Natalia Theodoridou
The Eleven Holy Numbers of the Mechanical Soul
Originally published by Clarkesworld Magazine, February 2014
a=38. This is the first holy number.
Stand still. Still. In the water. Barely breathing, spear in hand. One with the hand.
A light brush against my right calf. The cold and glistening touch of human skin that is not human. Yet, it’s something. Now strike. Strike.
Theo had been standing in the sea for hours—his bright green jacket tied high around his waist, the water up to his crotch. Daylight was running out. The fish was just under the point of his spear when he caught a glimpse of a beast walking towards him. Animalis Primus. The water was already lapping at its first knees.
He struck, skewering the middle of the fish through and through. It was large and cumbersome—enough for a couple of days. It fought as he pulled it out of the water. He looked at it, its smooth skin, its pink, human-like flesh. These fish were the closest thing to a human being he’d seen since he crashed on Oceanus.
Theo’s vision blurred for a moment, and he almost lost his balance. The fish kept fighting, flapping against the spear.
It gasped for air.
He drove his knife through its head and started wading ashore.
Animalis Primus was taking slow, persistent steps into the water. Its stomach bottles were already starting to fill up, its feet were tangled in seaweed. Soon, it would drown.
Theo put the fish in the net on his back and sheathed his spear to free both his hands. He would need all of his strength to get the beast back on the beach. Its hollow skeleton was light when dry, but wet, and with the sea swelling at dusk—it could take them both down.
When he got close enough, Theo placed his hands against the hips of the advancing beast to stop its motion, then grabbed it firmly by its horizontal spine to start pushing it in the other direction. The beast moved, reluctantly at first, then faster as its second knees emerged from the water and met less resistance. Finally its feet gained traction against the sand, and soon Theo was lying on his back, panting, the fish on one side, the beast on the other, dripping on the beach and motionless. But he was losing the light. In a few moments, it would be night and he would have to find his way back in the dark.
He struggled to his feet and stood next to the beast.
"What were you doing, mate?" he asked it. "You would have drowned if I hadn’t caught you, you know that?"
He knelt by the beast’s stomach and examined the bottles. They were meant to store pressurized air—now they were full of water. Theo shook his head. "We need to empty all these, dry them. It will take some time." He looked for the tubing that was supposed to steer the animal in the opposite direction when it came in contact with water. It was nowhere to be found.
"All right," he said. "We’ll get you fixed soon. Now let’s go home for the night, ja?"
He threw the net and fish over his shoulder and started pushing Animalis Primus towards the fuselage.
b=41,5. This is the second holy number.
Every night, remember to count all the things that do not belong here. So you don’t forget. Come on, I’ll help you.
Humans don’t belong here. Remember how you couldn’t even eat the fish at first, because they reminded you too much of people, with their sleek skin, their soft, scaleless flesh? Not any more, though, ja? I told you, you would get over it. In time.
Animals don’t belong here, except the ones we make.
Insects.
Birds.
Trees. Never knew I could miss trees so much.
Remember how the fish gasped for air? Like I would. Like I am.
It will be light again in a few hours. Get some sleep, friend. Get some sleep.
The wind was strong in the morning. Theo emerged from the fuselage and tied his long grey hair with an elastic band. It was a good thing he’d tethered Animalis Primus to the craft the night before.
He rubbed his palms together over the dying fire. There was a new sore on the back of his right hand. He would have to clean it with some saltwater later. But there were more important things to do first.
He walked over to the compartment of the craft that he used as a storage room and pulled free some white tubing to replace the damaged beast’s water detector. He had to work fast. The days on Oceanus waited for no man.
About six hours later, the bottles in Animalis Primus were empty and dry, a new binary step counter and water detector installed. All he had to do now was test it.
Theo pushed the beast towards the water, its crab-like feet drawing helixes in the wet sand. He let the beast walk to the sea on its own. As soon as the detector touched the surf, Animalis Primus changed direction and walked away from the water.
Theo clapped. "There you go, mate!" he shouted. "There you go!"
The beast continued to walk, all clank and mechanical grace. As it passed by Theo, it stopped, as if hesitating.
Then, the wind blew, and the beast walked away.
Dusk again, and the winds grew stronger. Nine hours of day, nine hours of night. Life passed quickly on Oceanus.
Theo was sitting by the fire just outside the fuselage. He dined on the rest of the fish, wrapped in seaweed. Seaweed was good for him, good source of vitamin C, invaluable after what was left of the craft’s supplies ran out, a long time ago. He hated the taste, though.
He looked at the beasts, silhouetted against the night sky and the endless shore:
Animalis Acutus, walking sideways with its long nose pointed at the wind,
Animalis Agrestis, the wild, moving faster than all of them combined,
Animalis Caecus, the blind, named irrationally one night, in a bout of despair,
Animalis Echinatus, the spiny one, the tallest,
Animalis Elegans, the most beautiful yet, its long white wings undulating in the wind with a slight, silky whoosh,
and Animalis Primus, now about eight years old, by a clumsy calculation. The oldest one still alive.
Eight years was not bad. Eight years of living here were long enough to live.
c=39,3. This is the third holy number.
Now listen, these beasts, they are simple Jansen mechanisms with a five-bar linkage at their core. Mechanical linkages are what brought about the Industrial Revolution, ja? I remember reading about them in my Archaic Mechanics studies.
See, these animals are all legs, made of those electrical tubes we use to hide wires in. Each leg consists of a pair of kite-like constructions that are linked via a hip and a simple crank. Each kite is made up of a pentagon and a triangle, the apex of which is the beast’s foot. The movement is created by the relative lengths of the struts. That’s why the holy numbers are so important. They are what allows the beasts to walk. To live.
Each beast needs at least three pairs of legs to stand by itself, each leg with its very own rotary motion. All the hips and cranks are connected via a central rod. That’s the beast’s spine.
And then, of course, there are the wings. The wind moves the wings, and the beasts walk on their own.
They have wings, but don’t fool yourself into thinking they can fly, ja?
Wings are not all it takes to fly.
In the morning, Theo was so weak he could barely use the desalination pump to get a drink of water and wash his face. He munched on seaweed, filling up on nutrients, trying to ignore the taste. After all these years, he had still not gotten used to that taste. Like eating rot right off of the ocean bed.
The beasts were herding by the nearest sand dune today, mostly immobilized by the low wind. The sun shone overhead, grinding down Theo’s bones, the vast stretches of sand and kelp around him. The beach. His beach.
He had walked as far from the sea as he could, the first months on Oceanus. All he had found was another shore on the other side of this swath of land. All there was here was this beach. All there was, this ocean.
He poured some saltwater on the new wounds on his knees. The pain radiated upwards, like a wave taking over his body.
The winds suddenly grew stronger. There was the distant roar of thunder.
Theo let himself be filled by the sound of the sand shifting under the force of the wind, by the sound of the rising waves, by this ocean that was everything. The ocean filled him up, and the whole world fell away, and then Theo fell away and dissolved, and life was dismantled, and only the numbers were left.
a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8…
At night, like every night, Theo sent messages to the stars. Sometimes he used the broken transmitter from the craft; others, he talked to them directly, face to face.
"Stars," he said, "are you lonely? Are you there, stars?"
d=40,1. This is the fourth holy number.
You know, at first I thought this was a young planet. I thought that there was so little here because life was only just beginning. I could still study it, make all this worthwhile. But then, after a while, it became clear. The scarcity of lifeforms. The powdery sand, the absence of seashells, the traces of radiation, the shortage of fish. The fish, the improbable fish. It’s obvious, isn’t it? We are closer to an end than we are to a beginning. This ecosystem has died. We, here; well. We are just the aftermath.
Stars, are you there?
Day again, and a walk behind the craft to where his companions were buried. Theo untangled the kelp that had been caught on the three steel rods marking their graves, rearranged his red scarf around Tessa’s rod. Not red any more—bleached and worn thin from the wind and the sun and the rain.
"It was all for nothing, you know," he said. "There is nothing to learn here. This place could never be a home for us."
He heard a beast approaching steadily, its cranks turning, its feet landing rhythmically on the sand. It was Animalis Primus. A few more steps and it would tread all over the graves. Theo felt blood rush to his head. He started waving his hands, trying to shoo the beast, even though he knew better. The beast did not know grave. All it knew was water and not-water.
"Go away!" he screamed. "What do you want, you stupid piece of trash?" He ran towards the beast and pushed it away, trying to make it move in the opposite direction. He kicked loose one of its knees. Immediately, the beast stopped moving.
Theo knelt by the beast and hid his face in his palms. "I’m sorry," he whispered. "I’m so sorry."
A slight breeze later, the beast started to limp away from the graves, towards the rest of its herd.
Theo climbed to his feet and took a last look at his companions' graves.
"We died for nothing," he said, and walked away.
At night, Theo made his fire away from the craft. He lay down, with his back resting on a bed of dry kelp, and took in the night, the darkness, the clear sky.
He imagined birds flying overhead.
Remember birds?
e=55,8. This is the fifth holy number.
