There was no response from Regina. I hadn't expected one, as she'd opted out of our state of marital bliss many months ago. This didn't stop me from adding, "But it's so smart it's stupid. There's something I'm not seeing, some missing link. What do you think it could be?"

I sat back in my desk chair and massaged my forehead. Regina was being no help. I reached across the desk for the picture frame that had been placed there, face down. I held it in my hand and stared at the beautiful blonde woman with hair flying in the invisible breeze. I asked again, more softly, "What should I do? Tell me."

I looked out at the bay. Even at five a.m., a crew boat was gliding by, oars dipping into calm waters. The buildings of the university were barely visible on the opposite shore.

In my mind I heard Regina's pat remedy to relieve stress: "Take a walk." I slammed the picture frame back down, face first.

"How do you take a walk when you're surrounded by water?" I mused. My houseboat or, more properly, my floating home, is like any small house except that it rests on huge timbers in the water, bobbing to infrequent waves from the wind or passing boats on Portage Bay. Its plumbing and electricity connect to the land via fragile hoses, sump pump, and wires stapled to the narrow gangplank. Regina used to joke that my connection to earth was equally fragile.

I answered my own question by pulling on a University of Washington sweatshirt. I snapped my laptop shut and slipped it into my backpack. This I slung easily over my shoulder and went outside.

It had rained during the night, and now it was windless and relatively warm. The air's moisture felt refreshing. My dun-colored kayak floated in the water. I removed the skirt that protected it from the eternal rain, lowered my backpack and myself into it, and paddled across the bay.

I docked at a pier that jutted from a small waterside park and began a random walk through the campus. I eventually came to the dramatic western entrance of University Cathedral. I gazed up, following the lofty length of the cathedral's massive, squared columns.

I knew the building's proper name wasn't University Cathedral, but Our Lady of Something-or-Other. The gathering light had not yet dispelled the shadows of the western entrance, which held three large doors. Each door had a stone roof supported by sculpted figures from the Bible. Huge rectangular windows above the doors were dwarfed by an immense circular stained-glass window.

Two sets of scaffolding clung like tinker toys to the front of the building, one on each side of the large stained glass window. A plank that connected the scaffolds intersected the window's center. Above the window, higher than the rooftop, rose two towers, each capped by enormous spires. It was on the northern tower that I thought I saw a gargoyle dangle its feet.

As I stared the image rearranged itself as a woman sitting astride the jutting gargoyle as though on horseback. She swung her legs and the fabric of her dress swirled.

"Are you all right?" I yelled up to her. No answer. I couldn't be sure that she heard me from that height. I moved from the walls into the courtyard and waved both hands in the air. "Are you okay?" I called again. This time the legs stopped their dangling and the figure returned my wave. I watched her move forward so that her chest lay along the horizontal back of the gargoyle, blending into it as though there were no separation between human flesh and cold stone. Except for the still-hanging legs, she had dropped from view.

It wasn't something that you see every day, but during the year I had just spent as a graduate student at the university, I'd seen stranger. At the beginning of each quarter, the fraternity initiations bordered on the bizarre. Hazings had been halted, thank goodness, but that only incited the frat boys and sorority girls to concocting more creative, if less dangerous, embarrassments for the initiates. Now that the school period was near its end, unusual behavior could be chalked up to stress caused by impending exams.

I walked up the stone steps, past the statues and through the middle door leading into the cathedral. A spider web of symmetrical ribs ran from the walls to the center of the ceiling. The space was dark and indefinite. And incredibly quiet. I finally lowered my gaze and tried to make out the far end of the building. It was several hundred feet away, but the area around it was backlit. The large altar was resplendent with bouquets of white flowers, though from where I stood I could smell only the mustiness of cement.

As I walked toward the center aisle that ran between long rows of pews, my shoes crunched bits of broken glass and wire. Stooping over, I picked up a small piece of plaster and a sliver of red tinted glass. It occurred to me that it might have come from the stained glass window. I turned around and looked up.

The diffuse light of early morning only hinted at the window's true color. Through the glass I could make out the wooden plank that ran across the outside, connecting the scaffolds and intersecting the huge round window. Sure enough, the center of the window was clear, as though a small hole had been cut into it. Odder still, an image appeared against the window. Would workmen be up there on a Sunday? And this early? Or was it the person that I had seen on the gargoyle?

I heard something at the front of the cathedral. I turned but saw nothing. When I looked back at the window, the image was gone.

The morning sky had lightened enough that I could make out a cloud through the clear round hole in the center of the window. A shaft of light shone through the hole, spotlighting one of the pews. I went and sat near the light.

Many years had passed since I last attended a Mass, and even more since I had prayed. But Regina's memory had prompted this excursion. Could she have drawn me to this place? I lowered the kneeler and knelt down, feeling more than a little foolish. It was as uncomfortable as I remembered. I quickly sat back down and opened my laptop.

