"Stephen Golden - Last Ghost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldin Stephen)

He exists (if that's the word) in an everlasting now, as a state of
nothingness less substantial than a vacuum, smaller than infinity, larger
than thought. Eternity lies as far behind him as it does ahead. He drifts
through this lack of anything at infinitely greater than no speed at all.
He sees with non-eyes. He hears without ears He thinks thoughtless
thoughts that revolve in circles and make little eddies of emptiness in
the not-quite-nothing of his mind.

He searches for
He wants a
He desires some
He loves to

No objects remain within his mental grasp. The words have been
corroded by the gentle acid of time. All that's left is the search; the
want; the desire; the love.

She began to appear slowly, a flicker at the limits of his nonperception.
(Why he
considered her a "she" could not be explained. There was just an aspect
about
her that was complementary to him.) His unthoughts raced in puzzlement. She
was a newness in his stale cosmos, where nothing ever changed. He watched
her as she took on a form even less substantial than his own. He watched
with
his crumbling mind at a crossroad, afraid to approach, even
more afraid to run from her in fear. (If, that is, there were anyplace to
run in eternity.)

She gained awareness suddenly, and started at the alien strangeness of
her new environment. The eerie infinitude produced within her a wave
of awe commingled with fear. She could, as yet, perceive only herself
and the barren continuum around her.

She spoke. (What came out was not sound, but could be interpreted as
communication.) "Where am I?"

The action was a simple one. It seemed utterly new to him, but down
somewhere among the shards of his memory it was all tantalizingly
familiar. He trembled.

She perceived his being, and turned her attention toward him. "What
are you? What's happened to me?"

He knew the answers-or rather, he had known them. As it had with
everything else, infinity had eaten away at these chunks of
information too in what was left of his mind. It had all been so
important once. So important! That was why he was what he was, and
why he wasn't what he wasn't.