FEAR STALKS THE LAND!

Term Project

Andrew Bloom June 7, 2011 ENGL 459 Marchbanks

Part I Lights in the Sky

If you really think about it, people on the whole are very stupid.
- Inscription on a Babylonian clay tablet.

The disaster was nearly on us; that was obvious after I left the pub and looked at the sky. I recognized it as the disaster I had lately dreamt of, only worse. Quite a bit worse. In my dreams I could pinch myself and awake always inside my sheets. In my dreams I could hide if I wanted to. But now the lights followed me everywhere. If I went outside they were up behind the clouds. If I woke and cranked apart the blinds they were always in view. I suppose I was careless to think I ought to be surprised. I was careless to think my dreams had been the only warning. But when I got home I saw I had ignored a hundred different species and specimen of warning for years. I had bred a collection of kitchen appliances which condensed the experience of hunting and gathering to a flittering of knobs and levers. I kept stacks of insurance documents and socks bloated with the old pound sterling which implied my life was worth money. I fancied racks of water bottles when in reality my body was nothing more than an invention made by water to carry itself from place to place. My bookshelves were lined with several genres of explanations. I had volumes on mathematics and physical sciences for rational explanations. I had novels and some of Shakespeares plays for fictional explanations. I looked through the indices for any helpful advice in case of lights in the sky. There was none. I told my bosss answering machine I would not be coming to work tomorrow. This was all last Wednesday.

I was ironing when the desire to smoke tobacco overcame me. I pictured myself, broader and less pale, with a pipe in my mouth and cloaked in a fuzz of blue smoke. Would I look like someone from television? But I had never smoked before and even if I had got my hands on a box of fags I wouldnt know which end of the tube to apply flame. I decided I would go across the street to where the homeless congregate and purchase one and ask them to light it for me. Then I would know better in the future. The future. Something big and nefarious lurked in it like a black dog in the mist. I had always thought of disaster in all capitals, like a headline or a movie poster. DISASTER, it would read. FEAR STALKS THE LAND! Like anything from its life, societys death would be a polished cultural artifact. It promised to entertain. When it came, it would look like expensive special effects; it would sound like the pit of a rock concert. When the ground shook it would be from the orgiastic throbbing of subwoofers, or from so many people dancing around each other. But this disaster, the real disaster, would not involve the shaking of ground. At least not yet. This disaster was lights in the sky. They remained up there, affixed above the platinum thunder cells like the glow of intercloud white lightning, only a glow that lasts all day today, all night tonight, and then all day again tomorrow. Slow burning. The homeless would not share their fags. They expressed more indignation than I expected. In fact, they said it should be I who provided them with cigarettes. I said Id rather return to my flat and watch my recorded television programmes than loiter around their little dustbin campfires, so I left. Later I remembered that it wasnt very long at all since there hadnt been any homeless on this street. I wondered if perhaps these sorts of changes happen too slowly for anyone to take notice. Perhaps the changes hardened over a long time, like a smoky black crystal. Would they go on to no end? Or, some-how, would they all converge? Stalagmites and stalactites, meeting in the middle.

The lights were not only growing brighter, I decided, but also more mesmerizing. They loomed in the store window while I stood in line for batteries there were rumours the power grid was becoming unstable and beamed into the back of my skull an unprecedented saturninity. The calmness pooled there like serotonin, spilled down my spine and spread throughout my circulatory network. I sighed audibly, and those around me paid no attention. I felt remarkably like I did when I engaged with my belongings, clothing, money, the television, culture. These things were like a thick foam padding I wore around myself. They served to protect and insulate. But from what? I thought of the worldwide calamities which were often forwarded to my attention by the daily mail. They were invariably a grand ways off. Their inconveniences were always suffered by other people. And I thought of the smaller events that happen all around me every day. But even though I had routinely exploded squadrons of freshly moulted barn flies on my abrupt, uncaring windshield, I continued to use credit cards. Even though I had murdered and ensnared dozens of mice in a variety of contraptions littered in strategic locations throughout my home, I persuaded my bank to assist me in purchasing an automobile with a computer screen in the dashboard. And even though I had in part carved out my comfortable niche in society by writing lucrative falsehoods for a very large company, I went on pretending all was in the right. I had done no wrongs. That sort of thinking had been a mistake. But when there are lights staring at you through windows at all hours, it feels less like a mistake and more like a deadly miscalculation. A Roman blunder. There can be no recovery, only the accepting of the obvious: that you have made your last misstep, that you must now watch yourself fall down forever. Like standing with only your toes on a high ledge, windmilling your arms and knowing it will do no good.

