Korridorium

♫ Fabel­beben ♫

171/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, clutch­ing a loaf of home­made bread. Mis­for­tune dogs my every step, but today, I intend to turn the tide of my des­tiny. I will finally con­front the Fate who has plagued me with dis­as­ters of every kind through­out my life. Will I suc­ceed in win­ning her over? Will my offer­ing soften her heart?

Ignor­ing the count­less side pas­sages, I fol­low the main cor­ri­dor hewn into Mount Dikti. It leads deep into the moun­tain’s heart, where the Fates are said to dwell. But even here, I sense impend­ing doom. She will not leave me in peace, not even here! The famil­iar, hate­ful con­stric­tion tight­ens in my chest, grow­ing stronger and stronger—a sure sign that she intends to make life mis­er­able for me and every­one around me once again.

With what this time? Wild beasts? A flood? A drought fol­lowed by famine? A plague? Pirate raids? Defeat in war?

No.

An earth­quake. The moun­tain roars and shud­ders, throw­ing me to the ground as the bread slips from my grasp. Ter­ror-stricken, I crawl back toward the day­light. I nar­rowly escape the falling debris, and no sooner have I made it out onto the rocky ledge than the cor­ri­dor lead­ing to the Fates col­lapses. I hear scream​s—or is it the screech of shat­ter­ing stone?

Sud­denly, all is quiet. Only a few small stones trickle down the moun­tain­side. I can hardly believe it: the oppres­sion that has ruth­lessly shad­owed me my entire life has left me. It feels as though it will never return.

Filled with new courage, I begin the jour­ney back to the city—to the palace, to my deformed brother, and to my fam­ily.

♫ Mem­bers Only (Tick­ets Avail­able) ♫

172/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor with its walls of jasper and doors of golden glass, still com­pletely dazed by the fact that the earth I knew is gone for­ever. In my hand, I carry one of the leaves from the Tree of Life, meant for the heal­ing of the hea​then​s—has it worked? I still feel like I’m stuck in some B‑movie pro­duced by Bible fun­da­men­tal­ists.

Who would have thought? The Apoc­a­lypse, the last book of the Bible: so it turns out the Book of Rev­e­la­tion was­n’t some sym­bol-laden fan­tasy of revenge and apoc­a­lyp­tic fire after all, but one of the few prophe­cies in human his­tory that actu­ally came true—​down to the very last jot and tit­tle. Oh well, hind­sight is 20/20, and now, once I get set­tled in a bit, I’ll have plenty of time to think about it.

♫ Sacred Syl­la­bles ♫

173/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. It’s a nat­ural fis­sure in the rock, widened by monks like me over cen­turies of labor. Along the sides, the pas­sage opens into small cells, yet my path leads deeper into the moun­tain. I take a deep breath.

For 49 days, I will sit in dark­ness, in a place where no ray of light pen­e­trates. I have been warned by other monks. Some med­i­ta­tors have gone mad in there, and it was whis­pered in hushed tones that some adepts did­n’t sur­vive these 49 days.

Descend­ing deeper into the moun­tain, toward an unknown and fright­en­ing place, I real­ize that I am about to con­front what lies deep within me—un​known and ter­ri­fy­ing. I break out in a sweat. Nev­er­the­less, I con­tinue to inch for­ward into the dark­ness. I don’t want to dis­ap­point my mas­ter, and I cer­tainly won’t change my deci­sion.

What will I dis­cover? What will rise from the depths of my being when I sit there in absolute silence and com­plete dark­ness? I stum­ble, and despite my des­per­ate grip on the metal bucket, it slips from my grasp, falls over, and the pre­cious water—the only thing accom­pa­ny­ing me into the depths of the moun­tain apart from my robe—spills onto the bare rock and seeps into the cracks and crevices. I must turn back. With­out water, I won’t sur­vive!

Yet, I keep going.

There are no more cells along the sides of the cor­ri­dor for a long time, not even niches. The pas­sage nar­rows. I feel lost. It’s bet­ter to turn back now than to come crawl­ing out later, half-starved and dying of thirst!

But my mas­ter said that I can take this path into the dark­ness, into the moun­tain’s inte­rior, only once. If I turn back now, the descent into the moun­tain is for­ever closed to me. I start sob­bing for no appar­ent rea­son. Fear of death seizes me. Yet, I con­tinue to stag­ger for­ward. I am deep inside the belly of a moun­tain, and it feels as if the rock weighs tons on my shoul­ders.

Peo­ple I once knew come to mind, hurt­ful words, thought­less actions that I regret. I beg the black, cold walls for for­give­ness. They do not respond. I am four years old, explor­ing the base­ment alone, and an unfor­tu­nate coin­ci­dence causes the only light­bulb to blow. I scream, and my own voice and its echoes through the moun­tain send shiv­ers down my spine. I can’t stand myself any­more, yet I have no choice but to endure myself, some­how. It’s as if I’m walk­ing through hell, and hell is me.

There. A glim­mer ahead of me. At first, I think I’m mis­taken. Then I real­ize that there must be another monk down here. He must have brought a light, a can­dle, or a torch. But the light does not flicker.

I’ve actu­ally been ascend­ing for some time now. It’s day­light that awaits me. I have to squint. The deep­est and dark­est part of the jour­ney, the dark night of the soul, is bright?

I step out into the open. A green val­ley, bathed in sun­light, stretches out on the other side of the moun­tain. The mas­ter sits on a rock, pour­ing me a cup of tea. I feel con­fused. How long was I on the jour­ney? Was it hours? Or weeks? Am I already dead? Am I dream­ing?

“We never really know for sure,” says the mas­ter.

♫ Queen Puabi (Reign­ing Cats and Dogs) ♫

174/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor that con­nects my house to the boathouse. I haven’t been here in month​s—​first because the lake froze over dur­ing the harsh win­ter, and sec­ond because a demand­ing job for a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion left me with no time for my pri­vate research. Here in the hall­way, I’ve set up a nar­row table where my notes are spread out next to the cryp­tic orig­i­nal text and my attempts to recon­struct the game board and pieces.

Years ago, through a lucky coin­ci­dence, I came across some yel­lowed records men­tion­ing a long-lost board game that was appar­ently quite pop­u­lar in south­ern Europe dur­ing the Renais­sance. It was called “Citadel,” and the tex​t—a let­ter to a mer­chant father from his son trav­el­ing in dis­tant land​s—​men​tions some of the pieces, though unfor­tu­nately only in pass­ing and not to doc­u­ment the game and its rules. The recon­struc­tion is prov­ing dif­fi­cult. If it is ever to suc­ceed at all.

My hon­ey­comb-shaped replica of the game board is sawn from balsa wood. I have col­ored the spaces alter­nat­ing brown and green, true to the anony­mous author’s notes.

Thought­fully, I pick up the game pieces I carved. The text speaks of a “sweep­ing courier,” “cat­a­pults,” and a “nim­ble princess.” The infe­rior pieces appar­ently included numer­ous “vas­sals,” which—​due to my lack of craft­ing or artis­tic skill​s—re​sem​ble sim­ple obelisks. The “Throne” and “Scepter” pieces did­n’t exactly turn out to be mas­ter­pieces, either.

I lose myself in my intri­cate notes. “Exe­cu­tioner cap­tures jester,” I read. But how? Must there per­haps be a sym­bolic sen­tenc­ing by a judge first? Once again, the enig­matic game com­pletely con­sumes me.

And then, just as I give my tired eyes a good rub, he is sit­ting across from me: the unknown author, a dap­per young man with a mus­tache and a green vel­vet beret. With a sur­pris­ing move, he places his king’s son next to my princess. “Throne and scepter,” he says with a broad smile, before the brief vision van­ishes.

That’s it!

Inter­nally, I rejoice, hav­ing just taken a mas­sive step for­ward: “Throne and scepter” in the yel­lowed let​ter—that does­n’t describe two more pieces; those are the words that end the game!

I take the small, crude pieces I had carved for the scepter and throne off the board and care­lessly let them fall under the table—and with that, the game sud­denly comes to life, the moves and strate­gies become clear, and the rules stand vividly before my eyes. It’s all so obvi­ous. “Throne and scepter!” I shout, danc­ing through the hall­way.

♫ Some­one’s Gotta Kill ‘Em ♫

175/398

I enter the Cor­ri­dors of Dark Sal­va­tion (cocOblivionMqKvatchCitadelHall02), first pre­emp­tively increas­ing my Intel­li­gence (mod­pca intel­li­gence 99) and Luck (mod­pca luck 111), and, while I’m at it, I make it snow out of a clear blue sky across the whole land (fw 00038EED). It does­n’t make much dif­fer­ence for this gloomy place. It reminds me of the Rend­ing Halls, and indeed: here I find Blood Foun­tains and Mag­icka Essences once again. I make short work of the Dremora guards (tcai) thanks to the cheat codes. Per­haps at least they will find their very own dark sal­va­tion here…

♫ Rent-a-Moth ♫

176/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, and per­haps you are dis­ap­pointed that it is once again just a cor­ri­dor, and wish that I would take you to a flower meadow or whisk you away to a sandy beach with palm trees. Well, accord­ing to chaos the­ory, all of this is indeed within the realm of pos­si­bil­ity. You know: the flut­ter of a but­ter­fly’s eye­lid… The tini­est changes in ini­tial con­di­tions can lead to com­pletely new, unex­pected out­comes. Even—and espe​cial​ly!—in a cor­ri­dor.

