Korridorium

♫ Love in Times of Blitz and Blithe ♫

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I enter the—corridor might be the wrong word here, since it sug­gests this pas­sage is intended for human use. Though I wish that were the case, it’s not true of a canal, or more pre­cisely, a sewer. It is a man-sized brick tun­nel where other canals con­verge from both sides—a tun­nel net­work beneath the city.

A deceased human body may decom­pose in a few weeks or months, depend­ing on exter­nal con­di­tions. With the metab­o­lism of a city made of stone, metal, glass, and the arti­fi­cial mate­ri­als of its time, it takes cen­turies or mil­len­nia for nature to com­pletely reclaim what human­ity had wrested from it.

They call us corpse scavengers—and indeed, we like to com­pare the object of our inves­ti­ga­tions to a body, a human body. Since the city has been aban­doned for a long time, it is a dead body. In essence, we per­form an autopsy akin to pathol­o­gists, albeit with­out inves­ti­gat­ing the cause of death. That is appar­ent. We are search­ing for any viable organs that might remain.

The city’s sewer sys­tem, my field of exper­tise, serves as its excre­tory organ. No waste­water has flowed through its intestines, hid­den deep in the ground, for a long time. That’s why it does­n’t stink here any­more, as some might think, who turn up their noses at my task. I know I’m not exactly well-regarded. But I take my task seri­ously and do my best.

It’s always the same. After a long march, we sud­denly arrive, the whole troop. We encounter no resistance—aside from over­growth and build­ings on the verge of col­lapse. We nois­ily invade the oth­er­wise silent city, reach its cen­ter, dis­perse, each assigned to their per­sonal task. A few hours later, we gather again in the main square, and shortly after­ward, the dilap­i­dated city lies dead again, as if we had never been there.

A liv­ing body requires air and sus­te­nance. Nerve path­ways, veins, and a lym­phatic sys­tem run through it. Food is digested, pro­duc­ing energy used for activ­i­ties and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. An immune sys­tem and var­i­ous repair mech­a­nisms fend off foes, resist­ing decay, wear, and exces­sive growth for as long as pos­si­ble.

All this applied to the grand cities as well. In homage to ancient heal­ers who once spe­cial­ized in the var­i­ous organs and sys­tems of the human metab­o­lism, we have given our­selves names, nick­names refer­ring to our respec­tive spe­cial­ties. I am the “Proc­tol­o­gist.”

The old cities are con­sid­ered cursed places, and that curse clings to us, the corpse observers. We are out­casts, accused of being in league with demons. There­fore, we’re forced to keep to our­selves. At times, we plun­der women. Even I am reach­ing the age where I should start a fam­ily. I’ve set my sights on the “Neu­rol­o­gist.” But how can I impress her? I would need to make a sig­nif­i­cant find, yet what can be dis­cov­ered in the sewer chan­nels?

We seek unique arti­facts, objects whose mean­ing and pur­pose are lost to us. From each city, we take only one of these items and, often through per­ilous routes and great efforts, bring it back to our fortress. There, in the moun­tain, we’ve estab­lished a vast under­ground museum, where these objects, labeled with the city of ori­gin, are displayed—and no one but us knows about it.

Despite being seen as mere plun­der­ers and cursed with vile names, we are, in truth, cus­to­di­ans, hold­ing great rev­er­ence for the dead cities and their for­mer inhabitants—the cre­ators of all the won­drous yet enig­matic devices that our expe­di­tions uncover.

I’ve been walk­ing through the chan­nels for many hours now. It’s time for me to return. My unerr­ing sense of direc­tion is why I’m tasked with tra­vers­ing the drains and cat­a­combs of the dead cities. I’ve never got­ten lost, and even if my torch were to extin­guish, I would find my way back.

There! In the flick­er­ing light, I spot some­thing I must have missed on the way in. It’s a metal frame with a han­dle made from the past ones’ arti­fi­cial mate­ri­als. It’s black, pli­able, and feels sur­pris­ingly pleas­ant, almost how I imag­ine a wom­an’s skin feels. I stand the frame upright, its short cross­bars hold­ing it steady on the ground—similar to one of those pedal-dri­ven con­trap­tions the past ones used. But it has no wheels or sad­dle. Even so, it looks like some­thing you could climb on: two plat­forms, slightly larger than my feet, are fixed side-by-side at the bot­tom. Appar­ently, you’re meant to climb on while hold­ing the tall han­dle. I’m excited; I’ve never seen any­thing like it. Is it dan­ger­ous? Reck­lessly, I step onto the foot­boards. My breath catches in my throat with fright: They move—one tilts away, simul­ta­ne­ously push­ing the other upwards. The frame creaks. I put my weight on the raised foot, and its plat­form sinks slowly and heav­ily, while the other foot rises.

I can walk on it—walk in place! Weird. But a great find. I have no idea what it’s for.

It is heavy. I shoul­der it and make my way to our meet­ing point. It makes me proud to bring some­thing back from my excur­sions.

Our Elder exam­ines the arti­facts. He lingers in front of mine for a long time. Then he ges­tures for me to demon­strate it. I step onto the plat­forms and slowly start mov­ing them with my feet, shift­ing my weight. It creaks as I start walk­ing in place, like I’m climb­ing stairs. I hear mur­murs from the oth­ers but only have eyes for the Neu­rol­o­gist, who regards me and the device with aston­ished glances—and smiles when the Elder makes his choice. She smiles at me! I step off and feel as if I am float­ing.

Our Elder crafts a small plaque in the dead lan­guage and script, which I’m allowed to attach to my find. “Berlin.” We set out. The Neu­rol­o­gist helps me carry the arti­fact. From the hushed whis­pers of the oth­ers, I real­ize they’ve noticed whom she’s cho­sen. The “Proctologist”—who’d have guessed?

In any case, I proudly carry the device with her—the one you can walk in place on. We have a long way to go, but I feel light and full of energy. I’ve found a museum piece… and a com­pan­ion!