6
The ascent takes us from a thunderstorm up through fifteen thousand feet of pure white cloud, reminiscent of the way an elevator carries me, with barely perceptible motion, from a grey carpark up to the beige heaven of a Carrefour municipal shopping complex on the eastern edge - and as in the kingdom of the Lord, I step briskly and avoid making eye contact with any of the anyone. The symphonic trill of cash machines is replaced with the more compete sound of air conditioning units, small streams, frogs and the occasional birdcall.
At a customer information point I am able to negotiate safe passage to the aisles of cordial and soft drinks in exchange for my bullup rifle and a few magazines. Management provides me with a guide who speaks good English and we set off down the river.
The aisles here are heavily overgrown and descend beneath the water further than the florescent light can penetrate. My guide lowers a rope with a rock tied to the end. He explains that the rock is a powerful magnetic meteorite, which his tribe mine from an aeons-old deposit near the stationary. Hooks aren't used when venturing from the camp as they catch on roots and shelves.
Due to a shipping accident involving over three hundred tons of table salt a dead river flows beneath the fresh water one. The dead river flows to a separate current and is dense enough to carry the shopping carts that the natives throw into the water for the hundreds of miles through the twisting canals. The carts accumulate canned food that falls naturally as tides change, or as the result of floods or shelves collapsing.
My guide is able to feel the meteor making contact with the cart through hundreds of metres of rope. Over the next hour he tracks it through the rows of trees and shelves, standing on the wide raft and directing me to steer in this or that direction. Finally we reach an area he deems clear of roots. He runs a hook down the rope and begins to haul in the cart.
He tells me that it is the spirits of the dead who push shopping carts through the underworld. So, as in life we are provided for by the dead, in death we must take our turns on the infinite aisles.
He hauls up nineteen cans of tinned pork, a waterlogged flintlock pistol, three dozen spears and an eighth of crack cocaine; he screams for a glass pipe. I think I will be rewarded handsomely by the company for this venture. Most men give less thought to crossing the street. My guide is still screaming for a glass pipe and his cry reverberates throughout the neat shelves, the glass display cases that crack and crumble to dust, mountains of ash blowing away in the wind, his cry reverberates throughout the visible ducting in the ceiling and the secret ducting in the walls, the power is cut and in the last moments as all the lights in the sky flicker out I am unable to remember what I have gone shopping for.
