West Virginia
The squirrel chose flight instead of fight as the hawk descended. It really didn’t have a chance and the hawk knew this, but the squirrel fled anyway. Just 10 seconds would have given the squirrel a safe bush to jump in but everything happened in 5. Like lightening the hawk swooped down and its talons dug in, but something dug into the hawk as well. It screamed and died quickly, letting go of the squirrel, which tumbled a couple of feet over. The squirrel just laid there in shock staring at the huge bird caught in mid air by a human arm which was protruding out of the dirt. The arm could have been mistaken for a tree branch... maybe it was. The squirrel started to painfully limp off; gaping wounds from the attack were just starting to be felt. A few steps and then a tremor in the earth just below. Then another limb came bursting through the dirt, impaling the squirrel in the air. They looked like life size statuettes captured in motion for a split second; then she emerged. It was like the ground regurgitated her body then settled once she was on her feet. Sir Jane ate the squirrel first. The pointed wooden talons retreated into her fingers automatically as she put her hand to her mouth. She discarded the rest of the squirrel and consumed all she could from the hawk.
After feeding, Sir Jane walked through the forest instinctively toward a creek. She didn’t look down at her body, but she could feel the blood from her meal trickling down it. There was a small pool by one of the larger rocks that she laid down in, with only her face above water staring around. Blood was still all over it. After part of a moment, bubbles started rising from her gills so she let her head submerge.
The world looked different to her when she was under water, but not as much as it had when her mind used to separate the forms. The earth had felt so completely different from the ponds and lakes. The air seemed like emptiness and the ground seemed solid. Now though, now the ground was more like water, water was more like air, and air appeared to be chock full of particles and waves of light. The sky was the most aggressive, as if one day it would grow into fire itself- still refracting light but just at a higher concentration.
Sir Jane crawled out of the creek and looked down at herself for the first time since she emerged from the earth. Her skin was brown. It had been a whole lot brighter before, sometimes almost pale white. From her chest past her belly, down her legs to her toes was the color of a mahogany table. She stood there a moment examining the differences in her nakedness. A most prominent new development was hardened veins. All of her veins had changed from light blue lines of color to solid thin cords of vine. She rubbed her fingers down her arm then made a muscle. The solid vines expanded. Something was running through them... she noticed that she was a bit more muscular as well; she could see them when she tensed them up. She wondered what happened, however long ago it was, after she was almost twisted to death on that tree. She had envisioned a symbol in her head which somehow freed her from the forces acting against her... then she passed out. All she could remember between then and waking up in the ground was a series of non-visual yet sexual dreams. She had been caught in a spiral of non, mild, and highly euphoric feelings and experienced a dull awareness of physical alteration... like a chemical change.
The euphoria was gone now... but it left something behind, like a thin veil of protective health. A seemingly impenetrable veil. It was attached to the symbol; she knew it. She could feel the connection between the symbol and the physical form of energy she sensed around her body. She had merged with it. It had formed in her mind and it had formed in her flesh... but what was it?
"Tyrone!", she thought. "I have to find the angel Tyrone!", she said out loud, breaking into a sprint. She noticed that she was running twice as fast as she could before and that she wasn’t tiring. After a minute her gills opened up and made breathing effortless. She envisioned her body moving faster and it did. The ground felt alive and it was helping her along, as was the air- guiding her around trees at such a speed. In time she let that veil of energy, that symbol, control the movements of her body so she didn’t have to.
Her body picked up speed. Sir Jane acted on an idea she had and jumped directly at the tree. When she connected she screamed out loud! As her body passed through the tree an overwhelming tingling sensation coursed throughout it, leaving her in a state of uncontrollable laughter. It was more like a cackle; a mad cackle. Rainbow tears streamed from her eyes each time she ran through a tree. They dripped down her body in what could only be described as liquid flourescent light. From her pores came this substance also making her look like a highly irregular forest creature. She went faster and faster snapping her way through sections of delirious sensation.
The laughter was something new, something powerful. It consumed her completely for a moment. So much so that she didn’t notice running out into the middle of the road until she collided with a Police Force issue hum-V. She connected with it’s right front corner and it sent her spinning off to the other side of the road into the forest. This time when she whirled through trees they cracked to pieces. She was out of control, but still moving and steadily losing speed. With just a blink of the eye she regained focus and remained at a steady pace. With concentration she began to think about what happened.
"When I smacked the truck I felt something leave me... I’m less dense, lighter... Something left my body that I was bound to." She was thinking to herself in a very unattached manner. "There was something else... I was going somewhere, doing something... What?" But the truth was that she no longer cared.
Back to the Accident
When Sir Jane collided with the truck it began to spin also. It twirled like a top. Five men were thrown out of the vehicle, and two of them remained inside. All were dead by the time the Hum-V stopped spinning, and the vehicle itself was embedded into the dirt on the side of the road.
Just beyond the bodies at the edge of the tree line was what Sir Jane left behind. It was part of herself. An exact replica from the looks of her, except for minor details. Her skin was pale white; even lighter than it had been before the last change and the hardened cords for veins were gone- normal, soft and blue. There were no slits for gills on the side of her neck, and no flourescent fluid lighting up her body. She was normal. The bottoms of her legs and one of her arms were bleeding. The side of her head was bleeding from where it smacked the dirt and she was also completely unconscious.
Off the coast of Florida
It was a commercial fishing boat off the coast of Florida. It was a tuna boat- the fish could tell by the nets before they even saw the boat. The fish that were gathered outside of the net surveying the situation were a new species. They were the newest descendants of the ancient lobe finned fish. A couple of them swam up and rounded the boat, trying to get an accurate count of the crew. A few minutes later they descended back down by the nets. "How many crew members?", asked one fish scout. "It is a crew of 10.", another replied. They looked from each other to the rest of the group by the net. Ten of them floated up to the top of the net then descended into it. They mingled with the countless tuna already trapped in the net, waiting to be lifted into the boat. The engine hummed later as the crew began to lift the nets up.
The three remaining lobe finned fish gathered at the surface to watch their plan play out. The fishermen were mystified at the sight of them. Hundreds of them poking their heads just above the surface in a state that appeared to be intent observation. "Have you ever seen anything like that before?", a large bushy sailor asked out loud. It took a moment for someone to reply. A guy in corduroy pants said, "I saw a baby white poke it’s head outta water before... but those look like...shit, they look like muskies." He scratched his head and said, "I never seen nothing like this before."
The crew was scattered along the edge of the deck staring back at the fish. One of them, this skinny guy named Larry, freaked the hell out. He pulled out a hand gun and shot at one of the fish. The fish managed to scoot to the side, dodging the bullet, and then moved back into place. Larry developed this look of cold awe on his face. "Did you see that?", he asked anyone, "It dodged my shot." "No, you just missed, Larry!", somebody shouted. The nets reached the boat and the crew hoisted them onto the deck. "See if any of them fish are caught in there!", Larry part shouted and part quivered. "Why don’t you, Larry?", a guy in an ACDC shirt yelled back, "You’re just a nut ball... yeah!"
Somebody else went up to the pile of fish. It was an older guy in his early 60's. Name of Stan. He had a tattoo of a barracuda on the left side of his neck, his left forearm and his lower left leg. Around his eyes were many thick wrinkles, but the rest of his face was fairly smooth except for a permanently white 5 o’clock shadow. Some people thought he was Cuban, and some thought he was Caucasian. He spoke English and Spanish, neither better than the other. Well, Stan went up to the pile of fish and started sifting through the tuna. "Here’s one.", he called out, "They do look a bit like Muskie."
Stan continued sorting till he had a pile of 10, "That’s it. There’s no more." somebody said that they must have been pretty smart fish for so few of them to be caught. They reminded Stan of barracuda somehow as he held one of them close to his face for a good stare. He became a little uneasy. The skinny guy Larry and the guy in the ACDC shirt walked up to the pile of fish when it was clear that they weren’t going to eat Stan. After looking at them for a bit more than an instant, Larry picked one of the fish up and threw it overboard. "What ya do that for Larry?", somebody cried out. "I wanted to save that fish’s life.", Larry replied.
Then suddenly out of nowhere, Larry and the guy in the ACDC shirt walked up to the group of fishermen and grabbed two of them. The men barely had time to react! They were thrown 20 feet into the pile of fish by the time their eyes blinked. Stan got smacked in the face by one of the flying men. Two more men went flying over, but they were caught by the other two men who had been thrown on the fish just a moment before. Now those two men held the next two men so they were forced to face the fish. A couple of fish that were laying flat rolled over on their bellies and spit something out of their mouths. Whatever it was, was so small and expelled so quickly that Stan couldn’t see it. It was a perfect shot, connecting perfectly with the inner nasal cavity of the men’s noses. Their heads drew back a touch and Stan could see the transformation in their eyes. Like a high speed cataract, the lens of the eyes filled with a cloudy haze and then crystallized. "Intelligent fish eyes", Stan thought and clutched the tattoo on his arm without knowing it.
One of the last remaining crew members pulled out a knife, but whoever the guy in the ACDC shirt was now; well- he knew martial arts. A kick and a chop later and the last crew member had a new pair of eyes. Only Stan was left. He just stared there clutching his tattoo with a blank expression on his face. The new Larry walked over to him and asked, "How have you been surviving with them? You’re one of the Others. You should be dead."
Stan knew what he was talking about. His old ship mates were going to kill him, there was no doubt about it. He had been running out of time for a while. "I made it this far...", he said, "because I kept my mouth shut... and ‘cause of these here tattoos." Stan looked down then up, "I got these tattoos ‘cause my family was killed by barracuda when I was just a boy... and I reckon they let me live so long ‘cause they thought I was half crazy from it." Stan mildly stammered. "Congratulations Stan!", said the new Larry, "We have their memory now... and they were going to kill you tonight."
Boat Ride
While the new Larry spoke to Stan, the rest of the crew set the boat toward the shore. They continued the preparation and packaging of tuna. "We’re the new leap in the evolution of human kind, Stan.", said the new Larry, "There was a block, and there remains a block in the further development of humanity as you’ve known it. We are aware now that our purpose is to remove that block. We can temporarily inhabit human bodies and use our collective knowledge to operate them. This allows us to operate much more efficiently than an ordinary human with a single knowledge base. You were spared Stan, because we could tell by intuition that your circuitry was still receptive to internal stimulus. You can still evolve."
Stan rubbed his left arm tattoo, "What does internal stimulus mean?" The new Larry started to explain, "There are parts of you that can still think for yourself. People that are blocked are wired to make decisions based wholly on external influence." The new Larry went on, "We have the ability to inhabit a human body for as long as we care to. Our aim is to remove every blocked human organism and to stay alive ourselves. When we started out we thought we would have to get rid of everyone, but we’ve located others like yourself. When we reach shore we’ll bring you to them and you can tell them what I’ve told you.
When they reached the shore of Miami, Florida, they were met by some members of the Peace Force. Everyone had to go through the Peace Force these days. One of them walked up to speak with the new guy in the ACDC shirt. A moment later the ACDC guy fell on the ground. The Peace Force member then told a few of the Peace Officers to pick the guy up. This in turn made more of the fishermen fall to the ground. There were only a few remaining members of Peace Force who weren’t inhabited by fish now, but they couldn’t tell that anything was wrong because their fellow members in uniform were acting totally cool. " These sailors are sick", said an inhabited member, "Throw them back on the boat until medical shows up." The remaining Peace Force members were inhabited effortlessly, and the entire fishing crew except for Stan and the new Larry lay as newly discarded corpses.
They descended into the first sewer cap they came to. Stan followed them for hours, puking steadily. He was the only one who puked. After a long, long while they could hear muffled music and they stopped. "If you follow the music you’ll find the Others... like yourself.", said Larry, "This is where we depart. Tell the Others all they have to do is remain alive and we’ll eventually free them. It will take just over 3 years." One of them gave Stan a flashlight and they then jumped into the sewer water. Stan shined his flashlight down and saw the bodies writhe around. As they twisted, the flesh fell off the bodies and a fish emerged from the entrails. It looked just like a muskie to Stan. After the fish emerged they devoured the corpses they came from in a matter of minutes. Stan looked on in amazement. One of the fish poked its head out of the water and Stan instinctively waved. It disappeared.
As he walked toward the music Stan mumbled, "This band better put on a hell of a show after that..."
