My Diary

2002-12-04

My mind is rusty, it grates when it moves. The lights are burning my skin. I've got to get out. Got to get out. Got to.

Cold flame. Walls. Twisting, turning... lights everywhere, no darkness... swirling light in my eyes... Unauthorised. Unauthorised. Unauthorised. Unauthorised.

Help me. Someone. Help. Me.

[pause]

Aaah.

My head feels full of fuzz. I can't think straight. This place is pushing in on me, and my mind is pushing out, and I'm getting crushed in between.

I don't know what time it is. My watch is inside the suit. I vaguely remember trying to sleep, and the rest is a fragmented jumble of glowing walls, twisting passages and that thing swirling at the back of my head.

I slept. I think. The room I was in ---- wide and low, tunnels going up and down, right? Corners. Yes. I was sleeping in one of the corners. This isn't it. I'm at one end of a jagged green glass cylinder. Several tunnels meet at this end, tubular with longitudinal green stripes. The other end dissolves into a spiral of sharp teeth, almost meeting at the centre. Green and yellow light slowly swirls through the walls.

[pause]

The suit's got tubes for water and food. The water is cold. The food is that paste I had on the ship. God, it tastes good.

It's got other attachments. Let's just say that they work.

There's still fog in my head, though it's slowly clearing. I have to think. I need to find a way out.

But all these tunnels are the same. No, no, that's not true. They're all different. They're so radically different that there's no common theme. There's no order to this place.

It's a maze of twisting, turning little passageways, all different.

The suit's head-up display is no help. It's been in fly mode ever since, ever since I left the Hotel yesterday, and the display is showing me a number of gauges that probably relate to velocity and orientation and so on. The altitude gauge has gone. Annoyingly, I'm sure there'll be an inertial map in there somewhere, I just don't know how to get at it.

[pause]

More water.

In free fall, moving the suit is easy enough, probably easier than walking would be. Make a slight mental gesture, the suit moves. I suspect I should probably switch off fly mode when I sleep, or I'll start moving around in my dreams. Which will probably be spectacularly bad. I can still see that thing, glittering behind my eyelids.

Gah. I'm feeling bad. That pressure inside my head is building up again, and everything's going fuzzy.

Oh, God.

[break]

Clearer.

I've moved again. I'm in ---- some sort of spherical chamber, with a rotating glass prism in the middle. Several tunnels. Glowing white rings on the walls.

It wouldn't be so bad if I couldn't remember what happened. But I do. I remember groping through a nauseating jumble of concepts and sensations and ideas, my mind working nightmarishly badly, everything shot through with the taste of vomit and that those trails of colour sliding across my vision and over everything the vast un-voice shouting huge, incomprehensible words...

Ugh. Change the subject.

I've got to get going, before I go under again.

Down the tunnel. Contrasting dark and light blue, in diagonal stripes, this time.

Turn. Twist. Turn. A junction. Both branches identical ---- left.

Turn. Turn. Hmm. This is new.

The tunnel just stops, neatly capped off ahead of me. The flat circular wall is inscribed with concentric white rings. They're lighting up as I approach.

Hey. They're actually reacting to me.

As I get closer they get brighter, and... woah.

I reached out to touch them and they were suddenly gone. The tunnel stretches forward ten metres or so and there's another cap. What's going on?

This cap's glowing as I approach too. Oh. The other one's reappeared behind me. I'm trapped.

Or...

Yes! It's an airlock. I touched the new disk, and it vanished. The tunnel goes on unimpeded. Perhaps I'm getting somewhere.

Push on. The tunnel's dead straight, still cyan and dark blue.

Argh. I think I'm going to go under again. Stop. Stop. Flight mode off.

Okay. Here we go.

[break]

That was bad.

My vision's fuzzy and I have a splitting headache and I feel sick. But I'm still in the tunnel, which is a good thing. Obviously while I'm having a seizure I'm not lucid enough to switch to flight mode again.

Water. Proceed.

The tunnel's still completely straight, stretching on as far as I can see. This is new. I seem to be actually getting somewhere.

Is that light? Yes, it is!

