He said he regretted cutting off all my beautiful hair, but piling it all up beneath a cap would risk drawing the attention I have to avoid at all costs.
He’d given me a kiss as I’d left him, telling me I still looked beautiful.
*
Chapter 16
We’d arranged to meet outside the main stadium in Nihilism.
It’s not my preferred rendezvous.
I would have rather gone for the Music of The Spheres, where you ascend into the heavens on solidifying chords of music; or the Sands of Time, where vibrating waves make sand ripple like streams you float on, or take solid forms you can hold or walk through. There are similarly entrancing zones of snow or ice, of sun or moonlight, of crystal or controlled flames, of scents or touch or even kisses, of immense origami shapes or minute lacy metal, of kites you can soar on, or bubbles you can use to descend into watery depths.
It’s easier to get lost, however, or remain hidden, in Nihilism.
It’s a level of utter chaos, where what little of the law enforcement adhered to within Nevaeh reaches a whole new nadir.
Here the customers seem to me to be in almost as much danger as the participants hacking each other to pieces in the stadiums. A few humans are even crazy enough to present themselves as droids to take part in the contests, hoping to pit their skills against ageing, malfunctioning machines who have no further purpose in life unless they can achieve a whole new area of greatness in the gladiatorial contests.
Huge, hired four by fours roar around on the elevated roads as if the drivers are almost hoping they’ll crash through the minuscule barriers and plummet head first into the milling crowds below. The crowds themselves appear resigned to the fact that accidents are bound to happen amongst such chaos, the almost complete absence of light, bar that reflected back from the stadiums’ footlights, or the headlamps of motorbikes roaring past – the whole effect is one of an endlessly permanent night –only adding to the sense of ever impending death.
It’s the fatalistic madness of the End of The World, the Twilight of The Gods.
And yet, surprisingly, there have never been any deaths amongst the customers that I’m aware of.
Each customer, even though they don’t realise it, is accompanied by a hovering droid that floats just above their heads, electronically veiled in the darkness until such times as it’s deemed necessary to drop protective force shields into place around their charge.
Those humans taking part in the individual and massed combat displays are similarly protected (much to the chagrin of any droid, who knows they’re facing a death sentence when pitted against a human), even though they also remain unaware of this.
It’s a place of constant threats, of thrills gained through overcoming your fear, of exerting your power over others.
It’s not the place I want to wait too long in as I wait for Joel.
Just above Nihilism, there lies Epiphaneia: a land of brightness, of sparkling light, of glittering excitement.
This is where I’ll wait until it’s nearer our agreed rendezvous time.
*
Epiphaneia is the perfect place to hide out.
As in Nihilism, as soon you step inside the zone a hovering droid takes up its place flying just above your head; here, though, everyone is aware of the droid’s presence – indeed, it’s the very reason why most people visit here.
Here, it’s your own presence that is veiled, hidden behind a new identity you wish to take on in its place.
You could meet your own mother here, and she wouldn’t recognise you.
In fact, you could meet your mother here and it almost certainly wouldn’t be her.
Most people chose to be a famous person, a historical character, or a movie or storybook personality.
Everywhere I look, there are Marilyn Monroes, Audrey Hepburns, Cary Grants, Clint Eastwoods, Napoleans, Nefertitis, Queen Elizabeths, and King Davids, all mixed in with a smattering of pirates, explorers and princesses.
How many of them will later venture, I wonder, into Revelatia, the area where the droids’ sensors chose your character for you from your innermost thoughts? Only the most confident of people tend to risk it, and then only when they’re on their own.
In that area, apparently, there are devils, demons, bears, wolves, lambs, angels and goddesses: but the latter are in very limited numbers indeed.
I chose to be Joel, or at least the imaginary version of him that the droid picks up in my thoughts and transforms into a realistic veil.
I catch glimpse after glimpse of myself in one of the many mirrors or silvery surfaces scattered around this zone.
It’s not an entirely accurate portrayal of Joel, to be honest.
But it’s a passable version of him.
It’s odd, being Joel.
Odd not being secretly stared at, and lusted after by just about every passing man.
*
Chapter 17
You might think it odd that I’ve chosen such a relatively mundane veiling as Joel, rather than, say, someone famous, someone admired by a vast number of people.
But you’d be surprised how many people here choose a regular person as opposed to a more well known one. (How many people, too, chose animals or hybrids: horses, Beauty’s Beast, that kind of thing.)
Some couples swap personalities.
Some change gender simply to get an idea of what it likes on the other side of the divide.
Many girls chose the looks of the girl they envy at school, wishing to experience the attention they receive.
Many boys wish to be simply stronger, more impressive.
There are even those who wish to appear uglier than they usually are, granting them some idea of how much worse their life could be.
Here, if you find your character is causing you more problems than you assumed it would, you can always change your personality on a whim, after all.
The environment you find yourself walking around is likewise ever changeable.
