Pensees

Blaise Pascal

Dr. Karoll set the controls for our descent and in moments the ship was settling down in front of its enclosure beside the garden. It had been a long day for his family for they had been in the air for twenty-four hours. Alice and her mother had served the evening meal before we descended and all were ready to make preparations to retire.

I had no more than just drifted off to sleep with the perfume of the cool mountain air stirring up visions of my last trek through the woods when I felt someone vigorously rubbing my wrists and calling, "Dave, Dave, wake up!"

Startled I opened my eyes to see who it could be.

"Darch! Bill Darch! How did you get here? Where am I? How, in the name of God, did I get here in this cave?"

"Take it easy, Dave. It's all right. I had to wake you a month early."

"Wake me a month early! What do you mean wake me a month early? I've been awake for six months and you've been dead a hundred years," I screamed.

"Easy, Dave, easy, you're fine...blood pressure's coming up...temperature's almost normal...you've done it Dave, you've done it!"

"Oh, my God, my God, Darch! You don't mean that I've only been asleep for two months? Oh, no, no! It just can't be," I moaned.

Professor Darch didn't say anything more but just kept working on my wrists as I lay there. I looked around at the newly chipped stone ceiling. The days came to mind when we had worked together with air tools to enlarge this natural cavern about a hundred feet in from the cave's mouth. I tried to sit up.

"Easy, Dave! Don't try to move for a little bit. Wait until the blood circulation is a little better." Then he said with enthusiasm, "You made it, old man, you made it!...two months of suspended animation and you're still alive. I've been working over you for three hours to bring you out."

I was stunned. The smell of the cool air in the cave, the details of its interior, the equipment in the chamber and Bill Darch massaging my wrists...what was the use to try to deceive myself...everything was just as it was when I had laid myself down there. Instead of being grateful to be alive and back in the world that I knew, I just wished that I could have died during my hallucinations of Utopia in 2103.

"That's right, Dave, just lie there and relax. Inside of another hour you ought to be able to sit up. I'll explain why I had to wake you up early a little later. It will be best for us not to discuss that just now."

Professor Darch's effort to sound soothing was not altogether successful. I detected a note of anxiety which set me wondering. I studied his face as I lay silently while he massaged my wrists and ankles. Time went by slowly as my mind was racing madly through the dream experiences I had just been through. It had all been so logical and now I had a whole set of intensely personal memories to assign into the category of hallucinations. I wasn't sure that I was willing to do this. Maybe, I thought, I would prefer to hang onto them and be called mad.

"You can try to sit up now, Dave."

I was so engrossed in my thoughts that I didn't take notice.

"Dave, Dave, try to sit up, please," Professor Darch insisted.

"Uh...all right."

I painfully pulled myself up and started to black out and let myself back down again. The professor worked with me for two or three more hours as I tried to sit up from time to time. When he finally got me onto my feet so that I could walk to his cabin, he was worn out. He stretched out on a couch to rest and was soon in a deep slumber. In the meantime, I found myself gaining strength with each passing hour.

There was no thrill of achievement because of my success. There was no joy over having proven a theory to the scientific world. I was filled only with burning memories of Alice and the Doctor's family and the way of life that I had observed and participated in for more than six months. So real were the impressions that I could not conceive that it was only an elaborate creation of my own imagination.

I began to think about the situation in America and of the terrible financial collapse which I dreamed had devastated the land. Had I had a prophetic dream which foretold events that would transpire in the near future, I wondered? If my dream was a true vision of future events, then the great collapse had just taken place and this was the reason Professor Darch had felt he should awaken me early. This thought set my mind to racing in another direction. I began going over all the news events I remembered from just prior to my entry into the trance state. By some strange manipulation of the unconscious mind I now found that they fitted the picture described in my dream by Dr. Karoll. As it does with a dream that incorporates into a sleeper's visions a cause for the sound of a passing truck, possibly, I thought to myself, my sixth sense had interwoven real current events into my dream of the future.

