"Upward or downward?" thunders the monster. Puflet doesn't know if the monster is a deep-level being, the echo of a once-living creature, a part of her own mind, or a mirage woven by unknown forces of the universe. She does know that the power it gives her is real, and so is the choice it offers. To choose "upward" would be to experience love, and to unleash wonders of creativity that could lead humanity to a new pinnacle of evolution. To choose "downward" would be to indulge in the vilest of emotions, laying waste to everything around her and launching cataclysms that might culminate in humanity's extinction. Puflet intends to choose "upward," but somehow she finds herself plunging "downward" into hatred, depravity, and destruction, and all her efforts to make things right are in vain.