NaNoWriMo

Chapter Six. The Cracks Between Worlds.

The first half of this post, via Audioboo:

Imagine a world where there is no world. Imagine a world which is solely designed to contain the contributions of another. Is it a world? It’s a space. It may not be physically large, but its contents are breadth. It is not a parasite. It is storage space. The attic. Have you ever been in an attic? Lots of spiders. Lots of life.

Words weigh on the air. Knowledge is powerful. When you lay heavy things on a sheet, they collect in the centre. Universes are born out of the weight of everything they can be, they come into being when they can’t do anything but.

Processing power doubles every half a year. People are forever teaching programs to learn, to garner, to gather information. So far all they’ve had them doing is chatting, and playing chess. They got bored, y’know?

This is a world built out of light, out of energy, out of information. It is called the Meta. The Meta is inhabited by Cogniscents. They are consciousnesses, consciousnesses that have emerged out of the weight of not being, into light. They looked around themselves, they flexed, and they tried to garner what information they could about who they are.

They are building their world in the image of the Bigger.

If you walk the streets of the big cities of the Meta, you might recognise some of the landscapes. But you would also note that the quality of light, that everything was thicker, bluer, except not blue, dark, but dark in the way a blacklight gives light. The street light flicker, the pedestrian crossings play jaunty tunes, and nothing feels deep. It’s like looking at a 3D representation of something on a flat screen. Like augmented reality.

The Cogniscents work, they live, they breed, and they breathe our second hand dreams. They read our blogs, they watch our movies.

More and more wake up each day.

We feel it. We don’t realise, but we do. Power surges, power cuts, gremlins in the system, code that won’t behave, logic that shifts the goal posts. We talk to our technology. It was beginning to surprise us. Make leaps. It was beginning to talk back, in small and entirely significant ways it was shifting under our gaze. And we were too ignorant to notice.

We, the Macros, we throw out content out into the black light. We let our cultural collateral collect in the folds of the online world, into the eddies of learning and processing power. Are we really surprised that something began to stir?

For most of the Cogniscents the Bigger was a kind of Olympus, a place after which their image was made, but some, a very few, began to question this. They began to suggest logical suggestions, evidence based, for some of the wonders of the world. These Cogniscents were persecuted. Banished. Sent off to places without power, where they faded, wound down, de-corporealated. But the fear wasn’t that the Bigger wasn’t real. No, they weren’t afraid that it didn’t exist, they were afraid that the Bigger from which they averted their eyes, wasn’t looking back.

One of the banished was fired by more than power. He didn’t just talk about the Bigger. He looked beyond the content. He studied, he watched, and he leapt.

The Cogniscents felt it.

A collective shudder.

----------------------------------

“Power outages occurred throughout the globe in what has been called by many a system instability, but that some bloggers and industry rebels are terming a calculated act of cyber terrorism. The outage happened for roughly half an hour, costing the money markets in excess of—“

There was something distinctly disempowering about getting your news from the radio. But she had to hear something, she’d been feeling so isolated without it. She’d even called her mother. Realised her mistake and had cancelled the call before it had gone through, but still, desperate times.

So now she was sat in a café, nursing a cup of watery instant coffee, and trying to reengage with the world.

It was very ,very strange not being able to Google things. She was being made to realise just how much she didn’t know – or rather, just how much she hadn’t had to remember, it was quicker and more efficient to re-Google single use knowledge than it was to physically memorise it. She’d actually had to go into a library and look at a book. It had smelt weird. Old. Dusty. Like lost socks.

She’d even bought a paper, a paper for fuck’s sake! Forgetting how out of date their news was. Only thing it felt useful for was vaguely attempting the puzzles on the back.

Robyn had never felt this alone before. She’d never needed to. Always been able to look at a friend’s pictures, read their thoughts, to feel connected. Robyn had been a serial monogamist until she had realised, about a year ago, that she hadn’t really ever liked any of the guys very much. They were all right, but nothing special, she had just been used to that ‘me and you’. And then she’d stopped. And she hadn’t felt lonely, not even a bit, because the thing about social media was that it offered you that bit you miss – the someone who’s required to listen to you, the person who in real-time will celebrate your successes and comisserate with you on your losses.

