The Space Between Her Thoughts (The Space in Time Book 1)

by Marie Curuchet

  Chapter 3

  “MARGOT?”

  She jolted up at the words and felt the weight bang harshly back into her body. The awakening from this dream-state was rude, unwanted.

  They must know the slow, gradual, half-hour of making a decision about getting up is the best. I can command my own time, thank you. Who said that? Joey? He better not be waking me up. What?

  With her eyelids partially opened, her eyes darted quickly around the room, and a thick, coarse voice emanated from her lips. "Shit! Shit! Not this! Can you turn those fucking lights off, you idiot?” She was surprised she said it. Surprised also at the sound of a voice she did not recognize and startled that it was hers, coarse and deep, the vocal cords searing with pain from lack of use.

  “It’s good to see you have some of your motor skills back,” Rovada replied from his station. A day, a full cycle, had passed. Rovada had rested well and was prepared to face a long day with Margot. He was glad she had not wakened during the preceding two tours while he was off-duty. His tour, the next 10 hours, would be very busy. This day would be a challenge, a real challenge, not imagined or contrived in any way. This activity was unpredictable by its nature. That’s why he chose to do it. Besides, the credits were good, considering so few wanted to elect to do the zookeeper’s job. The risk to himself was higher, maybe, but the job, the excitement, was worth the risk.

  “Well?” she uttered.

  “I’m sorry, Margot, let’s wait until the doctor arrives. The lights kill germs that lead to infection.”

  “Yeah,” she whispered hoarsely, straining her neck to see where the voice came from, “I recall that old asshole saying I was the picture of health, so what gives? What time is it? Why aren’t there any windows in this room?”

  “Remember, Margot, this is a specially designed room. No windows, special ventilation, all of that. In your comatose state, you were subject to a variety of infections and still are. We’ll need to reorient you in the next few days to your new surroundings.”

  “Hey dude, I don’t need orientation. I just need my cell and purse and clothes and shoes, and then I’m out of this place. Um, I suppose this is great for you that you can see through this little nylon thingie that is on top of me,” she growled. Margot lifted her arm very slowly to touch the sheer fabric that covered her from neck to knees.

  “Margot,” he replied, “that is not my purpose here.”

  “Jesus!” she cried.

  “What?”

  “Jesus H Christ!” she repeated.

  “What?” Rovada glanced at the monitors. Her heart rate rapidly elevated. She had discovered it. Rovada was surprised that she could even move her arms at this point.

  “I. What the hell? Where’s the bed under me? What am I lying on? I am above the . . . am I floating?” She turned her neck as far as it could go, wincing with pain, and saw a body length, copper-hued basin beneath her that appeared to extend the length of her body, containing a small level of pinkish fluid. “But that’s,” she stuttered, “that’s a yard or more under me? What’s holding me up? Holy crap, what’s holding me up?”

  “Calm down, calm down,” Rovada begged her in as soothing a voice as he could muster. “Do you remember superconductors?” Never mind the monitors, he thought, he could see her body shaking vigorously and uncontrollably from his small enclosure. “These are superconductors five years hence from when you remember. They allow us to elevate you slightly above the bed. It keeps the bedsores to a minimum, obviously. Allows us to bathe you more easily.”

  “Bathe me?” she said, still shaking.

  “Yes, Margot. Remember, you were in a coma. Could you bathe yourself? This machine is the most modern scientific device available.” He laughed to himself when he thought how truly antiquated a device like this would be. “You are one of the first to benefit from it.” He looked up at the heartbeat level and noticed it erratically beginning to calm.

  Margot began breathing deeply. “You mean,” she said, out of breath, “that I am not really lying on anything here? That I am suspended above this pukish pink stuff beneath me? I can see, even though I can hardly turn my head. Can’t I fall in? What happens if the electricity goes off?” she rasped. She tried to twist her body but had only limited success in looking beneath her. The thought of splashing down a few feet into this tub of fluid was not her idea of fun, not given the recent painful recollection of her fall.

  “We have backups. Don’t worry. In your time here, you’ve never fallen in the pan, if I can call it that, and if you did the liquid in there wouldn’t hurt you anyway. You might get a bump or two from the fall, but that’s it.” Rovada noticed her hand and arm moving slowly up the side of her body, re-engaging flesh to flesh.

  Margot felt the warmth of her hand as it finally reached and pressed her cheek. Her elbow and knuckles were stiff and felt arthritic, but the pain was minimized by the pleasure she felt of her own touch. She moved her hand to her head and slowly stroked her hair. “What did you do with it?”

  “Your hair?” Rovada replied.

  “Of course, my hair. Hey, who are you anyway?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your name. Who are you?”

  “I am Rovada.”

  “Ralph?”

  “Yes, Ralph, that’s close enough.”

  “Are you foreign or something, German?”

  “You could say I’m a little foreign. Yes, I’m not from your desert home called Phoenix, if that’s what you mean.”

  “So? The hair?”

  “We had to cut your hair fairly short. Keeps the germs down.”

  “And what about the rest of my hair, I mean under my arms, and . . . well . . . what about the rest? I’m a pretty hairy person.”

