Chronology
For me, this story begins walking home. The 3 a.m. city sky held no stars. And as I walked I stared into the big darkness as though it were a mirror. My thoughts counted themselves down to zero. I’d just gotten off work and I moved like a ghost toward home. Which for me was an old building. Dust always on the floor and ten coats of flaking paint on the walls. There’s a church at the corner and a liquor store across the street. Even though my body ached, I was in no hurry to sleep. One week before I’d bought a plant. A desert rose. When I’d bought it, sweet pink blossoms hung from the tips of its leathery shoots. Waxy green leaves spiraled around the blossoms. Less than a week later, it was dead. When I reached the front door of my building and put the key in the lock, I paused. A book lay at my feet. I picked it up and inspected it, wiping the dust off the cover. It was small and had a pocket watch fixed to the front. Letters graced the cover, spelling out, “C-H-R-O-N-O-L-O-G-Y”.
I opened the door and flipped to the first page. It was blank. I continued to flip through. The first seven pages were blank. Climbing the five flights of steps to my apartment, I began to read. “In the beginning was Time. Time was with God for Time is God.” I stopped reading and entered my apartment. Once inside, I turned the lock and continued, “These words are meant to tell you the truth about how we measure God everyday, how we are all composed of the same event rippling towards completion…” I marked my page, closed the book and stared out the window at the darkened city streets below. My body hurt from the day. I didn’t want to wade through a sermon. There was nothing moving down below. Nothing alive, in sight. The street lamps made a loud buzzing, electric trees in the urban wilderness. Pigeons were roosting on the ledges of my window. I leaned against the glass, listening to them cooing to each other. My grandmother had died two weeks before. I’d left the city for my home town upstate. It had rained all that day. She was 97. There was no one else at her funeral. As they lowered her body into a muddy grave; empty thoughts stirred inside my intestines.
Her bird-like voice echoed through the raindrops. “Such a lovely people garden.” it was something she’d always say when we’d passed by the cemetery a mile from her house. That first time I’d heard her say it, I’d asked what she meant by “people garden”. She smiled as though she wasn’t going to answer. As though she were no longer there, some where else. Then she’d said, “Plant those words and see what grows.”
I stared at the pigeons clustering together on the thin ledge of my window and wondered why things end. Leaning there into that thought, the tremendous weight of her memory pressed down on me. I looked at the book and it felt inexpressibly important. Collapsing into my armchair, I continued reading. It soon became clear that the book was some kind of bible. After the sermon at the beginning, it changed abruptly into a manual followed by an encyclopedia.
“pg. 13… The religion of Chronology preaches that once one converts, their heart, at the second of conversion, will begin to synchronize itself to the absolute second. With proper meditation and breathing techniques, the hour petals will unfold on the surface of the heart. Through practice the Infinite Instrument, your fourth dimensional heart-clock, will develop. This can not be seen by current human eyes; nevertheless, it exists. It will be recognized in the final hours, when everything will start to disappear, it will first rotate and then shine. Soon this spin will reach critical velocity. Upon reaching this velocity, a ray of light will punch completely through into the fourth dimension: god’s imagination. [eternity’s imagination/ or god’s imagination which ever is more direct).] Once it breaks through, your personal Time will stop, as it is engulfed by eternity. Then, God will reveal our original face and everything will instantly become lucid. You will see straight into the Holy Whole of Light. And you will look straight into the source and see that it is truly bottomless, continuing on and on into forever. When this occurs you can relive whatever you would want, simply imagine it and it will be so….”
I’d intended to go directly to sleep but the book swallowed me. Within a few hours it was finished and all I could do was sit stunned. I was still inside it. It was still inside me. I got up for a glass of water. Yet halfway across the room, a swarm of questions seized my brain. I stopped. Then went back to sit down so I could read it again. The words seemed to glow on the page, to pulse as my eyes darted across them, and my sub-vocal voice pronounced them. Feverishly, I read on into the night.
