Revolution (6 page)

"It's
true!"

He
didn't even look up when I slammed my hands on the table.

"If
you get out of your chair one more time it'll be another injection, a stronger
one. And they will keep getting stronger until you cooperate. Now sit
down."

So I
sat. I obeyed. What else could I do? There were no windows. The only door was
made of steel and that had a tumbler lock on it - all numbers, no key, all very
very secure. There was also, of course, that bruiser in the corner with the repeater
popgun in his claws.

"Good.
So, Desert Center, what happened there?" he said.

"It
came down from the sky."

I sighed
shuffling the empty coffee carton across the table, left hand, right hand. When
what I really wanted to do was smack it at his face.

"The
spaceman?" he said.

"The
ship."

"And
at what time was this?"

"It
was eleven in the morning. The sky was clear blue, and it just appeared."

I was
resigned to rote. Monosyllabic if I could get away with it.

"Out
of nowhere," he tapped his pencil at the pad.

"Look,
I've said it a million times."

"Okay,
so what did it look like?"

"A
bubble."

"A
bubble?"

"Yes,
a bubble."

Up
straight – chair hits wall. And Tommy Gunn in the corner grips the trigger of
his machinegun tighter.

"Sit
down!"

I sat.

"I
thought you said it was a flying saucer," the doc said.

"It
was like a bubble of light for Christ sake, when I first saw it coming
down!"

"Out
of a clear blue sky you say. Go on. Tell me what it looked like."

So I
did, nice and slow.

"Like
a fucking flying saucer."

#

"We've
got your mother here," the good doctor smiled straightening his crooked
tie.

"My
mother's dead. She died giving birth to me," I said.

His
eyebrows shot up. It was something else to pin me down to the butterfly board
of nutcases, category - Maternal Guilt.

"Mrs.
Andresen?" he said to the open door.

And
there she stepped it, all black veil and tear brimming eyes.

#

"Sean,"
she said, "that picture was of your father, remember? It was taken even
before you were born."

"Who
the hell
are
you?" I yelled at her.

That's
when the good doctor, and his white coat wide boys, rushed me and slapped duck
tape to my mouth.

Now all
I could do was look at him and her talking to each other like I wasn't there,
her dabbing at her eyes with the handkerchief that the good doctor had whipped
out of his top pocket.

"I'm
sorry about this, doctor," she said. "But he's been this way for
years. We tried to shield him, of course. But in the end," she raised her
hands, "it was impossible. Paranoid schizophrenia, you see? He doesn't
even know who he is himself most of the time. The poor boy, all those things
about aliens and flying saucers, I thought he would grow out of it, but instead
he kept getting worse and, oh..."

And
there she broke down.

I would
have clapped but my arms were strapped to the chair.

The
doctor held her hand.

"Mrs.
Andresen," he said, "we don't want trouble. I can see that you've had
enough as it is. Neither of us wants to be embroiled in a legal case now do
we?"

Eyelids
fluttering she looked up at him.

"You're
very understanding, doctor."

"The
extradition is easy to deal with," he said sitting back and looking at me.
"He's obviously insane. He's not going anywhere, and as for a court case,
well..."

"How
can I be of assistance?" Mrs. Andresen perked up.

"I
can sign over his mental status to you and you could take over his financial
affairs."

Now that
did make me mad. So mad I thought my eyes were going to pop out. They almost
did when they rammed that needle in my arm.

"As
far as the money he stole," the doctor went on, "you could hand it
over to its rightful owner. But then again, as no one knows this poor deluded
young man is here for treatment, and he is in no fit state to speak for
himself, what you decide to do with it would be up to you."

She
looked at me, simpering through her veil.

"I
understand, doctor," she smiled. "I don't know what possessed him to
make that claim, charging for an old photograph of his poor dead father."

What a
bitch.

"It's
a sickness, Mrs. Andresen," the doctor patted her hand, "one that
unfortunately makes everyone's life, especially those who love and care for
him, an unbearable hell. I'm sure the extradition charges will be dropped when
I write my report. And we have all the facilities here to make sure that
society is safe, and give this poor young man the proper treatment that he so
obviously needs."

She
looked at me and sniffed back a tear with a smile.

"Thank
you, doctor," she said.

#

Twelve
years it took me to find a way out of that maximum security cracker palace.

It took
me six hours to get back.

And
nothing was going to stop me from proving my sanity.

#

My axe
tore through the wood. But before I knew it I was kicking and screaming as they
stuffed my arms into the sleeves and pulled the straps tight.

#

"You
made it, back," Mrs. Andresen said as she sat behind my desk.

She
didn't even stand up.

"How
many years has it been?" she asked.

"Since
like forever," I said.

"I
think you owe this man an apology," she said.

I looked
over at my filing cabinet.

"How
are you feeling?" the doctor said.

I
struggled inside the straitjacket.

"This
is kidnapping," I said.

"This
is justice," she said.

"You
stole my money," he said.

"And
you killed five people getting here," she said lighting up a cigarette.

"What
did you expect," I said.

"And
it wasn't always easy clearing the path to let you back. You should thank
me," she said.

