Syberium #1; My Life Amongst the Metal Trees

Steadily stepping out of my haunt - Old Lynn’s 90’s-chic retropub, Buffer Underrun - on Monday afternoon I found myself confronted with a basic realisation. I am helplessly and hopelessly depressed. And that I want to die. Now. Only my work for CABAL keeps my interest during these long days of nothing, and even that is beginning to trail off into this self-same nothingness, with fellow supporters lurching into nihilism and totally absurd situationism. People say I should be thankful for what I have, but I can only nod a vacant lie back to them.

Five years ago I had everything. A beautiful wife, son and home. I even had a good job in construction. I don’t mean to go on about it, but that was an absolute fact. My wife was raped by six Русский язык soldiers as my son was forced to watch by the seventh patrolman. My son died soon after. My wife might as well have done; she was still physically there but, if you dared to look at her, you could see straight through her shell into a terminal, grey void. We had to leave our self-destructing country, but she grew to detest my eager, smothering arms and overpowering best intentions. Thus we begin on our separate paths and were no more.

In truth, I cannot connect to anyone or anything here. I feel faceless and non-descript as I walk the streets of Old Lynn – worse, that I really am unwanted and worthless as I parade my frame around the usual job units and building sites for work. They say I steal jobs away from the natives and, if I am honest, I wish that was indeed the case. But I haven’t worked for one whole day since arriving here in Cracktown.

Do you know what it is like to not have anyone at all recognise your face? Thankfully, there is a small group of people living in the Migrant Quarter that I can converse with, to share drink. I would have to say that we share more in common with our sense of woe and despair than we do with our geography. We have that same look on our faces; avoid eye contact / keep your head down / prove your worth / don’t react when a native spits on you / retreat quickly if someone hits you.

The large pale natives jeer at us all, point condemningly at us, and say we have it easy. That we take advantage of this country’s benefits system. That we’re freeloaders. Ad nauseum. Well, they can go fuck themselves. They know nothing about me. About my wife. About my life.

I have found a way out. A small metal portakabin hidden away near the Lilith Plantation, to the North of the Swaffham Cageworks, surrounded by rare, dense areas of trees. Buzzing cellphone towers stand guard like majestic metal sentinels nearby, but its so quiet there, in that long-abandoned construction site. I have spent several weeks sneaking up to the site this year, making an accessible yet discreet route for me to come and go, and repairing the kabin like I was some kind of uber-conscientious squatter. I cycle up there when it gets to the gloaming time (its about 8 miles away from the migrant quarter). I find shards of myself in my solitude there in that rusting metallic box, away from the pools of piss and drunken abuse from the natives. I am a drug user here in my kingdom, yes, but any umbrella of comfort in a raging storm should be grabbed – at least as a short-term measure. Yes, I am still alone there – but under that roof, my roof, I am no longer lonely.

Last night I was there, laying in the kabin under candlelight, watching the flickers of flame reflect and dance on the metal ceiling. I heard the very familiar overhead buzzing from the cellphone towers and I drifted into a half-sleep, fantasising as to what telephone conversations were being transmitted through the electrical, snapping signal pulses from these metal giants as I lay in slumber.

…

“My love, I miss you so much. You are my world. Every day without you is…”

“Hello Mr. Raven. We have called to inform you that your last Direct Debit payment was withdrawn by your bank. We are sorry but…”

“I regret not being with you, but I can no longer do this…this… thing we have. I don’t love you. I am so sorry. Too much has happened that I…”

“If you do not provide an alternative payment method, you will be…”

“But I don’t understand. You know I love you – you MUST love me. Remember all those things you said to me. I still have all your texts. You said I was the ideal partner for you…”

“You have 14 days to pay the outstanding amount…”

“Please stay with me. I cannot live without you. Our child…”

“We will be forced to take stronger action…”

“Please tell me you will reconsider. I will give up everything just to be by your side. I would give my life for you and risk…”

“If you do not resolve this matter, your home may be at risk…”

…

I woke up a couple of hours later. A gentle rainfall was pattering on the kabin roof, creating a slight, soothing echo on the metal surface almost like a wind chime reverberating in the darkness here in my man-made sanctuary (the candle had long since burnt out). My thoughts and faculties came back as the chiming rain stopped. To my surprise I could see beams of light wavering through the steel grids of the solitary window, occasionally lighting up the interior of my rural abode. I laid there for some time, watching these strange beams of light, before the question as to what they actually were came to me. I got up, unlocked and opened the kabin door to see…

Well, it was just amazing. The sky was filled with shades of purple, green, and dark orange. A pulsing, psychedelic bruise in the night sky that came to befriend and to love me that night. I looked around at the nearby trees, through to the distant clearing of the abandoned industrial site, and much further into the distance; everything was changing vibrant colour and I felt a broad blissful smile form on my face – almost as if I wasn’t in control of my reactions. At that very moment I felt like I was a truly free human being. Surrounded by puddles and churned-up tyre-marked terrain, this land was all lit up in a very strange fashion but so beautiful. It seemed like this HAARP-induced, artificial but accidental weather effect was reminding me of something I had clearly long-forgotten.

But, just I almost reached that moment of realisation, the faux-northern lights faded into the black, starless sky without a trace, its balmy warmth ebbing away with it as it died into the night.

I continued staring at the crow-black night sky for several minutes, but nothing came back to me. The night grew ever colder, and I realised I felt naked and abandoned out there after such a phenomenal personal light show. I could also feel a sense of dreaded loneliness seeping back into every pore and knew I must leave my metal box for the night, otherwise risking everything that that kabin represented.

I left my bicycle locked up in the kabin and walked all 8 miles back to Old Lynn in the early hours of this morning, for some reason not bearing the thought of cycling home. I stopped momentarily on the outskirts of the town (or city – since the Norfolk floods and the resulting mass-migration to Old Lynn, no-one knows what it is any more). I surveyed the familiar horizon of Cracktown’s ailing industries and newly constructed towerblocks, the silhouettes of cranes and other construction machinery now becoming visible in the early morning sky. I looked behind me one last time, back into the distance of the wooded land from which I came, dried my eyes and continued on my journey back to the Migrant Quarter.

When I arrived back at my room on the estate, by around 4am, I fell into the deepest sleep I had ever experienced. I woke up abruptly at dinnertime today having this vivid sense that I had dreamt of my son. I could not picture the dream in my mind at all, but I could feel it. I could feel him. My son was in my dreams, for the first time since his passing, and he held me tightly in his arms. And I could feel him smiling.

Syberium.