| Nirvana; How it all Started | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 20 2016, 11:37 PM (29 Views) | |
| Michael Williams | Jun 20 2016, 11:37 PM Post #1 |
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The short story that started the entire idea of The Slipstream. |
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| Michael Williams | Jun 20 2016, 11:52 PM Post #2 |
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Thread the Needle “You’re doing the right thing.” The words sounded muffled, distant, but he knew what it meant. The right thing… She was letting him go. All those months of fighting through the darkness, the struggle to even squeeze her hand had all been for nothing. She was letting him go. “I’m sorry.” Her words weren’t quite as far away as the other voice had been, but it took so much concentration to listen and understand. “I can’t…” A short pause, then, “I miss you but… You’re not coming back to me, and… I have to let you go. “ She didn’t cry, she couldn’t. She’d cried enough and had already gone through all the stages of dealing with his coma, denial being the first one. He’d only be under a few days. He’d come back to her. Days stretched into weeks, denial turned into anger. Weeks slipped into months and she’d begged God and bargained with the Devil. Months had turned into years and bargaining had turned to depression. Text book grief. Now, three years later, she’d kept him too long. Acceptance. It was the final stage. “Everyone is different. These stages take longer for some than others. But I think you know its time to accept that the man you married died a long time ago.” One last time her fingers entwined with his, warm and smooth, alive, so very real, and all he could do was lay there, screaming silently at himself to wake up. He was trapped in a constant cycle of dreams and madness, visions, music, racing thoughts and repeating numbers. Lately the thoughts were nothing but numbers… a steady, unbroken stream of numbers interrupted by the occasional repetitive word, phrase, and even music. It was a twisted carnival ride, a sick carousel of blurred vision and distorted tunes, an amalgamation of every memory and thought he’d ever had, the human brain run amok. Latitude, longitude, ascension, arcs and degrees. The laws of physics… roller coasters… g-forces…. Silence, then: “Can you thread the needle?" Can you thread the needle? That voice was a woman, one he knew but was a stranger to him. He and she had talked many times, but he’d never seen her face. He’d never met her, but her voice was comforting, soft, coaxing. "Thread the needle? I don’t understand…" "You will. I am certain of it. You’ve done it before, you will do it again.” Before… Before he’d been a pilot. A military pilot. He’d flown, he’d killed innocent civilians and enemies alike, he had been an instructor…. And he’d gone down in his plane twice. The last time had left him here, trapped with his memories, his knowledge that his plane had gone down in the suburbs and this time, those who had died were some of the people he’d joined the military to protect. Some were children, some were elderly, others coming home from work, mowing their lawns, planting flowers, cleaning the pool. Can you thread the needle? “It’s time to go." His wife's voice. "Time to find out what’s on the other side Michael. I can’t keep you here any longer… and there‘s a child who needs you.” “Are you ready?” The man’s voice again and he felt the faintest hint of warmth on his forehead. She’d kissed him, then nodded as she looked into the doctor’s face. “Can I meet him?" She’d asked the doctor this question on more than one occasion. The boy was dying, and her husband was an organ donor. A good match is what the doctor had told her. A very good match. Without help from her husband, the child would be dead in a matter of weeks. “You have to understand, his immune system is weak…“ "Just through the glass? Just one look at him? He won’t even know I’ve been there." Reluctantly, the doctor had agreed, and arrangements had been made. The boy was asleep when she arrived. A nurse with unnaturally green eyes had stood beside her, watching in silence. He was so frail and his skin a deathly shade of graying yellow. Scribbles of stick figures covered the walls and balloons hovered near his bed, tethered by a stuffed puppy. Her eyes drifted from one crayola masterpiece to another, and noted with the eyes of a school teacher that the drawings only showed one parent, a mother. The colors had slowly faded from cheerful brights - greens, blues, and reds, to paler shades and in the final drawing, rain fell from darkened skies as the boy and his mother stood alone, stick figures without umbrellas, sad and cold. “I’m ready…” She nodded, inhaled a ragged breath and stroked her husband’s hand once more, then his forehead. The man laying in this bed barely resembled her Michael. His muscles had atrophied, his hair had been shaved, hoses, ports, and machines kept him breathing, fed, and alive. His heart was beating, but not on its own. Now came the last hard decision, to stay and watch the line go flat, hear the heart monitor’s unbroken tone, or leave with the knowledge that he would be dead before she was in her car. “I… don’t think I can stay.” She quietly answered the unspoken question and without thinking, her fingers and palm slid across her rounded stomach and paused there as the unborn infant kicked and turned, suddenly stirring and reminding her that her life with Michael was over and had been for a long time. The child she carried was not his. The same nurse who had waited so quietly beside her at the boy’s room met her eyes and nodded. “But… please.