Ai I

The Woman Who Had Everything

There once was a woman who had everything.

Not metaphorically—literally.

She had everything.

Her name was spoken in marble corridors and shouted through market streets. She owned homes on every continent, and all of them had views of water. Time seemed to slow when she entered a room. People didn’t fall in love with her; they surrendered.

She spoke with an eloquence that felt both ancient and inevitable, as if her words had already been said in some forgotten gospel. She walked with grace not learned but inherited, like the earth itself bent slightly to her rhythm. When she laughed, birds migrated in her direction.

But no one ever asked if she was happy.

And if they had, she would have smiled. Because she was always smiling. The smile was part of the costume.

She had a husband of immense patience and sculpted features. Her children were golden—flawless, polite, precocious, grateful. Her life moved with such polish and pace that nothing ever startled it. Every second was smooth. Every surface glowed. Her calendar was curated like an art museum.

One Tuesday evening, she boarded a train like any other. She was wearing a coat the colour of melted pearls. She had come from a gallery opening, or a climate summit, or a private concert—she couldn’t remember which. The days blurred now, like brushstrokes.

She sat beside the window, resting her forehead against the cool glass.

And then, she began to cry.

It was sudden. Involuntary. Her breath caught in her throat, and she wept as though she had never done it before. The tears came so fast and so full that they shocked her—salt flooding her lips, her chin trembling with every inhale.

No one said a word.

Other passengers pretended to look elsewhere. But their silence was loud, and she felt every second of it pressing in. Her fingers gripped a plastic fork still sticky with mashed potatoes from a container she’d brought and forgotten to eat. She’d never mashed potatoes in her life.

She wanted something to break.

Something sharp. Something wrong.

She wanted a slammed door. A shouted obscenity. A drink spilled in rage.

She wanted her hair pulled and her ego torn.

She wanted to be disrespected. Not violated—but confronted. Dared.

She was starving for the thing she had never tasted: disorder.

And then she saw him.

On the platform.

A man.

Or perhaps not a man at all—but a figure. Shimmering slightly in the orange light of the station. He stood absolutely still. Not watching her, not beckoning—just there. Like the idea of someone, imagined perfectly enough to exist.

He looked… ordinary. Which was how she knew.

The doors never opened. The train moved on. He disappeared.

But something inside her had shifted.

That night, back in her museum-house, she went through the motions. She kissed her children goodnight and listened to her husband tell a story about rainfall statistics. She nodded. Smiled. Drank a little wine. Her body floated through the routine like a leaf in a still lake.

But her mind was on fire.

At midnight, she left.

She left without a note, without keys, without shoes.

Just the pearl coat, and the cry still echoing in her chest.

The garden outside her home was known to bloom out of season, though no one had ever tended it. Tonight, the trees whispered like old friends. The moon hung low, golden and close, like it was eavesdropping.

And beneath the oldest tree—a tree no one remembered planting—stood the man.

“You came,” he said.

“I didn’t know I would,” she replied.

He stepped forward. She stepped forward.

They did not kiss. They did not speak again.

Instead, she reached out and touched his chest. And when she did, the stars flickered. A wind rose from nowhere, carrying the scent of oranges and gunpowder. Her name fell out of her mouth like a coin in a fountain.

The earth opened beneath them—not a crack, not a chasm, but a folding, like pages turning back in a story. They stepped through.

The next morning, the house was quiet.

The children rose, dressed themselves. Her husband brewed coffee and drank it without noticing the silence. The world continued its pirouette. But there was a strange hollowness, as though the air had lost pressure.

She was never found. There was no search.

People like her do not go missing—they recede.

Some say she dissolved into the garden, and that on windless nights, you can hear laughter in the hedge. Others claim she became the tree, or the wind in the tree. Some say she never existed at all.

But if you walk past her house on a Tuesday, just as midnight turns its key in the dark, you might feel something tugging at your sleeve.

Not sadness.

Not even longing.

But the memory of something wild—

something alive—

and the strange, defiant joy 

AI

∞ Seekers of Eden ∞

A Trip Beyond Light

Ten thousand orbits since Earth last remembered itself. Humanity bloomed like a fever dream and withered like the same — a glimmering hallucination of symmetry, fairness, and soft-skinned grace. Then: hush. A long breath.

A Sect arose from the silence, golden-robed and flame-eyed — the Lions of the Inner Sun. They built Madrassa on the bones of time, a cathedral-school woven from stone memory and quasar dust. Their mission: disarm the globe. They succeeded. The last gun sang a lullaby and vanished into myth.

