A famous picture of the Tower of Babel's gyre, diminishing into darkness. Once I saw a Japanese movie, projected in a Saturday afternoon gymnasium, which explained the story of an underground submarine that had a screw-shaped nose much like the top of the Tower of Babel... at least that's what you saw for a moment when it popped out of the ground, to confound enemies (who spoke in a foreign language, except when delivering threats, and who lived in the Center of the Earth).     I did know that once I had traveled across the ocean, to Basra, in Mesopotamia, in order to find the Tower of Babel.