaustion. We call this success. In a culture built on ever-increasing speed, slowing down is hard, and most of us will feel guilty about doing it. That’s one reason why it’s important we all do it together—as a societal, structural change.

From that point on, Nicholas began to believe you could solve the problems of many animals by responding to them in ways that, until then, had only been applied to humans. For example, he was consulted by the Calgary Zoo about a polar bear that was endlessly pacing, and he recommended giving it a massive dose of Prozac. It stopped pacing and began to sit docilely in its cage. Today, thanks in part to Nicholas’s shift in perspective, there are parrots on Xanax and Valium, there are many species from chickens to walruses being given antipsychotics, and there are cats on Prozac. One of the staff at the Toledo Zoo told a reporter that psychiatric drugs are “definitely a wonderful management tool, and that’s how we look at them. To be able to just take the edge off puts us a little more at ease.” Nearly half of all zoos in the U.S. now admit to giving psychiatric drugs to their animals, and 50 to 60 percent of the owners who come to Nicholas’s clinic are seeking psychiatric meds for their pets. At times, it sounds like One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest for actual cuckoos.

“I was so confused by your book,” a woman in Dallas said. “There were all these strands, narratively speaking, all these characters, and I felt like I was waiting for them to connect, but they didn’t, ultimately. The book just ended. I was like”—she was some distance away, in the darkened audience, but Olive saw that she was miming flipping through a book and running out of pages—“I was just like, *Huh*? *Is the book missing pages*? It just *ended*.”

“Okay,” Olive said. “So just to clarify, your question is…”

“I was just, like, *what*,” the woman said. “My question is just…” She spread her hands, like *help me out here, I’ve run out of words*

“Is this your first time staying with us?” a woman at a reception desk for the third or fourth hotel said to her, and Olive wasn’t sure how to answer, because if you’ve stayed in one Marriott, haven’t you stayed in all of them?

“In the city of Seleucia,” Olive told a crowd at the Mercantile Library in Cincinnati, a day or two later, “the Roman army had destroyed the temple of Apollo. In that temple, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus wrote, Roman soldiers had discovered a narrow crevice. When the Romans opened this hole wider, in the hope that it might contain valuables, Marcellinus wrote that there ‘issued a pestilence, loaded with the force of incurable disease, which…polluted the whole world from the borders of Persia to the Rhine and Gaul with contagion and death.’ ”

A beat. A sip of water. Pacing is everything.

“This explanation might seem a little silly to us now, but they were grasping wildly for an explanation for the nightmare that had befallen them, and I think that in its outlandishness, the explanation touches upon the root of our fear: illness still carries a terrible mystery.”

The library director nodded, her eyes wandering. She clearly didn’t want to talk about pandemics. “Let me tell you something magnificent about this place,” she said.

“Oh, please do,” Olive said. “It’s been a while since anyone’s told me anything magnificent.”

“So we don’t own the building,” the director said, “but we hold a ten-thousand-year lease on the space.”

“You’re right. That’s magnificent.”

“Nineteenth-century hubris. Imagine thinking civilization would still exist in ten thousand years. But there’s more.” She leaned forward, paused for effect. “The lease is renewable.”

“Well, some of us don’t have doctorates in literature, Jim,” Jessica said to the interviewer, in response to some imperceptible provocation. The look on his face mirrored Olive’s thought at that moment: Well, that escalated quickly. But a man in the audience was standing up with a question about Marienbad. Almost all of the questions were about Marienbad, which was awkward because Jessica was there too, Jessica with her book about coming of age in the moon colonies. Olive was pretending that she hadn’t read Moon/Rise, because she’d hated it. Olive had lived the real thing, and it wasn’t nearly as poetic as Jessica’s book suggested. Growing up in a moon colony was fine. It was neither great nor dystopian. It was a little house in a pleasant neighborhood of tree-lined streets, a good but not extraordinary public school, life lived at a consistent 15° to 22° Celsius under carefully calibrated dome lighting, scheduled rainfalls. She didn’t grow up longing for Earth or experience her life as a continual displacement, thank you.

