Eclipse: A Postmodern Odyssey Part 2 (Short Story)
BY SNAUT (@Snaut14 on twitter)
I was asleep. But it was one of those nights where I found myself in a strangely vivid dream.
I was crawling on all fours, through black soil towards a fire. Once I had gotten near it I reached out to the flame and it didn't burn me, but dissipated. Behind it were a series of concentric circles forming a tunnel. Almost crystalline in its outward appearance, I walked through the emerald, liminal rabbit hole. It almost felt like an eternity I found myself in a labyrinth, a vague anger and frustration gripped me until I stopped in my tracks. Something whispered to me, and I had a very gripping, primal notion that something was observing me. That is when the thud came. An abrupt burst of energy emerged from the back of my head in an instant – giving my body a shock. And I woke up, slowly opening my eyes.
I found myself in my tent , wrapped up by a sleeping bag. It was still dark outside, with a full moon that shone its light through the variety of trees and bushes. The fresh, leafy air poured in through my tent flap and I had taken a moment to relax. Something stirred inside of me, a quickening of the spirit, and I got up immediately – walking out into the campsite and beyond it – in the direction of some high ground overlooking a big clearing and beyond it, corries and lochs – so characteristic of the highland landscape – with sparse patches of pines dotted throughout. During my silent gaze over the vista I was approached by Henry.
Initially, he said nothing, but as time went on and we both got immersed in the view, he tilted his head and spoke to me.
“Why the long face?”
“I’ve had a bad dream.” I replied.
“Ah, so you’ve been visited by ‘them’ as well, have you?”
He jested at me with a slight smirk.
I was a little stunned, at first, but I took it in stride and mustered a response.
“Aye, don’t ken what to make of it.”
“Little devils they are.” He remarked.
“Most of us have also been having problems with them in our sleep, ever since setting up camp here.”
He continued.
A deep intrigue then gripped me, is this where all those folk tales come from – about spirits, about the otherworld? My experience was too undeniably real to simply dismiss it. Then a feeling of dread intruded into my bones, a horror, even, that ungrounded me, that haunted me.
“Aye, whatever lad.”
I retorted resolutely, if only to dam the neurotic flood that had briefly broken into me.
Henry laughed heartily, while patting me on my back.
“Put it out of your mind.” He urged me, cheerfully, before a solemn look slowly formed on his face.
“In any case, there’s work to be done.”
In the aftermath of the financial collapse, there was a very heavy malaise in the streets of Britain.
Districts fractured along ethnic and religious lines, and there was open violence in the streets. Muslims and Hindus formed opposing paramilitaries. Now that the material basis for this Babylon was subverted – the underlying old hatreds, the rigid loyalties that the managerial elites hoped would fade away reasserted themselves in an orgy of tribal violence.
Glasgow was not much better – although it had not strained itself to the hopeless extreme of the major metropolises in England, it had entered a period of low-level civil conflict comparable to the troubles in Northern Ireland several decades earlier. Wars and rumours of wars. The occasional public assassinations occurred; murmurings of bomb threats were overheard in the dark alleys.
My fellow travelers’ predictions turned out to be correct. Not only did the financial system plummet irrevocably, but also in the following days there was disordered violence in the cities which was reaching feverish proportions. During it all, there were all the usual suspects trying to rally the disoriented and bewildered masses like moths to a flame. In fact, this was only the latest iteration of the tyranny that has always been present but embodied in a more determined and ruthless faction – which had obviously gathered that the previous status quo wasn’t adequate to maintain their grip on the population. Some of them were agitators that were introduced by foreign powers, like how Lenin was introduced into the body politic of Russia by the Germans as a particularly virulent pathogen. Others were domestic, but still well connected to the parasitic milieu that has pervaded this country and had grown increasingly bolder in ensnaring us in their web of manipulation.
Initially this tightly knit clique had not bothered to give itself a name and openly proclaim its intentions upon seizing power but busied itself with the technical aspects of maintaining its venal grip on urban infrastructure and the means of communication and transport - it had seized cell towers, electrical grids, warehouses, and train stations among other key sites. It had enacted a blackout and paralysed the nation so that it could not know what was happening. Finally, after it had established itself as the predominant organised power in the urban centers, it had started publically proclaiming itself as “The Syndicate”.
As to the ideology of this cabal and the premise for its existence, it can be best summarised as the most distilled and naked iteration of everything that we despised about the ideals of our previous leaders, however more benign they may have been. Its modus operandi was a technocratic one - it had begun the slow work of building up its body of technicians, propagandists, and other professionals that were open to doing its bidding. The Syndicate’s immediate goal was to dispel the anarchy that emerged because of the worldwide economic fallout – but in doing this they set the foundation for a tyrannical dictatorship. The unwashed masses were baying for blood and the new, jumped-up sovereigns were only too willing to give it to them.