Still not getting anywhere.

2010-05-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

A world without poetry...that's a world without a soul. Well, perhaps not something that melodramatic, but it's something incomplete. A world without poetry is a world unwilling to look beyond the facts and the bare-bones logic and see the marrow contained within the stark white bone - the reason behind it all, or lack thereof, that makes it grow and flower and carry on into the next generations. A world without poetry is a bleached skeleton of a world, one without life covering it or filling it. It's just a world, and because of that it's somehow not a world anymore.

Different.

2010-04-15T19:20:00.001-07:00

I should give her credit in that she didn’t walk up to me and start it right away. We were both curled up in the motel room, avoiding the stiff, embalmed bed (“Ew, smells like burbon.” “…can we not sleep in this?”) and slumping ourselves deeper into the crusty carpet around a shared bottle of Dr. Pepper and cheap Chinese-style meat product. RENT has it wrong, you know—bohemians don’t eat tofu and greens. We feast on what we are thrown or what we scavenge as we prowl through the jungles of this world, whether it be stale bread with catsup spread on it or a chunk of raw poultry. Whatever stops the gnawing wolves in our stomachs from eating up our ideas and turning that idiosyncratic light of ours to more mundane things, like why the hell we’re flat broke and can’t afford groceries. Sharks aren’t particular about what they eat as they ceaselessly swim; they just get what they can.

The cable box was out or maybe it was the TV itself—or maybe we were the defected electronics, and refused to fully turn on the tube. Either way, it hissed and crackled with electronic snow and spit out one or two random images to tantalize us. True to American television, they were mostly commercials.

Between a static-laced voice singing about imitation butter and a department store babbling about errors in orders, she put a hand on my shoulder. Lightly she fingered the thin web of cracks, frowning at the fading splits—they’re almost gone, you know. There will still be lines for me to remember them by, but the exoskeleton is almost closed. In a way, I’m contained again, protected, since they can’t split me open as easily or penetrate.

“Those people were real assholes, Olo.”

I nodded and looked to the door on reflex, checking to see if the locks were fastened tight, the windows closed, the drapes up and blotting out the scene within. I’m a sensible shark, you see—I always watch for the other predators when I slow down to rest for a bit. They can’t overtake me. “They were, Scoot. They just took…you know, and they sold it. Like it was something they owned, and not me.”

“All of us aren’t like that.” Husky tone; Scooter’s voice (it’s too late for anonymity, anyway) seemed to rumble up from within her like rock, rolling like boulders with certainty. She waved aside my ‘I know’ and sighed. “That ain’t it. I mean people who…well, share sheets. We’re not all like that.” Her hand travelled to my back, just below the neck, and patted the plating. “It’s different…I could show you, you know. It’s nicer with women, for humans and poleepkwa.”

My voice cracked like ice and shattered so that the sentence fell apart, the words like broken icicles at our feet. “W-what—no. Oh no…no no no no…” I shrunk back, wrenched her hand away—had it gone lower, snuck further down while I wasn’t noticing? No, but I wouldn’t let her. If I had to I’d scratch at the hands, use the little bit of self-defense and flee.

But Scooter was my friend. Why would she want to hurt me? The sardonic reply came quickly: Why did all of those customers want to hurt me?

She sighed, let go of me and slunk back. Her eyes—I couldn’t look away, not because they were angry, or because they were sad, but because they were sad and trying not to show it. The ice blue was melting, getting watery with the heat and tension of the moment and she turned, blinked back the gush from the melting glaciers. Raindrops, or lakes of ocean water that were separated from me by the small flaps of skin, slightly smudged tangerine. Nonchalantly her shoulders moved in a shrug that turned into a slump. “I guess I always choose the people I can’t be with.”

She was going to stop this…she was going to stop herself and retreat in inglorious defeat because I didn’t want to take part in this. When did humans do that? Never; never had they turned tail to me and fled when I whimpered for it to stop short. Instantly I realized how she must have been feeling—you’re high up on the roller coaster but derail and fall before going down the big hill. No safe rush, just the dull, sick swoop of your stomach dropping and the long plummet down, down, down, down, down. Just because I wasn’t comfortable…that had never happened.

I acquiesced. No, more then that: I agreed. That was the good in it; the vital difference that made it more then torture and, maybe…enjoyable. I chose to do it, not out of fear but out of curiosity, of companionship. The way sex is supposed to be chosen, I think, and it was all so different. So familiar and unfamiliar; the scraping of plating against soft human skin, not rough this time but infinitely more delicate, more careful. Gentle, because she wasn’t trying to hurt me. It smelled different, too—free of the stench of booze but smelling like fruit, whatever perfume Scooter wears...most of the people who rented me had been drunk when they paid for it; they’d probably had to prepare themselves with the actual act by drinking, matching the heat down there with the warm fog of alcohol so that it makes a shred of sense. Things were clear this way—it didn’t make sense but then again when does anything in my life, our lives, make sense? I’m sitting in a motel room with Dr. Pepper, for Vishnu’s sake.

La Vie Boheme, I guess. It still smells like strawberries.

Travel (Short)

2010-04-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

I am travelling again, and watching the road streak by, feeling the distance between home and where I am now dissolve away. The car I’m sharing with my friend (who will be unnamed...sometimes reality sets in and I have to protect identities) is cramped, shuddering from the strain of moving forward and smells faintly of vomit. It’s like a small, mobile promise of the party to come. Just a few more hours, one more night of driving and praying that we don’t get pulled over by the cops. She has no driver’s license. We’re illegal here, my partner-in-crime and I; she’s guilty, I’m guilty of smuggling ourselves in this tiny, rave-marked car and for carrying the contraband we’ve got shoved in the backseat next to the worn, old rave equipment. It’s wonderful. Absolutely, refreshingly wonderful.

The complete foolishness of this—the rash thoughtlessness of it is invigorating. It’s stupid, yes, but how stupid can it be? Logic backs my actions…why would I ask for a ride back home? I couldn’t wait any longer—there are plans that are in the making. A protest-rave that needs to be planned and set up…I couldn’t wait, and it would have been wasteful to ask for a plane ride home. No, this way is best. I’ll be more, anyway, and people may see me: secrecy must be abandoned for the plot to come. It’s going to be great.

Daylight.

2010-04-11T13:57:00.001-07:00

Today is a nice day, if you’re a nature person. I can see the sun hanging high overhead like a dragon’s eye, swollen and yellow. It crisply takes in the green of the trees; it makes the brown and black of the bark stand out in stark relief against the few patches where snow clings on for dear life. Sooner or later it’ll realize that its time is up and melt away cleanly, or maybe not. Maybe it’ll keep hanging on until it’s finally torn from existence by the glare of the sun.

Today is a nice day, if you’re a nature person. If you’re like me and crave darkness, cut into with neon lights like knives and seething with the electricity of desire, carefully balanced tension that glitters like honed steel, it’s horrible. Today is one of those days that prove to me that I cannot leave this world; as wonderful as our home planet sounds and as exciting as it would be to go there, I can’t leave Earth. When the sun goes down and it’s dark out it’s fine—I’ve compromised between worlds and can get both the sky and the ground in my life. Now though, in the brightness…Vishnu I wish that today would end already.

I can’t leave my raves behind—even now, I feel the absence of a bass beat thumping next to my heart and miss it terribly. Without the rhythm and the vibration of speakers I am hollow; without the flashing strobes I am hopelessly blind. To be surrounded by color, lights, moving bodies and the thick, steady beat-beat-beat-beat of the music is like a drug to me, and that fact is both horrifying and uplifting. Yes, perhaps I’ll give up another life beyond this atmosphere for a chance at techno and nightlife here, but I’ll make sure that the upper air trembles with my music. Others will carry on my story if I reach them and my story is worth telling; if it isn’t worth telling I am content to keep writing it and living it. Someday it might be memorable then.

There are a few hours left until daylight ends. There are a few more days until I can finally go home. I’m waiting.

Moths, Songs, and Raindrops.

2010-04-09T11:37:00.001-07:00

Dreams are coming to me today; dreams that I can’t quite grasp now but that still stick to the back of my head. They’re like moths, chasing the beams of light from my eyes; bumping and flopping against me, their little bodies failing to penetrate the thick glass that separates truth and perception. Maybe when I put the blinds down and go to sleep, leave the window open a crack to allow the night air passage, the moths will get through…for now, I can only observe the ideas and write about the color of their wings.

It must be an exciting life, being a raindrop. You’re formed in the upper atmosphere—if I remember what Jill warbled happily to me, it’s the troposphere—and exist as a loose collection of ice crystals. You form slowly, gradually over time, fragile and yet undamaged because of the gentle quality of your surroundings. Fellow groups of ice shards bump into you and you grow, maturing and changing over time, maturing.

Then, finally, you get too big for your surroundings, too old and weary to the world that surrounds you and you begin to fall, fall fast. Your beauty dissipates; you warp and meld into yourself, structures melting and liquefying as the grayness drops away and the ground sneaks closer. Unseen forces pull at you and you stretch, falling down, down, down until you finally crash against the ground and splatter, far away from your home…

…it should be a tragic thing, the death of a raindrop, but people don’t cry over them. Maybe it’s because we know that the water isn’t gone. It soaks into the ground and nourishes plants and us, by extension; it runs into lakes and oceans and trickles under our feet, deep down in the darkness where rivers silently flow. But even if the rain gurgles in the river Styx, it always manages to make its way back into the sky again. It evaporates and drifts above the harsh, hard surface of the earth, leaving the pollution and the pain behind. It’s only then, when all the pain has bleached you clean, that the process can begin again.

I’ve been alternating between the raincloud and the falling for some time now, but maybe it’s time I went back to the earth again. Sherry’s mentioned classes in the District after Tanukashi finally takes over, and I’ve offered to help out. It’ll be nice to teach something…I think I’ll help with music classes and philosophy classes, if there are any. Probably not right off the bat, but later on there might be. We’ve got to establish a basis first; people have to have the words and the math before they can understand the rhymes and the measures. I’ll wait, and then when things calm down, I’ll be there to watch the newer, cleaner, more hopeful excitement. Who knows…maybe I’ll even help to cause some revolutionary thoughts. That would be something, wouldn’t it?

I wonder what it would be like to live as a song…translated, transcribed and endless, reincarnated through the vibrating discords of foreign throats, braying in unison and sometimes in different keys…

2010-04-08T12:02:00.001-07:00

I just finished my first day of basic self-defense training, and I’m left with a sense of how small I really am. I barely reached the shoulder of the poleepkwa who was training alongside me; it’s safe to say that I was much weaker then them too. In a rational person’s brain, this would be mulled over for a while and a conclusion would be struck: “I should learn how to defend myself.” It’s easy, it makes sense, but I really can’t reach that conclusion yet. Maybe it’s my pacifism that’s making this block inside my brain, or maybe it’s fear. It could be half-repressed embarrassment at how vulnerable I really am at times…or it couldn’t be any of those. I’m not sure. The main thing is that it makes sense to the people who care about me, and they’re some of the sanest people I know. It makes sense to them, so I do it, if it’ll make them feel better. The world has too much worry…they don’t need to worry more. You don’t have to worry more.

That little revelation is one of the saddest and truest things that I have felt lately...people shouldn’t be worried but they are. They shouldn’t do bad things, but they do. Why?

Another note: chaos. I’ve been thinking about chaos and order lately—some of you know why, and please believe me when I say that I’m not worried; I’m not scared—and, like my old days in the basement, I turned to a book, and then turned inward for answers. What I’ve found is perhaps not the best explanation or the most logical one, but it’s what I’ve got for now. If you read this, it’s what you’ll have too, plus your own opinions of course.

What defines chaos? In the dictionary, chaos is “a state lacking order or predictability.” Order, it seems, is “a condition in which freedom from disorder or disruption is maintained through respect for established authority.” It can also be a command given by a general in a war, or a formal written letter stating requirements for commerce. Lastly, it can be a body of persons living under a religious discipline. This is interesting…can chaos be a religion all its own? It can be a god to those who wouldn’t have a god otherwise. Perhaps it can be everything to those who have lost everything…

Chaos, however, the idea of chaos, is by its nature indefinable. It’s unable to be measured or predicted. It’s a variable, endless and vulnerable, infinite and already dead. Living by chaos can be living, or it cannot be. You never know, and that’s the problem with it.
If you expect chaos, it will not be there, because it’s chaos, and it can’t be predicted. Yet at the same time it’s predictable in that respect. There’s no order to it, nothing that you can hang a resolve on or base one’s life around. It’s CHAOS—what we truly think of it is nothing but a shallow hint of what it really is. Perhaps a madman can truly tell us that it’s like, but it would be in a language we cannot understand. Come to think of it…that would be why he would be called a madman. That’s the danger of it; those who worship chaos might someday look at their altars and find that their god is dead, or not the god they were worshipping. Either that, or they look back from the altar to the world and see that what they are surrounded by is something they can no longer understand.

Gone on a Walkabout.

2010-03-02T19:38:00.000-08:00

I am walking on the Milky Way.

Each tiny speck of dirt and sand reflects the moonlight overhead, the brown haze of grime momentarily lifted to reveal a soft glossy glow, like pearls, like ivory left lying around among the silent forms of cacti. No, they are stars—miniature stars, and if I wanted to I could dip my hand own and scoop up a handful of them. I could dig my feet into a galaxy—Vishnu knows my toes are sinking into the gleaming shards. I’ve gotten a bit bigger, a bit taller; I’ve started eating more, and my shell plates fill out better. For the first time in a long, long time, I feel more like an actual poleepkwa then an empty set of shell-plates. There’s a soldier inside this suit of armor. Would He be pleased at that? I’ve heard of control of the palate, reigning in of the carnal pleasures, but for the life of me I can never obey fully. If I can stop myself from eating, I cannot stop myself from drinking, or dropping acid, or acting immature and foolish and transitive. It’s always something that leaks out, something I can’t control or limit. So I take turns, day to week to month.

I think He would be pleased that I’ve decided to eat instead of blowing my mind even further out of my skull then it is at this point. My dharma isn’t to poison myself, I think. Well, that’s what I think now. It changes so very often—more then it should. A dharma isn’t like a shirt…you can’t pick and choose so that it matches your mood for the day. It’s permanent; it forces you to change around it. It’s a purpose. I’d like one of those. They sound nice. Would He mind that I’m wanting one? Does Vishnu take notice of what I desire or does He simply chalk it off as another failure on my part, another instance of my allowing desire to creep back into my life. I don’t know, and because of that I’m scared. If I ever see Him, I think I’ll ask, just to be sure. Of course, by then it’ll probably be too late, and I’ll have climbed my way up and down the ladder until I no longer remember the question. Reincarnation has its own dilemmas, just like a “traditional” heaven.

Everything’s rendered in black and white—there’s the soft glowing of the ground, the lamp of the moon, the velvet of the sky above. Then the dark silhouettes of cacti. Their shape makes me shudder a bit; it’s too human, too similar with arms raised, pipe in hand, or it’s too similar with arms held up in victory or outstretched in a warm embrace. The good and the bad images, and yet both are too real for me to go back and touch right now. Even Jack and Jill are too real, too certain and assured for me to think about right now. Later, perhaps. The crowd gathered here can wait while I think for a bit longer. Not too much longer, though…I wouldn’t want to keep this crowd waiting. No, they expect something, anything. Entertainment, horror, love, real love…anything. They expect something because I’m alive.

The world is rotating around me, spinning on and on and on, and all I can do is watch it twist and turn. Try as I might I can’t get the things to click, I can’t follow along. Is that because I’m moving in a different direction or that I’m not moving at all? I don’t really know.

When will I finally get answers to my questions?

2010-02-20T14:52:00.001-08:00

Wow. I certainly have ignored this blog of mine, haven’t I? I believe it’s about time I began writing in it again, and not simply to chronicle the day-to-day events of my life...that kind of thing gets boring after a while. That is not what I set out to do; I set out and created this account and blog to capture ideas, constructs, poetry and memory—yes, memory, but only in its proper course. My life is not interesting enough to exclusively write a blog about, but when you add my ideas…well, perhaps it can be. Anyway, let’s pursue this, shall we?

The Village. Every city has one: an area where the rancid, diseased, scabbed-over aspects of urban life burst out into the open and bloom into something that’s strangely wonderful. A pub, clubs, bars…the pus of society gets drained out in these little triage centers, trickles away, carrying the infection with it. Most assume that this saves the rest of the populace; the poor, sickened souls that inhabit those locations are too far gone to ever recover, to ever survive, and so they’re left alone. We let the drunks and junkies slouch away and simply keep a tighter grip on our purses and wallets when they slide by us. It’s too late for them, poor things, why can’t we help them? They don’t want to be helped…however can that happen? What drives them to stay in the red-light districts and bars?

It’s simple, really. In the cold, bright symmetry of the skyscrapers, the 24-hour days, the glare of florescent lights…you freeze. That fire in your gut gets snuffed out; ice is jammed down your throat, numbing your lips and tempering your tongue like red-hot metal in the waterbath so that argument overcomes words of kindness. Your highbeams get turned off, and you cannot see ahead. But alcohol and laughter, rowdiness and obscenities, the deep bass beat of a good techno song...that makes the cold go away. You warm up to strangers, reach out and touch them and find something real and unbound by a nine-to-five schedule and set rules of conduct. You sing, make stupid jokes, try things you know you’ll regret and laugh it off as it happens. The tentative friendships—tiny heartbreak and comradry to lend more weight to the friendships back home. It’s so personal and impersonal, so dangerous and foolhardy and addictive; it’s better then the mundane. Sometimes it’s better to be transitive. Sometimes it’s better to be out on the street or at the bar; to be irresponsible and id-driven and ready to go out in a blaze of glowsticks and glory.

We need to have a little sleeze, a little disease in our lives. Something cancerous and warped out of shape, to offset the monotony. Sure, it’s dangerous and toxic, and it can build up in your system—I know that. I’ve been nearly claimed by it, and every time I go to the city I’m reminded of the danger by telephone booths, prepositions, the rubbing of cloth against cracks and scarring. I know that it’s stupid to get drunk and show up somewhere and talk with people I barely know; I’ll never see them again, and who knows what their intentions could be? That makes it so much more precious, though! What’s better? Having the time of your life, even if it claims it, bursts it and burns it like powder to match, or burning slowly and emotionlessly? Apathy or annihilation?

Both, I believe. Both.

Crash.

2010-02-09T11:30:00.001-08:00

“I’m sorry.”

The words couldn’t help but escape my mouth. Quickly I looked away from the rear-view mirror, stared at Jack, stared at Jill, looked back again. “It’s just—I know—look, I’m sorry.”

Tom raised an eyebrow and grinned lopsidedly. “Déjà vu, isn’t it?”

“Yeppers. I could have sworn I’ve heard this before…” Max chimed in and reached over to pat my shoulder. “So I’ll say it again, Doorbell. We’ve made up our minds, and it’s okay. It really is, man.”

Yes, I’d had this exact conversation with Max and Tom at least three times already. The thesis was always the same—they were making the choice to join ARFA on their own. They’d been thinking about it for a while, it seemed, before I even showed up with Jack and Jill and my own stupid story. I hadn’t forced them to consider it, nor would I ever. It was their choice. It was all their choice in the end, and nothing could—or would—change that.

Still, I kept thinking about the apartment they’d just found, after weeks of searching. The studies that they probably wouldn’t be able to continue now that they’d be employed under ARFA. They had lives already, and now they were being turned upside-down by this newest chain of events. Tom and Max had spent so long trying to find a place to settle down and continue their studies, but now…now they were just going to give that up to help the poleepkwa. Hopefully they’d still be able to have semi-normal lives, but if Jake was any example that really wasn’t likely. The knowledge made me admire them all the more, though guilt still twisted in my gut and my thoughts kept turning to maybes. Maybe if I hadn’t mentioned it, they wouldn’t have joined. They would have found other, less dangerous ways of helping my people, but then again we needed all the help we could get. We really did, so shouldn’t I be thankful they would do this? That they were doing this?

I turned around in my seat and faced them. “But are you sure—“

Something must have happened in those few seconds that I wasn’t looking, because a squealing noise came and the car suddenly jerked forward, then back. Metal groaned and screeched; suddenly we were sideways and something collided with the back of my head—my vision went black and stayed black. Nearby I heard Jill warble in fear, and reached out for her. She was fine…no cuts or bruises, but she clung to me along with her brother, voice shaky and warbling. “Olo—what happened? The car’s sideways.”

Tom swore and a slight clicking sound came. “Goddamn seat belts. Hey guys, are you okay? Max? Kids? Olo?” More clicking sounds came and I felt movement. “The fucking car crashed…is everyone okay?” His voice was loud. “I’m going to try to crawl out of the side of the car, okay?” Metal began screeching, and I heard the tinkle of breaking glass.

“Here…holy shit! Oh god. Oh god, oh god—shit!” Max’s voice came from somewhere close to my antennae, sounding hoarse and pained. “Damn. My leg…shit. Shit shit shit.”

“Max?” I turned my neck and ignored the spike of pain the motion caused. “What is it…?” I blinked, first once, then twice. “I can’t see you.” Something wet was leaking into my eyes, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Was there blood in my eyes or engine oil?

“Here—Maxie, stay still. Still, Max. We’re gonna get you out—Olo, I need a hand here, man. Jack and Jill, you’ve got to crawl out of this.” Tom’s voice was steady—well, steadier then anyone else’s—and he guided me out of the car. "Look, we've gotta get out of here."

Rehash.

2010-02-04T12:10:00.000-08:00

The conversation was light for the rest of the day; we rehashed the past and joked about old raving escapades while drinking various non-alcoholic beverages—Tom stuck to coffee, while Max and I had cola. We’d arrived late in the day, so no caffeine for Jill and Jack; they drank apple juice from a small carton that had been stuck haphazardly in the back of the refrigerator to cool down when we arrived. On a whim, I logged onto my facebook account and let Tom poke around, chatting with some of my other friends. Max grinned and began telling me what had transpired when I left.

“Yeah. After you left, we packed up and went to college—dorms.” He grimaced and rubbed at his soul patch before continuing. “Yeah, the dorms were bad. Remember the old apartment, the one we used to crash in all the time? The Hangover Hang-out?”

I nodded; how could I forget The Hangover Hang-out? It had been the place where I slept in a warm, reasonably clean bed for the first time, watched television sitcoms for the first time, gotten drunk for the first time. The chaotic, cramped residence was forever fixed in my head alongside the basement—the memories of the apartment, though, were warm and bright, at odds with the cold, blank bewilderment of my basement memories. It was good that I couldn’t forget it...it was really good.

“Well, these rooms made the old apartment look like the Ritz.” Max chuckled and sipped at his cola, shaking his head mockingly at the memories. “We couldn’t stay there—we were already catching flak from some of the jerks who lived there also—so Tommy came up with the idea of getting our own place. Of course, with him getting his chemistry degree and me studying my ass off with all the mythology and psychology courses, it was hard.”

From the other side of the room, Thomas grinned and looked up from the small laptop; there was no conventional computer here. “For God’s sake man, don’t study your ass off. You need it!” He laughed and looked back at the screen, eyes narrowing slightly as he read the text. “Hey Olo…who’s this ‘Thomas Rohrer’ guy?”

“A friend of mine. He works for ARFA—y’know, the Alien Rights and Freedom Association.” Quickly I warded off the impending question, antennae twitching slightly. “I’ll explain it all later, okay?”

“Sure thing.” Thomas nodded and went back to surfing the web.

Max followed that short conversation, then raised an eyebrow and stuck his tongue out at Tom, coaxing laughter out of Jack and Jill. It did look funny, seeing a man in his twenties resort to such an infantile gesture, but this was Max we were talking about. Age really didn’t seem to matter with him, nor appearances. That quality seemed to be in everyone I met…but of course that would be the case. I was an alien, after all, and not many bigoted people would want to be friends with me. Just my luck, I guess.

Sensing the conversation sputtering out like a candle deprived of oxygen, my black-haired friend blinked and rolled his neck. “So anyway…it took a while, but once we got some real free time away from classes, we started scouting around. New York isn’t the best place for people like us, at least when you want an apartment, so we waited until we could transfer together before putting the down payment on this place. Now we’re at the college nearby—it’s a nice place. Copacetic, really.”

Tom held up a fist in the air, his eyes never leaving the laptop screen. “Right on.”

