"No sooner had I closed my eyes than a rope was lowered from above. Faintly, so faintly, I heard a voice say, 'Lifeline. Take it.'

"I took it and began climbing with an ease belying my depleted condition. Impossibly, I reached a sort of plywood ceiling. The rope hung through a hole. I climbed up and felt hands pull me to safety.

"Blackness. I thought, 'I'm blind.' Silence. I thought, 'I'm deaf.' But I knew there were, were people, someone, some ones there.

"Again I felt 'hands' and as they guided me into a chair, I heard, 'You are taking it all much to seriously.'

"This angered and hurt me. Tears came to these eyes here. I said into the silent blackness, 'His pain...'

"It was like an anechoic chamber. A space that was no-space and so with no-echo, with no-resonance, with no, as acousticians say, life.

"'That pain is one of the risks, one of the challenges.'

"I screamed, 'You, you, how dare you imply he or the starving child or the ulcerous PWA brings it on himself!' No echo. And, I noticed then, in some bizarre way, no time. At least, no clock time.

"'Of course not. Those judgers, those screamers are, um, how to say, kindergarten recividists.' There were murmurs, almost-chortles, around the no-room at this turn-of-phrase. 'Of course, no one chooses pain. It is one of the risks, one of the parts...'

"These words, these no-words said far more--do you get that?--said far more than my words to you. They said solace, and the effect was as if I were a despair-infected sheep dipped in the most wonderful solace-bath, emerging spotless with not one bloodsucker left on me. The words were nonsense. The no-words, the cleansing feeling was as impossible to deny as a sunrise. I waited.

"The voice came again, and this time the hands moved over me, consoling. 'There is worse pain: the pain of separation from God.'

"They immediately knew I didn't like the contaminated word. Even as a no-word, it smelt. 'Very well, just separation, then. Isolation.'

"'You mean, self-imposed isolation,' I said, thinking of prisons and offices, and schools and clothes and armies and houses and cars.

"'All isolation is self-imposed,' they said.

"Worried about the pomposity but mightily intrigued by certain powerful tactile and cardiac perceptions, I non-sequitured, 'How can I come back?'

"'The rope is there, for you.'

"'Any time?'

"'Any time.' I opened my eyes, got up, called Pan Am, and here I am. What do you think?"

"I think you were just promoted from kindergarten to first grade."

"I don't. It's too easy. Too simple. The pain is so terrible, now, this minute, around the world."