Leaning back, I closed my eyes and let my obsessive tendencies carry me at least part of the way back to my happy place. I let myself fixate on the one thing Suisei had said which made complete sense to me. The island of normality in this sea of surreal information.

“Dr. Horosha is an Oatsman,” I mumbled.

That was familiar. That was reasonable. In fact, it made everything else a little less horrible. It was comforting.

“Oatsy?” Andalon asked.

“Yes,” I nodded, not bothering to elaborate further.

Now, where to begin? Hmm…

I figured I could do worse than contemplate religion.

Had I gotten a do-over for my life, I’d have asked to be born into one of four Lasseditic denominations. iIn no particular order, these were: Universalists, Unitarians, Universalist Unitarians, and Oatsmen. Of the many, many branches of Neangelical Lassedicy, those four were the ones that didn’t suck.

As I settled into my train of thought, I decided I might as well get in some tail-using practice as well. To that end, I made a game of trying out the different ways in which I could flex the darn thing. I curled it. I swept it out behind me, easily threading it through the space between the back of the bench and the seat. The gap was a little on the tight side, though. The way it rubbed under and over my new limb made my back tingle.

I let out a pleased sigh.

I finally understood why dogs wagged their tails when they were happy. Brushing my tail against the wall behind me had all the appeal of stretching out my arms or legs, only without any of the hassle.

Where was I? Right: the Neangelical branches that didn’t suck.

In practice, Universalists and Unitarians were the same as Universalist Unitarians. In addition to being of a liberal political bent—Unis were the rare breed of Lassedile who reliably mustered up the courage to suggest that, “Rich men, give all you have to the poor” really did mean the wealthy had to give most of their wealth to the poor, or else—all three were defined by two main doctrines: universalism, and a disbelief in a triune Godhead. Their opposition to triunity was simple: to them, the Angel was the Godhead, and the Godhead was the Angel. Anything more than that was an unnecessary complication.

But, in my eyes, what really set them apart was their universalism: their belief that all people would eventually be saved, and welcomed into Paradise. To the Unis, Hell was remedial in nature—a consuming ice, to use one of their favorite expressions.

My wyrm-memory dredged up a quote from Samuel Gibbie, one of the more well-known Unis:

Punishment is for the sake of amendment and atonement. The Angel is bound by His love to punish sin in order to deliver His creature; He is bound by His justice to destroy sin in His creation.

And that really was their view. They saw evil as the absence of God, and to that end, all that was evil within man had to be scoured away, for the Angel would utterly destroy all evil. Gibbie gave one of the most audacious, beautiful arguments for why any soul’s stay in Hell had to be finite: to allow sinners to exist in Hell for all eternity would be to allow sin and evil to exist for all eternity. For that very reason, Hell destroyed what was evil in man, so that the Light within could finally return to the Godhead from which it came. The suffering souls endured within it was simply their purification in action. In time, they would join the righteous in Paradise.

I’d wept when I first learned of that doctrine.

“Woo,” I muttered, breathily. “I will say this, Andalon.” I looked her in the eyes. “I’m starting to get fond of this perfect memory perk.”

Andalon smiled, and for a moment, things felt okay.

I had to admit, perfect memory was pretty darn neat. It immensely helped me take my mind off stressors. I felt like I was back in high school, studying for my honors’ Trenton History exam, only without any of the mental anguish that studying tended to bring.

Case in point: the radicals for the kanji meaning “to study (by memorization)” were “repetition” and “suffering”.

The so-called Universalist Unitarians went even further, beyond the boundaries of traditional Lassedicy. Many Double-Us believed in a non-specific humanistic faith often only tangentially grounded in traditional Lassedicy. My wife considered the Double-Us de facto atheists, as did most mainstream Lassediles, which was quite ironic. In ancient times, universalism had been commonplace. Unfortunately, over time the Church had hardened its heart against universalism, and I would be willing to bet that decision was a political one, rather than a spiritual one. Why bother to convert if we all eventually get Paradise? So, they decided to make the benefits package exclusive.

