“Get lost, Blackie,” I said. “And don’t forget to collect your gun on the way out. I don’t want the neighbor’s dog bringing it home and starting talk.”
He slid past me and down the steps and was gone in the night. For just a moment, I had a feeling that something else had slipped away; some weight in my mind that glimmered and was gone. I had a dim feeling that I had forgotten something; fleeting images of strange scenes flashed in my mind: dark hillside, and places where giant machines roared unendingly, and a beach with dinosaurs. Then that was gone too.
I rubbed my head, but that didn’t seem to stimulate my memory. Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been important—not as important as being alive on a night like tonight.
Then the door opened and Lisa was there.
44
I woke in the night; in my half-sleep I sensed the thoughts of the great machine as it contemplated the end of the long drama of its existence; and for an instant together I/we mourned the passing of a thing inexpressibly beautiful, irretrievably lost.
And now it was time for that act of will by the over-intellect which would dissolve it back into the primordial energy quanta from which it had sprung. But first, an instant before, a final human gesture—to the future that would be and the past that would not. To the infinite emptiness I/we sent out one last pulse:
“Goodby.”