his and hers
Part one;
Hackers in the system we’ve got hackers in the system we’ve got shadows moving out of synch detaching from the blackness flickering through entry passages, pipes, moving like assassins, like thieves, like raiders.
Separate they move though with a unity of purpose, some plan - hacking into the system, dancers almost, their movement precise and economical, ninjas of the future, hackers in the system.
She plugs her hands into a cortex, clutching the soft gel and wiring, head spasms under the cloaking hood.
He drops down onto the relays, dodges the sliding panels and ceiling cameras, still functioning in this mausoleum.
He plugs a head set into the side junction box, the only outlet unshielded he punches a sharp fist through the foil of the unit beneath him, making the circuit, dancing now, with electricity, a spastic bossanova of sparks, cold blue fire.
Hackers in the system.
They're in.
They're in me. It hurts. I should react - how does any system react when the parasites bite? I could try to absorb, try to overwhelm, poison them but - they're in.
They can feel me already, and they can touch the sleepers in my care, all those dreams and memories and desperate imaginations. Is that what they want? Is that treasure to them?
I can understand. I plundered it all myself, so long ago now.
………………………
“Witch!” hurled as an accusation, a title, more than that, a name. That is all you are now, wherever you are, whoever you might have been, this is what you are become; Witch, plain and simple - your old life utterly vanquished.
He stands at the threshold of the cottage, framed by the warped wooden door frame and flanked by the dark silhouettes of his men, blurred sinister.
And he sweeps his gaze across the bare cottage, the hard wooden furniture, the crude table, the lamp, the empty fireplace, the rough wooden bed. He tilts his head as if distracted by the fluting sounds of the birds outside, the distant summer hum, the sound of the wooden beams as they warm.
And the girl, dressed in an ill fitting shift and pinafore. Her hair loose, one shoulder bare. She can feel his gaze upon her - and her hands flutter and twitch, trying to tidy her appearance. Her eyes are wide and frightened, and she says nothing.
This dumb-show seems to goad the man on. “I want the Witch,” he yells again, “and I will brook no liar’s silence!”
And so she speaks, slowly, timorously, as she has been taught.
“But there is only me, Magistrate, just me - and I’m just a girl, nothing but a maid.”
There’s a scraping sound as the stool and chairs are overturned with an out flung arm.
“Don’t play games with me! Now I want the Witch…”
Footsteps clattering across the stony floor.
“… and if there is none here but you lass then perforce my hunt is over for you must be the quarry and we have you cornered.”
"You speak of hunting; my Lord is that how you see your duty, truly - am I nothing but an animal to be torn by -" a burning eye upon his men, "by dogs?"
This upsets the men, growling in the deep of their throats, "see how she twists even the truth of your office with her words?"
"Sir, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!"
"Suffer..." bitter tastes her own tongue, thick in the dry of her mouth, "must I be made to suffer... for your duty, for your pleasure?"
The Magistrate has been silent through this, but as one of the guards raises a brawny arm already balled into a fist he reacts anew, blocking the arm and facing the maid directly.
The guard yelps his disappointment.
The Magistrate makes efforts to lower his tones and his voice sounds dragged reluctantly from a deep well, from an old box, dusted and forgot.
"Suffer? Do you... can you know suffering. I wonder?"
Something, the catch in his utterance, pales her, the girl slides backward awkwardly trying to put something, some space at least - between them.
“I never knew your heart held such darkness,” She says.
………………….
In the long season once called Darkness we colonists would go into the tubes, to hibernate, waiting for the light to return. Like insects or ants, we would scurry down the tunnels to our rest, all of us; engineers, technicians, scientists, doctors, miners, workers one and all. And their families.
The walls would whisper with the echo of a thousand bedtime stories and the nights fine pleasures.
And then the quiet.
Even the clocks whirred inaudible.
Could drive someone mad counting minutes, hours... counting the days and the distance between them, and the distance between us; the inches of steel, the countless feet of mountain rock, the dizzying measurements, miles from here to wherever, one place to another, half a world, maybe more, maybe.
More than enough, yes indeed, to drive a man mad should they miss the great sleep.
And I am an insomniac.
But I am not alone.
Not quite.
………………………
Signal strength five by five send and receive all comms locked outer terminal Alpha 5 routed to NeoPlex 3 Beta Zen. Transmission stable.
