Michael Scott Hand

The world wobbles on its axis, but we don’t feel it.

The world spins–once slower–now faster, each year. But we do not feel the spinning.

To the calendar they add leap years to maintain the façade of a reality we are somehow in control of.

Time and space whirls around us in a dizzying light show. But to us it is just day and night, day and night, day and night.

Day and night we ponder as the world spins.

Tectonic plates and magnetic poles and ocean tides. The moon shines down. Old friend; old, dusty rock.

The world wobbles on its axis, but we don’t feel it.

Or maybe we do.

Everything’s okay, says the voice on the loud speaker. Please return to your seats and remain calm.

And there’s that special type of fear that comes with falling, that life-affirming, last-ditch gasp as your hands turn to claws on the arm rests and you find yourself praying to whatever-god, any-god.

We will be attempting an emergency landing. Please do not be alarmed; we are trained for this. Assume the brace position.

Shudder, rattle, shake.

You wake up, of course, because it’s a dream. There’s no flaming engine outside your window. You’re not even on an aeroplane.

The fear is replaced by the familiar sensations of your bed sheets and your pillow. Your hands tangled in the covers.

How foolish of you to mistake a bed for an aeroplane.

Having safely landed from your dreams, you sit up and place your feet on the floor.

The floor feels solid beneath you; everything’s okay.

Worry courses through my veins.

Like a demon nobody summoned: it’s there, in my blood.

Worry leers at me from around corners. It stalks me in the night.

Worry touches everything; it even makes me doubt the words I write are right.

What right does worry have to stalk me in this way?

It’s an elongated shadow, sharp teeth gnawing at my nerves.

My nerves like elevator cables, my psyche is suspended.

What victory does worry seek?

Hope, a small bird, flaps around in the air ducts. I can tell the bird is lost, I can hear its body thump against the manufactured metal.

One tunnel will lead the bird to freedom and yet it is afraid; for in every other air vent there are quickly spinning blades.

And who am I? A human trapped between a goblin and a dove, unable to control either. Unable to control anything.

Worry courses through my veins.

Shoes squeak; trolleys rattle. White lights, reflected, shine up from the linoleum floor. Movement, hustle, bustle; a phone rings and is promptly answered.

Papers rustle, voices raised, voices whisper. The elevator dings.

So many bright buildings, so many bustling people. So many signatures on pages. So much data. Computer on the fritz. Balled up paper thrown at a rubbish bin bounces off the wall and hits the floor.

Wall-to-ceiling windows that don’t seem to let in the light. Double glazed. From the outside you can only see the reflection of the sky. Invisible buildings that claim not to exist except by virtue of their doorways.

The building is connected to other buildings by the roads. Beneath the roads there are tubes and pipes. These carry refuse, dirty water, clean water. The pipes extend like tree roots between the buildings. They tangle with one another. Sometimes they burst and water seeps onto the streets.

The streets are lined with power cables. They decorate the streets like hanging lights. They are the ropes that hold the buildings to the ground so that they don’t float away like the clouds that their windows reflect. Buzz, click. The coffee machine is done. The elevator dings.

Buildings stand as monuments to what we’ve built.

Ruins stand as monuments to what they built.

Mountains stand as monuments to what time built.

What time built? Through time and space, dust alights and chemicals trace. Unbound by gravity, yet bound, hemmed in by dark matter or some other thing we do not understand.

So vast, so vast, this empty space. A tiny spacecraft topples endlessly into the void. We sent it out there bearing greetings to the Universe. Bearing bleatings to the Universe. Empty pleadings to the Universe.

We are so grand, says man, as we plant our flags in foreign lands. And none so foreign lands exist as that dusty Sea of Tranquillity.

Persevere, Mars rover. Persevere, mankind. If we try hard enough the next ones might just find the remnants of what we leave behind.

For even the mighty mountains erode and ruins are swallowed by sand.

What will become then of these roads and cities we’ve built all across the land?

Ah: but these too will fall. Not tomorrow, perhaps. Not in a day or in a month. But just as life slips through our fingers time treads on and Eternity is ever-patient.

Eternity awaits the shopping mall. Eternity awaits the highways. Eternity awaits all ash and bone and creatures long replaced by other creatures. Snapping beaks rush to escape a cloud of toxic dust.

And the horizon is so bright. The horizon is so bright and everything is melting. Everything is together.

And then this rock, so vital now, becomes nothing but another age-cracked space marble. Burnt beyond recognition. Swallowed and melted in the expanding furnace of our sun. Our planet, scrap metal; like so many recycled refrigerators.