by Kondor, Luke
“It’s okay,” Darpal said. His voice all around her. Each word a tendril that gripped tighter around her mind.
The parents were hiding now. The boat came ashore and they were scared. They’d arrived in the UK. Men in big yellow coats took them to a warehouse. They gave them tea and biscuits and wrapped them in towels and asked them questions about where they’d come from and why they’d came to the UK. The men gave them paperwork. The word that bounced around was ‘asylum’. A sense of ease and happiness washed over them and then … wait … no.
“It’s okay.”
It was raining. They were surrounded by cars. A parking lot. The husband didn’t see them. He wanted to protect his young family. The mother and her baby. The men, different ones, with shaved heads and tattoos. They screamed at them about not belonging. A fight broke out and the terrified mother took a knife to the chest. They ran but the husband fought back. He grabbed one of them, a younger one, and pulled him to the ground. He kicked him. He kicked him again. The sound of the wet boot against the skinhead’s bloodied face. And then …
“It’s okay.”
The child could see for the first time. Light. Colours. All blurred. The doctors. But the mother — too much blood lost. The repetitive beeping turned into one long tone and the woman in the white coat said to “Call it”. A month later and the father was visited by a man in a blue hat. CCTV footage. Attacking a teenager. He was taken away. Regardless of who attacked first. “Deported,” the men said. And then the child was alone. Taken to home after home. Watched over by family after family but he never stayed in one place.
Eventually the school. Older now. Able to read and speak. Too fast, though.
“It’s okay.”
The teachers told him he’s special. They passed him to another school. One they called IPC-funded. The other children were like him there. Smarter. The man in front of the class. Beard and glasses. And then the numbers. They spilled out from his mind and through his mouth. The numbers. Pouring out and into space.
“It’s okay.”
The numbers were a part of something bigger. They flew outwards, and reached towards something. A mass. A cloud. Pain. Something was in great pain. Nisha felt the pain. A black cloud. And then she saw a face. It looked at her. It screeched.
“No!” Nisha stood up.
She was back in the classroom. Sweat dripped down her forehead. Breathing heavy, hands shaking and her legs unsteady. She looked around. Tried to make sense of where she was. The face. Looking at her. It was Darpal. He was standing next to her, looking up at her. The indigo colouring to his eyes had died down somewhat. He took a step back from her.
“I’m sorry Miss Bhatia. I just … I wanted to show you.”
“No, it’s okay Darpal, but …” She sat back down on the chair, took a moment to recalibrate her mind. Remind herself of how she got there. Of who she was. Who her family were. Her entire history and identity lost for a second. Like a purse she’d dropped. She needed to pick it back up. She closed her eyes and ran her hand over her head. “It’s fine Darpal, but tell me, what did you show me?”
“It was my life,” he said. “I showed you my experience.”
The parents. The foster care. The school. It was all far too much for a child of Darpal’s age. In his short twelve years, he’d experienced more pain than most adults had in their entire lives.
“Come here,” she said, lifting her arm. “Hug me.”
Darpal walked over and wrapped his arms around her. He tucked his head into the nook between her neck and shoulder and kissed her.
“I want to be alive,” he said. “You asked me what I wanted to be, and I want to be alive. But I know that I won’t be.”
As Nisha tried to understand what Darpal had just told her an alarm rang. They both jumped and looked up. A light at the top of the monitor at the front of the classroom started to spin, flashing red and white. One of the computer screens beeped into life.
“Miss Bhatia? Can you hear me?” It was Dr Warwick, readjusting the camera to get all of his face in view.
“What’s happening?” Nisha said.
“I’m not sure. Most likely a drill. But I want you to go past the courtyards and to make your way to one of the safe rooms. Darpal, are you able to show Miss Bhatia the way?”
“Yes sir,” Darpal said.
“Thank you. I’m just finishing up my questioning. I’ll come and find you when this is all straightened out.”
With that, the screen turned off with a beep and Darpal pulled on Nisha’s hand.
