This morning I was straightening up and came across something a bit surprising for me: A hand-written first draft of the first page. These days it's usually all on the computer. I have a vague recollection of writing this page while sitting on the beach at Ditch Plains during the summer of 2012.
Quite a lot has changed since then. The POV has gone from first person to third person, Ishmael is an orphan and foster child, the planet is now called Cretacea. But in other ways, the scene described is basically a condensed version of what I sent off yesterday. Here's the first scene two and a half years later:
1
“Wake up.”
It’s dark and gelatinous. Ishmael
floats in a breathable syrup. Is this a dream? he wonders before
soft, warm tendrils reach out and draw him back into a black, foamy haze.
“Come on, everyone. Rise and shine.”
Ishmael makes a fist; the gel is
gone. He opens his eyes and sees hues: a woman’s copper face with an unusual
sheen accentuated with serpentine tattoos. Dark brown hair, blue eyes, a gentle
smile.
“Are we there?” he asks. He is lying
on his back. The foamy haze has lifted, but he feels woozy and surprised by how
tight his jaw feels. As if it’s rusty, in need of oil. He starts to push
himself up.
“Easy, honey.” The woman places her
fingertips on his collarbone to keep him from rising. “You’re here, but you’ve
been in deep stasis. Take it slow.” She gently pushes him back into the molded
foam. “I’ll tell you when.”
Ishmael allows himself to be eased
down into the soft cushioning, but when the woman moves to the next pod, he
peeks over the edge and watches while she tells the person inside it the same
thing she told him. In this dimly lit chamber, there are five green oval pods,
each containing a new arrival. Ishmael saw some of them the day they left
Earth. Strangely, right now, that and his name are the only things he
remembers.
Moments later, having awakened all of
them, the woman steps into the middle of the chamber. She is wearing blue
shorts and a blue shirt with the sleeves torn off, exposing arms covered with
tattoos. “Listen up. My name is Charity, and I’m going to guide you through
reentry. I know you’re eager to get out and look around, but unless you want to
do serious damage to yourselves, I recommend that you do exactly as I say.
Raise your right hands.”
Ishmael does as he’s told. Like his
jaw, his elbow and shoulder feel tight and stiff.
“That’s your left hand, Billy.”
A high-pitched voice flutters:
“S-sorry, ma’am.”
“Now raise your left
hands.”
Charity leads them through a process
of moving their limbs and flexing their joints. Ishmael has never felt so stiff or feeble. Just
lifting one leg leaves him momentarily breathless.
“Don’t worry about feeling weak or tired,” Charity tells
them. “Just before destasis, you were infused with a biologic that will help
you regain your strength and balance. We’re now going to start the process of
getting vertical. Most of you won’t succeed on your first attempt. That’s
expected. When you start to feel light-headed, let yourself fall back into the
pod. That’s why it’s got all that nice soft cushioning. What you don’t want to
do is fall forward and crack your skulls on the floor. Everyone got that?”
Muted affirmative replies.
“Okay, try to sit up.”
Slowly propping himself on his
elbows, Ishmael feels his heart begin to pump harder. From this angle he can
see into some of the other pods. He doesn’t remember putting on the stiff brown
uniforms he and the other new arrivals are wearing. Across from him, a girl
with a tangle of unkempt red hair manages to sit partway up before her eyes
roll and she flops back with a soft thump.
Once his heartbeat feels steady, Ishmael lifts his torso
more. Someone else tries to sit straight, loses consciousness, and falls back. Carefully,
Ishmael inches up a few degrees more.
Charity glances his way and nods
approvingly.
The others adopt the gradual
approach. Still in the pods, they eye one another curiously. Next to the girl
with the red hair is a tall fellow with broad shoulders, and a frail-looking
kid with short, curly blond hair who Ishmael suspects is the one named Billy.
They are all thin and bony and have dull, mud-colored skin.
The next step will be to get out of
the pods and stand. “Make sure you hold on to the handrail,” Charity
tells them. “Don’t try to walk. If you straighten up gradually, you shouldn’t
feel dizzy, but if you do, bend your knees and lower yourself to the floor.”
The pods slowly tilt forward.
Grasping handrails, Ishmael and the other new arrivals place their feet
unsteadily on the floor. The tall
fellow is the first to stand, but then he starts to sway. As his knees
begin to buckle, Charity scoots behind him, sliding her arms under his
shoulders and easing him down.
