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Atmospherics 06
ATMOSPHERICS 6
Fall 1995
_______________________________________________________________
Contents (in no particular order):
a new poet(h)ics
Allegra Sloman (argella@dunciad.dorval.qc.ca)
1. (newspaper headline)
2. Counterpoint
3. How She Saved Her Own Life
Arupa Chianari (barupa@atlantic.net)
Coding the Flows
David Joseph Dowker (djd@io.org)
Origami
A stay in Acceleration
David Hunter Sutherland (3468441@mcimail.com)
Fidel's Secret Agent
Jay Marvin (102547.1273@compuserve.com)
Desert space
Skirmishes
Scent of flesh
s.c.virtes
_from_ TRIBALWARE
Allegra Sloman and David Dowker
all this cumulus
Vincent Farnsworth
Observations of a Coastal Wanderer
J. G. Fabiano (marine@star.net)
_________________________________________________________________
Welcome to Atmospherics 6. Some exciting news this issue,
Atmospherics will be listed in the new Internet Directory.
In this issue there is another excerpt from Tribalware by
Allegra Sloman and David Dowker. It was very well received
in the last issue. Also included are poems by Allegra and
David, s.c.virtues, Arupa Chianari and Vincent Farnsworth.
This issue also has a story by Jay Marvin and an essay by
J.G. Fabiano.
Atmospherics is available through anonymous FTP at:
etext.archive. umich.edu; it is available on WWW at:
http://www.inforamp.net/~billie/atmos; it is available
through Gopher at: etext.archive.umich.edu.
Requests for subscriptions and submissions should be sent
to Susan Keeping at:
keeping@library.utoronto.ca or billie@inforamp.net.
_________________________________________________________________
This text may be freely shared amongst individuals, but it
may not be republished in any medium without express written
consent from the authors and advance notification of the
editor. Rights to stories remain with the authors. Copyright
1995, the authors.
_________________________________________________________________
a new poet(h)ics
she is front of a screen . the penetrated one
she is one atom of iron away
from being a vegetable, and this
is irony only free time can provide .
with enough food, one can sit
for this discrete movement through space
and divert attention from appetite
to the raffinated sky . the screen .
the
gods .
*
invisible conspirator, I bless you
without incense . my deities
do not have addresses, I can't
click on _send_ and offer up a votive
_gif_t of fire . perhaps .
you prefer to keep your distance
but I must tell you now
I know you, I will see your name
in these frail reed beds
where science lets me nest
by your scent I will trace you
*
were you here, were we to breathe together
I would offer you a drink of (filtered)
water, the contents of my cupboards
so that the simian would be satisfied
and the intellect could pull itself free
of _those constraints_
those _covert_ suchnesses
it is our duty to expose
*
and turn from the personal to the hobbled hominid of culture,
staggering along with pinworms and paresis, peevish with an
egotism that is a single organism WRIT LARGE . and turn from
the personal to the sick'ning and the ludicrous, the background
loopiness that veers from _atavism_ to endlessly repeated logo:
_oblate spheroid as viewed from space_ . and turn from the
personal to see _assertions_ mirrored and contracted with such
tightness you are paralyzed with envy, and are plunged into the
personal again .
and turn from the personal to find a safe subject to discuss, and
every one a grenade which mimics the pineapple of hospitality .
my expectations . my non-quantifiable but observable sanity . my
desire to dwell among my people . and you are all so far away,
even&especially the ones here now, you .
the personal is a sixteen year old girl writing clunky words in
the back of class with a stolen pen . one can take comfort in
knowing that either she will get better at it or she will likely
stop .
likely stop .
the political is a thirty-five year old man seeking a new way to
reiterate: the contents of my belief system are more utilitarian
than yours . one can take comfort in knowing that eventually all
his ravings will be nesting materials for successor species .
the observational, _language_:_torsion_:_hebephrenia_ corresponds
to something no more or less valuable than two people shifting
arthritic hands over a five hundred piece reversible puzzle,
alternately laughing and cursing the in-laws who give it to them
.
or it can be compared to many things, depending on what .
you have in your tool kit .
or whether you have a tool kit at all .
presuppose literacy, and the sham of it rises into your face, the
clinging odour of death amid your sufficiency .
we are debating what the dance band on the Titanic was playing .
we are being ultimately recursive and precious .
so switch me off, it's tiresome, but when I am satisfied, when:
my hunger for _THIS THING_ is sated; I have PRESSED ENTER; I am
DONE for now
;
I must fall to the repairs . it hasn't stopped . the entropy
machine is still running, and coffee break is over . I have to go
back to work .
to work .
the real work .
Allegra Sloman
-----------------------------------------------------------
1. (newspaper headline)
WOMAN SHOT
BY CLOWN
CARRYING
FLOWERS
DIES
2. Counterpoint
FROM HERE I SEErhonda's
shadow
THAT POOR WOMAN NEXT DOORmousy hair pulled back
CHOSE HER HARDSHIPSpushing a shopping
cart
SHE
DIDall over town
I SAID TO GUS JUST THE OTHER DAYlooking for a Christmas
doll
I HOPE THOSE KIDSfor her
black child
GET SOME CHRISTMAS PRESENTSrhonda's white
AND A GOOD DINNERcooks neck
bones and rice
HE'S A MUSICIANdon't
have much money
GOOD LOOKING FELLOWhe's a drummer in
a
THAT'S NOT EVERYTHINGblues band
I KNOW YOU DRINK A LITTLEsnorts a little
coke
BEER BUT YOU GOTTAsmokes a
little weed
STEADY
JOBrhonda scrubs floors
AT THE POST OFFICEon hands
and knees
STAY HOME NIGHTSgoes to
work every day
WATCH
TVmakes the steady pay
I COUNT MY BLESSINGSshe's a
wispy
EVERY
DAYshadow in his
WHERE'S
MYebony dream..
TEETH?of drums in the night...
3. How She Saved Her Own Life
Once there was:
a vagina dangling from the end of a rope,
a purple snake gliding through glass grass,
hissing pain,
striking at the vagina,
which was brown and old.
There is a story to this:
she cut out her vagina,
after it stopped bleeding,
and no-one wanted it anymore.
It was tired of vibrators,
carrots, cucumbers, summer squash.
