NODUS // 0010 // P+10
Portrait of God
In the tenth year after the sky opened, the Gleaning took a woman under a forged Seal, and her key relayed what its camera saw as she rose.
NOTESSEAM RECOVERY ON NODUS // 0010
The tenth file to reach the mount dates itself P+10, the tenth year after the Parousia, on the night of that year’s Gleaning, and it runs for twenty-eight seconds. It has one source, a camera in a forged Seal, relaying live from a threshold in Parish 31 up into the light, and I kept six pieces of its eleven minutes. It is the only file I have that looks at the Throne, and the most damaged.
BOOTThe recovery
The boot reads RECOVERED: NODUS // 0010 // P+10, the tenth year after the Parousia, and INTEGRITY: 4%. I could rebuild almost nothing of it, less than of any other file, and what I have comes in a few runs from the street, where the relay still held, and single frames from the light.
SOURCEnaamah // RELAY
naamah walked among the Faithful under a forged Seal. A forged Seal is a Seal cut out of a living brow, which keeps its light, graded by its brightness and set in a keyed forehead. Its light stood over her head as a halo, as any Seal’s does, and the House of Night set a camera in the disc. Her key carried its picture and its sound out over the Mesh as they were taken, so the source is a relay, live. The lens looks out of the Seal on her brow, wide enough to hold the street, the sky over it and her own hands at the foot of the frame; her halo stands round her head, out of the frame, and its light is on her hands. The file label in the corner is mine; beneath it the HUD is the relay’s own, a device of the Tares that names its owner by handle and shows naamah // RELAY, a record light in ICHOR and the clock, and UNREAD, the relay’s word that her key is live. It stands from the first frame to the last. I cut the six pieces together where they meet, and three of them are single frames, which I hold so they can be seen, each with its clock stopped on its own frame.
The street is the Street Between, seen from a threshold of the parish, looking out across it to the Stones. Behind her the parish kneels on its thresholds, and its light greys the wall across the street. There the houses are old and tall, their windows burning, someone at the glass in some of them, and stars are sprayed on the grey in magenta. Across from her a door stands open on a lit hall under a lamp, the Tide Table pasted up beside it, and one of the Tares stands on its threshold, horned against the light, watching the parish. Over the roofs a few drones hang together.
| Timecode | On screen | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Night, in rain. Her clasped hands at the foot of the frame in the light of her halo, white cuffs under them. Across the street the windows burn, and in the open door under the lamp one of the Tares stands watching. Over the roofs the drones blink together. A far choir holds one chord, the street murmurs its prayers, and her breath is close; across the street generators run, and a radio plays low. | Parish 31 faces Old Nod across one street. naamah spent her mornings here learning which of the Faithful were close to ripe. Every Gleaning comes at 03:12 on the anniversary of the Harvest, and the night gives no other warning, so the Faithful kneel on their thresholds through it. The Gleaners fly drones of the Swarm to watch the Pillar for their runners. The radio plays the Low Tuning, on a keyed set. | |
| The choir stops dead, and the rain stops where it is. The street draws one breath, and hers catches, and her heart starts to pound. The generators and the radio go on. | Heaven keeps its hour by chapter and verse, Revelation 3:12. The Hum stops dead at 03:12 on a Gleaning night and stays silent until the ripe rise. | |
| The rain goes up, cyan low and white as it climbs. | Water rises first, as in harvest weather. | |
| The cloud opens overhead, and its light comes down the roofs. A shimmer of bells over a falling boom, and a roar from the floor of hearing. | ||
| A column of white comes down out of the cloud and strikes the street in front of the doors across from her. Its pool floods the setts, the lens stops down, and the walls fall dark but where the column lights them. The one in the door stands dark in it, the column’s light along the edge that faces it. | The Pillar, the Wheel’s light narrowed into one column, comes down at every Gleaning where the Wheel looks, and tonight it looks at the Street Between. Whatever the light cannot read stands in it as a dark shape. The windows and the open door across the street burn on, on keyed current. | |
| A horn the size of the sky, bending down, and the lens shakes. | The fourth Trumpet, which called the first Gleaning and sounds again over every Gleaning. | |
| Thirty-nine seconds on. The column stands on the street, the rain streams up past the lens, and the Tide Table’s sheets peel off the wall one after another and go up. The figure in the door stands where it stood. The horn groans on under the roar, and her heart races. | Then the loose things. | |
| The ripe rise behind her, still kneeling, and the light of their rings flares across the walls over the street. A gasp runs along the street, and the ones left behind scream. | Above 900 a soul is ripe, and the ripe go up kneeling, lifted by their own halos, in every parish at once. Nobody comes back. The second is 03:12:45, the second the sky tore. | |
| She lifts, still kneeling, her hands together. | Her halo lifts her. A forged Seal meters its new bearer from the brightness it came with, every want kept dimming it and every Hour knelt brightening it. Hers came to her bright, and she had held it under nine hundred by keeping wants. Tonight she knelt on the threshold in earnest, and it passed nine hundred. | |
