You Affect the Outcome
"You know it's possible that even with your help I won't be able to get out. That's something I've considered."
Inter-7 A is sitting on the roof of the tenement. His legs hang from the edge, and before him are the lights of the town, yellow-gold and burning against the slowly darkening plane.
"I've thought about that," he continues with a touch of irony. "I'm not crazy."
He leans over the ledge and watches cars passing on the road below. He hauls back in his throat, spits.
"Or I could end it here and now. Just by jumping..."
His neck muscles strain as he turns in your direction.
"I know you wouldn't mind," he says, standing up. "But first we'll try it this way. It'd be a shame if all the birds died for nothing."
He laughs, but the sound sputters and dies as his face is twisted in a momentary spasm of pain. He presses the palm of his hand to his temple.
"If the headache would only give me a chance to think..."
He frowns and picks up the canvas sack at his side; by now, the birds have stopped struggling, exhausted and at the point of death. He reaches inside and removes a mid-sized pigeon. Its wings barely flutter as he takes it by the neck and rips off its head. Blood shoots over his chapped, cold hands, but he ignores it, and sets to work on the ring. When he's finished, he tosses the body aside, and uses a second bird to draw the symbols. You stare at his work, aware of the by-now familiar inversion of tone and colour, the symbols and the ring burning blue-white against the tar paper covering of the roof. There is a searing burst of light, and a sense of motion as the fabric of things is ripped aside. Suddenly the roof is gone, and you find yourself in a wide, stone chamber. Floodlights wash the rough-hewn walls, and to your right is a massive, gaping pit. Behind you, Inter-7 A is kneeling on the ground, his hands gripping the sides of his head, a faint trail of spit hanging from his half-open mouth.
A gunshot echoes through the cavern; the sound is vaguely familiar, even vestigial, recalling a memory of a time before any of this began. You struggle to recall it, but Inter-7 A is already moving, worming his way behind a row of large, cylindrical containers. He reaches for the sack of birds, his hand trembling, a look on his face like a startled animal.
You leave him there. Not far away a group of men are arranged in an odd tableau. There are five in total, two of them dressed in black coats and goggles, the taller one with a gun in his hand. Two others are on the ground, blood-spattered and panting, but only the one with a line of shifting colour on his face appears to be wounded. Not far away is another man whose face is cut by a line, darker than the first, purple and livid as a fresh scar.
"There's something else here," says the shorter man in goggles. The taller one turns.
"Yes," he says. "There is."
"What is it?"
"I don't know."
You look at the man bleeding on the ground, the steady flow of blood seeping from his wound.
"Do we continue?" asks the taller man.
"We don't have a choice," replies the shorter one.
"But with this other here..."
The smaller man is looking straight at you, his face confused, as if unsure of what he's seeing. The floodlights glare sharply over the black expanse of his goggles.
"There's no time," he says, and, handing the gun to the taller man, he turns to the closest computer, calling up a menu on the display screen.
A strange light flickers into life from within the pit, blue-white and crackling. You move toward the ledge: ten meters below you the pit is gone, replaced by a skin of rippling energy. It is unlike anything you have ever seen before, a featureless plane or mirror, reflecting nothing other than itself.
"Whatever that thing is, it's right at the edge!" calls the man holding the gun. The shorter man does not look up from the computer. His face hardens, his lips twisting in a bitter smile.
"Are you ready Ward?" he asks.
"What do I do?" answers the man with the scar-like line.
"Jump," replies the shorter man.
"Is it safe?"
The taller man laughs.
"You're about to find out," he says, turning the gun on him. "Get moving."
The man named Ward swallows, and steps toward the pit. A wave of vertigo overtakes you; the lines of the chamber begin to fall away, the men eroding like sketches drawn in sand, and you understand that whatever Inter-7 A was planning to do here, whatever ring or symbol he meant to paint, he has begun. He is changing the nature of this place, and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop him.
Auld is Awake
Auld stands with the gun in his hand. Through the haze of his fatigue he is dimly aware of Ward moving toward him, but Auld does not look up, nor does he make any attempt to defend himself: Ward is exactly where he should be, as are all the rest. The pieces are set, each one perfectly positioned to fall.
In this place and in this moment, Auld's foresight is as strong as he has ever known it. With numbing, terrible clarity, he watches the two men from the Institute enter the chamber. He raises the gun, and feels Ward's sharp blow on the back of his head. He falls, briefly losing consciousness, only to come to as he hits the ground. The gun slips from his hand and rattles across the floor.
He sees himself lying on his back. His eyes are closed, and he should not be able to see anything further, and yet he does: he watches as one of the agents stoops to pick up the gun, and knows that he could prevent this, easily, just by standing up or reaching to take the gun himself, but he doesn't. Instead, Auld allows the agent to aim and shoot, and Irbe to be shot.
He sees C kneeling beside Irbe, who is bleeding to death, and the men from the Institute calling up the gate. He sees them force Ward to the edge of the pit, all the while aware of another man, hidden behind the canisters of powder, busy scrawling symbols onto the ground with the blood of a dead bird. Auld does not know how this man arrived, or what he's trying to do, but he knows that he is necessary, that the illegible and seemingly meaningless symbols he is painting are as important as anything else.
Auld watches the gate crackle into life within the pit. He watches the agent point the gun, and Ward jump from the ledge. He sees all of this before it happens, standing at the entrance of the cavern with the gun in his hand, waiting for the future to become the present.
;
Ward's scream is sliced clean away the instant after he jumps, the light, or gate, or whatever it is that's down there swallowin him whole.
Both agents are distracted by the monitors, and without thinkin I stand up and lunge at the gun; the taller man jerks back, much stronger than I expected; his grip tightens and the gun goes off, the shot glancin off the opposite wall. The man pivots on his heel and there's an explosion a'light and pain behind my eyes as his elbow connects with my temple; I stagger away, blinkin, but the light grows worse. It's comin from the pit, blue and near blindin, and with it a sound like rock bein torn apart, electrical storms ragin in a glass bottle. I let go a'the agent's hand, and he looks away, shieldin his goggled eyes.
I can just make out Irbe reachin for the detonator.
"No!" shouts a voice, maybe mine. I get up and run, but it's like someone's unplugged time; every motion is slowed ta a crawl, the only sound the whistlin call a'energy in the pit. My legs rise and fall, heavy as sacks a'mud; I have the sense a'runnin in a dream, but know that for the lie it is: none a'this may be real, but at least it's not a dream.
Thoughts echo over a void; I think a'what's next, and whether or not Auld had this all planned from the beginning. I think a'what J will get up ta now that I'm gone, tryin ta picture it, but I don't have Auld's gift. I can't see ahead. All I could ever see was what was right in front a'me.
I reach the edge a'the pit and the field a'blue light shimmerin below it. I think a'when I came here as a child, the pull this place has always had on me, the long, graspin fingers a'gravity and fear.
Somewhere behind me a blast goes off, a
nd I jump; the blue field flickers, dies, and all that's left is the fall into the dark; I can just make out the sound a'water rushin in the depths below. In a moment the light appears again, paperin over the hole, and it goes on like that, the light flickerin on and off, growin larger, until the blue field and the black are all I've got left ta see.
I think a'my father.
3
Glass Eyes
There is in me the hope to look
upon your face once more.
There is in this the urge to do
what once was done before.
I know in this I hope in vain,
for what is not can never be:
a doll will never cry in pain,
nor glass eyes ever see.
- Emi Foulliou, "Glass Eyes", from the album All of This copyright Milky Media, 2004