Domus Crystalli · Scene III · Nell Is Lost
Dawn, the next morning. The happiness frequency, and for a moment the watchers' faces on the wall. Nell crosses the white hall of the Castle and finds the Architect waiting at the top of the stairs. He has never come to her before. As he sends her down to the amplification hall, the light behind him — the Father’s signal — grows and speaks with the voices until it fills everything. Then the long, ordinary corridors of the Castle, his voice still in her ears, and at the end, behind dark glass, the Architect. He is gone; the doors open on the stair down, wet and cracked. At the bottom, the amplification hall: racks of small lights, failing speakers, screens that watch her. The Surveillance Chorus tells her she went the wrong way. She keeps going left, into the old halls, where the walls keep their scars and her own body shows on them, slice by slice. The chorus promises her the light. “Why do I have to feel this way?”