by Alex South
Silence.
She took a few steps. A few more. She glanced at the doors that had remained closed. Where did they go? She inched closer. Finally she came to the threshold. A corridor ran either side of her.
The walls were white and windowless. The whole ceiling was emitting soft light – perfectly uniform in its brightness.
On her left, the guard stared at her – behind him another door. It was identical to the one she had passed through. It opened. The guard turned and walked through it. There the red carpet ended. She looked in the other direction where the corridor stretched on for a bit and then made a turn.
She looked back to the guard, hesitated, then headed towards him; she could see whiteness around him in the room as if it were just a piece of paper and he was a drawing. As she came close, the whiteness revealed an empty, cube-shaped room. She entered. The floor and walls were made of a pale, shiny material – some sort of ceramic. The smell reminded Laura of cleaning spray. There were three doors. One she had come through. One to her side. One straight ahead. She stood next to the wheezing guard, who remained motionless, except for the unnaturally fast rise and fall of his chest.
“Now then Laura. I’m going to do a quick scan.”
Laura glanced around, looking for some sign of what was coming. Her body began to tingle slightly. A sudden panic hit her.
The fillings.
What if they put her at risk? What kind of scan was this?
“Laura… I’m detecting some metal, is there something you perhaps forgot?” Adam said, as the door to her right opened.
“Yeah… I have some fillings,” she said quietly.
“If you can just go through that door, we’ll figure it out together.”
A silence passed.
“Is everything okay?” Adam asked.
“What’s in there?”
A short silence. The guard moved towards her. Laura felt a smallness. She could feel his weight from the way he walked. She raised her fists and backed away. The guard stopped.
“Laura it’s okay… he would never hurt you.” Adam had a slight tone of panic.
“I’ll hurt him, get him away from me,” said Laura.
“You… you have to go with him. If you won’t go, I have to ask him to lead you by the arm. I’m sure you’d rather go at your own pace.”
Laura lowered her fists, glaring at the guard. “I’ll follow you then,” she said to the guard.
The guard turned and left the room, moving back onto the red carpet. Laura walked behind him. This time the corridor was straight and only a few steps long. A door at the end opened and she came into another cube-shaped room.
In the middle stood a comfortable looking, green armchair. A lonely stroke of colour.
“Would you mind taking a seat, Laura?”
“Why?”
“It may not look like much but it’s a special chair. It should help us investigate the results of your scan.”
“What does it do?” said Laura.
“Take a seat. I’ll show you!”
“No… tell me what it does.”
“It’s a little bit hard to explain, Laura.”
Laura heard footsteps and she turned to see the guard approaching. Her neck bent back to stare into his eyes. He came toe-to-toe with her. They held each other’s gaze for a moment. He looked at the chair, looked back at her, and pointed, making her flinch slightly. He put both hands on her shoulders, squeezed them and lifted her up. A voice told her to kick him. She felt the back of her legs touch the chair.
…
Laura opened her eyes, a white ceiling hung above her. Her head lifted. She saw glass walls, expensive furniture and a wooden floor – this was the same room as before. The one she had woken up in.
She sat up straight. The guard had picked her up – the last thing she remembered. After that, nothing…
Her tongue moved to her teeth. They felt the same as before. She stood up and walked around, looking for cameras, microphones, anything.
“Ah hello Laura. How are you?”
She froze and tried to pinpoint the direction of the voice.
“Well. Your fillings are gone. I had to be a little bit sneaky about it. Please forgive me. But I felt like you were getting a tiny bit stressed. Who wants to be awake at the dentist anyway? It’s never a particularly pleasant experience.”
Her tongue moved to her teeth again.
“Well the good news is, you’re all set. So let me show you what all the fuss is about.”
A door opened. The guard stood at the threshold – his empty eyes piercing her. He turned and left. Laura followed, coming back onto the red carpet. She looked left, seeing the guard and the open door. They were going to scan her again. She glanced back the way she had come, then slowly walked towards the cube-shaped room, until it opened up around her.
She waited in silence.
“Just doing another scan,” said Adam.
Laura felt a familiar tingle. She stood, waiting. What was she to him? A prisoner? In a way, he had saved her, or at least made her safer. But for whose benefit? Was she some sort of experiment? Were Zack and Macy here somewhere, going through the same process? She wondered if Adam knew about the powers she used to have.
“Okay, it seems like you’re ready. I can see you’re safe now. Shall we?”
A door opened. Laura waited for the guard to lead her, but he only stared at her blankly. She hesitated, then walked forwards into a corridor identical to the last. A corner waited ahead. The guard followed her with heavy footsteps. The bend drew close, and then unfolded before her.
She froze.
Purple light spilt from an open door. Laura felt unable to move. It forced her to stare, forced her to take it all in. It came from several bulbs – equally spaced along the walls and floor of the room ahead.
Her neck felt stiff and slow. She forced it sideways and flicked her eyes away to the guard behind her, who watched her without expression. As she did so, everything loosened – she could move normally again. She turned back to the light – it took hold of her again.
