Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 7

            I can’t believe it, I can feel everyone. Connected as though by a string around our fingers. If I concentrate, I can feel Benjamin next to me, as old as old can be. I can feel people across London, across the world, moving around, walking, quickly blinking out one second and appearing somewhere else. A collective human mind, far beyond the population of planet earth.         

‘Why are we here?’

‘Why are we down there?’ he says, raising his eyebrows. ‘Search me. If I were you, I’d enjoy it, same as I do, see the world, live your new life,’ he says. ‘You can interact, that’s the biggest unwritten rule of this place. You can interact but think about what you’re doing. How would you like it if you were alive in your favourite armchair, cup of coffee one hand, a book in the other and your lamp levitated off the table. I don’t know about you, son, but that’s the sort of nonsense that gives decent folk the heebie jeebies.’

I look at my new friend, my only friend, for a second. Sometimes, just rarely, there is the twang of the deep south in his voice, the occasional word which doesn’t fit, or a faint smile of remembrance on his lips like he’s slipping into a pair of comfortable old shoes he’d forgotten he owned.

‘Where are you from, Benjamin?’ I ask, feeling very rude for not asking a single thing about him.

‘Four hundred years I’ve walked this earth,’ he says. ‘Seen a lot of things, seen more wars than I care to count. Seen people beaten, hurt, abused, and not been able to touch them or do a thing about it. But I’ve seen more love than I could even begin to describe, millions of happy families who I hope don’t mind they’re sharing a memory with an old fool. Tell you the truth son, being born some place doesn’t make a blind bit of difference; I’ve almost forgotten where.’

‘Have you ever tried to find someone you knew when you were alive?’

‘Plenty of times,’ he says. ‘I meet the boys in Alabama once a week for a game of five-card-draw.’

‘How did you find them?’

‘Luck,’ he says. ‘And a familiar scent on the breeze.’