AMERIKA IN THE SKY(UPDATED EXTENDED VERSION)

This is an extended version of the "AMERIKA IN THE SKY" story that I posted earlier in the year.

 

 

I remember that day starting off ordinarily enough, there I was playing in the open field not that far from home, the sky azure with nary a cloud blighting its face.

I was alone as usual, for my mother didn’t let me play with the other kids. I never really wanted to play with them anyway. I always knew I was different, I could see things that they couldn’t see and understood matters that they had no inkling of. I was way ahead of them in intellect; in fact, I believed that I was way ahead of most adults too, although, as my mom has repeatedly told me to do, I kept that view all to myself.

This disparity between my physical and mental development did cause me problems; there was always the inner conflict between the body’s desire to be a child, carefree and frivolous, and the mind’s desire to think deep thoughts, explore complex subjects, create abstruse theories.

That day the body scored a victory for there I was playing in the open field…

 

The lay of the land is so perfectly flat I can see unencumbered all the way to the horizon. A strange sensation grips me, that the sky is a giant snow globe surrounding and enveloping me in its grasp, making me feel slightly queasy and claustrophobic. I feel trapped in this impenetrable glass-bowl sky and have the strong urge to smash its walls and break free from the eternal imprisonment that it has me and the whole world under.

As the day proceeds, the heavens rotate slowly around their axis. Towards mid-morning something very odd catches my eye on the eastern horizon. It is something that I have never seen in the sky before but there it is before me, slowly arising from beneath the edge of the earth.

By some incomprehensible process, the continent of North America has become attached to the celestial sphere at the place where land and heavens meet and is slowly getting unravelled from the crust of the Earth, like an old scab being peeled neatly and easily from a healed wound, without any tearing at the edges.

Could this be that new natural phenomenon of celestial tectonics that I vaguely remember hearing about on the news? Some geologists have for decades been warning about the possibility of it occurring but their concerns have been dismissed and scoffed at by the rest of the scientific community as alarmist talk, coming from doomsayers with private agendas. By grim irony, America has been one of the most vociferous deniers of the veracity of these predictions. Its refusal to sign the Yokoto Agreement put a stop to any further research into this puzzling process.

The entire continent is uprooted, but the outlying Caribbean islands get left behind. An ugly gash of a gigantic scar is left on half the Western Hemisphere, reaching into the very flesh of the Earth, like a third-degree burn, with skin and underlying tissue destroyed.

America is now being carried along by the turning of the heavens. I can clearly see its unmistakable shape and the features of the land: the whiteness of Alaska, the mighty rivers, the mountain chains, the major cities, the wheat fields, the pine forests.

At first, while the continent is still at a shallow angle in the sky, the North American people seem to be enjoying their unique experience, smiling, laughing, some even waving to me down below. They appear to be very proud and self-satisfied, taking delight in their position above the rest of us. Perhaps they believe that this is a very special favour bestowed upon them by destiny, that God has finally put them in their rightful place, above all the other nations, as it should always have been, given their technological and cultural superiority.

America has never been grounded in the past, nothing ever brought it down and so it is only natural that it should reach the sky itself for there are no limits to what it can achieve.

America is now close to attaining its celestial manifest destiny, accomplishing that which no country has ever realised before, to occupy all of the sky from horizon to horizon, filling up the entire heavens with its being.

Those cities at the edges of the continent are particularly enthralled by their intimate contact with the sea of blue sky and are already feeling superior to those stuck in the middle of the land. Californians are especially jubilant at finally being über alles in the most literal sense possible. They are being carried on the port side of the continent, the privileged position, surfing the celestial ocean blue. I can even see some of them already waxing their surfboards, getting ready to ride the heavenly waves.

For an instant it appears to me as if I am the one up in the sky, upside down and America is the right way up. America has so often been right in the past, always on top, always the leader. Surely it can not be possible that now they are in this helpless position, surely it must be our land that is upside down, not them! And so I can not help but drop to the ground and hold fast to the tall grass growing in the field to stop myself from falling.

Like an optical illusion where one’s brain cannot decide upon a stable interpretation of the picture and keeps switching incessantly from one configuration to another, my mind keeps shifting from the view that America is upside down to the view that we are the ones upside down. 

There is no reference frame for me from which to interpret this sight of a whole continent in the sky. No human eye has ever beheld anything like it before and so the mind has no way to process what it is seeing, it just doesn’t have the machinery, the capacity to fully take in and comprehend such a phenomenon.

It is entirely possible that what I am perceiving is the brain’s best attempt to make sense of the data flooding through the senses. It is quite probable that the brain is trying to fit the sensory input into familiar categories that it has evolved over millions of years to help it comprehend the ordinary world, but it might not necessarily be an accurate picture of what is actually happening up there.

