Psycho blinked. He was staring at the roof of a room he had never been in before, lit dimly by small blue lights on the ceiling, surrounded by sheer grey walls. He felt the shuffle of multiple… giants around him.
A voice asked if he could hear them. He was too light-headed to answer just yet.
He heard screaming in the room next door. Unable to move his body, he could only turn his head. He couldn’t see down the hallway what was happening next to him, but that voice was familiar. It was her voice. There was a thrashing noise. Something metallic was kicked over. Tall giants moved about quickly, yelling at each other.
He panted, ‘Lo…’
Fingers snapped in front of his eyes, turning his attention upwards again. Psycho blinked and looked back up at the lingering faces over him, inspecting his vitals. He tried to move, but it was too difficult to lift the weight of his body. The air in here was strange, heavier. It would take a little while to acclimatise, he was told, although he was not sure if it was said in words or simply beamed directly into his brain.
There were screams again. Psycho turned his head. He wanted to shout to her that everything was okay, that there was no need to panic, but only air came out of his throat.
When the kicking and screaming next door finally stopped, it only made him pant more.
‘Lo,’ he called. ‘Lo!’
ENGINEER
Lara woke several months later. She only knew that because Psycho told her.
‘You didn’t transition properly,’ he said. ‘They couldn’t take you.’
She struggled to open her eyes, as though she had been in a deep, deep sleep. Psycho was nothing but a blurry outline and it took several blinks to adjust. Her body was heavy and would not respond when she wanted to move something.
In her daze, he explained what was happening to her and where she was: she was in an iso-pneumatic environment – a phrase he conjured himself in all his brilliance – which was balanced for both her and them. Since she had been in this environment for months now, her body was acclimatised. She may not have remembered, but when she first woke, kicking and screaming, she would have felt as though she was drowning without oxygen. That phase had passed now.
As for the grogginess, she had been drugged. There was a thin plastic tube lodged in the back of her neck, mixing anaesthetic directly with her spinal fluid and rendering her completely out-cold with no memory of the time which had passed. She and millions of others were in a permanent comatosed state for practical purposes, but to also conserve their energy: animals did not need to be fed as much when they were hibernating, and one could imagine the hassle of feeding several billion species. The tube also helped with that: it fed sugars, amino acids, and fats into her bloodstream in the most basic molecular forms, bypassing the need for digestion. As a result, she had lost a few kilos of weight, but that was mostly because of muscle atrophy brought on by the hibernation. Psycho had temporarily pinched her line shut, allowing her to come out of her coma.
Lara sat up and realised she was lying in a three-inch puddle of brown liquid, sitting in the base of a cocoon-shaped glass pod. The lukewarm mud had stained through her clothes, making her filthy and moist. The glass pod was shaped like her supine body, completely sealed off, except for a few pinprick holes above her head which allowed her to breathe the strange, new air. Her neck had sprouted a thin, plastic tube, which flowed out of the pod through a tiny hole and was connected to a machine somewhere in the centre of the room. It made her panic. She clawed at her neck. She pulled at the tube and felt it was imbedded quite deep into her skin.
‘Don’t pull!’ he said. ‘It’s feeding you.’
And where was Psycho? He was on the other side of the glass, standing upright, clean and well-dressed in a suit and tie, hair slicked back, chin freshly shaven. He wore black, leather shoes which had hardly been scuffed, and there was not a speck of dirt on him.
‘The brown water is still a mystery,’ he said, ‘from what I’ve managed to gather, it’s full of bacteria that we normally surround ourselves with, like dirt and foods and pollen and dog shit. We didn’t come from sterile environments and so we can’t live and digest food properly without them. That’s my theory, anyway.’
Lara couldn’t stop staring at him. ‘Is that you?’
He grinned. ‘It is. A lot has changed.’
‘Where am I? Where’s Dylan?’
‘Dylan?’
‘My boyfriend! He was with me! He was there when…’ She paused when those images of Veteran’s Day came back, of the running people and the fires and jets crashing into the clouds. Thousands must be dead; it had been a full-blown attack.
Psycho said, ‘Yes, you were abducted. Everyone was.’
‘Oh, god…’ She pushed against the glass. ‘Get me out.’
‘I can’t. You didn’t transition properly, Lo.’ He knelt down to her. ‘I just woke you up because I was bored. If Vet found me here, he’d probably go nuts!’
Lara calmed herself down slowly. You’re in a pod. You’re okay. She looked around her at the visible world through her glass, but there was not much to see other than darkness. The walls were very tall and divided into shelves, and running up and down were thousands of bunches of thin tubes, wrapped together, flowing liquid from a central tank up into the darkness, to more pods, to more people trapped in a never-ending nightmare.
‘This… this… it can’t be a…’
Psycho stood back and threw out his arms. ‘A ship in the clouds!’ he cried. His voice echoed. ‘This place is huge. You can’t even imagine—’
‘This is a spaceship. An alien—’
‘We don’t like that word,’ Psycho said, cutting her off sharply. ‘It’s derogatory now.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘I don’t joke.’
‘Get me out!’ She banged on the glass with two fists. The thump echoed.
