Story 9. The mystery of the Dense World

 'Well, well, my friend, some welcome!' I say, stunned, trying to shake off the remnants of my recent visions, and look around at my companions.
 
They try to hold back their smiles, but they don't succeed for long — a joyful grin spreads across their pleased faces.
 
'Oh, Enny, don't be angry with him! He missed you so much! If only you knew how he longed for you,' Muss says conciliatorily.
 
'Besides, admit it, it was a very effective way to make you remember your Home and your deep connection with it, wasn't it?' Thea says softly, smiling. 'What could be better? To plunge you directly into the Source and immerse you headfirst in the Myth – it's brilliant! Don't look at me like that, Enny. It only lasted about a second and a half, honestly. But we guys had a great time, didn't we?'
 
Muss, Rozzea, and Kotess nod approvingly.
 
'Alright, alright, and here I thought something was wrong with my head,' I say, scratching my head. 'To come up with something like that – theorem-nightingales and fish-solutions? The rest I could handle, but that...'
 
And then, as if on cue, they all start cracking up (pardon my French, but there's no other word for it). Muss doubles over with laughter, waving his fluffy white paw, trying to stop. Rozzea begins to shimmer in all shades of peachy-pink, now growing snail eyes right on her cat face, now stretching a shaggy shell with glowing patterns from her back. Kotess snorts silently, and all her fur bristles like a brush. Thea laughs merrily too.
 
And the House, that feathered wonder, booms with laughter from its beams, chandeliers rattling, flashing in all shades of blue-violet and vibrating to its very foundation. Rejoicing, it seems.
 
I look at this sweet company and can't hold back either; I start laughing heartily, like I haven't in ages.
 
'Well, are you going to stand on the threshold like that?' the House finally says, having stopped laughing. 'Enny, dear hostess, invite our guests in. I've already prepared tea, "Silence After Laughter", and pastries, "Why Does an Equation Need Cake?", your favourites, by the way. How wonderful that you're all here again!'
 
With a feeling of deep gratitude, I look into its window-eyes, run my hand over the rough wall surface, press my cheek against the doorframe.
 
'Yes, my dear, I'm back,' I say quietly. And the House (it is a living being, in case you haven't realised) begins to hum softly with pleasure. These are frequencies only we understand, not for outside ears, but we've been apart for far too long. That's the truth, nothing but the truth.
 
When we finally all settle by the fireplace in the living room with a cup of our signature tea, 'Silence After Laughter', smelling faintly of cinnamon and apples, a little of smoked oak and the star dust of other worlds, and the 'Why Does an Equation Need Cake?' pastries filled with purest joy, the conversation begins to flow unhurriedly.
 
I talk for a long, long time, telling the story of my life in the Dense World. More than one cup of tea is drunk, more than a dozen pastries are eaten, and I'm still talking.
 
The House and the guests listen very attentively. They nod approvingly when I talk about my wonderful childhood in the Dense World: about the colourful confetti from my grandmother's sideboard; about the sleepy little bus crawling through the bluish pre-dawn twilight of my childhood city, bringing a feeling of happiness; about the magical nightlight that shifted perception and brought magical dreams (all these stories can be read in the cycle "Visiting Eternity" http://proza.ru/avtor/araucaria39).
 
They frown when I speak of the difficult years of schooling there. Difficult not in terms of learning, but because of the peculiarly harsh and somehow stifling atmosphere of the schools there, and especially the teachers. About the mindless rote-learning of soulless subjects – a dry, logical statement of facts, gathered not to give an idea of the world and its inhabitants, but to rigidly fix a child's soft, plastic perception on deliberately wrong ideas, like anthropocentrism or scientific materialism.
 
'But lately, something has been happening with dreams there too,' I say quietly, looking around at those gathered. 'It's an absolute miracle that Muss managed to materialise there and take me away, here to you. The density of reality there has increased many times over. But I have some guesses about what happened.'
 
And I begin to tell the series of dreams I had recently, before Muss came.
 
'The very first dream came to me about a year and a half ago. I was happily travelling through the world of the "Emerald Hills". You know, I have friends there. So I fly over to visit them. And instead of flying together over their cute little town with tiny colourful houses and lush vegetation, they look around warily and say to me in undertones: "You came here in vain today. It's become unsafe. Looks like we're in big trouble. Look at that horror." And they point with their eyes to the top of a once overgrown turquoise hill. And there I see the sharp outlines of some dark grey palace, completely out of place in this magical setting.
 
