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"Are you going to tell me now?"

"What, and spoil dinner?"

Newton offered a rueful smile as he looked over the happy ruins of the dinner that the two of them had shared in Chase's quarters. The coyote had done them proud, with his waistline-threatening fry bread as an accompaniment to roasted corn and a largely-vegetable dish with enough ground beef to satisfy both of their appetites. The red panda learned quickly that the tiny Tien Tsin peppers were best left to flavor the food rather than be eaten directly. More commonly used in Asian dishes like General Tso's Chicken, Chase used them because they are a good ten times hotter than chipotles, and the coyote did enjoy springing his flair for spice upon his unsuspecting guests. Newton's first bite of one of the "red Chinese peppers" (as they're more often called) led to a full minute of holding a piece of fry bread in his maw to soak up the oil from the blasted firecracker that had exploded inside his muzzle. The firefox then enquired if Chase's sire had deigned to offer his name to the coyote's dam on the night he sired him. The insult got a laughing thumbs-up from the young canine.

"Not meaning to insult either you or this fine dinner," Newton continued, "I want to know just who you've sent to me."

"You'll have to ask him yourself."

"When he next chooses to visit."

"They often come when invited, politely."

"Somehow, that actually makes sense." The firefox leaned back in his chair. "There's something else I need to know, Chase. Would you tell me, finally, what you've been withholding all this time?"

"I've been afraid that you wouldn't understand."

"Perhaps I've changed, more than a little."

Nodding slowly, Chase regarded his guest with gentle eyes. "I hope I'm not wrong when I say that you've become a friend."

"You're not wrong. Not even a little bit. If nothing else, I'm starting to get into your music list more."

"And you're way too good at playing Monad." The coyote smiled all the way to his eyes. "Newton, I still can't tell you everything, because I really don't know everything. I don't entirely understand what happens to me, and why I seem to create lightning, or channel it, or whatever it is that I'm doing with it."

"Can you tell me now what you meant that night, when you said that you wished you could give it back?"

"I feel that this... whatever this thing is, it's like it was given to me. I don't really feel like it's a 'gift,' particularly, but it was somehow bestowed on me from outside. That's what it feels like. And I feel like I just want to give it back now. I don't know what it's for, or why I have it, or what to do with it. If it's a gift, they gave it to the wrong pup."

"Or perhaps they just forgot to give you the instruction manual to go with it." Newton smiled softly. "There's nothing 'wrong' about you, Chase, and there's nothing 'wrong' with you, either. As a Jewish friend of mine might say, you're a shtikle meshugge, but who isn't?"

The canine laughed, then looked up with an expression of guilt on his muzzle.

"Not too many speakers of Yiddish on the res, I take it?" The firefox made a conscious effort to keep any hint of smugness out of his voice or his expression; to make the Tribal joke, 'counting coup' was not the point of his observation. "What made you look into the language?"

"I don't know." The slight tremor in the young male's voice was almost painful to hear, as if he were on the verge of tears. "Newton, I swear to you -- I don't know. It happened after I started having the lightning episodes; that much, I'm sure of. I don't know what guided me toward it. I found a book of Harry Kemelman short stories, and his first book about Rabbi Small, and that led me to a book on Yiddish words. The Joys of Yiddish. Practically its own dictionary."

"Let me see if I can help. You said that you 'found' the book. Can you tell me how you found it?"

"Main library in Mesa. I managed to get a cheap room in a boarding house not far from it, spent a lot of time in the stacks. Biggest library I'd been in. Still want to see bigger ones, but..." He nodded, getting himself back to the point of the story. "I wanted to look for some new mysteries, and I found Kemelman there. I liked the work..."

Very softly, Newton interrupted. "Again, 'found.' Can you be more specific? You were looking in the fiction stacks, in the mystery stacks, and you saw spines of books with authors' names and titles. What brought you into the K area? Did you just pick randomly, or...?"

The coyote yipped, just a little, jumping in his chair, then forced himself to sit quietly. The firefox rose from his seat, padding around the table to place a soft forepaw to the younger male's shoulder.