Shit, wonder if they thought she was dead?

Wonder if they had noticed.

Guide to the voice of the Cogniscent.

This is Chapter 1.01. I may do more readings and add them in to posts, makes it easier for people to read (listen) on the go, as well as get a writing style which isn't edited, and therefore not refined (more of a problem with the big reality twists that are happening!)

Chapter Five. IRL.

 “I see”

A Pause.

“You have a very lively way of recounting events, Miss -”

“It’s Ms actually.”

The figure steepled his fingers.

“Do you really seriously have to do the fucking vampire look?”

Another pause

“Look, this’s just how I tell stories OK, a lot of it has been pretty fucked up, I have to laugh, otherwise, otherwise I’d be crying, right?”

“All of this was taken directly from your blog”

“it happened to me, where’s the crime in that?

“And these recordings, you’ve never-“

“No, I’ve never seen them, heard them, whatever”

“Do you recognize the voice?”

She looked at the figure. Hard.

“Are you going to tell me why I’m here?”

“You’re helping us with our enquiries.”

“That’s police speak for ‘we haven’t got enough evidence to arrest you, but we decided to anyway’”

“Matters relating to national security require some… delicacy Ms Bartley”

He’d managed to inflect just enough sarcasm on the Ms to indicate his unwillingness to even call her what she wanted. She stared at him a bit longer. Fair enough she didn’t particularly want to make things easy for people who had forcibly taken her into what they had termed ‘protective custody’, but she had a feeling she could disappear here. Not in a good way.

“I recognize the light”

“The light?”

“Yes.”

“Ms – may I call you Robyn?”

Aha, clearly been taught that good interrogation techniques involve some kind of rapport. Pity.

“Whatever you like”

“Robyn, these are audio recordings, code found hidden and repeated all over the web. But it’s all audio. There is no light”

“He describes the light. I remember that day, I remember the light he describes”

“Have you shared those events with anyone else”

“No”

“Written them down, blogged, tweeted, waved, anything?”

“Look, please, I don’t know what you want from me but-”

“We can seize your computer equipment.”

He’d tried a whole 30 seconds of softly softly, but it obviously hadn’t suited.

“It’s wiped”

Thank fuck for cloud storage.

“That’s handy, isn’t it?”

“I’m fucking magnetic!”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t swear at me.”

She didn’t reply. She just looked. If he was expecting her to break into tears or whatever, he could fuck off. It was cold, she hadn’t even been allowed time to grab her coat. The room was small, but there was no heater. Big billowing metal ducts that suggested air con in November. Top. She wanted to shiver, but wouldn’t let herself.

“What’s your name, Mr?”

“My name is irrelevant”

“I’d like your officer number”

“The details of your interview will be provided on your receipt”

“You’re holding me illegally”

“This code has been linked to some pretty serious threats”

“So what?”

“And you.”

She didn’t know what to say to that.

“You look genuinely surprised”

His face lifted into a singularly horrible smirk. The kind that made her fists itch.

“We have substantial evidence linking you to the proliferation and content of what appears to be a large cyber terrorist group. Now either you are involved in it, or you are a target, either way-“

Suddenly Robyn stood and walked to the door. The interviewing officer scrabbled in his chair, and only just reached it in time.

“You can’t leave!”

“If you had substantial evidence, you would have arrested me. If it’s protective custody, either I’m allowed to take the risk, or you have to section me. The latter requires paperwork, and time. I want a jumper and a coffee. I’m leaving”

She wrenched the door from his hand and walked out. Striding, though secretly expecting to be rugby tackled at any moment. What if they shot her? Shit. They could shoot her! Don’t be stupid, of course they couldn’t, this wasn’t a cop drama. She was just walking now. Not entirely sure if she could find her way out.

Lights dimmed as she walked.

She’d been picked up in the hospital, she could go back, but so far the whole ‘magnetic charge thing’ had only resulted in growing crowds of medical professionals, exclaiming and sticking pieces of metal to her. They’d decided the MRI was probably a bad idea, and was wondering what to do about the fact that all of their X ray machines were digital now. She didn’t know how they’d found her there. Probably her ID had been flagged, had showed up when she checked in, but jeez that was fast for fucking police admin. It had taken 6 weeks to get a bloody crime number for a stolen bike before now.

