Chapter One

                                                               Awakenings

I remember the room because it was like some lab or hospital in a science fiction movie, a white room tiled along some walls, ceiling when I got my eyes focused was of different it was a mosaic of very basic form of the medical symbol and in the thin tile circle that surrounded it was a story I recognized as being the story of one of the most famous physicians of ancient times (his name at this moment I have forgotten.) I tried to keep my eyes shut as if I was a sleep, observing discretely through nearly closed eyelids, so as to figure out a way to escape from were ever I was. I suppose most people would have not done as I did, at least if they had been unable to remember who they were, but I did remember; even as a man in a white lab like coat said,

(His hand over my mouth to hush me) “Look I know you’re not still unconscious but before they come in here calling you by another name…just listen… They wanted me to erase your memories, they said it would help you better adjust to your refurbished body…sorry I always think of the human body like a car…yes I remember my first and only car and my past, just like you…were a small group of… (He searched his mind, it was obvious for the right word) rebels or fifth column…how long has the war been over and who won? Tell me later (he said hurriedly) they are coming, remember, just let them talk, and you’ll get the way of it…”

I opened my eyes, and tried to get up, but my head hurt as I tried to move it. The man who had whispered looked like the French police chief that Rick walks off with in Casablanca but younger, taller, and truth be told better looking somehow but he wore that thin mustache common back in the nineteen thirties and forties the three people were not so clear to my eyes and aching head…I would look better at them after my ally as I thought of the cop guy in Casablanca…Louis something (like I said I didn’t remember his name and gave him that for a moniker which would stick and we would all use, those of us who became the rebellion, until I escaped.)

The two men, and a woman came over toward Louis (pronounced Louie emphasis on the E) who had whispered his warning just moments before, the larger, and one might describe him as a man who projected a giantness but was no more than I would say six foot two and was obviously the leader, his gray hair and royal baring so obvious in his body language and his clothes which were a finer suite then the other men wore he spoke like a leader too, and said,

“Doctor Cassius, how is my granddaughter doing?  Recovering from her ordeal with the malfunctioning steam valve? No permanent damage as far as I can see.”

He did not touch me since Doctor Cassius was kind of blocking his path in the way a soldier might stand before his commander.

He turned to the very pretty blond woman, built like a Valkyrie, in that she was big of shoulder and hip and very somehow Norwegian or Scandinavian looking. It was not just her big bust that gave one the impression of a Valkyrie but something else, something I could not as yet put a finger on. The man to her right was small and had what I would only call a cross between a hawk and a weasel, or what you might get if you crossed the two. The older man who had referred to me as his granddaughter continued (in that very autocratic way I soon came to realize was his only real way of speech)

“Eliz my dear, check her vitals and see if she really is alright after all you were best friends, and you are a fine neurologist.” The woman leaned over me, and began to look at my eyes as she smiled, with a smile that never reached her cold ice blue eyes, she began doing the usual poking and prodding I was already accustomed to having done to me in the past by neurologist.

After her examination she replied,

“With the exception of a bit of bruise and I would say a very bad headache I would say it’s nothing bed rest, and relaxation for a few days couldn’t cure. Tell me how is your memory do you remember what happened? Do you recognize us?”

If I had not been good at lying and a damn good poker player and all right I had been at one time a pretty good actress…I wonder still if I could have pulled of the lie, I saw in the eyes of Louis that smidgen of fear and knew I had better pull the slight amnesia card…it was not uncommon for someone who had taken a blow to the head I remembered that from my own science/ med courses.

“I vaguely remember you grandfather don’t I call you grandpapa… and Eliz is (pronounced E Leez) I remember you and I haven’t really been on speaking terms since you and grandpapa became more then friends. I am sorry sir but I don’t remember you at all…my head really hurts, and most of what I just said I am not entirely sure of, frankly your faces seem somehow familiar and yet it’s like I don’t know you, or even who I am. So anything you can tell me about myself and my life I would greatly appreciate…but maybe later I have this really bad headache…”

(I hoped all the TV and movies where the person with amnesia wakes up, and doesn’t remember anything, or remembers a bit but has bits missing, would work with my audience, if not, then the good doc, and I were up the s creek in a chicken wire boat sinking fast.)

