Dispel Illusion (Impossible Times, #3)

by Mark Lawrence

There’s a special connection between consciousness and time. Einstein said, ‘Time is an illusion’, and the great Douglas Adams had even greater doubts about lunchtime.

I followed the signs, doing that almost-walk where all that holds us back from a flat sprint is the misplaced sense of embarrassment that so often keeps people in check. It’s as though somehow we think that if we throw decorum to the wind and run, the universe might disapprove and raise the stakes still further, greeting us with a greater disaster than we might find if we just walk there like civilised human beings.

Always the child standing there wearing an old man’s clothes, an old skin hanging from old bones, and wondering where the days went, remembering how marvellous it had been to fritter away so many slow and sunny days. And wanting more.

‘Are you crazy!’

The universe doesn’t care about time. We care about time. Because we remember.