Chapter XVIII: Death in the thinly lit spectrum, Smoking in the bubbles, blogging against myself, meeting Quigley, the Second Renaissance, an Understanding of Time.

I'm spacing out in the Bubbles. Faust and Godfrey are as high as Kites. Godfrey climbs up the side of the sculpture, eeriely lit against the neon orange cloud-sky.

"I think I might topple this thing." He says slowly.

"And by 'this thing' do you mean society?" says Faust.

No one else would come with us. Though the fog descended as predicted, and clouded Olympus like a myst of the fantastic, the mortals refused to mount our Everest. There were two girls in the bubble next to us.

I knock on the would-be door jamb.

"Hello, I'm from the bubble next door, would you guys like to smoke?"

Politely, they declined the offer. I was left with the two crazies climbing the sculpture and spouting nonsense. We finished the bowl and made a go at the chapel. Faust started playing on the Grand Piano and it was fantastic. I quiet the soul and obeyed the crescendoes willingly. Up, Up, Here we go, get ready it will fall out presently..........exhale, and down we go.

Godfrey lit candles while I wasn't paying attention. I had run out into the bathroom in the hallway and taken a solid two feet of paper to write raw horrorible poetry that was streaming out of my altered conciousness. The words were meaningless and impractical. But I looked up and saw Godfrey with the candles and almost died.

He was preaching. The twin beacons of church candle's hung over the altar and ebbed through the room and unholy light. For the pious this was a place of prayer. For the dispassionate and apathetic, it was a place of solace. For the rogue, uncultured, unbaptized element, it was a place of great fear. Nothing in the world is as frightening as the halls of something that is charged with more that heat and electricity. Nothing is as frightening to the burgeoning intellectual as the idea of raw, blind, unwavering faith.

It does not quiet the soul of a scholar.

Faust was running out of material to play from rhote memory. Godfrey proclamations were growing more sacrilegious. Much as this was Brown, and much as falsifying the Gospel in the Chapel seemed perfectly in line with the Brunonian Dream, I became convinced that we were tempting and awful fate. There are three things in this world you cannot fuck with lightly. Faith, principally, can accept no ridiculousness.

So I ran up to the Choir balcony and stood surveying the scene. My memory flashed- an uneasy parallel- two weeks before the scene was similar but frightfully different. For a moment I saw the Rave at the loft on Matthewson, and everything was undone. It was an impossible connection, and struggling out of the link, I fell backwards down the stairs and almost killed myself.

I got back (eventually) to the top of the stairs and found the loft empty save for a partially lit closet to the far left. I opened the door expecting lucifer and the Faustian offer. I had it once before. I have been greatly awaiting the return of my demon, though I still know not how to deal with him.

I called the preacher and we went into the closet. There was a ladder and a light in the attic. We were on the top of the Chapel and able to touch the very flagstone that had constructed Brown two centuries before. A single match would destroy though place. A single spark of love in the loft would undone the Godliness of the chapel. It was SO tempting.

But I grew frightened and we retreated down the ladder. Our vibrations were growing wild. I demanded an exit. The two crazies were refusing treatment. I left out the front because I knew the curtain was falling.