102
M.A.R.S. Bulletin 102
Nightlighter — original draft excerpts c. 2018 (EDT)
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—ORIGINAL FIRST PAGE(S) OF THE BOOK—
It was late, dark and in the final türm of the Gnâvang Gaila when the translucence had devoured the earth and left nothing but rot, decay, and ruin. Ash was everywhere and it was a time for celebration.
When the purity of intellection was scant and the fündz determined status, rank and preborn class. When the cyclical norms of the Gnâvang Perpetua, Ahtürdim and Külvavluk had run their course, exhausted all resources and expired, shedding only fond memories of a desired past. When the what little remained of the Ëhrr Vitality vacated homes, the living units, the urban collectives, the rural cities, the thousands of sector vectors, and the millions of inhabiting households. When once celebrated days oversaturated with harmonious and jovial fellowship and communal ecstasy, where tapheads poured nothing but the freshest of frequencies refined and purified through newly energized refineries at Center Ehstaylox Control.
These days that decomposed, deteriorated, dissolved until the inevitable transition when the days gave way to night—perennial blackness perpetuated by the unforgiving character of the Gnâvang Gaila. It was a time of debated reflection and stalemated revival—of unceasing corporeal standstill.
It was now and it was then.
And it was in these moments that an old sage came to call upon the girl, Kohra.
The sage, remnants of a lived woman, fell thin, huddled in wandering shadow with hair like dusty straw beneath a hooded cloak draped over a sunken face wrought with weathered rolls of leathery flesh. The pointed crook of a nose was what remained, glistening like a clouded green diamond between two shining eyes in the gradient moonlight. A scent of damp petrichor hung in the dank air as the night grew tired and the once sylvan streets of L’Lohgus stretched wide and wanting with an aged concrete slick and reflecting a dry, heavy mist.
She crept like a shadowy memory in the darkness, clinging to skeletons of buildings with precise movements and decided agility. Like a whisper she passed decaying frequency dispensaries and abandoned frespeeders, receptor coils cold and mildewed, the steel peeling from the rotting chassis.
She passed defunct freports, bronze housings rusted to a worthless shine, detached from once secured steel tethers, caked and peppered like barnacles on the ruined exteriors. Some oozed stale frequencies, old whiteblue, gelatinous and shiny expelling a putrid scent that mixed with the concentrated moist in the air. They gathered there, stagnant.
She passed frejunks, drifting, caught in a dazed wander with blügae bags glued to their hips, half-emptied, the syphon straws chewed and abused, and yet, the woman remained hidden among the shadow—disguised out of necessity. For many would kill to be endowed with the knowledge of a sagekin and in this particular instance, with what she held. This she kept close to her chest—close to an aged and waning heart.
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—THE ORIGINAL JUN’GAHZAH SAFEHOUSE AMBUSH SCENE—
Opposite the velveteen tapestry appeared a room. The space was small and intimate. The haze engulfed all floor space available, which seemed to have a spherical geometry and rotate slowly, balancing perfectly on some point invisible to any common eye. The mü-frequencies commanded the room, a presence—a boisterous and singing uproar—obnoxious and beautiful.
And no longer was the old sage alone.
Dressed in midnight shades of black, other patrons shared the space. All wore the insignia of the octopus pinned precisely to their chest and wore caps that looked like berets—Khapahkas—and a dark pair of spectacles—Frespecs they were called. One lens was clouded, obscured by a smoky paste. The other was clear and through it, an eye, deep and red with a dilated pupil.
Some sat in booths that looked as though they were stolen from restaurants, whispering into attentive ears huddled closely together and glancing repeatedly over darkly clothed shoulders. Others milled about with heavy sacs filled with a glowing substance hanging on their belts. The substance traveled through an acrylic straw that connected the bag to an insertion point at the base of the wrist. The substance glowed whiteblue and traveled the length of the tube quickly and cyclicly and the sage observed this intently.
And there were others that sat high upon an elevated table that circumferenced a dance-looking floor, sniffing the smoky air and losing themselves in a steel cup of sorts.
Fuel the Frequencies, Embrace the Gaila glowed in a harshly illuminated pink and stretched the length of the elevated table and was attached securely to galvanized piping that hung from the asbestos-littered ceiling above. It looked as though the sign had been tampered with, vandalized at some point or another.
