Part 45: 15:09-17:28: The 2mm Hole In the World
Chapter 45: 15:09-17:28: The 2mm Hole In the World
ANDRE: “Ecstatic vibrations! Totally transcendent! And I’ve finished setting up the new compressor, too!” He looks at the imposing black box in the corner that’s churning out the sound.
ARIST: [Easy: Success] Let’s get some input from Kim first.
KIM KITSURAGI: “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t build a club and I wouldn’t name it either.”
ANDRE: “An underground place with no name? Sounds like something the crab man would say.”
ACELE: “We’re not going with anything the crab man would say.”
NOID: “Why not? The crab man has *ideas*, Acele. Ideas from another level of consciousness!”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “I don’t.”
ANDRE: “The name…” He appears to mull it over, one hand idly touching his hair. “Everything I manage to come up with sounds just *wrong*.”
ACELE: “Andre’s overthinking it,” says the girl with the microphone.
NOID: “Yes, *you* should do it, detective.” The speedfreak with yellow beads aroundhis neck is looking at you. “It would be good for the sines.”
ARIST: [Challenging: Success] Ignore them. This is a lot of pressure and you might just be able to slip out of it yet.
ACELE: “How about something simple, like The Club?”
EGG HEAD: “YEKOKATAA!” The freak with the large head yells from the stage, waving his hand in the air. “YEKOKATAA, THE PLACE TO BE!”
ACELE: “Yekokataa, the zone of ecological catastophe? That’s too morbid, Egg. Got anything else?”
EGG HEAD: “HARD CORE!” A witless, victorious smile adorns his face. “HARD CORE TO THE MEGA!”
NOID: “The Amnesia.”
ACELE: “Like… the I-can’t-remember-the-name-of-the-club amnesia?”
EGG HEAD: “AMNESIA!”
ARIST: [Medium: Success] Fine. What about… this?
NOID: “Like that Dolorian word for the world, you mean? Elysium…”
ACELE: “But *Disco* Elysium…” She looks unsure. “Isn’t it wacky? Disco’s kind of gone, isn’t it? Forgotten.”
EGG HEAD: “THE PAST IS THE FUTURE, BUT THE FUTURE IS DEAD!”
ANDRE: “No, it’s beautiful. Beautiful and brave! Like we want it to be.”
NOID: “*And* short. *And* memorable!”
Yeah! Title justified!!!
ANDRE: “Yes, my man!” He jumps up and down with glee, his moves punctuated by the stroboscopic flash of the club lights.
COMPOSURE: [Easy: Success] Talk? What is there to talk about if you can express yourself with *moves*?
ANDRE: “It’s to express my individuality.”
ARIST: [Medium: Success] Don’t comment on the balding thing. He’s probably sensitive about it.
LIMBIC SYSTEM: …but just *imagine* the moves you could pull to this futuristic beat!
EMPATHY: [Medium: Success] With wonder in his sharp eyes.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Yes. You really came through. For the hard core underground.” He spreads his arms, looking around at the speedfreaks setting up shop. “How come?”
ANDRE: Andre is busy cutting some slightly less lame, but still quite ungainly shapes on the church floor, sweating profusely.
ACELE: Acele is using her contact mike to listen to a tree, underwater.
EGG HEAD: The one with the large head is blasting the dance track on repeat, while the stained glass window behind him is rattling from the bass.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Okay.” The lieutenant keeps it laconic.
NOID: “That’s right. The first settlers built it, plus six more like it. On the coast here. Was one of the first things they did… must’ve been really scared of something. But I understand… Alone on an uninhabited archipelago, forced to face themselves and nature. Pre-industrial quantities of solitude. The sea. Perhaps something more… fundamental.”
NOID: [Medium: Success] He means something para-natural. He must…
NOID: “Like that woman there,” he nods toward the stained glass window. “Vertical, thin, white, a false image of grandeur. The source of the system is up there, you’re at the bottom. They really dug that power vertical.”
NOID: “Stands to reason it used to be white on the outside.” He peeks out of a small window in the dark. “Before the sea wind took all the paint off.”
VISUAL CALCULUS [Medium: Success] Year after year, flake after flake, white washed clean, then covered in green moss…
NOID: “‘I saw some piglets suckling their dead mother’—have you heard this one, cop-man?” He continues without waiting for an answer: “‘After a short while they shuddered and went away. They had sensed that she could no longer see them and that she wasn’t *like* them anymore. What they loved in their mother wasn’t her body, but whatever it was that made her body live.’”
