Dust the Colour of Blood

"The portal only looked like a door. Turns out it was a trapdoor—and Luke had just kicked it shut behind us."

The dust was the colour of dried blood.

That was my first coherent thought as I stood in what should have been impossible—a landscape that stretched endlessly before me in waves of brown and rust-orange, hills rising and falling like the backs of sleeping giants, all of it utterly devoid of anything I recognised as life. Not a single blade of grass. Not a bird in the cloudless sky. Not even the distant hum of insects that would have been inescapable in any Australian wilderness. Just silence so complete it felt like pressure against my eardrums, and the voice still echoing in some chamber of my mind that shouldn't have existed.

Welcome to Clivilius, Paul Smith.

The greeting—if that's what it was—had burrowed into my consciousness without passing through my ears. No sound. No voice in the conventional sense. Just words arriving fully formed in my awareness, planted there by something I couldn't see, couldn't comprehend, couldn't begin to explain with the tattered remnants of my understanding of how reality was supposed to function.

"Did you hear it?" Luke's voice shattered my reverie, snapping me back to the present moment—if present was even the right word for a place that seemed to exist outside of any timeline I'd ever inhabited. His face was alight with something between excitement and vindication, the expression of a man whose wildest beliefs had just been proven spectacularly correct.

I managed a nod. Words seemed inadequate. What could I possibly say? Yes, Luke, I heard the disembodied telepathic greeting from an alien world. Please pass the butter. The absurdity of the situation was so vast it threatened to overwhelm me.

Jamie stood nearby, his face the colour of curdled milk. Whatever composure he'd maintained through the awkward car ride and the tense confrontation in the kitchen had evaporated entirely. He looked like a man who'd walked through a door expecting a broom cupboard and found himself standing on the surface of Mars. Which, in a sense, was exactly what had happened to all of us.

"This is where life will begin anew," Luke declared, his arms spreading wide as if to embrace the desolation surrounding us. His voice rang with the certainty of a prophet delivering revelation—absolute conviction wrapped in enthusiasm.

An involuntary shiver ran through me, cold fingers tracing the length of my spine despite the warmth of the alien sun overhead. There was something in Luke's tone—something that went beyond enthusiasm into territory I couldn't quite name. Zeal, perhaps. Or the particular intensity of someone who had been waiting years for this moment, rehearsing it in the theatre of his imagination until reality itself bent to accommodate the performance.

The silence that followed his proclamation stretched like a held breath. I found myself looking around, searching for something—anything—that might anchor me to comprehensibility. The landscape offered nothing. Just dust and hills and that vast, empty sky, blue as a promise that had already been broken.

My arms began moving before I consciously decided to move them, waving through the empty air in sweeping arcs. The gesture felt ridiculous even as I performed it—a thirty-five-year-old businessman flailing at nothing like a child trying to catch soap bubbles. But some desperate part of my brain refused to accept what my eyes were reporting. This had to be a trick. A projection. Some elaborate virtual reality that Luke had somehow constructed in his study.

"What are you doing, Paul?" Luke's question carried a note of genuine curiosity, as though my behaviour were the strange thing about this situation rather than the fact that we were standing in an impossible alien landscape.

"I'm trying to find the study walls," I admitted, and the words sounded exactly as ridiculous as they deserved to. But I couldn't stop. My hands swept through air that felt entirely real—warm, dry, carrying a faint mineral scent that reminded me uncomfortably of the outback. No resistance. No hidden surfaces. Nothing but emptiness where solid walls should have been.

I wanted this to be a hologram. A projection. Some technological marvel that would explain everything without requiring me to discard every assumption I'd ever made about how the universe functioned. But even as I grasped for that explanation, I knew it couldn't be true. The heat on my skin was real. The dust beneath my shoes was real. The way my lungs expanded with each breath of this alien air—all of it insisted on its authenticity with a persistence that left no room for denial.

"I can assure you, Clivilius is very real," Luke said, and his voice carried not a trace of mockery or jest. Just calm certainty, the tone of someone stating obvious facts to a slow student. The sky is blue. Water is wet. This alien world is entirely real. Accept it and move on.

