The Urbаn Prophet™ 5.0

"Should I fall out of love, my fire in the light,
to chase a feather in the wind.
Within the glow that weaves a cloak of delight,
There moves a thread that has no end.
For many hours and days that pass ever soon,
the tides have caused the flame to dim.
At last the arm is straight, the hand to the loom
Is this to end or just begin?
All of my love, all of my love, All of my love to you, now."
All of My Love - Led Zeppelin

“I can’t breathe! Isabel thought to herself in a sudden flash of consciousness as she fought to free herself from what felt like warm treacle. She was floating in the mass of sticky, greasy, gooey liquid and at this point in time, it made up her entire world. There seemed to be other things floating in there with her but she couldn’t quite make out what they were but they felt cramp and uncomfortably close to her. She thought she could see light above her but it was very faint and so distant that she just couldn’t tell. To be honest, she couldn’t really tell if what she thought was up was really up. Her eyes could barely make out a warm red glow above her, but her vision seemed blurry, it was like the substance surrounded her was opaque enough for her to see light but not much else. Isabel felt confused, where was she, how did she get here. Her head ached, and she felt dazed as if she just woke up from an unusually long sleep. Pain throbbed in her head, a constant film wrapped over everything else going through her mind but wasn’t so bad as to turn her incognisant.

Her movements felt slow and laboured as she fought to right herself in the surrounding ooze. How did she get here? She could barely remember her name let alone what caused her to be here in the first place. Regardless how she got here, she realized that she was quickly running out of air and options, she needed to find air and quickly. So she struggled, grasping towards what she thought was up at anything and everything to try and drag herself through the sticky mess.

As she grabbed and grappled through the mess, she suddenly felt something grab back at her hands. To her horror, she realised that there were other things down here with her! Screaming, she wrenched her arm back from whatever it was that held her and kicked with all her might to move upwards. It took everything that Isabel had to hold on to what little reality she had left in her mind to not take a breath and breathe in the repugnant gunk that surrounded her. She was surrounded by whatever it was that grabbed her. The hand, or at least she thought it was a hand, felt weak and it didn’t take much for her to pull out of its grip. Whatever it was, Isabel realised that she didn’t have time to neither panic nor speculate and she continued to pull her self up. She felt as if she was crawling through bodies, which like everything else right now, felt slimy and greasy to the touch.

The light above her seemed to get brighter and brighter so she assumed that she was reaching the surface. She pulled herself through the mass of things that surrounded her. Sure enough, she suddenly felt hands grasping at air so she thrashed with her legs with all her might managed to pull her head out of the goo that surrounded her. As her head crested through the gunk Isabel took one deep gasp of air then screamed with all her might a wail that was a mixture of sheer terror, confusion and panic. Sobbing in terror she paddled her way to the side of what seemed to her to be a huge pool. It took her almost five minutes to reach one of the sides as the goo she moved through clung to her, as if it was trying to keep her in place, holding her back. Furthermore, she was still pretty much blind and deaf as the gunk she was in, covered her face and gummed up her ears. When she finally grasped something solid it turned out to be one of the sides of this huge ‘pool’. It felt course and grainy to the touch, much like rough concrete. She pulled herself up the side and with all her might pushed herself up and out of the warm treacle liquid that was surrounding her. With a loud plopping sound, she managed to pull herself free and she fell over the side of the ‘pool’ into a pile of what felt like powdery sand. Her body felt racked with pain as she pulled her self free, that she was struck dumb with shock. It felt like every single nerve ending under her skin suddenly screamed out all at once as she fell out from the pool. She convulsed in the sand as pain racked through her body in diminishing waves.

After a minute or so she finally managed to get enough sense in her to huddle up against the side of the ‘pool’ she had been in. She pulled her legs up to her chest as she sat there trying desperately to clear all the gunk and goo out of her eyes and ears. When she finally could see she realised was completely naked. She felt even more confused, where was she? How did she get here? Where’s Sam? Sam…

The name resonated in her mind, the name of her husband for over thirty years. Sam had always been there for her through thick and thin. Completely dependable was her dear old Sam but where was he now? As she sat there sobbing, Isabel looked at her hands and realised that they looked different. Through the reddish gunk and goo that covered here, her hands looked to her to be much too young to be the hands she remembered having. Looking at herself she felt shocked, she seemed to have the body she remembered having when she was still twenty! What was going on?

