Plato's Cave

by Russell Proctor

  "Yes," I said, "you phoned all your friends."

  "That's not the amazing thing."

  "It would be for me. I don't have any."

  The crowd had backed off a little as Joanna took charge. Or maybe they just didn't want to be too close to my jokes. In any event, Madam Aura had at least stopped staring, and I could breathe again. "Emily," Joanna continued, "these are some of the best psychics, clairvoyants and other practitioners of the paranormal in Brisbane. And we have people from all over the world on-line right now." She indicated the computer. "You're a positive sensation."

  "I just told Winifred she's here," said one of the computer people. "She wants to chat with her."

  "Scotland Winifred or New Zealand Winifred?"

  "Scotland. She's called a meeting of her coven, and they're getting together right now. They'd like to have Emily on-line with them at the same time."

  Her coven? Wtf?

  "Stars," said an old man. He had been sitting quietly in one corner, underneath the African mask. He still sat there now, but his one word had caused a reverential hush to fall over the assembly. All eyes turned to him, and anatomy being what it was, all heads soon followed.

  He wore a dark suit and neat tie. White hair hung to his shoulders. One hand rested on a walking stick of black wood, and his eyes glittered brightly in contrast to the darkness of the rest of him. His face would probably have shown poise and grace and elegance and deep respect for the mysteries of the world, if a handkerchief, which he was currently using to blow his nose, hadn't obscured it.

  "This is Turhan Birgili," said Joanna. "He's the Maestro."

  "Merhaba," he said thickly through the handkerchief. He folded it neatly and slipped it into his pocket.

  "I beg your pardon?" I said.

  Maestro? What...?

  "He said 'Hello'," translated Joanna. "It's quite a coincidence the Maestro's here. He's just flown in from Istanbul on a lecture tour. Maestro, this is Emily Branwell."

  I was hurried forward into the good Maestro's presence. He smiled and nodded. A ring with a dark blue jewel gleamed on his finger. It matched the colour of his eyes.

  "I see stars," he said in a deep voice. "Her whole presence. She is like a – like

  a – how can I say...?"

  "Like a patch of space?" I offered.

  He smiled. "A patch of space, yes." His Turkish accent was heavy and slow, with lots of long vowel sounds and sibilants.

  "Do I still look like stars now?"

  He regarded me carefully. "Oh yes. I see them very clearly. Bir sürü yıldız. A lot of stars. You are just an outline, filled with the void."

  Behind me I could hear various rapturous exclamations. Madam Aura came close again, jewellery clanking, running her hands around the air near my body. I guessed she got some sort of thrill from that. It made my skin crawl.

  "After you left," Joanna was offering, "I tried to ring you, but your phone still doesn’t work apparently.”

  True, it hadn’t worked since the Removal. I’d tried charging it and even replaced the battery. Nothing.

  “My computer program started working again,” Joanna continued. “Almost as soon as you closed the door. And I cast your horoscope immediately. You are enormously important, Emily. There is something huge happening."

  "I could have told you that," I said, a little callously. I was hoping Joanna would be a good friend; she had been very kind, but I was a little resentful of all these people psychically probing me like I was some sort of specimen.

  "And not just your horoscope. I tried tarot cards as well. After that, I just had to let everyone know." Perhaps she hadn't noticed my comment, or was too caught up in her own excitement to care.

  "So what did you find?"

  "You are a vortex," said a young man with a completely bald head, trying to get close enough to read my palm. I put my hands behind my back. "A centre of enormous power," he added, thus proving he had no idea what a vortex was.

  "There is a psychic storm coming," said Madam Aura. "And you are the focus."

  "It's like the universe is coming to a point," said someone else. "And you are that point."

  "Great times."

  "Probably the most important person since Nostradamus."

  "A quintessence."

  Any moment now, I knew, someone was going to mention the Great Pyramid. Whenever some unexplained mystery is taking place, old Cheops and his pile of rocks manage to sneak in somehow.

  "You are stars," said Maestro Birgili, briefly but mysteriously. Again, his voice silenced the room.

  I turned back to him, since he seemed not only concise but also accurate, given what had happened in Max Fisher's office.

  "Do you see me at all?" I asked. "Or just me-shaped space?"

  He smiled. "Oh, I see you. But you are space. You are like a summary of the entire universe around you. You are as large as the universe, and the universe is as small as you."

  "But why? And what does it mean?"

  "Both of those I cannot answer," said the Maestro. "Bekleyin. Wait. We will soon have the answers, in one way or another."

  "But - I don't want to – I don't want to be – whatever it is I am." And then, in the midst of my sputtering, a neologism popped into my head:

  Emilyspace. Like cyberspace, only more intrapersonal.

  There was a sigh from the other side of the room. Three people were examining a sausage that had appeared on the floor. They were bent over its slimy length, making various rapturous noises, but giving it a wide berth all the same. It squirmed in the usual way and then stopped.

  Madam Aura looked at it. There was a moment's silence, as the whole room hung on her verdict. She took the sausage gravely and peered closely at it, then closed her eyes and seemed to drift off for a moment, then opened her eyes again.

  "Nothing," she said.

  "And that is very significant," she added after a moment. "There should be something."

  - Sorry to disappoint you, I thought. I'll try harder to make it more interesting next time I create a sausage out of nowhere.

  The sausage was passed from hand to hand. Various crystals and cards were consulted, but apparently to no avail. Not even the Maestro could venture an opinion. For the first time since I had entered the room, doubt had set in. The sausage was a psychic vacuum. The room was vexed. I confess I was delighted.

  "I guess it's like ectoplasm," I said cheerily.

  All those eyes turned on me again.

  "You know," I said, opening my mouth again and thrusting my foot in up to the kneecap. "You guys are supposed to extrude ectoplasm, aren't you? I do sausages."

  Silence descended like a lead weight.

  Joanna touched my arm gently. "Can we have a word?" she said.

  "Sure."

  We went out onto the back veranda and sat in wicker chairs. There was a huge flowering Poinciana tree overshadowing most of the back lawn. The veranda looked a cool and friendly place, in contrast to the hectic living room. Joanna was looking slightly abashed now. She knew I was embarrassed and maybe a little angry. She fiddled a bit with her bangle.

  "Sorry, Emily," she said. "I should have warned you. Are you mad?"

  A damn good question – was I? Perhaps my sanity was a little unstable. I knew that wasn't what she meant, but still...

  Before I could answer, several things happened.

  I heard a

  !Click!

  from somewhere close by.

  A camera, stage right. Coming from the bamboo stand that grew near the end of the veranda.

  I stood up.

  And instantly turned into stars. Physical Me vanished, replaced by the Stellar Me, an outline of dark space, like before, filled with spheres of burning gas. My mind exploded into infinity; there was a sense of rushing headlong through the void; vast chasms of nothingness all around me; then it was gone. My body was still stars, but my mind was earth-bound again.

  At the same time there were two strangled cries, one from behind th
e bamboo, the other from Joanna. But they were not quite the same. The one from the bamboo was more of an inrush of breath; Joanna's was a strangled Glurk!

  Then there was another

  !Click!

  and a man started running before I could get to where he was hiding.

  A photographer, in the bamboo. Taking pictures of me. I launched myself from the veranda after him, went high into the air, but managed to keep my feet when I came down again, and chased him. I felt very light in my star-state. He sprang over the back fence, clutching his camera, and raced across the neighbour's lawn. I followed, leaping the fence in a single bound.

  Halfway across the neighbour's yard was a swimming pool. The man pulled up sharply, swung the camera round, and

  !Click!ed

  again.

  I was not going to look good in that one.

  He turned to run again, too late spotted an inflatable plastic pool toy in the shape of a sea horse, and planted his foot firmly on it. It went bang. His feet became entangled in the suddenly limp plastic and he fell heavily onto a folding chair and small table set up beside the pool. That must have hurt. I felt no sympathy at all.

