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Somewhere Upon the Boiling Sea Tonight
In the cell, the heat rose and rose until steam vapored up from Captain Webb’s mouth and eyeballs, from his armpits and his feet and his groin. He guessed it was a hundred and fifty degrees in here, maybe one-sixty. He held himself off the baking, steel floor by the tips of his toes and his elbows and the sweat rained off his body and popped and spat off the ground like fat on a griddle. Just as he was beginning to black out, when he felt the cerebral fluid begin to percolate in his skull, they brought the temperature in the cell down to somewhere around zero or maybe in the low negative numbers, and Captain Webb balled up fetally and hugged himself, his only protection from the cold was his diaper and the electrodes glued all over him. He concentrated, willing his pulse down almost to nothing, commanded his own blood to creep slowly through his obedient veins until it was thick and pudding-like within him. Time contracted and elongated and started to wobble at the fringes of his vision, so Captain Webb ordered time to proceed linearly and sequentially and without fuss, and it did. At some point they brought the temperature back to the survivable range. An aperture in the ceiling irised open and from it sprung a plastic tube that dribbled a salty, green jelly. “Drink,” said the voice of the cell, a nasal and pinched voice that issued from processors buried in the walls. Captain Webb considered it a weakling’s voice, but he jumped from his prone position on the floor athletically, leaving a thin layer of skin on the steel where he had laid, freezer-burned to the metal. It was an outline of himself and he registered it only fractionally. He went to the tube and drank, sucked up globs of the saline-smelling paste like a gerbil in a cage. “Stop drink,” said the cell, and he stopped. The tube retracted. “Name. Rank. Number,” said the cell. “Charles Avery Webb. Captain, U.S. Air Force. 5655655,” he said. His voice had a distinctly brown and wooden timbre. “Name. Rank. Number. Repeat. Stop not,” said the cell. So he repeated it, over and over. He counted his repetitions, and by the ninetieth, he noticed that they were leaching the oxygen from the room. By the hundred and eightieth, it seemed that all the air was gone. By the two-hundredth, his speech began to slur. “Charles Avewy…Avery Ebb.” He issued a direct and incontrovertible string of orders to his brain cells to function. He gasped and went on, “United Stays Air Pores. Five…Sis? Five, five, five-“ “Incorrect,” said the cell, and the floor electrocuted him with crispy orange lightning voltages, and he fell down. Oxygen seeped back into the cell again with a passing gas hiss. Bright phosphor klieg lights from hidden emitters shone in his eyes. “Wake,” the cell told him. “Stop sleep. No sleep.” So he woke. “Stand.” So he stood, and then he was pounded with a wall-like blast of noise from the cell. The decibels were uncountable, but there were within it the low, grinding tones of stones talking in their sleep, and higher up there were the wheedling screams of ripping metal and crushed toads. When the din hit him, Captain Webb failed to flinch. The cacophony lasted for 12.4 seconds. “Name,” said the cell. “Charles Avery Webb,” he said. “Correct.” And he was shocked again with another needlelike current of electricity. This time the captain hardly even moved, but his heart rate jumped up spasmodically, and the electrodes on him noticed it. He ordered his heart to normalize and his heart obeyed and cringed at his authority. “Webb, Charles Avery,” said the cell. “Unstoppable force encounter unmovable object. Discuss.” “They change,” the captain barked immediately. “Correct. God is just or God not is just. Answer.” “God is not just,” he guessed. “Incorrect,” said the cell and Captain Webb was rewarded with five seconds of a pan flute playing “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah” and the walls gave off a quick charge of the smell of hot, buttery pancakes. “How are you, Charles?” asked the room. “I’m fine.” “Maybe.” A mouth opened in the ceiling and from it buzzed a fat, tiger-striped bumblebee that seemed to be enraged. It flew to the captain, who was standing at attention in the center of the cell, which was the size of a boxcar. It landed on his face and stung him on the soft part of the lower left eyelid, where bags formed when one is tired. Captain Webb had no bags there. The bee then tumbled to the floor and died. In his interior, Captain Webb took the pain of the sting, chopped it up, tied it with string and disposed of it in his waste centers, where he envisioned it coming out in his diaper when he let himself have a bowel movement next. He didn’t feel it at all. “You are Charles Avery Nelson,” said the cell. “No, I am Charles Avery Webb.” “Wrong.” A red laser light shot out and seared a blackened star-shape onto his buttock and he evacuated this pain as well. “You are Bobby Winnipeg Nelson,” said the cell. “Run, Bobby Winnipeg.” And under Captain Webb, the steel floor started to move and trundle like a treadmill, and he ran. As he ran, the floor sped up and he ran faster. The moving floor radiated heated again and the soles of his feet began to blister and bleed. “You are Amanda Barnes O’Camden,” said the cell. Nubbinlike thorns began to sprout from the floor, which was now whipping beneath his racing legs. “You are Blackie Dougal,” said the cell. “You killed three men.” Blood splattered and slimed from Captain Webb’s footfalls. His lungs and heart and bones shuddered and thundered. The pain came past and he bludgeoned it and strangled it and cut it up inside him and squeezed it out somewhere. On the wall behind him, from which he was running, long, shining scimitars poked out through the wires in a hundred places. If he slowed down, he would be run through. “You broke all our hearts,” said the cell. “You called us ugly pigs!” And then the cell began to cry high and crazy sobs, and then it called him a stupid bastard abortion, and then all the lights went out and it all stopped.
