2

The noise is ambiguous. It is mechanical, or it is human. Perhaps it is both -- a strange, industrial, cybernetic hybrid. He can't discern whether the human part of the noise -- if there is one -- is full of voices raised in anger and uproar or whether it is a collective voice of celebration. And as for the mechanical portion of the noise -- again, if there is one -- he has no way of knowing whether he is hearing engines that build, that cultivate, or machines that wreck and thus lay waste to that which they touch... whatever unseen material that may be. As he approaches, body directed by the ears, ears directed by the noise, he can, at last, see a gradation in the black mauve. Can see lighter, can see darker. The darker is, he guesses, substance. And as he approaches further, he thinks he can discern a profile of life and movement articulated by the substance. Heartened -- by constructive or destructive forces he doesn't care for the moment -- he continues his approach until he can see, for the first time, something other than shadow. Something he can recognize. Kind of: he can make out the shapes of figures, but he cannot, as yet, tell what those figures are.