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The night before the expected battle, Rensselaer had a dream the likes of which surprised him. Floating in darkness in the air over the sea, without the oppressions of either gravity or pain, he looked up at the stars. But what he saw was not cold, distant, silver-white light, ethereal and detached. Every single star had vaulted over light-years of distance to show its true self, a roiling, orange, red, and white giant of ceaseless nuclear detonations, roaring like the fire in a forge. A trillion trillion stars, pulsing and hot, that even after the dissolution of humankind, much less Rensselaer’s unnoticed part in it, meant that if not life then motion, purpose, and a kind of passion would outlast human vanities, in quantities unfathomable and for time illimitable. No matter what the outcome when they met Sahand, and no matter should he and the others perish, the fires of the world beyond would burn and the heart of everything would beat. Morning
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Mark Helprin (The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story (A Novel))