Some time after, the door of the cell opened. Captain Webb, who lay spread eagle on the floor, coated in a tropical punch of sweat, blood and blister juice, had forgotten which wall the door was in and even that there was a door and even that he had ever been outside the cell before and even that there was an outside. He suppressed these thoughts. Major Plinker walked in the cell, his chest bulging and dangling with multicolored medals and badges, most of them unheard of by anyone. He clomped over to the Captain and tossed a towel down onto his chest. Captain Webb tried to rise and salute. “At ease, Captain.” And he laid back down. “How long have I been in here, Sir?” “Eight days. And you did a bang-up job in here, son. You made the cut. Of the original fifty-six, only fourteen are left. ‘The Golden Fourteen,’ we’re calling you. How’s that for honorifics, boy?” “Thank you, Sir.” “Yeah. You just might make it all the way to launch. You got the highest pain threshold of all of them, you know that? Hell, nine candidates died in the cell. Heart attacks, mostly. Eighteen seem to be incurably insane, Simms and Alvarado among them, and they were the favorites, as I’m sure you’ve heard.” “Yes, Sir.” “We’re gonna get you cleaned up.” With the towel, the Major wiped a crust of gunk off Webb’s chin. “What would you like more than anything else in the world right now, son?” “A baked potato and my mother,” said Captain Webb. “Ha-ha!” the Major growled. “I’ll just bet you do. Now, I’m sorry to have to do this, but it’s all part of the selection process, so the bright boys tell me.” “Yes, Sir. Protocol. I understand, Sir.” “Yeah. Name!” “Charles Avery Webb.” “Incorrect,” said the Major, and socked the captain in the jaw with a gloved, hammy fist and the world went out. They let him sleep for six whole hours after that. When he woke they started other tests. They drew blood. They made him pee into beakers, into tubes, into cups. They siphoned off his spinal fluid and counted his sperm. They squeezed him with clamps to gauge his body fat. They wired up his nipples to test his galvanic responses. A little lieutenant sat in a corner with a clipboard and made a note every time his eyes fluttered. They charted his tensile strength and lung capacity and pumped iodine into his nasal cavity. They clucked over his enzymes and were absorbed by his liver and they monitored his dreams. Once, they measured each and every one of his eyelashes individually with a tiny pair of calipers. They gave him enema after enema after enema until his insides went spongy and turned a strange, manila color. Captain Webb performed good-naturedly and within acceptable limits. The other candidates that made it through the cell laid beside him on slabs to get their guts poked, waited in line with him to get scrapings taken, hung upside down with him while things were inserted. At the beginning of the process, a month ago now, they had been like Greek gods, young gladiators, thoroughbreds all. The criteria had been exacting and stringent. They all needed specialized degrees (Captain Webb had a double in divinity and quantum mathematics). They also needed to be top-notch jet fighter pilots, twenty-four to thirty-three years old, under 175 pounds, under five feet nine inches, IQ over 160. Green eyes or red hair were automatic disqualifiers. The slightest hint or inkling of sociopathic tendencies would get you the boot. If you talked in your sleep you disappeared in the night. Flippancy was dealt with harshly. But one after one these brilliant young men turned sickly and sallow and their eyes took on a glowering look and then they were gone. The secretly weak were weeded away and culled back to whatever service they were stolen from in the first place, but Webb maintained a ruddy glow throughout it all. He didn’t quiver or joke or tap his foot or bite his nails. He was physical perfection, he was unperterbable, he could not be fazed or goaded into frustration. He willed every cell in his body to emit wavelengths of terrible superiority, and they did. Of the Golden Fourteen, Ackerman was the first to go. For six hours straight that morning, they had stood at attention in a yellow room with yellow lights while a ten year old girl with pigtails and a megaphone paraded up and down before them and told them how much she hated them using the foulest language imaginable. Then they had to sit in tiny, junior-high school desks and take a test on the