After more than a year of striking storytelling, Sci-Fi-O-Rama is proud to reveal CG Inglis’ twelfth and final installment in “A Colour Like Orange: Stories from a Broken World“.
This series has taken us through a vivid world of high-tech experiments and urban motorcycle chases; drugs and dreams; holes in reality and people only half-there. And now we travel right to the very edge, and if the Director of the Institute has her way, through to the other side.
Read on to the conclusion of this sweeping journey in “The Director’s Voice“.
–
The same dream again: in the chain link fence a hole like a black mouth is gaping. Crouching down, the girl makes her body as small as she can. The cut ends of the fence frighten her, a ring of tines like so many sharpened teeth. She does not want to be here, not again, crawling through this hole and into the ravine beyond. That she knows it is a dream provides no comfort. Why should it? An awareness of death has spared no one from dying. She has no choice but to pass through.
In the dream she is still a girl, but it is her adult mind that watches as she exits the hole and rises to her feet. Slowly, she begins to pick her way through the underbrush. The slope is heavily forested, the uneven ground a morass of snaking roots. From behind comes the dry crack of a snapping twig: the girl freezes, heart fluttering in her narrow chest. Has someone followed her through the hole? There is no sound but the whisper of branches. With a groaning effort she wills her younger self to go on. Serrated leaves, half glimpsed, slip over her exposed skin. Raising her arms in front of her face, she forces one foot in front of the other. After a time, she emerges from the trees. In front of her is the wall of stones.
It rises perhaps a foot above the girl’s head. Encircled by the woods, the wall’s rough, interlocking stones are spotted with clinging moss. Once through the hole, all paths lead here. The architecture of the dream is like a labyrinth with a single heart. Over the years she has grown resigned to it, always seeking the quickest way, the most efficient. She no longer wastes time fighting. Past the hole, direction loses all meaning. Whether clambering down to the foot of the ravine or ascending the far slope, in the end she must arrive at the wall. There is no way around it, just as there is no avoiding what awaits on the far side. Swallowing her fear, once more the girl hauls herself up and over the stones.
A clearing is spread before her, the grass bathed in an orange glow as soft as dying flames. In the center of this place there is a flower, and its petals are the source of the light. Three glowing petals, as long as fingers and as flat as knives, droop from a delicate stalk. Stepping closer, the girl can just make out the hole. It rests between the petals, a small, black hole piercing the flower’s empty stalk. Somehow, she is certain that the hole extends all the way down to the roots. Under the ground, there exist a series of hollow, grasping veins, each one of them boring deeper and further into the earth. That darkness pulls at the girl. It calls to her. Heart beating madly in its cage, her feet begin to slip forward. Inch by inch, she is being dragged into the hole at the flower’s heart, dragged down into emptiness. Her mouth opens to scream, but before she can make a sound, a hand drops onto her shoulder, pulling her back from the edge.
“Light!” says a voice. Instantly the room appears: her bed with its blinding white sheets, the desk and lamp in the far corner, the porcelain cup of water on the nightstand. She is sitting up, gasping for breath. The hand is still there, squeezing her shoulder. She looks at the man who shares her bed. A man in the prime of his life, long-limbed and muscular, with skin the colour of polished wood. His brow is lined with worry.
“The dream again,” he says. He is naked, the blankets twisted around his legs. The touch of his hand on her skin is uncomfortably hot; a flick of her eyes in its direction, and he removes it. She disentangles herself from the sheets. Rising, she takes the cup of water and downs it in a series of slow, methodical gulps. The floor is cool under her feet, its evenness disorienting; she had half-expected to encounter the ravine’s steep slope, or a gnarled confusion of roots. There is a layer of sweat on her back, and her heart is still racing.
The man watches as she crosses the room. A single, towering window spans the entirety of the south wall. Standing before it, the woman looks out at the dreaming city. Beneath a brooding sky, a sea of high-rises extends to the horizon.
He can read the tension in her body, the shallow rise and fall of her shoulders as she struggles to control her breathing. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, the man goes to her, making sure to keep a respectful distance; he knows she doesn’t like to be touched after a nightmare. The hand he’d placed on her shoulder earlier had been an instinctive reaction, her tortured breathing and twitching limbs pulling him from sleep. Now she needs time to return, to reorient herself in their shared reality. He examines her reflection in the glass, the bright, slim shape of her body against the skyline. Her hands are moving in a complicated series of signs. The man exhales.
“You mean to go ahead with it,” he says.
As the woman’s hands and her fingers continue to dance, her expression softens.
“I know,” he answers. “The world is broken.”
She has said the same thing many times. They are living in a broken world. At least, that is the word he uses to translate the particular cut and fall of her right hand over the palm of her left, fingers rigid, thumb tucked. Even for him, the woman’s signing is complex; another interpretation might be cracked, or possibly sick, as if the world were a thing of glass or infected organism. He knows about the holes cut in the fabric of their universe, the visitors from parallel worlds who have arrived in untold numbers, invisible and untamed. Outsiders, people call them, and they are not the worst of it. Somewhere in the night are gashes like festering wounds, dark creatures dredged out of dreams, parasites feasting on the flesh of their hosts. He has seen such things with his own eyes. His work will not permit him to look away.
