The World Without Pain and Death

By Stuart Hopen

The saga of the Twilight Patrol continues — equal parts H.P. Lovecraft and G-8 and His Battle Aces.

The dead reappear all over Europe. Men survive fatal wounds. Judgement Day seem to have arrived, but no supernatural or spiritual forces are at work. The world is being subjugated by an entirely rational and scientific phenomenon — A perfect pain killer. A cure for most illnesses and injuries.

The Aesculapius Pact zealously believes life should be preserved — at any cost. They heal the wounded and drive away their pain, so they may take up arms again and be wounded again, so they may heal again. All should live so that all may fight. Eventually, The Pact’s dominance of medicine and drugs will allow them to control both sides while the Great War goes on forever!

To the world at large, The Twilight Patrol is a high-flying band of scrappy patriots, ever alert for trouble and always willing to lend a hand. To the sinister foes lurking behind the Axis horizon, they are a force to be reckoned with in the onslaught against freedom. To their fans, The Twilight Patrol is the bravest assortment of adventurers ever brought together to confront the dark forces threatening the mortal realm.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bold Venture Press
• Release date: Sep 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463502600

Book preview

The Twilight Patrol

#6: The World Without Pain and Death

Stuart Hopen

Bold Venture Press

Copyright Info

Copyright © 2019 Stuart Hopen. All Rights Reserved.

The Twilight Patrol TM & © 2019 Stuart Hopen. All Rights Reserved.

Bold Venture Press edition April 2019

Electronic Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For Gina

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

The Trappings of Naught

The World Without Pain and Death

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

The Editor’s Cockpit

About the Author

About the Publisher

The Trappings of Naught

A tale of Hollister Congrieve

by Stuart Hopen

In the last issue of the Twilight Patrol — the October, 1935 edition, titled The City Annihilator (which you probably didn’t get to read because distribution has been lousy, and sales could qualify as non-existent) — the universe was disappearing around Hollister Congrieve. It’s a long and complicated story. For the sake of simplicity, let’s just say he’s caught between being and nothingness and he’s trying to get back home.

One by one, the lamps of the universe were being extinguished.

In the cockpit of his Spad, Hollister Congrieve raced through a nether realm, a zone teetering on the cusp between the beginning and end of time. He was flying as fast he could, trying to escape the emptying remnants of the hidden mystical cities known collectively as D’say-Wardsany. Existence itself seemed to be disappearing around him, like a carnival shutting down its attractions, collapsing its tents, and pulling its stakes from the impaled ground, withdrawing to a secret place behind the sunset. The incandescent pallet of the full spectrum shimmered away into soft and dreary fogginess. The vibrancy was fading.

The avenues that could lead him back to comprehension were becoming incomprehensible. His scalp began to prickle with nervous desperation.

He could still make out faintly glowing highlights that etched the shape of his Spad upon a black backdrop. He was tempted to give way to despair, or surrender to the ultimate inescapability of his plight, for the ongoing transformation of his very senses was overwhelming — but he was determined to escape the omnipresent shadows, to return to the realm of real.

There was still yet a hint of light mingled with non-light. It flickered but a moment. Then all light was gone.

Implacable endless skies stretched in all direction. He tested the space, trying to move up or down, or turn. All positions seemed the same. Everything was dark, silent, and ultimately empty.

Congrieve felt the circle of padding that defined his enclosure, then groped around the interior of his cockpit. He swiveled the stick around between his knees. He ran his fingers over the dials. The rest of the universe seemed to have disappeared entirely. Why had the plane retained its shape and apparent substance after the mystic cities were gone? Why did his clothes still cover his skin? What would happen if he climbed from his seat and leaped into the void? He struck himself to see how it would feel. He pounded his fists upon the cockpit padding.

At the top of his lungs, he screamed into the night, You think you’re beautiful, don’t you? You think I’m going to fall for you… But I’m not. Hell, no. I’m… not… He didn’t even know whom, or what, he was screaming at. Some stranger. Some personified nothingness that permeated the void.

Himself?

All at once he lost any sense of how much time had passed since he started shouting. How long had he been in the utter darkness? There was nothing to mark the passage of time but the simple progression of word after word in his own mind. Word after word. Word after word after word. The phrase was becoming stuck in his head. Word after word after word… He was repeating himself. Word after word… those three words complete in their self-contained, fully self-referential meaning, at home in the void and needing nothing beyond itself, the words word after word after word, whether the phrase was stated once or endlessly repeated as linguistic wallpaper for the future. The repetition of the phrase ceased to mark the passage of time.

It was like being trapped in a deep sleep, trying to rouse from a dream. Limbs paralyzed. Nerve impulses drained of electricity. For all he knew, he had actually dozed off. Maybe he was still asleep, though he’d never had a dream so devoid of sensation.

Perhaps he had actually died…

He would not give into the lazy solution of utter despair. Nor would he be seduced by the beckoning nothingness.

Word after word after word afterward, afterward, afterward…

Afterward.

