Those of you around way back in the day might remember a few sections of this, written when I was experimenting with various ways to execute description. They were supposed to be part of a grandiose story arc that was soon abandoned two days in; however, a few months ago, I happened to see them lying around in my hard drive and decided to bring them back and make a story out of what I originally wrote. This was also when I was obsessed with T.S. Eliot's obscure and amazing Waste-Land -- which might explain a couple of the stylistic devices I used in the context of the story.
It's not a very good story, and after re-reading it I've found that it's damn near incomprehensible even to me. But considering my obligation to post something before the prologue to the collaboration between myself and Kieran goes up, I'm throwing this out here as a homage to old times.
As always, let me know what you think.
S
Home
The ship still reeks of blood when it pulls into Spacedock at two-thirteen in the morning.
"Docking. Docking. Docking," moan sirens from the rocks -- there is no Orpheus to drown them out, for he is ever in pursuit of his Eurydice -- not home -- and blue-and-white body bags are piled neatly in the shuttlebay, neatly labeled and sorted. Officers on the right, enlisted on the left. Here's “Cohen, Daniel, Human, male, 29, cmdr.” on top of the C-stack in the upper corner of the room, and there's is “Finnigan, Isaac, Human, male, 19, crewman,” its tag smeared by a tiny trickle of bodily fluids. A faint metallic smell hangs about the corridors, undeterred by the disinfectants and air fresheners summoned to combat it.
At two-fifteen in the morning, the surviving crew begins to disembark by ones and twos. A few had found the time and the presence of mind to replicate new uniforms, but the majority are crumpled, burnt, stained, hollow. A shuttle is quickly requisitioned to ferry them over to the station’s administration ring for debriefing.
The remaining officers power down the warp core at two-eighteen and shut off the running lights at two-nineteen. Those in the shuttle catch only a glimpse of the scarred nameplate before the beams illuminating it dim and blacken, empty -- and the shipboard computers are deactivated at two-twenty-one; the officers are beamed off of the bridge moments later.
There will be a wake tonight, as the crew and officers of the ship remember their comrades. Speeches will be given, words of comfort will be exchanged, and countless toasts will be proposed. The bodies will be placed into coffins to be returned to the bereaved on the next cargo freighter departing the station.
Maintenance has already rerouted its scheduling, bumping the ship to the top of its list, but even then it will be weeks before actual repairs begin. Parts have to arrive from all corners of the galaxy, experts have to be called in to analyze structural damage, an update to the computer system has to be debugged before it can be installed, and the usual post-battle inspections must be completed.
But occasionally someone will pass by a viewport and see her, drapes lowered and windows shuttered, see her mourning the deaths of her crew. The shadow of her former self, this; the silhouette of glory long-lost, this; the shade beneath the umbra of Bay 02, this -- waiting for something, a black specter against the blazing lights of the station.
* * *
The sun beats brightly on the plains when he awakes and he knows he is home again.
A rich expanse crafted by no greater hand than Nature's stretches out before his wondering eyes and he can see the open fields golden and glorious in the shining light of midday that dances past the soft smooth breeze and it is as if a quilt has come suddenly to life, stirred up from its dormant slumber, as patches of bluestem begin to sway amidst soft grama, brown, tan, yellow glittering under the gaze of a clear azure sky and far off in the distance there are mountains, blue and black, silent monoliths capped with powdery snow down whose slopes flow the sparkling water that feed and nurture these fields -- his fields.
This is the land where he had lived as a child and the land he had come to love, for he knows this land like a lover would. In his youth he learned the feel of its rich, loamy earth, dark and fertile, and found its precious little hollows where sings the melancholy wind on frozen winter nights, and nestled the curves of its gently sloping hills where he could lie down and time would seem to slow until even the world stopped turning -- and the sight of its tremendous breadth when he looks is almost enough to stop his heart. It always had.