How long can America remain hovering above me, defying all the fundamental laws of physics? We all know that it has found ways in the past to circumvent the laws of history, the laws of karma, the laws of finance, the laws of justice, the Divine Laws themselves but surely not even America is capable of outwitting the laws of gravity? Surely now, at long last, it will have to obey at least some of the regulations of the universe and not be able to claim exception to the rules yet again.

I am torn by two conflicting thoughts that somehow occupy my mind simultaneously and seem equally valid to me. Is it the case that I am the only who sees America up high? Am I the only one who is able to perceive it? Does everyone else’s mind refuse to accept such a sight as impossible and therefore non-existent? Could it be, given my tender years and particularly unique intellectual make-up, it is my brain alone that does not repudiate this vision? Is it up to me to yell out to the whole world:  “ America has no visible means of support!”, just like that boy who cried out “The King has no clothes!”

Or is it the case that it is only now that I have caught a glimpse of America in the sky while the rest of the world saw it a long time ago? How long then has it been going up into the sky and landing on the ground again without me noticing it? Perhaps it has taken this lengthy amount of time for my mind to take it all in?

Or is it indeed the case that America has been going up and down together with the heavens for eons now, without me nor the rest of the world ever perceiving it due to the limited capacities of our brains and their inability to correctly interpret such sensory input?

This would certainly explain why America has held such sway and influence over us. Has their special vantage point over all these years endowed them with unique and vastly extensive powers, with the ability to directly affect and have an intimate bearing upon our affairs?

I scream out to them trying to make myself heard:  “Share with me also some of the secrets of the sky, throw down to me some of the heavenly treasures, let me also taste the ambrosia of the celestial fruit that only grows up there.”

But all that they do is break off pieces of the frozen sky and toss them down carelessly. I rush to pick them up and peer through them, these cerulean, glass-like fragments of the frozen sky. But even though the pieces are transparent, all that I can see through them is the sky. I recall learning about this in school; it’s something to do with the Persistence of The Collective Consciousness of the Sky, the inherent memory of the fragments being so strong that it overrides every other perception.

“We are superior to you!” – I can see this conveyed in their smirking eyes. “The rest of the world can’t touch us any more. We are invincible!” – I can read these words in the movement of their lips. They have a special place in the Sun now, the Sun shines only upon them. The rest of the world is in near-total darkness as America absorbs most of the light.

This uniquely peculiar positioning of America gives its citizens powers over us just in virtue of their altitude. They are free to throw anything upon us now, the power of their smallest missiles being amplified many times by the effect of gravity. They are privy to every bit of our existence, looking down God-like at the rest of the world, while being immune to ever being reached or perturbed in any way. We can not even train our rockets upon them for who knows how far exactly the sky is located from the ground.

All kinds of debris and other unmentionable substances shower upon my head, while I am powerless to do anything in return. The temptation to throw things, regardless of the consequences and in total disdain of the decorum, is obviously too strong to many of the Americans. Given that we are totally exposed to them and can never counter-attack leads to a set of circumstances that even the saints would be unable to resist taking advantage of.

As the heavens continue their inexorable turning and the continent slowly approaches the celestial zenith, the fun and the mirth turns to panic and despair.

At midday the continent reaches the highest point in the sky, hanging precisely upside down and the Sun is completely eclipsed. If I felt claustrophobic before and hemmed in by the sky above me, now those sensations are so much worse, given that there's a whole continent looming right above my head, threatening to fall upon and crush me under its weight, to annihilate me together with itself.

The people are now in their most precarious position, desperately trying to hold onto anything that is firmly rooted in the ground, to any moorings whatsoever, to blades of grass, to soil itself. In bitter irony, America’s ardent love affair with food now turns cruelly against them with their weight becoming their biggest encumbrance.

Even when they completely lose all grip on land, still they hopelessly attempt to find some protuberance in the fabric of the sky that they can hold onto, to save themselves from this terrible disaster, to give themselves just one more instant of stability, just one more instant of life.

Their position in the sky, above us all, that only hours earlier gave them such an unrestrained sense of superiority now becomes the greatest threat to their survival.

The view from down below, looks, for all the world, like a disturbed anthill on a gigantic scale with millions of Americ-ants scurrying frantically in random directions trying to save their hive from some uncouth hooligan poking at it with a stick; little bugs struggling against some capricious, unforgiving, unyielding force which is ruining their arduously constructed nest.

Oh the humanity, dropping from their once secure abode that has now turned treacherously against them. But what can one do when your whole world has literally been turned upside down?

If I could, I would turn the whole Earth into the softest, warmest, cosiest bed for them to land safely on. They then would be tucked in for recuperative sleep so that when they awoke they would think it was nothing but a horrible dream.

How must we appear to them now? Do they look upon us enviously, jealous of our  infinitely safer location on stable ground or do they look upon us as being immeasurably poorer for never having tasted the mysteries of the sky?

