“He wants you. Now.”

“What – for, what? He wants me now? You're saying.”

“I would get there quicker than immediately if I were you,” she recited, “He is,” She noticed the screen by Pry, “- that's what he's looking at too and he's extremely not happy about it. You can tell by the gestures, the shouting, the spitting, and the look on his face; the shapes his body is contorting itself perhaps permanently into.” She stopped. Clua was still talking.

“- In the world of this child nothing else is going to work now but sending Pry, even you see this, and sending him with truth – pick a number and make it truth -”

“I don't like being here,” said the tall girl, “I'd like him to know as soon as possible that I did the thing he wanted me to... do.” She glanced around. “Clua-Sryh.” Nod. “Cazzo.” She left.

Beyond the door Pheel saw Cyclops turn their heads, expertly with the minimum effort required to get her back to her... Lord, he thought, in zones that would remain habitable while they looked at them that way and while she traversed through them; black walls; blacks panels; corridor worlds joined solely by talented perception.

“- If this thing isn't already running by the time you get over there he'll make you patch the thing with quantities of lies, the like of which you've never seen. He'll ram whimsy, he'll ram illusion in there, no relation to reality/fantasy; he'll make it fantasy, you know, his fantasy; his dreams, his desires, he'll have the leverage to do it because you won't have anything supernatural backing it. Just your own instincts. Forgiving him the premise they're not,” anticipating objections, “you know, supernatural themselves. He won't take that. No p52. I can't look at him like I've ran through this, I've seen where it goes - it reinforces the exchange, everything – no talent to see how much it re-infuses Old Works with new capacity and vigour. I won't have - I can't even flirt with him -”

“You're toying with me. You're feline nibbling me/not puncturing the skin.” Because it was exactly what he wanted. But she was only half right. It was the only thing that could – running the story through himself as much as anything, he did that too, he just didn't know what it would do to time, passed through so many minds, so many millions, billions – only half right, it was the only thing that could hold this thing together. - But it was likely the only thing that could just as easily – once you let truth in... there was nothing more dangerous – just as easily destroy it forever. And what would that mean? He meant beside a dark age of permanent chaos and degeneration -

“You know he's -”

He felt the world twist in the wake of his waiting.

“Pry,” he turned to the young Sly and it all came instantly, the dimensions of the dream, and the corridors it took, the hero, the man himself, the quest, all of it came at once – his attributes and how they related to reality – in fact a jumble, he'd work them out as he went - as well as the man himself: who he was - the fact of the quest being who he was. - Also, the fact of the fakeness of reality and the forced land of illusion that was actually the truth of the world everyone, including Pheel himself, and everyone he knew explicitly, lived in. He saw it all, almost instantly, actually instantly, interconnected in a manner that was almost scriptural, almost like Old Works itself.

- He saw the outlines too, of where it was going, but not linear, not one long engineered tunnel. No it was not working like that at all: he saw three interconnected worlds - he saw the fact of the connections between all three, and the fact of their being worlds of lies connected with lies; the fuel of whose continued existence was belief in those lies, living in the worlds constructed by those lies, or even living against them, that – same thing in repetition - being actually more effective, for producing the juice, the weight, that they needed to keep the whole thing going.

He saw it all, and his name came; that came too, immediately in fact. It came so fast, only had happened this way – how long had he been dreaming this? - maybe it was only working this way because it had been so hard, and growing harder, to the point that for so long it had been a painstaking and incremental process of one verified interconnection mounted on the next: there had been no dream, left.

Nothing like inspiration, nothing either, at all, like imagination or truth, but this was – this thing was instantaneous.

Like in fact this story had been waiting for him.

This was almost actually true; he was almost telling the truth; almost actually - it was also entirely new. He pulled it out himself – or it was pulling; in fact it was, because it was actually true.

“His name is Art[ion] Mlckk'n Inchance-rify.”