Death by Transmutation

PART I

BEFORE THE MELTDOWN

i

With every waking moment, in every oblivion, there is an awareness so damp that it slips even as the sun beats down upon the disintegrated terrain of yesterday. Sullied by long decomposed cartilage, a landscape outstretched across several continents comprised mainly of a sedimentary type of nostalgia had been rolled earthen and shut solid. Now, trodden over for centuries by generations of blissfully unaware children, obsessed with empty glory and prone to sensory deceit, there is nothing of sustenance left.

The final kinetic shudder ever recorded had rustled the wind out of perception, pushing hot air into alleyways, causing buildings to shudder an electric and vibrant flavour the colour of poison out into the streets. It is from this scattered rubble our companionship had formed.

Oppressive were the diffused remnants, somewhere they had even managed to reach a pack of howling wolves out in the middle of the tundra. Bloodshot eyes prowled reeds covered with snow, in the corner blinking midnight to crackle with a type of exuberance only those with predictive alibis have the skill to comprehend.

Crippled by turbulence, distant figures morphing out of printed symbols careened overhead. No more were there stars, no more did the blanket of darkness cover our impressions with the hopeless longing for evidence of an inner sparkle. Yet the question never left us:  Is there any validity to an echo?

ii

The air was heavy laden, ironclad. In the section of the land called Fundus, only consummatory activities of a derelict nature flourished, home to aliens who had birthed exclusively alien babies since the towns insurrection. Cards and whiskey overflowed, spilling out of windows and cracking frames, leaving geometric shapes on the edges of the frames like mini interpretations of Euclid's original conceptions.

Thousands of these tenement apartments padded with mould were peppered across all visible fields and they housed only creatures who never learned to let go. Crippled prototypes gasp in slime, writhe in foliage; scrape at the whiteout flakes on the wall of the arrangement so there could leave no discernible difference between asbestos and home.

Dehydration was the key to survival in Fundas.

Meanwhile, beyond a fettered border, those born with limbs in the correct places continued heedlessly to rise and fall and roll and splice the gentle marble dusk of an eternity caught between time and space. Existing in a swirl of polluted hearts and fissured minds, our bodies splayed atop the lap of a gambling hound whose only excuse for being alive was that he had inherited a sense of loss over exchange value.

Soldiers here are perpetually flanked against the tallest known ivory built structure, sitting just behind the west end of town. Their bodies rigid in the company of affection, their muscles contracting with delight at the sound of the whip clank chain march soldering mesh sight. Their heads bobbing from a distance to bands of wild horses that unfurl day by day from out of the blue-hued woodlands which crown the town. In their hearts they are riding a monochromatic rainbow all the way to the end of the pines, lured in as though attached to a roll of film, they suddenly imagine as they are reeling into the lens that the hooves of the horses are caught in spears and the escaped sparks from the struggling friction still smoking hot from the gun powdered atmosphere ignite the front line. 

They replay this in their heads, all of them dreaming the same dream over and over again.

‘Follow through with the inhale boys, if it doesn’t reach the bottom, it’s not worth pursuing!’

iii

The tower, or some may say, the tipping point, looms an ominous reminder of what happens when civilizations lose control. It casts an infectious shadow over all the known inhabitants of the region known as Medias. Solidified drums thump dull against the backdrop of this century and the taste of the ocean is lurid, having been stewed acrid by stagnation.

Circumscribed by an intimidating amalgamation of steel, iron, copper and zinc were situated the troops quarters, where they came back to gnaw on scraps donated by the local country inn before finally retreating into the hostile cold of night at the border. Splodged on a drooping lamppost, at the end of a dilapidated electric fence, a slippery little hole had been exposed under a tiny crack about ten centimetres off the ground. Under the hole was a passage, tightly-knit. She would lay her ear on the ground and lean in close to peep through the hole. Sometimes she would poke her finger through the hole just to caress the moss on the inside of the hole.

click.

