[RcGrant]

I agree you'll get more responses if you cut it down, but...I have to say...wow. It's the first thing I've read here of any reasonable length, and you hooked me from the start. I consider myself a very visual reader, and if I don't have the setting in my head by the end of the second or third paragraph, then I abandon it. This, I stayed with all of the way.

I love the idea behind it, and way it's been executed. You have some beautiful words. Only quibble would be perhaps it is a little cliched, but what the hell. Maybe consider writing other things with this main character? Explore his life before this point? He's certainly vivid enough to warrant it.