Songs after midnight

Ok folks,
this one is a bit acid trippy so please bear with it. It's based on a dream I had in mid-November and I brushed it up and pieced it together a couple of weeks ago. Being a good deal more linear in plot than the average dream I thought it was worth writing down no matter how weird, so here you have it:

Songs after midnight

 

Some men have dreams too big to dream, desires too big to chase, ideas too wild to fulfil. But it’s a funny quirk of human nature, this will to push the boundaries of what’s accepted as the limits of what’s possible. There are those who dare to dream and have the drive to make that dream a reality. Seven crew members of a space shuttle believed just that; they asked the question, what lies in the great beyond? How do we reach it? How do we make use of it? What seeds of wild possibility can this plant for the future of mankind? The answer they came away with was not the answer to those questions but to another one entirely.

It happened in the cold depths of January, in an America filled to bursting with such expectation and wonder. Challenger was to be the vessel that would take mankind into a new world, to take it on and win. The astronauts had trained for many years, and friends and family waited with tears and trembling goodbyes as Challenger took them up and with an almighty roar, into the vast unknown on a voyage of limitless discovery.

There was blinding light, then carnage. Joy turned to horror as shrapnel fell down from the sky and the air exploded with debris. The soft, melancholy voice of a leader filtered out of television sets and radios to the ears of sobbing citizens. That day was a day for mourning and remembering, for those who had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They had a special grace, a special spirit that said, ‘give me a challenge and I’ll meet it with joy.’ The people would never forget them, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye, and slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God.

But the crew members were unaware of the fate that had befallen them, and ahead they charged, into the star-spangled darkness. So filled with wonder were they at what they saw that the loss of contact with Mission Control was ignored; they had lost sight of the Earth as if it had been swallowed up by the blackness but no-one had noticed; the Sun seemed so bright, the stars seemed to dance and the black became a vibrant, shining light that enfolded the crew members like a warm caress.  Brighter and brighter it grew, becoming so intense it made them dizzy just to keep their eyes open. All turned to blinding white, then all faded to black.

He woke up surrounded by the blinding white. He sat up and looked around but it only made his head spin. He was sure he was sitting on solid ground, and tapped it with the palm of his hand. A solid floor, yet it seemed to melt into everything around him. Then there in the distance he could make out a shape, something moving – a figure approaching. A figure of a man, and as he walked the four corners of a large room seemed to fall into place around his feet, faint at first, now becoming clearer and perfectly defined. The man was dressed all in white, barely visible against the blinding wall, but his face was smiling and had soft, warm features. He held out his hand. The man took it, and shakily, with a big of a wobble, he scrambled to his feet.

“Do you know what happens after you die?” said the man in white with a smile.

Terror and confusion coursed through the crewman’s veins.

“Err...”

“Do you?”

“No. I can’t say I do. I’m as ignorant as any other. I think that’s the right thing to say.”

“There is no right or wrong,” the stranger replied with a beaming smile and a shake of the head. “Come. Come with me.”

The man in white led the crewman through the white light towards a door, which he opened and invited the man to go through. Above him rose a metal staircase painted white, going up, up and up into the white mists beyond...

“Go up those stairs. When you reach the top you’ll come to the corridor. I want you to walk to the end of it and go through the door.”

Shaking now, the crewman did as he was told and began to ascend the stairs. He looked down and both the stranger and the door were gone. Down there was white; up there was white. All there was for it was to take one step at a time.

He heard voices up above; giggling voices, chatting, laughing, floating down on the air and echoing through the whiteness. Then there were people, hordes trampling down the stairs, two, three abreast. He tried to make eye contact, to ask for information, but they looked right through him and disappeared down the staircase, their shapes and their voices disappearing into the whiteness.

Up, up and up he continued to climb, until he could see the end of the metal staircase up above. All was silent; all was still. Up he went, and as he reached the top, there was the corridor. There were the doors. Panic rose once again in his chest as he approached the doors, then touched them – they were cold, so cold, but he took a deep breath, then another, then pushed on through.

