Meltdown XXVIII & Fallout 028 (May '23).

[episode twenty two]
”LAUGHING, I WON’T ALWAYS LOVE YOU, TROUSERS, TURBINES, UP SONG, DANCERS….”

*****

1979. Earth.


[001]
“Good Will Hunting” || Black Country, New Road.

G. was awoken by the stomping of boots and hushed, hurried whispers. The thin layer of dark blue skin over his bulbous, red eyes peeled back, consciousness suddenly imposing itself upon him. He was lying down on a hard, wooden bed, itself atop the hard and unforgiving stone inside a cave. He figured he shouldn't grumble. He was surprised his captors had even provided him with a wooden board and a few sheets.

Even if he did his best not to grumble, his thorax did enough of that for him. He sat up and massaged the source of the pain, but the urgent eyes of the trio of marines surrounding him suggested there was no time for such endeavours. Each of them wore camouflage facemasks through fears of catching a peculiar and exotic disease from the specimen. That's what they called him. Prisoner was closer to the truth.

He sighed a deep, dissatisfied, and unfulfilled sigh. Another day.

Before he had the chance to do so himself, two of the marines descended upon him and - wrapping gloves hands around all four of his arms - dragged him up onto his feet. Being couriered along had become something of a running theme. He was led from his cell and through a warehouse, eventually emerging into the bright and oppressive sunlight of an unfamiliar desert. It wasn't the American one he recognised, where he'd been held for weeks before a lengthy flight wearing a blindfold. They'd removed that upon arrival, at least. Given the number of Chinese military types standing around and speaking in Mandarin, he guessed that they were somewhere in China. One such man - wearing a dark grey Mao suit and smiling even through his facemask - waited for the trio of marines next to a truck. G. was loaded into the back of it, his narrow and tired legs soon penned in by an American either side of him. The captain and the Chinese man climbed into the front, and they began on their way through the desert.

Nobody said anything during the journey. G. looked at himself in the vehicle's rear-view mirror. His navy blue skin glistened and glimmered under the harsh, hot sunlight. His thorax was bent and bowed through fatigue and his wide, oblong head felt heavy upon the end of his short neck. His ruby red eyes were wide and sad, and he noticed that a pair of tears were emerging from one of them. He didn't even know he had tear ducts. His human host had them, of course. He made use of them often during his teenage years. He didn’t remember anything from before his arrival on Earth. He thought of the family that he’d infiltrated in North Carolina. A happy enough bunch. Father, mother, brother. Real nuclear. They had no idea what was living inside their son, of course. Not until the government descended on their house and ripped it out of him. The host didn’t survive the ordeal. Never does. But he had, and that’s when he was taken to the Deep South facility for observation.

All those years hiding were spent in fear of exactly this. Despite the love that this surrogate family poured into him - love meant for his host but absorbed readily by the being living inside of it - a lack of belonging pursued him alongside a foreboding (and eventually validated) paranoia. Perhaps if he knew where he was really from, he would be able to find himself and the part of him that was missing. That he’d left there, along with his memories. He remembered so little of what happened before his arrival on this strange, alien land. This anti-home.

And so, G. remained hidden, within his host and amongst this unknowing family, inactive through a vague fear of what they’d do to him if he was discovered. He couldn’t remember exactly when and where he’d heard the horror stories about experiments and dissections, but they were always there in the back of his mind. He had an unexplained but firm understanding that, here on this bizarre and backwards planet, his peculiarities and uniquities would be used against him.

“Almost there,” the man in the Mao suit said. He pointed towards an overhanging ridge of rock, bereft of sand. “Just up in the shade, there.”

“I don’t like it,” the marine captain replied, whilst shuffling uncomfortably in his seat.

“You don’t trust our Russian friends?” the other answered, as the truck bumped and bounced through the sand.

“I barely trust my Chinese ones,” the captain replied.

“You need to open up more,” was the dismissive response. “What is it you guys say? Take a chill pill?”

