“There! That’s what was on the map above where I went. Boos! Not booze as in alcohol. Something different. A creature!”
“This exact creature,” I tried to clarify. “White not black.”
“White not black,” he said. “Open mouth. Ready to attack, it seemed. Or swallow.” And swallow it did, he realized.
“How did it start?” I asked perfunctorily, as I had to. Still reading the script, you see. In the past.
“With the body. I found myself… climbing up a body. Skin to begin. Then more as I continued, inevitably ending up… at the end. Metal; a pipe, a long dark pipe about yea high to me in my state at the time.” He was raising his hand above his head as far as he could.
“Iowa?” I jested.
“Pipewold!” he said, staring at me, as if I wasn’t taking him seriously enough. I though of Newt/Baker here. This is something (nonsensical) that Newt/Baker would say to ease the tension, add in a bit of levity. I was becoming him, I realized. Losing the body myself. This was my exploration as well as Karl’s. I had to find a new one. Or else… back to the concrete grave I came from.
“The pipe, the entrance, represents the end of the seen and the beginning of the unseen,” I continued philosophically. “Neptune,” I put it in a word. “Neptune is in there. Beyond the Mars where you began. Did you find Neptune beyond the Mars, Karl? Did you?”
He wasn’t sure (!).
Later on — in the present I suppose — I found out that, yes indeed, he went back to Iowa once more. Through the back door as it were, Alpha switching places with Omega. White to Black again. Amazing synchronicity!
Sunklands 