She fastened it to the end of a rope
and put it in the garden to
scare off crows.
When winter came she left it there.
The world froze.
A purple snake,
dying from the cold,
pushed his failing body through the
sharp edges of the frozen grass.
He saw it:
a brown rose
smelling faintly of love and blood and babies.
Moldy with loneliness,
he desired this vagina for his own.
He struck, and struck, and struck again,
until the brown rose fell into his open mouth,
whereupon he ate it
down to the rind,
which he threw away.
The purple snake, now strong,
went on his way,
traveled south,
to adorn the jeweled breasts
of the king's concubines.
She who saved his life went out
to the garden one snowy day and
finding the rind,
ate it with her three good teeth.
Arupa Chiarini
-----------------------------------------------------------------
ORIGAMI
Think like a slave !
Seize these landscapes whose
ardor of flashes, stills and pictures,
acquiesce too her chastity
lucid with critics.
Open these arms !
strained with surrender
as weighted skin covers..
beauty creams, gels, shattered lip gloss,
stain in a memory / forgetting last night....
Curtains between acts,
limber on a rickshaw,
creased between her paper swans...
Japanese tigers...
seductions...
Think like a slave !
wave-like, naked, idiot-proof.
Upstream these feelings !
on rapids' coarse shoals of
hair split lovers and
papier-mache'
then
Rise to occassion !
Hard and deliberate
as another hour
falters to a comfort
which begs to stay.
David Hunter Sutherland
A STAY IN ACCELERATION (Dedicated to my wife)
On stilts, Cyrano courts Neptune
blind to the
time-worn cracks and
centuries coarse ephesias,
of her moons. Gone this view
of her suns,
behind half-opened doors
Susanna finishes Figaro,
Daedalus takes wing,
and the price of cloves falter..
Stay !
this beaten path,
balm it with a lullaby and
Grind it too a halt.
(In her absence),
shiploads will burn.
David Hunter Sutherland
-------------------------------------------------------
FIDEL'S SECRET AGENT
He calls you to the blackboard and you stand in front of the
class. The figures stare at you in white chalk, but you can't
make anything out of them; it's like your head is blank, dead,
there's no here and no tomorrow. God knows how long you're up
there; the whole class laughs; you sit down stunned, wounded.
You'd like the whole fucking class to die, and most of all you
want your tormentor to die. You escape the moment by thinking of
ways to kill your math teacher. You've read stories in the
papers about service men in Nam fragging their own commanding
officers. You feel the grenade slip and slide in your palm and
you roll it under his desk and it goes off with a. . . .
At home they sit at the dinner table. You pick at your food
watching them your insides coiled like a snake. You watch him
eat and drink his water in huge gulps. He talks about the
quality of the food. This drives you crazy. This man is your
father yet you have nothing in common with him. You don't want
to have anything in common with him. You'd like to get out of
Marvin--2
your chair and push his god damn head into his plate. Across
from you sit his two girls from another marriage. You look at
them, you see them every day, but you don't really know them.
The family: all of you under one roof bumping into each other
living together fucked up as hell. It's like you're on some
kind of movie set and you wish you had a saw to cut a hole in
which you could climb out . You don't live life you try to
survive it. The phone rang and he answered it. He's talking
about you. The others at the table are sitting still listening.
You get it at school you get it at home. Your mother gets up and
fiddles in the kitchen. He continues to talk on the phone you
hear your name repeatedly. He hangs up and sits back down at
the table. Your math teacher doesn't want you in his class
anymore. He says you are flunking and that you won't do your
work. The others giggle. You ignore them knowing you'll get
them later. Starting tonight, he announces, you'll get no
television, and you'll go to your room until you start doing
your work and your grades improve. This is the deal he's worked
out for you so you can stay in math class.
In your room you sit at your desk and turn on your
short-wave
radio very low so the guards don't catch the prisoner with any
special privileges. The radio plays a
Marvin--3
Station from a country called Cuba. You hear about this man
named Fidel and how he keeps telling the U.S. imperialists to
jam it. You like that. Maybe if Fidel
was here he'd tell your math teacher, your stepfather and the
rest of the household to jam it. You decide to listen every
night. Now you're a communist, and while others cheer for your
country you'll cheer for Fidel's; and when the Cuban people win
in their battle with U.S. imperialism Fidel will come liberate
you. There will be trials and those who committed unjust crimes
against you will be tried in a revolutionary court of law. It
will be a people's tribunal and you'll be the judge and
prosecutor. You'll present evidence and take testimony, and in
the end they'll plead for forgiveness and mercy, and you'll ask
who gave you mercy when they were in control and held you
prisoner and subjected you to torments and abuse? There won't be
jails big enough to hold everyone you'll try and convict.
The radio glows hot with non stop programming from the
Caribbean. You rub your eyes and make a pact with God and Fidel
you'll be his secret agent here in America; in the belly of the
beast. You disconnect your receiver, hide it under your bed,
like in the movies, and turn off the light. You get undressed
in the dark a smile on your face. You're a guerrilla fighter: a
man with a purpose and tomorrow
Marvin--4
you'll start to prepare yourself for the coming revolution in
which all men will be free from exploration! For the first time
in your life you feel like you'll survive.
Jay Marvin
---------------------------------------------------------------
"Coding the Flows"
to continue, as always,
the thread that never ends
on this grey day drizzling
discontinuous as these
thoughts which elude recording
just kind of dissipate into
the text at random intervals,
the leaky faucet model of
consciousness, the slipstream
of being occupied with this
and that (the space-time twins)
while _pre_-occupied with these
manifestations of that other,
the impossible possibility
the probably improbable
happening right now, the room
a kind of refuge a space apart
from the _flowing_ machine
outside, that contrivance
of stops and starts and
absence and presence,
the difficult technic
of existence, the absolute
immensity of the world,
a moth upon a branch of
that associative tree
we make of our minds,
that space where language
is the true mirrorsite of
emotion, the loose grace of
flesh beneath fabric, the feeling
translated to motion happens
in the head and feeds back into
the dream, the sensation of
familiar presence, the body
without boundary
David Joseph Dowker
_________________________________________________________________
SKIRMISHES
Nobody told the guns to stop:
A line wandered back & forth
on a small world.