‘When did you realize you could make sense of this moment?’

click.

iv

Hello,

Bartering with ghouls was never my intention, but it seemed at this point in my journey as though the only choice left to make, lest my will perish for yet another turn. You had me convinced that the end of man is the end of proportion. Human beings are sensationalists by name and corpses by nature.

Sincerely,

Isophine.’

Entertainment came the easiest of all. In retrospect it seemed as though the meaning behind all of this destruction amounted to little more than an incessant desire to exert the notion of freedom onto boredom. Neighbours rarely ever wave here, it is considered blasphemy.

The rays of morning penetrated a cone-shaped slit-pattern over a mingling sweep of contrastive textiles and materials. Unlike Fundas, which still bore the mark of a recollection for a time when gentrification ran rampant, nuclear communities were not so easily discernible in Medias. 

Harmony had been achieved, albeit a compromised translation of the thing, dictated by fascination and wonder rather than aversion and terror. They were all connected by an iridescent eclipse, waiting patiently for cadence to eventually take hold of their fragile tendency to breathe.

Streets quarantined between Fundus and Medias fade out and crust over within seconds only to be mended by zipping nanobots moments later.

‘Medias’, fine father Costanzo would say, ‘Has no obligation to Fundas.’ and the crowd would cheer and he would go on, ‘Our ancestors built this city. It is in our veins’. The clamour of the crowd picked up wildly, feet stomping. ‘We tend to the outskirts from pure generosity.’

It is not difficult to understand why the citizens of Medias felt this way. Stratospheres buzzing with excitement were a very isolated phenomenon, and so was the pride that came with them. Commodification never goes out of fashion.

Occasionally the freedom fighters of the town convened under the guise of prodigious council necessity. Unfortunately futile, as every meeting ended in the congregation chasing down the most dishevelled of the group in circles across Medias. ‘Sarakov! Sarakov!’ they cried after him, usually to catch up and ruffle his head in relief. One day he made it to the bridge over the river, and we never saw him again.

My dear,

I think I caught your eye for the first time, just before Sarakov threw himself over the river. It reminded me of when men used to heave sacks of potatoes onto carts. I was smitten by a fleeting apparition, for your presence was unknown. The glint was so contagious, I could no longer hide. Despite being interrupted by quivering tambourines in the distance, I never lost sight of your glint, even as the procession came to pass adjacent to the stretcher carrying Sarakovs mangled body, his arms like twisted sprigs flopping aimlessly about and catching the knees of the paramedics as they bobbed solemnly towards the ambulant capsule. Do you remember Sarakov? He was such a funny man.

Sincerely,

Isophine


It was the first time in her life she had encountered a stranger. In Medias there was no escape from the threat of treason and in turn no stone left without surveillance.

Strangers, for him, were a plentiful breed. He could recognise them as adeptly as a carpenter could recognise other carpenters by their hands. She was not a stranger.

v

Costanzo spent a majority of his working day toiling over important decisions. For example, today his pockets were exploding with shrimp, and he could not determine whether it was more appropriate to blame the fishermen or the ocean for this disrespect. Rounding up his confidantes, Costanzo wrote up legislation, banning pockets, to be replaced by slings one could attach a pouch to. 

Conflicting legislations were always subsequently remedied by the careful burying of previous terminologies. Sling-pouches were banned after a theatrical performance went horribly wrong and an actor who had been playing a cowboy tripped over one of the many elusive cables distinct to Medias that no one could remove, let alone cite the origins of. Coffee burst out in globules from a paper cup, leaving behind a hand in steep descent to desperately snatch at thin emptiness and spraying a chaotic masterpiece over Costanzo’s lapels.