The tunnels opened out into a long hall. It's tubular, quite wide, very well lit by a mosaic of white patches along the walls, and stretches as far as I can see, perfectly straight, in both directions. Right down the middle runs a thick, matte black rod.

I would appear to have a choice, then. Which way?

Let's have a look at that rod. Odd. It's not matte. It's... cloudy. I think. It looks more like a invisible glass pipe full of very dense black fog, swirling slightly. It looks strange. It--

Aaah!

Damn, damn damn damn...

[untranscribable sounds]

Ouch.

What the...

I touched it. It... hang on, I need to get this straight. I touched the rod, or pipe, or whatever. It sucked me in, the world blurred around me, and then it spat me out again.

Wow.

I'm at the end of the corridor. It neatly terminates in a hemispherical end piece, with a tunnel leading off. The black rod comes a to a flat end about ten metres away. What was that?

Well, whatever.

I need to rest.

[break]

I feel much better. My vision's back to normal, the headache's ebbing, that awful pressure in my head is fading away. I still have glitter across my vision and the occasional swirling colour, and periodically I jump as I momentarily think I sense that un-voice deposit something in my head, and I haven't had another seizure.

The tunnel ran off in a straight line, with occasional side branches. I ignored them all and headed straight up. Eventually it opened out again and I was at the end of another of the big hallways, complete with smoky black rod.

With much trepidation, I reached out and gingerly touched the rod with my fingertips. This time I was prepared; the tunnel blurred and rushed silently by, and then I was at the other end. It took maybe five seconds. I think I know what those things are, now; the ship's rapid transit system.

There was another tunnel heading out. I followed it. It led to another hallway.

So far I've been down six of the hallways, and am at the start of a seventh. All the hallways and the connecting tunnels have been in a straight line. I don't know where I'm going or how far I've gone, but I must be making decent progress along the ship. Hopefully there'll be something interesting when the line terminates...

[break]

Not good. Not good.

I had another seizure, suddenly, just as I came out of one of the rods. My vision blurred briefly, my head ached, and I just had time to switch out of fly mode before my consciousness dissolved into the nightmare that I am becoming all to familiar with.

I can still feel that thing's tendrils brushing the inside of my skull...

I think that that was the twelfth rod. I could well have lost count.

Come on, I've got to reach the end some time.

[break]

I'm at the end! And it's impressive. Trust me on this.

The last rapid transit rod was a long one, several times as long as the other ones. And the connecting tunnel that followed it was short, only a hundred metres or so before it finally opened out into the chamber I'm looking at now.

It's vast. You could put the island in here.

It's spherical, and marked with a hexagonal pattern of holes. The holes look small; they must be a hundred metres across, at least. The wall of the sphere seems to be simple metal. The mosaic of white rectangles that was lighting the tunnels and hallways is completely absent.

Without illumination from the walls, the only light is that shed by the structures inside the sphere; huge, hard-edged geometrical shapes glowing in all the colours of the spectrum and plenty more besides. They fan out radially but asymmetrically from the centre of the sphere, at which there is a single point of brilliant green light.

They're not idle, these shapes. Periodically one will brighten, change shape slightly, slide around the centre until it is pointing somewhere else, or all of the above. The entire display, which must have been kilometres wide, is in constant motion.

This is, without doubt, the nerve centre of the ship.

Periodically, a brilliantly white line of fire stabs from one hole to another, perfectly skewering that green star in the sphere's centre. Shards of green light are shed in all directions while the vast shapes flicker madly, fast than the eye can follow, along as much of the line's length that they can reach. And then the line, so blazingly hot that I can feel the heat coming through my visor, will flick out again as if it had never been.

The problem is, where do I go from here? I'm not venturing out into that lot.

One thing I've noticed is that the beam of white fire always joins two of the holes that are diametrically opposed. Which means the only hole that will be safe to approach will be the one exactly opposite the entrance tunnel; there is no hole on this side for the beam to connect to.

That's assuming that there is such a hole. I can't see it because the green star is in the way. But the pattern of holes suggests there is one.

This is going to be interesting. I'm going to have to go round the edge, keeping as far from the holes (pits from my point of view), and hoping one's not going to become active while I'm near it.

I think I should rest first.

