The Diving Bell

May 5, 2018May 20, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

please come back

Alli walked across the bottom of the pool, in a T-shirt and shorts, keeping her arms out to maintain her balance. Her breath rattled around in the metal skull; she looked out of the grate of the diving helmet. Underwater, the weaker gravity made the apparatus feel a little gentler on her shoulders.

She was awash in the warm water. But she was also awash in the static and comms of New York City, far away. She shifted the focus of her mind, like tuning an antenna, and different frequencies faded in and out. In the water, the signal of her mind was amplified. The radius of her reach was expanded, without her expending any greater energy on her part.

One voice rang out among the many, with greater expectancy and urgency. Downtown, in a quaint bistro, Nancy, the lab assistant, was reading the phone book. Alli homed in on this singular signal and broadcasted it back to the tower. Transmit and receive. Her training was complete.

the future is already here

Song

“On the Nightway” – Admo

Modernist Dream

April 28, 2018May 20, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

Nealy stood in the wood-paneled study, in her beige suit and red ascot. She poured a glass of wine from the glass decanter. Lightning illuminated the room, splitting the sky in two. The faint lamplight flickered across her face.

Alli sat in front of her, in a simple cashmere sweater and jeans. The rain raged outside, racing down the windows and pouring onto the balcony nearby.

The darkness pressed in on them, suffocating and urgent. All along the walls were tomes, ancient, leather-bound manuscripts, shrouded in dust, some of them written hundreds of years ago.

“There can be no future, without the past,” Nealy growled. Thunder snapped and cracked, in the distance. She poured a second glass for Alli. The scarlet liquid seemed to hover in the air, forever suspended in time, even as it flowed inevitably to its endpoint.

Alli stopped glancing around, and looked back at Nealy, her eyes flashing with a look that could have also cut the sky into pieces, “If that was the case, Nealy, then why did you leave me?”

The thunder grumbled in reply, rolling mindlessly, over the hills dotting the landscape.