"I'm sorry, but I can't let you in, sir." Above me, staring down with it's ruby inlaid eyes, the sound slipped out of the gargoyle's unmoving mouth with a rasp of stone grinding against stone. The sir part was almost assuredly part of its affectation and not any sort of respect for me.
"Look, I just need to get inside, drop off a package and get it signed for, and then I'll leave." Most of the truth. I could have left the brown paper sack in the gargoyle's keeping what with regulations on magical towers and their owners, but I really wanted a glimpse inside. Maybe it was a dangerous curiosity, but getting a peep inside of the most powerful of the eastern wizard's tower would be worth the lost time.
"As per my orders, I can not let anyone into the tower without express permission from my master, who does not want to be disturbed at the moment." I could probably rush the door and open it quickly enough to get inside before the gargoyle did anything. That would be incredibly stupid though. There was actually a high chance to get hurt that way, either by the gargoyle, who was watching me with a bored expression carved into its face, or by whatever was past the door with the intent to stop intruders from entering. So if brute force was out. . .
"But the fact that this is a package specifically sent to your master, ordered by him last spring in fact, he has already given permission for this to come in."
"But he has not given permission for you to come in, sir." Either it was smart enough to see through my ruse, or it was simpler than I would have thought.
"What if you open the door, and then I push it through, and then get you to sign for it?" Not exactly the visit into the tower that I wanted, but it was better than seeing nothing at all.
With a low creaking it turned its head a little, as if it were thinking. I hadn't heard that constructs could think, so maybe it was consulting something else? "Very well." Out of the alcove above the doorway the gargoyle's tail slithered down to wrap around the handle to push the door open. A long dark hallway stretched out farther than I was able to see, nothing of interest besides the closed doors on either side that were spaced every few feet. It obviously should not have been there. The hilltop the tower stood on was maybe a hundred feet across, and not all of that flat.
A grin found its way onto my face. It wasn't much, but it was something to tell the others around the table at night. "Thank you very much." It was always good to be polite. As I stepped toward the doorway flames combusted into being from torches on the walls. Okay, this was so worth taking a job out into the middle of nowhere. I moved to set the bag down inside the doorway before the gargoyle's tail swung up into view, stopping me.
"You implied that you would put the package inside. That is not inside." Okay, that's weird. I know for sure that constructs shouldn't be able to understand implications. There were stories abounding about the very troubles caused because they couldn't.
"I'm not quite sure I understand?" Entirely true. That hallway looked very much inside, if not very possibly inside, the tower. "Where am I supposed to put it then?"
"Walk down the hall to the third door on the right, knock, then when it opens, hand it over there. When you get back I will sign whatever you have regarding the package." The gargoyle had turned around, rooting around in the alcove for something. It took a moment to get my bearings and walk in. My grin had melted away first into a confused frown and now into the kind of face a little kid makes when they see their first snowfall. This place was cool, no doubt about it. The doors were all nondescript, though, just the plain wood-grain you'd see in a normal tower. They didn't even have the stylized staining that the front door did to make it look like fire and lightning engulfed it.
I knocked. Silence. Just as I was about to grab the handle a slithering sound made its way through the door. Silence. Then it opened an inch, a long black line inside with one weird looking eyeball peering out of the darkness inside. "Hi, I'm here to. . ." And then the brown bag was torn from my hand and pulled back through the door as it widened a bit to accept the package. It was grabbed by a tentacle. Both the eye and the tentacle belonged to some sort of octopus type thing inside. A grey colored octopus. A grey colored octopus with about one hundred tentacles. The door slammed shut. Okay then.
Back at the front door, by the time I returned, the gargoyle had a well of ink in his hand and his tail wrapped around a quill. "So, was it supposed to be grabbed by the octopus looking thing?"
"Yes, Hortence is there as the chief organizer of his great and majestic lord Phrex. Now if you would present the paper?" I had to dig into my brown coat-pocket to grab the folded up form I had stuffed in there on my way here. The gargoyle made a quick flourish with his quill, a low creaking accompanying his movements. It read: Peter Stonewing, Chief Executor of his Lord Phrex Gateway. Way too many words for how many movements he made. Magic quill or magic gargoyle, it was hard to tell, and it would probably be impolite to ask.
"How did you write all that so fast?" Okay, maybe I was good at asking dumb questions. In my defense, it was really cool.
He took his time to answer. Cocking his head to the side like he was thinking again. "Magic, sir." The gargoyle's features shifted into a grin, showing his stone teeth. "And since I did not need to call some other messenger through the halls to pick up that package, you may even have the benefit of figuring it out fr yourself." With that last remark, he tossed the quill through the air. I almost dropped it. Looking down at the nub, it was out of ink. "Good day, sir."
"Good day, and thank you, Mr. Stonewing." He's an alright chap, I think. Now I need to get back to town to find some ink.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Thursday, December 19, 2013
On the space between and circumstances relating.
There are two ways of thinking about trans-universal travel. The first way is about how it works, and it goes like this. You open a door into a giant maze. Doors fill the halls and the stairways, some clustered in twos or threes in the rooms that spring up throughout. You can walk around the maze, sneaking around "traps" and "monsters" that might end your trip prematurely until you come at last to what you think is the right doorway. You open it up and are sucked through. If it was where you wanted to end up, well, that was an exceedingly lucky trip. Most times, however, you come to the conclusion that you had in fact made a left turn somewhere where you should have had the sense to take the stairs down a level before taking a left. Then you puzzle out how to get the door open again, because the handle on this side is missing since nobody set one up. If you get back in, you have the choice of going back home to relative safety, or to try once more to find your way to your destination. Either way, depending on how long you were out of the maze, you may expect subtle to drastic changes in the layout of the whole intersections of corridors, staircases, and doorways. To go into too much detail on the subject of the perils of the maze besides the layout would take a lengthy and baffling catalog of metaphors and references, many of which would be better described in terms of the raw physics than in a roundabout fashion, at least with my personal talent with words.
That said, the other way of thinking is the immersive picture painted by actually experiencing a travel. Unlike any metaphorical glitter that gets written on the subject, you either go with the flow or you don't. If you do, you feel a sort of greasy wave pushing you along while soaking into you, feeling your very being invaded and replaced. This is not to say that you are overwhelmed by it, taken over entirely. Instead, you feel it wash over you and through you, then slosh over to your other half, leaving your solidifying self tingling. All this happens in the blink of an eye, all right before you start to see things. Maybe you see a particular color of yellow that draws you in, falling deeper into that before all at once you aren't just experiencing a certain shade of color, but instead are having a wordless heart-to-heart with a yellow color you instinctively call James, even though you also know clearly that it's name is Marge. And then you're out, sitting, standing, laying, or embedded on or in a new world.
