Another fine writer who also writes in the genre of Twilight-Zonesque type stories. Please find posted below for your reading enjoyment, Boris Glikman's two short stories: "The Curious Story of Frank" and "Amerika". Both fine tiles I hope you enjoy. Happy Reading!
Russ Huneke
THE CURIOUS
STORY OF FRANK AND HIS FRIEND Mr. STIMS, THE HYDROPHOBE
...so anyway, like I was saying, I was sitting comfortably
in this nice chair when Mr. Stims told me what he wanted to do with his
invention. But please don’t interrupt me again, because I am going to forget
what I was saying and won't be able to tell you the whole story of what
happened that day.
Let me begin again from the start, as I can’t remember now
what I have already told you. My name is Frank. I finished school two years
ago. I stay at home most of the time and watch TV. I live with my mum. I like
her a lot. She is very smart and knows about everything. So I don’t see what’s
wrong with saying, “That’s what my mum told me”, but the other kids used to
laugh when I said that and called me a retard, which made me angry. Now I can’t
hang out with them any more; my mum tells me I have a bad temper and could hurt
them.
My only friend is my next door neighbour, Mr. Stims. I enjoy
being with him. I love the brain games that he is so good at
inventing. The game I particularly like is the one in which he asks me to guess
what he is thinking of at that very moment. It is not an easy game to play at
all.
Usually I spend time in his living room, where we drink tea,
eat some biscuits and discuss interesting topics. But that day, Mr. Stims
invited me into his study and asked me to sit in a comfortable chair beside his
desk. He himself sat behind the desk, on
which lay writing pads and folders, all neatly organised.
After staring at me in silence with an odd look in his eyes
for about a minute, Mr. Stims started talking: “For the past five years, I have
been engrossed in a fiendishly difficult task, as you probably have noticed
Frank. I no longer need to be secretive about what I do, but I did want to
apologise for being evasive and unpredictable in the past.”
He was right. He never told me what he did for a living, but
it seemed to me that he was spending much of his time working on some scientific
problem. All of his rooms were cluttered with books, whose titles I didn’t
understand, and papers that were covered with calculations and formulas in his
scribbly handwriting. And his strange ways did confuse me sometimes. I remember
once asking him how he would like to be remembered, and it produced an odd
reaction from him. He turned first red, then white and only replied that he had
great hopes for the future. Another time I told him that even though we don't
live far from the ocean, we don’t know much about it, and that there could be
big sea monsters and other curious fishes living in its depths. For some reason, he got all agitated and started going on
about the chemical properties of water. Then, suddenly, he stopped mid-sentence
and started talking about something completely different. But I still find him
a fascinating person to be with. He knows so many things and can always answer
my questions.
Mr. Stims continued: “You might remember from your school
days, my friend, what a polar molecule is. Well, water just happens to be
comprised of polar molecules. This fact is the linchpin of my work.“
I did not actually remember anything about those molecules.
To tell the truth, I really do not recall much from my school days. I was
always surrounded by people brighter than me, which made me afraid to speak up
and say what I thought, in case I might say something stupid. That is why I like Mr. Stims so much. He has
never treated me as a fool and is always happy to listen and explain things to
me.
“The fact that it is a polar molecule, does that suggest
anything to you, Frank?” he asked. Not waiting for my reply, as he usually
does, he continued: “I will get straight to the point. For your benefit, I will
state it in simplified terms. The water molecule is a charged particle. Charged
particles respond to magnetic fields. By creating a magnetic force of
appropriate strength and by aligning it in the right direction, we can separate
the water molecule into its constituent parts! We can turn liquid water into
the gases of hydrogen and oxygen. The theory behind it is of course much more
complicated than that, but what I have just stated is my work in a nutshell.”
He stopped talking for a short while, to give me time to
understand what he had just said. But to be honest with you, I did not really
see the point of it all. I thought it would be much better if you could go the
other way and make water out of the invisible gases, so that people everywhere
would have enough to drink, especially people who live in the hot deserts.
He went on to say, “The idea sounds simple enough. Let me
tell you, putting it into practice was another kettle of fish; the years I have
spent trying to create a functional apparatus, attempting to discover the right
alignment. Failure followed failure. Many a time I was tempted to throw it all
up in the air and just walk away. Only one hope kept me going. I cannot say it
was a well-defined sensation, but it was something like…well, that by achieving
my goal, all my past deeds would gain the meaning they were lacking.”
I looked closely at Mr. Stims’ face. Sweat had gathered on
his forehead and there was a distant look in his eyes, but it quickly
disappeared.
He then said, “Let me tell you a little of my past, as it
will explain to some degree the present. I was a brilliant university student,
majoring in chemistry. I was heading straight for a conventional academic
career. But my personality did not sit well with the scholastic surroundings.
The claustrophobic atmosphere and the daily routine were stifling my natural
creativity; the imperiousness of the professors, the ceaseless competitiveness
prevalent amongst the students. Once I left the university, there was no way
back. To this day I remain an outsider to the scientific community. You, Frank,
are the first person in the world to hear of my achievement.”
Although I was flattered, I still thought it would be better
if water was made out of the invisible gases, so that people everywhere would
have enough to drink, especially people who live in the hot deserts.
“But what are we waiting for!” he exclaimed. “Actions speak
louder than words. Just one minute and I will show you how it works.”
While he was gone, I stretched my legs; they had almost gone
to sleep. I also had an itch on my back where a mosquito bit me and I gave it a
good scratch. I could not do that while Mr. Stims was in the room. When I am
with him, I try to behave properly so he will respect me. I remembered
dinnertime was coming soon and wondered what my mum had cooked for me. I hoped
it would be fish fingers with mashed potatoes. That’s my most favourite meal in
the whole world.
My friend wasn’t gone for long. When he came back, he was
carrying a small, shiny box and a full glass of water. I thought it was really
thoughtful of him to bring me water, because I was really thirsty. I was about
to reach out my hand and say, “Thank you Mr. Stims, it’s really thoughtful of
you,” when he put that shiny box over the top of the glass. There was a hissing
sound and the water disappeared before my eyes. Well, it didn’t actually disappear
straight away. For a second, it looked like the water was cut in half, like a
fresh bread roll with a sharp knife, and then both halves vanished. I was a bit
miffed, as I really did want to drink that water, but still the sight was so
amazing I could not help crying out, “WOW!”
The room filled up with a funny smell, like a cross between
rotten eggs and fresh pineapple. Mr. Stims must have noticed me sniffing for he
said, “That’s nitrous oxide or laughing gas, as it's commonly known. The oxygen released by the process has
combined with the nitrogen in the air. You have to be very careful with nitrous
oxide. It messes with your mind.”
I knew he expected me to say how impressed I was and I did
say so. He didn’t reply for a while and then he started a long speech. I can only remember bits of it:
“I have great plans, great plans," Mr. Stims said.