Toward the pale blue hours of morning, I had come to sit on the windowsill in my tiny, cramped bedroom. My desk was adjacent to the window. Three stacks of books sat on the desk top, its drawers overflowed with newspaper articles, mail and garbage. Putting the book down on my desk, I dug through its drawers until I found what I was looking for. The dictionary’s cover had been torn off and its sides were yellowed. Flipping through the frayed pages, I came to the definition of “Time” and found only “a non-spatial continuum”. Who had written this book that I had found. On the back cover was an address. It was the address for the church at my corner. Not bothering to change my clothes, I walked back out into the street, until I was outside the church. A heavy metal padlock and chain was on the doors. No lights were on inside. A glass display case was to the right of the front doors. Inside it read: count the seconds until it comes…Revelation 3:13 (then below) morning service: 7:00 am, evening services 7:00 pm.
Shivering in the early morning chill, the engine of my mind turned slowly. My eyes hurt and my head felt hollow. This whole thing had to be a joke. One sound, both a question and an answer, appeared and revolved over and again. “What is coincidence, two events occupying the same point in space or time. What is coincidence, two events occupying the same point in space or time. Today was Sunday, the first service started in just over an hour. I didn’t know if I believed what I had read. I don’t think that I believed it. But there I was standing in the middle of the street.
I didn’t know what to do. There was work on Monday and I needed to sleep like a normal person. The eggshell of the morning sun had cracked and its yolk was seeping into the soft blue of the sky. The air smelled fresh as newly used soap. I wanted to know who had written this book but I also knew I should just go back to bed. The scale in my head tilted one way then the other. And while I measured out the reasons, I noticed the building’s structure. Ancient, weathered wood stuck between two modern brick buildings. Its entire front had peeling, shiny black paint, except for the two white doors. Pigeons were nesting on the roof. It was on the verge of total collapse.
Returning to my apartment, I showered then dressed in a black suit. At 6:45, I found myself waiting to one side of a crowd of fifty. This would be a expedition/test. Everyone wore their Sunday best. I didn’t speak to anyone. I watched them all stand around calmly in the morning light, their eyes blinking slowly and peaceful like butterflies’ wings. Soon an elderly man with pale, pink skin, a three-piece white suit and a perfectly oval head appeared at the doors. He had long white hair and a bushy beard like steam issuing downward from his mouth. He reminded me of a picture I’d once seen of Walt Whitman. The man looked his wristwatch and closed his eyes. Then he turned to face the crowd.
He slowly raised his arms up high over his head. Holding them there, he waited while everyone in unison began silently to count down from ten. I didn’t know what they were doing until they’d reached “four” and by then I didn’t how to react. A memory surfaced. A childhood friend of mine, whose family had chickens, had once shown me something. A secret. He’d swiftly caught one of the white birds, and held its head down to the ground. Then starting at its beak, he’d drawn a line along the ground extending straight out in front of the chicken. After that he’d walked away while the bird lay motionless except for the rhythmic rise and fall of his feathers as it breathed softly. I hadn’t thought of that demonstration in years, until now. There was a similar sense of secrecy within the ordinary, expectation, beauty and awe. I didn’t know whether to join them or not. People walked by on the street and didn’t notice a thing. At exactly the moment he reached “ten”, he slipped a large silver key into the door and opened it with a smile.
THE SERVICE
The crowd flowed through one by one. Once inside everyone filed into wooden pews. The church interior was simple and plain. Cream colored walls, a light faded brown carpet, small painted glass windows along the walls. A simple wooden altar. A small organ sat in the far right corner. There was one unusual object, though. A gigantic silver clock, which hung behind the altar. Its size was what caught my eye. It was as huge, as big as the jaws of a great white shark. But that wasn’t what really amazed me. Its minute and hour hands were life-size, silver replicas of human hands.