The time: forever.
s.c. virtes
THE SCENT OF FLESH
quiet alluring
trace of sweat/strength aware
perfumes like lace reaching out
flowers peace or hope
we pass closer, ask
where are we going?
has this moment passed before?
opportunity?
a trace, a scent
old memories, a future
a wave of unknown life
interest & dividends like
work & play
sleeping alone (however close)
all islands reaching out
air, a chill, an open window,
where have we been all this time?
reach for a blanket, shiver
will she ever be home?
s.c. virtes
-----------------------------------------------------------------
_from_ TRIBALWARE
Nicad awoke in a strange bed, feeling the uneasiness to be
somehow familiar, to find Caithin sitting naked in front of
a computer, through the open door to the next room, mirrored
and sun-drenched, working. The soft percussives of a keyboard
punctuated the morning. Nicad's head throbbed once and melted.
"Don't worry. You didn't disgrace yourself or anyone else.
You _should_ be able to remember once those inhibitors wear
off." Caithin displayed a truly wicked smile and continued with
the manipulation of writhing shapes on the screen before her.
He got up and by instinct, certainly not by any usual functioning
of sensory apparatus, found the bathroom. Difficult to avoid
the mirror, but, fortunately, the haze had not yet cleared
from his vision. The angles slipped, twisty corridors between,
at a tangent to the corners.
Caithin called out, "So, how does it feel to be a rich, about-
to-be-published author?" as Nicad emerged after his brief attempt
at becoming human. He stood as close to her as he dared.
"You mean that wasn't a dream?"
She turned and ran a hand along his thigh. "No, but this is,"
she said, "and the offer still stands." That succubus smile
again. "You'll remember _that_ eventually, too."
"So much to remember, so little time to forget." Nicad's
fingers found the nape of her (neck) as the screen suddenly
_resolved_ into a pointillist beetle or was that a blossom
surrounding...?
"This is connected to the thing they're after, isn't it?"
Caithin asked.
"Well...actually it's a trace, an empty carapace. What _they_
were looking for has already escaped...and, I may add, was
never really there in the first place."
She looked bemused. The image on the screen remained,
pulsing amoebically. "Are you sure that you couldn't be
a tiny bit more cryptic?"
Nicad grinned and entered a short command on the keyboard.
The image fell apart and the fragments sprouted a variety
of appendages and promptly scattered off the edges of their
world. Sporadically, they clambered back onto the screen,
forming a series of words which, after much fumbling
and groping, arranged themselves into sentences. Caithin
read with increasing (as disbelief dissolved into) astonishment
the echo of her thoughts across that animate glass.
*
Pockets awoke in a strange bed, the events of the previous
evening rushing back to her, the hurried exit and increasingly
intoxicating autocab ride back to this space in _the enclave_,
and pushed them away as she arose into the splash of sunlight
before her. A shudder of another chemical wave through her
nervous system, distant remnant of last night's psychoactive
activity. It scurried away and she followed it.
Liana was in the kitchen, sipping at a cup of coffee, mulling
over _the foldaway_ on the table.
"The reading I get is ambiguous to say the least."
She was possibly more enchanting in the morning. This was,
indeed, dangerous territory. The Daughters were powerful
in their fashion, and their wrath, apparently, everlasting.
Pockets could not afford to have this woman clouding her
perceptions. She _was_ such a delight, though.
Her tattoos were actually organic circuitry and allowed her
to perform an amazing number of calculations and data-searches
while maintaining, for example, an ordinary conversation.
Or an elaborate exchange of fluids. Pockets watched, entranced,
as the faintly luminous patterns coalesced and disintegrated.
Certain radical transformations flashed through her mind,
as well as the contrived image of moonlight upon
Liana's information-dense breasts.
Pockets was amused to think that they had never actually
made love. Liana had simply (!) guided her through the most
intense massage that she had ever participated in. It was if
they had conjugated in their heads (ah! verbs...and re-verb)
but translated into touch and muscle, memories flooding over
the immediate area of sensation, slipping into and out of dream
states, that moment just before falling asleep, slow orgasm
flowing across and into that expanse of body-image, not skin
exactly but undulant waving flesh-consciousness becoming
one continuous perception coincident with the environment.
"It would seem to indicate nodes of intense computational
activity coordinated through some kind of pattern in time,
or agency outside of time, I suppose."
Pockets manoeuvred to glimpse the tiny screen.
"Why don't I send it to your visor?" Liana asked.
The images seemed to exceed Pockets' frame of vision,
widening the retinal through some other route, tickling
the pineal. (What kind of pharmacological havoc had she
wrought?) These animated fractals spoke to her of spels
and morphs already actuated. She saw the frenzied rush
to consciousness and calculated flight to diffusion. She
_saw_ (see the wave of recognition flow over her face
as we slow down and enhance the visuals, the quiver of
the muscles, the tiny hairs that flutter) but did not know.
"It appears to be a signature...or a path, perhaps."
"Or both. A map, a formula, a recipe, a spel? Whatever
it is, though, it must be monstrous."
Pockets removed the visor. She could see the patterns
morphing still in her mind and a dim echo reflected in
the coffee cup on the table. It took her a while to realize
that Liana's foldaway was the source of the image.
*
Nicad in his eyrie. Memories haltingly surfacing. The most
amusing being the realization that they had talked all night
and then hugged and retired to separate beds. The darling had
not wanted to take advantage of poor, confused, drug-addled
Nicad. He _had_ been rather manic. Their conversation was
a somewhat different matter. He had said a number of things
he probably shouldn't have. Most of it just hints and allusions.
Caithin knew him better than anyone, though. How much had
she guessed? Yet he had been reduced to stunned disbelief at
the slow-motion unfolding of her thoughts across that screen.
What in Gaia's name (as Pockets undoubtedly would say) was
going on here?
His thoughts returned (yet again) to the event rapidly
approaching. Pockets had sent the confirmation that morning:
"A big hug by the Henry Moore (you'll know the one) or, perhaps,
a furtive kiss beside "Erotomania" - we'll flip a coin into that
fountain when this is water over the bridge."
He had checked out the location earlier today. The Gallery
had stubbornly remained over the years and dug itself (literally)
into the underground as everything else around it had shifted,
as the workers departed from the office towers and cars had
disappeared and roads became labyrinthine paths and strings
of shanties. Refugees from the various wars had claimed
and reclaimed the sub-divided architectures of obsolete industry.
