he felt sudden fear. He sensed the power of this strange new movement, the gathering strength of the prophet’s appeal to unreason. It was time for a new religion, maybe, a cult that offered emancipation from all inner burdens. They would synthesize this drug and turn it out by the ton, Mueller thought, and repeatedly dose cities with it, so that everyone could be converted, so that everyone might taste the joys of oblivion. No one will be able to stop them. After a while, no one will want to stop them. And so we’ll go on, drinking deep, until we’re washed clean of all pain and all sorrow, of all sad recollection, we’ll sip a cup of kindness and part with auld lang syne, we’ll give up the griefs we carry around, and we’ll give up everything else, identity, soul, self, mind. We will drink sweet oblivion. Mueller shivered. Turning suddenly, tugging roughly at Carole’s arm, he pushed through the joyful worshiping crowd, and hunted somberly in the fogwrapped night, trying to find some way out of the park.