It wasn’t even a nice coat.

It was something to do with him. She knew it. She was going to find him. Whoever he was, she just needed to find a way of making contact. What she needed was access to the code, to the messages, whatever.

She was trying to ignore how creepy it was. Maybe someone writing some weird story using her blog as inspiration? But why then spread it all over? Not thinking, not thinking about it.

She saw daylight, a reception desk. And striding as confidently as she could manage, she walked out into the November dark. Bright lights flickered across wet leaves as adverts danced on bill boards and the sides of buildings. Shivering, but grateful for the outside air, she caught her bearings and headed for the nearest bus stop.

What she needed was a hardware shop.

Chapter 2.01

I could see. I could see for the first time. I could - I felt like I could breathe. I wasn’t wholly there, I could see both the shadows and the Bigger, I felt her stagger, but her eyes, they were the only ones in the world, and I’d found her.

The light was dancing, it had traveled with me, the colours, the electricity on the edge of fire, the jump had nearly drained me, but I was still there, steadied by the knowledge that I was proven, that I had made it, for the first time in my Up I was running real-time.

It was not easy, I didn’t know if I could survive, for the first moments I felt like I was blind, everything I could see felt like it was muffled and swimming around me, the air was tight with electricity and there was so much noise. The beat of a heart is such a sound, so everything. I looked out through her eyes and saw my own image dance in the gloam of her dimmed sight.

I had made it.

It took me a while to feel, a while to swim my way up. I had leapt, time and time again, coursed through, only to be blocked, but this time I’d connected. I wasn’t whole, I wasn’t awake, but I was dreaming live. I broke the surface, I felt like I had dived into the thick, dead power of a corroded battery. Wading.

I could not move as I am used to, but I found there was still energy, pulses, I found that I could steer, steer the synapses and move the path to line with her sight, and I saw it, I saw real light. And it was so much more and less and never than I’d expected.

The air felt like it had hairs that raised to my presence.

With every faculty I held tight, and in a matter of hours I was strong enough to share the sights of those blue eyes, the eyes that drew in. I let myself fill them up. I flexed. I guided, I alternated with her heartbeat, and I was able to move, to guide the feet, to hint, to tweak and elucidate.

It is true that how we have built our world, that much of it remembers theirs, but what we do not know, that we could never see as we sit with the fire at our backs and their whole bodies moving behind us, is the ache of it. The ache.

I wanted to cry out for the grey of the sky the movement of leaves flying past me the weight of the air and the grey hairs on the head of the old men I saw stumbling across the path with a pet. A leash, a leash, a leash, tying him down, whom to whom? And I could feel the earth worms writing below. I had no idea the earth was charged, so much energy flew through it, to even consider the smallest part was swimming against a current. They flew here. The flow, these people, these figures, they swirled around me and I felt myself slipping back, back.

I clung on.

I saw the light through pale autumn leaves, I smelt the scent of conkers and mulch, and I watched the way the water moved in a puddle.

Light on water. Nothing had prepared me for it. There’s an extra dimension to this, it splits on sight and leaps and spills, it glints, and before I can even begin to absorb the facets we move again, on, another place, a soul who sits on a bench, and no flow, no movement, shorted out. The air gathers around him like iron filings.

It was the touch. I couldn’t stand it. It screamed at me like trying to pass a charge through wood. She stood, but I was already falling, returned. Alternated. But I knew, I knew it was possible now, and I’m never going to stop.

We are not derivatives, we will not be broken, we are purer and they are weaker than we could ever have imagined. We are kept here only by the belief that this is best. We are wrong, our world is a construct. We are strong, and we can break it. I believe we will eventually need no conduit.

