IGMS Issue 32 Read online

  Josef is the first one to notice my discovery. He had probably been staring at my ass when I bent over. Again.

  "What is that?" he asks, managing to make even the simplest question sound impossibly pretentious.

  I reach toward the circle, hesitant. Did the stirrer fall through the floor? Vanish into another world? Or has it been snatched out of existence altogether? With Josef now squatting beside me, they all seem like appealing options.

  "I wouldn't touch it," he says.

  And so I do exactly that. Like the stirrer, my fingertips disappear into the glittering flecks. I expect to feel something -- pain, a prickle, liquid pooling around my skin. Anything. Instead, there's a frightening absence of physical sensation, as if my fingers no longer exist. A fingerless oboe player. With that dreadful image in mind, I yank my hand out of the circle. Suddenly my fingers are alive with sensation, every pore buzzing. I try to back away, to escape this overwhelming discovery, but the other musicians crowd around me, blocking my way. Their voices combine into a clamor that hurts my ears. That oaf of a percussionist T.J. shoves past them with such bumbling force that he knocks me forward, into the circle.

  White and gold explode across my vision, vanish just as quickly. For a moment, I am suspended in nothingness. Everything I sensed only a second before is gone -- the scent of burnt coffee, the rough feel of the carpet beneath my knees, the oppressiveness of sweaty human bodies pressing in around me. Even the beat of my heart is silent in this void.

  I smack against an iron-like grating, and sensation returns -- unfortunately. I feel not only my pulse racing, but also a sharp ache where my face connected with one of the grating's thick, black beams. At my feet sits the coffee stirrer, its formerly dull brown now vibrant against a featureless white floor. As I back away from the grating, I see that there are five beams in total, horizontal and evenly spaced apart. Another few steps, and more comes into focus: the swirl of a treble clef symbol, 2/4 time, one flat in the key signature, the instrument indication of "Oboe 1, 2." Too many measures of rest follow for me to tell if the key is D minor or F major, but I am definitely staring at my part on a musical staff.

  I spin around. All around me, against an endless backdrop of white, are three-dimensional staves for woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings. Overhead, title and composer loom large: Symphony No. 9, Beethoven.

  D minor it is then.

  I run my hands over notes and rests; their texture feels like the grainy metal of a music stand. I give an experimental tug at the staff lines -- sturdy enough that one could climb them like playground equipment. So many fantasies about escaping behind the staves, and here I am, standing in an oversized orchestral score. The entire piece has been rendered with a sculptural precision that makes me see Beethoven anew, that fills me with the kind of awe I felt the first time I ever laid eyes on the score's intricacies.

  Though no instruments are in sight, the symphony begins. My surroundings are so pristine, so meticulous, that I half expect the tinny, synthesized playback of music notation software. What I hear instead is the sound of live instruments played with inhuman exactitude -- the horns on their sustained fifth, string tremolo lurking underneath. More parts join the sustain: clarinet, oboe, then flute, building and building until the theme the first violins have been hinting at bursts forth full force. I dart from measure to measure, grabbing hold of note heads so that I can feel their sound vibrating through me -- a sensation more thrilling, more intimate, than any human caress.

  Feeling, Ms. Adams!

  How delicious it would be to hear Maestro Furhmann right now.

  Several of my fellow musicians stumble through the portal, cutting my musical reverie short. I stifle a shout of frustration. They could have burst into my home uninvited and I wouldn't feel nearly so encroached upon.

  "What the hell is all this?" T.J. says.

  Josef responds with an overly dramatic clap of his hands. "It's glorious, is what it is!"

  They gasp and chatter and twirl about in circles, asking too many questions instead of watching and listening. It's just like rehearsal.

  Josef slings his arm over my shoulders and drags me toward the woodwind staves, unsubtle in his babbling about the way the flute and oboe parts intertwine.

  "So many people talk about losing themselves in the music," he says, "and here we quite literally have!"

  Lose yourself in the music -- exactly the kind of thing I've never been able to do. At least not off the page.