Is this The Rapture America’s theologians have been prophesising the coming of? Why are people falling down instead of rising up then? Why is there suffering, chaos and confusion instead of bliss, joy and clarity? Why are the virtuous being punished?

The only way that this could be The Rapture is if we are the ones who are in the sky. Perhaps religious leaders of America are trying to convince their flocks right now that it is the rest of the world that’s up in the sky and not them and so they are not falling down but are in fact ascending, as The Rapture prophesised.

The light is eerie and unnatural due to the almost total blocking of the Sun by the continent. Some rays are still able to sneak around the frayed edges of the landmass but the diffracted beams are of completely different hue to natural sunlight.

The ground is covered by a shadow in the shape of North America.  Within the giant shadow I can discern smaller shadows of the American people scampering about. Once they lived on Earth, now only their shadows remain.

A tinge of gloating passes through my mind momentarily as I observe how quickly the situation has changed. Just a short time ago they were lording over us but now terra firma must seem like the sweetest, cosiest haven to them. They realise now that all along Heaven has been situated down on Earth, that Cloud Nine was not up in the sky but on the ground.

A million voices I can hear in the distance, I think they are calling my name. “Help us Boris! Save us! You are our last hope!” they cry as my name is amplified a million-fold across the sky and the land.  But I am as helpless as they are. How can I bridge the limitless gap separating me from them? What can I, a young boy, do to help? I am powerless, an impotent observer of the catastrophe. All I can do is stand, watch and bear witness to this evil. That is the most I can do, to commit myself to record it in the most vivid detail so that it will never be forgotten.

Why isn’t The Lord coming to their rescue? Why have I become the focus of their attention? Why are myriads of accusing and pleading eyes all looking at me? Are they blaming me for their predicament? Am I the one responsible for this disaster?

Or am I the Saviour, The Chosen One? Are those feelings of premonition foreshadowing my destiny - portents that I’ve sensed my entire life but have always denied and suppressed, never having the courage to admit their authenticity even to myself, let alone to others - are they now being validated? I never could face up to the inner voice telling me that truth about myself, the deepest truth possible. I felt it coming; the overpowering scent was carried from the days of tomorrow by the omnipotent wind of intuition. Perhaps I am indeed destined to be the Deliverer and it is up to me and me alone to save America from destruction?

Only the struggle for survival remains as the very foundations of society are broken apart. There is no time left for niceties or civilities. All the schemes that the American government created for times of crisis are futile and useless.

If not for the overwhelmingly desperate gravity of the situation, it would be almost comical to observe the way that those millions are trying to deal with the catastrophe that has stricken them; as if it is a problem that could be overcome by rational means; as if it is not an inevitably terminal situation with no escape clause or magical way out.

Oh the pitiable futility of their actions! The gigantic disparity between the finality of their predicament and their response to it! The pronounced contrast between the might of the outer force and their useless ways of dealing with it! Do they really think that it all can be solved using logical thinking, that banding together, ceasing their endless squabbles and exhorting themselves to super-effort would make an iota of difference? Is there any sense in continuing to strive vainly against the implacable pull of gravity?

But how does one deal with their world becoming upside down? All the old ways of thinking, all the knowledge gained through the millennia of existence, all the survival instincts developed over eons of evolution are now hopelessly inadequate and irrelevant. All the measures that mankind took to protect itself against the elements and vagaries of fate have now become lethal burdens instead. Houses, streets, clothing, electricity, all the trappings of civilisation – none of that protects them now from what has befallen them.

Everyone becomes equally equal, from the highest politician to the lowest drifter, gravity makes no choices, grants no preferences; we are all reduced to just our masses when we enter gravitation’s realm. Our status, age, standing in society, whether we are good or evil, innocent or sinful, has no consequence or significance in its domain.

Various groups of Americans deal with this situation in different ways. Those who possess religious beliefs see this as just and deserved punishment from God. Geologists see it as a natural process of celestial tectonics. Marxist historians take it as a confirmation of their political philosophy that all capitalist societies are doomed to destruction. They are celebrating that finally the Communist Utopia has been achieved and everyone is equal now. Pessimists are saying that they have always expected to end up like this. Optimists are trying to convince themselves and others that America is actually the right way up and it is the rest of the world that is upside down. Others still are begging God for mercy but isn’t it God who is doing this to them?

It doesn’t take long for an apocalyptic sect to spring up in the upside-down America. Rapid conversions take place with the new believers donning transparent, sky-blue, silky garments. These clothes apparently will stop them from falling down and instead they will merge with the sky and attain immortality. So many people take up this new faith that wide expanses of America become monochrome azure, especially in the southern regions.'

 

I can see that some of the people hold hands as they fall, others are kissing and hugging, while others still are engaged in more intimate activities. I look away, not wishing to intrude upon the privacy of their last significant moments together.