"Chase, can you tell me what's going on? You look like you're being hurt, like my questions are causing pain. Is it that?"

"I don't know!" the canine cried out suddenly. With an effort, he placed his forepaws flat on the table, gently but firmly, his hindpaws flat to the floor, then made himself breathe in deeply through his nose, out slowly through nearly-closed lips, his ears firmly forward, his tail still. Watching silently what he felt was a ritual of calming, the firefox waited with as much patience as he could bring to the situation. As utterly unscientific as it might have been, he tried to "send reassurance" through his touch. It was more likely just a thought to calm himself, but even that might help the pup.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"Chase, I'm sorry to have upset you. Are you all right?"

The coyote nodded. "Grounding. Trying to reconnect. And... trying to answer your question."

Newton stayed quiet, kept his forepaw on the coyote's shoulder, hoping that he somehow was helping. One more large breath, then Chase put a forepaw atop the firefox's own, using his other forepaw to wave the firefox back to his chair. After sitting down again, the older male looked across the table into eyes that seemed far older than any he'd ever seen before.

"There's still so much that I don't understand," the coyote said softly. "That word keeps coming up between us. When you told me that you wanted to _understand_what I was going through, I really wanted to tell you that I felt the same way. That felt like a bad answer, or no answer at all, so I kept trying to find ways to tell you something that made some sort of sense."

"There are no wrong answers, Chase." Newton called upon every scrap of his empathy and his caring to keep his voice soft and his words sincere. "I didn't mean to come across as demanding; I simply want to help you find words for your experience, if there are any to be had. I probably still sound like a scientist, trying to make everything exact for some kind of report. I think... I feel that there's something more going on here. It's not about science, or at least it's not about any sort of science that's ever been explored with any enthusiasm or direction."

The coyote managed a smile. "Don't let them hear you talk like that, Doc. Something that won't make them money won't give them much reason to sign your paychecks."

"Maybe this is more important than paychecks."

A witty retort was undoubtedly on the canine's lips, but he clearly suppressed it. "When you ask me about it, Newton, I get a feeling... no, _conflicting_feelings, several of them, all trying to be the one-and-only answer. It makes me feel more confused, and after all this time, it hurts -- literally hurts -- for me not to be able to explain it. I really want to tell you some kind of 'real answer,' as if that's a thing. It's like not wanting to let you down. Am I making sense?"

It was the firefox's turn to nod. "That's my fault, at least to some degree. It's the scientist part of things, wanting some sort of definitive answer, some ultimate answer that solves one or more riddles beyond questioning. I don't want to inflict that on you, Chase. I want to show you the side of science that explores, looks for things, and maybe with a view to describe them, but mostly, just look. At its heart, science is rooted in curiosity, and good science is rooted in wonder. I'm not at all sure that part of science still exists, but I want it to, at least here, now. I want to discover. I want to ask questions that will help us both understand, or at least feel a little clearer. To do that, maybe we need to look at everything that's come up about the Kemelman book. What emotions come up for you? Feelings, memories, anything at all."

The coyote's eyebrows came together briefly. "Why did you say 'memories'?"

"Maybe that's just my own experience talking. That feeling I had when I heard 'Air and Light' for the first time, as if it were music that I'd always loved. It felt almost more like a memory."

"But not your memory, because you'd not heard it before."

"Yes."

Vigorous nodding from the coyote. "That's closer to it, yes, at least sometimes. It's like we were talking about before. I've never had the names like you had, but my own clues, my breadcrumbs, were what led me to things that felt... familiar. Like with Kemelman. I didn't know the name, but when I was looking around in the stacks, I stopped when I read his name on the dust jacket spines. I'd never heard of him before, or even of Rabbi Small, but the feeling was like something familiar, something remembered."

"Were the stories familiar?"

"Not entirely, not like I knew exactly how each mystery would end, but reading them was sort of like rereading them. Like reading a book for the second time, after a long time had gone by."