Evening was well upon us by the time that Professor Darch had led me from the cave to his cabin. The strain upon him was evidently more tiring than I realized. He had worked over me for about six hours, I estimated. When he had lain down to rest, I covered him with a blanket to keep him from getting a chill. As the night wore on, I realized that he was going to sleep through until morning. All thought of sleep was out of the question for me as I sat out on the porch in the cool night air and reviewed the many questions I had. The moon was almost full, the night cloudless, and feeling the need to stimulate my blood circulation, as well as to quiet my nerves, I decided to walk down the winding dirt road in front of Bill's cabin. The dusty picturesque little road followed a brook until it led into a paved county road about two miles farther down.

Ordinarily, such a walk in the moonlight would have been a deeply satisfying time of communion with Nature for me. Now it was a time of frenzied thinking. I made a special effort to breathe slowly and very deeply to help my body adjust itself. The breathing soothed my nerves and helped me think. Almost before I realized any time had passed I found myself standing at the edge of the county road. Not wanting to go back to the cabin quite yet, I decided to walk on in the direction of Asheville.

It was possibly around one o'clock in the morning. The road I was on had no traffic at that hour for it served only the people of a few scattered mountain communities thereabouts. I had been walking along for about ten minutes when I heard the unexpected sound of an approaching vehicle. An old Chevrolet pick-up truck rattled up from behind and stopped beside me.

"Need a ride into Asheville?"

"No, I'm just out for a walk."

"Do you know what's gone wrong with the `lectricity and the phones up here, mister?"

"What do you mean?"

"They're all dead. I got to get somebody to help my wife or take her into the hospital in Asheville but I can't get a call through to nobody."

"You're coming right back from Asheville?"

"Yeah! Got to get back to her quick."

"I'd like to ride with you."

"Get in."

It was too noisy to talk without half shouting and we were both too occupied with our own thoughts to care about trying. The road twisted and turned as we rolled through the sleeping unincorporated villages beside it. When we arrived at the approach to the freeway, the lean, drawn face of the young mountaineer beside me was outlined for a moment by the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.

"That's funny," he puzzled.

"What?"

"No lights on the freeway and hardly no traffic."

I sat bolt upright and looked both ways down the four lane divided highway.

"Ah never seen that before," he drawled.

"When did everything go dead?" I asked quickly.

"`Bout three days ago."

He pulled onto the highway and accelerated up to sixty-five. We rattled along that way for about five minutes without passing another car. Then we reached a crest in the highway which gave us a view over the outskirts of the city.

"Holy cow! The lights are all out." He was startled.

I had guessed by now why he was so anxious about his wife.

"You had best turn back and get one of your neighbors' women folk to stay with your wife," I said in his vernacular. "That town's got bad troubles and there's no chance of your getting her into a hospital or getting a doctor."

Without a word he turned around, crossing the divider strip in his haste. Before more than two or three minutes, we saw three men standing in the highway blocking the way and waving.

"Don't stop," I said quickly, remembering my vision of the chaos after the money collapse.

"Why not?" He slowed down as he spoke.

"They may want your truck," I said.

"I don't pass nobody needin' help."

"All right; have you got a pistol?"

"Loaded forty-five."

"Give it to me. I'll put it under my jacket and pretend to be asleep."

"Okay."

The pick-up slid to a stop on the gravel shoulder.

"Get out, kid." There was no mistaking the speaker's intentions.

I was observing the situation through almost closed eyelids. One of the men had stepped up and raised a twenty-two rifle just as we stopped. He was pointing it in the driver's face.

"Look, mister, my wife's expectin' and she needs help. Why don't you stop the next car." The boy had courage.

"Get out kid or she won't have you. Move quick!" There was cold blooded murder in his voice.

The boy had his wits about him. "Awright, this truck ain't worth much, no how." He drawled this out like he didn't care too much about the whole thing and didn't want any more trouble than he already had.

