The tyres of the other buses punctured loudly
and he heard a dog barking.
Now everything was slow motion,
they fishtailed crazily,
skidding off across the ruts,
mounting the grass verge.
Coming down so slowly,
into an ocean jam-packed with marine life.
There was a brief, strained pause,
a cloud of huge fish-type things
sat on the silty floor,
perfectly still.
A few seconds passed,
he listened to a faint rattling sound
gradually building to a prang, a second prang,
and then a bass drum was tapping ominously,
a slow, steady rhythm thrumming and pounding,
a tighter, off-beat rhythm,
and eventually a few notes thrummed on koto strings
held in and slowly increased,
a noise like a ferocious short circuit
– krrrrrrrk –krrrrrrrk –krrrrrrrk –krrrrrrrk –
and the music suddenly turned mean.
It went pwhhhoohhh! mphhhh!
They struck the beams and disrupter pulses,
kicking out blooms of dusky ripples.
The darkness around them intensified,
their trajectories shimmered sharply
to send out long streamers
a hundred metres
directly above the wormhole generator.
His secure priority connection collapsed,
fogged by the dense gases.
External sensors were showing the routing on the link,
which did nothing to relieve the growing ache. I sighed.
Some time later,
in a vain attempt to alleviate the throbbing,
I rubbed a hand across the safety webbing
hat dropped out of a series
of large interlocking hemispheres
that were slipping across the counter.
There are five large storage shelves,
but that is all.
He’d memorised the complete file,
that was a start.
At first, he was worried
about how much evidence
the vacuum had already cleared away.
Russian-made metal fatigue,
with messages from space.
When the screens on the tightly curved,
nearly horseshoe-shaped tabletop came to life
at 7:59:59,
she found herself listening to a thousand minds.
The harsh blue hue
the two dozen computer screens
was now a flood of changing colours
which were the faces and clothes
of everyone in the biosphere
on all levels,
the release of tension was palpable
and seemed to repeat itself once
Twenty-five seconds
we have a medium-sized set of rebounding signatures
from screen to screen.
There’s something down here
hooked to a well-known paperback novel.
They reached the stairway,
and saw the starlight
and the distant glow of street lamps.
These beards and guitars flashed messages
of subliminal behaviour modification
into the open doors of the train,
the subconscious sees
and absorbs the resultant image.
Thankfully, his sunglasses offered some protection.
The phone beeped
a few grains of rust-coloured stuff
that was coming through in gusts
settled into the folds of his sleeve
and started decades of wear and tear,
those clothes would be wrecked.
Two cables ran from a battery-powered radio
clamped to the boiler ledge,
facing the wooden crates in the control room .
He climbed on top of the bed,
and began flicking through the reference pages
until at last he had the full message.
He dropped back onto the bed
his eyes wide,
before he managed to eat through the fabric
that would not come off his bed.
One third was pieces of dry, brittle leaves
littered not only with coal dust
but with loosely packed sand and gravel.
Yellow grains were pages,
composed of two types of sand.
He jotted down words,
torn wrappings that could be decrypted
from the abrasive sand
with smudges of numerical oil
and unravelling decades of soot
to get something they could use
from the coded communication.
The pre-War noise encryption standard
had a rusting main rod,
with a blackening connecting rod,
and a leaky rheostat
turned all the way down.
When it is projected on a screen,
the screen appears to shake and grind
for a few seconds.
But it will not take long to compose the message.
Finally, the algorithm was firmly implanted into his brain.
Nocturnal Emissions' Nigel Ayers has continued to work with a strong underground of cult support, avoiding music industry fashions, and following his own creative path he concentrated on creating a strong sense of a wilderness identity through sound.
supported by 20 fans who also own “The Pre-War Noise Encryption Standard”
Pure enjoyment of sound, never knowing what will happen next except for the fact that it will be even better than what you just heard. I love this one, thanks. saimonix
This ambient pop album from Chute Records label head Jan the Man captures melancholy, contemplative moods simply, and without words. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 15, 2021
