Thing One: Science Fiction (for NS)

Black Box.

A Micro Short Story by Sean McGovern

For Nathaniel Swartz.

“Toren – check your spike,” the voice said.  It was female, and seemed live, by Toren was in that in-between state where his mind was blanking.  “I’m showing that the sync is incomplete.  Are you sensing it?”

“I can’t feel anything,” he said.  You bitch, he added, and hoped that the sync is incomplete.

I CANNOT FEEL ANYTHING, the speaker blurted.

“Yeah, there’s a disconnect,” he said.

YES THERE IS A DISCONNECTION.

Oh, fuck off, he thought.  His mind swam, felt the world rising as he fell, the notion that he was plummeting down, as though he was falling asleep, directly into a dream.  That was the way of it, equally familiar and alien, known only in the way that dreams were.  If he dreamed.  Truth to tell, he could no longer remember anything he saw during his sleep cycles beyond the neon and halogen glow of the grid.  The glow currently denied him by – well, by whatever wasn’t clicking.  “Can you send a tech?”

CAN YOU SEND A TECHNICIAN? The speaker blurted.

The voice again: “Acknowledgement of your request, pulse sent and technician in route.”  He was glad that the voice did not give him a time estimate.  It was better to just weightlessly plummet – closer to the sensations he would soon be feeling once all of the waiting was over.  Once he was in the sky.  But the sync’s incompleteness was becoming irritating – he could feel his skin around the induction nodes, and knew that they were red around the metal and plastic that let the spikes enter ports.  But he couldn’t move, couldn’t scratch the red skin.  He knows it’s for the best, and at least the straps weren’t biting into his arms, legs, chest, and hips.  He was aware of the one on his head, crossing his brow and holding it fast to the padding.  “Toren, there will be pain.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Toren said.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, the speaker said.  It then roared, breaking into static and fractions of sounds.  It gibbered, raged, and screamed, the noise reaching beyond inhuman pitches and into the outright demonic.  And then it ended.  TESTING, the speaker said.

“Sync showing within acceptable parameters – exact center.  Good morning Toren, you are clear to enter flight AA dash 4430, en route from Boston.”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, the speaker said.

The air was a shock after the amniotic fluid, bur he was still scrapped smooth, and felt every molecule of chill on his frame.  And the air and fluid were cold, there was no mistaking that, both cold in the same way, seeping into his bones.  It ran through the curves and contours.  And like that, Toren came aware.

“This is Captain Allen.  Tower do we have connection?”

The woman’s voice crackled through him.  “Captain Allen, this is the tower.  We have unity.  David Toren is with you.  Mr. Toren?”

AGREEMENT.  WE HAVE UNITY.  GREETINGS CAPTAIN ALLEN.

The captain’s voice was distantly present, like a voice in the back of his mind.  “Greetings Mr. Toren.  How is the sync strength?”

SYNC IS AT NINETY-FIVE PERCENT.  THERE IS A SLOW LEAK WITHIN OUR FOURTH ENGINE THAT WILL NEED REPAIR UPON ARRIVAL.

“Any danger to this flight,” the captain/thought asked.

NEGATIVE.

Aware.  That was the proper word for it.  The plane was a giant eye, a giant ear, a giant bone.  He knew all of it, as surely as he knew his flesh body floating back in the amniotic tube being watched over within the tower.  His mind accepted it all.  His seeing in three hundred and sixty degrees, and that eye buffeted by the fierce winds, and hearing the blood and electricity in his flesh body, and the oils and electricity of this new one roaring over the outside world in a quiet hum and slosh.  He felt the leak like a bug bite on his left hand.  But all of that was far away – and he couldn’t have cared less if he tried.

Below him was the city, its lights glowing in haphazard grids.  He liked these flights, this time of year.  Early autumn was truly the best time to be one with the planes – no real travel heavy holidays until the end, no real vacation rushes packing the lanes so that, in addition to the always present threat of machine failure, there was also the chance (no matter how remote) that the pilot, co-pilot, navigator, their systems, and the tower, and the harnessed tower acting as the plane would miss seeing the other large aircraft and crash.