He screamed again, a long torrent of dissociated words, anything—anything—anything at all to avoid falling into a pattern. Anything… nothing… nothing at all.

Congrieve could no longer feel the wind blowing across his face. He wasn’t even sure he was still breathing. In the emptiness, he wondered if he had somehow reverted to a pre-birth form of respiration.

Nothing out there at all. Nothing. Nothing as all. The space before him presented a vision so blank and pristine, it felt as if he could let his thoughts flow into it. He could write upon that slate any content that might content him. But with that proposition came an acute awareness of the contents of his own mind, set against an unopposing opacity.

The contents of his own mind.

He could be contented with that alone—the isolated contents of his mind— he thought, until the thought occurred to him— so much of those contents remained inaccessible, alleyways cloaked in shadow, invisible, unreachable, there, but not there. He hadn’t realized how much of himself lay beyond his own comprehension until now—until this state in which his senses had ceased to distract him. Could he be contented to have only thoughts based on memories? Could he be contented to weave dreams from what he already knew? Could he accept the fact he would never have anything else? The inchoate, unpredictable, polluted and poisonous contents of his own mind. A future based entirely on the past.

Ocean of memories. Brine of emotion. Tides of impulse. Whipped to a tempest.

Because the rest of the universe had gone AWOL, his battle against despair had turned into a fight against himself. He was churning his own regurgitated thoughts.

Now and then he was experiencing panic, experiencing the experience of now and then, such as they were in this place.

He thought he could see again the delicate tracery of the outline of his plane, dim glowing highlights, which seemed to alternate between lingering and fading. He thought there was light coming from somewhere. When the light faded, it gave way to the deepest kind of darkness, as if a glowing coal had abruptly reverted to anthracite buried in a place where light had never been.

And when the faint glow returned, he couldn’t tell if there were some actual embers, remnants of the universe, still illuminated within the void outside, or if what he thought he was seeing was nothing more than dimming memories of the last thing he had seen. Distinguishing what was in his mind from what was beyond the perimeters of the plane was becoming impossible. Perhaps the plane itself was only a memory. The nothingness outside was becoming a vacuum sucking his thoughts into it. His self, the permeable membrane separating the interior from the exterior, felt as if it were being punctured.

I will not surrender to you, he screamed, at the void, at himself.

Congrieve remembered what Wootin had said about the actual nature of the realm of D’Say-Wardsany. He’d said that it wasn’t the same as the world we know. It wasn’t made of atoms and molecules. And it wasn’t a dream either. It was sort of an ether made of primal elements that in their purest form could turn into atoms or pure dreams and ideas. It was the stuff of information. In such a medium, what had Congrieve become?

His consciousness — the permeable membrane that separated the interior from the exterior. He felt like a window pane in a storm — his personal identity buckling between the pressure building within a shelter and the pressure dropping in the world outside. The only way to keep his consciousness from bursting was to find a way to strike a balance between the nothingness outside and the pool of memories and experiences within. To let the emptiness seep in without his becoming empty; to let the pool seep out without overwhelming its boundaries.

How could Congrieve strike such a balance? He was trying to understand that which lay outside himself. First, he considered his craft. Was the plane the one he’d flown into this realm, or was it the duplicate Spad constructed in the City of Science? What was this craft that held him, that surrounded him? Perhaps it wasn’t a real plane at all, but rather a dream of one, or a memory of one, or the naked idea of one.

He explored the depths of the cockpit— last vestige of his tangible universe.

He discovered a pack of Lucky Strikes. Or maybe they were Pall Malls or Egyptian Deities. Carefully, he peeled back the foil and extracted one of the cigarettes. He had several books of matches scattered through the pockets of his flight jacket. He brought the cigarette to his lips. He couldn’t see it, but it felt real enough. The tobacco smelled rich and vital.

The darkness imbued everything with qualities of nothingness, but he felt himself aware within the nothingness. He might as well be one of the beautiful, if deserted, cities of D’say-Wardsany, and his craft might as well be a vehicle in which he could explore. In many ways, the utter vacuum was utterly liberating. Perhaps he could be the spark to set the void ablaze with being. A mad thought—and blasphemous— came to him. Let there be light. He erupted with sardonic laughter.

He struck a match. The flame and amber glow was one of the most glorious sights he had ever beheld.

Congrieve pulled deep on the cigarette, and the pungent flow of smoke into his lungs felt very real. He sat in his cockpit, contemplating the ember until it drew close and blisteringly hot to his lips and then went dark.

He lit another cigarette. He considered his hands in the act of creating light.

A knife was tucked deep within the cockpit’s recesses. He wasn’t sure where the knife was exactly, and he had to grope for it, but he had plenty of time to hunt. He gashed himself when he found the knife. He probably needed stitches. The bite of the knife was somehow reassuring with its proof of a reality greater than untethered ideas. He welcomed the pain and slow dribbling blood as a diversion from incessant thoughts. At first he considered the knife absolute proof he was in his original craft, and not the duplicate. But then he realized the scientists who replicated the plane might have replicated the knife as well.

