by Graeme Hurry
He vaulted over the waist-high gate at the top of the stairs and half fell. His sense of balance was starting to go. One swift kick and the door to the restoration lab splintered. He could see the stacks through the windows on the far wall.
The multitool was still in his hand as he battered at the reinforced glass that protected the stacks. Bloody streaks appeared on top of the splintering cracks as the sharp chunk of metal slipped from his grasp and crushed the edges of his hand.
The frame gave, and he dropped the multitool to pound with elbows and knees, tearing great swathes of the spidery, crumbling glass from the frame. He stepped through and now he was sure the alarm was going off, red lights shooting from the fire alarms. He tried to remember where Zimmerman had headed with the book, and ran through the shelves trailing fingers across books, leaving clotting crimson streaks, faster and faster.
Slash tore into another progression, electric feedback shrieking as loud as a jet engine, but underneath it all the lion was nervous, backing up hesitantly, whiskers twitching and ready to turn and run at the keening that came from the night surrounding it.
He found it tucked away at waist height on a shelf of incunabular travelogues in a tan book-box. It was only discernable from the rest via the newly minted restoration tag that hung off into the aisle, glimmering and sparkling in the light of the silent alarms.
Victor ripped it from its cradle and tore at the box with scrabbling claws. The book itself emerged, loathsome and satiny smooth, and he ran into the wall at full speed with his head down. His vision went red, his ears rang to drown everything else out, and he flirted with the edge of consciousness.
In the formless space inside his head, one set of echoes began to vanish. The cacophony of hard rock sputtered and skipped, a microminiature needle bouncing wildly in his pocket, gouging deep, soon to be fatal grooves into the magnetic recording of Welcome to the Jungle. A hiss of triumph came from somewhere deep inside his head, and the fifes screeched unopposed.
He pulled the miniature torch from his pocket, the one that had fused the release valves on the cryostats, and opened the gas. Clenching it in a fist, he started to beat the butt end into the floor beside in a daze. One, two, three times it clicked and sputtered, the fourth brought a flickering blue-white flame into existence.
His arm swung from the elbow and ground the edge of the torch into the cover of the book. A charred oval sprang up, then vanished from the inside out in wisps of ash. He’d run the flame across his jeans without noticing, and wisps of smoke swam and multiplied on top of his thigh. The stench from the book mingled with the odor of his own burned flesh and as they burned he began to slam the back of his skull into the concrete wall, rhythmically, methodically.
In perfect time with the drums. In counterpoint to the fifes.
The fire caught and spread, and anyone who had wandered by the lawn above would have seen the smoke pile up in the pyramidal ground-level skylights, lit by the flickering red strobe lights and the deeper, richer hues of orange and yellow ochre mixing inside the black haze. Had they stayed there long enough, they may even have seen and, somehow, heard an optical illusion, a weird swimming motion looming up out of the billows, a thin horripilous shriek that came from nowhere but the inside of their own head.
If it were a dark enough night, the streetlights turned off and the windows blackened, they might have happened to glance up to see the white band of the Milky Way stretching across the heavens, one central, unblinking polypous bulge staring down. They would have shivered a little bit and hurried home to watch the news as the fire department arrived, and they would have turned the volume up unaccountably high to listen to the sports scores before they shook their head out of a daze and wondered why Willard Scott was screaming at them.
The next Monday, when the steady flow of fire inspectors and investigators and gawking students had slackened to a trickle, a folded-up copy of the campus newspaper was left abandoned on a bench after nine-o’clock classes had finished, the crossword and Jumble half-done. There would have been the usual assortment of student health columns on the prevalence of venereal disease, three-hundred word columns on the problems plaguing America, the Middle East, Africa, the whole damn world and how to fix them, and the obligatory fifty percent of the paper given over to sports.
There would also have been a sidebar blurb on the A3 page, and an excerpt of a departmental press release, looking at first glance like a private advertisement.
*
May 23rd, 2009 – University officials have released preliminary findings concerning the recent fire in the manuscript restoration room of the Rare Books Collection at the Small Library that claimed the life of Astronomy graduate student Victor Sibarra. It is now believed that the fire was started by faulty wiring in the environmental control system and that burning insulation was responsible for the dense smoke that quickly overwhelmed the unfortunate student.
As to the damage to the rare documents caught in the fire, the Library’s Director of Digital Collections, Raymond Zimmerman, said that ‘we may salvage some hope from this in that all of the affected items were already fully digitized and stored on the Library’s servers, so that scholars will at least still have access to the texts, if not the physical books themselves.’
*
May 24th, 2009 – In the wake of the still-unexplained explosion that devastated the Fan Mountain Observatory and to a department still reeling from the suicide of Professor Mona Khovanskaya last month, Department Chairman Alexander Hurt delivered a somber address at the annual Majors’ Dinner. He remarked that ‘while we do not know what caused Professor Khovanskaya’s tragic actions, we must not linger on such misery. She was a part of this department for twenty two years and I would like to think that, through her students and research, her legacy will continue to enrich our lives.’
