The descent into the sixth, seventh, and eighth cycles was a full-body VR into the tragic dust of an arrested humanity.
As the memory of those forgotten ages uncoiled in Qiao Ming’s mind, the golden light of Entry hall 950 dimmed to the sickly, eerie-glowing green of deep-sea decaying kelp. In his mind’s eye, the grand, dignified refugees of the First Era—the scholars who had marched into the Ark with silk robes and star-charts—had vanished, replaced by the pale, distorted shadows of their descendants.
“In the Sixth Cycle,” Qiao Ming spoke, his voice dry as very thirsty thick parchment, “the human form began to surrender.”
He saw the refugees of the 900th tier during that long twilight. They had lived in the damp, high-pressure air of the lower galleries for so many ages that their bodies had abandoned the shape of the dry land. Their skin had developed a semi-clear, slippery sheen of fine skin scales to shed the bitter-salt moisture that condensed upon their sleeping pallets. Their eyes had enlarged, their pupils leftover dilated into huge, lightless black discs that could register only the faint yellow flicker of sulphur candles.
“They didn’t walk upright,” he whispered, his heart squeezing with ancient guilt. “They moved with a crouching, shuffling gait, their bare feet flattened and splayed to grip the greasy coarse grey rock slime of the floor. Their children were born without teeth, drinking the strained broth of crushed water-spiders and white cave-moss dredged from the sump chimney pipes. They…
