I ordered a brand new analog modular synthesizer with expedited shipping.

Reed no longer mastered the waves and the apartment became even more netted and noisy.

Melisms zinged, gurgled, and murmured. When the synthesizer finally arrived, I immediately popped the electrodes into empty glass vessels and electrified a thin cable.

Hardly have I thought that I would call it a metadata sonification in analogy to the bio-object listening sessions that I was familiar with, then my legs started shaking and my body was being pulled into a side of the aquarium. The room looked distorted and turned into something that looked like a Minecraft location. The walls of the room became sharpened and jutted upward.

I was floating inside a golden sphere of light, exhaling pearlescent pink bubbles from my mouth. With each breath that I took, the sphere breathed, too. It cracked, and then I sparkled.

The cycle repeated itself.

The sphere inflated, emitting a snow-white glow, cracked, and let out pearly bubbles, retracted on the inhale, patching up all the holes with light.

I was a spherical nucleus radiating light, and a melody poured from inside of my belly.

My pure crystal consciousness perceived what was happening with playful curiosity, without any confused desires or paranoia. I focused on the sound and listened to the melody from within, repeating it in my mind and shaking my head.

Having memorized the melody, I floated towards an opening which brought me back to the surface of the apartment, right under the table with the vases on top of it. The aquarium was emitting membrane waves and I enthusiastically painted them in the gold color of the sphere.

The melody would not leave my head.

I found a laptop in my apartment and downloaded a music writing software. The program seemed fairly easy for my understanding, although I had never worked with it before. My attention was not dispersed. Just like a genius, I quickly figured out what each function and button meant.

I intuitively sketched harmonics and percussion parts and applied automation to soundtracks. I sensed which frequencies to highlight and which to cut.

It took me two gloomy winter nights to apply my own human audio effects to the sounds coming out of the speakers. I stood in the center of the room and spun sound waves in a circle, creating a swirling panorama, compressing frequencies, changing the shape of the waves, adding obtuse angles to the wave curves or, on the contrary, making them sharp.

When I finished, I listened to my work a hundred times, and the little men from the glass were still moving around, not paying any attention to me. I found what I had created to be identical to what I heard behind the glass and wanted to show it to somebody.

I thought of Reed; he would surely have understood and even visualized what I had done, but he was not there.

It was lunchtime. I put on my sneakers, walked outside, and made my way to the mermaid cafe with a thrill of excitement. At the entrance to the cafe, I looked in the mirror. I looked simultaneously dirty and decent, my hair and face were not particularly fresh, but the look and expression on my face made me like my own reflection.

I scanned the cafe guests, and, to my surprise, at one of the tables I found the same girl that I saw during my summer practical assignment in the park. The same girl who I had imagined to be a monster with a snake’s neck, and who had heard all the gibberish about suffering that I had uttered on the wooden stage of the street amphitheater.

The girl was drawing in her notebook. When she raised her head, I read on her face a quick succession of emotions, from coquetry and smugness to surprise and embarrassment. The girl covered the drawing with her palm and smilingly invited me to engage in a dialogue.

Deprived of all emotions and experiences, I could see through her and somehow knew that she remembered me and had been waiting to meet me all this time.

‘I wrote a piece of music. I want to show it to you. I live across the street over there.’
      ‘Let’s go,’ she was not a coward, and, in addition, was strongly interested in me.

I helped her to get dressed and we left the cafe. The girl was nervous. She shuffled her feet against her will, tripped over, and made a strange sound in her throat which was automatically covered by smooth movements and friendly questions.

‘What’s your name?’

I had forgotten what my name was because I hadn’t used that information for a long time, and when I remembered, I decided to introduce myself as Smoke after all.

‘I’m Cigarette then.’

At the front door, on the bench, I noticed a drunkard who used to throw stones at our window. I asked for his opinion on my music as well. “No diggity,” he nodded, not recognizing me, and followed us in fading soberness.

Climbing the stairs, Cigarette whispered to me:

‘Interesting company.’
      ‘I need a motley crowd.’

I let the guests in and invited them to follow me into my glass laboratory. Both marveled aloud at the glass construction.

My lady guest marveled with gasps while the shabby gentleman marveled with other strong words. I offered a single armchair to the girl and a wooden kitchen chair to the man.

The Play button flashed. I concentrated on the sonic coil, and, like a conductor, prepared to control the sound waves. A shimmer slowly crept and filled the room. I created a swirling panorama. As soon as the waves appeared from the speakers, I spun them around in a sonic tornado. I was playing with different frequencies, not even audible to the human ear. I imitated the sphere and its endless breathing. The music was intensifying. Underwater bells and a succession of alien knocks took over time and space.

After a minute the man rose from the chair and staggered to the corner, muttering something under his breath. He squatted in the corner, grabbed his head, and screamed that he was scared. The girl, on the other hand, was staring at me attentively.

The composition reached its peak at the black noises when the drunkard began to cry and shouted toothlessly: “Tuurn iit ooof.”

The girl also cried, but in a different way. She pleaded for a kiss and rubbed the hem of her dress under her faux fur coat, showing her thighs in tights. Now she opened her red mouth like she was orgasming.

For a brief moment I thought I was like God. It was a harmless moment. Yet the thought that slipped near the glass shook me, and the fleeting sensation grew into a giant Cyclops that triumphed that it knows the secrets of the world and can manifest its power at any time.

The enjoyable melody turned into a terrible squeak that hurt the ears. The girl jumped up and stormed out of the apartment in tears, covering her ears with hands. The drunkard smashed the glass aquarium with a yell and fell into it with a noise. He got up, all coated in shards, and left frightened like a stray dog.

‘I am an eternal fool,’ I said to myself with a smirk and went to get a broom. My soul was filled with serene joy.

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