“What is it?” she said.
“It’s the big magnet,” said Adam. “A silly thing really. But just a little part of what we do down here.”
The light shifted, somehow becoming a colour she’d never seen in her life. The idea of approaching it seemed insane. Surely it wasn’t safe. Yet it seemed to pull at her. A conflict rose. Go or stay? She took a step forwards, her heart beating against her chest – the room disproportionate in her vision. As if that single step had been a huge leap.
She swallowed – her throat dry. She struggled to keep her legs straight. Her hips and knees tried to fold in on themselves. Was the light hurting her? She took another step forward.
Another step. Another. Until the doorway grew above her and she knew she would enter. A few steps more and she passed the threshold, losing the last shred of space, losing the last bit of white, empty corridor and becoming enveloped by the light.
Her chest rose and fell in gaping breaths. A terrible weight pushed down on her. The lights were everywhere. The walls. The ceiling. The floor. Her eyes wouldn’t focus, causing the room to tremble and distort.
For a moment she thought of death – was this her execution? Then the weight upon her began to feel good, as if it made her stronger. Her eyes focused. The lights were behind a thick sheet of glass. They had a robust, blocky shape.
Crystals.
They led somewhere. She could feel them pulling her. Like tunnels to some unseeable place. Her hands pressed against the glass. It was hot. She yearned to step through. Let them take her. She didn’t need to stay anymore. They would take her back. Back to where she should be. Back to where she came from. Back into light, and colour, and size, and depth.
The door opened. Laura’s head snapped to it. Another empty corridor. No! She couldn’t leave. Not now. She stared back at the crystals. They wouldn’t let her go. A strong grip caught her arm – the guard. She screamed and
kicked as he dragged her. The light disappeared, replaced by the white of another corridor. The door closed behind. The guard let go, leaving her panting on the floor.
“Laura… Laura!” said Adam.”… Laura, are you okay?”
“What are they?”
“They’re just… just. Are you claustrophobic? Or… wh-what happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Laura I’m here to help you… please, what’s going on? You’re scared of small spaces aren’t you?”
Laura knew she mustn’t tell the truth.
“Yeah… no… I… I, like, had a panic attack. I don’t know… I want to go home.”
“Oh Laura, I’m so sorry. You must relax. All this stuff is almost over. Please just… come to the next room. This is all totally safe I promise you.”
The guard took hold of her again and led her through cold white light into another room.
A pressure built around her. The air grew heavier. The guard let go. She quickly took a breath, but it felt like any other. She took more to be certain. Her eyes squinted. It was quiet, but not in a way she understood. It wasn’t a lack of noise, it was a vacuum, as if noise had been sucked out and could never exist again.
The room consisted of two equal spaces divided by a thick glass wall. Through it she saw the man from the helicopter wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Only one object was near him. A small screen. On her side of the glass, an MRI machine was embedded in the wall. Looking at it, she began to think it was that which affected the air. She could feel it, like a weight, or an anchor, slowing everything around it down. Next to it stood a plant with a red pot – a palm of some kind.
“Hello Laura,” Adam said. His voice, in the strange deadness of the room, was wholly unnatural.
Laura glanced around.
“Well,” said Adam. “We’re almost at the end of all this messing around. Thanks for your patience so far. So all I need for you to do now is lie on that flat surface over there. And then I can finally start explaining things.”
Laura looked at the machine. Was it an MRI machine? Or did it just look like one?
“What does it do?” she asked.
“It’s a different kind of scan.”
“What for?”
“I can’t tell you yet. I’m sorry. When we’re done, I’ll go through everything.”
Laura moved to it and lay flat on its tray, knowing it would take her inside. The surface under her moved. Adrenaline pulsed under her skin. The ceiling became replaced by darkness. She felt herself as an object – being taken along a factory assembly line. An idea came to her; this might not stop moving, it might lead her to machine after machine, to process after process.
She glanced towards her feet, and watched the shrinking circle of light. Her breathing became uncomfortably loud, like someone blowing in her ears. She tried humming, but that made an agonising drone in her skull. She tried to sit up slightly, but her body was stuck – she couldn’t figure out how. Laura tried moving just her arms. They were stuck too.
…
Adam couldn’t understand it. What had happened? She had looked so strange pressed against the glass like that. Then afterwards she had looked… gone. He had a sense of inevitability. Of course it wouldn’t go to plan, the one thing that he had planned for his whole life. Of course it wouldn’t work and he would have to fight for what should be guaranteed.
Well he would fight. This belonged to him. He would fight. He approached the screen and studied the number there. As his eyes rested upon it, a terrible sickness rose in his stomach. This was actually happening. It was actually going wrong.
…
Laura looked down at her feet and saw herself moving back to the lab, back into brightness. She waited until the tray had stopped moving. She lifted an arm, finding it unstuck. She sat up quickly and got off.
Adam was staring at a small screen in the wall. Laura watched him until she began to wonder if he had noticed her return.