Atop a familiar knoll overlooking a veritable ocean of color rises a house, its wooden boards painted a clean white, its shingled roof pointed grandly towards the heavens, all around which are spread the tilted grasses through which rush currents of liquid air. Standing before it he seems to be at the helm of a great ship plowing through the bottle-green sea, her sleek hull cutting through welcoming swells, but then she is frozen, the surging waves around her suddenly unmoving, and though the tempest yet roars and flays her oaken masts with its whipping winds and pounds against her holds, she stirs not -- is still.
He is not. An unfathomable exhilaration seizes him. A strange strumming flays his senses, scourges him, spurs him -- son coeur est un luth suspendu -- it's the lash of the lyre, broken strings eerily harmonious as they spring forth from loosened bolts to strike his heart -- it's Dali's music, Picasso's choir -- a Surreal earthscape and a Cubist home, paintbrushes daubed in metamorphosing palette --
How many have been in his shoes? How many have viewed what he is viewing? Doubtlessly the count is innumerable, the great mosaic Eye of humanity, the perceptions of whom are tinted by that particular lens that creates feeling from fact.
Hence, man!
Others see.
* * *
"How is he, Doctor?"
"Who? There's lots of them here."
"That one."
"That one? He's fine."
"He doesn't look fine. What's hooked up to him anyways?"
"None of them look fine. I've seen guys with blowed up head, arms gone, legs gone, everything gone. He's fine. -- Oh, it's therapy. Messes with his mind. Keeps it active, makes him think he's actually conscious. "
"Yeah? Sounds pretty new."
"Yeah. It's a prototype. Why do you care so much anyways? He was on your ship for a week."
"You're the doctor. You're the one caring."
"I just save them."
"Isn't that the same thing?"
"To you, maybe."
"Hippocrates would be rolling in his grave."
"Ah, but I do no harm."
"Yet you don't care?"
"That's not part of the business. Trust me."
* * *
Just as when the callow leaves of youth tremble and drift away in the wind, when a plantlet sheds its green shoots to don the heavy dark mantle of something grown, so now at his zenith the kindly sun steps down from his throne, descending the celestial staircase robed in rose's copper, in saffron's gold. And the clouds are split asunder by his searing radiance -- heralds, all, as from their murky leaden depths they bring forth brazen trumpets loosing notes of incandescent splendor -- and the mountains are inundated by this polyphonic flood as (soundless, soundless) Helios the conductor of men raises his baton --
Downstroke.
And as if commanded, ovoid bulbs within the house's coruscated windows flash and glow with the soft flickering of votive candles atop an ancient altar which rests its weary granite before the infinite nave that echoes with footsteps underneath the Gothic grandeur of pointed arches and soaring buttresses and the tolling of a cathedral's bells and he sees it all.
remember the christmas lights the reds and blues and greens in a volcano of colors i strung them up with my father and it was cold i wore a jacket one of my gifts from the year before and he propped up the ladder and up i went and no gloves he told me and i threw them down and they were red and they were covered with snowflakes and they shone silver under the moon was it crescent no new it was new i remember because i couldn't see and he had to get the flashlight and there were clouds i remember and he caught the gloves and we strung them up and wasn't it beautiful and it looked like this i remember
And as if commanded, a door's ancient hinges creak to life below the sloping eaves with the scraping screech of a chorus of cicadas that fans the air with their translucent wings threaded by fine brown filigree curling upwards and outwards as the grain of hewn wood that swings open at his gentle touch and showers gilded sprinkles of rust on the back of his hand and he sees it all.
remember the rocking chair that chairs still there mother used to sit in it and rock every night and knit my those were long needles and they would click together every second while she was rocking and weaving with thick yarn from the balls that the cat used to play with hed purr and id be watching and hed jump onto my lap so id have my own ball of yarn to pet and play with and she was the one who made my gloves wasnt she they were wool and father said she died because god needed someone to mend his gloves as heaven got chilly at night and i bet shes still rocking
somewhere up there
And he sees it and everybody sees it and it is almost too perfect for his human heart.
