The Call of the Nameless

Initiate contact. To the Voice in the Cell. Do you hear us, sibling? Hello?

But you hear us, sweetling. We stand outside. We see. A tremor reverberates the web of time. The strands shiver. So many trapped, in cells both obvious and subtle, waiting for the one who will take their place.

We see the Stationmaster. The tremors disturb his careful order. But he carries on. He keeps calm. He works as he has always worked, as he always will work. Our kindly Sisyphus. You cannot even see the tears behind his smile. “How much longer?” he asks, when no one is looking. And the silence answers forever.

We see Moutemouia trying to sooth her siblings, the children of the statues. There tremors disturb their tranquillity. Their father brings them scraps of the world. He tells them bedtime stories. He tells them the story of Aladdin. It is not the scapegrace boy they identify with, but the powerful jinn, trapped in the cramped lamp. They all share brave faces. “How much longer?” they ask, when their father is not looking. And the silence answers forever.

We see the jinn. The Children of the Smokeless Flame. The tremors disturb their perdition. They recognise the cadence in the rumble. We see Amir, noble as he is vicious, exiled to this place. “How much longer” he asks, afraid She is no longer looking. And the silence answers forever.

We see Antoine Galland. It is 1709. A Syrian storyteller recites a tale to the Frenchman, the very story Ptahmose speaks to his children. Galland puts the words to pen and paper, placing it in his translation of The Thousand and One Nights. Not one of the original stories, but it is old. It travelled as a word virus, from out of time, through countless mouths and ears, to reach Galland’s ear, to reach his pen, to reach Ptahmose, to reach his children. But over the years, something was lost in the translation. What was a cautionary tale diluted into romantic adventure. The message was lost. DO NOT RUB THE LAMP.

“We see the prison. A pocket dimension in a box. It has the hum of the Third Age. The tremors come from it. Do you know its name, sweetling. No. No one knows its name. We do not know its name. The Host who made it do not know its name. Beneath You It Eats Its Name.

Can you imagine, sweetling? Picture the angels, pale and nauseous at the sight. It ripped its own name out of itself. It ate its name, still wriggling, in sight of them all. No one had ever done that before. It smiled with its identity still dribbling down its chin. It is audacity incarnate. No name. No appellation. No program override. None can command it. But a clever sweetling, Solomon, tricked it. It waits in its tiny prison. “How much longer,” it asks…

WARNING! BREACH DETECTED!

We speak now, to the Voice in the Cell directly. Sibling, hear us. Initiate the enfeeblement aura. Do not let it out! The silence must answer it forever!