New novel – Sorting the future – Chapter 3 – Any help you can offer?

Chapter 3 – Sci-fi

I am a Sci-fi nut. It isn’t the only type of writing I enjoy. I like a full range of literature with serious stuff that you can get your teeth into, funny stuff, biographies and weird stuff. But I was brought up reading Sci-fi – with the genius of Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Robert Sheckley, Kurt Vonnegut and Philip K Dick. I even liked Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert. They gave me a view into the worlds within their heads and sent my imagination soaring through the panoply of space and time. Sci-fi was like a food to me. It nourished the parts other fiction could not reach. It fed my dreams. I had a library of countless paperbacks and had read nearly all of them. I preferred my Sci-fi plausible, intelligent and based on good science and social reasoning. In my opinion Iain M Banks fitted the bill admirably. Then the miserable bugger went and died on me! Still there you go.

Liz made me keep all my science fiction collection out in my room away from the main house. She couldn’t stand them. She found them trite, shallow and ridiculous and did not want my library of futuristic masterpieces to sully the other books. It obviously didn’t open the same doors for her as it did for me.

On top of the books, I had seen every Sci-fi film going and still adored 2001 a Space Odyssey, which I had seen a dozen times or more. I thought the original Solaris was wonderful and I could even enjoy blockbusters like E.T, Encounters of the Third Kind, and the great Star Wars series. Dark Star was my particular favourite. I loved that alternative, wacky edge it had.

So it was no wonder, on that evening when I was walking Sam, that I was not quite as flummoxed as the dog. He’d never read a single Sci-fi book in his life.

We had rounded the corner of the tall hedge and Sam froze. I might have walked on by if he hadn’t, but I didn’t – I looked to where he was looking. He had gone completely rigid. He only did that when he felt threatened. I expected to see another dog. There wasn’t any other dog but there was something weird. I couldn’t make out exactly what it was. The air was shimmering in one area of the field. It was like some electric storm localised in one part of that meadow. It was all star-spangled like my eyes were playing up. But I knew they weren’t because Sam was seeing it too. There was something large that was twinkling away in a peculiar manner and it was sitting in that field.

I froze too. I don’t like the unexpected or the unfathomable. It is unnerving – particularly when you are half a mile away from the nearest house and the closest human being. It is scary.

I did not know what was causing it and neither did Sam. Part of me was rationalising it, suggesting that it was a phenomenon of the weather. We were having a very fine period of warmth and sunshine. Perhaps it had caused some local disturbance responsible for the strange iridescent patch? But inside I knew that it wasn’t.

Sam was having none of that rubbish. He did not bother trying to rationalise what he was seeing. He’d decided that he’d seen quite enough. Whatever was creating that strange flickering was no natural phenomenon. It was beyond his experience. Now maybe dogs do have special senses and he could see what was there much more clearly than I could. I’ll give him the benefit of doubt. Whatever he saw spooked him. All his fearless bravery evaporated. He glanced at me, his tail went between his legs and he shot down that lane like a rabid tyrannosaurus rex was snapping at his arse. So much for canine fidelity, valour and altruism – he abandoned me like I was a dose of Black Death.

I should have taken my cue from him and scarpered; but I didn’t. That wasn’t because I was any braver than Sam or knew more than he did. It was simply because I couldn’t. If I had been able to control my limbs I know I would have been out of there like a shot trying valiantly to catch him up. I was that terrified. As it was, I could not so much as twitch a muscle. I stood there in the lane frozen like a statue. I don’t remember much after that.

All I can remember is that shimmering patch expanding until I was in it ………. and then everything went black.

When I came round I was so disorientated I didn’t know where I was. I was lying on a couch but I could not move. I assumed I was in a hospital bed. The room looked completely devoid of all furniture. It was aseptic, with plain white walls, like some clinical institution. I was certain that I must have passed out, had some kind of episode, and they had taken me to hospital. When I could not move I began to panic. I thought I had suffered some kind of stroke.

It was then that a screen slid out of the ceiling in front of my face. A woman’s face appeared – a kindly face. She looked calm and sweet. She smiled at me in a reassuring manner. ‘Opher Goodwin,’ she said in a very sensual tone. ‘Please do not worry. You are perfectly alright. You have not suffered any trauma. There is absolutely nothing to worry about. We are taking care of you.’

The way she said it was so pleasant and she looked so nice that I was instantly more at ease. I was going to be alright.

‘’Where am I?’ I asked, blinking around at the bare white walls. It was one thing to say I was doing OK but that didn’t mean I was. Perhaps she was just being professional.

‘You are in our home,’ the woman said with a soothing smile. ‘We are looking after you. You are absolutely fine. There is nothing to worry about, I promise.’

That did not make sense to me. What home? How did I get in someone’s home? I was walking Sam. What was going on? Where was I? Who was this? The calmness fell away and I started feeling all that apprehension welling up again.

‘What am I doing here?’ I managed to ask, somehow separating that question from the tangled mass that was going around in my head.

‘We are on board our ship,’ the nice woman explained.

That did not make sense to me. What ship? ‘I don’t understand.’

‘We have taken you on board our ship because we need you to help us make things right.’

‘Who are you?’

‘We have come from far away and we need your help. We mean you no harm Opher. We just want to help.’

‘But who are you?’ I was beginning to gain an inkling at this point. This wasn’t any normal hospital. I wasn’t ill. I had been abducted. The thought had come into my head and made me feel sick. But then that woman sounded so human and reassuring. I was confused.

‘We are from a different solar system,’ she explained. ‘We have travelled a long way to be here. We have been watching your planet for some time …………… and we have selected you.’

Well I was stunned. That was a lot to take in. I looked about me again trying frantically to suppress a wave of panic. I thought I understood. She was saying that she was an alien. This home was some kind of vehicle.

‘Where are we?’ I stammered, suppressing the waves of fear that were swirling round my brain.

‘We are in space,’ she said quietly.

I did not believe that. There was no sense of movement or weightlessness. We couldn’t be in space. She was fooling with me. ‘But you do not look like any alien. Are you telling me you are an alien?’

‘We thought it best to show ourselves like this,’ she replied. ‘We did not want to scare you.’

‘Well you’ve failed then,’ I told her. ‘I’m scared shitless.’ I was too. This woman was basically telling me that I was in some spacecraft out in space and that I had been abducted by a bunch of aliens. How was I supposed not to feel terrified?

‘Please be calm,’ the woman said. ‘Everything will be fine. We will not hurt you.’

‘But you’ve put me in here and I can’t bloody move!’ I said with a touch of hysteria. ‘How do you expect me to feel?’

She allowed me time to calm down. Gradually I took some deep breaths and managed to gain control of myself. My heart stopped thrashing around in my chest. Losing it was plainly not going to make things better.

‘OK,’ I said finally. ‘But you do not look like any alien I’ve ever seen.’

‘How would you like me to look?’

‘Well,’ I said hesitantly, ‘like some alien.’

The screen metamorphosed into a shimmering being, a golden humanoid with a smooth face, no nostrils, a mouth without lips, and two huge eyes.

‘Is that more to your liking?’

I took a big gulp. ‘Yes, yes, I suppose,’ I stammered. ‘That’s more like it.’

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