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Jordan awakens with a jolt. He is disoriented, but he still knows his boundaries. He can see the bubble clearly now. What is it about God? He has never thought about it, but now he knows. He knows with complete certainty what happens next. If he were living two thousand years before, they’d have called him a prophet. Now, the only ones who know his situation would call him a plague.

He stands up and flexes the muscles of his arms. He pronates his palms and supinates them back again. The veins are standing out in his wrist. They pump blood that created a civilization and then destroyed it. They pump blood that will destroy again. He kicks down the door with preternatural strength unparalleled in his species. The shadow figure is an offering to the fire. He’s a sacrifice consumed in the ever-burning fire. Jordan feeds that fire.

He walks at a pace unequaled by even the rover vehicles of the Moon Colony. He no longer needs a suit for protection, he is the plague. He is death. He is the collapse of Universe they fear so much. He was unsure before he saw the translucent onion peel of the bubbled dome. He knows the dark and he knows the light. He is both and the shadow shows features light refuses to acknowledge.

He reaches the sunlight. He is drenched in the yellow part of the spectrum. It gives him power beyond power. It’s a solar battery fueling an electrical storm. He’s a fire plague, riding on the back of a locust swarm. The seals have been opened and the trumpeters trumpet. The horses are riding and the locusts are leading, the trumpets shoot fire from their horns. Rough beast, it’s hour come round at last; sloughing nearer to the golden eye of destiny.

He is careful when he reaches the colony. He enters with the pace of a human. No one must know. It’s a silent storm, very personal. He walks past the guard, through the gates. The computer no longer recognizes him as human. It doesn’t make a sound.

He doesn’t pay attention to the humans; they come later. He kicks in the door to the temple with the same ease as the VLA shack. The material doesn’t have the density of his heart. The heart is heating. The blood is beginning to bubble and pop. His fists clench as he walks down the hallway. The trumpets stop trumpeting and the horses stop riding. The locusts are gone, but the fire’s still burning.

When he reaches the door, it slides open, and the men seem to be expecting him. They are seated and looking at him with interested gazes. He walks in and immediately sees the white-hair man to his right.

The man speaks, “Boy, I know you’re angry. But you must listen to reason.” He is backing away and Jordan is walking closer. “I…I…We, we thought it would be best for your safety…”

Jordan grabs the man by the collar, “Enough talk. We have business.” He slams the man into the wall and the diamond-steel sword falls and clangs. He holds him in place with one hand. He turns to look at the others.

Jordan’s eyes turn bloody, then white-hot. The council members all drop to their knees with their arms back to support them in a triangle posture. They look up to the ceiling. Their eyes glow white-hot as well. Spandex suits catch fire at the sternum. Skin is completely melted away and hearts are bubbling and popping as if they were on a spit. Eyes fade Antarctic-blue and the hearts tumble from their chests and lie smoking on the floor under the table. Bodies go limp.

The white-hair man still lives. “Jordan, I know you’re upset, but please try to listen to reason. We didn’t need them, Jordan. They never did anything anyway. It was I, Jordan; I set it all up. I executed everything. I’m the one who built history and revised it. I can help you. I’ll work with you now. You need me, Jordan.”

Jordan drags the man, with one arm, down the hallway. Two guards rush out to stop him. Their hair catches flame and blood pours from their eyes, ears, noses, and mouths. Jordan drags the man into the VLA room. He swings the white-haired mass towards the computer console. “Take a reading.” His voice booms off the walls.

The man pushes buttons and a picture appears on the CCD monitor. ERROR….ERROR … ERROR, flashes across the screen. The man says, “My God, the size of the Universe is less than zero. How can that be?” The man appears to have forgotten Jordan in his crisis of observation.

Jordan walks calmly towards the computer and smacks the man’s hands away from the keyboard. “Have you ever been dead and didn’t know it? I want you to know the secret that’s been kept from you for so long.” Jordan pushes the return button and the computer takes another reading. The answer comes back and the man’s face contorts in fear as he scoots against the wall with a force that knocks computer chips off the shelves.

He says, “Impossible. Unthinkable.”

The computer gives a reading for the size of the Universe that is bigger than the initial reading taken 57 years ago. Jordan looks at the man, then looks away. He says, “Everything ends old man. Your time is over and your temple is crumbling.”

The foundation trembles. Jordan’s eyes display the heart’s rise in temperature. The white-hair man leans up on his knees and looks to the sky. Same routine, same fire. Same sound the heart makes falling to the floor. The building’s coming down.

Jordan hacks the man’s head with the diamond-steel sword and carries them both out of the convulsing building. Tapestries are falling to the ground and being smashed by pillars of metal. The building has toppled and the council has fallen.

© 1998 by Joshua Minton

photo credit: şãÐ FέëŁίήg™

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