The Nuclear Bomb Dream
There were certain events in the dream that took place before the parts I can remember, but my
memory of it starts at being in some super high-tech city around a hundred years in the future on a
large island. This city was so advanced that they used magnetic roads in order to prevent pollution,
your car would levitate from magnetism and the tires and engine were used only when outside the
great city, or in certain undeveloped parts of the city.
Well, now the scene changed and I was on another part of the island near a shopping center that was built somewhere around 2020. Across from the shopping center was an extremely old house built in 1943, this house had a kind of bamboo trimming layering the walls and it was converted into a restaurant, so it looked like an old beach restaurant. I could hear some really old man going on about how famous it was and how old it was.
Suddenly, my attention was turned psychically to the city towering in the distance, the one I mentioned before, with the magnetic roads. I looked at it and it's rising towers off in the distance near the horizon with some sort of dreading expectation.
WHAM!!!
A blinding flash, searing heat, and a stopped heart as I watched in terror and . . . Curiosity at the giant mushroom cloud forming in the midst of the city.
And I knew what came next, almost as if I had been through it before. The outward expanding wall of super-heated air, hot enough to melt the skin right off your body or bake you alive in your own blood.
I saw it coming.
I saw distant buildings disintegrating in it's wake as it neared. I felt an over-baring need to run like hell, but I really didn't see the point. No-matter where I went, or what I did, I was to fall pray to this expanding hell when it reached in the next few seconds.
Suddenly, I was aware of this old man standing near me observing the unfolding chaos, as he went on about how there was nothing to be done, and it was a shame his restaurant was doomed after being there so long.
I watched the wall of super-heated air come toward me as I vaguely listened to the old yammering man. I entertained certain ideas of self preservation, but knew they were futile. I was going to die, or at best, be so severely maimed it would be better to just die. I imagined starving to death because I was unable to see, hear, or feel, it was quite unnerving.
The "wall" was now at the other end of the shopping center. I looked in awe and terror at this force of utter destruction as it swept toward me turning all it touched into fire (it was now many miles from it's source, so it was merely bursting wood into flame and melting iron, as opposed to just disintegrating everything it touched).
At the last moment, when it was mere milliseconds away, I did the only thing I could think to do. I pulled . . "something" over my face as I fell back to the ground and braced for my fate.
The old man started in immediately, saying in his raspy accented voice, "T'ain't gonna matter w'ot you doo, that there wall o' fire's gonna doo you in. You aint got you no chance w'ot so eva'. That there lil' piece o' cloth ova' you face ain't gonna stand up ta heat that be hotter than the surface o' the sun."
Just then, I could feel the searing heat hit me at my feet and move up my body, legs, stomach and arms, then neck and head. I could hear a deafening blast, and then nothing (my eardrums had been clean knocked half way through my brains). I felt an instant of the most intensive searing, burning pain. . . And then nothing (my sense of touch had been seared right off me).
All the while, the old man going on like a radio announcer from hell describing in detail to me exactly what changes my body was going through as I melted into a pool of burning flesh on the pavement. I felt my eyes burn out of my head, I turned my head a little the right, and I could vaguely feel the melting flesh around my ear pour down my ear canal.
And, all the while, I am wondering if the techno-surgons would be able to put me back together again after it was over, and make me look presentable for my duties (I think certain political works and business transactions). What is weird is, I knew I wasn't going to die.
The old man's yammering had stopped, and I was still alive. Blind, deaf, without feeling and acutely aware of the fact that my muscle tissue was being cooked well-done.
Yet, I was still alive. . . . Still alive. . . still. . .
I awoke with my heart pounding, scared to hell and my covers pulled over my face. After about twenty minutes, when I started to realize there was not going to be any 'Earth-shattering Kaboom', I ventured out of my bed to use the restroom.
I wait . . . .
Atop a hill I stand overlooking a dying city, a dying nation. Alas, a dying Earth. Beyond the great city the ocean laves sluggishly upon polluted shores, exhausted by the constant effort. Dead fish line the beaches in such numbers that they are clearly visible even from where I now stand. The soulless sea stretches far to the horizon a weary brown-tinged shadow of the mighty sea that once stood in it's place.
I wait . . . .
Behind me, a chain of mountains rise to meet the dingy lifeless sky. It's topmost peaks lost in a corrupt and sordid haze which hangs low over all the land. Many of the great peaks lay shattered across the Earth a mighty misshapen mass of rubble, giving evidence to the extensive mining and Earth-moving that has destroyed more that half the range. The remaining peaks stand lifeless, in their great mass having given all they had to offer. They are destitute as a wind full of lost and dying souls howls through the remaining rock that stands as silent witness to the ravagings of a soulless race.
I wait . . . .
The is no life, none. All that has ever lived has died of either starvation, or disease. All that is left are the creators of this abomination. No longer do rivers flow. No longer does the sun shine it's pure and healing light. No longer does green life flourish upon the land. Just . . . .
Just desolation.
Desolation . . . .
I wait . . . . .
I sigh . . . .
I say one last prayer for the Earth as I fade forever into an eternal sleep. All goes dark, slowly, and I can feel a tingling sensation in my wrists.
I sleep . . . . . .
It will speak the invocation of the final doom.
. . . . The final change.
And Earth full of moraless souls will fall upon their faces in fear, asking the forgiveness of a God they do not believe exists. Filled with dread, they will seek to evade the coming doom. The same doom they themselves had wrought.
\Some will scream to a sky full of fallen stars, some will kneel before a rock which has lost it's form, some will bath themselves in a water which is poisoned from their own foulness. All seeking in hopelessness some repentance for there deepest sins, some mercy from a horror they only then will see.
. . . . Only then.
On this day, there will be those who lay about with there wrist opened, as others will scatter their bones upon a rock from some mighty fall. All the while the voice of The Nameless One will ring clear for all to hear and know.
Some will cry out, "Who is this who speaks for all to hear, but is not seen!" Some will seek refuge from an utterance they cannot cease to hear, others will go into a grievous shock as a deep and dreadful truth suddenly is revealed to them.
On that last and final day, a world will cry out in panic as they suddenly see the inevitable doom to be. The voice of The Nameless One will lay proof to what has been realized by the world of dead souls, and all that has ever been will stand clear at the brink of it's own destructive end.
The voice will speak:
"Wake ye o' world and meet the doom you have brought. Stand ready, for the time is come. Be brave, for the choice of a world is made manifest. Stand ready, for the end is come."
Hollow hearts will cry with new life, voided souls will wrench and writhe within. A great sadness will accompany the fear of a planet who has just recognized that they will no longer be. They will shed tears for their children, still as they run in panic for their own lives.
Then, in that final moment of reckoning, a world will scream for mercy from a God they never loved. Man, woman and child of every nation and creed raising their voice for the first time in all history to reach a fearful, hopeless chord of ironic harmony.
. . . . Then.
At the peak of the tension.
All will come to an abrupt halt as wave after wave of great cataclysms will sweep the Earth and lay waste to most of what has ever been known.
. . . . A new age begins.
. . . . A great change takes place.
And all that has ever been known, will become unknown. A new acceptance will pervade the hearts of all who dwell upon the Earth. In the end, a new race will spring forth from the old, fresh and capable. Able to hear without fear the voice of The Nameless One, their heart.
And respectful of a land they nearly destroyed.
© 1992 EAT