But Corvallis took it better than Zula did. In the silence that followed, he stared out the window over the lake, seemingly unruffled. “It’s never been clear to me how you guys actually feel about phased embodiment,” he remarked. He was talking about their stopgap scheme for booting up new souls in a resource-efficient style. “When it suits your purposes, you complain about not having enough mana to launch every single new process at full fidelity. But I was there when the Wad was running, and I saw El’s fascination with it. You guys have never been comfortable with how the Landform came out—how Dodge made it in the image of the world he came from. How its souls pattern their forms and their lives after ours. You guys are aiming at something different. Heaven 2.0. That much is obvious to me. But I have no idea what you imagine it’s going to be like.”

“Your speculations about our motives and our dreams are fascinating in a way,” remarked the Metatron, “but wide of the mark and not relevant to the matter at hand.”

“The ‘constitutional crisis’?” Zula said.

“Even the processes we have now are placing insupportable burdens on the Landform,” said the Metatron. “They are making mistakes that we have already made in Meatspace. They need direction.”

“We need to tell them what to do,” Zula said. Not agreeing. Just trying to translate what the Metatron was saying.

“Exactly.”

Part 9

Part 9

Chapter 45

Chapter 45

During the months that they had ranged over the sea of grass, dwelled on the hill, and explored the valley of the wolves, Adam and Eve had from time to time noticed small knots of aura nestled in deep grass or lodged in the forks of trees. They were typically no larger than a fist and could be difficult to see when looked on directly. In the corner of one’s eye they could be detected, and their presence confirmed by the gentle thrill that they raised in the flesh when the hand was brought near them. But they could not really be touched, or clearly discerned, being more the absence than the presence of form. Some grew stronger than others and emitted a faint light of their own that could be seen on dark nights as dim soft gleamings. These came and went, and on moonless nights, when observed from the top of the hill, they seemed to drift westward toward the wooded river valley as if drawn toward the red glow in the night sky beyond.