by CJ East
His lungs vibrated a dull ache like they were overly full and ready to burst. He couldn’t hold it together any longer. He began to flail in panic, fighting the almost complete darkness engulfing him. His heartbeat throbbed in his ears as the taste of copper pennies flooded his mouth. An unnatural guttural pop escaped his throat as his lungs engulfed a huge stream of air. He gulped down burning air like swallowing fire. The darkness in his vision began to retreat.
“Kinch! Are you receiving?” The terror in Chang’s voice cracked through the hissing of the link. “We are coming to your aid. Stay awake. We will be there very soon.”
“I’m. Hurt bad, Chang.” The words didn’t sound like they came from his mouth. They gurgled out as if from a drunken man. Blood began pooling in the bottom of visor. It sloshed as he coughed again with an involuntary jerk, spraying the cracked glass in a speckled pattern.
He heard a teeth clenching crunch and the puddle of blood bubbled and froze motionless. A quick cold wave rushed over his face. His suit environmental system hit override and started a full emergency oxygen flood.
“My visor is cracked. I’m not feeling. Not feeling good about this Chang.”
“Yes, he is alive! He is updating me!” Chang yelled to someone in the control room directing the rescue team. “He is badly injured and reports his visor is cracked.” Chang broke off from the status update. “Kinch, listen to me. A team is departed and is speeding to your aid. You need to stay awake. Tell me of your injuries.”
“Tell them to hurry. It’s all wrong - not good. I’m face down in the dirt. The blood congealed and sealed the visor crack. My chest hurts. I can’t feel my left arm.” He strained his eyes to look to his left without moving his helmet and its cracked visor. The site made his stomach churn. The straight metal forearm of his bio suit bent midway between elbow and wrist back toward his helmet. A wave of nausea washed over him.
“It has two wrists, Chang.”
Chang shouted away from the com link. “He has a compound fracture of the forearm! He’s losing oxygen through the visor!”
Kinch heard his words, but didn’t understand their meaning. A euphoric sensation of distance began to replace his fear.
“Kinch, what else are you experiencing?”
“Blood. A lot of blood,” he wheezed, trying to suppress a cough. Another cough could cause him to lurch and shatter his visor. “Painful to breathe, painful to speak. My neck, my head, it…” A second wave of sickness wrenched his gut. He grew more confused feeling like he was spinning in a circle and end over end.
Silence crept into his suit for a few seconds, the only sounds being the blood dripping from his parted lips and boiling on contact with the crackling spider webs and the incoming Martian atmosphere. He felt a cool breeze up his left arm, on his chest, and through the bubbling blood in his visor.
Chang snapped back to the link, finishing a second conversation on mute. His tone was grave. “Kinch they are very close now. You need to hang in there. It is, what you say, ‘muscle through it’? You are a mountain. Stay strong, my true friend, OK?”
Kinch wanted to say something to reassure Chang, but felt consciousness slipping away. He tried to pull his muddled thoughts together. He wanted Chang to give a message to his Mom and Dad, wanted Chang to tell them he missed them and he loved them very much. But they died long ago, didn’t they? He let out a soft, long groan and slipped into embracing darkness.
Surgery
He awoke with a scream of pain from the core of his body. Men in enamel environmental suits supported his head, feet and sides. They sacrificed gentleness for speed, heaving him from the transport and dashing to the surface level elevator.
“We’ve got you Kinch. You are back at the Colony. You are going to make it, Champ.” The voice of Colonel Sullivan, the American Team lead, crackled through the com link. The huge man cradled Kinch’s shoulders and head to his mid-section, tilted to the side so Kinch wouldn’t drown in his own blood. The Colonel had seen too many wounded boys in war, but this boy was special. Sully needed Kinch to live.
Kinch drifted in the gray realm between sleep and consciousness, trying to record an inventory of his injuries for Dr. Singh. A burning pain shot through his arm, gut and chest. His head throbbed as pressure increased behind his left eye. Events happened too fast, disturbing the pace of the slowness he needed.