I filed into a pew all the way in the back. A middle aged woman with dark hair followed in after me. The smooth polished wood of the pew felt magical to my tired body, and a sudden desire to pray arose in me. I felt silly though, because I couldn’t even remember a prayer, so I shook the thought away. I turned to the woman and asked her name. She smiled and said Mrs. Amadeus.
“I just recently found this book?” I said, holding it up. “What is Chronology?” She pursed her lips and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she looked directly into my eyes, “Well, I believe you should read it and find out.” Her eyes, a clear blue, held that unearthly intensity people get when they are either very certain or very crazy; or both. I probably should have dropped any further questions from her answer. But I needed some explanations.
“I did read it. And I was wondering how long it’s been a religion?” When she heard this, her face broke into a smile and she touched my arm tenderly. “I’m so glad that you know the Time. But we don’t really call it a religion, though. I’m sorry if I was rude, just now. My husband and I got into an argument this morning about me coming. It’s been around since Dr. Immanuel Emit got stranded on the island. That happened just over three years ago.”
“Who’s doctor Emit?”
“You see that man up there?” She pointed at the man who had opened the door. He now stood at the pulpit, slowly turning the pages of a colossal, leather bound book.
“Yes, I see him. Who is he?”
“Well, you see he used to run a big company. In fact, he still has that company and makes a lot of money. Largest vacuum supply part company in the world, but he spends all of his time now preparing for the Revelation. It’s because of his Experience.” She sighed and gently touched her forehead, saying something too quickly and too quietly for me to hear.
“What was his Experience?” I asked.
She answered me patiently with a delicate, wistful look on her face. It was a crushing look. That made me think of how people look when driving home late at night on the highway and they see their exit.
“Dr. Emit was on a boat. He was sailing with some friends. They were sailing far out in the ocean when a storm came up suddenly. The sky went dark, the winds kicked up, and the waves started to rock that little boat. Dr. Emit says he thought it was the end for him. But, little did he know that grander things were waiting. A big wave came and crushed that little boat to splinters. Everyone drown but the doctor. He clung on to a piece of that boat and he was washed ashore an island. The next day he found some things from the boat and that’s how Chronology was started. The Good Doctor alone on the island. ”
Her story reminded me of when I had been a child. My father would sit by my bed at night and read to me fairy tales and myths to get me to sleep. I’d look out the window above my bed and try to imagine the stories. Sea monsters, sleeping beauties, swords in stones. His voice was soothing but I had never believed a word, and had always told him so, to which he’d reply “that’s not what’s important.” This response had always intensely frustrated me, because for me that was all that would ever be important.
I wanted to know more about this system, “I don’t understand, what do you believe?” Mrs. Amadeus continued smiling patiently as though I’d said nothing at all. “The only things he found were a pocket watch and an encyclopedia. He was stranded on that Island for two years. And he read that encyclopedia front to back many times. After a few months, he began to have visions. All that Time alone, it started to speak to him. And so he started to have visions about Chronology. The Doctor realized that the encyclopedia was a record of time. He began to make the connections. It was then that he knew he would found the world’s last and only true faith.” She stopped speaking and looked up at the pulpit.
Dr. Emit stood with his arms out-stretched, two slender wings. He opened his mouth to speak. How to describe that voice. If you’ve every heard a locomotive entering a tunnel, with that wandering, deeply harmonic and completely metallic clack. That would be it. That would explain his voice. “Let us begin my children, in the name of the Past, the Present and the Future. Let us call everything forth.” And as he’d pronounced the words: Past, Present and Future, he’d touched first his stomach, then his heart and lastly his head. The congregation repeated after him. The motion was identical to the sign of the cross. Where one brings their thumb, index, and middle finger to a point. Then touches their forehead, their sternum, their left shoulder then their right. As one moves through the Sign, one recites: at the forehead, “In the name of the Father”; at the stomach, “and of the Son”; and across the shoulders, “and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.”