I thought about the paradox that had haunted my research. Observation had shown that ten people given the same set of facts, applying the same rules of deduction, repeatedly arrived at different conclusions. I still didn't understand it. In my mind, a fact was a fact. It was almost as if people used reason only so far, and then made some sort of irrational, intuitive leap. My efforts at NeuralSense, my former company, had broken new ground into teaching computers to apply reason. When I sold that work, I knew that the next breakthrough would have to come from teaching a computer to be irrational.

The situation made me smile. What better place than this to contemplate these questions? The worldview that allowed organized religion to thrive was anything but reasonable. I looked over at the statue in one of the side altars and felt an idea begin to gnaw at the edge of consciousness. I rested my head back against the pew and allowed my eye to follow one of the stone ribs that ran from the ceiling to the top of the wall, where it became transformed into a thin column that descended to the floor. It was amazing how the structure conveyed the feeling of infinity. Did the people of the medieval era find it impossible to believe that brick and wood alone could hold up such an immense roof? Did they see in it the hand of God?

And then, just like that, the inspiration came to me. Of course! It seemed so simple. Belief systems held the answer! Unlike human reasoning, belief systems were not rational. Model them in my computer system, and I would be mimicking human problem solving in a way that no one was yet able to do.

"Yes!" I shouted from my seat, and the sound echoed in my ears.

"You sound pleased about something," said a voice from the front of the cathedral. A priest was striding to the altar carrying a vase of white flowers. He waved a friendly greeting. I waved back. I noticed that the fabric of his robe swished as he walked. It reminded me of the person astride the gargoyle. Was the figure I had taken to be a woman in a skirt a priest instead?

I rose and walked back toward the entrance, glass again crunching beneath my feet, and entered the courtyard. Looking upward, I searched for the gargoyle and its rider. I was stunned to see the figure now hanging by one arm from the gargoyle. The next break in the brick wall was provided by an arch twenty feet below, and then only thin air the rest of the way to the ground.

I yelled, then raced toward the scaffolding and began to climb frantically. Commuting by kayak had put me in much better shape than your average software jockey, but I was nearly winded by the time I reached the top of the scaffold. A gentle rain had begun. I was now at eye level with the sloping roof, which terminated at a narrow walkway with iron rails. The hideous, horned gargoyle was about thirty feet further along this walkway, jutting out from the wall directly below the railing. The figure hanging from it looked over at me.

"It was good of you to come."

The calm understatement was spooky. It was indeed a priest.

I clambered onto the walkway and rushed toward him. I then jumped the rail and landed on the back of the gargoyle. My foot slipped slightly and I made the mistake of looking down. I saw that the archway below us sloped out from the wall at a fairly steep angle. After mentally mapping the trajectory of a fallen object, my legs became rubbery. I knelt down, and stretched my hands across the stone figure. I hugged it for comfort and fought off nausea.

I saw that the old hands grasping for a hold on the gargoyle were not keeping the priest aloft. A pocket formed by the robe's hood had somehow caught on one of the stone creature's horns. One of the priest's arms had slipped out of its sleeve, and he was dangling to one side. The right side of his face was bloody from a cut in his cheek. Blood had soaked his shirt.

I groped until I touched his fingers and stretched my hand until it encircled his thin wrist. I couldn't hold his weight long without losing my balance.

"I think I'm stuck," he said haltingly. Again the calm understatement.

"Hold on, Father. I'll get you free in another minute." I adjusted my weight.

"It's too late, my son. Perhaps my death will atone for my misdeeds."

"What are you talking about? Just hold on a little longer."

The fabric of his robe's hood tore, and his body twitched like a marionette losing its strings. My hand on his wrist and a last bit of fabric were the only things preventing a long, deadly fall. A fire engine wailed in the distance. I couldn't wait. There wasn't time.

His phrases came in soft gasps now, as he labored for breath. "I witnessed it…the ruin…of the rose. Thought I could reason…We argued…God help..."

"Don't talk. I'll try to swing you up!" I yelled. Holding his wrist, I pulled as hard as I could. The final bit of fabric ripped from the gargoyle's horn, and the priest swung violently. I used the momentum of the swing to pull his torso onto the edge of the gargoyle. I jumped my grip from his wrist to his elbow. One more pull might do it.

Just then the stone beast trembled. The priest's hand slipped back to my wrist and he stared into my eyes. Then his body slipped from the stone. For one horrified instant I thought he would drag me with him. Instead, he released his grip. I watched as he dropped like a rag doll onto the sloped stonework below. He tumbled backwards, his hands flailing for a hold. He fell over the edge, unobstructed, towards earth. I closed my eyes. The full wail of the fire engine sounded from directly below. The thud I heard could only have been my imagination.