Twisted Perspective

[Montague 0]

A spear of white hot energy shot from the computer’s processing core at the instant that engineering shut it down. Capacitors discharged with mechanical precision each letting loose an arc of dangerous voltage, combined, forming a single charged stream of electrons seeking release. In the low pressure of the core room, the beam struck flesh, tore through the skin, muscles and found its way to the veins and nerves where it dissipated into the deck.

 

More spent than the capacitors that triggered this event, Ens Lazarus Montague collapsed, laser welder in hand to the cold deck below.

 

Darkness surrounded him, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, isolated, a wayward soul, drifting among the sands of time. Seconds turned to minutes as time seemed to lengthen and turn to whorls and eddies of eternities captured in a single moment of amber clarity. Here there was nothing, only time and thought.

 

Eyes closed, darkness his medium, hearing but faint voices in the distance, sounding like sirens, pillars of light and beauty, captured without the eyes of the body, but those of the soul, each tone, glittered, multifaceted, hung like a jewel and was whisked away, becoming one with the darkness once more.

 

Eyes closed, warmth, seeping through the skin, trickling in eddies and rivers, moving to and fro across his body, grounding him to reality in a base and primal way. Pressure, easing its way through, through the mists of obscurity settling along his back, edged its way through his limbs. Every texture, from the sheets to his uniform, was a universe in itself.

 

Eyes opening, shafts of wondrous light shining through the slivers left between his eyelids. Each shaft different, containing everything in and of them selves yet being contained by others akin to it. Infinite complexity, seeing all but Seeing nothing, his eyes opened and beheld a beauty unparalleled in all his life. Language nothing more than a fevered dream, a single word escaped his lips, drowned by the flurry of activity surrounding him.

 

Eyes closing, senses dimming, once more, returning to the state of limbo from whence he came, a second, an eternity its whorls and eddies a fingerprint in his mind.

 

One second, a lifetime, containing everything, yet nothing. A moment, crystallized, forever etched into the fabric of time.

 

Darkness his medium, his mind, concocting new patterns, processing the input slowly, methodically, storing, examining, computing, contemplating this nameless unit of time. Entropy is the bane of existence.

 

Rustling surrounded them, the trees swayed like metronome, each moving at its own regular tempo. The shuttle had left, depositing them at the border, leaving no instructions, no objectives. The wind stopped suddenly, making thw world eerily quiet, the trees became rigid once more, not a single animal could be heard even in the silence that pervaded every part of their existence. A twig snapped. The sound of whispered conversations filtered through the forest under story. A glint of metal in each one’s hand.

 

Running. Moving. Leaves and twigs crushed as the two of them fled, the men, unusually silent, began their pursuit, stalking their prey, moving stealthily through the trees. Running. Moving.

 

A brief respite among the two, two flashes, and darkness. Once more, ensconced by a shroud of darkness, seeing nothing feeling everything through a velvet curtain.

 

Light. Flooding from every side, the smell of rotting wood and lavender, a thin blanket on the ground under him, clothed no longer in his uniform, a thin fabric, flowing over his frame. Turning his head, he sees his counterpart, dressed similarly just stirring, recovering from what happened in the forest.

 

Yelling, piercing his ears, rousing his partner, rousing a village. Sounds of movement emanating from each hut, as people prepared for the day ahead and the issues at hand.

 

A white hot stone in the sky lighting the world, casting everything into sharp contrast, it hung high in the sky, beating harshly upon the two of them.

 

They stood up, lucid, absorbing the world through their eyes. Out of place, they struggled to understand, there was no metal, not brick, or cement to be seen. Branches and leaves the material dominant. Their uniforms, on a rock beside them, drying, blood spatter evident on the larger of the two.

 

The hunters emerged, their small hut closest to them, a cross marked their roof, blue rags waving in the breeze. Their guns in hand, they approached the pair. In an obscure language, they yelled. Gesticulating wildly, they led the pair, confused, to a pot simmering on a smoldering fire. Soup or laundry. They were brought a bowl and through some gestures, they dipped it into the pot. Laundry or soup? They drank.

 

Running. The hunters on their trail, they hid in a hut. Its graceful vault concealed everything inside, there was no glass, no windows. Candles, scores of them lined the center of the hut. Three guns on the walls. Primitive, projectile weapons, feathery darts stacked neatly in a box..

 

A bang, echoing throughout the hut. The pair grasped the guns, both facing the door, another bang. Facing each other, their eyes staring into the other’s their faces drifted closer. Gazing into the Doctor’s eyes, Lazarus leaned forward and…

 

Woke up.