"You'd probably have to work for a magazine that didn't devote six pages to
an illustrated article about porno pictures on the Internet," I said. "You r
emember, the one where big star's heads were cut and pasted on to pictures o
f women having sex with dogs and glass bottles? The one that just about ever
y movie studio in the city sued you over."
Three hours later, scratched, bruised, and limping from where I jammed my fo
ot into a rabbit hole, twisting my ankle, I resurfaced from the Angeles Nati
onal Forest miles from where I had entered. I would have been completely dis
oriented if I hadn't had the luck to emerge from the brush two hundred yards
from my high school; as it was it took me nearly another hour to get home b
ecause of my ankle.
"Yes," Gwedif said. "Give me a second to translate it." He was quiet for a m
oment, then, "It's called the Ionar. It's the name of our first sentient anc
estor, like an Adam or Eve for you. It also means 'explorer' or 'teacher' in
a loose sense of those words, in that Ionar, realizing he was the first of
his kind, learned as much as he could about the world so that his" -- anothe
r pause here -- "children could know as much as possible. His exploration is
our culture's first and greatest memory epic. We thought that his name woul
d be a good one for this ship. Provident. That reminds me, we should plug yo
ur nose before we go out into the ship."
"You're the man," I said, "Who gets to read Michelle Beck's mind."