Conscience had been waiting for an opportunity to try out his new interface idea and now was the moment. He rummaged in a section of Lucy’s memories that he’d termed “popular culture.” He found the idea he was looking for.
It had everything he could want for interacting with the world through Lucy. A nice big screen for viewing the world and a large computer bank that would give him feedback from her other parts. It was perfect.
There you are my precious little memory, he said, fishing it out of her temporal cortex which should have been impossible. He flattened it out in her posterior parietal lobe, using a hammer he found in her cerebellum, and made it corporeal for himself in her thalamus—again this should have been impossible.
If Conscience hadn’t been so preoccupied with the idea of actually doing it, he might have wondered how he had achieved it. He might have realised that what he was doing was very, very impossible. Too caught up in the novelty of it all and his new surroundings, he never questioned how he’d realised it.
Conscience stood on the bridge of his newly created, imaginary star ship and thought his work was good. The room was a large circle with another indented circle in its centre.
Around the edge of this indent ran a red handrail at about the height you needed to really damage your knee. Along one edge of the room was a six-foot square, view screen showing the view from Lucy’s eyes. Currently, it showed the inside of her eyelids, but he was sure it would work properly when she woke up. Around the rest of the room were large computer terminals and other paraphernalia he didn’t recognise.
In front of the screen, on the lower level, was a workstation with two unoccupied swivel chairs. The workstation, coloured black with a red trim finish, had raised, flashing orange, yellow and green lights covering it.
Conscience sat on a plush, swivel chair in the room’s centre. He had no terminal in front of him, but he did enjoy the vantage it gave him over the whole room. He smiled.
Just how she imagined it for me, he thought idly, as he sat and swivelled in his new chair.
A “bung-ssssshhhht-whiiiip” sound emanated from behind him, and he spun on in his chair to face it.
A lift door opened in the wall opposite the big screen, and he stared in disbelief as a troop of Lucys stepped out. Most were dressed in red all-in-one miniskirts. A few were dressed in blue versions of the same skirt. Their hair was all done in exactly the same way, swept up into massive beehives, making them look like a row of chocolate ice-creams. He couldn’t believe his eyes, then it occurred to Conscience, he had eyes! He had a physical body!
He leapt from his swivel chair almost spilling himself on the floor and addressed a Lucy dressed in blue.
“Lucy, what’s going on?”
“I am not Lucy, Captain. My name is Pride. I am your science officer,” she said, raising one of her immaculate eyebrows.
For reasons Conscience couldn’t fathom, this Lucy clone had pointed ears. Why did she have pointed ears? None of the others had pointed ears.
“Are you feeling all right, Captain?” she asked. “You look quite peaked.”
“Look? What do I look like? A mirror! I need a mirror.”
“Here you go, sir,” said another Lucy, dressed in red, as she handed him a small mirror.
“Ah thank you, Miss?”
“Anticipation, Captain. Ensign Anticipation.”
“Ah, thank you.”
Conscience stared at himself in the mirror. He appeared to be a six-foot male, with a slightly receding, sandy blonde hairline. He wore a yellow jump suit made from what turned out to be towel fabric. His face was on the podgy side of handsome, and he seemed to be developing a beer gut.
Well, this was his world. He’d created it. He should be able to sort this out. He closed his eyes and tried to change. When he opened them, he was the same podgy captain.
He tried again with the same result, then gave up, suspecting that someone was having a joke at his expense. It was probably whoever was creating the world where Lucy was, he reasoned. He turned back to the Lucy clone.
“Thank you, Miss Pride,” he said, handing back the mirror.
“I’m Anticipation, Captain,” corrected Anticipation, taking the mirror.
“Damn. We’ll have to get name stickers or something.” He returned to his swivel chair and tried to address the whole room which was quite hard because the Lucy clones had all gone to their workstations, and they were dotted all over the circular room. He made himself dizzy a few times before giving up on trying to get everyone in his field of view at once.
