We are here. This is now.
Overhead, the King Columbia does its penance for crimes unrecorded; grumbling in a language long forgotten. The energy mills groan, the bright engine in a wide net of infrastructure reaching into the wild west and out to the coasts. Past a crack most people can't see, down a tunnel, through a chamber, on the other side of a shadow, down here in the dark is a haggard man that for now we'll call
(twisting and turning in the widening gyre)
Maerlyn. Falco columbarius.
It's dark here; the glowing balls that litter the shade cast no light, at least not here. Size is variable, or maybe some of them are farther away than others. Merlin sets aside a fist-sized orb of light the indisguisable shade of twilight and reaches for another, bigger, the serpentine color of a television tuned to a dead station, back in the days when that didn't mean blue. The dynamic, twisting gray we call static.
Show me, he says. Show me the beginning.
When nothing happens he says: Then show me something starting. Show me the old woman, or someone like her.
Show me the gunslinger.
The power lines stretch from sea to shining sea and they make a sound like this:
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO
(twisting and turning in the widening gyre)
Maerlyn. Falco columbarius.
It's dark here; the glowing balls that litter the shade cast no light, at least not here. Size is variable, or maybe some of them are farther away than others. Merlin sets aside a fist-sized orb of light the indisguisable shade of twilight and reaches for another, bigger, the serpentine color of a television tuned to a dead station, back in the days when that didn't mean blue. The dynamic, twisting gray we call static.
Show me, he says. Show me the beginning.
When nothing happens he says: Then show me something starting. Show me the old woman, or someone like her.
Show me the gunslinger.
The power lines stretch from sea to shining sea and they make a sound like this:
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO