Vortex

Vortex

Riding the Rift

The universe is bent being. Everything is apart of it and all things are connected in their most primal essences. There are beings that have great impact on the forms that the universe takes, anchor points in the fabric of existence. There are other creatures, ones such as myself, that have the freedom to travel throughout its many layers, but at the cost of deeper connectivity to any given part. My name means, one without home, untethered one. It cannot be spoken with words.

Sequence

A quilt of dreams…

A person sleeps in a bedroom. A shadow come sup the stairs. No footsteps. The person awakens but the person’s body does not. The person knows something is wrong. The person attempts to wake its body and fails. The creature is in the doorway. It has a featureless face. It grows larger, inward, its neck moves unnervingly.  The creature floats closer. The person backs up against a closet door. When the person opens it, a portal appears. As the person backs into the door, you see the creature looming over the person’s body.

The person runs over beautiful rolling hills away from the dark rift. Away from IT. Trees part and the person discovers an ovular pond with a rock in the center. The person jumps onto the rock and looks at the person’s reflection. The person’s reflection is alive and goes deeper. Strange creatures and plants live in the pond. A large creature attempts to eat the person. The person swims back up to the surface and grabs the person on the rock. The person in the water grows very old. The person in the water gets swallowed and the creature goes back into the deep.

The pond becomes dark like the rift. The person jumps from it. The person jumps high. All the way up to clouds. Mountains, building, etc are no higher than a stepping stool. There is a cliff. The same pond and rock seem to be over the edge at much larger scale. The featureless visage appears in the pond. An arm reaches toward the person. The person is terrified. The person gathers courage. Tears are in the person’s eyes. The person refuses to be intimidated. The person becomes larger. Larger than the entire world. The creature shrinks back. Asteroids and satellites and cosmic phenomena circle the person’s head as eyes follow them. The person closes its eyes. A real person is asleep. The same person attempts to wake that person as a shadow grows larger. The sequence takes place in slow motion.

Music Composition 2120

In the year 2120, new brain scanning technology becomes available to the public. Bachtoven, as he calls himself, is a self-taught musician. He is on his way to the top of the music scene with nothing but his brain, his brain scanner, and speakers. He is performing a concert in the old stadium tonight.

A million people sit in the audience. It is a cool evening in November. I am there. I wear a fedora and a trench coat so that people won’t recognize me as easily. I have an on-line music review. It is the most widely read review in Cincinnati. I have not kept my skepticism about Bachtoven a secret.

The stadium lights go out. A few sparks of electricity streak across the would-be roof of the stadium to let us know that there will be sky fire. A deep base tone makes our butts rumble against the metal stadium seats. A single light glows from below Bachtoven. We can see the round contour of his electrode laced scull cap and the flowing shadow of a cape. The base tone begins to oscillate. A ring of red and red violet pulsates around the edge of the sky fire web above us. Light crashes down with it, like ash or leaves, illuminating the audience below.

A sound akin to violin or electric guitar pierces through the air in a violent melody as silent lighting  crashes down into the empty field around Bachtoven. The familiar sizzle of a fiber piano follows soon after. With it comes green bubbles, which kidnap delighted audience members at random and float with them around the auditorium. Most of the first piece goes on something like this, with plenty of variation of course, and with some minor sounds introduced occasionally. In truth my mind is a bit blown. The composition is incredibly complex and emotional, and I certainly couldn’t have been able to hold so much in my own head. I shamelessly begin to think about how I might make the claim in my review that Bachtoven can’t not either.

After a period of silence, a long string scaling harmonies begins. They become increasingly fast and layered. When they reach an apex, the sky fire becomes erratic, and waves of plasma wobble out and around the stadium. Suddenly, there is a deafening tearing crack. It is hard to tell whether it is part of the music as first. As the music dies it becomes clear that it isn’t. A dark rift with purple lighting around the edges forms in the center of the auditorium. Bachtoven gets sucked directly into it along with most of the first few rows of spectators.

They still don’t know what exactly caused the rift. Bachtoven’s manager released a statement that Bachtoven had been taking drugs so that he could hold more complex patterns in his head than he would otherwise be able. Perhaps this had something to do with the rift. In any case, the human brain has now been classified as a potentially dangerous weapon and all brain scanning technologies are being very heavily regulated.

The rift is still present. A probe is due to be sent into it a week from Thursday. Perhaps Bachtoven was simply so popular that probe will discover he has been taken to old a performance for creatures from some distant place. I think he’s probably just dead.