The Unlimited Dream Company by J.G. Ballard

Author:J.G. Ballard [Ballard, J.G.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780871404190
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 1979-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Later, while I rested in my bedroom above the river, I thought of my third vision that afternoon, of my lordship of the deer. Although I had not eaten for three days I felt gorged and pregnant, not by some false womb in my belly, but by a true pregnancy in which every cell of my flesh, every gland and nerve in my brain, every bone and muscle, was swelling with new life. The thousands of fish crowding the dark water, the lantern-like plumage of the birds in the park also seemed gorged, as if we were all taking part in an invisible reproductive orgy. I felt that we had abandoned our genital organs and were merging together, cell to cell, in the body of the night.

I was certain now that my vision that afternoon had not been a dream but another doorway into that realm to which my unseen guardians were guiding me. I had become first a bird, then a fish and a mammal, each a partner in a greater being to be born from my present self. However barbaric I might seem, a minor pagan deity presiding over this suburban town in a shabby suit stained with semen and blood, I felt a powerful sense of discipline and duty. I knew that I should never abuse my powers, but conserve them for those goals which had yet to reveal themselves to me.

Already, like the local spirit of some modest waterfall or doorway, I could change myself from one creature to another. I knew that I had been transformed into a household god, not a cosmic being of infinite power pervading the entire universe, but a minor deity no more than a mile or so in diameter, whose sway extended over no more than this town and its inhabitants, and whose moral authority I had still to define and win. I thought of the corona of destruction I had seen hovering over the roof-tops, and my conviction that I would one day slaughter all these people. I was certain that I had no wish to harm them, but only to lead them to the safety of a higher ground somewhere above Shepperton. These paradoxes, like my frightening urge to copulate with young children and old men, had been placed before me like a series of tests.

Whatever happened, I would be true to my obsessions.

No longer needing to sleep, I sat by the window. Was all sleep no more than an attempt by the infant in its cot, the bird in its nest, by old and young alike, to reach that further shore where I had run with the deer that afternoon? Below me the river flowed towards London and the sea. The hull of the drowned Cessna was lit by the White dolphins that crowded the water, turning the river into a midnight oceanarium filled from my bloodstream. Motes of light flickered from every leaf in the midnight forest, miniature beacons within the dismembered constellations of myself. Looking

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