The Listening Place

1.

And now this. Within months, whether he finished the work or not, he’d be dead.

He knew this battle. The enemy he kept close. Not the cancer, that was its own thing. Time. It finally had him pinned.

He may have realised where he was, that he’d been drawn to the last place he saw her. Something made him stop. Something made him sit down and cross his legs. Sodden commuters bumped by and tripped over him.

Staring blurred into the grey, a memory brought him to focus. Part of the answer at least. This didn’t change a thing. The work was always desperate. Give everything you have left. And without the green notebook in his jacket pocket, none of it would be possible. He had to keep it dry, which meant getting up, running and finding shelter.

Shielding a cigarette in a cupped hand, he stood shivering outside a tube station. What now? Words came to mind, words that he played with like a cat with a ball of twine. Escape, s'échapper, gælavnna, effugere, tappikka. Help, dobda, hjälp, voítheia. Home, vīṭu, gedara. Choosing the number of translations based on the number of cars that got through a green light, the number of cigarettes left in the pack, the sorry number of decades he’d been alive.

Someone bumped into him. No, his phone had started vibrating. Tired eyes strained to read the bright screen. A +94 number. Sri Lanka. Gedara, vīṭu, home.

‘Hello?’ He answered.

‘William Easter?’ The voice was feminine, he thought, and Scandanavian.

‘Who’s speaking please?’

‘My name is Januari Kapellny. Apologies for the method of approach. I didn’t have time to traverse the official route of permissions.’

Official permissions? Someone had hacked the Seshat Association system again, Easter thought. It occurred to him that in different circumstances he’d have hung up. But circumstances weren’t different. They were exactly what they were.

‘I’ve just emailed you my ID,’ Kapellny said, a note of defensiveness in her tone despite having faced no resistence yet, ‘and copies of original grant documents – some of which you might recognise – with my name and details untouched in the header. I’m Seshat and funded.’

‘What do you want?’ Easter asked.

‘In short, you,’ said Kapellny. ‘My expertise is in computer sciences. I hold doctorates in subjects relating to artificial intellgence. I’m building a virtual reality structure using all the raw data from assocation submissions.’

Easter didn’t say anything. Several thoughts came at once, none worth voicing.

‘I’d like to invite you to participate in a program of experiments designed to overcome some roadblocks we’ve encountered.’

‘Why me?’ Said Easter.

‘You’ve done enough to maintain funding, but your submissions have shown no promise of progress. Or so most would think. We’ve picked up on some patterns in your work, and we think otherwise.’

‘Do you?’ Easter barely asked.

‘It’s clear enough that your reports leave out a lot.’

Easter was quiet.

‘No need to confess to anything,’ Kapellny reassured. ‘We can see that you’re keeping things to yourself. I don’t think you’re an egotist. I think you’re careful. And you’re right about one thing. Keeping people away from your work was a good idea. We’ve been able to use it without distraction. The tests we’ve run—’

‘Computers have been used before,’ Easter interrupted.

‘Computers get better every day. But no, I don’t think they can do the whole job, either. Which is why we want to stop inputting data and input an actual human mind instead.’

‘Why not your own?’

‘As I’ve alluded to, Mr. Easter, while the association may see you as something of a liability and a rebel, we think you are, singularly, the association’s best hope.’

‘You’re in Sri Lanka,’ said Easter.

‘Will that be a problem?’ Kapellny asked.

‘No. Just wondering why there.’

Kapellny paused very briefly before answering, a hesitation that Easter would spend more time considering than the words that followed.

‘Your father knew,’ she said.

‘Using him won’t work on me.’

‘Not my intention. I thought only that you’d trust there’s something worth knowing, and that if you don’t already know, you could appreciate it’s not something easily explained. Especially on a phone call with a slighy delay.’

Easter shivered, a trickle of cold water running down his back from his hair, and he considered moving down into the station.

‘Don’t catch cold, William,’ Kapellny said with convenient timing.

Had the shiver been audible?

‘Rushing me,’ said Easter. ‘How do you know I’m even considering this?’

‘Because you’ve got nothing to lose.’

Kapellny continued, ‘and this is a dream come true for you. To be clear, this isn’t a video game. You’ll be shocked at how far this technology has come. Do you believe Criela ever really existed?’

‘It wouldn’t be any less significant if it didn’t,’ Easter answered.

‘But let’s say it did,’ Kapellny lowered her voice. ‘And more than that. Let’s say it exists right now and you could go there, walk its streets. The sights, the smells, the mysteries.’

On cue, the pain in his abdomen flashed and settled heavy on the base of his spine. He lit another cigarette and walked back out into the rain. Everything you have left.

‘Flights are on you,’ he said. ‘First class. And a hotel. Suite. At the Galadari.’

‘Flights are on me,’ Kapellny confirmed. ‘I might stretch to business. We have a small apartment you can use. It’s sweet. And it’s not far from the Galadari.’

‘Send the tickets,’ Easter submitted.

‘Already in your inbox.’

2.

