Patchwork Universe

Lord Doomshadow · Posted: 21 Mar 2004 03:53 am Post subject: The Museum of Many Things

Signs, signs everywhere, indicating everything, signifying nothing...

"Illuminated Geese Through The Ages - Turn Left Here"

"Mesopatamian Medicine Wing - Follow The Green Line"

"The Dreams Of Mice - A Sponsored Display"

There was no end to it. Every room had another door, every floor an unexplored staircase...

(And how was it that he could read the signs? They were not even made of pictures, but from some kind of abstract markings. Yet when he looked at them it was as if he could hear the words they represented being read inside his mind...)

Exhausted, Doomshadow slumped down on the featureless white floor. Vaguely, he realised that Ivor was starting to smell. And not his usual smell, either - there was a definite hint of rot beneath the aroma of wet fur. Perhaps the effects of the latest flask of Vivification Fluid were wearing off? Could it be time to reapply the Procedure? Who could tell how long they had been here, wandering the endless corridors in this unchanging, unnatural light?

Hours passed while he lay on the tiles, full of self pity and despair. Occasionally he could hear the distant echoes of passing feet, or Ivor's soft, anxious whine.

Understanding arrived all at once, as if in a dream. This was not a real story; this was some kind of literary fantasy, a piece of intellectual trickery intended to amuse the decadent and feeble minded. A fable about a museum of infinite extent, within which all knowledge was contained, whether real or illusory. A place where you could find the answer to any question... as long as you were willing to search forever.

Doomshadow sprang to his feet. His voice was harsh with fury and contempt.

"Ivor! We are trapped in a work of... poetic realism!"

Lord Doomshadow · Posted: 22 Mar 2004 01:39 am Post subject:

He had won in the end. The story had done its best to destroy him, but it could not have been expecting to be confronted with a Doomshadow.

Once he had broken the code, the rest was simple. The stick figure of a man, drawn in black, meant "artificial spring". A similar drawing with a floating sun for a head indicated the presence of an escape route. Follow this second kind of sign for long enough... and you would arrive at an exit.

Staggering slightly, he approached the mist. North. He must go north.