“Stay there, I’ll be right back,” he said eventually.
Chapter 13
Adam stepped into his office, brightly lit by the large window in the centre of the back wall.
His eyes roamed over the pine trees for a few seconds. He moved over to the corner desk, black, sleek and modern. He sat down, opened a drawer, pulled out a sheet of paper and put it on the desk. A white board hung on the wall to his side. On it, a flow chart he had drawn a long time ago.
He reached over to a small, oblong box and took out his favourite pen. Without knowing why, he drew a little square on the paper. He put a cross inside – a doodle from his subconscious.
It didn’t make sense. He had done everything right. The crystals were meant to suck it all out of her. This must have happened before, he reassured himself, because they had told him to test the result. If it worked one hundred percent of the time, what would be the point of the test?
What could he do? The result wasn’t low enough, but it was low. Maybe she just had more than the average person. Maybe she just needed to go back in. But their instructions had said to do it once. No more. That part was specific. The thought of going against that, of going outside of the plan – he could end up ruining everything.
Chapter 14
Laura watched Adam walk through the door. He gave her a wide smile. “Laura, I hope you don’t mind but we’re going to have to go back to the giant magnet again.”
An intense warmth passed through her. At the same time, she felt sick. She could already see the light in her mind, already feel its pull on her.
“Why are they magnetic?” she said.
“I know you have a lot of questions. And after we’re done here, we can start addressing them. Let’s get this out the way first though, shall we?” Adam gestured towards the open door. “Please, go ahead.” The guard began to leave.
Laura followed him out of the room and down the corridor. A few corners, a few straight stretches, and it was there. That impossible light which fell out of the room and coloured everything. Laura walked past the guard, trying to act naturally. She couldn’t let Adam know how they affected her.
The door frame pulled her forwards, like a portal – taking her inside, pushing away the white, cold corridor and drawing the light over her. It hit so hard. Had it turned against her? The light came into her. Her body expanded and shrank as it tried to suck in air, no longer feeling like it belonged to her. Her vision bled out her eyes and swallowed her whole skull.
She accepted her death. This beautiful energy could continue without her. But then the light seemed to change. It seemed to heal her, fuel her. Each crystal sang. They overlapped, screeched, vibrated in the spaces of each other, fitting together and yet clashing. An incredible, ecstatic noise.
The door opened to her side. Was that it? Laura pulled herself away. She couldn’t stay. She couldn’t let Adam know.
She came stumbling back out into harsh white light. With them behind her. With their image burned into her. As if time had stuck with them and spat her out into a future that wasn’t real. She followed the guard, his wide, slouched back a beacon in the endless, bleak corridors. The carpet turned to wood and a huge rectangular room opened around her, drawing another see-through wall across her vision with yet another sweeping view of sunlit treetops. A line of sofas and arm chairs ran parallel with the glass.
In the room’s centre lay something halfway between a deck chair and a beanbag. To her right were two huge wooden tables, arranged in a right angle so that they neatly slotted into the room’s corner.
“Laura, why don’t you makes yourself comfortable?” said Adam. “Do you want something to eat?”
“No…” Laura walked towards the glass wall until she had her palms against it. She remained standing like this, staring out.
“Quite a view isn’t it?” said Adam.
Laura didn’t move. She let the moment linger – just her and the view. What were those crystals? What was it that they gave to her?
Chapter 15
“Laura, make yourself comfortable,” said Adam, “I’m going to play you some audio which will clear up a lot of your questions.”
Laura dropped onto the beanbag-deckchair in the room’s centre. It shifted around her. She felt the tiredness in her body.
“Your language has no word for us. But you can call us oceanbeings,” said a deep voice. Like Adam’s, it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. But it possessed a calm and authoritative quality. Something sounded a bit off. Like the voice was doubled over itself, but in a way Laura could only just pick out.
“We come from a planet similar to yours in some ways, and very different in others.
“We existed in an ocean, not too dissimilar to the ones on your planet. For this reason, evolution made us look very different to how you look. We were built to survive in very different conditions.
“The way our society developed is also very different. You had many resources and materials with which you experimented and evolved. Where we come from, there was not the same opportunity for experimentation and the development of technology. Simply put, without the ability to go on land, we did not have the history of tool-use that your race does.
“Our development, instead, was linguistic, philosophical and cultural. We developed a strong understanding of our nature, of how to live with happiness, and co-operation. We do not have the same history of war, and power struggles, except for one exception, which I will come to later.
“For us, the important thing was to have an idea. Some common idea that united us all. With a common idea, you can relate to one another. Everything has an ultimate meaning. Everything has a purpose. A society with an idea is a society united. A society with direction.
“I will sum up for you now, the idea we settled on. We observed the great equalising power of huge numbers. Flip a coin once, and it can only be heads or tails. Half of its potential is lost. Flip a coin five times, and, although unlikely, it can land on heads every time. Again, the opportunity for full expression is lost. Only half of what is possible is experienced in reality.