"What?"

"You
really don't think that it was that easy to evade the police, do you? Of
course, scrambling the wires of communication, never mind erasing your records,
helped."

"What
are you talking about?"

"That
we wanted you back," she said. "Don't you see? It was planned from
the very beginning. We put you in there because we had to change things about
you a bit, and we got you back out again. Voila!"

"You're
insane," I said.

She
stood up.

"And
you are a mass murderer."

#

"We're
restoring a balance of nature," she said. "When one of us lands here,
one of you has to disappear. It's not very nice were we come from, but then
again, that depends on your point of view. And we like it here. So we're
staying.

"There's
so much culture on this planet," she went on, "so much resentment and
hate on a scale never dreamed of where we come from. Here you have wine and
war, love and hate on a global scale. There's just so much... tension all the
time. On this planet you can be a dictator and get away with causing untold
misery. Or make millions for being a brainless idiot as long as you look good
and smile a lot at a camera. Brilliant!"

"We
don't have anything like that back home," the doctor said lighting his
pipe. "No no, it's perfect utopia. No disease or dysfunction, nothing
needing to be put right because there's never anything that goes wrong. You
will just hate it there. I know you will. And if you don't die of boredom first
you'll end up cutting your throat instead. That's why we left, and why we're
sending you there.

"You
should have destroyed that letter," Mrs. Andresen said. "If you had,
you wouldn't be in the mess you're in now. Temptation is the first link in the
chain. The letter was a vector, you see, and burning it would have destroyed
the monoclonal antibodies impregnated into the paper, tiny little signals that
bored right through your skin every time you touched it. But keeping let us
know that we were onto the right type, someone who is easy to manipulate, who
is weak and needy all at the same time. You were perfect.

"It
was easy to track you after that. Of course, you were also being changed by it,
slowly being infected and transformed. But you just had to keep it though, didn't
you, Sean? Like a drug."

"And
all because of a photograph," the doctor said. "And by the way, it
was fun seeing the look in your face every time those electric shocks went
through you head. I almost couldn't stop myself from flicking the switch one
time too many."

#

I was
loaded into the back of a van, dumped on the floor so I could feel every bump
on the way. It was hours before it stopped and the doors opened.

It was
night and the air was freezing. The starlight was pretty clear, as were the
shadows and silhouettes, like that arm flying down, the fist on the end of it
around the syringe, stabbing it into my thigh.

It felt
like my muscles were being torn apart when the plunger was hammered home.

After
that they grabbed my feet and dragged me out into the open, smashing my head on
the ground.

I was
hauled to my feet, and there, between these tiny little hills, was that bubble
of light again. Only this time I got a good look of what was inside it. The
whole thing looked like it was made out of thick green glass.

The
craft tilted as it hovered above the ground. Then he stepped around the side of
it and I saw him.

Mrs.
Andresen lit a cigarette and smiled.

"Orthon!"
she called holding out her hand, "this is Sean. Sean, this is Orthon. Sean
used to be a human."

Orthon
bowed to her and I could see that he had never aged in sixty plus years. He
kissed Andresen's hand.

After
that they tore my clothes off and stuffed me into a shiny one piece suit
complete with ox-blood colored shoes, the likes of which you have never seen,
as I watched Orthon changing before my very eyes, even as he was lifting the
camera telling me to smile.

"A
Box Brownie," he said, "the same as the original."

He held
up a picture.

"This
is one we took earlier," he said.

I looked
at it.

I was
twenty four, with a high forehead and extended jaw line. I wouldn't have looked
out of place walking down the street, on their planet anyway.

"Interplanetary
trafficking," Mrs. Andresen said. "Don't you just love it?" she
squealed scrunching up her nose in delight.

They
were just about to hustle me onboard when she called out, "Wait!" as
she if she'd remembered something important at the very last minute.

She
opened her black patent purse and took something out.

Skipping
over to me, she pealed the paper backing off a red No Smoking decal that she'd
extracted from purse, slapped it on my right shoulder and patted it down a few
times to make sure it stuck.

"Welcome
to the No Fun Zone," she said scrunching up her nose at me again before
skipping back over to Orthon.

#

They
strapped me down inside the craft.

"There
can be a bit of a jolt when it takes off," she said.

And I
couldn't care less anyway seeing I was so drugged. I didn't even realize where
I was until I looked out one of the portholes and saw Mrs. Andresen waving,
Orthon by her side

Funny
thing was he almost looked like the guy in the picture in the forged passport I
had used.

Still,
some people would pay a high price to experience this kind of shit, I thought
as everything went dark.

Then
there was nothing but stars and streaks of light outside.

But what
good is money when you're stuck in utopia and you can have anything you want
without needing to pay for it?

Then I
began to wonder about how long the boredom would take to set in, how long
before I didn't even want to move, to walk, how long it would take before I was
praying for a war or a famine to hit for excitement.

How long
would it take me to forget how good it was to be part of a species that was
constantly pushing itself towards the edge of destruction?

How long
it would take for the seduction of peace to overwhelm me and forget that I used
to be human.