nanowrimo 5 – from sea to shining sea

sumberkins and i both went away to new york city for film school after high school graduation. movies have always been very exciting to us, as has storytelling in general. we both believe that stories are a powerful tool, and just as with any tool they can be used for good or for evil. our culture generates a huge cloud of stories around it at all times, and sometimes these stories give us the hope and insight that we need in order to prevail against our fears, and sometimes they feed those fears, and convince us to toe the line. that’s a big topic, though. at the time, we just knew that we wanted to make movies, but we weren’t really sure yet what we wanted to make movies about. we went to film school to learn, but the first big thing that we learned was that film school doesn’t teach you how to figure out what to say. it is mostly about technical skills, and a networking opportunity.

sumberkins had a great time in the first week of school, when there weren’t any classes yet, and she really liked her roommates. once classes started, she found that she didn’t really want to spend all of her time with other film students, most of whom were stereotypically pretentious, and talked about things that sumberkins found rather boring. she hung out with her roommates instead, and as a result, by the end of the first year of film school, she hadn’t really clicked with anyone else in her class, and since production work is team-based, this was a disadvantage.

she came back for the second year, and took some animation classes, which were really cool, but she had lost the desire to really be there, and since it was so expensive, it stopped making sense for her to continue. she took a semester off to consider her options, and decided to transfer to the university of california – santa cruz. her mom had just gone back to school, too – she was studying to be a unitarian universalist minister, in berkeley, so sumberkins was eligible for in-state tuition in california.

she picked santa cruz because they had a program called ‘the history of consciousness,’ which sounded really enticing to sumberkins for some reason she could not quite explain, and they also had a fun-sounding language studies program, which sumberkins thought might be the best evolution of her interest in film. she figured that she was interested in film as a sort of language, really, and it was communication in general that fascinated her – the translation of ideas into symbols and sounds that other people can understand. she didn’t know what this meant she was going to end up doing as a profession, but it seemed like a good place to start, and santa cruz seemed like a good place to start starting.

as i’ve already mentioned, this was the first big split decision in our life. i thought about going to santa cruz, but in the end, i decided to go to boulder, instead, where i studied political science, a decision that surprised even me at the time, but also taught me many valuable things. and so it was that sumberkins and i were in different locations, and the years of flatter thinking and confusion began. sumberkins says that when she first got to santa cruz, it was very hard for her to concentrate on being there. she felt kind of distracted all the time, and tired. the campus was beautiful, and she met several friendly people as she explored the new school and got used to being in california. she had visited california a few times before, but living there was different. everyone talked about energy and chakras and yoga all the time, and went camping in the woods and took mushrooms. sumberkins was very wary of drugs. she knew that they were dangerous, and she was very protective of her brain. over time, however, she met several people who convinced her that the balance of benefits and risks was much more complex than she had initially been led to believe.

from that point forward, our conception of reality would never be the same.

nanowrimo 4: frogger, forks, and fireflies

kindergarten was not very fun for sumberkins. her preschool had been a montessori preschool that let her do things that she liked, and she liked books, so she knew how to read already, and the teachers at her new school made her leave kindergarten to go read with the 2nd graders sometimes. she didn’t really understand the schedule, and sometimes they would show up during recess or something else fun, and she would have to leave while the rest of her class kept playing, and she felt like she was always looking over her shoulder, and could never really relax, and she didn’t really make any friends. the 2nd graders all thought she was a baby and the teacher yelled at her when she sucked her thumb, so reading class wasn’t worth it, and now she thinks that the only thing she really learned from the experience was that being smart makes you special, and being special isn’t always fun. she also believes that it planted an early seed of cynicism about formal education, and as the one of us who went on to consider a career in education reform, i second this.

fortunately, she still got to go to preschool in the afternoon, and there were other fun things to do at home, like play frogger on the commodore 64. sometimes, she didn’t want to go to school in the morning, and her daddy would tell her that she could stay home if she really wanted, but if she did, she wouldn’t be allowed to play frogger, and that would make her suck it up.

