A chapter.

<-Chapter 33->

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There was a kind of poetry to it.


Even with his eyes closed, back to his table, he could hear its rhythm. The poetry of the Machinations of it all, to all the cogs piecing into the colossal machine. The real machines, the gears that clanked and clacked and whirred to draw him through the wall, as well as the really real machines, the ones built of intricate connections of men and jobs and ideals. But mostly ideals. It had to be, Nelson was sure of it; nothing other than pure ideals could keep people together behind this, locked down in places with a kind of moist air that had a tactile sense not unlike grease drippings from a fryer that hadn’t been cleaned for sixteen years(don’t ask).

He knew that the people were there. It was almost as if he could feel them, all of them moving through the honeycomb of caverns connected to the woven tunnels that slipped throughout the place without care for ease of movement and angle. Lives breathing through this place, this place, this place…


“What is this place?”


The thought was an intruder, a random thing that shook the foundations of the pyramid of concentration that he had been building up. He shook it off, and in that second between forgetting and once again thinking; Nelson could feel the building once more.

More than just feeling it; Nelson wanted to feel it. Some sort of desire, to see into the thing that he was suddenly a part of. To be what he was supposed to be, rather than not to be. Because there was something here. There had be something, something more to all of this. Madness -- but of course -- was a deciding factor, but still. Something else had to be driving this. Ideals, once again. Ideas, perhaps. Keeping this place moving, an alien network where people with X’s cut into their necks moved forward with the hive mind, day after day after day after day.


“It must be nice.”


Again. The thoughts were coming faster now, things that he didn’t want to say. Even though they belonged to him, as all thoughts do. Nelson was the sort who liked to keep track of thoughts. He wanted to think the ones that he wanted to think, lots of ideas and concepts and lives gleaned from his surroundings. Like this place. Looking at the scratches and the walls, feeling the non-existent breeze, it connected him to the place. So he could think about it. Take it all in, absorbing it so that the wholeness of it all could make him content. The world outside, taken inside. With him. Keeping them in his head so that he could caress them and sass them, like a child playing with a pet that he doesn’t quite know how to control.

Vicious thoughts, coming from the self, the tiny little bit of indignation spouting off whatever the shize they wants to say. Most of the time Nelson could keep those down. Keep them in their place, ducking his head out of the way in order to let the comic-book illustration of the words fly by his ear, refusing to let them tickle his delicate organ of corti with their slanderous concepts. But this time, he heard it.

And it bothered him. It bothered him. This place, it bothered him. It bothered him to be here, to be among these people whom he didn’t understand. It bothered him to be among people who knew more about the things that he had always done than he did. It bothered him. It bothered him that they actually seemed to care. They cared about what he could do. They cared about who he was. They cared about what he was, whatever the fuck that might mean. To them, to him, to anyone. It was bothersome.

“It must be nice.” He didn’t understand it. He tried to think about it. He tried to think. He tried to move. He tried move his head up, straining it against whatever was holding it down against the wooden surface of the door. Unfortunately, amidst all of his thoughts of himself, of this place, of the world as a whole; he forgot to the think about what he was doing.

He was flying, twisting, turning through the intricate tunnels that led from the bathroom to…wherever. And the instant his head strained itself upward against the motion, he brained himself against the pipe that happened to pass through the tunnel, while it was delivering its precious cargo of human waste to…wherever.

Had he been conscious, he’d be happy to know that he didn’t bother thinking about it.

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