  “The machine takes care of that.”

  “How?”

  “It just takes care of things. It cuts your hair if it gets too long. It’s kept your skin young and supple. Not a day different, maybe even better than when you arrived here.”

  “This is wild, this is just wild!” she said, her jaw and vocal cords now starting to loosen. “I suppose you bring med students in here just to see this place?”

  “Actually, the facilities you are in have only been seen by a few. This is, in a sense, a project of an experimental nature and not many people are aware of what we’re doing here.”

  “Why is that?” she replied worriedly. She swallowed hard, trying to soothe her newly found voice. “Is this place a secret or something? Is this a machine you don’t want the Russians or Chinese to get? God forbid we should give the world some of our medical innovations.”

  “No, no secret. Let’s just say that the technology is being tested before it goes to market. You happen to be the first of the guinea pigs for our pituitary research, and we are observing how well you’ve fared.”

  “What about pituitaries?”

  “You’ve had most of yours removed. You could say that this is a head injury clinic for pituitaries. We specialize in people who’ve had their pituitaries injured or removed.”

  “Shitsky! What a specialty place. My friends haven’t seen me here like this, have they?”

  “No. Not since Phoenix have your friends seen you. Due to the nature of this facility, visitation has been limited.”

  “My parents?”

  “No, not even them.”

  She sighed, not wanting anyone she knew to see her naked and helpless like this. “I can’t understand why my parents wouldn’t at least come to visit. I mean, did they give up on me or something? What about my brother Joey?”

  “Same for him. This facility is restricted to medical staff only. Your parents, friends, brother, they can’t come into this room. It’s part of the price paid for coming here.”

  “Can they come see me now? Are they on their way?” Margot was worried. “I want to see them, damn it! Did you contact them?”

  Rovada sat back calmly. The Council of Five, he thought, could generally care less about diminished species. Too ma
ny instances to count. Always too much to do to manage and continue discovery in their small portion of the universe. Never enough time to focus attention on one thing and do that thing very well. It was always done adequately, not perfectly, but adequately. Just enough to get by. Minimum viable conditions. Resources were spread too thin in the ever-constant need to progress forward. And the damn time it took to communicate. Laws of physics. Truly immutable. A constant battle.

  He prepared himself for what came next. He had been through this more than a few times. How many? Too many to remember over too long a time, especially with such poor long-term memory. It was always difficult to do this, even after the many years as a zookeeper.

  “Margot,” he began, “you are a mature woman, and a being capable of great adaptation.”

  Margot stretched her neck to look toward the blackness of the voice emanating at her left, but she could discern no shapes. “What is this about?” she yelled. “Are they dead or something? Has something bad happened to my parents?”

  “Turn your eyes back to the lights,” he requested, “and you will see a video in front of you.”

  Margot slowly turned her head and raised her eyebrows in surprise. As she turned her head, she noticed a large, flat, rectangular surface, the size of a large screen TV, about ten feet above her bed and emanating from the blackness of the ceiling. She hadn’t noticed it there previously. “Look, dude. Ralph, right? I remembered. I had an uncle named Ralph. Dude, I don’t feel like watching a movie, not unless it’s pictures of my family or something. Where’s my iPhone? Let me call them. If something’s happened to my family, just tell me now. Don’t beat around the bush. If I can take five years in a coma, I can take anything else.”

  “You’ll get your chance, then,” Rovada said as he looked towards the screen.

  “The Planet Earth!” a voice blasted out from the screen as the sound of ocean waves splashed harshly into Margot’s ear. She winced at the loudness.

  “Margot,” the voice continued, “we had been studying your planet for seven years.” The image of the ocean transitioned to one of a dark room where five silhouettes, each in the shape of the letter W, stood motionless. “We have learned much by observing your species in those years. However, our society has a strict doctrine of Interlocking Effects that demands noninterference in the current and future existence of civilizations. This is true on all planets and other habitations that we observe, and it is a values system that applies to all beings like us who travel the known universe. Yet it is also the reason you are here today.”

  The visual image switched back to a view of the earth as if it were taken from the moon. Margot noticed ominous clouds covering sections of the North and South American continents. Shocked at the absurdity of what she was viewing, she stayed silent for a few moments, incredulous at what they were trying to do to her.

  “The Planet Earth,” the voice continued to boom, “is very likely an inhospitable place, no longer a habitable environment for human beings. A rapidly replicating viral plague devastated the population. It was transmitted through both water and air and was of such an unusual molecular structure that no human efforts could eradicate it or slow its spread. This virus attacked key structures in the brains of primates and other mammals. In humans, the virus created an extreme overproduction of certain pituitary hormones that caused most humans to die rather rapidly from cellular starvation and water depletion. One half of the earth’s population died in the first ten days after the outbreak. The planet had . . ..”

