Joe kneels down and puts his hand to the floor; the stone is warm to the touch. In a junction of sorts, Joe looks around at the pipes, many of them larger than before, and criss-crossing the room all around and over him, they are now covered in condensation. The cobwebs and dust have been replaced with glistening. Perhaps a half an hour before, upon entering the intersection, Ghede had put his nose up to the air and sniffed carefully for several moments. Then, without explanation, Ghede had asked him to wait in the chamber while he “fetched” something. So Joe waited, is waiting, listening to new noises, knocks and clangs in the pipe works. As they had approached the chamber, he had noticed the change in temperature as the pipes grew in diameter and became alive with activity.

He detaches his lunchbox from his belt, seats himself on the warm stone floor, and sets the little black metal box in front of him and stares at it. Removing the letter and the map from the box, he goes over both once again. For the first time, he notices some faded symbols behind the letters of the poem that Walt had given him; faint sketches. He turns the old, rumpled paper one way and another and without knowing why, turns the lantern off once again. As before, a darkness comes over the chamber and as his eyes adjust, the room begins to glow, this time even more ghostly, the fungus appearing to thrive in the hot moisture of the room. More and more, the green glow seems to crawl out from thick patches in various places along the pipes and then merge until outlines of most of the room, arches leading to other corridors, even more pipes, creases in the stonework of the floor, all come to life before him. The glow becomes so luminescent, he can make out virtually the whole of the chamber around him. And like before, it seems he can see further up and out than what the lantern revealed.

Looking down to the piece of paper in his hand, he sees that the poem is entirely gone, now replaced by strange green icons and symbols. He holds it close to his face and squints, but it is hard to make anything out in the faint light. He looks to the little lunchbox and he is standing in a field with someone, a faint glow still surrounding him, but now white, from a full moon. He feels young again and looks to his side to see a figure, an arm and a hand covered in dirt and grease. Looking up, the moonlight falls on the calm smile and eyes like windows—nearly white in the moonlight—of Beatrice. She looks down at him and smiles. “Sometimes it’s easy to see the stars when you don’t look directly at them.” She stoops down next to him, puts her hand on his shoulder and then points skyward. “Pick a dark spot in the sky, Joseph, and then you will see that the stars in your periphery appear that much brighter.” He does as he is told and sees that she is right. Looking to the lunchbox, the paper just beneath his fovea gleams with sigils and he can almost recognize them—Kanji. He recognizes some of them: Cycle… repeat… fire… one… no, not one, but whole.

Read the whole thread: The Hunger Engine

Characters and Places: ,