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by LaineySummers in Fantasy, Humour, Science Fiction added July 25, 2008

3000 Words By Tea-Time Tomorrowmature

The snow white plain of my monitor was broken only by my subject title in size eighteen font. I realised I had been staring at the screen for fully one hour, and had got no further than that. I decided I needed some caffeine to fuel my inspiration, so headed to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

One and a half cups of coffee later, after stubbing out my third cigarette, I had finally made some progress. I had in the last forty five minutes managed to complete my name underneath the title. I had toyed with the idea of a blinking font, but dismissed it as too flashy.

What I needed right now was three thousand solid looking words, and I needed them by tea-time tomorrow. What I had was a headache from staring at the screen for so long.

I decided that a nice walk in the fresh air might be just what I needed to clear my head, so I decided to go down to the shop to pick up some more coffee and cigarettes. I had to keep alert no matter what, my very life depended on it; or at the very least, my degree.

It was almost five pm by the time I got back from the shop, my headache was worse now than before, as it had started pelting down with rain the minute I’d gotten halfway there. Cold and irritable, I put the kettle on for another coffee as I changed into some dry clothes and towel dried my hair.

I now had slightly less than twenty four hours in which to complete my essay, and so far all I had was a title page. It was most definitely not looking promising, but that realisation only served to offer me the inspiration I was looking for. I sat down at my keyboard with a fresh pot of coffee, and before long was furiously tapping away at my keyboard.

Two and a half hours later, I sat rubbing my neck to massage some life back into it. I had several deep impressions on my forehead where it had been resting on the keyboard where I had dozed off. I had typed four hundred words before I had fallen asleep, then a subsequent sixteen pages of gibberish. I could almost have kicked myself, but first I needed to get myself something to eat and some more coffee, the other pot had gone cold sitting on my desk.

Sandwich and extra strong coffee to hand I stationed myself once more at my desk. I’d added some more cushions to the seat; I’d be sitting here for some time now, toilet breaks excepted. I thought it important to be comfortable, but I didn’t want to doze off again, so got up and opened a window to let in some fresh air.

Feeling much more comfortable, and hunger and thirst suitably slaked, I got back to the task in hand.

I’d have to double my work output over the next few hours to get the bulk of my essay written before I went to bed.

It was ten pm the next time I took a break from my desk. I’d been working solidly, and wanted to reward myself for completing the first one thousand words of my essay. With the first stage completed so early, I thought I deserved a bit of a treat, and there was a piece of cake in the larder that would be the perfect sugar boost.

The door to the larder was located just inside the kitchen. It had its own light, so I didn’t bother switching on the fluorescent tube, rather just flicked on the single bulb hanging from the ceiling.

The cake was on a shelf on the back wall, and I was just about to reach out for the cake when the light overhead went off. The bulb had blown. Not to worry though, I reached out to where the shelf should be, but instead of finding it, there seemed to be nothing but thin air. I took another step forward, shuffling in the blind dark; as I did hands gripped each of my arms and pulled me sharply forward.

The larder suddenly seemed to be a lot bigger. The light had come back on and I also seemed to be lying on a couch of some sort. I closed my eyes and opened them again. The light was a little hazy, I couldn’t see anything. And I was still wondering where the couch had come from.

I decided to close my eyes again, in the hope that when I opened them again, things would make a little more sense.

With my eyes closed, I fancied I could now hear voices, far off in this suddenly cavernous larder. The one furnished with a couch, and the subtle lighting. I wondered if I had drunk too much caffeine, and this was some sort of hallucination.

I decided to listen to the voices more closely, in case they knew what was going on. I had to strain to hear them, it felt like I had cotton in my ears or something, and the voices seemed to be attached to bodies that kept moving in and out of hearing.

Through my closed eyes, the light seemed to suddenly get a little brighter. I was about to open them again, when I heard several sets of footsteps headed my way. I decided to play dead for a little while longer for I had no idea who my mysterious audience might be. Or what.

“I see you are awake now”. It was not posed as a question, and I fear my act had been rumbled. The voice had not sounded angry or two headed, yet I still didn’t care to open my eyes. If this was a hallucination, it was a damn good reason to never drink coffee again.

“Fear not Princess,” the voice sounded much softer now, and there was a definite edge of kindness to it that I had not detected before. I must have misheard what the stranger had said though. I thought he had just called me ‘Princess’ of all things.

“We are here to take you home Princess, your people need you now. We are almost there, so you take this time to rest if you wish.” The voice tailed off, as the unseen strangers made their way out of the room.

I had to assume I was not in my larder any longer.

When I was satisfied that I was alone again, I took the opportunity to open my eyes once more. Though the lights were dimmed again, there was enough light to see by. From my current vantage point however, all I could actually see was the ceiling above me.

