The Stowaway

Evan Rosse

 

The Stowaway

 

The I think I'll take the highway... his mind races. Carl sank deeper into the device. “I think I’ll go to the moon... No, the sea, today I will set sail.

Mental mindscapeing can be quite exhausting, but far easier than going to the database for your traveling needs. It had been a long day so Carl decided to take a week (well, a mental one) off and travel.

Suddenly Carl became aware of his cold metal apparatus. The mindscapeing device was a cumbersome twisting mass of wires and tin metal pipes, but then again matters of appearance were unnecessary when imagination was your only limit. The metal glowed warm and the process began. Carl can feel his mind, his consciousness, slip increasingly away, and try as he might, the process cannot be stopped now, like a child trying to climb up a slide on-route to the bottom. The walls of reality, or at least Carl’s perception of it, were folding up and sliding into infinity and Carl focused intently to steer his mind down this tunnel. Carl could never get used to that feeling of first submission, it always felt dirty to him like rust on a bike chain. Once past the perception altering first stage, the rest was as instinctive as raising your hand. A slight purple haze guides the mind through its mechanical labyrinth and it is really the only aspect of mindscapeing that appears artificial. As Carl’s mind slips deeper, he dodges past the obvious obstacles of cyberfolds and datablock with expert accuracy. Carl’s has been here before. He looks for the sea and struggles to right his mental sails amongst the purple slide of cyberconsciousness. Then, like a stint of déjà vu, Carl suddenly became aware of his desired path. As soon as his
Cyberconscious had direction, he was there instantly. The purple haze dissipated and left behind a cool sea breeze and a salty musk of breaking waves. Carl had set sail. The water was clear and the boat glided effortlessly, this was the vacation Carl needed.

Like a dream, cyperconsciousness was a state of mind, completely
Believable as reality and yet, at the same time, strangely alien. But a frequent user like Carl easily dispelled this veil of the synthetic. By now his mind could feel the floorboards creek beneath his boots.

As he paces across the deck, he came to the realization that he was bored. He needed a destination. With a snapping impulse of psuedoconscious manipulation, Carl imagined a course, and like a gust of wind, Carl new his goal. It was an island known only in the mind of Carl and it's location could only be exacted through an invisible impulse that compelled Carl to move. His mind was at ease and the wind blew west. Carl took in the sunlight and began to admire his vessel. It was a beautiful ship, probably the most well crafted of Carl’s career, and clearly the biggest. Its masts shot upwards towards the strange blue sky, with its sails spread like a giant butterfly’s wings.

Carl was finally relaxed, the days stresses were all but forgotten and he continued to walk around and admire his metal craftsmanship.  His island was getting closer; he could feel it between his eyes.

As Carl continued to bask in all of his ship’s glory something crawled between his legs and caught his eye. Carl knelt down to examine the strange creature and was startled by what he saw. It was about a half inch long with four arachnid-like legs sprouting from both side of its body. It was a dirty yellow color like that of hardened honey. The strange part about this creature was that it resembled a human toenail. Carl peeled his large boots off to compare the similarities and it was, as Carl has suspected, identical. Carl watched the creature scuffle off and slide itself into the floorboards, down into the belly of the ship. Carl was slightly disturbed by this finding, but eventually dismissed it as a small glitch, probably just due to some latent stress from a long day at the mill. In any regard, it was ultimately inconsequential as he was about the make contact with the island.

By now the island was in clear sight, and Carl continued to pace excitedly around the deck of the ship. He began to think about what things he should bring to the island; definitely a shovel, defiantly a pale, and definitely some pure, unsynthetic, water, just like the ancients drank. He was going to dig, Carl loved digging in the sand. Carl strengthened his thought path, and within seconds the objects of his desire were laid out in front of him, ready to be transported onshore. Carl looked at his new belongings and his eye was quickly brought to the shovel. At first it appeared that the color was off, like a static malfunction that can be common with mindscapeing. But when Carl stepped closer and grabbed the shovel, he realized that it was not the static malfunction he had expected, instead he saw thousands of strands of hair slithering like worms in the mud. Horrified, Carl dropped the shovel on the deck and watched in disgust as the hair slithered off the shovel and wormed into the floorboards. This was not supposed to happen.

In all of Carl’s experience he had never seen anything quite like this. Carl though in utter panic, there must be a virus, and he must have been hacked. According to the PSA’s a virus could have deadly consequences, but Carl had never seen or heard of, an actual virus before. The only publically advertised indication of a virus was, “Strange or Otherly appearances, thoughts, or actions”. Carl had previously laughed at such comments, and considering the frequently bizarre nature of mindscapeing, how could one ever differentiate viral activity from the everyday otherness of mindscapeing? Panic had set in. This was not the vacation he had hoped for.

Carl began to pace again, this time however; it was a frantic and nervous pacing. Carl was eager to land on the island and to get off this boat with its strange occupants. It was now time to anchor.

