1. The begining of The Begining

“Why am I here?”

This wasn’t the first time Dan Pride had asked himself this question. Over the last couple of hours, as he sat slightly patiently in the Pitt street mall in Sydney, the thought had come into his head more than once.

Dan had been living in Sydney for about the last twenty years. He liked the place. Not as stressful as London, not as dirty as New York. It was a big city that didn’t feel like a big city. Dan’s work had taken him over half of the planet. His other pursuits had taken him to the other half. He’d lived, or stayed, in most of the major cities in the us and Europe, lived in hotels from Birmingham to Budapest. He’d camped out, stayed over, shacked up, settled down and squatted in more places than the average Street directory had names for. So his slightly biased opinions about his home town at least had a level of research behind them.

Leaning back into the shady spot he had picked out for himself, Dan looked up to the sky. It was a beautiful sunny day in Sydney. 23 degrees and slight breeze. He took a brief slug from the drink he had with him as he watched all of the busy people go by. He once again marvelled at the Human race’s ability to keep itself busy. One young man , wearing a blue suit and tie, raced past Dan, talking heatedly into the mobile phone plastered to his ear. A look of stress was penetrated deep into his brow, and his cheeks were flushed with both exhaustion and anger. Dan watched him go, smiling.

“Calm down, sunshine,” he thought. “The world will keep spinning.”

Dan took another drink from his bottle. It made him laugh how much energy we wasted, worrying about such little things. And, although he could remember a point in his life where he too used to have those concerns, he honestly could not remember how it felt. Too many events, to much experience in his life had taught him that the day to day routines that seem to monopolise the lives of the people around him, are the events that we should treasure the most. If they had seen what he had seen. . .

He stopped himself before he started thinking about it. Those days were over. It was his choice, his decision. And although he had enjoyed the life, enjoyed a lot of the things he had accomplished, it had gotten to a point where it was too much. So he got out. Simple as that. To tell the truth, he didn’t even think about it that much any more. Today was a rarity. Actually, today was strange for several reasons. Him sitting here, waiting for - well, whatever it was was the strangest.

“Why am I here?”

This question to himself earlier wasn’t just a random thought. He honestly didn’t know. After waking up this morning, he found himself almost on auto-pilot. He had planned to try and break the back of that new novel he was working on. But instead, he found himself putting on his walking shoes, heading outside and catching the next train into the city. When he arrived in town, the same compulsion had lead him here, to Pitt street, where he had spent the good part of the day. Something told him that he needed to be here, today. So here was where he waited.

That was the problem with abstract hunches. They were soft on details.

Dan sighed. Leaning back, he looked up at the huge tower above him. Sydney’s Centerpoint was one of the most unique buildings in the city’s skyline. The building consisted of a main pylon with a series of observation decks at the top. Huge metal cables weaved from the ground to the bottom of the observation levels. On top was a large, white metal pylon pointing up at the sky. And, unbeknown to most, right at the top, in bright red permanent marker, is written three words.

MM was here.

Dan smiled to himself. All the things he could have done, and he chose that. The memory made him smile, but then made him frown. Where is this bout of nostalgia coming from, he wondered. Dan hadn’t thought about this – any of this – in years. Now all the old memories were flooding back in an unstoppable tide. Names he hadn’t thought of, faces he’d forgotten, Friends, foes and events that he had done his best to put behind him washed over him. A feeling of loss that almost made him cry had accompanied the memories. Why? He thought. Why now?

And that’s when he heard the scream.