Hallucinating (3 page)

CHAPTER THREE

...Einstein on the beach...

Sixty kilometres south of LA they gaze across drifting orange sand for the Einstein3 guy on Marcia's card. Nulight knows he is a webhead because he has a personalised homepage location and a really stupid e-mail address.

The surf is pointillist white and folks are lazing in the sun, some of them watching films, some of them logged on, others just snoozing. It is very warm. The icecream-fluff sellers are doing great business. One such is playing an auton remix of Tangerine Dream's "Rubycon" that sets Nulight's teeth on edge. That's classic stuff, and it shouldn't be messed with.

VR kids on motorskates are locked in some fantasy battle as they skid up and down the mirror smooth concrete parade at the back of the beach, shouting at the tops of their voices, simultaneously experiencing some net hack-and-slay fest. It sounds vicious. The kids swipe the air with their arms. Doubtless many orcs, goblins, whatever, are being killed. One kid trips over a can. One of the perils of not looking where you're going.

But there is the beach hut they have been looking for. The door is dumb, so they knock. A voice calls, "Just a moment."

After about one hundred moments the door opens and a man, medium height, tubby, wearing a pale suit and sandals, looks out. "Yep?"

"You Einstein?" Nulight asks.

"Could be, but relativity was never my strong point." There is a pause. Nobody laughs. "Who's asking?"

"Me."

"And you are?"

"Man, only the boss of Voiceoftibet Records! This is my friend Kappa Smythe."

Still the man has not opened the door. "And what can I do for you?"

"We'd like to know what Chantal wanted. Just curious."

"Who she?"

Kappa displays the card and says, "So you are Einstein3?"

"I'm Einstein3."

Nulight says, "Like,
really?
"

Einstein3 is becoming tired of all this. "If you must know, I disseminate through the net works carrying certain voices of reason."

Kappa says slowly, "Would these be voices of reason arguing the case for orbital aliens?"

"Yep."

"Then we're on your side."

The Einstein3 dude emerges from his hut and they all sit on the sand. "In which direction is your research going?" he asks.

Nulight replies, "We know the invasion has started. Man, I've seen the lights myself, right on top of Glastonbury Tor, and you don't get a clearer sight than that. Except maybe from Avebury. I dunno. Anyway, the main thing is the semi-autonomous music at the Gesang Der Junglinge, you know it?"

"Of course."

"That music's been infiltrated by the aliens. They're gonna use it to control us all."

Einstein3 nods like a sage. "This is the kernel concept of my own research. Have you noticed anything unusual about the new music?"

"What, auton?"

"Yep."

"Lotsa stuff. I ain't into it, man, I'm more an ambient head. A loose tripper."

Einstein3 nods and smiles. After a pause he says, "Auton music is the first Western music not based on the even tempered scale. This is as revolutionary a concept as nineties rave, that was stripped of all lyrics, and even melody. But auton is completely different. It sounds so new, so different, so refreshing almost, because of this departure from the even tempered scale."

"That ain't nothing new," Nulight contends, "'cos globo was based on ethnic trance, and ethnic is basically an oriental medium, not using Western—"

"Ah, but it did! Globo
did
use the even tempered scale, because all the classic globo sounds were sampled and tweaked to fit Western sensibilities."

"Hey, but they weren't. There were some massive Indian steals, man, and you can't tell me you can sample a whole Indian riff and tweak it Western."

Einstein3 takes a deep breath, then replies, "All right, I grant you that some globo pieces were based on non-Western scales, but those were, as you said, giant samples, maybe a minute in length, more sometimes. They don't count because they were at the esoteric end of the market and we can count them as special cases."

"I don't see your point, man."

"That's because I haven't quite got to it yet. My thesis is that auton is totally new and different, and there's got to be a reason for that. So I set to analysing modern music with a software package called Messiaen—"

"After the composer?"

"The birdsong melody man himself. Once I'd created the environment for the software, downloading the even tempered scale and then all the other scales that there are in the world—every one, right?—I sat down to see if Messiaen could fit any of the auton tunes in the current Billboard Top 100 to these scales."

Kappa whispers, "And none of them do fit?"

