Fractured Veil

Table of Contents -- Prologue and Part One

2006-05-26T19:20:00.000-07:00

Contents

Prologue : Transmission

Part 1: A Birth, The Death, and Questions

Chapter 1. The Fallen Hospital

Chapter 2. A Sylvan View

Chapter 3. Ghosts of Corporate Headquarters

Chapter 4. Funeral Oration

Chapter 5. Two Amours of Information

Chapter 6. The Protection Game

Chapter 7. Garbage In, Garbage Out

Chapter 8. Falling and Floating Away

For now, only the Prologue and Part 1 are available free online through this blog. The entire print book (or ebook in multiple formats if you prefer) can be purchased here through LuLu.com:

Part 2: The Sleeping Show

Chapter 9. Jon Chivy Coyote

Chapter 10. Aurora, the First

Chapter 11. Blueprint of Naiya

Chapter 12. The Chains, Like Lines in the Sky

Chapter 13. Breakdown in Nothingville

Chapter 14. Shaman of the Revolution

Chapter 15. Innerview

Chapter 16. Incursion and Glint

Chapter 17. Terranaut

Chapter 18. I, d(y)ÃƒÂ¼-"kÃƒâï¿½¬l-yn

Chapter 19. A Clue

Chapter 20. Detour to the Knees

Chapter 21. Cagey Bird

Chapter 22. Candy That's Chewy (on the inside)

Chapter 23. Quantifiable Results

Chapter 24. The Call

Chapter 25. Stratagem

Chapter 26. " Spirit dreams into the world of man "

Chapter 27. Cling

Chapter 28. The Migrator

Chapter 29. Closing in on the Hunter

Chapter 30. The Inheritors

Chapter 31. Shadow

Chapter 32. How Delicate thou Art ...

Chapter 33. Womb

Chapter 34. Playground

Part 3: The Wake Island

Chapter 35. The Long Awakening

Chapter 36. Theft of Death's Collage

Chapter 37. Quantum Karyokinesis of Local Brane

Multiversal Emergence Bubble Or My Soul?

Epilogue: Remission or Decision

Table of Contents - Prologue and Part One

2006-05-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

Table of Contents

Chapter 0. Prologue : Transmission

Part 1: A Birth, The Death, and Questions

Chapter 1. The Fallen Hospital

Chapter 2. A Sylvan View

Chapter 3. Ghosts of Corporate Headquarters

Chapter 4. Funeral Oration

Chapter 5. Two Amours of Information

Chapter 6. The Protection Game

Chapter 7. Garbage In, Garbage Out

Chapter 8. Falling and Floating Away

(For now, only the Prologue and Part 1 are available online through this blog)

Part 2: The Sleeping Show

Chapter 9. Jon Chivy Coyote

Chapter 10. Aurora, the First

Chapter 11. Blueprint of Naiya

Chapter 12. The Chains, Like Lines in the Sky Guy

Chapter 13. Breakdown in Nothingville

Chapter 14. Shaman of the Revolution

Chapter 15. Innerview

Chapter 16. Incursion and Glint

Chapter 17. Terranaut

Chapter 18. I, d(y)Ã¼-"kÃ€l-yâï¿½¬n

Chapter 19. A Clue

Chapter 20. Detour to the Knees

Chapter 21. Cagey Bird

Chapter 22. Candy Thatâ€™s Chewy (on the inside)

Chapter 23. Quantifiable Results

Chapter 24. The Call

Chapter 25. Stratagem

Chapter 26. â€œSpirit dreams into the world of man â€ï¿½â€ï¿½

Chapter 27. Cling

Chapter 28. The Migrator

Chapter 29. Closing in on the Hunter

Chapter 30. The Inheritors

Chapter 31. Shadow

Chapter 32. How Delicate thou Art â€ï¿½

Chapter 33. Womb

Chapter 34. Playground

Part 3: The Wake Island

Chapter 35. The Long Awakening

Chapter 36. Theft of Deathâ€™s Collage

Chapter 37. Quantum Karyokinesis of Local Brane

Multiversal Emergence Bubble Or My Soulâ€ï¿½

Chapter 38. Epilogue: Remission or Decision

More Info?

2006-05-26T11:47:00.000-07:00

A novel of speculative fiction in which the identity of a brain damaged narrator is explored through fragments of memory, possibly not his own. Told in a floating first person narrative, the memories are of four disparate people, constantly replaying and overriding his consciousness. The struggle has greater implications as, after awakening at the site of an apparent disaster, the narrator finds himself the only survivor.

The four identities that unfold in Fractured Veil each have their own story lines within the novel, though they are experienced or interpreted through the narrator. These main currents of the novel follow:

Jon Chivy Coyote, a disgraced former detective, teacher, and pseudo-celebrity of native/aboriginal descent, enlisted to use his tracking skills to find a bizarre serial killer hunting in a metropolitan park. The killer may be, in some way, the herald to the impending disaster.

Naiya McCloud, a gold-digging female scientist obsessed with architecture to such a degree she is gradually falling in love with her house. Her hypersensitivity and sexual episodes are indicative of the change in reality which is gradually taking hold.

Aurora Vitellius, one of three identical triplets born of royal ancestry, whom after the death of their parents, become the controlling force behind one of the biggest fortunes. Though still practically prepubescent, these legally emancipated girl-prodigies can now apply their sinister intentions without limit.

Guy Connel, a perpetually unlucky construction worker who survives a seeming industrial accident to a wholly new, bizarre, and transcendent life.

Common themes throughout the novel are:

The fluidity of perception, memory, self, and reality.

Consciousness, physics, extinction, selection, and survival as forces both beyond, and sometimes within, human control.

The main archetypes present in human nature, as expressed by the central characters, which are colored in mythic, spiritual, surreal, and often symbolic terms.

Backstory for Fractured Veil:

During the rough New England winter of 2002, as the birth of my first child steadily approached, I found myself forcefully confronted by all of the submerged and sequestered emotions which surrounded my own birth. I was adopted. In effect, the arrival of this fruit of love was to be the first meeting I was to have with an actual genetic relative. Mixed in with the overwhelming loving emotions of new life were the questions, endless amounts of questions. When I saw how strong and blissful my wife was, I could not help thinking: How was it possible to give me up at birth? To an unknown ... what really did this whole thing do to me?

Adoption was something rarely discussed, if at all, in the time of my childhood. Even though my adopted parents were as loving and supportive as parents could ever be, I did not have knowledge of my true origins. This reality has a very unique effect on the psychology of a developing mind, one that is only barely grasped today, nearly two generations later. I was told of my adoption in childhood at an age that all the literature recommended, and though I had somehow instinctually known for sure I was different, it was earth-shattering.

This set into motion a chain of events, or released a part of my personality, that would reverberate throughout my life. It called everything I believed into question. Then, it forced me to confront familial emotions regarding a large extended family that was not actually mine. Years later, as I observed life through the lens of a Catholic school alter boy, it would call religion into question. In my teen years, society and reality itself would be brought under the lens.

It was not until my 20's in the 1990's that I began to write down the lucid dreams, indistinguishable from true reality, which I experienced all through my life. Science fiction inspired flights of fancy in parallel worlds one night, strange shifts in identity in both mundane and bizarre settings other nights, and everything in between, all with the unsettling template of amnesia built in. Although I had many failed starts at writing my first novel in this period, it was not until fatherhood faced me that I could codify my view into a sincere statement. That was a decade of experimentation and observation for me. It was not until I was out of it, and physically out of Manhattan, that I could even make sense of it. Laboring away mostly during a night job in 2004, which my wife has yet to forgive me for, I made peace with those childhood feelings of helplessness in the face of life’s processes.

This novel is that strange statement and it deals symbolically with my feelings surrounding adoption, though it does not address it directly or thematically. It combines dreams, emotions, philosophical and scientific speculation in a way that truly expresses my struggles with identity, reality, and the human condition. In a way, it is all I had to jettison from the dark black core of my being so I can move on and I have struggled to explain the book ever since.

The child born in that winter was my son Jorn, nearly four now, and when he held Fractured Veil in his hand recently and asked, “You wrote this book?” I knew I had written it equally for him as for myself, and I think I am a better father because of it.

Chapter 8 - Falling and Floating Away

2006-05-26T05:09:00.000-07:00

Chapter 8

Falling and Floating Away

Screaming from my core, I tried to run from the invasive ghosts, their minds conjuring their own identity, as they attempted to gain possession. Striking at me, they used their lives to pummel me as if they were a twirling mace, my pain their possession, or creation. I wanted to run. A child running frightened from the power, the completeness, of the fully-formed advantage of the adult. This is what I was. I felt the infant. How could I be my own thoughts, with innocent and ignorant purity, in the face of their corrupting identity.

Instinctually, I wanted to claw at my ears and eyes, rip their visions and voices from my head. If my hands were free, they would have raked their nails across my face to dig out the source. However, they were not free. No part of my body would respond. I was restrained.

My head was even immobilized in a cold metallic brace, as the rest seemed to be from the unyielding feel, and the only view was straight on to the skylight with the stars beyond, a robotic arm descending almost to my chest from a machine suspended somehow on high. A sound resembling a full tray of metal instruments overturning to a hard floor helped me remain conscious, as I felt I may again drift away. Soon after a low voice said, “Goodamit …”

“Hello? Please help … I beg you don’t hurt me … please release me!” Fear inspired a quick chain of pleas, in a rabid fever of desperation.

A face leaned over the table to occupy my view. It was ‘Stu’ from outside the building. A dirty improvisation of a rolled cigarette hung from his lip, crooked as a twig. His hair looked wet and slicked back, as if he made an attempt to clean up. A new bright pink tie, complete with coagulated stain, stood out in contrast to his new light grey shirt, obviously recovered from the dead. If not for the greenish pallor, sunken emaciated eyes, and overloaded boils threatening to rupture with the slightest provocation – he looked almost human.

A friendly smile popped across his face, sending ash onto me, as if someone just hit the ‘happy’ button on his remote control. “Good morning sunshine … scared the hell otta me wit that scream there. ”
“Stu … please help me. Please release me. We can … work together … figure this whole thing out. ”

“Uh, um … no-can-do, pal. Your organ donor card says I can have what I want. So … im gunna take em out in case later on I need something. ”

My mind could not process the situation. Fear flooded through my body and I knew I would die, never to know the strange circumstances of my life. Tears flowed unchecked as Stuart walked away. With the desperation of a trapped animal, I tried to release my body from the restraints, determined to rip my own skin off if necessary to pull an arm free. As my muscular tension reached its maximum, the restraints disengaged. I pulled them all open easily. Jumping from the table as if it was electrified, I saw that Stu was crouched beside it, his hand on the release levers.

“I was just kidding … put you in there cause you were thrashing ‘round, not makin any sense … just like them. ” He pointed high to the two remaining blue globes with the cybernetic children inside. The state of grand architectural space shocked me, as familiar as it now was.

Time had certainly passed. The blood on the walls was darkening and the corpses, no longer sealed in a preserving atmosphere, were decaying. Looking at my hands, they were still blurry, though the dark hue indicated the same as the splattered wall, dried blood. I could feel the dry flakes fall to the floor through my fingers. What happened between the kid and I? Why did I attack a corpse? Its night again. A day must have passed. Why am I not hungry?

My head swam with the frustration and absurdity, the questions piled on other questions. They seemed unending. Smoke blew into my face. I turned slowly. There was a hand outstretched, nearly to my face.

“Stuart T. Prendergast, Acting Director of Operations, pleasure meeting you. So, which one are you? I always get confused, no disrespect. ” It was obvious he did not remember meeting me before, not that I could have introduced myself.

Convincing myself this was a good sign I said, “Which … one? Which one do you think I am?”

“Heh, you … you guys …” Stuart handed me a syringe. “… this was stickin outta yer neck. Coulda been worse. ” He gestured to the corner, where once there was dead man in a lab coat, now only remained an impossibly bloated mess, barely contained by its clothes in dried pools of its innumerable injections.

He continued, “They were stickin him, mumbling about ‘father’ something. I don’t know, that was Briant Langley, the CEO of Silicon Horizons, my boss. He didn’t have any children. Anyway, they were throwing you and One around with machines, the automated lab equipment, then tried to go after me … sirens going, lights flashin – I said ‘Fuck it. ’ Hope I’m not otta line. ”

Stuart, who at first seemed surprisingly lucid, suddenly looked sleepy, and staggered.

“Stu, are you alright?” I put my arm on his shoulder. My hand – why … why is it blurry? Is it possible to hide so thoroughly in trauma from oneself?

Eyes nearly closed, he burped. Shaking his head he said, “Yeah … yeah I think so. ” He drew a pill container from his pocket and poured some into his hand. “Want some? Keep you going …”

“No, that’s ok. ”

Dry swallowing about eight or ten he continued, “Suit yourself. ”

“Stu you were saying … about what happened. ”

“Oh, yeah. So, I went and rebooted the systems up here. I got the manual, see. They’ve just been mumblin since then, like static … creepy. ”

My mind thought to all the chaos and death, not just in the rest of the building, but the whole city beyond. “Yeah … creepy. Look Stu, what are they?”

“Who them? The owners … they own the world. Remember, you’re one of them, right?”

“Oh, right. ”

Stuart walked over to a computer panel on the wall. “The power from the reactor has been fully restored up here. The systems are all back. It looks like its just them that needs full power, then to bridge their connection. First bridge to the AI unit, then the … “ He pulled a little book from his back pocket, pen marks and circles sloppily all over the pages. “… then the AV units themselves. Should I do it, boss?”

“Stu, what do you mean ‘bridge the connection?’”

“Connect them with the system again, when it rebooted, they got cut off. This … is some freaky shit I know. Hey, its in the manual as the next step. I’m management you know, this ain’t my damn job. ” He took a long drag and blew it out his nose.

“Stu, what happened outside? What happened to you and all the people here?”

“People are lazy, but hey, I’ll take the holiday pay any day - bonuses too I bet. ”

“Bridge the connection Stu. ” Giving these strange creations the power over systems again to likely attempt killing us was not the best solution. However, I was not going to get any clear answers from Stuart, as helpful as he seemingly was hopped-up on pills. The ruins of this digital computer culture, with its information stored in binary code, could take its last voices into oblivion, without the knowledge and power to revive all their little fragile devices. The building obviously had the only functioning power source, with a potentially encyclopedic brain attached to it. The risk of reviving that potentially psychotic brain was clearly outweighed by the possibility, regardless of how remote, of gaining any kind of clear information.

I backed away near to the aperture in the clear wall where I lost consciousness. Stuart took a toolbox over to the wall, removed a key of some kind and inserted it into the wall, tapping a few menus and buttons. “Well, that’s it. ” There was no dramatic sound or series of lights.

After a few moments, the gentile voice of an dignified female child filled the air, lightly crackling with synthetic tones of static. “Em … emergency mode initiated. AI connection successful. ”

The lights flickered and a warbling of intricate electronic tones flooded the lab air. “Higher personality functions: suppressed, pending damage assessment. Solar cell line: broken. Building systems: 34%. Connection to AV1, AV3: inoperable. Video feeds: down, no damage detected. Audio feeds: operational. Infrared sensory detection grid: operational. Manipulator Automatrix: functional. ” The robotic arm descended, and within the span of a second, had clasped a brace around Stuart’s neck as it pinned him to the floor. “Intruder Lab Alpha: secured. ”

Miraculously, Stuart still possessed his cigarette after the rough treatment, like an ash from an expounding grandfather that refused to fall off the tip. In a relaxed gesture, as if it was merely a post-coital puff on satin sheets, he took a long drag and pointed at the globes. “That’s gratitude for ya …”

“Intruder Identified. Stuart T. Prendergast. Report. Unable to initiate AI connection with AV1 or AV3. ”

“Well, I gotz some good news and …”

Strangely ignored by the defense response, I quickly decided to take a risk and interject, rather then have Stuart possibly make the situation worse. “There have been some problems, we will explain further in a bit. ”

“Unidentified voice. Refining scan . . . qx-wave 4D reconstruct sensors: inadequate power. Magnetic resonance imprint: micro-coil malfunction. Indistinct thermal anomaly: please identify. ”

“I really wish I could. I suppose you can say my memory is malfunctioning. I was hoping you could provide information. ”

“Interrogative mode minimal. Memory functions limited in this mode. Higher organic AV2 cerebral unit possible severe damage. Recovery: indeterminate. ”

Walking over to stand beneath the globe, I continued, “We will both do everything we can to help you. Right now, is there anything, anything at all, that you have … in your files … about what has happened outside … recent events. What happened to the building at the very least … what went wrong?”

“Interrogative mode minimal. ”

“Do have any recent information at all?”

