Pins (22)

Applecross, Scotland
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'They'll bring the departure forward,' Alisdair said.

He was sitting beside the fireplace. His face was frozen in a disconcerting blur. His features were all mashed into each other. The clock on the wall ticked. Sophie dropped her wine glass. She watched the red spill bloom on the carpet.

'Do you think my eyes look different?' she whispered.

Alisdair's fuzzy face offered no opinion. He was completely still. The living room was white. White roots crisscrossed the walls, ceiling and floor. Sophie stood and picked her way amongst the plants. They were sticky, and white dust clouded from them whenever she stood on one. She wanted to get to the window. There was something strange happening in the sky.

'We only know how to pin minutes,' Alisdair said.

She looked round. Candlelight danced. Alisdair was curled up on the floor by the skirting board. His cheeks were hollow, and his face was a network of deep wrinkles. 

'Do you keep that minute?' she said.

'We only know how to pin minutes,' he said, and she saw that stretched, distorted mask again. 'I don't know how that could screw you up so badly. I don't understand. There were comprehensive audits. We never moved from the original shape.'

'Do you keep that minute?' she said.

'What tosh,' Alisdair said. 'How does anyone keep a minute?'

She made it to the window. It was slow and tiring work. She pressed her face against the glass. 
The fields and the beach beyond were webbed with white branches. There were metallic hoops in the sky, and something beyond them. Something unfolding over the sky. Far away in the hills, strange buildings had risen out of the waxy roots. Tall white columns. 

She thought it all looked pretty, and she did not feel afraid. On some fundamental level, the way the world had functioned hadn't worked for her, and she hadn't worked as a part of it. She felt grateful. 

There was a sibilant screech in her ear, and she turned. Alisdair was sitting beside the fireplace. He looked cheerful. 

'You need to see other people,' he said. 'It's not healthy. Even if you think you don't, you need to see other people.'

The shrill noise peaked, softened, and settled into a scratchy drone. Sophie swayed as she picked her way back to the sofa. The roots moved beneath her feet.

'I'm not good at that,' she breathed.

'You're obsessive,' Alisdair said. He was grinning, and he had a champagne flute in his hand. Drinking again. He drank too much.

'I said sorry to her,' Sophie said. 'I couldn't stop.' 

She flopped down on the sofa, and felt for a cushion. Three men wearing suits and bird masks were sitting on the sofa opposite. They watched her silently. Her head felt like a lead weight.

'She didn't need to go to the police,' she mumbled. 'I could have stopped.'

'Marvellous,' Alisdair said. 'You've all worked ever so hard.'

The masked men stood and approached her. They were walking fast, and for a second Sophie felt scared. Then, abruptly, they were sitting again, watching her. 

She relaxed and reached for the cushion again, but found that she couldn't grasp it properly. She was at an awkward angle; it slipped from her hands, and she rolled onto the floor. Everything was so fuzzy. Even the most basic movements required complete concentration. 

She tried to crawl forward. Roots snaked over her hands, and she screamed. Alisdair was smoking and talking ahead of her, but she couldn't hear the words. The screeching noise peaked again, and his mouth made little clicking noises as it opened and closed.

HD 85512b orbit, Vela Constellation
2038

The tapering cylinder cut a silent passage through the darkness. Stars pursed around the monolithic, rotating centrifuge. A vast cone-shaped tank rested against its spine.

To the rear of the ship, concave panels preceded further hive-like cylindrical clumps. The tubular ship glimmered, as if the last monastic cell in a ocean of oblivion.

A whirring noise. A dull throb. Weird rhythms. They came to Sophie. They found her. They dug behind her eyelids.

Waking was a protracted process. Consciousness leaked in through a series of confused images. She saw the barn in Applecross. The skeletal trees outside. She saw lecture halls at Barnard College. She saw her. The image lingered, and refused to dissipate. 

She had long since stopped mentally referring to her by her name. It had been C for many years. Thinking of, or hearing her name, was just too hard. She'd been stored as C in her phone. The same number she'd deleted and resaved numerous times. In moments of guilt, or during attempts to overcome it all. And later, with multiple new phones and sim cards, after each time she'd been blocked.

The secondment has come at the right time, in that sense. Alisdair had said so himself. Moments and feelings rushed back in as consciousness found her. It was always there, festering in her mind, waiting to be dredged up whenever she was at her most exposed and vulnerable. Still, to this day, she wasn't exactly sure what form the feelings took. Only that they were too strong for her to handle.

C had been a colleague. A fellow professor. They were similar. Hardworking and introverted. The rapport had been similar to the one she'd developed with Alisdair, only it had taken place entirely within the realm of messages. Text messages, emails, app messages. Sophie couldn't bring herself to engage properly in the real-life conversations. They were passing, procedural, and unfulfilling. But as soon as she was home, the messages would begin. Perhaps C saw her as some kind of project. Someone who needed help. Alisdair always said the same thing: You need to see other people.

Still, she felt like there was something there. It bloomed over months and years. As their professional, real-life relationship became more awkward and stilted, their fake, message-based relationship grew. 

At times, there were periods of no contact, but these were always followed by phases of renewed, relentless messaging. She was aware it seemed childish, but it became intoxicating, and it was so much more manageable than reality. She could be anybody she wanted to be. She could be as funny as she wanted to be. As flirty. C contributed. C encouraged it. At least, Sophie felt that she did. She was sure. And then something changed. Something in their dynamic. 

I think we should stop talking. I can't do this to you any more. It's not healthy.

She panicked. She knew at that point, too, that she was in too deep. Alisdair said obsessed. She avoided the word, and the weight it carried. Although not exactly normal, it felt like how things should be. They couldn't change. She'd invested too much. It had become too big a part of her life. 

She'd navigated past all the attempts to block her out. New numbers. Fake profiles. It had felt like part of the dance. It had felt like fighting for something. It hadn't felt wrong. She'd managed, with great effort, to put a temporary lid on it, after the police visited. It was just a warning, but it was an effective enough jolt of reality to pull her out of the cycle of messages, manipulation, and blind perseverance. Perhaps providentially, the funders contacted Alisdair around the same time. 

It wasn't long afterwards that she was seconded in the farmhouse in Applecross. After the first few weeks, she learned to stop feverishly checking her phone. It became a relief. She cut herself off, and focused on the work. There were only the occasional burner emails, and Alisdair's updates. She didn't seek the help that he encouraged her to. She didn't contact the services he suggested. 

As the dark Highland nights drew in, she knew that he was probably right. She probably was obsessive, in all areas of her life. There was no distinction between numbers, astrophysics theories, and people. Everything became stuck on the same shore. But she did not want to apply the weight of those words, and she did not want to waste months and years tearing herself to bits in therapy. The truth hurt, and she preferred the solitude, and the numbers. 

If it meant cutting herself off from people forever, so be it. If it meant no longer forming attachments, so be it. She knew that she could not function properly as part of the world. She knew that she could not communicate properly.

But there were other parts to the world. She gave in to them. Then, in later years, when the barn was crammed full of rustling sheets of paper, she became unwell, and all thoughts of C, and of spurious human interaction, faded. They were replaced by new, strange, and equally disturbing things; hospital rooms. Doctors. Shapes. Pins. Stars. Ships.

The lid was grinding open. Bright light. She rose and choked. A gelatinous membrane clung to her shoulder. She blinked gluey eyes, and tugged at strings of it.
 

https://www.abctales.com/story/stephen-thom/pins-23