Rinaud stretched, reaching across the slick floor for his communicator. Some instinctive sense sparked, crystalline, in a forgotten sensorium. A moment of vertigo and he was back where he started, his arm unmoved. The shock rippled along his back, an immense eye distending above him in cold light, picking him apart. Picking out the Seed.
Rinaud lunged, contracting his way toward the communicator. There was a twist and he was outside, gasping in the shale field. His body shimmered, cast off photocell by photocell. Relief settled over him, his finger probing the depressed button on the pitted trigger. A woman's voice crackles at both ends of Rinaud's nightmare.
"Hey. It's okay." she repeats herself. "You're okay." The words echoed loudly with each wave of breath. His chest opened, mouth agape. He turned slowly, unsure why or how. "It's okay," she says one last time.
Picture this—an endless sheet of gloss black, striated and flecked with gold. A thin layer of water on the ground—a forgotten creekbed in the Appalachian mountains—no. A flake of light. Minute, jagged edges melting into nothing. Neither here nor there. A dendritic pattern muddies the terrain into soft, blurry warmth.
To be safe, to live here forever.
The same voice, a soft hello filtering through the veil.
"You're back. Deep breaths." Rinaud shakes his head. His left eye comes into view, glimmering.
What's that? What did you say?
He finds himself on the floor, lying in the empty darkness. "Gotcha," a distant face whispered, strangely flat and breathing loudly. His eyes struggle.
"Rough one, huh?" The face winces at a vague trace of light. A blue dot pulses slick next to slick hair hanging down the arch of her neck. Indiscernible color. "You're doing well," she says. Silence underscores the room around him, a soft smudge of light sharpened. Recollection sparks and retreats again.
Who are you?
She grins, eyelids falling down below the optic. "Ready?" The word slips into his consciousness, echoing into the soft collapsing edges of memory.
Where to...don't know.
Silence, the soft whir of air.
"You're still awake," she interjects. "The machine is helping you. You have to keep talking. Keep telling me what you're seeing."
There were no circles. Elongated shapes shiver in the landscape of his vision. A stretched oval expands further and he falls through, limitless, the boundary collapsed. The others blink in and out of view. An invisible surface poking through, direct gaze shattering, hopeful. Out and in again and again.
What was that? Dance to that? We're dancing. Why?
It subsided. The indeterminate dissolved from his body. He could feel his shoulders now, his torso. He listened. A blanket of static replaced the sucking noise and an autonomic sense of dread gave way to—peace.
Breathing came easier now.
His neck bent backward against the soft frame of the chair. The solid, dark blue of the room only adds to the silent release. Each muscle in his back and neck relaxed by degrees. His left hand flexed in a familiar, sure movement. He stood, opened new eyes, and saw clearly.
An electric buzz dulled his vision into uniform, grayish calm. He looked over his shoulder, new reality surging in a soft-edged moment of forever. Blue cushions, edged in gold brocade. Stained oak. Green light, filtered through rain on a beveled glass window.
He smiled. Synchronous flowering, the overlap opening to diffuse in fits and starts.
Everything. Is everything okay?
He felt his face with newborn hands and touched hard metal, photocells flowering away from his cold fingertips to expose the surface beneath. Sounds reverberate in the warm, inviting space of the room: a pshaw, a chuckle, and a sigh. The frame of the window is painted softer white. He smelled the rain on the other side.
He stepped forward again, reaching. Convex doors opening. Sunset red and velvet.
Concentrate.
He made a cautious motion and the convexity snapped into focus, bulged and contorted into rigidity. Aligned with the substrate. The room swam and congealed. Certainty arrived and, with it, the Seed—urgency, a pulsing sense of ineffable direction. A clear world, a simple world. Little lives proceeding in their direct trajectories.
"Quadrant One." Rinaud heard. "Your knowledge is saving us." A figure seated by a window, a sinking of color to bright and sharp relief. Another, across a low table, reclining on a divan and smoking. A langorous acknowledgement, a slipping taste of salt. Yes...