"Imagine magnifying the strength of this machine a hundredfold, a
thousandfold, a millionfold! Look at the map of the world, Frank! Look at how
much space is taken up by the oceans. Two thirds of our planet is water. Two
thirds! How much land is wasted because of it! So many regions are
overpopulated. This leads to stress, stress leads to crime. And on top of that,
the world population is growing at a faster and faster rate. What use is ocean
water? We certainly cannot drink it. And in any case, many regions that are now
ocean used to be land once. We need to reclaim that land. And we need not stop
there. The time has come for the oceans to go! We will make them disappear,
just like the water in this glass. Certainly, this might cause some climate
changes, but they will be easily fixed. And just imagine...land, land, land
everywhere! One great continuous continent! No barriers between countries! The
whole world finally united as one, living in peace! Room to plant crops, room
for cattle to roam! Spaciousness that, at present, mankind doesn’t even dare to
dream of! Whole continents underneath the oceans are just waiting for us to
populate them! The potentialities are breathtaking in their scope! Yes, there
will be a price to pay. That price will be paid by the ocean inhabitants - but we need not concern ourselves
with that. Intelligence arose on land and it is the land dwellers that will
rule this planet. And I will go down in history as the man who made it all
possible - the new saviour of humanity!”
Mr. Stims was getting very excited. Whenever he gets
excited, he walks from one end of the room to the other and waves his arms
around. Well, he was certainly doing that; his arms swung like the blades of a
windmill and he shouted out, “Liberation from the tyranny of water! The time
has come! The possibilities are endless!”
It was all very interesting, but I was getting rather hungry
and kept thinking more about the fish fingers with the mashed potatoes. It
was then that a terrifying thought startled me so much that I felt like someone
punched me in the stomach. I realised that without oceans there would be no
more fish, and without fish there would be no more fish fingers for me to eat.
Fish fingers really are my most favourite food in the whole world.
I said, "Hey, wait a minute Mr. Stims. I really like
fish fingers. You can’t kill all the fish. Give me that shiny thing! I don’t
want you to destroy the oceans."
“Fish, shmish,’’ he replied. “Who needs them? They don’t
sing, you can’t pat them and they smell terrible.”
He refused to give me the box. A scuffle broke out between
us, because I was getting a bit angry about not being able to eat fish fingers
any more, all because of his stupid invention. I reached for the gadget and
tried to take it away from him; it was then that I accidentally pressed the
round red button on its top. What happened next was the strangest thing of all.
You know when you blow up a balloon, and then let it go without tying it up and
it flies all around the room, letting out air? Well, something similar happened
to Mr. Stims. All this vapour started coming out of his eyes, nostrils and
mouth and he was getting thinner and thinner and changing in shape before my
very eyes. Then he just fell to the floor, or what was left of him, for by now
he looked like a gigantic squashed raisin.
"I am very sorry about this, Mr. Stims," I said to
him, "but I really do like fish
fingers. They are my most favourite food in the whole world."
I then took the box that was lying on the floor and broke it
into small pieces. You both know what happened after that.
The two detectives exchanged glances and one of them said,
“Looks like it’s going to be a long night for all of us, Frank.”
AMERIKA IN THE SKY (IN MEMORIAM)
I remember that day starting off ordinarily enough. There I
was playing in the open field not that far from home, the sky azure with nary a
cloud blighting its face.
I was alone as usual for my mother didn’t let me play with
the other kids. I didn’t really want to play with them anyway. I always knew
that I was different and could never relate to them. I could see things that
they could not see and understood matters that they had no inkling of. I was
way ahead of them; in fact, I believed that I was way ahead of most adults too,
although, as my mom had repeatedly told me to do, I kept that view all to
myself.
This disparity between my physical and mental development
did cause me problems; there was always the inner conflict between the body’s
desire to be a child, carefree and frivolous, and the mind’s desire to think
deep thoughts and explore complexities and subtleties of the world.
That day the body scored a victory for there I was playing in
the open field, in my white shorts, blue T-shirt and a crumpled Panama hat…
The lay of the
land is so perfectly flat I can see unencumbered all the way to the horizon. A
strange sensation grips me, that the sky is a giant snow globe enveloping me in
its grasp, which makes me feel slightly queasy and claustrophobic. I feel
trapped in this glass-bowl sky and have a strong urge to smash its walls and
break free from its eternal imprisonment.
As the day
proceeds, the heavens rotate slowly on their axis. Towards mid-morning
something very odd catches my eye on the eastern horizon. It is something that
I have never previously seen in the sky, but there it is before me, slowly
rising from beneath the edge of the earth.
By some
process, the continent of North America has
become attached to the celestial sphere at the place where land and heavens
meet. It is slowly getting detached from the crust of the Earth, like an old
scab being peeled neatly from a healed wound, without any tearing at the edges.
Could this be
that new natural phenomenon of celestial tectonics, in which portions of the
sky acquire the properties of Earth’s mantle and exert an irresistible
attractive force on any land that they come in contact with? I remember hearing
in the news some geologists positing the existence of this process and warning
of its consequences. Their concerns, however, were dismissed as alarmist talk,
coming from doomsayers with private agendas. By grim irony, America had
been one of the most vociferous deniers of these predictions.
And now I’m
watching America
being carried along by the turning of the heavens. I can clearly see its
unmistakable shape and the features of the land: the whiteness of Alaska, the mighty rivers, the mountain chains, the major
cities, the wheat fields, the Mojave Desert,
the pine forests.
At first,
while the continent is still at a shallow angle in the sky, the American people
are enjoying their unique experience, smiling, laughing, some even waving to me
down below. They are taking delight in their position in flight. Those cities
at the edges of the continent are enthralled by their intimate contact with the
sea of blue sky. Californians are especially jubilant at finally being above
all others in the most literal sense possible. They are being carried on the
privileged port side of the continent, sailing the celestial ocean blue. Some
of them are waxing down their surfboards, getting ready to ride the heavenly
waves.
This uniquely
peculiar positioning of America
gives its citizens powers over us just in virtue of their altitude. They are
privy to every bit of our existence, looking down, God-like, upon the rest of
the world. Our complete exposure to them inevitably leads to a temptation that
is too strong for many of its citizens to resist. And so regardless of the
consequences and in total disdain of the decorum, they toss things down. All
kinds of debris and other unmentionable substances shower upon my head, while I
am powerless to retaliate.
As the heavens
continue their inexorable turning and the continent rises steeper in the sky,
it becomes more and more difficult for the people to maintain their traction
upon its surface. The initial wave of fun and mirth gives way to first signs of
panic and despair. All the living and non-living things that depended upon
gravitation for their stability and viable existence now realise what it is
like to have it as an adversary.
If not for the
overwhelmingly desperate gravity of the situation, it would be almost comical
to observe the way the people are trying to respond to the predicament that
they find themselves in. It looks like a disturbed anthill on a gigantic scale,
with millions of Americ-ants scurrying frantically in random directions, trying
to save their colony from some uncouth hooligan poking at it with a stick;
little bugs struggling against some capricious, unyielding force which is
ruining their arduously constructed nest.
The way
American people resemble tiny insects produces in me a certain indifference to
their fate. This sensation is very similar to that experienced when you look
down, from a great height in a plane, at people on the ground. You can’t help
but see them as ants and, consequently, their lives and activities assume the
same insignificance and triviality as their physical appearance.
