Chapter 8: Signals from Space
*** I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this model of spacecraft before. I imagine that advancements in science and technology have improved on the overall general designs, but then again, maybe not. Sometimes future technology is actually worse, and people longingly remember the craftsmanship of an older era. Maybe my spaceship is one of those well-made machines from an older more nostalgic time. Maybe I’m flying in a classic!
And who knows. Maybe you’ll end up in a ship that’s exactly like mine, in which case, I hope that some of what I say will be practical and of use to you. If your model is different, then I guess you can skip over the parts that don’t concern you or your needs. I wouldn’t blame you for skipping through this.
Anyhow, the spaceship: the designer of this vessel (the architect) seems to have favored a simple, practical layout with few amenities that are not directly linked to survival and daily living. I’ve heard some of the units were constructed with windows, but this isn’t the case with my craft. In my more gloomy moods, I become resentful at the lack of windows, like I’m in solitary confinement in a prison. And is there a difference between being on a spaceship floating out here and being in solitary confinement all alone? Not much. Still, to avoid the downward spiral of depression, I try not to think of being so confined, and I try to convince myself that I still have some level of freedom, which is found in the little things. That is, I still have some autonomy: I choose when to go to the bathroom, or when to go to sleep at night, and I can sometimes control of my thoughts, so that’s a level of freedom, right?
And who needs windows anyhow? Perhaps it’s a good thing that I can’t see what is going on around me. I suspect it would actually break me to look out a big bay window and see some marvelous galaxy on the horizon knowing there’s no way to control the ship and head toward it. The scenery would just glide by, always unexamined and slipping past me. It would also devastate me to look out a big bay window and see nothing at all. Imagine how terrifying to have visual confirmation that nothing exists, just an empty hollow space! At least, without any windows, I can imagine possibilities, and in that sense my imagination becomes both a type of freedom and a type of prison depending on my mood.
Sometimes I can hear strange ghostly noises from somewhere just outside the spacecraft. I have no clue what causes the sounds, whether they are some solar wind or the echo of planets spinning in their orbits. It’s a thrilling friction type of sound, like vibrations pulling from a silver string from the ship’s metal frame. Yes, it almost sounds like a wet finger pressed to the rim of a crystal glass. I don’t hear the sound all the time, but it happens enough for me to imagine that I’m passing a cluster of planets. In those moments, I imagine I’m in some type of trans-galactic hallway tucked into the in between.
I also hear a strange tapping sound that pitter-pats from somewhere deep inside the ship.
I have no real way of knowing how long I’ve been out here, and I’m not even sure it would matter if I did know because time doesn’t pass in an ordinary way. Here, the days are seconds and the seconds are years. Time exists as a sinister type of joke where I seem to flow backward, pulling ever so tightly onto the head of a pin.
As far as spaceships go, there’s nothing wrong with mine. It’s a fine vessel and, all things considered, it’s comfortable enough I guess. I don’t want to come off as indifferent, and I know that I can sometimes seem like I’m complaining, but it’s not so bad. My spaceship is mostly comfortable, so I really am grateful for what I have. I’ve learned tough lessons through experience. Too often in my life, I’ve had a perfectly good situation—with friendships, jobs, experiences—and I’ve stupidly presumed that something better would come my way. I’ve taken those perfectly good experiences and tossed them off like orange peels as if something new will come along and somehow make it better. In doing that, I’ve traded novelty for quality, and I’m determined not to make that mistake again. I don’t want to end up in a much worse position. I hate feeling like I squandered something good, but I also fear that I might cling to things that are no longer good for me. It’s a catch-22, I suppose. While it’s certainly true that risk reaps rewards, it’s equally true that rewards are reaped from what you already own, and gratitude allows you to see the rewards. With that in mind, I’m in no hurry to improve my condition, even if such a thing were possible, which it’s not. It’s not possible and therefore I won’t complain.
Let me introduce you to my ship.
My spaceship is small and circular and white. I call her DB Anderson. I’m not really sure why, but the name seemed to fit her. The inside, where I live, is only about 250 square feet, but that’s plenty of space for a solo flyer like myself. I have a bedroom, a main deck area where I can exercise and entertain myself, a bathroom, and of course, a kitchen. My ship has everything you would expect to find in a home except for windows and a door. Otherwise, it’s the same.
It used to be better, I suppose. Before the internal power went out, I had access to an endless supply of films and books and mementos from my past, but that all went away some time ago.
