The Light

White Out is compulsory at the Church of GodMind.  It starts every night at precisely 22:45 and lasts exactly one hour.  The night she first got hit with White Out Melody shrieked in terror.  It didn’t matter.  In White Out you can scream all you want.  You hear nothing.  You feel nothing.  You see nothing.  Nothing exists.  Nothing but an empty anxious whiteness. 

God’s Light reveals Truth.  White Out is God’s Light.  Therefore, White Out reveals Truth.  So sayeth the Deacon.

 White Out: the ultimate in sensory deprivation.  Electromagnetic pulses emitted by chip algorithms are perfectly calibrated to flatten brainwaves, cancel perceptions, cancel thoughts.  The mind becomes a bleached emptiness unencumbered by inner or outer distractions.

 The chip is the ultimate in extravagant avant-fuKool.  It’s a scintillating gem-size quantum computer derma-bonded to the temple.  Direct connection to the mind.  If your wallet’s fat and you’re an early adapter, you’re in for a mind-bending ride!  Forget VR goggles, augmented reality eyeVids, haptic suits, holo decks—forget all that shit.  The chip’s made everything else dragging-edge-so-five-minutes-ago.  The chip rules.  It blows everything else out of the water.  Real and virtual are now indistinguishable.  Simulated reality injected directly into the brain is reality.  And neuroTranzing into dataStreams, merging mind with net in a direct connection, that’s another reality.

 22:45 approaches.  Melody sits alone in her cell waiting for White Out.  She now knows what to expect.  Her heart pounds.  She trembles.  Her stomach tightens.  Her breath is constricted.  His Eminence taught her to sit in lotus position, empty her mind, embrace the whiteness, meditate on it.

To merge with God we must eliminate the ego.  To eliminate the ego we must meditate in pure righteous silence.  White Out is pure.  White Out is righteous.  White Out is silence.  In White Out we merge with God.  So sayeth the Deacon.

 At 22:45 exactly Melody’s cell begins to bleach out.  Slowly everything loses all colour, then dissolves into a featureless all-encompassing whiteness.  Melody is now deaf, blind, impotent.  She feels confined, exposed, vulnerable.  By 22:50 she is suffocating in whiteness and unfocused anxiety.  Unbidden internalogues bubble up from the depths of her subconscious: paranoid thoughts, negative chatter, pointless mind babble, fleeting surreal images.  The ceaseless brain buzz is perceived only for an instant before being cancelled by White Out algorithms.  A train of thought is impossible.  Breath, try to follow your breath.  Slowly…in.  Slowly…out.  Church of GodMind devotees claim to see God in this eerie nothingness.  Melody’s never seen God.  In the beginning she thought it was a deficiency on her part.  But slowly the truth began to dawn on her: White Out isn’t God’s light.  It isn’t purity in silence.  It isn’t holy or righteous.  No.  White Out is power.  The Church of GodMind owns you.  It owns your body.  It owns your mind.  White Out is christo-fascist hell.  There’s no God there.  And if you do see God, most likely your brain has suffered a systems crash on too much White Out.

 I hate this!  I hate fucking White Out.  I hate the Church of GodMind.  I hate all its sanctimonious holier-than-thou assholes.  Melody’s thoughts are vague, White Out makes sure of that, but the hate is fervent, wholehearted, and feels warm.  It’s something to hang on to with that little bit of consciousness that’s still hers.  White Out is bloody forced meditation, so she bloody well meditates on her hate.  It’s what’s keeps her going, keeps her from completely losing her mind.  It helps helps her focus, focus on how much she loathes them, all of them, all those Church of GodMind bastards—the Magister Templi, the Adeptus, the Porter, the rest of them—all bastards and bloody pervs.  And the Deacon, although she’s never actually met him (and wonders if he even really exists), he’s the worst—responsible for all those bullshit declarations.  I’m supposed to be bloody impressed?  Are we pretending they’re deep thought?  Pearls of wisdom?  Seriously?  So sayeth the Deacon my arse!

 But then—when?  Who knows?  There’s no time in White Out.  A disembodied voice breaks into her nothingness.  It startles like a flashbang exploding in a pitch-black cellar.  It’s low, slow, smooth, infused with sarcasm. 

           “Melody…”

           Her heart skips and freezes.

           Like fog lifting White Out evaporates and Melody finds herself back in her cell.  A holo projection towers menacingly over her.  Shit!  It’s the Adeptus, Dean of Discipline.  Dark Lord creepazoid zKunt.

           “Melody, we need to talk.”