At midday, America reaches
the highest point in the sky, hanging precisely upside down. If I felt
claustrophobic before and hemmed in by the celestial sphere, those sensations
are so much worse now, given that there's a whole continent looming right above
my head, threatening to fall and annihilate me together with itself. How long
can America
remain hovering and defying all the fundamental laws of physics?
The people are
now in their most precarious position, desperately trying to hold onto anything
that is firmly rooted in the ground, to blades of grass, to soil itself. Even
when some of them lose all grip on land, they still attempt to find some
protuberance in the fabric of the sky that they can grab, to save themselves
from this disaster, to give themselves just one more instant of life. Their
position in the sky, that only hours earlier gave them such superiority,
becomes the greatest threat to their survival. They are all equal now, from the
highest politician to the lowest drifter. Gravity is the ultimate lecher; all
of us are reduced to just our bodies when we enter its realm. It grants no
preferences, respects no individuality. Our status, age, whether we are
innocent or sinful, famous or obscure is without significance in its domain.
For an
instant, it appears to me as if I am the one in the sky, upside down and it is America that is
on the ground. America
has always been invincible in the past. Surely it is not possible that it is
now in this helpless position; surely it must be that it is our land that is
suspended in the heavens. And so I cannot help but drop to the ground and hold
fast to the tall grass growing in the field, to stop myself from falling. The
familiar solidity of the ground reassures and comforts me for an instant, yet,
at the same time, it intensifies, by contrast, the bizarreness of the events in
the sky and make them seem all the more unreal.
No human eye
has ever beheld the sight of a whole continent in the sky. It is entirely
possible that what I perceive is the brain’s best attempt to make sense of the
data flooding through the senses; to fit the input into familiar categories
that it has evolved over millions of years to help it comprehend the ordinary
world. Yet, it might not necessarily be an accurate picture of what is really
happening out there.
I am torn by
two conflicting thoughts that occupy my mind simultaneously and seem equally
valid. Is it the case that I am the only one who sees America up
high? Could it be that, given my tender years and my particularly unique
intellectual make-up, it is my brain alone that does not repudiate this vision,
while everyone else rejects it as impossible? Is it up to me to yell out to the
whole world, “ America
has no visible means of support!”, just like that boy who cried out, “The
Emperor has no clothes!” Or is it only this morning that I have caught a
glimpse of America
in the sky, while the rest of the world saw it a long time ago? How long then
has it been going up into the sky and landing on the ground again, without me
noticing it?
Or is it
indeed the case that America
has been going up and down together with the heavens for years and years,
without me nor anyone else ever observing it, until today? That would certainly
explain why, all this time, America
has held such sway and influence over the rest of the world, for its special
vantage point would have endowed it with unique and vastly extensive powers.
How must we
appear to them? Are they envious of our safe location on the ground or do they
look upon us as being immeasurably poorer for not having tasted the mysteries
of the sky, for just as depths of the oceans conceal undiscovered secrets, so
heights of the sky must contain unknown enigmas that we, down on Earth, can
never be privy to? What thoughts must be running through their minds when the
vastness of the heavens envelops them? Do all of their past troubles and crises
appear utterly trivial to them, compared to what they have to deal with now?
The light is
eerie and unnatural, due to the almost total blocking of the Sun by the
continent. Some rays are still able to sneak around the edges of the landmass,
but the diffracted beams are of completely different hue to normal sunlight. America has
always cast a long shadow upon the rest of the world. It is no different now,
for the ground is covered by a giant umbra in the shape of the continent.
Within it, I can discern the smaller shadows of the people scampering about;
once they lived on Earth, now only their silhouettes remain.
A million
voices I can hear in the distance, I think they are calling my name. “Save us
Boris! ” they cry. My name is amplified a million-fold across the sky and the
land, as their screams intermingle with the urgent cries of my mother
incessantly calling me back home. But what can I, a young boy, do to help? I am
a powerless observer of the catastrophe. All I can do is stand and bear witness
to this evil. That is the most I can do, to commit myself to record it in the
most vivid detail, so that it will never be forgotten.
Why have I
become the focus of their attention? Why isn’t The Lord coming to their rescue?
Why are myriads of accusing eyes boring through me with rage? Are they blaming
me for their predicament? Am I the one responsible for this disaster? Or am I the saviour? Are those feelings of
premonition foreshadowing my destiny - portents that I’ve sensed my entire life
but have always denied and suppressed, never having the courage to admit their
authenticity to myself, let alone to others - are they now being validated? I never
could face up to the inner voice telling me that truth about myself. Perhaps it
is up to me and me alone to save America from destruction?
Just wait till
I tell the other kids in school about this. They have always ostracised me and
treated me as an eccentric outsider. I have never been able to count on a
single person to come to my defence or say a good thing about me. And now a
whole continent is putting its faith in me to rescue them. Surely this will
change those guys’ opinions of me.
As I look up
at the sky, some people hold hands and silently look into each other’s eyes as
they fall; others are kissing, hugging and whispering last words of love to
each other. Quite a few are engaged in, well, more intimate activities. I look
away, not wishing to intrude upon the privacy of their last significant moments
together. Mothers are wrapping arms around their children, hoping to shield
their offspring from the impact of the earth. Men are writing their final wills
and testaments. Some are resigned to their lot; a few, white with anger, are
raging against the impending eternity. Many are in denial, pretending that
nothing untoward is happening. Others have gone into shock and are paralysed by
terror. Not a few rationalise the disaster by saying that man is born a fallen
being and that it is the destiny of all of us to fall, sooner or later. Some
people see this as a just and deserved punishment from God, while others are
begging God to help them.
There are
deafening screams of that hysterical despair that only the imminent arrival of
death can evoke, and yet, even though those screams pierce my being, I am no
closer to understanding their meaning. How can I ever hope to comprehend what
the American people are undergoing up there in the sky?
Surrounding each
person, as they fall, are pieces of their broken lives. Some try to catch these
shards and re-build their lives into more meaningful and happier versions.
Others just cannot be bothered, completely ignoring the fragments.
Oh the
humanity, dropping from the once secure abode that has turned treacherously
against them. But what can one do when one’s whole life has been reduced to
just the act of falling? How does one deal with their world becoming upside
down? All the survival instincts developed over eons of evolution are now
inadequate and irrelevant. All the measures that mankind took to protect itself
against the elements and vagaries of fate have become lethal burdens instead.
Houses, streets, clothing, electricity, all the trappings of civilisation –
none of that defends them from what has befallen them.
The falling
people now discover that gravity is the polar opposite of hope, for while hope
makes you light, raises you up and frees you from the worldly concerns, gravity
brings you down to Earth and crushes you and your dreams.
If I could, I
would turn the whole Earth into the cosiest bed for them to land safely on.
They then would be tucked in for recuperative sleep, so that when they awoke
they would think it was nothing but a horrible dream.
Is this The
Rapture America’s theologians have been prophesying the coming of? Why are
people falling down instead of rising up then? Why is there suffering instead
of bliss? Why are the virtuous being punished?
The only way
that this could be The Rapture is if we are the ones who are in the sky.
