This just may be the trippiest chapter I have ever written. I hope I've captured the sense of unreality both our heroes are feeling here, and of course, their personalities.
Wake up dead/ bathed in red/ a world that doesn't exist/ yeah!…
Lyrics from Scum of the Earth, by Rob Zombie, 2000.
"And a voice was screaming, 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson, 1971.
"(Jim) I think they think I'm gonna come after them. I feel like I want to. I feel like I wanna...The first one that comes near me, I'm gonna throttle em. That's what I'm gonna do, is throttle em. I don't like these things...(Jack) They're right there, their face is right in my face...they're...saying things, they're explaining things...They're saying 'Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid, we won't harm you,' they say." Excerpts taken from recorded testimonies of alleged abductees Jim and Jack Weiner under hypnotic regression in 1988, concerning a close encounter and 'missing time' incident with a UFO on the night of August 26, 1976.
Jack Driscoll would've sworn in a court of law that everything he saw and experienced in his stupor was just as real as anything that he'd experienced on Skull Island. Like De Quincey in his autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, he seemed to live a thousand years in each passing second, so that the time rocketed by-and yet, barely even crawled.
He perceived himself as being restricted, confined in an amazingly tight space where he was curled up in a fetal position. As the walls of his globular prison compressed his flesh, it pained him horribly. It wasn't only the pressure either, although that was bad enough. Somehow, even in this protective globe, he'd received grievous injuries and bruises to his flesh as well.
But that was for later. Fortunately, Jack had the impression that whatever was surrounding him, it was thin and brittle. The only way to escape the crushing torment was to split this encasing substance.
Mustering all his strength, Jack forcefully kicked out with his back limbs, cracking, then breaking, then shattering the shell. His bare feet touched soil, which immediately collapsed around his legs, and he sensed that it wasn't the proper direction to go. Bracing his feet against the cool dirt, he pushed upward with the knuckles of his intermeshed hands, rapping them against the ceiling several times until it too split, and he victoriously burst out into the open air.
He gratefully crawled out, and realized with a sudden shock that he was a great nude giant, massive as a mountain. As he'd suspected, his body was horribly slashed and torn, many of his wounds exposing pale yellow fat and red muscle, a few even penetrating right down to the bone. Blood flowed, oozed, trickled in threads from each one, but curiously, not nearly as much as Jack would've expected from the severity of the injuries. He looked back at the egg he'd just burst out from. Good grief, he thought, no wonder it hurt so bad, with all of me stuffed inside that and the way I've been wounded. But what could've possibly gotten to me, much less ripped me up so terribly, inside of there?
Raising his head, Jack looked around, utterly at a loss. He had no idea where he was, who he was, or even what he was. The landscape that greeted him too, was equally shocking, and dreadful. Devastation sprawled to each horizon. Everything was seared into charcoal, covered and blanketed in thick ash and pumice. Although it was midday, only a few weak, struggling rays of sunlight penetrated a thick veil of dark, ugly clouds, from which ash continued to drift down like gray snow.
It was chilly, and he saw no other living creatures. They must've either been killed or driven away by the disaster. He chose a random direction, and perplexed as he was, wandered off, each of his strides miles long. As he walked, the ash fall diminished, and then stopped falling. Soon after that, the chokingly thick clouds half-broke up, allowing the sun to shine through and warm him. It buoyed his sprits, and he was even more gratified to see life, as it always did, return from distant lands or peek out from its underground hiding places and make a fresh new beginning.
Distracted so, he didn't notice the small lake in front of him, choked with ash and algae, until he accidentally fell right into it. When he stood back up, the ashy mud congealed into a paste, sticking to his body. It made his skin, his hands, his neck, his trunk, and his feet prickle all over. Feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed at himself, Jack removed what he could manage with his fingers as he crouched on the shore. As the mud fell away, and the sky now became flawlessly clear, he realized that the mud had transformed him in some manner.
He was now an entirely new creature, a great feline covered in sleek yellowish-beige fur, with a luxuriant ruff of dark brown hair around his neck: a lion. This was fine with him. He knew now what sort of creature he was. He also knew that now he had a name, a title-Jabari-and his wounds and bruises were now healed.
For a while, Lion/Jack was delighted, since his body no longer hurt and bled, and he was now self-assured. He ran wherever he pleased, uttering groaning roars of excitement and gazing with pleasure at the returning grasses and trees far below. None of the creatures who dwelt among them though, as they bred and changed themselves, were large enough to really be worth eating, and Jabari-Lion/Jack-became desperately hungry.
His white-hot hunger made Jabari irritable, and he swelled up in fury, turning onto his colossal back and clawing at his pinched gut until he tore open the hide of his own breast and belly. From the cat's hide, Lion/Jack struggled free and emerged again, this time in the form of another gigantic man, all nut-brown and powerful.
