The Dreaming Dragons by Damien Broderick

Author:Damien Broderick [Broderick, Damien]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 100 Best, Science Fiction
ISBN: 090910607X
Publisher: Norstrilia Press
Published: 1980-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

8. Ekratkoye Complex

NOVEMBER 12

Well, now that Nurse Kuenzli has at last brought me pen and paper, what am I to write?

It seems that my dogged habit of jotting down the day’s doings in my journal has become something more than simple compulsive ritual. (That it has indeed become compulsive is an astonishing discovery, considering how painfully I had to force myself, those ten years ago, to maintain regular diary entries. Discovering how peremptory the habit has become shocks me somewhat — as though in this respect as well I have become no more than an adjunct to one of my light-winking laboratory instruments.) I am for the first time today mildly amused, if only at the minor paradox. What I began to write — nullified indeed by these words themselves, even if they are negated in turn by the circular triviality of my theme — was that the ritual of keeping current my pretentiously leather-bound journal has become so stereotyped I could not write without it.

These sheets of Project-issue memo paper were fetched by Nurse Kuenzli when finally my monotonous complaints wore down her professional insistence that I should rest. The small success left me cheated and frustrated. I sat up in bed staring at the stack of virgin paper, irritably thumbing the retractable pen, and elaborated spurious conjectures.

Well. That exigency, at least, seems to have resolved itself. Perhaps (hallelujah!) I am after all more than a machine. To be candid, I suppose I first began my journal in the hope of allaying that bourgeois fear. After fourteen years in the neon halls of Novosibirsk the human part of me was shrivelling away, despite the fashionable banalities I could spout arguing the creative identity of science and art. I needed to speak human truth to myself at least.

So much for the literary customs of the scientific animal. I am, frankly, indulging in the crassest diversionary tactics.

It is my belief that I am dying.

Why else would they have rushed me here? (I am unable even to give the place a name; Nurse Kuenzli adroitly skirts any direct answer to my question.

‘The doctors will be here shortly to examine you, Academician Kukushkin.’) It’s the damnedest hospital I’ve ever seen. A hospital with comfortable beds?

Perhaps that is one of the side benefits of working in the most grandiloquent Security operation since the Sputnik project.

(Perhaps I infringe Security in writing these notes. Surely not: the medical staff must have clearance at least as exalted as anyone on the Project. I was accompanied here by Aegis guards — I presume there’s one or more on duty outside my room right now. Would they have allowed me pen and paper, for that matter, if they were concerned about Security? No.) My fears are doubtless without foundation. Apart from one extravagant vomiting episode shortly after today’s anti-radiation shot, I have had no indication of illness.

My predominant sentiment is boredom.

That’s my major complaint, and probably the explanation for my difficulty in starting today’s notes. There’s nothing to write about, except the unthinkable — and I shan’t encourage morbidity by going on about that.

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