The door opens, but I don’t move or open my eyes. I continue my slumber, and the machine continues to beep its steady beep.
‘I don’t know if you’d be interested,’ the voice says. I don’t recognise it, but everything sounds so far away that it’s hard to latch on to anything. My mind is mostly drifting. It doesn’t hold on to a single thought or memory for long. I imagine it’s like being at sea. I don’t know if I’ve ever been at sea. I imagine the bright blue of the ocean, waves picking me up and throwing me down. I’m nothing but flotsam on the current.
‘I thought I’d tell you about these twin Astronauts today. I think the one in space came back today, or maybe it was yesterday, I’m not sure,’ she says almost absently.
I start to imagine space, the utter darkness, the expanse, and its totality. I fear not having an up or down and drifting back to sea again, tousled in waves. Where’s the surface? Where’s the sea bed?
‘So, these Astronaut twins, one spent a year on the International Space Station to see the long-term effects of space travel on the human body. His brother stayed at home as a control subject so they could compare. The one who went up into space for a year had to do all these experiments while he was up there to measure space travel’s physical and psychological effects. Imagine floating up there for a year, being so far away from home, seeing your home in a way you know only a few people get to see it. Just watched it for a year. Stuck in, what amounts to, a tin can, inches away from a silent vacuum. Do you feel like you’re floating around above your home? You must try to find a way back. Be like the astronaut, don’t get lost up there just for the sake of exploration. What’s the point if you can’t tell anyone about it?’
I hear the door to the room open a second time, this time with more bluster, but still, I don’t move. The woman immediately stops talking. I miss her voice. I wanted to hear about the astronaut twins. I wanted to hear how one of them got home. I want to hear that space is something you can escape.
‘What are you doing?’ the man asks, I assume to the woman, as who would ask me anything? I’m just lying here. Unmoved. What is the difference between me and a rock? Maybe I’m an asteroid. I imagine myself as a frozen ball of space rock hurtling towards the earth. Am I falling? Is that what this is?
‘Nothing,’ she says. I can hear clicking now, a steady click, clack, click, clack. It’s a sound from childhood. I can see a room now with brown sofas, beige carpet and faded orange curtains. A fireplace, a crackling fire, and small black burn marks on the carpet. The smell of melted cheese. The sound, click, clack, click, clack. I can see loops of bright wool, hands long and delicate, automatic movement, creation lengthening underneath them.
‘I thought you said something,’ he says.
‘No.’
‘When I came in, you weren’t talking?’
She sighs. ‘I’m just knitting.’
‘Okay,’ he says.
‘I was reading the other day about those twins, one went into space, and the other stayed on Earth. Do you ever think that this is like that?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘If there’s another him floating around out there while this guy just lies here?’
A few of my recorded heartbeats beep by before he responds to her. ‘No.’
‘It would be strange, though, wouldn’t it for those twins, one looking up and one looking down? Like looking at a reflection of yourself in a really deep pool.’
A deep pool. A well. Wet stone, glistening, echoes, dripping. Cold.
‘They wouldn’t have been able to see each other.’
The click-clack stops for a moment before she responds. ‘I know, but imagine looking up at the night sky and knowing there’s an exact copy of yourself looking down at you, possibly, at that exact moment. They say twins have a psychic connection. I wonder if that extends to space.’
My mind leaves the comfort of the living room and whizzes back up to space. A reverse asteroid. I can see the planet. A million different blues, whites and muted browns, so bright against such darkness. So huge yet so small. I don’t want to turn around as I know there lies nothing but a vacuum behind me.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You know how twins always know that even if they’re across continents, they know if the other is in trouble? I wonder if they felt that when one of them was in space. It got me thinking because they will do all these tests to compare them and see how space changed the Astronaut twin. I wonder if they can tell if the one on the ground changed. Whether he’s a changed person after being as far away from an exact version of yourself as you can be?’
I’m being observed. They’re watching me, or at least supposed to be. They seem more interested in watching each other.
