Bobby lay on the floor, trying to get Lamont interested in a catnip-filled mouse, but the cat was taking a hard-line antidrug approach. Ollie and I sat on the couch, leaning into each other, holding hands like teenagers. We didn't need to talk; we'd done nothing but talk for twenty-four months. In prison, no cell phones, pens, or internet-capable devices were allowed, but it was impossible to keep them out; just about everything these days was an internet-capable device. My second day at the EMDC I traded my dessert for a piece of smartpaper with a Wi-Fi connection. On our first call, Ollie walked me through installing what she called "real" encryption software. Every night we talked about the past-including everything she'd learned from Rovil and his sociopath-for-hire-and about the future. We burned up the airwaves with our words.

While we waited for the proper, secret time to have cake, Ollie showed me the latest news on one of our most frequent topics. Numinous was spreading through the States and Canada's biggest cities. The Landon-Rousse scandal, and Rovil Gupta's video confession, recorded just before he disappeared, had only accelerated curiosity about the drug. Stepladder was dead, but NME 110 was alive and well. It had spread beyond the walls of the Church of the Hologrammatic G.o.d. The chemjet blueprints were all over the internet. Numinous was a recreational drug now, with all that entailed: theme parties, overdoses, suicides, novelty T-shirts.

"I didn't think it would happen so fast," I said.

"We've never had something like this before."

"Sure we have," I said. "It was called the Great Awakening. But this time the crash is going to be bad."

The message icon on the screen blinked on, and Ollie flicked her hand at it. The screen changed to show a hand-lettered sign that said WELCOME HOME!

The sign dropped away. Sasha, looking sophisticated in a pale green dress, opened her arms in a ta-da.

She had only a few minutes until Eduard and Suzette checked on her, so we ate quickly. On her side of the screen Sasha bounced on the edge of her bed while eating one of Esperanza's cookies.

I leaned over to Ollie and whispered, "She has little girl b.o.o.bies."

"I know," she whispered back.

"Should we tell her about bras?"

"Not in front of Bobby we don't," Ollie said.

The eating didn't interrupt Sasha's texting; the words scrolled across the bottom of the screen almost too fast to read. It seems like we should have a chair for Dr. Gloria, she said.

"That party's over," I said. "She's long gone."

YOU CAN'T JUST THROW HER AWAY!!

"Kid, there's nothing to throw away."

Just 'cause she's imaginary, doesn't mean she's not real, Sasha said. You can't throw away yourSELF.

Meaford was a small town, but even here there were cameras in the stores. Our faces would eventually pop up in some database, and anyone with enough money and energy would be able to find us. Fayza, for example. We'd have to keep moving, even if it meant breaking my parole.

But there was one person I wanted to find me. It took a few days, but I finally was able to get a message through to him. The call came on what felt like the last day of fall, a cold wind whipping off the lake, picking off the last of the leaves from their limbs.

"Hey, Gil. Thank you for calling me."

"Gil is pleased to see you," the G.o.d said. His face was still thin and bony, with the strong cheekbones of a prophet.

"I'd rather we talked in person, but..."

He nodded. We were both convicted felons. He could never cross over to Canada, and I'd never set foot in the States again. Legally, at least.

"I never thanked you," I said. "For what you did."

"Thanks aren't necessary. We did it not only for you, but for the child. And we knew that Gil needed to be in prison, among those people, to start the ministry."

Sure, I thought. That's always the way with divine plans. No such thing as an accident.

"Can I tell you a story?" I said. "About three months into my sentence I got cornered. A couple of women I'd p.i.s.sed off-it's too complicated to explain. They caught me in a bathroom. One of them had a knife. I should have died.

"But here's the crazy thing. Four other women I'd never met burst in and saved me. I didn't get a scratch. Afterward, they gave me a slip of paper. You know what it said?"

He smiled.

"Half of EMDC is on Numinous," I said. "The male units, the female unit I was in-paper is flowing through there every day. Some of the guards are converts. They think it's their duty to spread the word. I wouldn't be surprised if one of your chemjets was running in a back room."

"It's been known to happen," Gil said.

"The first time I ever saw one of them was in a church in Toronto. I thought, Edo built this. I thought only a rich man could afford to make it."

"Churches raise money," Gil said. "That's what they do. Even peasants can build a cathedral."

"But you're losing control," I said. "Numinous may have started in the prisons with you, but it's out there on its own now. It's a party drug. Frat boys are getting religion."

"We never wanted control," Gil said.

"What do you want?"

He smiled deprecatingly. "For people to know me," he said. "That's why I sent the printer and pictures to Edo, so that he would see what I was doing, and share. I wanted him to know me. And you as well, Lyda."

"I know you," I said. "You're not a G.o.d; you're a symptom. Now that people can get the drug outside of your church, it'll lose its mystique. Once people understand how NME affects the brain-"

"It won't make any difference," Gil said. "The more people hear of it, the more people will try it-and then they'll never go back."

"Unless they overdose or die," I said. "Numinous can't escape the physics of tolerance. People will stop being able to feel G.o.d's love as intensely as before, and they'll have to ramp up the dosage. It's already happening."

"Then we'll print more," Gil said.

"Jesus, Gil, you want more overdoses? Freaks like us? And what about the people who can't get the drug after they've used it? Emergency rooms are already filling with Francines, looking for a shortcut to the afterlife."

"Francines?"

"A girl. She was the first person I met from your church. She killed herself after she went into withdrawal."

"Was she so happy before she came to the church?"

I didn't want to answer that.