Unfortunately, the damage was done. Many times, before I finally gave up, I’d considered declaring myself a universalist, but had never been able to go through with it. That wasn’t because I thought it wouldn’t stick, but rather, because I feared it would. If becoming a Uni rekindled my faith, it would have meant the end of my marriage. Pel wouldn’t have been able to share it with me. It would have been a terrible burden for her, I couldn’t do that to her. If one of us had to be miserable, better it be me than my better half.

Then there were the Oatsmen. Suisei’s branch.

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Aside from officially enshrining the Angelicals’ reforms, after the expulsion of the Munine from our lands in the Third Crusade, the Resurrection of the Church was intended to mark a new beginning, as much for Trenton itself as for the faith. The Age of Revelation had ended. Going forward, Church and State resolved to sleep in separate beds. Unfortunately, as lovers tend to do, Church and State couldn’t resist each other’s allure. There was much canoodling between the two, particularly in the Second Empire’s sunset years, starting in Emperor Copeland’s brief reign, followed by his son Julian, and his son, Eustin after that—the last Emperor, and probably the worst of them all. Most of the extant Neangelical denominations owed their existence to those troubles. And, lo and behold, the Neangelicals did to the Second Empire what the OG Angelicals had done to the First Empire centuries before: they dissented. They dissented against the Church, against the State—usually both. But none of them dissented quite like the Oatsmen did.

Despite its awe-inspiring title, the Church’s “Resurrection” was little more than a grandiose Lassedile enthronement ceremony, albeit one with an especially weighty set of doctrinal implications. In his famous enthronement homily, Harold III, 231st Lassedite declared that the end of the Age of Revelation and that the current Age—the Age of Resurrection—had begun. Why did that matter? Because it meant that the Angel would no longer speak to individuals. All new spiritual revelations would come from the Church, rather than from the people.

Then the Oatsmen said, “hold my beer.”

Much to Harold III’s displeasure, the Oats believed that the Angel still spoke to Mankind through the inner Light that dwelled within the heart of every person. The Oats acknowledged the sacrament of Convocation, though they’d reinvented it from the ground up, meeting in groups at the height of the day when Light shone through their meeting-halls’ Eyes instead of having the clergy bid the Hallowed Beast good-morning and good-evening. They took turns reading scripture, they engaged in discussion and debate, and most of all, they spoke from the heart, all while basking in the Sunlight. Oatsmen were arch-pacifists, the fiercest opponents of slavery and human trafficking you ever did see, and conscientious objectors to every form of warfare known to man. For them, orthopraxy—doing the right thing—mattered far, far more than orthodoxy—believing the right thing. They even allowed for congregations to engage universalism or even atheism, provided it was what their inner Light told them to do.

Once, in college, I’d attended an Oatsmen Convocation. It was spellbinding. Had they performed Unction, I might have apostatized and become an Oatsman right then and there. Ultimately, my guilt kept me from formally abandoning my childhood faith, as it continued to do to this very day. And though I didn’t completely agree with their total pacifism, I always admired the strength of will it took to uphold it.

Unsurprisingly, when the Old Believers took the reins and initiated the Prelatory, the liberal Neangelicals (as opposed to the sycophantic Irredemptists) had been among the first people Prelatory shipped off to the labor camps; Horknome, Chambliss, Inkwatch, and the rest. The camps usually didn’t kill the prisoners outright, but… considering what they did to them, they might as well have. Oatsmen were all but extinct in their native Trenton habitat. Indeed, my college Oatsman Convocation consisted almost entirely of Munine students from overseas.

And to think… Suisei belonged to that tradition.

That was reassuring. With their ideals, an Oatsman sorcerer sounded like a wonderful thing, especially if he had a spell to counter the "Baleful Polymorph" effect I was currently under.

By this point, Andalon was getting antsy, exhausted by my navel-gazing.