A few years ago the sea spit out the carcass of a bird. I think it was a bird. I pulled it out of the water, all bones and feathers and loose skin. I looked at it and looked at it, but I couldn’t understand it. Where had it come from? Was it a sign of some sort? Perhaps I was supposed to read it in some way? I pulled it apart using my hands, looked for the fleshy crank that used to animate it. I found nothing. I left it there on the sand. The next morning it was gone.
Did you imagine it?
Perhaps I imagined it. Or maybe this planet is full of carcasses, they just haven’t found me yet.
How do you know it was a bird?
Have you ever seen birds?
Are you sure?
Theo’s emaciated body ached as he pulled himself up from the cold sand. He shouldn’t sleep outside, he knew that much.
How much of this sand is made of bone?
Had the winds come during the night, he could have been buried under a dune in a matter of minutes. Animalis Elegans was swinging its wings in the soft breeze, walking past him, when a brilliant flash of light bloomed in the sky. A comet. It happened, sometimes.
Are you there? he thought.
Are you lonely?
f=39,4. This is the sixth holy number.
Animalis (Latin): that which has breath. From anima (Latin): breath. Also spirit, soul.
Breath is the wind that moves you; what does it matter if it fills your lungs of flesh or bottles? I have lungs of flesh, I have a stomach. What is a soul made of?
Do you have a soul? Do I?
The breath gives me voice. The fish is mute, the comet breathless; I haven’t heard any voice but my own in so long.
Are you there? Are you lonely?
When I was a little boy I saw a comet in the sky and thought: Wings are not enough to fly, but if you catch a comet with a bug net, well…Well, that might just do the trick.
Breath gives life. To live: the way I keep my face on, my voice in, my soul from spilling out.
Night already. Look, there is a light in the black above. It is a comet; see its long tail? Like a rose blooming in the sky.
If we catch it, maybe we can fly.
Tomorrow I think I’ll walk into the sea, swim as far as I can.
And then what?
Then, nothing. I let go.
Instead of walking into the sea, in the morning Theo started building a new animal. He put up a tent just outside the fuselage, using some leftover tarpaulin and steel rods from the craft. He gathered all his materials inside: tubes, wire, bottles, cable ties, remains of beasts that had drowned in the past, or ones which had been created with some fundamental flaw that never allowed them to live in the first place. Theo worked quickly but carefully, pausing every now and then to steady his trembling hands, to blink the blurriness away. New sores appeared on his chest, but he ignored them.
This one would live. Perhaps it would even fly.
The rest of the beasts gathered outside the makeshift tent, as if to witness the birth of their kin.
g=36,7. This is the seventh holy number.
Come here, friend. Sit. Get some rest. I can see your knees trembling, your hip ready to give, your feet digging into the mud. Soon you will die, if you stay this way.
I see you have a spine, friend.
I, too, have a spine.
Theo was out fishing when the clouds started to gather and the sea turned black. Storms were not rare on Oceanus, but this one looked angrier than usual. He shouldered his fishing gear and started treading water towards the shore. He passed Animalis Elegans, its wings undulating faster and faster, and Animalis Caecus, which seemed to pause to look at him through its mechanical blindness, its nose pointed at the sky.
Theo made sure the half-finished beast was resting as securely as possible under the tarpaulin, and withdrew in the fuselage for what was to come.
h=65,7. This is the eighth holy number.
Once, a long long time ago, there was a prophet in old Earth who asked: when we have cut down all the trees and scraped the galaxy clean of stars, what will be left to shelter us from the terrible, empty skies?
Theo watched from his safe spot behind the fuselage’s porthole as the beasts hammered their tails to the ground to defend their skeletons against the rising winds. Soon, everything outside was a blur of sand and rain. The craft was being battered from all sides; by the time the storm subsided, it would be half-buried in sand and kelp. And there was nothing to do but watch as the wind dislodged the rod that marked Tessa’s grave and the red scarf was blown away, soon nowhere to be seen. It disappeared into the sea as if it had never existed at all, as if it had only been a memory of a childish story from long-ago and far-away. There was nothing to do as the wind uprooted the tarpaulin tent and blew the new animal to pieces; nothing to do as Animalis Elegans was torn from the ground and dragged to the water, its silken wings crushed under the waves.
Theo walked over to the trapdoor, cracked it open to let in some air. The night, heavy and humid, stuck to his skin.
i=49. This is the ninth holy number.
The night is heavy and humid like the dreams I used to have as a boy. In my dream, I see I’m walking into the sea, only it’s not the sea any more, it’s tall grass, taller than any grass I’ve ever seen in any ecosystem, taller than me, taller than the beasts. I swim in the grass, and it grows even taller; it reaches my head and keeps growing towards the sky, or maybe it’s me getting smaller and smaller until all I can see is grass above and around me. I fall back, and the grass catches me, and it’s the sky catching me like I always knew it would.
The storm lasted two Oceanus days and two Oceanus nights. When the clouds parted and the winds moved deeper into the ocean, Theo finally emerged from the fuselage. Half the beach had turned into a mire. Animalis Elegans was nowhere in sight. Animalis Primus limped in the distance. The beach was strewn with parts; only three of the beasts had survived the storm.
"No point in mourning, ja?" Theo muttered, and got to work.
He gathered as many of the materials as had landed in the area around the craft, dismantled the remains of the new animal that would never be named.
He had laid everything on the tarpaulin to dry, when a glimpse of white caught his eye. He turned towards the expanse of sea that blended into mire, and squinted. At first he thought it was foam, but no; it was one of Elegans’s wings, a precious piece of white silk poking out of a murky-looking patch in the ground.
He knew better than to go retrieve it, but he went anyway.
j=50. This is the tenth holy number.
Listen, listen. It’s okay. Don’t fret. Take it in. The desolation, take it all in. Decomposition is a vital part of any ecosystem. It releases nutrients that can be reused, returns to the atmosphere what was only borrowed before. Without it, dead matter would accumulate and the world would be fragmented and dead, a wasteland of drowned parts and things with no knees, no spine, no wings.
Theo had his hands on the precious fabric, knee-deep in the muck, when he realized he was sinking, inch by inch, every time he moved. He tried to pull himself back out, but the next moment the sand was up to his thighs. He tried to kick his way out, to drag himself up, but his knees buckled, his muscles burned and he sank deeper and deeper with every breath he took.
This is it, then, he thought. Here we are, friend. Here we are.
He let out a breath, and it was almost like letting go.
k=61,9. This is the last holy number.
So here we are, friend: I, Homo Necans, the Man who Dies; you, ever a corpse. Beautiful, exquisite corpse. I lay my hands on you, caress your inanimate flawlessness. I dip my palms into you, what you once were. And then, there it is, so close and tangible I can almost reach it.
Here I am.
In your soul up to my knees.
The sand around Theo was drying in the sun. It was up to his navel now. Wouldn’t be long. The wind hissed against the kelp and sand, lulling him. His eyes closed and he dozed off, still holding on to the wing.
He was woken by the rattling sound of Animalis Primus limping towards him.
The beast approached, its feet distributing its weight so as to barely touch the unsteady sand.
"I made you fine, didn’t I?" Theo mused. "Just fine."
Primus came to a halt next to Theo, and waited.
He looked up at the beast, squinting at the sun behind it. "What are you doing, old friend?" he asked.
The beast stood, as if waiting for him to reach out, to hold on.
Theo pulled a hand out of the sand and reached for the beast’s first knees. He was afraid he might trip the animal over, take them both down, but as soon as he got a firm grasp on its skeleton, Primus started walking against the wind, pulling Theo out of the sand.
He let go once he was safely away from the marsh. He collapsed on the powdery sand, trying to catch his breath, reel it back in, keep it from running out. Animalis Primus did not stop.
"Wait," Theo whispered as he pulled himself half-way up from the ground, thousands of miniscule grains sticking to his damp cheek. The beast marched onwards, unresponsive. "Wait!" Theo shouted, with all the breath he had left. He almost passed out.
The wind changed direction. Theo rested his head back on the sand, spent, and watched as Animalis Primus walked away—all clank and mechanics and the vestige of something like breath.
On Post-Mortem Birds
Originally published by Interfictions: A Journal of Interstitial Arts, June 2015
1. Extraction
Place a body block under the back of the cadaver so that the chest protrudes and the neck and arms fall backwards. You might hear the bird flutter at this stage. Do not be alarmed; this is normal. Make a deep, Y-shaped incision in the usual manner (cf pp. 22-25). Peel back the skin, muscle and soft tissue. Pull the chest flap over the face. The birdcage should now be exposed, and the thoracic bird should be visible. Using a rib cutter or saw, make two cuts on each side of the cage. Be very careful when you pull the ribs away so as not to damage the bird. The bird should now be free. Depending on your relationship with the deceased, it may choose to fly away. If it does, there is no point in chasing it. The bird was never yours. It will never be yours. Do not forget this.
If the bird stays in the chest cavity, extract it using your bare hands and proceed to step 2.
