"BORROWED TIME". (3.1)

BY: MAURICIO ESCOBAR

3.1

 

Harper shook his head and looked at the other one with hopeless features.

-       We need to put him back –he said.

-       No.

-       He’s dead.

-       No…

-       Cap…

-       No!

-       Gershon is going to die in there if we don’t put this guy back.

-       No!

Then, suddenly, the bracelet in the man’s hand emitted a electronic whine after which the green led stopped blinking. Immediately, the alarms moaning in the back stopped their chanting.

-       What happened? –said Meyer.

Harper sighed and returned to the computer panels. Meyer observed the ReLoc and noticed the sluggish up-and-down motion of his chest.

-       He’s back –Meyer gasped from the other side of the room.

The defibrillator was showing the characteristic rough, sharp signal as it beeped rhythmically. Meyer exhaled air noisily.

Harper approached the man and placed the stethoscope on his heart; then, he checked the pupils.

-       Goddammit… -murmured Meyer, trying to overcome the excitement.

-       It was his glucose level… -he said. –Hypoglycemic attack.

-       Will he be alright?

Harper didn’t answer. He was still in his diving suit, soaking wet.

He started disconnecting the defibrillator slowly.

-       Wallace… He’s of no good. We need to put this guy back.

-       What?! –Meyer exclaimed. –But you just revived him. Is he going to be alright?

-       Yes…

-       Then what?

-       The damn counterweights, Captain, it’s all messed up!

The sergeant then pointed at the suitcase. Meyer observed the rectangular silver box attached to the man’s wrist with a pair of cuffs.

-       Now that’s the damn problem, Cap?! You didn’t mention that!

-       I didn’t know!

-       Seriously?

He gazed at Meyer coldly.

-       Seriously, Cap? What is in that suitcase, Cap? –he asked in a flat tone.

-       I don’t know, Dylan.

Meyer walked to the body and lifted the pale man’s hand.

-       Are you kidding me?

-       I’m telling you, Dylan…

-       Do you think I’m stupid?! Look at it! –he said. –He is attached to the case. There was no way Gershon could have cut it off; Gershon knew he shouldn’t but still he relocated him –Harper walked towards Meyer until his nose almost touched the other’s. -What’s in that suitcase so as to make Gershon take such a risk?

The other remained silent, unable to counterargument. The medic rinsed the water and sweats off of his face and shook his head.

-       OK, Captain, don’t answer, I don’t want to know, but you know this guy is of no good –he said.

-       What do you mean? –asked Meyer, eyes wide-open. –You said he was going to be OK.

-       Yes, but he’s not good. Whatever is the suitcase –he explained, -the extra load messed up the Planck Factor, Cap. You might not know everything, but you know how relocations work.

Meyer remained tight-lipped.

-       This Reloc is faulty, Cap, and we need to put him back… -he murmured.

There was a brief, tense silence.

-       It’s my son, Dylan… - finally said Meyer. -It’s my son who we are talking about here and… You’re my brother, for Christ’s sake! There must be something you can do!

Sergeant Dr. Dylan Harper put his hand on Captain Wallace Meyer’s shoulder and spoke to him very slowly:

-       Cap, I need twenty-four hours to complete the surgery on your son… This ReLoc is unstable and won’t last even an hour. I’m sorry. There is nothing I can do…

TO BE CONTINUED...

 

"BORROWED TIME". (3.0)

BY: MAURICIO ESCOBAR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3.0.        RECOVERY

Harper, hands on his head, walked from right to left and back to right, like a lion trapped in a cage. Then, he exploded: 

-       Just what in the fuck is that?! –Harper yelled, irate, pointing at the silver suitcase. -I could’ve been killed! Jesus Christ, Gershon could’ve got killed! –he yelled again, now pointing at The Vault.

Meyer was speechless. The wet body lied stiff on the metallic floor.

-       Is he dead? –Meyer murmured.

Harper headed to the computer panels.

-       Goddamn! –he exclaimed after watching the screen.

-       What?

Harper rushed back and kneeled down next to the pale man; then, suddenly the alarms jumped off again.

