Weavers

by Tim Kelby

          The forest stretched away in every direction as far as he could see, crowding his vision with a thousand different shades of green and brown. He’d never known that the world could contain so many hues, so many infinite variations on that same emerald theme, all infinitesimally different. He stared around him, marvelling at the woven tapestry of vines and branches that tangled his eyes into their twisting, labyrinthine web. Inclining his head, he looked upwards, to where the silver moon shimmered like an opal cast into the jet-black velvet of the star-glittered skies.
          A gibbering shriek shattered the peaceful stillness, and the man found his gaze drawn to the branches above him. He smiled slightly - up in the treetops, a troop of monkeys was cavorting and capering, swinging agilely through the viridian webwork of the canopy. One of them turned towards him, golden eyes blazing in its black face, a ruff of white fur lending the creature a clown-like air. The man felt the simian’s intelligent, perceptive stare bore into him. Disquieted by the animal’s intensity, he reached up and touched his temples lightly with his fingers, making the network of metal threads that covered his shaven scalp shimmer in the dappled half-light. He took a last look at the forest, and closed his eyes.
          When he opened them again, he was staring at a wizened, slightly dishevelled old man, whose lined face was covered in wires and mechanical projections. He looked, the first man reflected, very much akin to the monkey, with his quizzical eyes and his dandelion clock spray of white hair.
          "Didn’t you like that one?" the old man asked, in a cracked voice. The customer shook his head.
          "I didn’t like the monkeys," he remarked. The aged proprietor shrugged.
          "I don’t make these things up." He sounded profoundly indifferent. "It’s your brain that creates them. I just program the Weavers." He gestured to a pile of wire-mesh headsets similar to the one the first man wore. "And all they do is take your subconscious thoughts and feed them into your conscious perception centres. Would you like to try another?"
          "Will it make any difference?" The old man chuckled.
          "Each Weaver is different," he answered. Hesitantly, the customer removed the device from his skull, and picked another at random from the heap. Carefully, he slipped it onto his head. He closed his eyes again, and touched his temples lightly.
          This time, the scene was a city - a dusty street crowded with a jumble of sights and scents and sounds. Stalls were jammed along the edges of the thoroughfare, with vendors selling warm sweetmeats, cool, fresh fruit, meat, and a hundred other things. The visual cacophony was interwoven with a miasma of smells - the odour of cooking intermingled with the scents of spice and incense and sweat and dung and hot camel. Shouts rang out over the heady babble of chatter that filled the street. Everything was so real - the man could even feel the sun’s heat on his face, and the desiccated caress of the desert sirocco that stirred the abrading, ochre dust into intricate eddied patterns. I preferred the forest, he reflected, a little disappointed.
          Abruptly, a strident screech sliced through the background hum of the day. The man looked over his shoulder, and saw that the sound came from the nearest stall. The vendor was selling exotic animals - tattered birds, their bright feathers caked in choking dirt twittered half-heartedly next to wicker cages filled with scrawny, flea-bitten rats. A dejected-looking camel chewed disconsolately at the tarred rope of its halter. But none of these sorry beasts had emitted the raucous cry, and the man’s eye was drawn irresistibly towards the occupant of the furthest cage. It was a black monkey, its beady, golden gaze framed by a ruff of white fur. The man frowned. A little annoyed, he touched his temples and deactivated the Weaver.
          The old man’s face stared down at him, calm and inscrutable as ever.
          "Was that better?" he inquired, solicitously.
          "No, it wasn’t," his customer replied, a little snappishly, and grabbed another Weaver. He closed his eyes, and opened them again in a tiny, dingy tent. A fire burned, warming him and casting a flickering light over the bent back of an old gypsy woman. The burnished hoop of her earring made a dully-gleaming arc of gold in the shadows. The woman was shuffling tarot cards and laying them out one by one on a small table in front of her, and the man craned his neck to get a better look. The first card flopped onto the wooden tabletop. It bore a crude drawing of a monkey, and the space that usually showed the card’s name was blank. The second card fell beside it. It carried exactly the same image. Irrational fear began to claw coldly at the man’s heart as the third and fourth cards appeared. They also bore the design of the monkey. The fifth and last card was placed face down. The man held his breath. The gypsy woman reached out and, carefully, turned it over. The monkey. The man’s creeping dread made his skin crawl, as the gypsy turned to face him. He gave a strangled gasp of shock. Beneath the crimson scarf that wrapped her head, a pair of familiar golden eyes stared out. Fighting to stop himself from screaming, the man clawed at his forehead and squeezed his own eyes closed.
          When he opened them, the old man was gazing concernedly down at him.
          "Was that a distressing experience?" he wanted to know, but the man didn’t hear him. Frantically, he ripped the Weaver from his head and replaced it with another. A subtle pressure and a blink, and he was again immersed in unreality.
          This time, he was standing in an immense cathedral. The light from a stained-glass window threw a varicoloured blur of shifting puddles of radiance over his ashen face. Columns of white marble rose, tapering elegantly, to a high, vaulted ceiling that towered above him like a white sky clouded with intricate carvings. The air of silent tranquillity calmed his rattled nerves, and his terror receded slightly, leaving only an icy, uneasy apprehension in the pit of his stomach. His feet rang echoingly on the mosaic tiles beneath them as he approached the altar. A priest in a white-and-gold robe was lighting candles there, and the man fell to his knees.
          "Please, Father," he begged the holy man’s back, "I’m plagued by visions of strange monkeys. What must I do?" The priest turned, and with horror, the man saw a mane of white fur like a halo around his face.
          "You must have faith, my child," the monkey intoned, piously. The man screeched, and yanked the Weaver from his head in a single, spasmodic jerk. Breathing heavily, he glared at the old man who now stood before him.
          "Why do I keep seeing monkeys?" he demanded, angrily. His voice shook with emotion. "Why?" The aged proprietor shrugged. He still showed no sign of any sort of emotion, other than a kind of detached, aloof pity.
          "It’s not my fault," he said, with a hint of reproof. "It’s your brain, not mine."

          Somewhere far away, although not so very far, an irascible monkey tore off the wire-mesh cap that surmounted his fur-covered skull. An ageing macaque regarded him steadily.
          "What’s wrong?" he asked, in a cracked, wavering voice. "What did you see?" The monkey glared at him, his golden eyes boring into the other’s enigmatic face.
          "It’s very odd," he said, eventually, absently smoothing the ruff of white fur that ringed his head. "Every time I use these damn things, I keep seeing the same human." The macaque shrugged.
          "It’s not my fault," he told the other monkey, mildly. "It’s your brain, not mine."

This story © Tim Kelby 2002.