Music of the Spheres (3)
A Christmas in Selene City story!
Author’s Note: This is Part 3 of a 4-part story written as part of the Christmas in Selene City collaborative anthology. Do check out the other stories in the collection!
Previously, after recovering from her encounter with the mysterious music, Livia accidentally interrupted a meeting of the Selene City Executive Council as they discussed possible reasons for the phenomenon. Her Ph.D. student Victor then discovered that the geological anomaly below the Mare Serenitatis appears to be a hollow chamber, and Livia realised it lies almost due north of Selene City — the direction in which the music was leading her.
31st December, 7:15 am
Livia felt the music slip away, draining like water from a bath as she awoke. The sound of birdsong seeped from the speakers. She reached for her earpin and slotted it into place behind her right auricle. The birdsong sharpened as the audio automatically switched from external to earpin, so that when Livia closed her eyes she could almost feel as if she were a tree and the birds were perched in her branches.
She turned the alarm off, and tentatively reviewed the events of the day before, examining them one by one like a dentist probing for a loose tooth. The music. The airlock. The clinic. Maria Celeste’s office. The seismic data. Then the cafeteria, the chatter and whispers whirlpooling around the old stories: alien artefacts hidden deep, Shijie Heping being abducted, Shijie Heping defecting to Muskovy, Shijie Heping running secret and dark experiments. Then the meeting with Maria Celeste, late in the evening. The lacklustre recording of this year’s festive family video. The tightness of Maria Celeste’s mouth and eyebrows as she worried about the base’s security and its reputation. The push to find out what was happening before the New Year party and the fiftieth anniversary event, before Shijie Heping’s daughter Serena and grandson Frankie Khan learned about it and were frightened off the base and out of the money Maria Celeste hoped they were going to donate. Maria Celeste’s rush to tick the video off her list and get onto the next thing, barely acknowledging Livia’s narrow escape, let alone asking for details. Livia scowled to herself as she dressed in her usual leggings and sweatshirt. She tossed Maria Celeste’s dancing snowman jumper onto the pile of stuff she was going to take for breakdown.
In her office a few minutes later, coffee in hand, she set the door to Do Not Disturb. She checked for updates from Victor; she had set him to apply for data from the geosensing satellites run by Chang’e and Goodluck. Nothing yet. They would have to cross-check the data somehow, but the seismic test truck was on the other side of the Mare and would take days to get back to base.
Livia paced the small floor of her office and examined her plants, wondering what to do next.
“Galileo! Prepare a summary of all lunar geoscience data involving hollow or geode structures.”
“Working,” the deep bass of the AI responded. “This will take approximately twenty minutes to complete.”
“Also, give me a list of all personnel affected by the phenomenon yesterday.”
“To which phenomenon are you referring, Dr. Lamarr?”
Livia cursed the AI’s intolerance of ambiguity. “The phenomenon which occurred yesterday morning shortly before noon. In which I and a number of other personnel heard — rather, apparently heard — music from outside the walls of Selene City, and attempted to exit the airlocks.”
“I have no records of this phenomenon, Dr. Lamarr.”
Livia swore, and pulled a dead leaf off a lüluo plant a little harder than was necessary. “You mean it’s been classified.”
“Selene City operates an Open Access information policy. The existence of classified information would contravene this important principle.”
Livia swore again. The Council must have decided to wipe it from the record. She knew that happened from time to time, Shijie Heping’s founding principles notwithstanding.
“OK, fine,” she said. She closed her eyes and tried to recall as many as possible of the people she’d seen in the clinic. “Prepare a table listing the following personnel. With their, let’s see, work unit, date of birth, location of living quarters. Nationality. Photos. Arrange alphabetically by family name.”
31st December, 8:03 am
A message from Victor. Goodluck Station was on holiday until the 2nd January and someone would be in touch with him after that. Chang’e acknowledged his request and would consider it at the next meeting of the Satellite Data Users’ Committee. Livia rolled her eyes, then remembered her old university classmate Li Madou. He was something high-up at Chang’e now. She sent Victor his contact details and asked him to call in a favour, then went back to the data table Galileo had given her. She’d tried sorting the data in various ways and not seen any pattern, but there was something there, whispering to her in the rows and columns, she was sure of it.
She looked at the faces. Hadn’t that guy Vusi been in the same intake as her, along with Carla Novak from Engineering?
“Add a column on date of arrival at Selene, and sort by ascending date.”
Galileo presented the updated table. Livia scanned it carefully. Seventeen out of the nineteen names on her list had arrived within the same six-month period. One of the remaining two had come as a student a couple of years earlier, and the other had been at Selene almost since its founding. Livia knew there were several other victims of the phenomenon who she’d been unable to recall, but felt she had a reasonable picture of the whole. She narrowed her eyes, wondering what the link was between everyone.
“Galileo, what do all these individuals have in common?”
It came to her in the instant between her asking and Galileo’s answer. Their ID numbers. Usually allocated on arrival, but sometimes — if a student graduated and became staff, for example — changed later.