“Please, Neesh. I don’t like this. We must go now.”
Cape Canaveral, January 31st 1961
Dr Liz Cooper
“Calm the fuck down, Sam!” Adam, one of the animal handlers said. He was getting irate.
Liz had just delivered the bad news that the flight had been delayed by four hours. A hot inverter. Whatever the fuck that meant.
“Adam, be careful,” Liz shouted from behind her desk. She’d been going over the final checks. Her part of it, anyway. It was her job to make sure that Miss Sam performed the tests that were given to her and would be safe and mentally stable when up there. It was everyone else’s job to get the chimp into suborbital flight and back down again.
“God, I wish Donald was here,” she said to herself as she ticked a box. One of many on the checklist. “Speaking of Donald, has anybody seen him?”
The cluster of twenty or so technicians and handlers shrugged. Too busy. Someone mentioned the bar. Drowning his sorrows. Pitying himself.
“Fine, Donald,” she said. “Don’t be here, miss all the fun.”
The warehouse was large, open, full of people and equipment. It was here that they’d be putting Miss Sam into the nosecone of the rocket. And it would be a short time before Miss Sam was thrown into space.
Liz looked at the chaos and the mutterings of people around her and sighed. She felt hot. It was a strangely hot day for January. She yanked on her shirt collar and tried to get some air in there. She wondered what her life would be like when all of this was over. In fact, what would humankind’s life be like? Would it even change? Sending people to space, maybe they’d find life on Mars. Maybe aliens would come down to Earth and live amongst them. Maybe there would be some sort of galactic war.
Not likely.
Liz sipped from her white mug with ‘The Twilight Zone’ written on it in black. Just a marker pen. Donald had written it when she wasn’t looking. He’d told Liz that working with her had been like stepping into another dimension. As she wrapped her mouth around the ceramic mug she avoided the side of the mug that bore a brown stain, and drank a mouthful of the tepid water. It was malty to her tongue. Not as refreshing as she would’ve hoped. She went to take a step outside. Hopefully catch some sort of breeze to cool her down. As she put the mug down on the table and turned to move, she stopped in her tracks at the shriek.
The howling.
The crying.
It was Miss Sam.
“Liz! She’s having a fit,” Adam shouted from the white capsule chair they’d seated Miss Sam into.
She ran over, holding her glasses as she went.
“Adam, what the hell are you—”
As she neared she saw Miss Sam’s teeth. She was rocking back and forth in the white chair. The straps around her were digging into her chest.
“She’s not fitting, Adam, she’s just—” She took a step towards her and repeated the words “Home, home, home” over and over until Miss Sam recognised her face. Her squealing calmed to a huffing and Liz placed her hand on Miss Sam’s and the other on her shoulder. “It’s okay baby,” she said. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
When Liz was a child she was never much of an animal person. Her only pleasurable experience that she could recall was in science class in the third year when she had a frog on her desk, its limbs splayed outwards and its insides in a jar. She never understood the idea of having a relationship with an animal. They weren’t humans. They were th
ings. They didn’t have consciousness. Not like a human did. Her dad once asked if she wanted a puppy or a kitten, but she’d balked at the idea. To have a furry little shit-monster to look after. To clean and feed. She told her dad that she’d only allow it if she could run tests on it.
Fearing the kind of tests she’d run, her father never came home with anything more than sweets, paperback novels, and a chemistry set.
Having said that …
As Liz held Miss Sam’s hand in her own, as she saw the child-like fear in Miss Sam’s eyes, she recalled the first time she’d met Miss Sam back at the Holloman Air Base. She was as scared then as she was now. Captured and taken from her family in Cameroon, shipped across the world and chucked in a cage with her brother and thirty-eight other chimps. All of them banging on the cage bars. Screeching and snarling. Looking for their first opportunity for escape or revenge.
