Every day another miracle
Only death can keep us apart
To sacrifice a life for yours
I’d be the blood of the Lazarus heart.
(Sting)
“Get the fuck out of here – now!” Captain Scarlet yelled as he raced towards the ticking detonator of the bomb.
“But, Captain-”
“Now, Adam. Fuck off out of it!”
Blue swirled around and raced for the safety of the SPV. Even as his heart rebelled against obeying the peremptory order, his logical mind reminded him that, unlike his friend, he wasn’t indestructible, and someone had to pick up the pieces.
He had scrambled aboard and was driving at full speed away from the booby-trapped building before the blast occurred.
The three-storey building imploded and collapsed like a house of cards. Scarlet was mortally wounded but was still alive as a huge RSJ pinned him beneath the rubble. The hot brick dust, slivers of shattered glass and fibre glass cladding filled his mouth and nose and ripped his struggling lungs to a bloody pulp.
He coughed up great gobbets of plasma, causing him to choke on his own lifeblood.
‘Enough.’
He closed his eyes and waited for death.
***
“Hello.”
The voice sounded familiar but he couldn’t immediately place it. He kept his eyes closed in a sulky reluctance to engage with any well-meaning care professional trying to ease him back into the daily grind.
“Why are you sulking?”
He pursed his lips, refusing to respond.
“Oh well; it’s up to you, of course, but given that our time is limited I’d have thought you’d have wanted to make the most of it, Paul.”
The use of his given name caused him to frown. ‘Who was this?’
“I can wait as long as you want. I’m not exactly going anywhere, am I?”
“Who are you?” he muttered angrily, half-opening one eye.
Sitting beside him was a golden-haired woman of an indeterminate age, with – to use an expression Ochre was fond of – cheekbones you could ski down. Her pale coral-coloured lips moved in a sweet smile and she raised an elegantly thin eyebrow.
“I’m Augusta.”
“Augusta who?” He opened both eyes.
“Just Augusta.”
“Where am I?” He struggled to sit up, frowning as he studied her simple flowing garment that was unlike any medical uniform he’d ever seen.
“Don’t you know? You’ve been here plenty of times.”
“No, I don’t know, or I wouldn’t have asked.”
She gave a slight sigh. “I always have to tell you, so I don’t know why I keep hoping you will remember and am surprised when you don’t.” She held up one thin hand and continued, “Now, don’t get cross. I’m going to tell you. It has several names: Gehenna, Barzakh, Naraka, Limbo, Purgatory… take your pick.”
“Purgatory?” He looked around anxiously.
“Don’t worry; you’re in the antechamber, not the real thing.”
“And what do you do here?” His suspicions were growing with everything she said.
“I’m a sort of receptionist, but you’re my only regular customer.”
“Huh.”
“Are you feeling better? You were in quite a mess when you arrived. I expect you still are… over there.” She turned her eyes away for a moment, staring into the distance and gave a slight smile before continuing: “That nice friend of yours is going frantic pulling rubble away and calling for help. It’s a good thing you can’t see him.”
“Adam?”
“Yes. There are others on their way. He’ll be all right soon.”
“Why can’t I see him?” He peered in the direction she’d been looking.
“People get upset witnessing the grief and pain of their loved ones, so it just isn’t done.”
“You’d think he’d stop caring by now. I’ve been blown up so many times he must be used to it.”
“No,” Augusta said quietly. “None of them get used to it. You suffer, Paul, but so do they in their own ways.”
“I’ve had enough of suffering – my own and theirs! When is all this going to end?”
She shook her head and extended her hand to him, as he struggled to his feet. They began walking together across a huge, airy, flower-filled room, but as they walked the walls seemed to retreat so they never got any closer to the doors.
“I don’t know, Paul. Such things are not vouchsafed to such as me.”
“What are you, exactly?” He turned to study her, irritated by her gentle smile in face of his calculated rudeness.