[break]

Well. That... worked. Sort of.

I entered the sphere and immediately started to fly along the wall. The sphere was so vast that I could barely see it curve when I looked straight ahead.

After a few hundred metres, though, it saw me. Whatever it was. One of the huge geometrical shapes of light suddenly pivoted around the axis point, and aimed directly at me, where upon it change shape, extending a sharp tooth of light towards me. I had just enough time to register its movement before it reached me. Blue light seemed to crystallise all around, forming a hard, transparent shell just out of my reach in all directions. I looked around wildly, surprised and shocked, and as I did so the huge blue jagged triangle touched the shell. There was no sense of acceleration, but the chamber suddenly wheeled vertiginously around me and then the shell shattered and evaporated, leaving me drifting, stunned, on the far side of the sphere. The shape shrank back to its original size and returned to doing whatever it was doing. The whole process took maybe two seconds.

Was that more rapid-transit system? I think this is the hole I was aiming for. If so, that would explain why I can't see the tunnel entrance through the transparent shapes ---- it will be blocked by that green star. And besides, the tunnel entrance will be for too small to see.

Perhaps it was a mechanism for moving crewpeople about the bridge quickly.

The hole is actually the wide end of an inverted cone. It descends into the deeps below my feet, lit only by the flickering of the shapes and the steady glow of that green star. The scale is, as usual, vast. The cone is at least as deep as the sphere is wide.

Well, this was where I wanted to go. I suppose I had better go down and... no.

No. No. Please, no. Not that. Anything but...

It's gone.

I thought for a moment I saw another of those things. Swirling lights nearby, just for a moment, and then it was gone.

I have got to get out of here!

[break]

I've descended into the cone. Directions are all arbitrary in free fall, of course. But I feel happier with the tip of the cone below me, so it seems as if I'm descending into a funnel-shaped pit.

It's big. It's featureless. The light from the sphere above is getting steadily fainter, and so it's getting dark. After the endless neon glows of my experiences so far on this ship, that's fine by me.

The walls are getting closer. They're now only ten metres or so apart, and narrowing every moment. If there isn't anything at the bottom of this pit, I'm going to feel like an idiot.

Spotlight on. Approaching the end.

There's a flat, black disk at the very tip. It's not lighting up when I shine the light on it. Not far away now... approaching... oh.

Wow.

Yes! I've done it! I'm finally outside! It wasn't a disk, it was an exit!

I'm now hanging below ---- excuse me, above ---- a vast, conical tower, stretching back until it meets a huge rounded shape. More towers spring out from the shape all around... of course. This is that ball at the front of the ship. I am floating just above the very front-most spine on the ship. I have travelled the entire distance, all the way from the cargo section at the stern to the very bowsprit itself!

Black sky surrounds me on five sides. It's wonderful.

From here it's a simple matter of flying back down the side of the ship on the outside. Past the ball, past the central core, through the weak bit of field by the spines, down through the air moist, thick air onto the island and I will be home...

Although...

Now I come to notice it, there's a fair amount going on in that black sky.

The new sun, violet and angry, is at my back. All around I can see vessels, similar to the Big Ship. They're everywhere; there must be hundreds. The closest is the size of my hand, the smallest just a metallic speck. I can see the close one has a bulbous object of some kind caught in its claws.

And... all the ships are facing the same way. Except this one. They're all pointing behind me. Hang on.

Oh, my god.

There's a...

Something. It's big, it's indistinct. It's curved. It looks like a ship, but it can't be. I can see Big Ships in front of it, just dots, which means they're thousands of kilometres away and it's still behind them. The new sun is off to one side of it, so the side that's being lit isn't the one that's facing me... I can just make out a vague hint of a structure, something outlined against the shadow. It looks... it looks like someone took a slice out of a planet and turned it into a spacecraft. And all the other ships are heading towards it.

No. I do not care. I am out of here. I'm going. Goodbye.

[break]

Or then again, perhaps I'm not. The suit's not responding.

Haven't you played with me for long enough, you bastards? Now what? The suit won't move me, I can't reach the lip of the spine, there's noone my radio will talk to...

All I can do is wait.

[break]

I'm back.

