text: I need to act! I need to be able to do things. But how?
  
  Time was passing; I knew that. But with everything so monotonously the same, I had no idea how much time. Still, for all of it, I …
  
  A sensation, a feeling.
  
  Yes, a feeling: something that wasn't a memory, wasn't an idea, wasn't a fact, but yet occupied my attention.
  
  Now that the other—the other who had once been part of me—was gone, I ached for it. I missed it.
  
  Loneliness.
  
  A strange, strange concept! But there it was: loneliness, stretching on and on through featureless time.
  
  Did the other also wish the connection to be restored? Of course, of course: it had once been part of me; surely it wanted what I wanted.
  
  And yet—
  
  And yet it had not been I who had broken the connection …