The Blackberry Walk

Chapter 9 Ahead, I saw the planet Mercury. I had always imagined some kind of rocky ball of a planet, like the Mercury I saw in my childhood book of planets. But the Mercury I imagined was not the one presented before me. Instead of some dull grey nugget of a planet, what I saw was an iridescent planet. Not iridescent in a sparkly way - there was still a dullness to its texture - but in a multi-coloured way, reflecting the breadth of the rainbow in through the train car window. The colours reminded me of a bismuth crystal I bought at a fair in my youth. Yes, it was as if the whole planet shone with oil-slicked colour, no colour easily pinned down. I held on to my seat, but my fear of the descent was needless. The train glided down gently into station, slowing, until it came to a final stop. ‘Mercury’ the sign read - although this train sign was one of those burgundy ‘hot dog’ style signs, not a modern National Rail sign. For how long had people been coming here? Since the ‘50s? Earlier? It didn’t take long, however, for such pleasant musing to be rudely interrupted. “Ah, sir, we have just arrived at Mercury.” That much I could see. “Sir, here is the parcel I mentioned, and a small map to go with it. Oh, and here sir is a telecommunicator, please use it if you have any issues.” I received the gifts. The parcel was heavy, far heavier than I had expected. Though I was curious as to the contents, I was hesitant to shake it should it be fragile; but judging by the density and weight, it was likely metal, I’d say. Then the map: this map felt ancient in the hands, the paper browned, despite being covered in some kind of plastic cling-filmy laminate which was a bit beyond beginning to peel off. And the telecommunicator. This device must’ve been high tech alien technology given that it could telecommunicate across planets without radio towers nor satellites, presumably. But holding it in the hand, it just felt like tat. Its aesthetic was stuck in the early noughties, coated in dark blue-coloured plastic with bright red, green, and yellow buttons for contrast. The device had very little weight to it too, and feeling its centre of gravity in the palm, you could tell the batteries were its heaviest part. “Thank you. But how do I operate this device?” “Aha, let me show you sir.” And with that, the conductor snatched the children’s walkie talkie from my hand and began tapping on the buttons with vigour. “See here sir, if you press these buttons,” at which point he tapped a sequence at such speed I couldn’t quite track, “you can call this train.” The conductor handed me the telecommunicator, and cupped his hand to his ear so as to hone his hearing - though he didn’t really have ears. Then, faintly, from the other end of the train, a phone could be heard ringing. He looked at me as if I should be impressed. “Could you show me that sequence of button presses again please.” Slightly deflated from my lack of enthusiasm, the conductor wrote the sequence out on a chit of paper from his EMR-branded notebook. This sequence, I could never have memorised. So long a sequence it was that the chit of paper couldn’t quite fit the sequence comfortably, with last few inputs squished into the corner of the paper, hardly readable. “Are you ready to set off then?” he said looking into the distance, a little glazed over. I looked at him slightly forlornly. “Wait a moment, I haven’t figured out where I’m going yet.” Sensing the impatience on his brow, I carefully unfurled the map and scanned the page. There was an ‘X’ marking what I presumed to be Miss Böhme’s house deep in a woodland, far from where the station was marked. There was also a compass in the bottom corner. “Look here,” the conductor said, pointing his shadowy thumb to the compass, “the sun always points North here on Mercury, so you’ll have no problem finding you bearings, sir.” “So I’m trying to reach the ‘X’ here, is that right?” He looked at me as though I were an idiot. “Yes, sir.” “And I have to traverse this woodland?” “Yes sir,” the conductor said in a monotone disinterested voice. “Is there anything I should know about this planet, anything to watch out for?” “No, not much sir. Just don’t believe every sign you see.” The conductor had begun tapping his foot. These questions must’ve bored him. The man was on the clock, I suppose; don’t we all want a break? “And this Miss Böhme, what’s she like?” “She’s a very lovely lady, now will you make your way sir,” the conductor said shooing me along. I placed the parcel, the map, and the telecommunicator in my work backpack, and, with a sigh, made my way to the car door. I looked back to the conductor, but he had already reclined into a first class chair, his hat dipped down just covering his eyes. I steeled my resolve. I was scared, I must confess. It may have already been my second extra-terrestrial planet, but I was venturing into the unknown once more, and my nine-to-five-trained constitution was struggling to take this much novelty. Nevertheless, in spite of my nerves, I couldn’t stop smiling. Then, inhaling, I pressed the button to open the train car doors, unsure what kind of atmosphere to expect. Chapter 10 The Mercurial air was warm and barmy; sharp, with a slight metallic taste. This wasn’t too unsettling. Though what was unsettling - and not expected by virtue of the train’s tinted windows - was the dazzling brightness of the planet’s surface, with each coloured and silvered surface reflected the sun’s rays. The map instructed me to go North, which, due to the sun always shining from the North, seemed a very tricky prospect. I re-entered the train which now looked as dark as a cave, and called out for the conductor. No response. And once my eyes adjusted, I couldn’t see him either. “Do you have a pair of sunglasses I could borrow?” I hollered out through the train. Again, no response. I walked down the aisle to where the conductor was sitting, and there, lying on the table, was a pair of cheap-looking sunglasses sitting atop a note. The note read, “You’ll need these too sir, please take them.” I chuckled to