LS35-J Chapter 1
I'll set the scene.
The wind was blowing through the grove of trees,
making the branches move in a wild and strange ritualistic dance.
I looked out the window and something caught my eye.
It was odd.
It had no property I had ever witnessed before.
Slowly it came towards me.
I watched, transfixed as it slipped easily beneath the locked and barred
window,
and,
just as effortlessly, filled the whole room with its presence.
The rhythm,
throbbing in my brain,
pulsating shards of sound entering the cerebral cortex.
A new form of matter - pure energy but at such a low frequency
that it had begun to solidify into an organism entirely of its own.
For seven minutes I stood there,
transfixed as the shape changed and liquidly metamorphosed itself into
a being...
As the vision faded and then became stronger I could make out a central
eye
amongst the tentacles of colour.
Its huge enlarged pupil, surrounded by shocking mottled masses of vivid
colour.
Blues, violets and lurid greens followed my every move.
Billy felt his arm,
LS35-J dripped from the syringe.
Shit this stuff was heavy...
The pulsating eye opened and closed.
Billy's mind raced faster.
The computer linked to his mind spluttered more data onto the VDU.
Billy became the Eye.
With practice he found that he could move his gaze,
slowly at first and then with more precision.
He did not like what he could see.
His body was not there.
Nothing.
Not even a head he presumed,
though he could not look back on himself to ascertain whether this was
true or not.
OK he thought,
I can still think.
Billy tried to focus his mind on one thing,
unfortunately the only image that came floating repeatedly into his brain
was that of his pet goldfish Oscar.
He was one of those goldfish that always had a long sliver of turd
hanging from his behind and a particularly gormless expression on his face.
The fish began to speak.
"Have you got any margarine?"
Oh dear thought Billy,
the fish was trying to play a cruel psychological trick on him,
how should he answer this one?
After a short pause he answered,
"Soya or Sunflower margarine?".
He asked tersely,
he could see that this goldfish was going to be the cocky, self-assured
type,
what he really needed was the close companionship of a hungry piranha fish
he thought.
No such luck though.
There were no other fish in site and Oscar was getting more and more overbearing.
The frightening thing Billy thought,
was that the fish was beginning to look more and more like his mother.
The way she used to look at him when he came in late.
His mothers eyes...
"Mother?"
"An old lady bird never loses its spots sinking in jam".
Just the sort of meaningless,
and slightly inaccurate proverb my mother would come out with he thought.
"Go and stick a large fishing hook up your dorsal orifice"
He said, in a bad tempered way.
He blinked and the fish disappeared,
only to be replaced by a TV set blaring out the signature tune to "Come
On Down And Pick Your Nose".
Bruce Presely looked at his workmate, Mike.
"Fucking hippies, why do they do it?
Allowing themselves to be treated like laboratory mice in these experiments.
Why should you want to find some inner part of your mind anyway?"
He was alright he thought, he had found all the parts of his mind aged
thirteen.
Hurriedly finishing his Waggon Wheel, he carried on mopping up the corridor.
Up and down,
round and round went the mop until it reached the door with a silver number
attached to it,
Number 13,
above it the plaque read:
PROF P. Snideblast BSc, PhD, OPAD, NRE, FGREDD.
"Wanker"
He spat at the door and headed down the corridor.
He felt the bulge of his wagepacket in the front of his jeans.
Better than a hard on,
and that Snideblast could never take that away from him.
Money can buy me anything I want.
The door opened,
a cricket bat flashed,
globules of blood splattered across his newly mopped floor.
His two months training in the Territorial Army made him react instinctively.
"Oh Shit!"
he cried and then ran for his life.
The room went dark.
A pain streaked Billy's forehead as the man in the labcoat stared down
at him.
He seemed to know him.
"Presely"
The man shook him violently and then seemed to give up.
"Better modify the reflux levels for LS35-J"
Billy tried to speak but any words came out in the form of organ sounds.
PARP PARP PARP PARP PARP PARP PARP PARP.
It was Presely's alarm clock,
waking him for another days work at the lab.
Strange he should keep dreaming about that stupid hippy.
Still,
who cares as long as I get my money I'm alright.