If you don't go with the flow, you have a much more painful time of things, but some say a much easier time of finding what you want. You push up against a solid wall of nothingness, feel the slimy bits of it harden into knives, cutting you as you try to slip through them. The same dots and colors and memories that you might see regularly are still there, but this time they run away, not content to let you slip down into them. The harder you chase, the faster they run. After you end up exhausted or dead, your body is pushed back into the flow to drift into whatever universe lays on its path. Once you start out one way, it takes real mental effort to reverse your method and get to the other state of mind. The best of us who travel can do it in an instant, less walking through the void and more swaying like a drunk all while carefully placing our destination in front of us.
These two explanations on the subject tend to say that the people who are most successful are not the fastest, the brightest, or the best equipped to enter into the gap between worlds. It is not an ability that you hone outside of the place, at least not consciously. The ones who walk without fear are the ones who were ripped to shreds and survived, baring their teeth to go back in again. The ones who step unerringly are the ones who have visited countless places, more than they even remember, before they finally find their way to a place on purpose. It is no wonder then that in societies built around commonality, those that spring up and flourish in the multiverse, there are very few places that claim allegiance with them or even bear their presence for too long. Life as a traveler creates rifts in the same way that the first wish to separate oneself from others does at the start.
This is not to say that on the whole people who claim no one universe home are not upstanding and beneficial to society. They only walk by their own choice to the places they go, learning from their constraint to go where they can when they want instead of hesitating behind social norms or trends. Stories of saviors coming into being before leaving in a flash of light number many, and tales of terrors who spring up from out of the darkness to wreck havoc, never to be seen again but in nightmares, those tales match them. Even more are the unexplainable events that find themselves as perplexing aggravations for any scientist-type who runs across them, defying all expectations of reality.
All of this would define me as some sort of classical enigma, ready to do as I please and achieve legendary status through a multitude of known worlds. The fact that I have tripped head-first into a portal in this between-space makes it all the more embarrassing with these high expectations. It is a common problem, that of opening doors where they were closed but moments before, sucking you towards them to steal you inside. I was aware of these and usually avoided getting caught. When I did, just now, I came across something even I wasn't sure actually existed. A room with no door. Rather, a universe that had a door in, which opened as if something were coming out, and no door out from the inside. Perplexing doesn't even begin to cover it.
That said, the other way of thinking is the immersive picture painted by actually experiencing a travel. Unlike any metaphorical glitter that gets written on the subject, you either go with the flow or you don't. If you do, you feel a sort of greasy wave pushing you along while soaking into you, feeling your very being invaded and replaced. This is not to say that you are overwhelmed by it, taken over entirely. Instead, you feel it wash over you and through you, then slosh over to your other half, leaving your solidifying self tingling. All this happens in the blink of an eye, all right before you start to see things. Maybe you see a particular color of yellow that draws you in, falling deeper into that before all at once you aren't just experiencing a certain shade of color, but instead are having a wordless heart-to-heart with a yellow color you instinctively call James, even though you also know clearly that it's name is Marge. And then you're out, sitting, standing, laying, or embedded on or in a new world.
If you don't go with the flow, you have a much more painful time of things, but some say a much easier time of finding what you want. You push up against a solid wall of nothingness, feel the slimy bits of it harden into knives, cutting you as you try to slip through them. The same dots and colors and memories that you might see regularly are still there, but this time they run away, not content to let you slip down into them. The harder you chase, the faster they run. After you end up exhausted or dead, your body is pushed back into the flow to drift into whatever universe lays on its path. Once you start out one way, it takes real mental effort to reverse your method and get to the other state of mind. The best of us who travel can do it in an instant, less walking through the void and more swaying like a drunk all while carefully placing our destination in front of us.
These two explanations on the subject tend to say that the people who are most successful are not the fastest, the brightest, or the best equipped to enter into the gap between worlds. It is not an ability that you hone outside of the place, at least not consciously. The ones who walk without fear are the ones who were ripped to shreds and survived, baring their teeth to go back in again. The ones who step unerringly are the ones who have visited countless places, more than they even remember, before they finally find their way to a place on purpose. It is no wonder then that in societies built around commonality, those that spring up and flourish in the multiverse, there are very few places that claim allegiance with them or even bear their presence for too long. Life as a traveler creates rifts in the same way that the first wish to separate oneself from others does at the start.
This is not to say that on the whole people who claim no one universe home are not upstanding and beneficial to society. They only walk by their own choice to the places they go, learning from their constraint to go where they can when they want instead of hesitating behind social norms or trends. Stories of saviors coming into being before leaving in a flash of light number many, and tales of terrors who spring up from out of the darkness to wreck havoc, never to be seen again but in nightmares, those tales match them. Even more are the unexplainable events that find themselves as perplexing aggravations for any scientist-type who runs across them, defying all expectations of reality.
All of this would define me as some sort of classical enigma, ready to do as I please and achieve legendary status through a multitude of known worlds. The fact that I have tripped head-first into a portal in this between-space makes it all the more embarrassing with these high expectations. It is a common problem, that of opening doors where they were closed but moments before, sucking you towards them to steal you inside. I was aware of these and usually avoided getting caught. When I did, just now, I came across something even I wasn't sure actually existed. A room with no door. Rather, a universe that had a door in, which opened as if something were coming out, and no door out from the inside. Perplexing doesn't even begin to cover it.
Friday, December 13, 2013
Beneath a Stone Sky (Part Four)
I wander, the tunnels now. Each day feels empty to me. Where once there was a reason to push out and create a system to guarantee our expanse, all I can do now is check the walls and ceilings and floors for any structural damage. Nothing makes me smile anymore.
I have a place here, yes, but it feels futile. Even before I was around the periphery, looking inwards on the laughter and joy. That lure is gone now, and I without connections in am adrift. I can't leave this place, there would be no surviving, but where I once traveled out away from the rest of them with thoughts of the well being of the community, I now seek quiet and separation.
It makes me wonder how much of a loner I really am here. When the sky fell people were shattered apart, broken into factions. Some of them want to leave, to expand out and recolonize somewhere safer with no constant memories. Other would stay for the graves alone. Each and every one of them is a group. I fit in none of them. Perhaps I might side with exploration if my preference was asked, but I wouldn't fit in with them.
