How the Emerald City acquired that odd name, who could say? There had never been emerald mines in the area. Why did the city pick that name? It had no inhabitants, they would soon discover, who could tell them. Of if Wally had provided any, they were certainly not in sight. The Emerald, before it was contaminated, has been a fiery stone in heaven, known for foresight, perception, perspective, and truth. Fallen, the star-stone promoted only blindness, twisted viewpoints, and falsehood. Did the inhabitants of the Emerald City know what they had chosen to be their shining star?

Given three days shore leave, the fifty Cybernauts fanned out, to take a look at whatever caught their eye. Though the two women decided to look for curtains and other household items to brighten up the rough, sailcloth tent the captain had erected on board for their privacy, the men were more in a mind for some adventure. Some climbed the steep hills, others went up to the salmon locks between Lake Union and the Sound. They got in some good fishing there, as the salmon runs were back to pre-settlement numbers and the seals couldn't possibly cut their numbers significantly. Others toured the museum of flight--which was in walking distance of the port.

Ero, trained to run alone, left his autoharp on board and took off, without a backward glance at Horace, who followed more slowly at a distance. Horace the butterfly scout wasn't interested in art and sculpture, salmon, or the tall buildings. He was a lookout--always on the watch for trouble up ahead, such as reefs, icebergs (though the Sound, north and south, was too warm for them), and enemy ships.

Taking a staircase down, Ero found himself in an underground city, that had been buried in the 19th century when the city moved two or more levels up from the soggy sawdust foundations of the logging mills and tidewater business district.

Here the lighting, thanks to Wally, was good enough to see all he wanted before he climbed back to the 20th century street level. Taverns, bordellos, Chinese gambling houses, dance halls, pool parlors, livery stables, dry goods shops and gold rush miner outfitters, assayer's offices, shippers' officers, rooms to rent, barber shops, clam chowder houses, haberdashers, blacksmiths, jails, Chinese laundries, sea level latrines with tide charts, cobblers, more Chinese laundries, pawnshops, tanners, warehouses, docks, a lone Salvation Army feeding station in a converted Chinese laundry--they were all there, abandoned but mostly intact, even with unsold items left in the stores and windows as if the proprieter were still hoping for a late sale.

Were there any people living in the huge maze? he wondered. Then he heard a gasp and found a surprised beggar gazing down at him--not just a beggar but the unelected mayor of the underground. The sidewalk window grate above, missing some colored blocks of glass to allow the light through to the next level, let both Ero and the mayor get a good look at each other before the mayor scurried off--not liking the sight of a stranger popping up on him like that.

Going down a blind alley, he left by a doorway and found himself in a narrow entryway, then was faced with a staircase, which led to a brick wall. Going back he noticed a window was open on a wall, and climbed through it. It put him in what looked like a storage room, with barrels of salt pork, sacks of potatoes, canned goods, rope, and sundry other things needed by businesses outfitting the gold miners for the Yukon gold rush. Hearing voices, he looked through the doorway and saw two men, one in clerk's clothes and the other in fancy top hat and a horsehair-trimmed coat. They did not notice him as he approached. Ero stopped, wondering how to explain his presence in their store.

As he paused, he overheard the younger man ask the portly, older gentleman, "Mr. Yesler, we got another sucker up front for you! He's a rube from Kansas, and wants to be outfitted proper for the Yukon! Said he was sure, with his method, he'd be able to locate a bonanza! Sold his farm and has all the cash in hand! Four thousand dollars! Showed it to me too! Want to meet him before I work this little country boy over?"

The older gent laughed. "I don't have time today--got to look after a marble topped bar and some fancy chandeliers from New York I imported round the Horn--heard just a little while ago they're down at the wharf."

Mr. Yesler moved toward the door, then turned back to the clerk. "Give him enough John Barleycorn, so he won't remember a thing what happened here. After you complete the "sale," pull his shirt and boots off and throw the bum out, and if he comes back, tell him we'll have him arrested for trespassing and loitering if he makes any trouble for you! That should shut him and send him running!"

"Sure boss--er, Mr. Yesler, sir, --I'll see he doesn't make any trouble in any case!"

