The Dial

The space is white.

The walls are silent observers of the tug of repulsion between the floor and the ceiling. They too are white.

You blink an eye, and the space is black.
Blink again, and the space is white.

An unblinking eye can untangle the chaos in the calm façade. It can sense out where the center of the space is, and heads there. Reaching there, it stares down.
Down, not up.
And there, levitated by the chaos, is a dial of black volcanic rock. The dial glints in the invisible light, and the eye can see the facets time has cut on it. It ticks tranquility, and the needles are prancing against the tick of time. Brace yourself, for they are fast ticking towards Carnage.

Suddenly, you sense a disturbance in the white air. The space is sending out ripples of it towards you, and you steel yourself as the waves lash in. Your mind conjures wild images of earthly irritants, but the storm approaching is far more unnatural.
Nothing. You feel nothing.

You blink, and the white air stills itself.
The dial is still alive, and the needles are still ticking down. A wary eye will know to hide, because they are ticking towards Cataclysm.
You feel it whipping you about before you can see it. High-velocity winds rage at you, and you feel trapped in a war you do not know of. The ceiling has sent a vortex down at the floor, but the floor and ceiling are there no more.

As the vortex spirals down past you, it holds you prisoner. You are forced to watch the visions stream by, distorted by the spiralling. The visions are like pulsing tendons, the vortex drawing its strength from each of them. Stretched faces, unrealized acquisitions, monochrome dreams – they all whiz past the blinking eye. The vortex grows stronger as you watch. With each blink, another second spirals down.
The faces are crying, some aghast, some euphoric. The dreams are like deserted construction sites, the rubble and pillars clumped together in an unlikely pair. But everything dematerializes. Everything spirals down towards the dial.

The eye winces as the vortex reaches the dial, but the dial is alive. It is the power, and it forces the vortex into submission. The filaments of the vortex flicker out like carefully lit notes in a symphony, and they are all strung loose. The dial does not render them free, for the vortex is intact at its head. The space witnesses an eerie picture – A lone figure stands stranded among the blinking filaments, and at its foot, the dial holds the reigns to it all.

You blink an eye, and the filaments are gone. The walls would have you know, that the last thing they saw before dissipating themselves, was the dial guzzling the filaments into it.

A ripple emanates from within the dial, and for a moment of stunned disbelief you see liquid on the dial surface. And reflected there, you see yourself. You see all the things your naïve heart had desired, and you see everything that was denied to you. The dial shows you their faces, their smug arrogance. It shows you what was, and what never was. The dial is the power.

You blink an eye, and the surface of the dial freezes over. There are the needles, ticking down. You can’t see where they’re headed now. The dial does not deem you worthy. Insipid thoughts fill you up, as you’re forced to relive every moment of regret, of indecision, of despair. The needles are ticking, and blatant lies are pouring out of their mouths into your world.

An unwavering eye sees nothing. It sees stillness. It sees completion. It sees eons of emptiness.

But you are not the eye. You cannot survive in the presence of the dial. For it will incarcerate every object you hold dear. To the dial, all but itself is trite.

So you close your eyes, and the space is no more. You do not blink.

The mundane trinkets of life await you for when you wake. There will be papers to be filed, men to be bought, fragility to be destroyed and seconds to be killed.

The automatons are waiting for you. You must walk amidst the millions of them that throng the world your reality inhabits, and you must distort your thinking to aid theirs. You must not waver; you must submit.

But don’t blink. The space will reel you in, and the dial will wreck your sanity.