Turbulent Gifts

"Evolution had shaped language to convey many concepts, but going from a single to a networked topology of self was not amongst them. But if he could not convey the core of the experience, he could at least skirt its essence with metaphor. It was like standing on the shore of an ocean, being engulfed by a wave taller than himself. For a moment he sought the surface; tried to keep the water from his lungs. But there happened not to be a surface. What had consumed him extended infinitely in all directions."
Alastair Reynolds.

As if anything was ever going to change. He could smell the explosives in the air. Ambulance officers crouched around the famous figure. His phone started ringing; at just the wrong moment, bringing attention to him in the midst of being invisible. Time was of a sequence and had left him entirely bankrupt. He clicked the busy button; and wished he could busy the woman right out of his life. Only one person noticed his phone ring; and they were too busy attempting to save the man's life to worry about who he was or why he was there.

There had been a complete breakdown in the practice of power. The media sang along with it; or was destroyed. But he had been around long enough to know the media had been complicit long before. Complicit or dead. But he could remember a time when he could write anything he wanted and it would be published much as he wrote it. Bar the ever present twiddling by the sub-editors, the subs, the living dead as they were sometimes called; who didn't feel they were doing their jobs unless the copy was thoroughly massaged; from silken finesse to mashed potato half the time.

None of it mattered; but this was one death where the reporting would be thoroughly scrutinised. And no doubt altered to protect the guilty. It wasn't exactly hate he felt for the man; well maybe it was. He was certainly appalled by his behaviour; by the callous and brutal disregard he had shown to so many thousands of people; the lives he had destroyed. There was movement now. A group of them heaved the body on to a stretcher. He couldn't tell from the odd angle of his head whether he was dead or just nearly. There was certainly plenty of blood. And his phone started up again; and this time a police officer fixed him with a piercing stare?

Do you have a right to be here? he asked.


THE BIGGER STORY:

NZ Herald

Xue finished stop-violence programme before killing
5:00AM Thursday September 27, 2007
By Elizabeth Binning

Nai Yin Xue completed a court-approved "Stopping Violence" programme just three months before he is believed to have murdered his wife and callously dumped her body in the boot of his car.

The 54-year-old fugitive was ordered by the courts to attend the programme in November after his wife, An An Liu, sought a protection order after a violent knife incident at their New Lynn home.

In January the programme co-ordinator suggested Xue change to another course due to language difficulties and in February he was referred to a programme especially for Asian men.

That programme was completed by the middle of June, by which time the Herald understands Xue had participated fully in the programme and completed all the tasks set in it.

Despite his successful completion of the course, the tai chi master's wife ended up in the boot of a car after what police described as a "violent death" two weeks ago.