Hallucinating

CHAPTER ONE

...nicely ambient music...

It is 2049, one hundred years exactly since Edgar Varese composed "Deserts," the first piece of electronic music. Through an acrid Berlin downpour Nulight walks, head bowed, boots splashing through puddles, his nostrils twitching as the polluted air excoriates his mucous membranes. He is tall, athletic, his long black hair loose past his shoulders, wearing a mac and black jeans, his boots steel toed. On account of his thrusting jaw, Asiatic face and gullwing eyebrows people tell him he is a dead ringer for Lenin. He agrees.

Mild paranoia makes him glance over his shoulder as he tramps the concrete streets designed retro Carlo Scarpa style, makes him stare at umbrella wielding passers-by, makes him avoid the light pools of street lamps in case somebody recognises him. After all, he is Nulight, yeah
Nulight,
the boss of Voiceoftibet Records.

Down a passage he dodges, shoulders hunched, jumping when a splat of roof moss hits the ground just ahead, glancing up at the fluorescent club signs, looking for one picked out in lemon yellow that reads 'Gesang Der Junglinge', or would do if somebody had not made a masking washing line of optical cables out to the window opposite.

There it is. He pauses, looks behind him. Just a dog. Two, in fact, ripping apart the body of a giant rat. He darts into the club, bending down because the door is a metre and a half high.

He smells wet coats, pot smoke, mud on shoes, hair gel.

At a counter a girl sits reading a copy of "Ohr Zeit." She is petite, Telemusik, her hair bleached, her nose a posy of silver and gold loops, and she looks up at Nulight, but then, recognising him, returns to her read. Nulight can pass. He can hear the music in the club, and he is attracted to it like a berserker drawn to the rumour of war.

The club is a single space excavated like a cave from the rooms, yards and passages of properties surrounding it, an accretion of volumes bought over a period of thirty years by the owner of the club, Dieter Ohr. Its roof is composed of melted polythene, its walls are white-painted brick. The music emanates from a torus of Surroundsound stacks, ambient heaven, a continuous ocean of music that has become semi-autonomous, taking as its source material foreign radio broadcasts, CDs, MPs, samples and riffs filched through coagulated computer feeds from the internet, all mixed by club DJs who sit astride their music like a diver on a whale. Twenty four hours a day, every day of the year, on and on and on...

This music has mutated over a period of two decades. It has never stopped since it started, yet in becoming semi-autonomous it has turned into something else, something
vast.
Many people try to control it, but they cannot. It is too complex now. Wiser folk, they just interface.

For twenty minutes Nulight absorbs the music, which is currently in an Indonesian phase, gamelan driven and supple as a sarong, head in Bali, feet in Berlin, stretched across the world like a digital mantra, absorbing culture—ever absorbing—and restructuring itself on all of its frighteningly many layers into a hypnotic fabric. Nulight for a few acid moments feels scared of this music that is never turned off, because it is alive, mutating according to the rules of binary heredity. People drown in oceans. Clubbers drown in this music. Sometimes their entranced bodies are dragged out of the club by Dieter's bouncers, the Zyklus Mensch; and if they are lucky their fazed minds return to a semblance of human normality.

One hundred feet down lies the nest of computers that is the brain of this music. The Zyklus Mensch must guard this nest. Dieter said so.

Nulight thinks he spots Dieter on the opposite side of the club floor. He takes a pencil light from the pocket of his coat and shines it across the chamber, and the beam stabs through smokes, clouds of exhaled breath and whiffs of oxygen from photosynthesis tanks, illuminating the faces of listeners twenty metres away. One is indeed Dieter. Carefully, avoiding supine clubbers, Nulight makes his way over to Dieter, who is explaining some new Japanese gizmo to a woman.

Nulight says, "Dieter, man, what you got there?"

The gizmo is a cross between a computer and an Armenian doudouk. Dieter swings around and nods. "Good evening, Nulight. Long time no see."

Nulight nods back, realising that the instrument must be a new toy that Dieter has stolen. The fibreoptic whiskers at its lower end irritate his sense of purity. He replies, "See you got a new giz. You ain't telling me that's software driven?"

"It is," Dieter replies.

Nulight makes a small scoffing sound. "Man, you don't wanna get wedded to
that
stuff. Soft
ware
is old hat. What all the major thinking type dudes is talking about is soft environments."