I let my arms drop to my sides. The study walls weren't there. Of course they weren't. I was standing in another world entirely, and my brother had brought me here, and somewhere in Broken Hill my wife was probably wondering why I hadn't returned her thirteen missed calls, and none of this—absolutely none of it—made even the smallest fraction of sense.

Luke bent down and retrieved something from the dust at our feet—an object that looked absurdly familiar in this landscape of the utterly alien. A book. Slightly weathered, its spine cracked from use that had occurred in another lifetime, another world.

"I recognise this book," Jamie said, his voice cutting through the stillness with an edge that hadn't been there before. He snatched the book from Luke's hands. "This is one of your uni books that you've had sitting in the bookcase untouched since we met, isn't it?"

"Indeed, it is," Luke confirmed, and there was something in his tone—pride, perhaps, or nostalgia—that suggested this book's presence here carried significance I couldn't yet grasp.

The surrealism of the moment intensified. A university textbook lying in the dust of an alien world. Objects from Luke's study materialising in Clivilius. The implications spiralled outward, each possibility more disturbing than the last. How long had Luke been coming here? What else had he brought? What was he planning?

"I don't understand," I said, turning to face Luke directly. My eyes searched his face for answers, for some indication that this was all part of some elaborate explanation that would eventually make sense. "There's nothing here."

The words felt inadequate. There was nothing here. Just dust and emptiness and a sky that belonged to no planet I'd ever known. Whatever Luke's grand visions entailed, whatever "new life" he imagined beginning in this place, I couldn't see it. I could only see desolation.

"Apart from a pile of large boxes," Jamie corrected, his gaze shifting to something off to our right. I followed his eyes and saw them—a stack of cardboard boxes sitting incongruously in the rust-coloured landscape, looking for all the world like someone had started moving house and then abandoned the project halfway through. Jamie walked toward them, curiosity apparently overcoming his earlier shock. "Why are all these here?"

"It's going to be the first shelter here in Clivilius," Luke stated, his voice carrying the conviction of someone announcing the cornerstone of a cathedral rather than a pile of cardboard in a wasteland.

"What the hell does Clivilius need a shelter for?" Jamie's incredulity was palpable, his brow furrowed in the particular way of someone confronting absurdity too vast to process.

"And what even is Clivilius?" I added, the question bursting from me with the urgency of water escaping a cracked dam. The name had been floating through my consciousness since the telepathic greeting, but I still had no framework for understanding what it meant, what this place was, why any of us were standing in it.

"This place is Clivilius," Luke said, his arms spreading wide again in that gesture of encompassing embrace, as if the word itself should explain everything. "And the shelter is for the start of our new civilisation."

Jamie and I exchanged glances. In that brief moment of eye contact, something passed between us—a shared recognition of the magnitude of what Luke had just said, and the impossibility of knowing how to respond to it. Our new civilisation. As if the three of us—a businessman, a nurse, and a dreamer—were going to found a society in this empty wasteland, using cardboard boxes as our first building materials.

"It has to start somewhere," Luke murmured, his shoulders lifting in a shrug that carried the weight of visions only he could see. His voice held something between resignation and quiet determination, the tone of a man who had accepted a burden others couldn't comprehend.

"What the hell do we need a new civilisation for?" Jamie's frustration cracked through his words like lightning splitting a night sky. "I'm quite happy with the current one, thank you very much!" His stance was combative now, shoulders squared, jaw tight—a man pushed past the limits of patience and demanding answers that made sense.

"You'll see in time," Luke responded, his calmness a stark counterpoint to Jamie's rising temper. "It will all make sense."

"Fuck time," Jamie spat, his voice rising. "I'm going home. This place is shit. It's just dust for God's sake! There's enough of that in the outback." The disdain in his words was matched only by the determination in his stride as he turned and began walking toward the portal—that shimmering wall of impossible colours that still pulsed against the landscape behind us, the doorway through which we'd entered this world.

I watched him go, a mixture of emotions churning in my gut. Part of me wanted to follow. The sensible part. The part that still believed in plane tickets and bedroom windows and marriages that needed saving. But another part—the part that had always been curious, that had always wanted to understand things even when understanding hurt—that part kept me rooted to the spot, waiting to see what would happen next.

