Now, I am leaning to the side. In comfort again. I am in that dark place in the desert, the creosotes are taller than me, but the ground is flat. They measure my eyes, and I see no end to them. I look up at the moon bearing brightly down. Its light casts shadows on us all. I walk slowly, calmly through the desert. A million eyes are upon me, but they care not. I am simply there, as they are, moving, thinking, smelling the damp ground as I walk, listening for the lack of noise. Stop, brown bird, don’t shatter my reverie. No, no, be considerate. This is my time.
I walk through this desert. The outline of a house. Oh, Jesus, I forgot, houses would still be here. This was a beautiful one. Set out here in the middle of this arid ground, the nature and life around it left undisturbed. How a house should be built in my desert. Oh God, oh God, oh no, I see them, it took them, huddled in the living room. They are dried and desiccated and their eyes are gone! Jesus, they are dried with their arms around each other looking outside at the desert, their last vision. All is dried and weathered like old leather and a sweet Westie is there, his head resting sadly and lifeless on the man’s foot! I must leave.
In the desert again. Calm. My heart beating but slowing as I move away from this terror. I can feel it under this strip of cloth on my chest. I am lying down. No, I am up, standing up in the desert, on this dark and moonlit desert ground. I dig my toes into the hard-packed, brown dirt. I could eat this dirt, this desert clay. It is cool and still moist from the day’s rain. I am standing in this silence. I can imagine being elevated above a table, a video screaming over me blaring a lying course. A birdlike beast poking at me, mocking me and my body, telling me lies. What honesty ever screamed from a bird’s beak? I can be here, I can be there. It’s a matter of opening or closing my eyes. I need to know when I have done one or the other. I need to know my reality is here.
I must see the desert animals. I must force myself to see and smell and taste the desert. Lizards crawl out from all around. They stare at me for an instant and then pay me no regard. I am not different than them. I step lightly among their trails, not wanting one to lose its tail. But at once, they are all tailless. A Gila monster opens his mouth and expels his own mottled red and black half-tail, still writhing and twitching, with long strings of mucous attached. He spits at me and growls ‘Stop in your tracks, move in another direction.’ ‘Fool lizard,’ I think, ‘this is my dream, my desert.’ I cautiously step over him, hoping he does not strike at my bare heel. My left foot follows and its ankle feels a sharp pain. ‘Fool, woman, to fear a bridge you’ve already crossed.’ ‘But it could fall this time,’ I reply. ‘And so it could,’ he counters, shaking his head with clenched jaws to pour his poison into my tendon.
Now the lizards are gone. The twitching tail transforms. A coyote stands before me, blocking my straight path. Gypsy, you and I are friendless in this world. You, focused on desert rats and jackrabbits. Me, focused on not much else. You and I are too much alike for you to be my friend. He peers at me as if he knows what I am thinking. He pants rapidly then lifts his cheek to display his fangs. You do know what I am thinking. But why shouldn’t he know? This is my dream, and an animal can think, should I wish it. This dirt can speak to me if I so desire. I can fly or hover above this midnight desert. I can float over pink ponds. These creatures can sting and bite me, this cactus can tear and hook at my skin, and the result is nothing. I fear not the desert or anything within it, for I am the desert. I am you, brown dirt and loose slate on the trail. I am you, mesquite and your thorns. I am you, creosote in the rain with your smell of heaven that is my soul.
Bat creature! Stop entering my thoughts! Earth, my heart aches for you. You were mine and I was yours and why do I still live while all others are dead? Bat creature, you slime, abhorrent bigot! God did not even bless you with fingers, you pisshead! Why don’t you let me sleep?