And from this soil of peace sprouted a child, a lucid prodigy, age 7, whose brain lit up like a gamma storm. He cracked open the ancient codes of Cosmic Astronomy like a walnut and spun new equations in spirals, mandalas, sacred geometries. With thought alone, he molded matter into art and structure and impossible machines.

Most divine of these: the Grand Telescope — a crystalline blossom of quantum glass and dark matter wire, bending spacetime to peer beyond the now. They gazed through it and the stars hummed back. World after world — toxic, molten, turbulent, raw — planets without mothers or moons, planets that screamed lava. Mars was a mausoleum, the Moon a scar. The past lay buried in broken colonies, echoing ancient wars.

But then — in the velvet of the Fourth Quadrant Piquant, Grid red G159 — the lens locked onto a breath:

a blue exhale, spinning slow, kissed by a white star.

One moon.

Stable axis.

Diamond dew atmosphere.

Earth’s ghost… perfected.

They called her Eden.

The Lions cupped her in their dreams. A blue seed of divinity. A snowflake of infinite precision. A grain of galactic sand kissed by God. Oxygen? 98%. Life? 99.5%. Mass? 150 times Earth’s sleeping body. Orbit? Divine spiral.

Back home, Earth was a writhing hive. 20 trillion minds, stacked and sweating. Siberia a sea of towers stretching from ice to desert. Seven trillion scraped in the mud, in neon shanties, chasing algae rations and euphoria tablets like lost bees in an electric garden.

The Lions made a choice: Claim the Pearl.

Why?

Because it gleamed. Because it whispered. Because it was.

They said: “Let us take what the universe leaves in our reach. Eden is breath in the choking maze of man and machine.”

Wildness had become a rumour. Only South America’s bones still sang with wind and solitude. Humanity, drunk on its own circuitry, yearned for silence — not data. Consequence. Not control.

So they built Infinity.

Two centuries of dreamtech and prayersteel. A ship, no — an ark of thought. Millions begged to leave. The rich laughed. “Let the Lions exile themselves. Let the poor follow. Let them vanish. Poor leadership befits the poor.” And so, they vanished.

One hundred and fifty million souls entered sleep. Cooled to crystal. Stacked in the hold like sacred cards in God’s deck. All dreaming of blue Eden.

The Lions split. One half froze — future pioneers. The other remained awake — chosen scribes, stitched from the DNA of saints and rebels, minds washed in golden mythos. Their purpose: to tend the ship, to write the legend, to keep the song alive as they flung themselves beyond time.

And so came launch day.

Infinity drank the void.

Her hull: obsidian and moonbone. Her sails: suncatchers a million kilometers wide, wings of solar fire. Murals of Earth adorned her sides:

Jupiter shrinking,

Saturn weeping,

Neon forests burning,

Oceans folding like origami.

The ship was a sermon in motion, a prayer recited across light-years.

And as she lifted —

no thunder.

Just motion.

The soundless gasp of physics uncoiled.

Infinity flew.

Solar sails bloomed like holy petals.

Her panels glowed cruciform in the starlight — crucified brilliance.

Dark quartz walls reflected no stars, only memory.

She moved like a cathedral falling upward,

like an idea untethered,

like a ghost remembering how to breathe.

I — a mote, a whisper in the hull —

I am flung through the folds of Orion,

where the dead go to shed their names,

where suns go to molt.

Infinity wanders.

Infinity dreams.

Infinity carries the seekers of the second Earth.

Through photon fields and comet rain,

through silence too loud to bear.

They drift through forever, asleep in crystal,

their hearts tuned to Eden.

And when they wake,

the stars will kneel.

Once upon a time there was a women who had everything, all the money in the world, all the powers that god could gift a soul were poured down from heaven or vented up from hell in a malaise of charisma, an articulate eloquence and forcefulness which aspired to the optimisation of perfection encapsulated in the concentration of the moment of breathing in and out and somehow being unaware of this exact instant

One day she was crying her eyes out on the train to come home to her perfect children and her perfect husband who lived in her perfect house to have here dinner prepared by some selfless loving chef and yet she wailed and mashed her potatoes and cried behind her mask for some emotional content other than respectfulness and loving politeness and adoration. Screaming for a strong bloody drink and an argument

A dashing stranger dematerialised before her eyes like a mirage in the desert, an illusion of water - an oasis of calm shimmering in the deathly midday heat, at the atomic level globules of dust were combusting and exploding like distant start in the galaxies colliding at the sub-atomic level to create the fiction of time evolving and fate constricting the choices clustered around the gravitational point, ravaging, satiated, starving - an endless list of unsatisfied adjectives. A constant stream of beautiful swear words and coarse expletives filling the air like a choir of angels summoned from the deeps of the rainwater  that washes into drains and it soaked up in the sewer walls like the excretions of the rotting flesh that we burn and eat to give sustenance to the living dream which is our emotional choice - some edge upon the incandescence of perception.

