CHAPTER 1

You see a diminutive yellow man with a hookah pipe sticking out of his small lips. He mouthes soft murmurs as he arranges neatly a collection of figurines and trinkets near his feet.

"You are the Wiseman, Olabach? Long ago, I've been told, by a man not unlike you, that you held prophecy"

His eyes spoke, and his greeting like a winding path. Finally, after rhytimically dancing around his breath, the puff of smoke escapes his dry lips like a drag of flame. His tongue bellows like a soft guitar:

"Pigs are the smallest, most repugnant of slaves. Cows, perhaps, are nobler still. But compared to simpler things like a mold or worm, they are still not wholly free"

"I don't understand. "

"You will meet three kinds of people in your travels, I say: the master or enslavener, the slave or layman and the fool. The enslavener is the dark mural, the thing that the layman fears; for the layman asks many things to the fool, for the fool's goodwill will make him act in behalf of all things he deems good."

"You are calling me a fool?"

"I say: you know where memories live? Where thoughts live?" "They are simply creatures of another world; spirits that wrest and whip from beyond. "You see with your eyes these things and they flourish inside of you and die...We, people, are simply the gateway between two worlds. If you, and only you, look behind your head, you might see a funnel, and behind it, a multicolored plate...beyond, a gateway to infinity."

"Enough! You're insane!"