Pheel Cazzo pushed back in behind and the last word he heard was breathe. Not merely a word but an instruction, a code, or in someway an incantation. Because that word triggered an ability – that function in fact had been imparted to him and he could breathe.

He was inside the building itself, and therefore inside Theust in a fashion entirely new. This was not the same as being in a Womb Booth. There was no insistence he perform here. He didn't have to force his mind into the kind of totality, a form of obedience, or agreement, required by the planet-mind; it wasn't that. And he could breathe because of that latent instruction imparted as he departed - inside in an entirely new way separated from performance.

Something terrible and strange.

He was in it.

Breathing, he could breathe; there was a method by which he could. If he didn't think about it. He used whatever discipline he had, not to. The life-saving pathologies the survivors of Theust, for any serious length of time with any measure of functioning whatever, had to develop. He used these not to think about what subconscious facility was required of him to breathe.

Instead he looked around, moving forward, in a world that was all gas and liquid: globules of floating mass, and organ matter; flesh, the same as the walls, repeated organ patterns, this was Theust. - This was what it was but he was inside, like he'd never been before. Breathing, at this very moment, because, the whole thing - it was a vast sensory chamber.

He was inside organs, inside grafted pancreases, bowels, always bowels, glands. The ugly jungle of bowels and insides, that was Theust. He went through these repetitions of obvious concepts to orient himself even in the ugliness that was familiar to him but in some brand new sense, and this was the point – he was inside it. Completely inside.

And Theust, as untranslatable as that final concept - it was also something brand new and strange that he was inside. A feeling, now, that he was inside, that was imparted in him too. Walking the corridor chamber Pheel sought to understand what was –

it was copying, it was repeating - it was a mania, that was at the same time a series of repetitions and weird ideas: panic that was a thrill; panic that deranged; masturbatory panic at being inanimate; and something stranger mixed with the copying, and the repetitions, and the panic, too.

Theust was even worse inside. Already awful this thing was far, far worse, wanting oceans of death. It was eradication and it was wild. And in here Pheel could, who he was - his particular mode of – he couldn't pull himself out of this by – unfinished thoughts; walking forward, inside and breathing by means of a -

He rounded a corner and saw – them -