It came from the deep darkness, cold and bitter in the faded power of the gloom. It was huge, its momentum was awesome, its raddled and damaged face hideous to behold. The New Moon came up from the celestial South; it passed by unannounced; nobody, apparently, had seen it coming; or those who had observed it on its terrifying path, had chosen for whatever reason, not to speak of it. It came out of the void, swung into an elliptic orbit around the Earth and the old moon; and sheer madness came in its wake. It’s easy to talk about orbits, inclination to the ecliptic plane, longitudinal lines and celestial poles and all of this astrophysical jargon. And the orbit of the New Moon, for the few months that I have been observing it, seems to be stable. It was snatched from the sky, flung from its chosen path, dragged into orbit by the Earth herself. Celestial mechanics being what they are, the mere presence of the New Moon at that place and at that time made it inevitable that it be wrenched from its path and that it fall into orbit around the Earth. The orbit is stable but eccentric; it is closest to the Earth during its full moon phase, at about three hundred and forty thousand miles away. It is furthest away during its sunward phase; the dark of the moon, where it seems to be nearly a million miles away; it’s a bit hard to measure its position precisely with the sun sharing the sky. The New Moon is fully a third of the mass of the Earth; it’s as if Mars has fallen from the void to orbit around us; and the effects are huge and damaging. Day followed night; the sun hid secrets during the day, and the dark hid secrets during the night. Often enough the clouds hid secrets too; it was an occult time, when the Word was not spoken, the Schism split night and day, and the Tides learnt to change. During that peaceful – almost peaceful time when war was forgotten, the blue bumblebees, the carbon reset and the gold beast were about their labour; I found that time to be very peaceful because nobody came to disturb me in my hidden forest keep – my retreat away from the troubles of the world, though yae they existed beyond my gate. I certainly had no inkling of the gargantuan behemoth on its way; other than these troubled dreams that are driving me to pen to paper and write this record, precogniscent though it be. I may be a prophet in my mild way; but I am not so immodest as to write in future tense, as some would have me do. I feel the darkness, jagged and cold; but I give it no more heed beyond penning this warning; writing these words for you to read; as is my duty. I know not from where the rugged wanderer came; I am no astronomer. It came, apparently, from a direction fifteen degrees below the plane of the ecliptic, on a line from a tangent to the point where it swung into orbit around the Earth. It came at a snail’s pace; compared to the real movement of the sun; had it been going any faster, it would have been just deflected by the Earth, swinging in towards the sun, or missing the appointment altogether. Instead, it crept up with slothful lassitude until it was right here in our marches, approaching first over the Australian night sky before swinging very sharply around, wrenched out of its groove by the combined weight of moon, sun and Earth. It swung past with enormous kinetic energy, heaving the Earth on her neck as it did so, to head out towards the sun from over the Earth’s shoulder, as it were. The capture, during those days when the wanderer was being wrenched from its path until it settled down into its new orbit, caused seismic events that have later been estimated at about twelve on the Richter scale; which only goes up to ten; events so far off the map as to be indescribable. The Earth was forcefully jarred from its track, and the seas slopped messily out of their beds; or so it must have appeared to any observers looking from space. On the surface, where this wrenching and slopping were happening and a bit more real for their proximity, events were not described in those mild and colloquial terms. Those amongst us who troubled themselves with a description of the events used much more graphic terms; their thresholds of imagination were so much larger, the scope of their lucid lucubrations apparently without limit. Their thesaurus was sucked dry in that beachy prose; and they spared no mixed metaphor or split infinitive in their appalling literary endeavours. Towns and cities were swept away; towns a thousand miles from the nearest ocean were soused with violent brine. Tectonic activity changed its timeline from aeons to seconds. Faults were ripped open to reveal the Earth’s blood within; and when fire and water met, storms rose to the tropopause and beyond. Waves were miles high and crashed with the noise of thunder, earthquakes shattered most of the buildings across the face of the world. Mines and towers alike collapsed, Earth and water combining in the Hammer of Thor. Trees, mysteriously, suffered less, and the turned soil of that first hectic upwelling seemed, with the water that flooded by and the huge clouds and storms, to be the flame that the new Carboniferous Era needed. Trees and plants were destroyed in their millions, but unlike the buildings, the plants swiftly grew back; and took over the rubble of buildings in their own green wave. The waves and the wild, howling wind; the atmosphere moved as much as, if not more than the sea; transferred plants from one place to the next; a diversifying and intensifying of the forested face; the waves and the trauma seemed to bring endless damage; I later saw that they had brought endless change. We had no idea of the vehicle of this violence; we did not see the New Moon take up its station above the face of the world. There was already far too much cloud from the still – raging hydrogen flames, most if which howled and shrieked in the face of high winds, high seas and towering rain and storms. Earthquakes and typhoons had no impact on those flames; they burnt hotter yet for the colossal input of oxygen. Many other gases in