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| Janus | |
| By Bagheera | ||||||||||
| 07 June 2006 | ||||||||||
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This is a tightened up version of something I wrote a long time ago. I've edited away c. 500 words (!!!) to achieve a max. WordCount of 2000 for a competition I'm thinking about entering. Comments from the fair but honest judges on GW would be appreciated! And BTW: anyone who logged on and read this earlier today will hopefully excuse the historical howler which I have now corrected! Janus She gazed on the former commercial nerve-centre of Liverpool. Was it Fate, or just a cruel joke? The only buildings of any size which had not been destroyed, vandalised, or plundered to jerrybuild housing for the survivors of the war were the Twin Towers of the two Cathedrals, at opposite ends of a street named Hope ….. She flashed her sword in a tight, fast, upwards arc, slicing off the tip of a cactus. As it dropped she speared it on the point of the blade. The telltale lens of a camera concealed in the flesh of the plant was revealed. With a scream of defiance she shook it off the sword to the sand at her feet. “Bet you can’t see too much now!” she howled. After a few futile clicks the automatic shutter whirred into silence. The blade flashed once more, taking an inch-thick slice of peotl cactus from the top of another plant. This was swiftly trimmed, and the central flesh chewed and sucked greedily for the refreshing moisture it contained. Water from taps and similar sources had long since ceased to be safe drinking. Having extracted the liquid, she spat out the bitter, stringy vegetable matter which remained. The mind-altering properties of the mescaline present in the cactus was little more than an ‘added bonus’. After all, there were no longer any police or drug counsellors to preach abstention …. Climate change and nuclear winters notwithstanding, there was still a fairly dependable power supply, though much of it was locally supplied by windfarms built in the estuary back in the 2000s. The National Grid was now no more than a distant memory from a time before the War which had effectively ended All Wars. The amphitheatre of the Kings Dock was still more or less intact, and having nothing else to do Janus found herself there most days. She climbed onto the stage and lay her sword to one side, opening up the well-worn, much travelled case containing her favourite Richenbacker guitar. She flicked the mains switch on the PA system and was gratified to hear the steady hum which confirmed that there was power available today. No audience, no problem: in truth, she couldn’t care less. She played for her own gratification, and because there really wasn’t any alternative form of entertainment. Jacking her instrument into the full-size amplifier bank at the rear of the stage she lost herself in her music. Chord sequences and riffs flowed in ever-increasing complexities from her fingers: a frown of concentration appeared on her brow as she strode about the stage, sometimes singing a line or a verse, even a full song from beginning to end. Just as often, she was content simply to play, and listen to the music crashing about the empty auditorium. It happened during the instrumental ‘break’ of the Queen classic “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Janus backed off a few steps, approaching the speakers, experimenting with feedback effects. She screamed in agony as her casually placed sword sliced through the umbilical cord connecting her guitar to the amplifiers and a charge of several thousand volts flowed through her, cooking her flesh, fusing her fingertips to the frets. ***** S wimming through a haze of pain, she senses unfamiliar voices. “She’s coming round.” With a great effort she opens her eyes. Four, five faces, none of them known. All dressed in white, including a woman with an unfamiliar headcovering who pours water into a glass. Remembering the disease and contamination she associates with drinking any water which she has not personally collected from a clear stream, she tries to refuse. Firmly but irresistibly, her head is held, her lips moistened. A few drops of water slide past her lips: she gulps greedily for more despite her fears. “This is a hospital: you’ve had a massive electric shock, but you’re safe.” She nods. So many people, all in one room! One of the men catches her glance, looks at his wristwatch. “It’s almost ten o’clock: on Monday 17th June: the year of our Lord 1930 to be exact ” Janus was too shocked to respond. This was almost exactly a century before ‘her’ time in Liverpool’s post-nuclear apocalyptic future, and she hoarded the information jealously. In a society where currency and paper notes had become worthless, possessions meant status: knowledge was power. Every survivor she had met guarded what specialist knowledge they possessed, to be used as a barter tool, trading for things they needed to survive. “Can you tell us your name?” She hesitates, but can see no advantage in withholding this basic piece of information. “Janus” “Janice? Can you remember your surname? Is there someone we can contact?” “No, no contact ….. can’t remember …………. ” (after all, if the date was right, nobody she knew had even been born yet!) But that wasn’t true, she could remember, but what she could remember were things which hadn’t yet happened …. and there were other things…………. For instance: In 1930 nobody had even dreamed of the genius of John Lennon. In 1930, a megalomaniac housepainter known as Adolf Hitler had yet to make his mark with anything more deadly than a distemper brush …. And what of herself, Janus/Janice? That was how the doctor had spelt it on the card over her bed. For some reason, she preferred that spelling and decided to adopt it. But if this was 1930, she was an anachronism, and needed some sort of checkable ‘history’..... The first thing was to ‘acquire’ a surname, some sort of background, establish some sort of “street