Art Pact 180 - High Level View


From the tops of buildings all differences are erased except for the grossest ones. I can tell the difference between a vehicle and a person, between a person and a beast, but between two people? No, nothing. Not colour, not sex. Not happiness or sadness, good or bad. All are the same, and all just as worthy or unworthy of my protection. I find it comforting - it removes a layer of morality that is perhaps less pure than it could be - a layer in which there are confusions brought on by disgust or delight, attraction or repulsion. Much better to be free of the frailties of the mind and to see all of humanity (all of terranity, perhaps) for what it is - life, and therefore something both rare and useful.

Naturally, I can only maintain this psychological detachment with the aid of physical distance. Come too close to the ground and all of this high-minded thought is removed from me. I become fearful and judgemental, terrified that my own life will be taken from me by some equally terrified local. They are weak individually, humans, but their machinery is rapid and deadly to one such as me, cut off from all of the advantages of civilisation. With a proper shield I could slow a bullet enough to pluck it harmlessly from the air, but I have no shield. With a defender I could atomise a tank shell and ionise it to blow away from me as though it were a fly bouncing off my arm, but I have no defender. I have no through-scanner to tell me the weak spots of an armoured car, no translocator to walk past defenses and weapons as if they were mist. I have my wings, and my eyes, and my brain, and nothing else. And those three, although they are much, are not always sufficient. There is no point relying on my wings to bring me freedom when I must go so often into their dwellings. My eyes, which can see so much in the dark, are useless during the day. My brain, so quick at home, here is dulled and slowed by melancholy and loneliness so that sometimes I can barely think at all for the weight of desire upon me. I miss my home, I miss the others of my kind, I am confused and vertiginous at the alien nature of the world to which I have come. What could have caused this apocalypse, this twisted world in which the little creatures of my world are grown so vast and dangerous? Sometimes I fear that there was no transition, that I am still somehow in my own land and merely incapable of seeing things for what they truly are. When I swoop down upon humans, am I in fact descending upon my own kin, who call out in confusion and try to bring me back to them, only to watch in vain as I swoop past them on my own mad errand?

But such thoughts are exactly the ones I must guard against - doubts that sap the blood from my brain and make me sluggish and weak. I am here, this is the world I can see, this topsy-turvy world. This is what I must react to, for to distrust my senses invites paralysis. If the world is otherwise I am the one person least equipped to help myself, and I must trust that there are others working for my good. My family, my nest-wife, they must work to save me one way or the other. If I am truly here, I trust they will be using their wits to try to reverse the transition and bring me back. If all of this is merely a storm in my mind, likewise I must assume that they are following me and trying to talk me round. Although if that is true I suppose I must be alert to hints of their work seeping into my experiences here. There is so much here to pay attention to already, though, and again I am caught in a maze of my own making - if they cannot help me without me actively working to look for signs of their help, do I put myself at risk again?

Enough. There are tasks at hand. First of all, I must consider the two children. They have seen me, I know it, swooping past the windows of the penthouse. I am not afraid to be exposed - it is too late for that, the doves have flown. But the fewer people know the location of my nest the better, and I do not know whether the children will be believed. Perhaps they are already sure of my roost, or perhaps their parents have talked them around with the dull statistical logic that parents use alike in this world and my own.

I make a decision. I cannot leave this to chance, I must make myself known to them. It will put me at risk of an emotional response, but I must attempt to communicate the necessity for my secrecy. I have heard enough of their language to understand a few simple words, but such a complex concept - will it be too much for them? Too much for my rebel tongue, that refuses to make the proper sounds?

No matter. I must try, and now. Lying atop the roof above the corridor that leaves to the lifting-and-descending box, I have felt in the tingle of my feathers the sound of the parents leaving for the day. I must do it now, while there is a chance of communicating with them without outside interference or risk of exposing myself to more humans.

I clamber to the edge of the building, feeling the sudden blast of wind rushing up from the cliffside of glass and metal, and hook my hind-claws onto the rounded metal railing. I open my wings, feeling the battering press of air lifting me up. I push forward, and swoop down onto their balcony, landing in as small a bundle as I can press myself into.

On the other side of the glass, the two children stare out. Their mouths are open, but I can hear nothing throught the thick glass. I do not know whether this is good or bad.

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