  And so it goes: a group of extremely talented yet overly spoiled musicians romp through Beethoven's 9th like children on a playground. They climb the staves and swap notes to hear how the trombone line would sound on the cello. T.J. and Brendan start a game of catch with a whole note. Kumiko rearranges the violin line the way she thinks Beethoven ought to have written it. Josef speculates aloud what it would be like to make love between the staves.

  I roll my eyes and chase after them, trying to fix the unwritten dissonances and other imperfections their antics create.

  At the end of the first movement, we find a white- and gold-flecked portal like the one we came in through, only this one is larger and hovers upright, taller than even T.J. The final notes of the movement play -- four staccato eighths, that last unison D. Then, a new sound: a crinkle like paper. The portal begins to fold in on itself, bit by bit, fleck by fleck. T.J. yelps and runs through. I try to linger, just a second more to adjust a fermata left in the wrong place on the oboe line, but Josef and the others drag me along in their fearful stampede.

  Instead of returning us to the musicians' lounge, this portal sends us toppling one over the other into the orchestra library, between two dusty shelves piled high with sets of music.

  My colleagues start chattering all at once; the librarians rush over, gawking first at us, then at the portal. The shimmering circle closes behind us, as if sucked into the shelving.

  I glance at my watch: 11:25. Here, not a second has passed.

  We all have an agreement: no one is to tell Maestro Fuhrmann about the portals. He'd probably insist on conducting us through, baton waving with its usual flourish and indistinguishable downbeat.

  We spend every rehearsal break scouring the concert hall now. The portals are never in the same place twice. Josef found one leading to the second movement in the men's dressing room; the third movement was in the concertmaster's locker. There's no doubt in my mind that someone will find the fourth movement today -- our final rehearsal before the concert.

  "I'm not going through the next one," T.J. says as we head toward the stage. "I'm not even gonna look for the damn thing."

  Josef slaps a hand to his chest in exaggerated offense. "Why the bloody hell not?"

  "It's the last movement."

  "So?"

  "So the portals are getting smaller. The ones leading out." T.J. shakes his head. He looks pale. "I'm not getting stuck in there, man."

  T.J. shuffles off to assume his place behind the timpani. Josef starts babbling some insult about the average IQ of percussionists, but I tune him out. T.J. is right: the portals are getting smaller. Not for the first time, I wonder what would happen if you didn't leave. If you couldn't leave. Would you starve to death there among the staves? Or is food as irrelevant as time in that world?

  Maestro Fuhrmann takes to the podium, carrying himself with an extra degree of churlishness. "Let's try to muster a little more passion today, shall we?" He directs a withering glare at T.J. "And a little more focus."

  From the very first note, my focus is certainly elsewhere. I play a B-flat and remember how it felt to actually hold one in my hands, how the pitch pulsed through my body -- pure and unwavering, almost erotic in its perfection. I fantasize about having the portal world all to myself, the way it was those precious few moments before my colleagues first blundered through. I imagine sagging against the staves, consumed by the feel of pitch and rhythm, tempo and phrasing, dynamics and articulation, all coming together like musical clockwork. No mistakes, no
fickle emotions.

  "Yes!" Maestro Fuhrmann cuts us off with a slap against the podium. "That's it, Ms. Adams!"

  All eyes turn to me. I tremble; my skin flushes. What had I even been playing just then?

  "Every time, Ms. Adams," the maestro continues. "I want you to put yourself into the music like that every time."

  The music feels as if it's crawling around inside me -- not just my part, but the entire symphony, twisting and turning in search of release. I clap a hand over my mouth and swallow back vomit.

  From down the row, Josef gives me a thumbs-up.

  "Again from the top," Maestro Fuhrmann says, smiling in my direction.

  I touch the oboe reed to my lips. I try to focus, but then I see it: a fermata out of place in the first movement, just as it had been left in the portal world.

  The maestro cues us in; his smile quickly fades. The music claws at my insides, but it finds no escape.

