[image (missing): woman in the moon the stars gathered around her. searching... restoration file reclamation]
Darkness.
Complete and all encompassing. The darkness of sleep... No, darker than that. More absolute. The deep, unconscious darkness of not being there. Blacked out. Needle off the record, all lights out, emptiness.And then, with the most minute of shifts into self-ness; she suddenly was "there" again. Back in her body, her eyes slowly opening, her vision gradually un-blurring into focus.
[Music starts to play cinematically, without any practical source- Adiago for Strings, Leonard Bernstein & NY Phil]
Sand.
Water.
Lights in the distance.
The night sky.
As it sharpens into focus, it takes on a grandiosity she was unaccustomed to, even in this picturesque locale. The sky seems impossibly big, bigger than itself.
Sitting up, her vision blurs again, nausea and vertigo kick in and the whole world spins impossibly fast around her mind, in that violent way that causes severe disorientation. She could feel the earth's rotation through every inch of skin that was in direct contact with the sand. This makes her realize that she is nude, the clothes, the tact-vest, her gun, all gone. She is alone, nude, severely incapacitated and disoriented, on the beach where she brutally murdered two strangers, while in pursuit of a kidnapper and her missing lover....
....and the only thought she could think was-
Mack: [vo- in her mind, to herself] Let me trade places with them.
The spinning stops.
The universe is suddenly crystal clear. The stars themselves seem to be reaching down towards her. The music falls silent for a long, breathless moment, then she takes in a breath of deep surprise, and exhales it ever so slowly, as tears well up and brim over, and slowly, magically roll down her cheeks... exhaling and exhaling, until she is empty.
Mack: [speaking in a near-breathless whisper, but one that sounds so vividly 3d, that it feels that she has whispered it in your ear] It's all so... beautiful.
The music continues and builds. Her tears evoke a sob... and then true weeping. She breaks down and cries, the sorrow overwhelming her. The memories of her panic and dismay at McGee's disappearance, the heat of her anger as she ran towards the person she presumed was the kidnapper, the shock of realizing what she'd done, the smell of blood in the air. She Wept for all of it.
The night sky falls around her, slowly tumbling away in a maddening spectacle that defeats description. She weeps harder, but is soon enough overwhelmed by the disappearance of the universe around her... she falls silent, in pure awe as little by little it continues to all fall away. Behind each piece of infinity that falls away, is...
void.
Mack: [vo- sounding close and intimate] What is this?
void.
Mack:[vo- with stereoscopic FX] Is this Death?
void.
Mack:[speaking, breaking the Fourth Wall- turning to say this directly at you, in the narrative third personae] Had she eaten her own gun, out of shock and desperation?
void.
Mack:[speaking, as she turns away from you, restoring the Fourth Wall] Had someone got the best of her with a sniper rifle?
void.
In this moment... she honestly could not tell what she was or was not. Dead or Alive, Waking or Dreaming. Her sensory input seemed simultaneously dull and vividly surreal. She seems to slowly dissolve and disappear into nothingness.
The very last piece of everything... hanging there, in the distance, impossibly floating in pure nothingness, the last fragment of reality- like a little bit of glass from a broken Christmas Tree ornament. She could see a little patch of the beach she had been on, in the fragment, as though that tiny patch of home were suspended in amber.
Defying explanation, she tried harder to see this little fragment more clearly, to zoom in and see if it would show her any more of the world she seemed to have disappeared from. Gradually, as if she were getting closer to a small portal into a different world, she saw more. She saw... dawn. The sun slowly rising. A figure in the distance, just a shadow in the morning light. The figure of a man, approaching her.
Was she still there? On the beach, passed out, or in a coma, or nearly dead? She could not tell... so she just tried harder to see the shadow figure in the fragment more clearly.
But something beyond strange happened....
Mack: [vo- in her mind, to herself] As if all this weren't strange enough!
The shadowy figure of the man walking towards her- it reached the fragment portal and somehow stepped through it.
Inside the void, in "here" with her. The man paused, and dusted himself off, body language made her think- English Butler.
This English Butler-like man, was impossibly walking on nothing, towards her, in the middle of nowhere in complete void. She could not even see herself! There was no body to look at, and no eyes to look with. But he could evidently see her.
He walks confidently towards her, like a VIP concierge assigned to assist her, and only her during her stay at the most luxurious of resorts. As he comes closer, she begins to feel things that she can't explain- nostalgia, pain, familiarity, loss... the kinds of memories and emotions evoked by lovers. But this man, he is a stranger to her. Yet she senses that all these feelings are directed at and evoked by him, and him alone. There is no one and no thing else to be seen or heard.
There is just him, coming closer and closer.
Anticipation in her heart building.
[Black Out]
YOU ARE READING
zero hour
Action"Set in an experimental sci-fi comic book action adventure literary world-building project universe of multi-book series nested within other book series, 'The Zeppoverse' may be a bit disorienting to navigate at first... but you kind get used to it...
