Star Trek: Who am I

[RobertScorpio]

I



A drop of blood trickles down the arm of a man. He is nearly buried in rubble, and is barely cognizant of his surroundings; of his life. As he struggles to regain his wits, his ears try to listen for anything else, other than the pounding of his heart. At first all he can hear are the low droning sounds, like that of muffled hums, of various octaves, each wanting to be more heard than the other.

But as his eyes remain closed he becomes ever aware of the fact that the droning sounds are not coming from the outside world, they are coming from his own mind. Something has terrible has happened, and knows this because as each second builds upon the one before it, his mind sends him waves of worry to muddle through.

He licks his lip and tastes the metallic flavor of his blood. It becomes ever so apparent that he has been injured. Wanting to open his eyes to take in the unknown reality around him, he fights the urge to know, with the urge of not wanting to know. He wasn’t a coward, or so he thought. He is just a man, trapped in his own mind, wondering if he was alive or dead, or, more to the point, deciding if he really wanted to know.

Perhaps this has always been his existence; licking the blood off a face he has never seen; his face. Yet, in the mire of not knowing what has been and what was now and what is to come, his curiosity begins to get the better of him. Its time to open his eyes and see the world, reality, for what it is, and so he does.

He opens both eyes. And as he does, a cold breeze blows across his bloodied arm with almost the same sensation that comes from the soft kiss of a lover. He looks at his bloodied left arm, which is also swarmed over with Goosebumps. He focuses on his injury; a gash in his caused by a piece of metal hanging out of his arm. Luckily the injury is worse than it seems, as is the gash over his left eye. He knows he has a gash above his eye because he feels the pain there. And when he presses the palm of his hand above his left eye and then looks at his hand again, he is rewarded with the sight of red blood; his red blood.

With his right hand, which is still trembling and weak, he slowly pulls the metal fragment out of his left arm, causing more blood to stream out towards the ground as if that is where the red liquid wants to be. The man presses his injured arm against his left leg. He feels the blood being absorbed by the material of his slacks, and seeping through the material and dampening his leg. A very sharp stinging sensation races from his arm, all the way to the pain centers of his mind. It hurts, and it hurts bad.

Time passes, ten minutes being his best estimate, and the pain in his arm becomes manageable. The rubble around him consists of wires, glass, shards of walls and other man made materials as well, including a smashed mirror of some kind not far from where he is. He reaches out his right hand to try and obtain a piece of the metal, and he cuts the tip of his right index finger on the jagged edge of the mirror. Undaunted, he is able to put his fingers around the smashed mirror, and brings it closer, so that he can see who he is.

He gazes into the mirror, and does not recognize the face he sees. He tilts the mirror toward a lower angle and sees the strange metallic looking object on the outside of his shirt. It appears to be, at first glance, a triangle pointing up at him, with a star in the middle of the triangle. What is it? He has absolutely no idea. And more importantly, again staring at his face in the mirror, he realizes a more important question needs to be answered.

“Who am I?” He asks, hoping for an answer.

There is no answer…yet.


Continued….

 

[RobertScorpio]

Robert Scorpio presents

II

“Who am I?” the man asks him self, hoping for an answer.

No answer comes. Instead, in the reflection of the mirror, he only sees the face of an absolute stranger; his face. After setting the broken mirror back on the upturned floor, he decides to try and free himself from the wall fragments holding him down. As he pushes down on the ground with his hands, trying to gain leverage, he feels a sharp pain pulsating from his legs. There is good news with the influx of pain. Most likely it meant that his legs were just pinned, and not injured.

Grimacing with pain, he tries and again, and pressing down harder, he is able to push him self out from beneath the wall fragments. He sees that his pants are torn, but thankfully, there are no bones protruding outward. His legs now free, he forces himself to stand. His first attempt is met with failure as his legs crumble under his waste. After resting for nearly ten minutes he attempts to stand once again he presses down on the ground for leverage. Struggling, he finally stands on both feet, but his two legs still in pain. Caked dust, which had been on his shirt moments before, fell to ground. He aided parade of falling dust off by patting down his arms and legs. He takes care to go easy with the use of his injured left arm, and its make shift bandage. The pain in his arm still rings as well, but he forces it out of his mind as he stands.

He looks around the room he is in, with the light of the room coming from the collapsed nature of the building he was in. The Sunlight bellowing through the smashed ceiling reveals the fact that he was not alone in its destruction. He sees several lifeless bodies, some of them with their heads smashed about in unrecognizable mounts of bloodied flesh and brain matter. He sighs, realizing that the terrible fate could have been his as well. But what had happened? Who were the dead people? He walks over to one of the dead bodies and sees that they are wearing a uniform nearly identical to his. After a few moments of looking at the others, he realizes that the dead people in the room are all wearing uniforms like his. Why were they all dead, and better yet, why had he managed to be spared? Was it by chance? Or was there something more to it than just the random events of the universe.

He walks towards what appears to be a door, and as he passes a row of electronics panels, he hears a noise; a steady low sounding beeping noise. He walks over to the unmanned control panel, actually consol, one of many on the panels, and sees a red light that flashes in unison with the beeping noise. Next to the blinking light is a plain on descript button. Having no idea what the button, or the blinking light were for, the man stops himself from just pressing the button. Would it be wrong? Would it make the situation even worse than it was? He decides to push the button.

Quite unexpectedly a voice speaks; it is a female’s voice coming from unseen audio devices no doubt contained in the panel.

>>Contact made; please Report<<

The man has no idea what to report, or what to say at all, but he doesn’t want to be rude either. And, as fate would have it, his only contact to the word was via the voice coming from the unknown person on the other end. Balancing one with the other, the man decides to respond with honesty.

“Umm,” the man says, “I don’t really know what to say. I just pressed this button on the consol and your voice came on.”

There was a pause that seems like forever, but lasts only twenty seconds, and then a response comes.

>>Is this Station 456?<< The voice asks.

The man searches his memory, but since his memory only goes back to about ten minutes earlier, when he opened his eyes, he can only give a helpless sounding reply;

“For all I know it could be station 123,” the man says, “I simply do not know. Again, I just pressed the button, that’s all.”

>>Why did you press the red button<<

The man shook his head in disbelief. All he did was press the button and now it was becoming far more trouble than he had hoped for.

“I pressed it because I had no idea what the hell the red button was.” The man states, in a matter of fact tone. “Can I ask you a question now?”

>>This transmission will have to be terminated unless you can give me your designation code<<

“Look,” the man said, as his impatience was getting the best of him, “I’ve been injured, and I don’t know how, and I don’t know where I am, or hell, who I am; so could you please tell me what the hell is going on< And just who the hell are you?”

The man waited, and waited. There was no reply, and this time the silence stretched past twenty seconds. Finally, after nearly two minutes later, a response came from the unseen female’s voice.

>>RUN, HARRIS; RUN<<

What had happened? Looking around the room, he sees the exit, and wonders if he should just make a run for it. Before the man can make a move or say another word, another voice came from the panel; this time it was a male’s voice.

>>We will find you Harris; where ever you are or where ever you go. Stay where you are, I repeat stay where you are and make this easier on all of us<<

The beeping sound and blinking light both stopped.

The man, totally confused, looked around the cluttered smashed room one more time, and its collection of dead bodies; and then he reached down and picked up the smashed mirror one last time. Both the female and male voices referred to him as Harris. Was his name Harris? As he stared at the features on his face, he still could not remember who he was; it was all just a blank. But he decided to do what the woman had suggested. He let the mirror drop to the ground, again, and headed for the exit. He decided to run.

…continued