06/02/96, Tuesday ‫ט"ז בשבט התשנ"ו‬

In the Space of a Heart Beat

By Daniel Feiglin
The End
Knock, knock, knock!
I glanced aside from the computer monitor to the door. Who, for heaven's sake, could
be looking for me, here of all places, at eleven o'clock at night?
For years, I maintained a workroom away from the house, next to the settlement
secretariat. That way I could get on with my business free from domestic interference and
unwanted visitors.
"Come in!"
A man of medium height, wearing a grey raincoat, opened the door. He wore a grey
hat pulled down over his forehead somewhat obscuring his face. The raincoat seemed out of
place on this late March spring evening. The rains had come and gone.
The man entered somewhat diffidently, looked about as if unsure of himself, and then
asked me, "Are you Saba Savion?"
His voice told me nothing.
"Sure. And with whom do I have the honour?"
He half smiled at my barely hidden annoyance at the interruption. Without troubling
to identify himself, he asked, "Do you mind if I sit down?” occupying the chair across from
my table as he spoke.
A big blowfly buzzed in the still open door and proceeded to make noisy circuits of
the room. Both of us glanced up at the blowfly. He smiled again, rose and closed the door.
"I'm sorry about that", he said, resuming his seat, "I suppose you want to know what
this is all about."
"I can hardly wait."
"What I have to tell you might be a bit hard to take."
"Who died?"
"You!"
"Come on, cut the crap!"
"Look at the blow fly!"
I had forgotten about the pesky blowfly. After a moment I located it. It seemed to be
stationary, in mid air, not doing anything.
"Do you notice something odd about the fly?" the man asked.
" It seems frozen in mid air!"
We both remained silent, watching the fly for a few moments. I noticed that the room
seemed to be enveloped in silence. The music CD ROM on the computer had stopped
playing, and in fact I could no longer hear the buzz of the computer's cooling fan. I noticed
that the digital display on the computer box was flicking on and off ad a very slow rate. The
video screen also seemed to rise and fall in intensity, as if a long power wave was washing
over it.
Exasperation started to creep over me.
"You were going to tell me what this is all about", I reminded him.
"You are experiencing your last heart beat", answered the man opposite me.
"Rubbish. A heartbeat takes less than a second. We've been sitting around talking for
about three minutes - why even this remark ran to about ten seconds!"
"No, no. It's not quite that simple. You are now operating in a form of psychological
time which can be quite independent of biological time."
"And you I suppose, are the much to be feared Angel of Death?"
He merely smiled and said nothing.

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 "That's very funny", I continued. "The least you could have turned on was a dangling
skeleton with a scythe or maybe scary red devil with a red hot pitch fork. What do I get? A
man dressed in a grey hat and raincoat. And anyway, for how psychologically long can the
last heartbeat go on? A minute? An hour? A year?"
The man opposite me sighed.
"Where should I begin?" he mused, as if to himself. He paused for a moment and
continued:
"The Angel of Death does not exist. What people, or as I prefer to think of them, my
clients perceive in their last heart beat is a product of their own accumulated fears,
expectations and preconceptions."
"And you are a product of my fears, expectations and preconceptions?"
"More or less. And as to how long this form of psychological time can last, your
intuition was correct. It can be indefinite."
"The whole thing sounds like a crashing bore to me."
"Actually it could be far worse than that."
"How so?"
"At a certain point a client finds that he has nothing further to say to me."
"And then you whip him off into good old eternity?"
"No. I am not that crude. Even in my profession there is room for finesse and
elegance. I always offer my clients an opportunity to rerun their lives."
"Something like a home video movie?" I prompted.
"Almost. Much more realistic."
"I cannot imagine why people would want such a thing", I mused.
"Most of them seem to want that more than anything else."
" It smacks to me a bit like narcissism. Maybe just stalling. And you offer this all in
the space of a heartbeat?"
"Yes, but only the last heartbeat. And you are right. It is a bit narcissist. The reactions
of my clients seeing themselves as they really are provide them with a never-ending source
of wonder. As for stalling, who cares? As you correctly intuited, I have all eternity. Would
you like to try it?"
"I have a question for you Mr. Angel of Death or whatever in a grey hat and
raincoat."
The man opposite me cocked up his eyebrows and a faint grin crossed his face. "Ask,
and all will be answered my son", he said in a mockingly unctuous tone.
"Suppose", I began, "that I accept your proposition. You replay my life for me. What
happens when we get to the point of my last heart beat? Do we go through this little comedy
again?"
"Let us suppose", he replied.
"So", I continued, with a triumphant note in my voice, "it seems that I would
ultimately find myself in an infinitely recursive loop, from which there is no break out. Why
not? You agreed with me that you had all eternity!"
"I can see that you are going to be a difficult client"
"Listen to him", I jibed as if to no one in particular, "I have just been offered a one
way ticket on an endless roller coaster ride to nowhere, all in the space of a heart beat and I'm
meant to take it seriously!"
The man started to say something, but I interrupted.
"I haven't finished. The fact that I can experience anything at all, even in the space of
one heartbeat points my not being totally removed from the world of reality, from which I
presumably came."
" So?"