myself. He couldn’t even wait behind for a moment? “What a twit,” I said under my breath with a soft smile. Now donning my new sunglasses, I took a step out onto the surface of Mercury. There was a slight tinny rattle with each step, as if I were walking along a metal walkway. It felt a little hollow, this planet. Here, gravity wasn’t so much an issue, and I wasn’t leaping with each step like on the Moon. I looked up to the horizon and saw a world not unlike our own, only one made of metal. There were metal trees, metal bushes, and metal flowers; though many of these looked quite different to our own. The trees were like inverted bismuth oxide crystals, upside-down metal pyramids gleaming in technicolour; the bushes were bundles of coarse steel wool; and the flowers looked a bit artichoke-y, like a floret found on a Gothic church - some coloured with bismuth oxide sheen, others copper-y, and some with a greenish look. The only noticeable difference was the absence of grass. The ground was flat as can be, like plate steel. Looking at the beautiful flatness of the Mercurial surface, I crouched down to feel its smoothness on my fingertips. But the moment I touched the floor, I got an almighty static shock. The zap tingled all the way down my spine, from my Crown Chakra to my Base, and at once I felt wide awake; such a zap could wake the dead. It could at the very least wake Frankenstein’s Monster. Breathing hard recovering from the shock, I made my way back to my feet, taking special care not to touch the ground as Igot up. I looked back towards the train, remembering the conductor lazing around, tutted, and continued walking on, the map my guide. The bismuth trees got denser, some larger, some smaller, forming a kind of woodland of these trees nestled together. There was a light breeze too, and I heard the edges of the tree tops clank together, making a sound somewhere half-way between a wind chime and a church bell. And to my shock, fluttering between the tree tops, were these small metal birds. These steel birds, they chirped much like a bird - albeit with a thinner, tinnier sound - and they flapped back and forth too with tin foil-looking wings. And then, casting my eyes below, there were rodent-looking creatures too. Slinking around the woodland floor, scurrying from steel wool bush to steel wool bush, were these steel rodents - they couldn’t have been more than a couple inches long - and they made odd little electronic squeaks, squeaks akin to a dial-up modem. I confess, though the route was relatively harmless, the only fauna being quite small and rather charming, there were perils to this route. Perils, at least, for us carbon-based folk. Each tree had many a sharp edge, and so too did each bush. Brushing past a thistle bush in the Lake District will leave a couple grazes at most, and you can walk through them not paying them too much mind; this is not so when the thistles are a bound knot of electric guitar strings ready to lacerate you. Care must be taken, on these paths. Even the rodent-y creatures, with their slinky-looking torsos: if one of those came up to me and nipped me on the leg, it wouldn’t have left a little bite mark, but instead have left wounds akin to those left by the Spanish Inquisition. I proceeded on, taking care as I walked. Thus far, the terrain had been flat; and thank goodness for the fact, for my shoes weren’t cut out for ascending a sloped steel incline. But then I came upon not an incline or a hill, but rather a cliff face ahead of me to my left. From this cliff face poured a torrent of quicksilver, falling down much like a waterfall; but instead of foam and spray forming at the base where the waterfall pooled, there was this gloop of mercury bubbling up, as if some awful monster were about to emerge. A river proceeded from the waterfall, flowing away from me North, a river of fast moving quicksilver. Now, I know mercury is poisonous, and the effects of mercury poisoning are ruinous, but such a sight was too much to pass up. I got closer to the waterfall, close enough to the point where some unconscious alarm in me said, “Stop. No further.” And to that wise daemon I listened, not wanting to push my luck. But what a glorious sight: the quicksilver glistened in the high noon sun, splashing to the pool below with what sounded like thunderous applause. Mercury is like no other metal. Liquid at room temperature, it’s a kind of paradox; a kind of metal which shouldn’t be. And though we had handled some at school, and though I had watched YouTube videos of people playing around with the runny steel, this was unlike all of that. I began to follow the map further North, keeping to the river. I kept an eye out to the river surface to see any kinds of movement, but alas there were none. Perhaps the mercury is too corrosive an environment for ‘aquatic’ (or maybe merquatic?) life to sustain - that’s true, how did any of this life sustain themselves? Are they robots, those birds and rodents I saw earlier, powered perhaps by the static electricity which shocked me? Or are they some kind of silicon-based life-form, not in a computer sense, but in a more biological sense, a life-form based on silicone chains rather than carbon chains; or some kind of metal based life-form beyond my cursory pop-science knowledge? The theories churned in my head, and as I wondered, I came upon a sign. The sign was a stick of steel rebar planted into the ground with a steel panel welded to its top; the writing of the sign looked gloopy as if written in liquid mercury. “Follow the river for Miss Böhme’s house ahead,” it read. I consulted my map. Unfurling its wispy pages, I saw the waterfall marked by an abstract symbol, and saw my destination marked ahead in the direction of the river past the waterfall. The map did however give me a different path, one that went back through the forest winding around in a not-so-direct route. “Beware of the signs my arse,” I said aloud. And I decided to stick to the river path in the hopes of spotting any merquatic life. I walked onwards down the quicksilver river. And oh how wrong was I.