After more than five years in the making, you’d think I’d be happy with this story, but no I’m afraid not. The basic concept I still like and the first half I think is good. However the second half, well, I think I just wanted to get the dam thing finished. The end still seems, to me to be very rushed (that’s because it was!).
But any way what of it’s history? Well the basic idea came from a news paper article, in the daily mail, on near death experience’s. Most of the experiences described where of the ‘normal’ heavenly garden type. But there was one lady that, as far as I can remember described a near death experience very much like the one Martin has just after the crash. That created this very powerful image in my mind of the burring sphere. It was quite some time after I read that, that I set about writing a story around it.
The earliest versions, had the main character (which seemed to switch sex with each rewire) actually living, well at lest to the end of the story. They all centered around him/her developing some sort of super power and maybe some sort of shadowy government agency. It was from this idea that the strange man came from.
The idea that all these strange events where happening in the mind of a dying man came from another, (very) short story that I wrote. The story, which I actually finished (but have now sadly lost), was centered around a couple that got sucked thought some sort of dimensional gateway in to a very small and empty dimension. This empty dimension took it’s form, from the minds of it’s only two occupants. Hence the world looked just like the one they left. The problem was that there wasn’t enough perception of reality to hold reality up, so the world rapidly decayed around them. This to me seemed a great idea, literally having the world fall apart around you.
So the idea of living your last moments in a dying oxygen starved brain was born. I found out quite a while after this that my idea had been though of before and filmed in the movie Jakobs Ladder, I still haven’t seen the film, so I’ve not been infuanced by it all. Dispite the similarities to my story that I’ve heard in contains!
And what of the strange man in the story, well I know who and what he is, and I’m sure you’ll come up with your own ideas…

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