Blog entry twenty one: Making amends

Making amends is very much the morning after the night before, when the consequences of Marta’s actions come home to roost. I misquote Genesis 1:1 in the opening passage (substituting world for Earth. as we are on another planet!).
Marta comments that the greyness she thought confined to her dreams has now penetrated everywhere; it has become actual, and has now invaded her waking hours! This is a reference (obviously) to the ‘…grey plain on which…[she]…walked forever…’ from Sleeping Beauty, and the imagery will probably be familiar to readers of the works of Philip K Dick.
The following day she observes, ‘…Now everything was sharp and painful…’ (in contrast to the peace she felt during her suicide attempt), ‘…[and] the world felt raw pitiless and unforgiving…’
I owe a debt here to the writers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, specifically the scene in Season six when Buffy tells Spike of the struggle she faces just to keep on living after being returned from Paradise. This is not to suggest that Marta’s actions were justified, or that she was necessarily bound for a better place, merely that she sought release from a life she found intolerable…
Our heroine is left to her own devices for a day and half after waking from her coma; Nurse Gee comes to see her but merely informs her that she has been sedated and must sleep, the nursemaid tending to her does not (and maybe cannot speak!). The implication is that Marta is being made to confront her actions (and perhaps repent!).
When people do finally come to see her her their reactions are very different…
Priya is angry, and the scene where she castigates her friend for her selfishness and her thoughtlessness (and ask her why she doesn’t want to live!), still makes me cry…
Nurse Gee is next; as befits a machine she is not judgemental or emotional, in fact she is impressed by Marta’s insight, perception and initiative in solving another piece of the puzzle that is the Children’s origins!.
This is not the reaction that Marta was expecting, but gives me as author the opportunity to provide more background and furnish explanations for what has transpired, by putting this in the mouths of the main characters…
Jorge is next, and he’s scared because he thinks he’s lost her! But when he realises that he hasn’t, that she does now want to live, then their relationship begins to return to familiar patterns and they begin to speculate; this time on the nature of the Alphanian intelligence. This again is a device for putting across what could be indigestible information in a natural way; they are scientists after all, and one of the main ways they relate is through science!
Finally Nurse Amber appears with the twins, and she reproves Marta for her selfishness and stupidity, reminding her (like Priya) that she is now a mother and has a responsibility to her children. As Marta ruefully observes,
‘…my conscience is machine, who’d have thought it…!’
When we reach the coda, time has passed and things have returned to normal; Priya is proposing that they have ceremony, a formal recognition of the unions between all the couples, and is seeking Marta’s support for this!
But the chapter ends on a darker note, setting up a cliffhanger for chapter 22…