Dark stretches of emptiness! The rush of chaos through endless space! Nothing anywhere that knows.... An equation without a sign....
Off in dark Eternity, a gleam of light—dividing all space—where minus changes to plus, is not to is. Towards it struggles, battling with all its little strength, a mortal consciousness.
Up out of the void, voiceless utterances sweep, like the drone of far-off, undiscovered seas: “Minus 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... Minus 3 ... 2 ... 1.... Decimal point!... 9 ...”
Back around an infinite circle the Soul sweeps to strike again for being beyond the Point!
“Minus—Point ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...” intones the judgment from the deeps.
Over and over, the drifting consciousness hurls itself through the wilderness of the Lost—and over and over, the awful voices measure throughout infinity the losing fight. Swept to the pits of zero—Eternal Silence—the Soul, with its last desperate knowing force, sends through the terror of the wastes its agonized appeal: “God, life!”
That other planet had been one of light—light that streamed over the world, and into the faces of its beings. Here, in this ... sphere, black animate shadows—possibly ... very doubtfully, human—crawled in and out of the holes of the universe.
Again, in that unfathomable fashion, two worlds convulsively changed places—and there was no clear mark between the real and the unreal.
Pushing at the mists did no good! One moment you were zero; the next, you were minus.... The horror of it was too much to bear!
At last the pall of those dark, terrible outer places lifted. The girl came fearfully back into consciousness, her being shaken to its foundations by the terror of the thing it had passed through. It had touched awful and unknown areas.