Babylon

Space. Nothing but horizon.

And yet, somehow, he is back here. On Earth. The universe has a funny way of working things out, doesn't it?

London again, of course. If Rome is the eternal city and New York never sleeps, then London is Babylon – the hungry metropolis is a magnet for the talented, the ambitious, the vain and the venal, yet in its long history it has been home to refugees and penniless artists, liberators and healers and engineers, angry students and the bourgeois elite. The hopeful flocked to the world's first global city, recognisable through the centuries by its diversity, and though there has been no civil war here for over three hundred years it is full of little revolutions. London doesn't scream, it doesn't promote itself – it doesn't have to. Instead, the city is in a constant state of metamorphosis and reinvention as the world around shifts from the age of empires to the dawn of the superpowers. It is a city in flux that, although understated, never fails to make its mark (much like its people). Disraeli had been right.

(Babylon fell. All that remains is myth and dust.)

The first time he meets her, he thinks of Babylon. He thinks of a hot Asian sun on dry land, the labour of hundreds and the inevitable draw of time, the forces conspiring to create life. Hot blood. Her skin is bronze, her hair as dark as those huge brown eyes of hers that look at him expectantly.

In this old body of his, he might have found it easier not to care but she is so very human and she forces him to. Because to be human is to care. He is quick to add that he isn't human, thank you very much, but they both know that's not the point.

"You do care," she says, with such certainty he doesn't doubt her for a moment.

She's smart, this one, far too smart for her own good. Never resting on one idea or in one place for long, she is a bundle of restlessness and passion that he cannot believe can be contained within one girl. Oh, and she's so stubborn, so proud– too much, was always her problem, too much caring - but he doesn't think much of it until he realises in one catastrophic moment that he has lost her. He is standing right beside her, close enough to see her hands trembling out of the corner of his eyes, and he has lost her.

What is in front of him is terrifying because he has seen this before.

He was wrong; she is Babylon.

(Babylon fell.)