Ch 15: Dream , Music, Pain and Humiliation

~
(David

Intense bright light. Like looking at the sun through closed eyes. Sounds all around fading in and out. People around me? I can’t see. They’re whispering, but it sounds like they’re underwater.

“They say he’s like an Oracle or some shit.”

“And he makes sick beats.”

“Shut up. No way.”

“I heard he can tell if you’re lying.”

“Ask him something.”

“No way! You ask him. Ask him for a stock tip. No, ask him who wins the football tomorrow.” Laughter.

“Shhh. He’s looking right at you bro. Is he here?”

“No man, he’s gone, he’s all the way out there. We only have a minute though. Hold him still.”

“Load it now.”

“Did it load? Okay, let’s go.”

“Will he be like, retarded now?” Laughter.

“Shut up you idiots. Get lost, I got him from here.

“Yo, D, let’s get back inside man….D! Hey D, you ok man? Come on let’s get back in to the party!”

Shaking me awake.

I feel the tingling electricity fading in. Right in my chest, in my heart. Not painful yet. I know I have to get up and move around to keep it from from getting much worse.

I open my eyes to see the thin strip of light that always leaks through the slit between the blinds. I was dreaming. I sit bolt upright in my bed, thinking I’ve slept through the alarm, but the anxiety eases when I remember I still have a couple of days off before the next round of Prophecy readings and policy simulations. That’s a big project. The Supremes have come up with some weird, aggressive stuff, with a crazy, threatening tone, seems maybe like belligerent taunting of enemies, can’t tell if they mean foreign or domestic ones. We have to be careful with it so it doesn’t come out worse than necessary. I’m honestly dreading my work for the first time in many years.

I lie back down and feel the mattress under me, roll back onto the pillow, and remember to exhale.

Fragments of the night before are drifting back: the music showcase in the Cultural District, the incredible SRI. what’s called again? Synaptic Resonance Interface. And oh yeah, the neuropaks. I got high with Finn. The whole experience turned sound into something that felt like lucid dreaming. That crowd was so different. In my world, official social events, which I hate, are always the same – a crowd of stiffly disciplined InfoTechs kissing up to a visiting Leader, everyone competing to act more serious and religious than the next.

But last night was truly different. After half the crowd left, the fun began. The night evolved into a full-on party with a lot of dancing and laughing. I recall strangers leaning in and shouting over the music, just trying to make each other laugh. It felt – genuine? I’m feeling strangely refreshed, which is surprising after drinking the first three beers I’ve ever had, along with the psychoactives. I guess none of that stuff produces the “hangover” I’ve seen in the old movies.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed, head to my galley kitchen. I pour a cup of affordable, just-okay coffee. Strong enough and slightly bitter, not enough sweetness. I crack open a breakfast cube and eat it mechanically while replaying the night’s highlights in my mind.

My workstation in the corner of the room has awakened. It’s flickering the day’s live news and propa feeds across the display. Images of apartment buildings collapsing, people running, on fire.

I settle into my chair, and the first thing I do is place my hands on the interface and launch the Neuro-Sonic Composer. The familiar feeling of limitless possibilities unfolds before me. the good old NSC interface. It always feels clumsy and kind of impossible to make a good sound when I first start it up. I have to wait for a flow to develop. My ears are so fresh first thing in the morning. I always start with my speakers turned down low.

There’s a light electric feeling in my chest – my own personal alarm clock that wakes me up every morning. But is it always there now?

I relax and let the memory of the showcase’s beautiful alien sounds guide my fingers and my mind, and the NSC responds, stitching together some clicks, glitches, and a low-frequency drone. Now there’s something that sounds a little better. I freeze it, loop it, and start thinking about the next part. Soon I’ll be creatively paralyzed by the feeling of having too many options. How can I find the best sound when I can always create another one I like even more?

Then I remember.

I look to my left and see the headband on my desk. I can install the new SRI system locally as a beta tester. I scramble to find the datapak they gave us. I swipe it over my workstation and put on the headband, and wow. Here it is. I step into pure sound.

Time goes away. My eyes glaze over as I chase a motif that I watch rising like a filament of light, then collapsing into a rhythmic cluster that spreads outward like shattering ice. The composition grows organically, each segment feeding into the next without really consciously planning it. Again I feel like I am seeing language in this but I can’t make it out.

