Excerpt from Chapter 24: The Starry Path
Niko kept walking, over hills, across railroad tracks and through streams, while listening to the sound of the Earth turning. He ascended to the summit of Skytop Mountain and kept on going higher and higher... until he had walked right off the world.
He passed groups of people in conversation: their demeanor reminded him of learned masters at a university. No hatred, no violence...just dignity, kindness and love of learning. People he had known drifted past, and he could see the glory of the starry heavens right through them. Mother...Father...wise minds of many ages spoke soft words of encouragement. He recognized savants of times past who knew how to build mighty works and harness cosmic forces. Astronomers and calendar makers, wisdom teachers, fearless savants who had probed the Mysteries.
“Is this the right path?” he asked Archimedes.
“Keep going, Sage Nikola.”
“If you need help,” said Pythagoras, “all you have to do is ask.”
“Courage, friend,” said Giordano Bruno. “No matter what they do to you, don't be afraid to speak the truth.”
Eventually he started to encounter other kinds of beings: creatures of ice and crystal, floating gas cloud colonies, plasma serpents...collections of intelligent numbers, sentient trees and rocks, group-minds composed of whirling atoms, planets that thought great slow thoughts as they brought life into being.
He beheld a universe unutterably vast, in which he was less than a molecule: he had never experienced such a tremendous mixture of fear, awe and wonder. His journey took him across rivers of stars like sparkling carpets, each point of light a maelstrom of electromagnetic forces, on frequencies far above human comprehension.
He finally reached a plateau where one universe lay atop another. He sensed a tiny gap, turned sideways into it, and disappeared.
Niko kept walking, over hills, across railroad tracks and through streams, while listening to the sound of the Earth turning. He ascended to the summit of Skytop Mountain and kept on going higher and higher... until he had walked right off the world.
He passed groups of people in conversation: their demeanor reminded him of learned masters at a university. No hatred, no violence...just dignity, kindness and love of learning. People he had known drifted past, and he could see the glory of the starry heavens right through them. Mother...Father...wise minds of many ages spoke soft words of encouragement. He recognized savants of times past who knew how to build mighty works and harness cosmic forces. Astronomers and calendar makers, wisdom teachers, fearless savants who had probed the Mysteries.
“Is this the right path?” he asked Archimedes.
“Keep going, Sage Nikola.”
“If you need help,” said Pythagoras, “all you have to do is ask.”
“Courage, friend,” said Giordano Bruno. “No matter what they do to you, don't be afraid to speak the truth.”
Eventually he started to encounter other kinds of beings: creatures of ice and crystal, floating gas cloud colonies, plasma serpents...collections of intelligent numbers, sentient trees and rocks, group-minds composed of whirling atoms, planets that thought great slow thoughts as they brought life into being.
He beheld a universe unutterably vast, in which he was less than a molecule: he had never experienced such a tremendous mixture of fear, awe and wonder. His journey took him across rivers of stars like sparkling carpets, each point of light a maelstrom of electromagnetic forces, on frequencies far above human comprehension.
He finally reached a plateau where one universe lay atop another. He sensed a tiny gap, turned sideways into it, and disappeared.