To conceal a lie

or, another fragment of Precipice

Hello amazing reader,

Another fragment of Precipice has been carved into the page, the words indelible. I’ve tried to edit them, but they refuse¹.

There’s a few of these fragments now. Holding them could be like trying to solve an unseen puzzle, so:

What is Precipice? | A SciFi novel set in a city cloaked in rain and dark, one that’s been built upon by an upper metropolis that straddles the clouds, allowing those within it to live in daylight, pretending that all the ruin of the world below doesn’t exist.

Are there characters in this novel, or is it written solely from the perspective of these … cities? | Erm. The main protagonist is Jisa Mirabar. A person. We love Jisa, but she knows not of our presence and prying eyes. Turns out she’s fallen for someone else, though. Pfff.

What’s with these “fragments”? | They’re just my way of saying “this isn’t the complete story. Dip in and out at your leisure and see if the pieces begin to form a narrative.”

They aren’t all written? | No. Not yet. Those that I've published can be found here. They aren't necessarily in chronological order because I, umm, can't write like that, which might be super weird and confusing, but such is my way. My hope is that you don’t need to treat this as a standard serialisation.

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Here’s the fragment synopsis: Jisa sits down with her friend Zinn to discuss the impossibility of the task she must face.

Nestle in as we step for a moment into Jisa’s room. Careful not to touch anything.

Seriously, Jisa? You wanted to bring Cloud back here? Ick! (Image credit: Midjourney)

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Zinn is slouched in his chair, feet upon my legs as he chews a wire pulled from atop my desk. “You like insane,” he says, twirling the wire as he speaks.

“Go suck a sump.” I stand, swatting his legs away before pacing the short distance to the wall. Then I turn, looking at him and the mess in which I live.

He wears his favourite boots, standard grey slacks and a black undershirt. No overshirt, not ever. Just a sleeveless top so he can feel the cold on his skin. I like it this way, he once told me. Weirdo.

Junk is strewn in boxes across my room. Salvage. Some fresh from Zinn, yet to be sifted by my own hands; the rest anywhere from days to weeks old, worryingly untouched. I have lost track. I have not been here. I fret that Zinn may notice and begin to question my movements. Rarely does the absence of one go unspoken to the other.

I stare, imagining someone else in Zinn’s place, how it could be Cloud, with me as the chair.

(It has only been a day since my return. It has already been a day since my return.)

“Eyeing me up?” Zinn’s words snatch me back. He pulls the wire from his teeth, throwing it at me.

I snort. “You wish.”

He ignores my words, points to where the wire landed near my feet. Sighing, I toss it back to him.

“A-thank-you,” he says in one of his stupid voices, popping the wire back in his mouth and kicking his feet up onto my now vacant chair.

“You’re fucking disgusting,” I say.

“And yet you continue to enjoy my company.”

I have no response to that, true as it is. Zinn is easy company, one who wants little in return, provided it consists of some form of narcotic, alcohol or otherwise. He flashes a smile, showing the gap where he lost a tooth in some idiotic game.

A tube shuttle rumbles by and we both look up as the lights flicker.

“Maybe pretty soon, if this pays as well as you claim,” I say, answering what he didn’t ask. A wistful notion. I’m knee-deep in debt and the cramped shithole I call my den is likely going to stay that way.

Unless? 

No. I stop myself. I have replayed the last two days a thousand times—every moment, every conversation, every act—all across so many emotions. Lust, for Cloud and how the two of us lay together. Hatred, for being sucked in. Hope, so futile, that his words were true. And envy, at the past me still living out those moments.

“Squirrel,” Zinn says. “What is it with you today?”

I flinch. “Bad day for a girl,” my voice a mumble. I move his feet and slump back into my chair, hoping the lie is enough.

Zinn makes a retching motion.

Passed. For now.

“So. How?” I ask, restarting my thoughts, hoping to keep them in place. How can I get there? To The Kernel, of all places. To steal its secrets, if I’m to believe what Cloud said.

Zinn’s eyes roll. “We’ve gone over this,” he says. “The barrier, Jisa. The fucking barrier.”

Vi above, Siridan below—as close as two cities could ever exist—yet their proximity makes no difference. Two different networks—one archaic, one advanced—separated by an invisible band of interference that blocks all but the most specific of communications. The barrier: a firewall that may as well be physical.

“Can’t you just shut it down?” he continues.

“Hah! No. But thanks for the confidence. Do you have any idea how fortified, how much redundancy that thing has? You’d need twenty insertions at once—simultaneously—and then you’d have about five seconds to get it locked off before you were jumped out.”

He grins at that. “Stop talking such tech, Jisa; you know how I get when you talk tech dirt.”

“Shut up you fuckwit. You were the one who asked.”