When I determined that this disaster was coming whether I liked it or not, I decided I would not stand idly by. I would make preparations. I would take certain steps to preserve myself despite my culpability in the brightening anomaly above the clouds. The first thing I did was start this journal. Of course Im a pitiful novice in the realm of first-person narratives, and I had a bit of backwards narrating to do before I got caught up to today, but I figure that to coddle through these present tribulations anyone who might read this journal in the future is to insult their already commendable job of surviving them in the first place. Survival is a ridiculous word. Its too early to be talking about things like survival at this point. There hasnt even been anything concrete to suggest that the lights are anything quite as malevolent as Ive made them out to be. But in my heart of hearts I know they are evil. Lurking up there like incandescent crows. They can make a promise like nothing on earth ever could have made before; theyre proof of something else something outside ourselves. Some of the rioters have become fond of hand-painted signs talking about lights and miracles in the same sentence. How could they not be mistrusted? How could terror be anything other than the natural response? So the second thing I did was start planning for a shelter. I would find or create a place the lights could not reach, nor the inevitable regiments of their worshippers. I havent many friends these days, but perhaps there are others who are not so keen on cults of light. Others like myself. The shelter cannot be in the city. There are too many people here. Too many angry mouths, too many scuffles over sales taxes or the immigrants, too many who fancy the lights a solution to their problems instead of the culmination of them. No, tomorrow I will make for Savernake in the west. In the woods there ought to be seclusion enough. Ill find a safe place for myself and any other runaways. When the lights do come down and elucidate their true intentions, the woods will be the last safe place. If there is to be any resistance, it must be from Savernake.

At the edge of the forest a stone column peers over the trees. I supposed it thirty metres tall and in the style of a Roman pillar. A copper ornament sits on the top and is visible from an impressive distance. The copper has long since oxidized to an abject turquoise. The plaque at the structures base reads In Commemoration of a single Instance of Heavens protecting Providence OVER THESE KINGDOMS in the year 1789 by restoring to perfect Health from a long and afflicting Disorder their excellent and beloved Sovereign GEORGE THE THIRD This Tablet was Inscribed by THOMAS BRUCE, EARL OF AILESBURY. I wondered if towers like these are harbingers of the coming future just as much as they are relics of the past. I thought of hapless monarchs caught with the sniffles, their endlessly loyal throngs of servants milling about, ready to obey any whim, the destroyers and frigates, loaded with man and horse and cannon, as eager to supplicate the divine right of the monarchy as they were to battle the unholy legions of Emperor Bonaparte I. The lights and I can still see them perched over London in the east must for so many look like the return of proper monarchy. Nobody likes being told what to do, not now, not ever, but show them a path light their way, so to speak and theyll follow obediently, unquestioningly. I thought about the centuries of Enlightenment, of rational thinking, of the decentralisation of power, the separation of church and state, the dividing of personal truth and political truth all coming crashing down to the tune of beautiful lights in the sky. In the distance their acrid luminescence combining with the sky-glow of London threatens to overwhelm with glare all but the brightest handful of evening stars.

I had wandered a foolishly long distance before I learned I am not the only guest in these woods. I spent the night walking through the thick of Savernake. In the parts where the soaring limbs knit so densely they block out all the lights, I reencountered total darkness for the first time since the night at the pub. I had always been afraid of darkness, but I found myself at ease. I stared into the uniform, pitch-black landscape and considered the low hoots of the wildlife in several directions. For a long time, I stood still. In the woods my problems seem distant and pathetic. I can believe or disbelieve in whatever ideology I see fit, and there are no troublesome otherworldly lights bombing through the windows. I wondered if these woods were perhaps the mythic Arden, where I would feel not the penalty of Adam. I felt sure that, if I could persuade enough people to come, these limbs could eclipse the nonsense enough for us to think through this latest round of trials and tribulations. If enough people could look back and see that they began long ago, long before any lights arrived with blank cheques and empty promises, when the warning signs were as invisible as my hands in the blackness of the woods, perhaps then we could Then what? Our problems, once they came out from the dark, were nursed and nourished by our casual indifference, our evangelical malice, our xenophobic greed, our petrol tanks, our caf cups, while meanwhile our bedtime prayers spoke more and more to our private hells and hatreds and less to the ignorant fashion in which wed all chosen to live. I wondered if any number of people, no matter how numerous or dedicated, could avoid these problems if allowed to start again. I remember another tobacco craving. In the orange instant of a match-strike, the constellation of invidious eyeballs leaping out from the walls of the forest, I knew I was not alone. I saw their clothes and faces; it was as though they were dressed like Savernake itself. Before my cigarette was lit they had me surrounded.