Jack and Jill giggled again before scampering off. I kept track of them out of the corner of my eye—they wouldn’t deliberately cause trouble, but it was still possible that they’d knock something over, mix up a box or two…”

“It’s fine, really. It’s all cool.” He must have caught my expression. Max flicked his wrist a bit, driving away the idea as if it was a mosquito. “Jack and Jill can fool around all they want. They’re kids.” He smiled as my children pulled a deck of cards out of the duffel bag and sat down a short distance away. I gazed at them—yes, they were playing gin rummy. They loved that game.

Quietly I could hear him add, “Could you tell us your end of the story, now? What’s gone on over the past few months?” max didn’t say it out loud, but his quick glance at my scarred plating begged the question: what the hell happened to you? Tom looked up and closed the laptop, picking up that the conversation was turning away from its original trivial subject.

What the hell had happened over the past few months? When I stop to think about it, even now, it seems like so much…too much to have all happened. It did, though—I’ve got the memories and the scars to prove it, tangible reminders that my dreams and flashbacks really aren’t just in my head. They’re real, and they did happen. Slowly I felt myself tip the coke bottle and drink a few sips’ worth. Even though I was moving of my own accord, it was detached. I could have been an observer to it all; an audience member to my own monologue, listening in on my own soliloquy. I just wished that it was better then it actually was; Hamlet’s “to be, or not to be” seemed a whole lot better then my stories of Miss Miss, tripping, meeting ARFA…and the egg trade.

They didn’t need to hear that; I could have easily lied and used my brain—my somewhat talented brain, if I allowed myself the vanity of thinking that—to formulate some other way of explaining my cracked, still-healing frame. I could have fallen down a flight of stairs, or gotten into a memorable barfight, or gotten caught up in a rowdy MNU protest. But no: the story tumbled from my mouth in all of its bastard glory—and the best part? The best part? It was tame compared to some of the other ones I’ve heard. Take Seth Thomas, Sherry Johnson, Gabriel Mumper, Nick Gogan. What I’ve seen is nothing compared to what—

Max was staring at me, horror etched on his features. “You’re…you’re not kidding. You…really did that.” He ran a hand through his hair, looking down and shaking his head. “Just…damn. Damnit. That shouldn’t be happening here. Not in America, or anywhere. Damnit.”

My voice was quiet. “Well…Blue Fly doesn’t do it anymore. We—“ No. I would not tell them what happened to that monster. Let’s save some of their sensibilities, shall we? “We took him down. He got arrested. He's...he's in jail now.”

“But still, there are others.” Thomas tentatively put a hand on my shoulder. The blue cloth of his sweater rubbed against my green plating and I thought briefly of analogous colors. He was complementary, but I was analogous to him. Funny. Ha-ha. Why wasn’t I laughing?

Max chewed on his bottom lip for a few seconds, then stared right at me. “We’re joining this ‘ARFA’ thing. If this shit goes on, we’ve got to stop it.” He stared at Thomas, who had moved during my narrative to sit next to him. His voice was softer when he spoke to him. “Right?”

Thomas smiled grimly and flicked Max’s nose. “That’s right, Maxine.” He nodded and blinked at me. “We’re signing up to this. Can you put a good word in for us with the guy in charge? I checked it out…it was some ‘Commander of ARFA’ guy and Ryan Baumgardner, right?”

I could only stare at them, moth agape and mandibles hanging slackly. Their remarks…they were in English, perfect Tom-and-Max English, but for some reason their meaning refused to be processed. If I was a computer, I’d still be displaying the ‘Windows Is Loading’ pop-up.

“What?”

Reunion.

2010-02-03T14:04:00.000-08:00

The trip to Max and Tom’s place wasn’t that hard, or long. One of them—I think it was Tom, since he tends to think of things like that ahead of time—sent me a set of directions through the email system that would get Jill, Jack and me to their apartment without a great risk of being spotted. Still, it was painstaking and methodical travel, especially when Jack and Jill wanted to look at and draw/analyze everything new they saw. They’re like miniature energizer bunnies; they’ll keep going and going and having a fun time doing it.

Finally, though, we were able to sneak up to the apartment and knock on the door. Jill and jack hugged my legs, blinking around silently at the somewhat dingy hallway. Hopefully nobody would see us…or whoever saw us wouldn’t care enough to alert MNU…

“Who is it?” I recognized Max’s voice, but it sounded…different. Less stressed, with an almost laid-back tone; from those three words I guessed that the college life had been treating him well. The question was, how much had he changed since I’d last seen him?

I shuffled my feet uneasily; Jack and Jill disentangled themselves from my legs. “It’s Olo—”

It immediately flew open. “Olo!” A man with black hair stood there for a moment, blinking at me, then letting his eyes travel down to Jack and Jill. I blinked in surprise myself; Max had changed his appearance since I’d last seen him. He’d let his short Mohawk grow out and actually had a soul patch-of-sorts. Good old Max…his expression was the same as I’d imagined it—full of good-natured surprise and happiness.

“Hey man—it’s great to see you again! Come on in. Tommy’s just straightening out a place for you guys to sleep.” He pressed himself against the door frame, allowing us passage, and closed the door behind us. After a few moments of silence, he grinned. “So? What do you think? We’re still getting settled in, but we’re nearly there.”

“It’s…wow.” They’d quickly described their apartment in the various emails we’d exchanged in the past few days, but seeing it in person was so much different. The walls were a nice turquoise color, while a green carpet was halfway spread out on the floor. One side was still undone; grey cement winked at us like the sidewalk at the edge of a lawn. Boxes were scattered around the place, pushed up against the walls and stacked on top of each other to make makeshift tables and work surfaces. We seemed to be in some form of kitchen, but there was a sofa and a small coffee table in here as well. I remembered a remark from the last email: it’s not a huge place, so we’re combining some rooms. It should make for an interesting layout. It sure did.

Jack scampered away from me, heading towards another room that was adjacent to the one we were already in. he turned and fled back to me as a figure exited the space and stopped. “Yo.”

My mandibles twitched, then froze in surprise. This man…this man couldn’t really be Thomas, the same Thomas that had admittedly “tried to rock the nerdy look, and failed.” He’d gotten different glasses—these were rectangular frames, a far cry from his old circular ones—and he had to have grown at least four inches. He’d even gone ahead and dyed his hair…it was a brilliant orange color that contrasted with the blue sweater he wore. That at least hadn’t changed: Thomas had a knack for wearing warm clothing even when it was roasting out. The guy was permanently cold.

“Oh hey there. You’re Jack and Jill, right?” Thomas scratched his head and looked down at the two little poleepkwa.

Jill nodded. “You’re…you’re Thomas?”

“Yeppers.” Tom grinned and knelt down, so he could be at eye level. “You can call me Tom or Tommy, though. Thomas sounds so formal.” He made a face; Jill giggled and Jack smiled. Straightening up, he gestured with his head at the duffel bag I was carrying. “You want me to get that Olo?”

“Uh…sure.” I handed off the bag to him, and he walked off with it. Thoughts churning, I turned to face Max, who was still smiling. “We have an awful lot to talk about, don’t we?”

"Yup. You could say that."

old friends.

2010-02-01T15:42:00.001-08:00

I rarely, if ever, check my email; the last time I checked it I had over three thousand notification emails from facebook and other spam sites. So when I logged on to my email, I expected nothing but hordes of pointless spam messages that I would have to systematically rifle through and delete. Of anything, I did not expect a letter from a friend, especially a friend that I had not heard from in a while.
Maxie and Tommy—the two college students that had found me and taught me the rules and ways of the rave. Quite possibly, the two first nice humans I’d ever met.

Hey Olo! Max here.
Long time no see. Or talk. Or message. Or rave. :( It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Hope everything’s been going well in your little universe. I got your emails a while ago—sorry that I haven’t responded. It’s just been so chaotic with the moving around and college and all of that. Can you believe that it took us over a month to get an apartment? Some people just hung up on us when we said we wanted to lease an apartment for two men. They were jerks…oh well. PLUR, right? ;)
Anyway, when are you coming over to visit us with those little kiddies of yours? I’d LOVE to meet Jack and Jill, and I know Tommy would too. Let me know ASAP, bud! It would be great to meet up again!
-Max, the magnificent.

The epitaph made me smile a bit. Trust Max to use that nickname I’d given him so long ago…how long had it actually been since I’d seen them last? Months, at the very least. I’d been with Miss Miss since September, so it had been months. Too long, much too long; it would be nice to meet up with old friends again. Quickly I typed up a response, grinning wider with each tap at the keyboard.

Olo the Doorbell here.
Sounds like a great idea! Just send me the address—it might take a while, but I’d love to join in the housewarming pleasantries. ^,,^ Jack and Jill send their regards. See you two soon!

The Cat Came Back (Remake)

2010-02-01T14:02:00.001-08:00

Old MNU had some troubles of his own
He had a yellow cat which couldn't leave his home;
he abused it and he used it, since it couldn’t run away,
one got back to the mothership and flew far, far away.

and the cat came back, the very next day,
The cat came back, they thought it was a goner
But the cat came back; and then they all got away.
Away, away, yea, yea, yea

The grunt around the corner swore he'd kill the cat on sight,
He picked up his cattle prod and went out to start a fight;
He waited and he swore that the cat would not return,
He was never heard from again; oh, won’t they ever learn?

and the cat came back, the very next day,
The cat came back, they thought it was a goner
But the cat came back; and then they all got away.
Away, away, yea, yea, yea

He gave it to a blue fly, with a dollar note,
He told him to take it ‘cross the ocean in a boat;
They tied a rope around its neck, it must have weighed a pound
Now they search the docks for a blue fly that was drowned.

and the cat came back, the very next day,
The cat came back, they thought it was a goner
But the cat came back; and then they all got away.
Away, away, yea, yea, yea

He fumed and he swore when the cat met with UIO,
he tried to say it wasn’t true when it told its tale of woe;
But then a voice cried out in rage, and said “this won’t go on!”
The faces turned to the podium; alas, the cat was gone.
and the cat came back, the very next day,
The cat came back, they thought it was a goner
But the cat came back; and then they all got away.
Away, away, yea, yea, yea

Jack.

2010-01-28T18:13:00.000-08:00

Jack springs up as soon as Jill is finished, pushing her over to the seat he occupied and shuffling his feet. “Okay…um, um here I go!”

I grin and let Jill clamber up onto my lap; she seems intent on using me as a pillow so I make no attempt to ask her to move. Her head briefly blocks my field of view and Jack’s face is obscured—I move my head to the side and he reappears from behind Jill’s grayish plating. “Sounds good, Jack. Whenever you’re ready.”

“O-okay.” Jack scratches his head and breathes deep. He stares at his feet, blinks at me and Jill, goes back to analyzing his feet. It’s normal for him—Jack tends to think over what he says before he says it, which makes his words that much more endearing to me. Jill speaks her mind and dredges up ideas like a volcano coughs up obsidian; Jack’s thoughts take time to reach the surface, like turquoise or amethyst, but shine in another, wonderful way. Smiling to myself, I continue the metaphor: I would be bronze—different ideas and concepts combined and heat-treated. Not exactly the best thing out there but still useful at times.

“Oh! Then I see Queen Mab hath been with you!” Jack’s shout startles me out of my revere. The little poleepkwa has punched at the air with his fists and voice, eyes wide and flicking back and forth. I can tell that he’s going to be outspoken for this one…maybe I should have closed the door. No, no—it’s best if people hear this. It’s going to be interesting. “She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes in a shape no bigger than an agate-stone on the fore-finger of an alderman, drawn with a team of little atomies over men’s noses as they lie asleep!”

He cocks his head, points to nothing in particular and squints. “Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs, the cover of the wings of grasshoppers, the traces of the smallest spider’s web, the collars of the moonshine’s watery beams, her whip of cricket’s bone; the lash of film. Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat, not half so big as a round little worm pricked from the lazy finger of a maid.” He makes a small circle with his finger and thumb and peers through it, smiling at me and Jill and illustrating the insane tininess of the thing. His sister squirms and laughs a bit; I smile and nod in encouragement.

“Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut, made by the joiner squirrel or an old grub, time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers. And in this state she gallops—” He jumps, actually jumps up, and lands back down on his feet only to start up again and run in place. “—night by night, through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love; O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight, O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees, O’er ladies ‘ lips, who straight on kisses dream,”

With each repetition of the word “o’er” his antennae flick; the words and their meaning seem to be vibrating through every scrap of his plating, energizing my usually-quiet child and goading him to speak louder and with a note of jollity in his voice that even I have rarely heard. This was why I wanted them to read Shakespeare, I muse: the fact that words hundreds of years old could excite children today. Maybe, one day, something that we write will do the same—maybe hundreds of years from now people will be reading works of literature by those of us born here on earth and marveling at them the way we are now. Maybe—enough with the maybe. Jack is speaking…I have to listen.

“Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are. Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose, and then dreams he of smelling out a suit. And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail, tickling a parson’s nose as a’ lies asleep, then dreams he of another benefice: sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck, and then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon drums in his ear!”

He’s so excited now that he’s stumbling over the words, spitting out the syllables like they’re hot food that, no matter how tasty it is, has burned his tongue. Jill picks up on his energy—how they can do that, I have no clue. Is it a remnant of our species’ hive mind or simple understanding?—and jumps out of my lap, grabbing his hands and hugging him.

“At which he starts and wakes, and being thus frighted swears a prayer or two and sleeps again—merf. Merf…eef.” Jack giggles and returns the hug, cutting off mid-sentence and bursting into laughter. It’s apparent that he’s not going to continue, but it’s fine; he’s happy, Jill’s happy, so it’s—

“You say something! You gotta say something!” I barely manage to hear Jack’s words before he and Jill catapult into my lap.

It’s wonderful.

Jill.

2010-01-28T17:20:00.000-08:00

“To be, or not to be--that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.”

How strange it is, hearing a voice so young utter words so old. Shakespeare is much, much older than Jill…almost fifty times her age, when you think about it. Yet here she is, eyes closed, antennae swishing to the rhythm of the soliloquy, flicking at the end of each line as she unconsciously clenches her hands tightly on the book; the words are slipping, it seems, and she must grab them else they fly away.

“To die, to sleep—no more—and by a sleep to say we end the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep—to sleep—perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.”

They aren’t escaping, though—they’re fluttering about like tamed birds, the tentative quality of her voice only adding to the hesitant nature of the words. Hamlet isn’t sure of himself when he’s saying this in the play…quite the opposite. He’s anxious, confused and afraid of how his life may continue—or end. Can’t she see that she’s mastered it? She’s remembering it perfectly, every last word. I am so proud…at her age, what was I doing? Compulsively measuring cracks in a wall. Not memorizing famous speeches, not reading up a storm, studying science, excelling in art. My children are, though, and it is amazing. Where will they be when they are my age? What will they be able to do?

“There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong…the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin?” Jill pauses to giggle—she always laughs when she says “bodkin”—then presses on, her voice grave and sad. It’s not an act; she knows exactly what she’s talking about and how it relates to life today. The emotion is real. I feel guilty…why did I suggest that they memorize separate speeches from Shakespeare? I should have seen this coming…but no, even then it wouldn’t amount to much. Life is full of reminders of how bad things can be—after all, D10 is still here, people are still dying…perhaps it’s best that this reminder is less direct and beautiful in its own right.

Jack is sitting next to me, nodding off against my side and clutching the copy of “Romeo and Juliet” close. For a second I wonder if it’s smart to let him sleep and read his snippet of Shakespeare later, maybe tomorrow when he’s more rested; I shake my head at the thought immediately after. No, he’d be upset that he didn’t recite his soliloquy right after Jill, no matter how tired he was. As if in affirmation, Jack stirs and blinks over at his sister, smiling a bit and looking down at his book. His mandibles move silently as he reiterates the words. My antennae flick and I focus on Jill again.

“Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will…” Jill pauses and stares at me, eyes wide and a blank expression flickering across her features to be quickly covered by fear and embarrassment. She’s forgotten the words.

I give her a few moments to try to find her place before prompting her with the next few words. “And makes us rather bear…?”

A small spark seems to light up her eyes and she continues the sentence, stumbling over the words and going back to her original rhythm.

“Bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprise of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action—Soft you now, the fair Ophelia!—Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered!”

Rescue, part 1.

2010-01-17T10:32:00.000-08:00

I spent the rest of the day hiding from the runners, ducking into dumpsters and hiding under cars whenever I heard footsteps come near. That sort of routine had been beaten into my brain already from my time in the egg trade; it was only a matter of slipping back into that old frame of mind. Judith found me much later, sitting on top of a demolished cardboard box in a dumpster.

“What the fuck happened to you?” She wrenched the top of the dumpster off, ripping it open as if it was a piece of tin foil. Her black face peered down at me and her eyes were narrowed.

I swallowed and hoarsely spoke—my throat was dry from lack of water. I’d used the single bottle of water I’d brought to rinse out the burns on my hip, which was pointless now that I was hiding in a garbage pail. “Not planning…hello Judith.”

“Can you walk?”

No. I chewed back the retort and tried to get up. “Umm…I don’t know.” Judith made a small noise of discontent and grabbed me, lifting me up out of the dumpster as if I weighed nothing. As I had predicted, my hip screeched with pain and I winced, balancing on the uninjured leg. “Thank you…”

My rescuer towered over me, at least a foot taller, if not two or more. Judith’s voice was underlain with a growl, though her face betrayed no expression. It was as if someone was standing behind her, speaking with that rough voice while she stood there, seemingly unperturbed. “Who did this to you?” Her antennae swished a bit and she glanced at my blackened plating.

“Just some runners. I pissed them off…it was my fault.” It was my fault—if I had taken the time to at least cover up the Blue Fly logo, I wouldn’t have been burned. Of course, they would have cornered me for the absence of a tag as well…damn. I guess I shouldn’t have ventured out on this wild goose chase at all.

Causally, Judith lifted up a lapel of the overcoat she wore to reveal the shiny metal of a shotgun barrel. Immediately I hissed and looked around to see if anyone was watching. “Put that away! Put it away, before anyone sees! They’ll kill you!” She couldn’t be serious…she wasn’t actually intending to take revenge. No—this was a backup weapon, in case something bad happened. It had to be, because nobody in their right mind would go up against a runner or a dealer.

Judith snickered and smoothed the fabric of her jacket out. “I’ve been in worse places.”

“Maybe…but they’ll still kill you. They’ll rape you, take the gun, and blow your brains out.” Trying to ignore the stabs of pain from my roasted, heat-warped plating, I hobbled off further into the alley. “We’ve got to hide—”

I was stopped by Judith’s tight grip on my shoulder and pulled back like a mouse being tugged out of a hole by its tail. “What fucking side are you on?” She sounded disgusted with me, and her mandibles splayed out ever-so-slightly with each word.

“The side that doesn’t get me raped.” I wrenched my shoulder free from her grasp.

Calmly, Judith took out the shotgun and tapped it against my chest, knocking at my sub-arms with the barrel. “It looks like that would be my side.” She snarled. “Now get it through your fucking shell plates—it’s either you or them.”

Memory briefly overlapped with reality; as if in double exposure, I saw Sirius standing there, a crowbar in his hand and safety pins in his mandibles. The pain in my hip and leg was from a pipe, and the distant honking of cars was the ringing of telephones. You ain’t got friends here, Rigel. You just got people who haven’t conned you yet. You get over before they get over, or you won’t last a night. Hear me?

“Do you want to run away like a scared little prawn, or do you want to fight for your freedom?” The brief image melted away and it was Judith again, the shotgun now cocked and ready.

I sidestepped it. “I want to stay alive.”

“You're afraid. You're weak. You won't take revenge for yourself! Your kids are fucked if this is how you defend them.”

Easy for her to say. She had training, experience with ‘warriors.’ The egg trade had no rules, no matches, no wins. Just losses, and the occasional chance at delaying your loss and pain. “You don’t get revenge here. You just dig yourself a deeper grave.” I felt my mandibles splay out. “And leave Jill and Jack out of this.”

Judith’s voice was cold and furious. “You never give in. You never submit. You fight! That is how you live, Olo.” When I said nothing she lowered the gun and flicked the safety on. “You know, maybe your kids are better off with you dead. Perhaps I should take over as their parent. Because you are obviously too weak...to protect anyone.”

Judith, taking care of Jill and Jack. Just a month or so ago I would have denied that and protected them all the more, but now…she was right. I was weak and unable to protect them, whereas she…she wasn’t a call-prawn. She was better than me. It made sense.

“Yeah. What are you going to do about it? I’m going to take custody of your kids and you’re going to stand there looking sad…”

My eyes widened, but everything just seemed dimmer. “It would be better.”

Judith looked confused for a millisecond, but quickly masked the expression with a bitter tone and a flicking of her antennae. “Oh, that's great then. I'm going to be able to start them on their military careers early then. Private third class Jack and Jill. Two good little soldiers, but remember that if they make any mistakes…” She pantomimed smacking something, backhanding the air and grinning. “…they get hit like the rest of the recruits.”

Jack—Jill—hit? They shouldn’t be abused; if this was where this was going…I didn’t know what to think. I responded with the first thing that came to mind. “Don’t fucking say that.”

She ignored me and instead snickered, something like glee in her voice. “Jack and Jill went up a hill I told them not to go up. Jack gets smacked down and Jill gets put in her place.” Laughing, she turned and began walking away. “I like it.”

No—I numbly snatched up a half-empty bottle of booze and broke it against the wall near me. The wet glass slid in my grasp, but I didn’t tighten my grip as I held it out as a makeshift shank. “Shut the fuck up. You can beat the living shit out of me—rape me if you even want to—but you never talk about Jack and Jill like that.” It was true; I couldn’t care less at this point what happened to me, but if it determined my children’s well-being then maybe I should start caring. I would never let them be hurt.

The other poleepkwa nodded slightly and the cold tone leached from her words. “Good. Now, are you fighting the dealers or not?”

Fighting the dealers? Impossible. You couldn’t kill Blue Fly, or a runner, without signing your own death warrant. They were stronger, more equipped, and more versed in street-smarts then I. Vaguely I noticed that I was making tiny, choked noises and shuddering.

A hint of encouragement reverberated in Judith’s voice. “You've already got a weapon. You've got inspiration. And I know how to signal the dealers. Heard a call prawn do it when I was searching for you. She gives a low whistle, the signal.” She twitched her mandibles and made a loud whistling noise. “Now they’re coming Olo. Your friends. Time to figure out if you're worth the life you've been given.” She stepped back into the shadows and vanished from view.

The runner ducked into our alley before I could say anything. She scanned the dark alley and raised an eyebrow when she saw me. “’Sup, squiddie? Finally decided to make things golden?”

There were only a handful of options right now. I could cry out for Judith to help me, but she would most likely stay hidden and that would only alert any other runners to my presence. I could try to overpower her, and get shot—the small lump of a salt-and-pepper gun could be seen at her waist. Unlikely that she had any big bullets in such a tiny gun, but even a small bullet could cause big trouble if you got hit in the wrong place.

Which left only one option, if you could call it that.

“Y-Yes. I have…” I limped towards the runner, dropping the bottle and hunching over. I tried to make myself look even smaller and weaker as I crept closer to her. “I-I’m small, but I’m experienced. I’ll sell for a lot. Just—”

“Shut it, grillo.” The runner held up a hand in a combined fuck-off/shut up gesture. “You’re gonna come with me, get Oro’s tag, and then we’ll bring you to the breaker. ¿Entienda?”

I was within range. I reached out and grabbed her, yanking her to the side and hissing as my hip screamed. She reached for the gun—it fired, but I felt no pain. Her neck was closer, so I grabbed hold of it and pushed my hand forward, dashing her head against the wall where the stain of beer from that bottle still dripped down. Breaking the skull wasn’t like breaking the glass, though…it took a few blows for her to stop moving. I stepped back and turned away, bile rising in my raw throat. What had I done?

“Great, Olo. Half the fucking neighborhood could hear that smack.” Judith mumbled from my side. I whirled; she was standing next to me with an irritated expression. “Let’s hope they didn’t…”

“What the hell?” The other runner was here now, along with several others.
Still reeling from the crack of bone on concrete, I snatched up the pepper pistol and pointed it at the small group. I had no clue how to use it, but maybe the bluff would do the trick. “Clear out—clear the fuck out, now!” The New York slang came naturally and I whispered to Judith: “The neighborhood won’t care. if we can get over on these guys, we’ll…we’ll be clear.”