There were too many suits, to many people tugging on him and filling him with panic, urgency, and helplessness. He felt each heavy shuffling step the suits took into the small elevator. Each jostle sent blinding, rapid waves of pain crashing through his upper body.
Sully’s green eyes locked on his through the spider webs and blackened blood. His thick, freckled face held an intense, reassuring expression as the elevator cabin descended to the Colony. His face began to disappear as the pressure behind Kinch’s left eye began to ache as if being squeezed, darkening to blackness, leaving only half of Sully.
When the elevator door opened into the compression room, the men swerved against the elevator walls, sending an unreal crush of white pain through his chest. His back arched, he gasped, and then fell unconscious.
Kinch drifted back to consciousness on the infirmary table. His helmet was removed. He smelled colony air. He saw the torn green metal of his suit. Blurry figures in surgery gowns and masks tugged on him from different directions.
“The drug has never been used on a patient in trauma, Doctor Singh. It is administered only under controlled conditions,” he heard a young woman protest.
A familiar Indian female voice answered. “We are not having a different option, Miss Chen. His injuries are severe and he is not having much time.”
Kinch rolled his head to the left, saw his suit had been cut away at the elbow, and stared at two exposed bones jutting out of his flesh. The wound pulsed a slow stream of blood into a metal tray on the extended arm of his table. The young Chinese woman caught his glance. Her gentle brow furrowed in sympathy as she covered the bone with a large pressure bandage.
She was about to speak to him when a voice instructed her. “Bind it with this tourniquet, Grace. We are having bigger issues after we cut away the chest plate.”
“Doctor,” Grace interjected. “He is awake.”
Dr. Pushpa Singh lowered the surgical mask from her light caramel face and turned a concerned and nurturing smile to her “little pale brother” as she had once called him. “Kinch. Are you hearing me? Do you know who I am?”
He did not have the strength to speak. He wanted to joke with her about finishing their chess match. He communicated with a weak nod.
“Good, do not speak. You need to know what is going to be happening so you can prepare. We are having to perform surgery and we are needing to induce a coma. You are having brain swelling. We will use the same Neuromorphine drug used for the interplanetary trip to the Mars. Nod if you are understanding me.”
Kinch’s eyes fluttered as he nodded. A rattling wheeze started in his chest. His eyes moved back to his exposed arm. Grace finished his bandage and wrapped the tourniquet near his elbow.
Pushpa continued in her melodic Indian cadence, “Good. Then you will also be remembering your body and mind will be disconnected from the other. You will be having intense dreams as the drug’s agonists stimulate your brain activity to a heightened state.” She paused considering her next words. “It is very important you enter the coma in a calm state, Kinch. Our travel training, you remember? Your Neuromorphine readings for the interplanetary trip were very good indeed. You need to prepare yourself for a similar mental state. I remember you telling me about happy experiences at your Grandfather’s farm. It is time you do the needful.”
Through the haze of swirling events, he understood what Pushpa was pointing him towards. Anxiety began to rush through his veins. If he started this drug trip freaked out, paranoia would overcome him. The Neuromorphine dream would degrade into a flight of madness. He nodded and closed his eyes and concentrated on a path forward.
&
nbsp; His thoughts drifted back to the entry into Mars orbit when the team was revived from the eight month sleep. The Neuromorphine dreams were so vivid they seemed like an alternate reality. The conversations he held with his mother and father at the farm seemed so real. And his Grandfather was there, happy and smiling at his son and grandson. He almost didn’t want to wake up. When he did find himself in his pod, he knew the dream was over and he had a job to do.
His Google teammate, Sashenka Vavilov had not been as fortunate with the drug. She was catatonic for three days, sometimes rocking, sometimes whimpering, and withdrawn deep into the madness of her mind. Kinch stayed next to her the duration of their Mars orbit. He was there without exception, trying to engage her in humor, including her in dialog as if she was listening and part of the conversation.
He understood and remembered the place she was held captive. He had been in the painful, deep pit of hopelessness before. No superficial platitudes were going to bring her back. But she came back, somehow. She had never thanked him, and he never spoke of it to her. The experience broke her, it dimmed her shine.
Sashenka was getting stronger. She would be there for him when he awoke. If he awoke. He would follow the training and remember no matter how excruciating or disturbing, everything was a dream. He told himself he would endure, stay objective and when he awoke, he wouldn’t be alone.
He no longer felt pain, only numbness. His broken body was giving up. He understood what had to be done and was ready. Pushpa stared into his eyes. She saw the resolve of decision roll over him. “I am looking forward to finishing our chess match and outmaneuvering your knight in your Latvian Gambit, Mr. McGrath.”
Dr. Singh slid the needle into the IV tube in his good arm. She pushed the plunger all the way down and removed it as his eyes closed. “May your God be with you,” she said under her breath as she set down the needle and began removing his mangled metal space suit.
Into a Dream
Kinch awoke in a white room staring down at a white table. He was seated and dressed in a white t-shirt and pants. His coal black hair, tan skin, and his cool blue eyes the color of the Aegean Sea contrasted with the sterile background. This was the staging area his mind was conditioned to create. Here he could lay out the plans for his dream, structure it before he committed to the point of no return.
He inspected his intact left arm. His memory held a residual image of his ideal self - muscular and long, like the rest of his body.
The counting exercise worked, he felt calm and at peace. His head no longer pounded with pressure. His breathing was unrestricted and strong. He reminded himself this is the dream. Pushpa and Grace were in another reality cutting away his environmental shell and working to repair what could be done with the limited surgical tools brought from Earth.
His calmness was encouraging because now everything was familiar. He knew what to expect. A successful outcome could be defined and a pathway to achieve the outcome planned.
His previous coma initiations started in this featureless staging room - the time at the NASA lab, and again on the interplanetary mission. The training session lasted 42 hours. The go-live mission lasted eight months. For each session there was no concept of passing time. Both were a lifetime - like an eternal present tense overwriting the past and future.
He considered his wounds. He had enough space to be objective. If Pushpa was inducing a coma, she was just buying time. What would happen if he died back on operating table? Would he just phase out here on this flight deck? Would his eternal soul be trapped in Purgatory or Limbo? If he did die, he hoped Dr. Singh would accept she did all she could and would keep his chess set.
On the table before him stretched a lone titanium dagger. This wasn’t real, he thought, an imagined totem created in training. The dagger was a representation of his identity: Kinch – the nickname his Grandfather gave him, meaning a strong Gaelic knife blade. It reminded him to concentrate on this alternate reality, not the operating table.
He set himself to forgetting his physical body and controlling his thoughts using the training. He closed his eyes and cleared his mind of every thought except the dagger.
The calm silence was disturbed by murmuring. Distant voices filtered into the room. They were not heard like speech, but rather felt like a gentle touch. He surveyed the white, empty room as they grew stronger - nearer. The voices were not external sounds, but inside his head. A tickle of fear ran down his spine.
The voices began to control his attention like a group of children circling an adult – questions, demands, and interrogations. Their urgent emotions flooded into his mind. The voices insisted he acknowledge them. The sensation of this communication was so new and strange. They kept coming - rapid, urgent voices pressing in and touching his mind.
Kinch pushed away from the table. The voices overwhelmed him. His heart raced with adrenaline. This had to be the beginning of a bad trip. Perhaps his body was going through shock as he lay dying?
The voices had to be coming from the operating room. He looked around the sterile white room in desperation for a rip in the fabric of his dream. Nothing appeared, only voices raising to a chorus of inquisitors:
“Who are you?”
“From where do you come?”
“Why are you here?”
“Will you harm us?”
