--

The Small Circle

first off, this is not what happened, of course, it's my telling of what i
remember, and you know how in the telling everything gets all mixed up and your
reds get in with your blues and the socks get lost, but that's what has to
happen, because that's what happens when i write.  "Tell the Story as if it
were only of interest to the small circle of Its characters, of which you may
be one.  There is no other way to breathe life into the Story."  Cortazar.
[see, melody?  i don't just write, hey, i read too!  i'm multi-talented!]
Julio Cortazar said that in some essay, quoting some other person really, whose
name i don't remember.  but that's not important, what's important is the idea.
so this is the story and i hope it's of interest to you, melody, because you're
one of the characters, and i guess that means i am too.

i'll bet you didn't know i wrote, did you, melody?  i'll bet you have no idea
who i even am.  hey there; Paul Mortstone here, yes, hello.  on the Net, which
you may or may not know anything about, [i don't remember what i heard on that
point] i'm called PowerSpike, but don't hold it against me, it's an old old
nickname clung to through nostalgia and habit.  PwRsPk for short.  !p for
shorter.  i hack, i'm a Hacker if you buy the hype, a computer geek at heart,
dressed in black of course of course.  again, yes, how do you do.  well, i also
write, mel.  mind if i call you mel?  no?  good, ok, there it is mel, hey, call
me !p for shorter.  how does someone end up with a name like !p mel?  how does
a hacker end up writing prose, a meme-hack in the end?

when i write, melody, it's like a crowd of voices is in my head, each one
wanting to be the one to type out the very next key, that's how stiff the
Competition Over Which Memory Gets To Be Remembered As Real is.  it's all a fog
of overlapping voices, just like hypnagogia, just like the entry to sleep that
everyone but me can seem to ride around in at the NEXUS here because everyone
but me is a DreamHunter around this place.  i guess you are too, eh, mel?  well
i'm not.  did i tell you that yet?  i'm just a techie.  everyone's got their
schtick, and mine's not DreamHunting.  /not/, ok?  i just work here.  it's a
crowd of voices mel, just a mob, sort of like the 4 of us, katie, me, you,
aqaraza.  i guess shara-liana has to be counted to, eh, mel?  hell, why not the
whole Seattle NEXUS?  why not?  ah, but patience, there's a good reason if you
want to call it that.  no sense spoiling the fun.  did i tell you i'm a hacker
by trade?  did i tell you that i just work here?

look, mel. here's what scares me.  you want to know what scares me?  well then
look, Captive Audience, here's what scares me: i am Outside the System.  i
could be just bonkers.  you know, there was a time when i lived and went to
grad school in Berkeley CA.  yes, UC Berkeley, and there my craziness had
papers and acronyms to go with it, all the fine print to say that what i was
doing was Sane and Official, that i had access to campus equipment to fiddle
with, that everything was fine and that the the pentagon, no certainly he had
nothing to do with that, and of course i didn't, because i had my Career to
consider.  and so what happens, 3 years later i find myself here in Seattle at
some damn CyberHippie co-op house thingy, crammed in tight with a bunch of
loonies who happen to have secured group Internet-access.  and me i just work
here, that's what it comes down to mel, that's why it's not fair, because ME I
JUST WORK HERE.  but no, of course that's not true, i loved katie.  i loved
aqaraza.  i loved chuck, and i loved colin too.  and they wanted me here,
because i could do the tech, and they could do their e.mail and i could have my
own little node, and we could have our own little NEXUS, and everyone'd live
happily ever after, right?   ok.

you and i never met.  you came here, to the Seattle NEXUS, to a party in may of
93, right?  more than 2 years ago, yes?  yes.  i was there, but we never met;
ships in the night and all that sort of thing.  but you did meet katie, didn't
you?  and you met a lot of people, and i wasn't one of them, though i probably
saw you, probably saw you across the room, for a moment, you being confused by
a conversation, and that was it.  me, i was confused too.  but all i knew was
that here was a house just FULL of people, people from the Net, people who
spoke my impossible lingo as smoothly as i did, people who were family before
i'd even fleshmet them.  when they were just words we were already of one
flesh, and that's not really fair, is it?  they too had all met through words
first, on the Net, they too had gathered without ever having seen each others
faces, and lo and behold, they too felt like family, to each other, and to me.
and there i was.  within a month you were dead, cohen was dead, katie was
missing, and that was just the background noise/local chaos to provide
soundtrack to my moving all my tech in.  everything's really screwed up,
melody, but i know you know that by now, though not in the same ways i do.
nope, never in the same ways, always different irreconcilable screw-ups just to
keep everything muddy and confusing right through to the end.

by the way, melody: when i'm writing, please don't interrupt me.  i'm just
trying to get a fix on my mental position here, and every few minutes adamfast
comes in to check stuff, and yes adam i know that messages are still bouncing
from the NEXUS, fucking duh, we've already figured that one out i thought, it's
gone, right?  no, not down, did i say down?  i didn't say it was down, i said
it was gone.  oh, huh mel?  hey, nope, pay no attention to the foreshadowing
behind the curtain.