This time, the separation had not gone smoothly. Jabari now had a sparse, shaggy coat of hair all over his body, like that of a Cape buffalo, although it remained thickest on the crown of his head. Like the wings of a butterfly that has just come out of its cocoon on a windy day, the teeth in his jaws were misshapen, a cross between a lion's and an ape's, with impressive flattened canines. His hands and feet still bore tough, leathery pads, but now the digits were tipped with claws that resembled a grizzly bear's, yet were more curved in form, and partly retractable. At his rear, an ebony, stumpy, prehensile tail hung and curled, half the length of what Lion/Jack's had been.
He stood, looking upon a world that was now lush and verdant with greenery, diademed and laced with shining lakes, ponds, rivers and creeks that were clean of ash and alive with fish. As he did, Jabari-Lion/Jack-felt the strangest sensation well up within him. It was subtle and comforting, yet deeply suggestive and even authoritative. It was poetry in emotion, in a way, like bubbles rising to the surface of water and then placidly popping.
{You have a task to do here, Jabari.}
A task? What task?
{To help repopulate the land, so that it is home to many, various, living beings once more.}
They seem to be doing that pretty nicely on their own. In fact, many have even taken on bodies that are nothing like the ones they had when I first saw them.
{Yes Jabari, but that's because the beings you see here, with their warm, hairy bodies and the milk they feed to their young, have just gotten a wonderful chance to shine. They've been waiting for it a long time, and are now seizing the moment in earnest. But there are other creatures that are still trapped underground and held captive in the clouds, from a time before the hairy beasts you see became so lucky. You must free them Jabari. Only do not dig too deep. Do not dig too deep!}
So Jabari went about the duty that he'd been silently assigned. Using all the strength in his massive, coiled shoulders, he clawed the sky above him with his fingers, and scored pits into the earth at his feet wherever he walked. From the slashes in the sky, a cacophony, a rainbow, a storm, of birds fell out-eagles, macaws, weaverbirds, herons, pheasants, warblers, pelicans, teal, crows, hummingbirds, finches, birds of paradise, plovers, quail-taking flight in all directions to call and nest in the trees, on the cliffs, on the beaches, some in flocks, some alone. Wherever he dug into the earth, frogs, toads, salamanders, caceilians, crocodiles, caimans, pythons, geckos, vipers, monitor lizards, iguanas, rat snakes, tortoises, pond turtles, sea turtles, water snakes and other older, cold-blooded beasts cautiously scurried and slithered out into the invigorating sunlight.
Seeing the sheer beauty of these creatures, and their great joy at being set free made Lion/Jack happy himself, and he became all the more eager in his digging. But in one place, near a coast, he became so eager that he paid no mind to how long he clawed into the soil, and burnt his fingers in molten rock. Jabari howled in pain, and shook his hands from where the lava had burnt them as he stood up and ran to the great ocean that was nearby, wading out and gratefully plunging them into the sea.
When he returned, he saw that strange, shocking creatures were rushing out of his deepest hole. Many were flesh-eaters, frightfully hideous and vicious, and even many of those who thrived on plants were bellicose and savage, in the name of protecting what was theirs. Lion/Jack somehow understood that these beasts came from a time even further back than the older types of animal that had been already liberated from the shallow holes.
Some, like massive apes, elongated fish with viperfish heads, and grotesque invertebrate monsters that were part slug, part hagfish, had been buried so deeply and for so long that they'd actually warped into beasts all their own, resembling no other creature that had ever walked the planet. Whether they'd had biological precedent or were revoltingly unique, their accidental liberator knew with a shuddering certainty that they had all been supposed to remain underground forever. And all of them had a deep, seething, absolute hatred for humankind.
The curious, silent speaker who had set him about his duty did not rebuke or even talk, but Jabari knew anyway that he'd done something very bad, and that the entity had seen. Hurriedly, he hurled enormous amounts of dirt and stone into the great hole, blocking it up and preventing any more of the horrid creatures from escaping. Then, he ran inland and in a vast circling motion, herded all the abominations that were running free over the earth-giant insects, apes, centipedes, crabs, horned dinosaurs, naked flying rodents, massive meat-eating dinosaurs, and great eel-like fish with crystal swords for teeth-right to the coast. They fled before him like mice, and at length, he had them all bunching together with the sea at their backs.
Not knowing what else to do, Lion/Jack plunged his claws deep into the earth around the monsters and used them to cut loose the chunk of land that he'd driven them onto. Gathering it up into his arms, he brutally kneaded the earth he held several times so that it would be easier to carry, then waded out far into the ocean until the water was up to his collarbone, placing the great mound of earth on the seafloor. This new island would be a mountainous, warped prison for all these horrible, violent, obsolete beasts, where they wouldn't be able to terrorize or hurt anyone ever again-except for each other and outside visitors of course. And that was fine with him.
Embarrassed and humbled, Jabari was far more cautious as he excavated the last several shallow pits. Then at last, he felt and knew that his work was done. But the work had made him hungry, and he was again faced with the dilemma that although his efforts had caused many more types of animals to come into the world, not one of them was still big enough to sustain him. Nor was there enough fruit or leaves or even grass to possibly feed such a vast giant.
