7

He begins to feel hungry. It is not a hunger for food, however. It is a more pervasive hunger. It increases as he looks at the thing in the volume. It is a hunger that he is, slowly, coming to remember. It is a hunger that awaits definition. He has felt this hunger, before. He thinks of the joy of hunger. Not a joy, so much as an enthusiasm for reaching a state of fulfillment. He loves being hungry. The hunger motivates him, yet he knows not the direction of this motivation. Nor does he care. He wants to consume, to eat, to act, to fulfill. But he does not want to be sated. The hunger wakes him. The dream drips away, the library melts, the book dissolves. The machine-human headed thing remains, and he stands in front of it, no longer bound but intent. He knows it will speak. He waits for it to speak. It speaks.