I located the surgical lab. Hurried past rows of cryogenic pods and laid Oscar on the floor next to one of the operating tables.

THREE MINUTES …

ABE directed me to the medical cabinets. I located sealed packs of intravenous lines and syringes. Tearing through the plastic, I removed a line and rigged each end with needles.

TWO MINUTES …

Oscar had stopped breathing. Leaning over the unconscious cephaloped, I grabbed one of his tentacles, parted the fur and searched for anything that remotely resembled a vein. Finding nothing, I repeatedly jabbed at the soft flesh, attempting to simply draw blood.

ONE MINUTE.

I tried a sucker pad and was relieved to see Oscar’s blood inch up the line. Rolling up my left sleeve, I located a knotty vein in my forearm and slid the other needle inside the blood vessel, drawing blood. Keeping the syringe flat, I repeatedly opened and closed my fist as I stretched out on the surgical table above Oscar’s inert form, praying gravity would do its work.

Leaning over the table, I watched as my blood quickly drained down the length of tube, pushing Oscar’s blood back into its vessel. ABE, increase my heartbeat to one hundred sixty beats per minute.

I lay back, staring at the dark recesses in the reconstructed ceiling overhead, my agitated pulse pounding in my neck at the memory of the skeletons harbored in GOLEM’s gruesome attic.

At some point, I closed my eyes …

Chapter 34

34

Things are not what they appear to be: nor are they otherwise.

—SURANGAMA SUTRA

When I opened my eyes, the ceiling that harbored my creation’s museum of perversions was gone, replaced by shimmering waves of gold reflecting along a smooth ceiling of rock.

I sat up, disoriented. The surgical lab was now a cave, the surgical table a bed of velvety soft spinach leaves, each sheet of vegetation as large as a raft.

“The dreamer awakens.” Dharma waved from a shallow pool of mineral water, clouds of steam dispersing from the percolating surface.

“How did I get here? Where’s Oscar … whoa!” Attempting to stand, I was struck by a wave of vertigo that sent me tumbling back into the sheets of spinach.

Dharma climbed out of the pool, her nude body silky wet and alluring. Kneeling by my side, she held my hand and kneaded the flesh along the back of my thumb. “Oscar’s alive. Your transfusion saved his life, but it nearly bled you to death. Oscar managed to reverse the flow of the IV; now half your blood is mixed with his and vice versa. I think it was karma, don’t you?”

“Karma? How is it karma that I now share my blood with an octopus?”

“Join me in the hot springs and I will explain. There is much we need to talk about.”

“Food first. I’m so weak. It feels like I haven’t eaten in days.”