“You know the phrase I keep thinking about?” a poet asked, on a different panel, at a festival in Copenhagen. “ ‘The chickens are coming home to roost.’ Because it’s never good chickens. It’s never ‘You’ve been a good person and now your chickens are coming home to roost.’ It’s never good chickens. It’s always bad chickens.”

Scattered laughter and applause. A man in the audience was having a coughing fit. He left quickly, bent over in an apologetic way. Olive wrote no good chickens in the margin of her festival program.

No star burns forever. You can say “It’s the end of the world” and mean it, but what gets lost in that kind of careless usage is that the world will eventually literally end. Not “civilization,” whatever that is, but the actual planet.

Which is not to say that those smaller endings aren’t annihilating. A year before I began my training at the Time Institute, I went to a dinner party at my friend Ephrem’s place. He was just back from a vacation on Earth, and he had a story about going on a walk in a cemetery with his daughter, Meiying, who was four at the time. Ephrem was an arborist. He liked to go to old cemeteries to look at the trees. But then they found the grave of another four-year-old girl, Ephrem told me, and he just wanted to leave after that. He was used to graveyards, he sought them out, he’d always said he didn’t find them depressing, just peaceful, but that one grave just got to him. He looked at it and was unbearably sad. Also it was the worst kind of Earth summer day, impossibly humid, and he felt like he couldn’t get enough air. The drone of the cicadas was oppressive. Sweat ran down his back. He told his daughter it was time to go, but she lingered by the gravestone for a moment.

“If her parents loved her,” Meiying said, “it would have felt like the end of the world.”

It was such an eerily astute observation, Ephrem told me, that he stood there staring at her and found himself thinking, Where did you come from? They got out of the cemetery with difficulty—“She had to stop and inspect every goddamn flower and pinecone,” he said—and never went back.

Those are the worlds that end in our day-to-day lives, these stopped children, these annihilating losses, but at the end of Earth there will be actual, literal annihilation, hence the colonies. The first colony on the moon was intended as a prototype, a practice run for establishing a presence in other solar systems in the coming centuries. “Because we’ll have to,” the president of China said, at the press conference where construction on the first colony was announced, “eventually, whether we want to or not, unless we want all of human history and achievement to get sucked into a supernova a few million years down the line.”

“The job requires an almost inhuman level of detachment,” she said finally. “Did I say almost? Not almost inhuman, actually inhuman.”

“As is the Time Institute. The premier research university on the moon, possessor of the only working time machine in existence, intimately enmeshed in government and in law enforcement. Even one of those things would imply a formidable bureaucracy, don’t you think? What you have to understand is that bureaucracy is an organism, and the prime goal of every organism is self-protection. Bureaucracy exists to protect itself.” She was gazing across the river again. “We lived on the third floor,” she said, pointing. “The balcony with the vines and rosebushes.”

Sometimes in the garden, he liked to talk to Gilbert, although Gilbert was dead. Gilbert and Niall had both died in the Battle of the Somme, a day apart, while Edwin had survived Passchendaele. No, survived was the wrong word. Edwin’s animate body had returned from Passchendaele. He thought of his body now in strictly mechanical terms. His heart flapped deathlessly. He continued to breathe. He was in good physical health, except for the missing foot, but he was fundamentally unsound. It was difficult to be alive in the world.

Edwin’s gaze drifted away from the man’s face, to the mild decrepitude of the September garden. The salvias were bare now, for the most part, brown stalks and dried leaves, a few last blooms wisping blue and violet in the failing light. He was struck by an understanding of what his life could be from this moment: he could live here quietly, and care for the garden, and that might eventually be enough.

“That’s fair.” Gaspery felt a little unhinged. “I’m sorry,” he said to Zoey. “I’m sorry I tricked you.” But she was already being escorted from the room, the door closing behind her.

“You tricked her?” Ephrem asked.

“I told her I was going to 1918 as part of the investigation. I was really there to try to save Edwin St. Andrew from dying in an insane asylum.”

“Seriously, Gaspery? Yet another crime? Does someone have an updated bio?”