♫ Rent-a-Monk ♫

177/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. Sand—white sand has been blown in. Through it lead strange geo­met­ric tracks marked by imprints of rec­tan­gu­lar cross­bars: a line of prim­i­tive Braille con­sist­ing of the same repeated let­ter, etched evanes­cently into the sand.

The cor­ri­dor opens onto a beach—the roar of the sea had already sig­naled this. I fol­low the tracks east­ward, my gaze fixed on the grooved sand and the low-hang­ing sun.

Now, faint, mourn­ful sounds pierce through the roar of the ocean like the tips of knives through a bil­low­ing cur­tain. A fig­ure is perched by the water, play­ing a stringed instru­ment, his face turned toward the hori­zon-wide ocean.

He is Asian. His head is shaved bald, though the regrowth is already dark­en­ing his scalp. The monk wears a blue silk robe and white trousers. Beside him sit his san​dal​s—sim​ple wooden blocks with a loop on top and two wooden slats beneath—the source of the tracks that led me here.

The monk sings, strik­ing the four strings of his lute with a tapered piece of wood.

“It is a biwa,” a voice in my head explain​s—but it is not a voice. It is more of a déjà vu, a frag­ment of long-for­got­ten knowl­edge.

The monk ceases his play­ing, as if a noise had pierced his con­cen­tra­tion, and turns his head in my direc­tion. He mut­ters some­thing in Japan­ese, nod­ding as if to con­firm his own words to him­self; then he stands, sets the biwa aside, and bows deeply to me. As he raises his head, I see now that he is blind: his eyes are mute, bro­ken long ago.

Nev­er­the­less, I bow as well and sit down to his left after he begins to tell me a story.

I can­not explain how I am able to under­stand the moso’s story, as he is speak­ing Japan­ese. But some­how the old man’s dry voice touches my heart and paints ink draw­ings in my mind, so that I grasp every­thing he tells me.

And so I lis­ten, moved, to the moso’s tale of water, fire, wood, earth, and met​al—of a land where peo­ple live in har­mony with nature and know how to appease the demon​s—and I am sad­dened that I can take so lit­tle of it back with me into the nar­row cor­ri­dor of my alien­ated and super­fi­cial life.

The sun has long since set by the time the monk resumes his biwa play­ing and I begin my walk back. Regret­tably, the magic of his words and images quickly evap­o­rates; they melt like snowflakes in my open palm the moment the clamor of the city rolls over me again.

♫ Akashic Spalls ♫

178/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. Once again, the throb­bing headaches plague me, even though, fun­da­men­tally, I don’t even have a head any­more. Instead, I travel through time like a bod­i­less spirit, always inside the minds of oth­ers who don’t notice me—a​long​side peo­ple who fas­ci­nated me as a child, even if I have long since for­got­ten them.

It all began with the div­ing record of the Tri­este. Most recently, it was a jour­ney of a com­pletely dif­fer­ent kind, where I ended up in the Lop Nor Desert with Sven Hedin. I sat help­lessly behind the eyes of the expe­di­tion’s Swedish par­tic­i­pant, forced to expe­ri­ence all the hard­ships, until he finally entered an under­ground pas­sage in a Bronze Age ghost town they were explor­ing.

It is their dreams that give me headaches. They often ambush me at night and last through­out the morn­ing. I feel com­pletely help­less against it all, but for a few days now, I have been try­ing to focus on a thought that keeps slip­ping away from me: Maybe it’s not an acci­dent, a pun­ish­ment, or a curse that has befallen me. Maybe it’s an oppor​tu​ni​ty—or a bless­ing!

There was this movie where the hero was trapped in a sim­i­lar way and could­n’t find a way out. He was a mete­o­rol­o­gist, I believe, and only when he started to see the hope­less sit­u­a­tion he had got­ten him­self into as an oppor­tu­nity and fully exploit its poten­tial could he finally free him­self from it.

So, I try to redis­cover the fas­ci­na­tion I had as a child when I read about all these adven­tures.

