40. Rest.

Sid was one of only a few people alive on the planet who didn't dream. Dreams were, after all, the spasms of the ego fighting against itself and trying to order its understanding of reality.

His mind moved in specific patterns as his body stilled before rest--memories generally, though sometimes he imagined things. A secret unknown to most people was that the imagination developed quite independently of the ego, a thing more would have realized if they simply observed any human child.

The demands upon his body were enormous. Like a garment, he could easily lose track of it. It could snag or tear or become stained as his mind was occupied with other things. He was indifferent to pain, that body's pain at any rate, which was a drop in the ocean of the vast agony in which all of humanity was submerged.

Fatigue was a much greater enemy than pain, though, much easier to lose track of, until the body just collapsed of exhaustion. This had happened to him in many of his former incarnations. His best known form--that of Siddharta Gautama, the historical Buddha--had expired of a number of conditions related to exhaustion, ultimately disease contracted from tainted food. Afterwards, they had harvested relics from his cremation: things that modern science could have helped them to understand him better, but which at the time seemed simply miraculous.

On this night, as his body quieted, he remembered.