Cascade | CREATIVE WRITING

Someone began tuning a guitar.

The vent was open on the skylight, so the wind was loud, like a harsh flapping sound. The hallway felt spacious, the rooms too, light and empty, relaxed and cold.

It was Sunday.

He had been lazy. Most of the day so far had been lost on watching sport, mostly clips online, trying to find a live stream of something decent. Most of yesterday was spent watching rugby. There was a lot on. He’d had an urge to watch sports lately.

He read a few more points on his list of notes then lost focus scrolling down the screen.

Chords were starting to be strummed out. A little uncertainly, the rhythm rewound and gone over, the different shapes put together after pauses. Someone was learning a new song.

The notebook slid off the side of the bed as he collapsed back, slapping the laptop shut at the same time. He’d never noticed that the ceiling had a kind of kind of pattern to it, on the wallpaper. Staring at it made it go kind of fuzzy, like it was some magic eye constantly in the process of forming into the final picture but never quite getting there, his brain unable to scramble the bits together but knowing something is there. It was dizzying after a while. Enjoyable though, in a sort of way.

He’d once met a guy doing a psychology degree. On drugs this guy had become so convinced that all of consciousness could be altered, and that all the elements of consciousness had clear neural correlates that could be discovered, that he’d sworn from then on to take a fully functioning human brain and use it to create for the subject a full, realistic, totally genuine-feeling simulation. You prod the right bits, and you control the simulation any way you want. There’s bits that correlate to seeing redness, and bits to recognising a square, so you prod all those bits and the experience of seeing a red square is simulated. That was the basic principle, he said, although it became vastly more complicated down the line as far as anyone could tell, possibly involving manipulation of the hands, feet and other bodily movements in terms of interaction with parts of the simulation – and so on. The “as far as anyone could tell” part was slightly terrifying, suggesting that there was more than this one lonely crusading pothead on the case, out to trap us in the matrix for all of time. But actually, when you get past that primal wariness that tends to give what is a fairly reasonable protest whenever someone suggests tearing apart the fabric of your entire concept of reality, these things are pretty cool. He had zoned out, thinking to himself as the student carried on talking. Imagine if you actually saw that happening, a bunch of scientists showing you it was possible to create a fully-realised, life-like simulation by prodding all the right bits. Maybe they wouldn’t even need the body – the brain could be out of the person, on some slab but hooked up to a projector for you all to watch, a lecture theatre full of students, neuroscientists and future brain surgeons, the philosophy lecturers outside protesting the closure of four-fifths of the department, everyone else watching the demonstrations at home on TV, being told that TV would soon be replaced by a brain and some sticks so you could prod out whatever simulation you desired, or maybe sticks in everyone’s heads so they could stay home and just simulate everything all day, just zoom about the cosmos without rockets or even getting out of the tub, NASA joining the philosophy department to protest, space travel the latest venture to be deemed not worth the bother along with musing on the nature of reality. Hmm. So he listened as the student went on. Unfortunately, it soon became terrifying again when he thought to ask the student where he would be able to do this research and where he’d get his test subjects.

The guy stared and looked incredibly serious. “There’s a lot of regulations on this. All the ethics. The monitoring. The uncertainty. Big institutions can’t touch this sort of thing. I don’t know if there’s many others who’d be willing to, maybe there aren’t, but however I do it, this is what I’m doing. I’m here now, I’m going to get my qualifications, I’m going to learn what I need to learn and I’m going to do it. I have to know.” Then, silently, he’d turned and continued waiting for the bus. The ceiling was swimming now. It was a zero-gravity pool. There was no pattern or wallpaper, it could ooze down at any moment and douse him, it could slowly trickle down or crash in all at once and flood the room. The chords started to string together, lacking a proper rhythm, bits of a melody being hummed in between. There was a nice tune in it. Quick learner.

Some yelling started out in the streets. It sounded like school kids to begin with, but it became clear that it was a grown man and woman screaming at each other in an unusually shrill way. The guitar had suddenly stopped, the player obviously listening.

“Get it done. Get it done, you waste of space.”

“I’ll get it done. Listen! I’ll get –”

“Waster!”

“If you back off, maybe I’ll be able to breathe. And if you maybe just let me live a little, things would get done, and things would be halfway decent.”

“Don’t you dare. I’m not letting you live? I’m not letting you live? I’m not letting you live? Get it done you waste of skin.”

The guitar started up again, playing slightly louder. It was nice to listen to. It sounded like a folk song.

The voices faded off.

There was some smashing of glass and more screeching, further away, “The ceiling was swimming now. It was a zero gravity pool.” somehow even shriller.