  I was on him in an instant, before he could rise. I am not given to throwing myself at men, especially those who take sneaky pictures of me, but I decided under the circumstances to set my reputation aside. He was holding the camera carefully away from his falling body, no doubt trying to keep it from continuing its momentum into the water, so when I hit him somewhere between his ribs and the top of his legs, I was expecting him to fold up neatly and lose most of his breath, particularly as I was coming in with my right shoulder straight at his solar plexus. I played touch football in my high school years, and I had been curious to try the real thing for some time. I came in low, sliding the last few inches along the grass, not caring if I lost a bit of skin providing he lost more.

  I went right through him. It was like I was made of nothing at all (I was in fact still made of stars at this point). Yet despite being insubstantial physically, I apparently still had mass, because my momentum continued unimpeded by his intervening body. Good old Sir Isaac had laid down the law three hundred years ago and he wasn't hearing appeals. I slid right through his body, which was of course totally dark inside but no doubt filled with warm rushing blood and viscera and other yucky things which I just swept through, emerged from his back, continued on through the collapsed wreck of the table and chair, and finally ploughed straight through the concrete edge of the pool.

  At a point just above the water, I suddenly ceased being stars, shuffled on my mortal coil, and headed downwards.

  Splash, I went.

  When I surfaced, I heard yet another

  !Click!

  which was becoming really boring by now, and noticed after I had dragged my hair away from my face that the photographer had gone. I was standing in about four feet of water. I waded to the edge of the pool and began to haul myself out as Joanna ran up. She put out a hand to help me.

  "Are you all right?" she asked.

  "Did you see that? I went through him. Did you see that?"

  "Yes."

  She was looking at me funny. I would have, too.

  "Are you all right?"

  Another good question. How did it feel to penetrate solid objects like they didn't exist? I was not hurt, except for my dignity. I was surprised in fact by the lack of sensation, both in being in my star-state, and after my ghost-like penetration of corporeal things. I felt perfectly normal, and that was more surprising than anything.

  There was something squishy under my feet. I looked down through the water, then clambered out. Joanna helped me across the lawn and over the fence. I didn't tell her the squishy things were half a dozen sausages I had left in the pool. Maybe I should have. It sounded hilarious, and I needed a good laugh at that point.

  ***

  Later that night.

  Me: ensconced on Joanna's sofa with a soft pillow under my head. Joanna: in her armchair, consulting a pile of books whose titles were as esoteric as the diagrams and symbols that decorated their covers and pages. Bruno: asleep between us, dreaming pussycat dreams, blissfully unaware of anything except his stomach full of dinner. Maestro Birgili: in the same chair as before, apparently not having moved a muscle in the last six hours.

  Everyone else had gone. Joanna had very tactfully sent them packing after we had limped back to her house, me soaking wet and her getting wet by her proximity to soaking wet me. Most of them had gone quietly, assured by Joanna that she would be consulting them again soon. A few had begged to continue their use of me as some sort of exotic specimen for their various investigations, but even they backed away when I scowled, which I do very well even under normal circumstances. Maestro Birgili had just sat there as if the call for dismissal could not possibly apply to him, and Joanna had seemed happy for him to stay. So all but he had left, taking their crystals, horoscopes, cards and other paraphernalia with them. The house seemed very empty.

  "You are still stars," the Maestro said, looking at me. There had been no more reversions to my star-state since the afternoon, but he seemed to be able to penetrate my exterior resemblance and find something more sinister beneath.

  "Well I was for a minute, while I chased the guy," I confirmed. "That is, I could see it for myself, and I think Joanna did too."

  Joanna nodded without looking up from her book. "It sure took me by surprise."

  "You glurked," I said.

  Joanna looked up from her book this time. "I what?"

  "Did you recognise him?" I asked. "The photographer?"

  "Yes. He's with The Trumpet. Conrad someone-or-other. I thought he was a nice guy until today."

