Everything is connected to everything else…
There is no such thing as separateness…
We are all in this together.
To be or not to be? That is not only the question… it also happens to be the answer.
When Homo erectus first brushed the dirt from his fingers, noticed they came in convenient bunches of ten and inadvertently discovered arithmetic, little did he realise the psychological burden this would heap upon mankind. For, in doing so, those who followed would be able to calculate just how stupefyingly puny their allocation of three score years and ten was when matched against the gargantuan age of the Universe.
13,820,000,000 – 70 = unfair
Worse still, they would also come to appreciate just how disturbingly finite three score years and ten appears within the greater scheme of things.
[the ability to reason anything at all] –
([the ability to reason anything at all] x [time in which to do it] x [unfair]) = death
From Homo erectus to Homo permanently horizontalus in the blink of the cosmological eye.
Ever since these epiphanies, man has quested for not only the reason behind such injustice, but more to the point… the point itself.
Many conclude there isn’t one. Fatalistically supping from life’s half empty glass until time is called, they depart without so much as the faintest impression of their buttocks on the bar-stool of existence.
Others – more sanguine – see the slaking of their thirst as the purpose; the glass gloriously half full and a gift from some higher power, draining the last drop with a religious zeal that comes from believing that when they’re done, the brewery awaits.
But then there are those exquisite exceptions… a rare few who – having drunk their fill – bid adieu, yet place a full glass back on the table. They have achieved immortality… though not through the cheating of death, but by the realisation that death is a cheat.
For – as sure as you are reading this – it will appear one day… ghoulishly cowled, scythe in hand, silently beckoning… demanding the removal of your presence from time’s journey… its skeletal finger summoning the cessation of your thoughts, feelings and everything you’ve fondly come to think of as you.
If the maths helps…
death = 0
Resistance is futile. After all… the shock will have been enough to kill you.
But what Death will fail to inform you – in all its melodramatic muteness – is that you are allowed to leave a part of that you behind.
Those who realised this and prepared in advance, now stand for all time in history, their psyches still burning bright, expressing themselves perdurably and inspiring others. These are the great artists of genius: painters, sculptors, writers and composers who reached into their souls for answers to their three score years and ten, and found a way to encode in their art what they discovered, in order that others might one day discover it too.
* * *
Princess Aihtnax cowered behind Zorgan, her protector’s muscular frame shielding her from the approaching troll.
It stopped… a sense of victory in its stance, certain its opponent had used the last of his energy dispatching its fellow warriors. Raising a corner of its mouth, it let fall a slow, cascade of saliva. This, for a troll, was the equivalent of a smile… and is why you don’t see many of them sitting in comedy clubs.
It drew its sword.
Zorgan dropped to one knee, head bowed, the sobbing princess helplessly clutching at his heaving, sweat-covered shoulders.
The troll seemed momentarily surprised that victory could be so easy… then raised its weapon in a little-too-prematurely-relaxed manner.
Cocksure in combat is fine. Cocksure can even unsettle your opponent and give you that vital edge. But cocksureness can also blind you to the possibility of that opponent rolling to one side, pulling his double-bladed titanium axe from the chest of a nearby corpse and sending it hurtling towards your Adam’s apple – shards of glistening light emanating from its razor-sharp edges – all before you’ve had a chance to readjust an inappropriately supercilious grin.
For the record… cocksure is quickly replaced by acute embarrassment as you realise it’s not the wind whistling past your ears you can feel, but your ears whistling past the wind.
head – body = deep shit
Victorious, Zorgan turned to comfort the princess. But their embrace was short lived. Above them came the sound of giant wings dissecting the air, a colossal shadow enveloping the ground below. Zorgan instinctively turned his gaze skyward to meet the threat, but time had surely outrun him. He was weapon-less… and what little energy he had possessed was now spent. The hideous form above opened its stinking, razor-sharp jaws… appeared to draw breath… then let forth...
Spikey… the metal aardvark?
‘What the fu_!’
Norman Penkridge slouched back in his chair – interlocked hands resting exasperatingly on his head – and watched as Spikey bounced around the screen in front of him to the accompaniment of a series of cartoon-like boings.
Such a sight would not have been out of place in Spikey’s Grand Day Out, Norman’s first serious foray into the world of computer games programming. But the little metal aardvark – loveable though he was – appeared a poor substitute for a hail of deadly, green acid-mucus… and had most definitely never been offered a cameo role in Zorgan and the Perils of the Universe.