NOID: A three-thousand-year-old tyrannical regime of History, built and maintained by hundreds of generations of self-appointed *intellectuals*…” He looks around. “It’s false-core.”
NOID: “*I* only said: *Unity*. One word. Figures of authority always misquote you.” He points to his friends.
NOID: “But were you wrong? The Founding Party is okay with everything. Look around.” He spreads his arms. “They do not have enough love for the *human crew* to oppose anything anymore. We’re on our own.”
NOID: “Well…” The young man pushes his chest out, the skeleton of suspenders rattling…
ANDRE: “Noid-man! Mellow out,” the dancing hedgehog yelps at his friend. “Stop aggroing the law!”
ARIST: [Formidable: Success] That was a weird outburst. You okay, man?
NOID: “No wonder.” He cracks his neck. “We have to get rid of it. Dismantle it. Can’t dance with a giant *mass murderer* lookin’ at you. Not a good look for the club.”
ANDRE: “Mellow, man! Mellow!” yells his friend. “No one’s a mass murderer, this is a house of *love!*”
RHETORIC: [Easy: Success] What a strange choice of words…
EMPATHY: [Easy: Success] Caustic, overflowing with negativity.
NOID: “Hard to say, cop man. Sines in here are distinctly *wild*. Gonna take a while before everything’s properly *synced*…”
NOID: “Anyway, he’s been giving me kind of a *psychic rundown* of this place…”
NOID: “Have you been listening to what Egg’s been saying? Love is *hard core* man, and a mother’s love is the hardest core of all… The man picks up on stuff. And he knows *a lot* about the church. I got a lot to learn from him…”
Ah man, we circled back to the main conversation branch. Put those at the end, dammit!
NOID: “Encasement. Confinement. Of something they were afraid of. Something new and unheard of on the isola.” He looks up, into the darkness beyond the beams. “I think that’s what the crab man is experiencing when he climbs around upstairs…”
NOID: “I dunno… and it’s not something they properly understand either. What it does. But it’s what this Soona person is looking for, and trying to measure.” He nods toward the woman. “It’ll be fruitless, though. She won’t be able to measure it. People like that always want to measure everything, all those things they really can’t.”
NOID: “No, it’s pretty fucking *un*-sound if you ask me. They should have built a club for anodic music around it instead.” He grins… “Anodic music will *definitely* contain whatever we’re dealing with.” His words echo in the chamber…
NOID: The young man rubs his chin, in silence, then mumbles: “…like a concentric ring spreading out… the struggling villages…”
NOID: “Suspicious people are esoteric people. We don’t go around spilling everything to Johnny Law. They don’t call me Noid for nothing.”
NOID: “Oh, it’d be easier to list stuff I’m not suspicious of. I’m not suspicious of sound and colour. Mechanics and chemistry also have a trueness about them. Most anything else deceives. Wants to steal your life away.”
NOID: “I don’t have a top ten list of things I’m most suspicious of. But if I *had* one, the left-right complex would be number one. Number two would be their sole accomplishment—the pig/wheat paradigm.”
NOID: “Nope. Politics is an inert complex of daily corruption and inane thinkpieces. The real paradigm is economic and it concerns pig and wheat.”
NOID: “I prefer not to. Both ask the wrong questions. Any spark of light from either one is accidental. Their combined movement’s only concern is producing enough pig and wheat for everyone—the end goal of humanity… The original mistake was assuming that words have more being than bodies. That’s what led us astray, far from our true lives. But we may yet find a way back.”
NOID: “Beats and bright lights to shatter falsehoods. Nerve impulses for the collective body. We are very much alike in basic structure. A hard enough beat would awaken everyone to a truer calling—in unity!” Just like that the speedfreak is right in your face, his eyes burning. His comrades look on worriedly.
EMPATHY: [Medium: Success] The young man is dead serious about this.
NOID: “Utmost dedication. Thoughts from the spinal cord. It’s a potent superlative as well.”
ENCYCLOPEDIA: [Medium: Success] The term also signifies certain varieties of pornography that depict penetration, just so you know.
ARIST: [Challenging: Success] Thanks for that. Really.
NOID: “Egg Head actually has a better concept of the hard core. He just really likes saying *hard core*.”
NOID: “That’s a pretty hard core coincidence, don’t you think?”
Wow… uh… really wasn’t expecting to pass that one. Was actually kind of hoping I’d fail it so I’d have an excuse to potentially savescum some others without getting called out, drat!
HARD CORE TO THE MEGA… is something we will not be saying because we like having our Interfacing skill at 5, thank you very much.
