D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,106

drive this thought from his mind, but it only grew stronger. It will come to no good no good it cannot come to any good... "Despair." Despair, anxiety, and fear. Yes, the whole atmosphere here (where?) contributed to it. But there was still something besides the realization that he had awakened (regained consciousness!) devil knows where, remembering nothing, in the neighborhood of a dead person who had choked to death in his own blood. Having rummaged through the short scraps of his memory, he understood with surprise that the "something" was his previous thought about genetic engineering. It was as if... as if he had inadvertently touched a painful tooth which had now subsided and was having no effect. Why? Why does this thought generate such fear? Perhaps these bandages are the result not of an accident but of biological experiments? Some operations made against his will? Though, how does genetic engineering come into the picture? As much as he could remember, geneticists did not cut the victim, they operate at the microscopic level. Or not genetic engineering per se, but something related to it? Something that (no! no! don't do it!) he could not remember. He tried again, despite the fear that spread like a sticky cold. No. He could not recall. Emptiness.

He approached a little table which until now had escaped his attention and found out that it was not simply a table. Half of it was occupied by a built in screen and, maybe, some other devices. Had there been any communication facilities? Now it was already difficult to tell. Everything had been destroyed, broken out, and shattered with a wild frenzy. Only a lonely torn off optical path stuck out from the mess. Suddenly the man leaned forward and peered through the dim light. In the niche which remained from where the screen had been, among the fragments of electronics (photonics, broken out from the emptiness, "electronics" is an outdated term) something lay that did not resemble a circuitry element. He lifted this small object, rounded at one end, and brought it up to his eyes. In an instant he understood with disgust that he was examining a torn off human nail with flesh attached. Could the one who destroyed things here have done it with his own nails? And the intense pain of a nail and flesh being torn off had not stopped him?

The amnesiac hurled away his trophy and gloomily thought that having a weapon could not hurt. However, the harmful subconscious immediately replaced "could not hurt" with "would not help," but he tried to drive away this thought. At least a chair... after all, shouldn't there be a chair in this room? But alas, there was none.

Again he went to the corridor sunk in flickering twilight, only now realizing that the corridor was not straight, but smoothly bent, forming a large ring. Which direction to choose – left or right? Whichever direction he chooses, he could not see around the curve of the corridor. He listened. He listened. Neither from the left nor from the right came any sound. Only occasionally the oppressive silence was broken by the electric crackling of flickering lamps. He went to the right. Underfoot there was the same dirty floor–for how many years was there no cleaning done here? However, he no longer regretted that he had to go barefoot, as it allowed him to move almost silently. The blank wall continued on the left and doors similar to those which he had left repeated on the right. Judging by distances between them, not all of the doors hid such small rooms. But he had no desire to enter and to come across... The devil only knows what it is possible to come across here. His goal was to get out of here as soon as possible, so he should go directly to the exit. Shouldn't there be an exit somewhere here?!

The dim shivering light was distorting his sense of reality, hindering his ability to orient himself, and giving the impression that all this was just a dreadful nightmare in which he would walk eternally in the dirty gloomy corridor that had neither beginning nor end. For a moment he was so assured of it that he began to pinch himself but without the desired result. However, as he remembered it now, actually pinching oneself to wake up is a myth, since painful sensations can be in a dream, too. While in dreams they are usually weaker than