‘Well, what is it?’ Costanzo demanded, livid with frustration, cheeks a stretched red balloon,

‘Old age.’ Said the coroner

‘You don’t say… and what is this, a sling-pouch?’ He casually motioned over to a crumpled pile of black polyester attached to a plastic brown case holding the actors fake gun, which had slipped out of his other hand after he had tripped. It had landed before the cup landed and was now damp and swimming in a pool of coffee flecks. Marvelous and dignified, the cup had settled upright on top of the pile, erecting an offensive glow from which a taunting disc of triangular rays wheeled in the direction of Costanzo.

‘I am not a linguist, sir, I am a coroner.’ Said the coroner.

There was only one consequence possible here, that sling-pouches had obviously been banned moving forward, but in light of a new Constanzian revelation, slings and pouches combined as a detachable mechanism were okay.

Not that anyone in Medias was particularly affected by these changes. Most legislation in Medias had nothing to do with behaviour. Ownership was the only concern afforded by the law.

Rituals were still used as a means to an end in both Medias and Fundus. Aside from the peculiar primordial urge to justify ones actions through belief systems, commonality had been altogether exiled from the epoch to which our two nations belonged. Torches used in rituals were still a popular symbolic artefact among both places, and in Medias an entire field of artisan study had grown out of a succession of attempts to firstly isolate the original determination of man to achieve comfort and convenience, secondly the inclination of man to pit glory over balance.

vi

Between fibrous nebulas and jagged crescents, creatures the size of pinpricks dazzled convective fields, rousing a set of immutable waves positioned underground into performing actions intended to solidify magnitude. Fissured loops sizzled hymns, arranged together in cohorts based on scale and resilience.

‘Wrinkles will eventually subsume everything’ He told her, ‘Nature works in layers’

She said, ‘No, you’re wrong. It’s a matter of approach.’

vii

‘War built these chambers’ Constanzos booming voice decreed, as he sauntered clumsy from drink, leading a tour group of the towns best starry-eyed graduates down Eisenhowers canal system. ‘It is precisely here,’ He stopped dead and lasered his eyes to a slightly raised, furry wet patch at his loafers. ‘The mechanism failed us.’

‘Sir,’ Said a proud young voice from behind, snapping Costanzo from his eye-mired trance. He turned to a sleek head of thick black hair and a sharp, confident face obscured by cartoon glasses. Constanzos eyes curiously tracked the left arm of the man which was pointed stiff, holding a pen towards an arched ceiling covered in stalactites and stalagmites.

‘Yes child?’

‘Can you explain these?’ The young man asked, lifting his chin to look up.

Costanzos face lit up smug, ‘Ah yes. They are cocoons.’

The young man raised his brow, ‘Cocoons, sir?’

Constanzo frowned, ‘Yes, cocoons!’

The young man smiled, ‘When are they due to metamorphose?’

Costanzo narrowed his eyes and lifted his chin slant-ways to look down on the young man ‘What is your name boy?’ Costanzo asked,

‘Alexander.’

viii


A rush of blood lingered in the air on the morning when it happened. Flurries of executives, dignitaries, lawyers, journalists, scientists and philistines, all scrambled around the empty streets of Fundas. Earlier, an emergency warning call had driven the townsfolk behind lock and key, blinds drawn and all. Whispers began to circulate out from under crevices and peepholes. 

Communication was no longer facilitated by machinery or device. It was instead standard to convey messages long distance via a series of sighs. Syntax was determined by the frequency, cadence, pitch and force of an exhale. This peculiar technique had come about not long after the Singularity had grappled with its last victim. Breath during this era became fully integrated, and so the human mind never forgot the essential language of intuition, even after the singularity had been dismantled some 2,000 years after its formation. Faith had been lost, once again, to a vogue replaced by a humble blend of pre-technocratic explosion and 400AD early medieval aesthetic.

No message of an ascertainable nature mingled in the heterogeneous patches of autumn that day. Laneways that meandered intricate whorls along a washed out territorial fuse-box, ticked hysterically together, yet retained a subtle harmony despite being jagged. Frenzied murmurs resounded to a faint gargle eventually, muffled by the noise of seats being taken.

Costanzo took to the stand, clearing his throat.