“I am often asked that and sometimes my visitors devise their own answers to their question. Some say I am a spirit, a ghost or a paranormal entity. I’ve even been called a minor goddess from a pagan past.” She gave him an amused glance and said, “I particularly like the ‘minor’ in that one. Most of them say I’m an Angel – not like the ones you’re familiar with, of course. But I am all or none of these. I stopped wondering about it long ago, I am just Augusta. That is all I have ever been. Besides, I expect they forget about me as soon as they move on.”
“Into Purgatory proper, you mean?”
“On – to wherever they expect to go. This is just Reception, beyond here lies a multiverse of options.”
“Are you alone here?” He looked around.
“There are the visitors.”
“Just them?”
“Oh, I don’t work alone, if that is what you mean. I’d never have a minute to myself if I did. But you are my own special case. Only I see you, Paul. And it is usually such a pleasure too.”
“You mean every time I die, I end up here?”
“That’s it. I like to think we’re friends, only this time, you’re not your usual charming self. I guess we all have off-days, don’t we?”
“I think I must be hallucinating. Am I in a coma?”
“No, you’re dead.” She looked away again to where she’d claimed to see Adam. “The medical transport has arrived and that nice doctor is organising things. One of the nurses is bandaging your friend’s hand. It seems he’s lost a fingernail dragging the rubble away.”
She turned back to Paul. “It’ll be time to go soon, once they get you back to Cloudbase.”
“I don’t want to go back. I want to move on, to go through the door to explore those multiverses. I’m tired, Augusta; tired of the constant pain, tired of carrying the responsibility, of the guilt for surviving, tired of their expectations! I wish it had been me that’d blown up in the Maximum-Security Building and not Brown.”
“You don’t mean that, Paul.”
“I do. What do I have to look forward to but more of the same? And then…” He closed his eyes and fought against the tears that welled up. “Then… a ‘forever’ without them – without the people I love and who know me and all that I was and became.”
“I’m not sure you have a choice.” She put her arm around him and held him close. “ But maybe…maybe I can help. You see, every time you come here you effectively stand at a crossroads, Paul. Everyone has one choice, so I could show you the road you have not taken, so far. Will you let me show you that possibility?”
Confused, he nodded.
“Hold tight.”
He felt as if he was losing his balance for a moment and gripped Augusta to steady himself.
“Trust me,” she whispered, “and look…” One slim hand directed his gaze downwards.
He focused.
He was on Cloudbase. There was Adam, nursing a huge mug of coffee, alone in the dimmest corner of the cafeteria.
“Adam!” he called joyfully.
“He can’t see or hear you, nobody can. We are outside of their reality, looking in. Watch.”
***
Colonel White approached and sat opposite his officer. “You did all you could. You saved the World President.”
“I shot my best friend.” Blue’s voice was bleak.
“We must all do things we don’t want to do, Captain.”
“Yeah.” Blue swigged his tepid coffee and grimaced. “It’s just that it stinks, Colonel. We’re three men down and these ‘Mysterons’ could be anywhere and anyone.”
“Then we must be vigilant. Spectrum cannot fail. Each and everyone of us must be prepared to lay down our lives in defence of humanity.”
“Against what?” Blue snapped. “If they can take the shape of our friends, our families… I doubt the capacity of any human to turn against all he holds dear. It’s okay as an abstract commitment, but let me tell you – it’s a whole new ball game when you’re facing someone you know.”
White briefly laid a hand on the younger man’s arm. “I know, son; but we can only try.”
Blue’s head dropped onto his arms as his broad shoulders heaved with the anguished sobs he could no longer suppress.
The colonel sat in quiet sympathy, his stern glances fending off the curious stares of other agents who stayed too close.
The vision faded.
Augusta’s voice startled Paul who was wrapped up in his concern for his friends. “This is where the possibilities diverge. You recovered in Sick Bay and with Adam and your other friends, you fought on.”
She took his hand. “Step over here through the divide.”
There was a brief tingling sensation against his skin as Paul followed her for what seemed like only a few feet, yet the vision changed completely.
He was in a churchyard and Spectrum agents were collected around a new grave. Blue, Ochre, Green, the colonel, Harmony and Melody. The honour guard fired a volley of shots over the grave and then, slowly, the sad party dispersed.
Paul looked down at the wreaths on the grave and read aloud.
