by A. Sparrow
August 23rd, the first night I met Lys, I was thinking about Indigo 709. If one of my patterns had the power to heal even one old lady, maybe it made ethical sense to emulate those properties and see if I could create more stuff that made people feel good.
My bum knee had been acting up lately, so I already had something to test out these curative properties. If nothing else, I would have a new track for my legions of fans to admire and maybe even inspire fan number fifteen to follow my work.
Turned out that Indigo 709 had a beat very similar to the one that conjured that icy fog—busy in the front end, with long gaps towards the end the loop. Maybe that was no coincidence.
After all, with cellular automata, both Chris Langton and Stephen Wolfram discovered thresholds in the universe of numbers that make the difference between organized complexity and chaos. Life and death, in other words. Perhaps I had stumbled on a sonic realm where the same kind of principle applied.
I used the overall shape of Indigo 709 to guide me in the selection process. I could have built off of the exact same pattern, but that would have been cheating. I wanted to see if I had discovered a general principle, not a specific anomaly.
So I plugged my headphones into the drum box and clicked through the randomizer, searching for even more extreme variant of the combination of cluster and space that made that California lady’s swelling go down. When I found a likely candidate, it was time to go live.
I peeked out the window to make sure the lights were still out in the house. Maybe the boys couldn’t hear me, but their ladies might. They had a habit of bringing women home from the bar at the end of Ringwood Road, especially when their mom was away. It was only eleven p.m., so I still had another couple hours to myself.
I plugged into my amp and selected a volume that would shake the walls without overpowering the mic. For my lead synth I never went direct into a board. I recorded to analog on an ancient Ampeg reel to reel that I had salvaged from an old man’s garage in Dryden.
A lead tone told me where to patch in. A long squeal followed by syncopated hiccups told me the beat was about to start.
Soon, I was in the thick of it. The beat had the feel of a grade school drum class, the rhythms ragged and organic. As the layers kicked in one by one, my fingers hovered over my modified Sixtrak. Everything was looping now. Programmed parts dropped in and out while I added counterpoint and contrast, swooping in to increase the intensity or back away, whatever made sense in the moment. For the live improvised overdub, my goal was to add texture and build depth to this wall of sound.
But those 88 keys so constrained me so. I longed for a keyboard with keys between keys, offering an infinite array of microtones, like a fretless guitar. Frequencies mattered. An A of 437 cycles per second to me was a universe away from A440. It made all the difference to the magic behind my music.
For now, all I could was to work with a predetermined subset with keys remapped from their original, conventional defaults. It sufficed, though I often found myself wishing to play a note my instrument could not produce. Black keys. White keys. Why not keys colored various shades of gray?
It only took a few moments to fall under the spell. Often, I would edit out my early meanderings and explorations, but sometimes that was where the magic lay. I had to be very careful with post-production or I could sometimes ruin things.
When things really got rolling, I entered a trance state, stabbing out riffs and runs that wove between the layers like thread, creating dimensions and facets that wouldn’t happen without my intervention.
A piercing pain shot through my throbbing knee and made me grunt. The dull ache became an excruciating burn that just wouldn’t let up. Some therapy.
But I kept at it, because an icy fog had just swooped into the room. Never had it come so fast and thick. I honestly even hadn’t been thinking of summoning Lys tonight. But I had stumbled onto some powerful mojo.
Crystals coalesced into shapes with color, sharper and more solid than anything conjured before. A bunch of knobby, thorny things sprang up, arms reaching. I flinched away, but clearly these were plants, not animals.
Flubbing notes, the objects went hazy just as Lys stepped into the thicket of cacti.
I hear a gasp, high but raspy. “No! Not yet. Don’t go!”
I scrambled to get her back, hunkering back into the groove, choosing notes for maximum effect. I fell out of breath. Sweat poured down my brow. I could hear the cows stomping and mooing over in the main barn. Flurries of notes poured spontaneously out of my hands, guided by some atavistic muscle memory.
It was touch and go, but I won the trend. Indigo 823 would not be denied.
The crystalline mist re-solidified into flesh and clothing. A frosted girl now stood in my living room holding a spiked club. Her hair was braided and knotted. Her eyes were astonished.
I stumbled backwards and collapsed into my tape deck. A cord unplugged. The music stopped. The cacti vanished, but Lys remained.
As the ice crystals sheathing her melted, she stood there dripping onto my carpet. Intricate scars criss-crossed her limbs. Geometric lattice works. Celtic knots. Like an array of pale tattoos.
She was underdressed, with a scarf wrapped around her meager bosom that looked to be woven from human hair. A floppy leather wrap hung in tatters around her waist. She wore bracelets of bone and a choker made from the ears of rodents.
“The Takers lied. They said this was all destroyed. That they had come to rescue us.”
“You believed them?”
“No.” She gawked at my gear. “This … is how you brought me here?”
I gawked right back at her and nodded.
She commenced to topple my keyboards from their stands, smashing, stomping, ripping cords from sockets.
“Hey, hey, hey! What the fuck?”
“All of this ... must be destroyed!”
“That's thousands of dollars of gear! My gear.”
“That means nothing to me.”
