Mirror Space - Marianne de Pierres [57]
The buzz and his mind. In his mind.
He tried sleeping but his conscious state wouldn’t alter. A pressure began to build around his thoughts. The buzz would send him crazy soon.
Again he tried moving his limbs. Nothing. Just the frustration of sensing - hoping - that his body was intact, but no longer his to govern.
His mind sped off again. The-Extro-thing-i’m-stuck-in-must-be-messing-with-my-brain-chemistry-So-why-hasn’t-it-suppressed-my-frigging-hearing-too?-This-is-frigging-torture-what-else-could-it-be-for?-Think-Think-Think-unless-the-buzz-is-the-way-in-Shut-the-fuck-up.
But the buzz got louder.
What-do-I-mean-the-way-in?-Maybe-the-buzz-is-a-data-flow?-The-Extro-is-the-data-flow-of-sound-But-I-thought-the-Extro-was-a-drum?-I-don’t-fucking-know-Fuck.
Jo-Jo gathered together the pieces of his rapidly dispersing sanity and gave it a go anyway, concentrating on the irritating noise until it broadened and became the jackass sound again.
It slipped from the jackass sound to a clamour of voices more quickly this time; though he had no measure to be sure of that, just an innate sense of time passing. He let his mind adjust to the voice-roar and listened as, occasionally, one voice rose above the rest.
After listening for a while, he caught one of the raised voices and tried to follow the sound back down into the flow. It slipped away from his auditory grasp almost immediately, but he became determined not to give up. Each time the voice peaked he grabbed for it. Slowly, he began to feel its sense of individuality, timbre and pitch - as if he knew it.
Eventually it pulled away from him, but he floated back to the clamour and waited patiently for it to return.
When it rose from the flow, he was able to attune to it quickly, and the individual voice grew solid. This time his grasp felt sure, and it dragged him through a series of dips and peaks of sound that were speechlike, but not.
Eventually the rise-and-fall nature of it began to smooth and without warning it became a voice that he could clearly comprehend.
‘For fuck’s sakes, you fucking freaks!’ shouted the voice. ‘Somebody speak to me!’
Rast Randall, sounding thoroughly rattled. It comforted Jo-Jo to know that the woman felt fear.
‘Randall?’ He wasn’t sure if his lips formed the words or if it was a thought. ‘Randall, it’s Josef.’
‘Rasterovich? Where in fuck’s name are you?’
‘I don’t know. Tell me what happened to you.’
‘You made a run for the ‘zoon and fell. Then I feel like I’m sinking into the floor. That’s it. Next thing I know I’m awake in some kind of suspension. Can’t feel any-fucking-thing. Don’t even know if I need to piss.’
‘I’ve gotta theory.’
‘Shoot me with it.’
‘I think we’re inside the Extro. You saw it suck up the grenade. I think it did the same to us.’
‘You saying we’re its lunch?’
‘Shit, I dunno. Y’hear the buzz?’
‘Yeah it’s all I could fucking hear. Till you dropped in.’
‘I concentrated on the buzz real hard. For a long time. It started to change. Became more like a crowd. Just a big, big bunch of screaming voices. Nothin’ I could understand.’
‘And?’
‘The sound was worse than the buzz but I kept listenin’. After a while I heard some voices above the rest. Kept trying to follow them. Ended up latching onto yours.’
Randall went quiet. ‘Still there, Randall?’
‘You telling me we’re in some kinda sound machine? And somehow you found me over all those voices screaming?’
‘Maybe you were bellowing louder than the rest of them. You gotta better theory?’ Jo-Jo wanted to rub his forehead. In fact, he would have given away a body part just to feel again.
That was, if he still had body parts to give. What if his flesh didn’t exist anymore? What if all that was left of his consciousness was this voice and these thoughts? Maybe the Extro had ‘evolved’ them.
Rast must have been thinking something similar. She began to curse and didn’t stop.
‘Shut it, would you?’ said Jo-Jo eventually.
‘If I can swear, I know I’m alive,’ she spat back at him.
‘Yeah, well, I wouldn’t be counting on that.