Seven broke off his thoughts. The darkness was now swooping into itself at an incredible rate, and in the heart of the activity, a small microscopic image was forming. It was tinier than Seven thought anything could be and still be visible; an image of such intensity that its vitality completely invalidated its size, so that now Seven wondered how he’d ever thought that importance and size were connected in any way at all. He stared at the image because there seemed to be nothing else he could do, and discovered that it was actually composed of glittering lights that somehow existed on the … other side of darkness.

“I’ll teach them something about hypnosis,” Christ chuckled.

Zeus said uneasily, “I still think you’re going too far.”

“Nonsense,” Christ said. He and Zeus were whiling away the afternoon. They’d watched Ram-Ram’s projections, which had appeared outside of the rest home’s huge windows, flickering in dimensions too vast for mortal eyes to follow.

“Still, it was a damn good show,” Zeus thundered.

“I gave that idiot godologist just what he wanted,” Christ said. “Verily, I told him just what he wanted to hear. It’s not my fault if he has to deal with the consequences.”

The tiny image that Ram-Ram and Seven were staring at now made up the entire contents of the universe as far as they were concerned, and each of them interpreted it in his own, frightening way.

Every one of the separate glowing details he saw made sense to Seven, for example, yet none of the details taken together formed anything at all, while in each eternal moment they seemed just about to; and the suspense was almost unbearable.

“What about Oversoul Six?” Zeus asked.

“Seven. It’s Oversoul Seven, though if he doesn’t watch it, he’ll be Oversoul Five,” Christ muttered. “Verily, he’s been asking for this. It’ll do him good, and it will teach him not to go to the godologists expecting to learn anything of merit. It’ll certainly give him a better perspective.”

Ram-Ram was seeing himself, in a million different pieces, scattered, throbbing, changing relationships. His memories kept getting organized in different ways, like jigsaw images constantly changing shape and forming new pictures. The dark yet bright images held his attention so that it seemed nothing else had ever existed, or ever would.

“Now, that’s hypnosis,” Christ chuckled again.

“Still, that part about Jehovah was good,” Zeus said, drinking his wine and at the same time wondering if it were nearly time for supper. He eyed Christ slyly, rubbing his black beard, trembling with a laughter that sent the royal floorboards quaking. “I didn’t know you hated your father all that much!”