The Entity That Shows You Everything—and Nothing

Dr. Reneker walks into a field of pampas grass in the Texas Hill Country, expecting to meet an omniscient, omnipotent being. Instead, he finds a man in jeans and a t-shirt who calls himself Jazz, sitting cross-legged on a woven grass mat. When Reneker asks for his name, Jazz shrugs. "It says that you don't need my name, but it understands that you would be more comfortable if I gave you one." He offers "Jazz" and then, without warning, grabs Reneker's arm and takes him everywhere at once.

The Tour of Suffering

What follows is not a conversation. It is a sequence of brutal, vivid, first-person experiences that Reneker cannot control and can barely survive. He is on a passenger plane that nose-dives toward snow-capped mountains, passengers screaming, a flight attendant bleeding from a chin wound. Then he is in a jungle during a volcanic eruption, dodging car-sized rocks while a burn pile blazes nearby. A bear mauls him, crushing his ribs and severing his hand in a shallow river inlet. He is stabbed on a mesa by a man with a stone knife, bleeds out staring at stars, then wakes on a highway shoulder where a friendly stranger offers him a ride—only to drug him, paralyze him, and bring him to a basement.