Remembrance - Part 2
#2 of Remembrance
Second in a multi-part series.
In this installment, our space traveler attempts to come to grips with his experiences while in statis - and the fact that they do not seem to be leaving him alone.
The next five nights, Damian slept soundly, and for five nights he was visited by one dream after another. He dreamed of friends and family he had left behind, back on Earth, friends and family that he would probably never see again. He dreamed of the many long months of training in high Earth orbit, and of the many men and women that he trained there with, men and women who had been selected to abandon their existence up to that point for the sake of a tenuous, desperate mission. He dreamed of his childhood, the days before the real extent of the situation had been understood, when hope was a creature that still dwelt among men. He even dreamed of her, the woman who was to have been his wife, who he had left behind when he had been chosen. She had said she understood, that she supported him, and even swore that one day she would join him in the stars. She hadn't been chosen, however, and was still back on Earth. Her letters mentioned that she had applied to be on the following mission, but Damian selfishly remembered that for all those years he had been in stasis, she had been aging. That, at least, was not a part of his dreams.
Nor did he again dream of dinosaurs. The first day or two he had continued to dwell on the strange dream, wondered quietly to himself what had brought it on and where it had come from. He had gone through a phase as a child when he had been interested in the prehistoric reptiles, but in the many years since he had all but forgotten them, and never had he been quite as fascinated with them as others his age. Why they would reappear now, in a place and time so far removed, he had no idea.
But as he slept without a return of the strange images, he began to think about it less and less. While David, who was his companion for the first half of his shift, had asked him more than a few times if he was feeling okay, if something had been bothering him, the memory had faded enough that David's replacement, an older lieutenant by the name of Samuels, had not so much as mentioned anything to him. The last two days of his shift had come and gone as uneventfully as the dozens that preceded it, and the dream had been all but forgotten.
Then the sixth day had come and gone, and once more Damian found himself standing in front of the pod that would be his resting place for the next two months. It was unassuming as it always was, white and sterile, yet the memories of what had happened were suddenly fresh in his mind all over again. The smell of piss and fear rose up, acrid in his nostrils, even though he knew that it had been cleaned out within minutes, and was probably cleaner than himself. In the harmless shape of the pod's open door, waiting patiently for him to settle in for the long sleep, he saw the gaping maw of the tyrannosaur bearing down on him, ready to tear him asunder and swallow him down a couple ravenous gulps.
Wringing his hands, he stepped forward and rested one hand on the rim of the pod, peering inside. He realized he was shaking, shivering and sweating. Looking around from side to side, his cheeks hot with embarrassed frustration, he reached up to wipe the sweat forming on his brow with a quiet curse. "Come on, Damian ... what's wrong with you?"
It wasn't the first time that he had felt nervous, even anxious before slipping into the pod and dropping into stasis. The technology was still relatively new, and it had only been a few years before their launch that it had become accepted. He still didn't understand how it worked, but only knew enough to realize that it was frightful on its face. The subject - victim, as the other trainees that he had spent so much time with liked to joke - would be quickly drained of their blood, the machinery pumping some kind of anesthetic replacement. Consciousness was quickly lost and then the body was quickly chilled to a temperature below freezing. The blood replacement also had the effect of preventing the freezing water from crystallizing, limiting cell damage. The body could then later be warmed, the blood volume replaced, and the subject successfully revived.
There was probably a lot more to it than that, but it was enough for him to know that his blood was drained every time he slipped into the damned contraption to make him distrust it. Now, with the memories of that unsettling dream creeping along the edge of his mind ...
Damian curled his fist and lightly pounded it against the entrance to his pod, breathing a little sigh. He really couldn't let something like this get the best of him. Sitting on the edge of the pod, he swung his feet up and into the little chamber, reaching up and pulling the door down before he could give it a second thought - before he could delay the inevitable any longer.
The pod sealed with a little hiss, locking him out of the circulating air outside. People in stasis had no need for oxygen, thus no need for the air to circulate with in the pod. Damian knew that the units were equipped with a fail-safe device, that the seal would break before there would be any real risk of asphyxiation, but he could not help but to think that the little hiss of the door sealing was the sound of some kind of countdown beginning, a limited amount of time for him to complete the process before he would run out of breath, perish in the confines of his tiny little resting place, perhaps to be frozen and entombed until the end of the journey.
He knew it wasn't true in the least, but he couldn't help but to think of it. It was not as if there was much left to do. A fairly thick tube jutted out of the side of the pod, just long enough to stretch over his chest. A titanium junction on the end of it was designed to fit into a surgically installed port in his chest, where it would tie in to a valve and begin to shunt his blood flow into a chilled holding tank adjacent to his chamber. The feeling of jamming that junction into the port on his chest was disconcerting at best - he could feel it moving below the skin and between his ribs, and imagined what it might feel like to be stabbed. The feeling was so uncomfortable that he was never able to do it on his first try.
