Chapter 23 - Fly, Ginger! Fly!

I run out of the building after slipping in my own pool of blood. It’s amazing just how much blood the human body keeps in its body. I run towards the craft. Somehow, I have no idea how, but the hatch opens, long before I am even within touching distance of it. But it does. It opens and enables me to jump straight into the craft. It’s immediately warm. Unlike the ice cold of the outside or even the building, now that it has been reduced to Swiss cheese. That building is not going to last very long. It is a gonna, a definite gonna.

I have to glance long and hard around at the control panels. I have to remember how to fly this thing. It’s not difficult, I’ve flown it twice now, within only a matter of hours. Yet the bump to the head I suffered in Flighty’s office has made me lose some of my memory, it would appear. I don’t know. I’m not even trying.

Eventually I get it into my thick and stupid head. Success! Hurrah! And I start hovering up into the air. I just realise that I’m about to go back into space. If I’d have thought of it earlier, I should just have stayed there. Again, I feel thick and stupid. But what can I do? Kill myself. 

I’m flying now, longer and faster than I’ve ever been able to do before. And I’m flying. Flying, man. I feel tranced out as there is so much peace to this flying. I feel sleepy. Very sleepy. I notice that we are passing over my house. Not my house in Wycombe, but the one I spent most of my life in, the one in Ogmore By Sea. It looks so small. I reach out and pick it up. It really is that small that I can just put it into my pocket. There is a sense of absolute calm now. 

I aim the plane thing towards the sky, and press even harder on the accelerator. The force is phenomenal. It knocks us back into our seats, you, Holly, and me, and we are unable to move. A huge jet of flame, that is at least a mile long torches the area where my house used to stand. I feel suddenly very relieved that I moved it. But the force is that great that we can no longer see now. I regain my eyesight first, I think, but you regain it almost as quickly. But it doesn’t matter. I’m that sleepy, I’m just tempted to close my eyes again. Now all we can see is just clouds hurtling towards us. It brings back a sense of deja-vu to me. Haven’t I just hurtled towards clouds? Am I just going to bounce off them again as I did earlier? Only one way to find out and in a matter of seconds they have gone, below us. Now all there is is just the glare from the sun and surrounding that, fading up from the haze, is the blue sky. The blue darkens and, despite the sun’s glare, the dark surrounds us both. From blue to black, quite slowly, considering our speed, but at a noticeable rate of change.

We are in space, baby. Me and you are in space. And to reflect your magnificence, the stars start coming out. And our view is just filled with millions upon millions of them. There are so many out here, and they all burn with an intensity only matched by you. I look for recognisable constellations. But with this overload, the extra stars obscure the constellations visible on Earth. You can’t chart love, honey. As we start getting closer, the stars turn into lights, soon they become the buildings of a city at night. And this where we are headed.

And I find that there is a rhythmic pulse coming from the radio. It is my rhythmic pulse as I created it. And I listen to it and I sway along to it. The pulse grows in intensity and I groove to it, baby. This is just the greatest thing ever. But now this is different. This pulse is getting even more intense, and I feel it so much that I actually fall over. I get up again and hold on to a nearby surface. As the pulse continues to build, my grip strengthens, and the need to crumble comes upon me once again. Unfortunately, it also comes upon the wood too, which does in my hand and once more I fall to the floor. I get up and I’m flying down the streets of this city, wanting to get out, as I need to escape. I need to escape this terror. I’ll leave those streets behind for a second. 

It has just occurred to me that I have once heard that there is no air in space. No air, that is, to breathe in space. That there is in fact just nothing. I try to recall this point of reference, to validate it, but I can’t. The fact just exists there, as a sentence, with nothing else tied to it. I check you first, Holly, who I have never actually met, to see if you are still breathing. I check myself, I am still breathing. That’s good. So if there really is nothing to breathe, I wonder how long it would be before we would stop breathing. But you reassure me. You state that if we were to be unable to breathe, we would have stopped breathing by now, the fact that we are still breathing suggests that we would be able to breathe in space. Failing that, the air that we are currently breathing must be supplied by the space-machine itself. This is very reassuring and it reassures me, thank you very much. It is curious because, up until this point, I had never really thought about whether or not one would be able to breathe in space. It always seemed like such a minor, minor detail. I wonder why? 