“I know how bad it is,” he goes on. “I just wish there was another way.”
The woman turns to him. Her body is small, not much larger than that of a child, and her head reaches only up as far as his chest. As the director of the Institute for Applied Research, she is arguably the most powerful individual in the capital. In this room, tormented by dreams she has never thought to share with him, she becomes something else. Less than that perhaps, and more. Once again, she signs a response.
The man sighs.
“All right,” he says. “Let’s go back to bed.”
Taking his hand, the director leads him there.
–
“There are threads between individuals, strands linking one life to another. Some of these have names: family, obligation, love. Others, though anonymous, are no less powerful. All of us are caught in a great net of interactions, and even the most tenuous connection may have a profound effect on the whole. Faced with such a truth, it is tempting to believe we are granted some measure of control, but that is an illusion. Does water set out to flow downhill? Do spiders plan the pattern of their webs?
–Excerpt from the director’s preface to The Psychology of Fate
When she was 9 years old, the girl ran away from home.
Her parents were fighting again. She stood in the hall and listened to the sound of their violence and knew that sooner or later it would fall on her. She made no decision; she simply ran, first from the apartment, and then out of the building. She had no direction in mind, no place to go. She fled into the street.
Hours later, her mother found her in an empty parking lot. Head tilted back, the girl stood in the orange pool of light at the foot of a street lamp. Dirt covered her small body, and a few damp leaves clung to her hair. She seemed to be in shock. Roughly, her mother held her, demanding to know what had happened. At last a tremor passed through the girl; her lips moved, but no sound emerged. Confusion swept into her face. Tears welling in her eyes, she tried again. Mouth stretched in a wide O, the muscles in her neck straining, she attempted to cry out. But there was nothing. No sigh or exclamation escaped her. She could not even produce a moan. It was as if the spring of her voice had run dry.
She told this story to her translator soon after they began sleeping together. Most of it he already knew. The director of the Institute for Applied Research is a public figure, and in her case, as a mute and as a woman, the attention was magnified. Celebrated both for her scientific achievements as well as her successes in business, the broad strokes of director’s life were well-documented, but the details she revealed only to him, to the man they called her voice. She warned him not to assume this meant her version was the truth. No one ever lies so completely as they do to themselves.
As a girl, she refused to articulate what had happened. Her parents’ increasingly desperate questions went unanswered. She would not even draw a likeness of what she’d experienced. Whatever took place on the night she ran away remained buried in the past. A thorough examination confirmed there was no physical cause for her condition: her vocal chords were undamaged, and she had suffered no significant trauma to the head. There was no evidence of assault, sexual or otherwise. The attending physician recommended a therapist, but the girl’s parents could not afford the cost. Feebly, they placed their faith in time to heal her. Instead, the girl’s silence worked its own strange magic. In the months that followed, her parents’ arguments grew less frequent, and her father’s temper cooled. Long days passed in the small apartment with no one saying a word. For better and worse, the threads that bound them together began to unravel. More and more often, the girl was left on her own.
She had always been clever, but now it was if a fog had lifted from her mind. Learning to sign came easily, and the lack of a voice did not prevent her from performing well in school. In some respects that only made things harder; utterly silent and exceptionally bright, the other children labeled her a freak. Swallowing her anger as well as her pride, she approached her adolescence with the grim resolve of a prisoner.
Release came in the form of a scholarship to Capital University, but even there she strayed toward the margins of student life. Though the corridors and lecture halls brimmed with the golden offspring of the city’s elite, she did her best to avoid them, preferring the company of those who walked a sharper road: the survivors of abuse and the disabled; the queer, the racialized, the outcast. In their shared otherness, she discovered community. These were her peers, if not exactly her equals. Intellectually, she knew that not even her professors could match her. This was no arrogance on her part. She simply saw the world more clearly than they did. In gaps she drew connections, and where others believed in solid ground, she knew the void. In less than three years she completed a double major in physics and philosophy. By the time she was 26, she had earned her PhD. Targeted early on by the Institute’s head-hunters, she signed a contract of employment the day after her graduation.
She excelled at whatever work she was given. Her name appeared on a steady stream of published articles. Grants were raised, patents applied for. Her silence was no longer a limitation; with a smile or well-placed touch, she made herself known to those around her. The quality of her mind spoke for itself, and the Institute’s frequent testing only served to quantify what her colleagues already knew: as well as being a genius, she had blossomed into a natural leader. At 34, she became the youngest director in the organization’s history.
By almost any measure, her life was a success. She had money, and status, and the authority to pursue whatever intellectual pursuit she found most meaningful. None of this mattered. At night, she was torn from sleep by silent screams. Sweat covered, she lay prone in the overheated prison of her bed. Inside her, the shadow of her childhood lurked like a slumbering beast, and from time to time as it stirred, all the old wounds threatened to open. She could still hear her mother’s cutting voice, still feel the pounding of her father’s fist against her bedroom door. With utter clarity, she saw the black heart of the flower. Its pull was unrelenting, and some days it was all she could do not to fall.
