I have no proof of this. It’s theory. But this is what I believe. And if this is so, I want to examine this creature when he’s incarnated for what I can learn—not from his particle body but for the invisible and subatomic neural circuitry that controls it, just as Amel’s neural circuitry sustains all of you.

But we can talk about this in detail later. Suffice it to say that in all your writings, the Vampire Chronicles, no two spirits command the same attention as Memnoch and Amel, and I do want to explore very much this spirit Memnoch, though my first goal is of course to understand and learn about Amel, to know the subatomic anatomy of Amel.

And when we do come to examine this subatomic anatomy, we will be examining the anatomy of a soul.

But let me return to that night, that night of all nights!

As the hours passed, Amel confided in us his theory once more that all sentient beings generate souls, and souls have their own intricate anatomy and organization which gives off an energy, an energy that Amel believed was irresistible to Bravennans who had been harvesting the misery and suffering of the planet for thousands of years.

“I have often wondered,” he said, “if they have found a way to harvest souls. Imagine, if you will, what this would mean for these monsters who thrive off the energy of the invisible part of us, if when the lives of men and women are finished here, Bravenna takes their souls.”

I thought it was all too fanciful, but Amel would not let go of it and I could see then how much more interested he was in the fields that later epochs would call philosophy or theology than he was in the actual biological sciences which he had used to such advantage to shape and sustain his world.

“What if the transmitting stations, wherever they are, can draw to themselves the souls of all those who have finished their biological life, and what if these souls are drawn to Bravenna as surely as all those moving pictures are drawn, and what if the Bravennans use those souls as a concentrated form of energy, a concentrated expression of energy, enhanced and deepened and perfected by suffering so that those souls are like ripe and perfect fruit to the Bravennans and maybe even to others in the ‘Realm of Worlds’?”

He went on describing this, how it seemed to him that the souls of human beings, thanks to their mammalian nature, might have a wholly different flavor than the souls of other sentient species, and this would make the souls irresistible to Bravennans.

Even as I regarded this as utterly far-fetched and unprovable, Garekyn took an interest and began to speculate along with Amel.

“And what if,” asked Garekyn, “that is why they want to foment war on this planet, because they will have more souls to harvest, somehow traveling through the transmission stations as they are released from the biological bodies, souls drawn Heavenward through the beam of the transmission station as if through infinitely long tunnels of light?”