"It's a disease of modern times," Newton smiled softly, "and I'm by no means immune. The Internet is always available for us to look up anything and everything, so it's no longer necessary for us to remember. You know those little rhymes that have come down to us from centuries ago? 'Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November...'? They were created from a time when reading and writing was possible only for the very few, usually monks and other holy types. Ordinary folk had to remember everything, including what to plant, where, when, all of that. The more advanced we got, the less we could remember freely; we grew to know how to find it, first in books and libraries, since most of us could read by that time, and then on computers. The more we use computers, the less we are able to remember on our own. We're rewiring our brains without our even knowing it."

"So that means maybe I really did read it before?"

"Not at all. It means that I can understand the feeling. I also understand that you can't possibly have read the books, heard the music, found all those references, long enough ago that you've re-experienced all of them in your short life. Your experience of these things, Chase... it's from somewhere else."

"But where? Where else?"

The scientist smiled slowly. "That's the exploring part."

* * * * * * * * * *

Conversation turned to many topics after that, most less stressful for both of the males. Chase calmed considerably once he realized that both he and Newton were more or less groping for answers in a pitch-black room. The coyote even joked about not being able to provide a spark to help light up the place a little. He seemed to feel freer to talk about more of his mysterious discoveries without feeling that he had to justify them somehow. They also tried out a new card game that one of the techs had been crowing about. It was called Fluxx, and both males agreed that it was the stupidest, least productive, utterly strategy-less games that they'd ever played, and they made arrangements to do it again very soon. As bad as it was, it was still addictive.

When the two decided to call it a night, the coyote asked for permission to hug, which the firefox gave readily enough. It was a warm gesture of friendship that Newton had not had the pleasure of experiencing in some time. It carried with it the sensation of something like kinship. The idea wasn't entirely farfetched, as neither had much blood-family to speak of, and they shared a great deal more with each other than most friends or family members could lay claim to.

Arriving at his own quarters at what could be considered a reasonable hour for a healthy male of his middling years, the red panda settled onto his sofa and closed his eyes. He took a few calming breaths, and he spoke to the air: "Felice? Are you there?"

"No; I'm here."

Newton opened his eyes to see the grinning bear, still suitably attired in the garb of a lab assistant, seated near him on the sofa. He managed a smile, despite feeling every hair of his fur shifting in what would ordinarily be called a fight-or-flight response. "I feel as if I should be calling, 'Are you free, Mr. Humphries'?"

"Free as air, Captain Peacock!" The bear laughed, that sense of his enjoying it with his entire body and spirit. It occurred to the firefox that body was a debatable word, yet there was something that felt physical about the presence. "The answer to your question is, yes, I do know your references, or at least many of them. I am, in some ways, partly in your imagination."

"And the rest? What might you be? Another Elemental of some kind?"

"I am my name, as much as I can be."

Newton thought about his studies of the romance languages. "You are joy. Happiness. Perhaps even luck, good fortune."

The bear inclined his head in acknowledgement. "Trust a scientist to know his Latin."

Grinning, perhaps at himself, the firefox confessed, "I'm trying very hard not to deluge you with a thousand questions. I'm also trying to hold on to what is a new definition of 'reality,' at least for me. You are your own entity. I'm imagining you, like an imaginary friend, yet there's more to you, a Self with his own knowledge. I don't think I'm the least bit familiar with the name Daphne du Marier, but you came up with it. You have given me a breadcrumb."

"That's what you said Chase called it. It's a good description."

"Did you come to me in order to bring me breadcrumbs?"

"Partly. And partly because I like the way you think." Felice smiled warmly, sincerely, with real affection. "Mostly, I'm here because I like the way you feel, the way you use your emotions. Sometimes, you don't use them, and that's when I realized how much you needed me."

A normal response might have been to bristle at the implications of such a statement. To state it ironically, it felt bad to say that one didn't feel. In this moment, Newton felt that he was somehow slightly outside of himself, observing more than experiencing things directly. He nodded gently, letting the simple truth of the bear's statement outweigh whatever sting it might have contained. "I hope that I've been correcting that somewhat."