More than anything, she wanted a way out; the depth of her mind and the sharpness of her intellect were as much a curse as a gift. She understood all too well that she was broken. Like a malignant organ, trauma is stitched within the body. It can never be excised, not fully, but she thought its influence might be dampened. There had never been a problem she couldn’t solve; she would find a way to repair herself.
As a first step, she undertook a regulated program of antidepressants and psychiatric analysis. In session, she held nothing back. Dormant emotions sparked and frothed in the frantic movement of her arms and fingers. Foremost was the deep well of rage she possessed towards her father, and the abuse she’d suffered at his hands. More surprising was the anger she still had for her mother. She resented the woman for her failure to leave, for setting her father off in the first place, for her weakness. It was disturbing to see these feelings made manifest, but if this represented a sort of breakthrough, the director soon understood that nothing had changed. Her voice was still missing. She was no closer to being free. Over one wall, confronted by the next. She had no choice but to expand the limits of her approach.
She became a participant in the Institute’s ongoing experiments with hallucinogens. Overriding the objections of some of her more conservative colleagues, she underwent controlled trips with psilocybin. Regular micro doses of dimethyltryptamine were administered at 2 milligram / kilo of body weight. On her orders, a massive sensory deprivation tank was constructed, the water precisely calibrated to match her body temperature. The ceiling of the tank was comprised of a state-of-the-art LED display, and a radical psychologist and former video artist was contracted to produce a series of images designed to stimulate certain pressure points in her psyche. A threshold dose of LSD was administered twice a month. She spent hours floating in the tank, staring at the screen and observing the reflections in her internal mirror; locks were discovered, and keys fashioned or fused into existence. There was self; there was non-self. The universe was a plane of translucent colour on the surface of an ever-expanding wave. At the same time it was a thing of matter and emptiness, as rutted and pock-marked as a fading stretch of pavement. She grew aware of the cracks in her world, the yawning pits. How could anyone hope to remain whole in such a place? It was not her fault that she was broken. It was no one’s fault. She went far on these chemical journeys. It was never far enough.
The mind resides in the body, and she turned her focus there; applying a holistic program to her cellular health, the director ingested supplements such as DHA+, acetyl-L-carnitine, and enriched magnesium. An hour of each afternoon she spent with a personal trainer from the low continent. Together, they drilled advanced prana-muscular techniques optimized through statistical analysis. Micro-processors were subdermally implanted in key muscle groups, and A.I. was utilized to construct a working model of her kinetic functions. An experimental enzyme was administered through use of eye-drops in an effort to promote neuroplastic regeneration. She did not smoke. She didn’t drink. As well as she was able, she tuned her body like a machine.
Sex was a necessary and enjoyable element in this process. The muscular control she developed in her training enabled a heightened level of pleasure, both for herself, as well as her partners. Chemical experimentation produced orgasms so powerful they seemed to pierce the center of her consciousness. Fusing her body with another (or several others, she was not limited by any sense of societal taboo) she felt herself suspended in reality. Climaxing, a beam of clear light shot from a point between her legs to the utmost limits of her nervous system. Open-mouthed, writhing, she still could not moan; even the exhalation of breath was muted. Long after the act was finished, lying naked next to the somnolent flesh of her partners, she remained awake, examining the contours of her own emptiness.
Throughout all of this she continued to dream. Night after night she approached the wall of stones. In an endless loop, she was confronted by the flower and dragged ever close to the hole in its heart. Meanwhile the cracks in her world grew wider; as the government dithered, outsiders poured in. Protests erupted across the city. Everyone had an answer, but no one had a plan. Meanwhile the environment was left to rot; oceans rose; mass die-outs occurred. Just like everyone else, she found herself trapped in a dying world.
Regardless, she would tolerate no disruption in the quality of her work. Under her leadership the Institute experienced the longest sustained period of growth since its founding. But for all her achievements, what had she accomplished? Some balance in her life, and a financial windfall for the Institute’s shareholders. No matter how far she went, in the end she was bound by her own limitations. The mind cannot outrun itself, and a broken world will never fully heal. In her weakest moments, she thought of giving up. Then came the discovery of powder.
The miners who stumbled across the vein had no idea what they’d found. Specialists summoned from the university were equally lost. A series of ever more complex tests produced no answers. Carbon dating proved useless. The substance was neither organic nor mineral. Apparently it existed in a liminal state. Dry as bone, fine as dust. Orange, the miners called it, but it was not orange. A substance without a name; a mind-altering chemical; a bridge or gateway between realities. The director recognized it immediately. Its colour was the same as the light that filled her dreams. In powder, she now possessed the means to pass beyond limits.
–
Our world is not unique. There are others, very much like this one, existing just beyond our perception. Parallel realities, infinite universes. They are not far away. They are here, now, occupying the very same space and time as our own. This is astounding, and it is not all: the borders are not secure. Institute technicians have already confirmed the arrival of visitors from at least one other world. As the realization of such truths enters the public consciousness, we can expect to encounter any number of destabilizing effects. Bonds that have proven stable for centuries will loosen, and political and social unrest will be the inevitable result. Dealing with the fallout will require a tremendous commitment of material and logistical resources, which the Institute for Applied Research is in a prime position to procure and supply. I’ve come before you today to offer our help.