I am in the jun­gle, trapped in the mind of a young local man who accom­pa­nies a well-equipped expe­di­tion as a porter. Hiram Bing­ham has us hack­ing with machetes through the dense veg­e­ta­tion over­grow­ing large stone blocks. He is con­vinced that he has finally dis­cov­ered the Inca city of Vil­cabamba. I know bet­ter. This is Machu Pic­chu. But I can’t tell the explorer. I am con­demned to help­less­ness, left only to watch des­per­ately and hope that some cor­ri­dor will free me from my prison. I wanted to focus on some­thing. But every­thing keeps blur­ring and elud­ing me. I curse my fate. Even­tu­ally, the man enters a low pas­sage­way in one of the par­tially exca­vated pyra­mid struc­tures…

I am Lord Lind​say—or at least that’s how I am addressed—​s​tand​ing on the third floor of a build­ing. With a mix­ture of admi­ra­tion and dis­may, I observe a man—that must be the medium Daniel Dun­glas Home, I vaguely remem​ber—rise from the floor and lev­i­tate. Soon, he floats, stretched out, with his back fac­ing down­ward in the room. Lord Lind­say is seized by hor­ror, while I sit in his head and watch the spec­ta­cle, fas­ci­nated. Even­tu­ally, Home glides out the win­dow, his face con­torted with exer­tion and his eyes closed. Lord Lind­say stands ter­ri­fied, while another observer of the scene rushes to another win­dow and opens it. Home floats back in, feet first. He lands upright, opens his eyes, and smiles at his three spec­ta­tors. Lord Lind­say sud­denly feels a press­ing need to relieve him­self and rushes out of the room into the stair­well…

I stand beside Xu Fu on the bridge of an ancient Chi­nese sail­ing ship. A fleet fol­lows us, stretch­ing to the hori­zon. The Elixir of Immor­tal­ity! Every­thing comes back to me. Qín Shǐhuángdì, the founder of the Chi­nese Empire, equipped a naval expe­di­tion out of his para­noid fear of death, which was sup­posed to obtain the elixir of immor­tal­ity for him. The sixty barges never returned, and no one knows what hap­pened to them. Will I find out now? My curios­ity reminds me that I wanted to focus on enjoy­ing my jour­ney as much as pos​si​ble—de​spite my help­less­ness, despite the fre­quent headaches, and despite the con­stant black­outs. Why do I keep for­get­ting that? I smell the sea breeze, feel the wind on my skin—skin that is not my own. But then the man goes below deck, and I imme­di­ately lose my grip on his mind and whirl aim­lessly through space and time…

♫ Back Into the Magma ♫

179/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor that leads to the huge weather crys­tals. The earth trem­bles. Peo­ple run about shout­ing in panic and mor­tal ter​ror—I hear their screams echo­ing not just in my ears, but deep within my mind.

I am con­sumed by a sin­gle thought: I have to deac­ti­vate the large crys­tals! The Spirit Mas­ters wanted to use them to influ­ence the weather, but now they are out of con­trol. A dark, ter­ri­ble crash of thun­der resounds, vibrat­ing through my entire body. Knocked down as if by the fist of a god, I hit the ground. It was a ludi­crous plan, try­ing to use the crys­tals to stop time! The entire land is sink­ing into the sea: the hall of crys­tals slowly tilts away to the side, and the cor­ri­dor turns into a bot­tom­less shaft. Its walls tower before me. I haul myself up the stone slabs, duck­ing away from falling debris. Water bursts in from all sides. Light­ning streaks through the hall. The mighty crys­tals rise up against the del­uge, their death throes mak­ing the sea boil.

The hor­ri­fied screams of mil­lions of dying peo­ple echo in my mind. My mother, my sis­ter Nete—their pres­ence flick­ers brightly in my con­scious­ness one last time before fad­ing away. The loss leaves every­thing inside me dull and numb.

More and more water rushes into the hall. The stone vault has already sunk deep into the sea, and the air bub­ble trapped inside is being swal­lowed up by the invad­ing flood. Should I give up? No! Some­thing unknown inside me grants me strength. I want to live, to climb higher, to escape the rush­ing water—but a col­laps­ing pil­lar shat­ters my left leg. A pierc­ing pain robs me of my breath. I am pinned down, and I am going to drown. Now, there is only one thing left for me…

♫ Gaz­ing Into the Crys­tal Skull ♫

180/398

…I enter the cor­ri­dor, just as I learned to do from the Spirit Mas­ters as a young child, and descend into my “tem­ple of fleet­ing images.” At first I hes​i​tate—​for weren’t the Spirit Mas­ters the very ones who descended too deep into their inner tem­ples, and with their hubris con­jured up the demise of us all? But the immi­nent drown­ing and the unbear­able pain in my shat­tered leg drive me to this place where every­thing is still and motion­less.

