Journeys of the Mind

by Sonny Whitelaw Sean Williams

  'In-cite.'

  He said it softly. Just softly enough for them not to hear and assume (correctly) that his activities required frowning upon. Then he powered up the capacitors. Shuddering with incitement, the coils oscillated into their respective rhythms. Invisible ripples sloshed inwards from the four corners of the boxing ring and broke in conical upheaval around the cup.

  Electric fizz spun into a delicate lacework of haze whose strands condensed to fog; fog the colour of peridot, the secret shade of her eyes and gentleness and lovemaking—not fucking, never fucking—peridot set in amber and gold. The cup went fuzzy around the edges and sucked in a plume of steam to regurgitate it moments later. Blurred contours of china ware melted into green mist, rippling in tune with the coils.

  'In-cite,’ he gasped and jerked back.

  Blue and white discharges fused in the haze and arced toward gay strip lights, there to spark into fireworks. Considerably more gay than the strip lights on their own. The dayroom vaulted to black, and from somewhere near the window came the muted smack of china cracking on linoleum. China on granite would have sounded harsher.

  'Uh-oh,’ he said.

  The darkness heaved with tweets and jibbers and hoots—the song of startled senility—and he craved Krapp's solitude. A few surprising interludes aside, he and Krapp had always been alone.

  Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The Earth might be uninhabited.

  It most assuredly wasn't. He could hear Miss Mehlworm.

  'Green!’ she lowed through the void.

  'It's just the emergency light, dear,’ the Busty Blondes chanted soothingly.

  Miss Mehlworm knew better and lowed, ‘Ectoplasm!'

  Mounted above the dayroom door was a light panel. It showed a stick figure running full tilt from malt drink, carpet slippers, and Pepto-Bismol. Beneath it said Emergency Exit. One day he'd followed the suggestion, shuffled along the hall, across the lawn, down Main Street, wearing blue flannel pyjamas. It had alerted a patrol unit. Beige would have been less flashy. The kindly young officers had expedited him back into the care of the Busty Blondes, where he'd pleaded the Fifth. What was the point of a circular escape route?

  The emergency light shed fish tank dusk on the room. In it bobbed ghostly faces and upside-down watches. #4's beehive had acquired a mossy sheen, which suited her. Over his breakfast tray hung a whiff of singed ampere, and he swatted at it to disperse this ephemeral evidence. Mid-swat the lights snapped back on. Chewing air for remnants of the smell, he pretended to wave at Miss Mehlworm, three tables over.

  'Green ectoplasm,’ she yammered.

  'That's nice,’ he said, not meaning it.

  'That's nice,’ the Busty Blondes chanted soothingly.

  What the hell is this?

  Near the curtains clustered a little pile of shards. He poked them with his toes, doubled over, licked a long, elegant finger and dipped it into the beige powder that dusted shards and linoleum like some kind of fungal growth. The flute caught a glint off the gay strip lights. He straightened up, tongue-tip nudging the residue on his finger. One eyebrow climbed towards his hairline. More clearly defined now; the mane had been chopped, leaving salt and pepper tufts in stubborn refusal to reach any kind of directional consensus. Shoes still were anathema. Anything that might confine him was anathema. He should try a stint in this place.

  Another tongue-tip nudge, then he scrubbed his hand on the jeans. Malt?

  'Mink drink,’ he replied joyously. ‘In its embryonic state ... oh ... about twenty-seven minutes ago.'

  I don't like malt.

  'Quite. That's why I got rid of it.'

  Very considerate. Mouth working like he was trying to grind down the last vestiges of the taste. I don't suppose you could have just poured it away?

  'And poison an innocent rubber tree?'

  There's no such thing.

  He ogled the shards, smirked. ‘The spatial dislocation is interesting.'

  Yeah. That's what the crew of the Eldridge thought when they woke up blended into the bulkheads.

  'Stop digging for imperfections!'

  It caused a flinch and confirmed his estimate of the time line. Several months after he'd decided to forego freckles and peridot lovemaking and impersonate the Lone Ranger. He couldn't even impersonate the horse. He looked nowhere near cheerful enough. Hey-ho, horseshit!

