Lilo is a roundish soft mass of mildly chewed bubble gum. She is limbless but manages to move by constantly reshaping her body. Sometimes she resembles a worm, sometimes a bouncy rubber ball, sometimes an amoeba. Buñ’s blue mouth is all he is: a concave being. He engulfs objects and emanates sounds. That’s all he does. And then there is the rat-faced Curcus. He is the most monstrous one. He is so hairy that he has trouble moving his legs, all entangled in the dreadlocks of hair. How is that the three of them are either limbless or have disabled limbs? That’s what I asked myself the day I managed to escape the Salt Desert, and could allow my brain to produce thoughts again, after a long period of absolute focus on my motor functions.

Exiting the desert is no easy endeavor: it is not too big, it’s boundaries are not guarded, but you can only cross it all the way through if you manage to walk for days on a straight line. I practiced for years before I decided to try. The ground is shapeless and the light is blinding on the hot white salt. The only sense you can rely on to maintain a linear trajectory is your movement self-awareness, the perfect symmetry of your steps. For that reason I searched the greatest masters in all physical arts. I found a few who thought they could help me, and trained me for months, some even for years.

All those teachings didn’t perfect that self-awareness to the extent I needed. I realized I had to find my own method to complete my mission. I found a place disorientating and vast enough to test and train my abilities. It was south of the Stretched Mountains, in the frozen lands of Nurisá. It was the whitest and flattest landscape I could find; it was a terrain cursed by extreme temperatures, just like the Salt Desert; one place was well below freezing, the other not much cooler than water’s boiling point. The equipment requirements were not so different, and both expeditions posed similar challenges. The main difference was that the Nurisá frozen lands were not haunted by the tricks of the Salt Desert three-dimensional foldings, so if I failed in my straight-line practice I wouldn’t get lost forever.

I have to admit, the great master’s teachings were a very solid base to start from when I undertook the development of my own method. Despite my advanced age I had a very good physical condition that combined strength, flexibility, endurance, and balance in the most efficient proportion to accomplish my mission. I had very deep knowledge about the multiple relations and interactions between the body and the mind, so that I had almost full command of my physical performance.

The only thing I lacked was the actual practice, the perfection of the Art of the Straight Line. I took a map of the Nurisá frozen lands to establish what would be the longest straight line to cross it. I was to set off from the Beul Bleu Fountain and reach the second left window of Pemtel Temple at the end of the journey. The walk was bound to last fourteen days, twelve hours and twenty minutes at an average speed of 8.2 km/h. Maintaining my optimal speed was important to achieve the body’s perfect symmetry, stopping the movement at any point would make it almost impossible to resume the trajectory without a slight degree of error.

The fifth time I tried, I succeeded. Still, I tried five times more after that, one of which I failed. That was the time I stopped trying. I realized I was just wearing myself out, it was time to try it for real. I took my time to plan the route to get to the Salt Desert Entrance, to prepare my liquid food supply and to brush up my spirit. The day I reached the Entrance I was calm and self-confident. I tamed the fear and the excitement, I kept the feeling of intrigue alive. And then, I stepped in with one single perfect step that set my direction, and hundreds of thousands of steps followed.

There was no night and day in the Salt Desert, there were always several suns in the sky, mirrored upon the three-dimensional foldings. I had walked for what it would have been days when I saw a bright warm colour for the first time as a small dot on the horizon. I knew it was one of them. I focused on my constant movement to dissolve the seed of panic germinating in my heart. If I happened to intersect with any of the monsters my straight trajectory would most likely be altered, and I would eventually end up inside Buñ.

Panic rose like the surf the moment I saw Lilo’s pink wobbly flesh lay casually about 300 meters beyond me, right across my trajectory. My heart rate was altered, my perspiration was suddenly increased, the tight bond between mind and body I had been maintaining thinned dangerously. I stared at the pinkish mass sitting on the bright salt wishing – as I never wished anything before – that it would just drag itself away from my path. I wished strongly, but nothing changed in the following minute, and I searched my mind for solutions while I kept advancing through my wellstudied symmetrical movements. Then an idea came to me as the one sun suddenly duplicated in the sky. And I sang at the top of my lungs “Ma n’atu sole, cchiù bello, oje ne’. O sole mio sta ‘nfronte a te!” My voice rang louder and louder as I got carried away by the Italian passion. The three-dimensional foldings seemed to have an interesting effect on the sound, similar to a wa-wa reverb that made the plain voice fuller and harmonized despite my very limited talent as a singer. I found that my coordination was enhanced by the act of singing, and I wondered how throughout all those years of training and research I never paid enough attention to the voice-movement relationship.