cred” she could use once discharged .... Her memories were intact, which pleased her but did not seem particularly strange: after all, she reasoned, they were her memories, weren’t they? She might have been rather more surprised if she’d had any medical knowledge at all, but this was truly a case in which ignorance was bliss. Feigning amnesia, requesting all the newspapers she could get during her stay on the Observation Ward, she managed to build up a picture of life in 1930. She had a foreknowledge of events still mercifully hidden beyond the temporal horizon which gave her an added advantage. She began to see the Shape of Things to Come, like Scrooge and the visions shown him by the last of his visitors. Her reaction was very similar to his: she was not impressed.. Her instinct for survival sparked the germ of an idea. On her second day in the ‘Obs’ ward she found what she needed in the Notices of the Liverpool Echo. A family consisting of Mother, Father and seven children (including one whose name was Janice, only 2 years younger than herself) had been amongst those lost, feared dead when a ferry carrying families fleeing the Potato Famine in Ireland had been lost off Holyhead as it approached Liverpool. Some survivors had been picked up, but the whole of the O’Neill family seemed to have been lost, and a commemorative service was planned for upwards of 150 missing passengers. The dates tallied with the time she had appeared on the Mersey banks – soaked to the skin, and close to an electric sub-station on the Dockland Light Railway, she’d been told. This had been accepted as the reason for her having suffered an electric shock, and she was canny enough not to wish to disprove the misconception. The one thing which might have presented a problem would have a family member welcoming her back from the dead, but the gods were kind: no relative came forward. Soon after being discharged Janus had a full set of ID papers stating her to be Janice O’Neill, spinster of the parish of Allerton … She threw herself immediately into a frenzy of activity. Her musical skills and knowledge were unchanged, but she lacked funds to replace the instruments she had lost. Two day jobs went a long way towards redressing this, and she spent every spare moment rehearsing and playing, as far away from others as possible. She felt the world was not prepared for John Lennon’s lyrics yet, either alone or in combination with Paul McCartney’s musical influence… The Richenbacker was a serious loss – in1930 irreplaceable – but she managed to obtain the best instrument her funds could provide. By the end of the year she had moved twice, each time to more isolated (and therefore cheaper) lodgings further along the waterfront but still served by mains electricity. Her own musical talents were continually honed. By the turn of the year, she had squared her conscience, accepting that she was not plagiarising Lennon’s music but was actually arranging it and producing music of her own which could genuinely be termed ‘original’. Word spreads; sooner than she would have liked, she had a reputation as a musician, and began to attract followers and fans – though the latter term was an anachronism as far as mainstream UK music at the time was concerned. “Ladies and Gentlemen!” boomed the Music Hall barker “On behalf of the Neptune Theatre, which has always brought new and innovative music to Liverpool, I give you Miss Janice O’Neill!! She will entertain us this evening with her own compositions for voice and electric guitar.” “My first piece is called “Omnes Pacem Amant” and shows the guitar used in a variety of musical styles, from Gregorian plainchant – hence the Latin title, meaning “Everybody Needs Love” – up to and including popular music of today …” ***** As ripples in a placid pool will spread, the twin concepts of Love and Peace travelled swiftly, becoming firmly established in the mind-set of Europe. The vitriolic rantings of a failed painter and decorator achieved a brief notoriety in Germany when he became an object of savage lampoon on the front page of Der Spiegl. Many of his countrymen breathed a sigh of relief when he was led away to a padded cell where he remained until his death (from a surfeit of choler, according to the claims of one of the German tabloids). There was a tragic personal price to pay. Janus’ unique musical talent and the style of her compositions made it necessary for her to invest time (and money) in better instruments, bigger and more powerful amplification systems, larger venues, correspondingly more and more technicians, support staff, managers, agents... She found she had no private life at all, and was prevented from touring, taking her message of Love and Peace to all and sundry by the logistics involved in producing musical performances. Increasingly frustrated by this unexpected drawback she became moody and reclusive, turning her back on the world, choosing the life of a total recluse. She took to meditating in solitude, as Lennon had done (would do?), exploring the concept of transcendentalism. She acquired a ceremonial dragon-sword, which she claimed helped her to focus her attention on a single physical object when she needed to. One evening she called together the staff who worked at her amphitheatre in Liverpool Docks, saying she wished for total privacy, giving them the night off. She was seen to enter the theatre, carrying her dragon-sword and a case containing her favourite guitar. They heard her lock the door. The following morning, after several attempts had been made to contact Miss O’Neill, the door was broken down. She was nowhere to be found: neither were her dragon-sword, or her guitar. The auditorium had the distinct ozone-like smell of electrical discharge in the air. Theorists still argue about the possible consequences of two objects attempting to occupy the same space at the same time ….. WordCount: 1999 © Paul McDermott Page 5 Wednesday June 7 2006
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