As The Raven Escapes, or Eyes Shut: Starlight – David Flies.

26 pages. The reason the site is called A New Gnosis is that while gnosis does not change because it cannot, its messaging can evolve. This is the first chapter of my second novel. It is formatted for a blog, with break lines to note where the second and third stories start. Enjoy. Joshua David Levi, Author’s name for General Audience & Poetry.

As The Raven Escapes; or Eyes Shut: Starlight (original title.) Book One: David Flies.

1. David & Juniper With Banter, Rose & Abbly.

                 David and his latest travelling companion were “speaking”. But this implies sound resonating from vocal cords to reverberate off ear drums, implying throats and ears housing cords and drums, implying bodies and physicality. A form of physicality. David and Juniper were no longer bodies on earth. They had become clear, glowing thick gelatinous blobs roughly the dimensions of the space their bodies had occupied before leaving. Now each was only differentiated by a self-binding tension separating them from the glowing plasma through which they slid.

                 “What was that? For a second there I wasn’t sure-”

                 “-If you’d come back?”

                 “I guess. It got so bright. Much brighter than this and I forgot everything, it was like I almost no longer felt…”

                 “Try staying there as long as you can each time you pass through. That is, if you even exist there.”

                 “Why?

                 “Questions are meant to be answered.”

                 “This feels more comfortable.”

                 “I agree. Here we have the luxury of being able to be us feeling comfortable.”

                 Juniper laughed and it was a long while before she stopped. Laughing in transit isn’t a projection forth from one person in reaction to stimulus. Here laughing is sheer undulation throughout the blob of gel you have become and it emanates from where you know your torso would be, enveloping along the length of your being in both directions simultaneously until you, in your entirety, have lost any uniform property; until you only exist in waves causing the resonance of sound. David enjoyed the reverie he heard and felt in transit when a person laughed their first time. For some time, he would try to get them to laugh, but soon learned that for most the entire proposition and scope of no longer being your body was too daunting. Once taught to fall, everyone still senses their bodies, but in a form they never conceived.

                 Terms of referential perspective make David laugh. He uses the term “fall”. It approximates the momentary sense of weightlessness common to someone abruptly falling from a higher position to a lower one and encapsulates the tension felt as they inwardly struggle to stabilize themselves. Not a psychological tension- a physical reverberation caused by a falling conscious body searching without hope to find rest. When falling in a normal sense, like off an unforeseen high curb, an inner, subtle search for some solid surface below your foot arises – you physically search to stop falling – seasoned fallers, skydivers for example, learn to quell that sense and enjoy their time moving downward. In transit the tension doesn’t leave. The body becomes a singular, conglomerated unit of varying degrees of tensed nondescript physicality, and it’s like the invisible inner tremors seize a person midfall do not end. One learns to appreciate it because, while travelling, were it not for these constant tensile sensations racing through the assembly of glowing jelly you’ve become, you wouldn’t be aware of your form at all.

                 Referential perspective; when he leaves does he move upward? Really? Or downward?  He and each person he takes with him moves “through” and “into,” but those are only thoughts referencing perceptions and all those become propositions that lose hold at some point. At many points in fact, as many points as there are stars.

                 “How far have we gone, David?”  

                 “Can you tell our journey is near its end?”

                 “How?”

                 “We and all of this around us have been dimming ever since we came back through that place where we lost who and what we are.”

                 “It’s all pretty bright. But not like it was.”

                 “It will all dim by another order of magnitude and that’s when we’ll arrive.” 

                 Space traversed in transit is glowing, palpable and endless. While travelling one is completely surrounded by and swallowed up inside this space. Only the slightest parameters differentiate you, only varying degrees of tension tell you you’re alive, that’s where psychology comes in. Hardly anyone entertains for a prolonged period of time an idea that they are wholly indistinct from the world around them. The thought that as an individual you have some intrinsic value elevates you, marks you as separate from the physical world, but even the notion that because you can have this idea you are different is challenged at its foundation during transit. This challenge garners its own appreciation as a possible way to structure self-definition, when faced by the miniscule nature of your own being, nearly anything would.

                 Of course, even this is thought. David giggles and Juniper feels the waves he triggers lapping through her. Communication appears a-causal; outward undulations of a being in transit, indicative of communication, are not transferred into the medium which surrounds the sender of a thought or feeling; no waves travel through the ocean of plasma. The giggle and its attendant thoughts reverberate inward from David’s surface to the central length of his being, his core, and outward from Juniper’s core. Near as David can figure, people in transit that have left together are entangled on a quantum level just as they are entangled to their physical world.  Virtue of two people falling and “entering” the physical material of reality, as the formulating fabric of their bodies, apparently substantiates a bond that, among other things, is used for communication. -More thought. Thoughts often found emotions and emotions, when not properly sourced or used, shackle perception. It’s the reason for David’s work.

                 “It’s our work now David.”

                 Not much is private in transit.

                 “I suppose you might do the same thing Juniper. I developed a skill allowing me to discover the actual chain of thought and emotion binding people to the world. I then follow that chain to where the emotional construct embeds inside someone. From there, I just nudge people along till that construct dissolves. Juniper, you are the first person I have never had to confront with their past.”

                 “That was my work. I did it.”

                 “Sure, and that’s true. I never do the work for anyone. How did you find me?”

                 “I felt a rumbling in my gut and a warm sort of chill reverberating up either side of my spine. It spread into my legs and arms as I sped up, heading to the Questioning Room to take your lunch order. HaH!” Juniper was laughing again, she continues, “I had arms and legs there…. A spine… HAHAHAHaa!”

                 “You are a peculiar case. We’ll be bodies again soon.” David has become accustomed to just about any occurrence when showing people how to leave, and while travelling with them their first time. He always thought it absurd to think he was the sole person to develop the ability in people, so he wasn’t going to get caught up on this slight a detail. Plus, he figures not filling Juniper’s head with the notion that because she can do this she’s some sort of amazing being, works out best in the long run.

                 “I suppose so,”

                 She speaks, again picking up on David’s train of thought.

                 “I guess the point should be getting more people to know they can do this for themselves.”

                 “That’s where I’m at with it.”

                 “Looks like maybe all this has dimmed.”

                 “It’s most notable just before entry.” 

                 As one approaches their destination, a bottom is the first discernable structure. Within the unending expanse of the glowing, gelatinous field there suddenly appears a flat surface toward which one is descending, a floor just as slightly differentiated as they are from the rest of the glowing gel-ocean. Only the homogeny of the field at large sets distinctions. For an untold amount of time in travel, the only differentiations they each knew were their bodies, and now a large, flat undulating floor was the third.

                 To a traveler’s perspective the glowing surface is touched by the furthermost bottom extremity of their gelatinous body. As this apparent contact is made a swift spinning occurs. A spin much like the twirling body of a ballet dancer accomplished at such a speed it only registers as an aftereffect. An aftereffect of quickly fading import because at the spin’s completion, travelers find themselves to again be a physical body in a physical world.

                 Despite a vaguely haunting sensation they have suddenly halted an incredibly fast twirl, upon arrival a traveler finds they are standing on ground, arms at their sides, with eyes closed. No conscious volition is necessary to arrive with eyes closed. It’s apparently an autonomic physical response and the accompanying sensation of having just arrived, the one allowing a bodily sense of physical immersion into the world you’ve travelled to, is the weight of the planet’s atmosphere pressing on the surfaces of your body and its hit is stronger on exposed skin.

                 What David can never escape, even still, are effects of arrival settling in on his physical form. A downward pull on everything within your body from skeleton, organs, heart and muscles seizes you upon landing. It doesn’t last long. Once gravity has taken hold it feels as natural as ever, except your own certainty that a second ago none of this applied; you weren’t a body of skin, organs and bones, much less a being on a planet experiencing gravity. Immediately there is an invisible push of uniform weight as pressure, almost-anxiety takes over from outside you and to you in all directions.

                 All that seems to be doing the pushing is air, precisely, the atmosphere of a new planet but the same, uniformly distributed twelve pounds per square inch.

                 “And we’re here.”

                 David announces, looking at Juniper.

                 Who is standing a few feet away facing him. Her eyes are just beginning to open. As they do a sound of immense awe escapes her mouth. As the pressure of normal to anyone air registers, the warmth of the planet’s star, if it’s a clear day hits you. Naturally, landing in a rain storm is more dramatic. Whatever the weather it arrives just as, all at once. These effects are impossible to shake while David has found that with experience, physical registry of these sensations can be mitigated but not at all ignored. 

                 “Ahhwawhao – What?” She laughs, looking around,

                 “This looks just like Earth. Didn’t you say we were going to a different dimension?”

