two quick pieces
These are two quick pieces; one is science fiction and the other is decidely not.
Station Five:
Station Five woke up one morning to discover itself some 17 feet underground and 153 years in the past.
What had caused so odd an event, so dramatic a shift such an outrage to the norm and the Stations comfortable routines? A cataclysm possibly, or some sort of terrible failure - a temporal experiment gone horribly awry, or was it simply a shift, a rupture and entirely unavoidable, cosmic mischief some apalling quantum caprice?
There was no way to know - perhaps if some crew had been available for comment, imagine that, the brave fellows hacking into the internet to declare their presence and obtain rescue. Imagine the exultant chat-room discussions the arguments and theorising crossing continent to continent in a single click and the grave and sober interviews with CNN, the BBC, Reuters and Pravda.
There were indeed two skeletons, supporting those who might theorise a disaster, but these skeletons were of themselves mysterious. The genus seemed human-esque but such an appearance could be coincidental, whilst height, appearance and skeletal structure all bore considerable difference, evidence of mutation, some might argue, or evolution - even extraterrestrial origins were not so wild a notion. Some looking at the foetal curled figures might postulate that these were indeed crew but nonhuman, chimpanzees of a special sort, hand picked reared and trained.
Such animals might indicate a mission, that the ‘journey’ was deliberate, that the movement of Station Five had been intentional albeit with lethal consequences for the unfortunate primates.
Again, think how many theories and theorists would be stimulated and engaged by Station Five and its chrono misadventures.
Of all those likely to be driven into sudden and blustering activity, one man more than any other might be able to shed light on the situation, relaxing on camera as his ideas are coalesced by Station Five and its miraculous appearance. That man of course would be Professor Leon Berwick whose controversial papers have through the years mapped with a pioneer’s relish the undiscovered country of Time and the unknown denizens thereof. “I am an anthropologist as much as a futurist” he has been wont to say.
This learned individual has been galvanised by what he clearly regards as the paradoxes inherent to man’s theorising about time travel. It has after all long been assumed that such a thing as time travel will become possible once mankind has the necessary knowledge to master wormholes or black holes or any other conceivable form of temporal fracture. Yet parallel to this is the clear awareness that no/one in the present has seen evidence of any such activity. No tourists from far off centuries, no time capsules, no communiqués from then to now delivering the ultimate reassurance that a future generation could bestow to its ancestors, ‘we are still here’, ‘the future exists’.
Juggling these apparently irreconcilable oppositions, Berwick has come up with solutions well known as breathtaking in their simplicity and apriori obviousness. Given exponential technological advances of course time travel will be possible in the future- however, any sensible society would prohibit the use of such technology.
What then would a man such as Berwick make of the Station Five conundrum?
The skeletons and the burial of the station could well be some form of punishment after all. But this begs the question; was Station Five itself in breach of some future legislation or a tragic example of a botched judicial pursuit? Was Station five some lost arbiter of the law and the skeletons inside avenging angels fallen, alas, all too literally to earth? Or, in a surely ironic nod to the Pharaohs of times past, the station could have been sealed and buried with its servants onboard exactly so, a stolen or black marketed technology and its nefarious users entombed as stark warning to anyone else tempted to such deeds.
But Berwick is a radical thinker, albeit a strongly commonsensical one and it would not be out of character to suppose that in reading the riddle of Station Five; that sleek silver name being the only recognisable language, those cool white walls in the shadowy flicker of dimming emergency lights and unknown power cells, the curious furniture of unknown but clearly ergonomic design, the cryptic positions of the apparent animalistic crew, the silent machinery and computer banks, the Professor might well put forward yet another question - what if Station Five was indeed mistaken, off course in some truly unforeseen circumstance and for whatever unknowable reason, what if Station Five was indeed mistaken - what if Station Five had come from the past?
Profound as such a question might be, alas such meditations are entirely academic - for not only has Berwick (and indeed no other of his contemporary generation) never seen Station Five but neither would they even if such a thing might be theoretically possible, for surely (and with the very best of motives, which is to say a desire to protect humanity and its unwary innocents,) any knowledge of Station Five (and the contents of that unsettling mausoleum) would be almost entirely restricted and any record of its existence sealed away in the deepest possible archive.
