Dr. Lande Bevek was well regarded at The Technical Institute of Sydney. After all, it was through his data imprinting research, alongside a large donation of his considerable wealth, that the jewel of The Institute – the Library dataweave – had been created.
This weave, being a lattice of conductive silicone membranes, was not remarkable in its construction; nor was it noteworthy in its dimensions. Stretching over two storeys of the Library at full extension, it was quite modestly sized for a tertiary grade installation, especially when compared to some of the recently financed Pan-Asian weaves.
However, where The Institute’s dataweave distinguished itself was in the make and quality of its interlaced electrodes. They were Bevek’s design, requiring only the most delicate of skin contact to stimulate the data within the membranes. It was said that they were able to facilitate a reciprocal link in under a second, making the Library’s dataweave, overall, the most receptive tactile data exchange in Australia. This fluid informatic access became an addiction for academics, putting The Technical Institute of Sydney on the map as a hotspot for pore-2-pore knowledge transmission amongst students and professors alike.
So it was odd, then, to see Bevek, the most rapacious user of the dataweave, on the third floor of the Library browsing the museum of 21st century relics. He had made his way there after a conversation with The Institute’s resident professor of Anthropology, Art Benton, whom he often spent his lunch with. Bevek was politely listening to another of Benton’s lectures on the irrelevant when he touched upon the 21st century phenomenon of the magazine. Benton had argued adamantly that these magazines were a primitive form of data storage that, like a weave, used silicon compounds to form a pliable surface. However, unlike a weave, the effect was intended purely for aesthetics. He was certain that the societies of the era used the very same living tissue of dataweaves not to add informational depth to an image, but to add a glossy sheen. At the time, it had seemed implausible to Bevek. Yet, here and now, the evidence was in front of him. Row after row of glossy, silicon coated magazines.
He slid one out from the shelf and brushed off a thick layer of dust with his sleeve. The pages still seemed to operate cleanly. A curious advantage of paper-based data warehousing, Bevek thought. These magazines could accumulate a visible film of airborne particles without suffering any profound effects on the integrity of the stored knowledge. Meanwhile, the fragile complexity of a dataweave demanded constant maintenance. Any stray hair could disrupt gnostic flow, causing fractures in the immersion. Letting the magazine splay itself open in his hands, Bevek paused the pages at an image of a woman’s bright, red lips. Softly, he put his fingers to the page, expecting some kind of sensory feedback. He wished to explore the image more meaningfully, but it was precisely as Benton had described – flat, occupying no more dimensions than one. Bevek was enthralled.
Initially, he devoted his efforts toward decrypting the page’s symbols. Arranged in linear configurations, Bevek assumed them to be bounded semiotic keys; the secondary dimension of meaning missing in the magazine’s partial images. He spent the afternoon scouring the Library’s reference material for confirmations of his theories, but his progress was slow. Dealing with 21st century antiquities, he was forced to rely on the dumb and mute archival computers of the Library’s historical wing. These were machines that listened only to the cryptic keystrokes of user manuals, holding stubbornly onto whatever information they had swallowed over the centuries until the right blunt, esoteric prodding made them regurgitate their knowledge onto their monitors; like the effort of performing their sole function had made them sick.
Still, Bevek persevered, eventually discovering that the magazine’s symbols were referred to as letters, part of a pre-modern alphabet meant to visually depict sounds that, taken collectively, were known as words. The process for decrypting a single word, however, was utterly exhausting. He would need to parse the individual letters, then recombine them to form a unique sound that could be translated into a current, acoustic tongue. Even after doing this, the meaning of the word would transform dynamically based on the other words found on either side. In the end, after hours of cross-referencing, the only word that Bevek successfully decrypted was ‘Lipstick’. He guessed that it coated the skin, similar to LED paint, though with much less pronounced effects. It was featured prominently in his favourite page, that of the red-lipped woman.
Through it all, though, it wasn’t the language that drew Bevek deeper into the magazine’s pages, it was the bizarre incompleteness of every image. They were all so static, even under magnification. They were representations of such minute facets of reality. Each one shone on the page like a waning moon, offering him the barest smile of light whilst keeping its true body hidden in darkness. Bevek desperately wanted to feel these figures. He wanted to explore them, find their streams of data with his own fingers and let his pores dilate to receive them. He wanted to put these magazined fragments of people into the dataweave. He wanted those lips in his hands. So, with the afternoon now behind him, Bevek tucked the magazine under his coat and left the Library.