she also made friends with her next door neighbor, bez. bez was a boy, like most of sumberkins friends. sumberkins thought that being a girl was kind of lame, and she hated wearing dresses, and playing with dolls. she played a lot of imaginary games, and her favorite toys were stuffed animals, followed closely by her he-man and star wars action figures. she particularly liked orko, the levitating magical alien from he-man, because he had this plastic pullkey you could use to make him spin around and around, and the speeder bike from return of the jedi, because it would blow up when you pushed a secret button on the back, so you could make it crash into things, and explode. sumberkins still has these toys, but i don’t, because i sold mine at a garage sale when we moved to colorado. i thought i had outgrown them, and it was fun to make money, but looking back, i think sumberkins got the better side of that division.

this is a good example of the kind of little thing that might be different between our universes, so i’m going to take this opportunity to go on a little tangent about these little differences.

it’s a tangents about tangents, in a way.

at every decision point, you see, there’s a chance for us to divide, and sometimes we do. it’s like we’re walking on a dirt trail, cutting through a rocky forest, and for the most part, we’re treading the same ground, but every once in a while, we take different paths around an obstacle, and meet up later down the trail.

sometimes one of us trips and the other one doesn’t, and bellamy says that there’s actually a version of our consciousness taking every possible fork. in some universe i fall off the bed now, and in some universe a bomb goes off nearby, and in some universe i win the lottery, and in another i walk away, disgruntled and suddenly confronted by writer’s block. in most of the universes, however, i keep typing, but there will be some subtle changes to the wording of the examples i give, because each version of me is thinking about things from a slightly different angle of personal experience. it’s like we’re each running along down our own path, and there’s a very narrow spotlight shining on us, revealing our environment, and this is what we call the “known universe.” but really there is an infinity of trails, each separated by the barrier between individual consciousnesses, like soap bubbles that each contain a whole universe. and sumberkins and i are like two bubbles that overlap, for the most part, but not entirely.

there are a few things that are really different between our universes. for example, in sumberkins universe, john lennon is still alive. he wrote some really cool kids books, and started hanging out with syd barrett, who became an eccentric oxford recluse in both universes, and they released a set of crazy weekend jam session recordings that have become a part of the bedrock of the electronic music scene in sumberkins universe, so it’s really interesting to see how those changes have percolated through our cultures.

you can see, then, how some little differences add up to bigger and bigger differences, down the line, but others don’t. we’re not certain, but it seems like john lennon wasn’t shot in sumberkins’ universe because he had forgotten his glasses, and he changed direction really quickly when he realized this, and the bullet went through cleanly without damaging any organs. some of the decisions that sumberkins and i have made differently have added up to dramatic, life-altering differences between our paths, and these differences are reflected in our personalities. some of the decisions, on the other hand, don’t really seem to matter, other than that we think about them sometimes, like toys sold at a garage sale, or lost to a flood.

sumberkins has a few more memories of kindergarten, but she’s feeling a bit bored by telling the story in chronological order, so we’ve decided to switch approaches for a while, and just record any memory, in any order that comes up. the real goal of this project, for us, is to integrate the last ten years or so, when we’ve been apart, so we both keep feeling drawn to think about those memories first, and then we can go back and talk about older memories as they become relevant. there is something appealing about having a written archive of all the stories that we can remember, but we can flesh that out bit by bit when we can’t think of anything else to say.

so, we’re going to jump forward in time for a while, but first, sumberkins wants to tell you about the time she got stitches in her arm, while catching fireflies in mason jars with bez, the next door neighbor. mommy and daddy were not home, and bez’s mommy and daddy were watching her, and she and bez were catching fireflies outside. bez dropped his jar, and it didn’t break! and he thought that was the coolest thing ever. unbreakable glass! his jar was special! so he dropped it a couple more times, to test it, and this activity bored sumberkins, so she sat down on the sidewalk and rocked back and forth on her hands, which was fun. then bez’s jar wasn’t unbreakable after all, and it startled sumberkins, so she tipped over, and a piece of glass cut her arm right below the shoulder, and it bled a lot, and she cried, and bez’s mommy and daddy called her mommy and daddy to come home, and they took her to the hospital, where she got stitches, and it was kind of cool, but then she couldn’t go to the water slide, which mommy and daddy had promised they would do before they moved away to colorado, so she was grumpy and sad for a long time, even though she also didn’t want her arm to get infected.