-Excerpt from the director’s address to the governing seat
The press conference is running long. Again, the translator checks his watch: already a quarter after nine. He was scheduled to meet the reporter fifteen minutes ago, but behind the podium, William Tanning, head of the Tanning Corporation, is still blathering away about production capacity at the mines. An audible sigh escapes the translator.
“It’s alright sir. We’ve got things under control here.”
This whispered to him from the attending PR rep. The translator searches his memory for the man’s name, and comes up with Stevens. Hired less than a year ago, he is a graduate from Capital University; young, slightly too eager to please, but competent enough. The translator places a hand on the back of the man’s broad shoulder.
“Thank you Stevens.”
Smoothly, he circles around the gathered members of the media. He has already spotted the reporter at the edge of the crowd. A woman in her mid to late 20s, not tall, with straight blonde hair shaved close to the sides of a narrow head. She stands a little apart from her colleagues, speaking into a phone. Taking notes no doubt, recording her “impressions.”
In preparation for today’s meeting, the translator has read everything this woman has ever written, all the way back to her days working on the student paper at her local high school. A solipsistic writer with the bad habit of incorporating herself into her work, recently she has garnered a kind of muted celebrity through a series of exposes on the Institute. “Sadie’s Lens”: the translator snorts under his breath. It’s a bad joke. He has no idea why the director insisted on grooming an independent blogger when any number of major news outlets would have worked as well. There is so much about the director he will never understand, and the reality of what she has chosen is a constant weight on his mind; for everyone else this is all business as usual, a simple news conference. Only he knows what’s truly at stake, and the knowledge is like a thorn in his gut. It pricks at him, constantly, and the acid in his stomach is churning. Still, it is his job to project an aura of calm. The director’s voice must never waver.
Affixing his most professional smile, he approaches the woman.
“On behalf of the director, please allow me to apologize for the delay.”
The reporter smiles back at him.
“It’s not a problem,” she says. “You must be Marcus.”
The man raises an eyebrow. His name does not appear on any official Institute publication. Inevitably, he is referred to by his title of translator. Following the same grueling schedule as the director, it has been a very long time since anyone outside of his immediate circle has used his name.
“I see you’ve done your homework.”
The woman shrugs. Her eyes have already shifted back to the scene in front of them. At the podium, Tanning is finally wrapping up his speech.
“The Institute’s unparalleled technical expertise, coupled with three generations of practical experience at the Tanning Corporation, will ensure a bright future for the northern mines, as well as its community. What’s more, I would like to express my personal gratitude to the director for facilitating this partnership. Thank you.”
Flashes spark from cameras; hands are raised, and words spray from the crowd. Head lowered, the graying man retreats from the podium. In his place, the Institute’s beaming PR rep steps forward to begin taking questions.
Next to the translator, the reporter swipes a note into her cellphone.
“Partnership is an optimistic term for such a one-sided deal,” she says.
“By all accounts, Tanning is an optimist,” the translator replies.
“Powder is a valuable commodity, and as far as anyone can tell, Tanning’s mines are the only proven source. Now, for the first time in his family’s history, he’s sold extraction rights to an outside organization? Seems more like a capitulation to me.”
“He owed the director a favour,” the translator says simply.
“Yes?”
“His son found himself in a little trouble, and we were in a position to help.”
Now it is the reporter’s turn to register surprise. The man’s smile loosens by several degrees.
“Did you expect us to obfuscate? The director believes in transparency. That’s why you’re here, after all. Come, she’s waiting for you.”
With a short gesture, he indicates the way. Together they cross the lobby. The space is massive, with towering ceilings and a curving series of windows that allow for a great deal of natural light. The iridescent walls recall mother of pearl, while the floor is composed of interlocking panels of semi-translucent plastic. Beneath them, the building’s plumbing is faintly visible, as well as its electrical wiring. Transparency; the reporter enters the word into her phone. To her left, a pair of lovely female attendants rise from behind a reception desk. They nod to the translator, twin sets of lips softly curling. Demure, the reporter swipes, and affected. Here is one face of the Institute; its darker side is well-hidden. There is no visible evidence of security, no patrolling agent. Even the surveillance cameras have been kept hidden. From the corner of her eye, the reporter studies the translator. His suit is immaculate, a brass pin embossed with the Institute’s logo at his lapel. He moves with measured, purposeful strides, but despite his studied calm, she is aware of an unmistakable tension around his eyes.
“I understand you’ve been working closely with the director for several years now,” she says.
“Three years next month.”
“Her work ethic is legendary. Do you ever find yourself struggling to keep up?”
“All the time,” the man says.
“It must be tiring.”
“I find it rewarding.”
“Is it alright that I’m asking you questions?”
“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”
“One more then. Your official title is translator, but popularly you’re known as the director’s voice. I’ve always wondered how that term struck you.”
