Desk Eight was not built in the same plane as the other desks on the dais. When Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu approached it, their eyes experienced a sudden, disorienting dizziness, as if the desk existed at the same time four paces ahead and two paces to their left. The whale-bone planks had been carved along a hyperbolic curve, their joints linked at angles that seemed to defy three-space-folding perspective. They cast shadows that bent at ninety-degree elbows across the flat marble floor.
On the curved desk rested an eight-sided coffer of polished spreader tool metal—an ancient, highly shiny bronze alloy with an intense silver sheen. The amber lamplight struck its facets. Then, the box reflected not their present chamber, but an endless row of receding reflections that curved into an infinite, closed circle.
“Do not look directly into the corners of the box,” Qiao Ming commanded, reaching out to catch Yan Zhiqiu’s arm. “Spatial distortion. In the Eighth Epoch, the metric tensor of space itself lost its stiffness. If you gaze into a looping glow too long, your sight nerves will try to map the non-Euclidean pipe hub, inducing deep vestibular heavy bleeding.”
Yan Zhiqiu blinked rapidly, lowering her eyes to the dark leather of Qiao Ming’s oilskin sleeve. Her pulse raced against her ribs. The room seemed to tilt beneath her feet like the deck of a vessel caught in a whirlpool. “The shape here... It folds back upon itself. When I look at the desk, I see…
