Christopher WunderLee - The Loony - a novella of epic proportions

Over the weeks afterward, there were false alarms, near misses, when he’d inspect his rations, and think, for a brief instant, that she was there. He was almost sure, one summer day, waiting for Ladybirde to receive his cup, that he’d been given Albert’s, that should Albert have been just a millisecond earlier, he would have gotten her, would have been reunited. But he was never sure, he asked the nurses again, every week, did he have any visitors scheduled? They would never reply definitively, poor Albert, you cannot do that to him, she’s never coming back, that’s what the word NO means, even just for this week, NO means she’s left for good, and he cannot handle that, so they defensively redirected his questions, avoided them, even pretended not to hear them properly. “I know you know what I said,” he’d grow enraged, “I know you know I said: ‘do I have any visitors coming this week’ and that you’re covering for her. For THEM.”

They, it was true, were part of Them. Very few people weren’t part of Them — how could they not be? They had taken her away again, he had to relent, agree, go along, if ever he wanted to see her again. Just like his decision before, Albert didn’t pro and con it, thesis and antithesis it, he simply trudged forward. All right, if that is what it takes to have her back, to have the apartment near the zoo and the furniture from swap meets and second-hand stores, and the pictures on the walls of travels to places with waterfalls and horses and beaches and fruity drinks, and the Sundays of reclusive love and the meals with her in her revealing fringe apron, if that was what it took to have all that, Albert was finally willing to comply. He knew they had a purpose for him, a reason to keep him alive, a reason for locking him up and not just popping him. He’d confess, sign another agreement, do whatever it was They wanted to get her back.

He headed straight for the doctor’s office, dodging malcontents trying to get more or better drugs, avoiding the nurse who tried to help.

Out-of-room voice 1: Can you hear me Major Tom… can you hear me Major Tom…?

* * *

Albert hoists his leg over a galeanthrope rubbing his neck against the doorframe and purring. The doctor is at his desk, busy with heaps of forms. He observes Albert's entrance and looks up patiently.

“I need Harris,” Albert pounces.

“We've determined that the regimen is magnifying your… your problems…”

Out-of-room voice 1: Its perfect. My sister's lettuce leaf doll.

Out-of-room voice 2: …draw a veil over the fate of those who perish…

“I'll agree to whatever They want, I don't care,” Albert pleads, remaining on his feet.

“The nurses tell me you had a visitor… have been up, walking around…”

“We're going to get an apartment by the zoo and buy trinkets from second-hand stores and go on trips.”

Voice 2: Words half reveal and have conceal what it is…

“Albert, do you remember when you came to us?” he's tolerant.

(File footage of soldiers dashing over a battleground, Sean Connery's James Bond at a gambling table, and the Nuremberg Trials)

“…it was voluntary, I can't keep you if you want to go…”

Voice 1: Oh, ward those monster bits off your head.

“I'm asking you to return her to me.”

“The Harris Group protocol is not helping,” he says cryptically. They are part of Them. “Do you remember when you first came to us?”

“…after I was shot…”

“How long ago was that?”

“…a year, I don't know…”

“Twenty-two years, Albert. After you drove your father's car into the ocean, in California.” Now he understands.

“Who won the war here?” he asks, pacing.

“Do you remember?”

“I never knew my father.”

“He's been here over a hundred times.”

“Did we… go to the moon, here?” he doesn't remember coming back from the john, afterwards…

“We've talked about this on numerous occasions.”

“We didn't, did we?”

Voice 2: …and all the world's a stage…”

“We still have a lot of work to do, you and I.”

Out-of-room Voice 3: Among them: horned bears, tailless beavers, and 4-foot-tall ape-like creatures with thick beards and large wings.

“What do you need me to sign…”

“For release?”

“…to get her back?”

“Do you remember when you first arrived, Albert? You did a tap dance. Do you remember signing your admission form?”

“I've lived up to my contract, I spent two years in that sedan, I wasn't escaping. I had to see her…”

“…its up to you when you go.”

“Don't you understand? You have to talk to Them, get her back for me.”

“I can't. Its not helping.”

He understands. No North American Yeti attacks, no genital electrodes, no oatmeal suffocation, not for him. He's been dislocated, removed from time. He flips through the pages of the Who's Who of Science , Lobbe, Loblitz, Loché, Lochear, Lockler, Lodden, no Lochner, Albert, no: “American Astrophysicist and interstellar trigonometrist instrumental in the early stages of the US space program. Lochner calculated the earth's gravitational escape velocity, enabling Apollo mission astronauts to break orbit and travel to the moon.” Nothing.

“I was never here,” he says.

“We do not think you are ready…”

“I am, I deserve it… after all this.”

Voice 3: Surely, the earth is flat.

“Let me consult with my colleagues,” the colonel says.

“I need to go, to see… to be involved.”

(File footage of rocket shivering, raising in an inferno of smoke, an astronaut running on the moon, and a sea captain with his hand over his eyes, peering out into the ocean)

“Its not what you think, Albert, out there… things are quite different than you remember.”

“I know, that's why I want to go,” he replies, he understands now.

Gravity howls unremittingly against the asphalt of the temple. The inferno tumbles down, like a wave leaving the shore, spreads its burning tentacles out in a raging storm, and begins to lift the chariot above even the sky…

It is time. The rising has begun, but its vaudevillian in its complexity. There are no feathers, no messages, there is no ascension, nothing but the shards of technicolor instrument panels and the crackle of radio waves. Above him, the tube bends asymmetrically into a lewd cone and the tip is breaching the first sphere of heaven. But its vacant, abandoned. He fears the absent clouds, the way the firmament will tumble down, like a Chicken Little prophecy…

Inside the vessel, which is lite-brite busy in a glowing spectra chorus, he sits against the wall, his feet feeling metal contract and stretch, tubes lock, air escapes, a deep shudder awakening within the trembling frame, an uneasiness of engineering, the din of angry pressure, the scream of air, as he soars toward the suburbs of heaven.

There are no heroes, not anymore… there are no saviors, no messiahs, no more prophets… they have been replaced, like temps in an office, faceless fixtures that come and go, no longer conjuring up the almighty’s breath, they no longer tumble over great injustices with brute force, they no longer venture out on quests, no longer weather trials, or save oppressed races… Now, they mount up with telephoto lenses and night-vision goggles and M-1 tank fleets and air cover and bomb raids and pinpoint sights and submachine guns and satellite extrapolation and heat sensors and movie special effects in small plastic grapefruits… They are the unholy, constructed… Techno- uber mensch … the secular messiahs that Nietzsche never predicted…

Albert, in his cyborg chair, horizontal in directional indifference, eyes a vertical technician securing his helmet, gives him the thumbs up, and feels the curled fist thump on his plated crown. “God speed Doctor Lochner.” He pulls the hankie straps over his shoulders, although how they will hold up against the g-forces is highly questionable, what with the perforated squares. He mummifies himself with one roll and gets a second from under the sink, careful not to flush. The initial phases of the countdown are just beginning; technicians still going through the checklist. He’s ready, as ready as could be expected. The vessel grumbles to life, the earth shakes, the phlegmy voice: “Commencing the prelaunch checklist.” He begins his pretrained, memorized, do-it in his sleep routine, he flips switches, joggles gauges, checks the Christmas lights strung in a sagging bow, ensures the velocity control odometer is set, secures his bearing, flips more switches for good measure, sniffles, tries to quell his growing nervousness, he sings a little of her song, and after each: “check; space acceleration unit, check; gravity release pressure, check; life support systems, check; love handles” he squeezes the cellulite doughnut around his belly: “check.” Here we go.