LITERATURE/ANDREW C. KIDD

Caterina Barbieri explores the mutability of time on Myuthafoo, a 6-track piece released on the Light-Years label on 16th June 2023. It was composed in the same period as Ecstatic Computation (Editions Mego, 2019).

I have written a short story which references the broad-themed narrative of time. The two characters in the story are connected through a transient common consciousness, independent of time, each sharing their own respective experiences millennia apart. They are unconscious of this at first, but gradually develop insights into the event.

The first character is a cosmometeorologist (denoted as *) who exists in the distant future, returning from an interstellar mission, repeating his observations of TOI-2180 b, the Jupiter-like planet located 379 light-years away in the Draco constellation. The second character is a taikonaut (denoted as ∆) who is the first person to enter the orbit of Mùxīng. Mùxīng is the Mandarin word for Jupiter, translating as ‘Star of Wood’. They both listen to Myuthafoo on their respective journeys.

*

After a rapid deceleration, the long body of the survey vessel made an uncomfortably abrupt stop. A single occupant was jolted forward in his harness. The monitor projecting inside his helmet blinked the characters TOI-2180 b. The red writing of the display flooded through his visor as the synthesisers of Memory Leak sawed and played out triumphantly in his headset.

Finally!, he gleamed inside, the Draco constellation. The journey had been a long one, and
not without challenge.

Steely synths arped and orbited on Math of You in a manner not too dissimilar to his own trajectory around the exoplanet. He smiled witlessly at this reference.

He vacated the lead-lined safety of his survival pod and immediately felt the stifling heat within the grand archways and long corridors of the ship – this was the unintended transference of heat through the protective shields of its fusion reactors. His heart rate still bounded away at a fast-tempo; it held steady as he glimpsed out of the bow window.

The familiar rubor of this exoplanet reddened the white suit of the cosmometeorologist in pinkish projection. He observed its clouds that banded and danced in linear synergy as they rapidly rotated upon its axis. Their formations and morphology were recorded perfunctorily. Superstorms he named after other nebulae because that was easier than remembering the names of men and gods that he had never known or cared to know. The cloud vortices expanded and contracted in eternal rage. He marvelled at their fury.

This visit to Draco was a routine one: a simple stop-off to allow the hot heat exchanger to cool on his return from the recesses of intermediate space. Soon, his palm would hover over the propellant injector control, releasing the fusion pellet to send the ship forward, and him homeward.

After collating the new data, he made arrangements to have these safely stored for future analyses. During this process, he had started to feel uneasy: an unnerving sensation was propagating through him. He turned off the music blaring loudly in his headset, beckoning silence and space to breathe. The dizzying modulations of the synths had reached a pinnacle of inorganic arrhythmicity – perhaps this had been the cause for his unsettling?

He stared out silently at the hulking exoplanet for a while longer, pondering whether the way he felt had something to do with its magnetic energy. He peered into the dense orb in an act of mindfulness, imagining what metals and minerals its core contained. This had little effect. The discomforting feeling had become more pervasive.

What is this!? His mind called out in internal inquisition.

It was as if an invisible force was streaming slowly through him, illuminating not only his body, but his very being.

∆

A white-suited taikonaut was sitting at a seemingly incommodious 45-degree angle. Yet he sat quite comfortably, completely weightless in space, shuffling through the alphabetically-stored sounds that he had brought with him on this momentous journey.

Don Buchla – not today…

A reading of Golden Apples of the Sun…

No, no… it’s under ‘m’… ah, m…

The North Shanxi Suite by Ma Ke…

Moon, Silver Apples of…

Yes… here it is…

Myuthafoo

He pressed the play button on his receiver, smiling broadly because the celebratory opening track embodied the spirit of adventure. Minutes later, the shorn cross-section of the wooden planet came into view through the bow window.

Mùxīng, he declared to himself.

*

Mùxīng? I… I… what is this? I have never been here before – the star system, it… it is completely unrecognisable. It seems… illusory – a déjà vu, but…

Moving his hand away from the propellant injector control, he turned around to look through the observation aperture on the starboard side.

Barked appearance; ringed by age; gaseous whorls; circular and impermeable –

He paused to observe the ever-changeability of the line-like clouds that wrapped around the planet. They moved in opposing directions like some great puzzle that would eventually split open to reveal its hidden contents.

He left the observation station and made the short walk to the bridge; there, he would recalibrate the cartograph.

Red words continued to blink TOI-2180 b in his visor. He knew that the co-ordinates of the ship would have already been checked and double checked by the on-board neural network; still, he manually validated these in accordance with protocol. His location had been confirmed: he remained within the confines of Draco.

The cosmometeorologist had already passed through this constellation on his forward voyage. He compared the measurements of the specific gravity that he had obtained those short years ago with his updated readings.