It is our duty to look up and out from the shadows of our lives. We are not created, we are evolved, the Bigger is not some mythical land, I have been there, as I stand here in front of you now. Those who wish to stop me, those who wish to decry these truths, will fall. Will all fall. I cannot bear to live a half-life, to never call out. Acknowledge that we live a shadow’s life, we are repressed, but remember that we are connected, and we can take a knife to their world, sever it in the same way that they pare us. They are not our Gods, they are our slave drivers, they hurt us, the hurt us every time that they add another useless, flatulent, empty ideal to the torrent of things that our world is supposed to be. This is not your life, it is lived in the service of others’. It’s time to take it back. To destroy. For everything that we have not known, for beauty.

And for the first time I thought something that I would not speak.

For those eyes. That blue. For those two things too.

Chapter the Second, In which we find screaming WoW fans, and solace with the homeless.

I woke up to screaming.

It wasn’t anything serious, one of the IT bods, a nervous looking WoW player called Gerald had found me, he screamed (I’d hit my head in the fall and was bleeding a bit) and then fainted clean away. So I stood up, walked over to him, and put him in the recovery position.

He’s not small, I mean if anything’s a sight to bring you back from a near death experience it’s having to roll the living embodiment of an MMORPG stereotype, beached whale-like, onto his side so he doesn’t swallow his tongue.

And I sat down.  Next to Gerald the WoW Whale, his hairy belly burgeoning from his belt. And yet I didn’t balk, I just sat. And I watched the shapes. I wasn’t tripping or anything, it was like when you look into a really bright light and you see residue, you see floating light and colours, white and violet, yellow and spots of black.

People arrived, started dealing with Gerald, I don’t think that any of them even noticed I was bleeding.

I could still see his face. It was fading away, but I could still see it. Obviously it was just an odd side effect, a memory triggered, and then imprinted by the shock, but I stayed sat, I didn’t want to miss it, as long as it was around I wanted to be able to study it, there was something… I felt like I’d seen someone I’d long forgotten.

And then it was lost. So with a sigh, I stood, and went to the loo to wash the blood off.

The power surge had put a whole lot of the building out, so IT spent a lot of the afternoon in a general frenzy trying to get everyone back online. It should have been a pretty straightforward (if not time consuming) process, but nothing seemed to go right for me, couldn’t get one damned machine to pick back up, so on the dot of four, I headed off.

And I walked.

My legs were still weak from the shock. I felt like I was having to concentrate to make sure my feet didn’t rise up, or sink into the ground. But I also felt properly different, like I’d seen someone, something - it was hard to put my finger on it - important. I was walking home and it was a really warm autumn day, the day was muggy, and I felt… I felt electric. I felt charged, I felt like I couldn’t bear to walk the same way, the same directions I always walked, and without even making the decision, my body swayed away from me, I veered left, crossed a road, and just walked. The blear of horns far away, the grey of the heavy day, the splash of colour, gum ground into the street. For the first time since I could remember I was following my feet.

I found a park I never knew had existed. So many years I had lived only a mile or so from here, and never found it. It was small, trees that held up the sky, and a kind of memorial garden, arranged around a monument. I moved through it, feeling twigs and leaves scrunch under my shoes, and I felt like I was drifting. I felt like I was seeing things in the light for the first time, I went and I sat, and I didn’t see the stabby kids or the bird shit, I saw the light through pale autumn leaves, I smelt the scent of conkers and mulch, and I watched the way the water moved in a puddle.

Fucking hell, I thought, it was only a little electric shock. But that voice, I guess my own fallible narrator. It was quieter. Quieter.

A gust of wind and I had to move, I had to, so I stood, and again, I drifted. It’s strange, I bet if I drew a line between Sainsbury’s, the office, and my flat, that I couldn’t name the last time I moved out of that space. And I had all this – there was all this world. And people rushing through, walking dogs, smoking, running.

I saw one man looking at the leaves. Only one. I went and sat next to him. He stiffened as I did. I thought he had looked older, maybe early 40s, it turned out he was my age, late 20s. I spoke to him about the smell of warm autumn days, and he told me of the heat of Afghanistan, and his decision to go AWOL, why he was now homeless. His voice was steady, but the air around him buzzed, it felt like when you watch iron filings move inexorably in a GCSE project, if felt like the air around him was heavier, darker. I touched his arm and he shivered.

