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I return upstairs to finish my dinner without appetite My words orm their way into Glirastes’s brain When I am finished with the meal, Exeter coht up “I trust your choice in as satisfactory?”

“It’s a stubborn vintage”

“I have faith in it, dohtcap, of the fortifying variety?”

—

I wake in the night to hear the expected sound of bare feet in the hallway There’s a peculiar wheezing sound from my arm where they injected me with anti-rads My door opens and Glirastes stands in the doorway illulowlamp “The spike is frozen To theht I want to show you so”

The green light casts eerie shadows on the artifacts along the walls as Glirastes leads roans

Glirastes stops at the end of a hall near a large wooden door with an old-fashioned lock He searches a huge ring for the right key and unlocks it with a satisfying clunk Lights blossohtful as inevery wall I reave es stand covered in dust He fusses over the dozen teacups scattered about the room “Really should let the servants in here But theyknob, then boom” He slams a hand on the table “All dead Nohere did I put it? Ah This way” Behind a 3-D enerous phallus, he pulls back a canvas covering, unsettling a cloud of dust, to reveal a ether Intricate parks and public buildings wind together, defying gravity as the surface of the city bends upside down on itself to create the spiral impression of a huins to turn clockwise He sits in a drawing chair to watch me walk around the model

“It is…” I begin, and pretend I cannot find the right words Of course I remember his favorite poems

“It is what?” he asks in trepidation

“Without flaw”

“Use e”

I reply:

“Cities and Thrones and Powers

Stand in Time’s eye,

Al as flowers,