Dieter shakes his blonde head and says, "This is the human face of technology."

Nulight glances away. The Indonesian slant is all wrong. "Man," he says, "this is gone bad. No way should there be Indonesian riffs spiralling around, it should have gone
Japanese.
Japanese after Californian. It's obvious, ain't it? The music's been taken over, it ain't autonomous—"

"Semi."

"—any more."

There is a pause. Then Dieter says, "What are you saying, Nulight? Are you citing external influences?"

"Yeah!"

Dieter shakes his head again, as if troubled by a child. "Absolutely not. We are still on a semi-autonomous tip. There are no external influences."

Nulight indicates the soft-doudouk. "I'm telling you, man, I ain't interested in the human face of technology, what I'm interested in is the
alien
face of technology. Your music's been taken over by aliens, man. It's an invasion. Red alert."

Dieter laughs, joined by the woman. "Are you telling me you think the Earth—"

"Yeah. What, it's so strange? This music is growing like a cancer, man, and you can't control it."

"I don't want to."

"That ain't the point. Never mind your stupid external influences, I'm talking alien influences. The Indonesian slant proves it. It should have turned Japanese. These gamelan samples and sequences are symptoms, man, symptoms of the alien influence. Don't you get it? They're coming to take us over."

Dieter pushes Nulight away. "You have swallowed too many hallucinations. You're paranoid."

"I ain't."

Another pause. Nulight reconsiders his position. This is a bad vibe. No way should it be Indonesian, that
feels
wrong. He's a muso, he owns a famous underground record label,
he
should know. Thoughts flutter into his mind with clarity. He has a revelation. (Another one!) He has got to warn the Earth about the musical alien invasion that is taking place. One thing though, could they have started in 1949? Were Edgar Varese and Pierre Schaeffer controlled by aliens? Hell, "Deserts" and "Symphonie Pour un Homme Seul" could have been alien manifestos, changing culture, subliminally perverting the course of the human condition, manipulating the direction of world affairs.

Jabbing the air with a forefinger he tells Dieter, "I'm telling you, man, this club is just the start of it. These aliens are subtle. They'll act so we can't tell what they've done, until it's too late and we're under their heels."

Dieter remarks, "If they are aliens perhaps they have not got heels."

Nulight answers, "Shut it. This is
serious.
"

Dieter says, "Don't tell me what to do, small stuff."

As if reacting to the anger, the music inserts a menacing seventh into itself.

Dieter speaks coolly, acting almost, making himself appear as steel brutal as possible. "I do not want you breaking into my club and messing up my customers. Get out, small stuff, and detox your perceptions."

One of the Zyklus Mensch grabs Nulight from behind and chloroforms him with a hanky. Nulight half-feels the bumpy ride that follows, part conscious as he is; feels calloused hands under his armpits and smells the lager heavy breath of his assailant. Then he is soaking wet and out in the street. It is dark. Dogs sniff around him.

He struggles to his feet. This is the down side of his revelation, the nauseous drop over the edge of wonder, drenched by Berlin rain that brings down a thousand industrial chemicals. He looks over to the low door. There, Telemusik watches him, tears in her eyes, and Nulight suddenly realises this is the last time he will be able to enter the club, for he is now an exile. He staggers back. The semi-autonomous music has for years been a support to him. Now he will only be able to hear it on the internet. That bass drone will never again thrum at his sternum, and his tympanic membrane will never more vibrate to mutating hi-hats.

Telemusik waves goodbye as he plods down the alley, but he does not see her. He has to sort out this alien invasion thing, and there is only one place where he has friends who can help. But
she...
she might not want to see him again.

Nearby lies Berlin Airport. He hails an alky-taxi and tells the driver his destination over the intercom. The taxi floor is littered with junkie syringes, DMT wrappers, and the shattered jewel-cases of mini-CDs. He stuffs a hand behind the seat and sure enough finds the usual selection of detritus: smart coins, old credit cards, buttons, pill cases, the inevitable wrinkled old tissues. He pockets the coins and investigates the credit cards. Hmmm. One here belonging to Klaus Mueller that might retain some functions, while the smaller card with the hologram of Polanski would allow him entry to all the city's kinos. Pity that one is no longer any use, being, as it is, defaced.

