“Ok,” said Graham. “Stage two.”

  Both scientists held the sealed envelope in their hands. Now was when The Daughter would receive the drug. Now was when the real science would begin.

  Track 23 (Red)

  The Girl lay in the machine, fearful yes, but recounting her mother’s words over and over in her head – Poise, Persistence, Perfection. Any other child her age would have been begging for a hand to hold. Not this girl, though. She didn’t hold hands, she held it together. She held people’s attention. She held their expectations, their breaths, and their stares. She held their captivation, and she provoked their round of applause. She wasn’t any old common girl, she was a superstar.

  She was a pageant queen.

  Still, alone as she was, inside a giant whirring machine and with a cocktail of drugs coursing through her veins, this stoic young girl quickly became weak and brittle; her stony resolve eroding until every muscle in her body twitched in nervous succession.

  “Poise, persistence, perfection,” she said, over and over.

  But fear had taken hold. It was like a hurricane in her mind and those words – her mantra – were castles made of sand. They did little to make her feel safe.

  “Anything to be famous,” she thought. “Anything for mother.”

  And this, if anything, was the only thread strong enough to cling to.

  In the other room, the two scientists, The Rector, The Professor, and all the committee heads stared at the host of screens with an unflinching and almost psychotic resolve. Truth be told, there was only one psychopath in the room but by the looks on the faces of all and sundry, it would be almost impossible to single out the lunatic from the sane.

  The first thing The Daughter felt was an overwhelming feeling that everything was OK. A smile occurred on her face – occurred because it happened as naturally as the sun rising behind the backs of shadowy ranges. She played no part in the smile. It was not forced and it was not the kind of smile that one could practice in front of a mirror. This was entirely how she felt.

  Though she had no real concept of the actual size of the universe – being seven years old of course – she was immediately struck with the apparent realisation that everything, no matter how big or small, was interconnected; and that the only truth she knew outright was that there was nothing to fear – nothing at all.

  Her next realisation was that blind people sometimes dreamt in colour.

  “What are we seeing here?” said one of the committee heads.

  They were staring at the smile on the young girl’s face and it disturbed them.

  “What’s happening to this poor girl?”

  “N-Dimethyltryptamine,” said Isaac, relieved somewhat that, apart from finally being able to collect some publishable data, at least for today – and especially with all these damn committee heads present – nobody was going to die.

  “Is that safe?” said the same committee head.

  He spoke as if he knew that it wasn’t. In fact, he spoke that way about anything that didn’t concur with the ideals and their exact definitions set out by his tribe. His doubts were insinuations dressed as such. So, when he asked, ‘Is it safe?’ what he really meant was, ‘I don’t know what you’re doing but it seems wrong, and I know more than you’.

  The Daughter had her eyes closed and still. With a smile that ran like a river from one side of her face to the other, she chased tiny explosions of colour in her mind; all of them like soapy bubbles. Her thoughts didn’t sneak up on her; she snuck up on them.

  “Such pretty shapes,” she said. “Such pretty colours.”

  It was the first time she had said anything that hadn’t been coached and rehearsed to the point of tedium. It might have been the first time, in a very long time, that her voice was actually her own.

  And though her math was limited to the two times table, her next realisation was that beneath everything – at the heart of it all – everything was made of geometric doodles; that for all its complexity, just as it was savage and misunderstood, the universe was quite simple and that life occurred inside of a kaleidoscope.

  Two of the committee heads left; estranged by what they were seeing. That left only one who, instead of focusing on the science, in his frantic scribblings, had made this trial an issue of privilege and discrimination.

  The Daughter, though, thought different. She didn’t so much think different as much as she observed a different kind of thought and, like a campfire, she sat herself down and was warmed by its radiant glow.

  It was a thought that might have been innocuous to anyone else; someone who, swept away by the merry delusion of their own ego, might assume that not only was the thought their own but that they were that thought and the rest of the world was its definition and counterweight. It was a thought that when thought of by this type of person, it would be less of a realisation and more of a rebuttal – a point of leverage in a moral debate.

  It was a thought that - with the love she had swimming in her veins and with the enormous smile on her face as proof – took all the worry out of being alive.

  “There is no young or old. There is no black or white. There is no man or woman. There is no boy or girl. Everything is one. Everything is light. Everything is love.”

  Until that point, the colours and shapes and all those stupendously strange extra dimensions were trapped behind the lids of her eyes; visible only when they were shut. But as the drug really took hold, the magic that was happening inside her head spilled out onto the world around her so that, though she was lying flat on her back inside the bore of a machine, for reasons that no ophthalmologist could ever explain, she could see, not only the inside of the machine, but also above it, behind it, and under it too. And she could see all of those spaces at once as if the fourth dimension were a fish lens that warped her three-dimensional world into one flat two-dimensional image. She could even see herself inside the machine.

  Her first thought was to tickle her own feet.

  “It’s like there’s a trillion fireflies in her head,” said Isaac, staring at the image of The Daughter’s brain. “Neuros are all firing randomly – everywhere.”

