Ducie

by Chris Freeman

  Chapter 22. First contact

  “What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognised. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher. What we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish. There is no free will. There are no variables. There is only the inevitable.”

  It was Adam’s choice to run from the answers. It can’t be told whether sticking around to listen to them would have made him feel differently. As it was though, at that time, Adam decided it was time to run. It could be fair to say that he may have still ran, had he stuck around long enough to learn the true fabric of the story behind the story. And that is the story that I’ll now share with you. Had he stayed put and accepted what he was hearing, or reacted in some other way, fate may still have sought out the ending it desired in one fashion or another.

  4 years earlier…

  Kate Gaffney lay horizontally in a reclined, hydraulic pump-operated chair in a bare white room that would later become known as the Situation Room, in a previously disused building, adjacent to a drug rehabilitation centre. For now, it was their temporary study lab, but eventually, this entire complex would come to be known as the Two Steps Forward Rehabilitation Institution. 15 hours earlier she had been administered a dose of a previously untested drug containing an enzyme to which its developers had assigned the name ‘CROP’. Shortly after receiving the dose by way of injection, the administrators of the drug had been surprised by what they called the initial evident pharmacodynamics they were witnessing. In short, Kate had rapidly and unexpectedly lost consciousness, and once it had been established that she was in a stable semi-comatose state, she was left to rest under the watchful eyes of 3 doctors who monitored her as she slept. The doctors offered a variety of stimuli intended to rouse Kate and after 6 hours of unresponsive sleep, Kate’s eyes opened and she began responding coherently to some basic polar questioning. Having responded with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ about a dozen times, she quickly and visibly appeared to become exhausted by these basic interactions and within fifteen minutes, her eyes closed once again. Another 15 minutes or so passed before her eyes began to flutter in a way that resembled the REM stage of sleep where the large voluntary muscles of the body are paralyzed, but brain activity remains intense. This passed after a short while and her breathing and movement settled once more.

  One of the doctors, Frank Gilbert had set the stopwatch function of his wristwatch to monitor the time elapsed since the drug was administered. He watched the hour digits flick seamlessly from “14” to “15” and continued to stare a while at the busy numbers, obliviously rotating their way to infinity or whatever time limit his wristwatch could handle. The numbers knew not what they were counting towards. They simply performed their function without question. Frank imagined the target market that the designers of the watch must have had in mind when they decided to include the stopwatch feature: Joggers, swimmers, bobsleigh coaches…How he longed for the simplicity of being involved in one of these innocent everyday pursuits right now. The counter turned through 15:01:35 when his daze was broken by the sudden and unfamiliar sound of words, sentences in fact, flowing from Kate’s mouth.

  - Who’s this? What are you doing here?

  It was Kate’s voice, but the tone and flow of it somehow wasn’t her.

  - Kate, this is Doctor Frank Gilbert.

  - Donna who?

  - No, Kate, this is Doctor Frank Gilbert.

  - And who’s Kate? Is she here too?

  Frank was alone with Kate in the room and was torn between running to fetch his colleagues and not missing what he already sensed was an important twist to this fledgling story. His decision was made for him when Kate resumed talking.

  - What are you here for Doctor?

  - I’m here to help you. Tell me how you feel.

  - I feel sleepy. Drained. Like when you’re in bed with a cold. Sick, but…but not too sick, you know. It’s in a nice sort of way.

  - Kate, just relax ok? Everything’s going to be just fine.

  - Who’s this ‘Kate’ you keep talking to?

  Frank’s medical training led him instinctively to the diagnosis of amnesia, but something didn’t sit quite right with him about it. Kate was so calm. There was none of the panicked hyperventilating and wild-eyed confusion that usually came with this type of case. Rather than appearing distressed, Kate seemed as intrigued and keen to push for answers as Frank himself did. They were two strangers, on the opposite side of some sort of gulf between their respective realms, both willing to work a little to gain an insight into the other’s reality. Looking for a way to connect.

