lantern hiss nearly inaudible over the sound of the lake doing its best seashore impression
when I turn the lantern almost all the way off, it emits a blue-red glow from the mantles barely being warmed by the short blue flames inside. when the wind gusts, it flickers to yellow life briefly.
just now one side went out and was relit by the other with a small "fump"
it can only go so long at minimum brightness before the heat isn't enough to vaporize the fuel to keep going
@simonstalenhag I finally got home and was able to read my copy (#123! auspicious) of The Electric State!
1. it is a fucking spectacular book 2. I very much appreciate your replacement of notorious pirate and slaver Sir Francis Drake with Saint Augustine
and 3:
I have noticed a disturbing similarity between the settings and narrative of The Electric State and my unfinished project (also my first large project) Desert Structure Investigation.
disturbing because neither of us can possibly have read the other's work before this...
I suspect the simultaneous independent invention of "post-soft-apocalypse United States with odd machines doing things incomprehensible to humans and the landscape of technology irreversably changed" speaks to a greater pattern of things we have both identified & are reacting to.
uncomfortably warm cast iron, air flowing past you, you walk into the spiral as it narrows, narrows, light gone past the first turn, air rushing past you toward the unbearable roar in front of you, turn, turn, continuously twisting inward toward—what lies at the center?
whatever it is, the sound it produces is deep, deafening, a roar you can feel in your bones, stomach, soul, it creeps past the mandated hearing protection, rattling your brain
you cross the threshold and it cuts off leaving a redhot ticking cooling edifice of pipes in the center
of course the entity that is most in place with right-of-ways to build a modern network of fiber lines as their own long-distance network is The Fucking Railroad
AT&T should have been nationalized in January 1982