“There are moments when my mind misses a beat. I find myself, in mid-step or mid-breath, feeling as if delivered abruptly into my body after a long absence (spent where, I could not say), or a long, dreamless sleep. I lose not my memory, merely my thread. My attention has inexplicably wandered, but a little calm introspection restores my context and brings me peace. Almost peace.”

— Greg Egan

Mind Vampires http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/HORROR/VAMPIRES/Vampires.html, published in Interzone (Winter 1986)
Fiction

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Australian science fiction writer and former computer progr… 1961

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