Another of these (previous parts here, here and here). Still not great, none of this parts will be, but it’s nice to have them shared.

I hope you enjoy.

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Harvey and Cave headed on to the pub, their thoughts weighing heavily upon them. It was not long before they arrived and it was not long before the silence held onto them They sat there, staring off into nothingness, feeling as though there was nothing else that they could discuss about what they had witnessed. It went nowhere and it provided nothing and the silence was something that they needed to break, even if to just move away from the topic at hand, but the silence was deafening and neither felt they could speak out above it, for when they thought they could it would roar and intimidate them back into their position of fealty.

Spectacle ruled in this particular moment in time and if they could not escape it, then they should at least try to confront it, but that too was something that neither felt that they could get away with doing. Therefore, more silence held until Cave spoke up.

“I’ll get the first round.”

Cave walked on over to the bar and Harvey was left there to their thoughts. They felt that beforehand the thoughts were, at the very least, shared, but this was something else entirely. This was them and their thoughts; their thoughts were seated somewhere next to them, poking and pressing at them, asking a thousand questions but not waiting for any answers. What did they see? Did it mean anything? Could Cave have not been full of shit this whole time? It just kept playing back and piling on more questions and it just kept going on and on, and all Harvey wanted to do was just sit there and enjoy a drink before getting on with something else, and they wanted their interface back so they could go back to making their shitty music again. They wanted something to do whilst on this paid leave and they had nothing at hand, and so it was and so it would be for that time in the pub.

It was pretty in a way, but as Harvey tried to remember it Mercury retrograde kept on shifting in their mind. They knew what they saw, but their mind kept on playing around with it, changing it so that whilst the same series of events occurred, the image differed every time Harvey tried to remember it and it was something that Harvey could not get away from. That they could remember what happened clearly but the memory kept on changing threw them off. It was weird and uncomfortable and it was something they’d not experienced before, and they wondered what it all meant and-

“You gonna have your drink?”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“So… that was a pretty weird thing, hey.”

“I guess. You tell me what it all means.”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on. Surely it must mean something in all that cosmic woo bullshit that you believe.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“You sure?”

“Look, I don’t know what to tell you. That was something fantastic, but we already tried discussing it. WE tried putting it to words but the closest thing that I can get to is that it was… well, overwhelming. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know if it means anything at all. Perhaps it means some sort of particularly intense form of Mercury Retrograde. Maybe something happened to Mercury. Maybe something hit it hard enough for it to disintegrate and that’s what we saw. I got nothing.”

“But if something hit it, then surely it wouldn’t have appeared intact.”

“Who knows?”

“Maybe someone at the observatory saw it. Maybe we could go there tomorrow and ask them.”

“Why not this evening?”

“Because after this I want to go home and sleep.”

“They have people who work the evenings too, you know.”

“Well, maybe. Let’s see. Let’s just try and sit here and move away from it and hope that we forget about it and can then go on with our lives.”

Once more there was silence, and the sound of people became distant, somehow. The space that Harvey and Cave inhibited seemed to enclose around them and they were suddenly in their own dome that they could not escape from. Their food arrived and they took it and ate in silence, until eventually Cave spoke up once more.

“You know, as I try to remember it it seems to change.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you saw it and you saw what happened. That’s what I remember, and I remember how it happened and the stretch that formed behind Mercury, but every time I try to remember it something about it changes. The same events occur but something is different, such as the shape and size of the trail, or how Mercury was moving the way it was moving.”

“I see.”

“You’re having the same thing happen, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

“Alright. We’re going to the observatory after this.”

“Why not consult the crystals?”

“Fuck off.”

“Why do you want to go to the observatory? I thought you found Astronomy to be a corrupted practice.”

“I saw something I hadn’t seen before, and so did you. Maybe someone there saw it. I think we should go ask.”

“Trusting science then?”

“I want a view outside of yours and mine.”

