15th January 2078 – 15:02
‘You mean like a potato?’
‘That’s underselling it.’
‘Well sell it then, Jim. Because it sounds like you want to remove his brain and plug it in.’
‘Christine, it’s been five days. His brain function was gone.’
‘Exactly, so why?’
‘Was gone. It’s back, but it’s different.’
‘Different how?’
‘I’ve run some tests. I think his brain can power… well, everything. We can power the transmission for the timer.’
‘Fuck the timer. Look at him. He’s unconscious. Normal, like the others. We can’t just cut his skull open.’
‘No, each of them is in a textbook coma. They came in barely alive, and have stayed the same. All vitals as you’d expect. Damien full on died.’
‘Don’t say it like that.’
‘Hey, look I didn’t want it to be any truer than you, but it was a fact. I called time of death.’
‘I told him not to go. A full team, a round dozen. I told him the Commander should sit in his comfy chair, like he does at the beach. He should call the shots, not fling himself into the unknown.’
‘Lead by example you know. That was Damien.’
‘He’s not dead!’
‘Sorry, maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is that something happened to him. I’m not sure what. But it changed him. His brain is practically exploding with energy.’
‘What, like electricity?’
‘That’s the thing. Energy is a spectrum. Different types, from different sources. Damien is all of them, all at once.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Think of it like M&Ms in a box if you want. He is every single colour, and infinite amounts of them. Instead of red, blue, green, think electrical, thermal, nuclear.’
‘That’s not helpful. Why the hell are you talking about M&Ms?’
‘Yeah, bad analogy. But I’m telling you, this is unprecedented. Imagine every power station in the world lives within Damien’s brain, and that still doesn’t scratch the surface.’
‘Surely that would blow the system then?’
‘If he were a conventional generator I’d agree. But this is happening inside a human head. His brain is still there.’
‘How?’
‘I’d love to know that too. Synapses aren’t designed to carry that much energy. It should be causing noticeable effects. But no, he’s just lying there. Are you sure there was nothing different about him when he was rescued?’
‘You know there wasn’t. We fished him out of the ice just like the others. That screeching signal died down, our radar came back and there they were. A few hundred meters away, tucked into a shelf of ice just below the surface. Like they were deposited for safekeeping.’
‘But like was there a cloud or maybe a creature? Anything weird nearby?’
‘Oh yeah, sorry, how could I forget.’
‘Go on…’
‘A big box of M&Ms.’
‘Not helpful, Christine.’
‘Well, excuse me for struggling with the lunacy of this. You’re telling me the only way to save this base, the crew, and probably the entire planet is for me to order you to cut my husband’s skull open, and permanently convert his brain into a makeshift triple A?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jesus christ, Jim.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. It isn’t personal is it? Unless you’re really messed up in the head.’
‘I’m just doing my job. Believe me, I wish I wasn’t Chief Medical Officer right now.’
‘Logic then. How long do we have?’
‘We have enough food for three weeks…’
‘Okay.’
‘…but we’ll freeze to death long before that anyway. The emergency generators don’t have much fuel left.’
‘Right.’
‘And the timer could go any moment. We’re long past the due time.’
‘Christ, and you’re certain he can’t wake up?’
‘Do you want the real answer or the easy one?’
‘Come on.’
‘There is a chance he can wake up.’
‘And-’
‘I don’t know the likelihood, I can’t give you a percentage. It just could happen.’
‘What does protocol say to do?’
‘Wait, as long as we can.’
‘So, we wait. It’s the safe choice.’
‘It’s the wrong one too. Damien picked you if anything went wrong, and it went wrong. He knew you could make the big calls. Waiting isn’t big, it’s passing the buck.’
‘He picked me, exactly. And now you’re asking me to sign his death warrant. Some first act as Commander, killing my husband, my predecessor.’
‘If it helps, it would take me at most thirty minutes to do it.’
‘Good for you.’
‘For the timer, I mean. Once it starts we have forty-five right?’
‘Oh.’
‘So you have a small window, but it’s pushing it. As long as you can make it back to the terminal and answer the question in less than fifteen minutes. It might work.’
‘Right.’
‘So what are we doing?’
‘I don’t know.’
—
I feel the breeze.
