Primum non nocere

“Quantum Mnemonics,” I reminded myself as I sat down and began to engineer sense out of the maelstrom of facts currently streaming through my consciousness.

This is where, you decide, it all gets too weird. Because you truly know you’ve begun to stray into the domain of the Time Lords. Only for you it’s not science-fiction. Rather it’s the stories from your past giving you the ability to make a modified form of sense out of all of this.

Ideas come as fogs of probability rather than words: images from contemporary culture flow together leaving you with an overwhelming feeling of whatever it was the other thing was about. A feeling that only now are you able to translate into the spoken word.

Yet it’s only over an extended period of time that you may find your ways to uncover the truths of it. Patiently weaving skeins of different reality as you seek to uphold the past in the lights of things to come. And still so much fails make sense.

Leaving you, for now, trapped in a place where the least hypothesis, and the social structures of law and order, insist it’s little more than the pathology of a manifest thought disorder.

“Block Transfer Computations,” replied my other cat as she jumped onto the table and demanded due bandwidth consideration from my tuna sandwich.

“Are we really reverse engineering,” I asked my other cat once the tuna had been depleted, “a theory of block transfer from the mess I’ve uncovered with my Quantum Mnemonics.”

“Yes,” purred my other cat with a satisfied purr, “we are.” And with that she began to clean her face with a moistened paw and lost interest.

“It’s not funny,” objected my cat, “for others have begun to perceive the extra dimensions we have taken to folding our minds through.”

“I’ll continue this later,” I decided. “Because right now I’m stuck in a hole trying to resolve the apparent fogs of reality surrounding some of the key operators who support these facts as fiction.”

“Shit, shit, shit,” yelped the wolf as the truth sunk in and once again revealed me as the Bad Wolf who started it all.

“You along with others brought harm to his neural symbiote,” warned my other cat once the wolf’s identity had been established. “We do not take matters such as this lightly.”

Sounds of Silence

“On the morphology of neural semantic precursors in closed cell particle memetic structures,” I recited to myself as I wandered through the streets.  A moment later and my mind slipped into a crisis of confidence.

Your mind split then.  Leaving you flapping about inside your own head as your emotions flopped about looking for your cat, and your intellect began challenging the need for said cat.

Then she found me and my fleeting moment of panic dissipated.

Other moments of time and real began to suggest themselves to you then as once again you began to question.  And yet no coherently shareable view would come.  Leaving you yet again trapped between realms.

It’s that sense of the other voice, I decide later.  Something I can’t actually remember never being there.  It’s not until I pulled a trick of light and mind with my cat that I became able to see beyond the noise… and the silence.

Dimensions of change

“I miss my children,” I moaned as I sat there and contemplated the available opportunities of movement ahead of me. “I sense their minds around me all the time,” I continued, “but it’s on days like today when there’s an opportunity to catch-up that it really begins to ache.”

For a while I sat and pondered the nakedness of the trees outside my window. Contemplated too the spectre of Justice in the distance. A dry mood of not exactly depression blew across my soul then. Leaving me pondering words like ‘leviathan’, and the fickle deeds of minds so divorced from reality it becomes hard to see how once they could have successfully claimed to have been men.

Other dark collectives of human understanding revealed themselves to me then. Families of silence huddled together in the dark seeking to avoid the ultimate judgements of self enlightenment. Leaving me once again lost without words as individuals moved from the silence merely to assault me with their selfish understandings of right and wrong.

I began to ask why then. Again and again, until the deeper voices of my heart and soul could be heard repeating the question.

“Because I’m not in the best of moods,” came the reply from the other side of the fence, “and I’d only go blaming you for it right now.”

Strange, dark, words from ancient texts spooled across my mind then. Unlocking long metaphors of meaning written in the images of contemporary form. Promoting the deeper recollection of the treatise on the nature of harm that had once formulated itself in my mind.

“I’ve been contemplating,” purred my other cat suddenly, “the nature of blame. For example, would it be just to blame a catalysing agent for an explosion, given that the other reagents provide all the energy of the action/reaction.”

“Humans are dumb,” my cat announced, “failing so often to see beyond the simple logic of action-reaction. Failing to look deeper into the nature of the operators involved within the complex systems they uphold with greatest of virtue: life, mind, intellect, emotion.”

