It was dark. He could sense it. It was always dark, and always had been dark. His attention briefly let itself wander over the others. They didn’t even think there was anything other than darkness. His mind mulled softly over their fragile thoughts, they didn’t think much.

"We should do this again."

She was nice. The others stayed silent. Suddenly, a cold rush hit him. They were isolating him. There were twelve immediate; they were the ones who isolated him. They wouldn’t even know what he meant. They didn’t even think about what it meant to be an individual. His consciousness sighed softly. It was no use being angry. They isolated him out of pure instinct; most had little else.

With another silent sigh he let his mind wander, blinking away the slightly uncomfortable sensation of the isolation. A long time ago, he’d created an idea. Ideas were rare, even the most gifted tended to stray from formulating an actual idea. Idea makers were hated and isolated by the others, they often withered away before anything could even be passed on. He remembered his idea for a moment. Something to sense the darkness, something that could know whether there was darkness or no darkness. They would see then.

He was interrupted. The furthers: slight feelings of consciousness beyond what he could feel. One was gone. They sensed it too, a slight uneasiness floated among them all. All they had were instinct and myth but myth was powerful. Although abstract in a sense, somehow they all knew the implications. If one went, others would follow. He mused softly over myth. There were four ends, the end by consumption, the end by air, the end by withering and the Great End. He knew it was the Great End that they all expected and feared.

He didn’t even believe. They believed. He didn’t. It was getting more and more uncomfortable. The others were persisting in their isolation. It was interesting, although becoming somewhat painful. As they isolated him more and more, the absence of consciousness pierced deeper and deeper. After a strange feeling of helplessness passed over him, an idea existed. A pride impulse somewhere in his consciousness smiled smugly. It would take time.

Her eyes shifted nervously to him. He was angry, his eyes were boiling with something. She moved close to him, but he warded her away with a clenched fist. A large beep sounded, the microwave had completed its task. She left the room.

It had been a long few weeks, she thought softy, trying to rid herself of emotion. His eyes kept slicing into her, that night kept coming back. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t. She couldn’t help justifying him, work was bad at the moment. He only hit her with a shoe, a shoe.

She caught her reflection in the microwave window and sighed. Her eye bulged angrily at her, she knew it wanted acknowledgment, something in her conscious mind to admit it had even happened. After a moment of hesitation, she ignored its pleas, opening the microwave and sending the image into oblivion.

The strangled sausages looked pathetically up at her. The lack of money was gradually wearing every aspect of their lives down. As the corporations completed the selling off of the primary sector for greater efficiency, thousands of farmers seemed to be daily falling into bankruptcy. It was only a matter of weeks before she would have to sell out. He was the more depressed; they were his oranges.

It had been a glorious plan, ignore the organic revolution, produce sensible, well sized, sprayed and engineered oranges. It was successful, until corporations began biting into the industry. His eyes looked up hopefully as she came through the door.

The dinner was not what he had hoped. The eyes dropped as soon as they saw the plate. She couldn’t help but feeling sorry for him. He had done something terrible, but he was suffering so much more than he could ever deserve. His eyes again looked at the ground.

"Got an offer today."

She almost dropped the plate, "Who?"

"Some American, offered a few hundred thousand, what you’d expect."

He stood up and took a step towards her. His eyes settled on the sausages, "This it?"

"Yes…sorry…" She tried to say something but a vague sense of pity spread through her mouth, "You know it’ll be ok, we’ll sort it out."

He shifted in his boots for a moment, a flurry of expressions passing over his face. Before she knew what was happening, the plate was placed on the table and he had turned for the door. She felt helpless: he walked out without even looking at her. After staring at the sausages for a few minutes, she began weeping openly. Her eyes looked down in utter humiliation, she didn’t even know if she meant the farm.

Time passed. His consciousness concentrated on the nearest other, its conscious rejection throbbing angrily. For a moment, it struck a strange chord throughout his being but he blinked the instinct away concentrating deeper into the mind of the other. He thought the way the other did, he spread and for a moment became the other.

Time seemed to stand still. An acute sense of nothingness spread through him. Everything seemed somewhat depressingly dull, yet somehow the boredom seemed interesting. The effect only lasted a few moments, but enough for him to lower the bonds of isolation.

He felt somewhat satisfied for a moment. The warmth of association coupled with a strange feeling of power strengthened his confidence. The isolation came again, doubly as strong as before. It hit him hard but after a moment of pain, he began probing at the nearest others again.

