Monday 29 June 2009

A Short Story: "The Big Pang Theory"

Like I told them, and keep telling them, it was all about the ‘pang’. It was like being whacked across the face with a shovel; or levelled with a beautifully, brutally-appointed southpaw punch. I could feel the heat of exploding blood on my neck, the cold of the night air, the crunch of bone as my face collapsed under a heavy weight. I smelled the terrible scraping of rubber on scorched ground, and I heard the ‘pang’. I felt a brief shudder of crushing disappointment, regret and fear that lasted perhaps a second... no longer. I thought about saying “Oh God!” but I didn’t get the time.

And after that? Nothing. Before that? Nothing. That’s all I can remember. The pang.

I keep hearing that my recollections, hallucinations, whatever you want to call them, are important and that I should do my best to remember as much as I possibly can. And I do try. But as time rollson, even the memory of that ‘pang’ event is growing nebulous. I sometimes experience a very faint sense that there must be more; like I used to have another important memory which I’ve since lost. I don’t think I’ll get it back, anyway, if it was ever there.

Does it have anything to do with the Earthists? Doubt it. Like everybody, I’ve seen the shadowy figures that sometimes walk, confused and directionless, among us. I’ve heard all the wacky stories and I’m up to speed with all the wild theories. I’ve read the Murdoch Files and I guess his fantastic thinking could carry some weight. Maybe some of us did come from another realm or dimension? Maybe it does have something to do with the Earthists, whoever or whatever they are? Maybe there is something ‘out there’? And maybe it’s connected to everything that is here in some weird and wonderful fashion?

I guess we’ll never know for sure. But I do know that my ‘pang’ experience is causing some considerable excitement. Nitzer, the leader of my research and interrogation team, reckons the memory I have of feeling blood on my neck is important. He thinks that because I felt the blood during the ‘pang’ but not after it, it could signify that I was once ‘alive’ – in the sense that Murdoch believes everybody was ‘alive’ in another place or dimension or something before arriving here. Imagine that! How could anybody have been somewhere else before coming here? Surely everyone has just always been here?

A lot of Murdoch’s claims are too barmy to take seriously, of course, and I don’t buy this image that everyone seems to have of him as some great visionary. But when I first heard about his theory of the ‘famell’ – that people in this other dimension of his are borne of other people and remain connected to them through some kind of brain glue – I had to stop and think. I haven’t told Nitzer this, but I once had some kind of vision in my brain that might have something to do
with all that. In this hallucination I was sat on the top of some wooden steps, looking out onto a small garden. I could see a silver-grey ball of liquid spinning slowly above the horizon like a
clumsy sun, with clear elastic strands of gooey stuff stretching from its circumference out to a spot at the back of everybody’s head. There were thousands of people, all being fed from this ball of sticky stuff and all sending sticky stuff back up to the great big ball. It was a snapshot of a work in progress, I think, some kind of ongoing process. It looked like a giant harvest. Anyway, the point is everybody was connected by glue and I wonder if Murdoch’s ‘famell’ stuff has anything to do with that?

But, hey, who cares right? I for one am in no rush to make contact with the miserable Earthists! They seem so dour and unhappy. Maybe they should stick to their own funny dimension – or wherever it is they come from – and stop coming to us?

I remember watching a small, white Earthist drift in and out of my dorm the other week. He was shimmering in and out of view all the timeso I couldn’t get a proper look at his face. Of course, I didn’t try to open communication with him - it’s just not fair on the poor creatures. His words of gibberish flashed briefly into my head, though, as Earthist words frequently do.

This is what he said: “Oh, I miss you so much!”

Anybody have any clue what that might mean? Tears were streaming down his face, the poor thing. Seriously, now. Who’d want to be an Earthist?

1 comment: