In the Deadlands Read Online Free PDF

until people started believing in evolution—then when they did start to believe in it, you couldn’t turn around without tripping over fossils.”
    â€œYou really believe this?” I asked.
    â€œYes, I do!” she said intensely.
    â€œThen it must be so,” I said.
    â€œOh, it is,” she agreed, and I knew that she really did believe it. She made a very convincing case. In fact, the more she talked, the more I began to believe it too.
    â€œWhy did you tell me all this?” I asked.
    â€œBecause we’re in great danger. That’s why.” She whispered fiercely, “The world isn’t changing uniformly. Everybody is starting to believe in different things, and they’re forming pockets of noncausality.”
    â€œLike a pimple?” I offered.
    â€œYes,” she said, and I could see a small one forming on the tip of her nose. “It works this way: a fanatic meets another fanatic, then the two of them meet with some other people who share the same hallucinations, and pretty soon there are a whole bunch of fanatics all believingthe same thing—pretty soon, their delusions become real for them—they’ve started to contradict the known reality and replaced it with a node of nonreality.”
    I nodded and concentrated on wrapping a swirl of the fog securely around me.
    â€œThe more it changes, the more people believe in the changes, and the stronger they become. If this keeps up, we may be the only sane people left in the world—and we’re in danger—”
    â€œThey’re outnumbering our reality?” I suggested.
    â€œWorse than that—all of their different outlooks area starting to flaw the structure of space! Even the shape of the Earth is changing! Why, at one time, it was really flat—the world didn’t turn round until people started, to believe it was round.”
    I turned round then and looked at her, but she had disappeared into the fog. All that was left was her grin.
    â€œBut the world is really pear shaped,” I said. “I read it in Scientific American. ”
    â€œAnd why do you think it’s changing shape?” the grin asked. “It’s because a certain nation is starting to believe that it’s really bigger than it is. The Earth is bulging out to accommodate them.”
    â€œOh,” I said.
    â€œIt’s the fault of the news media—television is influencing our image of the world! They keep telling us that the world is changing—and more and more people keep believing it.”
    â€œWell,” I said. “With the shape of the world the way it is today, any change has got to be for the—”
    â€œOh, God not you too! All you people keep talking about the world going to pieces—falling apart at the seams.”
    And then even the grin was gone.
    I was left there. I was also right. Other people had begun to notice it too. Great chunks of the surface had gone blotchy, and holes had appeared in it. More and more pieces were falling out all the time, but the waters had not yet broken through from the other side.
    I poked my finger through one of the holes, and I could feel the soft gelatinous surface behind. Perhaps it hadn’t completely thawed out yet.
    So far, nothing had been accomplished about my eye—not only was it beginning to ache something fierce, but my I was beginning to twinge a bit also, and I had a feeling that that too might be going opaque.
    â€œHave you found yourself yet?!” one of the speakers in the park demanded. (I hadn’t even looked—and remembering my previous experiences with looking for things, I certainly was not going to initiate any kind of a search.) I walked on.
    Farther on, there was, another speaker—this one on a soup box. “We should be thankful for this great nation of ours,” the speaker woofed and tweetered, “where so many people are allowed to believe in so many different