As the time passed, Lion/Jack tried to live off of what paltry meals he could scrape together, but still became hungrier and ever hungrier. He went without food for so long in fact, that his body shrank. His tail disappeared. His coat of hair nearly vanished. His skin became sallow and pinkish, and his impressive claws atrophied into broad, no-account nails. His teeth degenerated from formidable weapons into mere, pathetic corn-kernel pebbles.
Now Jabari had reached the point where instead of being as huge as a mountain, he wasn't much larger than a grown man. All the same though, he remained much stronger than any human, and he also knew, with an interior certainty, that he was an immortal being as well. Even better in the short term, despite the drastic reduction of his dental array, he was now finally able to eat filling meals, treating his palate to whatever it fancied.
For a while, he walked here and there across the earth, through forests, over hills, and across plains. He slept, drank, rested and ate wherever he liked. Although he sometimes killed them to enjoy their meat, all the animals hailed and honored him, calling Jabari their lord and friend.
But after some more time had passed, Jabari became lonely and unhappy. He saw that all the male plants and animals that shared the world with him had wives, and he was the only one who did not. However, he also noticed that many of the males lived by themselves, and only got together and mated with their females for a brief time. Perhaps, if there was a wife for Jabari to find, she was living by herself too! He would just have to go out and search.
Lion/Jack kept his eyes open, and looked and looked, but he found no sign of a wife, or indeed, any other being like him in his wanderings. This made him very, very sad.
One day, still hoping to find a companion, he came down to drink at a beautiful pool of water, ringed with reeds and bearing floating lotuses. Jabari knelt, and put his hands into the water to steady himself while he drank. As he did so, a sharp stone, half-hidden in the sand, cut deep into the side of his palm. Crying out in pain, he leapt to his feet and flicked his injured hand through the air several times. Drops of his blood flew into the air, and two landed on a lotus bud.
Cursing and growling, he used the fingers of his uninjured hand to clamp the wound shut underwater until the blood stopped flowing. Now more cautious about where he put his hands, the irritated Lion/Jack moved to another place, drank, and turned to leave.
Suddenly, he heard a swishing noise behind him. Jabari turned around, and saw to his amazement that a lotus bud, the one where drops of his blood had landed, was growing to an enormous size, becoming larger and larger until it was almost as tall as he was. Then, it radiantly opened up to the world, and as they fell back, its petals revealed an angel. He knew right away that this was a female for him, standing on the massive lotus, and that her name was "woman."
Slim, gracile, and petite, her curled hair, yellow as fall grass, blew in the wind, offsetting her ivory skin. Eyes as blue as sapphires sparkled above a rounded, softly contoured nose, and sleek, full lips curved in a tentative, demure greeting. Like him, she was completely naked. He felt no discomfort or disgust at this awareness. It only added to, accented, her incredible beauty and aura of peaceful grace.
She stepped out of the blossom's heart and onto the broad petals. There she paused, like the loveliest sprite, uncertain and timid. Noting this, he respectfully remained quiet and still. Simply being able to behold her was ecstasy enough. Stepping into the shallow water, ripples spread from around each ankle as she walked toward him. Every swinging movement of her pale legs was enchanting.
On reaching him, she stopped, and gave another shy, soul-filling smile, her limpid blue eyes sweeping over his figure now. Jabari/Jack wondered if she was still too nervous to touch him.
"It's okay," he tenderly assured her. And then, a fulfilling, ecstatic truth flooded through his brain. She took delight in his form too! She loved his sharp male scent, the power visible in his shoulders, chest and arms, the light in his dark green eyes and his thick square jaw, his wider cheekbones and darker complexion.
He took her smooth, delicate hands into his own with a profound, exultant thrill.
"I am Man," he told her simply as their eyes remained linked by that wonderful magic.
"I am Woman," she responded in a voice like birdsong.
Once more, Jabari heard and felt that strange, commanding voice from within bloom, except now he just knew that this creature, who called herself Woman, heard it too now.
{That is right. Your name is no longer Jabari, but now Man, and it will always be so. So too, the mate I have created for you out of your own blood shall be called Woman forevermore.}
Thank you, Man/Jack whispered in deep gratitude. Now I will never again know loneliness.
{No. But your gift will come with a price, as all things do. And if you accept, you will also have to take on profound responsibilities.}
What is the price? Man/Jack asked in trepidation.
Please, do not make it too high for my love!, Woman begged touchingly on his behalf.
{If you choose to have Woman as your companion, friend, and mate, you and your descendants will become creatures of sex and of mortal tissue, just like all the other animals in this world.}
That means we'll be stripped of our immortality, and so means that we can die…can be slain, Man/Jack understood with a searing, terrible shock. He bit his thin lower lip hard for several seconds. But as he locked eyes with Woman and searched her face, there wasn't any doubt as to what his decision would be.
Yes. My choice is yes, he proclaimed fiercely. And what are the responsibilities I must consign myself to? Hurl them at me! I'll take those tasks on without a moment's hesitation!, he shouted, making Woman smile in joyous delight.