‘I don’t understand what this has to do with him,’ the man says. His voice scratches at my throat, and I want to cough. I imagine coughing. I imagine the inside of my throat. My body. Made of stardust. Molecules from a vacuum. ‘He’s not in space.’ I am, though. I’m in space. I’ve left the comforting warmth of my throat, and I’m in a cold, frozen space again. I would shiver if I could. ‘He’s in a coma. He doesn’t even have a twin.’
‘I know, I just thought of him when I read it. That’s all. It just got me thinking about the soul and what happens to it, whether his is still there.’
‘Well, he’s not dead, so I guess so.’
Silence falls in the room once more, just the steady beep, the clinking of needles and the slightly irritated breathing of the second visitor. The woman eventually breaks the silence.
‘Do you dream when you’re in a coma?’
Is that what I’m doing, dreaming? Is all of this a dream? I continue to stare at the earth. I look for the red.
‘I don’t know, sometimes. It depends on what type of coma and what part of the brain is affected.’
‘They must find it quite hard to sleep in space.’
‘Who?’
‘The ones that go up, the Astronauts. They don’t stray that far from Earth, so they get more frequent light up there than here. On the space station, every ninety minutes, the sun comes around and shines through the windows with an extra brilliance that comes from no atmosphere. That’s got to mess with your inner circadian rhythm, right?’
The sun. How could I forget the sun? Its warmth is behind me. It’s burning, radioactive, and hotter than anything we can imagine. It’s there waiting to disintegrate me. I wouldn’t even feel it.
‘I guess so; you’d have to ask them,’ the man says.
‘Add to that the lack of gravity problem. They haven’t figured that out yet. So, they just float around up there, even in sleep. They put themselves into these little bags and just float around.’
The man laughs. I don’t like the sound. ‘No, they don’t. They tie themselves down so they don’t float. Otherwise, they’d bump into each other.’
She carries on knitting. I want to be back in the living room once more, sink into the brown sofas or brush my fingertips over the smooth black burn marks on the carpet.
‘It must be strange for them,’ she says. ‘I suppose, though, in some ways, it might be like being back in the womb, floating and weightless. Maybe it’s quite calming.’
The man laughs again. I want to stop him. I want him to leave. I just want to look at the huge globe beneath me, watch the weather fronts whip by and listen to the woman tell me about the astronauts in their tin cans hundreds and hundreds of miles away from home.
‘I don’t think humans find space calming,’ he says. ‘I mean, what’s calming about being inches away from the vacuum of space? Did you know if you put your ear up to the hull, you can feel the vibrations of all the micro asteroids hitting it?’
‘Hmmm … The one who came back from space is taller than his twin now.’
‘Won’t last.’
‘Yes, he’d already begun shrinking the moment he landed. Couldn’t walk either, not at first. Like him, if he wakes up, he might not even remember who he is or how to walk or talk. He may have to re-evolve.’
‘Is that possible? That he won’t remember anything? I hope that doesn’t happen. What about his life experiences? The things that made him who he is? The little moments of joy, sadness, and boredom make up his history?’
I can see the rivers now, a hue of dark blue tendrils like a leaf under a microscope. Nature loves patterns. I imagine my hands. My palms. My fingers. Turning them over. The mottled marks of my skin, moss on rocks.
‘Maybe it all gets stored in his body as he grows, like a blueprint on his bones that you don’t realise is there because you can’t see inside yourself. Maybe it’s more than just brain tissue.’
‘That was unexpected.’
‘So, now that I have, what you would describe as, an existential thought, I get ridiculed.’
‘No, that’s not what I meant. I’m glad you thought it. I was just surprised.’
‘Well, one of us has to keep our feet on the ground, as it were.’
Night time in cities. Burning electricity, a constant threatening glow. I want to be by the fire in the living room again. It’s too cold up here. It’s too cold to be witnessing such heat.
‘True, very true. Do you think we should talk to him?’
‘Why?’
‘Because we’re talking over him and about him. Perhaps we should talk to him.’
‘What are you expecting to get out of that? He can’t respond.’