“Don’t anyone else faint. There’s
only one of me to catch you.” She squats before the tall fellow, who is now
sitting on the floor with his head between his knees. “You okay, Queequeg?”
He places his hands flat on the floor. “Yeah,
I think so. Thanks.”
“That was a little too fast,” she
says, helping him up. “Try it more slowly this time.”
By now, Ishmael and the others are
standing unsteadily, still gripping the handrails. The floor gradually tilts
beneath them.
“Feels like a ship,” says a boy
Ishmael hadn’t noticed before. He is short and chubby with neatly cut black
hair and evenly trimmed fingernails. For a moment, Ishmael stares, unable to remember
the last time he saw anyone with so much as an extra ounce on them.
“That’s because this is a ship, Mr. Lopez-Makarova,” Charity
replies.
“You may address me as Pip,” the boy
says.
“W-where are we?” asks the
frail-looking blond kid, his high-pitched voice quavering.
“You’ll hear about that later, Billy. If I
told you now, you’d just forget. Memory loss is a side-effect of deep stasis,
but it will pass. Right now just concentrate on keeping your balance. Oh, and
one more piece of business. Hold out your left wrists.”
They do as they’re told, and she
scans their wrists with a tablet, starting with Billy, whose slim wrist
reflects his fine, delicate features. Ishmael focuses on the strange symbol
tattooed on the inside of his own wrist. The one-inch square resembles
circuitry, with clear and copper-colored filaments woven through a black matrix
code. A registry, he remembers.
Illuminating the red-haired girl’s
wrist with purple light, Charity gives her a curious look.
“Got a problem?” the girl growls.
“That attitude won’t help you here,
Gwendolyn.”
“Nobody calls me that,” she snaps.
“It’s
Gwen.”
Charity moves to Queequeg who holds
up an unmarked wrist. “Sorry, don’t have one.”
That catches Ishmael by surprise.
Despite his addled memory, he’s certain that back in Black Range everyone had a
registry — it was the law. But Charity accepts the boy’s answer and moves to
Ishmael. As the purple light passes over his wrist, he catches a glimpse of
gold filigree. Charity gazes at him with an expression he can’t quite decipher,
then turns away.
Ishmael wonders if any of the others
noticed that she didn’t even try to scan the wrist of the boy named Pip.
It’s not long before the new arrivals take their first
steps. Feeling as shaky as a toddler, Ishmael finds it hard to separate his own
unsteadiness from the mild sway of the ship. Charity is both gentle and
demanding, directing them through each stage of movement. Finally she hands out
goggles. “We’re going up on deck. Be careful with these. They’re delicate and
in short supply. Once we’re up top, under no circumstances are you to take them
off. To do so will mean risking severe macular damage.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t go up on
deck.” Gwen tosses her goggles back.
Charity lurches to catch them before
they hit the floor. “Did you hear anything I just said? They’re delicate. You
can’t toss them around. And you are going up.”
When the redheaded girl crosses her
arms and juts out her chin defiantly, Charity steps close, then lowers her
voice. “Don’t be stupid, Gwen. You’re here to make money, and to do that you’ll
have to cooperate and take orders.” She holds out the goggles. “Unless you’d
rather spend the voyage in a stinking hot cell next to the reactor.”
Gwen snorts but does as she’s told.
Charity turns to the others. “Okay, everyone, it’s time to meet your new
world.”
Eager to see what’s out there,
Ishmael puts on the goggles. They’re different from VRgogs, which are always dark
for virtual reality. These
stay clear while Charity leads them out of the chamber and up several
ladderways. At the end of a long passageway, she pushes open a hatch. Through
it comes a blinding glare far brighter than anything Ishmael ever experienced
on Earth. The hot air wafts in.
“One at a time,” Charity orders.
Queequeg goes first and seems to melt
into the powerful brightness outside. He’s followed by Gwen, then Pip. Ishmael
shuffles closer, his pulse revving with excitement. As he steps through the
hatch, a blast of torrid air hits him; the top of his head begins to feel hot,
as though he’s standing under a heat cell. Even with the goggles darkening
automatically, he has to squint in the painfully bright whiteout. Meanwhile,
he’s bombarded with a host of bewildering sounds, smells, and sensations.
But there is one thing he knows for
certain: for the first time in his life, he is standing in sunlight.
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