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Sunday, March 06, 2005
Wake up.
What if you wake up in a tube... Cold, wet, confused... Wondering where and in fact, who you are? You can see outside the tube and there's a light.... Maybe a flourescent light or a halogen might be better... Your breath makes steam on the inside of the tube and fogs the view so you wipe it away with your hands and you see a room. In wiping the steam away you push against the tube and it clicks and swings open. An even colder blast of air makes you shiver and your teeth chatter. You blink in the sudden clear light and dry dustiness of the room. Your eyes water. You cough uncontrollably. Staggering around you find a large metal wheel. It's attached to a hatch. In desperation gasping for oxygen you turn the wheel. A sucking sound fills the room and then a buzzer goes off somewhere behind you. A green light comes on over the hatch and it rolls back. The brightness stabs at your eyes but you manage to stagger blindly through the open doorway. Your feet get sluggish and you stumble. You fall to your knees but catch yourself with your hands. You realize your hands are touching sand. You open your eyes but the light is too much and you close them again. You realize what you are seeing is daylight. The warmth you feel on the back of your head is sunlight. You stand and dust off your hands. You are still wearing the jumpsuit. How long has it been? A year? A week? Six months? You carefully turn around the way you came and take small steps back to the hatch. When your hands find the hatch you reach inside and grab the goggles and mask you know are there just to the left hanging on the hook over the first aid kit. You put them on and open your eyes. The inside of the Rabbit Hole is dark. Dust twists in cold light from the halogen lamps over the tube. You check the gauge. Just as you thought. Oxygen depleted. It must not have worked. You tap the gauge. You turn to another small screen to the right of the tube. It's dirty with some sort of dark brown muck. You wipe it off with your elbow. And then, everything changes.
You haven't been asleep a week, or a year, or ten years. You've been asleep forever. Or never. The numbers are all zeros. Just as you watch, the hour counter ticks over to one.
What if you wake up in a tube... Cold, wet, confused... Wondering where and in fact, who you are? You can see outside the tube and there's a light.... Maybe a flourescent light or a halogen might be better... Your breath makes steam on the inside of the tube and fogs the view so you wipe it away with your hands and you see a room. In wiping the steam away you push against the tube and it clicks and swings open. An even colder blast of air makes you shiver and your teeth chatter. You blink in the sudden clear light and dry dustiness of the room. Your eyes water. You cough uncontrollably. Staggering around you find a large metal wheel. It's attached to a hatch. In desperation gasping for oxygen you turn the wheel. A sucking sound fills the room and then a buzzer goes off somewhere behind you. A green light comes on over the hatch and it rolls back. The brightness stabs at your eyes but you manage to stagger blindly through the open doorway. Your feet get sluggish and you stumble. You fall to your knees but catch yourself with your hands. You realize your hands are touching sand. You open your eyes but the light is too much and you close them again. You realize what you are seeing is daylight. The warmth you feel on the back of your head is sunlight. You stand and dust off your hands. You are still wearing the jumpsuit. How long has it been? A year? A week? Six months? You carefully turn around the way you came and take small steps back to the hatch. When your hands find the hatch you reach inside and grab the goggles and mask you know are there just to the left hanging on the hook over the first aid kit. You put them on and open your eyes. The inside of the Rabbit Hole is dark. Dust twists in cold light from the halogen lamps over the tube. You check the gauge. Just as you thought. Oxygen depleted. It must not have worked. You tap the gauge. You turn to another small screen to the right of the tube. It's dirty with some sort of dark brown muck. You wipe it off with your elbow. And then, everything changes.
You haven't been asleep a week, or a year, or ten years. You've been asleep forever. Or never. The numbers are all zeros. Just as you watch, the hour counter ticks over to one.
