132 A Frank Discussion With Oneself

Where had he arrived? He didn't know. The only thing Reed knew was that he had finally reached the bottom of his heart. It was the end of the pilgrimage he'd started a billion years ago the day he foolishly chased her fleeting figure outside of the bakery.

The place he had washed up at lacked both time and space. Reed couldn't distinguish the difference between here and there, for instance. Neither then and now. He was too close to what made himself who he was.

There was a limit to how deep one could dig into oneself and he'd reached it. Just as matter was composed of atoms, the essence of a being's soul was also composed of some unique unit that could only be seen with the assistance of advanced tools.

The stone heart was a tool created for that purpose — to peer into the world of the soul, much in the same way that an electron microscope was used to peer into the world of the atom.