“Alright.” Judith drew her shotgun and blinked. “I’d listen to the prawn if I were you.” She cocked the gun and pointed it at the nearest man’s head.

“You can’t fucking get us all, grillo.” They drew their own weapons, and for some reason I was reminded of Act 1, Scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet. ‘You bite your thumb at me, sir?’ ‘Draw, if you be men!’

Judith snarled at that. “Slavers! Fucking die!” She fired, clipping the first man’s shoulder and moving on to the next one. Somebody flicked their safety off; she threw the gun at them. It knocked them down and he lay still on the pavement. While one of the still-standing runners took off running, his partner aimed and fired at Judith.

“No—” She didn’t need my warning. Judith leapt up into the air and avoided the rounds, landing catlike in front of the lone man. She crunched down on his head, mandibles scratching at the flash and cleaving bone; blood sprayed lightly on the wall and the stench of death spread out like a fog. As a last gesture, Judith simply grabbed the man’s wrists…and ripped his arms out of their sockets. Simple as that—he could have been a paper doll. The corpse fell to the ground and made an awful thudding noise. No, that wasn’t paper. That was flesh, torn, bloody, dead flesh.

Judith wiped blood from her face and smirked at me. “That’s how you kill humans, Olo.”

Burned.

2010-01-16T11:42:00.000-08:00

Seeing my foster parents was unnecessary; as soon as I got into the city there were signs of the dealers’ presence. Spray-painted tags that had sloppy poleepkwan writing concealed within their designs, numbers written in the insides of public telephones and bathroom stalls. “For an out-of this world experience, call XXX-XXXX;” “got shrimp? Call this number.”

It was dark when I arrived in Flagstaff, and early in the morning. The night life was out and about, stalking fresh meat for the market and piling their “wares” up and down streets and in the few buildings I managed to sneak a peek into. Like the docks in New York, I wasn’t noticed—I stuck to the alleys and other undesirable locations, and the few people that saw me could care less. What’s the point of reporting a prawn here? Better to jump him if he looks like he’s got something worth stealing and leave his twitching corpse for the fuzz to find.

Something worth stealing…like a backpack. I realized my fatal flaw as soon as the calling started.

“’Ay. Grillo.” Strangely, this voice was feminine; the smug, boisterous tone of a runner was unmistakable. “’Sup?”

Tentatively I turned and stared at a wall just past the woman’s ear, not directly looking at her but analyzing what she looked like. You never look a runner in the eyes, or a dealer. It’s disrespectful, and more than enough reason for them to kill you. I didn’t want to get killed or seriously miamed, so instead I averted my gaze and croakily spoke. “What?”

“You’re pretty far from your stable, ain’t ya?” She pointed to my lower torso. “I see that tag you carryin’. It ain’t ours.”

“Urm…yes. Yes, it’s not yours, but I’m just passing through—” Fuck! If they thought I was trying to sell to anyone here, I was dead. I still had Blue Fly’s logo embossed on my hip, which when coupled with the fact I was sneaking around made me look guilty.

“Bullshit. You’re turning tricks, ain’t ya?” A deeper voice cut in from my left. It must have been another runner, or maybe even a bodyguard—this guy was tough. Silent alarm bells went off in my head as the man walked in closer. “Ain’t ya, camarón?” He pinned me against the wall with a forearm. “I asked you a fucking question.”

I whimpered and felt the dull crinkle of bills through the cloth of my bag against the wall of the alley. “I…don’t want any trouble…” This was too much like all the times I’d angered Blue Fly, all the times I’d done or said something wrong by mistake and paid dearly from it. “Please j-just let me go…please please please…” I could almost hear the phones again and feel that pipe bashing against my skin. Vishnu, this was it…world-wide, this was it. New York, D10, Arizona…it’s like this everywhere. Where could I go where I wouldn’t be raped or mugged by someone?

“Nah. I don’t think I will. Hey chica, get the light. Let’s put some shrimp on the Barbie.” He held out a hand; the woman put something into it and stepped back, grinning. I met her eyes this time—she glared back and I looked down. The man smirked and shifted his grip on me; he held a lighter. With sickeningly deft moves, he smashed it against the wall and let the clearish liquid drip on the section of plating that the logo was painted on. It was as if he’d practiced it; I tried to squirm free as the other runner lit a match and held it to my soaked hip. The lighter fluid ignited immediately, and it felt like someone had decided to rip my plating off.

I failed. I’ve done nothing except get myself hurt and make it worse for any poleepkwa in the area. I’m so sorry everyone...please forgive me, or at least overlook this transgression. I haven’t gotten anything done…

On The Road Again...

2010-01-15T14:22:00.000-08:00

“Promise you won’t be gone for a long time?”

We were curled up on one of the couches in the rec room, oblivious (for now) to the tiny tears our exoskeletons made in the fabric. You could tell which chairs and sofas were preferred by the poleepkwa who worked at the base—after a while they looked moth-eaten and gnawed by the small puncture wounds unknowingly produced by spines.

Jack, Jill and I were all huddled together in a collection of shell plates, warmth, and comfort. Jack blinked up at me with wide eyes as Jill tugged at my vestigial arms playfully. His voice was wavering. “Promise you’ll be back soon?”

A small brown knapsack—borrowed from ARFA’s locker room—lay at my feet; my tattered overcoat (found in a trashcan in d10) was on my back. It was the little things that broke apart the happiness of the moment, the tiny indications that no matter how wonderful this frame of time was, it would have to end soon. Sighing, I wrapped my arms around them both and smiled wanly as they snuggled in close and warbled quietly. They were always so happy if someone hugged them, even if they were worried before...it’s as if that simple embrace has the power to erase the worst of fears and anxieties. Vishnu, they were my little angels, love and intelligence in poleepkwan form. The sentimentality is well-deserved for them—I don’t lie when I say that, or think it. It’s true, every single word.

Quietly I spoke, eyes darting around to check if anyone was listening in. Nobody should know ahead of time what I had planning, except my children. I didn’t want to cause unnecessary worry or goad someone into coming along by accident. Quickly in, quickly out, and it would be over; ideally that was the way this was going to work out. “I promise. I’ll be back Monday, maybe even sooner. I won’t be gone long.” My grin grew in earnest. “Hey, we’ll even watch a movie when I’m back here. How does that sound?”

They were enchanted by the idea, and began babbling excitedly. My practiced antennae managed to pick up their individual statements even when they spoke at the same time.

“Ooh—ooh—can it be the Jungle Book?”

“Can Judith watch too?”

“And Jake?”

“Jake’s got a lot of bruises, have you noticed, Jack?”

“Yeah. I think Judith’s—“

“I’ve got to go…” Carefully I moved them to the side, off of my lap, and sadly hugged them one last time. “I’ve got a train to catch.” I broke off the sentence there…they didn’t need to know that I’d quite literally be doing that. Better for them to think I paid for my ticket, or was given a ride.

Jill and Jack watched me leave the room, clutching onto each other with the space I had occupied still between them. I was strangely heartbreaking to watch—as if they would stay that way for the rest of the weekend, waiting for me to return and slide back into place so everything would be normal and happy. Secretly a part of me hoped that that was true, and they would wait. They’d wait, and know without a doubt that I’d come back.
_______________________________________________________

“Six-fifty. Damn, you’re far from home.”

I grimaced and jotted something down on a notepad: ‘you could say that, but I’d rather you didn’t. I won’t bother you. I just want the food.’ I didn’t expect anyone to understand me here, so I’d had the foresight to bring along plenty of pens and a pad of paper for communicating. Pulling the crumpled wad of bills from my backpack, I held up seven of them and passed them over to the tanned, weary man. Luckily he didn’t object to their ratty condition. Vishnu was on my side in that respect—I’d had no time or means to tidy them up. His wrinkled face split oven in a gap-toothed smile; money was money, and I’d given him more then he’d asked for. Good—that meant I might actually get the beef jerky I’d been eying.

The old man grinned and pocketed my money, then passed over the bag of jerky, winking at me with a slightly filmy eye. “Who’s going to listen to an old guy like me? Go on, mister alien. I won’t tell a soul. There’s no-one here who’d believe me anyway.” He croakily laughed and swept an arm out to encompass the dry landscape. “’Cept maybe those folks in that building east of here. I reckon you’ve heard of them.”

Was he talking about ARFA? Hopefully not. The base was supposed to be secret. I shrugged and bolted, stuffing the remaining money and jerky into my backpack. Now I had food, and therefore one less worry.

I caught the train later as it sped by. It’s a simple method, albeit dangerous. You jump up, grab onto anything you can get at and climb onto the top of a boxcar, keeping your grip against the howl of air moving past you as the train speeds ahead. It’s terrifying, it really is, and I hope I don’t have to do this very often. I read about it from books written during the Great Depression, though it’s a lot easier said—or read—then done. Vishnu granted me another boon today: there was an opening in one of the boxcars that enabled me to drop in. Right now I’m huddled amidst boxes of I don’t know what, typing away at this little phone and watching the service indicator in case it runs out. There are two bars left out of five, so I better hurry this up.

I’m fine; I’m about to cross the state border and go into Arizona. My destination is Scottsdale, though I’ll end up in Flagstaff beforehand. There’s been…well, I’ve gotten word from my parent, about my parent. The people that owned me finally decided to contact me via email (I guess they read the blog) and say they’re willing to point me to the guy they bought me from. This is, quite possibly, some of the stupidest things I’ve done, I know it, but if this turns out good…I could at least learn about my real parent, if not see them.

One bar left. I’ve got to go. Good night, everybody, and see you Monday.

2010-01-08T21:44:00.000-08:00

They seem to think that I've been saving people in District 10 all this time, that I've done good and liberated the oppressed. Apparently someone told Jack and Jill this, and it grew in their minds as ideas can only do with children. It's an amazing thing...leave them with a simple explanation and they craft a mythology in your absence, substituting the real flesh that isn't there at the moment with words and ink and dreams and hopes and aspirations. Wonderful, simply incredible; it's horrific, because their Olo isn't the Olo that I am. I haven't done the things they think I've done because I can't. I couldn't have done it--I have none of Sherry's drive or Seth's strength or Jake's tenacity or Christian's intelligence...for the past week or so I've been the trashcan prawn, the call-prawn who sold their own flesh for empty promises. Not a "hero."

I...I want to hold them close and just tell them flat out, whisper it to them: Vishnu has made you too good for me, or I have made myself too low for you. Either way, it isn't as nice as you think it is. I'm not the hero you seem to think I am, and as much as I try I will never be. Don't you realise that? Don't you see that, you wonderful, amazing, enthusiastic fools? I love you two with all my heart, and yet that heart is breaking because I will never be good enough. You need--you deserve--someone with a heart of gold; mine is pewter and fired ceramic.

I don't speak the words; they claw up my throat but are beaten back until they retreat and tear at my stomach and lungs. I simply move on and walk through the base. It helps, somehow, to be in motion...like the air moving around me will carry away some of these thoughts. Sharklike--stop swimming and you die, you asphyxiate. Somewhere in the back of my head I visualise pipes and tarp, hear the faint echo of a telephone. Do I really deserve this life, or that one? Who made that decision?

No. That question no longer matters...whoever or whatever decided, decided. What I'd like to know is how they made that choice, and why. Vishnu has His reasons, and I've been content thus far to rest easy with that knowledge. But now, I'm not. Out of all those killed in the egg trade and d10--this entire crisis and war--I wasn't. Maybe I should have been, if that meant keeping the greater, kinder, more deserving ones alive. So many have died...the innocent, the oppressed. They died, but I haven't; a call=prawn hasn't died. It's almost laughable...such a rarity. But why? Why have I lived when the better ones haven't? Why?

Solicitation.

2010-01-07T08:14:00.001-08:00

“Hey, prawn.”

That used to be an insult or a warning—when I heard that I would tense, look around and brace myself for danger, altercation. Now it isn’t; it’s a call, a request that’s closer to a demand but still tentative, still polite in the uncertainty of the outcome of this situation.

I could do two things in response to this; acquiesce and submit, or deny and flee. What I have to offer is too valuable, too sought after and rare in its deplorable quality, to risk being damaged…they wouldn’t shoot at me. There’s always the chance, though. They might, if they think that they’re getting blown off or stiffed. Destroy the thing that refuses to obey…that’s the reasoning behind D10 it seems. Grunts appear to think like that when they bring the cattle prods to touch our plating, when they stomp down with heavy boots and squash our flesh into the dust…

Out of fear alone—or is it more? Is this just the life drive, pressuring me to remain alive and aware, or am I seeking death, and becoming unaware? Does it even matter at this point?—I halt, turn around and plaster a masklike grin onto my face. This is my protection…I have no weapons or strength, but only deceit to defend myself with. You know nothing of what I’m thinking, human. You have no idea what I could be planning. I know what you want, but do you know what I want? No. You don’t, and you never will. I’ll sooner die then let you penetrate my brain along with the rest of me. “Yes?”

And then we’re grinding away at it, flesh roughly scraping against flesh for no reason other then the rand note. The rand note…it’s nothing but a slip of paper. Its worth is assumed…you can’t eat money, or drink it when you’re thirsty or use it as a coat when it gets cold. It’s a promise, a chance at getting the things you need; a chance, nothing more.

Is this why the other person enjoys it? Do they think that they’ve won something—they’re getting instant gratification while I must wait to receive mine? I have nothing to show for this, while they’ll walk away flushed, a smirk on their face, delighted and tingling. I have a scrap of printed paper for my troubles.

What the john thinks is immaterial. We’re both filling out our end of the deal, and we could care less what the other thinks. For something supposedly so intimate, sex is cold and detached. I’ll be gone soon enough—he won’t have to look at me again or worry about feeding, clothing, caring about me. If he wants, I’m just a walk down the street, a phone call away. Available, but not always there. All play, no work.

Maybe that’s what they want: detachment. They want it, but without the intimacy, or the work of caring about the thing you’re screwing. I’m not a living, thinking, feeling being to this man—the only part he’s interested in is the bit there between my legs. The rest of me could be rotting, ravaged, wet with decay and he wouldn’t care. He’d still keep grinding away, sending wave after wave of pain spasming up my spine, lengthening the splits in my plating with unconscious rocking motions. I could die and he wouldn’t care.

They want to get something for nothing. That will never happen, though—there’s no such thing as a free lunch, or free love. You have to work, or give something up, if you expect to receive something else in return. It’s a fallacy to even trust that you’ll get anything at all; things don’t turn out the way you want them to.

When the john is gone, I find a pen and scrawl his name on the rand note. He’d like to pay me off and let the world forget what’s happened here. I won’t…I will remember this. For as long as I have this blood money in my possession, I will look at it and remember where it came from and how it came to be mine. The rest of the world may forget—he may forget—but I will not. I cannot.

Erie Canal.

2010-01-06T12:18:00.000-08:00

I've got a mule, her name is Sal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.
She's a good old worker and a good old pal.
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.

We've hauled some barges in our day
filled with lumber, coal and hay
And we know every inch of the way from
Albany to Buffalo.

Low bridge, everybody down
Low bridge, for we're coming to a town
And you'll always know your neighbor, you'll always know your pal
If you've ever navigated on the Erie Canal.

We better get along on our way ol'gal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.

'Cause you bet your life I'd never part with Sal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.
Git up there mule, here comes a lock,
We'll make Rome about 6 o'clock
One more trip and back we'll go, right back home to Buffalo.

2010-01-06T11:22:00.000-08:00

I wish I could fully describe the feeling that throbs in the back of my head--pry open my torso, peel back the cracked plating and show you my heart. It's right there, that pewter little bit above the coiled loops of intestine and below the scorched dip of windpipe. Can't you see it--oh, it's gone? Forgive me; sometimes it does that. It disconnects from the center and travels to places elsewhere, crawling away from threats like some obscene jellyfish, some primordial thing crying lamely out for an escape from vague, dully sensed threats. You can try to grasp it and shove it back under the rock from whence it came, screw it back into place like a broken lightbulb, but it still wanders. A crusted, crumbling thing, not close to diamond or gold but more like metal, like copper conducting sparks of something great but never knowing it, never actually being it.

I must have left it behind at one of the trash piles. If that's the case then I don't need to worry; it'll turn up eventually and I'll get it back someday. Nobody's going to steal it...what good is a heart in D10? If there is an afterlife, if there is a hell, then this is the closest allegory to it that will ever slash at the face of this planet. Things happen every day that you could...couldn't even imagine. Values and morals take a backseat to the id, the ever-demanding id, and the life and death drives are shredded and clumsily melded together.

Better yet, it's with Jack and Jill, in America...I hope they're okay. I hope they understand why I can't talk to them, and that they know that I'm not abandoning them...I'd never abandon them. Every night, I can only imagine what they are doing, what they're learning and what they think about it. Jill, my little scientist: what have you analyzed? Have you figured out any answers to your questions, or have they only multiplied and formed into a theory, a hypothesis? Jack, my artist and poet: are you in touch with the tune of things, as you say? What have you made--has it made you?
My kids are growing up, day by day, and I'm not there...

2009-12-26T20:00:00.001-08:00

The bust had begun so abruptly—a bang, swearing and sudden torrents of gunfire. I hadn’t expected it…I don’t think anyone really did. We’d charged into this blindly, like the cavalry on a battlefield, and only stopped to consider what could happen next when we realized that the enemy had bayonets…but this is a war. It’s a war, and we all knew it.

As the sounds of firefighting and pain rose all around, I looked around and began gathering the poleepkwa near me together. Many of us had hidden behind the crates, wincing and crying out when a child hissed and shrieked in pain. To think that even now, we were hiding behind the next generation to save ourselves…something shriveled up inside me as I looked out at the fighting.

The one next to me had been shot and blood leaked out from cracks in his plating—I tore off my jacket and pressed it to the wound, clumsily tying it with fear-benumbed fingers into a tourniquet. The cracks and scarring were visible on my torso as I turned to face the others around me. They blinked back at me, silent and petrified, waiting…waiting for something. Death perhaps, or freedom. Whichever came first, or was reached first. As terrified as I was, I laughed a bit, thinking morbidly of Braveheart. “They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom.” We had to fight for both, or lose both. Right now, right here.

Too many had died…too many would still die even after this. There was no way I would let this continue, as long as I could do something.

“Come on! We’re getting the hell out of here!” I rasped and tugged the wounded one—Sirius, I think. I knew him, he’d tried to kill me when I was being rented—to his feet, pushing him towards the door, the night air, freedom. “Down low! Out the door to that truck!”

“Is this the police?” Betelgeuse looked up at me. “Where are we going?”
Too urgent to explain; I picked him up and bolted the distance to the truck. He was handed roughly off to one of the poleepkwa already there as I ran off inside. We all ran out, but I continued to double back—the sound of gunfire was like thunder, the muzzle-flashes like lightening. A storm, if there ever was one. Turbulent, vicious…

After aeons it was over…we were at the base. Jake was standing off on his own, a bandage clumsily wrapped around his leg. He turned away when I spoke to him, face pale. I knew why…I could say nothing. People filed past me—the ones who’d pledged to help ARFA. I couldn’t look at them. They’d stood by as we were killed, and I wanted…I didn’t want them dead. I just couldn’t talk to them. I was too tired to hate.

It was as if Vishnu Himself was with me right then; it was as if He’d put a hand on my shoulder and turned me so that I could see the light ahead. At the very edge of my hearing, I could hear His voice…”You’ve done well. Good job.” I let myself feel a warm glow of pride, just a bit, then quietly let it drift off into the night and began to cry.

Phone Call

2009-12-25T11:47:00.000-08:00

The phone rings, the tone vibrating down the stairs to where we’re resting and waiting; everyone immediately tenses and stares around warily at those near their space. Any second now, someone’s going to answer that phone, and soon after that one of us will be called out and sent off to another john. Maybe they’ll die—most likely they’ll be dragged back an hour or so later, tired and beaten. Hopefully it won’t be you, or anyone you especially liked, but most likely it will be. That’s the way it is, after all. Things don’t work out the way you want them to.

A child starts crying from across the room. It’s a whipped, whimpering sequence of choked sobs. They try to restrain themselves—after all, it messes with the john’s head and they don’t pay as much if you’re crying—and fail miserably; an older poleepkwa smacks them across the head and hisses at them to shut up.

The ringing abruptly cuts out and a muffled “hello?” can be heard. Collectively we all flinch in unison, thoughts swirling with the same fear—a grotesque parody of the hive mind that almost nobody’s heard of here. More speech, direct and flat. You strain your antennae, catch only a few words, a number—is that the amount being paid or the number in the catalogue? Is it an address? What’s going on, and how is it going to hurt you? You’ve got to know beforehand...that gives you an advantage. It gives you time to brace yourself.

The talking goes on for a few more moments and trails off. You can hear the small click of the receiver being hung up. It’s silent upstairs...you hope for something that’s hopeless.

“Rigel.”

The name’s called out and everyone turns to you. For a brief moment you consider turning to face somebody else, or a wall—anything other than the glances of relief. A wave of tired happiness rises: hey, at least somebody else isn’t getting hurt because of this phone call. Bile comes up next. Well, that’s because you’re the one that got called.

You swallow down the fear, horror and twisted gratitude and follow the runner who traipses down the stairs to escort you to the car. He’s whistling a bit, and smoking a cigarette; nothing seems to be going wrong for him. He isn’t perturbed that he’s bringing somebody to a place where pain awaits, ready to scratch at the plating and claw into the soft inner flesh, growling in pleasure while you choke and whimper quietly. Why should he worry? He’s never encountered it on the “business end” of the call-prawn system. It’s just another night at the office for him.

It is for you, too.

Reunion.

2009-12-22T12:19:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it’s useful, having experienced the conditions of the egg trade and become accustomed to its varying miseries. You begin to recognize the main symptoms of common sicknesses and figure out some basic, hopefully effective remedies. So when I heard about the shipment of eggs that came in, I immediately set to work pointing out things that were wrong and helping to fix them.

“See? That’s egg rot. They get that when they’ve been in a crate too long. That needs to be cleaned off, please, and you have to check and make sure the fungus didn’t go inside…”

“This one is dehydrated. It’s going to need to sit in some water. At the trade, we filled a bathtub with warm water and let it sit, halfway submerged. Don’t leave it in too long, though.”

And, now and then…“That one’s dead.”

It’s triage, except this isn’t a battlefield, this isn’t an all-out fight. Or maybe it is...there certainly are enough casualties here, in the rows upon rows of crates and eggs, swarming with ARFA nurses and volunteers. There’s enough pain and trauma for this to be a war, if not one for a direct cause. It’s a fight for life; trying to save as many as you can, however you can.

Jake walked up to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Look, you don’t have to be here...they know what they’re doing.” His eyes were tired and wary. For a moment I remembered that he was barely an adult—a teen, shouldering a workload that few men or women can even imagine. Almost instantly the thought was pushed aside by necessity. Even if we are too young or small for the burden, we have to carry it if there’s nobody else willing to. At least for now, anyway.

“I know that they know what they’re doing. They just…they just don’t know how to do it.” I didn’t bother elaborating on what I meant, instead moving on to the next row of crates and continuing my self-appointed task. Nearby, a nurse was trying to give some food to a tiny Poleepkwa—the child was squirming and glancing around, confused. As they twisted, their back faced me and I caught a brilliant splotch of glossy red on the plating there. That kind of marking would fetch a high price, I thought sadly. That poor kid would have been sold as a pet it they hadn’t hatched and hid away—

Hatched. Observations connected quickly like tinder and a match and an idea flamed; quickly I strode over, plucked the baby Poleepkwa from the young woman’s grip and began walking to where Vega slept. Markings like those weren’t very common here, so that meant that this child would have had a parent with markings just like that. I knew someone who had them. My steps quickened to a run and I dashed the last distance, ignoring Jake as he ran after me.

“Vega.” I carefully set the little one down, brushing some of the dirt off their plating. “Vega, look…do you recognize this child?” Hope was there—I could feel it like a breeze or draft in the room. It was possible that this was a coincidence, but what where the chances? Things could be finally shaping up for us, and all it had taken was a blot of red.

