Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. It is a draft; there are mistakes, many misspellings and sometimes long periods of no updates. copyright: ion fyr 2025
The inside of the flattened egg of a car, a taxicab of sorts, reeked of whorehouse and opium den; the seats were filthy and as Pool also was filthy (and entirely naked) brought vomit to his throat. However, as vomiting in a breather strapped to his mouth and nose, would have been a demonic cherry on top of a rather hellish experience, he forced it back into his gullet and closed his eyes, trying to find some pithy wisdom from the ancient times, which he did not believe.
He was a practical man.
Although, his current predicament, being naked in a floating whorehouse with toxic slime covering his body, three hundred years out of sorts, recently recovering from a still unexplained kidnapping zombification with narcotics…as if this predicament wasn’t enough, the anthromorph was his guide through this underworld, like Dante’s Infernal Voyage, having Virgilius as his guide on a similar ship made of brass.
This was his brass ship of the underworld, a stinking vessel of so much filth, Mr Maron would be proud, in the underworld where homunculi collected scrap metal from the ruins of his world (as men did when he walked his beat.)
“Can I call you ?” he asked, once the car was airborne.
“I have no name,” it responded.
“Ok, Philoctetes, it is.”
Pool had little understanding of how Philoctetes could communicate unheard with the car, but he knew it was true. He had seen Nila do similar things, as if by magic…that’s all it was. Didn’t that famous Philosophist As…something, say something similar. ‘technologies which we don’t understand are perceived no differently than magic to more primitive peoples.’
The car was on the move–he could tell because his stomach churned with many of the major turns, and a good number off the small ones.
Pool kept looking at Philoctetes, hoping for a sign that he would not be thrown back into a more modern vat. There was nothing. It just sat, in a position, due to its size and slightly different joint positioning, looked uncomfortable. He knew this was nothing for them, but he felt some compassion, though it was likely misplaced, the thought.
While Pool had in his 19th century brain, however addled it was from the narcotics and unbreathable gas of the lower modern city, he did have, to his mind, an idea of how large Londbridge was.
Heavens, was he wrong.
The City, by the beginning of the 23rd century, was the absolute biggest in western Europa, Europe as some people keep saying. After the “gathering”, that word the 23rd C denizens spit upon with its mention, the population hovered, or was kept at around 50 million, give or take.
It stretched from the Thames, or Themis Estuary, battered by waves and floods on the west, to the Useless Marches of Doggerland on the Southeast, but the city had sucked in the entire arable countryside, along with all of the cities between the Doggerland March and the Sea.
The great thing historically about the Doggerland March is you can actually use a boat, a floaty-thing on the water’s surface for transportation. No one for millennia really liked doing this, but boats floating on water are excellent ways for transporting goods, and the Marches, Marshes, really, were really good for keeping invaders, especially those without boats, out.
This is an aside. Pool really needed a bath and clothes.
He wasn’t expecting to be taxied into Nila’s apartment.
The anthromorph, which seemed to have unlimited invisible skeleton keys in its invisible magical pouch, opened the door to the building, commanded, again without words, the elevator to rise to some uncountable floor, then again, unlock the door, to an apartment flat, that Pool’s nose, quite immediately sensed belonged to Nila.
He looked at the anthromorph, with raised eyebrows. “This is Miss Tagore’s Flat? You brought me here!? What is this?”
“It is safe. She as ensured that. Clean yourself. I will find suitable clothing. Do not leave without my accompaniment.”
Its voice was beginning to grate. The anthromorph spoke in this cloying and pleasant way, which, very much like the peasant-emulating gestures, signified obedience and obeisance.
While Pool would never call himself an equalist–is that what they call them–where all men are considered of the same class, regardless of trade, he did find a disgust in how the lower classes bowed low to the ruling castes, which he was surprised to find in his attitude toward Philoctetes. He wished it would stop acting like a slave. It’s inhuman.
Ion Fyr 