The Rapture: Australia Undone

  The story had to begin somewhere; the untangling.  All those birds flying through graveyards had to dissipate sometime, down narrow lanes and past the desolate aftermath of war. It had to begin somewhere, all these antique threads, the false beginnings, the descent back into the ordinary.  He had said loudly enough: All I want to be is ordinary. But when he got there, it was a nightmare all of its own making. Barely sentient. No rushes of lyricism, no crowded thoughts and thronging personalities jostling for attention. Barely capable of stringing one thought after another, as he spent his days contemplating the evolution of intelligence. Nothing, just nothing, encased in aging flesh.  So it had to begin again, the master, the servant, the Glory Be, the transcendent thoughts that added to nothing. He wasn't trying to be a better person. He wasn't anything, so in that terrible gap, in that shocking realisation, he simply had to begin again, before the flesh wore out ...

It was the staggering deceit of those who set out to destroy him that truly did his head in. It was an unhelpful trait for a journalist, that he was surprised when people lied to him. But lied, and lied, and lied they did. He switched off; hid from the roving machines, delved deep into the ordinary, just as he had been forced to do before. The spirits abandoned him; or went silent. "A field is just a field," as Nick Cave had put it.  And so they went on. The bastards destroyed any possible link, their craven greed, their absolute dishonesty."I did whats I had to do," one of the most dishonest of them had said, dragging him through a court system he had no desire to go near. There was no non publication order. They were easy to expose. Yet he remained silent, masqueraded as a tired old drunk, told them to leave him on this mortal coil, not the beginning, not the end, just there in the flux beyond time or the edge of time, a civilisational collapse, a moment in their ...