What? Your reality is static.
Rinaud shook his head. From the window: "Are you not concerned that there is yet something unaccountable? Still something we can't quite grasp?" The man on the divan shook his head, slow draw on a burning pipe. The bursting electric blue of the room came into focus. "Something of consequence, Rinaud. Something we'll sorely miss." The voice modulated in hallucinatory waves against the blank wall before him but the form did not flicker. He could feel the Seed dilate in interest.
The figure on the couch sat up. "Your concern is unwarranted. As long as the Seed determines reality is stable, I'm confident." He paused to smoke. Rinaud settled his attention, willing his jaw to relax. He inhaled and tapped his fingers against cold metal. The figure rose and shrugged off an invisible mantle. From the window: a gust.
"And the Seed... is like a mind. It possesses the qualities imbued in it by the efforts of the Quadrant. Our trust in you is absolute, but are you confident that it carries those qualities faithfully?" A soft, twinkling reflection in the surface of the window, brilliant white. Rinaud's eyes welled. The Seed, similarly inquisitive, maneuvered itself in his consciousness. Vast light flowed through the convolution.
The chatting voice morphed, became layered.
"Yes. Be there ? Chez vous."
The audacity of his grip struck Rinaud. As if, by squeezing a memory, he could hold it. The window snapped into place. A presence moves through the room, real figures coalescing from the hazy blue. A wave of nausea and reorientation. All of the cells along Rinaud's spine shimmered in mutual alarm. Extracted.
Rinaud instinctively grasped the speaker. They both froze.
"A mind is leaky without design. Ours is not." Click. Metal on plastic. Metallic shift. Rinaud's head swum and lights traced themselves over the sterile vault. Memory rearranged along with his faculties through the liminal confusion of recollection, a wash of image and sound, taste and tactile sensation, synthesized disorientation.
Rinaud reached for his cell phone and dialed a familiar number. She picks up. "Oh, man. Thought we had it this time. You okay?"
Rinaud smiles. "I am." Standing helped. "Whatever happened to Rinaud?" she asks. She laughs. "Quadrant had to have their poetry." He sat back down and sighed. "It's over now." She laughed again. "Here? Or there?"
Out of the window, the crisp midday sky. A burning cloud shifting into the minutiae of the room, riding the thermals on the wind.
Rinaud opened his eyes. Her voice shook him out of the calm awakening.
"You appear to have it right." She said, smiling. He blinked at her and searched around the room for something to focus on before it dawned on him that the game was finally over. No more uncertain disguise; no more trying endless variations.
"It is a brilliant solution, sir, and Quadrant will be ecstatic. I know it doesn't look like much, but you'll get used—"
"Which version is this?" he cut her off. A deep sense of foreboding welled in Rinaud's chest.
Her countenance froze and fell. "I'm very sorry, sir. It's the one we had to choose in the end, after so many failures—"
A squeak of a voice blurted out, rapid-fire: "But they're all failures."
The woman sighed. "That's right, sir. It's a repetition." A smile flickered across her lips and she reached for a tea and a plate of scones. "Would you like some? It's really very get used to."
Let.
Rinaud paused, tasting the words.
The room was intercut with fragments from another time.
"According to ours, the Seed determines reality—"
The screen began to collapse inwards in slow motion, quiet and relentless.
A weary corner, where pleiades might burn again in the evening air. The circle of my inner world grows larger, crowding out the world, receding along the moss. The endless page, smooth certainty, was the surest vessel for the seated master. Here, thought dissolves, earth at your feet.
Thanks to Jack for his helpful comments.
Rinaud stretched, reaching across the slick floor for his communicator. Some instinctive sense sparked, crystalline, in a forgotten sensorium. A moment of vertigo and he was back where he started, his arm unmoved. The shock ripples along his back, an immense eye distending above him in the sterile light, picking him apart. Picking out the seed.