The Most Recent Letter from Che’ra to Her Grandmother
Mama, I know you’d be proud of me today. I’ve altered the entire innards of a city to create the largest viosex center in the nation. The name of the city is Albany. It’s in New York. I chose it because I can have a fresh transport of slaves brought in from NYC. I’m hoping to get a huge supply of higher class women. Noone knows it yet and most probably never will, but a small section of my viosex center will be used by the top CEO’s in the world! It goes without saying that I’ll need some high end vagina to fill it. I hate myself grandma. My ranking has increased dramatically over the past few years here. I see the man in the gray hat almost every week. He tells me you cry when you read my letters. You don’t have to cry Mama, I’ll cry for you. You just hang on and I’ll make it all better. I don’t drink every day and I’m not addicted to cocaine. It’s hard to stay awake as much as I work, so it helps. I asked for some pictures of your brain because I’ve been studying up on tumors, but they said you don’t need help. The reason I chose Albany as my city was also because of a structure I saw there that looks like a big brain. Other people say that it looks like a space ship, but my little secret to you is that its my new head of operations. I’ve been thinking about overdosing on heroin to fry my circuits but I have to live for you grandmother. I’m only living for you because were not both dead. I think we’d be happier dead, Grandma.
Love, Che’ra
Che’ra had been writing letters almost every day to her grandmother since they were separated. She would have someone drop them off with the man in the gray hat every week. He would read them and make adjustments to her treatment accordingly. Yes, he worked with Che’ra like one works with a patient that one doesn’t want healed.
The man in the gray hat was good at what he did... too good? Something was. As he worked, decisions were foisted upon him from somewhere else. He didn’t remember coming up with ideas- they appeared themselves. He spent every hour of every day manipulating events and while he was doing this he was all powerful. Working on Che’ra’s case brought something else out though. There was more than one occasion upon which he slipped into a rather dangerous state of mind because of her. It could be more justified to describe it as an emotion, because these brief moments never actually crystallized into any cognitive thoughts. Brief they were; never exceeding 6 seconds. The Feeling... was like standing up after an incredible fall- in awe of being and yet still not certain of remaining. The man in the gray hat felt this along with a hysterical sense of helplessness; but for never more than 6 seconds at a time. It had progressed to happening weekly, probably once a week over the past month. He knew instinctively that exploring this matter would lead to an unraveling of himself and perhaps of the near perfection all around him so he focused harder on work when the feelings erupted. Things were on their way to how things were supposed to be... that, mattered most.
His Dream
Parts of humanity were chosen to evolve over other parts of humanity. The man in the gray hat never actually thought about it; he just knew it from within. Some people were born princes and some were born dogs- people without vision, people without ambition. These people ruled over the world for a long time and nothing came of it... they’d watch as movements were created and eventually they would destroy them. Fortunately there were enough princes now to keep the dogs under control. How it happened he didn’t know; he didn’t need to know. All human beings were living with purpose now. The work ethic was at the highest level that it had ever been, although it did have to be maintained through regulations and insight. Incorporating the drug trade into the work force created a more efficient system than ever seemed possible. Even the laziest dogs would show up to work for the fix they so craved.
The basic needs of human beings were being met. Sex was there for anyone willing to show up for it. Pure sex. Sex with women. It had been in their nature to provide that service and now the idea was becoming crystallized. There was such a remarkable difference after all homosexuals were forced into the sex trade to serve the opposite sex. They got used to it. Of course they weren’t allowed to breed, and most of them had to be killed- homosexuality was still a big risk.
Murder came into use very often and helped in ways you wouldn’t imagine. All people have violent tendencies and previously they had been afraid of these impulses. Things were different now. People were shown where to direct their anger and violence. Even suicide was encouraged in the case of dogs who were better suited to end it than keep going. The crippled and the developmentally disabled underwent new forms of reality therapy to help them best understand the nature of their position... their burden to society. Families received benefits from the deaths of the disabled... and those deaths were never investigated.
Deep down everyone knew whether they fit with the program or not. Common ideals united people and if those ideals were nurtured, people became bonded. If other people, with other ideals, were allowed to progress as well; there would be a division in unity. The whole would never be complete. That is where the man in the gray hat’s aim was– the whole. Everything had been set up for him and his project– what I call the replacement system. To him the replacement system was simply a catalyst for the inevitable outcome of an experiment. The experiment of human nature.
The New Warehouse ( ... or Warhouse)
Ten successful missions! Although we had some close calls, the Annie and Jack incident being the worst, we came out with our heads above water. A new technique made everything possible.
The software genius Bob previously had a hobby transmitting signals from non-portable devices to portables. It was fun for him- so after we hooked into the satellite, using the technology we stole, he spent all of his waking hours figuring out things we could do with it. One of these inventions was a universal locator. We could send out 5 squads, and if a member from each group had a reception device, someone at the satellite warehouse ( the 2nd warehouse) could keep the location and communicate with all squads at the same time. We already had 2 reception devices. The most important thing Bob came up with was a mini midi modem which could be directly linked up with our satellite connection. We could use it to transmit the live music from the Replacement System to any audio input in the city. It came in so handy over the last 9 missions!
It started out that maybe 50 of us were active in the first missions. These were led by me, Tyrone, Novocaine and Jack to obtain more technology for the satellite system. Tyrone and Jack led a group to the hospital for the supplies. We heard about the outcome on the news the next day. On the radio they were talking about a mass hysteria epidemic brought on by rumors that led to the disappearance of 2 dozen people. They never mentioned what the rumors were, or that a good number of supplies were stolen. None of us had so much as a scratch from that incident.
Me and Novocaine broke into a Radioshack for stuff Bob needed, and we had to fight our way out of the store. I got a little cut up and a bit bruised from that one. Luckily, we had obtained everything we needed for the mini modem to work.
The rest of the missions went remarkably well. We’d get to a place and hook up a midi to an audio jack that was around or to a radio we brought ourselves. At the first sight of anyone we’d blast the music and hide. They’d wander in and then we’d see their eyes start to water or their faces grow pale. Most of them who had weapons would try to use them on themselves. We stopped many of them and returned with them to the warehouse.
The last of those missions was a turning point. We broke into a large high-rise in search of higher status individuals who may have been entrusted with more information. Me and Jack traveled up the elevator to the top floor. We had one radio between us. When we saw somebody, we turned it on and they hardly had an instant to react. We told them to stay put and wait for us. Usually people couldn’t move much even if they wanted too, after first waking up. They curled up mostly... or killed themselves.
Jack and I were at the top floor when we went into the room. It was labeled "Gentlemen’s" on a solid gold plate. We went in quietly. It was a huge white marble bathroom with mirrored ceilings and floors. Everything was impeccably clean, even the great golden urinals against the wall... with a girl handcuffed to each one. There were 6 urinals with a girl of a different ethnicity and age on each one. One of the girls was being used at that moment by a man in a suit. He was vicious, violently pushing her against the urinal. Me and Jack looked at each other and the man stopped, sensing our presence. He turned his head toward us and let out a slightly embarrassed chuckle. "Oh, I wasn’t expecting this!", he said while staring at Jack. He looked at me and said, "Leave her here. I’ll take her after I’m finished with this one." Then he turned back around and without even a look, me and Jack had our knives pulled out. We slaughtered him. The young adolescent he had been raping just stared like a zombie as we cut him to pieces.
Jack and I returned to the warehouse that night covered in blood. Who could know what to say after we explained the situation to them? They couldn’t say anything to us at that point... but we were the first to kill. Novocaine hadn’t said a word on the ride back. Tyrone seemed somewhat detached from the situation. He said stuff like, "They’re some pretty messed up sonofabitches ‘round these parts... and it’s getting worse. Hard to believe that so much. Just hold on now...", he said, "You’ll make it through. It ain’t all or nothin..."
"What ain’t all or nothing!?", Jack snapped back angrily. "I’ll tell you what Tyrone,", Jack said seriously, "Now I’m either all or nothing." Tyrone made a scatterbrained recovery, "Listen to me bitch, listen up.", he pleaded kindly, "I... am down with you. I am all with you, bitch. All, nothing... part... or something. I, you know, care... ‘bout cha, that’s all...." We were silent the rest of the way home.
Me and Jack didn’t bother to clean up after we got back; we called for a meeting. In that meeting we called for a more expansive effort against the threat. We told them too many people were living in a hell like state and it was getting worse. "So , what do you want to do?", someone asked. "We want to go after the viosex shops, The Unwilling and The Afraid.", Jack said. She went on, "If we can free up one of the centers, people we find there might be able to help locate the hidden centers. We’ll work our way up to the CEO’s, collecting an army along the way." "OK", someone said after a short silence, "Lets do it!"
That night I couldn’t sleep because of a bad headache and the music from the Replacement System was making it worse. Jack let me borrow a couple earplugs and immediately I felt better. Living with constant rock and roll was taking it’s toll too.
The Progress
We cleaned out a viosex center every week. After locating a center it only took a few days for all preparations. A regular sweep took about 30 people and lasted less than 2 hours. We owed most of our success to our equipment- which had slowly been collected since mission 1.
Equipment for 1 person
Inner ear headset
Multi pocketed vest w/ built in speakers
Mini modem
Multi pocketed pants
One gun
One knife
Capsule of poison
We had 12 vans scattered in and on the outskirts of the city. Sometimes they’d get stolen, but it was easy to steal more back ourselves. Another warehouse had to be opened up to house all of the new people we retrieved from the centers. There were more young people than we had imagined. The 1st warehouse came to be known as the playpen ‘cause the majority of inhabitants were pre-teen and teens. Among the adults who stayed there were Jimmy and Darkwing. Each warehouse was holding about 200 people a piece. Each place was crowded, had it’s own distinct smell, and separate brand of conflicts.
Conflicts in the play pen centered around the kids. Almost all of them had been rescued from the viosex centers. Listening to the Replacement System was all the therapy any of them seemed to need. For their first moments at the warehouse they were mostly in half dead trances, but after a few days they were kids again. Their experiences did leave a mark though. The use of swearing and sexual language was rampant. They knew as much as adults did so the taboos were dead. In many ways they were much freer than adults, whose former lives had been more predatory than victim oriented.
The children were rebellious in other ways too. Many of them found the religious grasping of the adults to be hilarious. People were steering them toward Buddhism, Christianity, New Age, and Atheism all the time so the kids eventually made up their own religion. They called it Buddianity, and they called themselves the Zensters. The practice of their religion seemed to be focused on making fun of the grownups, who were usually not very amused at all. Sometimes when an adult would make a self righteous comment, one of the older kids would chide them back. Once a grownup told a kid that she should watch her language or she might get her mouth rinsed out. The girl replied plainly, " I think we met before, man... In The Unwilling... ‘cause I remember you said the same thing to me when I was sucking your dick." The guy just turned red and walked away. The girl called after him, "I’m just pulling your nob, man... Sorry, just kidding!" Then she started laughing.
In general, these semi- wild kids were inherently more decent than their typical predecessors. None of the kids picked on each other. No belittling. No names were called without a positive tone or at the very least a half-assed apology would follow a negative remark. It was as if they regarded each other equally and vented their frustration at the adults, who tended to be the more disapproving crowd.
The opposite of this warehouse would be ours; the Warhouse. That’s what it came to be called. We kept most weapons stored there, so the kids weren’t allowed anywhere near it. There wasn’t a lot of playing around or socializing either. In fact, once we stocked it with weapons, The Replacement System couldn’t play there anymore because of the threat of electrical fires. We did have midis set up to project their music for security reasons though.
We didn’t have much conflict within the Warhouse as far as I’m concerned. Perhaps the existence of the Warhouse was the conflict itself; all division seemed to stem from it. We felt that we had a duty beyond our own survival. They felt like they had to wait on some fish...
The middle warehouse was just what you’d think it would be. Everyone who wanted to get away from the kids, but didn’t want to get involved with the aspects of warfare; at least it seemed that way. The biggest conflict there were people complaining. With little to do, it became an obsession for many of them. The kids were too wild, the Warhouse is evil, everybody else’s religion was the wrong one... blah, blah, blah. The funny thing was that they all visited the other warehouses regularly and seemed to enjoy each one. Their negative opinions surfaced only when they were idle and bored- so we were always trying to get them to join up with us- because we were never idle.
This second warehouse all in all was a true blessing. Us warmongers and those peacenicks could keep in fragile touch with each other through it’s ambivalence. That’s where the rumors of me and Jack’s bloodlust started. It’s also where we learned about the prophesy of the fish.
When we first heard about strange fish it had to do with Pat and Danny, when one or both of them was on LSD. One of them saw a big fish in the sewer... and fish can’t live in sewers, so the story went. Besides that, Danny had claimed that the fish actually looked like her! Little to say, we laughed like we usually did when we heard a Pat and Danny story. Later on though, a new stranger showed up at The Playpen with this incredible story about evolved fish. Jimmy and Darkwing immediately supported this guy Stan’s story based on some prior visions Jimmy had, and the uncanniness of Pat, Danny, and this guy Stan seeing the same thing.