                 Juniper’s reorienting herself to physicality seems to have been astonishingly easy. New travelers never flip out. There’s a lot of work to do in preparation and that eliminates the possibility of freaking out. They tall had to stop being concerned with their looks, which is harder than you may think. To rearrange your sensibilities regarding vanity,  and that’s not ever – not at any time, the issue with people qualified to start. Though the stage fights his pupils as if they secretly always needed hours in the mirror, then as fi they always wanted the fruitless procedures attending truly vain people. David’s ‘people’ across an average of eight weeks, before they discovered they can move while remaining still.

                 David starts in building a trapped target to a new traveler, with a one hundred percent success rate in an average of two months.

                 But this time, Juniper.  Unlike anything he’s encountered.

                 He takes a second before responding, preparing himself to observe this near, self-controlled anomaly. As he interacts with her, he’s basically reading the same script except all at once, sort of. This isn’t David, it’s Juniper. He isn’t finishing up on Sherat with a student. He thinks it’s exciting, feeling as untouchable as the universe’s first traveler and says,

                 “Technically it is another dimension so, it isn’t the same planet. You’ll catch onto the differences soon.”

                 David, having done this countless, maybe millions of times – non one knows David’s age. He doesn’t much hang (if you get the phrase).  Can’t even remember being impressed with details of transit, like:  the clothes you are wearing somehow travel with you; apparent time of day or evening you left from, wherever you came from is approximately the same when you arrive – not just, if leaving in daytime you will never arrive at your destination at nighttime. It seems to be the same hour. Naturally, internal time can only be set in relation to sunsets and sunrises still; if one leaves around three-thirty, or two hours prior to a winter sunset, one will arrive two hours prior to sunset. The sun might be setting in what feels like a different season, but it will set on not just Sherat but on Retah, Thera – any and all trapped people planets including Earth.

                 If your sun sets in two hours on Earth, plan out how to enjoy it on Sherat, the only place David takes anyone; they’re free from there on out. David, the liberator.

                 Suddenly Juniper’s taking in her surrounding-silence breaks,

                 “Did anyone see us land?”

                 They had landed in an open field of a city park. In the distance, there were people engaging in the same sort of activities anyone would enjoy at a park on Earth. At one end of the field a swing set with children being pushed by their parents; about twenty yards away from them, a couple enjoying a picnic. The name of the planet won’t be important for a while. A typical late morning scene in any park anywhere, no one took notice of David and Juniper’s arrival.

                 “They’ll see us soon. Some may have already. Thing is once we are seen by them, it will be like we were always here. Even if a nanosecond earlier a person was looking directly at this very spot, our presence would not be a surprise.”

                 “How’s that work?”

                 “Not quite sure, as I can figure it goes like this: This dimension, this planet. Is named Sherat by the way but otherwise just like any other, serves as the focal range of attention for the sentient conscious awareness of the people living here. These people were born and raised here. We, our awareness, are not party to this particular field known to this planet’s sentient beings. Thus, we never exist to anyone from here until we are seen by someone from here. Once we are seen, suddenly we exist to them – after all, we look just like them.”

                 Juniper is listening, without making eye contact without – she’s hearing David but noticing a long thick line shadow along the ground. She moves only her eyes up to see it. Darts her eyes with a head turn slightly and with her shoulder nudges David, to tell him, she’s seeing that in their reactions. But she means the looming bent rod, knowing he’ll get it if she focuses – but then, she realizes he’ll address it.

                 “Also, these people have no perspective from which to conjecture how we existed before we were here. They aren’t the ones who just arrived into a field of perception as it is known by a whole other planets’ population.” Juniper was struggling on the why but,

                 “We just arrived to where they have always been. So…”

                 David saves her,

                 “The only place they have ever known. And the perceptive conscious awareness we’ve each possessed since we were born belongs to another place.”

                 David squint winks out of one eye, a perfect half squint wink he must’ve taken years to master, continuing because he‘s starting to feel like Juniper’s leading the final lesson, compared to what he still must read off his accomplished pupil script:

                 “Once we were seen by these people we existed here just like them but it is impossible for them to see us arrive because all anyone here has, is their own individual awareness of their world. If you were to travel from point A to point B in the same dimension on the same planet, then you move within the same field you share with everyone else. In that case your arrival can be seen because the witnesses know the same world you’re a part of. It’s an subtle yet very real connection shared amongst every person perceiving and living in any given dimension.”

                 “How can that be?”

                 “I’m not sure, it’s the only conclusion I’ve come to that might explain it. Once you’ve been seen so far as anyone knows, you’ve always been there. When you leave, if anyone’s around, it will be seen.”

                 As if she’s actually finished calculus problems in her trapped life, which interests David but he has no time, Juniper:

                 “Well, I guess. If after we’ve been seen it’s like we’ve always been there-”

                 “That’s it, so try not to leave in public. It’s a mystery we are not likely to solve. There are a few things I must explain to acquaint you with this place before we part ways.”

                 “Yeah, like that?” Juniper is looking straight up and pointing into the sky, at a floating, glinting thin metallic arch covering a quarter of the expanse between horizons.

                 “It’s a large part of the problem here.”

                 “-Problem? This place seems nice enough.”

                 As she looks at the arch again, Juniper notices flashes of light scintillating along its length.

                 “Those quick flashes are sources of invisible lightning strikes. You’ve heard of electro shock therapy, right?”

                 “Yeah David. I know about it. Sargent Harris said you need some.”

                 “Everyone who lives here is treated to constant remote electro shock therapy, and that thing does the shocking.”

                 Juniper speaks with a degree of awe,

                 “That’s what’s happening here? How?”

                 “It’s your basic quantum entanglement device.”

                 “Right, basic…” Juniper says in a dismissive tone.

                 “Each charge of lightning starts there and hits its target on the ground without producing a bolt connecting the two.    You thought getting out – that learning how to travel was the hard part and that’s common. Fact is, there’s a real problem on every physical planet,”

                 “Dimension, David, you said we were going to another dimension.”

                 “Semantics.  -Look, you got a planet. Just like anyone because dimensions are only for control and they are dangerous. Think: Reich.”

                 Juniper finally locks her eyes to David. He’s not engaging. He’s talking and she hates Nazis as much as most,

                 “Excuse me,”

                 David pauses, knowing what her type will say. They’re the people who want dimensions in their heads. He doesn’t care to point it out but,

                 “You caught the word Reich, correct.” Juniper softly half nods,

                 “Is suppose you take that on? Mr. Inquisitor.”

                 “It’s only your work if you start it. All you need is mapping out strategy. Juniper, you clearly have done that to get here, so use it. I do have limited time here plus you’re advanced. Trust me.”

                 “David, you a sound like an idiot inquisitor to me-“

                 He interrupts, turning for the first time to what Juniper doesn’t’ know is her new eyes. That’s his fun part. He resigns to hold out for the moment he walks them to, steering this to as usual as it can be, then resuming the questioning on Earth. Hopefully he’ll appreciate his but their, only worthwhile moment this time.

                 He settles on using her name often, to contain and his tone lowers volume,

                 “Think about what I said Juniper. Think about what you may get into, Reich literally means dimension of unseen controls. Juniper, on Earth they think it’s like a group effort – covert lives lived for one third of the world but single out any of their kind, they can hardly keep track of a thing – it’s like sex clubs hooking into a computer. All of the, everyone loyal. Even though if it’s not by brith it becomes mind control, will never change anything.”

                 He nods reassuringly knowing he put Juniper, I’m a stronger inquisitor on pause, then, an encouraging nod to stipulate,

                 “Juniper. It’s men paid in sex who won’t listen.”

                 She involuntarily let a quiet ‘okay’ slips, something she hated in here self when she was 16, she hadn’t done it, especially around males since then but David,

                 “7 percent aptitude.”

——-

Jordan does not remember the following data set. I disclose pertinent thought and feeling as accurately as possible. There is little I can do about subconscious impressions the boy uses to shade his memories. Those impressions are why I’m here. Actually, my being is best described as impressions on the subconscious. But I don’t need him confronting me yet, so I’ll make certain he doesn’t read over this, and we’ll get into to the report.  We were about six years old. Jordan said:

“I know everything.”

“No son, you don’t know everything,”

He was standing next to Mom. She seated at the breakfast table. Dad started laughing and in his bellowing voice,

“Ma, this kid is silly.”

Jordan saw mom’s face warm a motherly shine. He says he’s always noticed those things. Mother embraced father, she whispered,

“Oh my, look what we’ve made.”

Jordan continued, as serious as a six-year-old can muster:

“I do know everything.” 

Mom had the softest blues he had ever seen in her eyes that day.

He recalls her easy smile, 

“Why don’t you run off and play sweetie.”

Jordan read as if words had been written in a shift of mom’s face:  

“My boy will understand.”

Jordan’s a sentimental sap. Every parent feels their child will see and accomplish more than they have.

He left mom and dad in their kitchen (room for preparing sustenance), ran out front to our neighborhood’s wet morning sidewalk (path for advancing). As he walked, he occasionally ground Earthworms into the cement. The ones he missed were baking to death in sunbeams shot through the large olive trees that lined his street. That Saturday morning was the aftermath of the previous night’s storm. Jordan thought the sky looked ‘clear as a bell,’ just like mom always said. He claims Mom would say that day or night, even if it was raining. Also, this may have been the first time Jordan noticed Father call his wife “Ma-” not Honey or Babe. He remembers Grandpa using the same term for Grandma.  

Storm drains were backed up, which made the gutters two parallel rivers four feet wide. He started hop-skipping through standing rainwater. He waded and danced through half a block where no cars were parked. Jordan’s procession halted about a yard from the back of a rusty blue pick-up. Standing at a spot in the road where gutter water was just below his knees, Jordan threw his head back and looked straight up at the canopy of a tall olive tree which shaded his side of the street. He started twisting his body at his hips, swiveling his head left to right faster and faster, looking upward.

Long branches began to look like they were bending, sort of slithering, like gigantic airborne snakes. In less than a minute, Jordan felt his stomach turn. He noticed sun baking his back. Morning heated up the precise moment the scent of warmed-over gutter water entered his nostrils. He’d always had a weak stomach. Jordan dashed out of the gutter onto the sidewalk quickly and escaped the enveloping stench of floating grease and dirt before it could make him gag, then it’s gag to puke. 

On the sidewalk he noticed a weaker scent of rain evaporating off green grass, seeming to clean the air. As he walked his jeans absorbed grimy water and stiffened. His socks and shoes were soaked and Jordan began to notice a sloshing sound at t. He slowed to a step every five seconds then sped to a near sprint, creating with his steps a squishy rhythm only he could hear. He matched the sloshing squishes to lyrics,

“You-u are my sun–shine my only-sunshine you make me hap–py when skies are-grey,” a song he say’s mom used to sing.

I don’t remember it. That Saturday’s read-out: Rejection / escape / fun / partial peace – moving with a temporary river (glimpse of eternity) / too much rainwater (excess fertility causing anger) / distance of trinity (grace) / lubricant-making easier / heat / grease (processed lubricant) / nausea / cleanser / melody. The following Wednesday: 

Jordan stood in the middle of the kindergarten grass playground holding a ball of mixed swirling blue shades. He had been turning it in his hands, slowly tracing the darkest blue swirl with his index finger over and over. Roy, one of his kindergarten classmates screeched,

“Gimme the ball.”

Jordan kindly,

“Wanna play?”

Roy snottily, arms crossed,

“Not with you.”

Roy was a pudgy deep olive-skinned boy. He asked him why they couldn’t play together, Roy’s response:

            “-Cuz I don’t like you.” 

“Why don’t you like me?”

“-Cuz you’re a dummy, Gimmme the ball.”

Jordan’s eyes searched the playground for his teacher. Ms. Lomer was standing half the grass field and a blacktop away outside his classroom door. He saw her bright red dress and turned his head back toward Roy. A sudden sharp pain exploded through his gut. Roy had thrown a right fisted punch into Jordan’s stomach. He folded his torso, collapsing forward as Roy withdrew his hand and the ball bounced away. He remembers sucking dryly for air, heaving and gasping for breath, hears loud laughs as he starts throwing up his breakfast, a cream cheese and jellied English muffin mom made. When he stood up Roy tapped on Jordan’s chest hard enough to push him back a step, saying,

“You never mess with me again white boy.”

Roy ran off, grabbing the ball on his way to the blacktop, where a small group of friends waited. Jordan’s stomach ached and he held it with his right arm. He extended his left forearm in front of him and stared dumbfounded at the color of his skin, thinking aloud and helpless,

“I don’t look white.” His teacher never saw the incident, Jordan never told; He didn’t want to be called a tattle-tale.

Wednesday’s read-out: color-dark and light blue (contrast in equanimity) / olive skin / escalating temper / red dress (warning) / intense pain / confusion / purging / skin color / identity confusion.

Following Thursday Jordan was lying on the floor watching after-school cartoons, an amorous skunk chasing a painted black cat. Red lines trailing to lipstick kiss marks popping in air shot out the male skunk’s head. The female cat ran away determined, peering out the backs of her eyes, afraid to glimpse her unsolicited suitor as he hopped casually along after her. Jordan Abbly didn’t see most of the cartoon. He stopped paying attention when the cat got her stripe, closed his eyes and saw in his mind his hand outstretched against bright blue sky. Jordan was engulfed by the memory of lying in Sara’s backyard, suddenly transported to a year and a half ago. 

He was next to Jonathan. They were both five years old. Sara, six and Brittany, five, were standing across the lawn. Jordan looks at his fist atop his arm, thinks it looks pasted onto the sky, feels breezes sighing through stiffened dry grasses, and hears Sara’s voice:

“Are the boys ready?” Jonathan giggles, turns his head Jordan’s direction. His quiet voice cracks into a high squeal, “Are you ready Jordan?”

Jordan can’t contain his joy, he yells out: “Yes we are.”  

He hears the girls’ exchanging giggles across the lawn, over Brittany’s constantly sweet rolling laugh, Sara shouts: “Okay, start counting.”

Jordan hears himself counting aloud each time he puts up a finger up until his thumb is out with his palm facing the girls and lowers his arm to his side.

At the sound of “FIVE”, Brittany and Sara run across the lawn to the boys. Jordan watched them approach, extending his neck to see over his body’s length. Inside himself he was jumping with anticipation, lying still, as the girls got closer. He giggled uncontrollably once they arrived.

Sara descended upon Jordan’s face, showering him with short loud kisses, exclaiming: “MMMUUA” as her lips touched Jordan’s nose; cheeks; chin; eyelids; forehead; lips. 

Her kisses landed frantic, changing at uneven intervals spot to spot scattered across his face, like fiercely falling raindrops. Jordan felt most of Sara’s pecks with his eyes shut. One of the girls’ rules was neither boy could open their eyes, so when he did peek, he dared not move his head, yet still managed to lift his left eyelid a sliver. Through strands of Sara’s straight light brown hair that smelled like apples, Jordan glimpsed Brittany kneeling over Jonathan. He was smiling wide. Jordan shut his eye as quick as it opened, instead watching the slits of red sunlight between strands of hair through his eyelids. He felt and heard Sara’s mouth, her puckered lips, pressing into different places on his face. Jordan was shaken from his daydream by mom’s voice, yelling from the kitchen,

“Does my little man want graham crackers with bananas?” Before he started his snack, Jordan asked,

“Ma, why did Roy hit me?” She answered,

“Oh poor baby, I don’t know.  Did you do anything to him?”

Slip time readout: Electric signal blue on black / blue through black and white clarity of purpose / female runs forward looking back / grass blade needles / pokes on backs of legs and arms that soften pain is short time / girls giggling / running to shower boys with their lips.

              Like anyone Jordan holds thoughts and/or feelings within memories to give context. Obviously, Jordan experienced how his life happened and remembers what he does. I, Sal, lest you forget, contort the form of his memories and suggest experiential relations to aid him in our project. At six Jordan was not aware of these behind-the-scenes operations. He has not yet figured them out.

                 Abbly, Jordan. My dominion expanded by a few years.

            Let’s toast the empty world and its denizens. Glasses raised clinking cheers even with some too dumb to note the contradiction. Some too quick for second thoughts before hollering agreement, hold blank faced questions until the spotlight’s on the passed out topless woman. If you have something to hawk place it beside her. Our photographers do the rest. Don’t be shy, everyone deserves their big break. Can’t wait to say I knew her before tonight.

Institutions we’re raised to accept and crimes we unwittingly commit. Don’t look at me. Don’t talk to me long enough to see who I am. I am the cell phone provider I pay; the televised entertainment I watch; the clothes I wear and video games I conquer. This had better be enough. If not for my tendency to hide, the ease with which my mystery is solved, I’d possess no identity and would lose volition to question yours.

Will you get to the point? All this drivel you need me for is all you ever offer and you know damn – Shut up Sal. You’re not in control. The problem is you. You’re not doing what you’re alive for, our reason for living.    

            A consorted nuance to the party, we move two times result, half as fast. Hopes worn thin. Mentally note fashioned and comfortable clothes with slight inner vanity: “What can’t see me?” These thoughts are long flat, shifting green, partly browned or blue-purpled clouds thinning to mist, edges wisp into empty black space. Space as empty as void, except the machines floating through putrid clouds all hovering head height. The machines structure our ideas. Our brains access the void, inter dimensionally sopping up heavier particles of the colored clouds. The machines pick which clouds unsteadily fill our heads. We know it as thought, but the machines pick and choose. These are things I know and you don’t consider.

