Time, in its fickle movement: the moment of awakening which, in spite of repetition, retained the power it had at first experiencing, usually diminished and often waxing and waning at that but never wholly absent; the minutes of repast when his body accepted nourishment and showed itself grateful through a pervading feeling of well-being, then perhaps was time the slowest; the hours of discovery of what that body could and could not do—it could walk, run, climb, fall, kneel, stand, feel pain and give pleasure, be tired, rest and recover, it could not hover in the air, nor walk on water, nor penetrate trees and rock, nor show the way at night, nor run faster than the gentlest breeze, nor be perfectly still, nor long go without food, all these things and more; the days of exploring the island—it was large, two days around, everywhere displaying the same basic plan, a ring of sand, a ring of jungle, and the mountain—only the fault, the meadow and one particular inlet walled in by high cliffs broke the pattern, plant-life was as varied as it was profuse, animal-life, but for himself and the dinosaurs, non-existent; days of exploring which occupied him for so long and left him exhausted but which, looked back upon, were as the passing of a moment; nights on the beach under the stars and sea-black sky, which produced a feeling not unlike that he experienced on taking food, one of great pleasure, deep satisfaction, brooding yet somehow fine, almost grand incomprehension, for then too was time slowed and nature stilled as if waiting on him—on him—the realization, when it first came, overpowered him with its ecstatic, incredible beauty and left him out of breath, wondering if it was true; but above all in value, pleasure, and in mystery was the wonder of sleep, the miracle which restored the body and placated the mind, lending substance to his pride while opening realms of uncertainty to his knowledge, sleep, when time, neither retarded nor accelerated, simply was not. At times he courted the miracle actively laying himself impatiently in the jungle beside his incomplete day's supply of food to await its coming or leaping from the sea to lie expectantly in the afternoon sun. It was always there, to do his bidding and he eventually came to accept it as he had more quickly accepted other facets of his new life.

There remained, yet, a body of experiences which through their unexpected and infrequent occurrence were special and apart: his hand, one day as he lay in the sun drying himself after a swim, became a fantastic object of improbable shape and ability, a thing which, although he knew it to exist, by the very form and substance of its existence seemed for a moment so noble as to be holy, so holy as to be unholy, and so unholy as to be obscene, a dissonance in the world he occupied, a thing whose origins and present shape implied a magnificent purpose, for that so finely and painstakingly wrought could not be fortuitous coincidence, however much he might so comprehend it. Or, the feeling on awakening that there were or had been others, that he had seen them in his dreams; but the only clear memory was that of the city, as if that which decreed he should not remember had unintentionally let one vision slip past and was unwilling to withdraw it for fear of calling attention to its omnipresence. For all that, he felt the presence of others like himself strongly, although where they might be remained a puzzle. Were there other islands? Or. in close connection, the strange feeling which sometimes came over him as he walked through the jungle and meadow occupied only by the dinosaurs and himself: Were there only the plants, the numberless varied plants, the great animals, and one man? It should not be so.

Of new experiences, after these had come, there seemed to be no more. He observed life settling into the selfsame featureless routine which had engulfed him in the fault.

The Hundred-and-forty-eighth Afternoon
Fruit, in sufficient quantity to complete the day's supply, hung from a tree just ahead. He advanced through the jungle and set the basket at the base of the tree. As he reached for the low-hanging grapes, his eyes fell on a group of large, dark objects among the distant trees. It seemed as if there were a clearing beyond, for they stood out in semi-darkness against a backdrop of white, which could only mean that the matted roof of the jungle was interrupted there. Forgetting the fruit, he made his way slowly in that direction. At closer range, the lower part of the white backdrop was blotted out by a larger mound-shaped object.

The brilliant light of day beat down upon him and he stood for some minutes looking first uncomprehendingly, then sympathetically, then sadly at the great carcass of the dinosaur sprawled with absurd grace on one side of the clearing. A silence to which he was unaccustomed had settled over his world. He consciously tried to hear, but the noises of the jungle and the distant sea would not penetrate to him. Sight and smell alone continued to function. As he walked around the clearing examining the various corpses, some of which were dried to the bone, others partly decomposed, the odor smothered him and made him ill.

Unable to move, he stared vacantly. The feeling was that of being lifted from time, smoothly and swiftly, with a tearing motion. Out of time, there was no thought. His mind was rent open to absorb passively and relentlessly the great, silent images scattered about the clearing. Besieged by the mounting of physical sensation and the swelling of incomprehensible emotions, he ran from the unendurable and plunged through the jungle, ignoring the slapping branches and ripping thorns, none of which could return his senses intact.