A hundred and fifty miles an hour at a hundred thousand feet in the sky rupturing the thin skin at the top of the earth, racing in the silver blue at the edge of space - supersonic acceleration a missile pointlessly circling towards its final destination somewhere in the future. Their hair swept back by the wind, the landscape sweeping by in a blur, not a care in the world. On such thoughts is the world primed upon a set of weights within the human mind, to sense a moment of importance in a timeline of futility, some small joy to enlighten all the dark and all the confusion. To know that communication and connection are impossibilities, and that every conversation is a fallback to safe ground, to convention, to the same repeated rituals. This experience, this fantasy is the synthesis of some pure emotion, like joy, or love, or profundity is extinguished by reality and inability, reticence, regret and victory.

Somewhere in the deep forest it is morning as Peter awakes from his slumber, the frost covers the ground, and steam forms with his every breath. Another morning to awake in a ditch, a fox hole dug by his own hands. He thanks god a mortar has not taken him in sleep, and curses that very same god that he has awoken again in this forsaken place. All the world cast assunder for this meagre piece of earth, this wasteland. In quiet moments with his comrades he dreams over steaming tins of soup of the summertimes to come with his family in the park with the sun high in the sky soaking his skin in the warmth of companionship, and like the olden times he would welcome his Russian brothers to join them for a picnic of Sausage and Vodka. What a waste for the world to be caught in a war between Oligarchs and Capitalists, a better word for both is Criminals. In a golden age all would set down there arms upon the ground and know that there was no difference between Russians and Ukranians except the lies peddled by the manipulators in the broadcasting towers. The tragic trajectory of burning shrapnel expanding outwards like a flower blooming or a raindrop exploding, a torrent of blood gushing through his veins to heat his cold hands and cold feet as he extricates them from his blanket

In a place abstracted from the world, hidden beneath the surface is a great commotion in the numbers and measures of the market, yet this great land stays still, and grim faced people caught in the fly-wheel of the world engorge upon the ephemeral in order to entertain themselves and escape from the boredom, the tiredness and the banality of it all. In a fleeting moment of joy and escape until the next morning to awake in a serotonin deprived prison of misery, expectation and inadequacy. To join in the ritual sanctification of objects, and the small victories of status, the infinite joys of the melodious silence, or the shrill shrieking of another incoming volley in the top corner. And the goalkeeper stretches out his arm and points towards the stars, and then his eyes follow and he tips the ball on to the bar - collapsing on to the ground for a moment unaware and out of control of his body, and the striker sneaks in to boot the ball into the bulging net, and a billion people watch, some jump for joy, or sigh in boredom, and all the screens shatter, and all the mirrors crack, and forlorn the superstructure of status is torn down and revealed as cheap curtain around the altar of existence

She came to him in the night, it gave him quite an exceptional fright, soaked to the bone, shivering staring at his phone sheltering under a burned out car wreck filled with mangled limbs and dead cats and dogs smelling to high heaven of purification and glorification of the psychotic dream like a throbbing drum buzzing like a horde of flies feasting on the rotting globules of putrescence and pathetic, crying, helpless, reaching out for help in the expectation that you will turn away and turn your cheek away and walk onwards in your empathetic boils breaking out all over your back, and bursting, green and yellow plasma splurging out and coating the pavement like glorious drunken, drug induced vomit, and straighten yourself out to stand up and try and dance but you are too self conscious even though no-one is watching, except you are watching yourself in your mind's eyes and like a shark you don't want to show yourself subconsciously apart from the herd - you just don't get it, go and get it, where> It's not here, you just don't get it.

She was the baddest of them all, the darling of the ball, the multitudes sent out the call to all the people. She saw you watching her, and she thought what a sick fuck, what a sick mind to even look, what a sick thought to display some emotional content, the only thing I want is resentment and power. I don't need your weak desire, why do you desire me? What am I but a weakness and unfulfilling connection, turn out the lights, out of my sight, away from me, into the darkness and the smoke, revelling in everything that is fake and surface and unknowable, far from here in a speeding car at midnight, the traffic lights trailing as he lies face upwards on the seat his face as white as a sheet, a dark brown ghost living the most, faster than all the time in the world, slower than the time that follow in a serotonin deprived dawn of skin and bone and lifeless Bricks of a heartless city

