And no doubt stories have begun to leak out from other survivors who believe they saw the dead walk.
I’m beginning to suspect, though, that however reliable these witnesses might be, on close investigation their claims will come to nothing. I don’t believe that they’re lying, or that they mistook what they saw. Everything happened just as they described it—but it was simply never made real.
I’ve settled down now, in this camp on the old city’s western edge. I have a registration card, I queue for food twice a day, I do exactly what I’m told. Most of the relief workers here are freshly recruited volunteers; they insist that we’ll all be resettled within a year. The experienced ones, though, admit—when pressed—that a decade is more likely. New Hong Kong won’t be rebuilt on the original site until investigators know why the city crumbled, and the answer to that — I hope—will be a long time coming.
I don’t have much to do here to pass the days. I try to get some exercise, but mostly I end up lying on my bunk, thinking it all over one more time.
And last night, this is what I thought:
Maybe smeared humanity reached the edge of The Bubble—and didn’t recoil, after all. Maybe the planet is still smeared. One consciousness per eigenstate, branching out endlessly; the many-worlds model come true. Blood still rains between the skyscrapers of New Hong Kong. Children still conjure up dancing flowers. Every dream, every vision, has been brought to life: Heaven and Hell on Earth.
Every dream, every vision. This one included, mundane as it seems, half-way between infinite happiness and infinite suffering.
So here I am, gazing up into the darkness, unable to decide if I’m staring at infinity, or the backs of my own eyelids.
But I don’t need to know the answer. I just recite to myself, over and over, until I can choose sleep: It all adds up to normality.
Copyright
Copyright © Greg Egan 1992 All rights reserved
The right of Greg Egan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This edition published in Great Britain in 1999 by Millennium An imprint of Victor Gollancz Orion House, 5 Upper St
Martin’s Lane, London WC2H 9EA
To receive information on the Millennium list, e-mail us at: smy@orionbooks.co.uk A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 1 85798 590 7
Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic