D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,140
a similar to the macrocosm! A soul actually exists, and it is not an ethereal angel with wings. It is a steady matrix of dark energy, or, that is to say, a structured despair. For the whole time that we tried to investigate dark energy in depths of space, it was in ourselves! But the accuracy of our instruments was insufficient to detect it. We after all searched only for the gravitational component, which is ten to the one hundred twentieth power weaker than the true essence. The Kalkrin generator was required to transport us to the phase of dark matter and thus to tune our despair to resonate with the great despair of the universe. The theory predicted that switching off the generator would lead to a spontaneous return to the initial condition, but it was true only for an inanimate probe. When there are animate beings onboard, the Kalkrin generator only starts the process which then becomes self-sustaining. In a dark phase it is not necessary for us to eat, to drink, even to breathe. The dark energy feeds us directly."
"I breathe!" the woman interrupted.
"I too, because it is a reflex, but I am not sure that we really need to. It's like a sailing ship which was equiped with an engine. And all systems of the starship is fed with the energy of our despair. Therefore, when it grows, light becomes brighter, and what has gone dead, turns on again.
"But corpses..."
"That's just it! We cannot die! We have tried already numerous times! But every time when we kill a body, on the matrix of our soul a new one is recreated! The law of increase of despair won't allow us to escape! Neither us, nor anyone else. Sooner or later all will fall into despair. At first, the crews of interstellar ships like us, then the whole civilizations, whose sense will reach an adequate level to enter into resonance with universal despair directly. Probably sooner or later even stars and galaxies will evolve to the same level, and in the whole universe nothing will remain except dark matter filled with infinite despair. Actually this process is already closer to the end than to the beginning: There is already four times more dark matter than what we consider normal."
"And bandages?" asked Linda, clutching at a straw. "Well, let us assume we revived without clothes. It is logical, but didn't somebody bind us up? And why did we need it in the first place?”
"They are not bandages," Victor sighed. "It's dead skin. Our subconsciousness tried to save us from the truth, representing it as just dried bandages. Look! Look at them attentively!"
The woman brought her bound up arm to her eyes. Now she saw that the edges of the "bandages" were actually ugly peeling scars, and on the cadaverous-gray surface of the "bandages" it was possible to make out pores and some separate not yet fallen out hairs. That means, her head also... her face actually wasn't wrapped. It became these terrible rags.
"A soul it not just personality," Adamson continued to explain. "The energy matrix stores the information about the body as well, otherwise resurrection would be impossible. Naturally there is no information about clothes there, nor about putrefactive bacteria. That's why bodies don't decay here. Small wounds don't influence this matrix, but those that are really serious and cause especially severe pain are reflected in it. That's why we revive with dead skin or, at least, with scars in place of such wounds. However, even this won't help us die. We tried. Oh my God, how many times we’ve tried.
Linda shuddered and with a groan fell to her knees, clenching her head with her hands. Now she too could not escape the memories which rushed on her like a torrent. She now remembered how she had torn her own face and squeezed out her eyes–how with all her force had pushed off her feet from the floor, empaling herself through the stomach and breast on pipes, cut out the schematics of the damned ship on her own body, hung, stretched on wires, while the man now speaking with her skinned her slowly...
"Remember how you crucified me?" she dully asked.
"No," he answered. These memories were probably too awful, and his subconscious still tried to hide at least them. "Could it be that I... though, of course, who else... what for?"
"I begged you myself–to torture me as long and painfully as possible. I couldn't do it myself, I have tried