Hackworth woke from a dream of unsustainable pleasure and realized it wasn't a dream; his penis was inside someone else, and he was steaming like a runaway locomotive toward ejaculation. He had no idea what was going on; but couldn't he be forgiven for doing the wrong thing? With a wiggle here and a thrust there, he finally nudged himself over the threshold, the smooth muscles of the tract in question executing their spinal algorithm.

Just a few deep breaths into the refractory period, and he had already disengaged, yelping a little from the electric spark of withdrawal, and levered himself up on one arm to see whom he'd just violated. The firelight was enough to tell him what he already knew: Whoever this woman was, it wasn't Gwen. Hackworth had violated the most important promise he'd ever made, and he didn't even know the other party.

But he knew it wasn't the first time. Far from it. He'd had sex with a lot of people in the past few years— he'd even been buggered.

There was, for example, the woman-

Never mind, there was the man who-

Strange to say, he could not think of any specific examples. But he knew he was guilty. It was precisely like waking up from a dream and having a clear train of thought in your mind, something you were working on just a few seconds ago, but being unable to remember it, consciousness peeled away from cognition. Like a three-year-old who has a talent for vanishing into crowds whenever you turn your back, Hackworth's memories had fled to the same place as words that are on the tip of your tongue, precedents for déjà vu, last night's dreams.

He knew he was in big trouble with Gwen, but that Fiona still loved him— Fiona, taller than Gwen now, so self-conscious about her still linear figure, still devoid of the second derivatives that add spice to life.

Taller than Gwen? How's that?

Better get out of this place before he had sex with someone else he didn't know.

He wasn't in the central chamber anymore, rather in one of the tunnel's aneurysms with some twenty other people, all just as naked as he was. He knew which tunnel led to the exit (why?) and began to crawl down it, rather stiffly as it seemed that he was stiff and laden with cricks and cramps. Must not have been very athletic sex— more in the Tantric mode.

Sometimes they had sex for days.

How did he know that?

The hallucinations were gone, which was fine with him. He crawled through the tunnels for a long time. If he tried to think about where he was going, he got lost and eventually circled back to where he started. Only when his mind began to wander did he make his way on some kind of autopilot to a long chamber filled with silvery light, sloping upward. This was beginning to look familiar, he had seen this when he was still a young man. He followed it upward until he reached the end, where something unusually stony was under his feet. A hatch opened above him, and several tons of cold seawater landed on his head.

He staggered up onto dry land and found himself in Stanley Park again, gray floor aft, green wall fore. The ferns rustled, and out stepped Kidnapper, who looked fuzzy and green. He also looked unusually dapper for a robotic horse, as Hackworth's bowler hat was perched on top of his head.

Hackworth reached up to feel himself and was astounded to feel his face covered with hair. Several months' growth of beard was there. But even stranger, his chest was much hairier than it had been before. Some of the chest hair was gray, the only gray hairs he had ever seen coming out of his own follicles.

Kidnapper was fuzzy and green because moss had been growing on him. The bowler looked terrible and had moss on it too. Hackworth reached out instinctively and put it on his head. His arm was thicker and hairier than it used to be, a not altogether unpleasing change, and even the hat felt a little tight.