nanowrimo 3: preschool and two cinnamons

the next thing sumberkins remembers is preschool. she loved preschool. there were lots of toys there, and books, and a hamster named cinnamon, and friends to play with. her best friends were twin boys, and their names were radolf and jazben. all the names in sumberkins’ universe are pretty much gibberish, as far as i’m concerned. what i said yesterday about how there’s this weird echo when people say our name in both universes at once, that’s true, but really, it happens with all names, it’s just more pronounced with our name because our name is a different kind of thought than other people’s names, and, not to brag or anything, but sumberkins and i have developed a pretty refined thought palate, just out of necessity.

see, consciousness is kind of like a giant room that you fill up with energy, and sumberkins and i are like two rooms linked together. when our bodies are in the same place, the two rooms are overlapping, and all our thoughts are shared, and more intense. when our bodies are in different places, it’s like the two rooms shift apart, gradually until they’re next door to each other, and we can think our way into the other one, if we want, but we can also stay in our own room, and as a result we’ve learned which thoughts go where and what different kinds of thoughts feel like because, well, there’s another person moving around in our head all the time, so it’s like this rippling thought massage, and we can feel it. we’ve also learned to keep a corner of our room for private thoughts, and we don’t go into each other’s corner without asking, because that’s just rude.

so anyway, we know that our name is a different kind of thought than other people’s names, and so it makes a different kind of echo, which makes it very distinct, but that all seemed kind of complicated to explain yesterday, so i decided to just gloss over it. now i’m beginning to regret that decision because this tangent is kind of ridiculous. i guess it’s good to learn to not make things up, just to make the story easier, at first, because then i’ll just have to make up for it later, or figure out some weird way to work around it. for now i think i’m still just getting used to this whole biography business, and honestly, i’m really only beginning to understand these things myself, so sometimes i figure out a better way to say it the second time around.

back to preschool.

radolf and jazben were fun to play with, and sumberkins remembers that they liked to play superheroes outside on the playground. she was superman, and radolf was batman, and jazben was spiderman, and sometimes eezin, the son of one of the teachers, would try to play, too, but he was littler than them and didn’t really get how to play in a way that was fun, so they would make him be aquaman and send him off on secret missions all the time, which made them feel kind of tricky, but eezin didn’t seem to mind. now sumberkins likes to scubadive, and thinks that if she had to pick a superpower, breathing underwater would be near the top of the list, maybe even above flying, so this memory amuses her, in retrospect.

they played other games, too, like star wars, and sumberkins liked climbing on the monkey bars a lot. there was a sandbox that had a spider that lived in it, and this scared sumberkins, even though the spider was friendly.

sumberkins remembers these workbook pages that they got every week that had numbers and bears on them, and they were fun to color, and she always tried to do it better every week, without coloring outside the lines.

they had spanish class, which was fun, and they sang songs, and there was nap time, for which sumberkins had a teddy bear named walzip, and one time radolf tore off walzip’s tongue, and that made sumberkins really sad.

one time sumberkins took walzip into the potty and made him sit down and then his leg got all wet, and sumberkins didn’t know how to dry it off, and she was embarrassed.

one time they grew radishes in the garden, and sumberkins was really excited about them growing, and then they picked them, and sumberkins bit into hers, and it tasted terrible, and she felt betrayed, and she didn’t eat radishes for years. it still takes a bit of effort.

one time it was halloween, and there was a party at school, at night time, and mommy came, too, and it was awesome. sumberkins was luke skywalker.

there were also these little tray things that were like cartographic representations of different bodies of water, and they were painted blue and green like maps, and they said things on them like “island” or “isthmus” or “peninsula”, and you could actually fill them up with water, and sumberkins wanted to swim in them. she wanted to invent a special gun that would shrink her down to tiny size, and then she could also play in her fisher price barn, which had a slide and everything. then she would also have a tiny gun that she could use to grow herself back. that part was important. she couldn’t invent the shrinking gun until she figured out how to make the growing gun, because otherwise she might be tiny forever, and that would probably suck.

