I myself had visions of the future
which were absolutely overwhelming. Two of them particularly
stand out.
The first was concerned with a sizeable cataclysm. I was in one
of these incredibly real dreams. I felt like I was present only
as a spectator, seeing through the eyes of another.
We were on a large ocean liner in the middle of the Atlantic.
That afternoon’s atmosphere was pleasant. The great hulking
vessel cruised along at a good clip under a sky of blue
scattered with white clouds. Many passengers were up on deck
enjoying the sea air.
Suddenly a tourist pointed out a curious phenomenon up beyond
the bow. The water was becoming mildly agitated in a small area
straight ahead of us. The slight quivering rapidly morphed into
a steadily increasing boil until, with the water’s surface now
shaking frenetically, the disturbed area abruptly spread to
encompass the
vessel.
The stunned passengers and I then witnessed an unlikely sight as
the water became progressively darker.
No one seemed to understand or be
able to put forth an explanation for this situation. The deep
blue of the Atlantic turned the color of coal. The sun’s
reflections had now vanished off the water’s surface, which
water was reduced to a viscous and shaking mass. It was then
that a third phenomenon joined the incredible scene to which I
was a speechless witness.
In the midst of this ebony sea, black and red swatches were
welling up randomly, much as ignoble warts on a sick man’s skin.
These reddish and dirty boils multiplied even as the ocean’s
nervous shaking increased. A complete silence had fallen on
deck. The event was beyond all human experience.
As I grasped what was happening, I was lifted into the air to
view the panorama in its entirety. The ship sank slowly,
allowing the last clamors to retch up from terror and
unavoidable death. In a flash, I had a vision of what was
happening under the sea. The Atlantic ridge was waking up.
Dozens of undersea volcanoes were exploding violently along the
abysmal ridge that was being severed by two moving continental
plates.
Straightaway, I found myself on the last floor of a skyscraper
in a big American city. The setting was a large Reception Hall
with a prodigiously high ceiling. The walls were light in color,
the interior decoration sumptuous. On one side of the room an
immense cantilevered picture window offered a magnificent view
of the ocean and the surrounding buildings. People were there
assembled, wandering around as if they were awaiting something.
Some appeared nervous, but the majority remained perfectly
relaxed, not a few of them with glass in hand. It seemed they
had all been invited to a surprise at afternoon’s end. Yet none
of them seemed to know what they were doing there.
All of a sudden, I caught a glimpse of the horizon rising
imperceptibly. No one else stopped to notice this strange
situation, as a party was now getting underway. Music was
drowning out the worldly chatter and the hall was filling up
with new arrivals. Most were wearing work dress, as if the
occupants of the lower floors had been invited to a happy hour.
While a small number were clustered around the window, the
majority of the guests preferred to crowd around tables that had
quickly been decked out with food.
Far away, a dark wall, horizontal and linear kept rising towards
the sky. As I floated halfway above the room, I saw a glint of
light run across the entire top of this mountain of water. The
late afternoon sun was reflecting off the monstrous mass which
approached at great speed. In these infinitely long moments, a
handful of urbanites glued to the window held their collective
breath in the face of this unimaginable spectacle.
One might have thought the silence
they kept was meant not to disturb the last moments of joy and
carefree living of the assembly. The huge wave was now only two
or three kilometers off. Its height clearly fell below that of
the last floor of the building; although most of the surrounding
buildings would be flooded in short order. The mega-tsunami was
at least two hundred meters high.
A woman’s scream tore through the plush ambience of the
improvised reception, followed by an immediate and great silence
which echoed the fright of this fortyish woman who by now had
fainted. In a matter of seconds, hundreds of eyes had turned
eastward. The majority were transfixed, although a few already
wept, not daring to howl out of decency and respect for social
graces. All these souls had henceforth been stripped bare.
Rapidly, many joined hands, others hugged with great emotion.
Others yet fled behind whatever
protection was on hand. The apocalyptic tidal wave first reached
the smaller buildings up ahead. As it hit them, a second wave
rose to lick the great cantilevered bay window. Moments later an
enormous battering ram caved in the lowest floors. The ballroom
tilted slowly and inexorably towards the tumultuous waves of an
ocean which was penetrating, unopposed, into the landscape of
North America. The dark hours had invaded the earth’s timepiece.
This vision had for its origin a phenomena considered “natural”.
If the great wave was born of the awakening of the undersea
volcanoes, these owed their sudden activity to a projectile come
from space. A small meteor the size of a car had been flying at
an inordinary speed, which was given: 800,000 km/h! I ignore
whether the speed attributed to the space projectile is possible
but what I saw was it crossing the atmosphere and the ocean in a
blink of an eye.
These fluids had certainly slowed
the advance of the racer, particularly the few kilometers’ depth
of the Atlantic. Yet the meteor had seemed to dive into the
watery layer as if cutting through butter, even breaking through
the mountainous crust with ease. Having lost mass and speed
during its traversal, the space pebble must have shaken
millennial sediments and perforated the carapace of the ocean
ridge before bringing to light another ocean, this time of lava,
and causing new lands to emerge in various areas of the planet
whose two-thirds were covered with water. There was no doubt
that a domino effect was going to take place most everywhere on
earth, setting loose a multitude of earthquakes, volcanic
eruptions and tidal waves.
Eric Julien
from “Children
of the Stars, Vol. 1”
April 24 2006