He glances at her.
“The director speaks through her signing, and in her written work. It would be more accurate to think of me as a glorified mouthpiece.”
The man has brought her to the head of a narrow corridor. There is no sign of an exit, no stairwell or door, only a simple, electronic keypad placed at chest height. As the translator presses his thumb to the pad, a section of the wall glides noiselessly forward. Behind is a small partition, large enough for two or three people to stand comfortably.
“After you,” the translator instructs.
Frowning, the reporter steps inside. If this is an elevator, it has no control panel, nor any display to indicate the floor. The translator’s entry causes the wall panel to slip cleanly into place. The man stands to one side, hands clasped behind his back, eyes on his polished shoes. The reporter clears her throat; concentrating, she strains to detect any sense of motion, but they might as well be standing in a closet. For a moment, she closes her eyes.
She is still amazed that any of this is happening. When the call came from the Institute, she assumed it would be from their legal team. For more than a year now, she has been investigating the organization, dragging whatever she could into the light: clandestine business deals, bizarre experimentation, interviews with traumatized former subjects. She has always believed that her work made her a target, but now she isn’t so sure. Say what you will about the director, the woman has never been careless. Doubt runs like a fissure in the mind, and the more the reporter considers the implausibility of her present situation, the wider it grows. Coming here, she was prepared to be used. There’s nothing remarkable about a corporation piggybacking on the supposed authenticity of an outsider’s voice. But is that all this is? Until now, she has remained at a distance, interviewing others, recording their stories. Now she is inside of a story of her own, and she has no idea how it will end.
All at once she grows aware of the smell of flowers.
“This way please.”
Her eyes snap open: the translator is standing to one side of the open door. Stretching behind him is some sort of industrial complex, a sprawling, concrete enclosure of metal pipes and narrow walkways. Dozens of masked, white-suited technicians scurry between banks of blinking machines. The flowers’ sweet aroma hangs heavy in the air, and more faintly, an iron tang of blood.
“Where are we?”
It is all she can think of to say. The translator has removed a pair of surgical masks from a dispenser next to the door. Without a word, he places one behind his ears, and hands her the other. In a kind of daze, the reporter covers the lower half of her face. Her finger is already swiping a series of notes into her cellphone: flowers, technicians, masks. A sound reminiscent of the hum of an insect hive surrounds them; muted conversations; the clap and scuffle of boots on concrete. The translator steps briskly forward, and the reporter does her best to keep up.
“This building acts as our head office, but as you can see it also houses one of our main research facilities,” the translator informs her. “We are about a hundred meters below ground.”
Perhaps muffled by his mask, the man’s voice is strangely altered. Stilted somehow, and less composed. He almost sounds like a different person, but the beautifully tailored suit is identical, and his body is unchanged. Of course it is the same man; it’s only that she’s disoriented, struggling to process the abrupt change in setting.
“I thought the interview would take place in a board room, or the director’s office,” the reporter says.
“I don’t believe we said anything about an interview. It’s best not to assume anything where the director is concerned. She wants you here as a witness.”
The reporter’s brow tightens.
“A witness to what?”
“The director will explain everything.”
By now they have reached the midpoint of the complex. In front of them is a hemispherical dome, its design vaguely reminiscent of a greenhouse. Orange light filters softly through the plastic tenting. The reporter thinks of it as plastic, but up close she realizes that the material’s texture is closer to skin. A circular orifice – a door? – stands to their right, and a keypad. Again, Marcus presses his thumb to the sensor. The door’s series of interlocking panels unfurl in silence. Beyond is another circular door. The reporter stumbles to land on the word: an airlock. They have entered an airlock, but one seemingly carved from the flesh of an animal. To their right is a rack of hanging goggles. Calmly, the translator removes a set and places them over his eyes. With a flick of his hand, he indicates that the reporter should do the same. Thick rubber clings and scrapes along the side of her head as she drags the lenses over her eyes. Looking up, she is suddenly aware of hundreds of orange particles wafting through the air.
“Is that pollen?” she asks, but the translator ignores her.
“Hold still,” he instructs. “This next part might sting a little.”
A violent eruption of hissing air enfolds her. Her hair whips across the top of her head, and every inch of exposed skin tingles as if under an electric current. She does not dare inhale. Abruptly, the hissing ceases. The opposite lock is unsealing. The translator makes enough room for the reporter to step forward; as she passes beneath the dome, the breath is torn from her throat.
Before her is a wall of hanging flowers, three-petaled and glowing. Orange as flame, she thinks, or orange like the glare of a street lamp. And then: caught in the midst of the bouquet, the severed torso of a hanging man. Bare-chested, a series of wires extend from puncture points on both sides of his shaved skull. A breathing apparatus covers his mouth and nose. His eyes are closed, his arms stretched wide, his hands enveloped in blossoms. A purple line cuts the right side of his face from forehead to cheek. Heavy cables suspend him. Oil-like, they slip through the flowers to reach the pollen-dusted floor. Even through her mask, the reeking perfume of rust and blood fills the reporter’s nostrils.
