Don’t just lie there—get up.”
The little one’s still tugging and pushing, dancing on the frozen deck. I try to move but I’m uncoordinated. I’m losing skin all over. I try to fight. Maybe she’s the reason I’m in so much trouble.
“Hurry! The air’s going to freeze!”
All I can do is grunt and cry out. I hate this skinny creature. Who is she? What is she to me? She’s pulled me out of the Dreamtime, and it’s no good.
I turn to look at where I came from. Bodies are pushing out of a gray wall. They’re enclosed in reddish sacs. They’re trying to move, trying to punch and tear their way out, but the bags crystallize and shatter. The room is long and low. Carts wait on the floor. Bodies flop down on the carts and squirm but they’re moving slowly, slower still.
They’re all going to freeze.
I lash out, pushing her away.
She encourages me. “That’s it,” she says. “Breathe deep. Fight. Hurry. The heat’s going fast.”
Standing makes my head spin. “Help… them!” I cry out. “Go bother them!”
“They’re already dead,” she says. “You came out first.”
So that’s why I’m special. This time, when she takes my arm, I don’t resist—I’m in too much pain, and I don’t want to freeze. She drags me through a tall oval door into a long hall, curving up far away where there’s brightness, to my left. The brightness is moving on, going away.
Receding. Strange word, that one.
The little one leaves me behind, running, dancing. Her feet never linger on the cold surface. Either I make it or I don’t. It hurts too much to stay. I stumble after her. My legs are getting a little stronger, but the cold sucks my strength away as fast as it returns. It’s going to be a close thing.
It gets worse. I see black stripes and thousands of tiny lights wrapped around the long, curved hall. The lights are going out. Walls fall in place behind me. They make the horrible clanging sound I heard at first. They’re called bulkheads or maybe hatches. I blink and look up and down and see notches, indentations. That’s where the bulkheads will rise or fall and close me off, trap me.
Where I am is bad. All wrong. The only place to go is in the light ahead, receding, getting smaller, soon to vanish unless I run faster and keep up with the little one, a faraway, tiny figure, all thrashing legs and arms.
I start to really run. My legs catch on, my arms pump in rhythm. The air is warming a little. I can breathe without pain, then I breathe deep, as instructed. Swirls of fog drape off the walls and split as I pass through them. Other oval doors fly by. All are dark and cold, like little rat holes.
No time for questions.
“Come on!” the little one shouts over her shoulder.
No need for encouragement. I’ve almost caught up with her. My legs are longer. I’m taller. I can run faster if I put my mind to it. But then I realize she’s deliberately lagging, and with a burst she’s way ahead, pink in the full blaze of light. She turns and waves her hand, beckoning.
“Hurry! I’ve got clothes!”
A bulkhead slides down, and I jump forward just before it slams shut. It would have smashed me or cut me in half. The long, curved hall doesn’t care. That violates everything I think I know, everything I think I remember. The next notch is a few steps ahead. The floor rumbles and shivers. I pass the notch. The bulkhead puffs cold air on my back as it slams down. I’m gaining on them.
The little one jumps for joy. “Almost there!” she shouts.
What a way to wake up from the long nap, but I’m almost in the light. The warmth is delicious, the air is sweet. Maybe there’s hope.
I look back. Another bulkhead drops. So far, my life—away from the Dreamtime—is filled with simple shapes and volumes. Striped halls, hatches, oval and circular openings, gray and dark brown except for the lights. Then there’s the little one, like me, legs and arms and running and shouting.
I look ahead. The little one holds one arm up, head turned sideways, mouth open in surprise, staring at something I can’t see.
She suddenly flinches and covers her face with her arm.
Something new and terrible enters the picture. I see it in the square of light, where the little one is, where I want to be. A thick, furry blackness fills that square, blocks it with a huge, unfurled rug of a hand that swoops behind the little one and wraps her and lifts her. She screams a short scream and then throws something as far as she can—something small. It lands in the hall, bounces, slides to a stop.
Something moves in the blackness, and three gleaming beads focus on me—looking at me. Then it’s gone. She’s gone. The light opens up. Warmth pulses down the hall like a temptation, a lure. I stop and stand, shivering, under a spatter of condensation from the roof.
A wall flies up between me and the horror waiting in the light. I don’t mind. I slump and lean against the wall, a bulkhead five or six paces behind me and now one in front, nine or ten paces. The little one is gone. The light is gone.
I guess it all started badly, so I close my eyes and hope maybe it will stop. It’s quiet. The walls aren’t freezing but they are still cold. I think if I lie flat, they’ll suck out what’s left of my heat. That’s what I need. A reset. Time to start over. I’ll be painlessly absorbed and wait for a better start, more like what the Dreamtime promised. I hardly remember any of what came before the sac, the tugging, the cold. It’s gone but leaves a beautiful, troubling impression.
