Taking the Tube to the Outer Limits Read online

  Taking The Tube

  To

  The Outer Limits

  by

  Darren Humphries

  This book is copyright to Darren Humphries 2017

  This book is a work of fiction (which should be obvious to anyone reading it) and all characters, events, and names are fictitious. Any resemblance to real world places, companies, people or events is purely coincidental (and it would be one hell of a coincidence!).

  All the stunts in this book are carried out by specially trained fictional characters and should not be attempted at home (especially singing opera at giant crystalline spiders with hate in their hearts).

  All rights reserved. Please don’t reproduce or distribute any part of this book without the express permission of the author

  Credits

  My thanks, as ever, go to the fantastic foursome of unflinchingly honest error checkers, Kath, Patti, Geoff and Susan. They suffered more so that others could suffer less. Any remaining spelling mistakes and grammatical horrors are entirely of my own making.

  Table of Contents

  The Operation

  The Wall At The End Of The World

  Full Disclosure

  The Egg Mk II

  Lottery Ticket, Lottery Ticket

  The Girl Who Talked To Fire

  The Detective’s Genie

  Never Ever Gonna Fade Away

  Which Witch Is Which?

  There’s An App For That

  Ice, Ice, Baby

  There Is No Sanity Clause

  The Man From U.N.D.E.A.D and the Spiders From Mars

  The Wheel

  The World May Not Be Flat, But…

  Another Brick In The Wall

  The Book

  Afterword

  The Operation

  It was when the doctor said “Well, I suppose we could try upping the dose of your painkillers,” that George finally lost his patience.

  “Really?” he snapped irritably. “And you think that will help, do you?”

  Though the General Practitioner hadn’t been able to identify what ailed George once again, he did manage to pick up on his patient’s tone, “Yes, I think so.”

  “I only ask because it didn’t help the last three times that you upped the dose, or the two times that you moved me onto more powerful brands. I just think that it might be time to stop trying to deal with the symptoms and actually try to find out what’s causing them,” George ranted. “Of course, I didn’t go to medical school…”

  He had gone too far with the last part of the sentence, he knew, and had only just managed to stop himself from adding, “…but then I’m not sure you did either.”

  “Then perhaps you will just have to defer to my professional judgement,” the doctor suggested, with an edge to his own voice that let George know how much his words had annoyed the physician.

  “It’s just that a year in pain without any sort of a diagnosis seems excessive,” George complained, subsiding a little.

  “Oh, I hardly think it’s been that long,” the doctor demurred.

  “Then I suggest you take a look at my records,” George couldn’t stop himself from blurting out. He did manage to stop himself from saying. “The ones that took fifteen minutes of this twenty-minute consultation just to find on the computer. It’s been a year, almost exactly. I know because I’m the one who has had to suffer every minute of it.”

  The doctor paused, his hand poised over his prescription pad. The pen that he held was quite an expensive-looking one. “Do you want the pain medication or not?”

  “Yes, I want it,” George muttered. The fact was that he could no longer do without it. He tried to work through the pain, to extend the time between pills just a little bit each time, but it wasn’t possible. Recently, he had barely been able to get through the full interval between doses. With each passing hour, his nerves screamed at him and his fingers itched with the urge to snap the magic pills out of their foil-covered plastic trays and soothe away the pain. The perpetual pain. George didn’t think that he was psychologically addicted on the painkillers, but he was definitely physically hooked. Life without them would have been hell and he would have long ago been staring down the front end of a train on the main Birmingham to London railway line. “At the same time, can you get one of your nurses to look up the phone number for the BMA and GMC malpractice lines.”

  “What was that?” the doctor placed his scrubbed metal pen down on the desktop blotter with a very slow and deliberate motion.

  “I’m not sure whether it’s the British Medical Association or the General Medical Council that I should be putting a malpractice claim into,” George said with as much mock innocence as he could muster. It would not do for him to show how much pleasure it gave him to finally shock the uncaring old sod into paying attention to him. “It’s certainly one of them, possibly both. I’ve heard that there are a couple of other patients who are grumbling about the care that they’re getting here. Maybe I can rope them in with their complaints. That might speed up the investigations a bit. I’m sure that they’re not too disruptive and won’t have too much of an impact on your patient list. Not everyone will transfer to the new surgery they’re opening on the new estate.”

  “Are you threatening me?” the doctor asked with a genuine sense of wonder in his voice. He clearly had never encountered such a thing from a patient before.

  “Are you treating me?” George shot back and his tone left nobody in any doubt as to what he believed the answer to be.

