Draft86


 * 1) PF1: By late fall the homes in Franklin were complete and the Red Wing was migrating out of Greendome by train, six families a week. And a curious thing happened. The Squaw River, which debouched full-grown from the western slope of Green Dome, slowed to a mere trickle.
 * 2) PF2: Then even J. Edgar Hoover got tired of Clyde Tolson wasting time with his obsession on the high plains and called him back to DC. A war was still raging. Or perhaps he just missed him. When Robyn began to have labor pains she could visit Dr. Wahkan without fear of capture.
 * 3) PF3: 'I'm glad you came in,' he said. 'You won't need to be sedated because you can choose to isolate your conscious mind from any pain but it's still going to kick your ass. Your body, your subconscious mind is still going to know something is going very wrong.'
 * 4) PF4: 'Why is that, Doc?' she asked. 'Why can't we just drop 'em like cows do and carry on?' 'Because humans are the only animals on Earth that walk upright, on two feet. At every moment we are faced with the threat of being disemboweled simply by standing up.
 * 5) PF5: 'So the hole in the pelvic floor has to be as small as possible to prevent that. At the same time, humans have the largest brains of any animal on Earth as a percentage of their total body mass. So the opening in the pelvis cannot be too small, do you see?'
 * 6) PF6: Robyn nodded. 'Otherwise the infant would get wedged in the birth canal and die.' 'Correct. The baby's skull does not fully form until after birth, so it actually deforms during birth to ease the passage, but the ordeal is still very dangerous for mother and child.'
 * 7) PF7: 'Assuming we both survive, what am I in for?' 'You mean, what are you going to get?' Robyn nodded. 'Well, Gabriel is a jen, hez sex chromosomes are X and Z. You're are X and X. So there's a fifty percent chance you're going to get a beautiful and human baby girl.'
 * 8) PF8: 'And there's a fifty percent chance you're going to get an equally beautiful baby nephil. Flip the coin again. Heads che's an ambi, like Doriel's mother. Tails che's a che like hez father Gabriel. I could have tested for it earlier, but now it's so close there's no point.'
 * 9) PF9: Robyn's husband and her two closest friends stayed close to her during the whole ordeal. Once, just once, she let herself be in full contact with the worst of the labor pain, and she quickly retreated, thankful that she could retreat. The Change had completely spoiled her.
 * 10) PG0: When it was over she was holding a baby girl. Gabriel suggested they name her Ariel, and Robyn agreed. Ariel was perfectly whole and healthy and came with a little pad of soft black hair. Robyn found that words failed to fully convey this greatest of human experiences.
 * 11) PG1: Robyn loved to hold Ariel's face close to her own and inhale her soft baby scent, that special new person factory-fresh smell. She was Ariel's mother! Gabriel, too, was filled with joy to be Ariel's father, but he felt sliced out, somehow, from the pure joy that Robyn felt.
 * 12) As they crossed the Appalachians Lilith tried to explain how Robyn's precognition worked. She explained that a particle, like an electron, wasn't just a little dot moving through time, it was more like a long line, growing like a crystal, and the exact point where it crystallized was the present.
 * 13) From that point going forward, many other lines existed in a ghostly form, including the Primary, the most probable future, which was almost firm enough to be a crystal. 'Time is a fire,' Lilith said, 'and history is ash.' After Robyn understood all that, she wanted to know how they could loop back in time.
 * 14) 'Wouldn't we be walking into the middle of a bunch of hard crystals? she asked. Even the air we breathe?' Lilith said that their bodies could dissolve the crystals of everything they touched, set even the ashes of the past afire again.
 * 15) 'But we don't put the whole world in play again just by being back here,' she cautioned. 'I'm looking for a crucial event that can give us leverage.' 'I don't understand,' Robyn said. 'I know I have a power, but that power comes entirely from you and Bat-El. Why am I tagging along?'
 * 16) 'It's hard to explain,' Lilith said, 'but I guess the way I could put it is I can't see the forest for the trees. Yes your power ultimately comes from the Elohim, but by necessity you are looking at time as though through a pinhole. Am I right? Tell me, Robyn, what is it like for you?'
