Jules says, ‘We don’t have much time,’ which makes you want to laugh, because it’s not like you both have ever spent that much time in one place before you’re bolting off to some other place with eyeless suits hot on your heels.
In the center of the gallery rests the Rube Goldberg machine, partially dismantled and raised on a plinth, like a sacrificed body. The remainder of the machine’s components are in a cardboard archive box next to the plinth, ready to be set up tomorrow morning. The label reads: ALLER, U.R. & P.B.
You load the pictures of the Rube Goldberg machine on the Canon. Together, with Jules, you align pencils and dominoes, balance marbles on precipices, steady rulers and ramps. Your pictures are an excellent reference. You steal glances at Jules, trying to peer behind her Aviators, but the angles of her lenses are just too cunning, and you can never see beyond them. You feel bad about taking Jules’s Aviators and screaming at her before. I mean, you were having a profoundly terrible moment and all, but maybe that was kind of rude. You wonder what happened to Jules. Whether you should feel sorry for her or not. Whether you can trust her or not. Whether you should actually feel bad. The jury’s out when it comes to Jules Valentine.
And as you work, you find a safe place to nestle inside your head. You make a commitment to see this through. Just keep moving. You fix the xylophone mallet. You position the bell. You place the bowl of marbles at the start of the machine. You verify the set-up on the Canon.
‘I think that’s ready to go,’ you say.
Jules gets to her feet and steps back. ‘I think you’re right.’
You hang the Canon around your neck. The machine seems different in this afternoon light. Somewhat larger, filled with shadows, less crisp. Jules plucks a marble from the bowl. ‘Play Tim’s speech, please,’ she says. ‘On the dictaphone. When I say “go”.’
‘What’s going to happen?’ you ask, as you retrieve the last track on the dictaphone.
Jules poises her marble at the starting point. It’s a white marble, like an eye without a pupil.
You sigh. ‘Rule number three?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jules says. ‘I don’t know the answer to your question. This is the first time I’ve reached this place.’
‘Oh, okay.’
You turn the volume wheel. The amber screen of the dictaphone waits for your signal, while you wait for Jules’s signal. Jules steadies the marble. ‘Hey,’ she says, a lifetime of weariness in that single syllable, soft and frayed. ‘Thanks for your help today, April. You were invaluable.’
JULES VALENTINE HAS DEEMED YOU INVALUABLE.
YOU... WIN?
Jules doubles her focus on the marble. ‘Okay. Go.’
She releases the marble, and you press play.
‘In the current crisis, our situation will utterly transform.’
Down the wooden gutter. Dropping through holes.
‘Reality is a stand-alone document; there can be no true maps.’
Ever so faintly, you can hear the solo violinist, the ghost of her speaking in the background, as if the dictaphone you are holding is actually a living diorama, a moment trapped in a shoebox.
‘When you weigh up the benefits, the document is relatively worthless.’
You think of Peter Pushkin, clutching the bird diagram so tenderly.
‘Rethink your monuments, your map-making instruments.’
The rolling marble. Descending the xylophone staircase.
The notes ring out like epiphanies.
‘The sky is a tender vacuum; the compass turns the traveller.’
You think of Ulysses, his watchful green gaze.
‘Accept the unresolvable loss.’
One marble’s journey ends, another begins.
‘There is no better way.’
Marbles hum and drop.
‘We regret that you no longer exist.’
The bow of the mallet.
‘Kindly surrender.’
Ding! Goes the bell.
The recording clicks out. The mallet swings back. At first everything seems to vibrate with a kind of hyper-stillness. Theatrical, projecting all the way to the cheap seats. Objects performing stillness. Jules looks mournful. But then, the plinth creaks. You hear a clunk like tumblers turning in a lock. The plinth seems to not so much come alive, but come awake. It hums, and then, at an imperceptible speed, it begins to sink into the floor. Through the floor. The Rube Goldberg machine rattles, but it does not collapse; the marbles tremble in their graves. The plinth continues to descend.
Perhaps you should have expected it. There’s a change in the air. You turn around.
They’re here. Five, six, seven of them. Smooth white moonfaces. Melted eye sockets. Smart neat suits and smart neat guns. This close, you can see that there is a small purple sigil stitched on each of their lapels. A kind of tree.
Jules, now, turns. Stares down the eyeless suits as if she has already won. She even permits her lips to rise in a smile. The plinth creaks with finality. You can smell the oaky breath of the exposed pit.
