Mothlight

A The cartridge on the Slopbox, signed by the Slopwright. On the night the lamp goes out again, the Draught gets up in the attic, and a curtain moth that followed a flame up the ladder from the walnut finds the Slopwright’s row of jam-jar lanterns set out across the dust sheets to see by, all guttering. The moth can only fly while there is light to fly by. At each lantern its wingbeat fans the last ember up, and a lantern alight is a little more light to go on by, so it goes lantern to lantern across the attic, twelve in all, with the round window in the sky to tell it which way it is facing. At the twelfth the Draught drops to a breath.

It is a flight, not a road (that is Side A) and not a corridor (that is Backrooms). A dive buys speed and a climb buys height and costs it; the Draught always blows from the round window, and lifts anything flying low on the side of a heap it hits; flying close over the cloth is counted. Three watches of four lanterns each, the Draught stronger in every one. The ground is a field of hills that the cartridge’s shader marches a ray across for every pixel, from a sum of three waves the rules also take, so the hill you see is the hill you hit; the horizon never tilts. Like everything else here, it was made by a machine.