When I finally pull back and disengage, the display shows a full-length piece, its waveform stretched across the display, transitioning from small and jagged, to a brick of pure loudness, back to jagged, then loud again before it ends. I stare at the title field — “Fractice” — a nonsensical placeholder that I guess I added while I was deep in it. I must have tried to call it”Practice”. I hit play and lean back.

Sonically a piece emerges that reminds me of a high speed pod journey through the city at night: a tentative opening pad that fractures into the icy arpeggios I saw, with tentative partial melody that hints ambiguously at an emotion. A beat filtering in underneath it, sounding like it’s underwater but approaching the surface. Then it all goes quiet for an instant before a subtle but satisfyingly heavy transition to the main section where glitchy percussion pops between waves of a pressing sub-bass with just the right weight. The bass is satisfyingly weird, like it goes with the other sounds because of an unintended fluke. Overall I’m hearing a satisfying full-spectrum sound that’s loud but grooves smoothly. My head is nodding, always a sign that you’re on to something good. Then a breakdown with a stronger emotional vibe. Holy shit, I’ve never done that before. At this point it seems to be activating something in my mind that is like words or memories that I can’t quite make out. I’m stunned by this, but just then the second section picks up with a crazy wobbling groove that freezes me as I listen. At the end it kind of resolves into a dissonant cluster of notes that sound to me like a question mark, which lingers quite long before it stops dead.

I feel emotional. Something I’ve never been able to articulate before has finally taken shape.

I’m curious about what this music would sound like without the SRI and the headband, just as audio. I hit play and I immediately perceive a word, or something like a picture of letters, in my mind. “FRA”. And I called the piece “Fractice” without even knowing it. I’m chuckling, in disbelief. What? Is it supposed to do this?

A chime on my feed snaps me back to the present. Finn’s avatar pops up with a message:

“Yo D hope you enjoyed the party, on chess server if you want to get beat bad”

I stare at the nickname “D”, recalling that at the party, Finn called me that, a playful shorthand that stuck. If I ever see those people again, I’ll be “D”. Funny.

I open the voice note interface, letting my voice tumble out in a rough draft: “Yo Finn.” I pause, cringing at how childish it sounds. I rewrite: “Hey Finn, had a great time, everyone was super nice, very impressed by the new tech”

Then a new thought strikes — should I share my new piece? I’ve never shown anyone my private experiments; they’re always just fragments and they’re messy, unfinished. I always fear they’d be dismissed as the ridiculous noodling of a Senior Prophecy Analyst who’s dabbling in art. Which is exactly what they are. Ridiculous. Yet this one feels different, like actual music with life to it. And there’s no try-hard to it. It’s just weird enough to maybe not be embarrassed about it. I hesitate, then let the impulse win.

“…created this today on SRI, still needs work, what do you think?” I whisper, throwing the file “D-001” over to the message. The track name I thought of is maybe too cringey to share. The “send” icon pulses, and a wave of exposure washes over me. Embarrassment, vulnerability, the old imposter syndrome. I stare at the “sent” confirmation and watch in horror as it changes to “delivered”, feeling the weight of the moment settle like a stone in my gut. I’m an idiot. What did I just do?

And I didn’t even think: he’s with the fucking Art Division. Oh God, how embarrassing. He’ll think it’s a demo submission.

I put the headband back on. The rest of the day, the evening, and most of the night dissolves into a fevered creative sprint. The SRI seems to anticipate my intentions, offering harmonic progressions almost before I can hear them in my mind. I’m projecting ideas as sound and images that are in my mind. This will take some getting used to, but it’s working. I can’t remember if I ate at some point? But I don’t stop. Another piece materializes, complete, with another nonsense title. Throughout all this I’m getting the usual unpleasant sensations that accompany my flow state, like electricity hitting me in the face and chest. But I keep at it.

As I near the final bars of a third composition, the electric sensation intensifies — but this time it surges with a new ferocity. A heavy, buzzing current rattles my sternum. It’s buzzing hard at a lower frequency than before. My vision narrows with blurry star filter effects. Pure pain. But my auditory senses are like perfect crystalline scalpels. I’m seeing the sound but not with my eyes. I’m trembling. But I force the notes and sounds into place, completing the piece before the sensation peaks. Wait – am I seeing language again? Or am I thinking words into the music? Then I remember last night when I thought I saw words. But I know there’s something to it. There’s language in this. As the pain intensifies, it gets clearer. I know these are words, but I don’t know what they are saying.

