A Distant View of Empire

He did not hear it. He did not know at the time that that half step was in fact a drop, and by a fraction missed the mark which would have ushered him into another environ...no, but he went on with his life altogether programmed in this supposed realm all the same. A guild chorister at “Smokey Mary’s”, he spent his days in study, and solemn song. And he always carried with him the scent of that sweet smoke in the infinity after Evensong. The distant view of Empire was not real in the distance, nor were the cracks in the sidewalk of this precinct. To him it was dissonant dreamscape and sacred ground. All would change however in due course, and when it did the question would be whether even he would be in concord with it’s harmony, it’s ritual.

From the very beginning of his time in New York City there were these hidden forces at work in his life. He remained unaware for the most part, but there had been times of intuition and suspicion. Sometimes there was a shadow of the non-material, but by the time he saw it, it had vanished. Surely that’s not at all possible. Or the times when he had that sneaky feeling of being watched; but didn’t that happen to everyone? He had sensed it from behind the High Altar or from the shadows within the Lady Chapel. And then there were those faces he constantly saw in all patterns of oil stains or chain link fences, or the shrubbery, or the bricks and masonry in the other churches by which he passed regularly, and even in the bark and knots in the gray tree trunks along the way. These faces weren’t specific or defined, but they mostly had the pattern of facial features and expression. Definitely eyes and mouths, he was sure. Some grimacing, some mimicking, sometimes a snarl, sometimes a smile. He thought it was just his mind playing tricks, like the subconscious counting of streetlights passing when he was in the cab at night, or the ability to always be able to pick up counting backwards a sequence of beats down to zero by the time the cab finished crossing the expansion joints on the bridge. Every time.

He realized that in a hundred years or so,  everyone living in this city - everyone from probably the newest newborn baby today, to the oldest living tomorrow, would already be dead, and yet… how could he possibly know? There was this feeling of an unending ripple, a constant expansion of waves from a center, like when the first electron of a facet of a skipping slate pebble touched the outer electron of the water molecule in a pond at the instance of the splash. Yes all those living today would be dead in a hundred years, but what of those living tomorrow? And the next day? And the next…? And those ripples, in theory, are unending; at least that was his limited understanding of wave theory. The frequency may grow fainter and wider as they expand away from the center, ultrasonic to infrasonic, but they do in fact continue; out from the pond, say, propagating into the surrounding air and then into space. Forever.  

And those about whom he had only an inkling or a hunch were still watching and waiting from the bricks and stains, from behind the High Altar, and maybe even from within the wisps of Saint Mary’s incense. He thought he had even seen a ghost face there once. They had the time luxury of sweet infinity for their next opportunity to entice him with that half step, or with a dissonance in the liturgy of the Solemn High Mass, and then welcome him into their most regarded community. His training and preparation was now complete, he was even ready to take the name of Brother Andrewes at Eastertide, but he had to sing it, to hit the mark and enter on his own, as if by chance, and then he would finally see - and hear - that the distant view of Empire was not only dreamscape, but a dream.