"Disconnect the wires. Can you do it, Rob? Quickly—or it will be too late."
I fumbled for the wires; cast them off—gigantic cables they might have been to the futile wraiths of my fingers. Will helped me, I think; and at last I was free, lying back upon the mattress. Dimly I could feel it beneath me, my thrilling, vibrating body resting upon it as though I were a feather newly drifted down.
Moments passed; I do not know how long, I could not have told for my thoughts were winging away unfettered, untrammelled as in a dream.... A dream ... the past, the present—all of it savoured of a vaguely pleasant unreality.
And presently I realized that I was moving; my body—could I indeed call this vanished consciousness of the physical, a body?—my being was floating, drifting gently downward, I could no longer feel the mattress; I saw it—a blurred, grey, transparent shadow, coming upward. Beside me, within me; then over me as I sank through it a foot or two and came to rest.
Beneath me now, there was a dull sensation. I could feel myself lying upon something apparently solid. Feel it? The feeling was barely physical; rather was it a mere knowledge that I was lying there.
I tried to keep my scattering thoughts together. It was an effort to hold them—an effort to think coherently; an effort to cling to anything—even mental—of reality. I told myself that the change must be nearly complete. I was the spectre; this phantom mattress, this wraith of a room—those ghost-like chairs and table floating in space above me—that was my own real world, lost and gone.
A silence had fallen. The hum within me no longer sounded. It was a shock to see that little phantom clock; the movement of its pendulum was visible, but its ticking heart gave no sound. A preternatural silence hung like a grey shroud over a universe of shadows. Then I heard Will's soundless voice—heard it clearly now with the knowledge that it was wholly mental, a transference of thought which only my imagination and memory endowed with a familiar physical timbre.
"Rob. Come back to us! Hold your thoughts. Stay here with us."
And Bee's imploring voice, "We are here, Rob. All here together. Sit up—look at us—speak to us."
Was I indeed, nothing now but a mind? Were my thoughts all that remained of me? I fought for reality; for stability; fought for anything real that I could clutch, to which desperately I might cling. Where were Will and Bee? Somewhere here in the shadows. An abyss of shadows everywhere. I thought I could see a thousand miles into that pregnant darkness. I could wander in it at will; my thoughts could wander everywhere.