Chapter 1: The Pleasure Dome

The shadow of the hemisphere of pleasure stretched the length of the valley as the sun set, creating a black river of premature darkness where a river once flowed. The dome was milky, gleaming. Goldmund marveled at the white phenomenon, unable to comprehend its inherent beauty. Its impossibility sent him into a frenzy, one in which he ceased to regard life as beautiful, for this structure transcended life; it was from another world. Nothing in Goldmund's life could compare to this spectacular creation. He knew no human could be capable of crafting such a perfectly round hemisphere, and that the gods which dwelled no doubt within dwarfed his imagination. Rather than turning back, however, he rode toward the pleasure dome.

Halfway down the mountain's side, Goldmund's horse saw the dome and its brain became jumbled. Its legs caught one another and Goldmund was flung from his steed into a pile of stones. A particularly jagged edge forced its way between the fallen man's ribs, snapping any curved bones impeding its path. Goldmund watched his spasmodic horse twitch beside him until the red veil shrouding his vision darkened to cerise, and then black.

He awoke bandaged, still on his side, but now having much softer company cosseting him. Both fluffy and silky, the materials adorning Goldmund made him realizing his nakedness far less troubling. Lazily he opened his swollen eyes to see a woman, his mother, above him, smiling down from the heavens. The scene then melted before him, it was not his mother, but an Asiatic woman, wearing only strips of a cloth Goldmund had never seen. She twirled for this awestruck man until he suddenly stood up, his red eyes crazed, the robe around him drifting to the floor in no hurry.

"Where is the hemisphere?" he asked, certain that anyone who had seen such a sight would know of what he spoke.

"Qinai de," the girl he knew was either a princess or a slave said, "ni shi kuaile de yuan ding nei."

To Gregor the dome looked like a giant oily pimple in between the creases of the earth. Piercing such a bubble at its apex may cause a volcanic eruption of pus, he concluded, but to bite at its base may release some of the sweet rotten excretions of mother earth herself. The choices were a frothy death or infinite satiation, for there was no doubt whatever foul secretions rendered from the greasy dome would be hot and addictive; nothing would ever satisfy Gregor again if he were to drink from this fountain, and he had already decided he would.

The giant cockroach therefore passed the decaying horse it normally would have feasted upon in the highest of spirits, flying instead toward the alien dome enticing it.

Kublai Khan had been sitting in the plush ball of cotton for hundreds of years, his red eyes glazed over, stumped limbs cyanotic, broad beard braided with all sorts of beads threaded through, and gelatinous body perfectly round, a miniature sculpture of the palace of his residence. He sipped upon a blue and pink drink that fell from the sky in a thin stream that stopped abruptly whenever he turned his head to the side to take a breath. Seventy-two women were playing his flute, and though none of them were formally trained, it was Kublai's opinion that even a bad orchestra was a good one, and like the central limit theorem, the chances of it being good grew with the numbers of those preforming the act. That being said, the Khan did not have the capacity to think these thoughts, let alone express them. He was completely oblivious to the bizarre orchestra taking place above his catatonic body. The girls were all standing and holding and pressing their lips against the 25 cubit wooden instrument, all of them breathing through their noses as they played, for their lips were glued to the flute by a mixture of saliva and sap. The cacophony produced by this ensemble could have woken Lazarus from his grave, but it did nothing to excite Kublai. Turning his head seemed to be the only physical exertion he was capable of, and this was not a conscious act, only a somnolent tick the khan's survival necessitated. The women were never bothered by their audience's lack of attention. They were enraptured in their own noise, and had been for hundreds of years.

Gregor, feverishly hungry for the spoils of mother earth's blemish, landed on a bed of twigs beside the rising white dome and plunged his toothless mouth into the shiny wall. The translucent skin snapped and a surplus of pus gushed into the roach's mouth. The white ambrosia quickly filled up the giant bug, and within a minute Gregor turned his head to gasp for air. As soon as the breath was taken, more pus spewed from the hole and knocked him onto the ground, unconscious.

While Gregor was dreaming of his sister, Goldmund took care to learn something from the Asiatic woman, whose name remained unknown to him, but not because of her lack of repeating it. Her speech to Goldmund was completely incomprehensible, but her love he understood very well, though it seemed that he was teaching more than he taught, for the first time in his life. The woman was quite pleased, judging by her languid composure in the lovemaking's aftermath, but she did not leave him as did the others. An enormous weight crushed Goldmund's soul when he came to this realization, with her body nestled in his own.

"I cannot stay with you," said Goldmund. "I must return to the cloister and die there, with my best friend."

The girl looked into his eyes, and then kissed him on the mouth. To her, that was as good as a proposal. She took his hand and led him to the court of her father to receive his blessing. Goldmund let himself be led, if only to see if there was an exit on the way to wherever they were going.