She crept over to the little one, who blinked bewilderedly back at her. “I-I…I don’t…” As they wobbled around on tired, undeveloped legs, mewling for food, her expression flattened. “I…” She had noticed the red markings, that small byproduct of genes that had persuaded Blue Fly to keep her as a breeder in the first place, so very long ago. Her mandibles began to twitch and tears came to her eyes.

Jake puffed up from behind me and watched silently as Vega picked up the child and gently held them close to her. “What…?”

“My…child of mine…” Vega was beginning to cry openly now, eagerly looking over the little one and matching marking for marking, antennae to antennae, bright innocent eyes to tired, older ones. They were alike, kith and kin.

“So what’s their name?” Jake smiled. “Do you have any idea of what you’d like them to be called?”

“Sadal. Her name is Sadal.” Vega reached out blindly and awkwardly crushed the Commander of ARFA in a one-armed hug. “You…you said you would bring my children back…and you did. You brought one…thank you…” She smiled quickly and turned back to her child, her “lucky star,” and began cleaning off the muck and offering them some water.

After a few moments of stunned happiness, Jake grinned widely and leaned against the doorframe. “Yes.”

That single word, spoken quietly and quickly, described the feeling of victory that hovered in the room right then and there. Our friends and brethren may have died and may still be dying, but if one child was able . This is a war that may not be won soon, but we can still experience a victory time and again.

Docks

2009-12-18T22:45:00.000-08:00

Things clicked into place so quickly and unexpectedly that I had to go: why hadn’t I noticed that “cactus” and “fish market” were used a little too much by Blue Fly and the dealers to be a coincidence? They’re talking about places; they have been this entire time. “Apple” means New York City, “cactus” is New Mexico, “fish market” is Clearwater….I’ve wasted so much energy and time trying to figure out where the eggs were being traded—but they were talking about the biggest distribution centers all the time! Maybe I was still reeling from getting out of the trade, and it just took this long to finally sink in. Damnit, we could have done so much to stop this! Why didn’t I remember sooner?

When I got to the harbor I hid behind some crates, knowing that the dragonfly still painted on my hip could either keep me alive or get me killed. Getting there had been strangely easy; the routes I learned when going to and from customers’ houses enabled me to sneak through the city while remaining almost unnoticed. Just another call-prawn, coming back from a job…nothing to look at here. I finally got to the salty openness of the docks and crouched down behind a crate. I could feel my heart in my throat and the cold on my limbs—everything was monotone and I didn’t know exactly where I was. What mattered was what I was seeing.

Men were moving about, their faces covered by dark cloth like burglars in the night. It was impossible to pick out their identities. The men hauled crates off of a gigantic cargo boat, one after another, and lined them up like dominoes. When the two men nearest me wandered back into the warm, covered area of the cargo ship for a smoke break, I crept over to one of the splintering wooden crates and whispered through a gap on the side. No answer came…and why did I expect one? I should have known then, and stepped back into the ignorant darkness. But I didn’t—something in me must have still hoped, or ignored the truth.

I pried the top off of the crate, ignoring the blast of blistering, fetid air…and stepped back, swearing to myself and blinking back tears. The inside of the wooden box was coated with waste and sawdust; the stench that drifted up from it is beyond my words to describe. It reeked of waste and blood, of death and the last stale breaths of suffocated Poleepkwa…of my people, my brethren.

Inside, sprawled amongst the filth…my eyes were drawn to the children. Children, with bruises and cuts adorning their bodies, almost torn limb from limb, or even worse just staring up at me with glassy eyes, like fish. No laughter, no light—nothing was left but these hollow, battered bundles of plating. Everything…everything was taken from them. They were dead, and their corpses had been left lying around in the crate, like firewood or trash. Not the remains of living things…of children…

They’d been left to die as if they were worthless, not even of much value to the dealers themselves. These people had sat back and let them claw each other to death, out of sheer helplessness and fear, in crates without water or air. Had they heard their cries and chosen to ignore them, or had the crates muffled their screams? I didn't know, and it no longer mattered almost as soon as I thought it. Of the twenty inside, only one still kicked out blindly at the heat, eyes sick and glassy…I will always remember their muttering. “So hot, so hot.”

I tried to help, but what could I have done? This little child was too far gone, and there was nothing I could do…the most I managed was holding the poor broken body close and praying silently to Vishnu, God, whoever watched this scene unfold and did nothing to stop it. The feeling of something dying very close to you...it makes something deep inside you die as well. You know something has departed, something that can never be caught and slid back into place; it leaves a hollow inside you.

After, I pushed the crate off the dock and tried not to cry out as the splashes came and I saw shapes sink into the inky water. Better a burial at sea then having your corpse sold as food. I crept off before anyone noriced, slinking back into the city that slept, unaware of the horror unfolding within it.

I want them dead. All of them—Blue Fly, Mistress Pike, all of them. There’s nothing more you can do for people—they aren’t even people, no person could casually kill another or put them in conditions like this. These dealers are monsters, and only fit to die. Now. This has to stop, it has to, and there can’t be any more crates, or pipes, or phones…it has to go, all of it.

Message.

2009-12-18T11:20:00.001-08:00

I would like to start by introducing myself. I am not a “prawn,” as you may have been told, but a “Poleepkwa,” an “Outlander.” These are the proper terms for us. We are not simply “non-humans,” not a group sorely defined by its exclusion from your species, but a proud race with achievements all its own.

But all classifications aside, my name is Olo, Olo Lamna, and I am here on my own, to speak with you as an equal—and an individual. I’m not here to represent every Poleepkwa on this planet and beyond the stars…the honor and responsibility is too great for someone such as me. All I have are my own experiences and beliefs, and the drive to tell you what is going on in this world. That is all I have—I pray that you will listen to me and take what you hear to heart.

All of you have heard of District 9 and the illegal genetic experimentation that was revealed late last August. Perhaps not all of you have heard of MNU’s continued solution of the “prawn problem,” a horrible place called District 10 where hopes and thoughts are not only crushed, but discouraged from ever developing.

Very few of you are aware of what may be an evil on par with D-10, if not greater: the black-market egg trade. Our children are sold, snatched away from their mothers and stolen away, never to be seen again. They become guards, servants, prostitutes, test subjects. Back and forth we are traded, from owner to owner, all will and pride beaten out of us with pipes and words and blood-money. Each customer teaches us what the Poleepkwa trade is all about, and the lessons are painful beyond all description.

This happens to your own children, your fellow humans as well—humans are bartered and sold for monetary gain alongside us. In our shared misery, we are the same…this is not the way equality should be achieved. We must not be equals because we are both in the mud; we must not be equals because we are similarly wretched and desperate. No, we must—and can!—be equal in our drive to better ourselves. We both can accomplish so much on our own…we can be proud of that, but always we can look forward to better things and reach for them.

Leave this “speciesism” and fear behind; look past our radically different exteriors and realize that the same blood runs through our veins. The appearances may be different, but my heart still beats the same as yours do. I have a heart, and all Poleepkwa do.

It freezes when we fear for our lives—the same as you!

It warms when we are near the ones we love, our siblings, friends, and family—the same as you!

It beats in anguish when we gaze upon the injustices of the world and sinks in indescribable misery when we see our loved ones hurt, killed and stolen from us—the same as you!

We are the same! Can you not see that? Can you not see that we share so much, our mindsets and emotions so alike that it is only the outside, the shells—figurative and literal—that keep us separate. We are not trash, mindless bottom-feeders without intention or emotion, but neither are we a chosen race. We are not perfect…but then again humans are not perfect. One day we can both be greater then what we are now. The potential is in us all…someday, I believe, we will work together and our capabilities for achievement and greatness will be unfathomable. But that will never happen unless we decide, as two kinds sharing one cause, to stop lying down in the mud and stand upright.

Thank you for your time.

Nightmare

2009-12-14T18:42:00.000-08:00

The pipe bears down on me slowly; I duck and narrowly miss it. It buries itself in the ground. It’s reddened exterior flakes off like tiny bits of rust, showing the surface underneath to be a faded green. Jack and Jill are here: cowering, haggard children who clutch at catfood cans and hiss warily at me. “No space—fuck off! You’ll just get him mad at us!”
I try to reach for them with a painted arm, but the stripes peel off and become like cloth in texture—a jailbird uniform—and finally crumble away to grey dust. My children scurry off…I know not where…they’re gone.
I’m alone, stranded on my piece of tarp with no escape. I’m petrified, I can’t move…the pipe comes down again, its red cover restored, and although it inches through the air so slowly I can’t do anything to stop it. I can’t flee. It hits—and keeps pressing down, tearing through me until there is no resistance and it touches the tarp.
Blue Fly’s voice is at my ear, repeating the words that concluded every beating.
“Remember prawnie—no matter who buys you, no matter what you do. No matter what you think, I own you. You are mine.”
I believe him.

2009-12-12T21:24:00.000-08:00

I know that I must look awful…the others here are heavily bruised and scarred, and it would be stupid of me to assume that I look any better. You grow callous to the pain of wounds quickly; you learn to ignore when a limb goes numb or figure out ways to get around its immobility. Even now I’m typing this with my sub-arms…there’s something wrong with the main ones. They’ll heal if I let them rest, I think. But I can’t rest, so they’ve only gotten worse.

It’s not just that. It’s not just the bruises that make a trade Poleepkwa stand out; it’s their expression. Flat, masklike grin, hollow eyes above, half-dead…or weak and afraid from too many nights with nothing but a pipe, cat food and endless phone calls for company. You get “shop-worn” so quickly—all the energy, all the hope gets ground out of you, bit by bit. Each “john” is twenty, fifty dollars worth of pain and helplessness, teaching you what this is all about. It’s a gigantic machine, the egg trade, and we’re caught in the cogs. If we’re trapped like this for much longer we’ll be nothing but shattered plating and bloody flesh.

I haven’t tried teaching any of the kids here about math, science or space—what’s the use? Civilization isn’t here, except for the buildings you pass by and the blood money that you’re traded for. Fundamental things, basic animal things are what’s demanded; not education. The only thing possible at this point is simply giving them your food, cleaning their wounds, getting them out of a beating by getting in trouble just after they do…Blue Fly always picks the adults first, and that tires him out. They don’t ask for anything else—they don’t ask for that either. You do what you can, knowing that it won’t be returned or appreciated openly, at least not for now. Maybe, out of this place, it will…I don’t know.

Take Betelgeuse; half my age, one-third my size and more scarred then any of us. He’s one of the ones who have been here for over a year—I think he’s always getting into trouble because he feels that the only way out is at the end of that pipe. Betelgeuse has been here too long to not know the rules…he’s had no life but this. Even now, the only name he’s ever had is his “shop name.” It’s perverse…how can I tell this child about the universe and our home beyond this planet when the names of stars are equated with slavery and pain? How can I give him hope when he’s told me to “lay off the talk of outside; it won’t happen anytime soon?”

You can’t. You can try…but you can’t do it. Not in a week. Not in a month, or maybe even a year—but I’ll keep trying. There has to be hope.

Our group will be getting moved soon—several “breeders”, prostitutes, and guards. I can tell because Blue Fly has slacked somewhat in bruising us with his taped pipe; he wants us to look as good as possible for the buyer. I don’t know exactly where we’ll be going, but I caught a peek at Blue Fly’s list of names and saw, “De Oro.” My best guess is that we’re going to end up somewhere where Spanish is spoken, but I may be wrong. I’m probably wrong…these names were designed to be misleading and snazzy. When we get there we’ll find out, I guess, and I’ll tell you as soon as I can.

Vega—the “breeder” who sleeps near me—laid her egg today, two weeks early. Blue Fly snatched it away almost right after it was laid. It’s gone now. We all saw it wheeled out, an innocent little bundle of life and potential…it won’t stay that way forever. It won’t stay that way for more than a month.

Of all the grief here—out of all the pain, loneliness, and fear here in this business—there’s nothing worse than that of a parent whose child has been taken away. Not only that, but stolen so that it can be sold to those who won’t love it, who will only mistreat the poor, poor thing…Vega’s inconsolable. Blue Fly wants her to get pregnant again as soon as she can, but I don’t think she will. You can tell…she’d rather be beaten to death than lose another egg.

She wouldn’t be, though. That’s not the way it is here. Here you’re beaten to the point in which you can’t get up, you’re about to die, but you don’t. Your owner keeps you alive, bandaging your wounds with ripped cloth, administering cat food as both your food and pain medication, letting you rest on your square of tarp for the rest of the night. He does all this, if only to keep you healthy enough to survive the next round of customers and the next time you’re thrown to the ground and struck with that pipe until your back is bloody, your shell-plates cracked, your body shivering violently even when it feel s like it’s on fire.

You’re worthless dead, and you’re worth keeping only when you’re making money. That’s why I can’t decide which is worse—the egg trade or D-10. They’re just as horrible, but in different ways. Radically different ways…but both need to be shut down for good.

2009-12-11T12:48:00.001-08:00

The majority of eggs are sent to major cities, I’ve found out. A crate of eggs is easy to hide on board a cargo ship, retrieve after, and sell…cities are where most of the trafficking takes place. New York’s Chinatown, Houston, Las Vegas—check the major cities, search for the “call-prawn” numbers and you’ll find us.

It’s getting hard to show kindness to the others here with me. It can be so easy falling into the steady, unyielding rhythm of the phone calls, caring only about your own bruises, your own hunger and fear. I’ve been trying to avoid this and help as many as I can, however I can. But nobody trusts anybody here! Even the little ones, the ones barely Jack and Jill’s age. They’ve been beaten and starved and bound into this existence and can’t imagine anything else…I would talk to them more about the outside world if I wasn’t working all the time or getting beaten with that bloodstained pipe for “talking about leaving.” Talking about leaving—that’s all there is to talk about! No family, no friends, nothing to occupy your mind but those damn phones, the hordes of people willing to pay by the hour, the cat food that’s keeping you alive but just barely.

It’s heartbreaking trying to tend to their wounds when they are hurt, or trying to comfort them when they cry out at night, and having them strike out at you. They think you’re going to hit them…it’s like trying to pet a badly-treated dog. Their eyes…oh Vishnu, if you could only see their eyes you would understand. There’s no curiosity or light behind them, just wariness and sorrow. Elder eyes, in Poleepkwa that haven’t even seen ten years.

I keep thinking about Jill and Jack, all of you guys, and it helps. Knowing there’s someone who gives a damn about if you live or die, not because of the money they’ll lose but because they love you—that helps you keep a smile on your face even when you’re getting hurt. You have to keep smiling; you can’t cry because it messes with the john’s head and wrecks their fantasy. They won’t buy you, and you pay for it after. You make them happy and they make you happy.

I see children like Jack and Jill all the time here. I see them bought and sold like furniture, I see them beaten like dogs when they disobey—no, dogs are better treated. At least with a dog someone will try to stop it. Here we all just look the other way…we can’t do anything when Blue Fly hurts someone. I see my fellow Poleepkwa taken out behind the building and shot when they’re too sick to work; Blue Fly’s final method of dealing with the “rough trade” that isn’t making money. It happened to the Poleepkwa who had the sleeping spot next to me—I saw them handing the corpse off to another customer. The bodies are sold as exotic meat…there are people who eat us like we are cattle.

To Jake, Sherry and everyone: I read your comments on my blog post and Jake’s post. I can’t deny that what is going on here is immoral and horrible, but I don’t believe that there’s no hope in humanity as a group. I can’t believe that. If humanity is nothing but “the species that rapes,” then why the hell am I getting these people out?! If the majority truly is as corrupt as the people who buy us, willing to believe that labor and sex are commodities, exchanged and bought fairly with our consent…then there’s nothing beyond this but a place with different telephones, different owners.
You are better then this, not just individually but as a collective, and you WILL overcome this; we’ll all work together if we have to and things will be better someday. Giving up your kind for lost will do nothing but prevent that day from ever coming and justify more of these awful sales. Just do what you can, how you can and you’ll prove that humans are good.

These Poleepkwa need to have a better life then this, just as much as air and food, and they have to have hope. There has to be hope…

Egg Trade.

2009-12-08T19:18:00.000-08:00

The best way to learn about the egg trade, I decided, was to rejoin it and find out who runs things from the inside. ARFA got the clutch of ten eggs, plus the three extra that were thrown in when I was sold. I didn’t know I’d be worth the lives of three children, but I was. At least I’m getting three of the unborn out of this awful system.

I was given a new name as soon as I arrived: now I’m expected to answer to Rigel instead of Olo. There seems to be a “star” theme with everyone here. My picture was taken (for the catalogue) and I was marked with a spray painted logo on my hip. Blue Fly’s logo is put on every Poleepkwa under his control, in order to identify us and tell any other dealers in the area that we’re his property. At least the MNU tags are gone from those who had them—Blue Fly has told us over and over again that MNU can’t touch us, that we’ll be dead before they get their hands on us again. It sounds comforting before you realize what he means when he says this and how true it is.

I’m housed in a small building with many other Poleepkwa. People call a number or go straight to the building, pick us out of the catalogue, and we go with them to their houses. The phones were ringing off the hook the first night I started work; I don’t think I will ever listen to a telephone again and feel anything but indescribable revulsion. Knowing what you’ll have to do as soon as your name is called but not being able to change things…it’s horrible. You’re being sold and exploited and there’s nothing you can do, nothing you want to do because you know that there’s only a beating waiting if you try to escape or cheat someone out of their “good time.”

Once we’re at the house of whoever bought us we either work like dogs, lifting heavy objects and performing menial labor, or we work at satisfying the sick fantasies of whoever rented us. Whatever the customer (or “john”) tells us to do, we have to do it without question, or else we aren’t paid or beaten by the person. Oftentimes it’s both. Sometimes the Poleepkwa don’t come back, and nobody asks where they went. Most likely they were sold…I hope they were sold. That’s better then the alternatives. I’ve heard awful things about what people do to us on the streets…

So far I’ve learned the faces and stories of three of my fellow “rough trade;” the “newest” ones. Everyone else comes and goes so quickly that it’s almost impossible to learn their name or their past.

Generally the adults are tricked out of the safe house network with promises of finding loved ones, safer areas or work, while some are stolen right out of D-10 and sent to the US, Brazil and other countries. There are others here who lay eggs so Blue Fly can sell them, and they get cat food in return. None of them have done more then mutter at me not to take their sleeping-space, which consists of a small square of tarp for bedding and another bit of cloth to use as a covering. I’m the only one who was born a trade egg. The life expectancy isn’t very long here.

That’s all I’ve been able to learn thus far, as well as the fact that every person who was willing to talk about their past has only been in this system for a few months at the most. The ones that have been here for over a year are too traumatized, high on cat food or apathetic to listen to me or tell me anything besides their NAP: Name, Age, Price.

Cat food is abundant here; we are paid meagerly with it if we pull in enough customers. If we don’t make enough money we aren’t fed. I’ve been beaten twice for not following the rules and for “holding out;” Blue Fly uses a piece of taped metal pipe for this and makes the others watch. The second beating was much, much worse then the first…obviously I have to learn what to do and what not to do if I’m going to stay here and find out more about who’s running this. Blue Fly knows how to cause pain, and he makes sure we know it. Even now I’m scared of what he’d do if he found out I’m posting this. Everyone’s scared here...there’s nothing to trust but those telephone calls and what they mean.

Posts will have to be sporadic from now on—all of the things I had with me were pawned. I own nothing, not even my body, but that simply makes me like everyone else in here. Right now this post is being made on a customer’s computer; I promised him a few extra minutes of sex if I got some computer time in exchange. I know that you may be alarmed at what’s going on here, and to be frank you should be. This is happening in America, the “home of the free,” to Poleepkwa and humans alike. This SHOULD NOT happen to anyone, and it has to end, as soon as possible.

To Jake and everyone at the ARFA base. Please send Jack and Jill my love and, if possible, continue to read Romeo and Juliet with them from where we left off. (Jill should have the book with her.) If Jack paints his or Jill’s plating with paint, that’s normal. Just ask him to wash it off when he’s done and not make a mess, and remind him that some people may not appreciate being painted different colors. I hope they aren’t too rambunctious for Xenrop and the rest of you, and I thank you so much for taking them in while I’m away. Knowing that they’ll be well taken care of makes it a lot easier to rest when work is over for the night. I’ll be back with them as soon as I can…I love them so very much and I’m already missing them.

To Sherry, Ryan, Dayna, Seth, Christian, and Kris. This is redundant, but please be careful and watch yourselves. D10 has enough danger from MNU; having dealers and traders hanging around the area, waiting to swipe Poleepkwa away and buy eggs from people like Kurt, doesn’t really help things. Otherwise, I hope the schools are going great now that everyone’s aboveground and pray that nothing bad happens to you.

To everyone. I hope you’re doing well, and wish you a good night and the best of luck. Don’t worry about me—I’m fine. Please work towards ending the atrocities of MNU and these egg dealers; nobody should be bought, sold, abused or killed. However, don’t lose hope. People are inherently good, IMHO, and the actions of a few depraved individuals shouldn’t ruin your hopes for an entire species.
As soon as I can, I’ll get at a computer and keep you updated.

Sales.

2009-12-05T14:20:00.000-08:00

There's a point that you reach in which your past somehow hooks onto the present and refuses to be torn away and thrown back into a corner of your mind. Not to be cliche or melodramatic, but I've reached that point.
Poleepkwa eggs. They're sold, like property--I know that all too well, and I know without a doubt that it has to stop. After searching and guessing, I've managed to find a man who sells them. For the sake of keeping this post reasonably reader-friendly and short, I won't say how. All I'll say is that it wasn't easy or pleasing.
I don't know his real name, only his "trade name," Blue Fly. Apparently all these dealers and handlers create bizarre pseudonyms in order to evade authorities and other dealers. He runs an escort agency; people call in and pick from a catalogue containing pictures of everyone in the "stable", then wire money to him and receive poleepkwan eggs, adults, and services. Yes, a catalogue--the first thing he did when I contacted him was send my a digital copy.
This has to stop. This can't go on. I'm doing something to end this.

The Slave Auction, by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

2009-12-03T04:26:00.001-08:00

The sale began—young girls were there,
Defenseless in their wretchedness,
Whose stifled sobs of deep despair
Revealed their anguish and distress.

And mothers stood, with streaming eyes,
And saw their dearest children sold;
Unheeded rose their bitter cries,
While tyrants bartered them for gold.

And woman, with her love and truth—
For these in sable forms may dwell—
Gazed on the husband of her youth,
With anguish none may paint or tell.

And men, whose sole crime was their hue,
The impress of their Maker’s hand,
And frail and shrinking children too,
Were gathered in that mournful band.

Ye who have laid your loved to rest,
And wept above their lifeless clay,
Know not the anguish of that breast,
Whose loved are rudely torn away.

Ye may not know how desolate
Are bosoms rudely forced to part,
And how a dull and heavy weight
Will press the life-drops from the heart.

Past, part 2

2009-12-01T11:47:00.000-08:00

I honestly don't know why my mind continues to turn this way, anxiously twisting its neck to check behind itself, to look back down the road. There is nothing following me; I am separate and walk alone on this trail of memory...
It happened so suddenly, and yet with such a clarity that it lingers still, a flash-frozen moment in time. I was reading, thinking, as usual, when the voices of my Mother and Father came rumbling through the walls from the Outside.
"We've got to get rid of it! Don't you understand? Look at the news--what do you think they'll do to us if they find we've got one in our home--"
"They'll fine us, hon. Nothing more. There are others who bought them, remember Gertrude was thinking about getting an egg herself after seeing this guy--"
"A fine? We've got no money as it is, with that damn thing eating us out of house and home! We've got to get rid of it, and fast!"
A quavering sound of confusion came from me as I looked up from the pages. The voices instantly quieted, fading into incoherence. After a few moments of this awkward silence I turned back to the book, only to be disturbed again as crashing noises came from the stair-Wall. Father's voice roared down the structure, filled with a wrath that was usually saved for my gravest transgressions. It had been accompanied with discipline and pain of the highest degree, and I instantly dropped the book and pushed myself back against the Wall. What had I done wrong? I had done nothing wrong--
"Get up. Get up now." When I hesitated, I was dragged up into a crouching position. "Get the hell up! Go--up the stairs!"
The stair-Wall? I wasn't allowed to go there, wasn't I? I itched for a page and something to scrawl with, but received a blow to the face instead. Pain bloomed like a flower and my limbs warmed, and I scurried up the stair-Wall in a dash of fear. The stairs extended out in empty space, little floors set higher and higher and connected with tiny Walls. This was madness! There were only four Walls...oh, I'd have to measure them, I'd have to figure out what was going on--
"Go! Get moving!" Again with the roar of rage. My vision blurred with the sudden abundance of light and the tears in my eyes, splitting into multiple prismatic images. Blindly I scampered on through endless, bewildering space, bumping into odd shapes and structures that lasted only as dark blots in my sight. The ground changed under my feet, raising up for a second and then becoming...soft...furry, like the blanket I had slept on. More light was around me--where was it coming from? Were there thousands of light bulbs illuminating this giant space?
"Outside! Go!"
NO! No, the Outside--I was never to go there, I was never supposed to flee into its womb! Only Mother and father were strong enough to venture into its clutches and live; I would surely die if I was to so much as reach out and touch it...
I was there. Outside. It had swallowed me, I knew it. The light and the strange warmth were its insides, the soft floor its innards. I was dead, i was surely dead...I had done something terrible to be subjected to such a fate. "Go on! Scat!" Scat? What was that? Was scat being dead? No--please no!I reversed direction, tried to double back and was pushed along by an unyielding force.
Another blow to the head, this time landing even though the voice was faraway. That was the final bizarre straw; everything was too new, too strange for me to stand. I was in the Outside--fine! Let it consume me so that I wouldn't be afraid, I wouldn't be without Mother and Father! I turned and ran, the prisms still stuck in my eyes, like little diamonds, like ice. Flash-frozen fear.

