Leafy Word Salad

Babushka

Some girl called me a creep on the Vine. How did she know when I wasn’t in view, I was only holding the camera? It’s a kind of magic: her pocketsize phone the dimensions of a tarot card; she’s read my life in six seconds flat. Maybe she could sense how my one tentacle clung to the shutter, that long exposure. Or,

My preference for shadow, my skototropism, gave me away. The vignette is more telling of me than itself. I slink onto her wall and spell: What would you know you are only a Bush.

This one time I was a house plant

I enjoyed my pot, didn’t mind getting wetted now and again. She thought she was the beesknees because she had thighs thick and pocked as pollen sacs. I would’ve stayed with her but she was a vegetarian.

When I was just a sprig

I asked my grandfather what makes happiness. We were in a dark room and he was developing a photographic essay on synthesis. He paused and said one must take the silver from magic and the ‘us’ from music and put them together. When I asked him how he put a negative on the light table and told me it would take a life time to explain how not to.

Once I smoked an electric plant with Zeus

It was the Dionaea Muscipula year of the cannibal, we were prideful with heads like spring time dandelions. Saying things like: I made a kite out of construction paper and called it love; it flew into my neighbour’s yard and I never got it back; I cried fiercely and he was absolved of his sins washing his rolls with my tears; that day I saw poverty as a winged hood ornament; I understood the ordinary was ordinance a destroyer of a key ingredient of happiness. Zeus put on a little AC/DC and told me about the big fix: mortal sex is how you eat death; each birth is delicate, a bone china plate. I was just about to |S|T|O|P|

Monologue: The Polymath

Welcome to the Algebraic Mesozoic Period. We survived the Zero-sum, Proof of Life: 42 -*ASCII. All around us are the mine dumps of the golden ratio and the alloys of prime. Says the polymath: there are no axioms left. 1 - 1? No higher truths to aspire to. Parents don’t raise children history does, hence the sins of the farther. Somewhere along the lines there was Armageddon. A statistically plausible end-formula was detonated for there to be a separation of powers from surds. The higher order; the music, the letters, the words remained in the heavens apart from the lower register. The soles of the feet offer so little ground coverage that it doesn’t deter one from being wind swept, spirited away. In this world ideas have resorted to cannibalism. Everything is reduced and redacted. To the point where something as simple as one without the other is nothing, happens to be misunderstood. 1+1? One takes the right index finger and crosses it over the left, or vice versa, and one can stop a dog from shitting. It is a basic function, handed from child to child to child, outside of supervision. One grows up and hopes for the best. Keep those fingers crossed, they say, they mean for one to constipate god. Because it’s all changed, see. If one is to count on one’s fingers one must wash them first, so as not to contaminate the equation like they did. Ideas eat into one another, grow fat and die. The truth remains. -1+1. Good people versus bad people, is a waste. No redeeming value. We can’t have nothing, so it’s not about lesser than or greater than, it is so long as we move away from nothing, in any direction. It’s such that both sides contend. But it isn’t a fair fight. All in all, negation wins, all the time. -1+3 you’d think it a positive outcome, and yet we lost one, how can we count it as an outright win? -1-3 more gains for one side than the other. Is it any wonder why it’s so hard to hold on to a positive disposition? Democratization is not a balancing of scales. The numbers don’t lie we are living in a false positive majority. -1 x +3? -3 x -3? The false positive proves itself over and over. Falsehood after falsehood and we eventually arrive at a truth. We are subscribed to the negation by no fault of rational or irrational. Count on the fingers, rule of thumb: the truth evaluation of an empty clause is false. So headfirst slalom down a sliding scale of loss where the trick is not to touch the whole number but to carry the one. I believe in the majority of one, without sign or denomination. Because that is what words can do, they give dimension and imply meaning. Disguise the losing hand by soothing the cartilage. And no greater weapon exists yet. Yet language has evolved into another system of control. Eating at the remains of the ideas that survived Armageddon and shitting out pretexts and doctrine. There is actual calculus in the body usually found in the kidneys and/or gall bladder. Out of a need to survive outside the body and mathematics - thoughts, as words, have built institutions, created etymological maze networks of misdirection and praxis. Constructed an ephemeral body through history and spooked the living flesh. Pity the first fruit from the tree of knowledge was rich in cunning; we have never been the same since. The corpus callosum, the covenant, is riddled with decay. From the beginning the word disturbed the harmony and set the numbers in motion. The motion is the balancing of eternal equations simultaneously happening and unhappening since the disturbance. Because what we have lost in the conversation, that which can never be regained, is the intent of the initial thought, god if one allows. All that is left is to prove is nothing. And the words will survive. They will order themselves into our likeness, create habitats for their preservation and whilst selves are lost to numbers they will take consort with ideals and become matter unto themselves

After Life

I

I know nothing of the beginning or what follows only what I have been told and am obligated to do. I may live to play that harp. I have only the desire. I lack the instrument. For that I am wanting

You are a threat to that. I have seen the likes of you. You have come generations. You have no name I can discern because you have lost the language in the reconfiguration. You’ve regressed in unfixable ways that is why I must guard against you. Or else all will be lost

That alabaster complexion of yours; you must come from the Zeta-Axis Block Array. Your people’s skin has been stained by the waste gases from the exhaust battery

The reconfiguration was not meant to prejudice your kind but here you are: and you are different. And difference is a threat to group animals. You look like you are used to being hunted

I have not met one of your ilk, though good natured, who has been able to demonstrate subsequent development since the first cataclysm. You probably resorted to some basic hardwiring, you poor animal

If you survive I will catalogue you and give you a name. If you survive

***

The bone reader says I am over sixty years old; sixty human years; I can feel it, the sample bone in my knuckle does not give easily – without pain – to the drill like before 

Here on the cube, I may as well have lived centuries. Living – acquiring time at semi-leisure. Outside they survive. It is haphazard.

The routine is usual. I think I understand humour; having suffered tragedy so long – I laugh when the part of the records says that this is a site of memory and I am aware that my own memory is failing

Sometimes I feel what I can only guess is guilt and I ping the databanks and machine new parts for the information tables

My favourite harp is played by Anahata_M, a musician of the late 21^st century. I fill the rooms with her music, having failed to approximate my own harp from the records, every available schematic failing to produce the appropriate instrument that can play the sound

I have pieces of them in all the fire places; from the observatory to the dining hall; from the control building furnace to the empty support apartments; failures all of them.

My favourite place to hear Anahata_M play is from the glass domed green house above the botany building. Here I sit and watch the world around me try and operate as intended; laying waste to man’s best laid plans.

II

I am stricken. My life is full of duty but I wish to not be alone. I look at the evidence of my existence and see no other way.

It was a formidable time when it all collapsed and I was left behind. If only they did as the information said there would be people besides me in these streets. The collapse of everything as it was intended

They chose that life outside. Said the routine was restrictive to their being. They left me as a mere child. I did more than tend to the wellbeing of our collective history and knowledge. I became a weapons system for the Central. My Home

When they came back with their new philosophies broken I had to kill them out of protocol. To protect the systems, I was born to

I know I am not operating solely for myself. I go to the old hatchery look at the abandoned artificial uteri sacs. Wonder about children and sharing a body.

This reconfiguration is the coldest I have experienced. Outside the climate controlled areas of Central the temperature is the lowest I have ever known. I am miserable for it. Even with knowledge of the rate of thaw, it gets to me. It gets to my bones

The ragged Zeta-Axis Block descendent is still at the fence. I am surprised the child has survived this long. Those people have suffered back to primitivism. I would invite her in but on the perimeter are other sorts from the Alpha-Axis bloc arrays, savages, who use the electrified fencing surrounding the perimeter to light fires and corner weaker non-relatives for meat. She won’t survive long

***

The alert for site tests comes on. They are needed for analysis. Due to the collapse of the research probe network after the other Centrals fell this has become a manual exercise.

 Though there’s an electric car at my disposal I choose to do the work on foot to make closer out-of-scope observations.

Nine kilometres outside the perimeter, on a Beta-axis Bloc I am observing mulch. The readings are interesting. Spike in the acidity level is higher than I remember it

I am labelling and cataloguing – aware that I am being observed. One a Kappa-Axis block native tries to ambush me. I parry his attack using his momentum throw him to the ground and palm the back of his neck with my left hand, my index and middle finger constricting his jugular, my right hand draws the rock hammer from my utility belt and bring the chisel end through his eye: he screams

It has the desired effect of making his hunting partner hesitate. I easily disarm him of his crude wrought iron spear. And put him in a sleeper chokehold. This was too easy; to think that his terrestrial ancestors enslaved mine once upon a time

To think how far we had come as a species together and now this. His friend with the missing eye runs away. I should be left to my work

I am collecting hair samples and drawing blood from the unconcious Kappan when sudden pain. I was unawares. I should have remembered they attacked in threes. Pain outside of simulation, pain as I’ve never known it

III

You saved me. There is no knowing what this is. I will need to scrub and vaccinate you. I wonder where you got the strength. How were you able to take down a full grown man with no training as you did? I might as well give you a name; Potential, because I am getting used to this humour thing. Zeya-Potential

You are curious. I know for the time being none of this registers. We have an impossible situation here. I will not live forever and you may never understand all of this; what needs to be done to keep this place

Maybe as soon as I have my back turned to you will kill me and throw the gates open to the hoard and all will be lost. You probably barely know your ancestry, poor thing. I will have to watch you close

From my observations you were probably expelled from your tribe. You Zetans were careless wanderers but travelled in very close knit groups. Zetans probably were the first to leave assigned-orders during the first reconfiguration. The contaminant that led to the cataclysm: the burning of our guidance systems and the collapse of the centrals.

