The dark night wind cuts like glass through their winter coats and a scent of expectation exudes as the stalled throng shuffles in its place. They seem anxious to push forward on mass to fill the Void.
As we approach the swaying lines we hear the repeated relief of “At least it’s not raining”.
We are jostled to a place in one of many queues, each wavering line crawling slowly into the covered marshalling area. The huddled crowd is swathed by a glow leaking from creases in the carapace of the Void. The radiance pulses enticingly green, blue, pink and silver. The clean colours a contrast to the jaundiced street lights which hang over the broken paths and alleyways, channeling the crowds towards the Void.
As we inch forward openings come into sight, keepers of the Void are seen standing guard at the portals. They laser-scan the crowd and detect those with evil intent. Any person not properly authorised, those sad souls, are handed to henchmen who take them for hidden interrogations. The Void is not for all who make it here. One man and his partner stumble out into our midst after being neutralised by the authorities. She has stains streaming from her eyes and his face is ashen, they trudge leadenly back into the gloom of the city. The efficiency of the portal keepers is well matched to the fervour of those around us who are desperate to enter.
The cutting wind drives us forward and we find ourselves processed through a portal into the stark marshalling space. Severely cut signs give directives of how to enter the Void. Around us many of our co-journeyers are consuming substances to heighten or lessen the experiences they expect once within. Some are delaying their entry, but we are keen to progress, not however without our own stimulants, which we easily secure from a child dealing openly in the marshalling area.
We determine our access to the Void, it is slightly off to the left and, on going through its massive doors, we find ourselves not in the Void but within a high walled space. A corridor expanding up and out, encouraging us towards its end. The walls and floor are roughly cast in a powder grey blandness motivating us to leave its confines.
At the corridor’s end a vastness hits us with a shuddering vista.
We have entered the Void at its centre edge and we are drawn forward to peer down over a perfunctory barrier. Ledges cascade away beneath us and some of our fellow travellers have already perched upon them. To ease our vertigo we hold each other and turn our backs to the drop. Looking up we see an equally endless rise of ledges and some hardy souls are perched around the very top of the Void. The surfaces here too are bereft of any feature or distraction from the palette of mute stone grey. Way above the ledges, the Void arcs ever higher where vision is lost amongst entangled black technologies.
We smile unsurely at each other, take a tight grip our youth-bought stimulants and begin the climb along to our vantage point.
The vista before us is cavernous, immensely impressive and beyond our mundane comprehension of scale. We drink deeply from our chosen vials and our senses melt, relaxed and enhanced.
As the time draws closer for the event, organic flows take shape in the mass of bodies coursing onto the ledges. The crowds form an amorphous globulation, a life blood, streaming and pumping along the wider pathways before splitting, capillary-like into tracks between ledges where they pulse and fidget into place.
Eventually every tiny gap fronting the massive Void is occupied by a faceless homogenous wall of organisms exposing themselves as one to the inevitable.
There have been rumours as to what this Void can do, many have left it struck mute and unable to express, some made unable to process, but all carry defining experiences back into life.
Some don’t survive. At least one has been already transported away as we gazed down from our eyrie.
Suddenly all light drains away. The vast blackness assumes a fertile imagined eternity. Surprised, the multitude gasps as one. There is no echo. A faint glow seeps into the platform below and an impossible hush falls over our assembled riot.
Harbingers of sensation file into the Void under a muted sheen. Some of the troop assemble behind strategically placed implements but most of this dark-suited infantry carry their own specific armaments, each crafted to shake anatomy and pierce all resonance. Closely following them, a regiment of black robed warriors move in to flank the backs of the infantry and form a double assault line through which retreat or penetration is impossible.
A piercing beam transports a black suited commander to an alter at the centre of the platform. Ignoring the multitude he commences to flail and to beat order into to the forces gathered before him.
On a flamboyant cue the Void is flooded with a guttural aural explosion.
There are cries from the crowd as if a pain has been inflicted among some.
The fidelity is achingly applied and the masses are subjugated. There is an entrancement being perpetrated here, a deception of reality driven past our minds. It is not possible that this vast space can provide such an individual attention.
Every soul is torn from a memory of what has gone before, a replacement of expectation, a corruption of past experience.
With masterful timing the commander averts a sensory crescendo and rests his troops in order to leave his alter. The Void fills with appreciative sounds from the occupants of the ledges as if droplets are falling on glass. The commander heads to the platform edge and leads a sightless drone back to proudly display to the assembly.
Screams rise from sensitive females encircling the Void and the sound of a million pebbles crashing on parchment sweeps down from all the ledges. Interjections and whistles smatter the applause. The blind warrior smiles strangely and embarks manfully on his mission, immediately familiar but unrecognised. Clawing at memory and wrenching through emotions he delivers a devastating and unassailable assault. The Void is consumed in its entirety, engorged with an opulence that none could have anticipated. The unctuous fulfilment endures through the grandiose and reprieve until, satiated, exhausted and enthused, all expectations are exceeded. An ultimate salvo is unleashed with undeniable finality and the last farewells are made.
The platform is vacant, the multitudes drain away, and the Void, the cold, grey stone Void remains. The Void holds no memory, no pride, no remorse or regret. The Void is a void.
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