the atmosphere were also altered by the heart of those flames, fires in which porcelain would yield and sag down in a lurid red slurry. Some pieces of rock – continents – didn’t move much; and were big enough to contain and limit the sloshing of those seas. These places, obviously, were the best places to be in that disastrous time. It is also enough to note that height above the old sea level was one of the factors to be considered. Higher was better; within limits. It turned out that high mountains were not a good place to be, as they were on active fault lines. Faults – worldwide – were places to be avoided, although a chap had no real idea of where the new fault lines would appear; and how dramatic their appearance might be. Many of the continents were torn to pieces by the huge quakes; and a world of muddy, shallow seas and tiny islands began to emerge from the morass; the maelström of confusion and conflicting lines of force. A quarter of the total weight of the sub-system had been introduced by the arrival of the new planet; it was significantly larger than the moon but not quite the size of Mars. Physical data, including density, have as yet not been determined; however, its effects, on the sub-system in particular, were enormous, colossal, beyond the mind to see. It appeared that the centre of gravity for the sub-system was no longer within the mass of the Earth, and the rotation of the main planet was clumsy and acentric as a result. The satellite lock of the smaller moon had been decisively broken; it was slightly further out than before and its speed of rotation had increased, although the time of orbital transition had also increased, to slightly over thirty days. The mega tides and seismic waves had settled down, the air mass speed had been reduced; the fantastic figures that had gone before had settled down to reasonable and stable numbers, although these figures were still huge and extreme. The outer moon; the New Moon, having a much larger mass, had a far greater influence overall on the tides, although the influence varied according to where the New Moon was in its new orbit. Sometimes the tides were only a few hundred feet between high and low tides, but when the moons were closer together, the tides were five hundred yards between high and low tides. This made lounging on the beach a difficult and dangerous; and profitless; exercise. Five hundred yards vertical rise and fall over a twenty-six hour day; the time of rotation of the Earth had also changed; translated into a tide line – or beach – of about two miles, on a one in five slope. This is one hell of a beach; but it also became a huge ecological zone; where all kinds of interesting new life were clearly in the process of evolving. As all the water was very much more saline than before; for a short time; and filled with plastic and other non-perishable trash, the beach was a dank, cold, smelly sort of place. Due to the thick clouds, black, dense and cold, caused by the hydrogen fires, very little light from the sun came through, and the polar ice was building up at a frightening rate. This meant that there was less water overall in the seas, with a proportional built-up of the minerals absorbed by the water. Ice didn’t trap salt and other minerals, so these were left behind as the water froze. The eccentric rotation of the planet had other effects; the density of the atmosphere varied in a nearly tidal manner; and this was a huge motor for storms, with wind speeds above a hundred miles an hour as a daily thing; gentle breezes were a figment of a fond and distant past. Due to the atmospheric tidal effect, there were places where the lower atmosphere varied from four to fifteen miles in thickness; and air pressure was in proportion. This added to the speed; and force; of the winds. After all, it was a bit like two magnets passing close by each other. Gravity phenomenon are much the same; the two magnets drag at each other and impart energy to each other, constantly changing their relative motion. With two planets passing so close together; as was the case; materials on the surface; and above the surface of each planet tried to leap across the gulf separating them, vastly disrupting the surfaces of the two magnets. Three. The old moon was also a victim to the passing of the giant, swinging up and into the swirling wake of the wanderer. This jerk was the pulse of power that caused the old moon to step into a slightly higher orbit and start to rotate faster. For the first time in history, the old moon showed all her myriad faces to the world, spinning in a relatively slow ninety hour day and displaying all sides of the ancient orb to our view. And the space junk, satellites and such, all disappeared. Only we were a bit distracted at the time. The old moon had lost her shyness only when there was nothing to see, as the world was covered with thick, black cloud, and most of us were trying to swim in a vast and turbid sea. A black sea raging beneath black clouds miles thick. Sunlight could not get through, so it wasn’t really a surprise that the old moon also failed to penetrate that shield. The darkness presented other challenges as well; the vortex of air rushing about the Earth sometimes warm, mostly so cold that things froze in its blast. We soon learnt to see the signs; and to get inside and make sure that the fire was very hot in these times. That silver beneath the clouds, that banshee wail from the heights; all told us it was time to go home and stop playing. Things that froze, especially the large crystal wave that so nearly came over the small hill to the north, did not thaw, not for a very long time. The frigid nature of these times, and the darkness, were appalling, challenging, filled with desperate fear. There was very little that could be done; such as my wind turbine that turned cold wind energy into electricity; and light; and warmth. Those who survived were the ones who stayed at home and kept out of the way; and utilised their resources to the best advantage. There was no soul, no compassion, no