Ero, hearing these shameless thieves hatch their plan, could hardly believe his ears. He was furious, and started toward them, not even thinking what he would do, but wanting to knock both their heads off. As he came through the doorway into the shop, they both vanished! Ero was shocked--and looked around for them, but the shop was empty. Still seething with anger, he rushed down the tall aisles, stocked with all sorts of mining gear, but he saw no sign of the crooked Yesler and his jerk of a clerk. As for the rube from Kansas, there was no one of his description either. Bursting through the door, Ero stood in the narrow street cluttered with the supports for the level above, looking everywhere around, but the street too was empty.

Thoroughly disgusted by a place that had spoiled his shore leave for him, Ero looked for a way up and out of the underground city, and after several false stairways, he found one that took him out. With relief, he stood and breathed in the fresh salty air just to clear his mind of what he had experienced in Mr. Yesler's store, and then turned back toward the ship.

Back at the ship, the captain waited for any sign of the rival Black Ship, so that he could sound the alarm with the old-fashioned ram's horn, or shofar, Wally had thoughtfully provided. He hadn't yet run up the Blue Peter, but that could wait a bit yet, he thought. And if the Black Ship showed its ugly snout, he wouldn't need the Blue Peter anyway to call the crew back.

He had no desire to find his fine vessel scuttled, with the pirates cutting off their only means of escape before launching a final attack to wipe them out or enslave them. This gave him time to consider his decision. He would have liked to relate his reasons to his crew--but decided to wait for a later time, so that he could think about them a bit more.

He was still amazed how a random book he found in Mrs. Funnemark's lending library, kindly offered him by the lady, held just the wisdom he needed in a tight spot.

It was a book called Consolation, and was meant to encourage the Christian on his life voyage. It was divided by months, starting in January. Reading January 2, he was struck by the description it gave of the storms every mariner must face and somehow endure and overcome. The title was "Sail On!"

Every word seemed written just for him. "So now into another year we sail, O Time Mariner! And something of what we may expect as we continue our voyage we may infer from the past. Without doubt storms will come as they came in the bygone days. But we will give them firm and courageous welcome, for we have already weathered so many storms that we are unafraid of the wind and the tide, the lightning and the snow..."

"Consolation" did not promise a smooth sailing, evidently. "Sails torn of course as they should be, spars and masts all strained and creaking without doubt, and many a mark of the tempest upon us, but still masters of the waves and winds we shall be. And so we shall--when the Voyage is completed drop anchor where no storms come, but where, the green swell is at last in the haven dumb, and we are forever out of the swing of the Sea..."

A poem, "Hitherto," followed, which the captain thought Ero might take a hand at, providing the music. But where was the ship's fleet-footed musician anyway?

Pikkard went and took a binoculars and scanned the shore, but Ero had long since disappeared. He hoped it would go well with him. He had so far not done the White Ship any favors on his own--and returning late as he did, they all had been put in danger by remaining too long in one spot. That had set them up for the surprise, ferocious attack in the harbor that was meant to sink the ship and drown them all.

Meanwhile, after he looked down toward the ship and saw no Blue Peter flying, Ero continued exploring and doing reconaissance, to see if this city was the one where the Golden Fleece was being held captive by the dragon as its special treasure. Though he saw no sign of wily King Aeetes, Phrixus, and the Fleece of the Heavenly Ram, he still turned up some interesting things. A revolving globe of the world above the entrance of a newspaper building still revolved and told the time, though the clock hand was out of control and spinning madly around, making a high-pitched sound like an alarm going off.

He went in and found a stranger sight. Hanging from the ceiling, rows and rows of people, their eyes moving so that they appeared to be alive, were suspended on strings like puppets. They did not seem to notice him or nobody called to him to cut the strings so they could be free. Instead they were all muttering in unison, but it was mumbo jumbo to his ears until he chose Greek on his hand-control.

Now he understood them perfectly.

Their words transcribed to precise Greek, which had no such weasel words as English abounded with, he was amazed to discover that they were all lying, with either poker faces or smiles, it made no difference. Liars! Lying puppets pulled by an invisible puppet-master!