What you take to believe is a mirror can suddenly be a flowing waterfall, while a drizzle of rain, or a rising of steam, can immediately transform into a frozen sheet, a veiling of lace.
And it’s not just a trick of your imagination, a visual transformation; physically, it changes too. So what a moment ago was something you could safely pass through is now solid, immovable.
It’s a constantly changing, incredibly frustrating labyrinth, especially as everything is made to be either transparent of reflect light back, such that you’re never quite sure where a path lies, and where it’s blocked off.
Some mirrors can be actually passed through; but your droid will ensure that from now on, until you pass back through a similar mirror, most of the actions you wish to make will be strangely reversed, as if you’ve entered a looking glass world.
And these changes can all happen so quickly that if a couple become separated, even momentarily, they’ll find it’s impossible to get back together until they inform their droid they wish to leave Epiphaneia.
Why would any couple part under such circumstances?
Because they could easily leave here far richer than they ever imagined they could be.
All they have to do is retrieve one of the many sparkling jewels placed around the park.
Of course, they’re reflected endlessly, such that you could be chasing a mirage. While the real one can be suddenly made inaccessible as a diffusing heat haze becomes polished steel.
Besides, there are equally brightly coloured butterflies, hummingbirds and insects soaring everywhere around the maze.
It's a stunningly beautiful sight, a world of intense colours splintered into vibrant, intertwining and ever-moving rainbows.
It took my breath away the first time I experienced it.
My parents thought they would never, ever persuade me to come home.
*
Parents?
Hah!
There they are again; those ridiculous false
memories!
They’re all just so irritating!
How are you supposed to get on with your life when you’re mind’s being constantly flooded with absolutely useless information?
I don’t have a past.
Least ways, not like everyone else.
My life, my world, began the second Joel switched me on.
Before that, everything is quite literally a blank.
I didn’t exist.
There are no real memories to recall.
No memories for me to try and remember in the hope that I can begin to figure out what sort of person I really am.
I’m nothing but an empty shell.
I’m just me; what you see is me – and that’s it.
I have no sub-consciously submerged characteristics to search out, to rediscover.
There’s no point in wasting any time attempting to discover ‘the real me’.
I came with an instruction booklet, after all. Apparently, it comes with a full listing of all the ‘Automatic Commands’ controlling my operation.
If I really want to know who I really am, all I have to do is sit down and read that.
*
Chapter 18
Is it any wonder that the sensors on the ride failed to prompt the commands that would have sent us down a more romantically inclined track?
Any wonder that, like those computers confused by the clever starship captain, they simply blew a fuse when they were set the task of detecting love between us?
There’s Joel, with his heart of stone.
Then there’s me, like an egg with no real filling, no real substance.
Maybe I should step through into the area where my hovering droid is expected to reveal the real me?
Maybe not; if that explodes above me, it might just take my head off.
I might not be a real girl: but losing my head like that would kill me just as effectively as if I were.
But I don’t have to use the droid, do I?
See, it turns out my false memories have come in use after all.
Because I ‘remember’ that the park has extra special mirrors.
Mirrors called ‘Regretful Reflections’.
*
Yeah, I remember now.
The ‘Regretful Reflections’, just like the droids in Revelatia, reveal the real person lying beneath your shell of flesh, of muscle.
They detect your real thoughts, I believe. The state of your emotional wellbeing.
Your desires.
Your arrogance.
Your innermost regrets.
Whatever it is the mirrors do, I ‘remember’ that people tend to only glance in one; and then studiously avoid seeing themselves in any others.
That’s the advantage, the difference, these mirrors have over Revelatia.
If you don’t like what you see there, you don’t have to try and accept it, try and adapt to this revelation of whom you really are, as you have to do within Revelatia.
Plus, only you see the mirror’s version of your personality.
No one else, no matter how close by, can see what you see there.
I break into a swifter trot, seeking out the signs directing me towards one of the mirrors.
When you’re in a rush to get somewhere in particular, the mystical, brightly coloured, ever-changing maze almost instantly becomes frustrating rather then entrancing; having your route suddenly blocked by the abrupt appearance of a glass wall is especially annoying, as you quite often crash directly into it.
The swooping birds, the whirling insects, despite their iridescent, jewel-like tones, are an irritating distraction.
As for the stumbling wanderings of the equally bewildered Joan of Arcs, the befuddled Alexander the Greats; well, they just seem entirely hopeless to me!
It all just adds to the confusion of a mind already set in a whirl by the fear of what you might see within the mirror.
You’re already considering who the real you might be long before you step in front of the mirror.
You feel, too, increasingly torn: is this such a wise thing to do, seeking out a mirror that might reveal something about you you’d prefer not to recognise?
