Before The Lightning Fades
You can't see me, can you? You look at me and you can't see me. Do you have any idea what that's like? I'm not on the phone. I'm right here. Standing in front of you. Please. Just... Just see me.
Clara Oswin Oswald never tells anyone her first name. Ever. Well, maybe once or twice on occasion. It depends really on the face of the person she is talking to. She tends to play games with names.
If your name is Rory, she'll call you Nina and she supposed if your name was Nina, she'd call you Rory. The whole thing is tied up in first crushes and phases but that's the way her brain works, in logistical patterns as well as crazy loops of swirling colour. The girl's a genius, a prodigy.
But she doesn't look like one. She looks like an illustration out of a Misty annual, with her neatly parted hair and Bambi eyes. Her voice is clear and sweet, enchanting her audience like Orpheus, catching their hearts and attention unawares. There's something odd, something arresting about Clara, like she's not quite there, even when she's standing right in front of you.
She works in a cupcake shop, swerving between baking the inevitable cupcakes and baffling the customers she serves. At night she plays Carmen until the darkest moment of midnight, standing by her window and conducting an invisible orchestra from on high. The neighbours see her and shake their heads, wondering what the world is coming to. But every morning they find soufflés on their doorstep, sometimes perfect and beautiful, sometimes defeated and worn.
Clara often stands by her window, gazing out up at the heavens. A part of her is missing, a part that she is trying to remember. Because if something is lost, it needs to be found and she can only find what is lost by remembering, and she can't remember, only forgetting. There are other girls like her, unknowingly linked by the invisible web of longing for the sky and the wonder they feel for what lies beyond its blue gates. Some girls are lucky and stumble across a mad man with a box. He shows these girls the universe and it's brilliant and brutal and beautiful.
There are other girls like her, unknowingly linked by the invisible web of longing for the sky and the wonder they feel for what lies beyond its blue gates. Some girls are lucky and stumble across a mad man with a box. He shows these girls the universe and it's brilliant and brutal and beautiful.
But there is no mad man with a box and his hand outstretched for her to take, so he can whisk her away to other worlds. There is nothing but her twisted genius, half torn between believing in the vagaries of luck or unrelenting reality. So she has to decide. Either she waits for fate to smile upon her and drop a policebox in her lap, or she takes life into her own hands, moulding it into her own opportunity.
She wants to see.
But there is no mad man with a box and his hand outstretched for her to take, so he can whisk her away to other worlds. There is nothing but her twisted genius, half torn between believing in luck or reality. So she has to decide. Either she waits for fate to smile upon her and drop a police box in her lap, or she takes life into her own hands, moulding it into her own opportunity.
And one day she does just that. It all springs from the second her gaze alights on a newspaper left on the counter by a customer. Flicking through it during a quiet spell, she spies the tiny advert hidden amongst all the other adverts jostling for attention. It's typed out in nondescript font, the details sparse and dull but there's a little cartoon picture of Saturn that makes her heart jolt. So Clara tears out the advert, shoving it into her apron pocket. This is what she is waiting for. This is destiny conspiring with Clara to forge her own fate.
So she dons a dress and tiptoes out to where fate is waiting for her. The career drive is being held in a dingy hotel, a throng of people milling about the closed bar, faces alight with excitement. There are the science types with their thick glasses and prominent Adam apples, clutching folders and laptops for dear life as they wander aimlessly and alone through the crowd.
There's the ex-Army lot in the corner, the ones who think they're Bear Grylls crossed with Neil Armstrong. And then there are the dreamers, the ordinary folk who want to touch the stars with their fingertips. Clara perches on a bar stool, smiling cryptically at them all, as if she knows something they don't, a certainty they'll never be sure of.
A woman with a clipboard appears in the doorway, reading out names with an impatient flourish of the hand. Clara's name is called, startling her because she almost never hears her first name said in public by herself or others. She's just Oswin, inscrutable Oswin who could be anyone or anything. She could be a bottle of milk for all the world knew.
But she's not. She's just another girl with starlight in her soul, a girl responding to the siren call of the universe.
That song hums through the veins of all the hopefuls here, whispering maybe, just maybe in their ears, that this is the day they can leave their dreaming shadows behind. So Clara stands, following the others into a large room lined with rows of hard, plastic chairs.