When they opened Miss Sam’s cage, she didn’t run out. She was scared and quiet. She pressed her face into the length of rope they’d chucked in there — a piece of the netting used to capture her. Maybe it reminded her of her family or her home. Whatever it was, seeing that wrinkly munchkin face of hers, burying into the fibres of the green knotted rope, caught Liz’s attention.
As Miss Sam calmed down to a heavy panting, Liz brushed her hand over her face.
“Home,” she said again as she caressed her rough skin. Miss Sam touched the back of her hand to her chest. The damp eyes on her dark and rough skin. It was all incredible to Liz. Fascinating even, but it was those eyes that got to her, those damn eyes. Innocent little baubles that possessed all the wisdom of the world — its pain as well as its joy.
There’s a reason that scientists choose chimpanzees for experiments. They’re humanity’s closest living relative. They test on them because they’re so much like themselves. They justify the experiments based on the idea that chimpanzees are so similar them. They train them like humans, dress them up in human clothes, give them names like Miss Sam, and humanise them as much as possible. But then, when the shit hits the fan, something goes wrong, faulty equipment, pain, poor test subjects, the poor Alberts, when the chimps die, it doesn’t matter. The scientists get to go home and drink tea and eat dinner and tell their spouses about their bad day in the office as though it had been a printer jam. They justify using the chimpanzees because as close as they are, chimps are not humans. A fine distinction that gives scientists the reasoning to do whatever they want to the poor animals.
“Home,” Liz said again, touching her hand to her chest. “Home.”
Those sweet little eyes, almost life-like, almost. She looked up at Liz and she could swear that if Miss Sam had the vocal chords to do so, she would’ve told Liz that she loved her.
A call came in a short while later. The inverter had cooled. The mission was a go.
This time, Liz strapped Miss Sam into the nosecone herself. She stayed with her knowing that her presence had a calming effect on Miss Sam. She watched as the poor little chimp was hoisted into the nosecone of the rocket, and disappeared into it. She tried to catch a glimpse of her one more time, but she didn’t quite see her. Miss Sam didn’t make a noise. She was calm. She was a good girl. She was ready for her mission.
Moomamu The Thinker
Only a few minutes before and Moomamu felt like all his energy had been sapped. The blood, naturally designed to courier oxygen around the human body, had mostly been spilled out of him. Without the oxygen, his muscles shouldn’t have been able to move, but here he was, running from hundreds of angry cats through the town. The noise they made was of sheer violence. They wanted to rip him apart. They were going to dig those claws of theirs into his flesh, and finish the job that Snuckems had started.
He wheezed as he ran. His lungs weren’t at their optimal standard. This human vessel of his was falling to pieces.
The thing about cats is … they are much better runners than humans. When they run they can access the power of four legs. Moomamu tried for a second to run on all four of his limbs, but he found the whole thing ludicrous and much too slow.
What he needed to do was teleport.
He turned a corner as a blade hit the stone wall by his head, sparking as the metal touched the rock.
“Come here,” he heard one of the cats shout. It sounded like Snuckems. “I’m going to rip your fucking head off.”
His chest rose and fell with force. The motion hurt. It ached with each breath. He tried to remember how he’d teleported. He’d just thought about being somewhere else, and then there he was. The voice had told him to concentrate. To imagine being there already.
Another blade chimed as the metal point slammed into a pan hanging from the roof of a house. Its hot contents poured outwards and splashed against the muddy floor.
A nook, a cutaway section to the castle, big enough to hide in. He climbed inside. Pressed his back against the stone wall. Uneven bricks pulled at the cuts on his back. The puddle on the floor made Moomamu think that he was perhaps standing in some sort of excretion point.
“It’s fine,” he said to himself. “It’s fine. I’m okay. I’m okay. It doesn’t smell too bad.”
