Bedlam Read Free

that he found disturbing. It wasn’t so much that there
     was anything aesthetically displeasing about the colour itself; it was, to be fair, a quite regally luxuriant purple: deep,
     textured and vibrant. It was more to do with his knowledge of astronomy and subsequent awareness that, normally, the sky he
     looked up at owed its colour to the shorter wavelengths and greater proportion of blue photons in the type of light emitted
     by the planet’s primary energy source. What was disturbing about this particular hue was not merely that it could not be any
     sky on Earth, but that it could not be any sky beneath its sun.
    Worse, its predominantly purple colouration wasn’t even the most distressing thing about the view through the window: that
     distinction went to the fact that it was full of burning aircraft. There were dozens of them up there, possibly hundreds,
     stretching out all the way to the horizon. It looked to be some kind of massive extraterrestrial expeditionary landing force,
     and its efforts were proving successful in so far as landing was defined as reaching terra firma: all of the craft were certainly
     managing that much. However, controlled descents executed without conflagration and completed by vessels comprisingfewer than a thousand flaming pieces were, quite literally, a lot thinner on the ground.
    Ross felt that inrush again, that sense of energy being channelled very specifically to one source, then heard the great boom
     once more, and this time he could see its source. It was a colossal artillery weapon, sited at least a mile away, but evidently
     powered by the facility in which he was standing. Its twin muzzles were each the size of an oil tanker, jutting from a dome
     bigger than St Paul’s Cathedral, and its effect on the invasion force was comparable to a howitzer trained on a flock of geese.
     Each mighty blast devastated another host of unfortunate landing craft, sending debris spinning and hurtling towards the surface.
    He had no sense of how long he had been standing there: it could have been thirty seconds and it could have been ten times
     that. The spectacle was horrifyingly mesmeric, but the car-crash fascination was not purely vicarious. Everything Ross saw
     had unthinkable consequences for himself. Instead of being merely lost in time, he now had no idea which planet he was even
     on.
    He could see buildings in the distance, only visible because they were so large. The architecture was unquestionably alien,
     as was the very idea of building vast, isolated towers in an otherwise empty desert landscape. And still something inside
     him felt like he belonged here, or at least that his environment was not as alien as it should have been.
    ‘It’s an awe-inspiring sight, isn’t it?’
    When Ross heard the voice speak softly from only a few feet behind him, he deduced rather depressingly that he must no longer
     have a digestive system, as this could be the only explanation for why he didn’t shit himself.
    He turned around and found himself staring at another brutally haphazard melange of flesh and metal, one he decided was definitely
     the estate model. The newcomer was a foot taller at least, and more heavily armoured, particularly around the head, leaving
     his face looking like a lost little afterthought. He looked so imposingly heavy, Ross could imagine him simply crashing through
     anything less than a reinforced floor, and couldn’t picture walls proving much of an impediment either. Wherever he wanted
     to be, he was getting there, and whatever he wanted, Ross was giving him it.
    ‘Yes,’ Ross agreed meekly, amazed to hear his own voice still issuing from whatever he had become.
    ‘You could lose yourself in it,’ the big guy went on. His tone was surprisingly soft, perhaps one used to being listened to
     without the need to raise it, but not as surprising as his accent, which was a precise if rather theatrical received pronunciation.
     Clearly, as well as advanced