this is easily more confusing than it is expository, but nothing like getting
off to a good start, eh?  i promise you it can only get more coherent from
here, as the caffeine wears off and the ephidrene too and the adrenaline.  ha,
mel, you just missed shara-liana, coming in here, as if i had any words for her
or she had any words for me; we're both blind and lost here, no-one wants to
say anything to anyone, it's as if all of a sudden no-one knows WHAT's going on
much less who to trust, and so i, the nearest beacon, i get a radar "PING!"
every now and then and all that i can do is go "PONG...", yeah, talk to me
later, sorry.  i'm as lost as you, i'm just unloading it into a word processor
is all.  maybe a little background?  i have mail archives, a few of 'em anyway,
in word processor, on this very disk.  nice and compact, barely separate from
my body, just a bunch of electromagnetic secretions so to speak.  i don't need
to write to run the NEXUS' computer system or an electronic discussion-list.
writing for me is a compulsion, a side-effect of living.  because as i said i'm
a hacker at core, and that's where i learned to be automatic.

you see, when i write, melody, it's just like hacking a messier kind of code.
every computer operating system is different mel, every single one has a
fingerprint; and every programming lingo differs from its fellows, even more so
than the operating systems themselves do from each other.  when i write, it's
like a new language; it's murkier than code, i have to wait longer to run it
through and check for bugs, but the freedom is worth the hassle.  First Person,
Second Person, Third Person, First Person Once Removed.  COBOL, C++, machine
code, LISP.  it all depends.  it all really just depends, melody.  the program
will tell me what lingo it has to be hacked up in even before i have any idea
quite what the program's gonna do.  the same is true of writing, mel.  i have
no reason to write.  it's a secret vice, if you will, which you must, because
you're not here to not-will.  why should a hacker write?  why not stick to
code?  writing sort of engenders an involvement that's awfully great for
someone who just works here, huh.

so i am me, i am !p, and i'm going to tell you about some things that happened
to the Seattle NEXUS, to some people you know and some people you'll never
know.  a nice thing about writing is that when something gets too close i can
just push it right away via the Third Person, like switching to another
programming language to do a different hack.  Third Person Omniscient Past
Tense, only you know that i know that i'm not really Omniscient.  but i have
eyes, mel; i can see, and i can etceterate [word of my own, how'd'ya like it?]
well beyond the borders of what i can see so dimly.  so when i write i get to
play GOD, get to say, George went here, and saw the purple daisies, the
beautiful smelly purple daisies, and also smelled the mint and chocolate in the
air from the corner candy-shop, although i have no idea what George did that
day, although there is no George, although there are no purple daisies,
although there is no damn candy shop.  but i have eyes, and i can etcetrate.
yes you've heard that bit before.

i suppose you know by now that katie loved you and that eventually aqaraza
[didn't meet him either, did you?] hated you for that simple little thing,
right?  "aqaraza, what sort of name is that?"  here, say it out-loud with me:
"aah-KAR-aah-ZAH."  yeah, don't worry, that's just /his/ nickname.  you should
get one mel, very chic, very suave in today's image-oriented day and age and
Net etc.  mel, we all sort of loved you, but don't get me wrong, it was only
because in a way we felt that we were safe from ever actually finding you
again; we could go about our business with you as the Dead Lost Martyr, you
were safely gone, so we could all Love you.  but hey, one day katie wakes up
saying shit like "melody's reached to me in my dreams, aqaraza, and i have to
go to europe to get her, she's still alive!?!"  well, then we all start to sort
of hedge: "hmm, she must have been ok, from what you've said, but i don't think
that it's such a good idea, europe and all... and what about rent money... and
what if you get lost... and what does aqaraza think of all this..." and aqaraza
was pretty well speechless, though i talked to him.  i talked to him a day
later, went on a walk, said aqaraza, what the fuck is she babbling about?

so here, let's use a little of this Third Person i was raving about before...

