You should have let him sleep (4 out of ?)
Chapter four - The Wake.
again, many thanks to rranne. How she can be so fast and thorough is beyond me.
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He was choking. The need for air erased all the indefinable images from before and narrowed his perception to the desperate now; it deprived him of his senses and left him in the middle of bright nothingness. He felt like having suddenly come to exist, awoken by pain that rippled through his convulsing body, only to die the very next moment. He tried to will his mouth to open, his chest to heave and the intercostal muscles to contract, but his body was not responding - the connection was broken and there was nothing he could do about it. His mind darkened and he fell back into the abyss whence he came.
The next thing that had soaked through the thick layers of dumbness that encased his mind was the sound of hushed voices.
“...oxygen saturation normal. Heart rate elevated; I think you did the right thing with the neurotransmitters, but the dosage...”
“He’s awake.” Soft, smooth fingers wrapped around his hand, bringing to his awareness the fact that he finally had his body connected to his brain- chest, abdomen, limbs, and fingers; all of which suddenly felt as if dipped in acid and roasted over a small fire. He screwed his face in pain and forced his eyes open.
The most exquisite eyes he had ever seen- he could ever imagine- almond shaped, brightest aquamarine flecked with silver- that regarded him with an unmistakable expression of relief from an unearthly beautiful face. The stately elegance of this woman was even more punctuated with the torturous length of her neck, smooth perfection of her skin, and complete absence of hair on her head which gave her an almost alien, but definitely regal, look.
I’m in heaven and angels do exist. But wait...heaven shouldn’t hurt so much.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, he managed to lift his head and take a look at his surroundings. Though his eyes were still a bit dazed, he could make out the walls of an irregularly shaped room that seemed carved of rock, an improvised berth that he lay centered in; everything illuminated by an artificial light from outside. Another man, tall and black with rich curly hair, turned and left through a stony passage. The woman standing by his bed gently lowered his head back to the pillow.
“It’s all right, Watson. Rest. You’ve had a nasty fit when we’ve pulled you out; we didn’t know the right procedures for your awakening when your chamber suddenly malfunctioned, so it was make-or-break. I’m glad to see you’ve made it.”
“My...chamber?” He didn’t remember any chamber. To tell the truth, he didn’t remember much at all. The last thing that stood out clearly was that rather wild party his roommate threw at the occasion of his coming-of-age. Surely...
“Your hibernation chamber. The technology and materials used indicate pre-First Contact era; we did a quick research and I think that the early twenty-first century would be when you’ve been buried here. There are thousands of questions we would like to ask you and I can understand that you must have questions of your own.”
His mind didn’t seem cooperative enough to pull together anything past the shortest and simplest phrases, so he decided that it would be best to start with them: “Where am I?”
“You’re in the Vale of Kashmir; at the foothills of the Himalayas. One hundred and fifteen meters under, to be correct. We were searching for a cave suitable for our purposes when we found you. Any idea how did you get here?”
He shook his head. Holy shit. The Himalayas. What’s wrong with London? He licked his lips with some effort, afraid of the next question. “What year?”
She drew rather a lengthy breath, as if to give him some time to prepare for what he was about to hear. “Two thousand two hundred and eighty-four.”
John groaned. She flicked her gaze nervously between his face and a small object that lay on a table beside him. Life function check...his medicinal instinct told him without even thinking about it.
“What am I even doing here?”
She sighed. “That’s what we hoped we would hear from you, Watson. There were no records, no papers, no files or data media found with you or near you. Only two things: we’ve got your name from these-” She lifted his dog-tags. John frowned at them.
“I don’t remember being in the Army. I studied medicine.”
“These two don’t exclude themselves. You could have been an Army doctor. Does that ring any bell?”
“Nope. I’m sorry. I don’t even know how old I am - how old I was, before I mysteriously skipped almost three hundred years.”
“Our med scan says you’re forty-three. I’d say more, judging solely from your hair, but I am aware that in your century, premature aging was not uncommon. You haven’t led a healthy and peaceful life either.”
“There’s a shot wound in your left shoulder,” she added an explanation when she saw the question on his face. “Well healed, which is a miracle given the almost stone-age state of medicine in your day-”
“Now hang on a minute-” he protested indignantly.
