GENESIS (Projekt Saucer)
Page 33
DOCTOR
Wires?
RICHARD
The wires are taped to them. Wires and rubber tubes. All these things trail back to the wall behind the beds and are fixed to machines. The machines have colored screens. Not colored: a sort of monochrome. I thought at first they were colored because I saw lines of bright light jumping up and down.
DOCTOR
Have you ever seen an ECG monitor?
RICHARD
I think so. In the movies.
DOCTOR
Is that what these machines look like?
(The patient reverts to the past tense.)
RICHARD Yes. The room looked like a hospital ward – except for its shape. DOCTOR
The circular shape.
RICHARD
Yes.
DOCTOR
Okay. Continue.
RICHARD
We were led to the far side of the room and taken through another door, and we entered another circular room, but bigger and brighter. There were a couple of surgical beds – no, like operating tables. There were people around the beds and the walls were all lined with long glass cabinets… Oh, please God, I don’t want to!
DOCTOR
It’s all right, you are relaxed, you are deep, deep in sleep, you are very relaxed and you can tell me, you have nothing to fear. What is it that you didn’t want to do?
(The patient reverts to the present tense.)
RICHARD
I don’t want to look at them.
DOCTOR
At what?
RICHARD
I don’t want to look at the glass cabinets.
DOCTOR
Why don’t you want to look? What do you see in the glass cabinets?
RICHARD
People. Naked people. There are naked people in the glass cabinets. The glass cabinets are like coffins, the glass seems to be slightly frosted, and the naked people are lying in the cabinets with tubes running out of them. Oh, God, I can’t look at them!
DOCTOR
All right, Richard, it’s all right, you’re relaxed, you don’t have to look at them. Relax, Richard. I just want to go over something I might have missed. In the room you’ve just come from, where the people were lying on the beds, did any of those people actually speak to you? RICHARD
No. They couldn’t. They were unconscious.
DOCTOR
And the people in the frosted glass cabinets?
RICHARD
I don’t want to look at them!
DOCTOR
It’s all right, Richard. You don’t have to look at them again. Just tell me: Are they unconscious?
RICHARD
They’re unconscious or dead.
DOCTOR
Do you see anything that looks like an ECG monitor?
RICHARD
Yes. There are screens like that above and between the glass cabinets.
DOCTOR
Are the lights on the screens jumping up and down?
RICHARD
Yes.
DOCTOR
Fine. That means they’re alive.
RICHARD
They’re alive. They’re unconscious.
DOCTOR
Fine, Richard. Now tell me about the people in the room. The ones standing around, fully conscious.
RICHARD
They’re ordinary.
DOCTOR
They look like normal human beings?
RICHARD
Yes.
DOCTOR
Please describe them.
RICHARD
The two nearest to me seem pleasant enough. They’re smiling at me and the woman who drove the car. One is tall and slim, white hair, suntanned, I think in his late forties or early fifties, but his forehead is unlined. It looks unusually smooth.
DOCTOR
That was the only oddity you noticed?
RICHARD
He was ordinary, but his forehead was unlined.
DOCTOR
And the other man?
RICHARD
He has no hair on his head. He looks normal, but he’s bald. He seems older than the other man – not much, but a bit older – and the skin on his face seems unreal, as if he’s had plastic surgery. DOCTOR
Do you know what the results of plastic surgery look like? RICHARD
Yes. I had a friend who was badly burned in a traffic accident. (The doctor deliberately reverts to the past tense; the patient does the same.)
DOCTOR
Were there any other people in the room?
RICHARD
Yes. There were four other men, all wearing white smocks and trousers, pretty young, adolescents I think, quite small, foreign looking. DOCTOR
Explain that, please.
RICHARD
They looked like Vietnamese. Something like that – I wasn’t sure. They had peculiar eyes, narrow, Oriental… I’m not sure. It seemed unreal.
DOCTOR
You still felt as if you were dreaming?
RICHARD
I never felt as if I was dreaming. It was just different, somehow. I didn’t feel frightened anymore. I felt nothing. Removed from it. DOCTOR
Did any of these men talk to you?
RICHARD
They talked to the creatures who’d brought us there. They made them all leave. The men in white stood all around us, but they never said anything. The two standing close to us spoke to us.
DOCTOR
The same as before?
RICHARD
Pardon?
DOCTOR
Did you just hear their voices in your head or did they speak to you orally?
RICHARD
They were normal. They spoke to us. They spoke to me and the woman. They were pleasant and they asked us how we felt and I said I felt fine.
DOCTOR
Did you feel fine?
RICHARD
No. I felt weak. I felt very removed. I was confused and I felt half asleep, as if not really there.
DOCTOR
So why did you tell them you felt fine?
RICHARD
I just said it. I didn’t want to upset them.
DOCTOR
What did the woman say?
RICHARD
She didn’t say anything. She just smiled.