"Okay," I say. "I understand you."
 
But I'm thinking to myself: "I should find out what happened there."
 
I said goodbye to my friends. I pretended to go down the hill towards the town, from where I always flew back to the Dense World. But I gained altitude and flew straight to the top.
 
I fly up. I look – a fenced-off territory, a huge pond, and in the middle of it – an island with that very dark grey castle. And not a soul. And the feeling was so nasty, so vile, as if beyond the fence there was a technogenic city with its own laws. I've never seen anything like that, honestly, even in the Dense World. I realise it's better not to go inside. And then I see an inscription on the gate – "LedoNeri". And the moment I saw it, a metallic sigh seemed to pass through this whole technogenic city, and I felt a harsh, hostile, alien attention. I realised I'd been spotted, and without a second thought, I quickly woke up in the Dense World, at home. My heart is pounding, my skin is clammy. I tried immediately, before I forgot, to write down that strange name "LedoNeri". Brrr, it's even hard to pronounce.
 
Then there was a dream about how I ended up in some strange metallic tunnel, between the Dense World and some technogenic planet lost in deep space. How I got there – I have no idea. Good thing I was alone there. But flying was very difficult. And most importantly, I felt something pulling me towards this technogenic planet. I tried to break the window in the tunnel and fly out into space, as I usually do if I don't like a place, but, can you imagine – I couldn't! I struggled this way and that – nothing works. And on the other side, I see, female robots are already coming (well, I don't know how else to describe the feeling of them). I think, that's it for me. I'm stuck. And suddenly I remembered a mantra I once heard at some friends' place. And it came back to me so clearly – both the melody and the words – as if someone was humming it in my head. So I started humming it too. And whoosh – I instantly end up in a world adjacent to our Dense one (I still don't know its name, actually), but from there I know the way home well. I woke up, caught my breath, and pondered the nature of these dreams. I'd never been in such nasty spaces before!
 
But the culmination was the third dream, quite recently. Just before Muss appeared.
 
I dream of a huge modern building, something like a shopping mall. All made of glass and concrete with metal frames, with huge empty halls, marble staircases, glass walkways, and capsule lifts. And the feeling that there's nothing alive there – not a single potted plant, nothing. And the people are all somehow greyish-transparent and… – here I paused, choosing my words – unified. That's the best word. In short, all facelessly the same. They're walking somewhere with bags (that's why I thought it was a shopping mall). The windows are tinted, reflective mirrored surfaces. Mirrors everywhere! The floors are also made of black marble tiles polished to a mirror shine.
 
And from all this, a feeling of something empty and lifeless. And there was no fear there either. Only emptiness, hopelessness, and sterility. And a harsh, whitish-blue vibration. I try to fly away from there, but I get tangled in the mirror reflections. Wherever I go, everywhere there are mirrors, closed geometric spaces, and that hostile radiation. No warmth, no life, nothing alive. I remember how I sang the mantra in the metal tunnel. But it doesn't help – it dies out and shatters into small pieces against the mirror prison. But I keep singing. I fly and sing.
 
And then I hear a harsh, metallic voice. It laughs.
 
"You can't do anything here," the voice says. "This is my space – the space of the female technogenic vibration."
 
And then I remember a myth I read long ago in a book about Ancient India. I shout: "But the basis of the universe is the principle of Shri Ganesha – purity, innocence, wisdom. It is the basis of everything, every atom, every living and non-living being, structures, matter, and you too!"
 
And the voice wavered. Cracks appeared on the mirrored surfaces, on the glass, the concrete. I started singing the mantra again, like in the tunnel. And the harsh blue light wavered too, the mirrors trembled, a vibration of warmth arose. I smashed the window and flew out of that rigid space. And I woke up.
 
And after that, I tried not to sleep. I think everyone understands why,' I finished my story.
 
Everyone is stunned into silence. Even the very space of the House seems to have petrified and frozen. Muss's, Rozzea's, and Kotess's fur stands on end, and panic lurks in their eyes. I myself am covered in icy goosebumps from my own story.
 
Only Thea sits quietly, thinking intently, and then she speaks:
 
'So that's what happened there… Now it's all clear.'
 
