1.

So I awoke, staring at the sea. I don’t think I’d ever seen the sea before, not like that, not that way – its overarching majesty was silencing. A moment was all I had, a snapshot registered and then placed somewhere in storage, forgotten about entirely as the tide rolled in. 

I thought I had wiped out, but then, how would I even know what that meant if I had? Pretty obvious I hadn’t, so I must have had a bad case of the glitter-jitters. But what kind of Freak action was I doing, trying to place the Sun? I wasn’t a junior any more and surely I had wised up about grav-spinning with the Obscene. I hadn’t spent eight months in refuge for the fun of it.  

The Halo wobbled above, or was it below, or was it the Interstice? Hell, who cared? Just stop looking at the damn thing! I closed my eyes and did my utmost to turn over, felt the salt press against my lips before looking again.  

How long had I been out? Some useless question that was – I mean who knew what the time was these days anyways? 

So I tried to pick myself up, only to find I was doing the sideways shuffle and scraping my left side, grinding my mufflers into the ground. I kept one eye closed and ignored the sight to my right, filtered it out through long habitual mental routines. Turning on my ear, I was going nowhere. 

I decided to stop the leg gymnastics and wait for help – hoping some refrigerated Samaritan may pass me by, but I guess I had stumbled too far below the greenline and luck had gone fishin’ like some Freak. At least the mufflers were working, keeping that damn fish orchestra out of my head. The ghosties I could deal with, but my head was thumping and spinning and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay grounded for much longer. I desperately needed an anchor but nothing would present itself.  

Where the fuck was I? 

Ah shit this! Just when it couldn’t get any worse I felt a chicklick coming on and the obscene weight of the Above pressed in. My habitual filtering routines collapsed. My face did a spasmo and I could feel my brain looming large against my skull. As always, it slow-mowed with my heart beat…pause, thump… Relax whispered my survival monologue…Smile…and then I lost sight of everything to the infinite. 

I knew what I must look like, eyes rolling, drooling on the ground but where the ground was I hadn’t a clue. So I let go of my robot - there was never any point in fighting it - and spent time or something like it in the topsy-turvy. 

I was pleasantly surprised when a hand touched my shoulder. Probably some Robo-dude doing his self-programmed community service, but the hand felt warm – none of that metallic sting one received, even through a second skin. My chicklick passed but I double shielded my eyes with hands and lids in case the Obscene would press me a second time. 

“Are you okay?” 

It was a soft voice, a woman’s voice. I could tell, even through electro-mufflers. I hadn’t heard a woman’s voice for so long that the sound was almost painful to hear. I knew I must have been a state, so a few tears wouldn’t matter – they’d be lost amidst all the other crap anyway. 

“I need to stand, and I don’t know which way is down – I’m totally topsy. I need to be grounded, sorry.” I sounded pathetic. I was. 

“That’s okay. Let me have your head” 

I nodded slowly, searching for my breath, sensing the position of my mouth and relaxing my neck as best I could. Warm, gentle hands touched the sides of my face and moved my head slowly. I felt the soft, tentative downward pull of gravity and slowly opened my eyes, letting them re-adjust and re-programme the actual situation for my overwrought brain. Fields of infinite regression coalesced and solidified and I recognised ground again. 

“Is this yours?” 

A small black satchel which I recognised as my only source of sanity was dangling in front of me. 

“Thanks,” I said, reaching up for it and placing its strap across my shoulder. Something inside relaxed slightly, I felt whole again. 

I waited a moment in my favourite recovery position before attempting a stand-up. My legs felt wobbly and the multi-shadows didn’t help so I took a different angle but something still wasn’t right. 

“I’ll have to sit a bit longer if that’s okay. I know this is irksome but would you mind staying with me? – I won’t be long.” 

“Sure,” she replied. 

I couldn’t help myself - human contact after an interminably long refuge - a flesh and blood woman! You take what life presents and make the most of it. She didn’t have to stick around. Heck, she didn’t have to have helped at all, could have left me rolling and drooling, so I treated it as an opportunity. Not that much of an opportunity though, for I’d never know who she was unless there was some Halo-shelter. 

I felt calmer now, almost happy.  

“What are you doing so far below the greenline?” she continued. 

I didn’t dare look at her face but stared instead at her sandaled feet. She had nice feet, well manicured toes, very clean, olive brown skin, and her sandals looked as if they were made from ‘old’ material – expensive…yet strangely new. 

It was a good question: what was I doing so far below the greenline? Events seemed hazy and I thought about a wipe out a second time.  