Such information might eventually come to life but how long such a process might take! Years could pass, many years - indeed so long that by the time of any file being uncovered the contents would seem even more unbelievable, almost fraudulent and fictional. Alternatively it might take so long that by then Station Five becomes unremarkable, anonymous at last among its brother and sisters Stations One to… however many.
And it is just as likely that by the time the general public (or those lucky few among them) become able to read of Station Five and its discovery and whereabouts that the station itself will have woken up one morning to find itself again somewhere else entirely.
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Green Hat:
Yeah, so i gave him the hat that i'd kept ever since i came home with it by accident in a pile of baby clothes from the charity shop. The clothes had been for Rita's little girl next door but once i'd discovered the hat i put it aside and never thought to offer it, maybe someone she knew might have wanted it and for some reason best known (only not) to myself, it stayed at home instead with me. Till i gave it to the boy anyway.
I hadn't had sex for a long time and he, maybe, had never had sex at all and we were both a bit ponderous and awkward, but so what, and i felt myself swirling and stirring and warm, like i was - i dunno - in one of them weird mud baths in New Zealand or wherever that you read about in the magazines. Now admittedly the nearest a woman like me has ever come to a mud bath is getting my face plastered up with that gunk from Boots, but i reckon i know what it would feel like, sort of lazy and sticky and that's how it was and i felt something in me, something rising, memories of time spent, lovers, (the precious few, ha ha ha!) and better sex mostly.
Now you might be thinking then that this was, the event to hand so to speak, a bit of a wash out all told - but i didn't think of it like that, i enjoyed just feeling, myself and him all lean and young and just letting the memories wash through me (rinse cycle 5) and those flashes of whenever and whoever, the private stuff i'd almost forgotten, well, i felt tender with him for bringing that all up again, in me. Yes, i felt very tender.
'Course i half expected him to be lying there asleep right after or else maybe looking disgusted or cocky and pleased with himself ready to brag like any other kid would do. But then who did he have to brag to exactly? After all when i said to him "shouldn't you be off somewhere with your mates?" he'd scrunched his face and said, without looking at me, "Aint got much time for mates as it goes..."
That had been more or less the first time we met when he came to the door on a mild autumn morning to sweep leaves. Leaves, i ask you, we aint had any leaves here to speak of in a dogs age, not in a bleedin' terrace. I remember thinking he must be a bit simple.
He wasn't looking anything but far away as i rolled over and gawped at him in the blurry light through the curtain. He was there and he wasn't there - but that might have just been me, I mean i was the one seeing different rooms and faces superimposed now, right?
I'll tell you what it was like; i don't watch much telly or listen to the radio a great deal (unlike some round these parts), just occasionally. Recently i tried a bit but all i found was that there were previews and trailers and after listening to a few minutes of what would be on later or watching clips of some show coming soon i got bored and switched off, I felt like i'd seen and heard enough.
It made me wonder if maybe that's all the shows are now these days just adverts for themselves, a couple of minutes of clips - or if they were would anyone notice, they're all much the same. Seeing my memories come and go and listening to the breathing of the lad next to me felt much the same. A bit more satisfying though.
Enough so that i wanted to do something anyway, give the boy something to remember me by and vice versa. So the green cap it was; a little battered, one of them faux-baseball or basketball jobs with a number 5 on it. "You oughta wear that," i said giving it to him like a mother, "with yer 'air so short you wanna watch out or you'll get sun burn or somfin'."
"Yeah, cheers."
And that, as they say, was that.
Except i saw him a couple weeks ago bumming along the street in town near the market. I was on the bus at the time and fending of the arms of the child in the seat opposite, gawd knows where that brat’s mother had got to, and there he was (on his own) just breezing past Asda and he was wearing the hat and i sort of smiled to myself and wished we still had conductors on the busses. Some bloke with a ticket machine leaning in so i could whisper confidentially, "see that lad down there in the cap, yeah the green one, that's right that tough looking kid there. I've had him." And i'd see his shocked bloody face and just smile, "oh yes my son, we ladies do get about y'know" and then, Christ would i laugh.
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