By: Jon Mychal – ©2008
It was as though the two factions had set up base within the perimeter of a theme park, overlaid with the usual trappings associated with those ‘cookie-cutter’ strip malls found in most American suburbs.
‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ gave way to a ‘Starbucks’, where a child had been born two nights earlier under the light of an emergency back-up system.
Those who chose to call this shop home crunched hungrily on biscotti and chocolate-covered espresso beans, huddled behind the barista’s counter while fires raged outside and the sound of yelling and broken glass could be heard.
There was no religion here – at least none that could so easily be identified or even related to by those unfortunate enough to have passed through the anomaly on that day.
Instead, the feathered plume rose high and cast a long and obliterating blackness over the children of Mullahs and pastors alike, bending the minds of the faithful as it defied any prophet; the new paradigm not so much being revealed, but more like inserted in to the very psyches of those who bore witness to it’s presence.
Cameron slowly approached the main door of ‘Party Bazaar’ with a lump in his throat and a gripping tightness in his chest. What if this Tucker guy just shot him, no questions asked? There was the very real possibility that he was walking headlong in to a trap – a jig orchestrated by those who had doubted him from the start. Those desperate and frightened idiots had aligned themselves with the edgier, bravado-based rhetoric of Tucker Simms and his clan, opting instead to hunker down in a silly head shop rather than risk the indecisiveness fear could induce.
The newly fashioned ‘turnstile democracy’ Cameron’s crew had offered was starkly contrasted by the most primordial aspects found within these disenfranchised souls; the very notion of individuality utterly annihilated by circumstance.
Meanwhile, deep within the heart of the Cineplex, through torch-lit corridors, past darkened and still snack counters, meetings were being held in colossal theaters before three-storey viewing screens. Those willing to listen and participate in this new Town hall scenario gathered and gently reclined in ‘stadium-seating’ chairs, the drink holders on the arms of each now being used to store pens and notepads. A large plastic box with the words ‘Your Suggestions are Welcomed!’ written across the top in a flowing font reflective of a buoyancy belonging to a different era, stood in the middle of the main foyer, amid long-forgotten coin-op video games; their vacant screens flawlessly covered in dust like a first snowfall.
This place was vaguely reminiscent of the “holy city” described in the new testament ‘book of revelations’ – that of ‘New Jerusalem’, as it had been called – a giant cube of insane dimensions, hovering and floating over the middle east and fashioned entirely out of man’s favourite commodity: gold.
Cameron had read about this in his youth. He remembered the re-animated heavenly drones said to inhabit this ostentatious architectural tribute to extra-dimensional greatness, and thinking that it had always sounded more like a Borg vessel from a ‘Star Trek’ episode. He felt the old and dusty queasiness of an apocalyptically-inspired anxiety attack awaken and begin to wash over him, and so hastened on, his mind desperately trying to board a new train of thought.