 * 17) 'There's this bigb&canvas, but every time I do something or even say something, I can see a ripple run up that canvas and change the paint that's on it. Sometimes it's a big ripple, l like when you showed up with Edgar the Elder, and the whole painting changes.' 'That's why you're tagging along, Robyn.
 * 18) I have too much information of all the different ways things can go, so I have no information. But you, with your pinhole view, can help me find the pivot points where we can do tiny changes and make big improvements.' 'So you can see that canvas also, you and Bat-El?'
 * 19) 'We're painting that canvas, my daughter and I. And do you know something else about our art, Robyn? We are perfectionists.' Robyn and Lilith ran out of Highway 50 at the nation's capital and got a room on the fourth floor of the Howard Johnson's hotel on Virginia Avenue.
 * 20) After they got all settled in, and the sun had gone down, Lilith took Robyn out on the balcony and said, 'I brought you here to sensitize you, to let you practice what I need you to do.
 * 21) So please tell me what comes to mind.' Robyn was silent for a moment as she surveyed the stack of events that piled up in her mind. At length she said, 'All this, the city, it's gone in a few months. H-bomb.'
 * 22) 'In October there will be a war in the Middle-East that will spin out of control. It won't turn into World War III, but if you are able, Robyn, tell me what does happen.' 'There's chaos at first. Millions of people are dead, here and in Russia.
 * 23) The United States moves the capital back to Philadelphia, where it was in the very beginning, but the states in the South and the mountain West take advantage of the opportunity and file for divorce, like way back in the Civil War.
 * 24) America is basically down to just New England and the states north of the Ohio River over to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, that area. The other side picks Atlanta to be their capital, and they get southern California, the Rockies, the Great Plains, and Dixie.
 * 25) They actually go ahead and call it the New Confederacy. But Northern California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, they form a third country called Pacifica.' 'So look out towards the end of the century, Robyn. Tell me what happens.'
 * 26) 'Okay, so what's left of the United States still has the most people and industry and money, but militarily they're kind of weak. All the bases were in the south and the west.
 * 27) The New Confederacy has the most land and resources, but their culture and their political system isn't set up to allow their people to flourish, only corporations.It was the same thing in the Civil War, men dying to keep cotton-growers in the money. Anyone who isn't white and straight will be basically non-citizens there.
 * 28) The New Confederates end up using the military they inherited to extort their neighbors, US and Mexico, the Caribbean, and try to bite off chunks of land.
 * 29) Everyone thinks they're assholes. But they won't mess too much with Pacifica, though, because that country inherits the west coast submarine fleet, a bunch of carriers and a crapload of nukes.' 'Tell me about Pacifica then. That's where we shall have to live.'
 * 30) 'Pacifica is the smallest piece, with the fewest people, but in that country the people will come first. They will do some amazing things to make life on Earth a paradise, but the operative word there is Earth. The space program is entirely forgotten in all this, except for lofting some satellites.
 * 31) Everyone turns inward. And this, Lilith, if I understand your goals correctly, will not do.' 'No, Robyn, it will not do at all. We must make some sort of change, if only to make sure the suffering of those millions of people will not come to be.
 * 32) But I'm entirely at a loss as to how to proceed. I need to find a place where events constrict in such a way that if we apply a small change it will prevent the Cold War from going hot in October.
 * 33) But only you can see time that way, how it does constrict.' Robyn desperately wanted to help, or at least give Lilith the impression that she was trying to help.
 * 34) She looked across the well-lit street at a large array of striking, modern buildings with graceful curves, very unlike any architecture she had ever seen. 'There's something about that place,' she said with more confidence than she really felt.
 * 35) 'Something important, and the President is mixed up in it, but we're about a year too late and now I can't unravel what it was.' 'Give me a date and we're there.' 'What day is it now? Some vacation, huh? I completely lost track.' 'Today is Saturday, June 16, 1973.' 'So there you go, Lilith.