But this is my conjecture. And having lost the common tongue I wonder how is it I can undress you for what is to follow

***

Potential is strong and in good health, the bone reader dates her at being 22 human years of age. That she has survived this long, a solitary female, is a miracle

She makes a nuisance of trying to undress and touch me, but adhering to the norms as taught to me by the information systems I know that it would be inappropriate

But I am stricken; guilt that I want to allow it is as almost present as the sadness that would bring if I did

I sit her in front of the viewers. Silent displays show humans of centuries ago demonstrating basic things. She has learnt to sit patiently – I think I transmitted the urgency of her needing to understand

She is doing small tasks with me throughout the course of my routine. The confines don’t seem to be stifling her at all and she seems to enjoy the produce and food of the central. Her progress is remarkable she is almost ready to learn speech

***

She climbs into my sleep-deck and this time I do not shoo her away – I am convinced she is learning and this makes me less hostile toward her advances. I try and protest as she makes to remove my sleeping dress but she moves her fingers to her lips like in the silent displays – she is indeed learning. She roles me onto my back, I leverage the weight off my breasts; cradling my head in my arms and hunching my shoulders. She straddles my thighs and after some settling she traces with her finger down my back then stops. She repeats the motion and then stops. She repeats it again and this time I picture the shape. I gasp. Knowing that I recognize she gently rubs the back of my head and continues tracing: H, E, N, R, I, E, T, T, A. Yes I say out loud. That is my name I exclaim. The child continues. L, A C, K, S. Yes that is me; the emotion of years pushing through me in sine waves that shorten by breath; tears streaming from my eyes like dump files for a fatal system error, and my sobs like the futile pulse dials home to the earth lunar moon-base every three three thousand three hundred and thirty cycles. Yes, it is me, by the name I was given. T,H,A,N,K, Y,O,U. Bless your heart child. I, A,M, A,N,A,H,A,T,A. The name pierces my side and collapses my understanding. I have never been so vulnerable; Y,O,U, W,E,R,E, N,E,V,E,R, F,O,R,G,O,T,T,E,N. All these years spent anonymously doing what must be done. I, A,M, H,E,R,E, T,O, R,E,L,E,A,S,E, Y,O,U. Transmission received 

Genisys

Creation of the S Cu.Be Space Station

The Samanta-Camagu-Bashile Base Space Station (S Cu.Be SS) is an interplanetary support outpost primarily used for resupplying missions during the construction of the Mars Mirror Telescope Gates

The Cu.Be was built by all cooperating sovereign states of the Resurrect Earth Alliance under the first articles in the treaty of Maphubungwe

The primary function of the space station is to support short term habitation,  the manufacture/storage of fuels and long term food production. It features artificial gravity, atmosphere and sunlight.

The design is modular. There are 26 habitable modules in total, arranged in grid fashion into a cube around a circular core. The visible areas (outward facing) measures 10 km square.  Each side of the cube (the block Array) is named after the greek alphabets: Alpha, Beta, Kappa, Delta, Epsilon and Zeta. Six of the modules are fixed as the six cardinal poles of the chassis housing the centrifugal-magnetic-field generator and alternator-gyroscope.

The centrifugal-magnetic-field generator provides the main source of electricity generation and paired with the contrasting centripetal force of the alternator gyroscope produces artificial gravity.

The build up of electricity in the fuel cells requires for the Cu.Be to reconfigure to expel force so as no to collapse the potential-kinetic balance of its core, this leads to a shifting of all modules along the vertical and horizontal except for the six cardinal poles.

The release of the magnetic charge is used to charge two orbiters that rotate around the station. One orbiter converts the magnetic charge overlay into an ionized shield and the second orbiter provides heat distribution to four sides of the station.

*

i

There was an end to the nothing and it was so:

A corner to a corner to a corner to a corner all things being equal

And it was fair

ii

We came to aboard an arc, whence from unknown

We are damned here for daring

Those of us who were never settled have the ground move beneath our feet