{Woman came into existence by the shedding of your blood Man. That means she is your partner, a part of you. She has her innate courage and strength, but she also depends on and finds great confidence in your own. So tell me this Man, are you willing to shed your blood in her name? Are you willing to be her best friend? Are you willing to fight for her life and for her honor? Are you willing to share your heart and soul with her, give her the respect she deserves? Are you willing to provide for and nourish her? Most of all, are you willing even to die for her?}
Oh, yes, yes, yes and yes! Yes one hundred, three hundred, five hundred, a thousand times yes to every single duty you've asked of me! Jack fearlessly, resolutely shouted, already taking this angel named Woman into his secure embrace.
"Yes, I would gratefully bleed and die for you," he decreed to her in a husky whisper, hand stroking her curls and feather soft, warm cheek.
"Do you speak true?" she queried.
"The greater sadness and agony would be to fail at my duty, and you will never see that day come," he earnestly vowed.
{Then go Man, with your Woman to fill the world. Woman, go with your Man. The two of you will have no weapons, no fur or feathers, no speed, no crushing bite or slashing claws to defend yourself against the world's dangers. But you will have your love, your bravery, your cunning, your imagination, your critical thinking, your agile hands, your gift for making and using tools, and your ability to make fire your servant. Use them all to fullest advantage, and one day your race will spread to the ends of the earth!}
After that, Man/Jack sensed nothing further. Giddy and flushed, he took Woman by the hand, and laughing, showed her through the forests and the fields, telling her the names of the flowers, the birds, the spiders, the antelope, the trees and the other wonders around them. In one small field, a great rainbow painting of wildflowers, they stopped and crashed down into them, side by side. Looking into his mate's soft face, Man/Jack knew that he wanted to kiss her, and clutch her beautiful form to his own while he did.
She accepted. It was an indescribably sweet, world-encompassing feeling, like eating heated honey, only even better, a linking in every aspect between them. He put his tongue into her mouth, and now began to position her in the flowers so that he was lying on top of her, broad hands caressing up and down her body as he was driven by an exotic, yet powerfully seated and deeply satisfying urge. I am Eros, I am Cupid, I am Min, I am Lono, I am Kamadeva, I am Quetzalcoatl, I am Svetovid, I am Wollunqua, I am Osiris, I am Kokopelli-
His new mate's eyes widened into terrified blue puddles, and she screamed, "Look out!"
The strange, clenching new sensation of fear clutched at Jack's breast, and he whipped around, leaping into a squat and putting up his fists, naked and essentially defenseless against the horror rushing towards them. The beast somewhat resembled a leopard, but was like no leopard ever seen on earth, a thing unto itself.
This leopard was twice as big as normal, and had six legs instead of four, partly sprawling like those of a crocodile-and each one was unmistakably an instrument of slaughter. Only the middle three toes were normal, the dewclaw and little toe replaced by great meathooks of chitin, like a grasshopper's claws. The cat's face was sooty black in color, pierced through the forehead, septum, nostrils and cheeks by pieces of bone, as if someone had tried to experiment with giving it warthog tusks and gotten rather too carried away.
Its abnormally huge eyes glowed a terrible orange-yellow, elliptical rattlesnake pupils heightening the demonic glare-and yet, curiously, there was a sort of horribly blank, robotic aspect to that gaze as well, and a panicked Jack fancied he saw a mosaic pattern sketched across each organ. It all combined to produce a countenance that was so hideous, there was almost something seductive about it.
The beast's teeth were like those of a proper leopard, but just behind them were greedily gnashing, protrusible mouthparts perpendicular to the cat's dentition, a powerful, serrated slicing horror that yearned to chop into his living flesh. Rows of semiconical scales protruded through its fur and ran down its back.
Jack had only just enough time to stand and face this hellish monster before it was on him. With the manic strength of desperation, he gave the leopard monster a hard right hook to the jaw, gasping as one of those paws slashed his arm. That punch was enough to give the cat-demon pause for a few moments however, and it drew back a few steps, uttering a grunt as it shook its head. Jack used this as an opportunity to grab his angel's hand and run for his life through the forest.
As he did, he heard the leopard-beast cry in a voice that was part chalkboard screech, part grunting bellow, "So! Once more, as you are so irritatingly prone to do, you escaped me once again Jack Driscoll! But you and your Ann won'tbe able to evade me forever! I hate you beyond what words can express Jack," it frothed, snarled, "and I will not stop hunting you until I see you DEAD IN THE DIRT!
And if I didn't kill you today, or yesterday, or the day before that, I promise you that I will later…someday soon," it vowed, an ominous growl that filled the entire world. "Yes, someday verysoon."
Suddenly Jack was so terrified that he desperately wanted to become a giant again, even if it meant bearing those same terrible wounds. And instantly he was a giant once more, wounded even worse than before and as big as a mountain, rivers of his own blood flowing across the dirt like the cursed Nile in Exodus-
Slowly, as if it was struggling up through seaweed to reach the surface of the ocean, Jack Driscoll's mind reentered the waking world. The realization came to him that his eyelids were closed. They also felt so, so heavy, and he was sorely tempted to let the blackness reclaim him again.
