The Temple

The Temple: Chapter 1

As Bill Hoefflin woke it took him a few minutes to know where he was. There was a familiar pounding in the base of his skull and a dryness of the mouth which resembled the consequences of alcohol abuse. As memories of the hours before his sleep flooded his cortex he realised this was in fact not the case, but rather it was the height that was causing his suffering. The train Hoefflin was on was the highest in the world reaching a whopping five thousand metres above sea level. At this altitude those more accustomed to the modest levels of say England were liable to suffer a variety of peculiar and terrible effects ranging from headaches; nausea and vomiting; weakness and fatigue; inability to walk; decreasing “mental status”; impaired cerebral function; and finally death. As it was all Hoefflin had was a killer hangover, but he wasn't eager to gain knowledge of the next level.

He rose in his bunk to a sitting position consequently banging his head on the roof of the carriage. He winced and rubbed the bruise.

The train lurched back and forth on the track like a man shot through the head, nerves still reeling from the shock of it so the message hadn't quite reached the feet to tell them to lay down and die. If it weren’t for the windows there would be no way of knowing which direction the train was heading. And from where Hoefflin was hunched, it could just as easily be hurtling off the edge of space turning over and over as it fell into the blackness of the abyss.

He reached for the ribbed plastic bottle that contained the last of his water and washed back the final egg-cup full over his parched mouth and wondered why the altitude sickness had hit him so suddenly, so hard. He lay down and slung his hand above his head to see if any oxygen was coming out of the pipe; as the train climbed the mountain range from Mainland China into Tibet it was necessary to pump in oxygen to supplement the thinning atmosphere. It seemed to Hoefflin that if such precautions had to be taken when travelling through a place then it was certainly unnatural for people to live there. But people apparently did. Although no actual people had been seen through the windows for some time, evidence of their existence was still to be found even here. The Chinese were like that, some may call it resourceful, some disrespectful of natural law, but Hoefflin was reminded of a place in Gansu where they had artificially diverted a river and channelled it a thousand miles out into the desert so they could live there. It seemed to Hoefflin to be a prime example of moving the mountain to Mohamed. Almost literally so, except of course a river not a mountain. Either way, Hoefflin was sure if and when man colonises the moon the Chinese will be first there, living under its most harshest of conditions for no reason he could fathom.

In fact the landscape outside the window almost looked like the moon. There where no trees nor grass or anything green for miles. There were great monstrous yaks, but Hoefflin was unable to fathom what could be sustaining them. The yaks appeared to stand completely motionless on the grey mountains; their brown shaggy fur being the only venial specks of colour in an otherwise uninterrupted monochrome landscape of swirling slate-grey dunes, ash-coloured boulders, and bone-white frozen streams and rivers. The whole vista was one of desolation, frost, and death.

Sure enough the oxygen pipe above Hoefflin's bunk was dead. He twisted the nozzle hoping in vain to bring it to life, but no air was released. From the snake-hiss in the air he knew that others were functioning. He dragged his body over to the edge of his bunk and threw himself into the unoccupied bunk opposite. Thankfully this one had functioning air so he drank deeply and closed his eyes hoping to lose consciousness.

Thankfully darkness came.

When he awoke the next morning, the headache had somewhat subsided, but the thirst was back tenfold. Hoefflin shook his empty bottle and it rattled like a dry gourd. He pulled his weight over the bunk and clambered down to the scrubby-carpeted floor of the cabin.