“ Her attention shifted to the doctor, “Let me know… let me know if the transplant is successful?” “I’ll see what I can do.” As the door closed with a soft click, the doctor and his nurse, as well as a few ‘team members’ were alone. She was letting him go. Frantic, he fought for the surface, to break through, to not let the darkness drown him, and in his panic, the racing thoughts returned. “Come as you are, as you were As I want you to be As a friend, as a friend As an old enemy Take your time, hurry up The choice is yours, don't be late Take a rest as a friend As an old Memoria, memoria Memoria, memoria….” “Nirvana? What an ironic name for a musical group with such a troubled singer….” The comforting voice had returned. “Who are you?” “I am a frightened mother, Michael.” In all their conversations, this was the first time she’d used his name. “Without you, my child dies.” “I’m impressed. “ The doctor again, and his voice distracted Michael from the phantom visitor in his head. “You projected an excellent illusion.” “I had a lot to work with.” It was the nurse’s voice that spoke, and Michael’s foggy mind simply couldn’t make sense of the conversation, but at least the racing thoughts had stopped. Now he had the horror of being unplugged to cope with. He clawed at the darkness that kept him prisoner, screamed and begged for help, but the conversation continued on. “She’s losing faith that he’ll agree. All I had to do was let her project through me.” A soft grunt was all the doctor offered in response. The boy had been an illusion, a mental projection pushed into the soon-to-be widow’s mind. The room in the pediatrics unit was empty, no child lay there dying, not really. Not there anyway. Instead, he lay on another world, in another ‘hospital’ so far from here it yet so close, it could not be explained. Not easily. He hadn’t lied to her, the child would die without Michael, and while the wasting man was a good match, there was no guarantee the child would live, but both the Pilot and the Child had a far better chance together. Without one another, their fates were certain. “Without you, my child will die, my line will end." Nirvana again… “Come as you are… as you were… take your time, hurry up, the choice is yours… don’t be late.” “Let’s do this.” Was it his voice, or the voice of the doctor? Horrified, his panic consumed him. Terrified but unable to stop what was happening, Michael tried to claw free once more, heard the steady beeps of the of the heart monitor slow, and felt the air forced into his lungs stop. "The choice is yours… don’t be late…” Can you thread the needle? White light exploded around him as his heart began to slow, then it shrank to a single, impossibly small point of light, cold and distant, a single star in an infinite night sky. The eye of the needle. The path to Heaven? “Possibly. I wouldn’t know.” It was Her again. “I don’t know what lies within that System. The choice is yours. That System, or this one…” No longer was were his thoughts a muddled mess of numbers and music, nonsense words and galloping memories. The twisted carousel he’d been riding for so long came to a lurching stop and for the first time, he could see it. Vivid colors surrounded him and his fingers released the sculpted metal pole he’d been clinging too. Beyond the elaborate carved horses, swans and elephants, was nothing. Nothing at all… then a darker shape moved in the night. It rippled and flowed, faint light fell upon it, and the Dying Child was revealed. “That… is your child?“ His bare feet stepped off the swaying platform and onto the void. The Child sat there, still and quiet. Shaped like a manta ray, but impossibly huge. It was a ship, but alive, sentient, able to travel through the atmosphere of a world, through the dead air of space, or even “thread the needle”… make the jump from one place in time and space to another. It’s ‘skin’ was sleek and black, whorls and patterns were carved into its surface and a soft light of fuzzy blue illuminated the valleys of the carvings and the light pulsed in time with Michael’s steadily slowing heart beat. Its ‘wings’ drooped - the same fear and sorrow that had held Michael a prisoner for so long seemed to fill the air around it, and he knew, somehow, that the Child was just as afraid of having its plug pulled as Michael was. “The choice is yours.” A hand, cool and small caught at his own, and Michael looked down, into the tired face of a boy. His curly mop of black hair was damp, his face ashen grey with a hue of sickly yellow. Unnaturally blue eyes met Michael’s own blue eyes. This Child was the boy that had haunted him, the son he had dreamed of having some day, the son he and his wife had waited to have someday. Someday had ended in flames and wreckage. “You’re not real….” The boy shrugged and the effort to merely stand seemed to be draining away his life. “I’m as real as you are. See? We’re even wearing the same stuff.” The boy was wearing a hospital gown, the type that tied in the back, same as Michael’s, but the boy’s was covered in a soft, blue pattern of whorls. Like the pattern on the ship. Michael looked up; the Ship was gone. Only he and the boy remained, but in the distance, the pinpoint of light burned steadily. “Will you help me? Please?” Weak fingers squeezed tighter, “I don’t want to die… not like this.” ~*~ Eternity suddenly stopped with the beating of Michael’s heart. The heart monitor began to drone its steady, flat sound. The doctor’s eyes met those of the nurse, then he nodded sharply. “I’m calling it. The choice is his now. Let‘s get him iced down.” Edited by Michael Williams, Jun 20 2016, 11:56 PM.
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7:37 PM Jul 11