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X:\>IN MEDIAS RES\BY MATT MONGRAIN\
1:\>GREY\
He woke to find himself staring up at an endless
never-changing wall of grey. Here and there he picked out slipses of faint,
dying light peeking through,, but these solemn rays of hope were quickly drowned
out by the overwhelming grey. The greyness rolled on and on, never ceasing,
never taking a stop to think or breathe, but still it seemed alive, and that
life offended him as he drifted back into melancholy waves of thought. The chill
pierced him like an arrow before he could fall into his trance, though; his back
was cold, deadly cold, and he felt the wretched bumps of screws and nails
burrowing themselves into his flesh. He felt no pain, and he decided still not
to move; if he did, he would be thrust once more into the reality of life, and
that world was a harsh and painful place. His hurt eased the ache.
Endless grey, rolling on and on.
His mind was wracked by vicious bipolarity, duality; two
beings wrapped into one soul, but the total was so much less than the sum of its
parts. The one half of his mind told him to stand up and speak to her; the
other, more powerful one knew he was better off lying there, comfortable in
thought, unaware.
The grey shrunk and expanded, evenloped him entirely,
embraced him with a frigid, metallic touch. It seemed to be on all sides now;
now and again it would fade almost to the point of dissapearing, then reappear
complete once more. The pain subsided.
COME TO ME
Intangible was the sky. Ever looming above, a bearer of grave
warning present in the whispering of the wind. The sun had not shown his bright
face for days. He seemed to be afraid of the grey that had supplanted him, and
refused to fight back.
It began to rain again, and the giant droplets, like tears of
some angry God, thudded dully against his shirt. He knew he was getting wet, but
could not feel it, so he opted again to still not move. The tears smashed upon
him, the fabric of his dark clothing clinging to the steel. Still the grey was
omnipresent; inside each of the tears was a little bit of grey, its children,
thrusting their dullness upon the world. Their banality irritated him, and he
inwardly cursed them for it. He longed to dissapear, be like the water falling.
The effluent, melting cries of a voice that he recognized but
was not familiar. As if the ocean moaned with writhing ecstasy and passing a
final breath all at the same time. Duality. Balance. Irony... he was certain he
knew the voice, but the somber grey seemed to swallow the cries entirely.
FLASH
A field, bright, infinite and green. Birds chirp overhead.
The children run gaily through the grass, every blade of the plant bending to
accomodate their passage. Perfection... but like any perfection, this one was
brief. The sky cracks open in an orgy of reds and blacks, the clouds tear to
shreds, leaving only pieces that fall to the earth and shatter. The ground
splits open in a flash of fiery crimson, and the children shriek in terror as
they fall into the burning crevasse. A man emerges from the flames, tall,
slender and all in black, and he laughs at the children, snaps his fingers, and
all instanly transforms back into the all-consuming grey.
He blinked and turned over on his front to stare at the silvery tone of the
iron. It was new, but already beginning to rust - he could smell the ferrous
oxide, could feel its rot permeating his skin. He turned back around to face the
grey again.
He felt something prod his side, and not too gently. A harsh
call to awake a dreamer who only wished it was all a dream. He stirred and sat
up with difficulty, pushing against the grey, but he sat up all the same, with
his hands to his sides, pressed against the wet, cold metal. It was still
raining, and his black hair clung to his face like the hands of a climber who's
lost his grip.
"Beautiful day, isn't it?" he said in a clear, unaccented
voice, devoid altogether of sarcasm. He looked up at his waker to see a tall,
slender woman wearing a green raincoat, with the hood pulled on. Through the
hood he saw short, dark hair with red tips, and bright blue eyes.
He turned to look at the sea. He was sitting on the stern of
the SS Fernandez, an American shipping vessel en route to the British port of
Liverpool, carrying a cargo of computer parts manufactured in the modern-day
cash-cow of Silicon Valley. The ship was more or less brand new, but straight
days of rain and grey skies since departure had tarnished the perfect metal. He
still wasn't altogether sure he could piece together the series of events
leading to his boarding the ship, but there he was all the same. He turned back
again to face her.
"You know it's raining, right?" she asked. Her voice was
nearly drowned out by the roar of the sheets of rain colliding with the ship and
the gentle purr of the engine.
"Yeah," he responded nonchalantly, and shifted uncomfortably,
tugged at his soaked shirt. She looked puzzled, and raised an eyebrow.
"Don't you want to go in? There's a pot of coffee brewing and
towels for you," she said.
"What's wrong with outside?"
"You mean other than the fact that it's raining?"
"Yeah."
"Well, it's terribly cold - terribly cold..." she replied,
shivering.
