Doctor Who Wonderland Mark Chadbourn

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Tension was in the air, hard beneath the smoky aroma of grass that brought dreams of hope and peace and love.For a girl from the conservative suburbs of Dallas, San Francisco at that time was like another dimension, filled with alien beings, where every sight and sound and smell was beyond real.And Haight-Ashbury was the capital city of this weird world, six blocks of pure strangeness straddling the Golden Gate Park Panhandle.White Rabbits and MadHatters, all down there, in Wonderland.I loved it.Even with hindsight it's hard to comprehend the madness that was Haight-Ashbury.For that brief period it seemed like every oddball in America was either living there or on their way.In 1965 it had just 15,000 residents.By the summer of 1967, that figure had surged to 100,000, all crammed on top of each other, all searching for something.Barely a day went by without some protest rally or a local band playing a free concert in the Panhandle.And those local bands – Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Santana, the Quicksilver Messenger Service.Music never moved me again like it did at that time, in that place.There, innocence was important.The true enemy was cynicism, the one thing that held us back and kept all the repressive forces in power.Everyone did all they could to fight that, and for a while it looked like we were going to win.The Diggers championed a socialist utopia, handing out free meals to hundreds in Golden Gate Park; and when they weren't doing that they were urging local businesses to distribute their profits to the community.Timothy Leary pushed us all to expand our minds with LSD.Ken Kesey challenged authority at every turn with his Merry Pranksters.We had our own cafes, boutiques, newspaper, dancehalls, medical clinic, our own world, run by us, for us.Back home I was Jess – Jessica to my parents – Willamy, twenty-two years of age with nothing to mark the passing of years apart from a dream of something better.There I was Summer, a new name to mark my reinvention as a poet who could capture those transcendental energies as they transformed the world into a more wonderful place.It sounds so pretentious now: a poet.But that was how we were back then, when we still had belief, before it was all grubbed out of us by the mean spirits and black hearts, the businessmen and the politicians and the generals.On the road, Denny and I heard of what was happening in San Francisco with the hippies – though that name didn't really catch on until a month or so later.Like everyone else in America, we were slowly waking up to the fact that a new age was dawning, but unlike most of our parents' generation, we didn't feel threatened.Finally there were people like us, people who had dreams of that better world.There was no doubt in our minds: San Francisco was the place to be, with all that power rising up, ready to rush out across the country, across the world.We wanted to be a part of that; we had to be involved – it was a calling.Denny didn't need any convincing, though at first glance he wasn't really like all the others who were being drawn to the West Coast.He was a jock, dropped out of college, bummed around for a while until I hooked up with him, but I knew from the moment we met that his heart was in the right place.Denny Glass, boy wonder, the only hippie to have a crew cut.I'd been searching for a while, on the road since my folks split up.None of us ever got over what we saw that November afternoon in Dealey Plaza.But with Denny, everything felt right.When I gently suggested San Francisco, he came alive.Denny, a dream, with blue eyes and brown hair.'Two hearts,' he used to whisper.'Together, forever.'And I wake up crying.'Excuse me.I'm looking for this guy.' I thrust Denny's picture under another nose.It must have been the hundredth that morning and the snap was starting to look dog-eared and stained, but I tried to keep a smile on my face.'Oh, I'm sorry my dear, but I don't think we can help you.' This man returned my smile in a distracted way.I could see a gentleness behind his eyes, but he had barely glanced at the picture.He sounded English, and he was a real eccentric in his tall, stove-pipe hat, voluminous black frock coat, white shirt and tiny, spotted bow-tie.Anywhere else he would have looked more than a little weird, but in the Haight he fitted in perfectly.'His name's Denny Glass,' I persisted.'He's my boyfriend.He came down here a few weeks ago to find us a place to crash.He was supposed to wire me once he found somewhere, but.' The words trailed away; I didn't want to think about all the possibilities hanging in that emptiness.'Here, let me have a look.' This guy was a Brit too, kind of goodlooking and about my age, but his hair and his clothes were L7-square.He seemed friendly enough, though.'No, sorry.But then, we've only just arrived here, haven't we, Doctor?'I looked back to the man, but he didn't answer, and appeared to have lost interest in the conversation altogether.My irritation must have shown in my expression.'Oh, don't mind the Doctor.He's a sweetie really.He just gets a bit.distracted sometimes.' The girl who was with them was hip, with a minidress and long blonde hair.She was pretty.Another Brit; tourists, I guessed.The Doctor looked faintly embarrassed, while Ben gave a derisive snort.'Yeah, that's right, a real sweetie.' He handed the picture back to me.'Sorry, love.I hope you find your boyfriend.'I shrugged; situation normal.As the three strangers moved off into the flow, I held out Denny's photo for the next passer-by, a boy in a Big Brother and the Holding Company T-shirt.He was clutching something bundled in a torn, oil-stained denim jacket.There wasn't anything particularly out of the ordinary about him – early twenties, long hair, trimmed beard, glassy eyes like he was tripping – but I had the strangest feeling.He walked right past me and stopped.The Doctor and his two companions were about twenty feet away.I don't know if there was some psychic connection, but the Doctor stopped too.When he turned, he had this dark, concerned expression.'Can I help you?' he asked.The boy's glassy eyes were fixed hard on the Doctor.He spasmed, and then his left arm shook like he was sick.There was something in the air that gave me gooseflesh.He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, before slowly unwrapping the bundle.For some reason I couldn't explain, I really didn't want to see what he was carrying.I should have walked away; it probably would have been better for me on every front if I had.But I couldn't; I just stood there and watched as he peeled that jacket off in a creepy, slow-stoned way.It felt so dreamy and hypnotic it was like I was high myself.I couldn't hear any sound from the crowd, the street vendors hawking their comix and the Oracle, the kid playing guitar in the gutter; everything was dead, like we were in a bubble.The jacket arm came away.Silver flashed in the sun.The other arm fell away.What was I seeing? More silver, a metallic headpiece, black holes, like eyes, piercing a grey cloth-like face.The Doctor's face was grim.His companions looked horrified.All three of them like statues, uneasy.The jacket hit the sidewalk.Slowly the boy held up his burden: a head, hideous, silver, cold.It was like some robot from the Twilight Zone, but this one made me scared.'A Cyberman.' The Doctor's voice burst the bubble of silence and the world rushed in.The Doctor and his friends moved forward slowly, but I couldn't take my eyes off that mechanical thing.The boy raised it until it was shoulder-height and then it just burst apart.It wasn't like it exploded – no shards of metal, no sound – but like it broke up, became light, or oil, or something, and disappeared on the breeze.The Doctor was transfixed, but his companions rushed forward, and I ran up to the boy too, not believing what I saw yet knowing I had seen it.'What did you do?' I shouted at him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Pokrewne