Isle of Noise

by Rachel Tonks Hill

  Finally, a door slid open that was certainly not there a moment ago. A flood of something - something other, something new - came into the room in the form of a man in a white coat.

  "Ready," came the terse word from the researcher. More words would have been unacceptable to the room. Nemo sensed this and replied simply with a nod of his head. It was not until they were through the door that he ventured to speak.

  "I was hoping for a little more money." Nemo spoke with a tone of jest, but he was serious enough in his need.

  "You can always sign the invasive surgery waver," the white-coat replied, holding a clip board and pen out to Nemo in grotesque hope.

  "No," Nemo's good humour dropped. "Thank you."

  "You should know we are aware you have broken your non-disclosure agreement." The researcher was stern and Nemo tensed. "I trust you were ridiculed by your friends." Nemo nodded.

  "Mmm," was the white-coat's response. "Nevertheless, don't let it happen again." Nemo nodded, shaken by the man's clairvoyance. He was led through a corridor that had more shape than the waiting room only in that it was long; a fact made evident by the end, which was clearly visible as the only place he had seen so far in the entire institute which could be said to contain. And what it contained was harrowing. The fact that what he saw ahead was all he had opportunity to focus on only intensified Nemo's reaction.

  It was another chair; not a waiting chair, but a doing a chair. It was a chair that interfered with people, via myriad instruments and indicators around its periphery, in a way that those being interfered with might not wholly appreciate. The crowning piece of the collection lay at the top of the chair. It fitted over the head and this was done for Nemo by a nurse or assistant who stood by the chair as he was sat down. The apparatus enclosed the dome of his skull and down to his eyes. A mask was fitted after the helmet and Nemo heard a tell-tale hiss of gas. Instinctively, blind to what went on around him, he began to listen with greater concentration.

  "OK," the white-coat said. "Ready to begin the first elimination." Nemo panicked at the word. He tried to struggle away from the chair but found his limbs sluggish and, a moment later, restrained. His mind fogged, the voices around him trailed off into silence and he was left alone with himself and his dreams.

  4.

  Nemo jumped at the image in the mirror before him. The sight was no more or less grotesque than it had been the preceding morning, yet somehow, the look of himself, pale and dark eyed, chilled his nerves to ice. A second later he had shaken it off, ascribing it to his being disorientated from the procedure at The Institute, whatever that might have been. The procedure! Nemo's addled brain slowly reconstructed a memory of the previous day; the waiting room, the operating chair, the helmet, the mask. His hands went to his head and ran through his hair and down his face. There were no signs of any surgery, at least, none that he could find. Perhaps they had kept their word. Nemo decided to afford them the benefit of the doubt. He stared once more at his haggard reflection.

  "What happened to you?" he asked of himself. Breakfast was called for before Nemo could feel fully himself again. He moved to his kitchen drawer in a swift, well-practiced motion and, before his feet were together, the drawer was laid bare, as it was. Conducting his habitual about face, instinct took his hand and its pointed finger to the whiteboard. He saw the word, 'DOME', and paused. Thoughts formed in his mind, they flowed and shaped and moved, placing his hand back beside him and his phone into it. He saw the cute, little, green '£' symbol flashing in the corner and smiled. He had credit - he had money. They had indeed kept their word. Nemo's thoughts moved beyond his depressing student cell and to a cosy cafe where he might get a well-cooked breakfast, a hot cup of tea, a real meal; that would, without doubt, bring him back to himself.

  Agitated by his new found wealth, Nemo rushed to dress (how he had become undressed he could not recall) and scrambled to find his disc-key (how the door had become locked, for he never did so himself, was a mystery) eager to forage his way to hot food. He was delayed only by a memory of the warning the white-coat had given him before the procedure. Mindful of putting his income at risk, not wishing to live off porridge oats for the rest of his life, he took his palm and swept it down the length of the whiteboard. Nemo's list became an illegible red outline on a field of white, another wipe and it was gone, deleted, irrecoverable.