You mention something else, a whirring sound and I say no, that is just my sound coming from the radio, but you say, no it is not coming from the radio, this is a whirring sound, not a pulsing sound and it is coming from behind us. You put your hand in front of you somewhere, after having twisted around in your seat in this one-man spacecraft. And you are right; there is another sound. I had not heard it before. In front of your hand is a small grille type thing and I, too, put my hand there. My hand brushes yours, and the electrical charges that cross from one to another are enough to destroy all the combined constellations in the sky. There is also some air, a small breeze, coming from the grille. It is as if there is somebody behind that grille who is waving a fan. If there is air to breathe, and it appears to be coming from somewhere, that is all right by me. I give it no more thought, instead I return to that street I was walking down. 

It’s funny, actually, and I do laugh – out loud! I’ve never been this far down this one street before, even though I walk it every day. Along one of the side streets, I notice that there is a whole massive row of cafés and restaurants. How could I have never known that they existed before? But I intend to explore them later. I continue along my way, though, through this residential street, highlighted by trees, and lots of them, the impression is just dark green on this glorious day. Eventually I work my way round and I find myself approaching another street full of theses bistros, connected at a right angle to the one I passed earlier. I’m amazed that there are even more of them.

I see one, the biggest, about six floors of just tables and chairs, the building totally glass fronted and I go in. On the ground floor I catch up with a lot of my chums. They’ve always known about this place and are as surprised as I am that I had not already known. Outsider status? I’m certainly made to feel that as I sit here and it depresses me, so I come back to you, Holly, who is waiting patiently for me here. And then I come up against someone. I can’t remember how I got here. There was a logical, cohesive way, which has been clouded over in my memory. Maybe it was just my own simple desire for mutilation, but I now face someone who has got a knife, and a big fucker of a knife, too. 

He is some kind of a samurai, and his sword/knife thing has a jagged edge to it. This I know, ‘cos later I will grab hold of it, only for it to serrate my hand. But before that, he starts waving it around in front of me, before coming towards me with it. It is here that I notice that I am wearing a vest. Then he slices into my arm. But this is where it gets uncanny. Instead of the huge chasm you would expect to see, there is just a deep cut. You look at it, you can see the layers of the skin, the faint, white blobs of fat that are tucked under your skin, and you look at it for what seems like ages, before it fills up with blood, which is always satisfying. But instead of running down my arm, it just stays there, and it’s not normal. He does it to my other arm, my right arm. I’m not sure if this hurts or not. And again, and again, and it is around about this point that I grab hold of the blade. He pulls the blade easily out of my hands. They are now cut, too. I look down at myself; my arms, my body and my hands all lacerated. Noticeable, but not too many wounds. He attacks me a couple more times. I grab hold of the blade once again. And then I get out of this situation. Again, there was a logical, cohesive way, but that too has been clouded over. It’s not that relevant. I feel like I just drift. 

To be honest, I’m not sure if I’m sitting in the café or I’m floating around in space. Because as I reach out towards my cup of tea, it appears not to be there. I can’t help but think about my unborn child. What it will do, what it will say to me in the future. Dee walks in through the door, though her feet do not seem connected to the ground. I wonder now if I should bring up the possibility of making this unborn child real. When I ask her, she tells me that we can’t, surely I should know that? I ask no, why should I? She tells me that perhaps we are not as compatible as it may seem. But that makes no sense to me. I sit there looking at her, and I confess that part of me wants you to be there, Holly. But that should not affect things between me and Dee, surely? Holly? I tell Dee that we have a right to bring this unborn child into its life. She tells me, so what? If it won’t be that one, it’ll just be another. But this confuses me. She mentions the different combinations between eggs and sperms, but that does not affect the responsibility that we have towards our child’s life. Confused I ask her, but what about the child. She just says no. It is impossible. 

