Chapter 6. The Premonition
And there it was again; the violence subsumed his field of view. Musa’s shifting consciousness, his enhanced dream state, mind in lockdown. Projections muddled as dreams by the self-administered analgesic cocktail. Visions of before, or was this yet to come? Blood spattered, limbs flailing, arms ripped from sockets, eyes locked in terrified atrophy before the wall of flames and fury. The assault mounted from every aspect, there before the great assembled armies of the nations united, the legions of languages and cultures flocked as one mass to meet the great threat. Musa was evil personified, the end of humanity. This slight man, or was he even man now? More so machine, a scientific joke played upon the lives of innocents for generations to come. All that stood before him were these fine souls. Gathered as if transported from a different age, but at a scale never imagined. Ranks of men and women, armour positioned and readied, poised in anticipation of conquest. With vast logistics behind them, a cast of millions conveying the fuel, food and sundries diligently staged, readied for the coming days, weeks or if necessary, months of war. Perhaps even years, for that was one of the projections the best of their imagining could conceive. All the nations had arrived at that same conclusion. Terra’s growing influence, its irreverence, an arrogant gentle assent, ever wider in its borders, subsuming peoples, unapologetically integrating centuries of achievement within its fold. But refusing to pay any tribute or consideration for its elders and betters. The skirmishes that had peppered the news in the decade following its surprise resurgence, as if from nowhere, had rarely amounted to more than a lapping at its shores. Nothing, it seemed, could challenge the advance of its borders, no single nation had the means nor the resolve to overwhelm it, no fragment of mankind could imagine triumph over the dilettante nation. And the projections were never good news. They indicated only one outcome: should the nations wait any longer they would inevitably fall in the path of its exponential growth. The time to act would soon pass; now, now, now, or never.
Edited by Kathy Pelich
© Daniel Zeff 2023 All Rights Reserved
