I wait until nightfall, my stomach rumbling since I have been fasting for two days in preparation for the ritual. I try and sit and meditate, anything to quiet the sound of my nervous heartbeat. I thought at first that all the "magic" of the Netwalkers was just a bunch of primitives playing with computer toys beyond their understanding, combined with the crazy dreams of an old man, but now I don’t. Sitting here in the dark, the Matrix patch is starting to look to me like a gateway, a gateway to another world, a world I have been traveling since I was a child, but one I may not really know at all. I thought I had put my hopes and dreams of magic behind me a long time ago, but I feel the wonder I felt when Tarien first taught me how to deck stirring within me again and I realize I was looking for information on magic in the Matrix when it was there before me all the time. The shadows in the cave grow long as I watch the gleaming trunk line.