Belatedly, she grows aware of the woman standing at the base of the wall. Next to her is a complicated apparatus, an operating table equipped with a computer terminal and several cables of its own. Robed in white, head shaved to the scalp, the woman is not much larger than a child. She wears no mask or goggles. Her expression is serene. One porcelain hand is raised in welcome.
–
Taking powder, there is no high, no rush. It has healed nothing in me, and will not return my voice. It only makes clear what should have been apparent all along: everything is broken. I know now that my goal was never to repair myself. I was only looking for a way out.
–Entry in the director’s personal journal
The director watches as her translator ushers the reporter inside the dome, one guiding hand resting lightly on the young woman’s shoulder. Over the constant hum of the machinery, she cannot hear the man’s whispered voice, but she knows how it must sound: soothing and direct, the perfect foil for such a surreal environment. How must it be for the girl, now that she has finally arrived? The reporter was groomed for this moment, her investigations quietly aided, her notoriety fostered by the Institute itself. It must have seemed a great stroke of luck when her former roommates found work with the organization, one as an agent, and the other as a research coordinator. Over the years, both have proven willing sources. Or did the reporter not believe in luck? In any case, up to this point, she has seen only what she was permitted to see, learned what the director wished her to know. The time has come to pull back the veil.
Like a weaver tugging at strings, the director’s hands begin to move.
“What do you see?”
The translator’s words cut like a whip; the reporter blinks, one unsteady hand rising to her jaw.
“I -,” she starts. “I don’t understand.”
“Tell me what you see in front of you.”
It is the man who speaks, but there is no doubt that these are the director’s words. The translator’s face has gone blank, and once again his voice has changed. Suddenly it is higher pitched, almost lilting. It is as he said: in the end he is only a mouthpiece. Sadie’s eyes dart quickly to the naked torso hanging in the flowers. She looks again at the line cut from the man’s skull.
“An outsider,” she says, her voice wavering.
The hint of a smile plays on the director’s unpainted lips. Her hands are flashing signals.
“A visitor from another universe,” comes the voice of the translator.
“He’s alive?” It emerges as a question, but already the reporter is nodding. “I can see him breathing.”
“Technically alive. Our equipment maintains his heart rate and lower motor functions. What remains of his mind is drifting, lost inside an endless dream. He will never regain consciousness.”
“A dream?”
The reporter frowns; her heart is racing. One thought replaces the next with a jerking, mechanical heave. She should be recording this, writing it down. She reaches into her pocket for her phone.
“Please refrain from using your device.”
Again, the command cuts deep. The reporter stands frozen as the director approaches her. A finely-wrought hand is extended; instinctively, the reporter offers her own. The director’s skin is cool, almost lifeless. She turns the reporter’s hand, and presses the tip of a thumb into the center of her upraised palm. Eyes closed, the director’s face tenses in concentration. The reporter releases a breath she had not been aware of holding. Gentle as an outgoing tide, her shock begins to fade. Once more, the director signals her translator.
“What do you dream of Sadie?” the man asks in the director’s stead.
The pollen in the air is like a wash of static. Its vacillation is hypnotic, and the reporter can feel herself sinking. She shakes her head, trying to clear it. Her dreams are anxious, uncomfortable, crowded by mirrors and odd premonitions.
“I try not to,” she mutters. As the director’s hands flash, the translator speaks:
“A shame. The dreamer is receptive in ways that a conscious mind is not. In dreams, that fiction we spin by living, the myth of the self, begins to unravel. The boundaries grow thin. Thoughts filter in from the outside, new ideas mingling with those we naively believe are our own. My dreams have followed me into this very room. The flowers you see growing here are exceedingly rare. I first encountered one on the night I lost my voice, and have been dreaming of them ever since.”
The reporter lifts and turns her hand; weightless and immaterial, grains of the shining pollen begin to accumulate on her open palm.
“What are they?” she asks.
“The flowers do not have a name,” the director replies through her translator. “At least, there is no name that I’ve ever heard. Across the greater sea, the plant grows in only one location, a certain cave on the edge of the desert. The sap has hallucinogenic properties, and low continent mystics have made use of it for centuries. But the blossoms are far more potent, and achieving bloom in such quantities requires an incredible amount of fertilizer.”
“Fertilizer,” the reporter echoes. “You mean powder.”
The woman nods, urging her to continue.
“So that explains the deal with Tanning. You needed a guaranteed supply.”
The director’s smile brightens.
“You see the threads intertwining? Good. I have spent years tending this garden. The process itself took on some of the properties of a dream, full of its own twisting, fragmentary logic. Now that the flowers are finally in bloom, I hardly know what to feel. It is a very curious thing, to see one’s dreams made manifest.”
The reporter brushes a loose strand of hair from her forehead. In her pocket, one thumb is busy working over the surface of her phone. Threads intertwining, she thinks, and dreams. Through the translator, the director goes on:
“Have you ever wondered how the outsiders arrive here?”
Again, the reporter glances at the hanging man. Inevitably, her eyes are drawn by the line that runs like a fine chasm from forehead to cheek. There is, she now sees, a tube extending from the tip of that line. Flesh-toned, the tube rises along the outsider’s forehead to disappear into the flowers. Its sudden appearance is unsettling. Has it been there the whole time? The reporter can no longer trust her memory.
