Null Terminator - In the Presence of My Enemies

As I've mentioned before, I am producing an EP and a full length album for Galactitronic Super-Space-Composer Null Terminator. The last track I posted was from the EP, which should be released first, though I still have no idea when it will be completed.

Anyway, I felt like officially sharing another track, though this one had already been available. I simply had never really pointed it out on this blog before. This will be the third track from the full length. I should add that while the EP will probably be 100% composed by Null Terminator, this track is in fact almost completely my own composition, so on the full length I suppose I will be credited as co-composer, which is good, obviously, because I have been wanting to get into the professional musicdom for a long time now.

Null Terminator - In the Presence of My Enemies

Spending Time

I dreamed that I was spending Christmas with the family of one of my Indian coworkers. I do actually have some Indian coworkers, but this particular person was a fictional coworker conjured from the ether expressly for the dream.

The members of my coworker's family seemed to be fairly well divided with respect to what they were allowed to eat. Some had only rice and water. Others were vegetarians. Still others were eating beef. I don't remember now what I myself was eating.

I was asked to take part in some kind of family ritual. Actually, I wasn't exactly asked. The patriarch of the family, who spoke no English (in fact, I don't remember hearing him speak at all in any language), gestured to me to take part. He gave me some sort of sea horse shaped casing made from some plastic-like organic substance in which was contained some kind of shimmering silver-blue dust. I did as the others did. I used a knife to cut the end of the tail and shook out the dust into a pool of water. I don't remember whether I ever learned the significance of this act.

Later, I was speaking with an older gentleman who looked like the sort of man who might portray a Colonel or General in a movie. Maybe a little like Bob Gunton. I think he was trying to set me up with his daughter or granddaughter or niece or something. I think I was some kind of national hero, which is why he liked me.

At the end of the evening, I was speaking with my coworker, and I realized that I had started speaking with his accent. I didn't want to offend him, so I forced myself to speak like myself again.

"You know," I said, "I was thinking. If I saved up all the money I spent on soda and candy, by the end of the year I'd have a lot of money saved up."

"Or..." he said. "The vacuum will suck up your money, you'll drink a bit too much vermouth, and the Dark One will show you a good time."

~   ~   ~

I don't know who he meant by the Dark One. I suppose he might have meant himself, referring to his skin color, but I doubt it. I'm not sure what religion he practiced. I was never aware of whether Hinduism or Sikhism had any villainous entities in their theologies (I suppose now that they probably do, though I still have not checked). He might have been Muslim, but I don't think so, and for that matter, I'm not sure whether Muslims ever describe Iblis as "the Dark One." I suppose this particular Dark One may not have anything to do with any organized religions. Well, whoever he is, I don't think I want anything to do with him.

Dreams of a Swaly Gaum

I am a Gaum. If you don't know what that means, then in all likelihood you don't need to know. But you seem so earnest in your curiosity. I might as well explain it.

It's simple. I am a monster. A beast of evil company. That reprehensible thing that is the object of revulsion for those who dwell in the light. The one who delights in the suffering of the innocent. Usually the one who causes it.

Well. In my case, little of this is really true. I have done nothing to warrant being called Monster. No one from the light has had any chance to revolt at my hideous countenance. I have witnessed no suffering. How may I delight in it? I've certainly caused none.

I do keep evil company. That is a fact. This is difficult to avoid when you are born a Gaum. It is an evil world.

I am hideous. This is also difficult to avoid. Surely if a light-dweller were to cast their light upon me... hah hah...

Affection is not my destiny.

Still, I find it difficult to accept fully what I know to be unavoidable. I am a monster. There is no other course.

Yet I know myself to be different. Perhaps this is on account of my inexperience. Perhaps it is simply my youth. Perhaps it is because I am alone.

The others do not speak to themselves. In my solitude I find solace in conjuring companions to hear me out. They listen to the ramblings of a young neophyte. They speak not a word. Still, they direct me to further my ramblings. The curiosity of an imaginary companion. Does this belie an impurity in me? Am I insane?

I have been trapped in the shadowy passages of this damned castle for too long. I long to return to the comfort of the Turned Worlds. There I have no need for ramblings. I would have tangible companions. Mired in groupthink, I would bury my thoughts beneath an ocean of subservience.

Subservience. This is why I am alone in the first place. We all must assume our posts in such places as this castle. Anyplace where the tendons binding the Turned and the Upright are strong and well dispersed. Intruders must perish. The Pendants must be found. It is commanded that these places must have a Gaum present to ensure that the Evil One's ends are achieved.

Why must my post be established in such a deserted and pointless place? Why did I have to grow old enough? Why couldn't I simply have died a whelp? In death there is the greatest darkness. In darkness there is stillness. Stillness. Stillness.