The captain didn’t enjoy the recycled idiom and fell silent again. The uneasiness was only brief and was soon displaced by urgency when they arrived at the meeting spot. The Russian envoy had already arrived. Their own truck was tailed by two more filled with marines, matched by three identical ones carrying Spetsnaz agents who disembarked when the American contingent came to a halt. Dotted amongst the Soviets were a handful of Chinese men, most of whom looked more like academics than soldiers. G. was left in the back of the truck as the marines and their escort climbed out of their truck.

"Мы уже можем видеть его в вашем грузовике," the Spetsnaz commander said, a cigarette between his lips and derision present in his tone. "Он синий. Это другое. Вы должны вывести его. Давайте лучше посмотрим."

None-the-wiser as to his opposite number's meaning, the marine captain glanced up at his escort. The man in the Mao suit had taken up position between the two groups, where he was joined by others wearing the same uniform. They had come to facilitate and translate, but also to get a good look of their own.

"They say they can already see the specimen," the escort said, whilst nodding at the truck. G. stared back at them from the backseat, his oblong head poking out of the window. "They want you to bring him out."

The commander nodded at his underlings. They opened the truck's backseat and took a grasp of G.'s four arms, pulling him out and into the sand for the commander's inspection.

"Интересный," the commander said. He took a couple of steps towards G., the marines either side of him tightening their grip as if worried the Russian might make off with him. "Очень интересно. Такой же, и в то же время другой. Я тронут, но и обеспокоен. Самец и самка вместе…"

The commander said no more. The captain's eyes turned to the translators.

"What did he say?" he asked.

"The commander is moved, but also he has fears," the man in the Mao suit said. "He is worried about a male and a female existing here together. Concerns about reproduction, I assume."

The marine captain cocked an eyebrow. Was the first he'd heard about the gender of the Russian specimen.

"We want to see theirs," the captain said, simply. "We've acted in good faith."

The Chinese man bowed slightly before turning to face the Russians.

"Они хотят увидеть ваш экземпляр, товарищи," he said. "Такова была сделка."

The Spetsnaz commander, most of his face hidden by his red facemask, looked at G. once more with his cold, blue eyes. Then, with a glance at the marines, he nodded his acquiescence. One of the trucks behind him opened up and a hooded, four-armed figure was led out. The Russian prisoner was placed into a kneeling position in front of G. before their hood was finally removed.

She was like him, but not like him, just like they said. Her skin was dark green, shimmering slightly in the aggressive sunlight, a little taller than him but more slender in her arms and thorax. Her hair was silver and fell in tumbles to her shoulder. She wore a black dress, ragged and tattered after what he assumed was an equally lengthy period of imprisonment. Fatigue lay heavily upon her lithe frame.

He looked at her with recognition in his red, bulbous eyes, and she returned his gaze with the same inexplicable familiarity. He knew that she was M., and she knew that he was G., but neither of them were sure how exactly this knowledge was earned.

G.'s mind was filled with visions of unplaced memories. Wet grass beneath his bare feet. The feeling of the untamed wind rushing against his skin. Dancing in the moonlight next to a blackwater lake. And in none of these images, for the first time (at least that he could remember), was he alone. M. was at his side in each of them, a dormant feeling of togetherness and completeness stirring deep within him.

He reached out with one of his hands, his palm open. She did the same.

Before they could touch each other, he watched one of the Spetsnaz agents bring the butt of his rifle thudding into the back of her head. She fell face-first into the sand. The sudden sensation roaring through his own skull suggested that the marines had done the same. He rolled onto his front as one of the scientists climbed upon him, a syringe filled with sedative in his gloved hand.

There was no use fighting. He stared only at M. as he lost consciousness.

*****


[002]

As they were both dragged back to their respective forms of transportation - under the helpful (to their captors) influence of the powerful sedatives administered in the Chinese desert - both G. and M. were blessed by vivid dreams that felt more like memories. They each bathed happily in this warm nostalgia, to the point where the American marines as well as the Soviet Spetsnaz reported peculiar smiles upon their peculiar faces during transit.