The Lockless Door, by Robert Frost.

2009-12-01T11:46:00.000-08:00

It went many years,
But at last came a knock,
And I thought of the door
With no lock to lock.

I blew out the light,
I tip-toed the floor,
And raised both hands
In prayer to the door.

But the knock came again
My window was wide;
I climbed on the sill
And descended outside.

Back over the sill
I bade a “Come in”
To whoever the knock
At the door may have been.

So at a knock
I emptied my cage
To hide in the world
And alter with age.

Nothing Gold Can Stay, by Robert Frost.

2009-12-01T11:43:00.000-08:00

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Sonnet, by Olo Doorbell Lamna.

2009-12-01T11:22:00.000-08:00

O Freedom, thy mother of open sky!
Wherefore hast thine children flown?
Trapped on Earth reap they, with heavy sigh,
the bitter crop which hast been sown.
With prideful hearts came, from yonder star,
we, from the wide heavens, our souls untamed!
But how such pride is death-marked! Far
have we fallen, flames cooled, hearts lamed.
Cold fear doth runith through our veins, a shade
of the old spirit, our rightful hope!
Keepith some, the embers--they shalt not fade
and for three years hence so shall we cope.
Until then we shall reach out from behind these bars
and dream of our lives among the stars.

Past.

2009-11-30T15:32:00.000-08:00

I normally don’t think about the past; what happened may (or may not have) happened and things can’t really change when it comes to that. Still, we have to look back on what we’ve gone through in order to continue on with the present and future. My story…well, it was a lot less bloody then the stories of my kith and kin, and for that I am grateful. There are others who lived through worse, or didn’t live through them at all. But even with that gratitude fresh in my mind I can still smell the dank mold of the past, seeping through past the coolness and out into the open. My past is better then others, but it wasn’t fun and games.
The first few snatches of memory I have are of the four Walls and a blanket. I’ve talked about the Walls before; their comfort and existence as boundaries to my blissfully small, peaceful little world. Up and down the stair-Wall my mother and father would come, bringing food, water, and sometimes small rectangular things called “books.” The food and water would be happily consumed by me, while the “books” would be split apart into smaller, wafer-pieces called “pages’ and held open while a parent rumbled words at me. Over time it became clear that the books spoke a different language, a silent tongue called “reading” that I could speak too, if I scratched odd lines and curves called “letters” on the pages. Even though no sound came from me I could talk, and I loved it as much as I loved sleep and thinking. The books gave me new things to dream and wonder about—I didn’t have to just measure cracks in the wall and try to guess how long they’d be later, I could read about “philosophy” and “words” and all sorts of strange things!
Life went on—food, water, thinking, reading, sleeping—for some time, I knew not how long. My world was safe from the Outside, that strange thing that threatened me and I was never to try to go near. I had mother and Father. I was happy. Then, a new addition came to my little world—a structure with not four Walls, but six! One could move, in and out, and I bounced inside, kicking at the movable Wall and having a great time. I heard the rumble of approval from Father just as the Wall moved in and things got black. “Good boy.”
When the wall opened again, I clambered out. I was sleepy, and there was an odd feeling on the lower part of me. It hurt like a scrape or a cut, yet stung like when I jumped up and touched the “light bulb” that hung from the ceiling. A quick look revealed a long, thin cut to the area close to my legs, black lines and a hollow ache. The six-walled thing was taken away to the Outside. Though I had the means to ask about the strange wound, I never did. There was something shameful about it—the rumination of a part of me that Mother and Father seemed concerned and yet nonchalant about. A part of me that was not like them…but then again so much of me was not like them.
Whatever I was, it was not like Father or Mother, and I knew it. Only much, much later did I find out why I was different. At that point, I was simply freakish, a strange quirk that was rightfully guarded and kept away from the Outside. “Poleepkwa” or “prawns” were things I had never read or heard of, while “human” was a thing I read about but shirked for more fun things like “religions” or “isms.”
It makes me laugh a bit, how I figured things out when I was younger. All of it was assumption, little to no given, provable information available to the imaginary laws and standards I created. It’s funny how it was all upended when I was thrust out into the Outside…but then that’s another story I guess. I’ve droned on about the past enough; there’s the present here calling for me, in the form of two little poleepkwa called Jack and Jill. They’re much more important then the memory of what happened.

Paradox.

2009-11-30T11:53:00.000-08:00

"The statement below is false."
"The statement above is true."
Paradox. Again--that wonderful, confounding, euphonic term. The logic is endless: if the above statement is true, then the second sentence is false. The second statement is true, which makes the above concept false...ad infinum, turtles all the way down, circular logic. A seemingly pointless couplet, isn't it? Absolutely irrelevant to everyday life, completely unnecessary and useless. Yet even when I stare at the collection of syllables, I can't help but find it relevant to our lives.
Is it right to prevent violence by killing the violent? Can you promote equality between species by raising up one of the two? We all live our own little paradoxes, striving to figure out an answer and finding only more questions, more logic chains repeating on and on until we are consumed by the search for a solution. There may be one; there may not be one, and maybe that's not the point. Maybe it's the question that matters and not the answer, like the old saying that life is a journey and not a destination. By attempting to figure things out we shape ourselves and the groups we are a part of. I guess, then, that the only thing there is to hope for is that people are willing to spend time thinking in circles...

quasi-Nirvana

2009-11-29T15:40:00.001-08:00

When you meditate, the key is to ignore everything around you and inside you. It's rather odd, but the concept is simple; find a quiet space, sit down and relax. Steady breathing, not focusing on anything but allowing your mind to drift from one tentative train of logic to another, trickles of emotion and thought relinquishing their grip on the brain like a sleeper's grip. Over time--if you have the patience--the senses quietly flick off, their continued functioning useless in the stillness and unchangingness of the environment. All that you have is the self. You see it, but at the same time you're blind; you can hear the beating of your heart, so faint like a drumbeat and just as impersonal. It turns from a vital, private function to a meaningless whisper through what? Limbs? I can't feel them, I don't need to--I'm not locomotive, not sluggishly dragging myself around space, through time, like quicksand, like a snake through closely woven grass...
Nothing matters; nothing beyond you being can bother you. Time and space: meaningless theories that only serve to tie the world and its inhabitants--if the two are separate; how can one ever tell, if we are all Brahman, we are all one?--together. Restrictive ties on a bundle of straws, but without them there wouldn't be order or community. It's worth it, in the long run, to be limited to one moment and place at a time. Everything is a lot more simple then.
Simplicity. That's it. No details or qualities or actions here; I am. Nothing else is necessary. Pain or time or even the gradual wearing-down of age are, at this moment--this one endless, nonexistent moment, forever and never at once--pointless and beyond me. There is nothing, and for that it is everything.

2009-11-25T12:15:00.000-08:00

They say that only the good die young; that isn't true, is it? Maybe one dies at a young numerical age, but by the time they are finally struck down they've seen so much, done so much, that they've aged internally. they die young of body, but old of soul and mind. Life sure has some quirks. What Vishnu does for His followers...
George laughs bitterly. I can hear the cynicism in his voice even as I type his words...the tones hover by my antennae for whole moments after they are uttered. It would be beautiful if it weren't so sharp at my thoughts, like a sculpting tool at the malleable clay of myself.
"Vishnu? The preserver? Preserver of what, Olo? Hate? Fear? Injustice? What gods would let their followers suffer and die, or continue to punish their comrades who don't follow them? Face it, you've been following a shadow."
Shadow. The shadow of evil? I don't knowingly believe in a deity that causes pain and preserves the negative way of things...but that is what Vishnu does: preserve the world until Shiva comes and brings the cycle back to Brahman...
No. Not that kind of shadow. A reflection, a fleeting ghost. That's what I've been following; not a flesh-and-blood being but a concept, an idea. One that doesn't act on its own to begin, preserve, or end, but exists to drive others to do just those things. How many wars were fought for Shiva? How many good deeds for Brahman? How many--oh dear--how many ideas struck down in order to keep the norm, to preserve and please Vishnu? This wasn't what I wanted, I didn't expect--
"Expect what? Somebody to save us all and end MNU? Nothing will ever do that; only those who walk this earth can ever change things here. You are alone here, and there is nothing else."
Nothing else? But wait--by simply believing in these gods and acting either in their stead or to please them, we make them real to us. Vishnu doesn't exist in the flesh anyway, except for when avatars manefest. that's the point of a god, is it not? Having a being that exists in some way that is better then mortals, higher then physical existance. that way we have something more reliable that we can trust in, something that won't fail even when we do.
What about the afterlife? Everyone that's died knows what happens after death, too. They just haven't gotten back here and spoken with the living about it. In that respect we are alone; we must guess about what we don't know and we won't find out if we're right until it's too late.
I guess it doesn't matter anyway. Even if Vishnu doesn't exist, I still think that he does, in some way, which is great for me. But does that prove the existance of a god for any other world but mine? Can a god exist subjectively?
I need to think this one over.

"Caged Bird", by Maya Angelou

2009-11-25T11:39:00.000-08:00

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

"Writ on the Streets of Puerto Rican Harlem", by Gregory Corso

2009-11-25T11:37:00.000-08:00

There’s a truth limits man
A truth prevents his going any farther
The world is changing
The world knows it’s changing
Heavy is the sorrow of the day
The old have the look of doom
The young mistake their fate in that look
That is truth
But it isn’t all truth

Life has meaning
And I do not know the meaning
Even when I felt it were meaningless
I hoped and prayed and sought a meaning
It wasn’t all frolic poesy
There were dues to pay
Summoning Death and God
I’d a wild dare to tackle Them
Death proved meaningless without Life
Yes the world is changing
But Death remains the same
It takes man away from Life
The only meaning he knows
And usually it is a sad business
This Death

I’d an innocence I’d a seriousness
I’d a humor save me from amateur philosophy
I am able to contradict my beliefs
I am able able
Because I want to know the meaning of everything
Yet sit I like a brokenness
Moaning: Oh what responsibility
I put on thee Gregory
Death and God
Hard hard it’s hard

I learned life were no dream
I learned truth deceived
Man is not God
Life is a century
Death an instant

2009-11-22T14:43:00.001-08:00

The language we were conversing in wasn’t English, Poleepkwan, or even Latin, as I’d experienced in previous trips and dreams. What it was…I don’t know, but it was basic and yet eloquent for it, a raw transmission of words and feelings back and forth without need for words. You’d think it, the other person would just know it, without any explanation on your part. On a whim, I glanced up at my antennae--had they changed?
Yes. The small, stubby feelers of flesh were gone. In their stead were two inflexible, silver-grey radio antennae, vibrating ever so slightly with transmissions. There would be a shiver down the length of one--somehow I felt this, even though the new additions were strangely numb--and an instant later, a sentence or emotion. Oh, so that was why I had such good reception: I’d gotten an upgrade in my equipment.
“Alright, you’ve gotten the main hang of it. Now to business.” George flickered blue and green and happily gestured to the surroundings with a sweep of his analogous arm. “This…is the inside of your head. Welcome to your own mind, Olo Doorbell Lamna.”
The landscape was complex and seemed to shift slightly in my peripheral vision, fading away and dissolving into vague shapes and blurs only to spring back into sharp focus as I looked out the corner of my eye. This must be my own doing, I think, I must be forming all of this so I can understand what I’m looking at. My brain is forming the world for my mind to explore in…jeez, this blew the homunculi thought experiment out of the water.
“Give the poleepkwa in the back a cigar!” George laughed, and I realized that I must have been transmitting the entire train of thought by mistake. Ah well…
…a forest. That seemed to be the main thing here. A forest, with large trees--some “regular”, others more bizarre and alien in shape, texture, and color. Occasionally one would turn to dust and become part of the rubbery, slightly spongy ground; another, smaller tree would sprout and set to work growing. And constantly, there was the swimming of things in the corner of my vision, that strange blurriness, a pounding of blood in my head…but was that just me? Something seemed off, and suddenly I figured out what that something was.
“Wait…we’re upside down. We are upside down.” The trees were jutting out into a turquoise and mauve sky like teeth from the top jaw of some massive beast. How were we possibly holding on to the floor--er, ceiling? Any moment now we’d fall out into the wide expanse of emptiness. That kind of fall would never end!
I quickly flattened myself on the square of turf that I stood on and held on tight. Quietly I began to pray.
That was a mistake on my part; the landscape went topsy-turvy and began to twist in all directions. The turf began to shorten, leaving me less to hold on to--frantically I tightened my grip and prayed even more. This process might have continued on for a while had not everything abruptly stopped spinning. Something inside told me that it was okay to stand up now, that I wouldn’t fall out of my own head. However, I didn’t stand up, simply lying on the ground and enjoying what odd version of gravity I had inside my mind.
George again. “Get up. Get up now.” .
I oblige, and suddenly my head is covered in smoke that clings to every centimeter of my plating and wisps down into my lungs, assimilating into the blood that’s still, sort of, I think, pumping through that network of veins and arteries and making me a little bit closer to it in composition. An idea blooms, bright as a flower and just as appealing. I‘d been looking at it wrong the entire time, oh Vishnu, oh deity, this was the solution--
George drags me out of the cloud. I writhe away and try to escape into the heady mist--the idea! The idea! I knew it--I knew it and I could…I could what? What was I talking about? Odd…
“I told you to get out of that fog. You stay in there too long and there won’t be anything left in a while.”
I cough, hack out a puff of grey air. Already the rush of concept and understanding was fading, the flower dimming and wilting in on itself. In a few seconds it was gone entirely and I had no idea of what the original idea had been. Turning to George, I blinked. “What was that?”
“Pure thought, unfocused and open to anything. It can form and interact with anything here, but when it’s in a cloud like that it usually stays static.“ His plates flicked red for a moment, then lightened to tangerine. “Your inspiration.” He snorted and beat at some of it that was inching out tentatively towards us like a tentacle, driving it away. “The stuff that drives you, makes you write and draw and indulge in all manners of philosophical contemplation.”
“So…why wouldn’t I want to stay in the cloud? If I was inside there…wouldn’t I become enlightened?” There was a temptation worthy of Eve and Adam…knowing that the potential for comprehending everything there was lurked inside your mind, but being told not to actually take advantage of it. Why wouldn’t George let me stay there…wasn’t his ulterior goal to make me understand things and find the Truth?
My friend chuckled and pointed to my head. “Check out your antennae, Olo.”
I looked up. The smooth metal had corroded and melted partway, turning a blotchy rust-red. The pulses and vibrations had decreased tenfold; I could barely hear George, much less the rest of my inner world. “What--”
“The longer you spend in that mist, the more you understand, that’s true. But at the same time, it eats away at you. If you give in to inspiration too long, you’ll be corroded beyond recognition and there won’t be anything left to communicate those ideas to the rest of the world. You’ll be trapped inside your own head, without any way out or a method to contacting the outside.”
He wasn’t just talking about my mind. I remember all those thought-jags I’ve gone on before, where I don’t eat or sleep but just think and write, think and write. My escape when I was small, alone and unaware of the fact I was part of a different species then human--had I really gotten that close to oblivion? Yes, I had; I’d be completely off my rocker now if I wasn’t booted out the door. Not the benevolent crazy, either…strange, incomprehensible, rotten insanity would have been the main focus of my thoughts. Would have been my thoughts.

Rhyming Couplet I

2009-11-20T20:19:00.000-08:00

The solution seems within my grasp, O answer, O Truth sublime!
Such wonder permeates my soul; will you ever be mine?

Sides.

2009-11-19T11:36:00.000-08:00

There's no earthly way of knowing, which direction we are going;
There's no knowing where we're going, or which way the river's flowing...
There really is no way of knowing where our actions will take us. It's nice to think that the resistance and all of the efforts of the ARFA, Versus Novus, and Miss Miss' own little organization have been for the right reasons. It's nice to think that MNU and District 10 are "bad" and that freeing all of the poleepkwa and going home is "good."
Really, though, it can't be proven. There are no "good" or "bad" actions in this frame of existence, this moment in time, this universe; there are only actions that appear to be beneficial or disadvantageous to a certain group. To us, the poleepkwa and fighters for freedom, MNU is evil and must be stopped. I believed that MNU's atrocities were one of the certain things in my short life--it was only by talking to someone on the opposite side as me that I actually realised that morals are subjective. To MNU, we are evil, we are the bad guys who must be halted in our efforts. No doubt that if we were to go to thrid, fourth, even fifth parties the viewpoints would change. It is all subjective, all of it.
I am not going to give up--don't think that for a moment. However, as I continue to do my small part to stop the processes and ideas that created and sustain MNU and others like it, I will keep in mind that I may--most likely, in fact--be considered the "bad guy." I will also keep in mind that this cannot be proven false.

2009-11-19T11:19:00.000-08:00

If knowledge is acid, at least for me, then love is like heroin. The intitial blast of pleasure at being a parent is overwhelmingly wonderful and blissful; the content and utter happiness that follows soon after is even better. I may not be Jack and Jill's birth parent, but I'll try my best to be a good foster parent to them. They know that too, I think--and that makes it even better. The two of them could have decided not to trust me or simply chosen to hate my guts, but they didn't, and we're together now, a family, a freakin' family! It's great.

2009-11-17T19:22:00.000-08:00

It seems like there'll be solace
for every tear we've shed...
it looks like there's an answer--
alas! it's gone! our hope is dead!

2009-11-16T11:59:00.000-08:00

What makes things real? What separates the mundane and proven from the uncertain and fantastic? Is it the majority that decides; the viewpoint shared by the most people declared true? Would that make a delusion real, then, to the population of an asylum?
Who decides what is real, and how can you tell if they actually exist or not?
Senses, logic, faith? They don’t prove a thing. There’s no way of being certain if what you see, along with everyone else, is true. Still, there is a point to be made. If I—along with everyone else— “saw” a chair where there was none, it wouldn’t matter. Yes, we could smell it, touch it, taste it, hear it—presumably…and I would still fall down if I tried to sit in it.
There’s got to be something that can be taken for granted, some given information in the proof. Without it, you can’t ground the assumptions; you can’t ever hope to find a true solution…
So are we all drifting, then, since we don’t know exactly what the given information is? Even the ideas of gravity and the ideas behind the stars are still theories—there just hasn’t been anything to disprove them yet. All we have is mist that we’ve been able to cup in our hands, separating it from the fog around us. Until something more solid comes along, that’s it.
What am I trying to say here? I honestly don’t know; I’ve forgotten, or maybe I didn’t know where this was going to begin with. But what I keep thinking is…you can’t be certain what you see is what everyone else sees. Even if it’s real to you—even if you’re the only sane one and the rest of the world is sharing the same madness, it can’t be real.
If we do give in to another reality, though, we lose. Isn’t that what MNU has done for all these years? Created a world populated by humans and bizarre, violent monsters called prawns? That isn’t true—not to me, since I am a “prawn” and I would never harm someone—but goddamnit! How am I right either? Both ideas could be madness, just a different delusion masking a truth we can’t understand. The Truth…the given information, the perfect, undeniable facts that give sense to all the ethereal worlds out there. If we are to find ‘real”, we must find truth then! Yes, yes we must…but can we?
That’s for another day, I guess. Another wild jag of thought and doubt…this post is too long already and I have other things to do; the “real” world and all its responsibilities are beckoning and I have no choice but to answer the call. If I didn’t--haha!--I’d be considered insane.
It’s true that we can’t live in our own dream worlds, I know that, but we can’t sunder our thoughts and observations from our interactions with the outside world. Without madness, I believe, there wouldn’t be insight—there wouldn’t be those jolts of understanding and creativity that provide for advancement and change. There’s got to be some kind of diffusion between worlds—perhaps not equilibrium, not even a dynamic one, but some form of balance.
We can dream, we can ponder, we can doubt and ask for other opinions, but there’s still got to be a happy medium.

2009-11-15T17:12:00.000-08:00

I don't know what's going on...am I asleep and dreaming of typing this, or am I typing this and dreaming of sleeping? I swallowed a few tranquilizer pills, enough to knock out something at least my size, if not more, but I'm awake now and still thinking. I'm seeing, in some odd way that makes no sense. George is next to me, maybe he knows.
"You know I don't. I’m here, but I know what you know. Nothing more, nothing less.” He grins and flickers out of sight, pops back in so I can see him, vanishes again. “I just look at it differently.”
What is it? “Everything. Life, un-life, the things between.” Things between? "Of course. There's black and white, then the shades in between. Not just grey, everything."
Thomas said you were a "muse". A part of a process, along with a vision and a message. Messages. That’s why you’re here, and that’s it. If there was no message, there wouldn’t be you.
“Of course. The same goes for you, too. If you didn’t have a reason to be, you wouldn’t be. The only problem is finding out why you’re here.”
The ideas. The loa, they use me like a horse, a draft animal for labor. The ideas need to escape. That’s why I’m here, to…what? Capture them? Inform others? Teach--guess--live--prophesize?
“No. Provide a viewpoint. Prophecy is misleading--the future never changes, it just repeats, so as long as you understand the pattern you can see what lies ahead.”
What lies ahead? We’re in a war, aren’t we? People on two differing sides, fighting and killing each other to prove that their idea is better, more right then the other. What comes next…a ceasefire? No…no, that wouldn’t make sense, the ratio is too uneven. Maybe if one side loses followers, or the other side gains fighters, it may happen, but for the time being there is only one thing.
“Persecution. The ones on the smaller idea’s side will be tracked, killed, followed to the best of their opponent’s ability.”
So we have to hide. “No. That would let the foe win. We cannot hide or back down, but must continue forward.”
But that will lead to our doom. If we continue to fight, we will die, we will be struck down.
“Yes, but remember what happens next in the pattern; the ‘renegade’ idea takes hold, gains followers, and there’s a revolution. What happens next you know.”
Yes, yes I do know…don’t I?