Boing.
‘This can’t be!’ Norman hastily examined the lines of computer code displayed on an adjacent screen. ‘It’s just not possible!’
There was only one thing more just-not-possible than a computer-generated aardvark – renowned as he might be for his fantastic jumping abilities – having jumped from one folder on the computer’s hard drive into another… and that was that Norman Penkridge – when it came to programming – could have made a mistake.
Boing.
It just didn’t happen.
Boing. Boing.
He understood computers because his mind functioned like one. He had the kind of IQ that frightened people… much the same way people frightened him.
As if Spikey’s unwarranted trampolining wasn’t alarming enough for such a logical mind, the lines of code began to pulsate and blur.
Norman removed a pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses, drew them to within squinting distance and examined their lenses. Perhaps, he reasoned, the aberration was due to the layer of grease that had been allowed to build up on them… much like it had on his cooker… kitchenette worktop… and quite a few places elsewhere. Some young men put grease on their hair to be fashionable. Norman didn’t need to bother.
He moved the offending layer about a bit using the outside of a crumpled t-shirt, then replaced his glasses on an equally oiled nose.
The code continued to pulsate.
‘Surely not a virus?’ he mumbled, frantically attacking the keyboard in front of him, his eyes darting to and fro across the screen as if umpiring an extremely manic game of tennis.
Boing.
Ping.
Boing.
‘Ping? Where the hell did that come from?’
He spun around and quizzed the pizza-encrusted microwave that had just announced dinner was ready. The problem was… it was two fifteen in the morning and – despite the noisy protestations of his stomach – he’d had nothing to put inside it for the last twenty-four hours.
Boing. Boing.
The lights in the bedsit flickered violently.
Voltage spikes! That had to be it.
The bedsit’s wiring was appalling. You could turn the bathroom light off and on simply by having your upstairs neighbour stamp his feet. God help you if you were in the middle of a nice, relaxing, hot bath and he decided to put on his flamenco records.
Ping.
Phrrrrrrr.
‘Now what?’
The video machine had switched itself on and was rewinding its tape.
Norman felt a strange tingle run up his spine… register with his brain… then escape back down through his underpants… along his legs… and earth itself in a worn, 1960’s paisley carpet via a pair of supermarket’s own-brand plimsolls.
And then it happened.
Not the kind of occurrence you would expect at 66c Armageddon Terrace, Paddington, London. In fact… not the kind of occurrence you would expect anywhere in the known Universe.
A small ball of light, the size of an orange, appeared in front of a poster of page three stunner Xanthia. It did nothing for a few seconds… then, in an apparent change of heart, pulsated in time with the computer code. Not that Norman spotted the connection. His jaw had dropped to the level of imbecile, his eyes transfixed on the quivering globe.
The good thing about having an extremely logical mind is that, when encountering the unexplained, you attempt to explain it… well… er… logically. The bad thing is that when you fail – as will happen when observing any floating ball of light in your room – your brain has nowhere else to go… unlike that of a less logical person, who can at least avoid impending insanity by clinging to the concept of a miracle.
If, on a biologically linked scale of miracles, a floating ball of light ranked as your common or garden dust mite, what happened next would have to be marked down as an extremely overweight and pregnant blue whale.
The light ball exploded – like a supernova but on a bedsit scale – emitting a sudden burst of blinding light which then imploded, leaving the room bathed in a warm and shimmering glow. At the same time, all the usual external sounds of a room at night – late-night traffic hum, the rattle of a distant train, bouncing aardvarks etc. – became muffled and as one.
Norman felt his heart beating at the back of his throat.
He’d heard of light being described as harsh, gentle, cold or warm… but this one seemed… friendly?
He peered into its centre.
The ‘overweight and pregnant blue whale’ scale of miracle analogy was about to become pathetically inadequate. No animal large enough has ever existed that could be analogous to the host of trumpet blowing cherubs that began to emerge from it.
Had Norman been capable of clear and rational thought, he would have thought it curious that their trumpets gave forth not the brash fanfare one might expect, but a sound like a huge choir singing nothing in particular but very nicely thank you. It was the kind of music designed to calm the listener.
It wasn’t working.
