D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,138

the reflection in a mirror.

But Eve was already looking at something else.

"My God... Just look at his hands!"

Adam looked. Then heavily stood up and glanced into the lift cage which remained opened because the legs of the dead man remained between the doors.

All the inside walls of the cage had been scribbled in red. And there weren't anymore separate phrases with large letters. It was continuous text (not divided even by punctuation), covering the walls in a spiral, beginning from the height that the writer could reach and continuing almost to the floor. And on a floor there lay pieces of what he used instead of a felt-tip pen.

"He bit off his own fingers," Adam ascertained. "Piece by piece. To write this. When blood ceased to flow, the next finger was used. And the last phrases," he peered at wide and smeared, almost unreadable letters just inches from the floor, "it seems to me, he finished by using his tongue. Dipping it in the blood flowing from his wrists."

"And... you think, it is the answer?" Eve asked, fearfully looking at the curve lines.

"I guess, yes."

"I am so frightened. It seems to me that we shouldn't read this!"

But Adam, of course, had already stepped in the cage. The text began, most probably, from a big blot, from which a dried stream was stretching downward almost through the whole length of the wall. At that moment the writer still had plenty of "ink."

"despair darkness it really darkness dark energy despair only sense and essence of universe my god god doesn't exist there is only despair which created the world what idiots we are we understood nothing when probe explorers began to hop the perch we trusted only to instruments even when it gobbled up ape too late to back away told computer error only changed number all the same biosynthesizer two idiots volunteers save prestige of program for science's sake morons morons we would better be real morons though won't help finally it will absorb all for it is alpha and omega law of increase of despair..."

For Adam it wasn't at all incoherent gibberish. With each word read the wall in his consciousness fell with a crack and a roar of a ruptured dam, the truth uncontrollably rushed outside, and he spoke, spoke, even understanding that he shouldn't do it, that he doomed Eve, that is Linda, to premature–though all the same inevitable–torment, but his own torment didn't allow him to stop, and soon he even needed not to look at the bloody letters, just a view which filled with a pain the scars on his fingers.

"We named it dark energy. Energy of the vacuum which produces particles and antiparticles, the force interfering with the recession of galaxies. In general, all this is true. But its true name is Despair–the essence of the universe and its basic force. Once people considered that the primary law of the universe was the law of nondecrease of entropy. But, be it so, any evolution, any transformation from simple to complex, from interstellar gas to stars and planets, from inorganic molecules to live cells and organisms, would be impossible. Then it had been postulated that self-organizing processes can proceed in unclosed systems where there is an energy inflow from the outside. But that meant that the universe itself is a unclosed system, otherwise from where can it receive the energy? Now we know what this energy is and what law of the universe is really primary: the law of increase of the despair. It is possible to say that the despair is the force making galaxies to scatter in horror, though this run into eternal void will not help...

"But unless galaxies can feel anything?" interrupted Eve, whose consciousness still resisted memory. "They are not alive!"

"It's only a terminology issue. Can we say whether a stone feels heat or cold? But after all they operate on it quite objectively, forcing it to crack or even to melt. But, really, inanimate objects are incapable of feeling despair to the full. Therefore, all processes in the universe develop, eventually, in the direction of the evolution of life and sense. For life, and in particular sense, is nothing else but despair capable of realizing itself and thus to complete the positive feedback and to realize the unique purpose and sense of existence of the universe–the achievement of absolute, infinite despair.”

"But after all despair is just an emotion! Arising in our brain in reply to strokes of misfortune. It is subjective!