“I’m not sure,” I replied.  

Maybe I had wiped out, but what was I doing here if I had?  

“You have nice feet though.” 

She laughed. “Do you want to see my face?” 

I lifted my hands above my head, expecting. But instead she shocked me by lying on the ground, laying her head on the arches of my feet. Her hair was cut short, dark black ringlets framed her face which even upside down was obviously very beautiful. She smiled or frowned depending on how one was with orientation and our eyes met.  

“You’re one freaked out mess, Chicklick,” she giggled. I watched her lips time lagged out of sync.  

“How can you stare up like that?”  

I shuddered at the thought of my face surrounded by the weight of the Obscene; thought momentarily about the razzle-dazzlers and the glitter-jitters and groaned. Her warm hand reached up and touched my face again. 

“It’s never really bothered me. I think it’s kind of beautiful.”  

“I know beautiful. Beautiful is in front of me, not up there.” 

She smiled at the compliment, her hand still caressing my face.  

“What’s your name Chicklick?” she asked 

“Eliot. What’s your’s, Freak?” 

She smiled again. “Tabitha,” she replied, “but I like Tabi.” 

I noticed then that she didn’t have any mufflers unless they’d managed a micro line which I hadn’t heard of. Not likely, which meant she was some real hard-core Freak – a type I’d never met before. 

“Do you mind me asking where we are – I feel wiped out.” 

“Do you know how you got here?” her face expressed puzzlement as if I was somewhere unexpected, somewhere I shouldn’t have been. 

“Uh uh. Last thing I remember is being in refuge. And now this.” 

“Fuck,” she said mysteriously, giving a low whistle. “Well Eliot you’ll be glad to know that you are currently at Base Helix 5 and this is one dried up sand bed of shit.” 

“A Base Helix?! What am I doing here?”  

Not only was I grav-disorientated, now I had no local history and, if I was at the nearest Base Helix, at least 600 miles from where I assumed I had been, which was Nice. Nice it wasn’t. My world perception melted and my head span. So I hadn’t just simply ‘wandered below the greenline’ this was some major fucked-up deviation of epic proportions. Things started to spin again. Above, around, within; circles passing through each other, pulling me further and further away from my centre. 

“You tell me,” she replied 

“What are you doing here?” I gasped out, trying to remain grounded, squeezing my left arm with my right hand – a routine I’d been working on since a kid. 

“Easy Eli, you’re still here with me. You’re still here.” She paused, waiting to make sure I didn’t go again, before answering my question. “I’m on University secondment. My third year. Up-force analysis of a Base Helix sand cone…on top of which you are currently sitting, and I am currently lying. Not very scientific, but very pleasant,” she smiled again.  

Her smile was a real grounding. I could have sat and stared at her face for ever - hypnosis of the proper kind. 

“This doesn’t seem real.” 

“Then wake up Chicklick” 

“I already did” 

“Then it must be real. Accept it.” 

“Very funny Freak. – You know I can’t” 

“I never saw the problem with it – it kind of makes sense if you ask me. All that beautiful blue suspended up there, perfectly balanced.” 

I groaned again at the thought of it. Felt the spinning in my brain, the topsy turvy switch vibrating in its centre, could hear the voice of doubt whispering: If you think about it too much it will all come crashing down and you’ll die, nothing can withstand the weight of all that water. If you think about it too much, the sky will fall and your head will smash open. I instinctively closed my eyes, pressing my hands to the side of my face, groaning and rocking backwards and forwards. Backwards and forwards. 

“Eli – Eli, it’s okay, it’s okay.” 

Warm hands again came to the rescue, took mine in theirs and got me to stand.  

I was in a brain fug but I knew I was being lead, grateful for being lead, my satchel lightly tapping its comfort against the side of my leg. 

Being a Chicklick was like being blind, any glance that breached the horizon made you topsy turvy. Staring at the ground had it’s place, but if the Halo was glitter-jittering then the multi-shadows would send you into a spin. Of course there were solutions – umbrella hats, AHH-Gleks, drugs – but they all had their drawbacks. Best solution was a refuge where I had been for eight months deep below line green. A real chill zone but you couldn’t live without sunlight. I couldn’t anyways. I craved it, no matter how much it had been filtered. Which meant adios the Go-lytlies and hello Freaks but how I came here was beyond me.  

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

A sudden thought entered my mind. Tabi obviously felt me tense and I could imagine her stopping and turning. I had her down for wearing real ‘olds’ – did she have a t-shirt on? I couldn’t remember. 

“Are we still inside the Wall?” I asked.  