There was glass all about the pavement this week, and strange garbage too. It was all remnants of drinking and takeaway. But this was a quiet street, no noise at night, not on a route back from nights out. It was out the way, calmer, heading out to the residential areas. There were places with gardens not that far away. He’d seen them. It didn’t make sense for these remnants to be washing up at the door of his building, but this week he’d had to almost wade through it some days, most days even, broken shards and bottlenecks and polystyrene, all smothered in chips and burger buns that had defecated the last of their grease before shrivelling up for dead. And amongst all this was the really strange garbage. Stuff that made no sense. This morning it had been clumps of fur and what looked like velvet, balls with laces of coloured thread through them, each one with cardboard flaps spread either side like tiny wings.

It was a mess, each week it was more of a mess out there. The chords were strummed out more boldly, with more of a rhythm, and the player started singing along faintly.

He was supposed to leave soon for a meeting, but that wasn’t happening. Reading through his work wasn’t happening. He took a deep breath and nuzzled his back a little further into the covers. It wasn’t a day for happening. He didn’t want to go anyway. It had ended in an argument last time, all the rest of them squabbling and accusing each other of not working hard enough. Then they started picking on each other, insulting the way they dressed, and one of them had a shopping bag with her and they’d pulled things out and asked her why the hell she’d even buy brown rice when everyone already new that white rice was better. Which was all sort of weird, but above all he’d found it tiring so he picked up his books and notepads and threw them onto the middle of the floor, which got them to stop for about four seconds before they all turned on him and told him to stop having a “tantrum” like an eight year old. He’d considered showing them what a real tantrum looked like and taking off his clothes and standing on the chair pouring brown rice onto his head and wriggling as it poured down his naked body and into his screaming mouth. He’d thought better of it and just slowly picked up his books and left instead.

It wasn’t happening today.

His phone vibrated on the desk.

Some huge machine was backing up, beeping. Someone else in a car was beeping at it in frustration.

The singing grew louder, the chords linking together.

He hadn’t called home in too long. He needed to email about the fridge leaking. He didn’t have any lunch. He had his printer too close to the window and moisture had gotten in it and it didn’t print anymore. He had things to print. He had to tell the landlord the windows let in moisture. He had to tell the workgroup he was unwell and couldn’t show. He’d cancel his lesson tomorrow. He’d have to phone in and be ill again. He needed to clean. He hadn’t showered.

Today wasn’t the day.

The chords came louder and louder under the door. He yawned and stretched back over the bed, hands behind him, stretching and arching his back, and found he couldn’t open his eyes. They were fused shut. He strained and strained to pull them open but the muscles on his face were locked tight in a kind of grimace. They wouldn’t move. Then they snapped back open, and the ceiling came into the view. His whole face clamped shut. Then released.

His body wobbled a bit. His arms moved slowly, dragging back down the bed. He couldn’t tilt his head properly away from the ceiling. He couldn’t balance, like the bed wasn’t flat anymore. The guitar burst through, reverberated through every room, the voice wailing and soaring, the player screaming beautifully and hoarsely. Who could sing like that? Nobody, an insane, winding, bursting, swallowing voice. He strained his head, trying to look down, to look to the bed and towards the door. His neck muscles tightened in response, crunching as he shook and tried to lift his shoulders, the song shattering all around him.

He looked down to himself, torn in two at the abdomen, translucent flaps of skin sticking to the gore that flopped helplessly out, the bed swimming in bile and filth pouring from a slab of his gut wound onto the sheets. His legs and lower torso had disappeared, slumped out of sight below the bed. The mattress was sodden with brown and swampy liquid that he watched oozing out of him uncontrollably, a circle crawling out in all directions as the mattress drank in more and more, streams of it flowing quickly and falling off the sides of the bed, trickling and splashing down the frame and onto the floor, pools forming into streams as even more came down, the flow increasing, more streams falling quicker all about and flooding the bottom of the desk and chair.

The song filled the entire building, deafening, sounds beyond the guitar he didn’t understand, hundreds of voices but he could pick out only one, crashing down onto him and launching itself above, swirling into a vacuum, sucking the air from the room into the sky and falling again, covering the light and screaming into his ears, pulling his eyes so wide the lids and sockets peeled away and he stared into the ceiling, feeling uncontrollable desires, needing to eat, needing to smell things, needing to run, needing to exert, needing to feed and taste with everything he could, consume everything he heard and smelt.

The voice spiralled out of song, out of any possible singing or voice, beyond melody, the guitar spiralling down into the sounds of waves, the song unbearable and beautiful, vast beyond sound, his half body shuddering on the bed, completely sodden and brown, his face gaping at the eyes and mouth, watching the ceiling melt and shimmer, the pattern turned to liquid. Matt Blades

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