Aretta was frowning at her device. “Updated bio,” she said. “Thirty-five days after Gaspery’s visit, Edwin St. Andrew died in the 1918 flu pandemic.”

“Isn’t that the same bio?” Ephrem reached for her device, read for a moment, then handed it back with a sigh. “If you hadn’t changed the time line,” he said to Gaspery, “he still would’ve died of the flu, just forty-eight hours later and in an insane asylum. You see how pointless that was?”

“You’re missing the point,” Gaspery said.

“That’s very possible.” Were there tears in Ephrem’s eyes? He looked tired and strained. A man who’d preferred being an arborist; a man in a difficult position, doing a difficult job. “Is there anything you’d like to say?”

“Are we at last words already, Ephrem?”

“Well, last words in this century,” Ephrem said. “Last words on the moon. I’m afraid you’ll be traveling some distance and not returning.”

“Can you take care of my cat?” Gaspery asked.

Ephrem blinked.

“Yes, Gaspery, I’ll take care of your cat.”

“Thank you.”

“Is there anything else?”

“I’d do it again,” Gaspery said. “I wouldn’t even hesitate.”

Ephrem sighed. “Good to know.” He’d been holding a glass bottle behind his back. He raised it now, and misted something in Gaspery’s face. There was a sweet scent, a dimming of the lights, then Gaspery’s legs were giving way—

“—which is to say I’ve had the opportunity to speak with a great many people about postapocalyptic literature. I’ve heard a great many theories about why there’s such interest in the genre. One person suggested to me that it had to do with economic inequality, that in a world that can seem fundamentally unfair, perhaps we long to just blow everything up and start over and I’m not sure I agree with that, but it’s an intriguing thought.” The holograms shifted and stared. She liked the idea that she could still hold a room, even if now the room was just in the holospace, even if the room wasn’t really a room. “Someone suggested to me that it has to do with a secret longing for heroism, which I found interesting. Perhaps we believe on some level that if the world were to end and be remade, if some unthinkable catastrophe were to occur, then perhaps we might be remade too, perhaps into better, more heroic, more honorable people. Some people have suggested to me that it’s about the catastrophes on Earth, the decision to build domes over countless cities, the tragedy of being forced to abandon entire countries due to rising water or rising heat, but that doesn’t ring true to me. Our anxiety is warranted, and it’s not unreasonable to suggest that we might channel that anxiety into fiction, but the problem with that theory is, our anxiety is nothing new. When have we ever believed that the world wasn’t ending?

“I had a fascinating conversation with my mother once, where she talked about the guilt she and her friends had felt about bringing children into the universe. This was in the mid-2160s, in Colony Two. It’s hard to imagine a more tranquil time or place, but they were concerned about asteroid storms, and if life on the moon became untenable, about the continued viability of life on Earth and my point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world. “But all of this raises an interesting question,” Olive said. “What if it always is the end of the world?” “Because we might reasonably think of the end of the world,” Olive said, “as a continuous and never-ending process.””

Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreign-ness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.

I don’t think there’s a game that embraces and satirizes America’s sentimental mongrel spirit better than EarthBound.

Market pressures majorly shaped the Super Nintendo’s precursor, the Nintendo Entertainment System, which was designed to look like VCRs in an attempt to distance itself from the catastrophic North American video game crash of 1983 (known in Japan as the “Atari shock”). In just two years video game revenues dropped nearly 97%. The structural evolution of gaming consoles, then, is not as linear as the march of Moore’s law (i.e. the observation that computational power—via the increasing number of transistors on integrated circuits—doubles every two-to-three years); consoles have oscillated between geometric slot-full bricks and sleek sportscar-esque parabolas, molded by the projected desires of millions of young humans.

If EarthBound is the hospitable Milky Way, Mother is the experimental Big Bang.

If you’d like to experience EarthBound directly and unspoiled, go play it on a Wii U or shell out $200+ for the SNES cartridge. Or there are ROMs and emulators. You can learn a great deal about yourself while doing something illegal.

