Part One

War had been declared.

He never thought it would happen here. Not here. He always considered this a safe little enclave in a military world. But no. And the occasional sound of fighter planes roaring low across the sky, their force rocking the building, bore witness to the new reality.

No-one seemed to understand just how this conflict had mysteriously escalated into all-out war. But there it was.

It seemed to him that the System was old, tired, sapped of all vitality. It no longer possessed the energy to do anything novel, so it kept itself going by declaring wars. Stupid, pointless wars that nobody wanted, and which would see the usual huge numbers of people die needlessly.  

It occurred to him how easy it is to declare a war. And, once a war has been declared, how difficult it is to stop. The usual few voices were raised in dissent, and shouted down for being traitors, or cowards, or sympathisers with the devil. But unless half the population mobilised and protested, and the youth refused to take up arms, your war would go ahead. And everyone would suffer, and thousands would die horrid deaths. 

In his view, the war probably wouldn't last long. They lived near the border, easy pickings for the apparent enemy with their superior technology. Looking outside from the fourth-floor flat, he could already see piles of rubble where once stood buildings. Empty spaces where once lived old schoolfriends.

Division seemed to be the driving force behind the System. It needed division and disunity at all costs, however and whenever possible. Without it, he speculated, the whole thing would just collapse, a parasite starved of its sustenance.

Part Two 

Across the expanse of now-fading pale cream carpet, on the other side of the room, sitting slightly crouched over in a spacious light mauve armchair, sat a woman. This was his wife, Ursa: Bear in any other language.

She was leafing through a magazine on gardens and gardening. She would spend hours poring over these magazines, despite it being years since they lived anywhere that boasted a garden. Maybe it was her doorway, however faint, out of the horror of the human world - where war had just been declared - into a slightly saner and calmer realm. 

Periodically a braid of her long fair hair would fall down over her face. She would flick it back with a touch of venom, only for it to fall flopping over her right eye and into her mouth again a few minutes later.

This irritated him. All she needed to do was to fasten it up with a hair grip, but no. She preferred to engage in this annoying habit. 

In her day she was a bit of a looker. She worked in the clubs and bars, dancing on the tables. It was not a bad life. She made decent money, she liked her body, and with strict regulations she was free from any personal violation. And she was able to pay for the art course at college which she so longed to take. And she did pretty well.

He knew how much had changed. The soft, smooth skin on the nape of her neck had given way to a host of little wrinkles that no number of creams could hide. The taut, sculpted belly was now saggy. And the veins in her lower legs were more visible by the day.

He smiled a wry smile. He didn't mind. He didn't care, not in the slightest. There was a time, maybe, when he would pine a little for that faded youth, but no longer.

The braid of hair fell once again, and she flicked it back with a well-practiced movement of thumb and index finger. In truth, it was not just this: there were many things about her that irritated him. Little habits, ways of answering his endless questions. Funny little things, like the way she folded her clothes away in the evening; the way she carefully arranged the dirty cutlery in neat little rows before washing up. A host of little annoyances. 

If they based their being together upon habits and ways of behaviour, they would have divorced decades ago. As it is, and he doesn't know if it happened at once or over a period of many years, something else began to take over. He couldn't really describe it, and could think of no word for it. But it was a kind of calm, a stillness, that came over them, underpinning all the frustrations and irritations that would sometimes be expressed. It appeared to point altogether outside this 'normal' world.

Part Three

He opened a cupboard and took out a box full of old CDs. 'For a rainy day' he would say. He flipped through them, in search of one in particular. There it is. Johannes Brahms. His Second Piano Concerto. Nothing quite like it. The first few seconds, where horn then piano play a few haunting notes, before the main melody sets in, were unique, infinitely enthralling to him. He could spend all day just listening to those few simple notes.

He was through with drama, be it of the personal, soap opera, or 'we have declared war' variety. It required a personal identity with the affairs of this world which he no longer possessed. But for some reason the drama that was encompassed by some of the piano concertos of the Romantic composers had him by the short and curlies. 

Schumann, Brahms, Liszt; Rachmaninov, even tinkle-tinkle Chopin: all produced concertos of magnificence. The form seemed to really bring out the best in them. 

It was a lucky day: the power was on. Some days power was limited to 'the essentials'. And Brahms sure wasn't one of them. In fact, the list of what comprised 'essential' seemed to dwindle by the week.

All of this was necessary because sometimes the sun didn't shine and the wind didn't blow. It was decreed thus by the Great Planetary Saviour, who had deemed a host of measures necessary if we were 'going to prevent the lights going out.'

