DN10: May 10, 1986

TOW

Dreaming; Night of
May 10, 1986

	4:07	I met a great girl. She was very S-like, if not, indeed, S herself. I became obsessed with her. I discovered which house she lived in and went and watched it. We talked a lot, banter much like the Wodehouse standard. I asked her to marry me (well, "ask" is not quite the word) and she agreed. We had a class together, albeit an odd one. Everything was great, she was perfect. I began to examine her from every angle, obsessively looking for a flaw, almost needing to find one. I broke into her house and did other similar things, but everything was perfectly in order. She went somewhere briefly, and I went to the office and talked the clerk into letting me see her scholastic file, which not only contained grades but old test papers, going as far back as grade school. I flipped through the file, almost desperately looking for something, although I had no idea what. It was as though I had to find some blemish in her perfection. She came back, passing by a window overhead as she walked toward the door. She saw me through the window and I was afraid she'd be upset with me for checking up on her and prying so, but, as with all of the other crazy things I'd been doing, she didn't seem the least bit upset. I was hurriedly putting the file back when a paper jammed inside it, keeping it from closing properly. I pulled it out and saw that it was an old test or something, on which she had doodled a picture of a cat baking in an oven. I was horrified and rushed to the door with paper in hand to confront her with this evidence of what I took to be her hidden sadomasochistic tendencies. Remember, this was the only thing that was less than perfect that I'd been able to discover in her whole life. I wasn't entirely serious; in fact, I was half joking—but only half. I did feel as though this child's drawing needed some explanation, as absurd as I knew that to be. I got to the door just as she did and opened it, confronting her with the drawing before she could even get in the door. I told her I couldn't marry her, because of the sketch. She smiled an angelic smile, not the least upset by my craziness and said, "Well, then, I didn't have to go and do this," and from behind her back, she pulled out a severed child's head. (I)
	8:27	C and I were moving a bunch of her stuff into a sort of cave in a cliffside. M came home and made us stop, saying it was too dangerous. I went back in there to get something and it partially collapsed on me. Fortunately, I wasn't entirely buried and they were able to get me out fairly quickly. Back at the house, a strange thing happened. I had lost my class ring and some other stuff when buried. A little worm-grub brought me a gold wedding band-type ring. It was too small, but I figured it would be worth a good deal. We were examining the grub-worm when C, who was holding it, crushed it between her fingers. This caused a psychic explosion, leaving M and C with slight memory losses and me able to communicate directly with the grub-worm, who'd been uninjured by the whole thing. He began to breed, and I kept all of his offspring in a large tub-like structure (reproduction was by extreme growth, followed by fission). He showed me how to learn to communicate with his descendants. Since their lifespan was much shorter than that of a human, he eventually died, and several generations of the grub-worms lived and died. In legend, they remembered their beginnings, calling the original grub-worm the Grandfather and me the god. I, of course, was still around, so they had direct experience of me but the Grandfather was long gone so all they knew of him was what their tradition told them and what I told them. Over the years, the population had been geographically separated into three breeding isolates: the original and by far the largest group in the original tub; a group in a metal garbage can; and another group. I don't remember how these separations had occurred, but they had, and whole generations had lived apart from the other groups. Although these groups were physically near one another (by my standards) their isolation was complete, and social evolution played a role within each deme. One group had come to believe that the Grandfather was everything and the god was nothing—obviously, this group was hard for me to deal with. The original group, being the largest, was the most stable, remaining trueist to the old ways. I no longer remember much of the third group, only that they had evolved some significant characteristic. I decided to play scientist (or god, since they'd given me the position) a little and mixed the groupings a little, taking specimen from one deme and introducing them into another, hoping, first, to witness the effects of culture shock on them and, second, the effect of them on the culture. M, or someone, was getting tired of my keeping the grub-worms around, always messing with them. I pointed out that I was obliged to, as they were the first non-human intelligent species that man had come across. (G)