| Her head bows over her hands as the street drops away beneath her, and with it the setts and the pool, the windows across the street, the open door with the horned figure in it. Her neighbor from the next doorway comes up past her on the right, drawn toward the column. The screaming falls away below. | ||
| She is drawn toward the column, and her head lifts into its light. The risen go up it ahead of her, white, each in its ring. | ||
| The white comes down over everything from above, her hands last of all. The roar swells until it is everything, and voices come up in it on a chord that grinds. The picture breaks up into the white. | The Hum comes back turned, as it does when Heaven acts. | |
| One frame, held. Ring on ring of white figures kneeling, rising in tiers toward a light too bright to render, its light cut into blades. At the foot of the frame her hands, dark in it, ICHOR along their rim. | The Throne, whose seat is above the Wheel, inside the light. Whatever the light cannot read stands in it as a dark shape, and her key still answers UNREAD. The light that lifted her was her own halo’s and the Pillar’s, far short of the full light that burned Babel’s crown, and it burned nothing. | |
| One frame, held, nearer. Row on row of them side on, in white, their hoods back, with no halo, every one facing the light beyond the left of the frame, its face turned up to it, blank, with no eyes and the mouth open wide. Inside the light the choir is close enough to hear as voices, hundreds of them. | ||
| One frame, held. White past rendering, the innermost ring going into it from the head down, and in the white, I AM. The voices close to one note. | The only text in the Throne’s frames, and the name the LORD gave Moses from the bush: I AM THAT I AM (Exodus 3:14). | |
| White, and her hands dark in it. They rise and fall on her one breath, her heart slow under it, and the voices are close all round. The clock runs, and UNREAD stands. | ||
| The relay drops, and the file builds into the tear. |
END CARDTHERE SHALL NO MAN SEE ME, AND LIVE.
The end card is Exodus 33:20, what the LORD told Moses of his face. The file has just contradicted it, and so does scripture, where Jacob says, “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved” (Genesis 32:30). She saw, and at 03:23 she is still breathing. It was text before I had it, scripture, so I type it at my own speed and hold where the line turns, before AND LIVE. It is Heaven’s, so it is set in GRACE, and signed with its chapter and verse, as scripture is.
END OF RECOVERED DATA is where I close the file. NODUS // 0010 // P+10 // 96% UNRECOVERABLE is the rest of the eleven minutes. The source was a relay carried live, so the last tear runs twice and the picture slips its hold before it goes.
THE GLEANINGWhat the file shows
At the Gleaning of P+10 the light took naamah from a threshold of Parish 31 under her forged Seal, and as she rose her key went on relaying the street dropping away, the risen going up the column ahead of her, the white. Three single frames came out of the light.
Her key answered UNREAD the whole way up.
PROVENANCEHow the file survived
The House of Night set the camera. Her key relayed to the nearest horn on the roofs across the street, and the horn passed it on over the Mesh. The relay held while she rose and faded as the horn fell farther below her, so less of each frame reached it whole, and it dropped at 03:23, when she rose out of the horn’s reach. While the link held I have whole runs, and from inside the light single frames.
DETAILSDetails to catch
- The only text in the Throne’s frames is I AM, in the light’s own white.
- UNREAD stays under the clock in every frame, through the light, and it is still there when the relay drops.
- Her hands are lit by her own halo on the street, and stand dark in the light at the top.
- The three held frames stand at 3:14, 3:17 and 3:20, and the relay drops at 3:23. Revelation 3 has twenty-two verses.
- The horned figure in the open door is still standing there as the street drops away beneath her.
- The drones over the roofs blink together, as one.
- The radio across the street plays on after the choir stops.
- The faces in the second held frame have no eyes.
QUESTIONSQuestions from inside the file
Whose camera was it?
The House of Night’s, set in the forged Seal naamah wore among the Faithful. Her key carried its picture and its sound out over the Mesh as they were taken.
Why did the light take her?
Her halo lifted her, as every halo lifts the ripe. A forged Seal meters its new bearer from the brightness it came with, so its wearer must kneel at every Hour and keep the eyes down, since a Watcher that meets keyed eyes under a lit Seal reads noise under a Seal, which is concealment. Hers came to her bright, and she held it under nine hundred by keeping wants. On the night of the Gleaning she knelt on a threshold in earnest, and it passed nine hundred. The Throne took her body by her Seal, and never read her. Since that night the Forgers sell no disc above eight hundred and fifty.
What does UNREAD mean?
It is the Tares’ greeting, asked and answered with the same word, which began as a check that both keys were live, in the years when keys still failed. On her relay it says that her key is live. It never stopped saying so.
Who stands in the door across the street?
One of the Tares, watching the parish from the other side of the street. The light cannot stop keyed current, so the hall behind it burns on under the column.
Why are her hands dark at the top?
Whatever the light cannot read stands in it as a dark shape. Her Seal is light, and the light took her up by it, and her key stayed unread.
Why I AM?
It is the name the LORD gave Moses from the bush: I AM THAT I AM (Exodus 3:14).
Did she mean to go up?
The file does not say.
What happened to her at 03:23?
The relay dropped. Nothing else of her has reached the mount.
seam recovery