His face twisted again and again as he strove to pull up the memories out of the clinging darkness that tried to hold on to them.
‘Yes Jarz was there. He told me he was my friend but in the end he was not. And there were other people, crowds of people. And light, a great pillar of light reaching up into the red sky, as far as the eye could follow.’
Shana nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, I remember the great pillar of light too. It was very important to us at the time. And I remember that there were awful creatures that wanted … Ahhh!’
Jon looked sharply at Shana. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing, nothing. Just an odd feeling down – down below. As if I’m full of something.’
‘Is that all? Too much food, too quickly. Now go on – you were telling me what you recall.’
‘Yes, horrible creatures that kept asking me questions and wanting to harm me. And there’s another thing. Where we are now doesn’t look anything like where we were. We’re in some huge metal building. Did you see a huge metal building on your way to the hill?’
‘No.’
‘Neither did I. And we were on the top of a hill, remember. Any huge metal building should have been visible from that top. And there was noth … Ahhh!’
Jon looked at Shana with mounting concern. Her face was twisted as if in great anguish and she was squirming incessantly upon her chair.
‘Shana what is it?’
She looked desperately around and her squirming became manic.
‘I don’t know! Jon something’s trying to get out! I can’t stand it!’
And with that, she leapt up and after a few more moments of looking around she dashed out of sight around a corner of the room. Shortly afterwards Jon heard the sound of water splashing onto the floor and a deep ‘Ahhhhhhhhh!’ from Shana. He was halfway to where he had seen her disappear when she came back around the corner, tugging her tunic and looking much more relaxed. ‘That’s much better!’ she said, with a broad smile.
‘What is?’
She sat back down and looked at him with a half-amused expression.
‘Jon, I seem to recall that we had some strange doubts about the life we had before. How things didn’t seem right, didn’t make sense. I’m sure that on one occasion I said something to you about food and drink.’
‘What – that you like it?’
‘No. I’m sure I said that it was peculiar how we took things into our bodies but nothing came out.’
‘That sounds vaguely familiar. Someone must have said it to me. Probably you.’
‘Nothing comes out, I said. But now it does!’
‘It does? But that would mean …’
‘Yes. There is. There’s an opening in the lower part of my body that I didn’t have before. You must have one too.’
Jon thought: the new baggy thing that he had noticed earlier with the fleshy tube. That must be something to do with Shana’s discovery.
‘Don’t you feel something Jon, a feeling of pressure?’ she asked.
He thought. There was an odd sensation developing in the lower part of his torso, he must admit, but it was not too demanding – as yet.
‘What does this all mean?’ he asked finally, spreading his great hands.
Shana’s face bore one of the expressions that Jon had come to recognise: the display of a growing sense of triumph; of discovery.
‘Jon we are in a building that we should have seen before but didn’t. We awoke from being inside caskets which we must have been in for a long time. Our bodies are similar to what we remember but are subtly different and seem more practical. You don’t bear the scars that you thought you should have.’
Jon nodded reluctantly to each of her points.
‘And your conclusion?’
She leaned forward so closely that some of her cloud of hair hung over him and her food-marinated breath invaded his nostrils.
‘Jon the things we remember they cannot have been real. This – where we are now – this is reality!’
Three
Jon stared at his companion. ‘This is reality. So what was it that you’ve been trying to get me to remember?’
Shana looked confused. ‘I’m not sure Jon. But if I’m right, all that we experienced on the hill was – was just a dream.’
‘No’ said Jon flatly, ‘It was not a dream. I recall what dreams are like and that was not one. In dreams there’s no continuity, no cause and effect.’ (A small portion of his mind noted, not for the first time, that his vocabulary seemed to be expanding.) ‘In my time on the hill, which is becoming clearer to me by the minute, things happened in a regular sequence. The time of darkness followed the time of light in a definite pattern. And in any case there’s one completely fatal objection to it all being a dream.’
‘And that is?’
‘Have you heard of a dream which was exactly shared by two people? You recall things happening to me and I recall things happening to you.’
Shana looked both puzzled and irritated at the same time.
‘You’re right of course. There is one way it could have been a dream, though.’
‘And that is?’
She gave a wan, uncertain smile. ‘That’s if you are not real. If you are part of my dream.’
Jon rocked back, uncertain whether he was amused or angry. In the end, he settled on being amused. He reached over and grasped her wrist, squeezing tight.
‘Are you dreaming this?’
She glared at him and eventually managed to extract her wrist.
‘Alright Jon, we’re not in a dream. We weren’t in a dream. You’re not dreaming me and I’m not dreaming you. And if I was dreaming up a man I’d have dreamt up a more agreeable one than you!’
They stared at each other for a few moments and then simultaneously burst out laughing.
The laughter soon faded however and the strange uncertainty of their current state came back to them.
Jon finally stood up and looked around.
‘I think I feel the way that you did, now. It’s a definite feeling of fullness. But if this is a normal part of life now there must be some better way of dealing with it than your method.’
There was and he found it eventually, just in time.
‘Let’s recap’ he said, stretching his legs out in newly found comfort, ‘we awoke inside cabinets, caskets whatever, without knowing how long we were in them. We are like we were but subtly different. Our bodies seem to make more sense than they used to – which would suggest that of the two types of experience, where we are now is more likely to be the true existence.’
(Once again he was mildly surprised by the ease with which he was able to express such abstract concepts, as if parts of his true abilities were gradually awakening.)
Shana nodded. ‘Agreed. So where does that leave us?’
Jon gave a shrug. ‘Absolutely nowhere.’
She stood up. ‘Look, if there is an answer to all this, we’re not going to find it just by feeding our faces. We’ve got to explore more of this building in the hope that we’ll find something which will give us the answer.’
‘Agreed.’
The corridors appeared to be endless and all exactly the same; nothing but grey metal curving this way or that. The only signs of “life” other than themselves were the squads of arachnoids which they frequently encountered, always busily taking something apart or putting it back together again. Once Jon picked one up only to find that it twisted violently in his hands and then emitted a harsh alarm cry that caused the other arachnoids to menacingly surround him. To his great relief as soon as he put the ululating thing down it scurried off to join its fellows and they all busily got back to work.