“Of course. Oh, gladly,” Seven said. “The nineteenth- or twentieth-century ruins are underneath the new 35,000 B.C. ones because those appeared “later” from the future of Past Time, where there’s always fresh action and new things happening. That’s why Window couldn’t figure it out. It’s a complete dilemma in the framework of time as he understands it—”

Cyprus said, very softly: “Seven, remember you create your own reality. We all do.”

“I know. You keep telling me,” Seven said, somewhat impatiently. “What does that have to do with this?”

“It has to do with other questions you haven’t answered yet, and it all fits together. And it’s a clue.”

“Oh, well, then. Let me see—”

“You Make Your Own Reality,” Cyprus said again, in the weirdest fashion, and suddenly the words rang in Seven’s own mind, from within his own consciousness, not from outside it. And with that, Cyprus disappeared.

Yet in a microsecond that could also have been a century, Seven experienced a richness of being beyond any he had ever imagined, in which he was himself, or rather itself.

And he and Cyprus were both participants in a multiplicity of selves; multiple existences rippling inward and outward like constellations. Each self was unique. Seven knew who he was, yet in experiencing Cyprus he knew he was glimpsing only a portion of his own reality. His consciousness reeled. He couldn’t grasp it all. Somewhere within him, Cyprus laughed with the most delightful brilliant understanding. And images appeared, sometimes inside him and sometimes outside him until he could no longer keep track.

And Seven’s Consciousness
Parted Four Times

In one he was Proteus, in the courtyard of the Dig of the Tellers. Window was beside him. And though Seven was Proteus, Proteus was himself and inviolate, and Seven from far above saw the entire scene. Proteus’ face was grave, yet full of excitement, and Window was looking at him with the eye of a father such as no boy ever had.

“I know I’m on to something important,” Proteus said. “From now on, I’m a Teller, too. This dig has secrets that no one’s discovered, and I’m going to learn what they are. Sometimes, like now, I feel so close to knowing. I’m going to work with these sound-embossed tablets until I know them backwards. I think that the sounds themselves are far more important than we realize.”

Proteus looked up. He could feel himself teeter on the edge of some new comprehension that was still beyond his reach. It was twilight. As Window stood there, his skin seemed to absorb the blue of early evening so that to Proteus he looked blue-green, almost fluid, joining the sky and the ground, growing into the sky like a figure-shaped tree for him, Proteus, to climb. What a weird idea, Proteus thought.