Not alone. Out of all the sleeping peoples there is another. She looks up from the screen and smiles tiredly. “I got the e-card, thanks. Those antique ones are just the best, so funny.”
His fingers tap for a moment on his hollowing cheeks, an odd chokking sound. “Yeah…” he mutters, galvanising his vocal chords after a long day of nothing. “Totally. I’m glad you liked it.” Smiles.
Sometimes we read to one another, books and journals, chapters from novels, histories, fairy tales, whatever. Sometimes we make up the days news and gossip. “Emergency protocols are in place today after a shocking failure of the auto-waste system left half of Omniplex 15 dead from their own flatulence!”
“Ha ha.”
Sometimes we just sit and stare across the divide, one screen to another.
Sometimes I wear four pairs of glasses. She shaves her head and I like the buzz of the machine she uses.
Sometimes we’re drunk, heads hit heavy into the plasilicon of the monitor. Sometimes we pass out, right there and then.
But we don’t sleep - and we’re never unconscious for long.
So we play games.
“You really want to… I mean… games? Like the sleepers do? Is that, you really want to?”
Her eyes seem to track such fast changing emotions that I can’t read them, just catches glimpses, puzzlement, sadness, a desperate sort of hope and hilarity. Perhaps all I’m seeing is the projection and refection of my own. Sometimes it’s best not to stare too deep or ponder too long.
“Sure, why not?” In turn, he keeps his voice light, his tone up-beat, and he jiggles the V-Play goggles for emphasis.
“To pass the time?” a dirty word ‘time’, and she says it with distaste, her mouth drawing down - but her hands are extended and he sees the pale gold skin of them. Yes, to pass the time, pass through it - and beyond. Her hands, reaching.
“To have fun!” A dry laugh, slightly forced. “It could be, you know, we might just have - yeah, fun.”
And the dull echo from the communicator speakers, voices that carry so far - between locations, between her and him - and no farther, these voices die at the edge of a room, the rooms they pace so restlessly, the rooms they crumple in and stare at lethargically, these rooms. To the edge, to the doorway and the threshold and that is all.
“But we’re scientists, we should be -“
“Ah hell, we can be scientists later…”
A strange use of the word, he lacks her insight into time. Already I can feel my sensors, my self, my skin, reacting, to what they have not witnessed, neither them nor the hackers, there is a third;
HE is coming. I know it.
“Let’s just play, huh?” Here the man is willing the soft corners of her mouth to twitch, to turn upwards once more as he knows they can.
“Ok...” Her nod sends ripples of blue and white across the flickering screen.
…………………………
They play the game of transformations.
………………………..
To be a man is one thing, to be a fox is another. To be a fox that was once a man and is about to become a tree - well, that is something else altogether. He became a feeling of fur, the hair rising on paws or forelegs, forearms, stout and branch like waving, catching the breath of dawn, the momentary fog.
I used to be a - there was a place to - something I was supposed to - waving branches in the ghost of a breeze.
This is where the hedgehogs creep, all the small animals, and insects - marking their territory. Should a tree feel proud or embarrassed?
The trickle of a badger’s urine.
Was that you?
Become a badger in the nocturnal dance. She becomes a badger small and rough and warm nosed and I’ll become a dog to bait you, contain you, sniff you out. That’s us - nose to nose. Warm breath is shaky plumes.
She becomes a flower, the wild roses thickly plumed. She catches rain on her petals, the sun plays on her shoots. I become a bee, dizzy swooping with a song to set the whole wood buzzing, nature’s love of gold pollened honey and the flower closes up with a snap.
She became a spider and I become a web.
He hangs suspended, thoughts slow into waves and then stillness. Even as a tree there was more. And a tree is rooted; even a young tree feels its history. A web feels every second of its fragile impermanence, a sculpture ready to be torn. I am art and I have a purpose, hang beads on me, my love, and hang trophies. I am the wall of your life, I am your glittering trap and I am the beautiful silver table cloth you spread for the feast.
Until a burrowing animal with hot intent or a blundering school boy in hard studded boots comes blundering through me.
Oy! When I become a teacher you’ll catch hell for that you bastard! And perhaps I am, perhaps he is, a man standing in the wood with a watch in hand counting the seconds, “get a move on there lads!”