Theres a stretch of smooth ground in the innermost umbra of the forest where they have been gathering since even before the lights arrived. They are no occultists; their clearing is lit with fluorescent bulbs running off a petrol generator somewhere, and the occasional hurricane lantern. They made the centre of their camp the rotting tower of an oak that split long ago, an ancient one, a named one. Ragnarok, they call it, the end of gods, and after it they call themselves. To this tree I was taken, and there I explained myself to their leadership. I swore I was not an agent of any sort for the lights, and in fact, that I quite detested them. If people could spoil things as well as they have all on their own, then surely they could just as well dig themselves out without any help from the supernatural. And I said I dont trust the lights either. I dont trust anyone or anything that bespeakes the truth with a capital T. I told them it would be quite like living in North Korea. This seemed to placate them. I was invited to stay. In the morning my wristwatch alone informed me of the hour I acquainted myself with some of the rebels. I hadnt guessed there were so many of them. There was an elderly man who was born in Laos and had travelled his entire life until he wound up in Savernake. He had been a Buddhist in Asia, a Muslim in the Middle East, and a Christian in Europe, and now he feels no single deity or ideology lays claim to the truth. There was a woman who owned with her family a petrol station. She left when the price riots became too frequent and her husband sided with the light-worshipper crowd, whose side God allegedly favours. And there were two young women, probably not much older than teenagers, who had been badly injured for being in love with one another, a crime punished violently by those who felt the lights desire a return to purity and orthodoxy. And then there was the boy who had lost his father but didnt say where, but he did say the lights were wrong. They were imposters, carried no good intentions, and served only to distract us from what is really happening. I asked him what is really happening. He said he didnt know yet but that weve got to resist those lights at all costs.

When I was in college my parents split up over an argument about a Christmas turkey, but I suspect it had been building for some time. To the best of my knowledge they had remained faithful to each other. To the best of my knowledge they had each done everything right. But it had been building for a long time. I travelled for a while after that. In Spain I played piano for a rhythm and blues combo that wanted to tour Europe and I said OK. The vocalist was a woman who smoked too much, drank too much, smiled not enough, and spoke English even less. We made love on the overnight train from Paris to Geneva and decided to keep it casual. After that I worked for a scientist who thought he could use Pavlovian conditioning in humans to make them respond in predictable ways. I had to make some groups memorise Scripture. Others had to regurgitate the stock tickers or something of that order. I never knew the exact parameters of the study, but I remember that the scientist was quite bothered by what he found. At night I tended bar at a dive that had a reputation for stolen handbags and ugly patrons. After that I performed statistical measurements of complaints of bias in the Daily Mail. As it turned out, the popular sentiment was not-Labour, and no-Tories either. After that I interviewed the lowball politicians and asked them questions about their children and pets and underwear. After that I edited the headlines to make them sound more catchy and idiomatic from the newsstand. I became familiar with words like TWIST and SCANDAL and any others which seem in themselves worth the quid for a paper. After that my mother died. After that I edited scripts for commercials targeted at family-oriented households. My lies were profitable. After that my father died. After that I kept editing scripts and started drinking at the pub where I had worked after I took off the lab coat. It was under new management and nobody remembered me.

Everything is in chaos. Ragnarok is leaving Savernake. Everyone is going back to the city. Something there has happened, or is happening. In any case we can no longer stay here in the forest. Rumour is that word got out, maybe through their spies or maybe they just know somehow, or maybe theyve always known, but what theyre saying is that the lights know were camped in the forest. So were hiking out of the thick of it tonight. I opted to hold a flashlight instead of a rifle. I wonder what will happen once we actually make it back to the city. And worse, I wonder, if the lights could wipe us out any time they pleased, why havent they done it already? The crows nest at the Ailesbury Column came through on the hand radio to inform us he could no longer see the lights of the city in the east. Only those which hung in the sky, he said, like smoldering halogen lanterns. I dont want to think too much. Especially not now.