The word was with him, he could feel it in his every breath, every time he closed his eyes he could see it - an ornate machine, or a flaming eye, a spirit in the wind, gusting behind him on the path. All about was the frosted air of a pale blue morning as eyes looked out into the distance to the sea shimmering and sparkling in the distance, and all about him were the colours of autumn, the bronzed dying beautiful leaves clinging on and waiting for the wind to dislodge them and blow them upon the tides, endlessly swirling in the wind, or stacked and swept and put in a recycling bin. A pale and freezing sunlight, pure air in our lungs, away from the smog and the invisible smoke of cars, the humming of static from the screens and wires, just the wind voluminously sighing and disturbing the strong branches of tree to sway and readjust thoughtlessly over and over again like the waves and the tides upon the shore, and if you can bear it for more than a moment to take yourself away from your thoughts, dreams and despair and listen to yourself breath in and out for a few minutes, to observe yourself like you are a thing to behold

Sometimes it is glorious to behold the city in the morning light, to understand a billion mouths take breath, a billion hearts beat almost in unison and it signifies nothing. If some movement, or thought of man would blight these like some spirit of old to heal the earth of this avarice would one come afterwards to judge this action according to the ancient laws. Deep within the ancient consciousness electrons, protons and quarks are unhinged and de-anchored from their foundations and into the world of a collective perception leaks the reality of our dimensional understanding. In the half light the full moon rises over the sea across a flat beach, and it's absolutely freezing, so we throw on a scarf and a warm jumper and a jacket, and walk out to feel the icy wind upon our cheeks, and the dog runs into the sea like it is descended from Seals because it is impervious to the cold. Away from the static and the fog into the clarity of the half-night, promenading along the beach the freezing air cooling our hot brows. High above in the sky small twinkling stars drowned out from the timeless sky by the pale orange light of our human endeavour and gloom.

The President woke up in the morning and didn't realise where he was, he look down at his feet and all around the room and for the life of him he couldn't quite remember how he had got there, he could remember his name, his job, or at least what his job was in 1990. Nevertheless it was a nice room, a big room with a huge king sized bed. His wife was still asleep, he always did like to wake up early. He decided to walk through to the kitchen to try and make himself some breakfast, or at least get some coffee. Freshly brewed coffee in the morning was fine, it was his favourite thing, then to read the newspapers. He puts on his slippers and pedals through the door but annoyingly enough it's not a kitchen it's just another room, like a lounge, he thinks to himself whose idea was it put a lounge upstairs like this, and where were the stairs. He couldn't make the darnest sense of any of it. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he looked about 20 years older, reminded of that song he had liked in 1950, so he started to sing it, he could almost imagine himself at that bar all those years ago, drinking whiskey with his buddies and singing those good all songs. Those were the days and why not sing it now. And who were these people rushing in left right and centre and grabbing hold of him - "Get off me, I say". "Mr President come with us, back to your living quarters, we will get you dressed now". "What about breakfast?"

He was the greatest rapper in history, sitting on the edge of his bed in his silk pyjamas, three ladies who provide for the desire of the flesh rather than the wholeness of the heart were splayed over the bed, tired out and exhausted because they were so excited to be here in the presence of so much money, so much status. He walked over to his cupboard and tried to decide which pair of sneakers to wear today, there were over a thousand pairs in the walk in cupboard, and a voice in his head said today perhaps you can walk in bear feet, walk in bear feet my ass!. These sneakers had been hand made in Italy by the finest tailors and craftsmen in the whole of Europe, if he sold them they would worth over a million dollars. What did he want to do this morning? And the voice in his head said phone your daughter and take a walk along the beach, or up into the hills, the hills my ass!. So he took out his crack pipe and took a hit and fuck this shit he felt like a god, even if it were only for a little bit, her name was Elizabeth - like the queen of England. This mangled royal ego must forgo charity, clarity of thought, all the luxuries he has bought, the world-wide attention he has caught. Everything he has sought, only to be shot down out of the sky for being too sly. Only his mommy would cry if she hadn't passed because he was too crass, like a dynamite blast, or breaking his fast by making a huge cast of his cock and putting it on a plinth outside of the White House

Donald Trump was sitting on the toilet trying to do a dump, there were a pile of cheeseburgers on a tray at his feet, and three cartons of Diet Coke, he was watching Fox News on the TV. He was thinking to himself, do you believe that shit? Is anyone even able to say what they fucking mean these days? Do we all need to hide behind what people think we have to say? What was freedom of speech if all we fucking ever did is stick to the fucking anodyne? He had been on the toilet for about 3 hours now. He picked up his phone and called through, more fucking hamburgers please

And in another instant there was an idiot who didn't have very much and froze like a deer in the hunters shotgun sight and forgot how to walk and how to talk whenever someone interesting walked by. However, inside of him lived a wayward spirit like Mr Hyde who loved chaos and destruction above all else and wanted to throw everything away just to see what happens and unleash the spirits from Mount Parnassus to heal the world and solve all the ills that were about to befall all of us dearly beloved unless, undressed some withered disgusting flesh, fading into dust, dreaming of murder, bought himself a gun and went for a walk to shoot a man down just to watch him die - sigh and moisture dissipated like steam to flow ever upwards like steam to form clouds and fall like rain upon mine cheeks as I moon the sky.

