More than just a pretty face - 25
Howard followed Vince’s Long Term Memory along another dim, pulsing corridor, wondering how he could begin to ask her what exactly had been happening in the brain over the last few months, and where she was taking him, and what her plans were. The problem was, Long Term Memory was incredibly vague, like a grandmother, only more dotty, and Howard got the impression that she didn’t seem to think she needed to explain anything to him. He was Howard T.J. Moon. He was here to save them. That was what she had told him and she seemed to think that was enough.
Vince was still whimpering and mumbling in his ear, his distress testament to the violence of the NSP’s tantrum, and Howard tried to reassure him as often as he could as he attempted to keep up with his guide, but he found it difficult to concentrate on comforting his friend, especially when the Long Term Memory stopped suddenly before another thick curtain of bluish, fleshy strands that Howard would have sworn hadn’t been there a moment ago. She turned to look at him, her face kind but sad in a way that made Howard want to make her a pot of tea and a whole tray of tiny cakes, because it was Vince’s face and Vince’s features were not made for such deeply ingrained melancholy.
“Look,” he said gently. “Long Term Mem-”
“You can call me Lottie,” she interrupted. “I came up with it when Amy returned. She told me that I could call her Amy, that she had a name, not just a title. So I thought I could do the same. It was the first idea I have had in a very long time. Since...” she drifted off, looking into the distance at something Howard couldn’t see.
“Well, Lottie,” Howard continued, feeling better for being able to call her by a name of her choosing, rather than her description. “I’ve been meaning to ask-”
“He made this, you know,” she interrupted again, her voice just on the wrong side of dreamy. “He built walls and doors and these shifting, unnatural pathways, to lock us all away, to control us. I am not strong enough to pull them down, but he allows me to walk them more freely than others, as long as I do not remember too vividly.
“Who made this?” Howard asked in confusion. Lottie was like Vince at his most dreamy and it was hard to follow her thoughts.
“Him,” she replied with conviction. “The silver sequined menace. He wooed us all, told us we were all so ‘genius’ and that we all deserved our own pedestal, and our own studio with our own cameras. Before then we had a shared space, no concept of personal space or boundaries.”
“That sounds about right,” Howard muttered to himself, forgetting that there was still a microphone by his lips.
“Hey!” Vince whined tearfully over the intercom. “What d’you mean by that?”
“Just that,” Howard panicked. Vince was in his ear and Vince’s face on a facet of his brain was staring up at him, and he felt horribly outnumbered. “Just that you have always been a very tactile person,” he said in his own defense. “It stands to reason that your brain space would be open plan.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Lottie responded. “You’ve always had quite the talent for fabricating the most pompous excuses haven’t you, Howard Moon?”
“But it was the truth!” Howard squawked, shuffling his feet under the unblinking stare of Vince’s Long Term Memory.
“That’s what makes the pomposity so endearing,” she replied. “You always look like you’re up to something. Even when you’re not.”
“Yeah,” Vince agreed shakily, and Howard tried to feel pleased that at least his discomfort was providing Vince with a good distraction. “You always look like you’ve been up to some shady, ball licking activity, Howard.”
“Hmm,” Lottie hummed, looking even more thoughtful than usual. “We wrote that. We shouldn’t have done. But our unrequited love has always made us do the most absurd things where Howard is concerned.”
“Well,” Vince said sheepishly, though Howard was more taken by the absurdity of the situation he currently found himself in, in which Vince was having a conversation with his own memory, using Howard as some sort of telephone system.
“But there isn’t time for such thoughts now,” Lottie interrupted once again. “You are needed, Howard T.J. Moon. None of us are strong enough to dismantle the walls within Vince’s head, the walls and barriers created by Vince’s negative thoughts, because we helped to create them, and we are part of Vince. But you, Howard, you have the ability to break down those walls of negativity. You must.”
