The tea was sweet, milky, and warm. Jacob swirled the spoon in the cup lazily, staring at the cream-coloured liquid. He took a sip, spoon now lying on a paper napkin, and enjoyed the sensation. Putting the cup down, he glanced around the cozy tearoom just off the town square and decided he was ready.

From the floor he lifted up a black canvas case, padded with rubber at the corners and covered in zippers and pouches. He placed the case on the table, carefully away from his tea, and unzipped the top. Reaching in, he gingerly lifted the laptop computer up and out of the case. He kept an eye on the tea, remaining wary of a spill that could damage the laptop. Now more confident, he placed it on the table in front of him and turned it on. Within a minute or so, he had the word processor up and started typing.

Jacob remained lost in his work for a minute or so. When next he looked up to take a sip of tea, there was a man sitting across the table from him with a genial smile on his face.

"Hello, Jacob," the man said.

"Afternoon, dad. I'm glad you could join me."

"Think nothing of it. I haven't been here in quite a while."

"So I've noticed," Jacob replied with a slightly sarcastic note in his voice.

A smiling, older woman walked up. "Would you like a cup, sir?"

"That would be fine, just fine," said Jacob's father.

The woman placed a cup on the table and poured hot tea into it. Jacob passed his father the cream and sugar.

"All your stuff is gone, I'm afraid," Jacob said.

His father nodded. "I know. My parents sold it off or burned the lot of it. I'm sorry it's gone, but it's nothing I truly needed."

"I suppose. Still, they even sold your manuscript."

The man waved his hand casually. "That's twenty years' water under the bridge, Jacob. You needn't press the issue."

Jacob nodded, chastened, but couldn't help adding "Well I would have liked to have had the original, at least."

"You don't need it son. Let it do its work in its own way."

"Oh, it is. There's been a printed version only recently, about four years ago. Small press, of course, but still a quality job--it's in a uniform edition with the first twelve volumes. Still as potent as ever, too."

"That's good to hear. It's nice when one's work acquires a life of its own."

Jacob chuckled. "I had no idea you possessed such a dry wit, father."

"Well, we've never actually met before, have we?"

"No, that's true," Jacob said ruefully. "I really don't remember you at all, just mother."

His father frowned. "Has she respected my memory?"

Jacob shook his head. "Got married a year after your death. Cecil Bierce, from your old school."

"Cecil? Good god."

"Don't fret, father. I took care of both of them a while back."

Jacob's father smiled. "That's my boy. It's good to see you take after your old man."

Jacob leaned forward, suddenly intense. "Tell me what it was like. Tell me what writing your manuscript was like."

"My manuscript? A wretched task. I'd spend every night sweating and flailing about, waking up four or five times when the dreams were just too much. Then several hours in the morning trying to get it all down on paper. We serve a powerful lord, Jacob, but he demands much of his servants."

Jacob's face grew cold. "I'm no servant, father."

"Of course you are, son. Both of us are, and others. You can't deny your role."

"You know nothing of my role, dead man."

"Jacob, why the hostility? Surely you don't reject our part of the great plan?"

"There is no plan, father. No plan but what we make."

Jacob's father sat back and folded his arms across his chest. He looked at Jacob for a long moment.

"What are you on about?"

"Are you familiar with post-modernism, father?"

"Vaguely. It's been a while."

"Post-modernism postulates that in this modern age, creativity can not be divorced from context. Every writer writes with the knowledge of all the other writers he has read, or even just heard of. Every artist paints with his mind full of all the art he has seen before. The dispersal of information in the 20th century is such that there's nothing wholly original left to a given individual. You can't write a story that hasn't been written before, in some form or other. And the more you see and read, the more you come to recognize the building blocks of the craft. Post-modernism leads to art that references other art, or society at large. It is intrinsically self-reflective, either on the surface or beneath."

"I suppose I follow you."

"Father, I believe post-modernism is the first crest of a new wave. Not an artistic wave, but a wave of human experience. I believe the widespread dispersal of knowledge and ideas is building a collective unconscious among all of humanity, and eventually a collective consciousness that will awaken as an independent life form, the queen bee of the human hive. Post-modernism is just a minor symptom of a mindset that will become the norm rather than the avant-garde."

