Darkness and the New Land

Expecting dark, Jacob finds that the inside of the cave has been brightly lit by the bees. Shadows and folded form surround him, hinting of fractional dimensions and the presence of the hive within or beyond.

Moments after entering the vaulted rooms, a bee-tv drops down on Jacob, to show him with greater clarity how stone has become honeycomb in this place. The bees then show him a vision of himself, watching the tv, in order to pass suddenly to a clear image of themselves, gathering on hungry comb in the darkness shaped by the walls of the cave. They are giant, unbounded by scale. Isolated hexagons move in synchronization, and fragments of isolated cave-land float in front of his eyes, at the frontier of the land of the future dead. Jacob understands that these are mysteries, meant to make him understand that he does not understand the bees.