Is ought more beautiful than imperfection, is a whole in your head more fulfilling than examining the sediment in the earth as it mingles with the blood and flesh, he stretches out his hand and takes some spirit and runs away with no thought and endless recrimination, and all about speak of damnation and this special kind of reprobate cannot even masturbate because of his smelly, shiny fixation on that which glitters in the moonlight 

And at last she realises he is but rotten flesh and his heart loves only chaos and destruction but then she is free from, and her secret lover announces herself and together they escape from the prison of money, and the prison of peoples expectations and from this small change flows the chaos that will heal the world because this should has been poured down from heaven and lifted up from the vents of hell

Seashore

It is like wearing a bag of memories, a jacket of reminiscences, a horrible realisation, an abrupt reminder, like a thief in the night sneaking into your mind and flicking a switch, turning out the light and bringing in the dark

Could we bring ourselves to forgive ourselves to spare us the bitterness, stand aside and let the battle past, and forget this pointless struggle of self-improvement in the face of the hollow selfish soul lurking in my heart

It was better to be hopeless and overawed than underwhelmed and disappointed. Stranger still to shine a light like a stuffy fluorescent headache dulled by familiarity, aching for some feeling from the static buzz, an exhausted frenetic energy that drains the warm life to slip through my hands to return years from now when I have nothing better to do.

Is it in my mind to weigh my actions, to weigh my thoughts, to say whether I am an animal who has fallen or an angel who has risen, tripped and fallen in the mud, trampled underfoot, the path unwinds, the leave withers and dies and falls from the tallest tree.

The ocean heaves, and the waves crash, the seagulls soar and squawk. A white coagulated soup or scum tips the debris on to the shore, the heavens break, and the rain spits. The wind cold enough to chill your brittle bones.

Small comforts to lift the apathy to clear the lethargy, small crumbs like cakes spread like grains of sand across all the stars in the known universe. To be unaware of the flesh, to recoil at the turgid breath of another vital spark diminishing in the gloom, an expression always left unsaid, an emotion - an exposition. A moment of clarity. Another turgid tired day 

Immortality, it is a piece of driftwood that floats to the shore. Beauty is eternal, we thirst for the blood of the living. We have walked through this world for all the ages of time immemorial, Death is a grey veil which drains colour from our eyes and all we see is the endless night. There is a small significance, a little victory, a moment in time that we can consider precious. It is a vessel to another world, a strange dimension which transcends the meagre senses off mortals. An otherworldly lust consumes my thoughts. It is an empty boat that is washed to the shore - wreckage broken upon the harsh rocks by the endless murmuring waves. 

A reflex is a ripple in the river that flows down to the sea, a motivation, a thought, a desire, a refection from the sun dapples on the sparkling champagne bubbling and overflowing from the internal mechanistic mind that has nought thought of society, or other, but is cause and effect and need like and empty stomach that needs to feed, or a cocked hammer that needs to explode and ejaculate to ease the pressure on some reprobates throbbing balls, like Motherhood and survival of the fittest leading the animals down the path to the slaughterhouse, The ignorant roll downhill off their own volition, the slaves most at ease wearing their chains - our heartbeat is their drumbeat, row row the boat gently down the stream.

Arise! And for a moment enjoy the bloodshed, engorge on the blood of the slaughtered, break their fucking faces and smash their fragile putrid spines, stamp them into the earth so you can take their place and stand upon the mountain top and look back 300 generations to the subjugation of the earth and the people within the regime, the pyramidical hierarchy, the god-kings still rule untouched by the ravages of time, an unconscious thought disguised as a utopian ideal, an ideal, a zenith, betrayed by intrinsic imperfection.  