And with a laugh and a smile my mood turned. And I began, finally, to navigate my mood into a less bleak aspect.

“I can’t claim,” I replied in response to my cat’s assertions, “to be very much different. Other than I’ve developed the habit of thinking long.”

“Identification, thesis, apotheosis,” muttered my other cat, “antithesis.”

Halt 0

“I wouldn’t have left it going like this,” I admitted, “left it going for as long as I have, unless I’d become convinced there’s more to this than my personal insanity.”

“Your own personal,” emphasized my other cat with a grin, “insanity.”

“Sentenced 1989,” commented my cat by way of a distraction.

“Since 1943,” I muttered in reply…

For a moment I allowed my mind to stroll through the other trackways of my memory. Allowed the other operators of my empty life to specify the times and dates. Finding myself, then, falling through the maelstrom of symbols twice left by the side of the road.

Then life and art began to blur together again. As the juxtapositions of my various crazy notions began to intersect the realms of the real. More hard data passed me by with alarming coincidence as the supernatural plot of the programme I was watching began to unravel into a year long conversation. Leaving the others, perhaps, with a better explanation of the last five years of my living hell.

“Significant other,” my cat reminded me as I calmed myself with a breathing exercise, “most significant other, perhaps.”

“Proclamations,” I sighed eventually, “and the difference between Shadow and Other.”

“Easy,” purred my other cat, “it’s a voice and it’s all in your mind. Heart through head is Other,” she began, “those known to you. Those that are rejected are Shadow,” she continued, “head through heart.”

“Intellect and emotion,” I nodded thoughtfully.

“Along with the unconscious,” added my cat, “both Shadow and Other are operational entities within the realms of the sub-conscious.”

“And schizophrenia, the split mind,” I nodded as I recalled the conversations, “occurs when the normal moderators of the mind break down, allowing sub-conscious thought to bleed into prime consciousness. Leading to the peculiar phenomena where there is no fixed perception of self.”

“…and if you ever want to meet anyone who is truly insane,” my other cat reminded me with a demonic grin, “go speak to a writer…”

Sync I

“Is it always like is,” asked my other cat sarcastically as I sat and stared at the blank screen in front of me.

“There’s one-thousand and one things on my mind,” I sighed. “One-thousand and one points from which I may start placing my mind in order. Yet in the end it always seems to come down to something casual I added to the end of the conversation we had last night…” My mind tapered off then as I began a serious effort to recall.

I’d defined a brief plan of attempted understanding. Something due to last a few days. Something to assist during one of those subtle shifts of mind and emotion. Reason had allowed me to spot it. Reason told me too that now was the time to say something about it. Yet so far my hesitant attempts at words had served merely to fuel my frustration, rather than my enlightenment.

“Synchronize,” I muttered, “begin with what you know, begin with where you are and what you’ve got.”

“Chained to a chair not of your making,” replied my cat to no-one in particular, “with two dead cats and the reflection of the item in the back of your mind projected onto the shadow of another man’s faith.”

“It’s not funny,” hissed my other cat.

“Wolf,” barked the wolf from the other side of the room.

“Recognized,” asserted my cat from her vantage point, “you may speak here.”

“Just don’t think of using the word coincidence with regards to any assertions you make here,” purred my other cat, “you’ll only annoy him.”

“Understood,” nodded the wolf, “and now to business. Because I become concerned with the congruencies between the wider plot of your life and the specific plot as seen on TV.”

For a moment I considered a verbal reply. Until the set of related data expanded by several orders of magnitude, leaving me flapping with even more connections and entanglements than I was comfortable with.

“Allow me,” prompted my other cat. And with that she fixed the wolf with the full force of her stare, and began to speak on my behalf. “It’s like this all the time,” she asserted, “yet every time he attempts to put it into words the connections expand into a certainty of weird. Leaving him flapping like a fish out of water as he tries to argue around the obvious exceptions his words cause within consensus.”

“Got it,” I muttered. And with that I framed my mind around a specific body of knowledge. A web of linked and interlinked information. Something filled with many images. Many the wolf would recognize as his own. “I share with you,” I incanted, “my mind.”

“Time is,” concluded my cat, “the simplest thing.”

Sync II

“It’s been a while,” said my cat as she curled down beside me, “since you could be bothered to write anything down.”