 * 36) Make it June 16, 1972.' They bugged the wrong phone during the May 1972 Watergate break-in. It was just a secretary's phone mostly used by staffers to order in Chinese food, not the one used by the Democratic Party chairman that was clear on the other side of the office in a locked room.
 * 37) The corresponding Operation GEMSTONE transcripts were useless and the Attorney General, loath to piss away $89,000 in diverted and laundered campaign funds, ordered a second break-in to square things away.
 * 38) On June 14 the GEMSTONE leader codenamed 'Daddy' got his Washington team back together and the 'Spook' told the same group of burglars he used the first time to fly back up from Miami.
 * 39) It took two days to get everyone into place with the right equipment, mostly off-the-shelf stuff that couldn't be traced, but there was no written plan and no rehearsal. This astonished the 'Photographer', a semi-retired CIA operative who had captained a boat for over three hundred missions to communist Cuba.
 * 40) Some of the captives where men who might have been his own friends had he dared to lift their hoods. But his friend the 'Realtor', a fellow Bay of Pigs veteran, practically worshiped the ground the Spook walked on.
 * 41) The 'Quiet Man' walked nonchalantly through the front door of the Watergate office complex, signed in, took the elevator to the top floor, entered the stairwell, then used duct tape to cheat the locks on every door all the way down to the parking garage levels. But the Quiet Man was a complete moron. He taped the doors horizontally, rather than vertically, so anyone and his dog could see it.
 * 42) A private security guard named Frank Wills did see the tape, because his first task was always to check the basement doors for tampering when he came on to his shift at midnight. He pulled the tape off and called his supervisor, who told him to check the other doors and call back in fifteen minutes.
 * 43) But what Frank did instead was go get some fast food across the street with a young intern who was pulling a late-nighter, a young lady that he was trying to make tracks with.
 * 44) When the actual burglary commenced, it lasted for about seven minutes before they came back to their base of operations in Room 419 of the Watergate Hotel and told Daddy the duct tape on the B-2 garage level door was missing. Meanwhile the 'Locksmith' and 'The Goon' went around looking for another lock to pick.
 * 45) The Realtor and the Spook told Daddy they wanted to abort the mission, because obviously a guard must have removed the tape. The Photographer said he was ready to do whatever Daddy decided to do. Daddy decided to cancel the evolution and try again two weeks later.
 * 46) So the Quiet Man made his rounds again, this time removing the tape from all the doors. By the time Frank Wills finished his hamburger and actually did what his supervisor told him to do (check the other doors), there was no tape.
 * 47) He figured it had just been some lazy workman who taped the B-2 level door open that one time to save a few seconds of hassle fumbling for keys while carrying something big. Wills forgot about the entire episode.
 * 48) But the third time was the charm for the burglars. On July 1 the GEMSTONE team returned one more time to the sixth floor offices of the DNC at the Watergate complex, bugged the correct phone, and photographed ten rolls of film of the Realtor holding documents in his blue-gloved hands.
 * 49) He even made off with some blank stationary with Party letterhead. What they didn't find was evidence that Cuban President Fidel Castro was giving money to the Democratic Party, which is what they hoped to find.
 * 50) But that was okay, because President Nixon's master of dirty tricks, Donald Segretti, simply used the letterhead they stole and the photographs of various signatures to manufacture such evidence.
 * 51) Tactically, there was little profit in any of this illegal activity, all it really did was turn what would have been a historic 49-state victory in November 1972 into an even more historic 50-state victory.
 * 52) But having avoided a messy second term scandal, Nixon was free to bring about what he called the New American Revolution, making the executive branch nearly omnipotent with a cabinet whose heads were supremely loyal to him. Congress he largely ignored.
 * 53) But this notion of an imperial presidency was going to bite America in the ass in October 1973 when the Yom Kippur War spiraled out of anyone's control, even that of an Imperial President. Rewind to early Saturday morning, June 17, 1972.
 * 54) At 12:30 in the morning, Robyn and Lilith walked across the street from the Howard Johnsons and entered the parking garage of the Watergate hotel/office complex. Robyn led them one level down, and walked toward the door leading into the building. It was locked.
