The Great Game

Like last week, things this week are a little crazy. So the next episode will be in a week’s time. Sorry for the slow service!

If you’re new to the Great Game, please have a quick look at the blurb to your left, where you’ll find a short catch-up introduction.

I ate in the canteen, and was assigned a surprisingly sturdy bed in a hall with fifteen others. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see the man’s fleshless face leering at me, and I was sure I’d be awake all night. The next thing I knew, I was floating in darkness. I couldn’t see — or feel — anything, but I knew it was juddering, and I had the strangest impression that it was hairy. There was an unpleasant background hum that made my teeth ache, and every so often, a little burst of uncomfortable static zapped through me.

After some time, it occurred to me that the static bursts were screaming something. I felt certain that if I concentrated, I would be able to hear what it was. The prospect unnerved me, but it filled me with a wild wonder at the same time.

I resolved to listen to the bursts, and tried to concentrate on the sensation of the static zapping through me. It made my teeth tingle, and seemed to make waves of energy ripple up and down my body. When I noticed that the onset of each burst seemed to be heralded with a tiny pinging feeling, it became easier to get hold of the sensations. As I did so, I started becoming aware of the sounds within them. The impression that the entire realm was quivering grew sharply stronger.

Then, suddenly, I could hear.

The void was alive with sound. From all directions, there seemed to be a steady thrumming pulse, slow and oddly irregular. It was accompanied by a dizzying whirl of what might have been wordless song, if there were creatures with throats that reverberated and span. The song rose and fell, and hinted at strange mathematical secrets in its variations. And above all else, there was a swarm of individual voices, diving and whirling around me, laughing, screaming and gibbering.

One of the voices veered towards me, and then burst through me with the now-familiar zap of static. As it did so, I heard it call out to me in a horrible, mocking voice, “Taylor, Taylor.”

I felt it recede, and then another was buzzing me. “Oh, John Taylor.”

Then it was as if I was at the centre of a whirlwind, with spark after spark diving through me, so that I was suddenly afire, every nerve thrumming. The static blurred into a long, dark howl, and then I was being spoken to by a voice like nails scraping down my spinal cord.

“Here, to the darkness, you have come. The stars, oh the fleshy stars, they sing, after so long they sing, and you have come to hear, come to the darkness. That which was and may and shall, and the old and new are joined in the fleshy singing, and you, John Taylor, have come.”

I tried to scream, to howl “No!”, but I had no self, no voice, to scream with.

“No?” The amused word was like needles. “Yet here you are, and you hear the song, and the old is new and now. And now, John Taylor, would you join the song? Would you hear?”

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Today’s picture is Deep Space Dancers by DVeditor.