Blame Charlie
Copyright© 2012 by dotB
Chapter 4
There’s just something about waking in familiar surroundings that puts you at ease with the world. Unfortunately, that comfortable feeling can be easily dispelled. The fact that I awoke with a very full bladder convinced me that I had to leave my comfortable bed. The fact that I hadn’t been strong enough to sit up by myself the afternoon before didn’t even enter my mind. So I flipped back the covers, sat up, and put my feet on the floor. Then I discovered that my robe and slippers weren’t by my bed, where I usually kept them. Okay, so what? My bladder’s demand was too darn insistent to worry about insignificant details like that, and the bathroom was only a few steps away. Besides, it was early in the morning, so it wouldn’t bother anyone if I walked to the bathroom in my birthday suit. And right about then, I didn’t really care much. I needed relief, and I needed it NOW! If I had even considered it, my answer would have been that this was my house, so if someone happened to be visiting and they saw me running around naked, too bad. Any offended feelings were their problem!
I pushed myself upright and managed to stand on my own. Then I discovered that I felt weak and could hardly stand, let alone walk. I managed two small steps, then decided it would be safer to lean one hand on the bed to steady myself. Another hesitant step meant I could reach out the other hand to steady myself against my dresser, and I was able to shuffle along beside that until I could reach the door to the hallway. The doorknob and the door weren’t the steadiest of supports, but they worked. Then came the challenge of three short, unsupported steps to cross the hallway and reach the door to the bathroom. Once inside that cozy little room, support was easier to find, but for the first time I could remember, I sat on the porcelain throne to ‘drain the bilges.’
That short, early morning venture had been one of the most difficult walks I had ever made, but the feeling of relief that washed over me in the following seconds made it all worthwhile. As I was relaxing afterward, the memory of the previous afternoon came back to me, but was any of what I’d heard, recalled, or seen real? Was it possible that I’d been hallucinating? Or had I really been rescued by extraterrestrial beings? Had I been transported from Earth to some other planet circling some other star? Had I really met an extraterrestrial being who communicated by telepathy? I remembered everything that I’d felt at the time, and I recalled all of the things that had been explained to me. I even felt that I had believed the explanations - at the time, but was any of what I’d experienced real? - or had it all been a dream?
Since I was sitting on the same ‘throne’ that I had used for years and since the room was completely unchanged from what I remembered, I began to doubt my recollection of the previous day. And yet it all seemed so real! The problem was that I could remember everything that happened up on the dome, at least until I’d passed out from the pain of being burnt so badly.
Wait a minute. Something there didn’t make sense! I knew I must have been burned horribly, and as a former volunteer fireman, I’d seen the scars of others who had been badly burned. I knew that the scars from deep burns almost always made a victim’s movements stiff or even impossible at times. Yet I had been able to get out of bed, and although I felt weak, I had been able to walk. If I had been burnt as badly as I was certain I must have been, I would never have been able to walk again.
One way or another, my present situation seemed impossible.
Hold on - let’s go back to what I remembered. I’d shot my rifle and seen the explosion, then I’d ducked, but I’d been lying on my belly. I remembered the heat on my hands, then pulling them back and tucking them against my body. Maybe they wouldn’t have been badly burnt, but I knew the backs of my shoulders and upper arms hadn’t been protected and I knew I could check those quite easily. I could reach my hands back far enough on either of my shoulders to feel any scarred areas, so...
Damn, my right arm was hard to lift, but I slid it up my left arm and over the edge of my shoulder.
Whoa! What goes on here?
There were no signs of scarring under my fingers ... none at all.
All I could feel was clear skin - no scars, no tight ridges, nothing like that?
How was that possible?
Maybe that shoulder had been protected, I had to try lifting my left arm to check the right shoulder...
Argh - I had the same struggles as the other arm. Same results though, unblemished skin!
What the hell!
If I’d been badly burned that was impossible, at least I had thought it was impossible.
I had to see for myself and there was a large mirror above the vanity not two steps away.
I struggled to get up, but finally lurched to my feet, grabbed the edge of the vanity sink, leaned on it for support, raised my eyes and stared at the reflection in the mirror.
Unbelievable!
The face staring back at me wasn’t the face of the man I remembered!
Well, no - that isn’t right either - it was my face, but a much younger face - at least twenty-five years younger!
I hadn’t looked that young in years.
There was no way that what I was seeing was possible.
Then I noticed the arms and the chest on the reflection in the mirror. There was no way my body had ever looked anything like that either!
Even when I’d been in the volunteer fire department and working out regularly I’d never had shoulders or biceps like that.
