Bottle Top

(And Other Diocletian Effigies)

For Benjamin Alan Cameron

3/27-29/2002

By Geoffrey Gordon Ashbrook

In a sanctuary of mnemonic remnants a small group sat crouched with sandwiches and books behind the large and newly finished marble monument to Rice, a janitor who had sought employment elsewhere.

Lambert stood up, slung his tin box over his shoulder, and ran off prowing aside ever diminishing ever diminishing echoes to his wake. Klee’s mug of mocha clinked against the slate floor and she adjusted her woolen blanket and slunched sideways against the base of the statue. “Do you think he’ll get in?”

“He usually does.”

“But it’s a quarter past.”

Raenard let a pair of lens-less bifocals slide down to the end of his nose as he looked up at her, everything but his eyes were still trying to focus on the book he was holding.

“Benson locks the door,” she said.

Raenard took his glasses off and folded them and hung them on his front by sticking one of the arms through the weave of his loose knit sweater. He looked at her, and then back at his book, and then shut his book and returned to her with, “I thought he has Professor Ligand now.”

“Oh, yeah. Whatever. He’s still late.”

“We should be going too, think?”

She splayed out onto the floor and buried her head under the blanket and murmured as Raenard and Phelps and Gidgen began shuffling their papers and rewrapping what was left of their food and tossing it all into their bags.

They trolled through the halls with Klee at the back --her head still wrapped in the blanket--, holding onto to Phelps’ bag by the flap of a pocket with a broken zipper. People of all ages were trickling in through and out of doorways. Toddlers in parents’ arms, and three-to-five year olds who lacked the proper expressions to say that they thought their parent should be going in the opposite direction. A gaggle of girls sporting models of basal ganglia. Grandparents walking from talking to listening or visa versa. A woman and a man with braids in their hair, dressed for glaciation, walked hand in hand and whistling. A suited bow-tied scholar transporting a tank of turtles stumbled and bumped across the every-which-ways flow. Young sea gulls, laughing and herring, haranguing and pleading from the tops of occasional book shelves and hat trees watched the mostly children going by below. Even out the windows they could see people moving about between the buildings, all bundled up because it happened to be a very windy day.

The group split up at a T intersection, Raenard and Gidgen taking the left and Phelp’s leading Klee around to the right. And they hastened when they heard the first few notes of ‘Silent Night’ in a minor key from the bell tower with every third or forth note slightly or completely off. Halfway down the hall Phelps reached behind him and detached her hand and then pushed her into a classroom and then ran off to his own.

* * *

Raenard and Gidgen situated themselves in the second row and watched the strange tank that sat on a table at the head of the room. The tank, 30 gallons or so, appeared to be filled with faintly orange colored gelatin. And the only solid thing visible in the whole tank was what looked like a little green acorn, or maybe an olive, an inch or two beneath the surface, which would occasionally shudder or vibrate and emit a weak green light from its topmost end.

“Hello-everybody,” Mr. Schloughler said as he emerged from a small closet on the side wall --the door to which was just over half his height-- and dusted himself off to stand behind the large tank. “We’ve an unexpected treat today. This,” he pointed downward to the tank with the long forefingers of both his hands, “arrived late last night from Amabramn. Do you all remember what Amabramn is?”

There was a sort of dull wave of deceitful nods following a lengthy pause. “Amabramn is, while not it’s real name its much easier to pronounce, but-anyway, Amabramn is the third planetary civilization that we came in contact with.” The small nodule jumped again, and the mass of transparent whatever-it-was quivered all over. “Yes?” he called to a hand-up halfway to the back.

“What is it?” asked an elderly woman who was squinting through her spectacles.

“That’s an excellent question. We have no idea. I’ve shown it to most of the teachers here and most of them thought I was joking. It came with a note…” he fished around in his pocket, “which says…We at the United Institutes of Amabramn feel that your schools and ours should begin communicating.” He looked around the room smiling. “And what’s even more puzzling is that when our first ambassadors returned from Amabramn one of their concerns was that they hadn’t seen any schools. They couldn’t find any schoolhouses or even any libraries. Nothing. And when our head ambassador asked them about this she said they became very concerned and began speaking to her more slowly.” The thing jumped again. He smiled down at it.

Then it began to shake and jerk around more rashly than before, and it began to glow brighter and brighter at the tip. The light congealed in the jello into tubes that branched out and undulated like a jellyfish.

