Watching The Rain Fall

NOTE: Watching The Rain Fall is the forth installment in a five part series of fiction based on The Nearside Project. Taken as a whole, these five stories are known as The Thirteenth Hour.

* * * * *

Earth⁷ 24^th July 1996

Jacob sat on the balcony of his home, was a sprawling mansion erected late in the Sixties on this small island off the coast of Scotland. He had bought it for a song early last March when he convinced the previous owner that his home was filled with evil spirits. Jacob was a good liar, and the small shrivelled Italian artist that had haunted the mansion for years became haunted by the creations of his own imagination. Jacob had come close to going mad himself- the ghosts were particularly horrible. Eventually, the artist committed suicide, and he took his creations with him. Now, in this quiet place, Jacob was alone.

He didn't feel guilty about his actions. It wasn't technically murder, you see. He was just using reality for his own purposes.

A cool breeze washed in from offshore, a relief in the surprisingly hot Scottish weather. It gently moved some trees in front of the house, and Jacob was intrigued to see some clouds appear on the horizon. It would soon rain.

Reality wasn't all it was cracked up to be. It was more than cracked- it was broken. Jacob quickly discovered that, while he couldn't manipulate reality directly, he could do so by persuading others to believe what he wanted to be true. With their belief, reality melted and reformed to fulfill their belief, while all the time keeping the manipulator ignorant of their participation in the new order.

There was more to it than that, Jacob mused. Back in 1989, the world changed as reality gave up it's fixed nature, and began to flow with the collective belief of mankind. The more who believed that a certain fact was true, the more true it was.

"Plus la change, " he murmured. Even as the belief of humanity altered the world, it altered their perceptions. No one was aware of the ludicrous new truths. It didn't seem odd that mammoth roamed the Great Plains of the United States. It didn't faze them when strange shapes moved through trees, tentacles rippling. It was normal. All of it.

The few who were not affected by this thought they were going mad. They watched the world turn on its head, and everyone thought everything was fine. Soon, these individuals realised that the world had changed alright, and that everyone else was mad.

Jacob was one of these people. He was a Nearsider.

Few knew about the Nearside. The majority of Nearsiders, rocked back in forth in asylums, their sanity a strange affliction in this insane world. Jacob had heard about the Nearside and his gifted siblings whilst fighting Werewolves in Canada. Another of the Silver Branch had asked him questions, testing his perception of the world.

* * * * *

"What happened in 1989 ?"

Michael stared intently at Jacob, hanging on the answer. Jacob returned an incredulous version of the same stare.

"What do you mean ?" he asked eventually. No one had ever broached the question. Jacob had asked it, yes, but everyone had a different answer. It was as if no one had the right one.

"You heard me. What happened. Do you remember ?"

Michael sat with Jacob in the back of the truck as they drove across the vast wheat fields of central Canada. They bounced up and down, as the vehicle made its way across the deeply furrowed plain. Michael carried his automatic shotgun close his body, as if protecting the hundreds of dollars worth of silver that made up the buckshot. Jacob carried a silver bayonet, and an automatic pistol with silver rounds. They were alone- the driver sat in the cab at the front, and couldn't hear their strange conversation. There had been two others, originally, but the lycanthropes had torn their throats out back in Regina, two hours ago. The huge steaming corpses of the beasts lay on the floor between Michael and Jacob, their own throats cut cleanly by Jacob's blade.

"I... remember that everything changed. Everyone went mad."

Jacob answered slowly, unsure as to how his answer would be received. The last person he had told had tried to get him placed in an asylum.

"Good."

Michael seemed pleased with Jacob's answer.

"I thought you were one of us. No Watch," he explained. He pointed through the glass panel between the cab and the back. On the dashboard, the drivers Pocket Watch sat, open and gleaming, gold and brass in the light of the full moon.

"Those things give me the creeps," explained Jacob. Michael nodded.

"Ever heard them speak ?" he asked. Jacob's eyes widened in horror.

"God, no. Do they ?" he whispered, as if he believed the watch might hear.

Michael laughed.

"Oh, yes. Not in any language I know. They squeak and hiss, chirping. But you have to hold one up to your ear. And the ticking is much louder," he told Jacob, a great big grin on his face.

Jacob smiled uneasily. He didn't like the direction the conversation had taken.

"What do you mean, 'one of us' ?" he asked. Michael spread his hands expansively.

"You're a special person, Jacob. I knew it when we met, but I had to be sure. You're one of us. You can walk the Broken Road, if you haven't already. You can witness your world as it would be. Or could be."

He leaned close.

"Take a walk on the Nearside, Jacob. I promise you, it'll change your life."

Jacob stared at Michael. Then he said something he hadn't said in years.

