[-empyre-] start of july......directions

[Jason Nelson]

1.	With the brakes chewed, their front axel pops over the planters. And
 with a spooling swerve they crash their van past the front porch into a
 mud thatched oak. (JN)

 2. "Now its your turn," Whistler laughs. "I think she's good for one
 more." The way his left eye bulged still bothers Denim, but he knows
 better than to say anything, especially when Whistler is in this kind of mood.
 (AK)

 3. But they were car poor. Such high tops, as in shoes. Not Whistler's
 shoes as he is shoe rich. Jeans as names and the birds, those moody fear
 mongers, can lift the trees, such bark heavy alarms. (JN)

 4. the van's headlights screened by the mud from the oak their
 electric light washing over the walk the porch the house itself unlit
 empty the street almost stubbornly dark the moon divided the stars
 fracturing in the now cracked glass of the van's windshield their
 reflection faintly lighting shards of glass splinters of the front
 porch the cracked pottery of the ruined planters suburbia's uniform
 order cancelled now like a series of bad checks until finally the
 headlights went out too a door down the street opening and then
 slamming not followed by footsteps but only by a more complete silence
 the night pushing on Whistler beginning to perceive the low rush of
 air entering and leaving his lungs the silhouette of Denim's face a
 distant curve that slid lower as Whistler strained to lift his head by
 degrees by inches forward skyward up causing the moon to scatter
 deliriously across the crazed glass stretching dilating revolving and
 then inverting again as incapable Whistler fell back staring into
 shadow unable to quit listening to the now flat growing unbearable
 silence of the night where he could sense an approach of some kind of
 outcome indifferent unnameable yet as certain as dawn and he thought
 (af)

 5...his  synth_suit. all p[l]ocked.mar[c]ked + r[l]e[i]s[ure]in bound. no
 crash was programmed  4 this session!?

     6. He took off the suit, and was about to write a quick complaint  to
 the project manager, when he changed his mind and phoned her instead.

        "Hello S ? We need a team meeting. ...I've just exited from
 World(3)... ...The violence bug is no better but it's still not ready for
 user testing.  Unless the violence is turned down we will never be able to present
 World(3) as a replacement for focus groups and polling surveys which is the
 supposed   purpose...11Am.." And wondered when and if world(3) would ever be
 ready for the clients.  (s)

         7. ' i want 2 b emptee '
               sd S
              'emptee of vishyuns n 10shyuns
               n memoreez uv dreems 4 a whil
               so hunee what do u want from me
               tho we r alredee heer wer gonne put a trackr on u
               feel the ekstasee as it cums 4 u ... '   (if)


 8.
 then the laugh as feared as expected his voice over the cel suddenly
 amplified approaching unreasonable so that the part of herself still
 struggling with words suddenly withdrew the hotel bed shrinking the
 phone itself now useless the tracker already blinking and the
 something within her which had no need of body moving pushing out
 scanning the room's pressurized furniture nylon curtains plastic
 windows its artificial walls themselves dissolving under a moment of
 observation as placid as a child's who suspects it will be orphaned
 who has always suspected and who finally abandoned can somehow
 concentrate for minutes before making even the slightest gesture it
 was four o'clock she (af)

9.
 Sarah immerses her self into the bath, feeling more relaxed. She plays
 with the idea of what it might be like to transmute her body into water.
 Would her consciousness be diluted and dissolved by the volume of this
 splashy, h20 substance? Sarah submerges her head under the water,
 leaving her eyes open, looking up at the ceiling and then she slowly
 closes her eyes. So far we know that that if one is to be materialized
 back into human, solid - form, that we can regain our material self and
 our consciousness. Yet if one was transmuted into the form of water.
 What then?

 Her mind shifts to Darnley, perhaps he's an agent, and his motives do
 not seem to be on par with the rest of the group's ambitions. I don't
 trust him; he must be a plant. What if he's from central office?
 Although so far we have no real basis to think that he is, we've had no
 actual interference from external forces.