Disgusted as any truth-loving Greek would be, Ero left, not noticing the cartoon briffitt that appeared in his wake. He didn't even hear the joke a comedian laid on him as he passed.

Back outside, he almost ran over a tangled mass of hair. It was a huge hairball, standing upright somehow on two legs and with shoes on that smelled like boiled cabbage and something worse added (Wally regretted the bytes needed for boiled cabbage, but he did it anyway). Then a hand reached out from the hair and brushed away some hair, and a man's face and head appeared.

"A dime?" Ero wondered. But he didn't have one! What could he give the poor hairball-man anyway?

As he was wondering what to do, the lookout caught up to him. He landed where he liked to sit--where he could look Ero right in the eye.

Ero, knowing exactly what Horace was telling him, even without a speech balloon, laughed, "Okay, I won't do that again. I promise!"

He turned back to the beggar. "Do you want to go with us? Maybe the captain will take you onboard the Argo, if you don't want to stay in this city."

The hairball-man gazed round with horror, showing that he much preferred to go with Ero and take his chances on a ship than remain.

The three then continued on the tour together. The state university, the many art museums, the Space Needle and Science Center, Pike Place Market and Pioneer Square--they saw the things the city took most pride in, evidently.

At the Center, beneath the Space Needle, they were turned away when they attempted to use the elevator without paying. They were leaving when a popup brought them to a halt. "Questor choose a bot for transport to the observation deck,' the message read. Horace could fly himself easily enough, but Ero and Hairball looked at the selection: flying carrot-bot, jumping kangeroo-bot, and hopping-rabbit-bot. Ero didn't like the looks of either kangeroos or rabbits taking him anywhere, much less to the top of so high a structure as the Needle, so he was left with the carrot-bot. As for Hairball, he showed by his terrified expression that he wanted nothing to do with going up over fifty stories without an elevator.

Thinking he might catch sight of the Golden Fleece from the Observation Deck which lay 20 feet up from the topmost of the three revolving restaurants, Ero pressed the carrot on the screen with his big toe.

Immediately, the popup was replaced by a giant, leafy topped carrot. But how was it going to get him to the top of the Needle? Ero wondered. Then he saw the rope attached to the top of the carrot. What? He was to hang by a rope as the flying carrot shot up over five hundred feet?

Only a Greek would try such a thing. A moment later, he was launched. A spaceship briffitt appeared in his wake.

Diners in the Emerald Room restaurant looked out and there he was, with Horace his faithful Man Friday! They hardly batted an eye, as if he were some kind of native bird.

He was set on the top of the Space Needle.

The top of the Needle was not spinning, unattached to the two revolving restaurants below the observation deck, but he did not need to be turned slowly around like a chicken in a broiler. He viewed, without a single thing in the way, a panoramic view of the entire landscape of Kastorr. To the north, the Emerald City's neighborhoods and condo developmets sprawled amid lakes and highways. Looking south toward Olympia in the South Sound, he saw skyscrapers, a squashed onion that was the sports dome, and a very big snow and glacier-crowned mountain. To the east and west, the Cascade Mountain Range, many lakes, and the white, jagged-peaked Olympics. It was utterly foreign to his Greek eye--a land too green and forested, an ambiguous city too dull to his eye though glittering with a lot of glass and metal--everything just too muted at the edges and soft like a chamois, without the sharp antitheses of Greek landscape and architecture, where black was still black, and white was still white.

Kastorr, unlike Greece, was a vast gray zone of water, sky, and mountains, without any clear, sharp distinctions; everything melted or merged with something else, even if there was nothing held in common; it was a muddle, a stew of half-formed things, a mist and cloud that would never become anything solid you could get your hand on. Nothing there would really taste different from something else, nothing would smell with a unique aroma only it had possessed--could the Golden Fleece exist in such a bland and tasteless flour pudding as this country? he wondered. His heart suddenly turned over as he gazed at the rolling world of mostly gray-green below him--how he missed his Greek homeland, its cities shining with eye-dazzling whiteness and the lines of roof, wall, and door steps etched against the inky blackness of the shadows as with a razor-sharp stiletto.