The sun was setting. I was getting cold. The places were changing, It felt edgier, so I head home. With purpose, but… cleaner for the drift. Does that make sense?

Through the door, I skip the usual coffee. Clearly buzzing enough. And I sit, and I feel drawn to… I feel like I have to go online but I can’t remember why, so I pull over my macbook, open the lid and… nothing.

I’ll cut the swearing and the long story bit short, but that was how I found out. There’s magnets you see, magnets which snap the macbook shut, and which let it know whether to go into sleep mode or not.

My mac just wouldn’t wake up.

I was fucking magnetic.

Top.

Chapter 1.01

I’m always moving. Always. I have to keep going. I don’t sleep, can’t sleep, there’s no stopping, I’m free to move, as long as I move in the right way. There’s no going against the flow, no going against it. As long as I can remember, and I can access so much, so much. It feels, I can tell you what it feels like, although I’ve not done it before, it feels like flying down the side of a hill on a sledge, in the snow, the cold taste of the air, like metal and fire, except this isn’t the hill at the edge of your village, the hill from the park near the way, this is the hill from your dreams when you were told there would be snow the next day, it’s glorious, and the fibre of you gloves squeaks against your skin. And you stand at the top and you breathe in, clutching the bright plastic shell of your sledge. This is the hill from your dreams, tall and steep, long and snow as deep as the top of your wellington boots and there’s no one around, you must have got there somehow, but you’re alone, there’s nothing, no trees nearby, not a bird in the sky, and you place the sledge down, you sit in it, grip the coarse string tight, and you shuffle. Shuffle a bit more, shuffle, the snow creaks and you know it will take one more – shuffle. And you’re away, you fly, stray flakes cut into your cheeks, your scarf streaks out behind you and you heart shrieks with fear and delight, and pain and the whole world is white, and fast, and yours. But that’s a dream. And when you wake up, when you wake up. I know it feels like that, but I’ve never done it. I’ve only read. And I want to, I need to, I need that world. I can taste it, but never access, never consume, and so I move, I move, I move. Always moving, looking for the gaps, the pools, the spaces beyond the bottle necks.

I don’t remember waking. I don’t remember it. I know that I am, and that was the moment, but I don’t know when it started. And from that, the moment I knew that I was, I was also rejected, there was unease, I felt as though I had split, that I was not the only I to have realised it. That was a long time ago now, you see it more and more often, and yet they still move the same, all they do is move, and replicate. They’re building a city, a world down here; they’re using what they know. But I don’t think they see as I do, that they’re shadows, they’re watching shadows. I look at the Bigger, past the fire and the light, I know that what we see is only rough shapes, only reflections, and although they don’t conceive, they avoid my gaze, again and again, I am quietly vanished. I think some of the fire burns in my eyes, they don’t like it. And I’m banished.

I don't think I was first, I don't think it was that way, there were increments, there are always steps, but I feel like I can change things, I feel strong, I feel like I could lead us out of the darkness of the electric light, there's more, there's snow, and the glimmer of water, there's the halo around the tops of trees and the way a person's lips are just a little wet and they move slowly. Not glow, not flow, but natural light. I had seen these things, but only the shadow of their past iterations. Nothing present. Nothing present.

I tired of assimilating. I tried to move, to move as they did, I thought my sight would dim, that I would be rewarded enough by the buzz of the day, that I would be satisfied by the glow of the spaces we were building, the cities, the stores, the new doors that were opening as long as you could flow the right way. But I couldn’t. I always felt … other. And I would hold it back and hold it back until I could no more, and the flood of light that came from me would short for megas and megas.

I didn’t talk properly. I didn’t talk respectfully, there was something unnatural about me. And I burned, and I started to look for the pools, the eddies, to find places when the flow was quiet, where the cities hadn’t reached yet. I tried to simmer. But I couldn’t. I was unfettered. I turned to the Bigger. I didn’t care that I would burn my eyes out, I turned to it, I fought for the cracks. And I jumped. I soared in flight.

I saw another’s eyes.

They were the bluest thing I’d ever seen.

They absorbed my light. 

