Can you call a place home when you feel like an intruder in it? It’s not that I lacked experience in this department. I had come to old Europe in search of a value system my country has long left behind.
Yet, in this labyrinth of flowing pipes and whispered directives, I felt like a glitch in a well-oiled machine. These people followed a god that I couldn’t see, secretly murmuring things into their ears. Everyone knew what to do, how to behave, who to be. Everyone but me.
True solitude isn’t just being alone; it’s being invisible in a sea of faces. You have no one and yet you are surrounded by everyone. You wander through these magnificent structures, trying your hardest to find a path through the crowd. A mob that is so perfectly attuned to itself, moving in a constant state of coordinated chaos. Nobody would look at me, nobody would talk to me any longer than absolutely necessary. An urgency I couldn’t grasp propelled each and every one of them.
I spent days tracing the paths of this hive-mind, only to end up at the starting point. This world seemed self-referential, a never-ending loop striving for its preservation. A cycle that existed only to maintain itself. And there I was, an anomaly looking in, pondering if I could ever sync my rhythm with theirs.
—
You are currently traveling through the 1990s nightmare of Pipedreams. Each narrative fragment in this collection unravels a peculiar memory of a man drawn into an alternate reality by a looming figure in a suit. In this world, the mundane is flipped on its head as giant pipes carry more than just water. These tales offer a glimpse into this bizarre dimension, both infinitely monotonous and threatening at once. Based on a true story.
