“Without the Cyclops. You can't even see reality properly without an understanding of their gift, of how they see worlds, and by seeing them, making them; you can't understand shit about shit-life anything; what's good; bad, you certainly can't do any of the stuff upon which our lives are based. There's no trade. There's no economic value generated. There's no work even for those upon whom the dreams, that resource anyway it's farmed, the whole thing – seen through a Cyclops – it all depends. On them. So who is killing... Cyclops?”

“I love Cyclops -”

“Everyone does. That's it. They're adorable, look at them. My father was one. They're wonderful magical beings - even knowing them, let alone understanding them, our lives feel more interesting. My father was one. I love them. Even the dreamunits, a deplorable term we all use even as we unfailingly premise it – that is - for a normal human being who is economically active in no manner other than their dreams; even them, that haven't met them; they all love them.

“We have scientific means of acquiring that knowledge. We're plugged into them literally through Old Works, through the Slys, through their dreams, we convert their dreams, via the story you plot, Pheel, into this realm of which we are, are, you know currently existing inside - that is the only route and passageway between the three worlds upon which all commerce; financial, media, economic; alimentary, for the love of all that is mystical, depends.

“Everyone loves a Cyclops. There is nothing without them. Again, again, the point at which I'm directing you with unsubtle perseverance because - even trying to re-indoctrinate you into a mode of understanding apparently everything you should already know. In your current condition you can't understand anything but the direct and literal. Is why. - Someone is killing Slys: they want to replace everything that we have; everything that is good; with nothing. I don't mean they haven't thought it through, I mean with nothing, exactly nothing, with nothing-existence and the void, instead of the three-realms; the void realms, and nothing more than itself; nothing-time-finished-land - because everything is gone; replaced with nothing. It must be religious, it must be political. Why else?”

“Quite,” he glanced at her queint, “But I am a person finding it increasingly difficult to speak.” He couldn't breathe, “I need... blood... back in me -”

“Couple days you'll be fine.”

“That nothing-land you so wistfully recount,” he said, “that's where I'll be living in a few days if I don't -”

“Send Pry.”

“What?”

“Send Pry.”

He glanced involuntarily at Pry-Boak.

“Try truth.”

The beats... in terms of beating... did not cease. The savage beating upon whatever his psyche was made out of, these beats did not end.

“I have to take all this to... without any backup; without you being able to convincingly tell anybody you've passed it through any potential gestalt of an operational, what's the word, future, in time, in reality - that it holds water, that it would; that this story would at least hold the whole thing together until... the next one. Whenever - and it's getting – everything is hurtling hysterically to nil - quicker, that is, whenever - it's required.

“- Are you not sick - you are sick; look at you, of throwing patches on this thing. Of scraping illusions over any sort of functional reality framework; to keep the dreams coming, to get enough fantasy weight through these Slys, pointlessly... it ain't even working anymore.”

He knew what she was really saying, “I'm already sympathetic to that. You know I'm already sympathetic to that.”

“Then do it.”

“This ain't, and is not, the time to start experimenting with more reality; with more truth; the terms are not interchangeable apparently in this reality-land; any. But... what was I... I'm sympathetic,” he couldn't look at her, but he had to, to say this at least, “I'm -”

“You're sympathetic -”

“It's a movement to which I'm sympathetic.”