NODUS // 0004 // P-1
The Barefacing
Three weeks before the sky opened, a surgeon on Chrome Row took a woman's face.
NOTESSEAM RECOVERY ON NODUS // 0004
The fourth file to reach the mount dates itself P-1, at thirteen minutes to two in the morning, three weeks before the sky opened, and it runs for twenty-three seconds. I joined it from two sources made twenty-one minutes apart. One is the camera over the chair in tubal’s clinic under Chrome Row, and the other is the new lenses of the woman in that chair, on the roof of the same block. The first half is the night he took her face. The second is the first thing she saw without it.
BOOTThe recovery
The boot reads RECOVERED: NODUS // 0004 // P-1, the year before the Parousia, and INTEGRITY: 71%. I could rebuild seven tenths of the file, more than of any file before it.
SOURCE ONEtubal // TABLE
The camera over the chair records every procedure and files each record under the patient’s face, so it boxes the face and follows it. It is a charter clinic’s camera, bought in the years when nobody on the Row feared a face, and tubal keeps what it records on a keyed store. The file label in the corner is mine; beneath it the HUD is the camera’s, with tubal // TABLE, a record light in ICHOR, and the timecode. Under the lamp, skin, bone and ceramic show in ICHOR. His hands, the steel and everything the camera draws show in SIGNAL, and his words come up in ICHOR as he says them. Of tubal the picture shows only his hands.
| Timecode | On screen | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| A tiled room under a surgical lamp. A woman lies back in the chair with her face turned up to the camera, horned, the plate over her key bolted to the side of her skull. On the wall behind her the Tares’ mark is sprayed in magenta and still running, and a crucifix hangs upside down from a nail, with forceps, a scalpel and a hook hung off its arms. The camera boxes her face: FACE 99%. HOLD STILL. | The woman on the roof in NODUS // 0001, three weeks before it. She read the Restored Genesis on the first night of the Leak, and within the month she had gone dark. tubal keyed and horned her before this night. The Tares’ mark is an inverted star, drawn by hand and never twice the same, and it marks where the Throne’s sight ends. The crucifix is a hook for his tools. | |
| His hands come in, chrome to the wrist, and take her head. Her face comes away from the brow in one piece, and he lifts it toward the lamp and holds it up. The box goes with the face, and its number falls. IT COMES OFF IN ONE PIECE. | tubal is the surgeon and smith of Chrome Row, about sixty on this night and never on the Tree, and he talks the whole time he cuts. I could make out five of his lines, and the rest runs on under them. The camera follows faces, so it follows hers out of the chair. | |
| He lays the face in a steel dish on his tray, face up, and it goes slack. The box stays on it, blinking FACE 14%. Her breath comes wet through what is left. | To the camera the face in the dish is still the patient. | |
| The tracker gives up the dish and hunts the room. The first face it finds hangs head down on the crucifix: FACE 06%. It tries the star, then her head. THEY'LL READ FACES FIRST. | The only other face in the room hangs upside down on a nail. His line is the Cainites’ old theory, that the first thing Heaven would do when it came was read faces. | |
| A ceramic skull comes in from his side in his hands. He brings it down over the raw face and seats it with a knock. | A skull casing. The light knows a face once it has seen it, and a casing gives it no face to know. tubal made this one. | |
| He takes a long driver off the tray and turns four bolts home, her right brow and jaw, then across her for the left. Each goes in flush with the ceramic. | Seated flush, the bolts leave nothing to see, and the casing on the roof in NODUS // 0001 shows none. | |
| His hands leave the frame. THERE. The lenses light for the first time, magenta and then white, and the tracker tries her head once more: FACE ?, then FACES: 0. NOW YOU'RE NOBODY. The lenses settle to a dim magenta. | Lenses glow when they run hot, dim magenta at rest and white at full burn. White-hot is the one way GRACE appears on something Heaven’s light has not touched. The camera counts no faces with a woman in the chair. | |
| The file tears. | About twenty-one minutes are lost between the sources. |
SOURCE TWOvesper // LENS
Her lenses record what she sees, and this is the first thing these lenses recorded. The file label in the corner is mine; beneath it the HUD is hers, as in NODUS // 0003, with vesper // LENS and the timecode in SIGNAL, a record light in ICHOR, and her own word in ICHOR, in lowercase. Lenses see further and in more of the light than the eyes they replace, and the HUD numbers the bands of light they see in.
