Chapter 11
The Koan Dome
A dream state began to take hold with a myriad of textured colours and a distant harmonic drone like a thousand people running moist fingers around different sized wine glasses. Ed started to come around, gradually becoming aware of a jabbing pain in his side. Barely conscious, he began to realise he was being prodded with some sort of stick. He noticed an extreme gushing wind noise, a deafening and continuous powerful flow causing a breeze to leak up his trouser legs and across his body. He felt another jab in his side and looked round to realise he was being poked with the butt end of some sort of rifle.
Maybe I’m still alive as a bloody hound
, thought Ed, as he was jolted again, falling down around a short curved incline to the bottom of what felt like a tunnel. The wind pushed him more fervently and soon he felt bits of cloth pulling at every part of his body. It jerked his limbs into contorted and pained extremities with his right leg bent up to his stomach and his knee at a right angle. His head was twisted around slightly to the left and he could see his arm and hand caught up in a weird texture of homemade netting.
Thank goodness I’m not that hound still
, he mused, as he began to realise he was once again in the tunnels.
What was that rifle butt though? And what am I doing caught up in this makeshift net?
Ed could hear someone calling out to him.
“-9, =5 2>;=C9B5AL. / 2KABC?0N 2 [email protected]>. / 1C4C C 20A, B> 8 157>?0A=K8 2 =5B [email protected]=8. / Donald, 2K?CI5= 20H5 8
“Er???”
“Dag, bare rolig. Jeg er ven. Jeg vil have dem der og sikker i nogen tid. Jeg er donald, whats dit navn?”
“Erm,” uttered Ed as he felt a sharp jerk on the netting which closed violently in all around him, wrapping him up in a little ball like a captured orang-utan.
“Dag, bare rolig. Jeg er ven. Jeg vil have dem der og sikker i nogen tid. Jeg er donald, whats dit navn?”
“Hé, ne vous inquiétez pas. Je suis un ami. Je vous aurai de là dans aucun temps. Je suis Donald, quel est votre nom?”
“Arrghh!!” yelped Ed as he was yanked and tugged upwards.
“Nem, ne aggódj. Én vagyok barátja. Nekem te meg az ott és biztonságos rögtön. Én vagyok, Donald módosított név?”
“What the fuck!”
“Thank Christ for that, you speak English. Don’t I look a bit English? Couldn’t you have tried that first?” yelped Ed as he was humped up the side of the curved tunnel and over a flat ledge. The wind noise immediately lessened to a hush and from where he had landed he could see back through into a side passageway.
He was relieved to realise that he had landed back in the tunnel complex but at the same time, felt completely disoriented and confused by the transition that jolted his mind to its very core.
He heard a loud ‘clunk’ beside him and glanced round to see an old
Enfield
rifle settling on the dusty ground. The makeshift net was loosened and he started to free himself from the uncomfortable restraint. It fell around him on the floor as he scrambled unsteadily to his feet like a newly born deer.
“Oh, it’s a relief to be paused again,” breathed Ed as he turned round to be greeted by a British soldier from WW1.
“Who are you? Where are we? Is this Silicon Alley or Ancestors’ Cove by any chance? Have you seen Thomas?” asked Ed as he dusted himself down, happy to be reunited with his familiar jeans, jacket and wrist watch.
“This is not Silicon Alley or Ancestors’ Cove I’m afraid. The names ring a bell though. Maybe someone else has mentioned them at some point,” replied the private.
“Really? Can you remember who?” enquired the life hopper as he reached out his right hand towards the young man, revealing the big shiny-faced watch that adorned his wrist.
“I can’t remember. No one here called Thomas that I know of either,” replied the individual as he reached out and gently shook Ed’s hand before gathering up the strange net and tossing it to the side of the tunnel. Ed glanced over to see it land, and noticed a densely rich tapestry of leafless vines all over the tunnel walls. They stretched as far as the eye could see, illuminated from behind with the familiar recessed jets of light that he remembered from before.
