Mystères Élémentaires

"Some dogs can 'smell' cancer," she said, almost in a whisper.

"Seriously?"

She nodded her head. "Yup. Prostate, testicular, ovarian, cervical."

"Cancers located in the groin?"

"Yup."

"Do whales smell? I mean, like the way a dog can scent out things?"

"I doubt it, but things like blood emit certain distinct electromagnetic patterns in water, and those signals can travel pretty far underwater."

"And belugas have some kind of hypersensitive sonar, don't they."

"Could be something similar to an ultrasound, I suppose," she said as ideas ran through her scientist's mind, "but they'd have to know normal from abnormal for that to work."

"Unless this is working on an instinctual level, you know, like 'I see something bad here.'"

"Well, I doubt we'll ever know one way or another. I do know one thing...I'm not ever getting near the ocean ever again."

"I know what you mean. My sailing days over over...too much big stuff floating around out there. The Atlantic has become one huge dumping ground."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Sailing up from Norfolk to Montauk Point, took me two days to sail around this mound of garbage floating on the surface. I mean huge, like seventy miles long. Lots of medical waste, stuff too toxic for landfills. Looks like it had been hauled offshore and simply dumped out there, and so there I was, surrounded by billions of flies -- in the middle of the ocean. It was surreal."

"Any idea where it came from...the garbage, I mean?"

"Good ole New Jack City. I saw addresses on envelopes, on shipping boxes, all from New York."

"Still the most corrupt city in the world," she sighed. "Things never change."

"Yeah, you know the funniest part? Out there, like a hundred miles offshore, I'm sailing by these hills of garbage and a periscope pops up out of the water, right there in the middle of the garbage field. Russian submarine, hiding under our garbage, probably heard me on sonar and wondered what I was, so he had to come take a look. Sitting out there with their missiles aimed at our cities, using our garbage as camouflage. Man, that's irony. Bet that skipper was having a big laugh that day."

"Kind of sad, I think."

"How're you doing?" he asked, wanting to change the subject.

"I still can't believe he's gone, the whole thing, but when I first looked at that cruise ship I told Bob the thing looked unstable. How can something so top-heavy..."

"I know. It's like they put huge apartment complexes on top of barges to make those things. Ten or more decks above the waterline. Those ships rely on stabilizers in rough weather to keep an even keel. I wonder what happens when the stabilizers fail."

"Not my problem. I'm flying home tomorrow, and like I said, I'll never see the ocean again."

"Yeah, you know, since they told me about the cancer I feel liberated. Like there's nothing to be afraid of anymore. If death is the last big adventure, as in he last thing I'll experience, well, I'm not so sure I want to hang up my spurs just yet."

"Oh, what will you do? Go bungee-jumping?"

"Yeah, that's right up there with skydiving -- without a parachute." They both laughed, then looked at one another. "Ya know, I'm not real sure yet, but I've been sitting here thinking about it for a day or so now. Maybe go somewhere I've never been before, someplace real far away, then just get out and walk. Not to see things, but to meet people, talk to..."

"Are you thinking about India, someplace like that?"

"Place doesn't matter so much, I guess. India, Mexico or even someplace really primitive, like Kansas. Just someplace new, ya know. Someplace I've never been before. A back road in Oklahoma or a trail in Kenya. Doesn't matter much, I reckon, just breathe the air and talk to folks. That's all."

"Where did you grow up?" she asked.

"Seattle. Studied architecture in Wisconsin, practiced in Chicago. My wife, Rebecca and I, we were going to cut the cord and sail away, then she got sick..."

"Cancer?"

"Yes, that's right. Invasive ductile carcinoma, or words to that effect. She fought the good fight, went down swinging. I ran away after that, thought I might as well run off and die somewhere, so of course I loaded the boat down with every conceivable rescue device known to man..."

She laughed again. "No sane person really wants to die, I guess, but even so, that's kind of funny."

"I justified it, ya know, saying I didn't want my son to worry if I just disappeared."

"The not knowing. Yes, that would be brutal. So, where were you going to go?"

"I was going to wander around Greenland, then work my way back to New England. Nova Scotia, that thing. Get to Maine in time to watch the leaves turning in autumn. I figured by then I'd have a good idea of what I could do on the boat..."