Eliz said in her most Valkyrie way yet,

“We’ll leave you to rest, and I am sorry you never accept my relationship with your grandfather, but we aren’t involved anymore, you and I were trying to become friends again…I think our biggest hurdle was not wanting to agree that Michael here was not really suitable fiancé material…you said looks could be deceiving… that was when you went to the engine room in the airship named for your brother Valentine you insisted since it was your design of the air valve that made it so strong and gave it its speed…well let’s just say it thunked you when it broke off. Art at least told us that was what happened… sleep now and when you wake again you will need to go before the people and tell them you are okay…they worry when something happens to you…remember when you and I got into that scrape, about ten years ago, you broke your leg, we were trying to see if the new sea gliders were everything you had heard… (Eliz must have seen the confusion on my face and also the look of pain for she added quickly) You don’t do you but it’ll come back to you I promise…sleep now.  Doctor Cassius, administer a gutta of purple sea plum it should help with the pain and help her to sleep…” 

Louis replied calmly, “I was just about to, Doctor Cadmus”

They acted as if they left (you know the slow dodiling walk as if to leave) and I pretended to take the odd liquid and to fall asleep, knowing full well that Eliz, and company where watching, for all that they pretended to leave. When they thought I had fallen to sleep they walked back and the man, who called himself my grandfather said to Doc Louis,

“You didn’t get the memory we asked you to implant to implant fully, it seems, but you did a good job in erasing her memory, and giving her a better personality than we thought she would have considering she has been monitored ever since one of our allies above told us he saw her…”

 He the man who called me his granddaughter touched my head gently with his hand, not unlike a feather as it falls. Once they were really gone I looked up and though my head still ached, Louis (whom I shall spell as Louie, for that is how the name is pronounced) whispered,

“Take the drops this time they really will make you better and they won’t do harm.”

                                                    *********

I never sleep more than three and half to four hours, at any given day or night. So I was not surprised to awaken again this time without the headache of before. I felt odd, and the feeling become more worrisome, especially when I saw my reflection in the mirrored glass of the medicine cabinet, how could I look as I did when I was a teen…all be it better than I was then because there were none of the zits (true I had hardly any back then but they usually scared especially if I didn’t touch them.) My hair was darker than it had been then black instead of the dark brown with red tips. I had the look of health I had a body that even when I was a teen I would have envied, and the face and body I stared at was that of me yet like somehow I had been aged backwards I was between 16 and 25 at least I looked almost like my picture from that period of my life. I wondered around till I found two windows one in the room I was in and one in the corridor like room or maybe it was a waiting room, wasn't sure and after I looked out the first one, well to say I felt odd would be to understate it...they say that when you go very deep under the sea in any kind of vehicle or living habitat you can experience this kind of imbalance that can make you go kook coo...I began to realize that maybe my headache and this feeling of imbalance was from feeling some kind of pressure change. I could not believe what my eyes where seeing. I remember staring not quite believing what I was seeing, in the window in the lab like infirmary/hospital was an underwater seen that I had only ever seen in shows about the deep sea creatures and there in the distance was an underwater crop harvesting going on… As I was walking back to the other window Louie came behind me and said,