"Not one!" Einstein3 says, slapping his hands upon the sand. "Not one. Unique! The obvious conclusion is that auton music is not a human creation. It follows no known pitch progression. I even took Harry Partch's forty three notes to the octave scale and tried that, but auton is different still."

Nulight understands the implications of all this. A terrible fear wells up inside him, starting in his stomach then rising to his breastbone, making him breathe out, out hard, then sit upright and clutch the hand of Kappa. He says, "Then I was right. This is the proof. The aliens have mutated Dieter's semi-autonomous music, and one offshoot is the new auton music. They're setting up the conditions for their invasion. Man, don't you see? This is an alien scale that auton uses. We're listening to the musical consciousness of aliens, man. We're listening to their soul!"

"You got it," Einstein3 remarks.

Nulight is completely freaked out. He stares up at the sky. They are there! They are sending down their spirits for us to listen to and we are just taking it all in, consuming it like babies, unaware of what is happening!

Nulight tries to control himself. He want to scream, run, tell everybody, scream some more, and most of all get himself clear of the aliens; but where can you run when gravity binds you to a planet and anyway the orbital highways are secretly, subtley laced with alien threads?

And he thinks, is this real, or am I hallucinating?

Kappa says, "I find this alien scale hard to believe. Auton isn't composed by people, it's just remixed. I think it's composed by deep computers."

Nulight replies, "What's the commonest remark people make about auton?"

"That it's out of tune."

"Exactly! The human mind isn't meant to receive it."

Kappa looks away.

Then Einstein3 asks them, "What are you dudes going to do next?"

Nulight replies, "We gotta find ourselves a mighty hacker to see if there's anything official on the aliens. NASA must know something, the Whitehouse, the FBI, maybe the Chinese or the Japanese. Anyone who makes me feel bad, basically. But we need somebody who understands our way of thinking."

"I might know somebody," Kappa says, "somebody back in England. Cambridge, in fact."

Nulight nods. "Yeah? Well, okay, we'll run with that for now."

"And then?" Einstein3 asks.

Nulight stands up. "We'll be in touch, man. You're valuable. We'll stick together."

"Yes, we will."

Nulight takes Kappa's hand and they stroll off down the beach. Out of earshot he tells Kappa, "I kinda did and didn't like him. Sorta mental case. We'll take what we want, then dump him. What say?"

"I think Chantal was here before us."

"Why?"

"Obviously Marcia sent Chantal over to Einstein3 in an attempt to get her off this alien craze. But Einstein3 has the facts. He's
convincing.
"

Nulight's head is too tight for logistical details. Wisps of virtualsmooth riffs surge through his mind. "Music, man, why
music?
Why that Berlin club?"

Kappa says, "Do you mean, why is music the vehicle of the invasion?"

"Yeah."

Slowly, Kappa says, "Music is deep. Everybody in the whole world is wired for music. This is no amateur invasion, this is aliens putting together a
massive
plan. You were right. They don't want us to notice them, they want to act subtle, because the last thing they want is resistance."

Nulight laughs. "We'll resist them all right."

"But how?"

Now Nulight sighs. "If they're gonna attack with music, maybe we'll defend with music. I dunno. But we'll do something."

...Strawberry Fayre, late as usual...

Nulight and Kappa stroll through a sunlit Cambridge. It is noon, Saturday, no clouds in the sky, the distant rumble of cars and lorries audible, though there are none within a kilometre. They amble across Parker's Piece, through tree-lined Parkside, into Parker Street then Emmanuel Road, then across to the edge of Midsummer Common.

Before they get there they hear the warble of auton music, as local computers running off solar generators remix parasitic snippets plucked from the melodic surface of the semi-autonomous music in Berlin. The detuned strains are underpinned by the thunk-thunk of the bass drum, popular from the eighties through to the thirties, now returned as if part of the human experience: the trance.

Then they turn a corner and there it is, all bright and flag waving and wonderful, full of zippies, tech-heads, smoothers, and all the rest of this island's fabulous array of sub-cultures. The Strawberry Fayre, better late than never.

Hundreds of stalls cover the grass. The place is swarming with people holding paper cups of warm lager, cold tea, exotic fruit drinks, semi-acid, decaf. It seems to Nulight that every person is different to every other, despite the defined sub-cultures that are apparent, as if here all aspects of the drive to individuality, to freedom, can be expressed. This is the ultimate friendly place where nobody judges anyone else. It is a madness of fun.