How he missed honest Greek faces, honest Greek smiles! Here the smiles were puppet smiles, that jerked on and jerked off. Such smiles meant nothing--they did not come from beating, warm, red-blooded human hearts--they were all on the surface.

Ero, after a minute, had enough of the Emerald City from its highest point. The carrot-bot was handy enough, and the trip down was even faster. He rejoined Hairball, and together with Horace went to explore the Center.

Ero and Horace were soon in the International Fountain, enjoying the spray and the jetting waters, while Hairball stood well back from the spray, as if he hated the thought of getting the least bit wet on his dread locks and hair balls.

The fountain was the most enjoyable thing he had discovered in the city! Getting out, he shook off the water like a dog and they continued exploring, though Ero's hopes of ever catching a glimpse of the Golden Fleece in this city were well nigh gone.

What was next? It so happened that they turned toward the Lake Union ship canal and the Locks where there was supposed to be salmon running to their yearly spawning sites up some river. On the way they swung by Hairball's old haunt, the U of Dub. He used to hit up the unlimited supply of guilt-driven, compassionate students that flocked to the crack houses and porn shops and strip clubs that he knew in the area--and slept in crates or Dempster Dumpsters behind McDonalds or Starbucks. Once he tried to sleep behind the main off-campus bookstore, but some employee came out to the Dumpster where he was exploring the mystical gardens of Shangri-la and dumped the Collected Works of Timothy O'Leary on him and nearly killed him.

All this he was not relating by human speech, of course--for he was a mute, his speech center destroyed when his genius-IQ brain was fried by bad LSD years ago. Instead, Wally had thoughtfully prepared for this with plentiful speech balloons that enabled Hairball (the son of a well-connected university professor with considerable name recognition who rose to being a highly tenured cipher in the office of the Lord Chancellor of the University) to really let down his hair, so to speak.

All his father had to do after his promotion to administration was smile occasionally, smoke his pipe discreetly, and say nothing at the various meetings. For years he served the University and the Chancellor by doing nothing but draw his considerable pay, but he was highly respected and, found stiff and apparently stone dead in his office chair one day, he was duly eulogized one of the University's most valued academicians and administrators.

Hairball's mother? She was a Smith College graduate, and had scored high on some important test and then done something in mathematics once that got her name in a scholarly magazine. She had evaporated somewhere along the broken, intermittent line of his life--and the only place he could come up with regarding her possible whereabouts was Erewhon, a place he would not be able to reach anyway, walking on his own sore and tottering, fungus-diseased feet.

Following Hairball who served as their guide to the underbelly and groins of the University, Ero and Horace got to know every Dumpster where Hairball had slept once upon a time, and also the places where he had hung out and hit on the compassionate students passing by. It had been a good life while it lasted--but with both his parents' passing, he had no reason to stick around. They couldn't be shamed and made to feel guilty anymore. He sensed he had lost his power base, so he moved downtown. There he found another unlimited supply of guilt-driven, compasssionate people from a number of upscale businesses, software corporations, Boeings, Starbucks, etc. He had milked this lucrative trade for a number of years more. He didn't know how long, or even how old he was getting--things just went on and on.

But then came a day he could not understand. He had found himself lying face down in a puddle of his own urine, or maybe someone else's. It was urine, that was all he knew, and there was a lot of it. He was soaked. But hands pulled him up, threw him on a stretcher, tied him on, and carried him somewhere in an ambulance. He was attacked by shift after shift of nurses and doctors. What did they want? Was he going to die? He could not talk, so he could not get them to tell him anything. So he just kept smiling.

They were pretty mean to him though, despite his smiles. They shaved off all his beautiful, warm hair, took his clothes, stuck him in a baglike robe with the back missing, and dropped him on a cold bed hard as a board.

He was lying there helpless and naked as a baby, wondering how he was going to run away with no clothes anymore, when the whole building began to rattle and shake.

Things crashed. The ceiling was falling down around him. Everything turned dark.