“Most outsiders claim they fall in,” she answers, still staring at the line. Inside its limitless depth there is the barest suggestion of movement. Calm waves breaking across an endless sea.
“That’s right,” the director says. “Like a dream, our world is porous, but when the outsiders slip in through the cracks, they do so incompletely. They are not fully here. Some part remains behind, stretching like a fine thread back to their own universe. An outsider’s line is like a tunnel that follows that thread. The work we’ve done here, this garden and all the equipment we have developed by tending it, everything was done in an effort to enter that tunnel. To pass from our side to theirs.”
The reporter takes one step toward the wall. In the strange light of the flowers, what remains of the outsider’s body is cast in exquisite detail, less a thing of flesh and blood than the hyper-realistic model of a man.
“So that’s what this is,” she remarks bitterly. “Another experiment. You brought me here to watch some guinea pig travel to another dimension.”
Some strength has returned to her voice. She can feel the old habits reasserting themselves, the rhythm of call and response. She will not allow herself to be overawed. Once again, the director smiles.
“I brought you here to watch me do so.”
Pronouncing this, the translator’s voice catches; the reporter rounds on him, but the mask and goggles prevent her from reading his face. Only the tension in his body betrays his emotion. He’s terrified, the reporter realizes.
“Why?”
The director moves to stand before her translator. Lightly, she places a hand on his chest. The man will not look at her. For a moment, a gust of emotion threatens to crumble the director’s composure. Then she is turning to the reporter, and once again her hands begin to speak:
“Picture a locked room. There are no doors or any windows. What is there inside? It could be anything, or nothing. From the outside, there is only potential, an oscillation between one and zero. Now imagine a hole being drilled into one of the walls. Through this hole, light enters the room, illuminating its contents. Suddenly there are things: a bed, a desk, a cup of water. Did they exist before the light revealed them to us? In an instant, potential is given form. Such is consciousness; our perception of ourselves, and of the world, is the light that illumines existence. For a thing to be, it must be perceived.”
An ache has appeared behind the reporter’s eyes. Her hand twitches with the urge to write. A locked room, she thinks, and perception.
“It’s a nice metaphor,” she manages. “But it doesn’t answer my question.”
“Nothing exists in a vacuum. The object necessitates its subject. So it is with what we call our universe. We have all been living in the locked room. A thing does not perceive itself in isolation. Until the arrival of the outsiders, all of us were mere potential. It took their gaze to make us real.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. Reports of the outsiders only began cropping up in the last few years.”
The director’s shoulders rise in the barest shrug. She steps away from the translator.
“It’s possible the outsiders have always been here, unseen and unheard, wandering like lonely ghosts. It was only the discovery of powder that revealed them to us, just as it revealed the state of our world. To return to our metaphor, holes have been punched in a wall. Inside the room, light falls on a collection of useless objects. The plaster is cracking, the paint chipped. Water drips from a sagging ceiling. Mould has sprouted in the room’s damp corners. And this is where we find ourselves, trapped in a decaying room. How can anything flourish here? Is it any wonder so many of us are broken?”
The director spreads her hands. She has positioned herself next to the apparatus at the foot of the wall. The light of the flowers slants across her narrow face.
“Its all falling apart you know,” she goes on. “The rot is in the foundation. Every day brings us closer to the end. Why do you think that so many outsiders are looking for a way out? We can try to repair the cracks, fix the leaking pipes. Wrap a bandage around the wound. That’s what I’ve been doing all these years. Maintenance. But in the end, no matter how many cracks are filled or holes papered over, the world will collapse around us. I want to offer people hope. I want to give them a way out.”
A short laugh escapes the reporter. Absently, she tugs at the goggles where the rubber strap bites into the side of her head.
“So the answer is travelling to another dimension? What makes you so sure your plan will work? Or that the other side is any better?”
The director raises her eyes.
“I can’t know,” she says through her translator. “All I can do is jump, and I will not ask someone to do it for me. Even if this trial is successful, it will not be my body that crosses, but my consciousness. In time, perhaps, we will perfect the technique, but it is my life’s work, and my responsibility.”
The reporter jabs a finger in the direction of the hanging man.
“And did he get a say in any of this? You get his consent before you cut him in half and strung him up on a wall?”
The director turns to the outsider. In the woman’s soft expression, the reporter recognizes something like pity.
“His current state is not our doing,” the translator says on her behalf. “Think of the life the outsiders lead in our world, constantly out of phase, present and absent at once. This man dreamed of going home. To that end, he attempted to cut a hole in the world. He had to know that such an act could be dangerous. If only he’d come to us, we might have been able to help.”
“Right,” the reporter mutters. “Because the Institute is famous for its generosity.”
