Youth is that condition of being without a past; old age, of being without a future. For this reason, the screenwriter thinks the girl’s character is ultimately uninteresting. He, on the other hand, has a surfeit of memories to draw upon, to crowd his horizons with, and yet he refuses to do so because these memories are mostly bad, mostly painful. So, content to languish in no-man’s-land, his thoughts always revolve around the girl. She has no past to speak of, but strangely, neither does she seem to have a future. The glittering path to fame and fortune has abruptly vanished, and now a thick mist beclouds her horizon. The future has become for her a dream instead of a reality, a hope instead of a certainty, a squinting at some indiscernible offing. And yet, the girl still has a purpose, has an aim: why not write in such a way about the future? Perhaps in reading the author her father holds in highest esteem, the girl is learning something about herself. If someone considered to be unhealthy, once a salon wit, now a bedridden recluse who lacks the strength to write a serious novel, who never showed any sign of wanting to write one, who’d rather have cultivated good manners, who seemed to hold courtesy at a higher premium than celerity of thought; if such a man could successfully disguise his commitment to his craft, his belief in his vocation, and still produce a monumental masterpiece for the ages, why can’t the girl? Youth is that condition of being without a past. Time is a dimension added to those of space, but this is not the sort of time that can be measured by a watch: it’s the girl’s own personal time, which is different. A tunnel could transport her to another instant, another day, another life. But the girl can’t predict the future, and therefore, she cannot know that on the other side of the tunnel is only misery and desolation. The telephone rings, interrupting her musings. It’s the brilliant composer calling to update her on the continued success of the Little Sinfonietta. Her replacements are outdoing her every day, he gloats. It seems he never liked the way she played. But he’ll always be grateful, he says, that she played a part in making him a recognized composer. Right now, they’re on their way to another capital, where everyone excitedly awaits their arrival. Are you still writing? he asks. She says yes. He says he thinks it’s a result of the hypnosis. What do you mean hypnosis? It seems she doesn’t even remember she was hypnotized. The hypnotist turned you into a writer, he assures her. It was from then that she began hitting false notes and missing beats in rehearsals and performances. She doesn’t remember a thing. This is all just beacuse of his jealousy. One day she’ll call him to account — him and the young conductor, whom she imagines is sitting right beside him, egging him on. The girl won’t let anything he says upset her. She remembers that, in the end, the brilliant composer is nothing to her. He could drop off the earth and she’d forget he ever existed. Before hanging up, the girl asks him to name the people who were there that night. The screenwriter then improvises a scene in which the girl is in a writing frenzy, actuated by the material she’s read about that author from a bygone era, the one her father reveres. She disconnects the phone, just in the case the brat composer decides to call again, telling herself that there’s no limit to human wickedness. She doesn’t feel like she’s been hypnotized. She stops writing and gets up to stretch her legs, to do a couple of laps around the room. After a few moments, she takes her seat in front of the laptop, and continues: “5.5561 The limit also makes itself manifest in the totality of elementary images. He’s sold all his belongings, but he wants to take one last photograph of her. He wants to take it before they come to take away the furniture, the computer, the camera, and the spotlights. Just one more, he begs her. Again, he wants her to be naked; again, wants to be the one who takes her clothes off. They’re both used to it by now, of course, but this time is special, because it may in fact be the last. The girl gets in the bath, and the old professor produces a safety razor, which he uses, along with scissors, to trim her pubic area until it’s practically hairless. He prefers it like this, thinks it looks perfect, almost angelic. He wants the camera to capture every single pore. After drying her with a towel, he goes down on her, kissing the warm pink flesh of her labia until she trembles. He wants to make love to her, but he decides to take the photograph first, because he knows he always gets his best shots when overcome with desire. She’s lets him take his photos, although she’d rather be talking about W, and the No World. 3.04 If a No World were correct a priori, it would be a No World whose possibility ensured its truth.”