Oh god, the ones column of the clock has been destroyed, we’ll never know what minute it is again!!!
(It flipped over to the next minute when I took this shot and I didn’t notice I guess, but also I’m not retaking it just for that)
SHIVERS: [Medium: Success] A hawthorn tree on Rue de Saint-Ghislaine. Tangled in its branches, something bronze flutters in the wind…
ARIST: [Challenging: Success] Oh, quiet you. We already did that.
EGG HEAD: He stands on stage behind a table, nodding along to the music and waving his hand in the air. In front of him—the audio mixer, one reel spinning.
EGG HEAD: “Yeeaaaagh! Back on the case, no disgrace!” He pumps his fist in the air. “Bring it down to party place!”
ARIST: [Challenging: Success] You’re getting nowhere here. Talk to Soona, or at least Acele.
ACELE: “Hey, there.” She gives you a shy smile. “I’ve been recording some new audio from all these beams and rafters. The sounds travelling through the wood are pretty cool—creaks and stuff. Like you’re underwater, you know… But, like, underwater inside a tree.”
ACELE: “Good, I think. Noid is getting a read on the place, I think he finds the carpentry very impressive. Andre’s been setting up the compressor and… dancing. Egg Head’s keeping the party up, he’s got the stage under control.”
ACELE: “Uh… she’s a bit odd, I have to say. Doesn’t talk much. I’m not really sure how to vibe with her, y’know? Seems like she’s not in a very good mood most of the time.”
ACELE: “Oh, the crab man.” She shudders. “Still gives me the creeps, the way he moves… But he doesn’t actually come down that much, just climbs around the rafters.”
ACELE: “Andre? He’s a cool guy. Doesn’t really come off as one, but he is. To me at least…”
PERCEPTION (SIGHT): [Medium: Success] She rubs her sides, but not from cold. Her shoulders are relaxed. She must have taken a hit or she’s on an upswing.
ACELE: “Nothing. But then again… there’s nothing to organize around here either. He really wants the church thing to work… Must have taken it as a sign when he found it abandoned like that. Said it was an *augury*. I don’t know where he got that from.” She smiles. “Andre’s not super intelligent… I’ve never seen him so psyched about anything though—and he’s often psyched. Looks sort of desperate, like it’s his last chance or something. Or maybe he was just high…”
ACELE: “Come to think of it, yes!” She laughs.
INLAND EMPIRE: [Medium: Success] This is the first time you’ve heard her laugh.
ACELE: “He’s a Faubourger I guess, like the rest of us. Okay, maybe not Egg, I don’t know about him, but Noid and the rest are from Faubourg, making the pilgrimage up north to visit The Paliseum.”
ACELE: “Sir,” she gives you a switchblade smile. “I abide by *the law*.”
ACELE: “Anyway, even if you don’t have vocals you still need someone to say something every now and then, right? To urge things on. That’s where the party boy comes in… He basically just stands on the stage and dances and yells how awesome everything is. It’s very catchy.”
KIM KITSURAGI: “I understand. People are usually afraid to do things if others aren’t already doing them. Dancing makes you dance like sneezing makes you sneeze. Or yawning makes you…”
ACELE: “Actually, we don’t know where he’s from. Or who he is, really. One time we were out partying, somewhere in backwater Faubourg. Or maybe even Coal City, I can’t remember. Maybe it was Coal City…”
ENCYCLOPEDIA: [Medium: Success] The worst of the *banlieues*. A wretched heap of closed-down mines even west of Jamrock, on the dusty slope of Monte Martin. The remotest possible area of Revachol, no one even wants to exploit those people anymore.
ACELE: “Egg was yelling along to some jams someone was spinning, all night long. Just kept yelling until he didn’t have a shred of voice left. When the sun came up over the mines… there were mines? Yeah, it was in Coal City!” She nods. “Egg came with us. He made this wheezing puppy dog sound all the way back. Couldn’t even speak. It was definitely Coal City, because it took us two days to walk back to the Fau. He just wheezed the whole way, we never really asked him why he came with us. Or who he was. I think his name is Germaine… People are sweet,” she says quietly.
EMPATHY: [Easy: Success] You can see it must have been a great night. The memory causes her to go silent for a moment or two.
ACELE: “I told you, I’m a silver bird.”
ACELE: “Alright.” She picks up the tape recorder and looks you in the eye…
ARIST: [Medium: Success] Okay, we’re *finally* getting to Soona. You know, the reason we’re here?
...I’m sorry, all White Checks? As in ALL OF THEM!?
...Holy shit.
(Some if not most of these are no longer available to retry due to our having progressed *around* them, but it’s worth showing that yep, every single one of them is open again)
EGG HEAD: “Oh… oh… she used 3.5…” An uncomfortable pause follows. “Yeah, the auxiliary line-in is 4.5 mm. These two don’t mix.”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Oh no.” The lieutenant closes his eyes. “We’re going to be in this church *forever*.”
EGG HEAD: “Don’t worry, I have an *adapter* for it right here!” He searches for the cable on the ground and picks it up, looking at the jack. “Hang on—this *is* a 4.5! We’re all good, people!” With a grin he sticks the plug into the auxiliary line-in. You hear a satisfying click.
INTERFACING: [Medium: Success] Whooh, thank god—adapters noticeably degrade the sound quality.
EGG HEAD: “Everybody, everybody! Don’t panic, I’m going to turn off The Arno for *just a sec*,” the young man shouts as he clicks a switch on the mixer, “for a *special scheduled event*…”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “Okay, but…” She seems hesitant, her eyes still fixed on Egg Head. “Think you can ask him to turn the volume down a bit, just in case?”
EGG HEAD: “MAXIMUM!” shouts Egg Head, a great smile still adorning his face, larger than a red dwarf star. “MAXIMUM IS THE ONLY WAY!”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “I know, I know it is, but… could you *please* turn it down just this instance? Just *this* one time—maximum is *not* the only way, okay?”
EGG HEAD: “Pump it to the brick, pump it to the hard master! There is no other way. Glue-style.”
INTERFACING: [Medium: Success] Glue-style? Okay, there *literally* is no other way. The mixing desk is glued to maximum.
ARIST: [Challenging: Success] Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of a mixing desk?
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “Because I’m afraid that something might happen. It’s an unknown phenomenon…” She turns to Egg Head. “We can always turn it back up if there’s a need.”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “Of course it is.” She shrugs, consigned to her fate.
EGG HEAD: “YEAGHHH! PERMANENT ENLIGHTENMENT. RAY OF SOUND.”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “Never mind then, let’s get on with our project… I am going to unmute the speakers on a count of five. Everyone ready?” She looks around the church.
ARIST: [Easy: Success] A tiny, rogue element within your imagination conjures up an image of Tiago whispering “Ready,” secluded from his perch.
REACTION SPEED: [Medium: Success] Not so stoically—his hand moves to the gun holster.
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “No, we should definitely do this. I *am* going to do this.” She pauses, looking around the church—everyone stares at her hand on the keyboard. “Ready?”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “Five… Four… Three… Two… One…”
PERCEPTION (HEARING): [Easy: Success] No wind outside. No waves. No floorboards creaking. Total, continuous silence. This is… unnatural.
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: The woman looks around. In the silence, you see dust move on the floorboards. The driver of the speaker vibrates in the air and then stops. Plasterwork begins to crumble down the walls…
ANDRE: “Guys, what’s going on?” There’s alarm in the man’s voice, as he steps back to scan the surroundings. A slight rattle fills the fair, joining the chorus.
NOID: “It’s getting louder…” says Noid, his eyes riveted on the strange circle of water basins.
PERCEPTION (SIGHT): [Medium: Success] In the basins—the water looks like it’s *boiling*.
EGG HEAD: “HOSIANNAH! MOTHER OF MEGA!” You hear Egg Head yell—then something else, but his voice is growing faint…
EGG HEAD: “The BEAUTY AND THE BEAT! The future of dance, PLANETARY!”
ACELE: “No, Egg! It’s the window.” The glass shared around Dolores Dei’s vacant heart appear to be vibrating from the sound. It almost looks as if she’s alive.
KIM KITSURAGI: In the corner of your eye, the lieutenant steps aside cautiously, his eyes searching for a possible evacuation route.
PERCEPTION (SIGHT): [Medium: Success] Cracks appear on the stained glass window. Cracks run up the wooden pillars in the dark…
EGG HEAD: “COME DOWN TO US! LOVE!”
VISUAL CALCULUS: [Medium: Success] It’s shaking the building’s foundation. The floor twists…
COMPOSURE: [Medium: Success] A great PULSE arises in your flesh…
EGG HEAD: “OH, I WANT TO FEEL THE HEAT WITH SOMEBODY!”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “Shit, it doesn’t stop!” The woman is furiously pressing down on her kayboard—but the sound doesn’t stop. “Acele, have you…?”
ACELE: “Yes, I’ve turned it off!” She yells, holding the contact mic in her hand. “Andre, pull the compressor! The place is gonna come down…”
ANDRE: “Fuck…” Andre frantically smashes buttons. “I can’t shut it up, the signal’s passed… It’s not *in* here! It’s…”
LOGIC: [Medium: Success] In the mixing desk now. Building into a positive feedback loop.
ACELE: “Egg…”
EGG HEAD: “I pulled the plug,” he says, calmly. “It was getting *too* hard core.”
ANDRE: “You did good, Egg…” Andre breathes a sigh of relief and inspects the window. “Most of the place seems to be intact. Fucking L… Programmer-lady, tell me you were recording that!”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “Four years…” the woman whispers. “Twenty-two people, millions of reàls… Just erased it…” Her lip trembles. “Sulisław isn’t gonna believe this.”
ANDRE: “Yeah, but did you record it though? It was dope, I think we can use it.”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “Yes, Andre.” She composes herself—wipes the dust off her sweater and rests her hands on the keyboard. “I recorded it. Damn, I need to send some letters now…”
KIM KITSURAGI: “It was *very* hard not to. I think you’re right,” he turns to the woman. “There *is* something going on here—and you need to be *very* careful with it.”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “It was mathematical information—from the anomaly—presented as a waveform. That’s what it was *technically*—theoretically…” She shakes her head. “I have no idea. I’ve never even heard of anything like this.”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “Yes. Our lead designer. And maybe some of the producers too. And some of the writers, if they’re sober enough to open a transmission. They need to hear…”
EMPATHY: [Medium: Success] That it wasn’t her fault. Or theirs.
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “I don’t care,” she blurts, then reconsiders: “But thank you anyway.”
VOLITION: [Medium: Success] That’s the best she can manage for Andre. It’s quite a lot, in truth. For her, at least.
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “Now…” Her hands move on the keyboard. “I have a theory to come up with. *Some* kind of preliminary explanation to all this, or the letter will sound like I’ve lost my mind…”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Yes. And we have to get back to stabilizing Martinaise…” He breathes out, trying to shake off tension. “Instead of demolishing it with loud bass noise of unknown origins.”
LOGIC: These thoughts formed in you somewhere, in a long forgotten discussion. Behind a kitchen table, in the evening light.
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: She looks up into the darkness under the nave, then back at you.
RHETORIC: [Challenging: Success] You have her full, undivided attention.
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “Then… what *is* that?”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “And information,” she nods. “Causing data losses in the East-Insulindian front. Have you considered why it’s formed in a church? And, also, *when* or *how* it might start growing? Or—if it has other effects? In addition to sound and data…”
EMPATHY: [Medium: Success] An intellectual hunger fills her now, casting fear aside.
KIM KITSURAGI: “I also have a question—since we’re piling them on. How do *you* know this? I’m not doubting you,” he explains, “I’m simply curious as to how a detective of the RCM…”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “I have considered the same. The bad news is—there were *seven* pinewood churches built in the first decade of Revachol’s settlement. Most of them were burnt down during the Revolution, or re-purposed before, during the Suzerain. I’m not saying *all* of them have one in them, but…”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “You think the presence of that *puncture* has somehow… influenced the outcome of events here? Even, say, software development?”
KIM KITSURAGI: “An amateur-entroponetic police officer… I’d like to say I’ve heard stranger things, but I’m not sure. This is a hell of a guess, however. Well-worded I might add…”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “I’m going to leave that out—but the rest… some of this I can use to *start* to explain this to the rest of the team. Maybe I’ll sound mad, but…”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Ma’am, you will *certainly* sound mad.”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “I wouldn’t go so far as to…”
EGG HEAD: “YEAAAGHHH! ONCE THE LIGHT IS ON IN THE UNIVERSE—IT WILL NEVER GO OUT!”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “The creepy woman!” She slaps her forehead. “We were wondering about that when we worked there… but I had completely forgotten about it ever since! It must be entroponetic crosstalk. The kind you get in radios and long-distance calls… Now it makes sense, with pale right on the doorstep.”
SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER: “It’s quite common actually. When the signal gets routed through pale, all kinds of irregularities take place. You may hear snippets of someone else’s conversation, or the voice of your former lover, or an echo of an event that took place 100 years ago.”
And here’s Cleaning Out the Rooms.
ARIST: [Formidable: Success] And as you turn to leave Soona, you try not to think about the fact that you, with the help of those speedfreaks, almost just destroyed the world (or at least Insulinde). Oops.