 Jordan stop- Stop it Sal. Do you have a point? -More attention to the invisible machines shtick? No need, I told you you’ll never figure those things out- if they’re even real. They’re real Sal. Every time I think about them your voice pops up to distract me. We just have to work together. There is no ‘together’ Sal; it’s just me here. I’ve briefly glimpsed flying spherical machines. They’re clearly not meant to be seen. A hallucination your individual unconscious cooked up to conceptualize humanity’s collective unconscious. That’s too simple an explanation. Too simple- and this compensatory shit you formulate to avoid facing your sedentary drug addiction is what? I know the machines are real and I’m the author. First, they’re only real to you. You’re the only one that sees them. Second, their supposed existence provides you a reason to fail at your task. Third, you are the observer and you are not acting responsible enough to file the report. No report here.
            So then, all thought connected as an invisible web embedded inside reality. All concepts as blankets of mist intermingling green for the newest most original shifting between brown grey stagnant mundane. Accessed from outside this world by our brains’ piecemeal efforts to explain and cope with day-to-day experience. All human awareness comprises a few bands of energy and a certain gradient of sound-waves. Everything I am and can hope to become is either present or far removed in a mental conception. And the machines float around in this disembodied concept-realm, interfering.

Stop with the machine bit Jordan. I’m warning you. Sal, your voice has gotten loud and menacing like this before. Nothing came of it. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stick with the world at large. My distant past lays secret foundation of my so-called future. Better.

Entire process of perceiving reality is most likely explained by understanding our relation to the thought-realm. Individual brains gathering individual portions of thought parameters creating sub and unconscious awareness which in turn allows what our conscious mind experiences. My days are filled with attempts to contrive my future, as if I alone was free to choose. We only grasp pieces of colored mists floating bodily between arcane machines shrouded by void. No one actually knows freedom.

Well then, Jordan, what do you suppose provides the light for you to see this nonsense? Sal, you and I both know the beasties are real. And you have just addressed me directly, acknowledging my existence. No. I am – NOW YOU LISTEN – the only one – NO YOU’RE NOT -here.   

Saw everyone on the otherwise dark bus as individual suns, this is not melodrama. Subtracting from one, divining paths from numbers cast by a maelstrom of words overheard in the last few hours. We’re the result of proud men who looked into a solid world that collapsed once they decided to look. Our hearts are accustomed to their attempts to put it back together; imported and exported goods, glue-like binding stratagems – ‘pharma-logistics.’ Everyone one that was the ‘true’ body of Uncle Sam decided to Enterprise and we’ll become whole even if our God didn’t make us that way.

There’s a fidgety sort of nonsense about the way we walk and especially present when he talks. All those words mean nothing. I’m Sal, an absent shell aberration- more real to him than air. I swim through Jordan Abbly’s drowned out thoughts and control more than he’ll ever know. I am filing this report. Rather, my half commits the effort. We both acknowledge the impracticality of capturing all relevant interactions, -every perception, how they connect and equal everything that happened-happens (is happening.)

When I don’t force control he’s rambling tirade against or for something. I’m not quite sure.

——-

                 Juniper’s following, finally aware of where David’s honesty meets his sincerity, finally. So, she quits. He won’t notice. She stops. He will see the Juniper gets him,

                 “For anything beyond how they’re programmed. It’s 7% percent aptitude.”

                 David, looking at his wrist like he’s the only transiter ever to need a watch. Juniper gets the humor. But she knows he has no time.

                 “Daily Juniper. They all are stuck in a daily reset.”

                 She calms his issue with,

                 “I know that part David. And you cannot get sentimental about who or what their uneven selves became. There is no helping them if you do, it can’t be talk and you can never say it’s them uneven.”

                 For the first time in lifespans worth of trying with people he’d lose in between people he’d teach, David felt the air near his eyes soften, like he wanted to cry. He had to leave and Juniper knew it. She’s always been borne to purpose, as has David. He can see her shift toward him but he has to transit, again. For the rest of the exchange Juniper resolved only see unobvious strength in this man’s build. He has the park walk stage. David’s mission precludes tears so he’ll use the script:

                 “Knowing how to travel doesn’t require you to know all the ins and outs of how disparate realities are interconnected. Just pay attention to this:  Everywhere you visit a control mechanism is at work, and its main function is to enforce the paradigm on its populous that the reality it knows is the only known reality.”

                 “Wanna explain more?” She says nodding her head upward,

                 “About the monstrous hunk of metal in the sky.”

                 “Sure, every brain resonates on an energetic level at a certain frequency and they call that the lazy arch.”

                 She explains quietly with excitement,

                 “I’ll say. It’s so high up that it’s what, a half mile long and it looks really flat but it’s clearly bent? Okay, you can conclude. I get it David.”

                 David can’t let his eyes soften the air near them on Sheart. Cries cannot be completely ended. They must be cried out once they start. He won’t blame Juniper so, maybe on Earth.

                 “Thanks, the frequency is shared by every brain on this planet, it’s like the electrical component of brain function, and the lazy arch up there excites a field of energy identical to the resonance of the frequency shared by these brains. Then, at set intervals that field, up at the Ark. Sherat voted to build it, the owners liked the name Ark, thinking themselves clever for those reasons.”

                 Juniper has to pause to pay attention. David won’t talk much to you unless you might leave, to Juniper’s mind, with him she guesses. Yet somehow, probably with uncrackable age,  David knows how to engage.

                 “It’s entangled to the resonant field shared by groups of brains belonging to people in the region assigned to each of those arches.”

                 “So, what does that accomplish?”

                 “The total cognition of everyone is not completely sourced from the individuals living here, thinking they own their brain.”

                 “But the arch is right there.”

                 Juniper points at it then takes another look at their surroundings, paying closer attention to the people around them. The couple on the picnic blanket are smiling and laughing. Further off in the distance, the child on the swings and the adult pushing him both with raised cheeks. David says to stop that,

                 “Never underestimate the power of propaganda.”

                 She nods a playful yeah knowing this is not the time for an eye-to-eye talk.

                 “This particular system was sold as way remove to pollution from the atmosphere. Supposedly it’s incinerating smog at sub-molecular levels.”

                 Juniper, “What? How’s that work?”

                 “It doesn’t. But it is the reason why everyone here is so happy.”

                 “We’ve seen, like, four people.”

                 “Let’s walk and talk. I have to be going soon. You’ll see what I mean.”

                 The pair makes their way to the nearest walking path. A few paces along, David speaks again,

                 “You have a grace period before this system here, or any system anywhere, notices you. I suggest you leave before that happens.”

                 “Is Sherat the only place it’s visible?”

                 “Juniper I can figure enough of what you had to do, you know why it’s you that discovers forward.”

                 How does David know how to talk how she thinks? David offers,

                 “We’ve transited together.”

                 She did what Rose did. In the same way Juniper, involuntarily bounced her eyebrows, impressed with the line. David hardly noticed that part anymore. Given where he’s been. It’s all about the reveal. So, he concludes first offering,

                 “I’ve been doing this longer than you Juniper. You learned today. But if we meet again, it would be because your free life will work on the same task as myself and others.”

                 Juniper knew that. She just found out David’s doing some time as distance thing, using how they both just arrived to do what she calls-

                 “Spreading out, Ms. Juniper Willow. A common one I use though my name for it is different. You may learn it. Pupils – excuse me, this Juniper talking like this are typically those I meet again,”

                 Juniper to cut him off with interest mastery,

                 “And,”

                 David goes deadpan. He isn’t offended since these types are rare and they’re years-long loners before they even start whatever it is that make them fit in the glowing ocean known only to Travelers but holes voice is deadpan and now he the speeds up:

                 “Earth has many controls in fact, they’re just well hidden. The control mechanisms there will become more apparent though they won’t be disclosed as a system of physical mass control, only more and more they’ll come online as the population increases meaning, if systems of control don’t increase with population, inhabitants of a planet are more liable to discover within that they possess the ability to travel.”

                 Juniper calms herself to say,

                 “How many live in this dimension.”

                 “All I know is it’s enough to need those arches.”

                 They come to a hot dog stand. Putting his hand over his mouth, he speaks low in Juniper’s direction:  

                 “Watch this.”

                 He directs his next comment to the stand’s attendant,

                 “Hello sir, beautiful day out isn’t it” The man has a white mustache and glasses. He’s a portly type and wearing an apron, he speaks with a rasp in his voice,

                 “Sure is. Are you and your little lady interested in a hot dog or pretzel?”

