An expert from the Omniconstant, this time underneath, inside the unknown Athens cavity.

Chapter Forty-four



Inside the hole.



15:40



It is very
dark. The man is holding a torch as they are descending and the woman is
uncomfortably holding his warm hand. She almost sweats at the effort of
descending the moist steps, which at points switch to twenty-metre muddy, descending
corridors, sometimes so narrow that her scarf tips get scratched on the walls.
Some wall surfaces are covered with trimmed roots, probably coming from the
olive and the carob trees that cover the sides of Lycabettus hill. As they go
deeper and deeper, the roots become scarcer and scarcer, while the corridors
acquire –much to her delight- a less steep angle.



“Soon we
will be reaching even underground, there we will have to pace up.” the man
tells the unprepared woman, though her ears struggle to send the signal for interpretation,
having not anticipated the full sentence after so much active silence.



“What did
you say?” she asks.



“I said,”
he rephrases more slowly but not more loudly, “that the ground is levelling in
a while, so we will go faster!”



“Not much
faster, I hope!” she gasps.



“Eventually
we will enter a vehicle, so don’t worry about your stamina, MIss.”



Though she hates
this ‘Miss’ title as very few things in the world, she still does not want to go
into introductions and complaints of the intimacy sort. She just tolerates until
she is met with the ones she has to.



 Eventually she thinks. Eventually may well include more than three to four kilometres of
walking. Patience, I feel I have things to see down here, well worth the
trouble.



Inside the
‘even’ tunnels, reached after ten minutes, the passages are tall and the soil
is completely vanished, replaced by cement ground, walls and roofs. Sometimes
they walk along or across tunnels that obviously belong to the abandoned Athens
Metro. The juvenile graffiti is still on these walls, talking about revolutions
and pain that this city has suffered for more than thirty years before it
became what it flaunts of being now.



“Where are
we now?” the woman asks the man. She is not holding his hand anymore, as the
tunnels are illuminated with hidden lights inside the upper corners along.



“We are
right under Hilton Hotel. A colleague will be picking us up at the next
corner.” As soon as he says that, they turn the corner.



The woman
stands still and speechless in front of another big surprise.The stoma of a
membrane tube similar to the Air Metro tubes opens in front of her eyes, though
this one seems more alive, pulsating like a living tissue. The woman feels
frightened again, but as she has already gained full trust in the man
accompanying her, she makes no scene. She just stands with him. She is certain
that a capsule will come and meet them soon, just like they have casually been doing
above them all the years she has lived here in Athens. Indeed, seconds later, a
small four seats capsule with another man sitting inside stops calmly at the
end of the open mouth of the tube. Without special invitation, the woman sits
opposite the new person. Her escort sits next to her and the capsule starts
moving in normal speed.



“Close your
eyes.” The new comer tells her. “We are entering inertia.” No sooner had he
told her, than they gained immense speed for fifteen slow, full of feelings and
thoughts seconds.