Then something burst out from the top of the little olive. At first it looked like it was just a sizable splash of liquid that would splatter down on Mr. Schloughler and the table and the floor, but it didn’t. It held together, sagged slightly, and then it started shaking and colored liquids shot up through the stem from the nodule and filled the flapping, blooming, evolving shape with all manor of colors. When it was done it looked like an overgrown bushy sunflower with a choke of rotating iridescent metallic teeth and “petals” that were continually moving around as if they each thought it would be much nicer to be where another petal was. The leaves were covered with bubbles of liquid, ranging in size from a millimeter to an inch and a half in diameter, that looked like the lenses of eyes through stomatal lip-lids that squinted down on them as the tattered-looking leafs oriented themselves towards the class. The stem of it was not round or squared or any simple shape, but a mass of tubes and shoots that wove and wrapped around eachother, sometimes coming together smoothly and in other places looking all knobbly or even finned. And at the places where the ‘leaves’ or the ‘flower’ started there were long thin silvery looking hairs that just dangled and shimmered. The whole thing seemed to be making the crackling and snapping noises that a fire makes.

Raenard looked around him and saw that most of the kids were staring wide eyed at the plant. Hellen Bracabre was writing notes with an empty hand, her quill sitting next to the leg of her chair over a smatter of ink. Raenard leaned over and picked it up for her, trying to keep one eye on the thing up front.

Mr. Schloughler looked amused. He looked down at the note he held in his hand and appeared to be reading it over and over. “Maybe…” he said, but trailed off.

Raenard raised his hand, and after a few seconds Mr. Schloughler looked up from the note, reentered the world, and spotted the hand and pointed and said, “Yes.”

And even before Raenard had begun prefacing his question with hedges the head of the thing in the tank bolted foreword and over to him. The already large sunflower head swelled, the seed-teeth spun faster and spread apart like the shutter of a living camera exposing something that only Raenard could see because of how close it was to his face. And inside of a moment it had sucked Raenard out of his seat and in through the face of the flower and resumed its smaller placidly waving shape at the front of the room without so much as a bulge to indicate where Raenard might be.

* * *

Meanwhile, down the hall, Klee was in Professor Sanberdall’s history class, front row, and taking notes over top of her upside-down Sacred-Geometry notes with the blanket still wrapped about her head.

Talking about the second rise of Eugenics, and why it took a different course, Professor Sanberdall walked along before the front row as she spoke and gently lifted the blanket from Klee’s somewhat frizzied hair, folded it, and laid it down next to the layering of notes.

Klee blinked and squinted in the brightness of the dim classroom, and smiled at the Professor as she wrote out choice selections of lecture with her right hand over her other notes, while proceeding with her left hand under the desk in writing a letter to Gidgen over her knee.

…I think my brother’s up to something. I don’t care if he’s only six, he spends way too much time in the basement. Raenard says he thinks he’s talking to my grandparents, but I don’t know. And it’s Wednesday again, and I’m just not in the mood for tacos. I wonder if I could eat dinner with your family tonight. Or maybe you could eat tacos with me. Oh, and I found out what that noise was, I spotted my parents going for a bike ride last night at like two in the morning. 2:00, September. ? They’re all so weird…

* * *

Theodore Lambert stood at the black board with a piece of chalk in his hand and the dim and sketchy and smudged effigy of a partially dissected scarab beetle on the board behind him. “I think it was made from the carapace,” he said, nodding. ”I’m pretty sure it was. Yes?” He pointed to a boy they all called ‘Red’ who was sitting a few rows back.

“I don’t get this whole poo thing. What did the Egyptians think was so great about a beetle that rolls up big balls of poo?”

“Well…I think it had to do with death and the dead…and the connection between death and life. We can talk to people who’ve died anytime we want. Just send a Necrogram and tell ‘em to stop by. But for most of history it wasn’t that simple. In most cultures only a few people could ever talk to souls. And some cultures were just locked off completely and a lot of people didn’t even believe they existed.

“And Scarabs…well they sort of made a seed with poo. You see, they roll it in a ball and lay their eggs in it, so that their young can hatch into worm-like-things and then they would eat it.” Most of the class began to squirm and shudder and to complain audibly about how utterly disgusting that was.

Lambert let out a sigh and waved his arms, inadvertently dropping the piece of chalk, “Well, don’t worry the ‘worms’ thing,” one kid ran out of the room, “Just think about an animal, or an insect, whatever it is, that takes something that usually represents waste, and death, and decay, and turns it back into life.” He looked around at the class, hoping to see comprehension dawning on their faces, and seeing how agitated and mutinous everyone was looking he turned and shot a glance over at Professor Ligand, and she nodded, and he went and took his seat.