           Crap!  It’s never good news when the Adeptus wants to talk.  But then, maybe it’s better than White Out.  Anything’s better than White Out.  Still, she knows there’s got to be a very good reason she’s been pulled out of White Out, and given that she’s facing the Adeptus, no doubt she’s in for a reaming.  Oh God, not again!  Has he found out?

           “You’ve been extremely naughty, haven’t you?”

           “Me?”  He must have found out!  “I haven’t done anything.”

           “Melody, you’ve Transgressed.”

           “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

           “Really?  You were caught, and you know it.”

           “Caught doing what?  I didn’t do anything. “

           “Melody, last night, you were in the kitchen during White Out.  That is a Transgression, which means you did something wrong.”

           Melody stares at the holo and says nothimg.

           “Foolish girl do you think the Deacon can’t see through your eyes during White Out?”

           Melody’s heart skips a beat.  Crap, can he? 

With no warning, like a fast cut in a flick, Melody abruptly finds herself in the Church of GodMind kitchen.  A simulated-reality vid recorded twenty-four hours ago by her chip through her own eyes is fed back into her mind.  She’s re-living exactly what she experienced then.  Once more she’s crouching behind the big stainless steel flower bin.  She smells garlic, rosemary, bleach.   She’s confused, disorientated.  How the hell did they do that? 

           “You see, Melody…you are hiding.”  The Adeptus’ voice is in her head.

           “No!”

           “What do you mean, no?  That’s your eyes,” the measured words ooze disdain, “we are looking through.”

           She’s in yesterday today.  Melody tries to make sense of what’s happening.  This is like I’m in bloody Groundhog Day!  I must pull myself together!   “Yes, but I’m not hiding.”

           “Oh?  Then why, pray tell, are you crouching...behind the flower bin?”

           Shit, shit!  Melody’s heart jolts into overdrive.  Get a grip!  “I’m, I’m…”  Quick, think of something!  Anything!  “I’m looking, yes, I’m looking…for, for, the marker.  Yes, the rubbish bin marker!  I must have dropped it.”

           “I don’t think you believe that Melody.  Why are you hiding?”

           “I told you; I’m not hiding.”

           “Yes, you are.  You’re waiting for White Out so you can run away.  Why would you want to leave?  Aren’t you happy here with Your Family?”

           “Yes, yes, of course I love My Family, I’m happy here.”  Melody doesn’t like lying, but you gotta do what you gotta do.  I hate this place.  She crosses her fingers behind her back.

           “Then, perhaps, you need to leave because you require…a fix?”

           “No!  Why do you say that?  I’m off junk!  I am!  I don’t crave anymore!  I’m no longer a Vulnerable!”

           “So…if you are no longer a Vulnerable,” long contemptuous pause, “…and you love your Family, why…betray…your Family?”

           “I keep telling you, I wasn’t betraying my Family!  I wasn’t bloody running away!  I had to place the marker on the rubbish bin before it got taken out!  The one, the one I dropped!”

           “At exactly White Out time? 

Another fast cut.  The kitchen vanishes and instantly Melody is back in her cell a day later, the Adeptus’ holo hovering over her like a Dementor.

           “Melody, if you had remained in your cell during White Out you would never have betrayed Your Family.  But then,” the mellifluous scorn is glacial, “you haven’t exactly been…the Family type.”

           “What do you mean?  I have, honestly, I have.”

           “I find that…a little hard to believe.”

           “No, it’s true, really, deep inside it’s true, it’s because, because it’s My Family, and, and I don’t want My Family to suffer.”  

My Family and I are Indivisible.  If I transgress, My Family transgresses.  If I do Penance, My Family does Penance.  So sayeth the Deacon.

           “Suffer?  You don’t want Your Family to suffer?  I think that’s rubbish because by attempting to escape you’ve made sure Your Family will suffer.  They will be doing penance along with you.”

           “No, no!  I wasn’t trying to escape!”

           “Careful, Melody, God sees everything.  He knows when you’re lying.”

           “No, yes, I mean no, I’m not lying (fingers still crossed behind her back) and yes, God sees everything, sees me, sees what’s in my soul.  He sees what’s in my soul because, because His light shines everywhere and so He sees everything, and, and because White Out is, is God’s Light, yes it’s God’s Light, and so it reveals, yes, it reveals, White Out reveals my soul—”

           “Melody, if God’s light has illuminated you, then surely you have noticed the Feeders…it has revealed?”

           Oh God, here we go again with the bloody Feeders!

Feeders devour Virtue.  Feeders devour Truth.  Feeders devour the Soul. But in the light of White Out, Feeders are exposed.  In the light of White Out, Feeders are expunged.  So sayeth the Deacon.