-       Shit, shit, shit! No, no, no!

-       What?

-       The medical kit! –ordered Harper. –Quick!

Meyer ran back to the platform. The haste of his hurried footsteps was muffled by the chorus of sirens wailing in all kinds of endless repetitive patterns; the improbability of the events he had just witnessed revolved with the chaos of a swarm of bees inside his head. A man that had just disappeared and another one that had just appeared…

There was water still pouring out of The Vault and it had formed a huge pond next to it. Harper had been able to retrieve the subject at the very last moment of the procedure. Now something else was coming out wrong. Meyer’s heart was pounding furiously behind his chest. He grabbed the kit box and ran back to the Sergeant, panting.

-       Sheez! What’s wrong?

-       The hell if there’s something wrong! –said Harper.

-       Is he dead? –Asked Meyer again.

-       We need to revive him.

The Sergeant looked up at him and handed a small bottle broke in half. The label was still intact. Meyer read it.

-       Insulin? Where did you find it? –asked Meyer.

-       It was in his pocket –said Harper.

-       What did he do?

-       Come on, turn it on! –ordered.

Meyer switched on the small box which immediately started beeping. Harper exposed the chest of the man lying on the floor and glued the terminals around his heart. The suction pads rapidly adhered to the skin forming a ring of red skin around their circumference.

The body was flat, wet, stiff and pale. Meyer couldn’t help shuddering.

Harper acted swiftly and accurately with the mechanic and sound movements of those who have the training and the experience.

Sergeant Dylan Harper had served the last ten years of his life in the Military, where he had won his degree in Medicine and had worked as chief of the medical division of the Marines for the last five years. Meyer remained silent as the doctor prepared the body for the jolt.

-       I’ve seen it before –said the medic.

-        What?

He pressed his fingers against Martin’s jugular and then observed the display in the machine. There was no pulse. Harper continued:

-       The ReLoc sees the death is imminent. They don’t want to suffer.

-       What do you mean…?

-       He gave himself an overdose of Insulin. Wouldn’t you do it if you knew you would die?

The chronometer on the defibrillator started its countdown. The silence of the room was periodically broken by the unbearable intervallic whines coming off of The Chamber and the fuzzy thoughts running wild in Meyer’s head.

Meyer looked back at The Chamber and thought of Major Gershon. One minute ago he was in The Vault. Now he was gone, projected out of existence…

Unlike The Vault, The Chamber was a big coffin-shaped, metallic-colored sarcophagus that resembled those used by the Egyptians to keep the mummies; it was right next to The Vault. It was lit like a Christmas tree, all emergency red leds twinkling all around its surface. Gershon was in it.

Meyer observed the bracelet clipped to the subject’s right hand and saw the led wasn’t still red, but it was green and twinkling.

-       Not a good sign –said Harper when he noted Meyer’s gaze. –Gershon’s in trouble.

-       Shit! –Meyer gasped.

-       Cap… This doesn’t look good –the doctor murmured.

-       You can’t give up, doc…

The defibrillator screamed in a continuous beep.

-       Step aside!

Meyer pressed the red button. They both moved away from the corpse. The machine transmitted the electrical charge and the body arced up and the muscles contracted in a sudden, violent jolt; just for a second Harper thought the big black man was going to open his eyes, stand up and scream; instead, the body just fell heavily on his back, laying flat and unmoving, like a big doll.

Harper remained still, almost as a mannequin, observing the body. The alarms kept howling and the leds of the bracelet flickering. The defibrillator still emitted a continuous beep and showed a flat line in the display. Harper consulted his watch.

-       Charge! Twenty-fifty!

Meyer prepared the new charge with trembling hands. Harper approached the body and started the cardiac massage.

The box beeped again.

-       It’s ready!

-       Clear!

The body arced up again, this time with more violence. Meyer tightened his teeth. The machine still squealed in a single tone and the line on the display was still horizontal. Harper observed the bracelet and its green led twinkling, now more rapidly.

-       Shit! There’s no much time. Three hundred Joules! –he ordered.

Meyer obeyed.