But then he heard a hushed voice coaxing, "Jack. Mr. Driscoll. Can you hear me Mr. Driscoll?" The speaker seemed to be both authoritative and concerned at once, and the playwright figured he might as well make them happy by responding.
Glaring light, a white ceiling, and ivory walls greeted him on coming around. He blinked, owl-like, in confusion, mind groping for fragments of possibilities. Suddenly, Jack remembered his mauling by Nduli, and how he'd regained consciousness for a time, only to black out again on the rhino's leathery, dusty back. This whiteness, these antiseptic scents in his capacious nostrils...did it mean that he was dead? If so, being deceased wasn't nearly as bad as he'd imagined it to be. That, or his Sunday School teacher had been overly pessimistic about where the playwright and his brothers would all eventually end up after shuffling off this mortal coil.
Weak as he felt, he politely responded to the speaker who was at the left edge of his field of vision, muttering, "Yes, I can hear you."
"Excellent. Great to have you back, Mr. Driscoll. You had us awfully worried there a few times," the voice, infused with satisfaction and relief, informed him.
Great to have me back? Huh? Jack thought, what was left of his mind reeling in confusion. At the same moment, as his level of alertness rose, the writer suddenly realized there was a subdued, aching sensation, radiating out from multiple areas of his body. That did seem to be a pretty good indication that his body and soul were still bonded together. After all, wasn't the idea that you would never suffer physical pain again one of the few presumed advantages of being deceased?
More flashes of understanding came to him, one after another in quick succession or even together, like flashes of lightening during a summer storm. His head and abdomen were wrapped up in some sort of gauze. The tissues of his mouth felt terribly dry, covered in a sticky, clotted sheen of well-dried saliva. There was some sort of rectangular object fitting between his buttocks, which he figured was some kinda bedpan, and a catheter threaded up the shaft of his penis. Equal parts gratitude, embarrassment, humiliation, and disgust swept through him at the knowledge.
He was on large doses of painkillers, otherwise the agony of his wounds would've been unendurable. And he was currently in a hospital. But how in Christ's name could he have gone from the middle of the African plains to a respectable treatment facility in the amount of time needed to save his life? For that matter, where was Ann, and how was she faring?
All of these revelations visited Jack Driscoll in seven seconds. Additional ones were deferred when the speaker thoughtfully inquired, "I'm sure you must feel mighty thirsty. Would you like some water?"
Turning his head to the left, Jack saw a woman dressed in a pale blue shirt and pants looking down at him with brown eyes, her straight brown hair held back by a clip. Strange garb for a nurse, if that's what she was.
"In the worst way," he mumbled.
Looking over her shoulder, the woman requested, "Custavila, could you get our patient a bottle of water?"
"Sure thing, friend Pam," the voice responded. That was a voice that caught Jack's attention. It sounded very much like normal English...yet there was something unnatural underlying it, a musical, staccato clicking and trilling, almost like the calls of a chipping sparrow.
Gingerly, Jack levered himself up on his elbows to get a better luck at the speaker. What he saw nearly stupefied him with disbelief and shock and incomprehension.
It wasn't an especially big or strong-looking creature, maybe 3 and a half feet tall, 40 pounds in weight. But it was very big indeed when it came to sheer weirdness and horrendous looks. It looked like it was mostly crab, but also part dragonfly and part stick insect, six sucker-tipped legs, thin as bones, dangling underneath. It hovered on four transparent wings, iridescent rainbows of light reflecting off their surfaces.
This surreal creature might've been a fascinating curiosity for Jack to regard if it hadn't looked quite a bit like an insect, and even more importantly, hadn't been standing right there beside him!
There was another creature too, which looked something like a large bear cub with red hair like that of a dog, and was just observing.
"Jesus Christ!" the playwright shrieked in terror, eyes darting back and forth between the two creatures, his attention mostly focused on the insect one. He suddenly felt very chilled, helpless, and terrified. In an adrenaline-fueled spasm, he sat bolt upright in the hospital bed with a strangled, inarticulate cry, only distantly aware of a red, hooking pain as the IV tugged fiercely at his flesh, and his healing ribs shifted.
"Sir, Sir, don't panic," the human nurse gently yet firmly urged him, pressing at his chest. "Please calm down. You'll only hurt yourself even more if you do."
Although he'd only known her for a grand total of half a minute, the presence of the nurse, a member of his own kind, was partially reassuring, and Jack fiercely latched onto it.
Fear and dread and a snarling hatred whirled around under his breastbone as he fervently snapped, "Keep that goddamn bug thing the hell away from me! It'll attack and eat me while I'm helpless like this!"
"Do not be afraid, I won't touch or harm you," the light blue insect creature assured him, something nearby translating its trills and rapid clicks. At the same time, Jack felt a something in his head. It was like a warm, gentle hand was reaching into his skull and tenderly stroking his psyche. It reminded him of how his mother would comfort him as a boy after he'd woken from a nightmare.