"What the bloody hell has this to do with us and our lord?"

Jacob looked smug. "You were another wave, father. You and your book and your great bloated lord with the mouths on his palms."

"My lord? My lord? You serve him too, son, your soul was sworn to him before you were ever born!"

The voice of Jacob's father had risen in volume, and this last declaration attracted the notice of other patrons seated nearby. Jacob glanced about, looking reassuring, and then leveled his gaze at his father.

"You're speaking in metaphors, father, and you don't even know it. Yes, my soul is his because I inherited your power and the compulsion to use it. You created your own lord, father, and you wrote your own damned manuscript. Yes, Y'Golonac exists and yes, those who read your words become his servants. But it's all because of you. Your manuscript was the first creative work to involve the reader in the works' own self-reflexivity and alter their reality accordingly. It's quite amazing, really."

"What are you taking about? This is gibberish!"

"No father. Would you like to see gibberish? Here, look at this!"

With a snarl Jacob spun the laptop computer around so that the screen faced his father. Wary, the older man read the words on the screen:

"My late father is sitting across from me, appearing to be in his late forties. He is dressed in conservative but current clothing, and has a demeanor of reasoned intelligence."

Jacob's father looked up. "What is this? What am I supposed to think of this?"

"Father, as you've acknowledged yourself, you're dead. You died more than twenty years ago by your own hand, scant weeks after getting mother pregnant. In the time we've been sitting together, has it ever occurred to you that your presence here in this tearoom with me is quite impossible?"

"Nothing is impossible to those who serve Y'Golonac!" his father sputtered.

"Oh, please. Father, you're a construct. I wrote this bit here on my computer as a focus, and willed you into existence so we could finally talk. Sadly, you're just as tiring and absurd as mother said."

"Nonsense! I serve lord Y'Golonac! In him all things are possible!"

A woman at the next table glanced over nervously. The two men talking intently paid her no heed.

"Do shut up. Father, you wrote a manuscript that, when read, changed the reality of the reader. I've gone beyond that. I can change peoples' reality all on my own, without their participation. I called you into existence, and made everyone in the room here believe you were present. They all see you, believe in your existence. The waitress brought you a teacup. The people nearby stare when you raise your voice. They are all quite convinced of your presence."

Jacob's father sat back, and said nothing.

"Struck dumb? You really have nothing to say anymore but cliches. I've explained your existence to the point where I can't consciously ignore the fact that you can't be here, and as a result you, hollow man, have nothing more to say."

The man stared at Jacob dumbly.

"I think it's time for you to make your exit."

Without a word, Jacob's father got up and walked across to the restroom. Several patrons glanced at him briefly, curious about the argument they'd overheard.

Jacob turned his laptop back around to face him. He tapped his fingers on the table.

"More tea, dear?" asked the waitress.

"Yes, thanks," Jacob said.

"And for your friend?"

"No, I believe he's had his fill."

The waitress bustled off, handing fresh pots of tea to others in the room. Jacob smoked a cigarette. Eventually, he got up and walked into the restroom where his father had gone.

He found him inside, leaning against the wall.

"Still here?" said Jacob.

His father stared at him, fighting back tears.

"Bastard," he said. "Bastard. You'll wake with no face someday, and choke on your own flesh."

Jacob smiled. "You know, I can see the wall behind you, father."

The older man grew more transparent, and within moments faded away.

Jacob stood for a moment, wondering what his father's headless god was thinking right now. What would it be like to be aware not just of your mortality, but also of your artificiality? Jacob shook his head.

Soon he was seated back at the table. He looked at the screen of his laptop and then deleted the text. He glanced around the room with the unconscious cruelness to his features he inherited from his father. Fresh from his recent effort, Jacob decided to try again:

"She feels the pains in her chest suddenly, and experiences a shortness of breath. It's the beginning of a heart attack, and the end of the life of"

Oh damn, thought Jacob. What was the name of that waitress again?