VI. METROPOLIS
It took him almost twelve Earth hours before reaching one of the gates of the Metropolis.
Alex saw two SenRets standing idly by the open gate. They did not seem to notice him. He has seen these creatures before – at least, pictures of them, but up close, the sight of them is breathtaking.
Alex made a wide detour away from the gate towards the sidewall. After reaching the roughly-hewn stone wall, he flattened his back against it. Going sidewards, he slowly inched his way to the entrance. At the distance of about ten feet from the closest SenRet, Alex fired a missile at a certain spot, about 17 feet away from the entrance. The explosion startled the SenRets, who quickly took shelter behind the great stone pillars of the gate.
Alex waited.
After the smoke subsided, the two curious ‘sentries’ slowly crawled their way towards the small crater created by Alex’s missile. As the large creatures passed by, Alex sprinted into the gate.
Upon entry, Alex immediately searched for a hiding spot. Four Senrets casually strolled around, oblivious to the small creature clad in greyspace-suit. Alex ran towards a narrow alley-like space in between two walls, just in time to avoid getting seen by a SenRet.
The walls appeared to him as if they were created seamlessly, albeit done with a rough finish.
No handholds, Alex thought. For Alex, that was bad: for his plan is to shimmy up a wall then proceed on foot on the flat, interconnecting wall-tops until he reached the plateau right in the middle of the donut-shaped city. Alex considered walking along the city walkways (between the walls) with the risk of detection, of course. He also doubted that the Metropolis has some sort of underground passages in the form of sewers, wherein he could travel unseen.
Fortunately, the space between a certain pair of walls is narrow. Alex sized up the walls. His estimate is forty feet at the highest point. He pushed his hands firmly on both walls, then, his feet. Carefully, he climbed his way up.
After hoisting himself over the 20 foot wide wall, he stood up to scanthe maze work of the Metropolis’s walls and roads. He observed that in most parts, the wall-tops ‘bulge’ into great circles. That’s when he realized that those bulges form the cylindrical-shaped houses of the SenRets. Looking around, he noticed circular openings on walls and ‘houses’, leading him to a conclusion that the thick walls’ insides are corridors that connect the cylinders together. He remembered the arcane structures of Earth: the ‘castles’ that he had seen before on the Universal Wide Web. The castle’s ‘curtain’ – outer walls –looked structurally similar to the walls of the Metropolis, and the cylinders subtly resembled the castle’s towers. Below him, SenRets are milling all around; some appeared to be communicating with each other; some were pushing wheeled boxes that contain things he cannot recognize; others appeared to be cleaning the streets. He then noticed some large figures advancing from the street to his left. When he looked, he recognized them as the large, yellow ReTarcan creatures universally known as Eik-Cud Rebburs. The Eiks are plainly gelatinous in appearance – with no other distinctions other than their very large eyes and their short, brightly-colored snouts. They are three times larger than the SenRets, with spherical heads that give them a comical look. SenRets keep Eiks as pets, and use them for transportation. As the Eiks approached, SenRets on their backs, Alex heard shrill squeaking sounds emanating from their bodies.
For Alex, the whole scene below him looked very much like an ancient picture of Earth, where humans rode in cars along the crowded streets.