She tried her very best to remember something, anything that could shed light to her situation one way or the other. Slowly some vague memories came back to her. She remembered cooking dinner for Sam and that they had had an argument about where to go over the holidays during dinner. She was partial to the Canary Islands and he wanted to go somewhere different for a change. She remembered trying to leave in a huff with the excuse that she needed to get some milk. She never really liked change and she knew Tenerife like the back of her hands, why should she go somewhere new? Whatever it is, all that seemed so far away and so long ago for some reason. As usual Sam didn’t let her go alone and drove her to the shops, and she remembered leaving in the car but that’s when everything goes hazy. All she knew now was that she wanted her Sam back, or rather she wanted to get back to her Sam.

As she pulled herself to her feet, she felt that her legs were still a bit weak and she had to steady herself on the side of the ‘pool’ she was in which went up to just about her hips. It was then that she realised that the ‘pool’ she had been in was actually a huge fountain, immense in proportions, it was circular in shape and its other side seemed to be over 500 feet away as far she could tell. In the middle of it, it had a tall spire that seemed to be made of the same white stone as the rest of the fountain. It seemed to strangely glow an eerie white light. It had a thick base that tapered off to a point and stood roughly ten stories in height. The spire had ornate carvings going in a spiral up to the point of people walking up a set of stairs who judging by the costumes they were came from different backgrounds and even eras. Some seemed oriental, some seemed European, some she just couldn’t tell what they were supposed to be, but all were looking up as they continuously marched up the stairs. Red liquid shot out in spouts along the sides of the spire and from its top, the same red liquid that Isabel had been struggling to get out off not ten minutes ago.

She looked into the fountain and saw that the liquid had a reddish, oily sheen to it and she could just make out her reflection. What she saw shocked her. Her face seemed, just as with the rest of her, seemed twenty years younger than the forty-six she was supposed to be. As she stood there transfixed at her reflection, to her horror another face emerged out of the water. She screamed in shock and took a few steps back from the fountain but then she stopped herself.

She looked carefully at the face and it seemed to her that it was asleep. As she raised her gaze and looked around inside the fountain, she saw that it was filled with what must have been thousands upon thousands of people but they seemed strange, like they were incomplete. Her mind spun as she desperately tried to process the information she had at hand.

“Who are these people? Isabel thought in confusion, what does this all mean?

As she looked around her she realised that there were other fountains around her but since they’re dimensions were so huge, she couldn’t really tell how many they were. However, she quickly realised, just like the fountain crawled out of, all of the other fountains around her that she could see had spires and she counted over twenty spires, but there could have been more.

“What kind of place is this? Isabel thought, that had monster sized glowing fountains full of people?

It was then that she noticed that there was a path of cobblestone over the sand that surrounded the fountain, that cut between her fountain and the next.

“Might as follow it, Isabel thought to herself.

As she walked on the path, she realised that there was no wind at all. Even though she was as naked as the day she was born, she did not feel cold. Actually, neither did she feel warm, or anything at all as if the airs temperature was indistinguishable from her own body’s. Furthermore, even though there was light all around her, there was no sun to be seen, then again, neither were there any clouds to speak of either, just an endless sea of unblemished perfectly blue sky.

The path she was on wound its way lazily along the side of her fountain and on to the next. Isabel thought that perhaps this meant that all the fountains were set in a spiral with the path running alongside it. Again, this was impossible for her to tell from her vantage point. The path was pretty wide though, roughly thirty feet across.

As she rounded the end of the second fountain, she heard a strange slurping sound in front of her. As she neared what she thought was the source of the sucking, slurping sound it stopped abruptly. She noticed in the distance what seemed to be a very large grey boulder resting along the side of the path. It was huge, almost thirty feet tall. As she drew closer she noticed it had a pebbly, gravely texture. Closer still she saw what seemed to be some kind of black plant hanging from its side, its thick black vines dangled into the fountain swaying slowly back and forth.

“That’s odd, thought Isabel as she stood there, arms across her chest, how can they be moving when there’s no breeze to speak off?