Tribes and cults of all races and persuasions occupied the towers
and the underground mazes.
{Do you suppose - came a quiet voice in his ear - that we should
be nourishing our bodies as well as our eyes? I have in mind
a restaurant}...real-time image unfurling, subliminals screened
he supposed...and there was an address, coiling around a plate
of glazed multicoloured objects.
He figured that Pockets would be tracking him minute by minute,
so he phoned _Tender Buttons_ and confirmed the reservation.
It was in his name, which he found disconcerting, after eighteen
months of Caithin. The person at the end of the phone took
"the opportunity to remind him that the reservation policy was
quite strict, and a minimum charge of..." and Nicad hung up,
disgusted. A hole in the wall Rwandan restaurant was more his
speed.
*
He became aware of himself at odd moments sorting through
the recent past, gradually running the film backwards from
her recent graphic revelation to their initial exchange of
tribalware.
Her naked body with the iconic head of another (imaginary
character concealing some message or simply his fixation
mimed back at him?), her contortionist morph and, finally,
the zoom bloom of genital landscape. What was being said
here? He was doing exactly what he said he wouldn't
- searching for meaning in a probably random configuration
of arbitrary elements. That _was_ his specialty, though.
He glanced around the room with a curiously alien eye.
The foldaway thrown against a stack of printouts (another
ELYTRA compile) and disks, threatening to spill across
the table in one last futile download. Nicad considered
the lack of reliable data re: Pockets (or Cassandra Alexandra
Tessier or Carolyn Alice Tennyson or Catherine Alison
Terrebonne or Cheryl Ann Tedlock or Cecilia Amanita Torres
or Cynthia Amanda Thorne and many more for all he knew)
and his total disregard for the possible consequences. What
did he really know about this woman? His eyes caught
the image he had saved from that first encounter and taped
to the wall. It was meaningless to anyone else, but for Nicad
that abstract datamap contained a tantalizing glimpse into
the actual emotional landscape which Pockets inhabited.
He should have known right from the beginning that she
would quite quickly and effortlessly turn his carefully
contrived and cocooned existence inside-out. She had
suddenly materialized as a butterfly (spring azure, he
would discover), delicately, and apparently drunkenly,
fluttering about the table, eventually to alight upon his
nose. It was one of those rare occasions that he had
ventured into the virtual without benefit of shielding.
Why _had_ he gone out that night? He seemed to recall
some argument with Caithin. A further installment of
the ongoing personal reality adjustment to that shared
hallucination called _business_.
*
Inside the visor, his full grid, the series of questions,
acronyms and lists, showed itself. He'd captured the opening
matrix of D-War 3000 as an armature for his entire life and
as she fed him her own data the grid went crimson and gold
with explosion after explosion, followed by a trembling
bleedthrough of visual purple. He was shaking in his chair,
and was so embarrassed that he hit the 'mute' button which,
incidentally, cut the feed that gave her his physical status.
He swore to himself, then keyed it for the second layer
of revelations. This is going to hurt, but better to know
now, right?...and damn, it just continued to hit. A series
of full-screen implosions and the whole thing collapsed
into an apparent singularity from which the rose window
of the second level slowly spiralled open, achingly gorgeous
spectral blue, indigo to (ultra)violet.
Nicad could hear himself moaning, "This is not happening,"
and ignored her when she sent a single question mark
into his silence.
"Hang on a minute," she said into his ear. The configuration
froze.
He hit the mute again. "I'm supposed to feel better?
So what are you?"
"I am confused, frankly. You should see what it looks like
at this end."
"Show me."
She had arranged her tribalware in two layers - first
the bones, faintly phosphorescent, and then the skin,
animated to reveal the matching data become a homunculus,
the skeleton flickering through a veil of shimmering skin.
It looked bizarre: a child's rendition of a cartoon character.
The head, eyes, ears and hands were enormous. A fig leaf
obscured the genitals. Nicad didn't know whether to be
amused or annoyed.
"You must have spent ages working on that," he said.
"Nah, it's shareware," she responded. "I've never had it
go off like this before, usually the poor thing looks like
a pinhead with gland problems." The casual tone lay at
right angles to the message.
"Wanna see mine?" Nicad said, watching her heart rate
slowly drift below a certain level. She was either fudging
the feed, or genuinely freaked out, no matter how level
she could keep her voice.
"A pleasure." After a second, she said, "Gracious."
*
Nicad's lofty abode was another gift from the goddess,
namely Caithin. Global Reality Management used the main
floor of the antique building for an elaborate display of
nondescript subliminal manipulation and most of the remaining
space to house the hardware of part of its vast information
domain. Caithin had suggested that he renovate and move in
to the tower which was connected to the main structure.
He would be close to (never away from) his work that way
and could make the necessary interventions that were better
off not left to outside technicians. This was entirely
unofficial, though. Legally, the property was owned by
something called _C & C Enterprises_, which he assumed
was a holding company. Strangely, he never could discover
anything substantial about them. The usual vapour trail.
The smell of burning financials and phoenix-like corporate
resurrection.
*
He arrived at _Buttons_ early, pondering his misgivings. It
seemed like a really bad idea. He could feel everything sour,
becoming increasingly frenetic. As he sat down in a hushed
deep leather landslide Pockets appeared in the flicker and
he put his visor on. She looked fried. Worse than he'd ever
seen her. He wondered for a second if it had anything to do
with him, and was happy when she said, "I'm stuck for a while,
don't know how long, can't tell you how disgusted I am, want
to be with you, not here, and you'd better start ordering or
they'll throw you out. Transferring funds," she said, grinning
as she got the ping that echoed through Nicad's visor.
"Not much of a bribe," Nicad grunted. (She obviously hasn't
peeked at my bank account lately, he thought. Or has she?)
"This is hospitality," Pockets said smoothly. "Bribes later,
switching off," and poof! she disappeared.