     "Aqaraza, what the fuck is she babbling about?"
     Aqaraza walked along the night-street at a swift pace; litter ebbed and
flowed in his wake.  It was late November, and Seattle's northerly wind bit at
the city's exposed surfaces; its decaying storefronts and gleaming
office-buildings didn't care, but its people walked quickly.  Aqaraza was no
exception, and PowerSpike could not decide whether he was simply avoiding the
question or prioritizing warmth and speed over its answer.  PowerSpike turned
to Aqaraza tentatively, the look of alarm on his face bordering on melodrama.
The confusion was roundly completed by the reluctance of Aqaraza to say
anything remotely resembling response.
     "Aqaraza, you idiot, what the /hell/ is going on?!"
     "Hey, I know as much as you, probably."
     !p paused a moment, letting a gasp of frigid air measure his response for
him.  "Look friend, as I say, I just work here.  You fucking sleep with her
every night, you were there when she woke up, so what happened?  Simple."
     Aqaraza paid no attention.  Kicking a Dr. Pepper can out of his way, he in
turn used the November chill to induce a frozen throat and silence.  The can
rolled off along the gutter and down a storm-sewer, sploshing into a pool of
unseen gunk.  Aqaraza paid little attention past the initial kick.
     "Ok.  She woke up in some sort of fit, sweating and screaming, and just
like all the other times, I thought that it was another nightmare of the night
she saw Cohen and Mel killed by the Men in Black, right?  Or maybe this was the
night-per-week for her to get mindraped again over the babysitter thing.  Of
course, I mean, after a /year/ of this every night, a person just sort of leaps
to conclusions."
     Aqaraza paused, as if expecting !p to say something; he obliged
noncommittally, a back-channel cue of affirmation to egg aqaraza on.
     "Yeah, we all heard her, like we do every night," concurred !p.  "It
seemed like the same thing as ever, yeah right.  And?"
     Aqaraza continued with the air of someone who was irritated at having to
rephrase the obvious.  "And?  And, well, and it wasn't the same.  She said,
'Melody!  Melody!  Melody you bitch you're alive!'  & I said 'What?'  & she
says the same damn thing, just 'Melody, Melody, you're alive, oh GOD, Melody, I
miss you...'  You know, variations on a theme, not much to say beyond the
initial hang-up which was the fact that we all know that Melody is stone-cold
dead.  I mean, Katie herself said she had seen Mel shot, you know?  She had
gone over it again and again, blaming herself, crying, the whole thing.  I
cried too; I knew she was dead too, and I hated her for still tearing Katie up
like that even though she was fucking /dead/.  But this was worse.  I mean, by
this time we're walking to the cemetery,--"
     "Ridgeview?  Same as us now?" interrupted !p.
     "Heh, yeah, same one of course, how quaint and all that.  So we're
walking; Katie's smoking furiously, doing a sort of Orwellian revision of all
her memories ... you know:  'Come to think of it, I DIDN't ever see her shot
really, i just assumed... I mean, i thought she /must/ be dead, but now i see
she's not' and on and on.  And then she says, 'hey, we have to go get her, I
think she's in Europe, and if you even ask me how I know I'll hit you, we just
have to go get her.  She's there.  She's alive and we have to go get her.'"
     They walked on in brisk silence.  The wind bit at their faces, engendering
squints and eye-watering.  People passed as shadows on either side, shadows lit
in neon red and blue and pink and streetlamp yellow.  All faces turned down, or
towards one another if coupled up.  !p had no idea how to respond to Aqaraza,
and so wasted the moment on the obligatory "Jesus H Christ.  What the HELL?"
     Aqaraza  picked up the slack after a second or two.  "Yeah, you know,
later on, after I realized that she really was convinced she had heard from
Melody in her dreams and that we'd have to fly to fucking Europe to save her,
my resentment for Melody started to shift.  I was no longer angry at Melody for
going and dying and refusing to stop tormenting Katie with her memory; now I
was getting spiteful at 'Melody' for her filling Katie's head with these
/hopes/ that she was still alive.  Especially because, if for some reason this
was all just Katie feeling the strain and breaking up, and we went to Europe to
look for someone who had been dead for a year, Katie would not be able to crawl
back up out, mentally.  And I'd end up riding shotgun all the way down the pit
with her, because I'm stupid enough to love her more than myself.  And you
know, who's to say that Katie hadn't already snapped anyway?  I mean, chronic
nightmares can take their toll, and at this time I was thinking, my GOD,
Katie's gone.  Her brain's been fried by the fear and the hate and the
repressed self-doubt and maybe even by her resentment of me, and *poof*, she's
hearing voices of dead unfulfilled lovers because that's the only thing left
for her, to spend all her money chasing a dead ghost's echo halfway across the
globe.  I could think that, but there's no distance for me to gain, you see?  i
mean, Katie and i are stuck with each other, we're umbilical.  The Secret
Marriage Never Can Be Broken and all of that, you know?!  I /miss/ katie so
much when her eyes go away into nothingness or the wall or the distance, and i
know she's thinking of Melody, and all I can do is try to hug katie and hope
she doesn't jerk away in response!  DAMN it I hate that I love her like I do.
If you can call it that, maybe it's an addiction anyway!  But there's
/communication/ when we're together, I gnow there is... and she gnows it too,
which is what's important.  This is stupid, everything's a mess..."
     Aqaraza stopped; they had long since wandered far from the cemetery, off
near the lights and sounds and smells of Pioneer Square.  Standing in a thin
and narrow alley, roof of stars made dingy by the slight smog, Aqaraza slowly
began to shudder and then to sob, sliding down the wall and into a puddle below
the decaying brick facade.
     PowerSpike stood there in the neon glow, wondering how he had ended up
there, and at the same time wishing he could do something for Aqaraza, his
brother, his father, his son, knowing he could do nothing.  !p began to wonder
at the melodramatic irony; he had avoided a life entangled with passions for
the opposite sex -- or the same sex for that matter -- based largely on
observations of the nightly skirmishes between his adopted brother Aqaraza and
his prodigal sister Katie.  Yet here he was, loving Aqaraza, wishing like a
mother or a dog that he could make the pain go away.
     Wishing then, for no reason he could explain or understand, that he were a
/female/ so that he could kiss Aqaraza and /feel/ it, wishing that he could
offer Aqaraza a chance to disappear into the void that is not-Male.  Then
feeling embarrassed and self-hateful for thinking of that as a cure, as the
sort of cure that a male would conjure up through loneliness or an alternative
to any other form of empathy.  Finally !p reached the point where he was simply
wishing he could avert Aqaraza's attention, or wishing for a lover to come and
divert his attention away from Aqaraza.
     And of course, after this, there was still just aqaraza and the puddle and
the neon light and the smell of stale urine in the gutter and the cold and the
laughing sounds of billiard-ball Newtonian ricochet romance over in Pioneer
Square.  !p kneeled down -- then sat -- beside aqaraza, and hugged him, very
very tightly, because the stars were very very far away [perhaps even 23
light-years away] and were twinkling more like snowflakes than like burning
cauldrons of superheated hydrogen and helium.  After a moment, !p understood
why, and caught a snowflake in his hand, one just the right shape for Aqaraza.
"Here, father."  Aqaraza, now spent, looked up blankly at !p and saw the tiny
fleck of hope.  "Take and eat," smiled !p.  "This is my snowflake given unto
you.  Do this in remembrance of us."

