The girl dreams she’s surrounded by invisible aliens that talk to her incessantly. One of them talks about the planet and its destruction. It’s hard to accept that something which took so much time and effort to build up could disappear in an instant. One supreme instant, the voice says, in which the world blows up and vanishes from sight. The girl looks around, disbelieving. She can’t see them, but she knows the voices aren’t lying. The thought then occurs to her that perhaps this has already happened, and that the world she knows is nothing but a transitory ripple in eternity’s ocean, a ripple careening through space, perhaps a part of the expanding shock wave propelling outwards from that initial explosion. Maybe we’re only information in a microchip, or in a machine that can recreate the past and fabricate the future. Maybe we’re nothing at all, she says while smiling at the emptiness around her from which the alien voices seem to come. When the alarm sounds the next morning, she’s hungover, and can barely remember her dream or her argument with the young conductor. It’s going to be a long day, she thinks, as she opens the curtains and looks down on the city through the double-paned windows, which insulate her from the noise outside. She hears the distant muttering of her father in the living room talking on the phone. She can’t utter a single word that doesn’t set off the throbbing in her head, so she avoids him. The air conditioner has the temperature much too low and she starts shivering, although maybe her hangover’s at fault, the alcohol and drugs having screwed up her body temperature. She takes a quick shower and then goes outside to breathe in the air and feel the pleasant warmth of the sun on her skin. But it seems the sun doesn’t agree very well with hangovers, for the bright light almost cleaves her head in two, so she quickly retreats back inside. Her father’s no longer on the phone and is sitting down reading a newspaper. Do you believe aliens really exist? she asks. The screenwriter’s having a hard time with this father-daughter scene. After writing and rewriting, the dialogue is still unconvincing, so he ends up just jotting down the main idea: a scene in which they go over their flight schedules, the TV interview, and the concert in her native city. They also talk about topics of interest to the girl. As regards the aliens, her father says, if they’re not around, it’s because they don’t exist. If they existed, she muses, there’d be an organization set up to prevent us from knowing anything about them.
The girl is practicing on the piano. In its first few measures, the brilliant composer’s work flows clearly and smoothly, although a little farther on, it segues into a rough and discordant mishmash of notes. Someone told her it’s mathematically perfect, but the girl pays no attention to the score or its mathematical properties, and focuses solely on the keys. She’s performed the No World Symphony so often now that her fingers move without hesitation, and perhaps only a few people would notice that she’s straying from the score and encroaching on new territory. Then she stops playing the piano, goes over to the table, and spreads out the sheet music for the clown’s part in Dress Rehearsal for Voice and Music Boxes. She plays a cassette that reproduces the sound of the music boxes, and checks her reflection in the bathroom mirror before beginning the recitation. She notices the horrible bags under her eyes. She takes a pill from her pocket and swallows it with a sip of water. Maybe she needs two, just in case. She recites whole verses, forgets some others, while continuing to stare at herself in the mirror, perhaps looking for something she’s been purposely ignoring until now. I shouldn’t worry about anything, she sings, almost recites, putting her own words to the music.
Then she adds a deuteragonist to the scene: You shouldn’t fight with the young conductor, she says to the reflection in the mirror. And try not to worry about the voices, about your future, your father or what his real name might be, not even about extraterrestrials or your writing. Bags under your eyes, she sneers with an actress’s hammy delivery, beautiful teenage bags under your eyes. She can’t help thinking of the screenwriter at this point. Maybe it’s because he can relate to having bags under the eyes, unlike the young conductor of the orchestra. She goes back into her room and sits on her bed, trying to write while waiting for the pill to take effect. She could go in search of Cousin Dedalus, try to uncover his real story, because she doesn’t believe what she’s been told up until now. She calls her mother and asks about him, but this proves to be a mistake. Her mother doesn’t like it when people ask about her cousin, and she assures the girl they’ve completely lost track of him. Why do you want to know? she asks. The girl wants to go in search of him but she doesn’t know where to start looking. He more than likely changed his name, in which case there’s nothing more to be said. She could just make it all up, as novelists do with their characters. But she already has her No World. So to speak. Since all she really has is the title. Writing is such an ordeal for her. Perhaps it would be easier if her book was based on a true story.