Seven at Two Past Five

by Tara Basi

  “Now, all you have to do is adjust gravity just a little bit and – voila – the Undoing.”

  I cannot see him, but I recognise Liberté’s voice. At first, nothing changes, and then the spirals of light begin to move away from each other, faster and faster until they disappear into the blackness. It has happened so quickly that I am left startled and confused. I focus on the single galaxy that is left, alone, the only light in a sea of cold darkness. Its billions of stars begin spinning away and spreading out like a flurry of snow agitated by a violent gust of wind. One by one, the little stars melt and disappear. The galaxy itself is dimmed and fades, like blown-away smoke, until it finally disappears. There is nothing left. Even the space around me has fallen silent. Nothing remains. Nothing exists.

  Back in my cave, I snatch my hands away from Liberté’s grasp and shake my head vigorously, hoping to fling away the dark vision that has assailed me. Even though I know it is not real, merely a projection of a possibility, I am still horrified.

  “Entropy … everything was cold, lightless, still and unmoving.”

  “Thought you wouldn’t like it. Everything’s going back to the beginning, back to black, if you don’t get a grip.”

  I shudder in fear; there must be better choices. “Continue, Liberté.”

  “It’s not my favourite, but you could have a Purge. Start over.”

  “Purge?”

  “One of your great floods? Maybe another meteorite? Or how about a great warming? They’re kind of expecting that.”

  “I do not understand.”

  Liberté holds out his hands. I am reluctant to see what he has to show me. It will surely be terrible. Yet, if I cannot face the choices I have, how can I choose correctly? I take his hands.

  Below me, spinning in space, is a world ravaged by continent-ripping earthquakes, volcanos that boil the seas, wind and fire that scorch the earth and flatten the forests. Life on the land, in all its forms, is turned to ash and scattered. The surface of the roiling sea is cloaked in rotting fish. Cities melt and boil away. Great ships of the sea are shattered and disappear. Great ships of the air are flung about like leaves and fall from the sky.

  Without thinking, I shriek, “No! Liberté, no! How is this different from the first unspeakable choice you offered me?”

  Though he is unseen, I hear his response. “You’re getting soft, Seven. You’ve done it before. Look, at the top of the tallest mountain.”

  One mountain still stands; it is the only one. It rises high above the flames and the desolation that licks at its flanks. Its steep rocky face is scarred and cracked. Great pieces are being chipped away by the firestorm. The jagged slabs of stone topple into the surrounding sea of magma, sending up prodigious waves of ruby red that kiss the mountain face and then fall away. My eyes are drawn to the very top of the mountain. Its peak has been sliced off, leaving a barren plain of rock. On this last flat, habitable surface huddle a few dozen or so weeping and wailing souls. Men, women and children are blackened with ash and clinging to each other for comfort. They are surrounded by clouds of embers whipped into a storm by raging winds that continually buffet the survivors and threatens to whip them over the edge of the plateau and into the burning sea. Chaotically circling the wretched survivors are many wild-eyed animals that run one way and then another but can find no escape. Their bellowing, neighing and raucous screams rival the bedlam of the storm.

  “See? A few get saved, the universe endures and off we go again.”

  I am back in my cave. Though his vision is only a possibility, I am wracked with despair. Speaking is too much effort. I only shake my head. My feet are cold. A feeling of overwhelming lethargy is climbing up my legs towards my chest. The cold and the lethargy are dragging a morbid hopelessness behind them. I am engulfed by the wretched pain of failure. Have I suffered a crisis of faith in my own Creation as Liberté has alluded? Is this what brought me to the bunk-bed-tower? In my wretched misery, I call out, “Must my Creation be destroyed or begun again? Can nothing save it?”

  “There’s one last option, Seven. A Final Judgement. And you don’t have to do a thing. You can stay here. Me and Zero, we’ll take care of everything. Just say the word. Sounds tempting, doesn’t it?”

  Giving up responsibility for the heartrending Terrors that have no end and allowing Zero to take my place is indeed tempting. “Tell me more, Liberté.”

  “Would you like to see?”

  Although Liberté suggests this choice will be more appealing, I am nervous about what I might see. “Will it involve death and destruction?”

  “There’ll be a bit of blood and brimstone and monsters. Nothing gratuitous or over the top … much. Anyway, the Terrors, the status quo, are hardly sweetness and light. Isn’t that why you stopped believing your Creation could ever be saved?”

