Part 2 – Prologue
October 30, 2011
— In the midnight depths of the earth beneath the elder college, there is a fissure. This fissure is not in the ancient stone that forms the world’s bones, but rather between the infinite infinitesimal distances within the very substance of the stone. It is hiding behind the sizzling electrons, always occluded from every direction. It is hiding in front of everything we have ever known, and thereby entirely invisible. Something is moving through the fissure; or maybe it is the fissure itself moving. It is moving with a purpose full of the endless patience of endings. Presumably it has no intelligence guiding it, for it is not alive. No, certainly not alive. And though it is deep, still very deep below, it is moving, drawn towards the college’s very mortar by means unknowable.
— And then the fire alarm went off, and I woke up. And that was my dream.
— Then we agree that it was a portent that drunk people still shouldn’t be microwaving popcorn?
— Agreed. On a related topic, the sodium lights out here make that old towel and pajama bottoms combination you’re sporting look quite fetchingly . . . ancient.
— Why thank you! And may I say that the cold is bringing out the color in your cheeks in a way which quite sets you apart from the deeply ill famine victim that your shivering would otherwise suggest.
— Touche, my friend.
— Well, now those kindly firemen are leaving, and I suggest that we return to our dear dormitory at once.
