27°28 South, 153°2 East: Brisbane.

 

Escape like atoms.

 

A scream, shrill note that smashes the glass; the fire begins combusting as it devours other chemicals. The sirens sound so we both have to shout. 

‘LET’S GO!’

‘NO, HANG ON.’

‘FUCK THE FILES! MOVE.’ I’m tense; I’m terrified. I can’t believe we’ve done it. We’ve roughly 15 minutes before anyone arrives. You grab my hand and we make a run for it. Stop.

‘What is it?’

‘I know a quicker way.’

​

Turn back to the cleaner’s room where there’s a window we can squeeze through. A back door escape will save us time. Outside, the laboratory grows hotter; it’s sweating chemicals. Inside, all around us suddenly glows red. Emergency power. As in a photographers’ dark room the new light reveals you. The burgundy falling on your face brings out the gold of your lashes, freckles more prominent, your nose narrower and the bump at the end slightly larger; as oxygen levels diminish, where flames will start to encircle us we fall into the moment of discovery. The space around us begins to compress, the autumn leaves of our clothes fall, skin strips away, sinew by sinew muscle tears off, organs liquefy, and our bones erode to the point where we are nothing more than pleasure and dust. But further, as gravity increases and the volume of space gets smaller and smaller, we turn to molecule to atom to quark to electron reaching a point where nothing can escape – still those around would see two bodies embraced – and in the force that hurtles us into a singularity all changes, for here E=mc² crumbles as space and time are torn from each other since time is no longer orthogonal to space as no corners or angles exist, only the absolute darkness that curves around us; GUT, the Swarzchild radius, string theory, entropy are no more as physics itself fails as light cannot withstand the pressure of the collapsing; and here where an altogether different physics is needed we hurtle to point of singularity as there is an opening, for here where all is obliterated there is only a beginning.

 

*

 

I look back for a brief moment. Turning to the destruction and wonder where has this satisfaction come from? Perhaps it is knowing that you are now safe, Salt – I did this for you. The tides of flame consume the complex turning our research to nothing more than memory and ash. I might have reached a flash of infamy but justice lies where guilt does not and at this precise point in time I am remorseless, possibly when the morning light catches the crystal of memory at a different angle revealing what I cannot see in this instant, I’ll regret, if I do, tomorrow.