“I don’t mean to insinuate that you are unfeeling or stifled of life…excuse me onthat one. I just meant to ask you how you breathe when you are down here reading orwriting.”He smiled. “I have five years more experience in breathing on this earth than you. Iknow when it is I can breathe and when it is I can’t and I know just what to do whensuch a thing as suffocation occurs.”I can’t believe it, there is actually a qualitative property to every breathtaken…That must be wonderful. You must also know your cells are degenerating fiveyears faster than mine.”He smiled again, the same relaxed annoying way. “I get that you find it amusing toliken me to my cadavers. It’s not the first time you’ve done it, but truly we are not inlieu to play smart.”I was wondering if you could call the cadaver of a smart man, a smart cadaver. I’vealways wondered.”

“You were saying that the kind of man Robert wasis hard to find,” she said.Yes…it is.”I thought you were that kind of man?”Well…I am that man in the making.”Why do you think things are like that?”Society…you are right. Society has made the modern man promiscuous.”What? I thought you didn’t get my point.”I see your point now…it’s a very important point.”She smiled and allowed me to do the same. “A point that you are now using as anexcuse,” she said.I smiled, “what excuse?”That it’s all society’s fault.”No…oh…no,” I smiled again. “It’s not all society’s fault. We can also blamewomen.”What! Blame women for what?”For making it easier for men to be dogs.”Are you freaking me?”I wish I could but you won’t let me.”

“He felt a psychosomatic rush of emptiness before he spoke. “Since we are getting to the real point, I am not stupid John. And it would be foolish to think me ignorant. Isn’t this about the Science Nation interview? Isn’t this because I mistakenly used the word “soul?” Isn’t this about you and the others thinking somewhere along the lines, I had gained an imaginary soul? We all know when you gain a soul, you lose a mind. Don’t we john?” John hesitated briefly staring at Roma. “I believe so yes. Souls are luxuries for speculative minds. Real scientists can’t afford such luxuries. They have the world to save.”Roma narrowed his eyes. “Or destroy.”

“I hate gossips. I really do. I often wonder where they get the time and effort they put into either digging or fabricating so called *facts* about others. But these ridiculous creatures are a prime example of how the self-communal can try to injure and diminish the self-that-is. Now you know where the home of the self esteem is. It is not merely within the self. It is within the self-that-is. It is not within the self in relation. This can never hold true. Any sense of self estimation you get from the communal can never hold essentially true.”

“Yeye shifted in her seat as Roma stared down at her angrily. “There are inter-realm laws I must abide by, that the soul must abide by as well when it comes to an appointed manifestation. Whoever was in the world before can not go into the new world. That identity must be forsaken. It must—”“Forsaken or forgotten?” Roma barked. “Forsaken,” Yeye answered. “Unless you’re putting this soul into a blank state like that of a child, it can not be forgotten. It has to be forsaken. That’s the rule or you get no soul.” “So you’re telling me that this soul will remember but will never be able to be that person it was?” Roma asked. “I’m telling you a new memory must be formed with absolutely no reference to the previous.” “What the freak is that?” Roma asked, visibly agitated. “You can form new memories while holding on to preexisting ones.” Yeye stood. “Yes Roma, you’re right. But you can also form new memories while you are unable to access the previous ones.” “Such it would have a drive that belongs to it but would never be able to access or be forbidden to access it?” Roma asked. Yeye’s voice was low. “I’m afraid that’s the way it is going to have to be.” Roma shook his head vehemently. “Exactly which way is that Yeye. Exactly which way is that in common terms?” Yeye spoke in her most resolute tone yet. “You will never be able to know whether or not this soul is Mara.” Roma gained silence, breathing in and out rapidly. “We’re getting out of this damned Zharfar,” he said as he stormed out.”

“For an act to be evil, you must first perceive it, process and then conceive it as such. Then these acts are effects. They’re not causes. And by this I mean that these acts are not of Stream. Now we ask the other question again. What does it take for something, here specifically Stream, to be good or evil?”

“I ask of nature that it gives me life, unfiltered, show me what I am and every variation of me. That I may separate from it all, so I can know who I am.”