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I can’t say the first thing I expected to see when I opened my eyes was the pink and
sallow face of a mole-man, but life isn’t always what you expect, and sure enough the first sight I
saw when my eyes reopened was a mole-man. His small tenebrous eyes blinked at me.
“Shlad, share shyou shokay?” the moleman wheezed and spluttered. I sat up and grabbed
him by the lapel of his sports jacket.
“Where am I?”
“Shwhy shlad, shyou’re shin shthe shcenter. Shthe shcenter shof shthe shEarth!
I began to finally take note of my surroundings. Mole-men and humans had gathered in
the thousands, and were all gyrating softly together to the sweet sounds of an Iranian jazzquartet. The quartet -- whose banner labeled them A Different Kind of Fusion -- played on a stage
of molten rock. Magma dripped down behind them in a beautiful display as they improvised
together in perfect harmony. Their leader, a thickly bearded Iranian man playing an upright bass
was tapping his foot so loud and harshly I feared for the foundation of the stage. A stunted boy
stood next to him, and meekly played the theremin. Behind them both, was a woman with
chestnut skin who was drumming erratically to the leader’s ferocious bass riffs and the stunted
boy’s odd and soft melodies. At the forefront of all of this gumbo ya-ya however, was the
unmistakable noise of a mole-man on the baritone sax. I always hated the sounds the molepeople could produce with brass. High and low whirs at the same time, unlike anything a human
could ever produce. Though this one is not so bad. All the same, I shuddered at the sounds, and
then made myself to stand. The mole-man who greeted me shrugged me off, and walked into the