“But then, I’m a mere mathematician, I think that this beeping box knows more about medicine than I do,” she winked at him, indicating the plastic thing that lay on the side table, blinking innocently and obviously able to count down to the last one of John’s grey hairs.
Forty-three years. That’s not fair. The last he remembered about himself was being still at the Uni. Half of his life gone and he doesn’t even know how he’d deserved to become a fucking time traveler.
He touched his shoulder cautiously, feeling the scar under the fabric of his clothing - some sort of uniform and a washed-out tee. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the feeling to bring back memories - surely he would remember being shot! - but instead, he suddenly saw a chemical laboratory...bit different from my day...felt a pang of pain in his right leg, and heard a deep, rumbling voice of a stranger...Afghanistan or Iraq? And then, nothing, no matter how hard he tried, those images and sounds eluded the grasp of his conscious mind like the shreds of a dream that vanishes the moment you wake.
“And the other thing? You said there were two of them.”
She smiled, obviously pleased with him, and John’s heart unexpectedly quickened its pace. He felt the blush rising up his cheeks and she smiled even more.
“Good! You’re recovering fast. You mustn’t feel embarrassed by your reaction; it’s perfectly normal. My colleagues are already used to the effect of my Deltan pheromones on them; I might resort to suppressants for a while to make you feel more comfortable.”
Deltan. Alien. Of course. Twenty-third century. So there’s some chance that the women of Earth are quite normal and not all of them looking, and God, smelling like goddesses of sex. John wasn’t sure if he could manage such a reality.
“As to your question; here you are.” She produced a small photograph, slightly blanched but still clear enough. “It was in your pocket.”
“That’s me.” He squinted at the picture. God, how old do I look.
“And the other man? The one with the hat?”
There’s another shred of dream, blurred rooftops...this way!...forgotten cane; and then all of it is gone again without making a speck of sense.
“No idea. Looks funny.”
She gave him a thoughtful look as if trying to tie some loose ends.
“Do you think you were fond of him?”
John shrugged hopelessly. “I don’t know. Maybe. Why, that’s my ‘I’m about to have a hell of a laugh in the next minute’ face on that photograph. Why do you ask?”
She turned the picture in his hand to reveal its back. In a neat handwriting there stood a line:
Find him. Save him.
.
.
.
tbc Chapter five
again, many thanks to rranne. How she can be so fast and thorough is beyond me.
.
.
He was choking. The need for air erased all the indefinable images from before and narrowed his perception to the desperate now; it deprived him of his senses and left him in the middle of bright nothingness. He felt like having suddenly come to exist, awoken by pain that rippled through his convulsing body, only to die the very next moment. He tried to will his mouth to open, his chest to heave and the intercostal muscles to contract, but his body was not responding - the connection was broken and there was nothing he could do about it. His mind darkened and he fell back into the abyss whence he came.
The next thing that had soaked through the thick layers of dumbness that encased his mind was the sound of hushed voices.
“...oxygen saturation normal. Heart rate elevated; I think you did the right thing with the neurotransmitters, but the dosage...”
“He’s awake.” Soft, smooth fingers wrapped around his hand, bringing to his awareness the fact that he finally had his body connected to his brain- chest, abdomen, limbs, and fingers; all of which suddenly felt as if dipped in acid and roasted over a small fire. He screwed his face in pain and forced his eyes open.
The most exquisite eyes he had ever seen- he could ever imagine- almond shaped, brightest aquamarine flecked with silver- that regarded him with an unmistakable expression of relief from an unearthly beautiful face. The stately elegance of this woman was even more punctuated with the torturous length of her neck, smooth perfection of her skin, and complete absence of hair on her head which gave her an almost alien, but definitely regal, look.
I’m in heaven and angels do exist. But wait...heaven shouldn’t hurt so much.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, he managed to lift his head and take a look at his surroundings. Though his eyes were still a bit dazed, he could make out the walls of an irregularly shaped room that seemed carved of rock, an improvised berth that he lay centered in; everything illuminated by an artificial light from outside. Another man, tall and black with rich curly hair, turned and left through a stony passage. The woman standing by his bed gently lowered his head back to the pillow.
“It’s all right, Watson. Rest. You’ve had a nasty fit when we’ve pulled you out; we didn’t know the right procedures for your awakening when your chamber suddenly malfunctioned, so it was make-or-break. I’m glad to see you’ve made it.”