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 "That means that each successive repetition of my life story is going to take place in a
shorter portion of my last heart beat. In fact, the portions would have to decrease for
example, geometrically to ensure that I remain within that bound. Now then", I continued,
adopting the pose of a university professor, "if each replay takes less physical time than its
predecessor, and if indeed, the ability to stage the replay requires contact, be it of the most
tenuous kind, with the world of reality, say for example, my own store of memories, then we
have to face a bogey called entropy."
"What's the point?"
"The point is very simply loss of information from run to run. Attenuation. Like the
wear and tear effect that would become progressively noticeable if you replayed the same
home video 10, 100, 1000 times. Ergo: Beyond a certain point the replay of my life would
run to noisy mush, and eventually pure white noise. Is that by any chance what you call
Hell?"
" I knew that you were going to be difficult."
" Tell me something else", I continued, " What does your employer think of the 'heads
I win, tails you lose' deal you're offering me?"
The man shrugged. "It's the same deal I offer everyone."
"You haven't answered my question!” I persisted, "What does your employer say?"
"Why don't you ask my employer yourself?” he snapped back petulantly.
"How?” I asked.
"You've had a life time to figure that out for yourself."
For a few moments, we looked at each other across the table without speaking.
"You said", I proffered, " that you would answer any questions that I asked."
"Correct."
"You didn't answer my question about the way of talking to your employer. You just
returned a clever riposte. That is not an answer."
"I don't think that you are exactly in a position to tell me what is or isn't an answer"
"We'll see", I said, the germ of an idea forming in my mind.
"Is there a break out possibility from the infinite loop?"
"Yes."
"Is it attainable through the use of human reasoning?"
"Yes."
Carefully, now:
"Can I refuse to accept your offer?"
"No. Not really."
"Assume for a moment, that I discover how to break out from all of this. Does the
alternative differ significantly from what you are offering?"
"Yes."
"Does it entail ultimate oblivion as does your offer?"
"Only my employer could answer that."
"Do you know in advance, with absolute certainty, how any given client will behave?
What foreknowledge do you have?"
"To your first question, no, to your second question, I receive a full dossier from
Central Records on each client. As you probably know, my employer updates them annually.
Only my employer has the kind of foreknowledge you imply."
"Do you mind if I have a few minutes to think?"
"Take all eternity, so far as I am concerned!"
I stood up from my chair, and started to pace up and down as if engrossed in deep
thought. The man simply watched me. On each pass back and forth behind my desk, I added
a centimeter of distance. So the man was an unstoppable executioner, but not a mind reader.

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 After several hundred years of elapsed psychological time, I maneuvered myself to
within a centimeter of the door.
Without so much as an inkling of warning, I threw it open and stepped outside, into ...
____________________

