Chapter 2, Entry 2
Main Illustration
SCENE
We take an alternate route back to Alana’s house, since the tempest from earlier had wrecked through the shortest path there. Where it had passed, cells have become... unnavigable.
We first notice this as we cut through a temperate forest we had grown so familiar with. Where the storm had presumably passed, it grows unbearably bright, and the birds sing louder, much louder than they should. It doesn’t help to shade our eyes, because it is an ambient sort of light and sound and frequency, unpinnable and glistening and everywhere, even inside of me.
We can’t navigate with our eyes closed, of course, and the luminous, polymorphic red behind my eyelids is beginning to make me feel sick. So, we retrace our steps.
Text
SAM-. Elli.
ELLI.- What’s up?
SAM-. Do you remember what order the last few planets in the solar system are in? Like, the gas giants. I remember the first few, but after Mars…
ELLI.- Oh-- um, yes! I think I can help you with that…
SPECTRE-. He taps his fingers together rhythmically, as the information comes back to him.
ELLI.- It’s not the names I remember first, it’s–
SPECTRE.- Elli kneels down, and begins drawing shapes in the wet earth. Four are equally sized indents, made with his index finger. The next one is a large circle, presumably for Jupiter. The last three are equally sized circles, though relatively smaller than Jupiter. The two planets after Jupiter have rings around them.
ELLI.- There’s Jupiter, after Mars… I always remember it because it’s the largest, and at the center… Well, sort of the center. After Jupiter is Saturn, because Jupiter and Saturn are… just… well, next to each other… and the last two... I always forget the order of these until I remember that… Uranus has a ring around it, like Saturn, so it’s next to Saturn… which leaves Neptune as the last planet.
SPECTACLES = We gaze at the complete diagram with a sense of satisfaction. There they are, as they were… The planets that had gazed quietly at us from the posters on the walls of classrooms.
SAM-. Mercury… Venus... Earth. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn… Uranus and Neptune.
ELLI.- Yes. That’s them. I bet we’ll forget the order again. Or, at least I will.
THE PRESENT = We continue down the dirt path. It winds and wanders through the forest, but thankfully, it has no loops, or offshoot roads. We imagine the trail would have made itself impossible to follow if it did.
THE SPECTRES OF THOUGHT AND MEMORY = Would that be so terrible? To convolute into a deathless infinity?
THE PAST = It’s impossible.
THE WHEEL OF TIME = Yet here it is.
THE PLANETS = We’re not of this earth.
ELLI SPEAKING TO THE SPECTRE OF ELLI THROUGH THE SPOKES OF A BIKE = I’m not of this body anymore. Look at me. I’ve been lost in translation.
THE SPECTRE OF SAM SPEAKING TO THE SPECTRE OF ELLI AS THEY RIDE SIDE BY SIDE = What does he mean?
ELLI, ON THE 19TH OF APRIL, 1943 = Branching, parallel thought. Interceptor. Interludium. Die Engel Sam und Elli treten als Beobachter der Welt auf.
THE SPECTRE OF SAM TO EVERYONE = What have you said?
ELLI, AS HE WAS = Nothing. Those are your words, and your memories. A transfigured quotation from the Wikipedia article for the movie Der Himmel über Berlin. I’ve lost my body, and voice, and all original thought. I’m all yours now– the memory, the body, the momentum. I’m a flat piece of paper. I see everything. It’s you who gets lost in this imprint of a world. You reanimate me again and again. I’ve seen it all, and I’ll see it again, in so many different ways. You’re the most deranged kind of mortician– the Necrophage of Memory. Thanautocannibalist! Time-Flesh-Quilter!
THE SPECTRE OF SAM, SCOWLING AT DIRECT REFERENCES = You’re an index.
THE SPECTRE OF ELLI, ENJOYING IT ALL = I’m the indentation of a counting stone in the sand.
THE INTERLUDIUM BEGGING FOR A TASTE OF BOTH SIDES = Worse– The pockmarks of Myiasis.
THE RELENTLESS FUTURE = The worst: You’ve ruined everything. You’ve blown this whole thing wide open, like a grotty, licked up pustule– and in the second act!
THE GEARS = The most offensive act, the source of all taboos– betraying someone’s trust, and then spiralling out of control.
ELLI = I have nothing left to do. I’ve served my purpose, and I serve my purpose. I’ll let Sam look back at the calcified past, I’ll be the burning-carbon-paper, and–
THE THRESHOLD = AND?
ELLI = We need a third explorer. It’s always been this way.
ALANA, YASMIN = Do you need a writer?
ELLI = No, not quite. You’re not writers, either. Just the inkwell. You’re one of the sources of the drawn shadow.
THE FUTURE, THE WORLD, THE THRESHOLD = Who, then? Who will it be?
ELLI = Think! Feel! Search, beyond the pale of thought. I can only see the paper and the text, just like you. Sometimes we’re readers, sometimes we’re writers, sometimes we look towards the past and the present and the future like thinkers and writers and artists and philosophers– but what’s left?
NOTHING =
NO AN EMPTY ROOM ISN’T EMPTY =
AND NEITHER WAS IT BUILT AT THAT MOMENT =
AND NEITHER WERE THE TOOLS USED TO BUILD IT =
I HOPE YOU CAN SEE EXACTLY WHERE I’M GOING AND YET YOU WAIT FOR THE STRUCTURE TO BUILD ITSELF AND COLLAPSE ALL AT ONCE.
THE BEAUTY OF A SELF-REFERENTIAL PARADOX,
THE UNIVERSE IN A CHILD’S GEL PEN,
The third line in this act is simply everything else.
Matchbox words and worlds, alight, afire.
The House of Thought,
The Body of Regret,
The Markov Chain Architect,
and Spectres, cast-shadowed by the framework of the stage.
will again enter and exit the house and prose and world.