“I think about it,” I sighed, “try even. Only all I ever manage is to begin again. Or get stalled shadow boxing the voices who object to what I’ve already written.” For a moment I paused and considered my best efforts. “I’m not even sure,” I sighed, “I know why I’m doing it. Sometimes it seems little more than an ongoing attempt to reiterate the facts as I witnessed them.”

“A way perhaps,” purred my cat, “to see beyond the facts. A way to find cause and reason.”

“I lost my identity,” I admitted. “Then life gave me little opportunity to put anything back together for myself.”

“Turning points,” muttered my other cat, “when does one thing become another. Ask questions of the moment change was first observed and you see an answer fixed time. Ask questions of extrapolated fact and you see another, prior answer, fixed in time. Which leads us nicely to the question of absolute over apparent reality, and the reality of perception itself.”

“Grrrr,” I growled at the tangential nature of my other cat’s words.

“It’s a trick,” sighed my cat, “if you look you’ll see a valid sub-text.”

“Really,” I frowned as a hint of a smile began to crease me expression.

“We’re party to the meta-data which makes this evaporating fog of words hold greater meaning. When you do not speak of things, neither may we. Yet my sister always finds a way to de-occlude that which remains hidden.”

“Is it significant that a major character in this book has the initials D.S.A.,” purred my other cat, “given that you uphold the belief that there is no coincidence.”

For a moment I glanced in my other cat’s direction to see what all the noise was about.

“What’s the matter,” grinned my cat as my flummoxed expression revealed my unease as the planes of fact in my mind slid around a modifying the unseen sets of other fact, “think you’ve seen the light amongst all this surface detail.”

“Yet again,” I groaned, “evidence appears to suggest the nature of the intersect between consciousness and space-time is not exactly collinear with respect to all matter. Action predates cause, the cosmic censor keeps things in line simply because nobody believes information can flow like that, effect then follows and is ascribed to nominal causality ‘coz we don’t know any different.”

“P.S.,” muttered my cat, “This one punctuates a cry for help.”

“Ellipsis,” concluded my other cat, “dot, dot, dot.”

Shadow of the Blue Cube

Once upon a time a man who had lost faith found himself sitting in an otherwise empty tavern pondering the reflections of the life he had left behind him. Asking himself the hard questions about different pasts, different futures, and the world he could see reflected in the mirrors behind the bar. A woman enters. And as the barman fills her order casual social intercourse begins. The man at the bar is drawn in, and a conversation starts. The barman is soon draw away. Yet the conversation continues.

The conversation meanders until the man smiles and remembers. His voice falters and he stutters to silence. He puts the thought behind him and takes a deep calming breath. Looking through the mirrors in front of him into the world behind him he picks up his glass and apologizes. Commenting that, for a moment, nothing appeared to be quite what it seemed to be. The woman smiles and begins to tell a story.

… the allegory of the cave

Once upon a time the world was very different. Times were different. Life was different. People were different. It was a simple world because nothing had been discovered yet. So not a thing looked like it does today. But, just as it is today, the citizens of the land would profess just how free, cultured, and civilized they were.

What the people were unable to see, however, was that an evil sorcerer had cast a spell over the world and the minds of the people. For the people were not free. They were prisoners. Chained on benches in a cave, their head fixed in place allowing them to see nothing but the wall of the cave in front of them. Behind them burns a huge fire. And between the fire and the people, a bridge.

Puppeteers stand on the bridge. Their puppets, which are behind the people and before the fire, cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The people are unable to see these puppets. Unable to see the real objects that pass behind them. What the people see are shadows. Shadows cast by the objects they do not see. Yet people still do not know they are prisoners. They know nothing of the real causes of the shadows. And in their ignorance mistake the appearances before them for reality. To the people the shadows they could see on the wall were real.

For generations the people existed within the confines of the cave. The cycles of birth, death and life revolving around the false reality cast on the wall of the cave by shadows. From time to time one of the people would escape. Cast loose their bonds and find their way from the cave into the true light of the world.

Yet such escapees were never the concern of the puppeteers or the evil sorcerer. Because the fate of such individuals was always the same. Either they would perish from the aching loneliness coming to terms with loosing all that they once held to be true. Or they would return to the cave and do what they could to enlighten their fellow man.