"There's a strange, pleasant feeling in my head all of a sudden," Jack commented in puzzlement. "What's going on? Not that I don't like it," he added.
"We Cinrusskin," Custavila helpfully replied, "have evolved the ability to be empathic. That means we can feel the unspoken emotional radiation of others, while at the same time, project feelings of friendship, comfort, and other positive sensations into the minds of other living entities."
"I know you're probably just trying to make me let down my guard before you kill me in this vulnerable position," Jack dryly growled, "but that still is quite a fascinating ability to have."
"I assure you Mr. Driscoll, I've already come by your room several times during your period of healing, sedative-influenced unconsciousness," Custavilla stated. "If I had desired to consume you, that would've been the best occasion for it, with no suffering inflicted on you, and a minimum of danger posed to me."
"You've been around me before? I hope to Christ you didn't touch me," Jack shuddered, "you revolting insect!"
"No Mr. Driscoll, I did not make physical contact with your form. Disregard my outer appearance and know we only mean you well," it advised him, a feeling of friendship and comfort filtering into the New Yorker's brain.
"Yeah, Custavila and the other Cinrusskin working at Sector General are the least likely beings to hurt an Earth-human," the bear-cub creature chimed in, a tonal, purring background to its words.
Despite his somewhat reduced dread about the insect thing, those two words really grabbed the writer's attention. "Earth-human? What in the hell do you mean by that? And where am I? Where's Ann?" he desperately cried, suddenly feeling horrible about not having thought of his Venus's welfare sooner.
"I know you'll have a lot of difficulty believing this Mr. Driscoll," Pam told him, "but you're in the Critical Care Unit of the DBDG level-that's the code we use to designate warm-blooded oxygen breathers-of Sector 12 General Hospital Station, located right between the Milky Way Galaxy and the Greater Magellanic Cloud. Earth-human is the term used to distinguish us Homo sapiens from the extraterrestrials, like Dr. Custavila here, who is a Cinrusskin, and Registered Nurse Freschu-Plo, a Nidian."
"So you're saying I'm in some Martian-run hospital, waaayyy out in deep space," Jack responded, giving her a sidelong, confused, baffled look. "I guess with these two wacko-looking things in front of me, I have no reason to disbelieve you, but how in Christ's name did that happen? And even more importantly, where is Ann? If you hurt her, there'll be hell to pay once I'm out of this bed!"
"I assure you that Ann is doing just fine Mr. Driscoll," Pam informed him. "In fact, she can probably answer many of your questions just as well as we can. Would you like to talk to her? And please try to stay calm. Your blood pressure is too high."
Excitement and yearning and pleasure coloring his voice, Jack grinned, saying "You absolutely bet I would!"
Pulling what Jack guessed was a version of a walkie-talkie from an equipment belt it was wearing, the Cinrusskin pressed some buttons and said into it, "Friend Pickering, this is Doctor Custavila. Could you please inform Ann Darrow that her male bond-partner has regained awareness and is now eager to communicate with her?"
"By all means Doctor," a male voice replied. "And if her actions and emotions are any sign, I'm sure she'll be just as eager to talk to and see him."
"I'm going to rev up the holograph emitter," the Nidian, Freschu, told Pam before strolling out of the room.
Turning to the human nurse, the perplexed playwright commented, "You know, I can't help wondering, how is it that all you folks are able to talk in and understand each other's languages, and I can do the same?"
"Well, at the center of this hospital, we have a massive, cylinder shaped computer that uses ultra-"
"Computer? Sorry, but that word means nothing to me," Jack responded. "Less than nothing, actually. And so does holograph, for that matter."
"At the risk of oversimplifying, a computer is an extremely complex machine that processes inconceivably massive amounts of information with an adeptness that the human brain could never possibly achieve, and a holograph is essentially a picture made of light."
Jack doubtfully nodded, only partially understanding. The names of each device did seem to back up what she was claiming though.
"Anyway, ultra-sensitive microphones in the ceiling of each room and hallway pick up the speech of any being in the hospital-say, a Nidian-and transmit it to the computer. A program then uses visual feedback from the station's cameras to determine which species are in the room or corridor the Nidian's words was received from. Then the language is translated into the spoken tongue of each species in the vicinity and broadcast simultaneously over the speakers. It all happens in less than a second."
"Wow," Jack exhaled in awe. "There's a lot I still can't figure out about your explanation mam, but I think I get the general picture all the same. In fact..." He trailed off, an idea creeping up within him.
"Je suis content de renconter vous tous," he politely addressed the antiseptic-scented, cold air. To his delight and wonder, an English translation of his French phrase responded back. "I am pleased to meet you all."
"And we are as well," the Cinruss replied sincerely.
Now Jack tried the same greeting in his mother's native language, Polish. "Mam przyjemność spotkać się wszystkie." Once more, he was answered in English, and he chuckled lightly in enthusiastic delight.
His thrill at such amazing technology began to master Jack, and he then tried German. "Ich freue mich, treffen sie alle." Same incredible result as before.