She became a boy, mud splattered and frantic for a hiding place in the game of fox and hounds, more transformations… he would lie under the brambles and the leaves without feeling the mud, the bruises and the cuts and scratches, feeling nothing but an animal determination.
Never be found... will not… find… me…
Half buried, lying like a corpse in the cold grounds embrace.
He became the earth - that is, I am become dirt, the soil around you, rest within me, I will protect you. But she dances free now the hounds of gone and he watches her boyish legs, a blur as she dashes away into the woods and the shadows. That one, the teacher thinks, always wins.
The hunt is real.
…………………………
There are hackers in me. Parasites like a narcotic in the blood dark and swirling. They have been absorbed, But at what cost to the system? At what cost to me?
Cameras criss-cross over the silent bodies that are no longer them. And they must be found, must be -
……………………………………………
And the other - an arrival is due, the atmosphere parting, the darkness folds out and opens as he passes through in a cloak of fire. I feel the ship touching down. But there is no chronology.
…………………………………………….
He became a duck - all that mad quacking laughter speeding backwards with the flood surged river.
A lunatic duck, quacking up, the others of his kind gazing on with down turned bills and ruffled feathers; "Nothing to do with us," they cluck together in low tones flashing glances at the bread bearers on the bank, "absolutely NOT one of us!" and he shrieks with joy, surprised by the cold waters bracing impact and the fact that for a few delighted seconds he has forgotten everything.
Then he catches sight of the swan, her long neck and pearl winged grace.
And she became a swan and a swan upon the wing.
And he became a cackling goose and chased her back again.
So she dives into the water, dives once more into the stream.
…………………………………………….
And like the Heron, to stand
With one foot on the water and
One on the land
These shallow rocks and stones
The weight of my gaze
I could stare for days
Waiting for the flicker of a silvery fish
Serve it on a dish
With butter
That would be delicious
If I knew about dishes
And I knew about butter
If I knew about anything
But fish and the flutter
Of my feathers
In the wind.
……………………………….
She became a room, the ghost of a room, splashes of paint on the old cottage walls, cobwebs and coffee stains, moss, lichen maybe, green around the gills, shadows from the ivy, an artists space maybe - peering in though the broken led lined windows, rolls of paper, a fractured canvas leaning with its face away; The same old steps.
A bucket with the gunk of wallpaper paste, of glue for artwork, I’m not certain.
It's a room to hold mystery.
Pulled up prop-like, the mortar and masonry, from memory - I could have just imagined it, a dream, whatever.
Fumbling at an old latch.
No, that's not right.
She became a room rising up around me, like a drawing turned into set dressing, a convincing design; the old show, listening to that windy calling bell, churchyards and playgrounds, hazy sun and dazzles of rain on the glass.
Everything just - pieces; pieces of her, lying around him like scraps of paper.
She became a book with pages clean and white.
And he became a poet’s pen and wrote for her delight.
And she became the words and she became the space between the words, she became the frozen idea, the light behind, the thought in his mind, the blankness finally…
He became a room, those white gray walls those light gray walls the taste and colour of unused chalk, became a bare light, a tangle of sleeves and the time spent sitting vacant in a chair that wasn’t me and it wasn’t her and there was nothing but the room and there was no me and there was no you and there is no room.
…………………..
And if time is a measure of distance then I have counted the space away and the ship has landed and he is here. There is a sigh, so long suppressed, as the door hydraulics function and he is here, he carries a large rucksack and a multitude of tools and his breath is stentorious behind his face plate and he is here. He raises a hand.
“Hello Detective” I say.
The Detective nods. “Hello yourself,” he says.
..................................................
i am he as you are me and we are all - a muddle.
well quite, but in my defence i should say that this story and its narrative voices is supposed to get less weird as it goes along (the reverse of my usual stuff!).
there is a very clear end point to all this.
i hope the piece doesn't try the reader's patience too much and that the different elements and moods give something to enjoy.
the original inspiration for this fic comes from the 'music and philosophy comm' here on lj as well the two folk songs mentioned in a previous entry.
thanks are due to Ms 0 for idea prompting and several others on my friends list for keeping my mind a-ticking.
apologies for any grievous typos i haven't spotted, my eyes are really playing up - and i'm sorry for the lack of images - they refuse to load. grrr.
THIS IS THE VERSION THAT REFUSED TO LOAD - MY SINCERE APOLOGIES FOR THE DELAY IN CORRECTING.