A cat, toothless and ginger, emerged from one of the houses. Old and saggy and looking right at Moomamu. The old cat screamed as he ran towards him brandishing a rusty blade, curved like the one the bronze warrior used. Moomamu clamped his eyes shut and inhaled. He heard the blade slice the air by his ear but he didn’t hear it strike the wall behind him. Nor did he feel it sticking inside his body. He screamed anyway until he opened his eyes to see he was staring at a pinkish wall. The smell of the excretion point gone. Replaced with a familiar fruity smell. Bubbles splashed behind him. He turned to see a Babosian, twice his size, looking down at him.
“UIUPOX! *CLAP* SLOCKZ.”
Its many arms slapped against its baggy sides and Moomamu went to mouth a human swear word. One of the really bad ones. He didn’t get the chance, though. Before he could even open his mouth he was back on Othos, standing in the outside toilet next to the castle wall. The old ginger cat was a little further down the pathway, scratching his head, curved blade in his free hand.
Moomamu bent down. He reached past the stinky puddle and grabbed a piece of the castle wall that had come loose. He stepped over the puddle and carefully caught up with the cat.
“Sorry,” he said as he slammed the rock down onto the old cat’s right ear.
The cat didn’t fall down. He hardly moved. He just turned and hissed as thick saliva ran down and gathered in the white hairs on his chin.
“Dammit,” Moomamu said as he teleported again.
He was stood on a beach. Salty waves brushed his feet. A little cold, but the sun was warm and the sea-breeze was cooling. It was paradise—
Back to Othos.
“What’s wrong with me!” he shouted. “Why do I keep coming here?”
He was farther down the road now. The old man was a hundred feet or so away swiping at the air — barely realising that Moomamu had evaded his grasp. That didn’t matter much to Moomamu though as he realised he’d teleported right back into the centre of the town. He’d looped the castle, it seemed. The mauled corpses hanging on the stage by his empty rope. The dispersed horde of town-cats in search of him. Moomamu lifted his rock as he saw Snuckems frantically ripping through the market stalls, throwing the fresh fish and fruit onto the floor. More of the prince’s guards were with him now wearing full body armour and brandishing silver thump-sticks that glistened in the sun.
“Down there,” a voice shouted from above. He looked up to see one of the guards, on the viewing platform where the prince was a short while ago. “Oi, Snuckems, screntki pa!”
With that, the whole crowd looked to Moomamu and gave chase again.
“You son of a bitch,” Moomamu shouted to the cat on the tower before running again.
“Stop panicking,” a voice said. It was the whispering man again. “Calm down and focus on where you want to go.”
“I can’t teleport properly. I keep whizzing about,” Moomamu said through gasps.
“Whizz with purpose then, you idiot.” The whispering voice sighed. Or at least Moomamu thought it was a sigh. It was actually the sound of an arrow flying past his head. It flew through the fabric roofing of one of the houses. He turned right, ran between two of the houses and out through to—
Oh, wait.
Ahead of him, a handful of town-cats and two of the guards blocked off the exit to the town. There was going to be no way he’d make it. The cats were fast. He was in a slow, stupid human vessel that didn’t move properly. Especially now it was all cut up from the clawing. Whizz with purpose. Whizz with purpose.
He heard Snuckems and the rest of the crowd catching up behind him. Their bare feet pattering against the floor.
He closed his eyes and imagined himself on Earth. No, be more specific. He imagined himself in Luna’s tiny moving machine. No, more specific still. Gary was in the back. Luna was to his right. The machine was rocking gently as it rolled along the even concrete. More. The smell of food from Luna’s machine mixed with her perfume filled his nostrils. The sound of Gary’s soothing vibrations. The soft fabric against his back. A full belly. His fingers twitched and the hairs on his body stood on their ends. Something unseen in his stomach lifting upwards. Readying for a jump.
“Fuck you, human,” he heard.
The wall of the cats now upon him. He dared not open his eyes in fear of losing his concentration, but he could still feel they were close. Their feet on the muddy dirt growing louder every second. Their panting. The wind moving differently around him as they closed in.
He remembered the moving machine.
He inhaled.
He jumped.
