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MIND OVER MATTER - by FrankCap
The dinosaur roared over the embankment, thrusting its powerful neck back and forth, much like a rabid animal. But this was not a contortion of nature, but the hand fashioned reigns that had been slung around the thunder lizard’s strong neck. These leather straps, now gathered in the equally impressive left hand of the young hero controlled the monster – a glowing sword in his right. He steered the massive beast as if by will, stomping trees with the reptile’s monstrous footprint and leveling rocks with its potent tail. Trailing closely behind, from above, saucer shaped crafts bombarded the ground with pinpoint laser blasts. The airships are so many in number they block out the sun when the young man turns his head briefly skyward. He commands the t-rex onward, faster and faster, as the laser blasts come closer to their target. The beast squeezes through a cavern of stone, smashing it from behind with its tail. Beast and rider now forced into a narrow collision course with a thousand foot cliff, overhanging a molten lake. The airships press on, seconds away from accomplishing their mission. The young hero barely breaks a sweat as he makes the only decision he can – to run himself and the dinosaur off the cliff and take his chances with the river of fire. A short pulse of red laser light knocks the glowing sword from the young hero’s fist. He returns his right hand to the reigns and bears down on the thunder lizard as they take the final leap into the abyss…
The world goes white… nothing but a pronounced rhythmic beep, repeating over and over.
The starship commander puts his boot to the alien’s throat. The winged creature, who was not less than a minute ago his first officer, is now trying to steal the life essence from him. “Captain, the vortex is closing,” bellowed the rookie science office, “if we don’t make the jump now, we fry!” The captain acknowledged the plea, as he continues to stab the alien form with its own horned fingers, to no effect, as his two security officers lay dead by his feet. “Open the airlock!” bellows the commander, green goo covering his uniform from the belly of the still writhing alien. The second in command rises from his station, “Sir, that is surely suicide.” “Open the damn airlock and hold on to something,” the captain spouts back as he winces in pain, “open the damn airlock and make the jump the second this thing goes belly up into space!” The rest of the still living crew look nervously at each other. They pause. “Do it!” shouts the captain, “Now!” The pilot pushes a series of buttons and the massive metal airlock separates. The bridge becomes a giant wind vacuum.
The world goes white… the beep gets louder.
The scientist fell back into his chair. From the spacious window of his penthouse lab, he could see the destruction he had inadvertently wrought on the city. The nanobots he had created to rid the city of pollution and disease had become sentient… and angry. In only 2 weeks, these subatomic machines had snuffed the life from the surface of the city, and created a new order in their own image. How ironic it all seemed to the scientist – that the biomechanical marvels he brought to life, had now extinguished the lives of 8 million people, and yet left him to survive. They left him to preside over their arcane creation like a child wishes to impress their father. What he saw from his ivory tower left him with no such joy: metal alloy spires, jutting from the sky as far as one could see, blotting out the sun and the moon. The street, seemingly the earth itself, replaced… almost alive and ever changing - a world becoming ever present with movement and invention; yet sterile and inhumanly quiet. He despaired that this would be his legacy- destroyer of worlds – not that it mattered anymore. The scientist rose from his chair and picked it up, hurtling it through the plate glass. He half heartedly muttered a small prayer and followed the chair out of the 43rd story window.
The world goes white… the only sound is silence.
The doctor removes his face plate and enters the waiting room. An elderly lady and her daughter hang on his words. The physician speaks softly but pronounced, “He’s finally reached stasis.” The puzzled daughter inquires, “What exactly does that mean. I assume it’s good.” “The program has matched the faint brain wave pattern left in his mind,” the doctor explains, “He’s now in continual hyper-dream sleep”. The old woman slips in a question, “Is he in pain?” “He can’t feel pain”, says the doctor, “his body is dead, only the brain is barely alive with the help of this computer.” “What will happen to him then?” asks the daughter. The physician looks back through the glass and then answers, “as long as you wish to contribute to the project, his mind will stay in that hyper-dream state.” “What do you think he dreams of?” asks the much younger woman. “I think your mother would be the best person to ask about that,” says the doctor, “I can only imagine what’s inside the mind of the world’s greatest science fiction writer.” The elderly woman turns and looks at her husband through the glass and smiles, as a tear rolls down her cheek.
