Intrigues, he thought, rounding the next flight; up the pulsing red flesh steps; a big 2 carved in the wall in taut muscle material, and ligaments.

Another flight, a fresh corridor in flesh bathed in ersatz shadows; intentional gloom; a mood at the service of a contrived, yet effective aesthetic.

Of evil, of intentional mental illness, mental illness worried at - this kind of stuff seeping out the flesh wall panels and the, in repeated patterns - their only art.

There were certain arts: repetition in certain shapes inherent in the destroyed human form. He supposed he could say sculpture. Maybe interior design. These were arts functional and, anyway, an adept at this stuff, he understood, the corridor was supposed to make him ill at ease. This guy he had been given to approach, was bad, maybe, this philosopher, but – maybe you didn't have to be an adept; maybe this was the point.

Maybe he was supposed to feel this fakeness attached to the malignity; that it was performative, indeed, that -

And how did any real philosopher - as opposed to a scribbler - lie his mind into the intentional shapes required to exist in this space even for a matter of only long minutes/hours. How?

And what kind of philosopher could do that?

A 3 in flesh and bone and the same number on the door - after tickling another sad corpse nipple - that let him in through it. Almost fake-seeming; because it was - wasn't even dead. All this attached to the great circulatory system of Theust - and this wasn't true either; it might have blood in it and the apposite heat; but it was dead - it was all dead. And anyway he had to, so he tickled.

A sound inside, at least - this what what usually happened.

The door opened itself upon its own will and mechanical capacity to do that. He saw no one behind.

“Hello?” He stepped in and said hello as he did.

“Hello?” - He said that word again: hello, he still got no response this time; another, occasion, throttled, but – he coughed -

A noise of a human voice in perhaps a language he didn't understand. He stopped; momentarily, in the same flesh type corridor. Waited. Heard the same sound again. Decided to move toward it; he passed a corner, and the angles of a space opened greeting him, and what he saw inside it, this new space,

this:

Plants, bursting in life and fecund abundance.

He couldn't categorise them: green foliage bursting at the very seams of life. Every square space/angle - covered in them:

From the ceiling, the walls, growing directly on/out, of those walls. That presumably below were still the bio-brutal atmosphere of the – by law – absolute aesthetic of Theust. But presumably, and below, but above – no; he could see none of it.

To Pheel Cazzo there was only that fecund life in plant matter; flowers too, here and there and wherever apposite. It was biological beauty as opposed to... whatever this world was the rest of the time. In the middle of this, up to the waist in it, so to speak - because the chair he regarded him from seemed only another plant - a short tree. He noticed. The Philosopher was saying words at him.