‘The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there – there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were – No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it – this suspicion of their not being inhuman…’

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Chancelade was no longer the center. He was only a particle going round in the maelstrom, swept along, jostled, drained of all resistance. His name disappeared. His consciousness disappeared. And soon he vanished into the void, lost somewhere in the midst of the rout, become a piece of wood, a used match, a crumpled old ball of paper rolling faster and faster towards the mouth of the gutter. And nothing else remained certain but this infinite series of boxes one inside the other: the bed in the room, the room in the hotel, the hotel in the town, the town in the country, the country in the world, the world in the solar system, the solar system in the galaxy, the galaxy in the total of galaxies, the total of galaxies in space, space in space, space in space, space in space. There were no more men, no more women, no more anything anywhere. Just perfect and magnificent extension, empty extension, without a word, without a thought, without a gesture that might make it possible to measure, or understand, or even guess.

‘…this building, except for my apartment, is completely kipple-ized.’

‘Kipple-ized?’ She did not comprehend.

‘Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday’s hompeopape. When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there’s twice as much of it. It always gets more and more.’

‘I see.’ The girl regarded him with uncertainty, not knowing whether to believe him. Not sure if he meant it seriously.

‘There’s the First Law of Kipple,’ he said. ‘”Kipple drives out nonkipple.” Like Gresham’s law about bad money and in these apartments there’s been nobody there to fight the kipple.’

‘So it has taken over completely,’ the girl finished. She nodded. ‘Now I understand.’(…)

‘We can’t win … No one can win against kipple’, he said, ‘except temporarily and maybe in one spot, like in my apartment I’ve sort of created a stasis between the pressure of kipple and nonkipple, for the time being. But eventually I’ll die or go away, and then the kipple will again take over. It’s a universal principle operating throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total absolute kipple-ization.’

‘Pardon me,’ a voice whispered out of the shadows, ‘has this guy really won a hundred and forty thousand bucks?’

‘Yes, sir, I have won them,’ Dr Hasselbacher said firmly before Wormold could reply, ‘I have won them as certainly as you exist, my almost unseen friend. You would not exist if I didn’t believe you existed, nor would those dollars. I believe, therefore you are.’

‘What do you mean I wouldn’t exist?’

‘You exist only in my thoughts , my friend. If I left this room…’

‘You’re nuts.’

‘Prove you exist then.’

‘What do you mean, prove? Of course I exist. I’ve got a first-class business in real estate: a wife and a couple of kids in Miami: I flew this morning by Delta: I’m drinking this Scotch, aren’t I?’ The voice contained a hint of tears.

‘Poor fellow,’ Dr Hasslebacher said, ‘you deserve a more imaginative creator than I have been. Why didn’t I do better for you than Miami and real estate. Something of imagination. A name to be remembered.’

‘What’s wrong with my name?’