"You have. You concerned yourself with our young coyote's well-being from early on. It started becoming somewhat more recently, and I had the idea that you might want some help with that, so I came in to meet you in the lab that night."

"Chase needed a friend... and so did I."

Felice nodded.

Breathing deeply, Newton gathered himself and asked the question. "My friend Felice... tell me what I need to hear."

"Let's try the Socratic method, shall we?" The bear, or the Spirit of Joy, smiled with gentle teasing. "We invisible friend types usually work best as sounding boards."

"Fair enough." The firefox found himself grinning for no reason that he could fully understand. "Where shall we begin?"

"That would be telling," Felice chuckled, clearly knowing that it tickled another of the red panda's associations with British television. "Where did we begin?"

"In the lab... ah. Well played." Newton leaned forward, a posture he always associated with focus on the issues at paw. "The project. This unusual young coyote who seems to create lightning. He's managed to overload the circuit breakers every time. Whatever else is going on with him, he's creating -- or, perhaps, channeling -- electricity well over five times the power of a natural lightning strike."

"That's what your instruments are telling you?"

"The breakers tripped when the energy levels surpassed 25 gigajoules; we've not yet been able to make adjustments to the wiring to test higher levels, so we don't know how high his energy output could be."

"And that's why you were brought into the project, yes?"

"Yes, because of my work in electromagnetic energy, in its production, conduction, use, etc."

"So you track and measure the energies that Chase is creating."

"Yes, although I don't know if he's actually creating it."

"Spoken like a proper scientist." Felice smiled. "When he has one of these events..."

Newton scowled. "I truly dislike that term. It's so very cold, compared to what he seems to be experiencing."

"You feel that it's a non-descriptive label."

"Yes, and when I realized that, I started trying to treat Chase as an individual, not as a test subject." A thought reversed the scowl into a wry grin. "I'm the sort of fellow who would give names to laboratory test animals. They might be non-sapient, but they are still sentient. They feel, they sense, they perceive their environment."

"That would make it difficult for you, wouldn't it?"

"It limits what research I could do, yes, but electromagnetic sciences don't require such subjects. We're already pretty sure what would happen to any living creature subjected to sufficient electrical charges."

"It's amazing that Chase can survive such huge shocks."

"Not amazing, in one sense. There are a great many reports of people struck by lightning who have survived it. It's not entirely urban legend to say that, once struck, an individual's chance of being struck again are much higher. The most famous story is of a national park ranger who was struck seven times during his life, and he survived them all."

"And Chase's lightning is five times more powerful than that?"

Newton shrugged gently. "That's what's recorded before the breakers blow and the equipment shuts down."

"Is it the lightning that causes the breakers to blow?"

"Not directly. The entire room is as free from anything metal or otherwise able to conduct electricity. Even the sensors are ceramic-covered, to prevent what might be called 'direct contact' with the lightning."

"What trips the breakers?"

"Essentially, too much information coming in too fast. The sensors get overloaded, which makes the wires too hot, and that trips the breakers."

"What exactly are they measuring?"

"The power of the--" The firefox cut off abruptly, looking into the bear's eyes. Perhaps, in another form of his new reality, he was looking into himself. He was brought into this project because of "the coyote who makes lightning," because he (Newton) was a specialist in matters electromagnetic. He already had systems and instruments to detect and measure naturally occurring electrical forces, like lightning; the project simply duplicated them for him, included a few things that Newton had yet to find grant money to afford, and presented him with "the subject of study." It had taken a very short time for him realize that his "laboratory specimen" was actually a real individual who had been somewhat coerced into participating in this series of experiments. As Felice had observed, it sometimes takes a little while for him to let his emotions kick in and start working. Ordinarily, one doesn't need emotions to study electricity.

But what if it was Chase who needed to be studied... or, better still, helped?

The bear nodded.

"Tell me what I need to hear. Something about this story by du Marier?"

The bear smiled.

"I will go see if it's available as downloadable content. But first... Felice, I need one more breadcrumb. Can you tell me just one more thing?"

"You can tell you that one thing, Newton. You've already heard the phrase, the 'old saw,' to give you one more clue. I promise you -- it's there."

