Dangling Chad

I came to in the calm blue light. It was all my eyes could make out. They were heavy and burning and hard to focus. Every part of my body said sleep, but that little voice, that little judge of right and wrong overruled the request. There was that sound again. I thought I had imagined it and now it dawned on me, it had never gone away. The sound was constant. It was like the low, dull swooshing sound that a car makes as it drives along a smooth road. It's that sound that puts you to sleep on a long trip.

Where the hell am I? That little voice started. My brain felt as though it had been caught with its pants down. Am I Standing? I am. I had been standing this entire time. This was very confusing for I was sure I had been unconscious. Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh... The sound lulled. In my mind I saw a man-was it me? It was, I thought, but when? I had hair-short and well groomed. A woman was there-my wife? She was telling me I had soft skin.

Swoosh, swoosh...I tried to touch my hair, but even the air was heavy. Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh... I would love to sleep, I thought, I love to sleep. The lulling sound persisted. It distracted and transported me. The thoughts nearly left me as my eyes blinked and focused on what appeared to be a large pyramid.

I squinted at the structure a couple times and tried to make sense of what I was seeing. As my eyes cleared, it became apparent that this was a city comprised of pyramids by the thousands. It was like no city I had ever seen. To add to my confusion a massive blue sun blazed its crown over the horizon. The blue light seemed to sink into the metallic surface of the pyramids.

Damn it, I need to stop drinking. Swoosh, swoosh. Why the hell is everything blue? I couldn't seem to make sense of anything. Am I moving? That eerie kind of feeling ran helter-skelter on my spine. I was moving. I was getting closer to the pyramid that stood in front of what I realized now was my path. The blue sun burned full in the sky. The heat waves rolled across the pyramids like blue waves of water. I was still cool. I was still - still?

Why do I keep getting distracted? I took a look around me more carefully and found that I was in some sort of glass tube. The blazing blue mass above me sent a glare off the pane. It scorched my retinas and for a moment, even with my eyes closed, it was all I could see. Shit! Frustration was really kicking at my door and when my eyes had cleared again I came to a stop. I was moving?

I stood there for a moment in the shadow of a structure that seemed to pierce the clouds. Being a short man, I was accustomed to things making me feel short, but this building made me feel granular. There was a need to touch the pyramid that I can't describe. My arm stretched out in an awkward kind of slow motion while my hand unfolded to meet the smooth metal surface.

As my fingers made the touch, the hatch hissed open. I stepped in. The hatch zipped closed. I stood there, in the dimly lit room wondering, waiting, and then it began ascending. As I rose, the blue light appeared again. There was a clear glass window in the rear of this disturbing elevator. I peered out and saw the tube, seeming to stretch for miles. It wound its way through hundreds of pyramids until it left the city. It stretched until it went to a point and punctured the horizon. Where the hell is this place? The little voice whispered.

With a glance down I noticed someone else in the tube. He glided along motionless. I wanted to yell wake up, but then I noticed another and then another and another. I concentrated my focus on the tube and for as far as my eyes could perceive there were people, hundreds of people all drifting effortlessly through the tube. Shoot the tube, I thought. The little voice nearly laughed, but it was too close to tears for that.

It smells like hospital in here, I thought while I watched them come one after another. Soon I was too high. The tube became a thread and all I was left with was that smell, faint yet annoying. I tried to block it out, but every breath took it back in. That smell of sanitizing chemicals and incontinent old people mingled together. I had smelled it before. Was it grandma's nursing home?

The elevator seemed to move slowly as I watched the sun. That enormous blue star sank like a tanker set ablaze on the ocean. As the stern of that mighty vessel went below the surface, the sky went from purple to black to starlit. My ship?

My mind seemed to stutter. I was the captain of a space cruiser, but when? The elevator light had come on like a dome light when the space went dark. It was a truer light and for the first time since I had gained consciousness, the colors presented themselves. This was mildly calming, but the smell still lingered.

"You're old," a voice muttered.

"Shit!" My heart fell into my stomach and almost made me vomit. I instinctively whirled around and faced the voice.

"I'm sorry if I startled you. Are you all right?"

"Yeah, yeah," shit, shit, the little voice continued. I was really unnerved by this and what really frightened me was the thought that he had been with me this entire time and I hadn't noticed him.

"Are you sure you're O.K.? You seem a bit confused?"

"I'm fine," I said with a deep breath. It was a lie of course. I was confused as hell. "What do you mean I'm old anyway? You look like you're in your fifties."

"Fifties?" he laughed, "I'm only five."