2. Classification and Care
Post-mortem birds come in all shapes and sizes, but they generally do fall within known species of birds, although exceptions are possible [see note i]. Swallows, pigeons and larks are some of the most common, with corvids (crows and ravens) a close second. That said, do not be surprised if a fully grown peacock or a baby ostrich emerges from the chest cavity of the deceased [see note ii].
In order to figure out how to properly care for the bird, please consult the Concise Guide of Post-Mortem Ornithology (10th ed.). However, most post-mortem birds need a period of adjustment before they can be properly released into the wild. During this period, the bird needs to be kept in an appropriately sized cage.
The adjustment period generally coincides with a period of mourning. During that time, you might find yourself veering towards the philosophical [see note iii]. This can be exacerbated by the fact that some birds seem to retain certain characteristics or quirks of the deceased. It may help to remember that the bird is not your loved one. It is only a bird. Repeat this to yourself when they peer at you behind bars with their beady, indecipherable eyes: "It is only a bird."
3. Release
It is very important, both for the bird’s health and for your own, that you eventually release it into the wild. When the bird seems to grow restless in its cage, take it to a place your loved one liked (a park, forest, or large body of water is preferable) and open the cage door. The bird will know what to do.
There have been cases of people unable to let go of their loved ones' birds, which gradually grew dependent on their cages and could no longer survive except in captivity. The gravity of a situation like this is hard to convey. Take the following case as an example and a warning: A young man was recently discovered in New Hampshire having in his possession a large number of post-mortem birds that had been passed on to him from his parents and grandparents. The Post-Mortem Bird Rehabilitation Council has since removed the birds, which are reportedly making progress. The young man, on the other hand, did not recover. He probably never will. The fluttering in his chest feels stronger than ever. He thinks his bird will be an eagle.
Notes
i. It is generally agreed that all birds that currently occur in nature are either post-mortem birds that have been released, or their offspring. However, there have been reports about birds emerging from chest cavities that have never before been seen in the wild. Are these new species? Are they old species that had become extinct? Were the people to whom they belonged special in some way? Will we ever know the answer to these questions?
ii. A correlation between the kind of bird one encloses and the personality, ethnicity, race, gender, class, ability, or any other characteristic of the person has not been established.
iii. There has been much speculation about what the birds know, how much of our loved one is in them, or how much of the person we knew used to be a bird. What do the birds remember? What do they want? Of course, a lot of this is probably projection, and birds are, and will always be, just birds. But when they sometimes come back, peeking through windows or staring at our houses from across the street, it is easy to imagine they are wondering the same about us: Where did you come from? What do you remember? What do you know?
Android Whores Can’t Cry
Originally published by Clarkesworld Magazine, July 2015
False start #1
MEETINGS AT MASSACRE MARKET
by Aliki Karyotakis
for the London New Times
I met Brigitte at what the locals call Massacre Market. She pronounced her name as if she were French—or I should say French-made, I guess, but I didn’t know that at the time. She was a working girl, owned by a guy named Jerome—also French, supposedly. She was waiting there for my local liaison and me, among desiccated corpses and stalls full of blown-up photos of the tortured and the dead. She kissed Dick on the lips when she saw us, before greeting me. She did it in a mechanical way, as if she were supposed to, as if she couldn’t do otherwise. That’s when I saw the long strip of nacre that ran down the back of her neck, along her spine, pure and magnificent. I shot Dick a questioning look.
"Yeah yeah, it’s the real deal," he said. "She’s my artificial girlfriend in this town. I’m renting her full time. Very useful. She knows people." Dick could be snide like that. "I’m sure you girls will get along," he added.
Brigitte turned to me, holding out her hand. She gave me a warm smile, but I could tell that she, unlike Dick, was very well aware of where we were, of the transactable images of gore and violence that surrounded us. Of the history of this place.
"Pleasure to meet you," she said, a glint of something indecipherable in her eye. Was that an android thing? Or was that the part of her that is human?
Androids can usually pass, if they don’t have any visible nacre. But, of course, as soon as nacre appeared on android skin, people started wearing fake nacre patches as a fashion statement. When the patches are high quality you can’t really tell them apart.
What was the nacre’s appeal? I suppose part of it is that we still don’t understand why or how it is formed. The other part is that it’s perfect, beautiful. And that it doesn’t perish.
Nacre is forever.
[Note to self: You sound like an infatuated schoolgirl. What does Brigitte have to do with anything? Get it together. Just get the facts straight. Also, preserve both Dick’s and Brigitte’s anonymity.]
>>>END OF FILE
* * *
Nacre: Formation and Function
Nacre, or "mother of pearl" is a composite material produced by certain
molluscs as an inner shell lining and as the outer coating of
pearls[5]. Since the APC-VII[6] finalized and started
regulating the production of androids globally, nacre has been a standard
feature of all artificially produced semi-mechanical humanoid
organisms[3].
The production of android nacre had not been foreseen and remains unexplained.
However, android nacre is considered harmless, if not beneficial for humans as
an identifying mark, and so no attempts to avoid its appearance on android
skin have been made.
Nacre formation is an evolutionary conserved and multiply-convergent process
among the Mollusca phylum, arising as early as the Ordovician period (488 to
443 million years ago). While the exact process of its production is little
understood even in nature, the function of natural nacre is largely defensive:
layers of nacre protect the soft tissues of the organism from parasites, while
damaging debris can be entombed in successive layers of nacre, ultimately
resulting in the formation of a pearl.
The function of android nacre remains unknown.
>>>END OF FILE
* * *
Fieldnotes #1
It’s Dick’s afternoon playtime and he makes Brigitte re-enact scenes from his past while I try to work on my article. Playing in front of me is awkward, indiscrete. Vulgar, even. But I’m sure he does it on purpose—he wants me there. He wants me to witness this, and he knows I won’t interfere. He is the client: his game, his rules.
Brigitte playacts Sandra, my college friend and Dick’s ex-wife. She kinda looks like her too. Now they’re acting out the night Sandra left him—left us. Dick is high on pearl. I can tell from that slightly unfocused look in his eyes. Like he sees things past Brigitte, past the windows and the smog, past the illusion of life.
"I can’t be with you any more," Brigitte says. It sounds like she’s said this line a hundred times already—a recitation. It seems she’s in learning mode for these sessions. Dick is shaping her into Sandra. I find this deeply disturbing. "You’re such a brute," Brigitte recites. "Not sophisticated at all."
"That’s who I was when you married me. What was different then?"
Brigitte pretends to put all of her clothes in a suitcase, preparing to leave. Dick follows her around, practically yelling in her ear.
"I’ll tell you what was different," Dick says, "you were a horny little cunt back then, weren’t you."
Brigitte stops packing and just stares at him.
"You’re supposed to cry now," Dick says, and then pretend-slaps his forehead. "But I forgot. You can’t cry, can you?" He turns to me. "Hey Aliki, did you know that? Android whores can’t cry. Because who wants to fuck a whiny bitch, right? Right?"
I look at Brigitte. I think I see a twitch disfigure her lips for the tiniest of moments, but then she smiles. "Who wants to fuck a whiny bitch?" she repeats. Still in learning mode. Damn it.
"You really are a dick sometimes, Richard," I say.
Dick laughs. He comes over and hugs me.
Brigitte keeps smiling, a twinkle in her eye.
>>>END OF FILE
* * *
Nacre: Human Use
Historically, nacre has been prized for its iridescent appearance, while its strength and resilience has made it a suitable material for a variety of purposes. The nacreous shells of sea snails were used as gunpowder flasks in the 18th century and earlier. Nacre inlays have decorated some of the most renowned temples and palaces in Istanbul, traditional musical instruments in Greece, the keys of flutes, and the buttons of kings and queens the world over. Some accordion and concertina bodies are entirely inlaid with nacre. Little spoons made solely of nacre have been used to eat caviar in Russia, in order not to spoil the taste with metal.
All of these practices, although rarer, continue to this day. However, where natural nacre was used in the past, android nacre, the price of which is exorbitant due to the legal restrictions placed on its farming, is mostly used today.
[Note to self: I wonder what it feels like for androids. Do they consider nacre to be a part of their skin? A part of who they are? What would it feel like to see your skin as decoration, a musical instrument, a spoon?]
>>>END OF FILE
* * *
False Start #2
MASSACRE MARKET: A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE AND SILENCE
by Aliki Karyotakis
for the London New Times
* * *
"That great dust-heap called history."
Augustine Birrell
* * *
"Truth? I have no use for that. Truth won’t feed my people. It won’t cover their bodies. Won’t keep them safe."
The General
* * *
My air-conditioned taxi drives me through the outskirts of the city. I gaze in comfort at the unfinished highways, the hollow skeletons of skyscrapers looming over them as a reminder of the economic fallout—a city in perpetual suspension. But once at the centre, this city is impeccable—polished and shiny, no sign of poverty or suffering anywhere. It makes one think of the new regime’s necessity, its efficiency. A good alternative to the chaos and agony that came before. Only the smog weighs on us, like a bad omen.
