THE TOMB OF EVERY HOPE

     This photo of the entrance to the West Kennet Long Barrow was taken in 2009 by Adam Mason. It is much higher and wider than the one Morgen crawls into following a mastiff down into the Tomb of Every Hope. The stone slab corridor will continue to grow smaller as Morgen goes on, until he has to crawl along on his belly in the near total darkness, but he hears the dog in the distance, barking inside what sounds like a large chamber, so he keeps going. Suddenly, the floor of the stone slab corridor seems to fall away. In fact, Morgen has just emerged from the end of the passageway, and with the mastiff slobbering all over his face, he pushes his way out of narrow passageway and falls into the Tomb of Every Hope, a large vaulted chamber with a brook running through it, dimly lit by an oculus-like opening at the very top.
     Among the Special Effects challenges Morgen will face within the vault are the slabs that form the floor and, at a Furys' command, slide apart, emptying the brook into a chasm, that instantly sends steam billowing into the vault from the exposed magma bubbling below. Morgen manages to keep himself and the mastiff from falling into the hole, until the Fates reverse the Fury's action, causing a second Fury to summon cold that freezes the brook, Morgen and the mastiff, until similarly thawed out by the Fates. The third and final Fury's horror is the threat of an AIDS-like plague specific to mankind (unknown or certainly unidentified when the story was first written), postponed by the intervention of the Muses. Add to the moveable floor, pyrotechnics in the torches that further illuminate the interior of the vault and reveal the Furies, Fates, Muses, and Laura, chained to the rock wall of the vault -- and the Cauldron of Inspiration, from which Morgen accepts a sip, then falls to the floor like one dead. When he regains consciousness,the pyrotechnics illuminating the interior of the cavern now reveal the exotically furnished Fool's Chamber, with the brook flowing along a depression in the middle of the slab floor, that Morgen follows to the cave exit on the other side of the hollow hill, as he begins singing "The Fool." He emerges above a pond at the foot of a cascade, that is the source of the exterior Stream of Consciousness.
     Elsewhere within the cavernous Tomb of Every Hope (possibly on another wet set), there will be an underground grotto wherein Laura, a goddess, bathes, preparing for her nuptials, and the brook again, this time flowing into and through the grotto. The dry area of this "underground" set must be large enough to hold the pony (now unicorn), and ponycart, and allow three teenage girls to decorate the pony's bridel with flowers while they sing "Dog, Roebuck and Lapwing."