At this, the Buddha laughed, setting his image shaking and quaking, and he shouted, “Ah ha, but I’m not a Buddhist. I’m Buddha. And your desire is your inner direction, and you desire death only because it’s the only desire left, the only one you allow.”

“I don’t believe that at all,” Will shouted. “And I don’t have an ego anymore. I’ve rid myself of it. I just want to serve, so I can only suppose that your ridiculous remarks are part of a trial to test me. I want to be selfless. I am selfless. I am, goddammit,” he yelled. Then he stood, staring, too frightened to move. The gelatinous Buddha shuddered, trembled like a cosmic jell-mountain, and began to melt into a trembling mass of semithick liquid that moved purposefully and directly toward Will. First, the edges melted and small puddles reached Will’s sneakered feet. He finally screamed, and leapt backward, as the entire mass flowed like cold lava, faster and faster, in his direction.

“No. No,” Will screamed, staring upward at the unsteady melting Jell-O Buddha which now threatened to avalanche down upon him.

At the last minute, Oversoul Seven grabbed Will, and the Buddha-flow stopped; uncertain. Will was shaking and muttering, and Seven said sternly to the Buddha, “You didn’t have to go that far. We get the message.” Then, to Will, he said, “Your ‘trip’ is over, and I’m sure it’s more than you counted on. Wake up inside your physical body. And if it’s selflessness you want, you nearly got a taste of it, so I hope you’ve learned a lesson. Anyhow, you’re safe now, so you can wake up relieved.”

Will just nodded, too shaken to say a thing. He muttered something about never taking drugs again, and disappeared. The Buddha shrank at the edges, wrinkled, each part shaking with such humor that Seven almost forgot to be angry; and then the Buddha was gone. Seven and Lydia stood there a moment, still dressed in their pilgrim garb, when once again the air began to thicken into semi-shapes, and Lydia gasped as the grounds gradually changed to those of the gardens outside of the gods’ rest home. Only this time, Cyprus was waiting for them.

“This has gone quite far enough. Seven, I want to talk to you,” she said. She took a form that was nearly regal, so that Oversoul Seven made no protest, though he’d had one in mind. Even Lydia remained silent, though Seven was afraid she might complain about some of the less fortunate of their recent adventures.

A blue-green cast covered the garden; a twilight that was at once sad in nature and oddly neutral in quality in a way that Seven sensed but couldn’t fathom.