So I walk the tunnels, farther out on the worst of days, closer in when I feel the ache of that loss of a community to really call my own. Today I pass a broad door into an arched hall. Inside I can tell the whole place is carved out of a huge single stone. I never looked inside, never had a real interest in churches. The place is empty, dusty. Whoever came here before either died off or left for good.
Benches are carved up out of the floor, blocky with their grey-white forms thrust up into the space with a precision to detail. Along the sides, Roman-style columns stretch up to the high ceiling, up at least fourty feet. At the tops, small cherubic angels sit, bracing the ceiling with their backs and holding all manor of trinkets like wreaths, trumpets, or stone candles complete with stone flames. The whole thing must have taken each and every one of the years we had been here, been started almost right after we arrived in this hole in the ground. And now it sits empty. Behind that a tall, large stone column is carved out, just barely worked on at all. Probably designed to be a cross eventually. The stillness pushes at me, moving me back and away, out the door.
The next week I find myself walking in through the doors again to stare up at the columns and the angels above, all their eyes looking down, each watching over a specific spot of the church. It strikes me that if anyone had thought to seek refuge here, it would have been the safest place to be, when the sky fell. All one piece carved deep into a massive boulder, a rock to hide within in time of crisis. I don't come back for another two weeks.
This time the huge column at the center draws my eyes. It feels unfinished, the centerpiece of the whole place just left as a flat column. The next day I come back with a chisel and just stare at the thing. The pure blandness soaks into my mind. all the dimensions filling me. I'm not good enough for the task ahead, so I don't raise the chisel. Through the next week I experiment with the chisel, learning more finesse. I always was more comfortable with the drill, but that is not a tool of art.
When I come back to the church again, more confident, the blandness in my mind's eye melts away just a little. I take small layers off the surface, learning the feel of the rock and shaping the column toward the curves I see in my mind. My quests to keep the tunnels inspected and safe stops, replaced by slow and steady progress on the column.
The first thing that emerges is a leg. A long, womanly leg that wraps around the column of stone to rest daintily on the floor. The other three legs emerge more slowly, more difficult to carve out. The first form's other leg holding her weight. The bodies follow afterwards. Weeks pass as they emerge from the stone, small improvements to technique smoothing over the earlier, rougher work. Two figures embraced, both women of grey-white stone. The first figure exudes confidence, her wild hair framing her mischievous grin, arms wrapped around her counterpart. The other figure with shorter, straighter hair and a shorter build looks up into the wild eyes of her sister. The statue is not load bearing, so I cut slowly trim the topmost section into one thin arm raised by the taller woman to touch the ceiling with but one finger, holding the ceiling up for her sister, whose mild smile spreads subtly from cheek to cheek.
The elder of the two I name as wild Terra, strong and bold. The younger, Humanity, wrapping her thin arms around the broad back of her sister. They are finished on the anniversary of skyfall, resting on a slightly raised pedestal, the only remains of the column's original diameter. The figures are done, but the piece is not finished. Weeks longer I sit there, circling the pair, glancing up and down at them.
I had not gone back to the Split-Moon Chamber since I started the work. The only change is to the holes in the ceiling. At first they were designed to blend in with the original architecture, but they stuck out as bad imitations. Now someone had carved into them, widened them and shaped them. Two large suns and innumerable stars, holes filled with lanterns, hung up above. Even with the Grim monument to death sitting in the center of the chamber, the beauty of the sky was restored to the space. I smiled, just a bit. The inscriptions shall read thus "Night gives way to day as day moves ever onward towards the night."
I have a place here, yes, but it feels futile. Even before I was around the periphery, looking inwards on the laughter and joy. That lure is gone now, and I without connections in am adrift. I can't leave this place, there would be no surviving, but where I once traveled out away from the rest of them with thoughts of the well being of the community, I now seek quiet and separation.
It makes me wonder how much of a loner I really am here. When the sky fell people were shattered apart, broken into factions. Some of them want to leave, to expand out and recolonize somewhere safer with no constant memories. Other would stay for the graves alone. Each and every one of them is a group. I fit in none of them. Perhaps I might side with exploration if my preference was asked, but I wouldn't fit in with them.
So I walk the tunnels, farther out on the worst of days, closer in when I feel the ache of that loss of a community to really call my own. Today I pass a broad door into an arched hall. Inside I can tell the whole place is carved out of a huge single stone. I never looked inside, never had a real interest in churches. The place is empty, dusty. Whoever came here before either died off or left for good.
Benches are carved up out of the floor, blocky with their grey-white forms thrust up into the space with a precision to detail. Along the sides, Roman-style columns stretch up to the high ceiling, up at least fourty feet. At the tops, small cherubic angels sit, bracing the ceiling with their backs and holding all manor of trinkets like wreaths, trumpets, or stone candles complete with stone flames. The whole thing must have taken each and every one of the years we had been here, been started almost right after we arrived in this hole in the ground. And now it sits empty. Behind that a tall, large stone column is carved out, just barely worked on at all. Probably designed to be a cross eventually. The stillness pushes at me, moving me back and away, out the door.
The next week I find myself walking in through the doors again to stare up at the columns and the angels above, all their eyes looking down, each watching over a specific spot of the church. It strikes me that if anyone had thought to seek refuge here, it would have been the safest place to be, when the sky fell. All one piece carved deep into a massive boulder, a rock to hide within in time of crisis. I don't come back for another two weeks.
This time the huge column at the center draws my eyes. It feels unfinished, the centerpiece of the whole place just left as a flat column. The next day I come back with a chisel and just stare at the thing. The pure blandness soaks into my mind. all the dimensions filling me. I'm not good enough for the task ahead, so I don't raise the chisel. Through the next week I experiment with the chisel, learning more finesse. I always was more comfortable with the drill, but that is not a tool of art.
When I come back to the church again, more confident, the blandness in my mind's eye melts away just a little. I take small layers off the surface, learning the feel of the rock and shaping the column toward the curves I see in my mind. My quests to keep the tunnels inspected and safe stops, replaced by slow and steady progress on the column.
The first thing that emerges is a leg. A long, womanly leg that wraps around the column of stone to rest daintily on the floor. The other three legs emerge more slowly, more difficult to carve out. The first form's other leg holding her weight. The bodies follow afterwards. Weeks pass as they emerge from the stone, small improvements to technique smoothing over the earlier, rougher work. Two figures embraced, both women of grey-white stone. The first figure exudes confidence, her wild hair framing her mischievous grin, arms wrapped around her counterpart. The other figure with shorter, straighter hair and a shorter build looks up into the wild eyes of her sister. The statue is not load bearing, so I cut slowly trim the topmost section into one thin arm raised by the taller woman to touch the ceiling with but one finger, holding the ceiling up for her sister, whose mild smile spreads subtly from cheek to cheek.