Something inside urgently wanted to know. Perhaps it was a danger thing but I needed to know exactly where I was. My Base Helix knowledge didn’t extend much beyond their creation. 

“Yeah, don’t worry. Come on we’re nearly at camp.” 

It took maybe another five minutes but hell, who can tell what time it is anyways!? I counted steps though, and made 298, down for about 147 and then up for the rest so I assumed wherever camp was, was double the radius of the Base Cone’s distance away from its centre. I felt the heat change and the darkness of the Halo-shelter overhead. 

“Can I open?” 

“Just a minute.”  

I didn’t know what she was doing – sounded like tidying up but what would someone be tidying for out here of all the god-damn places? Her hands turned me around and urged me to sit and, as I tentatively opened my eyes, I was pleasantly surprised. We were in a naturally formed cave, sedimentary, mud and sandstone mix with evidence of some manmade niches and alterations having been added. A load of what looked to me like junk was piled against one wall. Against the other, a desk and three sleeping pallets - two were made, the other was mess.  

The dusty armchair in which I sat was so out of place that I wanted to laugh but Tabi was standing there in front of me, arms on her hips dressed in a floral one-piece, thin straps over her shoulders – real ‘antique’ but looking as if it was the day it had been made. The cloth revealed well formed breasts and an imperceptibly curved belly. Her hair skirted her face like small dark licks of flame. She was a streak Freak, elongated body shape, taller than me by about a foot, and my height wasn’t bad for a Chicklick   

“Welcome to my home,” she smiled.  

I smiled back, unable to take my eyes off her. 

“You’ll be fine if you keep looking in this direction, the entrance is behind you” 

“I’ll just keep looking at you. Don’t worry,” I replied 

She laughed her laugh and sat down in another armchair opposite, chewing her bottom lip and looking back at me with that mysterious smile and her shining laughing eyes. It was awkward, yet it wasn’t awkward. There was obviously a connection between us, even a fruitcake could see that, and I knew that we’d be lovers if everything continued as it did, but we both knew that I shouldn’t be here and the fact that I was, was an obvious freak-out to us both. 

 “Tabi,” I said 

 Her smile grew. 

 “What the fuck am I doing here?” 

 “I don’t know Eli but its some weird shit.” 

 “Is there any one else around here. I mean anyone who might know?” 

 “Jack and Briny who I share with have gone back for supplies – we have a tri-psuedo-monthly rota, so I guess I’m the lucky one,” she paused before continuing, “We have an alleged security visit every pseudo-week but they haven’t been round for ages.”  

 She emphasised the word pseudo in a way I hadn’t heard for a while. Most people didn’t even bother with it these pseudo-days. 

 “So basically, nobody comes here?” 

 “Nobody, except you Eli, and you just turn up on top of a Helix cone,” she laughed again perhaps to cover the same incredulous feeling that I too was experiencing. “What the fuck!” she exclaimed.  

 We sat for a few heartbeats staring, smiling. With that vibe between us there was nothing to say, we could both feel it. Loved it.   

 “You can take those off you know?” she gestured to my mufflers. 

“But the cave’s open.”  

She smiled again. “There are more things twixt heaven and earth than dreamt of in your philosophy dear Eli.” 

 I felt confused, she was making fun of me… or was she asking for trust. I raised my hands to my ears, pressed the release button and heard the air wheeze in through the suction cups. Nothing… Silence except for the dull sound of a very calm breeze rustling the sand outside.  

 “I don’t understand,” I said placing the mufflers on the arm of the chair. 

 “Don’t worry – neither do we, that’s what Jack and Briny are here for.” 

 “I’m sorry.” I mumbled shaking my head in confusion. I couldn’t believe the silence, not after twenty-eight years of living with electro mufflers to block out the insanity of the fried fish orchestra, the vibes, the ghosties or for want of a better description the Audial Halo Vibration, A.H.V’s. 

 “Kinda spooky isn’t it? Not many people know about it, it’s not really a secret but it’s not talked about much. Kinda like a lot of other stuff. Jack says it’s the way we’re all disconnected from each other, the Freaks and Chicklicks, the Domestics and maintenance populace, the A-dees… But it looks like we’ve made contact at least.”  

 “It makes sense I suppose. You’re the first Freak I’ve spoken to in about three years – but… ” 

…I was staring across at her tall thin body, her feet curled beneath her on the armchair. For a lankie Freak she was in perfect proportion. Her deportment was excellent, with no trace of a stoop, her head balanced on the graceful tower of her neck.  

