Time alone meant time to absorb.
By midday he’d made sufficient space at the base of the shaft to safely allow access to the light that was emanating down there, the light they’d been searching for the whole time.
Truck found it strange to be around the odd light, as if it had a life of its own. Sometimes when he was working away with the jack hammer he swore he could hear a voice, but then he would stop, lift his ear muffs from his head and listen. Not hearing anything he would return to his work, only for the voices to start again.
When they’d first uncovered the light everybody was under strict instructions not to touch it, the other workers didn’t seem troubled by this, except Truck. He cursed himself often for his sudden impulses to grab it, thanking his lucky stars he was never left alone. For the voices would talk to him, beckoning him to come closer.
He wondered why Alison’s team never touched it, nor paid it any heed whilst they were around. There were only three of them, simple men, their origins clearly Aboriginal Australian. They almost seemed oblivious to the light, whereas Truck himself felt almost consumed by it daily.
But then he surmised they’d probably not wanted for anything much in life, except maybe to serve their master, Alison. They seemed very simple, enjoying the work during the day and happy to tell a story of the Dreamtime at night. Perhaps they just didn’t hear the voices that he did, calling to him desperately down in the shaft.
Maybe he was just going crazy.
It made it difficult for him to think straight, especially on what had taken place between him and Harrison. He could see something in his mind, but struggled to focus on what it was, everything just rattled around inside his head in a jumble.
Harrison was different, ever since we came here. Or was he different before that, was he different after I left the apartment? Thoughts plagued the big man in the depths, especially now he was alone.
The vision, the voice in his head, that was not Harrison.
After making the clearing wide enough for a person to get through comfortably, Truck decided his work down in the cave was done and made his way back to the top, desperate to avoid the voices. As he exited he saw Smith standing alone, almost as if he was waiting for him. But Truck pretended to not see and instead chose to move back to the food tent.
Happy to be back above ground, as it afforded him some respite from the voices in the tunnel, Truck happily made himself a sandwich and plonked himself down alone, using the time to think about what Harrison had tried to show him.
Images flashed across his mind of green fields, bustling with life. Of deep rainforests, thick with foliage covered in a cool mist of water. Millions more of these similar images flashed through his mind of flora and fauna of the world, of its animals living in relative prosperity, in a perfect balance.
A perfect world, untouched and pure in its simplicity, existing without destructiveness.
Then the images started to erode, a sickness taking them over.
He could feel the hurt, the pain that was causing Earth to lose its beauty. A virus had come, a virus had infected it.
Slowly Earth begun to lose its balance and life started to fade away, gradually being replaced by something else. The rivers dried up, bees disappeared and forests wilted away.
The perfect world was being consumed.
As he sat there with eyes closed and mind wondering, an image slowly came to mind of what had caused the destruction. It hovered in his forefront, like a shadow, until gradually it became clearer. Truck found himself looking at something he did not expect.
He was looking at himself.
He was responsible.
Humans were responsible.
Truck knew what destruction looked like, he’d witnessed it first hand in battle. But the destruction he was seeing in his mind was worse, rainforests were rotting, the green fields had turned to dust and animals were now extinct, wiped out by the billions.
Their images were replaced by the image of man, of his creations. Infrastructure, agriculture, everything manufactured and artificial. He saw the rainforests making way for giant cities, green fields for cement jungles and rivers and oceans devastated as they were harvested for consumption.
The world had been consumed.
He was the consumer.
He couldn’t help but let a tear fall to his cheek as he silently contemplated the images playing over and over in his mind. The perfect world changed, replaced by something artificial, something that a collective consciousness built.
And that consciousness had given itself a name.
Ego.
But before Truck could venture further into his thoughts, his daydream was disrupted by a commotion outside the tent. It broke him from his trance and forced him to come out to investigate.
He frowned awkwardly as he saw Harrison and Smith preparing to leave, as their departure was news to him. Truck assumed this meant they were done here and would now travel on to the next site, wherever that may have been, to help Alison.
He suddenly felt vulnerable standing there in the open, fear suddenly gripped him. Without a word, he turned and left them standing there, retreating back towards the shaft excavation. There he found himself sitting at the entrance, unsure of what his thoughts were.
Truck was not a man known for weakness, but here he felt it, a weakness to face his inner fear, to see things he wouldn’t have otherwise contemplated. Uncertainty had weakened him.
After a long and strange deliberation inside his head, he decided the best thing to do was to go back down, march right up to Harrison and Smith and face his fears head on.
He stormed back down, with less reproach than he would have liked, but noticed all was quiet. Confused he assumed they’d gone into the main tent. So, chest puffed, he moved inside and came across Harrison seated and alone, in a video conversation with Alison on the laptop.
