If he approached it, would it attack him like the last one? Or was that one just insane? He gathered his courage, and stood up, and stepped forward into the gallery behind this new glowing creature. He cleared his throat, noisily, and stood in what he hoped was a non-aggressive looking pose.
The creature turned, and squealed, a high-pitched buzzy noise, presumably in surprise. Blaise smiled a little nervously, and said, "Hi."
The creature squealed again, then ran full-tilt at him. Astonished, Blaise dodged what he quickly judged was the inevitable blow. What was wrong with these creatures? "I'm not hostile!" he exclaimed, dodging and blocking blows, hoping the creature would somehow realise his peaceful intentions.
However, it was no use: the creature kept raining blows on his rapidly bruising forearms. Tired of this, Blaise kicked it on one of its legs, hard.
The creature stepped back, hopping on its other leg.
Blaise stood there, hoping the creature would get the hint from the fact that he didn't follow up his kick with further attacks. However, it didn't. After a few seconds it came at him again. He kicked it again, then followed up with a punch to the head. This time, it ran away, much as the first one had.
Blaise watched it in consternation. How do you communicate with these creatures? he wondered.
He thought about the psychology of it for a moment. He knew that he knew very little about these creatures, except that their technological development appeared to be very similar to that of humans, and that they attack strange aliens on sight. Well, let's assume that they are as similar to people as their technology implies, he thought. They would, like people, probably be afraid of the unfamiliar. Would they just attack it on sight, though? It seemed like a poor strategy: what if the thing you attack is stronger than you (as indeed he, Blaise, seemed to be)? Humans would observe it for a while, then gang up on the alien, not just rush it on sight.
On the other hand, humans had very diverse cultures too: what if he, Blaise, looked like some sort of demon to them, and their religion dictated that the way to deal with demons was to clobber them and trust in God?
He concluded that he didn't know enough about them to draw any conclusions; except that he would be better off avoiding them for now.
He glanced around the gallery he was in: displays of bits of broken wood. He didn't feel that he had time to stop and figure out what they meant: he should get away from here before the creature came back with reinforcements – if that was its intention. He turned and left via the right-hand exit, continuing in the direction he had been exploring previously. He didn't spend any time looking at the displays, though, except to notice that they contained a mixture of industrial-technological artefacts. He just walked briskly on and on, from gallery to gallery, until he came to the end wall.
He turned left, and walked into the next row of galleries. Here, against the end wall, was an iron spiral staircase, going up. He shrugged, and quietly climbed it, thankful that he was wearing trainers. He would have hated to be clattering about in this place. As he climbed, he noted the motifs on the staircase itself: not the stylised plants typical of British Empire ironworks. The staircase was built to look as if it was made from rocks, or miniature mesas, or stacks like the Old Man of Hoy: piles of flat stones or slates piled semi-irregularly on top of each other. Perhaps it was appropriate, given the desert environment outside, he thought. It fitted in with the motifs he had observed on the cannons but had been unable to identify, he thought. He smiled to himself. He was starting to get some purchase on these people at last, he felt.
He climbed right up to the top of the spiral staircase, where there were still more galleries; the first contained stone sarcophagi. There were no images of the beings on them, though: but then, an image of a glowing oval wouldn't mean much, he supposed. He wondered how they'd got them up here: some of them were far too large to get up the spiral staircase. There must be another way up, he thought.
He walked along through gallery after gallery, looking at the exhibits and, thankfully, meeting nobody, until he came to the other end of the building. Here, there was another spiral staircase, going down. He sighed, and walked down it.
He went down to the ground-level floor, but the spiral staircase went on down below ground level, unlike the one at the other end of the building. He hesitated, then followed it down.
It ended in a room about 10m square. The room had two doors – not doorways, but actual doors, with simple latches on them. He was going to try one, when he noticed in one corner of the room a trapdoor in the floor. That was much more interesting to him: it had a handle on one side near the wall.
He pulled it up and looked down. He could see a well-lit room, with an empty chair. He was puzzled as to where the light was coming from, but couldn't really see. He listened for a moment but heard nothing. He lowered himself through the trapdoor and dropped into the room, right beside the chair. He plonked himself into it and relaxed for a moment...
...then he realised he was back in the college. He started. Isadora was sitting opposite him.
"So you've woken up at last!" she exclaimed.
He was astonished. He looked up at the ceiling: no trapdoor. He looked around the room, re-orienting himself. "H... Have I been asleep?" he asked, leaning forwards and gripping the arms of the chair.
"Not really, but your trance went on a bit," she answered. "It was a bit deep. I couldn't get you out of it."
He sat back. "Did I narrate what I was seeing?"
"Yes indeed: the desert, the museum, the glowing creatures, even you trying to wake yourself up," she said. "Interesting stuff!"
"Yes," he replied, doubtfully," but surely that isn't what's real? I was supposed to be seeing whatever is here when my ego isn't faking it. That was a whole other world!"
"Well, it was probably just made up by your ego," Isadora said. "Resistance is to be expected. We can try again – but I want to make sure you don't go under quite so deeply in future. You wouldn't wake up no matter what. I was getting quite worried."
He thought to himself, was it real, or not? If he had brought back any evidence, his faking ego would presumably hide it to preserve his sense of the reality of the current world. Or would it, now that he had transcended that reality and not lost his mind? He looked down at his trainers: there was sand on them. Deep reddish sand...
###
Personal Note from the Author
Thank you for reading this short story. I hope you liked it. I haven’t written much as yet but may publish more. It takes me ages to write a story as I have to go earn a living too, but I will put them online as and when they are written. In the meantime, you can see what’s happening on my blog, where I give my views on all sorts of stuff, mostly not related to sci-fi, as it happens:
https://www.alphatucana.co.uk
You might also like to follow me on Twitter, at:
https://www.twitter.com/alphatucana
Martin Thompson
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