DOCTOR
What did the men sound like when they talked?
RICHARD
They sounded normal. They were both speaking English. The younger man, the tall one, had a normal English accent – a sort of everyday American accent – but the older man spoke English like a foreigner. His English was very good, very good, but he had a strange accent.
DOCTOR
What kind of accent?
RICHARD
I don’t know. It sounded slightly European. I think it might have been German.
DOCTOR
What else did they talk about?
RICHARD
They talked quite a bit. They wanted to know all about us. Our names, our ages – things like that – and they were very polite. The old man was fairly distant. He watched more than he talked. I had the feeling he was older than he looked, and he seemed pretty cold. The younger man was more informal. I think he said his name was Wilson. He kept asking us how we felt, if we were frightened, and he seemed really pleasant. The woman didn’t say anything. I said I felt very tired. The man I think was called Wilson asked me if I knew where I was, and I confessed that I didn’t. He asked me if I’d like to know. I said that I would. He walked over to the wall and pressed a button and two white panels slid apart. There was a very large window there. I went over and looked out. I thought at first that what I was looking at was a painted screen… and then I became really scared.
DOCTOR
It’s all right. There’s no need to be scared. Now what did you see? RICHARD
Stars.
DOCTOR
Pardon?
RICHARD
Stars. Lots of stars. No real sky – just the stars. No up or down, l
eft or right, just the stars in a blackness. Then the stars moved. The Earth suddenly filled the window. The curved edge of the Earth, wreathed in cloud, blue and white – like those movies the astronauts sent back… It all seemed too fantastic.
DOCTOR
You were above the atmosphere?
RICHARD
Yes. I could see Brazil and the Argentine. We were way up in space.
DOCTOR
Are you sure this wasn’t some kind of an illusion?
RICHARD
Illusion?
DOCTOR
You said that at first you thought it was a painted screen. RICHARD
At first I thought it had to be. I think I was hoping that. I wanted it to be a painting or a film, because the other thing frightened me. DOCTOR
What other thing?
RICHARD
Actually knowing that I was up there.
DOCTOR
Did the man at the window say anything at this point? RICHARD
I asked him where we were. He said we were up in space. He said we were landing briefly in Paraguay and then flying on.
DOCTOR
Flying on to where?
RICHARD
He didn’t say. I didn’t ask him.
DOCTOR
Didn’t you want to know?
RICHARD
I didn’t think of asking. I was frightened. I think I was frightened. DOCTOR
You said before that you weren’t frightened anymore. RICHARD
I can’t explain it. I wasn’t as frightened as I should have been. I felt a bit unreal, I felt drugged… but there was fear. A sort of fear in the background. The fear was just there, if somehow distant… I just wanted to please them.’
DOCTOR
You say you felt drugged. Did you feel they had some control over you?
RICHARD
I felt that I didn’t control myself. I felt kind of helpless. DOCTOR
You were looking down at the Earth. What happened next? RICHARD
The man, the younger man, pressed the same button and the two panels closed again. Then they took the woman away. I mean, the bald man took her away. I think I must have looked a bit worried, because the younger man tried to reassure me.
DOCTOR
The one called Wilson.
RICHARD
Yes. He told me they wanted to examine the woman and that she wouldn’t be harmed. He said that the bald man was going to examine her and that he – I mean Wilson – wanted to examine me. He said it wouldn’t hurt. He said it was just routine. I don’t know why, but that really reassured me. It seemed a natural thing to do.
DOCTOR
You didn’t wonder why he wanted to examine you?
RICHARD
I think I might have. I can’t remember it clearly.
DOCTOR
Why can’t you remember it clearly?
(The patient reverts to the present tense.)
RICHARD
I just can’t. I’m trying to think. I’m more tired than ever. I’m suddenly feeling very tired, so I stretch out on the bed.
DOCTOR
Are you still inside the spaceship, Richard?
RICHARD
Yes.
DOCTOR
Has Wilson told you to lie on the bed?
RICHARD
It’s more like an operating table.
But has Wilson actually told you to lie on it?
RICHARD
I think he must have. I can’t remember. He passes his hand over my face and I lie down. I’m feeling really tired.
DOCTOR
Go on.
(The patient does not respond.)
DOCTOR
I said, continue.
(The patient does not respond.)
DOCTOR
Can you hear me, Richard?
RICHARD
Yes.
DOCTOR
You are lying on the operating table. What happens next? (The patient now alternates between past and present tenses.) RICHARD
I woke up.
DOCTOR
You were asleep?
RICHARD
I woke up. I must have been asleep. I am in another room and the man, the one called Wilson, is shaking me awake. This room is very small. It’s relatively small. There are only two beds and the woman is on the other bed. She’s unconscious. She’s wearing a metal cap. There are wires running out of it, their other ends plugged into a monitor above the bed.
DOCTOR
How long were you sleeping?