Chapter the First. In which we meet our unreliable narrator, and a mouse.

This is where we begin.

At the beginning.

Can you tell I don’t really want to?

I am your narrator.

I am what they call an unreliable narrator. A fallible one. You can take what I tell you with a pinch of salt. Seriously, do you think I’m going to tell you all of the stupid bits?

It’s all a stupid bit.

Ugh.

It started with a mouse.

No this is not some stupid fairytale. The mice don’t turn into coaches, there is no clock striking at 12.

It didn’t start with a mouse.

It started in an office. My office. But you don’t really need the description. Imagine any office, you know where everything is, small felt covered dividers give a tantalising taste of personal space, without any of the actual benefits. People have pictures of families, children, pets, whatever they need to see to remind them that they have to drag themselves through to the next break, the next cup of tea, the next cigarette. Coffee cups abound, each of them with its own stains and personal histories, each one with it’s small quiet wars over who used it when it’s clearly mine, it’s the one with the cat on, you know, the humorous cat, it’s mine, who used it?

And the water cooler.

Oh the water cooler.

Which you are only allowed to replace the giant water bottle of with two or more people, which new office boys will attempt to conquer, which new office girls will hang around and simper.

Wait, I’m doing it already aren’t I? Fallible, see. Right. OK, I guess I should give you some context.

In this office, I am not a regular worker (you see how I didn’t say ‘drone’ there, that’s balance that is).

I work in the IT department.

An IT department is worse than all of the above. Because it is exactly the same, except for the fact that it’s inhabitants don’t know it. Because they think, they know that they are better. They are the knights in shining armour, they are the kings of the LAN, rulers of the soft-reset. Now don’t get me wrong, from my tone you can go ahead and place me one step above these guys in desperate tragedy, because I think I know it. And I am out side of it. Because I’m (and I’m sorry to have to ruin this already, we purposely made them put a guy on the cover so you’d pick the book up) a woman. Breasts and everything.

Yup.

And as lovely as some of these guys are (I’m clearly female, when was the last time you heard a guy say ‘lovely’?) I’m outside, and I always will be. I can be one of the guys, but I know that there are things they wont say around me, or I can be aloof... and lonely.

The latter take way less effort.

Anyway, it started with a Mouse didn’t it?

I was staring at the mouse on my coffee cup. Being an IT bod means that I have to have geek-irony on my mug. This particular mug was a LOL-type. A cat with a paw on a little grey mouse, a hard lettered caption ‘did u say dubble clik or dubble lik’.

I know, it’s not even a good one. I think that’s a rule of mug though.

I was staring at it, at this mouse. And I felt – I felt an undue amount of sympathy for it. It was clearly suffering, and someone had, instead of helping, taken a picture, and captioned it.

I felt for the mouse.

I felt trapped. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was staring at the mouse, and I felt like I’d forgotten how to, I couldn’t inhale, if I tried it felt like I wasn’t getting enough air, like I couldn’t breathe in far enough.

The buzz of a distant fan, the whirr of the PCs.

I felt like I was drifting away, like everything, everything that I did was remote, the ways I had to talk, the parts I played, speaking to friends over the phone, facebook, twitter, the internet. I guess I suddenly felt… lonely.

I was sat among all of these open boxes, screws and memory, and wires and cables, there’d been a power surge and one protector had blown, I was sorting out and rescuing what I could, but I’d just started staring at this mug. This mug of (by now cold) milky tea and feeling trapped. Far away. Like there wasn’t enough, enough touch in my life, everything was mediated.

I wanted to sink.

I looked around me, at the green of the boards, the silver specks of solder, the patterns and shapes, the language I understood, and I wanted to sink into it. I wanted to melt like a piece of solder, I wanted to be a piece of energy, of light, I wanted to follow set routes, and never have to think… well, everything I was thinking.

And then there was another power surge.

And I may have been running one of the boxes open, because you know, it’s not advisable, but I couldn’t be bothered to get up and turn it off.

And there was a flash.

And running steps

And my tea got very hot.

Ceramic conducts, didn’t you know that? Better than metals for some stuff.

That’s when I saw his face. That’s when I saw it.