White Love
By John Tannock
(1057 words)
Cold steel, and dark.
Not black, for black has a distinct shade, negative though it be, a certain persistence of memory that allows one to conjure its nature and gaze upon it even during times of light and color. Dark was different. Dark was nothing. In the dark there was no contrast, no shade, and the only fabric of consciousness that could be readily remembered by the senses was a vague recollection that once, upon such a very long time ago, there had been black and white and other colors that were but transient memory riding upon a timeless unconscious. There was no time, no sensory input, nothing but dark. It had been dark since the beginning of time, since long ago time itself had ceased to be and everything was nothing. He had even forgotten the nature of who, or what, he was. Forgotten that he had been buried in heavy metal, carefully enfolded in protective, immortal coverings and sent below the crust of the earth itself in nothing but darkness and an endless time given to waiting. He waited. And he knew, through the complex though dormant mechanism that was his brain, that even though time had forsaken him and he could only see and feel things akin to the dead or past lives forgotten, he would love. He had loved and, though eternity itself stand between them, he would love again.
Odd. In the dark he could conjure no face or shape or smell to the object of his love. He only knew that it was strong and rested deep within the core of himself, waiting to be unleashed and born again. He simply knew, perhaps as a fledging knows that it must leave the nest and head south at a precise time, or a turtle after some eons of blue eternity knows exactly in all the great ocean where and when to crawl back to the world and repeat itself upon the exact track of unrecognizable sand, that twenty years past brought its tiny form scurrying into the big blue. He knew without knowing, as it were. He knew that he would be released to find and meet and join with his love before the darkness itself could take the very unknowing certainty from within him. He was simply waiting.
Darkness....
Waiting....
Waiting....
Love.......
Waiting...
Darkness...
Then it happened. As if all the non-time had never been. Power, immediate and demanding, shot through him, roared across the very surfaces of his sleek body. His brain, so long dormant and floating, came alive as quick as light, and filled him with excited and expectant feelings and impending calculations. Electrons warmed him, he felt the warmth and realized he had been cold. He hadn't really felt that before because there had been nothing. There was black all around him, but the darkness was gone. Yes. Black. He felt a great warmth building beneath him slowly and his head filled quickly with millions upon millions of numbers which swam through him as magic and brought him to full sentience and attention. It was time to love. And there, finally, was his love. Not immediately before him. Not present with him in the chamber. But the detail and the image of her, down to every exacting line and curve that was the complicated beauty of her structure. That was the face he had longed for in the darkness. The face he knew would come. It was there now, clear and distinct inside his mind, as the whirlwind of numbers and ciphers coalesced and formed her for him at oh-so-long last. He felt the heat beneath him and through him ignite and the chamber was filled with icy water that added to his excitement. Love was coming.
There was a jolting sensation, as if falling slightly sideways, and then, miracle upon miracles, the cavern suddenly exploded with dim blue light from the birth orifice above him. Dim, deep, blue, hidden sea light, but brilliant after the dark. He could take it no more. Half of himself exploded and he rushed forward, up and out, sleek, and explosive, and filled with hope and passion beyond normal reckoning. He raced up and out of the dark, the blue giving way easily to lighter and lighter shades, so many seconds of different blue that it was a miracle, and then he escaped the blue and catapulted skyward with a great whale's wake and explosion of energy that defiled the calm of the sea, and he hovered, static and motionless bathed in sunshine so bright and reverent that he cried. But there was not time for the sun. It was time for love, and, beautiful though the light was, that was not the object of his passions. The numbers sang in his head and he turned himself slowly, guided by instinctual prescience, and picked the route to love, knew it as truth revealed, when his nose pointed and found the exact direction. He became supersonic and raced across a silent sea that cared little for his passing.
There were more numbers and signals and warnings and he calculated with his honed intellect their meanings and moved slightly, this way or that, as the terrain demanded. Then he made landfall and had not the time or the inclination to notice the browns and blues that greeted him for he was racing to his love and his sensors told him that he was being watched and tracked with malevolent, unseen eyes that would keep him from his love. But he was stealth and fury personified and none of their intentions nor actions would keep them apart.
He rose and crested a jagged mountain top and plummeted down its incline to a valley which he hugged tight for protection and then, beauty of all beauty ever dreamed, there she was. He saw her, in all her ingrained glory, for only a few seconds as she grew larger and larger and more real with the coming of his passion, and she was all that had been promised; the large, circular dish, the three black buildings and the tell-tale towers of electricity that he could smell as perfume. He touched her for perhaps a trillionth of a second, but it was all that had been promised and the universe exploded.
White Light...White heat...Burning.
My love.
About the author:
John Tannock lives and works in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. For the past 8 years, he has been employed as a Security Supervisor with the City. "From this position I watch the the world, observe, and hopefully, record same in an interesting and artistic manner."
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