Awake at a Different time

A life in the movies

Chapter Six.

After what seemed like long moments of uncomfortable silence, where there was me trying to digest all I have heard so far and Mum on the other hand doing whatever it is that she is doing in her head, she finally decides to break the frosty ice.

“I’m not trying to guilt you into thinking it’s ok that I lied to you, I am just trying to make you understand that it wasn’t easy for us to tell you. We couldn’t even quit our jobs, we had to be fired if we wanted to leave, and trust me, getting fired was the last thing you want from them.”

Oooouuu there are levels to this. I think I could even manage to feel impressed with the whole setup if I wasn’t so hell bent on staying pissed at my parents, but more so at Mum since she is the only one here to feel the heat.

I had to at least admit to myself that it was super cool that my parents worked for a mysterious organization at one point.

“Now back to the story, the explosion happened one week after your surgery.”

The only reason I wasn’t there or rather dead right now is because I was at the hospital, by your side.”

“I had taken time off work to take care of you and nurse you back to life, even though your case wasn’t looking good on paper. I was even asked to sign papers authorizing your move to the medical research institute in the facility, but at that time, I was still toiling with the idea and was buying my time really slowly before making any drastic decision.”

“Why didn’t you want me at your institute? you work there? and from what you say they are good”

“Honestly first of all, I kept thinking that you would wake up in a few days, and that the whole thing would be unnecessary. Then there was the fear of what would happen to you if I took you there. For one thing, it was a research institute, and I knew what they did to patient in search of a quick solution or a long term relieve to their problems. I just didn’t think I could handle having you poked and probed with needles and other things.”

Fair enough for me. I think Mum just added another point to her cool factor scale. I’m not letting her know that, I’m going to milk this moment for as long as I can. I don’t see the point of doing that right now, but I’m not one to dwell in the moments, I have always been one to think of long term results. So I will wait.

“ The explosion took most of the facility to the ground, and the entire town felt it. They didn’t just feel it, it shook the entire city. At the hospital where we were, the ground floor and the first two stories sank into the ground, and we were all the way over at the other side of town. About a hundred people died at the hospital alone, now add that to over five hundred staff members that worked at the facility, and the unknowns around and in the city. It was a crazy few minutes. But apparently those first fifteen minutes were just the blissful moments and at that time, we still had electricity.”

“ After the first wave, we thought we were extremely lucky to be alive. That was when more news of the facility and details of the nuclear weapon project became public knowledge. People joked about how we were unfortunately lucky, we flopped at something extremely dangerous, and the damage done wasn’t even to be compared to what was meant to happen because we were God’s people and and soon after, every one who survived proceeded to try to put the pieces of their life together. They had no idea what was coming, but we the staffs had an idea, and we had to run, but no where was safe.”

“A day before the explosion, one of the staff working at the nuclear plant sent out an emergency email to everyone that worked in the facility, back then I was so preoccupied with your health that I didn’t really have the attention span enough to understand what the mail really meant. It was after the explosion, with some of my colleagues calling to ask me where I would be running to or that they were leaving, that it occurred to me to check it again, and that was probably the smartest thing I did.”

“In the email, one of the engineer I’m guessing that was what he was, identified himself as Dr. P.C Ibe claimed that they were being pressure to give results by the government. He warned that as he was sending out the mail, his team was about to accelerate their testing program on the demands of the government. He claimed that he had tried to explain to the so called officials about the dire consequences of this irresponsible demand, but the only made him seem stupid.”

“He went on to explain some scientific mambo jumbo, but I’m a medical doctor and in no way a scientist, so most of it I didn’t understand. But I did get from the short explanation that they were going to introduce some kind of element that would act as a hydrogen magnet. Naturally Hydrogen bombs are the most dangerous nuclear weapons ever discovered, so once I read about hydrogen attractors in a bomb, I had no idea what the formula he wrote meant, but I became uneasy”

“ I knew for a fact that we didn’t have the resources to competently carry out the required research for it. I also knew that the facility wouldn’t want to venture into it because it was way too dangerous for everyone. They wanted a world with harmony and peace, and creating a hydrogen bomb wasn’t exactly ideal. I still believe that the only reason they allowed us to even start the nuclear weapon charade was because they expected us not to go very far with it. They expected us to give up at the very beginning due to lack of resources and information which they conveniently withheld from the facility in Africa.”

“They withheld information, and that challenged our brightest minds. They wanted to prove that Africa was fully capable of handling its own business, and it would have been an amazing fit to achieve, if our government didn’t have to put their hands in a pocket that wasn’t theirs in the first place.”

Mum finished this last part with so much contempt that I felt bad for whoever she was referring to, which invariably happens to be our national leaders. It’s funny how all I wanted to find out was how I ended up in a tree house , but I’m here intrigued about a story of an experiment that went terribly wrong.

“ can we go back to the email that saved us?” I say in a squeaky voice because if care isn’t taken, I know Mum would go off the rail in a rant about how the government was a mess and the cause of all our lives problems. I might have been gone for a year, but I still know the things she is passionate about.

Mum gives me a knowing smile, and with a swift hand movement, she pushes me away from her chest and ties her hair up into a bun.

Her hair was yet another thing I hadn’t paid attention to. Of course she had no form of extension, but her hair has always been long. It was incredibly stubborn to handle when it wasn’t braided, but Mum always preferred to just have her hair styled and packed than braided. She claimed she had a tender scalp that couldn’t deal with the pain that came from braiding her coarse hair, but I know she just hated the whole idea of sitting still for hours.

Her hair is probably one of the few things that she didn’t pass on to me. Mine were softer and less nappy. It was the kind of hair you would say had no volume, but it was long like mum’s. I got the hair texture from my dad’s side, and the good thing about it was that I never had to worry about dandruff. While Mum had to be on the lookout for the latest version of shampoo and hair treatment that claimed to eliminate dandruff completely, I just had to wash my hair and I was good to go.

“So back to the Hydrogen attractors, the physicist wrote that the theory of the Hydrogen attractors for an explosive was still one that wasn’t even close to being tested. He was skeptical about its result being the desired outcome that was wanted, but he was sure of one thing. That due to flexibility of the hydrogen bonds, and it’s ability to constantly have an affinity for weaker bonds, it’s reaction once activated would be continuous and probably unstoppable til it has exhausted it energy”

At this point all I could offer as calmly as I could was the question “. And they still wanted him to use something this unstable?” “ and he agreed?”

I was struck with total disbelief at some people’s emptiness. Not the doctor to be clear.

“Well they threatened his family. He had no choice. He didn’t know how much damage was going to be done. He finally wrote that he sent me the mail because the hydrogen magnet thesis they were about to make use of was by Professor Madu and he thinks they had something to do with his death”

“Wait Professor Madu is....is, wait he meant Dad didn’t he ?”

And for the second time since I woke up, I feel actual shock waves run through my entire body right before I pass out.