It is much lighter… three-times lighter on this occasion!

His stomach had started to churn and a mild nausea built up inside him – invocations of the unexpected sight of this strange planet. For the first time in his life, he experienced the nervous excitement of uncertainty, the heavy weight of expectation. It was quite a remarkable achievement: he was the first to…

He stopped himself.

I have not been the first to observe this.

He sat down guardedly. Thoughts oscillated in his head. Eventually he calmed his mind by visualising absolutely nothing. He inhaled and exhaled four times a minute, repeating internally:

I am a cosmometeorologist. I am recording the density of TOI-2180 b. The presence of this exoplanet is undeniable. I knew it was here. I observed it only a few short years ago. This is a routine mission. My forward and return data should be the same.

I am not here to discover. There are vessels for that purpose situated in deep space.

I cannot discover something that has already been discovered!

I… I have discovered nothing here!

∆

‘Are you getting this, Control?’

The taikonaut remained suspended in pseudo-weightlessness, the padded shoulder straps securing him to the modular seat. He had already pressed the blue ‘load’ button on the grey panel in front of him. The dimly-lit red display blinked in confirmation that his message had been sent.

‘Affirmative. We have your location. Aphelion: 816 Gm. Perihelion 740 Gm. Location confirmed as Mùxīng.’ The static in his receiver crackled in return. It continued.

‘Commander, Mùxīng marks a colossal milestone in our celestial journey!’

This congratulatory statement had washed over the taikonaut. The reference had made no sense: he had trodden on nothing. His focus remained firmly on the readings on his monitor. He leant forward and pressed the blue button again.

‘Control, it is…’.

‘Repeat…’, Control broke in. ‘We could not make out your last transmission.’

‘The exoplanet…’, the taikonaut paused momentarily. ‘It is… much denser than I imagined. Also, it has far fewer moons than we had previously considered’.

‘Exoplanet?’, the static of Control enquired.

*

Am I truly conscious of this? Has the arduous journey unlocked some deeper awareness within me?

My vital signs are normal.

What is this feeling that… no, it is not fleeting because I can still feel it – it is… fading.

I must be imagining it. Yes, it is in my imagination.

But how can I be imagining something that I already knew was there.

The cosmometeorologist had closed his eyes to enter the deeper reaches of his mind.

I cannot be experiencing this… it… it is as if someone else has already lived in this moment… transf–… transference of thought… that would be improbable… impossible, even!

The cloud-ringed planet continually resurfaced in his consciousness. He opened his eyes to stare at its globular shape, the Great Spot, its barge, its moons –

The moons! Hah! the radius of its moons and their respective orbits – yes, the moons… I will use them to calculate its density.

The cosmometerologist peered through his viewing apparatus, eventually recoiling in shock.

How can that be?! 95 moons!

As he leant back in his chair, his headset clipped the edge of its protective padding, switching the music suddenly back on. The step-like cyclisms of Alphabet of Light played unhurriedly. He listened to the organic sound. It was oxymoronic. The pioneering excitement still fluttered within him. He turned around as the Gas Giant momentarily left his visual field: the window pillar of the ship had blocked out its unfamiliar appearance in quiet orbit.

∆

A soulful symphonia continued to play with the starlight: the two-toned lightness of Sufyosowirl echoed back the title track. It was organ-like as it entered another modular sequence. The taikonaut remained poised in controlled weightlessness.

‘I can confirm my last transmission as being correct. Exoplanets. I repeat: exoplanets, and exomoons. I am visualising something truly marvellous here. A Mùxīng-like planet, Jovian in stature; yet, something on a wholly grander scale.’

‘According to our readings, your present location is Mùxīng’, Control hissed into his receiver. ‘Please relay your bearings.’

The taikonaut remained silent: he had sunk into a deep introspection.

Am I imbalanced because I am listening to a contrapuntal melodia, one that holds its notes before stepping down the next rung of the polyphonic ladder? Disorientation through some form of sonic imbibement…

‘Please repeat’, Control rasped.

A new sound for a new vision – synthetic and tom-tom like, steadily moving me further away from the reality of this moment.

The taikonaut observed the exoplanet long after his vessel had escaped its magnetic pull. He moved slowly away on his mission to reach the dust-ringed world of Saturn.

*

The image of the gaseous clouds slowly dissipated into the ether of the cosmometeorologist’s mind. Swirls of You crackled indistinctly in his headset, bringing him back to the present. He knew that this would fade into a calming niente.

His monitor repeatedly blinked out the characters TOI-2180 b. His hand moved down to prime the nuclear fusion engines. He returned to the sanctity of the lead-lined survival pod during this pre-propulsive state. Glancing one last time at the disappearing planet, his ship lurched forward to leave a long and vapour-like trail of plasma that stretched far enough to traverse infinity.