We stood at the entrance of the cave. After walking “east” from neau-eden for a time, we entered a wild land of dust, dry shrubbery, and rocks. The cave was low and dark.

  “This is it” Sophie said. “This is our entrance into the preconscious mind. At this point, step one is exploration only. We don’t fully know what we’re dealing with down there, we don’t really even have much in the way of theory.”

  I looked down into that dark, and a shiver ran down my spine. The shadows were unnatural, the light didn’t pierce the darkness of the cave, but stopped unnaturally at the entrance.

  “Ok. This is what we’re here for” Winsford said. “Remember, like Sophie said, this is exploration only. Something out of control goes down, we get straight out. No questions asked. Ready?”

  He didn’t wait for a response, he just walked straight in to the cave.

  “Cowabunga” Ross said, before following.

  Simon, Sophie, and Everett followed. I looked at Chen, and she at me. I could tell we were both thinking the same thing. This didn’t feel super good.

  “Together?” I said.

  “Ok.”

  We stepped in to the dark, and everything disappeared. I reached out instinctively, her hand was right there waiting. We held on to each other, the knowledge of another human soul in this blackness was comforting. We kept walking.

  It’s not that there was no light at all. The entrance behind was still visible when we turned to look. It’s just that there was no real light in the tunnel itself, if it actually was a tunnel.

  “Keep going, I can see something ahead” it was Winsford’s voice, kind of echoing, but kind of like a voice in your mind as well.

  At last we emerged through a dimly lit doorway. It was huge. As everything began to come into focus, I could see that we were in some kind of courtyard.

  It’s not that there wasn’t any light, but it was a kind of light unlike anything else you’ve ever seen. It was dull, somewhat reddish. Cheerless and it felt… somehow old. We were in a flat, paved area, with ancient buildings rising all around. But they weren’t really buildings. They were ruins, and empty. The sky was extraordinarily dark, and I couldn’t even tell where the light came from.

  “I don’t like this” whispered Chen.

  The courtyard was surrounded by walls. High walls, with windows full of black darkness. Pillared arches yawned around us. It was cold. Many of the courtyard stones were cracked and worn. The silence around us was dead and empty.

  “So... Doc” Ross said, his voice sounding somewhat muted, “What do abandoned ruins, blood-red mood lighting, and a post-apocalyptic courtyard tell us about the preconscious mind?” His words were light, but his face looked strained, as though he wasn’t quite focused on what he was saying.

  “Well… it does fit when you think about it” Sophie said. “One of the basic instincts is survival. What else is this place if it is not a manifestation of the fear of extinction?”

  “Hmmmmm” he nodded and kept scanning the area. What she’d said made some kind of sense, but something deeper told me that there was more going on here. I just had no idea what it was yet. Those archways were big.

  “Come on” Winsford said, “We’re not going to find out how this place works standing around all day.” He marched forward, and without really thinking we fell in behind.

  We walked up to the arched doorway opposite the one we’d just entered, which led us into a building. A vast, shadowy hall emerged from the gloom, with rows of pillars and more archways on either side. More of the tired red light strained into the space, and we moved cautiously, or perhaps wearily – I’m not sure.

  Another and larger courtyard waited for us at the other end, with more buildings, and more doorways. Some of the buildings were toppled and sprawled into the courtyard this time. We passed on, through another archway and up a great flight of steps leading to vast rooms and further corridors beyond. I was glad for all the memory training we’d done, it would have been easy to loose our way in here without it. I built a map in my mind of where we’d been, and how long it would take us to get back to the entry point. Something about this place made me feel uneasy.

  Courtyard upon courtyard followed. There were fountains, dry now but they looked as though they must have once watered great gardens. There were statues, stone monsters with mighty wings, and angels with spears, stone basins which must have once served for bathing. There were no bugs or spiders, no trace of life. There were dry sticks which might once have been plant life, but nothing grew here now. No grass. No moss. Nothing green. Not even dust.

  “This must have been a magnificent place once” Chen murmured. I felt like she sounded, as though I was beginning to lose myself. I traced over my mind map again to keep focus.

  “Is anyone else finding it a little bit… hard to think in here?” I asked.

  “Look!” Sophie’s voice echoed from inside one of the archways, “In here!”

  As we entered the room, which looked like it might once have been a dining hall, we found her standing by a square pillar, about waist high, in the middle of the room. A golden arch was set upon it, and from the arch hung a small golden bell. Apart from the dim red light, I realised that it was the first time I’d seen any colour in this place. There was a golden hammer beside the bell.

  “What is this?” Ross asked.

  “There’s something written on the side of the pillar” said Chen. We all gathered around to see. The letters cut in the stone were strange, but as we looked we found that, although the shape of the letters didn’t change, we began to understand what they meant. It was one of the strangest things I’d ever experienced.

  “Thou shalt not” said Chen. “Thou shalt not… what? What does that mean? Why is it there?”

  “It’s a preconscious manifestation of the moral instinct!” said Sophie. “Don’t you see? Because conscience evolved as one of our primary cognitive mechanisms, of course it will be a key feature of the pre-conscious mind. This is amazing!”

  “Yeah, but why has it gone all King James on us?” Chen asked.