Rovada stared at his monitors. "Such strong emotions from this one!" he thought. "Was she like this before the head trauma? Was there some damage undetected in all our scans? We are perfect, but only almost. The odd event, the odd life, seems to jump out now and then, like a supernova. But her history showed she was fine, no signs of unusual behavior prior to her fall, according to the medical records. Maybe I paid too much credence to their television shows and history of this race of beings. Irrational thoughts seemed stupendously common. But raw emotion. Fire, spit, gut-wrenching, this is what I feel from her. A penned animal; docile, anything but docile. Poor creature."
After a time, her eyes opened again, slowly, cautiously. She hoped to find herself in her bedroom, that soft, warm, salmon-painted bedroom. Lace curtains, a trundle bed she bought herself after her first real paycheck. Only a double bed, though. No queen or king size. Not expecting frequent visitors.
Her hands grasped for the side of the bed to feel the covers. Nothing. A chill ran through her body, making her hair stand on end as if she were electrified. There was no bed.
No bed, damn it. I am indeed here, a continuation of this protracted dream. Sickening.
She closed her eyes as they began to water, and she felt the tears slowly drip down her cheeks.
Those lights were too bright. I don’t want to open my eyes again. This is not real, Margot. This is still a bad dream. A long, extended, repeating bad dream. I don’t want the earth to die. I don’t want my parents . . .. My parents. My Joey. My sweet Westie. Jesus, what happened to her?
A horrible image of her small white dog crossed her mind as she saw its bloated body lying in the hot sun, flies and maggots making it look as if it were still moving, feigning life, teasing her with the frenetic movements of the morbid occupants.
“Asshole!” she screamed. “Asshole!”
“Ralph, if you prefer, Margot.”
“Did it kill the flies, too?”
Rovada had seen her thoughts. He considered that through the millions of years of the evolution of their mechanics, thought processing was still an art, not a science, and quick flashes of thought, in some beings’ minds, could not always be clearly understood. He simply saw an image of a bloated dog with flies buzzing around it.
“Did the virus kill the flies, Margot? Perhaps so, perhaps not. At first, it mainly attacked, as your science says, the primates and other mammals.”
“My science? My science?” She opened her eyes and glared into the lights. “Turn those freaking lights off, bug!”
Rovada dimmed the lights slightly.
“I guess it sure as hell is my science, considering the world’s gone. It’s not the damn world’s science anymore, now is it?”
Rovada leaned back on his tail appendage. "Cynicism," he thought, "is rampant in all higher beings, notwithstanding humans in the least."
“The science is still there, as it will always be.”
“Don’t wax philosophical on me, you louse,” she turned her neck to look behind her and realized that she was still under the control of whatever it was that held her in its grasp. “Would you take this fucking tractor beam off of me and let me get up?”
Rovada hesitated. As far as he was concerned, it was up to him regarding the freedom of movement she should have. Luckily, the other four humans were not quite as violent, at least initially, and required less constraint by this time. Margot was an exception.
“When you show me by your behavior that you are capable of controlling your body and emotions, I will give you your freedom of movement.”
Margot felt shocked for a moment.
Jesus. This guy really is in control. I have to think of a way out of here.
“You scum! What do you mean my behavior? My behavior! How nice is it for you to suspend me naked, with nothing but a blanket and, and, shit, my pubic hair, and you’re talking about my behavior!”
“Margot, you will find that when you calm yourself, things will get much better for you.”
“Are they watching me?”
“No, Margot”
Margot strained her neck and looked back toward the direction from which Rovada h
ad come in her previous encounter. “Please, please, bug, bat, whatever the hell you are,” she cried, “please, I want to move my arms and legs.”
Rovada felt sympathetic to her plea. He recalled the numerous trips in space, from port to planet, over the many eons, and the pain and longing in his joints for movement of his wings, and for real flight, continuous, mile after mile of new terrain. How he yearned right now for a few minutes in the One, where the atmosphere was thicker and he could fly freely.
“Okay, Margot,” he conceded. “I will give you more movement. I understand how you feel.”
“You what? You understand how I feel?” Margot laughed halfheartedly.
“When we travel, Margot, we suspend ourselves, so we do not notice the passing of time.”