fifty states and their capitols while over a P.A. system was broadcast a hyperharmonic recording of what sounded like someone slowly strangling a cat to death with a string. In the middle of the test Ackerman snapped. “Sacramento?” he screamed over the choked gurgles on the sound system. “Wilmington, Delaware? I want to go home! I want my damn blanket!” And then he tried to take out his eyes with his number two pencil but a couple of corporals came in and stopped him before he got too far. Harlowe, Menke and Yan all dropped out during the psychotrauma interviews. Webb noticed it and kept count as they were dragged away howling, and then turned back calmly to the Navy psychologist before him, who was wearing a rubber gorilla mask. The psychologist asked Webb at what age he had first touched himself in an evil way. “Oh, twelve,” said Webb. For seventeen hours in a row they had to endure the ‘Vomit Comet’; the centrifugal thrust simulator which spun them in a circle to 16.8 g’s, just under g-loc, the point at which one loses consciousness and dies. Martel, Grozny, Bonsant and Jeffers all hemorrhaged. They were able to resuscitate Bonsant, but he was out of the running. Webb had managed to sleep through most of it. They were made to memorize arcane chants in what sounded like Hebrew, and if they got a single, tricky syllable wrong they were beaten with rubber truncheons. Olivera swallowed his tongue sometime in the night. They were administered terror drugs and hallucinogens and shown movies of starvation tests filmed by the Third Reich. Vittoli and Ebers never spoke again. They brought in a special torturer who they said used to work for the La Sirena Cartel, who had a briefcase full of handmade instruments powered by butane. Webb scored a perfect ten on the Grubberstoll Pain Index Scale, for which he was rewarded with an extra cup of apple juice. Somewhere towards the three-month mark, Webb was immersed up to his neck in a tank of human waste while a computer was generating random, insane threats and transmitting them directly into his cerebral cortex. Webb spent his time in the tank envisioning a comfortable shave with hot water and new razor. Then Major Plinker marched in and hit the computers off button. “Captain Webb! No, don’t salute. Let’s get you outta there. I came here to tell you that Rand’s just bought it. They were administering the Apache Fire-Ant Procedure to him when he stopped breathing and suffocated. They say he did it voluntarily. They also say that that’s impossible, that you pass out first and start breathing again before you die, but he managed it somehow. And as for Hussein, well, let’s just say that he’s resigned his candidacy from the project. Do you understand what I’m saying, son? I’m saying you’re it! You’ve won, boy. You’re chosen.” “Thank you, sir,” said Webb. They let him rest for three days although he said he didn’t need it. He spent most of that time watching TV in a hotel room on a high floor in a coastal city and praying in a half-hearted way for about fifty minutes each day. Then they told him he had to go back to work to get him ready, something to do with having a very short launch window to achieve optimal results, they feared that Russia might get a man there before them, which might very well turn out to be cataclysmic. They threw him to the press first and he didn’t mind but it was pretty boring, considering everything that went before. The press just loved him and ate him up. Captain Webb had an easiness about him on camera that was difficult to fake or to doubt. He had a heroic jut to his chin, the papers concluded. He will get there or die in the offing, and, they were sure, if he died he would go out fighting, planting a flag on that farther shore and marking it as our territory. He endured their questions with aplomb. Flashbulbs had no effect on him, he just radiated the light back at them, like the color white. “Captain Webb?” said the man from the Post-Dispatch. “What will your historic first words be when you cross the void?” “That’s already been worked out with members of the executive staff, although I had a say in the matter,” said Captain Webb in his immaculate blue uniform. “But we’d prefer for it to remain a surprise for the time being.” “Captain Webb! Captain Webb!” cried the correspondent from the Times-Democrat. “Will you be carrying any personal objects on board the capsule for luck?” “Yes, I will, Roger. I’ll be carrying this clay