“My...chamber?” He didn’t remember any chamber. To tell the truth, he didn’t remember much at all. The last thing that stood out clearly was that rather wild party his roommate threw at the occasion of his coming-of-age. Surely...
“Your hibernation chamber. The technology and materials used indicate pre-First Contact era; we did a quick research and I think that the early twenty-first century would be when you’ve been buried here. There are thousands of questions we would like to ask you and I can understand that you must have questions of your own.”
His mind didn’t seem cooperative enough to pull together anything past the shortest and simplest phrases, so he decided that it would be best to start with them: “Where am I?”
“You’re in the Vale of Kashmir; at the foothills of the Himalayas. One hundred and fifteen meters under, to be correct. We were searching for a cave suitable for our purposes when we found you. Any idea how did you get here?”
He shook his head. Holy shit. The Himalayas. What’s wrong with London? He licked his lips with some effort, afraid of the next question. “What year?”
She drew rather a lengthy breath, as if to give him some time to prepare for what he was about to hear. “Two thousand two hundred and eighty-four.”
John groaned. She flicked her gaze nervously between his face and a small object that lay on a table beside him. Life function check...his medicinal instinct told him without even thinking about it.
“What am I even doing here?”
She sighed. “That’s what we hoped we would hear from you, Watson. There were no records, no papers, no files or data media found with you or near you. Only two things: we’ve got your name from these-” She lifted his dog-tags. John frowned at them.
“I don’t remember being in the Army. I studied medicine.”
“These two don’t exclude themselves. You could have been an Army doctor. Does that ring any bell?”
“Nope. I’m sorry. I don’t even know how old I am - how old I was, before I mysteriously skipped almost three hundred years.”
“Our med scan says you’re forty-three. I’d say more, judging solely from your hair, but I am aware that in your century, premature aging was not uncommon. You haven’t led a healthy and peaceful life either.”
“There’s a shot wound in your left shoulder,” she added an explanation when she saw the question on his face. “Well healed, which is a miracle given the almost stone-age state of medicine in your day-”
“Now hang on a minute-” he protested indignantly.
“But then, I’m a mere mathematician, I think that this beeping box knows more about medicine than I do,” she winked at him, indicating the plastic thing that lay on the side table, blinking innocently and obviously able to count down to the last one of John’s grey hairs.
Forty-three years. That’s not fair. The last he remembered about himself was being still at the Uni. Half of his life gone and he doesn’t even know how he’d deserved to become a fucking time traveler.
He touched his shoulder cautiously, feeling the scar under the fabric of his clothing - some sort of uniform and a washed-out tee. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the feeling to bring back memories - surely he would remember being shot! - but instead, he suddenly saw a chemical laboratory...bit different from my day...felt a pang of pain in his right leg, and heard a deep, rumbling voice of a stranger...Afghanistan or Iraq? And then, nothing, no matter how hard he tried, those images and sounds eluded the grasp of his conscious mind like the shreds of a dream that vanishes the moment you wake.
“And the other thing? You said there were two of them.”
She smiled, obviously pleased with him, and John’s heart unexpectedly quickened its pace. He felt the blush rising up his cheeks and she smiled even more.
“Good! You’re recovering fast. You mustn’t feel embarrassed by your reaction; it’s perfectly normal. My colleagues are already used to the effect of my Deltan pheromones on them; I might resort to suppressants for a while to make you feel more comfortable.”
Deltan. Alien. Of course. Twenty-third century. So there’s some chance that the women of Earth are quite normal and not all of them looking, and God, smelling like goddesses of sex. John wasn’t sure if he could manage such a reality.
“As to your question; here you are.” She produced a small photograph, slightly blanched but still clear enough. “It was in your pocket.”
“That’s me.” He squinted at the picture. God, how old do I look.
“And the other man? The one with the hat?”
There’s another shred of dream, blurred rooftops...this way!...forgotten cane; and then all of it is gone again without making a speck of sense.
“No idea. Looks funny.”
She gave him a thoughtful look as if trying to tie some loose ends.
“Do you think you were fond of him?”
John shrugged hopelessly. “I don’t know. Maybe. Why, that’s my ‘I’m about to have a hell of a laugh in the next minute’ face on that photograph. Why do you ask?”
She turned the picture in his hand to reveal its back. In a neat handwriting there stood a line:
Find him. Save him.
.
.
.
tbc Chapter five