2009-11-15T14:01:00.000-08:00

After a long time using acid, you get used to the feeling of going off on a trip. You learn to recognise the signs; sight and hearing blending together, touch fading, everything feeling too far away. Finally the world drops beneath you and you begin to drift...
My feet met solid ground--cold tile, to be exact. A whiff of cool, air-conditioned air caressed my antennae and I looked around. People dressed in suits and formal clothing bustled down the hallway, ducking into cubicles, trading papers, chatting around a water cooler that bubbled like a plastic cauldron. Where was I?
"Welcome to MNU. Or, at least, an MNU building." George jumped up and sat down on a fax machine, ignoring the human who passed through him as she went about her work sending some sort of a document. "See everybody?"
"Uh..." I looked around, analyzing the faces swarming in the hallways. "Yes."
"Alright." George held up a hand and began counting down with his fingers, ignoring my bewildered gaze. "Three...Two...One."
A resonating bang exploded somewhere underneath me and orange bloomed all around. Like the last time I'd been "spirited away", it was sensed only as a mild, dim warmth--a fraction of what others felt around me. I had time to count to two before the walls shook and smoke billowed out, blocking the view. The flames roared and there came loud crashing, banging, shattering--
Scream. One scream, choked, gurgling, female. It was the fax machine girl, her document now just ash. Most of her was ash, too; a leg, an arm, half of the twisted, reddened lump of flesh that had once been a torso. Black, charcoaled meat, cooked well done.
I could feel her pain, I really could. The struggling boom-boom of her heart as the pauses between got longer and longer. Boom-Boom Boom. Boom. Boom...Boom. Boom...
What's going on? A voice at my ear, sibilant and quiet. I don't understand--what's going ON? She seemed to understand what had happened and dull panic set in, pushing into my heart like a butter knife instead of a razor. Funny how everyone says that pain cuts clean; it really crushes your organs and thoughts, drawing them in and compressing, compressing, smaller smaller smaller...
No. Nononononononono. Was it the prawns? The--prawns? Did this? No. John-- I saw a man, blond hair, laughing. --alive? Pleasegod let him be okay...ohgod. ohgod.I didn't ask--badbadbadwhy? whybadwhybadwhybadwhybad--
"Shut up!" I couldn't take it, the sluggish trickle of thoughts, so i started to yell at her. "Shut up! I can't--I can't listen to you! Shut--"
The stream of thought cut off, the trickle of emotion and pain died down. I froze and stared at her as she stopped moving. I'd told her to shut up, but not like this. "No--no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--!"
Others joined in my screaming, as if the one cry of pain had broken the ice and everyone was free to give voice to their agony. I could hear them too. All of it, the thoughts, the straining of lungs and hearts as they struggled to work. Most gave out without completing what they set out to do.
I turned away, facing George, who was still glowing and outshining the embers. "Get me out of here."
"That's not the way it works, bud." George snickered. "You're here now, and you'll never leave. You can't kill a ghost, and this will stay with you wherever you are."
"Are you a ghost? Is this a ghost?" I wanted to strike out at him, but I somehow knew it would do nothing. My blow would pass through him like a blade through mist, or would hit him and not damage him; a feather against steel. "Or are you just another hallucination, like those people--" The memory of their strained thoughts
what'sgoingonohgodohGODpleasehelpIdon'twantthis
flooded my brain again and I sobbed.
George's antennae flicked, but he did nothing to quell my lamenting. "It doesn't matter if it was a hallucination--nobody knows what happened, and most likely nobody cares much. Ryan sure as hell doesn't." George's words pierced into me like bullets, or the shrapnel that had most likely pierced those people when the bomb went off. "Only you know what happened. Does that make it real? I don't know."
"But--" This was Ryan's doing? This is when he blew up the building? I'd known it had happened, but I hadn't thought of the pain this had caused--
"Do the technicalities matter? Stuff like this happens on both sides. The specifics aren't important, what matters is the idea."
The idea. The idea that there are casualites on both sides? No. There are casualites, but there are also families left behind. That was the point George had tried to make. These people worked for MNU, and did awful things, but they weren't bad. They just had bills to pay, mouths to feed. They helped kill poleepkwa, both indirectly and directly, for good reasons--as good as reasons could be--and we kill them for it. We still do.

2009-11-15T10:30:00.000-08:00

Is integration possible anymore, in both this world and the one we left behind? We've become different then the race that touched down almost three decades ago, bewildered and confused. The years have given us time to adapt and understand this new land we've found ourselves in, but it's also robbed us of what we once were. All the conflict and knowledge and pain our race has experienced has impacted us, not for the better. Whether we like it or not, we've become "prawns".
Maybe that's the wrong term to use; it's not just the hate, but trying to fit in and become part of a different culture--hell, a different planet--that has made us something different. Prawn, along with Outlander, Non-human, and Alien are just names the humans have given us in an attempt to understand what we are; to put us in easy-to-define, commonly known terms. Even "poleepkwa", the "correct" term for us, is a human attempt to pronounce our native tongue. We've been lost in translation, so to speak...something not-quite poleepkwan, but definately not human.
We'll never be humans, and that's a good thing, but will we ever be "poleepkwa" either?

Names.

2009-11-13T11:43:00.000-08:00

What’s in a name? It’s a title to distinguish yourself from the masses, but what happens when you have the same name as others? What if there are crowds of people who share your name, but not your looks or manners or memories? Are you a separate thing that happened to be classified under an umbrella term—it’s a “Jill!”, it’s a “Jack”!—or are you doomed to conform, to slowly sink into the grooves left behind by the ones who came before you so that when you state your name people say “oh yes, you look like a—” and pay no more mind to your self, who you really are.
That seems to have been one of the ways MNU drags us down, or at least it has become that. Never mind the names being in a foreign tongue; humans simply cannot speak our language, even if they tried and wanted to. But by being grouped in with the mobs of Johns or Alices or Roberts or Christines, even though we are drastically different in both appearance and mindset, we lose our identities. We become “just another”, just as the stamps poleepkwa are forced to wear classify us by numbers and “behavioral classes” instead of our viewpoints and feelings as sentient, emotional beings.
But will it be enough to wash off the tags and pick new names? No. No, because choosing who you are to prove someone else wrong isn’t choosing at all. You can’t choose your self—that is something that evolves over time, with everything you go through and think and ponder every moment in your life. “You”, who you are, is never static, but dynamic and quick to change as the earth and the living things on it. The only time you will ever know for sure, I think, is death, and then it may not do much.
Jack, Jill, don’t be so quick to give up your names and your lives. I will help you the best I can to overcome what D10 has taught you and shown you…admittedly that is not much. But don’t think for a minute—for a second—that you can walk away from the past unscathed. The tags can be taken away, but the mark they leave takes much longer to heal and be gone. It will take time for you to figure out who you are and what you want to do; remember, it took Odysseus twenty years. Hopefully, it won't be as long, but it won't be instant.

A trip to D10.

2009-11-11T07:31:00.000-08:00

When I realized that my consciousness was separate from my body the first thing I felt was irritation, like when you drop something because you had too much in your hands and you can’t pick it up without letting other things fall. My hands sunk through the plates of my corporeal body as if through quicksand and I pulled them out, annoyed and vaguely horrified at the feeling of my own organs at my fingertips. So much for that.
Then logic set in and I realized I was having another trip. That was great, as long as my physical body didn’t do anything stupid. I stared at it, sitting there as if in a coma or asleep. Highly unlikely, unless you counted not doing anything as stupid. Then I was an imbecile.
“Well, long time no see, if there is time and you are seeing this.” George snickered from behind me. My friend clapped a glowing hand on my shoulder and smiled. “How are you?” He froze and cocked his head to the side; it seemed like he was listening to something--or someone--I couldn’t hear. “Oh--right--” He looked at me. “No time for swapping stories. I’ve got to show you something.”
“Show what--” Time and space warped and shivered into multiple images before reforming into a totally different scene. Skeletal trees had been replaced with an open space, dirt ground and row upon row of uniform white tents. An air of hatred and bewilderment hung over the uniform grid like a fog. I knew where this was.
“Yeah, it’s D-10.” George blinked and swished his antennae at me. “Also known as Awshitz, also known as District 10, also known as despair. Like the view?” He pointed to the tents and an MNU guard tower in the distance. “It’s best from there.”
Nearby, a poleepkwa with plates painted grey was scrounging through a trash pile. He looked up for a moment, as if sensing our presence, then went back to his search. An MNU truck rolled by, the driver and passengers silent and immobile from what I could see. Immediately the poleepkwa bolted, scurrying off and running through me. I felt the brush of a heartbeat, a twinge of fear--he didn’t seem to notice anything.
George snorted. “Weird, huh? I never seem to get used to that, even with you.” He gestured to other places. “Here, let me give you a tour.”
We continued in this fashion, George showing the injustices and cruelties of D-10 while I followed him and watched. Each second there made me understand more and more why Sherry and the others are so adamant about leaving--it was hell, it was a shithole, and above all it was a place of terror. You didn’t know what could or would or might happen next; poleepkwa and people were slowly beaten down into more fundamental codes, more basic needs. Strikingly, horrifyingly, I could understand how MNU made drones out of our people--living in the chaos, coupled with the “education“, would break even the best of us if given enough time. If I was actually there in a physical sense there’s no doubt I would have died from my stupidity.
“Oh. Oh shit…’ George paused as we walked past a tent. MNU guards swarmed the thing like black flies on a carcass, chatting and arguing. They seemed to be waiting for someone.
I saw the tongue of flame slither inside the tent, hiss in pleasure and explode outward into a sheet of orange that covered the eggs inside. The white skin of the tent was lit from within and very object inside was visible, silhouettes against the orange and yellow. I could dimly feel the heat, but it was too much for the small sacs of life within--I could hear the young onesalready broiling and getting ready to pop out of life. Damnit--I tried to put the fire out, I really did, but how could I? I didn’t exist on a level that could do anything.
“That’s what happens to us, every day.” George gently yanked me away from the flames and guided me out of the shack, his plates never being outshone by the firelight. “You had to know. You believe that we can coexist with humans, no matter what? Try being civil to Kurt after seeing this.”
“You know about Kurt?” was the question almost on my tongue, but then I realized George had probably noticed when I was near-death. Besides, that wasn’t important--Kurt and I were individuals, and a race was at stake. Instead, I sighed. “I hoped--”
“Hope has nothing to do with it. Get to work, otherwise all those born prawns will die as prawns. I don’t know what you plan to do, but you’ve gotta implement it fast.” George waved. “Until then--”
Feeling returned. I let the shutters over my eyes lift up, relieved that I was home. But when the world focused I didn’t see the familiar walls of my place in the warehouse where I lived; there were walls, alright, but they were grey, dank, and cracked as the foundations had settled over the years. I remembered measuring the cracks every day, charting and keeping track of their growth and wondering how long it would take for the house to collapse.
I was smaller, the green of my plates paler and the plates themselves somehow ill-fitting, like a suit of armor that was much too big for the wearer. I knew this place, too.

Plea to the Elders.

2009-11-10T17:08:00.000-08:00

With blackened eyes and beaten soul do we look on our fate;
Quite possible the chance may be that it’s been a mistake.
But even still, the spirit yearns for something it can’t grasp,
That it may break the fettered chains and may be free at last.
Trying to break a mold made tight with everlasting shame;
Whose constrains have broken, beaten; thoughts struggle, ever lame.
Never to live the life that lurks inside the lusting mind;
A life open to joy and pain, to instincts that entwine
with the base of our being, yet we cannot show this side--
Like ivy climbing towards the sun to be removed in time.
So now do we put on faces that will never be thine,
and go out to this world we know and leave our dreams behind.

Differences.

2009-11-07T20:43:00.000-08:00

She was beautiful, that's true, but it was that kind of odd, otherworldly beauty that seems so far away; the person possessing it somehow is unappealing and plain to you, only to bloom and flower in radiant wonder as they leave your field of vision. Out the corner of your eye, you see them in all their glory--try to look again and its gone. That kind of beauty blends into a crowd so easily, one fish among hundreds in the big sea. She was stocky, expressive, built out of a single block of smooth ivory, marble; seamless and impervious to the wear and tear of the world. I don't know what she saw in me. Perhaps it was the novelty of something different. I was the geode to her marble; unappealing and likely to be ignored, yet, hopefully, when inspected and shattered...
It was night when we left the seemingly vacant warehouse. The lights and sound and goodwill inside were muffled and insulated by the silent metal and mortar. You'd never guess there was a party going on if it weren't for the sporadic trickle of tired ravers, sweating even in the cold air. The clouds hung over the sky, visible and pale against the dull gloss of the space beyond the atmosphere, like wisps of cotton lint on a funeral gown. It was strange, I told her, to look at the stars. I was glad they didn't show tonight.
Of course, she responded. It would be strange for her to stare at the stars now that she was going to be with one of their people. 'With' was the word she used. I liked the complete absence of intimacy; if she had said 'sleeping with' I would have left her on the spot. The idea was too unknown to both of us to be spoken aloud, too vulgar for words or even direct thought.
Her car was nice. I think it was a 'Bug' or something of the sort. Small, compact, and curved, a nice powder-blue color that stood out, I assumed, only as it drove past. I tried not to think of the similarities between the vehicle and the woman as she turned the key with an expert flick of the wrist and drove off. The windows were tinted, so I didn't have to hide; the only issue would be getting pulled over, and she told me that wouldn't be an issue. She hadn't gotten a ticket since 1990. That sudden comment alerted me to a rough estimate of her age and I panicked. This was, without a doubt, the most stupid thing I would ever do, and Vishnu almighty it was going to get me killed. It had to be a trap, or a trick, and any second now an MNU truck would appear out of nowhere and I'd be yanked away and deported--
We arrived at her house, a modest one-story affair with a postage-stamp of grass in the front and a veritable woods in the backyard. All four knees quaking, I scrambled out of the car and bolted inside so her neighbors wouldn't see.
Silently she steered me through the house, occasionally chuckling at some knickknack or appliance that caught my eye and giving a short description. I knew half of the things she told me but it was such a pleasure to listen to her talk, the self-assured tone resonating, just a bit lower then pride. Down a hallway, past a table, over a small black-and-white cat that was stretched out on the red carpet like a speed bump, until at last—at last!--the bedroom, with its decent bed and clean sheets. Wasting no time, she removed her outer clothing; I took off the tattered phat pants, held together with duct tape and safety pins to accommodate my unusual legs and hip structures. The two of us were on opposite sides of the bed. It took mental steel on her part, no doubt, to actually clamber onto the damn thing.
I could understand the idea of lust right then and there--there was something about her that I desired and needed and would fight plate and mandible and fist for, if need be. By all gods, human, poleepkwan and otherwise, I wanted her. A thin trill managed to work its way up my throat, contrasting the raspy rhythm of her breathing. I put one leg on the bed and leaned in, closer, so I could see the brown pigment of her eyes, the skin of her lips, the shining porousness of her skin. One mandible lifted up to slide against her cheek, against my judgement--I wanted to do that, but hadn't willed myself to do it yet. Another joined it, and another. She brushed my antennae with a delicate finger, rubbing along the base and tapping the tip. After a few moments we drew back. Preliminaries done--now we'd actually get started. I bent the leg resting on the bed and readied myself for the leap into the unknown, that figurative, literal, all-emcompassing unknown.
Something held me in place, freezing all of my muscles and petrifying me. It was like quicksand had been flowing around us all this time, sucking us deeper and deeper in only to harden into hard glass. We could see each other, we could feel each other, but we could never be close in the way we wanted to be. I let my leg slide off of the bed and rejoin its partner in supporting my weight. It wouldn't happen, ever, despite the emotion throbbing still in the room like a swollen heart; a heart that now skipped a beat and burst. We weren't the same, and because of that we'd always be separate. I would be acting in love when my people knew only hate...she would be giving up her gift of blending in. It was stupid, it was sentimental, but the fact was there and we couldn't ignore it now.
It was okay, she said. She understood. I knew she did--we'd been close enough for me to sense it, smell it on her skin. But that didn't help with the guilt; I felt like I had betrayed her and myself. So much effort was taken in getting our paths to cross, so much time spent in negotiating what was to occur, and nothing was actually happened.
The drive to an area close to Miss Miss' place was short and silent. There was nothing to say--everything we both could have thought of wouldn't have been adequate. Quiet was the best thing to describe the feeling of a bond severed, a bond that hadn't even formed but was broken, like a leech before it has attached to a vein, sucking and sucking at the empty air that provides no nourishment. Finally we arrived at the spot alongside the highway--"my neck of the woods", I told her. We embraced one last time, then I gathered my few possessions from the backseat and left. The little blue car stayed there for a moment, a wordless gesture of 'goodbye, godspeed', and it was gone.
I still don't know her name.

Radio.

2009-11-01T05:14:00.000-08:00

Radio. That was it; a radio. There was a radio in my head; the static so rough and loud, irritating the membranes of whatever brain cells I had left at the moment. I could have coped with it if it was music I was hearing, but the constant meaningless noise wore at my nerves like sandpaper. Have you ever been so angry at a thing that you want to destroy it? I have. I hated static, I hated the idea of static, I wanted the static to end.
But it persisted anyway--the volume even turned up and garbled outside voices. Snow buzzed in my vision, like a broken monitor had been stuck in the space behind my eyes and left with the power on, operating but not working. Blocking out sight, sound, movement, anything--there was the static and there was me and that was all. If the two of us occupied an entire universe on our own, it couldn't be measured or proven. We may have been in a world full of matter or consciousness; trillions of other lifeforms living all around...I couldn't tell. You could almost feel the brush of their little bodies against you sometimes; a moment later you'd find that you've gone numb and there's no way for you to feel anything.
The radiowaves changed in tone, sliding from higher to lower pitch as if someone was tuning it. Finally, all the backround noise coalesced into a few syllables, then a word, then a voice.
After contemplating the complete and utter fallibility of his life thus far, Olo Lamna, commonly known as Olo "Doorbell" Lamna, decided it was in the best interest of those around him to off himself. He hadn't accomplished much in his life yet, and with things the way they were it was highly unlikely he would ever do so.
The voice, so rough and jagged, narrating my thoughts along with lies. But were they lies, or were they things that were going to happen? Time was absent here along with the senses; the future blended into the past into the present into what would never happen. Was this voice a product of my own thoughts or another thing entirely?
In the course of his travels into the bowels of his own mind, he had uncovered a simple truth; even if things were not real to begin with it was still possible for them to impact three-dimensional corporeal beings, existing in an environment called space and time.
Well, that was true...ideas did more damage then blows or bullets. A cut or a broken bone would heal in time, naturally. An injury to the mind would take far more to go away. It may never go away--that was why we all had to be careful while fighting for or freedom. What if, in the process, we become slaves to our own actions and thirst for revenge? Then we'll have lost.
The incorporeal and corporeal fed off of each other every day, waxing and waning in unison to achieve equilibrium. Following this train of thought, Olo came to the conclusion that destroying the ideas of MNU would not be enough; the employees would carry the concepts away to re-create the company.
We couldn't kill, though. That would make us no better then them...would it? Was it okay to kill those who have killed innocents? The scars that action would leave are unimaginable. They'd never leave, so that meant--
His beliefs had been wrong all this time; he had assumed that things were better then they actually were. Ideas never die, but they could kill, quite easily in fact.
That was it. I wanted to walk away from this voice, but where would I run to? Nevermind that my legs were somewhere out of reach...I couldn't run away. It had taken root in my brain, digging into the tissue and sparks of thoughts like a tapeworm, seeking the warmth and spinning out accounts of my actions, my wrongdoings, what I failed to do and what I failed at doing. Little offspring, little mini-worms to repeat the process. Would they chew their way out of me to infect others, or would I just carry them along inside until they ate up everything and left a shell? A shell...that was interesting...an organic puppet to hide their lithe bodies from the world. Could they actually do this--would they do it? There was no way I could know, no way I could ever know.

2009-10-30T22:09:00.000-07:00

Kurt Jackson, the one who kidnapped me, has outdone himself. This...he's not a person, this thing...captured and interrogated several poleepkwan refugees and finally killed them after extracting the information it needed. What it found is not important--what matters is that innocents were mindlessly killed; not just that, but innocent children! Nobody should be killed out of malice or ill will, but children are our future...by killing them, MNU deprives us of a chance to move on and change. It's awful...this should never happen to any race. No parent or friend should have to watch a young life torn away from the earth.
Many of my friends want to see this pawn of MNU dead, but would it help? I can't condone violence--I can't, it's in my nature, but I'll try to reason this out. Killing him would make him a martyr at the worst, another excuse to crack down on the poleepkwa in one of the best cases. Not only that...would it be adequate punishment? A quick death to pay for the deaths of many? No. No, he has to be kept alive, if only as a maimed,scarred, withered shadow of a person, to experience the suffering he's brought on us all.

Hope, by Olo Lamna

2009-10-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

The time has gone and passed us by;
the clock has struck the hour.
We've yet to break these cursed chains
and see our freedom flower.
Many before us have closed their eyes
and left us all behind,
and many more will do this still--
it's a quality of the times.
But while our breath still sobs from lips
and cries of protest ring,
and the bullets flow, from guns and clips
to mangle everything;
As long as we have life in us
we'll fight, at any cost
for we are not beaten, we are not broken--
and the battle has not been lost.

Freedom, by Helen Hunt Jackson

2009-10-27T11:43:00.000-07:00

What freeman knoweth freedom? Never he
Whose father's father through long lives have reigned
O'er kingdoms which mere heritage attained.
Though from his youth to age he roam as free
As winds, he dreams not freedom's ecstacy.
But he whose birth was in a nation chained
For centuries; where every breath was drained
From breasts of slaves which knew not there could be
Such thing as freedom,--he beholds the light
Burst, dazzling; though the glory blind his sight
He knows the joy. Fools laugh because he reels
And weilds confusedly his infant will;
The wise man watching with a heart that feels
Says: "Cure for freedom's harms is freedom still."

Reading.

2009-10-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

We need to teach our children how to read and write--not only in our own language, but in others. So much knowledge can be found in books if only one can read them...for most of my life the only sources of knowledge I had were abandoned books that I would find, and (please let me not be vain in saying this) I'm intelligent today. That's not it though. Books can be teachers, but they offer something else; other viewpoints. With a good book and a good mind you can see through other's eyes and understand the world as they do. This may be a sentimental thing to say, but I believe it to be true, and I believe that we poleepkwa have plenty of good minds. The only problem is supplying them with books and works of literature.
I can guess what some of you may be thinking...'why read works by humans?' 'Why should we see the world as they do?' 'How would they know what we have suffered through?' and many variations of this. I understand that MNU tries to suppress our minds by feeding us human ways and forbidding us from learning of our own culture. This cannot go on...we have to know who and what we are and where we came from; that's a right that everyone should, could and must have. But being proud of your people shouldn't mean you deny the knowledge of other cultures--that's the viewpoint MNU seems to have, and it's thinking like that that has gotten us here in the first place.
By reading and learning of others you can understand them; by understanding them you can make peace with them; by making peace with them you prevent war and bloodshed. Too many have died for us to not jump at the chance to make things right.
We need to read and write in as many languages as we can--human, poleepkwa, or others alike. Reading may not come easily to everyone, but it must be done. The cries of the poleepkwa for freedom can be found not only on our lips, but in the written words of the humans that suffered before us. We are not the only ones who've been through this, and we can learn from them.
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/thematic_poems/freedom_poems.html
http://www.poemhunter.com/poems/freedom/
http://www.poets.org/
http://www.everypoet.net/poetry/

Memories, or lack of them.

2009-10-25T14:18:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been so afraid that you can feel the apprehension resting inside you like a chuck of lead? There's a sinker lodged right here in between my plates--there's got to be a hook in here, even though I can't feel it--and the line stretches out to somewhere I can't see, the thin wire getting fainter and fainter as I look back into my memory until it fades away totally. I don't know who's got the other end, but something tells me I can't just ignore this one...
Please don't ask me what happened, because I can't remember. My last memories are of carving pumpkins with Jack and Jill; the thin blade sinking into the orange flesh of the fruit and the appreciative 'eww' and 'yeech' noises coming from the pair of kids...putting the two jack o'lanterns out in front of the house, telling the story behind the tradition and snapping a few photos. I think I uploaded them after, but I can't be sure. The recollections get hazy and foggy, all conversations and actions slurring together into vague ideas: I think I went to work, so that means if I did then I played this music, did those kind of things. Just generalisations and mountains of circular logic. That's it...
... and then I'm waking up by the side of a road, vomiting into wet grass and dimly realising three things: one, I'm sleepy, two, I don't know where I am, and three--I'm scared. Not dread or apprehension, but hot animal terror--the kind that makes you want to run away or strike out at the first thing that moves in your sight. I can't adequately describe it in words, because I think I was beyond words...it's a miracle I could still read and type when I noticed the laptop computer. Whoever took me left it with me; I logged onto facebook and the rest is history.
I'm so glad I'm home and this is over, but is it over? This 'Kurt' did what he did for a reason; what was it?