I look at her. Wondering how she’s changed since… since when? But I ask who are you now?, anyway. She looks over to the stars. My gaze follows hers. I get no real answers, but I think I begin to understand a little bit more now. I get up and move towards a star. Surprisingly, I’m not cold. But if I ever wanted to feel alone, right here, drifting in space, this is the best place to be. I know now I have no control over my destination. I know now I have no control over my body. My wounds have opened up and I am bleeding, but this relaxes me as right now I would want them open. I want to bleed. And I know that I could not have achieved this. It is not just the wounds on my arm from where I bleed, there are others, I believe maybe my head, but I can see my trail behind me. My blood charting where I have been but not showing to where I am going. Because there is no destination. There never was. There never will be. My past is behind me. But I have no idea what that was anymore. I look behind me, looking for answers, there are none. Tantalising glimpses of something, but I can’t make out what.

Deidre, I don’t know what happened. For this time, I don’t think I want answers, but have I been wrong? Where were we once? And what happened to take me away from you? I have only one clear memory and that was wanting to come back to you. But from what? I remember waiting to hear from you. But why should I have needed to have waited? Could we… no, I don’t think we could have been together at that time. But why not the time before? Was I there? 

Visions of me as a child walking through the playground, sitting at a lecture hall in university, holding your hand, Deidre, but sitting in my room alone. In the air alone. Returning from a mission, somehow, alone. Floating through space alone. That is all I can remember of my entire life. Just these visions, but I had built it all up to you, then in my most recent life, it was being carried along by the hope of returning to you. You were supposed to be there for me, and I was supposed to return to you. I did, didn’t I?

Bleeding alone. But then that always had to be the truth, be it as a casualty or self inflicted. Being wounded is your sole responsibility and no-one can take that away from you. You don’t want them to. People can support you, but the healing has to be done by yourself. I haven’t been here for so long. But I can’t take away the fact.

If my purpose isn’t to be here with you, Dee, anymore, then what are my purposes? What are my choices right now? If I am no longer fighting to be back with you, then what am I here for? If, Dee, you have gone away, then why did so many others that I knew? I say this to your face now. You sip on a coffee. You have to be here. You put down your cup. And tell me that is the way that it isn’t. I continue, anyway. I continue flying through these depths of space, on a voyage that has no course. I continue there. I am confused, and I do not know my purpose. Not anymore. There was a way that it was. Once. There things used to be. I want to go there. That is my journey. Back to before everything happened. Back to the life I had. Before then. Before all that. Where life used to be. Once. Before the life started getting taken away. Before. I can’t remember that part. But it has to have existed. Like… It… Used… To… Be… But I can’t get off my course. This has to be done. My eyes are opening. I can see light. But I can’t work out what it is that I see.

I wake up. I feel refreshed; you look refreshed, too. Holly, you always look beautiful when you’ve been asleep. But there was a thought that woke me up. I’ve been walking around aimlessly and now I’m flying around aimlessly in space. I know I’m in space because it’s difficult for me to stay attached to the seat that I’m sitting in. I look around me, for something to keep me held to this seat. Attached to the seat are two strips of material, which I pull over my arms as if I’m wearing a backpack. There is another bit of material, which goes over my lap. I connect it and adjust it so that I’m firmly held in place, although after a while it will feel extremely uncomfortable not being able to move. 

I’ve been flying into space to follow the alien craft that I’ve been attacking. But I’ve lost it. I delayed myself too much getting into space. Besides, they know where they’re headed and I’ve been asleep. Am I flying in the right direction? Oh no! What if I’ve managed to turn myself around and I’m headed back in the direction I’ve been going in, flying around and around in circles? NO! No! Think! You stupid …! If you were flying back to Earth, you would see it. It’s fucking big.

You laugh at me. It makes me laugh too, before you point something out to me. I look at it, although I have no idea what it is. You try talking to me, but I cannot make out a word you are saying. No you don’t, you don’t do anything. You don’t exist. Not here, anyway. But I still bring myself back to the attention of this thingy thing. It’s another one of these cinematatic screen things. And it has dots on it. I look at it and I look at it. I look at it and I look at it. I’m looking at it, looking at it for inspiration, but I need to think about it. What is it there for? Is it helpful? There are dots on it. Both static. What can they mean? One is central, the other is about two thirds of the way up the screen. What can it be?  I don’t know what it is, but if I’m to get anywhere, I need to get there faster. I accelerate. I think. It’s so difficult in the middle of space to know. I show you my cuts that I received earlier from that samurai. Or were they there before? No, these are from the samurai. They are still very visible as I try to explain to you what happened. The older scars that are there, I try to pass off as the ones I received earlier from the explosion. But then there are more, much older ones, which I realise, I could never pass off as fresh. I immediately really regret showing you these cuts. Now you wonder what is really the truth. That I have also cut my own self in the past. 