He opened the door as wide as it would go and climbed out, moving straight toward the man holding the rifle in his face. He moved slowly. The man with the gun backed away from him. Then the boy stepped toward the front of the truck. Holding the door wide with his left hand so that I would get an unobstructed view, he lifted his right hand up over his head like a man in a hold-up.

The gunman now perceived me sitting slouched back against the right side of the truck with my eyes closed.

"You there, get out!"

I didn't stir. I was sick with disgust over what was apparently my obligation now. I wished that I had not decided to try to protect the boy and his truck.

"You! Get out!" He knew I couldn't sleep through his shouted command.

I stirred a little, like I was just waking up and then opened my eyes wide so that I would be able to see clearly. Then I saw the man's face in the moonlight and I knew that I hadn't any choice in the matter. I had just meant to play it safe in asking for the forty-five but now I was going to be forced to take advantage of my ruse.

"Get out!" This was shouted by the man like he was losing his self control.

The forty-five was a regular issue World War II automatic. I knew the piece well. Still under my jacket, I slipped it from single shot to automatic and squeezed off three rounds point blank into his upper body. The impact of the heavy slugs knocked him back several feet. I jumped out with the gun pointed in the direction of the other two men.

"Don't shoot," one of them screamed, as they both threw their arms up over their heads so that I would know that they were unarmed.

"Pick up the rifle, son," I said, then, turning to the two men, "Start running!" I fired one shot over their heads when they were about fifty feet away. Then I motioned toward the man on the ground. "Leave him. I'll be responsible if there are any questions."

We rode back in silence. After the incident I suddenly felt exhausted almost to the point of passing out. I realized that I had misjudged how much energy I had. I asked the boy to drive me up to Professor Darch's cabin. He helped me up onto the porch and into an old deck chair. As he left, he spoke one word with feeling, "Thanks."

The cool night air helped some to refresh me. Exhausted though I was, there was no feeling of sleepiness. I had never suffered from insomnia but I guessed that I was experiencing what it felt like. Tense, wide awake, nervous and exhausted, I sat there mulling over the events of the evening.

It was just beginning to get light when Professor Darch pushed the screen door to the porch open and stepped out rubbing his eyes.

"Didn't mean to sleep so long, Dave. How are you feeling now?"

I looked over at Bill Darch's familiar form for a long moment and forgetting his inquiry asked, "When did the Europeans refuse our currency?"

"It'll be two weeks tomorrow," then in amazement, "but how did you learn that?"

"When I was in the cave, Bill, I had some kind of dream...vision...experience. I saw it all...saw why it happened...devastated the big cities...the whole government was gone...cannibals...the city people went wild...they were starving...roamed the country in packs like wolves."

"Wait a minute, Dave, that hasn't happened yet. Things look pretty bad but not cannibals!"

"This is the reason that you woke me up a month early, isn't it?" I already knew the answer.

"Well, yes, of course. I didn't know what might happen. Everything in the way of communications has broken down. No one is selling goods. You can't even get a gallon of gasoline. I didn't want to stop the experiment before time but there was no telling what might happen. We actually may not be safe here. There is no law enforcement of any kind."

"This is the way I saw it all, Bill."

"You must have been having some kind of psychic experience."

"Yes, I guess that's what it was," I said, still unwilling to believe that I had awakened a month early instead of having overslept a hundred and twenty years.

"How do you feel now?" asked Professor Darch, changing the subject.

"Well, I'm pretty weak. I thought I was stronger and took a walk down to the county road last night. Rode part way into Asheville with a young fellow looking for help for his wife. We turned back when we saw that the lights were out in the city. Figured that meant things were pretty bad. Got stopped by three men who wanted to take the boy's truck. I killed the one carrying a gun with the boy's automatic. Left the body by the road...figured that my dream of how things were must be accurate. Been up all night thinking about it."

"Great God, man!"

We both fell silent for a time. Professor Darch went inside and began to prepare some breakfast. He was out of groceries and had little more than flour, cooking oil, salt and baking soda to work with. He was a pretty good hand at making biscuits and I had begun to feel like I could take some nourishment. In a little bit he had set out breakfast...a cup of instant coffee and biscuits made with bleached flour.

