was the trail, strewn at times with oddly tortured-looking
pieces of heavy white driftwood flung far inland from past hurricanes. Tiny red grasshoppers
inhabited the long grass in legions, with only a few frogs present to feast on them,
and flattened grass tunnels marked where the huge reptiles had, after bathing in the
sun, slid back into the water. Above, raptors searched the ground below for prey,
circling as if in geometric patterns so controlled was their flight.
In that cocoon of timelessness, with the lighthouse seeming to remain distant no matter
how long I walked, I had more time to think about the tower and our expedition. I
felt that I had abdicated my responsibility to that point, which was to consider those
elements found inside of the tower as part of a vast biological entity that might
or might not be terrestrial. But contemplating the sheer enormity of that idea on
a macro level would have broken my mood like an avalanche crashing into my body.
So … what did I know? What were the specific details? An … organism … was writing
living words along the interior walls of the tower, and may have been doing so for
a very long time. Whole ecosystems had been born and now flourished among the words,
dependent on them, before dying off as the words faded. But this was a side effect
of creating the right conditions, a viable habitat. It was important only in that
the adaptations of the creatures living in the words could tell me something about
the tower. For example, the spores I had inhaled, which pointed to a truthful seeing .
I was brought up short by this idea, the wind-lashed marsh reeds a wide, blurred ripple
all around me. I had assumed the psychologist had hypnotized me into seeing the tower
as a physical construction not a biological entity, and that an effect of the spores
had made me resistant to this hypnotic suggestion. But what if the process had been
more complex? What if, by whatever means, the tower emanated an effect, too—one that constituted a kind of defensive mimicry, and the
spores had made me immune to that illusion?
Telescoping out from this context, I had several questions and few answers. What role
did the Crawler serve? (I had decided it was important to assign a name to the maker-of-words.) What
was the purpose of the physical “recitation” of the words? Did the actual words matter,
or would any words do? Where had the words come from? What was the interplay between
the words and the tower-creature? Put another way: Were the words a form of symbiotic
or parasitic communication between the Crawler and the Tower? Either the Crawler was
an emissary of the Tower or the Crawler had originally existed independent from it and come into
its orbit later. But without the damned missing sample of the Tower wall, I couldn’t
really begin to guess.
Which brought me back to the words. Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner … Wasps and birds and other nest-builders often used some core, irreplaceable substance
or material to create their structures but would also incorporate whatever they could
find in their immediate environment. This might explain the seemingly random nature
of the words. It was just building material, and perhaps this explained why our superiors
had forbidden high-tech being brought into Area X, because they knew it could be used
in unknown and powerful ways by whatever occupied this place.
Several new ideas detonated inside me as I watched a marsh hawk dive into the reeds
and come up with a rabbit struggling in its talons. First, that the words—the line
of them, their physicality—were absolutely essential to the well-being of either the
Tower or the Crawler, or both. I had seen the faint skeletons of so many past lines
of writing that one might assume some biological imperative for the Crawler’s work.
This process might feed into the reproductive cycle
pieces of heavy white driftwood flung far inland from past hurricanes. Tiny red grasshoppers
inhabited the long grass in legions, with only a few frogs present to feast on them,
and flattened grass tunnels marked where the huge reptiles had, after bathing in the
sun, slid back into the water. Above, raptors searched the ground below for prey,
circling as if in geometric patterns so controlled was their flight.
In that cocoon of timelessness, with the lighthouse seeming to remain distant no matter
how long I walked, I had more time to think about the tower and our expedition. I
felt that I had abdicated my responsibility to that point, which was to consider those
elements found inside of the tower as part of a vast biological entity that might
or might not be terrestrial. But contemplating the sheer enormity of that idea on
a macro level would have broken my mood like an avalanche crashing into my body.
So … what did I know? What were the specific details? An … organism … was writing
living words along the interior walls of the tower, and may have been doing so for
a very long time. Whole ecosystems had been born and now flourished among the words,
dependent on them, before dying off as the words faded. But this was a side effect
of creating the right conditions, a viable habitat. It was important only in that
the adaptations of the creatures living in the words could tell me something about
the tower. For example, the spores I had inhaled, which pointed to a truthful seeing .
I was brought up short by this idea, the wind-lashed marsh reeds a wide, blurred ripple
all around me. I had assumed the psychologist had hypnotized me into seeing the tower
as a physical construction not a biological entity, and that an effect of the spores
had made me resistant to this hypnotic suggestion. But what if the process had been
more complex? What if, by whatever means, the tower emanated an effect, too—one that constituted a kind of defensive mimicry, and the
spores had made me immune to that illusion?
Telescoping out from this context, I had several questions and few answers. What role
did the Crawler serve? (I had decided it was important to assign a name to the maker-of-words.) What
was the purpose of the physical “recitation” of the words? Did the actual words matter,
or would any words do? Where had the words come from? What was the interplay between
the words and the tower-creature? Put another way: Were the words a form of symbiotic
or parasitic communication between the Crawler and the Tower? Either the Crawler was
an emissary of the Tower or the Crawler had originally existed independent from it and come into
its orbit later. But without the damned missing sample of the Tower wall, I couldn’t
really begin to guess.
Which brought me back to the words. Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner … Wasps and birds and other nest-builders often used some core, irreplaceable substance
or material to create their structures but would also incorporate whatever they could
find in their immediate environment. This might explain the seemingly random nature
of the words. It was just building material, and perhaps this explained why our superiors
had forbidden high-tech being brought into Area X, because they knew it could be used
in unknown and powerful ways by whatever occupied this place.
Several new ideas detonated inside me as I watched a marsh hawk dive into the reeds
and come up with a rabbit struggling in its talons. First, that the words—the line
of them, their physicality—were absolutely essential to the well-being of either the
Tower or the Crawler, or both. I had seen the faint skeletons of so many past lines
of writing that one might assume some biological imperative for the Crawler’s work.
This process might feed into the reproductive cycle
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