“The individuals in this table all have SeleneID numbers commencing CN80,” the AI told her. It added a column to the table on the screen and sorted in ascending order. Livia nodded in triumph. She didn’t have an answer yet, but she did have a little more data.
31st December, 9:30 am
“Victor, I know this is not technically within my remit as your supervisor, but I need to bounce some ideas off someone. And there’s a chance…” Livia hesitated, eyeing her student across the cafeteria table, then went for it. “There’s a chance this is somehow connected to our — your — discovery. Potential discovery, that is.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
At the far end of the room, behind Victor, she saw Matty come through the cafeteria door. He was deep in conversation with James, one of the microbiologists, both men looking serious. Livia felt a rush of longing to run her hands through Matty’s wavy hair, to tell him everything was going to be alright. Her insides felt like soup. She scowled at herself and shook her head, trying to clear her mind.
“Dr. Lamarr?”
Livia’s gaze snapped back to Victor, who was now looking nervous.
“Sorry, Victor. I was thinking about something else.” She rubbed her eyes. “Right. You’ve probably heard some of the rumours about something strange that happened yesterday. Solving it is pretty urgent, but I think the Council are barking up the wrong tree.”
Victor listened thoughtfully as Livia described her experience, asking clarification questions now and again that Livia recognised as eminently logical. The kind of questions, she realised, that she herself might have asked if their roles had been reversed.
“So what are your thoughts?” Livia looked closely at her student, watching his eyes as he responded.
He coughed politely. “Would you excuse me for a moment, Dr. Lamarr? I need to, uh, go to the bathroom.”
She waved him off, feeling a little disappointed. As she waited, she saw Matty passing by again, in animated conversation with another of the medical officers. The young pretty one. Her disappointment thickened, clotted like sour milk, and she leaned forward with her forehead resting in her hands, pretending to read a window on the table. The music from her wedding echoed in the back of her mind.
A tray clunked onto the polymer surface opposite. She jumped.
“Sorry, Dr. Lamarr.” Victor pushed the tray a little further towards her and resumed his seat. He had brought two small bowls, each containing three glutinous rice dumplings, the size of human eyeballs, swimming in a thin soup. “Tang yuan. One of my favourites. We have them at Chinese New Year. I thought you might like to try some, specially after everything that happened.”
“Oh.” Livia realised he had actually left the table to buy these. “Oh. Of course. Thank you, Victor. That’s — very thoughtful.”
“These are black sesame flavour,” he went on. “My favourite. And I think good for your health too.”
“Thank you,” she said again. “But, Victor, you’re my student. You shouldn’t be buying things for me. Let me—”
“No, no, no,” he said, his face flushing red. “This is part of my culture. My gift for you. Please. I insist.”
Livia held his gaze, then looked away, ashamed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d accepted a gift from someone who wasn’t obligated by family ties.
“Alright,” she said hesitantly. “Thank you, Victor.” She stirred the soup and scooped up one of the smooth-skinned rice balls in her spoon.
Victor looked earnestly across the table at her. “Going back to what you said, I think there’s an important piece of data that has not yet been analysed. And which is much more likely to be relevant than the seismic anomaly.”
“Yes?”
“The nature of the music itself. You mentioned that some of what you heard reminded you very vividly of some personal memories.”
“Yes.”
“Logically speaking, it seems implausible that some external agent would have access to data at that level of detail, for such a number of Selene City personnel, and to deliver it in such a uniquely personalized way.”
“Go on.”
“So maybe we can tackle it from considering who — or what — would know or be able to obtain these kinds of detailed informations about you and the others who were affected.”
Livia nodded slowly. “Good thinking. Should have thought of that myself, really.”
“If I might suggest a course of action, perhaps I could approach a few of the others involved. At least, I could ask Laura. I know her slightly from Postgraduate Club and since she was observing in the clinic, she might have picked something up.”
“Go ahead.” Livia sucked the sweet innards out of her second dumpling. “And if you hear back from Li Madou at Chang’e, let me know straight away, OK? I can’t shake the feeling that this is not just coincidence.”
31st December, 10:40 am
Livia paced the three short steps across the length of her office and back again. Two of the walls were occupied by the windows she’d opened to show Victor’s data and Galileo’s analysis, but she was giving the data tables and coloured 3D charts no more than an occasional glance. She was humming the melody from her wedding dance, as much as she remembered of it. Herself in that gorgeous mermaid-green dress Vincenzo had designed for her. The high-pitched scent of jasmine. The delicate pink, like cowrie shells, of the rose in Paul’s buttonhole. Paul’s thick curls like polished copper, his eyes the living colour of her dress. His warm hand on the small of her back as they danced. One of the memories she’d been trying to redact from her conscious thoughts for the last five years.
