Joseph McElroy - Plus

The Dim Echo Imp Plus could not look down upon but only look for. But more.

For Imp Plus had felt somewhere by him an opening like a growth radiate outward. He had held this for himself, not let it go far outward.

Imp Plus had the words of the Dim Echo asleep or half awake, like stored work of the Sun’s hand in the membranes.

The words were: “O.K., optimum warmth. Solar flow holds. Glucose stable. Glucose beautiful. Cold will come when dark cycle comes. Sleep.” Imp Plus had not let the words go to Earth.

So cold had not come.

Yet the Dim Echo who when dark cycle had come had O.K.’d the order SLEEP, now did not seem to know the dark cycle had come. Imp Plus tried an answer. The Dim Echo did not know the dark cycle had come, because the Dim Echo slept.

The flows did not know either. If there was anything to know. Imp Plus saw as many as he wanted or expected, though not as few. He saw through the gold shadow’s colors to the business of the bodies within bodies. The skins of the larger were screens. They pulsed so clearly Imp Plus remembered breathing.

They were membranes bending in and out. Screens that the smaller bodies squeezed through. Squeezed through where no holes were until Imp Plus saw them. And these bodies in order to squeeze through got larger not smaller.

He saw the body like a bad-angled spacecraft bounce on the screen and not get through. Then it found and grabbed and was held by what became a carrier. Then was joined by another thing. This thing was barely there. And not on or in, but off. It was a function pried off. Pried off the very small suck pumping an inclination, a gradient, and he knew the pump but could not see it except in its idea across the pulsing membrane. The body embraced by the passive carrier and joined by a piece of the familiar pump could then slide inside the skin. Then, once inside, glow and part. Be two. And fade into a light that was Imp Plus himself. And breathed through and back through the snowy glue cells and the cells that sparked, and what went on was that these firing cells were split into cells that did not fire and that seemed earlier, but grew and then divided without being hit by the breathing glow of those other divisions inside membranes. And as for those — the body, the carrier, the pump piece, their passage through a skin and their united division — he thought he knew what he was seeing. Or smelling, or remembering the smell of. And as he thought he was seeing glucose events, though he did not know the cells that did not fire, he could see for a moment into the fade itself. And what he saw was a great part of a bow or arc.

Slow sugars rained down it. Their grand soft light was outlined by the dark of the cycle. Some of these firing cells split into cells that didn’t fire but divided — which seemed a reversal. Imp Plus swung his look rapidly here and there, turned elsewhere in order to think: to think that since the Dim Echo was wrong about dark, it could be wrong about cold. Imp Plus did not know cold. He wanted the Dim Echo to tell him where to find it.

Ground spoke again, and as if Earth had turned away with the Sun, the distance was more: CAP COM TO IMP PLUS ANSWER IF YOU CAN. IMP PLUS YOU ARE ALREADY IN DARK CYCLE BUT WE READ TEMPERATURE STEADY AT ONLY FOUR DEGREES BELOW DAYTIME.

Imp Plus held on to the answering words of the Dim Echo and did not let them go: cold will come with dark cycle.

IMP PLUS WE READ NO DROP IN POWER STORED IN ACCUMULATOR. WE READ HIGH CORTICAL ACTIVITY, LOOKING LIKE R.E.M. SLEEP IN ALL AREAS WE MONITOR. BUT THIS IS LIGHT SLEEP PERIOD IMP PLUS TOO EARLY FOR R.E.M. SLEEP.

Imp Plus held on to the slow answering words of the Dim Echo and did not let them go: cold will come with dark cycle. Light sleep precedes R.E.M. sleep. Sleep.

ARE YOU ASLEEP OR NOT, IMP PLUS. DO NOT BREAK SLEEP CYCLE BUT ANSWER IF YOU CAN.

Imp Plus did not know accumulator; but he did not know power either. Yet it had been in him. At the last words of the message the huge arc which was only a part of an arc could be seen for what it was: countless arcs each with its own aiming rain of sugars. Did he know how he had kept the Dim Echo from answering Earth? Imp Plus saw these many arcs were what he had seen before: each had its own center and its spokes: yet spokes radiant not from each center but from the dark-outlined arc itself as if each arc could be a locus center in the form of a curved line.

Seeing these many parts of arcs also so many, he smelt a sweet burn of his own pain and he slid down the one huge cycle out of the countless small, and saw that he had both.

The one huge one was also just a part, not more whole than the elongated circle of his will come round with its fore and aft caliper rungs but not meeting. Though come maybe closer than the ends of this one huge arc now. The many making one. The one huge. But also a part. So all the more huge. Yet made of the burning countless small. Made by — he could not say it — he was in the mist of gold shadow — the staggering spectrums of countless whole new colors were like the many small arcs, and the gold shadow where they sheltered was the one huge arc— made by —he could not say it — not only because it was not only him (he said it) but what had been given him, the stored gold blood from the Sun’s late hand: but also then for him itself, and here he saw his doubt had been golden, he’d felt it like stored flesh; and not knowing how to want the Dim Echo not to answer Ground, he had been given his desire. Which was part.

A part he must come to know.

He wondered what that would be.

The Dim Echo, which was not so dim, had said, “Cold will come.”

But what was will? Maybe he had known.

Imp Plus would like to ask the Dim Echo.

How long had it been asleep? It had been asleep when it said, “Cold will come.”

Will come was come , but not now . Come then .

Now was any point of the gold-pink sugar slides. Now was the gray glint of the sliver head here in the cleft which was one of many Imp Plus centered on.

He concentrated on the sliver head and then he saw that Earth’s last message had sunk into the night and he had been feeling the old sweet ripping burn of the pain and now was not.

That was then . Like the cave-crash of burn that had stopped for the time being or been turned now into the night work of the stored Sunlight. But not like the sugars that had slid past him down one of the dark cycles; for though that was then, too, the sugars slid now as well, they were not different, though what he did — if anything now — was different: what he’d done then when the sugars slid down a dark cycle, was stick up arms he did not have and press against the clear-curved skull he did not have, until it lifted off.

Ground was after him again but he had to be here now and he looked again at this premotor cleft. The bulge at its brink was now bigger. The cleft had dilated more. So the here and now were not now the same.

He had nothing to stand on; the bulge he was on was him. The bulge was on the brink of the cleft, the cleft was in a fold, the fold was more open, and when it was all open it would not be a fold. He could not help wanting this, but with each unfolding a fold was gone. Ground knew that the capsule was not as cold as expected and that there had been no drop in power stored in the accumulator, but Ground did not know other things. Imp Plus could keep answers from going to Ground but he could not keep the woman at the seashore. But this was not it: he meant instead that he could not keep the woman at the seashore from coming on the axis of distance; could not help her from unfolding him, yet he had wanted it.

And had always known the axis of distance was coming.