But ... what if you want to go back ... to ... wherever you came from?”
“Go back? Are you daft?”
She continued to trash my gear.
“I will never go back. And no others shall cross! Never! Understood?”
“I … I guess.” I watched stunned as a mother watching her babies get murdered.
“You nothing of my world. Believe me, this must be done. I know what I am doing.”
She bashed and hacked at my gear until my entire collection of vintage keyboards and effects became a mulch of circuit boards, wires and shattered plastic.
And then she ran into my kitchen and rifled through my drawers, snatching up a serrated bread knife.
“What do you think you’re going to do with that?”
She ignored me and stomped back into living room.
“No! Not the Vandersteens!” I grabbed her arm. She wrenched free, much stronger than she looked. I hugged one of the towers but she was already sawing into the casing of its twin.
I collapsed to the floor, consigned to the demise of my precious $45,000 speakers.
When she was done with her rampage, she came and stood over me with that bread knife, panting heavily. I was certain she intended to cut my throat. At that moment, I wouldn’t have cared if she had.
“This blade is inadequate. Do you own anything larger?”
I blinked back at her, not comprehending why she would need a longer blade.
“Well, there’s a machete in the trunk of my car.”
“How large?”
I held up two fingers about three feet apart. The corners of her mouth curled. Her eyes flared wider.
“Bring it!”
***
Like a tool, I fetched the machete from the trunk of my car. I wasn’t worried any more about her wanting to use the blade on me. Clearly she was simply paranoid. Delusional. But who am I to speak of delusions after I had conjured a five foot four inch female out of thin air with nothing more than sound waves.
She snatched the blade from me, ran her thumb across the dull and rusted edge and cursed. She spent the next half hour sharpening it while I scooped the ruins into the corners so at least we’d have a clear path through the wreckage.
There was a noise outside. The boys were back from the bar. Lys shot to her feet and went to the window, peeking around the curtain. She rushed from room to room, frantic.
“Is there only one door to your house?”
“Afraid so.”
“This will not do. We cannot stay here. We’ll be cornered! I smell animals. Is there a stable, perhaps?”
“There’s … a cow barn … and some outbuildings.”
“Show me.”
I grab a flashlight and lead her out onto the farm. She snatched up a smudged and tattered moving blanket from the storage closet where I keep my grill.
“We’ll be safer out of doors.”
“We? You want to stay out here, I won’t stop you. Me, I’m sleeping in my own bed.”
***
She made her bed in the hay loft that night. In the morning, the wreckage in my living room reminded me that unfortunately, this was no dream. My avant-garde music career was over. I am too stunned to grieve the loss.
I cooked breakfast for two, even though I half expected her to be gone, but I found her up in the loft, snuggled in the hay with my machete.
I brought out four fried eggs and four slices of toast with jam on a tray, intending to share it. She devoured it all and asked for more. So I go back in and fried up a whole package of bacon and made us a couple of bowls of instant oatmeal.
I went out to cajole her to come back inside to eat because Mrs. Watson’s boys would be coming around soon to do chores. They usually slept in on Saturdays, but for these guys that meant rolling out of the house around eight. The smell of bacon did the trick, drawing her out of the loft and into my kitchen.
Lys didn’t seem to mind being stuck in a place with only one door as much when there was daylight. While she crouched by the front window watching every car that passed on Ringwood Road, I stuffed the remains of my gear into a bunch of heavy duty trash bags, the kind they use for construction waste.
The absolute obliteration of my synthesizers began to sink in as I gathered up the pieces. The sounds I had made with these beasts! All of those custom tweaks that I would never replicate. I suppose it was normal to be going through some level of withdrawal and mourning.
When I turned on the TV, Lys leapt to her feet and raised her machete. Like a fool I got between it in her blade, narrowly avoiding a slash in the ribs.
“Calm down! It’s just a television, not a portal.”
“Of course,” she says. “I remember … television.”
“You have … TV? There?”
“I’m from here, you fool. I was taken, as a child.”
“By … whom?”
“By the Takers. Who else? Do you not know anything?”
“I’m … learning.”
She calmed down, and watched a bit of a nature show with me. I just wanted to check the news, but she had no interest, whatsoever.
Afterwards, she washed up in the tub with some cold water and laundry detergent. I gave her some clean clothes that didn’t fit me anymore. They were way loose and long, but she didn’t look too out of place for Ithaca. At least the long sleeves of my jeans and flannel shirt covered her scars.
“They will come for me, you realize.”
“Will they?”
“Yes. You must destroy any trace of your music. Promise to never create such a thing again.”
I took a long, deep breath and sighed. “But aren’t there others … like you? Shouldn’t we try and help them?”
“Most are corrupt. No one on the other side can be trusted.”
“What about you? Can I trust you?”
“You still have your head, do you not?”
“Is that a threat?”
Tears erupted. “You really do know nothing, Mr. Indigo.”
***
A couple days later, we’re eating out in a meadow. She has me build a fire to cook some steaks even though I have a perfectly good propane Weber. She picks some cow corn from a neighbor’s field to roast right in the husks.
