The woman’s name was lost in The Fall, as was so much else we once thought vital—seasons, rivers, uncharred air—but her image persists, has become indelible. The giant wall of white upon which her travesties are projected once yearly has become a mecca for all in this, our new world. The desert for miles around is littered with the bleached bones of those who would gaze upon her bare body, to confirm for themselves and their outposts that one such as her ever actually existed. The recording of her on the giant wall of white doesn’t exceed a count of 160, and it starts as it ends, with the sound of water slipping away by the gallon, if such a thing doesn’t beggar the imagination, or hollow out the soul. Such heedless profligacy is of course the initial, albeit illicit draw to a recording as vile as this one surely is. But, sitting on the humps rising and falling before this giant wall of white, which we all know to be the grave mounds of the first congregants, who died upon viewing something so shocking as this—watch on, fellow pilgrims. It gets worse. Witnessing an act so obscene is penance, as this woman of course must be one of our ancestors, and thus tied to us by history and blood, if not culture and privation. If we would not repeat, then we must not look away. After disrobing and presenting her bare shoulders to us, so as to assure she has no open sores, no growths or parasites, she steps into what can only be called The Chamber. You can divine its religious significance by the regularity of the stones used to encase her on three sides, the fourth serving as a ritual flap to gain entry through. The animal from which such translucent skin might be harvested no longer walks our world. Though foggy and indistinct for a moment, this woman—pale of skin, short of hair, light of manner—kneels to an instrument too sacred to be seen directly, but which produces the next stage of this impossible act. This is the part in the recording where all arranged on the grave mounds either gasp or become, for the rest of the recording, incapable of breath, as what’s now on screen is as sacrilegious as it is compelling: water streams forth in a regular stream of unceasing droplets from the inverted silver chalice extending from the forewall of The Chamber. The woman closes her eyes so as to protect them, and, to a person, each pilgrim washing themselves in the entrancing glow of this heresy finds themselves incapable of not rubbing their own forearms and shoulders, imagining chambers such as this still exist, and water is obtainable for more than a spoon at a time, is so available, in fact, that it can be used like this. And the woman herself, as if aware of us out here, soaking this in, her pleasure in this unstopping stream of water, it’s not only apparent, it’s infectious. But when she turns her open mouth to this unending torrent? This is when the crowd arrayed before her raises their voices in anger, demanding she Drink, drink! How could anyone resist, from a source such as this? Of course, however, this woman doesn’t. This is why children are brought to learn from this recording. When the water continues to spill, shining on her skin but slipping away, uncaught, never to be used again . . . this is when the Rationer appears. Her tall shape is smoky through the opaque flap, her face indistinct, her hair pulled back in a bun of sorts, her dress drab and unwashed, but her knife, falling into this degenerate woman’s unmarred flesh, it’s sharp. It’s sharp enough. Of the people gathered to watch this denuded, wasteful woman punished thusly by the Rationer, there’s always one who stands when the stabbing starts, stands not just to cheer, but to roar with the righteousness of this act. And then all are rising to support the Rationer’s judgment, lest they themselves find her smoky form halfway behind them when they let a drop of their day’s second gulp of water wet their dusty chin instead of their parched throat. As the woman’s life is being cut away in pieces, so does the recording itself shatter into smaller and faster pieces with each stroke of the Rationer’s blade, until, as must happen, the woman falls dead over the side of her chamber, grasping onto the flap in what must be regret, the wish to have done better with such a gift. Here, lest we forget the intent and import of this recording, we look into the hole at the bottom of her erstwhile chamber, which is when the crowd, as a single person, falls to their knees in sympathetic pain at this unending waste they can’t stop: the water, still streaming from its high-mounted silver chalice, is now spiraling down into that open throat at the bottom of The Chamber, surely to fall into the void, and never get imbibed by man nor beast nor plant—the greatest sin of all. The great white wall this plays on is of course chipped and showing divots, as, when the recording settles back on the woman’s dead eye, itself forced to witness this travesty, whatever item is at hand is flung up into the finger of light delivering her. Others, however, rapt in this recording, aroused by the nurturing wetness on display and not heeding the consequences, driven to frenzy by this glimpse of What Once Was, they couple in the light falling down onto them, and the children conceived in such manner will themselves one day be led by the hand to these rolling grave mounds, to gaze in rapt wonder up at this, their little hands curling into fists, wishing it was them stabbing her, but any tears of rage they let slip, they of course know to save them, for the good of all.