What about Yiddish? "Ikh bin tsufridin-"
At that point, he was interrupted by a whirring sound as a sort of small, rectangular panel, about the size of a saucer, descended from the ceiling on a sort of mechanical arm. After moving down about a yard, the panel stopped.
Jack was aware of the hair on his nape erecting as he stared at the little screen, wonder and trepidation mingling within him. Who knew what was about to happen?
And then it flicked on, a magical thing.
A solid, yet translucent, cone of light darted two feet into the air at a 35 degree angle, expanding to form an image. And in the image, an awestruck Jack saw the face of the angelic being from his dreams, his angel!
How was this machine projecting this image, making a picture in thin air?
Then Ann's face lit up with pure joy, and he realized, not only could he see her...she could see him too!
"Jack!" she cried in delight.
"Ann!" he responded warmly, gratefully, dried spittle thickening his voice.
Thankfully, the teddy-bear creature returned with a bottle of water in a transparent plastic, and Jack told his girlfriend, "Give me a moment, will you sweetheart? I have a yen for water like you wouldn't believe right now."
Giving a silvery laugh, Ann replied, "I can imagine. You've been sedated for six days, after all, so go right ahead."
"Would you like me to open it for you?" the Nidian politely offered him.
"No, I'll be fine," Jack smiled wearily.
Gingerly, giving muffled, staccato groans at the aches flaring in his flesh, Jack raised himself into a half-seated posture and took the proffered bottle from the cuddly alien. As a physician's son himself and an intelligent man in general, he knew better than to start gulping it down right away and risk vomiting or choking, despite his fearsome thirst.
Twisting the cap off while his eyes stayed on Ann, he let a little of it pour on to his tongue, enjoying the cleansing sensation of the water saturating his mouth tissues and dispersing the cotton-ball taste. He had a little more, swallowing, than downed two-thirds of the bottle before reclining back with a satisfied sigh.
"Cripes, did I ever need that," he yawned, "although, considering the environment I've found myself in, I could really, really use a glass of whiskey too!" he wryly added.
"I don't think your circulatory or nervous systems would approve of that right now though Mr. Driscoll," Pam playfully cautioned.
Turning back to the light-picture, Jack told his dame, "You don't know how happy I am to see you-among other things, it's solid proof that I haven't gone completely bonkers yet, although that could change. Where are you right now?"
"And I'm so happy to see you awake and okay Jack," Ann replied, her voice quivering with heartfelt relief and pleasure. "You really had us concerned a few times."
"How's that?" he prodded, apprehension kneading his entrails while a grim interest piloted his mind.
"Well..." Ann vacillated, fidgeting. "You sure that you really want to know?"
"Hey, whatever happened, it's clear that I got through it and am probably in smooth waters now. I can take the truth perfectly fine doll."
Ann gave a brief smile at the term of endearment before abruptly becoming grave.
"I didn't see it myself Jack, but Doctor Zhong, the lead surgeon who operated on you, told me that you came very close to dying on the operating table, and he had to shock you to get your heart beating again."
"Jesus Christ," Jack moaned sickly, horror and a red band of fear constricting his heart. "That is too damned close for my liking. Thank God he was able to save me," he shuddered.
Cobalt eyes watering, Ann nodded, adding, "And then, despite all the precautions the medical staff took, your wounds became septic, and you ran a blazing fever...I watched through this very machine, and it was-so horrible," she concluded, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand.
Jack really had no answer for all that frightening knowledge, except for the clench in the pit of his stomach and the arctic quiver that migrated south from his atlas vertebra to his coccyx. He did know though, that he was awfully damned sick of brushing up against eternity.
"As for where we are," Ann continued at length, "we're both on this huge hospital, floating in the middle of outer space, called Sector 12 General Hospital-at least, that's what I've been told," she added. "Now, it has 384 different levels, each of which is specially constructed for a specific class of Martian creatures, like the air they breathe, the temperature they like, and so on. You and I are both on level DBDG, since we breathe oxygen and are warm-blooded."
Thinking it over, Jack felt his mind reeling at the concept. This was like something out of H.G. Wells.
"But where exactly are you on this DBDG level?" he asked of her after a time.
"Not all that far actually," she said. "Since my wounds weren't as bad as yours are, I got sent to the minors area, as they call it. As for you, you're in the Critical Care Unit right now."
"I wish you were here with me," Jack said longingly.
"God knows I do too," Ann replied wistfully, a hint of bitterness to her voice. "But the biggies here didn't want me taking up a berth in your area that someone who was badly hurt could need in a twinkling."
"Well, I can sort of understand that," he said. "How in the hell did we get here though?" he enquired from his pillow. "Did some kinda spacecraft come down and pick us up?"
"No," Ann said, shaking her head, "It wasn't any craft that got us here, believe me."
"Then what was it?"
Locking her gaze with his, her features neutral, Ann Darrow said in a monotone, "You're probably not going to believe, much less understand, a lot of what I'm gonna tell you Jack. Indeed, there's a lot about it I don't understand-can't understand!-myself. But this is on the level, trust me. Remember that green-tan flash of light that surrounded us before we dropped into the elephant graveyard?"
