Matt Eaton - Blank

“What have you done to everyone in Alice?”

“We manage their memories, and doing so we maintain order.”

“You have no right,” said Luckman angrily.

Cutler bristled. “We have saved them from themselves. While they remain under our protection they are safe.”

“Your protection won’t be much good to them if the Chinese decide to nuke the defence base.”

“It is up to you to persuade them not to.”

Luckman laughed. “Persuade them? America’s ready to go to war.”

“Neither country is responsible for the Flood.”

“You sound very certain.”

“It was we who caused the ice shelf to collapse.”

Luckman felt the ground tipping beneath his feet. “ You? But… why?”

“To save the Earth.”

“By destroying it?”

“We have not destroyed the Earth, Mr Luckman. We have merely dealt with its greatest threat – humanity.”

“You mean you played God.”

“If by that you mean to characterise a flood of such magnitude as an act of god, then yes. To further the Biblical analogy, we used water to cleanse the world of pestilence.”

“You bastards are human just like the rest of us,” yelled Pat.

“No, that’s just it,” Luckman realised. “You don’t see yourselves as human, do you Mr Cutler?”

“We are not at all like the rest of you,” he concurred. “Humanity has for too long believed its dominion over the Earth was sacrosanct. Your wars, your economics, your politics all became more important to you than sustaining the very thing that keeps you alive. Human civilisation advanced so very far, yet it failed to conceive of a mechanism to prevent the terrible outcomes of its own expansion. And so while the climate shifted and forests fell and oceans were stripped of life, humanity’s only response was to keep doing what it has always done.”

Luckman was horrified, yet part of him was also strangely impressed. He had discussed such things so many times with his friends in the environmental movement, although it was a dialectic no-one ever dared pursue to its ultimate conclusion. To do so necessitated going way beyond the concept of eco-terrorism. This was nothing short of eco-extermination.

“Your response is entirely understandable,” said Cutler, “because it is predicated on the assumption that the species of homo sapiens sapiens is more important than everything else on this planet.”

“I’m guessing there are a whole lot of other species you’ve taken out as well,” said Luckman.

“Not as many as you might think. Did you know prior to the ice shelf collapse more than 900 species had become extinct on your planet – more than 100 of them since 2006? Human civilisation had overpowered evolution as the dominant force of nature. And it surely cannot have escaped your attention that humanity remains far from extinct. The current global population now is only nominally lower than it was at the time of Christ.”

“If you include the Blanks,” said Luckman.

“I do – don’t you?” Cutler replied.

“Father Clarence found out what you did and you killed him for it,” said Pat.

“This is the least of what Clarence Paulson knew,” said Cutler.

“ Why did you kill him?” asked Luckman.

“He was demanding full disclosure from us. He delivered us an ultimatum. Either we revealed ourselves or he would do so for us. This was not in our best interests.”

Luckman’s head was spinning. He could no longer be sure of whether he was awake or dreaming. He felt as if he was venturing perilously close to the edge of sanity. His gaze fell upon Perrurle. The spirit man’s eyes held him to the spot. It was Dog who started Luckman along the path that led here. Everything that had transpired between them had led to this moment. In Dog, if nothing else, he could trust.

If he couldn’t hold onto that now he was already lost.

“You can keep your secret, I don’t give a damn,” said Luckman. “But tell me how you saved him. I can save millions of lives.”

Cutler shook his head. “The process was imperfect. We could not risk such outcomes on a larger scale. The results would be… unpredictable.”

That Cutler could place such little value on the future of the human race seemed incomprehensible. But as Luckman stared deep into the man’s eyes he knew contesting the point further would be a waste of time. He turned to Pat and placed a firm hand on his shoulder. “Time for us to leave.”

“Outside this cave a chariot awaits,” Cutler called after him.

Luckman suspected whatever the Others had in mind would suit their purposes alone. He was no more than a mouse on a wheel to them, that much was clear. He looked down at the flames of the spirit man’s fire before gazing one last time into his eyes, but Perrurle was giving nothing away.

“Goodbye, John Cutler.”

They stepped back into the desert moonlight and he saw the chariot to which Cutler had referred. Luckman found himself gripped by a fearsome awe. The ship hovered just above the sand some 200 metres below them at the foot of the escarpment. It was saucer-shaped and lit up like an amusement ride pulsing through a neon kaleidoscope that painted the surrounding desert in mesmerising lights and dancing shadows. It made no sound, although Luckman heard the wind whistling sharply along the rocky escarpment like the land itself was wary of the craft’s presence. Part of him wondered if he should try to get closer. But above all else, the longer he stared the more he simply wanted to flee.

“You see it, don’t you Pat?”

“Yeah brudda, I see it.”

“Any suggestions?”

“Run.”

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. You’d better head back to the boys.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll go over the range and down the other side. If they want me, they’ll have to catch me.”

“Mate, these buggers have destroyed the world. I don’t think one blackfella on foot will prove much of a problem.”

“Go on,” said Luckman, “get outa here.”

Pat needed no further encouragement.

Luckman started to walk toward the ridge line, fighting the urge to run. Panic rose in his chest. It went against everything he knew to turn his back on such a dangerous foe. It might have been no more than a futile gesture of disdain, yet he was not about to make it easy for them.

He made it over the ridge and almost to the bottom of the range before the ship appeared again – directly overhead. Close enough to touch. He stopped running. He stopped wanting to run.

The bottom of the ship rippled like pooled mercury. It mirrored the rocky hillside, but also illuminated the reflection to make it brighter. He sensed he could enter the ship just by touching it and immediately the impulse to do so became irresistible. He stretched out his arm like a leper in search of a miracle.

They were still flying, but no spacecraft held them aloft. Perrurle guided him by the arm as they drifted through the air in a simple and effortless defiance of gravity.

A broken city stretched out at their feet, an ocean pounding upon its ruins. He realised it was the Gold Coast, or a version of it. But it was devoid of colour – a world in black and white.

“No living thing has survived here. Despair has taken care of that,” Perrurle explained.

Slowly they drifted toward the rooftop of a building that was at once both familiar and strange, a composite of many parts. It was the idea of a building or, perhaps more precisely, it was the nightmare of a building. Its structure was unstable, its design fundamentally flawed. Yet somehow it remained aloft.

They landed upon its roof and Luckman saw the world below him as a place to be feared. A place ruled by fear.