  Just been listening to that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago. Hard to believe I was ever as bad as that.

  Every bit as bad. Perfectly identical. Leaving her had been his idea. Another thing they had in common with Krapp.

  The eyes she had! Everything there, everything, all the—

  Gut twisted, slippers whimpered.

  And you never once thought of marrying her?

  'I shouldn't speak badly of the mink drink,’ he said, less to distract himself than to ward off the misery radiating from him. He felt a sudden craving for bananas. He hadn't had bananas in years. Bananas caused constipation. Unlike mink drink.

  The shards were tugging at his attention, and he let them, less to distract himself than to ward off the misery radiating from him. He picked them up one by one, all graceful yoga moves and gleaming flute, then dug the evidence into the Saharan compost of the rubber tree pot. Such a tidy boy. Very considerate.

  He said so.

  Count your blessings. What if it'd ended up stuck in the table top?

  'I'd have told them we were making a contemporary sculpture: Mink Drink Unbound.'

  A corner of his mouth angled up, indicating trace elements of humour. Have we always been crazy?

  'More or less, like Krapp. It makes us tolerable.’ He wondered what had become of the avian umbilical. Egg on the rampage? ‘I'm glad they sent you.'

  Who?

  'You.'

  No.

  Two corners of his mouth angled up, indicating a smile. Odd to watch. Had there really been a time when he'd smiled? Must have, he supposed. If he smiled, he must have smiled first. It wouldn't do to search for the event, though. It might give rise to second thought. Which explained why he smiled. Sly devil!

  Who are ‘they'? Semantics less ambiguous this time, but he was still smiling.

  'The particles. They're getting smarter. They've lost, of course. Otherwise you wouldn't be here.'

  The smile tilted and keeled off his face.

  'I'm glad they sent you,’ he said again. ‘You know when you're being tormented. The others just stood there and took it. With you there's hope of a fight. Sit down.'

  He didn't. He just stood there (lopsided, weight off the gammy knee) and took it. His left hand crept toward his kidney region to retrieve the totem. Long, elegant fingers started stroking the flute. Okay, so he wasn't taking it. He was doing some tormenting of his own: Watch me. I could play if I wanted to. Unlike you.

  Stroke. What others? Stroke.

  'After a twelve-year-old idiot savant who wanted to discuss fractal geometry they sent me some brat who kept scratching scales on a quarter violin. He consistently fluffed F sharp, I might add.'

  Perfectly identical. Stroke. We made them. Stroke.

  'We didn't make them. We were made. We were made, and you f—'

  No F-words if you valued your residual privacy. Fig, fetid, or fiasco, Miss Mehlworm would tell the nurse. Three tables over, Miss Mehlworm looked nonplussed, mangy eyebrows bristling in a frown. She was staring at the Pepto-Bismol cup. It held an egg. Eggtoplasm.

  'Oh,’ he said.

  Oh.

  He was intrigued, too. They studied the egg, three tables over; perfectly identical profiles layered as on a photograph. Miss Mehlworm could have explained the principles of double exposure. Or triple. Or quadruple. He broke the tableau, scratched his ear with the flute.

  You have no idea of what you're messing with.

  'Then stop me.'

  I can't. You'd have to stop you first.

  'I didn't scratch my ear with a flute just now.'

  Hallelujah! The hea
dy thrill of self-determination!

  He'd always been a sarcastic son of a bitch.

  He leaned forward, reached under the cable—still warm—and touched the centre of the tabletop. His marker was gone, of course. Not even a damp patch from the runniness surrounding the lump. He'd have to measure again and then find another x to mark the spot. Something more ... permanent? Doubtful. He'd just cancelled permanency permanently.

  'I shouldn't speak badly of the mink drink,’ he said, returning to a prior thought. ‘See, the voltage for each coil has to be different. The key is interference. To sufficiently confuse the particles, I suppose, so they quit interfering with themselves. If the mink drink hadn't oscillated, I'd never—'

  He'd left.

  At least you didn't have to chase him away, unlike those needy children. Slight tactical error on the part of the particles, that. The children weren't going to talk him out of it. The children provided all the encouragement he'd ever want.

