His name is Slippy. Each mention of the name makes the possibility of his existence a little less remote.

I don’t know how many others he has entered. He seems to be new to the ranks of controls, unable as yet to materialize or even communicate a likeness of himself. Or maybe he has just renewed his license after decades on parole. He is out of practice, in other words, or my efforts of visualization don’t strike him as sincere enough to bother with.

“Slippy,” whispers Dr. Park, the acupuncturist. She glowers over her reading glasses, the onyx chevrons of her eyes glinting. “But it’s dangerous to wait. You must quickly assign a face to your illness. Make it conform to your picture of it. Describe him to me.”

Something larval, I want to say. Something wet. One imagines a newt in a pond of Jell-O or a tadpole just sprouting limbs. He is black or dark brown, with a phosphorescent vein, like a thread of mercury, running down the ridge of his back. A pale current pulses through the vein. Zooming in, one sees that the tiny fist of his head also generates light, or reflects it. Subtle contours of shadow articulate a face as one might see in a holograph. An inscrutable, funny, little mug he’s got—like Winston Churchill or W.C. Fields—and an expression that can be construed as belonging to any emotional state. At the moment, he appears to be grinning.

“If you want respect, you have to set the rules. It may show you a face you have not assigned it. If so, reject it. You can change its likeness to anything you want, but each time remind it of its name. That’s imperative.”

The face goes vague. Its distorted mass crouches, ready to spring into any configuration, something intolerably menacing. Zooming out, one sees again the tadpole suspended in gelatin. He is beginning to work himself free, moving slowly, eating his way through cherry-flavored Placent-O from one space-time to another.

“And caloric intake,” says Dr. Park. “Increase it. You’re looking downright wan.”