Even at this critical time, the teenagers can not suppress their competitive streaks and are racing to determine who can fall the fastest and hit the ground first.

The scope of the disaster is so all-encompassing that even the iconic cartoon and fictional characters of American culture haven’t escaped this fate either. There goes Homer Simpson, incessantly yelling out “Doh!” Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd are falling beside him, still arguing if it’s rabbit season or duck season. Amongst all the plummeting rubble I can make out Dorothy’s house spinning wildly, looking in vain for Land of Oz to alight upon.

Astoundingly Hollywood is still able to maintain its veneer of glitter and glamour; even the inexorable force of gravity can not make it reveal its true visage, its genuine nature.

What really surprises me is the professionalism and dedication to work of the American people while they are falling. The Vegas showgirls are still smiling broadly and performing their high kicks and other routines; no catastrophe can wipe the grins from their faces. The Mouseketeers are still dancing and singing their “Mickey Mouse March” song in perfect unison. The Pentagon is still debating on whether this situation is due to an attack coming from a rogue state and what counter-measures should be taken. The FBI is still arresting suspects under the provisions of the PATRIOT Act for the crime of thinking that this is the end of America.

I observe that the politicians of America are still engaged in their petty disputes, still tossing heated words upon one another, oblivious to their rapid descent. They are still passing motions, censuring, making character attacks. They are still doing backroom deals, hatching plans to obtain more power and money. Ordinary people, too, even while plummeting down, are still feuding and preoccupied with worries about not being able to use up their retirement funds.

It seems utterly ridiculous and laughable. Those actions are so trivial and senseless given the situation that they are in.

But then an amazingly penetrating realisation strikes me – aren’t we ourselves, down here on earth, all in exactly the same situation? Aren’t we also nearing our own oblivion, each day closer to hitting the ground? Yet we go on doing exact same foolish things, wasting our lives on the same senseless activities.

Isn’t it typical of America to once again reveal to us the secrets of existence? Even when it is at the nadir of its being, it still manages to teach us the value of life.

As if to make up for their lives being cut short, some of the falling people seem to age decades in the few instants of their descent. I can see one infant turn into a boy, then a teenager, then a grown man, then a greybeard and finally a tombstone and then a photo of that tombstone in a matter of seconds.

For others, this speeded-up aging process works in reverse and they become younger and younger, turning into kids, babies and finally into baby photos.

Land has betrayed them all, has given them no support or opportunities to live and grow and so now they are taking care of unfinished business up in the sky.

I can see weddings taking place and then being consummated. I hear babies crying, I watch them grow, they'll learn secrets of the sky that I'll never know. I see parents teaching their children the facts of life about the birds and the bees, teaching them how to behave, how to treat other people, how to tie their shoelaces. I see boys turning into adolescents, having their first shave and going on their first date.

I see friends shaking hands, saying “how do you do”, they're really saying "goodbye to you" and I think to myself what a horrible world. I watch mothers whispering last words of love to their children, men writing their final wills and testament, lovers hugging, people coming to terms with their fate and learning to accept it.

All this is done in a highly accelerated rate, enabling them to fit the rest of their lives into the last few seconds; but then again surely they are adept at doing this given that America has always been known as the place of rapid progress and movement. We always knew they lived life in a fast lane, their lives being a speeded up, more intense version of our own and now they are existing at the maximum tempo possible.

Falling is such a leisurely activity, one doesn’t have to do anything; indeed one cannot do anything. You just have to relax and let the inertia carry you along. Yet here too Americans are pioneers and innovators. They just cannot accept and surrender to gravity’s laws.  Instead they are able to overpower and defeat the senselessness of falling and to fill it with activity and meaning.

Sure all of this is beyond belief and inexplicable but one just has to accept that the sky is another world that has its own ways of doing things.

Morbid curiosity compels me to observe how the American people spend their final moments of being alive. Some are resigned to their lot, others are in denial. Some, white with anger, are raging against the impending eternity; others have gone into shock and are paralysed by terror. One man in particular strikes me in the relaxed attitude that he adopts: lounging on a deck chair with a can of beer in one hand, cigarette in another, watching the apocalypse happening around him as if he is a spectator in a ball game.

The height from which the unfortunates fall is so great that I can not even see where they land. Curiously, instead of their bodies looming larger and larger in my field of vision as they approach the ground, they become fainter and smaller still, until disappearing from sight altogether.

Even more curiously, after a certain stretch of time, they suddenly re-appear, only now they are not their usual corporeal three-dimensional selves. Rather they've turned into life-sized two-dimensional monochrome cardboard cutouts. As I watch these cardboard figures approach the ground another incredible metamorphosis takes place and the cutouts change into small photos of those same people.