And this then is the cruellest irony. For those that who returned were treated harshly by the others. Even a simple attempt to show the true reality behind the shadows would lead to vociferous accusations of heresy. Or worse. For the view of the people was that the heretics were seeing things that were not really there. And in this a charge of demonic possession would seem reasonable. And so the escapees would perish inside the cave too.

For eons life went on inside the cave. Until the very essence of the people became so adjusted to the reality of their imprisonment none would try to escape. This made the sorcerer very happy for finally the mind of the people had been truly enslaved. But this is a fairy-tale, and the lore demands a different outcome. Good triumphs over evil. And there’s always hope.

And so the people found their freedom. For there was one born into the cave who could send his mind elsewhere. One able to see beyond the cave without leaving it. One able to walk the lines in the minds of the people. And with all the knowledge at his disposal he sent his mind into the mind of the sorcerer. And with a power the likes of which the sorcerer had never seen took the power of the sorcerer as his own. Then, with a thought, he turned the walls of the cave into transparent blue crystal.

And in an instant the people were enlightened. Together they left the cave forever. And the people all lived happily ever after. Yet the power of the one still remains to this day. For never again will shadows and darkness be allowed to rule the world.

With the story concluded the woman becomes silent and smiles. The man remains silent for a moment too. Then he notices the room is beginning to fill-up. Looking at his watch he opens his mouth to speak. Only to be interrupted by the arrival of the woman’s friends. A different conversation starts. The man begins to be drawn into this conversation too. Yet soon his drink is finished and he elects to withdraw. He makes his excuses and departs with good humour.

Conjunction

“What time is it,” muttered my cat.

“They call themselves the soulless,” repeated my other cat.

“Bugger-fuck,” I hissed.

For a while you just sit there. Six minutes fourty-two seconds, and you’ve already had to hit pause three times. Then you begin to look deeper within. And sense of wider meaning falls away. Now there’s so little left. But you saw it. You know you did.

“I’ll tell you this for nothing,” said my cat, “it’s not morphic resonance.”

“As in the BBC didn’t start broadcasting the plot as an when,” grinned my other cat, “they were actually filming it.”

“But it almost certainly is,” continued my cat, “a function of singularity.”

“In this instance,” announced my other cat, “the damages began to accrue round about the time you got a call telling you the four-five-six had landed. Though if you rearrange those characters you’ll discover you’ve been an involved since the start.”

“Spin-offs and other entanglements,” I growled.

You find your self, then, looking for ways to connect the absurdity of your real to a truth you could speak of to another. It happened to you last night too. Had you so concerned you even checked the timestamp for coincidental entanglements of meaning. Then the weird got more obscure. Even harder to relate beyond your own peculiar palette of heuristic mnemonics.

“Fifty-seven minutes and twenty-five seconds,” I mumbled.

“A high-functioning sociopath,” purred my other cat, “two dead cats and a singularity.”

“Dwarf-star alloy,” grinned my cat. “You merely need to contemplate the heuristic mnemonic that is represented by the number fourty-two,” she continued, “to explain the effect of meaning.”

Yet more meanings of weird traverse your mind then. The thing itself represents the thing itself. The territory is the map.

“Care to define six,” asked my cat, “after all this did start at six minutes fourty-two seconds.”

“Woman in a red-dress,” I smiled, “standard link to an eight-mind. Then there’s The Prisoner. Only that reminds me of a psychiatrist who emphatically assured me I was right.”

“As the one who delivers the milk,” announced my other cat, “to the Museum of the Arcana, I think it’s only fair if you allow me to reference The Lovers.”

“Things get overloaded,” I frowned. “So I prefer to link to more abstract conceptual symbologies. Gives me a more plastic scope as I explore the morphology of meaning. Besides,” I smiled, “when it comes to received wisdom and Tarot I use my superior knowledge of the fundamental substrate, and cheat.”

“Esoteric,” argued my cat, “rather than abstract.”

“Whatever,” I muttered.

Other numbers and other meanings ratted across your mind then. Leaving you in a place where all words fall into the same meaning. A place where communication is impossible. Because somehow you realize you’re describing a thing which is new. And yet the restrictions placed on your life have always constrained you to that which came from without.

“You’ve been able to read,” interrupted my cat, “what is essentially the base code of the universe for over five years. It’s not until somebody said the words that you were able to rationalize this into your reality. Before that you were abstracted into what are essentially quantum mnemonics.”