The elder of the two I name as wild Terra, strong and bold. The younger, Humanity, wrapping her thin arms around the broad back of her sister. They are finished on the anniversary of skyfall, resting on a slightly raised pedestal, the only remains of the column's original diameter. The figures are done, but the piece is not finished. Weeks longer I sit there, circling the pair, glancing up and down at them.
I had not gone back to the Split-Moon Chamber since I started the work. The only change is to the holes in the ceiling. At first they were designed to blend in with the original architecture, but they stuck out as bad imitations. Now someone had carved into them, widened them and shaped them. Two large suns and innumerable stars, holes filled with lanterns, hung up above. Even with the Grim monument to death sitting in the center of the chamber, the beauty of the sky was restored to the space. I smiled, just a bit. The inscriptions shall read thus "Night gives way to day as day moves ever onward towards the night."
Beneath a Stone Sky (Part Three)
I was out in the outskirts, tunneling, when it rumbled. Ground as steady as ours leaves you forgetting what it's like to have unsteady footing. The tremor was like a low growl, deep and rising in intensity. It hit me that the whole place was coming down, but I had nowhere to run. Everywhere shakes and rumbles, debris echoing off the walls and floors. Smaller bits bounced off me,bruising me through the leather. Larger pieces cut into the ground where they fell, spraying my suit with shrapnel.
Slowly the vast expanse of the web of tunnels closed in, cutting off this particular pocket from the world. I closed my eyes, hands over my head. There was a procedure for cave-ins. Keep your head safe and make yourself a smaller target. I drew into myself, driven in by the crash of stone on stone. Darkness, and when I open my eyes, still darkness. Reaching blind I found my lamp. The rumbling fades into the shadows and crevices of the room. I can barely make out which way is back towards the city, the broken area around me alien and foreign. It takes me two tries to close my trembling hand around the drill, moving forwards to the rubble before returning to re-position the lantern.
This is what I do, I dig. A collapsed tunnel is fixable. Some parts of it are even still standing, but most of it collapsed or cracked open fissures. The batteries in the drill and lamp will last up to a week, so I shouldn't run out of those. The meager snacks stuck in my pack won't last me that long if I'm digging out. Speed is a priority. The tunnels sometimes collapse behind me, aftershocks running through the area. A sip of water, a bite of bread, more digging.
It takes me through half the water and one whole roll before I get back to the populated area of the city. Some of the tunnels held up better than others, some are flooded with water, some are sealed shut in an almost complete collapse. Other handiwork like my tunneling litters the area. People who got back faster than I did. The city is dark, small lights like stars shining out in the darkness where lanterns guide a safe path through the transformed ruins. No quiet chatter through the halls. Echos bounce oddly, frightening my lonely figure.
The way to the Moon Chamber has been cleared. Passing by my apartment, little remains of the wall. Most of it has broken down, carved stone decorations flooding into the street. Nothing important was in my room, but broken furniture and ripped cloth poke from the wreckage reminding me of the countless others who had lives there. Off in a shadow thrown by a massive ceiling brace, failed in its occupation, a hand sticks out of the mess. At first I see it as a doll, white as porcelain. The small red splotches all up and down its length to where it disappears into the rocks tell the story. At the foot of the pile, the slowly expanding circle of red affirms it. I couldn't recognize the hand from that alone, but like the others who must have seen it, seen the blood, heard no cries, I didn't have the strength to uncover the face. Bravery in the face of such horror is beyond most of us.
I continue on. More so than the first day, the silence inspired by the scene in the chamber is incredible. Where the dome had once been almost spherical, dotted only by a few craters, it now had holes. Somewhere up there large gashes breached the walls between the chamber and the various rooms that were positioned around it. The sky would just be dark if not for intermittent flickering of the lights here. Down on the floor of the chamber huge stone monoliths sat where they fell, gruesome markers like the one outside. Then screams. Pain, terror, loss, disbelief. We are shattered. Deep through the center of the chamber, a rift yawns, one large piece of stone trapped in its jaws. It could easily fit the whole of our civilization, now just remnants left after it all.
The weeks to come are filled with burial. The deep rift in the Moon Chamber has been hollowed out into alcoves of a mausoleum. I dig and carve. Three hundred names in total, all inscribed on the rock held in the rift's mouth. It is hollow to me, but other take strength from it. Some avoid looking at it entirely, retreating from our Moon Chamber. A Split-Moon Chamber. Some of the others tried to fill in the holes in the ceiling, but they show up as ugly sores to me as I look up to an unfamiliar sky. The chamber itself disquiets me. There is no laughter there anymore. No friendly smiles. All that remains of it is solemnity and death. Little point exists in expanding the tunnels for a long while now, yet I wander the outskirts at a loss. There was community here, an optimism to succeed in this unknown wilderness. Now there exists only grief and sadness. If we gained a new sky that day twelve years ago, it came falling down on us.
Slowly the vast expanse of the web of tunnels closed in, cutting off this particular pocket from the world. I closed my eyes, hands over my head. There was a procedure for cave-ins. Keep your head safe and make yourself a smaller target. I drew into myself, driven in by the crash of stone on stone. Darkness, and when I open my eyes, still darkness. Reaching blind I found my lamp. The rumbling fades into the shadows and crevices of the room. I can barely make out which way is back towards the city, the broken area around me alien and foreign. It takes me two tries to close my trembling hand around the drill, moving forwards to the rubble before returning to re-position the lantern.
This is what I do, I dig. A collapsed tunnel is fixable. Some parts of it are even still standing, but most of it collapsed or cracked open fissures. The batteries in the drill and lamp will last up to a week, so I shouldn't run out of those. The meager snacks stuck in my pack won't last me that long if I'm digging out. Speed is a priority. The tunnels sometimes collapse behind me, aftershocks running through the area. A sip of water, a bite of bread, more digging.
It takes me through half the water and one whole roll before I get back to the populated area of the city. Some of the tunnels held up better than others, some are flooded with water, some are sealed shut in an almost complete collapse. Other handiwork like my tunneling litters the area. People who got back faster than I did. The city is dark, small lights like stars shining out in the darkness where lanterns guide a safe path through the transformed ruins. No quiet chatter through the halls. Echos bounce oddly, frightening my lonely figure.
The way to the Moon Chamber has been cleared. Passing by my apartment, little remains of the wall. Most of it has broken down, carved stone decorations flooding into the street. Nothing important was in my room, but broken furniture and ripped cloth poke from the wreckage reminding me of the countless others who had lives there. Off in a shadow thrown by a massive ceiling brace, failed in its occupation, a hand sticks out of the mess. At first I see it as a doll, white as porcelain. The small red splotches all up and down its length to where it disappears into the rocks tell the story. At the foot of the pile, the slowly expanding circle of red affirms it. I couldn't recognize the hand from that alone, but like the others who must have seen it, seen the blood, heard no cries, I didn't have the strength to uncover the face. Bravery in the face of such horror is beyond most of us.
I continue on. More so than the first day, the silence inspired by the scene in the chamber is incredible. Where the dome had once been almost spherical, dotted only by a few craters, it now had holes. Somewhere up there large gashes breached the walls between the chamber and the various rooms that were positioned around it. The sky would just be dark if not for intermittent flickering of the lights here. Down on the floor of the chamber huge stone monoliths sat where they fell, gruesome markers like the one outside. Then screams. Pain, terror, loss, disbelief. We are shattered. Deep through the center of the chamber, a rift yawns, one large piece of stone trapped in its jaws. It could easily fit the whole of our civilization, now just remnants left after it all.
The weeks to come are filled with burial. The deep rift in the Moon Chamber has been hollowed out into alcoves of a mausoleum. I dig and carve. Three hundred names in total, all inscribed on the rock held in the rift's mouth. It is hollow to me, but other take strength from it. Some avoid looking at it entirely, retreating from our Moon Chamber. A Split-Moon Chamber. Some of the others tried to fill in the holes in the ceiling, but they show up as ugly sores to me as I look up to an unfamiliar sky. The chamber itself disquiets me. There is no laughter there anymore. No friendly smiles. All that remains of it is solemnity and death. Little point exists in expanding the tunnels for a long while now, yet I wander the outskirts at a loss. There was community here, an optimism to succeed in this unknown wilderness. Now there exists only grief and sadness. If we gained a new sky that day twelve years ago, it came falling down on us.
Beneath a Stone Sky (Part Two)
Ten years and I'm still not used to the heat. The leather suits trap it in, soaking up the sweat and crating a film of moisture on my skin. All the tunnelers create a stench like this, the oldest dug tunnels being the freshest smelling. If it weren't for the bits of chipped rock skipping across the floor as I dig, I would go without the thick, leather suit, dyed in sweat. Can't though. Wouldn't do anything else either. The feel of drilling out new areas in the thick rocky soil down here is tremendous. Just the whir of the motor as it revs, all the other noises unable to penetrate the headphones. The way it slowly melts away, leaving a new frontier, that makes the days go by so quickly. Work all collapses into a rhythm, no thinking besides a glance down at the blueprints and plans for the rest of the tunnelers as we push out the edges of our society.
We keep growing, some of the kids never having seen the surface in their whole life. They must think its some type of fantastical dream. Loose earth litters the floor, every so often I take a rest and see that the way behind me is cleared, one of the younger ones on the crew would have come around and taken the waste off to the refinery. Nothing much in the rock in this part of the outskirts, just stone and dirt and worms. They check a load every so often anyway, and if they don't want to, they throw it out. Somewhere there's records of each day's digging all filed away individually, but that doesn't hold my interest for long.
I have to make a sharp turn to avoid another tunnel, and with the mapping tool, it says I just got to the spot I planned to. The tunnel had been flat going on for the past while, but I tilt downward as I carve off at a left angle. It goes slower this way, more crouching, more breaks waiting for a cleaning crew to grab the waste-dirt. I don't have much to do in the time between.
Time is just vague enough that we kept it, though the concept is changed down here. We sleep when we need to, we take our shifts when we can. Laziness means you get new work, or you find what you want to do down here. We support the layabouts, to some extent. Either they find something to do, or they find that boredom gets old quickly. Three years ago, though the term means less these days, there was a huge slacking movement. There wasn't really any enforcement, but pretty soon people realized they didn't like being cramped in with finicky temperature controls and sub-standard food. Things shaped up quickly, and slacking too hard is a bit of a stigma since then. It could have been much worse. That's when we arrived on the current model for these things. Four bosses you might call them. They're like elected officials, but they head the guilds, as they get called. Miners, mechanics, farmers, and keepers of the peace. The last group always has some drama with it. When I'm off shift, I try to listen into it, cast a voice about matters. I get more news about the miners, what with what I do. Sherman is head of us, he looks over the plans, tells us where to start digging, what to be doing, assigns groups for bigger projects. Nice guy, though he's lost the last of his hairs lately. He has us clearing out ore in certain areas, shoring up the foundations and tunnels where we can. I'm personally on the expansion crew, stretching out the web of tunnels to the edge of our settlements in preparation for who knows how much population in the future.
We live down here, so we expand down here, growing out from around the center where the Moon Chamber is. That hasn't been touched. Nobody really thinks it could be improved, either for safety or style. I make it a ways farther down, maybe ten feet or so before I head back. The route is easy, smooth floor lit up by inset lamps. If I didn't come out this far every day I might get lost, tunnels branching off every so often to criss-cross, merge, or split. Back farther towards the developed area signs start popping up, carved into stone plaques that are inset like the lights, though up on the wall.
Finding my way to the baths is relatively easy, even with around a thousand people, the halls aren't crowded. When they designed this place at the start it was for more people. Either they were an optimist who expected more people to be around when we moved in, or they were planning ahead for a ways so that we could grow easily. Hard to say, really. Nobody on the original construction crew is here. Once they had finished up the major work they left some recruiters in-charge and headed to the next dig-site. Maybe they got another one built before they settled down, or maybe they didn't get that far.
The baths are well done, if not as impressive as the Moon Chamber. They take on the look of a network of pipes, filled a third of the way up with warm water. It all drains out through grates in the floor, and hanging lights and more plaques point the way to the entrance. Even with the directions, the steam blurs the way, giving you privacy for sight, if not for sound. Splashes in the water echo all through the area. Back at the entrance I peel off the leather in one of the changing rooms and set my pack down beside it on a bench.
The soak is another way to let time slip by. The place isn't deserted, it never is. Four people glimpsed as shadows through the steam so far, their sloshing steps taking them to their own favourite nooks and corners of the baths.
