Into the blue

Here is the world as it is. The world of unfair imperfection, troubles and inventions, questions and buzz word rhetoric. I am stranded in the aftermath of the accident. I fit myself in , here in the remains of my wrecked space craft, I sit and observe. The city is cranky and steaming. It’s foreign and far away and I am an interloper. I guess they know I’m here. They’ve  seen the crash on far away screens or monitoring devices, they’ve mobilised, they are on their way. The horizon is a dull distance away, over the head of the city. I’m in an area, maybe waste land, I’m aware of distant traffic and activity. Beads of light and flurry but I can’t understand the scale. Perhaps I’m injured, perhaps my brain has been affected. The trauma, the shock. Perhaps my straight thinking is not so straight. I feel I’m falling asleep.

Now I waken, on my back, lights and voices, the smell of … chemicals. I’m restrained, bolted down. Ready for inspection or repair. The slow terror begins to claw at me, here, on a table, lost and injured and under observation. I black out as the hands draw themselves around me, investigating, hopefully healing behind the terror I’m falling back into.

Next I’m roused, water on my face, or liquid or something. My eyes open. I’m in a wide dark space, starved of light. Movement and activity, small noises but no communication. Fear and terror bites into me again. There are no restrains, I’m free from pain, I move, slowly. The light is coming on. Figures approach, vague and cloaked, human like and expressionless. An arm is stretched out, a hand beckons and I rise and follow. No pain, just some hangover and apprehension and I step out as a light from somewhere, all around dawns.

I look across, through a vast open door, there is the city, steaming still and hot. Distant and by the direction I’m shepherded in clearly not where I’m going. I’m set in some vehicle, faces and controls are hidden, no words. I stutter a few things, clear my throat but I feel that talk is not expected or necessary. The vehicle is fast and smooth and there I am back at my space craft. The hatch prised open and, as far as I can see repairs have been done. I’m directed in and with that forgotten snap, last heard on  Earth some time ago, the hatches closes behind me I’m suddenly alone. I stagger and cry. I look around, everywhere all at once. I’m alone.

In the control room, the cockpit the lights and gauges shine. The meters show green, greener than ever. Timed and primed. A big hand has repaired thing.  Another technology has stretched out over the ship, cloaked and clothed and energised the dead carcass. I sit and consider the instrumental message. I seem to have no choice. All is primed, fuelled and ready to go. The system’s calculations done and expressed and ready for me to read. I wonder where I am in time. I look across and see the auto system kicking in. My journey is not mine, it’s theirs. They aim me, prime me and fire me. Out into the black cosmos and watery grey spiralling gas. Suns and planets circle in my head. New explorations and happy trails into the blue. I go without knowing anything. Lost and manipulated like a human cannonball , they crank up my flight , my hidden trajectory  and I’m gone. They are watching. Perhaps they always were.

What a drag it is getting old

He's a lot older now but the car remains  a classic.

The onset of age induced dyslexia. The older I get the less capable I seem to be of a) actually writing clearly and b) whatever the medium being able to spell. Now a) is simply down to skill fade (I hope) and an over reliance on typing and/or doing nothing. All I know is that if I have to write much more than my scrawny and indistinct signature I double up with wrist pain and cramp. I look at the fine collection of pens and pencils on my desk and think, “when was the last time one of these wore down and was used up?” For b) there is a strange paradox running; as I write less but type more my spelling gets worse but my vocabulary increases. Now the spelling failure is obviously brought by my reliance upon spell checkers and predictive text etc. It's laziness really so I deserve all I'm getting. There is also the phenomenon of bad typing where I seem to knowingly mis-type a word not just mis-spell it. The word comes out, beautiful typed with all the correct letters but they are in the wrong order. What's that all about? These acute symptoms and effects may well become a huge stumbling block in the way of me finishing the great Scottish/American/SteamPunk/Time Travel novel that I believe exists hidden inside my woolly head. On reflection and taking my mental condition into account it may be that the best writing technique to employ should have a chaos basis to it. I just type and type for 200 pages or so and then let the spell checker run riot and accept all the changes, it would be art and it could be brilliant. What are the chances? On reflection maybe that's all I've been doing for years.