she remembers having chapstick with a picture of santa on it that tasted like peppermint. sometimes she liked to eat it.

she remembers the front porch of her house. it had big pillars, and she liked to climb on them, and one time she fell off and landed flat on the porch, and that was the first time she got the air knocked out of her, and it was very scary.

when she turned 4, she had a birthday party at her house, and her daddy drew a picture of a clown on a big piece of paper, and they played a game where they tried to pin the nose in the right place with their eyes closed.

on the 4th of july, they shot off fireworks in the backyard, and one of them had a little army man in it, and it floated down in a parachute, and got stuck in a tree a few yards away, and they didn’t get it back.

once her kitty, schmaltie larue, got stuck up in the big tree behind their house, and her mommy and daddy didn’t know how to get him down. she came up with the idea that they should put some tuna fish in the laundry basket, and pull it up with a jumprope and see if schmaltie larue would get in, and so they did that, and it worked.

she liked to play catch with her daddy, and she had a big, red, plastic baseball bat, but hitting the ball was harder than throwing the ball.

there was a windy staircase in the house that she really loved to go down, even though it was also kind of scary because she knew she might fall.

she kind of remembers falling down the stairs once, when she was still in a high chair, but that must have been longer ago than these other memories, because she didn’t need a highchair anymore, but it just occurred to her now, so she’s telling me anyway, and she’s not really sure she’s not making it up.

she definitely remembers falling down the stairs once when she was going to visit saltzen, the man who lived in their basement. one of his arms was cut off at the elbow because he was in the war, which was kind of weird, but he was nice, and used to give sumberkins those little pieces of gum that were all different colors, and she liked that gum.

the falling down stairs and saltzen were in a different house that the one with the big pillars, though. sumberkins moved when she was about 3. the new house also had a little cubby closet in the middle of the wall in her room, and she liked to climb in it, and do puzzles of the smurfs. there was a red light bulb in the cubby, and it was her favorite place.

she also played marbles on the big porch, and the floors in the living room. in the kitchen, she played jacks.

there was another kitty, who was the momma kitty of schmaltie larue, and sumberkins was afraid of her because she was mean. schmaltie larue, on the other hand, was nice, and sumberkins used to pull him around on her saucer sled, or put him in her shopping cart, and he didn’t care.

she remembers more about the house with the big porch, and playing outside there, but not until after she started going to kindergarten, and today we’re only talking about preschool, so that might be about it.

sumberkins says no, she remembers one more thing, when she got her own hamster named cinnamon, just like the one at her school, and she loved him very much, and one day her balloon flew away, and she cried, and then she went home and cuddled cinnamon, and he made her feel better. then one time, cinnamon was dead, and she was quiet for a long time, because he was never coming back.

nanowrimo day two – meet sumberkins

it’s not my memoir, of course. i’m writing it down for my invisible twin sister, sumberkins. she’s invisible to everyone in this universe because her body is actually in a parallel universe, but turns out, sometimes a consciousness splits into two identical consciousnesses before bodies are even starting to show yet, and then two bodies just grow, and remain connected in the mind after birth into neighboring universes. so we can think each other’s thoughts. it’s more common than you think.

our universes overlap a lot, so we didn’t even notice that we were two separate people for a long time, because all of our thoughts and reactions to things were shared, and we just didn’t know that we were living in totally different universes because the thought never occurred to us. i mean, people in her universe were calling her ‘sumberkins’ and people in my universe were calling me ‘kynthia’, but since that happened pretty much every time? and it was almost always in the same voice as the person who was saying our name in our universe? we just thought it was a weird echo that happens when people say your name, and it seemed silly to us that people were always acting fascinated about how easily the human brain picks its name out in a crowd.

every once in a while, there would be some other weird little difference that we barely registered consciously, like she would want mango-raspberry instead of mango-pineapple-banana for some reason, and i would feel a funny tug, and kind of be able to imagine wanting to change my mind, but then in the end i would go with mango-pineapple-banana, after all. if the difference was something that kept coming up, the tugs would start to feel a little stronger, and our thoughts would feel conflicted about random things that didn’t seem to matter much, which we just thought was normal. if the thought had to do with which direction we should go, sometimes we would trip or stumble a little, but we just thought we weren’t paying enough attention.