Rinaud lunged, contracting his toward the communicator. He was flung sideways and into the wall. There was a twist and he was outside, gas ping in the shale field. His body shimmered, casting off pieces. Relief settled over him, his finger probing the dull trigger. A woman's voice crackles at both ends of Rinaud's nightmare.
Goodbye.
tags: Rinaud
"Hey. It's okay." she repeats herself. "You're okay." The words echoed louder with each wave of breath. His chest opened, mouth agape. He turned slowly, unsure why or how. "It's okay," she says one last time. Picture this—an endless sheet of gloss black, striated and flecked with gold, a thin layer of water on the ground. A forgotten creekbed in the Appalachian mountains—a flake of light. Minute, jagged edges dissolve into the nothing. Neither here nor there. A dendritic pattern in the forest, scattered flowers.
"To be safe, to live here forever."
The same voice, a soft hello filtering through the veil. "You're back. Deep breaths." Rinaud shakes his head and a hand firmly pushes him down. "Gotcha," a distant face whispered, strangely flat and breathing loudly. One eye comes into view, glimmering.
What's that? What did you say?
He finds himself on the floor and lying down. "Phew. Rough one, huh?" The face winces at a vague trace of light. "You're doing well," she says. Silence underscores the room around him, a soft smudge of light just above his head. Recollection sparks and retreats again as he struggles to move.
Who are you?
She grins, eyelids falling down below the optic. "Ready?" The word slips into his consciousness, echoing into the soft collapsing edges of memory.
Where to...don't know.
Silence, the soft whir of air.
"You're still awake," she interjects. "The machine is recording. You have to keep talking. Can't lose it."
There were no circles. Elongated shapes shiver in the landscape of his vision. A stretched oval expands further and he falls through, drops through the boundary. The others blink in and out of view. An invisible surface poking up, direct gaze shattering, hopeful. Out and in again and again.
What was that? Dance to that? We're dancing. Why?
To trip with stars; to walk again in the ways of the buried sun. The indeterminate snaps away from his body. No current of air any longer. He could feel his shoulders now, his abdomen. He listened.
The hollow stillness. Eyes discovered. The sight of an empty hangar, now filled with strange machines. A great apparatus flecked with light, a quiet man walking between two columns. Rinaud takes shape. He hears his own voice, scratches it with his fingers. Breathing came easier now. Rinaud's neck bent backward against the soft frame of the chair. A dim corridor, one bright spot falling away. Rinaud fit himself to the scale of the space, stood, opened new eyes. The small room behind him was dark, smells of paper and glue. He thinks. A clear world, a simple world. Little lives like shooting silver through the sky, tracing endless circles.
"Quadrant One," Rinaud heard now, echoing in the vast sheet-metal carcass. The distinct disconnect of the sound and the present image... "Your knowledge is saving us." A figure seated by a window, a sinking of color to bright and sharp relief. Another, across a low table, reclining on a divan and smoking. A langorous acknowledgement, a slipping taste of salt. Yes...
What? Your world is barren.
Rinaud shook his head. From the window: "Are you not concerned that there is yet something unaccountable? Still something we can't quite grasp?" The man on the divan shook his head, slow draw on a burning pipe. Rinaud settled his splayed attention, willing his jaw to relax. He inhaled and tapped his fingers against cold metal. Static blanketed the momentary silverfish flip of light in the dim room. The figure rose and shrugged off an invisible mantle. From the window: a gust.
"And the seed... is like a mind. It possesses the qualities imbued in it by the efforts of the Quadrant. Our trust in you is absolute, but are you confident that it carries those qualities faithfully?" A soft, twinkling reflection in the surface of the window, brilliant white. Rinaud's eyes welled and the seed, similarly inquisitive, maneuvered itself in his consciousness.
The chatting voice morphed, became layered.
"Yes. Remember? Be there? Chez vous?" The giant, crushed monolith visible in the rear window of silent memory.
