White and Other Tales of Ruin

Body-moulding armour, shifting and flexing with each movement or muscular tick. A transparent sheen around their head which was a helmet and oxygen mask in one, solidifying micro-seconds before anything impacted upon it, parting and opening as and when necessary for the wearer to breathe or speak or eat. The spark-sticks and the drill guns. Everything I was used to.

“This is now,” I said. “This is happening now.”

Time is an illusion, came the soft voice from inside my head. Be glad you’re not here at this time.

“I’m not a woman,” I said.

For the first time the voice answered me directly. But you may have been a policeman.

I watched a woman fall to the ground and a policeman kneeling beside her, fending off her waving arms and deftly crushing and melting her throat with one glittering lunge of his spark-stick.

I saw how right the voice was. “Who are you?”

Be quiet, it said. Watch. It’s all part of the service.

“Anyone being talked to in here?” I shouted, and the silence from the others in the coach was my answer.

The battle erupted all around the coach but never touched it. There was murder and death and execution, but the one thing I never saw was the taking of a prisoner. These police, for whatever reason, had been instructed to simply kill. No crowd control for them, no law-enforcing, no friendly chat with someone who may have had a vague idea to break a minor law …. these were out on a subdue and destroy mission the likes of which I could never have imagined.

“Is this how it could be?” I asked, and the disembodied voice answered.

Was, could be, will be is not important. You’re not here, that is important. You’re no part of this. Be thankful.

“I am,” I said, and I was. The coach moved on, we passed scenes of terrible pain and cruelty, and I was thankful.

I began to realise how Hell could really work.

The windows went dark. I slumped back in my seat and all hint of external influences passed away. I’d been smelling the fear of that square, hearing the screams and dying sighs, tasting blood on the breeze and the tang of discharging spark-sticks. Now, with nothing more than the slight aroma of my own sweat to keep me company, it seemed all the more shocking.

“That was horrible,” I said.

“Yes.”

“What’s your name?” I asked. The woman turned to look at me.

“I’m not going to tell you. It’s personal.”

I frowned, went to tell her my name but then thought about what she’d said. We were in Hell after all, and I tended to agree. Personal. She didn’t want to get personal, and I could understand and empathise. What was happening here was way too internalised to get involved with someone just because they happened to be sitting across the aisle. Even the voice came from inside, as if I was actually hearing it somewhere else and only its meaning was being understood here.

“I’m so sorry about your son,” I said, and she averted her eyes and looked at the black window.

I leaned forward and picked up a bottle of water, changed my mind and popped the seal on a beer. The bottleneck widened and a head developed, and I took my first frothy mouthful, sighing at the synthesised real ale taste. I still didn’t know how they managed it, but it was perfect.

Closing my eyes, I leaned back in the seat. Laura surprised me and ran across my memory, laughing as a six year old and leaping on Janine’s back just months before my wife died. I remembered the day vividly. I remembered being depressed and miserable and non-communicative, because both Janine and I knew that she was dying and there was nothing we could do. Fate had done that, to Janine and to me, and I hated it. I hated that Laura would grow up without a mother. And I took out my hate on both of them, because there was nothing and no one else to suffer it.

Reliving the memory, I knew that I should have relished that moment, every moment, not lived in a haze of hate. I saw Laura’s eyes as she leapt on Janine, Janine’s smile as she caught our daughter, and I realised for the first time that my wife was as happy then as she had ever been. Her smile was not for Laura’s sake, nor for mine. It was genuine. A true statement of joy. I should have been a part of that, not apart from it.

I opened my eyes and I was crying. I wiped at the tears and took another swig of beer, and it didn’t taste as good. That was the trouble with artificiality — it could never maintain a constant. Like memories it was only an approximation of the truth.

“My daughter has been taken away by a religious sect,” I said. “I don’t know where she is and I may never get her back.”

“At least she’s alive,” the woman said.