  After rehearsal, Josef and the others dart off in search of the portal, which went unfound during break. I wander up and down the concert hall aisles before finally settling into a seat in the back row. I watch as the stage empties of instruments and choristers, as the librarians collect music folders, as the stagehands rearrange chairs and stands, resetting the stage for the concerto that will open tonight's concert and serve as lead-in to our grand Beethoven finale.

  At my feet, the portal beckons. I should let the others know it's here. But I won't. They don't need this the way I do. They can find themselves in the music without any help.

  I take one final look at the stage. I'll be playing Beethoven's 9th tonight, but not from there. I slide out of the chair and through the portal, into the fourth movement. The music begins. I sink back against a cushion of slurred eighth notes, close my eyes, and listen as the movement unfolds. When the chorus finally enters with "Ode to Joy," I shudder at the feel of the thick wall of voices vibrating through me. My skin melts into the staves. Everything inside me pours like liquid down the staff lines, forming half notes and whole notes, sharps and flats, rests and staccatos, a world of musical perfection.

  My last breath is a sigh of ecstasy. I have become notes on a page, and I've never been played with so much feeling.

  Winning Veronica's Heart

  by Ian Creasey

  Artwork by Kevin Wasden

  * * *

  Hello! Hello to everyone down in the front row, and all the folks sitting by the aisle in case there's a fire. Hello to you people at the back who thought you were here for something else. The robot porn is over the road, down the steps, through the unmarked gate . . . or so I've heard. Hello to my alternate selves, and everyone here who isn't me. Hello Manchester!

  It's great to be back. I grew up here, in one of those council estates where burglary is the local form of recycling. You know the kind of place: the police got tired of putting up Crime Scene boards every day -- "Have you seen this murder?" -- so eventually they just used an enormous piece of hazard tape to enclose the whole estate as a permanent Crime Scene. Instead of the old notice-board with the dry-wipe markers, they put up a wiki-screen so we could input the crimes ourselves. It worked fine until someone stole the screen . . .

  But it wasn't all shoplifting and joyriding. When I was a boy, I used to go and watch the football. Back then, football was real -- you could pretend to know one of the players, because he was your cousin . . . well, your cousin's friend . . . okay, your cousin's friend's babysitter's brother-in-law . . . but it was a connection! Nowadays it's all nostalgia: stars from the past uploaded into cloned bodies, scuttling around the pitch like dogs looking for somewhere to have a dump. Why do we need a veterans' replay of every Cup final from the last century? Sometimes I get nostalgic for the days before the Nostalgia Channel.

  I don't need TV: I have my own nostalgia. Right now, I'm nostalgic for my ex-girlfriend. I was with Veronica for five years. Now we've split up -- we're seeing other people. Well, she is. I'm not; I want to get back with Veronica, because I love her.

  Okay, at that point you're all supposed to go "Aahhh" in a mass outpouring of sympathy. So, let's pretend you're not a bunch of heartless bastards, and give it another go. One, two, three, Aahhh. That's better. Keep it up, I'll make an audience out of you yet.

  I have a plan for getting Veronica back, and I need your help. It'll all become clear as we go along. Pay attention! This could be on the exam.

  When I say it's great to be here in Manchester, I should say Manchester version 74875413-blah-blah-blah . . . Remember when you were a child -- did you ever write your name and address with all those extra lines at the end? Mine was Richard Bonington, 32 Hallam Street, Manchester, England, United Kingdom, Europe, The World, The Solar System, The Milky Way. But kids nowadays have to keep going: Universe 456-Gamma, Sub-branch 74875, Bifurcation 12F . . . Reality is splitting faster than they can write the serial number. If a kid writes his address in the front of a scrapbook, he ends up filling the entire book with the postcode of which parallel universe he lives in.

  And who makes up those numbers, anyway? Every version of the Earth thinks of itself as Earth-Prime, the Hub, the Core -- they all want serial number 00001-AAA-Alpha.

  It's the same with us: we know we have infinite parallel selves, but we all secretly think we're the "real version." Even if you live in a derelict tower-block, and every time you walk out of your front door you're treading knee-deep in used syringes and condoms, you still think of yourself as the main event. It doesn't matter if you have an alternate with a super-amazing job like being the ambassador to Mars. While you're stuck in a sink estate, working in a fast food joint, you still think, "Hey, I'm the authentic soul. This is me with grease on my arms and three cautions for delinquency. Accept no substitutes."

