At their feet, where sixteen eyes could see it, was the display board to feed them their Input. Sixteen hands each grasped a molded switch to handle their binary-coded Output. There would be no storage of the Output outside of the eight-Component complex itself; it went as control signals to the electrostatic generators, funneled through the single Pyramid on Mount Everest, which handled the task of Component-procurement. That is, of Translation. The programming was slow and thorough. Perhaps the Pyramid which finally activated the octuple unit and went away was pleased with itself, not knowing that one of its Components was Glenn Tropile. * * * * * Nirvana. (It pervaded all; there was nothing outside of it.) Nirvana. (Glenn Tropile floated in it as in the amniotic fluid around him.) Nirvana. (The sound of one hand.... Floating oneness.) There was an intrusion. Perfection is completed; by adding to it, it is destroyed. _Duality struck like a thunderbolt. Oneness shattered._ For Glenn Tropile, it seemed as though his wife were screaming at him to wake up. He tried to. It was curiously difficult and painful. Timeless poignant sadness, five years of sorrow over a lost love compressed into a microsecond. It was always so, Tropile thought drowsily, awakening. It never lasts. What's the use of worrying over what always happens.... Sudden shock and horror rocked him. _This_ was no ordinary awakening--no ordinary thing at all--_nothing_ was as it ever had been before! Tropile opened his mouth and screamed--or thought he did. But there was only a hoarse, faint flutter in his eardrums. It was a moment when sanity might have gone. But there was one curious, mundane fact that saved him. He was holding something in his hands. He found that he could look at it, and it was a switch. A molded switch, mounted on a board, and he was holding one in each hand. It was little to cling to, but it at least was real. If his hands could be holding something, then there must be some reality somewhere. Tropile closed his eyes and managed to open them again. Yes, there was reality, too. He closed his eyes and light stopped. He opened them and light returned. Then perhaps he was not dead, as he had thought. Carefully, stumbling--his mind his only usable tool--he tried to make an estimate of his surroundings. He could hardly believe what he found. Item: he could scarcely move. Somehow he was bound by his feet and his head. How? He couldn't tell. Item: he was bent over and he couldn't straighten. Why? Again he couldn't tell, but it was a fact. The great erecting muscles of his back answered his command, but his body would not move. Item: his eyes saw, but only in a small area. He couldn't move his head, either. Still, he could see a few things. The switch in his hand, his feet, a sort of display of lights on a strangely circular board. The lights flickered and changed their pattern.