Old Chapter 4 - v1.0

-4- v2.0

Dur-Baqa is a planet closely reminiscing of old Earth. The glass spires and skyscrapers that curl without touching, they expand over the flat swampland in a jagged effort to copy that abandoned silver globe of ancient times.

Over massive underground complexes, slabs of bedrock and tunnels, the glistening asphalt streets make up the surface of a metropolis. The city appears as if submerged in fog and neon white reflections, street lights of yellow, resurfacing underground clouds, they all move and weave. Their drowning momentum breaks on the odd, solitary, cloak-and-blackened shapes of its inhabitants. If anything, there is more life underneath the asphalt, in equally wet corridors of cement and enclosed spaces of stale air. Unlike other planets however, there are no overarching bridges here, or balconies, or hanging gardens, platforms and roads to connect the vertical architecture. Each spire stands isolated on its own. Their foundations are driven as steel rods inside of the bedrock and the rest of these grand structures reaches upwards to the deep sky, parting through various compositions of clouds.

All else is equally damp. The quiet city ends where mud and stagnant waters begin, where mosquitoes and submerged trees survive off sweet and salty pools.

And as anything, as all in this galaxy hold spectacle to their concept, so the city is made to stand out. Designed in length by a Claimant architect who though that bored tungsten through glass skyscrapers, is display and meaning, the flow of all form, function and light is as square and ordered lines, parallel or touching in right angles.

This concept is universal on the cities of Dur-Baqa. Everywhere except for the arena-complex of this metropolis. Elevated from the asphalt streets and still in the middlemost part of the city, the skyscrapers around the complex choke its glass cupola by looming ever closer, straight and yet appearing as leaning to no contact. The spectacle therein can be overlooked by those wealthy enough to own such cloud-parting, vertical space and in Dur-Baqa.

The arena-complex houses manifold modular rooms that can swap to the needs of the performers and their art. From dancing troupes to circuses of transhumanist freaks, from purists of old Olympiads to theaters of light and lightbending, the sacred ability of mankind rolls, spectacle to spectacle, whole of body, mind and script.

This fleshly, written and thought weight of many cultures collects and coalesces. The one and only arena of this planet housing one program after the other in an unceasing flow of heavy moments. The spectacle has not stopped in centuries.

Within the arena, underdweller and skyscraping noble may rub shoulders with each other. Whether one carefully navigates the vast complex, or they are swayed by the gentle curvature of its corridors and things to see, the place is designed to assault the senses and to do so with no regard of the spectator's origin.

And even so, the one thing that grasps most of the attention, are the holes of this ordered place. Where tungsten cubes had broken through an out, all of the walls and flooring and ceiling is as such. Cracked, jagged-holed, a cut and glued mosaic of premium broken pieces of the city.

Inside this holed place, the wet drip and bend of foggy light warms the forehead of Jorj. The man is noticeably fatter.

When his teammate arrives as a living contrast to him, neither group is surprised. The other Contestant is bare of bone, skeletal, willingly starved as he himself, his sponsor and his female Claimant will it.

The four people turn to a screen above as they introduce themselves to each other. Jorj remembers the thin Contestant as a man named Umza from some past moment in his vast span of life. The two Claimants glance at each other's attire and the details of their wear remains undefined, courtesy of gentle and fair etiquette for the different sex.

As expected, the next program in the arena is a team deathmatch game.

Varhas eyes the woman and with a gesture, he leads her around the corridors twisting to foreign places. As the two leave, Jorj follows the woman with his eyes. She is a seductive form. Firm and all of her features gravitate towards elegant fairness.

When he turns to speak to Umza, the other Contestant is absent of mind, lost in details of otherwise uneventful broken holes.

'How's the Claimant snatch Umza?'

Umza doesn't break eye contact with the ceiling. His mouth hangs a moment before he lapses into language. 'She is out the other way. Complete psycho.' He walks as he speaks, animated and puppeteered.

Jorj eyes out Umza and the floating way his shirt moves along with his walking bounce. Bones and every other thing, it appears as a wholly different man than he remembers.

'She is working me to death. Day trainings with barely anything to eat and at night she wants equally long sessions in bed.'

'Wish I had a female Claimant.'

'You don't. Believe me. She finds ways to drain off parts that should be, you know, infinite. Some of the minutes I am not in her presence, I find my soul's pieces missing.'

'Beautiful words. Didn't know you spoke their lingo. Did she put it there?'

'What?'

'The words.'

'Maybe. Can't say.' As if broken from the animated trance, Umza stares at Jorj and focuses before he speaks. 'Who put that great Lanza shot in you Jorj? That was a fantastic play, fantastic.'

'It was alright.'

'Were you zoned in?'

'No. Actually, maybe I was zoned in. Not sure, I was just completely out of it.'

'Nice. You even had a pierced eardrum, fucked balance and all. Good shot, good shot.'

Jorj cracks half a smile back at that crooked pair of white teeth that he remembers. He likes the habit that Umza still has, for that exact reason. No matter what sponsor put whatever Claimant on him, he was still the man that repeated himself twice when seeing something that he fancies.

-

Over and into secret places within the crystal arena, through the holes, behind the broad shouldered guards and bouncers of more refined services for the spectators, the two Claimants symbolically dine on debased courses.

Human flesh is served as a spectacle that is not meant to be eaten. Courses that they discuss among themselves, looking alike to ancient ritualized artworks of bounty. As the ancient Shoguns and their host did, not-feasting on the elaborate roasted and re-feathered birds of five colors, so does the pair of two now. Awaiting for social queues to not-eat in very specific manners, they remain admiring the excruciating artistic talent, the mindfulness beyond basic sight, smell and even hearing of a dish's ambient bubbling heat and of its soft rising steam.

It all is as such on exclusive restaurants for the highest classes of this city. And human flesh, cut in thin, leathery strips, it is to both, a sorrowful display on speck-less ceramic plates. The blood spot that is actually beet-juice, condenses and clots identically to real blood. All materials have a characteristic unnatural, patterns of holes within the liquids, a molecular gastronomy that binds one dish to the other.

The man and the woman exchange words, almost inaudible.

In complete silence, one course gives way to another and they hold some binding meaning for the two who are to work in unison and yet so far apart from usual thought-streams. Shared experiences help do that and the extremity of this particular moment is but a common ground for the two to become as one. Or at least for the duration of the upcoming match. Bound by shared experience, beyond what the body craves and lost in the scents and would-be tastes that seduce them into ugly taboos, cerebral rulesets guide one Claimant to another.

From afar, one might look into the dark, small table between the two as a solitary, romantic dinner at the center of some art-gallery fused with a restaurant. One may imagine, the usual feelings that may rise in such moments between man and woman and forget that these two are not commoners.

Such imaginations matter little, as their common thought-streams fasten tightly and the dinner soon reaches its end. To the two, it matters not where those bonds are manufactured and under what circumstances. These are only worries of the texture of each Claimant and the shape, heat and colours of their soul.

As such, the non-dinner finishes and they both leave to their respective places as the next program is about to begin.