Isolated in lead

Memories 1. (minutes 14 586 215-14 586 220 of Thaddeus Finch's life)

I watch the glimmers up in the sky, making a wish as I do every night. It’s more like a prayer, but the stars are not the kind of gods to respond. They are blazing entities locked in cold space. I wish they give me the power to raise and dwell between them. Squeezing the soft hand harder, the dark brown eyes turn to me. I wish upon the stars in his eyes to rise together.

Memories 2. (minutes 14 846 432-14 846 434 of Thaddeus Finch's life)

I hear shouts, and my head is pounding. The lights are fading, not because the neons above have been blown, but because of my hazing view. Over the ringing in my ears, I distinguish what I thought were screams as a siren wailing everywhere. The pain in my abdomen doesn't recede. While trying to hold myself together I slide down with the back pressed to cold lead and even before my bottom hits the floor my sight darkens and my senses fade.

Memories 3. (minutes 14 846 449-14 846 459 of Thaddeus Finch's life)

I hear voices above me again. Are these angels? White bulky suits lift me. Oh stars, are these your envoys sent to take me up?

Memories 4. (minutes 14 846 519-14 846 539 of Thaddeus Finch's life- 28 years, 80 days, 2 hours and 19 minutes)

I see people around me again. I see torches and sparks and with a clank a big grey block engulfs me, falling down a whirlpool of cold and blackness.

Memories 5. (minutes 14 846 545- 14 846 425)

I feel a suffocating feeling tightening in my throat so I desperately gasp for air, but the feeling changes in distress as something thicker fills my lungs. Feeling a growing pressure on myself, I gasp again and this time I'm drowning. Through closed eyes, I know the last bubbles of air are leaving my lungs and that I'm plunging in deep darkness like a cloth puppet. 

Memories 6.(minutes 14 839 407-14 837 964)

I've been drowning in constant pain for a long time when the water abruptly ended and I began falling through flickers. However, when the suns got closer, they became beautiful flowers in vivid colours. When I kept falling closer, the flowers grew in grotesque blotches in chaotic colours. All this seemed like a hellish renaissance painting on a black canvas, enough to scare me awake.

Memories 7.(minutes 14 837 964-until sometime later)

 I forcibly open my eyes and even though the coloured spots disappeared, the nothingness remained. I try to get up but I can't. My head hits a wall after only 5 centimetres and I barely have enough space to shift my hands. What's happening? Where am I? Why am I trapped in this darkness?! I try to trash violently but physically there is no space. My heart's not pounding heavily as it should, so I try to just think. Think about how my entire world compressed to the size of a coffin. Think about how I still feel wet and cold even if know I woke from that feverish dream. Think about the few things my memory has kept. Think about the sky.

Memories 8.

Maybe sleeping or maybe awake because I no longer know, I hear six taps in the wall behind me and I recognize them as a "Hi". This is my neighbour. He doesn't know his real name, so I named him Arneb. Now you would say you can't even hear your thoughts, so how can I hear some knocks on the wall behind me. Well, after so much time spent in deathly seclusion, you perceive even the ants in the dirt beneath you. I left way behind the hectic lives the likes of you have. I was born under the stars, but now I've lost even the sight of them.

Memories 9.

There were others around me. I heard that sealing clank dozens of times. Sometimes the same story as mine: quiet, and then wildly shifting in shock and terror, ultimately to fall silent and accept their atonement. Sometimes they just didn't wake and I sincerely don't know if it's for the better.

Memories 10.

I hear Arneb, who tries to attract my attention again. 

"Are you awake."

"I'm always awake."

This process of communicating occupies my mind, so conversations like this are always welcome.

"Yeah. Unless when you're too caught in grieving to even respond."

"Grieving it's all I have."

We talk through a code of taps and scratches. It's hard and takes time, but where to rush.

"Yes. Grieving for a sky that you no longer remember."

"Maybe that's why we're here. To feel pained, for that is no longer ours."

"But I can't feel sorry for a life that I don't remember. That's no longer mine."

Here what he says begins to overlap with another tap. He has a hideous habit of leg tapping that makes talking difficult.

"Could you stop."

He says sorry and none of us talks for a long time. I can't understand him. I almost wish I hadn't had to listen to him. Almost. Listening to the nothingness twisting it's way more unpleasant.

Memories 11.

I stand alone in the darkness and I think. When you feel hollow like a corpse, you think about the end. Is this the end or the aftermath? Whatever it is, seems eternal and unfitting. I tried to end it, believe when I say I tried, but doesn't matter the space is too narrow to do anything because the stillness already has me shackled. I even tried to hold my breath, hoping I will suffocate. But how can you do this when in your lungs is the same air as in the beginning?

Memories 12.

Back to Arneb.