  Those over-achievers are just flukes, aren't they? They got some lucky break that you didn't have. Everything must happen, including a universe where you won the lottery and married a supermodel.

  So you rent a hopper and you go looking for that universe -- only for sight-seeing, of course. If you see your other self, you'll congratulate him. Yes, you will! The gun in your pocket is just for protection, in case you meet some interdimensional pirates along the way. Whoops! Oh no, it went off accidentally and he died. Now there's all this money lying around, and a grieving widow. Well, she won't grieve if she doesn't know he's dead. You'd better pretend to be him. It's for her own good . . .

  But most of our alternates aren't murderers or lottery winners. They're regular folks -- just like us. That's the point. If you visit a universe that branched off last week, the guy who lives there is basically the same as you, except he had toast instead of porridge for breakfast.

  Meeting your alts is a scary experience. You think to yourself: my God, is that what I look like? What museum of fashion disasters did that shirt crawl out from? Oh yeah, my wardrobe. Seeing your crappy hairstyle, your own bald spot -- now that's a trauma. And as for the rest of your body, your fat arse and flabby legs . . . well, say no more.

  I've got a theory that the whole universe-hopping technology was invented by the cosmetic surgery companies. Those plastic surgeons got together and said, "How can we make more money? We've already got celebrity culture and the mass media telling everyone that they need to look perfect. The only way we can sell more operations is to take people to parallel universes and force them to see their own alternates walking down the street. Then they'll look at themselves and realise how hideous they are!"

  Yeah, you need therapy after that. When you meet yourself, you realise how you come across to other people -- whether you have bad breath, a sweaty handshake, or a shifty look in your eyes.

  Yet there's a positive side. You can get a lot done if you team up with your alts. Let's say you work somewhere with a lot of women. You can't ask them all out -- "Form an orderly queue please!" -- because word gets around, and it looks sleazy. But you can ask one, and roll dice to decide which. The universe splits like it always does, and afterward you get together with
your alternates to compare notes. Which girl said yes? You home in on her.

  Perhaps she lost her own dice roll, and she has to kiss every frog who comes along -- even the ones like you, with the bald spot and the fashion-disaster shirt. She's taking one for the team, in case you happen to be a prince. You have to turn on the charm, so she'll report back to her clade and say she's met a cute guy, who might scrub up well if she can improve his dress sense.

  But when you ask a woman out, she'll check with her alts to see if any of them have met you before. She's got a whole file on you. It's like a job application, except your CV is the entire life history of all your parallel selves. You know there's gonna be some dirt in there somewhere. "I'm sorry, Richard -- I've heard that one of your alts once farted in bed. I'm sure you understand I could never spend my life with a man so lacking in refinement --" "But that wasn't me --" "Next!"

  We all need a little help from our alts. That's how I met Veronica. An alt passed me a tip-off: said she loved art and gardening, and she had a spiritual side. So before I approached her, I could bone up on flowers, then practise keeping a straight face while talking about energies and auras and whatnot.

  She was out of my league, really. Gorgeous and rich, moved in social circles where the only time she saw people from a council estate was when they came round to empty the dustbins. But I knew that one of my alts had dated hers -- a million-to-one chance. If he could do it, so could I. After all, he was me. And I had his crib-sheet.

  I asked her out. We chatted. She liked me. But she wasn't stupid; she knew I'd been given a primer. So she tested me by taking me into weird situations: places I'd never been before, that my alts hadn't already mapped out. On our third date, we hopped to a world where Britain was still full of cavemen worshipping at Stonehenge. We wore hover-belts, jumped up on the megaliths, and chased each other around the top of the stones. Hell of a Midsummer Day ceremony that was. They thought we were gods, and sacrificed a sheep to us. We had our own personal fertility festival on top of a trilithon. Tell you what -- you've never had sex until you've done it on an ancient monument surrounded by chanting cavemen.