But then it was in, and a quiet metallic _snick_could be heard from beneath his jumpsuit. A cold, cloying sensation began to spread out immediately from his chest, spreading with each anxious thump of his heart. It took only seconds for the sensation to reach his head, where it translated into a buzz in his ears. Another heartbeat or two later, and tiny black specks like insects beginning to swim at the corners of his vision. The sensation was familiar by now, but familiarity did not breed comfort. For a few more heartbeats the insects closed in on his vision, the little buzz becoming a roar as his chest grew heavy, difficult to breath. That weird little paranoia about suffocating rose up in his chest like a panic, but he was already too far gone - the darkness closed in before he could find the strength to fight it.
In the space of a last heartbeat, the darkness was complete.
In the space of one more, the light returned.
Almost as unsettling as the act of going in to stasis was the act of being roused back into consciousness. It was not like sleeping, where one was allowed to gradually slip into a comfortable rest, and then the slow return of wakefulness. There was never any sensation of the passage of time; it did not matter whether the sleeper was in stasis for a day or a year, it felt no greater than just closing one's eyes. Still, the return of light was hard on the eyes, and for the moment he had to squeeze them closed again, allowing the dim light to seep back through his eyelids and call him back in to the world of the living.
To his relief, it was not sunlight that met his eyes. Relief was short lived, however, when he realized that he was not looking up at the artificial plastic of his chamber, but wood. It was not like the wood he had seen either - which he realized was, for the most part, merely plastic that had been molded and colored to look like wood. This was rough, dried, ragged looking wood, wood whose edges did not meet perfectly, whose fibers were peeling and curling.
He also realized that he was reclining on his side. The wood panels that he was staring at was not a ceiling over his head but it was a wall. Startled, he pushed himself up, his hand sinking into the crude mattress that he was resting on, little more than thin cloth stretched over something vaguely soft, perhaps feathers, perhaps some kind of plant matter.
Immediately, Damian looked down at his hand. It was what he half expected, half feared to see : three slender fingers, equipped with talons, clearly inhuman and just like what he had seen previously in the dream. Without the threat of death breathing down his neck, he found himself strangely fixated by the sight of his own hand, pulling it up to hold right in front of him, watching the play of what must have been firelight dancing in ruddy tones against the more earthen-green hues of the scales that covered his fingers on down to the little feathers that poked their way out from the insides of his forearms.
The voice that sounded out behind him caught him off guard. As before, the voice did not speak, not in the way he was used to at all. The sound was a little trill of chirps and whistles, almost like birdsong in its quality, only more scratchy, more throaty, more guttural. Yet the strange sounds made perfect sense to his ears, sounded every bit as intelligible as the English language. Well? What are you waiting for?
Jerking his head around to look over his shoulder, he came face to face with another one of the creatures, one of the raptors much like the ones he had seen in the previous dream. Here, however, he was not distracted by the explosion of foliage, wild and visceral nature surrounding him on every side - where there was no fear of a great predator descending upon him and ripping his belly open - he found himself able to study the creature with more care, more detail.
It was not like anything that his mind had managed to dream up before. Bright, expressive eyes, forward-facing, slitted in a typically reptilian fashion looked right back at him over a long, slender snout. While the creature staring back at him was baring rows of pointed teeth, he instinctively knew that the expression was not a threat. The scales that ran back to its slender neck were of a similar earthy green color, the feathers that splashed out along behind its neck were also green with little hints of blues and violets, a pattern that was more than vaguely pleasing to the eye.
The creature reclining on the mattress next to him was naked. While it had no outward signs of gender - at least none that made any kind of sense to his conscious, thinking mind - he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the dinosaur resting in front of him was female. Not only was she female, she was extraordinarily attractive, enough so that he immediately felt a kind of stir in the pit of his stomach as he saw her reclining naked before him. There was a very alluring, almost sultry manner to her posture, and it was then that he realized the look in her eyes was nothing less than an invitation.
It was an invitation that his body was eager to accept. Damian felt a sudden rush of revulsion, not so much because of the implicit invitation, but moreso because of his reaction. There was nothing attractive, nothing womanly, nothing alluring about this creature in front of him, a creature that looked vaguely like something out of a nightmare, something that should have scared him half to death : reptilian, visceral, raw. It was the sort of thing that should have driven him to scream. He did, in fact, find the sight repulsive in its way, yet the natural, bestial urge still stirred within him, and _that_was what truly disgusted him.
At last, his muscles awoke and he was able to push himself away. So violent was his reaction that he nearly tossed himself right off the mattress his back - his tail - pushing up against the wall behind him, bending at an awkward, painful angle. He yelped in surprise and pain, clutching the mattress beneath him and casting a wild glance at the female.
Her reaction was one of genuine confusion. Why do you draw back, husband?
The words, though they came in that strange, inhuman voice, still carried with them all the same emotion that he expected he would hear from a human woman. Just as he might have heard from the one who he meant to call wife - the one who might have used that same name for him in another time, in a kinder existence. He spoke up as well, his voice sounding out the raspy, melodious syllables. Husband?
The creature seated before him sat up, and smiled to him. Ah, dear one, she spoke in her inhuman voice, leaning forward and reaching a hand out toward him. I did not think you to grow shy in this moment ... how sweet you truly are ...