Addressing the tragic accident that claimed the life of graduate student Victor Sibarra, he said that ‘most of us did not know him well, but those that did would surely agree with me: that Victor loved astronomy, and displayed the fierce joy in the pursuit of knowledge that is the prime quality of the great scientists. In perhaps the most fitting tribute that I can conceive of, for him as a scientist cut down before his prime, I am pleased to announce that the data recorded from Project OZUMA has all been successfully recovered. Colleagues around the country and world will continue this work.
I feel that, if he knew, he could think of no better way for us to honor his memory than by ensuring that his contributions to astronomy will not vanish, will not die with him, but will stay with us so that one day we may all hear of what discoveries he made.’
DREAMWORLD
by Caroline Dunford
The tiny gem heart of the engine hummed red-hot, and they were not even underway. Everyone knew there should have been more tests, but sometimes the universe doesn’t give you that chance.
He didn’t know if the others were having the same problem, but now they were boarded he couldn’t ask. He imagined elsewhere a thousand other men and women forced to make the same decision.
‘No, I’m not sure,’ snapped the engineer. ‘But if we don’t do this we’re dead. That I’m sure about.’
He rubbed his hand across his head. The final decision was his. Did he take the risk? He asked her one more time.
‘Will it be safe for – everything else?’
The strain was getting to them all. Her eyes were fire.
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. But you heard what he said; if you don’t do this we are lost. It’s a risk – but on the one hand you’re risking nothing, or the other hand you’re risking all of us. For god’s sake there are children here!’
He wanted to say there might be children out there. But he knew she was right; there might be nothing there at all. He knew somewhere the rest were making the same decision.
‘Do it,’ he said.
And the universe exploded around them.
*
‘I’ll swap you one of
those big blue ‘uns for an aspirin and a jelly?’ offered Senga.
His wife rummaged around in her toilet bag.
‘I’ve got a couple of those green things. What are they worth to you?’
She was looking better today; sitting up in bed wearing that hideous purple thing she referred to as her ‘matinee jacket’. Something about the room was overly familiar. How long had they been there? His mind was slipping again; sliding away from him like dandelion seeds on a breeze. The harder he tried to catch on to the memories the more they evaded him or dissolved in his hands. His wife and Senga both thought that the drugs they were given here were affecting their memories. He watched them rifling through their secret stores and wondered why everyone assumed if you were old you were stupid. No one in the Home, he could remember, had any knowledge of pharmacy, but an ever-growing group was taking part in a controlled and self-imposed drug trial. For some of them, like Senga, it brought back old times. She and he had been at school together, not that they were ever friends.
‘You smell and sweat too much,’ Senga was telling his wife. ‘And your hair’s overgrown.’
‘And you’re a vulgar, shrivelled up old slag,’ retorted his wife.
He was proud. She’d always had spirit; spirit and class.
‘At least I can still walk,’ rejoined Senga
‘You old cow,’ he began.
‘No, no, don’t worry dear. From what you’ve told me Senga always had plenty of exercise one way or another. Its not surprising she’s fitter now. Besides, I could walk if I wanted to. There isn’t anywhere to go.’
Senga shrugged, which was as close as she ever came to an apology. He noticed she let his wife get one pill up on the trade. It was a blue.
‘That was nice of her,’ Betty said when she had gone.
She opened her hand to show Bill the contents.
‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Won’t mixing these be dangerous?’
‘Oh come on, Bill. You know we’ve all been very good about watching quantities. This is a good plan. Besides, I don’t mind a little risk if there is a chance of getting a clearer head out of it. This is no way to live.’ He came over and sat on the edge of her bed. Side by side they gazed out of the window at the two swans on the artificial lake. They had single hospital beds now. Betty patted the bed beside her.
‘Come on, sit here properly.’
He hoisted his legs up the bed and sank into the propped up pillows beside her.
‘There. That’s nice,’ she said. ‘Just like old times.’
‘I’ll swap you one of those big blue ‘uns for an aspirin and a jelly?’ offered Senga.
His wife rummaged around in her toilet bag.
‘I’ve got a couple of those green things. What are they worth to you?’
Bill sat back in his old leather recliner, watching. He felt like a sailor lost at sea who keeps imagining clouds on the horizon are islands. Hadn’t they been through this before?
‘Are you meant to repeat combinations? We don’t have forever to get this right.’ He laughed half-heartedly.
Both women gave his odd looks. They carried on with their exchange. Before Senga left, he said, ‘You slipped her an extra blue, didn’t you? Why did you do that? You didn’t argue this time.’
‘Are you mad? A blue’s worth ten times what she gave me.’
Betty showed him what she had in her hand. There was no blue.
‘Come on, sit up with me,’ she asked as the door closed. ‘There’s two swans on the lake. It’ll be like old times.’
Bill didn’t make the same mistake again. Whatever was happening here wasn’t that simple. Unless this was how it felt to lose your mind. He’d heard that people who suffered temporal tumours constantly got cases of déjà vu. He spent the rest of the day fingering his temples, as if the tumours could be felt outside the skull. He stopped when Betty told him he’d wear away the last of his hair.
‘I can’t accept that we’re so old,’ he told her that night.