yeah, mel, seen there's a reason for the Third Person, but it always ends up
lapsing for me, back into tawdry melodrama, so i sort of prefer to keep things
open, if you don't mind...  if that's ok with you?  this is me, !p, Paul
Mortstone, PwRsPk, and you know -- i talked to katie as well at various times;
it wasn't just me and aqaraza.  i was in a unique position you might say,
because not only was i the local Unix guru, i was also sort of eunuch by
default.  no siree, i didn't mind sleeping alone, because although i felt the
fucking burning at the core that any other human male [ok, fine, any other
human] who gnows what's going on in there will, i learned to /cope/ with it.
because it just wasn't worth the entanglements.  give me the Net, give me
unfulfillable desires, give me things that would always remain Virtual; just on
the other side of the Real.

but i did /care/.  and it's true what the Third Person up there said about
katie and aqaraza.  for two people who were umbilical to each other, they
certainly stretched the cord past its breaking point often enough.  she, katie,
miss Ice-Cold Mantis-Woman, and aqaraza, mr I'm Not Quite Patriarchal Enough To
Crack Your Face Open, But I Love You Enough To Want To SomeTimes.  mr I Love
You So Much It Burns.  and that burning has to go somewhere.  so my room was
next to theirs, and the pattern was always the same, night after night: first
the yelling, then the accusations, then the struggling, then the silence, then
the caterwauling, then the hours of emptiness, then the waking up screaming and
"hey hey it's ok katie, another nightmare, go back to sleep," and quite often a
final "please, i'm sorry aqaraza, i just want to lay still, please let me lay
here" "ok" "alone maybe i'm sorry please understand"

and then aqaraza would walk out on the upstairs balcony and light up a
cigarette, and half the time i would go out there too.  nightly.  4 out of 7
nights a week, for months.

but as you can guess, i'd get to talk to katie the other 3 nights a week.  in
fact, aqaraza and i had a sort of pact going, because often when she wouldn't
talk to him she'd talk to me, and usually about different stuff than she and
aqaraza talked about [which was generally a fusion of neo-feminism and co-anger
and longing for some stupid impossible resolution].  nope.  katie would talk to
me about causes.

"I keep seeing him, !p." she'd say.  him meaning the babysitter's older
brother.

"I keep seeing him standing there, looking at me like he knew that i would just
put up, looking at me like he just fucking knew that all I would do is sit and
take it and that he barely even needed to put his hand over my mouth, barely
needed to at all because he knew I'd be quiet because I'd told him so, and I
keep remembering what it was like to know that he would anyway, that he would
put his hand over my mouth, and that he would tell me to be very very quiet and
very very still, the mutherfucking FUCKER!!" katie would scream, a shrill
piercing thing, and her eyes would burn like stars seen right on up close, no
23 light year twinkling for her iris-penumbras, jade coals under reddest
falling hair...

[outside, aqaraza would know that soon he could come back in, and so i'd hear
him light his last cigarette out there as morning began to swallow Seattle,
sucking up the SkyNeedle...]

in here, under blankets, i'd hand katie a tissue as she tied up the threads,
the only loose ends left to find, the only possible conclusions.