Such phrases were human constructs, human emotions. They shouldn't be coming from creatures like this. The same part of his mind that recoiled in fear and revulsion as the female raptor reached out and tried to stroke his cheek, her fingertips brushing against the side of his snout before he yanked it out of her reach, tried to remind him that this was merely some kind of dream. Yet that same part of his mind reminded him that no one had dreams while in stasis. It did not happen, and it probably wasn't even possible. If it was not a dream, though, what would it be?
The raptor in front of him reacted with a hurt expression, pulling her hand away and leaning back, her eyes widening and beholding him with a bit of apprehension. What is it, husband? Is it not what you thought, seeing me naked? Do I ... am I not ...
He was simply bewildered as he listened to her, and he began shaking his head. He did not know how to respond, did not know if he even should respond. Damian wondered to himself just how one was supposed to react to their dreams. No ... no ... this is a dream ...
She responded with a little smile, a sigh of relaxation as she calmed and leaned forward again. Then you are but smitten, my love ... you do not need to be shy, come to me ...
Still Damian recoiled. Without meaning to, he slapped her approaching hand out of the way. Wild eyed, he spoke up again, the sound foreign yet familiar to his ears, not answering her as much as he was answering himself, convincing himself. No, it's not that. Not that kind of a dream. This is some kind of nightmare.
The reaction was as swift as it was fiery, the female raptor's expression going from gentle to furious in a whisper of a moment, the rows of teeth in her snout forming an unpleasant snarl. What is this?_She stood with a righteous kind of fury, leaning forward and letting out a low, loud, and clearly angered hiss. _How dare you? The force of her anger was enough to catch him off guard, to leave him feeling briefly vulnerable and frightened. He almost felt obliged to respond, to apologize, before she hissed at him angrily once again. You mock me! What foolishness you bring to our matrimonial bed! How long have you planned to shame me like this? You ... you ... you!
Then she was gone.
Damian had no clue how he should feel. If this was a dream, it was the sort that simply surpassed him. Moments ago, he had been dreading plugging himself back in to his stasis chamber, hurtling through space at unimaginable speeds on his way to a new star, a new planet, a new home, and suddenly he was here in this surreal dream world, faced with creatures that had been dead and passed so far out of memory that nothing remained other than their bones.
Yet at the same time they were invading his dreams. At the same time, he was finding himself faced with a mix of emotions that was so strong, so poignant, so intense that it was not the sort of thing he thought himself capable of conjuring.
_Dreams like this aren't possible ... are they?_His voice was quiet and confused, echoing in those surreal tones. He felt his body relaxing some on the mattress, his eyes fixated on the path that the female had taken to escape. He tried to focus on the strange, vivid details of the hallucination, if that is what it was, the rude furnishings of what now appeared to be some kind of hut, but he found it impossible to do so. He wanted to scream, wanted to run, wanted to cry, but most strangely of all, he felt a weird compulsion to follow after her and apologize.
Somehow, that compulsion won out. He rationalized to himself, that at least it would be better than sulking in the corner.
He found the way out of the hut easily enough, somehow unsurprised to find that it was night outside. He was more surprised, however, to find that, for as simple and crude as the hut seemed on the inside, was surprisingly ... civilized, on the outside. The hut was one of several, simple but handsome wooden structures with thatched roofs lining a well-worn cobblestone trail running through what seemed to be a small village. He looked to either side, at first curious where the female had gone, quickly finding himself more curious abut the village itself. Without any sense of direction or purpose, he began to wander his way along the pathway.
These were not some kind of barbaric homes - which would be more than he would have expected to find from creatures as simple as dinosaurs - but were the beginnings of a proper civilization.
Listen to me,_he said to himself, softly, chuckling and shaking his head. _As if this were real, or something ...
Damian cast his eyes skyward, and the sight shocked him. Until he had finally made the trip to high orbit, the most he had ever seen of the stars from the surface of the Earth were a handful of the brightest, the ones he knew by heart : Sirius, Procyon, Rigel, Betelgeuse, a handful of the planets, and, of course, Alpha Centauri.
Yet here, the sky was an entire canopy of inky black with stars scattered as widely as sand on a beach, thousands upon thousands of glowing, glittering specks that littered the sky from horizon to horizon. The stark, hazy band of the Milky Way crossed overhead like a glowing cloud. It was the sort of thing he thought was only possible to see from high above the atmosphere.
Eagerly, he cast his eyes around for those familiar beacons, perhaps to catch some glimpse of his destination, as if he might spy in the inky dark the little space of sky where Hope screamed across the abyss on its way to their new home. The sky here, however, was completely foreign. The brighter stars danced in unfamiliar ways, creating whole new, unfamiliar, alien constellations that his mind tried to wrap itself around and failed. It was beautiful in an eerie sort of way.
So caught up was he in the sight that he almost did not hear the faint clicking sound, a sound that he instinctively recognized as that of talons against stone. Wheeling around he looked behind him, unsure of what he was about to confront, but all he could make out were vague shadows. Before he could react the shadows were upon him; he could feel cloth being thrown over his face, casting him in darkness before something solid, heavy and hard slammed into the side of his head, summoning the angry buzzing of insects in his ears once again before he lost consciousness.