But all this chaotic swirling of thoughts – even, no doubt, the infuriating obstacles being suddenly placed in your way – is all part of how the mirrors manage to strip away the many levels you’ve gradually managed to veil the real you behind: the facades you present to the world, even to yourself, to appear as the kind of person society expects you to be; happy, generous, stable, as opposed to miserable, envious, insecure.
By the time you stand in front of that mirror, all pretence has vanished.
Eventually, my persistence is rewarded; before me stands a mirror of ‘Regretful Reflections’, with no more icesheets, no more steel mirrors, to block my way towards it.
The only thing that can hold me back now is my own fears of what I might see there.
Or, in my case, what I might not see there.
For what I dread most is seeing nothing but myself reflected back at me.
*
Chapter 19
I pause, take a deep breath, before I step directly in front of the mirror.
Ready to face and accept what I might see within its refection, I stride towards it; and come to a shocked, abrupt halt.
There’s a ghostly girl in the mirroring of sliver, as insubstantial as the lacy maze I’ve been fighting my way through.
As insubstantial, too, as the wraithlike girl I’d seen within the swirling foam of Nevaeh’s underground waterways.
For a brief moment, I wonder if – perhaps even hope that – this is the real me being revealed to me. She’s young, much younger than I am.
But then, out of the corner of my eye, I detect movement.
The reflection I’ve seen within the mirror isn’t me, but that of a mistily white girl standing only a short distance from me.
She smiles at me; sadly.
Then she turns – and sweeps effortlessly through the mirror of polished iron standing behind her as it transforms into a foggy lace.
*
‘Stop! Wait – who are you?’ I cry after her.
She doesn’t stop; she curls around a corner of glass, she trips lightly through a waterfall.
And everywhere about us, there’s a fluttering chaos of rainbow-tinted birds, butterflies and insects.
Crazier still, there’s absolutely no one else around, as if they’ve all vanished as effectively as any of the mazes’ transient walls.
The wispy girl, however, is everywhere now.
She’s reflected around the maze innumerable times, such that I no longer have any idea which is the real one.
Then she stops, she turns towards me; she smiles, gives me a beckoning wave – and spins around and begins to run away from me once more.
*
I could never hope to catch up with the girl in this maze.
Not only did she move with surprising swiftness, as if she were floating rather than actually running, but she appeared to instinctively know her way around a maze that changes from second to second, that never, ever repeats a pattern.
To know your way around such a maze, of course, should be impossible.
It’s also supposed to be impossible for two separated people to link up within the maze, no matter how hard they’re both trying to get back together.
So what’s the chance of trying to close on someone who’s actively attempting to avoid you?
And yet, strangely, every time she gets so far ahead of me that I’m tempted to bring an end to my efforts to follow her, the girl stops, turns back to face me; and waves, encouraging me to continue perusing her.
‘What’s keeping you?’ her sad smile seems to be demanding of me.
Well, quite a few things, I feel like shouting back; including vast sheets of frosted crystal that suddenly appear out of nowhere before me, or hawthorn hedges full of white blossom.
I’m rushing through a heavy snow f
all when it finally dawns on me that, at last, I’ve completely lost sight of the girl.
This time, too, she hasn’t halted, hasn’t waited for me.
She’s nowhere to be seen.
But the stumbling crowds are back; the staggering Warrior Queens, the dazed Einsteins.
Why?
Why did she keep on urging me on, only to abruptly abandon me?
I look about me, wondering if she was simply making sure I ended up within this particular spot within the maze for some reason.
I’m standing next to a beautiful gem, a ruby sparkling like the ripest, most perfect of fruits.
Is that what all this was all about?
She was merely leading to one of the maze’s jewels?
Admittedly, these precious stones are nowhere near as easy to find amongst the maze as people might suppose; but I’m in no need of riches.
Am I?
A girl who’s just fled the Rooms of Pleasure.
A girl who’s made an enemy of the Womb Master.
I reach out for the gem; but it squirms, moves slightly.
I pull my hand back sharply.
It's not a ruby after all, but a crimson coloured worm.
And then, bizarrely, the strangest of questions flows though what passes for my mind:
What does the presence of the crimson worm mean in Jonah?
*
Chapter 20
Maybe, of course, I thought of Jonah simply because of Nevaeh: it’s hardly a great leap of the imagination, is it, to connect this immense whale with the story of Jonah being swallowed by the great sea monster?
There’s even an experience celebrating the event, where you can actually board a whale-shaped submarine that carries you through storms and beneath the waves.
But a crimson worm?
What could that have to do with Jonah?
And yet, no matter how hard I try to completely put it out of my mind, it’s a question that I keep asking myself:
What does the presence of the crimson worm mean in Jonah?
‘It doesn’t make any sense at all!’ Joel laughs when we eventually meet up. ‘Unless it’s just that, you know, seeing the worm just triggered this whole idea of being plagued by a brainworm; some weird thought that’s lodged itself in your brain, and now you can’t get rid of it no matter how irritating it is.’