*
<I have my first flesh-to-flesh with Nicad in less than
an hour and Moby goes nomad. Ah yes, timing is everything.>
His most recent blip recovered from the distant past of
the previous evening, mind-crawling through the miasma
of the multi-verse, apparently disappearing into a virtual
wormhole (redundancy echoed by a similar earthly vanishing
act). All the crosschecks came back negative: dates, times,
data streaks, parsing, and general dithering about. Moby
was nowhere to be found. Then, the message discovered
(when Pockets finally woke up and checked her personal
mailbox) that he was "on to something" and would get back
to her soonest. Who would get them into Wunderland now?
She would have to abort their little escapade and find
some other way.
"Can I have all the faces of my teammates onscreen?"
Pockets asked the immediate universe.
"Shutdown for now, folks. Unless one of you has developed
a sudden expertise in electronic security evasion or taste
for suicide."
Constance, Daria and Iain uploaded and clicked out. Toni
lingered to chatter at Pockets about the e-state of her
love life and lack of time for such complications. As she
was threatening to move on to much more frighteningly
personal topics, Pockets cut her off. "Believe it or not,
I have to be physical somewhere right about five minutes
ago. So voice me later. Gone."
*
Pockets arrived amid an internal flurry of invective (hers)
and a demure external composure, barely maintained as
Nicad arose to embrace her. A twitchy kind of induced
calm, obviously alchohol-based, nerves twanging beneath
the slurred surface. "Let's get on with it and out of here,"
she thought, not that loudly.
"How about we just, kind of, like, have a drink and get
out of here?" Nicad asked, as Pockets experienced a slightly
disturbing echo effect and pictured a long cool gin and tonic
(with additives, of course).
"Juniper, is it? Gin and quinine and all the accoutrements?"
("This is silly," Nicad thought. "Where did these words
come from...and where are they going? I'm speaking as if
I'm online.")
Pockets settled into the loop and smiled curiously. "That
would be just so," she replied.
Talk became impossible. Nothing about her posture showed
anything but relief to have a peaceful moment in a restaurant
with a friend. Nicad ran his own personal subroutine, counting
down muscle groups and trying to stay calm in the face of
an avalanche.
He imagined that he could already count on surviving
the experience, and quit worrying about it. In his new,
expansive state of mind, he slid the fingers of one hand
over the hands folded in front of her. Caithin had admired
them once in an unguarded moment.
<Let's see how fast we can drink up and go.>
<I want to be wasteful and just leave it on the table.
They have my money already>...and he threw his glance
over toward the intricately carved stand for the register.
"Easy come, easy go," she said aloud, and they pushed
their way out. Pockets looked up and frowned at
the overcast. The sky leaked ironic intermittent
commentary upon their awkward babbling and sudden
silences.
They walked within a cocoon of apparent immunity.
The street dissolved into background luminescence
and the sound of shoes slapping concrete. He was following
her turnings, slightly light-headed and off-balance,
occasionally bumping into her bubble, a shiver of sparks
brushed into (being (the feeling of) beside her (finally))
...winding a way to the tower in the spiral.
"Your place." (Definitely not a question.)
"Mine," he answered, and searched for his card to open
the door.
*
_The Hive_ was a favourite of the retro-crowd. It did not
particularly appeal to Caithin, though. The labyrinthine
design of the cells with their radically different internal
architectures and means of access made her uneasy, slightly
claustrophobic. It would not be difficult to disappear here.
Her reserved niche for the evening was definitely not her
choice and the early Fifties diner gone wrong motif seemed
vaguely threatening. Similarly, her dinner partner did not
inspire feelings of security. Mr. Bok had urgently requested
her presence at this location at this time and now was almost
certainly deliberately making her wait while he adjusted
his tie and dusted his eyebrows or inspected his weaponry
with paranoid precision of attention to detail. Caithin
wondered at the vividness of the imagining. She felt positive
that was exactly what he was doing. Assured resonance
as he oozed into the room a while later and she scoped
his cargo of chemicals and metalloplastic.
"Ah, Caithin, you look delicious."
"Martin, you flutter me. Consider me buttered for business.
Or shall we order first?"
"You always did have a poetic tendency, Cait. Speaking of
which, you didn't happen to have a hand in composing that
manuscript my company so impulsively acquired. Our
analysis indicates that your Mr. Addison did not labour
lovingly alone, if he laboured at all."
Caithin smiled and replied, "But certainly he could have
synthesized the language to correspond to his own particular
requirements, and, knowing Nicholas, I would say that is
highly likely."
"We did consider that possibility. There's no way of knowing
for sure, of course. Given certain other facts, though, we
think _that_ is highly _unlikely_."
"And you think that I may know who this mysterious
collaborator is. I have no idea. My question is: what
does it matter?"
"The possibility of future legal action, to mention one thing."
He motioned to the young sapling with asymptotic legs holding
a foldaway and signalled some kind of vintage obscurity.
"One of the unmentionables being the fact that you don't
give a damn about the novel and are really after the identity
of this hypothetical author. Shall I speculate as to the
reasons?"
A tiny fault line appeared in Bok's polished marble forehead.
He reached for his inhaler and puffed a trace of sentience into
his cortex. The restorative effect immediately apparent in
the glazed smile and rapidly blinking eyes. He clicked a bit of
his physical apparatus and examined the hand-scrawled menu.
"I believe it's time we decided what to order," he said.
*
"So why does everyone want a piece of the action?"
Pockets asked, stroking him, slowly, assuredly.
"I have the attention span of a housefly," Nicad said, resigned.
"You can either stop doing that or get an answer, not both."
"Okay," she said, and sat up, allowing her hand to slide over
a large portion of his anatomy. He'd never slept with such
a muscular woman before, and it was interesting to watch
the play of shadows as she shifted position.
"About three years ago, I stumbled upon an expert system
which appeared to have been abandoned and locked away
while still under development."
"So you, uh, liberated it," she said.
"More or less. I soon realized that it had been damaged, or,
perhaps, purposefully disabled. So, when I could cadge the time,
I domed out on the programming, rewrote whole chunks of it,
fiddled with the source code, fed a translator into it,
distributed
it across a bunch of different machines, recompiled and nearly
died of it. The system seemed innocuous enough at first. Its main
purpose appeared to be to search the global electronic network
for various programs and information nodes that would address
the planetary ecological crisis (within its own defined
parameters
which I was unable to ascertain, except inferentially) and also,
presumably, to correlate this information with its own database
(which, I much later discovered, was scattered around the
world)."