 * 55) 'This is going to sound very strange, Lil, but if there's an empty mailbag sitting right here for the next hour, Washington DC will not get nuked..' 'A mailbag?' 'Yeah, you know, like the kind a mailman carries.' 'What's going on here anyway?'
 * 56) 'President Nixon sent some burglars here tonight. Well, not the President exactly, but men working for him did. If the burglars get caught, there's not going to be a nuclear war. He'll be too preoccupied by the scandal.' 'Why would such a small thing become a scandal?'
 * 57) 'Because Nixon will abuse his power and try to cover it up, and that will be the scandal.' 'So why don't we just call the police?' 'If we do, they'll get away. They've got a lookout posted in our hotel. In the room right next to ours, in fact.'
 * 58) 'So how does a mailbag lead to them getting caught?' 'It's very complicated. If I try to explain, we'll run out of time.' 'Fine, I'll go find a mailbag.' 'Empty one, Lil.' Robyn saw Lilith shift a little bit, change her position slightly, but she was carrying an empty mailbag.
 * 59) Lilith had used the worm-tunnel to pop into a nearby post office, lifted a bag, dumped out the mail, and returned to the same spot and instant that she left.  Then they both went back across the street to their room and watched from the balcony.
 * 60) At one AM the balding Quiet Man pushed open the door from the inside, noted that the duct tape he had placed there before was missing. But he did not immediately assume a guard had removed it, because he saw the empty US Postal Service mail bag sitting there.
 * 61) He assumed a mailman had come and tried to use his key to unlock the door, but found the door was already accessible thanks to the strip of tape. The Quiet Man also assumed the mailman had removed the tape, but that he would be too busy delivering mail to think of reporting it to anyone.
 * 62) So he replaced the missing tape with another strip to cheat the lock, and of course being stupid he posted it horizontally, leaving it perfectly visible. At about one thirty, the Watergate security guard Frank Willis pushed the door open a second time and saw another strip of tape.
 * 63) He said, 'What the hell?' but left the second piece tape in place. He left to call the police. At 1:52 AM, Robyn and Lilith watched a piece of junk car pull up across the street.
 * 64) Two informally dressed longhaired men got out of the vehicle and entered the hotel. Neither Robyn nor Lilith realized they were plainclothes cops using an unmarked car, and neither did Alfred Baldwin, watching from the balcony right next door to them.
 * 65) Lilith scowled at the man, then went back inside the room. Baldwin was more than a little nervous and felt like he had to say something to explain to Robyn why he was out on his balcony watching the Watergate. 'Beautiful night.' 'You have no idea.'
 * 66) It was getting late, but Robyn and Lilith watched the growing police presence at the Watergate complex from their balcony in the Howard Johnson's across the avenue. Their funny neighbor Mr. Baldwin had to check out quite suddenly. Lilith asked Robyn, 'So did we do well?'
 * 67) Robyn looked dreamy for a few seconds. 'Oh yes. This bust right here isn't enough to do in the President, at least until after the election, but he's going to try to cover it up, and then he's going to totally botch the cover-up, and that will nail him in the end.
 * 68) 'What about the war in the MiddleEast next year?' 'We still get that, and Israel wins, barely, but it doesn't go nuclear. No one goes nuclear, in fact, until well into the next century. Meanwhile the space program just sort of peters out. The moon landings are never followed up.'
 * 69) why do they kill the space program?' 'It costs too much and there's no more rivalry with the communist world to conquer space. Oh, they don't kill it dead, they still muck around in orbit, but the planets? They just send robots there instead.
 * 70) 'No it doesn't. We definitely must find a way to make the Americans reconsider rolling back their space program.'  'You should use reverse psychology, Lil. If we're waiting for them ud there telling them to go ahead and dial their program back, they'll do precisely the opposite.'
 * 71) PA0: The house was too cramped to properly show hyz father what hy had come up with so Ithuriel led hym to the top of the little knoll which was still adorned with Dory's treehouse. Dory harself had gone on ahead to Franklin along with most of the Red Wing of the defunct Church.
