The Eternal Motorway

aul had a party before he left. A real humdinger of a party, all his friends were there and the family of course but that was only to be expected. Real food! Where his mother had got it from was anybodies guess, and his father's home brewed beer. Against all the Church's precincts but Paul felt that this small sin would easily be set off against the Pilgrimage he was about to undertake. Such an act of holy devotion was praised and admired by all.

The rosy tint of dawn touched the sky and they all raised their glasses to The Eternal City in silent devotion. Paul left.

Two years later Paul was still travelling. A steady one hundred and fifty miles an hour on the perpetual motorway. A huge concrete and steel construction rotating in ever decreasing spirals to the holy centre. Thousands, no millions of miles of roadway, crammed chock a block with eager pilgrims in a myriad of computer controlled cars. All matching the speed of the others, keeping the regulation distance from the car in front, travelling onwards to the shrine. It took many years to progress along God's Motorway, as it was known, forever circling in towards the centre. Fanatical devotion abounded, lead weighted flails were often evident, bread and water diets were also popular among the faithful. All travelling to the tombs, shrines and churches of the Eternal City of London.

Through chinks in the road or between the other lanes the surface could be seen. Sprawling urban-scapes, crops forcefully grown under artificial suns and ship lanes rising up to join the tarmaced roof bringing more of the faithful in ever increasing numbers. All were happy, basking in the glory of God, honoured to be living in this land, journeying along this road. Heading towards Him.

All were patient, merely waiting eagerly for their moment in the Light. But Paul was a bad driver, had started slowly, irritation at the delays caused by roadworks to the everused road. Annoyance caused by the fluffy dice hanging from the window of the car keeping pace with his. Stress gradually building up inside him, he swore at the other drivers, tinkered with the computer to make it go faster, all to no avail. His car stayed with the Sunday drivers beside him, with their idiotic animals glued to the windows, crude signs and hymn singing.

It finally came to a head one day late in the third year of Paul's pilgrimage. The Eternal City could be seen far to the left, radiantly glowing in its holiness. The road stretched off into the distance and turned once more away from the City. Paul struck his ineffectual steering wheel in frustration, he raised his fire extinguisher and brought it down again and again upon his computer face.

The car spun out of its allotted course, wildly swinging into the path of the 'fluffy dice' car. Computers frantically changed modes, slammed on emergency brakes and ploughed into each other. More cars followed, racing into the pile- up, unable to respond in time to the unexpected. Sparks jumped about from the colliding cars and then the fires started. Soon blazing and red-hot their flames burned the faithful alive, scorching their hopes.

Paul at the controls of his car, his own car, felt his spirits soar, he had a need for speed, for long tracks of empty road free of Sunday drivers. The computerised cars in front kept to their delegated speed programs, plodding along oblivious to the mental needs of their human cargo.

Now free of his electronic bonds, Paul swung the car wide and jamming his foot to the floor, rammed his way through the crash barrier into the opposite lane, scattering cars and leaving the same chaotic wake as he had in the old carriageway. The car had shuddered slightly going through the stressed metal barrier, but it was purely decorative nowadays, whole portions of it having rusted away. You don't need protection when computers are in control. Paul and his car burst through another, cutting years off his journey .Ahh it felt good, good to be alive, the car purring with power, an extension of his body. Metallic and rubber limbs, oil pumped through the veins and a hard impervious skin. The joy of motoring, simply glorious.

A flashing blue light appeared in the distance in the rear view mirror, rapidly threading its way through the traffic. A shiver of fear shook Paul, the police. A name of legend, conjuring terror from visions of cold, dark, noisome cells in long forgotten dungeons. Manacles, chains, torture implements. Paul put the pedal to the metal as an old saying became meaningful to the awakened Paul. Speeding through the docile pilgrim traffic the police pursuit car continued to close on the felon. In desperation Paul swung his car in a handbrake turn just in front of an oncoming van. The police car too near to be able to take effective avoiding action ploughed into a coach, bursting into spontaneous flames. Oily black smoke billowing up into the cloudless sky.

Paul wrenching his car from side to side in a frantic attempt to avoid head on collisions finally managed to burst through a rusty section of barrier and resume his headlong rush, a joyride to beat all joyrides. Better than any ecstatical broadcast by the church.

Behind him another motorist forced his car through the barrier with the desire to be another year closer to God. The Pilgrim's way was suddenly much shorter. The devotion most professed, overlaid an intense boredom and deadening of spirit. Just what the church was aiming for, but deadly for emotional pilgrims.

