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“I guess you will die sooner, Standing.”

“That’s your opinion,” I said. “But since you are so sure of it, why don’t you accept my proposition?”

“All right, Standing,” snarled Warden. “Roll him over, boys, and cinch him till you hear his ribs crack. Hutchins, show him you know how to do it.”

And they rolled me over and laced me as I had never been laced before. The head trusty certainly demonstrated his ability. You see, Hutchins was a scoundrel. But I did not believe that I was going to die. I knew—I say I knew—that I was not going to die.

“That’s pretty tight,” Captain Jamie urged reluctantly.

“I tell you,” said Doctor Jackson, “nothing can hurt him. He ought to have been dead long ago.”

Warden Atherton, after a hard struggle, managed to insert his forefinger between the lacing and my back.

“Hutchins,” he said. “You know your job. Now roll him over and let’s look at him.”

They rolled me over on my back. I stared up at them. But I was well trained. I had behind me the thousands of hours in the jacket, and, plus that, I had faith in what Morrell had told me.

“Now, laugh, damn you, laugh,” said the Warden to me.

I was able to smile up into the Warden’s face.

The door clanged. I managed to writhe myself across the floor until the edge of the sole of my right shoe touched the door. I could at least rap knuckle talk to Morrell.

But though I managed to call Morrell and tell him I intended trying the experiment, he was prevented by the guards from replying.

I remember my serenity of mind. The customary pain of the jacket was in my body, but my mind was so passive that I was no more aware of the pain than was I aware of the floor beneath me or the walls around me. Never was a man in better mental and spiritual condition for such an experiment. Of course, this was largely due to my extreme weakness. But there was more to it. I had neither doubts nor fears.

I began my concentration of will. My body was numbing and prickling through the loss of circulation. I directed my will to the little toe of my right foot, and I willed that toe to cease to be alive in my consciousness. I willed that toe to die. There was the hard struggle. Morrell had warned me that it would be so. But I knew that that toe would die, and I knew when it was dead. Joint by joint it had died under the compulsion of my will.

The rest was easy, but slow. Joint by joint, toe by toe, all the toes of both my feet ceased to be. And joint by joint, the process went on. My flesh below the ankles had ceased. All below my knees had ceased.

I knew that I was making my body die. I was devoted to that sole task. At the end of an hour my body was dead to the hips.

When I reached the level of my heart, the first blurring and dizzying of my consciousness occurred. I had shifted my concentration to my fingers. My brain cleared again, and the death of my arms to the shoulders was most rapidly accomplished.

At this stage my body was all dead, save my head [32] and a little patch of my chest. My heart was beating steadily but feebly.

At this point it seemed as if a prodigious enlargement of my brain was taking place within the skull itself that did not enlarge. Most perplexing was the seeming enlargement of brain. It seemed to me that the periphery of my brain was already outside my skull and still expanding. Time and space underwent an enormous extension. Thus, without opening my eyes to verify, I knew that the walls of my narrow cell had receded until it was like a vast audience-chamber [33] . And while I contemplated the matter, I knew that they continued to recede. Of course, this was pure fantastic whim, and I knew it.

The extension of time was equally remarkable. Only at long intervals did my heart beat. I counted the seconds between my heart-beats. At first, as I clearly noted, over a hundred seconds intervened between beats.

Morrell had told me that he had won freedom from his body by killing his body—or by eliminating his body from his consciousness. But—and here was the problem, and Morrell had not warned me—should I also will my head to be dead? If I did so, would not the body of Darrell Standing be for ever dead?

I decided to kill the chest and the slow-beating heart. So I no longer had chest nor heart. I was only a mind, a soul, a consciousness—call it what you will—and my nebulous brain inside my skull was expanded, and was continuing to expand, beyond my skull.

And then I was off and away [34] . I had vaulted prison roof and California sky, and was among the stars. I walked among the stars. I was a child. I was clad in frail, delicate robes that shimmered in the cool starlight. In my hand I carried a long glass wand. With the tip of this wand I must touch each star.

It was a long way among the stars. For centuries I trod space, with the tip of my wand tapping each star I passed. The way grew brighter. I was aware all the time that it was I, Darrell Standing, who walked among the stars and tapped them with a wand of glass.

And then the tip of my wand missed a star, and on the instant I knew I had been guilty of a great crime. On the instant a knock, vast and compulsive, inexorable and mandatory, smote me and reverberated across the universe. I was Darrell Standing, the life-convict, lying in his strait-jacket in solitary. And I knew the immediate cause of that summons. It was a rap of the knuckle by Ed Morrell, beginning the spelling of some message. It was a simple message, namely: “Standing, are you there?” He had tapped it rapidly, while the guard was at the far end of the corridor.

Now I know, my reader, that this story seems a farrago. I agree with you. It was experience, however. But it was real to me.

It may have taken Ed Morrell two minutes to tap his question. Yet, to me, aeons elapsed between the first tap of his knuckle and the last. And all the time I knew it was Ed Morrell’s knuckle that thus cruelly held me earth-bound. I tried to speak to him, to ask him to cease. But I had eliminated my body from my consciousness. My body lay dead in the jacket, though I still inhabited the skull. In vain I strove to will my foot to tap my message to Morrell.

Next I pursued my way among the stars and was not called back. From time to time, I stirred—please, my reader, don’t miss that verb—I STIRRED. I moved my legs, my arms. I was aware of clean, soft bed linen against my skin. I was aware of bodily well-being. Oh, it was delicious!

I awoke. Everything was the natural and the expected. I was I, be sure of that. But I was not Darrell Standing! Darrell Standing had nothing to do with the being I was. Darrell Standing was as yet unborn and would not be born for centuries. But you will see.