At one end of the seemingly spherical room one of the black-suited patrons facilitated the output of the mü-frequencies; this was a slender shadow-of-a-man with a set of hooded fredetector phones strapped from ear to ear. He moved fluidly with the vibrations, each hand comfortably commanding spinning disks that hovered centimeters from the table spinets. Two black monoliths loomed and casted shadows that ensnared the room, and flanked either end of the station. In intermittent pulses, sound emitted from the reflective surfaces. The symptomatic tremors, steady and powerful, shook the space, caused others to stumble about the room, lose their footing, made it seem as though those already inebriated engaged, unwillingly, in a more frenzied and frivolous drunken stupor.
Above the long and elevated table silhouetted by the red haze, suspended and centered between the monolith speaker cones was a phosphorescent capsule brilliantly illuminated and brilliantly red. Hundreds of bronzed pipelines extended from the capsule, encased in a translucent material traversed the ceiling overlapped and spread throughout the space in a beautifully weaved mess. From within the piping could be seen more of the whiteblue substance.
It whirlpooled, trapped inside the plastic encasement and rotated at a hyperactive speed, yet appeared immobile and at a peaceful rest. The resulting light waterfalled about the room mixing wonderfully with the brilliant and red luminescence. A particular bead of light—now a derivative of pink— cascaded in a conical spiral and highlighted a figure, swathed in a generous cloak of the haze and sitting high atop one of the elevated table stools.
The figure—a young woman—no older than twenty years was slim-bodied and wore a uniform that mirrored the others’ in the room. She was not alone. A drinking vase, cool and metallic, was glued to her hand. In periodic movements, it moved to her lips and she drank in long and focused draughts. Whiteblue liquid spilled from her mouth and fell to the floor and collected into small pools. The insignia of the seven-tentacled octopus was pinned to her breast and glinted in the dim pinkish light.
Presently, the sagekin approached at an angle and hoisted herself onto a neighboring stool. She withdrew a parcel from the folds of her cloak and spoke in a soft and graveled whisper: “Girl, do you remember me? I’m here to return for you.”
The girl at the bar twisted her neck, drink still in hand. The haze covered a side of her face. The other side, backlit red, revealed a marbled scar that scraped across her face in an uneven pattern. It stretched from the base of the ear to the point of her chin looking as though she smiled a permanent Cheshire half-grin.
“Get lost, mïfbah,” she huffed. Rigid shoulders rose like mountains and followed the dull inflections in her voice.
The old woman inched closer, the crook of her nose brushing the threads exposed at the hood’s opening. “You are something of which means a great deal to us.”
“Us? The girl questioned, not turning. “What us?”
“Hush now, child. Not here.” The sage chided. She looked over her shoulder, scanned at the other patrons through the haze. “It is late in the Gaila. Not all things are as they seem. Change is afoot. Spies are afoot.”
“What? Flaxerz?”
The sage nodded gravely.
“Here?”
The sage was unmoved.
“Bah!” The girl slammed her drinking vase to the bar, lapped up the whiteblue liquid that splashed to the outer edge of her thumb. “They don’t bother with this place. You see it’s protected, tribe-owned. The Jun’gahzah’s operate this club. They’d give ‘em the rage of A’Kohndak if a garrison or two were to show themselves here.” She paused to swallow a large gulp of the shiny liquid. “Wouldn’ we, boys?”
The other patrons—apparently male—in the club paused, looked confusedly at the girl. For a moment they maintained their gaze, sharp eyes tearing holes through the haze, glued to the back of the girl’s head. Matted and torn hair clumped underneath a frayed Kahpahkah, a layered mess. The room lay still, held together as if by unspoken unanimity, and the other patrons nodded tersely in what appeared to be rehearsed approval. One of the suited patrons at a booth cracked a smile in the shadow, looked in their direction briefly with a scrutinizing gaze, then returned to his hushed conversation.
“Besides,” the girl continued, “this place just ain’t their cup o’ mihlfrahm. None uh’ that mandated ‘Lox slime. Only pour the original öldah here. Don’ we, Eldridge?”