Harper resumed the resuscitation procedures franticly. The seconds that the defibrillator took to recharge itself were charged. Meyer bit his lower lip in tension.

Everything depended on that man being brought back to life.

The defib wailed.

-       Clear!

The body was jolted one more time.

The line was still flat.

TO BE CONTINUED...

 

"BORROWED TIME". (2)

BY: MAURICIO ESCOBAR

2.        TRANSFER

Sergeant Dylan Harper finished tightening up the suit as the howling of the alarms started as if announcing a fanfare. Before fitting his head into the helmet, Harper gave a last glimpse at “the Vault”, right below his feet.

As he looked down, he briefly noticed the shadowy human figure materializing in the bright interior of the tank, a clear signal of the completion of the entanglement. He adjusted the oxygen mask and locked the helmet and waited for the alarm to go green.

Tense seconds elapsed before the final dive.

The Vault was an enormous tubular container covered of transparent Plexiglas, white and shiny in any direction and with a shape resembling a gigantic straw and the height of a three story building. As the transit was completed, water started pumping into the cylindrical chamber, drowning the contours of the ghostly dark floating figure materializing in its interior.

Harper approached the panel on the top of the chamber and introduced the code; then it was matter of pushing the release button and the Vault would be open. The level of the liquid rapidly arose as the subject, now fully solid, was floating weightless in it; then the release button lit in green. The Sergeant opened the oxygen valve, grabbed the first aid kit case, breathed deep and jumped down.

The floating body floated still and immobile in the water. Harper found that strange. Usually the “relocs” showed up in the Vault very agitated and chasing for oxygen; but this one was floating still in seated position, still like resting on an invisible chair with the head still lying sideways. Harper realized quickly that the relocation had been that much sudden, that much abrupt, that the subject had materialized preserving the same position he had before the transfer. But unexpectedly, the body started to rotate and fall towards the bottom of the pit; Harper forced himself to swim down faster. The water was forming whirlwinds as the body came closer to the bottom. If the body got caught in the strong spiral current it would be pushed hopelessly out of any reach. Harper straightened his body in an action that resembled a skydiver plunging into the air to cut the fluid resistance to a minimum, but the fall of the body was rapid, as if it was being pulled down by heavy ballast. He then observed the body stretching out, losing that original sitting position and plummeting. In effect, he noticed something attached to his wrist, a rectangular object that was pulling him down as if it was weighty as a stone.

Harper’s helmet spitted bubbles when he involuntarily cursed. The calculation of the counterweights was wrong. Something extra had been passed through; an extra weight in the transfer.

If the weights were wrong the time of extraction reduced considerably. Even if the procedure were to be successful, the entanglement could end up being so defective that…
 

Then, he realized it.

The computer would recognize the weight discrepancy and activate the emergency system. As this thought crossed his mind the whole Vault trembled. Harper looked up as a sudden whooshing sound coming from above shook the entire structure. It took him a few seconds to understand what he was seeing. The level of the liquid was moving towards him.

“No!”, he thought.

He looked down again. If the body hits the bottom there would not be a second chance of recovery…

He breathed air deeply and took the oxygen tank off of his back and dropped the first aid kit as he boosted himself down as hard as he could. The water above kept descending. On the other side, Harper imagined the alarms playing their own orchestra, the emergency light bulbs of Gershon’s container blinking in red and the computer panels sending error messages in cascade.

He was not going to make it.

Bubbles kept ascending from the liquid twisters, blinding Harper’s vision. He only could make sight of a shoe describing turbulent curves in the middle of a violent current that was into the shiny bottom of the tube; beyond the blinding light were the other side and also any chance of recovery. The sergeant then stretched his arm until it cramped out.

All it took was to touch the cold skin…

  TO BE CONTINUED...

"BORROWED TIME". (1.2)

BY: MAURICIO ESCOBAR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 1.2

 

The bracelet produced the familiar beeping sound. When it was finally around his wrist, the little red indicator flickered slower and slower. The floating astronaut looked through the dark glasses as the rumbling, and the alarms, and the screams and the metal rubbing softly came to an end. The noise decreased in volume, the chaos subtly became quiet and the panic softly became imperceptible.