It was also the kind of music that usually heralds the appearance of something grand and mind-blowing.
That bit was.
As a circle of trumpet-blowing cherubs began to rotate slowly around the light’s centre, there appeared in the midst of it all a magnificent, seven-foot angel… resplendent in heavenly robes and with a wingspan reaching from the corner bookshelf to the bathroom door.
66c Armageddon Terrace had just become the equivalent of a three-dimensional Botticelli painting.
Norman’s jaw was now hanging so low, it was in danger of getting carpet burn.
The angel appeared to observe Norman for a short time then – to the accompaniment of the heavenly choir – spoke.
‘Fear not,’ it said, proffering a kindly smile.
Norman’s power of speech had deserted him. His whole body would have followed, were it not for the fact his legs could no longer function. All he could manage was a barely audible gasp, which, if amplified, would have sounded remarkably like ‘No shit!’
There is one final option the logical brain can adopt when confronted by an apparent miracle, in order to prevent insanity… and that is shutdown, causing a total blackout.
Norman’s brain adopted it.
* * *
The shepherds sat on their hill, observing the parched and barren valley below. It was the same sight their ancestors had observed for millennia before them, and their ancestors for millennia before that. Such was the mind-stupefying boredom provoked by this landscape, watching the grass grow would have been considered an indescribable pleasure… had there been any to watch.
Across the floor of the valley ran a road. At least, it had once been a road. And it didn’t so much run now as limp. The abandonment of the ancient temple of Arwan El Kahab, to which it had once conveyed travellers, had sealed its fate. The temple’s occupants, a highly secretive sect calling themselves The Sons of the Shaken Spear, had claimed to have received messages from Heaven that a final, all-powerful Saviour would appear sometime towards the end of the sixteenth century and deliver the world from an impending catastrophe. But the sect disappeared into history when the date for the new Saviour’s arrival came and went without so much as a postcard from him. The riveting distraction of a pilgrim’s sandals in full, pious motion had long since been replaced by swirls of dust… and they weren’t nearly half as interesting.
Flies circled the shepherds for the same reason their ancestors had circled the shepherds’ ancestors… There was nothing better to do. How they longed to circle a pilgrim for a change… just like the old days. Had one appeared on the road, you would not have seen them for dust.
Literally.
Even the sky had little to do. It hung where it always had, impeccably blue, with not even the merest wisp of a cloud to tempt the imagination.
But there was an atmosphere. Not the one of severe, oppressive heat that was part of a weather spell the region had been experiencing for the last ten thousand years… but the kind that has three men shifting uncomfortably from one buttock to the other whilst trying hard to ignore each other’s gaze. They hadn’t spoken for a while.
When they had, Shepherd One had decided to break the previous hour’s silence by announcing that he’d trimmed the wick of his oil lamp the night before.
Shepherd Two had looked at him incredulously for twenty minutes… then accused him of showing off. Was it not true Shepherd One had also claimed to have trimmed the wick of his oil lamp not more than a week ago?
The two had snake-eyed each other for the best part of an hour.
Shepherd Three had then cautioned Shepherd One against the dangers of over-trimming… hoping his intervention might break the impasse.
Shepherd One, stunned by Shepherd Three’s radical viewpoint, had dropped his eyes.
Shepherd Two had continued to eye Shepherd One suspiciously… until realising his opponent had fallen asleep.
‘Tumbleweed!’ shouted Shepherd Three excitedly, his outstretched finger straining to a point somewhere in the distance.
Shepherd Two hurriedly clambered to his knees, placing himself behind Shepherd Three so as to use his colleague’s arm as a positioning sight.
‘It’s a huge bit!’
Shepherd One, startled from his slumber, shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun and measured their gaze. ‘Would you be referring to that over there?’ he asked, nodding in the same direction.
An hour of circling flies passed.
‘Y…e…s,’ replied Shepherd Three, drawing the word out with measured caution.
‘Bush,’ said Shepherd One nonchalantly, closing his eyes again.
‘Ah…’ Shepherd Three sheepishly let his finger drop.
Shepherd Two administered the mother of all admonishing stares and resumed his position. ‘That’s the seventh time in three years!’ he moaned. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but it’s always the same bloody bush!’
Shepherd One shook his head in disbelief for at least the next two hours, whilst Shepherd Three attempted to discover whether it was actually possible to observe his toenails growing.