“I don’t remember any vines,” commented Ed.
“This is the Koan Dome community, not Silicon Alley or Ancestors’ Cove. We’re one of the last ones before the white light sucks in the Transients. If I hadn’t pulled you out then you’d have just got stuck at the end on the floor. Luckily I knocked you off that ledge with the butt end of my rifle and then caught you in the net and dragged you up. Christ, it took me over an hour to get you off that bloody ledge.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Not a problem. We try and help out as much as possible when there are stragglers in the tunnel. Come, come and have a look. You can see the white light from here,” replied the soldier, beckoning Ed over towards the entrance to peer back down the tunnel. There it was, the brilliant white light, perfectly still and sharply delineated, no shimmer or movement. With unstoppable omnipotence and power, it sucked everything in the tunnel towards it. The noise was horrendous and forced the duo back from the opening quickly.
“I don’t really dig the noise too much, it reminds me of the war,” stated Donald.
Ed looked at the young man, observing his head to toe khaki uniform, coarsely made hobnail boots, tight spats, unattractive canvas-looking matching trousers and ill-fitting green jacket. Over his right shoulder hanging down was a small cloth-covered water bottle attached by light green webbing straps whilst on the other side some sort of canvas pouch hung down over his fading grey cloth waist belt. The traditional domed metal helmet hung behind him and span around knocking him in the side of the head as he bent down to pick up his rifle. His young, innocent face and short wispy blond hair didn’t fit at all with the harsh character of the uniform.
“Were you really in the First World War? You look so young; how could you ever have gone to war?” asked Ed, perplexed at the thought.
“I’ve heard some people down here call it the First World War, others the Great War. I can tell you, it was never known as the First World War to any of us at the time and it was certainly never fucking ‘great’. If you want to know anything about hell then I know all the fucking answers, and I was only nineteen when I died.”
Ed was momentarily lost for words. He walked over to the net, bent down and picked it up. It was tatty to say the least and appeared to be made out of old bits of cloth, probably clothes from Transients who had been and gone. He thought back to Thomas and his last departure from the tunnels and remembered how they were going to make nets to rescue stragglers in the tunnels. He lifted it to his nose, sniffed at the disgusting muskiness and then threw it back down where it had come from. He turned round and walked over to Donald.
“What now?” he asked.
“Let’s get inside - we’ve a long walk ahead of us.”
“A long walk? The last group lived near the entrance?”
“Not us. We have a six hour journey from here. It’s a total killer in these fucking boots, let me tell you that. What sort of a crappy idea is that, train an army to march for miles and then give them crappy boots that produce agonising blisters after two hundred yards? It’s better now after getting used to them for ninety years, but still not nice.”
The duo started to proceed into the vine covered tunnel. It stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see. Behind the complexity of thick bare vines, there was a generous spattering of lights casting eerie shadows onto the deep red, dusty floor. He looked down at his round faced wrist watch and twisted the dials so the date was 01/01 with both hands pointing up at ‘12’. This would give him a good idea of how much time he had to play with later on. The sand was softer than before and was scuffed and disturbed with the footsteps, just like he imagined it should be naturally. He looked over at the vines enquiringly.
“Don’t you have any Tumpleberries here?” he enquired.
“Timple what?”
“The last place had little flowers on the vines, although they only had one vine.”
“No. We don’t have any flowers on these vines, not to my knowledge anyway,” replied the young soldier as they continued walking for a while. The temperature was cool in the tunnels with very little breeze to disturb the silence around them. It reminded Ed of the first few hours after a late night snowfall in the city. There would be a quiet and peacefulness that could rarely be found in such a place. The sand soaked up virtually all the sound of their footsteps whilst the vines further deadened the acoustic. Ed also noticed how dulled his sense of smell and spatial awareness were in comparison to his outings as a cat and dog. It all seemed very flat, even unexciting.