And I’ve been sitting here, trying to work out that dot screen thingy thing for at least five minutes now. I notice that the further up dot has moved closer to the centre dot. I try to remember if I had seen that earlier, but I can’t really remember now. I find myself back in the Flight Lieutenant’s office. He’s discussing tactics. On his table he has models, which represent squadrons. How they move, where they should move, when they should attack, how they should attack. I say to him “                .” He replies “ .” I say “     .”  He says “   ,     .          .      ,    ,         .   ,   .  ,  ,  .   ,  .  ,” and I’m here, back in the spacecraft. Strewth. I remember what tactics the Flight Lieutenant had told me and I know now that dotty screen cinematatic thingy thing is just like the board he had the models on. It’s a cinematatic screen thingy thing version, with dots as the models. I am the middle dot and the other alien craft is the other dot. I just have to keep heading towards that one. It really is as easy as pie. Magic. 

I look ahead. I’ve been looking at the cinematatic screen dotty thingy thing for well over ten minutes, now. Just purely focused, concentrated on that. Nothing else in the world has registered. Which is not difficult, ‘cos there is nothing else in the world out here, nothing from any world.  And I look, up. Lo! Indeed, and for what do I see? I see the moon; I see the moon and hark! It is coming towards me! Oh shit. I duck; I crouch, my arms covering my head. I stay like this for another couple of minutes and nothing has happened. I look back out the window. The moon is still there. Bigger, but not much closer. I feel disheartened when I’ve not been pulverised. 

I look at it; it seems yellower than it does from Earth. And I wonder whether, perhaps, it really is made of cheese. How did it ever even come to be considered that the moon was made of cheese, anyhow? Who could possibly think that? It’s unknowable the way that people’s minds work, especially someone’s whose mind I have never met before and probably lived about a hundred trillion years ago. It actually frightens to me to think that someone could have a mind that powerful to think such things and, with the oncoming rush of the moon, I go into panic mode. Oh yeah, I sound quite calm, now. That does not take away from how scared I am. The sweating, the convulsions. I am pushing my eye balls back in. Due to my eyelids relaxing as a result of the paranoia, the eyeballs are slipping out. The holding on to my tongue to stop it slipping down my hyper-relaxed throat. Relaxed? Over-tense is what I am. I start tapping my toes. They’re hitting the floor hard, almost causing the craft to wobble, if that is at all possible, all my nervous energy running the marathon into that action. Slower, slower, calmer, calmer. I’m okay. The moon is still hundreds of miles away. Someone just happens to be slightly clever. The moon hasn’t shown up on the screen. The moon is not where I am going to be headed.

There is a wetness creeping up my body, it’s like someone is pouring water on me, thick, syrupy though still very wet water. In an un-world where gravity no longer applies, it makes sense that it would be running up my body. It could be running down, across, diagonally, it could be still or disperse everywhere, but it happens to be running up my body. I don’t know what it means yet. I will do soon, though. It’s at my knee, now. Take my mind off it and it might go away. Mind off, mind off, up my thigh! I shut my eyes and my mind switches off, but in the meantime, the water has got up to my chest. My chest! How did it get there so quickly? My mind switches back on, yet I keep my eyes closed. The inevitable is inevitable. Take it, my boy. Take it! I can’t breathe when it covers my mouth and nose, then it swallows me whole. And this is it, what I’ve been trying to put off for a long time. The water begins to crystallise. I can see everything. Everything that has happened over the last four years. 

