
In the wreckage of a bomb‑scarred city, a young survivor and a grey‑bearded old man find themselves sealed inside a crumbling cellar. With the street above a chaotic scene of fire and rescue crews, their only company is the dim glow of a pocket flashlight and the weight of tons of brick pressing down. As panic threatens to overtake them, the two strangers cling to each other’s presence, searching for any sliver of hope.
The elder, a quiet scientist, begins to explain a radical idea: that all matter is essentially empty space, a tangle of energy that could be mentally dissolved. He proposes a daring experiment—visualizing themselves as “nothing” and using the power of will to slip through solid rock like smoke. The younger man, terrified yet desperate, agrees to try the untested mental escape, setting the stage for a tense battle between fear and imagination.
Listeners are drawn into a claustrophobic world where physics and survival intertwine, offering a thought‑provoking glimpse into how far the human mind might go when faced with the ultimate choice between surrender and daring ingenuity.
Language
en
Duration
~8 minutes (7K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Original publisher
United States: Fictioneers, Inc.,1942.
Credits
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2022-10-12
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1914–1990
A driving force in American science fiction, this editor, publisher, and writer helped shape what generations of readers found on bookstore shelves. He was especially influential through Ace Books and later as the founder of DAW Books, the first U.S. publishing company devoted entirely to science fiction and fantasy.
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