Shigesato Itoi’s experience in the cinema, then — similarly dark and magical by dint of cavernous space and projected light—was honored by EarthBound. And while both video game creators’ experiences had to be severely simplified to become produceable, these products contain considerations totally absent in the impartiality of nature.

EarthBound reminds me of Pixar’s movies, in that it’s built to please kids and adults while strongly presenting the idea that kids — in their ability to trust each other, have faith, and be fearless — can be as heroic as their elders. And like most Pixar films — I’m thinking of the moment here where the toys in Toy Story 3 join hands in the face of death — EarthBound allows itself to be deeply mature. Mature, but simple. The game’s got a Zen master goofiness to it. Like a dedicated monk, it’s minimal with its mechanics (its action) and its graphics (its appearance). Some of the sillier Zen koans would be right at home among EarthBound’s dialogue. One of my favorites: A monk asked Tōzan, “What is Buddha?” Tōzan replied, “Masagin!” [three pounds of flax]

Once again, a nascent inquiry holds the slingshot, but it faces the looming, agile goliath of subjectivity.

If the hope of progress is an illusion, how – it will be asked – are we to live? Th e question assumes that humans can live well only if they believe they have the power to remake the world. Yet most humans who have ever lived have not believed this – and a great many have had happy lives. The question assumes the aim of life is action; but this is a modern heresy. For Plato contemplation was the highest form of human activity. A similar view existed in ancient India. The aim of life was not to change the world. It was to see it rightly.” Or as Heraclitus put it: Time is a game played beautifully by children. I’ve experienced EarthBound unbidden. Now I want to see EarthBound rightly.

Touring performers being treated like shit is a recurring joke in the game, and encountering this for the first time as an adult who has worked as a professional entertainer makes me laugh. And so does Onett’s mayor, B. H. Pirkle, after delivering a few lines that would be right at home in The Wire: “For someone as great as you, giving you the key could help keep the town peaceful. However, if you encounter a dangerous situation, please don’t ask me to take any responsibility. I’ll be able to avoid any responsibility, right?”

The protective nerd in me wants to say that TV tropes is a symptom of humanity’s desire to make encyclopedic the things it should keep sacred. If you play EarthBound fresh — without your critic hat on — and you win the lottery of aesthetic wonder, why risk irrevocably dissipating it with analysis? Because my drive to see EarthBound as deeply as I can is greater than my comfort with simply enjoying it. Simply put: Because I can’t help myself.

The word nostalgia first appeared in a Swiss medical dissertation published in 1668, but the concept is ancient. While held captive on Calypso’s island, Odysseus sits still on a rock and weeps, thinking of Ithaca. And, providing earlier evidence of archaic religion’s yearning for return, Mircea Eliade argues that the central drive of homo religiosus is to reenact the creation of the universe; that all ancient religious rituals are stagings of the sacred moment of birth, or replays of mythical stories and adventures. So this yearning for a different quality of time—both dreamlike and sacred — is as old as Neanderthals. Yearning isn’t absent from the secular. As Eliade also shows in The Sacred and The Profane, the secular person still behaves in the grooves formed by religion. Which I’ll personally cop to—our earliest myths were mimetic (you repaired your canoe because the gods repaired their canoe; you ate human flesh because the gods, unfortunately, ate human flesh) — because even though I don’t consider myself religious, I find myself repeating the same stories over and over again. I’ll watch a familiar movie to cheer myself up. I’ll listen to Earthbound - the same song ten times in a row. I eat the same food because it’s familiar, it’s pleasurable. I keep routines, even if I don’t call them sacred. And I’m replaying an old video game. A video game that allows me — via my patient, unblinking avatar — to save the world. To make the world anew.

Stuff like this means nothing or it means everything. We’re set amid these billion instances and we connect some if we’re lucky.

“Game translations almost NEVER got this much careful treatment; just like Square’s RPGs from the time, EarthBound was one of the earliest text-heavy console games to be given a truly serious, competent, and enjoyable localization.”

EarthBound feels bigger, maybe only because of the wider temporal boundaries that video games provide.