“People,” he addressed the clones, “we have a lot of work ahead. As some of you may have guessed, you are the emotional content of my friend Lucy. She is not here right now, and her body will need our help whilst she’s away. We must keep her going until she returns. Move her arms and legs. Make sure she doesn’t injure herself. We may even have to communicate with that goat, but only if we must.
“So it is up to us. I am your captain and my name is Conscience. Any questions?”
“No, Sir,” said Pride. “You heard the Captain. Everybody get busy.”
Conscience sat in his bridge chair and watched his crew get ready to get under way. He smiled to himself. He’d done it! He’d created a better interface with Lucy. He should be able to really help her now.
“Captain,” said Miss Pride, who had taken the liberty of appointing herself second in command, “the ship is at your disposal.”
“Very well—three, two, one. Engage!”
Chapter 13 St. Anthony’s
I went to the doctor the other day,
He said, Son, I cannot tell,
What I have inside my bag,
that can make you well.
From the song “Body Armor”
By Franches Verns,
Year after Ice 19456
Lucy was very concerned that the floor had become soft. When she’d gone to sleep, the floor was the hard bark of the fallen tree. Now, it was soft and springy, like a mattress. She pushed her head against it again and concluded it was a mattress.
Conscience?
There was no response. She tried again, Conscience?
Conscience had gone. The coercion spell had gone too. She could no longer feel its dull ache as it tried to pull her towards the Falls of Wanda.
Flip-it, it happened again. I’m in the hospital, or trapped by the Dimn, or wherever it was I went before. Wherever this is, it’s not with Conscience and Talbot, and it’s not part of the quest.
She opened her eyes. The ceiling, which was the first thing she saw, was almost identical to how she remembered it. Artex squares. The stalactite-paint dry-dripping down at her. She lay on her back with her head pointed straight up to face the smiling white infinity.
She tried to turn on her side and felt a resistance at her wrists as if someone held her. Her wrists were tied to the metal railings surrounding her bed with thick leather straps.
This can’t be good, she thought. What the flip is going on?
The door of her room opened and a female nurse entered carrying a tea tray with a bowl. She was quite short, and her dark-brown hair was curled back into a tight bun beneath her nurse’s cap. Her skin was pale and rife with acne. Her pinched face had something vaguely rodent-like about it, so that Lucy half expected her to squeak and ask for some cheese. Considering the other strange things that had happened, she felt this was a distinct possibility. It would certainly go with the motif of fauns, dragons and talking cats.
“Ah, awake are we?” asked the nurse, in an Irish accent so thick it should have been served with a stout and a horse-racing tip.
“Where…where am I?” Lucy asked, after drawing saliva back into her parched mouth.
“Would you be in this world today, then?”
“What?” she asked, thoroughly confused by the reply.
“So, you are here, then. Well, that’s some good news, then. I’ll tell Dr. Bhat, after I’ve given you some breakfast.”
&nbs
p; The nurse who had Dymphna written on her name tag, sat on a chair next to the bed and began to feed her a bowl of cereal. Lucy, discovering she was ravenous, gratefully chewed the cereal. The nurse was good at spoon feeding patients, but Lucy still managed to get milk all over her chin.
“Oh dear, we’ve made a bit of a mess of ourselves.”
“This would have been easier if you’d just untie me. Why am I tied up anyway?”
“To stop you hurting yourself, dearie. Can’t have you running off all over the place whilst you’re not really here now, can we?”
The answer confused her.
“Not really here? Where is here?” Lucy asked.
“Here is Saint Anthony’s Hospital.”
Lucy’s mind began a reconnoitre, trying to trace the name. Saint Anthony’s, Saint Anthony’s? She had it.
“The mental asylum?”
“We don’t like to call it that, dearie. We call it a psychiatric hospital,” said the nurse.
“I’m in the nut house?” Lucy asked again.
“We definitely don’t call it that! Stay here, dearie, whilst I go and fetch Dr. Bhat.”
