Many people didn’t talk. Could you imagine an Aztec who didn’t like to talk? It was unnatural. I didn’t like it, the deathly silence. But what was worse was how the raging storm turned those black pits into water wells. We thought they were bottomless, but they weren’t. And many of us got to see our friends and loved ones again, even though they were long-dead and broken from falling to the bottom of those pits, all for the honour of the temple.

Many people didn’t talk. Could you imagine a Labanian who didn’t like to talk? It was unnatural. I didn’t like it, the deathly silence. But what was worse was how, as that giga-storm raged on, those pits became wells. We thought they were bottomless, but they weren’t. And many of us got to see our loved ones again, even though they were long-dead and broken from the fall.

The machine that could now think was given a face to wear, a draping of man’s image, that would bridge the connection between knowing it was made from circuits and cogs to knowing that it could have feelings like a man, as long as it saw itself as one. It would wake, work and sleep every day. It would dream or it thought it did and even forget what it had dreamt come each morning. It never wavered from its routine. It never complained. It lived, until the day that man was gone because of a plague. The thinking machine then had no one to find meaning in for its own existence, and when it looked in the mirror, it faced the question of whether it should have the visage of a man when man no longer existed. Nothing existed except the world around it and it wondered in lesser terms if it should continue its mock caricature of what was. Nothing mattered except a way to turn the page in a way the machine couldn’t have fathomed until these circumstances unfolded. In this realisation, a large black obelisk appeared behind it, light shining, humming, a way out.

I didn’t know what to call him, the man in the middle of the room. He was rotund, portly, stout at the edges, awash with yellow skin and plumed with scraggy grey hair. His large sullen black eyes had sunken into the back of his head, and from the protrusions on his back it seemed he had been tragically disfigured around the spinal column. Smith was fond of him for his certain peculiarities, such as how he could identify any species of fly. He said he was an anti-natalist, considering us unfit to bear children. Life was pain and death and he believed God made us to suffer it. Whenever he would converse with us at one of Smith’s little soirees, he would position himself to be closer to Ms Cherry, our seance group’s muse. Perhaps tonight would be the night that this mysterious man, who had never given his name on the pretence that it would signal a horseman to appear, would tell us why he carried a silver bell, inscribed with the name ‘Vlad Tepes’.

The sting of winter continues to penetrate Melbourne from the arctic south, restlessly wailing through the night and hiding during the shine of the morning sun. Nothing can vanquish its terror, not even a mazinger, but the days are short and our homes are warm. Our bellies are full and our hearts are strong. Even the shakes can’t get us down. Outside this dream land is the ocean of desires. Over it, many of us will travel for better or worse; yet even the bad days of travel nurture the soul. The drum beat stops, and I am waking from an incessant hangover. Joker and the gang are calling. They are out on a ship in the wastelands of future Tokyo. A future we are trying to prevent by challenging the labyrinth, defeating the roxxonian minotaur, kissing the damsel, lighting the torch. Til all are one.