MAIN » ARTICLESThe Iain (Rawson) Odyssey, part 2
Extract from ‘The Diary of Dr. Rog’: Week 672, Day 4605
Friday
A neon-green clock face on the ceiling above me showed it was now 6am; no time-zone was specified. I had no clue what zone one is in when floating idly in space, but being able to focus on it being “morning” gave me something to cling on to, something human and earthly. A feeling began to creep over my skin, much like the feeling of walking through a doorway and brushing against a curtain of cobwebs, and I no longer felt alone. Sure enough as I craned my neck round horizontal to the bed I saw Dr. Jameson sitting casually in a leather armchair flicking through WhatCar? Magazine with what appeared to be a Bloody Mary on the table beside the bed. He smiled after noticing I had awoken and put down his magazine. I saw numerous scruffy yellow post-it notes emerging from the pages and could only assume he was looking for a new hatchback. “How are you feeling now?” he asked with a congenial bedside manner, “Up for some breakfast?” I could only mumble something resembling a response, and this appeared to please Jameson, his smiling growing even larger and taking on a slightly sinister edge.
“Don’t worry Rog old boy,” he said, “I’ve got a reverend on board, and we’re all set.”
Half-an-hour later I was washed, dressed and putting on a new pair of slippers, neatly embroidered with The Institute's logo, which Jameson ensured me would make the experience of being in space all the more comfortable. I followed him gingerly into the cramped Kitchenette adjoining the control room and took a seat at the pine table, wondering if I really wanted to know the answer to the thousands of questions oscillating round the twitchy confines of my mind. I decided to wait and see what my esteemed colleague would tell me.
“You’ve been delusional for over a week,” he began, “I wasn’t sure what to do with you at first, but then I decided to do nothing, you’ve just been lying on your bed gibbering nonsense and shaking like a jelly for over a week now. It’s probably stress-related, induced by the shock of leaving orbit without adequate preparation.” He went on to explain how it had affected him too, albeit only slightly, and that he was unable to even pour himself another cocktail for over 3 hours following the launch for fear that the drink wouldn’t stay down. “Luckily we’ve cured that particular mental obstacle now”, he laughed manically, sloshing his words slightly with the tone of a man with too much alcohol in him and not enough spatial awareness. I made a conscious effort to clear my mind, which of course never works, and instead stared dumbly into the yolk of my fried egg as I nibbled cautiously on the greasy white and toast surrounding it. I sense that by the time I had reached the centre of this micro-universe sitting on my plate I would have to finally confront the brutish reality of my situation.
And so it came to be. We had been in space for a week now, I had been incapacitated ever since the shuttle had launched from the underneath the car park of the Institute. Jameson explained the origins of this obscure, but ultimately necessary vessel in terms of a puppy’s relationship with its mother within the first fortnight of life, but it washed over me like waves of a gentle sea over seaweed-strewn rocks. For a moment I pictured my old house overlooking the mouth of the river Avon, but by now the memory was dull and malformed. We had escaped, Jameson said, due to the Class-C disaster created when the subject’s clones took on a monstrous, and entirely unexpected new form and threatened the very structural integrity of the Institute. It was also around this time that a crack team of commandoes had stormed the complex through an underground tunnel with the aim of capturing me for reasons still unknown. What had I done?
If Jameson knew, he was keeping tight-lipped. Another empty cocktail glass fell to the floor following this brief summary of the most heinous of irreversible circumstances. “Why don’t you just put them on the side?” I remember asking, “No point,” Jameson exclaimed with a hint of pride, “the Reverend is on board to handle all domestic chores if needs be, plus, we brought too many glasses and by jettisoning my empty beverage containers into space tomorrow we can reduce the weight of the shuttle a sufficient amount to give us at least 4 days more electrical power, which of course we need to power the oxygen generators.” Another hour passed before I managed to gain more critical information, including the facts that we only had 4 days of power left before system shutdown and we were now 3 days from earth and attempting to turn back with a fantastically large and depressing turning circle. It suddenly hit me how important the smashing of the glass actually was and, with as much human effort as I could conjure from my wreck of a body, heaved my orange juice across the room and watched it erupt spectacularly over a panel of instruments, showering a tangerine waterfall down onto something that looked remarkably similar to a standard European AC wall socket. Then the lights went out.
The only sound I could hear apart from the hum of the generators was Jameson’s voice, and it sounded worried now for the first time, installing a further layer of fear on top of my heavily-burdened mind. “Well,” he said slowly and painfully, “there goes the last of the OJ.”
Meanwhile, back on Earth...