‘That was always your problem, dear. You could never accept anything. Its what made you a good policeman.’
That night he dreamt about the Home’s director, Mr Tibs. He dreamt that Mr Tibs was his pet cat. He was feeding him whiskas on a cracked, pale blue saucer, because it was the only thing Mr Tibs would feed off. Mr Tibs, Betty and he lived in the bottom of a blackened tenement, which had been rusty red when they had first moved in. He’d carried Betty over the doorstep.
‘It’s a good start, Betty,’ he’d told her. ‘But we’ll do better. I’ll make sergeant next year.’
‘Long as I’m with you, love, I’ll be happy.’
He’d honestly intended to move, but barely a year had they been in there when Betty got pregnant with little James. The money he’d saved towards the flitting went on baby clothes and toys. He bought a comfortable chair.
‘That’s for you,’ he’d said proudly when it was delivered.
‘Just when do you think I’ll have the time to sit down with a new baby?’ she smiled.
Bill was hurt.
‘I thought you’d like it. And it would be good for you while you were preggers.’
She laughed again and threw her arms round him.
‘I love it,’ she reassured him.
He sank his head into her wonderful, sweet, blonde hair.
‘I’ll get you something better.’
So he’d brought her a purple Matinee jacket to wear in the hospital after she’d delivered.
‘Proud purple for a new Mam,’ he told her, and watched the excitement glow over her dear face. Both of them longed for this child.
‘He’s going to be the most loved Baby in the whole world ever’ – they told each other a thousand times a day.
When he woke in the morning, he was sweaty, dizzy and nauseous. Where was James? Before he knew it, he was sitting up in bed, panicking, yelling.
‘Where’s the baby? Where’s little James? Where’s our son?’
Alarmed, Betty rang for an attendant. She took one look at what was happening and called Mr Tibs. They were like that there. You could say that for them, Betty often said, they’d never try and sedate you when you were confused like she’d heard some Homes did.
When Mr Tibs got there, Betty had managed to stagger out of bed and was trying to comfort Bill. Her hair was wild and her eyes had that bemused, haunted look. Mr Tibs hated moments like this.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘He says we have a son. He says we’ve lost our baby. Have I lost my baby? I must be such a bad mother I can’t remember him at all.’
‘James, little James,’ whispered her husband.
Mr Tibs felt like crying. This was the worst this week. He took a deep breath.
‘You’re both wonderful parents,’ he told him. ‘Little James is quite grown-up. He’s done very well for himself, and he is married with two babies of his own now.’
‘Is he safe?’ begged Betty.
Mr Tibs hesitated a moment.
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ sobbed Bill.
‘No, no, he’s not dead. I promise you he’s not dead. Have you been mixing your pills? You think we don’t notice these things, but we know how smart you all are.’
Betty looked sheepish. Bill shook his head.
‘Its easy to become confused sometimes. Please don’t worry. I promise James isn’t dead. I’ll check our office files and see if we have a picture, I can bring down for you. Pictures often help.’
‘I dreamt you used to be our cat,’ said Bill.
Mr Tibs didn’t know what to say.
When they brought the picture, Bill knew he had never seen it before. He did recognise James, but he was older than he remembered. He looked like Bill at fifty. Betty thought he must be about forty-five. She’d remembered what the jacket was now, and why she liked it so much. Although he hadn’t told her, since his dream she’d started talking to him about the old tenement flat. They agreed on most things, but she didn’t remem
ber a cat.
Mr Tibs was busy the next few days, ironing out all kinds of complaints. Some of his staff asked him outright if the meds had been changed, the people were suddenly so disruptive.
‘They’re dreaming, remembering,’ he told them.
Everyone began to feel hopeful and scared all at the same time. The mood affected the whole Home. It was going to be Christmas in three weeks, and many of the residents didn’t remember having a Christmas at all.
Bill knew things were wrong. Every time he tried to wrap his mind around the problem it eluded him. He knew he was defeating himself. He was growing more and more convinced he didn’t want to remember. Terrible fantasies suggested themselves to him. Perhaps this was an insane asylum or a prison for the criminally insane – had he done something so terrible he couldn’t bring himself to remember it? As the days wore on towards Christmas, and there was still no card from James, he convinced himself that he and Betty had done something terrible to their baby when he was little.
‘I don’t remember,’ said Betty. ‘What could we have done? He would have been the most loved baby in the world.’
‘Maybe it was an accident,’ suggested Bill.
‘And he blames us?’
‘Or he was taken away from us because of it?’
‘You mean like a chip-pan fire or something like that? One of us would remember. I’m certain one of us would remember.’
She was so scared and frightened he didn’t want to press her further. He sat on her bed, buried his head in her wiry white hair, and hugged her, thinking how terrible it was to be old. He’d always believed as you got older time moved faster. Nowadays, every day was an eternity. It felt like he had been here forever. No, he couldn’t frighten her with trying to uncover the truth aloud. He had never imagined he could be so lonely. It was only now, towards the end of his life, he realised how much a sociable animal a human being is. He needed companionship. He needed to be loved. He needed his son to think kindly of him when he was gone.