What are you?" Anders asked quietly.

"What do you mean?" the indignant flesh attached to the tie demanded.
Serene within its reality, it gaped at Anders. Its mouth twitched,
undeniable proof that it was real and sufficient. "You're drunk," it
sneered.

Anders laughed and left the party.

* * * * *

"There is still something you don't know," the voice said. "But you were
hot! I could feel you near me."

"What are you?" Anders asked again.

"I don't know," the voice admitted. "I am a person. I am I. I am
trapped."

"So are we all," Anders said. He walked on asphalt, surrounded by heaps
of concrete, silicates, aluminum and iron alloys. Shapeless, meaningless
heaps that made up the _gestalt_ city.

And then there were the imaginary lines of demarcation dividing city
from city, the artificial boundaries of water and land.

All ridiculous.

"Give me a dime for some coffee, mister?" something asked, a thing
indistinguishable from any other thing.

"Old Bishop Berkeley would give a nonexistent dime to your nonexistent
presence," Anders said gaily.

"I'm really in a bad way," the voice whined, and Anders perceived that
it was no more than a series of modulated vibrations.

"Yes! Go on!" the voice commanded.

"If you could spare me a quarter--" the vibrations said, with a deep
pretense at meaning.

No, what was there behind the senseless patterns? Flesh, mass. What was
that? All made up of atoms.

"I'm really hungry," the intricately arranged atoms muttered.

All atoms. Conjoined. There were no true separations between atom and
atom. Flesh was stone, stone was light. Anders looked at the masses of
atoms that were pretending to solidity, meaning and reason.

"Can't you help me?" a clump of atoms asked. But the clump was identical
with all the other atoms. Once you ignored the superimposed patterns,
you could see the atoms were random, scattered.

"I don't believe in you," Anders said.

The pile of atoms was gone.

"Yes!" the voice cried. "Yes!"

"I don't believe in any of it," Anders said. After all, what was an
atom?

"Go on!" the voice shouted. "You're hot! Go on!"

What was an atom? An empty space surrounded by an empty space.

Absurd!

"Then it's all false!" Anders said. And he was alone under the stars.

"That's right!" the voice within his head screamed. "Nothing!"

But stars, Anders thought. How can one believe--

The stars disappeared. Anders was in a g