we both daydream a lot. we think it might have something to do with the fact that having two consciousnesses makes our thoughts feel thoughtier, so thinking about abstract things we both like is really satisfying, like eating berries straight from the vine. as a result, it’s hard to get ourselves to want to think about material things, because they are different for each of us, and thus somehow more bland. but we can’t prove that or anything. not until solo people learn to think each other’s thoughts. we think the day is coming, but bellamy says the tide has to turn first. but i’ll get to bellamy later.

when sumberkins and i were teenagers, some of the subtler, subconscious differences started adding up to more obvious difference ripples, and we started to have thought static, but we just thought it was the microwave, and we learned to ignore it. it wasn’t until college that we started to feel torn about more serious things, and it wasn’t until after we took a semester off from film school to think about transferring that we consciously split locations for the first time. she decided to go to santa cruz to study language and consciousness, and i decided to go to boulder to study political science. for a while we didn’t really think about the same things very often at all, and we started to live different lives, and forget each other. everything felt a little flatter than the life we had been sharing as children, but we thought that was just part of growing up, and we came to treasure the moments when we still crossed paths in our dreams.

living separately made us kind of tired all the time, and we didn’t really know why at first. we had been kind of spoiled by having two consciousnesses to think with as kids, and so now we had to learn to get by with only half as much energy, which was tough. sumberkins figured out what was going on before i did, because santa cruz is pretty crystal crunchy crazy, and they just talk about shit like that, like other people talk about the weather. they also eat a lot of kale, particularly when there are fresh sprouts, and lemon-tahini dressing. i was exposed to some of the same ideas in boulder and bloomington, but through a very different lens, so we thought about everything differently, which is really helpful and interesting now, but at the time it made things feel pretty muddled. she was meeting people who did drugs all the time, or meditated on mountains, and sometimes both, and eventually she found out that she could hear my thoughts if she quieted her own, and then she remembered a lot of things from when we were younger, and she put two and two together.

she also spent more and more time exploring the parts of our consciousness that neither of us had really visited before, except maybe a few times on accident, and she met bellamy, who is kind of like our guardian angel. he’s not really an angel, at least not in the way people usually think about angels, because he doesn’t live in heaven or anything, and he reports to the alliance, not to god, but like i said, i’ll get to bellamy later. together they figured out a way to make me notice little clues in my environment that would help me access certain thoughts, and sometimes they visited my dreams, until we started sharing ideas again, and found ways to bring our worlds a bit closer together. eventually, we were able to pool our energy again when we thought about some things, which was very exciting for both of us.

when i finally went to santa cruz myself, about a year ago now, and we were in the same location for the first time in years, things got a little bit crazy. the more our thoughts and ideas overlapped, the more energized we got about them, and the more patterns we started noticing in the things we’d been thinking about while we were apart. i only really figured out what was going on very recently (in such a way that i was able to talk about it while i’m awake, at least), and now sumberkins and i have decided that the best way to integrate our separate experiences, and figure out what to do next, is to write down all the memories that really stick out for us as moments that shaped our development. there are some moments that we both really agreed on, and thus they feel really strong and important to us, and there are some moments where we made different choices, and then a sort of dissonance grew, and if we think about those things at the same time, it’s kind of like listening to two different radio stations at once.

the plan is for me to write sumberkins’ memories in this universe, and for her to write my memories in her universe, and then we’ll both publish what we wrote as fiction, because there’s not really much of a non-fiction audience yet for trans-universe undercover reporting. we think that maybe reading about what we’ve learned will be helpful to other consciousness twins, because we know they’re out there, and it would be easy to never notice at all, if you weren’t lucky enough to find someone to explain what was going on, like bellamy. in fact, bellamy says that the reason he’s been helping us is because the alliance is trying to find ways to help people in our universes understand consciousness a little better, so that we’ll be more prepared when the tide comes.

