Oh! Please take me!
The pain escalated, starting in her left arm and culminating at the crevice just under her armpit, the agony was intense and like nothing she’d ever felt before. She felt her entire body clench itself and her chest cavity being crushed as if under some great weight.
The pain intensified, to the point where it was no longer bearable. Right at the moment when she thought she could take no more, she passed out.
- -
Harrison
There’s a chill in the air as the two sit, side by side atop the mountain on Santorini island, once again silent and alone. Despite the strong winds of the night, the two remain oblivious, as if not bothered at all. Almost as if they’re a part of the landscape, part of the earth, the wind a part of who they are.
It is nearing dawn, the light barely detectable in the sky but growing slowly as the sun starts its trajectory skywards.
Their heads lay still and quiet, their eyes are closed and the only audible sound is Harrison’s nose breathing slowly.
“He is coming.” Harrison says to Smith, both with their eyes firmly shut.
A moment later a noise sounds from behind and warns of someone approaching, Smith doesn’t move but Harrison can’t prevent himself, his ears prick and he breaks from his concentrated state.
Before he can turn to investigate the noise though, he feels Smith’s hand reach and squeeze his own lightly. It’s something Smith does to still Harrison, so he re-centres himself and tries to ignore the oncoming distraction, despite his natural instincts telling him to investigate, he knows who approaches.
Harrison found ignoring his surroundings difficult at first, but slowly he progressed, step by step. Giving up his consciousness, giving up the person he was had not been an easy task.
“Sorry to disturb you both,” the voice of Alison Benchley sounds softly behind them.
Smith turns around to see Alison lurking in the dark behind them. “Yes, Alison, please sit.”
“I found more spears.”
“Where?”
“We found them today whilst digging, buried close by the light.”
“What spear?” Smith asks.
“Well,” she hesitates. “They’re spears, just like any other normal one you would find I guess. I don’t really know a lot about these but I do know they weren’t made here ... guess that means they didn’t come from here.”
“Why?”
“Remember the shackles?”
“What shackles?”
“The ones from the desert, where I dug you up.”
“What?”
“The spears, they’re made of the same material.”
“Spears … not from here?”
“Yes.”
“Yes … see?”
“Down in the camp, you can come and look for yourself.”
“Alison come, Alison finished?” Smith sighs, his eyes now closed as he realises her work here is at an end.
“I’ve gotten it far enough, next to the spears we found the light, so yeah, I guess were finished. I feel I can leave you to dig out whatever’s left in an hour or less.” She wipes her hands against each other, trying to remove the dirt from them. “The device is all set, ready to go as I showed you the other day.”
Harrison fidgets but he does not engage.
“Next thread now …?” Smith asks.
“Yes, Yonas is most helpful.”
“Yes.”
“He gave me the location for the next thread, I’ll head there once the sun rises, with my boys.” She pauses before asking, “Do you still not remember what you need?”
“Soon ... see as seen ...”
Harrison again moves, Smith senses he’s about to break concentration and stills him with a light touch to the shoulder. “Harrison not here ...”
Alison looks at the two of them with a frown. “What are you guys doing anyway?”
“Try remember what forgot.”
“I thought by touching me you could remember everything so …” she struggles to help. “Well I’m not sure what’s happened to you, and I don’t know what the pretty one did to bring you back, but you’re not the same as the day we first met. Yonas said as much to me when he first found you, said that you were like a child.”
“Harrison help Smith … see as seen.”
“He’s a good kid.” Alison smiles down at him.
“… helpful.”
“Is that why he’s up here?”
“To help? Yes, see as seen.”
“Do you mind if I ask why?”
“No.”
“How is he helping you?”
“Smith touch, see as seen. Harrison touch, see as seen …” he pauses momentarily. “When not think too much … see as Smith see.”
“Right ...” she muses, still amazed at Smith and his true nature. He’s a marvel and a mystery to her, she had loved being a part of his journey. “You’ve turned the kid into some kind of replica then?”
“Alison, many thanks … many thanks everything.” Smith says, ending the conversation and steering it in another direction.
“No need to thank me, I am only doing what is meant to be done. Anyway,” she continues, “I just wanted to say goodbye, I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again.”
“No.”
After a short silence, Alison’s about to turn and leave when Smith breaks from his seat and rises. He moves over to her silently and takes both her hands, bringing them up to his head where he softy rests them to his forehead. He looks her in the eye softly and nods in a gesture of appreciation, a look that conveys gratitude for all she’s done to help.
It’s a small gesture, but one she knows he seldom performs. This gesture is a very large show and she’s happy to receive it, she smiles back and says, “I will help you finish this, finish it to the end.”
“Alison?”
“Yes.”
“Want thank more.”
