agentblack

I dreamt I was on a ship on the sea at night.

It was a ferry, and it sat low in the water because it was too full of people and their cars and their luggage. People sat and crouched on the decks, building little demarcations of territory with bags and suitcases and coats.

Across the water I could see other ferries, all heading in the same direction. The lights from their windows made them look like blocks of flats floating on the dark water. They wallowed low in the water as well.

All the ships, and the people and their cars and their luggage, were all trying to escape something. I could've looked back to were the ships were sailing away from, but I couldn't bring myself to. I thought about flames that ate whole cities, sticky black smoke, the smell of burnt concrete and snapped metal.

One of the ferries was sinking, up ended and sliding backwards into the water. Horns blared as it sank, other ferries made slow wide curves around it. I went inside, so I wouldn't have to look.

Inside, the carpet was wet. Water oozed up around people feet as they walked. I went downstairs to try and find out why, but the stairs were blocked by piles of cases and duffel bags. Water was trickling through them.

The ship began to lean. A child was crying. I began to run back outside to the deck, but the room span and I fell, and then the water engulfed me, rushing from everywhere.

Underwater I began to swim for the direction I thought the deck was. My lungs began to twitch and ache. I swam as hard as I could, but I knew that the ship was sinking faster than I could swim.

Monday morning at The Institute. My role as Doctor Inspellen's assistant takes me all over the building, but for the last three months we've mainly been working from Four-Spire, the tower that commands the best view of the city.

Inspellen claims that the Institute's architecture was designed to call to mind the "Great Holy Spaces" of the world.
The great mass of the main building then, a huge edifice of ramparts and harsh angles eventually capped by a ziggurat, its exterior colonised by a raucous parliament of rooks that Inspellen introduced - when I asked why, he spoken vaguely of 'symbolic references to underworld messengers'. Inside, the building is a maze of vast airy halls and atriums, vertiginously high arched ceilings supported by monstrous pillars as wide and tall as trees from some primeaval forest. Huge stained glass windows scatter hard edged puddles of colour over mosaic floors.

At each corner of the Institute's main building rises a huge tower or minaret, reaching high enough for the maintenance workers who work on the outside to need bottled air and parachutes at the upper levels.
Inspellen had claimed, as usual, the uppermost space of the spire as his office.
Whilst I could understand the idea behind this choice - As top man at the Institute, Inspellen felt the need to declare his prestige at every opportunity - I resented the inconvenience caused.

As much as he enjoyed the image of being 'the wizard in his high tower', Inspellen disliked being far from the action. As a result I spent my time trailing after him as he ricocheted from laboratory and archive to the huddled forums of the other senior men in their common rooms, carrying his computer tablet and the masses of hard copy data - files and files of paper, stacks of disks, and spools of microfiche - that he would flourish and jabber over and point at and gesture with.
The work at Spire-Four seemed to require even more of this activity than usual, and more than once I wished he could have forgone his usual dramatic impulse and chosen an office at the hub of his work for a change.

On rare occasions Inspellen felt the need to ruminate without distractions, and would retreat back to his Office. Even then I could not relax, Four-Spire was the highest of the Institute's towers and even though most of this height was caused by the communications gantry mounted to the roof, with its forest of aerials and dishes, It was still high enough for the curvature of the Earth to be seen.

I was not normally struck by heights, but the view could still catch me unawares, and make me flinch involuntarily.
I had, early on in my career with Inspellen, met one of the senior engineers who had helped build the Institute. He had told me about the cutting edge polymers and composite materials that had been developed just for the towers, which enabled them to climb so high without the need the need for buttressing or other support.

This high up, I took no comfort from the knowledge, and tended to move around the office with an inordinate amount of care, as though balancing on the edge of a cliff. I would've been happier crawling.

Today, we were somewhere in the mid level of Four-Spire, higher than most birds fly, but low enough for me to glance out of the window without whimpering. We had left a computer lab, where Inspellen had been conferring with some of the artificial intelligence theorists - "All artifice is intelligent!", that was one of his favourite declarations - and were on the way to one of the comon rooms, where he had arranged to meet with Gillespierre and Krouger.

"Do you understand what I mean by the Oracle Effect?"
Inspellen had to repeat himself. Although it was his habit to talk to me about his work, and the myriad notions and ideas that occurred to him, I had not been paying attention.
I had been in the tail end of an affair for the last few weeks. My phone calls had not been returned for days, and I had started writing a letter to her several times, before the futility of it all would come crashing down on me and I'd tear the paper in half, before starting again a few minutes later.

That morning, I'd found one of her hairs on a pillow, dyed black, the blond showing through at the root. I had pawed at it dumbly, like a wounded animal, before the realisation of what I was doing dawned on me.
I had left it on my pillow though, and my awareness of it waiting there gnawed at me.