  It was three months before George’s first appointment with the specialists at the hospital, but the letter informing him of the meeting must have been posted before he even left the GP’s surgery because it landed on the mat in his hallway the very next morning. Apparently, he had been referred for a ‘general diagnostic testing regime’ in the hope that they would be able to tell him what was wrong with him where the GP hadn’t been able, or couldn’t be bothered, to. He had to present himself in the main reception at 10:30am and he was not to eat anything, drink anything other than water or take any medication that morning prior to the consultation. George was a man who liked his cup of tea first thing and couldn’t get all the way to lunch on a bowl of cereal and a couple of pieces of toast unless he had a snack around 11, so not eating anything was going to be purgatory, but compared to the pain in his legs, right arm and back it was a sacrifice that he would gladly make.

  The hospital was a relatively new affair, built before the banks ruined the world’s economy and made everyone else pay for it. Several smaller local hospitals had been closed and combined into the huge, sprawling white complex that was a three-bus, 90-minute ride away from George’s house. He had been forced to give up driving almost six months ago when the pain became so intense that he could not afford to have an attack whilst he was behind the wheel of his beloved Volvo. That now sat in front of the garage under a heavy tarpaulin. His wife, Sharon, drove what was laughingly labelled a ‘Smart’ and his son was slowly working his way through every ridiculous boy racer attachment that could be added to a beat-up old Ford Focus. Both were working shifts that didn’t fit in with the appointment and since George had been let go from his job, and the wage that came with it, he didn’t like to disturb them or risk their jobs. His own firm had been as patient as they could be with him, but a year is a long time to pay someone who can’t actually do the job. Finally, they had been forced to replace him.

  “Until you’re fit again,” his boss had assured him. “We’ll hire you back the moment you’re cleared for work. Nobody can work those machines as well as you do.”

  They’d checked up on him a couple of times since he left – “Just to s
ee how you’re getting on” – but he hadn’t heard from them for a while now. Life goes on, for those that aren’t debilitated by constant, unexplained pain, anyway.

  He struggled down from the bus, even though it was one of those ‘kneeling’ buses that lowered itself down toward the level of the kerb when it stopped. The pain in his legs was particularly harsh today, though the throbbing in his chest was absent and his arm hurt only a little even though he hadn’t been able to take his morning cocktail of pills.

  “You all right there, mate?” the bus driver called with more concern than was usual for people in that profession.

  “As I can be,” George responded, thinking how obvious it must have been that a man stumbling off a bus in front of the area’s main hospital, almost doubled up in pain, was a long way from being ‘all right’.

  “Don’t worry; they’ll fix you up. They’re good in there, they are,” the driver assured him cheerily and the doors closed automatically in George’s face. The bus rose on its suspension with a smoothness and grace that George could not help but envy and then eased off toward the maternity wing.

  George was fairly sure that anyone headed there would be using a more rapid mode of transport than the H6 bus service.

  He turned and stoically plodded across the full car-park toward the main hospital entrance. At least he was saving on the parking fees. The hospital charged for all parking, including staff, and the prices were pretty steep to say the least. It would only take an hour before the parking fees exceeded the cost of George’s entire bus trip. George was certain that he was going to be staying for more than an hour.

  The doors of the main entrance slid smoothly open and the cool waft of air-conditioning prickled the perspiration on his skin. The day was not warm outside, but his body’s reaction to the pain meant that his forehead and forearms were slick. He probably looked as though he was about to pass out from a heart attack as he presented himself to the main desk. Fortunately, the receptionist did not raise her attention from the computer screen in order to look at him.

  “Name,” she demanded, the only sign that she had even noticed that he was there.

  “Wilson. George Wilson.”

  “Date of birth?”

  George was tempted to reply that yes, he had one of those, but instead gave the three numbers that marked out how old he was. He couldn’t really believe that it was so long ago now. He had to scroll down the pick lists on the computer to find his age bracket now and the date of birth lists seemed to go on forever before they came to his year.

  “You’re in with Dr Kaanange,” the receptionist told him.

  “Kaanange,” George repeated the unfamiliar name. Most of the names on the noticeboards all around the main waiting area would have been equally unfamiliar to him.

  “Diagnostics lab,” the receptionist clarified. “Down the long hallway, turn right and then left halfway down the east wing.”

  “Right,” George said, not at all sure that he had got that.

  “Name,” the receptionist moved on to the next person in the line, the word being the only sign that she had finished with him.

  George stepped away from the counter, looking vainly around for a sign to direct him to the ‘long hallway’. A kindly looking lady accompanying a teenager with a scowl and serious looking bandage across the left side of his head leaned over and advised in a low voice, “It’s down that way.”

  George didn’t get lost on his way to the diagnostics lab, much to his surprise. Once he had been guided to the entrance of the ‘long hallway’, everything leading off it was well and clearly signposted. The lab might not have been the most important, or most frequented, part of the hospital, but it shared equal space on the direction boards.

  When he reached the lab, he found another reception desk, but this one was much smaller, manned by only one person and she looked up as soon as he approached and smiled a welcome to him. “Mr Wilson, I’m hoping.”

  “Mr Wilson, I’m confirming,” he told her and she smiled a little wider.