And then monotony stood on its head.
At first, it took the form of a lazy hum, building imperceptibly from the silence of the horizon and accompanied by a small cloud of dust that appeared to trace the line of the old road.
By the time the cloud had grown so large it obscured the hills behind and its accompanying hum was shaking the air, shepherds Two and Three, along with a rudely awoken Shepherd One, had become too transfixed to turn tail and run.
The first thing they saw break from the cover of the cloud was a large, wingless creature, with refulgent talons and bared teeth. It moved its vast bulk in a series of fits and starts, hovering in the air for a while as if waiting for the cloud below to catch up… then moving off again to repeat the procedure a little further along the road, like a dragonfly dancing above the surface of a pond.
At least… that’s what the shepherds saw. Anyone else would probably have recognised it as a helicopter… and if they subscribed to Military Enthusiast Monthly… a Cobra V250 attack module, with heat-seeking missiles and rapid-fire capability, performing advanced scouting manoeuvres requisite for a following convoy. In fact… they would have eventually seen four such machines, upon the front of which had been painted a row of shark-like teeth… presumably to strike fear into the hearts of the enemy below… along with any non-combative shepherds in the vicinity.
The Cobra’s raison d’être became obvious as it passed directly below the shepherds’ vantage point. At the head of a vast convoy sped a number of military trucks, rows of armed soldiers visible beneath their flapping canopies. These were followed by a swarm of motorbike outriders, their charges a hotchpotch of civilian vehicles, mostly of the stretched limousine variety. Though there was one curious conveyance that looked like a glass tank on wheels, whose passenger – an old man dressed from head to toe in white – kept crossing himself every time it bounced over a pothole.
Then came the buses. Not the rusty, open-windowed sort that people hang from or carry chickens in… but the air-conditioned, darkened-windows type that suggested none of its occupants had been required to have their ticket punched.
The convoy was rounded off by a string of military jeeps and yet more trucks carrying soldiers.
The shepherds watched in awed silence as it passed, heading in the direction of the abandoned temple. Not a syllable was uttered until the last speck of dust had settled, the convoy had faded out of sight and a familiar nothing, once more, filled the air.
‘Erm… did you see what I just saw?’ enquired Shepherd One cautiously.
Shepherd Two and Shepherd Three nodded slowly.
‘In that case… I think I’ve got a headache.’
Shepherd Two and Shepherd Three nodded again.
The flies had disappeared.
* * *
Becoming a genius is not that difficult. At least not for the genius, who – let’s face it – has very little say in the matter.
Depending on your doctrine, intelligence is either a gift from the Gods or the triumph of three thousand, seven hundred million years of evolution… give or take the odd million and depending on which day you started counting.
At first sight, they are such opposing camps that the myopia of dogma usually prevents us from seeing a third possibility… that both the above are true.
If we were to break intelligence down into its lowest common denominator, we would find ourselves squinting at the humble brain cell.
As an individual, this microscopic fellow could be forgiven for having a sense of worthlessness… not to mention a height complex. As just one of a trillion such cells within the cerebral cortex, it could also be forgiven for having something of an identity crisis.
Its abilities are limited. It’s either there or it isn’t… a state of being or not being. To be or not to be.
On its own, it would marvel in wonder at the power required to produce even the smallest tic on the face of the village idiot. But connected to its neighbours, as part of a fabulously intricate network and working for the good of the whole, it has become the force behind our history, the exploration of our present and the hope for our future.
Connection is king. The better your neural network, the higher your intellect. The more advanced your synaptic interrelations, the greater your chance of being able to stand in public without dribbling.
Ask any troll.
For an aspiring brain cell… it’s not what you know, but who you know.
Thus the neurologically well-connected pass through life able to think beyond the normal confines of structured thought; some finding answers to questions where no one thought of looking… or understood the questions in the first place; some achieving levels of skill that push back the boundaries of art and science; and some occasionally developing a strange propensity for wearing odd socks and stained kipper ties.
Norman Penkridge belonged to the latter.
Norman slowly opened his eyes and waited for his brain to engage. His head was throbbing and he was trying to work out why he was staring up at the ceiling whilst not wearing pyjamas. Gingerly pulling himself to his feet, his memory came trickling back.
Something to do with an angel… and a ball of light.
