The Street That Wasnt There | Page 8

window into a blank world. His neighbors' houses
already were gone. They had not lived with them as he had lived with
this room. Their interests had been divided, thinly spread; their
thoughts had not been concentrated as his upon an area four blocks by
three, or a room fourteen by twelve.
* * * * *
Staring through the window, he saw it again. The same vision he had
looked upon before and yet different in an indescribable way. There

was the city illumined in the sky. There were the elliptical towers and
turrets, the cube-shaped domes and battlements. He could see with
stereoscopic clarity the aerial bridges, the gleaming avenues sweeping
on into infinitude. The vision was nearer this time, but the depth and
proportion had changed ... as if he were viewing it from two concentric
angles at the same time.
And the face ... the face of magnitude ... of power of cosmic craft and
evil....
Mr. Chambers turned his eyes back into the room. The clock was
ticking slowly, steadily. The greyness was stealing into the room.
The table and radio were the first to go. They simply faded away and
with them went one corner of the room.
And then the elephant ash tray.
"Oh, well," said Mr. Chambers, "I never did like that very well."
Now as he sat there it didn't seem queer to be without the table or the
radio. It was as if it were something quite normal. Something one could
expect to happen.
Perhaps, if he thought hard enough, he could bring them back.
But, after all, what was the use? One man, alone, could not stand off
the irresistible march of nothingness. One man, all alone, simply
couldn't do it.
He wondered what the elephant ash tray looked like in that other
dimension. It certainly wouldn't be an elephant ash tray nor would the
radio be a radio, for perhaps they didn't have ash trays or radios or
elephants in the invading dimension.
He wondered, as a matter of fact, what he himself would look like
when he finally slipped into the unknown. For he was matter, too, just
as the ash tray and radio were matter.

He wondered if he would retain his individuality ... if he still would be
a person. Or would he merely be a thing?
There was one answer to all of that. He simply didn't know.
Nothingness advanced upon him, ate its way across the room, stalking
him as he sat in the chair underneath the lamp. And he waited for it.
The room, or what was left of it, plunged into dreadful silence.
Mr. Chambers started. The clock had stopped. Funny ... the first time in
twenty years.
He leaped from his chair and then sat down again.
The clock hadn't stopped.
It wasn't there.
There was a tingling sensation in his feet.
* * * * *

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