"I know the condition, Jim." She looked straight into my eyes. "I do. We all do. It's called . . . well, never mind. We're all a little fuzzy around the edges. That's why we keep this buffet t~wing. To remind us of the way it used to be. It's the one bearing wa still have in a world gone mad." She took my plate and handed n to me again. "Will you eat?"

I didn't answer. I couldn't win. And there was no escape. So I let go. I let my body go through the motions and drifted along helplessly behind it. It was easier that way.

The body turned to the table. It put food on the plate. It did it mechanically. I wasn't there. This was easier. I didn't have to be involved in any more decisions.

Lizard said to do something and my body did it, but I was uanewhere else, I don't know where. Hiding. Thinking. Trying to figure it out. Being crazy. Being numb. Being nothing.

Jim's body followed her back to a table. I watched from a distance while she ordered wine from a waiter. She tasted it and wrinkled her nose. A second bottle was produced. It was acceptable.

He drank wine. He ate food. He tasted nothing. Everything was nice and numb. Lizard talked to him. Sometimes she asked questions. Mostly he grunted. If she pressed, he answered mechanically.

Abruptly, she pushed her plate away. She put her hands on the table. "Jim?" she said. "Are you even here?"

"I'm here," he replied.

"No, I don't think so," she said. "You're showing all the Symptoms,"

"I am?"

"Yes, you are."

"Symptoms of what?"

"Fadeout. It's a kind of walking catatonia."

"Oh," he said. "That's interesting. How does it happen?"

"It happens to everyone. When things become too confronting or too intense . . ." She stopped herself. "Shit. Why am I trying to explain this to you? Wait here." She got up and went to the service bay. She came back a moment later with two live waiters. "Him," she said, and pointed to Jim in the chair. I watched with Interest.

The two waiters grinned and grabbed him, picked up the chair with him in it and carried him and it across the dining terrace, out to the main concourse, across the interior patio, toward the pool at a run, and tossed him into it, ass over teakettle.

I came up spluttering and swearing and shaking clouds out of my head. "What the goddamn bloody fuck do you think you're doing, you crazy pink bimbo?" I started swimming toward the shallow end. "This is a stupid, flaming, asshole, mother-fucking, sadistic stunt!"

Lizard was standing there laughing, so were the waiters. I squished and squelched out of the pool toward them. "Shit! I don't care if you are a colonel, Lizard! There are some things that you just don't do!"

"Oh, are you pissed?" she asked.

"You bet your rosy-cheeked freckled ass I am!" I bellowed at her. "I'm so fucking angry I could-"

"How angry are you?" she demanded. "Show me."

Something snapped then. Something happened. I exploded. My rage filled my entire body. I began to scream. I began to bring up great howling gasps of breath. I took in great gulps of air and turned them into gutteral roars. I could feel the muscles of my face stretched into a rictus of terror. I could feel the muscles of my arms and legs tensing as if I were pushing against the weight of the entire universe. I pushed against my own rage and pushed it out of my body and out against Lizard and beyond her, out against the walls of the hotel. I could see them shattering before my screams. I pushed my rage out into the entire universe. I was hoarse with roaring.

And then I collapsed wetly to my knees in a sodden heap, gasping, sobbing out of breath.

I looked up to applause. "Huh?"

I was surrounded by a crowd of grinning appreciative people, some in uniform, some not. They were applauding and cheering. "Good job! Congratulations! Go for it!"

Lizard was offering me a hand to help me up. I took it and pulled myself up weakly. I looked at Lizard-she was beaming-then I pulled her into my arms. If I was going to be wet, so was she. I grabbed her and kissed her hard.

I wasn't surprised when she kissed me back, only by the intensity.

"That isn't the usual response," she said. "But it'll do."

-and that was a curious thing.

In the middle of dying, we stopped for dinner.

I remember eating. I remember that people were willing to give me anything I wanted. I could have had every dessert in the room. I didn't want.

Curiously, food had become irrelevant. There was something else happening. . . .

After dinner, I resumed my place on the platform without any emotion that I could name.

I mean, I was feeling something, but it was something I had never felt before in my life. If I had to put a word to it, perhaps I'd call it peace. If you can believe that.

I was going to die.

And it didn't bother me any more.

Foreman had brought me through denial and anger, bargaining and depression, and now I had reached a place that he called accptance and I called peace.

How very very odd.

Was this what he meant by enlightenment?

Was this the thing he was talking about that existed on the other side of survival?

I didn't care. The explanation didn't matter. I didn't have to think about this at all. I could simply sit and watch and appreciate and experience whatever happened anywhere around me.

This is what peace feels like.

First of all, everything in the world-and I mean, everything is fascinating. You can see how things fit together. You can see things as if they are illuminated by an interior presence. Everything seems to glow with its own energy. People in particular-you can almost see what they're thinking. And when they speak, you can hear what they mean; and when you speak back to them, they turn to you with light in their eyes and listen to what you're saying. They truly listen.

This is what peace feels like.

It feels like being connected to everything in the universe, everything at once. Foreman and Lizard and the sky and the grass-and even the worms. How very curious. Even the worms. It's like the worm song.

It's a feeling I wish I could share.

And that's the only thing wrong with peace. You can't share it. You can't give it away. You can't even talk about it or they'll think you're crazy. For some reason, that thought was terribly funny. I was still giggling as I headed back into the training room.

Foreman looked at me-when I climbed back up to the platform and he nodded thoughtfully. I recognized the nod. It was his acknowledgment that something had happened.

"You can see it, can't you?" I asked.

"The whole world can see it, Jim. You're wearing a silly beatific expression on your face." He sat me down in the chair and began speaking quietly to me. "Jim, you don't look like a man who's going to die. Someone to whom this training is a totally alien experience would look at you and wonder. They'd think you're crazy; because where you are is light years beyond what most people call normal.

"I want to talk to you now about what's on the other side of survival. Do you want to know about it?"

I nodded. Yes, tell me.

"You think it's a feeling of joy or peacefulness, don't you?" Nod.