MINDSEYE

John Hoggard

            The five second long symphony of destruction began with the crystal sharp explosion of fragmenting headlamp glass.  A moment later there was a subtle, near silent hiss of superheated halogen gas escaping from its glass prison.  With a crack, JON50N, shattered as the colour co-ordinated bumper, it was attached to, folded up like paper.   

            The scream of tortured metal rose like a tidal wave over the melody.  It howled for mercy as it was torn, stretched and crushed.  It begged for understanding as the beautiful sleek curves it had grown accustomed to being shaped into were wrenched into distorted shapes of horror and destruction.

            Underneath this crashing roar were softer, more gentle sounds.  A careful ear could pick out the sound of fuel, water and lubricant pipes rupturing and splitting, spraying their contents into the void like blood from a severed artery.

            The heart of the car, devoid of this high octane blood, shuddered and died as it was torn from its mountings and thrown around the engine bay like a tin can in the autumn wind.

            The final crescendo was the shattering of a windscreen and the spraying of the tarmac landscape with stilettos of glass.  And as the symphony died away, leaving only the steady, ever slowing, metronome tick, tick, tick of a wheel spinning on a broken axle the listener is suddenly aware that there had been a second tune.  It had been an organic tune, the tune of breaking bones, tearing flesh and rupturing internal organs.  It had been the tune of Death overwhelming Life and only the suddenness of its ending made the listener aware that they had heard it at all.

            As wheel and heartbeat slowed in unison the final trailing sounds were of liquid dripping onto wet tarmac.  A mixture of oil, petrol, blood and urine escaped from the scene in rivulets of red and brown knowing it would be cleansed by the waters of the storm drain and eventually the salt of the sea.

 

Open your eyes Doctor Johnson.  Quickly please, we haven’t much time.

 

Pardon?  What?

 

Open your eyes!

 

Hey, I can’t move.

 

Unimportant, open your eyes.

 

Unimportant?  Unimportant!  Don’t you understand?  I can’t move!

 

OPEN YOUR EYES!

Are your eyes open Doctor Johnson?

 

Yes.

 

What do you see?

 

Nothing.

 

Be more precise Doctor Johnson, it’s important.  What do you see?

 

I can’t see anything.

 

Blackness?

 

No! NOTHING!  Black is a colour and I can’t even see that.

 

Excellent.

 

How can it be excellent?  I’m blind.

 

You’re not blind Doctor Johnson, this is the clearest you have ever seen.  The clearest any human being has ever seen.  Now Doctor Johnson tell Us about the dream.

 

What dream?

 

THE DREAM.  Tell Us about the Device.

 

You mean the Free Motion Device?  But that is just a dream, a childhood fantasy.  I want it to work, but it can’t.

 

Then you have nothing to lose.  Tell Us about the Device.  Tell Us everything about it.  Tell Us how it works, how to make it.  We need to know.

 

It’s just a box, a box in a dream.  I’ve studied degrees in Physics, mathematics, chemistry and engineering and none of them have shown me how to build an FMD.  They haven’t even shown me where to start.

 

But you know where to start.  You always have.  You knew when you were just six years old.

 

The drawing of the plane?

 

Yes.  See how easily it all comes back?  Tell Us about the plane.

 

I drew a plane, all windows and pointy wings and it had some stairs coming down from a door and all these people were going inside and my father had looked over my shoulder and said that I had forgotten to draw the wheels, because the plane wasn’t touching the ground.  So I drew a little box inside the middle of the plane and my father had asked me why I hadn’t drawn any wheels and I told him it didn’t need any wheels because of the box.

 

What type of box?

 

That’s what my father asked.  I told him it was a magic box.  So he asked me where the box got its power to keep the plane in the air, and I told him.

 

Where?

 

Everywhere.

 

So what’s in the box?

 

I don’t know.  I’ve spent my life trying to work it out.  I’ve hidden myself away from the world for weeks at a time and I still never found the answer.

 

There were too many distractions, you could not focus properly.

 

What distractions?  No TV, no radio, newspapers or telephones.

 

The effect the rising and setting sun had on your body, the need for sleep, the beating of your heart, the rattle in your chest from a threatening chest infection.  The room would be too hot, too cold.  The movement of the air over your skin, an ignored bladder full of piss, an empty stomach needing sustenance. 

 

I don’t understand.

 

Life, Doctor Johnson.  Life was your distraction, as it is for every human.  Now what was in the box?

 

I don’t know!  I don’t know what’s in the box.  I don’t know where to start.

 

Can you tell us what isn’t in the box?  Can you start there?

 

Yes, I think so.

 

Tell Us, what isn’t in the box.

 

The box has no moving parts.  Moving parts waste energy.  They produce friction, heat, noise, vibration.  That’s why the internal combustion engine is such a terrible device.

 

We know about the internal combustion device, We need to know about your device Doctor Johnson.  Tell Us what else isn’t inside the box.

 

No electronic components, no method of collection, no method of transmission.  All require energy, all bleed it unnecessarily from the whole.  Even pushing an electron through a wire or moving a photon through a fibre optic needs energy.  Too much energy.  It must be free.  The device must not react or interact it must simply be.  Its existence must be everything, all that is required.

 

Good, good.  Tell Us more.  Show Us Doctor Johnson, show Us the box.

 

I can’t.

 

You can Doctor Johnson and you must.  Show Us the box.

 

How?

 

It’s already here, in your mind.  We can sense it but only you can truly see it.  Now concentrate Doctor Johnson.  Concentrate.

 

Do you see it?

 

Oh yes.  We see it.  Now Doctor Johnson, show Us what’s inside the box.

 

I can’t.

 

You can.  Don’t think about it.  Your mind already knows, but your conscious must see it.  We must see it.  Stretch out your mind and enter the box.

 

Oh my god!

 

That’s it!  Relax Doctor Johnson, go deeper, into the structure.

 

These bondings can’t be right.  The composition of this material is impossible.

 

Not impossible, we’re looking at it.  Merely improbable, this is the start you could never find.  Now, quickly Doctor Johnson, time is very short.  One last level.  Go!

 

I can’t believe it, it’s, it’s so...beautiful.   It’s... Hey, where’d it go?  Wait, I want to see more...

 

 

            “I’m sorry Mrs. Johnson, there was nothing we could do.  We performed all the tests.  Your husband was completely brain dead.  Really he died at the scene of the accident.  If he hadn’t been so close the hospital when he crashed we wouldn’t even been in this position.  Are you OK Mrs. Johnson?”

            “Yes Doctor.”

            “You do understand that your husband was dead and that we kept him on life support only so we could use his organs?”

            “Yes Doctor.”

            “His death will save many lives...”

 

            More than you think.

            Was it enough then?  The image was very brief.

            It was enough.  The human race has proven its potential and will remain undisturbed.

            Shall I cancel the termination orders?

            Yes.  We have the box now.

            Johnson’s Magic Box.

            Yes, Johnson’s Magic Box.  The dream of a six year old human.

            Amazing.

            Quite, but come now we have much work to do...