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
Later that evening, stroking the new growth of his mustache so cruelly removed by the staff of that besotted submarine, feeling the contrast with his smoothed cheek and neck (thanks to one of those ingenious tonsorical devices, which Philoctetes informed him utilized a kind of focused heat to burn away whatever shoots the follicle had given growth to.
Pool looked at himself in the lavatory’s grimy mirror, framed by the ever present black ants which inhabited this place in greater numbers than any biped. He still looked gaunt and downright foppish (that wasn’t the correct word) in the clothing of this time period, though he could see parallels to the costumes that Ms Tagore wore.
Having worn the breather, as they called it, on his forays into the hazy orange-hued sunlight beyond the door, he wondered how it would accommodate his eventually-to-be-regrown mustache. He would manage somehow and faint intrusion of the noxious airs of mid- to late-afternoon were not instant death. Would he allow the tips of his mustache to remain outside of the reverse bell-jar? Would the poisonous miasma wither the tips? Or would he curl them tightly under the rubber skirts of the mask?
He would find out, wouldn’t he? Pool looped the elastic band over his head so the mask sat cleanly over his mouth and nose. He glanced down at the black-rimmed goggles. They too had rubber skirts to keep the stinging air at bay. Philoctetes had found, had acquired this pair somewhere–Pool was surprised by the wiliness of the machineman; they had the interesting and useful feature of darkening in the brightness of the day while remaining as clear as spring water at night or in the dim interiors of buildings.
Leaving Philoctetes behind to gather his charge from a wall panel Pool went out.
It was like stepping from a cave into a sauna, and he reflexively winced at the sudden change.
The twin lenses abruptly shut out much of the light scattered by the thin brown clouds. Limpid trees hung thirstily along the ragged boulevard. It seemed an awful day, as cheerless and moribund as a Londbridge winter (especially that of the winter of ’75, where ten thousand souls crossed over–were pushed over–by the inversion that smothered that city in smoke for two months. Here though, whilst outside, there was the heat, and the unspeakable swamplike humidity, oozing over the ground like the moist, fecund airs of N’Aurelia.
Unlike that deadly winter in Londbridge, where one could scarce see the hand in front of ones face, here in toxic Singhapol, there was only an orange filter placed over everything in the distance.
Sweat had already started pooling in the lower cup of the mask below his mouth.
He ran his fingers through his hair, slicking it back with the accumulated five minutes of sweat that had accrued.
Pool had had a purpose, blanketed and subsumed by the heat and moisture of the city. What was it? Oh, yes. He was going to explore, with the intention of finding a source of information and a weapon.
Philoctetes had informed him that there were keosks scattered here and there throughout the city, where one paid by credit-chip (part of the thing embedded into his hand) and could peruse the information network of the entire region or world, as one does in a library.
He was giddy at the thought.
The weapon, Pool was not quite sure about. He had even hesitated to ask his friend about such things. It was obvious that the regime of the land was no stranger to violence, and he had seen no common people with anything of the sort.
Even in Londbridge, of this same period, NIla, Ms Tagore, had kept her own weapons secreted in her pack, her rucksack, out of sight. He had taken that as advice taught to him by an expert of her craft (whatever diabolical practice that might be.)
He had a pocket in his mockery of a day-coat that was large enough to accommodate a smallish pistol. Surely, there must be a criminal underclass here. Wherever there is the boot above, there is the knife below.
Ion Fyr 