Romanya Story

1 ¶We have made it to the outskirts of the ancient capital of Romanya, which is also called Romanya: the walls can be clearly seen, massive and of stone, ahead of us. I've sent one of my Twelve forward, to see if an opening can be found. He should return in about an hour, but since I am writing in haste for despatch, to you, my love, I will not be able to report to you here what the man discovered. I suspect the search will prove fruitful, for we are on that which obviously a main road into the burgh was. Underfoot, the stones are broken and weathered, well-nigh invisible between the grasses that have overcome the valleys, both this one and the previous two, and yet we know by the feel under our leathers that it is indeed a rock road we're treading.

Imagine what will be! The ancients must have had a very good reason to situate Romanya (the city) in this distant desolation, that is my hunch. I've been told the whole idea of Romanya was a folly of some prehistoric nobleman with too much time on his hands. Now, I can understand building a gazebo as a flight of fancy: but an entire city?

 

2 ¶My love, you have never been in a room in which all surfaces are mirrored. I now have. I came across it this morning while exploring one of the outer buildings abrupt to the wall. The ceiling, all four walls, and the floor, are all mirrors. I pulled close the door and looked around me. As far as I could see, I could only see myself.

When I moved a limb, an infinite number of limbs moved with it. I would close my eyes and all around me eyes would close, and utter blackness would arrive. If I spoke, mouths would speak, running off in an infinite series.

Dizzied after ten minutes, I found the door out, and staggered into the courtyard. One of the men, startled, came towards and took my arm. He offered me a handkerchief, "for your nose," and I discovered myself bleeding. I had to lie: "A childhood illness," for any further investigation at that moment, of the Room of Mirrors, would hinder our penetration to the centre; for if a wonder like that existed on the periphery, what marvels would we find as we neared the tower that loomed high at what we had been told and believed to be the centre?

 

3 ¶The City of Romanya is vast. It may be as large as our own capital city, or even larger. As we crossed a grand plaza, sadly neglected as of late (ha, ha!), we bee-lined to the tower. As we crossed, we looked around at the shops which sold unknown goods to all who could pay their prices. I looked up, at the tower which looked more distant. My curiosity piqued, I stopped, closed my eyes, and took a step forward. Yes, with each step, the tower looked further away!

I alerted my comrades and asked for their opinions. For a while we argued, until one of them pointed to a spot above the tower, in the sky. Yes, a thin rounded line hung there. A barrier lay between us and the tower.

We came to the barrier, on the edge of the plaza. A giant convex and concave glass lens which distorted distances, simultaneously making near far and far near. Stranger and stranger, my love! We would have to go along a great arc to get to the edge, and thus that was exactly what we did next.

 

4 ¶The mirror made our journey seem like a long time. In vision, even if only peripherally, we saw space pulled inside out; and that, my love, is a very tiresome thing to behold. We all felt we were going at different speeds, even to the extent that one of my men doubled over wheezing whilst another was ready for the fandango. Nothing had prepared us for the ideas to which we were being subjected, and yet by my command and paybook we persevered.

Finally, late-afternoon perhaps, or it could have been the next day, yesterday, at least it's safe to say, we passed under the circumference of the lens. The air became sweeter, with wild or carefully-cultivated flowers nearby, and the tower looked a proper distance all aspects considered. We were in another courtyard, a second courtyard, a second ring inwards unless we consider the world outside of Romanya as a ring, a very large ring.... I'm forgetting my geometry. If I scooped Romanya off the face of the earth, what shape would the remaining surface be? This place is having an effect, I fear. Attend! We were on the edge of the second rim in, and we'll cross it tomorrow. I send this now by horse, post.

 

5 ¶Mid-day, and the sun was bearing down upon us fiercely. By a common consensus, we sought shelter under a kind of abandoned shop or funeral parlour or what have you in the middle of the second courtyard. We watched the distortions the heat made on the ground outside as silver phantom plates rose and fell. We felt we'd already come a long way, which was true. We rested and were silent for an hour or so.

Then the sky clouded over, though the heat did not dissipate. It was almost time for us to go, seeing as the sun was finally hidden. A few drops fell, then it became heavier, then it started solidly raining. The roof overhead was cracked and broken, and we were getting wet. It was time for us to make a move. We gathered up our things, and marched off into the rain.

It was a wonderful thing, that rain. We didn't care how wet we got. It was a pleasant change of pace. Still: I thought though: we hid from the sun and basked in the rain. I think life is supposed to happen the other way around.