Perhaps religious leaders of America
are trying to convince their flocks right now that it is the rest of the world
that’s up in the sky and so they the American people are not falling down but
are in fact ascending, as The Rapture prophesied. Maybe, citing Psalm 19:1,
“The Heavens proclaim the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His
hands”, they are trying to prove that this isn’t the real apocalypse but merely
an apocryphal one. Surely, they are reasoning, God would not permit such events
to take place in the realm that affirms his majesty.
How horribly
ironic this psalm appears now; it is as if the Universe had conspired to
repudiate it as comprehensively as possible and the sky, that has always been
thought to be a heavenly domain, is now revealed to be base and corrupt, a
source of evil and pain. And if this passage of The Holy Book has been reneged,
does that imply that all of the Book is now invalid and no longer holds true?
Or is this the
second fall from grace? Perhaps the death of the Messiah was not enough to
atone for the original sin and America,
being another of God’s beloved children, needed to be sacrificed too?
I recall
watching on the news, a long time ago, that horrific footage of American
people jumping out of burning
skyscrapers. If their attempts to save themselves by leaping from buildings a
hundred storeys high seemed tragically futile then, how much infinitely more
futile and tragic are their attempts to save themselves now, jumping off
America that is positioned thousands of storeys up in the sky.
It’s the
children I feel for the most. All their childhood they have dreamed that
persistent nightmare of endless falling that all children dream. How many times
have they woken up with a start or a scream from such a nightmare, only to be
comforted by their mothers with a hug and a reassuring word. Now I can see them
desperately begging their mothers to embrace them and tell them that this
falling is just that same old bad dream. How they yearn for that moment of
awakening, when all the inextricable troubles and horrors that were confronting
you dissolve, in an instant, into inconsequential shadows and gossamer threads
and terror is replaced by a wave of relief washing over you as you realise that
you are safely in the comfort of your bed, and a young day, pregnant with
promise, opportunity and discovery is awaiting you.
My anguish
over the plight of the falling is so extreme that I can feel another being
coalescing and hovering beside me; a being identical to me in every respect
except that it is made entirely of pain, for there is not enough room in my
body to contain all that sorrow. Yet, my despair is intermixed with an odd
sense of envy. The plummeting people possess the ultimate freedom, the
intensity of which I will never get to experience. Death throes have become the
purest and most authentic life experience for them, for only on the brink of
annihilation does life shed the frumpy dress that she wears during the day of
our existence and stands before us in all her natural, radiant glory. Now they
can savour life as it truly is, free of all the grime that besmirches its true
visage. Perhaps upside-down life is life as it should really be led, for it is
only then that the dross and delusions of everyday life fall away, and just the
essentials of existence remain.
All the delusions that once kept the
American people warm and secure at night, the delusions that sustained them
throughout their daily struggles and helped them through their darkest times
are now destroyed: the delusion that one is special and unique; the delusion
that one is destined for greatness; the delusion that one is a genius whom the
world doesn’t appreciate; the delusion that one will find a soul mate meant just
for them and whose love will save them; the delusion that one is above the laws
of humanity and deserves to be treated differently; the delusion that a lucky
break will come to one in the end; the delusion that somewhere some person,
angel or god is working on one’s behalf, trying to help one with one’s journey
through life; the delusion that one is protected by fate and special luck from
bad things happening to them; the delusion that there will come a day when one
will begin to live happily ever after; the delusion that one will find meaning
in one’s tribulations and that one’s struggles will be justified in retrospect;
the delusion that it all will turn out well in the future; the delusion that
one alone, out of the multitude in the present world and throughout the course
of history, will be spared from death; the delusion that one does not have any
delusions.
There are kids
putting on the Superman costumes, believing that they will be endowed with the
powers of flight, while some of the teenagers cannot suppress their competitive
streaks and are racing to determine who can fall the fastest and hit the ground
first and hardest. Young ladies, dressed in bikinis, are performing
synchronised falling routines, to give beauty and grace to their descent. Young
men, to show that they are not scared,
are somersaulting and twisting their bodies, as if jumping off a diving
board. A small ensemble of dignified gentlemen wearing formal evening dress are
playing “Closer My God to Thee” with
elegant aloofness. One man in particular strikes me in the relaxed attitude
that he adopts: lounging on a deck chair with a can of beer in one hand,
cigarette in another, as if he is a spectator in a front row seat, watching a
once-in-a-lifetime extravaganza of an apocalypse.
It doesn’t
take long for an apocalyptic sect to spring up in the upside-down America. Rapid
conversions take place, with the new believers donning transparently blue
garments woven from the sky’s fibres. These clothes apparently will allow them
to merge with the heavens and attain immortality. So many people take up this
new faith that wide expanses of America
become monochrome azure, especially in the southern regions.
America, once the creator of dreams, has
become the dream destroyer. Special extermination squads are searching out for
dreams to annihilate so that if America
can’t have them, no one else will either. All over incinerators are erected and
thick clouds of smoke discharge from them, comprising of dreams reduced to
their base elements: deep yearnings, burning ambitions, ineffable hunches
rumbling just below the conscious mind, half-remembered childhood premonitions.
As if to make
up for their existence being cut short, some people age in a highly accelerated
rate, which enables them to cram the rest of their lives into the last few
instants of being. One infant turns into a boy, then a teenager, then a grown
man, and finally a greybeard in a matter of seconds. Weddings take place and are then consummated.
I hear babies crying, I watch them grow, they'll learn secrets of the sky I'll
never know. Parents teach their children the facts of life, how to act
politely, how to tie their shoelaces. Boys turn into adolescents, have their
first shave and diffidently ask girls out for a first date. I see friends
shaking hands, saying, “How do you do?”, they're really saying, "Goodbye
to you", and I think to myself what a horrible world.
I no longer
know what to believe. The vision that is confronting me has no stable, constant
form but keeps changing incessantly, like a kaleidoscope with infinitely many
pieces. The bizarreness of what I am seeing makes me wonder whether this is not
an optical trick that Nature has played upon me, a mirage of sorts, similar to fata morgana, where whole buildings
appear suspended in mid-air. Perhaps a particular interplay of light, shadow
and dust up in the atmosphere today has produced this infernal illusion, and
America is still on the ground, safe and well, and everything is as it should
be in the world.
Could it be that all those lives depend
solely upon me, upon how my senses perceive reality? What a terrible dilemma to be in, millions of
lives at stake, all contingent upon whether or not I interpret it to be an
optical illusion! Perhaps, if I just believe strongly enough that it’s a trick
of the eye, then they all will be safely back on Earth.
What if, indeed, America has always been
a mirage, without any reality or substance to it? Or was America just a fictional construct
representing the Promised Land on which we could pin our aspirations for a
utopian existence? Was it an archetypal symbol of an all-powerful, all-good
Leader that humanity could look up? Could America have been a mass delusion
assuming a corporeal form, as they often do in times of crisis and hysteria? Is
it really possible that a country like America could have ever existed; a
country that was omnipotent and beneficent, that always came to the rescue and
saved the rest of the world from the enemies of mankind? Or what if, all along,
America has been my own, very cherished delusion that gave me sustenance and
identity, an invention of my own overactive imagination? That would certainly
explain why I’ve always felt an uncannily powerful personal affinity with it
and why I’m feeling such grief in seeing it being destroyed. These questions
arise fleetingly in my mind and then dissipate away.