"I don't know, !p.  i'm not a lesbian through some sort of damn sexual lust, i
don't look at a woman with the same eyes as you or aqaraza.  i feel /pain/ when
i think of contact, i feel violated unless it's one of me.  but for years I
haven't been able to be with a girl like I was in the beginning, because then
it was free from the fucking disease of masculinity, that bug or whatever it
is, no offense to you, personally..."

i always looked away, knowing no answer was expected at that point...  and she
never waited for one before going on:  "...and with Melody i thought it was
finally going to be different again, pure again.  as if she were my /sister/
almost, not literally, but I would be able to lavish her and she could've
lavished me and we wouldn't have had to worry about Ulterior Motives because
there WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN any, there would just be /us/.  Oh, !p, it was gonna
be *beautiful* ... we would just take a bath; I would get to wash her back and
she would wash mine, and we would've giggled and laughed and gotten bubbles all
over.  And we wouldn't CARE, because we wouldn't HAVE to.  For the first time
in years, I'd found someone -- a SISTER, even though she was so fucking distant
-- she was there, like me, and she was just a lost, afraid little girl inside
who had way too many layers of scar tissue built up to do anything about it.
And she was so /alone/ and so dizzy from her life spinning, I just wanted to
hug her and share my blanket with her and give her a bubble bath, because she
looked like she hadn't laughed in /so long/, powerspike.  SO long!...  And of
course there's no /time/, and I messed it up, I left her for dead.  I didn't
even want anything from her but to make it go AWAY, I wanted to make the pain
stop.  I had felt something again that I hadn't felt since I was /14/, do you
understand?  And she's fucking gone now, my GOD, I can't believe things get
THIS fucked up..."

and katie would sob a bit and grimace a bit, and say how much she missed you,
melody.  she would lay there shuddering [and now aqaraza's body is wracked
below me in the puddle by the wall with the neon and the cooing in the Square]
and she would cry your name, melody, and then slowly aqaraza would appear in
the doorway, backlit by the hallway BigBird NiteLite.  i'd look at him, and
know what he was about to say.  always precisely the wrong thing at the right
time or vice-versa of course.

"why do you even want me here?"

and she would fix him with a gaze that was meant for that bastard babysitter's
brother, and her nose would flare, and she would simply say "Fuck.  You."
that's a really overused word, mel.  it has to be saved, it has to be rationed,
but if i could i'd set it aside just for katie to use when she was smoldering,
because that's the only time i've ever seen it done justice; Fuck.  You.  like
a knife shoved into a new wound again and again, like a piercing that won't
stop throbbing or moving in and out, like a profound hatred that only swells
and ebbs, swells and ebbs, but will never never die.

aqaraza would Leave For A Fresh Pack Of Camels, and she would go after.  she
would go after, melody, though she considered him Alien, and i would go out and
take aqaraza's place on the balcony to watch the sun rise.  To hear the door
slam over at the front of the house startling the waking birds, to hear
aqaraza's best shot at defiance echoing around the corner, to hear katie hurl
him [and me indirectly] with vindictive barbs meant once again for her
babysitter's brother.

but you know what's funny: they'd still ask me once in awhile... katie and
aqaraza would come into the TekRoom while i was doing maintenance on the
e.list,  and they'd invite me with them to Pioneer Square.  why i didn't go
out, try to mix up a little, get some companionship.  and i'd just look at the
two of them there and stand up and muss up their hair with either hand and say,
hey, the SoulMate jig's already been perfected by you two lovecats, why try to
do what's already been done?  and maybe i'd even get them to smile at each
other, /genuinely/, and see them walk off without hating anybody.  and i'd hold
my breath 'til they'd gone, unclench my fist, and go back to re-configuring our
Unix account and subscriber base.

katie loved you, melody.  and i think you knew that katie loved you when you
were here.  now, aqaraza came after, and was the only male that katie EVER
loved, practically the only male that katie didn't instantly want to castrate,
much less let inside her, you got it?  not just inside her body, mel, inside
/her/.  her.  the only male for whom it wasn't /always/ an intrusion.  and
aqaraza loved katie, and i loved aqaraza, and it went on from there, mel.
until soon we were all grabbing each other for support, and all pulling each
other down in after you, the hands of love just tugging the war one way, right
on in.  so you see, we had NO CHOICE.

where were you during all of this, melody?  what the hell did you get yourself
into?  why were Men in Black out to kill you?  hey, better yet, why didn't they
succeed?  of course, i don't know that it would have made things go any
smoother, and besides, now i'd have NO-one to write to, so never mind, i guess.
you should have just died.  i sure do wish i was still in school.

and how the hell did you end up in Europe?  and how the hell did you walk
through into katie's dreams?  all we've had for months are stupid,
un-answerable questions, and hey, it's not getting any better.  we thought --
well, i thought, i admit it, -- that aqaraza was right, that you were really
dead and that katie had finally completely flipped out.  but they'd left for
Europe by the time we all realized how weird everything was getting, you know,
aqaraza and katie had already reported from the London NEXUS, so what could we
do?  we went on, then, and very soon we even found direction.  and now things
start to heat up, mel.  in cometh shara-liana, who's still spinning, who knows
her role no better than i do... hey, let's be fair, probably no less fully than
any of us in the end.