 * 72) PA1: Ithuriel could not hide hyz pleasure at the rare presence of hyz father, the seraph Michael, who was the absolute lord of Earth and arguably at least half of Heaven. And Ithuriel had no doubt that when hy demonstrated hyz breakthrough hyz father would be all smiles as well.
 * 73) PA2: To the north they could see where the Squaw River forked to form an island, but it was just a trickle now. Ithuriel brought that to Michael's attention and said, 'The town is dying a little bit every day, father. I've come up here many times and I've watched it shrivel.'
 * 74) PA3: 'There is no wisdom in completely stopping the flow of water,' Michael said, knowing that Ithuriel was well aware the source of the Squaw River was actually in Nyduly Wood more than four years away as the photon flies. 'But as you have seen I am reducing it by degrees.
 * 75) PA4: I keep it just below the level it needs to be to fully support the declining population of the town as it is from day to day. That serves to keep them moving out. Eventually DECON will own the whole town, but by then they'll need to bring all their water in by truck.'
 * 76) PA5: 'One consequence I've noticed, father, intended or not, is that the White Wingers who thought it was a bargain buying up Red Wing homes at seventy cents on the dollar are now grateful to sell their own homes to the United States government for thirty cents on the dollar.'
 * 77) PA6: Michael allowed hymself a sly smile. 'Over the centuries many have attributed to me the virtue of justice.' To the north and west they saw the island that formed the center of Greendome, anchored at one end by the courthouse and on the other end by the sheriff's station.
 * 78) PA7: But half of the business were closed so hard they weren't even boarded up. They were simply abandoned by their former owners and left for Clyde Tolson of DECON to remake them in whatever image he had in mind. But Tolson himself had not been around for several months.
 * 79) PA8: The War in Europe had entered its final year and J. Edgar Hoover had given Tolson's leash a tug, made him put whatever side project he had going on in Greendome on hold to hunt down actual domestic enemies, not phantoms, infiltrators who were Third Reich saboteurs and spies.
 * 80) PA9: To the east over the roof of his home Ithuriel could see the bulk of the town platted out south of the river. Dory's friends Robyn and Sofie used to live there but they had moved with her to Franklin. It was eerily quiet, with little traffic. Half of the homes lay vacant.
 * 81) PB0: South and east was the little bump informally called Mt.  Motorcycle. It was perhaps fifty feet taller than Treehouse Hill. The railroad from the east wrapped completely around it and merged with itself, the absolute end of the line. Passenger service had ended years ago.
 * 82) PB1: Behind them the uppermost vale of the Squaw bent south, then turned west again to wrap nearly halfway around the small mountain called Green Dome that dominated the skyline. On its summit lay the charred ruins of the temple, more or less untouched since the Desecration.
 * 83) PB2: Ithuriel took hyz copy of the Golden Gift into hyz hand and allowed the deadly hissing shaft of absolute darkness to come into existence and reach a meter in length. Hy said, 'My lord and father need have no introduction to this artifact, which was made by hyz own hand.'
 * 84) PB3: 'Indeed,' said Michael, 'and all the more so when its operation relies entirely on dark light provided by myself, which I can withdraw at will.' And to punctuate hyz words, the weapon abruptly ceased to operate. Ithuriel put the relic away and withdrew a silver version.
 * 85) PB4: 'Ah, yes, father, but the one I have made works entirely on its own, without your willing participation from instant to instant.' Hy brought the noisy dark shaft into existence and waved the new weapon around. But there was a subtle difference in the appearance of the shaft.
 * 86) PB5: The angle of the shaft emerging from the Golden Gift always matched that of the muzzle. But however Ithuriel rocked hyz new weapon the dark shaft seemed to rebuild itself at the new position, and the process, though swift, was just slow enough that the eye could catch it.
 * 87) PB6: Ithuriel allowed the shaft to disappear, then handed the weapon to hyz father with the muzzle pointed away from both. Michael was stunned to silence, but hy tried the weapon for hymself, carving a deep trench in the ground as easily as it could be done with the Golden Gift.
 * 88) PB7: Michael, too, allowed the shaft to disappear. When at last hy found hyz voice hy said, 'Nothing in all of the lore of the Elohim, spanning more than nine hundred thousand years, suggests that dark energy can be synthesized artificially, outside of the body of a living sun.'