The scope of
the tragedy is so all-encompassing that even the fictional characters of
American culture are affected by it. There goes Homer Simpson, stopping in
mid-air and asking for directions, confused as to which way is down. Superman
is tumbling too, powerless to stop his rapid descent; his power of flight
having been destroyed together with America itself. Amongst all the falling
rubble, I can make out Dorothy’s house spinning wildly, looking in vain for the
Land of Oz to alight upon.
All the
television sets are still working as they drop, even though they are unplugged.
To stop the population from panicking, every live broadcast of the disaster is
taken off the air and many people are lying on their plummeting couches and
watching the regular television programs.
Falling is such a
leisurely activity; one doesn’t have to do anything. One just needs to relax
and let the inertia carry them along. Yet some of the people just cannot accept
and surrender to the laws of gravitation. Instead they are striving to
overpower the senselessness of falling and to fill it with activity and
meaning, for even gravity cannot conquer man’s thirst to go on living.
The historians and current affairs
experts are analysing the events even as they are falling, looking for their
causes, and trying to determine what repercussions there will be for America
and the rest of the world when the continent crashes to the ground. It appears
that they believe that by explaining the factors that brought about America’s
downfall and by establishing the exact time-line of the disaster, they can
somehow make themselves immune to it. Or perhaps they believe that through
their words and diagrams, they can disempower the catastrophe and
intellectualise it away.
The business
tycoons see this as a unique opportunity to put their entrepreneurial skills
into practice; some are attaching advertising billboards to the clouds, while
others try to re-arrange the stars to spell out the slogan “Coca-Cola Takes You
Higher!” Hollywood is able to maintain its veneer of
glitter and glamour, for even the pull of gravity cannot make it reveal its
true visage. The Mouseketeers are singing the “Mickey Mouse March” in perfect unison and pitch. The Vegas
showgirls are smiling broadly and performing their high kicks and other dance
routines - no cataclysm can wipe those grins from their faces.
Even now, the
relentless self-mythologising that America is so famous for has not ceased and
the movie directors are engrossed with creating their own interpretations of
the calamity that has befallen their land. Steven Spielberg is making it into a
big blockbuster disaster movie, albeit one with a happy ending; the Coen
Brothers are able to transform the annihilation into a quirky comedy; Ron
Howard turns it into a gentle, feel-good love story while Michael Moore’s
documentary exposes the omnipotent global organisations that allegedly
conspired to destroy America.
To gain a
better understanding of the causes of the catastrophe, the President of the
United States gives an executive order to establish a Commission that will
investigate the crime that has been perpetrated against America. The commission
is given unrestricted investigating powers and is directed to evaluate all the
evidence and present a complete report to the American people. The first task
that the commission sets itself is to recreate the exact sequence of events
that led to the disaster, as well as a complete full-scale reconstruction of
the catastrophe itself.
With both
Hollywood and the government reconstructing the fall of America, I find it
difficult to determine whether what I’m seeing is genuine destruction taking
place or its re-enactment.
The madness of
bureaucracy does not cease and hotly debated issues continue to consume the
legislative body of America. The dispute about health care reform still rages
unabated, with committees and sub-committees holding sessions debating which
particular system to adopt, while all around them the country is breaking into
pieces.
The Federal
Government’s biggest concern appears to be whether the banks would be able to
maintain their profit margins and whether the car companies will be able to
continue their production in this new, free-fall environment. Consequently, the
government devotes all of the relief efforts to the financial institutions and
to the motor industries, while the people continue their helpless plunge.
The
politicians of America are still engaged in their petty disputes, tossing
heated words upon one another, oblivious to their rapid descent. They are
passing motions, censuring, making character attacks. Ordinary people, too, are
preoccupied with such concerns as not being able to use up their retirement
funds.
It seems
utterly ridiculous. Those actions are so trivial and senseless, pregnant with
their own contradictions, given the situation they are in. And then a
realisation strikes me – aren’t we ourselves, down here on earth, all in
exactly the same situation? Aren’t we also nearing our own oblivion, each day
closer to hitting the ground? Yet, we go on doing exactly the same foolish
things, wasting our lives on the same meaningless activities.
Morbid
curiosity compels me to observe what happens to the people when they strike the
ground. But instead of their bodies looming larger and larger in my field of
vision as they approach Earth’s surface, they become fainter and smaller still,
until disappearing from sight altogether. They then re-appear; only they are no
longer their corporeal three-dimensional selves but instead have turned into
life-sized monochrome cardboard cutouts. Even those enterprising few that
managed to strap on a parachute also turn into cutouts, with a cardboard
silhouette of the parachute attached to their cardboard shoulders.
As I watch
these cardboard figures approach the ground, another transformation takes
place, with the cutouts changing into small photos of those same people. These
snapshots now shower upon me like torrential rain.
Still, I
cannot help but stick my bony kid arms out in the hope of catching at least
some of the people, but only manage to catch the photos. Although in a daze, I
instinctively glance at them and see in these snapshots the lost souls as they
appeared in happier times, with their families, friends, pets; the way that
they like to be remembered, and not how they looked in their desperate final
moments. But although their lips are smiling, I can definitely discern a look
of piercing admonition that the eyes of the dead often possess, beseeching us
to explain why they were allowed to suffer so much and not be helped. There is
also perhaps a shade of wistful sadness at not being a part of the living world
any longer.
I turn one of
the photos around, to see if any last words have been scrawled on its back and
find four lines of verse printed in neat, childlike handwriting:
In
the mighty nation girt by two giant seas,
Constitution of Laws
becomes a piece of paper.
Its people too will
float to the ground as such,
The country’s zenith
being their nadir.
Every other
photo that I pick up has exactly the same inscription written on its back. The
handwriting varies but the words remain the same. Obviously this is the final
message that the American people wanted to convey to the rest of the world.
I know I have
read something similar to this before, something in my memory resonates with
these words. Yes, now I remember, it is a quatrain from the Book of Prophecies
written by that renowned medieval seer. This particular verse has long been
considered to be indecipherably cryptic. Now it makes perfect sense and I understand
why this grotesque metamorphosis is taking place. Didn’t one of America’s past presidents, not
that long ago, dismiss their Constitution as being just a scrap of paper? And
when the Constitution turns to paper, aren’t its citizens next?
I shake the
photos furiously, trying to bring them back to life and make them
three-dimensional again. Alas, they dissolve into a sticky fluid that drips
down from my hands in tear-shaped drops. Are these tears the final lament for
the lost America? Yet when I lick some of the liquid from my fingers, it tastes
like Diet Coke.
Not only have
the people of America become papery, their money too turns into worthless
scraps of paper and I do not even bother to pick up the greenbacks that land at
my feet. The US dollar, once the leading currency in the world, reveals its
true nature to be nothing more than a piece of paper dyed green. Nevertheless, some of the falling have their
arms full of cash and other possessions, hoping that these things will save
them or soften their impact.
