Avrin Gshtaar was a Weatherman, dutiful and diligent. The enormity of his responsibility was never lost to him. Upon his ministrations relied the small community of beings for whom the weather was the difference between comfort and pain, starvation and nourishment, companionship and isolation. Avrin was a true expert in his field. In this bookless emptiness, he had had taken it upon himself right from the dawn of his existence to study the weather in all its quiescence and rage. He would predict the ebb and flow of pulses and tides, anticipate the stillness and calculate the shifts, and compute and explain the luminescences and darknesses.
And how Avrin could explain. His presentation of his findings struck awe into his fellow beings. His lucidity in describing an impending doom or a soothing tranquillity was the envy of many a peer.
Blessed with a profound understanding, clarity of thought and fluidity of calculation, Avrin was the perfect weatherman. But he knew nothing of thunderstorms, heat-waves, rain and summer breezes - for to him these were infinitesimally unobservable disturbances of the microscopic globes over which his vast form flowed.
He was unbothered by mere, localised, planetary disturbances. Even if he could have detected something so insignificantly minute, these would have been of little interest to him, for such issues made no difference on any meaningful scale. As humans are unmoved by the blood pressure of an ant, Avrin never turned a thought to how planet's surface may suffer hurricanes. His reports never gave the outlook of the day or week. His plane of existence knew neither day, night nor season - for these were concepts based on revolutions and orbits far too small for him to notice. His knowledge of the weather was irrelevant to the suns and planets; to him, these were mere molecules suspended in the soup of the Universe. Avrin studied only the weather that truly mattered, the anomalies in the warp and weft of space of which his own body was an integral part.
Of late, Avrin's enthusiasm had become much dimmed. Alone among his colleagues, he knew what was approaching. He knew the risks under which it placed his community. The waves of increasing melancholy coursing his entity spiralled across the cosmos, like the song of a whale. In the distance, his feelings pierced the senses of another.
"What ails you, cousin Avrin?" The wordless voice glowed through space like sunlight through a cloud. Avrin felt it hum through every volt of the static electricity that comprised his vastness. The voice carried warmth and concern, mutuality and respect.
"I fear a disturbance, Cousin Eglohad", Avrin replied, the furrows deepening in his formless brow. "The aeon of disquiet is almost complete and heralds that soon the Great Pulse will be upon us. We must anticipate the worst."
The Great Pulse of which he spoke was the stuff of myth. In its timeless, unpredictably spiralling cycle, it would burn and rebuild everything in its path. To its fore, it shook the very foundations of the Universe - in its wake, it left embryonic galaxies to burgeon from the debris left behind.
Even in the indescribable life spans of Avrin's race, the Great Pulse came only once in several hundred generations. It never passed through the same point twice - but then as it passed, no point could be said to be where or what it had been before.
Eglohad Mahl emanated poorly disguised scepticism. "It is a long time coming, this Great Pulse. Of course I have heard the stories, but these are only the stuff of youth and timidity. Avrin, your knowledge and eminence are held in the highest esteem among our kind. Your predictions are the guide to the conduct of our existence. Your accuracy begs only the deepest respect. But none of our parallel entities have ever felt this pulse, and know of it only by legend. Could it be that the Great Pulse is no more than that?"
Eglohad's lack of faith was justifiable. Smaller beings knew of the Great Pulse, but all misunderstood it, in some cases to the extent of attributing to it the creation of the Universe itself. Their horizons could not conceive of its reach. But on the scale occupied by Eglohad Mahl and his line, creation was a pointless concept, for they knew that existence consisted only of cycle after predictable cycle. Yet the Great Pulse occupied a dimension that even he could not comprehend.
With the balance, tolerance and purity of spirit that was the essence of his kind, Avrin accepted his cousin's doubts with grace and respect. "Of course, it may indeed be legend," he said. "But I speak not merely of a single event, unperceived as yet by any of us. I name the Great Pulse as the swell behind our recent, increasingly violent weather. Do you not remember the depolarising? Or the long shift to red? Or the wanton eddy that spread us so thinly? My charts show that these are occurring more frequently than we have known, and lead me to conclude that we are nearing the precipice."
"If you are correct Avrin," Eglohad said, "then how should we prepare ourselves? Shall we contract or expand, glow or darken, raise or lower our frequency? What would you advise?"
In another existence, the answer would be none of these. It would be to flee - but there was no word in their language to describe unrooted freedom of motion, for the notion was needless. Avrin, Eglohad and their colleagues were part of the very fabric they inhabited. Movement was no more an option for them than it was for space itself. Movement was a luxury afforded only to such entities as the Great Pulse and it was almost always associated with destruction.
"There is no preparation, Eglohad," Avrin said. "If the stories are correct, we are to be descended upon. I can predict its path and its wake, its arrival and departing, but I cannot foretell the change it may bring about."
Both of them were stunned into silence. The nature of the exchange between them altered by a sudden, faint dull wave of massive spatial disturbance at an unspeakable distance. Both then knew that it was coming, something vicious and uncaring, ravaging and wild. The anxiety in each of them swelled, feeding and blinding the fear of the other.
Avrin knew he had to return to rationality. He must grasp his responsibility to temper his cousin's unease. "The stories of the Great Pulse are meant to frighten children", he began. "Thus may our minds become clouded. I have no reason to see the Great Pulse merely as an annihilator. It cannot really destroy. It may merely rearrange."
"Cannot destroy? Rearrange? But this too is cause for concern. I am afraid I do not follow you, Avrin".
"Eglohad, my cousin, space is space. We reside in and of it. We can neither cause nor end our existence. We are merely the products of space and of the minute entities occupying it. The Great Pulse shares the ether with us, and thus can merely reorder rather than render asunder. Our kind may slip into demise, only to emerge anew. Wherever there is space and electromagnetism, we shall maintain. If we are rearranged, we shall not know of it, nor shall it matter, for we shall continue to be, yet in another form. We shall simply begin again."
Many times after that, the pair discussed the approach of the Great Pulse, speculating in its effects, philosophising over its nature and meaning. And then they discussed it no more, as matter spilt over into energy, distance curled upon itself and explosions imploded. What had been, was no more, but was again.
Avrad Maar and Eglohin Gshtahl were children, laughing, playing and learning together. Too happy, busy and innocent to notice the shrinking circle of distortion in the firmament, as it receded from them and sped towards the distant Milky Way.
© Noel Bruton 1997. All rights reserved.