I need to move. This motionless palaver with the ghosts in my mind is leading me nowhere useful.

My claws make no sound as they usher my long frame along the stone corridors. My abdomen, menacing in its slenderness but somehow housing a full system of organs, sways little and hovers inches from the floor. A pale carpet made black by the shadows. I imagine my black eyes gliding through the darkness. Ebony gems submerged in the inky air that rules this place. They do not bob or sway. They simply slide forward, searching for the purpose that the Evil One has determined for them. Their victims would not see them before they perish. They are silent sentinels that serve my claws with information.

It is the claws that are masters here.

I hear a sound. I stop. My heart beats its flattened Gaumy rhythm a little faster. Soon I will be called Monster.

The masters take me quickly to one of the outer halls. The servants shall do their work without question. It is the coming of light-dwellers to this miserable place that will steel my mental faculties and make perfect my existence. It is their deaths that will lend sense to my purpose. I will yield to the subservience that is my destiny.

There is light in the room ahead. I enter, careful not to allow the light to touch me. The sentinels behold them now, climbing the staircase at the far end of this outermost hall. A trio of humans. Not dangerous. They will be a trivial group to dispatch. All the better. Their complete innocence will make my purpose all the more pure. I am a monster.

They are a family. The father is old. He carries the torch that lights their way. His hair is messy and thick along the sides of his wide face. His chin is bare. The hat he wears is too tall. I find him repulsive.

As foolish as the man appears, his wife is easily the more innocent. She is here only because he brought her. She trusts him too much. He leads her to her death. She wears her hair up in a thing that resembles the eggsacks of the Great Worms. Scaled down, of course. This is no Great Worm that wears this dress embroidered with flowers of every color. Hmm. Her face is nearly as fat as a Worm. She is disgusting.

The third is their daughter. She is in her late adolescence. She is interesting. She wears a dress as black as my eyes. Her hair is as dark as the air through which it flows. Her face is a delicate thing. It is slender and easily broken. Yet, I detect a determination that defies her enemies' power to break it. I cannot break it. I am powerless.

Stillness.
Stillness.

O sweet disillusion

That I, a Gaum of swale, I am by riddle rendered swain

A Gaumy swain in truth for to deny would but constrain

But for emotion newly felt, wherein to swell I'm fully fain

Is denial unfair in full? Is it constraint to wane?

O blackened spirit! Wherefore ask the truth of swage and swell

When hordes and worlds and death itself in question surely tell

That acts of swell fall to upright and swage does fall to darkened fell?

If bear ye lust for newfound loft, then shed this swaly shell!

But I cannot. No more can I break my own bonds of physical form than I can break her jaw from its rightful place. Through the link from eye to claw, the girl has made the master her slave. I am powerless to achieve my purpose. And I am powerless to shift my purpose. Surely the girl would look upon me and despair. And I would find a new form of self-revulsion. This cannot be.

I make my escape as silently as I came. I am careful not to allow the light-dwellers to witness my departure. They must not know my presence.

I choose passages at random. I care nothing for my destination. I lose my way. I have not been in this part of the castle before. I will move until I hear no more sound. Then I shall make my departure. They shall not discover me.

I stop. I am in silence. Yet my heart beats. I cannot silence my heart.

I shut my eyes. I seek the fibers that bind the Turned Worlds and the Upright. They are strong here. I guide my spirit toward them. The ether pulses. I ignore it. I drift away into the Turned Worlds, but I cannot control myself. The ether pulses. I resist. Stillness. Stillness. But there is no stillness. The ether pulses, and I am catapulted through the worlds between the worlds. I feel fear. Is this the justice of the Evil One?

I open my eyes. I crouch before an altar in a dim stone room. Beyond the altar is an abyss of impenetrable depth. I would cast myself into this abyss but for the object that hovers above the altar. It draws me near. I recognize its crescent shape from the tales of my father. A crescent moon of stained glass, an iridescent codex of color-formation. It is one of the three Godly Pendants, lost from the kingdom of the Light in ages only the Light and the Evil One still know.

How did I come upon this place? I have searched the reaches surrounding my post with the greatest care. No corner, however obscure, could have escaped my wanderings.

I am a fool. It did escape me. The girl's power drove me into places I did not know. I avoided parts of the castle. Did I reserve such places of mystery by subconscious action? Was it by intervention on the part of the pendant that it was not found? Surely the pendant was itself responsible for my arrival here as I attempted to fly to the Turned Worlds. Why would it hide itself for so long only to summon me now?

No more questions. I take the pendant's glittering chain delicately between two nails of my left claw. I guide the chain over my head and it nests itself around my neck. I feel powerful and powerless. The pendant is an artifact of greatness, but can I wield its greatness?