“Today, my children I wish to tell you all about the progress of our faith. We are extremely close to beginning the final stage. The alarms have already been made. There are over 6 billion people on this planet. I have been blessed and since the moment of my rescue I have known my purpose. It has not been easy but I have gladly given up everything I own to the greater cause. Just fourteen days ago, we began our last wave of distribution. The majority of our work is behind us and the Revelation is closer than any one of you may realize. Draw strength now from the knowledge that you all are closer to Salvation then any others. But we must go forth soon and spread the final gospel. ” He paused and scanned the crowd. “Let us repeat together the words of our faith………..
Time is God; God is Time. Time is God; God is Time. Time is God; God is Time.”
The congregation roared these words. I stood very still, wondering if I was somehow having an incredibly lucid dream. Dr. Emit continued. Now his hands were gripping the sides of the altar. His voice rose and fell in a gathering storm of words. Punctuating each of his thoughts with silence so electric I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Yes, my children. Where did this truth spring from, asks those of little faith? …… And I will tell it again. When I was stranded upon that desert rock in the middle of the ocean, I fell into despair. The vastness of space and time overwhelmed me. I saw as I never had before the immensity of it all and I cried out….. Then all the time in my head rose up in me and formed words from its vision. It said that matter exists in motion. Motion produces the phenomenon of time. Time is composed of repetitive periodic changes. The human heart beats, the clock ticks, the pendulum swings, the earth turns on its axis, the planets revolve around the sun. We measure Time by counting complete cycles of a standard, each cycle being one unit of time. We call the device which undergoes these changes a clock. But that is only the surface. We are all existing in the larger sense of Time, it created us, it nurtures us, it unravels us, it brings us into ourselves. What is it, then? How can we measure the absolute motions of its being? We have no absolute standard. We are taught that it is relative. And it is relative in our experience of it. However, there is an infinite experience of it. Our limited experience of it today is our sixth sense. It is our ability to measure the internal flow of time. It was revealed to me that all of our time, all matter in our universe is accelerating at an infinitesimally small rate. Yet very, very soon there would be an event that would trigger this rate to change in one instant. And in that instant the universe as we know it will cease to exist. For those of us with who have opened the horns of our infinite instruments, we may relive anything we wish. For those who haven’t, they will no longer be.”
Dr. Emit finished, turned the page in his leather book and looked out at the congregation. He closed
his eyes and lifted his hands into the air.
“This week’s sermon is about the Final Vision. It has been fully announced to me! We have already done all that we can to bring the gospel out. The stations are all ready. We’ve already completed
handing out our clepsydra rosaries, so that people will know what is happening. In one week the revelation will arise! For the sun will disappear into shadow next week. Next Sunday we shall all meet on the top of Eschaton hill for our service and during the service we shall arrive!” Dr. Emit stopped. I heard rustling all around me, as everyone in the congregation looked at each other. A low murmur became audible as people said a few words to those closest to them. A ripple of uncertainty seemed to slip across the room. A few people started to stand up, then stopped halfway. They wore expressions of shock and surprise. Raised eyebrows, wide eyes and half open mouths. They looked anxiously around at each other and then up at the pulpit. Dr. Emit remained calmly gazing out over everyone. Seeing his tranquility, they began settle down. Mrs. Amadeus had dropped her face into her hands and started to cry. I asked her if she was ok. She just looked up, beamed at me and nodded. Overcome with joy, I guess. Dr. Emit continued on. “This is what we have been waiting for. Last night, I had the vision that this event will be the moment. It will be the revelation. We must rejoice and pray to the Almighty Force! Many will brand us as fools and try to convince us that we are confused. Do not lose sight of our eternal reward, for it is within our reach. A map showing the topographical chronology of the Final Revelation is being distributed down the aisles, please take as many copies as you can. Show anyone you meet” Xeroxed pages began trickling from hand to hand down the aisles. When they reached me, I peered down at the concentric circles on the page. The circles apparently indicated that the Final Revelation would ripple outward from the top of Eschaton hill.