I’m holding my breath and grunting against the pain. When the composition ends with a wretched sounding drone that fades out, I know I can’t take anymore. I slam my hands onto the console and swipe it shut, the display flickering as the system copes with an abrupt termination. My body feels drained, as if the act of creating has siphoned the energy from my muscles. I stagger away from the workstation, my legs wobbling, and collapse onto my bed in a fetal position. I’m groaning. The room spins for a moment.

…An electric shock wakes me. My eyes snap open. It’s sharper this time, like a bolt striking my chest and my face, right in my forehead and my eyes. The ceiling looks way too bright. I sit up, heart pounding, sweat beading on my forehead. It feels like something hitting me from outside my body. I’m seeing faint ghost images of everything I look at. I think: It has to be my implant malfunctioning. Must see a doctor again. But it feels external. I feel I have to get out of my apartment.

I push myself up, grab my handheld comms and I’m out. The door closes behind me and I head for the transit hub under my building.

Harrington

My feed alerts me: Eyes only, see WRAITH viewing platform, updates and live playback starting 12 minutes ago.

I tell the beautiful Tania that there is a drone waiting for her just outside, and instruct her to leave as soon as she is ready.

I put on a robe and leave my spa.

Once in my office I activate my display tech and whisper, “Okay ready to view.”

I see it’s my favourite interpreter of Prophecies, David. The one who corrupted my loyal pilot Kade. Oh good, the update tells me his new tech is installed. The tech from the music show. Let’s see how much he’s enjoying it. This is very new tech that we’re hoping allows direct thought intercept. There should also be some more focused physical effects.

He’s in his apartment, at his workstation. I pull the WRAITH POV in so I can watch from just beside him and see his face and his display at the same time. He is deeply immersed in creating sounds. This one has a creative streak so I don’t expect to understand everything he is doing.

“WRAITH switch to subject’s POV please.” Looking through his visual cortex I can tell it’s his display but there is an overlay of wild shapes and colours moving in time to the rhythmic sounds. It looks blurry and confusing, dizzying. I can’t make any sense of it.

“WRAITH can you clarify the image at all?” The WRAITH platform responds, but it isn’t any clearer.

“WRAITH go to thought intercept please.” I hope it works. But instead of a stream of thoughts I get unpleasant digital distortion and noise in the POV display. “WRAITH turn off thought intercept. Go to third person POV.”

I watch him as he grimaces. He is straining to continue working despite the pain. I hate most of these people, but I don’t always enjoy seeing them fight it like this. Stop. Just stop trying. He’s not stopping. Why do this to yourself?

After several minutes of this intensity, the music stops and he swipes his workstation off, stands up briefly holding his chest, stumbles and falls onto his bed.

They all learn to give up eventually. Some of them are quite resilient but they all give up. That’s the point of this and it does not ever fail.

I exhale letting out the tension this scene has caused within me. I don’t normally watch that closely, but I had to see the new tech working. I couldn’t make out anything clear in the so-called thought intercept. I’ll send a note to the devs, who will explain that it’s still experimental.

David

My chest is still burning. I feel burned on the inside. I can’t focus my eyes.

I step up to the first pod that sits waiting for a passenger. The doors slide open silently. The interior is seamless polished plastic and metal alloy. The lighting is indirect, soft, ambient. It smells good in here, like a faint sweet bleach smell.

The pod greets me: “Hello, destination?”

I hesitate, then say, “Just go please. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

The pod accepts the command with a chime and the voice reminds me stay seated, to put away food or drinks, no smoking.

As the pod accelerates with a gentle rising tone of quiet noise, the world outside and below becomes a loop of passing scenes, banks of apartment buildings directly outside and rising high above. And below, an endless procession of narrow streets I’ve never seen before, some busy, with pedestrians and small vehicles flowing. I stare out through droplets of rain at the city’s skyline against the grey sky. In this weather, some buildings extend up into the clouds. My mind is a flood of thoughts trying to piece together what just happened. Did the new SRI tech cause it? Did the psychoactives affect my neuro system or implant? It will take time to control these variables to understand it. I may never figure it out.