“Travel, what the hell do you mean travel?”
“Interstellar, between stars and planets, we suspend ourselves.”
“Yeah, right. Sure. So what does that have to do with me?” she complained.
“After awakening from suspension, I get a similar feeling,” Rovada replied.
“Don’t give me that shit, cockroach. You said I was in a coma for how long?” she asked.
“Five years before we found you, according to the hospital records we retrieved, but you were also in suspension, too.”
“What? What do you mean by that?”
“Well, I mean we have traveled a distance from earth. A considerable distance.”
“Like what, bad dream? Why don’t you come out where I can see you?” Margot bit her tongue on the last word.
Jesus, what if this is real? What if this guy doesn’t like me? I mean, he’s the guy controlling my movements. What if he decides I’m not to his liking or too much trouble?
She gasped as her jaw dropped open. Rovada was now about three feet from her. She shook uncontrollably. Her body writhed with a cold, hard shake down her spine, one that tears at muscles and pounds the heart deeply into the ribs.
God, forbid this entity an existence in the universe. No neck and a gray orange body and, what was that in science, an exoskeleton? It seems to have an exoskeleton for a body! Fine lines across its chest like the belly of an alligator. Those appendages!
“Wings?” she asked quizzically.
“Yes, Margot,” Rovada replied. “On my home planet, we fly. The atmosphere is very thick, with a gravitational pull less than that of the earth. We Das can fly, much like your birds.”
Margot’s stomach began to convulse. She suppressed a hard, bitter gulp of burning stomach acid and tightened her gullet at the smell of puke in the base of her throat.
I can’t let him see me throw up. I can’t give him that satisfaction. Swallow it. Swallow it!
“Das?” Margot choked, glancing only briefly again at the terrible beast that stood in front of her.
“What we call ourselves, as you call yourselves human.”
I hate you beast, you are my living hell. I will not let you win.
“Never mind, boorish cockroach. Never mind. Back to what you said. Hey asshole, how are you speaking to me?”
“Well, I wish I could say it was through brain waves, as I can understand your thoughts, but your brain is not capable, and we do not want to change it, so, when necessary, we use the Wall to develop the proper vibrations in the air so that it will sound to you like we are speaking the way you do.”
Ignoring his last statement, Margot cried, “Change what?”
“Margot, you’ll have a million questions and you have much time to ask them. Let’s follow your original question.”
“Shit, I forgot what it was.”
“Suspension.” Rovada replied quietly. “And distance.”
“Traveled, yes.” Margot reached out towards Rovada as far as she could, about ten inches before she felt her muscles begin to sear and burn.
“Do you know what a light-year is, Margot?”
“Hell yes, I grew up watching Star Wars and all that crap.” She held her eyes closed, only opening slightly to see that he moved no closer towards her.
“The distance light travels in the vacuum of space in one earth year.”
“I know that. I know that! Tell me something I don’t know.”
Rovada shook his head slightly at her remark. "What she doesn’t know! What a character!" he thought, remembering that while he was on earth, their videos always seemed to contain such a large element of emotionally-charged people when real human life seemed, for the most part, much more docile in nature. This one would have been good in the videos.
“After we left earth, we all left earth, meaning you and the others, too, we spent about fifteen earth years traveling very near the speed of light to this star and the small planet we are on that orbits around it.”
“Fifteen years, fifteen light years?” Margot closed her eyes and envisioned a blue earth quickly drifting out of sight until all that was left was a star of the sun, a faint and distant light.
“Let me move, Ralph, please!” she begged. She wanted some clothes. “I need to dress, to end my nudity!”
Rovada hesitated, searching for something in her thoughts that might indicate anger or vengeance towards him. She was not really angry at him, he knew, but upset at the circumstance she found herself in. He understood her sense of shame at being unclothed, even in front of him. Rovada laughed to himself. He had no clothes, nor did the Das ever require them in their controlled environments. Perhaps if he allowed her some clothing, she would concentrate on that instead of acting out some instant vengeance. That would keep her occupied. He would stay at a reasonable distance from her, and the Wall would manage her if for some reason she became uncontrollable.
