Sneak preview

If you haven’t yet read “Old Bean’s Last Fantasy,” here’s a paragraph to intrigue you:

In the silence that followed, she grappled with Marion’s words that on the surface appeared obvious and rational. Of course, she knew Viv wasn’t real, and she wasn’t alive. Yet hadn’t she given Viv life? Contingent life, yes, but nevertheless a kind of “being there” that enabled her to live in the sun on Venice Beach and have a relationship with Rick. Without Bertie, her avatar did not exist at all. Whereas when Bertie awakened her, gave her the breath of life with her words and actions, the two of them constituted one. They were conjoined beings, symbiotic, even. If she could only find the right words to match what she felt inside, she could make Marion understand. But the more she thought about her relationship with Viv, the greater the entanglement became in her mind. Even as she reached for understanding, her thoughts escaped like slippery fish before she could haul them in, leaving her standing flat-footed in a boat to nowhere, wondering if when she played in the metaverse and gave her own being to Viv, she, Bertie, disappeared. She wasn’t there, she wasn’t “being.” Can you “be” when your “being” is mediated through a non-being?