His work continued long into the night.
Within his private laboratory, Bevek leaned over the motionless, featureless female form laid out upon his work table; a body meticulously hand–spun with silicon weave. About his feet lay the scraps of the night’s misdeeds. He had taken a scalpel to the smuggled relic and excised the flat images, discarding the dull backgrounds and words. He was convinced that in those glossy pages there was inexorable depth and it was senseless to leave it imprisoned in the confines of its own medium. He would be the one to liberate the figures hidden within those pages.
He didn’t have enough material to cover the entirety of the translucent grey membrane, but Bevek was confident that the weave could intuit a complete form with the parameters he had provided it with. After all, he had selected the best specimen for each feature, which would be a more than adequate guide for replication. He had paid special attention to the face to make sure he found features that matched the intensity of those large, red lips. He had found two sets of eyes that he felt complemented the red centrepiece of the face and, unable to decide on which was more suitable, attached both. One of blue and one of hazel. He paired the eyes with brows that he thought had striking curvature, appraising those closest to describing a parabolic arch as the most superior.
The nose, though, caused Bevek some trouble. In all of the magazine’s 40 pages, he could not find a single frontal nose shot. Every portrait was shot at an angle, never giving each feature equal real estate. It still bewildered Bevek that these images were deliberately framed to obscure information. Misrepresentation almost seemed to be the magazine’s purpose. In the end, Bevek had opted to jury-rigg a complete nose from the nose-halves of two separate owners. It had come out quite elegantly, he thought, and formed a countenance that, whilst jarring for now, would blend together nicely once the electrical current induced corporeal solidification. Bevek took some conductive gel from his workstation and rubbed it into his palms. He affixed a power supply to the navel of the silicon replica and prepared himself to massage the collaged woman into the weave. His hands were sweating as he made first contact.
With power now stimulating the grey membrane, the cut-outs began to impress onto the figure. Bevek pressed his fingers into the conductive frame of the figure, kneading through the magazine cut-outs to feel for the viscera beneath. He deepened his contact gradually, searching for a vein of information to tap into. He explored the surface of the replica woman, hoping for a tremble of resistance. He felt something start to grow within the grey matter, to push back against his touch. Bevek sunk his fingertips into the growth, cradling it, delivering it into maturity. A sensation of figure flourished into his mind and expanded in liquid, billowing clouds, like a drop of ink blooming in water. He groped around for the slippery edges of this newly forming person, guiding its entrance into the new world.
The weave breathed.
Bevek was seized; data flowed from porous membrane to porous membrane in a fluid connection. A shot of white noise ran through Bevek’s nerves and pooled into the back of his eyes. His mind flooded with incomprehensible howling. The sensation sent Bevek reeling backwards, collapsing to the ground. Through watery eyes he peered back to where he once stood. Back to the rising figure. She was now sitting up, picking at the discarded magazine cut-outs with odd-lengthed fingers. The woman held a discarded ear between a healthily tanned thumb and porcelain white forefinger. She studied it curiously, holding it against her own ear. Bevek gurgled, his voice lost in a rising tide of nausea. He had chosen each shapely segment with care, but the features now collided grotesquely, rupturing the skin where they met. She was a disharmony of features smashed onto a corpse-grey canvas.
His creation regarded him, each eye moving independently, before sliding off the table. Bevek desperately pushed himself to the corner with his heels, shrinking beneath her form. A form he now wished he had never searched to reveal. She lowered herself to meet Bevek, bending double-jointed at the knees, the segments of her face creasing like paper at the seams. The magazine was inhabiting the silicone completely, its amputated parts moving with a collective purpose as the grim centrepiece, those blood-red lips, pulled back tautly to form a cruel shape. Strange vibrations issued forth as the magazine’s thoughts condensed into sound, making Bevek wince as the air pushed passed her lips and settled warmly upon his flesh. He had wished to know the truth of the magazine, and his wish had been granted. In its undecipherable, ancient tongue, Bevek’s monster spoke:
‘These are my top ten fashion tips for this Summer.’
Ben Hudson Stories 