How can you be sure, Amos, that you and I and everyone else here are not figments in the imagination of some greater creative source? To be sure, we appear to be endowed with free will, but then, so do the characters I create. For instance, Chongo and Shane have opinions widely divergent from my own, and they do things I wouldn't dream of doing. I may have given birth to them, but after that they insisted upon going there own way, each according to his or her unique nature. I don't tell them what to do...they tell ME what they are GOING to do, and I am merely the scribe.

I have offered them advice from time to time, but they seldom take it. Kind of like the relationship you most likely have with your creator!

Chongo thinks of you as an ephemeral being with a limited lifespan. He says that after you're gone, the world will carry on as blithely as if you had never been. And he says the same of me. ;-D I suspect he is right about both of us.