And then the air cracks. Jules goes down like a hulled ship, through the space where the Rube Goldberg used to sit, falling into the darkness. Her jacket flares open; white STFU cards flutter outwards like the ghosts of dominoes. They follow her down. Jules Valentine, shot through with tunnels, red and glistening. Jules Valentine disappears and doesn’t ever seem to land.
You look back at the moonfaces, their smoking guns. You look them straight in the gleaming barrels.
Bullets soar like the strings of the most moving soundtrack you’ve heard in your life.
Pummel your Blue Screen of Death.
You let yourself get really close this time. Closer than you’ve ever dared to be, even closer than you were that day on the train platform. You shut your eyes. The better to trace the trajectories of pain, hurtling through every nerve, searing asteroids of your personal solar system. You wait for flashes, for a lightning storm of memories, but it is just this—asteroids, pain, burning tunnels. Interrupted signals, tripped wires. The immediate moment, stretched thin to a tenuous gum. The long groan of your universe. Everything horrible and beautiful cast in the present tense.
The swooping boomgate. Glass and bells exploding.
Don’t bail until the last
possible
second
K X 00
April Kuan is not expendable! April Kuan has more than two lines of dialogue! April Kuan is you! You have seven different outfits. Today you are wearing Outfit Two: gray jeans, green sneakers, Owls in the Navy tee which is the same blue as the Blue Screen of Death. These outfit components can be intermixed, so really you have more than seven outfits.
Your Nexus is ringing. Not an incoming call, but an alarm, a gentle clamour, and you open your eyes. And there you are, noun and verb. You are.
Inventory check: Canon, Nexus, dictaphone. Dictaphone? You feel its weight in your hand, the raised buttons, the satisfying clunk of the record switch. You play a random track and encounter your own excited voice: ‘Field note the first. Camouflage insurgents’ hideout with “if you see something say something” sign. Effective? Investigate in own time.’ You fumble for the Canon and shuffle through your photographs. Eyeless suits. A combination safe built from Duplo bricks. Marbles. Marbles in transit.
Blue, red.
It’s nine-thirty. You hang the Canon around your neck, pocket the Nexus and dictaphone. You skip coffee and run to Bull Creek station and board the next train to the city. You run to Peric Chambers. Take on the stairs two at a time.
Bursting into the gallery. There’s Ursula Rodriguez and Penny Birch, assembling the Rube Goldberg machine. There’s Arch Desai, conducting the interview. There’s Stace Calbourne, overseeing the accuracy of it all.
There’s... someone, documenting the installation. A scruffy-haired dude.
You flinch at the sound of his camera flash.
Ursula Rodriguez is saying, ‘It’s French because when I was younger I modelled for
a French educational video where I’d perform basic verbs—sit, eat, drink. A voice would say the word in French and I would perform the action. Sometimes when I am stuck I hear that voice in my head issuing instructions. Walk. Read. Nod. Aller means “to go”. “To proceed”. Sometimes you just need to do a thing, and you need to just keep on doing. And it’s how you survive.’
‘Simply keep functioning,’ Arch says.
‘That’s right.’
‘Shall we begin?’ Penny Birch asks, checking the time on her phone. A Nokia Lumia in a hard, bright case, Watchmen yellow.
Arch leans back to catch the photographer’s eye. ‘How are you going, Brad? Are you finished?’
‘Yep,’ the photographer replies.
Stace and Arch stand up to shake each of the artists’ hands. ‘Thank you for your time,’ Arch says. ‘We’ll be in touch.’
Penny Birch slides the Nokia Lumia in her pocket. Why do you notice this? Sensing that something is about to begin, the stray gallery-goers begin to congregate around the Rube Goldberg machine. Ursula and Penny stand beside each other. Ursula says, ‘Thank you for coming. Penny and I are delighted to present to you the third performance of Aller. We ask that you please refrain from taking videos of this performance, but still photography is permitted.’
The Rube looms like a foreboding airship. Like a bomb. You’re seized by an impulse. Take out the dictaphone. Turn up the volume dial. Get the last track ready.
You hide the dictaphone in your pocket and join the crowd.
Ursula’s hand dips into the bowl of marbles. A yellow marble. She places it at the starting position.
As Ursula sends the marble off, you press play. Tim Spiegel’s voice rings out, bouncing off the gallery’s hard white walls: ‘In the current crisis, our situation will utterly transform.’
Ursula and Penny stir. Stace immediately flips open her pamphlet of exhibition notes to figure out whether she’s missed something. But everybody else is transfixed by the marble, accepting the voice as part of the installation—including Arch, who smiles at the line, ‘Reality is a stand-alone document; there can be no true maps.’ Ursula is urgently scanning the crowd for the source of the voice, but, true to their word, uttered in some other lifetime, Ursula and Penny do not step in, do not interrupt the performance.