  “Nothing is entirely random,” said The Rector. “Even the occurrence of random events is a pattern on its own.”

  The Rector had been a math scholar but this was not a gem of probability he had been saving for a moment such as this; it was something his online crochet teacher had once said about slip stitches – an idea that had stuck.

  There was a pattern, it’s just nobody was looking at it the right way.

  “She looks so happy,” said Isaac. “Have you ever been that happy? I don’t think happy is even the right word.”

  “Nirvana,” said The Rector.

  To be fair, he may have been talking as much about the band as he was the esoteric state. Everyone in the room agreed, though. There was something majestic about the look on The Daughter’s face. Staring at her felt as blissful as seeing one’s reflection in a creek or watching a wild animal, step out into a meadow. She made the whole room feel, in some manner, benevolent.

  The next realisation The Girl had was life-changing.

  “Nobody is judging me,” she said; almost crying in joy as she did.

  The Girl breathed a massive sigh of relief. In her mind, she was standing on a stage in front of thousands of people as every girl except her was crowned a queen.

  This was a dream that had kept her awake for most of her life. It was a dream that was not confined to her sleep. It was a dream that haunted her whether she was sleeping, eating, or trying to pay attention in class. It was a dream that had become a habit of hers to have and one that caused her a great deal of and panic and dread.

  Now, though, for the first time ever, she was experiencing that very same dream except this time with that rapturous smile on her face and the light of pure love glowing in her heart.

  Different from every other time she had had that dream, this time, instead of being strapped to a table and surrounded by machine made out giant magnets and scary sounds, she was on that very stage.

  Not only was she on it, but she could walk around it. She could see all the other contestants – all the other girls like herself, dressed like their mothers, and all of them vying to be crowned a princess or a queen. Normally, when she kept such company, she would look at the others girls with disgust. And though she would be awfully polite, beneath her pleasantry was a scourge of vitriol that was measured in the size of the compliment or praise that she gave to her competitors.

  This time, though, their faces were somewhat blurred; covered in swirling geometric shapes that were present on everything, as if the universe were a giant jigsaw and she was seeing, through these special eyes, how and where all of the pieces clicked together.

  The judges, too, had blurred faces. They were no longer coarse or abrasive. And for that reason, they were no longer scary or mean. They were just people sitting in chairs. They didn’t care how straight her teeth were or whether she had too much fat on her thighs. They didn’t strike her with fear or intimidation. They were just people, like her, and just as she wasn’t judging them, it became abundantly clear that they – and everyone in the whole world in fact – were not judging her.

  It was a massive weight off her shoulders. For as long as she could remember all she had ever heard was that the world is a stage. That alone was exhausting knowing that her whole life was a performance and she was constantly being judged. Now, though, it was clear that none of this was true.

  Her smile somehow grew wider. And then she had her last realisation.

  “I don’t wanna be a queen of anything.”

  The Daughter didn’t die, not in any traditional sense. But who she was before she had been given the drug was almost alien to who she was when she was pulled from the machine.

  For the next ten to fifteen minutes, she vomited profusely. And when she felt that she was done, she wiped her mouth and walked with The Nurse back out to find her mother.

  “Don’t forget your crown,” said The Nurse, though The Girl didn’t put it on.

  She walked with that same stupendous smile; and she walked with a newfound understanding of the ego and self, along with all the intricate peculiarities that the universe had to offer. She walked with her heart, like a reservoir, over-flowing with self-love; and all she wanted was to fill the cups of every person on this planet with care, consideration, and compassion – especially her mother.

  “Did you do it?” said The Mother, cold to her daughter’s open arms. “Did you die?”

  All that mattered in the world was a crown and sash.

  “Yes, mummy,” said The Daughter, though her voice sounded just as her hug would feel. “I died and now I’m back.”

  Her face was shaped like a totem pole.

  The Mother smiled. Hers wasn’t stupendous. Like a crack in a house’s foundation or a fissure on a busy street, it looked calamitous. It had a wet and slippery sound about it too, clearly from all the Vaseline on her teeth and gums.

  “None of those little bitches will get anywhere near us now. As soon as those judges hear about this, that crown is ours,” she said. “We have a lot to do still. As soon as we get home we’re going to go over your monologue and….”

  “There’s something I want to say,” said The Daughter, knowing it would not be what her mother would want to hear. It would not be what anyone would want to hear. But feeling as she did, there was no way she could keep it to herself.

  “It can wait till we get home,” said The Mother.

  “I don’t want to be a pageant queen anymore, mummy,”

  Then she handed her mother the crown.

  “What?”

  The Mother’s eyes swelled with shock, then panic, and finally rage.

  “Don’t be upset, mummy.”

  “What did they do to you?” she wailed.

  “Nothing, mummy.”

  “What did you do to my girl?”

  “It’s alright, mummy,” said The Girl smiling and hugging her dear mother tight. “Everything is ok now.”

