Chapter 53

Pinball

This time the storeroom was a closet. A tiny closet with half the floor space taken up by an old broom and a battered looking mop and bucket. He turned to find Juliet squeezed into the small space beside him. She was still wearing the doctor outfit, the one with the blood stains down the front and the theater mask around her neck. She looked as if she was about to vomit again. He automatically changed his angle, shifting his shoulder so that he wasn't right in front of her face. She was taking deep calming breaths and staring somewhere past his the left side of his chest.

'That silver thing,' she was almost hyperventilating, 'What was that? Did you see that? – and the girl and the water, and the tubes coming out…' her voice faded to nothing and she swallowed hard.

Ah. Yeah. The girl in the tub. His dream girl. And the blonde bombshell with the metal robot.

So she'd seen that too? She wasn't supposed to see that, that was his dream.

OK, now this was too weird.

'James, I- ' she went silent, staring around the small space in a panic. 'How did we get in here? I was stitching up a head wound, then…' she looked down at her hands. He followed her gaze. She was wearing white latex gloves with more blood on them. He frowned. Was all that blood normal?

He hesitated. 'So, it's for real – the sick people?'

She gave him an incredulous look. 'Yes. There's people dying in there, James.' Her voice almost broke, 'I've lost four already.' Her eyes glazed over and she looked into the distance, caught up in some internal scene playing in her mind.

'Hey,' he caught her arm, 'You OK?'

She gave a tight laugh, 'No James. No, I'm not OK.' She took a deep breath. 'I need to get back,' she said quietly. 'It's busy.' She made to push past him. He didn't move.

'Ain't you wonderin' how we even got in here?'

She took another ragged breath, her eyes flitting around the space, shaking her head imperceptibly. It looked like she was barely holding herself together. She sighed and sagged in defeat. 'I guess they must have drugged us again.'

'So why weren't we knocked out?'

She frowned. 'I don't know, maybe they used a different drug, or we were unconscious but we don't remember it, or-' She took another deep breath. 'That... place, it must have been some sort of hallucination, and now we're here, and-'

'But if they drugged us both, then how comes we're seeing the same thing?'

'I don't know.' She said in a very small voice.

'Unless we're still drugged...' he said half to himself. 'Huh.' He grunted, then paused. 'Maybe we've been drugged all the time. Maybe this closet ain't real. Maybe none of this is real.' He had a sudden, clear image of finding Karl in that room on the other Island, strapped in that chair wearing those weird glasses with that huge screen blasting sound and pictures at him. Bug-Eyed Ben liked messing with people's heads. Something clicked. Okaaaay. Suddenly it all became sickeningly clear.

Sonofabitch.

Sawyer was there, on that Island, in that room being pumped full of drugs and crazy images. Now that made sense - the metal robot thing had been the giveaway. That and the whole Picon planet gravity mix bathtub. Yeah. That fit. He had to be in some semi-conscious waking drug induced hallucination.

Bastard.

Which meant that none of this was really happening.

'James?'

He looked down at her. 'You ain't real.' he said to her. And yeah, the words rang even truer when he heard them; the doctor outfit, the excessive amount of blood, the general weirdness of it all, being thrown from one crazy scene to another... It all had that surreal quality about it. It was all a goddamn dream. That made sense. It was the only thing that did. And now that he thought about it, he could see how all the things he had experienced since he'd met Juliet at the crashed plane could have been pulled out of his subconscious and arranged into this elaborate fantasy. Like the woman in the bathtub with the tubes coming out of it - Boomer and Racetrack had talked about body parts and experiments, and hell, he'd seen the insides of that plane, the one Starbuck had been pulled out of.

And then there was this ship - Galactica - well of course that would play a big part, seeing as he'd been counting on being rescued by it - and even being attacked, that would fit too. He'd just seen that plane on the Island bomb that boat. And then all the references to planets and gravity mixes, and then the crazy robot. He could lay that one squarely at Hurley's door- that'd been Hurley's jokes about all of this being so sci fi. That was his fault. Thanks, Hurley. Then there was the lockdown - OK, so his time in prison wasn't something he wanted to revisit, but being locked up still pushed his buttons. So yeah, all the ingredients were there, it was just up to his mind to make them into the creative crazy picture that he was currently enjoying. Which meant that Juliet here wasn't really here. And nor was he.