But that wasn’t as big a concern.  Not now.  He felt the cold air against his eyes, ears, skin.

The runway was a solid strip of darkness pockmarked by carefully spaced lights.  That was probably the worst part of the landing.  Seeing all of the tiny cracks and fissures in the cement as the wheels that were his eyes, his skin, came and pressed down during the landing.

He had heard the pilots say that there was nothing quite like flying.  Toren knew that that, for them, was utter bullshit.  They might as well have been driving a car.  This, this was flying, actually flying.  The machine was his body, the combustion, the electricity, the oils – this all was him, just as surely as…as surely as…

Somewhere far off he whispered, “my hand is bleeding,” and he knew it wasn’t true.  The flesh body was fine.  The flesh body was safe.  The flesh body was.  It was.  It.  He felt the ports, then, the spikes seeming to expand within, and clamping down on the human portions within the tubes.

Oh for fuck’s sake, his mind roared, but it clamped down on the mental words, keeping them from the machine, from its voice.  But he wanted to scream, the connection’s correction of his thoughts of two separate entities was somehow worse than the actual connecting.  Then he roared, and his mind roared back my hand is bleeding! They felt…weak.  They? Yes, they.  Plural.  His hand and his elbow.  No.

THERE IS A COMPLICATION. The machine voice said, while Toren was muttering, “Aw, shit.”  LEAK HAS SPREAD TO ENGINE THREE.  No, his flesh thoughts said, not spread.  It couldn’t be, the wiring was all wrong.  “My left arm is dying,” his flesh voice said, the fluid moving from his lungs to join the rest within the chamber.  ENGINE FOUR IS NOW CRITICAL.

He heard the captain’s terse voice but understood none of the words.  He could feel his hand growing heavy, as though the veins within were leaking.  He could feel it swelling, rotting.  No, no, it’s not, it is not.  MY FUCKING HAND!  And then the ports came alive again, pain drilling into his spine, his ribs, his neck.

ENGINE FOUR IS IN DANGER OF FIRE.  CORRECTION.  ENGINE FOUR IS EXPERINCING FIRE.

The captain’s voice was screaming, trying to get the fuel to stop pumping, but all that Toren knew was the pain engine strapped to his body, trying to get him back to the proper parameters for the sync, punishing him for his lack of focus by causing him to drift further.  His body went ridged, arms and legs locked, spine pulled so straight he felt sure it would finally snap.  He was suddenly very aware of his left elbow growing warm, just before pain exploded within the joint.

The spikes within the ports lanced in once more, but Toren was trying to look to his left arm, the screaming of the pilots and the tower now distant echoes.  He knew it would be missing, that everything from the elbow down had just been ripped violently away, as his heart pumped fire through his flesh body and the amniotic fluid reverberated with his screams.

ERROR.  ERROR.  ERROR.  ENGINE THREE AND FOUR ARE NOW OFFLINE.

               The spikes were withdrawing, but Toren was still one with the plane, lurching with it as the world began to spin.  He felt himself rising up in the fluid as he came through clouds to stare at the lights of the runway rising to meet him, nothing but a deeper darkness with its blinding, swirling lights.  Weightless, he plummeted down, he voices as hands tugged within his brain, trying to get him to rise and glide, to at least level out, screaming about their parents and passengers and how they didn’t want to die and he didn’t either but he needed both arms to fly.  That was how planes worked, for Christ sake that was how planes worked, and there he was, lacking that part, that arm that would make him whole, that would get him back to flight and shut up that damned pilots - idon’twanttodieidon’twanttodieidon’twanttodie – but the ground was coming up and the spike were still there.  He knew it.  They had dug too deeply into the human parts of the ports.  He felt them, whirling quickly, almost frantically, within him.  Trying to disengage, to get him out of the plane by getting out of him.  And from this height, just now, he couldn’t make out the cracks in the runway.