Cataclysm and a Reckoning

A Fragment – Part 7 (the finale)

Naman was having a lonely stroll on the airfield when he noticed seabirds in large numbers flying from their nests on the rocky cliffs below. They wheeled above then flew off southward. He was surprised and wondered why.

Two days later at night-time Dounlay the cleaner was getting into the lift to take her down to her room on the bottom floor when her boss Impilko appeared and asked her if she had cleaned the observatory. She smacked her forehead and pressed the ‘up’ button. It was an impressive space she had to dust and wipe and she touched everything with awe and reverence. While hoovering she heard an unusual grinding sound. It wasn’t her machine. When it happened again she looked around and was surprised to see a thin vertical crack in the wall. She phoned her boss. He was alarmed and decided to contact an engineer, when he arrived the crack had widened. The news was passed to the highest level and soon there was a group gathered in the observatory staring at the crack and when the grinding sound was repeated looked at each other with dismay. By morning the population of Ragba was aware that their island was in serious trouble. The crack was now a split and appeared on the wall below. An earthquake was clearly threatening the island which could be on the epicentre. By the evening the decision was made to abandon Ragba.

A small plane carried away leading personnel all with black brief cases, no looking back. Other planes and helicopters emptied the top floors. In the main harbour lay a steamship and hundreds of workers crowded at the bridges to get on board. It was now dark and families lost children and friends so that when the quay seemed empty and the ship began to pull away no-one knew who, if any, had been left behind. Had those on the North Beach been alerted?

From a safe distance survivors gazed as their island trembled and toppled. Turrets sank as floors beneath gave way. The observatory had disappeared. Buildings on the cliff-edge collapsed and roofs and windows dived into the sea. Suddenly flames were seen licking the fallen masonry. Then a huge explosion hurled rocks and black volcanic ash upwards to darken the morning sky. The ash spread far and wide. It tainted the beach of Tom’s hut. It was present on hedges and lawns and the sills of mansions and highrise flats in distant towns and cities. Films of the disaster showed world-wide its insidious progress. Lava flows trickled then gleamed in a broad stream which thrilled and horrified onlookers. The spectacle was overwhelming but the purpose and meaning of Ragba was hardly mentioned.

The owners and leaders of the island had no difficulty in recovering from the event. Funds were at hand to cover their losses. Investors’ shares were mostly forgotten. There was no workers relief. Bennet and his comrades continued in their power and wealth under another name. Ismail had died of heart attack. The loss of his loved observatory may have contributed. The fate of all the dwellers on the lower floors is not recorded.

Jasper eventually wrote to Barish and she responded. After some years she visited him in prison. They became friends and developed a new relationship.

Tom stopped in a village in South India drawn there, no doubt, by Indian Barish whose presence never left him. After a long stay he again moved on.

Naman visited Barish. She planned to write her story as anthropologist and also as a prisoner on Ragba. He offered to help with his inside knowledge of the island. He was now studying biology and ecology, his mother safely back in her homeland. He asked Barish what she would call her book.

She was not sure but said we need a new understanding of what it is to be human. Someone said that Tom was non-sequential and mostly we are consequential. This puzzled me. I think he meant that we understand mostly out of the past. Mostly science explains life by looking back. We try to understand who we are by thinking back to childhood. We try to know what it is to be human by looking back to an animal ancestry.There is also a looking forward, looking from the future, grasping our potential. Tom and others I have read and studied were masters of this , the non-sequential. It’s an imaginative consciousness.. So I might call my book ‘The Non-sequential or Awakening out of the Future’.

The End