Colombo’s roads pulsed like blocked arteries. Tormented by traffic and heat, Januari Kapellny moved towards Galle Road in the back of a trishaw. Marked out lanes swelled with five and six and seven rows of coughing old buses, oversized German and Japanese saloons, motorbikes, and trishaws regaled with stickers of pop-fiction logos and motivational quotes:

Who looks outside, Dreams; who looks inside, Awakes.

The trishaw bumped up on a curb, causing Januari’s satchel to slide away from her and almost fall out.

‘Hey!’ She shouted.

‘Ah, okay-okay,’ said the driver, smiling, and gestured ahead to a clearing in the traffic.

‘So wait. It’s ten seconds.’

Januari resettled herself on the plastic covered seat and put her satchel strap over her head. She wiped sweat from her lip and, with a huff of frustration retied – for the second time on the journey – the wisps of hair that kept escaping from her bobble and curling in the humidity. She was a creature of cold weather habits: lighting fires, sipping hot cocoa, and wrapping up in multiple layers. Over a black cotton dress, she tied a hoodie around her waist, though, a statement of rebellion as much in expectation of the icy lab.

Pressure released and was left behind as the trishaw dropped down on to Haima Lane. Growling and screeching vehicles became white noise, their stench muted by the sea now just visible in the near distance. Januari could breathe, as if for the first time in a while, as the air lightened and cooled. She reached into her satchel and leafed through the hundred- and two-hundred-rupee notes in her wallet, counted out the amount negotiated, then wondered if she should hold back a couple on account of the driver’s carelessness. On this occasion it wasn’t worth the argument. She wanted to get inside. It might have been different had he pulled those antics with her passenger onboard, twenty or so minutes earlier.

Januari stepped out into the sun and walked beyond the security barrier, across the bridge over the coastal trainline, and into the grounds of the Mt Lavinia Hotel. The fountain in the middle of the driveway rose high and a light spray rained over to her as she approached.

She slowed in the cool mist.

A chime came from her bag, a reminder on her phone. She rolled her eyes and marched left into the hotel, by the empty jewellery shops, and smacked the call button for the elevator at the end of the crimson tiled corridor.

Three floors below ground, she stepped out and walked down a short corridor. A stone arch, a remain of the oldest part of the building constructed in the early 1800s, framed a recess in the wall where a keypad and fingerprint scanner awaited code and print to unlock a thick steel door that spun on a central hinge.

Januari ignored the keypad and as she approached said, ‘let me in’.

Bolts clanged within the steel and the door spun easily aside.

A tall desk stood to the left with no one behind it. A telephone sat there, wires hanging over the side, unplugged. To the right, two old grey sofas. And on one there lay a man in his early thirties, his hair prematurely grey-streaked. Over closed eyes sat dark sunglasses. He had on red shorts, a long-sleeved white shirt, and white trainers that he tapped together as he danced to the music in his headphones.

‘Is he drunk again?’ Said Januari, placing an earpiece in her ear.

‘It seems not,’ came the answer, a male voice with a combination of European accents Easter was still trying to place. ‘I think he’s just relaxed.’

‘Has he been here long? Talked to you?’

‘He arrived a little over twenty minutes before you. Hasn’t said a word.’

‘Okay. Is everything ready?’

‘All ready.’

‘Thanks, Thivy. Use the main speakers from now on.’

A quiet static clicking came from two speakers in the upper corners of the room, and the voice said in reverberating bass, ‘good morning.’

Easter was distracted from the music in his headphones and looked up towards the sound, and then over to Januari, who stood watching, expressionless. He rolled up on the sofa and moved his sunglasses to the top of his head.

‘You’re late,’ he said.

‘We’re both early,’ said Januari. ‘How are you today?’

‘Not as drunk as yesterday, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘Not as drunk.’

‘Not as drunk,’ Easter nodded.

Januari’s face remained straight and unmoving.

‘Are you ready?’ She said.

‘For more this time, actually. I think we can push on. I told you, the areas we’ve looked at are fine, but I don’t think they’ll help us. I can see parts of the centre from there but what use is that?’

Thivy’s voice came from the speakers again, ‘we’re preparing you. Building you up.’

‘Yeah, yeah, so you keep saying.’

*

Januari and Easter walked out through separate doors behind the reception desk, Januari into the operations room, Easter into the VR Sanctum – as he called it. The sanctum was an octagonal room, soundproofed by jagged fibre panels, with a black recliner like a dentist chair in the centre.

Easter lowered himself to the ground next to the chair, crossed his legs, and began to slow his breathing, focussing on the movement of air in and out of his body.

‘Seek Nikuva,’ he whispered, ‘seek Nikuva.’

Januari watched through the viewing window, waiting, though believing it unnecessary, for Easter to finish his preparation. In her hand she mindlessly rotated a vial of red liquid.

Easter’s thoughts wandered. The pages of the green notebook lifted and turned softly by the ease of each exhalation. Lines of a multilingual story flowed from the paper, left behind the truncated and jarring structure of its prose, and made sounds like calm conversations set to music. Elegant philosophies, crystalline, and revelatory. And further stories emerged behind the first, connected to each utterance in an infinite web, at times alien to the original narrative, at others akin and mirroring.

