Outness

Sergeant Dylan Thomas saw two pairs running to the two doors of the schoolyard. From the quick inspection he thought they were absolutely alike. They were both a man and a woman. Both the women were injured in the same place and they were both dressed alike. The only difference was that there was an enormous wound in the back of one of the men. He couldn’t be alive after such an injury, and yet he was running.
Dylan pointed the object-finder at the other pair, who were already out of the door. He pulled the trigger and hit the woman in the leg.
He loaded.
He looked at them again. The short man was helping the woman by holding her round her waist. Dylan put a finger on the trigger and … his mother’s face emerged through the deep-rooted habits from his abundant training:
‘Dylan. Promise me! Do not hurt people again. Ever. Promise me!'
His finger was on the trigger but he stood still. He saw through the object-finder how the running pair turned the corner of the building opposite. Dylan didn’t move.
He kept on watching the empty street through the telescopic sights, recalling his mother’s words. In high school he had smashed the nose and beaten black and blue the face of a classmate of his. When they both, together with their parents, were called to the principal, his mother said nothing. She just looked at him and said these words with so much disappointment and at the same time with love, that Dylan remembered them for life. He heard a roar of cars in the distance. The sergeant pointed the object-finder in that direction and saw the two Hummers moving away at breakneck speed.

* * *

I opened the door of the Hummer and gently pushed Elly in. I sat in the front seat by Greyhair. He looked at me with the same sympathetic eyes as those Elly had gazed at me with earlier that evening.
‘What!?’ I said.
Greyhair didn’t answer. He stepped on the accelerator and urged on forward through the unlit streets. Dickpecker followed behind us with Dima.
We kept quiet.
Grey hair took the mike of the communicator and called the base.
‘I urgently want a transport plane with two hibernation capsules. I’m driving two seriously wounded people.’
‘Why two?’ I asked. ‘Only Dima ...’ and I stopped because I followed Greyhair’s eyes. He was looking at me. On my right side, in my jacket, there was a wide open hole with blood running down and soaking my camouflage.
Obviously some shrapnel from the grenades I had thrown earlier that night had passed through the door and through me, too.
I didn’t feel anything. I couldn’t be such a perfect model if even my pain centres didn’t work … Or had the “saviour-suit” had done its job?! I put my hand on the hole and raised my right leg in surprise. My shoe squelched. It was full of blood.
I smiled.
I turned back to Elly. She was still looking at me in silence and with strain. The lumps we were passed over seemed to me like diving boards sending our jeep into weightlessness. Everything was going as if in a slow-motion clip. We were passing by houses with one or at most two lit rooms. There were no people in the street.
I closed my eyes.
I had the feeling that three days had passed before I opened them again.
I looked at Greyhair. He opened and closed his mouth in a hurry. He must have told me something, but I didn’t hear a sound. I smiled and stared at my blood-filled shoe. When I looked up I saw the barrier of the reserve airport lifting before us. We passed by the post and continued to the airstrip, where an ambulance and a very nice aeroplane with its engines working were waiting for us.
On the ground in front of the car there were two sarcophagi connected as if by an umbilical cord to the ambulance. I identified the hibernation cameras in them.
The door next to me opened.
I was surprised.
A medical man invited me to get out. I agreed and tried to jump into the jeep, but … nothing happened.
They pulled me out and put me into the capsule.
They injected two medication systems into my veins, gave me an oxygen set and closed the cover above me. The capsule swayed – they were carrying me somewhere. I turned my head to the left and right and saw through the transparent cover that there was another capsule, with Dima inside it, next to me. Her eyes were closed, her face calm and the status lights were reflected on it.
It was as though we were again moving on the uneven surface with the jeeps. Something began to bump … and … all of a sudden peace set in. Well.
We had taken off.
How quiet it is! I peered into the ceiling of the plane. I felt some wave of weakness run through my body. I felt some tickling and … something drifted me forward …

I saw Dima peering into the sarcophagus with her body in it.

I looked around.

I saw mine too …

That was it. Was that what going into the “outness” meant? I looked around. Everyone was here and also some people I didn’t know.

I saw Greyhair for the first time with his head down and hands clasped before him. Was he talking to himself?!

He was praying … To get home without having any problems.

‘Are we dead?’ Dima asked.

‘No,’ I answered, basing my answer on my rich experience of the OUTIN.

Tommy was on his knees in front of her capsule pressing some buttons on the control panel.

‘But why can I see my body?’

‘Well, because …’ I started to explain our new experience.