Cold panic rippled over his skin as he covered his ears with his hands. His thoughts were battered like a small boat on stormy seas. He recoiled from the force of the intrusions into his mind – penetrating, examining, and violating his most private thoughts. Oh God. Is this the hell Sashenka knew? Complete surrender of her mind to insanity? Do I fight to reclaim or try to calm himself?
He staggered forward, his hands falling on the edge of the table, his head sinking low. He was powerless stop the savaging of his mind as consuming as a swarm of bees or a flock of birds attacking him, pecking and stinging his mind. This insanity was like a group of demons plucking out memories and teasing out thoughts.
He watched helplessly as buried flashes of the past to erupted before him in strobe light succession of intense feeling. The memories ripped through him – his Mother’s face, the smell of her hair, his Father’s comforting touch, the murder that took them, the farm – all flashed before his mind in random fragments.
Rage seized him as he became a passenger in his own mind, an impotent voyeur. His mind was used against him as scenes from his past assaulted, persecuted and damned him. His face contorted and he released an agonizing yell of madness. He flipped the table over while thrashing side to side, wild-eyed and desperate.
“Stop!” a female voice boomed over the landscape of weaker voices, clipping an immediate and deafening silence.
“He is like a child. You are frightening him.” Her firm tone projected compassion in the way she emphasized ‘frightening.’ “Go now, leave off. Consider your actions.”
Kinch fell to the floor on his hands and knees, panting at the white tile. He leaned back and looked into his thick hands quivering, “I’ve gone mad.” He pressed his cupped hands over his face.
“No,” the female voice returned, more gentle now. “You are not insane. Fear not. They meant you no harm.”
Kinch jerked his hands from his face and leapt to his feet, spinning front to back, searching the room for the voice. The words were felt, like a touch. More than words. There was a single, feminine presence, a feeling – maybe a knowledge – inside his head and alien to him.
He pressed in on his temples. He had to get on top of this. “Stick to the plan. Order. Structure.”
He jumped up and circled to arrange the table and chair, then took purposeful strides for the dagger and situated it in the middle of the table. He exhaled deeply as he walked behind the chair, pulling it back from the table. He sat, looking at the menacing dagger.
He remembered the operating room. The blood, the bone, the look of hidden fear and grave concern Grace and Pushpa tried to hide - the objection to giving Kinch the Neuromorphine
. The trauma was the delta. The combination of his physical stress and the Neuromorphine was the x-factor sending him down this path. He had to regain control.
The female voice started again, “I desire a word with you. I believe I can help you.” She left a presence of concern in him. And of urgency.
Grace’s words echoed through his mind - The drug has never been used on a patient in trauma, Dr. Singh.
He ignored the voice and tried to decode his situation. “I’m broken. First my body and now my mind.”
He remembered his Russian training course on the Neuromorphine phase of the mission. They discovered the drug’s powerful psychotropic forces required strong and focused control. A totem was the key, representing a person’s identity, the symbol of their strength and purpose. He remembered his training. “Repeat the steps you practiced. Even if it doesn’t work at first, trust the process.”
He took a deep breath and releasing it with slow control and started talking to himself, “Calm down, buddy. Pushpa is a sharp gal and will do everything possible to save you. Either you will live or you will not. Either way, it is out of your hands. Relax. There is not one thing you can do to save your life.”
He pulled the dagger forward and held it in both hands, one at each end. It was solid, but not heavy. The dagger had an inscription on the blade in Irish: “A soft answer turneth away wrath.” He closed his eyes again, ordering the totem steps in his mind.
He asked the first question from the program, “Who are you?”
“I am Cullum McGrath, my Father’s son and my Grandfather’s adopted son. My Grandfather named me ‘Kinch,’ meaning knife blade. I am strong and sharp like this dagger. I cannot be broken, but merely bent. Fire and hammer will straighten me to my purpose.”
“Where are you?” He continued, “I am on the planet Mars at the International Mars Colony with 18 other colonists. There was an accident and I am under Neuromorphine sedation.”
