Afterword

I noticed the colour on the inside of my jacket. I remembered when I stood in front of a blue screen, It made it appear like the clouds over some distant holiday resort in some space in time. We laughed about it then, we laugh about it now. Since then I have kept it closed, folding my arms or buttoning it up when I know I’m about to be in front of a screen. I still think about how it looked with the clouds drifting around me like I was akin to them.

I’ve never actually seen clouds, no one has for decades.

I like to think I was the closest anyone had ever come to the clouds.

The audio director hands me a bottle to drink and smiles. She’s trying not to look at the clock hanging above the studio door. The red luminescent numbers are counting down in hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds. No one is looking at it, every pair of eyes is doing it’s best not to drift toward the door or the clock leering above it. The cameraman remembers a time we interviewed the Secretary of Defense. We laugh about how strong the aftershave he wore was and how it smelt like rotten meat rations. We laugh about the scandal involving the sweat, the shoe and those pictures.

Then we remember the speech he gave in the interview about the lack of global threat despite the rumours.

There are still some laughs but the mood turns melancholic. Everyone buries themselves in their bottles, their work, the calls. The timer continues, impervious. I check my lapel microphone again. The audio director notices and laughs. She makes a joke then about how no one will be listening to it anyway so I shouldn’t be so concerned. I try to laugh with her about it. I tell her that I’ll have to hear any mistakes I make again in a few years once the signal reaches there. She makes a noise like a cry as she tries to laugh.

It is such an awful sound it nearly breaks me then and there.

There are a few minutes left. I go to the green room and lay out everything I have with me at this moment. A spare microphone, a cleaning cloth for my glasses and another for my earpiece, two shirts, my gym clothes, a key for my bike parked up outside the studio, my passcard for the building, ID papers, passports and payment cards. I wonder why I brought these things with me. The frivolous items of inconsequential worth in an uncertain future. My co-anchor tells me its for comfort, normality in the extreme, mundane in chaos. He calls it an anchor point, something tying me to this world, this time, this life.

Do I want that?

I think about the bike, locked outside the building. Would it outlive most of this world? I think about the spare shirts. Would I need them? He tells me I’ve packed enough already.

A hand is clasped across my shoulder and he pauses before telling me it’s going to be okay. A platitude that will form the foundation of the next century. He doesn’t think I noticed him pause but worlds have lived and died in the time it took him to speak. The thought returns, louder this time.

This world will die.

We are at the desk with the script in front of me. My mouth is dry. All eyes are on me, the eyes of a frightened world looking for light in the darkness. The red light turns green.

“This is our last report.”