Xanadu

Coleridge's note, published with the poem

"Kubla Khan"

"Or, A Vision in a Dream, a Fragment"

The following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity [Lord Byron], and, as far as the Author's own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the ground of any supposed poetic merits.

In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed [two grains of Opium, as the author explains elsewhere], from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas's Pilgrimage: ``Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall. The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter!''

Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him. : but the tomorrow is yet to come.

Sam checked the compass he had dangling from his belt. The hand pointed dead ahead. He looked up to realize that the Hop was right in front of him. Had been all along, in fact. If he had bothered to look for it, that is.

The Hop was gargantuan in size. In the past, legend states, it’s name had been the Meadowlands Xanadu(approve sites), but no one knew this for sure. The grand NJT Path had brought him here, and he really didn’t care what it had been called in the past. Now, and for as long as anyone could remember, it was the Hop.

The Hop was the closest thing to the fabled land of Lost Vagrants that anyone in the Kingdom of Nuyork could hope to see. Electric was hard to come by these days, but the Hop had plenty. And it used it, too. Moving picture halls, rail snakes you could ride just for fun, a wheel that took you to the heavens and back. And that was just on the surface.

Through the middle of the Hop ran the Alphabet River, which flowed through the middle across the only visible signs of damage the Hop had sustained from the Last War. The entire complex split down the middle to provide passage for the river as it flowed from the north and then splashed away into the tunnels and underground halls of the Hop’s underground palaces.

Alphabet River meant life to the inhabitants and visitors of Hop. It’s waters, less fouled than most, provided for the crops grown both above and below ground. As such, those who had the firepower and the resources had built there homes surrounding the center of decadence, both above and below ground.

Sam stood transfixed by all that surrounded him. The structures themselves were beyond anything he could have dreamed. And the people almost surpassed their surroundings in opulence and excess. Prostitutes, some human and some mutate, were everywhere, and among them men and women who made sure they kept in business. Vendors hawking wares ranging from exotic to obscene pounced on anyone who looked like they might have money. Shopkeepers stood outside their establishments, telling anyone who would listen what amazing things they would find inside.

And amidst the chaos came the steam volcano; bursting at intervals that could not be predicted any more than their direction or force could be. Now it was a tiny jet shooting straight up, then it was a humongous worm of hot moisture that snaked this way and that, searing countless creatures before sputtering and ceasing.

No one paid the steam any attention. If you got burned, so the Hop had willed it, and so it must be. No sense worrying about it when there was so much fun to have.

Likewise there was no reason to worry about the wailing of the Fathers, either. It was unfortunate that the Hop attracted the dead as well as the living, but the inhabitants knew there was nothing that could be done about it.

Sam staggered backwards as a specter shot forth from a cave below the balcony upon which he stood and, sensing a new presence, dropped directly in front of him.

“Doom!” the long-dead soldier shouted in his face. Sam could sense his hot foul breath, though no air actually moved in front of him. “Doom to everyone in this accursed place. The war is coming!”

“The war’s come and gone, friend,” same replied in annoyance. He had traveled the paths of the dead before, and was not going to let remnants like this one interrupt his fun.

Once he was out of earshot of the screaming ghost, Sam once again began to look for his goal. He was not here for any noble purpose any more than anyone else who came to this place. He was here to get laid, pure and simple. Well, perhaps not so pure, after all.

From the walkway suspended over the crevice the earthquakes of long ago had created in the middle of the Hop’s twisting structures, Sam could see into the countless caves below. Maids of all shapes, sizes, and mutations stood at the entrances to these caves, looking about for their next customer.

And then he saw her; the one he had been looking for. She sat on a small stool, playing a stringed instrument of some kind with two of her six arms, while another pair combed their deep blue fingers through her flowing white hair. The remaining pair of hands caressed and presented her other assets; which also number more than a non-mutate human could offer.

Sam knew that he would not be the same after this encounter. The journey had already proven worth the destination. Those that he had robbed from and killed on his way here were harmed not in vain.

He could only wonder at whether his beloved Enid, still at home back in the City, was thinking of him; kicking herself for not agreeing to accompany him when he set out to find the mystical pleasures at the Hop. He had promised, of course, not to enjoy anyone else’s company too much before returning to her, but he intended to take the saying, “What happens at the Hop stays at the Hop” literally.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge woke from his Opium-induced catnap with a start. His groggy mind registered that he was still in the farmhouse, the book on the history of the Mongul empire (and it’s capitol, Xanadu) open in his lap. He wiped the drool from the side of his mouth quickly, though he knew there was no one around to see it.

Quickly standing from his chair, he moved towards the desk to acquire parchment and quill to capture the vivid and almost disturbing dream that he had just departed from. As he did so, the silver compass he always wore bounced against his hip.

Had he stopped to inspect it at that very moment, he would have discovered the hand spinning wildly around its center point; temporarily unable to get its bearings.