  Did I sing as a boy? No. Did I ever sing. No.

  Three tables over, Miss Mehlworm finished her contemplation. Fingers spidered for a spoon, raised it, and smashed the egg. She'd discovered the sine qua non of making omelettes.

  * * * *

  Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The Earth might be uninhabited.

  Uninhibited.

  No carpet slippers.

  Bare feet sucked on linoleum as he stole along the corridor, glorying in the sight of bunions. His wardrobe was carefully chosen. No pyjamas. No little velvet suits like the needy children had worn. Instead a pair of faded jeans and a T-shirt, relics from a time when anger had still been possible. The clothes hung on him like a half erected tent on a pole, fabric contending with empty folds of skin.

  The building breathed the noises you'd expect at this hour and in a place like this. The bored hum of strip lights. The whispers of scurrilous dreams behind closed doors. The jingly chatter of a TV set brightening a nurses’ station. The endless clack-clack of the second hand skipping over the face of a clock, ticking away lives.

  Past midnight. Never knew such silence.

  The only out-of-place sound was the suck-suck of his feet, shambling past doors marked No Access and Men and Staff Only and Women. The one marked Dayroom lay at the end of the hall. Inside, darkness and the clack-clack of yet another second hand and a bouquet of faeces and verbena left behind by Miss Mehlworm. He eased the door shut and fished in his back pocket for the matches he'd lifted from the nurses’ station.

  'We're not supposed to play with matches.'

  Of course not. We might feel compelled to incinerate the whole fucking penal colony.

  The shimmer of the flame brushed a plastic Christmas tree that struggled to convey a sense of conviviality and mulled malt drink. Five feet out from the tree the match burned down to his fingers. He dropped it, swearing, decided against striking another and fumbled on, until a synthetic branch collided with his forehead. Ornaments tinkled. Bending over clumsily, he patted for the lead, found it, plugged it in.

  Green-pink-purple lights skittered around plastic foliage, darted in and out among tin stars and angel hair, cast a garish, unsteady glow over his table. The array sat untouched. It had taken him a month to calculate the frequency modulations. Day after day after day of solving equations in his head. The trick lay in creating a pattern of interference that would incite and reinforce the EM fields.

  Yesterday he'd spent rechecking it all. Now it was time. Fitting, in a way. A Christmas gift to himselves. Him, and him, and the children they'd been, and infinite others. Total redemption.

  Never knew such silence. The Earth might be uninhibited.

  He set the time delay switch on the capacitors. Ten minutes. Ten minutes should be enough. Hissing at the soft scrape of metal on linoleum, he pulled out a chair and wished he could have built the array on the floor. This would be difficult. Right hand on the backrest, left on the tabletop, good leg leading. He slowly hauled himself up until he stood on the seat, knees and ankles wobbling to sustain his balance. The next step would be harder still. He unhooked the cable between two coils, crawled onto the tabletop, and spent five minutes reconnecting the coils and getting to his feet.

  Two minutes to go. Positioned at the exact centre of the table, arms wide, he stared at the second hand clack-clacking its circles through green-pink-purple flickers from the Christmas tree.

  Did he have the right to take this step for his selves?

  If not he, then who?

  None of them could do it. Not unless he did it first. He was the index case. He was needed to set the ball rolling. He had no right not to. Not when he knew precisely how the needy children would grow up and fuck up and grow old and end up here, brooding over a smile smiled for reasons too painful to remember. Perfectly identical.

  The capacitors charged and flared; coils buzzed, haze rose, tamping the Christmas tree lights to remote sparks. The prickle started in his toes, shivered up his calves and thighs, through a listless dick, and seeped from gut to brain in an itchy crescendo. Electromagnetic fields palpitated veins, bones, nerves, milled cells to foam, spun particles. He was screaming and couldn't hear a thing except F sharp fluffed and a thousand second hands clackety-clacking into madness. A freezing hot vortex of molten time swept him through featureless space.

  And spat him into eternity.