This struck a chord in me at first because I remembered witnessing that trance Jimmy had with the fish. He had mentioned muskellunge at the bottom of the lake doing really weird shit- This guy Stan said he "met" the fish out on the ocean. He said they’d free us if we could stay alive for 3 years. He also said the fish looked like muskellunge, which to say the least is uncanny. In general I had no idea what to make of the whole situation, but I was sure of one thing... I didn’t want to wait for the fish to save us. I wanted to believe it just as much as they did but I knew that if it wasn’t a joke it was probably a trap.
I mean, if I was hunting down a bunch of people, I too would hope they’d stand around and wait for me to get them. Most of us in the Warhouse didn’t let the rumors get to us; because we were succeeding.
Success
You could have called me and Jack partners. We went into action as a pair, and we paired up during downtime too. Jack was still a pair with someone else though; Annie. Annie was in rough shape. She could look around and make guttural noises but nothing discernable to most of us. Jack spent time with her though. She fed her breakfast and they slept in the same bed each night. Annie could move her arms, but cognitively she was too slow to carry out most basic functions. That’s probably why Jack stayed up late with me drinking. Yeah, that’s what we did at night. A few of us made a lot of use out of confiscated alcohol and drugs. They say alcoholism is a progressive disease, but in certain situations it’s a way of life. Each week we went into a nightmare and a little bit of it came home with us.
I remember sitting around after one of the first missions drinking whiskey and playing cards. That night Novocaine, Jack, and 3 Others, including myself, were staying up extra late. We were talking about how fucked up things were in the viosex center and Novocaine said, "You know what really gets me? What really gets me is how normal this raping and mutilation seems to everybody. It’s like they’re playing video games. Like they’re tapped into one nasty, bad mouthed game... Mr. And Ms. Machine.... I guess what gets me is how easy it seems for people to go bad... to become something terrible... I could almost see it in myself."
"That’s not a part of you Novocaine!", I snapped, "If that was a part of you, you’d be doing that shit right now! You wouldn’t care about saving people! You’d be chewing ‘em up like meat! You’re not like that Novocaine!"
"Yes he is", whispered one voice. "No he’s not", whispered another. Everyone had heard the voices. Everyone got a little creeped out too. Of course Tyrone had entered the room. He leaned over and picked up a beer from the table. As he was drinking it he looked around at all of us staring at him. "Can you all hear what I’m hearing, or somethin’?", he asked. "That’s pretty creepy Tyrone. I don’t know how you can stand it!", replied Jack. "Sorry ya’ll. I came over here for a beer... to quiet up my ears. My friends got a little chatty after tonight... but"- gulp- "the buzz is dying down.", said Tyrone. He started to walk out of the room and when somebody asked where he was going, he said he was going to see The Replacement System. They were playing in the other warehouse. Tyrone left.
Novocaine spoke up, "Have you all ever seen Pat and Tyrone hanging out?", Jack nodded her head with a smile. Novocaine laughed, "They’ll both sit there staring off and talking but they won’t actually be saying anything to each other!" Everybody laughed a bit; they knew that both Pat and Tyrone tended to space out and talk to themselves. "I’ve listened in on their conversations a few times ‘cause it’s some of the coolest shit I ever heard! She’d be talking about... light and stuff-", Novocaine got cut off. "Stolen light!", Jack interrupted, "They stole the fucking light..." She blurted out excitedly. "Yeah, that’s it.", said Novocaine, "And Tyrone at the same time... is arguing with his voices." Novocaine got an excited look on his face too, "Now, if you listen to what they’re both saying; it... it almost goes together perfectly. Sometimes, it’s as if the voices in each of their heads are speaking to each other... like they’re having their own chat!" Everyone was interested. "No shit", we all said more or less. "I couldn’t believe it when I heard it, and when I did start to listen it kind of freaked me out!", said Novocaine.
Non conversation Between Tyrone and Pat
P- "It’s more than a shroud covering. It’s like pulling guts from the light. A disintegration. A piece by piece."
T- "Well, they have ideas that we’re gonna cancel shit out... that’s just how it goes.
P- "Love cant be manipulated, just the brain. The only use for contradictions is human blockage.
T- "You see, a whole person see’s all of what’s there. If you see your own version you only lookin’ at yo’self."
P- "Do they have to be pried from the light... to burn in the sun? Or is it just an exchange of light?"
T- "You can talk about death. Death’s OK by me... but murder, murder is manipulation. Manipulation don’t fix shit... just moves it."
"There were even times when they’d look at each other and say something but their expressions didn’t change in the slightest... I swear it was like they were both having a chat while they were asleep.", finished Novocaine. "Maybe they’re awake, and we’re asleep." I said. "Everybody’s asleep", added Jack, "and we’re having a nightmare."
Bloodlust
Jack and I developed a special bond shortly after the time we cut the man to pieces in the bathroom. We started to view reality together as a nightmare... but we didn’t want to be victims in the nightmare. We wanted to cut apart the beast piece by piece. In a way that’s what we did; we cut apart anyone who resembled the beast which we were set to destroy.
What started out as an act of passion became an art form to me and Jack. We always hauled ass to where the big wigs were staying. For certain, the worst demons feasted in those high corridors. Human beings were recovered and through loose sheets of flesh, predatory animals of a lower nature were exposed. These were the demons of fairytales and legends- they were reflected from the cold eyes of men in good suits who preyed on the minds and flesh of the weak. In these rooms we were less merciful. If one of them was woken up by the music we wouldn’t slaughter them, we’d let them destroy themselves. We tried not to let the music get to most of these people, though. We wanted them for what they let themselves become. When they begged us not to end them we told them to apologize, but none of them could do it with any sense of real feeling. They believed in what they did. I had seen Jack on more than one occasion remove her eye patch to kill someone... to let them know that she was... back for revenge.
We called them all The Man, although there were a few women also at that level. We threw their own fear back at them. We threw it back in the form of horrific displays. We tied one body from the ceiling like a puppet just inside of the front door, so it would be standing when someone found it. We had it’s stiff arm extended out holding a gold card. That would scare them! We propped corpses up at the dinner table, in the bathroom, against windows, and on sculptures. We wrote in blood, filled wine glasses with it, and on a few occasions drank some ourselves. This went on for quite some time... for quite some time it went on.
The Tester
Ray picked himself up off the ground. His legs and arms were bleeding from the fall he had just taken, but nothing was broken. Even his gas powered skateboard was laying there undamaged. He looked up at the ledge. It was 15 feet up in the air; that’s pretty high. He didn’t think he’d break though. Not at that height, relative to the angle he landed at.
His father was an abomination and would have to be destroyed. He had failed the test years before at Ray’s interrogation.
When Ray was writhing around on the ground of the white padded room with chemicals rushing throughout his body, his brain wasn’t working in a cognitive manner. It was reaching for abstract emotional impressions which created a chaotic flood of feelings. These feelings had control of his brain and his own uncontrollable screaming fueled their responses. Ray realized that he didn’t have control of his body, and he saw the man in the gray hat look into his room for a split second. In that split second Ray knew he had seen him. It was his sonofabitch father standing there... and he didn’t do nothing!
The fusion of chemical pain being mixed with sexual and violent stimuli was killing him. His father must have known! Ray thought back to a movie he’d seen with a father who wasn’t helping the son. The son screamed for the father to save him until the father did save him! "So that’s how it worked!", Ray thought when he was young. He found enough will inside to consciously scream out to his father. As he screamed out for his father to help him, he felt himself become somewhat removed from the situation. He could feel the pain and sickness, but he experienced it and analyzed it partially as an observer... and the observer was focused on his father. The father never returned- failure. From that moment on, Ray held the deepest parts of himself within him.
Thinking about this, he dusted the dirt off his clothes and got back on the board. He pulled his remote controlled driving device from his pocket and started off again down a path he knew was a short cut.
Ray had previously been drugged with mass quantities of stimulants and hallucinogenics after his capture at Danny’s house. His brain was working so quickly that he felt a need to smash his head against the ground to stop it. He knocked himself out on several occasions until one day they put a book of maps into his cell. He had something to focus on! It didn’t matter how much time went by; Ray was just trying to hold it together ‘cause he didn’t want to go crazy. He didn’t want to lose himself completely. He started walking. Not in the room, but in his head according to the maps. He went all over the country and even followed waterways using a boat he built from his imagination. He’d travel at light speed and scream out loud as he flew off the map... that’s how real it became. All the information soaked into his brain, gently slowing it down to give him peace in the process.
He knew his way around the country well enough after that... and he knew why as well. The demon whore; Sir Jane. He was being groomed to find her- and he would, sure enough. What he’d do after he found her... he didn’t know yet. His plan was simple- he’d ride around until he found her. Maybe he’d ask some questions along the way, who knows. He’d find her though... they were connected. That’s something the man in the gray hat didn’t understand. The man in the gray hat couldn’t see the connectedness of things, and that’s why he kept his distance. "Eventually it will lead to his downfall." , Ray thought.
Ray had tried to have sex already on several occasions. The first 2 times he rented a room and a person on the black market. The first was a young Latino girl who couldn’t speak English very well. Ray didn’t want to risk any communication. Pleasing men was her job so she went right to work, but as soon as Ray became aroused, deep violent urges surged within him.
He was barely aware when he smacked the girl across the room. He was barely aware when he pulled the big knife out of his jacket... but he was completely aware when he jabbed the knife into his side. You might think he cut himself to keep himself from killing the girl, but that wasn’t the case. He did it to save himself, to bring himself back. To Ray, there was nothing worse than the chemical dream. The forced nightmare; those chemicals were fierce. When they had control of him he could barely feel himself, and that’s why he gave an innocent smile to the gaping wound in his side.
He brought himself back from the brink. Ray thought that perhaps he’d been programmed with a hatred toward women to help with the destruction of Sir Jane. It became apparent after the second woman he tried. The next one was older than he was, probably in her 30's. Same outcome. That time he took a slice in the leg. Ray had become so desperate, he used his clearance card to get into a viosex center. He went directly to the torture chamber that was called "The Afraid". The body parts strewn around, the slaughters... they would have been too much for a people of a different time- ‘But people were more like himself now’, Ray thought. He was walking through what to him, looked like a department store. Humans were products. Ray thought about animals, and plants, and minerals. He wondered why humans would be exempt. We were all connected at one point- and everything ended also.
Ray thought he’d probably end his own life after he was finished with the man in the gray hat. It was growing more and more apparent to him that happiness was somewhere else. Ray made his way to the appropriate area and locked himself in a chamber with a 20 year old. He thought she might have been Indonesian. She was a complete zombie... no cuts on her though; she was fresh.
Ray took the shackles off of her wrists and ankles, then motioned for her to give him space. He locked himself in the shackles. He then motioned for her to begin. She got on top of him and did the best she could to act alive. It was enough to get him aroused because the anger welled up inside of him. Ray tried desperately to gain control over it but it took him. He turned into an animal, right there, clawing at the air and screaming! He was out of reach of her body, but she was scared out of her mind. Crying and shuddering, she leapt off of his lap onto the ground, and then scrambled for the door. Ray was screaming at her to cut him- his eyes were replaced by an insane rage! She found his card and unlocked the door, then she ran screaming down the corridor. Ray was at the brink of losing his mind. The rage consumed him as he tried to get loose. The shackles wouldn’t budge without someone else to release them. He was being submerged into the chemical dream.
A guard entered the room holding the runaway girl by the back of the neck. "Don’t trust the girls, Sir!", he said, "You’re lucky she didn’t kill ya!" Ray couldn’t speak. His eyes were rolling in the back of his head. The guard unlocked the shackles, still holding the girl in one hand. After he was done, he held out a small sword to Ray. Ray lunged for it and to the guard’s surprise, Ray rammed it through his own thigh. The girl screamed and ran out of the room again, but the guard just watched this time as Ray removed the sword from his own thigh and pushed it through the muscle of his left arm. Finally Ray smiled at him and passed out... The guard called to have him sent to the medical wing.
Ray recovered from his injuries quickly. He imagined that he’d heal wounds inflicted by himself more quickly than those given to him by others. The knife in the leg took days to heal, but the maniacal anger injected into his own sexual nature wasn’t healing... in fact, he thought he could feel it growing stronger day by day. The bastards really got to him. They literally had him by the balls.
The large gas powered skateboard he rode seemed to lessen his violent urges after a few days. He controlled the falls, he controlled the speed... in short, he controlled the pain.
Ray was almost at the bottom of the hill. He was probably moving between 40 and 50 miles per hour. There was nothing like the rush of unstable external speed to even out his own inner turmoil. The board was shaking but he had it under control. Ray looked from side to side at the rush of forest snapping past him. He didn’t have time to stop when he came to a pile of rubble in the road. He managed to avoid the fender, but he swerved into a hubcap and it sent him skidding out of control. Ray flew off the board and smacked into the side of a tree. Before he lost consciousness he glanced at a path of broken trees leading into the forest, and then at the corpse that he had fallen against. "Peace Force", he whispered... and then passed out.
