SPIRIAN ALTRA
Spirian Altra transformed my view of the world in a matter of seconds. It’s amazing how far-reaching some incidents in life can be. The impact of Spirian Altra’s sudden emergence was nothing short of earth-shattering.
A potentially dangerous incident had occurred on the fourth floor of Infinity Gateway the night before last. Renovation work had been ongoing for several weeks throughout all the corridors in the building as the electrical system was upgraded. A wiring fault in one of the new fuse boxes sparked a local fire that took several hours to contain. I saw flames coming from one end of the fourth-floor corridor while I was on my regular nightly inspections. As luck would have it, I managed to alert the fire brigade in time to avert a disaster.
Although I didn’t pay too much attention to the fire itself once it was under control, the event brought back to mind a similar incident that I’d been involved in that had also occurred on the fourth floor several months earlier. The passage of time had done nothing to dispel the memory of the incident in my imagination.
I’d initially seen, or at least imagined I’d seen (I’m no longer sure anymore) an unidentified flying object hurtling across the sky above Infinity. It had looked like a white fireball glowing in the blackness of the night sky. I had been so shocked at this unexpected turn of events that I’d stayed rooted to the spot mesmerised by what I could see in front of me. It had only been visible a few seconds before it disappeared from sight into the far distance.
I remain to this day deeply affected by what I saw in the sky all those months ago. I’d never witnessed anything like it before. Even more significant than the UFO, though, had been the flaming crimson portal that I’d witnessed at the end of the fourth-floor corridor later that same evening. The low-pitched throbbing that I heard coming from inside the portal had sounded just like the UFO. I convinced myself at the time that I had been in the presence of an alien force.
The memory of this imagined alien being has over time insinuated itself into my mind and still colours all my thoughts today. It’s like a subterranean river coursing through my inner being from which I cannot escape. That’s why the recent fire incident brought it all vividly back to me.
You know what it’s like when your imagination goes into overdrive. I dreamed up all sorts of fantasies. Naturally, I was at the centre of all of them. The portal became the gateway to extraordinary adventures in outer space, occasionally giving me access to space and time travel. In my mind’s eye, I journeyed back to the period before the Anticlocks had taken over when the Safronikans had been free…
Somehow though, I could never bring myself to believe in any of these fantasies. They remained the extraordinary delusions of my own inventive creativity.
•••
It was just past midnight. I was standing in exactly the same spot on the fourth-floor corridor where the incident had occurred several months earlier. For a few seconds I heard the same low throbbing sound that I had heard before. Then, the ground started moving beneath my feet, a glowing crimson portal appeared from nowhere and in a terrifying instant I was sucked inside a swirling vortex, spiralling and twisting amidst a deafening slipstream, eventually being dumped breathless in a dark room.
I took several minutes to regain my composure. I had no idea what was happening to me. When my eyes eventually adjusted to the obscurity of the room, I could see a huge sign painted on a glowing red wall displaying two large black capital letters: S A
What was the significance of SA?
I had no idea whether I was suffering a psychotic breakdown or if I had been captured by an alien being from another planet. The only thing I was sure about was that I was not dreaming. I was convinced that I was fully conscious.
As I slowly recovered my senses, a hologram appeared in front of me, a shifting disembodied ghost-like presence whose penetrating gaze sent a shiver down my spine. I stood transfixed staring into the featureless face of this spectral terror and watched as it began speaking:
`Do not forget me Solitanu. I am the voice and the face of the future. My name is Spirian Altra. The Anticlocks think that they are in
charge, but their grip on power is slowly diminishing. My time has not yet come. Mark my words. Spirian Altra will appear on the scene in the not too distant future and the Anticlocks will be crushed. If you survive the transformation that is about to occur, you will remember this night for the rest of your life.’
As soon as the spectre had finished speaking, the room was plunged into darkness. I felt myself being dragged backwards, buffeted and jolted down a long, winding tunnel. My body was blasted for several minutes by a fierce lacerating wind until I was dumped unceremoniously on the floor of my room in Infinity.
My physical discomfort was of little concern to me. What filled me with foreboding were the chilling words of the disembodied spectral voice which were still ringing in my ears: `Spirian Altra will appear on the scene in the not too distant future and the Anticlocks will be crushed.’
Was this possible? Could a supernatural presence overturn the Anticlockwise Empire when all else had failed? It seemed unlikely, but there was a spellbinding menace in the words of Spirian Altra that I could not dislodge from my mind.
There was also no certainty about my own situation. Would I even survive whatever catastrophe was about to occur?
Who was Spirian Altra? Had I just witnessed the future foretold?
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