His head thumped. It felt like his brain was about to explode. He pressed his fingers deeper to his temple but nothing was doing. His breath was both shallow and heavy. He sucked deep on the warm air but his stomach felt in a state of constant emptiness while his chest expanded profusely, too much and never enough on the same side of the coin.

  His fingertips started to tingle and his only response was to press harder until the red at his fingers and the white of his temple spoke of the stress on his mind that cast him into unconsciousness for a moment.

  He fell back onto the dirt; his tongue sliding down the back of his throat as his body thrashed about on the filthy soil kicking black residue into the still air. His convulsions increased as his eyes rolled up and to the left; his limbs and the back of his head pounding in and out of the dirt.

  The other men maintained their directive stare as they causally stepped over his body, willing; through mathematical logic, the return of simple white on black, dividing, subtracting and adding colours to return everything to one; back to white; adding blue to yellow, subtracting brown, dividing by green, equalling white; all things when they are everything, are one; and all things return to zero. This logic kept the men focused and their conscious minds at a state of readiness, at a state of one.

  The four remaining White Hearts rushed through the entrance of the station and held a position inside, calling the two men through. Marcos and The Behemoth entered slowly and as they did, a sound of light whimpering called them to attention.

  The White Hearts stood armed and primed where; sitting on a wooden bench near the edge of the platform, hunched over something small and wounded, the shape of a woman whimpered, louder now that the men had entered the station. The men engaged slowly, taking caution in every step, looking in every direction, analysing the threat and marginalising any negative outcome.

  The platform was long. From where they stood at the foot of the entrance, it stretched to the west for over a hundred meters. What caught Marcos was how clean it was. The floors were sparkling white; patterned and cool tiles that caught not a speck of dirt. Even the filth from their boots that they carried with would fall upon the tiles and be picked up by the wind; taken off out over the tracks and back out into the black field where it settled under the contrast of the bright colours of the station’s shell roof.

  The walls around them were littered with art and poetry; phrases in a scribe that none of them could read but their affectation had Marcos feeling lighter in his reason and thinking aside of the threat and instead, what would be at affect; of The Woman and how it pained to have her close and yet, how the thought of her wounded and alone almost brought him to tear.

  There was an object in the distance. Marcos couldn’t make out what it was exactly but its perplexing shape brought him closer to distraction. He fought hard to maintain his state of one; thinking hard of the orange hue of the Forever New Dawn, his rationale returning, his state of focus more refined.

  They edged closer to the whimpering woman with the White Hearts moving like human crabs over the smooth tiles; their fingers gripping their weapons, their teeth clenched and the dryness of their unflinching, unblinking eyes lending them to bother.

  They passed a grand piano that sat under a sign on the wall that said, “Your station, your art, your voice, your story to tell”.

  It was an invitation of sorts.

  Marcos ran his fingers lightly across the keys. The whites were so white and the blacks had not a finger print on them to muster their shade. It was so pretty that he didn’t think as he pressed down on a key and the sound jumped into the air, startling the men into a panicked readiness.

  The Behemoth looked at Marcos angrily, pulling his finger to his lips to hush any cerebral disobedience. The woman to their front was still whimpering and hunched over something that lay confined under a brown blanket. As the men approached they could see that her eyes were flooded, tears running down her cheek.

  Marcos and The Behemoth approached cautiously and slowly moved to the front of the woman, keeping their distance. The Behemoth held his weapon high ready to strike down on this unpredictable Famined beast should it attack or move in any manner. The woman’s arms were hidden under the blanket and her face too was looking at whatever was concealed inside.

  The Behemoth looked at one of the White Hearts carrying a long machete and nodded his head towards the whimpering woman. The White Heart reached his cruel instrument close to the woman’s leg catching the brown blanket on the blade’s tip and swung his arm back tearing the blanket from her body.

  “It’s killing an infant” screamed The Behemoth swinging his arm high and coming down viscously to strike the woman.

  Marcos ripped at his arm, pulling it up and then back, sending The Behemoth crashing over himself with the force of his swing. He jumped to his feet and again moved to strike but Marcos struck him in the chest and he tumbled over onto the ground.

  “What are you doing?” screamed The Behemoth, the pain from the blows carolling through his broken speech.

  “Look” said Marcos. “She’s not killing it. She’s feeding it. She’s feeding the infant” he said watching in awe as the child suckled at the woman’s breast while she wept benevolently in a moment of apparent love that shared between the woman and her child; her actual child.

  The men stood still, shocked, in wonder. The Behemoth struck The Famined woman’s head with his cruel instrument sending her lifeless body crashing to the ground. The child fell with her mother; secured in her arms, still attached to her breast.

  “Sequester the infant” ordered The Behemoth to a White Heart.

  The soldier took the baby from the frozen clutches of its dead mother and ran out of the station back into the black field covered by another White Heart tracing their path back along from whence they came.

  “What did you do?” screamed Marcos.

  “She was killing it, look” he said pointing to her exposed body.

  “There’s no milk. She wasn’t lactating. The infant would have died within a day. We saved its life” he said.