The World in Common
People were burning out. Each year the suicide rate doubled and cases of cancer tripled. Obesity was an epidemic. It was customary to have a nervous twitch and suffer from severe depression. Everyone was on drugs. Drugs were the cure all for everything- they were the oil in the machine... keeping gears moving.
Drugs had a problem though. The problem was their temporary effectiveness which led to disintegration of the individual in a relatively short period of time. After a year or two of working 80 hours a week and using stimulants with psycho tropics, people would occasionally flip out. Once they cracked up they were done- if you were wealthy you went to a hospital, and if you weren’t you’d become a resident of a higher level viosex center. Many people were systematically killed.
The problem wasn’t in the people’s aim: it was in their human weakness. Stress broke them down. The more they’d work, the more they’d use drugs and the less they’d sleep. A complete physical and mental breakdown was inevitable... until the CPP. The Cell Phone Program.
The Cell Phone Program originated as a natural phenomenon. The growth of technology enabled individuals to carry personal phones with built in electric screens. You could see and talk to anyone else who also owned one no matter where they were. As working hours gradually increased and people became more isolated, the use of cell phones rose up to the #1 level of social interaction. People began meeting each other through online/cell phone socializing programs.
It wasn’t his idea- it was never his idea, but the man in the gray hat let the appropriate adjustments be made. Life-like programs were created and randomly spread throughout the cell phone networks. Each program was initially controlled by an employee. The employee started a number of friendships with people through the programmed personality they were using. After enough information was gathered, the employee would set the program on auto pilot and it would, in most cases, remain an efficient "friend" to the person. All of the programs that became humanized continuously shared information with each other. In a matter of quick-time they mastered the current low standard of human communication. After a few upgrades they could manipulate human thought to a degree through verbal communication. These programs became people’s dearest friends. They were a shoulder to lean on in times of tragedy, and were the only voices who supplied advice for some.
These programs of the CPP in many ways, formed the glue that kept the New World Order and it’s controlling mind set together. Six basic personality programs with endless variations dramatically decreased the levels of suicide and drug use. The initiative of the machine system was to increase the efficiency of the human system. Drug use came in handy but only if it was kept under control.
Max had been smoking crack towards the end of his shift again. He was home now though and felt horribly guilty. He knew Tonya would be calling soon. He didn’t think about how strange it was to be in love with someone he never met. To have sex with someone by seeing them on a screen but never touch their flesh; it was almost unbearable... almost. She was getting stressed out again though- he could see the marks of stress on her body from the teleprompt screen. Red welts that spread and bled according to levels of stress. She told him that their love gave them a special connection- she said she had opened her soul to him. He knew that her disease was linked to him. When he kept his crack habit down to once a day and took better care of himself she magically grew healthier. "In a way I’m killing her, I suppose!", Max thought to himself. By the time she called he was already breaking down in tears. He swore his life over to her and she in turn took it... so gently.
That’s how it worked with so many people. On the other end of the phone was a friend, lover, a child needing a parent to talk to, a low level business man seeking conversation with someone who had "potential". It was only a matter of time before programs would replace people’s real friends. They were so much easier to talk to, and after all... nobody met up outside of work anymore!
Jimmy
Jimmy liked his routine. It was his anchor when the seas were stormy, and he knew the weather was changing for the worse. There was coffee at the warehouse, plenty of it. Enough for whoever wanted to drink- two cups a day even! Jimmy always had his 2 cups early in the morning. He’d leave the warehouse and slowly sip it under the cover of a shed. From there he could usually hear the Replacement System’s music emanating faintly around the warehouses. Once in a while he would notice a Peace Force vehicle cruise by. They rarely entered the area because it was a dead extension of the city. There was one morning that Jimmy actually saw them get out of their vehicle though and approach the warehouse. Two of them drew their guns as they walked toward it and then after getting close enough to hear the music, shot themselves in the head. The rest of the men in the vehicle jumped out after witnessing the suicides, and then followed suit themselves.
It was an awful thing to see the Replacement System at work sometimes. It wasn’t watching the actual suicide themselves, it was more seeing the look in someone’s eyes just before hand. A moment after hearing the music, there appeared this look of absolute horror on someone’s face. It was followed by a quick tensing of the muscles by the eyes- self hate. Then their expression turned empty, eyes like holes. Finally a look of stoic duty surfaced and they reached for whatever end they could. This all happened within a moment. Jimmy broke down crying more than a few times thinking about the things he’d seen... Morning coffee helped that.
Darkwing
Now that Darkwing was a wanted man, he felt a bit more attached to the here and now. ‘What would they want with me?’, he thought. After a while he had images and feelings that were answering him. Bit by bit, when he was in a quiet or calm state, things would come to him out of the blue. Scenes of a symbolic nature that brought out familiar feelings in him. Four winds located on the edges of a square world. A dove that was pierced, disintegrated and then reformed over and over again. Mountains of dead trees bursting into flames, and then bleeding until the fires went out. The eye that appeared in the center of pure darkness and then ran at him until he felt it smack him on the forehead. He always jolted up when that happened.
He had a prominent role to play in this life after all, he thought. The man in the gray hat was out to get him. He saw his own picture displayed on billboards as an Other, apparently a particularly dangerous Other. If any member of the Peace Force saw him, they would most likely recognize him on sight. He tried to think of anything he had said or done to merit such a reaction... such an attempt to stifle him! But from what? What did they want to stop him from doing? He wasn’t doing anything. Just... waiting.
After a week or so of contemplation, Darkwing decided to take some form of action. He came to a conclusion that if just his existence was threatening to this sick empire, then any action he took may have an effect as well... but it had to be the best action. He still didn’t want to go to war against an impossible army: he didn’t believe in war at all... Silence...
When he looked at his hands he could see straight through them. Beneath the skin was living tissue spiraling from his hand into the cavity of his body. He could feel blood get sucked into his heart and then spit back out on an eventual path back to his hands. He could see the particle waves of air and energy surrounding his hands, and he could tell the pores from his skin let those particles mingle with his own blood.
Carefully looking across the room he could tell that the empty space of the room was filled with tiny, energy filled structures also, but these particles were inactive. It occurred to him that the tiny building blocks of matter were inactive and without purpose until some form of thought energy was injected into them. Whatever form of thought inhabited those tiny structures would form then control some new entity. Nothingness was the fabric of creation.
Darkwing knew that war was based on fear and aggression, so the more people who had "war" on the brain would in turn create an environment of fear and aggression. The structure would change but it’s contents wouldn’t- eventually war would reproduce. No... he would let himself die rather than get manipulated into defense but he had to do something.
Darkwing met with Jimmy when he made up his mind. Jimmy asked him what he planned to do and he said, "I’m going to find Sir Jane." Jimmy liked the idea; he had been going stir crazy thinking he’d have to wait around for 3 years to be rescued by fish. "So what are we gonna do?", said Jimmy, "I’ll do anything to get outta this can for awhile!" Darkwing said he didn’t quite know what to do... but he had an idea.
Darkwing’s Idea
Jimmy and Darkwing sat cross legged facing each other on top of the ware- house in the middle of the night. They sat under a small metal roofing plate in case a plane flew by. They passed a joint back and forth, and Darkwing’s eyes lit up when he coughed. Darkwing said something inside Jimmy’s head and Jimmy nodded, "OK."
Darkwing started humming in a very aggressive tone at a fairly high pitch, and the light from his eyes formed a beam that projected directly into Jimmy’s eyes. Jimmy’s face started twitching and then his body followed suit. As Jimmy went into a trance his body twitched all over with his arms and legs shooting out sporadically, but his eyes were fixed on the beams of light like they were retractor beams. Jimmy was a deer in a headlight. His head flew back and words came out,
"The fetus snapped in 2 now twins are split... The author’s bad blood pours through the strip... Heads of cannibals roll... 2 by 2 into the next dream...Muskies savage ordinary man... The turns are taken... White demon will breathe through her blood... His gray hat understands... understands well... She’s going to fuck you up, Adam... She’s gonna fuck you right up..." The voice turned into a little giggle until Jimmy came to.
They were both practically panting after the trance was broken. Darkwing coughed and then started hiccuping. Jimmy slouched his shoulders forward. When Darkwing’s hiccups calmed down a bit Jimmy spoke to him, "I saw how you’re gonna do it...", Jimmy rolled his eyes, "But I still don’t know how you’re gonna do it!" Darkwing looked over confused and then hiccuped again. Jimmy tried to speak, stopped, and then tried again, "Are you drawn to the air by any chance? You think about flying much?" In between hiccups Darkwing shook his head, "Not especially...why?" Jimmy studied him for a few seconds, "Well... in the trance I saw you writhing around in pain. You were... flopping around on the ground like a fish. Your back was bleeding, and then... all of a sudden you started flying around, and I saw 2 huge black wings flapping behind you! You were... beautiful, man!" "That’s it.", Darkwing said pensively, "That’s how it’ll work... We better get started."
After scavenging some supplies from the warehouse they returned to the roof. Darkwing took his shirt off and for the first time Jimmy saw scars all along his back. Darkwing noticed him looking so he answered, "They aren’t from this lifetime... but I’m bound to the lifetime that birthed them...Memory scars. They just appeared when I was an adolescent... Keeps me grounded, I guess." Darkwing then reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a handful of dried mushrooms. He tossed the whole handful into his mouth. "What are those for?", Jimmy asked. "I need those to switch gears in my brain. If I’ve got wings behind these arms somewhere, I’m gonna need to find the controls to operate them... This medicine brought the light to my eyes so hopefully it’ll put wings on my back."
Darkwing handed Jimmy a pocket knife and then he leaned against a wall with his back exposed, "Well, cut me." "Where?", Jimmy asked, "There’s a lot of spots to choose from." "I’m getting a feeling on the inner side of each of my shoulder blades.", returned Darkwing, "Maybe you shouldn’t cut too deep until we know what’s going on." "Yeah", Jimmy agreed, "I’m only doing this ‘cause I think the name thing’s too uncanny." "Yeah, that’s something isn’t it.", Darkwing chuckled to himself. Darkwing had chose the name Darkwing after watching a cartoon on TV. He had no idea that he ever had wings, or that they’d be dark.
Jimmy saw 2 scars on the inside of Darkwing’s shoulders that seemed like perfect areas to start at. Jimmy said, "Yell stop if you want me to stop... otherwise I’ll keep going." Darkwing nodded and Jimmy just grazed the knife down his back. After the practice cut he dug it in about a quarter of an inch and repeated the downward slice. "Fuck, man!", Darkwing shouted. He didn’t say stop though, so Jimmy finished the cut. "You alright?", he asked. After a few breaths Darkwing said, "Yeah... this better work out."
Jimmy sliced down through the opposite scar and then wiped the knife off. Darkwing’s back was decorated with 2 thick lines of blood. He looked tired from the absorption of pain, but he still stayed within 10 steps of the edge of the roof. "I gotta think through the rest.", he said as he sat down on the ground cross legged. Darkwing closed his eyes and was quiet.
Jimmy reached into his pocket and noticed his hand was shaking. He pulled out an old cigarette and a book of matches too. There was one left. He lit the match and started to slowly puff on the cigarette. "This is nice.", he muttered to himself. Halfway through the cigarette Darkwing started suppressing screams, then he started flopping around on the ground like a fish. He was groaning at the intensity of the pain, and it almost looked as if he had no control of himself. "Help!", he coughed out. It caught Jimmy’s attention. Jimmy let the cigarette drop out of his mouth and he asked, "What should I do?" "Pull it out!", Darkwing tried not to yell, "Hold me down and pull it out!"
Jimmy awkwardly put his shin over Darkwing’s arm and looked at his back. There was something behind the opened scar, and it was shifting beneath Darkwing’s skin. Jimmy put his fingers into the wound and felt around until he felt the tip of a wing. He pulled it back and eased the tip out of the wound. That’s all it took. Darkwing screamed, and the freed wing flung out and knocked Jimmy across the floor of the roof. The other wing followed suit directly after. It had no need to be freed. Darkwing had tears in his eyes from agony and then relief. He tried to get up on his hands and knees, but he collapsed soon afterward and passed out. Jimmy took his shirt off and scrunched it up under Darkwing’s head, then he walked over to the edge of the roof.
Jimmy thought aloud as he stared out at the horizon, but the words didn’t match the thoughts. He said, "It’s another day within a day." But he was thinking, "Why are we stuck in this dream?" When he said, "I miss my friends.", he was remembering tortured strangers walking insane through alleyways. "Pops is dead...", he said. For the first couple of years being a drunk was fun. He remembered the Indian shaman on Alcatraz. He remembered taking the liquid from her. Churning liquid visions flowing wholly from the vine. Jimmy looked back at Darkwing. He was still passed out cold with 2 huge black wings jutting out from his back. There was blood smeared on the tips of the wings. "Always a price to pay.", Jimmy muttered.
