"I am old and it is better done with an outside subject. Do not forget
that this has never been done."
"Okay. Start," I said, suddenly making up my mind. I didn't want to die
and I would do anything, however wild, to avoid it. When one sits alone
in darkness beneath a ruined house and knows that there is no hope, a
decision like this comes normally.
All is logical according to the conditions given.
I gave him my flashlight and he shone it in my eyes. Then he started
weaving it and repeating what he had said about atoms and electrons and
masses of nothing.
I watched him fascinated, and I thought of little whirlpools in empty
black space. I saw flashing ripples on a void. I saw lone lights
untended in nothingness and reflected from nothing. And I saw that they
were glowing from nothing. Light, just light.
I saw a solitary mote pursuing an endless track across a vast area that
was utter abyss.
Gradually the flashlight seemed to flicker and die. I felt wavy and
mistlike. I understood the meaning of matter and I saw indeed that
matter has very little real existence.
I felt that I was upon my feet, and they were long columns of
imagination having no reality save for endless electric foam.
I felt myself moving forward and I felt other disturbances passing
between me and around me and through me.
Then I saw that scenes were passing before my vision and the globules
of vacua that were my eyes seemed to register as they passed through
other globules of vacua.
I saw what seemed like a tiny planet spinning on its axis, while a
strange blue sun shone down and a dozen other planets swirled.
I saw a figure indescribable, mounted upon a thing incredible, pursuing
the unknowable across a vast and meaningless place.
I saw dozens of things like this--none of which can be described. Once
I saw a large machine with churning arms and it was all bubbly and yet
hard and mechanical.
All about me moved a great current and a wave of feelingless substance.
Then I felt a beating of forces upon me, I felt a hammering at me and I
felt a pressure pushing upon the whirling, imaginary pools of my being
and a curious coldness setting in.
* * * * *
I shivered and looked around. I was naked in the middle of the street;
the stars were out and the drone of airplanes audible. People were
running up and down and a hose was playing upon the front of a burning
building. The wardens were digging in some ruins with crowbars and
shovels.
A man came running up to me and threw a blanket over my trembling
shoulders.
"Where'd you come from? Bomb blow your clothes off? It happens."