‘Shh!’ he snarled. ‘You’ll get me, and yourself, in trouble.’
‘Tell me where Dylan is.’
‘I don’t know where he’s kept. There are a hundred-thousand in this room alone.’
‘Tell me something – anything,’ she begged. She panted a little and the panic began to rise in her throat. ‘How long will I be here?’
Psycho hesitated before saying, ‘Forever, probably.’
She sat back in her enclosed bathtub, the lukewarm brown water sloshing around her, and hugged her knees to chest with childlike distress. She noticed she was still in the same clothes she wore to the parade, only much dirtier now.
‘What did they do to me?’
‘Nothing, Lo! Really, nothing! I was there.’
‘You were there and you didn’t help me? What the hell is wrong with you?’
‘Okay, look…’ Psycho knelt down close to her, almost touching noses with her pod. He promised to explain everything from the start, from the day they were both beamed up from the streets, and then maybe she would understand.
Psycho heard Lo screaming next door when he woke. They had to sedate her right away; she hadn’t ‘transitioned’ properly, so she couldn’t make ‘contact’. All these terms were explained to Psycho eventually by the one named Vet. He was the head biologist on the ship, the one in charge of all the specimens beamed up and all the replacements which would eventually be beamed back down. Vet was a renowned scholar who had dedicated his life to the study and understanding of the new world. It was his job to know all which could be learnt about the biology, the atmosphere, the bugs, the viruses, the DNA; that was his role aboard this ship.
Vet was in the room when Psycho woke. He was directing small teams of medics who were taking care of each newly-transitioned ‘native’. Vet snapped his fingers at Psycho to get his attention. On the flat table, he gazed up, still in a groggy state. Giant heads looked down at him. He choked on the air for the first few minutes, taking in big, gasping breaths. The mask was full of oxygen, and they were placing it on and off his face in order to get him to acclimatise to the new at
mosphere. Handheld devices were placed all over his chest, each recording separate aspects of his vitals. There was only little chatter, rhythmic talk, as though each was doing routine checks on their patient: heart rate, stable. Breathing, stable. Check, check. Once convinced of his health, the flat bed was mechanically raised to allow Psycho to partially sit up, where upon he was able to get a better look at the surgery-like recovery room around him. He saw a table beside him, where the oxygen mask had been placed. He lazily reached for it, knowing he was close to passing out, but a hand gently took him by the wrist and placed his hand back in his own lap. Psycho gawked at the fingers around his arm, and then up at the creature to which they belonged to. For a while, he couldn’t stop staring. He was hypnotised. These giants all wore plain, unpatterned clothing, like ponchos, which draped down to their ankles. They wore layers of cloth which wrapped around their heads, noses and mouths, revealing only a pair of eyes. Their skin varied from caramel to black, and the joints in their arms were different to his, as though they had extra bones between their elbows and wrists. As for the hand on his wrist, it was Vet’s. It had four fingers, each with four joints.
Psycho tried to speak, tried to say hello, but he couldn’t muster words yet.
Once every part of him was marked off as healthy and functional, the giants lowered his bed once again and left him there. He was told to lie still and wait, learn to breathe, just relax. The giants needed to move on to others and wake them too. Psycho stared at the roof for a while and tried to focus on breathing slowly.
He must have fallen asleep at some point because he was woken hours later by sharp words. Although they were not said in English, he could tell by the tone that he was being called at. He rolled over and sat up, on his own accord this time. He was staring directly at an eight-foot giant, carrying a digital, glass-framed tablet on which he was pushing several buttons with his finger. Christ, even they have iPads. He laughed at his own joke, which made the giant stare up at him and narrow his eyes through his white head sheet.
Psycho held out a hand. ‘Hi.’
The giant looked up, looked down, and kept touching away on the screen.
He retracted his hand and kicked his feet on the edge of his bed, like a curious child at the doctor’s office. ‘What do I call you?’ he asked.
‘De vet,’ he said under his breath.
‘De vet, as in, ‘Shut up, I don’t know your language, tiny human’, or de vet as in, the vet?’
The giant stared at him with a curious glare, then continued working away. Eventually, he stopped and turned his tablet so that he could see the screen. Psycho saw a cartoonish image of a cow on the digital surface.
‘Yeah, yeah, the cow says moo. Fructzul een mrauu.’ He pushed the tablet away. ‘Don’t play games with me. You speak English, or at least one of our languages, don’t you?’
The giant finally gave in. He folded his arms in his lap respectfully and stood up straight, head tall. ‘Little.’
‘A little is enough.’
He placed his four-fingered hand on his chest and introduced himself as, ‘Vet.’
‘No, no, doctor,’ Psycho corrected smugly.
Vet shook his head and chuckled a little, in a condescending way. ‘No. Vet.’
Psycho gave in. He held out his hand again and introduced himself with his real name.
Vet didn’t take up the offer. He simply said, ‘Stay,’ before moving on.
