Benvenuti in PARADISE

	The obelisk stood in the derelict town square and around a cul-de-sac of freshly painted project houses. It was a post-war town, they used to call it something different before the re-education period but no one seems to remember. The obelisk itself was a clean and flawless structure of marble and jade. At the top was the beaming visage of a stern, flatfaced man looming over the inhabitants that buzzed around his shadow like moths to a streetlight. It stood even higher than the houses.
	My guide's opium-decayed face contorted in delight.
	“Ah, yes. This is, it's the thing, they say. Or at least that's what they tell me it's called. It is... very much a thing as you can see.” he says.
	“What sort of thing?”
	“Well, it is very much a statue as well. Of whom or what I do not know. It has not been here long, I know that much.
	“The villagers seem as perplexed as you or I and perhaps the authorities must look into it.” he hacks violently into a handkerchief, dispensing a particularly painful sliver of phlegm. “Oh yes, I remember now. They have. Seen workers trying to pull it down just last night.
	“There is great, er, distress in these areas. This village, em, town in... specifics? Is that the right word? No matter. Re-education is difficult for the commoners and re-integration is even harder. Shall we pass?”
	We passed the signs urging us back, makeshift fences and blockade, shrubbery, bobbing and weaving while the guide sputtered a groan with every step.
	The obelisk reared itself. Its marble hilt glowed faintly and my face flushed in heat at the sight. My contents of my skull were a vapor now. It was getting dark.
	“The commoners and general riffraff believe that all problems come from one source, one very powerful source. Its in their nature. They are bred to madden at the sight of fear. The bombs fall and it's the allies' fault, their crops die and it's an act of God, the Council does not pencil their complaints in and it's the damned thing. And it is in our nature to protect them from their irresponsibility and themselves. And, particularly, their inability to understand, ehhh, small—no, erm, complex issues that do not concern them. I can sympathize with that at least.”
	The man drunkenly sauntered over to the hilt and sat himself in the grass near the protrusion of finely molded concrete. Like an Excalibur for the Gods, the obelisk towered over me as well. I felt it collapsing as it stayed. He brushed his palm against the hilt.
	“It is not something to be panicked about. It is a most beautiful thing and, unlike art or music or film, you can feel it. It's not simply an imagination of the feelings. I feel it and you can feel it. You can feel the memories. You can put your hand on the surface and you can hear and see and touch and feel. Whose memories I cannot say. It is most chaotic. Mostly I just hear screams and music. The old fashioned music. I can see the clammor of the bombs in the air like stars and the great machines. People dying, people living. Things that cannot be described in any language, less even your English.
	“But they are less appreciative than you or I. It is not the Council or curse who decides. It is man. Soft, foolish man. The curse is superstition and the Council is nothing more than a blind orgy of stubborn old fools.”
	He retches, propping himself up on the edge of the thing. After strenuously rocking forward with each halfhearted heave, he panted.
	“That's the thing. The thing is no thing. The thing is everything but. Marble is a thing, jade is a thing, concrete is a thing, the face is a thing, the idea is a thing but the thing itself is nothing. It is a mirror. A mere reflection of things.
	“Most... most people do not understand,” his stomach rolls and he grips the fine marble even fiercer. “It hasn't been here since the war but the re-education period saw it, the Council did. No one knows who put it here, who built it. Not yet.
	“I know what it is. It is grown into the earth. It is like the first tree in Genesis. God, I can hear the musi—hrruuggkkk!”
	His mouth erupted from his skull with a red-yellow froth bubbling, bulging out like a fist through a latex mask. My guide collapsed onto the concrete mound, cracking his skull silent as could be. The mouth slug rolled on the grass in bloody afterbirth and gave two chomps. It soon grew 8 prehensile legs like pin needles and started to trot and prick at the grass. It reared its crimson teeth to me and grinned.
	“I'm not much of a talker, actually.” it said.