With the knife, he cut strips from his shirt and bound his wound. He lit a few strips and tossed them into the void. Some fell, some rose, some drifted away. They surrounded him with points of light. He felt as if he were constructing constellations. He scanned the darkness for a glimmer of something beyond the flaming strips of cloth, some hint of solidity, some break in the bleakness suggesting an exit route.

And there it was, before him. The burning points of light had aligned to form the image of the constellation of Cassiopeia. The image floated on the void, an ‘M’ or a ‘W’ shape that was supposed to represent a mythical queen chained to her throne as she circled the pole star, sometimes upside down.

He looked beyond the constellation, the mythical queen damned for her vanity, and beheld the seductive power and beauty of the void. The beckoning maw. The desire to be swallowed by the emptiness. The desire to fill the emptiness with his substance.

Cassiopeia.

What did this shape mean? Was it merely an improbable coincidence? A phantom of his own mind? Or was it a message from an outer consciousness within the void?

He again resolved to escape this nether place. And yet he feared that he had become the nether place.

He cut a long swath of canvas from the side of his plane. As he pulled the canvas away, the flaming strips began to pulse brighter against the darkness.

Had the form misled him? Was he mistaken in thinking the craft presented a means to navigate the realm? Perhaps it was an anchor, holding him in place, imprisoning him in the void.

He began to frantically attack the side of his own plane, tearing apart the canvas, desperate need to reveal the frame, as if he were searching for some secreted item as he had searched the darkened cockpit for the knife. But now what he was searching for was the rest of the universe.

As he tore the plane apart, the surrounding darkness gradually turned azure. He suddenly found himself in the real sky, a blue firmament filled with clouds as real as the cigarette and pungent smoke and burning strips, as if he had awoken from a dream.

As the blueness of the sky continued to unfold, he surmised he had been correct—the plane itself had pinned him within the void, and he was being released as the plane was falling apart.

He found himself flying a crippled plane—all the damage he had done himself. The rents and scorn he’d inflicted left him plodding through gutters of gravity and turbulence.

At once he was surrounded by fighter planes.

The reality of battle took him completely by surprise, though he should have expected violence—if nothing else the violence of anything tangible at all after so much nothing. But he surely wasn’t prepared for this—a steady onslaught of tracers and lead, ripping apart what was left of his craft.

Bullets were lancing through his body.

Pain, which he had welcomed before, was no longer welcome. His nerves flooded with agony. Wheezing breath was slicing through his windpipe. Perhaps he had taken a bullet in the neck. His inner contents were volcanically erupting from the places they belonged. He felt the blood and bile intermingling, overflowing, punishing him everywhere.

He was going into shock, he knew it.

The void, whose wanton invitations he had stubbornly spurned, seemed not so unattractive after all. He had been so persistently and doggedly determined to avoid the void. If only he could find the void again. Ah, was that her?

His terrible wounds, his shaking quivering helpless flesh, his body wracked with pain and degradation, his agony, his total and complete agony—perhaps that’s what been happening all along. A battle that slipped from his consciousness in the aftermath of wounds that would certainly prove fatal. Life was dribbling away, within and without.

One by one, the lamps of the universe were being extinguished. Wasn’t that the way this had begun? He was dying. Perhaps that was what had been happening from the very beginning. He was being murdered. He was dying, and little else mattered. Surely not the hidden cities of D’say-Wardsany, which had seemed vaguely unreal and disorienting while he was there, but now they seemed neither more nor less real than anything else in his soon to end life. Perhaps that’s what this entire experience had been all along.

Dying and going into shock.

Surely that made more sense than believing he had freed himself from the illusion of the void by stripping away the illusion of his plane… dying and going into shock… But if he was genuinely dying and in horrible agony, maybe it made more sense to find a way to shed those illusions and… Do what? Find a way to penetrate the ugly reality of pain and bodily violence that might be an illusion so as to return to the void… to return to the safety of nonbeing?

He was falling; the billows from his burning plane thinned to smoky banners in the winds, and then the sky ahead turned opaque with flame.

The wounded Spad hit the ground.

The World Without Pain and Death

Stuart Hopen

The fate of a plague-ridden world hangs in the balance atop gravity defying islands where the air is thick with mercurial mists that pass through solid matter and worse. The air is infused with the world’s most potent narcotic, and the landscape is fraught with gigantic plants and flying apes eat their prey alive without them feeling a thing!

Chapter 1

The Order

May 1, 1918

Brought to a secret meeting, Orville Wootin sat in a tent on the outskirts of a French battlefield. Colonel Ralph Van Deman, the commander of the recently formed Military Information Division, spoke with grand oratorical flourishes, as if he were addressing a judge or jury.

"The voice of the doctor rings across the wounded ground. It isn’t the consoling voice that finds stories written in pain and offers explanations. Rather it is the voice that issues orders, demanding that we heal; the voice that