David was a historian at the institute.<\/p>\n
The machine had been cold, like the look on his father’s face when he cried.<\/p>\n
The noises that erupted from it felt uncoordinated and overeager, like the dreams where he could not stop\u00a0running and falling.<\/p>\n
The nurse had been friendly, like the voices in his head when there was no one else to tell.<\/p>\n
The doctor had been professional, like a salesman, like a monk, like a dictionary.<\/p>\n
The map of his brain showed terrifying patches of darkness and broken symmetries. But these only worried him. Everyone else only cared about a small smudge – more likely the thumbprint of an amateur in the darkroom, he had concluded. Space, progression, options, choice, determinism, time, death. It was unclear whether anything had changed. Except for a very particular prescience; mildly heightened; he had carried it with him for many years already as a concern with the lifespan of the sun, and the cold nothing promised by Einstein.<\/p>\n
On the way home he became distracted by the dangerous turns of another car, and the beautiful vision of a woman walking in sunlight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
David was a historian at the institute. The machine had been cold, like the look on his father’s face when he cried. The noises that erupted from it felt uncoordinated and overeager, like the dreams where he could not stop\u00a0running and falling. The nurse had been friendly, like the voices in his head when there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[159,90,114,106],"tags":[110,119],"metadata":[],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-blog-posts","category-story","category-the-traveller-is-the-journey","tag-fiction","tag-madness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":812,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2016\/05\/03\/story-of-a-slave-in-the-desert\/","url_meta":{"origin":803,"position":0},"title":"Story of a slave in the desert","author":"Pala","date":"May 3, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"He had been walking since before he could remember, and before that he had escaped. There had been dunes of fine white dust and shattered stones lining desiccated river beds. He had passed passages decorated by impossible fossils, decaying wooden signs and roughly hewn markers proving undeniable theses and directions,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1217,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2017\/08\/23\/warm-rays-in-cold-rooms-v1\/","url_meta":{"origin":803,"position":1},"title":"Warm Rays in Cold Rooms (v1)","author":"Pala","date":"August 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: This essay\/story appears in two versions (see also Warm Rays in Cold Rooms (v2)) and it is not clear which one is the later or more up-to-date of the two, hence they are both published here. After paying his respect to the anonymous pornstar, Professor Steven Stephenson, said,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1115,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2017\/10\/02\/noodles-and-lunar-fruit\/","url_meta":{"origin":803,"position":2},"title":"Noodles and Lunar Fruit","author":"Pala","date":"October 2, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: One of Shai's special skills was writing short stories in a style used by famous authors. The two short stories below are a reflection of these attempts. The first written in the writing style of the American-British novelist and screenwriter, Raymond Chandler[I] and the second in the writing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1223,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2017\/08\/23\/warm-rays-in-cold-rooms-v2\/","url_meta":{"origin":803,"position":3},"title":"Warm Rays in Cold Rooms (v2)","author":"Pala","date":"August 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: This post\/story appears in two versions (see also Warm Rays in Cold Rooms (v1)) and it is not clear which one is the later or more up to date of the two, hence they are both published here. I was walking around the room, trying to focus on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1198,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2014\/09\/15\/the-dickens-stalker-eg\/","url_meta":{"origin":803,"position":4},"title":"The Dickens Stalker – EG","author":"Pala","date":"September 15, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The Bible Nut, whose given name was Joseph, had recently found out that between 7:00 pm and 7:30 pm each day the caf\u00e9 across the road would sell their muffins at the reduced price of two dollars. Joseph\u2019s permit allowed him to speak until 7:30 pm but lately, he had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1153,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2017\/05\/11\/r-yona-at-jeta-grove\/","url_meta":{"origin":803,"position":5},"title":"R Yona at Jeta Grove","author":"Pala","date":"May 11, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: The short story below was found in Shai's Google Drive notes and is clearly incomplete. The Brain Storming section at the end of the narrative alludes to the continuation of the story An apocryphal Braisa, non-canonical and existing only in Arabic: \u201cRabbi Yona was lost at sea. Can\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/padotI-cX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803"},{"taxonomy":"metadata","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/metadata?post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}