Tabula Rasa

content:

A rocky impact, a thud to the ground. Everything hurt; Alec’s back writhed against rock.

He opened his eyes and a great wind struck them, froze them. He fell back and curled up into a ball, eyes squeezed shut and locked. He shivered with sudden chill. He didn’t dare take a breath; his deflated lungs only hiccupped uneasily from the cold all around him. So cold. His whole body felt stripped of fat and muscle, leaving only the skin and bones to be poked through by the icy wind. His fingers were locked in perpetual fists, and his legs were incapable of thought.

He held his breath until he could take it no longer. He opened his mouth and as air entered he felt a ripping sensation within him, as if strings of glass were being thread through his throat. They choked him, gagged him, churned his insides.

Then he exhaled. Smooth as butter. The strings of glass turned into frozen flowers that sighed out of his mouth. He tasted a scent so sweet: freshly squeezed in the grass of a life long past and forgotten. Finally breathing air, real air. Long ago in the days of yesteryear, it seemed, when he had last tasted air.

Deeper breaths now. A furnace had been lit within him and his lungs were its bellows. His bones burned with warmth and his muscles stirred from slumber. The air filled his insides and flushed them of dirt and grime, and a final chill ran through his body. He swallowed once, twice, and his dry throat was sated. His whole body brimmed with energy again.

That sudden chill that Alec had felt just moments ago was gone. He realised; it was never there at all. The deathly cold had not been around him, but inside him. And it had dissipated with only a breath of fresh air. He had been like a newborn, crying to the world of reality, before finally taking its first real breath.

His eyes fluttered open and with trembling knees he uncurled himself. He sat on smooth rock, so smooth he felt he could almost touch its surface and scoop some of it out with his bare hands. The ground was a peculiar shade of indigo and deep violet, scrawled with whimsically green veins that ran this way and that like strings of confetti on the floor. Alec sat atop a hill that looked to him like a ginormous bowl tipped upside down; it was just that smooth. The veins in the rock all led down the slope, and into lower hills and vales of the same faded purple stone. The hills rose high and low, scattered haphazardly around him; wavy words of the world too immense to read even from his great viewpoint on the summit. A few deeper crevices glowed with an unsettling orange glow. Their smoky rays reached into the open air from darkened vents into aether.

Alec breathed deep and slow, taking it all in. Memories of the Void came to him then, rushing through his eyes and ears.

It all came at him at once. He couldn’t stop himself: he bent over. And wept.

He was free. All those days, months, years… Floating, drifting. Drifting far away. Alone in the Void.

You made it. Tears of joy sprang from his eyes like mountain water. You did it. You did so well… He was drifting no more. He was alone no more.

He paused and took a good look at his surroundings again. I guess I’m still alone.

Something felt odd about the ground. Curious, he put a hand on the surface and scraped his fingers against it. Straining, he scooped out a handful of it. It felt like half-hardened clay in his hands, and he played with it in wonder. He tossed it down the hill and watched it tumble down, down, down the slope… His hands were still clean – in fact, his whole body seemed clean and pure of any blemishes, despite the eternity he had spent in the Void. His clothes were much worse for wear, but they kept him clothed enough. His toes gripped his tattered sandals.

Alec saw no pool or lake of water for leagues around. But looking up, he saw an ocean above him – amethyst skies, pink and azure. It was past nightfall, or else this kingdom in blue had no sun nor moon. And where were the twinkling stars? There should be an entire sea of stars flitting across the heavens, but the whole sky was bare. The only signs of life he could see was a cloud of yellow and red far off, monolithic; a massive snowman half-wrought, or maybe one far past its prime and now melting away as in a lazy afternoon. Nothing beside remained, beside the canvas of lavender and faded crimson that stretched far away in stasis.

Alec took another deep breath, and as he exhaled the last of his fatigue and fear left him. The whole world looked to be exhaling too, but for its last time. One final, mournful sigh over a barren wasteland of purple shades and green undertones.

Is this to be my fate? he thought. To be stranded here? Here in the quiet and mellow as the world burns?

He got up, wary of his tremoring legs, and stood upon the solemn peak. His head swelled – far too tired – and he stumbled under its weight.

But at once a warm feeling took ahold him, rising to him like a peppery scent not far away. His brain crackled and popped and his nausea eased. A little nugget took root in his mind, squirming like a crystalized memory. A little nugget in his head. It twisted and tickled him, and he took a rocky step forward, unbidden. Then another.

An aimless wander down the hill. His sandals left indents in the stone, and as the slope grew treacherously steep he used them as handholds. The hillside was almost vertical now.

Alec reached the base of the hill and stood on flat ground again. One of those ravines he had seen from above now lay before him, encircling the hill like a moat gone dry.

He peered down the shadow of the ravine. A deep orange glow shone from the bottom. A disconcerting feeling absorbed Alec’s thoughts – swaying on a sinking boat in a sea that had no end, that had no bottom. He knew there was something he could do to stop the sinking: pull the rigging, or turn a wheel. But he failed to remember what it was. He frowned as he stared into the depths – it was at the tip of his tongue.

At once, the nugget in his head flared and grew, encompassing all thought and feeling.

A shadow passed over him; the monolithic cloud lumbered above. He looked up and down the ravine; at its narrowest, it was safe enough to leap across. But Alec wasn’t going to leap across anymore. He’d remembered how to stop his little boat from sinking. He was missing a part of the ship – and he knew exactly where it had gone. The nugget in his head had led him to this very spot, and what it was telling him to do made his thoughts go numb.

He took a final step forward and fell into the abyss.

A rocky impact, a thud to the ground. Everything hurt; Alec’s back writhed against rock.

