That Hated Word

The pod was cylindrical, with rounded ends and a glass front so that its occupant could see the outside world. A tangle of wires and cables ran out from the back, looping over and under in a crazy mess that fed into a dozen screens set on stands surrounding the pod. Every screen was abuzz with calculations. On the largest screen, however, a simpler string of numbers was displayed; a five, and then two zeroes.

Will stared at the pod and the apparatus surrounding it, absentmindedly drumming the fingers of his right hand on the bottom of the largest screen. After years of planning, of failure and setback, the moment had arrived.

“Ready, sir?” said Simon, his chief scientist.

“Ready, Simon,” Will replied, trying to sound confident. “Begin the pre-checks, please.” As Simon did so, someone else came into the room. Will’s girlfriend Hannah was tall, dark-haired, and angry.

“I still can’t believe you’re doing this,” she said. “After last night, I still can’t believe it. Do you have any idea how selfish you’re being?” Will tensed.

“Simon, can you give us a moment?” he said. Simon, glancing up, noticed the sudden drop in temperature in the room and quietly backed out.

“This is ridiculous!” shouted Hannah the moment the door closed. “You setting up this mad science project in our front room was bad enough, now you’re telling me you’re going to be the one inside of it?! Even after last night?! Unbelievable!”

“Well, I don’t understand how you can be so short-sighted!” Will retorted. “Don’t you understand that I’m doing this for you! For him! For everyone! I’m giving my life to the world here!”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. You’re not doing this for anyone other than yourself.” Hannah turned and stalked out of the room. Will stood, stunned. For a moment, it was almost possible to see the battle raging behind his eyes. Then he blinked, and a cold iron certainty remained.

“Simon,” he called, his voice expressionless. Simon reappeared, and after taking a look at Will’s face, returned to his work immediately. Will pulled on the shiny silver suit that would keep him alive in the pod. He glanced at the pictures of himself and Hannah on the walls, but his mind did not waver. He lowered himself into the pod and gave an involuntary shudder as the cold metal touched the back of his neck, but his mind did not waver. Simon was at the last screen, the one displaying the number five hundred.

“Simon,” Will called. “Could you turn the timer to face the pod for me?”

“Of course,” replied Simon, doing so. “Now, sir, I need to give you a final legal briefing before we commence operation. You are aware, sir, that there will be no way to exit the pod until the timer elapses?”

“Yes.”

“And you are also aware of the effects of time dilation? That whilst you remain inside, every hour you experience will mean a year passes for the rest of us?”

“I am aware.”

“Very good, sir. At your instruction, we have, of course, chosen to keep you conscious whilst you remain inside. However, if you ever wish to enter cytogenesis, allowing you to enjoy the remaining years of the countdown asleep, press the button located beside your right hand.”

Will glanced at the button. It was small, silver, and appeared entirely unremarkable. “Thanks, Simon, but I doubt I’m going to find much use for it. I want to watch the world go by. Is that everything? I need to record my speech.”

Simon nodded, withdrawing a smartphone. He pointed the camera at Will, giving a thumbs-up with his free hand. Will cleared his throat.

“People of the world, my name is Will Byron. Today, I commence the process of the first deep hibernation in human history, allowing me to experience the next five hundred years as little more than five hundred hours. This revolutionary technology will lead to the development of incredible new medicines and scientific marvels, unlocking the potential of our human race like never before. I, the creator, will be the first to use this technology, demonstrating its safety and efficacy to you, the people of the world.” He gave a wry smile. “Seen you on the other side. How was that, Simon?”

“Neil Armstrong, sir,” remarked Simon dryly. Will nodded, resting his head back in the pod. Simon pressed a few more buttons on the nearest screen, and the glass lid encased Will. A light at the top of the pod lit up green. Will was bathed in a soft, pale glow. As Simon watched, Will’s eyes very slowly began to move to the left, fractionally, like a kind of weird slow-motion. Simon checked a few more things on a screen, then left, leaving the lights on as he did so.

Will had wanted Hannah to continue to live in the house after he entered the pod, allowing him to watch her raise their child, allowing him to be a part of their lives. Even with the money he’d offered her, Hannah had unsurprisingly refused him. As such, for the first few months of Will’s time in the pod, almost nothing happened. For him, of course, those months passed in the span of a less than an hour, but it remained a very dull forty-five minutes. Even a visit from Simon and some researchers analysing how the slowing of time was affecting Will’s body did little to enliven things.

Taking a deep breath, Hannah opened the door of the house she’d vowed never to enter again. The place was just as she’d left it. She could tell that Simon must’ve been round and cleaned during the past nine months. The pod’s screens still blinked and whirred with the number five hundred emblazoned across the large one facing the pod. Close up, she could see that upon her arrival, Will’s eyes had begun to widen, although they were doing so very slowly. She smirked in spite of herself.