It had been a turbulent week for Dr. Shields. First the delivery of paradise palms had been over an hour late, causing a throng of irate customers on their monthly house-plant run to become almost riotous, and then he was witness to an extraordinary scene which was still burnt into his retina 7 days later back at The Institute where repairs were long underway.
The first sign that something wasn’t entirely ordinary consisted of his coworker and childhood friend Dr. Randy nonchalantly paddling past in an Italian-style gondola, bags of papers and magazines tied up in bundles on top of ragged cardboard boxes all around him. A wind-up radio sang out a familiar opera, the blank face of Randy suggesting ominous goings-on beyond that of the immediate vista. Too unsure of his own vision to call out, Dr. Shields watched as the gondola swept around the bend on its way out to sea and then decided to take an extra long toilet break, weeping into his hands until a slow rumbling shook him from his tortured uncertainty and forced him back outside.
The rumbling and the ground shaking became more violent. A couple of exotic cactus plants fell from a high shelf, shattering their porcelain pots across the ground. It seemed to be coming from directly under his feet, but experience told Dr. Shields better and ever since stepping out of the shop’s double doors he had trained his eyes directly on the site of the Institute. Although some miles away, due to the flat terrain he could pick out the small wooden building resembling a shed surrounded by an acre of grim tarmac. The car park. As usual there were no cars, but something that did seem odd was the large gaping hole opening up in the very centre of the space. Gradually it grew larger, splitting in half, tarmac and earth falling into the chasm. A loud explosion was proceeded by billowing smoke gushing from the pit, directly upwards and stretching for miles, interspersed with the occasional flame and short, sharp bangs like that of an air rifle.
The next thing he knew, the sky had turned a brilliant white and Dr. Shields felt himself falling to the ground, bracing his mind for impact he was surprised to feel a comfortable surface as the fall ended. It felt like somebody had laid pillows on the ground behind him, lush pillows, probably synthetic as in Dr. Shield’s experience real feather pillows soon lost their shape and in fact offered less support. A second later his eyes opened, a bright light shining from above caused him to wince. Slowly his vision returned, he was in a room and immediately recognized the décor. ‘The Lounge! Operations Deck 4!? How on earth…,’ Dr Shields mind flailed for sense. Finding nothing, it decided the best thing to do was simply shut down again and hope for the best. His eyes slid to a close, everything turned white again and a strong smell of freshly cut grass saturated his senses.
Written by Jay
Friday
A neon-green clock face on the ceiling above me showed it was now 6am; no time-zone was specified. I had no clue what zone one is in when floating idly in space, but being able to focus on it being “morning” gave me something to cling on to, something human and earthly. A feeling began to creep over my skin, much like the feeling of walking through a doorway and brushing against a curtain of cobwebs, and I no longer felt alone. Sure enough as I craned my neck round horizontal to the bed I saw Dr. Jameson sitting casually in a leather armchair flicking through WhatCar? Magazine with what appeared to be a Bloody Mary on the table beside the bed. He smiled after noticing I had awoken and put down his magazine. I saw numerous scruffy yellow post-it notes emerging from the pages and could only assume he was looking for a new hatchback. “How are you feeling now?” he asked with a congenial bedside manner, “Up for some breakfast?” I could only mumble something resembling a response, and this appeared to please Jameson, his smiling growing even larger and taking on a slightly sinister edge.
“Don’t worry Rog old boy,” he said, “I’ve got a reverend on board, and we’re all set.”
Half-an-hour later I was washed, dressed and putting on a new pair of slippers, neatly embroidered with The Institute's logo, which Jameson ensured me would make the experience of being in space all the more comfortable. I followed him gingerly into the cramped Kitchenette adjoining the control room and took a seat at the pine table, wondering if I really wanted to know the answer to the thousands of questions oscillating round the twitchy confines of my mind. I decided to wait and see what my esteemed colleague would tell me.
