NOUCO: Alison I

ALISON
It has been years since I felt the tracker hunting me down, but here it is. That old familiar feeling of the mite crawling around in my brain, trying to crack the code that hides me.

The headaches are becoming more frequent now, growing in intensity. I know it is the tracker.

It isn't like I didn't know this day would come. I can see it. In all but he most improbable of futures, I am tracked. In 50% of all probable futures, I am found. Which means the trick is to choose the right 50  of the 50/50 so that I am not found.

Time Telling is a game of probability where the dice we throw are ourselves. It is a game of weight and balance, measuring between the genius of what Man can create and what he is made of. And man can never understand what he is made of. The human body is a miracle. The brain is nature's best technological feat.

I am good at hiding from technology. Bit if the tracker is boosted by another Time Teller, I'll have to reevaluate my situation. We can always see past the wires. Unless the Time Teller lies and tells them I'm not in view. The scope is too small. Something like that would be a miracle. But Time Telling is a miracle, so who are we to judge?

If the trackers is boosted by a Time Teller who doesn't lie, I'll have to reevaluate my situation. Retrain my cloaking mechanisms, meditate more. It means I'll have to breach my cover for awhile, make myself more vulnerable, subtract hours from my linear day. I'll have to find David and hope he hasn't been compromised...in one way or another.

Today is January 7, 2013. "Today" is a relative term. I have seen "Today" like it was tomorrow and like it will be yesterday. But here you are experiencing this little slice of time like it has never been and never will be again. And here I am trying to tow the line between both experiences and tell it in a language someone else can understand.

Today is January 7, 2013, twenty-one linear years to the future from the First Encounter between me and the New Agency. I was the typical age of  a Second Generation at the point of First Encounter: somewhere between three years old and five.

My talent was my own, nothing created by a biochemical genius in a lab. boosted, maybe. Enhanced, controlled - definitely. But they didn't pick me out because they saw the Time Signature. They discovered that later.

I was a great bargain. I was chosen originally for my superior intelligence, for my advanced motor function, calm temperament in the face of unconventional stresses and for my advanced creativity.

The Time Signature came later, maybe triggered by unconventional stress. I inverted my mind - extreme introversion - when faced with stress. The calm for which I was recruited was not calmness at all. It was misinterpreted Time Signature Introversion.

If cool calculation can be used as a weapon, a Time Teller can destroy whole universes if given the correct dosage of the Time Serum. The information I report makes me more valuable than seven armies. And no one will ever suspect how or why information was breached.

August 26, 2012

"I thought that an arrow pointed the way."

"And so it does."

"But you never told me which way that was. Wrong or right?"

"Perhaps all paths converge, Little Girl, and so an incorrect path is the right one because a misstep tells you the truth."

"So the destination isn't the point."

"Not so much, Little Girl."

"Will I ever stop being your Little Girl?"

"You will always be a moment in Time. You have always seemed the same to me, enough to make me wonder what a Man feels, how he sees."

"When the Gypsy stole my heart and scattered it, did you catch it, Uriel?"

"Perhaps I did, for the breadth of my wings is wide and the vision of my eyes is keen."

"Answer me! Do you have it?"

"And if I did, what would it gain you, Little Girl?"

"The chance of putting back together again."

"There are some things nothing can fix. To reform ashes into what they once were? You would need to bend back Time. But if you bent it back, you would not be you. You can grow a new one, Little Girl."

"But the old one had hope."

"A new one can have more than hope."

August 23, 2012

"Uriel, help me."

"You are capable of helping yourself, Little Girl."

"What a great friend you are," says the girl.

"I was never your friend, only your guide."

"I guess you're right. But it was nice to think otherwise."

"Since when are you one for deception?"

"Since never. But sometimes a half-truth is nice."

"You know I cannot feel," says the angel.

"Yes you can. You have been taken from me because of it, and you have been rewritten."

"An angel is a blank page upon which humanity writes the story of itself."

"And God?"

"You know better than to ask of God. you have heard. And you have seen. God is the voice inside your head and the promise that is broken. Now, Little Girl, take in the world around you. Feel the wind on your skin, hear the music in your ears. If you are looking for a different God, you have found it in this. Content yourself with that, for there will be no love for you."

"There will. But only in one direction. Uriel, I know my place."

"Yes, Little Girl. You know your place and you fit perfectly in the space between my wings."

"Take me now, Seraph! What is there for me to make in the world?"

"Everything, Little Girl. You have hands to form a universe, to grasp what you desire. You have ground on which to walk and air to breathe and lungs to accept it. You have a heart that can feel and a mind that can collapse and construct Time and its absence. You have a cliff from which to jump."

"And you, Uriel?"

"I have Vision and the lack of everything that you possess."

August 19, 2012

"Shh, Little Girl," says the angel. "I will cover you now."

"Yes, please," the girl relents. "Please cover me for a long time."

"Always."

"I give up again."

"You never came out of it."

"Must you remind me?"

The angel laughs. "I have never reminded you. I merely open your eyes to the moment in which you have always been. Your fate met you at the beginning. Try to avert your eyes and it stabs you in the back. Best to face it willingly. Nothing will change you."

"You are not being very helpful, dear."

"I am not meant to be helpful. I am only an arrow pointing the way."

"And an arrow isn't helpful?"

"It is not an arrow on a spear."

"Maybe that would be better."

"You are not ready to come with us yet and so, we do not carry a spear for you."

"Oh, yes, you do. You just don't throw it. I know you never miss. How could you? When everything is destined from the Point?"

