Doctor

Your browser lacks required capabilities. Please upgrade it or switch to another to continue.

Loading…

The doctor is in his office. He seems unhappy to see you. He seems like his life might be a mess. He doesn't look well and you can sense he's angry about something. He keeps clenching his fist. He is a man who seems unsympathetic to you and the things you care about. "What's the matter?" he asks. [[I feel numb.|doc2]] [[I can't feel anything.|doc2]]

The doctor seems even more angry. He actually turns away from you, looks at his computer screen. Pretends to click something then gets angry that it's taking so long. "I'm sorry to tell you this. It's not going to get better and it's happening to everyone. Things are moving apart. All of the objects in the world and the universe are moving further and further apart from each other. There has been a shift in the fundamental constants of the universe." He suddenly jumps, as though he's about to stand up, all his energy tensed into some action. Then he sits down again. [[What do you mean?|doc3]] [[That doesn't make any sense.|doc3]]

"It's more complicated than what I'm telling you. I don't fully understand it myself. We were only just briefed. They gathered all the doctors and medical practitioners from the district in a convention center. It was all put together at the last second. We knew it was something serious by how poorly organised it was." The doctor runs his hand through his hair and clenches a clump of it, he pulls at it whilst he speaks to you. "A man came on stage. He looked horrible. He must have smoked a thousand cigarettes a day since the day he was born. I could only see his image on a screen. The stage was too far away. He said physicists first noticed it a few years ago. A modification to some of the forces considered fundamental in nature. They thought ther was an issue with their instruments. Then they became excited that they had made a breakthrough. Then they realised what was happening." [[Things are moving apart?|doc4]] [[What has this got to do with me?|doc4]]

"As I've told you it's very complicated but everyone who has seen me for the last week has your symptoms. A lack of sensation in the finger tips, a sense your clothes don't fit right, a feeling of numbness, detachment. You can't touch anything anymore. The things you're trying to touch are further away from you. Everything is moving away from everything else. This is the easiest way to think of it. You're not the only one and the situation is deteriorating." [[Why haven't they told people? I don't understand.|doc5]] [[Shouldn't this have been on the news?|doc5]]

A buzzer goes off on the doctor's computer. Five harsh pulses, then silence. The doctor looks like he's about to pick the monitor off the desk and pull it over the top of his head. He leans towards you. "I'm sorry the buzzer means we're out of time. I could write you a prescription but most drugs no longer synthesize correctly and their effects are lessened or changed. It's a fundamental disruption to the material nature of reality. I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave." [[Leave the doctors.|street1]]

There is a queue to get into the doctor's surgery that you walk past as you exit the building. Out on the street the air is crisp. It is spring. Trees are beginning to grow new green leaves but as you look at them, you think it seems like the leaves are detaching from the branches, unfurling to escape them. A wind blows and the leaves jitter dangerously, faster than they should given the speed of the wind, like an animation playing at the wrong speed. [[Get away.|street2]] [[Look at the street.|street2]]

You put your hands in your pockets instinctually, even though they feel no different in there. You see someone walking unsteadily towards you, as though they're stepping on a mattress or a trampoline. They are carrying a huge suitcase. Their feet do not touch the ground and their clothes swim around them like seaweed. They stumble and fall without a sound, are jostled by the invisible force of the earth repulsing them and stumble back upright to continue. You think your feet might still be making contact with pavement. [[Keep walking.|street3]] [[Try to gather your thoughts.|street3]]

You go to the park near your house. It was an allotment that they closed due to poor yields. Now it is grown over with ivy and scrub. Flowers are bursting here and there, many different kinds. You have been told that wildflowers thrive in weak soil that is too low in nutrients to support grasses. You want to sit on a bench but there are teenagers there, they are climbing on the bench and jumping off. Each time they jump higher and higher and stop further and further from the ground. They are laughing hysterically. [[Watch the teenagers.|park1]] [[Look at the trees.|park1]]

Several trees around the teenagers have begun to move out of the earth. You can see their complex root systems above the broken up soil that they have pulled themselves from. Two of the teenagers are clutching at each other and trying to balance on the bench, which they cannot firmly stand on. They achieve some stability and count down from 3 before jumping but this time they jump so high they jump out of the park entirely. The reaction from them and the remaining teenagers is pure ecstasy. In a few moments they come rushing back in to reunite with their friends. [[Continue watching.|park2]] [[Pretend not to notice.|park2]]

The teenagers are frenetic with energy now. They redouble their efforts to climb on the bench, but the bench itself is now five or six feet off the ground. They pull themselves up to it by climbing on the detached trees nearby. You notice that some of their shoes have come off. Several of the teenagers have abandoned the bench and are climbing on the branches of the floating trees to try and get higher. They are massed in the orbits of the upper branches like unsteady birds. They count down together then jump into [[the sky]].

Some of the teenagers land relatively quickly. Others float up high and out of the park. There are one or two who don't seem to come down at all. They float further and further away, until they are miniscule outlines in the sky, and then disappear beyond your ability to see them. You try to remember the last thing you saw disappear into the distance like this. [[A ship.|ship]] [[A bird.|bird]]

You remember sitting on a bench at a harbour. A man near you was preparing a small boat for launch. His skin and hair were weatherbeaten but he seemed joyful as he loaded equipment onto his boat and attended to the sails and the rigging. Eventually he was ready to go. Neither of you had spoken whilst he prepared but as he got on the boat and cast off, he waved at you and you waved back. You watched the boat until it was a spec on the horizon, and then it was [[gone]].

You remember standing on a hill and seeing a hawk gliding on the thermals above a wheat field. It was so far away it looked like a child's drawing of a bird. A wavy w against the blue sky. Then it dipped its wings and banked away from you, the sunlight struck it from a different angle, and then it was [[gone]].

The End