  “You’re early. That’s good.”

  The truth was that he had no choice but to be early. The bus timetable had not been set up to suit George Wilson’s appointment schedule and so he had to choose to either be very early or very late. The speed at which he had walked from the bus to the lab (main reception stop included) had dealt with much of the extra time that the bus timetable had given him anyway.

  “And are you?” he enquired. “Early, I mean, not good.”

  “I’m good, but we’re not early,” she informed him brightly. “We’re about ten minutes behind, in fact.”

  Ten minutes behind in the NHS meant way ahead of expected schedules for anyone else, so George took the seat that the smiling receptionist indicated and settled in for the wait. Barely five minutes later, the receptionist coughed quietly to get his attention, “Mr Wilson? Dr Kaanange is ready for you. Examination room three.”

  Examination room three was a small room into which was jammed a large amount of medical equipment, making it appear even smaller. Doctor Kaanange, on the other hand, was a large man, whose presence behind the cluttered standard-issue NHS desk turned the room into the semblance of a cubicle. Even though he was sitting down, George could see that Kaanange was immense. He was almost as tall seated as George was standing and his shoulders were almost as wide as the surface of the desk. The white coat that he wore could have been used as a tent on the camping trips that George and his family had taken when they were younger and poorer. Of course, camping was no longer a cheap way to have a holiday.

  “Mr Wilson, come in and take a seat,” Kaanange welcomed him and the sound was like the prelude to an Alpine avalanche.

  George sat nervously in the room’s only other seat. In truth, there probably wasn’t room enough for a third. The idea of doing anything other than as the doctor requested could not be considered with Kaanange. George wouldn’t be using the BMA or GMC as threats in this room.

  “It seems that you have a mystery ailment that evades our colleagues in general practice,” Kaanange summarised without needing to refer to any notes or computer records. “You were referred by Doctor Cooper, is that right.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” George agreed, beginning to think that he could guess what a rabbit felt like when it saw the lights of an articulated lorry bearing down on it on a country road at night.

  “And you have had this pain for about a year?” the big man continued.

  “A little more,” George corrected. The time when he could use the phrase ‘almost exactly’ had passed.

  “Well, that seems a little excessive,” Kaanange suggested. “It manifests in the legs, right arm and chest, is that correct?”

  George merely nodded.

  “Let’s see what we can do to resolve this situation for you. I’m going to start with a few questions, mainly to eliminate the obvious causes. They might not seem to bear any relevance to your condition, but I can assure you that they are useful to me in deciding which tests you will have to undergo.”

  “Tests?” George asked, surprised.

  “Tests, yes,” Kaanange said, a white smile breaking his dark face. “That is usually how we determine such things. There will be blood tests and tissue samples and X-Rays and possibly a cat-scan.”

  “You’re going to take blood?” George wasn’t a big fan of needles.

  “And possibly some other bodily fluids,” Kaanange confirmed.

  Other bodily fluids?

  “Now, this pain – is it constant or intermittent; does it come and go?”

  “Well, it comes and goes,” George explained, “but it always seems to be there somewhere. If it’s not in the arm, then it’s the chest and if not either of those then it’s the legs. There are bad and… less bad days.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” the doctor said, without appearing to be sorry at all, but George did not get the feeling that he was being dismissed, as he had with Collins. “Where were you eighteen months
ago?”

  “I beg your pardon?” George asked, not quite understanding the question.

  “I presume that you had no history of this sort of thing,” Kaanange pronounced and George shook his head in agreement. “And I further assume that there is no relevant history of such things in your family. Even Cooper would have been able to discover that. This means that whatever is causing the pain came on eighteen months to a year ago.”

  “A little over,” George corrected him.

  “Yes, a little over. So, where did you go eighteen months to a little over a year ago that was different? What did you do? Who did you see? What did you eat?”

  George searched his memory for anything out of the ordinary that had happened in his life over the specified period and came up blank. It wasn’t that he hadn’t done things with his family, it was just that they had done the things that they had always done, the things that they had found they liked to do, the things that they could all do without descending into a three-way screaming battle.

  “I can see that nothing is coming to mind,” Kaanange guessed correctly. George expected that the expression on his face left little need for actual guesswork. “Let us take the possibilities one at a time. Where did you last holiday?”

  “Cornwall,” George remembered immediately. Sharon liked the little fishing villages and he liked the fact that he didn’t have to travel abroad or learn a foreign language.

  “Unlikely that you came into contact with any exotic pathogens there,” the doctor mused. He clearly hadn’t stayed at some of the more downmarket bed and breakfast places. “What about the time before that?”

  “Paris,” again that had been Sharon’s idea. She said that she wanted to see the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe and the Mona Lisa before the onset of the zombie apocalypse. He hadn’t understood the joke because watching The Walking Dead was something she did with Mark.

  “Ever been bitten by a monkey, a snake, a radioactive spider?” the doctor asked.