"So, now you're going to do the same thing, only..."

"Yeah. All I'll need is a really good pair of walking shoes, maybe a phone."

"I think I'd go to France, walk the Pyrenees into Spain."

"Oh? Why?"

She grinned. "The food."

He grinned too. "Ya know, I've not been hungry in the least."

"Give it a week. That'll change."

"The voice of experience?"

"Oh, yeah. I'd kill for a whole lobster right now."

"Drawn butter, corn on the cob?"

"Oh, man...don't get me started."

He turned serious, looked away for a moment, gathered his thoughts, then he turned back to her: "I've been having a weird dream. Twice now, the same thing. I'm swimming with a pod of those whales and I look up, see a ringed planet, something like Saturn..."

"And other planets in orbit around it," she said. "Then all of us are looking up into the sky, looking up at that planet..." They looked at one another, then she gasped, tried to catch her breath as implications rolled over her.

"I think I saw you there, too," he said. "Swimming by my side..." then more images began flooding into view, images of a vast sea under a strange, ringed planet. Belugas everywhere, just as confused as they were, then the sight of ship of some sort, behind a golden veil. He felt vertiginous tides then, felt completely disoriented, like his mind was one place and his body somewhere else. No 'here' or 'there' -- he was in both places at once. He wanted to hold onto the bed, feel the reality of the hospital room in Greenland, but his hands felt cool water within the texture of the sheets.

"Oh dear God," he heard Norma say.

"Where are you?" he shouted.

"In the water, that planet is overhead."

"The planet? What colors do you see?"

"Pale blues, white bands with pale reddish swirls. It's like there are a billion hurricanes on the surface..."

"That's what I see too...can you see me -- in the hospital room?"

"No. All I see is..."

"Me too. What about your hands. What do you feel?"

"Water," she cried. "What is going on!?"

"Follow the sound of my voice, swim to me..." he heard her pushing through the water, coming close... "that's it, keep on coming, it sounds like you're just a few feet away, that's it, a little more..."

And when he felt her hand touch his in a blinding flash they were back in the hospital room, but she screamed now, a full throated scream as real awareness flooded into consciousness.

They heard nurses outside the room running down the corridor, then they saw the door open and a half a dozen people rush in -- then they stopped, looked up at the ceiling. One nurse looked up at them both, now plastered to the ceiling with sea water pouring from their naked bodies, and she screamed as she ran from the room.

A physician walked into the room and looked up at them, then shook his head. "Some people will do anything to get attention," he scoffed as he turned and walked away.

"Can you move?" he asked.

"No, and I don't want to, either."

"I see your point. I wonder what happens next?"

"I hope you aren't asking me?"

Mystères élémentaires Nº 4

Quelle était, une fois, avant demain

I

When she felt her slow return to the light, when she felt sleep fading, Christine Mannon opened her eyes, expected to see the short creature by her side, but no...she was in bed, in her room and the sun was shining again. Not a cloud in the sky, and that same surreal too-blue color she'd noted when she walked to class. She got out of bed, saw the cathedral out her window and sighed.

"Maybe this has all been a dream," she said, "a really bad dream."

She walked over to the window and looked outside, saw the buildings she expected to see -- the Sabot Rouge first among them, and of course the Sacred Heart -- but the streets and sidewalks seemed empty now and she wondered what day it was. If she'd slept through to Sunday, the streets might indeed be quiet, so she made her way to the shower and rinsed away her cares under the hot spray -- for what felt like hours.

She felt light-headed once and reached out to steady herself, took a few deep breaths, and she was aware her eyes had rolled back for a moment. She suddenly felt very unsure of her balance and sat on the shower floor, let the hot water beat down on top of her head while she hugged her knees to her chest -- and in the next instant she was sitting on the cold floor in a huge, concrete walled shower -- packed with hundreds of naked women and children. A sudden, grim awareness held her fast and she scrambled to her feet, ran for the lone iron door and began beating on it, slamming the sides of her clinched fist on the gray painted metal as gas began hissing out of fixtures mounted on the low ceiling.

She looked up, started to cry even as she tried to hold her breath, and a little girl next to her began to choke and cry. She grabbed the girl and forced her face into the soft skin of her belly, tried to keep the gas from going down her throat. She held on as long as she could but soon felt her own grip loosening, the little girl slipping from her fingers, then she was aware she was falling, her eyes still open as the horizon tilted until all she saw was a tangled mass of bodies piling one upon another. Everything burned now: her eyes most of all, but it burned most of all when she tried to breathe -- then hypoxia set in and blinding pinpricks of light streaked inward -- until she was walking in the cool fog again.

And Werner was by her side once again.

"Was that so bad?" he asked.

"What?"

"Was dying so bad? Did you find the experience difficult?"

"What do you mean -- was that so bad? Are you fucking insane!"

"I merely wanted to know what the experience was like. You needn't be angry at me."

"Why don't you try it yourself sometime, you monster!"

"I wish I could."

She turned and looked at the man, if that's indeed what he was. "What do you mean?"

"Only that. Once I die that's the end."

"And you mean with me that's not the case? With the other six million?"

"Oh, you did not die, not even close. She did, however."

She looked down, saw the little girl inside the shower at her feet, her form lifeless now, and she bent down to cradle the girl's body to her breast. "Why? Why did you do this?"

But Werner was gone, and she saw the creature was by her side again. Small, not even waist high, a large, triangular face with glistening-huge, almond bright eyes, eyes as black as the darkest night...

Look closely, she heard a new voice in her mind say. Do you recognize her?

She turned the dead girl over, looked into precious, lifeless eyes and gasped. "It's me," she whispered. "Me...but how..."

When your uncle escaped, you elected to remain with your mother and father," the voice said. 'You remained by your mother's side, in the chamber. What you just experienced was your death, before we intervened.

"You what?"

A woman held you fast to her belly, and we came to you then, took you away before the truth became known.

"You took me away? To where -- where did you take me?"

"Here, obviously," she heard a man's voice now, and she turned, expected to see Werner standing there -- but no, this man was younger. Black hair just turning gray at the temples, kind eyes so familiar it ripped her apart...

"Father?" she whispered, her voice slowly giving way as the stones of years fell away. "Papa!" She cried before she flew into his arms -- and the cords of memory drew taut around her, pulled two souls close -- again. "What? How...?"

But in the next instant he was gone too, simply gone, and she fell to the ground, cried over the dead girl's acrid body -- her own body, if this creature's explanation was to be believed -- then that body disappeared as well, leaving her alone in the white tile room with the repellant creature. When the cool fog returned she felt his voice inside her mind, then she felt fingers sifting through memory, cataloguing her experiences one by one in a blinding rush.

You know, there isn't really anything malevolent about The Other, she heard another voice saying -- in English, and she looked up, saw another man, a very old man, she guessed in his 80s, sitting beside her now.

"Did you say that?" she asked, speaking English now. "I could hear you in my mind, but not with my, well, my hearing."

"Yes, when we're linked we can hear each other's thoughts," the man said now. "It takes some getting used to...the lack of privacy."

"Does this creature -- facilitate -- the exchange?"

"Yes. We're linked now, through him. You can 'speak' to me directly, so everything you think will come through him to me, but to him as well. Unfiltered, you could say. He'll hear everything you think."

"I don't understand. Could you tell me what's going on, please?"

"I don't know all that much...and I don't think I'm supposed to, or will be allowed to, but The Other is part of a collective that recreates certain experiences, certain periods in human history. To what end, I have no idea."

"Do you know where I am?"

"I hate to have to tell you this, but no. From what I've learned about them over the years, that's probably not even the correct question. You might think of all this as 'when am I?' -- as in where are you, in time."

"They want me to think this is 1944."

"Why is that, do you suppose?"

"I don't know."

"What happened then? Do you remember?"

"My family was killed, after they were taken from France to Auschwitz. And just now, it showed me a girl who had been there, and as much as told me it was me. I held her as she died."

"I'm sorry...but I have no idea what all this means."

"Who are you?"

"My name is Robert. Robert Jeffries. Call me Rob."

"Are you an American?"

"I think so, yes," he said, holding his hands up so he could look at them. "That's odd. A moment ago I was on a mountaintop in New Mexico." He turned and looked at The Other -- who's mind was a blank just then. "You know...I have the strangest feeling that I'm dead."

