Act 1, Scene 1
Hyperobjects have brought about the end of the World. A century of rapid change later, new worlds and alien life forms have emerged from the Back Loop.
The corps de ballet sways adagio; mouths open, tendrils and siphons performing subtle pirouettes. Their chemoreceptors feel-smell the familiar safety of communal effluent; delicately elongating the aggregate-corps orient into a denser ensemble, before burrowing deeper into the gravelly debris. They maintain a dim peripheral awareness of the slowly moving shadow cast by thin midwinter sunlight filtering palely through the ruins of the neo-gothic stately home whose rubble they sit in, and the huge greenhouse frame beyond. Chandeliers are garlanded with vegetation, algae-encrusted buttresses sag green, crustacean-covered battlements crumble, carcasses of window-arches point spikily in all directions. A uniformed figure with a huge fiercely-toothed head loiters patiently among the shards and plant life under the dining table.
The aggregate sense-smell Chimaeridae, Lampreys and Rajidae above, criss-crossing the scene, faintly registering their flitting and gliding shadow forms which suddenly, almost as one, exit from the field of perception as a series of crashing vibrations ripple through the surroundings. Two large flat shadows appear in the aggregate’s field of cognition, plunging heavily downwards. Most of the bivalves retract tendrils and siphons more or less hastily, sealing themselves into the safety of their shells. A few of the most inquisitive remain, remembering this has happened before. From experience, these are not predators. They are soon rewarded with a smell they recognize, a strange mix of their own with another marine form, and something entirely other. The alien beings spin around each other in a slightly clumsy pas-de-deux before settling in the ruins. The vibrations gradually decrease until oscillations revert to their usual rhythm; the other beings return, moving in complex patterns through and around each other, the Chimeridae performing entrechats, grands battements and fouettés jetés; Lampreys glissades battements and the Rajidae sautés arabesques. The shadows move around and deepen. One by one the mussel-corps-aggregate pull themselves out of deep unconsciousness, to resume undulating feeding tendrils after the exertion of opening up again. They taste the visitors’ smells, richly strange chemical profiles they will recognize next time.
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As Margaritifera and Anguilla sink, the liquid slows around them to a lethargic density. Frozen in the block of solid water, unable to move, feeling a single beat of the river as one long vibration lasting hours. Then abruptly the river is fluid again, they feel its pulsing erratic rhythm reacting to the shifting movements of multitudes of beings, magnetic forces and the weather above. The dance of the remaining bivalve siphons and tendrils unfolds; they observe in rapid time-lapse until long after even the most timid of the siphons reappear.
Anguilla finally nudges Margaritifera and reluctantly she starts to follow him. Margaritifera cannot detect it in her Pearl Mussel mode, but Anguilla’s electroreceptive senses perceive the curious old figurine under the waterlogged table as if suddenly lit up by an impossible shaft of pinkish light. Anguilla picks him up curiously before shimmying to the water’s surface. They dry off and pull on furs and heavy cloaks, shivering a little after being in the river so long, despite their genetic modifications. The object reveals a metallic sheen beneath the figure’s worn-away old uniform that matches Anguilla’s shimmering skin. He passes it to Margaritifera, now able to view it. As she lifts its cloak, the mouth opens revealing two sharpened sets of teeth inside. She feels a strange attraction to it, a ghost from the previous world. A mystery to be reserved for the future: they are running late.
Microchiroptera circling overhead pick out their echo-located gestures in reflected high-frequency sound signals, turning Margaritifera and Anguilla’s waltz towards the encampment into a series of polyphonic movements.
The nomadic base was set up by the community many decades earlier, after the hyperobject manifested its flood aspect, converting the mansion home of the long-running intentional community to a riverbed palace.
Over the temporary gateposts hangs the sign:
Braziers Park School for Integrative Species Research: "to make conscious the shape of the process of which we are a part, so that we may facilitate its development more efficiently.”
Underneath, carved into the gateposts, are fragments of a text copied and pieced together from the remaining written archives, rescued from rising flood-waters:
"Our research gathers together antithetic contrasts, although themselves constructed binaries - adaptation of the environment to oneself or of oneself to the environment, extrovert or introvert, material or spiritual, selfish or unselfish, subjective or objective, and many others. We continue to try to synthesize… extremes through a special method.
"We cannot control or predict what will emerge from the evolutionary process of quantum reality or the creativity which exists at the edge of chaos."