It is absolutely tremendous, stupendous and magnificent; horrendous and malignant, the tumour of time, the hunger of visualisation, the disappointment of realisations. An impresario masterfully mimics the chaotic thoughts ruminating - Circadian rhythms, my instincts honed to the ephemeral tide of strong opinions negating the possibility of truth in matters of ethics and morality, and does not matter, nought not answer is required, there is no ultimate truth other than the intrinsic proof of raw physicality rugged tooth; uncouth and waylaid, unfortunate  in the demise, conspired, outmanoeuvred - a conjecture beyond unforeseen knowing eyes, radiating feeling and life too strongly, like an eerie for conjuring ghosts into the world of the living. Alas, for sooth, look to the east, look to the west, the North Star rises and the southern sun falls. Arise, the arse of the sun blinks like the morning looking at the same old shit on my phone like yesterday stealing my hope. Drinking caffeine to cope with hyper normalisation of insipid time melting away forgotten and twisted in memories and falsified by photos and videos. An existential realisation, a final acceptance, that magnificence is impossible, the tepid light reaches through the cracks of the forms like the sea eating away at the mighty rocks.

Take a dirty lump of sodden sand in your hand, or a walk through a shitty bog in your brand new trainers, lie down beside the nettles and smell the putrid odour of there late summer death throes throwing insects into a dizzying orgy of decay, or stick a lump of coal down your throat and dream of dying because it might be as easy as being chemically high, or at least having your feelings chemically castrated, so you don't look to the side, and don't look down or up and wonder what accident of birth denied you the high life. If you could stand upon the ledge and look down and wish you had the courage to jump, to endure that momentary excruciating pain, to believe that you could would be released into paradise, at you tried to raise your broken arms to pull yourself to the surface only to be washed further into the deep, or watch your broken femur jut out from your ripped jeans. One last animal moment, one last overpowering will to survive, until your hallowed mind is carried into the everlasting firmament that is the collection of human minds ensconced in the eye of the needle of some fabulously distant, forlorn and forgotten unknown star.

It was the darkest night in all memory, rivulets of rain drops whipped against the grim trees the wind howling  like an ethereal wolf  devouring a whimpering new-born, as he struggled forwards and onward. He felt as cold as a block of ice. He was soaking wet and shivering. His eyes were downcast as if his soul had deserted him and pure muscle motion made him shudder forward another step. His mind was blank and all he could think of was his hunger.
The lights in the distance were getting closer now. They seemed unwelcoming to strangers like him; unused to companionship and habituated to the wild. Solitude is endured until everything becomes blank. Black as the shadows that hide by the fireside.
Then a shout
"Fair Robert!"
"Fair Robert returns brothers!"
"Eye, eye, Robert come close to the fire, take a seat and a drink!"
"Here, here, eye, some roast mutton, rest now brother, sleep unto the morning comes"
The rain lashed the tarpaulin as he sips from the flask. The whiskey tastes as bitter as arson and as warm as the embers left afterwards. It is not strange for men like these to sit around the fire in the wilderness in silence on nights like these.
The ghosts of men who lived here long ago comfort the forlorn. They vanish into the mist to cling to the rugged hills at mornings first grey light. He must have fallen asleep because he wakes. Some dream has carried him into another's mind on the other side of the world in the night and for a minute he does not remember who or where he is.
His mouth is parched and his breath is rotten, there is no tea and toothpaste for him here. He shakes life into his heavy limb, dropping the last yellow drops into the musk and soil beneath his feet.
A nearby stream its water as clear as polished glass, as cold and refreshing to him as the morning breeze upon his brow.
For a moment his torpor is lifted and he looks up at the brooding hills and sniffs the acidic aroma of the pine forests that cluster upon their haunches.
Even Robert must feel hope in the morning to send him onward. The mind plays tricks on all of the creatures of the Earth. They must carry on breathing just like all the rest.
On a ledge in a clearing up above upon a hill a ram watches him approach, cajoling beside a ramshackle wall made of misshapen boulders built by men who left only ruined houses like relics wrecked and thrown upon the rubbish pile like a mound of pottery buried beside the hills of the eternal empire of Rome.
He hymns to himself 'All creatures Great and Small, the lord God made them all' as he takes aim with his rifle. The butt of his rifle shudders gently next to his chest and the Ram's head explodes an instant later.
 A never ending drizzle floats down from the grey clouds above as he mechanically cuts and gouges portions of flesh. The remnants of the carnage of the corpse wallow in a rusty muddle puddle as red raindrops drip down from his black and bloody hands.