“Mine errs closer to the science and the realm of logic than yours.”

“So you say, but that’s beside the point. Maybe they know something that we don’t.”

Harvey and Cave ate as quickly as they could, then got up and left. The pub was full and there were people joyous and celebratory outside, but neither cared. They just wanted to see if they could get answers and so off they went walking at an accelerated pace.

The sense of foreboding and the weight of unease held fast upon their backs and they felt pressed down by some sort of belief that there was forbidden knowledge that they could not reach, or at least have been too exposed to in order to be able to understand. Regardless, they had to press on in order to get some sort of answers.

The sound of creatures made themselves known as the two traveled, and it was not long before they reached their destination. Cave approached the main entrance which was now shut and not open to the public at this particular hour, except for at very specific points in time and during specific events. There were some stargazers out on the area around, doing their thing, enjoying their time. Some were there to have evening picnics; others were looking to spark a little romance. But all in all they were few and far between, and so Harvey and Cave seemed to stick out with their speedy movement, almost seeming as thoguh they were going to deliver some urgent news.

Cave looked for a buzzer or intercom and tried to trigger it, but it didn’t seem to work. Harvey stood there, wondering what they were doing and felt that it was a fruitless endeavour.

“Come on Cave, let’s go. No one is coming. They’ve probably switched it off so they can do what they need to do undisturbed.”

“No, people are in there. I’m sure someone has an idea of what has happened.”

After a few more minutes someone came down, looking a little bewildered and annoyed.

“What took you so long?”

“We’re working. Also, the intercom appears to be functioning intermittently. What do you want?”

“Well, I wanted to ask about Mercury Retrograde today.”

The scientist looked at Cave for a brief moment and sized them up. Their face grew blank, as though exasperated but unable to express it, before they chose their words carefully.

“This is not worth anyone’s time.”

“But did you see it?”

“No. Go away.”

“It was weird! It was strange and it didn’t look the way it’s meant to!”

“Nice choice of words, Cave.”

“Can it.”

“Look, what my friend is trying to say here is that we have concerns about what we saw when we tried to watch Mercury cross the sky and we want to see if anyone else here saw anything, or if it is some sort of regular thing and we’re paranoid for no reason.”

“You’re paranoid for no reason.”

“Okay, but can we get some sort of confirmation?”

“…Alright, here’s what I’ll tell you. The observatory is open to the public in the morning. None of the night crew on at the moment saw Mercury today. Go away now.”

The scientist left. Cave grumbled to themselves for a bit whilst they and Harvey walked away. Near them some stargazers expressed awe at some of the stars as they seemed to shine and shimmer in the sky. Cave and Harvey would’ve looked, but Harvey just wanted to get home as quickly as possible, and Cave was too busy being annoyed by how pointless the endeavour seemed.

“Satisfied, Cave?”

“No. We’re going back tomorrow morning.”

“You’re on your own. I’ve got things to do.”

“You’re not doing anything at the moment and you’re not going to do anything tomorrow either.”

Cave had a point, but Harvey didn’t want to engage with this. They [referred to be left to their thoughts and they just wanted to be bored alone and without Cave’s interference.

“Alright, I’ll make a deal. You get up in the morning and I’ll come along. You’re not up in the morning, you’re on your own.”

Harvey felt rather clever about putting this forward. They knew that Cave wasn’t in a position to get up at an hour some considered reasonable, and so they knew that Cave would fail.

“You’re on.”

Harvey hoped that that would be the end of it, but they also felt curious to know and decided that they’d go in the morning by themselves. They probably were just imagining the whole thing and their thoughts were just fixated on something that was actually pretty normal, or maybe they imagined they whole thing. That would at least explain why they couldn’t remember it the same way twice. Regardless, there was now something that lay ahead and it was something to at least help distract for a few hours. At the moment sleep was more important, however, and so at a steady pace Harvey and Cave made their way home, soon to rest for a small day lay ahead.