1
He was floating somewhere, lost in a bluish-white light, waiting for the voice, the anchor, the thread back to the real world that would tell him he was not alone, not really alone.
There was no sensation, no weight, no scent, no taste, nothing but the light surrounding him. He might have been moving; he couldn’t tell, for he had no body. If he was moving, through air, through space, through electronic circuits, there was no way to tell. If time was passing, in either direction, there was no way to tell.
“Dr. Crichton?”
There is was! The voice for which he had been waiting.
It surrounded him as the light surrounded him, was a part of himself as the light was a part of himself---was himself!
“Yes.” He made words without lips and teeth and tongue to form them, thought words and heard them as he heard the voice, without ears. If he had a body, he might’ve looked about him, searching for the source of the voice, for someone to whom to give the answer, “Over here!”
It was important that the voice knew he was there. That someone knew he was there. That someone find him.
He had the sensation of being examined, of an intellectual curiosity, as if it were his turn to be the specimen under the microscope, subjected to examination and experimentation.
“Are you ready, Dr. Crichton?” the voice said. But it did not wait for an answer. It had never once waited for an answer. His willingness, his readiness, was a matter of indifference, as the willingness of the worm to be dissected was a matter of indifference to the student. At last, there was the sensation of movement, of rushing through great consequences, of being tossed and torn by something for which he had no name, of being carried to a destination he had not chosen.
“Can I go home now?” he cried out, and knew there was enough of himself---whatever he was---present to feel the wailings of despair. He couldn’t remember “home.” All he knew was that it was a good place, his place, where he had an identity and friends and people knew who he was, where he knew the other people, and he wanted desperately to be there. Home was some other place than this blue light.
Miraculously, the sensation of rushing through canyons stopped, as if the experimenter had paused between the dissecting table and the electron microscope to look once again at the stained slide it carried. “Home? Oh, no, no way. You can’t go home yet. You’re needed. Urgently.
“But soon. Very soon. I promise.”