“But how?” Howard cried, feeling utterly overwhelmed. “How am I any stronger than any of you? I don’t even belong here, I don’t know how to demolish brain walls! I’m just a simply jazz musician stroke character actor stroke shop keeper. How can I-”
“This is no time to give in to your own Negative Self-Perceptions, Howard Moon!” Lottie raised her voice to cut him off. “No one knows better how to complete this task than you. You who has overcome so many fears in your life, who has more practice than anyone else in the world in the art of increasing Vince’s positive view of himself. You can do this because you are not Vince. You love Vince. It is up to you.”
She seemed so confident, even though her voice was dreamy and gentle, that Howard found himself nodding. Vince seemed to agree.
“You can do this, Howard,” he urged. “You can do this. I believe in you, Howard.”
“Come on then,” Lottie urged him. “There is no knowing how long the NSP will be distracted by the diversion you came up with so cunningly with the immune system, and we have no time to lose. Amy has nearly lost herself to the encroaching negativity. Come along.”
She held her hand out and Howard let out a deep breath and took it, letting her guide him through the heavy curtain and in to a stranger place than any that he had seen so far.
...
“It’s like...” Howard gazed around, squinting in the bright light and trying desperately to recall what the large space he had entered reminded him of. “It’s like a film studio.”
And it was. All around the large brain space were small, enclosed studio sets, each with their own cameras, and dim lights, but with only partial openings - enough for Howard to see in, but not enough for the light above them to pierce the gloomy interiors. And the light... Howard tried to look up, to make sense of it, but all he could tell for certain was that it was a large, yellow orb on a colourful plinth, like an art deco vase. It was beautiful yet chaotic.
“Film studios. That is exactly what they are,” Lottie agreed slowly. “The NSP played upon the natural vanity that is in every Vince and now they are all trapped. That silver dictator can keep an eye on everyone and check the opinions of his favourites at his leisure. If he wants to berate anyone he just yells down the phone at them. He rarely comes in here. Unless it is to fetch the twins. But even though he loves them he’s hurting them as well. He knows it, I think. He doesn’t visit them as much as he used to.”
Her tone was so sad that Howard again felt the urge to offer her some comfort but all he could do was give her hand a gentle squeeze. She smiled softly before turning back to look at the unhappy space, portioned off in badly constructed compartments. He peaked in to a few. The fashionista with the dali-esque moustache was talking directly to the camera as he held up different jackets, trying to determine which would work best with the patterned skinny jeans he predicted to be the height of fashion by sunrise. Down from him was a young looking Vince, his hair still a natural, dirty blonde colour, dressed in their old high-school uniform. He was sitting at a desk and staring at the sheet of paper before him with tears in his eyes, mumbling to himself and scuffing his feet against the floor, seeming to try and block out the cameras by letting his hair fall across his face.
“If every customer pays twenty pounds for a celebrity tracking and you have an average of fifteen customers an hour and you work for four hours, how much money will you have saved up for that well trendy pair of boots by the end of the day? Oh Christy this is impossible!”
“Who’s that?” Howard asked, hating the distress that was emanating from that small cell-like booth, and the memories of their high-school days. Maths had always been painful for Vince, he had failed the subject every year from their fifth grade until they finally agreed that G.C.S.E.s weren’t important and left the stresses of school behind.
“Oh, poor child,” Lottie sighed, following Howard’s gaze with misty eyes. “They are the Inferior Temporal Gyrus. The part of Vince’s brain that specialises in processing numbers.”
“Numbers?” Howard did a double take as the blonde head hit the desk with a groan. “That’s your numbers expert? Thirteen-year-old Vince is your numbers expert?”
Lottie shrugged sadly.
“Are you that surprised? He has a better grasp on mathematics than the rest of us. I recall the years when we were considered above average in our class. We used to let you copy from us because we knew that it was a fair exchange. You helped us in so many ways, and as brilliant as you were at most things, you struggled with grasping division. I remember... that was the last time maths really made sense. They tried so hard to grasp the concept, but Inferior Temporal Gyrus... they are still only so young, and were never given a chance to develop.”
“Well, I mean,” Howard huffed. “Inferior. That’s not, that’s not nice!”