For G., it was a short truck ride before a long flight, and happy dreams of a blackwater lake. Two pale moons and a planet with dense, colourful rings danced across the black sky, innumerable stars twinkling between them. Sometimes, when he looked across the arcing coastline of the dark lake, the grass was covered with the reclining bodies of everyone of his kind that he'd ever known. Of course, he'd never really known any of them in the conventional sense, or at least had no recollection of such acquaintances. But here they all were, each stirring within him recognition and a vague sense of place.

These figures were only peripheral, though, despite the strange effect that they had on him. More often, he was with only her. Or, perhaps, his investment within her was enough to blind him to everyone and everything else. For G. in those stolen moments, there was only M. and the blackwater lake and the dancing celestial bodies hanging on strings high above them. She moved with the same rhythm as the moons, and G. was not sure if this galactic ballet was meant for him. She was more abstracted than the stars she danced beneath. She was lost in herself and he was lost in her.

For M., her truck ride was followed by an even longer train journey, rickety and loud and generally uncomfortable (especially for a prisoner). Somewhat fortunately, she spent much of the early stretches of it unconscious and under the power of the sedatives. She dreamt of a small boat being ravaged by huge, apocalyptic storms. Black clouds angrily groped at the tiny vessel, which the towering waves threatened to swallow whole. Rain lashed down upon a tiny figure attempting to man the mast, a tiny speck within the immensity of Poseidon's rage.

After a while, though, another stood with her. He climbed up onto the bow of the ship, and with nothing but the strength of his voice alone he began to quell the violent storm. He sang and he screamed and he whispered, and under his spell the whims of Mother Nature were tempered, her rage massaged and soothed by his gentle commands. Amidst the retreating rains, a column of sunlight shone down upon G., a captain upon the bow of his ship, his thorax puffed out towards a morning that he himself had brought about. The column grew and grew until they existed within an island of serenity, the wanton destruction of the storm continuing in a maelstrom around them.

Eventually, M. and G. were each returned to their less spectacular and less fulfilling personal realities. They were also returned to their cells. Half a world lay between them.

*****


[003]
“Laughing Song” || Black Country, New Road.

She waited in the gravelled courtyard outside the camp, a mop in her hand and most of the men already garrisoned there with her. They were clustered in groups, each of which would intermittently glance in her direction mistrustfully. The three hands which weren't grasping her mop clenched into fists. She was unwelcome here, even if she was purportedly being held against her will.

The guards were assembled on the courtyard, too, and had conducted a headcount before sending the most junior of their number back into the camp to rouse the missing inmate. A few minutes later, he returned with an old, tired, and somewhat queasy-looking man with a white beard and an ever-expanding bald spot on the crown of his head. M. vaguely knew him as Ivan Denisovich. She only knew most of the men vaguely. They kept themselves away from her and she had little choice but to do the same.

"Поздно, Иван Денисович," one of the guards said, sternly, as the late prisoner arrived. It seemed for a moment as though Ivan Denisovich may have thought about fighting his case, but in the end he closed his mouth and remained silent. M. couldn't blame him for thinking better of it. "Ты с богомолом. Очистите караульное помещение."

For Ivan Denisovich, the task of cleaning the guardhouse was a punishment for his tardiness. For M., it was the duty she was assigned each and every morning, regardless of the standard of her time-keeping. She reasoned that the guards preferred to keep her secluded from the other men (and from themselves) as often as was possible. Maybe being paired up with her was part of the punishment for poor punctuality, too. Ivan Denisovich didn’t seem to mind, though. He rattled on as they changed the soft, clean sheets on the officers’ beds for the second time this week.

“Человек ничего не может поделать, если он плохо себя чувствует!” he said. He punctuated his statement with exaggerated body language to convey the fact that he really was feeling unwell. “Я даже не знаю, когда успею сходить к врачу.”

M. didn’t reply. She never did. But she shared his doubts. He’d be too late to see a doctor, the only man who could sign him off for the day. Which meant he’d be out there in the fields just as soon as they were done with the guardhouse, regardless of the legitimacy of his claims of ill-health. Ivan Denisovich wasn’t so bad. At least he would speak to her, for a little while, until it became clear that she wasn’t going to say anything back. The rest of them just glanced at her, ever watchful and reproachful, in silent judgement of the fact that she had four arms instead of two, and of the peculiarity of her thorax. In truth, the glances had been the same well before she’d been ripped out of her host. Looking the same as them didn’t really change anything.