There are faces in the lights. They have lowered their altitude to barely a hundred metres from the top of the Gherkin and have come down from beneath the floor of the anvil clouds. They are brighter than ever and difficult to look at directly, like a welding torch or ignited magnesium. And true enough, you can see faces. They distort and revolve and appear only when youre not trying to see them, but theyre there. They cloud the lights, which have nearly converged into one body, like a squadron of moths. The city is powerless, waterless. Few people remain. They are mostly the light-worshippers, consolidated now after having won out against the other rioters. Their sentries patrol the intersections and the operational petrol stations with American rifles slung over their backs. They are namely concerned with putting out the remaining fires, but they will still shoot on sight if they decide you are a dissident. There are other people, too, who have been spotted peering from high windows. It is rare to observe them, but when you do, its always they who were observing you in the first place. I wondered if they were They, the phantom eggshaped malevolent manipulators whose fingers pulled all the strings in one dystopia or another. I wondered whose side they were on. Perhaps theyve not decided. Or perhaps there are really no sides at all. The lights, the faces, the gods, the saviors, the illuminati the bastards have so many names by now are landing tonight, is the expectation. Ragnarok wants to be in the thick of things. Circling the entire financial square, which is where the crowds will be, would stretch the group too thin, so were going to mix ourselves up among the loonies and do our best to suppress the violence from within. The first of the riots has already happened. A small squadron of light-worshippers burned a library where some of the noncombatant rebels were hiding. I arrived in time for the molotovs. I saw broken arms and punctured faces. I saw a small scorched body twitching over a gutter. It was the boy I met in Savernake. Its all smoke and mirrors, he told me. Its all a grab for power. Then he rolled over.

At the nadir of the sunset, when the last of the natural light departed and left only the pathetic flicker of flashlights and riot fires to compete with the luminous effigies up above, several interesting things happened at once. At the same time as the lights converged and coruscated in a white spectacle that, slowly and certainly, began to lower from the heavens on a collision course with earth, the big riot started in the square below. I wasnt sure if one event caused the other. I saw in one moment a crowd of heads and in the next a salad of limbs and fires. I saw revolvers and hoisted crucifixes. I saw panic and vomit. There were shouts and drumming. Some groups wore coloured scarves. A passing bullet blew air on my neck. Ragnarok, or the core of it, got pummeled. The laughing bodies of the deceased were always turned upward so I could see the descending lights reflected in every glossy tooth, every shining eyeball. Still, thousands fought. I wove through the smoke and shoulders until I tripped on the stairs to St Helens. The tower was black and empty. The elevator did not work, but the stairs went to twenty-eight. I walked to a boardroom window that faced the battle. I saw the ugly, unchoreographed warfare unfold beneath the smoothly descending star. I saw once again the disaster from my dreams. Only worse. Only now They had won. But I watched until I could no longer stand. I surveyed the bloodshed until I could no longer formulate coherent thoughts. The lights were almost here. I cant remember if I gave in like a coward, or if I swore to die resisting. I cried some. It had all come from such silly things. Things we had not got right. Did it matter if the lights fixed everything or not? Did it matter if it was a grab for power? There was a scream in chorus from the square. I looked up. It was the most beautiful, perfect thing I ever saw.

Part II Ragnarok!

We have geared the machines and locked all together into interdependence; we have built the great cities; now There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable of free survival, insulated From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all dependent. The circle is closed, and the net Is being hauled in. They hardly feel the cords drawing, yet they shine already.
- Robinson Jeffers, The Purse Seine

Ragnarok Its accepted fact anywhere but here The monsters run this town When youve tripped on your own sore swollen words Im hurting Not pretending Lights in the sky All of the time In a cloud of smoking cameras Fucked up I need a place to be one person Can I practice what you preach? Down here its hope against hope Im disbelieving Lights in the sky All of the time I looked up Were healing you, were healing you We can wipe you out with a click of our fingers Black crows in a row keep you fed on propaganda Now the last laugh is ours Its been a long time coming A long time coming Lights in the sky All of the time

Part III Proverbs For Paranoids

Death has come in the pantry door: stands watching them, iron and patient, with a look that says try to tickle me.
- Thomas Pynchon, Gravitys Rainbow

