Golden Strings
by Slawomir Rapala
When he thought he woke up it was still spinning, the world, but it was darker now, and it was cold as hell and he thought that he remembered forgetting to close the window before he went to sleep, no, he was too lazy to close the window before he went to sleep, so now he was cold, he was cold and the room was dark and he knew that he must have slept for several hours, and he wanted to check his watch but couldn’t move his hand and then he realized that he had no hands and that he had no feet, no legs, nothing, no body at all, no face nor voice, just an identity, blank and silly like an empty blackboard waiting to be written up with chalk, and that he was floating in the dark ocean of memories and thoughts long forgotten, enjoying the enhanced smells which didn’t mean much because he couldn’t smell them because he had no nose, enjoying the sounds of music which he couldn’t hear because he had no ears and so it was all in his head which was missing as well, he was all missing, all of him, he had his thoughts but he searched for the rest of him like a man caught naked in the eye of the storm out in the open ocean of memories, frantically beating the deep waters, the waves lifting him up and down, how high would he fly?...
And then suddenly the world was spinning all around him and he knew that he should close his mind before the intruders, because they were cold and he would become very cold, but he was too slow to lift up his defensive walls, the training wasn’t completed, he was too slow to act even though he wanted to, but the intruders made him sluggish with their soft caresses and their gentle words, lazy all over, and even his thoughts were now becoming slower and he couldn’t focus on one thought after a while, and he kept spinning and the whole world was spinning with him and spinning and spinning and spinning, spinning out of focus, away into darkness, sucked into it and pulled underneath it, the darkness cloaking him and his world and then there was no more spinning and there was just darkness permeated only by golden strings...
* * *
“Sir?” the young lieutenant knocked on the door.
The General lifted his head from the documents he was looking over. His weary eyes found the young man. “Yes?”
“It’s about Number Six, sir,” the young man shuffled his feet nervously.
“He flatlined?”
“Like the rest of them, sir. Nothing we could do, we just watched him drift away.”
The General sighed and leaned back in the chair. He turned to look outside his office window. The sky was dark and out here in the desert he could see all the stars.
“Is he dead?” he asked after a moment of heavy silence.
“He’s a veggy, sir. No brain activity, but we’re keeping him alive just in case.”
“Like the others?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How many does that make, Paul?” the general turned back to the young soldier.
“Number Six was the last of the fifteen ESCs who volunteered, sir,” Paul looked back uneasily, recalling one by one the end of each of the Extra Sensory Conduits.
The General gazed outside the window again. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
“Sir?”
“The stars,” the elderly General smiled softly and added quietly: “We never just look at them anymore, we’re too busy trying to conquer them.”
When he turned around, his face was stern again. “I’m terminating the project.”
“Sir?” The young lieutenant looked up in surprise.
“We can’t communicate with them on the subconscious level, Paul, I’m sure you can see it just as plainly as I. They keep flatlining our Conduits, meaning that either they don’t know what we’re trying to do because they don’t have the technology to understand it, or...” the General hesitated.
“Sir?”
“Or they’re hostile,” he finished. “Given all of our intel, I’m leaning towards that last conclusion.”
Both men stared outside the window and at the stars.
“They’re out there, Paul. Thousands of light years away, but they’re out there. And they’re on their way.”
“How do you know that, sir?”
“Golden strings, isn’t that what one of the Conduits said just before he flatlined? What do you think he saw? What do you think they told him?”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“You turn on the warp mode and the stars will blend into a golden highway. They’re travelling. And they flatlined the last three progressively fast.”
“Which means they’re getting closer,” the young man finished.
“Right.”
“Will we be ready?”
“If they’re hostile? God help us all.”
Silence followed as both men stared at the starry sky stretching over the desert.
* * *
He floated in the oceans of their thoughts and through their no eyes he saw the golden strings of stars before him, as they traveled faster and faster still...
Copyright © 2006 by Slawomir Rapala