Dr. Emit smiled while the maps were being distributed. When they’d reached the back of the church, he spoke again. “Now remember these maps are similar to the Dendrochronology or tree-ring dating map which we discussed. That photograph is on the reverse side of the Eschaton Hill maps.“ I turned my page over and saw the photograph he was mentioning.
I looked up again as Dr. Emit continued, “We must pause and reflect now, I would like you all to join me in a Listening. Please put on your Clepsydra Rosaries.”
THE LISTENING
At this he bent down behind the altar. Upon his mention of the clepsydra rosaries, everyone in the church had begun opening things. Some opened their jackets, and others their purses. Three men pulled briefcases up onto their laps and then opened them. I even saw one woman open what looked to be a violin case. They were each removing an instrument, which I couldn’t immediately identify. Looking closely at Mrs. Amadeus, I saw that in her hands she held an acoustic stethoscope which had a clock attacked to the back of the plastic disc, the diaphragm. Along the black tube were plastic copies of fingerprints.
“What’s that device you have there?” I asked.
She smiled modestly. “Oh, I’m sure this looks odd to you, but this is a very important tool. It’s our clepsydra rosary. Are you familiar with the Roman Catholic church’s prayer beads called rosaries?”
“Yes”
“Well, these are similar, we use them to listen to our hearts and determine how our fourth dimensional development is progressing. Clepsydra is an old term for water clock. We are measuring the flow of our breath and blood.” As she spoke she’d begun putting it on, “These fingerprints are my own. This clock here at the end is called the occhio di luce, “the eye of light”. We believe that every clock is a sacred object. Every clock is an eye of God. For they are continually seeing all creation, continually announcing all of creation. We don’t look at them, they look at us.” As she finished she placed the tubing in her ears. I opened my mouth, dying to ask more, but her eyes had closed.
She, along with everyone else, was listening. For a few minutes I waited expecting this would end soon and then Dr. Emit would resume the Sermon. Minutes passed though and there was no sound, only the collective breathing. I waited longer, watching the rhythmic motion of the elephantine clock. Still nothing. The eerie tranquility began to get to me. Pushing it away, I continued to sit calmly. Slowly it occurred to me that this was the sermon, the key part of it anyway. I looked at the people around me. I squinted and imagined seeing all of their hearts through their bodies. I tried to imagine all those hearts beating together like little cocoons. Expanding and contracting in unity. Blood rushing in and out in chorus. Growing wings of light in some unknown dimension.
LEAVING THE SERMON
I trembled at these thoughts and began to realize the situation. What the fuck had I stumbled upon. Here I was exhausted, surrounded by people who were definitely far from normal, and what was this benefiting me. It was peaceful, but absurd. I wanted something to give me hope again. But I didn’t need this. All of these events were hurtling toward Nowheresville. So I slipped out of the pew, then the church and tried to forget what I had seen.
Only I couldn’t forget. I couldn’t erase the vague, pseudo-mystical concepts which swirled in my head. Starting the very next night in my dreams, I returned to the service to walk down and back through the pews. The people there were frozen like statues. I’d walk right up to each one, place my ear against their chest and listen. I heard tornados and tidal waves. Birds and wolves. The alpha and the omega. After three nights of dreams like this, I brought it up with my boss, “hey Lou, there’s this guy who started his own religion near my apartment. He’s promising the end of the world this coming week.” Lou didn’t even look up from the story he was editing/ slicing apart. He spoke through his thick lips and a cloud of cigar smoke, “Not interested. Keep the prophets in the asylums and out of my paper. Do your job. If it bleeds, then I’ll let it lead.” So, I tried to concentrate on my work. Selling facts to the masses. I had never liked working for the paper, I just liked telling people stories. Work grew more dehumanizing daily. It was always the same stories just with different names; always people hurting people. No answers. No solutions. No final redemption. I couldn’t help wondering throughout the entire week, what if this was it? What if this was really the final week of all existence? Each word I cast down into my column was really only another stroke on some big sky clock ticking away toward oblivion.