  I shake my head. “Please just tell me. I am weary and can withstand no more shocking images.”

  “It’s very simple really. You declare that your Creation is as good as its ever going to get and it’s time for the Final Judgement. Your son will come again. That’ll be the Second Coming. Obviously, that supreme court fantasy drama doesn’t count. He’ll save everyone who deserves it: the dead and the living. Everything’ll be back the way it was before that apple business in Eden. One law, your law, and no more talking back. And you can keep making buttons. It’s perfect, isn’t it?”

  My heart is lifted. “Everyone is saved, there is no death and destruction?”

  “Well, if you want to get into the details …”

  “I do, Liberté. I do.”

  “Well, there’ll be a Rapture that’s nice.”

  The Rapture: that which the dead so clamoured for during my trial; the moment when they will be reborn. It would be wonderful to see them all saved. “You have said nothing of the death and destruction you hinted at earlier.”

  “It’s nothing really, and we should look on the bright side.”

  “Tell me, Liberté.”

  “Well, there’ll be a teeny-weeny bit of Tribulation, so-called Great and Small, and a little Apocalypse. Then I’ll take the undeserving Leftovers, and that’ll be that.”

  “Leftovers?”

  “Sure. You know.”

  “I am afraid that I do not know.”

  “Let me remind you, Seven.”

  I shudder as I immediately recognise the pose Liberté adopts. He is going to sing. I can only hope that, this time, the words of his song will at least make sense.

  Leftovers, Leftovers, who are the Leftovers?

  Murderers, molesters and nasty kiddy-fiddlers,

  Invigilators, adulterers and fecking fornicators,

  Carpet munchers, bummers and both-way swingers,

  Seducers, winkers and dirty hand-holders.

  Leftovers, Leftovers, who are the Leftovers?

  Birth-controlling-foetus-killers, smokers and drinkers,

  Crackheads, belchers and untidy-litterers,

  Sunday-dancers, Friday-meat-eaters and handy masturbators,

  Apostates, atheists, agnostics and the don’t-knowers.

  Leftovers, Leftovers, who are the Leftovers?

  Tight-clothers, high-heelers and smooth botoxers,

  Tailgaters, legalisers, heathens and idolaters,

  Republicans, monarchists, anarchists and communists,

  Rock ‘n’ rollers, punkers, hip-hoppers and poppers.

  “Liberté, stop! Stop! Who will not be Leftover? And what do you mean to do with them?”

  “Torment the bejesus out of them.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Good question. Hadn’t really thought about it. Teach them a lesson?”

  “What lesson? And will they then be freed?”

  “Oh no! They’re never freed. I’ll be blowtorching their genitals, hot-pokering their arses and worse, forever.”

  I am appalled. Who could have created such a senseless regime? For a moment, I am painfully reminded of my experience in the Inns of Court at the hands of
the arbitrary justice system. “What good can come from endless torture?”

  “Look, I’m just the chief tormentor. They’re the rules.”

  “By whose insanity are such Judgements made?”

  “Yours.”

  “Mine? I would have nothing to do with such cruel and barbaric behaviour.”

  “Well, okay. Not yours directly. There’s a bit of me and mostly your prophets.”

  “My prophets?”

  “Well, to be precise, the interpretation of your prophets’ interpretation of your exceedingly ambiguous message.”

  “I have no memory of communicating with any prophets.”

  “Of course, you don’t. Obviously, if you did, their brains would melt and run out of their ears. No, it’s a complicated process. Everyone’s a prophet. Some are just more convincing than others. Then comes the prophets’ factions with their own interpretations of the interpretations. Fractionalised interpretations as it were; and then it all goes pear-shaped, fractal even.”

  “Liberté, you are describing an utterly random process of law-making that is forever changing.”

  “Exactly, you’ve got it. Better safe than sorry, though. Wouldn’t want to mess up the neighbourhood, would we?”

  “What neighbourhood?”

  “Well, Heaven of course. Where you live, mostly. Can’t be having all that Eden nonsense again because you let the riff-raff in.”

  Liberté’s overarching vision and his narrative are familiar. It is the tale told by Priest at my trial and that of my witnesses at the first-tier tribunal. An end which resolves everything and satisfies everyone, even Liberté. Still, I hesitate. Liberté’s description of the Final Judgement also portends great suffering for little obvious purpose. “Are there any other choices that I might make? Should I not think on this a while? Perhaps consult with Zero? Yes, I shall consult with Zero.”