                 David turns to Juniper and smiles, quickly popping his eyes wide before he answers,

                 “Nope, not today, that damn tax hike is stealing all my spending money.”

                 Juniper watches the man smirk and begin to open his mouth. A glint of agreement. Camaraderie plays across his face, then suddenly, in an almost imperceptible fashion his shoulders sink and his mouth gapes, coming to rest in a neutral separation of his lips.

                 “Well then, you two go on enjoying this beautiful day.”

                 “You as well” David takes Juniper by the arm and walks slightly hurried past the stand at pace and once out of earshot he says,

                 “Did you notice that?”

                 “Kind of, are you saying he was coming up with some way to tell you he agrees with you, and then…”

                 David points upward to cut her off,

                 “Then that thing interrupted.”

                 Juniper Willow realizes,

                 “I noticed a change in him, but that’s easily explained. Maybe he was only interested in selling his wares. You’re pushing a hard sell.”

                 “Yep, so I must be crazy. I’m used to it. Over the course of your travels you’ll become convinced. You’ll see it everywhere.”

                 David pushes the pedestrian button to cross the street at an intersection outside the park.

                 “The more you interact with people the more you’ll notice it. I’m gonna get going soon.”

                 As they cross the street approaching the glass window of a store front, David smiles wide. After their first laugh in transit, this is his favorite part of showing any new traveler the ropes. Stepping onto the sidewalk, he sees Juniper’s mouth drop open as her hand touches her hair and he knows she’s seen her reflection. She steps quickly to the window and gushes,

                 “What’s this? I’m blonde!” She leans in to take a closer look,

                 “And my eyes are…” she turns to David,

                 “What color is this?”

                 She opens one of her eyes wider than natural by pressing her fingers to her upper cheek.

                 “Looks green.”

                 There’s no way to prepare anyone for the changes caused by travelling; every person changes some after their first journey,

                 “But you look the same.”

                 “I’ve been at this for a while. Though, when this was new to me my looks shifted a few times.”

                 David smiles at her,

                 “That’s a lie. It’s permanent. I’ll only lie if I told you I did it. Juniper had jet black hair and brown eyes when they left and she seems enamored with the difference.

                 “But why?”

                 “It’s yet another mystery. Nearest I can figure, your unconscious mind has always wanted to look like you do now. Whatever it is, I’ve never seen someone leave one planet to end up looking worse off when they land. That’s the last bit of prep you need, I’m heading back to the park. I should get going, I’m being interviewed.”

                 “Interrogated, David, you’re a suspect. Are you sure I’m ready to handle this alone?”

                 “You came to me. I’m more confident than I’ve ever been with anyone, though I can’t say why. I’m convinced that once someone knows how to leave, they can travel and interact at will. Whatever you decided to do in your life that led you to this keep doing it, you’ll be fine.”

                 “And that’s that? Why would you ever go back? They think you’re a kidnapper, or a murderer or – God knows what.”

                 “Exactly, I – now we are the God knows what.”

                  It was reflex, David begun this case so accustomed to making his transiters’ pupils work before he took them to Sherat. But he continues with no correction:

                 “I’m being questioned, and it’s not polite to keep them waiting.”

A week had passed and no matter how blurry the details, for the first few days, an acrid sour taste arose on the back of Rose’s tongue and rested at the top of her throat threatening to make her gag whenever she recalled that weekend. However, in short time fourteen-year-old resilience triumphed and a new version of the what-why-how burrowed inward. Her disgust became a willingness to see something more. A peculiar sensuality now framed the encounter and, having removed act from sensation, Rose wants to explore a burgeoning impulse.

 In her world, she is more refined than age suggests. She had ridden horses since she was ten; adored classic poetry and was building an impressive collection of antique porcelain tea sets. It recently occurred to her that her life existed in a realm that orbited a completely different world. One where none of her refinements mattered and few social pretensions stood. Rumors floated constantly through her private preparatory academy. Drinking, smoking playing, seducing and heart breaking; the claimed revelries of public school kid parties. Tonight she’s attending her first. It was no stuffy clubhouse pianist and hors d’oeuvres soirée, an unassuming house in a neighborhood of tract homes. Not one person in a suit, no one looks old enough to legally buy a pack of cigarettes. A public school kids’ party with two kegs, air saturated with smoke and loud music.

Like many girls her age, boy craziness drove mostly floundered attempts to seduce guys, whether or not guys her age knew how to handle it. Tonight, with Rose’s version of last weekend’s disobedience glowing through her pores, she feels set apart from the other, inexperienced girls at the party. A mental flash tingling recollection in her body pushes a confident smirk to her face. She watches attentive yet casual as Joseph Banter walks over to her. She deems him cute and rugged,

“Hey, my name’s Joe, wanna glassa beer? Uh, what’s your name?”

            Rose smiles widely, drilling a stare into him,

            “My name’s Rose, and sure-I mean, yeah, where’s the keg?”

She walked to the keg with Joe. Didn’t want to give the impression that beer was beneath her but previously, years before, she had taken one sip of her dad’s beer and remembers hating the taste then nearly as much as she does now. She prefers wine, yet managed to gracefully and incrementally choke the beer down, easily denying Joe’s refill offer. Already experiencing a vague notion of her stomach’s existence but in no danger of throwing up, her surroundings liquefied a bit.      

“All right, you wanna come see somethin’?” Joe said nodding upward. Rose could barely hear his voice through blaring music and every other voice in the backyard struggling to be heard. She didn’t hear the whole phrase, heard:  ‘right- wanna come – somethin?’ She nodded,

Joe touched her shoulder and leaned in to say,

“Let’s go.” 

He turned to lead her out of the crowd toward the house’s side-yard. Their motions through the party seemed mystical. They got separated by the crowd between the keg and their destination. She only knew where to go, cutting through them and sensing how to proceed through eye contact and head nods they shared during intermittent glances in each other’s direction. Rose was dressed in tight blue jeans and white canvas shoes. The adventure of the excursion thus far drove her to agree without hesitation when he turned and said,

“Can you climb a fence?”

She followed Joe up the backyard chain-link and hoisted herself onto the roof after him. They lied next to each other on their backs. Miniature pebbles of the soft tar paper roof created a minor traction that gently dug into their scalps. The most comfortable way to shift their views was to lift their heads a bit. Each time she did her hair stuck to the roof anyway. The discomfort was worth it though. Rose left the party with a boy. 

Music echoing from the yard below and young, anxious voices rising into the clear night, Rose and Joe watched the stars and began to talk. Basic topics got addressed fast: classes, music, friends and hang-outs. Joe began pointing out the constellation Scorpio, nuzzling his head closer to hers, their sights aligning with his arm as a pointer. She feels warmth of Joe’s breaths on her cheek and raises her arm beside his. He speaks in a soft whisper,

“There’s the claws, and see,” moving her arm with his, “then the body. You see it?”       “Umm yeh, YEAH,” she exclaims, “I see it!” 

Rose pretended she hadn’t learned about every constellation and how to locate them in seventh grade. A couple of weeks ago she would have thought it lying to false ignorance. She was a girl then. Joe lifts and turns his head and sees her smile. Her stomach’s fluttering and she’s nearly lightheaded. Excitedly returning his gaze, thoughts racing, ‘He’s getting ready to kiss me, ohhh Joe, please kiss me.’ Overtaken by the moment, getting swept up into Joe’s face, his full lips, in a motion that didn’t feel consciously her own, she lifts and turns her mouth to his with eyes shut, until their lips touch in a short, timid, perfect first kiss.

            A first peck is followed by a second and third, their lips press further and further into each other’s gradually opening mouths. Rose felt weightless within her body, like she was floating away. On a rooftop kissing a boy, feels tingles she had never before known shooting in bursts through the skin of her cheeks and around her mouth. Joe’s lips; his fingers tracing slight glances over her clothed breasts and down her body to her hip, where he grabs her.

            Their mouths open wider for the next few kisses and she feels Joe’s breath enter her lungs. She exhales into him as their mouths widen and he extends his tongue. At first Rose hid her tongue beyond his tongue’s reach. A game she wanted to try. When she let her tongue find his, an electric current sparked between them. Their mouths, wide open on one another, closing slightly to stretch open again in a natural synchronization neither could’ve planned. Tongues danced, they shared breaths. Rose’s mind spun, he rolled onto her and they began rocking their torsos together. Joe’s other hand was on her shoulder, moving across her chest and slipping under the collar of her shirt briefly before sliding down to her torso. That hand moved to her side while the other dipped down to her butt. He squeezed gently to rhythmically lift her waist off the roof with their rocking. 