I sipped the hot coffee very slowly. The biscuits smelled delicious to me. The two of us sat silently thinking. The idea of several years of anarchy in America was standing before me like a specter.

"We had better see if we can get a group of people together that can help each other and share what they have. It's going to take some clear thinking just to survive for the next few months. Winter will be here before this thing gets straightened out."

"You are probably right, Dave. You are probably just about right."

"No farther than we are from Asheville, we could be in serious danger right now," I commented thoughtfully. "Do you have a gun, Bill?"

"I turned mine in when they began enforcing the gun control laws. Most people around here wouldn't do it, but I did. I had no occasion to use it. I only had it for protection. I assumed police would eventually pick up all the weapons. I never had used it and I don't hunt."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I guess that we couldn't get one for love or money now...much less get any ammunition."

"You are surely correct about that, Dave."

"What do you know about edible wild plants, Bill?"

"That subject never held any interest for me. I'm afraid that I know very little." He thought for a moment. "As a matter of fact, I don't know any edible wild plants except blackberries and plums. They are always too sour for me, even when they are ripe."

We were silent again for several minutes as we thought about the situation at hand.

"The city people must already be pretty desperate," I commented. I looked over at the biscuits. "Your cooking gas won't last long."

Professor Darch nodded at a wood heating stove over in the corner. "I cooked those on top of the wood stove in an iron skillet with a lid on it."

"Hmmm," I said thoughtfully, "that might have been a mistake."

"What do you mean, Dave?"

"Smoke."

We spent the next hour talking over how we should get started with the community idea and what steps we should be taking to make needed provision for ourselves for the next few days. Both of us had forgotten about the smoke and the possibility of danger from intruders when we heard a sound like some rocks thrown on the roof.

Professor Darch got up immediately and started for the front door. I was right behind him when I stopped and decided to hide in the closet just in case there was danger. Without a second thought, Bill stepped out on the porch to look around.

"Up with your hands, Mister."

The voice was soft and pained. The speaker was plainly troubled and doing something that went against his conscience.

"Go through the house, son, and see if he's got any canned milk, specially. Don't take all his food but get some shells for this gun, if he's got `em."

He turned back to Professor Darch. "Sorry to do you this way, Mister, but nobody's been willin' to help us by askin' `em."

The man sounded like a millhand. I pictured him as a humble, conscientious employee who had just been able to provide a meager living for his family on his income but had served faithfully over the years. I deeply sympathized with him. The request for canned milk made me guess that he had a wife and a hungry baby somewhere about. It was hard to decide how to cope with the situation. The boy would probably be looking in the closet I was in before he got through. I didn't have a plan in mind.

The man evidently decided to come in after the boy. The three of them, the boy first, Darch, and the man shuffled down the hall. I watched them through the crack at the edge of the almost closed door. I decided to bluff from my vantage point in the darkened hall closet. I cracked the door about two inches and stayed back out of view.

"Stop where you are!" I said calmly. "I have you covered with a twelve gauge. Set that gun on the table and raise your hands."

The boy and the man were stunned. I told Bill to pick up the gun and cover them and then I stepped out of the closet into the room.

The boy took one look at me and shouted. "He ain't got no gun, Dad."

They both dropped their arms and lunged for us. The boy was about seventeen and overgrown. He grabbed the skillet off the stove and started for me.

Professor Darch didn't realize what had happened. He stood looking dazed as the man grabbed the rifle barrel with calloused hands and jerked it toward himself with the muzzle pointed toward his own groin.

We were no match for the two of them. I fended off a blow from the skillet aimed at my head. I hadn't guessed that my bluff would backfire. By this time the unloaded gun had changed hands and I heard a dull thud as Bill Darch caught a blow in the side of the head from the butt. I ducked another blow aimed at my head by the boy. The man started toward me as Bill slouched to the floor.

A brilliant flash of sparkling light filled my consciousness for an instant and I sagged to the floor with darkness closing in fast.