Lucy’s mind flew compiling facts and recollections, cross-referencing and connecting like a giant spider-web. Dr. Bhat, Ravi’s mother. The general hospital when she first woke up.
“Dr. Bhat? But, she was my attending doctor at the other hospital, the general hospital. If I’m in an asylum why is she here too?”
“She?” Dymphna looked confused for a second and then her face lit up as she put the pieces together. “Ah, that must have been Dr. Lalita Bhat, Dr. Bhat’s wife. I’ve heard she works down at the general. No, I’m going to fetch Dr. Manish Bhat. He’s been your psychoanalyst whilst you’ve been here. Strange, you being passed along in the family like that.”
The nurse turned and walked out the door, snapping the lock closed.
Lucy sighed, realising she’d been abandoned again without getting any important answers. What was she doing in a mental asylum? Why was she tied up? And what was going on?
Dymphna, the nurse, had said she was tied up so she couldn’t go walking around whilst she wasn’t here. Well, that really didn’t make any sense. If she wasn’t here, then she couldn’t be walking around.
Maybe the same thing happened to her body here as happened to it in the other world—in Mieha as the Cheshire Cat called it. When she came to the hospital the first time Conscience had said her physical body had still been in the desert. So maybe, when she leapt back again, her body was also in the hospital, and they’d mistaken it for a coma or something.
But then, why the need to strap her down? It seemed like overkill for a coma patient, especially as they locked the doors. It didn’t make sense.
She tried to wriggle free of her bonds, but they were tight around her wrists. She slammed her hands up and down, attempting to get some purchase, but again, the restraints didn’t budge. Lucy felt a sudden sharp sting in her left palm. She turned her hand over and examined it. Blood oozed from a tiny pin prick. Carefully, she placed her hand on the bed and felt the hard metal of a loose spring.
She could feel pain. That probably ruled out this being some sort of dream.
What if the Cheshire Cat was right? What if this was something to do with the Dimn? Then, she should be tied up (check), locked up (check) and not told anything (check). That was worrying.
However, this place didn’t look like a prison. It seemed to be a private hospital. The walls were white, the carpet a lush ocean blue. The door was the rich wood colour you got in new buildings. And yet, she was still wrist-strapped to the bed. It didn’t make sense.
It made more sense that this was all a trick by the Dimn, that she was in prison. This was her holding cell, and now that she had returned to this body, she would be tortured for information or something like that.
If that was true, then what about Dr. Bhat—he was Ravi’s father, wasn’t he? But if he wasn’t real, and she hadn’t been in the hospital the first time either, then what about Ravi himself? Was that even the boy’s name? The only things she knew about Ravi had come from her visit to the hospital. If the hospital was to do with the Dimn, then all she knew about Ravi could be a lie—a simple way to torture her. Maybe Ravi himself was the torture. Stick a knife through her emotions and watch her squirm.
What did she know about Ravi, anyway? She thought she knew his name. She thought he might have given her a card. She thought his parents might be taking care of her.
Nevertheless, all this information came from a time when her own observations were suspect.
So, what did she actually know? He was quiet. He went to her school and had never shown any interest in her before in their entire history together—not a lot of information.
Even if she accepted the suspect hospital as real information, she knew next to nothing. What were his likes or his dislikes? Was he very religious? Did he have any brothers or sisters? What would it be like to go on a date with him?
Lucy speculated about what the date would be like. It would be quite formal, she decided. Ravi seemed like the kind who would do things properly, none of this pizza and a movie. It would be dinner at a restaurant. Well, perhaps not a restaurant, maybe a pizzeria, but a posh one.
He’d be dressed in a smart suit, his coffee skin showing against the black suit and the white shirt. A red rose in his lapel to show the world he was on a date—and with her. His hair, coal black, would be scraped down neatly into a dashing side parting. He’d be wearing a hint of cologne, not an over-powering amount, just a slight whiff, like the scent of apples on a summer’s day.