The years she’d spent in Moscow had been filled with the same vague sense of disillusionment. It was always difficult to tell whether this grew from within or was imposed on her from without. Perhaps a little bit of both. Cyclical, even. The fact remained that she suffered on the periphery of the city, of society in general. There were always people, of course. Not her people, but people none-the-less. It was difficult to avoid them in the sprawling, swamp-like metropolis. She was often dragged down in the mire with them, but as she slipped below the mud there was no escaping the fact that she was dying alone. Alone with everybody.

It was no surprise when they came for her. The KGB had been circling her mundane activities for a while. Being inside Gulag S42, which had been her home (uninterrupted, but for her recent train ride into the middle of the Chinese desert) for more than a year now, was little different from her tedious life in Moscow. The limited freedom afforded to her in the city was only the illusion of freedom. Her agency had long deserted her, ever since she’d arrived on this godforsaken planet with no memory of where she was before. Of where she belonged. Of where was home, if such a concept existed for her.

M. was proved right, and that day Ivan Denisovich joined them out on the fields, struggling through his illness. The same was expected of him as when he was fit and healthy, and he made sure to give it. He worked with M. in the team that carried rocks from the crumbling wall to the centre of the field where a windmill was being built. The metals being used for the turbines were to be brought in from the city after the stone had been broken down from the surrounding wall and carted into position. The younger and stronger men were tasked with using picks to pry the wall apart. They assumed that M. was as fragile and weak as she looked, and so she joined the old and the infirm in carrying stones of various sizes from point A to point B.

Today wasn’t a bad day. Long, but all days were long here. Hard, but all days were hard here. The sun was shining but not too hot. At a few points through the day, she even got to stop and look at it. Not for too long. It hurt her eyes to stare at it for too long. But the blue sky - which resembled a gaping entrance, an open highway, a wild frontier - made her heart skip.

For all the time she’d been here, she knew that she could leave at any time. Escape wasn’t the difficult thing. Gulag S42 couldn’t contain her. The only problematic element was where exactly she’d escape to.

Now, though? Now it was different. He was out there, somewhere.

She smiled, and continued to push her wheelbarrow down the hill.

*****


[004]

Once more, he was being led out of his cell. This time, though, the dwellings were more familiar, as was the compound through which his captors escorted him. There were four of them in total, the closest two keeping a tight grip of a pair of arms each and holding them behind his back. There was an urgency about them that G. didn’t enjoy. As he was pushed through the livestock cages the cows backed away from him. Maybe they could smell his fear, or perhaps the sudden sight of him was too much for even them. More marines joined the escort at various points around the compound until eventually they emerged into the surrounding desert.

G. wondered how close the nearest living soul was. His antennae couldn’t sense anything, other than his own fear and the guard’s barely concealed ill-will.

The desert was familiar, too. He’d been taken for exercise around these dunes a number of times. But that didn’t seem likely to be the cause of their current excursion. The moon was already beginning its ascent and the sky had turned a purplish-blue. Although he recognised this sand better than the desert they’d driven through on his recent, unexpected, and unexplained trip across this world, a world that wasn’t his, this knowledge and recognition didn’t bring him any additional comfort. This wasn’t where he wanted to be. This wasn’t where he was supposed to be.

He was unsure if the guards knew that he understood them well enough. He’d spent years in the company of a well to-do family in North Carolina, after all. Perhaps his captors drew no association between the gangly, bug-like specimen they walked through the desert now and the handsome daredevil he’d inhabited through adolescence and young manhood. His parents certainly couldn’t make that connection after they’d ripped their poor son apart and dragged G. out. Regardless, the marines that watched over him felt little need to guard their conversations, and as a result he was privy to what they were going to do with him. Their superiors were scared of what he was and what he could do. He wasn’t showing them any particularly impressive talents or abilities, but that didn’t mean that there were none to be found. They meant to dispose of him and planned to capture the Russian specimen so that they could do the same to her. Total eradication in just two simple moves.