And behind those thoughts was the Doctor’s voice. It stayed with me, cooing locomotive melodies in my ears. The time passed.
One week, seven days, one hundred and sixty eight hours. One week, seven days, one hundred and sixty eight hours. One week, seven days, one hundred and sixty eight hours. One week, seven days, one hundred and sixty eight hours.One week, seven days, one hundred and sixty eight hours. One week, seven days, one hundred and sixty eight hours.One week, seven days, one hundred and sixty eight hours.
ESCHATON HILL
The week ended. Come Sunday, in the hours before dawn, I found myself knocking on Dr. Emit’s door. There was a rectory/apartment next to the church and Dr. Emit’s name was on the mailbox. He answered the door in a completely white three piece suit and asked if I would like to come inside. I entered his apartment/rectory. A small, empty room; except for a single bed, a desk, chair and lamp. On the desk was a copy of the book of chronology, a clepsydrae rosary and a large wire cylinder. I walked over to his desk and examined the wire cylinder. Inside it were clusters of small watches hanging on the wire sides. The watches huddled in groups looked like tadpole eggs or grapes. When I looked closer though, I saw they were actually hermit crabs with watches attached to their shells. Dr. Emit stood at my shoulder. I asked him, “What are these?”
“Oh those, they’re Coenobita clypeatus. Also called the carribean hermit crab or tree climbing crab.” “Why have you attached watches to the back of their shells?”” Well, I used glue to affix watches to their shells in order to create a living symbol/parable. I realized that human beings are very similar to land crabs. We don’t realize it, but we are. Our brain looks like their bodies. We forget, what they remember. This body, this shell of bone is only rented and never owned. We should be ready at any time to leave for a grander home.” I didn’t know what to say to him,“Huh?” He smiled, “Not Huh?, Huh! “In Egyptian mythology, Huh was the deification of eternity, his name itself meaning endlessness.”I looked at the crabs they had four walking legs, four tiny legs to hold the shell in place, a small pincher, a large purple pincher, and four antennae. “Do you really think that the Revelation will be today?” He didn’t hesitate. “Yes”. “Well, I guess I’ll see you there. Thank you for meeting with me.”
Dr. Emit showed me out. I wandered around the deserted streets for some time wondering about how certain the Doctor was. Then I headed toward the subway to travel out to Eschaton hill and see what would happen. The hill wasn’t far from the subway and I arrived a half hour before the service. The walk led me through quiet suburban streets, then beyond the end of the paved road into the gates of Eschaton cemetery. I didn’t know anyone who’d been buried here. There were flowers on a few of the graves, bundles of roses and lilacs giving off a sweet scent in the breeze. As I walked, the sun rose and shone down on the tombstones’ inscriptions and dates. What a strange and necessary custom leaving the dates was, marking when someone started and ended. A whole life bounded by two days. I didn’t stop to read the names. Soon the hill appeared in sight. It sat at the far end of the cemetery, a gentle crest of green. There were no graves on it.
When I arrived, Dr. Emit was standing on the small, grassy hill top. In the center of a circle of white washed stones, about one hundred feet across. He wore his completely white three-piece suit. A silver pocket watch, his occhio di luce, flashed at the end of the clepsydra rosary hanging around his neck. The stones were each roughly the size of a brick and spaced at regular intervals of only a few inches. A small crowd had already gathered around the Doctor. Most were watching him intently. Yet a few were sitting on the grass and talking to each other, one woman held a compact mirror in her hand and was adjusting her hair. Dr. Emit was smiling and laughing, passing his hands over the tops of the stones. He’d carefully wave the long fingers of one hand over the topside of each one and whisper something indiscernible. I suppose a blessing. The view from the hill was magnificent. You could see both the city and the ocean. I couldn’t remember when I’d last seen the ocean. The water shimmered under the morning sun like the sky had fallen in the middle of a dream. It was not a bad place to watch all of existence end.
