Gerard Anderson stared out the window of the lumbering truck at the falling snowflakes. The storm, if you could call it that, seemed to be intensifying. The dancing of the snow had turned into a frenzied movement of chaos, but he could still see everything around him. The storm couldn’t be that bad. Hills rose to his left, while off to the right, the Muskingum River continued its slow and plodding progress towards the Ohio River. As far as Gerard could tell, there wasn’t any ice on the surface yet.
What am I doing here, he asked himself, running his hand over the coarse red stubble covering his skull. Slowly, the events began to coalesce in his mind for him. There had been the space station he was helping to build. He remembered it vividly; the glorious sunrises over the fragile limb of the Earth. Nothing could take that memory from his mind. But with the memory of the sunrise also came the memory of the accident that had almost cost him his life. After the accident, there’d been the doctors, the needles, and then finally his plunge from a fourth story window to escape the torture the doctors had been subjecting him to.
A blinding flash of pain shot through skull, and he remembered everything, or at least he thought he did. His job with the Agency and the accident, which the doctors said had caused brain damage, were all a bad dream. They had to be. He couldn’t have been building a space station in orbit of Earth. That planet had died 200 years earlier.
Another blinding flash of pain wracked his brain as he passed the corporation limit sign of McConelsville, Ohio. The same houses he’d grown up with were all still there. They may have had a new paint job, but even the colors the owners had chosen were the same as they’d been in his youth. The new bridge, why it was called that he didn’t know, still led to the "bustling metropolis" of Malta. For the most part, nothing looked different to Gerard, but then nothing ever seemed to change in this sleepy little town.
"Amazing," the driver said, drawing Gerard out of his reverie. He hadn’t paid much attention to the woman when she’d picked him up, and looking at her, he regretted that. She was more than beautiful; she was stunning. "It’s almost the middle of the 21st century," she continued, "and these people haven’t even left the 20th yet. I mean, look around you. No moving walkways, no shuttle pads, and only two roads for electronic craft like mine. Why don’t these people get with the times?"
"This is a nice place," was Gerard’s only reply, which got him an odd stare from the driver. He didn’t care. He was home.
Home amid the towering red and purple cliffs. Cliffs? he asked himself. In McConelsville? No, McConelsville was only a figment of his overactive imagination. He was on Epsilon Eridani 2, and he knew it. Slowly, Gerard gazed up at the towering cliffs. The large sphere that was Epsilon Eridani crept towards its zenith just above the cliffs, while birds glided gracefully through the eddies of the air currents.
Gerard found himself growing inexplicably tired. His body graciously slid down onto the prickly plants of the canyon’s floor, and sleep crept over him. It wasn’t a restful sleep however, for soon the voices returned:
"Doctor, look at the ventricles of his brain."
"They’re enlarged! It almost looks like a schizophrenic’s brain. I never thought that brief exposure to vacuum could do this to someone."
"Have you noticed the CSF measurements? They’re three times higher than they should be."
Gerard found his body leaping off the ground as he was jerked from his slumber. Sweat beaded on his brow, and he shivered, even though the summer day was warmer than normal. The voices had left him shaken, as they always did.
He let his eyes scan the cliffs in an effort to restore sanity to his crazed mind. His eyes became transfixed on the holes where the caothu had dug in to hibernate for the summer. Why did it seem strange that animals would hibernate during the summer?
Gerard looked up again and found himself staring up at "the soldier." Soldier? What happened to the calothu? He laughed at himself for falling prey to his imagination. That seemed to be happening a lot lately.
"The soldier" was the only thing he could think to call the statue with the gun. He knew it was a soldier from one of the many wars that had ravaged Earth during the 20th Century. He just wasn’t sure which war. Luckily we’re more civilized now. He laughed. 21st century countries fought what they claimed were "civilized" wars. The nations were so economically interdependent that when one became angry with another, they, along with any other nations that would go along with them, stopped trading with the enemy. Now thousands didn’t die from bullet wounds and bombs. Instead, those thousands died a more humane and prolonged death by starvation.
Gerard shook his head in disbelief at the world he was living in. The village where he now stood hadn’t been affected by the deteriorating world around it. There might have been a small change here or there, but for the most part, the town was the same. On one corner stood the diner where Gerard had often gorged himself on greasy burgers. On another corner was the pizza place and tavern where, at the age of 19, he’d stuffed himself fill of pizza and beer and then planted his face in a pepperoni pizza. On another corner stood the courthouse building. The old building looked like it hadn’t been painted in two or three years, which didn’t surprise him. The building had had that appearance for as long as he could remember. Where to now? As the thought slowly passed through his mind at the pace of the town around him, he smiled at a young boy walking by in the falling snow.