“You don’t need to thank me anymore, you’ve already told me what I wanted to learn, about my origins. Now all I want is to disappear back from where I came from and help fulfil the promise I made to you all those years ago.”
“If want ... after dig … find high ground, big rain come.”
“Huh?”
“Great flood … cover Earth … high ground make safe.”
“Smith,” she touches his hands again. “I am a part of the threads and thus a part of the problem. I must go also. I thank you for your generosity but I must see this to the only end there is, so I cannot be there at the end. But I can assure you that I will take my time, make my peace and move onto the next plain with a great sense of pride and satisfaction for the work we’ve done. Happy that I have done the right thing for Earth, happy that I’ve put my own needs aside for the greater good. Happy that I had an impact on life …”
“Alison great woman ... many thanks ... many thanks.” He bows his head several times.
“Thank you Smith, rarely does one get to see their life’s work completed, with nothing more to uncover. I have you to thank for that. Now I know my beginnings I am fully prepared to meet my end.”
After another quick embrace, they both part with a nod and Smith returns to the still quietly meditating Harrison, taking a seat next to him on the ridge of the mountain. Alison takes off down the mountain and shortly thereafter leaves the camp behind for good, with her three Aboriginal men in tow.
Smith and Harrison remain quiet as the sun begins to rise until Harrison lets a gush of air from his mouth, as if he’s been holding his breath and has to let it out. “Arghhh! I couldn’t do it any longer!”
“… what?”
“I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering. I tried to ignore Alison coming up but couldn’t stop myself.”
“Why?”
�
�I don’t know, it just feels like my consciousness is calling to me, for me to wake up. Every time I try and stop my thinking, the voice comes back to me, calling out a thought.”
“Trained … since birth … think this way ... must forget.”
“Forget all of what? All that I’ve learnt.”
“Who is I?”
“Ummm me?” Harrison responds, not quite sure what the question means.
“And where is me?”
“I … I don’t follow?”
“Ask Smith …” He indicates to himself.
“Ok then. Smith, where are you?”
“Who is you?”
“Huh?”
“No you … no I … no me …” He replies thoughtfully.
Harrison is about to object, but decides instead to still his thoughts from taking over. Smith’s trying to teach him something and not in a conventional manner. In the stillness that ensues an idea strikes him, one that he’s never considered before.
He considers Smith and his use of language. He always presumed Smith wasn’t a native English speaker and thus assumed he wasn’t well educated. This was how he’d rationalized the simplistic nature of Smiths language.
But when he really thinks and recalls instances in the past, he can’t once remember Smith using pronouns in his language. He never used the words I, we, me, you, him or her, it was uncanny and almost certainly deliberate.
But why wouldn’t he use them and why was he now indicating Harrison should forego the use of them.
“What feel when give … to thought?” Smith asks.
“It’s what I feel before I give in,” Harrison replies. “I seem to have this instinct for thinking, as soon as I go silent I think about something and it breaks my concentration. Then I lose focus on the images and return to the present.”
“Who return present?”
“Huh,” Harrison nods, knowing he’s about to answer the question with a pronoun. “You want ‘me’ to forget ‘me’?”
“’Me’ gone … ‘me’ only exist here,” he taps at Harrisons head.
“It only exists because I created it and use it,” he wonders aloud. “And what’s so wrong with ‘me’? Why do I need to forget it?”
“What ‘me’ know?”
“I’m not following here?” Harrison scratches his head. “Do you mean, what does ‘me’ know and how did I learn it?”
“Yes.”
“Are you talking about my education? The things that I’ve learnt?”
“What?”
“Education? That’s what I went to school for, to learn, study things.”
“… ‘me’ learn what ‘me’ want teach you?”
“I don’t get it, I only learned the things I wanted to learn?”
“No … ‘me’ not real world. School not place learn … place teach, place rule, place dictate ... Harrison free now … Harrison real.”
“So what, I only learned things people wanted to teach me then?”
“Earth is teacher, feel … feel connection, don’t think. Feel … know.”
“And what’s real knowledge then.”
“What is it not?’ Smith replies.
Harrison nods, Smith’s slowly bringing him around to another way of thinking. He knows he’s referring to the use of the pronouns, but it isn’t just their use he means, there’s something else behind it. Smith wants him to learn more, learn some deeper meaning.
He remembers a quote then, from a famous detective renowned for his unusual methods of unravelling mysteries … “Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.”
“Well,” Harrison reasons. “I guess it’s not me …”
Smith nods and for a moment the two sit in silence. Much of this had been happening since the first night they’d sat together. Smith wasn’t playing a game with Harrison, he was trying to help him to see. They would often talk of strange things, Smith trying to show Harrison the error of his previous ways.