‘I know, but they say that hearing is the last thing to go in these situations.’
‘That’s not proven. Sometimes, I think they say these things to the family to make them feel better. If you talk to him, you’re talking to yourself. Even if he can hear, he can’t engage with you.’
‘They wouldn’t do that. Would they? The doctors. They’re scientists.’
‘You think because they’re scientists, they wouldn’t lie?!’
‘Well, I think because they’re scientists, they wouldn’t comfort. Which I suppose amounts to the same thing.’
‘Wait a minute. Is that what you were doing?’
‘When?’ she says.
‘Earlier, when I came in, were you talking to him?’
The clinking of the needles is a little louder now, more fervent. ‘I thought it was impossible to speak to him, that if I did, I’d only be talking to myself. Technically. If I were, what does it matter?’
I look at the swirling clouds, giant spirals and huge swaths. The Earth with its dusty browns and dull yellows. Greens so dark they are almost black. You cannot see the flowers. Where is the red? The bright purples? I imagine movement, ant colonies of people, but I can’t see them, I feel them though, I can feel all that life, teeming and moving. It’s overwhelming. It’s terrifying, but I cannot turn away. What’s behind me is worse. The silence. The stillness. No, this is better.
‘So, you were then, talking to him?’
‘Yes, maybe.’
‘I see,’ the man says. ‘What were you saying?’
‘Does it matter? Is there a right or a wrong thing to say?’
‘He can’t respond, so it doesn’t matter what you said. Did you tell him all about the twins? Fascinating, I’m sure,’ he says and yawns loudly.
‘Just shut up, will you!’ she snaps. ‘Read a newspaper or something. What have you got in those bags anyway? Why do you always feel the need to buy things?’
I can see frozen tundra now. Brilliant white, blinding and cleansing. The dark black beneath. Ink on paper.
‘I need these. Why do you feel the need to poke around in everyone else’s business?’
‘I resent that.’ Silence once more settles between them before she says in a calmer, more steady voice, ‘Why don’t you talk to him?’
The sound of a newspaper, the paper, ink seeping into the ridges of your fingers, smudges, crinkling, the fluttering of page-turning. News. Information. Words. The shape of letters.
‘Because I’ve nothing to say to him,’ he says.
‘You could read to him.’
‘No, I’m not going to read to him like he’s a child.’
Her voice is only just audible above the clicking of her knitting needles. ‘It wouldn’t be like that. You could read him the news, let him know what’s happening in the world.’
‘This part of it anyway,’ he says as another page flutters and is clasped between what I imagine are now ink-smudged fingers.
She sighs again. ‘You just have nit-pick everything, don’t you?’
‘I resent that. Well, the use of the term “nit-pick” anyway. Where do you hear these things?’
‘I pick up on things. You should, though, read to him from your paper. Tell him about the football score or the state of the economy. I’m sure he’d find that much more interesting than my space stories.’
‘All right, I’m aware of the concept of sarcasm. You don’t have to hit me over the head with it. We’re not here to read to him anyway.’
‘Then, why are we here?’
Why are they here? Why am I here? Am I even here? I think about it. Where am I? I can’t be in space. I’m human. Without a suit, oxygen, or protection, I’d die. Freeze to death in seconds. Icicles in the blood. I’d turn to frozen dust particles, become stardust, from space we came and space we become.
‘To wait.’
‘Wait for what?’
‘For him to wake up, or not, I mean, the laws of physics dictate that entropy will eventually lead to decay and death. So, inevitably he’ll do both. If he wakes up now, he’ll still die at some point.’
Death. The finality. That’s what would happen if I turned around. So, I must keep looking, looking at the earth with the burning sun and freezing vacuum of space behind me. I could follow one of those micro asteroids into the atmosphere and hope I don’t burn up on re-entry. Become a gaseous cloud, glowing in the darkness, an aurora of pollution.
‘Yes, I suppose. I hadn’t thought about that. That’s why you should read to him or talk to him. It might help him to find his way.’
‘Find his way where?’