do you understand any of this?  how much do you even know about the
DreamHunters?  probably more than i do.  "well, they go into hypnagogia, right
before sleep, and they float there and track down consistencies and patterns
and places in the voice-images in their minds."  we've all got our own little
things to do, don't we?  why do we even bother trying to share anything with
anyone?  it's too much to understand, in once sitting any way, or in a
thousand.  and that certainly means that It's All Too Much period.  the Beatles
said it best, why do what's been done, It's All Too Much period.  why, because
these words are mine, and more to the point, you'll never get this letter.  so
that kind of makes it all worthwhile, don't you think?

hmm.  shara-liana back in the room, more desperate now for a connection with me
than before... ok, gone now.  hey, let's try this:

     Shara-Liana walked into the room, nervously, apprehensively; !p sat at the
terminal, tapping away, as if he didn't even notice her entry.
     "Paul?  PowerSpike?  Paul, please..."  Shara-Liana's voice was cracking,
trembling, failing.
     "Really, Shara-Li, I can't.  I'm sorry, i need to get this out, and I
can't do it by talking.  It's just not my way.  I'm not much of a
people-person; we've talked about this before.  Really, I /will/ be out in a
minute -- "
     "Paul, don't give me that shit.  AdamFast wants to know what the hell's
going on.  Everyone wants to know, and all I can say is what we saw happen, and
that tells them nothing that they didn't know /already/.  Everyone wants you in
the kitchen...  They all need to get /words/ from you, don't you get it?  They
NEED some WORDS and-- "
     "Well tell them that they've got some words coming right up, I'll make a
hardcopy."
     A bald faced lie; !p gnew that the the words he was typing would never
reflect in any eyes but his own.  He was stalling, stalling for time, stalling
until The Forgetfulness Faerie came with his mail-order Amnesi-O-Matic.
     "Paul..."  Shara-Liana began to weep, for the first-past-countless time
that night.  Paul stopped; he could never stand tears, he could not tolerate
tears.
     "Hey.  Shhhh; look, please.  Shara-Li?  Shara-Li.  Hey.  That's it...  Ok,
now, I'm just as stressed and confused as you are, and I know we're all just
trying to get our bearings in all of this.  But you have to understand that --
it's like this.  If I get my bearings in relation to YOU before I've even
bothered to try and get my bearings in relation to what's left of ME -- then
I'm afraid that I'll lose all of ME in the WE, like too many people I love
have.  Please.  Wait.  Just a little longer, and that's a promise."
     !p smiled at her broadly, warmly, took her by the shoulders and hugged her
hard and tenderly.  She, not satisfied, had nevertheless made a connection, and
that was all she had really needed in the first place.  !p sat down again,
began typing again, lost in words again where the only ambiguity he had to cope
with was his own.

> it's amazing how much of human communication amounts to variations on
> "are you ok?"
> "yeah.  and you?"
> "yeah."
> "good."
> "yes, good."

yes.  good.

how do i explain this?  we were a bit frazzled, mel.  because we thought the
whole idea was full of shit, we thought that aqaraza and katie had gone off on
a wild goose chase, and would come back broke at best, or never make it back at
all at worst.  we had word over the Net from aqaraza and katie as they reached
other NEXI in Europe, but less and less the last few months, less and less and
less.  and then shara-liana, and then tonight.

i don't expect you to understand any of this.  but the thing is, mel, we now
know that you're real.  not only that, we now know that the Men in Black are
real, and that sort of makes us wonder why you aren't dead, mel.  that sort of
makes us question our Fragile Allegiances, as if that's just what we need at
this point.

easily the most tenuous, fragile, This Side Up Handle With Care allegiance was
-- is -- that with shara-liana.  a week ago we get word from raven [another
net-person; lives in Boston] that she's found someone who knows where you are.
and so since now "you" also means katie and aqaraza, we listened.  shara-liana
was a friend of ravens who had been doing dream-work for years.  she had done a
lot with hypnagogia, but hadn't known there were DreamHunters who specialized
in the stuff [we didn't advertise, huh].  so one night, while picking her way
through the strata of voice-images, she found one which very insistently
appeared as a lost, confused, extremely headstrong /living/ thing called
melody.  in a city.  in a tower.  in a dream.  and once shara-liana had told
raven, the word was released and made its way to us.  ["the word, once spoken,
always finds its way to where it's going."  where did i hear that?]

shara-li made her way through the NEXUS network to the Seattle house.  she must
have wondered, seeing the big hulking green monstrosity there over the rise,
surrounded by apartments and storefronts; her, a mild-mannered little woman,
well into her 40's.  she must have been completely lost, maybe even more than
we usually are...  that was a week ago, and in that time we were barely been
able to get ourselves and our DreamHunters mobilized.  and she, foreign to the
Net, foreign to any sort of structured DreamHunting, but with 30 years of quiet
experience, sat there on the couch tonight with me, just as confused as the day
she arrived.