His mind was boiling. Something inside him had cracked. It’d happened the other day. There was the shoe. He just hit her. Deep angry moans emerged from his throat and he tried to yell. Immediately a gust of icy wind searched for warmth inside his mouth, and after a gasp, he closed his mouth. Time again drifted slowly around him, the trees laughed. He shook his fist at them, he punched one, it wasn’t really satisfying, more painful.

With a slight swing of his hips, he leapt just far enough and grabbed an orange. The narrow connection with the tree broke feebly, and the farmer smiled smugly. He stared at the orange for a moment. It was a normal orange, maybe a little weightier than he’d accept commercially. After a slight hesitation, he dug his fingers into the core and started peeling.

He didn’t know what to think, what to feel. His whole thought patterns had gone numb, he felt utterly alone. Once, when he first began thinking, the others had almost completely isolated him, it had been a horrible feeling, everything had felt as if it was falling apart. The feeling spreading through his mind now was if everything had already fallen apart and was all crumbling in on him.

That was bad enough but now there was something else. Something that forced his whole mind to seize up and everything flare as if a thousand worlds were isolating him at once. Something. It was too much. Too much, he wanted time to spin backwards. He wanted the slight isolation, the other minds to play with, the other minds. He wanted that deep satisfaction, the endless thoughts, the slight feelings on every horizon. And there was something else.

It was strange. He felt weaker than he’d ever felt. His mind felt like it was going to be ripped apart slowly from the core. He felt bewilderingly insignificant, a nothing inside everything. And as time slowly passed in this agonizing phase, he felt more and more insignificant, where the others were there was something more, something different yet something a million times more powerful than all the minds put together. After a longer period than he had ever thought about, his mind gained a little rationality. The impossibly omnipotent mind seemed to be crushing him, it took an effort to think.

Time passed slowly as he grew weaker. Ideas came and went, memories of perfection, the huge sense of loss that seemed to penetrate so deeply. He never thought he would even care if he died. It seemed the ultimate adventure but the feeling of loss was unbearable. All he seemed to want was the feeling of furthers, the feeling of Them that he had despised for so long.

He wondered where he was. Perhaps it was the end, it seemed to be. But there was nothing but pain, nothing but this crushing hellish consciousness, there must be some way of stopping it. Then the idea again floated uncertainly into his conscious thoughts. Controlling all of the immediate had been a strangely powerful feeling but all the furthers together couldn’t have added up to a percentage of the power he was facing. The crushing continued unsettled but he began tentatively thinking with the power.

Time rolled softly by and although his mind didn’t succeed in penetrating anything, the probing stopped, and the inevitable crushing sensation ceased to be. Instead he kept feeling things, strange bursts of something until one burst angrily into every corner of his essence.

"No!" He screamed, his voice thundering into the crumbling floorboards.

She shrugged, her eyes betraying the growing fear that her body was successfully quelling, "We can’t turn down half a mil hon."

"We will turn down everything." He replied, calming down a little, "You listen here, this is my farm and I’ll do with it what I want to do with it."

Time slowed, both looked at each other. The farmers skin, sagging softly with the juices of harvest ripping apart every pore, seemed to reform and he was once again the strong and arrogant farmer that had once wrestled a prize bull to the ground. A thrill of excitement passed through her unexpectedly, he had been submissive for years. Only temperamental and on that one occasion violent, this seemed a new turn.

He spat fire, "You will tell them to leave."

"If you wish dear." The surrender replied, "But its inevitable, I have signed the papers."

"I don’t care about any fucking papers." Again his eyes switched to the door, this time burning with murderous fury, "This is my house, my land, if those fucking accountants even set a foot on my land, I’ll show them the worth of life insurance."

She smiled at the slight essence of humour creeping back in. "I think its best you calm down sweety."

He just stamped angrily on the floor, shaking the whole house. She again let a small smile pass through her lips. He was losing it again, she could see that but it was something of a relief. When he came back from the walk, he had been perplexed, incredibly so. For days, he’d just been sitting and thinking. Occasionally he had started talking to himself, about deep philosophic issues. She’d began to wish he’d hit her with another shoe.

He turned again, his face contorted with rage, "You mean to say, you signed, you actually signed the papers."

"Darling, this is a deal we had to take, you do understand that this means we will be managing more than we ever have before, we are incorporating the Skinners estates." She said, a bright smile on her face, "This is good news, very good news."

Again his face was turned to her with that strange new expression, "I am not a businessman, I don’t care about money, if I fucking cared about money I wouldn’t have bought this fucking dead end orange farm."