It’s as if the cardboard profiles themselves age in reverse, becoming smaller and smaller until reaching the size of snapshots that now shower upon me like demented torrential rain.

Even those enterprising few that have managed to strap on a parachute also turn  into cutouts, with a cardboard silhouette of a parachute attached to their cardboard shoulders.

Still I cannot help but stick my bony kid arms out in the hope of catching at least some of the fallen but only manage to catch the photos. Even though in a daze, I instinctively glance at them and see in these snapshots the lost souls as they appeared in happier times, with their families, friends, pets, the way that they like to be remembered, and not how they looked in their desperate final moments.

But although in these images their lips are smiling, I can definitely see an accusatory glint in their eyes, a look of piercing admonition that the eyes of the dead often possess, beseeching us to explain how they were allowed to get into this situation and not be helped. There is also perhaps a shade of wistful sadness in their eyes at not being able to be part of the living world any longer, to have been taken away from life in such a horrendous and unimaginable manner.  

People turning to paper, something in my memory resonates with this, I know I have read something similar to this before. Yes, now I remember exactly. I was reading the quatrains written by a famous medieval seer and one of them went like this:

In the mighty nation girt by two giant seas
Constitution of laws becomes a piece of paper.
A day arrives when its people too
Will float to the ground as such.

This prophecy has come to pass; it all makes sense now why this bizarre metamorphosis of people transforming into cardboard profiles is taking place.  Didn’t one of America’s past presidents, not that long ago, dismiss their Constitution as being just a scrap of paper? And when the Constitution turns to paper, its citizens are next.

My mind is on the verge of packing up and calling it a day, it cannot take it any more, it just has no strength left to process the sensory data deluging it. I no longer know what to believe. The vision that is confronting me has no steady, constant form to it but keeps changing continuously. One instant I see people falling down, next moment they are falling up back onto the surface of the continent, one instant America is suspended from the sky, the next second it is crashing down upon us, threatening to smash us to smithereens.

It makes me wonder whether this whole thing is not one of those optical tricks that Nature has played upon me, a mirage of sorts, similar to the one where whole buildings appear suspended in mid-air. Perhaps America and its people are still on the ground, safe and well and everything is as it should be in the world. Perhaps a particular interplay of light, shadow and dust up in the atmosphere today has produced this infernal illusion and there is no reality to it whatsoever.

And what if indeed America has always been an atmospherical mirage, a play of light and shadow or just a figment of my imagination and never a part of this world? What if all along it was just a Neverland that mankind has deluded itself into believing actually existed? Was America just a metaphor for the Promised Land or the paradigm of an all-powerful, all-good Leader that humanity could look up to and worship?

Is America just a Collective Illusion that was created because the psyche of mankind needed to possess an archetypal big brother that would protect it from threats and bad guys? What if it was just a symbol, a concept, an idea on which we could pin our hopes, our dreams, our wild imaginings?

If America is just a collective illusion, then what I am seeing now must definitely be a mass delusion assuming a corporeal form, as they often do in times of crisis and hysteria.

Is it really possible that a country like America, a country that was both omnipotent and beneficent, that always came to the rescue and saved the rest of the world from enemies of mankind, that spread justice and peace across the globe, a country which was an inexhaustible source of entertainment, invention, humour, innovation and creativity could ever have existed in real life?

As the continent remains in the apex of the sky, buildings' foundations start to loosen, roots of plants are no longer able to cling to the soil; the once mighty rivers empty their banks in cataclysmic downpour of unprecedented proportions. After all the signs of civilisation and life - buildings, forests, houses - disappear, the ground itself begins to give way and disintegrate. The earth slowly loses its compactness and adhesiveness, dripping down in small spurts first and then in great lumps. Here and there, the liquid magma substratum is peeking through the locations where the entire continental crust has fallen off.

Land that for billions of years worked hand in hand with gravity now feels what it’s like to be in opposition to it. All the things on the ground that once depended upon gravity for their stability and their very existence now realise what it’s like to have gravity as an adversary, to fight against its omnipotent presence. They now comprehend how they took gravity and many other factors that were vital to their survival for granted, without any appreciation of the infinitely intricate balancing act that life is.

Mountains too begin to disentangle themselves from their foundations – there go The Rockies, followed closely behind by Mt Rainier and Mt McKinley – what an awe-inspiring sight of these once mighty, solid as a rock, immutable colossuses tumbling and twirling unceremoniously like pebbles tossed into a river from a bridge.

Mt Rushmore’s gargantuan busts are falling too now; their granite eyes are shut tight for they cannot bear to watch what has become of their country. A land that they put so much sacrifice into creating, developing, preserving the unity of has now literally been broken into fragments.

There goes The Statue of Liberty, her robe fallen off, the torch extinguished, her once proud face bewildered and apprehensive.