Soon his thoughts had turned to his objectives and what he was hoping to achieve on this second visit to the mysterious ‘other world.’
“Have you heard of the Viking?” enquired Ed.
“A few murmurings. I’m not interested really. Do you want to meet him? I can set you up when we get back if you like? There are people that speak of him. I personally think it’s a bit of a myth,” replied Donald as they continued on their way.
“That's great. Please do introduce me to anyone who might know anything about him.”
“For sure.” replied Donald before they walked on for a few minutes in silence.
Ed glanced over again at the soldier’s uniform, the coarse and itchy looking material, thick leather belts and various devices and pouches for carrying things. His beautiful short cropped blond hair, smartly combed, glistened in the darts of light that shot out from behind the vines and across the tunnels. His fine young choir boy features were astoundingly youthful. Ed found it hard to imagine this youngster fighting on a brutal battlefield.
“Anyway, what regiment were you in?” enquired Ed, curiosity getting the better of him.
“Berkshires, Royal Berkshires. More like Berks if you ask me, sent off to die like letters being dumped out of a postman’s sack.”
“You were in the Berkshires? My grandfather was in that regiment. That’s quite some coincidence. Were you at the battle of Passchendaele?”
“I was in so many ass end battles. They didn’t have names for us though. Just another fucking nasty situation to endure. Over the top, advance, kill, die or return back to do it all again. It all became a blur. All that ‘bang’ ‘bang’ ‘bang’ ‘bang’ ‘bang’ ‘bang’ ‘bang’ fucking ‘bang’. My mind was blotting the whole thing out. I remember that name though, Passchendaele. I am sure I was in that area at some point. There weren’t exactly lots of road signs, just burnt tree stubs, stripped of life and hope, stranded there erect in a quagmire of mud, blood, bones, metal shards, rats and a stench that soaked right through your clothes, even penetrating the thick leather of your boots into your socks and all over your mouldering, blistered feet.”
“I’ve read about it. It really does sound like hell. My grandfather was there. He talked about it before he died. He fought in the battle of the
Somme
in 1916 and then at Passchendaele the following year - you might have known him,” enquired Ed excitedly.
“I didn’t really know anyone there. It suited you better to not know anyone. I watched people and noticed them but I never got to know them. The pain would be too much because they would always be taken away, usually right in front of your eyes and in the most barbaric way possible. Having a friend was your own worst enemy, it drove people mad. It wasn’t for me. When I was first at the front, I was palled up with a kid who I went through training with. Eddie Stoner. On the first day we were ducking and diving with panic every time there was a bang, pop or squeak. Everyone was laughing at us. It was horrible. Strange to think that it was normal to ignore bombs dropping yards away . That was the crazy situation we were in. For fuck’s sake, I went from being a kid terrified of the dark with a night light in my room, to an adult who was expected to stand up to machine guns and shrapnel with no fear. Totally mad stuff! Anyway, Eddie was there one morning, sitting down. It was all quiet and so he got up to pass me his ration tin and some bits of bully beef he didn’t want. When he got halfway towards me there was a metallic ping noise and he stopped in his tracks. His eyes were focused on me, that little food tin in his hand. He just stared and stood motionless as if time stood still. Then I saw a little bit of blood drip out from under the rim of his helmet, first a trickle and then a steady flow, down over his eye brows, into his eyes, over his nose and mouth and down onto his chin and over his jacket. His eyes were focused hard on me as if he was trying to say his last will and testament right there. He collapsed, the ration tin fell onto the muddy wooden slats of the trench face up and he crumbled into a bent heap still partially upright against the trench wall. He was dead in a second. I leapt up and grabbed him and hugged him and hugged him. We both fell on the floor and I sobbed and sobbed. I had no idea how to deal with the situation. It was completely devastating. I was hollowed out right then and there. It felt like my innards and stomach had been scooped out onto a small shovel and tossed to the floor to be trodden into the mud. From that day on I would never have another friend, ever. It was too much.”