What shall we be today?

This as part of a submarine. A periscope.
 
The Empire of England remakes its objects as they age, as purpose becomes obsolescence. Drains without feed are become submarines. Lamp posts without light, a temple's ruins. Alone, each seems to ask, "What shall we be today?"
 
I once attended an international conference on literature for children. Standing in the farthest reaches of the conference theatre, among the rafters like a planet in deep space, I heard "just-so" and "might-be" stories the likes of how coyote learned to call, or, crocodile came to smile, or, in translation from the near-Asian steppe, why mommy took a wife.
 

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You put your head to the window of the periscope and you can see them. The race that sails round and round the stationary scope. Traveling millions of miles if only in their own special sense of distance. Like a set of chattering plastic teeth at the end of a wind-up key held stationary, or, planets laid out on a mechanical form.
 
The mirrors that take the light down bend it along with the images of the over-land world above. I come out, below, with a broad nose and thin lips as is fitting an alternate reality. My eyes, sadly though, read like a bad poem. With gravity far beyond their years, those eyes - at first sight - spark broad panic. It dies down, but, not without much discussion of the blinkered code they might be sending.
 
Aware of your own distortion, you consider that the mermaids you see there, below, might be sea cows. Might they survive on the refuse washed down drains from the nearby open-air market's fruit and vegetable vendors, you allow yourself to wonder. Meanwhile, those below create myths in which we gain the role of gods. We should be honoured but wary. What goes down must come back up.
 
Indeed, whether mermaids or sea cows, they're ravenous with a propensity to belch. Initially, we've mistaken the gurgling sound for conversation. Attendant malodorous scents, however, neither suggest nor confirm that our hypothesis is false. But, they certainly rise as quickly as our hopes give rise to having discovered intelligent life beyond, if inside, our own world. If they, below, only knew what our scientists are saying!
 
Having described the submarine below as a kind of sit-n-spin, they've now moved on to postulate that those farthest aft experience age in advance of those closer to the spout. A society of contrarians labels the theory "Daft", outlining a mocking theory that considers those to the rear are stern and those forward are loopy. They refuse, simply, to allow prevailing theory to be edified by uncertain observations of the subterranean world. Indeed, reminding us of smoke-and-mirrors, they suggest, it may be our world, not that below, that is spinning.