The marbles drop. The origami box springs up.
You also scan the crowd, wondering if, like Brad, Jules Valentine has been repositioned somewhere, recast in a different role, but you do not spot her red jacket or Aviators. You grip the dictaphone in your pocket. You can almost perceive wheels creaking, tape spooling, the dictaphone’s unfathomable secret clockwork just like this Rube Goldberg machine, even though the dictaphone is digital and not like that at all.
Dominoes tilt, clip.
We regret that you no longer exist.
The mallet swings.
Kindly surrender.
Ding! Goes the bell.
The crowd applauds. You wait for the plinth to click awake, to descend. You wait for the portal to emerge, for eyeless suits, for Jules, for anybody. But the crowd applauds—oblivious, satisified—and then, bit by bit, the crowd begins to disperse. The recording runs to the finish. The Rube Goldberg machine remains stationary; the marbles are inert. Futile orbs. A benign murmur begins.
‘Hey, April!’
You turn around. ‘Oh, hi, Arch,’ you say, numbly.
Arch is clutching a dictaphone which is very much like the one in your pocket. She smiles. ‘My apologies, April. If I’d have known you were attending this session of Aller I would have asked you to photograph instead of Brad.’
‘Oh. Um, that’s okay! I don’t mind.’
‘See you at the next Lorem Ipsum meeting?’
‘Sure!’
You watch Arch walk away and join Stace at the top of the gallery stairwell. The Canon is heavy like a hand over your heart. It is Monday and you are not sure where you are meant to be. April Kuan, confused.
Slip out of the gallery. Clunk down the stairs. Into the morning light, the busy sidewalk, thick with lives. You wonder what the time is, and you remember Penny Birch consulting a Nokia Lumia, the hard yellow acrylic case.
You tip your gaze—across the road, to the obelisk of billboards. There is a new advertisement, so new it seems to radiate that fresh laserjet smell. An advertisement for Nescafé.
As your fingers dip into your pocket for your Nexus, the rubber case catches on something else. You pull it out: a white business card, creased in the middle. STFU it says, and, in blue biro, a phone number. Jules’s rule number one.
Plug the ten-digit number into your Nexus. Push the green telephone.
We wish to advise you that the number you have dialled does not exist.
You keep the Nexus pressed against your ear. It projects only silence. A null space, just like the void below the Rube Goldberg machine.
The door to Peric Chambers swings open and out steps the photographer. The elusive Brad Ruffalo. He lights a cigarette. Flicks ash.
You keep holding the Nexus to your ear even as you turn away from Brad Ruffalo and walk down the street. Aller. Go. Proceed. The Nescafé billboard drops out of view. There are people everywhere with cellphones pressed against their ears or cradled in their hands, busily creating data, and not one of them sports the telltale wooden case of a Seed.
You redial Jules’s number.
We wish to advise you that the number you have dialled does not exist.
The voice seems to grow lovelier each time you redial.
We wish to advise you that the number you have dialled does not exist.
We regret to advise you that the number you have dialled does not exist.
We regret that the number you have dialled no longer exists.
And, finally, when you are ready, you push the red telephone.
Slide the Nexus away.
You keep walking. April Kuan, on this brand new morning. April Kuan, starting over.
April Kuan: you have everything necessary to begin again.
Acknowledgments
My deepest thanks to Deborah Hunn and Ann McGuire for supervising my PhD at Curtin University, and for continuing to look out for me. To my friends and colleagues who shared their insights on various drafts of Rubik, especially Eva Bujalka, Erin Pearce, and Vicky Tan. To Brooke Davis, Rebecca Higgie and Mel Pearce for your generous advice and encouragement. To Janelle Booker at Curtin’s counselling service. To Cherish Marrington and Anna Dunnill for inspiring Ursula’s drawings and Michael’s adventures respectively. To Final Fantasy Online for giving me the best years of my adolescence. To the Pearce family for welcoming me into your home. To the Cullen family and the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre for the Bobbie Cullen Memorial Award. To my own dear family for loving me. To Alice Grundy, for being Rubik’s champion, and to Rachel Crawford and Olivia Taylor Smith for bringing Rubik to the US.
About the Author
CREDIT: PHOTO BY MEL PEARCE
Elizabeth Tan completed her PhD in Creative Writing at Curtin University in Perth. Her work has previously appeared in Westerly, The Lifted Brow, Voiceworks and The Sleepers Almanac. Her webcomic, Mais Pourquoi, can be found at et-maispourquoi.blogspot.com. Rubik is her first book. She lives in Australia.
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