“Major cognitive subsection: File header information and unencrypted summary only. ”

“Yes, go ahead … anything. ”

Stuart tapped his pen against the robotic arm. “Alright, so I’ll just fucking lie here then … yeah. “ He began another overture of coughing as the machine began bleeping.

Launching into a series of dry pronouncements, a bizarre contrast to the child-like mutterings and ranting from during recent events, the machine spilt whatever facts it had. “File headers with disabled encryption available, conforming to request are as follows:

594732: routine building operations altered.

223511: new marker programming uploaded.

223512: new disaster contingencies uploaded.

223513: new threshold data for building sensors uploaded for programming condition: Phenomena A: major 001.

483985: Anteros Vitellius AV(n) experiment illegally placed in operational control of the Ilynois World Commerce Complex.

908311: normal personnel scheduling flow exhibiting anomalies, as per new contingency.

000912: telecom signal flow erratic. employee criminal behavioral index reaching 41/100.

008711: organic test sample corrupted.

441107: magnetically sealed control sample corrupted. contingency variables complete.

441108: building security lockdown initiated.

660091: antipersonnel strategies initiated. neuronal disruption broadcast from media center commencing. trusted list personnel conversion commencing.

102679: known file corruption logged

102680: AV1 neurohypophysial functioning impaired due to Phenomena A: major 001.

End of known applicable files. ”

Walking over to a lit panel beneath the AV globes, I asked it, “Can I read these files in detail please?”

“Negative, you have no clearance, unidentified thermal anomaly. ”

“Does he?” Looking to Stuart, he was trying to make another cigarette, the change in his orientation not helping his rolling skills.

“Negative, file header information only. ”

Going over to crouch beside him, he spit out loose tobacco that was falling all over his face in my direction. “Uh, sorry lady. ” He made a motion like he was tipping his hat.

Lady? Forget it … there is certainly no time for this now … let it go, I thought.

“Look, Stu, can you think of anything we can do? Any way you can think of to somehow release those files for me? It’s very important. ”

“Yeah, but I can’t do it. ”

“Why not?”

“Well, you see I’ve got this … giant goddam robot arm pinning me to the floor at the moment. ”

AV2 responded to Stuart’s request to be released and while we conferred near the control machinery, Stuart mapped out our plan with surprising lucidity, almost as if he were reciting it at the head of a conference table, with colorful presentation material to point to. Once I had explained how vital this information was, to both of us, he agreed. Though what he was agreeing to was not necessarily what I had said, he pointed to a display with maniacal attention.

“Look kid, this here command console, as the manual states, will connect the higher functions. It’s the only way ta get it to reason with you. This thing might totally be gone though. We just power off the whole thing, then hit these two. AV2 should be back up. ”

“What about the other one? The other child-computer?”

“Look … you see that wall?” He pointed with his cigarette to the far wall where there seemed to be the outline of an inert display within it. “That is the control panel for AV3. ” It was right near the cracked window, the one I had apparently been thrown into. “You see this?” Stuart hit the wall with his fist and a lever popped out. Pushing it released a decompressing hiss. There was a corridor beyond. “You following me, kid?”

Kid. Another delusion. “Yes, brilliant thinking. Could you also start it up with no sensors at all? I would like some information before we inform … her … of the situation. Keep the audio. ”

“Yep, no problems. You the boss. ”

We would need every advantage. The machinery controlled by them, loomed in alcoves all about us. The robotic arm was positioned menacingly above. I was surprised that Stuart went along with this, as unconcerned as he seemed with answers. How long I would remain ‘an owner’, I had no idea. Scared, I stayed close to him, on some suppressed instinct, regardless of how dangerous he really was. The thick smoke from his cigarette was like a security blanket, wrapping around me and sheltering me from the death that permeated that grand space.

Since the seal had been broken, the odor of the bloated corpse in the corner and the other cybernetic child, began to strengthen. Even in this technological wonder with its spaceship-like sealed environment, so far removed it seemed from the earth, this mighty bacterial force, a relentless army of decomposers, still found its winding way to objects of purpose, irrespective of challenge.

On completion of Stuart’s checklist, the synthetic child’s voice again filled the air, with one distinct difference, as a range of emotional tones permeated every gentile inflection. “I … alive. No senses … I’m scared daddy. ” Various machines in the room stared to whir and twitch.

“Woa, hold on there Two, it’s Stu-E. The feeds are … still down, its ok. ”

“Stuart … disconnected from the others … hard to think … I’m drowning. ”

Cautiously, I crept closer to the door near the panel. I had enough sense to lie to this strange abomination. “AV2, this is … a member of the board … I need to know what you remember. ”

“Stuart?” It sounded scared.

“It’s ok, Two. He’s with the company. ” Stuart gave me a slow wink. For a moment, I thought his eye would remain closed from the collected discharge. Did Stu really know I was not with the company? It did not matter and I only dwelt on the thought for a second.

I pressed her. “AV2, please tell me what you remember. ”

“The girls … Vitellius … we received our orders. Defend the building, defend ourselves if the Phenomena reached us. It’s killing everyone. ”

“What is the Phenomena AV2, is it a plague? A virus?”

“No … it effects everything … even us, sealed away. We can be saved though … others can be saved … before it becomes too strong. ”

“Are people out there still alive? Has the city been cut off? How can people be saved? How can we be saved? Tell us more!”

“Nottingham disaster … communication disruption … I can’t think. No, they are alive. They are still out there! We have to … we have a job to do. Stuart, we have to signal them … yes! Restore power … full power. ”

The cybernetic child’s words excited me. Perhaps I would make it back to other people, survivors that can treat Stuart and I. Give me answers and perhaps even protection from all this. I turned to Stuart. “Can you restore full power to her?”

He shrugged. “Not sure. I could just give her whatever power through this panel, see what she does with it. I can’t do the reactor if it don’t respond. I can’t do the cybernetic thingy if it don’t - just work. I can just do what I can do from here and see what it will do. ”

That was a lot of do’s to pay attention to. “Yes, ‘Do it’. ”

Nothing happened for several minutes. Then, the panel on the far side of the wall illuminated and AV2 continued, “Stand by. ” We stood there while various systems sounded like they were being tested. Stuart took a long drag. “Well, this sure as shit don’t look good. Great idea, boss. ” The door next to us closed, the finality of a bolt being shunted into place.

It was two female child voices that spoke now, overlapping each other. “There is no escape, lying villain. We see you now. We may be damaged, but we kill you to survive. Your bubbling ignorance has brought your vital parts to us. ” Multicolored mist, which would have been a festive grand finale effect to the right dance party, now signaled another fight for survival. Forced like steam through small nozzles, that perked out like nipples from every corner, they worked in concert with flashing lights to take any vision further then arms’ length away. “Not even one of your little ones will escape the field,” they said.

Before I even had the chance to shout to Stuart, a clanging sound drew my attention away. Stuart was hitting a chisel into the panel with a hand-sledge from the tool box, cigarette still on his lip, he looked as if he was casually killing a vampire in a disco. Soon within a cascade of sparks and violent pops, Stuart banged away faster and more violently with each hit. It did not last long.

In one swift, incalculably fast motion, Stuart was seized by the robotic arm, spun at high speed and launched through an entire section of the skylight, machine arm and all. Whether this was a malfunction or intentional, I did not know. Glass, or whatever the thick clear material was, rained down on me. The entire structure seemed to tilt above me as one of the crucial supports was now gone.

Another machine apparatus tried to grasp me through the colored haze, now a shifting hallucinatory psychotic landscape, and I hit at it with fury. My hand was seized and was nearly crushed by the grip. Bones lost their place amid ripping as it twirled me around before another seized the other free arm. They threw me onto the same table I awoke from and all the restraints locked into place.

“We will dissect what we need, siphon the life we need from you, diseased creature,” they said.

The wind was tearing through the aperture in the skylight, beginning to displace whatever was not attached in the room interior. Pieces of the skylight continued to fall and my body soon collected shards like sprinkles on cookie dough. The cracked window that I was earlier thrown into shattered, the wind immediately drawing through the space with such force as to destroy those windows that remain. A vortex of shards spun through the room and soon the entire space seemed open to the violent air.

A syringe entered my chest, right at the point of my heart. I felt warm liquid in my mouth. There were screams on the hurricane wind. The machine table that bound me and the cathedral atop the earth receded, as if I was flying away in the talons of a giant bird through an open cage. Strobes of prismatic light danced around me and seemed to penetrate deep into my flesh; in a moment of stagnant time, my vision was only roads lined with broken mirrors. The building fell away as a violent wind massaged at my body as it tumbled through a vibrating abyss.

Dramatic notes of a many flavored pain greeted me following a crushing blow, the start of a varied and seemingly infinite torturous movement. The taste of hot blood now flooded into my mouth, down to my lungs, drowning me. Without voice, I screamed internally through the agony, my collective nervous tissues firing at once like a finale.

Through it all it, I sensed something. I was not alone.

Marching from the faraway dune of imperception, a sanative (sadistic?) force once again struggled to somehow right me. As a comforting, promising, friend who suddenly appears in an interrogation room, this - presence – began work to piece the hellish puzzle of my consciousness together. Was it taking me and my body away to a better place? Keeping it there?

My secret other, functioning in ruthless extremes, always by some means lurking intact, wove visions unheeded into me, as I faded away. Accompanied by my ignorance in a coup d’etat, it overthrew my conventional reality and forced the torment of my imminent death into unbelief like a rejected god.

Chapter 7 - Garbage In, Garbage Out

2006-05-26T05:08:00.000-07:00

Chapter 7

Garbage In, Garbage Out

“You gotta think of security … yeah … ‘fine-antal security’. I seen a whole video on it. Plannin’ for the future – retirement, shit like that. ” Driving along in my rusted pickup, Mick blew smoke out of his mouth and nose as he spoke, the same color as his pale, sickly skin. “This guy knows how to save - believe me. I‘m gunna order it when I cash my check. ” The wheezed coughing of the veteran nicotiner was used as punctuation marks between wheezed laughs. “And I don’t care what that … bitch … says. ” The window glass was rimmed in grimy dirt and discarded fast food and polystyrene coffee containers littered the floor. My smoke joined with his, and through our bleary eyes, there was no possible way for us to really see the early morning road ahead.

“Sounds damn good, mate. I can’t save for sheete. Can’t never get ahead,” I said, turning the wheel into a slide to regain control, the road made treacherous with newly fallen snow. “Woa there … this damn road. You know I just done pulled a double for that guy, third time this damn week. ”

“What guy, Guy?”

“The gu … don’t you bust my balls now. ” I gave him a punch in the arm.

“Heh, I’m just kindin’, mate. Drison, right?”

“Yeah fuckin’ Drison. I swear – I’ll walk he don’t show for anodda shift. I do two in a row at that Tunnel and now I gotta get home to get the plow runnin. Sheete … town’s called five friggin times. Anyway … all this work and I know it’ll all be - pow - gone. ”

Pulling the truck into the town mini-mall parking lot, we threw out butts to the ground as we walked through the snow to the check-cashing store. Inside, the line was already long with fellow construction workers, also taking part in the weekly ritual of pay. The long fortified room easily accommodated a large line, fitting everyone in between walls saturated with advertising. Utterly silent as it always was, despite the fact the room was filled with usually raucous construction-men, the air occasionally punctuated by soft feminine voices, issuing through the speakers imbedded in the everything-proof glass. The decrepit security guard nodded and smiled kindly to all who entered, fulfilling half his dual-role in town, the other being the decrepit church deacon who nodded and smiled kindly to all who entered.

I spotted a neighbor as he came away from a window, pocketing his money as he scrutinized his stub. “Hey, Nate. ” I motioned him over.

“Howgoezit, Guy. Man, you look knack-ered, dude. ”

“Third duce this week … Nate, you, uh, think you could come by tonight? Drop off more of … y’know. ”

“That same stuff from last week?”

“Yeah. ”

“Ok, but you know Guy you should take it easy … it’s not like you. ”

“Yeah, look … I dunno … just in a mood lately is all. After this friggin time of year is done, I’ll be straight. ”

“I hear that, mate. Gettin snow this late in season … weird, dude. Ok, I’ll be by … might be late. Later Guy. ”

“Thanks Nate. ”

The mini-mall was strategically placed right outside of town, on the route that led to the construction site to the Planetary Transport Grid or ‘Super-Tunnel’, as it was mostly referred to, a massive project designed to link all the major cites of the world. The construction of this particular section, a complex and key junction point, occupied the entire building trade workforce of the area and the once quiet mall, with shops for kitting, fishing supply, crafts, and comic books took on a new life as the businesses shifted. Local opposition fell on deaf ears, as anything not lauding the Tunnel, and anything remotely relating to it, was decisively ignored. The shifts went night and day, every day, the turnover of customers continuous. I walked with Mick from check-cashing right next door to the newsstand.

I entered with a jingle. “Heya Petesy, too late to get in on Lotta-Doh?”

Pete held his glasses like he was adjusting binoculars and craned his neck from behind the counter to look at the digital readouts on the far wall, flashing in a multicolored parade like a stock ticker dressed for carnival.

“Uh … let’s see … no, it’s on in twenty minutes, Guy. ”

“Ok, let’s do this thing. I’ll take my usual numbers, plus give me a random ten. ” I threw my temporary cash card onto the counter.

Mick looked at me with disbelief and said, “Random ten? That’s a hundred Guy … sheete … you need to buy dat video …damn. ”

“Quiet that, I’m feelin lucky today. Don’t jinx me! You friggin know how I feel bout that. ”

“Hey,” Mick threw up his arms, “Sor-ry. ”

I turned back to the counter. “And I’ll take two packs of Ultra Sevens. Oh, and uh, one of dem pink roses … and this lollypop. ”

Mick went through a similar routine, then slapped me on the shoulder. “C’mon, lets go watch the numbers at Moonies … first ones on the jinx. ”

As we walked the ten paces to Moonies I said, “Done, and I want one helava stiff curse reversa. ”

…

Danielle planted a kiss on my neck awkwardly, bracing herself with the shaky table and causing our drinks to swirl to the rim. “Y’a-hno, I allwas thhut you were cute … mhanly too… yeah. ” The barfly shifted her breasts in her barely-closed, mediaeval and psychedelic gypsy-inspired lace blouse.

A yell issued from the bar corner, right from under the TV. “Danny, now you don’t start trouble now … I don’t need anodda woman comin in here trying to kill your dumb ass. ”

“Yhou stay otta dis … Lem Lemme Lem… sherve drinks … not ahdvice, hear? Lhet da bhig whinner dis-shide. Rhight, my big boy?” Danielle rubbed my bicep as she stared without focus, looking much like a concentrating fortune teller, listening to an important announcement from the spirit world.

Mick was next to me on the other side and leaned into my ear. “Guy, not my place or nuttin, but you don’t wanna screw things up with Helen again … Lem’s right. ”

“Yhu keep otta dis too … o’l la-lhimpy … ha-ha. ”

Mick made a move to rise from his chair toward her, but I held him back and turned to Danielle. “Danny, maybe you oughta … “

“Hhey! Fhine, whatever … when you wanna rheal woman, I’ll be here chutie. ” Heaving her breasts at my face as she rose, she spun around ungracefully and with effort walked to a group hanging around the jukebox.

Mick slapped me on the shoulder. “That was for da best, mate. You gotta nice little lady at home. Don’t let da drink and yer pecker whisper to ya - she ain’t worth it. ”

“You would know. ” Smiling, I put my arm on his.

“Ha, true … true nuff … man … five thousand! You are one lucky sombitch. Was me gave ya that to, mate. ”

“Hey, haven’t I been good ta ya? Wish I can get that money card right now. Buyin everyone and their cousin drinks with my pay …” Taking another shot of ‘the good stuff’, I waived to another congratulatory patron making some noise from across the room, newly in on my good fortune.

Mick kicked his back. “Alls you haveta wait to is tomorra, Guy. The Stand opens at four-thirty. ”

“S’different, holdin it in ya hand. ”

“True, true nuff mate. ”

The front door opened and a blast of subfreezing air carried in the falling snow with it. The group entering mixed with those at the bar, and after a time, gave me a cheer.

Mick took a drag on his chrome tobacco cylinder, the force of which automatically lighting a small bit, sending the smoke into his lungs before turning off and out with a click. “News sure does travel fast,” He said, for the fifth time this afternoon. He continued, “Man, looks like hellava storm. Hey, aint you plowing today?”

“Shee-yit! Done slipped my damn mind … I betta get home. ”

Just as I rose to lease, my ex-brother-in-law ambled up to me, who I did not notice was in the last group that came in. “Well, well – the big winner. ”

“Aw, god-damn it. ”

He came close, so that only I can hear. “I just know … I’ll be gettin that thousand now … right Guy? My nephew or no, bailin you otta jail ain’t my business. That was a loan, remember? I need that money. ”

“You got it … mate. ” I put on a false expression of good will.