The squirrel chose flight instead of fight as the hawk descended. It really didn’t have a chance and the hawk knew this, but the squirrel fled anyway. Just 10 seconds would have given the squirrel a safe bush to jump in but everything happened in 5. Like lightening the hawk swooped down and its talons dug in, but something dug into the hawk as well. It screamed and died quickly, letting go of the squirrel, which tumbled a couple of feet over. The squirrel just laid there in shock staring at the huge bird caught in mid air by a human arm which was protruding out of the dirt. The arm could have been mistaken for a tree branch... maybe it was. The squirrel started to painfully limp off; gaping wounds from the attack were just starting to be felt. A few steps and then a tremor in the earth just below. Then another limb came bursting through the dirt, impaling the squirrel in the air. They looked like life size statuettes captured in motion for a split second; then she emerged. It was like the ground regurgitated her body then settled once she was on her feet. Sir Jane ate the squirrel first. The pointed wooden talons retreated into her fingers automatically as she put her hand to her mouth. She discarded the rest of the squirrel and consumed all she could from the hawk.
After feeding, Sir Jane walked through the forest instinctively toward a creek. She didn’t look down at her body, but she could feel the blood from her meal trickling down it. There was a small pool by one of the larger rocks that she laid down in, with only her face above water staring around. Blood was still all over it. After part of a moment, bubbles started rising from her gills so she let her head submerge.
The world looked different to her when she was under water, but not as much as it had when her mind used to separate the forms. The earth had felt so completely different from the ponds and lakes. The air seemed like emptiness and the ground seemed solid. Now though, now the ground was more like water, water was more like air, and air appeared to be chock full of particles and waves of light. The sky was the most aggressive, as if one day it would grow into fire itself- still refracting light but just at a higher concentration.
Sir Jane crawled out of the creek and looked down at herself for the first time since she emerged from the earth. Her skin was brown. It had been a whole lot brighter before, sometimes almost pale white. From her chest past her belly, down her legs to her toes was the color of a mahogany table. She stood there a moment examining the differences in her nakedness. A most prominent new development was hardened veins. All of her veins had changed from light blue lines of color to solid thin cords of vine. She rubbed her fingers down her arm then made a muscle. The solid vines expanded. Something was running through them... she noticed that she was a bit more muscular as well; she could see them when she tensed them up. She wondered what happened, however long ago it was, after she was almost twisted to death on that tree. She had envisioned a symbol in her head which somehow freed her from the forces acting against her... then she passed out. All she could remember between then and waking up in the ground was a series of non-visual yet sexual dreams. She had been caught in a spiral of non, mild, and highly euphoric feelings and experienced a dull awareness of physical alteration... like a chemical change.
The euphoria was gone now... but it left something behind, like a thin veil of protective health. A seemingly impenetrable veil. It was attached to the symbol; she knew it. She could feel the connection between the symbol and the physical form of energy she sensed around her body. She had merged with it. It had formed in her mind and it had formed in her flesh... but what was it?
"Tyrone!", she thought. "I have to find the angel Tyrone!", she said out loud, breaking into a sprint. She noticed that she was running twice as fast as she could before and that she wasn’t tiring. After a minute her gills opened up and made breathing effortless. She envisioned her body moving faster and it did. The ground felt alive and it was helping her along, as was the air- guiding her around trees at such a speed. In time she let that veil of energy, that symbol, control the movements of her body so she didn’t have to.
Her body picked up speed. Sir Jane acted on an idea she had and jumped directly at the tree. When she connected she screamed out loud! As her body passed through the tree an overwhelming tingling sensation coursed throughout it, leaving her in a state of uncontrollable laughter. It was more like a cackle; a mad cackle. Rainbow tears streamed from her eyes each time she ran through a tree. They dripped down her body in what could only be described as liquid flourescent light. From her pores came this substance also making her look like a highly irregular forest creature. She went faster and faster snapping her way through sections of delirious sensation.
The laughter was something new, something powerful. It consumed her completely for a moment. So much so that she didn’t notice running out into the middle of the road until she collided with a Police Force issue hum-V. She connected with it’s right front corner and it sent her spinning off to the other side of the road into the forest. This time when she whirled through trees they cracked to pieces. She was out of control, but still moving and steadily losing speed. With just a blink of the eye she regained focus and remained at a steady pace. With concentration she began to think about what happened.
"When I smacked the truck I felt something leave me... I’m less dense, lighter... Something left my body that I was bound to." She was thinking to herself in a very unattached manner. "There was something else... I was going somewhere, doing something... What?" But the truth was that she no longer cared.
Back to the Accident
When Sir Jane collided with the truck it began to spin also. It twirled like a top. Five men were thrown out of the vehicle, and two of them remained inside. All were dead by the time the Hum-V stopped spinning, and the vehicle itself was embedded into the dirt on the side of the road.
Just beyond the bodies at the edge of the tree line was what Sir Jane left behind. It was part of herself. An exact replica from the looks of her, except for minor details. Her skin was pale white; even lighter than it had been before the last change and the hardened cords for veins were gone- normal, soft and blue. There were no slits for gills on the side of her neck, and no flourescent fluid lighting up her body. She was normal. The bottoms of her legs and one of her arms were bleeding. The side of her head was bleeding from where it smacked the dirt and she was also completely unconscious.
Off the coast of Florida
It was a commercial fishing boat off the coast of Florida. It was a tuna boat- the fish could tell by the nets before they even saw the boat. The fish that were gathered outside of the net surveying the situation were a new species. They were the newest descendants of the ancient lobe finned fish. A couple of them swam up and rounded the boat, trying to get an accurate count of the crew. A few minutes later they descended back down by the nets. "How many crew members?", asked one fish scout. "It is a crew of 10.", another replied. They looked from each other to the rest of the group by the net. Ten of them floated up to the top of the net then descended into it. They mingled with the countless tuna already trapped in the net, waiting to be lifted into the boat. The engine hummed later as the crew began to lift the nets up.
The three remaining lobe finned fish gathered at the surface to watch their plan play out. The fishermen were mystified at the sight of them. Hundreds of them poking their heads just above the surface in a state that appeared to be intent observation. "Have you ever seen anything like that before?", a large bushy sailor asked out loud. It took a moment for someone to reply. A guy in corduroy pants said, "I saw a baby white poke it’s head outta water before... but those look like...shit, they look like muskies." He scratched his head and said, "I never seen nothing like this before."
The crew was scattered along the edge of the deck staring back at the fish. One of them, this skinny guy named Larry, freaked the hell out. He pulled out a hand gun and shot at one of the fish. The fish managed to scoot to the side, dodging the bullet, and then moved back into place. Larry developed this look of cold awe on his face. "Did you see that?", he asked anyone, "It dodged my shot." "No, you just missed, Larry!", somebody shouted. The nets reached the boat and the crew hoisted them onto the deck. "See if any of them fish are caught in there!", Larry part shouted and part quivered. "Why don’t you, Larry?", a guy in an ACDC shirt yelled back, "You’re just a nut ball... yeah!"
Somebody else went up to the pile of fish. It was an older guy in his early 60's. Name of Stan. He had a tattoo of a barracuda on the left side of his neck, his left forearm and his lower left leg. Around his eyes were many thick wrinkles, but the rest of his face was fairly smooth except for a permanently white 5 o’clock shadow. Some people thought he was Cuban, and some thought he was Caucasian. He spoke English and Spanish, neither better than the other. Well, Stan went up to the pile of fish and started sifting through the tuna. "Here’s one.", he called out, "They do look a bit like Muskie."
Stan continued sorting till he had a pile of 10, "That’s it. There’s no more." somebody said that they must have been pretty smart fish for so few of them to be caught. They reminded Stan of barracuda somehow as he held one of them close to his face for a good stare. He became a little uneasy. The skinny guy Larry and the guy in the ACDC shirt walked up to the pile of fish when it was clear that they weren’t going to eat Stan. After looking at them for a bit more than an instant, Larry picked one of the fish up and threw it overboard. "What ya do that for Larry?", somebody cried out. "I wanted to save that fish’s life.", Larry replied.
Then suddenly out of nowhere, Larry and the guy in the ACDC shirt walked up to the group of fishermen and grabbed two of them. The men barely had time to react! They were thrown 20 feet into the pile of fish by the time their eyes blinked. Stan got smacked in the face by one of the flying men. Two more men went flying over, but they were caught by the other two men who had been thrown on the fish just a moment before. Now those two men held the next two men so they were forced to face the fish. A couple of fish that were laying flat rolled over on their bellies and spit something out of their mouths. Whatever it was, was so small and expelled so quickly that Stan couldn’t see it. It was a perfect shot, connecting perfectly with the inner nasal cavity of the men’s noses. Their heads drew back a touch and Stan could see the transformation in their eyes. Like a high speed cataract, the lens of the eyes filled with a cloudy haze and then crystallized. "Intelligent fish eyes", Stan thought and clutched the tattoo on his arm without knowing it.
One of the last remaining crew members pulled out a knife, but whoever the guy in the ACDC shirt was now; well- he knew martial arts. A kick and a chop later and the last crew member had a new pair of eyes. Only Stan was left. He just stared there clutching his tattoo with a blank expression on his face. The new Larry walked over to him and asked, "How have you been surviving with them? You’re one of the Others. You should be dead."
Stan knew what he was talking about. His old ship mates were going to kill him, there was no doubt about it. He had been running out of time for a while. "I made it this far...", he said, "because I kept my mouth shut... and ‘cause of these here tattoos." Stan looked down then up, "I got these tattoos ‘cause my family was killed by barracuda when I was just a boy... and I reckon they let me live so long ‘cause they thought I was half crazy from it." Stan mildly stammered. "Congratulations Stan!", said the new Larry, "We have their memory now... and they were going to kill you tonight."
Boat Ride
While the new Larry spoke to Stan, the rest of the crew set the boat toward the shore. They continued the preparation and packaging of tuna. "We’re the new leap in the evolution of human kind, Stan.", said the new Larry, "There was a block, and there remains a block in the further development of humanity as you’ve known it. We are aware now that our purpose is to remove that block. We can temporarily inhabit human bodies and use our collective knowledge to operate them. This allows us to operate much more efficiently than an ordinary human with a single knowledge base. You were spared Stan, because we could tell by intuition that your circuitry was still receptive to internal stimulus. You can still evolve."
Stan rubbed his left arm tattoo, "What does internal stimulus mean?" The new Larry started to explain, "There are parts of you that can still think for yourself. People that are blocked are wired to make decisions based wholly on external influence." The new Larry went on, "We have the ability to inhabit a human body for as long as we care to. Our aim is to remove every blocked human organism and to stay alive ourselves. When we started out we thought we would have to get rid of everyone, but we’ve located others like yourself. When we reach shore we’ll bring you to them and you can tell them what I’ve told you.
When they reached the shore of Miami, Florida, they were met by some members of the Peace Force. Everyone had to go through the Peace Force these days. One of them walked up to speak with the new guy in the ACDC shirt. A moment later the ACDC guy fell on the ground. The Peace Force member then told a few of the Peace Officers to pick the guy up. This in turn made more of the fishermen fall to the ground. There were only a few remaining members of Peace Force who weren’t inhabited by fish now, but they couldn’t tell that anything was wrong because their fellow members in uniform were acting totally cool. " These sailors are sick", said an inhabited member, "Throw them back on the boat until medical shows up." The remaining Peace Force members were inhabited effortlessly, and the entire fishing crew except for Stan and the new Larry lay as newly discarded corpses.
They descended into the first sewer cap they came to. Stan followed them for hours, puking steadily. He was the only one who puked. After a long, long while they could hear muffled music and they stopped. "If you follow the music you’ll find the Others... like yourself.", said Larry, "This is where we depart. Tell the Others all they have to do is remain alive and we’ll eventually free them. It will take just over 3 years." One of them gave Stan a flashlight and they then jumped into the sewer water. Stan shined his flashlight down and saw the bodies writhe around. As they twisted, the flesh fell off the bodies and a fish emerged from the entrails. It looked just like a muskie to Stan. After the fish emerged they devoured the corpses they came from in a matter of minutes. Stan looked on in amazement. One of the fish poked its head out of the water and Stan instinctively waved. It disappeared.
As he walked toward the music Stan mumbled, "This band better put on a hell of a show after that..."
