Sallow smokers guard the gates, sharing flickers and fumes before work. They fidget and strain to look away, but fail to leave their insides. Pissed, I watch them pace their prisons, itching and picking, and flicking ashes into my lungs. They must be guarding something horrible. Our feet and tires chew salt. Everyone hurries to halt. A sphere, now warped into a pear, pops out sideways from a cube. It follows me into an elevator and I hold a button so the cube can join us. We try not to intersect sensually. Room after room, after room, after room, of rotten wood and mud. Like termites, we build a mound, a spire to a God made of fool’s gold. The day ends like it begins – stamping out like we are stamping in, keening a fine point: we are not human.