Dimly they/it perceived the final annihilation of a minuscule agglutination of refined masses—the Palomino. It was gone, lost in an infinite brightness. They/it remained, content and infinite now as the white hole itself.
They had been compressed, compacted, but had passed beyond and through with their selves still intact. With the passage came peace, and time to contemplate.
On a beach was a grain of sand. The sand was part of a continent, the continent a component of a world, the world a speck of substance in the sea of infinity. They were part of that world, part of every world, for in passing out the white hole their substance had become dispersed. An atom of Charlie to a nine-world system, a molecule of Kate to a local cluster of stars, a tiny diffuse section of Holland spread thin over a dozen galaxies.
Yet they could still think, for thought does not respect the trifling limitations of time and space. They were still them and this new thing they had become.
Their thoughts spanned infinity, as did their finely spread substance, and they now had an eternity in which to contemplate the universe they had become . . .
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
THE BLACK HOLE
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The Black Hole Page 21