She’d be wearing a sky blue evening dress. Oh, and a shawl. She’d always wanted to wear a shawl. Her hair, what there was of it, would be pulled back into an ice-cream cone style swoosh. They’d talk, chat, about absolutely nothing whatever, and it would mean the world to both of them. What were his plans? Did he want to go to university? What about his parents? Isn’t television today terrible? Weren’t books wonderful? Art, music, the works.
The restaurant would be lit only by candlelight, small flickering stars, islands of bright table cloths and couples in a sea of deep dark water. Waiters would hop from table to table, like excited frogs in a pond. Everyone would be dressed in their finest, and she and Ravi would be on display for the world to see. She, Lucy Gayle, would be on a date.
She let the image go. It dissipated like a cloud wisp in a breeze, a perfect bubble of imagination, pink and round and not the truth at all. She was here and now—in this bed strapped down, and soon the torturer would be here.
She was more sure now this had to be false. The perfect bubble of Ravi had told her the truth because things like that didn’t happen, couldn’t happen. Not to Lucy Gayle, the picked on and laughed at—the small and meek. It would all prove to be false—the hospital, and Dr. Bhat and Ravi, oh my!
Oh Ravi, why can’t you be real? Be real and really like me?
She knew he wasn’t and didn’t. The old familiar doubts crept in.
“Gayle’s got fleas! Gayle’s fleas.” “Gayle stinks!” The familiar sounds of Bartleson and Bertram, her tormentors.
“Here you go Gayle, have a nice shower!” She recalled the water’s feel as it was tipped over her. The cold dread. That was real, not this plush hospital bed. Being tortured by Bartleson and Bertram, that was real. Every day the same. Being picked on for being smart, for knowing the answer, for daring to be right, for being different.
If the truth was that she was the picked on, the despised, then Ravi couldn’t be real. He couldn’t like her—want her. Not the way that she wanted to believe in him.
She wanted to believe in an ideal boy. A god to whisk her away, to kiss her and tell her it was all right, and she wasn’t alone, but she knew it was not so. There was no prince charming. Life wasn’t like that—life had spikes and would tear and hurt you when it could.
Yet, there was something even darker lurking in the background like oil thrown into the perfect p
ool of her imagination. Black cracks radiated from a negrine hole of awfulness. Something bad had happened to her, something terrible.
A dark, gruesome, bubbling voice glubbed at her like blood bubbling down a drain.
He took you. He had you. The alley, the alley, the alley, oh my!
The voice was her own but distorted and warped by pain. But what did it mean? Who “had” her? Ravi? Well, that couldn’t be true, she had never even spoken to Ravi.
No, not Ravi, it said.
Who then? What was the dark voice talking about?
Not now, Gayle. Later. We will speak later.
She shook her head to clear the dream. This hospital must be the illusion thrown at her by her enemies—by the Dimn.
He rules the land of Meiha, that was true. Conscience was waiting for her somewhere, waiting for her to come back, that was true. Talbot was also waiting for her, waiting to guide her to the…to the…to the Falls of Wanda.
That was it, her quest. Her quest was the truth. She could see it now. This? This was all a distraction.
Playtime games to hold her up, to stop her completing the quest. However, that meant…the doctor, Dr. Bhat. He must be an agent of the Dimn, his chief torturer.
The door clicked open, and she had her answers.
Inside stepped a portly Indian gentleman. His face was round and jowly. He had a close cropped black beard, which handily defined where his chin started and his neck finished. He wore a white coat over a checked shirt and chino trousers, but Lucy could see past it all. She screwed her eyes shut and looked through the illusion. She could just do it by straining her thoughts to the left of what her brain expected to see. She looked, and she saw the torturer, his sweating body, a mass of hair and belly. He wore a dark hood, and his eyes glowed red like burning coals. In his hands, he held a chain to strangle her—a stethoscope to hear her heart.
She screamed.
“Get away. Get back! I see you!”
“Lucy, Lucy, calm down. I am Dr. Bhat. I’m here to help you.”
Ravens and Writing Desks: A Metaphysical Fantasy Page 14