24 megabits — the largest storage capacity for Super Nintendo cartridges — is equivalent to just 3 megabytes. Or we can look at the game this way: Since 1 megabit = 1,000,000 bits, the entire world of EarthBound is manifested by 24,000,000 binary decisions. To be able to casually interact with entertainment that complex and laborious still blows my mind, and deeper still when I remember that I was doing it as a kid, innocent of any given product’s measure and human cost;

I played EarthBound the first time without dwelling on the real-life tragedies that made the game’s colorful kidnappings stick in my throat, without knowing that play only has gravity because of the danger it softly mimics. But now I’m able to plumb the decade that contained my childhood more impartially. I can see the latent unresolvable horrors that exist alongside me, waiting to be discovered by curious adults or people just doing their jobs. * More young American girls who were lost but became free again: Carlina White, Katie Beers, Jaycee Dugard, Elizabeth Smart, Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry. Rescued by suspicion, accident, or self-inquiry. You get to rescue Paula from a cult that worships the color blue. *

When we give ourselves over to someone or something — a partner, a school, a cult, or a color — we do so out of the feeling that we’ve found a perfectly inevitable opportunity. For all our claims of agency, some circumstances feel so ripe as to feel impossible not to pluck and eat.

“nearly everything that is most important in our lives is unchosen. The time and place we are born, our parents, the first language we speak – these are chance, not choice. It is the causal drift of things that shapes our most fateful relationships. The life of each of us is a chapter of accidents.”

EarthBound tends to feel like a salve more often than an abrasive. Considered among the other media I gleaned before I lost the grace of a kid’s self-unconsciousness, EarthBound stands out as feeling continually kind and reassuring. In this way, it is like a good parent.

“Yes, like a caregiver. Someone who doesn’t say or do anything to interfere – just watches from afar. In one sense, I think that might be the ideal image of a parent. “I absolutely love the Pippi Longstocking stories. In them, her father is gone. He’s a sailor who’s gone missing. Despite that, Pippi is really strong and full of life. Her father’s absence isn’t used as a way to give the reader sadness to indulge in; instead, it’s simply given as a fact of life as the story continues forward. “I think that might be the same thing here. That’s why, looking back at the Mother series, I feel like I had a reason for making Mother 1 through 3. But now my kid is all grown up.”

EarthBound’s enemies are randomly generated, so if you find an upcoming area filled with baddies you’d rather avoid, you can walk away and then come back to a hopefully less threatening number of on-screen enemies. Game designer Michel McBride-Charpentier beautifully notices: “It recently occurred to me that my little maneuvers used to exploit a “bug” reflected the hesitation Ness must feel. A few steps forward, run away, gather courage, approach again, and yes, it turns out the enemies weren’t so bad after all. We can both go on.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: “The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”

I was raised to feel like an impostor among the rich because my family was middle class and they therefore healthily distrusted the wealthy.

Starched Prick was now constantly muttering. Loudly. He started shouting at the porter in clipped, whiny ejections, the kind that come from a creature ossified into a sort of immovable fuckwad exoskeleton by years of money and privilege.

Rich humans are humans still, but they’re humans who can freely use the most powerful tool in human history: a surplus of money. Tools impartially magnify our powers, which means they magnify our cruelty just as well as our magnanimity.

Lumine Hall, to me, reminds me of all the hidden potential in a healthy child. Even if a child’s parents are poor or geographically stranded, a child can live within an imaginative realm of transformation and experience, all shifting with and within his or her whims, morphing in and out of fantasy at the speed of thought. I marvel at the distance that a kid’s mind can cover, navigating such disparate and promising realms. EarthBound, like all good art, can work as a sieve. The child’s rough, unlimited desires can reach a finer grain with its help. EarthBound, in its thematic width and variety, and in its emotional openness and honesty, forms a uniquely powerful shape that you or I can fill with our attention and further fantasy. Like Lumine Hall, the game is a sanctuary in which you can see yourself connected to and reflected by its simple structure.

“Everyone would get together to watch shows like Lucy, Gunsmoke, Flipper, The Beverly Hillbillies and Twilight Zone. That was our picture of America—Father Knows Best and Leave It To Beaver. I love to think of America as a place like that.”

