From: tpl@eng.cam.ac.uk (Tim Love)
Newsgroups: alt.prose
Subject: Correspondence
Date: 28 Jan 93 14:47:14 GMT
Organization: cam.eng


                    Correspondence

The sunset's almost right. From peach it slowly turns crimson, drawing
the colour from the sky overhead as I press my cheek against the cold
window. Down the road I can see the boy with the baseball cap -- I
can't see which team, I don't know any -- folding grey wadges of paper
and pushing them through letterboxes. Anticipation makes me thirsty,
so I pop into the kitchen. I turn the jamjars of herbal teas on the
window ledge one by one to read their handwritten labels; tonight
there's Childhood, Bonfire, Sunset and Love, my favourite. I unscrew
its lid and shake some leaves into my teapot, filling it from the
kettle that's still hot from last time. While it brews I gaze out of
the back window. I've no garden to speak of, just a lawn with high
fences down each side and a path leading to a wasteland of rubbish
stretching to the horizon. I can make out objects there sometimes:
bedsteads, old phoneboxes, wine bottles. It all rots down in the end,
I can smell it when there's rain.  I fill my gold-rimmed cup, return
to my sofa with my phone and chocolates beside me. Chocolates are for
happiness.  The uncurtained windows of the terrace houses opposite are
black as retinas.  The moon appears bright and low, silhouetting the
old TV ariels as if they were stray denuded kites. I love the wet
slate roofs, the window boxes like childrens' coffins with tiny
coloured flowers. I love my room's white walls and parquet.  I love
David. I phone him. He walks in from the hall as I put the receiver
down. "Oh hi!" I say. He smiles back.  He only talks when he's sure
of himself. It's going to be one of those nights.  Suddenly I get an
idea. "Let me show you around. The price includes all fittings, even
the weather house up there. Cute isn't it?  When the business man with
a black umbrella comes out, the bikini'd lady hides. This arch was
knocked through to the kitchen by the previous occupants. Here, take a
seat. Want a drink? There's one in the pot". He shakes his head.  I
blush when I see I've left the lid off the jamjar, but he doesn't
notice. "It's a quiet area. I think you'll like it. I've never had
any trouble with the neighbours. I'd like to take you in the garden so
you can look at the back of the house but I'm sure you understand."
He nods. Then I take his elbow, lead him back to the hallway and
upstairs, ostentatiously masking the damp patches from him as we
climb.  "The bathroom's just been modernised", I say, hiding my
surprise as I open the door. Above the sink, on plywood shelves, there's 
now an assortment of soaps and aftershaves (for him I hope), some with 
their Xmas labels still on.  There's even a sachet for those `precious 
moments in the bath'.  I leave him to poke around for cracks and 
condensation.

In my bedroom overlooking the empty street I kneel down by my latest
toy, a dolls house, and pull the front aside to see if he's in there.
It's a perfect replica right down to the miniature dolls house in the
bedroom. I'm about to look inside that too when I feel him above me. I
blush again, close the house and get up. The room darkens as I look
into his eyes. "Let's play a game.", I say, "You stand over there
by the door and I'll look out of the window. Whenever I turn around
you've got to be still. First one to touch me wins. It's called
statues, OK?"  He must have played before, I don't see him move once.
I scratch my nails down his back as we make love, encouraging him to
be less gentle. We lie apart in the silence after the echolalia of
sex, he doesn't like too much contact.  I must be patient. Before I'm
quite asleep I hear the front door slam. I don't know when I'll see
him again. I miss him already. It's the only power they use on me. It
acts like love; I'm free but cannot go.

There's a trick so you can tell if you're awake or not. Find a sign
with writing on. Memorize it. Look away. If the sign's changed when
you look back, you're dreaming. So I practise in my sleep until the
sign stays the same. I'm improving all the time. In my dreams I can
walk straight out of the house. I can look back through the window.
No-one's there.
 
Morning again. I prop myself up on an elbow and look around like a
child on Christmas day. No, nothing new. I slip out of bed, pick up
his denim jacket that's draped itself over the dolls house and put it
with the rest in the wardrobe.  The mirror's gone from the door. All
the mirrors in the house have disappeared one by one. My photos too. I
stand on the bed to look for them on top of the wardrobe but there are
only some old board games I used to play as a child, the corners of
their boxes sellotape, and some dusty exercise books that I bought
with me. I take them down, ruffling through them until a distant train
distracts me, making the radiator rattle.  In the bright sky a vapour
trail broadens and fades as I watch like the scratches on his back.
This is how they communicate, as if I were a child needing picture
books. They pick up my emotions and translate them as they can;
embarrassment becomes a hot room, tiredness makes the sky bleed and
darken, sweating brings the bikini'd fat lady out of the weather
house.

Then everything goes quiet again. I'm scared by silence; there's
nothing to hold me in. They realise how little of me would be left if
they stayed away too long. I think their visits must tire them; they
don't come often, only when I phone.  And they understand my need to
match the world and words, outside with inside, past with present.
Just as a baby will first echo syllables back, learning the
turn-taking of discourse, so they present me with fragments of memory.