A man behind the elevated bar emerged abruptly from a curtain of the shadowed red haze and, making eyes at one of the boothed patrons across the room, nodded confidently. He presented no indication to acknowledge the girl’s question. The black Khapakah fitted squarely to his balding head. The girl at the bar followed him with her cold, golden eyes, then at the sage, said in a choked grunt: “Now, if you don’t mind, my dear, piss off.”
She rotated back around and flagged the man behind the bar, but he was gone.
The sagekin paused, glanced at the parcel in front of her on the bar. She did not think the girl would be this combative. Is she too far gone? Am I too late? She wondered to herself. Are we too late? These questions though, could not excuse the sagekin from her intentions to depart with this girl.
She looked then to Kohra’s figure, noted the way in which she grasped the drinking vase: clenched hands white with exhaustion. Her veins were a navy blue and bulged, pumped blood away from the heart and the brain and the intuition inside. Spilled whiteblue drew no attention from her eyes, flaming, glazed with aggressive fire. They were opened wide and unblinking; the pupils were dilated and overshadowed the color in them. Seeing everything yet nothing.
The sagekin observed her breathing, which was rapid and heaving, pushing the red haze further from her Cheshire half-grin. Her back was slouched over her broad shoulders and her head bobbed up and down, trying to straighten the increasing forward arc of her neck.
A prescribed madness, the sage thought. She is not well. This is the matter of intuition. Still it grows. Still it persists. Time be not her friend now. She must come with me! And we must make haste! She can yet still be spared from this evil.
The sagekin’s tone turned urgent. She faced Kohra, a bony hand grasped the parcel. “You are in grave danger, Kohra.”
Kohra whirled in her chair. She relinquished her drink to the bar and dipped her neck at an angle towards the sage, ignoring the package, eyes shining. “How do you know that name?” she demanded in a harsh and direct whisper.
“We’ve always known it, Kohra. We’ve known it for quite some time now. It is our purpose.”
The girl leaned close to the old woman, steel eyes glaring like red fire. “Listen to me, my dear,” she said, her voice now just above a whisper, a rich contralto that sliced through the haze like a boat through the Phrygian Sea. “I dunno who you are, or what you want from me but I haven’t heard that—“ She paused, scanned the room “—that name in quite some time.”
“Such things…” wheezed the decrepit woman, immediacy in her voice. “Trivialities and matter not in a place like this.” She gestured at the velveteen curtain. “You are ill, Kohra. We need—”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you, mïfbah,” said the girl, acknowledging the parcel, then sliding it back down the bar and making moves to vacate the club. “You’ve got the wrong piece of wobaz.”
Presently the old woman grabbed Kohra, by the arm, a steady grip. “You are not safe here, Kohra,” she breathed. “These other visitors…” a sudden dryness gripped her aged throat. “Some of these are not who you think them to be. You need to come with me. Now—.”
The girl, standing now, straightened then faced the sagekin. She looked at the old woman’s arm, feeble and loose with weathered skin, then glared into the vacant holes of her eyes, said: “Look, mïfbah, I’m usually a sophisticated girl, but—”
From behind the bar an explosion erupted. Glass vestibules containing liqueurs, and drink mixers, and aged wines and whiskeys and concoctions of the swirling whiteblue substance shattered and flooded the bar and the hazy air above. Multiple cracks and pops filled the space, then an irritable screech that grew louder as the whiteblue fluid painted the surface area of the bar, belching milky secretions that splashed to the floor in a hysteric mess.
In the chaos the girl at the bar had fallen to the floor. Her heavy black coat over top her fresuited uniform was ripped at the shoulder. A trickle of red was beginning to spill from a scabbed abrasion. Slivers of the glass receptacles were lodged in her shoulder and flared whiteblue. She buried her head in her chest, protecting her ears with two gloved hands. “What the fuck was that?!” she screamed at the old woman, as though a sudden awareness had struck her, her voice barely audible above the noise.
A second blast struck the elevated table, ripping a gash through it and sending into the haze a gust of splinters. Whiteblue cascaded from the bar and absorbed gulps of the red haze. Hues of blues and reds and purples and pinks had begun to intermingle, abruptly, beautifully, menacingly.