In fact I’d never had muscles like that in my whole life.
Just what the hell had happened to me?
Not only that, but considering all those bulging muscles, why was I feeling so bloody weak?
Oops, I shouldn’t have reminded myself of that, because suddenly my legs felt like they were made of rubber. I needed to lie down before I fell down.
I managed to make it back to my bedroom, but I bumped against the bedroom door, then my dresser, finally flopping face down on the edge of my bed. Talk about a noisy old fart though, banging around like that! If there was anyone in the house, they must be awake now.
Oops! There definitely was someone around, because I could hear running footsteps. Somehow I felt like a kid caught trying to swipe a chocolate bar, so I thought I’d better try to act innocent. Only I was still struggling to crawl all the way into bed when Donna came charging into the room.
“What are you doing? We told you to rest, dammit! You shouldn’t be trying to get out of bed,” she snapped, quite loudly.
I’m not sure if it was the volume of her voice or the tone that set me off, but I growled at her even while heaving myself onto the bed, then rolling onto my back.
“It’s my bloody house, dammit. Can’t I even go to the can by myself, for cripes sake?” I snarled, then my brain and eyes awoke to what I was seeing.
Holy crap, what a woman! More curves than a plate of spaghetti and all of them on display - which is when I realized she was wearing the same costume as I was - bare skin, from head to toe.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “But, I’m supposed to help look after you and...”
She’d leaned forward to help me adjust the bedcovers, then she paused, her eyes glued to my midsection. Suddenly I knew just where she was staring and if anything that stare made my body’s natural reaction to her physical allure even worse. While she seemed to be stunned and her face developed a slight flush, I couldn’t help finding our combined reactions to be funny. Somehow, I managed to lift my head and shoulders to look down at my body’s ‘gallant’ reaction.
“Well, at least that seems to be working okay!” I managed to chuckle. “Nothing else is working the way it should, though.”
She seemed to jerk in surprise, her eyes flicking up to meet mine. Then she giggled like a schoolgirl, so I winked at her.
“Of course, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, considering the view.” I grinned and winked again. “Your figure could cause a reaction in the week-old corpse of a hundred-year-old man.”
I couldn’t believe it, but that comment brought on a blush that started at her breasts and raced upward to her hairline. Her giggle became much louder.
“You’re terrible,” she managed to slur through the giggle. Then she became all business and twisted, bending forward to grab the bed covers and pull them over my lower body. “There ... out of sight, out of mind ... for now!”
“That almost sounded like a promise,” I grinned. “Now, can you tell me why my body seems to look about twenty-five years younger and has a lot more muscles than it should? When I went up that hill, I was a fifty-year-old wreck, but now when I look in the mirror, I see the body of a young man who exercised a lot.”
“Hah, welcome to the club!” she snorted. Then she leaned back against the wall and sighed heavily. “When I came to attend Maria’s 911 call, I was a forty-two-year-old, overweight policewoman who’d had two kids and looked like a middle-aged matron. I had been spending too many hours of my day just sitting in a patrol car to be in very good shape. My boobs and my butt drooped, and my belly bulged. I was out of shape, so I looked and felt middle-aged.
“Now look at me! I look about as old as my eldest daughter. My boobs are a large ‘C’ cup and perky as a teenager’s. My gut is solid muscle, and my butt is firm. My daughters are both jealous of how I look, though they don’t have any reason to be jealous, since both of them look gorgeous.
“Anyway, we can both blame it on the ‘Fox Folk,’ who are the people responsible for our restoration, but they used Maria’s description of both of us as models when they restored us. I think she needs an eye exam because she only saw me for a few seconds when I stopped at the main ranch for directions to the fight she’d called about. In your case, I think she gave them an idyllic description from memory, but I don’t know how close to reality her memory was.”
“Not very darn close,” I shook my head, then frowned. “But you lost me when you said the Foxes restored us. Just what did you mean by that? It doesn’t sound like any hospital procedure I’ve ever heard of, but then since they’re supposed to be extraterrestrials, I suppose they have different techniques than our doctors did.”
“I’m not even sure I understand what they did to us,” she sighed. “You see, all four of us, José, Diego, you, and I, were all so close to the original explosion and fire that our bodies were almost destroyed. Sawish told me that our skulls protected our brains, but our bones are most of what was left from our original bodies, and even they’ve been repaired. She explained that everything else was ‘grown’ from our basic DNA structure while our brains remained in stasis, at least most of the time. I think what they did must be something like cloning, but not quite, because they used our brains to stimulate ‘body memory’ as everything else was developing. I don’t know about you, but I had weird dreams while I was being restored, memories about my former life and stuff like that.”
