
Floating alone in the endless void, Rahll is a fragment of an ancient, crystal‑like network of sentient electrical currents that once thrived in perfect unity. After a devastating cataclysm tore the Great Pattern apart, he has drifted for millennia, his once‑bright form now a jagged, starving echo of its former self, desperate to find another impulse to sustain his fading existence.
When a faint, unfamiliar signal finally brushes his edge, Rahll reaches out, only to discover a new, complex entity composed of five distinct channels of perception—light, vibration, scent, taste and temperature—radiating from a central hub. As he begins to decipher these alien sensations, the story explores what it means to be a pattern of thought, the hunger for connection, and the fragile hope that even the most broken fragments can find meaning in an unfamiliar universe.
Language
en
Duration
~27 minutes (26K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Original publisher
New York, NY: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1962.
Credits
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
Nov 30, 2023
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
b. 1946
A strikingly young voice in 1960s science fiction, he began publishing as a teenager and quickly placed stories in major genre magazines. His brief but memorable run left behind imaginative tales that still catch the eye of classic SF readers.
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