GOD, melody, this was only /hours/ ago, tonight -- yesterday now.  i can see
colin standing there in the archway, pacing with some scheme or another running
through his head.  ambient rhythmic music floats through the air with the smell
of yet another wok of stir fry in the kitchen... shara-liana says to colin
something like "well, how can we know that this means melody is alive?" and
colin saying "yeah, we don't know, but the fact that we had no idea who you
were, no connection, makes this all too hard to ignore."  i'm in the fray with
"we haven't heard a thing in days from any of the Europe NEXI, and that scares
the shit out of me.  they should have reported by now, and no-one's answering
PINGs, even the ones that do seem to get through."  shara-li gets up, walks
over to front picture-window, nudging books and cd's out of the way with her
foot.  she stares into the night, lost as any of us.  i can practically /hear/
her thinking it over, the "maybe i should just go home, this doesn't make
sense, i can connect with these people but it isn't doing any good, no-one
knows what to do next..."

so i walk up and say, shara-li, hey; wanna come with me to get a big ol' soda
refill.  easy as that.  we'd talk.  we'd talk it all out.  i was lost too, but
i was used to letting it look like i wasn't.

     Shara-Liana walked slowly, frustrating !p, who always tended towards the
rushed end of the movement spectrum.
     "So, what you're saying," she said, "is that this Melody person is a
wild-card in the first place, right?  That she came here, and no-one knew what
her trouble was, except for the fact that everyone was after her and wanted her
dead, right?"
     "Yeah, that's about it," replied !p easily enough.
     "So, then, I don't get it: why did you even take her in?  I mean, a hot
potato is a hot potato.  In ANY area, whether she's a DreamHunter or a
NetWeaver or just some plain nobody.  If she's in trouble, she should have
friends already to deal with that sort of thing, or else she's out of luck,
right?"
     !p thought about this.  He had been about to take the easy way out, to say
yes, that's right, that's it exactly.  But it wasn't right.  It wasn't it
exactly, it wasn't even it vaguely.  It wasn't the case at all, and he had to
give at least a tiny jab at explaining why -- both to her and to himself.
     "No, you see, the whole problem is this whole Net thing.  Or actually, in
our case, the whole NEXUS thing.  The part you don't know as much about.  Ok.
Computer terminals let you type out words.  Modems let you send those words
across the city, across the state, across the country, across the world.  All
at once, even.  500 electronic copies of the same words typed onto a screen.
Cuts down on paper, and inadvertently it also makes for a weird sort of
community.  Imagine 500 pen-pals strewn around the world who all sent open
letters to each other, and imagine that all of them got those letters within
seconds of their being sent, and could respond with a page or a paragraph or a
word if they wanted and have the reply back to all the rest within seconds.  So
pretty soon you have what in our neck of the woods is called a /virtual
culture/.  A community of people who are sharing their thoughts on a day to day
basis, but who have never met each other.  Got that part?"  !p crossed his
fingers, whistling as they passed the graveyard...
     "Yes. i've got that part."
     "Ok.  So, now imagine what happens when these people finally meet in the
flesh.  They've been sharing each other's words for months, years in some
cases, without ever having touched each other, like this --" !p reached out,
gripped Shara-Liana's hand lightly...
     "Ok, yes," said Shara-Liana.
     "So I can't explain this part, but when these people fleshmeet, as we call
it, there's a certain bond there that ... well, that seems like the most
natural thing, and just can't be denied, but is something that humans really
weren't capable of experiencing before the Net, before virtual cultures cropped
up."
     "So this still doesn't explain why Melody -- "
     "Wait, I'm getting there," !p interrupted. "Ok, so then these net.folx
decide that they all want to live in one place.   Well, not all of them
obviously, but the ones that have made the strongest bond.  So they do so, and
they lease out Internet connections locally and to themselves, and bam, that's
a NEXUS.  then one day, one of those people in that house comes with someone --
someone named Melody, for instance -- who he says is very important, and who he
says is being chased, and who he says is a very close friend."
     A minuscule pause.  !p threw up his hands in retrospective exasperation.
     "No explanation, just 'here; this person is one of us and needs shelter
from the storm.'  So what the hell can we do, turn them both away?"
     "Yes."
     "Well, we didn't, ok?  Everyone has to learn.  So then, that was Cohen,
and that was his friend, Melody."
     "Cohen's the one that got shot in Cedar Falls, right?"
     "Yes, and we thought Melody had too.  But just Cohen, it turns out.  I
guess Mel was just kidnapped, thank the lord for small mercies, huh.  And Katie
was there, but got away."
     "I'm getting confused again."
     By this time they were getting their drinks; 69 cents for a 32 ounce Dr.
Pepper; the same for a Sprite.  PowerSpike continued, confusing the cashier.
     "Ok, never mind.  The point is, we have very little more of an idea than
you do what's going on.  All we knew, dig, was that this person was ushered to
us by someone we already loved, and that she was in trouble, and then that they
were both shot to death in Cedar Falls Iowa of all places.  So in one sense we
didn't have to worry about it anymore, though that's very crass of me to say
and already I sort of feel like a jerk.  But I didn't know Cohen, and I never
even met Melody.  Katie, I knew.  And she came out of it the worst.  She came
out of it with triggered memories of her fucked up childhood, and with an
imprint on Aqaraza, -- "
     "They're really weird; they really mess each other up, don't they?"
Shara-Liana broke in.
     " -- yeah, but stay with me here.  We're nearing the Grand Finale.  So we
only know that some stupid mysterious Men in Black shot Cohen and Melody.
Katie makes it back, half insane, Aqaraza and she fall in some very screwed up
love, and all we can do is take Katie in and mourn not only Cohen and Mel, but
the fact that the world really does seem to be as fucked up as we'd all been
used to fantasizing it was.  So, listen: you don't know a thing about me, i
don't know a thing about you... Katie could have been crazy all this time,
saying Melody was dead, though we had similar word from other corners of the
Net.  But after something like that, Katie's word becomes a bit suspect, you
know?  She says she's having nightmares, that's fine, that's expected.  But she
says that Melody's talking to her in her dreams, and we have to wonder.  What
can we do?  So Aqaraza and Katie fly to Europe, because Katie's Dream-Melody
told her to.  Crazy, right?"
     "Well, no it's not, because i-- "
     "Yes.. because you, who we don't even know, dreamed of her.  Maybe it was
just the word, "MELODY", and it stuck.  Like a catchy melody or something.  But
you write to raven and she writes to us, and of course we're going to get a
little panicked, because someone we don't know claims that Melody's there in
her dreams as well."
     There was a very long, very pregnant pause.  The cars made car-noises, the
wind blew through the telephone wires, their feet moved along the pavement,
motion like a current, steam from their mouths like little wispy clouds, making
the most transient of animal shapes...

