Gaps In The Transmission

"He passed houses and tenements which had grown into desolation the way a man grows into senility, unnoticed, with a fragmentary concern; each existed on the edge of life, and carried the despair of being incomplete. He moved towards the centre of town, but swung round after a few minutes, avoiding the centre. It was clear to him, in this peculiar light of evening, that the days of youth were really gone: the smooth days, the balmy days, the days of no decisions had petered out, like a disused road."

Randall Flynn


There were gaps in the transmission, when he stepped over the edge into a vast silence; when the mall that was his face held corrupted secrets; and all was lost. These moments never lasted long; as he sat at his desk, dialing routinely, pretending to be busy. There wasn't any way out, or through. He could guess. The crime linked back through other crimes; and his own vageries, his own indulgences, were swept away by the passing days; his skeleton on the planet surface, his strong desire for release.

The termination date, however, came as an unpleasant surprise. he had always thorught he would be there forever, his consciousness just not the type to be washed away easily. Somehwere, in the internal alley ways, he would survive, hunted but alive. He could see the date, ten years hence, as if on a digital clock, hanging in his brain. Would he betray his friend? Without proof, but with absolute certainty. Would they find the evidence to prove his madness? Did he know anymore, if at all, what he stood for?

The timescales were impossible, he knew. The country has been enveloped in an election. The ads batter each other on television, 70% of a Rudd Labor government would be former union officials, the ads pound. And Labor fights right back. Don't let Howard and Costello expand the IR laws. They fight only on the grounds on which they're comfortable. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion, the Liberal National government heading towards defeat; or annihilation on some predictions. Howard could lose his own seat. They stare defeat in the face. The tumult and the shouting will die down. And half the country is barracking for one man's disaster; the shocked stare out the window of the government limousine. The end of an era.

THE BIGGER STORY:


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