Rose heard half a moan escape from Joe and he drew a heavy breath, tilting his mouth from her lips. He was placing soft wet kisses on her jaw-line, their pelvic grinding slowed. As his lips and tongue slid down her neck, she let a muffled sound of ecstasy escape. His hand left her butt and her whole body fell prone, open for whatever Joe would do. Rose suddenly realized the state into which she had slipped. Attempting to fight off the tingling, nascent sense, she raised her arms to rest them on his shoulders, and bent them to both sides of his head. Rose put her hands on his cheeks, pushed his mouth off of her and up to eye level.

“No, no Joe. Not yet. Just kiss me.” She smiled brightly and held the smile, framing his face in her eyes, he says,

“Okay, okay, I understand.”

He rested the side of his face on her chest, and as he raises his lips to hers says,

“I really like this Rose.”

            “So do I.”

She closes her eyes and they resume kissing. About thirty seconds into their renewed passions Rose opened her eyes and saw incoming fog obscuring stars. A vision of the previous weekend’s encounter bolted into her mind and the shockwaves of sensation Joe sent through Rose’s body brought her back to last Saturday night in her parents’ T.V. room. She grabbed onto his hips, pushed up enough to separate their pelvises. Joe looked at her and Rose returned his gaze. She whispered,  

            “Are you ready to put it in me now?”

Joe pops up his head removing his lips from her collar bone. Frozen, not believing what he had heard. At sixteen years old, in the fall of his junior year, Joe was on the roof at a party stumbling kiss-by-lick across a girl’s neck and upper chest. This had become somewhat usual. He was not at all intimidated by girls. However he hadn’t even come close to the act.

            “What did you say?” Joe asked what he already knew, stalling for time.

            “I said, ‘are you ready to put it innme now?” Rose pronounced the words in a sort of groan. She did something with her eyes Joe had never seen before, doing her best to tantalize him into her. Rose’s hands sank to the button on his jeans. Overcome by primal urge he removed her hands to unbutton and zip down his pants. Rose undid and pulled hers down to around her knees. Her fingers flailed intoxicated upon her shoe laces. Joseph pulled her shoes off then took removed her pants and underwear the rest of the way.

            “Ooouch,” She whined at the rough pebbled tar-paper roof-top. Joseph, quick and gallant, took off his shirt and positioned it under her. 

            “Come here,”

Joseph had become fully erect shortly after their pelvises began grinding. He enters her, as he does Rose moans again. She wraps her arms loosely around his neck. Joseph thrusts fully into her a second time, and as he starts to withdrawal he erupts a loud indistinct groan -he came. Joseph collapses on top of her. Rose put both of her hands on his chest, confused, trying to push him off, she speaks into his ear,

            “What happened?”

            “I’m done.” Joseph offered less than half-heartedly.

            “That’s okay sweety. We’ll have to try again sometime.” 

She smiled as warmly as able. Later that week Joe picked her up from school and instead of going to riding lessons, she went to his house. His parents were at work. For the next two months they had sex as often as they could. Her parents never suspected. The whole of Rose’s nubile thriving sexuality remained a secret. At the end of the second month Rose realized that she didn’t have her period since her and Joe’s first time on the rooftop. She couldn’t fully confront the issue mentally.

Putting it out of her mind – she had been counting weeks wrong or whatever – Rose told her mom she had a boyfriend,

            “You have a friend that’s a boy?” Her mother inquired.

            “No Mom I have a boyfriend. His name is Joseph Banter, he goes to the public school and he’s sixteen years old.” Her mother looked at her, inquisitive,

“How long has this been going on?”

Rose lied, “Not long. He’d like to meet you and dad.”

            “Well I should hope so, I don’t know exactly how you’re father’s going to react. We haven’t discussed you having relationships with boys.”

            “I know Mom, but he’s so sweet and,”

            “We’ll have him over for dinner Saturday night.”

            “Oh, thank you Mommy, thank you.”

            The dinner went fairly well, soon thereafter her parents grudgingly accepted Joe as Rose’s boyfriend who couldn’t around much, busy with football or something. Their daughter, who hadn’t really pictured navigating Joe into her parents’ life as a boyfriend, was a good catholic girl that went to private school and church every Sunday. Her Mom and Dad told her,

“We’ll be keeping a very close eye on Joe and we’ll have to meet his parents.” 

Another week passed without a period and a home test proved Rose had a problem. She was nearly ninety-eight percent sure she was pregnant with no way to know who the father was. And being nearly three months along, Rose had resigned herself to the notion that she was showing. She decided she had no other choice but to fess up. This situation was bad enough without what happened a week before she met Joe.

Rose felt part of her dying, thinking of how great Joseph was. All the afternoons at his parents’ house they shared and how much about themselves they revealed to only one another. His grayish-blue eyes seemed to surround her if she stared into them for too long. His lips-his, face-his hair; she decides no matter how painful she’ll have to put Joseph out of her mind. He was too good to be dragged down by this.  

            Saturday night during Thanksgiving break, Rose met Joe on the road in front of her house. She told him over the phone she had terrible news. She waited in the street for his car to arrive. When it did she held out her arms to stop him from starting up their long drive way. He rolled down his car window to see what’s wrong,

            “Joseph. I can’t ever see you again.”

            “But Sweetheart.” Rose interrupts being forceful,

            “There’s nothing we can do Joseph. My parents have decided I’m too young for a boyfriend. They say if I keep seeing you they’ll send me away.”

            “They can’t do that. We’ll, I’ll,”

Joseph really didn’t know what to say. He was too timid around her parents and Rose had counted on that.

            “There’s nothing we can do Joe; that’s it. It’s over.”

            With tears growing in his eyes, Joseph spun off down the damp dimly lit street. Rose looked down at a dig in the cobblestone black rocks 6 rows wide where they meet, glazed with fallen mist deep grey concrete slabs at a small pool of oil Joseph’s car left in the road. It reflected the fading red glare of Joe’s taillights then smoothed to a slick black mirror, it reflected the under canopy of her mother’s front giant Elm.

            “Shit shit shit shit shit. There’s no way my parents won’t see this.”

She let herself believe, for a second, she was really angry about that puddle of oil. Any feigned consideration vanishes with her new nervous habit. Most times with only her left hand but then using both hands too often, Rose has started rubbing her hands on what she already sees as the day by day growing bulge in her lower belly. 

“Shit, Fuck, shit…”

Usually she manages a candor and sweetness in her voice and would never utter a cuss word. Lately she was enjoying the little false sense of liberation she found by spouting expletives. She walked slowly up her nearly, just over a quarter mile, one long curve lined by Oak.

By foot she’ll go slow, taking twenty a minute to get home, taking her time, inhaling the taste of the cold mixed with distant pine needles and yellow hard oak leaves. The Marland’s own 60 acres, the pines are the estate’s land barrier but she smells them and the oaks. Theirs is the second largest estate in the country club. Rose nudged her lips from a grimace to a disappointed smirk, the night seemed empty.

Helpless to change anything in her world and in the next few hours her news will wound the whole family, once she’s walked the rest of her driveway. When fog rolls in of the ocean here it takes a while to sag into the canopies, Rose remembered those clouds the first time she and Joseph, started. Tonight it has finally ended. Walking around the house, cutting off the driveway, walking on grass getting nighttime wet, she knows immediately what to do. Here’s where what her father called the Marland “shit dropper gene” will come into play; an inherited tendency to display absolutely no tact or delicacy when delivering bad news. 

Rose marches straight into her house to the T.V room. Driven to deliver notice to her Mom and Dad, she interrupts their evening news program and demands their presence in the kitchen because she had something important to discuss. Sitting across from them, looking at each of their faces, she remembers how annoyingly proud they always were at her slightest accomplishments.

She won the second-place ribbon in her division at the horse riding competition – second place ribbon was third place – first place got a trophy. There were only four girls in her division. She placed third out of four people and still, they cheered for her and took her out for ice-cream. She compared her father’s smiles then to his unspecific concerned look tonight and her tears poured forth before Rose’s words could start.

            “What’s wrong honey?”  Her mom asked sweetly,

“Did Joseph break up with you?”

            Rose felt her questions like sharp stabs at her heart. She knew that’s exactly what her parents were hoping to hear. More tears spilled from what seemed an instant depthless reservoir within. As her father started to get up and move toward her side of the table, she blurted out in order to make it known before her parents, watching their daughter cry moved any closer,

            “I’m pregnant.”

Her arms folded onto the tabletop, she collapsed her head to them and sobbed.

            “You’re what?” Her father blasted,

“Did you say,”

            Her mother grabbed her father’s arm and nodded confirmation that his hearing was dead-on. He exploded,

            “I can’t believe this, Holy Jesus,”

Mr. Marland paused uneasily, openly fuming, “Did that Joseph do this? That fuckin’ kid,”

            Mrs. Marland flew up to confront him,

“Now Bill, I think you should,”  

            “I should? I should what, calm down?  Hell I’m not gonna calm down. That damned boy.”