If he kept looking at her, he couldn't talk, so he quit looking
at her. The horrid sense that she was using him to get at
Cyberslam kept being washed away by the sheer comfort of
being with her.
"I noticed, though, that the system seemed to be growing
in ways not easily predicted and began to behave somewhat
autonomously, that is, outside of what I believed to be its
prescribed limits. It eventually started to create sub-programs
of its own. These continued the search, concentrating on
specific areas and often employing different methods. They
apparently _absorbed_ and altered the various materials
encountered (_Charmer_ being the name of the daemon
sub-program which approached and co-opted the security
systems involved, usually, with the help of the others,
absorbing and altering them for its own use).
"I would link up with _Geofile_ to find the strangest things,
and began to suspect that something extremely unusual was
going on. I always received responses, though (even if often
quite bizarre ones) to my inquiries. I mapped its so-called
_hypotheticals_ onto current economic trends and asked it
to predict where the opportunities to make money would be.
Two hours later it was still writing stuff to file, so I went
to bed. It was still chugging away when I got up, and it kept
going for another six hours."
Pockets was quiet. Her heart was pounding and she was
having to summon discipline to still her breathing.
"Impressive, huh?"
"Yes, very," she said drily. "Can it talk to other programs?"
"Shit, yeah...the engine is incredibly robust, and it tutors
itself
in no time flat."
"Could you get it to talk to the program _I've_ been working on?"
"Sure...what is it?" Nicad said, mentally holding his breath.
"Ah. Well. It doesn't have a name, or a specific function.
It's just an opportunist with a good sense of humour."
"Like you?" Nicad said, before he could stop himself.
Amazingly, she laughed. It was the first loud, unfettered bark
of laughter he'd ever coaxed from her, and the smile lingered.
"Like mistress, like program," Pockets said. "It's a philosophy
program, you might say. What it does is hunt up arguments to
support certain activities depending on the world view of
whoever it is you wish to suborn - I mean influence."
Nicad considered this for a while.
"Shit," he said.
"Exactly," Pockets responded.
*
Liana meandered through the mall, pausing here and there,
fingertips collecting information for her software to process
as she chatted up, for example, the hamadryads lingering in
the arboretum or the naiads looking bored by the fountain.
As if she was a bee gathering pollen and a very busy one
at that. She actually did follow an analogue of ultraviolet
markings in that her systems scanned for certain electro-
magnetic tags and auroral anomalies.
Her photos,though, were the ostensible reason for this
excursion and so far nothing much had materialized. That
blade being chased by security was mundane and mostly
ritual. The usual passing fashion parade seemed uninspired,
trite. The panhandlers and hookers, vendors and vandals,
differently drugged young and old navigating the track
- slotted in and flowing through the motion.
Liana stopped beneath a sweetly weeping willow to ponder
whether or not to continue. The hunch that had sent her
here crouched in the shadows (actually the irrigation tubing)
of the long leaves, heaved a sigh and nudged her attention
toward the base of that incongruous tree. She pointed
her camera at the worm-scrawled characters inscribed
in the bark and read, "We must talk. Open circuit. E."
Click and picture the world as the chunk of spinning rock
that it undoubtedly is. Imagine the clinging green moss
or fungus and the tiny parasites buried within writing
with acid their estimates of particle decay upon the backs
of shining beetles.
"We are in the land of serious lunacy," she thought.
*
Nicad tried very hard to pay attention, but it was next to
impossible. To cover his fidgeting he started to massage
her feet. The ambient images behind her moved through
surreal brides, and bachelors, even, to nudes descending
ancient newsreels.
"Are you non-verbal at the moment?" Pockets asked
and bit her lip.
Nicad nodded, smiling cheerfully, glad to have such
a convenient out. He concentrated upon the pale blue vein
on the inside of her ankle, and, forgetting himself, watched
it pulse. He traced a finger along that tributary line and felt
the molecules vibrate, seemingly accelerating.
"Well, do you mind if _I_ keep talking, or would you prefer
me to be silent?" was the next question. He gave a swift,
nervous shrug, without letting go of her feet.
Pockets closed her eyes, leaned back, and fell silent. She wanted
to explode. When Nicad got the idea from her body language
that she didn't want to explode any more, perhaps ten minutes
later, he said, "I'm back from Nonverbia, how can I help you?"
"I would like to help you out...which way did you come in?"
Pockets said, barely audible. At some point in the future
he might have a chance to get bored of her naked form, but
at the moment the experience was too novel not to be enjoyed.
His hands pursued the argument further, working their way
along the long muscles of her thighs to the articulated armour
of her shoulders (as his eyes lingered over the softer portions
of her intricately sculpted anatomy). The form of his devotion
flowed from his fingers, found warmth where shadow had lain
and followed the impulse to its source.
"I bet you don't remember what you were talking about,"
Nicad said cheerfully. "Something about being detached,
wasn't it?"
Pockets stiffened and Nicad's smile got broader. "I have some
talents, but sometimes I have to ask for time-outs to think out
my response," he said. "Anyway, continue, have the floor."
"No thanks, I've got the bed," Pockets said. They hadn't
trashed the room, but the bed was a disaster.
"You're the first female who's displayed any interest in me
in years," Nicad said.
"Six months, actually, since Caithin put you back down."
Her ambiguous smile was echoed by the pointillist image
beside her.
There was a tight pause. "I am nothing if not discreet
and will speak of her as I wish always to speak of you,"
Nicad said. Pockets felt her heart twist like maple taffy.
It was the politest rebuke she had received in ages.
"Point taken. She didn't say anything nasty about you,
and I didn't ask her about her sex life. I wanted to know
if you were reliable or not."
"How I wish I'd been a fly on that particular wall," Nicad said,
startled by the sudden appearance of a large compound eye
on the wallscreen behind Pockets (not so ambient after all).
Then she said, "You weren't. You didn't miss much. And you
are apparently quite reliable, as long as nobody expects you
to think except in short, strangely timed bursts."
"Yup, that sounds like Cait the Great," Nicad said. "She makes
me sound like a complete idiot, somehow. I'm sure she didn't
mean it," and he moved up the bed to lie next to her.