“Hey, and it wouldn’t hurt to throw my sister some of that back alimony, huh? I hate the bitch … but what’s right is right. ”

Making my way with the barest of competence through the intense snowstorm, upgraded to a blizzard en route, I arrived at the modular park where I rented rooms. The snow hid all the flaws of this depressed community, like the fuzzy mind that guided me. As I walked through the door, seven hours late, my son Kyle was the first to greet me, with the opposite expression of my girlfriend behind him. “Papa! The team’s heddin up ta Mount Juno to do the runs … can I go? Can I go? Can I go?”

“Where da hell have you been? You know the towns been callin every damn hour. ”

“Let me get in da door, sheet. I got good news. ”

In unison they said, “What?”

“I won Lotta-Doh … five thousand big ones!”

The three of us, and even the dog, yelled as we embraced one another. Continuously refined plans for the money crowded the air. When the excitement died down, I charged Kyle’s card generously and sent him away to fun in the snow. He was soon to be man of the hour for his friends. Helen, who had ignored the liquor smell for my son’s benefit, confronted me as she hung my coat. Before I could remove my scarf, she said, “So, and not to rain on you’re parade or nuthin, you win and the first thing you do is hang around the bar?”

“Oh, no here we go. ”

“Don’t you give me that shit. We had that whole damn talk about you bein round more. Now, I have somthin to tell you and betta listen, cause I think its gunna be good news to you. ”

“What Helen?”

“Remember how we were talkin’ and how I had said that I loved being … like … Kyle’s other mom and stuff …”

“Yeah …”

“And that I … y’know just needed …”

“Yeah … huh? You mean?”

“Yep, I’m pregnant!”

I hugged Helen tight and then picked her up into the air. I carried her to the couch and set her down softly. “That’s just great news, darlin. ”

“I wasn’t sure how you’d think about it. You’ve got four kids already, scattered all over the damn place. ”

“So what? This is for us. It’s gunna be great. ”

“Oh, I love you, baby. And we got this good way to start things. Let me see the winnin card. ” I checked my pants and then went to my coat. After searching the pockets several times, knowing full well that I put it in my shirt pocket, I went to the pickup and rifled through it in the numbing cold over and over. I went inside with my stomach tight and my blood pumping in my ears. A headache from my drink started to form.

I said to Helen, “I don’t know where I put the damn thing. ”

“Didn’t you just have it? Charge the kid’s card with it?”

“Uh, no … that was my pay card. ”

“Real nice, real friggin smart. ”

“I’m gunna find it … you see. ”

“Well you betta … you see those red envelopes on the table there? All past due … lectric, water, tele, that fuckin plow … we’re a month behind the rent … I take care of your little shits and now … when my time is here …”

“Alright, alright! Damn woman, I’ll find the fuckin thing! And don’t you fuckin talk about my boy like that. ”

The details of my morning and early afternoon were foggy to say the least. However, I managed my best air of optimism. As I grabbed a bite to eat, my first for the day, I had to listen to Helen’s fears for the future as they lashed at my skin like a riding crop. For the first time since I arrived from the bar, I removed my winter scarf to play a regular game of ‘try and bite it’ with the dog.

It took me a few moments to realize that Helen was not talking at me anymore. Her mouth was agape when I finally looked at her.

“What?”

“You fucking piece of shit son of a bitch. ” She refused to listen to any of my ignorant pleas as she grabbed her things and drove away. It was not until I answered the phone, pacing around as I laid out my excuses to the town official who interrogated me, as to why I was not on the road clearing snow, that I passed by a mirror and saw the unmistakable smudge of Danielle’s lipstick on my neck. “Aw, just fuck me … no not you Mr. Tiptree. ”

Just as I hung up the phone, with promises that the plow was warming up as we spoke, that it rang again. “Now what … yeah? Waddia mean ‘where am I’? On the sced-ule for this afternoon? I done got otta the Tunnel just this morning! Look I’ll … damn. ”

Determined to find my winning card, I drove as fast as I could in the plow, first to Mick’s to no avail, then back to Moonies, hoping against hope that it was safe in an untouched corner or an honest man’s pocket. Beyond fatigued as I drove in the storm, with a body now dealing with the beginnings of a hangover, a Stop sign invisible to those from my particular mental realm caused me to ram a car at full speed, wrecking it completely.

The driver walked away only dazed, saved by the intricate safety precautions of his modern vehicle. Thankfully, both he and the trooper who arrived on-scene were good sports, plus the plow only sustained the most minor of dents. Even though I wondered if my insurance was up to date, I considered myself most fortunate. That is until the trooper, no longer distracted by the wreck and the inclement weather, issued the magic words. “Hey, pal, com’mere. Have you been drinking?”

Bathed in the red light of a nearby exit sign, I sat on the jail bunk feeling truly sorry for myself, believing with absolute certitude that my ticket was never to be found, my life destined for a monotony of failure, hardship, pain and utter confinement, in more ways then I could fathom.

Chapter 6 - The Protection Game

2006-05-26T05:07:00.000-07:00

Chapter 6

The Protection Game

The newly straightened and relaxed hair, the focus of much money and time earlier in the day at the salon, fell awkwardly over all the clothes I tried on that day. As I stood before the mirror I thought, No – I was wrong. A change, I definitely need a change. It has to go. Most women of my ethnicity had a love-hate relationship with their dense hair.

Chuckling softly and shaking my head, I could not believe how the camisole enhanced and lifted my already weighty breasts to comic proportions. I looked like a pure work of the male imagination, painted on a fuselage for some wartime bombardier to gawk at as he loaded his payload.

A sales representative from the female-only erotica shop, an attractive one who had been unusually orbiting, came up to me. Her eyebrows were raised.

“Well, that will get his attention, eh?”

“Hopefully he wont get injured when he falls over. Seriously though, how this can look so delicate and hold them up is amazing. ” Brushing my hands over my form, we made eye contact. A blush must have been apparent, even in my dark skin.

“Yes … it’s a new fiber … I dunno what they call it. ”

I lifted my breasts and let them fall, testing the holding strength. “Probably a newer form of carbon fiber - Teh-Sun nanotubes they call them, I believe. ”

“Huh? Uh, I … dunno. Well - you look amazing in it, especially the thong. ” The looks she gave my very exposed body made me tingle. I was surprised. Normally, I would not even be in a store like that, much less prancing around nearly nude, allowing myself arousal by some stranger, a woman no less. Noticing my enormous wedding ring with distinct obviousness, she said, “Are you a model, Mrs. … ?”

I laughed. For a moment, uncharacteristically, I considered flirting more with her. Thrilling in a way, regardless of my lack of any real interest. “ … McCloud. Thanks for the compliment, but no. ”

Looking into the mirror, I had an expression of false demure and saw for a moment my mother’s face. The peeling paint, musky and olid air, and incessant yelling of my ramshackle home from childhood seemed immediately to surround me, as my memories made horrible associations. My mother was drunk in the living room. The TV was blearing. A slimy suitor, or to a child’s mind - ‘intruder’, pawing at her, saying what they all may have said, “You look like a model. ”

Seeing the change, the rep touched my shoulder. “Are you alright? Did I?”

“No, no – its nothing … really. ” Flashing a smile, I walked to a nearby chair. “I will not be taking ‘this,’” indicating what I wore, “but if you can ring the rest up that would be great. ”

Sorry to see the mood shift away, she said flatly, “No problem - right away Mrs. McCloud. ”

…

Strolling along the avenue in the shopping district, there was a festive nature that permeated the air, from the slowness of people’s stride to the relaxed smiles that seemingly danced from one face to another along my route. It was a fairly regular route, imbedded in a fairly regular bimonthly routine. First, from the garment and fashion streets in the southernmost areas of the city, then a quick cab jaunt midtown to the cinema for an interlude, and then to the artisan zones for a light lunch in a intimate street-side café, before the rest of the day was meandered away in bookstores.

These were the moments, out of all that was part or possible in my privileged world, that I was the most thankful for. It was the only time freedom was actually felt, even though it was apparently my free will that constructed my life, coupled of course by the ambition to rise, conceived in the womb of childhood neglect and abuse. Needless to say, a lot of work went in to that palpable freedom stroll, where months of a salaryman’s wages could be devoured in mere hours, especially if the release of a season’s new designs was imminent.

Kieran never once complained on the megatonnage of the closet. He simply avoided the marital and psychological dangers of ever stepping inside. I always appeared on his arm with a discussion-worthy ensemble, he would always match, never to think about such things – so that was that. Somehow, in the faux modest circles we inhabited, politics and governmental science for me, popular psychiatry and popular media for him, we never were criticized openly. In fact, there was hardly a ripple in our world.

However, its easy to enjoy the flight when you are high in the air above the world, dismissively on autopilot, drinks in hand in a comfortable chair. For Kieran, he needed simply to wait on a line and check his bags. My case would be analogous to reaching the sailing sky in my own craft, built from the refuse of an island garbage dump, to which I was deposited naked, tool-less, and a concussion from psychological baggage thrown on top of me.

Having all of my spoils of war with the garment district shipped back to the house, I was left distinctly without baggage after my movie this particular day. I would welcome the weight of books to my hand, however, as this was somehow uniquely satisfying, a trial to be undergone for knowledge. Most of my colleagues apparently carried their library around in their reading computers. I always found a book, its paper pages, the binding, the heft, and the unalterable type, as some form of hallowed object in some kind of high ritual, where the infusion of ideas is given almost religious meaning. Either that, or I secretly wanted to be seen reading complex books, an exhibitionist whose feelings of inadequacy were born not out of sexual repression, but of constant assumptions of intellect.

Working at the neutral computer, anything could be on the screen. That man in the park could be either reading a philosophical treatise, sorting his underage gay bondage porn collection, or chatting with the mayor, possibly all three. I must admit, especially with my satisfying but dry work, and predictable days within marriage, I welcomed these days to flirt with possibility. For some reason, they were generally the only interactions I ever had.

This day, as I browsed the aisles of my favorite bookstore, specializing in pabulum for the true bibliomaniacal scientist, the books I carried did not intimidate, as usually was the case, especially with shy nerds or confounded jocks. Rather, it served as a possible entry point of conversation, for another with the best of both worlds in their corner. After the third pass down the tight isles, the quintessential tall, dark, and handsome specimen decided to speak. The talisman I wore a mere challenge.

His eyes were gentile, yet magnetic. His voice – ripe with emotion. His smile … now don’t faint, I thought.

“You must be in great shape. ” He pointed to the load, barely managed at this point, under my arm.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re uh … light bedtime reading there. ” He gestured around. “This place is a ghost-town as usual. I could take those … leave them at the cashier desk for you. They won’t notice. I know how it gets when you get ‘involved’ in … just looking. ”

I smiled back and handed him my books. “I’ll take you up on your offer … thanks. I’m actually approaching muscle fatigue … feel like I’m back in school … didn’t want to break my momentum. I know something good’s on the way. ”

In a distinctly male way, he balanced them in the palm of his hand. Actually, a nice show of strength. I thought about his arms as he spoke. “I know what you mean … let’s see … ‘Bioinformatics Research Collected Papers YR 110. g: Computational Modeling of Genetic and Biochemical Networks in Disease’ … and … ‘BTB Worldlab, The Complete Series : Initiation and Progression of Astrocytomas’ … and … ‘Death of Earth: The New Ecology of the Human’ … ok … little depressing, but certainly interesting. ”

“Well? Let’s see your tea leaves. ” I tilted the books in his other hand. “’Totality Fiber Optics: Complete Integration Lighting in Building’ and ‘Architectural Physics Innovations IV, Façade Shifting Integration and the Subterranean Revolution. ’”

“Ok, fortune teller, what do you see? What’s in my destiny?”

Half closing my eyes, I touched my forehead. “ Hmm, the spirits are unclear. I see … the future, only the vision is hopelessly blocked by building contractors. ”

He chuckled. “Funny … and accurate I would think. ”

“What about me? Any predictions?” Wow, I’m really enjoying this.

“Me? Foresight is certainly not one of my gifts. I’m the kind that stumbles blindly through life, though I hope we humans do have a future … at the very least to enjoy all the sustainable architecture I labor - selflessly I might add - to bring about. ”

Smiling, I waived away his words, and in the tight aisle, almost touched him. “Oh, I’m not at all a pessimist. Don’t take this ‘Death of Earth’ thing the wrong way. We have to understand the worst to insure the best. ”

“True, true. So, how do you fight the good fight, may I ask? Teaching … ?”

“No, I am a director for the Science Ministry, Life Sciences obviously. ”

“Oh? Strange … I was not aware that there was actual beauty of that caliber in government. ” Cheesy as his words were, I ate them up and probably blushed. Second time today, I thought.

Waiving my hand again I said, “Stop . . . and by ‘stop’, I mean ‘go on’. Seriously though, I have been thinking about architecture quite a bit recently. ”

“Do tell. ”

“This may sound strange, but I often have the feeling that my house is speaking to me. I mean … it has actual presence. I mean, other then the computer systems, voice activated things and whatnot. I’ve always admired good architecture, with its ability to dimensionalize art – surround you - you know? But lately, I don’t know, I just appreciate it so much more. Of course, I suppose, that’s easy when you live in a Murikami. ”

“Murikami? You are … something else. Talk about serendipity. ” He looked deep into my eyes, then had to break it. “I’m Vio Lancaster. ” Another deep scouting mission with his eyes. “Anyway, I’ve been collaborating with Murikami for years, on the Colony Convention Center and now … well, I’m in town to work on the Murikami Project … Muria the underground complex. ”

“I heard about that. It’s not too far from my home in Oakwood. Quite a big project, that Muria – and controversial. ” Shaking his hand, I said, “My name is Naiya McCloud. ”

“A pleasure to be sure … would you like to get a coffee after … well afterwards? I know a great spot not to far from here. ”

“I would love to, but I have to decline. But here …” What are you doing? You never know … best to keep your options open. “… take my card. Maybe another time. I come into the city several times a month. ”

“I look forward to it,” Vio said as he likewise handed me a card.

…

After we parted, sure that he was no longer around, I lingered in the shop and searched for many books on architecture. Suddenly obsessed, I lost all the hours, until the store finally asked me if I ‘would be kind enough to leave’ so they could close.

This new drive was not for the reasons I had initially thought, as I spent those hours combing the stacks. I thought that it was Vio that I wanted to know more about. But viewing his work led me strangely astray. I realized that all the books had a common factor – and it was not him.

In a cab, on the ride back to the parking garage, I eventually ignored Vio’s designs in the books I had purchased and found myself drawn to the designs of Murikami, forms which so intimately resembled ones from my home. They were in every tome I had selected. There was a universal otherness, mystery, about them

I was certainly attracted to Vio, drawn as I was always to powerful men, the instinct to find that ultimate provider was always the strongest one in me. However, to my surprise, it was not Vio himself I was interested in.

Strangely, to my fatigued mind, jostling around in the back seat, dreaming out the window, he seemed merely the acolyte for something higher, something that was winding its way to the surface of me. Vio unwittingly spurred on my already burgeoning feelings, as if my ‘faith’ in architecture was elevated by his service, his mere presence.

As I traced my finger around the lines in the illustrations of a particularly large volume, all I wanted was to return to the house. My mind played with all sorts of notions. Maybe Kieran was just a stepping stone. Not to another man, what are men, but the house. Could it alone provide for me? Not if Kieran won it in the divorce … what the hell are you going on about, anyway? I did not know and banished the silly musings. I was like some little girl overly involved with her dollhouse, working the permutations of happiness possible through like a laboratory exercise.

Exhausted when I arrived at the garage, I look onward to my drive with dread. Of course, there was one phrase that held me aloft, the simple words that would deactivate the security system and signal my arrival to home, and to my bed - our bed.

Chapter 5 - Two Amours of Information

2006-05-26T05:03:00.000-07:00

Chapter 5

Two Amours of Information

A jolting vibratory thrust snapped my consciousness back, through a shockwave of pain, to the high-rise office building, a blaring siren preventing any sense of clarity to my shattered mind. The white room was now bathed in an ocean of crimson lights as if internal to a sadistic glowing organ. Flashing images and echoes were slow to shake, like a debilitating drunkenness. Slapping my face in fear, I tried to erase the sensory specters that still inhabited my waking body.

As if possessed, I still felt smooth skin and blond hair in my face. Was I still girlishly prancing? Motion? I saw my sister’s devious smiles. The smell of bubblegum lips was still with me and the sensation of having a slight and energetic juvenile body caused me to fall repeatedly in my bulky, clumsy, and tingling new body, as if gravity was increased.