 

6 ¶Once we were at the first inner wall, the rain had stopped. (Late afternoon.) We took off our clothes and set them against the wall, kind of gluing them to the wall, in the bright sunshine, to see how dry we could get them before sundown. While we waited, some of the men started grumbling. I listened as if I was thinking about something else entirely, and it seemed to me they were grumbling about why they were there in the first place. Who is the nobleman who has hired us? What is his plan, what is he after?

Cleverly, I started a pseudo-philosophical conversation with my servant. I asked him questions about the meaning of life and how it related to the self. "Are we seeking something outside of ourselves, or are we trying to find our inner selves?" He puzzled over that, my love, and replied that knowing oneself was the greatest good.

Most but not all of the others listened.

I got him to say the two goals are actually one and the same; the two worlds mirror one another, and ever it should be.

Thus I convinced most, but not all, that we were in search of our selves.

 

7 ¶Over night--for we proceeded no further that night, wet clothes and all--two of my companions disappeared. In the morning we called for them, but heard nothing. It is likely they returned to your world, my love; but some of the remainder say they were captured by sinister forces and were surely eaten.

But that's neither here nor there. Overnight, near awakening, I had a dream. I was on an elevator in a building. Two pieces of plywood and my superior and myself were there. She was telling me: You're quite capable, if not for your flaw. I was puzzled, so I asked: What flaw? Tell me. She said: Sometimes you baffle people with the things you say. Not everyone's read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, you know.

I became alone, in the rain, trying to get back into the building. I had to show my pass to someone, not quite familiar, who had the name Stayce, or so he introduced himself, calling me by name. I had an idea where the elevator was, and as I was passing through many empty rooms, I returned to the real world.

 

8 ¶We pulled our clothes off the wall, and as we were doing so we noticed two things. Firstly, we had too many clothes, for the two deserters had left theirs behind, which played to the 'sinister forces' theory, and secondly we uncovered and discovered a stone door which obviously led further into to city of Romanya. We felt lucky, my love, to have so easily seen a sign of progress, our dove in the morning, and we felt very pleased with ourselves. A hasty repast commenced, I sent off three letters to you, and we proceeded through the doorway.

The wall wasn't a thick wall at all; in fact, it seemed to be barely four inches of mortared stone. We were in another ring of a court, with buildings here and there larger and more sophisticated than the ones in the outermost circle. (Not actually a circle, though: it was a torus, as my geometer explained about an hour later.) The buildings here looked to be rather less decayed, also. It was as if, as we were proceeding, we were catching up to the present day, and thus we all expected that when we got to the centre we would find ourselves in a structure completed only yesterday. The atmosphere was having an effect.

 

9 ¶We started across this yard, or torus, immediately. On route, my aide asked me what I knew about the Romanyans I was so bloody interested in, and I told him that little was known about them, beyond a few cartoonish sketches made on parchment about a thousand years ago, and I had to admit to him that the sketches showed pretty ordinary-looking people. (The impression had been tainted by the illustrator's own milieu, certainly.) My aide wanted to know more. He wanted to know what happened to them.

I told him: "It's all conjecture, but the leading theory involves microbes. Tiny, tiny, microbes. The greatest civilization the world will ever know was destroyed by animals who cannot be seen without the aid of a microscope. I believe it's true because it's such an impossible thing to believe. They sickened, knowing not the cause of their sickness, came up with far-fetched theories involving supernatural beings, and perished entirely. Look around: not even bones remain of their vast society. We should treat it as a cautionary tale."

My aide asked: "Caution concerning what?"

I had to admit I was uncertain. But cautionary it must have been.

 

10 ¶oWe're jalfwaayt avross, my croasling,. Soineothing's asaaulting me? What could it vbe? My love, here 's nokjmly one solustion you have to opehn that atget and I'll get toi you I promise/ I know where you are AND HOW TO GET THERE AND so I go on to find that being it~!!

I understood him, and so when we crossed the line I'll never know that's midway of the second circle. I was paused because a battle was happening.

102 I was there, and it happened to me. Because he saw a voal-burston the other side of the coal-hill a burst, he shoved me down. The Nazis! He pulled down my undies and tried to get his dick in me. I gave up. I'd like yo give you9 something defginintive./ I can't.

My love, I promise I will not rape you. You seem so far away. I stumbled into my horse-holder, because he was nearby, to ask him to sent this letter to ty9u.

 

11 ¶Earlier today, two of my men got into an argument about culture and nature. As I heard it from someone who was present, the first said: "It's good to be out here in nature."

The second said: "We're not in nature. Look at the walls around you. This is culture."

The first: "It's no longer that, since the Romanyans vanished. They can now be studied like a species, with this being their habitat. All nature."

The second: "Perhaps you've never experienced much nature. This is vastly more massive than a habitat. We are heading into culture."

First: "When we get there, to the centre, trust me that it's not going to mean anything culturally, but it's going to mean a lot naturally."