I can see the planes falling out of the air. Counting the number of planes at base before departing on a mission, then counting them upon getting back. Recalling every single bullet ever fired. Knowing how many aircraft were caught in friendly fire. Not so friendly. Faces that I can still see whenever I want, but choose not to because they are gone now. The guilt. Above all, the guilt. I open my eyes, images flooding me, but you are there. A smile from you, Holly, and the ice cracks. You conjure up an enormous hammer and start smashing away. Hitting the ice. Breaking it, freeing me. Pulling chunks away. The warmth from your eyes heating up the impossibly cold ice, melting it away. You pull me out and hold me in your arms to warm me up and comfort me, the images having gone now. 

Reality still hits, though. Brutality. How can anyone enforce it? Yet it happens. Can I understand it? No. Yet do I still play my part in it? Yes. Maybe not today, though that was the intention, but being at the beck and call of those who want to hurt others. And my response? It’s my job, my life. What I have to do everyday. How do I deal with it? I almost don’t have to! I get called a hero! For going into battle! And what do I do in battle? I just try and survive, that’s all. I don’t go out to destroy; it’s just a purely selfish drive to ensure maximum aliveness, minimum pain. It’s got nothing to do with King and Country. That was when I joined up. Now it’s about hoping the nasty men in their nasty planes will go away. But they don’t. Safest option would be to just have never joined. But it’s too late for that now. Enforcer of peace is how I know myself as. So was Bertie, when he got shot down. So was the last German I shot down. So were the Americans when they joined in. Leaving poor France to feel the force of our peaceful intentions. Rob’s engine stalled mid-air. It was already heading downwards. Didn’t stop his plane from being cut up into small little pieces. He survived, having to jump out of the now burning wreckage. Ready to plunge the depths to the floor below. Again, he still got shot. I can talk, though, when I’ve run bombing missions. What chance do those on the floor have against that? I got back home, every time. I felt guilt. Guilt, not the comfort and joy of having got over it all for another day. Not victorious, not a hero for shooting someone before they shot me. Guilt for that very reason. Guilt for having survived when half of my squadron haven’t. It never stops at one person dying, either. The letters being sent home to proud parents. The trauma suffered, whether they expected their son/s to return home or not. And why? Why do we fight for the sides that we fight for? Do we choose? Not really, no. It’s determined by which country we are born in. The enforced patriotism of that country. The propagandist messages that are within that country. That, with an enforced call up combined with a heavy dose of machismo, and voila! We have a war. Who’s going to take the first shot? Just think, if Tom’s parents had moved to Germany ten years before he was born, he could be fighting for Germany, instead of Britain, believing that he was fighting for the right side. And everyone is in the same position I was. Germans, Brits, French, Americans, Africans, Japanese, Sudanese, Russians. The list extends to every single country. Is there a good or bad, right or wrong? No, but lots get killed. 

A fist reaches up to my head and connects. I fall out of reality, back into this space-craft thingummyjig. It’s actually quite warm in here. Very warm. I start taking off my clothes, after obviously having undone my seat buckles. Not an easy task, I can tell you, when one arm is floating that way, your leg is floating another and your body wants to go up whilst your head wants to go down. I’m naked, no longer suffocated. I lie here, suspended by nothing, supported by nothing, but I’ve managed to make myself relatively motionless. My eyes are closed. I feel the warmth. There are no sounds to hear, except for the humming of the machine. I activate the switch in my head that turns off my ears. Absolute silence. Absolute darkness. I stop my breathing. I clear my head of all thoughts……………… Peace…………….. Death………………. Nothingness………….

I wake myself up. Well, I open my eyes. That one dot has disappeared. And now I have no idea where I’m going. All I know is that it was headed towards the moon. And that is where I am to be headed. I was wrong. There is a cluster of dots headed towards me. In which case I’m fucked, well and truly. Absolutely. What do I do now? 

I dress quickly. Somehow, preparing yourself to go into a space-battle naked seems a bit wrong. If we were on Earth and I truly knew what we were up against, maybe I wouldn’t feel the need to be dressed, but dress I do. I sit there poised, guns at the ready. Ten minutes and they are nearly on me. They are now on top of me. Five minutes and they are behind me. They must have passed me, hundreds of miles above my head or something. Fucking 2D piece of shit! Space is 3D, you know! We do not live in a fucking animation! I am not a painting! Fucking aliens and their ‘clever’ technology. You ain’t too fucking clever now, are you?! Arse holes. 