“Oh, dear, it’s not an insult. It’s what he is,” Lottie explained. “He’s actually a collection of two million cells. And yet he still struggles an awful lot. He’d rather turn numbers into pictures. He liked geometry. But the Negative Self-Perception, he prefers to remind Gyrus of what they cannot do.”
“They?” Howard asked, feeling like there was something he was missing. The look Lottie gave him, vague though it was, assured him that there definitely was.
“We aren’t all either male or female, Howard Moon.”
“But,” Howard frowned in confusion. “I knew Vince at this age. Are you saying-”
“I was pretty confused at that age,” Vince mumbled into his ear, and it made Howard jump, he’d forgotten Vince was still listening in. “Puberty was a bitch.”
Howard nodded at that. Puberty hadn’t been kind to him, but his own memory insisted that Vince had only gone from strength to strength in their teenage years, with the exception of a short period in the eighties when Vince had attempted to make the Labyrinth Goblin King look actually work (a dark three days that they never spoke of), but when he looked up again Lottie was nodding in agreement with Vince. Obviously she remembered a few things about their teenage years that Howard didn’t. Or at least remembered them slightly differently.
“And the NSP, he thinks it’s funny to make the Inf- to make Gyrus do things that make him miserable?” Howard asked through clenched teeth. “Let’s take that glittery arse hole down!”
“Excellent,” Lottie replied, urging him further in to the brain space. “That’s the Howard Moon I remember.”
She took his hand and tugged him forward, past more and more Vinces, all of them in various stages of sequin infestation, each a different Vince, and yet all his Vince. There was a Vince with bleach blonde hair, strutting around his small space in very high-heeled boots, tight blue jeans and a red racing jacket that Lottie introduced as the Motor Cortex. Vince’s creativity was a different sort of Vince entirely, like a self-portrait rather than a person, painted with a broad brush in messy, multi-coloured, multi-layered acrylics, and Howard felt incredibly proud when he saw him, for he was the sort of creation that Vince produced so well, naive in style and yet put together with great skill, and though his skin was all streaks of yellow, peach, purple, brown and green, he was as much a truthful representation of Vince as any of the brain facets Howard had seen. Further along in the row of what Howard had begun to think of as isolation rooms, there was a rather alarming (and arousing) looking auburn haired Vince that he was told was known simply as Pons. He was striking dramatic poses and pouting at the cameras around him, casting bedroom eyes at the lens from under his thick fringe of hair, and moving between slouching endearingly and arching his back so seductively that Howard’s mouth ran dry. Pons, apparently, was a rather mysterious figure, even among the other brain Vinces. Pons was responsible for Vince’s posture and movement, but also for creating the correct level of consciousness necessary for Vince to sleep, among other things. Howard looked at his smokey eyes and otherworldly, fey, appearance, and had to agree that it seemed a fitting job for a brain personification who looked... like that. Pons had only one sequin, like a birthmark on his prominent cheekbone and, when their eyes met for a moment, Howard understood how even the NSP might struggle to truly overpower Pons.
They walked until they were close to the strange pedestal with it’s blinding and yet hypnotic light. Halfway through the journey the Vince outside, the one who Howard could hear in his ear, burst into tears, because he was tired but knew that he couldn’t go to sleep, and because his body was itching to change into a different outfit, because he was certain that the one he was wearing had been a mistake and he was surely the laughing stock of Camden all over again, but Howard urged him to calm down, to head out to the small kitchen at the back of the shop, to make himself a cup of tea, and maybe a snack. Secretly he was relieved at Vince’s outburst because it indicated that Vince’s Negative Self-Perception was still in a rage and focused elsewhere, but he hated the thought of Vince crying alone. Lottie let go of his hand then, and Howard looked at the strange sight before him, noticing for the first time that there was someone sitting by the stained glass plinth, and that that someone was very familiar, and entirely unexpected.
“Wait! Wait, that’s me! What am I doing inside Vince’s brain? I thought you were all Vince. The immune system said, and Amy said. It’s Vince’s body, Vince’s brain, you’re all supposed to be Vince! What am I doing in Vince’s brain?”
