The Hollow Man by Dan Simmons Read Free Book Online

quickly now, seeing it. “That’s why we have this constant static of people’s thoughts … what you call neurobabble … isn’t it, Jerry? We’re constantly breaking down other people’s thought waves. What did you call the hologram thing that does that?”
    “An interferometer.”
    Gail smiles again. “So we were born with faulty interferometers.”
    Jeremy lifts her hand and kisses her fingers. “Or overefficient ones.”
    Gail walks to the window and looks out toward the barn, trying to absorb these things. Jeremy leaves her thoughts to her, raising his mindshield enough not to intrude. After a moment he says, “There’s one other thing, kiddo.”
    She turns away from the window, holding her arms.
    “The reason Chuck Gilpen had that research in the first place,” he says. “Do you remember that Chuck’s working with the Fundamental Physics Group out at Lawrence Berkeley Labs?”
    Gail nods. “So?”
    “So for the past few years they’ve been hunting down all those smaller and smaller particles and studying the properties that rule them to get a hook on what’s real. What’s
really
real. And when they get past the gluons and quarks and charm and color, and do get a glimpse of reality on its most basic and persuasive level, you know what they get?”
    Gail shakes her head and hugs herself more tightly, seeing his answer even before he verbalizes it.
    “They get a series of probability equations that show standing wavefronts,” he says softly, his own skin breaking out in goose bumps. “They get the same squiggles and jiggles that Goldmann gets when he looks beyond the brain and finds the mind.”
    Gail’s voice is a whisper. “What does that
mean
, Jerry?”
    Jeremy abandons his iced tea with its melting ice cubes and goes to the fridge to get a beer. He pops the top and drinks deeply, pausing to burp once. Beyond Gail, thelate-afternoon light is painting the cherry trees beyond the barn in rich colors.
Out there
, he shares with Gail.
And in our minds. Different … and the same. The universe as a standing wavefront, as fragile and improbable as a baby’s dreams
.
    He burps again and says aloud, “Beats the hell out of me, kiddo.”

Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch’intrate
    O n the third day, Bremen rose and went out into the light. There was a small dock behind the shack, little more than two boards on pilings really, and it was here that Bremen stood and blinked at the sunrise while birds made riotous sounds in the swamp behind him and fish rose to feed in the river in front of him.
    On the first day he had been content to let Verge ferry him across the river and show him his fishing shack. The old man’s thoughts were a welcome change to Bremen’s exhausted mind: wordless thoughts, images without words, slow emotions without words, thoughts as rhythmic and soothing as the put-putting of the ancient outboard motor that propelled them across the slow-moving river.
    The shack had been more than Bremen had expected for forty-two dollars a day; beyond the dock the littlestructure boasted a porch, a tiny living room with screened windows, one sprung couch, and a rocking chair, a small kitchen with a half-sized refrigerator—there was electricity!—the bulky oven and promised hot plate, and finally a narrow table with a faded oilcloth. There was also a bedroom not much larger than the built-in bed itself, its single window looking out on an honest-to-God outhouse. The shower and sink were makeshift things in an open alcove outside the back door. But the blankets and folded sheets were clean, the three electric lights in the shack worked, and Bremen collapsed onto the sprung couch with an emotion very close to elation at having found this place … if one can feel elation while feeling a sadness so profound that it bordered on vertigo.
    Verge had come in and sat on the rocking chair. Remembering his manners, Bremen had gone through the grocery sacks, found the six-pack of beer that Norm