“I’ve come back,” she announced grandly to the silence. “Though I swore I wouldn’t. You meant to leave me all that money, if I came and lived here for you. But you gave me another gift, you bastard, one much more valuable, and that much more costly.”

She wasn’t sure if he could hear her, but when the babies started crying, and his eyes darted almost as quickly as normal towards the door, she knew that he could. The nannies had entered, each holding one of Hannah’s three children. Will’s children. Hannah looked him right in his slow-moving eyes.

“Obviously I need your money now,” she snarled. “But I won’t let you trap me in here whilst you get everything you ever wanted. If I’m going to be trapped here, so are you.”

“RAWR!” yelled Matt, leaping over the sofa with all the ferocity a three-year old could muster. Screaming, his two siblings ran for cover as he swung the cushion at them.

“What on earth are you three up to now?” shouted Hannah as she poked her head around the door.

“We’re playing monsters,” replied little Emma breathlessly.

“Monsters?” asked Hannah.

“Monsters,” asserted Matt, pointing at the pod in the corner of the room, still whirring away. The countdown read four-hundred-and-ninety-six.

“Oh,” said Hannah. “That. I thought I told you three to stay well away from that.”

“We do,” chirped Elliott. “We were just playing. We weren’t talking to it.”

A faint smile played around Hannah’s lips. “Alright, but be careful. Don’t get too close to the monster, or he might gobble you up!” She roared for effect, and the three kids giggled.

Inside the pod, as Will watched the figures of his children flash past, shrieking of monsters, he felt the first pangs of regret.

“Hannah, I don’t understand…”

“Shut it, Simon! Don’t pretend stupidity!”

The shouts were muffled, but Matt, Elliot and Emma could hear every word from their position crouched silently at the top of the stairs.

“Hannah, can’t you understand? An entire decade… Think of the data!”

“So, you barge in here during the middle of the night?”

“I didn’t think you would permit-.”

“You’re right, I wouldn’t permit! With my children upstairs…”

The voices, which had been growing louder and louder in volume, suddenly dropped to whispers. Try as they might, the eavesdroppers could no longer make out the words.

“I wonder who it is,” Matt mused.

“I think we should ask Mum tomorrow,” said Emma. “Who knows, it might have something to do with Monster.”

Despite having abandoned their games around the pod, there remained a sense of mystique around the mysterious man for the three children, and they still muttered the word in hushed tones.

“I don’t think we should,” said Elliot. “She gets really scary if you bring him up.”

Just then, they heard the door slam. Elliot, Matt and Emma scrambled back to their rooms, trying to keep as quiet as possible.

“Alright, let me see!” said Hannah, uncovering her eyes.

In front of her, she realised, her children had all grown up.

Elliot and Matt were wearing matching suits, Elliott tugging at his tie uncomfortably, Matt in his like a second skin. Emma wore a shimmering purple dress, and her hair was done up in an elaborate knot. All three looked faintly embarrassed, and faintly pleased.

“Wow, you look amazing!” beamed Hannah. “Come on, let’s get photos out front before you go!”

She started to move, but when she turned, her children weren’t following.

“Mum,” said Emma. “We need to talk to you.”

Hannah’s insides were suddenly churning.

“What about, darling?”

“We need to know the truth,” said Elliott.

“The real truth,” said Matt. “About the man you call monster.”

For a second, Hannah’s face seemed to swell up with rage. But after another, she sagged, and began to cry.

“Mum!” exclaimed Ellliott, rushing forward. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s the truth,” Hannah replied thickly. “A truth I should’ve told you about long ago.” She took a deep breath. “That man isn’t a monster. That man is your father.”

The silence that followed was deafening. The shock of the moment hung in the air like a bomb, a weight pressing down on them all. After what seemed an age, Emma strode, silent, through the doorway into the room with the pod. A second later, Matt followed. Elliott came last. Hannah, biting her lip, walked after her children into the room.

They were arrayed in front of the pod as if for battle, with Emma flanked on either side by her brothers. Will was resting in the pod, like a fly in amber, kept separate and slow and half dead to the world. The numbers on the screen read four-eight-four.

After a second, Matt spoke.

“Why’s he in there in the first place?”

“It’s… an experiment,” replied Hannah. “This technology was meant to help people with terminal illness survive in order for cures to be developed. There were other… purposes as well, but that was the main one. Your father developed it, and your father wanted to be the first to use it. He said… that nobody ever remembers the names of the people who put humanity on the moon, only the men who’d walked there.”

Will’s eyes were moving very slowly to focus on the four of them. For a moment, they stood silent, hypnotised by the movement of those eyes.

“So, he left us?” said Emma. “Left you? For what? A life in a gilded cage, watching us every day from behind that glass? Why?” The word reverberated around the room. Will’s eyes were widening.

“I… don’t know,” said Hannah. There was another silence. She began to turn away.

“I do,” said Elliott, and there was a note of icy steel in his voice that none of them, not his mother nor his siblings nor his father, had ever heard before. He turned to look at Hannah.

