A Journey to the Heart of the Millenium Dream

Chapter 5 - The Take-It-Apart Gnomes

We were unable to leave the roped off eatery, due to some licencing issue. We tried a couple of times, but "I'm sorry sir, but you can't consume alchol outside this area." The minions of the Dome lurk everywhere in subtle black and yellow outfits. Best not to get ejected just yet. Just keep smiling.

"They can't treat us like this! Don't you know who this is?!?" - my consultant seems to have a different plan.

"Silence! I want to remain incognito! Remember what happend in Brentford."

He sat down in a hurry. Too much of a hurry, a young couple had borrowed the chair he had been sitting on. My consultant sprawling on the floor, carrot cake and overpriced beer taking it's chance for freedom and children start screaming. Executive decision: Buggering off quickly is the better part of discretion.

Scurrying off to somewhere else. One of the minions tells me to keep out of the gray area. This, I think, is a tall order. Our purpose here is a gray area. Our work itself. Hell, life is a gray area, isn't it? My consultant points out that she may well mean the gray painted patch of floor we're standing on. We go somewhere even more else and watch her with suspicion.

The girl is one of a number of gnomes taking apart a structure in the centre of The Dome. The component parts are gaudy cloth and fake fibreglass logs. We can only guess that these are taken apart every morning and reassembled every night. It's all very fake but probably seemed significant to the committee which aprroved it. Such is a gnomes existance, constructing something meaningless and then taking it apart again, only to do it again tomorrow. Life without hope.

We were getting maudlin! Enough of this! "Let us see the Sights like the professional Dome Visitors we are!"

"Yes,", my consultant appears to have recovered, "We should see the sights! Hear the hearings! Do the doings and be the beings!"

"We shall start with... Technology!"

©2001 totl.net. This article should be blamed on Chris but he did have help from Steve and suggestions from everybody. Notice for stupid people: not everything in this article is one hundred percent true. Bits of it might be.