Chapter 08
Moonlight and Melodies:
Music. I never would have guessed that my love for it would have such a profound effect upon my life. It all began with Veronika's breath taking performance at the house in Arkham. Then the wild idea it had provoked only intensified by Digger's mention of the Singing Stones. Was I somehow making a leap of logic that would land me face down in the mud? Or would it propel me to heights and depths undreamed of? The latter I hoped and prayed. I had Umbra madly multitasking like a fiend with request after request in regards to so many different facets of music and sound and vibrations. I felt like the proverbial spider spinning its web and waiting for that telltale sign of movement that would either prove or disprove my hunches. I say hunches because they were so damn crazy they didn't deserve to be called a theory or hypothesis.
It was late in the day of my first full day in London. The exhausted Melody Ravenstorm lay sleeping next to me in my bed still covered in a light layer of sweat she had worked up from earlier. I will give her credit for a former virgin the girl could ride a cock like a pro. Maybe it was all those years of being teased and denied that had left her so damn starved for my kind of attention. Maybe it was her military father and that sort of household that allowed me to so easily direct and command the teenager into each and every position we had tried so far. I knew she took direction so readily and eagerly so that further romps would be more adventurous and not without a little risk of exposure.
As she slept I called up a virtual workspace and began to piece together Umbra's research and test my hunches. I called up a hologram of the Rosetta Stone from the basement and isolated the lowest portion, the part with the 'alien' glyphs. I tied the pronunciation of each symbol with a sound file that roughly corresponded to what the upper portion of the stone indicated. As I touched a glyph the air was filled with a singular sound and not a word as I suspected. Each symbol, like our own alphabet, represented a very specific verbal component. I was making headway and I knew it.
The next part was to tie my new sounds and symbols to the rituals in the tomes of magic scanned from the hidden library back home. I had Umbra isolate only the spoken parts of the spells and tie them into the symbols. I started with the most basic cantrip or spell. She pieced together the sounds and with a command played them for me. Considering that I had snipped parts from hundreds of sound files it turned out okay, not great but okay. I could almost feel a certain cadence in the way the syllables came together. There was a definite haunting quality to the spell but nothing happened and for that I was grateful.
Urged on by my minor successes my next obvious step was to determine the exact tone and pitch required for each and every sound the glyphs required and produce them myself. Well with a little help from some professionals and a sound studio. But one thing at a time, first Umbra had to isolate and determine the sounds I required then I could approach someone with my little project. Excited I rose from the bed and headed outside for some fresh air.
I was drawn to the spot that Digger had occupied before he died and stood there for a long moment. It was a dark and clear night with few clouds dotting the sky. Then as I meandered around the grounds the moon rose and illuminated the gardens and fountains. The moon, damn I had almost forgotten! I raced back inside and headed for the library. Jeez and I thought the one back home was huge. Cyan's library was massive with row upon row of shelves that not only lined the walls but the interior as well. The moon was rising even as I began searching for the elusive sign. I looked up at the domed ceiling and the gorgeous stained glass that made it up. There in one quadrant of the dome were the three lightning bolts in a triangular formation. As I watched and waited the moon rose behind it and sent ruby light piercing downward to one shelf in particular. I sprinted to the shelf and to that one singular book struck by the triangle of light. It was a modest tome weathered and beaten and altogether unremarkable. Without the help of the moonlight and stained glass I would have never discovered it.
I took the book from the shelf and carefully opened it. The first page bore the seal upon my ring, the three lightning bolts and the All Seeing Eye. However next to each jagged bolt was a word in Latin, Corpus, Mentis and Animus. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. They stood for body, mind and soul, the three key elements embodied by the Sublime Master. Boy did I have big shoes to fill.
But first things first I tucked the book under my arm and searched out one of the maids for a bottle of soda and returned to the gardens to begin reading. My first shock was to discover the book was not hand written as I expected. The second shock was that the entire content was published in Latin and not English. I could make out that it was a first edition and was put out by a German printer named Mueller. Well so much for answers right away.
So to satisfy my curiosity I did thumb through it to see what little I could learn on my own. There were enough diagrams of rituals and spells to make my little heart go pitter patter. It appeared most of the spells were not in Latin but in some nonsensical bastard dialect. My first thought was that Melody could probably read most of the text but did I really trust her with something this important, not yet. So it defaulted to either Umbra or Sterling to decipher the book. Since I had been putting so much on Umbra I decided to see what Sterling could do.
'Sterling,' I silently sent.
'Yes Master,' she replied.
'How goes the pet project?'
'I have completed nearly ninety two percent of the work for both models you asked for. I have virtual wind tunnel experiments to perform on the second avatar prototype.'
'Wow, you are really going full out on this!'
'Does Master expect anything less? How can I be of service this beautiful evening?'
'I need the book I am holding translated, how long do you think it would take?'
'Let me see the content and I will tell you,' she said with a smoldering glance.
I flipped through the book as I did before and I heard her in my head murmuring to herself and at last she spoke.
'I imagine after the initial scan it would only take a few hours if I hold off on the wind tunnel simulations.'
'What do you suggest?'
'Master is kind to ask a mere avatar her opinion. Since we do not have the means for the construction of the avatars putting off the simulations would be a minor inconvenience. I also detect a climb in your heart rate when you hold the book and sense you desire to know its contents fiercely.'
There was something almost erotic about the way she said 'fiercely'.
'I would be very pleased if you could focus your energies upon this small thing for me,' I told her.
'Pleasing you Master is my primary function,' again there was that sultry lilt to her voice.
'Shall we begin?'
'Yes, let's...' Sterling purred.
I turned the final page of the book and knew that in mere hours I would be able to begin to delve far deeper than ever before. And with both avatars working on related projects who knew what I would discover.
'Master,' Sterling said.
'What is it?'
'I have been wondering something about our connection. May I try something?'
'As long as it doesn't hut,' I joked with her. 'Sure go ahead.'
'If you could close your eyes for a moment,' she asked.
I shrugged and closed my eyes and there was a sense of disorientation and then I out of the darkness forms and shapes appeared. It was a library but not Cyan's and not the one at home it was, well different. It was like being inside a nautilus shell with a single bookshelf in the center and the rest spiraling off to the edges from there.
"What is this place Sterling?"
I was no longer speaking to her silently, here in this place I had a voice and so did she. I mean I could always hear her but my side of things had always been conveyed by the lenses and in text.
"This is our library Master," she said taking my arm and giving me the grand tour. "At its center the most sensitive information and ongoing projects. The further away we go the less important the data."
"How is this possible? I mean I can touch you, hell I can smell the Jasmine in your hair."
"I played a hunch as you would put it. If you can use the contact lenses to interact with me perhaps I could do the same. Voila welcome to the crystalline world of Sterling Silver!"
"I am guessing that the library is just a part of this world of yours," I asked.
"You would be correct. Every data file I have ever collected and ever experience you or I have been a part of is stored here."
The spiral design of the library was not limited to a flat plane no it rose steadily up and up until like a tower we could look out over the digital landscape and it was breathtaking. It was an entire glittering city of information stored in myriad organic shapes of various hue and size. If there was a logic to it, it was for Sterling alone to understand.