Seek Nikuva, Easter thought, an idea that permeated the patterns. Nikuva, mentioned as regularly as pleasantries, greetings and farewells, like the voice of superstitions or blessings. In meaning, at times life, at others death; light and dark; love and hate. The All, thought Easter, and took in a final, deep, drawn-out breath before rising to his feet, exhaling, and looking over at Januari. He gave her a nod.

‘The chair’s still a bit glitchy,’ said Januari, entering the sanctum, ‘I’ll aim it as well as I can, but you may have to give it a nudge to line yourself up with the emersion sensors.’

She handed him the vial.

‘It’s red,’ Easter said.

‘You asked for stronger. Recipe’s different. It’ll further darken activity in your prefrontal cortex and stimulate the required sensory areas, so you’ll be more receptive to the VR as it plays into the room. It’s stronger.’

Easter took the vial and sat down on the chair. It immediately started reclining and juddered to a stop when it was almost horizontal. He looked over at the sensors, a small green light to his left, red to his right.

‘I think I’m lined up,’ he said. ‘How’s it look?’

‘We’re just checking,’ said Januari into a microphone in the operations room.

‘All seems fine,’ Thivy answered. ‘See you in there.’

Easter drank the liquid from the vial and lay back, glancing one last time in each direction to make sure he was in line with the lights. And soon he felt it, his mind calming to receive the information. His vision softened and he was overcome by a darkness like sleep.

*

A dull green hue held the quiet street from arriving night, light ebbing from somewhere out of sight. This wasn’t an area of the city they’d visited before, but its architecture was similar. Where Easter stood couldn’t be more than a mile further in.

‘We’re still a long way out,’ said Easter. There came no response. He’d expected Thivy to be by his side. ‘Oh well. Lunatic runs the asylum today.’

Each step seemed untrue to the ground, dropping an inch below the visible surface or landing an inch above. He looked to the sky. Cloudy. And he looked ahead and back, but every building reached at least four floors. He had no sense of direction. There was activity ahead, a steady flow of people along a road that crossed the one he was on.

Most seemed not to belong. Tourists urged along by some unseen force. Easter wondered if they could see each other the way he could see them; because they couldn’t see him, and nor could they feel his presence. On his first trip to Criela, New Janaka City had immediately rejected him. A crowd of expressionless people had marched right through him. He felt nothing but the experience was disorienting, and he fell. He jolted awake and vomited.

‘People are more complicated than buildings,’ Thivy had said. ‘Designed the same way but unpredictable. Just stay out of their way and observe.’

Easter rounded the corner on to the busier street and began a careful slalom through the people. Most of the buildings were open at ground level; eateries, little convenience stores, a butcher with small animals cut in half set out on folding tables.

‘Ah, William,’ said Thivy, ‘you’ve arrived. Nikuva to you.’

A little way ahead, a man in deep green monk’s robes sat above the street on a first-floor balcony railing, bare feet dangling. Thivy looked a little different each time. Easter didn’t know what he looked like outside. They hadn’t met in person, for reasons he didn’t understand, but of all the questions he had since arriving this was far from priority.

Easter entered the building through the incense market on the ground floor and climbed a narrow stairway to meet Thivy out on the balcony.

‘There are too many people,’ Easter commented.

Thivy smiled. ‘The data used to create the people takes interpretations of the Seshat Words as truth. It’s all it can do, it has to decide, or we’d have a hundred versions of the city all floating around on top of each other. No one knows the Words like you, William. This is why you’re here, to help chisel this slab of marble into a masterpiece.’

‘Well,’ said Easter, ‘get rid of them for now. I can’t talk to them. I can’t learn anything from them. They’re just in the way. I need to be able to focus and find some landmarks that I recognise.’

‘I’ll see what I can do. For now, where would you like to go today?’

‘I still don’t understand how you managed to build a city with your eyes closed.’

Thivy laughed. ‘Our work was building the computer to process the information. The computer generated the city. William, we’ve had this conversation. Is something bothering you?’

‘You and Januari are slow where I’m fast and fast where I’m slow. Neither of you understand this place like I do, and I don’t understand your attitudes towards it.’

‘You’ll have free reign soon enough. But we should at least make some progress today. I think this road leads to the fountain, where we were last week. If we can connect this area to that…’

Easter had stopped listening. Night had fully descended, and the weather was changing. The dense cloud had broken apart and formed a flowing sea of shadows across the sky.

They moved on. Thivy marvelled at the attractions, the open shopfronts with their bright lights and strange smells, the people streaming by in their own fascinated dazes. Easter kept his eyes straight ahead; this area felt vacant, too much the replica he knew it was.

They reached the fountain and Easter was able to gaze out towards the centre. Visions that once only existed in his mind materialised with shimmering force. Elaborate structures created by artists were the broad streets and pyramidal homes. And the grand towers at the centre, icons of a world only imagined.

He felt the longing in his chest and thought of her.

‘What happens if we try to drink the sour tea?’ He asked.

‘It’s probably not possible,’ said Thivy, ‘but we can try if you like.’