Haven (Installment 3)

Over time her nerves quieted and her bright scientific interest dimmed to comfortable familiarity. At times I would look at her and get a glimpse of regret. She would fold her arms over her chest and look as if she was receding into herself and some of that old pain would come back.

I eventually stopped asking about her origins and figured she was Havinian now. The longer she stayed the less she would say about her past. And then she started calling Haven home.

She hummed our songs, she knew our stories, she cooked our food. About the time I stopped noticing her looking to the horizon from whence she came, I stopped seeing the pain in her eyes. It was replaced by relief so strong I thought there must be liquid light in her, overflowing so that it filled me, too.

We lived this way for many years. Jane rose through the ranks in her company until she became the head of Water Distribution. It was her inner ambition asserting itself - in every other area she was content with things just as they were. It was the start of another winter, already showing the signs of being long and frigid, when I found out just how far her desire for stability went.

Despite the cold I didn't want to stay inside. Jane and I walked aimlessly through streets packed with people trying to get every moment of time they could before the winter season truly began. I smiled as I took Jane's hand, for I loved her.

We walked until the ocean blocked us and then we sat on a bench, huddled together for warmth. The sun broke through the clouds and cast its brilliant rays on the world. I squinted at it; and then a shadow blocked my eyes. As the final pale sunbeams were extinguished by dirty yellow clouds, the silhouette turned into a man. Though he was probably over 30 years old, he had the face of a boy - all brightness and expectation and shiny, grinning teeth. He shouted, "Jane!" and I somehow knew he was here to change the world.

Jane was shaking her head. She was gaping in disbelief, but under it I could see fear. She looked as if she wished the man would go away. He said exuberantly, "I'm here to rescue you!"

Finally Jane choked out, "James. You look exactly the same."

"Oh, it hasn't been so long," James said.

Jane scoffed, "Only a decade."

This made James confused. I could see his excited energy dissipating and he said, "It's only been a couple months." Then he started up again, nearly yelling, "Jane, you're a genius. Even looking at the equations it took me two months to figure out what you did. When we get back you'll be up for a Nobel Prize. I just can't understand why you couldn't get back. It shouldn't be any harder than getting here."

"I don't want to go back," Jane said firmly.
It took a moment to sink in and then James stood perfectly still. "You don't?"

"James," she whispered, "Leave this place. Leave me. This is not a place for you. Go back to your dimension, tell them my experiment was a failure and it killed me. Tell them not to try it again."

"But... I'm saving you," he said.

And Jane said, "Let me show you something."

We took James everywhere I had taken Jane that first day, just watching life going on around us. Jane explained many things in terms I didn't understand and James grew quieter and quieter. Though I didn't know what she meant by war, crime, countries, genocide, famine, or a long list of other words, I could tell she was naming differences between our home and her old one. And I knew for certain now that she came from a place I couldn't imagine.

That night we found James a room. And in the morning we woke up to his frantic knocking.

Haven (Installment 2)

For another instant the forces of instinctual caution and intellectual curiosity battled each other, and then I began to move towards her, and it occurred to me for the first time to wonder where she could have come from if not here. Everything outside of Haven was barren desert, inhospitable. No one could live there.

Now I walked more boldly, for the more I looked at her the less threatening she seemed. Up close she was so ordinary, the person herself was completely at odds with the mystery attached to her. Still though, her eyes spoke of some wound I could not see. I half expected she would turn around and there would be a horrible bloody gash in her back. Then, realizing I had been standing five feet away and gaping for near a minute, I impulsively raised my hands in the same manner as her. This seemed to please her, for she smiled and dropped her arms to her sides. The smile made the hurt in her dark eyes even more disturbing and I heard myself ask, "Are you okay?"

She looked surprised and replied, "Yes. Of course, why wouldn't I be?"

As I checked her for injury I noticed an object attached to her hip. It recalled the rifles hunters used to shoot game, but it was smaller and fatter. The design of it, the sleekness and the minimalism, made me feel it had a completely different purpose.

"My name is Jane," she said, still smiling; and, with a pause and a giggle, she added, "And I come in peace." It was the giggle that did it. It made me feel she was an innocent and that the injury I'd perceived was a horrible tragedy, for her soul was clearly shattered, and no matter about the odd rifle, she needed protecting, and would she like to come to my town?

"I'm December," I said, and together we walked, out feet pushing down the grass and the sky darkening in preparation for night. Though she was short and I was tall, though I knew where we were going and she did not, the whole time I could not help but feel that I was following her. Over the years I would know Jane this would be a constant, for she always seemed to know something no one else in the room knew, and she always seemed the natural leader because of it.

It was strange how as we walked our conversation turned away from her and to the details of my life. Later I thought that it must have been some architecture of hers, for I had a million questions and asked none of them, while her nodding and pensive expression told me she was gleaning information from every word out of my mouth.