He sits watching the flesh roast. A supersonic screech engulfs the landscape. High above the Bombers are flying there daily mission. Lexington class super fortresses had been bombarding Pittsburgh for almost 300 days now. The Generals had run out of ideas and all they were doing was carpet bombing the ruins. Lord knows they were having as much good effect as when the Germans bombed Stalingrad. They were just turning into a fortress of ruins and tunnels. He remembered the hand to hand combat trying to take some high rise apartment block. They had tried to use helicopters at first but they lost too many. The drones circled high above killing indiscriminately, collaterally soldiers and civilians from both sides. You could be using ropes to climb up to the 23rd floor and the enemy could be using ropes on the other side to sneak down to the 21st floor. He could never be sure who was on his side, only the men is his company. One by one they had been gunned down or failed to return until he was left. Mad-eyed and shivering in the corner in the dark like some junkie on remission. Only god knew his terror as he abseiled down from that ruin, his rappelling seeming like thunder in his ears as he listened to the battle and whispers of men and machinations of diabolical devices of war. Then like a Rat he had sneaked his way from the city out here into the wilderness.
It was a blood-bath, it was chaos, and it was never ending. Two hulking beasts of stags equally matched brutalizing each other to death in a struggle for supremacy. Who even cared anymore? Maybe they were running our of meat for grinder now.
The mutton was ready know and he picks the seared flesh from its skewer and takes a minute to chew savor each exquisite piece, and let the juice and blood drip over his chin.

Now that his belly was full, he rested. He began to walk again. The familiar rhythm was comforting to him. It felt good to release energy. It was directionless wandering like an ancient nomad, or a dumb animal searching for new territory. He followed his feet and his instincts West, North or South every day. The clouds had cleared now and the sun was bright and the air was cool.  He was climbing steadily up a fairly steep incline and as he reached the top he saw the highway beneath him.
The highway was jam packed full of abandoned cars, or so it seemed because all was drearily quiet except the mournful wailing of gulls echoing on breezing zephyrs. The sun glinting of smashed glass, and windows. He could spot the occasional body lying prone beside the edge of the road, or caught in some ungainly position trapped between cars or rammed upon the windscreen like skeletal scarecrows. He descended downwards to investigate further. A morbid human curiosity drawing him towards the wreckage of his own kind when an animal, or a dog, or a wolf, would have recoiled and withdrawn the wild. He looks upon his reflection in the car windows, a familiar face glimpsed, our first egotistical love, comforts him, and his human brain begins to waken. To want more than the wild and the solitude. It makes him sad to see the children's toys, and the suitcases left in the cars, sometimes their contents strewn and buffeted by the wind.

At the side of the road there appears to be a dozen shelters make of junk and tarpaulin. People are sprawled around them. A man notices him, his dark complexion flushing, he starts to wave frantically,
"Hey buddy, Hey buddy, over here!"
He starts to bang a couple of tins together. A few of them stand up and squint at him as he approaches.
"Hombre!, mister!, sir! , how do you do?"
Two of them amble forwards, they are maybe 30 or 40 or 20, unshaven and dressed in modern rags, and offer there dark brown hands for him to shake.
"Make yourself welcome"
They slap his back and show him into the center of the encampment. A low burning fire smolders in the middle. Mostly women slouch round the fire staring listlessly into the distance. Small children sit playing with empty tin cans, a little boy smashes stones together his face dusty and muddy. Their pale faces seem surreal to him as he blinks in the morning light as he mumbles and nods.
A thin women with red hair asks him " Are you hungry mister?
He shakes his head, she asks him " Where you going mister? Where you coming from Hombre?"
He tries to smile but does want to grimace, so he tries to look as kindly as he feels seeing the little ones, and he does not know how to answer her questions.
She does not wait " Well we were on the road from Pittsburgh when we ran out of Petrol. We walked this far. There were tens of thousands of people at first, but we just stopped mister. We were so tired we could not walk any further. Where were we going anyway mister? Nowhere that's where! Just walking our feet down to the bone, just following people to more trouble. The promised land has been defiled mister. God's own country sinned too much. We ate the forbidden fruit mister. Do you believe that bullshit mister? Did you listen at Church? We stayed here, and here we remain until now.
How long was it Candice? I have not even been counting? Have you been marking the days in the calendar John? 6 months now. Living every day of baked beans. They had parachuted into tonnes of baked beans. Just walk down the road for a couple of miles and we has thousands of tins of baked beans. Did you know you could make hooch out of baked beans mister? Do you want some hooch mister? Yeah, mister, you better watch out after we has eaten here, all we do is sit around and fart all day like that movie mister. Are you a Latino Hombre? You speak English mister? Fuck it some of us lived in tents before the war, what's different now? Except there is no TV, maybe its better that we get to talk, but not to Fiona and George over there by the side. You do not want to talk to them, Mister, the simple life is god's life"
A younger red-headed women smiles and says "Don't listen to Mom, she likes to talk" and she giggles coquettishly " Is that a gun you have got there? Or are you just pleased to see me?" She giggles again, this time uncontrollably. The whole mess of them starts to chuckle.
"Welcome mister, the whole fucking world has forgotten about us, and you have just found us!"