I’m not mechanically inclined, so I can’t explain in technological terms what happened or why it happened, but it did: I lost most of my internal power. I’d heard about this sort of thing happening, but I never expected it to happen to me. It’s said to be so rare that, statistically speaking, it’s negligible. But statistics are a funny thing: they mean absolutely nothing to the person they affect. What’s the likelihood of losing my power? Maybe it’s the same likelihood as being swallowed by a black hole or a big whale. But maybe given enough time it’s inevitable, just like being pulled into a black hole or swallowed by a big whale. And maybe that actually explains why most of the internal circuitry shorted? Then again, maybe I’ve travelled beyond any lights at all, so maybe the solar panels don’t provide enough power for the interior? I don’t know. All I do know is this: I’m here, and it’s now, and I do remember when the lights unexpectedly flickered, and I remember when the colors disappeared, when I was cut off from the music, the television, and the noise of the computer console. I hadn’t realized how much noise surrounded me and how attached to it I’d become.
Everything went dead, and in that moment, I felt keenly aware of a fear inside me. I felt a horror swell up and threaten to choke out my breath. Only as a child had I felt such fear, and I tumbled in it thinking it would last forever. And it did and does. So I choked on it, let it fill me, and then tried to move on the best way I knew how.
I think of Helen Keller quite often. She was born with her senses entirely in tact, but after a childhood disease, she lost her hearing and her vision. I feel a kindred connection with her.
Maybe, if I am to follow through with the Helen Keller comparison, there’s an Annie Sullivan with me even now. Maybe my teacher is pressing him or herself against me and trying to make me see and say “water,” just like in the movie. That’s a comforting thought for me, so I think about it often and try my best to “feel” my way through the darkness for anything that might be communicating directly with me. Until then, I am in the dark.
Have you ever been in complete darkness? I’m not talking about lights out in a windowless bathroom or something like that. Somehow, even in a windowless bathroom, the light’s residue seems to cling to the surrounding surfaces, as if the room carries a photonic memory. But there is a different type of darkness. The closest way I can describe that first encounter with that darkness is in this way: the darkness deep inside a cave, only thicker.
I remember as a child, maybe ten or eleven years old, my mother took my sister, brother, and me to tour some type of caverns when we visited relatives back in Alabama. We walked down a steep stone path into the mountain, deep inside it, down through a cave like the Children of Hamlin. It smelled musty, like wet earth and stone. We’d traveled for what seemed to be miles and then, as part of the tour, the guide gave his ominous warning: “Prepare for darkness. True darkness.”
From above, the lights shut off, and a sweeping, thick blindness instantly swallowed everything and everyone. For those few moments, I was lost: my mother, my sister, my brother, and myself. The thick, black air blanketed me, and I felt a convulsive fear. I groped into a nothing, a thick nothing that spread eternal. The blindness only lasted maybe 30 seconds, just long enough to think they would never turn back on. But then the lights flashed bright, and everything reappeared like a magic act: the guide, my family, the strangers, we all stood stupidly smiling at our terror of the dark. Sometimes, I can’t help but wonder if I didn’t end up here in this spaceship on that very day in the cavern, when the lights went out. Maybe the lights never came back on, and maybe I had to make sense of the experience in the only way I knew how, which was to invent this spaceship theory, because isn’t that what this is? A theory?
No.
No it’s not a theory.
I know this because I can remember what this place looked like when the lights worked. I remember exactly where the monitor is, and I remember the color of the carpet and tiles and the appliances in the kitchen. I also remember the shows I used to watch, so it’s an absurd thought to imagine this is a theory.
I also have memories of my life before I went away in this ship. I keep them like a deck of cards, and I shuffle through them and revisit them.
In any event, theory or not, when the lights went off in my spaceship, I froze in horror initially expecting something worse to follow, like an explosion or—when that didn’t happen—the oxygen to slowly cut out. I sat in front of my monitor when it all happened—a monitor now swallowed by the void in this spaceship drowned in the dark. In that moment, death would have been a good thing, I think. What would I do? How could I survive? I couldn’t bear that type of darkness, so I sat perfectly still and waited and prayed. I hoped that the lights would turn on and everything would go back to normal. The darkness trivialized all of my previous concerns about what I would watch on TV or if I would get bored of the music I had, and it sat me face-first with a much deeper fear. How could I exist with just myself? Just me in the darkness? No. Surely the power would be restored.
I couldn’t bring myself to get up from the monitor, so I sat frozen and in place with a prickling fear drawn tightly into my chest. I felt that chilling vibration pressing through my skull, and in that type of blackness, I couldn’t feel where my own body ended and the darkness began. Everything disappeared except for the running monologue in my mind, and it spoke incoherently and incessantly.
I couldn’t work anymore.
I couldn’t communicate anymore.
Nothing in. Nothing out.
It stayed like this for a very long time.
It could have been days, months, or years: I don’t know. A minute is an hour and an hour is a minute. All I do know is I existed in the dark place, lost in a nonsensical monologue where words tripped over words and formed unrecognizable phrases. Fear kept me frozen. This may sound strange, but I felt that if I even moved a little, it would somehow give the darkness permission to continue reaching further into me, that I might lose even my fragmented thoughts.
Years passed.
