Blind and backwards

Consciousness found Lupton with no arms and lying inside a
marshmallow. That he was in a marshmallow he surmised from the texture
and colour that surrounded him. That he had no arms he deduced by their
absence. He lay trying to ascertain his identity, to recall recent
events, at the same time pondering the nature of the marshmallow and,
somewhat casually, his absence of arms.
Slowly, the stumps where his arms had once been began to pull forward,
tightening and stretching the tendons between his neck and shoulders.
The active part of Lupton's brain could foresee what was going to
happen. He tried to hold his head in position, pushing it down into the
soft base of the marshmallow, but the confection was no match for the
mechanical process underway in his upper body. With the industrial
inevitability of lock-gates, his tendons stretched to the heaving
contractions of his neck and shoulder muscles and his head began to
roll right.
A part of Lupton's brain knew that soon enough the Blind would come to
fill him with heinous anti-thought, but for now that same part of
Lupton's brain was relieved to be active and receiving data, albeit
confused.
He pushed further and harder into the mallow, but there was no stemming
the roll of his
head. As his stumps continued to pull forward a string of spittle
started to spring down from the side of his mouth - equally
uncontrolled and distorted into a tortured oblong, its bottom lip
folding out and down to the right, in apparent pursuit of his ears
which, transported by his head, were being re-aligned by whatever
manner of magnetism was drawing head stumps and all toward the
West.
As the rotation of Lupton's head continued, so the pain increased as
the cramps tightened their grip on his upper neck and lower jaw and his
body contorted and twisted beyond any control that Lupton or his brain
could muster, his will having been usurped by the "Blind" and their
omnipotent anti-thought.
Lupton's head reached its fullest natural extent, the skin of its jaw
and neck stretched to a taught membrane across their tortured tendons,
but the anti-thought would not be content with the West and as the cogs
of his neck continued to revolve, his head passed through West,
apparently headed South. Lupton's head had reached the fullest rotation
his vertebrae could allow, and yet it strained to go further, wanting
to twist itself into destruction. Lupton tried to let out a moan of
pain from his salivating oblong, only to find that the anti-thought
wouldn't allow it. His vertebrae started to creek and grind as his left
tendon stretched to breaking point. Lupton' s stumps pulled harder, his
neck buckled and his throat tightened until, as the spittle hit the
mallow and lowered itself to the floor, his body ground to a halt and
with no more warning than it had started with, the process reversed and
like a piston releasing steam the cogs rewound with the same
inevitability and unstopability as before, allowing Lupton's stumps,
neck and head to slowly subside back to their original positions.
Lupton's head felt heavy and loose as he let it sink into the pink of
the mallow and a pool of his own spent saliva. After a few seconds or
days the light quality inside the mallow began to change and newer,
fresher light started to ooze in to replace the stale light that had
been there before. The new light brought some sounds in with it in the
form of a creek, and Lupton's acute visual senses picked out two forms
within a rectangular vessel or orifice from which the new light seemed
to be pouring. The life-forms were blind but plodded purposefully
toward Lupton and his head and found them both where they lay in the
mallow, using whatever dulled sensory mechanisms they possessed. They
hauled him to his lifeless but twitching legs and made some sounds of
incomprehensible "Blind-gibber" before replacing his arms for
him.
As usual, this limb-restoration procedure was accompanied by a passage
of blood through Lupton's upper body and a pleasant tingling sensation
which said "all will be well" and then smaned.
The blind continued to mumble and gibber as they led Lupton towards the
rectangle of light which, a part of his brain remembered, contained the
factory.
The factory was as he remembered. White with a smell of vulcanising
solution and the ammonia they used to create memories and fear. He was
led down the main conveyer, past secret rooms bearing numbers of
prototype intelligences still under construction, into the first of the
main testing rooms. The first testing room was a hum-drum affair
containing a number of neatly-ordered rows of storage slabs, some
containing prototypes. These prototypes were inactive.
Between the two rows of slabs stood one of the factory's programming
devices - an ingenious box of coloured lights which fed the core
processors of the Blind and prototypes alike with the information they
were permitted to ingest and assimilate. Only the blind themselves were
showing any interest in this particular programming machine, whilst the
prototypes stood around like statues, looking incredulously around at
each other and at Lupton as the Blind milled about seemingly unaware of
their presence.
One of the prototypes stared at Lupton. Lupton stared back, they both
looked around at the
half-dozen or so Blind as they glided around somehow missing the
furniture and gibbering.
Another prototype joined in the gaze-exchange to form a triangle - much
safer - of prototype
consciousness. These three, at least, knew that there was some sanity
left in the world and that hope could still prevail. There was a gibber
of excitement from two female Blinds as the machine fed their heads
with the crucial information that a being was to be endowed with
several million tokens. There was a murmur of excited approval from the
female Blinds. Both prototypes exchanged stares of wide-eyed
incredulity with Lupton and with each other before the conveyor carried
him and his escorts on to the second testing room.

The second testing room was almost identical to the first but with pink
slabs, a faint odour of something sweet mingling with the vulcanising
solution, and female prototypes. The Blind were of mixed gender and
only four in number. The machine in the room had different programming.