Newton flicked his glance for the smallest fraction of a second, and Felice was gone. The firefox breathed carefully, as if not to ruin the delicate balance of the moment or of his sanity. There are some things that one simply cannot use ones usual ways of thinking to understand...

The old saw, sharpened, was there, just as the bear had promised.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The Breakthrough was a short read, a little dated by some standards, but intriguing for all that. Newton had found it before breakfast, read through quickly enough, having time to make a visit to the lab before lunching with Chase. Part of him wanted more time to think through the implications, but he also had the intuition that perhaps he should take it simply at face value. Besides, he realized that the young coyote wasn't as lively as he usually was during their time together.

"How are you feeling, Chase?"

"A little off," the canine admitted.

"Storm warning?" The firefox had agreed that Chase's use of the term was a good one.

"I think so."

"How long?"

"Building slowly, feels like. I don't think I'll lose my lunch."

"As good as it was, losing it would be very much a shame. An hour? Two?"

"Maybe that, yeah. I can let you know in time."

Newton reached out for the coyote's forepaw and squeezed it gently. "I'm going to need you to do more than that today, Chase. I want you to give me as much lead-time as you can. We're going to do something different this time."

"New experiment?"

"Sort of."

"Will it hurt?"

"Not a bit."

"What do I need to do?"

Another paw-squeeze. "Trust me, Chase. I'm going to ask you to trust me. Nothing more. Keep me updated on how you're feeling. Try to catch it a little early this time, if you can. I'm going to make some new preparations, okay? The rest will be fine, I promise."

The coyote's eyes showed a mixture of fear and uncertainty. "You sure?"

"Absolutely. I think this one will be our breakthrough."

* * * * * * * * * *

Chase had wanted to be alone for a while, to monitor his "symptoms" (for lack of yet another word). Newton had gone back to his own quarters rather than to his office, making sure everyone -- particularly Chase -- would know how to find him. He needed a little time to prepare himself, and a little time for conversation.

"Are you free, Mr. Humphries?" he asked the air.

No one answered him, not even his imagination.

"Playing hard to get, Felice?"

Nothing.

"Fine time to go quiet on me, my newfound friend. I'm about to take the biggest risk of my life, based on a story and my imagination. And, if I'm to tell everything, my heart. I'm facing a plethora of emotions, about the project, about myself, about what happened with Chase, and yes, even about Chase himself. I'm feeling... well, maybe I could stop with that. I'm feeling. That's not new, in itself, but it's the first time that I'm really feeling something about my work."

Newton let himself grow quiet over that idea. His years in research and study had never had anything dicey or suspect about them. Every job's purpose had been completely above-board, direct, simple. The things he researched had never been in question, but neither had they been questioned. It had all been very practical, some of it even important (in the context of his field), but never had he wondered why he had done it. It was simply the next thing to do, the next thing that was needed, the next job to be tackled, the next question to be answered.

"Would you at least give me some indication that I'm actually headed in the right direction, after all this time?"

He heard nothing, but he didn't really expect that he would. This was one that he'd have to work out on his own. Strangely, however, he realized that Felice had given him guidance on that already. If the only tool he used was his brain, he would treat everything like a logic problem to be solved, or at least understood. The tool he needed to use was his heart, if he could learn how to use it properly, and he didn't have much time to learn.

Even as he moved to his computer, he remembered the origins of the word _inspiration,_that in the days of Middle English, it referred to divine guidance. He wasn't sure about any aspect of divinity, but he was beginning to believe in guidance. He called up "Air and Light" on his music system, returned to the sofa, closed his eyes, and breathed. A scientist letting his mind "go blank" is, at the least, a contradiction in terms, and an impossibility at the worst, but he did his best to try it. The temptation to succumb to postprandial narcosis was the hardest thing to deal with.