Jamie's approach to the portal was tentative despite his earlier bluster. His steps slowed as he neared the swirling colours, his body language shifting from defiant march to cautious advance. He paused at the threshold, and I could see the hesitation in the set of his shoulders—the animal instinct warring with intellectual determination.

"Well, off you go then," Luke called out, and beneath the surface lightness of his words I heard something else. Disappointment. Concern. The tone of someone watching a plan deviate from its intended course.

"I'm trying," Jamie shot back, frustration boiling over as he threw his hands toward the wall of colour in a gesture of defeat. His body language spoke of struggle, of resistance against something invisible.

My stomach clenched. Something was wrong. Jamie was standing right at the threshold—I could see the colours dancing centimetres from his outstretched hands—but he wasn't passing through. Wasn't vanishing into the light the way we had done so effortlessly back in the study.

"What do you mean you're trying?" The question escaped me before I could moderate it, anxiety flooding my voice. The implications of what I was witnessing hadn't fully formed yet, but some instinct was already screaming warnings I couldn't articulate.

"I mean I'm trying to leave, but the bloody thing won't let me," Jamie growled, his exasperation giving way to something darker. He made a shoving motion toward the portal, his palms pressing against what should have been nothing but light and colour. But I could see it now—the resistance, the invisible barrier that held him back as surely as any wall.

The portal wouldn't let him leave.

The realisation hit me like a fist to the solar plexus. We hadn't just stepped through a doorway into another world. We'd walked into a trap. A prison without bars, where the walls were made of light and the locks were constructed from forces I couldn't begin to understand.

Then the portal struck back.

One moment Jamie was pressing against the invisible barrier. The next, he was flying backward through the air, hurled away from the colours as if swatted by an enormous, unseen hand. He hit the ground hard, raising a cloud of rust-coloured dust, and lay motionless.

I was moving before I knew I'd started, my legs carrying me toward him with the urgency of pure instinct. Luke was right beside me, concern etched deep into his features.

"What the hell was that?" The words tore from my throat, fear and confusion tangling together into something that barely resembled speech. My voice, usually steady, trembled with the intensity of what I'd just witnessed.

"Jamie! Jamie, are you okay?" Luke reached for Jamie's hand, searching for signs of injury. Jamie's shirt was torn and dishevelled from his violent flight, dust coating him from head to foot, but when Luke examined his hand it seemed miraculously intact.

"This fucking place is trying to kill me!" Jamie's voice was a blade of anger and shock, cutting through the tension as he pulled away from Luke's touch—rejecting comfort, rejecting explanation, rejecting everything. "What the hell were you thinking bringing us here?!"

"I didn't know that was going to happen!" Luke protested, his voice climbing with desperation and what might have been guilt. The certainty that had characterised him since we'd arrived was cracking, fractures appearing in the facade of the confident visionary.

I knelt beside Jamie, my heart hammering against my ribs like something trying to escape. My mind was racing, cataloguing possibilities and discarding them just as quickly. There had to be an explanation. There had to be a way out. Luke had walked through the portal effortlessly. Why couldn't Jamie?

"Let me try," I heard myself say, and immediately regretted the words. But they were out now, floating in the alien air, and some stubborn part of me—the part that had to understand, had to test, had to know—refused to take them back.

"Are you insane? Didn't you see what just happened?" Jamie's disbelief was written across every line of his face, his eyes still wide with the memory of being thrown through the air like a discarded toy.

"Maybe you did it wrong?" The suggestion sounded weak even to my own ears—the desperate grasp of someone searching for any explanation that might restore order to a universe that had gone spectacularly off the rails.

"Oh, fuck off, Paul." Jamie's response was instantaneous and sharp, pain and frustration combining into dismissal.

"Hey! Don't speak to him like that," Luke interjected.

"Fuck you all," Jamie growled, cradling his arm as he struggled to his feet.

The tension between us hung in the air like smoke after an explosion. The dust settled slowly around Jamie's impact site, rust-coloured particles drifting in the still air. The portal continued its patient dance of colours, beautiful and terrible and utterly indifferent to the drama unfolding before it.

