Time Was by David Calcutt

Time was you could walk the whole length of the world going from island to island across the bridges raised high above oceans and mountains, deserts and forests, sometimes alone, or with a single companion, sometimes one among thronging multitudes, of merchants and hunters, explorers and sightseers, the clamour of whose voices drowned out even the howling of the winds and the screeching of the giant eagles.

Most of us used the bridges simply to cross a single expanse of water.  A single day, two at the most, would suffice for this. Others however travelled greater distances, crossing many bridges before they reached their destinations. This could take weeks, or even months. There were hostelries placed at regular intervals for those who needed to rest during their travels, ranging from simple establishments offering plain bed and board, through to sumptuous palaces of recreation and entertainment with elaborate gardens where the crystal fountains of waters splashed and exotic birds sang in the trees, and whose seemingly endless array of rooms offered every conceivable variety of refreshment and pleasure.

With what pleasure and sense of anticipation we would enter the lifts that would take us from our earth-bound homes through the incomprehensible complication of girders and beams, wheels and pulleys and ropes that hauled us upwards to emerge at last in the sparkling brightness and freedom of the upper air.  Such freedom, such a heightened sense of being, to stand and gaze out across the distances spanned by those immense bridges that elevated us beyond the realm of the mere human.

There were those for whom the journey itself was the desired end. They passed their whole lives walking back and forth and their only world was that of the upper air. These solitary, cloud-haunted travellers, their eyes burning with a pale and feverish light, their skin almost translucent, spoke of the swirling mists that were gathered at the world’s edges, and of their almost mystical desire to discover what lay beyond them. Few, however, had dared to make that journey, and none who had had ever returned.

No one knew how old the bridges were, nor when or how they had been constructed. Scholars laboured for many years to try and discover the answer to these questions, studying ancient texts written in languages barely decipherable even to those who studied them, but none could come up with a solution they all agreed upon. Some maintained they had been built by some earlier race whose intellect and expertise greatly surpassed our own. Others claimed that the bridges had formed at the same time as the world itself, and were part of the natural process that had brought our world into being. And there were a few of the spiritually-minded who declared that they had been built by some superhuman being, a god even, who, having completed his task, withdrew from his creation in weariness and disappointment. Most of us did not trouble ourselves with such futile researches, content to know that the bridges were there and that, like the forests and the mountains and the great, rolling oceans that lay beneath our feet, would also be there, for our convenience and delight.

In those far-off days, on clear nights, you could stand on any one of those many bridges and with a hand raised reach up and touch the surface of the moon. Contrary to expectation it was warm and soft, and you could feel the rhythmic pulse of its secret life throbbing gently beneath your fingers.

I recall one night of bliss and magic when I stood with my wife upon one such moon-washed bridge and gathered from the clouds the jewel-like insects that dwelled among them and from these made a necklace which she hung, shimmering and humming, about her throat.

For those few of us who are left, now, it is difficult to remember the exact moment when things began to change. At first, it was nothing more than a slight feeling of unease, a sense that things were not quite right. Standing in the middle of a bridge, and looking straight ahead, you would experience a sense of disorientation. Your vision was slightly blurred at the edges and you were unable to maintain a clear focus on distant object. This state of things went on for some time.

It was during this period of relative calm that my wife decided to go with our children on a long-delayed visit to her family. They lived on an island some distance from ours, and she said she would be away for about a month. The last time I saw them, they were ascending in the lift to the bridge above our island, waving happily, the light from my wife’s necklace glittering in the morning light. I do not know if they survived or not. I do know that I will never see them again.

The real change came when we began to experience a general dizziness and fear of falling. People clung to the sides of whichever bridge they were standing on, and when they dared let go stumbled and swayed from side to side as if they had lost all sense of balance. Gradually, fewer and fewer of us were prepared to use the bridges. We spoke of them being cursed, or of a divine punishment for some unnamed transgression.

Slowly, at first, then with an increasing sense of panic, we realised what was happening.  The world was beginning to curve. The more it curved, the more the bridges bent and buckled out of shape. Cracks appeared, which soon became great rents and tears in their structures. And at last came the day of the great devastation, when one of after another the bridges groaned, tottered, and collapsed in a thunderous roar that lasted all day and all night. Many thousands were killed in those catastrophic twenty-four hours and many more died in the months that followed, when the light and heat of the sun could not penetrate the thick clouds of dust blackening the air.

When at last the dust settled, the survivors found themselves stranded, trapped upon islands from which there was no escape. They looked out upon a world misshapen and nightmarish, a demented globe offering no hope of movement forwards or backwards, and in which time itself was a stultifying fixed point of only here and now.

Gone the sweet transports of air and light! Gone the stars that hung in our hair like jewels!

Earthbound, I sit upon my solitary rock. Sky and sea are grey and motionless. In the distance, the abominable curve of the horizon mocks my lingering presence, brooding, formless, and without end.  

David Calcutt

Image: Planet earth in a black and purple void with another golden planet in the distance from Pixabay.com