Longer

Начало книги

One life was enough. Two were more than enough.

It was time to end it.

Yes.

No.

It would end itself. The last mystery.

Yes.

No. Not the last. But a great one. A great mystery, unspooled.

Birth was the first, also great.

Rebirth, not so much, and jarring. Overrated.

The stars were bright in the heavens, no atmosphere to dim them. So many of them, and so many more unseen. So many worlds. So many questions. So many answers.

Yes to all possibilities. Infinity promised this.

But space was cold. Eternity, also.

He’d need a better coat.

He needed one now, because he was shivering.

He stood in the cupola, gazing at the Milky Way, observing in himself the balance between what he saw and what he felt, between the sensation of cold and his perception of the sensation, and in the latter the balance between awe and terror, which shifted as all things shifted, and which he had experienced his whole life when gazing at the stars and the infinity of space. Currently, terror held the upper hand: how else to explain the chill?

Читать дальше →