Free Zen City by Eliot Fintushel

“Rules! Rules!”
    Tenacity puffed blue smoke. “Sure. Rules. Okay, hicks, here’s how it is. In hick tag, terra tag, dumbo, monochrome, one-note, two-D tag, the tag you’re probably used to, when you touch someone, you know it; and she knows it, at the place where the two of you touch, finger to a shoulder or a butt or a heel. Same with us, only lots of us got no fingers, got no shoulders, butts or heels. What we’re made of, what we’re statted out of, hick, is ideers—thoughts and feelings and attitudes—get me?”
    “Yeah,” said Big Man.
    “Okay,” Pirate mumbled. Something squirmed from under his heel. Things rushed and flitted behind him. He was walking very slowly and deliberately backwards while Big Man and the whaddayagets riveted their attention on the little green god.
    “Yeah. Okay.” Tenacity squeezed as if his whole body were a wrinkling forehead. “Hey, beefsteak, do you feel this?”
    Big Man flinched. It was as if, in a dream, his heart broke.
    “Hoo boy, that must have been some love affair, huh? Still not quite over it, are we?”
    “How did you do that?”
    “That’s what we’re made of down here. We see right through you 2-D dudes just like you was tracing paper. We’re stats ourselves, don’t forget. So we know what feelings look like when they’re flesh. Something about the way you stand, a wee tilt down at the neck bone, huh? A little quiver when you breathe a certain way. It was a tight spot in your chest. We know all aboutit. We see what you are as good as you see us. Even though you one-notes like to think you’re sticks and mud, you’re just ideers, like us.”
    “So?”
    “So, let’s play tag. If the killer can stay clean, if he don’t get tagged, we’ll spring him… till the crows come.”
    Big Man took a deep breath, massaging the adhesion in his chest, and he felt Tenacity gently disengage from the hurt inside him. Then Big Man tagged him: “You’re not as mean as you pretend to be.”
    “
Ouch!
This bum catches on quick. I’m It.”
    They scattered. Pirate waded farther away down the passage, his green glow obscured from Tenacity and Big Man by scores of scrambling bodies. They were paisleys, astigmatisms, monsters and figments. To see one was to think something.
    The snake that had wrapped itself around No Mind’s leg slithered out of its own skin, and the skin was a voice, and the voice called: “Lust! Black lust! Blinding lust! Is that you, Sorrow?”
    A small fish leapt from the gathering stream. Silvery green, horned, teeth larger than its tail, Sorrow protested, “Nobody knew that. Nobody ever saw that in me. I hate this game.”
    “You’re It,” Tenacity shrilled.
    “You didn’t tag me. She did.”
    “I don’t give a damn.”
    The creatures fled. Sorrow splashed and flailed after them. “Worrying about something. No, nervous about women, about me, about me catching you, about whether God loves you, for the love of Mike—I can’t play this damn game.” He dived into the soup and disappeared.
    “I’ll be It,” Big Man hollered.
    Tenacity clanked, delighted. “Go.”
    Big Man grabbed the mangy arse of a flying dog. It yelped and showed its teeth—summer concerts in the park, a hundredand one strings, red wine in paper cups… “Sleepy hope. Looking for love. Am I right?”
    “Are you right!” Tenacity howled. “Look at him blush. How’d you get that eye, beefsteak?”
    “Zazen.”
    From the balcony No Mind shouted, “Wet dreams about the karst.” Big Man peered up at him. No Mind had extricated himself from the hole and then stuck his head down through it to watch. “Reveries about the City glowing on its karst. Look how he holds himself—as if he were hanging from his heart.”
    The whaddayagets waited for Tenacity’s judgment. Water rushed, wind pressed. “Smart move, hit man. The best defense is a good offense, and no tag-backs. Big Man’s still It.” Then to Big Man, in a whisper—“How can you dream that? You never