It was as though the world had been frozen in an instant, and this latest arrival from beyond had just happened to catch it at that moment. So perfect was the illusion that even after so many days spent in the gloom of the shelter, the explorer still found the place to be disconcerting. The sky on the very first day had been a brilliant blue, and as the explorer watched, the clouds seemed to have taken forever to scurry across its surface.
Now, however, the sky was a dull, lifeless grey, like a projection of a grey sky onto the bottom of a grey ocean. It hung in the air, impenetrable… uninhabitable… sheer emptiness.
Strange sounds echoed through the bunker—tiny, tinny echoes from the single, stupefyingly huge loudspeaker that was triggered to play any non-essential announcements. What was real—what was artificial—was hard to tell. The explorer could no longer tell the difference.
And then that afternoon, a new voice cascaded through the bunker.
“JSS-12,” it said. “Match target.”
It was her turn. She had been chosen.
The operating table was big enough to comfortably seat four, but only three were in it. One was lying still, limbs splayed. The other two were strapped to instruments, and though their breaths were steady, their eyes were glazed.
The next couple were male, who looked almost identical. There was some sort of instruction made up for the dual test of the machine, instructions that the explorer was barely able to understand. They were labelled as J and P, but to the explorer they looked more like M and AD. The explorer was not sure.
Which was all right. She did not care. It was the explorer’s turn.
For the last three days the explorer had been engaged in an operation of quite a different sort. All her days had been devoted to this one task, and the nights too. But that did not bother the explorer—because at night she was sleeping.
There was a certain feeling of determination. And fear.
They had made it as easy as possible for the explorer. She had seen the procedure once already, but had not quite grasped the process. Still, it was quite intriguing. The machine had tremendous potential.
How lucky to be chosen.
The explorer sat on the soft mattress of the sagging bed and felt the sheets sticking to her back. What did she feel? After all, this was one of the greatest human achievements, this was what was going to ensure the survival of the human race.
Those humans in the pods—they were going to awaken.
That was what she was going to do for the rest of her life. And it was what she was about to do now.
The instructions played by themselves.
Bring her closer, they said.
Place her in the chair…
“JSS-12, match target,” it said again, and the explorer wondered if she was repeating herself. It was probably just the little sounds of the lone speaker, echoing against the walls of the bunker.
“JSS-12, match target,” it said again. Then, “JSS-12, fixate on J,” and the explorer felt a thrust of joy run through her.
The time of the awakening was at hand.
“JSS-12, fixate.” It was the first time the explorer knew that he was her own name.
“JSS-12, fixate.”
Something just did not feel right.
Assignment:
One JSS-12, fixate on P.
One JSS-12, fixate on AD.
The sounds in the bunker took on a surreal urgency.
“JSS-12, fixate on AD.”
Start at the chest, the explorer reminded herself.
And then she froze.
The explorer closed her eyes—and the world was gone.
She was outside.
The atmosphere was different—slightly less tense, it seemed. Outside there was a grey of the sort that the explorer had not experienced before. The explorer knew that she must be on Earth.
Why had she been on Earth?
And then she knew. This was more than just a moment of clarity, this was more than just a thought. The explorer could see. She could see what she had been.
And at that moment something rushed over her and what had been her memories came rushing back, and she knew it all.
The explorer looked down at her hands and saw them as broken bones—bones of a hand. Her eyes saw them with relief. They were fingers, all right.
The explorer saw herself then, in a hospital gown that did not quite match anyone’s standards of decency—or of dress code, for that matter. Her hair was uncombed and somehow too soft for her to think of it as just hair. It was grey and all of it was hers—her own, hers, hers.
Her eyelashes were long but her thoughts were not.
The explorer saw a hospital room. There were many of them. Starched doctors and nurses. Others like her, in the same gowns. They were in their own rooms, but the only ones that her eyes could really discern were the three that happened to be around her. One of them was very old, sleeping. One of them was very young. One of them was crying.
There was something else. It was not so easy to describe. It was an absence of something—and then the explorer could see a room with nothing in it.
“This is JSS-12, eye-patch up and fixate on AD. Keep EMU under 150 and prevent sleep,” one of the doctors said. The explorer thought it strange that the doctors had not even bothered to try to time their sentences—it did not seem to matter.
“This is JSS-12, eye-patch up and fixate on AD”—this time not quite so quickly.
Pic (Source)
nice sci-fi story!!
interesting song and nice cover, hearing it for the first time.
BTW I think you should start posting in communities. You should check out some of the communities in ocd's incubation program. i think you would find some interesting ones to subscribe to and post in.
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