Something in me hardened. Resolve, perhaps. Or the particular stubbornness that had gotten me through difficult business negotiations, through a failing marriage, through years of performing faith I no longer felt. I needed to know. Whatever the cost, I needed to understand what we were dealing with.

I approached the portal slowly, each step deliberate and measured. The colours seemed to intensify as I drew closer, their dance becoming more urgent, more alive. I could feel something in the air around me—a charge, a vibration, as if the portal were aware of my approach and responding to it.

It's going to be fine, I told myself, the mantra looping through my thoughts with each advancing step. It's going to be fine.

But with each step, the resistance grew. The air thickened around me, turning viscous, opposing my movement like I was wading through honey that couldn't be seen. By the time I was close enough to touch the colours—a finger's width from that swirling wall of light—I could barely move at all. The air itself crackled and fizzed, tiny sparks of energy dancing across my skin.

"What's wrong with this thing?" The question escaped me, more complaint than inquiry, as I strained against the invisible force holding me back.

"There's nothing wrong with it," Luke said, and before I could process the implications of that statement he was brushing past me, stepping into the swirling colours with the casual ease of someone walking through an open door. The light embraced him, and he was gone—vanished back to his study in Berriedale, leaving Jamie and me alone in this impossible place.

"Fuck!" Jamie's curse split the silence as he launched himself toward the portal again, desperate hope overriding the memory of his earlier rejection. But the result was the same—he slammed into an invisible barrier and was thrown back, though not as violently as before.

My legs began to tremble. The full weight of our situation was settling onto my shoulders, compressing my chest, making it difficult to breathe. Luke could pass through. We couldn't. Luke had the key—literally, that small device in his pocket—and we were locked out. Locked in. Trapped.

"I don't understand," I said, and my voice quivered with the panic that was gnawing at the edges of my composure. "Why can't we leave?"

The question hung unanswered in the alien air. No telepathic voice offered explanation. No mystical force provided comfort. Just silence, and dust, and the terrible realisation that I had walked willingly into a prison whose walls I couldn't see and whose exit I couldn't use.

Then it came again—that voice without sound, those words without origin, bypassing my ears entirely to plant themselves directly in my consciousness:

Welcome to Clivilius, Paul Smith.

The greeting echoed and re-echoed, patient and implacable, a loop that seemed designed to drive home the permanence of my new situation. I collapsed to my knees, the dust soft and warm beneath me, my fingers digging into the alien soil as if I might somehow anchor myself against the tide of impossibility threatening to sweep me away.

Beside me, Jamie's frustration erupted in a visceral scream that tore through the stillness—a raw, primal release of the helplessness we both felt.

"Fuck!" The word stretched into something beyond mere profanity, a howl of despair that sent rust-coloured dust billowing into the air as Jamie kicked at the ground.

I lay back, letting the ground receive my weight, and stared up into that impossibly blue sky. My heart hammered against my ribs. My thoughts careened between fear, betrayal, and a creeping numbness that threatened to become permanent.

What the hell have you done, Luke?

The question circled through my mind like a vulture over carrion—patient, inevitable, waiting to feast on whatever remained of my understanding of my brother, my family, my life.

Somewhere in Broken Hill, Claire was probably pacing our kitchen, her fury building with each unanswered call. My children were with their grandparents, blissfully unaware that their father had fallen off the edge of the world. My business partners would be expecting me in meetings I would never attend. My life—the careful construction of thirty-five years—was crumbling in my absence, and I was lying in the dust of an alien world.

The portal continued its patient dance behind me, beautiful and terrible, the door that only opened one way for people like Jamie and me.

There was no going back.

The thought arrived with the weight of a verdict, final and absolute. Whatever happened next—whatever Luke's grand vision entailed, whatever civilisation he imagined building in this wasteland—Jamie and I were part of it now. Not by choice. Not by consent. By the simple, terrible fact of being trapped in a world we didn't understand, at the mercy of forces we couldn't see, dependent on a brother whose motives I could no longer trust.

The dust of Clivilius settled around me, coating my clothes, filling the creases of my palms, becoming part of me whether I wanted it or not.

Welcome to Clivilius, indeed.