As he spied the noose atop the cliff, G. once again pondered his lack of place in this world. His recent meeting with M. was a curse as much as it was a blessing. Before that encounter, he had begun to accept that he would always feel this way. Always be unwhole. Always wander around amongst the otherly, searching for an adventure, a rush that might fill an unfillable void. Her mere existence was enough to light that in him again. These feelings were better off dead. Hope only led to disappointment.

They arrived at the noose. They forced G. up onto a low platform and placed his head into the loop. A burly, young, hooded marine that G. didn’t recognise stood next to a taut rope with a sharp axe in his grip. A priest approached from a line of witnesses. Everyone upon the cliff wore camouflage except for the father and the prisoner. The holy man began to read G. his last rites. He understood the individual words but the composition of some of his sentences were confusing to him. After a while he struggled to keep his focus. He began to watch the sky instead.

A flock of birds flew across the purple canvas.

Was there even a point in carrying on? Perhaps he should go quietly. Meekly acquiesce. Maybe his time was over.

In the distance, a second group of birds met the first and joined the formation. They flashed over the face of the moon and disappeared over a high peak in the north.

G. sighed.

Then, he unfurled his wings.

The priest and the commander took a step back, aghast, as G.’s hitherto unknown appendages spread out either side of his thorax. They flowed with vibrant bioluminescence in elaborate arrays of navy blue and indigo and bright pink upon his thin, translucent wings.

Showing initiative, the hooded marine struck the taut rope with his axe. The platform disappeared beneath G,, but with two flutters of his huge wings he tore the gallows apart and became a speck upon the face of the large, pale moon. The rope still hung from his neck.

*****


[005]
“Concorde” || Black Country, New Road.

G. closed in on his ignorant prey in the Ural foothills. The large cat (he couldn’t tell you the name of it) lounged in slumber near the riverbank. He had flown a long way and was hungry. He was quick and quiet enough to reduce the beautiful, wild animal to a carcass, which he dragged beneath the trees to consume away from the harsh, morning sun.

He had many gifts. Gifts that had prepared him well. He could sense that he was getting closer to her, and that she was getting closer to him. He knew, as well, that they were on his tail. His antennae informed him of the radio communications of his hunters. The Americans had launched a global search with the rather barbaric mandate to execute him upon capture. Uncle Sam wasn’t the only one with a vested interest in his discovery. The Russians were well aware that he was on the loose. He sensed a number of Spetsnaz units present on the ground. And the Chinese wanted a piece of the action for themselves, as well. If the Americans were going to be so careless, perhaps the specimen could be used to the advantage of one of their enemies instead.

“他就在这附近的某个地方,” a voice said, passing by only a few metres away from him. Instinctively, he backed away from the trail he was following and took cover in a dense thicket of bushes. “这些山上没有别的东西可以打倒这样的老虎。西边也太远了。”

He held his breath, the footsteps continuing away from him and up the mountain. Slowly and with great caution, he dislodged himself from his hiding place… and felt someone’s tight, firm grip on his wrist. G. turned around to be greeted by the cold, blue eyes of the Spetsnaz commander. Two of his underlings were at his sides. They lowered the barrels of their rifles to rest on either side of his wide head. In a cautionary gesture, the commander lifted a gloved finger up to his masked mouth. G. glanced at each of the guns that were directed at him. He thought about escape and then thought better of it. The commander took a thick and long length of rope from his waist and began to wrap it around G., being particularly careful to contain his wings in the binding.

“Over there!” the American cry startled the commander, who thrust a thick, muscular forearm into G.’s face to knock him to the ground. A series of bullets flew overhead, a pair of them making contact with the commander’s underlings and throwing them down next to him. His bulbous eyes remained fixed open as the Spetsnaz agents fought for their last, difficult breaths. The commander drew his revolver and shrouded himself in the shadow of a nearby patch of trees.

