Always at the Dawn of a New Age
by Gabor Csigas ©2018 | Sometimes you can foresee the past
“To hell with you,” Megan whispers, pouring herself her next Martini. She’s drinking alone. Her makeup a beautiful, smudgy mess, the glow of the special news broadcast reflecting in a tear welling up in the corner of her eye.
It’s cold outside. Not true winter yet, though. It snowed only once, and even then all the whiteness faded away in an hour. Now the snowfall has dwindled. The guest expert on the news says the mission is still a go. He talks a lot. It’s what he’s being paid for.
The news cuts away from the droning expert to a video of the booster, the footage recorded a few hours earlier. The scaffolding protectively hugging the giant rocket was full of orange-uniformed ants back then. Megan knows none of them are there now. Just the crew of the ship, but even they wouldn’t be visible from a distance like this. They’ve boarded already anyway. The channel is showing photos of them now. One of those shots is hanging next to Megan’s huge smart TV, printed and framed. The man in the picture is named Halwood Cronas. Megan sheds a single tear.
She slumps into an ancient, black chair, and pulls out her phone. She waits for Halwood to disappear from the TV screen. Then she dials.
“It’s a pity I can’t reach you, Tissy,” she says to the voicemail recorder. “I wanted to ask if you were watching the launch. And whether you had foreseen that I wouldn’t be able to talk Halwood out of it. Like that prophetic dream? The one you had about the California quake that took Alecta from us? And like when you told me Dad would get hit by a car in Texas. And he did. That’s what I wanted to ask. Whether you foresaw that your divination was in vain, as me trying to warn Hal was in vain too. Useless.”
Megan hangs up. She remains sitting, watching the TV. There’s a clock counting down to the launch in the bottom right corner of the screen. The moments keep dripping away, slowly yet mercilessly, like the Martini from the bottle that had fallen over. When did that happen?
It’s like blood — the spilled blood of Uranus, from which the Erinyes were born, after whom Megan’s father had named his daughters. That was a mistake, she thinks, because only an adherent of scientism like Halwood would believe in pure random chance. The rest of the world is stuck with fate — and your name is a seal of your fate. Just like blood. Tissy keeps saying that at least, and Megan believes her sister and nobody else. There’s only five minutes left now until ignition. Only five. Megan hits redial on her phone.
“It’s me again, you damned automaton,” she says to the voicemail. “Sorry, Tissy. You know what a fury I can be. I just wanted to ask whether you foresaw that the reason why I wouldn’t be able to talk Halwood out of this all is not that he doesn’t listen to me. And it’s not what I keep telling him about your prophecies. It’s that I haven’t even tried, at all. We had a fight before he left. I told him, finally, that I had long known he’d hooked up with that woman. And then I didn’t want to warn him at all. I wished him dead instead. Both of them. I wanted them to disintegrate.“
Megan bows her head, trying to evade the accusing glance of all the faces the TV keeps displaying. “And if you knew I wouldn’t do it, why haven’t you warned him yourself? Why? Or maybe you haven’t foreseen this? How does this work!? Do you only see fragments of fate?” Megan keeps raising her voice, shouting in the end. Her eyes are still on the floor. Her hair reaches the cold, black stone, melding into it in the shadows.
“Two more minutes,” someone says on the TV.
“You know, Tissy,” she continues, now in a whisper, “I think you wanted to leave me my freedom to decide whether to tell him. And I’ve made my decision. I’ve decided to leave it to their god of technology, and to my god to sort this out between themselves. Let’s see who’s more powerful. After all, this ship is the fastest, safest, and mightiest they’ve ever built! And they’ll be back from the frontier station at Uranus in six fleeting months, right! Half a year, if technology’s willing.”
Megan goes quiet for a second, swallows.
“Let’s see if it is willing. Let’s see if this ship can also let them brush aside others completely. In the name of science! They were chosen, Hal and this woman, by the powers that be. Of scientism. To conceive a child out there. And the two of them have thrown away everything! Hal threw me away! For science, and for fame! I even got a fucking letter from the gods-damned president. The government is counting on me. On my understanding of their sacrifice. Sacrifice! And they thank me for my own sacrifice! For the advancement of mankind! Oh, and I could be, could have been there at the launch myself! I got an invitation. At the dawn of a new age!”
Megan looks up, dizzy from the alcohol, blood rushing into her head.
“One minute! One more damned minute! Fuck the government, fuck them, and fuck mankind! I haven’t warned them, I didn’t say anything about your dream to Halwood. Let’s see who’s stronger! Us — or their plastic god with its perfect, astronaut genes?!”
Ten. Nine. Eight.
“But you’ve known all this, Tissy. I’m gonna hang up,” Megan says, but she doesn’t.
Five. Four. Three.
She’s staring at the TV with her phone in hand.
On the TV screen, a sinister orange rose of deafening fire opens its mighty petals.
“The color of the flowers he brought me on our first date,” Megan mutters to herself. “Half a year after Dad’s death.”
She starts crying again. Her tears turn into tiny wisps of flame.
About this story
I wrote Mindig Egy Új Kor Hajnalán, the Hungarian original of Always at the Dawn of a New Age back in 2007. It was first published that year in Roham, an art and literary magazine.
The story is the first of a trilogy whose parts are loosely connected via their protagonists, contemporary manifestations (?) of the Erinyes (also known as the Furies) of the Ancient Greek myths.
Please, note that the English is an updated version of the Hungarian text — I’ve decided to alter a few details while translating the original. :)