Unless they intend to swoop around and attack me from behind, they must be headed towards Earth. They would not need to attack me from behind, not with that many craft, so they must be headed towards Earth. A chill runs down my spine with an evil laugh. I turn around in my seat and not seeing anything but my seat, I start shouting. Shouting my head off. I’m screaming, yelling, hoping that my warning cries will reach Earth. What do I do? Turn back or go ahead? Turn back or go ahead? Turn back or go ahead? I continue to yell and yell. Bursting blood vessels, deafening myself, running out of breath with the effort that I’m putting in. 

I look ahead, as if to give me inspiration. The moon is there. It’s big and silvery and right in my face. I’m actually headed towards the surface of the moon. I’m not flying over or past it any more. I’m actually headed towards it! But how? My course was not there. Even as I watch, my craft is slowly pointing downwards. The craters on the surface of the moon getting bigger, by each second. Gravity! The moon has gravity! It’s pulling me down! Shit, I scream as, grabbing the joystick, I pull myself away. But the joystick starts fighting me. I don’t mean with fists or knives or anything, but it’s trying to take control of the craft. I let go, briefly, but rather than the sudden lurch downwards I half-expect, it doesn’t. It just keeps me on a straight and narrow course, parallel to the moon’s surface. Taking it by surprise, I grab it and yank it around. Only I don’t, it’s stuck there, root firm. It’s doing nothing. I kick it. Kick it and kick it. I yell at it. I turn around in my seat and start screaming back to the folks at home. I can do nothing to save them. I can do nothing to save them. I can do nothing to save them. I kick at the joystick and I yell again, both at Earth and the joystick. I realise there is nothing I can do and I slump in my seat. Now that there is a semblance of gravity coming from the moon, this I can do. I begin to cry. 

I hear a voice. It tells me that the Smoov has been taken over and that I may just as well sit back and enjoy the ride. I can’t. I try one desperate attempt to work out the radio. Yelling into what I believe may be the voice receiver, hitting buttons, hoping that a message may get to someone, anyone back home. I even try in French, for the sake of it. No replies. Other than just screaming my head off, what can I do now? 

The moon is fucking big. It has taken up my entire view of life. Right now. It is there. Nothing else is. It used to be so small. What happened? It used to be in the sky, yet if anything is now, the Earth is. What happened there? I’m confused. Everything I know suddenly seems to be flipped upside down. The sky when I do get to see it is black, not blue, yet it must be day time on the moon, because it’s shiny bright. But it’s barren. No water anywhere. No buildings. Nothing. Fields, grass, life, all empty of those significant factors of Earth. I can see pretty much every detail the moon has to offer. Craters. Hundreds, thousands of craters. Mountains, hills, rising into the air, casting ghastly black shadows. It looks like a desert, but its colour makes it look like it’s covered in ice. It’s not so yellow anymore. It’s so different. And I finally realise that I do not understand a thing. Nothing. 

I start rising above the moon, the sky is black with a million dots and there are a number of much bigger dots - the alien craft. That is where I am headed now. Previously, the biggest thing I had ever seen in a man made context was Big Ben in London. These are not man made. They look like countries. Countries that have been fuckingbuilt. I’m heading towards the biggest one. It takes fucking ages. All perspective is buggered. I keep thinking that I must finally be there, I find something that looks like some kind of port that I may be heading for, little black holes on the surface. But they keep growing and growing until they, too, take up your entire view, and yet these shapes take up, like, nothing of the surface area of the ship. You have no idea just how scared I am. You keep thinking you are close, but then everything keeps growing and you realise that you are nowhere near close. They are doing this on purpose. I should just give up now. One man against what is essentially a country? And there are several more of them!

I start rising above the moon, the sky is black with a million dots and there are a number of much bigger dots - the alien craft. That is where I am headed right now.

That is where I am headed right now. From the living room into the kitchen. 

I… I… I don’t know where I am. This is my house, but I look at it as if it’s the first time I’ve seen it. 

The walls… are blue.