Then he found himself walking the streets again, down by the Elevated. How did he find his clothes again, and how did he get away from the awful place where people stuck tubes into his nose and those other places they found on his lower body? They had taken the blood out of him too, and replaced it with bottle after bottle of something else. They had been so cruel to him--despite all his smiling at them. He tried to forget them and what they did to him after he was back walking the streets again.

Yet though the buildings, docks, and ships and trolley and Pioneer Square and Pikes Place Market all looked the same, it wasn't the same. Most of the people were gone. The cars and trucks were gone too. What people there were all liked to demonstrate, and always they burned the city down, again and again. Each time they burnt it down, it wasn't long before it grew back up again, without anyone's help.

He didn't like all the fire and noise and the people running and the buildings crashing down, so he moved to the Underground City. But that wasn't so nice either. It was a place where no one had compassion or guilt. He could not find anyone to give him a hand-out there. They were all trying to steal from him. And the police were always after him. He had to be very careful there, so he moved back to the Upper City. Here, other than when it was being burnt down by the world peace demonstrators, it was possible for him to survive more or less as he had before. It was not a good life, but it was bearable.

Then one day a new ship came into the harbor and let off its crew. He met one of the crew, a black-haired young man with no shirt and just pants, and who had no shoes. He was a kind person, and didn't hurt him or kick him or throw him into the gutter. So he liked him and hung out with him, hoping that it would continue, at least until the demonstrators started again and he would have to leave him and go where he knew the fire wouldn't come.

All this was related to Ero, who could hardly believe it it was about a human being, until he found it getting to his part of the story of Hairball's life--though to Ero's thinking, it was no life at all even with his contribution. Before they left the University District, Hairball turned in at one of the campus buildings where he must have encountered his father once when he was still teaching Comparative and Applied Sanskrit Philology II or III. Here Ero was treated to a lecture, or part of one, by a renowned feminist who had flown in, taking a break from a class symposium on Tibetan monks' breathing techniques she was giving advisory support to in Vermont, to be their featured guest speaker--all expenses paid of course by Danz Lecture Series.

As the short, sweatered woman talked about Patriarchalism in American Society, the class was so rapt and hanging on every word that they did not notice they had visitors, Hairball, Horace, and Ero.

Not able to make any sense out of the woman's impassioned but highly digressive speech (she kept referring to the Amazon Rain Forest, various vanishing species she knew about in Tasmania and Mongolia, having studied them on Sierra Club expeditions, and the once significant Ozone Layer Issue being swept under the carpet by somebody whose name she spoke with a hiss and a joke about the person's happy heterosexual marriage), except that she was deadset against Patriarchalism, Ero was relieved when he saw Hairball too had no interest and had turned to go. Maybe the way Hairball sort of skipped down the steps outside the building tipped him off, but Ero got the impression Hairball seemed pretty relieved his father was not in the building after all.

Lake Union was just a lake, with many houseboats cluttering it up and an ugly bridge at one end, so they circled back.

The expressways, strangely, were filled, not with cars, trucks, and buses but alligators! One of the elevated roadways had collapsed, and one after the other alligators fell to its death as Ero watched--a not unwelcome sight, as he had no desire to meet any of the monsters.

Passing down a street that led to some tall hotels, they saw a big crowd ahead celebrating Bumpershoot, Seafair, and Mardi Gras in a combined celebration. Men and women, buck naked, young or gray-haired, were riding bicycles through the cheering crowd in their yearly Lady Godiva and her Significant Other commemoration. Others took advantage of the crowd to do some pre-paid demonstrating, holding placards that no one noticed were all blank.

Already, there were incidents of some gang-bangers involved in scuffles ignited by exchanges of racial slurs and the "n" word, and a man just passing by the gang-bangers had been beaten to death with baseball bats and was lying with onlookers gathered around his body taking pictures and making jokes at the man's expense. Others began singing snatches of "We Shall Overcome," "Blowing in the Wind," and "The Age of Aquarius," as they protested the World Trade Commission and carbon emissions and whale harvesting by Japan and Norway, with a few "F" words accorded China for the crushing of Tibet. They smashed windows and spray painted grafitti and peace signs on cars and buildings as part of their show of solidarity against the WTC and the Global Warming trend produced by WTC factories and cars, all for the sake of the environment whose welfare was closest to their hearts.