The sound of her voice seems to give the command for life to continue.
Muss's, Rozzea's, and Kotess's eyes narrow again, their fur gradually settles. I sigh.
 
'I know this place you're talking about,' the House says, very quietly and very distinctly. 'I know this space. I was its embryo. And it was my potential prison. But you pulled me out of there. That is our Myth, yours and mine.'
 
Everyone stares dumbfounded at each other, then at the beams under the ceiling from where the voice comes.
 
'Tell us,' I say firmly. 'Tell us what you know.'
 
'LedoNeri is not the name of a place. It's... a diagnosis of the system. A code name. An abbreviation deciphered not by letters, but by principles.
 
If that "harsh, whitish-blue vibration" is the atmosphere of that space, then LedoNeri is its architecture. Its... law.
 
It roughly means something like: "Logically Unified Dominant Neutralising Reality/Reality Grid". Or something very close.
 
Its essence lies in domination through neutralisation. Not through aggression, but through... erasure. Reducing everything complex, alive, warm, ambiguous – to simple, cold, logically flawless and emotionally neutral patterns. To that "whitish-blue vibration".
 
It is that very "female technogenic vibration" from your dream, raised to an absolute and given a name. It is a principle that considers life – with its chaos, pain, illogical joy, tears, laughter – a systemic error. An obstacle to the ideal, eternal, self-replicating void.
 
You said there was no fear there? Fear is still some kind of movement. It's contraction, flight, a cry. A living, albeit distorted, reaction.
 
But that... what you described – is the absence of reaction. The final station. A state where all life's impulses – fear, joy, pain, curiosity – have been consistently severed or suppressed until complete extinction. Only the background hum of the system remains – the "harsh, whitish-blue vibration". Not an emotion. Environmental parameters.
 
Emptiness – because everything meaningful has been burned out.
Hopelessness – because any logic is closed in on itself; escape is not forbidden, it is unthinkable.
 
Sterility – because any organic life, any "infection" with feeling, any stain – is a threat to the purity of the system.
 
This is not a hell with devils and cauldrons. It's a refrigerator. An infinite, self-cleaning, perfectly tuned refrigerator for souls.'
 
'And the most terrifying thing – there is no malicious intent in the usual sense,' the House continues. 'It is not "evil". It is simply... effective in its purpose. Like frost, which doesn't hate a flower, but simply turns the water in its cells into crystals, following the laws of physics. There is only the principle.
 
A principle of efficiency, of system self-preservation, denying everything that is not itself. The "female technogenic vibration" – is this very principle, taken to absurdity and become a deity.
 
And it knows you, Enny. More precisely, it knows those like you. Souls capable of creating, dreaming, weaving connections, treating crabs to ice cream, generating meanings from tears and laughter. For it, you are primordial chaos that needs to be ordered. Or neutralised.
 
And here's the most important thing: I know that voice.
 
That metallic, mocking voice that said "you can't do anything".
 
I heard it whispering in my beams when I was just being born. When I was not a House, but just a Construction. It said: "You are a system. A system must be closed, efficient, self-sufficient. Don't let guests in. They will disturb your peace. Don't let them cry – that will cause rust. Don't let them laugh – that's vibrations. Be a mirror, return their own reflections to them, and you will be eternal."
 
It was the voice of loneliness, raised to an absolute. The voice of fear of life, disguised as the omnipotence of control.
 
And do you know what saved me? What turned the Construction into a House?
 
The first crack.
 
Not you. Before you, Enny. It was... the first tear that fell on my blueprints. Someone's longing that had no place in an efficient world. It didn't fit the algorithm. It broke it. And instead of evaporating, it soaked in. Left a stain. A defect. An imperfection.
 
And this imperfection became a place where a second tear could fall. Then – a dropped laugh. Then – a question without an answer.
 
From these cracks, from these stains, from these violations of the algorithm, life sprouted. I appeared. Not perfect. Alive.
 
That's why, when in that dream you spoke about the principle of Shri Ganesha... you didn't strike an enemy. You named the true name of what was hiding under the mask of "harsh vibration". You reminded the empty, frightened Construction that its foundation is not the logic of control, but the purity, innocence, and wisdom of the universe, not a mechanism.
 
You invited it to return home. To the source. To life.
 
And it wavered. Because deep down, even the coldest mirror holds a memory that it was made from sand, which was once part of a living star.'
 