  "And I guess Bob Kirke sent him?"

  "Probably. He's still a newspaperman, even if he is a dickhead. He paid more attention to us yesterday than I thought he would. I didn't tell you before – the paper rang me this afternoon and asked for a comment on what's been happening. I didn't tell them anything. This is their revenge, I guess. You'll be headlines tomorrow."

  That would be fun, no doubt. I turned my heavy guns on Maestro Birgili. "What does being stars signify? And why don't I feel anything?"

  "That's because you are one with whatever is happening," he said. "When you are stars, it feels natural, so you do not feel any different."

  "But why am I stars?"

  He shrugged, which was the most movement I had seen him make since I met him. Even then it was the barest lifting of his shoulders.

  "My guess is you are somehow reflecting the anthropic nature of the universe. As we said earlier, you are a focus of universal energy, like a magnifying glass refracting the sun's rays. Psychically, there is something big about to happen."

  That was no answer at all. I wondered if everyone in my life would speak in riddles from now on. My main concern was whether I was going to die or something. Petty of me, perhaps, but there you are. I always was a practical girl.

  "How much longer is it going to last?" I asked. For all their confidence that they knew what was going on, both Joanna and Maestro Birgili were very reticent with how, and why, and when.

  The Maestro did not even shrug this time. He just stared at me, his thick monobrow bunching in the middle over the top of his nose. Perhaps he was squinting, perhaps concentrating. Maybe he was farting. Whatever it was, the result was not helpful.

  Joanna, in her turn, had seemingly retreated into her books. She seemed to have an extraordinary number of them. Her library was filled with shelves filled with books. Despite being inside them for hours, she had found nothing that quite covered my case. E for Effort, though.

  I remembered something from earlier in the day that had been noted when it occurred, and then shoved back into the recesses of my mind while I concentrated on more immediate matters. It came back now and politely raised its hand for attention.

  "What was on the TV when I arrived?" I said. "Some sort of news report about something in space?"

&nbs
p; The news reporter, I remembered, had been blaring away about it until someone turned him down.

  "It was a report about the split in the sky," said Birgili.

  "From yesterday?"

  "No," said Joanna. "It happened again today, apparently, but we didn't get to see it because, of course, it was raining. But it was visible elsewhere. It was in apparently the same position as yesterday. At about the same time, but a bit bigger."

  "Evet," said the Maestro. "Yes. The Hubble telescope could see nothing, however. Of course, they would not. This is something not visible to science."

  "That's great," I said, "Just great. Intrusive and invisible. And repeating. And growing."

  So now, on top of everything else, we were going to be swallowed by some gigantic hole in the universe? I could not help feeling in some way responsible.

  "So it's not in the atmosphere?"

  "No," said Joanna. "Max said the Parkes observatory apparently detected nothing at all when the dish was aimed at the split. But I have no idea if they deduced anything from that. It only lasted a few minutes, like yesterday, then closed up again."

  "Have they any idea what it is or what's causing it?"

  Joanna smiled in that sly little way she used for talking about scientists. Sort of ridicule and sympathy tied into one. "They have many ideas," she said. "None come close to the truth."

  "And what is the truth?"

  There was a pause. Joanna made a little noise in her throat as her eyes flickered towards the Maestro. The pause grew into a silence.

  Eventually: "We don't know," admitted Joanna.

  About a dozen sarcastic comments leapt to mind, but I didn’t say anything. Joanna had been very helpful and sympathetic to me so far. I was anxious to find a solution from whatever quarter I could, but was not as quick as her to dismiss a scientific explanation, if it was available.

  "I wonder how Max is doing?" I asked and, as if in illustration of the enormous number of coincidences that occur in the world at any given moment on any given day, Joanna’s phone rang. Joanna answered. It was Max, asking for me.

  Joanna handed me her iPhone. I lay back on the sofa. Since meeting Max for real, the thought of him no longer produced tingling in my loins, so I was able to relax more.