Page:John Uri Lloyd - Etidorhpa.djvu/366

 === CHAPTER L. ===

MY WEIGHT ANNIHILATED.—"TELL ME," I CRIED IN ALARM, "IS THIS TO BE A LIVING TOMB?"
"If you will reflect upon the condition we are now in, you will perceive that it must be one of unusual scientific interest. If you imagine a body at rest, in an intangible medium, and not in contact with a gas or any substance capable of creating friction, that body by the prevailing theory of matter and motion, unless disturbed by an impulse from without, would remain forever at absolute rest. We now occupy such a position. In whatever direction we may now be situated, it seems to us that we are upright. We are absolutely without weight, and in a perfectly frictionless medium. Should an inanimate body begin to revolve here, it would continue that motion forever. If our equilibrium should now be disturbed, and we should begin to move in a direction coinciding with the plane in which we are at rest, we would continue moving with the same rapidity in that direction until our course was arrested by some opposing object. We are not subject to attraction of matter, for at this place gravitation robs matter of its gravity, and has no influence on extraneous substances. We are now in the center of gravitation, the 'Sphere of Rest.'"

"Let me think it out," I replied, and reasoning from his remarks, I mentally followed the chain to its sequence, and was startled as suddenly it dawned upon me that if his argument was true we must remain motionless in this spot until death (could beings in conditions like ourselves die beyond the death we had already achieved) or the end of time. We were at perfect rest, in absolute vacancy, there being, as I now accepted without reserve, neither gas, liquid, nor solid, that we could employ as a lever to start us into motion. "Tell me," I cried in alarm, "is this to be a living tomb? Are we to remain suspended here forever, and if not, by what method can we hope to extricate