He pulls out his MP player and listens to a ditty by Toru Takemitsu, remixed fresh by DJ Human.

At the Berlin Airport NetWise he spots a free seat on a hyperdart. Inside a comsat booth he manages to reconfigure Mueller's card, but he decides not to have the name changed, so that it is just a matter of tunnelling a little way into Mueller's stache and letting the digital drops leak out. No point complicating matters. As expected, the credit card was cancelled, but it sure isn't now.

So the seat is booked. He speeds through the airport, grabs soya milk, tofu bars and a packet of cheese'n'onion, then rushes down to customs. Nothing to declare. Authority believes him.

Now he is on the hyperdart. It is comfortable. The recliner seats are furry, temperature controlled. He loves them! To one side of him is an American gentleman reading the latest Electroloot, to the other a wisp of a goth girl dressed red/black like a vamp. He puts on an MP of Boletus Name's latest EP and ignores them both.

...Isle of Avalon...

Peace and quiet and cosmic tranquillity enfold Nulight. He is standing by the reconstituted Glastonbury Abbey. He can see where the stone parts and the plastic parts meet: it is not very subtle, but it is artistic, and it gives the town an aura of history, of old objects, made more intense by the complete absence of cars. Fractal-dyed longhairs stroll up Magdalene Street, glancing right at the light-splattered Abbey, at the Celtic weirdos dancing skyclad in spiral patterns. An enormous number of reefers are being smoked by the audience.

Nulight turns, looks up at the Tor. There the setting sun illuminates a patchwork of green and brown and grey, as the magick permaculture enviros set up by the Tor People bathe in ruddy light. Bright little sparkles reveal the presence of solar gatherers, or peace-engines as they are locally known. And the windmills are turning.

A tall dread nods affably to Nulight. "You new here?"

Nulight shakes his head. "An old timer, me. You know where Kappa is?"

"Copper. Name ring a bell."

"
Kappa.
Red dreads. Pale, slim figure, quite tall. Sure you know her."

The dread shakes his head, but then he says, "D'you mean the Dean at the Faculty of Avalon?"

"Yeah, her."

The dread really is amazed. "You know her?"

Nulight had no idea that this particular ex-lover was the Dean—it's been years since they spoke—but he keeps his cool. The dread is seriously respecting him now. "We've... you know," he remarks.

"Well, the Fac still in the same place. Jus' go on up."

Nulight nods and carries on up Magdalene Street, imagining what will happen next, once the dread has told his friends, see that dude who's back in town, he's shagged Kappa! Nulight laughs to himself. If the dread knew he had been speaking to the boss of Voiceoftibet he would pass out there on the street. Passing out being the ultimate in respect.

Turning right into the High Street he waves at old-timer Simon Scott, who is standing outside the Tandoori Space Emporium, before turning right again into the Courtyard. The sounds of old Loop Guru CDs emanate from the Blue Note Café, reminding him painfully of the gamelan music he has left in Germany, so he hurries across the yard and leaps up the steps that lead into the Faculty. There, a shaven-headed Krishna type welcomes him with incense and bells, but Nulight waves away the religious stuff and just asks, "Man, you seen Kappa?"

"You mean recently?"

"Yeah. Like, today?"

The Krishna type smiles and replies, "She's gone."

"Gone?"

"Far gone."

Fright descends upon Nulight. "What, like a
casualty?
"

"To a hideout in Wales. Just for a few weeks. It's being seen as a sabbatical."

"Thanks, man."

The Krishna type gives him a card. "Here's her temp internet location. If you know the right passwords you'll find her."

Nulight recalls some of the old passwords. Feigning understanding he takes the card and pockets it, then returns to the Courtyard. But there the dread stands, and Nulight is momentarily spooked. This guy could become a hanger-on. The dread approaches and says, "Me name Partzephanaiah. Please to meet you."

They shake hands, both embarrassed but both automatically reaching out.

"What bring you here?" Partzephanaiah asks.

"Kappa."

"She gone, or so I jus' hear, gone to Wales, via Chester."

"Chester?"

"Summat to do with watchin' the skies."

Nulight hums and hahs. So Kappa Smythe is still watching the skies. Useful. He tells the dread, "Listen, man, there's an alien invasion just begun, you know what I mean? It's serious. You know the Gesang in Berlin?"