a sip on a big fat dr pepper --

melody, you're Real, as Real as the Men in Black and their Operations are,
aren't you?  why else the bodies?  why else the sound and flashing red and blue
and yellow and the smoke?  why else the black charred crumbling and the water
running past our feet down the avenue as our running feet run up the hill
through the running water running down to the bottom of the hill as we get to
the top of the hill where the lights and the ambulance and the smoke and the
smell the smell the smell of burning wood and of burning plastic and of burning
telephone wires and burning posters and paintings and clothing and beds and
flesh

my immediate instinct was to back up and run.  that's the conclusion i come to
here now. that's why all the typing, just to get to this.  when i saw, when i
saw the house gutted like a turkey from a blast-furnace charred and crumbling,
when i saw the NEXUS without modems or phone lines or people or my FAMILY, i
did not want to go closer, or to find the ambulance, or to find JudyBat or
chuck or felix or miss aimee or even colin.  i wanted to run.  so that's it.
you're real, and i just felt that i had to get around to telling you that when
the time came i wanted to run, and i ran.  i ran and ran, and could barely hear
shara-liana running after me, crying, screaming at me to stop, i couldn't see
through the tears, but i could sure as hell blame the tears on the cold and run
anyway, away from shara-liana, and leave her all alone by a devastated home
that she barely had yet and my home that i had just betrayed, first by turning
and then by running and running and running...

but still i came here, to adamfast's.  not because i had to tell adam what was
going on; hell, they're still out there trying to figure out just what's going
on, not that i know any better.  no, i came so that i could write it on his
computer, so that i could exorcise it even before i had allowed myself to
digest it all, because that's the only way i have anymore of reaching myself or
an-other, that's what i do with the energy everyone else uses on absurd love
and Secret Marriages and emotional death-wishes; call it sublimation.  and
maybe now i can start to hear your voice in my dreams now too, melody.  and
maybe now i can finally begin to remember in nightmares the death of my sister
and mother and father in the car with the fire and me and my little stupid
bunny stuffing all falling out, and me saying don't leave bunny don't leave
bunny don't leave bunny, but surgeons always take the bunnies, and surgeons
never give them back.

i've never told that to anyone, and now i've told you what i would only tell a
lover like you, melody; me being a male and communication being impossible and
all, you're as close to a lover as i really want to get, now you're too real.
and now i don't think you're real at all, at all, melody.  you're a bunch of
words, i've made you up just like everyone else must have, because i never
FLESHMET you, and neither did anyone else i know or love.  except katie, and we
all know she's nuts.  you are Virtual.  which means just on the other side of
Real.  just the way i like you, just the way i'll leave you, because you are on
disk and the Forgetfulness Faerie has finally come with the Amnesi-O-Matic, and
lo and behold, it's a bulk magnetic eraser that'd been sitting over here on the
table all along.  i hacked you up, i can wipe you out, no problem, i'll
re-create reality some other day, leaving out the bugs.  and first you go, and
then i will slam my head against this table-top, because no-one but me knows
what's going on -- because the only thing that's going on now is that i ran,
and i'm getting out of here.  a good smack against this desk should put me out,
and when i wake up the only thing i'll need to remember is that you're dead for
real now, melody, because bulk erasers don't lie, and they don't distort
information.  they just erase it.  permanently located on the other side of
Real.  and i'll look at all of them standing around my hospital bed,
shara-liana and adamfast and colin's dead echo and i'll say -- "where am i?
who are you?"

and one way or another, i'll say it.
and one way or another, i'll mean it.