Now I
understand why the Ancients, in all their wisdom that has been scorned by
modern science, divided the Universe into four elements: Earth, Fire, Air and
Water. They knew that each element is a separate realm that is completely
distinct from and eternally inimical to the others. One just has to accept that
the sky is an alien domain where inexplicable, beyond belief, events take
place. The sky is a foreign country, people do things differently there. For
far too long we have taken air, and by implication the sky, for granted as an
intangible, invisible substance and now it is coming back with a vengeance,
wreaking havoc upon America that is unfortunate enough to have been caught up
in its clutches.
I feel like
this is a personal duel between America and me, to determine who would crack
first. For the first time in my life my mind is on the verge of packing up and
calling it a day. It cannot take it any more; it just has no strength left to
process the fantastical sensations deluging it. Yet, I force myself to continue
watching for it is my duty to do so.
The extreme
mental strain of the situation forces me to face something that my defence
mechanisms have been trying very hard to suppress all this time. No, I can no
longer deny it and have to be honest with myself. I have to admit that a few
years ago I did write a short story titled “Amerika in the Sky” (with “Amerika”
deliberately misspelled to stress the fictional nature of the story). From a
very early age, I was always scribbling stories with fantastical settings and
bizarre happenings; in my mind I was a child prodigy, a kind of a literary
Mozart, except that, until just a year ago, I never shared my writings with
anyone, they were my own secret domain. The idea for this story came to me in a
dream and it described a situation very similar to the one happening right now,
with America being attached to the heavens, then turning upside down and
breaking into pieces with people falling down. And now I am paralysed with fear
that it is my story that acted as a kind of a spur, causing reality to mimic
its fanciful events. A similar thing has happened before, when a book called
“The Wreck of the Titan”, was published 14 years before the Titanic disaster
and described, in detail that was remarkably similar to the real occurrence,
the sinking of an ocean liner. Perhaps my story also planted a prophetic seed
in the fabric of reality, like a seed that is needed for crystals to grow
around. Maybe some yet-to-be events are so deeply imbued with potentiality that
only a little kick, like imagining them or describing them in writing, is all
that is needed for them to actualise and burst into the real world. But how
could I even imagine that such an outlandish, completely surreal scenario, one
that contravenes the deepest laws of physics, could ever come true? Yet,
surely, my American friends, the very friends who are falling right now, have
to share some of the blame for this calamity, for they read “Amerika in the
Sky” with pleasure, shared it with others, talked and wrote about it, lauded
and applauded it. Heck, it even got published in an American magazine! They,
therefore, reinforced the strength of the potentiality of America’s fall, and
it was then only a short step from the fall being real in their minds to it
assuming a solid form.
As the
continent remains at the apex of the sky, buildings' foundations start to
loosen, roots of plants are no longer able to cling to the soil; the mighty
rivers empty their banks in a downpour of unprecedented proportions. Mountains
too begin to disentangle themselves from their foundations: there go the
Rockies, followed closely behind by Mt Rainier and Mt McKinley. What a sight it
is of these titans that once towered haughtily above the rest of the land. Now
they are twirling unceremoniously, like pebbles tossed into a river from a
bridge. The bunkers built into the mountains, in which the elite sought safety,
are popping out of their hiding places, like heated popcorn, and plummeting
down too.
There go Mt
Rushmore’s gargantuan busts; their granite eyes are shut tight, for they cannot
bear to watch what has become of their country. A land that they put so much
effort into creating, developing and preserving the unity of has been broken
into myriad fragments. The Statue of Liberty is falling disrobed, the torch
extinguished, bewilderment and anxiety etched deeply upon her once proud face.
Lady Justice is following not far behind. The sword has dropped from her right
hand; the scales, unable to maintain any balance, are seesawing wildly in her
left hand and the blindfold has come off the face. But what is the point of her
seeing clearly now, how can an evil of this magnitude ever be avenged?
Those
quintessential American characteristics - eternal optimism, justice and
opportunity for all - are on their way down. Plunging next to them are the
shattered pieces of the Great American dream, intermingled with fragments of
dreams of glory, wealth and happiness.
Even at this
desperate time, the pursuit of fame and fortune is too irresistible for many of
the people and they battle against one other as they try to catch up with and
grab the pieces all for themselves. Hordes of these Americ-ants swarm all over
each dream crumb, scuffling amongst themselves for a taste of it, just like
ants teeming over drops of strawberry jam.
One scrap of
the American dream ends up dropping right at my feet. I pick it up immediately,
hoping that it will endow me with the confident “can-do” spirit that the people
of this land are so famous for. Yet, on its descent, the dream fragment has
become, like the people, just another useless scrap of paper, devoid of any
potency or vitality.
“Fast food”
used to be the perfect symbol of American life. Before it was food that was
easily disposed with. Now values, dreams, people, the country itself have
become disposable too.
After all the
signs of civilisation and life vanish, the ground itself begins to give way and
disintegrate. The earth slowly loses its compactness and adhesiveness, first
dripping down in small spurts and then in great lumps. Here and there, the
liquid magma substratum is peeking through the locations where the entire
continental crust has come off. Land that for billions of years worked hand in
hand with gravity realises what it is like to be in opposition to it. Only now
will America reveal its true nature, free of all pretences, just as people lose
their facade and expose their real selves during the times of crises.
All my life I have been entranced by
America, that inexhaustible source of influence, entertainment, invention,
humour, innovation and creativity, and wanted to understand whence came its
boundless talents. That’s why I harboured a secret wish to grab America by its
legs, turn it upside down and give it a good shake, so that all the secrets
stashed in its hidden pockets would come tumbling down at my feet. And now no
more secrets remain; all the deep and eternal, ancient and modern mysteries are
revealed with the uprooting of the soil. All the closets have opened up and divulged
their carefully concealed stories, except that the question of who was behind
the Kennedy Assassination still remains unresolved; with the destruction of
America disappears the final hope of ever determining the truth behind this
hideous enigma.
The body of
America is twitching in its death throes. Some outer sections of the carcass
have not as yet received the message that the end has come and are still
displaying signs of life, just like a dead dinosaur’s claws that continue to
move while the nerve signals rush from the brain to inform them that it is all
over.
As the
continent continues to break up, it becomes a terrifying melting pot. A
colossal downpour of bodies, concrete, trees, mud, water, cars, houses, rock,
soil all mixed together into a horrible blend threatens to engulf the world
below and destroy our lives too. Eerily, I keep hearing disembodied laughing
emanating from the falling deluge. It seems that in the turbulence of the
maelstrom, the laugh tracks have become detached from the sitcoms and they
provide a bitterly ironic soundtrack to the catastrophe.
I run around,
picking up the debris, trying to salvage what I can. Is it up to me to rebuild
this country from all the bits and pieces that are descending and covering me
from head to toe? But attempting to put it all together again would surely be a
futile task, like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle that has innumerably many
pieces.
Some of the
light beams refract through the dropping water, leading to colours of the
rainbow, so pretty in the sky, showing on the faces of the people falling by.
This effect adds an incongruously cheery, multi-hued aspect to the grey,
amorphous sludge of devastation coming from above.
