prophecy

going home

i'd been spending a weekend away, visiting a friend who runs a hotel in middlesex.

i had an evening shift, so i left early in the morning, took the tube from uxbridge, made connections in london.

that first trip on the underground. i stepped on the train and the people looked different. and the train looked different. not too different, you understand. slight things. the cut of the men's suits, the women's skirts and heels. the font on the underground map above the sliding doors. haircuts. adverts for products i don't recognise. personal stereos.

i can hear a song playing on someone's stereo. i recognise it. it's off ray of light by madonna.

and there's one person that i can't look away from. a woman. my age, maybe older. very smart business suit. she's tall and very thin (a little too thin). hollow cheeks. Her skin is clear but so very pale, almost silver, almost translucent. her makeup is severe and businesslike. her hair has been shaved off completely, her head catches the light like plastic.

eyecontact

her eyes: they're this shade of bluish green that can't be natural, but they're not not like normal contacts, because coloured contacts have this kind of opaque look to them and this girl's eyes are irridescent. it's rude, but i keep looking at them. she makes eye contact with me. and neither of us looks away. and i want to say something but horror keeps me from saying anything because those awful glowing eyes hide someone who is empty. lost. madonna reaches the chorus.

do i know you from somewhere?
why do you leave me wanting more?
why do all the things i say
sound like stupid things i've said       before?

she has no life, it hits me like it's been emailed to me and there's a little message that says 'you've got mail'. she has no life. she doesn't care who i am, she isn't interested in anything here. she scans me like a camera, like data, like she's got a computer in her head. she has no soul, no anything, like all that made her a person, a good person, a beautiful person has been leeched from her soul.

she's just like me

and i know as we gaze into each other's eyes, me and this pitiable non-woman, this genderless mannequin, i know without any doubt as if i've turned psychic all of a sudden that she does a job just like mine. she's not from now, she's like all these other strangers, she's a picture of the future, as if the world hasn't ended after all. it's like she's a ghost. i want to say something to her, ask her something, anything, but the underground stops, and the silver-skinned woman and lots of others get off.

as she gets off, i see a glint of chrome, catch a glipse of a highly-polished disc or socket. embedded in the back of her neck.

i close my eyes, and the train starts up again...

and i open my eyes, and the train's different again. the people are now people, the adverts are now ads.

it's a sign. if i stay there, if i stay at that job, wired to their network, i'll end up like her. empty. my mind is made up for me. i'm getting out. i am leaving that place, handing my notice in today. going somewhere else. where, i don't know, i don't care as long as it's far from a place like that.

another sign

presents itself to me. i've changed trains now and i'm heading cross-country for home, for swansea. we stop dead just outside bristol parkway, and wait there for some time. it's a beautiful morning, and the sun is caught for me as i gaze out the window in the branches of a tree, shining through the shadows. i begin to notice the presence of god and i talk to him: god, if i have a daughter, don't let her end up like that. and please god, if there's anything that means you don't want me to leave my job, please tell me.

i sit and watch the world go by in silence, and despite the horror of my vision, i suddenly feel all right. i feel fine.

I'll be taking that as a 'no', then.