Visitation - Exodus (book 2 of 2)

"Wake up Ian. Come on now, wake up.”

An intruding and demanding voice bounced loudly in my senses. I was sure I had heard these words before. This was unpleasant with a certain degree of pain. I wanted to return to my dark sleep.

“Ian, you can hear me I’m sure, you must wake up, you must,” the painful voice persisted but now within my head, within my thoughts, within everything.

Among the coloured mist, off in the distance, I could hear the imploring words now not so painful, but with something else behind them, music, I could hear music.

“He can hear us and some music,” another softer voice spoke within my head, a female voice.

It seemed to drift through the ether in my direction.

“What’s the ether? I conceived of the word, but what does it mean? Nothing makes sense.”

I knew that I was in a dream like state, I recognised that. I came to some sort of reasoning that I was definitely dreaming, a complicated dream. I wanted another one, I had to make this one go away. I didn’t want to wake up but this dream was disturbing. The voice, floating in a purple mist and swirling all about me, wherever I was and for some obtuse reason, must be from some beautiful girl who could read both music and minds.

“She can read minds, can she also play music?”

This dream was definitely unpleasant, all the while having a certain strange beauty, but I could not force it to go away. I wanted to go back to my sleep.

“Leave me alone. Why does everybody want me to wake up.”

The music pervaded as she and her voice faded away from my persistent half imagery. I recognised those musical sounds that were adding to the colour and the warmth of the mist; a mist that had been there all along but I had not seen it until now. A mist that surrounded me in its totality. The sounds in the mist were slowly making sense, they were almost talking to me but I couldn’t hear the words. There were no words. It was Franz Lehar again and the same tune as the last time I had listened to a musical sound.

“Why do I keep hearing this music?”

It was a nice experience, one that wanted me to rise yet perversely I wanted to sink back into the comfort of the dark from which I had now started to surface.

“He says it is Franz Lehar playing music.”

I heard that; did I? I didn’t say anything, but the mist was dancing to Franz Lehar and I had to agree. What in hell was I agreeing with?

“Oh go back to sleep you fool, find something else to dream of.”

“He thinks he has recognised music,” the soft female voice spoke.

“This may be a survival strategy by his mind or perhaps a gentle way to finish his existence,” another added.

I was making out the words clearer now. I wanted to leave them behind but also drift forward to wherever the voice was coming from. It had said I was going to finish my existence, to die? I wanted to wake up now and quickly but the dream pulled hard. I needed a new dream, one where I was not going to die.

“Good, good, progress,” an intruding male voice responded. He had picked up on what was happening inside my head despite the music which wasn't real, or was it a part of the new swirl; I didn’t think it was.

Inside my head or down deep in my inner self a cavern suddenly revealed itself. I didn’t know from where or what it was but I did know I was dreaming and it was likely a part of it. Perhaps this was real and I was in a cavern, I couldn’t tell. There was no purple swirl here, it had all disappeared silently to be replaced by an impenetrable, deep, velvety darkness.

Down there in the dark of this echoing cavern, a very real cavern I was sure, way down there below me, flickering in some persistent, gentle cold draught was a solitary flickering candle. I knew instinctively that the candle was me, white, waxy, balanced upright in a pool of soft white candle drips; that was me. I was no more than a candle close to being extinguished by the draught of the music or perhaps as the wax ran out; the candle was very low, not much remained. I became one with the flame and felt the luxury of the heat, the enticing warmth, the oneness with the light of life. I was enjoying my dream again, this moment of clarity within a fantasy.

“This had to a dream but it wasn’t a dream, was it?”

Then I shot back up to the roof of the cavern where my alarmingly rapid ascendancy had been halted by a painless impact. I wanted to get out, to fly away, out through the hole where I had had a glimpse of the marauding attacker, the triangular beast with US markings. It was here or somewhere nearby, it wanted to blow a hole into this cavern and kill me, this I knew; I did not want that to happen. I wanted the warmth, to sink back away from this terror, a terror of what was to come.My thoughts were mixing in a confused manner and I wanted to go back to sleep; soon to be back on the Ark and with plenty of time to wake up there.

“The Ark.” That sounded a note of reality in the drift of the lilting music which still would not go away. The flame flickered and beckoned to:-

“Come to me, feel the warmth, I am you, we are one.”

I realised that these words were genuine and that I was indeed in a cavern but how did I get here? I needed answers. The words became distant, the music close, then they reversed, then back again but I was no longer with the flame which I knew to be flickering its last. I could smell it starting to go out, that odd smell as candles extinguish.

“Don’t panic son, don’t panic.”

It seemed as if an echo, multiple confusing echoes playing off the walls of the cavern, were playing within my head, not allowing any other thoughts to be present, but I needed to find a release, to emerge out of this darkness and fly away.

“Don’t panic son, don’t panic.”

“I think we may have him, he’s coming back,” yet another voice, male or female I could not make out, sounded in the distance, echoing through the cavern of my confusion.

I struggled to clear my head of the cold fog that had filled the cavern so suddenly, without me noticing, which was swirling between the words and music and changing shape at each note or syllable. It was as if each voice took on a different colour and shape in time with the music, which more and more I came to recognise as it penetrated the fog. I tried to hum along with it but nothing seemed to work. The candle was going out and I felt the last ounce of my strength going with it; it was not frightening but, there again, yes it was and I wanted the flame to stay lit, desperately so.

“Hold on, help will come.”