"Do you remember the guy with whom I share the left wall."

I respond with a scratch, three taps, and one more scratch. 

“Da.”

”Well. I kept trying to talk to him to see if he gets the code. ”

Here he makes a long pause, so I interrupt him.

“And.” 

“He responded.”

I don't know if Arneb was excited because you can't really feel much in these confines but his taps got kind of enthusiastic so I repeated myself.

“And.” 

“You want to know what he remembers.” 

“Da.” 

“He remembers nothing.” 

“Oh. For all that's sacred under the sky. Why.”

I don't know if his answer really did arouse in me emotions strong enough to swear. I think I did it out of habit.

“But that can't be true. He has to know something about it.”

“Let me ask.” 

“Please do.” 

“Well.” 

“What. What did he say.” 

“He got quiet when I asked about the sky.” 

Arneb and me, we both know the tapping code so we tried to synchronize the few memories we still had but all that matches is the emptiness brought by the same sky. 

Silence. 

“You got sad again.” 

“Yes.” 

“I keep telling you we were priests for that sky and now we're in hell.” 

“We ain't no priests. Whatever it means.” 

“You know. Someone who loves something big.” 

My face spasms. Something stirred inside me upon hearing this. After that, we both return to the cadaverous silence for who knows how long.

Memories 13.

After all this time, my mind changed in something much slower and mellowed. Thinking is all I have, so I transformed thinking in an art that's slow and arduous but never enough. In that deep darkness, I feel a tickle on my temple. This is new so I watch with interest how it crept down the side of my face, around my ear, and for a moment, before it fell, it waited hanged like a star in the sky. A wet plop and now it sits in a cold puddle on soulless lead.

Memories 14.

What a beautiful sky. I watch the rays and the clouds sparring up there and think that's what I sacrificed my life for. For us to get a say in that immortal spiral. When I think all my life lead me to this day when on this secluded frozen laboratory the sun shone even through endless snow, I feel closer to my goal. Smiling in that rare light, I got absent-minded.

Memories 15.

The hardest part is that I remember nothing about myself. What's the purpose of life if you just start with a clean slate? Are all the sacrifices we cut in raw flesh in vain? All I remember are odd things about everything. Once I found myself tapping and scratching in what seemed random patterns, only to find that Arneb understands the meaning of those sounds. When he responded, and I understood, I was puzzled. Why couldn't I remember something more useful like my name, or why I'm here, or what's that sky like? Or maybe if I could remember just a glimpse of those stars... Maybe thinking about them isn't the right thing to do. So I just accept the aching emptiness that word brings and think about something else. I want to know what blue means. Maybe it's a taste like the metallic taste of the lead in the walls or the iron in the veins. Why do I know all these but when I think about blue all I see is discoloured darkness?

Memories 16.

I watched the sky for too long and now I'm late. After dashing through the halls with only the sun still lingering in them, now, I press my ID on the panel. I don't wait for the doors to fully open to run in the main compound. Striding through people, pipes, and parts. I stop in front of a blond boy. Even though he's taller, he's younger than me.

"You're late."

In these simple words, I didn't feel annoyance, but rather nervousness.

"There's a first for everything."

"Indeed..."

I see he wants to say something but his face crumbles in anxiety and he returns to the counters he was checking. I take him by the hand and drag him in a corner a bit out of sight. He takes a defensive position with the back pressed against the wall and his arms wrapped around him like he tries to ward off the cold. With the hand propped in the wall, I slightly bend above him and look through the window next to us. 

"What if it doesn't work? What if we fail? That's what concerns you?"

"Yeah..."

Memories 17.

The darkness, sometimes I'm expecting it to howl and tear me apart, but I think it did. I didn't just lose count of time, it also took my sense of self and form. What a cruel fate which made me one with this sarcophagus. In times like this, I ask myself. Was it real, my life, or a mere fantasy and now I hang in darkness like the Earth, old and immortal and inhuman. All that remained is emptiness. Emptiness cause I don't breathe anymore under the same sky.

Memories 18.

He had such a bitter smile when he said this that I couldn't control myself anymore. I took his hand in mine.

"Look" 

And I plant my face in front of his so he has to look me in the eyes.

"if it doesn't work we'll try again, and again, and again. Because the stars gave us meaning. They called us because they knew we can reach them..." 

After this, we both watch the spaceship prototype visible through the window for a few moments before I break the silence.

"I got to go. I have to check the nuclear reactors!"

After this, I move a blond strand of hair out of his dark brown eyes and I can see that this made him more nervous than the project, so I say with a smirk:

"I really hate that leg tapping of yours!"

He seems insulted and ashamed while he stops his leg from shaking and strides back to his abandoned clipboard with royal dignity.

And so Thaddeus runs to his end, but there is no end for they died to reach the stars.