I can feel the mutation on my leg spreading as I traverse the chemical marshes below the monuments. I know it will kill me eventually or change me into something else. We all bear the marks of our world, some worse than others. Skyr, who follows behind me, is half-blind from the starfish-like appendage growing out of her eye. Baan, who follows behind her, we have to keep an eye on. One arm bears sharp talons and the fin growing at the back of his head is taking his mind.
The monuments cast shadows on the three of us, as we move closer towards the towering curtain wall that guards them. Ominous structures that belch strangely coloured smokes into the air from their long chimneys night and day. These columns of smoke extend into the sky like fingers bent back where they merge to form a flat tablet of smoke clouds that cover the whole sky.
All say that the monuments hold up the sky this way. Why else would they resort to producing such noxious fumes?
It is from the base of the monuments that the chemicals flow from pipes into the marshes. A variety of colours for a variety of chemicals, these streams and rivers from the monuments mutate the land and anything that lives there, including us.
But I am not so certain of the monuments’ purpose. Neither is Skyr or Baan. That’s why we’re on our way to one of those pipes. To see if we can get in to the monuments. To see if they really do hold up the sky.
Paddy Dobson
30th June 2022