  Frank hadn’t had time to set up the full lab recording equipment, but had instinctively hit record on his pocket Dictaphone the moment Kate had begun talking. He took the device out of his pocket and watched as the digital display continued to count the minutes and seconds since he’d hit record. He carefully placed the device on the grubby, once white work surface, conscious of not hitting any button that might stop the recording inadvertently. Somehow though, Frank felt that even if he had missed this recording opportunity, there would be plenty more to come. He got the overwhelming feeling that this was just the start of something big, rather than a tantalising flash in the pan. High on the thrill of being the first to see these new developments, Frank kept going.

  - So you aren’t Kate Gaffney?

  - No I am not.

  Kate almost sounded offended, as if she knew of this Kate Gaffney and wanted no association with her.

  - So who are you then?

  A pause.

  - Well…who are you first?

  - I have told you that already, I’m Doctor Frank Gilbert.

  - Oh yeah. Sorry.

  Another pause.

  - Well, why are you here Doctor?

  - I’m monitoring a patient. A young lady named Kate.

  - Is she sick?

  - Sort of, yes. She has a problem with…

  Frank trailed off. Was the world where this woman lived familiar with drug addiction? Would she even know what heroin was?

  - …She has a problem inside her head…I mean…with her brain, kind of.

  - Oh, ok. Poor girl.

  The responses from Kate were so casual. Though supposedly, this wasn’t Kate at all. There was a longer pause this time, as Frank considered his next move. Kate appeared happy to take the break in conversation as an opportunity to rest some more and lay silent. As he paced the floor of the makeshift operating room, sipping from a white polystyrene cup of weak, caffeine flavoured water, an idea struck Frank from nowhere. He chucked the disgusting hot beverage, cup and all, down into a deep metal sink basin at the far end of the room and paced back towards Kate excitedly.

  - Kate…erm…. Sorry….m’am, madam?

  Frank struggled in the absence of an agreed alias for the lady that lay before him.

  - Madam, are you still there?

  A pause.

  - Yeah, I’m here. How you doing?

  - Yeah, I’m er… I’m good. Yes. Thank you. Can I ask you a question please?

  - Of course you can.

  She was so polite, so accommodating, so not Kate! Frank continued.

  - Can you tell me what year it is please?

  - What year is it? What? Don’t you know yourself?

  Frank fumbled around his head for a quick answer to this perfectly valid question.

  - Erm, no. I don’t really… I mean… I just wanted to check.

  - Okaaay.

  Kate chuckled to herself at the stupidity of it.

  - It’s 2007, silly!

  Frank’s brow contorted, as his master plan hit an immediate dead-end. He half expected her to reveal that she was living in the 1930s or better still the 22nd century. Now that would have given him somewhere to go with the conversation. As it happened, Kate, or whoever this lady was, was living in the present. It was indeed 2007.

  - Yeah, I think you’re right.

  Frank was reluctant to be completel
y derailed, so quickly shifted his tact from time to place.

  - So, where are you exactly?

  - I’m here with you. What do you mean? What is this exactly? What do you want from me?

  Kate was becoming suspicious and the polite compliance appeared to evaporate quickly and was replaced by a harsh, accusing tone of confusion.

  - No, I mean… I mean… where do you live? Where do you call home?

  - This is my home. Here in Mendoza.

  Frank flew to the nearby workstation and clicked repeatedly over the Internet Explorer icon. He tapped his mouse repeatedly on the desk, as if that were the secret to improving the machine’s performance. He waited impatiently, glancing back at Kate still asleep, then back to the screen, as 2, 3 and 4 windows all opened consecutively with the same semi-loaded internet homepage. Frank clicked on the first window to fully populate and directed the cursor to the search bar. He made his best effort at the spelling and quickly keyed in ‘mendosa’. The search engine offered a number of articles on diabetes, by a medical writer called David Mendosa. Frank scanned through them and let out a frustrated sigh. As it were, Google had second guessed his intentions and kindly offered an alternative search option for ‘Mendoza’. God bless technology! He clicked the link and waited for the new page to load. When it did, Frank’s eyes finally sought out the one snippet he was interested in.

  Mendoza is the capital city of the Mendoza Province…

  … in Argentina