2009-10-23T16:49:00.000-07:00

In learning about different human societies, I've come across some very interesting points. The similarities between the ancient 'Varna system' in India and the (supposed) structure of our civilization's society are striking. The religious aspect may have been replaced with a biological one (for more on this idea, read the "poleepkwa phenotype paradox" post from a few days ago), but overall the two may be very alike. Here's an overview of the classic Varna/"caste" system, with possible parallels in poleepkwan society:
Brahmin: top caste--priests, scholars, teachers; lived in the best environment and had the (overall) best education for the time. Smallest percentage of population. *This could be the niche the 'queen' fills, making most decisions and passing laws.*
Kshatriyas: kings and warriors; defenders of the different 'kingdoms/districts'. 2nd-smallest percentage of population. *'Engineers' could fit in here, having higher standards of intelligence then the other classes but still subject to the queen's decisions. Presumably the ones who took care of the ship.*
Vaishyas: farmers, traders, artisans; grew and maintained food supplies and bartered goods with other castes. Association with a vaishya was not viewed as such a deplorable thing, but higher castes still spoke with them only when necessary. 2nd-largest percentage of population. *
Shudras: slaves, peasant farmers; the general 'worker class'. They took up the largest percentage of the overall population and were the least educated. *'Guards' and the like, who acted as 'citizen soldiers' and acted when the higher 'classes couldn't*
Another caste, the Untouchables, lived separately from all other castes and were the lowest of the low. Their jobs usually included tanning, cleaning trash and waste from the streets, and cremating the dead. To associate with an untouchable in any way was viewed as a crime. *I have not been able to think of nor hypothesize of an equivalent class in poleepkwan society. I personally hope we're above treating our fellow brethren this way.*
Each city or settlement was divided into 'districts' which were planned and deliberately designed to keep the different classes separate. *Perhaps a single ship acted as a settlement, with the 'command module' being the places where the queen and engineers lived and worked. The area where MNU originally cut in could be where the 'worker class' lived, but as the leaders had died by that time it really can't be proved.*
*Another interesting note to make was that the original varna system was based on skin color: lighter-skinned people at the top, darker-skinned ones at the bottom. It seems to be that the majority of us (the 'worker class') are dark-colored, without the markings or coloration of the 'guard' and higher castes that I've heard about.
**For more reading, I've included reference sites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system

2009-10-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

Don't worry...about a thing...
'cuz every little thing gonna be alright.
Sure. Bob Marley was right about a lot of things, but when it comes to that, he was sadly mistaken. Things don't always turn out alright, even when you do worry. You can't just roll with the punches all the time...sooner or later you'll get slap-happy and forget why you're doing this in the first place, and that's the last thing we need: aimlessness.

2009-10-21T11:28:00.000-07:00

If using acid is the closest you can get to schizophrenia without actually being insane, then withdrawal is the closest you can get to being bipolar without having the real deal. I'm not joking...it's hard to concentrate enough to even type this thing up now. One moment I'll be ecstatic and happy that my life is changing--I'm going to be a teacher and caretaker, I'm kicking my habits, I'm actually going to function as an involved member of an organisation again, woohoo! Vale la pena!--and then the nausea and insomnia (all things that end in 'a', especially when dealing with medicine, are awful) slaps me in the face and I crash into a shivering, irritable lump of misery. I'm trying not to complain a lot right now, but not sleeping really sucks when its coupled with a total digestive backup. It's not even nausea...it's your stomach backflipping and trying to crawl out your esophagus whenever you smell something cooking.
Christ, I miss being normal--or at least my kind of normal--when I could windowpane and lubricate myself with acid and alcohol to the point in which I was alone with my thoughts. Will I still be able to continue being a psychonaut, or has it closed off forever...that's the only thing I'm good at, damnit, except for being a disc jockey! I loved it, all of it, even though it was selfish and twisted and masochistic and antisocial...you learn so much about everything when you use acid...it doesn't matter if its good or bad. You learn, and I don't want to forget it all now that I'm sober.
I hope this rapid-cycling of mine doesn't scare the kids. Jack and Jill...they still seem to hate my guts but they aren't actually that bad. Even though they aren't related they could be siblings; they stick together and watch each other's backs--I honestly think they sleep in shifts, one watching over the other, because I've never seen them both resting at once. Whatever happened to them in D9 and D10 made them this close, I think...maybe that's not an exactly good or an exactly bad thing. They've got good heads on their shoulders--they could easily learn anything they wanted to learn, no problem. In the long run, it's up to them if they want to start trusting me and learn about things; in the same way I guess it's up to me if I want to break the habit.

The Darkling Thrush, by Thomas Hardy

2009-10-20T17:08:00.000-07:00

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

2009-10-19T13:40:00.000-07:00

Things have changed a lot since I left Virginia, and as soon as I got back home I was forced to adapt to those changes. Miss Miss had dyed her hair a bright pinkish color ("for breast cancer"), the woods had turned a dull red-brown as the leaves died, and a new collection of poleepkwa had been successfully snuck into the United States. Overall things were one hell of a lot different, and it's still hard to believe that this all happened in what...a few weeks?
The biggest difference? The appearance of two blurs of plating and energy named Jack and Jill. I'm not joking--Jack and Jill are their actual names. Apparently the two met while being smuggled out of D10 and joined forces to make--in my opinion--one of the most terrifying duos in history. Approximately fifteen seconds after I was introduced to them by Miss Miss, I was flat on my back and pinned beneath the two; I learned shortly after that they're fascinated with human wrestling, especially the move known as a 'mailbox' which involves one person driving the victim back while another crouches down and trips them.
I'm supposed to take care of them.
So this means no more acid trips, no more psychonautic activities. I have to keep these two out of trouble and keep them from running away from Miss Miss' place. If there is a god, please let him help me...

"The Poleepkwa Phenotype Paradox"

2009-10-19T11:20:00.000-07:00

**This is a response to a question that was raised a short while ago. Thomas, if you want to discuss this in greater depth, email me at spacekricket@aol.com.
Our species is hermaphroditic, for those of you who may or may not know that. To clarify any questions that may arise from ignorance, I will briefly outline the birth process. We possess both 'male' and 'female' sexual organs, fertilise our own eggs with sperm, and carry the egg within our bodies until it is laid. After that, it must develop more outside the parent's body; soon it hatches into a child.
The entire process is pretty simple, in my opinion, and much easier and efficient from organisms that have only one gender. Poleepkwa can reproduce on their own without a mate, which increases the chances of the survival as a species. An individual can create an entire population; a single human would not be able to reproduce on their own. At the same time, this may be the ultimate genetic flaw in our species. Every child is essentially a clone of the parent, save for the times in which recessive genes--if they exist for poleepkwa--are brought to the surface and manifest. This explains how we all tend to look similar, excepting plating color and the presence of spikes or markings. We are all genetically alike, to the extent that (according to evolution) if our environment changed drastically or a disease that affected those of a specific gene sequence came up, we would not be able to adapt as quickly as organisms that reproduce sexually.
(On a side note, this may be the cause of our biological 'caste' system: a genetic mutation may have caused a poleepkwa to lay an egg that hatched into a poleepkwa of a different phenotype. Over time these developed through the generations into the different 'classes'. Keep in mind that I'm guessing on this, please. I'd rather not be 'flamed' or 'trolled'.)
Hypothetically then, if such a situation was to arise, would we survive? Unless we all began to mutate and produce offspring that carried the same mutation, it's unlikely. Evolution, according to Darwin, can take millions of years and countless generations. Perhaps we could speed up the process by removing sperm and eggs from two different poleepkwa and swapping them, but this would most likely be extremely painful and dangerous and therefore SHOULD NOT be attempted by anyone, professionals or amateurs alike. Seriously guys, don't try it. It's stupid to endanger anyone like that.
In conclusion: our method of reproduction allows for a population to be established quickly in a given environment, but it may or may not survive if said environment changed quickly.

2009-10-18T15:42:00.000-07:00

Perhaps there is no 'right' or 'wrong' way to see the world, and the only way we will ever understand things is from our own perspective. If this is true then all the study I've done is useless...all those isms nothing but bloodless text on bloodless paper that relates to nothing in my life; someone else thought this way, and I never can or will or should think along the same lines. My thoughts will forever be just that: my thoughts, and no one else will understand them or share them with me.
Is my opinion worth anything then? Probably not...I can't change the way you think, no matter what I write. You'll think the way you think, as will MNU and everyone else who practices injustice and cruelty in this world. It can't be changed...human nature can't be changed, and neither can poleepkwa nature.

2009-10-17T16:23:00.000-07:00

An egg is not something to be bought or sold like a commodity! An egg is not lumber or steel to be weighed and tested and auctioned to the highest bidder. Eggs are children...not things. The destruction of an egg is like the murder of a human infant, and it should not happen to our offspring--it shouldn't happen to anyone's children.
Who started this sick trade? It doesn't matter--what matters is that we try to stop it as soon as we can. Our children must not be trafficked.

Happy Birthday, George.

2009-10-17T12:27:00.000-07:00

Today is George's birthday, but I can't send him a gift or bake him one of those overdecorated pastries or host a party in his name like most humans do. I don't think he'd mind, though. Birthday parties don't make a lot of sense...it's good that the person has lived through another year, but the main idea seems to be that the person instantly matures on the date of their birth, on that exact day. A birthday is a celebration of someone managing to get through another 365.25 days...that doesn't automatically mean that they're bigger or smarter or better then the last time Earth was in that point in space. Growth, mental and physical growth, takes time; it doesn't just happen. For some, it may never happen at all, while others are forced to grow up far too soon...
Back on track. Today is George's birthday, and since I can't give him a gift I wrote this post. Maybe wherever he is he'll know that I did this and be thankful. It's not much--just flashes of light converted to zeros and ones and converted again into text on the internet--but it's the thought that counts, right?

2009-10-16T18:39:00.000-07:00

I hope this is a dream. My plates are all peeling off like old wallpaper...I can hear them hitting the ground as they fall off. Plunk. Plunk. Plunk. I'm unravelling...I can't say it any other way. I'm not anything now, not human, not poleepkwa. Just a loosely joined mass of tissue and nerves and thoughts. My organs are lying on the ground.
Am I still all here or was I more then the sum of my parts? I hope Humpty Dumpty was wrong and that I can still be put back together again, else I'm screwed.

Metamorphasis

2009-10-16T17:56:00.000-07:00

No, this isn't about Kafka, although that is a good book. Read it...seriously. It's all about existentialism.
I'm not that alarmed at this turn of events; my mind's done stranger things...I've seen worse. I'm actually surprised at how sane most of the world is...it makes a lot of sense for eating about 20 pieces of blotter paper. Right now I can see my poleepkwa hands, but layered over that, like in double-exposure, are five fingers and smooth, shell-less skin. I'm seeing myself as human right now.
The thing that I'd really like to know is what part of my mind decided the gender. Most people tend to use male pronouns with poleepkwa and I have a male name, but right now I think I'm a girl...I can't be sure because I don't know much about human anatomy. Is it because stereotypically females are more verbal that I'm seeing myself as one? Maybe, or maybe it's because I don't see myself as strong enough to be a guy. Either way, this is so odd...I feel my mandibles, but only dimly, and my legs and arms are hard to move. Typing's getting hard too; I keep expecting five fingers when I only have three. My brain's probably going berserk, poor thing...having to decide what viewpoint to use: poleepkwa or human.
Are you what you think, or what you physically are? Seth's a poleepkwa now, but he's been human for all of his life. He thinks like one, probably still acts like one, but is he human anymore? Does identity depend on your thoughts or is it determined by the particular meat structure you find yourself in? If this weird transformation I find myself in became permanent, would I be poleepkwa or human? Could it be that I'm something totally different right now?

2009-10-16T14:37:00.001-07:00

Awful things like MNU and oppression happen because other people are content to listen to what their government tells them and nothing else. What you hear can be very different then what is...Districts 9 and 10 are a result of that. The public was misinformed and cajoled into allowing the rights of an entire race to be stolen away and the poleepkwa flung into slums and death camps; this continues to this very day, this very second. As you sit here and read these words, my people are dying at the hands of MNU or each other, our children 'educated', beaten and--I will say it--brainwashed into believing they are worthless, that they are the property of MNU and not people with thoughts and rights...nothing like this should ever happen to children. It shouldn't happen to anybody.
Would all of this have still happened if you knew what was going on in D-9 all along? I'd like to think not...I'd like to think that humans can still feel compassion. Perhaps I am wrong and the proletariat is too apathetic to care anymore; if this is true then we are too late and we will never be free. Or do you trust your organisations and governments still? You have to realise that these 'governors' and leaders are nothing more then individuals themselves...albeit individuals that find themselves with a lot of power. The government, for all of its wealth and ability, is nothing more then a group of people who decide for others. People are not perfect. Governments and corporations are not perfect.
I'm just trying to say that you need to look elsewhere for information. Don't trust the likes of MNU.

2009-10-16T13:08:00.000-07:00

You can tell who wields power by the way they act. In the 'modern', 'civilized' world, you can't, but at raves, in the 'bad' part of town, in dank alleys so full of refuse that they make you feel like trash, you can. It's all in the stance...relaxed, back straight but not rigid, hands open as if to say 'hey, I don't need a weapon or a fist to bring you down. I can get someone to kill you for me.' It's true; they can kill you, a million different ways. Junkies vanish or OD or get mowed down in a drive-by every day, and nobody really wonders why. "Maybe it was their fault, but maybe, just maybe--no, that can't be true." Thoughts like this are too hard to dislodge...nobody will care if you're gone.
Dealers know this, and they show it in everything they do. They don't care who notices. They are the ones who hold raw power, and they don't need a suit or handcuffs to show it. Dealers--the real dealers, not the runners and hawkers who negotiate time, place, amount, and price--can be spotted a mile away, once you know what to look for.

Trench Town--Bob Marley

2009-10-15T16:47:00.000-07:00

Up a cane river to wash my dread
Upon a rock I rest my head
There I vision through the seas of oppression
Don't make my life a prison
We come from Trench Town, Trench Town
Most of them come from Trench Town
We free the people with music, sweet music
Can we free the people with music
Can we free our people with music, with music
With music, oh music
Whoa my head, in desolate places we'll find our bread
And everyone see what's taking place
Whoa-yo another page in history...
...They say it's hard to speak
They feel so strong to say we're weak
But through the eyes the love of our people
Whoa-a they got to repay
We come from Trench Town
We come from Trench Town, Trench, Trench Town
They say can anything good come out of Trench Town?
That's what they say, Trench Town
Say we're the underpriveleged people
So they keep us in chains
Pay pay pay tribute to Trench Town, Trench Town
We come from Trench Town, not because we come from Trench Town
Just because we come from Trench Town.

2009-10-15T16:01:00.000-07:00

We must not act in violence. I've said that time and again, but I guess I've never had the chance to practice what I've been preaching. Well, don't worry--I have now. Apparently some people in the rave subculture haven't gotten used to there being poleepkwa disc jockeys...so a few of them decided to talk it out tonight, in an alley, over lead pipes and spilled blood.
You'd think I'd have expected it when they called me. "Hey, Prawn." Why do they always call us prawns? I can understand the resemblance to grasshoppers or shrimp to an extent, but the word's gotten out that the correct term is poleepkwa. People should know that's the right name for us...then again, I don't really think those 5 or so guys cared what I was called. Nope, they ignored my comment of 'it's poleepkwa' and formed a silent circle, grinning with that cold smile that isn't a smile at all...it's the showing of teeth. I knew what was coming--I've been at clubs long enough to recognise a streetfight when I see one--but where could I run? They all hung back, then by a silent consent rushed forward. I'll spare the details, but it wasn't fun to me, however much they were laughing.
And you know what? I didn't fight back. I didn't whimper, didn't cry for help or plead for mercy. Defending myself would have added to the image of a 'prawn' being a big violent monster; crying out for help would have goaded them to further cruelty. The best thing you can do with people like that is let them have their sick fun and leave them when you can. They'll get what's coming to them--you don't need to sink to their level and fight. We must not act in violence.

To MNU.

2009-10-14T14:36:00.001-07:00

You think we're done, now that there's an empty sky,
But above the clouds, our angel flies.
And you think we are finished, but among us, we know
That he’ll stretch out a hand to those below.
For so long we’ve waited to see our land…
Like a dream that you try to hold in your hand.
When he comes back, this nightmare will end,
We can only hope that it doesn’t happen again.

You think we're done, our knees on the floor,
A boot in our face, But this is not '84!
You can push us down, but we’ll come right back,
Your cruelty—you’ll be caught in the act.
The world will know what you’re doing is wrong;
The world will know that we do belong,
And when the world chooses to think this way--
We will fight, we will triumph, we will seize the day.

2009-10-14T11:33:00.000-07:00

I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been wondering on and off about catfood. What makes that stuff so addictive in the first place? Is it the presence of refined meat coupled with preservatives, or is it just the chemicals themselves?Even though I really don't know what I'm doing, I've been conducting my own little experiments and trying to find out the main ingredient that causes this effect.

Last night I borrowed a couple of pots from the Nevada base, set up a Bunsen-burner kind of thing and began boiling it down. The setup was pretty simple: a pot on a heat source with an oversized lid on top, tilted down with a bowl under the lip. The 'steam' rose up, hit the cooler metal, condensed and dripped into the bowl, leaving the solid stuff in the pot. Unfortunately it overheated and exploded, but not before I got a cupful of this foul-smelling greyish stuff. I won't go into detail, but I found out that this was NOT the part that acted as a narcotic.

So now I've got a little setup in my room. I'm going to 'bake' the catfood (extract the liquid, heat it and distill it into a concentrated powder) and then see if the science people at the Nevada base can analyze it for the most active chemical components. I was actually able to 'rent' some 'baking' equipment for a pretty good price--only about 30 bucks--from my supplier. The one catch? I have to tell the guy how I concentrated the catfood. If you can believe it, this guy (I'm not saying his name, because he'd cut off my supply or worse if I did) wants to actually sell this 'super-catfood' (that's what he called it) to the poleepkwa and human population in America. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that...I think I'll simply give him my original results and pray to god that he doesn't find out that it doesn't work. I'm not going to inadvertantly help get others addicted on something worse then regular catfood, even if I think drugs aren't as bad as people say they are.

In the meantime, I'm going to use this stuff and maybe make a duplicate set so I don't owe him. So far, I've got about...half a pot of liquid. The smell coming from it is unbearable--it doesn't even smell like meat anymore, it just smells like putrification and chemicals, even through the cheap little gas mask I'm wearing. Right now I'm trying to make sure it only stinks in here; I've got cloth shoved in the frame of the door so I don't accidentally gas the entire base and I'm not going to open the door until I'm done baking the stuff. I don't know if I should open a window, though--will people outside notice? I think so, but goddamn it smells so bad in here...I think I just may have to.

2009-10-13T11:31:00.000-07:00

Everything is so fragmented...mind, space, time, sight--shattered pieces of different things stuck and adhered together in a mosaic of life. Was what I experienced the sum of its parts or something more, Gestalt whispered from a corner of my brain. I ignore his pessimistic stuttering and gaze around at my sleeping-space. To some, this may seem like a confining gesture, locking myself in here without food or water for hours. If they only knew it's a tesseract in here, with the inside infinately bigger then the outside. How can I possibly grasp the world beyind the foot or so of door if I can't even see the end of the space in here? I think Jake and Max were right...I don't have my own 'zone', I have my own universe, and it keeps getting bigger.

When I move, I move with the help from the air, the light, the thought of others and my own muscles, it seems; I speak and type only with the assistance of all on earth and beyond, their voices and thoughts combining with the energy to produce this post. Actions are all so interconnected--you cannot act without the help of others. They may not even be people you know or care about--they can be your dearest friends or your bitterest enemies, but they aid you in everyday life. Would there be an ARFA without MNU? Poleepkwa pride without the crushing shame of captivity? No, not at all...they created each other and define each other even as we speak.

It seems like Timothy Leary was right...acid does enhance creativity. I've tried to capture the image in this picture...forgive me for its bad quality. I'm not an artist, I'm just someone who sees art and tries to duplicate its style and method.

2009-10-12T18:10:00.000-07:00

History repeats itself. Almost 20 years before we came here, "African-Americans"--humans with a darker skin color then most--cried out for justice and freedom from undeserved oppression. They were thought of as beasts; unintelligent, lower creatures that could be beat down and squashed by hate without ever putting up a fight. But they did fight; they fought undyingly. There were some--Malcolm X, the Black Panthers--who advocated violence. 'Why be kind to those who kill you and your friends?' they said, 'We must strike back,' and strike back they did, until they were killed in one of their many fights.
Others reached out with tolerance and love to those who knew of neither. Even when met with anger and agression they continued to act with nothing but acceptance in places where such things were unheard of. One of these nonviolent fighters for freedom was Martin Luther King, Jr. He put aside his own hopes and dreams to guide others and fight for freedom from hatred, preaching endlessly "We Shall Overcome."
We shall overcome! Just as those before us shook off the iron chains of captivity we will escape this enslavement! We will beat those who have beaten us time and again, but our weapons will be words and diplomacy rather then blows and bullets. I know this is a hard thing to ask for, but we must act in peace--unified, organised, understanding peace--if we are to ever end the reign of cruelty that MNU has forced upon us. It will be hard--others will die and many will be hurt in the battle, but I will gladly lay down my life if it ensures a better future for those who will come after us; I beg of you to do the same, not as a superior but as an equal. If not for yourselves, do this for the children who know nothing other then MNU law and captivity. One day we will all be free, and we will all be proud. We will be judged by the content of our character, as MLK said all those years ago, and not by our appearance. We shall overcome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobediance

Assurance.

2009-10-12T12:49:00.000-07:00

You've been through a lot; we all have. There hasn't been a war yet that causes no casualites and no trauma afterwards. Some wounds heal, others scar over and never go away. So much pain has been shared already in this crazy world...its a pity that it all has to happen to kind people who don't deserve it, but it does. We all must grin and bear it--in one way or another--and wait for the three years to pass. No one knows if things like this will ever happen in the future, but it will not happen to you as long as I have something to do with it. Those who were so cruel to you will pay for their crimes, have no doubt about that.
You're scared that this may not be real...no one can say what is real and what is just a dream for sure. Perhaps the solipsists are right and nothing is real but thoughts and images in the mind. But even if this is all in your head, your own thoughts have made it real. Memory and dreams only differ in the amount of weight they put on your mind. Real or not, we're here, and we're always going to be here for you. We're all in the same boat.

2009-10-12T10:38:00.001-07:00

This was new. I was just sitting at the computer, speaking with Seth and Sherry and reading her newest blog entry. Perhaps I shouldn’t read things when coming down from a trip…I don’t blame you, Sherry, don’t worry. My stupid idea, not yours, don’t be scared. Unbidden, a craving sprung up…it seemed like a great idea to start pulling at the still-healing crack in my leg. It hurt but was so much fun—like humans picking at scabs, I think. The pain is there but it’s overpowered by the fun of seeing little sections of yourself peel away. How far could it go? An inch—two inches? A foot—could I rip the section off entirely? As I peeled, I began to think. Everything was falling apart…it wouldn’t work, any of it. I could be fighting, but I can’t be fighting…I’d be useless in a fight and yet here I was, useless. I couldn’t stand it—this was wrong—I was wrong. So much pain was in this world…thank god there were only three years to go. Three years and it will all be over—how much worse can it get?
Acting on a new impulse, I got up and walked away from the computer, strolling until I got to another room. Perfect…I ran towards a wall, jumping and twisting as I got close to the brick so that I could see every detail, the singular fibers of the straw embedded in the clay, packed together to make such a wonderful, strong contraption…the object of my newest actions, my own stupid actions that had nothing to do with anyone else...my folly, not yours, don’t worry.
It exploded in a flash of red and brightened to white as heat trickled through my skull, quickly setting my brain on fire. Reeling from the impact, I buckled, stood up, ran again—not done yet. The cracking sound was wonderful…like fireworks; it matched the myriad of colors inside my head that flickered on and off. This was the right thing to do—I knew it as I ran again and again and again. After a time the impulse died down and shifted; it told me to lie on the ground. I stared up at the ceiling as George leaned over me, his voice deadly soft and filled with hatred. “You idiot—you think this is the end? MNU isn’t going down without a fight. . You think this is pain? Think again, Olo. Worse things are coming down the road.” The light shining from his body no longer seemed warm and serene—it was cold and glaring, like the light that shines on a specimen about to be cut and laid open on a dissecting table.
“Get up—you aren’t dead yet.”
I jolted out of the haze of pain to find myself at the computer, picking at my exoskeleton. I was in pain, yes, but it was not as extreme as the pain I had just been in—it was a hallucination, wasn’t it? I’d dreamed the whole thing, that’s why George was there. Only about ten minutes had passed…that was all? It had seemed like more—this had to be another dream. Fearfully I wait now—I’m going to wake up any second now to find that it’s just another hallucination, or maybe time will repeat itself and I’ll have to do the whole thing again. I hope not, but in a way I do. Worse things are coming down the road. Going back to past pains will soon be a luxury, I think.

