And worse: As fast as these events kept happening, they kept unhappening at the same time, so that yet another part of him felt as if he was tumbling back the other way through the hole he’d just entered. Not only that, but somewhere along the way, space had vanished; that is, it felt as if space knotted up into itself … or he himself was knotting up into space, so that even his thoughts had no psychological room between them but kept bumping into one another, sticking to each other like glue until there was just one clump of thoughts like porcupine quills—and then that vanished.

Psychological silence.

Seven knew he was thinking at an incredibly fast rate—but somehow no thoughts registered. He was himself, and he felt oddly cool and quiet, though he had nothing to judge himself against. He existed … in reference to nothing. So how did he know he existed? He thought the question, but it didn’t register, and all Seven knew was that … his thinking seemed to exist apart from himself, with no connection to himself. And “at the same time” in this silence he felt that unendurable energy surrounded him, making energy-falls instead of say, waterfalls; and that this energy felt solid even though its motion blurred the edges of his consciousness.

This particular experience seemed endless. He kept falling through this chute with the moving walls of energy; yet knowing this, he didn’t feel as if he were falling. Or rather, he felt suspended, unmoving and moving at once. Even the darkness around him moved, varied in intensity, trembled, formed shapes of darkness within darkness.

Seven was beyond fear. He even began to feel a part of whatever strange process was occurring, as if he and the process were one.

His thoughts had felt compressed and inaccessible to him. Now they began to gyrate within his consciousness; to swirl. Simultaneously, he felt a fantastic pull from some distance “in front of him” and suddenly he did feel as if he was falling. And falling fast. In the next “moment” Seven saw a rim of light so bright that he thought physical eyes could never stand it. And before he could even begin to wonder about this, there was a light, floating sensation, an odd popping sound—and Seven found himself standing in what he knew at once was another universe altogether.

Seven gulped, figuratively speaking. He was definitely in another universe or ununiverse, he thought, for he sensed negation everywhere. The atmosphere was peculiarly suffocating; the air heavy and motionless. Yet the environment was physical enough. There were ugly dwarf bushes everywhere; miles of grayish sand, and the sky was a threatening purple-gray, with fog reaching from a few feet above the ground, hanging almost motionless for what seemed to be miles, at least, before the thick levels of purple-gray sky began.