The sky over the office was blue, red and white, and contrails covered the heavens like a child's cross-hatched notion of infinity, stretching out to some poorly defined vanishing point.

For all my life I lived under a full sky, a sky full of man. The visual affirmation of man's continued refusal to admit that he was just another animal - the sign that he could re-make the world entire in a reflected image of himself, his inner imaginings. The contrails were our mark on the world itself.

Then the disasters came, and the skies emptied out, and remained empty. Late afternoon came, and the commerce of humanity was - gone. We were too far out from the major cities for the combat air patrols to quarter our skies in protection of the remaining buildings, the communication centres, the vital hubs. There was just - nothing.

And the skies were terribly, terribly blue, and empty, and it was as if man was already gone, and if we were not quite extinct, it was as if our dreams had died before us. The skies were empty.

Then, at last, they resumed flights, and there were new fears, and you couldn't help but twitch whenever a plane appeared overhead, in irrational fear that it might fall, but these were little fears, and lesser worries. The skies had men in them again; the void was full.

The great blue abyss was divided, by white contrails stretching off towards forever.