Zinn shrugs, as though in agreement. “Okay, whatever, I get it, you can’t just switch it off.” He waves his hands theatrically.

“No, I can’t. So, once again: what are my options?”

“Why don’t you just tell me?” His hand drops down to sift through a box of cables and circuit boards. I can’t tell if they are new or from days past.

“I don’t want to just tell you. I want you to play along. It’s how my brain works. And what else are we going to do?”

Zinn looks at me as though this is the most bizarre question ever posed. “Oh I don’t know, get a drink, perhaps?” he starts. “Go to a bar and get a drink?” He continues to reel off options. “Get out of your crappy den and go see Ramen, find some fawns. I’ll whore you off to get some creds so you can pay me for the junk I just delivered.” He drops one of the crusted boards he’d picked up and it lands with a dull thud. Wiping his hand, he feigns disgust.

I glare at him.

“It’s as if a man has to ask for a drink, is all,” he says.

Exasperated, I stand. From my shelf I grab two glasses and a bottle of xanth, pour each of us a large slug and then crumble in a few crystals of prash—an extra large crumble for myself—that I keep in my special tin behind the bottles.

Zinn’s eyes are wide. “Where’d you get that now you little sneak thief?”

“None of your fucking business. Don’t say I don’t treat you well.”

“I won’t,” he says, taking an immediate sip.

I smile, dimming the lights as Zinn’s pupils dilate, smelling the bitter-sweet liquor as I swirl my glass.

“So?” I say, settling back into my chair.

“Alright, your precious little barrier is off limits.”

“Not … exactly.”

Zinn takes another sip and closes his eyes, no doubt feeling the rush of prash, like inhaling adrenaline. The xanth balances it, masks the shitty taste, smooths the uptake. An intellectual high, if you’re used to it.

Zinn’s eyes dart back open, all alive. “Not exactly? Two options, then. You’re a sly one, you know, little squirrel. Pouring this and asking that, questions on the why and where and how, making this … this fine drink.”

I feel equal parts frustration and amusement. Zinn’s over-sensitivity to gear has always made me laugh.

I take my own first sip, feeling it flood across my tongue, holding it there for a second before swallowing. My lips tingle. I run my tongue over them, along my gums, licking at the taste of

//Cloud, lying there, my lips on his//

residue.

I blink.

The prash, I can feel it,

//the glass, so cool. Skin against my back//

warm, cradling my mind. It ignites, rushing through me.

A fraction later, the initial hit dims, subsiding into a beautiful, subtle something, and I would exist like this, if only I could. It would be manageable. Tranquil, even. An edge off of my reality. And even as my thoughts settle, they do so back to Cloud. To that night.

(Was I really there?)

“Jisa?”

Zinn. My room. Tube shuttle rumbling past. Bottles chinking.

My eyes flick open. “I’m here,” I say softly. “Just enjoying that first taste.”

“Damn right.” He takes another sip. A longer one this time, nearly draining the glass.

“Slower, fool. Ride it.”

Then I drink a little more. I want to prolong this, the taste of silver tendrils darting past my lips, sailing across my tongue,

//lost on his; never-end, never-let-it-end, never//

ending, slowly, as I swallow.

(One night, one day, one night. And I am lost. Am I lost?)

Back. Alert. Zinn stares at me, unblinking.

“The barrier, Jisa. Two options.”

“Yes, right.” My mind is like a small fire, burning through pathways, plans, ideas and desires. It won’t crumble like this, I know. It won’t last, either. Cradling the drink between my hands, I try to let that knowledge go, dismiss it as though it were not fact. “Two options. Tell me.”

He flicks me his gap-toothed smile. “One: go to the Cloudscape, up and into Vi—”

“Oh, sure,” I interject. “I’ll just visit Vi, shall I?” Sarcasm and lie intermixed, a cocktail of words. I have been there already. How ridiculous.

“Two:” he continues, ignoring my interruption, “did I say there were two?”

“You did.”

“Then what was the second one?” Laughter erupts.

“Lightweight,” I mock, though I can’t help but join him in laughing. “There is a second.”

“Above it, then.” A flippant, wayward comment, induced in part by the state of his mind—his entire drink is gone whilst I have only sipped twice. But he is right. Above is the way. The means.

I nod, pointing a finger at him, motioning that he is correct.

“What?” he asks.

Sometimes I wonder whether Zinn’s entire brain had been in that one tooth. I lean back, waiting for him to catch up.

“You don’t mean—”

“—I mean exactly that.”

“Are you insane?” he glares.

I smile. “We established that already.”

“You can’t go above the barrier, Jisa. You’d be in Vi itself.” Zinn stands now, begins to pace in short circles.

“Sit down; calm down. I’ll make you another drink. But only drink.”

“Mean girl. Mean.” But my words seem to have calmed him and he settles back, rapping his fingers against my desk.

I stand, begin to shift the bottles around on my shelf. As I move each one, my mind wanders. Getting above the interference is the only way. If I’m above it, I can probe from within. The rest should be easy. I hope. My eyes settle back on the shelf and its contents. Whisky, xanth, a small jar of zirosh that’s almost empty, yet again. Arianth, a slender bottle of mesz, a bizarre little bottle that once held a cork. That had been a good drink. No idea what it was. Then I notice a stout glass bottle with clear liquid inside. I grab it. “Jin?”

He shrugs. “Jin for Zinn. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. What matters, Jisa, little squirrel of the night, so daring and spry, is what in Siridan are you saying when you say,” and here he raises the pitch of his voice in some mock imitation, “‘I’ll go above the barrier?’”

“I didn’t say that. You did. And I don’t speak like that.”

“But you agree?”

“With?” I finish making his drink—quite literally a lug of jin—and push the glass across the desk.

He snatches it, then speaks. “You agree that you can’t go above the barrier. From here.”

“I disagree. Tell me, where is The Kernel?”

“Dumb questions don’t answers,” he says.

“I mean, where is it? Geographically.”

He shrugs, offering his hands up to the ceiling.

“In Libek, which is above?” I ask, yet Zinn’s stare is blank. “Man, you need some education. Above Garran.”

“So? Why is that remotely interesting?”

I shake my head. “Garran holds no special importance, but it’s the closest spot. The closer the better. And—and this is important, idiot—there’s a communications strut in Garran.”

I wait, watching. Eventually—a long time, even for Zinn—his eyes widen.

“You’re going to climb? That’s your how?

I nod.

“No,” he says. “No, no, Jisa,” he stands, voice rising with his body. “You can’t climb that.”

“Of course I can climb that. There’s a base support that runs a small lift a third of the way for maintenance access. The rest is on a ladder. They’re all the same. Nobody’s gonna look up and see me.”

“No, you’re right,” he yells. “They won’t. Because you’ll be on the floor, a pool of blood spreading from your body as the rain does its best to wash you away.”

“Oh, well, thanks for the confidence.” He isn’t far wrong, though. This is dangerous. Stupidly so. But it will work.

“I don’t like it, Jisa. I worry about you.”

“You worry about shit,” I tell him. Yet I love that he cares, like a brother would.

“I still don’t like it,” he starts.

“I’m not absolutely going to do it this way.” (I am.) “It’s just an idea. Forget it. Let’s go eat,” I say before Zinn can protest further.

And just like that Zinn’s apparent concern departs. “A fine idea!” he says, already making his way towards the door.

Setting my drink down, I stand and grab my jacket from the hook on the wall, slip it on and zip it up. It hugs with reassuring tightness.

As I move to leave, I gulp the last of my drink. It barely has time to register against my lips or tongue, but I feel

//him, beneath me, in me, my back to the world, arching until I see the glass fringing upon such sights, and I am here and not-here, because it is too//

right, centred and strong, for now at least. There is suddenly a definition of me; a plan, a purpose—something I can strive for and achieve and it will leave

//a sensation of pure ecstasy, never before felt; I feel it, him, us; my eyes, shut; my time, will it stop? And I will it to stop; but no, I know, I feel it too quickly, as he withdraws, he will leave//

me eventually, too soon, but for now I move with it. Standing. Moving. I am shifting, brushing through this space, the air parting for me. Glass down, dropped. My desk. My glass next to Zinn’s.

Zinn. Staring.

“Wtah zehf oo’ng?” Blurred words.

I keep my hands upon the desk, stopping it from slipping away. It is trying. I can feel it, like I feel my boots bracing the floor from its attempts against being the floor.

Then the world snaps back.

“Oops,” I manage.

“Oops? Oops?!”

“Oops,” I repeat, shrugging. Inside, the wires of my mind burn with a sensation of purity. An eagerness that I struggle to hold within. “I can handle it.”

“Sure didn’t look like it.” But Zinn is already turning, walking out.

I follow, letting the door lock as we ascend the short flight at the end of the darkened hallway and press our way onto the street, a muffled argument sounding from the room adjacent to the exit.

“So,” Zinn says as I pull my collar up around my neck, rain already spitting against my hair. He wrings his hands, glancing left and right as people drift past, lights of the city watching us all. “Kin-Kin’s?”

“Kin-Kin’s” I nod, smiling. “Come on, I’m starving,” and I clap Zinn on the back as we walk off through the puddled streets.

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Thank you for making it this far. I hope you enjoyed the time with Jisa and Zinn. I would join them if I could, but I have no map. Maybe someday Jisa will lead me there herself.

1. Yeah right. More like ALL THE WORDS ARE IN THE DUSTBIN!