Some tiny part of himself rode piggyback on the rest of him, which was definitely breaking up or falling apart. Not that he had a physical form, because he didn’t, but his being had an intangible form and this was gently falling off in bits and pieces, tumbling out into long waves that now and then bunched together in particles, and all of this kept extending outward into—well, whatever was there. In so doing, Seven’s consciousness flowed through the lot; rising and falling in the waves, bouncing and gently snapping back—all very enjoyable.

The waves and particles that were his kept flowing through others that weren’t, though he didn’t know who or what they belonged to. Only a strangeness flowed through him when this happened. It was “sometime later” before he realized that each time this happened, a bit of his consciousness mixed into those waves too, and a bit of the other streams most certainly flowed into him. How many others was he, then? Or how many others were him?

How on earth could you tell?

How on what?

Was that thought his?

Whose?

He’d gone to the other side of the universe, or to the other side of the inside of the universe, whatever that meant and whoever or whatever he was.

Was. This was the strangest thought he’d ever had. Nothing, he knew, was. Everything is. But where was he in this everythingness? And how did somewhere come from nowhere, drifting as he was, spread out into all those waves and particles, each spreading both light and sound? The sound disappeared but was always present. And Seven realized then that he’d quite disappeared. He doubted even Cyprus could find him. He was … dispersed.

He was hopscotching all over; or space was everywhere turning into what he was; or he was turning everywhere into what space was, and couldn’t tell the difference.

What would happen if—

He shouted, “I am Oversoul Seven,” and meant it?

And he did.

At once, or rather before at once, all the waves and particles stopped, wherever they were, for some had vanished beyond the dimensions of his knowledge or attention, fallen over horizons of being that he couldn’t fathom. Yet the stopping was so fast and involved such motion that, like a rubber band snapping, particles and waves all moved one into the other, contracted, imploded, shrank, moved faster than light into a different kind of light—and threw Seven back to the side of the universe he’d left earlier.

“To say I was multidimensionally dizzy is an understatement,” he said to Cyprus later, and as soon as he said the words he was struck with the meaning of “understatement.” He had gone under statement; beneath it. He had unstated himself, at least briefly, and he said proudly to Cyprus, “I must have restated myself rather well, too, because here I am.”

“Are you?” Cyprus asked gently.