I wait near the back until Stude finishes, then follow at a discreet distance as he makes his way back to his place. It's not something I ever would have considered doing last Hallowe'en -- the Stude I knew would've spotted a tail in hot second. But now the world has gone to jargon-slinging harmony and I'm brazen as I ride along behind on my bike, down Yonge to Front, and up to a new building made of foam. I feel like a ghost as I watch him look straight through me, and I mark the address. # I spend a day kicking at everything foam. The foam is hard, and light, and durable, and I imagine the houses of my parent's suburb, the little Process enclave, surviving long past any of us, surviving as museum pieces for arsenic-breathing bugouts, who crawl over the mummified furniture and chests of clothes, snapping picts and chattering in their thrilling contraltos. I want to scream Here and there, pieces of the old, pre-Process, pre-foam Toronto stick out, and I rub them as I pass them by, touchstones for luck. # Spring lasted about ten days. Now we're into a muggy, 32 degrees Toronto summer, and my collar itches and sweat trickles down my neck. I'd be wearing something lighter and cooler, except that today I'm meeting my Dad, at Aristide. They've got a little wire-flown twin-prop number fuelled up and waiting for me at the miniature airstrip on Toronto Island. Dad was *so* glad when I got in touch with him. A real Milestone on his Personal Road to Lasting Happiness. There's even one of the Process-heads from Yonge and Bloor waiting for me. He doesn't even comment on all my fricken luggage. # I hit Stude's place about ten minutes after he left for his trip to the mothaship. I had the dregs of the solvent that he'd sold me, and I used that to dissolve a hole in his door, and reached in and popped the latch. I didn't make a mess, just methodically opened crates and boxes until I found what I was looking for. Then I hauled it in batches to the elevator, loaded it, and took it back to my coffin in a cab. I had to rent another coffin to store it all. # The Process-head stays at the airport. Praise the bugouts. If he'd been aboard, it would've queered the whole deal. I press my nose against the oval window next to the hatch, checking my comm from time to time, squinting at the GPS readout. My stomach is a knot, and my knee aches. I feel great. The transition to Process-land is sharp from this perspective, real buildings giving way to foam white on a razor-edged line. I count off streets as we fly low, the autopilot getting ready to touch down at Aristide, only 70 kay away. And there's my Chestnut Ave. God*damn* the wind's fierce in a plane when you pop the emergency hatch. It spirals away like a maple key as the plane starts soothing me over its PA. I've got a safety strap around my waist and hooked onto the front row of seats, and the knots had better be secure. I use my sore leg to kick the keg of solvent off the deck.