The girl tumbled to the newly formed cover and shouted again at the sagekin, but she had disappeared.
Distraught, Kohra maneuvered to a defensive position and attempted to compose herself, scanning the room, her intuition screaming, traveling at lightning speeds.
The colors were expanding and infiltrated the spider-webbed pipelines and capsule above. One of the monolith speakers had collapsed to the floor. The other remained erect. The mü-frequencies persisted, but were louder, distorted and lower and seemed to pound the room like a sledgehammer.
Kohra’s ears rang uncontrollably. She imagined blood pouring from them—in persistent waves—the sense fading completely from her being. Near her hand, she located a glass shard from once of the shattered vestibules. It was mirrored and she used it to view the other side of the club from her cover.
Visibility was slim. The haze had thickened and was a near sludge that absorbed the air like a sponge. Pools of the whiteblue substance trickled ubiquitously and shuddered against invisible bonds along the floor.
She could make out scurrying shadows of the other patrons shouting muffled nothings to others in the space, motioning frantically at one another. At their hips they held a pistol that resembled a luger from the Ohld World. A part of her had seen this weapon before—in books and in what she remembered as tribal stories it was called a frequencer, but in this moment it looked alien.
The patrons fired blasts of a bright whiteblue beam into the haze; other shots of whiteblue returned their fire. They screeched by Kohra and fizzled and exploded into walls and chairs and more vestibules filled with the liquid whiteblue.
The other patrons were directed towards a figure at the end of the table opposite Kohra. Through the haze, she was able to make out a portion of his person. He was tall, muscular and generously able-bodied wearing a shadowed uniform and a black Kapahkah. Similar figures surrounded him. They appeared to protect the tall figure; weapons that looked similar to those of the friendly patrons were drawn and firing wildly. Concealing their faces, a crimson X was plastered on a helmet that shined and reflected the chaos of the club.
Attached to the tall figure’s breast was the insignia of an eye. It was lidless and black as night and featured a perpetually dilated pupil staring endlessly, omnipotent. It was housed inside a seamless pyramid with sides that were perfectly even and caressed the soft edges of the eye. Yellow and blood red. At his waist, a frequencer—brushed steel, an embossed EX etched near the nose of the barrel—poised and aimed in her direction.
Flaxerz.
She spat in disgust, but a part of her told her this was wrong. A gray fluid came from her mouth.
A couple feet away from Kohra, hidden in a thin layer of dust and debris was the parcel left behind by the old sagekin. A corner was torn open. She snatched it and ripped through the top half. Inside was another luger resembling the Ohld World—a frequencer—hollow point—the nose, sleek and concave, an ergonomic handle, layered latex with a matched grip. At the base of the handle were the letters LM. Pinned to the handle was a note scrawled in a sagekin hand:
This will help you remember.
A frequencer…She thought in sudden awe. Who is that old mïfbah…?
Kohra tossed the mirrored shard aside and peered out from her cover, a gloved finger hugged the frequencer trigger. Her heartbeat quickened. To her knowledge she had never before handled, no less fired, a frequencer. She attempted to remove these facts from her mind and a sound inside her head screamed.
Across the room, the tall figure’s frequencer discharged another round. Kohra had no time to evade. The whiteblue beam struck the flesh between her golden eyes and her limp body crumpled to the floor.
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—CUT CHAPTER FEAT. GRAHYHSON’S (NOW TAIMOHR) TROUPER BAPTISM IN THE JUN’GAHZAH BAPTISMAL CAVERN—
Grahyson then turned, locking eyes with his commanding superior. Something in them—he was unsure if it was the colorless cornea-against-pupil or the unmoving steel sockets—informed him that he was a respected member of the Jun’gahzah tribe. How all troupers desired this!
His mind flashed then to his trouper baptismal: There was Eldridge, knee-deep in the Water of A’Kohndak surrounded by The Nine piled high on stone-tiered balconies. The baptismal cave was dark but for a few lumipistons and the light that bounced off the eyes of his soon-to-be fellow troupers. Grahyson’s rite of entry was near to commence.