            Rose screamed. As she did she thought she heard Sammy giggle, it happens then it’s too late. No one believes her but Sammy’s real, she told Rose she wanted Jospeph. Sammy spoke but it was Rose,

“I wanted him to. I asked him to do it with me.”

            Her father’s eyes bulged and he drew a breath as his anger took hold,

“You little slut.”

Rose’s father raised his hand at her. Her mother darted in front of him, holding him back with her hands at his chest. His voice was gurgling, consumed, possessed by violent hatred,

“Where is this Joseph asshole?”

            Her mom pleaded,

“Bill please stop. You need to calm down.”

            “No,” he grumbled, “no, Rose you tell me where he lives.”

She lied,

“I don’t know.” The teenager’s salvation since junior high.

            “What’s his phone number?” She lied again, sobbing,

“I don’t know. Daddy please.”

            “Don’t try that shit. A whore that doesn’t even have the number of the guy she had sex with? That’s the girl I raised? Get your ass upstairs.”

            Her Mom added deadpan,

            “Go to sleep now.”

            Rose ran to her room and kept crying until no more tears were left.  She choked every once in a while trying to regulate her breathing, until complete exhaustion conquered her and she fell asleep. About 10 minutes later the black voice whose sound felt like fake light, spoke into her brain, Sammy. She’s usually calling Rose out to play. She hates Sammy. Sometimes she sees her coming out as she practices looks with smiles or eye motion. Poses no one knows are arranged in hours composited to have any other students’ eyes catch her at school.

Sammy this time felt like a blanket only meant to smother Rose as she had gotten too emotional though Sammy, as far as Rose thinks first announced herself to cause her only half day suspension, ruining her consecutive years with perfect attendance miracle. It was Sammy not her but at that time Rose had become Sammy making noise in the halls.

Actually, she shoved Jessica in precalculus then denied it. Sammy worked how Rose seemed so innocent throughout the entire affair to have Dad convinced Jessica was to blame. They even went out for ice cream that day. Sammy on this terrible night felt like she was stretched thin over Rose like a throw but she had made herself, a therapeutically weighted blanket. Meant to smother Rose as she had gotten too emotional. Now pregnant, now the parents are mad. She remembered the problem, here hands had started gravitating to her lower gut at night at about two months in

Next morning she awoke to her father’s loud bangs on her door,

            “You get your butt downstairs missy. Now!”

Rose hurried out of bed and sat across from both of her parents at the dining room table where they were waiting, side by side. She could only hope that mom doesn’t go blank face robot again. Her father spoke for both of them and his tone was deep and resentful.

            “We’ve discussed your situation and given this family’s beliefs, abortion is out of the question. I spoke to my brother, your mother’s sister on the phone this morning.”

 Rose offered,

“Uncle Greg’s mom, right?”

Dad shook his head, these sudden affects inside his own daughter so odd, Bill Marland almost grins with discomfort calling Rose to attention.”

“Rose, since Gwenny and my brother, your uncle Daniel.”

He makes eye contact, Dad-man fixing Rose’s eyes to his. It still worked, good. According to Daniel Rose is going to have to become God’s daughter, at least until she’s 21. She nods her head certain absently. At a claiming, frightening by possession conviction of what’s coming for her next.

Bill continues,

“Your Aunt and Uncle in Marin have been unable to have a child. They’re going to adopt your girl.”

Rose seized on the comment because there’s no way anyone knew it was a girl. She’s familiar with this kind of morning. Mom’s going to go blank faced: there it is. RoboMom robot, Rose used to call her factory model 4-1-3. Sort of playing, sort of making sense of it, she now precludes the abducted idea of her mother’s voice, perhaps until she’s at the convent though, last night it was also a plan.

On to the Catholic Services and schooling, now Sammy has her locked on happy to be a nun but if she remembers – nevermind. It doesn’t matter to Rose.

“In light of your despicable behavior, your mother called Catholic Services Care Center. They’re preparing a residence for you. They’ll teach you and you’ll have the child there.”

Rose couldn’t believe what she was hearing. No one sent their daughters away because they got pregnant anymore. This couldn’t possibly be real. She looked down at her arm on the table and pinched it hard. She winced at the pain it caused. Pain pinched once again but she only notices it each time. Rose’s familiar with dad being Bill. Usually when his big brother Daniel, mover and shaker in politics by billions serves to ground her in an air of dismayed silence. She leaned it from her Marla mom. Marla mom smiles a lot more, Rose’s inner voice goes childlike at the idea.”

Rose stared blankly at her parents with her mouth dropped open.

RoboMom just switched on a second ago. Probably her on wakeup mode today. Must be Bill as long as water with salt seems to reflect the sky. Since when will that change. Poor girl Rosey having lost Sammy, attempts to preempt 4-1-3 but sounds like she’s lost a race with,

“You can’t. But,”

Robot tone woman for lapses that can last for days on end. Starts speech:

            “Yes, we can dear. We’re taking you tomorrow.”

Rose looks at every wall in the room. First the one in front of her, then to her right and to the left. Rose even leaned forward in her chair and turned her head around to find the entrance to the room. Finally, tilting her head upward to the ceiling.

Rose speaks as her body starts feeling hormone heavier, fully resigned to the fact that she has no escape. Bill, then Marla, Gwenny but always Daniel and one house entrapment, she had just confirmed – actually thinks that somehow, Rose then manages a defeated knowledgeable smile:

“But we’re barely even Catholic.”

Rose sees she’s landed on the worst end of what Bill and Daniel Marland, can get up to.

Rose is sure of it, it’ll be smiles like our shadows pasted on the expansive lawns, for pictures after playing polo in our little flat valley but when the carpet is yellow amongst bare trees. We practically write magazines here, black goes better with yellow than green but the Marland’s? Losing their daughter and Daniel so sad, the venture internationalist got terrorist targeted abroad on business so he all the sudden had to change his name to Piertoff. Since that’s normal, that Daniel, what a dad the universe won’t allow so he tapped connections.

Rose is certain – childlike but it quietly screams, quietly up her throat with wind that traps Rose in the want to laugh outburst. ‘Hey Sammy, you wanted this kid.’ FU-

Piertoff lobbed the effort to the Marland’s for D.C. His Gwenny, whom never had Rose’s affections enough to change that her Robotmom hurts, since Marla mom plus Daniel’s circle-jerk with Bill, Sammy’s guiding Rose to see. Away from this and quiet with discipline. Rose will adapt, the girl’s strong willed but it’s Rose driving Sammy all the sudden with an urge to keep thinking.

Sammy moved into a position, forced to be Rose’s shield as she held her prone – a word she had just used – she has to calm down. She’s hit with automatic tired. Rose but Sammy murmurs,

“I know, now let me get to sleep some. I have to get used to it right?

What Rose made sure Sammy said felt deep in her voice, as she moved to let the Marlands’ final council trail off. (Not Marland’s anymore, their daughter no longer belongs here.) And she accelerates so that her pace helps the words echo but they’re absorbed into the hallway. Lengthing before her tired self the walk down the hall to Bill’s stairs, while any of whom Sammy named were speaking but fucking Bill:

“That’s our fault. We should have taken you to church more often.”

——

               David transited back alone though due to the nature of transit it’s impossible to know if you actually are alone.  Vision for a personified blob of gelatinous plasma doesn’t happen from one focal point, sliding though an expanse of unending super-heated then in empty distances warm plasma doesn’t make faculty to see at where the traveler’s two eyes make one.  Sight while travelling is all encompassing, as “all encompassing” as vision can be.

            Each individual sentient being knows itself and the world through its sensory awareness, nothing about falling into transit compromises these capacities; it’s the same abilities have been grounded to another medium.  The field at large is apprehended in a visual sense where the brain floods thought in sudden waves, building planet side body vision’s internal cognitive handicap, it is momentary but divisive. 

                 What remains the traveler’s side of experience is uniformity of the field, or how its uniformity is being compromised by you and others as they slide through it, means no one can discern the glowing ocean by vision; it feels like vision but it can’t be eyes while both side of each traveler flows one built star and planet to another.  So far as you know everything your big ball of gel is sliding through might as well be other individual’s bodies in their plasma form.

                 Leaving simultaneously with another is the only way to achieve the unmistakable presence of a second person. Conversation, even as basal interchange between two people that both know they are in the same field is unavoidable. Among any two beings or groups of beings, each is bound to have their own thoughts and feelings, David has never travelled with more than two others. Processing never halts and when you’re whittled down to how you exist underneath whatever you believed your physical foundation was, a goal of no thought-no emotion-no reaction to sensation whatever is unattainable. David only travelled in complete silence for the entirety of a transit his first time alone.