She blinked and seemed to ripple momentarily whilst tension like a fist clenched into my guts. My face must have blanched and I felt like screaming, clenching my face and eyes as the Wobbles passed overhead and through me. 

“Eli – are you still with me? That was a big one huh?” she was standing beside me. I love this woman I thought and just stared at her face, mesmerised by my own emotions. 

I was old enough to have experienced love and cynical enough not to get caught up in some dependency trip. Mothering nurse fantasies had been a real problem for me and I guess most other Ascension Psychotics who were as bad, which was probably just over thirty percent of the chicklick population. Been there, experienced that. Learnt from it? I asked myself ruefully, pausing to analyse those still painful feelings…Vulnerability was a state of mind.  

Maybe I was just kidding myself. Who gives a fuck anyway?  

 “I still don’t get the silence,” I said, breaking it. 

She sat again, staring past me, out of the cave, beyond into the clear blue Halo which was always there, suspended above, waiting to fall and smash my head open. 

“As far as I know, just after the Storm, about five psue-years after they ‘built’ the Wall and started consolidating the communities, the A-dees discovered that A.H.V’s are zero at the base helices.” 

“Let me guess, no one knows why?” I couldn’t help the sarcasm. Everything since god-damn Ascension Day had had that as a tag line.   

The words seemed to sadden Tabi and I regretted saying them or the way I said them. I knew A-dees had that as their heel. They were still questing whilst the rest of us were just busy trying to survive. 

“Yes, nobody knows why. Just like you Eli…” she sighed, letting go of the tension, not finishing her thought. “Would you like a drink?” 

“You have water?”  

 “Of course – the university’s not such a bad employer. They’ve kitted this place out quite well. There’re humi-tubs above which deliver enough to get by on. With the others away there’s even enough to wash with.” 

“That explains your beautiful feet then.” 

She just stared at me as if waiting for me to understand something. I stared back, counting my heartbeats until a dull realisation of my body infiltrated my mind. I looked down at the stain on my pants and became uncomfortably aware of what must have been dried excrement on the inside of my thigh. There were no glitter-jitters without the accompanying release of bodily waste, however small.  

All of the uncomfortable moments from youth came shrieking back to mind. I could feel the sudden rush of blood to my face warm my cheeks. I looked down. No not down! Not behind either! I didn’t know where to turn. 

“Don’t worry Eli,” she said, extending her legs and turning her feet backwards and forwards, examining them carefully, seriously. “They won’t be back for at least a psu-week, Jack and Briny…so if you’d like to stay…” 

I gazed at her, she at me. I don’t understand you, I thought, I don’t understand myself…  

A funny thing: to want to be invulnerable. To want to try and convince another that you are other than you are. I’m a chicklick for God’s sake! Why can’t I just accept it? What’s with the pretence? The voice was shouting in my head. 

“I’d like that very much.” 

“I’ll get the water,” she said, smiling, and stood up. “Don’t watch me or you’ll regret it.” 

“I’m not so sure,” I said, following her as she half walked, half skipped past, her hand touching my shoulder.  

I started to turn my head but the outside pressed in and I felt as if I were suddenly five miles up and falling, not a single whisp of interstice to focus on. My stomach lurched and the ground threatened to give way. She must have seen my panic and the look of terror on my face for I could hear her laughter gently echo around the cave. I snapped my head back round and stared at the sandy rock in front of me. Listening to the fading sound of her sandaled feet slap away on the sediment outside…I started to think. 

Why was I here? What was I doing miles away from where my last vague memory placed me, lying on the middle of a fucking Base Helix sand cone in the middle of fucking nowhere?... In fact what was my last memory? A certainty?...Before the glitter-jitters, med-zone 4, 800ft below greenline in a refuge colony with a bunch of fuck-ups, like myself, suffering from Ascension Psychosis.  

…A lot of questions…and no answers – a mirror to this awful age of wondrous phenomena. And, like in all aspects of allegedly twenty fifth century life, though nobody knew for sure, pragmatism decided to seal up the gaps before it all went topsy turvy again.  

So I’m missing some time, so what? Nobody can measure time perfectly anyways so what the hell. I can’t explain how I got here, who gives a fuck? There isn’t a single person in the world who can explain why the fucking ocean is now in the sky, so what have I got to worry about?  

What had I got to worry about? And there lay the problem. Sure, pragmatism was great if you wanted to live one breath at a time but if you wanted to spread out your life, wanted to let it unfurl like some beautiful Pre-Ascension Persian carpet and be in possession of all the threads of the past, to glimpse the pattern of the moment and express it in the future then one could not simply sweep everything beneath it and pretend that it was okay… because that was pragmatism. 

