Kraken

by China Miéville

THEY STARED into the empty word-pit.

History was punctuated with women and men who had by grit forced their ghost-selves back to continue their business, who had wedged their minds out into host after host, who had by simple doggedness failed to die.

We didn’t invent ink: ink was waiting for us, aeons before writing.

All buildings whisper. This one did it with drips, with the scuff of rubbish crawling in breezes, with the exhalations of concrete.

What would evolution be if humans had not noticed it?

“Till next apocalypse,

Wherever you go, that’ll be somewhere a god lives.”

It was coming up to the end of the world again, of course—it always was.