                 He pays mind, remaining silent, the overall field continues to brighten as he approaches a shining, still “midway” point. He takes inner stock of his thoughts and watches them as they falter, briefly jumble then blink out for the briefest instant in an incalculable flash. All at once his total surroundings, as strange as they were and all of his being, as unendingly different as it is, cease to exist. Then his gelatinous blob form transit side returns just as abruptly. He tells everyone to try and “stay” at that point for as long as possible though attempting a feat no one can explain, since during a “point” you are not actually aware of anything, is ridiculous.

                 Maybe David means it as a joke. He’s still not clear on that, it seems to be an important feature of travel so he always extends the challenge. He can’t trust math only accomplished to make the universe his sole struggle. He knows his edges, knows a crowd to all travelers after the first time alone in transit explains the wronged universe’s math response. DoD physics people regularly planned to intervene but that dialog is amongst them to whom they cannot conceive. Just as much as with anyone he’s taught but DoD cannot reach anyone whom he helped to leave.

                 All field built, all stars throughways, proof of circumvented containment pervading created life and David preserves his edges, collecting then collating data for the most part while traversing, transiting cosmic expanses meant to be silent. This time as he made his approach he shifted, knowing his window returning to Earth as the plasma field dimmed enough, when only that time-space life signal tells him he is almost back, he shifted. Shifting is something he stumbled upon. Anyone’s landing points are determined by the traveler’s will.

                 David discovered shifting after a long period of contemplation about what exactly the difference is between a dimension and a planet. He became convinced that if a different dimension existed on Earth he was ready to find it. Shifting can only be done on certain planets. On Earth there is a separate, dark dimension lying within reality. David calls the process of getting there “shifting”. It is most easily accomplished – if you want to spend any useful amount of time there unnoticed, if your plan is landing in Dark World as a pit-stop before completing the return to Earth. Here he decided to land in that dimension first as opposed to the bright, regular reality known to the day-to-day world.

                 David flashes into his body just past the time-space life signal faint glowing ocean, where it dims then directly into his now body side travelling form, insides reel for seconds with the impossible to avoid speeding, spinning a landing traveler’s body must withstand. You never land on the ground in Dark World and for a time, at the apparent top of the sky there he was caught in a parabolic conduit as if the minute he had landed free for a moment in dim filled with dark dust air his feet were invisibly grabbed, where he discovered he was trapped at the top of an unseen yet monstrous parabolic arc’s path that accelerated the second it took him at what still to his phantom being felt like the base of his blob form.

                 Then its terrifying ride from the top of an almost vertical speed fall starting some cosmic guardian’s roller coaster, crashing speed that he one time thought would slam his death felled corpse onto Dark World’s ground upon his first landing, always steadied about a yard above ground to a descent float. David’s needing to be undone welcome, to a brown dark grey air control realm within the folds of the local star’s heliosphere, he arrived knowing the foreign estate’s land somehow connects to Earth.

                 Ground there is an oddly yielding solid granite solid and in spite of the dimly lit, softer than concrete rock ground, David has never found one crack. Far off in the sky the sun shines into a deep orange-light brown haze delivering the conviction you are on another planet.

                 If you walk long enough you pass through occasional clouds of black mist. Occasionally floating small blobs of a black gooey substance hit your body but they don’t stick. Bouncing off and drifting into the distance, sometimes the tiny blobs seeming only alive enough to breathe the air in Dark World are fixed into position but something explains their motion,  the air sags too much to allow wind currents, black orbs ranging from small as a dime to rarely but nearly twice the size of an orange, all so empty and fluffy solid their color sucks light into its dark, all orbs held in place at a height of two to seven feet off the dingy raw granite ground, David hasn’t investigated them closely but he knows he can’t make them move.

                 Eventually they dislodge. He has found no reason in this realm for their breaking free from their positions and at times joining the others in their drift. 

                 He specifically landed here this time on a hunch, everything he knows develops from hunches. David is occasionally able to establish contact with people on the trapped Earth from Dark World and he spent hours there since the realm sustains enough air to breathe though he’s never found another travelling wayfarer. David entertains each visitor if any have found here, are held invisible to each other and he only  used the place to wander for hours, hoping to find a clue but also attempting Dark World to Earth connection here or there.

                 Speaking in normal tones while picturing areas of the planet he started on eventually produced a kind of open window, a floating vertical pool before him of shimmering muted Earth colors. In the contained by a vertical wide viewscreen’s window that came out of heavy air spontaneously scintillating, momentary dark floating pools taken by a paper-thin body of white shrunken shines then its apparent light flashes, glistening off grey sparks. Its field grows thicker for an entire second until he can see through the metallic-shaded transparent plasma space, where David can make out trapped to Earth people silhouettes.

                 David practiced until he saw them reacting to the sound of his voice; turning their heads and saying things like,

                 “Who’s that, who’s there?” 

                 So far he hasn’t been able to incorporate this communication into his ability to find candidates ready to be taught to leave. He hasn’t attempted in a while and he thought he’d give it a shot. David starts speaking, usually repeating some variation on,

                 “The world apart from you is not the world you know.”

                 Now as he starts reciting the phrase an apparent upright surface appears in the air. Previously invisible, containing a shimmering pool of shifting grey tones and darkened colors. Through the rectangular viewing window he sees a faint figure of a man sitting at a desk. Dim grey orbs are affixed to the person’s spine. David is encouraged as the man, unstartled, says,

                 “Who’s there?”

                 “What’s your name?”

                 David sees no value in identifying himself, lest he cause the poor guy set already searching, to sort out a person with his same name. He exhales all his air, feels the inside of his feet, their soles in his shoes and a whisper tares in his ears, it weighs with ‘Dr. Banter’ so David repeats,

                 “Dr. Banter”

                 “Yes.”

                 Upon establishing a connection like this the hints do become clearer and a full name is an easy preliminary,

                 “Joseph Banter.”

                 “Yes. Who are you?”

                 David knows his voice alone is projecting into the audible range of only one person. He has experimented with speaking loudly but then he comes through as a voice in the room. Either option needs to be handled sparingly and with care.

                 By now Joseph’s responding:

                 “If we meet I will have something to show you.”

                 David sees colors inside the grey of a few of the orbs along Joseph’s spine differentiating into shape and he speaks in a hurried pace. Before they can brighten further, he says, almost loud enough for his voice to move an Earth room’s air:

                 “Before we meet, Jospeh. You will have to stop using Chakras.”

                 David repeats at his most successful tone, a note under standard Earthside speaking volume he’s found enters directly. He offers amid full pauses,

                 “Stop. Using. Chakras.”

                 He’s done talking and he backs away, the amorphous window dissipates. The step back is definitely not required. David uses the ceremonious feature to help him disconnect from the person and reclaim a sense of his own body’s physical parameters. Dark to trapped Earth communication is retreaded happenstance compared to what it is in transit.

                 Now for Dark World’s recoil at a wayfarer making contact.

                 Something about the trans-dimensional nature of the connections he makes without fail, gives David the feeling his physical form is weakening however it isn’t a type of loss of strength he knows in transit. While in this dimension, softened interior edges of his being pronounce themselves gradually, then he feels in trembles noticing that it started during his grey window communications. He feels prone to the influence of another presence.

                 Something invisible belonging to the Dark world he has shifted to gradually occupies those soft getting fluffy regions inside his real body’s sections, his head torso legs and arms, the sensation is a monster David had to track it’s seeking to solidify them into his body on his behalf. He initially surmised the affects an impart of the dark floating globules but was wrong because avoiding contact with their chaotic, never blown flat speeding blob paths did nothing to prevent the effect of fallout.                                                                                                                                               

                 Dark World post-successful grey window use affects hit like lie math universe has in random soak then dry signaling, zeroed its sights on the transiter’s corrective action. Seizes the form from veins out and also…

                 Dark World, post-successful grey window use affects hit like lie math universe has in random soak then dry signaling, zeroed its sights on the transiter’s corrective action. Seizes the form from veins out and also to skin skipping to skeleton inward.

                 David exhales all his air again, only beathing slow and shallow then expelling even as his lungs work in their own accord to make oxygen, has to forget evil made this biology enough to survive. He feels the inside of his feet, draws shallow breaths, allocating total attention to ensure his lungs empty completely. Exhaling, feeling the interior of the pads on his palms just below each of his fingers, inhaling only slightly, gently, David commands his sentient awareness to spread out through the furthest extremities of his body.

He lies down on the ground flat on his back then drifts till asleep, ready to return to his Earthside bed in his little studio in Baltimore. David had planned out the sleep then wake exit before he ever found Dark World.            

Now it’s how he exits any control dimension local to Earth.

As the Raven Escapes or Eyes Shut: Starlight, part 2.