The abyss is a steep wall, reaching left and right for as long as anyone has ever travelled, up at least ten thousand levels from where I sit, and (in myth) down to the depths of Sheol, where the air burns, and the face of the abyss wall melts and runs perpetually downward, into a molten infinity. Standing on one of the switchbacked roads that men have scratched into the wall, looking out away from the wall, there is just darkness, fallers, and debris. Down and out, an occasional red glow from (one supposes) Sheol appears, but nothing else. Sound from the abyss is (in the absence of passers-by) only an occasional sighing, as of distant winds, or very distant gales. Our scientists have determined that the light we see by, that wells in the day and wanes in the night, comes from the rock of the wall, and the air itself near to the wall. Why it waxes and wanes, and what force can cause the very air to give out with light, they cannot say. Men's houses sit on the wall like the round, dusty hills of the spider's nests, clinging to the houses' walls. Roads are hacked into the rock, winding switchbacked between the houses, through towns, narrow and crumbling in the wilderness. Left to itself, the wall face is irregular, bumpy, with long cracks and clefts, ledges leading to nowhere, chimneys and hollows. The general tendency of each level is to slope inward (toward the wall) at an angle comprising about one twentieth part of a circle from the abyssward direction (the direction of the pull of gravity). At the border between one level and the next, there is an overhang, so that the lowest parts of the upper level thrust outward into the void beyond the upper parts of the lower level, and in fact beyond the lower parts of the lower level, so that although each level slopes wallward, the general tendency of the wall as a whole is to jut abyssward. At least this is what the legend says, and the dim looming greyness we see looking up in the daytime, and the evidence of debris and fallers, supports it. Passing from one level to the next lower is thus possible, although neither easily nor without danger, by the means of long ropes and pulleys or (if no assistance is to be had on the level below) by swinging. Travel in the opposite direction, from lower to higher levels, is on the other hand all but impossible in the normal course of things. The rock of the border overhangs is tough and not subject to cracks or fissures large enough to permit passage, yet has enough of a tendency to flake and chip near the point that all efforts to establish permanent bridges from this level to either of its neighbors have met with (usually tragic) failure. The vertical height of the level varies, being generally between two and five days travel from lower overhang to upper. This does not take into account the twists of our roads; if it were possible to move directly against gravity, the distance would of course be much shorter. Because it is in general possible to cross the boundaries between levels in only one direction, the general spread of humanity has been downwards, towards (presumably) Sheol. The population seems to be distributed uniformly in the lateral direction (left and right across the level), but to be spreading slowly downward between levels, as if humanity had begun somewhere far, far above (and why else would the levels be numbered, reckoned from up to down). Strong tradition holds that when one level becomes too crowded, the dangerous migration down to the next becomes more common, until the lessening of population due to bordercrossings (successful and unsuccessful) balances the birthrate. As our people are never extremely fecund, this desertion rate need not be high. There is some evidence to support popular tradition's picture of human migration. The villages near the top of the level tend to be the oldest and best established, and the density of population there is higher. One of the favorite and longest-disputed topics among the philosophers of this level is the fate of fallers. Fallers are those persons, or seeming persons, who pass by the level, more or less far out in the abyss, on their way from somewhere above to somewhere below. The popular wisdom states that the fate of fallers is simply to fall, until they reach the levels of Sheol, and are melted to nothingness. This is too simple for many of our wisest, however. They are divided into several schools. One set of schools holds that, somewhere between this level and the deadly nether reaches, there is something that brings the fallers to a halt. The schools disagree in the nature and placement of these obstacles, the purposes of their creators (if any), whether or not the obstacles are such that the fallers are destroyed upon meeting them, and a host of other questions. One of the more notorious schools of faller theory, popular in our great-grandfathers' day, held that ten thousand levels down, silken nets bring the fallers to a gentle halt, and they are led off by servitors (there was a schism early in the history of this theory on the question of the gender, if any, of these) to await, in honored opulence, the day when the normal migration of humanity reaches those regions. This school flourished in that time of optimism, but it tapered off as its most staunch defenders journeyed to the lower edge of the level and hurled themselves hopefully into space, equipped with greater or smaller numbers of philosophic texts, missives, and holy runes intended to ensure their friendly (not to say warm) reception in the Advanced Regions. ==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-== _ _ \ (_><_) And if you enjoyed this Text-file, Call: \_______[]_____ The Works "914's Text-file BBS" at (914)/238-8195 _\ 300/1200 N,8,1 1200 baud only from 6:00pm to 12:00mid ___________ \>\ 10 Megabytes on-line Anti-RBBS and Networks / > \ SysOps: Jason Scott & Terror Ferret / ======= (900) Text-files on-line! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following names compose a monument to last forever in the electronic highway: Patrizia Bravi Alessandra Bravi Glenda Frank Marcelle Dumont Donna Reznik Valentina Bravi Britt Warner Jennifer Gruen --=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--