An Obsidian Sky

  I’m walking through the doors now, philosophising. I was in the finals. Only six candidates remain. If I was a gambling man, and having come from the world of insurance I certainly would, I’d be playing the odds on some pretty good options.

  From another part of my mind I could just about hear the receptionist ask, ‘so you’re the new candidate?’ Then, after a nod from me, state, ‘this way Sir’.

  It’s actually happening, I thought, sitting down in front of my interviewer underneath the strong overhead lighting.

  ‘Our application process is really very simple Mr Engeltine.’ He said with authority. ‘I hope you are as pleased as we are that you’ve made it this far. We’ve taken a great interest in you since you first walked through those doors.’ He paused to pull his tie closer to his collar.

  ‘All that you need to do is sit comfortably and not worry.’

  So I sat comfortably, reclining backwards in increments until I could feel my spine touch the leather of the chair, preparing for the coming blitz of questions.

  ‘My name is Charles Sephra.’ He continued. ‘Welcome to the Eternis Systems’ human relations department.’ Charles leaned back into his chair and lit a cigarette before speaking again. ‘Are you comfortable? Good, shall we begin?’

  I nodded my head enthusiastically.

  He moved his hand over a light sensor and something clicked into life. An audible whirring sound started.

  ‘For a position of this gravitas,’ he continued, ‘we often need to perform a series of medical tests to ensure you are going to provide us a certain level of service that is worthy of our investment. We need at least thirty years of healthy, productive service from you if we are to commit.’

  I felt a stabbing sensation in the side of my leg. I wondered what kind of tech it was that he was using. Auto-diagnositcs were something that had largely disappeared even within my own lifetime. It must have been something they’d found in an old research lab, or maybe stuck together out of recycled pieces of other machines. It was possible the device wasn’t entirely safe. Even hospitals didn’t use them anymore. Ancient tech tended to have a mind of its own. One minute it’d be taking your bloody pressure, the next its would be trying to perform and unsolicited surgical procedure.

  He took another drag of his cigarette and offered one of the remaining six to me. I shook my head. It was important that I didn’t let myself get too relaxed. I had watched as some of the other candidates had been sucked in by these tactics. So much so that they had felt that their rapport with the examiners had given them special privileges. Their journeys through the process had, needless to say, been shorter than others.

  Mr Sephra placed the box back on the desk and almost seemed to shrug. He drank from his mug slowing. I watch his throat as he swallowed.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that times today are hard,’ he continued. ‘As a result we believe that we need to push the boundaries of what is possible today to secure tomorrow.’

  He ground his stub against the ashtray base and lit another.

  ‘As you no doubt realise, great men are the Atlases of this world. A long time ago Ayn Rand hypothesised what would happen to the world if all the great men in the world just vanished. If she’d lived a little longer, she’d have found out. I do not expect you to understand everything we are trying to do here but please be assured that any discomfort you experience during your tenure with us will be brief.’ He smiled coldly and spoke with a soft voice, ‘do you want to be once of those men?’

  ‘Who is John Gault’, I replied. He seemed impressed with that.

  He waved his hand again over the sensor again.

  Suddenly he murmured, ‘in the interlude between conception and cognition, you will see with new eyes.’

  He fell silent. I didn’t want to be the first one to speak or even to interrupt the silence, but I felt as though he was expecting something of me. That there was something that I should be communicating him, something to validate the investment they were offering me.

  ‘Yes, I would like to be one of those people,’ was the best I could manage.

  It was his turn to nod. His had passed over the sensor again.

  The silence continued. My fingers tapped awkwardly on the desk surface.

  Then, slowly, the clouds began to roll their way in front of my vision. A generator must have failed because the room was plunged into darkness. I thought I could just see a hint of the emergency lighting kicking in before my attempts to chase after it caused it to disappear.

  Then there was blackness.

  Then there was nothing.

  Then there was light.

  Light, a beautiful aura falling so smoothly above my head it was as if it was made from water. Focusing my eyes I looked forward and I wished I hadn’t. The man opposite me, so unremarkable before, was out of focus. Light was perforating him like halos from a lens flare. He was nothing more than an image, a faded recollection of an abandoned memory. His distorted self, in one moment, threatened to snap back into reality, yet in the next seemed only to shimmer, brighten and form images of impossible design. It was beyond comprehension, beyond understanding.

  I rose without moving my legs and dragged myself through sheer force of will from the inky black room.

  I emerged into hallways and rooms of white phosphorous that shot past in an ember of half imagined images.

  I was placed in a corridor that was backlit with bright white lights. There was no escape from it. To either side the corridor seemed to narrow into a pinprick of searing brightness.

  Then I was in a street, filled with damp rain that rushed past, unintelligible. The day faded and merged with the night. In the space between night and day I thought I saw an image of the earth held in the hand of a child. The planet wobbled and fell into two halves. As it split across the centre voices of the dead poured out from it in a singing harmony, as though they were calling out a Requiem for God. Each half of the earth dissolved under the weight of their voices and fell as sand into two hourglasses standing side by side. One hourglass filled from the bottom, the other from the top, and both were leaking sand into the other chambers.

  Two serpents coiled themselves around each of the hourglasses, and as each chamber emptied they were rotated to start the process again.

  I blinked and lost focus for a second. Darkness summoned itself around be as my eyes cleared to discover the glass had disappeared and the sand was being eaten by the serpents, which had grown fat and oversized in the consumption of the body of the Earth. Both of the serpents grew to such a size that they ceased moving at the same instant and in rapid succession began to decay.

  As their bodies diminished into nothing but stardust, two eggs rose from where their forms had been, turned black and began to crack. Amidst the cracking of new life, I woke.