‘We have a problem. As you are all aware, the core has been infiltrated. I have gathered you here today to help us find a solution. Yesterday we collated some data, harvested by our graduate team, but we came up empty.’ He scanned the crowed in search of any face not garbled by confusion.

‘I thought that might be the case.’ He said. ‘Well, plan B it is then.’

He stood to the side. Behind him an unusual shape clothed in velvet, as though illuminated, hung stark, solid and shiny on the stage. He pulled down, fat hand vanquishing behind folds. Exposed was the answer, gleaming virile, for only those whom destiny favoured.

ix

‘I once found a book, it was called, Hydrogeologie, written by a man who believed that we had evolved as a result of having developed an intrinsic ability to learn of our previous mistakes and triumphs. We would pass this knowledge on to the next generation in the form of traits beneficial to our survival. I found it one evening with my metal detector by the bank of our only river. It was bound with gold. Not much remains of history on evolution here. Evolutionary theory has long been supplanted by the relativist doctrine of Speculative Transgressional Movement Theory. Even before I found the book, I could not help but wonder if it maybe was the opposite way around, and that the omission of mistakes may more likely be attributable to an entire filtration system, rather than a series of self-contained valves linked by vicinity’

Alexander’

Those who had gathered that day in the hall were instructed to form a line of two from down the ships ramp.

‘Here ye!’

‘Here ye!’

Constanzo was the first to trundle flat down all doors. His army (although contested) came next, peering in. Their ties to the Department of Supreme Intelligentsia had garnered their rights. Winking and stumbling,

‘Was this the middle East?’ Asked one of the soldiers

‘Excuse me sir’ one of the journalists pointed over her shoulder. ‘Anyone accredited with understanding intersectional correlative deviations should take priority so we can investigate the framework of subservience as defined by the political zeitgeist over there’

Alexander flinched,

‘And the rest?’ Asked one of the scientists

Constanzo lifted his head,

‘Metamorphosed.’ He said.



PART II

TIPPING POINT CUT LOOSE

i

‘My resentment for numbers defines me. So confined. So awkward. So religious in their concerted separation. So meaningless.  So grammatical. Just like I knew that I recognized, just as I remembered who you really were and where we had really met. Between us there was a draw-bridge that insinuated our dimension was entrenched in some kind of horizontally shifting facade. We lived in a castle surrounded by rings of castles with motes placed in a discordant fashion around an isthmus so arcane you could feel its bones flaking.

I will wait for you.

Love,

Isophine’

Isophines fingertips drummed against her window, leaving a blanche of exotic marks streaked against a cascade of blobs on the other side. She found herself in a severe state of catatonic bliss, like a somnolent baby whose mind was filled with only shapes, colours and forms.

All events had lost their placement. Night, dry and bruised, whistled silken lullabies through holes and clefts.

‘It would be nice if sleep would come, even better if the wind would listen. Rustling is pleasant but I don’t understand it so how am I supposed to emulate it? Blades of grass grow very long. Long enough for wind to push a melody through them, but it’s not a known song. That which is above, undermines what is below, my thoughts negated by clouds and branches.

Love,

Isophine,’

ii

Futures are dizzying milieus, fraught with a perilous denigration. Tricky latitudes followed the group from Medias. Veiled caricatures plugged into an oblong slit, electrified bright by the translucent twinkle of a smile. They fastened their seatbelts. An eclipsed mezzanine shielded the view of a terrifying apex. Modified by signals, enchantment flipped in their direction and blinded them from movement. Channels segregated from the mainstream bore imprints reminiscent of a cataclysmic relief from tension. Magnified political handshakes and disused mortuaries flashed sharp between insertions of black and gold flickering slides. Messages related to current affairs snuck themselves into the periphery, vindicated by an appeal to interface.

Isophine squirmed at the sound of chalked sirens overhead. She flicked aimless through the pixels that made up his being.