Margaritifera and Anguilla arrive at the large tent for the Solstice meeting of the Secret Society of Special Sensory Symbionts (SSSSS), Braziers Park’s mystical branch of the Children of Compost. A Dionysian nature cult, the community continuum extends from a distant past and Braziers’ founding Order of Woodcraft Chivalry, basing their rituals on sensed or conjectured excavated histories and ghosts as much as the archival fragments. Clothing and encampment designs are reimagined from old rippled and faded photographs. The significance and deeper history of much is lost, abstracted or reinterpreted, and the scientific theory poetically archaic, but the structure and representation of their purpose through a quasi-religious aesthetic binds the group together strongly. They have genetically engineered and materialized the ancient Guardian Spirit Complex to produce the Children of Compost and their special re-connective role.
The session is just starting. The sacred ceremonial fire burns in the centre. All are wearing ritual robes consisting of tunics and cloaks decorated with their own sigils and modified to accommodate each individual’s symbiont modifications. The SSSSS members silently take a place in the circling dance and take their turn in the round of sensory introductions.
Margaritifera waves her tendrils and excretes complex chemical signals as a fine mist sprayed through her mollusk-enhanced nasal adaptations, exuding calm; she likes to stay near Salmonidae Iloha and Acipenser, who evoke hereditary memories of riding fish-kin gills as a youngster; she is also attracted to Anguilla, despite the danger, who shares her chemotaxical coordination. Salmonidae Iloha and her father Acipenser shoal closely together. Acipenser leaps wildly, he smell-feel-tastes the atmosphere, waving his barbels and emanating excitement. Salmonidae jetés gracefully around Acipenser’s leaps, large eyes surveying the scene in spectrums extending beyond violet, her chemical excretions conveying keen interest. Anguilla flexes impatiently, mouth open to taste the environment, and exercising self-discipline to not bite off a piece of Rhinolphus Chiroptera, who is swooping around the group producing a series of clicks and rapid, subtly modulated, high-frequency shrieks only audible to Avellanarius. She is emitting a chemical signal - in a different register to Margaritifera - of slight anxiety, accompanied by a series of her own ultrasonic vocalisations. Lupus Charlie and Lynx had made sure to eat before meeting, to avoid Anguilla’s problems which could have repercussions for the whole group; Lupus wags his tail and bows his head to show good intent, sniffing the blend of chemical signals and scents quietly; while Lynx, with ears alert, whiskers twitching and tail swishing, purrs encouragingly at Avellanarius.
The group’s experiential communion examines connections and disruptions between each other and with their environments. They analyse feelings, behaviours, psychological states, attitudes; how they impact on each other, connectivity with their symbiont species, changes in environment-worlds, hyperobject manifestions, environmental and species’ responses - whether subtle shifts or new behaviours. The session continues through the night until sunrise, before the next evening’s Solstice celebrations. In the following week’s series of short decision-making sessions for the season, these lengthy and subtle sensory explorations will all be taken into account as part of the executive, or resistive, group process.
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After the meeting, Margaritifera is unable to sleep, thinking about the mystery of the little metal man. She has never seen anything like him. She creeps back into the large tent, already decked with holly and hemlock for the Solstice initiation ceremonies and celebrations. Anguilla and Acipenser are still loitering, so they gather together and discuss the object.
Anguilla can answer some of her questions: it is a figure representing a ‘soldier’ – that is, a human who would fight for the nation in territorial and ideological disputes. The soldier has a weapon, a thing called a musket, which can kill other beings from a distance. Anguilla refers to an archival text:
We are living in a world in which the waste of natural resources, physical and mental, already achieved or menaced by a third world war, seriously prejudices the life of future generations. We cannot ‘take responsibility for the future’. We can only ‘act in such a way as to show a sense of responsibility to the future’. – from a letter to Glynn Faithfull from James Parkes dated 14 October 1948.
A move away from violence and earth-plundering was inherent in Braziers Park’s founding, in a time before awareness of hyperobjects. The soldier represents a very old ‘colonial’ way of thinking, when humans considered themselves the top predators and most advanced beings.
Margaritifera still wonders about the teeth, which even Anguilla doesn’t have a response for. Mystical Acipenser suggests a trip with Salmonidae Iloha may hold some answers. As they all have water-dwelling symbionts, they can take the underground waterways to visit ancient territories. Young though she is, Salmonidae possesses deep genetic memories and knowledge that allow her to access and navigate these routes. As they enter the water, Anguilla, Acipenser and Margaritifera hold on to her. Anguilla and Acipenser can sense the magnetic fields they follow as Salmonidae takes them speeding through the Earth’s crystal passages to travel through time and space via a series of spherical portals that each open to a river, lake or pool. They catch glimpses of many interconnected temporal layers emanating from locations, entities and objects.
>Scene 2
Score by Chris Hind: