Joseph McElroy - Plus

He knew choked but not what it meant, so he could not choke on the word, but he choked.

On an absence.

Though choked not on that old absence of obstacle which was how the impulses had once come on the frequency from Earth. Choked now on an absence that was obstacle.

Absence he didn’t want, which swelled him into glut.

What did?

While what he saw despite some need to stop using ultrasight was the reverse of swelling. It was shrinking he would incline to act on. For he was choking without knowing what choking was. But was disinclined, except to be.

So through all the milky smoke of the great thought fallen, risen, standing dispersed, the Sun’s flow made the only move. Or almost only: for, disinclined to act, Imp Plus yet inclined the other way, and when the Sun then grew less light Imp Plus knew this could not be the Sun itself, not the great hand withdrawing; for the glial cells and neurons — he knew neurons — and those other cells by some offsprung reversal like the neurons’ earlier selves unfiring but able to divide — had all been at their midday. For he had thought so. And since therefore the Sun had all the time from noontide yet to flow, the lessening light was due to Imp Plus not the Sun.

Imp Plus inclined to sleep. An early night was sliding across the slowed flood of Sun. Was what he choked on light that was forced to stand slower and slower?

For he choked. And what swelled, and swelled toward sleep, mixed him richer he felt and richer as the slowed and long-standing light enfolded and embraced him so he breathed its gas forever but stopped.

But stopped and stopped.

For he could not breathe; for what lung had he to breathe with?

But it did not take a lung to look, he thought: for, looking closer through the light that clearly he could not breathe, he saw the shrinking all over lean out of itself to swell like breath drawn in. That is, he swelled a bit but felt less choked. But then he was back where he began. Yet, having looked, seemed to breathe when he looked again out of his inclination to sleep; and in the great milky suspension which was the thought of his own growth, he saw parts larger than any the milky suspension had held when he’d first seen it occupy him like a shade. But the sizes were not all the same. He saw that the larger ones were made of smaller, and as he looked these smaller stopped avoiding one another and leaned suddenly together, split their flowing shells, and stuck and joined.

Elsewhere, remembering that looking made him breathe which meant he did not choke, braids of the Sun spindled their light; and particles of the milky smoke rebounded from each other without hitting; and larger particles — he knew blast —blasted back into smaller.

And Imp Plus swelled and inclined also to shrink and swell or shrink again, and crowds of off-blasted particles of particles slid back together, and the spindling Sun slowed.

Imp Plus saw that no, it was just because he could breathe that he could choke. But because he could choke he could sleep, which was — wasn’t it? — one more inclining among inclinings. But choke was sleep, sleep was night, night not see. Since see and look were both sight, hence in part the same, and look made him breathe, and he could not choke if he could not breathe — why he must look.

Which meant he must not sleep.

Though look was not see. And the big and small particles were undecided to gather or disperse.

Which were two inclinings among inclinings. Inclinings flooded by a slow-flaming gland that seemed like his sight unlimited.

And if joined like the microsight beyond the capsule into that length of blue afternoon space where somewhere some cloudy blue-mottled Ground hung like a preserved gland, then also connected to the sweet watering of some body’s eye feeding Imp Plus on the pulse of its color contracted across a pupil gap by rings of muscle celled like an Orbital Monitoring Station experiment able to change size.

Divided, Imp Plus in one dilated membrane heard the voice that said “Vanity” say “Glad I didn’t pack a bag.” He choked back something lost. And in another contracted membrane heard, with a pulse choke-bombing up and down his glorying head, a voice say, “But what would be the advantage of a capsule that could change size?” The same voice he also smelled saying (and so acrid that Imp Plus wanted to toss his head this way and that to get out of a chamber of chalk dust choking him), “The brain can signal lack of sugar but not lack of oxygen, so we’ll watch you for any accumulation of CO 2.” The words were hard to wait for. He was choking even if he had no brain now but instead neck after neck unheaded and unlike a neck he had once prepared to save. Or had the operation at the last moment reversed the plan and saved the body not the brain?

He choked through the velvety waters of eyes whose enticing mesh was lost for good; he choked through the voice’s words Travel light . He choked through a last grind of disintegrating teeth meshed on an axis between axles — that was it. A grinding dividing of ill body by ill will: he saw it in the capsule window like the reticle they had left out — he saw

fade into the clear glass and recalled only the grinding dividing of ill body by ill will, geared through soft sand and hard road to outdistance the dune watcher gearing his overdrive: but away for what? to find all through the towering headaches of that last weekend body over will in constant mesh of want driving back to the Project called Travel Light only as it had become his own secret will over the body from which that willed secret was to be divided.

Back at the end of the weekend, then, to the secret field of growth, Imp Plus had choked as if he hadn’t meant to on those words accumulation of CO 2 . And now on the O that was all around him. And in him. But bonded into absence.

And now new-grown but standing away toward sleep, he knew only that he’d choke if he didn’t do one more thing. But then another. Many. That was it. Do them quick or else.

And in the midst of the great gland’s bomb that like his multi-microsight seemed boundless and therefore unengaged, he found it also not like his sight; for the gland could not have focus: if not in where it went at least a reverse focus in its source. For the gland sent its omnifluence out from the same old center of what had been but was not now the brain.

Yet more: this difference between gland and sight turned Imp Plus like breathing to and from the gland and its field of himself. Back or forth past the optic crossing. There discolor had now long turned nearby fibers palest olive. But been turned to pinwheels of radii so many he would not see with his sight for a moment that the wheels lacked rims and the radiant spokes of so many lengths extended many colors fixed for a passing moment upon the axle points of the pinwheels but then shot off like stalks pulled up or like long low animals with plates instead of membranes sliding into water, the waters of all the fields of flood.

Seeing that the strange words radii of color were true, he could not stop to know why.

For the difference he had found between great gland and multi-sight turned Imp Plus to a new difference. It was in the spindling Sunbraids of what had been the midday cells now midafternoon. What he saw in the slowed Sunbraids looked caused by the light of the milky standing smoke of his great thought but also making that blinding curdle and sponge of light as ultramicron particles give up the spring of their meshes and slick frameworks. How did he know ultramicrons? What he saw was that those reverse-magnet Sunbraids raying off out into the fields of his space were braids of two Suns not one.