The room eventually becomes a doorway for Chalmers, a place where he can go back in time and also a place where he can be hunted through time. The transformation of the room through the application of plaster of Paris was an intersting one I felt as it appeared to directly contradict many other SF strories where the door to parallel universes, dimensions and time is often spherical in shape. Chalmers believes that making his room devoid of any sharp angles and strange curves that he will escape the Hounds, that in making his room spherical in shape he will avoid detection and the scenting of the Hounds. In the end this obviously does not work as Chalmers ends up dead, however the question to ask would be whether or not the Hounds found him simply because the plaster fell off the walls and they were able to come through the angles between the walls, floor and ceiling, or was it because the room was now spherical thanks to the the plaster. I would answer with the former given his statement to Frank about the foul and the pure. "The foul expresses itself through angles; the pure through curves." The language Long uses in his story is very descriptive, enabling the reader to visualise quite vividly the scenes that take place in the room. Through the narrator's eyes we see clearly the changes that occur in the main character Chalmers as the drug takes effect and transports him through time in the various different periods of history. It is a very rapid journey yet the author has managed with minimal amounts of words to convey exactly where Chalmers went and what he witnessed from the acting of a Shakespearian play in an Elizabethan theatre to him being a priest of Ancient Egypt where even Pharaohs bow before him. Long employs a minimalist language approach that is very efficient in it's description. As in a substantial amount of SF, Long's story contains quite strong overtones of religion. With what Chalmers experiences under the influence of the drug he is able to go back through time in a fashion similar to many well known time travel SF stories. He sees and experiences all the events in history that have been written about and recorded. He goes back to the Prehistoric age and then beyond that to unicellular organisms existing in a world of water. Going back still further he encounters the Hounds of Tindalos. These are entities that he proceeds to identify in relation to biblical accounts. The Fall is what I assumed to be the fall of the angel Lucifer who is thrown out of heaven along with two thirds of the angels of heaven. Chalmers also mentions the Tree, the snake and the apple. All biblical references to the creation of mankind. The «deed» is also repeatedly said by Chalmers and I am making the leap here of assuming the deed is the eating of the fruit of the tree by Adam and Eve. He states that in mankind there was a part of us that did not agree with and participate in the eating of the fruit which we knew to be sin, and it is this cleanliness in humans that the Hounds hunger and thirst for.
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