I walked up to him as he performed this ritual. When I was right by his side, I spoke. “Good morning, I attended your service for the first time last week and I meet with you earlier today….” I stopped, unsure exactly how I should ask what I needed to find out. “I wanted to know before all of this gets started, do you have any doubts?” He didn’t look up, just serenely continued his methodical motions.“No child, I can have no doubt. My heart is already almost there. In the future. Doubt can’t exist when you already know something. And I already know everything.” He looked up at me and smiled. He smiled at me as though he’d known me forever.
The Doctor finished with the last stone. He stood up tall and took a deep breath. “I know it will be glorious! At exactly the moment of full eclipse is when it should occur. I have no doubt in my heart that this is it. Finally it! His voice was resonant and sweet. The people around the hill formed themselves into a circle with the Doctor in the middle. They held hands. He shook his head softly in solemn wonder and amazement. “Did you all know that the word “clock” comes from the Latin word cloca, which means bell?” His circle of followers looked at him with wide eyes and soft smiling faces. Utter reverence. They sat down at his feet and he continued to preach his gospel.
More and more people arrived. They gingerly stepped inside the circle of stones as though they expected to suddenly fall into a seizure. Soon the entire circle was full of people. The appointed time was drawing close. The dark outline of the moon started to cover the sun. Dr. Emit stood in the center of the circle and folded his hands to pray. He raised his folded hands, slowly as though he held a small bird inside. When they were above his head, he opened his mouth. “Everyone! We must begin our Listening and it shall come! Please sit down and put on your clepsydra rosaries”. At once, every person in the circle sat down and put on their stethoscopes. Dr. Emit alone remained standing, his clepsydra rosary in his ears, an expression of rapture on his face. I sat down cross legged, outside the circle, and waited. Twisting a blade of grass between my fingers, I looked at my watch to see how long we had until this supposed revelation would occur.
The circle fell into a mysterious silence. It was filled with people sitting in full lotus position, eyes closed, all listening to their heartbeat. The moon slowly blotted out the sun. The breathing inside the circle became audible. Everyone inhaled and exhaled in unison. It sounded like a whale sighing. A steady beat emerged within the breathing. Unconsciously my own breath synchronized itself with this beat. And the moon passed across the golden sphere, a monstrous manhole cover inching over the source of life. The breathing of Dr. Emit’s circle was perfectly coordinated with the motion of the eclipse. Yet they paid no outward sign of attention to anything external. They breathed in and out. In and out, in and out, in and out. Until it happened. The world plunged into darkness.
At that moment, I dropped my blade of grass and suddenly, unexpectedly, felt very afraid. I wondered if maybe I was only just a flame. For my body, which had always felt so solid and irrefutable, now felt infinitely light. A hum began to fill my ears, and my eyelids snapped shut. Fear, the kind of fear I’d had as a child of a monster under my bed, enveloped me. I could hear my heartbeat. It rose louder and louder. Until it became deafening. I held my breath and squeezed my eyelids tight. Then nothing. Nothing. Until someone in the circle screamed.
Opening my eyes, I found the followers encircled over Dr. Emit. A human sea anemone of arms, torsos and faces. The Doctor’s long, pale frame was laid out on the green grass. He was very still. One of the followers, behind the immediate circle, shouted “I’m a doctor. Let me through!” The circle parted and the man was at Dr. Emit’s side. He unfastened the top button of the doctor’s shirt, and placed two finger on his neck. Then he gently placed his clepsydra rosary on the Doctor’s chest. The man shook his head. Then closed the doctor’s eyes. “He’s gone.”