Eldridge stood upright, poised. His face held no expression. Water lapped at his sides but he paid no mind. Grahyson was beneath him, floating on his back. He wore little clothing: the ceremonial cloth tied between his groin and a ring of gold amulets hung around his neck. Inside were the ashen remains of fallen troupers. A thin chain tethered the necklace to the top of the loincloth. Covering the skin on his face was the T’abotah, the dried translucence aged over a period of two cycles. Its scent was foul but Grahyson had been trained to ignore elements that were to cause discomfort, pain, fear.
Then, hands—four of them he counted—touched his back and Grahyson was lifted into the air. A voiced hum sounded from above, then all around. Grahyson felt as though he was at the center of a disturbed chorus. There was no melody just low noise. It permeated the cavern and grew steadily as he was lifted higher and higher. His eyes were open, but he could not see; there was only darkness. The lumipistons, he thought, must be far below him now. The hands supporting his back had gone but he had not fallen. There had to be some force supporting him for he felt secure. The humming began to pulse and—by no means of his own intuition—a light entered his vision.
It seemed to have come from nowhere. He closed his eyes but the light persisted. It changed from white to blue to white, back to blue then to white again. The white light burned through his eyes, filled his skull but he felt no pain. Images flashed before him and the light was in all of them. Hundreds of years flashed over him, millions of information bits that had been the composition of his memory flew through his thoughts and beyond them. They drifted to a place of which he was aware but did not understand. There was something about the white light that reassured someday, someday he would know again what he knew to be his life but that day was far, far away.
Presently a thin line, perfectly straight, bisected the seemingly boundless white light in his vision. A hand black in color, reached out to grasp it. The hand looked unfamiliar to Grahyson but somehow he knew that it was his. A rope materialized and he brought it towards his face. The rope became larger but it did not move any closer. Instead it sprouted an appendage; then a second, and a third! Within a matter of seconds, a sea of threaded rope had replaced the light.
Pockets of it shone through tiny gaps like a fishnet over a thousand lumipistons. The ropes tornadoed fantastically and twisted around what he imagined to be his head. On each of the threads he saw tiny beams of light, and in those beams of light he saw his memories. But no longer were they solely his. Tethered to the ropes were figures, many of them. He could discern no distinguishing features, but he assumed them to be human. They were above and below him and to his left and to his right. And suddenly Grahyson knew these figures. He knew their joys, their hurts, their lies and their desires. And these figures knew him. His initial reaction was to hide in shame for he was not proud of the whole of his life’s actions. Who could be?! He thought to what he imagined was his twelve-year-old self. If they only knew of the atrocities he had committed! But they did know and Grahyson did not hide and in this he felt peace. He felt safe.
The small bursts of white light highlighted backlit silhouettes of humanoid shapes. He had assumed correctly! Was this the time that was supposedly far, far way? Was he still in the baptismal cavern, floating ever up to meet his tribal liberation? He looked closer and saw what he thought to be his birth, a breath of air and the screams of another. How terrible was that sound! Was this his mother? My what? This term was foreign but now Grahyson sensed meaning and he longed for it. Then it was gone.
And he was falling.
The Nine were hunched. Their shoulders huddled together and bobbed up and down in a sort of repeating motion. The hum was overbearing. Grayson expected the cavern to collapse, but it did not. The light slowly retracted from his vision, substituted moments later with the stretching darkness of the cave walls. How it whipped at his naked flesh! He could almost touch it. No, best not, for fear of what it could do to me.
A thundering splash and he felt the Water consume him. Peace entered his mind. It was like the peace from before but magnified. He allowed it then to penetrate his body, cleanse whatever ill feelings plagued him. Soon, he knew suddenly, they would be evacuated entirely. For this is the way it was and the way it had to be.
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The voiced humming had subsided. From the tiered balconies, one of the robed Nine descended to the pool. He walked not on solid stone, but on air. It was a graceful gesture and his legs strode in perfect equidistance from the other. The other councilmen watched from above with hooded stares. A faint gold glowed from beneath. He spiraled down to the water’s glassy surface, and approached Grahyson. The troupers surrounding the pool’s edge bowed instinctively and retracted into the shadows.