I never really register the feel of my muscles tensed up while digging until it washes away in the warm water, and I look forward to the feel of relaxation immensely. Were it not for my stomach, I would have stayed in longer, but it growls like nothing down here but our stomachs do. I keep a change of clothes in my bag: a light, yellow dress with what would have been a scandalous and dangerous length back in the sun. Might have even been called a sun dress way back when.
It fits the style though. The hive of tunnels that we live in is hot, even without all the work and walking around we do. Most of the guys don't wear shirts, and shorts are pretty much standard dress. That's what's comfortable down here. Some people who remember farther back than I do make jokes about the beach, bikinis and floral print are here mostly because of them. Well, somewhat. We can't easily bring down flowers here, so it's a comforting sight, if a bit painful if I think on it too long. I pass a few people with one of the newer designs, stylized in the new current trend as I head toward the kitchens.
It's not far, not compared to walking in from the outskirts. I pick up some bread, potatoes, onions. Some other vegetables all mixed up into a salad. Nuts too. People still complain about the lack of meat, but I don't miss it. Not much anyway. Pigs would be too hard to keep down here, even if we had been able to get a hold of them. They'd just tunnel out, and risking a collapse of some sort due to a wild pig population doesn't sound like a good risk. Kids who get it into their heads to dig tunnels are bad enough as it is.
I load up a tray for a meal and stash some more bread for snacks in my pack, then drop it off at my house on the way to the Moon Chamber. It isn't out of the way, it's even on ground level of the large wall of apartment-style housing that fills a long hall that acts as a main thoroughfare through town. Nobody says anything about the smell of my work-suit that I've got stuffed half into a pocket of my pack. Either because the steam of the baths made it smell less or because they're polite. This area has enough people that both might be true to varying degrees, but the reactions aren't huge either way. The street isn't teeming with people, no, but there are about thirty or so on the stretch of hall I can see, which is more than I'd see in a week out on the outskirts.
Nothing much to say about the apartment itself. I don't spend much time there. Most people don't spend time in their housing, really. From the moment that we entered the Moon Chamber that first day we claimed it as a place of socialization. A plaza, a forum, the town hall. Stepping into it now there are tents set up where people have set up carvings or drawings, either just for display or for barter. There are a few games going, re-purposed plateaus or divots in the ground acting as makeshift fields. I sit down on a hill near the edge and pull out my lunch. There must be a third of everyone here, at least. When people aren't sleeping, bathing, or working, they're usually here, and people nap and work here too. Scattered around the area are likely a few groups of people planning and coordinating their projects, sitting in the silvery light with the rest of us. Just a normal day.
We keep growing, some of the kids never having seen the surface in their whole life. They must think its some type of fantastical dream. Loose earth litters the floor, every so often I take a rest and see that the way behind me is cleared, one of the younger ones on the crew would have come around and taken the waste off to the refinery. Nothing much in the rock in this part of the outskirts, just stone and dirt and worms. They check a load every so often anyway, and if they don't want to, they throw it out. Somewhere there's records of each day's digging all filed away individually, but that doesn't hold my interest for long.
I have to make a sharp turn to avoid another tunnel, and with the mapping tool, it says I just got to the spot I planned to. The tunnel had been flat going on for the past while, but I tilt downward as I carve off at a left angle. It goes slower this way, more crouching, more breaks waiting for a cleaning crew to grab the waste-dirt. I don't have much to do in the time between.
Time is just vague enough that we kept it, though the concept is changed down here. We sleep when we need to, we take our shifts when we can. Laziness means you get new work, or you find what you want to do down here. We support the layabouts, to some extent. Either they find something to do, or they find that boredom gets old quickly. Three years ago, though the term means less these days, there was a huge slacking movement. There wasn't really any enforcement, but pretty soon people realized they didn't like being cramped in with finicky temperature controls and sub-standard food. Things shaped up quickly, and slacking too hard is a bit of a stigma since then. It could have been much worse. That's when we arrived on the current model for these things. Four bosses you might call them. They're like elected officials, but they head the guilds, as they get called. Miners, mechanics, farmers, and keepers of the peace. The last group always has some drama with it. When I'm off shift, I try to listen into it, cast a voice about matters. I get more news about the miners, what with what I do. Sherman is head of us, he looks over the plans, tells us where to start digging, what to be doing, assigns groups for bigger projects. Nice guy, though he's lost the last of his hairs lately. He has us clearing out ore in certain areas, shoring up the foundations and tunnels where we can. I'm personally on the expansion crew, stretching out the web of tunnels to the edge of our settlements in preparation for who knows how much population in the future.
We live down here, so we expand down here, growing out from around the center where the Moon Chamber is. That hasn't been touched. Nobody really thinks it could be improved, either for safety or style. I make it a ways farther down, maybe ten feet or so before I head back. The route is easy, smooth floor lit up by inset lamps. If I didn't come out this far every day I might get lost, tunnels branching off every so often to criss-cross, merge, or split. Back farther towards the developed area signs start popping up, carved into stone plaques that are inset like the lights, though up on the wall.
Finding my way to the baths is relatively easy, even with around a thousand people, the halls aren't crowded. When they designed this place at the start it was for more people. Either they were an optimist who expected more people to be around when we moved in, or they were planning ahead for a ways so that we could grow easily. Hard to say, really. Nobody on the original construction crew is here. Once they had finished up the major work they left some recruiters in-charge and headed to the next dig-site. Maybe they got another one built before they settled down, or maybe they didn't get that far.
The baths are well done, if not as impressive as the Moon Chamber. They take on the look of a network of pipes, filled a third of the way up with warm water. It all drains out through grates in the floor, and hanging lights and more plaques point the way to the entrance. Even with the directions, the steam blurs the way, giving you privacy for sight, if not for sound. Splashes in the water echo all through the area. Back at the entrance I peel off the leather in one of the changing rooms and set my pack down beside it on a bench.
The soak is another way to let time slip by. The place isn't deserted, it never is. Four people glimpsed as shadows through the steam so far, their sloshing steps taking them to their own favourite nooks and corners of the baths.
I never really register the feel of my muscles tensed up while digging until it washes away in the warm water, and I look forward to the feel of relaxation immensely. Were it not for my stomach, I would have stayed in longer, but it growls like nothing down here but our stomachs do. I keep a change of clothes in my bag: a light, yellow dress with what would have been a scandalous and dangerous length back in the sun. Might have even been called a sun dress way back when.
It fits the style though. The hive of tunnels that we live in is hot, even without all the work and walking around we do. Most of the guys don't wear shirts, and shorts are pretty much standard dress. That's what's comfortable down here. Some people who remember farther back than I do make jokes about the beach, bikinis and floral print are here mostly because of them. Well, somewhat. We can't easily bring down flowers here, so it's a comforting sight, if a bit painful if I think on it too long. I pass a few people with one of the newer designs, stylized in the new current trend as I head toward the kitchens.
