Reading Hardballkid's journal

You move along and are briefly exposed to sunlight, casting a shadow from which you draw back in momentary fear. Well, it makes good sense to be afraid right now, and you are glad that your reflexes are quick and hard and functional. It’s a big poker game, and you’re playing your cards close to your chest and watching dealer carefully and betting your strength.

Other people have walked like this. Other men have driven their bodies through long black minutes that shrouded their minds and dropped in deep folds over their hearts. And this was a shadow they could not escape but which bobbed crookedly in the relentless gray dust of the scorched road.

Your whole body is battered by little shocks of instinct and your mind is loose and unbuttoned and all your thinking is drained from you in disjointed blobs. Theres some uneven ground a bit to your right, and you make for it, but you see there is a barrier of darkness on either side of it and that the space between is narrowed down like a funnel, but you can’t stop yourself. He spots you. He casts his shadow in your direction as you run for your life. The whole place kicks and scratches at you with dark figures and then suddenly the earth jumps up and slams into your chest and crashes you down.

There is a reserve of coolness holding your muscles together. You know that you have been surrounded and that the enemy, as you know him, has cut off your escape route to the rear. But the wildness of their yelps tells you that they cannot see you were you are and that they are only guessing at your position in the hope you will reveal yourself by crying out, by waving the white flag. But you are to smart for that. You have been in this situation every minute since you were weaved into the pattern of this earth, for it is the game of existence which you are instinctively engaging.

Now are ye undeceived! Welcome, again, my children, to the communion of your race!