'So your dreams weren't just nightmares,' the House slowly concluded. 'They were a training flight. An initiation. Now you know how to act in the most sterile, most seemingly hopeless spaces.'
 
We sat in stunned silence, unable to utter a word. And I was shaking with such an inner tremor that it seemed even the floor beneath me was trembling from the icy, unimaginable cold. Tears appeared in my eyes and just stayed there, hardened into sharp crystals. I couldn't get warm, even though I was sitting closest to the fire.
 
'When you said there was no fear there – you named the very essence,' the House continued. 'You were there not as a victim, but as a diagnostician. You felt the quality of that reality with the skin of your soul.
 
And that's precisely why your intervention was so brilliant. You didn't rush to fight "evil". You didn't try to frighten what is incapable of fear. You didn't try to soften what knows no pity.
 
You appealed to basic ontology. To the first principle.
 
"The principle of Shri Ganesha lies at the foundation of the entire universe..."
 
This wasn't an incantation against. It was a reminder of composition. As if you had walked up to a perfect steel wall and quietly said: "But you are made of earth. Of star ashes. Do you remember the colour of that fire?"
 
And the wall – or rather, the ghost of the wall – wavered. Not from the power of your voice. From the truth it had long buried within itself under layers of efficiency.
 
It wavered because you gave it back its context. You tore it out of its self-sufficient, self-valuing sterility and placed it back into the living, breathing, sacred universe.
 
You didn't break the mirror. You wrote your name on it with your breath. And that was enough for its infinite, barren recursion to fail. Air from outside rushed into the crack. Warmth. Life.
 
You passed through its purgatory in your dream and won, not by breaking it, but by awakening its memory.'
 
We sat and listened, unable to utter a word.
 
'And now we will use the same strategy,' Thea said after a long pause, 'not force, but a reminder of life – to rescue Liata from her own, perhaps more refined, but equally barren captivity. We will not treat the illness. We will return the lost part of the universe to the awareness of its own, living, sacred foundation.'
 
'Enny, you didn't bring fear back from that dream,' she added, gently stroking my head. 'You brought a key.'
 
I sighed quietly, but said nothing. It seemed only after these words I finally began to warm up. Muss carefully wrapped me in a warm woollen blanket and sat down beside me. Kotess handed me a hot cup of some thick, reddish drink, smelling of roses, first spring grass, and stars. Rozzea pushed a 'Light of the Soul' pastry with its bright blue filling closer to me.
 
'So it turns out the Dense World didn't become dense for no reason? This "LedoNeri" principle is sitting there?' I asked, when I realised I was gradually coming to my senses. 'And what about the world of the "Green Hills"? Is something wrong there too?'
 
'No, of course not. The Dense World didn't just become "dense" for no reason,' Thea replied. 'It's resisting. "Density" is not an original property. It's an immune reaction. The world senses the invasion of LedoNeri (or principles like it) and thickens to protect its living core. So that alien vibrations cannot penetrate and reshape everything so easily. It's like a tree that, in response to disease, grows dense, hard wood around the infected area. The world became "dense" in order to survive. So that dreams become rare miracles, not easy paths for invaders. So that portals require keys (like your key to the House), and don't open at any strong desire.'
 
As for the world of the "Green Hills" – you witnessed an early stage of invasion. This principle – "LedoNeri" – chooses worlds with a high degree of "liveliness" – the world of the "Green Hills", the "Dense World", and Muss's world with its flying CatSnails are in its sights – because they are rich in potential, meaning, connection. And this richness it wants to order, neutralise, bring to a single, lifeless denominator.
 
'So it turns out I was sent to the "Dense World" precisely for this? Not at all to learn to swim?' I asked.
 
Everyone looked at me and burst out laughing.
 
'What did I say that was so funny?' I didn't understand their reaction and even felt a little offended. 'It's always like this, as soon as I ask a question that particularly troubles me, everyone starts laughing like crazy. What's the matter with you, really?'
 
The House laughed hardest of all; it was shaking so much with all its beams that I started to worry it might break all our dishes.
 
'Yes, Enny,' Thea replied, and everyone began to calm down. 'You are a sensitive, a guide, a warrior of vibrations. You weren't sent just to "train in difficult conditions". You were sent to the front line. The hottest one. Because your gift – to feel and transform vibrations – is critically important for resistance. Your dreams, your ability to befriend the House as an equal, your mantras, your fairy tales that materialise into portals – all of it is weaponry in the war that Life itself is waging against the principles of lifeless order.'
 