  Marcos looked close at the dead woman’s breasts and squeezed with his right hand, and he was right, her nipples were cut and bruised from the constant suckling, but they were dry.

  “We need to go now. It’s a trap” screamed The Behemoth pointing to the west where now shadows danced upon the play of white as in the distance, a pack of wild humans scurried along the black dirt towards the pristine cool tiles where the men stood inanimate; almost unbelieving.

  Gathering their focus, the men turned.

  “Run!” screamed Marcos.

  A White Heart fired off scores of projectiles in a matter of seconds; his hands moving like a blur as he emptied his pockets of sharp metallic balls and fragmented shards of glass bound in barb wire; aiming his weapon, pulling hard on the elastic and releasing at every target, missing none. The projectiles flew through the air and struck the coming shadows sending them scattering back into the distance.

  The men ran, passing the White Heart who lay emotionally crippled with his head buried in the dirt. As they ran back along the track with the infant baby crying for its dead mother, their hearts flushed adrenaline to their legs willing them step after step, mound after mound, past the threat of shadows, onto the cobblestone bridge, past the line of charred bodies, back onto the loose gravel, past the array of wreckage, down to the centre of town until finally they collapsed in exhaustion near the great wall of The Nest, just beyond the centre square. As the baby cried, the men heaved over themselves sucking in air as hundreds of White Hearts rushed from the surrounding streets to encircle them; readied and alert.

  “Take the infant to The Scientist” said The Behemoth.

  “What just happened?” asked Marcos, his question filled by silence.

  The men stayed not long catching their breaths before they returned their focus and entered the complex, surrounded by hundreds of other White Hearts and about them, the pacified Famined, circling around the men, shuffled about and arguing amongst one another for their share of information. The sense of harrowing incident stung Marcos’ senses.

  0011000100110000

  “Get rid of this feckin mongrel” was what The Old Drunk Bastard had said as he rested his plastic shoe into Ruff’s bum.

  The dog went flying through the air and landed in a skid at the far end of the room; his tail tight between his legs and tucked firm to his belly. He wasn’t a big dog and a kick like that from a man even as inebriated and insensible as The Old Drunk Bastard was quite a reckoning.

  For a second there, as he flew up and over the rows of stupefied humans lying in a den of their own conscious absence; The Nest workers, dissipating their focus voluntarily, it occurred to him; as it would occur to any dog whose arse had just been graced with a tenderly boot, that he had just done wrong.

  He landed with a thud of guilt slapping on his adorable face; his bum pinned to the ground, his ears pulled back, his brow lifted, his eyes warm and not at all menacing and his whimper; pathetic but forgiving.

  The Old Drunk Bastard mumbled something to some other men as he stumbled off to the far end of the room. Ruff felt that he meant no foul and returned his body to its strut as the man called Seamus picked him up gently and carried him out under one arm, letting him free just outside the entrance.

  “It’s ok Ruff. He means no foul. He has a heart ‘o gold just at de moment he’s showin off his brass balls to da men in dere so come back later. I’ll fix ya some supper” said Seamus to Ruff as he lowered him to the ground, scratching roughly behind his ears.

  Ruff barked in appreciation; a smile lit his doggy face, his eyes widened, his ears sat tall, his tail flung about in joyous swing and his feet took to the cold pavement while in his wake, the young Irishman stood leaning against the doorframe watching the animal pitter-patter up the street completely unaffected by the blistering cold, the civil abandon or the recent foot to his bum. Seamus smiled and returned back into the den and attended to some miscreant clients.

  Ruff the dog made his way through the town as if the master key to its doors itself was hidden somewhere in his matted fur; confident, assured and belonging.

  Being a dog, Ruff thought little much of anything. He partook in little to no soul-gazing or self-discovery; those internal journeys where one mapped out and tore off layers of their identity like last year’s winter fashion preparing to assume a new better self by acquiring more timeless garments and expressions that would only be relevant for the following six months.

  Ruff did no thinking at all.

  After-all he was fact, a dog.

  That’s not to say that Ruff didn’t live a life of fancy, one of adventure and one of constant discovery. You see to Ruff, everything seen was everything found so everything he came upon was in fact a brilliant discovery and every walk around a block, an adventure.

  His survival after the blackout was always going to be without question. Though he had been; in times past, of servitude, obedience and companionship, he was; being a dog, quite adaptable. His instincts had never left him, as of course, they never do. This new city though brought him greater promise and in that it also brought him fame.

  To know Ruff is to know his mother and father or should one say, fathers; for Ruff’s mother was at a time, popular so to speak. When his mother fell pregnant, the strays in the street; which once fought for her attention, then made no time for her. She would move about the group looking for some paternal reaction from anyone in the pack but instead she was frightened off with ireful snarls; their noses lifting, saliva, pouring from their glaring sharp front teeth and the hairs on the beasts’ necks standing on end. Their instinct wanted nothing of her dependant madness.

  Back at home, his mother’s big friends became stranger in their affection as her belly started to grow. Where once they would greet her with jubilation and mania, now they merely sat at the big table and mentioned her name in a low displeasing manner. His mother didn’t warm to this new banter from her friends. Her instincts gave her a sense of concern.

