The demolished man Alfred Bester

In an endless universe, there is nothing new, nothing different. What may appear exceptional to the minute mind of man may be invisible to the infinite Hand of God. This strange second in a life, that unusual event, those remarkable coincidences of environment, opportunity and encounter… all may be reproduced over and over on the planet of a sun whose galaxy revolves once in two hundred million years and had evolved nine times already.

There are, and have been, worlds and cultures without end, each nursing the profound illusions that it is unique in space and time. There have been men without suffering from the same megalomania, men who have imagined themselves unique….

…This is the story of such a time of such a time and such a man…. The Demolished Man.

And this time his scream had sound.

Ben Rich awoke.

He lay quietly in the hydropathic bed while his heat shuddered and his eyes focused at random on objects in the room, simulating a calm he could not feel.