Kyle, his five-year-old son, came running across the prickly plants under the red and purple cliffs, bare feet kicking up the red and purple sand as he galloped towards his father. His face broke open with a huge smile and he vaulted off the ground into his father’s waiting arms, knocking him down in the process. They fell into a rolling, twisting, laughing mass of arms and legs.
"What is it, son?" he asked, mussing the young boy’s stringy blonde hair.
"I saw a calothu," his son answered with obvious excitement.
"Kyle," Gerard said in what he hoped was a compassionate tone. "You know the calothu sleep during the summer. So, you couldn’t have seen one."
His son stared at him with a persistent gaze. "I did, daddy, I did. It was a great big calothu. Three times bigger than the ones I’ve seen in books."
Gerard laughed at his son’s exaggeration. "Kyle, what have I told you about exaggerating? There aren’t any calothu that are that…" His voice failed him as the shadow of a 20-foot long creature fell across him. He gazed up at the drooling maw and needle-like teeth of a mammoth calothu. He was happy they were herbivores, at least, he thought they were.
"Kennebec," he said to the statue of the soldier. "I can’t put it off any longer. I have to walk up Kennebec."
He began to walk up the road he’d climbed many times in his youth. He passed the bank, the old schoolhouse, and then started walking past the nicest homes in this "backwards" village. He found it funny that people in the "real world" looked down their noses at this tiny place. "At least you feel like an individual," he said to the falling snow. Most of the people he’d met in the mega-metropolises seemed to be lost souls wandering aimlessly towards a fate that only an empty death could save them from. He shivered at the thought, or maybe it was the cold, or maybe it didn’t matter.
All around him, the snow continued to pile up. He was already trudging through several inches and it was only getting worse. He’d lived through many Ohio winters. He knew what to expect.
The road continued to grow slicker as he came closer and closer to his goal. It was as if some force was trying to keep him from reaching that goal. Probably some cruel spirit from the cities, or maybe it’s someone from the hospital trying to stop me, he thought. Whatever force was trying to halt his progress, he was determined to not let it succeed. He didn’t even care if it was some nasty creature with big teeth. He had somewhere he needed to go.
After twenty minutes of trudging through the snow, he knew he was almost to the top of the hill because off to his left was home. It hadn’t changed from when he’d left to pursue his life in the "civilized" world. What a mistake! The dark brown trim surrounded the lighter brown paint that seemed to have always been there. The black stains still climbed the wall from when he and his best friend Ben had burned the shrubbery surrounding the porch. Even the stairs were still warped from all the moisture, just like when he’d been a child. Smoke climbed lazily from the chimney that stuck out of the roof at an odd angle. Someone was obviously home.
"Better do it now, Gerard, before you lose your courage," he told himself, as he climbed up onto the steps, listening to them creak underneath his weight. At the top of the stairs, he took a deep breath and reached for the old brass knocker.
"Mr. Anderson, can you hear me?" a voice drifted towards him from some dreamlike place. "Mr. Anderson, it’s Dr. Endrick. Can you hear me?"
The name brought Gerard back to reality with a start. His eyes darted back and forth as they took in the room. It was the observation room in the hospital. The hospital, he asked himself. Yes, the hospital, he responded. Dr. Endrick stood in front of him in his red and purple gown. His features looked gaunt, almost skeletal. The worst part, however, was what his bony corpse-like hand was holding…a needle.
"Mr. Anderson, it’s very important that you don’t fight the treatment. We’re trained medical people. We know what’s best for you. Now, I’m going to give you this shot, and then we’re going to discuss what happened up on the station."
Gerard’s heart raced as the needle drew closer. He wanted to scream as the reality of his situation became clear, but he couldn’t.
As the needle pressed its way under his skin, and he could begin to feel the viscous fluid flowing into his body, he did scream. "No!"
He stepped back away from the door as it opened. His mother’s beaming face greeted him. She looked the same as she had when he’d left.
Now he was home.
Bio: Other works by J Alan Erwine that have appeared in Aphelion are The Sad Grey Eyes on Tharsis, Union in Death, and Opium of the People.
E-mail: jerwine@worldnet.att.net
URL: http://www.geocities.com/j_erwine/
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