“美国人！” came a second voice, followed by another whistle of bullets. “俄罗斯人也一样！”

Sensing his opportunity, G. rolled through the undergrowth and to the lip of a small but steep decline. With one glance back at the ensuing carnage, he threw himself over the lip and cascaded down the hill. He lay still at the base of it, dislodged branches and leaves and roots falling atop him and providing some sort of cover from unwelcome eyes. His bonds were tight, and even if he wanted to move it would’ve been difficult to do so. Getting up, at least for now, was out of the question. He would have to wait for his moment. Wait for his miracle.

He remembered how mundane, unexciting, and ultimately disappointing this planet was when the familiar grasp of the marine captain pulled him back onto his feet. He was alone and his eyes said what his hidden mouth didn’t have to. G. was to keep quiet and go with him, if he valued his life.

The captain was strong, and lifted G. up onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He forced a way through the undergrowth and the forest for several kilometres, rarely complaining but for a few muttered expletives along the way. Eventually, he arrived at his unit’s camp. Several of them were still away searching but there were enough of them here. He threw G. down from his shoulders and onto the rock in the middle of the group, which was gathered together beneath the shadow of the forest’s eaves.

“Should we wait for the others?” one of them asked.

“You know the order,” the captain said. “No reason to wait.”

G. was tied to a tree less than a hundred metres outside of the American camp. He noticed there was no priest here. It was difficult to imagine one parachuting in with the marines. There were five soldiers in front of him, four of them holding their service weapon at their sides and waiting for their captain’s command.

“Aim.”

Upon hearing the solemn command, each of the marines lifted their weapons and pointed the barrels at the prisoner. He expelled a deep sigh and glanced up at the blue, clear sky. A huge flock of birds traversed the face of the bright, yellow sun.

“F –”

As the squad’s forefingers massaged their triggers, a huge chiral blast interrupted proceedings. Much of the undergrowth along with the entire marine unit was sent flying thirty feet into the air. Most of them returned to the ground well clear of the vicinity. Only the captain remained close. He lifted his rifle, but M. discharged another blast of energy from her outstretched palm, leaving a charred patch of Earth where the captain once stood.

M. unwrapped G.’s bonds. In unison, they unfurled their wings, hers dancing with dark green bioluminescent lighting to compliment and contrast his midnight navies. They flew away from the camp and to the edge of a round, clear lake, hidden behind the broad, grey shoulders of the surrounding mountains.

“Bовξσγ=," she said. The surface of the lake began to ripple. "Β+ηγg οθhл -)6, hфф 8₽γ ηθщe7&! l?рпе."

"Цφς∆§," he replied. A dull, faint whirring noise permeated the scene from the sky. "Ξψо шщ#6 зфλ73, θοπнe64."

"Sцйκσ, υτρфжшб хз*₽8. £gдмяθ ξσрн&."

As the faint sound of human voices conversing in hurried English, Russian, and Mandarin carried up the hill, G. and M. gazed at the sky as a large, octagonal disc skipped upon it and positioned itself above them. With a blinding flash of strange energy, they both disappeared. Three units wearing different uniforms emerged on the edge of the lake as the spaceship hurtled back out of sight.

G. and M. joined their comrades on the bridge. There were a large number of them, and each greeted the newcomers like old friends. It goes without saying that this family that suddenly surrounded G. and M. created more of a sense of belonging than either had experienced before, when they had been apart. Each of them was different to the rest, most obviously and immediately because of their brightly coloured skins. Violet and plum, indigo and purple, teal and dark orange and fire brick (whatever that is). But all of them wore a hot pink tracksuit, indicative of the togetherness that you could feel even without seeing.

They watched through the large, floor-to-ceiling window at one end of the room as three smaller ships burst into the picture. Just like the beings around them in the bridge, these vessels were similar but different, and each of them bore the insignia representative of their disparate political identities. The stars and stripes, the hammer and sickle, the gold stars.

Three photon streams emerged from their ship, their pursuers reduced to a violent but spectacular burst of energy.

G. took M.’s hand in his own as their old home disappeared behind their new one.