Chapter 78

Darkness. Absolute, pure darkness. There was no sound, no play of light and shadow, no sensation of spatial stretching, and even the cold, rigid material touch of the decayed ruins had completely vanished. There was only a vast, boundless, and purely nihilitic "void." The Old Welder's residual consciousness felt as though it had been cast into the icy primeval soup before the birth of the universe. The last remaining cluster of information drifted within this pure "nothingness" like a flickering candle in the wind, liable to be blown out, diluted, and dissolved into the eternal background radiation at any moment. The concept of "time" no longer existed. Every time that gossamer-thin cluster of information attempted to fluctuate and form some structure resembling a "thought," it struck an invisible wall. The wall was cold, smooth, and unquestionable. This wall was the very rule of this void—absolute imprisonment. There was no way to remember, no way to perceive. Only that faint pulsation originating from the quantum oscillation of existence's core proved that this dust cloud of consciousness had not yet completely disintegrated. Yet, at the very instant when this cluster of information was about to expend the last shred of its structural characteristics in the pure void and dissolve into the true background noise of nothingness— Hum… A stream of information—or perhaps a structural resonance—that was cold, pure, devoid of any emotional color, yet precisely anchored to the core…