The yelling and screaming increased as the chain and baseball-bat equipped crowd fought the police who rushed at them in turn with tasers, pepper spray, and firetruck water cannons. It was over in a few minutes, as the crowd dispersed to the coffee houses and gay bars and the most rowdy of them were handcuffed and hustled into vans and driven away toward a lock-up they never would reach. But Ero saw they must have missed one of the rioters, a pyromaniac named Pang who was using his cigarette lighter and was running with it and throwing a burning rolled-up newspaper into each shop, store, and office building as he worked his way up the street.

Followed by the lookout and Hairball, Ero rushed into an espresso coffee bar, beat out the flames with a biscotti-patterned rug from the floor, but when he got to the second store, the window curtains and mannequins in Sierra Club approved UV-blocking hats and sports clothes were burning, and it was too late for that place, so he ran back out. But the other shops and stores were just as bad. He could not do anything more--the city was going to burn down on him, if he stayed. "We have to get to the harbor. We'll be all right on the water, out on the ship!" he cried to Horace and the Hairball. Together, they moved toward the port, but it was slow going--Hairball was like cold molasses and did not move quickly, even though a fire was raging, its flames shooting fire and smoke now from tall buildings up into the sky.

They had gone only a few blocks, when Hairball stopped and turned back around. Ero was horrified. "Where are you going"? he shouted.

Hairball started moving back away. He smiled crazily, shaking his head.

"You can't go back that way! You'll burn to death!" Ero protested.

For a moment, Ero was tempted to run and pull Hairball back with him to safety, and he did run after the beggar, but Hairball had vanished round a corner--and when Ero reached it, there was no sign of him. Had he gone into a building? Ero wondered. There was no time to look. A wall of flames was coming toward him down the street, overtaking and incinerating some fleeing demonstrators and their blank signs--and he and the lookout would be burnt alive if they lingered another minute.

Scooping up Horace in the hollow of his hand and cupping it against his chest, Ero ran for his life toward the White Ship.

When he got to the docks, Horace grew amazingly strong for a butterfly, slipped out of his grasp and flew off to find the ship, leaving Ero stranded on land. At that moment, Ero saw the wonderful advantage of having two wings attached to your body. He was late again! The ship had left, but he looked off toward the southwest, toward Alki Point, and thought he could see the ship's mast and a single flag, the Blue Peter.

"Tell them to wait, and I'm coming!" he shouted after Horace, though he knew Horace couldn't hear him by now.

Something he thought he didn't need right now was another popup, and it appeared right in front of him, a red flashing banner highlighting the annoying message.

"Warning! Danger! Questor must choose one of three options," it flashed at him. "Option #1: Stay on land and take your chances with the fire. Option #2: Swim out to the ship and maybe feed the fishes. Option #3, Answer three out of four questions correctly about what you learned in the Emerald City. Questor will click on the chosen option and press spacebar to activate."

Ero groaned, and aimed a kick at the popup sceeen, but it seemed prepared for this and vanished, appearing a moment later a few feet beyond with a guard rail in front of it.

Ero tried to ignore the popup, looking round for some sort of sailboat, since he couldn't swim in such cold water as this Sound had--but all he saw were big merchant ships, ferryboats, yachts, cruiseships, container ships, hydrofoils, and even the Victoria Clipper--a fleet which could easily transport thousands of people but wasn't going anywhere soon.

Its warning light now buzzing for attention, the popup could not be ignored. Ero thought fast. What real chances did he have for reaching the Argo? Would it help any if he tried to answer the popup's stupid questions?

As if his thoughts had been anticipated, the screen showed a flag, which according to the international flag code was "Yes!"

Ero was now interested, and the popup's defense rail vanished at the same time. He hit Option #3 and the spacebar with his big toe, and the first question appeared:

"Question 1: What local Indian chief did not want his name appropriated by this city, but they took it anyway?"

Ero was stumped. This wasn't his country, after all. He could not even guess it. He knew nothing about American Indians.

