Hit the Turtle to Return Home.
Lost and Found
Nothing Unreal Exists.
Sequel to Lost Girls
There is something about the smell of corpses that catches in the back of your throat. Living with death changes the way you see life. Changes a person. Changes a world. When humanity had command of the air, people often said that altitude diminished the flavour of food. I can tell you, below the earth everything tastes of dirt and soot. I would rather it had diminished its flavour. At least then we might forget our relationship with the bowels of our Earth and imagine a better world. The only radiance in this subterranean domain; my ever-present holographic companion. Alicen’s interface carried before me, by four men. Like the ark of the covenant before a conquering army. But here no army, only Pharaoh Gumtu. First and last of my name.
Every day we make the same pilgrimage, along the same path. A journey out of the depths to steal enough sunlight to keep Alicen’s interface charged. We glimpse the land of light and air, like an alien world. Spying the dodecagopus processions from our hidden crevices. The world above barely recognisable. The pyramids that had once declared the majesty of man, were now no more than a collection of quarried rubble. No block upon another.