Here they will find this major hacker that Kappa knows, this Master Sengel, he who allegedly cracked the Westminster Code and brought down the Tory Alliance, who convinced the Indian Government that they had no water, who spirited sixty billion pounds to hospitals in Scotland after independence by robbing French multi-nationals, and who apparently is invisible.

They scan the wares on offer. Senegalese drums, Philipino takeaways, stache boxes, Chinese astrology implements, lots and lots of rainbow clothes, political stalls, ethical stalls, freebooter stalls: and of course the music.

As they wander, they pass through the sonic envelopes of the various stages. The main stage is auton as that is what everybody is into, and many folks are already leaping about, dreadlocks flying, dogs barking, etcetera. But there is a virtualsmooth stage where blissed out punters stand eyes wide, tripping in many cases, and there is a globo tent decorated with sitars and sarangis, and even a retro techno booth playing Eurosomethingorother. And of course at the centre of the Strawberry Fayre lies its heart, where ancient crusties—seventy years plus—sell digital cassettes of the classics, Semiotic Stew, Hawkwind, Caitlin & Sika, and Ozric Tentacles.

Nulight has carefully tied his mane into a tail and donned shades, as here he will be recognised, but still he is spotted, and it is "Hi, man!" and "Yo, man!" and "Good to see you," and very often "Peace." For Nulight's label is greatly respected. His four main bands are stalwarts of the European Free Undergound. Strawberry Fayre is their emotional home.

Briefly paranoid he glances around for Chantal or others from Mystery Trend, but they are probably still recording in Brittany. However he has already spotted DJ Ginge from Henge Of Astral Stone.

After some hours of chomping and drinking and swaying under earthquake sub-bass, Nulight and Kappa pause by the Cam, and he asks her, "Where's this guy, then?"

"I told you to be patient," Kappa replies. "You don't spot an invisible man, do you?"

"He's really invisible?"

"He's wanted in sixty two countries. Invisibility helps."

Nulight shrugs and checks out the Indian rug stall next to the river. Some time later, Kappa nudges him and says, "He's near."

"How can you tell?"

In reply, Kappa sniffs. "I can smell him."

"What, his skin-saver? UV block? What?"

"There!" she whispers, as with her eyes she indicates a dude passing across their field of view, some twenty metres off. He is ordinary, wearing jeans and waistcoat and DMs, hair brown and spiky, and he does not stand out. Perhaps that is what is meant by invisible.

Kappa clicks her fingers at him, he notices, then approaches. "Kappa," he says in a deep voice. "And Nulight."

Nulight responds, "Man, you know me?"

"'Course."

Nulight sniffs but smells nothing unusual.

"You'll have to explain it to him," Kappa remarks.

Although Master Sengel's face is pleasant enough, it seems to possess more muscles than a merely human visage. Then he smiles and offers Nulight a blackcurrent wine gum, which Nulight accepts. Master Sengel says, "I have to be careful. My face is my defence. It's bioplastic, manipulated by chips implanted in my chest. Face chameleon, if you like, within the boundaries of physiognomy, of course. My friends know me by my smell. Only true friends know me, nobody else."

"I can't smell you," Nulight says. "Like, I'm not your friend?"

Kappa tuts. "He just explained himself, didn't he?"

"You'll join the initiates soon," Master Sengel tells Nulight. "The wine gum you just ate contained a bioactivant that will make your nose sensitive to my designer fragrance. That is how I am known—by a secret society of the nose, linked by an artificial pheromone the shape of which is known only to me. It was the world's first deliberately designed smell, you know."

"Cool," Nulight enthuses. He is beginning to get a whiff of the man, sort of somewhere between pine and musk and ozone. Indescribable, other than that.

"You get it?" Master Sengel asks.

"I can smell you, man. But you don't know me, really..."

"You are an initiate only—though you are trustworthy. My fragrance has many levels. You are one of the outer circle. Kappa can smell many layers of me."

Nulight nods, understanding.

Master Sengel says, more quietly, "And now I believe we have some business."