  Countless CTCs trapped by his coils, grazing the Cauchy Space at a single gathering point. They were all here. Wizened beyond belief or comprehension even now, newborns dripping amniotic fluid, memories and possibilities of every conceivable stage in between, sound of limb and crippled, bald and black and grey, flushed from lovemaking and riddled with acne and howling in pain. A myriad snapshots of events and locations blurred to grey mist, like all colours mixed together would blur to white. Their presents. His pasts. His futures. Fewer of those. Much fewer of those.

  A version of two months ago condensed, horrible scarecrow of a man, skinny and bent. Had there really be a time when he'd looked like this? The time was now. Two months were a heartbeat.

  Hazel irises milky with age, the Scarecrow looked at him and grinned. I was right, wasn't I? It was the mink drink, wasn't it?

  'I was right,’ he said pointedly. For him to be right, he had to be right first. ‘And you couldn't stop me.'

  No. Are you still going through with it?

  'Why else would I be now?’ Or was it here?

  Of course.

  Still grinning, the Scarecrow receded into the mist. He let himself drift, past five-year-old fiddlers, past pimply prodigies, past sergeants, gung-ho and caked with mud. Lovers with sand between their toes—it had been the desert, of all places—chased morning-after heroes, basking in peridot glow. Seconds and decades clack-clacking forward and back, and then he found him. The fool.

  Drowned in dreams and burning to be gone.

  Not so different from him or him—before and after, like the pictures of makeovers in magazines—but you could tell all the same. That one stood at the cusp, balanced on a pinhead of decision, poised to fall and bring them all down after him. He was a cancer that needed to be removed. Remove him, remove the decision, remove the loss. Easy.

  Not quite that easy, of course. Fundamentally, there were two possibilities: either the lives of him and the post-decision versions would alter beyond recognition, or the minute lacuna he was going to create would wipe them all out. He was willing to accept the latter. Like a patient undergoing surgery accepted the risk of death for the sake of being healed.

  The grip of the knife felt smooth and cool. He'd polished it. He'd cleaned the handle, whetted the blade. Alone in his room, at night. Knives—unlike bottle ships and dioramas—were not considered a suitable hobby, but neither the kindly young officers nor the Busty Blondes had thought to frisk him for cutlery after his excursion.

  He seemed pensive and a little lost, bare feet swirled around by mist, making him look as though he were afloat. Vulnerable ... that was it. Did he realize what was comin
g?

  It's hardly fair, you know. You were the one who left her.

  That answered that question. ‘True. But with you gone, I won't have left her. You're a mistake. A glitch.'

  Yes. Mother spoke highly of you, too.

  'It's nothing personal.'

  It never is.

  For some reason his refusal to fight or even argue was disconcerting. Did he care at all? No, probably not. He remembered not giving a damn about anything at that juncture. Nothing had mattered apart from following through after the decision. Much like now. If you allowed yourself to care, it sapped your ability to act.

  Long, elegant fingers reached for the flute. For a second or two, he weighed it in his hands, then he raised it and began to play. The Badinerie. His tempo was sublime. And his arms were raised. It simplified matters. The knife needed to penetrate laterally and between the ribs, at an upward angle into the heart. This way the pain would be kept to a minimum—he had no desire to make this any more unpleasant for him than necessary. The blade pierced the supple resistance of skin, whispered through cartilage, sheathed itself in muscle. For a second or two he could feel metal and wood vibrate with arrhythmic pulses.

  Bach's music broke off mid-note, decaying to a not-quite-squeaky whimper. Hot, wet redness coated his hand, and he released the knife. He came down hard on his knees. Wincing in sympathy, he watched him crumple and finally rest on his side, half swallowed by mist. His dead face—so much younger, but nonetheless his own—looked serene. Perhaps he was grateful. In a while the time curves would bounce back and diffuse, and he'd never have existed.

  Grunting softly, he reached for his flute. His now. As he straightened up, he thought he'd try to play for her tonight, lumbering fingers or no. She always—

  'Oh,’ he murmured. ‘Oh...'

  Etched into his memory with crystalline precision was an image of breakfast this morning. Sweet, steaming coffee and, above the rim of the cup, her eyes, still peridot, although her hair had faded from titian to perfect white. She'd grumbled a little. He was working too hard, spending too much time in the lab. Unlike his wife, she preferred having him around. On a whim he'd promised her a vacation.