* * *

It had taken quite some time for Mr. Schloughler to quiet everyone down and to somewhat assure everyone that Raenard was probably in no danger. He’d spent a few minutes talking to the front of the plant, but after eliciting no response at all he turned to the class, and…“Well, so…back to what we were talking about on Friday then.

“This class is going to be about language, so…you should all have at least an opinion of what language is. Who here would say that computer programming languages are real languages?”

He looked around and saw people gradually raising their hands, wondering if they should be so willing to ignore what just happened. After a few seconds most of the hands were up, though a few people were just staring blankly at the plant.

“Ok, I think that’s fair. How many of you…would say that DNA is a language?”

At first nearly everyone’s hand went up, then a few went down. The hands and faces seemed to be going back and forth. Only a couple stayed up or down.

“It is a bit much to chew at first…I just wanted your inclinations. And how about math? Is math a language?”

Three people raised their hands at the go, a few more seemed torn, but most looked opposed.

“Music?”

Five or six hands went up immediately followed by about three quarters of the class.

“Does it matter if it can be written not? Most of the languages that people have spoken, or sung, never had a written form. And that’s tricky because while human language is primarily oral we don’t know how to study a language without writing it down. So people make up the written forms of Oral languages when they study them.

“So, some languages are spoken but not written, you would all agree that those are still languages, right? Anyone disagree?”

No one raised a hand.

* * *

…but I didn’t know what to say to him. What was I supposed to say? “Oh, I’m sorry you’re dog’s really ugly.” I couldn’t say that. And my dad, yesterday, he brought home this giant pack of peppermint sticks. He said they were from someone at work, but then he gave me this weird look, so I dunno. But I ate like ten of them last night while I was working on my paper for Osteomancy and I now I can’t even think about eating any more and, today, my mom slipped one into my lunch bag. I really wonder if she knew how sick it would make me to see it because she wrapped it in a black ribbon. A black ribbon? Where did she even find a black ribbon? Anyway. And I used to really like peppermint. That sucks. Did you know that it’s illegal for any group to advertise genetic engineering? Damnit, I just wrote all over my leg. They passed some law about it in 2015. The Meme Irony Act. Cute. And tell me if you can possible do anything about dinner. I’m just really not up for Taco Nite…

* * *

“How about something that can’t be spoken, could that be a language? The unsayable? The unspeakable?”

A girl in the front row called out “How can something be unsayable?”

“A good question that is. Any of you ever have trouble putting your feelings into words? Ever get into a fight with someone over something stupid, or about nothing at all, because the words just weren’t working? It’s easy to forget about those things. And unfortunately a lot of people who study language completely ignore the fact that for most people the language they produce, in talking, in writing, is only a small part of what we wish we could.”

Someone else called out, “But are those things language?”

“Another good question. I think it is fair to say that those things, those unsayable things, are not words, or aren’t within the set of words, but I don’t think it’s so simple to say that words and language are the same thing. A lot of you just said that you felt that music is a language. And doesn’t music go beyond the set of words?

“Some people think that human language first started as a mix of words and music, and that for a long time language and music were not two separate things the way we think of them today.

“Then there is also a phenomenon, that gets mentioned…from time to time, where people experience a language that’s made of three dimensional colored objects as well as sound. And the people who experience this call it a language. They’re very clear about that. But it’s way outside the set of words.

“I think it’s very possible that language, taken as a whole set, extends into places that we just don’t know about. That what we think of as language is only a small piece of it. I mean, if language is supposed to be in the same area as meaning, and if meaning extends beyond words, then either language extends beyond words or language barely communicates meaning at all, and we have to invent some new term for whatever can communicate the rest of meaning. Anyway, we’ll get into that more later in the course.

“Something that you will all be getting some experience with in coming days, is story telling. And yes, you’ll have to read a story you like in front of the class,” numerous groans became audible throughout the room, “but you won’t be graded on it,” he said sympathetically, “it’s just to get you better tuned in to how story telling happens.

“Have any of you ever wondered, how you can read something you’ve never read before and still know how it should sound? How the characters say their lines? How the sentences read? Even if you’re just it reading in your head. It’s a funny thing.”

Barely visible behind Mr. Schloughler’s gesticulations, the top of the strange plant sagged over and vomited Raenard out onto the floor. He just lay there for a minute, covered in drapes of stringy confetti and tinsel which it was not immediately apparent were completely dry. Nearly everyone jumped and stood up at their seats when they saw him ejected, though they slowed and calmed and started to sit back down when they saw he was smiling, all except for Gidgen who tackled him and nearly smashed his head against the wall as they slid into it.