| Timecode | On screen | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| From the roof of the clinic block, the charter city at two in the morning. Towers are lit floor by floor, the underside of the cloud is lit magenta, rain is falling, and Babel stands six and a half kilometers off with its beacon burning in the cloud. Her breath comes wet through the casing, and sirens sound across the city. The lens opens its bands one at a time: BAND 1, BAND 2, BAND 3. | The city three weeks before the Parousia, still on the grid. The sirens are the panic of the Leak, which has not stopped. The neon of the Row and Old Nod lit the cloud every night. The beacon on Babel’s spire warned aircraft, and at the Parousia it was the first light in the city to die. | |
| BAND 4. The city goes out and leaves its edges as a line. Twelve points of white light stand in a ring under the cloud beside Babel’s spire, and from each a thread comes down into the city and ends in a window. | The fourth band is light the eye cannot see. The ring stands where the Wheel took its station three weeks later. A soul that kneels in earnest opens the room it kneels in, and the light comes in through it, so every thread ends in a room where someone is on their knees. Before the sky opened, that was the only way in. | |
| The lens traces the ring and brackets it: watchers, 900 M. | Her word for them, in her color. Nine hundred meters is the height at which the Wheel took station. | |
| Brackets close on two stretches of the city that no thread comes near: BLIND. | Their sight ends where the threads end. | |
| One window goes dark and its thread goes back up into the ring. Last of all the lens reads her: SELF ..... UNSEEN. Across the city another window opens. | Three weeks later, in NODUS // 0001, the Choir told the city YOU ARE SEEN, and nothing the Watcher read in her on the roof matched a line in the Book. | |
| The file tears. |
END CARDNOW YOU’RE NOBODY.
The end card is tubal’s last line at the table. I set it in ICHOR, as his words were on the camera, type it at my own speed and hold before NOBODY. Beneath it the rain on the roof runs out, and then there is nothing to hear.
END OF RECOVERED DATA is where I close the file. NODUS // 0004 // P-1 // 29% UNRECOVERABLE is the rest of that night, including the twenty-one minutes between the sources, most of what tubal said, and what she did with her new eyes.
THE BAREFACINGWhat the file shows
A face is the first thing anything reads. The camera over tubal’s chair was built to find one and keep it, and it holds her face through the lifting, follows it into the dish, and goes on calling it a face at fourteen percent. When it looks back at the chair it finds a skull, a crucifix hung the wrong way up, a star on the wall, and nobody.
The Tares call the procedure barefacing. The face comes off and a ceramic skull goes on, so that whatever knows faces has none to know, and the one who wears it is barefaced.
Twenty-one minutes later her new lenses find the ones who were going to do the reading, in a ring over the city, three weeks early.
PROVENANCEHow the file survived
The table camera kept every procedure on a keyed store in the clinic, which was below the street already, and the store stayed with tubal when the clinics of the Row went under the street after the Parousia. Her lenses kept their own recording. I joined the two at the tear.
DETAILSDetails to catch
- The camera tracks the face, and the face leaves. Its box goes with the face into his hands and down into the dish.
- The first face the tracker finds after the dish hangs upside down on the crucifix.
- Of tubal only his hands are ever in the picture, chrome to the wrist, in the machine’s color.
- The casing is a skull, and on the roof in NODUS // 0001 the Watcher found a skull where a face should be.
- The bolts go in flush, and the casing on the roof in NODUS // 0001 shows none.
- The lenses burn white the first time they light, as they burn white at the end of NODUS // 0003.
- The tracker counts FACES: 0 with a woman in the chair.
- His first line is HOLD STILL. His last is on the end card.
- Under the lines I could read, he goes on talking.
- Babel’s crown is whole and its beacon is lit. Three weeks later the beacon was the first light in the city to die, and the full light broke the crown.
- The ring of watchers stands where the Wheel took its station at the Parousia.
- One thread goes back up into the ring while the lens is reading her.
- The Choir in NODUS // 0001 says YOU ARE SEEN. Three weeks before it, her own lens read her as UNSEEN.
QUESTIONSQuestions from inside the file
Why take her face?
The Cainites’ old theory was that the first thing Heaven would do was read faces. The light knows a soul by its face once it has seen it, and the Watchers know faces, so a skull leaves them none to know. At a gate the casing buys nothing. A Cherub holds whatever it cannot read, and the barefaced still go under the gates.
Who hung the crucifix upside down?
tubal. He hangs his tools on it.
What does tubal say between the lines?
The file does not say.
What are the threads?
Light, running from each watcher down to one window. Heaven sees by its light, and before the sky opened the light came into Nodus only through someone on their knees. Every thread ends in a room where someone is kneeling in earnest.
Why can the lens see them?
Lenses see in more of the light than the eyes they replace, and the fourth band is light the eye cannot see.
Who are the watchers?
It is her word for them, in lowercase. Heaven’s own word for the angels that read souls against the Book of Life is the same.
Why twelve?
The file does not say.
What is BLIND?
Ground no thread comes near.
What happened to the face?
It is still in the dish when the file tears.
What does NOBODY mean?
The camera had just counted no faces. To anything that reads faces, she is nobody.
seam recovery