“You are immortal,” he was told. “You will live forever.” This was quite impressive news to take in. To be told that one would never die is like releasing a pressure valve. Time stops, in an instant, suddenly an intangible force. The man drank a cup of tea, and sat in a chair for a long while, and thought about how he would move forward with this impressive news. He got nowhere fast. The tea grew cold, and the chair began to sink.
Kiko stepped gingerly through the mess, desperate not to disturb any of it. She could feel the woman’s eyes on her back, willing her not to interfere. She had shown Kiko through the house, taken her to the room, but had stayed half a metre back the whole time. Kiko could understand. She was carrying finality into the woman’s life like a virus.
So here he found himself; in the bowels of a decaying, archaic church that jutted out from a rocky cliff, overlooking a hamlet full of poor, foolhardy people. People desperately carving out an existence, their wretched lives watched on by this crumbling reminder of a God that had forgotten them. It made him sick, their squalor.
Fredriks collapsed to his knees in a sea of blue. Wherever he was, the geometry was beyond his understanding. There was only colour – a wide wash of azure that enveloped him, held him up, kept at bay the cold void outside. It was a serene escape, a final twist in his final journey. And it would all be for naught if he died within the all too tangible confines of a space helmet.
It had happened more slowly than anyone had thought. At first, people were fascinated. Gripped and moved by the bundle of energy that announced itself warmly on a quiet corner. People would come and sit and watch as it pulsed and glowed, flecks of debris and dead leaves picked up by its wake, swirling around its centre. Beautiful.