‘Back here or to move on.’
‘You don’t seriously think that if I read him the football scores or the budget analysis, it might weigh in on whatever existential crisis you think is happening inside his head right now?’
‘It’s not the content. It’s the connection. He might feel like coming back if he hears a voice to come back to.’
‘The problem with that logic is that if I read him the Guardian’s analysis of the state of the government, he’ll stay where he is or move on, as you say. It really is the most reactionary thing I’ve ever read. I mean, they seriously can’t think this level of journalism is any better than the Daily Mail. Get some perspective, people.’
‘Don’t start on that again. That stuff is definitely not why we’re here. I don’t know why you insist on reading all of that if it just gets you impotently angry.’
‘It doesn’t make me impotently angry. It’s important to see a larger perspective, see how people perceive things or more accurately how they’re told to perceive things.’
‘Just observe them, talk to them, you’ll get a much better impression of people if you actually speak to them. Not all of them will parrot the Guardian or the Daily Mail back at you.’
‘Well, I tell you, the ones I have “observed” would refute that. Honestly, it’s like they can’t have an opinion until they’ve checked their Twitter feed that day to find out what they’re supposed to be riled up about now.’
I’m fascinated by the desert beneath me. The red swaths of sand look like waves, ripples in an ocean of blood. My mind wanders once more to patterns. They are everywhere, all around me. Nature loves to repeat itself. I think of my own body, the inside, the tendrils of veins, the shape of a tree in winter with no leaves to keep it warm. I think about space. Where are the patterns in space? We can never get far enough away to see them. Instead, we swim in unseen, unnoticed ripples in a pond.
‘Did you know they tweet from space?’
‘What, that they had internet in space? That’s where the satellites are,’ the man says.
‘I know they have satellites. I’d just never thought about it. It’s amazing that he could communicate with all the people he knew were below him.’
‘The ones that had Twitter anyway.’
‘Yes. Still, I think it must have been very inspiring.’
‘Or just another way for him to rub his brother’s face in it. Look, twin, look at this! I bet I’ve more followers than you do! Look at me! I’m in space doing important scientific work for my planet, and what are you doing? Sitting at home trolling me on my social media accounts. You’ll always be the twin that didn’t go into space. Humans are so petty.’
‘He did, actually,’ she says. ‘The astronaut’s brother. They’re both Astronauts, so they’ve both been in space. It was just this year that one went up while the other one stayed.’
‘I suppose that might be worse. You’d be forever reminding people that you, too, had been in space. You’d become a space-bore.’
‘He was probably glad to have his brother back safe and sound, knowing first-hand the risk he’d taken by going.’
‘I think, at first, he thought, ‘Finally, they can stop asking me how it feels to have a brother in space!’ But now, he just gets constant questions about how his brother is and what it was like for his brother to be in space for that long and did he miss him blah blah blah. He’s probably sick to death of it. He probably hates his brother by now. They are both space-bores trying to outdo each other’s tales of space travel.’
‘You really are a pessimist, aren’t you? I mean, I don’t know anyone else who, on hearing this tale of human ingenuity and endurance, would turn it all into a pissing contest between two brothers.’
‘I’m not a pessimist. I just have a more realistic view of humanity than you do. Human instinct is, at its root, petty and competitive. I can’t help that.’
‘I don’t think that’s true; I think that’s just what you’re like.’
‘Oh yes! I’m sure he loved hearing you wax lyrical at him with your existential musings on the whereabouts of his soul! Especially if I’m so pessimistic! Oh, and the Astronaut twins mustn’t forget them.’
‘I don’t know why you keep reducing this down to a competition. Not everyone is like you.’
I can see storms, circling around themselves, a circle with circles, tightening. They look slow from up here as if they are staying in one place but I know they aren’t. I know they are cutting huge swaths through expanses of land and sea. Changing the landscape, moving the earth, clearing a path.
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, you know, you’re just so reactionary. You’re supposed to be an objective scientist, an observer of cause and effect. Yet you have a rabid opinion. You always assume this world is out to get you somehow. I know you have your issues, but you really need to learn to set things aside better.’