mercy and no hope. It was a black force of nature; and our survival; or otherwise, meant nothing to those massive forces at work. It came from the deep void, merely a speck of trash brought into the system as the sun kept its appointment on its long trip down the spiral arm of the galaxy. One day the sun would fall into the central black hole; the fall had already begun; and this faint red blush we called life and held so dear, would be gone. The details of the sun’s journey to inevitable demise were foreordained in the big picture; the vague details that occurred along the way were just that, colour and shades on the tapestry of life. The fact that we were working so hard toward our own extinction; in the face of inevitable doom of the system, was just another failure we could chalk up on our passage with the sun through the dust of other stars. One speck amongst plenty; one that kept its appointment with our world with the brutal mechanics of the stars – we could no more hope to deflect that huge monster than we could hope to survive the changes that came with it. But even as our finalé was played across the harmonium of the galaxy, other changes were also sounded, and our doom, a single dark chord, was lost as the orchestra played on. The first day of sunlight and mild breezes I remember well. The wind was slow and sluggish; it could not have been faster than eighty knots. The clouds had been thinning for some time, enough for me to determine that it was in fact daytime. As the clouds split and shards of sunlight burst onto the hillside, I noticed the crystal wave huge and loathsome, yet glittering and beautiful too, brilliant in the chequered light over the crest of the hill. It had, I supposed, swallowed some of the shacks on the far side of the hill’s crest – worse fortune for them. I had a chance, standing precariously on the roof of the old house with my field glasses, to assess the damage around that tiny patch of forest that I had spent so long nurturing. The view was certainly different from the last time I had looked. Finding the roof was the first challenge, although the slab at the back of the house made the joust much easier. The overgrowth; brambles in particular, made matters decidedly more difficult. Raspberries and blackberries are difficult to negotiate at the best of times; but there, sheltered by the trees and given free reign during the time that I had spent shut in the house; they were wild and rampant; and laden with a gracious plenty of fruit; and hungry birds. The other detail of my quest to get the ladder to the back of the house, was the huge damage to the trees that had sheltered the property against the winds and storms. Branches were down in many places; but the damage, an assessment from the slab, was not as extreme as I had expected. The brambles were not the only ones to sprout prolifically in the cold, wet conditions, and the plants were audibly drawing a breath of relief as the sun touched their leaves. I could feel them drawing in carbon dioxide; photosynthesizing; growing as I stood there; and I felt their relief as my own. The view from the roof to the hallways of the valley and the low hills beyond was not so famous. Bleak was probably the term that I was looking for. Bleak and blasted; for no house in the valley, no building, tower, mosque or shop still stood. From my preferred viewpoint, however, things were not so bleak. Yes, there was a lot of mud and rock to be seen, bricks from houses and the raw rock of the hillsides where the flesh had been stripped to expose the bone underneath. But wherever there was soil, there too was that fragile mist of green. Wherever I looked across the hills and valley, the land lived. I might be nearly alone in this bleak and terrible place, where the low, milky clouds tore across that deep blue winter sky; the land was bleak, cold, desolate to the greatest limit of my imagination. But the plants were back. They were growing, and I could see my thousand league forest in my time. That was enough for me. Standing precariously and unsteadily on the old tiled roof, my powerful field glasses contesting green mists and distance, I saw movement to the north west, along the shattered remnant of the main road close to the rubble of what had once been a temple. Movement; and the glint of gold that even that accurst metal could not match. They walked slowly, looking at the wreckage; and I peered from behind the shelter of the trees at the front of the house. Suddenly I was wary; for here was something that I had not expected. I panned around, turning on the spot to cut down on visible movement; there were other groups, one to the west of south west, on the redundant bridge over the long forsaken railway line, devoid of use even before the disasters. To the south east there was a hint of gold, too far away for definition, on the road by the broken squatter camp. To the north east, beyond the wreckage of the small commercial centre that still provided both materials and challenges, there was another golden group of three. But for the intervening destruction, they would not have been visible. This group was also the closest of the three, and with perfect line sight; and these I could look at a bit more clearly. They were relaxing as they looked around, man and two women, their long blond hair free and their track suits pale blue; uniform for all three. I panned again, from my sheltered position close to the bank of solar panels on my roof. Pale blue; tall blonds; it was as if they were all from the same group; and in an uniform I had not seen before. Then I flashed back to the closest trio, leaning casually against the palisade fencing that separated the road; and the street marketers from the past, from the wreckage of the ‘real’ shops behind. I swore then under my breath, focused on the trio, leaning against the fence with their elbows behind them on the top horizontal bar of the steel palisade, towering above the fence. I swore, because that palisade, just where they were standing, was nearly seven feet high.