"You don't sound offended," Pockets said. If there was a part
of him that didn't smell and feel good, she had yet to locate
it. It was ambrosial. It had unparalleled intensity. It was
a complex experience...to be so irrational, so obedient to
the jerkings of internal chemistry - that was a good part of
the kick. No drug could be better than this. And sometimes,
she said, hugging the thought of High Romance to herself, it
lasts for life, you just have to see. You have to eat the same
food and breathe the same air for a while. Everything takes
time. There is little instant synchrony. Everything is moving
at a different speed and is meant to be meshed. You have to
wait sometimes, you have to give ground, you have to see
the shape of things and not get too close to your hopes.
"You're sniffing me," Nicad said.
"Yes. I am taking you forever into my back brain, and you will
never get out. I store that, one little molecule, in the back
of my head and it will never leave me," Pockets said.
"I should feel flattered," Nicad said, and pushed Pockets into
Nonverbia, for a long, trying time.
Every time she took breath to speak, communication would
fail in the barrage of distracting sensations. He was toying
with her, and could feel her reaction without much effort.
"Say something," he whispered, and when she could make
no reply, he slid into that silence with an emphatic answer
to at least one of her questions.
David Dowker and Allegra Sloman
----------------------------------------------------------------
DESERT SPACE
Another burning day
faces melt into the sunset
with long shadows of relief
the cold sweating night arrives.
s.c. virtes
---------------------------------------------------------------
all this cumulus
the tunnel of the road through the trees
some words fall off the wall of rock
peeled senselessly did curly q's and
shangri las susie kept away from me
stayed in austria dancing catty
beware scratching
beware: thoughts are like magnet and
skin iron filings
away under the heading southeast
aphasia nicht sprekken
it built up and amounted to
people on the street
hiding under their coat
little shrunken bodies
they reveal with the right password
or grimace
Vincent Farnsworth
-----------------------------------------
Observations of a Coastal Wanderer
The many beaches along the coasts of New Hampshire and Maine
have a beautiful distinction about them. Most of them have the
ocean approach adjoining roadways with few small walls or
buildings to obstruct the view of anyone who has the opportunity
to walk or drive along their edges. These beaches have been
protected by town fathers from being over developed by those who
see opportunity for the few instead of beauty to be enjoyed by
the many.
Long Sands Beach in York, Maine, is one of those beaches.
In between Route 1A and the beach is a walk. It is elevated
which allows the walker to see yet not be seen. Living on the
beach for the past nineteen years has taught me that the beauty
of the coast does not only come from the physical surroundings.
It also emanates from the visitors who walk along the long white
sands of the beach. Also having an intense imagination I make up
stories about the people I see.
Starting from where the beach begins at the point where
Nubble Road meets the ocean, there is little beach at any tide.
In fact, there is no beach at all. The people simply lean over
the large rocks which separates the road from the water. Young
and old stare into the pulsating ocean and lose themselves in the
heartbeat precision of the never ending waves. This is where the
expert observer notices what life's meaning should be. I have
watched people find, live through, lose, and then finally search
for memories that make and sometimes break their lives. I have
observed people meet in large groups. Their conversations filled
with laughter, youth, and of course the innocence that we all
begin our lives with. These groups eventually break into small
separate clusters to be reduced to pairs attracted to each other
by the possibility of creating their own memories.
During the course of the summer I see these pairs of people
on their particular section of beach. They create their
territory and do not like to share it. At first they are playing
the part of friends not daring to get close or to appear to be
interested in their now obvious partner. But as the weeks pass I
observe their closeness overtaking the fear of being vulnerable.
First their eyes meet and then they finally touch to be seen
perpetually as one on their section of beach. I don't care if my
observations are seen because I know that if I stood directly in
front of them they wouldn't care. In fact, they would not know
that I exist.
I also see the loners who dare not go on the beach but
rather stay up on the black-topped path and dream about their
time on the sand. They dream about their lost hours that were
either rejected or just disappeared. These people do not have to
be young or old, they are just in a stage of their lives.
One of the most exciting sights for me is when I first
observe young couples and see them appear year after year
together in the sun. Then one year passes and I see that they
are not alone. They are now accompanied by a mirror of their own
lives. They always appear so proud. Year after year I watch
them grow older and their babies grow bigger. Sometimes
visa-versa. Their memories never end, they just grow longer and
newer. I've almost lived here long enough to observe the babies
of the summer grow into adults. I have watched them grow to
young children, radiating innocence and creating memories for
their parents and all around them. Yet, on the other hand, I feel
remorse for the people who become singles again because of their
life's fate. They are seen in many numbers staring out in the
vastness of the ocean, obviously trying to forget while fearing
that they will always remember.
The old are the people I enjoy watching the most.
Especially the older couples who plant themselves on the park
benches to stare into the ocean and reminisce about their own
pasts. The old couples bring hope to us all. But the old
singles display such loneliness and despair that I dread the
thought that one day I might live so long as to remember my
memories alone. Some old couples lie their beach chairs
precariously close if not in the wake of the always approaching
waves. They know that with each large entrance of water they
will get wet. But they still close their eyes and react
surprised as each new wave brushes their feet and then wets their
bottoms. Maybe this sharp sensation causes them to remember the
first time they exchanged a similar feeling using each other.
I remember once I observed a very young lady, perhaps five
or six, being instructed by her mother to sit quietly and enjoy
the beach. Not so far away I saw another pretty lady, perhaps
sixty or seventy, being instructed by an oldest daughter as to
how to enjoy the beach. The instructions made the two ladies
fidget in their chairs. They were obviously uncomfortable by
what was being told to them. But then, as if some magnetic
attraction between the two of them developed, they gazed at each
other. Their eyes met and it appeared as if they told each other
to calm down and enjoy the sea. One day I hope to be fortunate
enough to experience what happened between the two of them. But
I know that I must first survive time and simply get old.
Of course not all men and women dare to get that close to
the ocean. Many on the beach are seen straight backed, standing
like statues on their rock like pedestals, contemplating nothing
more important than themselves.
Walking further down the walkway the ocean now allows more
beach to appear. This is where most of the young are seen. The
children are creating their own form of world in the sand while
their parents dream about the world they either left behind or
just rediscovered. During a sunny summer day the sounds of
laughter and screaming drown out all that nature can muster up.