  If an English man's home is his castle, then the local cafe must be the finest restaurant the world has to offer. This was as true for Nemo as it was for anyone. He knew every item on the menu, was aware of any change, could walk through the place blind; it was as much a part of him as the possessions we hoard, and yet...

  "What can I get you?" The waitress had a pleasant smile and spoke well, clearly. The words, their form and their function, shaped perfectly in Nemo's understanding, and yet...

  "Sorry," he offered to the poor girl standing over him, signs of nerves beginning to show. "I'm tired."

  The waitress gave him an understanding smile and leaned over him. He felt the soft touch of her arm against his as she steadied herself on the table and wanted desperately to touch her.

  "The all-day breakfast is good," the waitress suggested. Nemo could picture the food in his mind, he could almost smell it, almost taste it, feel the warmth and the fullness, and yet...

  "The all-day breakfast?" he muttered, mostly to himself.

  "Okay." The waitress made a scribble on her pad and wondered off towards the kitchen, his meal was on its way and yet... Nemo shook off the occurrence as some side effect of the procedure and chose to congratulate himself on finding an income enough to feed him well, rather than dwell on such a pointless thing as an expectedly foggy mind. He chose this, he did choose, he was certain. And that settled it.

  ****

  That evening, Nemo found himself elsewhere. Eva slid Nemo's pint across to him and stared towards him with a look of faux concern.

  "You okay, Neem?" she asked with a smirk. "You look out of it."

  "Yeah." Nemo offered up the monosyllable entirely unconvincingly.

  "Still got money troubles, huh?"

  "Yeah." His answer came slowly. His mind took the suggestion, handed it around his scattered memories and came up once more with the warning he had received and the fear of losing his supply line. They all overlapped neatly.

  "Woody was right, huh? All bullshit."

  "Yeah." Nemo was now committed to the lie.

  "Shit, Neem. You must be ill," Eva exclaimed at him. "I thought you hated to be proved wrong." He had to think about this, again shuffling through his memories, looking for an adequate response. "What is it you always say?" Eve asked, the gentle mockery still present in her tone.

  "No one’s perfect." The question had spurred his mind towards the response and his first polysyllable of the evening.

  "Mmm, might want to change that one," she jested. Nemo stared down at his pint. "Oh, come on Neem, cheer up and drink your pint." Nemo beamed a large, toothy smile at Eva, took his drink in hand and tilted it straight down his throat. He smacked the empty glass down hard and brought his face back up towards Eva's. His smile hadn't broken once throughout the machismatic motion.

  "Another please!"

  ****

  Nothing swept in around Nemo. The chair had been painted the same colour as the walls in an attempt, Nemo was certain, to disorient him. And it did. Nemo felt as though he were floating in space, just him, alone, in an endless fog of oblivion. Just him and the hands floating before him. No, wait. Just him. Those were his hands; yes; were they? He moved his fingers, the fingers moved. It was his hand. Left fingers; yes, his fingers. Right fingers; those too, both his hands. There they were so there he was, still here, still real, not nothing, something, someone. Nemo's head swam. He felt dizziness overcome him. This, and a sharp pain that suddenly shot up from the base of his spine to his neck, caused him to hold on tight to the chair. He felt as though he might fall away from himself. He could see his body tumbling away from him into
the void and he shut his eyes tight in defiance of the terrifying vision. Nemo remained this way until his attention was taken by the sound of the door being pulled. Nemo lifted his eyelids to see the open doorway, stretched out in the horizontal instead of the vertical, and the researcher entering the room walking along half way up the wall and at right angles to it, casually disregarding all sensible physical laws.

  "Get up!" was barked at Nemo. He couldn't tell if it was the same white-coat he had encountered during his first procedure. He could barely tell if he had the same skin colour, he was so disorientated by the waiting room. It took several moments for Nemo to even realise that the man before him was not some kind of magician and that, in reality, Nemo's chair had toppled over while he was sat on it, and he was now lying on his back looking up at where a ceiling would be in any ordinary place.

  "Come on," the white-coat repeated. "Get up!" Nemo struggled to his feet and was led roughly down the corridor. As they went, he was assaulted by a barrage of what to Nemo appeared to be entirely irrelevant questions.