He stopped to consider his position. Zorgan was frozen in time on the computer screen, patiently awaiting the player’s next command, whilst Spikey was nowhere to be seen.
‘Oh… thank God!’ he sighed. ‘It was a dream! A bloody dream!’
‘Are you alright?’ enquired the seven-foot angel standing directly behind him.
Norman spun and found himself face to face with his inquisitor, a host of cherubs circling patiently in attendance. He opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out.
‘Only… you look a little pale.’
Such a statement would have been appropriate at any ordinary moment in Norman’s life. His skin’s failure to embrace the sun – or any daylight, come to that – meant it had the permanent pallor of trench foot. But at such an extraordinary moment as this, it was doing an excellent impersonation of bleached tripe.
‘And you look…’ Norman fished for the appropriate word… hoping that whilst doing so, he might be rescued by yet another blackout, sparing him the few niggling problems being conscious seemed to be causing at that particular moment in time.
It didn’t happen.
The angel raised his eyebrows expectantly.
‘Translucent!’ blurted Norman finally.
Although looking at the perfectly formed vision of a three-dimensional heavenly messenger, he could see the poster of the love of his life, Xanthia, through its chest… which seemed even more bizarre, given it wasn’t just her face he could see.
The circling cherubs were doing their best not to smirk.
Xanthia had entered Norman’s life via page three of a tabloid newspaper, and from that moment on had taken over his nocturnal fantasies as well as his bedsit wall. Whilst realising she might not be his intellectual equal, Norman had convinced himself that – should they ever meet – she would see past his nerdish appearance, recognise a kindred spirit and fall madly in love… the two living happily ever after.
In reality, the following would apply:
‘I look as you expect to see me,’ said the angel, wishing Norman would stop concentrating on the area above his midriff.
‘But that’s just it!’ stuttered Norman. ‘I didn’t expect to see you. In fact, you’re the last thing I expected to see!’
‘I was referring to the way you’re seeing me,’ clarified the angel. ‘The image your subconscious has chosen to project me as.’
‘My subconscious?’ Norman’s stare turned inward. ‘Then… I’m imagining all this…! You’re not real…! Oh, thank God…! For one awful minute I thought I wasn’t going mad!’
‘I hate to disappoint you,’ said the angel, ‘but you’re perfectly sane… and I, in an existential sense, at least, am perfectly real.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Real is relative… I’m real in the sense that I exist, but not in a dimension your senses could recognise. So I’ve bypassed them and gone direct. What you’re witnessing is your brain’s interpretation of my vibration.’
Norman tried to corral his scattering thoughts and apply some logical reasoning. He shut his eyes to catch the angel out, but to his amazement, could still see the shimmering outline of his visitor standing in front of him.
‘You shouldn’t be so surprised,’ said the angel. ‘It happens all the time. Like when you dream. Whole worlds created without the presence of matter.’
‘But that’s different,’ insisted Norman.
‘Is it?’
Norman considered the idea. Bollocks! he thought, after he had.
‘Not a word I can say I’ve heard uttered in my presence before!’ flinched the angel.
For Norman, things had just taken a turn for the worst. ‘I didn’t utter it,’ he ventured slowly. ‘I thought it!’
‘Same thing where I come from,’ shrugged the angel.
‘You can read my mind?’ Norman groaned and desperately tried to ignore the sight of Xanthia’s magnificent breasts uncannily positioned beyond his visitor.
‘Let’s just say… I can feel it. It vibrates too, though on a very primitive level.’ The angel glanced at his chest. ‘Very primitive, in some cases.’
Norman’s bleached tripe pallor became suffused with pink.
‘Don’t worry,’ said the angel. ‘I’ve had far worse. You’d be surprised what you encounter when you drop in on people unannounced during the dead of night.’
‘Perhaps you should give them a warning,’ suggested Norman. ‘Slip a note under their door. Something along the lines of “You’re about to receive a heavenly visitation… Put the kettle on”.’
‘I’m afraid that’s out of the question,’ smiled the angel. ‘We have a problem with a certain aspect of your dimension. We don’t do solid.’
Seeking to verify the claim, Norman reached out so as to touch the edge of the angel’s shimmering aura. His hand passed straight through, a mild, tingling sensation the only thing to greet it, along with a slight drop in temperature.