 * 89) PB8: 'The effect you see with my imitation, father, is identical in most ways to what is produced by your device, yet it is not brought about by dark energy.' Ithuriel, who was Michael's best student, was also a remarkably effective teacher. Hy undertook to instruct hyz father.
 * 90) PB9: 'By way of explanation, consider a magnet, which always has a north and south pole. Now if you break it in half, you will have two smaller magnets, and each one has its own north and south pole. Even the elementary particles that comprise them are just tiny magnets.
 * 91) PC0: 'So we see if a magnetic field line enters a magnet of any size whatsoever, it also must continue through and leave the magnet. The field lines are closed loops. But what if there existed fundamental particles that could be either a source or a sink of a magnetic field?'
 * 92) PC1: 'Ithuriel, you are speaking of a theoretical particle which is called a magnetic monopole, but again, with my access to all of the knowledge accumulated by Ein Sof, the City of Stars, I can tell you the Elohim have never once observed a particle such as you describe.'
 * 93) PC2: 'And yet, father, years ago you told me the Elohim have developed models describing the primordial universe, and some of these models posit an era when the universe was richly flooded with magnetic monopoles. That was, in fact, when I first learned of the concept.'
 * 94) PC3: 'I remember telling that to you, son,' said Michael, 'but I also remember telling you that the most elegant model, one with the most beautiful simplicity combined with the greatest explanatory power, remains merely conjecture if the most obvious details remain unobserved.'
 * 95) PC4: 'Then, father, please allow me to mention an article in the May 1940 journal Physical Review announcing the synthesis of element 93. It has a half-life of only two million years, so any large amounts that were present at the formation of the Earth have long since decayed.
 * 96) PC5: It was not until a sample of element 93 was prepared by neutron irradiation that anyone on Earth actually observed it. So if magnetic monopoles are similarly unstable, it would come as no surprise the Elohim have not found one, if they never attempted to synthesize them.'
 * 97) PC6: Michael was beginning to enjoy this unexpected battle of wits with hyz beloved son. Hy said, 'On the contrary, the Elohim have examined collisions from the ejecta of collapsed stars, which are quite a bit more powerful than anything mankind can assemble here, to no avail.'
 * 98) PC7: 'I suspected as much, father, and I have abandoned searching for magnetic monopoles as exotic particles. But there are lanthanide crystals with interesting properties, made from molecules which have a tetrahedral geometry. They have four dipoles with two spin states each.
 * 99) PC8: Under normal conditions, in a crystal, each unit has two dipoles with their magnetic moment directed in, towards the tetrahedron, and two dipoles directed out. This is the lowest energy state, and the crystal forms a kind of committee of the whole which enforces this.
 * 100) PC9: But if you heat the crystal, thermal agitation can flip the dipoles to a random orientation. Increase the heat until the molecule sublimates off the surface of the crystal as a metal vapor, and the state of the dipoles are baked in. That's when things get interesting.
 * 101) PD0: On the scale of the molecule itself, all is well. The magnetic field lines pass through the dipoles as loops, as they should. But scale things up a bit, and look at the molecule from the outside. You might have three magnetic moments pointing in, and one pointing out.
 * 102) PD1: So you have a net sink of the magnetic field. Alternatively, you might have three magnetic moments facing out and one in, giving you a net source. As a result, the molecule can be treated, mathematically, exactly like a magnetic monopole. And it's part of an ionized gas.
 * 103) PD2: So it's easy enough to make monopoles, the real trick is to keep them separated long enough to put them to work. Monopoles are unstable in the same sense that antimatter is unstable, because they're immersed in an environment that is hostile to their continued existence.
 * 104) PD3: As hyz son continued to explain hyz device Michael was reduced to staring at Ithuriel in open-mouthed awe. Hyz thoughts raced ahead to glimpse how magnetic monopoles, the real ones, might have reduced the prevalence of normal matter to the present four percent of reality.
