Cerveau travelogue
Eery, strange and whimsical. The city of Cerveau lures you in, mesmerising you with its surreal atmosphere the moment you set foot onto its cold, marble slabs. You blink a few times to clear your vision but no matter how many times you blink, the strange vision will not disappear. You have no memory of how you travelled here. You slowly but cautiously make your way down the marble path, empty space all around you, you focus straight-ahead, at the figure of an oval structure further down the path. As you approach it, you realise the oval structure is the exact replica of a human brain, but magnified at a huge scale. As you inspect it closer, you notice that the wrinkled surface gives it the appearance of a walnut, except it has a sickly-pale pinkish colour and it is glistening with moisture. You circle around it, looking for something - perhaps a door? As you do this, you cannot help but hear chattering coming from inside of the brain. You bring your ear closer to it and as you do, low, flat tones reach your ears. You find this baffling, although you become more and more intrigued.
The atmosphere is making you feel dizzy, you are extremely perplexed. Suddenly, you find a small door floating to your right. It is made of wood, and extremely old and gnarled and you realise that moss is growing on some parts of it, leaving bright green marks on the wood. You look for a doorknob, there is none so you gently push against the door and it gives way. You climb in but it is dark and you cannot see much except for a faint light shining all the way at the bottom. Before you can think about this, you are pushed down a long, giant slide. As you slide down you see glimpses of ghostly figures, but they disappear in the blink of an eye.
As you reach the bottom of the slide, you see a great big building in the shape of an octagon with two triangular shapes jutting out from the bottom of it, resembling legs and two thin, spindly arms pointing upwards in a ninety degree angle. Upon closer inspection, you notice the shape has spider web like pattern and a giant blinking eye in the centre of it. You begin to circle the octagonal building and examine the structure more closely. The structure itself appears perfectly shaped however, on closer inspection, you notice the contour of the building to be imperfect. As you continue moving about the outside of the structure, you notice the eye in the centre of the building moving each way you move as if watching and observing you. You shout at it for a reply, but it does not answer nor change in a way you could understand to be a reaction. As you focus away from the building, you see behind the structure, in the sky, many eyes.
The sky itself, you find, has a deep blue colour but is overlaid with differing colours that randomly shift in hue. Stretching across the sky you see a faint, flat web like structure, the only features that stand out are the large eyes. Each eye being slightly different in shape and colour, but still has the same endless glare as the central building. As you observe them to see if they follow you, you find that they do not move at all, as if your too far away to see or perhaps they serve a different function other then watching their surroundings. Passing in front of the eyes you see ghost-like beings flying across the sky. From this distance you cannot see them clearly only hear a quiet chattering emanating from the figures. You make out however, that they are flying with their hands forward, they have no legs only tails that spiral from their central body. You move away from the central structure, still with its looming eye staring at you and make your way to the smaller structures surrounding the central building.
As you walk upon one of the smaller buildings you notice at first glance that it seems to be made out of some web-like material, forming into what looks like a beehive with a bluish hint. Large tendons of webbing spread out from the structure near the ground which seem to keep it standing as the building itself juts out and enlarges in certain sections. The tendons themselves seem to connect to other structures that stand across the city not just at the base but in the sky as well; large tendons of webbing connecting all the structures except the central building. As you look up at the building in front of you, you notice just like in the previous building an ever watching eye exists in the central section of the building, always keeping a steady gaze as you walk closer to the structure. In front of the building there lays a staircase of the same material leading to some sort of entrance. As you get closer you begin to hear chattering. Too subtle to be actual talking but it strikes you as if there could be someone to talk to. After reaching the top of the stairs you peer into the small opening finding the source of the chattering, seeing ethereal-like human forms floating about the inside. They seem to not notice you nor each other as they seemingly wander inside the building. The building's interior appears to be a maze, with many doors and many paths leading to seemingly impossible lengths as they outstretch the outside geometry of the building. The architecture you notice, has a certain flow to it that seems aesthetically pleasing to look at. The ghost-like figures seem to pass down the halls and up the narrow stairs to different rooms. You look at their faces, which to your shock have no mouths and have only one eye however are still able to make noises as you continue to hear the quiet chatter among them. Each however you notice experiencing different emotion and different states of being as you notice some chatter to be more aggressive then others and some to be quiet and calmer. The chattering seems to be not directed at each other but to themselves, as to what they are mumbling, you cannot ascertain. Inside the rooms you notice there being familiar objects that remind you of a home. Shelving, books, a bed all appear to be laid about in random patterns. Peering into the room, you notice it has a strange orange hue to it making you feel calm and at ease. The ghostly figures who inhabit these rooms also appear to be at ease and are more quiet then the ones wandering the halls.
You take your eyes away from the beehive-like building, to observe what looks like trees of a kind of nature. The trees themselves, however, do not have naturalist designs - the shapes are geometric. They have rectangles, triangles and differing polygons straying about a cylindrical shape which can only be described as the trunk. The colour of the polygons that form the bush are green with hints of orange and the trunk is a familiar brown. The ground at which the tree like structure stands you find what looks like dirt in colour and smell, but looking more closely you find the dirt to be made of paper mache. Looking closely, you find the tree’s material cannot be deceived, you find the closer you look the more it seemingly becomes blurry as if fading out of existence. The more you stare at the tree in trying to understand it, the more nauseous you feel, so you turn away from the tree to explore more of the city.
There is another building that stands out across from the central building that you had not noticed before. It stands the same height as the the central building, however, it is made of the same beehive-like material as the smaller buildings. Stepping over the webbing laid about its base, you come to notice there being an obviously large egg-like structure forming the top half of the building. However, there appears to be no eye staring down at you as before. The webbing is unique in that it spirals around to form the egg structure seamlessly looking wrapped. Similar to the previous beehive-like building, there seems to be a staircase leading to an opening inside the building. Coming to the entrance, you see more ghostly figures and an even larger interior structure. The building interior differs however, as the design is more straightforward and less elegant in design as the homely buildings. The ghostly figures in this building move very quickly, and their muttering is much faster than in the smaller buildings. You also notice that instead of muttering to themselves the ghostly figures are interacting and chattering in groups. The hue in colours are also very different as they are a greyish blue colour. You notice once again the impossible geometry of the inside being larger then the structure itself, however the endless hallways feels more to you like a hive as they are all very similar and there is little to no difference. You feel anxious walking into this area and sense a need to accomplish a task- but you do not know what. You become agitated as you see ghosts in certain sections become very angry and chattering loudly, almost yelling at each other. Other ghosts appear in turmoil, the hue shifting depending on the emotion each one is feeling.
You want to leave this building and a moment later, to your surprise, you find yourself outside standing on the marble floor, overlooking the brain structure. You walk up to it and settle down on the cold, marble floor, thinking about all you have observed. In light of the differences of this world, you felt something similar in all the places you explored to the life you have lived, and perhaps in all feelings that were felt, you came to consider that perhaps you had not travelled at all.
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