THE SHIP

THE SHIP

[aboardtheship]

Volume 4

Last Transmission From the Deep Halls…saying, once those outsiders get in your tortured halls … I’m saying we didn’t have command of the vast fictions of the day … The ship wasn’t, in the end, where those of us who lived there thought it was. We had already lost it in all senses of that word … All we knew of this place was the news … the decks are aware that--in the end--they can never know what, exactly, the plot was. It’s only silence after that. Back at the beginning there’s the tapping sound, like metal on stone … then the call signs, several of them, very amplified and confused … cries in the crawspaces … a cruel few words and then, “We no longer know which way to face.” The masts are still aware … What if the ship didn’t “fall”. What if nothing “fell”? Nothing was lost but existed just alongside everything else, fifty years later in the rubble by a pier at the flat end of nowhere … who could write this … everyone has a different story to sell … call signatures in fish, fresh chum, old silence: “We don’t know what to do. Everything is the alongside of something else.” … Minor players gesture helplessly … signals hard to make out in the chaos as the big conceptions go down … everyone desperate now.

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Time to face the music?

Am I alone on this ship?  The wood creaks. Occasionally a swell will tiilt the deck and a rumble can be felt through the feet but there is not a breath of air moving down here, in the bowels of the ship. It didn't used to be so cold, so empty. Once upon a time it was bubbling with activity, if not exactly life.  Ach, but how is this any different to what came before? Alone I stood amongst the officers and the crew... and afterwards it was alone that I stood the Bridge, wrestling with the wheel, amidst the tangled floes of this crashing, frigid sea.

But its not just the people who have gone. This Ship rolls on as a hulk, a carcase, a dead thing. Even the ghosts have gone And I am alone with the horror in the hold.

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An Encounter

It sat there on the pillar at the top of the steps. Then it would get down and walk the length of the railings, pause as if it was looking down over midships then it would cross the deck, stopping by a cleat or by a drain or to tap a hatch cover with its foot. This listless patroling went on for a while; I couldn't take my eyes off it and the longer I watched the stronger the feeling grew that it was just passing the time, waiting.

I crept downstairs and squinted out the peephole, then through the crack between the double doors. It was just waiting.

Its head turned slowly as the door latch clanked and the hinges squeaked, so I took a deep breath before I stepped out. The head that it turned towards me was like the skull of an elephant with no trunk but with four short tusks that moved like a spider's palps. It seemed to be watching me patiently as I walked towards it.

"You're not afraid," the statement resonated in my head rather than in my ears.

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Chromosphere

The sound of footfalls on the deck above has become a frequent occurance. Gone is the peace that allowed my contemplation, I am now fraught, wracked with confused ideas and driven to distraction by broken concentration and half-forgotten key ideas.  This has been planned. And so now I must spend my time exposed on deck, braced against the near-constant driven rain.

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The Harvester of Eyes

It is a constant. The heartbeat of the ship comes up through my feet and the legs & back of my chair; it cocoons me. I stare fixedly at the black porthole. We are running heavy and deep, the usual infinity of horizon erased. When did we load? Do we slump to the deck each time we dock, rising only as land slips o’er the edge of our world? I have the impression that the constant muffled voices just beyond intelligibility stop momentarily every so often, as if I were awoken from a shallow sleep: it’s redolent of a childhood spent drowsing on long car journeys.

This vessel is so large that a giant squid could be embracing the hull, sucking us slowly down and we would not know our danger, not feel more sick than we already do. Is there a vast cyclopean eye measuring us, our progress, seeking meaning in our apparently aimless and endless traversal of this endless water which could only be more internal if I could not see it with my own naked eye? Am I the oculant? Do Iwatch beneath the vastness? Can I blot out, squash and smear this existence if I reach out my thumb like this?

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beneath his breathing there is cold clay

Nils Hayt

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above the basso profundo of the waves agin the hull, the wind in the wires, the inert radio equipment and the moaning of the decks, a signal lives.

