He Was On The Steppe Before Them

    He was on the Ice Steppe before them, running south.  He thought he saw the Steppe, infinite in all directions, but he also felt he was on the median lawn of Charles Street somewhere above 30th, but to his right and above there was a vast plateau, from which his enemies could maybe laugh but also be shocked that he was on the Steppe, running, before them.
    There were lines at the bottom of his viewing range, as if he was watching a screen, his running was mechanically rhythmic, as if the whole process was a digitized fiction, and as if he was running in a mode of stoned semi-detachment, but he heard the snow crunch with every footfall.
    When he saw/anticipated the sharp rise of a curb, he waited for a jolt in the rhythm of sound and pressure, and wondered if cartilaginous reality would break the illusion of subjectivity and immortality.
    There was a twinge in the dreamt cartilage, but it faded, and his digitized footfalls pounded across the Steppe, pounded mechanically under the brilliant sky.

(Extract from The Song of Ianto: Internal Exile of the Exposed Unkown, Copyright registered by the author in 2007)