He burst onto the beach and flung himself on the sand at the water's edge. Huddled, with his knees under his chin, he cried, first from fear, then sadness, and finally self-pity.

. . . . .

After the barely occurred incident of death, he dwelled once more in the house and found time passing meaninglessly there, with a sick, feverish haste at once imperceptibly swift and unmistakably tangible. It was like rubbing a rough stone under the ebb tide. Life, for the first time, seemed a burden to be borne, an uncomfortable, restraining shell inviting escape, offering no resistance but also no possibility.

From the world without, he turned to himself. The terrified echo of the first meeting, which revealed unsuspected ignorance of unimagined scope and sensitivity—the quick laid bare—that echo which resounded for some days was followed by a heightened perception of both himself and his situation, a perception which, however, was wholly one-sided in that it rested on the randomly chosen paths and byways of his own mind and its ill-reflected concept of the world, never on the world itself.

Out of this aberrated inward view came a sleep-stealing longing for comfort and consolation. A source, which had to be found, was sought, and the seeking was a mockery, both of his very self and of his heritage, for it was a superficial seeking which was realized in hours of self-pitying walks and self-conscious glances, now angry, now suppliant, toward the heavens, the sea, the mountain. Both wanderings and thoughts in these days were blind and therefore fruitless because they were inherently impotent, a travesty of self-seeking, a prostituted microcosmic reproduction of macrochaotic harmony. The process left him mentally and physically exhausted, deeply hurt by futilely self-inflicted harm.

The hunger of awakening would not leave him now, no matter to what extent he gorged himself. It lay within him, dormant and at the same time frighteningly active in its effect, so that when he returned to the bone-cluttered clearing and found justification, it was with an overwhelming sense of relief and release. The rotting carcasses, the bleached bones were specters to mock his own glory and that of his world. 0, the evil and wrongness of it, the glory of a world reduced to ignobly weather-wracked remains and scorned by that once warm and receptive, docile, even loving world, It was another hand that did this, a force till now unseen and only half-guessed-at. The disconcerting dreams, the disharmony between himself and the living dinosaurs, the smaller discomforts of rain and hot sand, the water-whipping wind and star-obscuring clouds, the trifles and the greater displeasures were of one source, of one actor, and consolation could come only through communication with or appeasement of the outrageous anger of that source.

Evenings, he constructed great fires on the beach, visible, he know, at great distances. He sat calmly and gazed at the flames which, in their lurching and frenzied motion, seemed as ill-at-ease and out of place as he felt himself to be.

There was no response.

"Why, of all who must be, why me? What have I done, I, to deserve this?" His voice rose in a wail of lamentation. "In the dark of night there is no solace; the light of day brings grief, for it obscures... thy works. Thy great and manifold... blessings which thou hast visited upon the world are hidden. Half in ecstasy, half in despair, I was not meant to live. 0 my God, have I sinned so grievously before thee?"

To make the unbearable day bearable the ritual and its embarrassed, seemingly hypocritical expression was gradually expanded from a few minutes of prayer on awakening and retiring to an hour, then two, finally the entire day was taken. Food was stockpiled so that interruption could be avoided.

In the hundred and eighth week of his captivity—he saw his life thus and had grown to match his own concept of himself as the captive, the punished, the damned, and had long since failed to think of the island's material offerings and potentiality, for the world had shrunk not to the island or to his crude house but to himself and he was aware of his surroundings only to the extent that it was necessary to invade them in search of sustenance—in the hundred and eighth week, he went farther than usual into the jungle and discovered a large plant whose broads flat leaves, he noticed, retained quite clearly marks scratched on their surface.

He returned to the house with a bundle of such leaves and a sharp rock and in moments of tensely realized pain, imagined and real, he recorded his lamentations and adjurations:

The Liturgy of the Island

1. Arisen from the union of world and time and understanding neither, I admit to thee, 0 God, the grievous and manifold sins which I have committed against thee. 2. For those sins and the sins which I shall commit in further violence to thy name, I ask thy benevolent forgiveness.

3. I humble myself in mind and body before thy unfolding majesty, for I can neither comprehend nor apprehend thee. 4. I bow to thee in all places for there and everywhere are thy works visible to those who would see them.