As soon as I step out of the vehicle, I realize this is the hottest and most humid part of the day; the smog is so thick I can hardly breathe or make out any sky. My local liaison is meeting me in front of the city pillar, the geographical and spiritual centre of the city, from where everything extends outwards. I find out that the Massacre Market is tucked away at the heart of a crowded, semi-underground slum—the city’s last. We have to get there on foot. It will be a difficult journey.
When we arrive, hot and breathless, I am greeted by what my liaison describes as "The Political Cadaver of this country": the dead body politic, the regime’s atrocities mechanically reproduced and exchanged in a gamble with the spirits of the dead, a funerary protest. The place is crowded and dark and putrid; the stalls exhibit small mountains of body parts and corpses—some fake, some real (and I can’t tell which is which)—the brownish hue of decay accentuated by the bright orange robes of the monks and nuns that frequent the place, looking for visual aids to their death meditations. Tall cork-lined walls are covered by the forbidden pictures of the massacred and those brutalized by police. Relatives petrified in front of them, looking for the familiar face among the myriads, looking but not wanting to find I’m sure, or making small shrines with offerings for the disappeared; while protestors and instigators pick out the most shocking ones to circulate and share, to dub as the hidden reality of the regime, its true face the face of those it murdered. In the loudspeakers, recordings of the massacre’s soundscape: screams and bullets, the sound of revolting children and of a state devouring its young.
I spot a mother clinging to the image of her dead boy, his face proliferated ad infinitum, plastering an entire wall, in protest.
Here, at Massacre Market, death is a political act.
[Note to self: People need the historical and political background of the story to make sense of any of these. Start with an interview instead? Also, explain Death Meditation.]
>>>END OF FILE
* * *
The First Death Meditation
Death is certain.
There is no way to escape death.
We start dying the moment we are born.
The body is a husk, a shell, an overcoat. It must be left behind.
Imagine you are performing a vivisection on yourself.
Imagine every detail.
Concentrate on the repulsiveness of the human body.
The corpse, swollen and bruised.
The skin, peeled back.
The fat, removed.
The muscle, shredded.
The organs, shrivelled and gone.
The bones, pulverized.
The corpse, festering. The corpse, fissured. The corpse, gnawed. The corpse, dismembered, fragmented, scattered. The corpse, bleeding. The corpse, eaten by maggots and gone.
You remain.
>>>END OF FILE
* * *
Interview with X,
one of the leading protestors at the November Massacre
Part I [PLX1.vf]
Q: What is Massacre Market?
A: Images of death, disease and violence are forbidden by the regime; they are not good for foreign affairs, for the economy, won’t bring in investments. So now there’s a black market for that. It’s not about money, though. We believe in an exchange of gifts with and for the dead. At the same time, it’s a political thing. Because the government and the military want to hide the dead, when we photograph them and share their pictures, when we circulate footage of the massacres, we are exposing the true face of the regime. It’s a form of protest.
Q: A protest against what?
A: Against the regime’s suppression of the fundamental truths of life and death. Of poverty and suffering. Against the state’s cover-ups of its core practices, the terrorizing and massacre of its own citizens when they dare to speak out or deviate in any way.
Q: Then how does Massacre Market survive? How come they haven’t shut it down yet?
A: They have tried; they do raid it from time to time, but it pops up again after a while. Some people believe it is allowed to exist, or even that it has been set up by the government, as a safety valve, you know? To serve as an illusion of resistance.
Q: Do you believe that?
A: I do not.
Q: Can you talk about the November Massacre? I know this is the most recent one, but there have been others.
A: Yes, that is correct.
[He hesitates.]
Q: Can you recount the day of the Massacre?
A: [Pause] In the morning, the General was scheduled to appear at the city centre, very near the University. Attendance was, of course, mandatory, for students and first class citizens alike. So everyone gathered as planned. The General delivered the formal greeting and raised his arms in the usual salutation. The masses cheered, as expected, as they should. They couldn’t do otherwise, you understand. But then, then, they kept on cheering. And clapping. Just cheering and clapping as loud as they could, whistling and cheering, and waving. And they wouldn’t stop. After a few minutes, it became evident that this was no enthusiasm. It was super-conformity, you see? By cheering, they did not allow the General to speak. He literally couldn’t get a word in. But what could he do? We were only applauding, he couldn’t possibly punish us for that. So he mumbled the end of the speech he never managed to actually deliver, got off the podium and went back to wherever it is the General goes back to. And then the crowd was allowed to disperse, but the students and some others lingered. They were still not allowing themselves to talk, but they were smiling. They were shaking hands, not yet daring to speak about change, but that feeling, you know? That feeling, it was there. I felt it.
But then the trucks and the tanks appeared and sealed off the main square around the city pillar with the students still in it. We were surrounded before we realized what was going on. Some of us managed to slip through and save ourselves. Some holed themselves up inside the Polytechnic School at the University. They got them, though, eventually. They got them all.
Q: What did they do to them?
A: Why are you asking? You know very well what they did to them. You’ve seen the pictures, no? [Kneeling under the sun, hands tied, some behind their backs, some in front of their chests, beaten with steel batons and shiny black boots. Taken with a fisheye lens, they look like a human ocean. Innumerable, uncountable, and unaccounted for.] You’ve seen the footage. [Herded onto cattle-trucks by the back of their necks. Taken to that off-camera place from where no-one returns.] At four o’clock, it rained. The streets turned red.
[Pause] Of this, we will not speak.
[He takes a moment to find his bearings, he seems truly emotional. Then he adds:] They even destroyed several androids—most of them sex workers and cleaners—and later reimbursed their owners. I should say "bribed," to keep them from making a fuss.
Q: You said androids? Why were they there? Were androids part of the protest?
A: Yes, android guerillas have always been on our side, and uni students are often particularly drawn to them. There are several reasons for this. On the one hand, androids are part of the oppressed. They are low class, second rate, not even citizens. Most people don’t even consider them persons. But there is also something about them that speaks of truth, not least their perfect, infallible memories. It’s the human machine’s trap: the freedoms afforded to them by what little flesh they possess and command, the failings of that same flesh…these are not so easy to tell apart. They do not decay, too, while our whole culture is premised on decay and death, or, now, on its concealment. Why do you think people are so crazy about those nacre patches? You’ve seen the ones?
[Note to Self: Transcribe the rest of the interview from voice file PLX2.vf]
>>>END OF FILE
* * *
Fieldnotes #2
Getting people to talk is difficult. Brigitte and Dick work hard to find me the right contacts. But it takes time, and I know so little. I understand so little. This investigation is going to be long. We need to be discrete.
I often sit and watch Brigitte when she thinks I’m in my head, working, not paying attention to her.
She seems restless in her own skin, walking from the door to the window and back again. She stares outside at the smog—you can’t see anything out the window, just grey and brown. Well, at least I can’t. Maybe she can see something, maybe she can see everything. I don’t know.
Her nacre has been multiplying the past few weeks. There is a new patch behind her left ear, and one on the back of her right hand—her most prominent still. It makes her look adorned.
When she catches me looking at her, the programming kicks in and she responds with her standard line, every time: "What can I do for you, honey?" Then she lowers her eyes and looks embarrassed.
She’s always lived here, and yet I can detect a faint French accent when she says this. Like some guy’s fantasy of what a French whore should sound like.
>>>END OF FILE
* * *
Some notes on the translation of Massacre Market
There is some uncertainty about the translation from the local language of what I have called "Massacre Market." Other possible translations include "Atrocity Place," "Massacre Fair," or, and that was the most confusing aspect of this, "Pearl Fountain," because even though each of the two words means something different, together they create a new compound which, as Dick and Brigitte explained to me, could rather clumsily be interpreted as "a fountain whence pearls flow," "the breeding ground of oysters," or even "the plane of sublime imperfections."
>>>END OF FILE
* * *
Fieldnotes #3
Dick has started being rougher in his re-enactments; I doubt these are memories, no, I’m sure they are not, because these versions are conflicting and contradictory, and things happen that I know never really happened. Brigitte/Sandra is not always the one leaving him any more—sometimes he leaves her, sometimes she dies. Sometimes he kills her, chokes her. Or, he pretends to. He acts disinterested afterwards, says these are only stories he makes up and likes to play out; but I know, any reporter knows there are no disinterested stories, least of all the ones we tell ourselves.
Brigitte says she doesn’t mind, she doesn’t feel, remember? It’s her job, she says. I’m still not convinced. I find myself in my reporter’s role nonetheless, taking everything in, observing, reluctant to participate. This is not how the game is played, I tell myself.
I watch the nacre spread on her skin, covering more and more each day, like a disease of unbearable beauty.
* * *
"How did you end up in this mess, anyway?" Dick asked me yesterday. "I never thought they’d send a woman."
I hit him hard on the arm and he laughed. "I choose not to be insulted," I said. "Anyway, I needed this. Badly. Went through a rough patch a while back and was out of circulation for some time. So when I went back to my boss and begged, he gave me the case nobody else would take."
Dick stopped fiddling with his cigarettes and turned to me. I had his full attention now, and I wasn’t sure I wanted it. I shouldn’t have said anything.