 Her body lays still under the bath water except for her knees which are
 bending, sticking out. Sarah giggles remembering an MI5 incident at a
 large communist function which one her University friend's, attended a
 few years ago. There was an accusation buzzing around that those Central
 Office bugger's, had impregnated the lavatory paper with an itching
 substance. What if Darnley was recruited at the Uni, by MI5? I've known
 him for some time now and he certainly gives off the sense that he has
 no morality. As far as I recall he has never mentioned allegiance to the
 four of us. There must be some way of finding out whether he is a
 sleeper planted by Central Office. Sarah slowly lifts one of her legs up
 higher and sponges from foot to thigh, shifting her thoughts back to the
 possibilities of becoming water.

 Sarah steps out of the bath and pans the top half of her torso in the
 mirror. Through the steam in the room she can just see the ghostly
 outline of her reflection. Her finger inscribes an outline of herself
 onto the mirror's surface. Condensation drips down and it looks as
 though she is melting.

 Memories come flooding back to a time when she was a young child,
 walking in a fog in the streets of London. It was winter and she was on
 her way home from school. Her feet trod on a thick, condensed and
 slippery snow. She could hardly make out where to go, it was early
 evening in November and it was dark, the fog was getting thicker by the
 second. As people wandered to and fro, bumping and slipping into each
 other, looking like discordant shadows. Vehicles slowly chugged along,
 releasing gaseous, warm fumes out of exhausts. Lights from the vehicles,
 buildings and lampposts, shimmered, shrouded by the blanket haze of
 freezing fog. When the child stopped walking in the midst of home time
 chaos and held her hand out...it disappeared.

 At first she was scared as images of decapitation and thoughts of parts
 of her body vanishing began to play on her imagination. Then as she
 looked around at all the people everywhere and all the hustle and
 bustle, she smiled and an overwhelming feeling of comfort began to
 reign. It felt heavenly and it made her feel special, a revelation had
 come from nowhere and changed this thirteen-year old girl's life.

 It was time to move on having discovered that she was different than the
 mass of souls around her. Each step had to be measured or she would fall
 over, her legs finally guided her to a bus stop where there were many
 people standing and shivering. A bus pulled upside along the curb and
 the waiting crowd, including Sarah ascended the large red vehicle. Once
 seated, she made patterns in the condensation of the window's surface.
 It dripped and shook to the rhythm of the bus. Sarah could just make out
 her reflection, along with the outside world. When looking at herself
 and the world in the window, they fused together and became one. (mg)


10.
emotionless flat but inwardly glad there was no one else in the shop
this afternoon so that he could behave as a salesclerk and nothing
more maintaining his disinterest in both the merchandise he
mechanically brought out of the glass and mahogany cases and this pale
rich impatient customer who as if materializing in the storm had come
into the front room out of nowhere out of fog or out of the rain now
falling in sheets spattering the pavements pooling in the gutters an
oddity presenting himself as a detective fine a collusion yet knowing
next to nothing about barrel weights mounts calibers not drunk just
not really giving a damn and willing to pay a price that if not
outright stupid was at least half again what any sensible person might
consider fair as he determinedly the clerk continued to express
nothing placing the next automatic on the counter while discreetly
removing the last answering the occasional question with plain
information with facts no judgments no opinions hearing: but that's
how it is in my business that's how it is when you watch people for a
long time that's what it's like when you start to put things together
a stranger who did not need to be persuaded who due to the background
check was finally obliged to give a name -- darnley -- he took the gun
with him meanwhile (af)

11.  And since when did Sarah care about his profession. Watching people without punctuation or regard or highlighters, such luscious ghosts, such tasty and equal pens, stick of plastic he said and he watched. Did he watch Sarah?  Did he watch 10shyuns?
He was and she was and they were scared of all this code as not code and words as
not sequentials. Not stories and stories abound. So meanwhile the background check read something like this (jn):