the sleep facility - concluded
four:
once upon a time there was a girl and a ship and once upon a time
a girl in the water.
But when you float, everything is far away.
A burly face and the dark eyes had crinkled like money.
"Ok,ok," he'd said in his Scottish voice. "Ali - I'll take you. If your brother's there, sure... I know it alright; I was a guard there once. I'll get you in - and if he's there we'll get him out. They owe me."
"Can i trust you?"
"You're buying my trust, remember?"
Remember.
Once upon a time i suppose they asked me questions,
but i don't remember saying much, just the voice behind me, telling me stuff, explaining, calm, like reading out loud or maybe the words they'd been said before, to other people, how many times - how many others??
And they told me lies too.
“The man you followed here is dead.”
Lies.
"You have no brother."
But i do. i can see him.
“That body in there is just that, it doesn’t know you, can’t see you.”
Lies.
Because my brother has marble eyes and they don't blink, not even when his body thrashes in the tank and he touches his hand to the glass - and i do the same.
And i hear - the men in the dark behind me, their shock and surprise.
And i can feel the earth falling away.
And for an instant the voices stop.
But only for an instant.
"Some, some few - those who didn't sleep but dreamt nonetheless, they were the precious ones here."
The words swirl like ink, like colours in a rain puddle, shapes of clouds, twisting and changing.
"In ancient times poets sought such a thing, inspiration, something... well, I don't know what, but, they would use drugs, chemicals. Opiates mostly, shifting the dreams into the daylight and the void into the night. Blank in their sleeping."
Sleep.
"Blank like you."
No i'm not!
"So we took the sleep away, removed it from them completely, and gave them dreams to live in, and to become. Really, that's a wonderful thing."
My hand slips from the glass and I’m weightless now, even in chains, I’m lighter than air…
"Think about it, just think, if you can think. Try to appreciate - the condition... Poets were simply the first to run to the edge of the pit we all went over, downloading and uploading ourselves, living on-line and using the World Wide Web for a memory. They called it a net, but it didn't hold us when we jumped into the abyss.”
… and the pulling and pushing and scraping and splashing are just abstract sounds. The song of the ship is louder to me than the song of their machinery. But it doesn’t drown the chanting voice.
“We're looking at re-birth. That these dreams, thoughts, call them what you will, I call them memories - they can be passed along, not downloaded or... but transmitted through the flesh, by talking. Yes, even that's new - and most importantly of all by birth, handed down parent to child, the capacity to see and learn and grow. By birth. We will raise up a people again, the human family renewed. By birth. By breeding."
"Old school!" An interruption, a giggling man, a stupid man, a laughing shadow.
"Yes, I suppose it is. But it's sacred too - this was an empty vessel, a cup that we have made our chalice, from which humanity can drink. You think we’re monsters. No. We're architects, more we are Priests, we are alchemists of the Flesh."
Birth...
What was it I’d heard, another voice, the man I came with him, when he was on the trolley. He’d been whispering. "Leachers, Seeders, Feeders, Breeders."
Breeding...
And I feel, hope i guess, i don't recognise it at first swelling up in me, warming me likea mem-shot, flooding my mind and body, altering my brain someways. And for why? Because he knew. That man they tell me is dead, he wasn't lying, he knew this place, he knew what was happening here, he knew the sections in the centre and he'd been counting them down 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 and reciting over and over.
Because he was coming back.
He knows, the man who brought me here, he knows - he will come, he will find this chamber, this incubator. He will free us.
A hand rising from the trolley, the Dermic sliding into his palm from his sleeve. He's a soldier; he knows what to do, how to cut the restraints, how to take down the guards. He will come with his knife.
He will come for my brother and me.
And when he does...
So i am not afraid - and it doesn't matter what they're saying - and when you float, everything is far away.
This is the real rebirth; to realise freedom, that no/one can touch you -
A girl on a boat grows wings and flies, white clouds and feathers and high up and away and over the ocean and over the land and over the city, vast and sprawling, i have the wind in my feathers and the songs of distant birds in my ears and a whole world below me as i soar and dive - it's so beautiful, like jewels laid out for me to see.
And i have marble eyes. And they don't blink.
...........................................................end
this story was inspired by Yu and by the albums Plight and Premonition (especially the track Giant Grey Empty Vessels) by David Sylvian/Holger Czukay and Nostromo by SleepResearch_Facility and by the SF podcasts over at the Deuce Project.
It's a sort of re-write of an old song of mine from the 80s called 'The Empty Ship' and i hope you enjoyed it.