Those quintessential American characteristics - Eternal Optimism, Justice and Opportunity For All - are all on their way down. Plummeting next to them are the shattered pieces of the Great American Dream, intermingled with fragments of dreams of fame, wealth and happiness.

The underground bunkers in which the elite sought safety and protection are falling too now, together with the millions of common folk.

Amazingly, all the television sets are still working even while dropping unplugged. To stop the population from panicking all the regular programs on all the TV channels are still running for those in power know that nothing would upset and startle the people of America more than if their favourite TV shows were interrupted or cancelled for any reason. As long as TV is still working, all is well with the world.

As the whole continent continues to break up, a colossal downpour of bodies, concrete, trees, mud, water, cars, houses, rock, soil all mixed up together into a terrible blend threatens to engulf the world below and destroy our lives too.

Some of the light beams are refracted through the dropping water, leading to colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky, showing on the faces of the people falling by as well as adding an incongruously cheery multi-hued aspect to the amorphous sludge of devastation coming from above.   

No more secrets remain, all the deep and eternal, ancient and modern mysteries are revealed with the uprooting of the soil. All the skeletons in all the cupboards are disinterred together with the falling earth. All the closets have opened up and divulged their carefully concealed stories.

Thankfully, some clouds appear and block these scenes of suffering and chaos but then they quickly disperse and again I'm unable to look away, unable to avert my gaze from the largest catastrophe that has ever been witnessed by the human eye.

But what right do I have to look, God-like, upon the numberless agonies? Who am I to watch scenes of suffering so terrifying that even Death itself turns its bony face away in fright?

Oh the horror, the horror of it all, surely this day will live forever in infamy! Where are you God, in You they trusted! Don’t You have a special relationship with this land? Haven’t You always protected and looked after it? No, this was no Rapture, rather it was The Anti-Rapture! America’s religious prophets got it all backwards!

This cannot be happening, surely this is impossible and America cannot be undergoing this terrible fate! This punishment, what was it for, why all this suffering and agony?  And yet the eye continues to see what the mind refuses to accept – the Land of Dreams turning into The Field of Nightmares. 

Young eyes that should never have been exposed to such primal horrors watch it all unfold, from high pre-noon to darkness at noon to death in the afternoon. A young mind should never have experienced such absolute, undiluted evil and yet here I am, drinking it all in, heedless of the urgent cries of my mother incessantly calling me back home.

This is such an unimaginable and inexplicable event. Nothing like this has ever occurred before, how could it be happening now? It goes against all the laws of physics, geology, biology not to mention the laws of karma and morality. And yet, despite all that, despite its utter and complete impossibility, it does indeed exist. After all, history has already shown to us many times that the laws of ethics and physics are not a sufficient obstacle to prevent something from manifesting in this world.

Sure it is absolutely inconceivable, going against the deepest principles of both Cosmos and Humanity and yet it is happening nonetheless and you have to accept your fate, there is no other way around it, you have to accept it with equanimity and honour, despite the unthinkable position that life put you in.

There is no use protesting against the improbability of what is happening for that would make no difference. There is no point in dismissing it as nightmarish sick joke for one still has to face the consequences of one’s life being turned upside down. Nothing would be gained in telling oneself that things like this just do not happen for one still would die.

Suddenly a terrifying thought seizes me. What if the sky has in fact become a mirror and what we are seeing is in fact ourselves? Can it be that we are the Americans, we are the ones undergoing these tribulations? Is America a distorted image of our own land? Is what we are seeing a deformed reflection of ourselves and our own actions?

If the sky has turned into a reflective surface then I should be able to recognise in it the fields and the land features surrounding me. Yet when I look up all I can see is an image of my face, magnified grotesquely, filling up all of the heavens, staring back at me with a sneer.  In desperation I scrutinise the giant eyes for meaning to what is happening, in vain I wait for the vast face to speak words that will make all things right again.

After an interminable span of time, the continent begins to move away from the zenith. The Sun re-appears in the sky, whole and wholesome, able to shine fully again. For a moment it seems to me that the sky is empty and blue again, with its innocence intact, just the way it appeared early this morning. But morning was a million irreparable lives, a million lost potentialities, a million griefs ago; morning happened in another epoch altogether, in that innocent era when things like this could not be envisaged.

I can see that a fortunate few have somehow managed to survive the nearly total destruction of the landscape of North America and they are approaching the horizon and security of the ground again. Thank goodness they now will be able to descend safely and be lauded as heroes, as survivors of the most horrific journey that any human being has ever had to go through.

Alas, that is not to be, and my hopes are proven to be woefully inaccurate. For when this god-forsaken and ill-fated continent reaches the horizon again, it collides sharply with the stubborn, unyielding ground that is already there. A catastrophe even worse than the one I witnessed earlier in the day begins to unfold before my terrified eyes.