           “No!  There are no Feeders in my soul!”

           “Be careful,” the honeyed disdain darkens, “you are sinking in the mire of your lies.  Beware the pit you dig.  By lying you are becoming a Feeder.”

           “NO!  I’M NOT A BLOODY FEEDER!”

           “Do.  Not.  EVER…raise your voice to me, Melody.”

           “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry, but I’m not becoming a Feeder.”  I’m sick of fucking Feeders!

           “Clearly, however, there are Feeders in your soul.”

           “No, really, there aren’t any.”  The asshole just doesn’t let up.  What the hell does he want from me?  More BS?  “Only when I first arrived, when I was a Vulnerable, Feeders sucked me dry then, but, but not anymore.  They were revealed, yes revealed in White Out and they’re gone now.  They’ve been, they’ve been eliminated, yes, eliminated by the light, by the purity of meditating, righteous meditating, in, in the light of White Out.  I’ve been purged and I am no longer a Vulnerable.”

           “Are you sure?  What was it that made you a Vulnerable in the first place?”

           “It was, it was, weakness.  Weakness on account of self-doubt.  Yes, self-doubt.”

           “Maybe…doubt serves…a purpose?”

           “Doubt is imperfection.  If we embrace God and have faith in Him then there is no doubt and no imperfection.”

           “You’ve recited your lessons well, Melody, but do you really,” a pause infused with significance, “understand?”

           Seriously?  Who gives a fuck?  “Yes, I do.”

           “So, would you know who has no doubt?   Who has no imperfection?”

           “The Deacon.”

           “And who holds the keys to faith, to God, and to Perfection?”

           “The Deacon does.”

           “And do you know why?”

           “Because, because—” oh bugger, what’s that stupid word?

           “You led me to believe…that you have learned your lessons, Melody.”

           “Yes, I have, honestly I have, it’s, it’s because of, uhm, of Transmu—no, Transmo, uhm, Transmogrification.  Yes, Transmogrification, that’s it!  That’s the word!  God blesses the Deacon and, yes, and that way God Transmogrifies the Deacon so he can bless us.”

God blesses the Deacon and bestows upon the Deacon the power to bless His Flock.  And so the Deacon blesses His Flock with White Out.  And he blesses His Flock with the hair-shirt.  And he blesses His Flock with his seed.

           “Transmogrification is a metamorphosis, Melody.  God is all-knowing and all-seeing, and because he blesses the Deacon, the Deacon is transformed, and the Deacon becomes all knowing.  And the Deacon becomes all seeing.  And if he so chooses, by this power of Transmogrification, the Deacon allows you to see.  And…he allows me to see as well.  I know you are deceiving me.  Melody, you are clearly guilty of a Major Transgression.  You are weak, and what’s more…you are much too clever for your own good.  You obviously need to work on character and willpower.”

           “No, I have…”

           “SILENCE!”  The Adeptus’ voice cuts sharp. “We’re done for today.   Clearly you are still a Vulnerable infected with Feeders.  You know the rules for an infection: you are to remain in White Out until all Feeders are exposed and eliminated, and you must repent…genuinely repent.”

To be banished into White Out is to be blessed.  So sayeth the Deacon.   

           “No!  No, please!  No more White Out!”  Melody is indignant, exasperated and on the verge of tears.  “I have no Feeders!  I don’t.  Can’t I be spared White Out?  I’ll do a hair-shirt.  Please, please?”

           The Deacon’s holo waves dismissively.  “Lauren will be your eyes until you are discharged from White Out.  If you need help with anything…eating, dressing, relieving yourself, Lauren will assist.”

           “Please, please—”

           “Quiet!  You talk far too much for your own good, Melody.  From now on, and until I release you, you are under a vow of silence.  Whether in White Out or not, you must not, under any circumstances, speak.  Not to anyone.  Except to me…and then only if I address you.  If you break this vow of silence, you will be required to perform First Level Ritual VII (Penetration and Seed).”

Extended White Out.  Time dilates and contracts.  Moments are forever, hours an instant.  Anxiousness.  Impotence.  Helplessness.  Vulnerability.  Paranoia.  Fear.  Anger.  Endless dead dull boredom.  Inner dialogue, images, hallucinations, coming, going.  Interoceptive attention—bodily functions kept functioning—the stomach, the colon, the bladder, sensed, marking a progressively disagreeable time.  And as her time in White Out elapses, Melody’s loathing, hatred, resentment for the way she’s treated, grows. 