The sound of the ocean, the sand beneath my feet. What a lovely day. I must have driven to the beach, yeah that’s right, probably a picnic with Chrissy.
I feel great. No really, normally I’m in a caffeine dip by early afternoon. A brain fog that makes me want to nap. It’s the opposite today, I’m alert and ready to go.
Where is Chrissy, by the way? She’s probably parking the car, yeah that makes sense. She’ll be along in a minute.
Who am I talking to? No, wait, Chrissy can’t drive. What’s going on here?
I’m at the base, in the Antarctic, part of the taskforce. Something is wrong. We’re in bad shape, I think. Yes, a freak storm decimated our systems. Communications, life support, even some of the hab ruptured.
Our only hope to make the timer is to find something down there.
I’m preparing to go down into the chasm. A team of us are. Right I’m back up to speed now. The beach was just a daydream. Fine.
Okay let’s do it, the climb will take about an hour. It’s deep, I’m surprised our scans even found it.
I must have been in the zone. I made short work of the descent. I tell you what Chrissy would love this. It’s massive, the size of a couple of football stadiums at least. I can’t send images back up, comms are down. It doesn’t look as if the signal reaches down here. I’ll tell Ramirez to record everything.
Fuck, where am I? Oh yeah, we made it inside the structure. The instruments have been playing up. We get long periods of silence, nada, zilch and then all of a sudden they light up like it’s Christmas. There is something down here, something I can take back up to the base. The team is in good spirits, we’ll get this done.
Why did I come down here alone? This place is dead, nothing is alive down here.
I touch it. Touch what?
Light and dark all at once.
It wants to help, it wants to run.
Where am I now?
I see Christine, I see Jim. No, I don’t. I hear them.
I hear every word.
What was the timer? What were we doing?
None of this makes sense.
I understand now, the timer.
The world was under attack. From something. Not sure what, but we were it’s last hope. Find something to save us under the ice.
That was it. We had to answer the question and then the timer would restart. Fail, and it hits zero.
A fail safe. We’re the fail safe. Well we’re not anymore. We’ve failed, and no one is safe. That’s a good line.
They have to answer the question, or everyone’s dead. Christine’s dead.
She won’t do it, she can’t do it. She thinks I’m alive. I am, aren’t I?
I want to be.
I feel alive, but simultaneously I don’t feel anything. Is that living? Something’s screwy here. I can think, I can communicate. No one’s talking to me though.
I’ll grab a glass of water. Okay, I’ll try again. Nope, arms are not playing. Jim can help. Jim! Water! Hello?
Oh so I’m not physical anymore.
The ball, the thing I touched. It stopped the timer. It was due to start again.
The ball just wants to hide, it sent me back here, it was kind. Was I dying anyway? Maybe, so it sent me home. Well not home, but to Christine, that’s home.
But now Christine will die. The base is failing.
Because she thinks I’m alive. Still not quite sure if I am or not. Will get back to you.
Okay here is what I’ve concluded. I am alive. Damien is dead. Christine and Jim will die. The world will live. That is all if I stop here.
But I can do something. I’m trapped, but in reality I am also everywhere so what I will do is start the timer. I am the ball, well sort of. I think it’s very complicated.
If I start the timer, then Christine will order Jim to take me out. He’ll chop me up and plug me in, and then Christine will answer the question. The question that stops the warhead.
I will power the base. They get rescued, and I can do all that whilst laying permanently horizontal, forever.
They need to take something back with them, to help. I can give them information. I’ll leave it here. They’ll find it.
Took me a while to catch-up but I think I’ve got it all figured out now.
Christine, I love you. Damien loved you.
Okay, here we go. Sitting on the beach in my chair. Not a bad way to go.
Commander Damien West of the Antarctic Phenomena Force – Signing Off – 15th January 2078 16:04
—
‘Jim.’
‘I know, the timer. I can hear the alarm.’
‘Do it. I’m going to the terminal.’
‘Christine—’
‘What?’
‘There’s a new log in the system.’
‘A what?’
‘Commander’s log. Fifteen minutes ago. Signed by Damien.’
By Louis Urbanowski – Inspired by the prompt: ‘The boy who lived horizontally.’
Stories by Louis Urbanowski 