to become an obese monster?
"Be careful," Hopkins admonished.
The second-floor hallways stretched in three directions from the landing at the top of the stairs. Michael's light traveled only so far in the muddy darkness; he could not see the ends of the long hallways running east and west, but the south hall was short, with only one door on each side.
The water-stained walls were covered with markings, graffiti and scrawled names, and random gouges and scratches. A smaller stairway opposite the elevator door led from one side of the landing to the next floor. Michael climbed again; there was no sense inspecting every room.
On the fifth floor, he walked from end to end in each hall and found a broken, leaning door to one apartment on the east side. He kicked it open and grimaced at the destruction beyond. Anonymous green trash had drifted into the corners of the living room. The carpets had been shredded as if by iceskaters wearing razors for blades. Michael looked down at his feet and saw an ancient pile of feces. Nearby, yellow stains dribbled down one wall.
All of this , he thought, from the descendants of those who struggled back to humanity — or something like it — across sixty million years . The story was noble — yet as one of its end products, a human being had once defecated on this floor and urinated on this wall.
With a sudden flush of anger, Michael wondered to what extent human depravity could be blamed on the misguiding of the Sidhe acting in their capacity as gods — Tonn, who became Adonna in the Realm, portraying Baal and Yahweh, and how many other deities?
There was a puzzle here. He knew instinctively it was useless to blame others entirely for one's own failings — or to blame the Sidhe for the failings of his own kind. But surely there was some culpability. He had little doubt that the Sidhe had mimicked gods to restrain humans, to open a little more space for their own kind on the Earth they had abandoned thousands of millennia before.
He shook his head and backed away from the feces. Such profound thoughts from such miserable evidence.
And you, Michael? Withdrawing into cold intellectual splendor, knowing you are superior because of your knowledge, knowing you would never be so unstylish as to crap on the floor of a deserted building… So you're superior to your own kind, more stylish; does that mean you have something of the Sidhe in you, then ?
Suddenly, the crap on the floor and the piss on the wall became profoundly funny. In a way, that kind of fated animal indifference to the past had more style in it than any ordered Sidhe posturing. Michael's thoughts made a complete turnaround with dizzying alacrity.
The Crane Women, seeing the crap on the floor, would have drawn conclusions quite different from his own. They would have seen human flexibility — not just lack of dignity, but lack of restrictions.
He backed out of the apartment and returned to the stairs.
On the eighth floor, he vaguely realized what had drawn him here. There was a sensation in the air, as of a loosening or an opening . It was so faint as to be almost nonexistent, but he could feel it intermittently.
The higher he went in the Tippett Residential Hotel, the stronger the sensation became. There was nothing out of the ordinary here and now… but there had been, and there would be again. A breach in the mind-silence and the stolid yet ever-changing and infinitely detailed reality of Earth. He was feeling a tickle in an area of his mind once touched only by Death's Radio — the voice of Tonn… and the voice of Arno Waltiri. Yet the tickle came from neither of them.
It was the spoor of another place, lying nearby, separated by a much thinner wall here in the neighborhood where once The Infinity Concerto had been performed.
Michael felt a sudden exultation. His need for the bite of adventure… Here, there was hope for more adventure, more tastes of the strange and dangerous and wonderful he had experienced
"Be careful," Hopkins admonished.
The second-floor hallways stretched in three directions from the landing at the top of the stairs. Michael's light traveled only so far in the muddy darkness; he could not see the ends of the long hallways running east and west, but the south hall was short, with only one door on each side.
The water-stained walls were covered with markings, graffiti and scrawled names, and random gouges and scratches. A smaller stairway opposite the elevator door led from one side of the landing to the next floor. Michael climbed again; there was no sense inspecting every room.
On the fifth floor, he walked from end to end in each hall and found a broken, leaning door to one apartment on the east side. He kicked it open and grimaced at the destruction beyond. Anonymous green trash had drifted into the corners of the living room. The carpets had been shredded as if by iceskaters wearing razors for blades. Michael looked down at his feet and saw an ancient pile of feces. Nearby, yellow stains dribbled down one wall.
All of this , he thought, from the descendants of those who struggled back to humanity — or something like it — across sixty million years . The story was noble — yet as one of its end products, a human being had once defecated on this floor and urinated on this wall.
With a sudden flush of anger, Michael wondered to what extent human depravity could be blamed on the misguiding of the Sidhe acting in their capacity as gods — Tonn, who became Adonna in the Realm, portraying Baal and Yahweh, and how many other deities?
There was a puzzle here. He knew instinctively it was useless to blame others entirely for one's own failings — or to blame the Sidhe for the failings of his own kind. But surely there was some culpability. He had little doubt that the Sidhe had mimicked gods to restrain humans, to open a little more space for their own kind on the Earth they had abandoned thousands of millennia before.
He shook his head and backed away from the feces. Such profound thoughts from such miserable evidence.
And you, Michael? Withdrawing into cold intellectual splendor, knowing you are superior because of your knowledge, knowing you would never be so unstylish as to crap on the floor of a deserted building… So you're superior to your own kind, more stylish; does that mean you have something of the Sidhe in you, then ?
Suddenly, the crap on the floor and the piss on the wall became profoundly funny. In a way, that kind of fated animal indifference to the past had more style in it than any ordered Sidhe posturing. Michael's thoughts made a complete turnaround with dizzying alacrity.
The Crane Women, seeing the crap on the floor, would have drawn conclusions quite different from his own. They would have seen human flexibility — not just lack of dignity, but lack of restrictions.
He backed out of the apartment and returned to the stairs.
On the eighth floor, he vaguely realized what had drawn him here. There was a sensation in the air, as of a loosening or an opening . It was so faint as to be almost nonexistent, but he could feel it intermittently.
The higher he went in the Tippett Residential Hotel, the stronger the sensation became. There was nothing out of the ordinary here and now… but there had been, and there would be again. A breach in the mind-silence and the stolid yet ever-changing and infinitely detailed reality of Earth. He was feeling a tickle in an area of his mind once touched only by Death's Radio — the voice of Tonn… and the voice of Arno Waltiri. Yet the tickle came from neither of them.
It was the spoor of another place, lying nearby, separated by a much thinner wall here in the neighborhood where once The Infinity Concerto had been performed.
Michael felt a sudden exultation. His need for the bite of adventure… Here, there was hope for more adventure, more tastes of the strange and dangerous and wonderful he had experienced
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