John Evans - Galactic Lebensraum

April 2083

A range of mountains towered over a beautiful alpine valley. Below the forested escarpments a lake glowed, its calm waters stretching far into the distance. Konrad lay amongst the tall wild flowers and grasses which filled the meadow high above the beautiful backdrop. A butterfly appeared before him, its wings shimmering like oil on water. He followed the butterfly as it flew across the meadow, stopping occasionally as it did to land upon a bright flower and suckle upon the nectar within.

For a few moments the little insect continued its merry dance until it appeared to stop mid-air and change direction. It headed towards another figure, who like Konrad, lay amongst the swaying grass. Flowers decorated the womans long black hair and a relaxed smile dominated her face. She too watched the butterfly, her hypnotic green eyes drawing the little creature towards her until eventually it landed on her out-stretched hand, fanning its wings slowly as it rested on her elegant fingers. After a moment it flew away again, playfully circling around the laughing woman as it left.

Then at that moment, an icy breeze rose.

The breezes presence was insidious at first, but its growing power soon buffeted the little butterfly far into the distance.

As the breeze grew in strength, the blue sky darkened to become a threatening veil above the mountains. The temperature dropped, then a beat, heavy and powerful, began to accompany the strengthening wind. Konrad frowned as he clambered to his feet, listening to the sound. It seemed as if the entire valley was stirring into life.

Concerned now, he headed towards the mysterious woman. But she had already stood and walked down the meadow, seemingly hypnotised by the sound.

Ominously, and unseen by Konrad, his footprints left strange stains in the grass. They spread like a malignant cancer across the meadow, the grass wilting and decaying in its wake.

The mysterious woman drew further away from Konrad. In response, he tried to quicken his pace to catch up to her, but his limbs became like laden weights, pinning him to the ground. He shouted, but once again the woman ignored him as she reached the lakes shore below and disappeared.

Meanwhile the deadly smear spread its black throngs further. It smothered the meadows, the lake, and the mountains, until the entire landscape was in its dark shroud. The blackness seeped up the immobile Konrads feet and around his legs, crystallising as it rose to form an ebony chrysalis around him. He was now imprisoned and at the mercy of the power that was slowly revealing itself before him.

At the bottom of the valley a structure started to form. It dragged itself into the laden sky, feeding upon the sea of blackness as it grew and grew. The hills and mountains rumbled thunderously as they too were cannibalised by the emerging shape. Eventually, the entire landscape was scoured of its natural contours, wiped clean by this ravenous force which fed upon the land until all that remained was a flat, endless horizon and a single black spire, its scale vast and god-like. Konrads heart trembled at the sight as the beating that triggered the demise of the heavenly scene reached its deafening crescendo. He closed his eyes and waited for the end.

Then the sound ceased.

Konrad slowly opened his eyes and gazed up at the towering spire. His insignificance before it magnified by its silence.

Then a new sound, a voice, filled the void.

Your destiny lies with me! it screamed.

Konrad shot up from his bunk. This man, this prisoner, was a far cry from the healthy figure that had just appeared in the haunting dream. Relief overcame Konrad as he settled back onto his sweat-soaked pillow when he realised the hellish drama had been merely a nightmare.

Lying in the darkness, he sighed as he wiped his thin face, his fingers running over his protruding cheekbones and sunken eye-sockets. As he did, he saw the tattoo on his wrist, the permanent mark that forever reminded him of his lowly status. Branded into his flesh was a bar-code and it denoted that he was a prisoner of the Third Reich.

When the camps were first created in 1930s Germany, each prisoner had been handed a simple numbered tunic, then, as the camp system grew during the following decade and during the war, the numbering system evolved into basic tattoos. At first, the tattoo comprised on a series of numbers, but over time other pieces of information such as the class of crime the prisoner had committed were added. This was usually symbolised by a coloured shape; a red triangle for a political prisoner, a yellow Star of David for a Jew, a green triangle for a criminal, a pink triangle for a homosexual and so on. Eventually all these various pieces of information were incorporated into a sophisticated bar-code that was introduced during the 1970s, and this form of numbering, despite flirtations with technology such as microchips planted under the skin and data-collars, remained the favoured method of cataloguing the Third Reichs prisoners.

He now looked around the gloomy dormitory that he called his home. Hundreds of bunks were packed into the room. Its cold concrete walls were slick with damp and scarred with hundreds of pieces of graffiti. The names of prisoners, sexual imagery, football team badges, even defiant anti-Nazi slogans were scratched into the cement and this tableaux of graffiti reminded Konrad of Stone-Age cave paintings. Perhaps it was fitting that the crude drawings were so similar to those ancient ones because in the eyes of Nazis both were the work of barbarians.

A series of small stoves stood between the bunks like silent guards, their faint orange glow providing the dormitorys only source of illumination. The dancing light exposed the slumbering bodies that were squeezed head to toe on the bunks. The natural noises of the night wheezing, coughing, crying, even the odd scream generated an animal-like atmosphere rather like a zoo after hours. At the same time, the camps mechanical noises also added to the acoustic mixture. Utility-pipes slung from the ceiling dripped and gurgled, while the rooms support beams creaked and its air-vents hissed and whined.

Konrad had been imprisoned at Neu Magdeburg camp for three years. The overt bitterness at his predicament that had consumed him at the start of his sentence had long ago drained from him, instead, his focus was now firmly fixed on surviving in the camp as long as possible. He was determined that the numerous ways of death that stalked the camps corridors such as malnutrition, sickness, exhaustion and cruelty would not claim him too. But his motive to survive had nothing to do with wanting to escape or to prove his innocence, instead, what drove this all-encompassing survival instinct was to live long enough to see the Nazis destroyed and their damned swastika wiped from history. Realistically he knew it was a forlorn hope, but to have any hope of achieving this seemingly impossible goal, Konrad had to stay alive and the best way to stay alive in this harsh konzentrationslager or concentration camp was to be an asset to his Nazi masters. He knew the most dangerous thing for a prisoner to do was to appear to be expendable. Being sick or weak were guaranteed tickets to the camps gas chamber.

Konrad stared at the bottom of the bunk above him for a few moments. The bunk creaked every so often under the weight of its unseen occupant, the wooden slats shifting and bending. The grain of the wood slats reminded him of the black clouds that ran across the laden sky depicted in his nightmare. Another natural line formed a horizon and a simulacra image formed in the wood. It was an image of the spire. He traced this phantom with his finger, scratching the shape into the soft wood with his grubby fingernail.