On this, apparently more advanced apparatus, several suited beings were
proudly announcing their new plan to buy fresh air from poor countries
in return for poisoned gas in order to maintain the standard of living
of those people who could afford the air. This was followed by a series
of colourful attempts to promote the latest bad-air technologies to the
Blind. Most of the female prototypes appeared uninterested. None
exchanged looks with Lupton. One was looking out of a transparent
section of wall. Two were reading hinged blocks of paper. The Blind
waited with palpable excitement for further programming.
Lupton's blind escorts directed him to the far end of the testing room
where his vision constructed a doorway. He passed through it and his
escorts urged him towards another glowing area of fresh light.
The brightness subsided to reveal two figures. Both were blind. One was
wearing an
over-garment similar in hue to the bright strip raining the new light
from above. The other wore blue and presented a religious aspect, both
in posture and countenance. It was female.
The first Lupton recognised as Jack the Needle. The second he didn't
recognise.
The sight of Jack the Needle jerked Lupton into awareness. His
surroundings became suddenly familiar and it was with a mixture of fear
and relief that he positioned himself for take-off in the central chair
of the small cube. Fear at the prospect of further anti-thought being
pumped into the purity of his system, and relief at the fact that this
procedure was at least real. The procedure was real inasmuch that it
involved the verifying aspect of all Lupton's real experiences. It
involved the only discernibly objective evidence that Lupton ever had
any more of what was real and what not. It involved the sole tangible
thing that could confirm for Lupton his physical existence in the
factory and the worlds beyond it. It involved the joyful relief of his
old friend Pain. Lupton looked straight ahead. There was a clock on the
wall. It had stopped at five past one.
Jack sneered his happy sneer and, like a stage magician, with a sudden
flourish and flair rarely viewed beyond Victorian music halls, produced
an apparatus Lupton could not recall having seen before. It was shaped
like miniature torpedo, transparent for the majority of its shaft, the
remaining portion blue.
Jack seemed satisfied indeed with his new apparatus and shared with
Lupton a conspiratorial, if malevolent, grin before producing, with
rather less of a flourish, the familiar elasticised
buckle-oriented piece of equipment which formed both the entr?e and the
hallmark of the
needle-show. Jack clicked the torpedo gimmick into a blue plastic
sheath. The sheath had at its base a needle. Neither Lupton nor Jack
was surprised by this. Accepted procedure required it.
Jack tightened a strap around Lupton's upper arm and Lupton's vision
constructed a perverse violet-blue worm of pent-up liquid rising like a
serpent from his lower arm. Its blueness starkly and beautifully
contrasting with the lifeless fish-white of its host limb.
Jack leant forward, his new apparatus proudly poised between thumb and
fore-fingers. He positioned his left thumb in the crotch of Lupton's
elbow and guided the needle down towards the pulsing blue.
Lupton's eyes widened with a curious mixture of pleasure, relief and
perverse satisfaction at his new pain as the finely-quilled splinter of
clean steel first dented and then split his pallid white skin. The
membrane retaliated futilely before absorbing the steel splinter as it
slid effortlessly beneath the taught gossamer of skin and into his
vein. And then the gimmick. Not, as Lupton had expected, the inward
surge of anti-thought, but rather an outward surge of
crimson. It invaded the torpedo tube like a confused army of lost
particles; slowly spreading and exploring the apparent void before
consolidating and rushing forward en masse to spread
throughout the length of the vessel. Lupton looked up sharply at Jack
the Needle, his face abruptly slapped into a respectful and
amazed contortion of half grin, half gape. Jack smiled sympathetically
but said nothing. Lupton wondered vaguely but briefly what was going
on. He seemed to be experiencing an anti-injection. Clearly, the Blind
were taking a sample of his thought for examination, but - and here was
the rub - if his thought was coming out, what was going in? If
something was going somewhere, then what was replacing the
something?
Lupton performed a rapid calculation. Logically, it had to be the
somewhere. Lupton was being injected with somewhere! What could be the
nature of this "somewhere"? In order for the something to have found a
home, the place where it now was must have originally been occupied by
nothing. Lupton's brain searched for known things which contained
nothings. "Vacuum" his brain decided.
Was Lupton being injected with a vacuum? As far as he knew, he had been
in the factory for some time, but had encountered no vacuums. Where
could Jack have obtained such a void? There was only one place Lupton's
brain knew of that contained abundant voids. No wonder Jack was looking
so pleased with the torpedo gimmick, he had apparently acquired a small
quantity of bottled space. A notable achievement even by factory
standards. Lupton was impressed. He was having his thought replaced by
space! How very rewarding! Lupton grinned sincerely, if a little
maniacally at Jack who returned a calmly non-committal look.
Lupton was very satisfied with his new space. Jack seemed satisfied
with his new sample of
thought too and in due course eased the torpedo apparatus with its
incumbent steel splinter from Lupton with an audible 'foop' as Lupton's
outer membrane snapped shut over the wound. The usual procedure of
vulcanising and ammonia followed and the strap was removed by the
triumphant Jack who, thought sample in hand and space sample in Lupton,
muttered gibberish to the Blind who gestured Lupton to his feet.
Lupton stood with ease, despite the gravity which seemed intent on
keeping him stuck to the seat. His two blind escorts gestured him
towards a hole in the wall where the door used to be and Lupton made
his legs move. This was his favourite device for propelling himself.
His legs moved and his body followed towards the hole and the as-yet
un-constructed realities that lay beyond it.