The New World

Force

The child is sitting by a lake, not far from his parents' cottage where he spends his vacations. He often sits there, contemplating the reflections dancing on the water. His dog barks happily and excitedly, urging him to play with him. A man he knows approaches hesitantly and smiles. His gaze is gentle and understanding. He sits down not far from him. They both start throwing pebbles on the water to make ricochets. The man talks to him about the past. His words are like the waters of the lake, thirst-quenching, endless.

Then, something must have changed. Has the shadow of a cloud passed? The dog has fallen silent. No more reflections on the lake. No more lake, no more family home. The child realizes that the man speaking is himself. And he no longer understands what he's saying. It scares him now. The child doesn't want to be here and there, in two different bodies. He backs away, but the man's gaze becomes insistent, hypnotic. His eyes widen, become as big as the sky. The child realizes that this man is after his spirit, his integrity. So he bends down, crouches down, sinks into the ground, as it were, to hide, to escape this gaze, this thought that wants to insinuate itself into his own. And the child jumps, very high, higher than he'll ever jump. He doesn't fall back, but flies effortlessly, his bare legs stretched out behind him. The cold blue air in which he hovers does him good. A familiar melody guides and sustains him. He sees the lake, the house, from above. His parents see him and wave. All fear is gone. The child is well.

The internal alarm continued its little melody. Mens Ridge awoke from his sleep. His mind was emergingfrom the Refuge, as an adult butterfly comes out from its cocoon. Now Mens could see it from the outside. He opened his eyes and regained full consciousness, realizing he was drenched in sweat. Often, too often, he had this same dream where, as a child or as an adult, he saw himself threatened by a Mind Devourer.

His attention was drawn to a message: he had to get to the Wamash as soon as possible to start questioning people arrested the day before.

He stood up and stretched, then headed for the shower room. The hot shower washed away the morning's tension. After shaving, he splashed water on his face and quickly examined himself in the mirror: it was the image of a young man, with an angular, narrow face and prematurely grey hair, with a bitter crease at the corner of his mouth.

In the kitchen, breakfast was ready. Like every morning, he stepped out onto his small balcony, a cup of coffee in hand. It was his favorite hour on Archangel. The sun was just rising above the mists hanging over the eastern range. Its first rays cast coppery reflections on the distant towers of the old abandoned Downtown, contrasting with the soft blue of the Cali sky. Flocks of birds animated this transparent stillness.

From the top of his twelfth floor, he could see a group of people in the square below, as they did every morning, practicing their Tai-chi fitness routine. His neighborhood was one of Archangel's few remaining inhabited blocks.

Letting his gaze wander, he followed the line of thin, disheveled palm trees tracing infinite perspectives along the now almost lifeless boulevards of the ancient megalopolis. He finished his coffee, contemplated the view for a few more moments, which had the gift of soothing him better than any other landscape, and then went inside. He pulled a gray-blue suit out of the closet and dressed, watching the news on his changing wall, where he'd put Civic Channel.

"New assassination of a Chosen", announced the presenter, a female avatar with blond hair styled in a strict bun. "The Honorable Gwyneth Thorsteindottir was found last night in her Reykya apartment, brutally murdered. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the murder. However, the Honorable Sister Gwyneth had been decapitated (images of the senator, with a blur masking her decapitation, appeared), which is, of course, reminiscent of the Jihadists since this is their modus operandi."