In the far horizon, an inexorable process is taking place as two continents attempt to occupy the same location at the same time and one of them has to lose out. Northern Canada and Alaska are the first to go. Bit by bit they are torn apart as the stationary earth refuses to shift and stands firm its ground and those remaining alive that we thought would be the lucky survivors are crushed to dust. This process creates a horrible grinding noise that resounds across the span of the land, like a million fingernails scraping together across an inconceivably large blackboard.

I cannot help but rush to their aid, to try to save at least some lives. Suddenly I halt as I realize that the horizon is an illusory point in the distance that keeps receding further and further as you walk towards it and so I would never be able to reach the doomed ones.

By now, more than half the continent has been ground into fine powder as the merciless process continues without ceasing. The major metropolises of the United States, the founts of so much knowledge, art, music, creative energy, are being pulverized into nothingness, never before has there been destruction on such a thoroughly unmitigated scale.

Icy pieces of Alaska intermingle with the glassy shards of New York City and with bits of tinsel of Los Angeles. Would it ever be possible to reconstruct America from these clouds of dust?  Civilizations, cities, entire countries have been rebuilt from ruins before, but this is annihilation of an entirely different nature, from which there's surely no coming back.
.
"Well, there goes the New World. " I think wistfully.  " America, I hardly knew ye! I never did get to visit you, although just last year I came so close. I already had my plane tickets. No longer will we have America in our lives, no more remains of that cultural centre of the world from which we get all of our TV programs. It is all gone in the most cruel and terrible fashion right before my very eyes. Through no fault of their own these people died, they are The Innocents. And yet, its ashes and dust will settle all over the world, infusing every cell of the remaining planet.  Forever more it will provide fertilization for the world to go on growing and progressing the way America once did and we will be able to say proudly that we all now have America in our very souls."




Many years have now passed since the day we lost America. For years the sky was stained red with the blood of the hapless victims and the clouds had a peculiar bone-white aspect to their colouration. The heavens had become a death trap, a mass grave of unprecedented proportions, their mysterious beauty forever blighted by the destruction it has wrought upon the innocent millions.

People continued to fall down for days and weeks afterwards. Some apparently never came down, spending all of their life in flight, making the best of the situation and re-building their lives up in the sky.

There were occasional sightings of structures resembling skyscrapers perched upon the clouds and beings with what looked like wings on their backs entering and exiting these edifices. Given the can-do attitude of Americans and the fast pace of living that was the hallmark of their country, it is quite likely that they were able to speed-up the rate of evolution more to their liking.

That day I looked up to the apex and saw the abyss staring back at me. That was where Hell was located, not below us but up in the Heavens, without us ever realising it until that fated point in time.

Death itself could not keep its eyes open on that day, could not bear to watch so much pain. It itself cried a river at the tragedy taking place. Death could not accept the millions of new arrivals knocking on its door asking to be let in. It refused to recognise that all those souls were in its realm now and were begging for its welcome and hospitality. It desisted from believing in the reality of the situation confronting it and tried to find a way to deny these newcomers a place in its kingdom. It did not want to claim them upon its conscience, did not foresee them coming, was astonished by their arrival and strenuously denied playing any role in their demise, disavowing any responsibility for what has befallen all those countless lost souls.

Never before have so many died at the same time, in full view of the rest of humanity. It forever and irreparably scarred the Collective Consciousness of mankind; all the previous holocausts, crimes, tragedies, wars and massacres were dwarfed and trivialised by comparison.

This was an event unique in the absoluteness of its tragedy. There was nothing in it that could be construed as having any positive features, unlike the goings-on down on the ground which always have both good and bad aspects to them. With this singular occurrence there was no other perspective from which to look at it. It was an incontrovertible and unambiguous catastrophe of unparalleled proportions.

A confluence of causes combined to destroy America at that particular point in time. Warning signs were coming in from all directions – geological, environmental, political, karmic, historical, prophetic, theological – and there was no way that the continent could escape such an array of factors allied against its continuing existence.

The world gasped, the world cried, the world mourned and then it went on living. For a long time afterwards, all of our activities down on earth seemed trivial and insignificant by comparison with what transpired up there. A disaster like that raised the question of what value human life is. When the entire continent was destroyed, not only did the lives of the fallen become worthless, but our lives too lost their meaning. America may only have loomed over the world for a dozen or so hours but the trauma of its demise has continued to hover just above us ever since, threatening to crush us with its enormity and to make us lose all hope and sense in continuing existence.

Eventually we regained our composure, our sanity, our humour, our joie de vivre; we were able to laugh, love, smile and hope again but we could never recover our ability to dream for America was the source of all our dreams.

We realised that just like the stars, the sun and the moon, so the continents too are bound to rise and fall, indeed are compelled to rise and fall; it is all part of the natural order of the Cosmos. We all had to accept that one day our land too would be thrust into that same bottomless pit in the sky.