I still remember those headlines - Whitehouse Pornography Scandal!
The president woke up to find at his bedside a metal panel depicting a
man and a woman, naked. By the time one of his aides recognised the
design as the panel on the old Pioneer missions, the presidents of
Germany, Japan and India broke the news that they too had woken up to
the same pitted panels. Tests on the U.S. panel revealed that it
wasn't a copy, but the actual one sent out on the 1st mission in 1972.
The other panels, even the one that the Chinese later owned up to,
proved to be just as authentic, with the same isotopic proportions and
patterns of impacted cosmic dust.  On the obverse, blank on the
original, had been etched a solar system, the arrow showing the
probe's path reversed.  More duplicate panels appeared round the
globe. There was pressure on governments to do something. `Think what
would happen', said the economists, `if they started duplicating
currency, or even art treasures'.  When a Stonehenge was discovered in
the middle of the Gobi Desert we knew that it was a hoax though; it
just wasn't their style. Funny how we thought we knew so much about
them when all we had were a few panels.

As a newly graduated linguist I was excited by the chance to meet an
alien culture. I'd always been jealous of my professor -- one of the
last ethnolinguists allowed to visit the protected african tribes.
All I'd seen were videos. So when a mission was advertised I applied.
It was that or teaching nursery rhymes to neural nets for 3 years.  I
was driven to an isolated transit station, somewhere out on the moors,
a place where volunteers once went to test cold cures. The only order
I was given was not to go out. I waited a few days for a ship to
arrive. Then things started changing while I was asleep or turned my
back.  I didn't pay attention at first, I blamed myself, then I became
scared to look away from anything, especially mirrors. For a day or so
it was foggy, which helped. When it cleared, the old terrace houses
were opposite. Now I don't so much as try the doors, the thought of
going out terrifies me. But I don't mind. They told me it had to be a
solo flight, and it's only 90 days. I count them off when I remember.

I can hear the newsboy closing in again, letterbox by clacking
letterbox. He's never been this close before. My heartbeat shakes the
bed. His footsteps outside the door just below, then the thud of a
falling newspaper echoing up the stairs turns my senses inside out.
Something inside becomes unknown again.  I finish tidying up,
disposing of the browned tampon hastily discarded the night before and
take my notebooks downstairs. The doormat's empty.  As I'm making
breakfast Dave comes into the kitchen. It's never anyone but him.  I
didn't phone. Who knows, it could be love. "Morning lump", he says.
Out of character but no matter.  "Hi Dave. Sorry I haven't got any
Rice Crispies in."  He takes the orange-juice carton from the fridge,
pulls out a corner and folds along the dotted line. Gripping on each
side of the fold he grimaces, tugging until his hands slip and the
carton thumps onto the fridge top. He takes the scissors from the
drawer which he slams shut with his hip then hacks the corner off,
spilling gobs of juice. "You do that every time", I say. "Fuck
off." "Do you want some help?" "You heard what I said; fuck off".
This has all happened before, with someone else.  Seeing my anxiety he
breaks into a smile and pours us each a drink. "I was looking for my
photos this morning", I say, "Know where they are?" "No" "While
I was looking I found these old exercise books, the ones I was told to
bring with me.  Did I tell you about them? I won't read them out,
you'll only laugh. Oh, alright then. This bit's called `Realism: a
checklist'. I wrote it during my first week here.

* World  - physical objects exist independently of thought or
           experience of them.  
* Ethics - An action can be intrinsically right or wrong 
* Maths  - A statement can be true or false independently of
           whether we know or can find out.

Well, what do you think?" He sways his head. It's his turn to look
worried now. "If you fail to believe one of these, how can you
believe the others? Outside, no act is intrinsically right or wrong.
The newsboy who's always just a few doors away, the rattling radiator,
the smell of damp plaster on the stairs when it rains--" "You should
go out more, you know" "But I'm scared. I don't know what's out
there. It's funny, but lids of all sorts help. Things to screw and
unscrew, dark skies, sunglasses -- I like the sun or anything that
turns -- but I have to take things slowly, a step at a time, clutching
my keys as I go. It's the thought of having nowhere to hide that
terrifies me." "You're going crazy. It's something to do with me
isn't it? Maybe we shouldn't see each other for a while". "If that
works ok for you that's fine." He walks out. I knew he would -- he
couldn't just disappear.

Now the hard work begins. I've been wasting time. Learning the symbols
is not enough, I have to see where they point, make them transparent.
To find the meaning of a symbol it's not enough to have a few
instances; quantum effects will dominate. With a sufficient number of
symbols, the random influences of culture will be factored out and
classical linguistic theory can be applied. When they show me terrace
houses then yes, I should study their flowerboxes and phonelines
swinging like tightropes but I must also ask myself what's beyond the
houses, what's their deep grammar.  When they show me my past then I
must look at its interconnections but also the meaning of each present
moment, specify the class of histories to be summed over, then since I
haven't got the computers here to do the full calculations, indulge in
the exclusion principle that brings him and only him back to me.