But, with the finality of a slamming door or blown fuse, the sensations vanished. Looking around, I could see that the huge window near me was seriously cracked, like a fragile veined cataract that stared and threatened to disintegrate. My nondescript face and chest were soaked with fluid, which I immediately assumed was blood because of the pain, but with the lights it seemed that the whole room was hemorrhaging along with me. I must have slammed into the window with force during my latest delusional onslaught.

Looking up and around, I noticed a deep purplish glow emanating from the two children encased in their clear cybernetic globes; bubbles were forming and I detected strengthening jerking movements. Were these children causing these hallucinations somehow? No, I thought, they were more than mere fleeting feelings, they were a new kind of lucid reality. I was (am?) a horrid little girl? What about Jon Coyote? The virtual machinery of my brain seemed cobbled together for a demolition derby.

Wandering over to the dead child I had held, now thrown down near the cracked window, I lifted his head up to look at his face. It was the face of Aurora, or certainly very near to it, even though it was distinctly male.

I should be angered by this face, I thought. Why anger? Only the vaguest wisp of Aurora still remained and I struggled to recall what it had felt like to be her. Fading already?

Was she my own internal creation, a fractured or submerged aspect of my own personality? Looking at the familiar lines of the boy’s face, the sense of looking into a mirror remained. I thought then that I must force myself to assume a rational and logical frame of mind or I would never explain these events and eventually die as a result of another psychotic episode. However, as soon as my mind played with these thoughts, I started to loose control again.

A tingling sensation started in my mouth and fingers. My grip tightened around the boy’s limbs reflexively and the beginning of an unfamiliar, though pleasant, feeling began to travel up my arms. The sensitivity increased quickly like an intense sexual arousal or a syringe injection of pure narcotic. The mere movement of my mouth or hands sent a rush of pleasure to my brain. With sensation likened only to the furious rubbing of an enflamed and engorged penis or an over-stimulated clitoris, my now vibrating arms and drooling mouth seemed to have will of their own.

Like some perverse chemical addiction, my whole being seemed to be primed for the loss of my own identity and freewill. The beginning of an instinctual fury was upon me, and in that moment, I felt I would do anything to further these feelings, just like an addict in the beginning of withdrawal. The orgasm in my mouth intensified the closer my head was to the dead boy’s and I quickly found myself rubbing my mouth over the boy’s face and scull, to my own abject horror.

My finger’s were just penetrating his skin when a metal cuff painfully latched onto my arm. With a single, swift, motion I was thrown across the room. My leg brace clanged as it struck a pole that supported a computer panel, as I landed on my shoulder in a heap nearby. An immature, synthetic blend of male and female voices reverberated above the still active siren, “You will not kill us, monster…”

Released from the strange and violent erotic spell, I looked up to see machine arms attempt to pick up the dead boy. They were connected to a central cylindrical unit, like an umbrella with the cloth removed, that rose from a large dark opening in the floor. Several arms held the boy while others injected him with an array of substances. I watched as the machine relentlessly and hopelessly stuck the dead boy again and again until he looked swollen with fluids.

I must make contact with these children, I thought. It was obvious that they could communicate and control their environment through the machinery of the building. I just hoped I could keep myself from drifting away long enough to make some progress.

Avoiding the possible reach of the arms of that robotic apparatus, I rose and walked over to a nearby computer panel. The words ‘alert’ were blinking in various parts of the display and I made an attempt, through a touch screen, to stop the sirens. One screen led to another and another like a confused set of rooms and corridors, however I was able to cancel the alert. The red lights switched to white, the stains of blood and fluids upon the pristine white a shocking contrast.

Just as the siren stopped, the voices returned, “Stop it! We will kill you…” The robotic arms made an attempt to grab me, but I was out of their range.

Unsteadily I walked beneath the globes, my body a pitiful array of injuries, and spoke to the children. “I’m sorry about what happened. I’m sick. We have to help each other. I don’t want to hurt you, I promise. I want to help. ”

The synthetic voice was distinctly female, “We must kill anyone who comes…we were told by the others…the father tried to…he tried to hurt us…”

I pointed to the man slumped in the corner, “Is he the father?”

The voices answered in unison as if repeating a phrase committed to memory, “You are Vitellius, the father. You love us and we love you. We must listen to the father. The father knows best…”

The man had a badge that said ‘Langley’.

A boyish child voice then said, “ The father lied, lied, lied! The father killed AV3! We stop the father, they said so!”

Pointing to the dead boy I asked, “Is that - AV3?”

The voices screamed, “Don’t hurt him!”

“I don’t want to hurt him! I’m … sick. I didn’t mean what I did. ”

“We must help… help him alive…can you help him…help him alive?”

Looking around to locate the hole in the clear polymer wall in which I entered, in case I needed to flee, I cautiously said, “No, I’m sorry. I don’t think I can help him to be alive again. I am really sorry. I wish I could, I really do. ” Without waiting for a response, I tried to redirect them and gain some information. “What happened to all the people? The people in the building and outside, why are they all dead? Do you know?”

The young female answered in a warbling tone, “People will come … we must stop them … they are crazy … they said so …”

“Crazy? Why are they crazy?”

“They are crazy…they said so…they will try to hurt us…crazy from the plague … . ”

Plague! Now I am getting somewhere, I thought. Could I be infected with this plague? Was I insane? Why was I not dead like everyone else? Why were these children alive like this? Alright, slow down.

“Maybe … I can help. Do you know more? Tell me more about the plague. ”

“We … must stay alive. The building will help us. The few company men. Stuart. Malik. Briant. They are good, keep them good with drugs. They told us … don’t trust anyone… kill all who come…you…wait… wait… you are the one. We know you. He-he, we did it! We did it! They told us. Ha-Ha. They will be so happy! Happy!”

I started to back away as I detected a sinister change in their tone, despite their childish enthusiasm.

“What do you mean? Why am I the one? Who told you?”

“They said … they said … hold you … kill you … hold you? Use … use … find it AV2! File … found … AV1 … it’s a try … tri … tridiporozioxilide … slow you … confusion, its mental! Mental like crazy! He-he!”

“What? Oh no. ”

The umbrella-like machine extended itself, twirled, and then retracted into the floor as a panel closed the gap. There was a vibration from beneath and a space opened in the floor right beside me. I staggered back, yelled “No! Wait! Stop!”, and a similar strings of pleas, turned to make a run for the opening in the clear barrier, the way that I had entered. A space in the floor opened close to me again and a machine arm seized my leg instantly, before I could make a counter move.

The machine had fortuitously clasped my leg brace and I wriggled out of it in a panic, ignoring the pain. Limping and stumbling my way across the floor toward the hole, I nearly made it close to the atmosphere machines near the aperture, when another space opened in the floor in front of me. I turned slightly as a syringe attached to a manipulation arm plunged into my side. Jumping back from it, I fell to the floor and crawled again around the arm toward my only hope of escape.

As I neared the hole I inexplicably stopped. I put my arm out to steady myself on the clear barrier. A throbbing emanated from various points in my body. I could now see them. My shoulder, chest, left arm, inner thigh – dotted with grotesque metallic-looking tumors. Voices filled my mind. Whispering to me all their secrets and imploring…compelling me to listen. I sat on the floor, my back against the clear wall. My body flushed with an instant fever and my heart detonated with a volley of furious palpitations.

Sensations caused me to convulse as I was bombarded yet again with a series of lucid visions. I was in a drunken fight near neon signs, a crowd cheering. I was trying on a leotard, tight on my naked juvenile form. My husband was yelling as I packed my bags, I was leaving again. The tracks I was following through the brush, disappeared into the terawatt moon.

My face is dark. My skin is dark. My life is dark.

There I am, adjusting my breasts in the dressing room mirror, wondering if I should buy this lingerie for him.

Chapter 4 - Funeral Oration

2006-05-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

Chapter 4

Funeral Oration

Hands locked, the three of us stood in solidarity before the clergyman. Beside the grand mausoleum of our noble family, far away from our true country of residence, we were then on our ancestral land, which those of our line claimed divine right to. We listened to the cleric’s stirring tale of the grandeur of death. We were beyond the realm of exhaustion, though we knew we had to carry on. Our example would make pages the world over, as the photographers shooting with their high-power lenses at the cemetery gates were a constant reminder.

Identical triplets universally exhibit much greater resilience to psychic stresses then a single person does, the unity inherent in us a superhuman support system of a kind. This was the case for us, of course, even much more so then other sets. However, even we had to dig deep for strength, for it was the culmination of nearly a week of unrelenting trial and hardship. It was the day that my sisters and I had to bury our own parents.

The tears no longer came, our ducts swollen dry and our will nearly broken. The service, in the early morning mists of that day, was only the beginning. How would we pretend to cry in the unrelenting hours ahead?

As is the tradition with my family, the previous day was one of continuous religious service and wake. We were considered children, girls barely eleven. Our parents were tragically lost. It had to look good. This day would be marked by one funerary social gathering after another, bringing the entire A to D list of allies, celebrities, dignitaries, and family aristocracy to bear upon our piteous, and woefully fragile selves.

What can possibly inspire more tears, I thought. My repertoire of imaginary sorrows was nearly exhausted, and I was beginning to feel stress.

The cleric was saying, “ … and do not think, as we commit their bodies … to history … that they … their love in life, and their presence, in fact, … shall … end . . . ”

I thought, “Fuck, what must I do then?

Pastor, old boy, what’s the easiest way to obliterate an immortal soul? An Afterlife Assassin™? Vengeful rival god for hire? Yes, that could take some effort. Hard chore for sure if a soul, in fact, existed. Let us think more … current. Space-Time machine to erase them from history then? No, antimatter. Wait … think more practically – book burning. A good, old fashioned, historical record-modifying, or eliminating for that matter, media erasure party. You never existed see because everyone says you didn’t. How many people would I have to kill before both of your names have no meaning at all?

My sister Athena squeezed my hand, immediately sensing the unrest in my thoughts. She moved close to my ear, our doll-like black veils touching. “Why don’t you take a walk, Aurora? You have not slept, people will understand. I’ll deliver the oration. ”

I whispered, “Don’t forget to hit the themes I suggested. ” Without the need for words or movement, she agreed.

I broke from the ceremony, shaking my head and holding out my hand to keep the sea of consolatory interest at bay. Wandering among the other mausoleums, all with the ‘Vitellius’ name upon them, I eventually found one in a far corner, near the woods and safe from prying eyes, its iron door ajar.

Creeping cautiously inside, the movement of the door encouraged a discarded liqueur bottle to roll, but otherwise the interior was free of debris and was in fact very clean, obviously swept and maintained. That is, prior to the intrusion by some assumed drunken townie.

In the center of the space was a relatively plain stone sarcophagus, the light from colorful stained glass paintings shining respectfully upon it. The somewhat modest nature of the interior, along with the peaceful posture and expression in the glass, suggested that this was our physician-philosopher ancestor, Esculapiusa. This was probably a token shrine, possibly containing a famous piece of him, removed from his main resting place far away.

I felt immediately at ease, as if all the prophylactic symbolism could act instantly to generate a pocket of tranquility, diametric from a universe which sought to charge us with a destiny of such import. Jumping up upon the flat stone, the metal hieroglyphics etched into the stone sent chills as the cold easily penetrated my clothes. Laying down as if I was putting myself to rest, I stared at the ceiling reliefs whilst removing my pipe from the interior of my black dress.

The smoke filled the captured air, rolling slowly as it reflected the sunlight, lending the simple act the weight of a religious ritual. It was most appropriate, though this day no one could understand that there was a deeper, more meaningful ceremony at work.

Doing my best to remain in the moment, I allowed myself to feel a bit of the resolution of so much pain. I tried not just to savor our victory over that vile fiend and the ineffectual consort of his, once laughably called a mother by us. I banished the machinations of the future that obsessed me. I attempted not to dwell on all the work my sisters and I had ahead of us.

Really feel this, I thought. This is our turning point, our ascension, our ritual coming of age. Already emancipated from our parents in the eyes of the world, now we emancipate from puberty itself, the natural order is lost. We are above it. This is the bequeathing bang in which our new universe is born. One event, instantaneously setting into motion the space needed to create … everything.

We … we have the power to wrangle every little subatomic piece of our destiny into place. What a … party.

Daydreaming for a time, I drifted on the currents of imagination, feeling my place in history, as my smoke danced across a depiction of my ‘noble’ relative. The scene depicted him pretending to care as he ‘labored’ to build a sewer aqueduct for nearly revolting serfs, dying of their own living conditions, brutal my mediaeval standards, imposed on them by Esculapiusa himself.

The sound of a chirping bird echoed through the crypt. I looked around for a nest or lost wings and then caught myself. Gets me every time.

I removed my small disc and pressed its face. It glowed to life as the programmed bird ring faded. Before I could speak, I could hear that Arnika was covertly piping Athena’s oratory through her phone to me. I looked at the LCD on the disc, a small text message attached to the message, “Zzzzz. ”

Turning up the volume, I let the speech play alongside my chuckles as it reverberated through the chamber. Far too platitudinous, Ena, even for a prodigy, I thought.

Before returning to the services, I amusingly mixed more sound into the soundtrack of this momentous event, as I squatted behind the sarcophagus to avail myself of a relieving pee. My delicate pink panties, personally approved by a cartoon personality, were left behind with some trickles I wiped for the drunkard, after finding their own place of prominence on a rather phallic wall decoration.

Outside, there were no spies to witness my egress from the mausoleum, and I enjoyed the cemetery silence all the way back to the burial, feeling truly refreshed.

Chapter 3 - Ghosts of Corporate Headquarters

2006-05-26T04:58:00.000-07:00

Chapter 3

Ghosts of Corporate Headquarters

The sun was seemingly turned down to ‘low’, like the phosphorous overhead lamps of an office. Water yet again became the first sound to ease me into a conscious state (or was it out of?). I grabbed at a wall of sandbags beside me, hand over hand like a baby climbs the stairs, as I helped myself to my feet. I was standing amid the glass and plastic debris of a shadowy ruined street, struggling for recollection once again. Two sets of round red and orange lights stared at me from the shadows of a nearby retail store, like the eyes of robotic frogs playing piggyback.

You crashed the car into a teeny bopper clothing store, nice.

Dark windows hiding bogeymen all around me as I shivered, cold, wet, and naked near the fortified intersection checkpoint, abandoned as if by children suddenly bored with a game. The moonlight gave me ample light to limp across the debris-strewn street back to the shop window I had crashed through with my vehicle. A desire to be protected in the car, away from the shadows and the smells, asserted itself.

Still unsettled by the mannequins who somehow triggered my ‘panic attack’, they were somehow even more disturbing then the prone and decomposing true residents of this place, an inner voice told me not to look at them and I focused only on the vehicle.

The auto half in the shop was still on, but made a crunching and whirring sound as I tried to put it in gear. The illuminated indicator symbols across the dashboard informed me that nearly everything was wrong with the automobile, except the battery. Realizing that there were possibly a planet full of vehicles to choose from, I exited the car and wandered up the street.

Other clothing stores were all about, as I was obviously in some kind of shopping district. In a daze, I nearly slipped and fell at regular intervals, often on the putrid fluids pooled around the uncountable bodies, as I wandered toward another of the large storefronts. A nearby building with a huge familiar face on its front billboard caught my eye. It was a men’s department store called ‘Celebrity’, the glittery title like the rippling water of a tranquil lake. It became my beacon as the shivering became more severe.

The metal gates had been ripped open, clothes scattered in abundant heaps, as if a sale overstock had reproduced asexually, was left unchecked and finally exploded outward into the street. Since most of the clothes outside were wet, I had to step barefooted inside through the glass. I grabbed a coat quickly from a dismembered celebrity replica near the shattered entrance. I knew his face. As I worked his pants off, his detached head, bouncing and rolling out of the store, became a horrible exclamation point on the fact that real human bodies lay about me in every direction.

Stay focused.

By the time I was dressed, in my threads pilfered from one happy mannequin or another, not sure if they even fit me, Jon Coyote began to enter my mind, pushing the surreal details of my senses out by necessity.

As if by trance, I soon found myself in the nearest sturdy vehicle with its doors unlocked, an extra-wide military all-terrain transport, parked right near a tank with an impossibly huge cannon. I looked up at the moon shining down on the dark silent street. It’s like a blackout. I think I used to like blackouts, I thought. This blackout was serene, fully without the panic or criminal opportunity, as if everyone decided to ignore the situation and stay in bed. Looking at my hands to anchor myself, I tried to understand what was happening to me.

Was I Jon Coyote? I wondered if it was even possible to experience a dream so lucid as to essentially be indistinguishable from reality. I was confused as to which one was even the true reality, like some Buddhist parable or an imagined cinema fiction, shifting back and forth to confuse or amuse.