“You’ve been delusional for over a week,” he began, “I wasn’t sure what to do with you at first, but then I decided to do nothing, you’ve just been lying on your bed gibbering nonsense and shaking like a jelly for over a week now. It’s probably stress-related, induced by the shock of leaving orbit without adequate preparation.” He went on to explain how it had affected him too, albeit only slightly, and that he was unable to even pour himself another cocktail for over 3 hours following the launch for fear that the drink wouldn’t stay down. “Luckily we’ve cured that particular mental obstacle now”, he laughed manically, sloshing his words slightly with the tone of a man with too much alcohol in him and not enough spatial awareness. I made a conscious effort to clear my mind, which of course never works, and instead stared dumbly into the yolk of my fried egg as I nibbled cautiously on the greasy white and toast surrounding it. I sense that by the time I had reached the centre of this micro-universe sitting on my plate I would have to finally confront the brutish reality of my situation. And so it came to be. We had been in space for a week now, I had been incapacitated ever since the shuttle had launched from the underneath the car park of the Institute. Jameson explained the origins of this obscure, but ultimately necessary vessel in terms of a puppy’s relationship with its mother within the first fortnight of life, but it washed over me like waves of a gentle sea over seaweed-strewn rocks. For a moment I pictured my old house overlooking the mouth of the river Avon, but by now the memory was dull and malformed. We had escaped, Jameson said, due to the Class-C disaster created when the subject’s clones took on a monstrous, and entirely unexpected new form and threatened the very structural integrity of the Institute. It was also around this time that a crack team of commandoes had stormed the complex through an underground tunnel with the aim of capturing me for reasons still unknown. What had I done?
If Jameson knew, he was keeping tight-lipped. Another empty cocktail glass fell to the floor following this brief summary of the most heinous of irreversible circumstances. “Why don’t you just put them on the side?” I remember asking, “No point,” Jameson exclaimed with a hint of pride, “the Reverend is on board to handle all domestic chores if needs be, plus, we brought too many glasses and by jettisoning my empty beverage containers into space tomorrow we can reduce the weight of the shuttle a sufficient amount to give us at least 4 days more electrical power, which of course we need to power the oxygen generators.” Another hour passed before I managed to gain more critical information, including the facts that we only had 4 days of power left before system shutdown and we were now 3 days from earth and attempting to turn back with a fantastically large and depressing turning circle. It suddenly hit me how important the smashing of the glass actually was and, with as much human effort as I could conjure from my wreck of a body, heaved my orange juice across the room and watched it erupt spectacularly over a panel of instruments, showering a tangerine waterfall down onto something that looked remarkably similar to a standard European AC wall socket. Then the lights went out.
The only sound I could hear apart from the hum of the generators was Jameson’s voice, and it sounded worried now for the first time, installing a further layer of fear on top of my heavily-burdened mind. “Well,” he said slowly and painfully, “there goes the last of the OJ.”
Meanwhile, back on Earth...
It had been a turbulent week for Dr. Shields. First the delivery of paradise palms had been over an hour late, causing a throng of irate customers on their monthly house-plant run to become almost riotous, and then he was witness to an extraordinary scene which was still burnt into his retina 7 days later back at The Institute where repairs were long underway.
The first sign that something wasn’t entirely ordinary consisted of his coworker and childhood friend Dr. Randy nonchalantly paddling past in an Italian-style gondola, bags of papers and magazines tied up in bundles on top of ragged cardboard boxes all around him. A wind-up radio sang out a familiar opera, the blank face of Randy suggesting ominous goings-on beyond that of the immediate vista. Too unsure of his own vision to call out, Dr. Shields watched as the gondola swept around the bend on its way out to sea and then decided to take an extra long toilet break, weeping into his hands until a slow rumbling shook him from his tortured uncertainty and forced him back outside.
The rumbling and the ground shaking became more violent. A couple of exotic cactus plants fell from a high shelf, shattering their porcelain pots across the ground. It seemed to be coming from directly under his feet, but experience told Dr. Shields better and ever since stepping out of the shop’s double doors he had trained his eyes directly on the site of the Institute. Although some miles away, due to the flat terrain he could pick out the small wooden building resembling a shed surrounded by an acre of grim tarmac. The car park. As usual there were no cars, but something that did seem odd was the large gaping hole opening up in the very centre of the space. Gradually it grew larger, splitting in half, tarmac and earth falling into the chasm. A loud explosion was proceeded by billowing smoke gushing from the pit, directly upwards and stretching for miles, interspersed with the occasional flame and short, sharp bangs like that of an air rifle.
The next thing he knew, the sky had turned a brilliant white and Dr. Shields felt himself falling to the ground, bracing his mind for impact he was surprised to feel a comfortable surface as the fall ended. It felt like somebody had laid pillows on the ground behind him, lush pillows, probably synthetic as in Dr. Shield’s experience real feather pillows soon lost their shape and in fact offered less support. A second later his eyes opened, a bright light shining from above caused him to wince. Slowly his vision returned, he was in a room and immediately recognized the décor. ‘The Lounge! Operations Deck 4!? How on earth…,’ Dr Shields mind flailed for sense. Finding nothing, it decided the best thing to do was simply shut down again and hope for the best. His eyes slid to a close, everything turned white again and a strong smell of freshly cut grass saturated his senses.
Written by Jay