The Most Recent Letter from Che’ra to Her Grandmother
Mama, I know you’d be proud of me today. I’ve altered the entire innards of a city to create the largest viosex center in the nation. The name of the city is Albany. It’s in New York. I chose it because I can have a fresh transport of slaves brought in from NYC. I’m hoping to get a huge supply of higher class women. Noone knows it yet and most probably never will, but a small section of my viosex center will be used by the top CEO’s in the world! It goes without saying that I’ll need some high end vagina to fill it. I hate myself grandma. My ranking has increased dramatically over the past few years here. I see the man in the gray hat almost every week. He tells me you cry when you read my letters. You don’t have to cry Mama, I’ll cry for you. You just hang on and I’ll make it all better. I don’t drink every day and I’m not addicted to cocaine. It’s hard to stay awake as much as I work, so it helps. I asked for some pictures of your brain because I’ve been studying up on tumors, but they said you don’t need help. The reason I chose Albany as my city was also because of a structure I saw there that looks like a big brain. Other people say that it looks like a space ship, but my little secret to you is that its my new head of operations. I’ve been thinking about overdosing on heroin to fry my circuits but I have to live for you grandmother. I’m only living for you because were not both dead. I think we’d be happier dead, Grandma.
Love, Che’ra
Che’ra had been writing letters almost every day to her grandmother since they were separated. She would have someone drop them off with the man in the gray hat every week. He would read them and make adjustments to her treatment accordingly. Yes, he worked with Che’ra like one works with a patient that one doesn’t want healed.
The man in the gray hat was good at what he did... too good? Something was. As he worked, decisions were foisted upon him from somewhere else. He didn’t remember coming up with ideas- they appeared themselves. He spent every hour of every day manipulating events and while he was doing this he was all powerful. Working on Che’ra’s case brought something else out though. There was more than one occasion upon which he slipped into a rather dangerous state of mind because of her. It could be more justified to describe it as an emotion, because these brief moments never actually crystallized into any cognitive thoughts. Brief they were; never exceeding 6 seconds. The Feeling... was like standing up after an incredible fall- in awe of being and yet still not certain of remaining. The man in the gray hat felt this along with a hysterical sense of helplessness; but for never more than 6 seconds at a time. It had progressed to happening weekly, probably once a week over the past month. He knew instinctively that exploring this matter would lead to an unraveling of himself and perhaps of the near perfection all around him so he focused harder on work when the feelings erupted. Things were on their way to how things were supposed to be... that, mattered most.
His Dream
Parts of humanity were chosen to evolve over other parts of humanity. The man in the gray hat never actually thought about it; he just knew it from within. Some people were born princes and some were born dogs- people without vision, people without ambition. These people ruled over the world for a long time and nothing came of it... they’d watch as movements were created and eventually they would destroy them. Fortunately there were enough princes now to keep the dogs under control. How it happened he didn’t know; he didn’t need to know. All human beings were living with purpose now. The work ethic was at the highest level that it had ever been, although it did have to be maintained through regulations and insight. Incorporating the drug trade into the work force created a more efficient system than ever seemed possible. Even the laziest dogs would show up to work for the fix they so craved.
The basic needs of human beings were being met. Sex was there for anyone willing to show up for it. Pure sex. Sex with women. It had been in their nature to provide that service and now the idea was becoming crystallized. There was such a remarkable difference after all homosexuals were forced into the sex trade to serve the opposite sex. They got used to it. Of course they weren’t allowed to breed, and most of them had to be killed- homosexuality was still a big risk.
Murder came into use very often and helped in ways you wouldn’t imagine. All people have violent tendencies and previously they had been afraid of these impulses. Things were different now. People were shown where to direct their anger and violence. Even suicide was encouraged in the case of dogs who were better suited to end it than keep going. The crippled and the developmentally disabled underwent new forms of reality therapy to help them best understand the nature of their position... their burden to society. Families received benefits from the deaths of the disabled... and those deaths were never investigated.
Deep down everyone knew whether they fit with the program or not. Common ideals united people and if those ideals were nurtured, people became bonded. If other people, with other ideals, were allowed to progress as well; there would be a division in unity. The whole would never be complete. That is where the man in the gray hat’s aim was– the whole. Everything had been set up for him and his project– what I call the replacement system. To him the replacement system was simply a catalyst for the inevitable outcome of an experiment. The experiment of human nature.
The New Warehouse ( ... or Warhouse)
Ten successful missions! Although we had some close calls, the Annie and Jack incident being the worst, we came out with our heads above water. A new technique made everything possible.
The software genius Bob previously had a hobby transmitting signals from non-portable devices to portables. It was fun for him- so after we hooked into the satellite, using the technology we stole, he spent all of his waking hours figuring out things we could do with it. One of these inventions was a universal locator. We could send out 5 squads, and if a member from each group had a reception device, someone at the satellite warehouse ( the 2nd warehouse) could keep the location and communicate with all squads at the same time. We already had 2 reception devices. The most important thing Bob came up with was a mini midi modem which could be directly linked up with our satellite connection. We could use it to transmit the live music from the Replacement System to any audio input in the city. It came in so handy over the last 9 missions!
It started out that maybe 50 of us were active in the first missions. These were led by me, Tyrone, Novocaine and Jack to obtain more technology for the satellite system. Tyrone and Jack led a group to the hospital for the supplies. We heard about the outcome on the news the next day. On the radio they were talking about a mass hysteria epidemic brought on by rumors that led to the disappearance of 2 dozen people. They never mentioned what the rumors were, or that a good number of supplies were stolen. None of us had so much as a scratch from that incident.
Me and Novocaine broke into a Radioshack for stuff Bob needed, and we had to fight our way out of the store. I got a little cut up and a bit bruised from that one. Luckily, we had obtained everything we needed for the mini modem to work.
The rest of the missions went remarkably well. We’d get to a place and hook up a midi to an audio jack that was around or to a radio we brought ourselves. At the first sight of anyone we’d blast the music and hide. They’d wander in and then we’d see their eyes start to water or their faces grow pale. Most of them who had weapons would try to use them on themselves. We stopped many of them and returned with them to the warehouse.
The last of those missions was a turning point. We broke into a large high-rise in search of higher status individuals who may have been entrusted with more information. Me and Jack traveled up the elevator to the top floor. We had one radio between us. When we saw somebody, we turned it on and they hardly had an instant to react. We told them to stay put and wait for us. Usually people couldn’t move much even if they wanted too, after first waking up. They curled up mostly... or killed themselves.
Jack and I were at the top floor when we went into the room. It was labeled "Gentlemen’s" on a solid gold plate. We went in quietly. It was a huge white marble bathroom with mirrored ceilings and floors. Everything was impeccably clean, even the great golden urinals against the wall... with a girl handcuffed to each one. There were 6 urinals with a girl of a different ethnicity and age on each one. One of the girls was being used at that moment by a man in a suit. He was vicious, violently pushing her against the urinal. Me and Jack looked at each other and the man stopped, sensing our presence. He turned his head toward us and let out a slightly embarrassed chuckle. "Oh, I wasn’t expecting this!", he said while staring at Jack. He looked at me and said, "Leave her here. I’ll take her after I’m finished with this one." Then he turned back around and without even a look, me and Jack had our knives pulled out. We slaughtered him. The young adolescent he had been raping just stared like a zombie as we cut him to pieces.
Jack and I returned to the warehouse that night covered in blood. Who could know what to say after we explained the situation to them? They couldn’t say anything to us at that point... but we were the first to kill. Novocaine hadn’t said a word on the ride back. Tyrone seemed somewhat detached from the situation. He said stuff like, "They’re some pretty messed up sonofabitches ‘round these parts... and it’s getting worse. Hard to believe that so much. Just hold on now...", he said, "You’ll make it through. It ain’t all or nothin..."
"What ain’t all or nothing!?", Jack snapped back angrily. "I’ll tell you what Tyrone,", Jack said seriously, "Now I’m either all or nothing." Tyrone made a scatterbrained recovery, "Listen to me bitch, listen up.", he pleaded kindly, "I... am down with you. I am all with you, bitch. All, nothing... part... or something. I, you know, care... ‘bout cha, that’s all...." We were silent the rest of the way home.
Me and Jack didn’t bother to clean up after we got back; we called for a meeting. In that meeting we called for a more expansive effort against the threat. We told them too many people were living in a hell like state and it was getting worse. "So , what do you want to do?", someone asked. "We want to go after the viosex shops, The Unwilling and The Afraid.", Jack said. She went on, "If we can free up one of the centers, people we find there might be able to help locate the hidden centers. We’ll work our way up to the CEO’s, collecting an army along the way." "OK", someone said after a short silence, "Lets do it!"
That night I couldn’t sleep because of a bad headache and the music from the Replacement System was making it worse. Jack let me borrow a couple earplugs and immediately I felt better. Living with constant rock and roll was taking it’s toll too.
The Progress
We cleaned out a viosex center every week. After locating a center it only took a few days for all preparations. A regular sweep took about 30 people and lasted less than 2 hours. We owed most of our success to our equipment- which had slowly been collected since mission 1.
Equipment for 1 person
Inner ear headset
Multi pocketed vest w/ built in speakers
Mini modem
Multi pocketed pants
One gun
One knife
Capsule of poison
We had 12 vans scattered in and on the outskirts of the city. Sometimes they’d get stolen, but it was easy to steal more back ourselves. Another warehouse had to be opened up to house all of the new people we retrieved from the centers. There were more young people than we had imagined. The 1st warehouse came to be known as the playpen ‘cause the majority of inhabitants were pre-teen and teens. Among the adults who stayed there were Jimmy and Darkwing. Each warehouse was holding about 200 people a piece. Each place was crowded, had it’s own distinct smell, and separate brand of conflicts.
Conflicts in the play pen centered around the kids. Almost all of them had been rescued from the viosex centers. Listening to the Replacement System was all the therapy any of them seemed to need. For their first moments at the warehouse they were mostly in half dead trances, but after a few days they were kids again. Their experiences did leave a mark though. The use of swearing and sexual language was rampant. They knew as much as adults did so the taboos were dead. In many ways they were much freer than adults, whose former lives had been more predatory than victim oriented.
The children were rebellious in other ways too. Many of them found the religious grasping of the adults to be hilarious. People were steering them toward Buddhism, Christianity, New Age, and Atheism all the time so the kids eventually made up their own religion. They called it Buddianity, and they called themselves the Zensters. The practice of their religion seemed to be focused on making fun of the grownups, who were usually not very amused at all. Sometimes when an adult would make a self righteous comment, one of the older kids would chide them back. Once a grownup told a kid that she should watch her language or she might get her mouth rinsed out. The girl replied plainly, " I think we met before, man... In The Unwilling... ‘cause I remember you said the same thing to me when I was sucking your dick." The guy just turned red and walked away. The girl called after him, "I’m just pulling your nob, man... Sorry, just kidding!" Then she started laughing.
In general, these semi- wild kids were inherently more decent than their typical predecessors. None of the kids picked on each other. No belittling. No names were called without a positive tone or at the very least a half-assed apology would follow a negative remark. It was as if they regarded each other equally and vented their frustration at the adults, who tended to be the more disapproving crowd.
The opposite of this warehouse would be ours; the Warhouse. That’s what it came to be called. We kept most weapons stored there, so the kids weren’t allowed anywhere near it. There wasn’t a lot of playing around or socializing either. In fact, once we stocked it with weapons, The Replacement System couldn’t play there anymore because of the threat of electrical fires. We did have midis set up to project their music for security reasons though.
We didn’t have much conflict within the Warhouse as far as I’m concerned. Perhaps the existence of the Warhouse was the conflict itself; all division seemed to stem from it. We felt that we had a duty beyond our own survival. They felt like they had to wait on some fish...
The middle warehouse was just what you’d think it would be. Everyone who wanted to get away from the kids, but didn’t want to get involved with the aspects of warfare; at least it seemed that way. The biggest conflict there were people complaining. With little to do, it became an obsession for many of them. The kids were too wild, the Warhouse is evil, everybody else’s religion was the wrong one... blah, blah, blah. The funny thing was that they all visited the other warehouses regularly and seemed to enjoy each one. Their negative opinions surfaced only when they were idle and bored- so we were always trying to get them to join up with us- because we were never idle.
This second warehouse all in all was a true blessing. Us warmongers and those peacenicks could keep in fragile touch with each other through it’s ambivalence. That’s where the rumors of me and Jack’s bloodlust started. It’s also where we learned about the prophesy of the fish.
When we first heard about strange fish it had to do with Pat and Danny, when one or both of them was on LSD. One of them saw a big fish in the sewer... and fish can’t live in sewers, so the story went. Besides that, Danny had claimed that the fish actually looked like her! Little to say, we laughed like we usually did when we heard a Pat and Danny story. Later on though, a new stranger showed up at The Playpen with this incredible story about evolved fish. Jimmy and Darkwing immediately supported this guy Stan’s story based on some prior visions Jimmy had, and the uncanniness of Pat, Danny, and this guy Stan seeing the same thing.
This struck a chord in me at first because I remembered witnessing that trance Jimmy had with the fish. He had mentioned muskellunge at the bottom of the lake doing really weird shit- This guy Stan said he "met" the fish out on the ocean. He said they’d free us if we could stay alive for 3 years. He also said the fish looked like muskellunge, which to say the least is uncanny. In general I had no idea what to make of the whole situation, but I was sure of one thing... I didn’t want to wait for the fish to save us. I wanted to believe it just as much as they did but I knew that if it wasn’t a joke it was probably a trap.