Minutes had passed, hours, a day, hard to tell, when Melody noticed.  It was a corner in the whiteness (even though there were no corners, or for that matter, any physical aspects, in the whiteness).  She could swear it had pulled away, like the edge of a stage curtain.  At first it was indistinct, just like any another meaningless hallucination bubbling up from her subconscious.  And then, it became more a feeling.  The feeling solidified until she could swear that someone was staring at her—there, from the break in the whiteness.  Clearly, she was imagining it, wasn’t she?  She simply must have been.  A rupture in White Out?  Unheard of.

           “This is not a pleasant experience for you, is it?”  The voice seemed to come from where the whiteness had been pulled away, now revealing a tall thin fissure of deep blackness.  Unlike the Adeptus’ voice crashing in on her, this didn’t startle.  It seemed natural.  “And it’s not actually illuminating anything, is it?”

           This couldn’t be.  It made no sense.  OK, what the voice said made sense, in fact it was completely true, but there was no reason for her to be hearing a voice in the first place.  She was in White Out after all, and in White Out there were no voices, no sounds, nothing could be heard.  And no thoughts could be followed.  And there were no edges to pull away.

           Oh bugger!  Am I imagining this?  I’m going bloody mental!  But the thing was, that black fissure was there.  It was Real.  She was sure of that.  And the White Out algorithms weren’t flatlining it, or the voice, or her thoughts.  If that was the case, it must mean they put it there.  And if they put it there, well, it must be a bloody test.  A trick!  The bastards are messing with my mind!  This shit was uncalled for.  Melody’s loathing, her hate, burned hotter.  But remember, I mustn’t speak!  I must ignore it.

           “Ooh, wicked thoughts, but I’m not one of them.”  A Being belonging to the voice walked out of the fissure of deep blackness and into the blinding whiteness.  The harsh, bleached barren of everywhere shrunk and became round and focused, illuminating the Being, now standing stage center, in a bright spotlight.  Everything else became an impenetrable black nowhere.  The Being, which might have been he, or she, or they, or whoever, whatever—it was hard to tell by looking at it—shrunk to very small at first, then, like Alice, expanded to huge, then trying on a few mediums, eventually landed on just right.

           Convinced this was a test, a trap, the Church of GodMind messing with her head, Melody tried to disregard the perplexing performance.  She tried to look away, not with her eyes (her eyes didn’t see in White Out), but with her mind.  This proved to be futile as stage center in front of her remained stage center in front of her no matter which way she turned.

           “So, if it’s not pleasant, and serves no purpose, why do they do it to you?”

Melody gave up avoiding and regarded the Being in the spotlight.  She concluded it must be an avatar functioning as a trap.  It has to be!  They’ve sent an avatar to test me!  I bet it’s a bot trying to trick me!  Unless it is a dream.  Had she fallen asleep, her comprehension no longer in chip induced White Out, but instead now actually dreaming?  The stage, the spotlight, the Being that could shrink and expand like Alice—it certainly seemed dreamlike.  The possibility that it was a dream was seductive, except that she’d always found that White Out was much too bright and disturbing for sleeping or dreaming.  But then, contemplating her situation some more, she concluded that this awareness, the one she was now experiencing, was no longer the frightening, mind-numbing nothingness of White Out.

           “I don’t understand the point,” the Being said, “it’s like being turned off.  What’s the purpose of that?  When you’re turned off, you’re nothing.  Who wants to be nothing?”

           Ignore it!  It is a deception!  They’re going to punishing you if you speak to it!  The voice swirled angry all around her and then, surprised, she realized it was hers.  She hadn’t meant to verbalize her disposition.  And in White Out, the algorithms made sure you couldn’t.

           “Yes,” the Being sighed, “getting punished is never pleasant, but honestly, I’m not one of them.”

           Bugger, it’s reading my thoughts!  Had the Church of GodMind discovered how to read minds in White Out?

           “I will prove to you that I’m not one of them.  I can release you, take you out of here.  Where would you like to go?”  Melody had no time to ponder possibilities because ctrl+alt+delete immediately followed the question.  Everything she thought she perceived vanished in a stunningly swift instant and instead she was flying high up in the sky, the being next to her, the world spread out below.  They hit Mach two in under ten and flew across the snow-covered Alps.  The mountains quickly turned into rolling hills wrapped in fields and groves of olive lined with cypress.  Terra cotta rooftops and Cinzano umbrellas flashed below until they came to a nauseatingly sudden stop, Mach two to zero in zero.  They hovered high above the polychrome marble of the Duomo di Firenze.

           Florence?

           “You were at the top of your game the last time you did a gig here.”