The musical sounds now morphed into a melody that was taking shape but I was still on this crazy trip. That’s it, I must have taken drugs and I was hallucinating and dying? What had Ed given to me? "Ed", a name and a man I knew and trusted. A fear now overwhelmed me but all I could consider in amongst the mess was that I never touched drugs; had Ed drugged me?

“Please not drugged, hold on.”

The thoughts were themselves making me feel worse, feel ever more lost, feel my life slowly dripping away; I did not want such thoughts but that was stupid. The whirling of the sounds, the mist and the intensity now of my own thoughts were bringing on a sickness, a vomit inducing dizziness, a sensation sometimes experienced at a fairground on one of those rides that become dreadful with advancing age.

“Hold on, hold on.” I was still living.

The candle flared up as I realised maybe for a last time. No, the flame now penetrated the mist all the way up to the roof of the cavern where I expected an explosive hole to appear at any moment. The mist now became thicker and thicker taking on the smell of great dampness, the sort to be found next to stagnant water. I could no longer see the cavern nor the flame nearing the end of its flickering life as the purple, no cream, no now a brilliant blue burning incense of a mist, take on another deep swirling pattern.

“Come on Ian, keep going, almost there, you’re doing well.”

“Focus on my voice and try to open your eyes,” the first male voice spoke to me again but not as before.

I wanted to come back, I think I did, to see the flame burst into an incandescent life giving, magnificent full flame, despite the swirling mist. I didn’t want voices intruding upon my reality, making me feel unwell, putting out my flame or stopping the music.

For some reason one eye opened, or was it opened it for me; confusion poured in. The light hurt badly and came as a shock to this crazy, fatalist dream like state. I now had one eye in the real world, maybe, but one still in the mists with my confused brain. The ‘reality’ eye was taking over as the impressions of people around me started to occlude the visions and colours of my thoughts.

I was in deeply confusing, dizzying maelstrom where the light was smell, the smell became colour and they were all dancing to the music but then they were not, there was no music. I was being whirled round and round, the vomit rising higher in my throat, my head pounding and ready to explode.

The will to ‘come back’ arose within me but it was a struggle, yet dominated my inner presence with little effort. I was being taken on a ride I could not stop or control. I forced both eyes open and the mistiness dissolved away but the sick dizziness persisted yet I was not spinning round.

The music was clear but now very distant and it continued playing, not at all unpleasant, but diminishing rapidly. The dizzying mists steadied to be replaced by the shapes of figures in the gloom; my dream was changing but continuing, persisting, in another vein, surely.

The lights or was it the gloom, was very bright and I strained to notice what were grey, misty sort of figures or shapes casting shadows in my direction. Where was I, had I passed on, who were these figures, angels perhaps or vindictive aliens after my bodily fluids?

“Don’t be afraid, hang on.”

The imaginative fear rose to new heights, yet my eyes were wide open, my head pounded and the music in my ears had changed to a dreadful rhythmic drum beat hammering hard at my senses. A multicoloured dancing pattern with sharp edges started to appear from what I took to be my left. I was dreaming, I must be, but my head hurt incredibly and I felt dreadfully nauseous. I managed to move my head but the lights followed and continued their slow creep out into my complete line of vision. The warm dream was gone and this sensation, replacing it, was truly dreadful.

The zigzagging, multicoloured dance now spread from my left all the way across to my right and was much larger than before. I wanted the dancing to stop, it was making me want to retch, the more it danced in its shards of bright blue, yellow and red colours, the more I wanted to fight it to make it go away. I had become a prisoner to some dreadful, unpleasant, multicoloured, sickening fate. I shut my eyes and tried to find the misty warmth but it would not come and the dancing lights persisted to an even greater extent. I forced my eyes open and realised that although this hurt less, it was not going away. The dancing was now receding from the left and this provided some sort of relief from the nausea. It was as though I was witnessing the passage of some strange brightly illuminated, crazy zig-zag worm.

I still wanted to retch and gave way to whatever might befall me. I didn’t retch, nothing came up and allowing the experience to dictate to me made me feel even worse. I had to let the passage of the dancing light creature continue. I endured what seemed like forever but eventually it became no more than a small thing to the right of my vision. The pain and nausea eased and the figures in the room adopted their previous greyness.

“Hold on Ian, it will soon be over,” the male voice spoke again and reassuringly.

He seemed to know what was happening to me and that did seem reassuring, moreover his voice was real and not bouncing round ins ide my head. The grey shapes resolved with outlines against the gloomy brightness of the room. There was a figure, a person, stood alongside me. I seemed to recognise it as masculine, and there were two others in the background. The music no longer played and the deafening drum beat no longer attacked my sense of comfort, the strange visuals had gone, more or less. I welcomed the stability, the ceasing of the dizziness and confusing sickness sensation.

I almost wanted to hum the tune I thought I had heard as my senses stabilised but I no longer knew what it was, I couldn’t touch it in my mind for long enough and besides nothing was capable of coming out of my lips. Slowly and surely I came to realise that I had awoken and was in a bed in a room which was not at all bright, in fact it was lit only by a low dim light. I guessed that these people may be considering my welfare. This had a déjà vu sensation about it; I had been here before, but before what? The figure alongside me was a doctor, another doctor.

“I’m forever seeing bloody doctors.” I recognised the stethoscope hanging round his neck and the white, I guessed it was white, coat, sort of loose and creased.

“You’re back with us Ian, that is a relief. We didn’t know where you had gone, so to speak, or what damage may have occurred. Do you understand what I am saying to you?” he enquired.