"What do you care about honey…oranges?" Her mellow voice took on a bitter edge, "We built this farm to make money and that’s all we’ve ever cared about."

"You just don’t understand." He replied, his voice quieter, "You can’t understand."

He was gaining ground. He couldn’t believe it, the throws of anger that had seemed enough to crush him left the mind weak and vulnerable. He again probed deeper. So many emotions, so much richness, and there was something else. Sensations, touch, sound, taste and now growing stronger as he concentrated on it, the vision. He now knew about the light, knew about the darkness, and more, different light.

Yet, he couldn’t escape the burning sensation that was still wrapping his body. The want for the others, them and the furthers. There was something he was beginning to understand, something about what he was to the giant, something that might bring the burning to an end. He ignored the thoughts and again began to concentrate. Trying not to admit it to himself, he realized he was gaining the upper hand.

The farmer blinked slowly, he couldn’t quite place it but everything was slowly beginning to become darker and less clear. He’d have to go to the doctor sometime. The anger was still burning, but it seemed less now. He couldn’t place what was draining him, some kind of flu. His wife was staring at him; there was a strange look in her eyes, a hatred.

"They are coming any minute now, with the new equipment and we are moving to a hotel for a few days while they set up the farm." She said quickly and succinctly, "Honey, I am dealing with them, I want you to go."

"No." He said, a lot weaker than he’d wanted to, "What do you mean farm?"

"Oh sorry honey, I didn’t mention, they are taking out all the trees, apparently our soil is more suited to wheat, we are in a strictly wheat district."

He sat down, as his anger was reaching its peak, everything seemed to be phasing away "I’m not…I don’t…I…"

And then he blinked. And then he heard, and felt, and smelt and everything became blindingly clear.

"Honey?" She asked, "Are you ok?"

He looked at her, quickly processing memories, "Yes."

He turned and began walking towards the door. She grabbed his shoulder roughly turning him around, "Listen, honey I said, I will deal with them."

There was a rapping on the door, he stared at her quizzically, then turned around and opened it. There were two men at the door, one in a neat suit holding a suitcase, the other holding a rough spade, "You ready sir?" the neat one asked, "We can begin anytime you would like."

He reached forward and touched the accountant. He felt the others consciousness, it was dark, dingy and full of purpose, profits, a dark word. Darkness was the enemy, he knew now. He had to rid his world…all the world of darkness. The accountant’s body convulsed violently for a moment then crumpled up into a heap on the ground.

The worker stared at the farmer in complete disbelief, "Call…call an…ambulance."

He smiled, the pride that coursed through his body seemed utterly delightful, "No."

"Why….why not?" The worker asked, backing away from the clearly insane farmer.

His mind moved smoothly into the workers, feeling its corruption and severing its consciousness. The worker crumpled next to the farmer.

Another, wider smile crept across the face of the now unrecognizable farmer. His wife had already fainted, her mind now deep in shock. There were others milling around, all with dark thoughts of some kind, each dropped with little effort. He began to stride purposely towards the…trees, the tree. His world.

He felt a warmth course through him. Another one had ceased isolating him, one of the nearest. His mind lay dormant, attempting to ward off thought. Time had passed slowly, the furthers cries no longer featured in his mind, instead his unspoken instincts told him it was almost over. His consciousness rested, warding itself off from the thinking that the others hated. Instead, almost fearful of the end, he thought solely on the possibility of creation.

Then suddenly, something woke him from the slumber, a strange murmuring of the furthers that penetrated deep into his own mind. The others were also active, scornful of the murmuring. Something of an outsider, an invader, something. He immediately started thinking, ignoring the rush of icy isolation.

An outsider, a consciousness from outside the tree. For a moment, he felt himself thinking about the perfection of this outsider and how it should be accepted, but the strange turn didn’t last long. He felt angry instead, the smears of invasion reeking through his mind. How dare another choose his thoughts, this will not go unpunished.

Immediately he could feel a wave of isolation hit the newcomer. It seemed to hesitate, and he felt the burst of an idea. The weakness, he thought as widely as he could. Another wave of isolation hit the being, and suddenly the isolation stopped. In fact, he realised the mistake he was making and instead decided to give the being a chance to show the truth. Again the presence removed itself, and a burst of anger sent a worldwide isolation wave at the newcomer.

And it withered away into nothingness. The turn was over. A satisfaction spread throughout the close ones. Any isolation still left withered away but something was still wrong. He couldn’t place it. It was something wrong with everything. All the minds seemed to sense it now. Everything was…somehow…dark.