— My last argument, — the gentleman said, examining the sphere in his hand. — If you don’t sign the contract, you will never feel this good again. You’ll spend your whole life remembering this minute. And you’ll spend your whole life hating yourself for refusing. Count to sixty.
He set the sphere on the table and rolled it toward me.
One. The sphere web-cracked and exploded. Thousands of shards, flashing like tiny suns, pierced through me.
Two. My body, torn out of the circle of physiological life by a flash of pain, lost its connection with my mind.
Three. My consciousness shed the weight of flesh, bone, and blood, soared upward, luxuriating in the lightness and boundless possibility of the state.
Four. Particles of consciousness scattered, spinning, bumping, jostling apart. Whatever force had bound them into one whole vanished.
Five. No body, no soul, no capacity to act or analyze, only bare witness to what was happening — this was the true lightness of being, the very quintessence of happiness.
Six. I felt something appear in the space occupied by the tiniest particles of myself.
Seven. It hovered in the air, radiating currents of unease and confusion.
Eight. I recognized her. It was her — the queen of my soul.
Nine. Drifting across the sky was the girl I’d so frantically pursued in the blue chamber. She was here.
Ten. The particles of my consciousness clustered into a little cloud, to wrap themselves around the girl.
Eleven. She laughed.
Twelve. My cold body surfaced out of nonexistence. Soulless, it floated up to the girl and hovered beside her.
Thirteen. The body drew a breath, and the little cloud of my soul found itself inside sixty kilograms of cold mass.
Fourteen. I took possession of my body again, and, strangely enough, felt none of the old burdensome discomforts. I felt good.
Fifteen. I reached out and, barely brushing her with my fingertips, stroked the divine silk of her skin.
Sixteen. The soft gold of her hair slid across my forearms, sending a nervous shiver through my body.
Seventeen. I saw her round gray eyes and my own reflection in her pupils. I drowned in them.
Eighteen. I tasted her lips on mine.
Nineteen. Her hot breath became my own.
Twenty. The beat of her heart became my own.
Twenty-one. Her body, the object of my every thought and longing, my unreachable horizon and my boundless sky, my religion and my life — became mine.
Twenty-two. I wanted, desperately, to dissolve into the happiness enveloping me.
Twenty-three. I tried to dissolve into that happiness.
Thirty. I had to dissolve.
Forty. I began to dissolve.
Fifty. I dissolved.
Fifty-eight. We turned into an ecstatic colloid of tenderness and passion, breaking two bodies down into molecules of love.
Fifty-nine. There were no longer two bodies. Above the world hovered Love itself, made flesh from two principles, masculine and feminine. There were no longer two souls. Only an explosive mixture remained.
Sixty. The mixture exploded.
