“He could feel himself gliding down like the sail of a weightless craft, forever plunging into the great beyond below where mermaids sing and summon their lovers home, further down into the depths of some complacent serenity, further down where thoughts float away and never return and the lightness is so grand that there is no other worldly place imaginable, for there is no world left to beconsidered. There is only the soul, free from the prison of the body, and it is released to travelanother millennium through time, carrying with it the progress and industry gathered from themind previously occupied.”