Sixties

This is an extract – just to show you how weird it is. It is not often that your main character starts the story as a sperm:-

This is Chapter 1.

He was dimly aware of his existence, irritated by a sense of incompleteness, feeling lonely and lost, as if the bulk of himself was missing.

He had very little sensation. He could neither see nor hear. He knew not that he lacked senses with which to probe his surroundings. He had no comprehension of senses or self. Yet sensations of a kind did filter through to his cloudy awareness. He felt safe and warm. He felt the touch of a caring companion. There was no need to worry. He knew he was a tiny cog in some huge machine. It did not concern him. He was cared for and maintained but ultimately he was of no importance. His loss would pass unnoticed.

He flexed his body and felt joy at the pent up power that he felt. Yet he was not yet free to move. He lay quietly and attended to the flow within himself – waiting.

All around him he could feel the presence of others. They pressed in on him from all sides; their thoughts were impinging, crude and inexpressive, like those of his own.

He was patient. He awaited his destiny.

As his awareness grew he developed a feeling of being apart from the millions he sensed pressing around him. His life was full of dreams in which he felt incomplete; he felt that there was a greater self to which he was only half. His other half, the half he sought, was not to be found among these similar beings that surrounded him. She was far away. The huge distance of their separation haunted him and aggravated his sense of incompleteness so that he was consumed with a desire to be united. He could not imagine her and wondered if she was able to conceive of him. He felt that they were separated in some colossal abstraction with an overpowering longing to be together. It dominated his life.

Yet there was nothing he could do but hang suspended. He waited, poised in the darkness of his existence with vague feelings that he and his companions were part of some greater consciousness, something huge and distant, which drained his own cognizance as if it were a mental flea gorging on his thoughts, amalgamating them into something more substantial.

A change came. There was a schism that left him feeling more alert, more awake. He had separated from that he had been and felt invigorated, purer, with more purpose. The energy coursed through him and he was filled with impatience. He could taste it in the currents around him. The potential to move welled up inside him and yet he felt restrained. Unfettered he would have sped through the fluids in which he floated, but he was moored, held back, still waiting to be released. His overriding desire was to locate his other half so that he could be complete. Nothing else mattered. It was the sole and overriding purpose. The tension within him was building. He was coiled like a spring.

Out there in the distance he knew his other half felt very much the same. She too was clearer and more alert, certain that fulfilment would be soon. She too had separated and was overcome with a sense of imminence. Yet her being was calmer and more controlled. Unlike him she could not move and had no desire to. Instead she produced subtle alluring chemistry that she scattered in the fluid around her. Patience was her game.

Her world was rocked by a huge convulsion. She was ejected, buffeted, shaken and spun madly before finally coming back to rest. She drifted lackadaisically on the currents, waiting and luring with her secreted messages, seeking that uniting where-in she might become one.

All of a sudden he was rapidly moved along in an overpowering current, to come to rest in a huge chamber, crammed together with millions of others like fish in a net, silently waiting, bewildered and yet excited. It felt as if his destiny had arrived.

It came! He was shot down tubes at huge speed. Chemicals and fluids were poured on him as he was helplessly propelled forwards in a tidal wave of blurred movement. He gave himself up to it as it boosted him onward, helpless in its terrible grip. Yet even as he was buffeted and pounded he could feel the chemicals bringing him to life, activating his latent energy and flooding his body with power. If he could only free himself from this irresistible torrent he knew he could move like never before.

Eventually it came to a halt. Yet he was not free. All around the fluid had vitrified to hold him in place. He was trapped. It seemed to last for eternity but then he could feel it melting him to free him from his prison and he was free. He flexed and raced in nascent delight, exhilarating in the freedom and giving full vent to the locked up power that had been held in check for so long.  He had been released. He was free to flex his body, to propel himself, to charge madly forward.

He became aware of a new sensation. Something from outside filtered through to him – a scent drifting on the currents of his new world, an alluring aroma that was the most exciting sensation he had ever experienced. He instinctively knew what it was. He recognised it immediately even though he had never encountered it before. It was his other half. They were now close. He could sense her. It was what he had dreamed of through those long lonely aeons of time that he had spent caged.

Yet he sensed that those around him had noticed too. They were equally agitated and eager. The waters were churned as they turned and swam. A terror consumed him as he gathered his determination and swam the currents with all the force at his command. He had to reach her first. He raced to beat his fellows and gather the spoils for himself. To fail would leave him without hope or purpose. He knew she waited for him. He had to reach her.

He swam until his body felt exhausted and yet he could not afford to stop. He had to prove himself the stronger. The scent was so strong now that it consumed his consciousness with a raging desire which drove him frantically on beyond the limits of his overstretched resources, yet he refused to lessen his pace. Around him others slowed and dropped behind, their energy consumed, but he pressed on. His determination drove him forward. The numbers around him lessened and that served to drive him on even faster. The scent was unbearable. He knew she was close. He could feel the euphoric presence of her like an overpowering drug.

He arrived and pressed up against the wall that kept him from her. All around him others were fighting to get through that wall all consumed by the same fervour. There was a mad surging melee. They were all releasing their chemicals to break down that barrier – and it was working. He could feel that barrier dissolve. He joined in, thrashing for all his might to force his way through the liquefying wall that separated him from his only hope. All around hundreds of thousands were doing the same as determined as himself. He was desperate. He had to prove himself the fittest and the best. He dashed himself against that last barricade and strove frantically with all his might. Nothing else mattered. He had to get through. He had to beat them. He had to prove himself the stronger.

He broke through into a world of peace. He had won the prize. Behind him the others could no longer enter and were doomed to thrash away in futility until overcome with exhaustion. Their wittering counted for nothing. He alone would be fulfilled.

He moved across to embrace, merge and become one; to live and grow.

There before him she slowly turned and welcomed him. He raced across for that most fulfilling embrace.

They became whole.