The red indicator continued flickering, slower and slower…

The man in the dark suit looked up. The rolling and flying objects, the blinking lights, the people, everything, peacefully froze. The air blowing with the violence of a hurricane peacefully diminished into a subtle breeze and finally into nothing. The rapid, twinkling bursts of lightning outside and the motion of the dark clouds solidified. The scared features on the faces of the passengers gradually petrified until resembling that of freakish statues.

The red indicator flickered slower and slower…

The entire scenario progressed in slow motion as everything stood still, silent, passive. The man in the suit observed with a silent gasp. Bodies frozen, levitating on the air like balloons.  Some of them had their arms extended, trying to hold onto something as the now stationary current of air from the sudden loss of pressure tried to pull them outside of the plane; with violence; but there were others, hose holding at each other with facial muscles tense and eyes looking at emptiness, resigned themselves to their final hour.

He couldn’t avoid shuddering.

He then looked at the back and could see the flames flying off towards him at a lethargic speed. The final moment.

The astronaut observed static. Then, his bracelet beeped.

The indicator suddenly blinked off… and then turned green. 

Everything was quiet now.

The floating astronaut in the black suit then looked down.

Martin wasn’t there anymore.

  TO BE CONTINUED...

"BORROWED TIME". (1.1)

BY: MAURICIO ESCOBAR

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.1

 

He looked down terrified. An instantaneous shot of adrenalin made his consciousness return momentarily and then he saw it. The flickering bursts of light made it hard to distinguish, but there was a man dressed in what he couldn’t recognize but a dark diver suit with some sort of helmet on his head, almost like an astronaut, right in front of him. Martin opened his eyes as plates and swallowed. The figure was just not standing there... It seemed to be floating! Was it real or a figment of his delusions? Martin rubbed his eyes.

The astronaut didn’t move and remained still for an instant, suspended in the air; but then the ghost seemed to revolve, almost as if the air was water, and grabbed Martin’s wrist. He shook and screamed. Initially, Martin thought the man was trying to hold onto something to avoid falling, but then he confirmed that the stranger’s feet weren’t either touching the floor neither was he supporting his own weight from falling. He was just floating, inexplicably levitating in front of
Martin’s eyes. The phantasmagoric vision became more vivid as the lightning reflected on his dark, brilliant suit. Then Martin could corroborate, barely giving credit to his eyes, that flying objects went through him as if the astronaut was ethereal and immaterial, not just ghostly but actually ghost-like.

The apparition then extended its black hand and grabbed Martin by the hand. Right before collapsing, Martin saw one thing: that the man in the spacesuit had put a shiny bracelet on Martin’s wrist; the bracelet had a red light that flickered and the stranger had an identical bracelet on his own wrist, with a tiny red bulb that started flickering in the same way…

And then, it all went quiet. The world around Martin McGregor had simply stopped to exist.

TO BE CONTINUED...

"BORROWED TIME". (1.0)

BY: MAURICIO ESCOBAR

1.0        RELOCATION

Martin’s heart started pounding rapidly as the piston squeezed the last drop of the colorless liquid under his skin. When he pulled the needle out a red dot popped out through the tiny orifice. Martin closed his eyes. That was the fourth dose. He was already feeling the shaky tremors, the weakness and the sweat. His throat was dry and he was finding hard to swallow. Clumsily, he managed to put the needle into his pocket. The metallic mirror reflected a blurry and distorted image of him. Indeed, the effect of the drug was kicking in. Martin looked around and noticed everything else was getting blurry as well. He had to find the force to stay conscious and return to his seat or there was just not going to be enough time. He managed to pull a few paper towers out of the dispenser with the one free hand. Martin wiped away all the humidity from his face and breathed in, trying to get a hold of himself.

When he opened the door the ground shook moderately and Martin almost lost the equilibrium. He wondered if the tremor was real or another side effect of the hypoglycemia. The seat belts on sign lit up accompanied with the usual ding. One of the flight attendants started walking towards him; he noticed the blur approaching and walked away.

