Prologue
Birth
I am born. I won’t remember it and I don’t have words now, but a future self imagines it. From my familiar world of warm comfort, I slowly comprehend the need for change. I sense that everything has started to pulse around me in an alarming way, repeatedly constricting and releasing me. Now there is quiet for a while. I start to relax but it is too soon, because the pulsing begins again with greater intensity than before. It disturbs me profoundly. The pattern duplicates itself many times, but with each frightening contraction increasing in force, until my liquid world abruptly rushes away, leaving me heavy, dry and uncomfortable. The urgent feeling becomes stronger and stronger and now I am in a different place. It is very narrow, squeezing me painfully for a long, long time. My skin has never felt like this before. It hurts! Why is this happening? My head is squashed so tight I think it might implode, and then even tighter, from my crown down to my chin, and next the rest of my body and suddenly everything falls away and the world is bright, empty and cold. The empty coldness floods inside through my mouth and nose. I am terrified, screaming, as huge hands encompass my body, swinging me through a dizzying void. They wrap me in a strange, dry thing that sucks all the moisture away and at once everything is still and warm again. I become slightly more calm and try to understand the overwhelming sounds and smells around me. There is a new sense in my eyes, where darkness used to be. Nothing is as it was before. Everything is different.
I start to perceive an hollow craving inside and I want to quench it with the wet warmth of my former world. The need overpowers me and distresses me intensely. At last something fleshy but firm touches my lips and I have the idea that this might fulfil my desire. I open and close my mouth around it again and again, but the emptiness remains. It is agonising and eventually I stop sucking to scream. I’m hungry! After a very long time there is no energy left. Despite the fear and longing, it becomes impossible for me to stay awake.
It seems a short while later that I am woken by huge hands and the fleshy thing at my mouth again. The empty feeling returns and I try to suck once more. My mouth grabs frantically and my whole being is absorbed in the effort to fill the vacuum inside me. Finally it happens. Sweet warmth flows down my throat into my stomach and I begin to feel better than I can ever remember. The smell and the taste and the touch of everything around me now seems perfectly right. This is how it should be. Eventually the emptiness goes. I am sated, warm and extremely tired. I cannot drink any more and fall into a long, deep sleep.
When at last I open my eyes, they are fascinated by the brightness of this place. I stare at the shades and shapes in front of me and then there is movement, and in that instant I understand that there are enormous eyes looking back at me. There is a nose and a mouth and hair, and although I don’t know these words, I somehow realise it is a face and I can’t stop gazing at it. I feel wonder, bewilderment, although of course I don’t know those words either. Who is this other person? Where am I? There is so much I don’t understand. What will happen to me?
This is the prologue to a series of short stories investigating different versions of life in 2050. You can read the next chapter here.