“I guess so,” I managed a verbal reply with incredibly dry lips and mouth with a sort of nod of recognition.

“Wonderful, wonderful, that’s what I wanted to be told. Now come on, another effort and fully wake up for us.”

“Why am always being told to bloody well wake up?”

“Do you remember anything?” a voice from a figure at the end of the bed enquired before I could make a response. I could not turn my head from this position laid on my back but I did recognise the firm, in-control voice; it was Caterin. What was she doing here? I should still be on the craft.

“Why is she not talking to me properly, with her mind?”

I came to a conclusion there were no beds on any of the craft. So, I must be back at the base. I’m dreaming wildly, perhaps I can go back into my dream, into the swirling mist, I wanted to go there, to escape. I was alive and in somebody’s real world, or as real as they could make it and I could allow. Her voice did not necessarily bring me comfort but on this occasion it most certainly did; perhaps.

A face stepped forward to be alongside the Doctor and emerge out of the gloom; it was Caterin most definitely. I managed a smile, I think, and managed to voice her name, “Caterin.” My voice still worked but my throat was dry and sore and whatever came out was no more than a hoarse whisper.

“Is this real my old son, or are you making it so. This could be an awful dream or worse, real. Where’s my mist and warmth?” I was now thinking to myself.

“What should I remember,” I managed to ask myself without knowing why? Had I been asked this question by someone here; perhaps I had. My reply to a maybe question was in a stupid hoarse tone, but that was the only thing that would come to mind. At least something was functioning inside this beaten and now dulled head of mine, dream like or not.

“Give him a few more minutes,” the Doctor instructed.

“Can we lift you up,” the Doctor asked me, “you have been laid in that position a little too long for my liking. Nurse, please lift Ian up a little if you will. Adjust his pillows and please make him a little more comfortable.”

I reckoned my head was really clearing now, or was I inventing this in my continuing dream. I did not want the deep warmth, nor the crazy lights, I just wanted to be properly awake, now, as I thought or dreamed. I wanted to ease the ache in my body, the stiffness, and also the craziness in my mind but I needed some help. My eyes were managing to focus a little and I could make out the individual, no longer wispy shapes that stood in the room, or was all this really back in the cavern? Where was my candle, why was this echoing place grey and dim and not a deep black? Where were the sickening colours inducing the wish to retch?

I had recognised Caterin and a doctor and nurse, sort of, because they had come close to me and besides I would always recognise Caterin’s voice, verbal or mental, wherever I happened to be.

I was not wearing my suit, I panicked, I wanted to grab for something, my helmet perhaps. I had no idea where any of it was, but I had been wearing it only a short time previously. I needed my suit in this place, my head told me so; I almost started to panic. The nurse came forward and provided the help I must be needing but she did not bring me my suit. It’s surprising just how much strength she had in her small body and soon I was sat up with the back rest and pillows behind me providing all the support needed.

She was telling me not to worry about my suit.

“Bloody hell, she's reading my thoughts,” it was not needed in here or perhaps it was.

I thought that I did need my suit because I believed there was no air in the dimness yet I was breathing. I guessed I was but I wasn’t sure. I tried not to panic.

“How does she know what I’m thinking?”

“Was she one of those nurses I had encountered at the base who could read my mind or did they only do this in my dreams?”

I felt my head swim a little as I became increasingly aware of this more upright position but that soon passed and there were no more coloured lights; I did not want to experience that again, not even in another dream. Whatever kind of nurse she was, I didn’t mind; she was a nurse and she was looking after me, I needed that.

“Remember what?” I muttered mentally casting my mind back to a few moments ago.

“What should I remember? The candle, the flickering flame?”

I remembered the dancing lights and the nausea. I wanted to go back to the warmth. This reality I was creating for myself was now no longer at all pleasant, it was becoming confusing, very confusing.

The Doctor’s hand was raised in Caterin’s direction as a signal to her to stay quiet.

“Let him try for himself,” he said and stood there staring at me.

I glanced away towards Caterin and her totally engaging eye contact fixed me firmly even in this dim light. That seemed to be the key to restoring some sort of memory; I was beginning to like this illusion. Her gaze could have the same effect as a cold shower and perhaps this is what I needed; no I didn’t, I changed my mind, I could do without that. Something seemed to be working as pictures, then thoughts, then organised memories as the pictures started to reveal themselves but I was uncertain if I was going forward or backward. I could no longer place my velvet cavern darkness in this plethora of experiences.

I felt unbalanced and with a dreadful hangover type feeling. Why should I feel a hangover; I had to think of something else, go to a different place. I tried but I could no longer reach where I wanted to go. Those places were in the distance, I could feel and almost see them, but I could not move from this disturbing ‘reality’, if that’s what it was.

I think that the nurse must have realised my predicament as her hand came forward to offer a glass to my mouth with the words, “Now sip slowly, this will make you feel better.”

It did as soon as the taste of that wonderful chilled fruit juice slowly moved across my tongue and down my gullet. I slowly drank the whole tumbler. I was parched and this was satisfying a terrible thirst. My lips were no longer dry and dusty, the hangover feeling went almost immediately and apart from feeling very weak, my senses were coming back to normal at a rapid rate, but I wanted to move to the reality of the purple mist, or even perhaps the cavern.

I was not too happy with this place, it was turning into a ‘reality’ but this was not right, it should not be. The juice might have performed some miracle in my perceived sensations or perhaps it was just another aspect of a complicated nightmare. I could not focus sensibly.I looked in Caterin’s direction and managed a smile which, in a slight turn of her mouth, she responded to. My imagination was giving me what I wanted, I was almost happy with this.

“Do you have any idea how worried we have all been, Ian?” she asked me verbally in her usual flat controlling tone. “For a while we thought that we were going to lose you, the battering you took. The work our medical people can perform still surprises me, you have a great deal to thank them for.”

“Thank you Caterin”, the Doctor interjected, “go gently for a short while.”

“It’s OK,” I managed. “I’m feeling better by the minute." The last time I felt anywhere this strange or unwell was after a hospital operation back on Earth that I struggled to come out of.

Why on earth, or wherever I was, did I say and think that?

Then as a ‘normal’ human I had struggled with the strangeness, the inability to shake off an anaesthetic that was keeping me in a strange place, that would not let me think rationally. This ‘reality’ was far worse; was it the work done to me back at the hospital, has it altered my mental faculties or changed my ability to think ’normally’?

The Doctor smiled and that didn’t make sense, was he sensing what I was thinking, did they all do that, could he not leave me alone? This ‘reality’ did not make sense, I was not making sense of this; I felt nausea returning.

“Fair enough,” he said, “but I will be sitting over here in the dark while you chat to Caterin. If I think you have had enough I will call an immediate stop to any more talk and you will then be required to have a lot more rest before your conversation continues.”

“Is that understood, Caterin,” he asked as he disappeared into the gloom. A reply was not forthcoming.

I wanted to join him, go to the darkness, find my candle. I was in two places at once, or perhaps two dreams at once, or some combination of both. I was confused and that did not normally happen in dreams, or did it, I didn’t know any more.

She turned to look in his direction, without any reply, just staring straight at him, albeit briefly before turning back to me. “I want you to continue what you started,” she said in that same flat tone again. This was part question, part statement and part an order; she was good at doing this and I was sure I was visualising her well.

“Hell this could be real, her words are very real. Come on Ian, try.”

“The last thing I recall,” I said as the old grey stuff started to reorganise itself into some sort of incomplete semblance of order, or was it perhaps that I was still imagining things most realistically in a progressing nightmare. “It was Franz evading an alien craft as he left the base. The survivors of the attack, including myself and Ed, were on board.”

Where had this lucidity suddenly appeared from, I could not explain it to myself. I had started off wanting to talk about the candle, the cavern and the mists but the words came out differently. I had been on a craft at the base and I had been knocked about a bit by some vicious idiot alien shooting at us. I was recounting what had happened in calm, clear words, I closed my eyes to visualise what I had seen and some of it came back but not in any sort of correct order. Why was I speaking like this as the welcoming mists started to appear on the horizon?

“I was feeling far from well, I don’t feel very well now,” I tried to continue.

“Franz was piloting, I think.” This came easy but each word made worse the dread feeling of sickness that was now building. If I was recounting facts in a dream, it seemed so real.

“We had a hold full of the last people from the base. It was one of the types of craft that destroyed the Jamaican holiday place.”

I saw the hotel erupt in my mind and my attention was there amongst the victims being blow up into the air. I was flying through the air with them. I felt myself shaking most unpleasantly. I struggled and managed to return to the present or was it the time of the base attack, am I still there; “Just keep talking,” was all I could tell myself.

“That triangular thing was taking pot shots at the mountainside, guessing where the base might be.”

“There was an explosion. I was blown across the lounge. I received an enormous wallop.”

“Some of the last to leave were killed, some survived.”

“There were Seniors at the base.”

“Ed put me to sleep.”

“There was an explosion. I was caught in it.”

“Ed did something to help me.”

“There was a young girl but no floor.”

I was babbling in short sentences without any recognition of sequence and I could not stop. It just kept coming; I was giving a briefing to a dream. Ed certainly gave me something; has he been giving me more?

“Oh hell,” I spluttered.“All those last few, annihilated as the base was destroyed. I have survived somehow, but they didn’t.”

“The young lady,” she jumped out of the fog to stand there straight in front of me as I recalled her.

“One of her grandparents was killed and all the others waiting to leave.”

“Is she safe, did she get back, am I back on the Ark?”

I knew that I was rambling again in a sort of way, but the brain was really firing up now, albeit in no particular order, but the candle was fully alight, the smell was returning from an incomplete burn and I wanted back to the real reality.

“Where is my suit?”

“Why have I no clothes on except this smock?”

“How did I get here, did Franz get us all back? Is he OK?”

“Where’s Ed, I need to thank him?”

I definitely was back at almost full speed, or so I thought, and indeed even my thoughts were noticeably and most consciously now arranging themselves in some semblance of order. The nurse was instantly at my bed side with another tumbler full of the juice. Whatever it was it seemed to be working its magic again. I really could taste this stuff, the sensation was terrific.

The reality of this dream was uncanny. I steadied myself, or so I thought, and prepared to go on.

“Easy Ian, easy Ian, we do not want a relapse,” the Doctor was saying as he drifted out of the gloom.

“No I’m OK,” I protested, “really. I’m felling better by the minute. Your nurse and her juice are working wonders.”

The Doctor ignored my protestations and had his stethoscope at my chest while the nurse had some sort of blood pressure device round my arm in no time at all. He looked into my eyes with one of those things with the bright light attached and I guessed my temperature was being taken with something that was poked in my ear. He stopped to look at the numbers from the nurse and without comment stared me straight in the face with a, “Hmmm. Your recovery rate is surprising Ian,” he said.

“The work that was done on you after you arrived only a short while ago must be what is accounting for your condition now, as it has once already. What are you made of? Your body took an almighty thump, bruising all your ribs severely, cracking one or two and also disturbed a few of the major bits inside you. Although we can work wonders these days, you continue to surprise.”

A lengthy speech that seemed to fit but I had little idea of what he was talking about. The one thing I did know was that I was blending this reality, if it really was such, with shades of a misty dream where I felt warm and safe, mostly.

“You have only just come out of the deep coma you fell into some time ago and after a little rapid treatment, all your vital signs are now almost returned to normal. You are responding to questions by Caterin, becoming agitated at your memories of disasters and yet your heart rate and blood pressure are barely above normal.”

“How did I get back here?” I felt the tremble in my voice as I asked the question.

“I was in the last craft from the base, wasn’t I?”

“I’m not dreaming again surely, am I?”

“I feel as if I am?”

I was asking questions, perhaps not too coherently and in a quickfire manner, but definitely questions. I was still unconvinced that I was not in some sort of dream-like state. Caterin continued to stare in her manner straight at me but still without speaking. She wasn’t communicating mentally because I would have known that immediately, but why wasn’t she, she always did.

I had to be in a dream still.

She was staying solidly silent, letting me do the talking. When her eyes locked with mine, the sensation took me off immediately to standing before my Headmaster those years ago at school. I was small and in short trousers, I could smell the floor wax outside of his office where I was standing, the smell of fear upon entering his office. I was trying to find an explanation for something I perhaps should not have done but what was it. I was in a panic trying to find out what I had done wrong to be able to find an explanation but it would not come to me.

I felt terrible, my thoughts were again garbled, my reality had changed, and I had to try to make sense to myself.

“Did the aliens follow us back here, what happened to them?”

I found myself asking a question of the headmaster who just glared at me. I really needed to know the answer to my question, otherwise the repercussions could be painful.

“Everything is fine Ian,” she responded coolly.

The headmaster spoke the words with Caterin’s voice.

“We have you back with us and thanks to you, we now know what course of action to take.”

“Doctor,” she said turning to him. “I leave it to you to explain events from here but just for a short while,” she added.

With that the headmaster changed back into Caterin just before she turned away to the gloom. I didn’t sense that she had left the room but had gone back into her headmaster’s office.

The Doctor took her place. There were no Doctors at my school. I looked to him to continue but he changed the subject, or so it seemed.

“It has been a little while since you took anything of substance into your stomach and you must be feeling somewhat empty at present. Would I be correct in that diagnosis?”

He smiled slightly. Where was he going?

“How do fancy another of those cold fruit juice drinks that the nurse has been giving you, but a large one,” he asked again with a slight smile.

My mouth was as full of the cobwebs that were drifting through my thoughts. I had no hesitation in accepting the offer, but what was ‘a large one’? The nurse appeared, as he finished his words, carrying a full tumbler in her hand. A nurse, there were definitely no nurses or doctors at my school. This had to be a real nurse, she looked like one, this could not be school. My thoughts were interleaving memories, fears, this reality if it was that and dreams of memory or perhaps even memory itself; I was remembering or was I?

This reality was not too bad but could I keep hold of it; it seemed not but then again perhaps I could.

The tumbler was definitely full, nothing larger than any I had seen before, although it may have been a different shape or was it the colour of the contents. I couldn’t focus my mind as sharply as I thought I could, or intended to, despite assuring myself that I was back to normality; or was I?

“This is slightly different Ian,” he explained, “but I’m sure you will enjoy it and the benefits it will provide. I have had something extra added to it. It will do you no harm, you will not taste it but be assured you will feel the effects almost immediately.”

Another lengthy tome from a character full of reality.

Taking the tumbler from the nurse, he offered me the drink, not to my mouth but with the expectation that I would use one hand or the other. My arms were still and until now had been laid unmoving alongside me. It was strange raising my hand to take the glass but the Doctor did not entirely let go of it.

This was like moving through mud in a bad dream; that was it, I was still in my bad dream. He assisted me in finishing every drop but he need not have bothered; I nearly swallowed the glass in my eagerness. The juice had the same refreshing, intense almost magical flavour but with a smell that I couldn’t quite place; melon, orange, apple and definitely mango but there again none of them, something else, I didn’t mind, whichever.

Within a few moments I felt a surge of energy flowing through every sinew. This dream had real sensations, it was a good dream. My head was suddenly very clear, I wanted to jump away from the bed and run round the room, I felt so good.

“Is this some sort of drug,” I enquired with a daft smile on my face.

“Sort of,” the Doctor replied calmly, “but something that will keep you feeling the way you do now for about another thirty minutes only. You will come down then with a bit of a bump and will have to rest, possibly sleep, for the rest of the day before you come back to where you are now.”

I had no intention of feeling the way I did five minutes ago; we would see. Or perhaps he was trying to take me back to where I really wanted to be, in my warm swirling, musical mists.

“Is this from one of those machines in the restaurant?” I asked flippantly trying to catch out the character of my imagination. I had just recalled the restaurant that Ed had shown me; progress of sorts. This dream, if that’s what it was, was improving with snippets of real events coming to the fore, or was I dreaming of events in another dream that somehow provided a sense of reality?

“Can I have a continuous supply of it?” I asked, talking in an intentionally daft manner. I knew the question was partly correct but couldn’t stop myself coming out with it in this strange manner.

“Not exactly,” he replied with a very broad smile.

My head felt sort of on my shoulders, with a bad hangover, but also still within the realm, or perhaps with an edge given to the reality, or perhaps the purple mists again.

“Do you think you can get out of bed now?” he asked me.

That caught me out, but I certainly felt up to it. The energy was flowing in my veins and with every heartbeat thumping in my ears, the flow seemed to increase. I wanted to run round the room once more; I was really feeling so good.

“Take a little walk over to the other side of the room? I want to show you something; perhaps you would like another drink.”

“Hell yes,” I responded trying to leap out of bed.

My legs were not as good as I anticipated and I sat back on the edge slightly deflated. If this was still a dream then I would definitely be running round the room. I was definitely sat on the edge of the bed and with wobbly legs, which had to mean reality or so I thought. There was still a tinge of dreamy fuzziness round the edges of everything. The nurse offered me another glass full of the juice and in no time it was going down again but this time much more slowly, to savour the flavour and sensation of every drop.

“I’m sorry Ian,” the Doctor told me, “but that glass does not have any additions to it but I got the impression you could probably appreciate a further drink and enjoy the boost it seems to give you naturally.”

He was right, that extra glass did make me feel better or was it the first one now running through my system to full effect? My head would not clear. My eyes were seeing this reality but there was something else overlaying what I saw. I was helped across the room by the nurse, I was not objecting to this, and I was taken into the gloom. This is where I wanted to be, they knew it and were managing my dream nicely. The welcoming gloom slowly receded as the light level in the room increased gently, the work of unknown hands, to a subtle pleasant glow.

I was taken steadily to a set of vertical blinds in the far wall that I knew, somehow, were hiding a window or something. What was the view on the other side, the Earth from a great distance, the Moon, I did not know what to expect.

“Before I open the blinds Ian, I want to ask you a few questions and I want you to think carefully before replying,” the Doctor requested.

The Doctor reached forward, however, and slowly opened the blinds which I believed I had just heard were not his intentions; what was happening? What a beautiful view. It was obviously late afternoon as the light was fading but the tremendous view of greenery and the proud mountains either side of the lush valley was impressive. It filled me with a sense of calm and enjoyment at being alive to witness such a view.

“I guess we all came through,” I said. He did not reply.

Despite the semi-illusion bouncing round inside my head, I guessed that we must have found the Mother Ship because this was not the Ark. The Mother Ship; another facet of reality that just came into my thoughts from goodness knows where. The Mother Ship, those words I repeated again to myself, they sounded so comforting.

“Have I been asleep that long; are we on our way out of the solar system?” I queried.

I was bouncing, my head was racing, I felt good and couldn’t stop the babble. The words just almost tumbled over each other as they spilled from my mouth.

“This is still the Ark Ian,” the Doctor stated in his cool controlled manner.

“The Ark! Yes the Ark.”

“The Mother Ship, no; the base perhaps, no.”

“I'm certain that that was now behind me or was I still there, here, wherever.”

“What then?” I queried.

“Where are we?” I tried, not seeing the obvious.

“What do think, Ian, Tell me your thoughts,” the Doctor pursued.

“Come on, “I bounced back.

“This is some sort of trick you’re playing on me, a psychological test to check on my sanity, some sort of psychotherapy procedure. I thought I was awake, really awake, but now this means it is not so.”

I found myself giggling strangely and enjoyed the experience. Now I wasn’t sure that I was not still in my dream, these events, this view, could not be real. Nothing in a dream is totally real and that’s how I felt now, making odd leaps forward with connections that did not connect somehow. But there was no mist, no music or painful lights. I wanted to reach for the warmth of sleep, but wishing for it did not work; what kind of dream could this be? Neither the face of the Doctor nor Caterin's, who now stood alongside me and to whom I turned my head to face, moved a muscle.

I almost fell back stunned and had to be steadied by the nurse who had positioned herself behind me. I was still in a dream, surely and I had to be experiencing hallucinations or one of those remarkably realistic dreams all over again that sometimes occur just before waking. I smiled to myself knowing that it would soon be over, even if the headmaster did appear. I would wake up shortly, I felt sure of it.

“Nonsense,” I shouted out. “Come on, this a test, a television screen or something equally stupid; I will wake up in a moment hungry for breakfast.”

No reaction.

This had to be dream, a very real one so I thought and in my dream; I would test it.

If I took a swing at the Doctor or Caterin, I might wake up. I turned in her direction but she already had her hand tight round my wrist. I tried to swing the other fist but the Doctor had tight hold of this. This is what can happen in dreams where every move is anticipated. I might be full of beans but my strength had not still returned, of course it hadn’t. They were anticipating my every move in this dream, or was it turning into yet another nightmare. They could hear my thoughts, I was becoming confused, I was definitely slipping back to my mists.

Perhaps I really was awake and broadcasting, perhaps loudly again.

“You certainly are,” Caterin confirmed, “but you really must reduce your state of excitement. It’s almost painful for us.”

She was speaking to my mind, directly. This nightmare was far too realistic and I wanted to wake up. I was in a mad hot sort of nightmare that was now proving to be most uncomfortable. I wanted rid of it soon but for the moment I was trapped. I was sweating profusely in my mad dreamlike state and it had started to run into my eyes and sting quite badly. To find myself in a sweat had to be real, but I still wasn’t certain what was real and what was not. Five minutes ago the answer was there before me. I had not grasped it and I might now be paying the price of that omission.

I was desperate to clear my head of the fright to know that I could wake up, could be alive and well. Nightmares were dreadful things and I had not had one for many years. Here I was in a dream, knowing I was dreaming, but unable to wake up and a sense of panic was setting in.

“This is not a nightmare Ian, I assure you.”

The Doctor was surely reading my thoughts.

“Yes I am doing that, I cannot help but hear your thoughts, you are shouting, mentally, but still shouting.”

I had heard these words before.

Was I in a dream, knowing I was dreaming, or in a reality suffering some wakening nightmare?

“Look again Ian,” Caterin insisted verbally.

“Look out of the window. What was the last scene you saw there, tell me.”

“Snow in the gloom,” I had to reply but that was a very long time ago.

I had seen the valley covered in snow as the evening drew on; this had to be the base, surely.

“No it was not,” she contradicted me.

“The last time you viewed this scene it was raining real cats and dogs and they were fighting each other as they hit the ground. It was complete bedlam.”

“You’re talking nonsense,” I said, trying to maintain my dreamlike sanity in the face of this outrageous statement.

“Am I?” she continued. “Make me reply to you sensibly. If you are in a dream, you can make me do anything. Make me say or do something sensible.”

The confusion was building, the ill, sickly sensation was there again but her words for a moment steadied me. I thought to myself, get her to do something she definitely would not do because if this is a chaotic dream that I’m in, she will simply do as I say and I will ease my impending and ever close state of panic.

“My God,” I thought and spoke out loud. “You are so attractive Caterin, I just want to undress you slowly and take you into my bed, right now. Let’s not hesitate, let’s do it now and slowly.”

The sting from the flat of her hand across my face really hurt. I brought my painful face round sharply to face her and received another blow from the flat of her hand in the opposite direction. My face was on fire and this was not dreaming.

“This is what I call a little physical psychotherapy, Doctor. It often works wonders,” Caterin declared.

I glared at her. I put my nose up to hers, challenging her and was about to try to strike back. If this was a dream I was about to settle it properly, when I received another slap firmer than the others but in the same direction as the first.

“Bloody hell that hurt,” I shouted as the pain shot from my jaw up the side of my face.

“What did you want to do that for?” I demanded.

I was determined to tackle her head on, even though I was not physically restored to normal, but if this was a dream it wouldn’t matter, I could achieve anything.

“We are back in the real world, are we not Ian?” she faced me off as I had attempted to intimidate her.

“That’s enough Caterin”, the Doctor demanded.

“Are you trying to kill him, he’s only just come round.”

“I won’t take him that far,” she replied.

“But I think a little more of the physical stuff might just do the trick.”

“Come on Ian, let’s see what you are made of,” as she pushed her face into mine until our noses touched.

Her hot breath pervading my face was telling me that the slaps and the severe stinging of both sides of my face were most real. This was no dream. I was wide awake and I had pushed my luck with a superior who was about to unleash herself onto me. She was much fitter and younger than me and could surely have me for breakfast. I was not dreaming, most definitely not. I was in serious trouble, but I was alive and in a reality, the confusing overlaying of images had gone and only the clear one before me existed.

Her face developed one of her rare smiles as the coldness in her eyes melted. She stood back from my shaking frame. All of my thoughts seemed to locate themselves into the real order in which events occurred and the mists disappeared completely. I was awake, most definitely awake.

“I think we need you back to bed for a long talk and some explanations. I apologise for striking you,” she offered, “but you’re a grown man, you’ve seen military service and I sure that my actions in bringing you to your senses have also brought back a few memories from your past, have they not?”

I had to agree, I nodded. I could not hold a grudge for her striking me but I was certainly holding one hand up the side of my head to ease the painful sensation. I had been brought back to reality from a very confusing state. Her firm action had worked well.

I did indeed recall, that during my infantry soldiering, the occasion when a senior Officer had playfully floored me with a unexpected punch to the ribs. I bought the tickets that he had been selling with a genuine big smile; such were the ways of the military family. This event was most similar and I bore no grudges, if anything in a strange way it was almost a pleasure to be taken back to some very happy days.

“Doctor, I would like you to stay while I attempt some explanations for Ian,” Caterin mellowed tone announced. “You may have to fill in some of the facts but I don’t believe you will be needed to administer any more medication. I believe Ian will be well and truly on the mend as soon as his glowing cheeks have subsided.”

She looked in my direction at those words and managed the kind of smile I recognised immediately as one of acknowledgement; I returned the smile. I held no grudge, how could I? I felt as if I had had a cold shower, except for the burning face. I had awoken into a reality that had surely passed, but I was now being told no it hadn’t. Life had been extraordinarily strange for some time, why should it be different now?

I was helped back towards the bed and knew I had to simply listen and try to take it all in. I sat on the edge of the bed, not wishing to get back into its warmth nor to re-enter the dream like nightmare it offered.

The explanations came slowly to ensure they stuck.

“You were hurt quite severely but you continued on your self given task. Upon leaving the base Ed administered something of a sedative, an alcoholic drink he told me you soldier types are very familiar with, to help you relax. It worked so well you passed out.”

“Here in the Ark you were taken to the medical teams who undertook some quite serious remedial work to repair the physical damage. The work on you at your first visit to the base has created some sort of resilience to bodily damage and this assisted greatly in your recovery here.”

“What happens in your mind is something we cannot fully understand as yet. The improvements we made to your mind were beyond our expectations but it seems they have come with something not anticipated. I caught some of your delusional state as you tried to rationalise where you were; it was none too pleasant.”

After these words I was filling in the events very quickly. The memory just came up to full speed and effectiveness. I found myself telling Caterin my first hand experiences.

Caterin was no longer the ogre but a damn good leader, coaxing me with snippets of the truth, letting the facts settle and drawing out of me explanations that she could confirm or modify. She directed my gaze to the window and then stepped towards it and reached out her slim fingers. As she touched it the view changed to a dark rugged landscape of craters and valleys; the far side of the Moon, now receding rapidly.

But then came the ultimate explanation and this really caught me out. Turning to face me fully, I immediately saw the tears running down the cheeks of her face to fall uninterrupted to the floor.

“What’s this, not the strong leader of short while ago that sorted me out?”

I was thinking rationally and could not understand this. Her tearful eyes looked deeply into mine without any hint of control or seniority. I felt her calming presence in my mind, not probing, not speaking to me but just providing some sort of reassurance touching. I was not admonished for thinking too loud, in fact her ‘touch’ worked wonders in really bringing me back to who I had been not so long ago.

She was about to speak to me in a most personal manner as equals, of that I was sure. There was a grief in her tears and in her thoughts that I felt deep within mine. With each word spoken slowly I felt the sorrow and yet something else as she explained.

  “You disobeyed my orders to return to the base to meet and help your family who were in need. I did not want you to leave this Ark because of your importance to the project. I could not risk you being caught in anything that might occur at the base, but as it turned out, this is exactly what happened. This could have destroyed any chance we had of finding the survivors on our home planet; your disobedience could have been that serious.”

“Do you understand what I am saying?”

I replied that I did but I wasn’t sure why the tears should be still running down her face as I was sure that I was on the point of being given another old fashioned bollocking.

“I know that you went off in response to voices you heard directing you to go and save your ‘family’.”

“Ed explained this much as you had told him. Your actions and your timing seems providential now and you were right in taking note of what you were told and in doing what you did. If you had been a little later or slow in your brave actions, the outcome, for me would have been so much different.”

I remained silent.

“The young lady whose life you saved is my daughter, Caterin junior.”

She paused and I drew a long breath as the implications sunk in fully.

“The elderly lady you pulled from the rubble and whose life you also saved was my daughter’s grandmother, my mother, Caterin senior.”

She paused again and the tears ran fully. I did not need to consider anything more as it was all starkly clear.

“My father was amongst those that took the full force of the blast and lay with the other Seniors, dead, on the grass of what had once been our beautiful park. There was nothing you could do for him, but in saving the lives of the two other people most important in my life, I cannot thank you enough.”

“The voices you heard I believe came from that ‘Other Place’ we know so little of except from a few talented people as yourself. You disobeyed my orders to follow the words of voices you determined were senior to me. A course of action requiring an approach to following instructions in a disciplined manner that few would have dared to undertake. They directed you to perform in a manner that you took notice of and acted upon and I will forever be grateful for that. I must live with the loss of my father, he was beyond your help, as were many of his other Senior colleagues.”

The tears flowed profusely down her reddened cheeks but she did not hide her face nor attempt to brush them away. She was proud of the tears, of the kind that only truly adult people can openly and honestly shed in displaying their grief for those most loved but now lost.

She looked me straight in the eyes once more and I felt the humanity, the humility, the warmth, the thankfulness and the strength in her commanding presence pervading freely and warmly within my thoughts. She held nothing back as her presence invaded mine and truly made me a part of her family, a cousin of sorts, but most certainly a welcome addition.

The ‘voices’ I had heard had referred to ‘my family’ and urged me on to their rescue, but it was the daughter and mother of Caterin that I had saved. They were not my family, although it seemed I was now a part of theirs, but I could not dispel the memory of the words used, nor the story that they had told. Caterin picked up on my train of thought but continued verbally for the benefit of the Doctor perhaps.

“The reference to ‘family’ is confusing and I’m not sure why it was made but I am eternally grateful that you heeded those words. Perhaps there is some connection that may show itself eventually or maybe it simply refers to you being part of the larger family group that we now are. Be assured I will continue to consider you as part of my family from here on.”

I felt truly humbled by these words.

I could not bring rational thought or explanation to the events or to the ‘communication’ that had been made with me, except that perhaps over the millennia, from the DNA manipulation of the indigenous peoples on Earth and the DNA of the Settlers, a convergence of sorts had occurred.

It was, perhaps, the result of a beneficial mutation that would have otherwise occurred naturally, given time; I couldn’t tell. I could only consider that it was now most unlikely that these same processes would ever have the time to mature amongst all those left behind on Earth. I compartmented my thoughts for later consideration. The right time would come eventually when either events or my quiet contemplation would restore the question for reconsideration and possibly, a better, perhaps more complete, answer.

As my thoughts came quickly to a conclusion, she realised where I truly was, fully in the real world, no more confusing dreams and in the cold light of day. Turning away, she walked slowly out of the room away from the gloom. As she reached an opening door, turning back to look straight at me, and standing still for a moment, in the same manner as that the young girl I had saved, mouthed the same words.

“Thank you.”

That penetrated deeply as Caterin continued to leave, the door closing silently behind her.

I did not wish to return to bed now, but preferred to find my strength preferably in some element of regular routine. A shower was called for, despite my jelly legs, and getting dressed sounded like a good idea. I resigned to taking it a little easy with no more dreadful dreams, just try to be normal for a while. I needed the lights turning up but still had no idea where the controls where. The nurse wandered back into the room, waived her fingers at a section of wall and full lighting was restored. She smiled at me but in a very different way to Caterin.

I felt better already.

Now where was that shower?