The brightness instantly subsided. It took a while for his eyes to adjust, but to his shock, he was back on Challenger with his crewmates going about their daily business. There was something different, something not quite the same as before; the colours seemed a bit brighter, the smells a bit sharper, perhaps. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“I’m glad you’re here. We drifted off-course,” his crewmate said to him, appearing in the doorway. “Completely off-course, we lost all contact, can’t figure out why, everything’s functioning as it should,” she continued with a shrug.

“We’ve regained sight of Earth and can’t go on without contact with Mission Control as you know, so we’re heading back. Mission aborted. Where were you by the way?”

“Err... I had a headache, I rested for a while,” he replied, the excuse sounding ridiculous in his mind yet somehow acceptable under the circumstances.

“Ok. We’ve set course back to Earth.”

“There’s something weird going on. Can you feel it? Have we had some kind of time lapse?” he asked.

“No... I don’t think so... are you ok?”

“Yes... yes let’s go home.”

The speed at which the planet was approaching made his stomach churn. There was no sign of the moon, surely not hiding behind the Earth for so long. As the Earth became bigger and bigger, it looked less and less how it should look; where greens and browns and whites flowed between deep blue seas, sprinkled in fluttering white clouds there was only grey, a dull, dank colour that encompassed the whole planet. Slowly the reality hit the crewman in the face; either something dreadful had happened, or this was not Home.

They approached the surface regardless, breaking through the planet’s atmosphere as the cabin filled with tension that turned to plain fear. On the planet’s surface there were dead, open plains surrounded by bodies of murky water. Down, down they went, as a weak sun shone over the lifeless planet. But there, in the distance... there was a platform of rock that rose out of the water, not very big, but filled with green. It was the only colour they’d seen and they made for it. The green was made up of basic plant life, some familiar, some less so... was it safe to land on it? Yes, it was worth the risk.

Softly, softly they touched down on what appeared to be grass. It was solid ground, so far so good. Around them the world was so quiet and still; no other signs of life were stirring. The outside seemed so enticing – there was something there, something through the grey. Voices, barely whispers to start with, gradually crescendoing into full song.

“Look over there!” a crewman cried. Off to the left a building rose out of the floodwaters – how had they not seen it before? And another behind it, and another off further to the left. Great structures of steel and glass, once grand, now falling into disrepair.

Louder the voices grew, until there in the window, shadowy faces began to appear. They weaved in and out of one another, sallow, sad faces that eventually began to take some kind of form. Still the song came, melancholy and sweet at the same time, penetrating the glass and ringing through the cabin. The forms seemed humanoid but still shadowy, neither present nor absent from the garden.

“Come,” they said, although they said nothing at all, and the song continued.

“Come outside and see.”

The song was alluring, intriguing, but the crewmen stood motionless.

“Come outside. It’s warm. It’s safe. Come into the garden.”

Bright flowers appeared in olive green shrubbery where before there had been none. The stone ledge filled with plant life and colour, teeming with reds and blues and oranges amid radiant greens. Slowly she stepped forward, slipped past and into the airlock.

“NO! God, no!”

The voices rose, the song reached its peak. One second she was out in the garden, looking around in wonder, the next they’d engulfed her in an icy grip, pushing her down to the ground. The crewmates leapt for the airlock but it was impassable.

“We want you to understand,” said the voices. “We don’t want humans to settle here ever again. You see those buildings? One, a school, the other, a hospital. The big one was housing for the thousands of people who first came here. They were not even here long, but look what they did. We chased them away, they found some other planet to destroy. Do not tell us that now you don’t understand.”

In an instant, they were gone, and she was gone. The buildings gleamed expectantly in the sunlight, abandoned, beginning to rust in the murky waters that lapped around their bases.

 

 

She found herself at the top of a metal staircase painted white, that went down, down into a white abyss. She followed it down, unsure why, singing a melancholy song that was ringing in her head, and laughing all the while.

 

Sophie Horrocks, 8th February 2013