It's not far, not compared to walking in from the outskirts. I pick up some bread, potatoes, onions. Some other vegetables all mixed up into a salad. Nuts too. People still complain about the lack of meat, but I don't miss it. Not much anyway. Pigs would be too hard to keep down here, even if we had been able to get a hold of them. They'd just tunnel out, and risking a collapse of some sort due to a wild pig population doesn't sound like a good risk. Kids who get it into their heads to dig tunnels are bad enough as it is.
I load up a tray for a meal and stash some more bread for snacks in my pack, then drop it off at my house on the way to the Moon Chamber. It isn't out of the way, it's even on ground level of the large wall of apartment-style housing that fills a long hall that acts as a main thoroughfare through town. Nobody says anything about the smell of my work-suit that I've got stuffed half into a pocket of my pack. Either because the steam of the baths made it smell less or because they're polite. This area has enough people that both might be true to varying degrees, but the reactions aren't huge either way. The street isn't teeming with people, no, but there are about thirty or so on the stretch of hall I can see, which is more than I'd see in a week out on the outskirts.
Nothing much to say about the apartment itself. I don't spend much time there. Most people don't spend time in their housing, really. From the moment that we entered the Moon Chamber that first day we claimed it as a place of socialization. A plaza, a forum, the town hall. Stepping into it now there are tents set up where people have set up carvings or drawings, either just for display or for barter. There are a few games going, re-purposed plateaus or divots in the ground acting as makeshift fields. I sit down on a hill near the edge and pull out my lunch. There must be a third of everyone here, at least. When people aren't sleeping, bathing, or working, they're usually here, and people nap and work here too. Scattered around the area are likely a few groups of people planning and coordinating their projects, sitting in the silvery light with the rest of us. Just a normal day.
Friday, December 6, 2013
Beneath a Stone Sky (Part One)
Every day worse than the next, that's how things were going these days. We kept working, glancing up every so often through our heavily tinted lenses to watch the sunlight pound down harder than the last week. If the suits, masks, window coverings, and spray-sealants weren't distributed, we'd all be dead. Most of humanity was already. We here, left hiding in the husks of civilization, we're not really holding on tight so much as slipping down deep into a pit of hopelessness, clawing at the sides to slow our descent.
Funny, then, that today, the day our last seed of hope sprouts, we're marching down into a pit willingly. Literally. The entrance looks hastily cut into the landscape, out in the country so there's less of a chance the diggers would run into any old city plumbing or something. That and I expect they want to divorce the scene from the cities we all left. Coming out here to see all the plants in their various states is stunning in contrast, or comparison, with our group. Some of the plants are huge, larger than they should be. Sunflowers as thick as my arm, twice my height, which is average, even if people tend to call me short. Dried up moss and brittle yellow grass form the field that they spring up in. Unlucky and unable to adapt.
You can't tell by the people's eyes, what with how their faces are covered up, but posture is informative. The fat man at the head of the group is out of breath walking out here where the car's can't drive, but he's still holding his head up, expecting something. He has hope. The lady, can tell by the hips, who comes after him doesn't have that same pull upward. She slouches, dragging her feet a bit, and every so often looking up at the sun. It's a habit we all have,the sun-checking, but she does it with a rhythm, like a ritual for the end times.
Not like any of our glances up help, at least to solve the problem. Maybe we need to look our scourge in the face before we flee, get a good look at the thing that almost killed us off. May still kill us off. Groups like this, eight hundred, nine hundred people, lots of them are doing similar things. Digging holes and hiding. Up at the ridge, where the plant growth hasn't had a chance to spread, we can look down into the hole. It spirals down, like a staircase or what you would expect at an excavation, which this is, partially.
I have to step to the side to keep from being pushed down with the tide that walks forward, white suits covered in white cloaks, all walking down the spiral. A glance back and the group dwindles, trickling on down out of the field. Lots of postures, there. Hunched, timid, light-footed, heavy-hearted. Too many to find words for the small variations. Some of them are huddled in clumps, two or three, trying not to lose each other. A few lost looking people already have lost somebody. Not like we have to worry about getting split up too permanently though. Getting locked into a hole in the ground will do that.
Blue sky with a violet sun over a sea of sunflowers. Beautiful. I can still remember when it was more of an off-orange, back when it had just started. I was five, playing outside without a care. Even back then they knew something was wrong, but it was slow. The inevitability still made it frightening. First came the plans to stop it from changing, then the plans for adaptation, like the suits. Now we're left to run away from it all. The surface is lost. With that thought I can stop staring at it; I can turn and join the stream of people walking down.
Passing a few of the slower people in similar contemplation to mine, perhaps as they stare up at the sky while moving downwards. At the end of the spiral, down deep as a skyscraper, there's a door. Heavy and metallic, braced to keep the earth from bursting it open. It's not big, not even a double-door. Seemingly inconsequential but for the fact that it alone sits at the bottom of the hole. We all file in, one by one, walking into a faintly lit corridor that stretches out a long way ahead.
It's sloped downwards, somehow trying to say we're still not quite far enough away from the surface yet. I can hear a few conversations bouncing around and mixing with each other, but I have nothing to talk about, or nobody to talk to. Nothing to vocalize is the right way to say it, I guess. We reach a split in the path, men to the left, women to the right. The people in front, people who know where we're going to end up sat something about showers. I vaguely listen, but my mind keeps wandering back to the sunflowers.
Be lucky enough to survive wasn't the case. Cancer got to us and withered us like the grass up there. Adaptation is what we're doing now. It sounds better than saying we're fleeing. Better to adapt to the underground than to say we're fleeing from the surface.
There are showers here, spread out in a long hallway. The white suits are scattered on the floor, near the door, and I add mine to the pile before searching for a free space. People are talking more, now that the suits are off. Steam fills the room, pushing itself down either way as we collectively purge ourselves. There is some anti-radiation something or other in the water; don't drink it advises a sign. Even the clothes at the entrance are soaked through, the water carrying everything malignant out, they hope. If it were that easy, we would be on the surface, still. It works well enough as a placebo for some people.
At the end of the hall are airlocks, lined up side by side. Go in, get sprayed with decontaminents, then walk out the other side. Painless, and the reward is a towel and clothes. A nice, spring dress for me, even though it should be winter. Seasons aren't what they used to be, though, and I'm not even sure if seasons exist at all down here.