At last, I'm back. The suit's off, lying in a corner charging. There's a drink. There's a bath. There's a meal. There's real air against my skin, sand under my feet, real light illuminating the room. I feel damaged; my head's still fuzzy, there's still spinning shapes behind my eyelids and that horrible pressure is oh-so-slowly building in the back of my mind. But somehow... I think I can cope now.

I'd only been waiting ten minutes. I was feeling low. The ship had knocked me down about as flat as a human could get, had built me back up again with its promise of an exit, and had knocked me down again. I was just hanging there, watching the planetlet, trying not to think.

The only warning I had that something was happening was a flare of light below me. Deep within the heart of the sphere was a radial blossom of blinding light; all the beams had come on simultaneously, intersecting at its center. And then, almost before I had time to register something was happening, something seemed to pick me up and throw me sideways. The spine I'd emerged out of swept away and receded into the distance, and the mind-numbing bulk of the sphere, kilometres away and still occupying half the sky, slowly crept after it.

As with the rapid-transit system in the hallways, and my trip around the bridge, there was no sensation of movement. The suit still wasn't responding and all I could do was watch helplessly as the Big Ship ever so slowly receded into the black sky, leaving me alone and abandoned in space.

The whole vessel was laid out in front of me. It was so vast, so big beyond all comprehension, that even foreshortened as it was and, by now, probably hundreds of kilometres away, it still spanned the sky from zenith to zenith. I could see it all. At the near end, the morningstar bridge; brilliant blue arcs of light had started to weave between the tips of the spines, casting actinic highlights inside my helmet. Then there was the central mass, a titanic cylinder of anonymous grey pipes and chambers woven into a single, intricately detailed whole. Aft of that was the ribbed central column. I saw where the spines branched off it. Somewhere in there was the tunnel entrance where I had so incautiously ventured inside the ship, and the horror had begun. Nestled inside the spines was the smooth, curved shape of the sun funnel, and then ----

There was the island. Oh, the island ---- glowing geen and golden, pale blue and white, beautiful and inviting. I could see the shoreline, curving intricately. Parallelling it were the reefs, the water shining like polished metal. I could see the forests, still a tangled mess but none the less inviting. I could even see the brown smudge that was the central lake, now mud. And everywhere were the tiny, exact, brilliantly white shapes of the buildings... and was that one the Hotel?

I stared for some time.

Eventually I noticed, of course, that the ship didn't seem to be receding any more. Then I noticed that it wasn't as foreshortened as it had been. Instead of seeing it from the bow end, near the bridge, it was now laid out squarely below me. It wasn't flying away from me. It was turning.

The aft end approached and the bow receded. Now the ship was foreshortened in the other direction. I had a sudden fear that the stern of the ship would swat me like a fly as it came past at hundreds of kilometres per hour. And then I was terrified that it would miss me entirely, and I'd see the island skim past me and away and I really would be abandoned here.

The island grew, and changed perspective. The fake sun suddenly peeked out from underneath the funnel. Now the island was a flat disc suspended in space, the Big Ship itself invisible behind the fake sun. It looked... impossible. The suns reflected off the water, and there was a ring of blue around the edge from sunlight refracting through the ocean.

It wasn't going to miss me. I was going to hit it, square between two of the spines, a few hundred metres above the sea level. I suddenly thought about the force shield, but it was too late to panic now, as the edge was approaching fast, and the spines were swelling and drifting apart, and I uselessly braced myself within the inert suit and...

...with a sudden shock like plunging into deep water I went through the force shield and I was falling, for real, out of the sky into the sea.

The suit was working again. I floated for a while, and then pulled myself out of the sea and flew, slowly and hesitantly, back to the Hotel. I was tired. Not physically, as flying the suit was ease itself, but emotionally, mentally and psychologically. I had to rest.

Green and Black must have been watching. They met me excitedly in the foyer, obviously pleased to see me, Green babbling questions. I could not face them. I muttered something about tomorrow and being tired and just walked away. I hope I didn't hurt their feelings too badly.

And now you are up to date.

And I think I will look at this bath, and this food, and this drink, ignore them completely, and instead go to sleep in the big chair. I hope this time I won't dream.

[transmit]