"Nature was here, once, but those days are long gone, lad. Everything, every copse of trees, is where it is because we want it there, as culture."

"That sounds like an ultimatum."

"It is an ultimatum. You're deluded. You're looking or believing you're looking for something that in current principle does not exist."

"En garde!"

My source tells me that the battle did not last long. Soon, there was a corpse on the dusty ground. The corpse was dragged away to be buried. Some prayers were said, sincerely said, over the body. After a suitable period, the survivors gathered with me, and we proceeded onwards and inwards.

 

12 ¶When we'd almost finished crossing the second courtyard, when we found ourselves faced from a distance with another circular structure, another round of high stone, in which there was not apparent any opening of a doorway of a secret passageway or even a window of any sort, I decided the best way to proceed, once we reached it, was to divide into two groups such that we could meet on the other side and enquire about what, if anything, either had found, my love. So I said to my lieut that he should begin to go with a number of men to the left while I with an equal number of men proceeded to the right. He agreed, we said farewells, and yet we stayed in a unified group. I said to him: "You should be going to the left." He replied: "I am going to the left. And so are you, for some reason." We had to stop and think, for one of us was wrong, and we couldn't agree as to whom. We took a vote, and it came out balanced. Thus, I made an executive decision by pointing and saying: "You go that way," then pointing in another direction and saying: "And I'll go this way." This was agreed upon, and we proceeded.

 

13 ¶His party and mine met on the other side of the circular wall structure. How to get into the third courtyard? No-one had found an opening. One of the minions said he had, in fact, seen a symbol, and he led us to it. The symbol was of two intersecting isosceles triangles, each with its smallest-angled angle touching the centre of the other's unequal side. A lozenge, a tidy little rhombus, was formed by the overlap.

"Someone made this," someone dramatically said.

Since we'd already covered that issue, dramatically, we looked around for anything that corresponded to the figure, figuring the sign pointed to something concrete. That's when we spotted the six pegs: two columns each of three, evenly spaced. My astronomer traced lines in the grime from each topmost peg to each middlemost peg on the other side. A 'click!' was heard. Three lines later, each with a 'click!', were drawn, then simple lines from peg to peg in each column, my love. The wall section pulled away from us, and moved to one side. We had made it into the third courtyard.

"Not much of a puzzle, really," someone dramatically said.

 

14 ¶My love, I've awakened after another continuation of the dream. A dream, as I've said before, seems to be longer than it is because it is an entirely singular phenomenon, that is to say, the experience of a night's event includes all previous experiences. Ninety percent of the content of one night's dream is actually the contents of previous dreams. We accumulate the dream night-by-night, adding chapters as we go along. I last night crossed through some backyards across the regal grounds; my goal was to get something from the house we stayed in quite some time ago; however, I felt like the experience included all that led up to it: chapters upon chapters going back probably to my infancy. I know it's not a normal analysis, but I believe it's true. When sleeplessness hits me, I think about a dream, and I enter the sleep-world where I have better access to those experiences. I add a little to the dream while I'm there, all the while remembering the earlier chapters. Whole worlds I have, with geographies and characters I cannot identify, since the earlier chapters happened so long ago!

Maybe I'm not awake after all.

 

15 ¶In the morning, my geometer took me aside, away from the others. He told me he had something odd to share. "More than odd," he said. "Rather: impossible."

He preferred to show than to tell. He instructed me to go outside the wall, and walk along the wall, in whatever direction, counting my steps.

"That would take too long!" I whined, my love.

He replied: "All right. Fine. I'll tell instead.

"On a hunch, I did just so this morning. Going around, I counted five thousand steps.

"Then I did the same, but on the inside of the wall.

"On the inside, I counted seven thousand steps.

"The area--I think you can see where this is going--is larger on the inside than on the outside."

"That's impossible."

"And yet: it is so."

I took him at his word. (He is the geometer, after all.) I told him: "Not a word of this to the crew."

"I agree. Why do you think I took you aside?"

"Do you think it will affect our progress?"

We both looked across the courtyard, to the next wall. It didn't look especially strange. He said: "I think we'll be okay."

Something in his tone made me feel decidedly blue.

 

16 ¶We looked across this the third courtyard, and judged what progress to make. Two circles of pillars ran around the considerably smaller next circle, which did indeed appear to be the size of a palace of sorts.

At the first pillar, my love, the nearest pillar, that is to say, a brief dialog was engraved into the stone. Of course, it was brief, as inscriptions often are.

'"The generation of a heritage operates in retrospect," said the explorer.

'"I took care in creating my parentage," said the cartographer.

'"My forebears would not be forebears had I not instantiated them."