  "Favourite colour?" he was asked.

  "Err, I, Blue?" he stumbled in response.

  "Flavour?"

  "Chocolate? Why? What's this all..?"

  "Where do you stand on the Truro scandal?" the white-coat cut in.

  "Jesus!" Nemo exclaimed. "I don't know! Where do you stand on it?"

  "Ok," the man scribbled something on his note-pad tablet. "Sit down please."

  As Nemo drifted off into a dreamless sleep, he fancied he caught the edge of a conversation beyond the blackness of the mask before him.

  "Progress is a little slower than we hoped. We're only seeing physical disorientation; some small signs of loss of opinion. This time we'll go for one hund..."

  3.

  Nemo struggled hard against the depressing truth displayed before him by the humble piece of silvered glass hanging from his wall. Finally, and with little conviction, he let out a weak little squawk.

  "Still handsome..?"

  "Not really mate. You look like shit!"

  Who had said that? Nemo spun round in shock, finding no one in his apartment. No one. Just himself. Nemo. Of course, no one had said that. No one but Nemo. He had said it himself, in reply to what had come before it. So who had said that then? Nemo again? Of course it was, it must have been himself. It could have been no one else. You're talking to yourself, Nemo thought. Or, did he hear it? Did he just say that out loud, or did someone else say it to him? He turned his gaze about the room again, more thorough this time, trying to seek out by sight alone any place a trickster might hide. No one, still. Nemo shook his head hard and turned back to his reflection. There was no doubting it looked like him, it moved when he moved, it spoke when he spoke. Yet still, Nemo felt very little sense of ownership of the thing. Intellectually, he could see that it was himself, but it did not feel like himself. It felt much more to Nemo like he was being mocked; like there was someone wearing his face, stood behind a window inside an identical copy of his flat, mirroring his every move, mimicking his every word, like some childhood prank. The more he watched, the more infuriated he got at this immature mockery. He tried to tear his eyes away, but found he had some primal need to know if this imposter was still keeping up his charade even when his back was turned. Finally, something inside Nemo snapped. He grabbed the nearest object, a half full tea cup, and hurled it towards the mirror, yelling at the top of his lungs, "Stop it!"

  He barely cracked the glass, the tea cup taking the brunt of the force, shattering and spreading tea and porcelain to every corner of his room. Nemo looked around him at the destruction he had rained down on an innocent piece of crockery and tittered gently to himself.

  "You're bloody losing it, Neem!" he said to himself.

  "No shit!" he replied.

  ****

  Nemo sat at the campus cafe table, picking at the fried chicken he didn't really order staring across at the friends opposite him. Woody and Eva were locked deep into each other's horns in a debate over the Truro scandal. Nemo could tell from the extravagant motions of Woody's hands and the deep furrows across Eva’s brow that they were arguing, but these were his only clues, as the words they used washed over him and into the room beyond, bouncing off the ceiling, walls and floor before uselessly dissipating into the wind. Nemo didn't really hear any one of them.

  "Neeeem?" Nemo focussed on Eva's face to find she was addressing him directly, he had no idea for how long. "Earth calling Nemo?" She waved her hand in front of his face.

  "Yeah, right," Nemo said, not really knowing why.

  "It's not really a yes or no question, Neem," Woody explained to him slowly.

  "Isn't it?" Nemo asked. He had genuinely not been sure. Woody and Eva both rolled their eyes at Nemo, although he hadn't a clue as to why.

  "Nemo is disqualified on account of being a smart arse," Eva declared.

  "At least I've got one smart part," Nemo sneered in response.

  "Woah, that was a bit harsh!" Nemo jumped at the reprimand, which had appeared to him to come from nowhere. No, from him. Nemo had scolded... himself? He felt shame at his own words, so cruel that they had appalled his own sentiment. "You're right. Sorry Eva." Eva and Woody stared at Nemo, confused.