Quite what the problem was that he was saving us all from seemed to have been forgotten by most people. And those who remembered didn't believe it anyway. But it was very easy to issue decrees affecting the entire population. And once your decrees and regulations were in place, what people felt became pretty much irrelevant. 

Ursa had disappeared into the kitchen to make coffee for the two of them. He got up from his seat and wandered over to the window looking to the back of the apartment. They lived in the interior of the country, far from the sea. The sky was often a uniform pall of grey, and they could go for weeks on end without any wind. Hence the energy uncertainty, the insecurity. Just what the Great Saviour relished.

Looking out over the edge of the city, he could make out the countryside beyond. It was scarred with the ruins of abandoned industry. He could see clearly the energy plant which once provided power in abundance. Now closed and derelict: it was deemed not acceptable - like nearly everything else.

Had he been born in a different age, the Great Saviour would have been an enthusiastic Crusader. Slaying Turks, maybe, or inconvenient fringe Christians like the Cathars in the Albigensian Crusade. As it is, he was almost universally despised. But he didn't seem to care. He simply got on with what he had to do, and unless anybody put a bullet through his brain, he would carry on regardless.

Ursa came in with coffee. Strong but not bitter, the way they both liked it. He returned to his seat, while his wife prepared for another session of 'Exotic Herbs for Small Gardens.'   

He had no interest in religion. Too often fake, pretending to be something it wasn't. Besides, anything institutional gave him the willies. The same went for much of what passed as 'spirituality'. All that talk about harmony and oneness: how deep did it go?

He was, arguably, of a more philosophical bent. All the same, you wouldn't find him sitting in his armchair all afternoon reading Plotinus.

It was one morning, only recently, when it had come to him. The waters parted, the dross fell away, for a moment at least. He was left looking into a mirror of reality.

It was all so simple; and the other stuff seemed irrelevant. There were two modes, and two modes only, in the entire Universe. There was the mode of division; of disunity, of strife, of chaos. And there was the mode of Totality, Completeness. Everything could be subsumed under one or the other of these two categories. That was it; simple. You had a look and you took your pick. Except that picking and choosing was rather more tricky and challenging than we might at first make it out to be. 

Part Four

All of  a sudden an enormous bang resonated through the air, and a pulse of bright light cut through the air outside the window. Then the apartment rocked and shook, as if it were the plaything of an almighty giant. He managed to stay seated in his armchair, but lightweight Ursa was catapulted forward straight onto the floor.

"Fucking bastards" he exclaimed. "Are you OK?" "I suppose so. Still breathing."

"Fucking bastards" he repeated. A missile must have come down right next to the apartment block. It must have been of the 'scare the shit out of them' variety, because there were no military installations anywhere near, and industry had already been decimated by the Planetary Saviour.

He looked around. Not much damage done. A set of faux crystal ornaments had fallen from a shelf, and the pieces were lying shattered across the floorboards. No great loss, that: he never liked them in the first place. His coffee cup rolled across the floor. Fortunately he had drunk it empty before the missile strike. Ursa was still on the floor, wincing and rubbing her lower leg. She seemed OK for now; the shock would kick in later. 

To call it psychopathic would be an insult to psychopaths. But there it is. The same old pattern, repeating itself over the centuries. Hardly anybody likes it, but there seems to be a force behind it all which simply keeps it rolling on and on.

And this is the difficult part, the unpalatable slice of reality, the most difficult to accept and which most people will reject outright. That this place is not a place of love and joy. It is not intended to be such. It is a place of hardship, pain, and suffering, because that's how it's designed. That's the way it's coded to be, if you like. 

It occurred to him that this quality was inherent in any material, physical realm. Physicality implies division, disunity, parts and fractions, which can all too easily be pitted against one another. As if this particular universe insists that it be so; as if it requires the suffering in order to be able to survive. As if it feeds off the energy. There is no point in trying to transform this place into a paradise, it can't be done. Mind you, it could be improved on, even within these limitations.....

Realms of Completeness and Totality are there, he knew. He had been there. But to do so needs a kind of de-identification with the material, with 'this world'; no small order. The departure is possible, but difficult. It requires discipline, training, clarity as to what you are doing, and familiarity with what lies beyond. But what lies beyond is worth the effort. It is, after all, reality. It is home.

And at that moment the blue porcelain dolphin sat astride the bookshelf tottered, teetered, and smashed into a hundred tiny pieces on the wooden floor.