  Liberté stiffens and then shakes as if engulfed by rage. He growls and swells in size. I feel small and helpless. The reek of rot has returned. Through the slit of gauze in his hood, I can see two burning embers where his eyes should be. And the contraptions on his shoulders are unfurling. To my amazement, his devices morph into giant wings of blackened skin, threaded with purple veins and scaffolded by thin, yellowing bone. I am pinned with terror against the cave wall like some collected butterfly.

  Great blackened talons burst through the fingertips of his gloves. Curled, bloody horns erupt from his hood. Bile-coloured smoke tumbles out from under his gown and cascades across the cave floor in all directions. Slowly, he raises a trembling, clawed hand, as though he means to peel the skin from my face. I cower behind my raised hands and scrabble backwards against the unyielding rock. He approaches, deliberately and steadily. Each of his steps sends out a great crashing noise, as if his feet are shod with iron. The fetid, billowing smoke that surrounds him is choking me.

  His footsteps fall silent. Liberté is very close. I can feel his burning breath smoulder my gown, sting my eyes and blight my nostrils. Desperately, I try to retreat and it is to no avail. I am trapped between Liberté and the cave wall.

  “Think? Wait?” The sound of his voice is like the rumble of a great avalanche. It threatens to shake the teeth from my head and rattle the flesh from my bones. “No, you daft old cow! You will piss now or get off the pot and I will piss for you. And everything that you are and have will be mine.”

  I am mortified by Liberté’s terrifying transformation, his crude outburst and sudden reversion to his previously familiar belligerence. Before I can steady my shredded nerves and remonstrate with Liberté, he turns away and disappears into the darkness at the back of the cave, along with his evil, contaminating vapours. Gingerly, I rise and listen. Everything is quiet. With a great nervousness, I hobble towards the patch of darkness into which he disappeared. I find myself confronting the featureless cave wall.

  I am relieved that he has gone. Liberté brought answers without succour. Knowledge is a rabid beast that bites and claws away at my head and heart. If I could, I would tear the knowing from my body and re-imprison it in my boxes. I long to be reunited with ignorance.

  With what little energy is left to me, I stagger back to my workhouse.

  Within its comforting confines, I de-gown and take my seat. Perhaps I am wrong to be angry with Liberté. His prodding and the antics of my beloved dead have forced me to face that which I previously could not.

  I am sorely burdened by the morass of unpalatable outcomes that Liberté has presented to me. His solution will be to accept that I, and my gift of Free Will, cannot improve upon the sorry state of my Creation. I clasp my hands tightly together on the bench and let my forehead slowly fall and rest upon them. A shower of tears splatters the scarred wood.

  Then a thought occurs to me.

  What would Zero do?

  He is ever the optimist and kind and loving; he is also foolish and naïve. There is a choice that Zero might make that Liberté summarily rejected and did not expound.

  It would be a great burden and filled with heartache. It would be to continue my watch, uninterrupted, over the Terrors of life, with all its ambition and absurdism, longing and love, birth and bereavement. The dead would continue their timeless, dreamless sleep. Liberté’s final chaos might wait. Zero already seems content.

  The living may not be lost to me. Their search for meaning has, perhaps, taken a different turn. Like Prof, many probe my Creation’s workings with ever greater curiosity, and every new thing they find fills them with wonder. Might they not yet find a path to Bliss through the revealing of its intricacies? There might yet be felicity and liberty, if I can keep faith and only persevere.

  An inviting choice that could be no more than further self-delusion. Toil without end and for no purpose.

  The other possibilities are clear enough:

  To Undo my Creation and myself and all that exists.

  Purge then begin again and trust that the outcome will be different.

  Declare that my Creation, however flawed and corrupt, is complete and only awaits the Final Judgement.

  These are dark matters for the coming night. There is a button request to fill and another day of undisturbed, peaceful order-stretching ahead. For a few more hours, I shall be Abi who resides in bunk-bed-coffin number Seven in the bunk-bed-tower and leaves at exactly Two Past Five every morning for her beloved workhouse number Seven, beyond the Odd door, where beautiful buttons are fashioned.

  Tonight, at Nine Past Nine, I will be reunited with Zero, and I will make my Judgement when I take my true name – Absolute Infinite.