I live in a dimly-lit world, on the metal bank of a bubbling river that twists and turns. The river flows along flat hollowed-out metal beds – the liquid is voluminous and holds its shape by some chemical property – and it loops about itself a thousand times, it goes over itself and it falls below the metal earth. Liquid in many places spills over the sides of each riverbed, and floods the ground below.
The metal earth, on the bank where I live – and, I think, across the hills as well – is festooned with minuscule holes. Some of the holes are occasionally filled by metal struts, which don’t extend into the air, but merely stop at the hole’s edge.
I survive on the liquid, but I have been looking for food for a long time. While we were initially prosperous, the number of others living on this metal embankment has declined.
Some are suspicious about the river’s course. “It comes right back around and loops forever,” they say. “We’re living trapped in a dream – a closed system from which we can’t escape.” But I choose to believe there’s life out there, somewhere beyond the sky, where the sun shines at irregular times (luckily, we are not reliant on solar cycles for survival – they’re never consistent).
Instead, in the ordering of our society, we rely on the Three Holy Labruscae. The Three Holy Labruscae move about in the sky and announce their approach – they are close constellations, existing in our atmosphere, but unreachable, hidden above the White Wall. We organise our calendars by them; they suffer no irregularities. One is swift, and we consider it a common sight – it makes a high sound that comforts us and orders the day, one is quite slow, to be savoured for its appearance like a fine delicacy – a salted carbon mix of some kind (we live off what we can); it makes a sound like a distant summer storm, and the third takes an age to come about, but we recognise it by the low rumble it is always making, like a Morlock machine deep in the earth – only the eldest of the tribe have ever seen it, and only once. They will not see it again.
I mentioned the White Wall. This is a dome placed below the atmosphere, a dull-egg-white barrier between us and the outer layers of the world. Resting on the white wall are twelve identical constellations, each made up of short silver streaks pointing away from (what we calculated to be) the throne of the Labruscae (the highest point in the world, impossible to see from below the Wall. We only theorise its existence).
The world’s uppermost layer, our scientists say, is a thick clear sheet covered in unmoving oily worms, and through those atmospheres light from beyond shines dimly through into our dark world, underneath the layers.
There are many gaps in the earth beyond the embankment on which I live. My daughter, Lyudmila, fell down one of the gaps – much larger than the holes with the struts, large enough that only one would be enough to swallow our village – and I never even heard her hit the ground. In those gaps there is nothing but a terrible bronze blackness. Children do not play near them; adults caution their loved ones to stay away…
On a lazy day, the river flowing slowly, calamity occurs. The outer layer of the world – covered in oily paths – is lifted up. Suddenly, great swathes of us die, we are carried into space – into an unobservable world of blurry death, too stunned and too deprived of air to understand what hit us. Others are cast into the pit, and their screams reverberate along the metallic banks of the world.
There is a terrible silence. Yes – complete silence. The Three Labruscae have paused. Time is over. There is no order to the universe, the tribe is nearly destroyed – already small in number, we are but a few houses now – and then the Three begin to spin.
They become blurs, cutting through the sky like angry blades, and their anger at having the sky lifted away seems to last forever. All of a sudden they stop, jerk back and forth – the tribe watches in fear and awe, many of our heads bent to the earth in prostration – and then come to a complete stop again.
A clean, enfolding white sheet descends – ironic, a white sheet which will turn us into ghosts, cartoon ghosts as in a children’s pantomime, innocent reflections of the great reality of death – that white sheet, heavy, blanketing, somehow malevolently directed, falls down upon us, and our tribe is carried out into space, into the great rainbow blur of nothing. I feel time passing, and there is no way to measure it. As I die, I hear – in the distance, madly, below – the Three begin their normal course once more.
~
“Are you sure that’s the right way to clean that?”
“Don’t really care if it’s not,” he says, throwing the wet tissue to his empty plate. “It’s fake. Had a damn gap in the glass, after all. I’ll take it to the jewellers.”
“I’m sorry about the beer.”
“Don’t worry, I just got paid – I’ll get another one.”
verso folio 