The chain tingles upon my neck. I shift the pendant. The tingling ceases. I am content. The tingling begins again. I shift. It ceases. It begins again.

Why does the Evil One desire this thing?

~   ~   ~

The tingling on my neck awoke me. It turned out that this tingling was my ten month old son sleeping next to me, tickling me with his outstretched fingers. What he was dreaming about, I can only guess at.

Not all of this post came directly from my dream. I elaborated on a lot of the musings of the Gaum, who is actually a character that has appeared in my dreams before. In fact, I wasn't aware of the Gaum being the protagonist here until after waking. Another fabrication. Aside from this, most of this is intact directly from the ether. In the actual dream, I spent more time watching the family as they explored the castle, and I did not actually feel any malicious intentions toward them. These are all things that I came up with later.

The little poem in the middle was not in the dream. This is something I wrote many years ago and have now refurbished with slightly different language and rhythm. I have tried to make it as good as possible, but I'm not exactly Shakespeare.

As far as I can remember, the girl looked a little like Krysten Ritter or Laura Donnelly or Kate Micucci or someone in that broad category of person.

A Dead Stag

A stag fell dead, for the ebb of ethereal grief tis quicksilvered blood.

The sea rolled back upon its rearward edge
and pressed against a hidden one as you
eftsoon cut to the quick a quickthorn hedge
to form the stormcloud's silver lining true

Quantum Faith

Sometimes we go up to religious mountain retreats. It's what we do. Or, at least, in my case, it's what we used to do. In fact, I'm not sure if I should still be included when I say "we." I haven't been religious for years now.

Anyway, we decided to go again to the mountains, for old times sake. We needed drivers to shepherd groups of people up there, and so I volunteered.

On the way up, I noticed that the roads had become much more precarious than in previous years, but I was fully confident in my own driving abilities, and so I proceeded with accelerated aplomb.

Aplomb, it turned out, was not enough. At one particularly sharp turn around a precipice, my car tore right over the edge of the road and plummeted into the chasm below. Amidst the shrieking of my passengers, however, I kept my cool. I depressed the "reset" button on my dashboard, and instantly

I noticed that the roads had become much more precarious than in previous years, so although I was fully confident in my own driving abilities, I applied the brake gingerly and took the next corner with caution. Amidst the complaints of slowness coming from my passengers in the backseat, I kept my cool. I informed them with authority that I was travelling as quickly as could be considered prudent. After all, an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure.

Later, upon arriving at the campsite, I observed that we were evidently to be staying in a new building. The only problem, then, was that the building had yet to be constructed. In fact, the previous building was still undergoing demolition. Irked, I volunteered to help move things along and immediately began tearing planks of wood from the old framework with my bare hands.

Once the new building was ready to be constructed, I made that process move much more quickly with another trick: I showed the other workers how to file the materials down to the correct size using only one's own hair. Impressed with my knowledge and the time saved by my wisdom, they gave me the rest of the afternoon off.

My wife and I made for the music superstore that had recently opened nearby. We'd heard that they had absolutely everything. It was only a short drive from the campsite, and so we decided it would be a fair use of our newfound free time to take a look.

The place was a disappointment. Not the music, no. They really did have literally everything. The problem was that they didn't offer us any place to sit down. No chairs!

In retrospect, upon arriving once again at the campsite, I realized that there had been chairs all over the store at little listening stations where one could sit and listen to music before purchasing it. But I had continued to wander the store in search of a place to sit as though I couldn't find one. How puzzling.

Others had arrived at the campsite when we got back. In particular, the guest speaker had arrived and was intent on speaking to me. It seems that someone had tattled about my... ahem... recently acquired heathendom.

No worries. I am quite willing to speak about my present state of religious limbo, and so I welcomed the chance to get another's perspective. After all, the guy looked kind of like Richard Jenkins and sounded exactly like Harry Dean Stanton. So naturally I thought maybe he might have some ideas that were worth something.

So we walked together--really, I slid down the stairs on my socks--he and I and the other religious group leader who was, as always, present. I told him about my past, how I feel, where I am. How I neither believe nor disbelieve any particular idea about the nature of God's existence. How I do not believe that I have a personal relationship with God. How I do not believe that I know anything at all about God. How I wish that I did know something about him. How I wish that I did have a personal relationship with him. How I wish I could believe some idea about God's existence.

He told me that often prayer reduces to asking for things, and this can be a little petty.

I told him that my prayers usually only have to do with knowing God.

He said, "If he told us we know, then we'd know." The other leader seemed unimpressed by this, but I assumed that the guy was just trying to be cryptic. So I started trying to reason what exactly he meant.

He continued, saying, "Your computer programs are your messages to God."

I'd never thought of anything of the sort. What could he have meant?