"What? What do you mean?"

"I have no idea."

The Other moved closer, and the creature and Jeffries stared at one another for a moment, then Jeffries turned away, started to cry.

"What did it say...I couldn't make it out?"

"I am dead. So are you. You died in 1944, in that gas chamber."

She stared at the implications of that statement, found the idea absurd and discarded the very idea of it. "No, no, that is not true," she whispered, then images of the interior of the 'showers' filled her mind again. She saw her mother from above, pulling her close, trying to shield her breathing with the soft skin of her belly. She watched her mother struggling to breathe, then fall away, saw her own struggle, the struggles of everyone in that chamber, then she felt a sudden, overwhelming dissolution into a deeper fog.

"Are we still there," she asked.

"Yes," Jeffries.

The fog began dissolving, and at first she thought she saw blue sky overhead, but soon she saw smoke, and the air was full of panic. Sirens, like air raid sirens, filled the air and she thought this must be Paris during the war. An Allied bombardment, perhaps, had just taken place...?

But no. She saw modern skyscrapers and, as the fiery mist fell away, cars she thought she recognized, modern cars. People running for the Anvers Metro Station, pouring down the opening into the earth, then, southwest of the city a brilliant flash -- like the sky had just caught fire. Moments later an impossible roar, then an overwhelming motion, jet aircraft overhead falling from the sky as a massive of shockwave rippled through the atmosphere.

Then a tsunami of fire roared towards the city -- washed over her on it's way around the earth -- yet still she stood there, The Other by her side; the old man, Jeffries still with her, too.

And when the fire and smoke fell away she looked out over her city, her City of Lights, but everywhere she looked she saw charred ruins. Hardly anything recognizable remained, and the feeling of loss that swept over her was as profound as it was meaningless. Without the context of human wonder, what was left? When and if 'people' returned and explored these ruins thousands of years from now, what would they think of the civilization that had let this happen? Or, indeed, would 'people' be able to emerge from this level of destruction. How many millions of years would it take for intelligence to emerge again?

She looked at the creature by her side, but it remained distant to her, regarding her cooly, dispassionately, and even the old man was quiet too. He was looking over the ruins of the city, yet he too seemed almost unmoved -- and she wondered if he was real, or simply a part of this vast, unravelling illusion.

II

Driving through the last reaches of the Everglades, Jeffries looked at June, his co-pilot, as she struggled to come to terms with the night, with the things he'd told her so far. That the Others had been a part of his for as long as he could remember. That tonight hadn't been the first time something like this had happened; that he'd been enlisted to help them several times when something unexpected happened. That when he'd seen the shimmering hillside in El Salvador the day before, he knew contact was imminent.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked when he said that.

"And what if I had? Would you have believed me? Or would you have thought I was bat-crap-crazy?"

She laughed a little, then nodded her head. "You know, Rob, if anyone else told me I would have thought they were nuts -- but not you. If you told me the world was going to end tomorrow at noon I'd get ready to party hard for the next 24 hours."

He'd looked at her again, wondered where she was going with this -- and how much he could tell her -- but he decided to let her talk-on for a while.

"In other words," she continued, "I get bat-crap-crazy every time I'm around you. And I get depressed when I'm not."

"Sorry. I had no idea."

"I know. And I thought I was being too obvious."

"Maybe I'm just hard headed."

"Thick-skulled is a term that comes to mind."

"You do know I'm like twenty years older than you?"

"Yeah? So? Your dick still works, don't it? Your lips still know how to kiss? You remember how to put your arms around a girl? Any of those things ring a bell?"

He scrunched up his shoulders. "Let me think about it for a while. I'll get back to you tomorrow on that."

She sighed, scrunched up her nose. "Let me make this easy for you, Rob. Don't take me home right now, okay. Let's go to your place, let's get naked and screw for a few days. After last night I don't want to take anything for granted ever again, but I really don't want to go through one more day without you. That clear enough for you?"

He'd nodded his head, then felt her hand on his, her fingers searching through his, feeling for something beyond the common ground of the cockpit. "Why me?" he asked a minute or so later.

"I don't know, Rob. I look at you and the insides of my thighs feel like a three alarm fire."

"Have you checked down there? Could it be a rash? Something contagious?"