  “Religion has always been one of the most common externalisations of our moral instincts. This would be a reflection of our experience, or perhaps our broader sense of cultural awareness. Our preconscious mind is choosing something from the backdrop of our minds that makes sense to us. Perhaps if a person from another culture were here, it might look different, or say something else.”

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  “Well, we may as well start with this,” Winsford said. His face began to look strained, and a long, shimmering form began to manifest in his hand. “It’s… hard to cast down here. Everett, help me out” he said.

  Everett nodded once, silently, stepping forward. His eyes narrowed, and the lines in his face deepened. He placed one steady hand on Winsford’s shoulder, and the other hovered just beside the form that was shimmering into existence.

  The cast in Winsford’s hands pulsed and twisted, but still resisted form. We all knew Everett’s focus was absolute. If he couldn’t do this, none of us had a chance. The two men strained for a moment, like a steel wire stretched to its limit, and the shape grew clearer... a shaft and a head appeared… but then something broke and the light softly shimmered and fractured into nothing.

  “It’s not holding,” Everett said, voice low.

  “What if we use the little hammer to anchor the cast?” Sophie said quietly.

  Winsford blinked at her. “Anchor?”

  “We’re trying to cast something out of nothing down here, which is obviously difficult at the moment. This hammer…” she began, holding up the delicate little device, “already exists in the architecture of the preconscious. What if we use it as a base, and build onto it?”

  Everett and Winsford exchanged a look. “Worth a shot” he said.

  Sophie stepped forward and handed him the golden hammer. He held it, closed his eyes… and it began to change. It glowed, and then stretch. The shaft lengthened, the head broadened and darkened. It grew taller than Winsford, the molten gold deepening into dark steel edged with firelight. Crimson red runes crawled along its side like lightning on a slow burn.

  And then it was there, a mace worthy of Melkor himself. Winsford took a step toward the bell.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” Chen called, her voice sharp. But Winsford had already turned, and he swung without answering.

  The great weapon arced through the air, and crashed into the golden bell. Had it been that dainty tinker’s mallet, it might have been a sweet sound. As it happened, there was a moment of harmony combined with a terrible crash as the bell split in two. Nevertheless, the ringing slowly grew louder. It grew and grew, to the point where speaking was impossible. The stone work began to crack and crumble.

  The sound filled everything, it was hard to even think. Winsford shouted something, and we all knew exactly what he meant. Time to move, this place was starting to fall apart.

  We ran, and as we ran, the ringing mixed with other sounds, vague disastrous noises of distant trains and the crashing of falling trees. Screams and moans. Simon ran with Winsford, we’d all memorised the pathway, but Simon was without question the most powerful mnemonist among us. He took the lead.

  All sounds gave way to cracking rock and distant thunder. The noise of the bell, and mercifully all the rest, stopped. “C’mon, this way!” Simon cried out. We ran through courtyard and hallway, always back. I was finding it hard to recall, and simply trusting myself to Simon now.

  CRACK.

  An archway crashed into the ground just moments after we had passed through. The sky was swirling, thick bands of darkness churning and pulsing with red veins of light. We ran on, it felt like my mind was falling apart. All around us, the ruins shook, toppling inward, the old city was collapsing in on itself like a dying memory.

  We vaulted fallen columns and leapt across shattered walkways. At last we got back to the original courtyard.

  “Go!” Simon shouted. The world shuddered, and we ran, straight back into the dark. The sounds began to fade, the heaving ground slowly eased, and the dark at last was calm. No one said anything, it was just the echoes of our breathlessness, and the scuffing of feet. At last, the dark parted, a distant light caught our eyes, and we approached the entrance of the cave again.

  We stumbled out into the light, “What the hell were you thinking?” Chen snapped, whirling on Winsford. Her voice echoed like a crack across the dark. “You just hit it! No warning, no vote, no—what were you thinking? I thought that was supposed to be exploration only!!”

  Winsford held up his hands, palms out. “We had to move. That bell was a keystone—look, I didn't know it would bring the house down, alright?”

  “Yeah, but you smashed it! You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” Chen snapped again.

  “Okay—okay— hold up a little, just think this through for a second,” Sophie said, stepping in between them. Her tone was even, but her eyes were wide and blinking fast, like she was trying to rein in too many thoughts at once. “I think I understand what happened.”

  She took a breath.

  “Actually,” Sophie said, stepping forward, “Winsford might have been right. That bell wasn't just a symbol, it was a psychological lock. It represented the unexamined, inherited foundations of our moral instinct. Think about it. The preconscious mind holds the raw templates of survival, fear, conscience, things formed before we’re even aware. But those instincts aren’t always good. They’re rigid, ancient, and often unfit for the complexity of modern self-awareness.”

  “But what the hell does that mean?” Ross said. “Can we still go down there? Should we still go down there? Is it dangerous?”

  “I believe that the preconscious will reset, and when it does, it might rebuild differently. Better, perhaps this is the way to that we learn to master it. Winsford didn’t just break something—he triggered change and forced the system to adapt. That kind of disruption might be exactly what we need to move forward.”

  “Um… guys?” I said. “Where are we?”

  Everybody paused for a moment before they realised what I was talking about, and looked around. The dry shrubbery and desert surrounds were gone, there was jungle foliage around us.

  We were in a completely unmapped part of the subconscious, with no exit strategy.