2009-10-12T07:49:00.000-07:00

I'm going to step back for a moment and take a look at another group who have been denied rights: the LGBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) group. Being both asexual and hermaphroditic--as are all poleepkwa--I don't have the best viewpoint on this; I always thought that relationships were based on the drive to reproduce and 'love' was in fact a subsequent trait of this drive. "Turn-ons" were ways of picking out good genes to pass on to the offspring, while "romance" and "courting" were simply highly-developed mating rituals. From a purely biological point of view, homosexuality may not make sense, which can--and I'm not saying it does--imply that it is a "defect". I'm just saying that for someone who reproduces singly, it isn't the most logical thing around. I'm not going to even go near the "choice vs. born" issue...what matters is that people are homosexual or bisexual, and some people have a problem with that.
However, that does not condone violence and discrimination against members of the LGBT community. Having personal opinions is a universal right, but I've heard horror stories of people "coming out of the closet" (still don't understand that term) to peers and family only to be beaten, scorned and abused horribly. Harming or degrading someone on the basis of personal choice or biological identity is NOT right under any circumstances, and I will stand by that fiercely. After all, who am I to hate others and hold bigoted ideas? I'm an ALIEN, for god's sake! On what grounds can I hate, especially when those that have cared for me are gay or bisexual?
So, my conclusion? Homosexual love may not make an awful lot of sense to me, but then again neither does "regular", heterosexual love. People "in love" do things that most people may never consider otherwise; they may even risk their own lives for their significant others. There are a great many "straight" people who can't care for anyone besides themselves and wouldn't bat an eye if someone else was hurt--this I know all too well. If you are happy in a relationship and are not harming anyone else, then power to you. As long as you're happy, others should be willing to accept that.
*I hereby make this blog a safe zone for LGBT youth, as well as poleepkwa. I'm not sure what that will do, but it's the thought that counts, right? I'm here for you, people.

2009-10-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

You cannot shake hands with a closed fist.
But closed fists are all around, on both sides. They have to be: death hangs over D-10 like a sick cloud, a fog of hopelessness that is pierced through at times by acts of hope and--yes, I will say it--love. MNU will fight us and will continue to enslave poleepkwa reguardless of what they do. They've educated the society, and now our children, that we are violent monsters only kept alive for as long as we are useful. When others are trying to destroy you, the only course of action is to destroy them. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, kill or be killed, because if you do not then you will be another corpse in the pile...another casuality.
But Hammurabi's code doesn't work...the more violent actions taken by the resistance, the more examples MNU will have to justify their cruelty. We're trying to crawl out of hell but only make the hole deeper with each action we make. It's a horrific paradox. How will it ever be resolved?

2009-10-09T18:09:00.000-07:00

Well, this trip was…interesting, to say the least. I’m still not fully back on earth, so please be patient if it takes a while for me to pull the bits of my brain back together and put everything in a ‘normal’ sequence of events.
This time I agreed to be observed when I took the ketamine. I politely asked those who were present (who I will leave unnamed) to leave me mostly alone and only offer medical attention if I really became destructive to myself or needed to be resusitated. I recalled how I had collapsed the last time I tripped; I didn’t want to be prematurely ‘brought back' before I learned anything. Quickly I consumed the small packet of what looked like sugar crystals—I refused their offer of a ‘controlled dose’. Their ‘safe amount’ wouldn’t be enough—and began waiting.
Tripping alone is one thing, but tripping with other people around you is even more bizarre. They try to anchor you, asking things like ‘how do you feel’ or ‘can you understand me’ even though it’s useless in the end; their words melt away and distort into sounds that have no meaning and all that’s left is the slow shifting pattern of emotion on their faces. I felt as if I should tell them what’s going on, explain my behavior because it makes perfect sense to me but it didn’t really seems to make sense to them. But when I spoke they looked at me and confusion inched across their features; to my vision it takes forever to understand and did nothing. I was given a box of crayons and pencils and paper; I tried to write down what I was feeling but I’d forgotten English and my poleepkwan characters turned into batches of squiggles and intersecting lines. It’s so beautiful, a new language all its own, but they can’t read it. I began drawing what I saw, but they didn’t understand what I was doing and rumbled at me with voices too far away to hear. Eventually I ignored them altogether and focus instead on the trip. The white fog was swiftly returning…I sat down on the floor and waited for my consciousness to slip away. It did, my body vanished from view, and I was once again in that odd blankness.
George was waiting for me serenely. He was glowing again. “Hey. Back so soon?”
“Is this the hive mind?” I cut to the chase, not wanting to waste time. “Or is this heaven or some afterlife?” I was angered when he shrugged.
"Beats me. Whatever it is, everyone's here."
"Yes, you said that last time, but what do you mean everyone? Are they dead? Is the Queen here? How can i be talking to you--"
He cut my stream of questions short. "Olo, look. I know what your saying...but I can't describe it. I'm sorry, but I can't answer your questions." George was quiet for a moment, then both his expression and plating brightened. "Hey--I know. Maybe you can see it the way I do."
How? Would I have to die? I mean, I'd done that before, but it was useless if I found the answers only stay dead and not be able to tell others. George shook his head. "No, you won't die."
He could hear my thoughts? "Yup." George nodded. "But anyway, you know when you tried to hug me? Maybe we can try that again--if we overlap it might work." Before I could even think of a responce he darted forward and passed through me.
What happened next I cannot remember lucidly enough—only bits and snatches of memory remains. The bottom seemed to drop out of the world; I was bent and twisted into a mobius strip and sundered from time and space. Voices came from all around me even though I could not hear. Somewhere in that sequence of events I somehow forgot who I was and what I was thinking; I began observing my own thoughts while unaware that they were my thoughts. Olo was everywhere, nowhere, and anywhere, but he wasn't me...does that make sense?
The next memory was of waking up and seeing an unfamiliar poleepkwa face hovering just over mine. The nausea came again and slammed me; I rolled over--I was lying on the floor?--and vomited. When i was done I looked around--where was I and what am i doing here? I curled in in a corner and protected my head with my hands.
"Olo?" The poleepkwa spoke. The voice; I knew that voice--Viktor! The memory slapped me in the face and I remembered where I was and what the hell was going on. I grinned weakly and wiped vomit from my mandibles. "Hey Viktor."
And here I am now. I'll write more when I can figure out what happened.

2009-10-09T13:11:00.000-07:00

I'm eating for the first time in two days. I'm surprised how easy it is to forget such a vital need...I wasn't even aware that I was hungry until now. Strange.Anyway, on to the original purpose of this post...my personal experiences have no relevance right now...this is utilitarian hedonism, not egoist hedonism.
Is it right to be happy when others aren't? Out there, poleepkwa are dying of thirst, hunger, overwork, or at the hands of MNU; here I am, in a comfortable place. I have shelter, food, water...but why me? Why should an acidhead poleepkwa melting their brain with drugs get this, and the people who deserve it much more are left in the chaos of District 10 without anything? I'd trade places with anyone there right now, because they deserve it more then I do...but does that make me ungrateful? I really appreciate what I've gotten in life, I just think that others should have it instead of me; but is that right? I don't know.

2009-10-09T11:49:00.000-07:00

This trip was, in a nutshell, different. From the very beginning I could tell. With acid, the changes in perception had been gradual; my mind had seemed to expand with the passing moments. With ketamine, I became disoriented and numb rather quickly. Soon I not only couldn't move my limbs, but I couldn't feel them. Sleep seemed like a great idea as the floor swayed and walking became too difficult and risky. I curled up on the floor and closed my eyes.
The next thing I became aware of--after hours had seemed to pass--was that I was no longer in my body. No, I was completely sundered from myself; I couldn't feel or control my body at all, but simply floated on the gentle updrafts of air, simply watching my corpse. Eventually I got tired of the sight and turned my attention to my present environment. Wherever I was now was not where I had been before: the room with its sparse furniture had been replaced by a vast blank expanse, populated by a thick white fog, my consciousness, and my body--which quickly vanished from view once I stopped paying attention to it. Occasionally bright flashes of light would appear, followed closely by a low-pitched humming almost like thunder. Other then that, it was quiet and blank. Nothing happened. Once again, I have no clue how long this experience lasted. Time had no relevance...eons or milliseconds could have been ticking by and it would be impossible to tell the difference. Honestly, it was turning out to be a bum trip. I wasn't seeing anything, wasn't feeling anything, wasn't learning anything--I might as well have been sober. At least then I could have moved and interacted with tangible objects.
Eventually the fog solidified into what looked like the world I had left behind some indeterminate time ago. Color and sound returned, but touch, smell, and taste didn't. It was all so uninvolved, like watching a movie; you watch and listen but can't do anything to change what's going on. There's a human term for this, I believe: ghost.
Just as I said that--or thought it, I really couldn't tell--a figure slowly materialized, appearing each layer at a time: organs, flesh, plating, features. He was bigger then I expected, still a bit stiff from rigor mortis it seemed, but it was
"George?" This time I knew I had spoken aloud, but in what language I could not fathom. "What are you doing here?"
He shrugged, and the gesture was so familiar that I wanted to cry and embrace him. I willed my--what? spirit? shadow? mind?--forward and we almost hugged...we were both incorporeal and could not touch. Instead, we faded into each other, passing through one another's intangible bodies and briefly overlapping. After a time we drew apart.
"So, how are things going?" George scratched at his neck, where the breathing-plates were permanently splayed out, stuck gasping for oxygen that wasn't there when he died and probably wasn't wherever we both were now, either. "Anything new?"
Anything new? Where the fook would I begin? "There's crackdowns in D10. MNU has decided to stop outright killing us and start making us into willing slaves. It's like something out of 1984--" With a jolt I realise that talk like this was what drove him into the darkness in the first place. "I'm sorry. You don't want to hear this."
"Not really." George sardonically grinned. "Basically its all the same. MNU sucks, poleepkwa have no power, and its never going to change." His voice was candid and bitter, softening as he continued. "And you know what? The world keeps turning. Regardless of what's going on."
That was true, and ended the conversation with its infallibility. We sat on the floor--which still had no texture associated with it--and talked about things of no real importance, as if this was a normal day, just another day when we had nothing better to do then chat and joke around. It was bizarre, so normal and yet abnormal; George was dead...I couldn't be talking to him, but here he was, wherever here was, talking to me instead of being in an afterlife of some sort. I inquired about this.
"Hey George?"
"Yeah?"
"What was dying like?"
His mandibles twitched slightly. "It wasn't like anything. It just was. I was so sick of living in a world where everything was turning too fast...I guess I just wanted to be somewhere where none of that mattered." He waved a hand around, encompassing the entire place we found ourselves in now. "And here I am."
I did and didn't understand. George had wanted serenity and silence, and he'd certainly gotten that--was still getting it, even with me here--but it still seemed so cold. "Doesn't it get lonely here, by yourself all the time?"
George laughed and got to his feet, and this time he was not bitter or sarcastic. "Lonely? Olo, you can't be lonely here." Light flared beneath his shell, which became clear like glass and allowed the rippling patterns to show through unhindered. My friend was transformed from a dull black 'prawn' to a shining being of light. Behind him others shone, appearing behind him in flashes of light. That strange humming was back in the air...they were all connected, I felt, but could not understand. I shrunk back in amazement.
George put a hand on--through--my shoulder and an electric current tugged at me. His voice came from all around. "We all go here in the end, Olo. Every single one of us. We're all connected." His eyes narrowed slightly. "I think its time for you to wake up, Olo."
I could feel my body tugging at me, like my heart was a fish on a line that was being pulled in. Frantically I looked over at my body--it was stirring slightly. "No--wait--I don't get it! Where is this--"
Feeling returned in a rush and my eyes snapped open. I was back among the living and feeling nauseous--the walls were crawling, the ceiling flipped and sung to me. I wasn't back down to earth quite yet, but that place where I had been with George was firmly behind me.
Was it all a dream? I can't deny that I took the drug; it influenced my body and brain and--it would make sense--my mind as well, but I don't think it was a hallucination. Whatever I experienced was something more...something real. Somewhere beyond the stars, where time and space don't matter, I think George is waiting with the uncountable millions of our people.

New choices.

2009-10-08T18:57:00.000-07:00

I've developed a tolerance, it seems. I tried windowpaning LSD--that's worked for me and it seems so awfully poetic in nature--but it didn't work. I only got a mild effect; not even a Level 1 trip. I've heard about this. The mind adapts to the new input of information and accepts it as 'normal', the drug therefore becoming useless. The treatment is simple, thank god. All I have to do is not take acid for a week or so; when I restart my program the trips will be as intense as they were at first.
That's all well and good, but 7 days sober, locked in my limited point of view? Not going to happen. I feel this yawning need, not like a physical craving but a mental requirement...I must go back to that blissful state of environment. I've got to trip again, if not on LSD then on something else.
Ketamine. It's called "special K" and was synthesized for use as an anesthetic; that's most definitely not the case nowadays. Effects are said to include mental detatchment, relaxation, and above all hallucinations. That's what I'm looking for, and luckily I've actually got a supply--two doses thrust upon me one day by a raver who didn't know what to do with them. I'd never really thought about them until now. I'll try this--one dose will just about cover someone of my size and will do me good for a few more days. The learning sessions will continue at the school of the mind...I wonder if I'll wind up in a different place with a different drug. Good night. I'll write again when I come down.

2009-10-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

Who runs MNU? I don't mean the person, but the thoughts. I like to think that when this all began the intentions were good, that humanity stretched out a helping hand to Outlanders and didn't expect anything in return. But no, that's stupid...there's that saying, 'there's no such thing as a free lunch.' No such thing as free salvation, either. We had to pay for the resources we used--we began to work to pay off the debt we owed this species that had housed us. I'm reminded of how pimps buy fresh meat for their markets of prostitution...create a huge 'charge' that will never, ever be paid off. MNU has cut and cut at the resources we poleepkwa can get and increased the workload so very much; we should have paid off our debt long ago. But it's still there, bigger then ever...will it ever go away?

2009-10-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

MNU is flattening us, in more ways then one. The constant oppression bears down on our people and tries to squeeze out our hope and our spirit, like an orange under a rock. The life is covered, hidden from view--the only thing one can see is the blood. Some of us--against which no grudge should be held, there are always reasons and motives for everything--have succumbed and have had the depth driven from them. They become two-dimensional, paper cutouts, not people; their thoughts the length and breadth of MNU policy and fear--which can extend onwards to the stars but has been groomed and manicured by MNU education and discipline. Please, please listen: death is painful, that is true, and it is also marked by fear, but it is not the worst that can happen. Would you rather die in an instant of untold terror or live like an automation, guided by others wants and rules rather then your own desires?
The two-dimensional people scowl; they say, wide-eyed, 'I don't want to die. I want to live, however I can.' Is it living, what you now do? Is it really living? Others say no. The three-dimensional people, those who not only cast shadows on the ground but on themselves as well. Hope has not fled their hearts--they look to the sky with pride, not foreboding or shame. But the weight is piled on and the pressure increases as others give up around them, gifting their burdens onto these people until it seems they shoulder the world.
Don't give up, my friends. Two-dimensional your comrades may be, but even playing cards can be assembled into a structure with skilled hands and a steady gaze. Don't abandon all, and above all don't allow yourself to be squashed beneath the despair and desertion of District 10.

Done.

2009-10-07T19:19:00.000-07:00

The fire has died down and the flames no longer lick at my plating, boiling the flesh underneath without a care. My exoskeleton is now a brittle collection of segments, the tissue beneath it ash and sand, not the living stuff that was there just a short while ago. The job is done, the knowledge so much like electricity, like fire, like the hand of some god has left and Olo Lamna is left behind to pick up the diamonds scattered all over the floor and polish them. Later they will be either put on display or buried with the carcass out back...no matter, it's done. My job is done and I am used up.
Used-up, burned to a crisp, but something has been done here. I can only hope that it is good and will shed light on...on what it was that beckoned to me so very long ago and screamed to be accounted for and told. Three days...that's all it's been? Time has no meaning, not when you have a job to do and not when you are tired and ground to dust. I am so weary...the sleep sticks to me like molasses but is not sweet at all. It is as the greeks said so long ago, a little death to prepare all for the bigger, less temporary one to come. It will come sooner then later if the fight does not end.

Fear.

2009-10-07T19:04:00.000-07:00

Should one take each being singly and clarify its nature independently, making individual studies of, say man or lion, or ox and so on, or should one first posit the attributes common to all in respect of something common?
Something common. What is that? Poleepkwa and Humans are too different, too separate and too bound by an animosity almost 30 years in the making to ever be alike. From another star we came, in technology far beyond theirs and with bodies radically different then anything they had seen. Our languages, our skills, our society are all different; there is no common ground.
That's wrong. We're the same--we think, we love, we protect our own. We are willing to commit acts of unimaginable horror to protect what we love--we blow up biuldings, we slaughter our enemies without second thoughts and keep charging headfirst into the oblivion. Grief for the fallen and hope for those who will come next are instilled in both our hearts, our collective hearts that might as well beat at the same fucking time for how alike they are. Can't you see? Can't anyone see? We're the same, we're been fighting ourselves this entire time! The house is divided and might as well fucking crumble to dust now, because no one will ever believe me and listen! If humans were in the position of the poleepkwa things may have turned out alike the way they are now, the roles reversing and details changing to fit the situation. The proof isn't in the details, my friends, it's in the big picture, and right now that's all that should be seen.

2009-10-07T18:55:00.000-07:00

Perhaps Jake was right all along and this was a bad idea. The chemical compounds I’ve been pouring into my bloodstream week by day by hour just don’t leave when the effects wear off—they stay inside me like a heavy weight and push down on my brain. The pressure makes the thoughts glow white-hot but such pain comes with the thinking…I’d start on painkillers if I didn’t know that the agony isn’t real, at least to everyone else. There’s a difference in pains; the ones that are bared for everyone to see and the ones that are hidden deep inside you, lacerations left in the folds of your soul that fester and burn no matter what you do to ease them. Each slice is a byproduct of another realization, another epiphany that’s sent out through you to the world from somewhere else, a diamond that scrapes and scrapes at you. I wonder how the copper wire copes with the power from the generator…does it become egotistical? Maybe not, or else it would have been fired by now.
I must remember that this blog was not to be about me, but the thoughts that I find. It's getting harder and harder to tell what I think from what I am...fuck you Socrates. These diamonds are fine, but the coal that they come from is me--little pieces of me that are squashed and recrystallised into something not-me, something better. It's worth it, that's all, it's worth gving up oneself for the greater good, right? Of course it is. People will learn something from this account, be it good or bad.
But surely no one will read this torrent of opinion? No matter. I can’t let it fade away: I must not let the embers die, because the flame will never again be rekindled. All I can do is keep conducting, be copper and remain humble so that the force that sent these burning thoughts to me doesn't decide to fix its firey gaze on me. If that ever happens, the bottom will drop out of the world and I'll vanish from view, that I know. I must keep writing.

Dream

2009-10-07T17:51:00.000-07:00

It is nighttime, and I dream of dancers.
Not the kind of dancers I usually see, not rave dancers. These people are not clad in neon clothing torn to bare midriffs and thighs, nor are they dancing in abandon, madly gyrating and jumping to the beat of the music. No, these people are calm, collected. Their attire lacks the color of raves and is instead largely black and white; occasionally a splotch of color—a rose pinned to a lapel, a brilliant necklace or ornament—will show as the dancers go about their movements. The atmosphere is odd. There’s a feeling of great joy, but no animal desires beneath it. There isn’t an undertone of sex or lust or violence at this dance; no, the people—with a jolt, I see that the dancers are both human and poleepkwa alike—are here to have fun and nothing more. It’s so clean, so innocent…I’ve never seen anything like this. I smile as I see Sherry, her wounds healed and unscarred, awkwardly stepping through a waltz with Ryan, who grins. Nearby Viktor waves to me, standing next to Jake and Christian—everyone is here, and they look like they’ve been here for a while. I wonder where I was so that I missed the invitation.
A voice is at my ear.
“You know, you won’t get a dance partner looking like that.”
Startled, I look to the source of the voice and look at myself. I am wearing what looks like a tuxedo jacket… where I got it is anyone’s guess. A cockeyed smile is on my face as I stare at myself. “What’s the matter? Afraid of your own shadow?” I don’t know who’s talking or where I am—if I’m here and there, where am I? In both places or neither of them? As if to be sure that I am there I look down at my body; unlike my doppelganger, I am clad in ratty raver pants and am streaked with what smells and looks like ash. The attire is so out of place that I feel as if I should sink into the ground so as to not disturb the dance. Everyone is so happy and peaceful here…why would anyone want to interrupt this, for any reason? I’m quite beside myself.
“It’s okay,” I hear myself say. “Just go home and change, that’s all. It won’t take long.” With that, I’m guiding myself out of the door and down a small dirt road. I turn as if to leave myself behind; quickly I grab onto my arm. “Wait—where am I going?”
The reply is immediate. “Home. You need to change, Olo.”
With a jolt I wake up.

Memory.

2009-10-07T14:53:00.000-07:00

The one thing that really gets me about acid is the total lack of unpredictably. Not only when you're actually taking it, but after, when you pick up the pieces of your mind and rush for the door, only to find that there is no door and there's no escape; there's no going back to the way you were before. The memory of what I saw--is it seeing, per se? It was all in my head, in my thoughts, my brain was interpreting the electrical signals sent up my optic nerves differently, that's all...was I thinking of seeing or actually seeing? I couldn't have actually seen the things I think I saw; they weren't real...they couldn't have been real and they can't still be here, so close I can touch them, like smoke, like gossamer, like a whisper at your ears or a breeze at your antennae, just out of reach but oh so beautiful. It's just my mind, that's all. That's all it will ever be; just in my mind.
But, by thinking of them, do I make them real to me? I can taste these thoughts, hear them, touch them, smell and see them--that's what most people consider real anyway. My 'thoughts' are closer to me then a war half a world away that I am obliged to fight in because of my species, but they aren't real, the death and pain and suffering that I wish wasn't real is. Who decided that, and why--it isn't fair; why can't we all live in peace? Who decided to exile us from Eden and end the glastnost? Who brought the ship here two decades ago and who made the company that bought us little by little when they should have helped us?
Who made it all happen?

Required first post.

2009-10-07T14:04:00.000-07:00

For me to begin anything I have to have two things: anything and a beginning. So, this is the beginning. From now on my thoughts are easily converted to text format and put out on the electric egregore that is the World Wide Web. It's comforting and frightening...it's out there for anyone to see...the musings and crackbrained commentary of an acidhead poleepkwa.
For those who may not know me (which consist of about 7.2 billion sentient beings, plus the few million bacteria on your keyboard right now--made you flinch) I'm called Olo Lamna. Don't ask me what Olo means, because I have no clue; Lamna is latin for shell, which is pretty damn accurate considering I'm a space cricket. Suck on that, MNU.
Oh dear...I seem to have run out of interesting things to say. Perhaps this was not a good idea. I'm not like Sherry or Bradley or Akra Weaver--I don't struggle for life every day in D-10 or help to burn down MNU buildings or liberate the enslaved. People like that should tell the world about what they do and why they do it, because its people like that who change things and make the world a better place for everyone, human and poleepkwa alike, in ways that maybe aren't as obvious at first but still vitally important...I'm just a regular person; what do I have to say that's worth listening to?
Nothing worth noting. Nothing that will aid you in a firefight or inform you of D-10 occurances or even entertain you very much, I think. I'm probably like the unfathomable numbers of minds out there who play the harlot to their great god, the Internet; the people who post everyday thoughts and actions and words so that, in some bizarre, borderline way, they can live forever. When I wake up tomorrow morning and think that this was a stupid idea and delete this blog, the words and the thoughts behind them will still be there, somewhere, and they'll never leave. Nothing can be nothing unless it was nothing to begin with...
So I don't have anything important to speak of. That's true--that's more then true, that's a given. But, I do have myself to offer. My brain, my thoughts, they're all yours. No returns.