Maybe the Freaks were right. It was obvious really. They had adapted – they were making sense of it. Me and my kind, we didn’t stand a chance. 

“Are you alright Eli?” 

Tabitha’s voice pulled me out of my musings. I could sense her standing behind the chair. A beaker of water descended in front of my face, which I took gratefully. I wanted to gulp the water down greedily but restrained myself for the sake of appearances. A laughable conceit as the purity of the water trickling down my throat made me conscious of my body again.  

“It would be best to wash now whilst it’s still warm – it gets very cold at night out here.” 

The idea of having a wash felt decadent. Usually I would have made do with a sand scrub and a damp rag, but I felt whacked. 

I stood, uncomfortably, not really knowing what to do, not really being familiar with the social politics of washing. Does one just go or..? 

Tabi walked back into view, rummaged under her bed and pulled out a clean looking towel. “Here, take this… and, we’ll probably need...” she started rummaging around in the junk, pulling out an umbrella hat. She passed it to me, along with the towel. 

Whichever university this girl worked for must have been formidable in its wealth. She had handed me a towel as if it were just that, a piece of cloth. Clean clothes and available water for washing was beyond my comprehension.  

“The humi-tubs are just outside to the right and up, they’re basically over there,” she said pointing to a place beyond the back of the cave wall. “If you strip I’ll see to you’re clothes and sort you some new ones.” 

I was unsure as to how to take the last comment. 

“Just leave them on the floor there.” 

Now I knew. 

I didn’t want to undress quickly and seem nervous and hasty but I didn’t want to undress slowly either so I tried to find a balance half way between the extremes of pervert and stripper, without too much success. 

I placed my bag carefully over the back of the seat and let the rest drop to the floor. Tabi seemed unfazed, like it was natural – it was natural in a sense – and that calmed me. She smiled, always smiling, her eyes - I loved her eyes. 

“Just up there?” I said, pointing, placing the umbrella hat on my head. 

She giggled, I giggled too, I must have looked ridiculous. 

I turned towards the cave mouth, the umbrella hat only allowing me the precious downward view of a small area around my feet. My eyes fell to my satchel. 

“Please don’t throw that away.” 

“Don’t worry, Eli,” she said, asking “Why not?” almost as an after thought. 

“It’s everything I own.” 

I picked up the satchel and opened it carefully, tenderly feeling the familiar coarseness of the material and pulling the straps through their metal buckles. “My parents gave it to me,” I said, pulling out a thinly bound book, its pages scuffed and earmarked around the outside, a variety of miscellaneous papers and films bulking out the hard card front cover which was half falling off - the threads of the binding having slowly torn through the years, or something like them. “It’s all I have left to remember them by,” I said, removing the black elastic from around its middle. “Be careful. I call it a ‘book’, but most of the pages are loose, and there’re bits and pieces from other places as well. Part of its missing but there’s some hand written stuff which seems to be in the same style.” 

Strange how standing naked before her I was still concealing myself. 

I tilted my head back, though I needn’t have, for the reverence with which Tabi’s hands received the thin volume said just as much as the expression on her face. 

“I must have read through it a thousand times – what’s left of it - and it always says something new to me or perhaps reflects back to me a different part of myself. I guess it’s more of a mirror into my soul than a book.” 

She dusted down the cover, wiping it slowly with a careful hand. I could see she digged it, and had obviously held a book in her hand before. She checked the spine, I was impressed, she knew what she was doing, though she wouldn’t be able to read the title as the gild had faded from most of it and the light was too dim to understand the indentations.  

She flipped the cover carefully, showing a skill with her fingers by balancing the cover so that it wouldn’t tear further, and read the frontispiece, taking care not to allow any of the additional material to slide out. 

“The Mistranslated Song of Birds,” she half whispered, speaking to herself. “I’ve never heard of it, who’s it by?” 

I shrugged, she closed the book and past it back to me. 

“Read it,” I said, strangely annoyed by the fact that she hadn’t delved further. 

“Wash yourself Eliot, and then maybe you could read it to me, my voice might not do justice to the reverence you hold for it,” she spoke plainly, without any coloured or second meaning to her words. She meant what she said. 

I considered her request… “Okay,” I said, placing the book back in my satchel, closing the flap but leaving the buckles undone. I paused for a moment, letting my hand linger on the course material before taking the first of several faltering steps out from the cave, picking my way around the crusted stones, my bare feet needled and pained by the dry earth.