5. For them, I praise thee who made me and who shall take me from this place to another where thy radiant countenance may also become visible to me. 6. I praise thee for the goodness of thy creation, for the great bounty of this, thy island, for the impenetrable majesty of thy boundless sea, for the cool shades of thy protecting forests, for the light of thy day and the dark of thy night.

7. I praise thy gracious name and sing it a thousand times to the heavens for thy gift of the trembling earth which, at all times solid and firm under my feet, stirs from its eternal sleep at thy bidding and aids me in the times of greatest need. 8. O God, thou whose glorious name sounds in each falling raindrop and in each falling leaf, I praise thee in the mortal sounds of this mortal voice which thou hast seen fit to give unto me. Forever and ever.

9. Deliver me from that which I do not understand, O God. 10. Protect me before the machinations of Nature, the involutions of dreams, and the inequities of the life with which thou wouldst try me. 11. Preserve me from the beasts of the forest and the rocks of the mountain.

12. Not in selfishness but in humility do I ask these things of thee, O God. 13. Visit upon me, as thy most vain and errant creature, those trials and torments which thy will desires. 14. Through these words and the thoughts dimly mirrored in them I humbly approach thee to draw on thy everlasting strength, which, if thou wouldst have it so, shall make me to endure and triumph, kneeling.

15. Great is thy name, O God, greater is thy wisdom, and greatest is thy love, for thou hast in these days watched over me, the lowliest of thy works, as thou hoverest among the trees of the forest, the grasses of the field, and the waters of the sea, for all time.

16. Great is thy name, O God, greater is thy wisdom. Greatest is thy abiding love and everlasting mercy.

His prayers thus found written expression and for many weeks (he did not know how long; it was now that he neglected the calendar) he devoted himself to the tedious task of recording the lengthy rituals.

Erroneously then, the calendar showed that it was in the hundred and ninth week that he began his research. Somehow, the recording of the meditations spoiled them. With the loss of spontaneity was a corresponding loss of pertinence and sincerity, and he was discouraged by the time and energy which would be needed to produce new ones.

After the labor of writing had ended he hopefully tried to give himself up to the liturgy as he had in the past, but the power escaped him. One evening, while his lips moved in the habitual patterns, his mind wandered and he noticed a strange phenomenon. At the edge of the jungle, a large white flower was slowly opening. The darker it became, the more the flower opened. When the sun had at last disappeared, the flower was fully open, one perfect blossom the size of his hand, with countless tapering petals.

By using a large number of dots varying in size, he was able to produce a recognizable likeness of the plant on one of his leaves. The following day was spent drawing the plant closed.

He observe the flower and its immediate environment for two weeks and condensed his observations to ten leaves. In the process, he exhausted his supply of papyrus and realized that if he was to go on with the work, it would be worthwhile to cultivate his own plants. Obviously, they would not grow on the beach and if placed at the edge of the meadow, the dinosaurs would consume them.

After some days of exploration, he settled on the small, cliff-encircled inlet which he had earlier found. It was backed up by a steeply sloping hillside covered with fertile soil and dense vegetation which gave way at a low elevation to the mountain proper, and thus was secure from the attacks of the dinosaurs. There was also a supply of fresh water in the form of a spring which flowed in a narrow, shallow channel to the sea.

Leaving the beach house, he took the liturgical library, the ten leaves, and the calendar and moved to the inlet. In a short time, he had erected and furnished a dwelling much more satisfactory than the first. Partly on the ground, partly in a tree, it was roomier, sturdier, and was not plagued by the heat of sun and sand. Nearby, he cleared a small plot and planted a number of papyrus plants.With this secure base established, he began his study of the island. Months passed and the library grew rapidly. The liturgy was forgotten as he traveled to all parts of his world, observing, recording, drawing, assimilating, classifying. In his dedication, the calendar was likewise discarded. Only the island and its form had meaning.

He thus sought justification in things. It was an activity which seemed to him no more senseless than the recording of the liturgy or building the house or gathering food, or, for that matter, sleeping and breathing and thinking. Worth was a false criterion because back of every thing, every activity, stood one premise. To accept that premise was to give all things validity; to reject it—to reject it was unthinkable.Through investigative intercourse with the world he found a pseudo-meaning. His intense concentration induced forgetfulness, and the relative worth of knowledge and the way it is discovered assumed the invincible armor and the natural truth of a maxim, if not an axiom.World was perceived, examined, and understood. The small note which he had once inserted between perception and examination was first ignored, then forgotten. The hitch, which might take the form of a contradiction but which was really but a forking of the unified path of perception into the numerous paths of examination, seemed at first mere airy speculation, then absurdity. That there might be paths leading directly from perception to understanding, or perhaps even paths exceeding both of these was a pipe dream.