  "Are you OK?" Woody asked. Nemo gave nothing but a blank stare in response. He shrugged and looked from one to the other. He had no idea what was expected of him. His mind raced to try and comprehend the situation, but he could find no parallels. Finally, he fell back on what he was taught, so many years ago; the basic lessons of life, drilled into us from before we can speak.

  "I said I was sorry," came his childish whine.

  "Oh, he's fine," Eva explained. "He just doesn't want to admit we've got him beat on this one! Come on, let's get to class." Eva and Woody stood to leave and Nemo instinctively followed suit. Eva glanced around as she left and her vision fell on three men in suits sat in the corner. They appeared to be staring at her but not, looking into her, through her, but not seeing her. Her skin crawled. "What's with the suits?" she asked Woody.

  "I don't know," Woody replied. "Conference maybe?"

  "Yeah, maybe."

  It wasn't until the gang arrived outside the lecture theatre that Woody spoke up again.

  "What are you doing, Neem?" he asked.

  "Let's get to class." He said the words, but there was something about them that threw Woody off, unnerved him. They sounded hollow, as though they were just white noise, random sounds, and not actually a constructed sentence. It was like talking to some mimicking bird.

  "You don't go to this class, Neem," Woody said.

  "I don't go to this class," Nemo repeated and smiled.

  "Off you go then," Woody suggested.

  "Right!" Nemo marched off towards he knew not where.

  Nemo wandered for almost half an hour before he finally came to a standstill in the middle of a campus courtyard. He had no idea where he was going, or why he had come here. Growing desperate, he tried to force some form of a plan of action into his mind, some memory as to why he was where he was, some decision as to where it was he wanted to be. Nothing appeared. His consciousness sucked hard on an empty void, trying to bring forth a notion of Nemo, and no one came. Nemo fell down onto his knees in the middle of the courtyard and began to weep.

  ****

  The chair was gone. This time it really was just Nemo and nothing, nothing and Nemo. For a while, Nemo stood still, looking around at the nothing over here, the nothing over there. He moved his hands around in the nothing and felt no attachment, not to them or anything else, as they glided effortlessly through space. Soon, he began pacing, walking in long, slow circles around the wall, his arms out stretched, feeling for the edge of the nothing, and finding nothing. He lost his footing; he had no idea where his feet were, particularly in relation to a floor he could not make out as distinct from the roof above him or the walls around him. Now he crawled around on all fours, animal like, trotting, rubbing his nose against the floor, s
cratching with his nails, looking for anything else to be with, looking for any reason to be.

  "Get up!" Nemo hadn't noticed the man enter the room and now, frightened, he scampered to the other end of nowhere. Somewhere, from the back of his mind, he found a fragment of an idea.

  "I.." he stammered. "I think I have enough money now. Can we stop?"

  The white-coat sighed and walked over to Nemo. "You want to get up." It was a statement, not a question. Nemo nodded to himself and rose. "You'll come through to the theatre."

  Nemo did it, without fear or hesitation.

  "Would you like to put on the mask?" he was asked of by an assistant. Nemo looked confused, as though he couldn't decide.

  "We've moved on now. Nothing in the form of a question please." The assistant nodded at the remonstrance.

  "Put the mask on," came the second attempt.

  "No!" the researcher said, losing his patience. "Tell him he will, like this." The white-coat leaned into Nemo. "You'll put the mask on now." Nemo nodded - of course he would, what else would he do? - and he put the mask on. The gas flooded in.

  "Shouldn't be too many more," the white-coat said and then vanished, along with everything else in Nemo's world.

  2.

  Nemo sat in his tiny flat watching an internet clip of a medical lecture. On the screen of his table-top he saw a woman take a scalpel and slice into the wrist of a living patient to reveal the muscles, tendons and ligaments beneath, each one being pointed out in turn and described in great detail. As she talked, Nemo took notes, occasionally looking down at the wrist of the hand that was writing and picturing the stringy sinews that lay in waiting just beneath the flesh, the cells all working in unison to move about the machinery that caused the pen in front of Nemo to scribble down exactly what it was that they were doing. The perfect self-reference.