"Rough? How rough?" he asked.
I said nothing.
"You know you can talk to me, right?"
I thought of his hands around Brigitte’s neck. What happened to you, Richard? You were a tender boy, back then.
"It’s been a while, Dick. I’m sorry."
I think I hurt his feelings, but he tried not to show it. And at that moment I realized I didn’t mind. Hurting him. I didn’t mind at all.
>>>END OF FILE
* * *
The Second Death Meditation
The second meditation rehearses the actual death process.
Engage now in this series of yogas, modelled on death.
First, the body becomes very thin, the limbs barely held together. You will feel that the body is sinking into the earth. Your sight becomes blurry and obscured. You may see mirages. Do not believe them. The body loses its lustre.
Then, all the fluids in the body dry up. Saliva, sweat, urine, blood dry up. Feelings of pleasure and pain dry with them. You may feel like smoke.
Then, you can no longer hear. You cannot digest food or drink. You do not remember your name, or the names of the ones you knew and loved. You cannot smell. You may not be able to inhale, but you will be able to exhale.
Then, the ten winds of the body move to your heart. You will no longer inhale or exhale. You will not be able to taste. You will not care. The root of your tongue will turn blue. You may feel like a lamp about to go out.
Then, nothing.
Then, nothing.
Then, nothing. The ten winds dissolve. The indestructible drop at the heart is all that remains.
>>>END OF FILE
* * *
Fieldnotes #4
"Why do you let him treat you like that?" I ask her almost reflexively one day. I regret it right away. Am I blaming her for the way he treats her? Shouldn’t I be blaming him?
She thinks about it for a while, then shrugs.
"It’s my job," she says. "I don’t have a choice. Some things are in my programming."
"Yes, but some aren’t."
She looks me in the eyes, fixes her gaze there, and she seems less human than ever before. People don’t look at others like that. "I’m a whore," she states.
"You are more than a whore. It’s not who you are. It’s simply what you do."
"See, you got it backwards. What we are for is who we are. A hammer is what a hammer does. Would you ever use a hammer to screw a screw or cut a piece of wood?"
"Just a tool, then."
"That’s right. Just a tool."
"Doesn’t my saying that offend you?"
"Do you think it should?"
I don’t say anything.
"Why?" she continues. "We are all tools for something. Aren’t you? It’s not an android thing. It’s an existential thing."
I lower my eyes.
She leans over and touches my shoulder. "I’m sorry," she says. "Sometimes empathy is difficult for me. We don’t feel anything, you know. No feelings."
She seems sincere, but I don’t believe her; I tell her so. "Some people say the nacre is a byproduct of the things you do feel that were not programmed. Just like the nacre wasn’t, and yet, there it is."
She shrugs again. "My programming allows me to imitate feeling and to learn from other people’s perceptions of me. No one knows what the nacre is, or what it does." She pauses for a bit. Then she adds: "Perhaps it’s a form of rust. Tools do rust, don’t they?"
>>>END OF FILE
* * *
My trip
I’m sitting by the window, looking out. The smog seems heavier today. Darker, too. I think it’s the colour of rot. I wish I could see past it. I wish I could see.
Brigitte comes home—I notice there is a bright new patch of nacre under her right eye. She smiles, like she always does.
"Get dressed," she says. "I need to show you something."
When I’m ready to go, she holds out her hand closed in a fist. Slowly, she uncurls her fingers and reveals a pearl resting on her palm. It takes me a couple of seconds to realize what it is, and then I look at her, trying to figure out what she’s planning.
"Put this under your tongue, Aliki," she says. "You’ll see. You’ll understand."
I put the pearl in my mouth and we set out into the smog and that corpse of a city.
* * *
We are at the main square. The pearl is still dissolving under my tongue; it tastes sweet and tangy and makes my heart beat irregularly. I see the city pillar towering over us—round and bulging at the bottom, thinning as it reaches for the sky. The top disappears into the thick layers of smog above. Its marble surface emits a subdued light, like a fading beacon.
"It was built hundreds of years ago as a mystical axis around which the city would be born, you know," Brigitte says. "The story of its construction is now largely ignored and forgotten, but spirit mediums still gather here sometimes. They consider it a source of power for those who commune with the dead. It is said that when the foundation for the pillar was laid, a fosse was dug around it. They brought every young pregnant slave girl they could find, slit their throats and threw them in there to die, and through their death empower the pillar to protect the city."
I look at the base of the pillar and realize I am standing on top of where the trench would have been, if that story were true. The pillar starts glowing brighter and brighter and I look up to see if the sun has somehow penetrated the smog. I feel the ground shake under my feet, then give, and I fall into the trench. The slave girls are there, all around me, with their blood still seeping into the earth, their fetuses still dying in their wombs.
* * *
This city is built on gore. The shiny marble, a tombstone laid over history. I see the streets turn into veins. I see students parade through the city with what corpses they could salvage; they carry them on their shoulders, their friends, their classmates, their lovers, displaying them like a mute witness to the regime’s moral order. And then these students are shot down or snatched off the streets, the corpses torn from their arms. They are strung on trees and shot, or burnt alive, or worse. Of this, we will not speak.
The body is nothing. Its image, everything.
* * *
Brigitte pulls me away. She leads me through the city’s red streets, the ten winds of its body dying down. I think Brigitte is speaking to me. I think she says:
"Let’s look for the indestructible drop at the heart."
We are descending. She is walking in front of me, showing me the way. The nacre on her skin seems brighter than ever. I dare touch it for the first time—I reach out and brush my fingers against the back of her neck, tracing the nacre down her spine. I didn’t expect it to be so hard. "You are indestructible," I mutter, or I think I do, and she turns around and smiles.
We are at Massacre Market. It has changed since the first time I saw it; it seems even more crowded now, the walls of photographs fuller, covered once, and then covered again by more pictures, and more on top of those, layer upon gory layer, corpse upon corpse, body part upon body part. The desiccated corpses seem more real now, almost alive, absurd. Brigitte tells me something I don’t hear; her voice drowns in the screams and static spilling from the loudspeakers.
One of the photographs on the wall next to me catches my eye. I walk closer—it’s grainy, black and white, but I can still see the girl: she is laid out in a field next to others, dozens of others. Her top is removed, her chest slashed open. "Foreign slut" is written on her bare belly. She looks like a younger version of myself. This is me, I think, this is me, years ago. Why don’t I remember this? I put my palm on the photograph—what did I want to do? Cover her up, I suppose—and I notice a patch of nacre spreading between my fingers. I pull my hand back as if the photo suddenly burnt me and I watch the nacre spread. I feel it cover my entire body, and I’m calcified, my skin adorned and indestructible. "I feel like an instrument," I shout to Brigitte over the sound of massacre, "like an accordion, or a concertina." Play me like a flute, O Lord, I think.
Brigitte tries to tell me something, but I can’t make it out. I struggle to read her lips. "…it disappoints…" I hear, but the rest is stifled by static, and she’s far away. I see her pointing at my arms from afar. I look down and see the nacre growing dull and flaking, then my skin peeling and falling off, the fat exposed, the muscle, the bone, and I know, I know then, this city is a skin, no blood anywhere in sight, all surface, all shine and the slightest glimpse of nacre here and there—is it real? Is it not? Does it make a difference?
>>>END OF FILE
* * *
False Endings
I have precious little time left. So I will not say much. One never has the skin that befits her.
I know I’ll never finish this article—I still haven’t even decided on the title, or what this story is really about. What do you think? I might have called it:
Massacre Market
or
The Mechanical Reproduction of Violence: Truth, Massacre, History
or even
Android Whores Can’t Cry: Under the Surface of Death Meditation
Either way, I know that, if I did finish it, I would dedicate it
"To my B., my pearl, who taught me this:
The skin always disappoints."
>>>END OF FILE
* * *
>>>END OF RECORD. 14 OF 14 FILES RECOVERED.
* * *
This is all the material I managed to retrieve from Aliki’s hard drives. I wait for the reporter sitting across from me in Dick’s living room to go through them.
"You realize your memory files provide conflicting information about what happened to both my colleague Aliki Karyotakis and her informant Richard Phillips," he says.
I am silent. Is that true?
I recall the last time I saw Aliki.
* * *
She is lurching at Dick, pushing him away from me during one of his violent playacts. He falls back and hits his head. He is very still. We are all very still.
* * *
She is also standing by the city pillar with me, in a crowd of people I haven’t quite registered. I look at the sky. The sun is shining through the smog. When I look down again, she’s gone.
* * *
She is also looking at me as a tall man leads her onto a platform and places a hood over her head. Then a noose. Then the platform gives.
* * *
She was also never here. I never met her.
* * *
And Dick? Dick is always either dead or missing.
* * *
"Have you tinkered with your memory?" the reporter asks.
"It is possible," I say. "But I have no memory of that, as I am sure you are aware."
"Of course." He shuffles in his chair. "OK, let’s take the first version. Can you tell me what happened?"
He already knows this. Why does he ask?
"She pushed him. He died. Humans break easily like that."