My town was built around the River Tam which all the barges used to get goods from the fishing and farming Villages to the City. As we walked past the first houses outlying the town I said, "The City is built of steel and our houses are built of adobe, but we know that we depend on each other and really everyone's the same everywhere." I thought this was the best thing I could tell her for her to understand Haven. I think that even then I had an instinctual knowing, for I would find out later that trust and understanding were two things her world lacked most. After this she was quiet and just gazed in her analytical way at the open doors and children playing freely while their parents talked around the community fire pit.

Something I've always loved about my village was the way we painted our window frames bright colors. the buildings were all flat, dusty, tan, but the planks framing the windows were green on one house, red and yellow on the next, and cyan blue on a third. We lived in a world either pale or silver-gray or goldenrod, but always punctuated with our bright paints, bright fires, bright spirits.

At the edge of the village were houses with vegetable gardens and swing sets. Here were slow, lazy days and people who valued family above all else. As we moved toward the center of town the streets became wider and busier. They were filled with bustling people who wanted a steady income and a drink with some friends. The busier the streets got the more nervous Jane got. I noticed that she kept her hand nearer her weapon. When we reached the river the air was filled with shouting and our movements were hindered by a hundred other bodies. I saw it as beautifully functional, a center of productivity. Jane saw everything as a threat.

That first day Jane stayed at my house, an apartment near the river and my job as a porter, with the window frames painted green. In the coming weeks I would help her find work and an apartment of her own while she dodged questions about herself and my curiosities went unsatisfied.

Reality TV

We're young and callous and nothing means that much to us
So entertain me with pretty colors that wash my brain clean.
Keep me feeling nothing with a current of neon green juice
through my eyes and my ears to my mind.

And I know now why I like crows.
They're intelligent and amoral
and they like shiny things.
They're like me.

We're old and jaded and comfortable with complacency.
So entertain me with pretty colors that wash my brain clean.
Keep me feeling nothing with a current of neon green juice
through my eyes and my ears to my mind.

The earth will crumble
And all of our childhood homes will age with us
And contract our diseases.
But the neon lights wash my brain clean
So I won't care about anything
And it will be alright with me.

August 23

Every day is made of moments
Somehow they all pass unnoticed
Until that single hour
I hope to keep forever.

For weeks I saw it coming
Anticipation boiling over
And then it was gone
I watched it go.
And I kind of hate the way
It gets farther every day.
One day soon I won't even have the memories
And I'll be a different me
Then gone will be the best day of my life.

Aurora IMs Ananke and Darren feels bitter (Part of a novel).

NOTE: This is a little piece of a novel I started a while ago. it's near the end but it's my favorite piece of writing from it. I added some details and changed some sentences so it would be at least sort of understandable.

Hate was on Aurora’s face for maybe the first time ever as she stared fixedly at the screen. She understood that they thought they were doing the right thing – she always understood - but her emotion over her lost childhood was too strong. She hated Them anyway.

“One of our many problems was finding children to experiment on.” Each new piece of text that popped into the little orange box had Aurora leaning closer. This was her first-ever contact with Them, really. Maybe after this she would understand her one-time captors better and be able to See them.

“Why not just take DNA from the researchers to make kids for the experiments?” she replied.

“No one wants it to be their kids, you see.”

“That’s so wrong.”

“Well, we did try it at first, but people couldn’t think of their own children as expendable enough. Needless to say it went badly. You were one of the ones we wanted from the beginning, but we couldn’t see how to take you. You were so loved. Didn’t get you as early as we’d like. By age eight there’s a lot of risk of Memory retention. We were scouting at your house when you crashed the car, and we saw how easy it would be to make your parents think you died in the crash.”

“What about Darren? Couldn’t you have left him?” Tears of pure, unadulterated sadness poured down her face but it didn’t show in her smooth IM voice; it was a quiet, private sadness. She cried to herself, glad for the distance and the darkness around her.

“Honestly he showed no particular promise, but we were so desperate for subjects, and it was just too easy.”

“You bastards.”

“Yes, I know.”

The screen stayed like that for a moment, two moments. Aurora was not out of questions, but she was all out of caring. The place mark blinked silently at her.

Another message popped up on the screen. “Don’t you think Armistead would be saying it was destiny right now? He would say, ‘what are the chances of you crashing at the exact moment that we were scouting there?’”

“Yes, that’s what he would say.”

“We both know how wrong he is.”

“I thought you bigwigs wanted me to believe in destiny.”

“The other bigwig does. Not because he believes in it, but because it's such an easy tool for manipulation. But I think you should have it right.”

“Thanks, I guess. Which one are you?”

“I think I’ll let you guess for now. You should know, though, that Armistead does believe in Destiny. He believes everything he tells you.”

“I’m sure you saw to that.”

“Yes.”

Aurora flicked closed her stolen laptop and leaned back on her cot. Now that she’d been captured by the traitor Nova and sold to the “law enforcement” agency called Blaik, They were being much more communicative.