Unlike the wooden beamed ceiling of my larder, this one seemed to be a kind of steel grey colour, it was a lot higher than I expected and almost seemed to curve out of view.

I decided I was going to have to sit up if I wanted to check out my surroundings. That was not as easy as I had anticipated; my limbs seemed not to want to cooperate fully with my brain. It took me several attempts to lurch into an upright position.

When I was sitting up I wished I hadn’t bothered, my head almost split in two with a bolt of pain. What had those people done to me, I felt like I had been drugged. That would go a long way towards explaining a lot of things. Like the conversation I had overheard for starters.

When I felt as though I could move without my head exploding, I did. I swung my legs onto an equally grey, tiled floor. Seconds after my rubber-like legs hit the floor, so did my knees, then I threw up all over the place. I think a lot of it was coffee, but there was a kind of chemical aftertaste to it too.

I figured now was as good a time as any to wake up, so pinched myself, thinking I would wake up in the larder, or better still at my keyboard like earlier on.

After a couple of good pinches, I realised I may well be awake already. Besides, I couldn’t have dreamt the burning taste in the back of my throat.

Using my arms for extra leverage I managed to get back up onto my feet again. Walking gingerly at first, in case my legs betrayed me again I made my way to the doorway.

The door less arch opened out onto a lighted corridor. The walls were of the same dull grey as the room I had just left. I could see no sign of life in either direction, but decided I would head off to the left.

The corridor seemed to stretch off to an impossible distance, and as I followed it I couldn’t help but wonder still if I was dreaming. I turned a corner to find myself at a junction. As I debated which way to turn, I heard voices over to my right, so quickly ducked into the shadows of the arch ahead of me.

As the voices got nearer, I recognised one of them from earlier. They were going back to the room where they had left me. When they had passed me I decided to follow at a safe distance. I knew I probably shouldn’t follow them, but unfortunately the pull of my curiosity was too strong.

Even so, I let them get quite far ahead of me, and when a moment later I heard raised voices I knew they had discovered the empty room.

I paused a moment, debating once more the merits of going on or running who knows where. A sudden hand on my shoulder startled me so much that I fainted.

When I came too, I was staring at a now familiar ceiling. I could sense there were others in the room with me, and this time I did not feign sleep.

Sitting up I turned to face a row of hooded figures. I say face; I couldn’t make out one set of their features. My mind working overtime and my heart pumping furiously as one of them stepped closer to me.

The figure spoke as it approached, but I heard no words. I was too busy watching the hand reach up. Up to the face to sweep back the concealing hood.

I felt that now would be a really good me to faint again, but my body had different ideas. I remained upright, rooted to the spot as some horror was about to be unveiled in front of me.

It was a warm cloudless night thirty odd years before. By rights it should have been a stormy wind torn night, but sometimes life has no sense of narrative effect.

The facility stood atop a hill. Alone in a field of electrified fencing, no sign outside proclaimed it’s purpose. Of warning and danger signs there were a plenty, and the dog patrols that could be spied by those who dared creep close enough were sufficient to spark rumours that it must be some sort of top secret military base.

No one from the nearest village three miles away worked at the facility, or knew anyone who did. Although there was a main access road that ran up to the gates, it was often rumoured that the strange building was accessed secretly by means of a vast network of underground tunnels.

After a while, and despite the occasional stories of intrigue that often surrounds buildings like this, the facility gradually faded into the local background.

Occasionally people passing by on their way to somewhere else, would catch a glimpse of the facility or its long stretches of fencing but by the time it had passed from their rear view mirrors it was long forgotten about.

On this particular night however, if for instance you happened to be driving by and your car broke down on the motorway; you might be standing looking east, and as you were rubbing sweat and dirt out of your eyes, you might swear that just for a second you saw a great big flash of light burst out from the roof of a low brick building.

You’d probably just put it down to it being so late, and you being so tired, and you shouldn’t really be driving, and why don’t I just curl up in the back seat for a few hours. By the time you woke up, you’d have forgotten about it and be wondering how far it was to the nearest petrol pump.

And because you had fallen asleep, you wouldn’t have noticed the other two flashes of light that followed not long after.

The hand was still reaching up, now fingers hooked cloth, and at last the hood was falling back. Falling back to reveal the face of something I couldn’t even have imagined.

With something like horror, I realised that the balding, wrinkly skinned creature in front of me was actually doing a pretty good impression of a human being.

I chose this moment to let out a strangled noise, half laugh half scream, before promptly keeling over in a faint again.

The next time I came to, I was alone in a different room. This one was a little less harshly decorated than the other one.

It was still predominantly grey, but it had a proper bed in it instead of a couch. There were plants that looked exactly like ferns, in pots around the room.

There was on the far side of the room, a bench protruding from the wall, presumably to be used as a desk or dresser. There was a shelf running the length of the bench. On it were some books, I was just debating going to see what language they were in, when a recessed door in the wall to my right swished open like something out of Star Trek.