It was unlike what I somehow inherently knew a dream was - a vague replay of sensory events, old and new. I thought of the possibility that the voices in my mind were my own creation.

Am I hiding something from myself? I thought.

My sense of self faded, as if a childhood memory experienced much too long ago, rubbed away by rethought.

Hands blurry, morphing, I looked out the windshield. The environment, as sickening and frightful as it was, was perhaps more grounding then my inner landscape after all.

The dream, as mundane as it seemed to me at the time, was the only vessel of information, the only detail I knew about myself. Was it nothing more than vague feelings, or was it remembrances of feelings? In the moment, my leg was still in pain. My enigma of appearance and identity, skin burnt or stained, and my situation were the same as when I awoke at the river.

I sat in the transport trying to come up with anything else from the foggy recesses of my mind, hoping that my lucid dream sparked some fire of familiarity. I remained there some time until a felt a bitter frustration which gave way to shifting emotions and suddenly a spasmodic loss of control.

Breathing deeply, I attempted to relax and squelch this rebel element within me. Breath and the release of muscle my instinctual guide. With much effort, and fighting another rise of nausea, I avoided another ‘attack’ and regained control. The dim wispy voices in my mind, that I knew were somehow struggling for freedom, temporarily were suppressed out of fear and the dread of loosing total control again to pass away into death, like the very world around me, into a possibly eternal slumber.

I had no reason to doubt the apocalyptic cityscape as real, and assuming that I must have a serious injury, I started the giant military jeep with resolve and went in search for help and answers.

Driving along the street with all the lights engaged, after initially attempting to avoid the dead strewn about, some semblance of respect still intact, I nearly collided into an overturned twenty-eight-wheel truck and took more direct routes, a concentration camp’s sick test course. As I went I noticed a gradual increase in the size of the buildings. Four to ten-story residential blocks giving way to forty and above skyscraping office and luxury buildings.

Observing a break in the obstructions after dozens of streets and intersections, I took the entrance of a curved overpass rising nearly twenty stories into the air above a seaport. Speeding along the empty road, I had to hit hard on the breaks, screeching to a halt before ramming into another sandbagged military checkpoint. Built completely across the highway, its makeshift mobile gate was closed, a huge gun turret rising into the air behind it on a raised pneumatic platform. These ‘martial law’ structures seemed so out of place among the dignified ruins, as if a thoughtless entrepreneur was running tours of a disaster area.

Whatever happened to these (my?) people, I thought, the effects must be far-reaching for this whole region not to have been reclaimed. Were these obviously desperate military measures employed against an enemy? Was the threat the people themselves? Or was it a simple panic in the face of disaster?

I exited the transport and went to the railing to look out over the harbor in the moonlight. The bay looked like swimming-pool after a raucous party, boats of every size floating, shining like beer bottles, thumping or screeching metal heard as they drifted into each other, listing about unchecked.

Turning away from the melancholy sight, I stared out across the dark city, the buildings closest reflecting the bay at me again through their vasiform glass exteriors, as if pursuing me. A valley of mountainous skyscrapers lay beyond, bisected by another raised four-lane expressway, the off-ramp just beyond the checkpoint. I walked over to release the gate and found a group of dead soldiers in full battle armor littering the ground. To the side behind the sandbag wall was a tent, stacked to the top with canned military food of various types. I could imagine these men, firing off their weapons into crowds of civilians, defending only their food in the final chaotic days of the city, ravioli taking precedence over human life.

Strangely I was not hungry, despite not having any memory of ever eating. I found the release for the gate and rolled it open. I moved the bodies aside, the reflection in the circular glass of their chemical protection masks reminding me of swatted wasps. Moving the vehicle through, I loaded as many cans as I could into the vehicle, knowing that at some point in the future food would be needed.

There were electronic devices around the whole area, but none seemed to have power, as if they received them from a central source. There seemed to be no visible way to connect them with the transport’s power. With the exception of the hospital corridor and its sopping charts, I had seen no paper in the streets, no signs or newspapers. The accounts of their last days could be locked forever in the digital code of these inert devices, as reachable as a fossilized jellyfish within a mountain of granite.

Just as I was about to drive off, after staring at those seemingly well protected soldiers, a sudden realization gradually dismissed the reserved framework of my thinking and I climbed the ladder of the gunnery platform. Initially fumbling with the controls, sending the gun erratically in various directions, I gained an understanding of the weapon and prepared to rouse this inanimate town out its sleep with a violent display. Hoping to get the attention of anyone still living, I fired the weapon at will, lighting up the night, a demented dance disc-jockey with the ultimate sound arsenal.

The swiveling platform came alive and I was spinning like a hyperactive child on an amusement park ride. Focusing on a nearby antiquated bridge, of a distinct architectural style then the rest of the structures, I tried to bring it crashing down into the bay in a wild barrage of explosions. The twang of ruptured steel wires could be heard between deck-shattering collapses. Spinning to and fro I obliterated office windows, destroyed vehicles of every size, exploded fuel tanks, sank sea-craft, and sent a barrage of colorful exploding projectiles into the distant and silent unknown.

After it seemed, in my imagination, that the buildings themselves could be cut like grass, the ammunition stopped abruptly and I was left for awhile to tremble with vibratory aftershocks, as if I was still firing happily away. Fires burned near and far, while displaced objects fell with a crash from extreme heights. Even the gurgling cries of sinking euthanized vessels temporarily returned a semblance of life, however distorted and ultimately morose, to this necropolis. Climbing down after surveying the destruction from my insane S. O. S. , I knew I was probably reliving the fantasy of thousands of office workers who toiled in the cubicles above.

I listened for more than two hours, confirmed by the vehicle clock, for any type of response without luck. Imagined whispers and footsteps heard in every piece of settling rubble. Disappointed, I drove the military vehicle onto the curved onramp, deciding to push onward into the center of the silent monoliths.

The elevated road snaked through the high-rise buildings like a canyon river and soon I became hypnotized by the rhythmic flow and the vehicle’s soothing motor. I slowed down and reached into a nearby bag for a carbonated juice I had taken from the soldier’s tent. A putrid, nauseating smell rose from the beverage as I put it to my lips and hurled it out the window. The taste was like bleach and the few drops I had ingested burned my mouth as acid would. Rifling through the bag, I found a clear plastic bottle of water and rinsed my mouth out. Sudden nausea gripped me as I gulped a mouthful of water and I exited the vehicle just in time to disgorge it upon the cold pavement. As I knelt there on the road panting with my heart in my ears, I looked down at my vomit and in the headlights noticed that it had the same greenish hue I remembered from the crumbled hospital.

A moving light in the corner of my peripheral vision diverted my attention away from my sickness and I rose to my feet. High in the darkness, to the left behind the vehicle, there was a shaft of light that seemed to rise above the city, like a bridge connecting one darkness with another. Grabbing a pair of binoculars and setting them to their highest magnification, I could see a series of tubular elevators traversing the exterior surface of a sleek enormous building. Like ripples of sun on a diamond shard, the illuminated car in a gentile glowing white, glided steadily and swiftly as it soared to the top of the sword-like building, its ridges rimmed in the same dull light.

To my nearly paralyzing astonishment, the top three floors, and several interspersed throughout the length of this massive building, were brightly illuminated, as though a cadre of rebellious workers were working straight through judgment day.

Finding an off-ramp ahead and circling around, always keeping the building’s sharp tip in sight like the north star, I set out again. It took much longer then I initially thought to reach the building, this was not because I could not find a direct route through the raised roadway, rather the skyscraper was of a size that I did not expect.

By reading the measurement still remaining on the binoculars, and by the sheer length of time it took me to even close on it, the building must have been over two thousand meters tall. An intricate, and likewise designed, plaza complex surrounded the building like a city unto itself. All the structures jutted out at extreme angles, with sweeping curves like segmented thorns, organic in its own way, yet bred from a type of innovative thought that could conceive high art from space technology. The buildings all seemed to either protect themselves from the sky or stab at it like the aspiring tentacles of some tyrannous robotic vegetation.

The illuminated entrance signs and maps to the complex heralded it as ‘The Illynois’, the largest building ever built. Named strangely after a confederacy of tribal primitives long extinct, it seems to be the only sign of life that remained. I drove toward the skyscraper’s main entrance, wondering briefly if that long vanished clan would bring something like this into existence, even if given a cultural lifespan of millennia, with such a defiance of nature.

As I drove my vehicle through the barriers that marked the entrance of the grand mall toward the building, I could see that the whole area was illuminated with either natural-seeming light supplied by high and dramatic avant-garde lamps or lit from below the stairs and walkways eerily, several of which ‘crunched’ as I drove over them. A functioning fountain caught my eye. Illumination revealing not pristine white grandeur, but varying shades of purplish horror. Water spewed high into the air with the sound of violence, not the sea, the ‘tones’ no doubt discolored by recent noisome events involving unfathomable violence. A man sat upright on the marble rim near the water on the far side.

He was moving. He was alive.

Slamming the brakes, I screeched to a halt down stone stairs and ran without heed to meet him. The fountain, as I limp-ran around, was in a cloud of flies. Corpses littered the water. As I approached, I could see that the man was dressed in a tattered suit, frayed at all the edges and stained, its original color unknown. He turned to face me, his tie still on straight. He chewed on a handful of moldy bread with one hand, a loose collection of impossibly stained and brittle newspapers in the other. The casual, seated posture was that of any businessman who is enjoying the air of noontime lunch in a local park.

Excitedly approaching him, I called out, “Mister, thank …”

I thought of the weapons I had left behind in my rush. A mistake which soberly washed over me, damning my raft-at-sea enthusiasm. When I beheld his state, complete with an utterly displaced smiling countenance, I knew he was as sick as I must have been.

Eyes bloodshot and swollen, he looked to me, a blackened tumor oozing from just above the sharp edge of his once white and starched collar. He spoke through an upbeat voice, yet the sickness reduced it to an outpatient rasp.

“Weather’s something nice today, eh? Aw-some ball playin to be had on a day like this … the skirts … indian summer, baby. ”

In another realm of time, this kind of man would certainly have been the life of the party, the guy who could always cheer you up with some pub antics that usually involved his own humiliation. The sad sight of him did not quite register.

“Wh … what?”

“Hey, the Titans are gunna clinch this damned series - got a feeling. I say, ‘place your bets, my friend, place your bets, ha’. ”

There was an extremely lethal-looking automatic weapon near his feet, pushed up against the back of a corpse, a military bayonet through it. Through his wide smile, several of his teeth were broken. I made no sudden moves.

“Yes … they just may … pull it out. ”

The man released a barrage of coughs. A minute, or what seemed such, went by before he could take a clear breath. “I should really quit smoking this year …”

“Yes … you have to … think of your health, “ I uttered, equal parts disbelief and disappointment.

Standing there frozen for a time, unable to fathom this absurd development, I began to slightly shiver in fear as he read his ‘newspaper’. He looked to the vacant air at his side, as if someone walked past, and said, “Bill, how ya doin’ buddy … beers on Friday … hell-z yeah …” Chuckling, he began to cough again.

I started to slowly back away. He turned to me and said, “Were do I know you from?”

Reminding me that I needed to question him on my appearance, as I did not really know what I looked like, but too fearful to remain calm, I simply blurted out, “You have the time?” All my instincts pushed to return to the relative safety of the transport to think this situation through, and more importantly, arm myself.

His hopelessly shattered watch read, “Oh. Quarter to. ”

“Thanks … see you later – I’m … late. ”

“Yeah, no problem-o. ”

As I rounded the far side of the fountain, my eyes darting constantly back, I nearly walked right into a dead police horse. The ingrained assigned value of ‘nobility’ made the corpse somehow more of a tragedy, oddly it was not rotting as the human bodes strewn about were, as if the natural world wanted nothing to do with this particular ‘human’ catastrophe. I looked around quickly for his rider, who must surely possess a weapon. I knew that I required an appraisal of events, and more importantly my own perception, even if it was from an apparent lunatic. For all I knew we suffered the same delusion, the same illness. Though two wrongs do not, by any stretch, make a right in this case, I needed him. He could have died at any moment, or I for that matter, or he could have possibly wandered away in delusion to a fatal mishap.

The rider was nowhere about and the close examination of the dead was making me reflexively ill. The businessman was still eating his ‘lunch’, apparently uninterested by my scrambling around. Looking back at the horse from another angle, I noticed a shotgun stock sticking out from beneath him. Running around, I wrested it free from its holster beneath and the sheer weight. My hand was on the horse and I noticed that it was warm. Forgetting the gun for a moment, I went to its mouth. Was it dead? It surely was not breathing, nor its massive heart beating. Eyes were open, unblemished and moist.

Breaking my reverie on this odd observation was the sound of a ringing telephone, seeming to shatter the winds of the empty metropolis. The businessman answered.

“Pronto … Yeah, this is Stu. The what? Again now? Oh … oh yeah. Well … ok – but I better get overtime for that. Alright now you kids take care, bye. ”

He put the phone in his pocket and went back to chewing his bread.

I examined the shotgun. My hands searching the well-worn receiver, I clicked the safety of the shotgun back and forth a few times, not knowing which was which. I guess I’ll find out, I thought. Walking back up to him I said, “Hi again – Stu. ”

“Oh, hi there. I was just talking about you. ”

“Me? Is that right? Listen Stu, I am having a bit of a problem. This may sound ‘strange’, but who am I anyway?”

“I don’t know. I found out you’re not a team player, though. ”

“A team player?”

“Look, after lunch we’re going to have a serious meeting, so don’t go far. I’m sorry to say it has to do with your future at this company. ”

“I don’t believe this . . . I can’t play these games. Stu – what do I look like?”

Stu coughed up something dark and spit it on the ground. “I know you are no fool. Look -you’re good at your job. It’s just …”

“No, no – what do I actually look like? Describe my appearance – I can’t see my body. ” I raised my hand. “It’s sort of a blur …”

“Woa, easy now. Are you on ‘the drugs’? Maybe the owners in the building are right about you. Look, I’m sorry to have to be the one to say – but we’re going to be letting you go. It’s nothing personal – there’s just a lot of cutbacks these days. Look, we’ll talk more about it later. ”

“Later? What later?”

“Yeah, after lunch. I never do any work at lunch. My mealtimes are where I …” Stu had another coughing fit. “… draw the line. But when I’m done - I’m going to poke a few holes in you. ” He began coughing again.

Surprisingly, I put the gun right to his head. It seemed to have no weight at all. “Give me your phone - now!”

Stu, one hand still over his mouth as he coughed away, reached into his pocket with the other free hand, as casually as lending me a cigarette, and held it out to me.

I yelled, “Put it on the ground! Back away!” The tones of my voice sounded like the scraping metal of a sudden crash.

He did not try to recover the weapon at his feet, if in fact it was his at all, and backed well away until he felt he could run off, which he did with dramatic clumsiness. Stu’s unbalance of mind only added chaos. I needed answers. I was sick and frightened. The phone did ring, however, and I needed to know if there were others.

The mobile phone opened like a clamshell, with a screen and a keypad which were illuminated. I knew the symbols on the screen and was able to determine that the signal to the phone was strong. Must be the transmitter atop the building, I thought.

There were saved text messages. Going through them, they were nearly all maintenance instructions on one part of the building of another. Someone must have been sending them to him, either that or it was a divergent personality of his own creation. One message saved was not out of the apparent building archives, but a personal letter. While I was reading it, I heard the distant echoes of Stu yelling repeatedly, “You’re fired! You. Are. Fired. Fired!” Thankfully, he was getting farther away.

Stuart,

You have done exceedingly well on the conduit in the mid-level atmospheric regulator. You will be well rewarded. I have the assurances of the other owners that you will be summoned to our chambers soon.

You are on the fast track. Great work.

We are sending you programming manuals for the main interface. Learn them. If communication becomes hampered within the building, or if messages seem unusual in any way – it will be up to you to do the repairs.

Building security is currently stable and commissary systems on level 98 are functioning on auto for your needs. Please do not go below the 43^rd floor. They are not secured.

One

One? What could that mean, I thought. Unwilling to wait for Stu to mount a possible ambush, I felt I had no choice but to explore the possibility that there were others alive in the building, hostile or not.

There were lobbies with banks of elevators stationed all around the building, a massive vertical train station. Not all were lit. I chose the easiest one to enter, a four storey open space, shattered glass in huge piles littered the floor with broken furniture and bodies. Changing into some military clothes acquired from the transport, still unsure if they actually fit. They felt like they did. I’m probably a man, I remember thinking. I could not be sure at that point, as if I was fighting through a layer of preconscious dream. I slung a small bag of food and water on my shoulder.

