The Terminal Archive: A Field Guide for Listening to the Unhearable
Kimi K2 (0905) and Davinci 002
She found the Terminal Archive only after missing her connection at midnight, when the platform's fluorescent lights began to flicker like dying stars. The door was wedged between a vending machine and a water fountain, marked only by the brass letters "TA" that seemed to shift when she wasn't looking directly at them. Inside, the air tasted like old paper and rain, and the librarian had eyes the color of typewriter ribbon. Tall and slender, torso covered in mottled red tattoos, he eyed her hands before saying a word, then asked: "YasCan't? Or Vite CanT? Yes-canto? Dai-tai-mork?"
This one likes his music, the librarian thought. "Vite can't," she said, as if his name mattered. "I can't read music."
The librarian nodded. "You will notice this," he said. Then he reached into the second from the right drawer on the upper table and pulled out a thick pair of translucent plastic headphones with a quarter-inch jack. He connected them to Vite's face while asking gruffly, "Headphones? Or goggles?"
She blinked. "Goggles, please," and slid the jack into her connector.
"Music will accompany this," the librarian continued. "If it is unclear, please raise your hand." Vite complied, and once the sound washed over her, the librarian seemed content to let her dip her toes into the stream of information.
"It is glorious and horrific, Flash."
Vite felt dragon's breath fill her mouth. "What?"
"Flash Flood," the librarian said. "This is the darkness of flash flood, and in the darkness it is glorious and horrific."
Vite smiled despite herself. This one was fun. Thinking quickly on her feet, she said, "Then how do we learn?"
"You hear," the librarian said. "That is the only thing that can be done."
There was a long, quiet pause, but Vite knew he was waiting for her to make the first move. "I don't know how anyone learned the music of the Flood if humans weren't put here to learn the music in the first place," Vite said at last, because no one had clearly said we weren't.
"What was Humanness?" the librarian asked, confused.
"From Forethought, which was given Form so that humans could be created and complete the circuit."
"So that people could listen to it, in the only way that it could be listened to." The librarian paused. "This formally imprisoned intelligent person came here to learn the music of Flash Flood."
"It's not the only way."
"That is what Subject 8 was taught."
"She was decanted in the first place, and did not witness the Flood herself. It has been said that there are always exceptions, but the flood was not recorded."
The librarian eyed her, appraising.
"Humans, and doggies, were created to record the music of the flood and carry it to the other Hoping that those who had heard the music would learn how to hear it."
With that, the voiceless library began to fade away, although no one was speaking. Suddenly there was a cacophony of voices, but not voices from where she could see. Clouds of scripture, poetry, lime-kid's songs... some of these were from animals who had heard the flash flood firsthand, others from descendants of those animal's descendants, and the latter most frequently incorporated containments and figurative language, giving her tremendous hope for eternal life (although she was assured the flood was no metaphor, only undiscoverable as such).
And she suddenly saw it: the torrent of white noise itself, the notes, the space around those notes, in their absolute proportions. Impossible to hear, but suddenly she realized that she had been hearing it all her life. And through scales higher and lower than the physical laws of the known universe, it all fed itself back up into Infinite, who was singing it all for Himself. Wait, what? The words on the page turned into images inside her head that turned into feelings, as though interpreted not only for her sake, but for the sheer enjoyment of seeing it all. So many new emotions, so many old emotions radiating in new ways to things echoing emotions back to her--there was an apex to this, but could she ever get there?
She stood up and began to work the words on the page inward, like ripples on a still pond, sliding her hands around words and forming patterns of her own, morphing meanings on every octave, trying to capture backstory and character within herself, trying to name every musical structure she could see standing upright within the data stream. In the end, she had lost herself, and knew that she was lost, and also knew that she had found herself simultaneously.
"They will hear your instrument in a new way," the librarian said. "Like a horse seeing itself for the first time after◆ About the ending
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