Things could have been so much better. What went wrong? I lie back and stare up at the dripping brownness. The coolness is pleasant after the exertion.
Who was the little one? I think past tense because I’m sure whatever it was that got her ate her or recycled her or something like that. Obvious and inevitable. First lesson learned: Don’t go where it’s comfortable. Something bad will be waiting.
I don’t remember any swear words yet, so under my breath I just repeat formless murmurs. Like grunting, only they would be words if I could remember. There was no swearing in the Dreamtime. How wrong was that? What could they possibly…
“I want it to stop,” I croak. “Stop it NOW.” I begin to rant. I’m special, I have needs, I have a job to do—once I get my act together. I’m going to be important. I get so angry I start to feel weak. My voice goes up a couple of notches and I hit myself. Blubbering, incoherent. Strangely, I can feel myself smile as I shout out my frustration. I know how ridiculous I look, a grown man, having his first tantrum.
That’s what it is, of course. This body hasn’t learned self-control. I don’t know how to get mad without hurting myself.
That absolutely scares me and I stop. My sobbing drops back into hiccups. I don’t want to think that way. I’m a grown man. I have memories—I know I do.
I just can’t find them.
Slowly, my anger rebuilds, but I don’t shout, I don’t hit myself, I hold it in—by main force of will. I don’t blame myself for anything I’ve done, but I see no reason to act like a fool.
Still, it should never have started this way.
They should all welcome me, celebrate me.
Hell, I’m new.
Hell. Fantastic! My first swear word. I wonder what it means. Maybe it’s the name of this bad place. But it’s a mild word, an empty glass word, not nearly shocking enough to convey the awfulness. And yet now the awfulness has been replaced by simple misery. Half of that misery comes out of foiled expectations.
More words, longer, richer words, implying a process—a surrounding world with its own expectations. The words are like doors that open. They hold their own promise. Soon I’m shouting big new words into the brownness, the not-quite darkness. Some of them mean nothing. Others provide strength and relief.
There’s a pain in my middle. It’s called hunger. If it gets worse, the misery will turn into agony. I’d better do something other than just shout words. I can see that. No luxury to sit shouting and bemoaning my fate.
More words rise up and I shout them, shout around them. Monster. Fate. Death and duty.
But worst of all, hunger. Better to be frozen with the others in their sacs, way back behind the bulkheads.
The little one threw something. It’s still there, probably. I’m not dying. I had hoped my end would be quick, but obviously I’ve come too far just to turn to ice on the floor. I roll and crawl forward. Walking and running got me nowhere good.
But that sentiment is fading. I learn that hungry people wish for only one thing, and it isn’t death.
Death. Fate. Which word is the name of this new world?
Hunger.
And the solution is food. The little one became food because something else big and dark was hungry. My hand closes over the thing she tossed—a little square thing. I can feel it but not see it clearly. I wonder what it is. I think it’s made of light metal or maybe plastic. More memories return with these words: My world is made of things, and the things have properties. Funny how it all fills in unevenly.
The square thing flops in my hand and I realize it has a hinge, opens on one side. It’s a book. I can feel pages, thin and tough. If there was enough light, I think I might be able to look at them, read them—if they’re not blank.
If I can still read.
My fingers feel out scratches on the flat part, a cover. There are seven scratches—I count carefully, since there’s nothing else to do, and I’m not going to die, and there’s no hope of finding something to make the hunger go away.
The walls are getting warmer. That temporarily takes my mind off my hunger. I’m sealed in this section of hall like a piece of meat in a can. Meat. Can. If it keeps getting warmer, maybe I’ll be cooked.
Nobody eats meat out of a can anymore. Nobody eats meat. Except maybe the dark armored furry thing.
My stomach gurgles. I’d smell pretty good, cooked. I think over the words for the various parts of my body, internal and external. I apparently know a lot of useless things, but maybe not how to avoid being eaten. I know what I am, how big I am, I know how to move, I know useless things and simple things, but I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know where to find food, I don’t know what’s inside the book or why it has seven shallow scratches on one side.
I’m dozing in and out. I can see myself—imagine myself—talking to young humans, young versions of me. They mostly pay attention, as if they don’t know what I know, and I’m saying things that are useful to them. I imagine turning my head and seeing that some of the young humans—many, actually—are female.
The little one—she was a young female human.
A girl. That’s what you call a young human female. A child.
You’re a teacher, dummy. Teachers talk to children.
“Are there still children?” I ask. Plural of “child.”
It’s time for sleep. Maybe I’ll be eaten. Maybe I’ll fall asleep in front of the children, and they will laugh at me for being silly.
The little girl with the curly hair will be in the front row, laughing the hardest.