He stepped out of his shorts. He had a beautiful body. The orange flames of the torches sent flickering reflections up and down his skin. He seemed to glow in the smoky light. He was tall and trim and his muscles moved like silk. He stepped into the circle and stood just inside the ring of torches like a guardian. The firelight had a peculiar effect on Jason; it made him look almost as pink as Orrie. He even looked a little furry, as if he were covered with a fine pink down.

Jason grinned infectiously. I fell in love with him. Again. "Come on in," he called. "The enlightenment is fine." The tension broke. We laughed.

"All right," he called. "Who wants to enter?"

Jessie stepped forward. "I do."

Jason faced her. He spoke quietly with her. "Are you complete with the physical universe?"

Jessie thought about that for a moment. She said, "No, I am not."

Jason asked, "In what areas are you not?"

"I was unable to procure enough food supplies for the new gods for the rest of the week."

Jason nodded knowingly. "Are you willing to have this be complete? No matter what it takes?"

Jessie nodded.

"Good. Is there anyplace else in your life where you are incomplete?"

She shook her head. "Then you may enter."

Jessie stepped out of her clothes and into the circle. He hugged her and kissed her.

Frankenstein's monster stepped forward then. He loomed above Jason.

Jason quizzed him the same way he quizzed Jessie. "Are you complete?" he asked. Each of the revelators had to be clear. Jason asked about relationships or tasks or experiences. The person would answer yes or no. If yes, Jason would bid them enter. If no, Jason would tell them that they could not enter the spiritual world while they were still attached to the physical world. The incomplete things would pull them out. "The way to complete an incomplete thing is to acknowledge its incompleteness and have it be all right just the way it is. Are you willing to have it complete itself tonight? No matter what? Are you willing to surrender to the process of your own life?"

I began to understand. Really understand.

I am not my circumstances. I can step out of my circumstances. Let them take care of themselves. They will anyway, no matter What I do. If I am detached from them, they cannot control me. And I cannot be the author until I am detached.

I am the source of my own life. I stepped forward.

Jnson asked me, "And you, Jim-are you incomplete?" He looked deeply into my eyes and I felt as if I were being questioned by my lover.

I said, "I have things that bother me. And I am willing to leave them behind."

"However they work out?"

"However they work out."

"Step out of your clothes, Jim. Leave them behind."

I did so. Jason hugged me and kissed me and welcomed me into the circle.

When the last person was accepted into the circle we all sat. We purred for a bit, tuning ourselves to Orrie's sound, and then when we were all at such peace that death could have come quietly to any one of us without fear, Jason said quietly, "Loolie," and Loolie stepped into the circle carrying a small wooden tray. On the tray were two small mounds of pink and blue sprouts. She walked slowly around the circle, offering the tray to each person.

Each person took one pink sprout and one blue one. We held them, one in each hand, and waited.

Loolie completed her circle and offered the tray to Jason. He took a sprout of pink and a sprout of blue as well.

He held his hands up high, so all of us could see. He twisted the two sprouts together so that their skins broke and their juices mingled.

Then he ate them. And we did likewise.

The flames reached up. The night turned purple and blue and white.

The gods sang to us.

And we were revealed to the truth.

I stood on the platform next to Foreman. I was still holding the red card in my hand. The woman with the other card was named Marisov. She looked Russian; maybe she was. Not everybody in the class was American.

Marisov stood on the other side of Foreman; she was trembling. She looked like she was in her mid-forties and a career officer. Her hair was clipped very short and she wore a single tiny gold skull earring. United Nations Marine Corps? Maybe-but the trembling was out of character.

Of course, then again, the marines only had to deal with rebels, terrorists, insurrectionists and occasional bands of mercenaries. This was not them. This was Daniel Jeffrey Foreman, one of the source-workers of The Mode Training.

Given a roomful of United Nations Marines and one Reverend Foreman, I'd bet on Foreman. He'd have them surrounded in no time.

Three assistants came up on the stage carrying folding canvas chairs. They set up one behind me, one behind Foreman and one behind Marisov. They looked like the kind of chairs movie directors sit in. They were tall and surprisingly comfortable.

The assistants took the red card from my hands; Foreman told us to sit down. We sat.

Foreman sat down in his chair and nodded to one of the assistants at the back of the room. On the screen behind us appeared a copy of a document. The seal of the president of the United States was on the document.

Foreman began. He put on his glasses and began to read quietly from the manual in front of him, "The first part of The Survival Process is this. We are going to review the charter of this training and the circumstances under which it is conducted. We do this in order to establish the legality of the circumstances you are in. We do this now, because later on some of you are going to raise this issue. You will raise the issue in an attempt to negotiate a loophole for yourselves. There are no loopholes. We will handle the issue of legality now. Nonetheless, I am certain that the issue will be raised. When it is, I will refer you to the document that has just been flashed on the screen behind us. If necessary, we will put it back on the screen behind us and review it again."

Foreman looked up, he looked out over the room, he peered over his glasses. "We have seen this document before. I don't mind showing it to you again. I will show it to you as often as you need to see it. This is the written permission of the president of the United States to take any actions I deem appropriate-up to and including the termination of any trainee in the room. Please notice the date on the document; it was signed the day that this training began. We have, on file, a separate document for every training. The president is aware of the circumstances of this particular procedure and has elected to authorize it only on a case by case basis. Are there any questions, so far?"

There were none.

"Good. So, then I may assume that everybody in the room is satisfied as to the legality of this procedure?" He waited.

A fat man in the back of the room raised his hand. Foreman pointed. The man stood up and said, "You're laying down a lot of preparation for something, but we don't know what it is; so how can we question any of this appropriately?"

"Good point. Obviously, you can't. However, this is not the first time we've done this process, and we do know what kinds of questions always come up. We are answering those questions first to minimize the amount of time we will have to spend on them later: Anything else?"