"Ouvindo Brahms" por Suzy McKee Charnas , publicado pela primeira vez em a edição de setembro de 1986 Omni (cópia digitalizada aqui ), reimpressa em < a href="http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/titlecovers.cgi?41202"> estas capas .
Sobre um cara que está encalhado em órbita (?) um planeta alienígena após a humanidade ter sido eliminado.
O narrador (e um par de colegas astronautas) estava no cryosleep orbitando a Terra quando o alienígena Kondrai veio:
I sit looking through the viewplate at Earth, such as it is. I know what the lizards say is true, but I don't think I really believe it. I think mostly that I'm dead or having a terrible dream.
Os alienígenas os levam de volta ao seu planeta natal:
Até o final da história, você descobre que há um "culto" surgindo entre a juventude alienígena que as almas humanas da Terra destruída estão transmigrando para o mundo alienígena e reencarnando lá.Entry 3: Captain Midnight says now that we're all up he would be honored beyond expression if we would consent to come back to Kondra with him and his crew in their ship. Kondra is their name for their world. Chu says she's worked out where and what it is in our terms, and she keeps trying to show me on the star charts. I don't care. I came up here to do studies on cryogenic nutrition in space, not to look at star charts.
Entry 20: They are saying that the reason there's so much crime and violence on Kondra isn't because of the population explosion at all. Some snake who calls himself Swami Nanda has worked out how the demographic growth is only a sign of the underlying situation.
According to him Kondra made an "astral agreement" to take in not only us living human survivors but the souls of all the dead of Earth. Earth souls on the astral plane seeing that there were soon going to be no more human bodies on Earth to get born into, sent out a call for new bodies and a new world to inhabit. The Kondran souls on the astral plane, having pretty much finished their work on the material world of Kondra, agreed to let human souls take over the physical plant here, as it were. Now the younger generation is all Earth souls reborn as Kondrai on this planet, and they're recreating conditions familiar to them from Earth.
O homem também ouve muito música clássica - nada com vozes humanas.
Entry 5: Sibelius, Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 43; Tchaikovsky, Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33; Rachmaninoff, Symphonic Dances, Op. 45; Mozart, Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K581; Sibelius, Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 43; Sibelius, Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 43