"I don't mind. The rain is a refreshing change."
"It's been raining for a few straight days."
Silence. Tension flew thick like a cloud of insects between
them, annoying but fragile. As a sheet of ice covering a lake, it was present,
but shaterrable with but a single word.
"What was your name again?" she asked, easing the roar.
"I don't think I have a name, and if I do, I can't remember
it."
"Well, you need a name. How else will people call to you?"
The rain stopped falling and hung limp in the air for a
second, defeated, and in the same instant began to fall again.
"Then why don't you give me a name?"
"Fine then. I think I'll call you... Simon. I've always liked
that name."
"Then Simon it is, for the time being," said Simon.
"Alright," she says, pleased. "I'm Theresa."
There was a wordless exchange of thoughts - glances were
given that said more than all the volumes of human history combined. Simon
somehow knew he had found a friendly spirit in theresa.
The rain stopped, and the sun came out, making the ocean glint with the beauty
of a sea of shattered diamonds.
...
Simon wiped a bead of water off his forehead and watched as
it congealed into a tiny, perfect sphere in the palm of his hand. Where, he
wondered, had the water contained within the tiny bead been throughout its
existence? On a microscopic level you can picture the millions of distinct
molecules, made of protons and neutrons packed densely within. In all
likeliness, this water had seen more than any human could ever hope to see. It
was the seat on the chest of the very first humanoid australopithecus that
roamed and learned to hunt in Australia; it was the the Nile river at the height
of the Egyptian empire; it was the blood shed by the Romans as they nailed Jesus
Christ to the cross. It was all these things at once, and thousands of things
more, but Simon would never know it. After briefly considering its chemical
composition and impurities, he tossed it back into the shrieking sea, that has
experienced more than all of humanity combined, through the entirety of its
existence, merely just a blip on the immense span of time.
Infinity is perhaps the strangest concept the human race has
ever thought up. Some of its implications are stranger still. Imagine, for an
instant, an infinite space. At any given point in the space, there is an
infinite distance on every side of it. Not only does this mean that infinity is
perfectly spherical, it also means that any given point in the space is its
center, and so every single point in the space is at the exact same place. So
infinity is both something larger than we can imagine, and present in the
smallest of things. The ship Simon is on is infinite in size; otherwise it could
not exist.
...
The Fernandez's lounge was comfortable, especially for a
shipping vessel. It was furnished with red felt armchairs (a few rows of three
each), a table covered with a stack of now-ancient magazines and a television
(which Simon had found so odd, given the lack of any signals to display, until
he found a drawer underneath to be full of cheap pornography and Walt Disney
animated films. The walls and floor were the same dull metallic grey that formed
the rest of the ship, and posters of pop icons were posted to the walls. That's
where Simon now sat. He was reading a book about general relativity and threw it
to the table in disgust. It made a dull thud that wed with the sound of a roach
being crushed. Theresa, who'd been surveilling the scene, leaned against one of
the room's two opposing doorframes, was curious.
"Why'd you do that?" she asked innocently.
"Because," said he, "it's all false."
"How?"
"That's not the way things work."
Before Theresa had the change to reply, Simon left the room
with his quick pace. She didn't stir from where she was, only observed Simon as
he walked. His shoulder-length raven hair flowed sensually as he walked, and his
tall and thin frame made him appear more threatening than he was. His black,
buttoned shirt was tucked into equally black pants. Theresa had a very keen
fashion sense, and had pointed out thingsin the store windows of Toronto, before
they left for New York, things that would surely have suited and flattered him.
He refused, though, to wear anything but whites and blacks, and he only wore
them in three combinations - all white, all black, or black pants with a white
shirt. While simple, his dress made his skin seem less pale than the colour it
was, and made his green eyes leap out of their sockets with vibrance. More
interesting than anything else, though, was the total lack of marks on his body.
Not one freckle, wart, or beauty spot was to blemish his perfectly white skin.
His personality had quirks, too - he seemed to be suffering from amnesia. He
couldn't remember anything past waking up fully clothed in downtown Toronto. He
was, for all intents and purposes, a total enigma. Only one shred of memory
remained - that he was to go to London at any cost.
...
It was only the fourth day of the 10-day voyage, and Theresa
was already eager to reach solid ground. She never was much of a boat person -
as a child she was seasick on her father's motorboat, and this was the first
time since that she'd been on the ocean. Her adult insides seemed to be handling
it better this time around, though. The rain was very intermittent, and the
journey very uneventful. Late the ninth day she caught sight of a far-off
England, while Simon slept. The next day they were docking at Liverpool.