"And then?"
"She turned herself in."
"Wasn’t she terminated?" That’s when I notice the nacre on his underarm. Ah.
"I think the human term is sentenced to death and executed," I correct him. He should know this. I’m sure he does.
"Did you watch? The execution, I mean."
I watch him. He is serious, eyes cold. A reporter reports.
"A hammer is what a hammer does," I whisper.
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing," I say. "A reflex. Yes. Yes, I think I watched." I sense the nacre spread on my face, my surface irreparably hardened. It reflects the light so brightly it almost hurts my eyes.
"Are you going to cry?" he asks, hoping, I bet, for a good twist in his story.
The programming takes over, like gears shifting inside me, and I can’t stop it I can’t stop it I can’t.
"Android whores can’t cry," I say. "Who wants to fuck a whiny bitch?"
This puzzles him. He focuses on my lips, and he’s about to say something, but he stops. I know he stops because of what he sees. He looks disappointed.
I feel the nacre cover my lips and I realize this was the last time I spoke. This shouldn’t be happening so fast. I think of freedoms and failings. I am not sure which is which. It doesn’t matter. I am the oyster and the pearl. I am a shell that doesn’t speak.
I wonder what really happened to her, what happened to Dick. I know I’ll never know—and this somehow strikes me as appropriate. The truth has seeped through the pores on the skin of the city. Aliki is in its bloodstream now. So is Dick. So is the core of this story.
I remain.
Originally published by Clarkesworld Magazine, July 2015
False start #1
MEETINGS AT MASSACRE MARKET
by Aliki Karyotakis
for the London New Times
I met Brigitte at what the locals call Massacre Market. She pronounced her name as if she were French—or I should say French-made, I guess, but I didn’t know that at the time. She was a working girl, owned by a guy named Jerome—also French, supposedly. She was waiting there for my local liaison and me, among desiccated corpses and stalls full of blown-up photos of the tortured and the dead. She kissed Dick on the lips when she saw us, before greeting me. She did it in a mechanical way, as if she were supposed to, as if she couldn’t do otherwise. That’s when I saw the long strip of nacre that ran down the back of her neck, along her spine, pure and magnificent. I shot Dick a questioning look.
"Yeah yeah, it’s the real deal," he said. "She’s my artificial girlfriend in this town. I’m renting her full time. Very useful. She knows people." Dick could be snide like that. "I’m sure you girls will get along," he added.
Brigitte turned to me, holding out her hand. She gave me a warm smile, but I could tell that she, unlike Dick, was very well aware of where we were, of the transactable images of gore and violence that surrounded us. Of the history of this place.
"Pleasure to meet you," she said, a glint of something indecipherable in her eye. Was that an android thing? Or was that the part of her that is human?
Androids can usually pass, if they don’t have any visible nacre. But, of course, as soon as nacre appeared on android skin, people started wearing fake nacre patches as a fashion statement. When the patches are high quality you can’t really tell them apart.
What was the nacre’s appeal? I suppose part of it is that we still don’t understand why or how it is formed. The other part is that it’s perfect, beautiful. And that it doesn’t perish.
Nacre is forever.
[Note to self: You sound like an infatuated schoolgirl. What does Brigitte have to do with anything? Get it together. Just get the facts straight. Also, preserve both Dick’s and Brigitte’s anonymity.]
>>>END OF FILE
Nacre: Formation and Function
Nacre, or "mother of pearl" is a composite material produced by certain molluscs as an inner shell lining and as the outer coating of pearls[5]. Since the APC-VII[6] finalized and started regulating the production of androids globally, nacre has been a standard feature of all artificially produced semi-mechanical humanoid organisms[3]. The production of android nacre had not been foreseen and remains unexplained. However, android nacre is considered harmless, if not beneficial for humans as an identifying mark, and so no attempts to avoid its appearance on android skin have been made.
Nacre formation is an evolutionary conserved and multiply-convergent process among the Mollusca phylum, arising as early as the Ordovician period (488 to 443 million years ago). While the exact process of its production is little understood even in nature, the function of natural nacre is largely defensive: layers of nacre protect the soft tissues of the organism from parasites, while damaging debris can be entombed in successive layers of nacre, ultimately resulting in the formation of a pearl.
The function of android nacre remains unknown.
>>>END OF FILE
Fieldnotes #1
It’s Dick’s afternoon playtime and he makes Brigitte re-enact scenes from his past while I try to work on my article. Playing in front of me is awkward, indiscrete. Vulgar, even. But I’m sure he does it on purpose—he wants me there. He wants me to witness this, and he knows I won’t interfere. He is the client: his game, his rules.
Brigitte playacts Sandra, my college friend and Dick’s ex-wife. She kinda looks like her too. Now they’re acting out the night Sandra left him—left us. Dick is high on pearl. I can tell from that slightly unfocused look in his eyes. Like he sees things past Brigitte, past the windows and the smog, past the illusion of life.
"I can’t be with you any more," Brigitte says. It sounds like she’s said this line a hundred times already—a recitation. It seems she’s in learning mode for these sessions. Dick is shaping her into Sandra. I find this deeply disturbing. "You’re such a brute," Brigitte recites. "Not sophisticated at all."
"That’s who I was when you married me. What was different then?"
Brigitte pretends to put all of her clothes in a suitcase, preparing to leave. Dick follows her around, practically yelling in her ear.
"I’ll tell you what was different," Dick says, "you were a horny little cunt back then, weren’t you."
Brigitte stops packing and just stares at him.
"You’re supposed to cry now," Dick says, and then pretend-slaps his forehead. "But I forgot. You can’t cry, can you?" He turns to me. "Hey Aliki, did you know that? Android whores can’t cry. Because who wants to fuck a whiny bitch, right? Right?"
I look at Brigitte. I think I see a twitch disfigure her lips for the tiniest of moments, but then she smiles. "Who wants to fuck a whiny bitch?" she repeats. Still in learning mode. Damn it.
"You really are a dick sometimes, Richard," I say.
Dick laughs. He comes over and hugs me.
Brigitte keeps smiling, a twinkle in her eye.
>>>END OF FILE
Nacre: Human Use
Historically, nacre has been prized for its iridescent appearance, while its strength and resilience has made it a suitable material for a variety of purposes. The nacreous shells of sea snails were used as gunpowder flasks in the 18th century and earlier. Nacre inlays have decorated some of the most renowned temples and palaces in Istanbul, traditional musical instruments in Greece, the keys of flutes, and the buttons of kings and queens the world over. Some accordion and concertina bodies are entirely inlaid with nacre. Little spoons made solely of nacre have been used to eat caviar in Russia, in order not to spoil the taste with metal.
All of these practices, although rarer, continue to this day. However, where natural nacre was used in the past, android nacre, the price of which is exorbitant due to the legal restrictions placed on its farming, is mostly used today.
[Note to self: I wonder what it feels like for androids. Do they consider nacre to be a part of their skin? A part of who they are? What would it feel like to see your skin as decoration, a musical instrument, a spoon?]
>>>END OF FILE
False Start #2
MASSACRE MARKET: A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE AND SILENCE
by Aliki Karyotakis
for the London New Times
"That great dust-heap called history."
Augustine Birrell
"Truth? I have no use for that. Truth won’t feed my people. It won’t cover their bodies. Won’t keep them safe."
The General
My air-conditioned taxi drives me through the outskirts of the city. I gaze in comfort at the unfinished highways, the hollow skeletons of skyscrapers looming over them as a reminder of the economic fallout—a city in perpetual suspension. But once at the centre, this city is impeccable—polished and shiny, no sign of poverty or suffering anywhere. It makes one think of the new regime’s necessity, its efficiency. A good alternative to the chaos and agony that came before. Only the smog weighs on us, like a bad omen.
As soon as I step out of the vehicle, I realize this is the hottest and most humid part of the day; the smog is so thick I can hardly breathe or make out any sky. My local liaison is meeting me in front of the city pillar, the geographical and spiritual centre of the city, from where everything extends outwards. I find out that the Massacre Market is tucked away at the heart of a crowded, semi-underground slum—the city’s last. We have to get there on foot. It will be a difficult journey.
When we arrive, hot and breathless, I am greeted by what my liaison describes as "The Political Cadaver of this country": the dead body politic, the regime’s atrocities mechanically reproduced and exchanged in a gamble with the spirits of the dead, a funerary protest. The place is crowded and dark and putrid; the stalls exhibit small mountains of body parts and corpses—some fake, some real (and I can’t tell which is which)—the brownish hue of decay accentuated by the bright orange robes of the monks and nuns that frequent the place, looking for visual aids to their death meditations. Tall cork-lined walls are covered by the forbidden pictures of the massacred and those brutalized by police. Relatives petrified in front of them, looking for the familiar face among the myriads, looking but not wanting to find I’m sure, or making small shrines with offerings for the disappeared; while protestors and instigators pick out the most shocking ones to circulate and share, to dub as the hidden reality of the regime, its true face the face of those it murdered. In the loudspeakers, recordings of the massacre’s soundscape: screams and bullets, the sound of revolting children and of a state devouring its young.