A now familiar robed figure entered the room. Hood thrown back this time, the face that greeted me was the one that had caused me such a shock to discover that it was in fact just one face, on one head and not two.

I was coming to the conclusion that what I was looking at was either human, or possibly only an evil alien that was controlling my mind to make me think it looked human. When it spoke again, I wondered what kind of alien would assume such a precise British accent, and decided that it probably was human.

“I hope you are rested now. I did not wish to startle you earlier, for that I apologise. As Captain, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you onboard, and wish you a pleasant journey. I will see that someone shows you around, you must be quite hungry by now.”

I couldn’t help but admit that I was in fact quite hungry, but I was also quick to notice the words ‘captain’, ‘onboard’ and ‘journey’.

Was I on a ship? This place had looked too big to be an aeroplane, maybe it was a big cruise liner or a private yacht. Why was I here though and more importantly, where was I going?

Before I had chance to ask all these questions though, the Captain had turned to leave the room. After the doors had swished shut behind him again, I had a few seconds alone before the doors opened once more.

This time it was a much younger looking male that stood in the door way. He stepped aside and indicated that I was to follow him along the corridor.

I did so, wondering just how I was ever going to finish my essay on time now.

I followed my guide through seemingly endless identical corridors. Finally we arrived in front of yet another doorway. As the double doors slid aside I found myself being led into an impressively large, softly lit room.

Tables were dotted around the room, with what looked to be a bar sweeping a wide arc along one wall.

Some of the tables were occupied by people; a quick scan confirmed that they too only had one head apiece. Others sat along the bar, being served with colourful beverages in tall glasses. Spotting an umbrella or two, I figured this must be happy hour.

My guide led me to an unoccupied table near the wall, motioning for me to be seated. I was just about to comment on his lack of conversation when he turned and walked over to the bar, where he spoke with the bar tender briefly before leaving the room via the double doors we had entered.

Left on my own, I studied the occupants of the tables nearest to me. Men and women of various ages sat around, none of them were looking at me. I wondered again just were I was, I’d learnt nothing from my guide before he left me on my own.

I was about to go and chat to the bar tender, or waiter, whatever he was, when I spotted he was already headed in my direction, carrying a large tray. I’d forgotten the Captain’s offer of food, my stomach was rumbling in anticipation as I wondered exactly how long ago it was that I had gone to my larder for a slice of cake.

The call had come through three hours ago. With a bag already packed in the trunk of the car I’d been able to jump out of bed and leave pretty much straight away.

I’d known this day was coming for months, but still could hardly suppress the excitement that was flowing through me as I sped along the deserted roads.

Working at the facility for the last four years, also being among the most highly ranked, I knew all the details of the upcoming mission, was even one of those privileged enough to be on the mission. After all without me and the other partners, this mission would never have been conceived, let alone been possible.

Trees now lined the roads, so I flicked on my lights. The last thing I needed right now was for my car to spin out of control, or hit another car. The latter of course being far less likely out on this road.

A mile or so down the road, I took a turning onto a narrower, gravel road. The road took a circuitous route, but led eventually to an old abandoned farm building. No one much came up here, but nonetheless I circled the building once with headlights off before pulling in to the open doors at the front.

Cruddock was beginning to panic now. He knew it was only a matter of time until he was discovered. Stealing this particular vessel was bound to be punishable by death, or worse.

He also knew that if he could get them back before the craft was discovered missing that he would get away with it altogether. He was almost certain of this.

The quickest time this journey could be completed in was sixteen minutes; and then only under the guidance of a seasoned Captain and a skilled engineering crew. Not only was this Cruddock’s maiden voyage, the truth was he wasn’t really a Captain; the ink had barely dried on his pilot’s license.

As he sat staring at the banks of monitors before him, a single bead of sweat traced a line down his brow. So far they had been gone for almost eighteen minutes and they still had the re-entry jump to do. Wondering if they had been discovered yet, Cruddock offered up a silent prayer to The Founders. At this stage all he could do was hope that all of this had not been for nothing.

The largest of the monitors before him showed a video image, for the last five minutes one of the camera bots had been following their guest as she had made her way from the sleeping chamber.

Explaining to her where she was and why had fallen to Cruddock after a drawing of straws; and undoubtedly would be an interesting task, who knew how she would react.

With this in mind he called for the ships Doctor to meet him in the dining area; in case their guest panicked and needed sedation.

The huge double doors opened out into a long derelict open plan space. Boxes lined one wall, dust collected in all corners. Stopping the car in the centre I left the engine running and the headlights on as I operated one of the switches on the key fob glued to the dash.

The double doors closed behind me with a hum; as I pressed the second switch, the ground before me tilted forward creating a ramp which I eased my car onto and then disappeared into the depths below the barn.