The passage merges again, always sloping downward. Walking takes hours, it feels like, and others complain about it on the way. My feet are sore by the time we enter into a giant chamber. It's spherical, roughly, with the bottom fourth filled in with patios and benches and all manor of things to make up a large common-room. I can barely make out the entrances and exits that appear on the far walls, and on the sides around me. People are gasping and complimenting the architecture, and I can't help but agree silently. As I look up the lights inside bounce off the slightly irregular grey and white speckled stone that makes up the whole chamber, creating a sparkling display that feels like the night sky risen above our heads. Cratered indents that create shadows draw in the eyes far up and away, some that must be cleverly concealing lights to illuminate the broad expanse of the dome.
"Welcome to the Moon Chamber," somebody announces through a megaphone from one of the raised platforms that dot the dipped floor or the area. Most of us don't register the speech, picking up bits and pieces through our wonder. In punctuation, when he finishes, a long drum-beat sounds out behind us, like the shutting of thousands of doors one after the other. Shutting us in as it collapses. The tunnel, the piles of old clothes, the showers, set up for that one time, all crushed. Our new home entrances us for now, lessening the panic of being locked in, making things okay, for now. We have a sky.
Funny, then, that today, the day our last seed of hope sprouts, we're marching down into a pit willingly. Literally. The entrance looks hastily cut into the landscape, out in the country so there's less of a chance the diggers would run into any old city plumbing or something. That and I expect they want to divorce the scene from the cities we all left. Coming out here to see all the plants in their various states is stunning in contrast, or comparison, with our group. Some of the plants are huge, larger than they should be. Sunflowers as thick as my arm, twice my height, which is average, even if people tend to call me short. Dried up moss and brittle yellow grass form the field that they spring up in. Unlucky and unable to adapt.
You can't tell by the people's eyes, what with how their faces are covered up, but posture is informative. The fat man at the head of the group is out of breath walking out here where the car's can't drive, but he's still holding his head up, expecting something. He has hope. The lady, can tell by the hips, who comes after him doesn't have that same pull upward. She slouches, dragging her feet a bit, and every so often looking up at the sun. It's a habit we all have,the sun-checking, but she does it with a rhythm, like a ritual for the end times.
Not like any of our glances up help, at least to solve the problem. Maybe we need to look our scourge in the face before we flee, get a good look at the thing that almost killed us off. May still kill us off. Groups like this, eight hundred, nine hundred people, lots of them are doing similar things. Digging holes and hiding. Up at the ridge, where the plant growth hasn't had a chance to spread, we can look down into the hole. It spirals down, like a staircase or what you would expect at an excavation, which this is, partially.
I have to step to the side to keep from being pushed down with the tide that walks forward, white suits covered in white cloaks, all walking down the spiral. A glance back and the group dwindles, trickling on down out of the field. Lots of postures, there. Hunched, timid, light-footed, heavy-hearted. Too many to find words for the small variations. Some of them are huddled in clumps, two or three, trying not to lose each other. A few lost looking people already have lost somebody. Not like we have to worry about getting split up too permanently though. Getting locked into a hole in the ground will do that.
Blue sky with a violet sun over a sea of sunflowers. Beautiful. I can still remember when it was more of an off-orange, back when it had just started. I was five, playing outside without a care. Even back then they knew something was wrong, but it was slow. The inevitability still made it frightening. First came the plans to stop it from changing, then the plans for adaptation, like the suits. Now we're left to run away from it all. The surface is lost. With that thought I can stop staring at it; I can turn and join the stream of people walking down.
Passing a few of the slower people in similar contemplation to mine, perhaps as they stare up at the sky while moving downwards. At the end of the spiral, down deep as a skyscraper, there's a door. Heavy and metallic, braced to keep the earth from bursting it open. It's not big, not even a double-door. Seemingly inconsequential but for the fact that it alone sits at the bottom of the hole. We all file in, one by one, walking into a faintly lit corridor that stretches out a long way ahead.
It's sloped downwards, somehow trying to say we're still not quite far enough away from the surface yet. I can hear a few conversations bouncing around and mixing with each other, but I have nothing to talk about, or nobody to talk to. Nothing to vocalize is the right way to say it, I guess. We reach a split in the path, men to the left, women to the right. The people in front, people who know where we're going to end up sat something about showers. I vaguely listen, but my mind keeps wandering back to the sunflowers.
Be lucky enough to survive wasn't the case. Cancer got to us and withered us like the grass up there. Adaptation is what we're doing now. It sounds better than saying we're fleeing. Better to adapt to the underground than to say we're fleeing from the surface.
There are showers here, spread out in a long hallway. The white suits are scattered on the floor, near the door, and I add mine to the pile before searching for a free space. People are talking more, now that the suits are off. Steam fills the room, pushing itself down either way as we collectively purge ourselves. There is some anti-radiation something or other in the water; don't drink it advises a sign. Even the clothes at the entrance are soaked through, the water carrying everything malignant out, they hope. If it were that easy, we would be on the surface, still. It works well enough as a placebo for some people.
At the end of the hall are airlocks, lined up side by side. Go in, get sprayed with decontaminents, then walk out the other side. Painless, and the reward is a towel and clothes. A nice, spring dress for me, even though it should be winter. Seasons aren't what they used to be, though, and I'm not even sure if seasons exist at all down here.
The passage merges again, always sloping downward. Walking takes hours, it feels like, and others complain about it on the way. My feet are sore by the time we enter into a giant chamber. It's spherical, roughly, with the bottom fourth filled in with patios and benches and all manor of things to make up a large common-room. I can barely make out the entrances and exits that appear on the far walls, and on the sides around me. People are gasping and complimenting the architecture, and I can't help but agree silently. As I look up the lights inside bounce off the slightly irregular grey and white speckled stone that makes up the whole chamber, creating a sparkling display that feels like the night sky risen above our heads. Cratered indents that create shadows draw in the eyes far up and away, some that must be cleverly concealing lights to illuminate the broad expanse of the dome.
"Welcome to the Moon Chamber," somebody announces through a megaphone from one of the raised platforms that dot the dipped floor or the area. Most of us don't register the speech, picking up bits and pieces through our wonder. In punctuation, when he finishes, a long drum-beat sounds out behind us, like the shutting of thousands of doors one after the other. Shutting us in as it collapses. The tunnel, the piles of old clothes, the showers, set up for that one time, all crushed. Our new home entrances us for now, lessening the panic of being locked in, making things okay, for now. We have a sky.
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