Not quite 444 years, but close.
In time, the darkness became as familiar as my rambling thoughts, but I do not want to minimize the dread and fear that gripped me during that time. An indescribable horror reached into me, a type of forever-darkness that I doubt I’ll ever shake, but here’s the thing: the dread did not kill me. Though my spaceship lost the internal power, though my mind seemed to snap, I was not dead. The oxygen flowed as it had always done… It took a great while for me to accept that the oxygen would not stop as suddenly as the electricity had. I still had access to food and water. I still had daily needs like going to the bathroom and sleeping. These things continued.
Being familiar with the design and layout of the craft, I had no problem finding all of the items I knew were there. The only difference was that I could not see them. But I could feel them and sense them.
I could not see the photos of my mother, and I could not read the novels or watch the shows that I’d fancied. But that didn’t mean they weren’t there, and I drew some comfort in that fact alone. I could feel the books and the pages and I could feel the outline of the monitor. Perhaps, like Helen Keller, I could learn to read with my fingertips?
The interior of the ship, though without any light, remained completely functional, but I had to learn how to navigate through it in a different way. Though I knew where to find the bathroom, and though I knew how to get my food, it took an extended period for me to get comfortable with my environment (and to stop crying).
It took me forever to get used to the silence, and perhaps I replaced it with my own version of noise.
In any event, after that initial period—after giving up on the notion that the lights would suddenly flicker on and I would be returned to my old way of life—I decided to face it head on and continue with my daily routine as much as I possibly could. What choice did I have? Sure, I could have killed myself, but who’s to say I wouldn’t regret that decision and end up in a place much worse than where I am. I don’t want to be ungrateful. Remember what I said before about regret? Sometimes you toss off what you have like an orange peel not understanding the gifts that are right in front of your face.
Maybe it was time to accept the gifts of darkness.
I had to find a way.
So I remembered what my life used to be like. I remembered the routine. Each morning, I woke, drank coffee, sat at the computer and read stories, listened to music, read emails. Come early afternoon, I watched television, engaged in some moderate exercise, and wrote in my journal. At noon, I ate lunch. If feeling creative, I made music on my computer or watched movies, and this stretched out until the clock read 11:00 pm, at which time I would sleep.
In the darkness, I had no more stimuli. Nothing new. So I recalled what I knew before. It sounds insane, I’m sure, but I sat in front of the television in complete darkness and I imagined watching a movie from one of the many that I’d seen in my lifetime. I reconstructed it in pieces, as if assembling a stack of celluloid images into the storyboard for a film. If I couldn’t remember how a movie went, I would make it up. I made up the movie so many times that eventually I’d created a new one. I sat at the darkened computer, and I tapped my fingers into the darkness and onto the keyboard.
I did this so religiously that something quite strange happened. I eventually started to see actual electronic words on the monitor. That’s how I’m typing this to you now. It’s all through thought.
Point a to point B, brother.
I learned to pray, too. I’d never prayed before, but I took it up.
And my prayers were answered.
I discovered that the refrigeration unit made a tap every 42 minutes. This allowed me to count by taps, and once I understood the hours in a waking day, I had learned how to fill my time.
With the taps from the spaceship and the taps from the refrigeration unit, I learned how to mark time, eventually celebrating my birthday and Christmas, just like any ordinary person would do.
I guess at some point you go crazy, but maybe you just learn to see differently. When the darkness was evil, it was my own evil thoughts reflected back at me, and that’s the worst kind of evil, I think. The worst kind of evil is yourself baring your nostrils and steaming up the mirror in your face. Your evil is the worst evil because you know your worst fears and your most awful punishments. When the darkness says that there’s nothing but you and you alone, you have to fight it in a different way. Don’t be alone… and that’s what I tried to, to create, by dividing and duplicating.
My calculations told me 3 years passed when I finally noticed a shift in my perspective. While I sat at the computer, my fingers clicking on the keyboard, I suddenly felt as if I could not only see the electronic letters on the screen, but I could also see my arms. They weren’t fully formed arms; rather, they looked more like a trace of glowing lights, but when I moved my arms from left to right, I saw them in the darkness. You’ve heard of phantom limb syndrome, I’m sure: in the case of amputees, many report feeling sensations in the missing limbs though they no longer exist. Still, those who experience the phenomenon say the sensations are every bit real to the brain, and in many cases, the phantom limbs continue experiencing pain. The brain does not accept that they do not exist.
That’s what happened to me in the darkness. I developed phantom vision, which—when I first realized it—seemed every bit as good as regular vision. After enough time, my mind was able to recreate the colors and lights. Except for the times when I smacked into an appliance I’d forgotten to put away (and other things like that), it was an entirely convincing experience. I explored with my hands and memorized every object available: each cup, each book, each strand of each thread of carpet, and I could feel their colors pulled from the darkness; I could read their words and hear their music.
