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No, what was there behind the senseless patterns? Flesh, mass. What was that? All made up of atoms.

“I’m really hungry,” the intricately arranged atoms muttered.

All atoms. Conjoined. There were no true separations between atom and atom. Flesh was stone, stone was light. Anders looked at the masses of atoms that were pretending to solidity, meaning and reason.

“Can’t you help me?” a clump of atoms asked. But the clump was identical with all the other atoms. Once you ignored the superimposed patterns, you could see the atoms were random, scattered.

“I don’t believe in you,” Anders said.

The pile of atoms was gone.

“Yes!” the voice cried. “Yes!”

“I don’t believe in any of it,” Anders said. After all, what was an atom?

“Go on!” the voice shouted. “You’re hot! Go on!”

What was an atom? An empty space surrounded by an empty space.

Absurd!

“Then it’s all false!” Anders said. And he was alone under the stars.

“That’s right!” the voice within his head screamed. “Nothing!”

But stars, Anders thought. How can one believe–

The stars disappeared. Anders was in a gray nothingness, a void. There was nothing around him except shapeless gray.

Where was the voice?

Gone.

Anders perceived the delusion behind the grayness, and then there was nothing at all.

Complete nothingness, and himself within it.

* * * * *

Where was he? What did it mean? Anders’ mind tried to add it up.

Impossible. That couldn’t be true.

Again the score was tabulated, but Anders’ mind couldn’t accept the total. In desperation, the overloaded mind erased the figures, eradicated the knowledge, erased itself.

“Where am I?”

In nothingness. Alone.

Trapped.

“Who am I?”

A voice.

The voice of Anders searched the nothingness, shouted, “Is there anyone here?”

No answer.

But there was someone. All directions were the same, yet moving along one he could make contact … with someone. The voice of Anders reached back to someone who could save him, perhaps.

“Save me,” the voice said to Anders, lying fully dressed on his bed, except for his shoes and black bow tie.

–ROBERT SHECKLEY