RICHARD
No time. There is no sense of time. I just feel very drowsy. DOCTOR
So, the man shakes you awake.
RICHARD
No. He’s just there. I waken up. The man doesn’t touch me.
Yes.
RICHARD
He’s still pleasant. He smiles at me. I’m frightened because of the way he’s smiling. It doesn’t seem natural that he’s pleasant, and I feel really scared.
DOCTOR
Did he say anything?
RICHARD
He smiled and then asked me how I felt. I said I felt very tired. He said that was all right, that it was natural to feel tired, and that I had very strong will, great resistance, and would have to come back. I didn’t know what he meant. I said I didn’t understand. He told me that I didn’t have to worry, that I was going home soon. I said I didn’t understand. I asked him where I was. I felt drugged and I asked this automatically, not thinking about it. I asked him where I was. He said if I got up he would show me. I got up and he led me out of the room and we passed through a laboratory.
DOCTOR
A laboratory?
RICHARD
A laboratory. It looked like a laboratory. It frightened me because of what was in there and I tried not to look.
DOCTOR
What frightened you?
RICHARD
The big jars. The things in cages. All the things in the big jars. The big jars were filled with a clear liquid and these things were just floating there. I felt a bit sick. I was even more scared. I didn’t recognize half of these things, but I still felt upset.
DOCTOR
You didn’t recognize half of the things. What did you recognize? RICHARD
Eyeballs. Tongues. Maybe brains – I’m not sure. Things that looked like liver and intestines… things that made me feel ill. DOCTOR
Were these items from humans or animals?
RICHARD
I don’t know. I didn’t look much… There was a corpse on a table, a human corpse, but its head was missing.
DOCTOR
Anything else?
(The patient does not respond.)
DOCTOR
Can you hear me, Richard?
RICHARD
Yes.
DOCTOR
You mentioned cages. What was in the cages?
(The patient does not respond.)
DOCTOR
It’s all right, Richard. You have nothing to fear. You are asleep, deep, deep in sleep, you are relaxed, you will be calm. You have nothing to fear, you will be calm, relaxed, you are calm. You are relaxed. Can you hear me?
RICHARD
Yes.
DOCTOR
What was in the cages?
RICHARD
Heads… Human heads!
DOCTOR
It’s all right, Richard, forget it. You have forgotten it. You are calm, relaxed, you are just passing through. Remember: I want you to remember. Are you still in the laboratory?
RICHARD
We passed the laboratory. We continued along a curving corridor. The man was telling me that I would come back some day and that I should at least see it.
DOCTOR
See what, Richard?
RICHARD
Where we were.
DOCTOR
You mean you were still in the mother ship?
RICHARD
No, I don’t think I was still in the mother ship.
DOCTOR
RICHARD
The walls of the corridor were solid rock. They had been hacked out of the rock. The corridor led into a giant workshop with walls of sheer stone. This place was really enormous. Not a mere workshop – a kind of factory or machine-shop, filled with workers and machines. DOCTOR
What kind of machines, Richard?
RICHARD
I don’t know. Large machines.
DOCTOR
You are in the machine-shop. What else did you see?
RICHARD
The walls were stone or rock. The roof was stone or rock. I think it was underground. In the ground. Maybe deep in a mountain. DOCTOR
Anything else?
RICHARD
I can’t really remember. I can’t remember it clearly. There were lots of machines, lots of people, hundreds of people, men and women, and there were catwalks running around the stone walls, catwalks above one another, running past what looked like giant computers, past brightly lit rooms. It looked like a factory. An underground factory. The people all worked like automatons. Hundreds of people.
DOCTOR
These people looked like normal human beings?
RICHARD
All the people looked normal.
DOCTOR
What else did you see?
RICHARD
He showed me where we were. He took me up some steps to a platform and then pressed a button. There were steel panels on the wall. The steel panels slid apart. There was a really huge window, like a CinemaScope screen, and the panels slid apart to expose it, and I saw where we were.
DOCTOR
Where were you?
RICHARD
I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me.
DOCTOR
All right, Richard, what did you see?
RICHARD
Ice.
DOCTOR
I’ll repeat the question: What did you see?
RICHARD
Ice. All ice. Hills and valleys of ice. The sun was shining and it flashed off the ice and the light nearly blinded me.
DOCTOR
Nothing but ice?
RICHARD
No. There was nothing but ice. Ice, maybe snow, a bright sky, very blue, the sun beating down and flashing off the ice and turning the ice into prisms. It was incredibly beautiful. It took my breath away. There was nothing out there but the ice and the bright, flashing light. The ice went out to the horizon. The sky was sheer blue. I looked up at the sky and saw a green valley surrounded by more ice. The ice was everywhere
– down below, in the sky – and I stared at it and thought it was beautiful and that really frightened me.
DOCTOR
Why did it frighten you?