"Okay, I got that."

"Good. Operating in the domain of ownership will allow you to create new modes, as necessary. Right now, you can only operate in your unconscious modes, all those modes you've been programming into your head for the last three billion years. Only when you start to become aware of the modus operandi of your mind can you start creating new modes. That's the mode that the training is about: the mode of no modes at all; the mode that allows you to create modes."

I thought about that for a while. Foreman waited patiently. "So, how do I do that if I'm dead? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to keep me alive?"

Foreman turned to the rest of the trainees. "I thought so. We have now achieved a new state. Bargaining. Negotiation. 'Don't take me. Take my mother. She's old. She's useless. Take anyone but me. Take a lawyer."' Foreman gave me a look. "Sorry, but Hell has a full quota of lawyers already."

"This doesn't make sense. Why should I get enlightened if I'm only going to die?"

"Why not? Why die stupid?" Foreman laughed. "Why do anything at all if you know you're going to die? It doesn't matter, Jim. Bargain all you want. The Survival Process continues until you're dead."

Foreman sat down in his chair and stared at me. "Are you getting any of this yet?" he asked.

"No;" I admitted. "How much longer does this go on?"

"Until you're dead, Jim. Until you're dead."

After a while, I got up. I walked down to the far end of the hangar and found a Jeep. I powered it up and began driving slowly up and down the aisles, loading it with supplies.

I issued myself a new uniform, new underwear, a new helmet. I gave myself a new torch, a set of grenades and a launcher, three AM-280's and a case of ammunition. I took three weeks' worth of food, a first-aid kit, three canteens, and two gallons of distilled water. It was Christmas. New binoculars.

New dog tags. New ID's. I stopped at the security console and invented six new identities. All the way from Lieutenant to General. I doubted I'd ever use the General, but it would be nice for clearances. I gave myself clearances. I wondered how much of this stuff would actually work. I made a new set of ID's for Duke, but with my picture. There were a lot of valuable things I'd learned in Special Forces.

I had to get out of here quickly. There would be a recon team dropping in here any minute.

I looked through the security cameras: There were no choppers around. No trucks. No worms.

I opened the ramp and drove like hell.

I drove in the opposite direction of Jason and his goddamned Revelationists, and the tears began streaming down my face.

I was confused, I didn't know what to believe and I hated the entire human race!

I wanted to be safe again. I wanted to go home. And there was no safe place, no place on the planet. I was dead. I might as well be.

I wanted my mind to stop chattering in my head. I wanted absolution.

Finally, I drove the Jeep into someone's living room, crashing through the picture window, taking out half a wall and crunching furniture on both sides.

I fell out of the Jeep onto the torn-up carpet and sobbed into the floor. Why was I so crazy? Why was I crying? Jason was right. Jason was wrong. I was crazy.

I pried open the medical kit and hypoed myself into insensitivity.

I did that for three days, I kept myself sedated and zombied. I hardly moved. I lay in my sleeping bag and shivered and wept and trembled in fear. I knew they had followed me. I knew they were looking for me. I knew they would find me. I knew I was dead.

I forced myself to eat. I turned on the radio and listened to the news. The election returns were coming in slow, but the president was going to be reelected. There'd been a satellite receiving station failure. No details. The army had wiped out a major infestation of renegades in California. The red sludge had reached the coast of Virginia. The puffball clouds in Texas were easing up, but local air traffic would not be resumed for at least a week. The Zimmerman child had been found alive.

I listened to music. Beethoven. The fifth symphony. The sixth. The seventh. Brahms. The first symphony. Mozart. A Little Night Music. Dvorak. The New World Symphony. Bach. Toccata and Fugue in D minor. All the familiar pieces that would bring me back. '

I tutned on the TV and watched I Love Lucy reruns. I remembered the episodes as if I'd never seen them before. "I know this one . . ." And then I'd watch to see how it turned out. I forced myself to wallow in the world I'd rejected.

I powered up the terminal. There were games here. Inferno and Brainstorm. I knew these games. My father had written them. You couldn't lose in Inferno-because you had already lost. The game started when you died and went to hell. You had to find your way out. It was filled with devilish traps.

Brainstorm took place inside the human brain. You had to find the room with the secrets of the mind. There was a key here; you could use it to unlock the monsters from the id. It had been a game filled with old jokes and startling surprises. My dad's games were usually very serious, but this one had been written for outright silliness. If you weren't careful in your choices, the program gave you a prefrontal lobotomy, and then all the judgment circuits switched off. The program wouldn't give you any help at all in your decision making.

I sat before the terminal, shaking.

Nobody would give me any help in my decision making any more.

Not my father, he was dead.

What was it Jason had said? Oh, yeah. Help diminishes a person. It rips them off of the opportunity to grow. You have to handle it yourself.

I was truly alone.

And here was the question that Jason had left me with: What was my life about?

Killing worms.

Except-what if worms weren't a threat any more?

It was only that we insisted on seeing them as a threat. But-that's not true, Jason. I'm not making the worms a threat. They are a threat. They eat people. You, yourself, said it, Jason. We are their food.

And I don't fucking want to be food.

There is only one law in biology. It is the fundamental law. Survive!

If you don't survive, you can't do anything.

Goddamn you, Jason Delandro-what did you do to me? How do I deprogram myself from your madness?

I climbed back into my sleeping bag. I masturbated myself into unconsciousness. I awoke and ate and cried for no reason at all. I stayed there in that ruined house waiting for it to be over, waiting for Santa Claus, waiting for rigor mortis

I was tired of waiting.

I thought about killing myself.

No. Not until after I put a bullet through the brain of Jason Delandro.

That was what my life was about. No.

I didn't know. It didn't matter. The Chtorrans were going to take over the planet anyway. Gizzard.

That was the rhyme I was looking for.

There once was a lady named Lizard,

who got lost in a pink candy blizzard, with a fellow named Jim

who wanted to swim,

up her legs to visit her gizzard.

It wasn't a good one, but it was a start.

I never had found a rhyme for Jason. That was what had stopped me. If I could find a rhyme for Jason, I'd be free. He wouldn't be in my head any more. I could put him dawn on the paper and rip up the paper and burn the pieces, and put the ashes in a jar and seal the jar and put the jar in a lead box, and seal the box in concrete and drop it down to the bottom of the ocean where an undersea volcano will swallow it up, and if that isn't enough, I'll have a comet strike the goddamn planet to obliterate the last trace of that scumbag son of a bitch