This old story popped out of my files today when I was looking for something else. It was written 10 years ago on an all night train from Transylvania to Pitesti through the Carpathian mountains in Romania. It was a reply to someone whose identity was a mystery to me, who goosed me into an exchange of off the wall stories during my first six months of being on-line. His first note read: "Is it wrong to use my false eye to distract my billiards opponents?" and went from there. This is the culmination of our attempts to one up each other. Give it a read:

Dear Eepcat:

I've been pre-occupied the last few weeks in another quarter. Only now have I found the time and means to make connection with your neck of the sevagram. But your story has made me think back to the days of the Great Reptilian Descent and the Rise of the Mammalians.

It has been revealed in an obscure branch of Evolutionary Symbiotics that mammals, as a group, did not evolve slowly over millions of years, as once believed, but in fact evolved quite rapidly during three or four "Intervals of Similitude". The leap from small ratty creatures to medium-sized rat-like creatures was one phase. The "Enlargement of the Medium" was a second. And of course we must not forget the famous Enlargement of the Enlargement, accompanied by the too-well-known Di-volution of land and sea mammalian forms. There were other phases of varying size and degree of significance as well.

The theory goes something like this: At certain intervals, determined by cosmic forces beyond anyone's control -- could be change in climate, planetary accidents, temporary lack of a certain atmospheric nutriment, or the sudden introduction of another nutrient to the food chain -- life as we know it ("we" meaning us planetary beings) "goes fluid".

In the case of the mammals, it probably occurred that the skeletal structures of the entire family suddenly became softer, like gooey sub-core rubber, and the internal organs -- from which manifest the various genera -- suddenly began to morph.

Imagine the scene on the savannah during one such transformative moment... horn-toothed tigers interplaying in a come-to-life imaginative realm with aspirant horses and tonga-beasts... Colors meld and reform, necks grow wild long -- behold the giraffe! ... An imbivalent gazelle can't make up her mind -- Voila! The Zebra... The horny antelope sprouts a head of horny antlers ... patterns of orange, grey, black, yellow, white, green, blue and red blend and swirl ... manes and sharp red-meat teeth: a King is born... In the midst of the mayhem the strong-armed monkey sneaks off to the woods... When the confusion is over, relationships and forms have altered forever.

With the variouos forms of ape at a later date, it happened just the same. In a single bound, ten to twelve million years ago, the Primate cometh. One line, however, the line leading to modern man by way of the clever chimpanzee, found a way to maintain its state of fluidity on a near permanent basis. Everything you see in the fossil record -- Neanderthal Man and Cro Magnon, Lucy, the Catholic Church and Seven-Layered Cities of Ice Hockey Stadiums -- are not in fact evidences of development, but rather, representations of humanity's failure to maintain "fluidity". In technical terms, "evolutionary sidetracks".

These days, it is said that evolution lies not in change of form, but in altering consciousness. I don't know. But I have heard there will come a day when not our bones, but rather our very brains, will "go fluid". All of those ("us") in existence at that moment, and carrying in concentrate all the energies and experience of the ages, will be transformed. Whatever we've dreamt about -- the psychic blueprints on our minds -- will become real. Dreams heretofore hidden in night realms and dark corners of spidery consciousness, will be brought forth for the first time to shine in the light of day.

Those who dreamt about Heaven and Hell will take their chances like the rest of us. In fact, Hell, in this scheme, is clearly the state required by people who have adhered to old, fossilized mental forms. To face the new fluidity of the day, such people will need to undergo "psychic melt down", since their brains will literally have become like hard plastic. Those who hoped to realize an eternal reward in Heaven may suffer a similar fate as the intense vaporization of false hope is effected.

Those who have done the true Work of the Imagination, however, and not let their minds adhere to immediate concrete things -- what are really fleeting forms -- will prosper and see their hopes for a bright new species made real before their eyes.

Sometimes this "going fluid" is called death. In fact it spells Life. That is how it can be said, "There is no death, only a change of worlds." It also explains the often elusive proverb, "A happy man is the one who has erased his imprint from the face of the world."

Are you ready?