Only five, Is this guy human? The little voice wondered.

"I've heard that you're in your twenties. Is that true?"

I looked at him and thought for a moment. How old was I? I rubbed my balding head for a moment and said. "I think I'm forty-two."

"If you're forty-two, then that explains it." The man looked up above the hatch as a light came on and the elevator came to a stop.

"What do you mean by that?" I asked, but the hatch hissed open and the man stepped out. Ignorance had me follow him and as I stepped out I saw that there were hundreds of people all calmly standing in an enormous line. The line wound back and forth like those at an amusement park. I fell in behind the stranger in the elevator.

I tried again to make sense of my situation. I noticed that every time someone went into the room at the end of the line a very young person would come out soon after. There was something not right about the young people, though. They appeared young, but carried themselves quite maturely. I began to panic as one after another went in and never returned. Jesus, the little voice said. It's the aliens. They're using these people for some kind of experiment. Maybe we're food for the little people?

The smell seemed to finally over take my senses, and when it fused with my madness, my stomach emptied all its contents on the floor. My eyes watered furiously as I righted myself and wiped my face with my hand. I felt quite the pilgarlic as a great number of people started laughing and asking if I was all right. The room seemed to close in on me, constricting like a great python. I had to get the hell away, so I ran.

I ran through the jeering mass. I ran. I felt hands trying to stop me, but I wasn't going to die like those fools. Those brainwashed fools. I ran for the only open door I could find. The door took me into a long hall that stretched until it met a stair well. I took it and made my flight down without ever looking back.

When I reached the ground floor I collapsed in front of a large hatch. Above the hatch was a dusty-neon sign that read EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. My body ached as I gathered my strength and stood up. There was no telling what was beyond that door, but I had to get the hell out of here. I closed my eyes and sucked in the stale air. It was obvious that there had been no life down here for a while. I lifted my hand and reached for the hatch, jumping back when a high-pitched alarm went off. I would be caught for sure now I panicked, never thinking the hatch would open, but it let out a groan, paused and slid to the side.

A wave of heat rushed in as if I had somehow opened a black hole and allowed it to start sucking in all the world. I put my hand to my face and stepped outside. The heat stayed. It was thick and made it hard to breathe. I wanted to run, but I was afraid of passing out. Something struck me as odd anyway. No one seemed to be following me. In fact, there didn't seem to be anyone outside at all. In this enormous city there was not a soul.

I kicked a piece of gravel as I walked along the sidewalk. The cement was blue. Blue with the light of the rising star, black and blue and cracked and crumbling everywhere. "It just doesn't make sense," The little voice uttered. Up the road I could see large cracks that raced across the entire length of the road. There were out-croppings of stone and chunks of pavement lying overturned where they'd fallen.

I reached the corner of the street and sat down on the curb. "Where the hell am I?" The tears finally came. I broke down and cradled my face in my knees. The sun rose. The heat rose. Scorching blue rays that needled through my body. I turned my face away and noticed the street sign. It read, Broadway and Seventh Avenue, Forty-Second Street and Forty-Third Street. "Broadway and Seventh?" I mumbled allowed. Bewildered, I looked out across the street. The massive sun glared around the pyramid that stood there as if the building were causing an eclipse. On the building was a sign: One Times Square.

Off balanced, I looked up. I let my eyes follow that grand pyramid to the tip where the point reached toward heaven and the new-years ball had fallen. It fell and rested in wait for the next year. It fell-"I'm-I'm in Times Square?" and then the world went black.

I came to in the calm blue light. My wife, Barb, was there reassuring me that everything was going to be O.K and that mistakes like this weren't supposed to happen in 3003. From the window of my hospital room I could see the sun setting again. The doctor was talking to me about my condition. I was suffering from dementia due to an accident. I had been recycled in a Degenerator that had a bad link-up. He said luckily my DNA sequence was still on file and they were able to reprocess me and reduce my body age to that of a seven year old once again.

I just kept staring at the sun, the sun that was going to nova, the sun that had already swallowed Venus and Mercury. That miserable blue mass that had pulled the Earth towards it, causing us to spin around it every few hours, causing it to have massive earthquakes as the core heated and the plates shifted. It made us age faster until some genius invented the Degenerator.

"Don't worry, Chad, you're going to live forever. I promise." With a smile, the doctor made his last note on my chart and slid the data-bit into the frame. "I'll check on you in a couple of hours, so for now just try and get some rest." With that he left the room and closed the door behind him. I just stared out the window. I stared as the sun purpled and Barb chattered. I just stared, "Yeah-Great-Forever."