“Did you spend a long time all alone— with nobody near you, unable to touch, hear, see, or smell anything else?” I asked.
‘Unh huh, total sensory deprivation, almost ... well, a sensation of floating, but later there was a ... a weird sort of ticklish feeling. Every time I tried to find out where that came from though, I’d drop off to sleep, then I’d dream some more,” she nodded. “From what I understand of Sawish’s explanation, when we dreamed of running, or swimming, or any activity, they used our memories to trace muscle groups and stimulate them to grow. You must have been very active in your former life, because you look like a real athlete now.”
“Maybe I look like some kind of athlete, but I feel as weak as a butterfly in a hurricane.” I grumbled.
“That’s only natural, since your brain is still trying to accustom itself to independent movement once more. Up until now, our rescuers have been helping it to flex your muscles through some sort of outside assistance. Don’t ask me how that works though, I went through the same thing you’re going through now. In my case, it was a couple of weeks ago, and I was given a somewhat similar explanation when I bitched about feeling weak. I can tell you that after a few days of gradual exercise and solid food, I’m in far better condition than I ever was before. Even then, Sawish says I have about another month or two until I reach my body’s full potential.”
“So you were ‘awakened’ (if that’s the right term) just a short while ago, yourself?”
“About two weeks ago, and I think ‘awakened’ is a fairly good description of what happens, but I don’t know if that would be how Sawish would describe it,” she frowned slightly then. “I have a difficult time understanding just what the ‘Fox Folk’ are trying to convey to me, so that might not be what they would say has happened to us. She’s going to have to try to explain to you what happened, because she says we weren’t really asleep, just placed in some sort of stasis. She was trying to put across a strange concept of slowing or stopping the electrons and atoms in our bodies - things of that sort, which I didn’t really understand. Then she was going on about light years and eons, but I’m afraid I’m not good at that sort of stuff, so I was completely lost. All I really understood was that while we’ve been travelling here, we weren’t aware that any time had passed.”
“Umm, how does that work? I saw Maria here too, and she wasn’t up on the Dome with the rest of us?”
“Oh, the four of us weren’t the only ones who were in that stasis thingy. That weird Kalibrod-whozitz had set off his stun and transport gizmo, which lifted a huge chunk of the local geography in one big bite. A globe of soil and rock and air that had a forty-mile radius, right from your ranch all the way out to the coast and then some. Only that hole was forty miles deep too, which kicked off a massive volcano that must have been devastating to the area nearby.
That’s when more agents of the Fox Folk arrived, though. They went bananas and picked up anyone or anything that was going to be destroyed by the lava and the gas clouds or lahars from the volcano too. They salvaged anything living that couldn’t escape and would have been killed by the initial effects or anything that would be buried by tons of ash from the volcano. After they rescued us, they tamed the tsunami that would have resulted from the theft of that big hunk from the planet, then they shifted us across a huge hunk of space. The Fox Folk live on a planet with a sun almost like ours, so they adapted an uninhabited planet almost like Earth that sits in a tighter orbit than theirs, then set us down on it. So we have neighbours on other planets that orbit around this sun, friendly neighbours.”
“Are you for real?” I stared at her in disbelief. “Do you really believe all that horse pucky about travelling in space and other planets? Come on, pull my other leg.”
“I’m not kidding, it’s real, this planet is different. Heck, it even has two moons. All you have to do is go outside at night and you can see the difference, there are so many stars in the sky it’s almost bright enough to be able to walk around,” she protested, then she snapped her fingers. “I just remembered something else. Part of the reason you feel weak here is the gravity. Sawish said the gravity is higher on this planet than it was on Earth, because its core is bigger.”
I was about to argue more, but just then Sawish entered the room. “She is right and you are wrong. You are on a different planet, with greater gravity, so you should not have strained yourself to arise hurriedly just to micturate, not until you have full control of those muscles you were admiring in your mirror. You had no need to struggle that way since you were not showing any undue distress compared to the same time period when under our care.”
“Yeah, but I’ll bet you had a gizmo hung on my dick while I was unconscious that allowed me to piss whenever I needed to, didn’t you?” I threw back at her, “Check the hospital records and see what I did when I was awakened from a long sleep, or did you ever allow me to fully waken? If you didn’t, then whoever was tending me probably had some other way of emptying my bladder when it got too full for comfort. Besides, this is my bloody house and I’ll do things my way any time I want to.”
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