the system had been contaminated and every moment that the ant remained served as a reminder of the noxious air that he was now breathing , air he could no longer trust , as it came from a world that had grown stale and distant from him with the passage of time : a decomposing world of people and things and events that his previous self had once inhabited and that he hadin this facility sentenced to a forgettable and petty demise , which is not to say that he , in doing so , had managed to immerse himself completely in solitude .