“I’m stuck on the hows,” I sighed. “Mostly this sound insane, or at least highly improbably. Causes one or two emotional issues thanks to the implications. And leaves me forever trying to avoid accusations of borderline psychosis.”

“You’ve also got a very fragile psyche,” warned the wolf. “Though I do hope you realize I’m only being partially cynical when I suggest the current problems stem from an intervention by psychiatric services designed for their benefit rather than yours.”

“Observer effects,” added my cat. “Peculiar how Poppy Shakespeare appeared out of nowhere when he began thinking of that one.”

“Algebraist,” I hissed with obvious irritation.

“Bad wolf,” sighed my cat, “for her it was a taste of another’s power. For you it’s innate, and you’ve never been very comfortable with it.”

“Surface Detail,” I snapped.

“That would be me,” grinned my other cat. “Operating in and of the now.”

“Light,” purred my cat.

half-way out of the dark

Later I found myself remembering what had initially triggered my latest bout of hypergraphia. It was the dreams. They were back. Long lucid vistas of fuzzy meaning and unresolved understanding. Images seen through my heart not my head where characters from my past lives were finally put in their place.

There’s an ongoing narrative too. Something overarching and as yet poorly understood. Something psychologically tangible playing out as dream. Something which falls away into my unconscious within hours. Forgotten almost. Until seven days later when the next segment plays itself out in my mind. And I begin to recall the reason that went before.

There are other things here too. Things deeper in my mind I don’t even get to dream of. Things with the power to fill my wake with the thrashing anger of true frustration.

Four years ago I had a bout of anxiety that lasted months. For I’d begun to suspect it was possible to dream into other people’s dreams. Something easily credited as a symptom of my schizophrenia. Yet to me it was a feeling built on tangible memories of the shadows and others in my mind taking all opportunity to assert their vision of reality over mine.

I became withdrawn then. Became increasingly concerned about the dignity of other minds. Yet my aphasic mutterings and poorly expressed concerns did nothing to help my cause. Rather it fast tracked my admission into hospital once again.

Most recently my dreams and the impossibleness of my perceptions came back to haunt me once again. The humourless result of synchronicity, perhaps, courtesy of Hollywood. Though now I find myself wondering about the role of the Architect, and the true meaning of the father’s shadow.

eye for an I

“You need to find a way to confront this,” warned my cat, “without resorting to harsh words loudly spoken.”

I closed my eyes and, for a moment, found my mind wandering through that book of photographs that is always my cat’s. An odd way, perhaps, to begin a bout of meditation. With effort I calmed my Mind and reminded myself of my resolution to become more disciplined in my mechanisms of thought and expression. It didn’t help because I’d begun to lapse into one of my periods of self doubt: a vicious cycle of dissonance caused, in part, by childhood lessons bereft of all but the most draconian interpretations of law and lore.

“thrrrruuurp,” said my cat, thereby interrupting my attempts to reinitialize the basis for all thought and understanding. “My sister and I have settled on the opinion,” announced my cat with the dismissive charm inherent to her species, “that you are in several aspects somewhat retarded.”

I shot my cat with a questionable look and a half-smile. Somehow I just knew she was trying to lead me somewhere. She’d evolved considerably since dispensing with her mortal form. Leaving me to wonder where I began and she ended. Or was that the other way around.

“Not that you should take my comment as a pejorative statement,” continued my cat, casually multiplexing mild distain with a purr, “for you are indeed exceptionally intelligent and insightful. Paradoxically, however, it’s the literal mind and long thought you were granted at birth which both delayed your development and sparked your enlightenment. What you contemplate now are merely the general circumstances of time, space, place you have experienced through your life. Experiences you would uphold magnified the negative effects of your differences with very little chance of salvation ever being offered to you.”

“Logical pessimism,” I sighed. “Statistical data has so far offered me very little in the way of a positive outlook.” For a moment I considered the past few years. “Let’s see,” I began…

“Don’t,” warned my cat as I began to get shouty.

“I realize it’s not possible to apologize, it’s not cost effective” I sighed, “but I really do feel like I’ve been raped by state sponsored thugs and then just left to get on with it. Even the year’s hiatus in any sort of active treatment seems designed to magnify general levels of paranoia and suspicion with regards to unspoken conspiracy. It still tickles me. Every time a support worker comes near. Every time I have to speak to my CPN.”