A horrible, Bob Barker quiz-show buzzer blasted as loud as a ship's fog horn in his ears, and then the answer appeared:

"Chief Seattle. And, fortunately, he died without seeing it become what you have seen. Next question: What five rulers, or Pentocracy, hold the power in the Emerald City? Hint: The Letter 'P'".

Ero was a Greek, of a race that loved loved riddles and conumdrums, and being an intellect from birth, he had no trouble rattling them off: "Prestige, Parentage, Pelf (or money), Position, and Perspective."

"Correct," responded the popup, giving a musical flourish of Tirolean cow bells. "Next question on the fifth ruler, Perspective. How does that relate to the Underground City and what you saw there and also in the city above? Answer by voice with no more than one paragraph, as this is an Essay Question."

Ero smiled. This was getting him really interested and challenged. For the first time he was enjoying the popup feature of the voyage.

He had two cities to compare, one past and underground, the other above ground and modern, but really they were the same city and disaster in the making, doing the same things--only the city above ground just appeared more sophisticated.

"Perspective and the Underground City relate because the glittering, postmodern city above ground is a product of guilt produced by the low, dirty, crooked city below ground level."

The bells sounded. "Question Number 3: Name three local institutions or artifacts or sociopathic behaviors you saw above ground that are specifically driven by repressed guilt."

Ero relaxed. That was easy! He rattled them off. "Art Museums financed by local robber barons, homeless shelters for the rejects of society, violent demonstrations for world peace."

Bells again. "Last question, and you must answer this correctly to receive the prize, the means to return to your ship. Are you sure you want to return to your ship now? You can remain on this dock, and it will not burn up with the others. Press Spacebar if you wish to continue with the questions."

Ero had to pause to think. What did the popup know that he didn't? Why wouldn't he want to return to his ship now? He looked around at the dock. He had no desire to stay there--it had nothing to offer but some seagulls perched on pilings that looked as if they were plaster copies, they hadn't moved a feather since he had come.

He pressed the Spacebar.

"When you saw a man looking at you through the overhead sidewalk window--there were four sets of eyes present. Identify them, please."

Actually, Ero could think of more than four. "Mine, the beggar's, God's, the Game Players', and the Game Writer's." The Quest, he knew, was a zero-sum game, and so every game had to have a designer and people who played it.

There was a terribly long pause, heightening the suspense, as Ero held his breath.

Then blowing the seagulls off their perches (they weren't plaster, after all), a full orchestra erupted with "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow!"

Ero was pleased as punch with himself. He had proved that a Greek could still think fast on his feet, and also show the world that he wasn't like most 22nd Century people, who moved unreflectively through life, understanding nothing and believing everything they were told to believe--as if they weren't men, but a species of brute animals or automatons and puppets, manipulated with strings by the Puppet Master, or those five, behind-the-scenes rulers of every nation on earth, the shadowy Pentocracy. That quality of quick, independent, critical thinking had made his people, the Hellenes, very great--greater even than the world-conquering Romans--once upon a time--and it was proving an asset even at this late date. But where was his grand prize?

He did not have long to wait. He saw a Leg-o type ladder fly down from a penthouse preschool for software billionaire's children, dropping through the flying ash and curtains of smoke of the burning city and attaching itself to the dock. Towers of the highest buildings were shooting flames--the sound of the people trapped in them was terrible, and many were jumping out the windows, only when they hit the ground they bounced all the way back to where they started, then jumped again.

He didn't have long to get away, he saw--as the dock had caught fire already. He climbed quickly down the ladder to the prize: a dinghy! Just what he needed, though he would have preferred an outboard motor to oars.

Gasping, his excitement was almost too much to bear, he decided to take it rather than leave it.

But he didn't have time to argue with the popup or the prize committee. He grabbed the oars and began making for Alki Point. He had just cleared the dock when a cruise ship further down exploded, catching some Shell Oil storage containers, which also exploded, showering the waterfront with deckchairs, striped Italian Cote d'Azur deck umbrellas, and caffein-free peppermint tea bags.

He made the little boat almost fly and skip over the water to get away from the madness and the inferno on shore. By this time, the city was doomed for sure.