Leisurely orbiting them, the Icosahedrons rapidly vacillate in sentiments between ruby and plasmatic purple and brandeis blue, a pattern otherwise never exhibited. Orb, feeling like a broken sword, surmises that this colorful display lies somewhere between excitement, empathetic pain and an acute sense of taboo violation. Meanwhile however, the Trapezos do not stop chiseling, they continue on and on, at times clipping away even asymmetrically until there is nothing left other than crystalline debris, a myriad shards floating through the grey room. Orb projects perenially that this is injust every time it observes this subversion of the ritual. Though it wants to bound forward and bounce apart these terrible happenings, from fear for its own integrity it never does intervene. So that as a matter of internal fact, its own paralytic cowardice rather than the discouraging reality of perverted rituals is the real secret that keeps Orb from sharing this knowledge with Pab or any other crystal. It frightens the living black rubber out of Orb to imagine that between good friends there exist such vast abysses of ignorance, which are yet papered over by the friendly face of friendship.
>>
What they have floated into, Pab and Orb, is another green room as big as any of the major black rooms but less…funereal. Scuttling and hovering along the walls are dented, chipped and fragmented Tetras, a good three dozen. From what Orb can view, all of them are busy furiously inscribing the walls with novel textures, patterns, as well as shapes that suggest that indeed there have always been other possibilities. And it is so, Orb views, that the asymmetrical fragmentation that the diligent, creative Tetrahedrons have suffered has made their edges all the sharper, thus the inscriptions more highly defined, elaborate, aesthetically pleasing. He difts over to one particulary intriguing view, where a fragmental Tetra appears to have taken a yellow glowing break
- This is astounding. Not just one for itself but the dynamics. What is this? What do you call it?
- This be air for fishes.
- Fishes…. They exist?
- They might. It doesn’t matter, they do here.
- Yes…no…. but you wouldn’t bubble you don’t matter? Just because you can be viewed beyond here.
- You are too troublesome. Glide off, let me work!
It does, rotating in many directions. Re-imagined transmutations of Pab’s shapes occur within inscriptions like ghostly crystal fragments, planted amid swaying fields of fractal beauty. There are many articulations of polygons, some of them representing the six shapes of all the rooms there are others repeating themselves into immense patterns that go back and forth between the second and third dimension. On yet another wall one badly chipped Tetra has managed to inscribe three-dimensional bodies that are fashioned from two-dimensional planes thus manifesting their codependence. Orb projects it is something of a metaphor for the order of the rooms: A Tetrahedron is said to contain a Cube is said to contain an Octahedron is said to contain a Dodecahedron is said to contain an Icosahedron, the last of which are the most refined, exalted and respected. But why stop at the Icosahedron? And how could Icosahedrons be considered so exalted if they never inscribe?
On the largest wall of all is inscribed what suggests itself as a vision: there is a huge Icosa and it is cut down the middle by a sword that is not broken. Around it float all the other shapes in a tumult and in a far corner of the scene, small and forlorn, the object that Pab had called “human being” also is viewing. Orb views this as a fresh imagining of the ritual of passage but it seems that something else is floating on as well, which cannot yet be bubbled.
- So you know, Pab, what is adrift?
- Yes, it is… emoting greyly and burgundyly at the same time. For all the Tetras what has been done to us. But here in this room of inscribing we only want the regular peace of appreciating projections or inscriptions. Do you follow?
- Yes, I float behind you easily. I emote with you, this business of being treated terribly by Icosahedrons and false Trapezohedras, it must come to an end.
The Tetra spins around all axis at once, briefly, then describes a circle.
- This might be the best way and yet there are other possibilities. It is bad, the suffering. But the sham rituals for those who escape, they make each of them into a unique body for itself, a different body. Much better, no offence, than a simple smudge. You view? Not just a Tetrahedron of Tetrahedrons. The inscribing on the walls is celebrating this state of affairs.
- But you are bubbling madness Pab. A crystal can be both a Tetrahedron and a singular body unto itself! For every badly dented Tetra creating in this room there are a score of you reduced to crystal floatsam in a far-away grey room. The relation of numbers is awful, it is not acceptable.
[IMAGE http://www.mabonaorigami.com ]
THEMZINI • • • [gigben@gmail.com] 