"What did I just watch?" I asked.

"A creature recycling itself."

A thought struck me like a thunderbolt. I stared Suisei in the eyes. "No way," I said, in a hushed voice. "You don't think that this is what the Erboss-Tor meant when they mentioned their children?"

He nodded. "That's exactly what I came to think, though it would take me some time to get there."

"Why?" I asked.

"Simple: I finally understood why I was feeling disoriented. The Erboss-Tor's world was literal magic. It was physics and pataphysics, welded together."

Within the memory, Suisei was still reeling from his realization. He scraped his fingernails along a soft, fleshy portion of the tree's trunk, drawing up viscid latex. The fluid trickled down his fingers, bitterly cold, leaving chemical burns on his kin. He brought his hand up to his face and stared at it, meditating on it, blocking out everything else.

"You can tell someone's skill in pataphysics by checking their blood or one of their internal organs. The energies they can channel bathe their tissues and fluid, and with the proper know-how, you can detect the residuals. The tree sap… it was like the blood of a sorcerer from a fairy-tale. The weaves in it went down to the fractal scale."

Suisei dug into the cold ground, pulling up pebbles and weeds. A worm skittered out from a hole and crawled toward the latex pooling at the base of the nearby tree. One by one, Suisei focused on every object in sight. The worm. The weeds. Even the individual pebbles.

"It's like the wyrm's transformation-aura," I said. "Runic circuitry."

Suisei nodded. "Wherever this world was, everything in it was inflected by pataphysics, from the creatures on its earth and sky to the ground beneath my feet, and down to the smallest levels of detail.

Now that I knew what to look for, I saw this strange process of rebirth playing out nearly everywhere I looked. Instead of birthing offspring, this world's lifeforms became their own offspring."

"How could you tell if you didn't observe the replication process in action?" I asked.

"I didn't need to see it play out to notice that it had happened. I sensed the residuals of the replication pataphysics within all of the small creatures. It was like recognizing the taste of a particular seasoning in a meal. Even the 'little' Erboss-Tor were copies."

"They did call it a place of remembrance," I said.

Suisei nodded. "That they did."

It put the Erboss-Tor's lifeless city in new relief. Perhaps it was a graveyard, and they were merely its grave-keepers.

The melancholy was almost palpable.

He kept walking, wonderstruck by his surroundings. After a while, he came upon a pair of Erboss-Tor, one several times smaller than the other. They stood by the river. Foam coated the silty, reed-peppered banks.

There'd been a small, lizard-like creature on the ground near the small Erboss-Tor, or so I'd thought. But it wasn't a creature, not yet. What I'd thought was an animal was, in fact, a mass in the process of becoming one.

One of the most memorable events in any biology class I ever took was when my 9th grade biology teacher showed us that famous movie of a yolk becoming a baby chick. In a stroke of cinematic genius, the filmmaker had recorded a time-lapsed sequence showing the embryo congealing into being. Cells proliferated beyond number, shaping bones and organs and tissues before our very eyes.

I saw a version of the miracle repeated here, on this alien riverbank. Limbs slowly budded off from the unbegotten lifeform. Its physiology was a kaleidoscope, reshaping before my eyes. Liquid and foam streamed off the riverbank and onto its body, forming and reforming tissue by a process I could hardly describe, let alone understand. Things like wings crept out of its back as its tail forked, and then, with a glimmer of light, the process stopped and the animal stirred. Eyes flicked open. Its body twitched and moved, crawling forward toward the water. Its first steps were hesitant, but in a moment, something seemed to click inside it and it scampered up a reed, perched there for a dragonfly moment, and then fluttered away.

In the memory, too, Suisei stared. He wouldn't have noticed it were it not for the pataphysical threads throbbing around the lizard in his mind's eye. They'd drawn him like a beacon.

"Fricassee me…" I cursed, barely above a whisper. "What was that?"

"They called it… Tinkering," he replied.

"By your reaction, I take it this isn't something you usually see?" I asked.

Suisei chortled. "Genneth, this is the kind of thing only a god could do. The Erboss-Tors' world was enchanted. I'm not sure if they made these lifeforms from scratch, or merely sculpted some more primitive version of natural life into the biology I saw there, but, regardless, it's clear to me that the world I encountered was one they'd guided and shaped." He bit his lips. "Compared to them, I was less than nothing."

"Do you think they might be some of the other Angels?" I asked.

Suisei stared at me. "They just might be," he said, softly. "I wish I could have asked them."

That made me feel self-conscious. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—"

"—It's not your fault," Suisei said. "Nor is it mine. It's just circumstance; the luck of the draw." He sighed. "I prided myself on my skill, Genneth. And now, that pride is dead."

"You could always try to study it and expand your capabilities."

Suisei looked me in the eyes. "You think I didn't try? It made no difference." He shrugged. "Experience and experiment were my favorite teachers, after those online science videos, but none of them were options here. You'd have to have a death wish to fool around with this kind of power; look what happened to Zid in my world."

"So what did you do?" I asked.

