At The Wall

It was vast. It reached far into the sky. A kilometer? A mile?

He was relieved that it wasn’t smooth, like Hoover Dam. Rather, it was constructed of huge stones, cemented together. This meant there were lots of handholds and footholds. He could climb it.

He rested for a time, had a long drink of cable-drip, and then began his ascent. It went fast. The Wall was easy to climb. It took him no more than (he guessed) a day or so. Before he knew it, he reached the summit, and heaved himself over the edge.

The top of the Wall was broad and flat. He guessed it was over a hundred meters from the edge he’d just crossed to the far side. He glanced right and left. On the Wall, every few kilometers, there were huge, black metal towers. It was from these, of course, that the cables came that stretched out over the field of the dead, and from which the claws hung. He watched as one claw-scoop came up from the field to a tower, then, following the black cable, moved away from view.

He walked to the other edge of the Wall. When he arrived, he forced himself to look over the edge . . . then reeled back, fighting vertigo and nausea. On the other side was a vast, vast, space. The Wall must be a hundred kilometers from top to bottom.

Slowly, he regained control of himself and crawled on his stomach to the edge. He could see cables from the towers carrying scoops with their grisly cargos toward the depths below. As his eyes adjusted, he realized that, down there, on the plains, was an intricate network of canals or waterways. These stretched out like a maze for almost as far as he could see. Sometimes parallel, sometimes converging, the waterways all ran toward a single point, far in the distance.

He thought, if he strained, he could just make out some sort of huge structure there, black and ominous, where the waters became one.