Three women sit in repose: Yerjena, Lorin, and Fig. They are in a breathy library full of supple leather loungers, which is also a courtyard shaded by a grand marble statue garnished by wandering ivy, which is also a polished aluminum bunker that is vacuum-sealed against the corrosive future. They do not move often. When they do, it is a stimulating motion that reminds the viewer that these women, effortlessly focused though they are, have living muscles that need a tender adjustment every few beats of eternity (roughly ten minutes, we gauge). The sky casts shadows on Lorin’s legs; she tucks them under a glass blanket and lets the flames lick her toes.

“Everything he fears is mundane,” she declares.

Yerjena and Fig await her insight. They are aware of Lorin’s activity. They are always aware. There is a spiritual unity between creatures which is facilitated by a delicate screen that floats in the microlayer between the conjunctiva and the sclera, though when their eyes are open they may see the blinking marquee which is always erupting around each woman’s head to remind the viewer of what she is thinking and how her face may deceive. 

Lorin slides down the bannister of the spiral staircase to meet her colleagues on the upper floor of the library.

“I have been reading the story in word-order,” she explains. “The Commentaries say this ancient work evoked dread.”

Fig rolls her eyes, which is convenient for the impression it has on us, but is a purely functional behavior for her: she is reviewing Lorin’s work, blinking back the memory of the summary Lorin had posted that morning. The text is a twentieth century pulp piece. Fig inspects the meaning of the word “pulp” and her internal assistant suggests she form the word on her lips to achieve the full experience. The machine takes control of her voice. Its electrical impulses fling the word into the air. The pronunciation becomes her own.

Fig’s word hangs in the air for Yerjena’s enjoyment. They bat it back and forth. They chase it through a forest of tangents. For a few thousand hours Lorin is placed in hibernation while the conversation awaits partners. One chain of experiences must resolve before they can hear what comes next. They shift to the floor. A carpet of fall leaves cradles their stick-figure thighs, knees, ankles. Finally, they look into Lorin’s eyes.

“Mister London, as he is called, finds himself lost in the jungle of some foreign place. He knows he did not arrive there by his own reckoning, but if he ever had an expedition party he cannot remember them. Alone, he floats down river, knowing only that he must distance himself from the slender mountain that stalks the landscape. He keeps that tower to his back and flees into a valley. Savory smoke from cooking fires draws him in. The people of the valley live in beautiful homes: carved stonework mansions nestled between intricate lines of trees. He watches them. He steals a fowl from a careless boy who cries until his parents, both warriors, run to help. They catch Mister London before he can eat the roast bird. He begs them not to roast him.”

Lorin explains the story – not in this manner, of course, as her audience has no need for punctuation or connecting words that simply fill space. But the effect is similar to how Yerjena (who has never groped a preposition) perceives it.

Fig has lolled back into her eyelid universe, hoping the buffer on Lorin’s words will fill up soon so that she can experience the story all at once. Through her eyelid she is connected to an archive of tales that unravel with yielding grace. There are a thousand years or more stored there, though that would only be an absolute measurement and ignores the parallel/nested/intertwined time that exists in a form of expression that is only created once but is forever consumed, forgotten, and resumed. She dances through this labyrinth, never lost, her intuition in tune with the system. One of the pages she glides across has a question written on it in fossilized ink: Can we learn to dance with her? 

Fig hits a dead end. The story Lorin has found doesn’t exist in the eyelid universe. Fig bounced through time to pick up scraps of context from more famous, more influential, more meaningful works. Works that were preserved, documented, and shared long before the three readers were hatched. Whatever this tale is, it has no legacy. Nothing references it. Fig is twiddling her thoughts when she rounds a corner and bumps into Yerjena. They synchronize again, gazing upon the word “obscurity” and wondering what to do with it.

Lorin knows her sisters are elsewhere in their minds. She knows the demands of order will distress them. She is distressed, too. We have strapped her to a chair and tortured the story out of her.

