- Joined
- Mar 19, 2005
- Messages
- 3,886
- Age
- 33
Nameless
He was alone.
That much he knew.
But it was almost the extent of his knowledge; the rest of his mind was empty and panicking, like some confused animal thrashing about in a cage.
Where was he!? Who was he!?
His fear was that of a man who has no identity, not even the sense of a home to anchor him. He lay trembling on a tree-branch nearly half a mile long, like a rabbit caught in a snare. His fingernails scrabbled against the wood, leaving shallow gashes in the amber bark. He tried to cling to that feeling, afraid that he’d literally slip away slip away if he let go.
He had been awake for three minutes- and it was the only three minutes he could remember of his life.
It was enough to make a man go mad.
But no; he couldn’t lose himself to that. Survival. Survival. He began whispering that one word over and over, using it to draw himself back to sanity. Without personal memories to prove his humanity, his baser instants started to take over. Listen, breathe, be wary, stay alive.
A man would go mad. But an animal adapted.
He wouldn’t question why he had any language at all. He would only focus on keeping himself alive.
He pushed himself shakily to his feet, slowly looking around at his environment. He was in a sort of clearing on an impossibly wide branch; all around him, vibrant blue-green foliage grew around much smaller, intertwining branches. Red and purple and yellow blossoms grew like bright insects amidst the greenery, and insects flew around like fluttering blossoms on the wind. Everywhere, raucous birds attempted to outdo each other in pitch and volume.
And yet he was so alone.
Were there others like him? Surely there must be. Was he lost, abandoned?
He threw his head back to the alien viridian jungle above him, noting with despair the tiny shaft of sunlight that seeped in through the leaves.
He was nothing; he was nowhere; he was lost without a name to call his own.
But then a distant memory, like far-off music, like that defiant ray of light piercing the gloom, wormed through his empty conscious and filled that void, a trapped bird beating useless wings against unforgiving walls.
"‘Nameless here forevermore,’" he gasped, all thoughts being swept aside by those words, all he had left. A scattered piece of his identity that was nothing, yet meant everything to him.
"‘Nameless here forevermore....’"
He sank to his knees again and sobbed in rage and despair.
But he was not alone. Not quite.
Miles above him, orbiting the forbidding planet he was wordlessly cursing, was an O.C., formally known as an Observation Craft. Inside, it was the size of a small room, with computers taking up two of the walls, the southern one being the entrance to an airlock, and the northern one consisting of a tinted window. In front of the viewport were two chairs that were currently swivelled so that they faced away from each other, each person occupying the seat busy at their own computers.
One was a women with short yellow hair and steel grey eyes, dressed in light blue; her posture was of one who was used to holding authority, and her fingers were swift and sure on the keyboard.
To the right was a dark-haired man with a short, square jaw and desperate brown eyes; he was half-hunched over the keyboard, working with the reluctance of one who has a gun pressed to the back of his head. The screen in front of him showed a video of the man down on the planet below them, weeping soundlessly.
The yellow-haired woman reached up and flicked a switch, and a recording suddenly echoed throughout the cabin.
"Nameless here forevermore ... nameless here forevermore...."
William Hawker winced at the sound of the desperation in that voice. His superior listened with stoic interest.
"Interesting. That’s from ‘The Raven’, isn’t it?"
Her second-in-command tensed at the casual question, but he answered all the same. "Yes. By Edgar Allen Poe."
Averil Wakefield sighed. "I suppose you were right after all, Lieutenant. The memory shrouds aren’t impenetrable after all. Looks like something of his past got through. I doubt he’ll remember anything else though." She turned her chair around and looked at him, one eyebrow raised in cool tribute to a previous discussion.
There was a silence, and another sigh, this one from Hawker, yet this one was in true regret. He looked over his shoulder at the Captain.
"What is his name?"
Wakefield’s icy eyes narrowed, and she said in a mocking voice, "Getting idealistic again, Hawker?"
He glared back. "Call it professional curiosity."
He was certain she would refuse- but a few moments later, she pulled away from his gaze and typed in a command to her computer. A short buzz sounded from his own machine, and he turned back to see a new file opened up on the screen.
NAME: WYLES, ELLIOT
SEX: MALE
AGE: 24.6 yrs
HEIGHT: 5"9' ½
WEIGHT: 152 lbs.
OCCUPATION: INSTRUCTOR OF LITERATURE
HOME: PADENA, UNITED EMPIRES, NEO EARTH....