Soon, there was a convoy of eager pilgrims, speeding through the gaps and after the new prophet, as Paul was soon known. His roaring gun-metal grey car as it hurried past would send a bored pilgrim int a frenzy of fanatical devotion in his or her attempts to follow the new Messiah. Many failed to control the sudden bucking of their manual motors, multiple pile ups spread along the length of the concrete road. The rest of the convoy oblivious to the terror and pain of the burning, mangled devotees behind them, cheering and singing hymns and psalms as they burst through another railing.

Paul, panic glittering in his eyes just tried to loose the huge snaking trail which followed him where ever he drove. Impossible! It just stayed there a few car lengths back, not trying to overtake or ram him off the road. just sitting there, watching, always over his shoulder, recording all of his sins against God. no going back now - just race on and reach the shrine before they got him and sent him to the fiery death pits of the heretics.

Behind this trailing convoy of pilgrims came the armoured pursuit tanks, bristling with weapons. the sleek black helicopters, appearing smooth and innocent, but under the metallic exterior lay the racks of guided missiles and auto-cannons. They soon came up against the rear of the heretical column, shouldering aside the innocent cars and buses of pilgrims in their eagerness to get to grips with the theological enemy.

Machine guns chattered and high explosive shells whistled out of the lengthened barrels. Cars were ripped apart, bodies flew everywhere. Indiscriminately the tanks worked their way up the column destroying the true pilgrims and the offenders alike.

Unfortunately a batch of concussion missiles from an assault helicopter caused as weakness in the concrete to finally submit to the inevitable pull of gravity and fall a few miles to the ground below. the pursuit tanks in their eagerness to get to grips with the heretics continued on, unable to stop, and fell yelling, roaring, swearing and even in some cases praying, to the earth below. Hundreds of pilgrims followed, lemming like, the computers unable to detect the fatal breach in the floor until it was too late.

Only the tank of Sgt Colman managed to get over the breach in time. Crumbling blocks of road tearing away under his tracks, teetering on the brink but finally finding purchase and clawing its way onto the safety of solid roadway.

"By all that is holy, I'll see that man on as blackened stake." he vowed to his fallen comrades, even now ascending to the glory of paradise having died in a religious battle. Sgt Colman wiped the froth from his lips and finally managed to blink, before he gunned his tank into motion, slowly moving through the gears, increasing his speed. A manical grin fixed to his lips as he blasted death bringing flames and lead from his guns. Crushing the pathetic weaklings under his iron shod tracks, scarcely slowing as he rolled over the petrified pilgrims, squashing their saintly visions. Leaving mangled, burning heaps in his wake.

"I am the scourge of the Lord" cried Sgt Colman to no-one in particular, a glowering halo seemingly ablaze around his head. he slowly worked his way through the terrified trains of pilgrims - faithfull and heretics alike they received the same treatment, a one way passage to Hell, they were all sinners or they wouldn't have got in the way. The Hand of the Lord protected the innocent and the holy. All others obviously deserved to die, just like this new prophet, he'd been hearing so much about over the pilgrim's radio band. Soon Sgt Colman was down to his last high explosive shell and his last belt of bullets and still there was a score of cars between him and the heretic. The spawn of the devil.

Upping his speed he rammed his way through, crushing panels, spilling fragile contents to the unfriendly road surface, flinging bodies around like soft toys.

Paul, staring into his rear view mirror, saw this juggernaut of holy wrath descend upon him, out of the setting sun and frantically crashed his car through the railings, narrowly missing Sgt Colman's last high explosive shell.

"Damnation, it is Shaitan himself driving that vehicle." exclaimed the panting Sgt, "I'll get 'im, blow him, away and send him screaming back to Hell, the hard way." and he roared through the gap.

The Holy City was before them, the were in the suburbs, huge gleaming pillars of gold and glass. A sight to make even the hardest heart yield a gasp. Paul raced through the lengthening shadows, trying not to think too much about tomb stones and sped into the heart of God's eternal home, the road leading straight to his shrine. Sgt Colman in hot pursuit, his tank over heating and steaming, but nothing was going to stop him now.

Up almost to the very steps of the gigantic shrine, spires, minarets towering above him. Queues of pilgrims running for shelter from the crazily driven car. An attack helicopter, newly fueled, tactically took out the types of Paul's car with pin point precision. Skidding into a row of camera clicking faithfull, Sgt Colman's tank finally exploding in a searing white hot ball of utter devotion as the nuclear reactor gave out.

The Pope screamed as the boiling wave crisped the skin from his bones, his rabbis, his priests, cardinals, vicars and bishops frying around him. The great dome of God's shrine toppling over into the charred plazer. Silence descended.

In the distance was the sound of a car.