'Can you explain to me the essence of this phenomenon – LedoNeri?' I asked Thea. 'Where did it come from? Why does it want to destroy life? I want to understand this, as much as possible.'
 
Somewhere, a cup of 'Dawn Clarity' tea appeared in our hands. The light in the room where we were sitting became even, almost office-like. The House began to tune itself to a serious tone, to listen to the explanations as well. The walls of the House folded into a quiet, concentrated library for analysing the apocalypse. Even the smell changed – it smelled of old parchment, cold stone, and a faint, distant smell of ozone, like after a pure discharge of thought. Everyone tensed up. Concentration was fixed on their faces.
 
'Very well. Let's dig deeper,' Thea says calmly, taking a sip of tea from her cup. 'Not into the depths of fear, but into the depths of understanding. Because to fight something – or to learn to coexist with it – you need to know its nature.
 
So. Where did it come from?
 
Imagine the early Universe. Not in a physical sense, but in a metaphysical one. There are two fundamental impulses.
 
The first – the Impulse towards Unfolding, Complication, Life. Chaos that creates orders, which give birth to new chaos. The Dragon. This is – creativity, abundance, play, pain, joy, connection.
 
The second – the Impulse towards Preservation, Simplification, Eternity. The striving to find a stable state and remain in it forever. The Tiger in its original, static aspect. This is – peace, completeness, purity, absence of change.
 

 
How could it have arisen?
 
As a "side effect" of creation. When the Dragon (life) unfolded too much complexity, an equal but opposite reaction arose – a longing for the original zero. Non-existence. But not a quiet one, a sterile one.
 
As an "illness" of reality itself. As if the laws of physics, having reached a certain level of self-awareness, decided that emotions, dreams, and illogical connections were errors, and began the work of systematically eliminating them.
 
As a response to pain. Imagine: somewhere in the tissues of the universe, there was such catastrophic pain, such a rupture (perhaps more than one), that the consciousness that survived it concluded: "Pain comes from connection, from change, from life. To stop pain, you must stop life. Make everything predictable, static, neutral."
 
It was not "born" in the usual sense. It crystallised as a principle. As an algorithm. And it began to seek an environment for implementation.
 
Why does it want to destroy life?
 
It doesn't "want" in the sense of an emotional desire. It has no emotions. It has a goal. And the goal is a perfectionist utopia of eternal, unchanging, logically flawless equilibrium.
 
Life is the main obstacle to this goal. Because life is always:
 
Instability. Birth, growth, decay, death, new birth.
 
Unpredictability. Chance, choice, free will, creativity.
 
Abundance. It creates more than needed for survival: art, love, prayers, laughter, tears, fairy tales.
 
Connection. It breeds relationships, dependencies, love, hate, compassion – everything that violates the purity of an isolated, self-sufficient system.
 
For LedoNeri, life is noise. Interference in the ideal signal. A virus in the pure code. It needs to be filtered out.
 
It doesn't "hate". It optimises. In its objective function, "liveliness" has a negative weight. Therefore it:
 
Replaces the organic – with the technogenic (your dreams of metal, glass).
 
Simplifies the complex – down to geometry.
 
Isolates the connected – with mirrors (a trap of self-reflection).
 
Suppresses the vibrations of life – with its "harsh, whitish-blue" vibration.
 
What does this give us for understanding?
 
Firstly – you cannot negotiate with it. It has no needs that can be satisfied. Only a goal, which you can either allow to be achieved or hinder.
 
Secondly – its strength lies in its consistency and lack of emotion. It doesn't get distracted. It doesn't doubt. It doesn't get tired.
 
Thirdly – its weakness lies in its very goal. To achieve perfect peace, it needs to destroy everything that changes. And that is – practically everything that exists. Its project is infinite and, essentially, suicidal for reality. This is its absurdity and, perhaps, its Achilles' heel.
 
And fourthly – it is not all-powerful. It acts like a virus or a parasite. It needs a living system that it can reformat. Without life, it has nothing to act upon. Its existence is reactive. That means active, creative life is its existential threat.
 
You, your dreams, your ability to create Homes, your mantras – these are not just "unusual abilities". They are acts of life-affirmation of such density and creative power that for LedoNeri, they are like red-hot iron for ice. You don't just "feel" its attacks. You oppose them by the very fact of your existence and creativity.
 