SEX: MALE
AGE: 24.6 yrs
HEIGHT: 5"9' ½
WEIGHT: 152 lbs.
OCCUPATION: INSTRUCTOR OF LITERATURE
HOME: PADENA, UNITED EMPIRES, NEO EARTH....
The lieutenant stopped reading after that, leaning back to process the information. No wonder a quote from "The Raven" had been the one thing to surface. Elliot Wyles was an English teacher.
Was. Is. Had been. Never would be again.
How he wished he could stop thinking such thoughts. But they had been plaguing him since the very beginning of this depraved experiment.
"He won’t last, Av," Hawker said quietly. "He’s losing it already. Do you think he can handle the strain for much longer?"
The Captain whirled around, her expression one of cool ferocity. "I am still your superior officer, Lieutenant. I could suspend you for insubordination." She drew herself up. "It’s Captain Wakefield to you."
Hawker bowed his head in submission. Where was the friendship he and Averil had possessed as young cadets in the academy? Where was her spirit, her humanity? She had sacrificed it all for the sake of ambition.
And where had her thirst for immortality led her? To being the head of a project that was nothing more than murder. The government had kidnaped ordinary people and hidden away their personal memories while putting them in a chemical-induced coma; then, under Averil Wakefield’s watchful eye, they were reawakened on Planet Nuit, where they would be studied to see if humans could adapt to life in such a strange environment.
But Planet Nuit was dangerous, if fertile. There was no land. A fresh-water ocean covered the entire planet, and the only terra firma were the "tangle-trees", trees that extended miles high, with enormous branches that grew horizontally at the top in a bramble-like fashion, hence the name.
Such was the setting where this undeniable execution would take place, cleverly titled Project: Adaptation. The government refused to acknowledge the immorality of the experiment, and Averil? She was ecstatic to be given such an important position so short a period after her promotion to Captain of the Starlancer.
William Hawker clenched his fists and cursed himself for being such a coward, for taking part in the project, unwillingly or not.
"Nameless," he whispered to himself, with the voice of a haunted man. "Nameless."
It did not surprise Hawker that the famous poem was now coming back to him....
"Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore...."
And below them, Elliot Wyles continued to silently form that single quote of "The Raven" around his lips, unaware that his fate was being recorded by people who watched over him as a god might look down on an ant.
He was purposeless; what could he do? Crouching against the mammoth trunk of the tangle tree, shadowed by an immense teal leaf, he clenched his eyes shut and tried to dredge up something else, some tiny scrap of memory that might prove his existence, anything that would hint to a life beyond this maddening, feverish fear.
But there was nothing. Nevermore.
The hours passed. Captain Wakefield continued to watch and type out her report, and her second-in-command continued to fecklessly pray for a miracle. He watched as the satellite camera recorded Wyles’ actions, noting his straight, pale hair, long noise, and long face. Seeing how his thin lips continued to move, forever focusing on the only thing he could remember. He saw these features and knew they belonged to a young man. If only Av could see him as more than just a variable.
It was half a day into the project. The axe was poised to swing, the lever ready to be pulled. The only question was, how much longer would Elliot Wyles last until his inevitable execution?
He sat, weary and bent, facing the light tree-trunk, hair plastered to his face with sweat. He dug his nails into the bark, staining the wood darkly red as numerous splinters sliced his skin. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except for those three words, the words he was carving into the tree with his bare hands....
"This one is useless. His mind snapped under the pressure. We’ll have to kill him."
"Av- Captain -you can’t!"
Averil Wakefield did not look up from her report. "A lunatic is a superfluous test subject. What further use can he be to us now?"
"He’s a human being! He doesn’t need a use."
"Contain yourself, Lieutenant. He has one more hour."
Sixty minutes until execution.
"A name ... a name ... a name forever ... forever nameless...."
Wyles murmured this to himself, his eyes clouded with dispersed dreams and harsh reality, his feet blindly stumbling forward, his arms absently pushing away the dense foliage. His voice was like a crow's, hoarse and cracked. Unmindful of the distance, he only stopped when his feet brushed the edge of the branch, one hand clinging to a thick vine as he gazed down into the nothingness of fog and far-off water below. Unaware of the two people still watching him, unaware of the life he had been ripped away from, unaware that he even had a name, Elliot Wyles shrieked into the wind-
"‘Nameless here forevermore!’"
-and plunged into the emptiness of the sky.
And in the security of the O.C., William Hawker covered his eyes with a shaking hand, while Averil Wakefield sighed and moved on the next test subject.