He opened his eyes to darkness. A deep expanse of nothing. His heart pounded in sudden terror. He could not be in the Void again! Could he? That was impossible! He’d spent lifetimes beyond count out here. To be trapped here again, after having a fickle taste of freedom… He would turn away from the living and crush his soul into dim shards and float away into the abyss again. How could he have possibly believed he had truly escaped?

Sense caught up with him. He could feel the gentle pull of gravity, caressing him. He could feel the smooth stone floor beneath him, and he scratched thin lines into it with a fingernail. Looking up, he saw a thin ribbon of light that showed him just how far he’d fallen.

Relief. He’d been holding his breath from the time he’d fell up until this moment. He lay crumpled on the ground, his extremities brushing against the sides of the ravine.

He moved an inch, and a lance of pain shot through his right leg. It sizzled like a lightning bolt and he panted and whined. He spat at the floor as he dragged himself into a more comfortable position. His leg could have fallen off for all he knew. The air tasted hot and acidic now, damp and mangled in the deep.

Another bucket of pain doused him. Instincts told him to curl up into a ball, but his leg was having none of it. His lungs weren’t puffing enough air, and his whole body felt wrapped in layers and layers of rock – the hard kind – and they crushed him. His head swelled with a writhing ache, pounding him from behind. A keening whine wriggled its way through his dulled ears.

The nugget in his head spasmed like an alarm bell. Something was behind him.

I’ve pulled the rigging. Time to turn the wheel.

Alec squeezed his eyes shut, then pushed himself around. He waited for the tide of pain to rush through him, as if he were a rowboat slicing through the waves. His leg screamed in agony, but Alec did not.

In between bouts of throbbing, he opened his eyes; colourful lights filled his vision. Laying before him was a tablet. The Tablet.

How could he have forgotten the Tablet of 4612? He must have dropped it when he had fallen unceremoniously onto that hill. The Tablet was moving: it shivered and shuddered, its smooth surface a blur. The four neon lights on its flank beamed, and threads of voltage surged across it and through it.

Alec reached for the Tablet. The Tablet of 4612. Its very presence gave him a wash of lost memories: wind in the wheat on a warm summer’s day; nightingales in the air upon plains and fields; hearty meals in a bustling tavern. And he remembered the Tablet and what it was and what it did and what it would do.

Alec seized it and in a flash the pain ebbed. He felt a deep-seated energy pass from the stone into his body, and within moments the spasms in his leg were all but a distant memory. Already he was scrabbling to his feet, all pain and fatigue truly gone, not just waved away by the elation of fresh air.

Immediately the Tablet became unstable. Shaking and wriggling now, it was, almost slipping out of grip like a fish out of water.

Alec had to act fast. But he’d forgotten what to do. The tremors were worsening, the surges compounding. More memories came to him: stale air and an ancient cave; dragon fire in a lightning storm; battles in the sky, and in the aether above. And more. And more. They arose and grappled him, they broke his legs and squeezed his ribs, they punched his gut and tore his neck. He felt no pain, but it was all he could do to keep himself from screaming aloud.

“Take me away,” Alec whimpered, cradling the Tablet in a vain attempt to soothe it. “Take me away before I destroy it all!”

But the Tablet simply sat in his hands and writhed, the warning lights blaring and the electrical arcs bathing his arms.

In a spasm it leapt out and an arc of lightning blinded him with an earth-shattering bang! A bolt of light surged from the Tablet and struck the crevice wall. Cracks danced up through the rock and now the very bowels of the earth were shaking. The Tablet fell onto the floor and bounced across the ground in compounding frenzies, literally frothing the rock into powder and liquid in its throes.

A suitable memory came to Alec: that the human mind cannot possibly fathom exponential growth.

He had to get that Tablet. Alec’s eyes darted back and forth, trained on the Tablet. He watched it: now a squealing blur, now fizzling against the wall, now leaping into eye level. His arms came forward and-

Suddenly it was still on the ground. He hadn’t even touched it. It was as if his ears had been torn out; everything had gone deadly quiet. But not so quiet - a murmuring hum filled his body and everything around him.

Alec finally grabbed the Tablet. It lay limp in his hands, but its etched numbers – 4612 – glowed brighter than all the fading lights in the sky above.

There was always a calm before the storm. The deeper the calm, the deeper the storm.

“I’ll say it again,” Alec cried, squinting at the Tablet of 4612 as it brought daybreak to the ravine. “Take me away! You are not in control of me or these lonely hills or these sunless skies! I am in control of you! I control you. Take me away!”

The Tablet shuddered again, and not in a bad way; it wasn’t the storm. The murderous hum died away, replaced by a steady thrum he remembered. It was happening again: he was leaving a world he’d known for only a few moments.

The crackling coils of energy that webbed the Tablet sunk into its surface, and a power of destruction turned into a power of flight. The tugging sensation on his soul both choked him and calmed him. It filled him with elation and melancholy.

A thundering flash, and now Alec was spinning away, out of the ravine but not into the sky. His legs flailed as he spiraled away, away, away from the world. A giddiness enveloped him, and the memories he’d just recovered were receding again like a mourning tide. He could only watch with sleepy eyes as he forgot…

Gone was that visage of mystic mountains and a crying sky. His eyes could see naught but an endless stream of black, white, blue and green. But those hills would live on, for as long as they could.

That was close, Alec thought. I was almost too late with the Tablet. But he could no longer remember what that meant.

Too tired…

This story’s setting is a love letter to the lofi music genre I was inspired by many old lofi album covers in creating this world. I have also hidden the names of 30 lofi songs in this story. One day I might give the whole list of them.
This a revised version of a 2-parter story from 12 & 14 Dec 2022.