The Stone – by Frank Cap
They wheeled in the old man and thrust his tired, aging body, riddled with pain, off the gurney and into what passed for a bed. The discomfort and shame of it all was masked to him by the intense stabbing in his back, that had passed for a kidney the last four hours. “Where is the shot? When will I get it?” He lay, or more precisely, teetered on the bed, unable to find a single molecule on his body that would provide a moment of rest. The only stimulus that could distract him from his suffering was the ungodly sounds of an old lady vomiting in the bed next to him. And yet, even worse, she was not vomiting, but repeatedly making the sounds of expulsion. He soon prayed for liquid bile to appear. The women next to him was a fossil, older than even he, and in far worse shape. Every line and crack on her face produced years of pain. She kept asking, “Did I take my pills?” The nurses reassured her over and over that she did. He was momentarily distracted from the hurt, but the sensation continued to bombard his system like an enemy attack in endless waves. They were stabbing him and prodding his flesh now; needles and bags, tubes and fingers exploring a body long since numbed by trauma. “Where is the shot? When will I get it?” This became his mantra, the only last hope he could cling to. The old lady asked for her pills and said she needed the bedpan. The flimsy curtain between them was not long enough and he kept trying to pull it down so his face would not be directly in the line of her phantom vomit. The huge orderly spoke to her in a serious and demeaning tone, “Mam, you’ve had your pills and you need to lie down. I have a lot of other patients in here!” His world had become a pet store or an animal laboratory. He was reduced to a guinea pig, ready to be abused and tested for science. Several other persons of lab coat status visited him. They all made him perform the same painful tasks that led them to the same brilliant conclusion: he was in pain! “Where was the shot? When will I get it?”
As he was sloughed back to his old bed, he realized he could lay flat on it. The agony was subsiding… the shot was working. A sunrise was slowly occurring in the same region of his brain. The old lady turned to him, finally acknowledging him, “Trouble with your back?” “Kidney stone,” he answered. “Hun?” she squawked. “Kidney stone!” he repeated louder. “Oh my,” she said quickly. “I’ve had those… worse than childbirth.” He found little comfort in the fact that a woman was telling him, a man, that he was undergoing something more painful than labor. The feminine trump card, the secret decoder ring of all womanhood was actually being topped. He felt like Yeager, or Byrd, or Sir Edmund; a conquering hero who faced death’s summit and returned to tell the tale. God, the shot was really working. He felt his whole body relax. Things were calm, the walls were warm and fuzzy. He might even find some sleep. “Did I take my pills?” the old lady barked. It seemed almost comical now, this dog and pony show. He resigned himself to the fact he would be spending the night somewhere within this hospital. He closed his eyes without wincing for what seemed like the first time in an eternity.
The physician’s assistant poked him awake, “We’re releasing you. The CAT scan confirmed the stone. Here’s a prescription and drink plenty of water. Good luck. You can leave when you’re dressed.” She whirled away with her clipboard to the next poor soul. “Discharged?” he thought. He was just getting comfortable. But wouldn’t it be great to sleep in his old bed again. The world seemed fresh again. He stood, quite wobbly, but without much pain and pulled his clothes from the plastic bag to get dressed. He drew the curtain for the last time and saw the frail figure of the old lady, crumpled on the sheets. Her eyes met his. “Good luck, young man,” she said. “Young man?” he chuckled to himself. How everyone must seem young to her. But then he looked down at his hands and feet, the strength in his limbs. By God, he was a young man, merely a third of her years. He flexed his arms and felt a new vitality, a god-like sense of power and spirit. He wished her well and bounded from the ER, trying to be a symbol of recovery to all the other patients. He passed through the huge automatic doors and out into the fresh night air. The dark sky seemed limitless and all his. He had so much life ahead of him. He jumped off the curb, started to whistle, but quickly snapped his fingers. He did an about face, and ran back into the cold, sterile ER. He had forgotten his urine strainer.