Though feint at first, each object took on a clear life force in time. Intellectually, I knew that my vision wasn’t true vision, but it would have to work. I knew I was indeed still sitting in the dark, but my memory allowed me to replace the darkness with shapes that I could see.
Everything was a like a glowing neon dream, and that was more than enough at first. I didn’t feel so alone.
And that’s when I started to find things that unnerved me… Things started appearing on my monitor, writings that I had no memory of writing (or memories of ever having existed). Did I write them? Were they coming from some outside “force”? Is what they were saying true, or was it my mind playing tricks on me?
Here’s one of the messages I found written out on my computer:
To: Shelleybleby_B@yahoo.com
Subject: 444: Panic
Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2008 17:55:04 +0000
(You have been warned... a directive warning to simply delete emails from me. I fear they've become so self-indulgent that they're offensive, that perhaps you might feel like you're being accosted on the subway by a business man in Japan. But they're not random; I really am writing them to YOU. They couldn't be written to anyone else. I could try to approach them differently, but I can't seem to write a letter these days. Incoherent words reflect more accurately my state of mind. I think I'm becoming more... Oh, I don't know. Something is buried behind the haikus and snippets of plays and stream of consciousness. It was a graveyard, you know? The whole time. Something buried. Grab your shovel. Come with me:)
Night Time: it is the year 2452. We are outside, or perhaps a large room. We can only make out shapes.
Yeah.
Fuck it.
Guilt is the trap I always fall into... I feel guilty especially after I work myself up into a frenzy... "This time it'll be different!" I say. "The snow! The snow!" I point to the sky and declare myself an apostle. Even now, in my failure, I fall into the familiar martyr mode.
Shakespeare, who was born 444 years ago (or 888 years ago if you're reading this in 2452) recites lines from Macbeth. We do not see him, but we hear his words:
"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in the petty pace from day to day
'Til the last syllable of recorded time..."
(Shakespeare)
The present:
I'll quit smoking tomorrow.
A ghostly red-headed child's voice sings:
"It's only a day away."
(Annie, The Musical)
When I smoke, I get to be a better person in my mind because of tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I'll quit! Tomorrow I'll be better. You'll see! I will... blahh blahh blahh...
I can't let go of the guilt Shelley! I just can't!!!
(Here we go... Drum roll please! Drum sounds in the distance... no... wait... That sound is not drums. It's the sound of fists beating from the inside of a coffin. The coffin rolls onto center stage, stopping at the exact moment of the drum roll.)
A puppet leaps from the coffin and screams, pointing a finger at me (sitting in the audience):
"It was YOU! YOU! YOU idiot... YOU had spots on YOUR lungs and that guy YOU knew had to get half his throat removed, and that December weekend in 2008, Steve died of scirrosis (sp?) of the liver at age 42... YOU used to drink with him! You weren't 24! You were 37! YOU!"
The puppet is screaming, still pointing it's "finger" at me and repeating some variation of what it's been saying. I try to convince myself that the puppet from the coffin is not pointing at me. It's just some clever trick that the director has used... everyone thinks that the puppet it pointing at them... Or is it pointing at m-m-me?
Should I be panicking, Shelley? What do you think? Am I killing myself? Is there one moment, one drag off a cigarette too many, when the cancerous cell forms? Have I passed that moment? "If you want to quit, quit!" I try to say to myself, but it's not that easy, and I wish I didn't feel guilty but that puppet won't shut up.
It is talking to me. And I know that this is live theater, and I know this is unheard of, but I can't take it... I just can't... I get up--I stand up--and the puppet on stage (an actor name Bryan or Bruce or Ben... I know his name starts with a "B"... But I forgot what the program said) is startled.
FUCK YOU!!! I scream. The audience, surprisingly doesn't seem surprised. Perhaps they think I am part of the show ... though I wasn't written into the script. Was I?
I am about to go onto the stage, to slam the coffin's lid down, to shut it up... Enough! Or maybe the puppet is about to slam the coffin shut on me. I don't know. Honestly, I can't even tell you who's the Puppet. Somebody's the fucking puppet and his name starts with a B!
(A whisper: Kyle)
Lights dim.
KYLE SHAKESPEARE enters with great solemnity. He coughs, signifying a monologue of some kind. Before he begins, the lights flicker on long enough for us to see the puppet shoot him. He falls down, a rag-doll let go, with no ceremony.
"Serves him right," Janus says. I can't see her in the theater, but I hear her. She's behind me, perhaps one row behind me. Her Southern Comfort breath is close enough to taste.
Damn it! I'm back in the theater and it suddenly gets very "Our Town" in Act III (I think it's Act III).
I was never in a theater watching a movie. I was in a graveyard watching snippets of my life. I was in the darkness with snakes. Something moves in the projection booth.
Comments
Post a Comment