‘I will wear lilac silk and pin myself to little red windows, hoping you will perhaps at the very least respect the draught that blows through the cracks. My essence may be deceitful, but I can guarantee you it is free.

Isophine.’

iii

An inertial stigmata erupted, flowing wriggles spun down fast, blending into a foray of grasping characters, polished by the margins of a sequenced configuration of bleeding tombstones. Condemned by theory, once convinced to have balanced the difference between mercy and regret, the passengers zoomed hurtling down a spinning vortex. Cacophonous relief trickled down mottled leg hair, a feathered arm buzzed a hurricane snail, as translucent tears swam dizzy like the changing of season.

Sore veins pumped blood through a disembodied nervous system. Over a sleepy cobalt ridge, in an oscillating fashion, they waltzed towards the fervent strings of repose and arousal, into virtue and revival. Their expectations melted to shape an impotent moulding. Wax dripped ambience, exacerbating motive.

Pale fingers inch at a row of soldering irons ahead, bellies strapped in well past the last notch squeeze a line of figures whose bodies, tender and throbbing, imagine sipping on a cool breeze as they ride out rolling by dilapidated chariot into the limp sunset of a dying horizon. Porous slats encased in a tubular vessel attached to senile engines running on empty, guzzle fuel like maniacs when given crumbs to chase judgement day. Whooshing low, heaving wide, back up again tilting past neon operators whose counters drooped exhausted under the weight of monolithic paperwork.

Smoke interspersed with gravity and heat waver in front of both windscreens. The passengers blink idly in response to the collapsing scenery to which they are enveloped prisoners, drooling murmured incantations collected over a questionable period of history. Intersections fade out into dim obstacles. Visionary crossroads laded with sighs look the same, but invisible.

Tracks formed by toes in the sand cavort to make an exuberant canopy overhead. Radiation glosses over the surface of the vessel, delaying reflection. Unsure of whether the environment was solid or open, with only zips of electricity to guide them; they landed barren.

iv

Cursed embers surrounded their feet. After growing tired of kicking ash, frustrated and cold, Isophine and Alexander stood facing each other. Searching led them to believe only in cracks. No Spheres. No Doors. No rivers. No Mountains. No seals. Not even corridors. Only cracks. Molten cracks.

‘Alexander! Why didn’t you tell me this was going to happen? I thought you understood biology!’ She said.

He smiled, ‘I do.’

v

Sharp, metallic obstacles bloom towards a clanging reprieve during the torrential monsoon floods of winter in Fundas. Mangled bodies like braided shrapnel flow out of the head of a golden, snake-eyed Buddha, brushed immaculate and positioned between the town chapel and the town mosque. Clearly well established, the care it had taken to achieve this aperture will never be replicated; only in sleep do we find ourselves gesticulating patterns unique to our truths. Allow the conductor to take the world stage and we are only dooming him to a pitiless abashment provoked by the over-stimulation of vapid abundance. He will only twirl his baton long enough to induce a half-bred silence confined to the significance of a filtered amplitude. Although he may part the red sea, he is no less immune to the inevitable arbitration of the future, and no more saluted according to his lot.

Here is where the group learned to strike ambivalence at its putrid, stagnant core. Costanzo watched it vibrate like a drunkard falling onto hot coals beneath a turning spit-roast. A dispersive, sulphuric smell slushed into nothing worth longer than a glimpse until some of them became mistaken and evaporated. 

As the steam coagulated, Isophine sunk back into the moccasins she found in her mothers bathroom as a child the morning she was found dead, reliving that moment as though she were larger than her own insignificance.

‘Hollow out a sceptre from the balustrade that haunts your dreams, and you will comprehend what is meant by ‘to be a woman’. Dear staircase, subsume the moss of time so that we may persist as we were in your image! Moist and dense, sucking up the atmosphere and ejecting ice back at the target. Sweet carbon. Were it not for where I was, I would not be here. Nature fooled us. We prance as ghosts along jilted transistors left behind by transcended progenitors. Will you join me to dive as a current? Can we really form orbits into rings? I heard somewhere that home is isomorphic. Like violins and wind.