The audacity of his grip struck Rinaud. As if, by squeezing a memory, he could keep it. He paused, tasting the words. The room was intercut with fragments from another time.
"According to ours, as long as the seed determines reality—"
The pinpricks began to dissolve, whorling, blink.
In a soft, slow-creeping, steady space.
A squeak of a voice blurted out, rapid-fire: "Before we lightened it up the seed muted its own reality, always felt there was something lurking just out of reach." Rinaud pulled something post-linguistic from somewhere in the back of his mind and, smiling sardonically, pushed the over-filled trolley to the arena side door. "No respect at all" he muttered bitterly to himself, recalling that phrase over the taste in his mouth. The haste and waste of signs, full of understanding. A languid explanation of itinerant oral histories that blurred in and out like the wind; the echoing words that walked beside the canal on a sunny day. And always that thing lurking in the background willing his way. A candle burning the edge of night, a small stream of light in the back.
This life was terrifying in all the stillness and sadness. A boy stood before the shutter and the seaweed curtains in a small house, a figure, a scent, eyes searching every corner of the deep woods. Here was a brain and a heart and a hand that wrote pages of fervid scribbles. Could it cut clean through? But the forest was full of shivers, silver light, the absent stars. Impossible to pierce the silent hill, the woods, the moon, the sun. The woods, the flowers, the roots, the water.
Thnx to Jack for his helpful comments.
tags: Rinaud
Rinaud has a dream. Not of memory and loss but life, truly alive, surging in his bones. The ability to pierce the veil and emerge on the other side in the light of morning is the best approximation of life. A dream where he senses the other side but never touches it. He is grateful.
Rinaud stretched, reaching across the slick floor for his communicator. Some instinctive sense sparked, crystalline, in a forgotten sensorium. Rinaud gasped.
His body shimmered, casting off pieces. The shock unrolled its wake along his back, an immense eye distending above him in the sterile light, picking him apart.
"Hey. It's okay." she repeats herself. "You're okay." The words echoed louder with each wave of breath. His chest opened, mouth agape. Rinaud turned slowly, unsure why or how. "It's okay," she says one last time.
Picture this—an endless sheet of gloss black, striated and flecked with gold. A thin layer of water on the ground. A forgotten creekbed in the Appalachian mountains—a flake of light. Minute, jagged edges disappear from view, swallowed whole.
Neither here nor there. A dendritic pattern in the forest, scattered flowers.
"To be safe, to live here forever."
The same voice, a soft hello filtering through the veil.
"You're back. Deep breaths." He shakes his head and a hand pushes him down. "Gotcha," a distant face whispered, strangely flat and breathing loudly. An eye comes into view, glimmering.
What's that? What did you say?
A mirror finds itself on the floor, lying down. "Phew. Rough one, huh?" The face winces at a vague trace of light. "You're doing well," she says. Silence underscores the room around him. Vague memory retreating again as he struggles.
Who are you?
She grins, eyelids falling down below the optic. "Ready?" The word slips into his consciousness, echoing into the soft collapsing edges of memory.
Where to...don't know.
Silence, the soft whir of air.
"You're still awake," she interjects.
"The machine is helping you. It's aiding your recall. You have to keep talking. Keep telling me what you're seeing."
There were no circles in the air. Elongated shapes shiver in the landscape of his vision. A stretched oval expands further and he fell through, dropped through the boundary. The others blink in and out of view. An invisible surface poking up, direct gaze shattering, something fostering hope. Out and in again and again.
What was that? Dance. Did you dance? We were dancing. Why?
To trip with stars. To walk again in the ways of the buried sun. The indeterminate snaps away from his body. No current of air. He could feel his shoulders now, eyes searching. He listened.
Those sounds of hollow stillness. Eyes discovering. He blinks.