He nodded. "You bet I do."
"Well, that turns out to have been Rafiki's doing, although it was an accident. But to make a long story short, after finding us, he went outside the Pridelands, and with the help of another witch doctor, Mganga, used his magic to create some kinda mystical door to another universe, this one, where we could be he-"
"What the hell!" Jack exclaimed in surprise. "Ann, that's not possible! There's no proof that there's another universe besides this one, nor even any real hint that there could be another!"
"Ah, but that's because you hail from a time when quantum physics was in its very infancy," Pam supplied. "We'll have to give you a condensed version of what science has discovered after you've healed more."
"I don't understand it either Jack," Ann shrugged helplessly, "but the reality sure seems that way."
"Well," Jack dryly replied, looking particularly hard at the two aliens sharing his hospital room, "after what you and I have both seen and experienced lately, I think the words 'not possible' ceased to have any meaning or relevance for us long ago."
"Heh, tell me about it," Ann chuckled, a slightly unhinged edge to her voice. "At any rate, he used powerful magic to open a green, swirling passageway to...well, to here, and sent us through."
"Any idea what he plans to do next?"
"I wish I knew Jack," Ann sighed in frustration, as she tilted her head back, running her fingers through her cleaned curls. "I'd assume that Rafiki is waiting for us to heal up again and become fit, at which point he'll send us back to our true, original world-does that ever feel crazy to say, I can tell you! And I hope to Jesus its New York he has in mind as our drop off point," she added.
"Has he come by at all, talked to you?"
"Nope. However, Doctor Zhong, the surgeon who worked on you, told me that Rafiki had-communicated-with the head administrator two days ago about how you were doing, and I have no reason to disbelieve him."
Jack's eyelids felt like an invisible hand was drawing them down, and his head was a cinderblock.
"Ann," he muttered, "as desperately as I want to keep finding out more about this next wacko place we've gotten into, or just talk to you in general, I'm afraid my flesh is just a bit too weak right now to stay on the ball."
"Hey, don't worry," Ann tenderly assured him. "The more you sleep, the quicker your body will get fixed up too, so do it whenever you can. And remember, no matter how scary some of these Martian folks might look, they're as safe and friendly as the wild dogs were. Be seeing you," she smiled, reaching off the frame.
And then the square shaft of luminescence, on which moving pictures of light were painted as they happened, snapped off.
A few moments later, the fatigued, yet comforted, playwright's eyelids made this second mad, screwy world go dark as well.
Her heart so stuffed with joy, relief, optimism, fondness, and excitement it felt like it could split, a grinning Ann almost missed the knock on her door.
"May I come in, Miss Darrow?" It was her new best friend, Doctor Aaron Zhong.
"Of course!"
As he opened the door, Ann saw that he was holding a full bottle of champagne in his right hand, two wine glasses in his left.
"You much of a drinker Miss Darrow?" he asked.
"Um, no," she replied, feeling distinctly uncomfortable about what the liquor and the surgeon's congenial demeanor might imply.
"Well, neither am I," Zhong grinned. "Still, certain occasions almost beg for a celebratory swallow or two."
Relieved that he wasn't trying to court her or anything, and pleased that he was clearly feeling equally gay about her Jack of Hearts coming around, Ann replied, "I can agree with that."
Aaron poured a glass for each of them as Ann commented, "You know, it would've meant a lot to Jack to get a visit from the doctor who saved his life."
"No doubt it would," Zhong replied. "But there'll be plenty of time for that later. He had more than enough to deal with already without me in the mix."
"And without me telling him that I'm beating a mild case of malaria, although we both know I was never in any serious danger," Ann added. "That would've made him even more of a bundle of nerves. Thank you for prescribing that preventative course of pills, by the way."
"You're welcome, Miss Darrow," Zhong said, taking a sip from his glass. "Always wise to do things before the fact. You were right on the money telling him to sleep as much as he can too."
They both toasted Jack, and drank.
At length, Ann asked, "Any clue how long until he'll recover?"
"Since most of his wounds only affect muscle tissue, I'd guess three, four weeks."
"But after they heal, he's going to be rather weak for a while, won't he?"
"Yes, he'll be quite weak at first. But he'll gradually regain his old vigor, and we have excellent food and exercise facilities to help him out in that department. So in six weeks he'll probably be back in fighting form, if you'll pardon the pun, with no permanent damage."
"And then what happens?" Ann asked, thinking of her conversation with Jack in the moonlight underneath Pride Rock in a different universe.
"I don't know," Zhong exhaled thoughtfully. "I guess that's up to Rafiki Miss Darrow. I don't see any reason why he'd leave both of you at Sector General any longer than he had to though. Indeed, serious things would probably happen if he didn't take you back to your original universe and world."
But what part of the globe does he plan to bring us back to? Ann thought.
Then, the most likely possibility came to her, tantalizing and terrifying all at once-especially where Jack was concerned.
She decided to pour herself another glass of champagne, and quickly.
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