“The Takers thought they could breed us,” she says, while I’m choking on a chunk of bloody meat. “But their seed wouldn’t take in our wombs. So they used us as thrall.”
“Thrall?”
“Slave laborers.”
“To do what?”
“I am a hunter. Small game. It pleases me. Allows me freedom to roam.”
“So … uh … how long have you been doing this?”
“I was eleven when they took me. I used to live near a place called Cleveland. You know this ... Cleveland?”
“Yeah, I know Cleveland.”
“You will take me there? To See?”
“Sure. No problem. But you’re gonna have stop threatening people with that machete. Not everybody here is a Taker, you know.”
“But they are here among us,” she says. “They may look like everyone else. But they are different.”
“Well, you’re a grown woman now. Maybe they’ll leave you alone.”
“No one leaves the Rut. No one. Not ever. From the first day, they tell us. That is an absolute. They will not be pleased to learn I am gone.”
“Fuck em,” I say. “If it makes you feel better. I could buy some guns. We could go all survivalist. Build a cabin in the woods.”
Her eyes glitter. “You would do that for me?”
She has no idea the lengths I would go to please her now that she has wedged her way into my world. I am sure as hell not going to let any Takers take her away from me.
That she shows no physical interest in me whatsoever doesn’t matter yet. Eventually, she might cultivate some affection for me. For the time being I can sustain myself just by her presence, breathing the air she breathes. I was smitten from the moment she wrecked my most precious possessions. I would do anything to keep her safe.
***
Life changes a lot after that. Mrs. Watson makes us move. She doesn’t approve of couples living out of wedlock on her property. But that’s okay. I find us a little cabin in the woods to rent and make sure that the place has two doors.
She roams the hills and meadows during the day, catching squirrels for dinner while I worked my temp jobs. Every night she hunkers down and waits for the Takers to come, but there is never much more than a mouse or a cricket to worry about.
She shares my bed, so far, only to sleep. I’m pretty sure she’s not a virgin, but I don’t want to push her any faster than she wants to go. When I wake up in the middle of the night and sense her breathing beside me I feel this buzzing tingle that has to be better than heroin. I may not be loved, but I am wanted.
Of course, my fans aren’t at all pleased. Lys doesn’t want the Takers to be able to track us so she makes me go online and delete everything I have ever uploaded. I never realized how many nooks and crannies my stuff had made it into. There were even bootleg torrents of my stuff on Pirate Bay, not to mention all of these obscure Russian web sites. At least I am able to get rid of anything that bears my name and location.
I also have to delete my e-mail accounts to drown out the howls of ALL CAPS OUTRAGE that inevitably appear in my box. Turns out, I had way more than fourteen fans. I never realized how many lurkers were also into my stuff. My sudden absence draws them all out of hiding. I can only hope that the lady from California kept a copy of Indigo 709 to ease her arthritis. I hope that the Takers leave her alone.
I break down and tell Lys that I need to play music or else I’ll go insane. Turns out she has no problem with me playing instruments made of wood and strings. So I teach myself some mandolin. I already played a little guitar.
As long as I play other people’s songs or anything pre-composed, tonal and in three-four or four-four time, she’s fine with it. It’s not going to be anything that opens portals, at least not bet
ween worlds.
Once a week now, we go out among people, right after her weekly bath. It’s a major breakthrough for us, this coming out. She leaves the machete in the car, but she insists on carrying a big ass Buck hunting knife strapped under her vest. She goes barefoot in the city.
I buy her beer and whiskey at this open acoustic jam on Sundays at a downtown pub. The folks who show up play everything from Turlough O’Carolan to country rock.
Old habits die hard. I can’t help but play with fire.
In that huge room, with five or six Martin guitars cranking away at chords, I sometimes take liberties with the background accompaniment and resort to some of my old riffs, cramming odd time signatures into four-four spaces, detuning my strings to let those microtones ring. To any listeners nearby, it might sound like I’m incompetent or drunk, but there are a few out there in the crowd from time to time whose eyes might open a little wider. And sometimes a pale tattoo may peek out from under a shirt collar or cuff, telling me there’s more than just Lys crossing between worlds. I haven’t told Lys, but I’ve looked into their eyes, and I’m pretty sure these folks aren’t Takers.
I’ll have to ask her someday how to tell the Takers from the Taken, but that will be a ways down the road. She doesn’t like to talk about that other place.
*****
Bucket Run
The beast catches up with me in my brother’s apartment. The light becomes too dim to read, my book too heavy to hold. It weighs down my limbs, pins me against the sofa cushions. It has hunted me down after a week of remission when I had been functional enough to feed myself, wash my clothes and even read a newspaper. I can tell this is going to be a big one.
The monster looms like Jupiter over Ganymede, blotting all vistas, dominating my consciousness, smothering any trace of initiative or self-determination. Its shadows seep like blood into a carpet deep into the fibers of my will. Pinned to the sofa, the TV cycles the same veggie chopper infomercial hour after hour as I orbit this black hole of despair.
My brother Eric returns in the evening to find me sitting in the same spot I had been when he had left for work, same book in my lap, bookmark stuck on the same page it had landed on three days ago. He just shakes his head and goes into the kitchen.