Mr. Schloughler helped Gidgen and Raenard to their feet, and everyone could see that far from being maimed Raenard looked simply electrified. Upon getting to his feet he made a few futile attempts at brushing off the confetti but quickly gave up. His lips were moving lightly like a very old person’s mouth sometimes does, as though they were playing some part in shaping the meanings in his head.

“Have a seat,” Mr. Schloughler said, and he motioned to the table where the tank sat and where the plant was still swaying slightly.

Raenard said, “Ok.” And he looked over at the table, then glanced up at the flower and grinned and gave it a little wave. Then he sat down on the corner of the table and grabbed Gidgen’s sleeve and pulled her over to sit next to him and he skootched to make room.

He took a slightly deep breath, and Mr. Schloughler asked “So…what happened?”

“Well, at first I thought I was being eaten by some sort of carnivorous pet mechanical vegetable or something, but I wasn’t. Of course I wasn’t. Almost immediately after I was sucked in I found myself in a large round room with a lot of creatures --with very round heads-- that didn’t really look very human. And for a second they just looked at me, and I couldn’t guess at what was going on. But then a split second later they exploded…not exploded, they didn’t blow up or anything, but they started shouting and waving their arms and running at me and throwing stuff at me. I thought they were really angry about something and they were attacking me, they certainly didn’t look happy to see me. But they were, you see?

“It was a welcoming party of some kind. I had no idea what they were saying, or even if they were saying anything, until after a few minutes of being scared half out of my wits one of the taller ones started speaking English --for the most part anyway. He told me how happy all of them were that I’d agreed to come. I tried to play along, but I think he figured out that I didn’t know what was happening.

“They sat me down and gave me something like matzah to eat, which was really very good, and then told me that I was in a school, in a class room. You see…” he looked down at the floor, scanning it as if expecting to find his next words scattered over it. “The schools that they have, they aren’t…well, they’re inside plants like these,” he said, pivoting and pointing at the somewhat vapid looking mechanized sunflower behind him. “Or they’re in some kind of space, somewhere, I don’t really know, I don’t understand, but in the classroom there are round windows all over, of all different sizes. And when you look out of them you can see through these.” He turned around and grabbed at one of the foot-sized leafs and pointed to the large liquid filled bubbles that looked like lenses. “They showed me the windows that were connected to this plant and I could see all of you through it. Somehow these plants are like windows and doors into their schools.

“The one who was talking to me, I think he was a teacher, he said their whole society is set up through networks of plants like these, because you can grow plants inside other plants, and he said they only use their home planet as a kind of art form, or a kind of museum, I’m not exactly sure what he said about that, his English wasn’t that great. But most of their people, most Anam…Ama-bramn-ians live and work inside…whatever that space is. Oh, and he said, I can’t believe I almost forgot about this, they said that they want to start linking up our schools and their schools. They want to set up a cooperative - kind of thing. I think. Something like that.”

He looked at Mr. Schloughler, who was leaning back against the blackboard with his arms folded. Then Raenard looked around at the class, and he couldn’t quite read their faces. And it occurred to him that maybe they didn’t believe him. And, well, he couldn’t exactly prove any of the things he’d just said, could he?

But then Davin called down from the back, “Did it hurt? When you got sucked through, you know.”

Relieved, Raenard replied, “No, no. It was almost too quick to feel like anything. And it certainly didn’t hurt. I guess it felt like splashing down through a surface, like falling into water, except it wasn’t wet on the other side.”

Then the bells began to ring again in the tower, this time with music from Star Wars. At first no one moved. They were all still looking at Raenard, and at that plant thing looming lazily over him. But after a few seconds everyone began packing away their notes and making their way into the streams of people out in the hall again, where they could navigate to their next class.

* * *

Phelps was waiting with Lambert for the rest of them outside of Benson’s room, and he tapped Lambert on the shoulder and pointed when he saw Gidgen coming along with a Raenard covered with tinsel and confetti. And Klee came up right behind them and stuffed the note into Gidgen’s back pocket and said, “Like your tinsel there, Mr. Lox, think I could grab some?”

But as interested as she was in the tinsel she saw, when he turned around, the shape of his eyes, and the color in his face, and his mouth moving nervously as if it were actually connected to something for a change. And she saw Gidgen’s eyes slightly red. “What just happened?” she asked half in a hush.

Raenard showed a few teeth and said, quickly, and a bit hushed too, “Lets get some seats, in the back, I’ll tell you as much as I can remember. Lambert, how was the presentation?”

“I predict that people I’ve never seen before are going to be asking me about ‘poo’ for about a month.”

”Oooo.”

Lambert shrugged, and straightened his tin backpack, and walked inside.