"People need the divine in their lives," Gil said. "Science is a pale, unconvincing story compared to faith. You offer nothing-a mind that dies with the body. Numinous offers a living G.o.d. A G.o.d of love."

"You're an obese IT geek who overdosed on an experiment."

He laughed hard. "Formerly obese," he said after he'd recovered. "But yes, that's true." He wiped away a tear of laughter. "n.o.body jokes with me anymore. Too awestruck."

"I knew you when," I said. "If you're G.o.d, we're all screwed."

Gil caught his breath. "Don't be afraid of what's coming," he said. "Everything's going to be all right. Think of those prisoners who saved you. Think of the old Gil, the old Edo and Lyda-even Rovil. Even if it's just a drug, and I am lying to you now about being a deity-aren't we better people than we were before?"

THE PARABLE OF.

the Faithful Atheist There was a scientist who did not believe in G.o.ds or fairies or supernatural creatures of any sort. But she had once known an angel, and had talked to her every day. Mostly they argued, often about whether or not the angel existed. The scientist finally won the argument by trapping the angel inside a prescription bottle.

One day, two years after the angel had been captured, the scientist grew curious and decided to look inside the bottle. She opened the lid and peeked inside. She saw nothing but pills. Then she tossed out the pills. But still the angel was nowhere to be found.

This confused the scientist, and also saddened her.

Sometime later, in the middle of winter, she went walking in the woods, and came upon a man sitting on a rock. The snow was piled all around him, and he looked like he'd been there for some time. He was a white man with ruddy skin and a great halo of gray hair.

The scientist stopped, and was very afraid. She had seen this man twice before, once in a city in the north, and once in another city hundreds of miles away to the southeast, and now here, in the northern woods. He did not look like the kind of man who could afford airplane tickets. He was dressed in many layers of clothing. The outmost coat was crusted with snow and dirt. Below were jackets, fleeces, sweaters, dress shirts, and T-shirts, each layer older than the one above it, like geological strata. At the man's feet, resting against the base of the rock he sat upon, was a bulging black garbage bag that the scientist a.s.sumed contained all the man's worldly possessions.

The scientist overcame her fear and marched up to the man. "What the f.u.c.k are you doing here?" she said.

The man said nothing. He sat on the rock, looking down at his black bag.

"You think this is funny?" the scientist said. "This magical hobo s.h.i.t? My G.o.d, why didn't you make yourself black, too? I mean, Jesus, what's the point?"

The man became very still. His skin grew pale as porcelain. Hairline fractures appeared, and then began to split wide. Light burned through the seams, and the scientist fell back, holding up a hand against the light. With a sound like a crack of thunder, the man's outer sh.e.l.l shattered and fell away, clothing and skin and hair crackling like gla.s.s, until the angel was revealed.

"Behold," Dr. Gloria said. For that was the angel's name.

"You are such a f.u.c.king drama queen," the scientist said.

"I told you I would be with you always," Dr. Gloria said. She stepped down from the rock and flexed her wings. In her hand was a notepad bursting with hundreds of pages.

"That trick at Edo's," the scientist said. "That thing with the sword? I know why you did it."

"What trick?" the angel said innocently. She blew some snow from the top page on the pad.

"What do you have there?" the scientist asked.

"Oh," the angel said. "I've been working on a book of parables."

-G.I.E.D.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

I would like to acknowledge that I am a lucky man.

For example, I have in my corner the agent Martha Millard, whose enthusiasm for this book when it was nothing but a synopsis got me fired up to write it.

I am extremely fortunate to have David Hartwell as my editor. He was an early supporter of my short stories, and then insisted that I send him the early chapters of this book. Somehow he saw some potential for a novel despite their disheveled state. He introduced me to the fine people at Tor, including Alex Cameron and Marco Palmieri, who helped put this book together.

The right books fell into my hands when I needed them. I'm indebted to the work of the neuroscientists Antonio Damasio, V. S. Ramachandran, and Oliver Sacks, as well as to that of the philosophers and scientists Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Wegner.

This book wouldn't have been completed without three retreats that came along at the best possible time, in the company of the right people, in three inspiring locations. The book was begun on a beach on the Atlantic, with C. C. Finlay and the Blue Heaven crew. The final sprint on the first draft took place in a cabin in the Poconos, alongside Matt Sturges and Dave Justus. The second draft was completed within spitting distance of the Pacific, at Patrick Swenson's fabulous Rainforest Writers Retreat.

But I am especially lucky to have such great friends and family who read this book in draft form and offered advice. My thanks to these readers, in geographical order from east to west: Kathy Bieschke, who lives right here in our home; Gary Delafield, Elizabeth Delafield, and Mary "Gold Star" McClanahan in State College, Pennsylvania; Kevin McCullough Wabaunsee of Chicago, who shared his experiences working in a neuroscience lab, including the secrets of rat sacrifice; Kurt Dinan in Hamilton, Ohio; Dave Justus and Matt Sturges in Austin; and Nancy Kress and Jack Skillingstead in Seattle. Adam Rakunas, in far-off Santa Monica, not only read the book, he allowed me to rustle the miniature bison from his story "Oh Give Me a Home" and shrink them to apartment-sized critters.

In a surprise twist, the best copy editor on the planet, Deanna Hoak, moved to my little town so we could go over the ma.n.u.script in person.

Finally, Kathy, Ian, and Emma put up with me when I was distracted and missed me when I was gone.

See? d.a.m.n lucky.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fict.i.tiously.

AFTERPARTY.

end.