we’re not really thinking about all that yet, though, because honestly, we don’t really know what to believe, except that imagination is powerful, and more so when shared, so we want to begin by documenting our experiences, and then look back on them together, and let the record speak for itself.

i’m going to start by running through sumberkins’ memories, in chronological order, with some allowance for tangents as they naturally arise, and we’ll see where that leads. i’m going to try to editorialize as little as possible, at least until most of the memories are written down, and i reserve the right to rephrase things and organize the stories differently later, after we have a chance to compare notes. i’ll probably have to explain a few things about some of the more confusing differences between sumberkins’ universe and our universe, and i probably won’t be able to resist a few observations about things that are particularly interesting to me, because i want to remind myself about things i want to revisit later.

i will begin, however, by simply transcribing one memory a day, beginning with the first thing sumberkins remembers, which also happens to be the first thing i remember, because we overlapped almost entirely until we were about ten.

in our first memory, we are probably about two, and we are hiding under our crib, staring out at big bird’s feet, which are on a poster on our wall. we hear our mommy and daddy saying “where’s [kynthia/sumberkins]?” and their voices are playful, but somehow we understand, for the first time, that they really don’t know where to find us, and if we keep hiding, they might get scared, and we might get in trouble, and the idea that we have such power is both frightening and invigorating, and we aren’t quite sure what to do…

nanowrimo begins

how bout “that was the time when you just lay there, and then you got up and wrote down what you remembered when you lay there, and writing it down was like listening to a song being sung, one word at a time, in the back of your mind, but it was already there underneath, as if it had been written before many times, and this was just a new line of the same song, being discovered again for the first time, and then you laugh and you pause… and one thing you remembered when you just lay there was this one time you took mushrooms, and the whole world turned into a video game, and there were little life bars on the edge of your vision, and you could interact with other characters, or search for items, or you could play mini-games, and then you did a line of ketamine and invented a game that you played with your spine, while lying flat on your back with your eyes closed, and you could see your vertebrae lining up like the ridges of a mountain range, and then a little while later you took 2CB, and went outside in the snow with green sunglasses on, and invented another game about catching snowflakes on your tongue as if you were a frog catching flies, and it was kind of like a spaceship game, and now sometimes you combine the two games, and play spaceship games that you steer with your spine, while doing crunches and situps,” and that’s what you started doing after a while, the time when you just lay there, until you got up, to start writing it down.

next, you realized, while listening to your friends play pirates (during which time they were sometimes ‘nice pirates,’ which basically meant they went around granting wishes instead of stealing things), that the opposite of a pirate is a genie, and the only difference between a swindler and a wish granter is that the swindler takes back wishes after promising to grant them, and that the sorts of fairytales we choose to tell our children says something about our culture. do we choose to inspire fear of deception, or faith in magic? do we succeed in conveying that there are both forces out there? and how balanced do our stories suggest the odds to be, for the most part? or are there not sides at all? is it just two sides of one whole being, who is half of another whole, in turn, and so on ad infinitum…

and then you also remembered another time, the first time you took mushrooms on your own, which was at bonnaroo in 2006, the year that radiohead and beck and andrew bird were all there, and you imagined that you were going to write a book about what you were thinking, which was mostly about class and privilege and design, but through this surrealistic storybook filter that included a lot of random childhood memories that you hadn’t thought about in forever, memories of a time when you lived partly in an imaginary game that you were making up as you went along, and the book was called “i know i’ll go back there someday,” which you kept hearing over and over in your mind, but it took you all day to put your finger on it, like the echo of a memory of something you heard many times long ago, like an advertising jingle you thought you’d forgotten about, and now you’re hearing a name for this book, too, but you haven’t quite figured it out yet.

it’s something like ‘imperplausible applesaults somerdays, from outerspace’ and i guess you could call the genre impressionistic memoir pastiche.

