The Course Manager answered. "You do. Again."

Foreman looked satisfied with himself. He turned his attention back to the roomful of trainees.

"All right," he said. His voice was oddly calm. "The process is this. I am going to tell Colonel Marisov of the United Nations Marine Corps to shoot Captain McCarthy of the United States Special Forces Warrant Agency. This process will continue until Captain McCarthy is dead."

"Excuse me?" I said. "It sounded like you said . . . "

"I will repeat it." Again, he spoke in that very odd tone. I listened as hard as I could. I was certain I was missing something. "I am going to tell Colonel Marisov to shoot Captain McCarthy. If Colonel Marisov refuses, I will begin selecting people at random until we find someone who is willing to shoot Captain McCarthy. The Survival Process will continue until Captain McCarthy is dead."

I hadn't missed a thing.

There was an incredible drumming in my ears. I heard myself saying, "That's what I thought you said- "

And then I passed out.

All of us were a little dazed after that.

For days afterward, we moved around the camp glassy-eyed and stunned. Sometimes we forgot to dress or eat. We didn't see Jason for three days.

So much happened in that circle.

All of the circles before had merely been practice., Like an orchestra. tuning itself, we had been rehearsing this part of the Revelation and that part of the Revelation, not knowing how all the parts would fit together until the moment when the whole was revealed.

I remember flashes and visions. I remember thoughts. But I remember most clearly a single experience; I remember realizing, "Oh, yes-this time, we're wearing naked ape bodies, and doing ape things."

I realized why Jason had allowed us to spend so much time experiencing ourselves as physical animals. Not because we were physical animals, but because we weren't. We were gods playing at being physical animals. That was the game, and he wanted us to play it one hundred percent. "If you cannot completely experience something," he said, "you will get stuck in it. We must complete our experience of our physical bodies so we can move beyond them." It didn't make sense to me at all, but I became an ape with Jason until I realized I had been an ape all along, pretending not to be.

And then I wasn't an ape any more. Then I was a god like Jason. And I was revealed.

I remember realizing that what we were doing here was something unprecedented on the planet. We were the first human beings to live as Chtorrans. We were taking the Chtorran experience and bringing it home. It was an incredible shock and I fell to my knees, crying with joy and terror.

Jason too went farther than he had ever been before.

He was shaken by the experience. He tried to share it with us, but it came out as babbles. He held up a hand and said, "We don't have the concepts yet." And then he buried his face in his hands and cried, "I don't have the concepts yet!" He began to sob. "I saw it, I saw it. I broke beyond my limits and saw. But the experience is so far beyond concept that to try to conceptualize it is to channel it and narrow it. It would be like calling a symphony a sound. . . ." He wept into his hands, and the rest of us wept with him.

We didn't see Jason for three days after the Revelation. He was recuperating, Marcie said. He had taken such energies into his body that he had injured himself and needed to rebuild his strength.

The camp was not the same afterward. Everything looked different to me. I had never seen the world this way before. Everybody looked different to me. I could see things inside them that I had never known were there. I could see things inside myself.

By the glow on others' faces, I knew that they too were transformed by the Revelation.

I was told I would be assigned new chores. But for now, to make myself useful to Marcie, Jessie, and George-who I still thought of as Frankenstein's monster.

I was still walking around confused. I finally went to-of all people-Frankenstein, and after I told him how much I loved him, I told him how confused I was.

He told me that was normal. "It's part of the process. Cherish it. The greater your confusion, the farther you're moving from the level of ordinariness."

He spread his big hands wide to encompass the whole world. "Confusion is the doorway to the extraordinary level. You can only get there by being willing to not know anything. Confusion is the recognition that what you think you know is not what you really know. The more confused you are, the farther you're moving. Jason says that we're always on the threshold of the extraordinary, but as soon as we assimilate it then we've fallen back into the ordinary. So we have to keep pushing ourselves into the extraordinary, over and over."

He had picked up a large carton. He handed it to me to hold, while he gathered up puppies from the floor and put them in the box. They were four weeks old and so fluffy they looked like little mops. They squeaked and yipped and tried to climb out of the box.

"So, this will wear off eventually?" I asked.

"Yes and no," he said. "You are transformed by the experience. You will always be transformed by it. Can you not have experienced something you've already experienced? Can you make it not have happened? Of course not." He put the last puppy in the box and took it from me. I followed him across the camp.

"Assimilation is normal," he said. "It's the mind figuring out and explaining and conceptualizing the experience. It's a necessary step. Because once you've assimilated an experience, you've completed it. Then you're ready to go on to the next. You're ready to push yourself into not-knowingness again. You're ready for the next breakthrough. Being at the extraordinary level is impossible. You can get there, but you can't stay there. All you can do is get there and get there and get there. Breakthrough after breakthrough after breakthrough."

I followed him down the slope toward the pool where Orrie was building his family. Orrie spent a lot of time with the two younger Chtorrans these days. There was a lot to teach them. Soon, the baby would join them too.

I said, "There's so much to learn. And I guess I'm too impatient. Thank you for being so understanding." Frankenstein rumbled with quiet laughter. "Jim, we're all still learning here. Even Jason. Especially Jason. But you've already got the one quality. you need-you're willing to open yourself up to find out the truth. It's been a real pleasure watching you grow. When you first came here, I thought I was going to have to kill you. You were all pinched up like a prune. You wore your hate on your face like a mask. Now, you're always smiling and joyous. I'm glad you're here with us. Have I told you today how much I love you?"

I felt the tears starting to well up again. "I . . . I'm always on the edge of tears," I admitted.

"That's good," Frankenstein said. "That's a sign of how close you live to the extraordinary level."

I recognized he was right. I said, "Can I share something with you?"

"Sure."

"Since my transformation-God; it feels strange to talk about it."

"Does it?"

"Yes. It's like saying it makes it real all over again. I can feel myself recreating the experience and I know I really am transformed. It's this surge of power and joy; it comes up almost automatically every time I remember that I'm transformed by the Revelation. I mean, I know so much more now than I ever knew before. What I want to share with you is that I don't feel human any more. Do you know what I mean? I mean, it's like this body is a tool that I use, but I know I'm not the body. It's just where I experience myself. But I'm more than it. I'm beyond it. I'm a god. I have this detachment from this body. I know that it's not me. I know, I must sound like I'm babbling . . . "