Free Hallucinating by Stephen Palmer Page A

corridor of light. Then greyness. Gravity plumping him on a floor. A warmth near him. He is in a cell alongside a person.
    Chantal!
    She is looking at him. "So they got you too."
    "Man..." he murmurs, hugging her. "They got me, they got me."
    "They got me too."
    They hug some more. Nulight wants to be a child, wants protection from somebody. Chantal will do.
    He sobs, "Please tell me I'm hallucinating. Please. I don't want this to be real."
    "It's real, all right," Chantal replies.
    For some minutes they remain silent in the cell. Nulight glances around. It is spacious—no, huge, with a high roof; and everything is made of brushed metal. He imagines himself flailing around as the ship manoeuvres, flung around like a rat in a cage, which is what he is.
    "They done anything to you?" Nulight asks.
    "Not sure."
    Nulight continues, "You must've been out of it. Drugged, most likely. Ain't no other explanation—"
    "It is Einstein, isn't it?"
    "Einsten? What, number three?"
    Chantal's voice becomes urgent. "Time dilation. Whatever. If the aliens can hop from star to star, maybe galaxy to galaxy, then they can bend time, use wormholes, do whatever they like. Who are we to say? We're just animals to them. The zoo theory, ever heard of that? I'm a woman, Nulight, you're a man. Maybe they want us to mate, make babies for their zoo."
    Nulight is appalled. Of course he has heard of the zoo theory, but he never imagined in his worst nightmare that he would be one of the animals. With Chantal. It is just too bad to contemplate.
    "Stop bugging me," he mutters.
    Chantal proffers her hand. "Forget the past. Quits?"
    Nulight shrugs, but does not respond. Then he manages, "Maybe."
    "I was a pain in the neck to the aliens," Chantal muses. "I was investigating them, not as efficiently as you were, no, but hey... they grabbed you and me because we were the ones that got obsessed by them."
    "Uh-huh?"
    Chantal nods. "Don't you believe me?"
    "Nah."
    "It's why we were abducted, Nulight." She touches his right hand, and there is a sensation of mild electricity, like a 9 volt battery on the tongue.
    But suddenly Nulight is falling. The fireflies are back, sweet as ever, landing on his tongue like flakes of fruit-coated manna, sensorium overload, synasthesia. Is he falling or rising? He feels cider, tastes gold, hears apples.
    Mixer console in front of him. He hears the insistent thunk of a looped pulse, microtonal off-key auton, hissing white noise synthesizer wheezes, treated guitar breaks cut to shreds by a computer. Auton. Llangollen. He is back, and the band is all around him. Below him the audience are going mental; they think the abduction is part of the act. Nulight groans. This all goes back to The Orb trying to induce lightning over some Glasto fest, ELO with their spaceship, the Floyd. Whatever.
    "It's true!" he yells. "Don't you understand, it's true! It ain't no hallucination! It ain't funny any more and it ain't no hallucination."
    The gig is over. Rapturously he is received by the hangers-on, the groupies, the crazies, the whole tripping lot of them. But Zhaman and Partzephanaiah have snuck off somewhere, leaving nobody to protect him from his adoring fans.
    Nulight is surrounded by people and he is getting smothered. The roadies—hired meat—have already forgotten about him. Then a dude in a rocking chair barges his way through the throng, an oldster wearing a faded red T-shirt emblazoned with the legend Jerry's Strangely Apple Brew.
    It's Jerry Kranitz, thank Buddah. The psych cider supremo grabs him, as the rocking chair lifts a tad and forges a way through the screaming fans, who move back in response. Nulight is pulled through the throng, his body vibrating as he is crushed into the rocking chair engine, until the fans are left behind and there is the welcome sight of the cider tent up ahead. Into this haven they whizz.
    "Okay, we got a few moments," Jerry says. His American accent sounds odd, sure, but it is most welcome.
    "You