Are you paying attention? This notice is intended for potential enemies of Our Lord Gods United Kingdom only. If you have passed a faith examination, are in the waiting queue for a faith examination, or possess a signed and documented affidavit of loyalty from a credentialed Federal Bishop, you are not required but not discouraged to read this notice. If you do not meet these criteria, you are lawfully required to read this notice in its entirety, complete the enclosed forms, and return them via the post in a timely matter in accordance with the Prescriptive Faith Act (PFA1). The purpose of this notice is to expedite the successful conversion and integration of potential enemies of OLGUK including but not limited to sinners, blasphemers, vagrants, miscreants, deviants, and radicals by providing general information to the public in exchange for the information you will provide in the enclosed forms. The PFA1 requires the Ministry of Faith provide updated legal definitions, composed in laymans terms with minimal jargon, to the city ministries annually. The Ministry understands that a broad and accepted understanding of the legal compulsions, in addition to those found in the Federal Bible, are crucial to a healthy and holy democracy. This years legal compulsions are listed here for your convenience. 1. Loyalty to OLGUK is loyalty to God. Depending on your civil parish, all adults in your area may already be required to pass a faith examination. Failure to pass a faith examination, either through tardiness or repeat failed attempts, will result in possible reference to the Department of Sin and Sedition. A documented passing score on the faith examination must be present for participation in civil activities such as voting, enrolling in the education programme, or applying for retirement. A documented passing score on the faith examination must be present for use of common utilities, such as busses or public lavatories. A documented passing score on the faith examination must be present for applying for a procreation license. Documentation of a passing score must be kept on your personage at all times. 2. Sedition is disloyalty to OLGUK and God. The Department of Sin and Sedition recognizes that the Devil acts of his own accord, but grants no legal exemption in these cases. You are encouraged to remain vigilant at all times, and keep a watchful eye for sedition wherever it may occur. Deliberate failure to report sedition to the authorities is a criminal offense. Possession of seditious materials, such as uncorrected or secularist textbooks, is likewise a criminal offense. 3. You are responsible for knowing what is unholy! Ignorance of the law is not an excuse for infraction! The Department of Sin and Sedition advocates the strategic use of mnemonics and aphorisms in remembering what is and what is not sinful and illegal. Remember: when in doubt, cast it out! With regards to the parents of small children who have expressed concern that their

progeny might inadvertently let slip some sinful expression or behaviour, the Department of Sin and Sedition has developed a protocol by which the degree of the childs blasphemy can be measured and proportionately punished. Additionally, the Department of Sin and Sedition has republished this years list of sinful expressions and behaviours, which is reproduced in part below for your convenience: y Any unfavorable expression regarding the Divine Endorsement which occurred at the capital twelve years ago. The most common of these blasphemies take the form of the statement that the glorious incident was in some way simulated or counterfeited, either by the Christian Syndicate, the Conservative Party, or persons and parties unknown. Other blasphemies include speculation or research regarding light projection, holographic luminescence, or artificial meteorological phenomena. The Department of Sin and Sedition would like to remind you that any conspiracy theory, expressed or unexpressed, is punishable in accordance with PFA1. y Any mention, under any circumstances, of the terrorist group known as Ragnarok. This organisation was utterly destroyed soon after the Divine Endorsement and the subsequent unanimous formulation of Our Lord Gods United Kingdom. Experts believe even a passing mention of this group for nonofficial purposes can incline you and your loved ones to spontaneous acts of sin and sedition. Experts have also debunked rumours that a member of this organisation had somehow escaped deadly defeat at the capital and went on to recover the terrorist group. There is no secret facility in Savernake forest, and the Earl of Cardigan, the present private owner of the forest, insists that no terrorist group could subsist on his territory without his being wise to it. y The list of sinful and seditious literature has been expanded! Be sure you are up to date on which literature is illegal. Remember, possession of illegal literature, in either electronic or analogue formats, carries a minimum punishment of fifteen years at Faith Camp. This years additions to the list include the full works of Shakespeare and Chaucer, the entire body of American works catalogued under the illegal and sinful heading postmodernism, all works of the pre-OLGUK poet Phillip Larkin, and any surviving issues of the pre-OLGUK periodical The Daily Mail. Please note that only Federal Bibles remain on the list of approved religious texts. y The list of behavioural dissidences has been expanded! New additions to this years list include bright or baggy clothing, music louder than forty decibels from private property, and colorful beaded jewelry. Please remember that the standing general dictums surrounding blasphemous expression, artwork, literature, music, theatre, dance, and body art continue to warrant a five-year servitude in Faith Camp. Please remember that all the standing general

dictums regarding homosexuality or public displays of affection remain punishable by a five-year servitude in Faith Camp. Please remember that all the standing general dictums regarding drug use or possession warrant a five-year servitude in Faith Camp. Remember: good behaviour is Holy behaviour!

PFA1 Mandatory Informational Report Name:______________________________ Civil Holiness Status (circle one): y y Holy Number:___________________________ Unholy Blasphemer

If you circled Holy then you need only sign and return this form! If you circled Unholy or Blasphemer you must complete the short answer section before signing and returning this form. Do you have any information pertaining to the investigation into the terrorist group Ragnarok? ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ Do you have any information pertaining to seditious, illegal, or immoral activities (i.e. drug consumption, homosexuality) in your civil parish? ____________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ How much would you estimate your quality of life has improved since the Divine Endorsement? ____________________________________________________________________________ _______ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ Youre finished! Please deposit your answers in a Sin Receptacle near you.