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Walk on Water

The recording device is a dictaphone in a waterproof pouch, bought for spurious reasons years before...

Even though the cold water was three feet deep, I could smell it, the hot, dry tang of dust and oil. It smelled like a quarry or the site of major roadworks. The smell, the promise, beauty and openness of that smell...

The water is talking to me, using the voices of children. Its voice uses its own incidental sounds; splashing, lapping, soaking, being absorbed and causing to expand, rippling under the caress of the evening breeze that didn’t expect to do battle with the combative surface of the playful river for at least another two miles.

Beneath my feet I could feel piles of girders, stacked sheets of the heavy gauge metal mesh used within poured concrete walls, mounds of rebar, the long metal rods used to reinforce pilings and founds - common sights all, but strange to find under my feet as I paddled along, incongruous like a shopping trolley on a riverbed at low tide. The ancient vehicles used to shift the scrap and the newly forged products sat where they'd always sat, a legacy that would have been melted down too if there weren't so many non-metal parts within the hydraulics and engines. I'd wondered why space had been given up to these dead machines with the work being done by newer equipment: these thirty year old iron giants now rusted and mouldered with the filthy water lapping around the cab windows, old leather upholstery disintegrating into the unfamiliar element. Shouts and laughter from inside the building brought me inside where the water seemed warmer. This could have been my imagination, it could have been the immense heat in the bowels of the works still cooling. I didn't know. At what temperature does steel melt? How long would it take a smelter in constant use to cool once the power was off if it was immersed in water. I didn't know, and my imagination could supply any perception I wanted to fit what I thought were the facts. There were metal stairs leading up to a gantry about two storeys up, and I ascended, watching the children paddle about in their makeshift cruisers, exploring, shouting, laughing.

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Welcome Aboard

The Ship is at no fixed co-ordinates upon the open ocean. The Ship is of no fixed size and shape and it's internal schematics vary wildly depending on many influences. The Ship carries both crew and cargo but dependent on tangential factors and many oblique vagaries both the presence and nature of crew and cargo are subject to frequent and rapid alteration. The Ship has on occasion sails, and on occasion engines.

Sometimes it's engines are steam-driven turbines and sometimes The Ship is driven by diesel. In any event it is recommended that you stay out of the cargo hold and the engine rooms, although it may not always be possible to do so; some invitations are impossible to resist. The Ship's Master is ostensibly in command, and his rules are many, although subject to change without notice. He values your happiness and contentment above all else and if he answers to a higher power, it is unknown to us crew. It is best not to think too deeply about the ramifications of transgressions. Keep your head down and get on with your work, and above all be happy.

If you are new aboard, you may have many questions - we would encourage you not to ask, to push them out of your mind. Answers would not be helpful to you anyway. In time all questions will fade from your mind. It often takes new Crew members a time to settle in, to fold themselves into the loving embrace of our Ship and Crew, but in time you will see it really is in your best interests to surrender yourself to this life. The Ship is a different place for each of us and we invite you to share your experiences of your new life on board.

Remember, however, that loose lips sink ships.

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Place on him the Hand XII

Roaming these empty corridors is madness. The Ship peels on, heedless, regardless, helmless. Oh I have ever prided myself on being anything but a risk taker... but of course that's exactly what I am. My legs scream from the cramps of spending so long appointed at the wheel; asleep, awake and everything in between or round about. The very air against the hairs on my naked arms is exquisite agony to my mind. Freed from the shackles of the old plan that we cooked up, we few remaining officers, I am feeling new blood reaching parts that have long been asleep, and I am electrified, constantly. Slowly though, that's the way now. Can't take anything for granted now... not after the sight of Nevile, laying there with half his face missing and his lungs visible in his breast. Good thing I have this flare pistol in my hand. Spooks or rabid dogs, they're going to light up like a firework display if they care to prompt me. I listen to the song of the wooden halls creaking about me. The Ship reconfigures all the time but to me she's still the same... its that feeling that you can't itch.. she's always there, singing her same song... and I know the key of THAT tune only too well. Most of the doors are shut as I pass but I don't need to open them to know that there's no life behind them. The hairs on my arms can tell that here isn't anything moving there. No. For what we want to find we have to go down... down to the engine room... or the cargoes. Aye! Might need more than a flare gun for that...

