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Permutation city8/31/2023 ![]() ![]() Then he began to remember the details of his preparations. How could he have ever imagined reaching any other conclusion? What he’d done to himself was insane – and it had to be undone, as swiftly and painlessly as possible. And eventually, it did – to be replaced by one simple, perfectly coherent thought: I don’t want to be here. ![]() He rocked back and forth, on the verge of laughter, trying to keep his mind blank, waiting for the panic to subside. And he was sure that it would be worth it, right up to the moment when he swung the hammer down. He’d seen his father injure himself this way – but he knew that he needed firsthand experience to understand the mystery of pain. Another childhood memory: He held a nail to the wood, yes – but only to camouflage his true intentions. like the aftermath of a hammer blow to the thumb – and tinged with the very same mixture of surprise, anger, humiliation, and idiot bewilderment. The shock of realisation was a palpable thing: a red lesion behind his eyes, pulsing with blood. He leapt out of bed and crouched down on the carpet, fists to his eyes, face against his knees, lips moving soundlessly. He tried to recall exactly what he’d dreamt, without much hope unless he was catapulted awake by a nightmare, his dreams were usually evanescent. but the details remained elusive, and he began to suspect that it was nothing more than the lingering mood of a dream. He’d done something foolish, something insane, something he was going to regret, badly. He closed his eyes and let his mind grow blank – and then caught himself, suddenly uneasy, without knowing why. He spread his fingers on the sun-warmed sheet, and thought about drifting back to sleep. He couldn’t think why he’d slept so late, but he didn’t much care. Paul felt utterly refreshed – and utterly disinclined to give up his present state of comfort. Then he woke a little more, and the confusion passed. For one sleep-addled moment, still trying to wake, to collect himself, to order his life, it seemed to make as much sense to place these two fragments side-by-side – watching sunlit dust motes, forty years apart – as it did to follow the ordinary flow of time from one instant to the next. Dust motes drifted across the shaft of light which slanted down from a gap between the curtains, each speck appearing for all the world to be conjured into, and out of, existence – evoking a childhood memory of the last time he’d found this illusion so compelling, so hypnotic: He stood in the kitchen doorway, afternoon light slicing the room dust, flour, and steam swirling in the plane of bright air. Paul Durham opened his eyes, blinking at the room’s unexpected brightness, then lazily reached out to place one hand in a patch of sunlight at the edge of the bed. Prologue (Rip, tie, cut toy man) June 2045 ![]() La cité des permutants, le Bélial’, Saint-Mammès, 2022.Barnes and Noble Nook (USA), Greg Egan, 2017.Amazon Kindle (UK), Amazon Kindle (Australia) etc., Orion/Gollancz, London, 2010.Miasto Permutacji, Solaris, Stawiguda, 2007.Ciudad permutación, Ediciones B, Barcelona, 1998.La cité des permutants, Robert Laffont/Ailleurs et Demain, Paris, 1996.Translated by Axel Merz and Jürgen Martin. CyberCity, Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach, 1995. ![]()
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