It was dark.
Broken glass, soil and shattered brick crunched underfoot.
There was the smell of decay.
Footsteps echoed and were swallowed in a vast space.
A visitor had come to this dark world,
and by touch alone he explored the brick wall before him.
At a thought, his fingers burst forth radiance.
Away from him stretched a great plain of cracked cement.
Before him was a colossal tower of orange brickwork.
In the magnesium glare he could see that the tower loomed above him unbroken for
hundreds of feet and then spread into a panoply of turrets, balconies and walkways.
Up there were windows shuttered with wood, and structures roofed in iron.

This was the appointed place, but his lady was not in evidence.
Applying the strength of his shoulder to the only ground level entrance,
he stepped over the threshold and into a place of opulent splendour.
A chandelier of carved glass struck glints from glassed cabinets of trinkets
and silverware which sat on mahogany tables.
Selecting a crystal decanter of port from a lacquered tray, the visitor walked
from room to room, looking at the paintings of stern people in gilt frames,
and admiring his present incarnation in oval mirrors.
Silk-white shirt with lace at the collar and sleeves, sensible black trousers,
a broad leather belt and black pointed shoes.
Silver eyes struck a discordant note, but few emulators got everything right on the first pass.
Sipping the port he decided that the Errol Flynn suited him.
The air was filled with the scent of roses and piped music:
New Orleans Jazz.

Room after room opened to his questing fingers.
Somewhere a server must have been working overtime, as he found rooms of
platinum grass waving in an unseen breeze, piles of papers which folded themselves
into flowers, and steel children who played vicious pranks on each other with oxyacetylene torches.
He passed through a surgery filled with tools for trepanning politicians and around
a TV news studio where a decapitated android read the news off an autoqueue.
In a marble columned ballroom he conversed with emulations of Jesus, Napoleon
and Charles Manson, danced over parquet floors with Marie Antoinette, and spat
green liquid at targets with an alien from Zeta IV.
He sampled plates of canape and marvelled at the authenticity of the milleau.

Journeying away from all the light and noise, he systematically searched the ground floor of the tower.
The port was making him pleasantly drunk, but he was certain that there were no stairs out of this level.
Clearly this was going to be a very enjoyable game of hide and seek.
At his next step the rug gave under him, and he fell forward.
Lightsmith, decanter and red rug, all fell into a large square shaft.