summary two

The Obydian brain includes a network of crystalline nodes that light up as their synapses fire, and their skulls have evolved a thin plate of bone in their foreheads that acts as a projection screen for the resulting patterns of light. Most of their communication revolves around the projection of these patterns, each of which represents a holistic thought or idea. The patterns can then be replicated directly within other brains, with no need for intermediary translation. Vocalization is used sparingly, mostly for emphasis, and to make music. They are literally mind readers, and since psychic energy is a tangible part of their daily lives, it is a basic component of both their scientific and spiritual worldviews. It is by passing this energy between bodies that they are able to carry their identity and memories across several lifetimes. Their sense of self is tied not to any one body, but to the unique algorithm that is constantly generating the thought pattern that serves as the underlying pulse of their psychic existence. It takes 20 Obydian years (which is roughly 26 Earth years), for their algorithm to generate enough data for their pattern to be clearly established, at which point they are said to ‘cohere.’ If their body dies before Coherence, their energy will disperse, which is equivalent to death, if it is their first life, and kind of like being reset back to the last save point, otherwise. With each life, and the collection of more experiential data, their pattern becomes richer and more nuanced, as if they are becoming a higher resolution version of their previous self.

summary one

Obyd is a planet in the same galaxy as Earth, and with a similar atmosphere, but beyond the range of current Human sensors. The Obydian race is much older than the Human race, and they no longer live only on Obyd. Obyd continues to be the ceremonial home of their government, and the largest of the ancient cities are educational and tourist centers, with the countryside supporting farmers and ranchers, as well as nature preserves, and small towns that attract people who are drawn to the preservation of traditional ways of life. A small but vibrant city has existed for many generations on the Obydian moon, Olus, and it serves as the hub of their spiritual and artistic cultures, with most people traveling to Olus at least once a lifetime for pilgrimage or retreat. They have also colonized a smaller planet in their own solar system, Danh, which is the center of technology, fashion, and commerce, and they maintain several space stations, known collectively as Brece, which house their academic and scientific leadership. Under the direction of Brece, they have probed and surveyed the whole galaxy, sending explorers to other potentially habitable worlds and performing experiments. Their principal interest is not colonization (yet), but the identification, collection, and cultivation of DNA sequences that can be used to replace and/or augment the basic building blocks of their own bodies. They have the patience for experiments that take several generations, and an avid interest in biotechnology, because their memories extend beyond a single lifetime, making it necessary for them to either pass through multiple infancies and childhoods, or replace failing parts of themselves as they age. Their memories grow in size and complexity across their lifetimes, and Earth is of great interest to them because, as it happens, Human brains make great external hard drives.

nathaniel asks lilith to join him on a quest

nathaniel had not spoken to lilith in five years, and the last time had been a surprise to him, quite literally. she popped out from behind his couch at the party gordon threw him when his first major study for the lens was accepted, after many grueling months of review. he had expected the party, to be honest, and had played along with gordon’s ruses out of sport, and affection for his friend. when he arrived at his apartment after the final set of papers was signed, he had been practicing feigned looks of astonishment in the elevator, and had his favorite picked out, as well as a catchy one-liner. he made a point of rustling his keys when he got to the door, and took a deep breath before putting on some approximation of the face he thought he would be wearing naturally, which was a mixture of exhaustion and jubilation.

he switched on the light and they all jumped out, like an educational video that was trying to convey the concept of “surprise party” to children or aliens. his favorite feint flashed on his face for a fraction of an instant, as the scene sunk in, but then his gaze was drawn to lilith, and his mask gave way to a much more genuine expression. her hair was drawn up in a collection of spiky pigtails, and she was wearing a vest that seemed to be made out of several different varieties of those reusable, plastic-coated grocery bags. she was the most colorful thing in the room, apart from the kandinsky print above the fireplace, and she popped out a bit more smoothly than everyone else, wryly throwing up one hand in dramatic embellishment. the one-liner fell completely from nathaniel’s head, and he was forced to bumble through something completely cliche instead, making the rounds of handshakes and hugs in a daze.

after the initial tumult died down a bit and people began to focus less on him and more on the hors d’oeuvres, he found her standing on the fire escape with a martini and a cigarette, and they traded small talk, a bit awkwardly, but kindly. after a minute or two of silence they looked at each other, and she said, “i just wanted to hear from your own lips what the hell you think you’re doing, nathaniel. i want to give you the opportunity to tell me that you have a good reason before i write you off as lost.”

he turned away from her, and looked down at the street below, breathing deeply and closing his eyes, letting exhaustion win out over jubilation for the moment.