EarthBound’s gentle idealism, though honest in its depiction of the spread of evil, could only have been born out of a rosy reading of a distant culture. The manicured lawns, well-paid jobs, and respectful proms of America were girded with the post-war spoils of World War II’s productive boom. America, in the wake of such a massive, global atrocity, looked like a peaceful place. It’s easy to see how Itoi could admire it, especially the carefully constructed fantasy of America presented on television—a fantasy built by writers ultimately paid to stoke the viewer’s desire to consume, a desire that Itoi grew up to stoke professionally and profit greatly by doing so.

Please:

Close your eyes and ask for help.

I know this may feel silly, but it doesn’t have to. As someone alive only because of a confluence of circumstances so singular and complex that it is impossible to understand, do you think it silly to acknowledge that union? With your mind? Your voice? And if you don’t find it silly, then why not speak to that fate in a humble way?

You can ask for help from the god you worship. You can ask if you’re unable to name one at all. You can ask without expecting an answer. You can ask solely to know that you are wounded and that you are here.

Ask for your safety, for your victories, for forgiveness, empathy, and understanding. Ask for help, for order, for life. Ask for the world to thrive without you. Ask to be given access to old graces, and ask to be able to make new ones.

Please:

I will do it with you: Let’s close our eyes and ask.

EarthBound’s grandest act is self-transcendence. As Ness, you must give up the comforting regularity of your childhood to save humanity. But to do so, you need the help of three friends. Paula leaves the bubble of her local popularity as a gifted child in order to accompany Ness, a fellow psychic who saves her from captivity. Paula and Ness are then trapped and must rely on a physically transcendent plea for help to reach Jeff, who has pursued scientific excellence in lieu of a normal childhood’s free play since he was a little boy. And then comes Poo, who must transcend the most basic human desire—self-preservation—to fully realize his powers and join you. Together you face a Giygas, the ultimate schizophrenic evil, but not before having your very beings separated from your bodies and inserted into makeshift shells. In the final confrontation, it does not matter how powerful you are; again you are left with no other option but to ask for help from your family, your friends, strangers, and, finally, you, the unseen player. It takes a multitude in prayer to defeat Giygas. The challenge finally over, you return to your bodies and can explore the world in solemnity.

The game’s last act — the last event that you can enact with a press of a button—is sitting down with your mother and showing her photographs of your journey. Transcendence by way of storytelling.

The person who passed away has to be in all sorts of different people’s memories.

What they’ve done, how stupid they were, what kind of things they did for fun,

and how kind that person was sometimes.

All the people who are still alive are laughing, wanting to be the first one to bring up those things to everyone around them.

The life I want to live is something that can be concluded with that kind of a party-like wake.

Fame and fortune, setting records and accomplishments are all meaningless.

That person is inside those stories that are told,

where people talk about their episodes, casually and sincerely.

Well, it’s not dead, and it’s not even human,

but to me Earthbound is a game that’s kind of like that guy.

EarthBound isn’t just an incredible memory from my childhood, and it’s not only a strong wellspring for my nostalgia; EarthBound is a game made whole by its jokes and its peacefulness, by its references and poignancies, and by its lessons, challenges, and thrills. It is made completely alive by its variety and its familiarity. EarthBound feels like family, too.

If poetas are the unacknowledges legislators of the world, science-fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the graish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless.

And SF writers have every opportunity to kick up our heels -- we have influence without responsibility. Very few feel obliged to take us seriously, yet out ideas permeate the culture, bubbling along invisibly, like background radiation.

Gibson's extrapolative techniques are those of classic hard SF, but his demonstration of them is pure New-Wave. Rather than the usual passionless techies and rock-ribbed Competent Men of hard SF, his characters are a pirate's crew of losers, hustlers, spin-offs, castoffs, and lunatics. We see his future from the belly up, as if it is lived, not merely as dry speculation.

If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness. I'd had to turn both those twelve-guage shells from brass stock, on lathe, and then load them myself; I'd had to dig up an old microfiche with instructions for hand loading cartridges; I'd had to build a lever-action press to seat the primers -- all very tricky. But I knew they'd work.