'"If you had not been, they would not have been."

'"This applies universally, to all life."

'"Pushing back into the past, in an ever-widening ambit."

I have copied this down verbatim for you, my love, and it will be dispatched as soon as I set down my stylus. I hope this message, as with all the others, finds you well. You feel so distant to me, but that's only a matter of geography. I carry your image upon my vision; I see everything through your eyes.

 

17 ¶We were in the middle of the third courtyard, my love, and we could see our destination, a smaller round construction equidistant from all three walls of stone, and all we had to do was to take the time to cover the space between where we were and where we wanted to be. But I then recalled the ancient paradoxes: If we are to traverse the distance, we will have to traverse half the distance first, but to traverse that distance, we'd have to traverse half that distance, too, and so on, until we can't traverse any space at all since it is always necessary to traverse half it. Similarly, if it would take us fifteen minutes to traverse said distance, we would have to spend half that time traversing, and half that, and so on. Meaning that it was impossible to reach even one second hence. We stood there, my love, knowing it was impossible to cross time or space. I was being watched, watched for a decision, but even that was impossible, for the reasons above. Thus I pretended not to be caught in the dilemma, and shouted it was time to make camp, for there would be time to do much in the morning.

 

18 ¶And so, in the morning, we looked across what we believed to be the last distance between ourselves and the heart of Romanya. We crossed the gap pretty quickly, my love, and then we were faced once again with its problem. We circled until we found some words engraved. The words were: TODAY IS THE ANNIVERSARY OF YOUR DEATH.

We assumed the message to be true. After all, if everyone has a birthday, they must naturally have a deathdeay. But how could the wall know? We were all in agreement with the inscription, that is to say: No-one read anything different.

"We are all going to die on this day of the year, some time in the future," said someone.

"How could such a coincidence be possible?" said another.

"I can't figure it to be strictly impossible," said a third.

"But unlikely."

"Stranger things have happened."

My wizard was trembling. "This is bullshit," he shouted, and rushed forward to brush the message away as if such a thing were possible. He swept his hand across it, and a doorway opened below the message.

We had made it in.

Still: it makes you think.

 

19 ¶"That message was incomprehensible."

"What?" I replied to my astronomer, distracted, for I was still working on 18 ¶. "No message is per se incomprehensible."

"Well then, it had to be some kind of a metaphor. Or it could mean that today is the day we are going to all die. An anniversary must also be the anniversary of itself, mustn't it?"

I lifted my pen and told the minion whose back I had been using as a writing desk to stand up and be at ease. I said: "I must say, there's something to that. I have a feeling of finality coming upon me."

My astronomer replied: "We're well-nigh near the end of our journey, aren't we? The sense of finality could refer to our travails, or to our lives, or both."

We were in a wide hallway. A plain wooden door was set at the other side. We all had the feeling it was the last door, and that I would have to be the one who led the way, if not the only one to go at all. Something was definitely very close to a conclusion, that much was for certain.

 

20 ¶I went through the door, alone, my love. My crew stayed behind, and my consciousness lost the sense of them. It's hard to explain what happened in the next moment. I saw, or sensed, that I was at the heart of Romanya. The space I could see: a circular chamber, with white brick walls. I could see the bricks. When I turned my attention to the centre of the room, I could see literally nothing. Are you familiar with Gestalt pictures? Is it a rabbit or is it a duck? Well, I could see only the background, without the figure. A cut-out, like a sheet or paper with the figure removed, it's hard to describe, I saw an outline, with bricks to either side and a ceiling about and a floor below, but not the figure. The sides of the figure started straight on either side, yes, it looked, I could tell it was a chair of some sort. I could see a fuzzy part at the top, could that be hair? I didn't know, I couldn't understand. I had to snap out of it, I knew. Perhaps if I spoke a word, all would resolve itself. And so at that moment I spoke.

"I can't see," I said.

From the blacked-out area, a familiar voice said: "Open your eyes wider."

Like a developing negative in a bloody tray, the area grew darker, or perhaps it was lighter, and a figure formed in my vision: a chair, a throne, and a person sitting upon it.

"That's you there?"

She laughed. "Yes, it's me. You were expecting maybe Bugs Bunny?"

I could now see clearly who it was, my love, and you know the rest of this sentence, because it was you sitting there, my love.

I fell to my knees. "This is how all the fairy tales end," I muttered in amazement.

"Not true; however, this is one of the happy ones."

"The happy few."

In a bronze gown you sat there upon your throne, a diadem on your head and a jewelled sceptre in your right hand. You knew I would be coming. You knew you only had to wait for me. I am here now, my love. My journey is over, and I am happy to report it was a success. It's only a matter of three yards before I am with you again.