Sky

The Sky – Alan Hancock 2024

With thanks to the illustrators of the cover to Ian McEwan’s novel ‘Saturday’ – this image inspired my story

1, 150 words

He doesn’t go and make that coffee, he doesn’t check the NASDAQ and the Dow Jones Index, the DAX and the FTSE, the Brent Crude spot prices or US dollar exchange rate forecasts, not that day, or ever again. Because he lingers at the bedroom wondow and watches Venus beaming down on North London, next to her the Post Office Tower lit by its electronic and neon beacons that outshine any star or planet. He’s not sure which comes first, the thought or the vision that arrives, and stays for only moments, but then stays in his mind for the rest of his life. And not just in his mind. It’s a presence he can feel as it courses through his body, lighting up a tracery of nerves and neurons like a coloured Taoist body map.

The thought goes like this: If I have a grandchild and they are alive in this city in 2084 – Why 2084? he wonders later, but the date arrives ready formed, implacably precise - what if they look out, one night sixty years from now, when I am long gone from this world - what will they see? Will this city, this country, this world still be a pleasant place to live? And what have I done to help ensure that it is? He’s unsure whether the vision comes as the thought unwinds, or a moment earlier. But he sees it, as real as the plane trees that line the street beneath his bedroom window. Afterwards he often asks himself exactly what he saw that night, as if he might rewind a video and pause it at 03.09 on the third of June 2024 and examine the picture in detail. But his mind has no such function, as well he knows. He’s read all the articles on unreliable witnesses, on the frailty of human memory, on the way we create and recreate the remembered moment each time we recall it until it wears out, until it becomes a Chinese whisper version of the original that no longer bears any resemblance to the moment lost in the flow of time: a fake.

But no – this is different. It remains clear, timeless, vivid both for those short moments and then for him to hold for the rest of his days. In the years since it happened he has told only one person what he witnessed. They had listened, nodded, and then said just three words: “Yes, of course.” Of course.

In that moment, at three oh nine precisely, a disc of light descends, concentric circles centred on the top of the Post Office Tower. It is all colours at once, ripples of violet, green pink and dull red running in together to form a tight ball above the tower’s summit. There is a sudden burst of white light out of which a figure emerges, in silhouette. It must be many metres tall to be clear at this distance: feminine but not human, that’s all the information the memory holds about its form. It is definitely not human. And feminine - maybe it’s the effect of Venus, shining close by in the pre-dawn sky. Then in a shift of perspective he realises that the figure isn’t a giant, far off on the top of the tower, it is person-sized, and close. In fact it is no more than a few feet away from him, poised in the air above the rain-slick tarmac of the street in front of his house. It raises an arm as if in greeting, or recognition. Without hesitation or any awareness of deciding to take this action, he finds himself lifting his own arm in reply. He’s not fearful, but intrigued and delighted. It is as if he’s seeing a strange new species of bird or butterfly in his neighbourhood, something that is normally restricted to places far from the concrete and human din that is central London. Then it’s gone and the night sky returns to its usual state.

But something remains and hangs in the night air – an idea, a message, wordless inside his head, but still clear. He cannot say if it is spoken, or comes to him as a piece of music or some kind of song. It is simple: ‘We are waiting for you.’ Over and out. Later he thinks it might be, ‘Come and find us. You’ll know.’ And he has the realisation that what he witnessed was like a bridge between worlds, or a mobius strip that joins up things that occupy different dimensions in time and space. What he saw, and heard inside, was both happening in 2024 and in 2084, with his grandchild.

He sleeps long and well. Next day he wakes with a decision: he will go and find them, or it, or whatever it is that is not here in this house, in this life. He makes a number of phone calls: he’s taking leave, needs a rest, the last few years have been gruelling. He will travel, get away from city and work; he’s not sure when he’ll be back. There are protestations, which he ignores. He has decided. This phase of his life is over, now it’s time to find out what will be the next.

When was the last time he had travelled footloose and free? he wonders. Before he married, before the children were born, grew up, and left, followed not a long time later by a wife who had expressed a desire to leave the confines of a comfortable life where she came second to a husband’s career and find her own way in the world. It would have been the late-70s, and he had spent three months taking a random tour through Eastern Europe, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Nepal. Well he wouldn’t be repeating that trip. No wad of US dollars and travellers cheques packed into a body-belt wallet this time: just the app on his phone. ’Come and find us.’ But where to look? He’s on the flight-booking website when it comes to him. Without knowing how he knows it, he now has his destination. He resists the urge to question, analyse and look for other options. For a man who has spent the last thirty years making large amounts of money for both himself, and for his employers in the hedge fund business, out of making carefully considered decisions about which option to take, for a man who has lived his adult life through the application of rational thought and the rejection of intuition, this is at the same time deeply uncomfortable and thrilling.  A few minutes later he has booked a flight for the following day to Denver Colorado, with a connection to Santa Fe Mexico, then a Rail Runner Express to Taos Mexico. He’ll sort out the rest when he arrives. The instructions that had come to him had been precise. Then what? ‘You’ll see’. He digs out from the recesses of a cupboard a North Face backpack that he hasn’t used for years. He’s ready.