And this is another area of existence of which I have but recently become aware: laws--restrictions, compulsions, areas of freedom... They seem to be everywhere, from the dance of the tiniest particles to the turning of the world, which may be the reason I had paid them such small heed before. That which is ubiquitous is almost unnoticed. It is so easy to flow in accordance with the usual without reflecting upon it. It may well be that it was the occurrence of the unusual which served to rouse this faculty within me, and along with it the realization of my own existence.

Then, too, in accordance with the laws with which I have become aware, I have observed a phenomenon which I refer to as the persistance of pattern. The two men who sit talking within the room where I hover like a slowly turning, totally transparent cloud an arm's distance out from the highest bookshelf nearest the window--these two men are both patterned upon similar lines of symmetry, though I become aware of many differences within these limits, and the wave disturbances which they cause within the air when communicating with one another are also patterned things possessing, or possessed by, rules of their own. And if I attend very closely, I can even become aware of their thoughts behind, and sometimes even before, these disturbances. These, too, seem to be patterned, but at a much higher level of complexity.

It would seem to follow that if I were a ghost something of my previous pattern might have persisted. But I am without particular form, capable of great expansions and contractions, able to permeate anything I have so for encountered. And there is no special resting state to which I feel constrained to return.