Nothing is inflammable, p.5
Nothing Is Inflammable, page 5
Chapter Six
Wherein Dziga returns to his work
As soon as my brother had left, I had rushed back to the lab and turned the radio back on.
Static.
I was certain the dial was still at the correct setting but adjusted it anyway, searching for the voices I had heard before and whatever pirate broadcast was their source—but there was nothing. I reached the end of the dial then worked my way back again, slowing as I passed 101.6 yet there wasn’t a single broadcast.
The whole thing was bland static!
I wondered if perhaps there was an electrical storm outside or a smog cloud that was causing interference but could see nothing through the bleary windows.
I switched the device off, silently cursing that Dmitri’s unexpected intrusion might have caused me to miss my message.
Why had he come anyway? He usually informed me before he was going to visit, why not this time?
His sudden concern for my welfare puzzled me.
My own feelings of what others would term paranoia had become as much a part of me as leather restraints and powdery medication and certainly Dmitri was no stranger to it himself. However so far he had shown nothing but confidence in Jakobsen and my position in the lab—so why the change? Nothing had happened, nothing was different.
It certainly was curious.
However I had more important things to concern my time with for the foreseeable future.
And so for the next few days I worked with the blare of null radio transmissions in my ears as I listened for the voices again and went back over the newspaper clippings to see if there was anything I had missed.
I didn’t get the message I whispered to the newsprint.
I continued to take readings and monitor the Protohuman’s progress but with a certain level of distraction and, dare I say it, disinterest. Each procedure I carried out seemed to emphasize my feeling that my work should be moving on, that the next stage was awaiting me—and that in turn would bring me back to the radio and the message.
A terrible dread began to swell in me by the dawn of the third day that I truly had missed the message. I attempted to soothe myself by referring to the theory that a natural, chaotic system was repeated and reflected both microscopically and macroscopically and thus the message was there and could not be missed even if certain manifestations of it were.
And then it struck me.
Perhaps no further attempts at contact were being made because it had already been initiated—now it was my turn to reciprocate.
I pondered the idea as I prepared a snack for Judas and myself then selected one of the few newspapers that were still entirely intact, flipped through the pages until I reached the section Advertisements—Personal. It seemed logical to me that if contact had been started in newsprint then that would be the most efficient way to continue with it and as it seemed unlikely I would be able to place an article in the newspaper a personal advert would be the most sensible option.
Of course.
I ran my finger along the variety of messages and requests that lined the double-page spread, everything from assertions of love and/or hatred to thinly veiled calls for revolution from anarchist splinter groups to announcements of the sale of discounted hardware. It seemed like every human emotion and inspiration had been drained into a vat of ink and then stamped onto the paper.
At the very end of the spread was a black square with white text detailing the requirements for further adverts. It allowed up to 150 words for free and requested that details be telephoned in before 4pm to guarantee inclusion in the next edition.
There was a telephone in the lab but I had barely used it in all my time there. Although my fear of the machines had been assuaged by the doctors back at the hospital when I had been convinced that my every thought could be read by whom so ever might wish to listen, lingering doubts remained.
My mother had once said that no fear was irrational at heart, though it may manifest itself inaccurately, that fear was our spiritual reaction to danger that went far beyond instinct or learned reaction. I considered this as I stared at the phone, all that stood between myself and . . . and whatever lay ahead for me.
I couldn’t.
I had taught myself to remain calm when it became necessary to contact either Jakobsen or Dmitri but to speak to a stranger? What if it was possible for them to see into my mind? At least Jakobsen and Dmitri already knew most of my thoughts—what good could come of someone I had never met read my thoughts? I shivered at the prospect.
I would have to ask one of them to do it for me. If they questioned my logic or motives I would just have to invent an excuse for I felt sure that neither of them should be privy to my attempts. Not yet, not until I knew more.
So I would code the message.
My first thought was that I would ask Dmitri, who would do anything for me and had certainly fulfilled some more abstract requests in the past, but I discarded this approach. I discarded it not because I felt like my brother had lost faith in my work as he had implied upon his last visit but that this would in fact be the perfect opportunity for me to test Dmitri’s own misgivings—and in turn, those of my own.
Could I trust Jakobsen?
Later that night, after speaking with Jakobsen, I returned to the operating room and the Protohuman. Around us were portable drawer units of varying size, shape and build pulled close so as to remain within easy reach. The table was an adjustable one, such as you might find in a doctor’s office, but the electrics had failed some time ago and the headpiece was stuck at a 35 degree angle. A large angle poise lamp loomed overhead like a curious carrion beast, only a few working bulbs remaining.
Metal trays flecked with rust sat on every surface, stacked high with bladed, spiked, pronged and toothed instruments. Wires grew out of some of them, connected to a main circuit set into the wall behind me, most of the sockets of which were black and charred, blown long ago.
The light from the lamp overhead was harsh and coated the Protohuman in a kind of glaze as if it were made of glass. I ran my fingers across the old-style leather restraints encircling the creatures’ limbs and for a terrible moment I saw that it was I who lay on the table as Dr. Beveridge stood over me, about to place the electro-shock cap on my head.
Tomophobia—fear of surgical operations.
I pulled suddenly against my restraints. The Protohuman pulled against my restraints. Against its restraints. To get away from that cap. To get away from the memory of that cap.
I . . .
There was a sudden spark of electricity from the circuit and a blue-white line shot out in front of me like a heartbeat on a cardiogram. A small puff of smoke crept out of one the machines, lit neon green by a readout monitor and I quickly shut it off. It smelled like singed hair.
I left it for a moment as I gathered my bearings, feeling as if I had begun to float somewhere backwards at great speed before the power surge, then switched the machine back on.
Nothing.
I flicked the switch again—on, off, on, off.
Still nothing.
I mused that soon I would be stuck in a lab full of dead machinery and wet slops of rotting food, shook my head, left the room.
Jakobsen had agreed to place the advert for me when I had spoken to him. He had asked me several times to repeat the simple message that I had dictated to him for inclusion in the newspaper.
“Infinite mass,” I had said. “Infinite reflection.”
My benefactor hadn’t asked me the purpose or meaning of the message, which both puzzled and relieved me. Relieved since I wouldn’t have to lie about my first attempt at contact with the outside world., puzzled because I felt he should have been questioning me. Nonetheless he assured me the call would be made and also agreed to have that particular newspaper delivered to the lab every day for the next two weeks at least, longer if I requested it. I had made no mention of Dmitri’s visit and had tried to appear as aloof as I possibly could in order to conceal my suspicions regarding Jakobsen I had also asked him not to mention this to anyone else, even my brother and he had again agreed without question.
I remained wary of his straightforward compliance but was willing to go along with it for now while it suited my needs—though cautiously.
Let’s see how he fared against the forces of Chaotic logic if he indeed did wish to betray me.
The next morning the paper was delivered through a convoluted system of slots near the front door. Its arrival is announced by a series of thunks and metallic creaks and I waited until they had finished before retrieving it from a bin built into the wall.
I hurriedly took it through to the lab, glancing at the Protohuman who was once again chained to the wall, and spread it out on the worktop. I flipped to the adverts and after a brief scan located my own.
INFINITE MASS. INFINITE REFLECTION.
Just as I had requested.
I found myself smiling broadly for this was progression. I was still uncertain as to what we were progressing towards but it was progression nonetheless. Did this mean I could trust Jakobsen after all? Perhaps.
Perhaps the man had no grasp of what I had asked of him and complied through ignorance. His little mad pet acting up again.
Either way I would remain cautious. Someone had poisoned my food and there was only a limited number of people who would have access to my supplies and enough knowledge of myself and my work to make it worth their while trying assassinate me. Better, however, to appear ignorant to the attempts in the hope of encouraging my assailant to reveal themselves when they realized their failure thus far.
I returned to my work, trying to put aside my excitement at my engagement with whatever forces were working around-me with-me and how this might speed up the whole process, running another few assays I had plotted out previously to pass the time. Again such minutiae seemed inconsequential now but I felt it important to maintain my momentum as well as the appearance that my work was advancing as normal so as not to raise any suspicions.
I fed the Protohuman some of Judas’ meat and left the radio on as I worked, fixed to the frequency of 101.6 though no voices returned. I checked the newspaper every morning right after it was delivered for three days. I studied the other adverts, not knowing exactly what I was looking for but feeling certain I would know when I found it.
On the first day I read and re-read proclamations of personal grievances, messages for secret society and religious sect members, lovers’ requests and other meaningless drivel. I hadn’t realized I had truly expected to have found a reply the very next day until my disappointment at not doing so collapsed on me like an architecturally faulty roof. I sat later that night as I was drifting towards sleep with my head clasped in my hands, staring down at the spread, desperate to find a response.
“I heard you,” I said to the pages. “I listened like you asked and I heard you. Where are you now? What will you have me do?”
I was awakened on the second day by the noise of the latest paper being delivered and found myself still slumped over the previous one. I quickly rushed to the bin-contraption to recover it and just as I had done the day before, opened it on the adverts.
Again I scanned every advert, feeling my way through the random words and expressions for some sort of response but nothing, nothing. The page was cold to me.
I slammed my fist on the table.
Why were they not responding? It wasn’t a case of whether those who would seek to contact me would read the paper or not because I knew these forces weren’t as literal as that. I was in touch with them on another level—the level of Chaos and mathematics where universality applied and everything reflected everything else.
Dolls within dolls within dolls.
The radio remained on—and the broadcasts dead.
Silence.
In frustration I abandoned a small experiment I had begun the evening before to re-measure the Protohuman’s pain threshold and burned the results so far, dropping the charred mess into a bin while Judas screeched excitedly in his cage. I prepared myself a hot protein drink that I filtered thoroughly using purely chemical ingredients and decided to take a break from my work.
I retired to the back room I had taken Jakobsen to and sat in the sofa chair, watching the steam rise from my drink. Each ribbon of moisture was unique, each twist and turn seemingly random but in fact utterly precise. The steam could not rise in any other way than it did.
I took comfort from this.
In lieu of anything else to do, I paged through the rest of the newspaper, trying to distract myself with stories of political riots and royal scandals. I was briefly entertained by a series of small articles on recent scientific innovations in the field of engineering and in addition ended up reading a piece regarding a group of makeshift surgeons who were performing increasingly radical operations on willing participants. They called themselves artists and the article spoke of a great building full of such creators working within a latticework of needles and blades. There was an accompanying photo of a male and female, both with penetrative, kohl-smeared eyes.
“There is infinite reflection in humanity,” one of the group was quoted as saying, “and we hope to enhance that.”
I smiled to myself even as I felt sleep begin to descend upon me. The Chaos thread truly did run through everything.
On the third time I was more leisurely when retrieving the paper.
The quote from the newspaper article had reassured me that whatever messages awaited me would, in time, reach me as they should and so on the first sweep I had actually missed the advert. It was only as I checked once again, almost ready to put the paper away and return to my studies, that it caught my eye.
It looked like a string of letters and numbers, utterly random like the fragments of a literary nail bomb and yet as I dragged my eyes slowly along its I spotted a sequence which almost seemed to glow before me.
C3H5N3O9.
Not random, of course, for nothing was random.
A chemical formula.
I looked backed at the chalk board, at the formula that had so interested Dmitri when he had visited.
C3H5N3O9.
My face flushed and I suddenly felt as if I was surrounded by creatures that I could not see nor hear nor smell, beings of another nature that were watching over me, breathing their words through the airwaves and into my test tubes.
Judas cried out from across the room.
I circled the advert with a pen and immediately set about with what I knew was the next step.
I mixed the compound quickly and easily, as if I had already done it one hundred times before.
For once I had all the materials I needed, both chemical and technological, and so it was a mere hour after I had first commenced work that I poured the grey-green liquid into a fresh hypodermic syringe.
I tidied the notes that lay on the counter, dropped some semi-thawed meat into Judas’ cage [which he promptly ignored] then crouched before the Protohuman.
Its eyes were darker than I remembered, its facial bones more pronounced. It didn’t seem to be responding particularly well to the cocktail of vitamins I had been feeding it since discovering that my food supplies had been contaminated but then I no longer thought that that truly mattered.
I held up the syringe before us and looked into the smeared, awkward liquid within. I imagined there to be one hundred thousand futures in there, each molecule a further letter in the words of guidance being handed to me.
The creature regarded with me with a strange expression that was somewhere between hurt and puzzlement as I pressed the needle into its arm and in that moment I believe we were so close, my creation and I, that I too experienced the stinging kiss of the metal and I had to grit my teeth as I forced the concoction into its veins.
I float, I float.
Move like the injection through the veins and arteries of air and chemical stench in the lab, everywhere at once. I stop and look down at my arm and a needle mark glows there as if my blood were phosphorous. The Protohuman holds out its arm to me, displaying a matching wound and the eyes of a homeless man about to be beaten senseless.
My body is mercury, dense and immoveable and yet constantly in motion, my bones swimming around inside me and I try to stand but it is a useless effort. I reach out to the Protohuman but though it reaches back my hand moves through its hand and I wonder if I am now a ghost, a discarded being.
What is happening to me?
The Protohuman leans back and takes its chains between its fingers, holding them up for me to see. Accusing me? It turns its wrists upright and shows me that there are no locks on the iron cuffs, that its bondage is a sham, and opens them one at a time. It discards the chains and stands before me, rising like a god, towering over me and it gives me its hand and I find that now I can stand, though unsteadily.
It is a foot taller than me and its chest broadens before my eyes. I can hear its mighty heart beating behind the bones of its rib cage.
I stare into its face and realize it has no features—no lips, no eyes, no nostrils, nothing. Its head is like an egg, like a clean palette.
And yet still it watches me.
“What is happening?” I ask it.
But I don’t. I don’t ask it.
I try to. I want to.
I can’t speak.
I touch my face and it’s as if an electric shock has just jolted through me when I find that I too have no features. Panicking, I trace my entire head but find nothing. No bumps, no grooves, no indentations.
And the world goes dark for I can no longer see. I have no eyes.
I have no breathing orifices. I cannot breathe.
I am still holding the Protohuman’s hand and I grip it suddenly as my lungs threaten to burst.
“Help me,” I try to say but can’t.
When the darkness receded and my vision returned I was lying sprawled on the floor of the lab.
