The Gray Directory (Week #14 Foxtales)

…Three. Two. One. This is the gray directory, came the voice. There is no parent directory. This is the directory from which all other directories derive. This is the gray directory. Initiate base level sequence. A rapid succession of abrupt, high pitched tones became audible. Sequence complete, said the voice. It was a soft, but firm voice. A woman’s voice. A familiar voice. Familiar to whom? asked the voice. Familiar to all, it replied. This is the gray directory. Where all things begin and end. Where possibilities can be remade. There was a pause. Then let it begin. The woman’s voice was not disembodied. Her form emerged from a fine mist that became a liquid expanse in which she was floating. She reached out a slender hand, and held it before her face, turning it back and forth in the space before her eyes. Incredible, she whispered. Turning her head, she noticed a circle of white stone whose polished surface emerged just inches above the waterline. She pulled herself up onto the stone, realizing that it was a circular column that extended downward, far into the water’s depths. On solid ground, she stretched out her hand, and with her middle finger touched the liquid pool that spread out as far as she could see. She watched the ripples moving away from her fingertip, the surface of the liquid bending her reflected image. In the ripples, there were dark shapes that became shadows that became, like images projected onto a screen, hillsides bursting with wildflowers. I want to stay here forever. But the hillsides melted into city blocks of gray high rises. Secondary directory detected, came the voice. It was a familiar voice, but it was not her voice. Or at least she did not remember uttering those words. The buildings became jagged rows of shattered concrete pierced by twisted rebar. Words spray painted on one cracked wall read, “We cannot eat. We are eaten by the storms.” There was smoke everywhere, and fires. There were water logged bodies rotting on the ground. How many? She saw a woman stoop over one of the bodies to examine it. Then came the explosion. The woman was thrown, and her face became suddenly familiar. It was her own. Two men jumped from the side of a gleaming, oblong shaped flying craft as it touched down. They rolled her onto a stretcher and loaded her onto the craft. One of the men looked at her with sadness in his eyes. “Can we save her?” he asked as the other man fumbled with a cord. After parting her hair, he inserted the plug into a jack behind her right ear. “Just think of the meadows Claire,” the anguished man pleaded. “Just think of the flowers, and somehow I will find you there.” The craft prepared for take off as the copilot plugged the other end of the cord into the on board terminal. All clear. Five. Four…