The Beginning
I woke up as if from a long deep sleep, in a patch of soft dry grass. Around me were
trees and bushes, laid out as in what appeared to be a sort of botanical garden. From time to
time small animals would dart out from the foliage only to disappear with equal swiftness. I
noticed larger shapes moving in the distant shadows, evidencing larger animals. Birds
fluttered and twittered among the branches of the trees. The whispering rush of a nearby
brook completed the idyll.
I moved my limbs, stretched and breathed deeply. I had an odd feeling that I was
somehow disjointed from my body. It moved to my thoughts and feelings yet it was not quite
me.
I overheard the voice of the man I had just left in a quiet conversation with someone
else, also unseen.
"What do you think about these?” asked the man, "Will they be better than the last
ones?"
"Hard to say", came the answer, "Where did you put the other..."
"I merged them for easy transfer..."
The voices drifted away.
Left to myself, I started to visually explore myself and then my surroundings. Again I
tried to stretch, and wiggle my toes.
"Ummm", purred a female voice almost from inside my own head, "that's nice!"
"Who on earth is that?” I thought-said to one in particular.
My answer came almost immediately. Firmly, but very gently, my visual and mental
perspective started to distort - no, not distort but transform into that of a female. And then it
snapped back to normal.
Again, the same female voice as before, "Oops, I beg your pardon! I haven't quite
figured out how to go through our senses without bumping."
"Our senses?” I asked-thought, "What's going on here?"
"Can't you see?” replied the female voice, this time with a tinkling laugh, "There are
two of here! Look, close your eyes, shut off your ears and come inside yourself!"
I followed the voice's instructions without demur.
Instantly I found myself locked in an emotional embrace, which washed around my
senses hearing lights, seeing smells and smelling sights. The tactile sense was exquisite, yet
entirely absent. Most of all, the sense of simultaneous unity and individuality tore at my
senses like the irresistible pull of a whirlpool. Then a slow but persistent feeling of
withdrawal, of separation, accompanied by just a touch of the sorrow of departure.
It was an intimacy, which transcended male female contact, dwarfing any residual
sexual impulses remaining in either of us.
I slowly recovered my senses, but I knew that I was not alone. There was an
emotional after-glow, not of my own person, nor of my own making. Behind the smile I felt
playing on my face, there was another smile, no, again, the tinkling laugh.
I or should I say we, were bounced back to reality by the sound of a familiar voice -
"Yes, I think they are ready for the next stage," said the man, now without grey hat or
raincoat.
"Uh oh", I thought to myself, "This looks like trouble!"

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 The female voice came in, "Yes I remember him. He looked like the headmaster at
my school when I was a kid. He used to scare the daylights out of us! How did he appear to
you?"
I told her. She chuckled dryly.
"You got off lightly. I started to scream for help, and I finished up diving out of a
fourth storey window."
I shared her shudder of fear and revulsion from the recollection. It felt like a punch in
the stomache.
Our conversation was interrupted by the appearance of the man in front of us, directly
in our line of sight. Over to the right there appeared a shimmering circular glowing form,
which might just have had some of the features of a human head but not quite. I-we stood up
shakily.
"Good", said the man in a tone of self-satisfaction, "You seem to have found yourself.
Do you have any idea where you are?"
His glibness annoyed me.
"I'm with Alice in Wonderland", I replied. "This is evidently the Mad Hatter's tea
party, you are the White Hare and yonder face", I said pointing to the shimmering head-no
head, "is the Cheshire Cat."
The man's face clouded over with anger.
"I'll have you know that this is anything but Wonderland, I'm no White Hare and what
you called the Cheshire cat is my Employer, you - you Door Mouse!"
"At least Alice is real enough." I was determined to have the last word, but to no
avail.
"Enough", thundered a voice from the shimmering head-no head. "Now that you have
finished identifying White Hares, Cheshire Cats and doubtlessly other sundry wildlife, we
might as well get down to business. Separate them!"
"Now you've done it", wailed the female voice from inside me. I detected a small sob,
felt a teardrop, and then nothing.
_______________

I woke up as if from a long deep sleep, in a patch of soft dry grass. Around me were
trees and bushes, laid out as in what appeared to be a sort of botanical garden. From time to
time small animals would dart out from the foliage only to disappear with equal swiftness. I
noticed larger shapes moving in the distant shadows, evidencing larger animals. Birds
fluttered and twittered among the branches of the trees. The whispering rush of a nearby
brook completed the idyll.
I moved my limbs, stretched and breathed deeply and sat up. Alongside me slowly
coming awake, lay the most sublimely beautiful female, I could ever have hoped to see. We
were both stark naked, with young the healthy bodies of about twenty year old biological
age. We looked at each other without a trace of coyness.
Without exchanging a word, we both sensed that we had been endowed with the
knowledge and the experience of old, very old people, alive maybe thousands of years, the
accrued Wisdom of Generations. We were a pair of ancient twenty year olds.
We barely had time to get to our feet, when a stentorian voice thundered out:
"From any of the trees you may eat; but from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and
Evil, you shall not eat. For on the day you eat there from, you will not live beyond the space
of a heartbeat..."

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