Darn it.

I should have told her to go to the not-here-place.

Ah well.

“Sorry about that,” I muttered.

My attention got her going. “Mr. Genneth,” she said, hopping to her feet, “I wanna talk to them.”

“To who?”

“To them.” Andalon pointed at the other transformees. “To all your friends. But… they can’t see me.” She pouted and shook her head. “They can’t see Andalon.”

“Maybe they’re just really good at ignoring,” I teased. (I had few opportunities for pleasure anymore. When they came, I had to grab them by the throat.)

“Look at all the crazy secrets Mr. Sushi had. I wanna know if they know anything about Andalon.” She pointed at the others. “Maybe they got the other pieces.”

Was it possible? I suppose. Was it likely? Honestly… at this point, I had no idea.

I thought of Merritt, Kurt, and the rest.

“If they’re anything like my patients, they probably won’t know any of the things we’ve discovered. They might know something, but—”

“—Can you go ask ‘em, Mr. Genneth? Ask them for Andalon?”

“I certainly could,” I said. “Unfortunately, I have… anxiety.”

I shuddered.

“What’s anks-eye-itee?” Andalon asked, right on cue.

“You remember stress, right?”

She nodded.

“Anxiety is…” I pursed my lips. “It’s a little baby stress. It’s stress right before it hatches out of its egg. It’s like—”

At that moment, Dr. Ibrahim Rathpalla stepped into view, and much to Andalon’s displeasure, the friendly psychiatrist stopped to stand right inside of her.

“—Well well well, Nurse Costran wasn’t lying. It really is you, Dr. Howle.”

“The same could be said of you, Dr. Doodler.”

Dr. Rathpalla could draw, though not very well, and he happily accepted himself as-is. In C Ward, where he and I usually spent most of our time prior to the Last Days, Ibrahim had earned the nickname “Dr. Doodler” on account of his habit of drawing little doodles in his console on his spare time, which he’d send out with his text messages, to the delight to all who saw them.

However, at the moment, Ibrahim was on crutches.

“—Hey!” Andalon quipped, shaking her arms in frustration. “Andalon is standin’ here!”

I’ll be honest: it was adorable. Totally kawaii.

The reason Dr. Rathpalla needed crutches was because his left leg was utterly gone from the knee downward. He had to be at least ten feet tall, and was probably even taller still, because most of his current height was scrunched up in the bend of his back, making him arch like a hunchbacked inchworm. Unlike Suisei or myself, Ibrahim had foregone his professional attire in favor of a hospital gown. The gap at the back of the gown where it was held shut by magnetic clips had plenty of room for his tail, which dangled behind him, free to snake about.

We stared at each other for a bit. The awkwardness of the moment grew and grew as I struggled to figure out what to say.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon’s whine came from somewhere within Ibrahim’s body. “Ask him stuff! Ask stuff for Andalon! And make him move! Andalon does not like this!”

That was a good idea.

I looked Dr. Rathpalla in the eye. “Could you move a couple steps back or to the side?” I asked. “You’re displeasing one of my ghosts.”

He stepped away and then looked left and right and bowed apologetically. “My apologies,” he said.

Andalon nodded, pleased to no longer be occluded. “Okay,” she said, “now, ask him about—”

—Please, Andalon, just wait. Just for a little while.

I’d never been good at keeping tabs on multiple conversations. The medium didn’t matter. Text messages, videophone calls, face-to-face—it always ended in disaster. I suppose I could have tried bringing out one of my dopplegenneths, but I was tired and didn’t want to risk it, and, more than anything else, I just wanted to have a conversation with a friend. Something normal for once.

Maybe you can go to the not-here-place?, I suggested.

To my relief, Andalon smiled inexplicably, said “Okay!” in the happy-go-luckiest way and then disappeared, like a hologram committing suicide.

I decided not to pry any further.

“—So,” Dr. Rathpalla said, “how did you find your way to our little self-help group?”

I sighed a long sigh.