Here’s how things have been going: basically there is a gigantic tent city popping up right next to the gas station, where more forgotten people continue to materialize from the fog. The demon gate is slowly closing, which I think means that the forgotton people storm will end soon. Less and less demons are coming by the store, especially since they set up an shuttle bus between the portal and the Gate to Hell Trailer Park – they just zoom on past. Great!
Not so great: this single gas station is not in a particularly good place to be supplying all the basic needs of an entire tent-city of newly created and very lost people. Luckily more and more are filtering into the Territory, where, I guess they’ll find a home, or be eaten alive. There’s like a town in there, you know? I don’t just mean the entrance to the mirror universe, or any of the other weird places. I guess I should write down how to get to the mirror universe, or at least, try to describe in words what the experience of going into the Territory is.
So, imagine you’re driving down the highway, it’s a straight line, no bends or curves or anything. You drive past the gas station. You continue down the road and drive past some trees dividing a field, things look normal, although it’s getting darker. You reach another tree line. It’s darker still. You reach a 4-way intersection of highways, but there’s not correct signage and the roads and dirt and trees don’t match at all. The air and light changes, too, like they’re coming in at wrong angles somehow. The sky is fractured, but not sharply, it’s almost like a bad blur effect.
First, let’s try to go to the Leedwater apartments where Ann stays. Even if she had a car, she couldn’t drive it all the way there. You’d take the right at the intersection, it leads down another big field’s length, then you pass a tree line that’s divided by highway. Eventually you’ll run into what’s called the pipeyard. Here we can really highlight exactly how fragmented the space is, how each chunk of the Territory you walk into can be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. The pipeyard is just a gigantic field full of gigantic pipes, some of them connected, some of them with things flowing through them, but mostly just piled up into a disorganized mess. You can see the pipes extend past where you can actually look into the pipeyard from outside it’s chunk. There’s a fairly straightforward path of giant connected pipes that goes through this part of the pipeyard, leading to the apartments, so there’s a sort of impromptu parking lot in front of it.
The chunk with the apartments on it is actually at a higher elevation, so helpfully there’s a ladder stuck to the side of it. No attempt has been made by the apartment owners to increase accessibility from the pipeyard side. The apartments connect to other chunks at a much more gradual slant, connecting to roads that may eventually lead you out of the Territory on the opposite side, I’m not entirely sure, haven’t been out that way. I only assume so because there’s a parking lot on that side with cars in it.
Now let’s say you want to get to the Mirror Universe. Let’s go back to the first intersection. You’d just go straight forward, things get darker and darker until it’s pitch black, and then you ride out of it, as things get lighter and lighter and lighter, it’s about a 10 mile trip. Once things are lighter, you’re in the mirror universe, and driving down the road will take you out to the mirror universe gas station (it’s reversed because you’re in the mirror universe). Easy.