 * 105) PD4: Ithuriel went on to say, 'At some distance from the monopole the electric and magnetic fields operate under an extension of Maxwell's equations that include a parameter for magnetic charge. But the two kinds of fields are not compatible. It'd be like mixing oil and water.
 * 106) PD5: Since lines of magnetic and electric flux can never cross there develops something like a skin between the two different fields, and that's where a wonderful and unexpected thing happens. If quanta of light energy cross that surface, they become carriers of dark energy.
 * 107) PD6: If matter crosses that surface all the mass remains, and it's still subject to the gravitational field, but it no longer interacts with the electromagnetic field, so it goes 'dark'. Electrons fly free of their attraction to protons. Perhaps they recombine with dark protons.
 * 108) PD7: But from our frame of reference the matter is just gone. This is exactly what happens when we use your macro, father, I just get there by a slightly different route. So there you have it, the best I can do describing how it works without resorting to a mass of equations.'
 * 109) PD8: 'But certainly the run time of your device must be very limited in comparison to that of the macro.' 'That is true, father, and yet your macro has a severe run time limitation of its own. What if Keter or Daat knew of all the rat tunnels under this town and in yonder hill?
 * 110) PD9: Would they not begin to wonder where you found so much dark energy, and thus unravel the first knot of your ancient operational deception?' 'You make a good point, son, but now your Silver Gift can explain the most extravagant use of the macro. I consider it a gift indeed.
 * 111) PE0: But you have taught me something much more important than the secret of your Silver Gift. You may not yet see the full import of your deed, but I would proudly rank it among any of the works of the Elohim.  Perhaps one day men will have a fold-door network of your own.
 * 112) PE1: So I have learned that every teacher must be ready for the day when hy has nothing more to pass along, simply because hy has been surpassed by hyz own student. I tell you that day has now come, and I should be melancholy, yet I am exceedingly proud, for you are my own son.
 * 113) PE2: 'I don't understand, father. Why should you feel sad when you have fulfilled your role as teacher?' 'Perhaps it has to do with being a living star by nature, and a worlddweller only by choice. When I saw your achievement, I also saw the beginning of sunset for the Elohim.'
 * 114) PE3: 'Then with your leave, father, grant your student another lesson for hyz teacher. Ever you have seen the Elohim as the ones who teach, and humanity as the ones who are taught. Yet what is the goal of such a relationship if not that both should grow into a full partnership?
 * 115) PE4: Have you never considered what the B'nei Elohim will do after we aid in your victory over Keter and Daat? Do you think their corruption is unique among the Elohim? Are there no other living stars who are held aloof from Ein Sof? We will find and ally with them as well.'
 * 116) PE5: Michael bowed hyz head in acceptance of Ithuriel's gentle rebuke, but at once a new stream of thought came into hyz mind. Hy said, 'Are you fully assured that you can communicate with your daughter Doriel at once, at any time, no matter the physical distance between you?'
 * 117) PE6: 'Of course I am, father, but I also happen to know that Dory prefers to keep such communications to a bare minimum. I don't blame har.' 'Then are you also assured that no matter where you are, if you are in immediate danger I can summon a fold door and whisk you away?'
 * 118) PE7: 'There are the tales in the Green Book, but I was too young to remember my mother before sha died. I have only known this place and time. But Dory told me that you once 'whisked' har and Gabriel to the top of Green Dome in such a manner, and I have no reason to doubt har.'
 * 119) PE8: 'Then I have one more question, Ithuriel. Do you think you can stand before seraphim, either Keter or Daat, and lie to their face?' 'Now that, father, might need to be put to the test, and failing it, I would certainly be glad of a lifeline to Dory. But why do you ask?'
 * 120) PE9: 'Your Silver Gift suggests an entirely new course of action to me, and I would have you and your family leave this place, but I wanted you to be entirely certain I would never put you nor Anael nor Remiel in any sort of danger with no promise of instantly retrieving you.'
 * 121) PF0: 'What danger, father? Are we now to join Doriel and the others who have already moved to the west coast?' 'Oh no, I had a place in mind that is somewhat farther away than just the state of Washington. Something on the order of five hundred million miles away.'