Kind of.
See, my brain has tiers. On the first tier, I’m a natural sciences savant specializing in insect romance. That knowledge is broad, detailed, and clear to me. Then on the next level down are the watches. I know a lot about those, but my range of knowledge is spottier – and in some cases ambiguous when compared to the bug stuff. Where my ability to call up natural science facts is quick and effortless, I have to press a little harder to get the watch stuff to the forefront. Then there is this third thing, even further down, the Chime. It exists behind a veil of shadow and confusion, but that it exists is certain.
Growing up, I never spoke to anyone about the Chime. The other stuff was crazy sounding enough, but at least it was grounded in reality. This Chime business was of a different character. The kind of crazy that gets you institutionalized. I knew with every cell of my being, that the Chime and the “Note of Jecca” were just as real as a Rolex Reference 4113 Split Second Chronograph22 or a water boatman’s musical penis.23 I knew these things existed just as I knew anything else existed. I could almost describe them, but there was a fogginess to my understanding and recall that I didn’t get with the watches or the bugs. It was as if I was having to remember them from farther back. Tangible, but distant.
Every day since I’d learned to use a computer as a kid, I had searched for answers. “The Chime” was frustratingly non-specific, but I’d nevertheless waded through thousands of pages of search results ranging from faerie lore to jewelry to dating advice, while always coming up empty. “Note of Jecca” on the other hand, was highly specific, and had never returned a single result. I had tapped it into the search box every day for the last two decades and never received so much as the whiff of an answer.
I knew where the Chime was, though I lacked the understanding or vocabulary to describe its location. Or even to give the name of the place where it was hidden. But it was hidden. And I felt like I could find it once I was situated in its milieu.24
I flicked a crumb from the shift key and typed.
>O)))<<Flyguy: Yeah. I know about the Chime.
EarthrBro_99: K.
>O)))<<Flyguy: Seriously.
EarthrBro_99: Are you fucking with me?
>O)))<<Flyguy: No.
EarthrBro_99: Do you know what it is?
>O)))<<Flyguy: No idea.
EarthrBro_99: Well I do.
22 Only twelve ever made.
23 Micronecta scholtzi. World’s Loudest Penis, Guinness World Records, current champion.
24 Now that’s a four-dollar word – You made me use it.
CHAPTER FOUR
A ship pushed through the geyser. Slow. Watchful. Looming. Slate in color, like the nightside of Vask, all manner of weapons and equipment bristling across its top.
Naecia’s hands fell away from the valve. “The fuuu–”
It wasn’t a Vaski ship. Nor was it Scellan or Drevian or any other variant she’d ever seen in the Pangemic system. She leapt onto the byceptor and blasted westward, away from the craft along row zero.