‘Issues? What issues do I have exactly?’
‘Oh, come on! It doesn’t take a genius to see it. You’re hardly subtle, especially after that rant about the Astronauts brothers.’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Really?!’
‘What? What are my “issues”, then? Enlighten me.’
‘Seriously? You are seriously going to get me to spell it out to you?’
‘Spell what out?’
‘Oh, for god’s sake!’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. You can, though.’
I miss the click-clack of her needles. I miss imagining whatever she is weaving together lengthening and growing beneath lithe, delicate fingers. Fingers that aren’t hers. Hands that belong to memory.
‘I don’t know what these issues are. You think I have. You and your pop psychology! At least, what I’ve posited about the twins is based on actual observations of human behaviour. You’ve nothing to base any of this on except your own wild imagination. You aren’t observing. You’re indulging.’
‘I’m not! Even if I were, at least, I’m not overreacting. You know nothing about those twins, yet you’ve made up this ridiculous backstory that has no basis in reality! Who does that?!’
‘You, apparently, as you’ve made up these issues I supposedly have.’
‘You can’t just observe what’s happening; you can’t accept people for who they are. That was why we were given this assignment, you know? They thought perhaps a comatose man wouldn’t elicit such an extreme response from you. They’re wrong.’
‘It’s not him that’s eliciting a response from me. It’s you. I can’t deal with your mumbo-jumbo musings. If you just sat there and observed and didn’t start these ridiculous conversations in the first place, then I’d not have anything to get riled up about. I could just sit in silence, in peace.’
‘Reading your papers and sighing every five minutes, I don’t think you’d know what peace was if came up to you and calmly bit you on your arse.’
‘Well, you don’t seem that peaceful right now either. I thought you were the calm one, the one who “lived in the moment”.’
‘I am in comparison to you. Let’s face it. You’ve been through so many partners it’s ridiculous. No one wants to work with you.’
‘You think they want to work with you? Yeah, right!’
Maybe I can use these patterns to find my way back. Follow a tendril, a river, a desert wave. A labyrinth, a maze made of hedges, if I can find my way to the centre, I could find my heartbeat. I imagine it there, beating a rhythm of its own, sounding its own pattern.
‘Did he just move?’
‘Oh, don’t change the subject! After all, I believe we’ve both had multiple partner changes in the last few years.’
‘I’m not changing the subject. I just thought I saw…. Anyway, that’s part of my job. I’m supposed to change who I work with.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Part of my job is not only to observe these people. It’s to observe those who I work with. They put me with people who have trouble working with others to see if I can figure out why and then…’ she says and the whole room seems to take a breath. I can see something flicker in the corner of my eye. ‘Seriously, I swear I just saw him move.’
‘And then what?’ the man says. I hear him click his fingers at her. ‘And then what?’ he repeats.
‘Oh, and then I make a recommendation.’
‘A recommendation?’
‘Yes, as to what the best course of action is. Whether they need a change of job or a particular partner or whether this is just not for them.’
I’m rushing now, through my own veins, the map of myself, rushing and falling just like that asteroid. Crashing, plummeting, free-falling. I scrape at the inside of myself, trying to move a single finger, a toe… something…
‘You get to make this recommendation! How are you qualified for this? You’ve not been working with me long enough to know me! This is ridiculous. I don’t need to be observed!’
‘Look, I’m more than qualified for this, and you don’t need to worry. Nothing bad is going to happen. The worst-case scenario is that you get re-assigned somewhere with less stress. You might thank me in the end.’
‘Oh, so that’s what you’re going to recommend that I get transferred back to the arse end of space to be constantly known as a failure, or worse, not remembered at all.’
‘You see that right there! That’s what I’m talking about! Earlier, you weren’t talking about the twin human Astronauts. You were talking about you! These are the issues I mean.’
She sighs and I see her stand up. I feel her intention to stop him from pacing. She reaches out a hand to touch the top of his arm, but he bats her away.
