The Fourth Circle by Zoran Zivkovic, Mary Popović Page B

where I had drawn the form in the sand, while the unruly company of Roman soldiers moved on in search of new prey.
    I experienced only sadness that I had not on the threshold of death succeeded in fully mastering the Great Secret revealed briefly to me as it had been to the honorable Pythagoras. The thought of death, however, filled me with unexpected serenity, for all at once it was clear to me that now, at least, I had abundant time and that freed from the blunders of old age and never again to be disturbed by Roman barbarians or Kiane's follies—although I would sorely miss her wonderful cooking — I would be able to devote myself properly to the endeavor of the mind that is the noblest of them all.

4. UNWANTED PREGNANCY
    I'M PREGNANT.
    Everything else is going badly, too. Sri switches me off from time to time, but the dreams are of no use now. The Little One is hovering around, wanting to come to me, damn him, but he never gets the chance because Sri hardly ever leaves the temple. Outside it's raining cats and dogs, so my perimeter sensors keep short-circuiting or sending me garbled data. Besides, I'm getting darts of pain like rheumatism from all the damp. I have occasional bouts of nausea too, but that's probably natural, due to my condition.
    I could hardly wait for Sri to switch me off that first time after we arrived in the jungle, believing that dreams would bring me relief. So many puzzling things had happened at once that I really needed to peek into the future. But the dreams brought no relief—not because there weren't any dreams or because they foretold a dark future, but simply because I didn't understand them at all.
    Things used to be so simple. I'd just dream what would happen, and it would be like watching a documentary about the future. The first time I did this, I was a bit alarmed, but I couldn't confess to Sri, who would have taken any mention of dreaming, let alone prophetic dreaming, as a sure sign I was going out of my mind—and what man wants to have a crazy woman around?—so there was nothing for it but to get used to the whole thing, which, after all, did me no harm.
    In fact it did me only good, especially as far as Sri was concerned. I knew exactly how he would react, which decisions he would make, what he would expect, and adjusted my behavior accordingly. There isn't a man who doesn't like a woman to gratify his whims; if in the process he concludes she can read his thoughts, then he starts believing that perhaps there are ideal members of my sex.
    In Sri's case, this pleasure must have been even greater because I'm his creation; so he must certainly have admired his own excellent work as a programmer.
    He was not much disturbed by the fact that it never was his intention to make me the ideal woman. But there you are—men are like children: they only begin to worry when things start going wrong. While they're going well, they take everything for granted.
    Well, now Sri will have reason to worry because I'll no longer be able to foresee his desires. My dreams don't refer to the future any more, at least not in the documentary way they did before—unless what I see is some sort of metaphorical
allusion to what will happen. If it is, then the results are the same as having no dreams at all, because I can't find my way through all these metaphors and symbols.
    A psychiatrist might help me, but how do you find a good shrink in the middle of a rain forest? Sri certainly doesn't fit the part, because even if he could live with the fact that he's constructed a female program that dreams—and what's more, sees the future in her dreams—he would be driven wild by the thought that his creation now has nightmares full of symbols from the stockin-trade of psy-choanalysis. In the end, he'd need a shrink himself.
    The apparitions I saw in the dreams were totally batty. First, swarms of circles that started off by being regular, like the one that got the Little One so agitated; soon they become