_A quiet space. How’d we get in here? Don’t ask me. A slow fire smoulders in the center of the cave. HIM pokes desultorily at it with a stick._ ME: You know? Sometimes I get the feeling we’re long since dead, and our only existence as ourselves any more is being read off a screen or a page by someone else, some long time away from now. HIM: Could be. _In the smudgy space above the fire, a bluish glob of light appears, resolves into an image—holographic, only real as real can be, with smells and sounds and everything, a fine mist falling from the surface as the whole thing gleams in orbit—of HIM and ME as seventh-graders, lolling in a rowboat on a sunny/cloudy day, just drifting with the arcane breezes of spring._ HIM: You know, sitting here like this, just watching the clouds—if this is as good as it ever gets, that would be just fine. ME: Yeah? _[he isn’t so sure, is kind of amused by HIM’s folksy tone and simplistic insight. But he will learn, he will learn . . . .]_ But maybe not. HIM: Sh. _Somewhere in the distance, a wolf sings out. The sound spills through you, as through a bowl of rock in the bottom of a creek, and says, You fool. You want your freedom? Come and get it. And you will, you must, you will die if you don’t._