Gregor came to in a light blue room with no doors or windows. It varied in size, depending on the height he held himself at. Lying flat on the ground, he was imprisoned in an infinite expanse, and could crawl forever, but if he rose, the room contracted, and by the time he stood upright his hair touched the ceiling and nose touched the wall.

Gregor then realized that he had a nose.

A pin of trepidation penetrated Goldmund's thoughts once the first auditory convulsions reached his ears. What could make such a horrible sound? Surely nothing of this earth. Just as the dome had exceeded earthly standards, this noise made the smacks of an old man's gums as they chewed oatmeal a pleasant reminiscence. Still, the two lovers, one young and one old, let the music carry them to their destination.

Goldmund drew back with a disgusted snarl when they finally entered the source of the foul music. The anorexic brown women playing, who looked like malnourished clones of the girl that planned to betroth Goldmund, did not pause despite their nasty review.

"My father and sisters," the girl said, waving her hand across the traumatic tableau. "They shall grant us their blessing." Goldmund still had no idea of what she uttered.

The great conglomeration of fattened flesh rose on the other side of the room, a look on its face more tormented than its soon-to-be son-in-law.

"War," the blob stated.

The seventy-two women tore their faces from the instrument. Their lips remained attached to the multitude of mouthpieces, and their bared teeth hissed and cursed in foreign tongues. Conjointly, the women plunged the flute into the stomach of the fat emperor, and immediately they were thrown to their backs from the gas exhausted from the billowing hole. The fat man quickly deflated, swishing around the room, propelled randomly by acrid air like a popped balloon. Goldmund looked to his side to see the girl whom had taken him impaled by the flute, breathing her last breath. He took her hand and kissed it, and she died. The entire structure trembled. Tiles fell from the ceiling. A flat piece of skin landed by Goldmund's feet. It spoke to him.

"Travel to the pleasure dome on the opposite side of the earth; it has been sieged by the forces of evil. Do this and save the world."

Goldmund looked at the empty sack of skin that was Kublai Khan, horrified. Then he fled.

Goldmund heard laughter as the dome dismantled itself around him. It was hysterical, it didn't come from anywhere, rather, its source was in his head, and it drowned out all other noise. Not that there was any other noise to drown out. The walls fell, glass shattered, and the ground parted, fumes spewing from the broken seam, all of this silent. The exhausted steam tore its way into Goldmund's nostrils, sending him into frenetic fits of coughing as he stumbled through a self-destructing maze he wasn't even sure there was an end to. The laughter was all he could hear; sweat and tears all he could see; ash all he could taste; feelings of intense heat, claustrophobia he'd never known, and the maniacal laughter of a free man tormenting him sent Goldmund into a delirium. He scraped at a bare wall with his hands, and it collapsed. One of the rabid flute players was on the other side, drool dripping down her naked front. She stood with vacant eyes, waiting, and when nothing came somnolently stepped into the widening pit, no scream following her. Only laughter.

"Who the hell is laughing?" Goldmund mouthed at the top of his lungs, but not a sound sequestered the movements of his lips and tongue.

It stopped immediately. Wreckage piled around him, threatening to bury him, but Goldmund stood very still.

"Sorry, I thought I was alone here," a voice said in Goldmund's mind. Had the girl drugged him, Goldmund wondered. He also worried if whoever spoke could hear his thoughts, too, or only those he mouthed, if whoever it was existed outside of his mind, of course. But wouldn't that mean Goldmund could read the stranger's mind as well? Assuming that the other hadn't established the telepathic link, and that was improbable due to his surprise at Goldmund's presence, the two of them had the same capacities in regard to communication. That was assuming a lot, however.

"Who are you?"

"Gregor. And you?"

"Goldmund. Have you any idea how to escape this forsaken structure?"

"I've got a good one. Turn around."

Goldmund spun around, expecting to be attacked, but what he saw was the mountainside, and a man standing on a boulder half entrenched in the dirt. A landscape of rubble lied between them, languid but menacing. Particulates swam in the murky, stagnant air. Goldmund waded through. As he stepped over uprooted columns, mushed chairs, and splintered architecture, a brown mask collected on his slimy skin.

The figure that approached Gregor was featureless and dark. He thought perhaps it was a demon playing a trick on him, and nervously rolled a stone around in his pocket. His anxiety ceased when the thing reached up and removed the thick coat of brown matter, revealing a human countenance.

"Gregor I presume," the man said, out of his mouth.

"You presume right, Goldmund," Gregor said, without needing confirmation for the other man's name. "We should get acquainted later, now we must leave this place before the whole valley is shrouded in that dust and we are lost forever."

Goldmund took the man's hand and got up on the boulder, and then they began their ascent.