“The people teach Mister London their language and they give him a home in their stone city. He can’t remember the words he spoke before, but he knows the language of the valley will never express his thoughts. He tries to take up a trade. His crafts are crude and unwanted. Years pass and his only labors are chores fit for children and, like a child, the people of the valley feed and fend for him.”

The three women lie on their backs, head to head, the summer grass soft beneath their hair. Clouds tessellate the blue sky; Lorin seems to direct them to follow the story. The prow of a boat crashes through vines hanging from the weary trees of a swampy channel.

“He is feeling his age, he has foregone the thought of ever climbing out of the valley, when the people begin to share reports of demons traveling up the river. The cruel creatures leave no survivors. Scouts have only seen the flattened remnants of once-great neighbors. The river is growing shorter, the forest is receding, and the city bolsters to face the rumored doom.

“Mister London, listening to every word, knows that the oncoming force must be his kin. He fears the mountain tower that haunts the valley. He loathes it. It is the river’s source and his army has come to pluck out its malevolent eye. They have quested from realms beyond, where there is no jungle to hide from the truth.

“In the night he slays his hosts. The stone city must not be allowed to repel his demons. From the central market to the port walls, vines of ages have cradled hewn columns and balanced roof slabs. Fire pulses through those growths like blood radiating from a desperate heart. Mister London’s blood runs just as hot. No warrior can catch him, though most who spot the fiend think he is a child fleeing. All are destroyed.”

The sun winks at the moon. Yerjena reaches for Fig’s hand lying next to her in the grass, but she feels only the cold edge of a metal table. She rolls over, wondering what the system in her brain has chosen to show her now. She finds she has to open her eyes to imagine it more clearly. Fig is already sitting up, but she has all of her arms shielding her face. Yerjena feels a wave of heat as the sun flickers again. The light reflects off the flat steel of Lorin’s empty table. Yerjena follows the sound of the story. She does not follow the story. She follows the sound.

“In the morning he stands mighty. He waits for his army, eager to show them there is no one left to slow their charge. But when the waves break there are no boats. There are no commanders on great powered battleships.”

Lorin waits on the rim of the disk that is the stage on which the three readers wait. Yerjena approaches. Lorin reaches down.

“Men swim up the river. Their arms are long and broad, but delicate. Their strokes froth the river, yet are so quiet Mister London hardly hears them over the crackling and crumbling of the last walls of the city. He touches the water for the first time since he came to the valley. His arm is suited for paddling, he reasons. He cuts into the surge and beats his way to the front.

“When the valley rises into the mountains he breaches waterfalls. There is strength in his pale wriggling. The tower may reach into the heavens, into a putrid dimension, or into a wisp of mirage – he will cry and shatter no matter what he finds there.”

Lorin is halfway over the edge, heaving something into reality. She ends those words with a groan of effort.

The story collapses into Yerjena’s awareness. She has tried to follow the sequence as Lorin requested, but the instant the end is reached her auxiliary intellect chops the tale into chunks and files them away in reference drawers. She watches her sister struggle and tries to sort out what she is supposed to be imagining. She wonders if she hears splashing coming from beyond the edge. There could be a waterfall down there. They could live in a tower, waiting for the return of their Fish Men. Are Lorin’s fingers digging into the muscle of a slippery fin? Has he come this far only to dangle over a precipice?

Yerjena rushes forward. She drops to a crawl and scrambles to help Lorin pull. She looks down.

We look up at her. We have our glass bubble to protect us from contamination. Her searching gaze says there is nothing down below. 

Lorin’s huffing and puffing ends as soon as Yerjena sees there is nothing to haul. The sweat on her brow could have been mistaken for the spray of a waterfall, but it has already evaporated. There isn’t even a cliff – they are in a library, after all. Lorin places a book back on the shelf.

“He didn’t make it,” she tells us.