  “Stop the damn video!” Margot screamed, her veins bulging in her neck and face. “Stop the damn video now!” She turned her head and felt the muscles in her ribcage pull as she attempted to turn her torso. “You low-life asshole! What the hell is this, you faceless scum? You aren’t even here to watch this with me, you coward! How many do you have over there? How many fucking shrinks are over there laughing their fool fucking heads off, getting paid to watch my reaction at this piece of royal shit after I’ve been five years in a coma? Is this part of your grand experiment? Was this part of the price my parents had to pay to get you to let me stay here? What the hell are you trying to do to my mind, you bastards?”

  Rovada moved from his small enclosure towards the area where Margot lay suspended. He knew the sight of his presence would jolt her into a form of shock, at least temporarily. He also knew the shock should have no detrimental effects on her state of health or at least her physical state for now. The sheer curtain between them dissolved, and he moved near to her, very slowly. This was the closest he had been to her since he had begun monitoring her.

  Margot could sense something moving toward her in the dim amber light. “Come here, you stupid-ass lazy coward,” she yelled, “and bring your friends. This is funny not, and I’ll make damn sure you won’t think it’s funny. Have you ever heard the word ‘attorney’? The Hammer? Do you know what a lawsuit is? Do you know what my attorney would do to you?”

  Margot’s jaw dropped and she let out a soft, whimpered gasp.

  “What in God’s name is that? What the hell is that?” Her face turned gray and sullen. Spittle dripped helplessly from the corner of her mouth.

  She stared at a brown beast, its thorax shining and gleaming like the back of a large desert cockroach. The diamond-shaped head seemed to rotate slowly on the thorax. Two bulbous, golf ball-shaped masses shared each end of the head. It stood cautiously adjacent to Margot, just breaking the light overhead.

  Margot felt a large lump forming in her throat and tears rolled down the sides of her face. She quickly pressed her eyelids closed, trying to squeeze out the tears that obscured her vision of this creature. She knew. She felt its presence. This was too real. It did not seem like a toy or a large, horrible puppet.

  Through her tears, she saw the head move slightly, back and forth, “Don’t hyperventilate, Margot,” the voice said. “You and I need to be friends. I have watched you for a long time now, and I know you, or at least I feel I know you.”

  Margot gave in to her helplessness.

  Jesus! Bad dream. Jesus, when will I wake up? I must be sweating like a hog in bed, get me out of here! Like those damn toilet dreams I used to have. The bugs crawling out of the toilet. Jesus, I feel like this thing is right here! It is the most horrible bug dream I’ve had, ever!

  “What the hell do you want?” she screamed loudly, knowing she was still asleep and this would wake her. Her throat was burning, and her face and neck were on fire like a badly sunburned day at the lake. She tried to move her mouth to scream again but no words emanated, only a squeak as the air moved past her raw vocal cords.

  I hate that shiny brown thing, bat-like, winged, a head like a damn fucking pterodactyl. I never liked those dinosaur birds. Evil on wings. What a messed-up dream. God, if you care about me, wake me up!

  Rovada moved quickly back to his station. "Not unexpected," he thought, as he scanned the monitors. "Heart rate now at 154, hormonal levels at flight or fight expectations. Flight or fight," he thought, "how apropos for my race in those many years passed." He could hear the plunk, plunk, plunk of sweat that rolled from her side to the pool of pink fluid that lay beneath her. "Poor thing," he thought, "you wish you could do something more, but the rules are so limited. Species and subspecies and the need not to favor one species over another. We all did our part, it seemed. The rules, the manifest we all live by. No room to deviate, not in any substantial way."

  He was well-aware of the reasons why things had to be this way, but he felt an attachment to this one. No, he didn’t really care if the species died out. Hell, it was down to its last five. He did like this one’s energy, though, and he felt the swearing was all pretty good-natured. Not malicious. At least not intended that way. Of course, he wasn’t stupid. She could tear him apart in the right circumstance. Despite his innately trained martial capabilities, this could still happen. Despite the Wall’s protection, this could still happen. He could end up dead, or at least suffer the pain of death before bei
ng revived. This he had never experienced, never had a need to.

  Margot felt her head throbbing and the surge of blood in her neck.

  If I could only move, damn it, I’d find out what they put in front of me. What was that thing that my mind was dreaming up? A huge bat? Forget it, shithead, there are no bats like that in Minnesota. Mosquitoes, maybe. Damn it, that was real. Whatever that thing was, I felt its presence. And God, it is still there, still watching me. Where are the people who run this place? People? Jesus, the video. The stupid, fucking video! I want my cell! I want to call my family!

  She painfully lifted her head up and glared at the monitor. “Hey asshole,” she screamed with her hoarse voice, “you apostasy, you abhorrence, you abomination, you aberration, or whatever in hell you are that’s trying to scare the living shit out of me!”

  ‘Courage,’ dad would say. ‘Whatever you do, don’t give in to the bastards. Never, never ever allow yourself more than two seconds of self-pity or three seconds of self-absorption. Don’t give into fear, ever. Plow through it. Keep going. Don’t stop at it to review it and wallow. Don’t stop as you travel through, just travel through, put your head down and don’t look to the side. Singlemindedness of purpose’ he’d say. ‘A master of yourself, that’s the key to living. Fear is only a gatekeeper along the way. And fear itself will never harm you, though it may prepare you for that which will.’