I spot a mother clinging to the image of her dead boy, his face proliferated ad infinitum, plastering an entire wall, in protest.
Here, at Massacre Market, death is a political act.
[Note to self: People need the historical and political background of the story to make sense of any of these. Start with an interview instead? Also, explain Death Meditation.]
>>>END OF FILE
The First Death Meditation
Death is certain.
There is no way to escape death.
We start dying the moment we are born.
The body is a husk, a shell, an overcoat. It must be left behind.
Imagine you are performing a vivisection on yourself.
Imagine every detail.
Concentrate on the repulsiveness of the human body.
The corpse, swollen and bruised.
The skin, peeled back.
The fat, removed.
The muscle, shredded.
The organs, shrivelled and gone.
The bones, pulverized.
The corpse, festering. The corpse, fissured. The corpse, gnawed. The corpse, dismembered, fragmented, scattered. The corpse, bleeding. The corpse, eaten by maggots and gone.
You remain.
>>>END OF FILE
Interview with X,
one of the leading protestors at the November Massacre
Part I [PLX1.vf]
Q: What is Massacre Market?
A: Images of death, disease and violence are forbidden by the regime; they are not good for foreign affairs, for the economy, won’t bring in investments. So now there’s a black market for that. It’s not about money, though. We believe in an exchange of gifts with and for the dead. At the same time, it’s a political thing. Because the government and the military want to hide the dead, when we photograph them and share their pictures, when we circulate footage of the massacres, we are exposing the true face of the regime. It’s a form of protest.
Q: A protest against what?
A: Against the regime’s suppression of the fundamental truths of life and death. Of poverty and suffering. Against the state’s cover-ups of its core practices, the terrorizing and massacre of its own citizens when they dare to speak out or deviate in any way.
Q: Then how does Massacre Market survive? How come they haven’t shut it down yet?
A: They have tried; they do raid it from time to time, but it pops up again after a while. Some people believe it is allowed to exist, or even that it has been set up by the government, as a safety valve, you know? To serve as an illusion of resistance.
Q: Do you believe that?
A: I do not.
Q: Can you talk about the November Massacre? I know this is the most recent one, but there have been others.
A: Yes, that is correct.
[He hesitates.]
Q: Can you recount the day of the Massacre?
A: [Pause] In the morning, the General was scheduled to appear at the city centre, very near the University. Attendance was, of course, mandatory, for students and first class citizens alike. So everyone gathered as planned. The General delivered the formal greeting and raised his arms in the usual salutation. The masses cheered, as expected, as they should. They couldn’t do otherwise, you understand. But then, then, they kept on cheering. And clapping. Just cheering and clapping as loud as they could, whistling and cheering, and waving. And they wouldn’t stop. After a few minutes, it became evident that this was no enthusiasm. It was super-conformity, you see? By cheering, they did not allow the General to speak. He literally couldn’t get a word in. But what could he do? We were only applauding, he couldn’t possibly punish us for that. So he mumbled the end of the speech he never managed to actually deliver, got off the podium and went back to wherever it is the General goes back to. And then the crowd was allowed to disperse, but the students and some others lingered. They were still not allowing themselves to talk, but they were smiling. They were shaking hands, not yet daring to speak about change, but that feeling, you know? That feeling, it was there. I felt it.
But then the trucks and the tanks appeared and sealed off the main square around the city pillar with the students still in it. We were surrounded before we realized what was going on. Some of us managed to slip through and save ourselves. Some holed themselves up inside the Polytechnic School at the University. They got them, though, eventually. They got them all.
Q: What did they do to them?
A: Why are you asking? You know very well what they did to them. You’ve seen the pictures, no? [Kneeling under the sun, hands tied, some behind their backs, some in front of their chests, beaten with steel batons and shiny black boots. Taken with a fisheye lens, they look like a human ocean. Innumerable, uncountable, and unaccounted for.] You’ve seen the footage. [Herded onto cattle-trucks by the back of their necks. Taken to that off-camera place from where no-one returns.] At four o’clock, it rained. The streets turned red.
[Pause] Of this, we will not speak.
[He takes a moment to find his bearings, he seems truly emotional. Then he adds:] They even destroyed several androids—most of them sex workers and cleaners—and later reimbursed their owners. I should say "bribed," to keep them from making a fuss.
Q: You said androids? Why were they there? Were androids part of the protest?
A: Yes, android guerillas have always been on our side, and uni students are often particularly drawn to them. There are several reasons for this. On the one hand, androids are part of the oppressed. They are low class, second rate, not even citizens. Most people don’t even consider them persons. But there is also something about them that speaks of truth, not least their perfect, infallible memories. It’s the human machine’s trap: the freedoms afforded to them by what little flesh they possess and command, the failings of that same flesh…these are not so easy to tell apart. They do not decay, too, while our whole culture is premised on decay and death, or, now, on its concealment. Why do you think people are so crazy about those nacre patches? You’ve seen the ones?
[Note to Self: Transcribe the rest of the interview from voice file PLX2.vf]
>>>END OF FILE
Fieldnotes #2
Getting people to talk is difficult. Brigitte and Dick work hard to find me the right contacts. But it takes time, and I know so little. I understand so little. This investigation is going to be long. We need to be discrete.
I often sit and watch Brigitte when she thinks I’m in my head, working, not paying attention to her.
She seems restless in her own skin, walking from the door to the window and back again. She stares outside at the smog—you can’t see anything out the window, just grey and brown. Well, at least I can’t. Maybe she can see something, maybe she can see everything. I don’t know.
Her nacre has been multiplying the past few weeks. There is a new patch behind her left ear, and one on the back of her right hand—her most prominent still. It makes her look adorned.
When she catches me looking at her, the programming kicks in and she responds with her standard line, every time: "What can I do for you, honey?" Then she lowers her eyes and looks embarrassed.
She’s always lived here, and yet I can detect a faint French accent when she says this. Like some guy’s fantasy of what a French whore should sound like.
>>>END OF FILE
Some notes on the translation of Massacre Market
There is some uncertainty about the translation from the local language of what I have called "Massacre Market." Other possible translations include "Atrocity Place," "Massacre Fair," or, and that was the most confusing aspect of this, "Pearl Fountain," because even though each of the two words means something different, together they create a new compound which, as Dick and Brigitte explained to me, could rather clumsily be interpreted as "a fountain whence pearls flow," "the breeding ground of oysters," or even "the plane of sublime imperfections."
>>>END OF FILE
Fieldnotes #3
Dick has started being rougher in his re-enactments; I doubt these are memories, no, I’m sure they are not, because these versions are conflicting and contradictory, and things happen that I know never really happened. Brigitte/Sandra is not always the one leaving him any more—sometimes he leaves her, sometimes she dies. Sometimes he kills her, chokes her. Or, he pretends to. He acts disinterested afterwards, says these are only stories he makes up and likes to play out; but I know, any reporter knows there are no disinterested stories, least of all the ones we tell ourselves.
Brigitte says she doesn’t mind, she doesn’t feel, remember? It’s her job, she says. I’m still not convinced. I find myself in my reporter’s role nonetheless, taking everything in, observing, reluctant to participate. This is not how the game is played, I tell myself.
I watch the nacre spread on her skin, covering more and more each day, like a disease of unbearable beauty.
"How did you end up in this mess, anyway?" Dick asked me yesterday. "I never thought they’d send a woman."
I hit him hard on the arm and he laughed. "I choose not to be insulted," I said. "Anyway, I needed this. Badly. Went through a rough patch a while back and was out of circulation for some time. So when I went back to my boss and begged, he gave me the case nobody else would take."
Dick stopped fiddling with his cigarettes and turned to me. I had his full attention now, and I wasn’t sure I wanted it. I shouldn’t have said anything.
"Rough? How rough?" he asked.
I said nothing.
"You know you can talk to me, right?"
I thought of his hands around Brigitte’s neck. What happened to you, Richard? You were a tender boy, back then.
"It’s been a while, Dick. I’m sorry."
I think I hurt his feelings, but he tried not to show it. And at that moment I realized I didn’t mind. Hurting him. I didn’t mind at all.
>>>END OF FILE
The Second Death Meditation
The second meditation rehearses the actual death process.
Engage now in this series of yogas, modelled on death.
First, the body becomes very thin, the limbs barely held together. You will feel that the body is sinking into the earth. Your sight becomes blurry and obscured. You may see mirages. Do not believe them. The body loses its lustre.
Then, all the fluids in the body dry up. Saliva, sweat, urine, blood dry up. Feelings of pleasure and pain dry with them. You may feel like smoke.
Then, you can no longer hear. You cannot digest food or drink. You do not remember your name, or the names of the ones you knew and loved. You cannot smell. You may not be able to inhale, but you will be able to exhale.
Then, the ten winds of the body move to your heart. You will no longer inhale or exhale. You will not be able to taste. You will not care. The root of your tongue will turn blue. You may feel like a lamp about to go out.
Then, nothing.
Then, nothing.
