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That liquid giant had been the death of hundreds of men. The entire human race had tried in vain
to establish even the most tenuous link with it, and it bore my weight without noticing me any
more than it would notice a speck of dust. I did not believe that it could respond to the
tragedy of two human beings. Yet its activities did have a purpose... True, I was not absolutely
certain, but leaving would mean giving up a chance, perhaps an infinitesimal one, perhaps only
imaginary... Must I go on living here then, among the objects we both had touched, in the air
she had breathed? In the name of what? In the hope of her return? I hoped for nothing. And yet I
lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained. I did not know what
achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted
in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.
Stanislaw Lem, from |
'And are not we as well, if you examine us physically, mechanistically, statistically and
meticulously, nothing but the miniscule capering of electron clouds? Positive and negative
charges arranged in space? And is our existence not the result of subatomic collisions and the
interplay of particles, though we ourselves percieve those molecular cartwheels as fear, longing,
or meditation?'
Stanislaw Lem, from |
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