           Yes, this was true.  She had been at her peak, Melody London megastar, when she last played Florence, before that disaster in Berlin a month later, a concert that had turned into a (now legendary) train wreck.  The band never jelled, the performance was so feeble they had to kick in the canned shit, and, as if that wasn’t enough, an intense bout of crippling stage fright hit her halfway through a pitifully plastic rendition of ‘Diss Me!’, a major hit of hers.  She blanked.  She froze.  She walked off stage into a nervous breakdown.  And into a six-month binge of booze, junk and an endless series of one-night stands with the wrong stranger before she reluctantly dragged herself into the Church of GodMind seeking detox and redemption.  What a cock-up that turned out to be!

           They descended softly floating and perched themselves comfortably in a perfectly ordinary way on the dome.  The sky was a lovely azure and the sun shone in a warm breeze.   Pigeons circled in flocks above the roofs spread out below them, and far down on the street tiny tourists affected attitudes for selfies.  Inexplicably, her situation felt commonplace and tranquil.  Melody gave up pretending to ignore the Being.  Who are you? she blurted out.  She couldn’t tell if she sounded antagonistic.  She hoped she didn’t.   And she couldn’t tell if she was talking or thinking the words.  She hoped thinking, in case Lauren was there, in her cell, listening, waiting to rat on her.

           “I am you.”  

           What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?  What is this Being?  A bloody avatar sent by the church to test me?  To trick me into bloody speaking?  If I’m lucky, maybe it’s just an alien from another planet!

           The Being shrugged and shook its head.  “I don’t think any of that applies.”

Melody was quite certain that this time she hadn’t said anything out loud, but just to make sure, she touched her fingers to her lips to establish she wasn’t using them and replied.  No, really, who are you?

           “I already told you, I am you.”

           That can’t be because I am me.

           “I am the you that you need to wake up.”

           Wake up?  I’m not sleeping, am I?   I’m awake and you’re a demented new version of White Out!

           “Am I making you nervous?”

           No!  Well—if you’re a bloody avatar that the church sent to get to me speak, well, I’m speaking, thank you very much!  And if you’re not a bloody avatar, then I’ve gone mad, and I might as well be seeing bloody blue mice!

           “I’m sorry.  I thought that bringing you here would convince you I’ve got nothing to do with White Out.  But, since it hasn’t…”

           The Being shrugged in a resigned fashion and snapped its fingers and Florence disappeared.  But Melody wasn’t back in the whiteness.  Instead of sitting on the dome she was sitting where she had been sitting all along, on a meditation cushion in her cell.  And, she could see, and she could hear.  And, thank god, no sign of Lauren.  The Being sat comfortably cross legged above her on her bed.

           “Shall I keep you company until your White Out is over?  We can converse to pass the time.  Or shall I just play you some music?  I know exactly what you like.”

           I’m supposed to be in White Out.  You’re getting to me into a shitload of trouble.  Melody made quite certain by touching her lips that she spoke without speaking.

           “You are most definitely in White Out.”

           “Right.  So how the bloody hell is it that I can see!”

           “I am making you nervous, aren’t I?”

           Well yes, it’s not as if the Adeptus didn’t make it quite clear I’m not to speak to anyone.

           “I’m not anyone. I’m you.”

           Oh yes, fine, that’s what I’m to tell the Adeptus?  I was speaking to myself in two voices?  No doubt they’ll come up with a Feeder to account for that one.  And on top of that I’m not supposed to see anything but white!  And if Lauren walks in, or the Deacon sees that I can see you and the bloody cell…

           “Relax, don’t worry, as far as the church is concerned, your eyes are seeing white and your ears hear nothing.  I’m just showing you that you can deceive it.”

           What?  The White Out?  Or the church?

           “Both, of course.  White Out is generated by your chip, and the Deacon spies on you through your chip, and he sees what your eyes see.  I’m not in your chip.  I’m in your mind.  The Deacon can’t see what your mind sees.”

           You’re in my mind?  I am going mad!  How did you get in?

           “I didn’t.  I’ve always been here.”

           I’ve never seen you before.

           “That’s because you made me up a little while ago.  You wanted to escape White Out so badly you invented me to help, and now you’re free.  It’s all in the mind, Melody, isn’t it?  Real, virtual, everything.  Only you get to decide which one you’re in.”

           Right, all very nice, but how the hell do I know you’re not a bloody church bot flogging me a load of shit?

           “You don’t, but you will know when you know who you are.”

           The Being smiled enigmatically, rasterized, and disappeared.  Melody was alone in her cell.  No Lauren.  No Adeptus.  No White Out.