Descending Road - SO LONG IN THE WALL by Dana W. Paxson

SO LONG IN THE WALL

I wobble to a stop at Level 300. My ages-weakened legs shake; the bacterial film of the shaft‘s floor begins to scorch the soles of my feet, eat its way up my ankles and calves. It is time to feed, and heal. With bleeding fingers I pull the rusted door at this level; it squawks. I wait until the sounds of voices fade, and then look in from behind the door. This was a thriving Zone when I walked its streets. It still is.

Women parade their wealth, men their strength, children their fantasies, all in tight and shining costumes, with monstrous gene-crafted reptilian pets coiling their arms and necks. The pets smile and gabble with flicking tongues, the people frown and posture at one another. In twelve thousand years, even after the Destruction and the Colonization, so little has changed; then, only the pets were otherwise, crooning in polytonal voices and oozing sweet drugs from their skins.

But the people who walk past my prison in this age seem strangely plain, uniform. In the days when the Mondracen immured me for my crimes, human bodies flourished in mad variety: the Snin, spidery and six-armed, bone-slab faces pointed at cheeks and chin; the Crasstilizi, shag-haired and clumsy, cawing their poems and stroking their shambling young with pancake fingertips; the Treeminar, miniatures the size of mice scuttling the corridors on motorized hovers, shrieking cries at each other and at the large humans treading too near them; the Shoomtar Jend, great flat eyes the heaviest masses of their sleek, floating, gas-filled bodies, their gray skin-membranes marbled with their family colors; and finally the Mondracen, the dully-normal humans in the body plan I see here now. None survived the Great Death.

The City itself died then. I hung in the wall for so long after the Great Death that I nearly lost all track of time. Then the human Colonists came, the very image of the Mondracen, and they lighted the City, and they found me. I spoke to them, and they ran, but then they slowly brought machines, and they proclaimed me an ancient work of art, and left me here to perform for them.

And so I shall now perform what they did not expect.

Story List	SURPRISE ME	Author Page
USER SURVEY	PUZZLE ME	MAKE ELM MARK

HOVER Lucida Bright BARE	HOVER Lucida Bright FULL	HOVER Palatino Linotype BARE
HOVER Palatino Linotype FULL	HOVER Times New Roman BARE	HOVER Times New Roman FULL
PAD Arial BARE	PAD Arial FULL	PAD Lucida Bright BARE
PAD Lucida Bright FULL	PAD Times New Roman BARE	PAD Times New Roman FULL


	SO LONG IN THE WALL 6303 Arcus I wobble to a stop at Level 300. My ages-weakened legs shake; the bacterial film of the shaft‘s floor begins to scorch the soles of my feet, eat its way up my ankles and calves. It is time to feed, and heal. With bleeding fingers I pull the rusted door at this level; it squawks. I wait until the sounds of voices fade, and then look in from behind the door. This was a thriving Zone when I walked its streets. It still is. Women parade their wealth, men their strength, children their fantasies, all in tight and shining costumes, with monstrous gene-crafted reptilian pets coiling their arms and necks. The pets smile and gabble with flicking tongues, the people frown and posture at one another. In twelve thousand years, even after the Destruction and the Colonization, so little has changed; then, only the pets were otherwise, crooning in polytonal voices and oozing sweet drugs from their skins. But the people who walk past my prison in this age seem strangely plain, uniform. In the days when the Mondracen immured me for my crimes, human bodies flourished in mad variety: the Snin, spidery and six-armed, bone-slab faces pointed at cheeks and chin; the Crasstilizi, shag-haired and clumsy, cawing their poems and stroking their shambling young with pancake fingertips; the Treeminar, miniatures the size of mice scuttling the corridors on motorized hovers, shrieking cries at each other and at the large humans treading too near them; the Shoomtar Jend, great flat eyes the heaviest masses of their sleek, floating, gas-filled bodies, their gray skin-membranes marbled with their family colors; and finally the Mondracen, the dully-normal humans in the body plan I see here now. None survived the Great Death. The City itself died then. I hung in the wall for so long after the Great Death that I nearly lost all track of time. Then the human Colonists came, the very image of the Mondracen, and they lighted the City, and they found me. I spoke to them, and they ran, but then they slowly brought machines, and they proclaimed me an ancient work of art, and left me here to perform for them. And so I shall now perform what they did not expect.