Yeah, he was in the middle of some nightmare drug-induced trip. He guessed the best thing would be to sit it out, wait for the drug to wear off. And this closet was probably as good a place as any. Except that Juliet chose that moment to try and open the door. He closed it on her, ignoring her startled yelp of surprise. He frowned at her, examining her more closely. Why her? Why not Kate? It would have been much nicer to have done all this with Kate. She'd have looked good in that doctor's outfit. Maybe with a little less of the blood…

'Look. I need to go.' Juliet pushed past him, forcing the door open. He stepped awkwardly to the side as she squeezed through the gap he'd left, letting the door close behind her, the bright light from the corridor fading to the iridescent glow from the dull light on the closet ceiling. He thought about going after her, but then hesitated. He didn't need to stick close to her anymore, besides, she'd gone. Her hallucination self clearly didn't want to be stuck in a small space with him.

The closet was cramped and the air was thick with something that smelled like bleach, but he turned the bucket upside down and sat on it, leaning up against the one bare wall and trying to shut everything else out, closing his eyes to try and make himself drift off. He could hear noises from the other side of the door – faint sounds of people shouting and kids crying.

Ben was probably around, somewhere, watching his real body. That wasn't so good. Because once Ben had done his mind control thing he'd probably try and kill him again. But Ben was the sort of sick bastard who would want at least a few minutes to gloat over how much he'd messed him around. So Sawyer was pretty sure that eventually he'd wake up and have that conversation with buy-eyed himself. Before he was killed. But until he came to in the real world there was very little he could do about it.

He swore softly. The closet was too cramped, he was too shut in. And it was boring. Dammit. He may as well be entertained by what his mind was creating for him, go see what his subconscious had created now. Take a stroll through his own mind. It wasn't as if he had anything better to do – or if anything could happen to him here anyway. His real body was probably strapped down to some chair in that room where they'd found Karl.

He shook his head and opened the closet door. Another corridor. But the sounds of people were louder now, kids, shouting, crying, moaning, coughing, and right there ahead of him a huge space - like the hanger deck on an airplane. It was crowded; there were people everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of them, packed together. It smelled of urine and vomit and excrement and people. Too many people. Perhaps not so entertaining.

'This ain't real.' he muttered to himself, standing on the edge of the hangar space and staring out at the people in front of him. He took a slow step forward. There had to be hundreds of people here. Men, women, little kids. They all carried the same shocked and stunned expressions on their faces. He recognized that look – the look that all the survivors of flight 815 had had when their plane had first crashed and they'd all sat on the beach waiting for a rescue that had never come.

OK, so that was the part of him expressing itself right now. Not a memory he particularly wanted to revisit, but he didn't seem to have much of a choice here. He peered around nervously, then shook himself. OK, this was his nightmare, his hallucination, his fears. He'd just multiplied the scene of the crash and here he was. Hungry and thirsty and surrounded by shocked people - just like on the beach. Only here there were more people. A lot more people. He quickly scanned the crowd. So far no metal robots or weird aliens. And no sign of Juliet either. He could smell food though. His stomach started grumbling. He was hungry. He scanned the space, trying to find the source of the food smell. There, over on the other side of the hangar, he could see a table and someone handing out bowls of soup. He hadn't eaten in so long - well, of course he didn't need to eat, his dream-self didn't need to eat. Maybe he was hungry in real life and it had filtered down to this dream. Whatever. The food was there, he may as well get some.

This was weird - the extra awareness of the dream, like he was walking inside his own head and getting a chance to see his mind from the inside out.. Interesting and weird.

He walked around the edges of the space, having to pick his way over the feet and legs of those who were leaning against the walls. He made it quickly to the table and stood in the line, watching as a dollop of something was ladled into makeshift bowls. OK, they weren't bowls, they were empty food cartons, packaging, an odd assortment of makeshift utensils and throwaway cups being filled with water. He took his turn, held onto the messy plate of goo that was thrust into his hands, took the drink offered to him and went to find a place to sit and eat.