For the first time, the director’s face darkens. An edge of frustration enters the complex movement of her hands. As her fingers dance, the translator’s words fall in rapid succession:
“Our world is broken. You know this. You have only to look around to see it. The longer we wait, the wider the cracks grow. More than outsiders are coming. You’ve reported on some of it yourself, the dark things lurking in dreams, parasites and monsters. Has it all been a game to you? You recorded your subjects’ words, but were you listening? Look around. Night after night, protests clog the streets, and for what? There are no solutions. The only way forward is out. Whatever awaits on the far side, we have no choice but to cross over. Object must become subject. I brought you here because we needed a witness. You do not have to agree, but you will watch. It is all you can do.”
The director’s hands fall silent. She nods at the translator. Lifting the hem of her robe, she raises herself onto the apparatus and lies flat on the table. The translator is at her side. For a moment she clasps his hand. He has always been loyal; her decision to leave has hurt him badly, and still he follows. At least when she is gone, he will be able to speak in his own voice.
From the flowers, the translator removes a length of cable. At its end is a strange, misshapen object made of the same organic material as the tenting that covers the dome. On the apparatus, the director’s clear eyes shine with reflected light, two orange pools caught in a narrow face. Carefully, the translator places the end of the cable on her forehead, his fingers working to conform the skin-like substance to the contours of her skull. She is now connected to the wall and to the outsider hanging in the blossoms. Already she can feel the waves of his dream lapping against the shore of her mind.
She is ready. Everything that was set in motion has arrived in place. Nothing was left to chance; arrangements have been made for the transition of power. The Institute is no better than anything else in this world, no less broken, but it has a function, and she has done her best to make sure that it goes on functioning well. There is nothing left to give. The hole stands waiting. All that’s left is to pass through.
Raising her head, the director looks at the reporter. Her hands produce a simple sign:
“Goodbye,” the translator says, as he flips a switch on the side of the apparatus.
Searing light flares from the blossoms; air rushes past, a great set of lungs exhaling. Hands raised to cover her eyes, the reporter cries out. Her feet slip over the concrete floor as she is pulled toward the wall of flowers. On the table, the director is losing focus. One by one, the bonds that hold her begin to uncouple. She is like a loose impression of a woman, a rough sketch done by an unsure hand. All around her is glaring, incandescent. A colour without a name.
–
I returned to the surface with the translator. I have no memory of our movement through the underground facility, or of taking the elevator back to the lobby. My mind was full with what I had witnessed. I watched again as the director’s body shook against the table, the cable attached to her head pulsing with strange energy. A final spasm passed through her. Her mouth gaped wide as her eyes emptied. She was gone.
Through the glare of the blossoms I could just make out the outsider. Something moved inside his line, a shape like the shadow of a thought. I want to believe it was the director, that brilliant, broken mind making its way along the tunnel to another world. Could such a sacrifice be worth it? More than outsiders are coming, the director had said, and I believe her. There is always more to come. A more penetrating darkness. A more blinding light.
They say the director’s voice was taken on the night she ran away. As I walked toward the station, I thought of her as a young girl, living in the apartment she shared with her parents. How must it have been for her to run? To burst into the night without direction or purpose? For one moment, in leaving everything behind, she was free.
I tried to imagine her as she was then, flickering through the darkened streets. Already new bonds are being forged, new constraints. Somewhere, a blossom stems from a crack in a wall. Three glowing petals fall from its stalk. The light catches the little girl’s eyes. In the center of the blossom there is a hole. The child stands before it, transfixed. She reaches out with a delicate hand. The hole widens in welcome. Slowly, her fingers are taken, and then her wrist. Her arm is swallowed next, and still she presses forward. She is not afraid. Whatever awaits on the far side can be no worse than what she leaves behind.
Maybe our world is ending. I don’t have the knowledge or authority to say. But about one thing, the director was right. In our own way, we are all like her. Damaged people living in a broken world…
The cursor blinks steadily against the white background. The reporter reads over what she has written, her face bathed in the light of the screen. She has no idea how to finish the piece. For now, she rises and walks to the window. The night has gone quiet, the protests passed on. Loose bits of trash, discarded placards and water bottles, lie scattered over the pavement. In the distance, a few columns of black smoke rise above the line of houses. A lone helicopter prowls the bruised sky, its searchlight sweeping in shallow arcs.
A dim figure has entered the circle of light at the foot of the street lamp. An old woman, possibly homeless, pushing a cart piled high with old shopping bags. For a second, as if sensing the reporter’s gaze, the woman looks up. The reporter cannot make out her face. Then the woman is turning, passing into the shadow of a neighboring alley. Within seconds, she is gone.
The reporter closes her eyes. She pictures a hole, its edges crackling with strange light. There has to be a way out, she thinks. A brief shudder passes through her, and she smiles.
She has found the words to end on.
–
Sci-Fi-O-Rama has been incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to publish “A Colour Like Orange: Stories from a Broken World“. It is bittersweet to see this adventure come to a close! Our collaboration with CG Inglis is not quite done, however. Soon we will be releasing the entire story series as a consolidated and re-edited e-book for download from our blog. CG’s dedicated readers may even find some new content that further develops this remarkable world.
Our heartfelt thanks to CG Inglis for sharing this work with us. And thanks to all of you for joining us on this journey!
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