"Does it hurt?" asks the angel.

"Does what hurt?"

"You. Now."

"Everything hurts. Would you like some? Take it!"

"As you know, if I could feel, I would take it all from you. Or share it. But I am incapable."

"Of course. Of course you are incapable. Like I am incapable of saying anything to a human being and having it understood."

"It will be one, day Little Girl."

"By people? Or by you?"

"Yes."

"Nice answer," says the girl. "Avoiding. As usual."

"What did you expect?"

"Nothing. I expect nothing. You've trained me well."

"You have only trained yourself. As you know, we could be nothing more than a whisper you cannot hear, if you so wished it."

"I have always found sanity in the madness that is you, Uriel. Don't ask me how. But it is true. I would rather be mad with you than without you. Because my own race sells me short. Or I sell them short. Or whatever it is. How should I know?"

"You know, Little Girl. Like you know that we cover you."

"Let me deal with this alone."

"You have never dealt with anything else wise."

On Independence

July 4, 2012

I used to be proud of this day. Unfortunately, I have read my history, which never leaves me shy of ashamed. The pit of shame grows deeper every time. There is nothing I can do about it.

We Americans will never fight the right war of independence - we are too blind, too shortsighted for such bloody activity. For all our pomp, trampling around on the "home of the brave" and "land of the free" -- when will we learn to look backwards and examine just how valiantly our fights were won?

When will we ever weigh the cost of our illusive freedom (for turning a blind eye is might blissful and a Big Mac is more pleasing than shoving the likes of Wounded Knee down our throats) against the cost of dignity?

I realize now, of course, always too late, that no destiny was ever manifest but that which we create and execute ourselves. Divinity fled from Eden as we marched West and jumped off the cliffs of California. And what a white man's burden is that! Chasing God all the way into the sea to claim our "destiny" all in the Good name. And questionable faith.

The idea used to be beautiful to me. It was beautiful until I learned how much of its full meaning I had to omit: life - if I were a land-owning white man; liberty - to plunder and pillage and oppress - if I were a land-owning white man; and the pursuit of happiness - repeat the refrain again. Though the definition has been revised time and time again, Americans have still never quite defined "happiness," and I'm sure we never will.

If it really is that picket fence, painted shiny white but termite infested, then it's not my dream. And if it really is money,l gotten through deception and derived from imaginary confidence or the lack thereof - it is not my dream, again.

July 5, 2012

I have built my own dream, far away and I know the irony of it. East not west but still just as manifest as ever, expanding borders of attitude and ideology, again with my presence that is not native. Am I just as guilty as everyone who won the West?

People always have a way of looking back on history and convincing them selves that they aren't continuing it. It is a shame, then, because there is nowhere to run, trapped on this green and blue sphere that we systematically destroy. It is a shame that for all my thinking, it will always be human.

Don't misunderstand, I am not self-hating, only frustrated. I am not out of rope, just lonely. It is all empty space except for where the atrocities are. Maybe there is a veil somewhere that ripples occasionally and lets some beauty through. Or maybe beauty is something we contrive, so desperate for goodness we start hallucinating our greatest desires. The heat is strong. And the mirage is seductive. But its water won't save us.

July 4, 2012

"I must be an idiot," says the Little Girl.

"Because," replies the angel, "you are still trying?"

"Precisely."

"Don't give up."

"Even though it's futile? I made that decision so long ago...to be lonely..."

"Instead of untrue."

"But lonely anyway."

"You would have hated yourself," says the angel.

"Yes. And instead I hate everything else. Running and running. All my energy wasted."

"We know you are tired, Little Girl. You are more tired than ever."

She sighs. "Yes. I am very tired."

"And yet you choose to live, as you chose to be born. If you think that thinking is a sin, then end it. If you think that it is a privilege, then continue - and do something about it."

"I will try."

"Don't try. Do it."

"No one is listening."

"Then leave it behind. Someone will hear it one day and be grateful. Don't cry."

"You know I'm not crying, Uriel. If I were crying, I wouldn't ever stop."

On "In Pursuit of Wind"

July 1, 2012

Time flies, even if you're not having fun. I suppose I try to make the best of it, and it could be much, much worse. Waiting is never fun, though, especially if you don't know if what you're waiting for will ever arrive.

It is already July and we are moving into the heights of summer. Imagination has left me, so instead of imagining new worlds, I go back to old ones. Since I left Sibyl Fried for good, it has been six years. But now I can finally rip her apart like I need to.

Her madness is no longer my own. I have expunged that voice from my head and I no longer have to know every breath nor every moment and how they feel to someone who is not me. There are so many wavelengths of Sibyl Fried that I glossed over and shouldn't have, and there are so many more that I described too much.

But writing is never easy. Writing is always an exercise in laying what is most private within you bare to the world's criticism - and worse: your own. Of course, I am no longer the teenager who wrote her, who wrote her children, who wrote their madness, their violence, their incestuous, narcissistic love -- who wrote impossibilities and the small patch out of a tapestry of time. But that teenager was me once, and she has grown into this.

At twenty-five, almost, her dreams both deferred and come-true.

So I rip her apart and build her back up again. Perfection can never be achieved, but you can come close. I've ripped whole paragraphs out. And know i'll write more to erase her esoteric rambling so that her profundity can be understood. This comprehension is more important than flowery language.

They tell you from the instant you realize you're an artist that one of the most important things you can ever do is just let go. Sometimes it takes years because letting go feels like nothing less than slashing and burning yourself.