There were certain basic things, perhaps - the very earth, itself - which existed through every point in time, holding a sort of limited eternity to provide a solid matrix. And the dead - the dead and fabricated - stayed in the past as ghosts. The fence posts and the wire strung on them, the dead trees, the farm buildings, and the bridge were shadows of the present persisting in the past. Persisting, perhaps, reluctantly, because since they had no life they could not move along. They were bound in time and stretched through time and they were long, long shadows. He was, he realized with a shock, the only living thing existing in this moment on this earth. He and nothing else...