one month passes...
He mapped the folds that fell, wetly out, with his tongue; and the grisly nut in the folded vortex, and the soft granular trough behind it.
He saw a man lying in his tracks, and a little girl standing in the snow. And he heard a man cry.
He saw one body after another, so many that his imagination did not rest upon his own sight; and he did not hesitate but to place everything on the spot where they lay. A man was still alive, with a terrible wound above the right shoulder of his breast, and a gaping wound on the left of his back; a young girl was lying face downwards to the ground, her body half buried; with her lifeless breast she wore a long black nightgown, torn from a girl's dress, which she was so proud of that she was about to cover her face with it, but which she was already covering.
At last he saw her faint and go on her hands and knees, while a soldier, leaning toward her, stood behind her, his mouth open, his fingers still holding one finger from her left wrist. Then another, with one arm, raised a rifle. With such a sound the girl's face split open. "Oh, it was the one with the gun," said her mother, "the one with the gun that shot her! And
He mapped the folds that fell, wetly out, with his tongue; and the grisly nut in the folded vortex, and the soft granular trough behind it. 'What do you know of it?' the woman asked, frowning suddenly.
'I've been looking at it for years, actually,' he said. 'I've got a map that they use. I've found the whole back ground on it.' He opened the map again in his hand, showing what appeared to be a valley, with a flat plain beside it.
'Oh, they put it in before they got it into place,' the woman said, looking at the hand in front of her, 'a few years ago. They knew it had to be made, I bet.'
As the woman shook her head slightly, Harry saw her eyes narrow a little.
'I bet it was,' he said.
'They had to have, I think they got rid of the others. But don't think they put it together on purpose, because there are some things where the surface of the earth isn't in line. The lines don't exactly line up. I just can't figure out how they got it done. I've found it's got traces. It's a very old thing - ' He paused. 'All of it - ' He shook
He mapped the folds that fell, wetly out, with his tongue; and the grisly nut in the folded vortex, and the soft granular trough behind it. For it was all to him, and he knew, he knew what he could do by it, he could do everything, he could see it coming all night by the faint shadows on the rocks, with everything else that was there before him in the dark—there and behind and across him by the darkness, so much, so much, was there already, waiting for him in that tiny spot, as if there had been another person there with them, one who should get it all, who should get it, who would feel it, and make a thing out of it all. And yet he knew it would come. He knew in the dark he had something to hold him back; in the glow, just as he wanted it, with this dimly perceptible light, if he could hold it. He had made no head way when that thing crawled to his knee. He knew it was coming, as he said. So did every man who had ever seen those things. They came, they crawled. And it would not come. He had found that the dark had to come again from some other time, but it would not come at night, as in the daytime, for it was far more than that.
He mapped the folds that fell, wetly out, with his tongue; and the grisly nut in the folded vortex, and the soft granular trough behind it. He could see from the distance the hollow of a hole, in the middle; and the dark-green surface, that fell, as far in front of him as the hollow it encompassed. A dark-brown cloud rose into the sky behind him, and it touched his eyes. He took out one of the pailfuls that held his food. It was an old tin can, with a flat top, and another in the hollow in the middle. He put a teaspoon into the can in the socket, and dropped the can upon the floor, just as he had done it on the second occasion. When the food floated, he placed the can in the hole behind to take it with him. He was not entirely sure that it did not come away with the can; in part, it drifted down to the surface above. His companion, the one who had been waiting for him, looked at him with wonder. And the cat, after the first time, seemed to have forgotten all about him in all his years of living. All things went back to their old state. No one had changed. It was the old animal that was suddenly changed; and the cat that had been waiting for the can must have
He mapped the folds that fell, wetly out, with his tongue; and the grisly nut in the folded vortex, and the soft granular trough behind it. He was sure it lay inside a body, that the brain was still there at the bottom of an ocean, and perhaps some of that ocean had been sunk by the sea and by the river and the riverbank and that the brain was there, as the man had said.
He wondered at the way it had been shaped. It had been built to a strange shape, and then it had broken at least three times. The cracks had been deep enough to hide anything. One morning, when he went to use the elevator and found his way shut off inside the structure, the structure did not shut off again. In fact, it kept on shutting down with one of the crackings. After a while, if the machinery stopped there as it must be because it had begun to work in an altered state, the structure would take again, and it would take again until it fell apart, until some strange little worm-like creature moved inside it. The worms, in turn, would eat off the brain and, eventually, all the brain. And then, suddenly, the whole thing would collapse, collapse in an incredible heap about three thousand feet tall. He saw it again and again—and each time, like a
He mapped the folds that fell, wetly out, with his tongue; and the grisly nut in the folded vortex, and the soft granular trough behind it. The dark greyish fluid filled the small hole in the wall of the basement with the dark greyish fluid.
"You must not enter, but you must not exit. You are now under curfew. You have done wrong. Now come back to the kitchen by eleven at lunchtime unless you wish to remain there tonight, in which case you will have to do so immediately." The words were still on the air from the speaker. He waited and watched to see if he heard any change, but nothing.
"And you are to continue to talk to those in charge while I take a moment to examine the machine and the apparatus that holds the people down in here," said the voice. He listened quietly and waited. He knew what it meant, but did not know whether to react. In fact there was nothing for it. No idea, then, what to do. He waited.
"Well," said the voice, on cue, "you are a boy." The words were still on the air, and he heard his own voice behind him saying, "You are a boy, sir."
The man's voice stopped again. He was sitting up in bed, watching with a slight
He mapped the folds that fell, wetly out, with his tongue; and the grisly nut in the folded vortex, and the soft granular trough behind it. The wind was up and he had the wind. And then, on to the rest. He traced it, in the dark, as if to feel.
They grew, he counted, to three thousand. A thousand and seven years and two hundred and sixty-six seconds. He felt his fingers twitching in their sockets. It had come to an end.
"What do you think?" someone asked him.
"The cat's dead," he said. "No more. And the dragon has vanished, too."
"That was good."
"Not yet," another said. "And the cat and the dragon both die."
And he felt things rise again--the air was cold, even.
And then he felt the sun rising again. And then it set.
"You're right," he said. "Now the dragon's here to pick up what you left here. And the cat has gone as far as it can go. It'll be nice to get back to this."
He got out of his seat and walked to the desk. He felt his shoes slide. He opened his hand to the book, sat with his feet
― The Pingularity (ledge), Monday, 3 June 2019 09:33 (four years ago) link
one year passes...
three years pass...