Oh…

Here, it seems, is where we are. Right here.

And for what purpose are we here? Do we have anything resembling a mission statement?

No, no, it appears that we do not have anything resembling a mission statement. Nor, apparently, do we have even a general idea regarding what it is we are up to.

We do have shovels, that much is certain. Or at least a good deal of the time we seem to find ourselves with shovels in our hands. From this we might infer that we are here to dig. From the dirt on our clothing and hands and under our fingernails we also might conclude that we have, in fact, already been digging.

We are so exhausted, so conditioned by numb habit, that we sometimes have occasion to recognize that we may very well have been toiling for an indeterminate period of time in a sort of empirical blackout.

Our surroundings, which so far as we know have always been our surroundings, strike us as almost wholly unfamiliar.

It seems, though, that we are experiencing something of a lull in our digging, a lull in which we notice that it is suddenly very cold and getting colder. The sky has been overrun by low gray clouds. We notice as well the strange silence of our companions.

We are in an immense field that stretches to the horizon in every direction, and all around us are heaped the bodies of uncommonly large men.

Given a bit more time to take stock of our situation, we might ultimately be forced to arrive at the realization that what we are doing in this field is burying giants.