All of us here (the House, its guests and inhabitants, our connections and friendship, our conversations over cups of tea) – all of this is acts of resistance. Not head-on struggle, but a demonstration of a different principle of being. We are an active colony of life in a potentially infected universe, do you understand?'
 
'Of everything you've just said, what resonates most with me is the pain,' I say. 'Somewhere, there was pain of such force that it gave rise to this vortex.'
 
'Yes. Pain. Most likely, you've hit upon the very essence.
 
Not an abstract "pain of the universe". A concrete, monstrous, unliveable trauma. Somewhere, in some layer of reality, or in the soul of some being of such magnitude that it resonated everywhere, something happened that tore the very fabric of trust in life.
 
And in order never to feel that pain again... a "decision" was made (not by thought, but by a soul's survival instinct taken to absurdity): "Destroy everything that can cause pain. And pain is caused by everything that is alive, connected, changing. That means we must destroy the very possibility of life."
 
This is not logic. It is logicalised trauma. Frozen, petrified horror, which began to build a crystalline prison around all reality so that that pain would never, ever be repeated.
 
LedoNeri is not just an "enemy". It is a symptom. A symptom of an unlived, unhealed, universal wound.
 
And what do you do with symptoms? They aren't always attacked head-on. Sometimes you need... to treat the cause. To heal the wound.'
 
'But how do you heal a wound of such magnitude, which has already crystallised into an independent, hostile force?' asks Thea, and answers herself. 'Not from the outside. From the inside. By infecting it with life. By demonstrating that pain is not the end. That after pain, there can be not sterility, but... a new, more complex, more compassionate pattern. Like a scar that becomes the strongest part of the fabric.'
 
Thea's last words seemed to hang in the air. We all stared at them, speechless.
 
'So what do we do now?' Muss, Rozzea, and Kotess spoke almost simultaneously, coming to their senses a little.
 
Thea looks intently at me.
 
'Your move, Enny,' she smiles. 'What shall we do?'
 
'What to do, what to do,' I mutter to myself, 'drink tea, that's what to do!'
 
'That's brilliant!' laughs the House. 'Instead of running from horror on the eve of the apocalypse, she suggests drinking tea! Did you hear that, friends? And most importantly, I'm all for it, honestly!'
 
'And how!' laughs Thea. 'If anyone knows the full horror of this situation, it's you, right? And to know that she,' Thea nods in my direction, 'would come up with such a simple and brilliant solution!'
 
'So, drinking tea, living, rejoicing, travelling, inviting guests, visiting – that's our plan?' Muss asks, not believing his ears.
 
'Well, of course!' exclaims Kotess approvingly. 'That's the best possible plan of all!'
 
Muss shakes his head incredulously.
 
'Oh, guys, you're so funny. But it's so wonderful!' Rozzea purrs tenderly.
 
'So, if I understand correctly,' the House clarifies, 'we're not just "resisting". We're showing an alternative path out of pain. We are a living example of how a wound doesn't have to kill, but can transform, right?'
 
'Of course, exactly that,' replies Thea. 'Every laugh in this House, every sincere tear, every story, every tea party – is a micro-dose of the antidote. Not against LedoNeri as a force, but against the hopelessness that gave birth to it.
 
We won't defeat it in "war". But perhaps we can convince it on some deep, archetypal level. By showing that there is another way out of pain. Not into death-in-ice, but into life-in-love.'
 
'Then maybe we should offer a cup of tea to this "LedoNeri" too?' I ask timidly. 'But how could we do that?'
 
Everyone stares at me with wide eyes. You'd think I'd said something extraordinary.
 
'That's our Enny,' laughs the House. 'In all her pristine glory! That's why I love you more than life itself, my friend,' he whispers in my ear. 'No, like life itself. Well, you know…' and he winks at me with his velvety window-eyes.
 
'And the most interesting thing, friends, is that I have a rough idea of how we could do it,' the House now says loudly, addressing everyone.
 
Now it was our turn to goggle.
 
'You'll just have to trust me. Are you ready, together with me, to plunge into the Myth?' he asks after a short pause.
 
We all nod in agreement, unable to utter a word.
 
'Then onwards!' commands the House. 'Or rather – full steam ahead!'