-       Sir…? –said the stewardess.

-       I’m alright –replied Martin without turning around.

-       The Captain has just…

-       Yeah, yeah –said Martin.

-       …please return to your seat…

Martin walked with the eyes semi-closed. The same message given by the stewardess was being repeated on the loudspeakers by the pilots.

-       Sir? Are you alright?

Martin ignored her as he looked for his seat, a few rows ahead. The world was spinning around him. The airplane shook once again, slightly.

-       Sir?

-       Yes, I’m OK!

Martin felt the collapse was imminent. As he was walking, he felt numb, weightless and immaterial. He looked down to make sure once more that the briefcase was still attached to his wrist. The stewardess approached him on his seat and she was still asking questions but he could not understand what she was saying anymore. He stopped at one of the empty seats and just dropped himself down, hugging the portfolio with both hands.

-       Oh, my God, sir! –exclaimed the stewardess. –Sir? Do you…? Sir?

The pilots were announcing something about turbulence and a storm on the loudspeakers. Martin was loosing consciousness rapidly. Thoughts from within were collapsing into a spiraling nonsense and the weakness was taking over. He had perfectly realized that things were not going right.

He opened his eyes briefly.

-       Sir? Sir? –continued the stewardess. It was a gray unrecognizable figure. –Sir, you need to put on your safety belt! Sir, can you hear--?

A blasting sound whipped through the airship and in a blink the blurry figure disappeared out of his sight. Martin could hear the chorus of moans coming from terrified passengers in the back section, reduced by the abrupt roaring of the engines. The baggage compartments vomited objects that flew as rockets hitting people’s heads. Plastic masks dropped from above hissing air with a sound resembling that of a serpent. A violent current of air pushed Martin’s head forward with the force of a fist. Passengers jumped from their seats and flew over his head and rolled on the floor along with dozens of objects, as the airship started inclining in an impossible angle and the high-pitch whistle of the turbines continued in crescendo until it was unbearable: the clear indicator of depressurization. The sound of shattered glass and metal straining followed. The airplane was collapsing. The lights on the whole corridor blinked on and off and on again to finally extinguish gradually until total darkness filled the scene. Momentarily, the lightning from storm outside shed grisly cascades of whitish blue inside. The intangible sensation of the inevitable spread through the ship faster than the electricity outside. The chaos within was animated by both the stroboscopic light from the storm and the fearful melody of terrorized screams as the descent became inevitable.

Martin hoped for the end to be quick and pushed the briefcase to his chest harder than before, as hard as his weak arms allowed him.

But then…

TO BE CONTINUED...

"BORROWED TIME". (0)

 

 BY: MAURICIO ESCOBAR 

bor-rowed time. n. A period of uncertainty during which the inevitable consequences of a current situation are postponed or avoided. Term often used with terminally ill patients.

0. TIME

The ticks from the clock hanging on the wall reverberated in his ears as a distant repetitive echo. The rhythmic breathing of the child lying on the cold bed completed the chorus together with the musical beeps from the cardiac machine. A fearful orchestra that gave him shudders.

But the ticks were hard to ignore. He looked at the second hand and felt momentarily hypnotized by the rhythmic clicking sound. The minute hand followed lazily and silently.

He grabbed the little child’s palm and looked at his delicate face, stripped off of any form expression, covered in tubes that came out of his mouth and nose, pushing and sucking air into the fragile body that arced up and down, following the compass in the only form of motion that he had seen him do for the last six months. The hand of the kid was cold and his skin pale.

The clock kept ticking.

-       We will get you out of this one, champ –he murmured with flimsy voice.

The air was impregnated in the smell of disinfectant solution and alcohol typical of hospitals. The room was pathetically decorated with the kids’ posters hanging from the adjacent walls and his half a dozen toys, which he will never see or use, spread on a nearby table.

The clock kept ticking.

-       We will. –He gasped and squeezed the cold small hand harder. –We will! –He repeated and looked back at the mute face.

The clock kept ticking.

A tear ran down his face.

The clock kept ticking…

And then he looked back at it.

TO BE CONTINUED...