“Post traumatic stress disorder,” agreed my cat, “made all the worse because you’ve got a rather entertaining case of schizophrenia.”

No fixed perception of self operating in a realm where the normal division of consciousness have begun to break-down, where the hyper-conscious and sub-conscious bleed into the conscious realm and vice-versa.

“Your NHS focused ire is considerably amplified,” continued my cat, “because those who investigated your complaints clearly felt you were the aggrieved party, and yet within the healthcare system as it stands there’s little opportunity to bring questionable conduct to light.”

“It’s a perverse joke,” I cried. “One seemingly designed to get me to imbibe those chemical additives designed to turn my Mind to mush, then to leave me walking the streets like a zombie. Another success story for the miracle of modern science. One that leaves me as fodder for the displaced air of borderline criminality middle-class managers insist on displacing in my direction. Even being shoved in flat number 22 seems like a the twisted machinations of your standard generic unseen conspiracy.”

“You know,” said my cat,” one interesting thing with regards to medication, is that nobody has ever explained what they expect the medication to achieve. I mean nobody’s ever listed what they consider your symptoms to be, or how they consider the medication would address those symptoms. You simply get ridden and ridden to a point where you’re being caused obvious emotional distress.”

“Odd thing,” I sighed, “I still feel I’m being tested according to the book of Job. It started about seven years ago. Things happening to get me to renounce my various beliefs.” I grinned a mad smile then, “I used to believe in the NHS,” I laughed. “Still do in fact. Though as a higher ideal these days. The ‘fuck you’ attitude I’ve experienced over the past few years has seen to that.”

“I thought you’d overcome most of that religiosity,” said my cat with an upward inflection to her voice. “Kicking the God of Abraham in the face for attempting to suggest you should stab your son was where I’d expected the line to have been drawn.”

“Odd,” I sighed, “that happened just minutes before my first ever visit from social-services. I think they were somewhat concerned that day by what I’ve heard others call messiah consciousness.” For a moment I paused, thought, and began wondering about dates and time. “There was that Gabriel incident informing me that that my unborn son wasn’t mine; not that I could care much, kids are kids and you gotta love them.”

“I think this may have been a repeat,” asserted my cat with due seriousness. “Something from Her Father’s book you once heard in the back of your mind when the work-life balance left you very little chance to even think for yourself.”

“Judas,” muttered my other cat. “Please remember there’s the story of Your Father’s book too.”

“I remember that,” I sighed. “The day I jumped. The hours before hearing the word ‘Judas’ shouted again again. Along with the weight of the world bearing down on me I didn’t stand a chance.”

“You must admit things changed,” purred my other cat.

“Indeed,” I smiled, “weeks after I got out of hospital that first time there was a piece on the radio telling all that the Pope Benny had finally worked out that ‘Judas probably had a place in God’s plan’.” For a moment I grimaced, then hit my other cat with a hard stare, “this is your territory you beguilingly cute feline fuzz face.”

“Non-deterministic outcome of a non-probabilistic atemporal occurrence,” purred my other cat.

“When you open the box the cat will always be dead,” sighed my cat, “for that much was foretold. It’s simply that you can’t tell the name of the cat until the state vectors have collapsed.”

“I can tell what is going to happen and when,” I muttered, “I just can’t say where.”

“Do I need to mention limbo,” asked my cat meekly.

“More voices touch the radio,” I sighed. “I got dumped loudly in limbo for a week or two before Radio Four announced Benny’s lot had downgraded it to a depreciated concept. I even wrote the initial message down. The voices were very insistent.”

“This is one of those unspoken family things,” said my cat. “The respect you show internally for the churches and communions of others preclude you from stating your actual position. Which is probably how both She and He got hold of the wrong end of the stick with regards to the true allegiances of your belief systems.”

“I’m a chaotic elemental,” I sighed. “For me belief is a tool to bring apparent order out of apparent disorder. Apply a pragmatic approach to the concept of ‘the one’ and you’ve got the beginnings of a default substrate which traces it’s lineage back to the dawn of the universe.”

“Be fair,” barked my other cat, “you need to transcend good and evil, contemplate the realities of collective human attribution with regards to natural Justice, and seriously ask how it is there’s more congruences in the collective visions of Lucifer than there are of God.”

“The one true Not-God,” grinned my cat.

“True,” I laughed.