Gravity Rises (S3)

TTF: Part Fourteen

Art by me

SUMMER 1982

The man woke up.

His eyes flickered open, showing unfamiliar surroundings. A small room with stone walls, lit by flickering firelight. He didn't recognize it, yet it felt right. His brain assured him that this room was normal, that he had always been here. He didn't worry about how he had gotten here, where he had come from, or even where he was. This situation felt natural, somehow: the rough blankets beneath his arms, the poor lighting, even the metal digging into his left wrist.

Wait.

Now that he had noticed the uncomfortable feeling in his wrist, he noticed other pains. His stomach yawned with hunger. His abdomen was sore, raw, throbbing. His back simmered with discomfort.

It was then that he wondered. Why was he in pain? What had happened?

He sat up and was surprised to find the source of the pain in his wrist. He was. . . he was cuffed to the wall. A pair of handcuffs, one cuff around his wrist, the other looped into the metal sconce that held a lantern. Why was he cuffed? In fact. . . what was this place?

So, his mind searched the past, casting a net into his sea of memories to discover the answers to his questions.

The net came up empty.

Wait. Wait, no, that couldn't be right. He tried again. What had happened? What was the last thing he could remember?

Nothing. The more he reached for his memory, the further it evaded him. He tensed up all of his muscles, as if doing so would dislodge any spare memories from the recesses of his brain. It was futile. The rate of his breathing increased as his efforts repeatedly turned up fruitless.

What was wrong with him?

A distant sound floated into his range of hearing: the sound of a voice.

The man wanted to stand up, to get out of there, to find the source of that voice and demand what was going on. But he couldn't. He was cuffed so closely to the wall that he could hardly move his wrist at all.

Instead, he strained his ears to better hear the voice. He could make out the quality: medium timbre, rich tone, versatile inflection that rose and fell with the words. But he couldn't tell what any of the words were.

The voice grew closer, and the man could gradually piece together what it was saying. "I doubt it will work," the mysterious voice said, "but we may as well try, don't you think? He's just in here."

There was a door to the man's right. The knob turned, and the door swung open.

A man in a purple robe entered. His eyes widened in alarm as he saw the first man sitting up in the bed. "Scrabdoodle!" he swore, and he spoke with the timbre of the mysterious voice. "I thought you were still asleep."

"I. . . I woke up," the man said. But even as he said it, he wondered if it were true. Maybe he hadn't actually woken up. Maybe he was dreaming. It wouldn't surprise him.

The purple-clad man's face clouded in concern. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

Instinctively, the man's mind reached out for the answer, but it found only a knotted mess of emotions as his brain struggled to find his identity. "Where am I?" he asked, instead of answering. "Who are you? Who—"

The purple-clad man watched him curiously.

"Who am I?" the man whispered.

"We were hoping you could tell us that," the purple-clad man said. "We found you outside, unconscious, and we brought you in here."