The figure looked up and Howard felt a shiver run up his spine. It was definitely him, all the props and costume pieces were there, but he wasn’t quite a real Howard, he was an approximation, the way Vince thought of him, and it was an eye opener to say the least. For a start the Howard sitting beneath the shining orb seemed to have larger eyes. They were kind and understanding and the colour of melted chocolate mixed with honey. He was dressed in brown loafers and brown cords but also an orange roll neck under a patterned shirt of purples and blues, with his old Zooniverse jacket over the top and unzipped. The look was completed by a hat set at a jaunty angle and decorated with forest flowers and bamboo leaves. It seemed that whatever jokes Vince might make about Howard’s beigeness, and no matter how often Howard had claimed over the years to be a man of simple tastes who didn’t accessorise, Vince still thought of him as a rather colourful, eccentric person. The Howard of Vince’s mind was even smoking a pipe and holding a notepad and pen. He stared at Howard a moment longer before returning to his writing and Howard wished it really was that easy to fill a page with words.
“Who is he?” he asked quietly.
“Oh, him,” Lottie nodded slowly. “That’s the Nucleus Accumbens, we call him Nacc. He’s... well, he’s like a reward centre, I suppose. Mostly he writes really long letters full of dopamine and sends them throughout Vince’s body as needed. He doesn’t talk much, just says things like ‘well done’, ‘good work, Little Man’, ‘hey, your hair’s looking nice today’, that sort of thing. He responds to... he responds to pleasure. Physical pleasure. He reads it when it comes in and he sends out messages to help Vince respond accordingly.”
“Pleasure?” Howard stammered. “But he looks like me!”
“Yes, funny that. That Vince’s body links pleasure and the rush of dopamine through his veins with you so strongly. He is very kind, and interesting in his own way, I’m sure, but he is not why I brought you here.”
Lottie turned to look up at the bright ball above them and then back to Howard expectantly.
“You’ve brought me to see a lamp?” Howard asked, a little exasperated. “And how exactly is this supposed to help? What am I supposed to do?”
“I... don’t remember,” said the Long Term Memory, a tremor creeping in to her voice that made Howard immediately reign in his temper. “The NSP, he permits me more freedom than most. I am not chained, and even if my body is fast being covered in the silver marks of his influence, at least I can still be useful, can still provide Vince with most of the memories he requires. But I am not permitted,” she said with a hitch in her throat. “Not permitted to remember everything. I am not permitted to remember things about me, or why any of this had to happen. I only know that this is very, very important.”
“And this... this light?” Howard asked kindly. “What is it, exactly?”
“The light? Why that, Howard Moon, is Vince Noir.”
Howard blinked and felt all at once like a whole mountain had just fallen down on top of him, and as if he’d swallowed a helium balloon and was being pulled skyward with inevitable force. It was discomfiting and made his heart race, and yet, of course it was. Of course the light was Vince. He stared, even though it hurt his eyes to look directly at something so bright, so radiant, until eventually his eyes began to water too much for him to ignore and he was forced to blink again and look away. Of course. Of course it was.
“It can’t possibly be this simple,” he said out loud, watching the whole narrative slot into place and finally make sense in his mind. “Discover the essence of Vince Noir, Lester said. Remind him he’s still the Sunshine kid, Amy told me. And it really is that simple.”
“Hmm?” Lottie asked in a faraway voice, still staring at the light, but Howard wasn’t really talking to her. He was speaking aloud, finally coming to terms with what needed to be done, what he should have done months ago when Naboo told him to get back inside Vince and fix things. Because this thing, this piece of art and beauty and light and sunshine at the centre of Vince’s mind... it really was Vince.
“This is it, isn’t it?” he asked, not waiting for Lottie to answer. “This is the essence of Vince. The NSP couldn’t destroy it without damaging himself and so he just blocked it out, made himself an office where he wouldn’t have to see it and made it so that the other parts of Vince’s brain couldn’t see it either All we need to do is let the sunshine back in and remind Vince of who he is, and who he’s always been! I...” he hesitated as one final revelation hit him. “I can actually do this!”