The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

space on either side of him to move out of the way he had to jump clear over it, landing wildly before being quickly enveloped again. He saw the form of the woman running next to him stumble and he reached out and grabbed her hand, yanking her forward and keeping her on her feet. They ran holding hands and when Kierk glanced over it was a middle-aged blonde woman who looked like a suburban housewife, her hair up in a bun, her mouth a thin line, her eyes terrified. Her hand gripped his like a vice and they balanced each other amid the surging motion until everyone burst like a flood out of that thin street and the dull beast that had known only a single feeling in its brief life dissipated.

As Kierk and Mike would learn the next day, at that very instant their names were being called at the conference, and heads were turning in the well-lit and calm main room, a slow stir among a well-dressed crowd. The two of them had won the best student poster prize, but with no one to accept, the conference organizers had finally, and awkwardly, given it to the runner-up.

Hours after the mad rush of the mob, Kierk was sitting on a small brick wall off of a sidewalk in a little shady spot underneath a tree. Beyond him, small sounds still exploded into motions of people running from the aftermath or the racing forms of ambulances, shattering the glass garden of silence that had grown up toward the sky with the exhaustion of everyone, the exhaustion of the protesters, police, bystanders, the exhaustion of police dogs that lay panting in the shade. Mike was away getting them hot dogs and water from a nearby food stand and Kierk was depleted and waiting, his stomach rumbling among the people milling around, recovering in lower murmurs. A few smaller bands of riot police marched by but without a critical mass of people it was as if a truce had been called, clemency granted, and now the scattered groups were merely citizens again. A play had ended and the actors, still in their makeup, were mingling with the audience. Kierk, however, was still eyeing the loose formations warily. Across from him, on the other side of the small street, one of the riot police had stopped while the others went on ahead. The officer proceeded to draw a plastic water bottle from his belt and take a few long sips, then poured the remainder over his head and face. Finished, he looked at Kierk, noticing that Kierk, exhausted, was rubbing his elbow absentmindedly and had blood running down the side of his head because he had been whacked by a stray baton, that his eyes were red and bloodshot from the gas, the left eye so much so it was puffy, that he looked like he reeked of tear gas and pepper spray and his tie was loose and low and twisted around, that in the evening doldrums his clothes hung loose on him, that he had dark pit-stains under the arms of his dress shirt, and there was blood—not his own—splattered on his slacks. The cop, a stocky man of about forty with his hair so wet now with sweat and water it looked like he had been swimming, noticed all this and only solemnly nodded to Kierk. And Kierk, seated on his little brick wall overlooking the passing of pedestrians, thought about what that man’s day must have been like, the soreness of his quads, what it felt like to have wet hair and a right shoulder on fire from swinging a baton, his visual field and his feelings toward the mess of a protester sitting on a low brick wall across the street, sharing this moment with him. Kierk thought of the suburban housewife, running beside him, the fear in her eyes. Considering these things, he was a still point in everything, it was all slowed, the water seemed to drip off the stocky cop’s head in slow motion and a car moved past like a slow thrumming beast. It was only a few minutes until Mike would return with hot dogs and the news that he had decided to become a war correspondent instead of a scientist, but at that moment Kierk, still dazed, brought his hand up to his ear and felt the sticky aching spot that hummed when he touched it. Every sound was somehow both muted and loud as if the streets had become an amphitheater, unique, clear, real, and behind it all there was the double-thump sound of valves opening and liquid pumping through and Kierk could not tell if it was his heartbeat or a portent of the world spirit, but he could feel that the brick under him was a solid surface, his mind was a tuning fork still resonating, the air was a medium for prophecy, the glare of colors were bombing past him like schools of fish exploding in the setting sun—at the exact origin of this he felt he was a djinn at the epicenter of history and knew that he would be the one to solve the mystery of consciousness.

Later, as the sunlight is sliding off toward the end of hours, a completion of day, Carmen has just waved goodbye to Kierk, laughing a bit, straightening out her dress, moving to stand at the street corner. The light changes. As she passes a car honks, causing her to jump. Inside, a watching head behind glazed windows. Carmen pulls down the dress more, aware of herself now, the click of her heels on the pavement. On the sidewalk groups instinctually move out of the way, each splitting as they let her carve a path through them, all turning, men and women alike, with looks of approval or disapproval or open appraisal as eyes saccade over her clothes and hair. Her body is read like it’s language. Her mind