Isophine’

vi

She was ankle deep in the sand.

 ‘Reel me in and pull me close over the ocean, beyond the sea’ she used to say, ‘Wrap me up into a scroll so that I may crumble with the hourglass’

 ‘Keep your hands outstretched.’

The constant heaving of unpredictable waves carried way past the evening as they turned tides with their bare muscles.

vii

Sprawled out across a snakeskin bed, freckles like constellations glisten. Little globules of shapeshifting sweat, further xeroxed by contorted gasping, shrink-wrap them still. In a petrified bloom, dispersed knuckles relax. Cascade in ruin; a scattered symphony like a crescent prism under pressure, transferring their coalescence into a magic drift.

‘Consider the repeal of all the voices trilling in their own damnation. We are a castrated medley blown out of proportion. Snippets evoke countless fractions; they reveal a sense of continuity, by reminding the observer of experiential severance. It is one thing to take an elevated step; it is another to stand up straight. However, both functions are crippled by desperation. Different standards call for different measures. Too many mourn over history. If a laser could speak, I am sure it too would ask to be bent into an animal and scarified in the name of misunderstanding.’

Alexander’

viii

Sporadic blips of fervent, incoherent rambling bellowed out from locations no one could quite pinpoint. Occasional glimmers of poignancy could be gleaned from listening between the lines of these outbursts,

‘I almost forgot my keys this morning,’

‘Don’t step on the cracks!’

‘Hideous, absolutely not worth it’

‘If we all just joined together we could be united’

‘That’s what they all say’

‘LOL’

‘The grain of this wood doesn’t suit the bricks used to make this wall’

ix

Listless constraint beckons a convergence of amalgams to execute a metronomic rhythm. If a spiky charade courses through a malleable tube we feel alive, yet at the end of circuitry we die. Safety heeds a final call. From beneath a creaking siren, a ragged chiffon ball tied to a pipe burst swinging from a leather rope overhead like a withered Chinese lantern folds synergy analogous to consternation; it is livid with extremities. 

Located within hinges, they tick languid in a hypnotizing orbit. Archaeological investigation has led to the conviction that fundamental lines split for a sole purpose. To create junctions, from which one may have been able to briefly extrapolate essential qualities. Hybridization uses many tools in order to understand objective nuance.

‘Compassion is a reckless, punch-drunk beast that lacks coherence and possesses only limp inclinations towards exerting mimetic imperatives. The universe reclines in a pillow draped by golden locks; a cosmic, helical type of delicacy. Relentlessly have I warned you about the dangers of impulse. If you learn to savour, you will learn to survive.

Alexander.’

EPILOGUE

THE HUNTER AND THE HUNTED

i

He caressed a line of porcelain stems that were radiating out of a makeshift nettle vase she had crafted and strategically placed on the edge of her oak-wood dresser. Fundas was teeming with all sorts of curiosities. She thought of each protruding stem as something of a lever that could take her down underground where all of the fun things were kept hidden. Never had she questioned the integrity of her invention, yet his incisive gaze provided her with a glimpse of what it could mean to critically analyse a thing for what it was, rather than for what it could be. For an instant, she recognized a twinkle of pious enchantment wash over his otherwise irreproachable expression. Not only was there approval, there was a signal.

ii

‘An unbalanced portion of myself feels like it has been evenly distributed among every oven ever made.’ She said.

‘A toxic river of shame?’

‘No, a toxic river of joy.’

The bubbles have ceased to precipitate. They ordered another round, lapping up each morsel as they went along.

‘So this was where you grew up?’ She asked him,

‘Yup – the least threatening wet dog you will ever find.’ He said.

‘What do you want from me?’ She asked him,

‘Nothing’ He said.

‘You want nothing?’ She asked him,

‘Yes, I want you to show me nothing’ He said.