Through a lifetime of obsessive writing, Christopher E Ellington has learned the seminal place "words" occupy, in our world. In Ziggurat Filter, what may well be his final collection, the hoary theme of "the magic word", for the good or for the bad, is shot through prism of existentialism. Insoluble lives, brought to heel by government or peer group...resurrected to superior form, unforgiving. Words, turning minds unwillingly, or speaking one's "Is" as beast, then to a future form. A bending to a pleasing shape, for the State. Aliens unwanted, bereft, pronouncing judgement as mock. Two, in differing slow deaths, finding new life in nursing care darkness. The inescapably deterministic, bringing up the rear. Words. Getting into minds, troubling or spurring to purpose. Any yielding is of an animal, fierce, terrified. Magicks, be damned. Whether one's mind is determined by device or Other or Self, in Ziggurat Filter we learn the truth of No Choice. Transformed, rebooted, driven to dusty corner, our own resolve is trivial. Words, from papyri or computer or agonizing self-realization spell essence, indeed quintessence, and relieved, horrified, crestfallen, it is Human's lot to obey. Ziggurat Filter, Ellington's last statement to the world, echoes in words paranormal, speculative, the Be and Do of lives lived, even given a deus ex machina, are subject to some, any kind of puppeteer. What dance each performs upon its strings, is marching toward the inevitable Future.