ke a ghost as I watch him look straight through me, and I mark the
address.

#

I spend a day kicking at everything foam.

The foam is hard, and light, and durable, and I imagine the houses of my
parent's suburb, the little Process enclave, surviving long past any of us,
surviving as museum pieces for arsenic-breathing bugouts, who crawl over the
mummified furniture and chests of clothes, snapping picts and chattering in
their thrilling contraltos. I want to scream

Here and there, pieces of the old, pre-Process, pre-foam Toronto stick out, and
I rub them as I pass them by, touchstones for luck.

#

Spring lasted about ten days. Now we're into a muggy, 32 degrees Toronto summer,
and my collar itches and sweat trickles down my neck.

I'd be wearing something lighter and cooler, except that today I'm meeting my
Dad, at Aristide. They've got a little wire-flown twin-prop number fuelled up
and waiting for me at the miniature airstrip on Toronto Island. Dad was *so*
glad when I got in touch with him. A real Milestone on his Personal Road to
Lasting Happiness. There's even one of the Process-heads from Yonge and Bloor
waiting for me. He doesn't even comment on all my fricken luggage.

#

I hit Stude's place about ten minutes after he left for his trip to the
mothaship. I had the dregs of the solvent that he'd sold me, and I used that to
dissolve a hole in his door, and reached in and popped the latch.

I didn't make a mess, just methodically opened crates and boxes until I found
what I was looking for. Then I hauled it in batches to the elevator, loaded it,
and took it back to my coffin in a cab.

I had to rent another coffin to store it all.

#

The Process-head stays at the airport. Praise the bugouts. If he'd been aboard,
it would've queered the whole deal.

I press my nose against the oval window next to the hatch, checking my comm from
time to time, squinting at the GPS readout. My stomach is a knot, and my knee
aches. I feel great.

The transition to Process-land is sharp from this perspective, real buildings
giving way to foam white on a razor-edged line. I count off streets as we fly
low, the autopilot getting ready to touch down at Aristide, only 70 kay away.

And there's my Chestnut Ave.

God*damn* the wind's fierce in a plane when you pop the emergency hatch. It
spirals away like a maple key as the plane starts soothing me over its PA.

I've got a safety strap around my waist and hooked onto th