  Later that night she would be strangled to death and her body dumped in the bushes behind the tennis court in the condominium where she lived.

  Track 24 (Blue)

  That night, there was only thing on Isaac’s mind – karaoke. It wasn’t so much the singing as it was The Girl. Her face haunted him day and night; it was all he could think about. He didn’t eat and he barely slept. When he did, though, he dreamt of her.

  By the time he got there, the place was packed; or at least the street was. Scores of small tribes – of different social and moral trends - argued their way to the front of the line; screaming over the top of another about rights and privilege. It was clear that none of them had any notion whatsoever of what it meant to have fun.

  “Go on, let us in,” shouted one young man, and assuming the tentative role of negotiator. He staggered about, swimming against the currents of equilibrium, pointing a scholarly finger into the chest of The Bouncer; his face shaped like an I.E.D. “We just wanna get drunk,” he said. “Sing some songs, have a dance, have a laugh, and have a bit of fun. What’s the harm in that?”

  Behind him, his tribe had already broken out into a sloppy rendition of some radio-friendly rock song, swaying back and forth and chanting, as if their team had just scored a goal - all the wrong words.

  “It’s not gonna happen, guys,” said The Bouncer, polite but articulate in his body language. “This is not that kind of club.”

  “No need to be like that,” said The Young Man.

  He took a dollar out of his jeans pocket and pushed it into The Bouncer’s face. “We just wanna spend some money,” he said, his good nature turning sour. He made it clear too that this was not a negotiation. “Look how many of us there are,” he said. “You gonna pass that up?”

  He was less than subtle in his threat.

  It was true, of them there were many. And they all looked as if they spent just as much time lifting heavy objects as they did standing in front of mirrors. The girls were handsome and the boys were pretty and all their muscles were on show.

  “Now be a smart lad,” said The Young Man, pushing that finger in The Bouncer’s face. “Let. Us. In.”

  And without any warning whatsoever, The Young Man found himself being lifted off the ground by his friends having just lost his dignity and two front teeth.

  “You fucking fascist,” screamed his girlfriend.

  “Nazi,” screamed another.

  The Young Man, though, said nothing; surprise had caught him well enough unaware. It wasn’t until they were around the corner that he managed to spit out enough blood to raise his own voice, but by that time another tribe had pushed its way to the front of the line and their demeanour was just as brash.

  Men and women, boys and girls stewed on coke and booze, all of them with the confidence of a barking dog – cheering and smiling one minute, and then cursing and spitting the next.

  Isaac stayed in the dark beneath a tree looking on. He didn’t like confrontation. He deplored violence of any kind. All that shouting and posturing - it made him feel eight years old again. And while his stomach and his head both made their case for him to turn around and go home, his heart waned, like some crowning sonata, as if it knew that on the other side of that danger waited the greatest treasure of all; Love.

  Were this a movie, the sound of that violence would be lost to that of his beating heart. It, like a drum, would pound the fear and indecision out of his senses until all that was left was compassion and courage. Were it a movie, the song that she sang wold be blaring through the cinema speakers as her spectacled face, like a hummingbird, fluttered before his eyes. Were it a movie, the cinemagoers would all be shouting, “Run after her, you stupid son of a bitch.” And they would all be holding hands, hoping to dear God that he did. Were this a movie, it would be now or never.

  And so he took a deep breath and, he ignored the fact that he was on his own and most probably looking strange and awkward. Once he was inside, none of that would matter. And so he made his way through the swarming tribes, ignoring their mocking and hateful derision – his heart bursting with force fields and laser beams all in the name of love.

  “You,” said The Bouncer, gesturing with his finger.

  A group of young men and women pushed forwards; of which the men were dressed in Viking furs with magnificently groomed beards, manicured fingernails, fantastic complexion, and ponytailed hair.

  “Not you,” said The Bouncer. “Him.”

  They all turned to Isaac who, unlike everyone else, looked as if he were dressed to snatch the Sunday paper from his neighbour’s verge.

  “Him? What’s so special about him?”

  The young Viking men twisted their moustaches while the women hitched up their linen shifts, mocking Isaac as he pushed his way through their malleable tribe.

  “Ewww,” said one of the women; the one with the prettiest anklets. “Who’s gonna wanna get with a guy like that?”

  “Alright then,” said The Bouncer, proposing a thought experiment. “If I let you in, what song would you sing?”

  The three women in the tribe didn’t need any time to consider.

  “Girls just wanna have fun!” they shouted, while behind them, like gorillas beating against their scarred and bloody chests, the Viking men continued to whisk their beards into tight and pretty little points; their threat doused in sheer elegance.

  “Name that song,” said The Bouncer. “And I’ll let you in.”

  In the background, it sounded as if a dolphin was giving birth.

  “Song?”

  They all laughed and scoffed at the sound they were hearing.

  “Put her out of her misery.”

  That was all The Bouncer needed to hear.

  “Listen, I’m sure you’re all wonderful people when you’re sober, responsible, and have your shit together. But this here is not your kind of club.”