My “tem­ple,” how­ever, is—an island.

No one was allowed to know about it, since invok­ing the image of an island in the mind’s eye instead of a tem­ple build­ing con­tra­dicts the spir­i­tual law as it is taught to us. Yet, as much as I tried to fight this island, it sim­ply would­n’t dis­ap­pear. I did­n’t even tell my clos­est friends about it, so I am pro­foundly shocked when I see a group of strangers stand­ing there on my lit­tle island. An old man, the left side of his face com­pletely scarred, approaches me. Behind him stand eleven men and women.

“I am Ktephaim,” the old man says. What are these peo­ple doing in my mind? Or have they come to col­lect me and lead me to the realm of the dead?

“We are… Wan­der­ers. And we would like to offer you the chance to become one of us.” I want to know what all of this means first, but he motions for me to be silent. “You can save your­self.” With that, he hands me a pol­ished crys­tal in the shape of a human skull.

I know what I have to do. The other eleven stand­ing behind Ktephaim watch me silently. One of the women smiles encour­ag­ingly. I look into the eyes of the crys­tal skull.

“Con­cen­trate,” the old man says. “You have prac­ticed for this a long time. Now is the moment.”

All at once, I am back in my body. Icy cold water surges around me, and I feel a burn­ing throb in my shat­tered leg. I take one last breath before the sea swal­lows me whole. And I con­cen­trate.

My home­land sinks back into the magma. When the sun breaks through the black clouds for the first time again, noth­ing will be left of it. A new human­ity will rise from the mud, a new his­to­ri­og­ra­phy will unfold, new ancient wars will ignite, and old new inven­tions and expe­ri­ences will stir the human soul.

But these are things I will only learn later. Because I sur­vive. With a final breath, using the crys­tal skull and an unknown will to live within me, I trans­port myself to another place, another time.

A cush­ion of moss, mas­sive roots, a clear­ing.

Slowly, I come to. Enra’­daí, the woman from the group of Wan­der­ers who had smiled at me, sits beside me, exam­in­ing my leg. “Where am I?” I ask her, but Enra’­daí cor­rects me: “Bet­ter ask when you are. You are one of us now.”

She explains to me that there are twelve of us, and that we pos­sess the abil­ity to jump to the flip­side of time, wan­der­ing from there to wher­ever we are needed. Some of the Wan­der­ers man­age to do this five, six, or even ten times. Then the power runs dry. A new Wan­derer must be found to fill the gap. “And you are prob­a­bly the youngest there has ever been,” she adds.

Over the next few days, she heals my leg with herbal poul­tices and roasts her wild game for us over a fire. I don’t know what is hap­pen­ing to me. Her move­ments, her touch, her quiet voice: all of it intox­i­cates me, bring­ing joy to my inner­most self, touch­ing my heart, and awak­en­ing entirely unfa­mil­iar feel​ings—feel​ings that promise sweet­ness and pain, which I shame­fully hide from her. She nurses me lov­ingly, but clearly with the care of a mother for her son. How I long to prove to her that I am already a man. I could fell trees and build a hut for us, I would learn to hunt and slay wild beasts for her—but my leg does not yet allow for any of it; I must rest it.

Leap­ing to the flip­side of time saved my life. I doubt our Spirit Mas­ters knew of this abil­ity. Enra’­daí hes­i­tates when I ask her what becomes of a Wan­derer who loses the strength to jump. Her voice sounds frag­ile: “They remain where the new Wan­derer was taken from.” I want to ask her if Ktephaim was trans­ferred to the Hall of Crys­tals in my place, but Enra’­daí gri­maces painfully and turns her gaze away. That makes me fal­ter, and I leave the ques­tion unasked.

“I must move on,” she says finally, look­ing a lit­tle sad. “We Wan­der­ers are lon­ers.”

I want to protest, beg­ging her to stay, claim­ing my leg hurts again. But Enra’­daí can­not be swayed. To say good­bye, she only touches my arm briefly and then quickly looks away. I want to call out after her that I love her, but she has already van­ished between the mas­sive trunks of the trees. Tears well up, and I begin to weep bit­terly.

It is a good­bye…

All the dead​—an entire peo­ple! My friends! My mother! My lit­tle sis­ter! Not until dawn breaks do my tears dry up, and I fall into a rest­less sleep.

…and a new begin­ning.