The known Universe lays on the shelving banks of the unknown, pulsating gently, like an amoeba in the slime of a greater reality: an amoeba without consciousness, wholly unaware if this tiny event was the the extinction of that random collection of categories, or turning full circle a world or galaxy, those other haphazard assemblies, into nothing.

Nothing?

But perhaps we do have a soul, and perhaps, by a supreme effort in a moment of agony and separation, the soul so warped the continuum in its immediate vicinity as to create for itself its own private Nirvana, a bubble of pure timelessness in which it would be free forever.

Is the will to live strong enough to achieve such a conversion? Is there yet another Universe, then, in which an infinity of such bubbles drift, each with its own captive soul awaiting liberation?

So is this life your first time, or the last......................