Then, nothing. The ten winds dissolve. The indestructible drop at the heart is all that remains.
>>>END OF FILE
Fieldnotes #4
"Why do you let him treat you like that?" I ask her almost reflexively one day. I regret it right away. Am I blaming her for the way he treats her? Shouldn’t I be blaming him?
She thinks about it for a while, then shrugs.
"It’s my job," she says. "I don’t have a choice. Some things are in my programming."
"Yes, but some aren’t."
She looks me in the eyes, fixes her gaze there, and she seems less human than ever before. People don’t look at others like that. "I’m a whore," she states.
"You are more than a whore. It’s not who you are. It’s simply what you do."
"See, you got it backwards. What we are for is who we are. A hammer is what a hammer does. Would you ever use a hammer to screw a screw or cut a piece of wood?"
"Just a tool, then."
"That’s right. Just a tool."
"Doesn’t my saying that offend you?"
"Do you think it should?"
I don’t say anything.
"Why?" she continues. "We are all tools for something. Aren’t you? It’s not an android thing. It’s an existential thing."
I lower my eyes.
She leans over and touches my shoulder. "I’m sorry," she says. "Sometimes empathy is difficult for me. We don’t feel anything, you know. No feelings."
She seems sincere, but I don’t believe her; I tell her so. "Some people say the nacre is a byproduct of the things you do feel that were not programmed. Just like the nacre wasn’t, and yet, there it is."
She shrugs again. "My programming allows me to imitate feeling and to learn from other people’s perceptions of me. No one knows what the nacre is, or what it does." She pauses for a bit. Then she adds: "Perhaps it’s a form of rust. Tools do rust, don’t they?"
>>>END OF FILE
My trip
I’m sitting by the window, looking out. The smog seems heavier today. Darker, too. I think it’s the colour of rot. I wish I could see past it. I wish I could see.
Brigitte comes home—I notice there is a bright new patch of nacre under her right eye. She smiles, like she always does.
"Get dressed," she says. "I need to show you something."
When I’m ready to go, she holds out her hand closed in a fist. Slowly, she uncurls her fingers and reveals a pearl resting on her palm. It takes me a couple of seconds to realize what it is, and then I look at her, trying to figure out what she’s planning.
"Put this under your tongue, Aliki," she says. "You’ll see. You’ll understand."
I put the pearl in my mouth and we set out into the smog and that corpse of a city.
We are at the main square. The pearl is still dissolving under my tongue; it tastes sweet and tangy and makes my heart beat irregularly. I see the city pillar towering over us—round and bulging at the bottom, thinning as it reaches for the sky. The top disappears into the thick layers of smog above. Its marble surface emits a subdued light, like a fading beacon.
"It was built hundreds of years ago as a mystical axis around which the city would be born, you know," Brigitte says. "The story of its construction is now largely ignored and forgotten, but spirit mediums still gather here sometimes. They consider it a source of power for those who commune with the dead. It is said that when the foundation for the pillar was laid, a fosse was dug around it. They brought every young pregnant slave girl they could find, slit their throats and threw them in there to die, and through their death empower the pillar to protect the city."
I look at the base of the pillar and realize I am standing on top of where the trench would have been, if that story were true. The pillar starts glowing brighter and brighter and I look up to see if the sun has somehow penetrated the smog. I feel the ground shake under my feet, then give, and I fall into the trench. The slave girls are there, all around me, with their blood still seeping into the earth, their fetuses still dying in their wombs.
This city is built on gore. The shiny marble, a tombstone laid over history. I see the streets turn into veins. I see students parade through the city with what corpses they could salvage; they carry them on their shoulders, their friends, their classmates, their lovers, displaying them like a mute witness to the regime’s moral order. And then these students are shot down or snatched off the streets, the corpses torn from their arms. They are strung on trees and shot, or burnt alive, or worse. Of this, we will not speak.
The body is nothing. Its image, everything.
Brigitte pulls me away. She leads me through the city’s red streets, the ten winds of its body dying down. I think Brigitte is speaking to me. I think she says:
"Let’s look for the indestructible drop at the heart."
We are descending. She is walking in front of me, showing me the way. The nacre on her skin seems brighter than ever. I dare touch it for the first time—I reach out and brush my fingers against the back of her neck, tracing the nacre down her spine. I didn’t expect it to be so hard. "You are indestructible," I mutter, or I think I do, and she turns around and smiles.
We are at Massacre Market. It has changed since the first time I saw it; it seems even more crowded now, the walls of photographs fuller, covered once, and then covered again by more pictures, and more on top of those, layer upon gory layer, corpse upon corpse, body part upon body part. The desiccated corpses seem more real now, almost alive, absurd. Brigitte tells me something I don’t hear; her voice drowns in the screams and static spilling from the loudspeakers.
One of the photographs on the wall next to me catches my eye. I walk closer—it’s grainy, black and white, but I can still see the girl: she is laid out in a field next to others, dozens of others. Her top is removed, her chest slashed open. "Foreign slut" is written on her bare belly. She looks like a younger version of myself. This is me, I think, this is me, years ago. Why don’t I remember this? I put my palm on the photograph—what did I want to do? Cover her up, I suppose—and I notice a patch of nacre spreading between my fingers. I pull my hand back as if the photo suddenly burnt me and I watch the nacre spread. I feel it cover my entire body, and I’m calcified, my skin adorned and indestructible. "I feel like an instrument," I shout to Brigitte over the sound of massacre, "like an accordion, or a concertina." Play me like a flute, O Lord, I think.
Brigitte tries to tell me something, but I can’t make it out. I struggle to read her lips. "…it disappoints…" I hear, but the rest is stifled by static, and she’s far away. I see her pointing at my arms from afar. I look down and see the nacre growing dull and flaking, then my skin peeling and falling off, the fat exposed, the muscle, the bone, and I know, I know then, this city is a skin, no blood anywhere in sight, all surface, all shine and the slightest glimpse of nacre here and there—is it real? Is it not? Does it make a difference?
>>>END OF FILE
False Endings
I have precious little time left. So I will not say much. One never has the skin that befits her.
I know I’ll never finish this article—I still haven’t even decided on the title, or what this story is really about. What do you think? I might have called it:
Massacre Market
or
The Mechanical Reproduction of Violence: Truth, Massacre, History
or even
Android Whores Can’t Cry: Under the Surface of Death Meditation
Either way, I know that, if I did finish it, I would dedicate it
"To my B., my pearl, who taught me this:
The skin always disappoints."
>>>END OF FILE
>>>END OF RECORD. 14 OF 14 FILES RECOVERED.
This is all the material I managed to retrieve from Aliki’s hard drives. I wait for the reporter sitting across from me in Dick’s living room to go through them.
"You realize your memory files provide conflicting information about what happened to both my colleague Aliki Karyotakis and her informant Richard Phillips," he says.
I am silent. Is that true?
I recall the last time I saw Aliki.
She is lurching at Dick, pushing him away from me during one of his violent playacts. He falls back and hits his head. He is very still. We are all very still.
She is also standing by the city pillar with me, in a crowd of people I haven’t quite registered. I look at the sky. The sun is shining through the smog. When I look down again, she’s gone.
She is also looking at me as a tall man leads her onto a platform and places a hood over her head. Then a noose. Then the platform gives.
She was also never here. I never met her.
And Dick? Dick is always either dead or missing.
"Have you tinkered with your memory?" the reporter asks.
"It is possible," I say. "But I have no memory of that, as I am sure you are aware."
"Of course." He shuffles in his chair. "OK, let’s take the first version. Can you tell me what happened?"
He already knows this. Why does he ask?
"She pushed him. He died. Humans break easily like that."
"And then?"
"She turned herself in."
"Wasn’t she terminated?" That’s when I notice the nacre on his underarm. Ah.
"I think the human term is sentenced to death and executed," I correct him. He should know this. I’m sure he does.
"Did you watch? The execution, I mean."
I watch him. He is serious, eyes cold. A reporter reports.
"A hammer is what a hammer does," I whisper.
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing," I say. "A reflex. Yes. Yes, I think I watched." I sense the nacre spread on my face, my surface irreparably hardened. It reflects the light so brightly it almost hurts my eyes.
"Are you going to cry?" he asks, hoping, I bet, for a good twist in his story.
The programming takes over, like gears shifting inside me, and I can’t stop it I can’t stop it I can’t.
"Android whores can’t cry," I say. "Who wants to fuck a whiny bitch?"
This puzzles him. He focuses on my lips, and he’s about to say something, but he stops. I know he stops because of what he sees. He looks disappointed.
I feel the nacre cover my lips and I realize this was the last time I spoke. This shouldn’t be happening so fast. I think of freedoms and failings. I am not sure which is which. It doesn’t matter. I am the oyster and the pearl. I am a shell that doesn’t speak.
I wonder what really happened to her, what happened to Dick. I know I’ll never know—and this somehow strikes me as appropriate. The truth has seeped through the pores on the skin of the city. Aliki is in its bloodstream now. So is Dick. So is the core of this story.
I remain.
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