‘See what I mean? I wouldn’t be able to hold the pen… let alone a cup and saucer. That’s why I try the “fear not”approach. It’s traditional… if a little optimistic.’
Transfixed, Norman continued waving his hand through the angel, not bothering to consider whether this might be unpleasant for his illuminated guest or, indeed, extremely rude.
‘I wouldn’t concern yourself too much with the appearance side of things, if I were you. It’s all in your head. You’re merely seeing what you think you should under the circumstances.’
‘So, let me get this right…’ said Norman, struggling to get to grips with a concept that, if possessing handles, would not only be hypothetical ones, but through which his hands would pass even if they weren’t. ‘I’m only seeing you as an angel… because I think you’re one?’
‘Oh, I’m an angel alright. But angels take many forms. True… most in the Western world see us as you are doing now… romantically ethereal… gorgeous set of wings… that sort of thing. But some opt for an image of the Madonna… or even the Nazarene himself. But find yourself in the East and it’s a completely different story. We’re kept well on our toes… appearing as everyone from Buddha to Shiva, Mohammed to Brahma, Nanak to Lakshmi. And as for Vishnu… you can pick any one of ten possible manifestations with that guy.’
‘And atheists?’ asked Norman cautiously. ‘What if I told you I don’t believe in the workings of Heaven?’
‘It’s a bit late for that, wouldn’t you say?’ The angel acknowledged the host of cherubs floating lazily about the room. ‘I’m just grateful you didn’t give me a harp. They’re so passé. And you’ve certainly done me proud with these wings!’ He ruffled them as if trying them out for the first time. ‘Very impressive… though totally unnecessary. They’re a testament to your logical thinking. People envisage us floating in the air and assume we must have something to keep us there. It’s the same thing with fairies.’
‘Fairies?’
‘Another incarnation we’re occasionally forced to adopt. You see… everyone believes in something. I’ve been envisaged as everything from a dead relative to a water sprite. Curiously, a four foot high, silver-skinned creature with almond-shaped eyes seems to be the current favourite. Most extraordinary!’ The angel allowed himself a half-smile. ‘Though there’s a tribe in Papua New Guinea who beat even that. They scare themselves witless imagining us as this multi-tusked creature, the top half of which resembles a monkey… the bottom half, a crocodile. Trouble is, they never hang around long enough to hear what it is we’ve come to say!’
Norman didn’t blame them. He wished he’d run away instead of engaging an apparition in philosophical conversation. His senses were feeling like nonsenses… which was most uncomfortable for someone who prided themselves in their ability to understand the world in black and white. Shades of grey could be tolerated… colours were for dreamers… but hovering angels in the small hours of the morning?
This wasn’t the first time reality and he had begged to differ. He’d had a slight contretemps with it once before. It had occurred at university, on an occasion when a large saucepan of mushroom broth had been passed around the eager students crowded into his halls of residence kitchen.
The reason why it had been done with such ritualistic reverence eluded him until about ten minutes after he’d imbibed the foul tasting offering. As a yellow tea-towel gently morphed itself into a grinning teddy bear and enquired as to his well-being, the thought occurred to him that all was not quite as it should be. Alice Through the Looking Glass began to appear a sane and creditable read. A spaghetti stain on the wall had kept him entertained for more time than the cooker clock was capable of showing, whilst music from a nearby set of stereo speakers flew at him as a stream of three-dimensional notes, swirling above his head until they exploded like fireworks, raining down on him as confetti.
His thoughts had waltzed their way through the rest of the evening, giddily observing everything as if for the very first time until, just as he was convincing himself that the meaning of life had something to do with a stunning new shade of purple he’d just discovered, he found himself jettisoned down a mental drain of despair and self-loathing, causing him to throw up over an open bread bin and the last communal packet of cream crackers.
He was never invited to partake again.
But this time it was different. Reality’s walls had bent so much on the first occasion, he’d even believed himself attractive to women… his confidence buoyed by the knowledge he could fly. But if the angel was an hallucination, everything else was exactly as it should be. Stains were stains, tea-towels tea-towels and – rather than a member of the opposite sex – the only thing he was likely to make an impression on, should he choose to leap out of the window, was the pavement.
It was all too confusing.
‘Not really,’ opined the angel.
‘Oh God…’ groaned Norman… then added politely, ‘Mind if I pass out again?’
