【Op. Gate(s) of Hell】in Philadelphia

It is Blursday, the 287th day of March, 2020.  An ominous quiet lies over the fog-shrouded streets of Philadelphia.  Plague is returning.  Mild-mannered vote-counters and an orange, hockey-helmeted golem have risen to international prominence.  Society has progressed beyond the need for traffic jams on the Schuylkill Expressway.

By the reckoning of the common era, it is also Saturday, the 12th of December, the eighth anniversary of the first L8 portal in Ingress.  The original portal, an Auguste Rodin sculpture called “The Gates of Hell”, is in an area of the Stanford University campus that is restricted due to the plague.  In the spirit of friendship and of hope, the agents of the Philadelphia Enlightened join with agents around the world to carry on California’s annual tradition of re-lighting The Gates of Hell as an L8 portal.  


Several identical casts had been made from Rodin’s original molds, and another copy of The Gates of Hell (as it happens, the first cast) stands at the Rodin Museum, here on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.  The Museum itself is closed along with all other indoor attractions, but paths through the garden are open for the public, as are the sidewalks around the block.  Nine agents converge on that garden, clear it, and build to L8, in one mad minute.  


Participants, in alphabetical order:

This is the first live Ingress gathering of its size in the city by the Enlightened since the beginning of the March lockdown.


Standing apart, we stand together.  Stay safe, be well, and hold each other in the light, until we can all be together again.

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