The shock passed, my breathing steadied. A neuron fired somewhere in the folds of my brain and gave birth to a question:
— Am I dead?
— No. If you’d died, you’d have arrived here in a different capacity.
— What capacity?
— Not as a guest.
— I’m a guest here?
— For now, yes.
— Why? I was heading somewhere else.
— I wanted to meet you. I had to change the route.
— Why?
— I felt like it, so I changed it.
— What for?
— To talk.
— About what?
— About this and that. About the soul, for instance.
— The soul does not exist. — As a future engineer-physicist, I answered crisply.
— Indeed, there’s nothing to talk about. No soul, no subject for conversation. The offer stands all the same — sell me your soul.
— I won’t sell.
— Hm... You say it doesn’t exist. And you have no wish to sell what doesn’t exist for a good price?
— That’s exactly why I don’t want to. It doesn’t exist.
— Iron-clad logic, — the gentleman laughed.
The laugh seemed cold, ataraxic. People do not laugh like that. That is how you shake the air and frighten.