After some minutes, when the music had grown loud enough to be heard for its own slowly developing themes and harmonies, Newton let himself follow it, breathing slowly, feeling his way through his idea, his experience, even his own desires. He found himself imagining running his forepaws over a perfectly smooth sphere, the sensation of delicate care, of trusting himself to be careful with the sphere, and feeling the sphere's trust that he would take care with it. His mind tried to intrude with logic (how can an object feel or trust?), but he told it gently to go sit in the corner and be quiet. He held the sphere close to him, feeling, sensing, opening...

The music came to its gentle close, and the firefox opened his eyes to his still empty room. It will happen soon, he thought, with the sensation of absolute certainty. He rose to make his preparations, which first meant a change of clothes.

* * * * * * * * * *

He was in the lab ten minutes before Chase found his way there. As the assistants set about their usual preparations, checking equipment and lighting candles, Newton guided the coyote to a chair, and knelt next to him, talking softly. "Is it as bad as you feared?"

The young canine nodded quickly.

"I'm going to ask you to hold on very tight, Chase. And I'll need you to trust me."

A soft whimper told the scientist that he needed to hurry. He rose and ushered everyone out of the lab and locked the door behind them. When he returned to Chase, the coyote had already begun to shuck out of his clothes. Newton took a few more seconds to power down the machines until the lab was strangely silent.

"What are--"

"Trust me, Chase. Go on into the chamber."

The canine did as he was bid, not at first aware that the scientist had removed his lab coat. Underneath, he wore only a casual shirt and pants that were removed swiftly, and he padded quickly to the chamber and let the heavy door swing shut behind him.

"Lie down," he said to the staring coyote. "I know that it hits hard enough to make you fall. Lie down, Chase, before it starts."

Newton sat on the stone floor and all but pulled the canine down toward him. Lying on his side, he took the shivering pup into a tight embrace, spooning against his back.

"Can't hold on--"

"You don't have to. Let it go, Chase. I'm with you."

"Hurt you--"

"Trust me. Let it go. Let--"

The coyote yipped once, stiffened in Newton's embrace, and the firefox cried out with him, first in fear of being wrong, of dying, and then from the fears of a billion furs, their agonized screams, pushing his own soul out of himself. Without thoughts, without his own mind, he gripped tightly to Chase and held on for both of their lives...

* * * * * * * * * *

Newton slowly became aware that he was lying on a cold stone floor, furclad, shivering, holding tightly to a shivering coyote. He had no way of knowing how long they had been there -- moments, minutes, hours, lifetimes. Awareness was his key. He was aware. His brain was working, or trying to. The sensation was like trying to reconnect his brain to the rest of his body, trying to remember how to perform even the simplest actions, how to respond to the simplest stimuli, like a squeeze to his forepaws, a shifting in his arms, the sound of his name, softly, in the hard-stoned room.

"Newton? Are you okay?"

Think words, think muzzle, think speak... "I think so." His voice sounded raspy to his own ears. "You?"

"Yeah."

Slowly, the coyote unwrapped the firefox's arms enough to let himself roll over. He stayed close, and he looked at Newton, looked into his eyes, and those dark coyote eyes looked tired, and old, and full, and empty, and a hundred emotions that the red panda was feeling inside himself and, somehow, feeling inside of Chase as well.

"You know," whispered the canine.

"I do now. Do you know... now?"

Slowly, the coyote nodded.

With the attempt at a wry smile, Newton favored the young male with a tender forepaw to cup his cheek. "We'd better get ourselves out of here, or there's gonna be a lot of talk."

Chase chuckled gently and, with each others' help, they managed to stand. The door seemed heavier than Newton remembered, but the two of them pushed it open easily enough. No one had tried unlocking the main door to the lab; they couldn't have been in there too long. The two males got themselves redressed as quickly as they could. For the firefox, at least, it wasn't that his muscles felt too sore to move as it was a sensation of nervous shaking, very much like having received an electrical shock. To that extent, at least, the idea of having been struck by lightning was entirely understandable.

"We should talk, privately," Newton observed.

The coyote grinned. "Your place, or mine?"

Somewhere beyond the main door to the laboratory, Newton was certain, several very confused lab assistants were wondering about the loud brays of unrestrained laughter that came from within.

...to be concluded