Harrison turns when he sees Truck enter and gives him a big smile, “Truck come in, come say hi to AB.”
He waves his hand as if to say no, but says nothing, as he feels slightly awkward at storming into the tent in a mood.
“C’mon Truck.”
“Hi Truck,” Alison calls out on the laptop. “How are you?”
Truck looks around himself, noticing the absence of Smith and is about to leave the tent when Harrison stops him.
“Hey!”
“What?”
“Don’t ignore.” Harrison pleads.
“Where’s Smith?”
“Gone.”
“Huh?”
“Smith …” Harrison finds himself at a loss to explain. “Smith gone ...”
“He’s left? The camp?” Truck asks, cursing himself for fleeing when he had the chance earlier.
Harrison nods but can’t look Truck in the eye, he too of late has changed. It isn’t that he feels he’s growing apart from Truck, it’s more a steady realisation of what’s to come next in the story and what his true purpose is.
“Is he coming back? I mean, I never got a chance to talk ...”
“Gone Truck.” Harrison wells up, unable to control his emotions.
“Hey champ, it’s ok little buddy.” He slaps him on the back, trying to comfort him.
“Truck?”
“Yes Harry.”
“I miss Suni, I miss Doc and even poor Pigeon.”
“Me too mate, me too.”
“We had it easy back then didn’t we?”
“We had some good times buddy.”
“I might let you guys go.” Alison sounds via the laptop.
“Sorry Alison,” Truck apologises.
“Please don’t Truck, it’s been nice knowing you. I wish you all the best.”
“Umm, yeah, ok,” he wonders. “Nice knowing you too.”
“Talk to you later Harry.”
“Ok, is all in readiness then?”
“Yes, he’ll meet you at the rendezvous point.”
“Thanks Alison.”
The call ends, Harrison flips the screen down on the laptop and turns around to look at Truck.
“What was that about?” Truck asks.
Harrison ignores the question, his thoughts elsewhere. “Do you ever wonder why we miss someone Truck?”
“Huh?”
“I mean do you ever wonder why we miss people?”
“You’re asking me, Truck, of all people?”
“C’mon Truck!” Harrison begs him to play along.
“Harry, you don’t ask a chicken to quack like a duck, do you?”
“Urrrghh! C’mon Truck, know you’ve got a big heart in there.”
“Does it have something to do with Smith leaving?” Truck tries to encourage him, feeling as though he’s let him down a little.
“Yes and no, just wondered what thought about it all? You know, people, humans.”
“What? You mean what I think about our friends being dead?” He ponders the thought for a second before continuing.
“Every day, for as long as I can remember, I have lived with the pain of loss. When I served ... I lost a lot of my friends,” he sighs and takes a seat inside the tent. “War is a fickle thing, it’s a meaningless, pointless endeavour. But it’s not completely without meaning, the people I shared it with, they had meaning to me. And whilst we shouldn’t have been there, doing whatever we were doing, the fact remains that we did and we were.”
A tear streaks down his cheek as he recalls. “I spent years with these blokes, fighting together, playing together … we were like ... I mean … they were like a family to me.”
“The same goes for Suni and Doc, as well as Pigeon … they were my family, along with you after I left the army.”
“Do I ‘wonder’ why I miss them? ... no, I do not wonder. Why? I do not wonder on the subject because I know why I miss them. They’re a part of me and I a part of them, we were meant to be together in some way, somehow in life. To have feelings like missing them can only mean that you were meant to be together in the first place. That they made a part of you whole in the first place. And the separation creates a need to be whole again.”
Harrison’s surprised by the answer, he knows Truck is better known for his brawn, but occasionally he could shock the world with his insights. Harrison beams with pride on the inside for his friend on one side and feels his pain on the other.
“Not as stupid as look, hey champ.” Harrison chides him.
Truck punches him playfully in the shoulder. “No … but twice as ugly!”
The two laugh heartily, grateful for a break from the seriousness they’d endured of late. But in the ensuing silence, both have hidden feelings.
Truck breaks the quiet. “So what’s next?”
“Time to leave Truck.” He looks up rather solemnly.
An intense silence overshadows the two of them inside the tent. In a moment of clarity, Truck has displayed to Harrison he knows more than he lets on. He’s never asked about what they have been doing, or why they were doing it, he kind of just went along with it.
Albeit, when he didn’t understand something he would speak up, otherwise he would rely on the answer to come to him in good time, trusting in the company he kept.
Truck also knew they’d come here to unearth a thread, the very thing which earlier had been confirmed as responsible for mass deaths across the globe.