She tried to remember what exactly the strange music had been like, the day before. The night’s sleep had faded it. She knew it had brought this memory to her, but how close had it really come to what that jazz band had played? Victor had made a good point. How could someone, assuming there was a someone, have transmitted something so personal to her as an individual, even if only riffing off those particular tunes? And surely there was no remote psychological manipulation that could extrude such specifics from her subconscious? Unless Dmytro Grossman was right and Muskovy really had developed some new kind of psyops. She remembered the intensity of her emotions while the music had played, how it had seethed and bubbled, fractalised and tentacled, how it had enticed her almost to destruction. The thought of anyone wielding such power over someone else’s psyche shivered her.
“Galileo!”
“Yes, Dr. Lamarr?”
“I’m going to hum a short melody. Can you identify the source, any audio or video files that match the tune, even approximately?”
“I can try. It depends on how accurately your hum reproduces the original.”
“OK, smartass.” Livia closed her eyes, took a determined breath, and forced herself as deeply as she could into the memory, trying to capture the ragged soaring of the saxophone as she spun under Paul’s arm.
“Working. It will take approximately ten minutes to compare with all audio and video files available locally.”
31st December, 11:01 am
“I have been unable to locate any matching music anywhere in the Selene City system,” announced Galileo. “Confidence level 95%.”
Livia said nothing, but slumped into her chair. She would have to try another tack, even if it meant using some of her transmission data allowance. She spun round and stared, defocused, at the shelf of plants on the opposite wall.
“Galileo, open an Earth web search request. Personal account.”
“You have 27 credits remaining. Continue?”
“Yes. Search for video of a jazz band, based in Italy, called I Fantasmi Felici. Attempt to match with the same melody I hummed earlier.”
“Your available credits will only allow transfer of approximately five ten-minute videos. Continue?”
“Yes. I’ll buy more if I have to.”
“Working. On top of baseline latency between here and UltraGÉANT, there is extra traffic on the link due to the holidays. This may take some time.”
Livia got up. She needed some more coffee anyway, and a change of scene. As she stood, something bright caught her eye, a pink flash hidden in the greenery of her plants. She turned the crab-claw orchid in its pot. It was a crusty old succulent, something she’d bought at a market in Geneva to brighten up the tiny brown flat she’d moved into after coming home early from a field trip in the Jura to find Paul in bed with his research assistant. The plant had never flowered, and she’d decided Selene City didn’t suit it. But now, not one but two of the crab-claws had sprouted bold magenta buds, and she could see others on the way.
31st December, 12:08 pm
The Greenhouse was one of Livia’s favourite places in Selene City. Walking the paths between the woody shrubs and tall gaunt cacti, or sitting on one of the white-painted benches sipping her coffee, was the closest she ever came to peace. The cacti in particular seemed to do well in the low gravity and dry air, stretching into improbable gangling shapes that reminded her of neurons. Today, though, the space was crowded with families enjoying the holiday, noisy with chatter and games, and Livia could find no respite.
When a ping came from Galileo to tell her it had completed the search, at the cost of a whole month’s credits, she immediately turned back towards her office. It was hard to resist the urge to push past the family with two little girls blocking her path, one of them whining about a dog, and when she got round them she ran straight into a hand-in-hand couple who had stopped to stare up at the stars. Livia swore under her breath, muttered an apology out loud, and pushed on.
Exiting the Greenhouse into the corridor, she nearly bashed into Floriano Cóndor Cruz as he bounced past the door. The Artist-in-Residence was dancing up the corridor, some kind of extravagant samba. He was wearing a different LightWool garment today, a jumper so long it was almost a poncho, with a hypnotically zooming Mandelbrot set that seemed to pulse in time to some hidden music. Livia rolled her eyes as she followed him, but as he turned the corner into Selene City’s northward arm, she froze. He was heading north, as she and the other victims had been. He was dancing, to something only he could hear.
Livia sprang after him. His side-to-side samba motion was slowing his progress down the corridor, and it only took a few low-gravity leaps for her to catch up with him. She grabbed his arm.
“Floriano!”
He jumped, the startle reflex kicking him halfway to the ceiling. As he landed, he tapped his wristband, turning something off.
“Hi! Umm… Livia, am I right?”
“Good memory,” she replied, feeling a flush of embarrassment. He was obviously in his right mind, unlike she had been. “I’m sorry… I thought.. well, OK, I may as well ask… were you hearing music? Just now?”
“Music? Me?” He unexpectedly grabbed her hand and twirled her under his arm, as if they were partners halfway through a dance. “Ah, la música! La música es el arte más profundo, no?” He bowed theatrically, then winked. “Madam Livia, I eat and breathe the music, the dance. But I say no more! Less than twelve hours until my art must be ready, and it is not ready yet! Not quite! Excuse me, please!”
Floriano bowed again, and rushed away from her, walking normally now. As he turned another corner, Livia remembered that his studio was in that direction. She replayed the strange interaction and frowned. She knew he was extroverted and chaotic, and that he consciously cultivated a Dalí-esque identity, but there had been something excessively dramatic in his response. He had completely deflected her question. And he hadn’t looked her in the eye. Not once.
Read on…
Don’t forget to read the other stories in the anthology — click below to get the back story and the full collection by 5 wonderful authors!
Cover image photo credit: NASA/JSC.