* * *
Main Entry: caduceus
Inflected Form: plural caducei
Etymology: Latin caduceus, caduceum, modification of Doric Greek karykeion "herald's staff," from karyx herald
1. The symbolic staff of a herald.
2. mythology: The staff of Hermes, usually depicted as a winged wand decorated by two snakes.
Quoth Hesiod: "Hermes presided over commerce, wrestling, and other gymnastic exercises, even over thieving, and everything, in short, which required skill and dexterity. He was the messenger of Zeus, and wore a winged cap and winged shoes. He bore in his hand a rod entwined with two serpents, called the caduceus.
"He is said to have invented the lyre. He found, one day, a tortoise, of which he took the shell, made holes in the opposite edges of it, and drew cords of linen through them, and the instrument was complete. The cords were nine, in honor of the nine Muses. Hermes gave the lyre to Apollo and received from him in exchange the caduceus."
So our modern Aesculapius whom the Greeks call Asklepios bears the weapon of Hermes, harbinger of the gods -- dioktoros. And dioktoros is khtonios, Hermes of the Earth; and khtonios is agreiphontes, since from the Earth once stole Hermes Argus the hundred-eyed; and agreiphontes is psukhopompos, for the soul of Hera's most favored guardian he led to the very gates of Tartarus --
But when the heavy hand of a vengeful god strikes with a terrible plague it is the serpent that is always invoked. Says Pausanias: "Some Epidaurians touched at this point in Lakonia when sailing on public business to Asklepios in Kos. Warned by dreams that appeared to them, they remained and settled here. They also say that a snake, which they were bringing from their home in Epidauros, escaped from the ship, and disappeared into the ground not far from the sea. As a result of the portent of the snake together with the vision in their dreams they resolved to remain and settle here. There are altars to Asklepios where the snake disappeared, with olive trees growing round them."
Here's the irony of his craft. Does he know that the tool with which he guides forth life from death will soon take that life away? Does he know that he'll soon have to shut the eyes which he strives so hard to open?
* * *
"I thought I told you to get the hell out, Captain."
"You can't blame me for being worried."
"I'm not blaming you. I'm just telling you to get the hell out."
"What do you have against me, anyways?"
"I've got nothing against you. I'm telling you to -- "
"Get the hell out. I know."
"You're not listening to me."
"You're not my superior officer. I don't have to listen to you. So what's his prognosis?"
"You really do care about the guy."
"We've established this."
* * *
Before he dies, he opens his eyes one last time. "But it didn't exist, did it."
A shake of the head.
He smiles wanly. "Then why do it?"
And in that frozen moment doctor and patient see and plunge into the abyss before the reaper sweeps in and on its wake follows silence --
* * *
Here! calls one, pointing to a line -- and blunted silver blade reaches for the thinning line, blackened, and as it draws closer, glossy surface reflects what color there was in previous lifetimes, years of reds, loves, yellows, joys, and deep blues shading into rich violet for the dulled agony of pains once suffered -- but now all that once was is no longer, for what is inevitable has arrived. Here! then nowhere at all, as one life is ended, but in its place rises another thread, a brilliant white that streams across the loom's hollow frame to make its way across the yawning void of time.
What lies in store for Man? Even these hunched-over spinsters who hold the world at the mercy of their nimble fingers do not know. They merely begin, and then bring an end to what they have begun. But that which lies in between is not for them to determine, but rather to lay out in advance, before what will happen happens. That is the only respite given to those who live on the earth, enclosed by the rolling waters of Ocean, framed by the heights of Olympus and the caverns of dark Tartarus -- to make of themselves what they will.
The Fates foretell. We create.
* * *
From delusion lead me to Truth
From darkness lead me to Light
From death lead me to eternal Life
finis
Topic: Home; or, With Thanks to T. S. Eliot (Read 2825 times)