After the Truth (Book One)

Sixteen

It is over.

The afternoon sun is warm, and I stand at the window of my hotel room. From here I look over the United Nations Plaza. The view mocks me. The windows of my room are large, floor to ceiling, and I have spent thirty minutes staring out through the glass. What would it feel like to jump through the window and release myself to gravity and the pavement twenty three floors below.

Completely irreverent I know, but I remember a favourite science TV show of my son Samuel's. One of the show's hosts jokes that Gravity was not just a good idea, it is the law. For how long was the truth less than a law?

My speech was a disaster. I was only halfway through when the heckling started. Panicked politicians reduced to the lowest form of behaviour. My statements that the spread of the Word could never be stopped were shouted down. I was accused of letting humanity die, of being a fear monger and a coward. I rose to their bait and answered back that it took far more courage to try and talk of a new way of living as a civilisation. I was called naïve and childlike in the simplicity of my view.

Soon those politicians that supported me were in open arguments across the entire width of the assembly chamber, shouting down those who didn't want to listen. The crescendo of shouts coming the other way only grew louder. The supposedly respectful session fell into open revolt and argument.

I did not get to finish all I wanted to say. With ever more savage recriminations and insults being thrown, the session was halted and the assembly chamber cleared.

I can feel the air tearing at my face as a fall from the window. I have pictured my body, broken and shattered, on the street below. I press against the window to experience the precipice I and the World stand at the edge of.

I have changed my mind from last night. What I have written will now become a journal.

I fear what I will record on thefollowing pages.