"The what, sir?

"The Oracle Effect, do you understand the term?"

I shook my head. Inspellen often refered to Effects and Events and Thresholds. Some were obscure terms that could be found in textbooks on impossibly narrow fields - Superheated plasma dynamics - others Inspellen had just coined earlier that day.

"It's not important right now - Do you have the Zemeckis tables to hand?"


The war has lasted for four thousand years. It is a battle that rages across a plain so wide that it stretches past the lip of the horizon in all directions.
Where ever I look, I see men fighting. Crows hop amongst the dead, too bloated with the meat of corpses to fly.

Each army is equally huge, the ranks of men and standards on both sides stretching out across this plain without measure. Each army is monstrous, gargantuan. Too big to manoeuvre, too vast to command. All that there is bloody slaughter, waves of men crashing together and rending each apart, screaming their bloody defeat and roaring grim victory in the same breath.

It does not end. The sun rises and sets on us. The rain falls on us, steaming on our hot skin, washing the blood from us for a few seconds. The snow is ground under feet and corpses to freezing blood stained mud. We fight on.

All men are here, all soldiers, all fighters. Roman legionaries cut down naked tribesman from some equatorial jungle armed with hardwood clubs and stone tipped spears.
Saxon thegn-men form a shield wall and stab and push their way through and over a phalanx of Macedonian hoplites.
Danes in mail hauberks with kite shields and heavy axes roar and batter their bloody way through tough Dalaymi from the mountains of Iran.
Marines, armed with Thompsons and M4 carbines stand their ground and mow down a troop of Sassanian heavy cavalry.
Janissaries launch volleys of musket fire against a throng of Pictish warriors.

I stumble over bodies three deep, in armour slick with blood and sweat and the vomit of men disembowelled by spear thrusts. My breath roars through my teeth as hot as a furnace under the heavy metal bucket of my helm. I hide behind my shield from maces, axes, spears and arrows, and then swing my sword with an arm so tired it feels like lead.

Through the blade, I feel skulls break, flesh part, and bones snap. Blood leaks through the layers of my armour, over my coat of plates, through chain mail, soaking through the tough and padded cloth of my gambeson, until it mixes with the sour sweat that pours from my skin.

I shriek as I fight, with anger, with terror. Piss soaks my leg. A horse falls, screaming. It's missing a leg. It bucks and kicks, trying to right it's self, falling again. It sounds just like a woman as it screams. I stagger over to it and hack clumsily at it's neck until it lies still. A spear rams into my side, the armour holds but I twist and stumble and fall backwards over the horse's neck. The horse smells of warm hay and blood. I'm sobbing inside the darkness of my helmet as I get back up.


We had three more meetings in as many different locations before he started again on the Oracle effect. By this time we'd attracted a sizeable entourage, stragglers trailing behind us as Inspellen paced towards the central bank of elevators for Four-Spire.

I recognised a few of the faces in the lift with us as we descended into the basement levels of Spire Four. I was friendly with some of the junior members of the Alternative Contexts faculty who were accompanying the lift party; we were similar ages and shared the same sense of humour. We nodded to each other as the senior heads talked amongst themselves.

Inspellen began addressing the lift. My ears popped five times whilst he spoke, the lift dropping at a speed that was so fast it stopped being something you could imagine, and became just numbers

"What we're trying to achieve here is attain a level of influence that is otherwise lacking to us.
Something that I want all of us here to bear in mind is a quote by one of the popes, I forget which one I'm afraid"

There was some laughter at this. Inspellen was notoriously absent minded when it came to remembering the sources of the quotes he loved to pepper his addresses with.
I found that it was one of the reasons I enjoyed his company so much, aside from the dizzying directions his mind could take, and his irrepressibly curious outlook.
Nothing annoys me more than the pompous way some people have of ending a quote with a solemn announcement of who said it, as though this should somehow add to understanding gained from it.

" Anyway, it goes something like, 'You should learn my son, on how little knowledge the world is run.' Our heads of state are men of excellent education, I have no doubt, but their profession is by necessity one of generalised knowledge. They must be a jack of many trades, master of none.

We on the other hand, have the luxury of being able to specialise. I think it's fair to say that all of you here are something of an expert in your chosen field, yes?"

More laughter. Inspellen was a popular man, despite his place at the top of the hierarchy at the Institute.

"What we're working on here is a chance for us to pool our talents, and provide something of use to the world, something of more subtle benefit than the social constructs or mathematical models that we have already supplied. Grandiose words, I'm sure, but I hope once you all realise the scope of our project, you'll accuse me of understatement rather than hubris".

Inspellen was interrupted by the soft jerk of the lift slowing. The door opened with a hiss, and Inspellen lead the way.