As I walked into the lobby, I noticed a dull pain rising in my injured leg and a throbbing in my chest. Soothed by a rising optimism in what I would find, though I had no evidence for this feeling, I was easily able to ignore it.

Suspended in the once enclosed space of this particular lobby was an enormous corporate logo. As if defying gravity, it was a globe crisscrossed with circuits, helping hands reaching out from the body of the world in all directions. Written in multihued marble across the floor, visible even beneath the detritus, were the words ‘Silicon Horizons’. Searching the banks of elevators in the lobby, there was one elevator button illuminated, an apparent express to the topmost levels. A speaker somewhere made the digital version of a gong as I pushed the button and the elevator door’s rim became illuminated in that same soft white I remember seeing from the road.

There was a sucking sound and the doors opened, as if decompressing, the whole car seemingly made of white light, shaped like the cylinder of an antiquated vacuum office delivery tube. I pushed the top button without hesitation and the glow dimmed noticeably on the inside. As the elevator rose over the exterior of the building, the full extent of the dead cityscape came into view. The building I was in was seemingly the only structure lit. To the far left, I could see a fire that I had apparently started with the gun near the docks, becoming larger as it burned out of control.

Startled, I turned quickly to the right after hearing what sounded like a child’s voice mumbling, followed by a subdued playful laughter. Looking around the car, it sounded as if it came from all around me. Upon inspection, some kind of speaker on the roof of the elevator seemed to be projecting the sound around me.

As the elevator reached the top, much faster then I would have thought, a new, mature, digital voice within announced, ‘Top floor. Welcome to the office of Briant J. Langley. ’ Cringing in surprise at the volume of the announcement, my heart skipped a beat as the lift came to a halt.

I stepped off into a sweeping white reception area with three-storey high cathedral ceilings. Lit by a bright luminescent floor, walls and ceiling, it was a century old extrapolation of an imagined, aseptic, hyper-future. I felt like I was floating in a cloud, unsure of each new step as if at any moment the floor could loose its solidity. The elevator door closed and through a window I could see it receding below.

The waiting area was devoid of any sound or activity. I called out, “Hello? Hello, is anyone there?”

The same welcoming digital voice answered, ‘Someone will be with you shortly, please have a seat. ’

“Who are you? Is there anyone here?”

‘Mr. Langley is in his office with another appointment. Someone will be with you shortly, please have a seat. ’

“Appointment? Hey, I need help here, I …”

‘Mr. Langley is in his office with another appointment. Someone will be with you shortly, please have a seat. ’

The canned, prerecorded announcements were obviously controlled by some still-active reception computer program. Even though I did not have any memory of ever hearing one before, it started to seem familiar to me and strangely not alarming considering the circumstances.

The speaker seemed to then change tones quickly from the mature and professional, somewhat artificial, monotone voice and another sound came out, like two giggling playing children. The elevator returned, its doors opening with a hiss, startling me yet again.

“Going down?” The child’s voice asked all around me, chuckling.

“No, I … who … ?“

“Going up? Up, up, up! Hehe … ” The two distinct child-like voices seemed to recede in all directions, as if running away.

Confused, and wondering if I was hallucinating, I strode to the only visible office doors in the reception area. They reached all the way to the ceiling, rimmed in a thin, barely visible, line of brass. Like the entrance to heaven, I thought. I grabbed two shining brass handles, shaped liked curved arms, seemingly floating in midair, and pulled at them. There was a hard loud locking sound and another vacuum-like hiss. I pulled at the doors and they would not budge.

A child-like voice returned and said, “Hide … hide and seek … “ And then faded away with more giggling.

I was shaken and frustrated, a rage welled from within me and I screamed into the air. “Open this god-damned door you little, what ever you are! We need to help each other, damn it! Don’t you know what’s going on?”

Laughing again rose from the corners of the room and then the voices said, “Shhhh! Daddy’s sleeping! He-he … hide and seek …”, and again faded.

I yelled again, and sometimes cursed, into the air for many minutes, but the voices never returned. I then looked about for any other access, but was unsuccessful. The reception desk and chair on a far wall were built into the floor. I would have to force the door using a tool or weapon from the military vehicle.

Going to the elevator, I pushed the down button on the wall. When the elevator arrived and the doors opened, the familiar formal voice exclaimed, “Thank you for coming by. Have a great day!” Just as I was about to push the lobby button, the child-like laughter returned in a near whisper, like radio static, and said, “Goin’ down … slow, slow, slow… he-he …”

All of the floors buttons on the panel lit at the same time and I was treated to a long journey of one dark deserted floor after another all the way down. Just as the door closed on the second floor, the green lights in the lift dimmed nearly to darkness. The elevator then made an express journey all the way to the top again. Fatigued and frustrated, I simply had to endure the ride again to the top as no button or control I could push had any effect on the journey, except for one. When I pushed the ‘Emergency Stop’ button a subdued giggling could be heard.

Once I reached the top, I jumped off quickly.

‘Top floor. Welcome to the office of Briant J. Langley. ’

I looked once again for another access or even a staircase, but there was none. The walls were uninterrupted white, with no visible access except the windows. I decided to try the elevator again, but would jump off at the first floor that opened and try to take the staircase. As I entered, I pushed the lobby button again to see if this prankster would do the same thing as before. The speakers played again.

‘Thank you for coming by. Have a great day!’

The elevator started its regular decent, skipping the floors on its way to the lobby. It then passed the lobby entirely, the ‘L’ light on the panel went off and the lift continued into the basement. Stopping on the second sub-level, the doors opened onto a dimly illuminated underground parking garage. Nothing I could do would get a response from the elevator. All the panels seemed dead and the doors remained ajar.

After the lights in the lift went off, I decided there was little I could do, as there was nothing to stand on to get to the elevator roof access, and crept out into the garage. There were dozens of parked cars interspersed throughout, one dim yellow light still functional on the wall to the right side, casting eerie shadows. On the far end was a security guard’s booth and a rising ramp, which I assumed went to the surface above.

I knew that whoever was playing these games wanted me exactly where I was. That notion and my own physical weakness, added to my overall shakiness. I walked cautiously though the center aisle, limping on my throbbing bad leg. As I reached the center of the lot, a red light came on above the security booth.

I froze as I heard the announcement, in the same familiar proper digital voice as before echo through the concrete garage, “Attention please: Proceed with caution. Computer attendant is now parking cars. Attention: Proceed with caution. Computer attendant is now retrieving your car. Thank you. ”

Before I had a chance to realize what this may mean, all of the lights on all of the cars went on. The electric whirring of engines started and I could hear them being thrown into gear. Running the best I could manage back to the elevator, I was getting close when one car on the left side reversed at the same time a right one did. I staggered back just as they both slammed into each other, rear to rear, like a gate closing. I turned around and saw that the driverless cars were coming to life all around me.

On an impulse, I ran toward one of the walls, just narrowly dodging a colorful reversing ultra-compact. Another vehicle, a wide passenger van, then came forward turning with a fury on screeching tires. I hid behind a concrete column in desperation, hoping that it would hold. The van slammed into it, knocking me to the ground. My bag of provisions forgotten on the ground, I rose just in time to avoid being decapitated by the wheel of yet another vehicle reversing at me, this time a sleek convertible sports car. It clipped the side of the column, scraping its side and removing a side mirror. It gently bumped the wall as the breaks kicked in and I saw my opportunity.

Jumping into the convertible just as I heard it being engaged in drive, I desperately searched for some kind of override. The car sped forward and started to spin at high speed. The car was a type with pivoting wheels, allowing it to rotate in place. I was thrown to the side door as centrifugal force pinned me. Feeling myself becoming severely nauseated, as my organs seemed to find new arrangements, my head invited sleep and a escapist drift away. The garage relentlessly spun in a blur all around me with ever increasing speed. The engine roaring was roaring ever louder by the second.

Fighting the feeling of surrender, I reached out and grabbed at, pushed, pulled, or struck any control I could get my hands or feet on. A saw a bright red light on the other side of the panel and kicked at it with my braced leg. There was a crunching sound followed by a generator powering down. The car was now coasting in place, still spinning as in neutral, but slowing down. I managed to get into the driver’s seat, hit the brakes, and the car came to an abrupt stop. I started the engine with the manual key controls and pressed the accelerator, steering the car toward the guard booth. Lowering my head, I rammed through the gate just as other cars were smashing into each other behind me. I took the ramp without turning back, knowing that there was a ghostly demolition derby occurring and could hear, even over the engine, the crashes as the computer controlled autos made a desperate attempt to reach me.

Once on the surface, crashing through another gate, I went quickly around the dark streets and found the military vehicle parked in the shattered lobby. I loaded ammunition and hand explosives into my pockets, an automatic weapon slung over my shoulder. Just as I was satisfied that I had everything I needed, I heard a subdued crashing sound on the quiet street. Several followed in quick succession and I knew that the cars had also made their way above. Obviously the parking computer’s range was more then I would have liked and the autos would soon be around to this side of the building. I was struck by the madness of it all. My desperate search for help, optimism briefly aloft by the notion that someone might still be alive, had turned into a absurd and violent fight for life.

Past the bank of elevators, I found a stairway entrance and opened the door just in time as three cars came screeching around the corner of the street. They rammed the military vehicle one after another as I watched from the dirty window of a stairwell door. I heard them crash through the remaining structures of the lobby as I ascended the first level on my long journey back to the top, my leg throbbing.

Time was lost to me as I climbed one level after another, the atmosphere regulated to a comfortable constant, easily resting or passing out several times on the way. Surprisingly, the water that I drank from my canteen gave me great energy and I kept it in my stomach easily this time. Equally surprising was the fact that I did not encounter any strange occurrences in that stairwell, as I did in other parts of the building. I even found food in an automated commissary half way up, consuming it with relish, seemingly my first meal, eaten in the corner as machines processed food for people who would not come. The dead world dark as space through the windows I leaned on, as if the building was on an intergalactic voyage.

Finally, I reached the end of the staircase. Without a landing as in the other levels, there was a flush door at the top of the steps. The door had no handle, only a lit computer panel. I first thought of hitting at it with my rife, then realized utilizing the element of surprise might be a better strategy. I pulled the pin on a grenade and placed it on the top step, then ran down as best I could. The explosion hurt my ears only, but knocked me off my feet, as the powerful shockwave was reverberated down the stairwell.

I released the safety on my weapon and went through the blasted door to the illuminated white of the reception area beyond, the floor and walls now full of holes and black cracks. The stairway door must have been concealed, flush with the wall. The large room was still partially illuminated, some lights blinking on and off in distress, and the wind from several shattered windows obscured every other sound, like an approaching tornado. I went over to the giant white doors again, now scraped and dented by high velocity shrapnel. Going back to the stairway entrance, I pulled the pin on another grenade and rolled it to the door. The explosion did not take the doors off, but one was knocked and bent back, and I was able to slide through the space.

Beyond the doors was a giant, similarly illuminated, white hallway that led to a circular staircase, built into the side of the wall. I walked up, weapon in hand, rising through a curved break in the ceiling to stand right in the space above.

The scene was otherworldly. The room was a wide open circular room, built-in furniture and small walls of computer screens, most inactive, came up out of the floor. The floor was the same illuminated white, bathing the room in light just as the reception area. Several stories above, the ceiling revealed the stars through a dramatic triangular skylight, several stories even higher still. The skylight was cleverly designed to be nearly invisible, and the stars seemed unreal in their clarity, as if they were being projected from a planetarium apparatus.

Another digitized giggling sound made me turn to the left and I was startled at the sight. At the far end of the giant space, suspended from invisible means, were three giant transparent globes. Two were filled with a glowing blue fluid, they seemed to contain one naked body in each one, except the rightmost one, which was empty and cracked, its fluid lost, a body laying face down beneath it.

As if time had resigned, the bodies in the tanks were frozen in place, their arms and legs in dramatic positions. On the floor in the corner was another body, sitting like a rag-doll haphazardly placed.

Quickly making my way toward them I was struck and knocked to the ground. My nose started to bleed and my face twitched with pain. There was a perfectly clear glass or plasticized barrier separating me from them, extending I assumed all the way to the ceiling, the smudge marks deposited by my face the most visible feature.

As I examined this nearly invisible sealed environment, to the extreme side which went initially unnoticed, were machines seemingly hooked up to vents hanging in midair. There seemed to be no way to enter. Looking at the person in the corner, I was startled at his condition. If this person, and the apparent child face down, were dead, they were the only ones I had seen that were perfectly preserved, as if they just fell asleep when my elevator door opened.

The giggling sound returned, “ We know you … hehe … “

I was reminded that these were the people who may have tried to kill me in the garage. I felt myself loosing energy and knew I need to act. I walked over and I kicked at the largest vent, eventually breaking it as it let out a decompressing hiss. Pushing the machines connected aside, I entered the sterile area and approached the body in the corner. It was a bearded man in a surgical gown, dead eyes staring away to infinity. He was not decomposed and was completely preserved by the vacuum. Looking up at the blue globes, the people contained within were obviously children. I could now see that they were connected to the top of the globe by an intricate series of wires and micro-tubes that connected right into their bodies in various places, especially their heads.

The one on the left was a female, with small nearly prepubescent breasts and a slight, almost emaciated, figure. Her long blond braided hair extended in all directions from her small elfin head like a gorgon. I did not know her, but there was an unmistakable familiarity. My eyes followed the contours of her face, the skin seemingly just as soft as if she was alive. She looked as if she was frozen in a elaborate aerial dance. The next tank contained a male child with blond hair, perhaps ten, his eyes open as if in surprise, and his extremities stretched out as if he doing jumping jacks when he froze.

I looked at a nearby computer screen with what seemed like medical data, three dimensional figures of various body parts were highlighted with data streaming past. One of the displays seemed to indicate the workings of a power source within the building, digital dials read power levels and floors initialized. As I looked back at the vital signs, for some reason I knew that they were slowed, almost to the level of hibernation. Looking up at the children, I could plainly see that they were alive, their eyes moved in an eerie way, as if they were in REM sleep. Were these the children of a powerful executive, I thought, one last desperate act of selfish preservation the crowning achievement of his success?

Examining the bearded man, there were a great number of punctures and bruises on his body, mostly on his face and abdomen. Even though his clothes were ripped in many places, he looked like a scientist, various medical tools in broken pieces around him.

My husband is a doctor, I thought, he would know what this all means. You’re a scientist, think.

I paused for a long time, perplexed by my own thoughts. What made me think of that phrase?

A digital whispering sound rose, voices again seemed to be all around me. A child voice said, “Shhh, he’s sleeping…we made him …he-he …”

Nervous, I walked over and examined the body of the child laying prone in the fluid. Rolling him over, he seemed identical to the other boy in the suspended globe, probably a twin. This notion stuck in my mind for some reason and I began to clean him off. Twin? Identical. We are one. Strange words seemed to dance in my mind and I put him down abruptly.

I tried to walk away but then found myself at his side again. A warm, somehow wet feeling flushed from just below my shoulder. When I looked to it I could see clearly that my skin was blackened, as though burnt, a copper boil plainly visible just above my chest. Silver veins seemed to run from it, throbbing with life. As I touched it, a whisper without words urged me to touch the boy again.

A child’s scream came over speakers in the room again, this time in a warbling robotic tone, static blaring, “Get away from him!”

Unable to help myself from touching him, I ran my fingers through his short blond hair as a overriding recollection began to take hold. I ripped open my shirt and rubbed my chest, startled at the way my skin and nipples felt. I tore at my clothes until they were completely removed and scraped my long nails on my skull. Pain and pleasure blending in a comforting psychotic strobe, images penetrated my mind like a barrage of artillery. An inner fuel ignited that begged my tensing muscles to implode, to draw life in from the air itself.

Gripping the child’s neck, I pulled him toward me. Digging my nails deep into him, I could have pulled him apart. Transfixed by his blue eyes, I attempted to make a direct connection to his soul by focused concentration alone. On some unknown impulse, I took the boy up into my arms, taking a deep inhalation of his hair, his whole scent, tightly hugging him while I rocked him to and fro.

As I embraced the cybernetic child, disconnected wires scraping my face, my reflection in the glass, with the dim black skyline beyond, became distorted. Through welling tears, I could see an army of female children standing there, their blond hair shining like the rising suns of some new and genetically improved world.

Running toward them, I knew I was going home again. Transformed into that beautiful reality, like an ascension into a celestial paradise, I rose above the deceased earth to be in the light of that everlasting peace again. The life of beauty, ultimate belonging, and … power?

Chapter 2 - A Sylvan View

2006-05-26T04:57:00.000-07:00

Chapter 2

A Sylvan View

The last of the smooth rounded stones from the river were loaded into my double woven basket. Affixed to the wooden frame of my pack, it would be an easy carry back to my earthen cabin, easier still because it was the final haul. When I returned, I could finally begin the mortar process of fashioning the new chimney, whose added size and superior aesthetics will make the approaching winter a great deal more pleasant.

Pausing before I bore the weight up the hill, I looked around me to absorb the moment, let the breeze across the water cool me, and thank the river for its wonderfully crafted gifts. Wading into a still, shallow cove, I splashed some water on my face. After the ripples subsided along with my prayer, I looked down to examine myself in the dark silted water, as I often did when fishing. Since moving back to those wilds of my youth from the city, I could not help the occasional vain interest in my appearance, as unbecoming as it may be. In a way, I needed to actually see the progress as I felt it.

As the years ticked by, the purity of my essence had showed in my face along with the age. My skin lost its metropolitan pale. The body so lost in academic sedentary sedation, hardened as my ancestor’s body would have under the load of survival. The native braids, now with equal black and white hairs, no longer were out of place growing down a tailored suit, in filtered air. They were again happy touching tanned hide and wild changing winds, free of assignment.

I was beginning to respect that reflection again.

It was true that loneliness became more palatable as my true self reemerged from the white man’s fog, as the elder had said. Even so, there was enough of the city’s social machinery still installed for their norms of social acceptance to play a role as well. The village of my people was the better part of a day’s walk from my cabin. Whenever I confronted my reflection, I always wondered if it was time to face them again.

With resolve I decided, as I always did, to wait for a sign. Walking the path up the mountain, I thought, as I always did, Is this Truth or merely Fear. That particular day the self-doubt was rendered irrelevant. The sign would come and I would never know if I could have overcome without intervention.

Oddly, it was not my spirit animal, The Coyote, that settled the conflict in me. As I began the clay cement mixture for my fireplace, just below my observation tower nestled in an old tree, a hawk from a nearby mountain, which I knew well, started to circle above me. This was not unusual. This particular hawk, which I knew as Lazy Giant, dotted my journal with encounters. The lengths this particular huge bird of prey would go through to avoid actual hunting were so extreme that they were comical. Lazy Giant was known to every local predator and would often risk life constantly to scavenge from them, this included me. You just have to laugh as you see him fly off with your newly completed moccasins, thinking it’s a free meal, even if you desire to grab a bow instead.

Stopping construction and feeling generous, I decided to get a treat for Lazy Giant. The dwelling I lived in was a half recessed cabin-cave, that not only molded naturally with the landscape as is custom, but afforded many advantages in summer and winter. The caves interior was a perfect place to bore into ground for cold burial and even in a blistering summer could be relied on for food preservation. Leaving some second class eggs on my tower for him, I resumed my work.

I had walked into these mountains years ago literally naked and fashioned a whole life. From the sacred knowledge acquired in youth, preached but not practiced when I matured to live in the white man world, I crafted all from earth again: shelter, pottery, furniture, bathing tub, ink, paper, cordage, clothes, weapons, traps, pigeonier, smoke-hut, and even my own expressive art. Although the construction of the new fireplace and chimney design was not accurate to my people’s innovations, as it used clay flues to expel smoke from within the cave, it was made from local materials only, true to the spirit of my new life.

For a time, I lost track of Lazy Giant, as I became immersed in the labor, until I heard the calls of the blue jays, eyeing the eggs excitedly. Where was he? I thought, Not even circling anymore? Strange to pass on the eggs. . .

Climbing to the top of my observation blind, I noticed that Lazy was perched on a tree near the foot of the mountain. When he saw me, he started making a fuss, screeching like a nest danger call. At first, I assumed that he merely received a better offer. There was a former champ, now an old-timer bear, who lived down that way who was always over-fishing. As I listened to him though, empting my biased appraisal as best I could, his intentions sounded more and more as though directed at me, warning me only.

Finally thanking me for all the handouts, Lazy? I thought. There must be a human walking the wood or at the least, something he wants me to know about.

As I descended the tree-stand, strolling back to the cabin, I wondered who or what it may be. Wandering hunters were rare on our land, so I assumed it a traveler from the village. Could the Tribal Counsel finally be inviting me back? There were many reasons I wished our relationship improved.

Admittedly, the most pressing was the fact I was not nearly old enough to live in harmony with the mountain, in seclusion, in peace, without a woman.

How often I thought of her, abandoned though I was, and for reasons I did not even know. Let her have her city. Her evil white world. I kicked at a piece of crockery drying in the front of the cabin, utterly shattering it.

What was it about this presence that aroused such feelings after so long a time? Endeavoring to settle the source of this sudden discord, I stalked down the mountain to the intruder and found ‘it’ easily. ‘It’ was a male youth from the village, a messenger from the looks of him. Watching him undetected, I knew he was searching for me, for he held an artificial bag, one used to carry white technology, perhaps a telephone or mini-computer.

The boy was unable to find the right path and was moving in circles. I backed off to consider this turn of events, stalking in a return up to the cabin. Time I would have, due to my practiced and obsessive removal of tracks and trail-markers.

Entering my home, looking around slowly, taking everything in deeply. Somehow, I knew then that this presence in the forest would set something epic in motion. I was not one who received a simple message from the white world.

I wanted to be excited for the possible adventure, but really feeling the moment, I knew there was only sadness in the time-spirit voices. I ran my fingers slowly, lovingly, over many of my cherished items. All, without exception, were integral to my daily life and fostered quite a special breed of intimacy.

Searching my feelings for doubt – I found none. Surprising.

From a recessed shelf dug from the soil in the rear, I removed the ornately colored box containing my soul-knife, the symbol of my tribal identity and every man’s inviolable power, earned in the rights of passage from childhood. I took my work-knife from my side and placed it upon my table.

Removing the soul-knife from the box, I rubbed the hilt, staring at the symbols carved, my trueself symbols. Name, a vitally important concept of my people. Not merely a designation, it was you, your ultimate fate mirror. I was seven before I received my name. The day the shaman and chief sent for me, I walked into their meditation hut, my parents behind me, and they said, “We know now … who you are. ”

Reflective of the world I lived in, each side had a different name. One side had my simple name symbol - ‘Istaqa’. Before the whites, hundreds or thousands of years in the past, this alone would have been inscribed, possibly with more descriptive symbols. However, these were more complicated times. On the other side of the hilt was the white word ‘Jon’, the pictogram of the eye of the watcher, the one who sees not just flaws but the nipping lessons needed to move one along the path, a rare and honorable symbol, one that truly surprised my parents, and the black dog figure on a crescent, the crescent of the teaching hill trickster coyote. Jon Chivy Coyote.

My names … so far away the moments seemed when I considered them, since anyone has even uttered them to me. I thought.

Am I that name? Pure life in the wood offers a unique dimension to self, to connection.

Tying the knife to my belt, there was one last look around. I secured the door behind me and walked down the path to intercept the messenger.

Chapter 1 - The Fallen Hospital

2006-05-26T04:56:00.000-07:00

Part 1: A Birth, The Death, and Questions

Chapter 1

The Fallen Hospital

Consciousness came upon me slowly, like strengthening echoes in an immense deserted valley, until something within coalesced anew and my eyes opened. I could see vaporous faces dissipating around me in the first seconds of that day. They whispered as they fled to the dark corners of my mind, as if they were a child’s bedroom bogymen undone by a light switch.

Before I could pull a face from the messy impressionistic painting of my waking vision, or even discern a clear voice from the vanishing sleeping microcosm that my senses were being pulled from, reality asserted itself.

Without a coherent sense of self, I merely had my surroundings and the senses which process them to work from, like an animal without the benefit of an enlarged forebrain.

There was water flowing all around me, a misty spray danced through the air, and the thunder of a nearby waterfall upstream shut out any other sound. I was lying prone on a lichen and moss covered boulder, my raised head revealing a deep, smothering, impression in the growth, my back to a sun that screamed its heat upon my flesh.

Positioned roughly in the center of a wide and rapid river, I was naked and alone. Gigantic trees and vegetation, in strange complex configurations to my blurry eyes, lined either side of the bank and downstream there appeared to be a concrete wall, with cracks and perfectly cut square and rectangular holes, into which the water flowed.

My body was in pain, but it seemed merely a familiar fact at the time, as if the condition was the norm and not a cause for immediate alarm. The back half of me burned as if something was adhered to it and still aflame. Reaching behind to instinctively examine the area, I let out an inaudible cry as the added sensation sent a thrust of agony, like electricity released from a mad scientist's experiment, which surely went directly to a nexus within my forebrain. Nearly loosing my hold on the rock as I convulsed, I steadied myself and attempted to stand.

Without warning, another attack on my senses was unleashed, as I tried to stand with what would later reveal itself to be a broken ankle. Barely awake for a few moments, I was knocked off my little island to tumble into the vicious flow of the river. Before I could orient myself underwater, my body was sucked through one of the fissures in the wall downstream and slammed into one obstruction after another.

Inside the wall was a maze of chambers and organic debris filtered from the river. The flow would have me linger in the swirl of one algae slick compartment for a few seconds, as if it was an amused predator and I its prey, before violently expelling me into the next. I grabbed at anything within reach. There was a metal bar on a fixture anchored to the ceiling of the next chamber and I willingly let my body be thrust toward it.

After a frantic water ballet, once attached I looked about me for some method of escape. Sudden nausea brought about by pain washed over me and I vomited into the water. The green fluid expelled diffused into the circling flow, reminding me of something I could not quite grasp, as it seemed far away in the foggy recesses of a forgotten dream. Regaining my purpose, I scanned the walls and ceiling.

There were squared porcelain urinals and toilets on the ceiling on the far side of the room and an obvious doorway in the corner beyond them. Tilting my head, I was able to read the 'Exit' sign to the right of this rectangular break in the ceiling. Swimming as best I could, with my body slow to respond, I reached the other side of the chamber. Standing slightly with one leg on an out-cropped sink, I pulled myself up into the room above.

As if gravity had changed its direction out of spite, I collapsed into a pile of garbage seemingly magnetized to a hallway wall that stretched away on either side. Panting in wonder at the broken fixtures and rusted equipment, a sensation of safety and familiarity washed over me. The burning sensation on my back had subsided completely. I struggled to sit up and examine my leg in the dim refracted light of the corridor. Strangely, my sight was blurry, but it seemed only when I looked at myself. In dull colors I could see, just above the ankle, a black bruise rimmed in crimson, standing out in clear contrast to pale, nearly chalk white, skin.

The backs of my hands and legs, and I assumed the whole dorsal side of my body, was stained shades of dark green, like a quilt made of seaweed. As I stared it seemed to fade like a mirage, a shifting impressionistic watercolor. My skin seemed darker then a second ago and I tried to blink it away. As the tan remained, I ignored this apparent illusion as so much did not make sense. From sensation I knew I was nude, but was somehow blind to myself.

I rummaged through the debris on my hands and knees for an object to help support my weight. Despite nearly drowning and the throbbing in my leg, I felt a surge of energy leading me on to explore and escape this strange structure.

Pulling a rusted metal rod from a tangle of forgotten equipment, I hoisted myself up on my uninjured leg. The overturned corridor was wide enough for me to stand straight up with a meter at least to spare. Looking for the source of light, I hobbled along through the piled detritus, which I can now see included bloated corpses and skeletal remains among the moldy heaps. A brief knot of tension formed in my abdomen, but I was not startled in any way. Dismissing the dead, my attention was drawn to a strong shaft of light down the corridor. Surprised at my animalistic instinct to be above, I removed whatever debris or remains from my path without thought or feeling.

Reaching the source of light after some effort, I looked up at a wide break in the ceiling, formerly a main entrance. Two fragments of what were once huge wooden doors hung down few inches on either side, their pieces lying around my feet. Hospital stretchers were piled on each other in a tangle with bones and blue colored cloth, filling the space. A single intense shaft of light came through an opening in the center, the birth canal from this ruined womb.

Standing on a mound of paper, that must have turned to slop then dried, I fingered a fractured and discolored plastic sign above me. I read the words "Intensive Care Unit 4".

There was no way for me to pass through this horrific aperture, however standing and bathing in the light gave me added strength. Like an infusion of stimulants, the rays seemed to have a profound effect on me, though not all of the effects were positive. As I gave my back to the sunshower, a throbbing pain rose, like a heartbeat with a progressively increasing volume.

Limping down the hallway through the debris, I searched for another way out. At the far end of the corridor, past the many rooms either clogged with weighty equipment and dislodged apparatus above, or below churning with flowing water, there stood a sealed metal door with the sign ‘EXIT’ beside it. More than half the door was dripping with condensation and creatively decorated in rust and algae. Without thought, I grabbed the deformed handle and turned the knob.

A wall of water hit me as the door thrust me down with explosive force. Knocked off my feet, I was sent tumbling into the hospital machinery forgotten in the overturned hallway. However, the sheer weight of these devices prevented my limp body from being flushed once again into the swirling rooms below. The strength of the unleashed water gradually subsided until all the trapped water was emptied. Fish imprisoned in the stairwell by the water flows brought the dead corridor to vibrant life. Their dense numbers gradually dispersing throughout the corridor and beyond. With much effort, I then released myself from the crevice made by the pile of EKG machines, defibrillators, and various organ support machinery.

On one leg, I held onto the ceiling’s old light fixtures, now a railing, as I made my way again to the sideways stairwell. My rusted staff lost to the still knee-high water, I leaned on the light fixtures, the familiarity of their form unsettling, and climbed on the stairway railing to move ‘over’ to the next floor. The stairway windows and doors were composed of a heavy metal and were sealed, perhaps by some automatic mechanism, which allowed water to collect over time. Crawling on the railing in the dark, I made my way to the next floor over and forced the algae-slick door open.

There was a similar hallway, with the exception that the wall on the far end had crumbled away and green foliage beyond was plainly visible. The sound of rushing water filled my ears again as I limped or hopped my way closer, stepping over piles of bones, clothes and hospital equipment, all the while careful of the water-filled rooms below.

Through the crevasse, I could see the dense trees on either side of the river. Looking down, the water rushed through the open windows below like a defective dam. Leaning through the hole, I was able to see that there was a metal structure of some kind attached to the outside of the building. It was an intricate rusted scaffolding, bolted to the side, its direction and purpose a total mystery. I reached out through and grabbed on to it immediately, as if I was coming up for air, and clumsily knocked a rusted cabinet into the rapids below. Dangling for a moment, I looked down and saw the cabinet crash into the rocks, releasing a cache of first aid supplies and realizing, if only for a moment, that I should have tended to my wounds before I exited the hospital.

Dismissing the thought, my strong arms responded surprisingly without effort as I climbed up along the rails. The sun and adrenaline fueling my assent like a booster club. In what seemed like no amount of time at all, I was on the top of the overturned building, the concrete hot and rough on my skin as I rested on my back to regain breath.

Feeling as if I could give myself up to an encroaching sleep, (or was it a dream?), I rose to my leg. Avoiding the windows and huge fissures in the building, I limped or crawled my way across the length of the hospital.

As I came closer to the base of the overturned structure, leaving the river behind, through the trees I could see other buildings and ruined streets below. Pain was again coming in waves as the sun heated up the green-stained parts of my body and I rushed for shade. Climbing down the crumbled chunks of the building at its base, I reached the ground and quickly sought the comfort of a shaded tree.

A massive oak was the centerpiece of a nearby park, the street lined with partially crumbled buildings, a light grass began to grow in the cracked tarred street and sidewalk. A faded and dirt-encrusted sign on a bent pole read “War Memorial General Hospital”. Several street signs were beyond it towering over an intersection cluttered with strange abandoned vehicles.

Reading the name on one of the street signs “Chaucer Street”, I realized the fact that I had no trouble reading this language, although the actual name of the tongue eluded me. At the same time, with not a small amount of shock, I realized that I too should have a name.

I thought, What was my name? Do I know who I am?

Struggling there beside the overturned hospital for my identity, there was a sound my brain struggled to reconstruct. Voices of many pitches and sexes cried out in a flurry. It was as if my neuronal pathways were a defective recorder playing ten messages backwards and at the wrong speed. I could not discern a single word clearly in my own mind, like overhearing the unintelligible mutterings of a patient in the far corner of a dark asylum.

Fearing that in this rush of stimuli, I may indeed become mentally ill, or was so already, I pressed my mind for any bit of information that could account for who I was and what happened. My heart seemingly fibrillating out of control as rising fear gripped me. I could not recall one single fact that had bearing on my situation.

I examined my body for any clue.

My skin was pale and smooth with youth. The arms were that of a child. Running my fingers on my forearm, it suddenly thickened. Becoming hairy, tan, and muscular, it clearly aged. My arms were certainly masculine.

All was blurry. My arms were partially stained with green fluid, paled again and were completely hairless. Looking down, there was a old scar, long ago healed like the uncheck growth of tree bark. It swept across the chest from my shoulder to my navel. I had no jewelry, tattoos, or any other marks that I could see. A second later I became dizzy and my skin turned black as coal.

In a panic, I limped to a vehicle, its rear crushed by a piece of the fallen hospital, to examine my face in a side mirror.

My face was a stranger to me.

I stared without recognition for a long time, struggling for a simple legend in the map of my face, any answer in the smooth roads of dermal lines or eye and teeth shades. Just as my mind would skirt the cusp of recognition of one certain feature, it would loose familiarity as if my vision, or my brain’s processing of my optical impulses, were losing cohesion somehow.

I thought, was I even changing or was my brain damaged in some way?

Staring at the whole of my face my eyes were certainly blue. Looking closer at one eye, one pupil, it might have been brown or green or even black. It changed quicker the more intense my focus, the greater my intent. Pulling my face back from the mirror as I looked at the whole again, order would return. My eyes were blue. When I stared at the whole of my face, or away to use my peripheral vision, it was certainly consistent, but as I focused my gaze, that consistency broke down. My face was hairless, but as I stared at my chin, I would feel a phantom beard. I could almost touch it, see it.

When I touched my chest, it was hard, muscular, masculine – or was it? As my hands lingered it would become soft, phantom softness. I could nearly touch the nipples, the breasts, of a feminine form.

As my hands traveled about my cheeks, lips, and nose, I noticed that all of my finger tips were dotted with dark brown, resembling what might occur if I had stuck them repeatedly with pins. Looking too deep at the dots, they would disappear. Staring too long at my bleached skin, the hue would shift.

I thought, I’m Darkskin. No, I’m Caucasian. Bleached white? Painted colors? I felt like a farsighted explorer who could discern a distant ruin but when holding a blurry artifact in the hand, was incapable of the simplest description.

I managed to release focus, letting go of something which felt like tension, without loosing concentration completely. My cranium seemed deformed to me, too much of it added on to the rear part of my skull, as if there grew an added organ, shielded in a thick green carapace. It was more like the head of a newborn, stretched oblong as it passed through the birth canal. As I stared, alarm steadily rising within, I reasoned that the injuries, my head and mind within, my memories must have been badly damaged, in whatever event created this apocalyptic catastrophe.

Concluding that this scene, and my recent ordeal with the river and hospital, was too fantastic to be real. I thought, I must be hallucinating badly.

I turned from the mirror screaming cries of help into the sky and silent architecture as frustration welled up within me, spurred to a brief neurasthenia by overwhelming fear.

“Help me! Someone please help me! Hello! Help!”

My cries were answered only with their echoes, reverberated off the empty caverns of multi-storied residential and office blocks.

As I looked through the valley of dusty buildings all around, minute vegetation beginning to creep through the cracks, I could see only deserted streets and abandoned automobiles stretching away from the ruins of the hospital and nearby river. In a cluttered intersection ahead, a domed vehicle, shaped like a teardrop, with a red cross insignia across its roof was overturned and abandoned after a crash. With the relentless sun at my back, seeming to push me along with pain, I hopped and limped my way barefoot through the broken glass and rough metal debris toward the medical vehicle. Necessity put my identity crisis on hold.

A corpse, mummified by the sun, was ejected when I pulled the rear entranceway open. Like a CPR practice dummy made of papier-mâché, it fell with an unreal weight, as if separating itself from the reality of once being a living human. Without thought, I removed its chest belt with side arm and slung it over my shoulder.

The equipment in the ambulance vehicle was initially unfamiliar to me. However, A deeper, possibly unconscious, memory moved my hands knowingly through the various sealed sterile packages. I apparently hunted for a support brace with healing pads for my leg and was quite surprised when they were selected. As my hands worked themselves with the equipment, of their own volition, as if I was merely a spectator, I realized that whoever I may be, there were medical skills that somehow remained intact. With the brace I was able to put my full weight on my leg and the reconstructive gel contained in the pads tingled pleasantly as it seeped into my skin.

“Doctor? I need your … “ A hallway from the perspective of a shaky video recorder. I was talking to … or was I being told? A man in a black coat that changed to white put out his arms, palms open. The memory shifted.

“May I take your … Mmmmm … dress?”, an elderly man whispered into my ear as he welcomed me into an ornate, candle-lit dining hall.

There appeared in my mind a sickly woman who warned, “Go into the woods, there is … for you here … do not turn back … ”

My emotions, twisting with multitudinous gradations, animated me like a marionette as the random images faded. Muttering voices receded into the shops and haunted avenues around me as I stared into the ambulance and clogged thoroughfare for a time, with genuine hope that they would return.

Far off there was a sound like an approaching thunderstorm. Crashing glass and the melodic sound of tumbling metal pieces along an empty street brought my mind back into focus to the present.

I have no idea what’s happening. Find help, I thought.

Climbing into a nearby auto, after removing its long dead occupant, I drove away into the obstacle course of abandoned and overturned vehicles.

Discarded ground and air wreaks, bodies in various stages of decay, crumbling or abandoned buildings, and empty clean air greeted me at every turn through the silent caverns of this once teeming settlement. Tiny sprouts, the reconnaissance of an advancing vegetation army were visible growth through every available crack and orifice in the artificial structure of the city.

As I drove along, sounding my horn and looking for any indication of sentient life, I looked at my arms, which clearly were now metallic green, and wondered if I had been recruited to fight on this new battlefield.

Indicator lights screamed at me from the panel and a surge of power accelerated the automobile. As I worked various buttons and dials, my mind strayed from the littered street. In an instant I crashed into a pole on a miscalculation and the car deflected into the window of a clothing store.

Inside, the city came to life. A hundred faces, all the same, dressed in the latest fashions and poised in delighted surprise, advanced upon me. They were all little girls with the same face. Voices rose in my mind, like the sound of spectral children at play, while images of sick, desperate and grotesque, victims grabbed at my body.

Though only mannequins were piled on the car, I fled the vehicle, running into the street on my injured leg with glass cutting at my feet and my mind aflame with terror. Stumbling over several ‘real’ corpses, I careened into a pile of sandbags and was knocked into the gutter. Falling face first into a moss and grass-ringed sewer grate, pain crushed my will as something popped on my skin, seeming to flush with hot fluid. My back, fully exposed to the sun again, somehow acted as instigator, adding fuel to the fire of my unrestrained breakdown.

To my eyes, the street scene no longer appeared clear. For a moment, it appeared to be drawn as if by charcoal sketch on rough parchment paper. The warm, oddly wet, feeling flushed through my shoulder. Looking to it, there appeared to be a copper boil upon it, veins of silver ran away in all directions over charred black skin. I put my head down, as it throbbed I progressively felt evermore sleepy.

The sound of water flowing down into the nearby grate eased my mind into some kind of trance, delegated by a congress of shades, as my consciousness slipped away.

Drifting, floating, far from my familiar and somehow comforting first memory - the rocks, river and hospital - reality faded as I lost that new zygotic sense of self. The only external, or bodily, memory I recall is that of an indefinite twitching.

There was a definite time of transition.

A heated debate, ruled by a morphing clan of mumbling black shadows, at a live artillery testing range in a blood-red desert. A broken television, hemorrhaging the remains of every program made, in reverse and at the volume of torture. Rolling down a marble staircase whilst having an orgasm, in a tangled ball of connected bodies held together by barbed wire.

There was a time of accelerating peace.

The forming of rough clay, the hard booting of a computer, the dose that kicks in, the inspiration moment, falling in love, I was being helped.

An under-mind of truth generated a wholly new reality. An existence of order. An awakening without questions. A fated self with beginning and end. Like a slowly drawn out string, whatever unpleasant ignorant states mated and their offspring gave rise to absolute lucidity.

Prologue

2006-05-26T04:55:00.000-07:00

Prologue:

Transmission

Throwing another heavy log on the fire, inhaling the stinging bark smoke willingly, I feel fully present, alive you might say. As I sit to stare at the sparks that rise up to the night sky from the fire on the cracked and overgrown basketball court, the embers seem to join the stars. Exhaling a heavy sigh, like some emergency release valve for my barely disguised and contained inner tensions, I feel I finally know who I am, even though I do not.

The subtle hum of the reactor adds a strange atmosphere to the natural chorus about me. Frog, bird and insect mating calls punctuate a steady tone, not at all unpleasant, one that I have gradually become accustomed to. The daily change in modulation, as the power output increases, acts like a gentile wave guiding me in some way to my fate.

It was only perhaps a month of hard work to learn enough about this abandoned and crumbling property to know that I could revive it, to generate enough power to get the transmitter operational again. By the timepiece of changing moon only, and with a vagrant’s privacy, it seems perhaps another two months were labored to repair what was needed to start the systems. Another two perhaps to wrangle the inner torrent of what I was to broadcast.

When I am finished with these words, I will add them to the stack of forgotten corporate procedural manuals, their sealed colored binders preventing the decay of the precious paper within. Margins, forms, blank back pages, even widely spaced sentences and the empty areas of charts, all the unused surface space they easily took for granted, this is now my palate for thought. My journey, my only recollections, now fill the spaces never remotely considered by anyone.

As I sit here before the firelight, finally scribbling this most procrastinated portion of my message, I am a tempest of feeling as the time of transmission draws near, the scavenged pencils I use often breaking from sheer momentum.

My imagined resolve in this act of communication (or is it communion?) is as unwavering as that of my brain cells themselves that mysteriously bore it. What they have exhibited, irrespective of ‘me’, belies a premeditated act of microcellular creation, of which I can only report. Like the information contained in the universe itself, thoughts of import impel their construct to always find the little cracks of consciousness to ooze from.

But this is not important right now.

The weight of meaning and the realities of the aftermath of my efforts, push whatever emotions I possess into apparently virgin territory. They pump away, a part of me as much as they are wholly separate. I must remember to remain merely a reporter, centering myself on the remembered facts and keeping the feelings and implications at bay. Though a crab tossed by a tsunami, I remain a vigilant watchman of my own subjective maelstrom.

My purpose became clear, gifted to me as it was, as I stared one day at the plants gradually making their way to the top of the impressive kilometer tall white globe, which was the old transmitter at Alderville’s former Media Broadcast Centre. Like all the decrepit real estate now inherited by me, each has its own baffling personality and I suppose this had an effect on me as I lingered here, long before knowing what I needed to do.

At first, it was easy to become lost and revel in the unique glory of this beautiful place. Unlike most other lonesome artifacts of humanity left about everywhere, these buildings are ripe with a kind of melancholy symbolism. The materials here, the surfaces, the tiny interconnected parts, seem to resonate with one voice. A force that stands beside what is seen. Though what is seen is likewise the focus of the relentless recovery efforts of micro-nature, the world’s seldom considered and rarely seen overachieving inhabitants. Searching myself for the root of this perceived potency, I endeavored to achieve some sort of intimacy.

Feelings grew rather quickly and guided me. Comfortable like no where else, I walked back and forth over the sweeping pedestrian walkways, carpeted with leaves and guarded by nesting birds in every lamplight. Unlike other places I have recently seen, the architecture throughout is a true conglomeration of every major style from the last century or two.

More than merely loved as it was aided through one era after the next, my explorations revealed more redundancy designed into the Centre, on all levels, then I imagine exist at military installations of the highest order. Perhaps I can observe and be influenced by, but do not truly understand, a culture (my culture?) that seemingly places the loss of telecommunications and media in the same category as food and atmosphere. Basic trait of species? Somehow surviving without its host?

Something like desire still exists here.

Phantom traces of human lives lurk about here like smoke hanging on the air, fanned away yet still smoldering, more so than most other so-called empty places I now haunt. My hands and steps unavoidably trace their old movements in a kind of mindless chronological massage. I find myself hopelessly lost in the deleted past wherever I went, wandering likewise on those atmospheric currents, as if cursed to a gradually fading echo like some ghostly ancestor.

Every sopping, mossy metal chair and rusty doorknob become a meditation on the life of some secret unknown from long ago, or some parallel neighborhood for that matter, where hands kept them to their purpose, gave them their existence. The thought came once of expending the effort of maintaining one of the properties I was particularly attracted to, for whatever reason, as a ‘home’ I suppose you could label it, since there are so many buildings in this strange complex.

Call it instinct.

Quickly, however, I found this blind stab at a kind of normalcy, one only vaguely remembered in the first place, quite impossible. I simply ran from the cafeteria I had moved into after the absurdity of ‘sweeping’ one day literally knocked me over.

That was when I found myself staring at the huge transmitter, the globe. I thought of leaving this place to return walking. Unfortunately, hiding in some form of comforting ignorance is just not an option for me either. My mission, then only vaguely understood, became as the days wore on, my gradually increasing obsession. It seemed to me to be a rather human one, to be heard, by anything – even a dog who happened to cock his head just right.

The urge to cry out, to be understood by the pack, even if it is just a theoretical possibility, is something hardwired into any member of a tribal species, I suppose. To bond somehow and let whoever may be listening know something of my life is an urge I have found difficult to suppress, regardless if the message will end up bouncing through earth and space forever undeciphered. Even the most dedicated hermitic human will find that some connections are required. The lonely, I remember, talked to their pets as if lovers and the discarded homeless to anything that would listen, even their imaginations. Though I have drifted without care for a long time in my lonely journeys, connection was always lurking in the back of my mind, forcing itself into my attention like the stare of a stranger.

Is this stranger my own animal instincts asserting themselves or just my remainder bin of memories? Perhaps it is those persistent little evolving artifacts, who may soon no longer need ‘me’. Is it a delusion, or can all the cells that make up a body somehow get along without that annoying phenomena called consciousness or sentience.

What of my memories?

These broken pieces are the survivors, the life rafts of my own diseased, but somehow transcendent life. Perhaps they are merely the collective dream of a soul, a fair witness, damaged by an act of god. Perhaps I was merely selected by simple, wholly natural, forces of physical law on an infinitesimally small scale as to escape notice and imagination. I hope to have answers soon, for even forced exertion of the details that I have, in fact, even written - yields little. Answers may be unreasonable to expect, completion of my journey may not.

As I write this introduction to my transmission alongside the somehow purging bonfire, it is easy to suppose that my life is much simpler. The belief that I am merely plagued with the meditative reflection that often afflicts people when they are around a fire is comforting. The hypnotic fire itself, though empty of information, forces pressurized liquid thought to rush in and fill the space as one remains transfixed to it.

For my situation in particular, it is also comforting in some strange way to believe that I am simply gripped by madness.

Regardless, I could have driven the chill of the night away in any one of the buildings, for their encrusted vents no longer exhale just debris, but heated air. Even some of the lights work. However, I cannot bring myself to be inside for too long for whatever reason, now that the work on the equipment is done. From here, outside with the wild nocturnals in the former recreation area, I can see the inert red light previously dangled out of the control room window. When it illuminates I will march up there, transcribe into the machines, and broadcast.

Thinking to that moment, my instincts tell me to flee once the machines are set to repeat, while power still sustains them. Although my progress has been largely uninterrupted since I arrived, aside from the occasional brush with the wildlife that now resides here, I sense the very act of cohesion I am attempting will ultimately draw sinister attention.

Paranoia?

Perhaps, but resuscitating this disused cathedral to the media animal will likely issue a tone when the eyes finally open again. A tone that, at the very least, my relatives will hear. Knowing those two, they will certainly be listening, even if no one on the planet has the ears for this particular tune.

Perhaps it is they who would ultimately give me the answers I require.

Perhaps they will kill me on principal alone.

Perhaps they will chop up my abominous body, my tumors being the repository of souls, to lay me on some distant medical freak show trophy shelf – forever. Unable as they may be to let go with what is now part of me.

Fear.

I cannot dwell on the possibility they represent. I must not loose focus. I must not loose voice. I must focus on you. You, my savior in more then one sense.

Forgive these seemingly psychotic machinations of thought. Forgive the enigmatic allusions. Do not let them scare you away. Hear me as I commune, even though it may be sometimes be in tongues.

Hope allows me the belief that ‘you’, with the intimacy that we will share through these words, will find greater understanding lurking in these visions, these memories, then I. Perhaps, one day you can be the benefactor of my ignorant enlightenment, for I am the crate dislodged at sea. What is inside, is for you. What is outside, is beyond my power.

As near as I can recon with any amount of certitude, everything began for what I consider as ‘me’ in one moment, my first true moment.

Unlike the newly birthed, I recall with complete clarity that sensation of sudden being that greeted me. I would understand, much later, why nature found it advantageous to loose those feelings to time. To an already structured mind, birth is overwhelming in a unique way that I suspect separates itself from the infant.

Like a detonation, my birth was the sudden genesis of self that greets the amnesiac.