‘Well… as a matter of fact, I do. I haven’t delivered my message yet.’
‘Message?’
‘Of course! You don’t think I’ve gone to all this trouble just to scare you?’
‘To be quite honest,’ sighed Norman, ‘I’m not sure what to think anymore.’
This wasn’t strictly true. His logical thought process – in an attempt to rescue itself from total redundancy – had seized upon an idea.
Fumbling behind his back, he surreptitiously located his webcam. It was normally used for sending pictures of himself over the internet… usually to allegedly attractive girls who turned out – after some rather lengthy and steamy correspondence – to be not only singularly unattractive, but of a different sex altogether.
Moving it to one side, so that the angel was within its scope, he orientated the fingers of his other hand on a keyboard and secretly triggered its recording.
‘Maybe it would be better if we started right from the beginning,’ he suggested, desperate to prevent his guest from spotting the direction in which his mind was travelling. ‘Perhaps a formal introduction would help. I realise you’re an angel … but do you have a name?’
No sooner had the question left his lips, than the light in the room increased in brilliance and the cherubs, who had hitherto been content to float idly about, stirred themselves into action. Once again, the sound of a heavenly choir issued forth.
‘Given the perspective from which you’ve chosen to interpret me, I am not just any angel,’ announced Norman’s visitor above it, puffing out his wings with sudden authority. ‘I am…’
The heavenly choir swelled majestically.
‘…an Archangel.’
Norman let out a long, low whistle.
There was something akin to a heavenly timpani roll.
‘And you shall know me as…’
A stirring fanfare shook the light fittings.
‘Gabriel.’
A crescendo of gorgeousness embraced the room.
Norman would have let out an even longer, lower whistle… were it not for the fact he’d forgotten to breathe in since the last one.
‘Oh boy,’ he wheezed. ‘Top banana!’
‘Not quite,’ said Gabriel. ‘But certainly not an everyday occurrence.’
‘I got that bit prior to my first blacking out,’ confirmed Norman weakly.
‘First?’
‘Yes… I’m off for another… Goodbye.’ Norman’s eyes rolled towards the top of his head.
‘NORMAN!’ The room and everything in it, everything that had ever been in it and everything that would ever be in it, reverberated with his name. ‘You must hear what it is I have come to say!’
Norman’s eyes sheepishly backtracked.
‘You must fully absorb what I am about to impart.’
Norman nodded lamely.
‘It is of the utmost importance your mind records everydetail.’
As soon as Norman’s stumbling thoughts registered the word “records”, they tripped over the image of his webcam.
There was an instant change of hue in the room. The cherubs began gravitating towards the spot where his mind had landed.
Norman desperately tried to erase the device from his thoughts. But as soon as he focused on doing so, it caused his neuropile to light up like a neon-illuminated Christmas tree.
‘Norman!’ bellowed Gabriel, shaking his head in admonishment. ‘I’m very disappointed in you. For one so bright, you have proved to be extremely foolish.’
Norman’s thoughts scrambled for an excuse. ‘Don’t take it personally. I’m just having trouble with your existing. I thought a bit of concrete evidence might…’
‘Faith!’ Gabriel interrupted him. ‘That’s all that was required. It’s what links us all to the ultimate power behind the Universe. Faith is trust… Trust is love.’
‘I could switch it off,’ suggested Norman feebly.
‘It is of no consequence now,’ said Gabriel, flexing his wings as if preparing to take flight. ‘It is obvious you are not ready.’ The aura around him began to flicker.
‘Whoa!’ shouted Norman, as a chill flowed into the room. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Goodbye Norman. You must be given time to dwell on your experience. I will visit you again… and maybe without scaring you next time.’
‘Wait!’ shouted Norman. ‘Next time…? When next time?’
The vision of Gabriel and his ethereal entourage began to fade. The heavenly choir performed a diminuendo, leaving the hum of late-night traffic to take its place. After a few seconds, all traces of the light had extinguished.
The flat seemed cramped and dirty.
‘What about the message?’ shouted Norman, his voice suddenly sounding ridiculous in the emptiness.
There was a short silence.
‘Oh… that?’ came a faint voice from the ether. ‘The entire fabric of the Universe is in danger of total and utter annihilation… and we’ve chosen you to help us save it.’
A toilet flushed on the floor above.
* * *
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© Andy Dane Nye 2021
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