Carl was still nervous and had difficulty thinking the anchor into reality. But eventually he was able to successfully create a small, but manageable, anchor. He unhooked the anchor from its fastenings and tossed it into the sea. The anchor succeeded in stopping the vessel and Carl bent over the side of the ship to make sure the anchor was firmly attached. When Carl looked down he saw yet another strange object. Swimming around the rope of the anchor were two small finned hands racing around the sea like minnows in a pond. They scurried just below the clear blue water and with two great leaps, they hurtled themselves into the air and through a small window in the hull.

Carl had to get off this boat. He didn’t care how; he just needed to leave immediately. Disregarding his previously imagined supplies, Carl ran to the end of the boat in an attempt to fling himself over the side and into the ocean. The island was close enough to swim to and he thought if he could just get away he could wait out this entire mindscape and return safely.  As Carl approached the end of the boat, his legs became increasingly heavy and his pace slowed. By the time he reached the front lip of the bow, he was barley moving at a crawl, his legs were acted as though filled with lead. There was no getting off this boat. Carl was at a loss; he had no other choice but to enter the hull of the ship.

Suddenly, Carl’s legs gained mobility and a hatch appeared where the toenail creature had slipped into the boards. This was where Carl must go. He walked over and grabbed the chrome handle of the hatch. With a heavy click, the hatch flung itself open and Carl apprehensively folded his legs over and slid inside.

The hatch lead directly to one large cabin inside the boat. Carl descended down the latter and landed his large boots on the wood with a satiated thud. No sooner had his boots hit the floor, than the hatch above him slammed shut. The ladder underneath disintegrated into an illuminated purple mist before evaporating. Carl was in dark.

Carl struggled to calm his panic and to imagine a light source, but his mind was racing and he was unable to gain back control. This was not good territory to be in for a mindscaper, even one as experienced as Carl. Carl could feel his hands moisten with perspiration as he stumbled around the dark cabin, until suddenly, a crack of a match sounded and tangerine like flickered from the opposite corner of the room. Carl turned to the direction of the light and was horrified at what he saw.

 At first glace it appeared to be a man sitting cross-legged, the match suspended in the air about a foot away from his face.  But upon further inspection this was not a man in the slightest.

Carl first recognized the hands. They were the same ones he had seen off the deck of the boat earlier. They wrested on the thick thighs of vegetation colored flesh that constituted the torso. The hands were joined at the wrist to alien forearms by means of interlocked fingerlike tentacles.  In fact, every joint on its body was a small web of these interlocked fingers that bent and swayed with his general disposition.  Carl even recognized the toenail from earlier as well as the hair that wriggled on his head like a hurricane of serpents. His face was awash in flickering shadow, but had a familiar disposition that made Carl strangely more comfortable.

“Carl” the creature spoke in Carl’s voice.

            Carl was too startled at the sound of his own voice to respond.

            “Why wont you talk to me Carl?” The creature spoke again, this time in a gentler tone.

            “Who are you?” Carl responded in a whisper.  

             “Does it matter?” Said the creature.

            “Well, I have to see if you are a virus, or a glitch of some sorts”, Carl responded with more confidence and inched closer to the creature.

            “A virus aims to dominate another and use that other for survival. I have no use for you or your world, and I exist without necessity of raid or pillage. Also I think clearly and rationally, if I were a glitch this would be a coincidence of high improbability. I am here simply to ask you something.” The creature said calmly.

            “Well then, what would that be?”  Carl was baffled, but extremely curious.

The creature raised his tangled hand and motioned to the floor. Carl’s eyes followed and met at a spot on the floorboard about six inches away from his foot. There was a small, but perfect, spider crawling on the floor.

            “Can you kill that spider?” the creature said.

Carl looked at the spider, then back at the creature. Finally he lifted his boot and thrust in onto the floor, crushing the spider. The remnants of the deceased arachnid twitched briefly and stopped. The spider was gone. 

            “Why did you do that Carl?” the creature asked.

            “Well first of all, you asked me to, and secondly, because it’s not real, it doesn’t matter. This is my world.” Carl responded with increasing confidence.

            “Can you not smell my breath? When you touch my flesh, can you not feel the coarseness of my hair, and the firmness of my bone?”

            Carl rested in contemplated silence before proclaiming, “well I feel objects in my dreams, and they’re not real,”

“Have you ever woken from a dream in fear, jealousy, rage, or panic? Don’t these emotions carry into your real world experience? Doesn’t that affect your daily live and your perception of it? Then who’s to say these experiences aren’t real”

A Spider Crawled beneath Carl’s feet, and all of a sudden, Carl’s sight began to blur. Purple dots situated themselves in the middle of his vision and began to rapidly expand, before overwhelming Carl completely.

Carl awoke in his chair, the device on his head was hot and sweat dripped from his forehead. Carl was still a bit dazed from his troubling experience and it took him unusually long to remove the helmet and peal the synthoskin off. Carl stepped off the chair and his toes recoiled from the cold metal floor. He walked slowly over to the dispensary and poured himself a quart of Klydoale. As the cool liquid washed over his parched throat a spider crawled across the dispensary. Carl, paused, then slammed the quart on top of it, it legs twitched once, and it was dead.