Veiled City, The (2023)

[bunniefuu]

Dear Ida...

...I'm writing to you from a time

before we were even born.

I've been sent 250 years back in time...

...to try and understand

the early roots of the disaster.

From 2198 to 1952.

Such a long way from home.

Dear Ida...

...the city sits on the

zero-degree meridian.

The old start and end.

It was one of those

great cities of before.

The heart of an empire

of objects and trade.

Pretending not to notice

the tragedies of objects and trade.

As soon as we docked,

I set off to do my work.

The clouds had already descended.

Their formless masses were among us.

Last night, there were

two train crashes.

37 dead.

The train drivers couldn't

see the lights change.

Buses overturned in the street.

Bodies scooped out of the river.

They couldn't see the edge.

I imagine them falling...

...and for a short moment...

...feeling that the cold water was

an escape from the poisonous air.

I am told that every year the thick,

heavy winter blanket grows thicker.

This smog, December, 1952.

4,000 dead in days.

Another 8,000 buried

in a government report.

My Ida, dearest sister...

You will die like this in the future.

Another number.

Another report.

Dearest Ida...

...I know you will

never read these letters...

...but writing to you helps me

make sense of what's going on.

Today, I went underground.

Searching for the source; the input.

In the mine, I saw men

scratching corridors into the earth.

Rocks from the beginning of the world,

cut open for their magic.

Back on the surface,

I remembered you saying...

...how the smoke was like

a vapor of labor, a vapor of capital.

That the chimneys were like poisonous

plumes made of dead men's souls.

Black lung disease.

Bronchitis.

Acute respiratory failure.

Diseases tolerated so long as

they perform their work slowly...

...and make no conspicuous disturbance.

I can feel the sky is closing in.

The veil between the sun and the earth

thickens a little, each moment.

Growing children need vitamin D.

And my smoke hides

the children of London...

...from the ultraviolet

radiation of the sun.

Now, these children here...

...are getting artificial

ultraviolet radiation...

...in order to

protect them from rickets.

Dear Ida...

...yesterday I got lost in the smog.

It envelops everything.

The suffocation is everywhere.

The smog is considered an inconvenience.

A meteorological quirk.

London's geography.

Everyone knows that

the smog is man-made.

But no one says it that way.

I remember you telling me

about the history of painting.

How clouds have always moved faster

than an artist's brush can capture.

When I woke up today, I thought

about our last morning together.

You, standing at

the window, looking out...

...with only poisons above,

below and across.

We knew it may be our last day.

And you told me

to remember times before...

...when we didn't know

that there would be a world without us.

My Ida, on that final day,

the skies turned black.

The gas cloud descended, and I fainted.

I lay there until the next morning.

I thought you were still sleeping, too.

It was only when the doctor

knocked at the door...

...that I realised you were cold.

Emptied.

Away.

Here, in this endless past...

...the world is already

so full of stink and darkness.

But as in our time,

the night is quiet...

...and the Earth is still spinning.