If the zone where I found myself was inhabited, it could in any case only be by neohumans; the organism of a savage could never have stood up to the journey I had made. I now anticipated without joy, and even with a certain annoyance, an encounter with one of my fellow creatures. The death of Fox, then the crossing of the Great Gray Space, had desiccated me inside; I no longer felt any desire, and certainly not the one, described by Spinoza, of persevering in my being; I regretted, however, that the world would survive me. The inanity of the world, evident in the life story of Daniel, had ceased to appear acceptable to me; I saw in it only a dull place, devoid of potentialities, from which light was absent.