  In the final months of her pregnancy, Ruff’s mother was taken out by the big friend while his lady friend stood in the corner crying desperately. With a stern hand gripping the scruff of her neck she turned to the see the crying lady friend and whimpered lightly as if to say, “I understand.”

  “It’ll be ok, we’ll get another one” were the last words Ruff’s mother heard as the big friend forced the choker onto her neck and dragged her through the front door; her hind legs split, her nails digging into the grout between the tiles, her back arched and the force of her being positioned to her rump, stifling the misdirected leverage of the big friend who, unsure of his own centre’s balance, fell over himself in a fit of rage.

  The bitch simply held her weight in her bum and lent her head forwards until the big friend with coarseness in his tongue reached from under her belly and without a hint of sensitivity, scooped her up in one hand, securing her neck with the other and threw her into the back seat of the car.

  When she finally bit her way through the plastic bag, the big friend was gone. Still, she lifted her heavy body and crawled out from the black bag enticed by the thrill of game for even at the end of her pregnancy she was never shy of play.

  The sky was now dark and strange sounds completely unknown to her filled the night. The soil beneath her paws was damp and sludgy. She patted about moving away from the upturned bin where she had been placed and found some other dogs in the distance chasing one another and feasting on scraps from the garbage about them.

  When she approached, the pack encircled her; their necks arched to the ground, their sensitive noses sniffing the cold air, making sense of her scent. The alpha dog moved in and sniffed her entire body as she pulled her tail between her legs, her ears pinned, her legs shaking and her heavy belly swishing against the floor.

  The alpha barked wildly and she lifted and ran. As she did a large metal thing flew to where she had been laying and smashed into pieces on the ground and just behind the object broke the sound of two humans joking and laughing amongst themselves as they ran off into the distance.

  The pack formed a circle around Ruff’s mother once again, each snarling mouth and glaring eye facing out into the formidable darkness; watching, alert, focused, At Being.

  The alpha nudged at Ruff’s mother’s belly encouraging her to unfold from her retreated position and lay on her side. The dog, whose coat was sleek and as black as the night itself lowered himself to the expecting mother and proceeded to lick her head, her back and behind her ears. A state of calm became her and in an instant, she submitted to the course of nature.

  Her labour was quick and without arduous complication. She; like her son, was a dog, so her absence of critical conscious distraction meant that in fact, her entire existence was a submittal to nature. The lack of conscious interplay and internal dialogue meant she didn’t’ succumb to any internal amplifications and reverberations of what she experienced.

  She experienced pain; she didn’t relive it or dilate it. She experienced yearning; she didn’t objectify and dissect it. She experienced anticipation and joy, she didn’t postpone it. She was a dog. She experienced. That’s it.

  And in her labour she did not scream wildly, beg for someone or something to take the pain away or wish that it would just all be over right then and there. She merely lay on her side, breathed heavier than usual and experienced a moment, at one with nature, while her children were being born and while nature was in fact; being,

  As each child was born, the black alpha dog; a shadow by day invisible at night, gently took each one close to their mother’s face. The mother was At Being, the complete presence of herself being now inside her own womb and parting her legs.

  Every other organ and living vice played second fiddle in this moment like a fingernail to a marathon runner as the weight of his focus drives his legs through the finish. She was no longer a walking, crawling, flea ridden canine fighting for scraps of meat and chasing bicycle wheels, she was in fact her own womb, her ovaries, her perennial, her fluids and her vagina. She was at every moment, holding each child as they made their way through and out of her body, unto life.

  After the final child was born, she moved her weary head to look to the alpha that now stood above a small pack of tiny children. The alpha; Shadow, had licked each child thoroughly cleaning them and nudging them into wake to prepare for nurturing upon their mother’s breast as nature intended. He stood though, morose, as one child whimpered and blindly found his mother’s teat suckling and then falling into comfort. She had been the birth of six children that night, she had lived six times more than she had lived before, but now only one child suckled at her breast.

  She looked to where Shadow, the alpha dog stood and before him, at the tip of his long snout, five children lay, still and without being. Shadow’s eyes were heavy and sadness crept about him. The two fell upon one another’s stare for a moment before the mother turned to her nursing child and was At Love, licking his back; lifting him high into the air which each long stroke of her tongue and watching his rear fall back down upon her warm belly; her nipple never leaving the young child’s clasp.

  The intention of nature was nature’s to attend.

  Ruff, his mother and Shadow, his new paternal protector, slept through the night; mother and father watching over child as a ferocious pack of canines watched over the resting family.

  Ruff patted away at the footpath in the same manner his mother had done on the wet muddy ground years before. As each leg kicked out to the side in every stride, his tongue stuck out wide, his mouth pulled back to a massive grin and his eyes widened to take in every moment of this new adventure. His ears flicked back and forth as he moved about picking up on bits of this and that, the banter of stranger friends about the streets and the communication of other dogs echoing through the maze of buildings. Being a dog was about momentum and instinct and the instinct of being a dog was; to be happy.