The sight of an empty hangar, girders cutting parallel lines through watery light. A great apparatus flecked with light, an insect disappearing into the next room. Rinaud takes shape in the silence, his own breath rushing past the portal of his ears. And, underneath that sound, a voice. A squeak of a voice blurted out, rapid-fire: "metadata and access counts, etc. Type of card and type of subscription etc. So maybe even more than that?"
He heard scratches of paper, drew in his breath.
He is grateful.
A reader, of a sort. He considers himself brutally curious, ruthlessly fascinated with everything that surrounds him, from the first teeming energy of the growing season to the steam rising from the manhole cover in the wet street. Flowers giving way to golden age. Graphite, lightning.
"When will this end? I'm tired of waiting," Rinaud's voice overlaps in a dual attack.
Rinaud settled himself in the chair and laid his arm across the console. "Quadrant One," Rinaud heard now, echoing in the vast sheet-metal carcass. And the distinct disconnect of the sound and the present image. "Your knowledge is saving us." A figure reclining on a divan and smoking, sweet tobacco. Yes...
You are of nothing.
Rinaud shook his head. Other memories layered themselves into view.
"Are you not concerned that there is yet something unaccountable?" From the window: a slow draw on a burning pipe. Rinaud settled his splintered attention. He inhaled and tapped his fingers against cold metal. The figure rose and shrugged off an invisible mantle. From the window: a gust.
"And the seed... is like a mind. It possesses the qualities imbued in it by the efforts of the Quadrant. Our trust in you is absolute, but are you confident that it carries those qualities faithfully?" A soft, twinkling reflection in the surface of the window, brilliant white. Rinaud's eyes welled. He, similarly inquisitive, maneuvered itself in his consciousness. Vast light flowed through the convolution.
The vision called by the voice morphed, became layered.
"Yes. Bahnhofstrasse. Whatever."
Rinaud's irises dilated, driving the world backward. He smiles at the warmth in his bones.
What a brilliant solution is this? Rinaud lay back in the half-darkness, a warm sensation sweeping his legs. The chair whirred and the monitor started up again.
"Bahnhofstrasse 66."
Rinaud dragged the chair back against the wall. He breathed in deeply. The room was still, black walls stretching upward and down. He leaned forward and checked his watch.
He caught his reflection in the steady light of the computer screen. A ripple breaking out of some deep memory, generated deep in the bowels of the world at the bottom of the sea. It would never be this easy, Rinaud tells himself.
You have to make a choice and keep choosing it, keep choosing it, every day for the rest of your life. You can only get better at it. You're not alone.
A mirror Rinaud said, startling himself with his familiarity.
"You have a better feel for the world than I do, that's certain." he continued. "You know, for me, it only makes everything seem small. Small and anonymous."
The edges of the frame soften and close. "Why do you keep doing it?" she asked, twisting around to face him.
Rinaud opened his mouth like a ventriloquist's dummy. "I have to know."
She breathed. "But what? What do you want to know that you don't already?" she laughed derisively.
"The next one will be a recording of a phone call," Rinaud continued. He lowered his head and disappeared behind his shoulders. "A conversation that goes deep into the night." A flush came over him. He closed his eyes and kept them that way.
There will always be a way through, and that way through is you.
The phonetic sound swells behind his back.
"As long as the seed determines reality, I'm confident." The man from the window walks over and runs his fingers over Rinaud's bare arms and palms.
They're looking for reality out there. In all those words, waiting to see what you'll tell them. They're just people. Just like you.
Rinaud nods. He wanted to stroke her again, stroke her more, but no. The material sensation hovering just in front of him when she says "You say such silly things." Rinaud thumbed through the first letter. Precision and exegesis. "What exactly is it, then?" she asked. "Are you unfamiliar with the state of the art?" Rinaud asked.
"No, no. I wouldn't know what state it's in, Rinaud." She looked at the light fixture. "You're much better at this than me," she said.
To realize, in the end, what it is we're doing. And then, not to forget. Etch it into our bones.
Thnx to Jack for his comments.
tags: Rinaud
Author Name:
Erik Schnetter
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