The vast disintegration was a insidious fate. A planet gradually disengaging from its existence. Devon understood that violence was useless—it would merely become another type of hopeless deed for the fading stillness to consume. He possessed no opposing ceremony, no pattern of sound.
He carried nothing but the artifacts, in his pocket and a body that continued, persistently to follow his commands.
He rose from the carpet. The atmosphere felt like gel, every motion a tremendous act of determination countering the creeping drowsiness. He glanced at the flawless grid- design of the living circuit now flickering with a nauseating uneven glow. Its structure was the issue. Its impeccable reasoning was fueling the brake.
Order needed to be disrupted. Not replaced by an order but by chaos.
He faltered ahead not aiming for Flavio or the abyss. For the closest boundary of the human spiral. His shoe, worn and issued by Europol hovered above a thread linking the epidemiologist to a Swiss government official he did not know.
He didn't stomp. He dragged his feet.
He swept his heel sideways across the streak of grey dust and glowing bioluminescent light. It wasn't aggression; it was defacement. A rough clumsy obliteration.
The filament's glow didn't simply shatter; it flickered, ejecting flashes of icy flame. The two linked subjects twitched slightly—their physical response. A subtle simultaneous crease appeared on both their foreheads as though one unified idea had been disturbed.
Flavio yelled, a noise of artistic agony. "Cease! You're destroying the balance!"
That was the intention. Devon wandered forward a drunk wandering through a museum. He brushed against Alistair Croft's shoulder not forcefully, but sufficiently to disturb the don from his flawless seated pose. Croft tilted to one side his stance now flawed, human. The stream of energy emanating from him faltered.
Devon slipped his hand into his pocket. Withdrew the wrinkled evidence bag. He didn't toss it into the air or, at Flavio. Instead he relaxed his grip. Allowed it to drop onto the middle of the Liber Ignaviae slate.
The synthetic, rustling, contemporary and bizarre lay upon the age-carved rock. It concealed an emblem of the spiral. It acted as a noise. A mental offense.
The space, over the slate gleamed, resembling a pond rippled by a cast stone. Its flawless possible blankness was currently marred by a fragment of refuse.
"No! That's not allowed!" Hugo Hubert yelled from the entrance, where he and Luna were caught in the thickening atmosphere their motions reduced to statues. "This isn't a disturbance! It's merely… rubbish!"
"Yes " Devon gasped, his breathing heavy. He was standing beside Kale Kane. He noticed the philosopher's blank expression. Instinctively motivated by a human urge, for connection he extended his hand and grasped Kane's lifeless one. He made no attempt to rouse him. He simply held it. A warm living flawed hold on a flawless one.
It was an act. It fulfilled no function. It violated no rule. It was simply… touch.
The circuit's irregular beat faltered. The turbulent surge of disintegration sweeping across Geneva appeared to pause as though face-to-face, with a irrational tangle.
Flavio gazed, watching his master plan fall apart not due to an attack but because of a string of foolish human mistakes. An uneven mark. A scrap of trash. A clasped hand. This was the "senseless behavior" that his perfect calculations failed to predict. It was the corruption, in the system—not a belief but the rejection of belief. The emergence of the meaningless.
Devon with his will fading to its end flickering like a dying flame faced the middle of the room. There were no acts remaining. Thus he chose the basic utterly inconsequential action he could imagine.
He started applauding.
Not in rhythm. Not to rally or to celebrate. Slow, uneven, off-beat claps. Clap… … clap-clap… … clap…
The noise was a brittle snap, amid the dense quiet. It came from a set of hands clapping where there was no reason to do so. It was movement devoid of any significance, intent or elegance. Sheer determined, bodily sound.
Each clap was a tiny, violent rebellion against the sublime, silent logic of the void. Against the elegant surrender of the circuit. Against the very concept of a perfect, final solution.
Clap… … clap…
The deterioration decelerated. The dull lethargic fog sapping the determination, from Geneva appeared to fade near that single relentless meaningless noise.
Flavio Fergal, the architect of rest observed the agent of chaos bring in rubbish disturb his saints and applaud without cause. At that instant he realized his loss. He had expected resistance, debate and opposition in faith. He was unprepared, for this. For the human completely pointless, completely magnificent rejection of reason.
The Grand Conjunction didn't end with a bang, or a whimper. It ended with a slow, off-beat clap, and the terrible, beautiful sound of a single flawed man choosing, over and over, to make a meaningless noise.