THE ANCIENT APOCALYPSE

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A man who is of no use is of no interest. They had swum in the oceans and scuttled in the undergrowth, invisible to the hunters. A hundred million years. The figure kept reciting itself in his head, although in reality he had no real idea how long it had been. A very long time, is all he knew, trapped on this planet. He could still see his parents, crash landed on Mars, hiding in a cave, the air even then extremely thin. Even with their equipment, they could not survive for long. And so they had taken the step, and wept, in the way that species had wept, as they prepared to send him to a planet where they had never been, and could never go. There was only one escape pod; capable of carrying only one person. He was it.

They were all, in a way, projectiles from the mother of souls; but his parents did not make it.

He felt the wrench of separation even now.

To this day he found himself thinking the damnedest things. "They are such an odd species," he thought, as he looked out across the swimming pool on the east coast of Australia. "Humans." Above a bi-plane did aerobatics, and he could feel, even at this distance, the giddying, shrieking excitement of the occupants, could almost see, if he was not mistaken, their faces.

"Testing, testing, one two three," came one of them. And at this point, deliberately degenerated, he did not know if they were voices on the wind, a distant television set, or something else.

He knew there was another empath in the area, but his pursuers, or were they monitors, had gone very quiet indeed. Quieter than they had been for more than 12 months.

They thought he was no longer a threat, no longer of interest, could no longer do harm.

Or perhaps the goal had already been achieved: the removal of a very dangerous Prime Minister indeed.

"We have a duty of care," someone said; and he shrugged.

"We're from the government and we're here to help you," he thought dismissively. Because the good intentions of some would never survive the bureaucratic process.

The subject had come up over dinner one day, in Newtown, with that hopeful, promising, thought disordered, aspiring writer Anthony Curisatra.

"A trained empath is in and out of your head before you even know it, an untrained one senses images, emotions, intent, loud thoughts, but that is all.

Difficult to make sense of."

As if by way of explanation.

As if, in the accelerating crisis, any of these gifts would be good enough to save them.

Authorities around the world had been on high alert as the New Year dawned. But there had been no massacres, a burning building in Dubai, cancelled celebrations in Brussels, evacuated train stations in Munich.

2016: a year he had never genuinely expected to see, was dawning on edge, the pictures of fireworks and exultant crowds one final delusion of a departing world.

THE BIGGER STORY:

(CNN)Saudi Arabia said Saturday it had executed 47 people in a single day, including a dissident Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, who had repeatedly spoken out against the government and the Saudi royal family.

Nimr had been convicted of inciting sectarian strife, sedition and other charges following his 2012 arrest.

Iran, Saudi Arabia's regional rival, summoned the Saudi ambassador in Tehran to condemn the execution, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. The Shiite-majority nation issued a statement deploring the execution and warning that Saudi Arabia would pay a heavy price for its policies.

"The execution of a personality such as Sheikh Nimr who had no means other than speech to pursue his political and religious objectives only shows the depth of imprudence and irresponsibility," Press TV cited Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi as saying.