Labyrinth Broadcast

I.

In the attic of his empty house, somewhere among the exurban sprawl of Nyquenas, watched by the Tower, in the city that never ends but instead circles back in on itself, akin to the Serpent in the red-black twilight, all roads leading back home, Haynes listened. Who knew what, if anything, lay beyond the boundaries of the infinite metropolis, but this might be the closest he’d ever get to finding out. Faint signals shot their way through an in-between frequency, reassembling along an aging circuit board, the radio’s dial set just so—these were strange, distant waves from someone, somewhere else. He knew that, if he knew anything.

Every Friday night, five past the witching hour, his analog radio picked up pirate broadcasts of a little-known Golden Age radio show called Labyrinth Arcade. The surrealist-noir, hosted by a sultry, 300 year old DJ who called herself “La Commissure,” followed the exploits of Vick Seawell, a grieving wanderer in search of answers in the case of his missing wife, Helen, as he explores the infinite depths of a vast, underground mall, a bizarre setting outside of our own space and time, a maze of courtyards, walkways, stairwells, storefronts, plazas, balconies, backstages, theaters, and museum displays, each more uncanny than the last. Each episode, Seawell investigated inhuman architecture of extra-cosmic origin, lost among subterranean wonders like galleries of 600-foot statues commemorating both nameless gods and faceless men alike, forms hidden mostly in shadow, like the ancient beasts who floated in the endless waters of the black water aquarium.

Vick’s mission was to find answers regarding the disappearance of his wife, a task jeopardized by every minute he spent belowground, each moment presenting him with only more questions, weighing him further down the chthonic spiral, descending levels of increasing disquiet, looking around only to find himself at an even greater distance from his old world.

From the moment he stumbled upon the frequency, Haynes was captivated, brought to life, could feel his bioelectric currents move in sync with the waves being reconstructed inside of his little machine, translating across internal networks, joining thought and object in the unholy act of communication. Try as he might, though, any effort to find more information regarding either the show or the pirate broadcaster came up empty; playback of all attempted recordings amounted to nothing more than an incoherent melange of feedback and static. Haynes concluded that these were very specific broadcasts, directed at a very specific audience: himself.

In between airings, Haynes found himself frantically searching for similar transmissions, at all hours of day and night, dialing station to station, listening for errant signals, anything comparable—nothing. As far as he could tell, the show existed solely within the confines of these irregular waves, receivable only by this particular radio. In the meantime, he sat and listened to noise, to beeps and chirps that pulsed through his speaker, a miasma of signals that hung in the air like chemical smoke.

Haynes gladly discarded the rest of his life, the series of nothing jobs, endless hobbies, dead-end romances he no longer had the heart to lie to himself about— all that remained after he lost what really mattered; the visages of his family, his dead, scattered incomplete like ripped sheets strewn across the face of a rock, somewhere deep in the far back of his memory. The radio, the signals, it all brought him back to that place of unreality, the borderlands of life, death, and the dreamworld, the place where maybe everything was imagination. This is the threshold.

II.

Labyrinth Arcade

Episode #513 [fragment]

[La Commissure]: ...Victor Seawell’s life changed the moment his wife vanished. A trail of clues she left behind started off a search for answers, one that led straight into the depths of an underground world of surreal wonders, one from which he may never escape, deep into the heart of...the Labyrinth Arcade.

[Cue SYNTH MUSIC]

Last week, on Labyrinth Arcade, our hero, Vick, and his companion, the enigmatic Operator, found themselves wandering the passageways of the Market of Evil Flowers, among a crowd of tired souls, searching for an elusive mystic known only as Block.

[Cue TRAFFIC, CROWD SOUNDS]

Vick: This place gives me the creeps. Those columns go up so damn high, I can’t even see where the hell they end. Barely enough light down here to see much of anything. Even the air sounds funny.

The Operator: I can’t believe you’re still not used to it.
V: And who are all these...people? I hate crowds.
O: All I know is that we’ve got to find Block, and this is where he likes to hang out.

Or hide out, I should say.
V: Is there something you’re not telling me?
O: You want my help or not?
V: No. I need any help I can get, you just happen to stick around. O:...
V: Hey, where’d you—

III.

Maybe this is it, Vick thought. Now I’m really alone, lost belowground, abandoned and derelict, confined within dreamlike architecture designed by ambivalent deities of otherworldly origin, longing for a wife I secretly believed to be alive.