“It’s because he is what you told us, Mum. He’s a monster. He hasn’t got fangs or talons. He doesn’t spit fire or bleed silver. But he is a monster, because he left us, because he chose himself, chose forever, and then tried to take it back with through this sick way of watching us grow up.” He turned back to the pod, glaring. Will’s eyes were widening further.

“Yeah,” said Matt, after moment. “You’re right. He is a monster.”

“Monster,” echoed Emma.

“Monster,” breathed Hannah. Doubt nagged at her, her resolve wavered, then hardened. “Come one guys. Let’s leave him to it and take those photos.”

They turned their backs and trooped out of the room.

Inside the pod, Will was yelling, but nobody heard him. The world blurred past him, faster and faster it seemed to him, though it was not. In a flash, his children were before the pod again, carrying their own children in their arms, wives or husbands shadowy behind them, and Emma was pointing to him, whispering that word, that hated word into her infant son’s ear. Monster. Another flash, and Hannah, grey and aged beyond belief, trembling, leaning on a cane, smiling at him grimly, and tears were falling across her cheeks. Monster. Another flash, and his children were shamefaced in front of their own children, confronted with the enormity of their lie, confronted with the enormity of his existence, and then the turning, the disgust, the anger, the hated word given new life. Monster. Another flash, and Elliott slumped to the floor before the pod, clutching his chest, and nobody could hear Will’s screaming, and his son’s eyes were full of loathing as he rolled over into his grave. Monster. Another flash, and there were more faces before him, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, he wasn’t sure, it was blurring together so fast, and those little eyes were looking at his own in wonder and in fear and in hatred. Monster. Another flash, and Matt was standing, or was it stooping, still wearing his suit like a second skin, but the suit was black, and Matt’s hair was grey as he turned towards the open door where his children and grandchildren waited for him, and their eyes were flint as they watched Will in the pod. Monster.

He couldn’t take it, the rushing and roaring as time folded before his eyes, as the numbers on the screen tumbled and his children paraded before his eyes, born and lived and died, all with that hatred in their eyes and that word upon their lips. He found the silver button beside his thumb and pushed it, as the world slipped away.

The first thing his senses registered was the colour green. His eyelids fluttered open. The hated pod, open now, was looming over him. Will scrambled to his feet and was suddenly aware of his surroundings.

His home was gone. He and the pod were alone in a great green wood, with the tangled cables and wires snaking across the forest floor like the entrails of a dead beast. Faint birdsong echoed in his ears. The sun was setting, and a screen lying on the ground displayed one number: zero.

For a while, the only thing Will felt capable of was sitting on the ground and crying quietly to himself. Eventually the sobbing and the shaking subsided and he had another look at his surroundings. He could see the rusted remains of a car, and a bent streetlight leaning against a tree.

“What happened?” he rasped, his voice rough from centuries of disuse. He paced around the pod, examining every service. Crude graffiti covered the pod’s metallic exterior. The paint, a brownish red, was smeared haphazardly in crazy patterns and symbols along the length of the pod.

Suddenly, a hunting horn’s blare broke the silence. Will hesitated, reluctant to leave the pod. Hesitated for too long.

Three figures emerged from the woods. They held sharp wooden spears, and wore a jumbled assortment of rags. One of the figures, the leader presumably, gripped a baseball bat with several nails stuck through the end.

One of the three said something Will didn’t understand. Another replied, and Will realised they were speaking another language. Even though he was standing in the ruins of the house he had lived in for most of his life.

More hunters appeared, in the same clothes and with the same weapons. Will realised, now, who these people must be. Humanity’s descendants, who must have survived some cataclysm that ended civilisation as he knew it. But he had survived, and so had they. They might well be reasoned with.

“Hello,” he addressed the leader. “My name’s Will Byron.”

“Monster,” replied the leader. Will’s breath caught in his throat.

“No,” he protested, raising his arms. “That’s not right, that’s not me, I’m not a monster, I’m here to help you.” He gestured at the pod. “I went in there; I suffered in there for you. For humanity.”

But there was little of humanity in the eyes of the leader of the band. There was an icy, flinty look of hatred that Will knew all too well. Will looked from face to face, horrified. A large, muscular man had a shock of black hair like Matt. A skinny figure holding a club had Elliott’s nose. A woman with dirty hair would have been the spitting image of Emma if she were a foot shorter.

“No, I’m sorry,” cried Will, as the leader approached, bat in hand. The others were beginning to chant, that same terrible word. He couldn’t take it, he tried to run again, but his legs gave out. Will sprawled in the dirt, tasting mud. The chant grew louder. He rolled onto his back; his strength had deserted him. The leader came closer, almost lazily swinging his bat back and forth, the ugly nails set in the end. The chant grew louder. The leader raised his weapon high. Will looked up into the eyes that watched him, the eyes that hated.

The bat came down.