Theo was forever writing. Always the same story, although if you asked him what it was about, he’d dodge the question. Always the same place, too, weather permitting; his favourite writing place: a seat at one of the tables outside the Café Nomadica. And the weather seemed to permit it, most of the time. He justified his place there by consuming a steady stream of espressos – supplemented by the occasional Danish pastry – over the course of the day.
The Nomadica lay on the minor road that ran around the north side of the bay, perhaps a quarter of a mile from the edge of town. Beyond the road lay nothing but a narrow strip of beach and, beyond that, the sea itself. The handful of regulars who frequented it were an unassuming lot. The road was little-used and people rarely came to lounge on the beach there. There were few distractions and, whenever he looked up from his work – as he often did – he rarely saw anyone, apart from the odd dog-walker. It was what he liked about the place: he felt alone with the sea and the sky. What he did see, though, from time to time, were uncanny eddies in the air, distorting the view of the world behind them rather like the glass you see in some old windows. Unlike the imperfections in old glass, though, they seemed to move and shimmer as if they were spinning: they resembled the phenomenon of dust whirls he’d read about but never seen, only without the dust. He thought little of them at first, that they were perhaps a trick the eye, the result of drinking too many espressos, until he saw a woman out walking her dachshund walk straight into one: both she and the dog seemed too shimmer, then disappear. Shocked, he called André, the café owner, who seemed unconcerned and told him not to worry. It was no more than a spatial vortex. They were quite common in that part of the world. The locals, he said, never gave them a second thought and, as they were only visible from certain angles, it would only be a matter of time before he got caught up in one himself. They were quite harmless, he said, and, sure enough, Theo saw the same woman, unscathed, out walking the same dog only the next day.
One afternoon, when the tide came in and the wind got up, he decided to go off and explore the town. When he did, it wasn’t long before he found himself, as André predicted, caught up in one of the vortices. As he was wandering through an amusement arcade, the machines suddenly seemed to get bigger and brighter, the space between them shrank and the noises they made got louder. The world around him quickly degenerated into an overwhelming kaleidoscopic cacophony. It became a regular occurrence on his subsequent trips into town. He might be wandering the backstreets, when, all of a sudden, the road would get narrower, and the buildings and lamp-posts on either side close in over him. He discovered early on that, oddly, if he stopped walking in these situations, the world around him seemed to continue to move and change, as if he were being sucked in. It was a phenomenon that took many forms, but, whatever form it took, it was always like a journey to the centre of a snail shell, only he never reached the centre. Every time, as he approached the vanishing-point, it all came to an abrupt end and he found himself sat, back at his table in front of the café, wondering if he’d imagined it all. Despite the things André said, it occurred to him that he might be suffering from some sort of neurological condition which he was unable to understand but which might explain the events in his life as he perceived them. He gave the matter some thought and resigned himself to the possibility. It crossed his mind, too, that if he were indeed living though a delusion, his memories of André’s explanations might be a part of it.
One evening, after closing time, André came to join him at his table, as he often did, bringing with him a couple of cognacs. The air was still thick and warm. The first stars were out and you could see the lights on the ships anchored close to the horizon, waiting their turn to come into port. The two men sat there together for a couple of minutes, drinking in companionable silence. Then André explained his theory of the vortices. It was his belief, he said, that their influence extended outwards, well beyond their visible manifestations. If the energy of a vortex diminished exponentially with each gyration then, theoretically, that energy would never be reduced to zero. If this were the case, the influence of each spatial vortex would extend outwards indefinitely. It could be, he said, that these widening outer swirls, being much less intense and, to all intents and purposes invisible to us, could be drawing us in, way before we realise what’s happening. ‘So much,’ he said, ‘for free will.’ He chuckled. He suggested that perhaps a machine could be made to detect such low-energy gyrations. He had a few ideas of his own, he said, which he was working on.
Every night, when Theo fell asleep, he had the same recurring dream. In it, he woke up to find himself lying on a bed in a narrow room, looking up at the ceiling, the whole suffused with a grey light. He knew he had to get up. What followed after that was always hard to remember, as the details, though they varied slightly, were invariably humdrum and repetitive. Sometimes he’d be left with a vivid memory: it might be of taking a shower, making coffee, being stuck in a traffic jam, or sitting in front of a screen. There were people, too, in grey suits: he could vaguely remember the tone of their voices but never what they said.
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Dominic Rivron
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