Thankfully,
some clouds appear and block these scenes of chaos, but then they quickly
disperse. Again, I'm unable look away from the largest catastrophe ever
witnessed by the human eye. But what right do I have to observe the deaths of
others; to look, God-like, upon the numberless agonies? Who am I, a small boy,
to watch scenes of suffering so terrifying that even Death itself turns its
bony face away in fright? What right do I have to continue living, while
millions are defeated by the irremediable evil of extinction?
Is it just
America falling or is it all of mankind? I feel like I am the odd one out,
stubbornly holding my ground and remaining ludicrously motionless. How tempting
it is to join the plunge, to become one with the deluge! The avalanche is
calling out to me with all its might, it is so persuasive in its roar. Let me
fall too! I want to plummet together with them!
Oh the horror,
the horror of it all! Surely this day will live forever in infamy! Where are
You, God? In You they trusted! Don’t You have a special relationship with this
land? Haven’t You always protected and looked after it? I ask only one thing of You and I will never
ask anything of You again - expunge from the fabric of spacetime the moment
when America became attached to the celestial sphere. But God, who sees everything, remains silent
and does nothing.
A young mind
should never have experienced such absolute evil. Yet here I am, drinking it
all in, still heedless of my mother calling me to immediately return home.
Such an
unimaginable occurrence! And yet, despite of it being utterly inconceivable, it
is nonetheless occurring. Indeed, there is even a certain inevitability about
it, just like the slow uprooting and the plunge of a mighty tree that has been
weakened by age or storms.
Maybe it was
meant to be this way and some good will come out of it. Perhaps it was
necessary to throw this country up into the air and let it shatter into a
billion pieces, so that, when all the intermingled fragments of the cities,
forests, rivers and mountains settle back on the ground, a better arrangement of
America will emerge. I cling to this faint straw of hope, trying to use it as
ballast in my mind’s turmoil of despair.
But my sanity
can no longer endure the relentless onslaught upon the senses, and I can
distinctly feel my inner self separate into two halves. One part is an
idealistic child that I was before this day, a child that would never accept
that such horrors could take place, a child whose mind would refuse to accept
what his eyes see. The other part is a strange, unfamiliar being that I know not
at all. It is he who perceives this hideous tragedy, for the person that I have
always known myself to be cannot be a part of this occurrence.
A new,
terrifying thought seizes me: what if the sky has become a mirror and what I am
seeing is, in fact, my own country? Could it be that we are the Americans, we
are the ones undergoing these tribulations? Is America a distorted image of my
own land? Are the happenings in the heavens a deformed reflection of our own
actions and lives?
If the sky has
turned into a reflective surface, then I should be able to recognise in it the
land features surrounding me. Yet, when I look up, all I can see is an image of
my own face, magnified grotesquely, staring back at me with a sneer. The
birthmark to the right of my upper lip looks just like an odiously black
anti-Sun. But the face in the sky is not of my present child self; rather it is
the face of me as an adolescent, as a middle-aged man, as an elderly greybeard.
Obviously everything in the sky is subject to rapid aging this accursed day. In
desperation, I scrutinise the giant eyes for a sign of support and wait for the
vast face to speak words that will explain the meaning of what is occurring.
But its eyes remain stubbornly cold and no sound emanates from its lips.
After an
interminable span of time, the continent begins to move away from the zenith.
The Sun re-emerges in the sky, whole and wholesome, able to shine again. For a
moment the sky seems to be empty and blue again, with its innocence intact, the
way it was early this morning. But morning was a million griefs, a million
irreparable lives ago; morning took place in another epoch altogether, when
things like this could not be envisaged.
A fortunate
few have managed to survive the near total destruction of the landscape of
North America and are approaching the horizon and security of the ground again.
Thank goodness that they will be able to descend safely and be lauded as
heroes; survivors of the most horrific journey that any human being has ever
had to undergo.
Alas, that is
not to be, for when this god-forsaken continent reaches the horizon, it
collides sharply with the stubborn ground that is already there. Before my
terrified eyes a cataclysm, even worse than the one I witnessed earlier in the
day, starts to unfold. A relentless process takes place as two continents
attempt to occupy the same location at the same time, and one of them has to
lose out.
Northern
Canada and Alaska are the first to go. Bit by bit they are torn apart, as the
stationary earth refuses to shift and stands firm its ground. Those remaining
alive, who I thought would be the lucky survivors, are crushed to dust. The
process creates a horrible grinding noise, like a million fingernails scraping
together across a gigantic blackboard, and it resounds across the span of the
land.
I cannot help
but rush to their aid, to try to save at least some lives. But after a few
steps I halt, for I recall that the horizon is just an illusory point in the
distance that keeps receding further and further as you walk towards it, and so
I will never be able to reach the doomed ones.
By now, more
than half the continent has been ground into fine powder. The major
metropolises of the United States, the founts of so much knowledge, art, music
and creative energy are pulverised into nothingness. Icy pieces of Alaska
intermingle with the glassy shards of New York City and with bits of Los
Angeles tinsel. Would it ever be possible to reconstruct America from these
clouds of dust? Cities, civilisations,
entire countries have been rebuilt from ruins before, but this is annihilation
on a scale from which there's no coming back. The land of endless
possibilities, a country that once offered so much opportunity to everyone, is
now itself bereft of any future prospects.
Well, there
goes the New World, I think wistfully. America, I hardly knew you! I never did
get to visit you. I was going to fulfil my destiny there, make it my home, for
I knew America was the only place where my unique faculties would be fully
recognised and appreciated.
No longer will we have
America in our lives. It is gone in the most terrible fashion, right before my
very eyes. And yet, its ashes will settle all over the world, infusing every
cell of the remaining planet. Forever more, it will provide fertilisation for
the world to go on progressing the way America once did, and we will be able to
state proudly that we now all have a little bit of America in our very souls.
Many years have now passed since the day we lost America.
For a long time, the heavens were stained red with the blood of the hapless
victims; clouds had a bone-white aspect to their coloration, and fragments of
the final despairing screams continued to resonate through the sky. The sky had
become a death trap, a mass grave of singular proportions, its mysterious
beauty forever blighted by the destruction it had wrought upon the millions.
Now we could see that, instead of being a fantastical wonderland, the sky was a
place where reality assumed its harshest, most pitiless form, a place where
destiny was reduced to just one option, and you were compelled to follow that
option unequivocally, a place in which you were given only one path to tread.
Death itself was not able to watch so much pain and carnage
and was inconsolable, crying the rain down that day. It could not bring itself
to accept what had happened and tried to refuse entry to the millions of new
arrivals knocking on its door and asking to be let in, for it did not foresee
their coming and strenuously denied playing any role in their demise.
Never before had so many died at the same time, in full view
of the rest of humanity; all the previous catastrophes were trivialised by
comparison. Nothing would ever make the world regain its lost innocence and
America, whose ceaseless creativity once brought the world so much
entertainment and pleasure, now became the cause of humanity’s greatest sorrow.
This was an event unique in the absoluteness of its tragedy.