When the councilman moved across the water there were no ripples, no evidence that a body was interrupting the space in which he occupied. Lumipistons from above showered him in a goldenrod luminescence. A marbled face of dusty flesh appeared to wade through twilight, although, there was no indication that it was such a time. Two sunken eyes toyed with the shadows under their cowl before noticing precisely, Grahyson’s location. Like old clocks they moved, ticking and tocking mechanically.
Grahyson lay on his back once again, floating weightless in the cool liquid. If there had been a splash, which there was, or he thought there was because he had felt it, it would have soaked the whole of his body. But, he remembered, many of his thoughts (and feelings) in this Jun’gahzah baptismal cavern were not as they seemed and things he considered as themselves were changing into things that, apparently, were not themselves. There were no hands upon his back, nothing between him and the water. His body felt the same, except for the sensation that someone or something was banging—or screaming—mildly or infuriatingly, the insides of his skull. But this was however, not an annoyance or a hindrance to his impending actualization of liquid peace, but a supplemental feeling that something (different from the something inside his skull) was changing his mind.
Soon there was a cool and crisp air and Grahyson heard a voice whisper in his ear. It sounded like a wind that had been cut short when trying to blow through decaying branches of an old Oakwood tree. The sound preluded the delicate crackling of what could have been the bending of human kneecaps. “Tell me, my boy…Did you see them?” the voiced rasped. Grahyson thought he felt droplets of moisture tickle the fuzzy hairs in his floating-above-the-Water ears. “Did you see them in the light? What did you see?” From above, hushed echoes came from the tiered balconies, delaying only slightly and bouncing every which way.
Grahyson registered the councilman’s question, opened his mouth to speak, but could not. He tried again. Nothing. Then again: still no voice came from his mouth. What is happening? He thought, not in a panicked sort of way, but rather of genuine intrigue.
You are beginning to understand. The raspy voice was like sand riding the waves of his brain, in his mind and everywhere. Tell me, did you see them in the light? What did you see?
Grahyson, involuntarily, as if his mind operated of its own volition, responded immediately, My voice…where—where—is it gone?
The councilman’s voice nearly choked, hints of incredulity. Gone?! Bah! Gone?! No, my boy. Magnified. Illuminated. Initiated. Enlightened. Expanded. Liberated. It will take some time, but soon the mind—your mind—will function on a much, much deeper level of imagination. And at that time, the mind will hear, my boy. It will hear! Now, tell me, did you see them in the light? You must’ve! This came across to Grahyson as a croak of bewilderment. Tell me, what did you see?
Grahyson considered this, imagined his eyes closing, then: I saw what I thought—whatever that means—to be figures, figures bathed in a bright light and—The councilman hummed a low growl of satisfaction, leaned closer to the boy’s ear—and my memories, they were everywhere as if on display to these figures—as if to judge them—judge me. And I felt shame! But these figures…they did not judge.
No. They do not. They cannot. They are incapable of such human miseries as judgment.
But then I knew them! And I felt them to know me. And I experienced a sense of happiness I had never before known.
The eyes within the councilman’s cowl brightened. Of course you did. Good, my boy. You have been selected. This is a cause for celebration.
But who are they—what are they? And—and my voice—
The councilman’s back arched, bones cracked and hissed. They are you and they are them. He pointed a brittle finger to the shadows at the rim of the Water. Abruptly the Jun’gahzah troupers emerged, stepped to the Water’s edge, knelt and deposited both hands, disrupting the surface. No ripples came. The councilman began to retrace his steps, gliding backward, re-ascending the invisible spiral staircase. He looked as though this was all unnaturally natural. The other councilmen resumed their hum.
Grahyson strained to arch his neck, open his mouth to speak. But my voice! What about my voice!?
The councilman was completing his ascent. “Speak, trouper Grahyson.” He spoke aloud, sounding like a flood of whispers. “Speak and be welcomed.” He reclaimed his space among the Nine, golden eyes soon indistinguishable from the rest.
Grahyson felt a clicking at the back of his neck. He looked up and saw not the eyes of the councilman, but of Eldridge. Abruptly, words sounded in his mind: ‘Welcome, Trouper Grahyson. Tell me, how do you feel?’ Eldridge spoke but his mouth made no movement. And in that instant Grahyson became aware that he had welcomed the mændlink to his intuition.