I spend the morning going through my notes, researching more into how
insides and outsides can match. There are as many points inside this
house as outside.  Each point in the universe has a unique partner
here. It's strange how when I hear a train I invent distance, I believe 
in things beyond the houses, but when I put my hand on a hot kettle, I'm
only conscious of my hand. The world out there isn't there anymore.
Pain isolates. I read that in Reflexology each part of the foot
corresponds to part of the body.  With a sickly liver the big toe
throbs. But what part of the foot represents the wounded foot? Pain
regresses infinitely. If the contents of the house represent me, how
can I be in the house? And how does the vocabulary of the house
correspond to the world? Suppose my mind matched what I could see from
the window. So much can change in 90 days.

Then I chance upon some jottings about topology.  Whenever a flat map
of an object is made, there's a risk that information will be lost or
distorted. Brown's "Flower Pressing Theorem" states that some points
which were close are likely to become separated and previously
distinct points become superimposed.  So in mapping their world into
my experience, I could become superimposed on the house. The radiator
could be me auditory nerve, the walls my skin.  Cause and effect could
become confused so that the sadness comes first, then reasons have to
be made up. I start writing furiously, each sentence a hand-drawn line
of best fit, confident than Dave won't interrupt anymore.

The fog started mid-afternoon. I sipped Dedication in my front room
watching as it thickened. Soon all I could see were headlamps of
passing cars, so I went back to my writing.  But it must have cleared
by nightfall because now I can see the stars.  I try the phone. It's
dead. I turn on all the lights, leaving open the curtains to make the
house feel bigger.  Waiting for Earl Grey to brew I start humming a
tune, dancing with myself in the window because it's so dark outside.
I return to my notebooks until I'm too tired to go on.


In the middle of the night there's a knock at the door. I go
downstairs, wait in the middle of the room in case I'm imagining
things. Another knock. I pull the bolts and some men come in. They
smile at me, say my name. I recognise them now. We all sit down. I ask
if they want a drink. During the small talk they glance through my
notebooks and at each other. I laugh at the right moments but I'm
thinking of my silhouette still warm upstairs under the blankets,
imagining refilling it limb by searching limb.  They seem pleased. We
discuss how things went as if we were at a conference bar. I'm full of
questions.  
"How did you know about this transit camp?", I ask. 
"We had reports that some people in isolation were having hallucinations.
Of course there was never any evidence of alien involvement but we had
a hunch that the aliens could superimpose spaces." 
"Where was I then, during the 90 days?" 
"That depends on whether anyone looked in the window. In a sense you were 
there all the time." 
"Was I the first?"  
"You're the first to make contact. You got on the shortlist
because of your research interests, but when your fianc e died you
became the best candidate." 
"Which isn't to deny, of course, the brilliance of your academic work",
one of them quickly interrupts,
"Absolutely", the first continues, "We just hoped your grief would
make you especially sensitive. Sorry." 
"That's ok. After all, it worked. Want a chocolate?"  But I can't find any. 
That makes me sad but I try not to show it.  The tall one asks 
"Would you say they're intelligent?" 
"I don't think they have any intelligence at all. They're a natural 
phenomenum, a special sort of surface that distorts some things and not others
in the way that a mirror turns left into right but not up into down.  I had 
no sense of making contact with anything but myself. It was as if I'd caught 
a virus, a mutant of normal language that spread through my brain, triggered 
by stress and isolation. Perhaps we all have it."  
"Interesting", he says. One of them sidles towards the phone.  "So you 
don't feel that applying rules of grammar to produce new sentences implies 
intelligence." 
"A parrot isn't a linguist" 
"But the aliens, from what you say, didn't just copy, they abstracted a 
grammar of forms from you then used it to create expressions of their own." 
Suddenly I have a feeling that this room of men is trying to trick me, asking 
me questions to keep me talking. 
"A parrot mindlessly repeats words. The aliens as you call them mindlessly 
replicate forms." 
"But do you think they're dangerous?" 
"You mean will they cause our financial world to crumble by duplicating 
currency?".  He caught the eyes of his colleagues before saying 
"More that they could devalue the currency of our thoughts and beliefs."

Pausing to think I hear the one at the phone calling in the forensics,
the doctors.  
"How long have I got?" I ask him. He seems embarrassed. 
"What do you mean?" 
"Before they come." 
"Oh, 20 minutes or so." 
"Enough to teach you what I've learnt." 
I walk to the window and hold it open.  I feel the wind on my burning 
cheeks. I hear the autumn leaves falling one by one. "Do you understand 
now?" When they shake their heads I close the window then suddenly open it 
again, closing and opening it like a musical box.  "See?" When I start to 
cry they look away. When I look back at them they're motionless.




Tim Love (tpl@eng.cam.ac.uk) 1991. Any comments welcomed, especially 
about how I can improve the final section.