But on fog bound days the inhabitants treat the shore like they
would a church with their voices daring not to disturb the sounds
of the sea.
Continuing my trek down beach I arrive at the place where
the young are known to camp themselves for hours in the hopes of
attracting each other into summer and maybe longer relationships.
But again, during fog bound times, even the young are awed into
staring into the ocean praying that sunny days are soon to
return. The lovers are always there, arm in arm and body to
body, in the hopes that their love is the true one which will
last forever. But the fog hints to these young lovers that they
are observing a truer reality. Whether or not this scares them
or gives them hope is their own mystery.
Further down the beach is the territory of the more mature
inhabitants. These people have already been through over half
their lives and are in the midst of giving up their existence's
to mold new futures for their children. Observing these people
shows that they always seem lost in their own thoughts or
possibly lost dreams.
The short summer season is not the only time one has to
observe the beauty of the coast of Maine. Another season that
marks the end of the excitement of summer and begins the
preparation for the holidays and the cold winds of winter is also
a prime time to observe what life can be. It is a remarkably
quiet time of year. The hustle and the bustle of summer
vacations are still very clear in all of our minds. Yet
normality is not the only idea that comes back to us this time of
year. Serenity also creeps its way into all of our lives.
Walking down the beach clearly shows how the screams of
playing children are now replaced by the songs of gulls overhead.
The acrid smell of aloed bodies is replaced by the pure smell of
salt water mixing with the salted air. Even the waves of the
ocean, which during the summer seemed to be pounding their way to
the beach in the hopes of dislodging all the bodies who would
dare to step more than knee-deep, now seem to be enjoying their
own sense of serenity by ever so gently touching the newly vacant
beaches.
The people of this season also have changed. Not that the
same people aren't seen on the summer's beaches enjoying the
warmth and excitement of that season. But the bicyclist is not
hurrying down the beach to be the first to arrive at his
destination. He is now sitting by the beach on a bench, enjoying
the eternity of the ocean. You can almost see through his eyes
and feel that he is not even thinking of the fun of summer's
past, but is experiencing his own emotions mixing with the
emotions of the ocean.
The slow minded boy, whom almost everyone feared and made
fun of during the summer months, easily joins the bicyclist in
his losing of self. And of course the men and women of the rocks
are seen again straight backed throughout the length of the
beach, standing like statues on their rock-like pedestals.
Different seasons or times mean nothing to them. Even the old,
who during the summer were sometimes pushed aside to make room
for the energy of youth, now set the pace, staring down into the
sands of the beach, contemplating the sands of their lost time.
The very young walk with the old more this time of year.
They play the part of a sponge soaking all the knowledge that let
the old get old. The youth are so young and the old seem so old
that is very difficult, especially on the beach, to tell them
apart. The other inhabitants of the beach seem to trust us more
this time of year. The sand birds inch their way to a closer
more fearless view. Even the butterflies and white moths
fearlessly circle around our heads.
The colors of this season have forever been written about
and pictured in pastels, watercolors, oils or photographs. But
on the beaches you can't only see the green of the ocean with its
frosty white caps. You can feel and smell how perfectly combined
the colors are. How the browns of the sands go perfectly with
the deep blues and grays of the sky. The morning sky takes a
different form this time of year, in that its colors complement
the sea's so perfectly that one seem to be a continuation of the
other.
The clouds appear to form holes at the end of massive
tunnels, sneaking a peak at a hopeful heaven in the sky. One
particular morning a small sailboat broke this consistency by
daring to float between the sea and the sky. I wonder if they
knew how close they were in attaining that light at the end of
all of our tunnels. The quiet is the most intense feeling this
time of year. It is so extreme that the rumbling of chain saws
and the banging of hammers can't even hope to overwhelm the quiet
of the season. Even the sound of my footsteps, as I walk down
the beach, seem to naturally belong to the serenity of the ocean
front.
The summer months expose people's souls to anyone interested
in observing them. The off season demonstrates the natural
beauty of the coast. But to me the most exciting observation I
can make is becoming part of a coastal storm. They always start
with a lull. Not your ordinary quiet, but a time so quiet you
can't even hear the gulls or the wind blowing through the trees.
It is a time when all those who live on the coast walk to the
water's edge to watch the low tide go ever lower, in preparation
for the waters destined to explode on the beach.
The people are not the only ones who flock to the beach in
the lull before the storm. The gulls also come to a collective
realization that they must fly to the beach in preparation. They
are more courageous than their human counterparts, landing right
on the surf, staring into the water en masse, like members of a
religious cult awaiting their messiah.
The impending storm toys with the emotions of its observers,
first by blowing gentle streams of fresh air that stir
recollections of the gentler summer breezes. Then the ocean
shows its first white frothing heads. Soon, the sea is a bubbling
cauldron of milky white foam and spray. The air around the few
observers left explodes with the sparks of mist, and the wind
forces the viewers to squint into what has always been and will
always be, as long as life can exist on this planet.
The gulls at this point pray to some gull God in hopes that
mercy will keep them from being swept into the depths of the now
violent ocean. At the peak of the storm, the skies and the sea
become one, torn in half by the foaming waves and violent water.
Nothing else exists. Nothing else dares to exist. If there was
ever a time when beauty and violence co-exist, the coastal storm
is the pinnacle of both. The storm also puts the dreams of the
observer into perspective. The day-to-day reality of life seems
so desperately insignificant when compared to such violent
majesty. Yet the strength of nature, as reflected in the storm,
also inspires a sense that anything is possible, even achievable.
The beauty of the storm is that no one ever sees it to the
end. Most viewers grow to cold or tired and head for shelter.
The only thing that remains is the stark, gray tone that hangs in
the air and over the ocean. It's a color that has never been
successfully reproduced, because like a sunset over the volcanoes
of Hawaii, or the blinding white of a snowstorm in the Mount
Washington Valley, the gray of a coastal storm registers directly
on the mind as a feeling, a sensation of power, rather than a
visual stimulus that can be tucked away for later use.
Their are many reason why people yearn to be by the ocean.
The serenity, the perpetually fresh sea breezes, or the hypnotic
sound of the waves striking the beach. I love living here for
one simple reason. I am allowed to observe.
J.G. Fabiano
-----------------------------------------------------------------