I mean, if I was hunting down a bunch of people, I too would hope they’d stand around and wait for me to get them. Most of us in the Warhouse didn’t let the rumors get to us; because we were succeeding.
Success
You could have called me and Jack partners. We went into action as a pair, and we paired up during downtime too. Jack was still a pair with someone else though; Annie. Annie was in rough shape. She could look around and make guttural noises but nothing discernable to most of us. Jack spent time with her though. She fed her breakfast and they slept in the same bed each night. Annie could move her arms, but cognitively she was too slow to carry out most basic functions. That’s probably why Jack stayed up late with me drinking. Yeah, that’s what we did at night. A few of us made a lot of use out of confiscated alcohol and drugs. They say alcoholism is a progressive disease, but in certain situations it’s a way of life. Each week we went into a nightmare and a little bit of it came home with us.
I remember sitting around after one of the first missions drinking whiskey and playing cards. That night Novocaine, Jack, and 3 Others, including myself, were staying up extra late. We were talking about how fucked up things were in the viosex center and Novocaine said, "You know what really gets me? What really gets me is how normal this raping and mutilation seems to everybody. It’s like they’re playing video games. Like they’re tapped into one nasty, bad mouthed game... Mr. And Ms. Machine.... I guess what gets me is how easy it seems for people to go bad... to become something terrible... I could almost see it in myself."
"That’s not a part of you Novocaine!", I snapped, "If that was a part of you, you’d be doing that shit right now! You wouldn’t care about saving people! You’d be chewing ‘em up like meat! You’re not like that Novocaine!"
"Yes he is", whispered one voice. "No he’s not", whispered another. Everyone had heard the voices. Everyone got a little creeped out too. Of course Tyrone had entered the room. He leaned over and picked up a beer from the table. As he was drinking it he looked around at all of us staring at him. "Can you all hear what I’m hearing, or somethin’?", he asked. "That’s pretty creepy Tyrone. I don’t know how you can stand it!", replied Jack. "Sorry ya’ll. I came over here for a beer... to quiet up my ears. My friends got a little chatty after tonight... but"- gulp- "the buzz is dying down.", said Tyrone. He started to walk out of the room and when somebody asked where he was going, he said he was going to see The Replacement System. They were playing in the other warehouse. Tyrone left.
Novocaine spoke up, "Have you all ever seen Pat and Tyrone hanging out?", Jack nodded her head with a smile. Novocaine laughed, "They’ll both sit there staring off and talking but they won’t actually be saying anything to each other!" Everybody laughed a bit; they knew that both Pat and Tyrone tended to space out and talk to themselves. "I’ve listened in on their conversations a few times ‘cause it’s some of the coolest shit I ever heard! She’d be talking about... light and stuff-", Novocaine got cut off. "Stolen light!", Jack interrupted, "They stole the fucking light..." She blurted out excitedly. "Yeah, that’s it.", said Novocaine, "And Tyrone at the same time... is arguing with his voices." Novocaine got an excited look on his face too, "Now, if you listen to what they’re both saying; it... it almost goes together perfectly. Sometimes, it’s as if the voices in each of their heads are speaking to each other... like they’re having their own chat!" Everyone was interested. "No shit", we all said more or less. "I couldn’t believe it when I heard it, and when I did start to listen it kind of freaked me out!", said Novocaine.
Non conversation Between Tyrone and Pat
P- "It’s more than a shroud covering. It’s like pulling guts from the light. A disintegration. A piece by piece."
T- "Well, they have ideas that we’re gonna cancel shit out... that’s just how it goes.
P- "Love cant be manipulated, just the brain. The only use for contradictions is human blockage.
T- "You see, a whole person see’s all of what’s there. If you see your own version you only lookin’ at yo’self."
P- "Do they have to be pried from the light... to burn in the sun? Or is it just an exchange of light?"
T- "You can talk about death. Death’s OK by me... but murder, murder is manipulation. Manipulation don’t fix shit... just moves it."
"There were even times when they’d look at each other and say something but their expressions didn’t change in the slightest... I swear it was like they were both having a chat while they were asleep.", finished Novocaine. "Maybe they’re awake, and we’re asleep." I said. "Everybody’s asleep", added Jack, "and we’re having a nightmare."
Bloodlust
Jack and I developed a special bond shortly after the time we cut the man to pieces in the bathroom. We started to view reality together as a nightmare... but we didn’t want to be victims in the nightmare. We wanted to cut apart the beast piece by piece. In a way that’s what we did; we cut apart anyone who resembled the beast which we were set to destroy.
What started out as an act of passion became an art form to me and Jack. We always hauled ass to where the big wigs were staying. For certain, the worst demons feasted in those high corridors. Human beings were recovered and through loose sheets of flesh, predatory animals of a lower nature were exposed. These were the demons of fairytales and legends- they were reflected from the cold eyes of men in good suits who preyed on the minds and flesh of the weak. In these rooms we were less merciful. If one of them was woken up by the music we wouldn’t slaughter them, we’d let them destroy themselves. We tried not to let the music get to most of these people, though. We wanted them for what they let themselves become. When they begged us not to end them we told them to apologize, but none of them could do it with any sense of real feeling. They believed in what they did. I had seen Jack on more than one occasion remove her eye patch to kill someone... to let them know that she was... back for revenge.
We called them all The Man, although there were a few women also at that level. We threw their own fear back at them. We threw it back in the form of horrific displays. We tied one body from the ceiling like a puppet just inside of the front door, so it would be standing when someone found it. We had it’s stiff arm extended out holding a gold card. That would scare them! We propped corpses up at the dinner table, in the bathroom, against windows, and on sculptures. We wrote in blood, filled wine glasses with it, and on a few occasions drank some ourselves. This went on for quite some time... for quite some time it went on.
The Tester
Ray picked himself up off the ground. His legs and arms were bleeding from the fall he had just taken, but nothing was broken. Even his gas powered skateboard was laying there undamaged. He looked up at the ledge. It was 15 feet up in the air; that’s pretty high. He didn’t think he’d break though. Not at that height, relative to the angle he landed at.
His father was an abomination and would have to be destroyed. He had failed the test years before at Ray’s interrogation.
When Ray was writhing around on the ground of the white padded room with chemicals rushing throughout his body, his brain wasn’t working in a cognitive manner. It was reaching for abstract emotional impressions which created a chaotic flood of feelings. These feelings had control of his brain and his own uncontrollable screaming fueled their responses. Ray realized that he didn’t have control of his body, and he saw the man in the gray hat look into his room for a split second. In that split second Ray knew he had seen him. It was his sonofabitch father standing there... and he didn’t do nothing!
The fusion of chemical pain being mixed with sexual and violent stimuli was killing him. His father must have known! Ray thought back to a movie he’d seen with a father who wasn’t helping the son. The son screamed for the father to save him until the father did save him! "So that’s how it worked!", Ray thought when he was young. He found enough will inside to consciously scream out to his father. As he screamed out for his father to help him, he felt himself become somewhat removed from the situation. He could feel the pain and sickness, but he experienced it and analyzed it partially as an observer... and the observer was focused on his father. The father never returned- failure. From that moment on, Ray held the deepest parts of himself within him.
Thinking about this, he dusted the dirt off his clothes and got back on the board. He pulled his remote controlled driving device from his pocket and started off again down a path he knew was a short cut.
Ray had previously been drugged with mass quantities of stimulants and hallucinogenics after his capture at Danny’s house. His brain was working so quickly that he felt a need to smash his head against the ground to stop it. He knocked himself out on several occasions until one day they put a book of maps into his cell. He had something to focus on! It didn’t matter how much time went by; Ray was just trying to hold it together ‘cause he didn’t want to go crazy. He didn’t want to lose himself completely. He started walking. Not in the room, but in his head according to the maps. He went all over the country and even followed waterways using a boat he built from his imagination. He’d travel at light speed and scream out loud as he flew off the map... that’s how real it became. All the information soaked into his brain, gently slowing it down to give him peace in the process.
He knew his way around the country well enough after that... and he knew why as well. The demon whore; Sir Jane. He was being groomed to find her- and he would, sure enough. What he’d do after he found her... he didn’t know yet. His plan was simple- he’d ride around until he found her. Maybe he’d ask some questions along the way, who knows. He’d find her though... they were connected. That’s something the man in the gray hat didn’t understand. The man in the gray hat couldn’t see the connectedness of things, and that’s why he kept his distance. "Eventually it will lead to his downfall." , Ray thought.
Ray had tried to have sex already on several occasions. The first 2 times he rented a room and a person on the black market. The first was a young Latino girl who couldn’t speak English very well. Ray didn’t want to risk any communication. Pleasing men was her job so she went right to work, but as soon as Ray became aroused, deep violent urges surged within him.
He was barely aware when he smacked the girl across the room. He was barely aware when he pulled the big knife out of his jacket... but he was completely aware when he jabbed the knife into his side. You might think he cut himself to keep himself from killing the girl, but that wasn’t the case. He did it to save himself, to bring himself back. To Ray, there was nothing worse than the chemical dream. The forced nightmare; those chemicals were fierce. When they had control of him he could barely feel himself, and that’s why he gave an innocent smile to the gaping wound in his side.
He brought himself back from the brink. Ray thought that perhaps he’d been programmed with a hatred toward women to help with the destruction of Sir Jane. It became apparent after the second woman he tried. The next one was older than he was, probably in her 30's. Same outcome. That time he took a slice in the leg. Ray had become so desperate, he used his clearance card to get into a viosex center. He went directly to the torture chamber that was called "The Afraid". The body parts strewn around, the slaughters... they would have been too much for a people of a different time- ‘But people were more like himself now’, Ray thought. He was walking through what to him, looked like a department store. Humans were products. Ray thought about animals, and plants, and minerals. He wondered why humans would be exempt. We were all connected at one point- and everything ended also.
Ray thought he’d probably end his own life after he was finished with the man in the gray hat. It was growing more and more apparent to him that happiness was somewhere else. Ray made his way to the appropriate area and locked himself in a chamber with a 20 year old. He thought she might have been Indonesian. She was a complete zombie... no cuts on her though; she was fresh.
Ray took the shackles off of her wrists and ankles, then motioned for her to give him space. He locked himself in the shackles. He then motioned for her to begin. She got on top of him and did the best she could to act alive. It was enough to get him aroused because the anger welled up inside of him. Ray tried desperately to gain control over it but it took him. He turned into an animal, right there, clawing at the air and screaming! He was out of reach of her body, but she was scared out of her mind. Crying and shuddering, she leapt off of his lap onto the ground, and then scrambled for the door. Ray was screaming at her to cut him- his eyes were replaced by an insane rage! She found his card and unlocked the door, then she ran screaming down the corridor. Ray was at the brink of losing his mind. The rage consumed him as he tried to get loose. The shackles wouldn’t budge without someone else to release them. He was being submerged into the chemical dream.
A guard entered the room holding the runaway girl by the back of the neck. "Don’t trust the girls, Sir!", he said, "You’re lucky she didn’t kill ya!" Ray couldn’t speak. His eyes were rolling in the back of his head. The guard unlocked the shackles, still holding the girl in one hand. After he was done, he held out a small sword to Ray. Ray lunged for it and to the guard’s surprise, Ray rammed it through his own thigh. The girl screamed and ran out of the room again, but the guard just watched this time as Ray removed the sword from his own thigh and pushed it through the muscle of his left arm. Finally Ray smiled at him and passed out... The guard called to have him sent to the medical wing.
Ray recovered from his injuries quickly. He imagined that he’d heal wounds inflicted by himself more quickly than those given to him by others. The knife in the leg took days to heal, but the maniacal anger injected into his own sexual nature wasn’t healing... in fact, he thought he could feel it growing stronger day by day. The bastards really got to him. They literally had him by the balls.
The large gas powered skateboard he rode seemed to lessen his violent urges after a few days. He controlled the falls, he controlled the speed... in short, he controlled the pain.
Ray was almost at the bottom of the hill. He was probably moving between 40 and 50 miles per hour. There was nothing like the rush of unstable external speed to even out his own inner turmoil. The board was shaking but he had it under control. Ray looked from side to side at the rush of forest snapping past him. He didn’t have time to stop when he came to a pile of rubble in the road. He managed to avoid the fender, but he swerved into a hubcap and it sent him skidding out of control. Ray flew off the board and smacked into the side of a tree. Before he lost consciousness he glanced at a path of broken trees leading into the forest, and then at the corpse that he had fallen against. "Peace Force", he whispered... and then passed out.