The experiments had always referred to their nameless, faceless tormentors as They. Now that they had escaped and grown to understand their former life, they knew that They were a semi-secret group of genetics researchers called Ananke. Aurora had looked it up. Although there was no list of an Ananke Inc. online, she’d found out that Ananke was the goddess of fate and necessity.

Fate. The ‘fate’ that neither of the Ananke leaders believed in?

And that brought her back to Armistead. A good guy on the wrong side. He’d been sent by Them to pretend to be her friend, to monitor, to direct, and, most of all, to tell her all about her destiny.

She was sure that last part wasn’t in his orders – it was just who he was. Ananke knew that. They understood almost as much as Aurora did.

She closed her eyes, but her brain was too alive with these thoughts to shut off for the night. Big gig tomorrow. Terrorist group. Should be easy. It was always easy, for no normal human could match her strength, speed, or endurance. Of course, she also had her other power. Armistead had said that she’d started out abnormally perceptive, which was why They’d wanted her, and that They’d intensified it to the point of telepathy. More than telepathy; she could sense things that had happened before, that were happening now, that would happen in the future, all because she understood people. She could take every single variable from the people and the environment and extrapolate the things she could not see.

She rolled onto her side and pushed her mess of brown hair above her head so she could see the people she would be fighting with tomorrow. None of them wanted to be here, not really. They had all turned off their consciences to make it easier to do the things they were forced to do, but Aurora refused to do that. If she had to do something, she would do it, but she would not make herself numb to it.

So, though it would be easy for her tomorrow, it would be excruciatingly hard.

Before she fell asleep she tried to think about Darren, but there wasn’t much to think about. She knew of her childhood friend’s existence now, but she didn’t remember him. Ananke had wiped her memory clean of anything before her life as an experiment, but she’d heard that Darren Remembered, somehow. She fell asleep wishing she could picture his face, but could only succeed in stirring up that half-remembered love she’d felt for him before they’d both been captured.

Darren hadn’t closed his eyes since he’d found out that Blaik knew about the BDH. Big Damn Heroes was the nickname for the nameless group he was newly a part of, the group dedicated to stopping Ananke.

What was it now, three days? Three and a half. That was how long the entire 20 BDHs had been on red alert. A few had slept. Not many. They didn’t know when the battle would start.

Invariably when he knew he should be sleeping but couldn’t he thought about Mariko. Where was she now? Safe? Dead? The BDH had been scouting for all the escaped experiments but had not found her yet. Sometimes he could not stop himself from thinking, She’s the really important one. He knew it wasn’t right, but it would pop into his head before he could push it back down every now and then.

He’d heard Mariko’s name was Aurora now. All the experiments had named each other because they hadn't known they’d ever had another name, but Darren remembered and had always gone by Darren. And he still thought of Aurora as Miko, his childish pronunciation of her former name. It was so hard for him to let go when he knew all he’d lost. It made him so angry.

He let the anger run like a sickly warm stream through him, less intense but more horrible after so many years, let it prepare him for the battle ahead, and never fell asleep.

Not good enough to be a poem but maybe good enough to be lyrics.

Making patterns with my words
Look cool, don't mean a thing (anything).
I don't know anything anymore, got nothing real good to say.
I got earphones in and TV on to blur my thoughts don't wanna think
Don't wanna know, don't wanna be.
Turn off my brain turn off my
Turn off whatever makes me say
“I'm not alright, it's not okay, it's not gonna be okay”.

Lets all just be what we are; how hard is that?
My face and hair and clothes are a mess but it's alright
I jut say it's an expression of the mess inside my head.
Realized I haven't dusted my room since I moved in last year.
I have to confess the mess in my life is a reflection of the mess inside my head.
And way too late I realized I'm exactly the one thing I really hate.

Wishing I could be stupid
Not think so much not think too much (way too much).
Wish I could believe myself when I say
“I'm only 15, I don't have to understand everything”
And because there was nowhere I wanted to be
Thought I'd turn off my brain turn off my
I thought I'd go to bed early
And wake up in the morning to something different (hopefully).

How 'bout we all just be what we are; how hard could that be?

First I halfheartedly put some neon blue words on a page
About the depression of the rich suburban teen, about me.
Probably to be recycled in the morning.
So all it does is prove I'm exactly the one thing I really hate.

Lets all just be what we are; how hard is that?
My face and hair and clothes are a mess but it's alright
I jut say it's an expression of the mess inside my head.
Realized something new today.
But it doesn't give me anything to say.
I have to confess the mess in my life is a reflection of the mess inside my head.
And far too late I realized I'm exactly the one thing I really hate.

Letter to my Dear Love

The war is done,
And I think we kinda won.
But then again, how can you tell?
Look around My Dear,
There’s still no comfort here.
In the end, nothing has changed.

Caroline

Faith

All the people after the war
They all wait for
Imagined fate.
They rot and wait.

Could we expect anything more?
Could find a way
But we decay.

There is no Man, no God at hand.
No higher plan.
Sky is empty.
Just you and me.