“Margot?”
“Yes, cockroach?” She chided him, changing her mood when he didn’t answer her plea immediately. She stared directly into his bulbous eyes, now certain of the impossibility of all of this and willing to face her dream in its utter terror.
“I will release you from this machine, although you may want to sleep here when you tire.”
“Release me? Let me come back? Are you serious, you sick dream? Do you think I’d really like to sleep above this pink crap? Are you kidding?”
“Margot, the Das don’t kid. Maybe tease for humor at times, but not kid. We always tell the truth, with the few exceptions I stated previously. I will provide you with some clothing.”
Rovada moved toward her quickly, startling Margot as she winced and moved her suspended body nervously.
“I won’t touch you. This machine, which is actually an extension of what we call ‘The Wall’, contains information about your body’s needs and it will create appropriate clothing for the environment.”
“Look, I don’t care what you give me, as long as it’s clothes. I’m tired of laying here like a peeled banana. Regardless, I don’t want you or any other fucking bug staring at me naked.” She watched with surprise as silky orange shorts and a matching pullover top extruded from the machine’s arch that hovered above her.
Her eyes bulged. “How the hell did that happen?” she asked Rovada. “What the hell are those made out of?”
“Cotton.”
“Cotton? How could that be?”
“We have the capability to replicate the cellular structure of cotton.”
She shook her head, “So what the hell are you made from? Cotton?”
“The Das are carbon-based, just like you humans.”
“You mean what’s left of humans.”
“Yes,” Rovada shook his head, “of humans and the other dominant forms of life that were on earth. Carbon is the obvious atom upon which most sentient life that we have encountered is based. If you are wondering about my appendages, they are a little like your bones, hard and strong. Yet they are somewhat brittle and break easily, which is why we Das move carefully.” Rovada shoved back, off the floor, using his appendages to propel his body upward and allow his wings to spread open fully for a moment.
“My God, they are huge wings!”
&nbs
p; “Yes, they stretch out like your skin. Why don’t I release you from this machine so you can touch them?”
Rovada moved back towards his surveillance area. Margot sensed a gradual loosening of her joints and muscles and felt as if her heart were a garden hose pushing her vitality outward into her body. “Where did you go?” she asked.
“You should have some privacy,” he responded. “You can slowly move to your left and right, even rolling for a moment above the pool. Don’t worry. I won’t let you fall in. When you feel gravity take your legs down, be careful not to rise-up too quickly. Give your brain a chance to adjust to the vertical plane and of course to gravity.”
“I’m a mountain climber, bug. I’m not worried about my body supporting me. But I can sure as hell tell you that I’m not going to sit up straight with you watching me. It’s bad enough you’ve seen me naked lying down! Turn around!” she demanded.
Rovada was puzzled for a moment. “If I turn around," he said, "I can still see you.”
Margot stretched her neck and saw the faint outline of Rovada whose back was towards her, but she could make out his bulbous eyes. “You look like a wildebeest, or is it that? You look like some creatures on earth, I can’t even remember, that are so ugly they can see in front and behind themselves. Look, I don’t give a damn about your mealy bug-eyed body, just get the hell out of the room for a minute. How many others are in here or looking in?”
“No others,” Rovada replied. Since the risk was minimal, he decided to step outside. He would give her that much privacy. “I will be back in three minutes.”
Margot didn’t answer. She was thinking about her breasts.
Will they sag if I stand up? How fat am I? I can’t tell lying down like this. They must have ways of getting rid of fat if they’re this advanced. God, that’s great! No more stupid dieting!
Then her spirits suddenly dropped.
The Space Between Her Thoughts (The Space in Time Book 1) Page 5
