Free The Plato Papers by Peter Ackroyd Page A

them it was the threshold of the universe. I was walking among the blind. Yet when at night I looked up at the glittering face of the Mouldwarp heaven I, too, was entranced by it.
    I had thought that, when each night followed day, there would be silence and stillness; instead there was continual sound. When I walked in any direction, trying to find its source, it retreated from me with every step. It was then I heard it; this was the whispering and groaning of London itself. Neither was there any true darkness, since the horizons of the city glowed beneath the darker levels of the air. Beside the streets there were vessels of glass, or frozen water, which contained the radiance of the stars. Could I have invented such a place? The citizens wore close-fitting garments of many colours. I had expected them to be uniform in appearance, but instead they seemed to mock and parody each other. They seemed to delight in difference and to believe that there was no distinction between outward and inward. Does this surprise you? Only then did I begin to understand the nature of the Mouldwarp era. Of course they could not escape the tyranny of their dimensions, or the restrictions of their life within the cave, but this afforded them extra delight in contrast and discontinuity. Within the precincts of government and of business, of living and of working, they derived great pleasure from reversals and oppositions. The air was tainted by the inhuman smell of numbers and machines, but the city itself was in a state of perpetual change. No. Do not laugh. Listen to me. I soon discovered that they always wished to communicate in the shortest possible time; the most simple piece of information seemed to amuse them, as long as it could be gathered instantaneously. There was one other aspect of their lives which, I admit, I ought to have anticipated: the faster an action could be reported, the more significance it acquired. Events themselves were not of any consequence, only the fact that they could be known quickly. Now you are silent. Again I ask you: how could I have invented such a reality?
    When the citizens were young they tried to leap into the air; when they were old they stooped downwards to the earth, which they believed to be their final home. They did not know that they lived in confinement, and many were content. Perhaps they were happy simply because they fulfilled their form, but I also saw those who were tired and careworn. They were continually building and rebuilding their city. They took pleasure in destruction, I believe, because it allowed them a kind of forgetfulness. So the city continued to spread, encroaching upon new ground. It was continually going forward, forever seeking some harmonious outline without ever finding it. I tell you this: Mouldwarp London had no boundaries. It had no beginning and no end. That is why its citizens also seemed so restless. They were consumed by the need for activity, but it was activity for its own sake. There may be a further explanation. It is possible that they continued at their fevered pace in the belief that if the pattern was interrupted they, as well as the city itself, might be destroyed. So there was a time for eating, a time for sleeping, a time for working. There was even a band of time strapped to their wrists, like a manacle binding them to life in the cave. They lived in small divisions or fragments of time, continually anticipating the conclusion of each fragment as if the whole point of activity lay in its end.
    Their time was everywhere. It forced them to go forward. When I saw them walking in great lines, it was time itself that was moving. But it was not uniform. I had expected it to be forever racing, never ceasing, but in fact it proceeded at different speeds according to the variable nature of the city. There were certain areas where it moved quickly, and others where it went forward reluctantly or fitfully— and there were places where it no longer moved at all.