vase made by all the first-graders in Mrs. Cheavey’s class from Eleanor Roosevelt Elementary School in Falls Church, West Virginia, where I grew up. Those kids mean the world to me.” He held up the vase and the world took his picture. In the photo his smile is a devil-may-care parallelogram of hope and fortitude, and vase is a glazed, muddy vestige of the Earth. The engineers showed him how to work the craft, which took less than twenty minutes in all, even including the reading and initializing of the manual. There were only two buttons, one lever and one dial to operate the whole apparatus. One of the buttons opened the door. The lever turned it on. Nothing turned it off. On the day of the launch they had a ceremony that cost more than three million dollars. Thousands gathered on a limestone mesa in New Mexico, not far from Alamogordo, from which he would be launched. They set up massive, aluminum bleachers for the curious and the proud, the foreign dignitaries and journalists and well wishers and those who were attracted to explosions. They hung banners and non-flammable bunting and record numbers of flags. Souvenir-hunters and the entrepreneurial chipped off sheets of shale and scooped up handfuls of the mesa’s ruddy dust into their pockets. Eleven marching bands from the nation’s finest colleges played John Phillip Souza all day. Towards the evening, Captain Webb was flown down in a helicopter painted gold for the occasion, and was carried from it on a sedan chair by a Green Beret honor guard. Over him, they ignited the equivalent of a megaton of fireworks, purple and green and Roman. At last the Vice President himself, who was corpulent this year, stood at the dais and made a speech as Captain Webb sat on stage and looked out over the swarming, undulating throng. The press noted that he didn’t even tap his foot, didn’t even drum his fingers, and were pleased. This is a man, they declared, who would hold up under anything, the worst torments inflicted upon him. He would not shame us. “We stand here in the presence,” said the VP, “of Captain Webb, a man who, at this historic crossroads of fate and destiny, has been chosen by divine selection to take up the mantle of champion of mankind. One who might determine, on this very sacred night, our species ultimate place in the cosmos. We have struck up this grand enterprise in a spirit of hope and goodwill to all people and all denizens of the spheres. And we send forth our son, Charles Avery Webb: pioneer, frontiersman, bearer of the light of humanity, as the Earth’s first infernonaut. He will be our ambassador to Hell, our emissary to Malebolge, to engender what is fervently wished will be a prosperous relationship between that realm and our own. He will be the first living human being to venture, soul intact, beyond this mortal coil, to step tall and unbowed over that hot border of the netherworld and to plant our emblem there amid the coals. And then, by the Grace of God, to return to us here in triumph. We do this not in some superfluous, technical vanity, but because the conquest of the afterlife, the victory beyond all taint of death, has been our race's unmet calling since time immemorial. We do this not because it is easy, but because it is hard. We do this so that no hostile power takes the initiative that it is our preordained and holy place to take, so that no foreign potentate achieves this dire objective where we should win, and purloin any allies among the infernals that should be ours alone. We do this with the good wishes and the heartfelt…” He went on more sixteen more minutes. He droned. There would follow speeches from two reverends and a cardinal. Captain Webb didn’t listen. He sat within his folding chair and stared at the criss-cross of scaffolding erected over the launch pad, which gleamed in the desert starlight. Underneath it, the machine sat heavily. Even from here, half a mile away, he could see the hooks and barbs of its chucking mechanism. Its chains were strung taut, and its spikes and cranks were heated already to a jack-o-lantern glow. He allowed himself the thinnest crescent of a smile that would not register on any photograph. It was T-minus ninety minutes to Zero Hour, and he would be somewhere upon the boiling sea tonight.
John Medaille has been published in Pseudopod and is working on a short story collection called: Hideous Tales of Doomed Spacemen,
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