The Ascension Factor

Twisp had studied well, read widely in the histories, and like any Islander he brought the hungry into his home. That home grew as the hunger grew into two homes, three homes, a settlement. Differences with the Director drove them to their perch in the high reaches and to secretly make fertile the rocky plains upcoast, away from Flattery's henchmen. Now, in the grip of the spore-dust, Twisp saw the intricacy of what he'd wrought, and the strength.

A small voice came to him as the dust was distributed to others. It was a voice of the world of Noah, one that he had never expected to hear, even within his own mind.

"Fight hunger with food," it told him. "Fight darkness with light, illusion with illumination." It was a tiny voice, nearly a whisper.

"Abimael," he said. "You are here at last. How did you find me?"

"The scent of the sweet cake," Abimael said. "And the strong call of a good heart."

Twisp swept past Abimael in the headlong tumble down the kelpways of his mind. He was out of the fronds, now, out of the peripheral vines and into the mainstem of kelp.

This hylighter must have come from a grandfather stand, he thought. It is a wonder that they still escape Flattery's shears.

"It is not wonder, elder, but illusion."

The voice that Twisp heard was not from inside. He turned slowly, remembering the young Mose. It was then that he noticed Mose's hand on his arm.

"You travel this vine, too, my cousin?"

"I do."

At no time did Mose move his lips. His pupils dilated and constricted wildly, and Twisp knew that his own did likewise. He'd looked into a mirror once after taking the dust, and fallen into places he'd rather not remember.

"I remember them. " Mose began.

Twisp interrupted him, concentrating only on what Mose said of illusion. This interruption, too, was spoken without lips.

"You said, 'illusion,'" Twisp reminded him. "What has the kelp shown you of illusion?"

"It is a language this hylighter spoke when it grew on the vine," Mose said. "It learned to cast illusion like a hologram. Elder, if you follow the vine of this thought to its root, you will know the power of illusion."

Suddenly Twisp's mind cartwheeled deeper into itself.

No, he thought, not deeper into my mind. Deeper into Avata's.

"Yes, this way," a soft voice coaxed.

Twisp looked back on his body as though from a great height, incurious about the shell of himself, then he turned onward into the void.

What is illusion, what is real? he asked.

"What is a map," the voice replied. "Is it illusion, or is it real?"

Both, he thought. It is both real — something that can be held and felt — and illusion, or symbol, or representation. The map is not the territory.

"You, fisherman, if you want to build a boat, what do you do first?"

Draw a plan, he thought.

"And the plan is not the boat, but it is real. It is a real plan. What do you do next?"

Visions of all the boats he had built, or fished on, or coveted floated through his mind.

Next.

He tried to concentrate, tried to remember where it was that Avata was leading him.

"Don't think about that," the voice chided. "After the plan, what next?"

Build a model, he thought.

"It, too, is not the boat. It is a model. It is illusion, it is symbol, and it is real. If you would get a man to live a certain way, how might you do that?"

Give him a model of behavior?

"Perhaps."

Map out his life?

"Perhaps."

A moment of silence, and Twisp detected the distinct pulse of the sea in the pause. The voice went on.

"But a map, a model — these have a basic limitation. What is this limitation?"

Twisp felt his mind bursting at its seams. Avata was forcefeeding him something, something important. If he could only grasp.

Size!

Whether it came to him intuitively, or whether the kelp provided him with the answer, the effect was the same.

It's size! You can never know truly from a model how it will feel because you can't live in it. You can't try it on for size!

He felt an immense sigh inside himself.

"Exactly, friend Twisp. But if you could make the illusion life-size, the lesson, too, would be life-size, would it not?"

Suddenly he was thrust back in his spore-dust memory and saw the old Pandora through the eyes of one of his bloodied ancestors fighting the Clone Wars. He saw the immensity of Ship blacken out the sky, and heard that final message ring in his mind: "Surprise me, Holy Void." Ship's voice was not the electronic monotone he'd expected. Its voice was relieved, even gleeful, as it made its farewell pass across both suns and disappeared without a sound. It sounded much like the voice he'd been hearing inside his own head.

"Ship unburdened itself of us when it headed out for the Holy Void," Twisp whispered to himself. "To live to our fullest potential we have to learn how to unburden ourselves of ourselves."

One more thing nagged at the back of his mind. He didn't know whether he said it aloud or not, but he knew that Mose, at least, heard him out.