‘Oh, yes, well done, Sherlock! You got me to admit that I want to be remembered.
‘That I want to be good at my job. Well, who doesn’t?! That doesn’t make me crazy or difficult to work with!’
‘I didn’t say you were crazy, and who is Sherlock?’ she says as he makes his way to the window.
‘You know, for someone who claims to observe everything, you really should know who Sherlock Holmes is! I can’t believe this! Who put you up to it anyway? Someone must have.’
She moves to the window, standing just next to him. She places her hand on his shoulder. Her voice is calm and steady.
‘No one, you just raised some red flags when you went through so many partners.’
‘Yeah, right, you just can’t tell me. Is it my fault they keep partnering me with such idiots?! Case in point right now!’
‘Oh yes, that’s a good move, insult the person who holds your future in their hands. Brilliant move,’ she says and removes her hand from his shoulder. ‘Look, let’s stop this, okay, let’s do our jobs. Let’s observe this man and note our thoughts and observations about him.’
‘Don’t be so patronising.’
‘Um, excuse me?’ I say, finding my voice soft, a little gravelly from underuse.
‘I wasn’t being patronising!’ she says. ‘I’m trying to help you if you’d let me.’
‘Yeah, right, am sure you’re helping! No doubt in my mind!’
‘I thought you don’t like sarcasm.’
‘My apologies, yes, of course, I forgot that’s your area of expertise.’
‘Could you just tell me who you are?’ I ask.
The man and woman look around at me.
‘Ah, hello, Sir. How much of that did you hear?’ the man says.
‘Um, well, a bit, you were saying something about him having issues. Look, who are you? Am I supposed to know you?’ There’s a slight panic in my voice now, a cracking which makes both the man and the woman look nervous. She watches as the man makes his way closer to me. I want to move, but everything is still heavy, moulded to the spot from entropy.
‘Please remain calm, Sir. All is perfectly fine. I just need to know when exactly you woke up and how much you heard?’
‘I’m not sure. Are you doctors?’
She follows the man to the other side of the bed and takes my hand. Her fingers are cold. Keeping her voice soft, she says, ‘we are Scientists, of a sort.’
‘You don’t look like Doctors or Scientists. Why won’t you tell me who you are? What’s happening?’
The man takes out a white handkerchief and a small brown vial. He dabs some of the liquid onto the fabric. She motions to him, holding out her spare hand.
‘Just let me talk to him. There’s no need to….’ It’s too late, though, and the man has covered my mouth and nose with the handkerchief. She watches transfixed as I struggle, and then finally, the beep becomes a steady hum, and I am once more in space, looking at the vacuum the stars hang on.
He leans over and turns the alarm off.
‘Why did you do that?’ she says realising she’s still holding my hand. She lets go.
‘He was about to panic. I had to do something. Sometimes nice words aren’t enough, plus humans say anything to save their own skin; he’d have sworn not to say a word then, next thing you know, he’s talking to any newspaper that’ll listen. You know the protocol. If he’d reported us, questions would’ve been raised. We wanted to know if he would wake up or die. I guess he did both.’
‘Because you just killed him.’
‘What was I supposed to do? Tell him it was all a dream, part of his existential coma crisis?’
‘It would’ve been better than killing him.’
‘He’s just a human. There are billions more of them making a nuisance of themselves. You just wait until they start terraforming Mars, then you’ll wish I’d killed more of them,’ he says, finally removing the handkerchief and placing it back in his pocket.
‘We were here to observe. Nothing else.’
‘You were talking to him.’
‘That was different.’
‘How?’
‘From killing him? Very! You seriously wonder why I was sent here to observe you?!’
‘Okay, I can see why you might think I overreacted.’
‘Overreacted? It’s not like this is the first time this has happened either, is it?’
‘Ahh, you guys know about that.’
‘We know about several interferences and sudden deaths.’
‘Ah.’
‘Yes.’
‘So, that means you’re going to report this then,’ he says, and his fingers twitch. She takes a step back.
‘Yes.’
‘Ah.’