Gideon and the Star

I don't know yet what this will become...

A silver flask sits at the edge of a nightstand in a stylish, high-end hotel near the west side of town. Gideon Nebuls tries to relax in a brown chair on his balcony. His room is on the 4th floor. It's late afternoon and the sun has just begun its nighttime routine while the rain continues to fall from the mottled sky. Gideon listens to droplets beat away at the balcony overhang as he watches the people below move about like ants in a farm. 
He tries to relax.
The phone rings from across the room. Gideon, legs full of anxiety, gets up out of his chair to answer it. It rings two more times before he finally picks up the receiver.
"Good evening, Mr. Nebuls," says the concierge at the 1st floor front-desk, "I hope you're enjoying your stay."
"I am, Yes. Thank you." Gideon replies. His voice is low and coarse.
"Very good, sir. I just wanted to check in. There is a Mr. Conners on the line. Shall I put him through?"
Gideon thought for a moment. Mr. Conners? He couldn't recall the name. He was never one to take a call of someone whose name or number he didn't recognize and, yet, at the same time he always hated when people left voice messages. But what did it matter? It was, after all, his last night on Earth.
"Go ahead. Put him through." He told the concierge. 
"Very good, sir. Have a good night." There was a brief pause while the line switched between the front desk and Mr. Conners line.
"Hello?" Gideon asked. His tone had now shifted from tired to curious.
"Mr. Nebuls? Hello. My name is Mr. Conners. You don't know me and we've never met, but I know that in approximately 12 hours from now you will be boarding a ship that you will be a passenger on for the next 4 years. I know that to you, however, it will only seem like mere minutes. Mr. Nebuls I am calling to tell you that terrible things are about to happen. Things that have been building and building behind the scenes, behind what you call your world and within everything you see and feel. Things, Mr. Nebuls, things are going to get very bad. I'm calling to warn you, Mr. Nebuls, that the mission you have signed up for, the mission you've been preparing for the past year, is not going to succeed. You will not reach your destination and your entire crew will die. Do you understand this, Mr. Nebuls?"
Gideon tries to adjust himself to the words he's hearing, 
"Is this a joke?" he responds, uneasily. 
"I can assure you, Mr. Nebuls, that this is no joke. I need you to comprehend what I'm saying. I know this is difficult for you but you need to listen to me. Terrible things will happen whether you're on this planet or not."
"This plane- How do you know this?! I don-" The phone goes to dial tone before he can finish. Gideon looks at the phone, at the receiver, and back again. He hangs up the phone and picks it back up to dial the front desk. The concierge comes across the phone.
"Hi. This is Gideon Nebuls," he began, tense and excited, "I'm in room 1138. Listen, I just received a call from a Mr. Conners. I don't know who this person is but is there any way you can trace that call? You know, find the number he was on?" 
The concierge was taken aback. "Um, I'm sorry, sir?" he asked back.
"Can you find the number that just called me?!" Gideon became more heated.
There was a pause. Only the sound of Gideon's breathing came over the phone. "Mr. Nebuls," the concierge began, "Sir I'm looking at your phone records and the last call you received was two nights ago. There have been no new calls today."

A Revisiting (Part VI) "103107"

counting backwards from ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one...

the heat permeates through the entire structure like lighting strikes. nonstop, failure after failure attack the systems, the controls succumb to the pressure, the flames pour into the circuitry, empty you bottles of wine, they flow like a river of the gods, pressure and fire throughout the entire level. this is it. this is the beginning of the end. trapped in this death case high above the floating sphere, looking down upon the end of the world and he can't escape it. though he can't imagine what is going on below. might as well have it easy.

"i permit the high council to have this report reviewed and analyzed to the most direct effect, scrutinized to the last period. i believe you will come to realize that my findings on the matter are far more severe than we had first imagined. they, as we had first disputed, had it correct the entire time. throughout the research that went into this study they knew all along the outcome of this debacle. what fools they must think of us now and, as you will see, fools are nothing but what we have come to be. i pray that this information finds you in the deepest regard of your being and that you take any and every step needed to rectify the situation thusly. good day, gentlemen"

five minutes from now two men will walk into the convenience store in the southern part of newark and ask for two bottles of vodka and a pack of cigarettes. one man will be wearing a long coat and sandals. the other a tye dye shirt and gym shorts. ten minutes from now they will exit the convenience store, purchases in hand, and continue to the automobile of one of the men. twenty-three seconds ago a fire began in the caspian sea. it spread like wildfire to the outlying borders. a fisherman and his son were killed in the inferno. eleven minutes into the future a bomb goes off. the moon weeps and the sun sets and no one is heard from again.

have you figured it out yet?

A revisiting (Part II) "a beginning with no end"

Stars collide in the midnight sky

And form matter transcended from dust.

I could not discern between fabrics of time

And space befitting of us.

Though suns when they shine may be bright for some time

They play on illusion of sight.

When bodies black out they leave us to doubt

With old photographs of light.

The moon hangs low beneath blankets of black

Sprinkled softly with points of white.

And I think to myself while the stars still implode

How I could ever reach such heights.

 

 

Sleep could not have come sooner for him, although he wished at once that it had kept its distance from him. In his dreams, his nightmares, he found himself frightened the most. Even when the days dragged on and his body gave way to fatigue he would wish for protection from the unconscious state that worried him so. It was both savior and sacrifice at the same time. Sleep. The sandman's realm. The place where anything can become real and false all together. Imagination meets fear and curiosity in the chambers of slumber. For the man, however, it was more a prison, a punishment if you will, than it was a relief. And when he closes his eyes the terror grips at him even more.

 

Space is vast. You can tell just by gazing into the night sky. It contains billions upon billions of stars within billions of galaxies. Particles and molecules of dust and matter, hydrogen gas forming together with specks of cosmic material forging itself to newborn nebulas in the white hot genesis of the universe. The cosmos has existed for billions of years. We have existed from merely a handful of years. And in his conscience he is existing within seconds of himself and finding within what no man should ever see.

 

Awake. Suddenly. Alert. Floating. Through the blackness and the vacuum of space he floated there. It must have been days now, weeks even. The concept of time was lost to him lost to an environment where every hour, every minute, is darkness save for the faint glimmer of a distant star. No, time does not exist out here. Only the memory of time. Time lost and never regained. He mourns time, mourns the absence, the map it creates through the sharp and vague, the net it weaves through the firsts and lasts, the people he once knew and those he will never meet. The loves. The losses. Charting the ups and downs like a master cartographer. He mourns those now. For when you exist in total darkness, and a complete void, what purpose does time continue to serve?

 

 

I had dreamed once, long ago, before the darkness came to be. To remember it is a sweet release from the blackness I have come to know to well. I think of it often. In this dream, hard as it may be to believe, I am engaged in a most epic conflict with the sun itself! But I suppose that is what makes dreams, the unbelievable.