Enigmatic Pilot_ A Tall Tale Too True - Kris Saknussemm [127]
As outrageous as the things the gambler had told him were, Lloyd acknowledged that there was a kind of consistency to them—and consistency, whatever form it takes, is always the hallmark of something one should pay attention to.
To Lloyd, the “painting phenomenon” was a transformation analogous to what he imagined occurring with the twins’ secret writing—and what the horse-faced girl may have been alluding to. The amount of space, the frame for each, did not change, but what happened within the frame did, over time. Time was the crucial element. Time and the observer, of course. Without someone to observe the changes, would they occur?
His mind had often spun around this perennial question of philosophy and perception. But now he saw that there was another aspect. There was the much more subtle yet still intensely practical issue of how the presence of a perceiver changed the event or object viewed. If, for instance, one was willing to grant some occult instability to the twins’ writing, what was it that triggered the changing? People, when they know they are being watched, behave differently from when they think they are alone and unseen. They perform. Could it be that in some way the markings were performing, and that the increase in their luminosity was influenced by the number of people and the intensity of attention paid? This would suggest that there was something important about his own particular participation, for the markings had shone brighter when he made physical contact.
This chain of thought brought to mind a comment his mother had made years before, when the husband of one of her herbal-remedy patients had asked with mock seriousness if she honestly believed ghosts were “truly real” or if she was just being colorful and folksy and thought that they were “creatures in the mind.” To Lloyd’s surprise, Rapture dropped the usual white accent she used in public and replied, “Show me now where yer mine true ends and de worl’ begins, I show you plenny ghosts.”
Something about ghosts. And time.
Ghosts and time were intimately related, and yet profoundly disconnected. For what were ghosts but people who had stepped out of time—who were now immune to time—watching from outside, interacting with the world but no longer of it?
What would the world look like outside time? Lloyd wondered in his sleep. What would human culture look like—or sound like—outside language?
Time was change. The glyphs of the Ambassadors seemed to be constantly changing, except for the spiral symbol that looked like a tornado. So their language had something to do with time.
But was not a written language always about time? A fixing and freezing of a spoken language? In his dream state it occurred to him that he had assumed that the markings and carvings were transcriptions of the alien tongue the twins seemed to share. Their behavior had suggested that they understood each other’s sounds. Because the one was so bizarre, he had made the link to their markings; it was not surprising that a method of transcription would appear alien, too. What had puzzled him was why they needed to write. If no one else could understand their language, what was the point of writing? They could speak to each other.
Looking at these assumptions now, he saw that people often write things down for their private benefit. (He did.) To make things clearer for themselves. To prioritize. To remember. Or for other as yet unknown people to find and read. To teach. What were most books? Messages written in the hope of being found and decoded. Perhaps the brothers were trying to teach people their language, only it was hard to find a suitable student.
Something about ghosts. And time.
In his trance state, Lloyd slipped through the hierograms and the phenomenon of their luminosity for a moment, back to the Martian Ambassadors’ speech and the question of what things would not just look like but sound like outside or in some new relation to time. Yes, there was something about ghosts and time when it came to the twins. And tornadoes—or at least the tornado that they