"Whatever I could. I started practicing my spellwork on my daily walks. At first, it was just to help modulate my senses, so that I wouldn't be disoriented by this pataphysics-world." He nodded. "I even found the perfect place to practice: the bank of a river at the foot of a gently sloping hill."

The memory advanced.

In the memory, Suisei walked out onto the bluffs, past some whiskered, darkly striped crab-snakes. Meanwhile, in the theater, Suisei shook his head. "But nothing worked."

Suisei's memories were filled with stacks upon stacks of the mental notes of correspondences between causes and effects.

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Sometimes, indigo thoughts increased temperatures.

Always grab hairy loops by their loudest ends; that was where they were most easily broken.

And so on and so forth.

But the instant Suisei tried them, he realized something was terribly wrong. Attempting to freeze the greasy fluids in the planet's rivers ended up spraying gobs of the liquid through the air, which then floated off, twitching like flapping wings.

"Whoa…" I had to admit, it looked really cool.

He smiled. "If only I'd shared your enthusiasm at the time."

Day after day, Suisei tried working through his old routines, only to fumble with his thoughts and fail, every time. Some of the Erboss-Tor took to watching his struggles in bemusement, Green-Eye among them. Suisei couldn't help but feel dishonored by their presence.

"Somehow, on that alien world, with its red dwarf sun," he told me, "I'd regressed. I had a lifetime's worth of knowledge and skill at my disposal, yet nearly all of it was useless to me. The power was right there, in the fabric of space and air, just waiting for me to reach out and use it as I saw fit, but, no matter what I tried… everything came up wrong."

He lowered his head in shame.

"Don't blame yourself," I told him.

He snorted. "I'm not blaming myself Genneth; I'm embarrassed." He raised his head and looked at me. "I would have died if the Erboss-Tor hadn't been watching over me."

The memory showed the grisly details.

Standing at a hilltop, Suisei tried to do a simple levitation, but then exhaustion tore through his body and made him spasmed and he blacked out. The next thing he knew, he woke up in his platform chamber once more, with Green-Eye and a couple other Erboss-Tor looking over him with what was either concern or hunger.

"What happened?" Suisei lurched upright.

He noted a bitter taste in his mouth.

Quickgrowth, one of them said, unbidden, unbounded. Entropeaking.

It was Poet.

Staggering to his feet, Suisei walked over to the ever-flowing water fountain. The face he saw in his reflection was haggard. His night-black hair was long enough to spill down to his shoulders, and his jaw and cheeks were bristled and grassy. Pawing his fingers around his mouth, he dimly recognized the gray goop encrusted there as the dried dregs of some of the Erboss-Tors' human food.

He turned to the aliens in shock. "How long was I out?"

A half-full of sleep, Green-Eye explained, no more, no less.

Perhaps it was just Green-Eye's unusually colored nucleus, but Suisei got the feeling that it was their leader. And if it wasn't, it certainly comported itself like one.

Though their conversation continued, it didn't give me the answers I wanted. So, I turned to the man himself for some clarification.

"What happened?"

"Pataphysics can accelerate certain processes, though not always without risk." He scratched at the back of his head. "From what they told me, my misfired pataphysics must have forced my hair to undergo several weeks' worth of growth in a matter of seconds."

"That can't be healthy," I said.

He nodded. "No. It sucked the sugars and proteins out of my bloodstream and shunted them to my hair follicles to fuel the growth, and then borrowed some more from the rest from my body once that source ran out. As you know, matter doesn't come from nothing."

"That would have put you into a coma," I said, "if not outright killed you!"

"Yes," Suisei said, "and the Erboss-Tor healed me and nursed me back to health."

Back in the memory, Suisei asked his caretakers why the laws of physics as he knew them had gone topsy-turvy.

The power is different, Poet told him. Be guardkept. Cautious.

"Why?" Suisei asked. "How?"

Different different different! Poet was very insistent. Plurality brings many knoways.

Different worlds have different customs, same as different peoples, Green-Eye said.

"It makes sense, in a way," I said. "New world, new rules."

"My thoughts exactly—and theirs as well."

Standing atop the platform, Suisei fell to his knees. He grabbed either side of his head and howled, venting his rage, frustration, impotence, and longing.

You are painbroke, Poet said.

Suisei looked up at them, showing them the tears streaming down his cheeks. He didn't know if they could see them—or if they even had a sense like sight at all—but he didn't care.

"Yes," he said, "I am painbroke! I am helpless and small! I," he shuddered, "I am nothing!" The word echoed through the chamber.

He stared at his hands. "I've been forsaken," he said, in a whisper.

Foresaken? Green-Eye asked.

"Given up. Abandoned. Getting no more help, not that you would understand." He scowled with contempt, and then spoke in a voice too heartbroken to be loud. "I struggled with my faith, I made my life through violence, hoping to find justice, but always fearing I was already damned. And, look, I finally am! I sold my soul to power, and it cost me everything!"