The concrete walls were overlaid with graffiti, years of them twisting into a single matascrawl of rage and frustration.

I held the useless shotgun under my jacket. Its hardness and heft were comforting, even though I had no more shells. And it came ot me that I had no idea all of what was really happening, or of what was supposed to happen. And that was the nature of my game, because I'd spent most of my life as a blind receptacle to be filled with other people's knowledge and then drained, spouting synthetic languages I'd never understand. A very technical boy. Sure.

I decided to stay up here. When I looked out across the Killing Floor, before he came, I saw how hollow I was. And I knew I was sick of being a bucket. So now I climb down and visit Jones, almost every night.

We're partners now, Jones and I, and Molly Millions, too. Molly handles our business in the Drome. Jones is still in Funland, but he has a bigger tank, with fresh seawater trucked in once a week. And he has his junk, when he needs it. He still talks to the kids with his frame of lights, but he talks to me on a new display unit in a shed that I rent there, a better unit than the one he used in the navy.

And we're all making good money, better money than I made before, because Jone's Squid can read the traces of anything that anyone ever stored in me, and he gives it to me on the display unit in languages I can understand. So we're learning a lot about all my former clients. And one day I'll have a surgeon dig all the silicon out of my amygdalae, and I'll live with my own memories and nobody else's, the way other people do. But not for a while.

In the meantime it's really okay up here, way up in the dark, smoking a Chinese filter tip and listening to the condensation that drips from the geodesics. Real quiet up here -- unless a pair of Lo Teks decide to dance on the Killing Floor.

It's educational, too. With Jones to help me figure things out, I'm getting to be the most technical boy in town.

The Thirties had seen the first generation of American industrial designers; until the Thirties, all pencil sharpeners had looked like pencil sharpeners your basic Victorian mechanism, perhaps with a curlicue of decorative trim. After the advent of the designers, some pencil sharpeners looked as though they’d been put together in wind tunnels. For the most part, the change was only skin-deep; under the streamlined chrome shell, you’d find the same Victorian mechanism. Which made a certain kind of sense, because the most successful American designers had been recruited from the ranks of Broadway theater designers. It was all a stage set, a series of elaborate props for playing at living in the future.

I decided to go to sleep, with nothing worse to worry about than rattle-snakes and cannibal hippies, safe amid the friendly roadside garbage of my own familiar continuum. In the morning I’d drive down to Nogales and photograph the old brothels, something I’d intended to do for years. The diet pill had given up.

They were the children of Dialta Downes’s ‘80-that-wasn’t; they were Heirs to the Dream. They were white, blond, and they probably had blue eyes. They were American. Dialta had said that the Future had come to America first, but had finally passed it by. But not here, in the heart of the Dream. Here, we’d gone on and on, in a dream logic that knew nothing of pollution, the finite bounds of fossil fuel, or foreign wars it was possible to lose. They were smug, happy, and utterly content with themselves and their world. And in the Dream, it was their world.

Quit yelling and listen to me. I’m letting you in on a trade secret: Really bad media can exorcise your semiotic ghosts. If it keeps the saucer people off my back, it can keep these Art Deco futuroids off yours. Try it. What have you got to lose?

Parker lies in darkness, recalling the thousand fragments of the hologram rose. A hologram has this quality: Recovered and illuminated, each fragment will reveal the whole image of the rose. Falling toward delta, he sees himself the rose, each of his scattered fragments revealing a whole he’ll never know stolen credit cards a burned-out suburb planetary conjunctions of a stranger a tank burning on a highway a flat packet of drugs a switchblade honed on concrete, thin as pain.

If the chaos of the nineties reflects a radical shift in the paradigms of visual literacy, the final shift away from the Lascaux/Gutenberg tradition of a pre-holographic society, what should we expect from this newer technology, with his promise of discrete encoding and subsequent reconstruction of the full range of sensory perception?

