342 The Diary of a Drug Fiend
not an independent and conflicting unit in this com-
plicated chaos of machinery, but was, as it were, the
reason. for its assuming its actual appearance in
preference to any other. And as the night went on,
the enormous complexity of the vision co-ordinated
itself. There was a sensation of whirling and rising
communicated to the entire universe of my thought.
A sort of dizziness seized upon my spirit. It was as if
a wheel had been set in motion and gradually increased
its pace so that one could no longer distinguish the
spokes. It became an indefinite whirr. This feeling
invaded my entire consciousness little by little, so that
it was reduced to an unchanging unity; but a unity
composed of diverse forces in regular motion. The
monotony devoured consciousness so that my waking
sleep merged into true sleep.
The strangest part of the whole experience was that
I woke up an entirely new man. I found myself en-
grossed in abstruse calculations, loosely knit together,
it is true, but very intense, with regard to an idea which
- had not entered my mind for months. I was working
out in my mind a plan for constructing a helicopter,
the invention of which had occupied me deeply when
I was out of a job. It had been driven completely out
of my mind by my becoming heir to Uncle Mortimer’s
estate.
As I regained full wakefulness, I found myself
extremely puzzled by my surroundings. In fact, I
could not remember who I was. The question seemed
in some extraordinary way to lack meaning. The
more I regained consciousness of myself, of Telepylus,
and of the immediate past, the more these things
became unreal. The true “I’’ was the mathematician
and engineer working on the helicopter, and the interval
had been an elaborate nightmare.
I threw it all off like a retriever coming out of a
pond with a stick in his mouth, and bent myself to my
work. I was disturbed by some person or persons
unknown kissing me on the back of my neck, and