One flight down there are stores, for the finding of fish, and bigger things that live in the sea. I'll get something there that feels better to my hand... and then we'll see what's going on down in them bowels of The Ship.

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All at sea

Is it quirkiness in yer plumbing, d'you think.. or the random jet of blood through the ears as your adrenaline ramps up the fear? Wired to the max, my son! Use this power wisely and ride the wave of the storm like a current. Anyone might guess the truth or the wisdom of the waves' motion... but to be a conduit... is to be so much more. Scribble down your observations on the sheet I gave you and make sense of them later. Let no one put a worm into the study. Be brisk and brief, for the Master needs not your exposition... and speak from your heart, always. Even when the words make little sense to you, they may mean everything to someone else.

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When the Wind Spoke.

When the wind spoke we knew we were at sea. Safe inside, all was motionless. The water pouring across the skylights spoke to us of rain but the off-white plaster walls kept their silence until we heard the voice of the storm.

Maybe shooting a hi-def time-lapse video of a spirit level would reveal the motions of the waves; we only guessed where we might be, we only thought that it might happen. When the wind spoke we knew we were at sea.

This was the first storm. The flooding had come and the waters had not receded. The foundations of the city had subsided, ending the oh-so-brief attrition with the river and the solution was literal floatation. A square mile a buildings on inflated pontoons.

And still the water rose.

And here we are. Finally it is confirmed for us. The wind spoke and now we know we are at sea.

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A crate of audio recordings created using Spectral Imaging taken from the Black Telescope in The Map Room. I have spent days repairing and reconstructing a number of damaged reels.

It seems the signal from the sky has been recorded over the top of a number of other layers of music and noise. This is the result of the most successful reconstruction so far, ie. it's the best I could do with the time and resources available.

I assume these are refering to the Kepler Mission undertaken by NASA in the early 2000's. The sky in that direction has been somewhat darker ever since.

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From a batch found in a box with a strange sketched symbol on the side.

All the reels have designs etched into the metal frames.

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From a box of tapes with a strange sketched symbol on the side. Each reel has its own unique etching on the frame.

It was reported to me that this box was dropped off in the cargo hold by a gentleman who signed the cargo sheet with the initials 'M.B.'

It is rumoured he is still on board.

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She bellowed down below, in the guts of the ship. The band played on…

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The Desk

Upon the desk sits a number of things. An empty oil burning lamp. A children’s spinning top. A photo frame. A glass paperweight. A book with no cover. An ink well and pen. A necklace with a photo pendant. There is a thick sticky fluid spilt on the desk. It smells like oil and blood. I have tried and failed to light the lamp with this many times.

There is also a briefcase. It has no locks, no hinges, no means to open it. 6 sides and a leather handle are all it features. It has never been opened and yet still there are things contained within.

If you were to stand in front of the desk, you would only see it and the things upon it by touch, for there is no light in this place. The desk itself is old and battered. Many scratches and marks scar it’s surface. The drawers are missing.

When I touch the desk, something within it allows me to see it, to visualise it, to FEEL it. Something is shimmering, rippling, eager, underneath the surface.

I do not sleep. Each and every night I lay my head down and close my eyes to rest I am instantly here in the darkness. The desk and the things upon it are my only company.

I have thrown the things from the desk a thousand times in a thousand different directions in frustration and anger but each night as I visit this place they are as i first came across them.

I have been chained to the desk in this way since I first came to this ship. It may sit in the dark down here, with me, each night, forever.

I need to open the briefcase.