Vet could talk fractured English, about as much as Psycho knew his language, which sounded Dutch, German, or possibly Russian – heavy on the consonants, lots of rolled R’s, solid V’s and hacking sounds, like the Welsh made. With a combination of both, Vet was able to explain to Psycho that he had transitioned well, but needed to now make contact. Each boy and girl chosen to transition was given a personal contact when they were very young – a teacher who sat with them and played with them, who swapped knowledge with them, and who prepared them for this event. It was many years ago now since any of the transitioned ones had met or heard their contact, except in dreams, and so it was important to re-establish that bond they once had as young ones. Like babies to their mothers, student and teacher should instantly recognise one another and connect. This was done by voice; the ears being a more reliable sense than eye recognition.
Psycho was told to sit there on his bed and stay put. He was visited by a series of giants in different coloured ponchos and head scarves, tall ones, short – well, shorter – ones, dark-skinned, light-skinned, yellow-eyed, blue-eyed… Each would appear with Vet by their side and let out a strange sound from their throats. It was like a very long, extended croak. Psycho only responded with a scornful look, to which Vet would then encourage the giant to move on and try another.
This went on twelve times until Psycho almost instantly leapt from his bed with excitement. The giant who appeared in his room wore black, with a very tall headscarf wrapped like a turban, and vibrant orange eyes. He stepped into the room, hands behind his back, with the respectful strides of a leader of great importance. When he appeared before his student, he hardly got the chance to make his croak before it all triggered. Psycho almost wanted to cry when he saw him, but the reunion didn’t last long. Before he could even hug him, or shake his hand, or shout that he had been a believer all along, the black-dressed giant left the room and Vet ticked something off his tablet. Psycho wanted to call out to him, but he didn’t even know his name, so he didn’t know what to shout.
Vet and another medic in white then washed Psycho down on the bed, spraying his naked body with lukewarm water and washing a smelly shampoo all over his skin and hair, scrubbing him clean of the dirty Earth contaminants. He was also given an injection in his arm, a vaccine, so that he wouldn’t get sick from any of their contaminants either.
As he sat there, being washed, he asked, ‘Is he the captain of the ship, my one?’
Vet kept scrubbing. ‘No.’ He struggled to find a word.
‘Commander? Pilot? Lieutenant?’
The other medic asked what the native was saying. Vet typed words into his tablet, and then read the translation. He found a suitable reply and said, ‘En-gin-eef.’
‘Engin-what?’
‘Gush, dif ‘ar’, vuer ‘ef’,’ said the medic, pointing at the letters on the tablet.
‘En-gin-eer,’ Vet repeated. ‘Yes.’
‘Of the ship? Like a mechanic? A builder?’
‘No, not ship.’ Vet did a big circular movement with his arms. ‘Home.’
Earth, he meant.
Curled up in her pod, Lara muttered, ‘So it wasn’t just me who freaked out.’
‘A lot of people freaked out.’
‘This Engineer guy… he’s like, your Baba, isn’t he?’
Psycho, on the other side of the glass, nodded. ‘He is my everything.’
After Vet and his medics cleaned and scrubbed him, they instructed him to dress in a buttoned shirt, jacket, tie and black shoes. These were the formal clothes natives wore down there, they explained, and so these were the formal clothes he was to wear up here. To them, the clothes of humans were rather eccentric and unnecessarily lavish, on par to one seeing a Chihuahua in a pink woollen jumper, a wig, and mini shoes. But, craving their respect and adoration, he was happy to comply. He was given his silvery-grey suit in a locker room of sorts, where he met the other humans who had successfully gone through the same transitional process. They were from all over the world, all ages and walks of life. He had seen some of them in his final dream when they were nothing but projections, but in real life, they were just as characterless. None spoke, nor looked at all interested in making conversation. They hardly blinked. They did nothing but put on their clothes, slick their hair back tight, straighten their ties, check their makeup in the reflective glass panels, like one would do before a corporate job interview.
Not all had made it. Like Lo, some didn’t transition well and woke up in terror. Others failed to make contact: they did not recognise their teacher, not by
their appearance nor their unique croak. Those ones had been removed, leaving only the fully functional, well-transitioned pilgrims. As to what happened to the others, no one seemed to be interested. Psycho asked casually, but the guy next to him, buttoning up his shirt, merely shrugged and carried on. He asked them what they thought of the ship, but they had no opinion. He asked what their giant was like and they’d just shrug. Perhaps something had been altered in their psychology during transition, or maybe they were all just the same dull, boring human beings that they were back on Earth.
Meeting Engineer for the first time since he was a child was rather superficial; he felt like a puppy being chosen from a pet store, except he was the last one left and his new owner was tossing up second thoughts as he looked down into those brown eyes and remembered how much he would have to feed him and train him and clean up after him. The moment they made contact though, Psycho felt this overpowering warmth in his chest, this unconditional adoration. The excitement was almost too much to contain, but he tried to keep his poise to blend in with the other transitioned humans, in case an outburst of any kind would make him look defective.
Vet ticked him off once he was fully dressed, and another giant in a blue poncho was brought in to be Psycho’s escort and take him to Engineer’s private quarters, where he would begin his ‘service’. Psycho tried to shake hands with the escort, but he pulled away from him rather dramatically, as though he was a venomous spider.
Vet slapped Psycho’s hands away. That was gross, he said.
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