A Darkness in my Soul
by Dean R. Koontz
Version 1.0
A #bw release
ONE
Divinity Destroyed...
I
For a long while, I wondered if Dragonfly was still in
the heavens and whether the Spheres of Plague still floated
in airlessness, blind eyes watchful. I wondered whether
men still looked to the stars with trepidation and whether
the skies yet bore the cancerous seed of mankind. There
was no way for me to find out, for I lived in Hell during
those days, where news of the living gained precious little
circulation.
I was a digger into minds, a head-tripper. I esped. I
found secrets, knew lies, and reported all these things for
a price. I esped. Some questions were never meant to be
answered; some parts of a man's mind were never intend-
ed for scrutiny. Yet our curiosity is, at the same time, our
greatest virtue and our most serious weakness. I had
within my mind the power to satisfy any curiosity which
tickled me. I esped; I found; I knew. And then there was
a darkness in my soul, darkness unmatched by the depths
of space that lay lightless between the galaxies, an ebony
ache without parallel.
It started with a nerve-jangling ring of the telephone, a
mundane enough beginning.
I put down the book I was reading and lifted the
receiver and said, impatiently perhaps, "Hello?"
"Simeon?" the distant voice asked. He pronounced it
correctly—Sim-ee-on.
It was Harry Kelly, sounding bedraggled and bewil-
dered, two things he never was. I recognized his voice
because it had been—in years past—the only sound of
sanity and understanding in a world of wildly gabbling
self-seekers and power-mongers. I esped out and saw him
standing in a room that was strange to me, nervously
drumming his fingers on the top of a simulated oak desk.
The desk was studded with a complex panel of controls,
three telephones, and three-dimensional television screens
for monitoring interoffice activity—the work space of
someone of more than a little importance.
"What is it, Harry?"
"Sim, I have another job for you. If you want it, that is.
You don't have to take it if you're already wrapped up in
something private."
He had long ago given up his legal practice to act as my
agent, and he could be counted on for at least one call a
