I am confident that the things that have been described for centuries as mystical insight are results of abnormal Multiverse sensitivity — either acq… - James P. Hogan

Linc didn't know if it was his imagination, but the streets seemed to have gotten older and dirtier - more so, surely, then was possible in the time that had gone by. What he remembered as the center of where the action was, and where all of life happened had turned into tired and shabby remnants of an age that was running down.

Had the store fronts always been so grubby with their cloudy windows, half hearted displays, the paint around the doors dulled and peeling like the once-high hopes of some forgotten opening day long ago? Had trash always stunk like this, piled in alleys and strewn along the gutters?

Above it all, high-rental buildings that had once thrust proudly toward the sky crumbled silently amid the winds, the rain, and the corrosive fames eating into them. They had degenerated into cheap hotels and apartments while business fled the cities for manicured office parks by the interstates.

But the people no longer stopped to gaze at these buildings, in any case. The figures on the sidewalks hurried on, avoiding each other's eyes, enwrapped in their own isolation.

Even those who stood or walked together aimed words at each other from behind facades that had become so second nature that even they themselves now mistook them for the persons atrophying within.

A city of brooding shells, inhabited by beings who hid inside shells.

The scene beyond was eerie - a tortured jungle of torn pipes and jagged twisted-metal sculptures rearing up out of nightmare chasms of shadow being cast by a few emergency lamps glowing dull red to preserve night vision. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she made out several shadowy helmeted figures crouching over weapons in the darker recesses and behind makeshift parapets of smashed machines and crumpled wreckage.

On Earth they've forgotten how to make everything except money. But what good is it, if there's nothing worthwhile left to buy?