“i’m helping people lead normal lives, lil. the lens is closer than ever. my father’s work is changing the world, and i have the chance to play a part. i can’t just walk away. you know that.”

“yes, you can. you just won’t. and you know that.”

“fine. and you know what i mean.”

the old argument simmered.
they chose to let silence fall again.

“so those kids, in your study, you’re just giving up on them, then?” and she looked him in the eye, and waited.

“they’ve already given up on themselves, lilith, and so has everyone in their lives. we can help them find comfort. how is that bad?”

she shook her head, and looked out across the city, blinking quickly a few times. nathaniel could see that she was holding back tears, and he was glad that he had only had one drink, because he wanted to kiss her and yell at her at the same time. instead he managed to hold his ground, letting the scene play out, as if they were actors, and he simply didn’t have any lines.

she turned back to him and glared with an intensity that still burned in his dreams.

“this isn’t cancer we’re talking about, nathaniel. all growth is not malignant.”

and she walked back into the apartment, set down her martini glass, took a piece of bruschetta, and left. later, he found a fuzzy hat on his coatrack, with giraffe ears, and for a while, he thought she might call to claim it, but she never did.

that was five years ago, and now suddenly, he stands up, and walks to the back closet, where he keeps winter clothes, and old jackets and shoes that he never wears. he rummages around in a bin full of scarves and gloves, and pulls out the giraffe hat, and holds the fleece to his face.

he reaches into his pocket for his phone, and dials before he can stop himself, not even knowing if the number will work. the call connects after four rings, but there is only silence on the other end, and he pulls the phone from his ear to see what time it is. 2:30 AM. shit. after a few more seconds, he blurts out, “i have your giraffe hat. do you want it back?”

at first, there is only more silence, and breathing, but then he hears a soft, sleepy chuckle, and he is flooded with relief, and lets go.

“i’m sorry, lil. i know it’s been forever and you have every reason to hate me. but i might be going crazy. and i have to go to south america to find out. i don’t want to go alone, and you’re the only person i can think of who might even halfway believe me… i just…”

“shhhh!”

and he stopped.

“it’s the middle of the night, nathaniel. calm down. one step at a time. i’m already planning to come to new york this weekend. i’ll call you when i get there. and you damn well better answer, after this stunt. otherwise i’ll call the police and tell them that you dyed my pet chihuahua to make it look like a giraffe and then skinned it and turned it into a hat.”

now it was nathaniel’s turn to chuckle.

“that’s gross. and you would never have a pet chihuahua.”

“i’ll come up with another plan then, when i’m actually awake. or you can just answer your phone, and i won’t have to go to the trouble.”

“it’s a deal… and i’m sorry i woke you. i didn’t know what time it was.”

“it’s ok. i surprised you last time. now we’re even.”

nathaniel smiled, and hoped that the phone would find a way to convey it.

“good night, lilith the fair,” he said. the old joke just popped out without warning, and there was a slight pause he wasn’t sure how to read.

“good night, nate the great.”

and they hung up.

mihle arrives in the margins

loux was just about ready to leave for the night, washing down his last bite of fried kitrel and shallots with his last swallow of pirated onecian ale, when a stranger entered the tavern, too perfectly cloaked to be local, but also too expertly subtle to be patrol. his scan flashed for a fraction of a second, but was skillfully retracted before anyone noticed, and loux was intrigued. he watched the stranger intently as he approached the bar and adjusted his cloak. none of the regulars seemed to detect anything out of the ordinary, but they were human, so they were easily fooled. loux felt a combination of terror and relief. he had not known why he had been drawn to come out tonight, and he had been battling annoyance all throughout dinner. he knew that there was work he should be doing, but he was beginning to feel helpless as the days ticked by with no new options for nathaniel, and he found himself fearing for the heart of the resistance for the first time in years. but now this stranger erased those thoughts from his mind, and he was presented instead with a simple question: was this man a devil or an angel? for he was surely nothing in between.

my epitaph for six feet under

ending is an art.