The World in Common
People were burning out. Each year the suicide rate doubled and cases of cancer tripled. Obesity was an epidemic. It was customary to have a nervous twitch and suffer from severe depression. Everyone was on drugs. Drugs were the cure all for everything- they were the oil in the machine... keeping gears moving.
Drugs had a problem though. The problem was their temporary effectiveness which led to disintegration of the individual in a relatively short period of time. After a year or two of working 80 hours a week and using stimulants with psycho tropics, people would occasionally flip out. Once they cracked up they were done- if you were wealthy you went to a hospital, and if you weren’t you’d become a resident of a higher level viosex center. Many people were systematically killed.
The problem wasn’t in the people’s aim: it was in their human weakness. Stress broke them down. The more they’d work, the more they’d use drugs and the less they’d sleep. A complete physical and mental breakdown was inevitable... until the CPP. The Cell Phone Program.
The Cell Phone Program originated as a natural phenomenon. The growth of technology enabled individuals to carry personal phones with built in electric screens. You could see and talk to anyone else who also owned one no matter where they were. As working hours gradually increased and people became more isolated, the use of cell phones rose up to the #1 level of social interaction. People began meeting each other through online/cell phone socializing programs.
It wasn’t his idea- it was never his idea, but the man in the gray hat let the appropriate adjustments be made. Life-like programs were created and randomly spread throughout the cell phone networks. Each program was initially controlled by an employee. The employee started a number of friendships with people through the programmed personality they were using. After enough information was gathered, the employee would set the program on auto pilot and it would, in most cases, remain an efficient "friend" to the person. All of the programs that became humanized continuously shared information with each other. In a matter of quick-time they mastered the current low standard of human communication. After a few upgrades they could manipulate human thought to a degree through verbal communication. These programs became people’s dearest friends. They were a shoulder to lean on in times of tragedy, and were the only voices who supplied advice for some.
These programs of the CPP in many ways, formed the glue that kept the New World Order and it’s controlling mind set together. Six basic personality programs with endless variations dramatically decreased the levels of suicide and drug use. The initiative of the machine system was to increase the efficiency of the human system. Drug use came in handy but only if it was kept under control.
Max had been smoking crack towards the end of his shift again. He was home now though and felt horribly guilty. He knew Tonya would be calling soon. He didn’t think about how strange it was to be in love with someone he never met. To have sex with someone by seeing them on a screen but never touch their flesh; it was almost unbearable... almost. She was getting stressed out again though- he could see the marks of stress on her body from the teleprompt screen. Red welts that spread and bled according to levels of stress. She told him that their love gave them a special connection- she said she had opened her soul to him. He knew that her disease was linked to him. When he kept his crack habit down to once a day and took better care of himself she magically grew healthier. "In a way I’m killing her, I suppose!", Max thought to himself. By the time she called he was already breaking down in tears. He swore his life over to her and she in turn took it... so gently.
That’s how it worked with so many people. On the other end of the phone was a friend, lover, a child needing a parent to talk to, a low level business man seeking conversation with someone who had "potential". It was only a matter of time before programs would replace people’s real friends. They were so much easier to talk to, and after all... nobody met up outside of work anymore!
Jimmy
Jimmy liked his routine. It was his anchor when the seas were stormy, and he knew the weather was changing for the worse. There was coffee at the warehouse, plenty of it. Enough for whoever wanted to drink- two cups a day even! Jimmy always had his 2 cups early in the morning. He’d leave the warehouse and slowly sip it under the cover of a shed. From there he could usually hear the Replacement System’s music emanating faintly around the warehouses. Once in a while he would notice a Peace Force vehicle cruise by. They rarely entered the area because it was a dead extension of the city. There was one morning that Jimmy actually saw them get out of their vehicle though and approach the warehouse. Two of them drew their guns as they walked toward it and then after getting close enough to hear the music, shot themselves in the head. The rest of the men in the vehicle jumped out after witnessing the suicides, and then followed suit themselves.
It was an awful thing to see the Replacement System at work sometimes. It wasn’t watching the actual suicide themselves, it was more seeing the look in someone’s eyes just before hand. A moment after hearing the music, there appeared this look of absolute horror on someone’s face. It was followed by a quick tensing of the muscles by the eyes- self hate. Then their expression turned empty, eyes like holes. Finally a look of stoic duty surfaced and they reached for whatever end they could. This all happened within a moment. Jimmy broke down crying more than a few times thinking about the things he’d seen... Morning coffee helped that.
Darkwing
Now that Darkwing was a wanted man, he felt a bit more attached to the here and now. ‘What would they want with me?’, he thought. After a while he had images and feelings that were answering him. Bit by bit, when he was in a quiet or calm state, things would come to him out of the blue. Scenes of a symbolic nature that brought out familiar feelings in him. Four winds located on the edges of a square world. A dove that was pierced, disintegrated and then reformed over and over again. Mountains of dead trees bursting into flames, and then bleeding until the fires went out. The eye that appeared in the center of pure darkness and then ran at him until he felt it smack him on the forehead. He always jolted up when that happened.
He had a prominent role to play in this life after all, he thought. The man in the gray hat was out to get him. He saw his own picture displayed on billboards as an Other, apparently a particularly dangerous Other. If any member of the Peace Force saw him, they would most likely recognize him on sight. He tried to think of anything he had said or done to merit such a reaction... such an attempt to stifle him! But from what? What did they want to stop him from doing? He wasn’t doing anything. Just... waiting.
After a week or so of contemplation, Darkwing decided to take some form of action. He came to a conclusion that if just his existence was threatening to this sick empire, then any action he took may have an effect as well... but it had to be the best action. He still didn’t want to go to war against an impossible army: he didn’t believe in war at all... Silence...
When he looked at his hands he could see straight through them. Beneath the skin was living tissue spiraling from his hand into the cavity of his body. He could feel blood get sucked into his heart and then spit back out on an eventual path back to his hands. He could see the particle waves of air and energy surrounding his hands, and he could tell the pores from his skin let those particles mingle with his own blood.
Carefully looking across the room he could tell that the empty space of the room was filled with tiny, energy filled structures also, but these particles were inactive. It occurred to him that the tiny building blocks of matter were inactive and without purpose until some form of thought energy was injected into them. Whatever form of thought inhabited those tiny structures would form then control some new entity. Nothingness was the fabric of creation.
Darkwing knew that war was based on fear and aggression, so the more people who had "war" on the brain would in turn create an environment of fear and aggression. The structure would change but it’s contents wouldn’t- eventually war would reproduce. No... he would let himself die rather than get manipulated into defense but he had to do something.
Darkwing met with Jimmy when he made up his mind. Jimmy asked him what he planned to do and he said, "I’m going to find Sir Jane." Jimmy liked the idea; he had been going stir crazy thinking he’d have to wait around for 3 years to be rescued by fish. "So what are we gonna do?", said Jimmy, "I’ll do anything to get outta this can for awhile!" Darkwing said he didn’t quite know what to do... but he had an idea.
Darkwing’s Idea
Jimmy and Darkwing sat cross legged facing each other on top of the ware- house in the middle of the night. They sat under a small metal roofing plate in case a plane flew by. They passed a joint back and forth, and Darkwing’s eyes lit up when he coughed. Darkwing said something inside Jimmy’s head and Jimmy nodded, "OK."
Darkwing started humming in a very aggressive tone at a fairly high pitch, and the light from his eyes formed a beam that projected directly into Jimmy’s eyes. Jimmy’s face started twitching and then his body followed suit. As Jimmy went into a trance his body twitched all over with his arms and legs shooting out sporadically, but his eyes were fixed on the beams of light like they were retractor beams. Jimmy was a deer in a headlight. His head flew back and words came out,
"The fetus snapped in 2 now twins are split... The author’s bad blood pours through the strip... Heads of cannibals roll... 2 by 2 into the next dream...Muskies savage ordinary man... The turns are taken... White demon will breathe through her blood... His gray hat understands... understands well... She’s going to fuck you up, Adam... She’s gonna fuck you right up..." The voice turned into a little giggle until Jimmy came to.
They were both practically panting after the trance was broken. Darkwing coughed and then started hiccuping. Jimmy slouched his shoulders forward. When Darkwing’s hiccups calmed down a bit Jimmy spoke to him, "I saw how you’re gonna do it...", Jimmy rolled his eyes, "But I still don’t know how you’re gonna do it!" Darkwing looked over confused and then hiccuped again. Jimmy tried to speak, stopped, and then tried again, "Are you drawn to the air by any chance? You think about flying much?" In between hiccups Darkwing shook his head, "Not especially...why?" Jimmy studied him for a few seconds, "Well... in the trance I saw you writhing around in pain. You were... flopping around on the ground like a fish. Your back was bleeding, and then... all of a sudden you started flying around, and I saw 2 huge black wings flapping behind you! You were... beautiful, man!" "That’s it.", Darkwing said pensively, "That’s how it’ll work... We better get started."
After scavenging some supplies from the warehouse they returned to the roof. Darkwing took his shirt off and for the first time Jimmy saw scars all along his back. Darkwing noticed him looking so he answered, "They aren’t from this lifetime... but I’m bound to the lifetime that birthed them...Memory scars. They just appeared when I was an adolescent... Keeps me grounded, I guess." Darkwing then reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a handful of dried mushrooms. He tossed the whole handful into his mouth. "What are those for?", Jimmy asked. "I need those to switch gears in my brain. If I’ve got wings behind these arms somewhere, I’m gonna need to find the controls to operate them... This medicine brought the light to my eyes so hopefully it’ll put wings on my back."
Darkwing handed Jimmy a pocket knife and then he leaned against a wall with his back exposed, "Well, cut me." "Where?", Jimmy asked, "There’s a lot of spots to choose from." "I’m getting a feeling on the inner side of each of my shoulder blades.", returned Darkwing, "Maybe you shouldn’t cut too deep until we know what’s going on." "Yeah", Jimmy agreed, "I’m only doing this ‘cause I think the name thing’s too uncanny." "Yeah, that’s something isn’t it.", Darkwing chuckled to himself. Darkwing had chose the name Darkwing after watching a cartoon on TV. He had no idea that he ever had wings, or that they’d be dark.
Jimmy saw 2 scars on the inside of Darkwing’s shoulders that seemed like perfect areas to start at. Jimmy said, "Yell stop if you want me to stop... otherwise I’ll keep going." Darkwing nodded and Jimmy just grazed the knife down his back. After the practice cut he dug it in about a quarter of an inch and repeated the downward slice. "Fuck, man!", Darkwing shouted. He didn’t say stop though, so Jimmy finished the cut. "You alright?", he asked. After a few breaths Darkwing said, "Yeah... this better work out."
Jimmy sliced down through the opposite scar and then wiped the knife off. Darkwing’s back was decorated with 2 thick lines of blood. He looked tired from the absorption of pain, but he still stayed within 10 steps of the edge of the roof. "I gotta think through the rest.", he said as he sat down on the ground cross legged. Darkwing closed his eyes and was quiet.
Jimmy reached into his pocket and noticed his hand was shaking. He pulled out an old cigarette and a book of matches too. There was one left. He lit the match and started to slowly puff on the cigarette. "This is nice.", he muttered to himself. Halfway through the cigarette Darkwing started suppressing screams, then he started flopping around on the ground like a fish. He was groaning at the intensity of the pain, and it almost looked as if he had no control of himself. "Help!", he coughed out. It caught Jimmy’s attention. Jimmy let the cigarette drop out of his mouth and he asked, "What should I do?" "Pull it out!", Darkwing tried not to yell, "Hold me down and pull it out!"
Jimmy awkwardly put his shin over Darkwing’s arm and looked at his back. There was something behind the opened scar, and it was shifting beneath Darkwing’s skin. Jimmy put his fingers into the wound and felt around until he felt the tip of a wing. He pulled it back and eased the tip out of the wound. That’s all it took. Darkwing screamed, and the freed wing flung out and knocked Jimmy across the floor of the roof. The other wing followed suit directly after. It had no need to be freed. Darkwing had tears in his eyes from agony and then relief. He tried to get up on his hands and knees, but he collapsed soon afterward and passed out. Jimmy took his shirt off and scrunched it up under Darkwing’s head, then he walked over to the edge of the roof.
Jimmy thought aloud as he stared out at the horizon, but the words didn’t match the thoughts. He said, "It’s another day within a day." But he was thinking, "Why are we stuck in this dream?" When he said, "I miss my friends.", he was remembering tortured strangers walking insane through alleyways. "Pops is dead...", he said. For the first couple of years being a drunk was fun. He remembered the Indian shaman on Alcatraz. He remembered taking the liquid from her. Churning liquid visions flowing wholly from the vine. Jimmy looked back at Darkwing. He was still passed out cold with 2 huge black wings jutting out from his back. There was blood smeared on the tips of the wings. "Always a price to pay.", Jimmy muttered.
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