Ships were forbidden from approaching the ugly scar that lay across what was once the New World. However that didn’t stop the morbid sightseers from making their own way there to gawk at what became known as Ground Absolute Zero or taking chartered flights over what was once a mighty, bustling with life, country.

There was talk of constructing a memorial or even of re-building America itself but how does one rebuild a whole continent?

I’m no longer the small boy that I was back then but I did attain a precious possession that day- humbleness in the face of fate for every time I look up I see it all again: the skies of blood and clouds of bones, the chaos, the panic, the destruction, the irrevocable demise, America writhing in its final death throes. 

In the end, however, what I have written is only a crude and clumsy depiction. The words that I have used to convey what I saw and felt that day were created and defined in a world where America still existed. Words like “tragedy”, “catastrophe”, “fear”, “life” and “death” are now impotent, bloodless beings which lost their vital life-force together with America itself. And that of which we cannot speak we must remain silent.    

 

Reviews

[Dave "Doc" Rogers]

I remember this story in its original version. It was remeniscent of Bradbury or Heinlein in the way it grabbed a sci-fi concept and made it come into plausible fiction, a nightmare event.

I am not sure of the motivations behind this version. I can definitely see some rewrite efforts were put in. This version has decidedly gone political. If that is your intent, it worked. It could be just me but this story came off more as a political rant of an allegory ... allegorical editorial.

You write well. I think I like the original concept better. It was more suspense and shock than political and religiouscommentary.

Doc.

[Rain]

Incredible great anti-American write. I see from your Bio, you are from Australia. Isn't that the land of the "Stolen Generation?" I'm sure you, being the historian you are, are familiar with what seems to be some
discrepancies in Aussie history...Aborginal babies being taken from their families, mass slaughter. I'm sure there must be some mistake. There couldn't have been a deliberate attempt to exterminate the dark(black) skinned natives of your peace loving country. It appears that Australia is struggling with their history, where countless Aboriginals died from new diseases brought in by settlers. That sounds too much like America. From here it seems your Parliament might have written it's own version of history. I guess the saying is correct. The winners write history. But, it does seem that your country is in denial about it's historical violence. History is always best written by philosophical intellectuals, as yourself. Do you have an Aboriginal leading your Country? Will you ever? Me thinks you hide more than you reveal. Still very well written piece. Something just isn't right. I agree with Pax, in that we are hurtling through space so fast, we tend to like pointing our finger away from our own flaws. Rain..
PS..Ten thousand years ago we had an ice age, perhaps man caused that.

[Pax Analog]

Been awhile since I read the first version, but no matter.

A Kafka-esque parable, and a sense of America probably conditioned by the low-life Bush era.

With the election of Obama, it's as if the world intervened, what with his more international background and sensibility.

As it stands, at the level of reality, it is global capitalism, or corporatism, that should arguably be the real upside-down spectacle in the sky.

Well-written piece, evokes ambiguous feelings. It is written with heart and respect, but really the pros and cons of what it points to are already global, and the planet is in fact hurtling through space, miraculously on a regular orbit.

Perhaps, "Earth in Space" is next, yes? ;-)

[alternative_be]

This new version of your previous story with the same title certainly is a huge improvement of the first version which already was more than excellent!
I hope this piece will make people think about global warming and its possible effects. This is no longer War of the World by Orson Welles or a figment of Steve Rother's imagination ... This might well be realitiy or should I say will be reality if America persists on not signing a certain agreement.
You asked me my opinion on the American election results ... Well I plan on writing an essay on those and the US voting system and my view on American society.
Let's say that I hope that the president elect gets to read this story and that it makes him think!
I am sure both Al Gore and Gore Vidal agree with you ...
Since the president elect is a Democrat and has put nature on his agenda during his victory speech, I hope the US will sign the agreement you mentioned, as to prevent the Armageddon scenario you have written, though I cannot find proper words to express to which extent I appreciate this story.
Thank you for putting so much work in it and sending it to me again!

[Emily B]

The emotion of it was too much on a day like today. Rome was a great nation. It fell. All things eventually crumble, decay with age.

[Legion]

I remember this. :) Still a great write. As for rebuilding it, with the way it is now, I wouldn't bother. Kudos.

[Wildfleour]

Quite an intense write there, Boris. It took me a few days to completely read, so forgive the delay in my response.

It is a very dark vision, both on a literal and symbolic level.

[Justin Tobey]

Oh, wow... Boris, this is absolutely incredible.

You've taken an already wonderful idea and adding on to it, making it symbolic, deep, descriptive, and altogether powerful. Your writing probes the "what if" questions, following them through to the end and finding true meaning in the lessons learned. I'm constantly in awe of the fantastic lands and situations your writing takes the reader. Awesome job! :D