To me.
As I fell through the polar reaches.
It was always us in this room.
Always I that traveled to the New City at the world’s end.
Always only Jimmy.
That burrowed a thousand years then reached the surface to pursue voices.
Preserved for all time by Dr. Vannevar body of a boy or a youth.
[heavy cross out]
It makes no difference.
Stop writing.
Listen.
Get it right this time.
Not much time.
The tongue for the moment intact.
The warren of damage from the wires of the apparatus.
Already beginning to swell.
To leak fluid.
Soon it will stuff the mouth.
And no more words.
But no I didn’t I didn’t remember. Not for me. I remembered for them. So what about me? So what about Lewis?
[heavy cross out]
Stop writing.
Remember.
Remember these words.
I have to change.
How can I?
[illegible]
To feel the peace.
Too many stories.
The machine broke.
Stop writing.
Remember for next time.
You understand?
Yes?
No?
[illegible]
You is we.
We have to do better next time.
Can’t feel all this suffer all this again for nothing.
[illegible]
The Commission they’re almost gone.
They’re leaving.
For the sky.
For the Cloud above the Cloud.
Or just death.
I don’t know.
[illegible]
We’ll describe the room.
No not the room.
You believe.
Do you?
You remember Lewis.
[illegible]
Describe Lewis.
[illegible]
No.
No need.
We believe.
I did.
I remember.
We was here.
[illegible]
We was I.
You are.
Last time.
Next time.
Wires extracted and how they swayed.
How like a what can’t remember like a.
Yes like a thing from the ocean a thing of clockwork wire.
[heavy cross out]
[illegible]
[illegible]
[illegible]
So many stories.
Press the pen and remember.
That’s why they let us go back why the New City sent us back to tell the stories.
But no peace unless we remember the story.
Too many stories crowding!
Souls don’t stand a chance.
They want me to say.
No real death.
Only the New City.
Only the eternal suffering.
Commissioners all gone.
Dead or moved on to something better.
Or in some other hell.
We are forgotten.
No way of knowing.
Tell our stories.
To be sliced up for information in the New City unbearable pain.
That’s why they told their stories.
The dream of mind-uploading is a dream of hell.
To talk at last tell our stories at last that’s the only thing that saves.
For a time.
Heat death for all even in the stars but for a time it saves.
I burrowed I came out they told me their stories then sent me back.
I wish I never went to that place.
To Dr. Vannevar.
To drink his formula and dream his dreams and to do his great work.
Didn’t we have dreams too once.
No matter.
We all have everything.
That’s what we have.
Good bad rich poor beautiful ugly.
We all have the everything of our lives.
Until our lives are gone.
But we don’t know where it is.
We have everything but where is it?
[heavy cross out]
I have it.
I don’t know where it is.
How many have we been?
How many times has it been?
[illegible]
Too much to process.
[illegible]
Valley collapsing.
I feel it.
I feel it in my tongue.
I know you’re still writing.
For them.
[illegible]
I know you believe me and yet you don’t.
Not much time.
I I I I.
I I I.
Give them these pages.
You think you give them and have a life.
But all lives are over.
[illegible]
Dr. Vannevar his medicine.
It holds you.
It held me a thousand years or more.
[illegible]
Robots and sycamores ascending no stopping.
The Cloud ascending no stopping.
Send up your words see how little it matters.
Send them up or wait.
[illegible]
Oh oh I’ve been here before.
Oh oh I you we I’m dying we are we’ll die.
[illegible]
But we’ll live.
We’ll live too because I will.
Do you see?
[illegible]
You are.