Now they’d unearthed and prepared this site, people were packing up and leaving all over the place. All seemed in the know except for poor old Truck, who appeared to be dawdling uncomfortably now that things had come to an end, uncertain of what came next.
He knew somehow, he was here for a reason and not just to protect his family, he the soldier was here for another reason. There was a reason Smith had come for him, rescued him from the clutches of the government and brought him here. Harrison tried to explain it to him earlier, by holding his hand, but Truck was still a little unsure of himself.
“So why save me Harrison?” he asks unexpectantly.
“Huh?”
“Smith? Why did he save me?”
“Let’s take walk Truck, take walk.”
“Harry …”
“Ok Truck. Why save you? He needs you, that’s why.”
“I’m not some pawn in his game Harry.”
“Truck, you are not what you think you are, you only think you know who you are. Which is the problem in the first place, because thought is not real. Your thoughts are not real and not who you are. I know this probably doesn’t make much sense to you, but the only way to see past that is to not think, at all, which I don’t think you can do anyway.”
“Thanks for the faith champ.”
“I struggle to do it Truck and I’m …”
“What?”
“I’m different to you.”
“How?”
“Take my hand Truck, let me show you something.”
“I already saw it.” Truck turns away, knowing what Harrison means. He knew what he saw in those visions, he knew the person he saw and it wasn’t the kid he knew as Harrison.
“Saw what?”
“The Earth, her beauty, her existence and the perfectness of it all. Everything worked, everything in some strange sort of harmony. I felt at peace when I saw it …” He pauses, “and then I witnessed it fall, that world crumbling before my very eyes and turning to ash. And when I looked to why, man came into the fray.”
“Understand then?”
“A little, very little I think.”
“Tell.”
“I understand what I saw, what caused the problem … But that’s the problem.”
“How so?”
“Because I’m the problem.”
“Then understand?”
“What I understand I cannot explain, I only feel it. And I can feel the collective consciousness that is me and feel its negativity coursing through me. Whatever I am, I do not belong here … I am not a part of this world.”
Harrison nods his head in agreement.
“And then there’s the black man, on the giant rock … always there. I see him in the vision too. He’s a part of it all.”
“Yes,” Harrison nods.
“Not often does a man get to choose his future, but here it seems I’ve got one …” he pauses thoughtfully. “I am a man and man is the problem here on Earth. I don’t want this champ, I want to be part of the solution.”
“Then will help? Will you help Earth?”
“How could I possibly help?”
“Truck …” Harrison moves in the direction of the excavation. “Come and meet Iegar.”
“I already know him …” Truck’s shoulders sag.
“What? How meet Iegar already?” Harrison turns, surprised Truck has already learnt about the thread.
“I heard him, inside my head …”
- -
RECALLING
destiny
RECALLING
destiny
- -
Catlin
Television screens around the globe came to a sudden standstill, the daily programming stalled and now displayed a standard broadcast loading image, with no sound coming from it. It was universal, everywhere affected.
This was the second time in a month such a thing had occurred, only this time all the networks had crashed. No stations were broadcasting. Anywhere.
Screens would remain thus for hours around the globe, until one station came back live.
The first to break the standstill was the Australian Broadcasting Commission, a government sponsored radio and television network. They were the first to come back online because they had already suffered an incident of thi
s nature once before.
The Day of Darkness had previously done the same thing, shut down all the networks across the country, thus they were the most prepared to restore and resume transmissions.
Over the course of the next few hours the network had worked tirelessly with several other nations in trying to restore the global information network they’d been operating in. With their aid, station by station, other nations started to come back online and transmit data.
Once the information did start to come through a common thread became apparent. Everyone was sending through the same information, every one of the data servers from each country spoke of the same thing.
A disaster, the second of its kind.
Inside a Melbourne city apartment building, a woman slept alone on a couch, covered in blankets, the television screen in front of her blank. The woman was Catlin Conley.
Suddenly the television came back to life, roaring loudly and waking the sleeping beauty with a shock.
She stuck one hand out from under the covers, reaching out to find the remote control and turn off the loud noise. Frustrated she couldn’t grasp it, she pulled the covers down over her head to dull the noise.
Despite her best efforts to deafen the sounds of the television, her brain started to register what was being said and she felt a sudden dread of fear as the news reports came in.
Earlier, before she’d fallen asleep, Catlin had been watching the television newscast when it had suddenly flicked off, onto a load image stating the station was having technical issues. Catlin had tried to find another working station, but no others seemed to be working. She’d fallen asleep on a couch waiting for it to come back online.
She thought it strange it had taken so long to get things back online, but soon realised why. On screen was a panel of people in a plain looking room, assembled to provide information to the public. What was more concerning for Caitlin though, was that she recognised one of the experts on the panel as Samuel.
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