"You're mad. Really."

Michael laughed so loudly that the driver looked around. He gave them both a curious look.

"Jacob, you are one of many. If you don't like this world, find a Broken Room and leave it. Actually, I'm here recruiting others," explained Michael. Jacob was silent, but bobbed his head once.

"That's not why I'm here talking to you. I'm glad I was the one to tell you about the Nearside. Someone else might try and use you. Don't let that happen, especially here."

Jacob shook his head, not getting it.

"What do you mean ? Use me ?"

Michael nodded.

"You aren't affected by the unique problems here. You don't need a Reality Engine. You are Reality itself. You're like...." he looked around clicking his fingers, trying to find a metaphor. He smiled.

"You're a lightning conductor- or rather, a reality conductor. Reality is grounded through you. That's why you can't change reality directly. And why no one on this world can hurt or change you with a change of Consensus."

Jacob nodded, and he felt relieved at the uncovering of this secret term. He'd read a few papers by 'madmen', or as he knew now, other Nearsiders. 'Consensus' was the term used to describe reality and it's flux. Once Consensus changed, Reality changed. Unless you were nearby a Reality Engine.

The Reality Engines seemed to reinforce Reality. At some subconscious level, humanity knew something was wrong. Consensus created the need for the Reality Engines, and so they came to be. Huge clockwork mechanisms that ran a singe clock in each city, they were confectionaries of gold and brass, steel and oil. While they were kept wound and maintained, the cities were fairly stable. Consensus was less destructive in the cities, perhaps because the Engines themselves gave everyone something to believe in. As they say, everyone needs something to believe in.

But then Consensus suggested that perhaps if people had smaller Reality Engines, they could carry them out into the ever-changing realms between the larger Reality Engines. And so the Pocket Watches were born. Some say literally, because no one makes the Pocket Watches. They appear at irregular intervals inside Reality Engines, gleaming and new. And if anyone had heard a Pocket Watch chirp or click in a most unclockwork-like manner, then, well, they weren't saying.

Some had hinted that the Consensus was inflicted upon humanity. These were the same people who hinted at a sinister secret behind the Reality Engines. These were the same people who disappeared soon after.

The majority of humanity knew nothing about Consensus, or the birthing of Pocket Watches. They wouldn't even notice that Pocket Watches had thirteen hours instead of twelve. They didn't notice the clocks which hid Reality Engines strike thirteen in a twisted hour between midnight and one ay em.

Jacob had noticed. It had been the one thing that still nagged at his soul, the one consistant madness in a world of ever-shifting insanity. And that scared him more than the insect gods and the mammoth and the volcanoes and the Werewolves. Much more.

"Consensus... you... I always thought... yes...." was all Jacob could say.

"You can't change the world, Jacob," whispered Michael. He smiled.

"But you can always get someone to change it for you."

* * * * *

The town of Jericho was small and unimpressive by anyone's standards. It lay on a minor road in the middle of Nebraska, and had recently seen some trade in supplying the mammoth hunters. Maybe fifty people lived there, with the odd hunting party staying for a night or two.

Jacob had found the town late in the summer. He was heady from the success of the Werewolf hunt two hundred miles across the Canadian Border. There was good money in hunting the beasts, even after taking out the cost of the silver weapons. Jacob must have had ten or twenty thousand dollars in cash for a months work.

He decided to stop and spend some time in Jericho in order to spend some of the money, which always seemed to go further is a piss-ant backwater.

Jacob walked in, his shoes worn and his feet blistered. Just before entering the town, he had taken his shoes off, and hobbled in. Somewhere along the way, a group of children had seen him, and had imagined him some powerful figure, barefoot. Like Jesus, in the pictures.

That's just how Consensus starts.

Jacob walked into the diner, and sat with a sigh at the counter. An attractive young woman smiled at him, and handed him the menu. Too tired to read, he simply said,

"Just water. And bread."

Somehow, the thoughts of the children had brought up a psychological symbol into the shallows of the towns subconscious. The waitress, called Nancy, also took hold of the simple religous theme of bread and water. A man, tired and weary. Hungry and in from the wilderness. Like Jesus in from the desert after his forty days.

"You look tired, sir," she said softly.

"I feel tired, child," commented Jacob gently. He sipped his water carefully, so as not to make himself sick.

"I need a room. Is there anywhere ?" he asked. Nancy nodded, and handed him a small business card, one of many left behind the counter for this very reason.

"There should be room at the Stern Motel," she said. He nodded, smiled vaguely.

"Good. Thanks."

He paid for the bread, and wondered painfully over to the motel, where he booked a room for a week, and climbed into bed.

Jacob slept, dreaming of nothing.