A few Kilometers later, Viktor stopped. His lung was burning. Again he wished for mechanical legs. Behind him, the former golden statue of the Goldelse was staring into the nothing, having lost her head a few years ago, when a madman had wanted to make love with her, flying his self-built balloon next to her face. The police had handled him. And the explosion had handled the statue. No one had cared afterwards. Berlin was already mad and dying. Viktor…
Water hit him like a bomb in the back. It was cold. It stank like 30 years of bad climate. It felt more like slime than water. He now was under the water, in the black darkness of lightless nights. Probably not even sunlight was able to cut through the stuff, the old Spree-river was now made of. Up, up, he had to go up. Something hit him on his leg. Moved. Disappeared. Still going up, Viktor felt another movement…
Darkness moved over and created patterns of light, orange, dirty orange and scratchmarks on the old windows. Berlin itself seemed to leave the realm of reality and became just a thought, less than a dream. The ropes shook and Viktor tried to see, how the inside of the box looked like. The gaps showed nothing more than a few bronze-painted walls and black flowery suits moving. As Viktor looked up, the tower shrunk, almost as if it would crush him…
The girl was 12, maybe 13 years old. She looked at him like a deer standing in the light of a car. She trembled, but not only, because she was so young. The door of the pod had been ripped open, when the pod had landed … crushed, in the park, blowing some trees to the smithereens, burying itselt into the earth and brickworks of the next house. There was something weird here, some non-explanation, but Viktor didn’t have time…
For all tourists – if these people still existed somewhere-, the eastern part of Berlin looked the same. At least in the night. And at least from the lights. The long Unter den Linden still showed nice facades glowing in the endless parade of lampposts, shining their orange light into the crowns of the trees in the middle of the street. And yet, even the first and maybe second impression of the normality of this street could not stop the…
He could see the glaring light, roaring upwards to the sky. Sadly, it was on the other end of Berlin, as Max had told him. This ray of light was part of the great diversion. And yet, he was not sure, if it would work. He had survived Tiergarten, a place, where people lived, dwelled, which were more loke hermits, but neither humble nor peaceful. He knew her looks, her eyes hidden behind walls of covers, as if they were…
Standing in the rain again, Max looked at the smoke which rose from the tip of his cigarette. He barely smoked, but he liked the mix of smoke and fog, which rose from the sidewalk, from the underground bunkers, from the empty spaces, in which Lasseter slept now. Did he really sleep? „Any adress?“, he asked Viktor. „The official location is just top of the street to the right, Bismarckstraße, just 5 Kilometers away, but the real adress is more…
Viktor dreamed about sunless skies and rotten towers looming over the endless silhouette of a small town. He often dreamed about this, feeling his feet walking over the puzzle pieces made from cobblestone streets. His eyes met the dark windows, the shadows behind them, sitting in buildings, houses, which were more or less empty. But not always. Often he heard a creaking sound from the voids behind the lidless glass, the movement of tiny feet slurping over rotten woods. But…
It rained. It usually rained. The clouds over Berlin never disappeared, at least not for long. The moist of the constant memory, that climate was fucked, clinged to every wall, every person, everything. Even the fires, which burned on the streets, created more fog than heat. Even the ash became slime. And the humans, I mean, humanity probably mutated in the background, in some hidden cellar, delevoping webs between fingers and toes. But that was not a real problem. Viktor…
He woke up in darkness, pure and absolute darkness. His lips were dry, he could feel the cracks, filled with dried blood. He lifted his head. Closed his eyes, opened them again. His shoulders burned, his arms probably were made of stone: no, he could move them. He lifted his hands to his face, felt his features: he was intact. But he was cold. And naked. He could feel the dryness of the place, he was. His back leaned on…