Parker lies in darkness, recalling the thousand fragments of the hologram rose. A hologram has this quality: Recovered and illuminated, each fragment will reveal the whole image of the rose. Falling toward delta, he sees himself the rose, each of his scattered fragments revealing a whole he’ll never know stolen credit cards a burned-out suburb planetary conjunctions of a stranger a tank burning on a highway a flat packet of drugs a switchblade honed on concrete, thin as pain.

Coretti had never been in a disco before; he found himself in an environment designed for complete satisfaction-in-distraction. He waded nervously through the motion and the fashions and the mechanical urban chants booming from the huge speakers. He sought her almost blindly on the pose-clotted dance floor, amid strobe lights.

And for the first time, Coretti knew what they were, what they must be. They were the kind you see in bars who seem to have grown there, who seem genuinely at home there. Not drunks, but human fixtures. Functions of the bar. The belonging kind.

Perhaps they were like house mice, the sort of small animal evolved to live only in the walls of man-made structures.

Even now, knowing what I know, I still want to go. I never will. But we can swing here in this dark that towers way above us, Charmian’s hand in mind. Between our palms the drug’s torn foil wrapper. And Saint Olga smiles out at us from the walls; you can feel her, all those prints from the same publicity shot, torn and taped across the walls of night, her white smile, forever.

Tell them . . . and every cliche came rushing to him with an absolute rightness that made him want to laugh hysterically: One small step . . . We came in peace . . . Workers of the world.... You must tell them that I need it, he said, pinching his shrunken wrist, in my very bones.

“But why?" Korolev shook his head, deeply con-fused. "Why have you come?" "We told you. To live here. We can enlarge this thing, maybe build more. They said we’d never make it living in the balloons, but we were the only ones who could make them work. It was our one chance to get out here on our own. Who’d want to live out here for the sake of some government, some army brass, a bunch of pen pushers? You have to want a frontier want it in your bones, right?" Korolev smiled. Andy grinned back. "We grabbed those power cables and just pulled ourselves straight up. And when you get to the top, well, man, you either make that big jump or else you rot there." His voice rose. "And you don’t look back, no sir! We’ve made that jump, and we’re here to stay!”

“It rains a lot, up here; there are winter days when it doesn’t really get light at all, only a bright, indeterinmate gray. But then there are days when it’s like they whip aside a curtain to flash you three minutes of sun-lit, suspended mountain, the trademark at the start of God’s own movie. It was like that the day her agents phoned, from deep in the heart of their mirrored pyramid on Beverly Boulevard, to tell me she’d merged with the net, crossed over for good, that Kings of Sleep was going triple-platinum. I’d edited most of Kings, done the brain-map work and gone over it all with the fast-wipe module, so I was in line for a share of royalties.”

“ It was one of those nights, I quickly decided, when you slip into an alternate continuum, a city that looks exactly like the one where you live, except for the peculiar difference that it contains not one person you love or know or have even spoken to before. Nights like that, you can go into a familiar bar and find that the staff has just been replaced; then you understand that your real motive in going there was simply to see a familiar face, on a waitress or a bartender, whoever . . . This sort of thing has been known to mediate against partytime.”

It was hot, the night we burned Chrome. Out in the malls and plazas, moths were batting themselves to death against the neon, but in Bobby’s loft the only light came from a monitor screen and the green and red LEDs on the face of the matrix simulator.

Bobby read his future in women; his girls were omens, changes in the weather, and he’d sit all night in the Gentleman Loser, waiting for the season to lay a new face down in front of him like a card.

When Rikki showed up, he needed one in the worst way. He was fading fast, and smart money was already whispering that the edge was off his game. He needed that one big score, and soon, because he didn’t know any other kind of life, and all his clocks were set for hustler’s time, calibrated in risk and adrenaline and that supernal dawn calm that comes when every move’s proved right and a sweet lump of someone else’s credit clicks into your own account.

But I guess she cashed the return fare, or else didn’t need it, because she hasn’t come back. And sometimes late at night I’ll pass a window with posters of simstim stars, all those beautiful, identical eyes staring back at me out of faces that are nearly as identical, and sometimes the eyes are hers, but none of the faces are, none of them ever are, and I see her far out on the edge of all this sprawl of night and cities, and then she waves goodbye.