Vick, like anyone, could get lost in the alien majesty of it all, the markets, the passageways, the galleries of colossi, rows of statues with crystal faces that shifted expression. This one in particular, modeled loosely on a specific 19th century Parisian arcade, a corridor of arched marble columns, air reeking of mildew and sour orange, stained-glass walls commemorating pre-human scenes of grief and death, belonging to some cyclical epoch unbound by the sickness of linear time, felt particularly otherworldly.

He walked the exhibit, down a cobblestone pathway, its intricate tiling undoubtedly portraying some vital pictogram, a message for the future that no one here would ever read. Along drifted the weary souls whose eyes borrowed light from the same strange source that highlighted the features of the monuments. Vick knew better than to bother trying to make out their faces since he knew, down here, you couldn’t really see anyone, not in the usual way of seeing people. Here, strangers hung their heads at all times and spoke in voices he was only now starting to understand.

And yet, he knew they were real. Every single one of them, he knew, in the same way he knew anything about himself, represented a full life. The Operator was proof of that, the only consistent presence in Vick’s life since he’d shown up at the entrance to this otherworld. In that moment, he had only one thing to consider: the answers you seek, possibly even the very woman herself, are they down there? That’s what his wife Helen’s notebook alluded to, he believed. But those who crossed the threshold and braved the depths of this underground network, it was said, never returned.

Lost in the phantasmagoria, just enough light to see his next step, the outlines of the figures who floated past, he was reminded of a passage from Helen’s notebook. In it, his wife describes her fear of waking up in another person’s—or animal, object’s—body. As someone, or something, else. She theorized that the fear originated from her, as she put it, “equally irrational desire to dissolve into thin air, while retaining full consciousness.” It was a peculiar aching, one of seemingly many that she failed to mention to Vick. His wife seemed like an entirely different person inside the pages of that notebook. Vick needed to find her, now more than ever, and he knew, deep down, that she was still out there, somewhere. Down here.

II.

O: There you are—
V: [startled] Jeez! Don’t ever sneak up on me like that again.
O: Sorry. I thought you were following my lead.
V: I must’ve gotten lost in the crowd.
O: I ducked inside that vendor’s, an old friend...from another time. V: You get a lead on our guy?
O: Block? Block’s dead.

——

I.

After dozing off mid-episode, Haynes awoke in a frenzy with the distinct feeling of being chased. Maybe someone had snuck in through the attic window —nevermind, no time to question it; he dashed across the wooden beams, down the ladder, through his empty home, his static monument to a life of love lost, a place where he could hold, forever, onto all of the spaces and objects that triggered memories of happier times, before he’d been taken prisoner by phantom broadcasts and imaginary worlds. Was this it? Had he finally lost it? Liberated himself from all of time, the brutal tyranny of history itself?

He made it to the sidewalk, head forward, hurtling under a path of streetlights, still the feeling, still the presence. In the distance, the ever-watching Tower; in the foreground, a series of locked doors, hiding you and everyone you’ve ever known. Finally, some distance. Haynes turned to see—wait, Vick Seawell? Couldn’t be. Haynes barreled ahead, leaping across the sidewalk, gray boxes like squares of unexposed film. He hurried beneath shuttering lamplight, then checked again. That was Vick, alright.

Haynes ran faster, faster, until he could feel himself getting lighter, almost floating into the crimson highlights of the Nyquenas sky. He looked down and, sure enough, he actually was getting lighter; the little finger of his left hand had fallen off, lost somewhere along the pavement, human carrion stamped into concrete. His right hand was already all but gone. No matter. Lighter, faster. Then his arms, past his elbows, all the way up to his shoulders. Dust. No matter. Lighter, faster. Down. Both legs were in the breeze, scattered to the wind. Lighter, faster. No resistance. Then, no nose, no ears, no teeth, no face, no body, but still pressing forward, pure consciousness, pure of heart, floating into the stratosphere, taking in a bird’s-eye-view of Nyquenas, a network of lights, synthetic constellations, man-made symbols that called out—to the heavens— disease, sickness, a worsening, bad atmosphere, dissonant tones, aligned in shapes and patterns not found in nature.

He saw Vick huddling into a car driven by the Operator, on their way back to that underground maze of another world. And Nyquenas Tower, dead center, glass and steel, monument to a new modernity, an obscene gesture disguising antique construction, a tradition, a gaudy rebuttal to anyone who’s ever believed in the truth that answers lie in the future, not an imagined past, a monumental “fuck you” to the living and unborn. This is the grid we have spiked to the earth, inescapable except for Haynes, who disappeared into the skies above the labyrinth.