There wasn't much space. He contemplated going back to the corridor outside the closet, but it seemed a long way across the mass of bodies and he was too hungry for that. In the end he found a bit of wall space and sat down, putting his drink carefully on the floor next to his outstretched leg. He was squeezed between a woman with a small child asleep on her lap and a balding guy, glasses, dark eyes that immediately locked with his. The guy nodded a greeting as he started to eat. He had a book in one hand, laid open on his lap. Sawyer tried to read the cover. 'Economic myths and models.'

'What a complete mess.' Sawyer's eyes snapped up from the book to the guy's face. 'I mean look at this,' the guy waved his hand in front of him. 'It's a complete fiasco. And they're not telling us anything. I've got work, I've got a life. It's a frakking disgrace.'

Sawyer shook his head and smiled. This was just great. He started eating, trying to ignore the guy.

'And you heard the latest? Apparently we have a new president. A school teacher! Yeah. They appointed a school teacher as president. I mean, for gods' sake, a frakking school teacher? We're in the biggest crisis for forty years and they put a school teacher in charge? No one's even heard of her! You think she got voted in? Oh no, democracy goes out the window.'

Sawyer looked up from his food. He couldn't believe this guy. Though he did seem frighteningly familiar. There was something about him.

'And what's happened to the ships without FTL drives, that's what I want to know – I mean it was close, I nearly got the bargain ticket, I nearly didn't upgrade. What if I'd been on one of the bucket ships, huh? They're not saying what happened to them, but come on, do they think we're stupid? I saw them out of the window. I saw them, you know – it was obvious to anyone.'

Ah, he realized what it was. This guy was a cross between Arzt and Frogurt. Oh yes, his subconscious was really lathering it on thick now. What a treat. His idea of social torture. Sawyer mentally tried to close his ears.

'You know that Caprica City's bombed to frak? Someone's got a radio – they said it was nuked. Those frakking toasters. What happened to the defense mainframe? Attacked by frakking toasters.' the guy was muttering now, glaring at his book.

Sawyer paused for a moment, his makeshift spoon poised mid air. In his mind he had a vision of toasters, sandwich makers, a few pots and pans, well, any sort of kitchen equipment flying at this guy, burying him. He finished up that last of the lumpy goo and quickly drank the water.

He pushed back, leaving the empty container next to the Arzt-Frogurt combo and putting his head back on the wall behind him. He settled down and tried to sleep. Maybe Arzt-Frogurt would spontaneously combust. He wondered if he could make him go boom and explode before he said anything else. Maybe he should just roll with it. Get all Zen and accept it as part of his psyche or something.

There was no sign of Juliet. He didn't care now. Her hallucinated self could go wherever she damn well pleased. Her presence or absence was now irrelevant. There was nothing else to do but wait it out. This was boring now. Where was the blonde bombshell or the girl in the tub? Maybe he could make aliens sweep through the door and scare the crap out of Arzt-Frogurt here. He was still talking, but since Sawyer had pointedly closed his eyes he'd started torturing the girl next to him. She was young and pretty and Sawyer wished he'd found a way to sit next to her instead. He must have gone to sleep because Arzt-Frogurt's voice faded to nothing and he was having a dream with Kate and the Island and he was running… and how in hell was he having a dream within a dream? Was that even possible?

He awoke with a start. A voice was blasting around the hangar deck.

'This is your captain speaking. We're about to make another hyperlight jump, so settle down and keep calm. Best to be sitting down if you can and make sure all hot beverages are secured.' The voice sounded strangely upbeat. Sawyer tried to clear his head, still groggy from sleep. Hyperlight jump? Right. Still in crazy land.

'OK, here we go. Three, two, one, hold onto your hats folks, off we go.'

The soggy goo he'd eaten rose swiftly up to his throat as his body turned inside out.

And yeah, he guessed it was bath-time again. He couldn't help but be impressed with the way his subconscious was organizing this. The regular bath-time slots were becoming something to be enjoyed. Especially if the blonde came back. He could have a few more dreams about her...

But this time bath-girl was alone. No metal monsters, no bombshell blonde. Just Juliet standing next to him as usual, this time her hands dripping with water and blood. She had more blood on her now, the front of her gown was wet with some squicky icky stuff, shiny too like there were huge boogers there as well. He didn't even bother meeting her eyes this time, but took in her appearance with a frown and then turned straight back to the bathtub girl. He'd watch her blab some poetic crap for a while, do her orgasmic head back thing and yell 'Jump.'

He stood and waited for it.