Pry –

Glanced out the eye of his own back Eye he –

Pry –

He felt the hit –

Out his face.

“Tenns.”

“You're a daydreamer – you're dreamin' in your own head – and stay still while you're at it – unless you want me to cut your head off. Would you like me to cut your head off? Because if you'd like that... I can.”

Pry really looked at his head, and then his face, in the blurry but still perfectly interpretable mirror he sat in front of. On a stool. A cape on the front and one on the back too. Tenns stood behind him observing very carefully, and in fact dubiously, the shape of his head. “– I'm not used to doing this to a head quite so large – in fact bulbous, is the descriptor, and shaped weird, in fact I'll say shapely – is that a more pleasant euphemism – head. It's usually little heads. Little normal shaped heads.”

Two Cyclops lads sat on the chair behind them observing all this with goofy grins on their faces.

“– And you two can get out. – No more haircuts today. This one is...” again observing dubiously his head... “complicated.” They did nothing. “Come on – shoo!”

Grudgingly, eventually, they left, “And shut that – door.” They did. Just two of them.

She ran her fingers through his beard; which he'd grown, not really noticing; through – all this. Thick and brown, with an impressive moustache and long on the chin – he didn't know what to think about it. But then he had an idea, “Can you leave the moustache?”

“No,” running her fingers through the thick locks of his face-beard, “I like it.”

“No I think I'll have the moustache only please,” he was just annoying her.

“I'll cut your head off first.”

Closing his Eye as she continued to run her fingers through his beard; she massaged under his chin; tugging the long parts, gently, and even a little more than gently. It was pleasant. Even a little more than pleasant. Especially after that hit in the face. – But he was here. What was happening beneath only dim images, now – he'd really have to concentrate upon, to comprehend in any kind of linear fashion – any kind of real understanding of what were after all the events. It was hazy, the connection. The connection to brothers in a mysterious relationship to final reality. For reasons he could go into. It was hazy. But he shut his eyes, because this was nice – after he'd been hit with a face in the rock or –

he got the big events – or the sore ones –

“– I was thinking. The fact I ended up here, basically here – and the rest are scattered memoryless; identityless, etc. The fact that a couple hours after I woke up I was already here. And now. I remember everything.” He paused. “This is clearly only the case because he/it wants it to be. Everything we do... is already -”

“But we knew that. He's only 10,000 Slys. That's all he is – he still needs a story. I don't know how the dreamunits part functions. – Whether the demons he's replaced the populations of three planets with still dream in some fashion, or we do, or – you four; or – whatever; but he's only 10,000 Slys. He still needs a story – He/It still needs a dream.

“The very fact you four are still. Still. Here. Alive. Separate, weak, and they don't even know who they are – impossible to reunite anyway because they're on three entirely different planets. But that's all he is – in terms of the functioning of New Works, anyway – if you can really be bothered calling it that – whatever technicalities – in these very basic terms; I'm not talking religiously, philosophically. – But in terms of how this great interface actually anyway actually functions... at all. This grid; this system – who cares; which is the total system we're all forced to live in. That's how it functions. He obviously still needs you all – he obviously still needs a dream.”

He had an idea while she was talking. And while she rummaged in a drawer for a tool required by her in the process of giving him a haircut he tried to explain it to her. “It's truth; it's exactly, like Pheel. Why I'm here in the first place. That I know who I am. If he had the resources – if this thing was secure; New Works; if – it was in any sense stable he could ram as much lies inside it – in terms of a functional story – as he wanted.

“The weight behind it would keep the whole thing aloft. Separate alone and identityless – I understand why they are; the way they are. Pheel on Shensh and Art, where he is, those – and in those grids, Massimo – completely destroyed by –” he couldn't betray a confidence; even then. Even to her. Concerning what he was destroyed by. Massimo. Not of one of his brothers in a mysterious connection to final reality. “By why I am here? Why do I know?”

“This is all just natural self-justification. Because you're setting out. You are going to head toward Massimo – you're going to head at him, and New Works, to – perform the narrative task assigned despite the fact it's his story; and it's exactly what he wants you to do, because all it can do is reinforce him because despite all this – and these same stories repeated because that's reality and –”

“It is true. – He had to ram the minimum truth required to float the lot, just like... just like his father. Just like Pheel. From whom he learned to erect a tower of lies upon one beam of truth. This is what he –” he couldn't say it in front of her, the – Wound, he couldn't – he couldn't bring himself to speak that name aloud in her presence.

And this impulse too was something he had to hide from her. Despite – who even she was... Tenns.