Nothing in it could have been construed as having any positive features, unlike
the things going on down on the ground which always possess both good and bad
aspects. With this singular occurrence, there was no angle that could provide
an alternative perspective; it was an incontrovertible and unambiguous
catastrophe of unparalleled proportions.
The fall of America disrupted the very fabric of society. It
wasn’t just a small “hole in the stocking” that could be darned and become
invisible. Instead it was a big, ugly tear that threatened to grow larger and
larger, and bring down the very foundations of the civilisation that mankind
had taken thousands of years to build.
The world gasped, the world cried, the world mourned, and
then it went on living. For a long time afterwards, all our activities seemed
frivolous by comparison with what had transpired above. A disaster like that
raised the question of the value of human life. When the entire continent was
destroyed, not only did the lives of the fallen become insignificant, but our
lives too lost their meaning. America may only have loomed over the world for a
dozen or so hours, but the trauma of its demise has continued to hover above us
ever since, threatening to crush us with its enormity.
“Where was God while America was being destroyed?” we asked.
Did God look the other way and ignore what went on that day? Or was God Himself
paralysed with fear at what He witnessed and could do nothing to help the
victims? Was this event such an unexpected aberration of the natural order of
the universe that not even He foresaw it coming? Was this His will being done
or was this done against His will? Was God predestined to do this to America or
could He have chosen not to do it?
Time itself stopped in the face of such tragedy and then
tottered on uncertainly, in a punch-drunk manner, the way we staggered around
in a daze down on Earth. And so we could not tell if days or years have passed
by, for Time trudged forward erratically, sometimes taking steps back, as it
too tried to reverse the flow of the events and return back to the innocent
happiness of the past.
Eventually, we regained our composure, our sanity, our
humour, our joie de vivre; we were able to laugh, love, smile and hope again,
but we would never recover our ability to dream, for America was the source of
all our dreams.
We realised that like the Sun, the Moon and the seas, so the
continents too are compelled to rise and fall. We could not delude ourselves
into believing that senseless tragedies like that only happened in America. We
had to accept that one day our land too would be thrust into that same
bottomless pit in the sky. We recognised that the redness of the sunsets and
the whiteness of the clouds, whose colours we always took for granted and
indeed were enchanted by, were actually a harbinger of the fate that awaited
all mankind, a forewarning of the blood and bones that would fill the sky.
Ships were forbidden from approaching the ugly gash of a
gigantic scar that laid across half of the Western Hemisphere and reached into
the very flesh of the Earth, like a third-degree burn, with skin and underlying
tissue destroyed. That, however, didn’t stop the morbid sightseers from taking
chartered flights over what once was a mighty country, to gawk at what became
known as Ground Absolute Zero. There was talk of constructing a memorial or
even of re-building America itself, but how does one rebuild an entire
continent?
The tattered advertisement signs that continued to cling
tenaciously to the clouds were the only remaining physical evidence that there
once was a spot that for one brief, shining moment was known as America with
the lot. We were the last generation to have America as a vital part of our
lives. Our descendants will never believe that such a land could have ever
existed and will scoff at our accounts of it as just myths and fairy tales.
Naturally, given such an irrefutable and immeasurably tragic
event, plethora of conspiracy theories arose denying that it had ever occurred
and that instead America was “playing possum”, just like its native marsupial.
These deniers pointed out that Americans have always been masters of
simulation – one only needed to look at
Hollywood, that pinnacle of artifice. It was entirely possible, one theory
claimed, that the American government staged destruction of their own continent
so that it could assume dictatorial powers. Another conspiracy theory went
further and insisted that this was America’s ultimate gambit, to feign
annihilation of their land, so as to evoke the world’s unreserved sympathy and
support, which would then be utilised to extend American hegemony upon the
Earth. Others alleged that they had evidence that a secret NASA experiment had
gone terribly out of control and instead of launching just a shuttle, all of
American continent got propelled into the sky. The most outlandish claim was
that the annihilation of America was indeed authentic, but that it was
perpetrated deliberately by the military-industrial complex, as the only way
they saw to save America, both from its external and internal foes, was to
destroy it.
The philosophers debated endlessly about the nature of this
event and what meaning such a tragedy could possibly have. Eventually, two
opposing schools of thought emerged: one that claimed that this event had
infinite meaning and one that claimed that this event had no meaning at all. In
either case, the catastrophe could be analysed forever and still its true sense
would not be determined. This gave philosophers of both camps immense
satisfaction, for they could now occupy themselves with this dilemma till the
end of their days.
Historians too analysed exhaustively all aspects of the
catastrophe, studying its causes and publishing a vast number of weighty tomes
which recounted in finest detail everything that took place in the sky that
day. The underlying intention of their work appeared to be that their erudite
words would nullify the cataclysmic changes that the disaster had wrought upon
the collective consciousness of mankind and would restore the dignity of human
life.
I’m no longer the small boy that I was back then. No, I was
not a small boy ever again, for the suffering I witnessed and felt in my very
bones that day turned me irrevocably into a man. I understood that life itself,
whether up in the sky or down on Earth, is an act of falling; each hour we are
closer to hitting the ground, the soil waiting to receive us when we make the
final impact. What I saw that day exposed the absurdity of trying to impart
meaning to our lives whilst we are in free fall towards our doom. When one
witnesses life reduced to its last moments, the ultimate futility of our
actions becomes patently clear.
I realised why one is destined to be forever alone, for we
all just pass each other momentarily on our descent and then continue along our
divergent trajectories. The most you can hope for is a fleeting contact with
another being. But I also understood, after watching America in the sky, that
just as falling while holding onto someone is unwieldy, with less manoeuvring
and freedom of action possible, so it is much more graceful to live your life
by yourself, without anyone else in it. Your life then is dependent upon you
alone and is not affected by every movement and weight of the other person. And
so I have stayed alone in this world, without a friend, an offspring or a soul
mate, alone and graceful in my flight down to the ground.
That day I lived through the most authentic experience of my
life, the reality of reality hitting me with full force and making me shed
forever my youthful illusions. Yet at the same time, I still find it hard it to
convince myself that it was not some phantasm created by the overactive mind of
a precocious child.
For years, I could feel the presence of millions of spectral
figures hovering just above ground. Every time that I look up to the sky, I
still can see and hear it all again: the chaos, the destruction, America
writhing in its final death throes, a thousand lives being cut short with each
passing second.
I felt that I was given the responsibility of living out all
the curtailed lifetimes, that it was up to me to accomplish all the deeds left
undone, to give voice to all the words left unsaid. The fallen had entrusted me
all their talents, all their aptitudes, all their special and unique gifts that
were lost together with America. This was my inheritance, my destiny, the price
I had to pay for having witnessed America’s fall. By watching their deaths, I
had entered into a covenant to complete living lives cut short and to fulfil
millions of unfulfilled dreams and ambitions. And so now I no longer live for
myself, but only for them. I am living out their existence.
In the end however, what I have written is only a clumsy
depiction. Words that I used to convey what I saw and felt that day were
created and defined in a world in which America still existed. Words like
“tragedy”, “fear”, “life”, and “death” have since become
bloodless beings that lost their life-force together with America itself. And so
I will speak no more, except in that most authentic, most profound language of
all – absolute silence.