The pod’s gentle noise is constant as it banks slightly left and glides into another tunnel. I close my eyes and force myself to just listen, letting the faint rhythm of the transit play against the lingering beats of the music still playing in my head. Faint muffled sounds of normal life drift up from the street level. I hear a dog barking and a kid laughing and then it’s all drowned out briefly by the roar of a heavy construction drone fading away in a doppler effect. I feel both detached and oddly connected. I still want to chase that creative exhilaration even if it’s accompanied by intense torture.

I open my eyes and realize my holoscreen is floating in front of my face. I must have forgotten to turn off my pendant, or it turned on. Do they turn themselves on now? Probably. I’m looking at dozens of pop-up links to ads and services of all the buildings, stores and businesses I’ve passed. Each link is a company logo along with the familiar “Y/N” icon – a green dot for “Y” and a red dot for “N” – asking if I want to link to the ads, shops, or media. I whisper, “No, no, no, no, no…” to close all the links. People used to complain about these pushed links when they first started, but everyone got used to it quickly. Now you can often hear people quietly saying “no” even when they’re in the middle of a live conversation with a real person. Everyone’s used to it.

Right now, any change of scenery will help. I exhale “Ok next stop I’ll exit please.” The pod gently warns, “The pod will apply braking. Please brace using your seat handles.” But bracing isn’t necessary. As the pod slows, the round passenger compartment rotates just slightly backward, turning the g-forces into a slight sensation of heaviness in the seat. As the pod stops the voice tells me the location and encourages me to do precisely the thing I know not to do: “Copeland Square. Remember to consult your local Prophet to decree God’s obedience for health and prosperity.” There’s a little flourish of patriotic music as the announcement ends.

The doors open onto a platform in a residential/commercial district that looks like it was once new and modern, even luxurious, but now exudes the sad vibe of an aging streetwalker dolled up for a night out. The air smells faintly of rain and that sweet flowery chemical smell the city uses to mask harsher odors. I don’t know where I am or where I’m heading. I just know that I need to keep moving which seems to keep the physical sensations at bay.

As I walk I see a coffee shop and immediately enter. I want to sit down and just think, and make sense of this combination of creativity and torture I’m experiencing. It’s like some kind of sick experiment. I step up to the bar.

“Large bold coffee please, can you make it pretty sweet?”

The barista stands there staring at me, looking confused. I try again.

“Uh, hi there. Can I get a coffee?”

She snaps out of it and pours me a coffee and puts it in front of me, looking scared. I touch the pad to pay. It’s cheaper than in my neighbourhood. I get a table by the window and sip while thinking. Minutes pass and I finish my coffee. I’m still thinking.

“Excuse me sir, unless you’re going to order something else, you’ll have to move along, thank you.”

I look up. I guess it’s the manager. Standing behind him looking at me pensively is a huge man, a BuilderHelper who seems to have come from the kitchen in the back.

I look around at the empty shop. I’m genuinely curious about what he means. “There are open tables everywhere. No one’s waiting. What do you mean, move along?”

“Look. I understand you need somewhere to sit for a while, but you can’t hang around here all day. I’m sorry but you have to leave now.”

The huge employee steps toward me and his giant hand wraps around my arm.

I say instinctively, “What the fuck, let go of me!”

He tugs me to my feet and then lets go, looking at me wide-eyed like I might attack him.

The manager says, “I’m sorry sir but I am asking you to leave right now please.”

I look around for someone to help me understand this. It’s getting dark out and I catch the reflection in the glass.

Looking back at me is a dishevelled, wild-eyed middle aged man wearing a dirty t-shirt and sweat pants, with greasy unkempt hair and massive dark circles under his eyes. I realize it’s me. I realize I haven’t slept or showered or changed my clothes for perhaps two days, or was it three? I look down and my shirt is stained with spilled food.

“Ok, sorry, I’m leaving, thank you.”

As I stumble out I hear the manager saying “It’s ok, he wandered out from the shunned zones. He shouldn’t be around here. Let’s pray for him.”

On the pod back to my place I resolve to maintain myself physically despite the pain and sleep deprivation. I will exercise, eat healthy if I can, dress well at all times, maintain cleanliness and grooming. No one will ever look at me and conclude I am some kind of psychiatric case. If I am ever able to tell my story, they will believe it is real.