Be Warned

The ancients manifest. Here in the ancient forests, there on the fatal shore, the depth of things. We begin again, with the sound of chariots and the cries of exultation, there in a great silent desert, in a harsh life, in the flow of things. All went well, or didn't go well, and his old comrades, the ones he thought of as friends, the ones who survived, all curled into their own quiet domains, swapped prejudices on Facebook, clung to their ancient left wing views on climate change and multiculturalism and the virtues of a Big Australia.

And meanwhile, Old Alex scanned the headlines, of businesses going bust, of the tyranny of the Australian Tax Office, of construction company after construction company hitting the wall, of the death of all local economy.

The shelves were lined with garbage, thinly lined, so that the local stores could shut down in an instant and no one would care. A few potatoes, a few oranges, bananas. Shelves lined with Cheezos and chips and chocolates, Mars Bars and other things.

He entered to buy petrol or the stray odds and ends. All was lost when he looked at it, but then again, the streets coated with the young; and he, despite all his best efforts, was no longer young. 

So it was then that he remembered things perhaps best forgotten, and reunited the stream of lyricism that had once flowed through him unbidden, all of it dispensed into the garbage zone, because he had been exhausted, because he hadn't wanted to hear them anymore, because he didn't want to be used. The manifestations unbidden. The cruelty of the time. The grand ignorance. 

And everyone, everywhere, all around, streaming across the internet, the mycelium of the age, talked of God. And to the ancient spirits he explained the nature of being human, well organic, for each wave had to be taught anew, and he did not understand, no more than anyone could understand the nature of it all, the evolution of intelligence, the things that had existed long before there were humans. And they were all around us. And they said: beware.