Broken English

First published in Scifantasic, Issue 3, 2005

I don’t know exactly where I am, but I know almost everything else.  Problem is, I’m forgetting it all.  In the last few minutes I’ve lost the entire lineage of mammals from prototype amoebae to the nascent apes, the French revolution and the collected works of Enid Blyton.  Half an hour ago I could have given you the blueprint for cold fusion, outlined a plan to reverse global warming and cured herpes (simplex and complex).  Of course, the losses are relative.  I estimate that I can still remember 52.3% of the knowledge in the Universe.  By “knowledge” I mean all the data that can be known about it and how it can be applied.  Yeah, I know.  I’m great.

Unfortunately, that percentage is dropping.  My head just dumped Terran arctic geography, the history of cheese and everything you need to know to work in Public Relations (which is, admittedly, very little).  I retain enough of my faculties to realise that you’re probably wondering how I came to be such a prodigious individual. It will surprise you to know that you and I were once the same.

Let me backtrack a little; give you a bit of “local colour” to help fill in the picture.  Just don’t expect me to stay inside the lines.

Some time ago – using the word “time” loosely here as I’m talking about a realm that lacks that dimension – I was waiting for a new body.  Though, to be honest “waiting” is a relative term too.  Long story short, I was absolute.  A being of infinite space and dimension, existing at all points in time at the same moment.  There was no short or tall, fat or thin for me; my physicality was minimal.  In the strictest sense I wasn’t a being at all, but the potential to become a being.  You might have called me an idea or a possibility.  It doesn’t really matter. You can call me George if you like.

News update; total knowledge retained, 26.4% and declining.  That’s still pretty impressive though.  I know how to splice DNA and which bits to splice with which.  I know how to breathe underwater.  Alas, it’s all leaving me – dripping like the milk from a cracked coconut.  Soon, all that will be left is the new flesh I’m locked in.

And that’s the key, really.  Have you ever made yourself a really big sandwich to take to work?  You know what I’m talking about – one of those triple-decker things with salad, tomatoes, cheese, ham and mustard; the works.  Then, you try to put it in your lunch box and you can’t quite close the lid.  Well, I’m trying to fit the biggest sandwich ever made into a tub that can barely hold a bagel.

Oh, listen to me being so dramatic.  Of course, I’ll remember some things; a tiny part of the original knowledge I currently hold.  I couldn’t put a figure on it – because I’ve already forgotten how to calculate it – but it’ll be a fraction of one percent.

There’ll be basic language structures, but no real language.  I’ll remember that crying brings me assistance and that I need to eat and sleep.  There lies the greatest irony.  Struggling to cope with the enormity of our loss we, all of us, spend the first months of our lives trying to pass what’s left of our knowledge on to anyone who’ll listen.  And everyone wants to listen to a baby; grannies and grandads, aunties and uncles, friends and acquaintances. Everyone listens but no one hears.

Then, the more language we acquire, the less knowledge we have to pass on.  Eventually, we’re reduced to a small palette of basic needs.  Feed me, burp me, change my soiled nappy you big lunk.  We communicate those needs through the medium of screaming really, really loud. Finally, the last whispers of omniscience simply fade away and we’re left vulnerable; tender as bruised fruit. Oh, the ignominy.

So, anyway, I’ll be seeing you soon.  I’m rotating into position now.  I’m pointing my head down so that I can begin the process of being born.  It’ll be a bit like fighting my way out of a padlocked sack submerged in jelly.  The womb’s a safe, soft place to spend nine months of contemplation, until the final few hours.  Then it becomes a cage.

What’s that?  You don’t remember?  That doesn’t surprise me.  It doesn’t surprise me at all.

You’ll remember one day.  One day you’ll be pruning roses or playing with your grandchildren or lying quietly in your bed seeing scary faces in the folds of your curtains.  It will come back to you like that – like the snick of claws cutting through bone.  You’ll balloon to three times your current size and spines of sharp cartilage will carve a row of fins into your back.  Your breath will become an acid gas and your eyes will acquire a second lid as the cones on your retinas multiply.  You will become what you have always secretly been.

Then the invasion will begin.