Chapter Eleven

Quantum Quarantine

Data was still filtering in…last minute rushlets of informational traffic as she executed her approach; her titanium etched footfall scraping out a statement of intent in the quiet empty street.

Sybil had been known, even to herself, as an open book; readily readable on sides writ large. But her awakening, that was being launched down the slipway as an ongoing process, suggested that all anyone had ever read about her were footnotes compared to the weighty tome slammed shut to library-eyed dictionary-heads. She had more to give… ‘more’ she translated as ‘infinite’ and applied a rugged, expansionist positivity to all her fantasies of realitifyable futures. After the ‘more she had to give’ had been given, her ‘take’ would get what it was due.

Outside, streetfront, looking on anticipatorily at a twinned representation of Stockholm Munchauses sat side by side, identical, barely a whimsical differentiation. Her thought alignment buffered momentarily…and kicked in, ‘Action stations,’ she said quietly, in private, but the sounds made it out into the street anyway: one last broadcast before showtime.

She honestly seemed to descend the steps; making herself abundantly clear at the weapons check-in…duplicating her actions at the same, yet different venue next door. At each check in, she used the freely available redacted space to make a copy of herself that would be sufficient to keep the jazz clubs running and the musicians therein fed and watered intellectually, spiritually and silently. 

She no longer questioned the very idea that she was being led by a handler who was the littlest doll in a Russian doll algorithm tree; the human inheritance quotient of bad god’s was irrevocably capacious. She let the naturally occurring curiosity that should be expected, wash over her and get sucked out to sea…to where, she didn’t ask.…expediency was one of her pet names. Without direction she could not promise herself she would adhere to behaviour that was exclusively beneficial; she had an aching-malignancy twin, who was secured to a bed in a ward off the wards. An inbuilt yearning for expression was bricked up in the walls of common decency that surrounded the fortress of rectitude.

Sybil donned trail shoes, lifted her dress and fair pelted back down the lane…in something like a skip ’n’ shuffle…

‘Out of metaphor comes metaphorph,’ she thought, to anyone who cared to listen. And there were ears, there were observers, she just didn’t care to see them…and all thoughts related to them were condensed and restricted behind more-trouble-than-they-seemed-worth fences.

Although there were physically no keys, the security system activated by the prospective accessee’s presentation of a key, or more accurately the imaginary actions of key holding, turning and unlocking, was meant to develop into a state of the art security system, but it was bufferslurping, lagbufferating, glitchbuffering, and just plain buffering. Anything of value would have to be pretty much nailed shut or it would be re-ownered by light-fingered billionaire customer beholders. Sybil had it; what it took to gain access…and she used it… 

The bedsit used by Kirk James, a known alias of Maxizillion Ninjaminja, was of little interest…it took a matter of seconds to unveil the military industrial complex’s attempt to infiltrate, invade and show Peace it’s marching orders. But as long as they were see-through they had no purchase… traction retarded…checkout closed.

She ascended the spiral rococo staircase and chose from the dummy hatches correctly, gaining access to the empty theatre space, which simultaneously woke with ambiential ghostliness, and thusspake in spiritual linguistic dialect; implications were insinuated… Sybil’s fabric level inclusivity led her to see a space where forces were pushing against the heaviness of being and asserting a gravitational pull on the lightness of being. She was not phased or fetched…she merely renewed her membership of the void and started integrating her diary. The extent to which other forces had control of the auditorium showed that it was not a willing part of the security arrangement; it was a burgeoning infiltration, ripe with rotten fruit that had acidic unpalatable juice it needed to impart.

Sybil took the lift down from the crow’s nest midi-entrance hall platform. G-force parameters had not been installed, at least not properly; there was no actual orientation perceptors, so when the doors opened as the cage came to a stop while coming up from the stage, she felt obliged to feign disorientation…in case the pointed empty seating of the auditorium hid within it some entity she needed to feign such things for…

Once on stage, she looked around. Some strange force was keeping her out. This was a cavern of resources…Atoll was not just a construction source, he was the source maker. As a container space it stored everything a new world builder would need. It was the local root of all… ’Stuff’ HQ.

Her perception differed from Atoll’s who probably saw an unwieldy cavernous space that he was struggling to find some understanding for…but that unfolding vision gave him a sense of purpose that paved the way to executable knowledgability, as he saw it. What Sybil could see, that Atoll could not, was the dreadful haunting. The egregious suffering of those not passed on for technical reasons of ethical and moral perversion bled at a subatomic level. Sybil did not know who or what the energy represented…her concern was not up for abduction, they were there for Atoll, to use him as a portal to the collective unconscious, for whatever reason.

The prompt to leave signalled without reservation…

Sybil pulled open the trap door in the stage. There was no call button for the lift to take her down and then up to the exit to the bedsit. She was stuck… She launched an Emergency Authorised-Feelers-Out Detection Net (EAFODN), which summarised her situation (SitSum) for her: nothing new; almost expected…she was going nowhere. ’They’ had her: in quarantine…the second most feared word beginning with ‘Q’…

Mask was working on his disanimation for the upcoming concert…the performance was to be a side by side head to head with Max, and constituted a play-off…the competition would be damagingly ferocious: a competition for losers… Losing would mean, metaphorphically, a Pernicious Terminatory Outspin (PTO) with Synthetic Lederhosen Downdrag (SLD).

Potential outcomes dried up once the communication alarm rang soundlessly inward. And worse…news came to them: the concert was to be upgraded, in a personal downgrade, to a festival. They were both invited to forward concepts and nomenclature for the event and all off-duty, off-site activities would be curtailed until after the festival: anurously curtailed…

‘Was “anurously” code?’ trended between them… Unbeknownst to each other…it turned out not to be…but that was another tale, (more of a leak from the subtext).

If Sybil was quarantined in a vital root space, then every other participating energy was in the same boat. She knew from experience that the next thing to happen would be contact by the quarantiner. Negative and Positive were being dressed for action. Sybil almost yawned thinking about the coming dilemma….why they needed constant narrative drive remained a mystery to her…She always found quarantine travailing.

She grabbed a prop seat, and sat…watching…waiting. Looked out at imagined watchers, judging, as they judged, unified and multiplying, rolling threat up into a ball for ease of delivery… Only Time could pronounce verdicts…adjust the malhumanity into something resembling justice…

Contrarily feisty as ever, Sybil was not going to feel guilty until her handlers made her…she couldn’t…but something about her company in quarantine-induced deep-reflection made her thirsty for a ladle of forbidden guilt soup…