"Edmond Hamilton - Exile" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

definitely human, but had decided against making them too civilised тАУ for that would exclude the conflict and violence
that must form my story.
тАЬSo, IтАЩd made my imaginary world, a world whose people were still only half-civilised. I figured out all their
cruelties and superstitions. I mentally built up their colourful barbaric cities. And just as I was through тАУ that click!
echoed sharply in my mind.
тАЬIt startled me badly, this second time. For now I felt more strongly than before that queer conviction that my
dayтАЩs dreaming had crystallised into solid reality. I knew that it was insane to think that, yet it was an incredible
certainty in my mind. I couldnтАЩt get rid of it.
тАЬI tried to reason the thing out so that I could dismiss that crazy conviction. If my imagining a world and universe
had actually created them, where were they? Certainly not in my own cosmos. It couldnтАЩt hold two universes тАУ each
completely different from the other.
тАЬBut maybe that world and universe of my imagining had crystallised into reality in another and empty cosmos? A
cosmos lying in a different dimension from my own? One which had contained only free atoms, formless matter that
had not taken on shape until my concentrated thought had somehow stirred it into the forms I dreamed?
тАЬI reasoned along like that, in the queer, dreamlike way in which you apply the rules of logic to impossibilities.
How did it come that my imaginings had never crystallised into reality before, but had only just begun to do so? Well,
there was a plausible explanation for that. It was the big power station nearby. Some unfathomable freak of energy
radiated from it was focusing my concentrated imaginings, as super-amplified force, upon an empty cosmos where
they stirred formless matter into the shapes I dreamed.
тАЬDid I believe that? No, I didnтАЩt believe it тАУ but I knew it. There is quite a difference between knowledge and
belief, as someone said who once pointed out that all men know they will die and none of them believe it. It was like
that with me. I realised it was not possible that my imaginary world had come into physical being in a different
dimensional cosmos, yet at the same time I was strangely convinced that it had.
тАЬA thought occurred to me that amused and interested me. What if I imagined myself in that other world? Would I,
too, become physically real in it? I tried it. I sat at my desk, imagining myself as one of the millions of persons in that
imaginary world, dreaming up a whole soberly realistic background and family and history for myself over there. And
my mind said click!тАЭ
Carrick paused, still looking down at the empty glass that he twirled slowly between his fingers.
Madison prompted him. тАЬAnd of course you woke up there, and a beautiful girl was leaning over you, and you
asked тАШWhere am I?тАЩтАЭ
тАЬIt wasnтАЩt like that,тАЭ Carrick said dully. тАЬIt wasnтАЩt like that at all. I woke up in that other world, yes. But it wasnтАЩt
like a real awakening. I was just suddenly in it.
тАЬI was still myself. But I was the myself I had imagined in that other world. That other me had always lived in it тАУ
and so had his ancestors before him. I had worked all that out, you see.
тАЬAnd I was just as real to myself, in that imaginary world I had created, as I had been in my own. That was the
worst part of it. Everything in that half-civilised world was so utterly, common-placely real.тАЭ
He paused again. тАЬIt was queer, at first. I walked out into the streets of those barbaric cities, and looked into the
peopleтАЩs faces, and I felt like shouting aloud, тАШI imagined you all! You had no existence until I dreamed of you!тАЩ
тАЬBut I didnтАЩt do that. They wouldnтАЩt have believed me. To them, I was just an insignificant single member of their
race. How could they guess that they and their traditions of long history, their world and their universe, had all been
suddenly brought into being by my imagination?
тАЬAfter my first excitement ebbed, I didnтАЩt like the place. I had made it too barbaric. The savage violences and
cruelties that had seemed so attractive as material for a story were ugly and repulsive at first hand. I wanted nothing
but to get back to my own world.
тАЬAnd I couldnтАЩt get back! There just wasnтАЩt any way. I had had a vague idea that I could imagine myself back into
my own world as I had imagined myself into this other one. But it didnтАЩt work that way. The freak force that had
wrought the miracle didnтАЩt work two ways.
тАЬI had a pretty bad time when I realised that I was trapped in that ugly, squalid, barbarian world. I felt like killing
myself at first. But I didnтАЩt. A man can adapt himself to anything. I adapted myself the best I could to the world I had
created.тАЭ