An acronymically inspired tale of eyes from the past peering into a worrying future.
We were jarred awake by the unearthly sound of a sudden, short, supernatural low-frequency BUZZ from deep down in the bowels of the earth. Jumping out of bed and staggering bleary-eyed to the bathroom to grab my old red dressing gown from its hook on the wall, not wanting to expose my unadorned family jewels to the originator of this sleep-shattering blast, I did a quick Cook’s Tour of our 1000+ SF of living space and discovered only rare SOCAL rain pattering hard against closed windows and spied palm trees bending their trunks, cowering in the face of a strong SSW wind. Pattering back to our bedroom on my brown woollen sock encased feet, I found not my sleeping bride in our old queen bed, but curled up on an old velveteen couch, a spectral young female with cropped black hair, brown eyes and a slightly snub nose reading a Penguin copy of George Orwell’s “1984”.
Looking up at me she opened those sweet lips from so far back in my past.
“Is the future really going to be like this?”
My hesitation must have unnerved her, for the apparition slowly dissolved away in front of my eyes, and back in the here and now, I glanced over at my beautiful wife who had returned to her own land of dreams and was now curled, foetus-like beneath the flowers of the duvet, a wisp of a smile on her sleepy face. Slipping back into my normal bedtime nakedness, I followed her beneath the covers and quickly returned to my previous somnolent state.
My mind however, continued to race, eager to return to the specter from the past. Very soon I was standing in front of a large bay window, with my back to that same old velveteen couch, remembering the future from which I had returned.
I mused out loud, trying to calm the fear I had heard in her voice, but not wishing to destroy this renewed time lapse relationship we were experiencing.
“I’m not sure about Big Brother watching our every move, but I know the pigs from “Animal Farm” will certainly be taking control”
“Nice segue my love, but try to get real”
“No, it is . . . I mean . . . will be like that, pigs will be presidents and prime ministers” and then getting slightly out of literary context I continued wildly, “monetary matters will rule their thinking processes and people will be mere pawns in their global games.”
All the dire warnings from the WHO and the CDC were rushing through my brain. The uselessness of NATO, the UN, the EEC, and even their predecessor, the League of Nations, was clearly demonstrating the inadequacies of the human race to organise itself and unite its millions of different factions to fight a common enemy. Racking my brain, I sought to warn my pretty young lady friend, that things might get even worse, Cold War would become a threat from the past, weapons would be circling the earth like Sputniks, evil drug lords would make the Heroin Wars seem like gang fights in the playground, and COVID19 would become the threat to beat all threats to humanity.
Reaching over to my bookshelf I pulled out another well-thumbed Penguin edition.
“Here Skolly, read this and you will see another alarming possibility for our future”.
But, as I bent down over the back of the couch, handing her my copy of Albert Camus’ “The Plague”, the beautiful wraith slowly faded into the encircling mist, and I was left with nothing but the sound of water splashing its way down gutters, and the low light from an unusually damp grey South California dawn filtered into the room as my sweet Celine slept on blissfully at my side.