“Take hand.” Smith extends his hand for Harrison to touch. “See as seen … tell what see.”
“Oh geez, this whole ‘seeing as seen’ thing is crazy man, you’ve got a lot of memories I can see when I touch you.”
Harrison does as he’s asked and goes through another period of being plunged into Smith’s mind, into the depths of his memories. But at times it’s too much for him to bear and he has to withdraw himself from the touch.
“Don’t need see all ... need purpose.”
“Have seen time fire fall from the sky ... Atlantis and the great wave.”
“Yes …” Smith leans forward.
“And have seen another time, when star fall at your feet, near the great rock.” Harrison recalls the visions.
“Speak … tell … fire in sky?”
“The fire, two fires. First Destiny … Destiny …” Harrison exhales, realizing in the moment he knows exactly what they are, what it is, but before he can explore it more his mind awakens and he loses it.
“Tell … more …” Smith presses.
“Destiny came from sky … Fahwad sought to capture … Smith learn truth … before fix the great flood came. You were taken by great wave and buried, long time.”
“And star…?”
“The first star … you were on the great rock, but this was before the great wave. A long time before the fire came from the sky. This was beginning of story.” Harrison recalls.
“The star from sky?” Smith presses again, eager to learn more of his past.
“It brought Fahwad to Earth, was first to come.”
“Fahwad.” Smith says the name aloud.
“For hundred year he ruled from Atlantis. I can see him ruling over the people, I can see him enslaving mankind, even devouring them. I can see …” he stammers, the visions dissipating in his mind. “Wow, I can see the world as it was before. The ancient times, Smith, this is truly amazing.”
“Yes, what else see.”
“I see man, us …”
“Yes … yes … what see?”
“Fahwad, he is absorbing many people, changing who they are …”
But he lost it, the visions left him before he could fathom anything further. “And then I lose concentration, it’s all so intense. A million other thoughts and visions enter my head, it’s too much for me to see it all, I just get random visions from everywhere.”
“Memories,” Smith replies.
“Is it real? It’s like I’m watching a thousand movies all at the same time.”
“Yes, real.”
“Is this what happens to you when you touch people.”
“Yes,” he confirms. “Touch, see as seen.”
“And now when I do it the same thing happens?”
“Yes.”
“How … how is that even possible, I’m just some kid, I’m nothing like you?”
“Me … I … all gone … all gone, when see, forget ‘me’.”
“Well what the hell is that supposed to mean,” Harrison loses his temper. “That I am not ‘me’ anymore, that I am something else?”
“Yes.” comes the flat reply.
“How?” he says aloud, before the image of him back in the apartment, lying in bed, flashes before his eyes. “Smith?”
“Yes?”
“I is dead? Harrison dead?” He asks Smith.
“‘Me’ dead.” Smith corrects him.
His mind expands at a million miles a second, if what Smith tells him is true then he truly is someone else, a new person. Ever since the day he died he’d felt different and hadn’t been able to explain it, but perhaps now he was beginning to understand.
But death wasn’t as conventional as he would’ve thought it, it was more the death of another part of him, a part that Smith kept referring to as ‘me’.
“If the ‘me’ is dead, then that means …”
“Yes.”
“It means I have no ego.”
Smith smiles at him, pleased Harrison has come to the conclusion he wants and happy they can now continue, he puts hand out once again, “See … see as seen.”
“See as seen.” Harrison repeats the words, grabbing Smith’s hand with a different look to his face, one similar to an expression normally reserved for Smith.
And Harrison dives, literally into the abyss of Smith’s memories. Trying to live them in the moment, trying to see as Smith has seen, trying to help his friend to see once again.
Trying to remember what Smith forgot.
And like ripples in the ocean, the memories flood over him.
“Smith?” He turns and looks intently at Smith.
“Yes.”
“I have an answer …”
“What answer?”
“… Sousa is the key.”
- -
Marion
She awoke with a start, something in the night rousing her from her previous lapse into unconsciousness. It was pitch black, but she had no idea which day, or how long she’d been unconscious for. She remembered the intense pain she felt just before passing out and shuddered at the memory of it.
How long have I been out?
She felt the cold and noticed she was shivering, looking to the side she saw the blanket she’d discarded before passing out, haphazardly tossed to the side. She stuck her hand out but found it out of reach, so tried rolling to the side, but couldn’t roll herself over properly. Struggling, she steadied herself and reached out desperately to grab the blanket, but before grasping it heard a sharp crack emanate from somewhere nearby.
She froze instantly. She was alone in the dark, surrounded by bush and rock, yet something had made that noise. Was it an animal?
Her heartrate soared and she desperately tried to calm herself down to prevent another attack, until she heard the noise again, crack, snap!
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