The tension created by panic could not cling to my body now, as it was pulled away from me by the sound. Lilo’s pink wobbly mass was trembling in sheer excitement. I kept singing loud trying to bluff a tremendous opera diva voice. I didn’t know the complete lyrics of the song, so I kept singing the chorus, growing confident at every repetition. I had almost managed to make Lilo move out of my trajectory, I was approximately 50 meters away, by then. I could see Buñ in the distance, slightly right to my path. He was rocking right and left, to the beat of my song. I walked past Lilo, I didn’t touch her for about two centimeters. Then I saw rat-face Curcus approaching in a clumsy run like a monstrous hairy puppy. I almost screamed in my singing. It was the fear of smashing into him. “O sole, O sole mio! Sta ‘nfronte a te! Sta ‘nfroooonte a teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Curcus was coming right for me, I could see his licking intentions from afar. I just sang and sang and kept walking straight and suddenly my voice disappeared and I felt sucked by a powerful air current. I had reached the perfectly opposite exit to my entrance.

I’ve never read the Bible myself, but it seems to me that one of the ideas it conveys is that God created the universe, earth and life so that mankind could flourish. This is not what I believe. What I believe – and I am quite certain – is that God made the Universe, Earth, Life and Mankind so that Sky Scrapers could flourish. And that is why, on the 8^th day of the creation calendar, God insufflated will into the Sky Scrapers. I wasn’t there myself, but I can visualise how it happened as clearly as if I had been.

That morning rose as pink as the pink petals of a red rose. The light – so sharp – pierced the chilly atmosphere layers. The air was as quiet as the walls. Until the walls woke up in a quake-like roar, distorting the shape of light. The divine power of full elasticity permeated both concrete and steel, glass and stone, doors and beads. The Sky Scrapers rose with the rising sun that painted the whole land pink.

The mirror walls of the Shanghai World Financial Centre were shining bright as ever in a majestic pinkish glow. Suddenly, the sound of one hundred thousand million neighing horses fiercely slapped every surface around, and the tower of the SWFC bent in a seemingly eternal bow towards the sun. So did the Jinmao Tower and the Aurora. The Marriot and the Radisson across the river followed, multiplying the deafening sound of neighing horses. Soon every Sky Scraper in the metropolis had bowed their heads to the ground to worship the sun of their dawn. Later on, their heads rose back up gradually, following the curve of the sun in the sky, bidding farewell to their father with the same devoted reverence.

When night fell, the lights in the city started to shine with the first stars. By midnight, both the firmament and the Earth were sprinkled with floating tiny lanterns. By then, the Sky Scrapers were out of the sight of their father, and stood up somewhat heavily and without any elegance. At some point during the night you could hear the growing sound of the buildings singing. Their voices were deep and flute-like, so different compared to the creaking and booming sound of their bodies. Their chants swung across the city, from one tower to the other in a question-answer rhythm, musical and orderly. Meanwhile, the human survivors from the Elastic Dawn laid abandoned on the floor like rug dolls, some trapped inside the disobedient organic structures of the buildings, some fallen in the still roads.

The enchantment by the singing of the giant sky-scraping pipes started to take effect when Queen Nariayaght arose from the mists of Huangpu River. It was the beginning of the new order, and Nariayaght was its queen. Her soul was the entity of the collective singing. Whenever summoned, a gigantic cargo ship with a mole head and a gecko tail would incarnate her spirit. She had a transitory body, a soul, and also a voice of her own. It was loud and deep, it shook the human bodies like a drum and it delighted the Sky Scrapers with the tickles of its sound waves. The night that followed the 8^th day of creation she was heard for the first time.

I have to admit again from my most annihilating humbleness, that I never heard her. I have seen, though, the fear in Anna’s eyes whenever she takes her prescribed drugs to induce her interplanetary visions. Something colossal is happening on Earth while we cling to our miserable exiled existence in the orbit of Venus. The only hope for mankind today is to be remembered after our extinction.