Susiei pressed one of his hands onto the floor. His sweat stuck beneath his palms and the smooth, bitterly cold stone.

The creatures backed away.

Please, forgiveness from you, Green-Eye said.

Forgivenessecessity, Poet said. It lowered its tendrils to just above the ground.

"If you want my forgiveness, send me home! I can't live like this. I'm losing my mind!"

Lifting a tendril, Green-Eye pointed at the Sword where it lay against the wall on the far side of the room.

What you call this? it asked.

Suisei stared at the holy artifact. "The Sword," he said. "The Holy Sword. The Sword of the Angel. Why do you ask?"

It may yet send you home, Green-Eye replied.

And Suisei stared.

Given what I knew about the man, what he did next didn't surprise me in the least. Suisei had steered clear of the Sword throughout his time with the Erboss-Tor, in a reverse image of the aliens' interest. He felt guilty, unworthy, and afraid—and I felt it, too.

As the Erboss-Tor moved toward the exit to the hallway, Suisei rose to his feet and yelled. "No! I can't!"

The aliens stopped.

Why?

Suisei laughed "Why?" His expression fell. He closed his eyes in shame, and reached for the icon of the Angel around his neck, but stopped himself.

"I'm unworthy," he admitted. He turned to the Sword and pointed at it. "My friends, that, there, is a thing of God. A sinner like me isn't worthy of touching it. I…" he cried, "I think I might have ended my world. Oh God…" He patted his chest. "This thing… it brings disaster. It brought monsters and conquest. It builds empires of blood and cruelty, and annihilated half a continent. I'm here because Zaina used its power, and was unworthy, just like I am, just like the rest of us." He pointed at the Erboss-Tor. "You told me that when you use your powers, your people die. Well," he pointed at the Sword again, "if you use that, you know what will happen? It won't be just your people that die. Your whole world will end. It will be your doom. Do you understand that? Death! Destruction! Doom!"

The two Erboss-Tor shook their tendrils at one another.

Were they having a discussion? An argument?

Suisei didn't know.

Green-Eye limbered forward, stilt-legs tilting to and fro with every step.

Suisei's heart skipped a beat as the Sword levitated off the floor and toward Green-Eye.

"What are you doing? No! No!!"

He ran toward the Sword, lashing out with his magic to pull it back, but Green-Eye's pataphysics rebuffed his own, swatting them away like a fly, leaving Suisei dazed and confused.

By the time the room stopped spinning, the Sword was floating mere inches in front of Green-Eye. The Erboss-Tor's hands hovered around it, though Green-Eye stopped short of touching it.

Every instinct in Dr. Horosha's body told him to fight back. He couldn't let them take the Sword!

But he was powerless against them, and being combative would only make a fool out of him.

You do not understand, Green-Eye said.

Suisei quaked and roared. He stomped his boot on the floor. "What's there to understand?!"

This Sword has been misused.

"You think I don't know that!?"

It was like you, Green-Eye continued. Yourself, you broke, and made too much hair. Sword, others broke. They did not know what they were doing

Suisei gestured at himself, bending his fingers like claws. "You expect me to believe you know how to use it properly?" He pointed at Green-Eye.

Yes, Green-Eye said, rather frankly.

"How?"

It holds the old way, Green-Eye said. The old clay. We knew. We know.

"The old way?" he asked.

Home.

Suisei was buffeted by waves of homesickness of nauseating intensity. The weight of the creatures' longing brought tears to his eyes. It dredged up emotions he'd long since suppressed.

He felt himself looking over his cat's body after Kuro had been run over by a passing car. He held his wife, Kana, in his arms as she sobbed over the miscarriage. He felt the warm, cheesy savor of his mother's tamago take gohan after he'd been crying over having gotten kicked out of school for getting into a fight.

He felt everything he'd ever lost. He missed it and wanted it. Reverence and heart-worn nostalgia blossomed inside him. It flowered and shined, making him happy and proud, only for melancholy to pinch at the edges and make them crumble.

It was love. He felt Green-Eye's love for the Erboss-Tor's home. It was a shimmering breath of feeling that brought him to his knees. It was the kind of love so beautiful, heartfelt, and deep that just the mere sight of it could move a man to tears.

Home, Poet said. Its feelings were just as genuine as Green-Eye's.

Gradually, the onslaught of emotions ebbed. Suisei calmed down. He sniffled and rubbed the tears from his eyes. He cleared his throat and shook his head.

He hadn't cried like that since he'd been a kid.

Suisei breathed in deep, only for ozone to rush through his sinuses and make him cough.

"What was that?" he asked, barely above a whisper.

Into his mind, the Erboss-Tor broadcast that impossible non-sound after which Suisei had named them.

Erboss-Tor. Home, Green-Eye said. You understand home, yes?

Pausing the memory, I pointed at the screen. "Did that thing just make a joke?"

Suisei nodded. "I believe it did."

I let the memory resume.

The Suisei in the memory understood the jibe. He'd doubted their ability to understand his pain. But they knew.

And he got down to his knees and wept all over again.

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