"What's everybody eating?" Brock asked. "I'm starving. Whatever there is to eat, I'm having two." 

     "What is there to eat?" Adam asked.  

     "We need a menu," Noel said. "Brock?"

     "Sure." 

     They all looked at the visual monitor they had hooked up in the van. It had a smaller twin that sat between the driver's and passenger's seat up front. 

     "Freeburgers food menu," Brock said to his computer. The menu immediately appeared on the computer screen. 

​     "What do you need to know?" Brock asked Noel.

     "I'm good. I'll order last, though. By that time I'll pretty much know what there is to order." 

     "You want to let's hurry this up?" Estelle asked. "We're coming up in line. It there's one thing I hate, its waiting behind some idiot who doesn't know how to order at the drive-thru and taking forever, and I don't want us to be like that."

     "One at a time," Noel said. "Everybody tell me what they want." 

     By the time they finished, the order ended up being something like sixteen or seventeen burgers along with a dozen orders of fries and nine drinks. ​

     "Want to you want?" Estelle asked Nacy. "Point."

​     Shawnacy used the smaller screen in front of her to make her order. 

     "So..." Trevor asked, "there's nothing physically wrong with her?" 

     Noel said, "You talk like she's not sitting right there." 

​     "She just doesn't talk, is that the idea?" 

     No Valid bothered to respond, but by that time they were up to the window anyway. Noel yelled the full order to the clerk from where he sat in the back seat. Gramps slipped Nacy some twenties. They paid for the food, and Shawnacy pulled away from the drive-thru to re-enter traffic. 

     "We should park," Gramps said. "Shawnacy, there's no reason for you to drive and eat at the same time." 

     "She isn't eating yet," Estelle replied, "and the sooner we get to where we're going the better." 

     Although she did eat a little bit at that, Trevor noticed. They stopped at a light, and Shawnacy snatched a couple of fries and a sip from her coke. Long, lithe fingers. Nails polished but not overdone. She wasn't smiling, but she kind of was, too. It was like her aura smiled. Trevor just liked looking at her. Yes, in spite of the shock he felt from everything that had happened to him so far that morning, Trevor was still enough of a sixteen year old male to get a mind boner at the sight or a pretty, smiling girl, even though she wasn't really smiling. 

     Adam wolfed down four triple cheeseburgers in as many minutes. (And, no, the food couldn't be seen sliding down his throat to his stomach. The food disappeared as it got to his mouth, although that looked creepy too, if you weren't used to seeing it.) For a mile or so there, all that could be heard were car motors and the sounds of food being eaten. Trevor dug into a double cheese Freeburger, and, man, it was good. Plenty of cheese and two tomato slices and crisp lettuce and two, thick juicy meat patties. 

     "Local news," Brock told the computer. "Let's see if Trevor's still a hot item." 

     On the left screen, Seatrailia's chief-of-police discussed the manhunt for Trevor. 

     On the right side of the screen, however... 

​     It was a live shot from one of Domitika's entrances. Thousands upon thousands of people, pressed together as tight as they could get, struggled to get in. 

     "That's trouble," Gramps said. "Get too many jammed together like that, sooner or later someone's going to get pissed off." 

     "And out come the guns," Noel said.

​     "And we're wading right into the middle of it," Adam said. 

​     They stopped at a light. Shawnacy nibbled on her fish sandwich. 

     "And why, exactly, are we going to Domitika on today of all days?" Trevor asked. On the right side of the screen, desert warriors used futuristic weaponry to fight lizards the size of tanker trucks. It was easy to tell the difference between the patrons and the simulates. The patrons dressed in street clothes, jeans and T-shirts and tops, the simulates in armor that covered them from head to toe, yet, to Trevor, they looked equally as real. The special effects were that good.

     "How do you think they can do that?" Adam asked. "How do you think they can make those futuristic soldiers look so real?"

     "Uh, I don't know...robotics? Maybe they're actors?"

​     "They're not actors."

​     "Well then I don't know what..."

​     "They're designed by a process that is beyond anything our present reality can imagine," Brock said. "That's Domitikan energy, if you want to call it that."

     "Great," Trevor replied. "And what, exactly, is Domitikan..." 

     "What do you know already?" Noel asked. "About the Azure. About Infini. About..." 

     "He doesn't know anything," Gramps said. "We haven't had a chance to tell him anything." 

     "We've been too busy running," Adam said.

     "Uh, okay," Noel said. "In that case, how do you suggest we..."

     "Do you believe in God?" Brock asked Trevor. "We'll start with that."

     "Do I...what..."

     "Yeah, that's all right. Don't bother answering. For us, God is Infini. We call our god Infini." 

     "So, when you say you want to save Infini, what you're really saying is you want to save God." 

     "Yes, well...yes. For us that is quite literally true."

     "Not for me," Gramps said. "For me, Infini is Infini and God is God."

     "We've seen Infini," Brock said.

     "Seen? You..."

​     "Through the Azure."

​     "And God looks like..."

​     "Well, uh, okay, you're probably not going to believe this, but...it looks like, well, okay, more than anything else it looks like a gigantic ball of string, only, like, a zillion times more complex."

​     "But you're telling me you've actually seen, physically seen..."

​     "Well, okay, we haven't actually seen Infini..."

     "We've seen what our meager perceptions allows us to see as Infini," Noel said, which was ironic considering the fact that he was sightless. "And what we see are an infinity of timelines weaving in amongst themselves. To our way of thinking, Infini resembles a beehive or a massive ball of string."

     "Massive," Estelle repeated for emphasis. 

     "And that's God," Trevor said. 

     All four of the Valids, even Nacy behind the wheel of the car, nodded as one. 

     "So all that crap I've heard all my life about God looking out for me and caring for me personally..." 

​     "That's true. That's all true. Infini is very loving," Brock said. "Love is a part of her make up, a major part of what she is."

     "Okay, but first you say Infini is a ball of string, and then you say he..."

​     "She. Infini's referred to as a she. She is our mother. She's mother to all that was, is, or ever will be in all her zillions upon zillions of permutations. She's very compassionate, very perceptive."

​     "And she dreams," Estelle said.

​     "That's what this is," Adam said, referring to what was on the visual monitor. "That's what Domitika is," Adam said. "And I'm not talking about any kind of stupid amusement park. It's a universe made up of nothing but dreams. Infini's dreams. The dreams of God."

CONTINUE