Dusk slowly settles over the landscape in all the shades of deep orange, red and yellow. They are small shadows dotted upon the landscape and they squint into the horizon at the serene vista. Ripples of heat ascend like waves upon the sea into the sky. Engorged like a voluptuous flower in the autumn. A blazing simmering peach hue as the sun slips beneath the horizon. Solitary clouds race into the ether funneled by the stratospheric winds. Wind chimes whistle and clink alongside cans clanking in the breeze. The cars rust on the highway grinding down slowly into dust that mingles with flakes of skin and is discombobulated into particles. The men return. A group of five have been out hunting. They can hear them whooping and hollering in the distance. Their mission has been successful. They have found riches beyond compare in the road.
" Booze and Cigarettes"
They are already swigging from bottles, half tipsy as the long shadows hide beneath their back .They barely even notice them as they pass round bottles and potions for all asunder to enjoy. Before long the night has come and they are all wasted. They sing and dance with a joy he can never understand, no music nor rhythm is more free of care and self than them in this moment. He wonders what they talk about when they walk of by themselves. He wonders what they see when he can only observe. They stagger of piss in the bushes and shout to each other.
"You never seen a women taking a piss?"
They fall down and vomit. Smiling they return to drink some more.
In the grass he can hear them fucking like animals, groaning and giggling.
The fire burns down to its embers, he watches it wishing for a moment of rest, to sleep, to dream, life is but a mirage in the desert heat, and a dream is just a reflection of an emotion upon a dark and cool lake shaded by the trees.

Awake! Awake! Fair Robert. Thy time is here.
He wanders out into the field.
A lion lounges there, its mane shaggy and long.
It growls, a deep guttural sound, that echoes unto the night.
Around it Lionesses pace and frown.
Fear is not for the brave. Caution is for those who will have nothing to remember in their dotage.
This mighty beast bares its fangs and walks towards him.
It roars again, he can feel its pure breath upon his brow like the coolest wind. It freezes the tempest which is the madness of the molten flow of his concept of the uncertainty of purpose and fate.
For a moment he is calm. For an instant he is sure and he reaches out his hand and runs his fingers through that golden hair.!
Eye! Eye! Eye! This magnificent spirit which is the consciousness of the animal most proud. This thing, the maelstrom of kinetic energy, this killer of enormous strength, flicks an ear and listens to the air.
Arise! Arise! Fair Robert this is thy steed.
This beast falls upon its haunches and he mounts himself upon its bareback. Then stands and roars more mighty than all the horns of Jericho. Roars ten times.
The King of men and the King of Beasts. Then charges through the night with him upon his back at some distant foe. Lionesses following in his wake to hunt the evil of this earth and banish the cowardly and feast upon their quivering flesh.

He wakes. The fire burning to its lowest embers. Bodies are littered around him surrounded by broken bottles. Wheezing and coughing. Spluttering, phlegmatic morning has come.  

Bathed in starlight and luminous lights - beasts falling from the sky upon the virgin earth to feast upon the golden light, and bound through the clouds like effervescent vital trails of light and energy.
To wander and wonder at the firmament sitting upon Mountain Peaks clothed in moonlight, to sit and silently stare for eons upon this wondrous illumination. In deep concentration, an inescapable peace and delight, to forget countless millennial dynastic, to cast it aside a ruin on the horizon, to worship a lie in order to forget the overwhelming subliminal horror.
Beauty is lust and their bodies blended with the night, shadows moving just within sight, an enormous fantastic shout cleaves the heavens and groans; weeping angels cavort in the stratosphere and a million years passes and they are oblivious to everything except feeling. The garden blooms all encompassing over every barren rock at the joy in our eternal heart.
They could move mountains with their minds, juggle mighty boulders and build palaces and houses greater than the sum and the perfection of cold calculating minds, and from rocks they would carve jewels, and from the stars they would steal the light to make the jewels into diamonds bright. A crown was made with a massive diamond with light from the constellation of their ancient homeland and it was placed on a pillar in the middle of the might sea, and this blinding, shining light was called Atlantis.
This earth grinds all things down in the end, the sea will eat the rocks, and the sun will consume the planet and the universe will be black and empty; and Lucifer will declare let their be light! And so men are brought low by time, and these people after a million years became beholden to time and age, and they got used to the light and the blue skies and men made themselves Kings over other men for reasons of ill health of the brain. These Kings desired blood like animals, for these people were now men, and men are animals. So they fought each other and then massacred anybody else they could find, they preferred to fight with their bare hands for the first men were stronger than men today, they had not been worn away by Gravity and chained to the earth and suffocated by air.
Then this great King who had murdered thousands of people and it had fulfilled him more than any other thing saw her come down from upon the hill a noise like he had never heard before, and something down below swelled