He posited a world, a method, and an end, never aware of the real distance by which he erred. Paradox had no place, except as a temporary stumbling block, a stimulus to more thorough-going representations and orderings of Nature. Time was a useful, admittedly indispensable quantity.

There were, of course, moments of doubt, when it seemed he perceived footprints of giants who remained impishly, if not haughtily, invisible to him, when it seemed there were connections between the observed phenomena which were completely beyond his rational abilities. The former he occasionally admitted to, the latter, never, for that there might be parts of his world which were permanently inaccessible could not be admitted, since it implied a limitation which he had once recognized, only to have his despair thrown back at him. He blushed, now, when he thought of the hours, of the days he had spent reciting the liturgy. He laughed.

Bit by bit he constructed a mental model of the ecology of the island and the sea and the sky. Highly satisfying interrelationships became evident through his study: the cycle of water, the cycle of plants, the cycle of the dinosaurs. Purpose was elusive and unsettling; description and ensuing mastery were rewarding and satisfying.

The woman came shortly after he moved to the inlet. She appeared at night and lived with him and bore him a child which resembled neither of them and which remained weak, helpless, and simple-minded. He hardly took note of their presence and was unaware of the exact day, sometime early in the fourth year, when they disappeared from his life. Occasionally, in remoter parts of the island, he afterwards glimpsed them in the distance, without attaching any particular significance to the sighting.

A chance of nature gave him his first, great advance, from which he knew all things would in time be possible, Following a thunderstorm one day, he noticed a fallen tree blocking the stream by the house. As the water backed up behind it, there was a steady flow over the trunk, which caused the leaves and smaller branches of a low-hanging limb which touched the water's surface to tremble and twist. For some minutes he stared in disbelief not at the scene before him but at the picture in his mind. He hesitantly snapped the branch from the tree and, holding it loosely in his hands, partially immersed the leaves. The branch turned, haltingly to be sure, but it turned and dumbfounded he watched it make several revolutions.

In the following days, he exploited the library as he had never expected to. There were trees to be sought which resisted water, plants whose fibers were strong and tough for binding, plants whose leaves were broad and flat and stiff.

The dam appeared first. Several efforts were washed away before he learned the trick of detouring the stream until the structure was completed. At last it rose to a height of some six feet. Then came the problem of mounting the makeshift paddle wheel. Eventually its shaft was attached to a nearby tree. The stream was directed into its original course and he impatiently watched the water level rise slowly until it flowed over the top log, The wheel turned such gratifying speed and smoothness that only when he was knocked off his feet by a wall of water did he realize there were yet techniques to be learned in dam-building. It mattered not, for he had at last used his knowledge. Life was justified, even though he had not the slightest idea about how he could possibly utilize the energy source he had found. He was as confident that he could build a sturdier dam and better mill-wheel as he was that a use would be found for them.

And so it was. First a dam thick at its base which held firmly, then a wooden paddle-wheel, and a system of gears which he had visualized while turning two rocks together, then a millstone to grind and squeeze fruit, then an extension of the power-train to the house. The result was a complex system of gears, levers, and control rods and cords by which he could open and close windows, start and extinguish fires, and even have food brought in pre-filled baskets from a distant storehouse.

With this encouragement, and with the extra free time which was his after he tired of arranging such devices in new ways, he entered upon his studies more intently than ever. Each day the library grew visibly as, rejuvenated by success and tangible rewards, he sought, examined, and recorded.

From his labors, ever farther reaching systems developed slowly. Soon it was not beyond him to envisage a great and unifying, progressive unfolding of complexity among the plants he studied. The relationship between the smallest and the largest, the simplest and the most complex, and all those between, was more often vague than not, but never in doubt once he discerned. The question then weighed upon him, what of the dinosaurs and himself? How was the great leap possible in the light of the hardly sloping curve of development which he saw in the plants? Their apparently wasted foliage and fruit, much of which was poisonous or repulsive to him and avoided by the dinosaurs, also puzzled him. Here alone did purpose come under consideration, and then only as a possible means of resolving the disappointing gaps in his model of ecology.

Less pertinent and therefore less often considered was the puzzle of spatial dimension. Here too, considered only as a significant part of the greater, incomplete unity. What, he would think looking up toward the see, from writing on his leaves, what lies beyond the horizon? Is it a horizon? Does the sea stretch to endlessness?