“Captain Magenta. What happened to Pat?” he demanded of Augusta.
“The Mysterons,” she said. She directed his attention to a row of recent gravestones, the lettering still sharply incised and the stones unblemished.
“Sacred to the memory of – not Dianne!” He stared at her. “Not Di!” He looked back at the others, his heart already aching at what he knew he would see. “Bradley Holden, Karen Wainwright… Why?”
“You were not there to save them. Come.”
A few yards further and the cemetery morphed into an unkempt graveyard with neglected graves and uncut vegetation between the stones. He read the names: Charles Grey, Adam Svenson, Magnolia Jones, Seymour Griffiths, Chan Kwan, Juliette Pontoin.
He stared at Augusta.
“Come.”
Suddenly, they were in the debating chamber of the World Senate. An angry debate was in progress with World Leaders berating an unknown World President and demanding resources for their beleaguered nations.
“There is nothing left!” the President roared. “The factories, the farms, everything is in ruins! I can order them to print paper money but what is the point if a wheelbarrow full of million-dollar bills won’t buy you a bag of flour?”
This was greeted with howls of outrage. The World President shouted even louder.
“Go back to your homes, go back to your people and fight as hard as you can. The World Government has ceased to exist – you are on your own!”
There was pandemonium as people protested and demanded the resources they could not believe no longer existed, but must be there if you demanded loud and long enough. A fight broke out. Shots were fired. Screams rang out. Chaos reigned.
Paul looked angrily at Augusta. “You were not there to lead the defence of the resources,” she explained bleakly. “Come.”
They hovered over smoke-shrouded forests, flew over devastated fields and empty reservoirs. Once great cities were ruins, blackened by fire. Roads had disintegrated and bridges were down, train tracks were warped and engines overturned. Rows of destroyed planes littered the airports. Scattered bands of scavengers roamed the streets, carrying their possessions on their backs or piled into shopping trolleys and pushchairs.
“When they could not trust their own, they trusted no one,” Augusta said. “Come – one more time.”
It was Trafalgar Square, or what was left of it, just enough for Paul to recognise it. There were no people, no pigeons, nothing moved except the rain clouds scudding overhead.
“Are they all dead?” Paul asked.
“Everything is dead,” Augusta corrected him. “Even the weeds between the pavement cracks.”
“All this if I don’t go back?”
“It is possible. That’s all I said, Paul. I would show you a possibility.”
“And if I do go back? None of this will happen?”
“It is possible – don’t get cross! It is less likely to happen. I showed you what happened if you had never recovered from the first time your friend shot you. You did recover and this possibility remains just that; a temporal dead end, if you will. I do not know if choosing not to go back now will result in this or something like it.”
She touched his hands and they were suddenly back in the reception room.
“Now is the time to choose. You must go back and face the future, or move on and let them face it alone.”
“Great. Emotional blackmail on top of everything.”
“No,” Augusta smiled. “The choice is yours; I do not say if you go back what you witnessed will never happen. I do not say if you move on it is certain to happen. I do not know, Paul. And nor do you. If you want to know you will have to go back. Move on and you will never know. There is no second choice and no coming back.”
He looked at her and saw compassion in her eyes – sky blue eyes, like Dianne’s.
“All I can give you is the choice. Everyone gets one choice.”
“You do know me well, Augusta. You know I’m insatiably curious, don’t you?”
She smiled. “You’re a human. You all are.”
“Yes, I am human. The Mysterons can’t take that away from me.” He stood up. “Time to go home, I think, Augusta. Goodbye, until the next time.”
“Goodbye, Paul.”
His vision grew indistinct and she faded from his sight.
***
He felt a jolt as his heart began beating and moments later he heard the relieved voices of Dianne and Adam saying in unison:
“Paul, darling!”
“Welcome back, buddy!”
Unexplained tears crept from between his closed eyelids.
The End
(until the next time)
Author’s Notes:
My thanks as ever go to Hazel Köhler for her excellent beta-reading services and for the most apposite sentence at a very pertinent point. Thanks also to Chris Bishop for her magnificent website!
Marion Woods
22 October 2022