“They harvest the crops even in what to us is considered night…. At least if you have seen the city, which I think, you already have… (He paused then, to let that sink in, as he walked me gently one hand around my shoulders, as I still felt the shudders pass through me and felt just a teeny bit wobbly, then as I looked out the window of the city which was in the room outside the lab/infirmary/hospital area he continued to whisper in my ear) We use carefully disguised mirror system which allows for our city to maintain some small semblance of topside day or night atmosphere not that we don’t help it along with our lighting system… (he pointed to a point in the distance and I could see the rivets and bolts and the “airship” which was something like a zeppelin and as decorative as a hot air balloon… I saw the train which reminded me of the old steam trains or electric trains that little kids get and which some adults like to collect only older, it all looked like something out of a Victorian kids story book.) Don’t worry the shudders you are feeling and the loss of equilibrium will pass as your body adjusts to being so far below the surface (I felt that since that was not said in a whisper that was for the benefit of an unseen audience.I would know soon how right in this thought I was even as he continued back in a whisper) I am sorry but they will wonder what I am doing if I don’t make it look as if I am doing something to get you more stable. (He quickly began to tell me bits and pieces about my life here or at least what might be expected of me to know. He also told me that the small little whistle like gadget he was slipping into my pocket would temporoarily take out their “eyes and ears” he also told me about his war time experience…he was called by the younger men in his air squadron “grand dad and grand pa” his plane had crashed into the ocean but not before he had ejected and landed in the ocean. I found it very hard to believe until he added) I know the war must be over by now but who won…oh please don’t think my young man features makes me what you see, think are you a teenager or a twenty something girl? No, right, well neither is any of us we can if we are “lucky” be regenerated/refurbished, the clock as it were turned back and slowed so that every ten to twelve years is about one. I was born August 12 1903 but in the First World War I lied about my age so I could join became a pilot then, so of course when the second war came I joined as a pilot. Everyone I know has probably died and if not they are so old that even if I went back topside I would kill them if they even thought I was who I they thought I was…I often wonder what became of Jeanine, my wife, and our three children. I became a part of the resistance here because I wanted to see my wife and children but after Margery Smyth came in the 1980’s I knew that I would never be able to go home. Ten of us escaped in the 1990’s but some like me where forcibly brought back…I suppose they thought that letting me see my wife, her dying in my arms would make me more loyal when they brought me back…even after they tried to erase my memories, it didn’t work then and I still feel anger at them for the time together they stole from us. I ask who won because I need to hear it again; it reminds me how much of my life I missed. So humor an old man and tell me, who won the war.”

I looked again outside the window and remember the look in his eyes when I turned and answered him,

“The allies (I whispered and continued) we won the war after dropping a very big bomb made of uranium which is called an Atom bomb.”

(I saw the sigh escape him and the simmering anger in his eyes as well as a fierce determination, hesaid then what I had not expected to hear it really wasn’t the kind one wants to hear when one has just woken up, not so long ago, and in a strange place yet )

“They plan to destroy the topside world our world, no matter how bad things maybe no one has the right to destroy the innocent with the guilty, I fought against tyrants and madmen before, Hitler Mussolini and the Emperor Hirohito...will you join us…you don’t have to fight, just be ready to escape, because without you they will not do it they will not destroy the world above us.”

(I felt tired again but my last words before I cat napped in the waiting room as I had come to think of the outside room the one with the view of the undersea city, was my kids what about my kids. Even as I said) “I will do whatever it takes to see my children again…”

That was when the thing I didn’t expect was said to me by Louie,

“Your children are here they were in the other section of this medical complex, right through those doors, before you storm over, you need to know they may not remember you, at least not this way we already have a plan in place to get them topside since they will not be as guarded as you, they won’t even be watched as much as you. You are the key to them the promise of success and stability if their plan is to work…a sort of Messiah, if you will rest here, they will be coming and knowing them (the people you met before) they will be seeing how you react to the sight of your children, and how they react to you…our numbers are growing, but I have no way of knowing if one of our people has helped them, as I have you rest now in an hour I will tell them to come in.”

I remember thinking right then that while seeing my children would bring me great joy it would also bring me great anguish, since they might not even know who I was.

I also remember thinking what a wake to wake up…

Maybe if I closed my eyes this would just be a bad dream.

But life is often full of rude awakenings; opening my eyes an hour later showed me that.