Clara wants to sit either at the front or the back, one extreme or the other, but she's ushered to somewhere in the middle, which just about sums up her life so far. When the rustling of papers and murmur of voices cease, the woman with the flourishing hands enters the room, followed by a stern faced man and a girl about Clara's age.
The man ascends the podium, eyeing the microphone with some trepidation. Then he begins to speak, orating at great length at how glad he is they have all decided to seize this once in a lifetime opportunity to travel into space, because that's what life is about, grabbing the moment and running with it. He wishes them all luck before handing them over to the girl who turns out to be called Rita.
Clara's mind starts to wander during the rambling reel of Rita's speech, the logical part of her mind carefully dismantling the girl's sentences and storing what is important whilst discarding the unnecessary. There were numerous flaws in such a scheme, the most glaring one being that their would-be captain had more money than sense since his knowledge was bound up with dollars and recessions rather than stardust and black holes. He didn't exactly have the credentials to lead them into outer space. His motives seemed to be rooted in sensationalism and grabbing headlines with his arrogance and audacity.
But Clara's mind navigated its way through the minefield presented by such a problem. None of that mattered, she was going to see.
And Clara more than passes all the introductory tests designed to whittle out the useless, the ignorant. However, the aspiring captain of the Alaska isn't as much as a fool as she thinks him to be. He's looking for the clever, the forward thinking, the brave, the reckless and most of all, the mad. Because only madmen want to travel the wilds of the universe and he is mad enough to even think of such follies.
When Clara makes it to the final round, a face-to-face interview with those who would be her superiors, she causes consternation and confusion. The girl's a genius, it's proven by the hundreds of IQ tests they've flung at her, each one returned to a disbelieving audience. And she's some sort of computer god to boot. No software is safe when she's about. She's a hacker, a fiend on the loose online. In three seconds she has Google on its knees, begging for mercy. If the Internet could dream, it would have nightmares about Clara Oswin Oswald.
But she has no qualifications, not even a handful of GCSES. All she turns up with is a threadbare CV and a cake tin, with a ribbon in her hair and a mysterious smile playing on her lips.
Yet she dances and dazzles her way around their intellect, astonishing each brain in turn, until all who sit there in judgement, are awed and terrified to the toes of their feet. Even when she addresses the highest ranking person in the room as Eyebrow Boy, they remain subdued in the light of her genius. And Clara loves to define a person by a defining facial feature. Chins, noses and ears, no body part is safe.
Then the day comes when the letter arrives through her letterbox announcing she has been picked to serve aboard the Alaska.
Clara isn't surprised.
She is healthy, can handle the rigours of space fairly well (or so she hopes since this was only put to the test on Earth in a simulated space zone) and she can run if the occasion calls for it. She has the suspicion that running is very important when it comes to travelling the universe. And she's extremely, extremely clever so she ticks all the boxes. And as ever, she is right.
Clara Oswin Oswald is going to see.
Time passes in a rush. One minute she's handing in her notice at the cupcake shop and hugging her mum good-bye, the next she's wearing her white space uniform, the fur-lining of the hood tickling her skin as she pulls it over her head. And then she's aboard, silently saying farewell to the Earth she's longed to escape from for so long.
But then the Alaska crashes, her first shipwreck. There are frissons of fear and wonder shooting up and down her spine like dodgem cars smashing into each other.
The would-be captain's dead despite his billions. The rest of the crew are out of range. She's on a strange planet, with nothing but a rope ladder to lead her to who knows where...
I am human, I am human, I am human...
Clara Oswin Oswald never tells anyone her first name. Ever. Well, maybe once or twice on occasion. It depends really on the face of the person she is talking to. She tends to play games with names.
If your name is Rory, she'll call you Nina and she supposed if your name is Nina, she'll call you Rory. The whole thing is tied up in first crushes and phases but that's the way her brain works, in logistical patterns as well as crazy loops of swirling colour. The girl's a genius, a prodigy.
And when she tells Chin Boy to hurry up and rescue her, so he can show her the stars, she knows he will.
Because Clara Oswin Oswald is going to see the universe.
She is going to remember.
When you look over your shoulder
And you see the life that you've left behind
When you think it over do you ever wonder?
What it is that holds your life so close to mine…