Jake Puckett’s Reviews > Insomnia > Status Update

CONT: ... or perhaps there is no Random beyond a certain level; we suspect that may be the case, but we have no real way of telling.
We do know that it is sometbing from one of these higher levels that has interested itself in Ed, and that something else from up there made a countermove. That countermove is you, Ralph and Lois.]

CONT: if you like—ruled by the Random and the Purpose.

Above these floors, inaccessible to us but very much a part of the same tower of existence, live other beings. Some of them are marvellous and wonderful; others are hideous beyond our ability to comprehend, let alone yours. These beings might be called the Higher Purpose and the Higher Random

Clotho: [Be content with this: beyond the Short-time levels of existence and the Long-Time levels on which Lachesis, Atropos, and I exist, there are yet other levels. These are inhabited by creatures we could call All-Timers, beings which are either eternal or so close to it as to make no difference. Short-Timers and Long-Timers live in overlapping spheres of existence-on connected floors of the same building,

[Try to think of life as a kind of building,Ralph-what you would call a skyscraper.]Except that wasn't quite what Clotho was thinking of,Ralph discovered.For one flickering moment he seemed to catch an image from the mind of the other, one he found both exciting and disturbing:an enormous tower constructed of dark and sooty stone,standing in a field of red roses.Slit windows twisted up its sides in a brooding spiral.

"Dear Jesus, I'm a vampire."
But was that the right word? he wondered suddenly. Wasn't it at least possible that, in the world of auras, a life-stealer was called a Centurion?
Ed's pallid, frantic face rose before him like a ghost which returns to accuse its murderer, and Ralph, suddenly terrified, wrapped his arms around his knees and lowered his head to rest upon them.

He suspected he had glimpsed the leading edge of a force so huge and so vital that it made all the nuclear weapons created since 1945 seem about as powerful as a child's cap-pistol fired into an empty peach can. Enough force to destroy the universe, perhaps... or to create a new one.

“It's a place in Bangor called Riverview Estates."
Ralph knew the name; had gotten a brochure himself, as a matter of fact. One of those mass-mailing things, this one targeted at people sixty-five and over. He and McGovern had shared a laugh about it ... but the laugh had been just a touch uneasy—like kids whistling past the graveyard.

-and saw a dark gray balloon-string rising from her. Its point of origin wasn't the skull, however, as had been the case in all the people Ralph had seen while in this heightened state of awareness; Rosalie's balloon-string rose from her muzzle.
Now you know the most essential difference between dogs and men, he thought. Their souls reside in different places.

It came to him as he walked that his hopes had been denied. He had been pushed into the tunnel after all, and the dark was all around him.

It came to him as he walked that his hopes had been denied. He had been pushed into the tunnel after all, and the dark was all around him.