macksting

A starfield fades in and out of view on the holoscreen. ‘What happens when a mortal dies? In sufficient time, all men must meet their end. Whether for weal or woe, they all pass through my realm, for I… am the Angel of Memory. ‘Death holds no fear for some. Indeed, some have more to fear from life.’ A man in angelic garb with a priestly bearing, honestly passably acted, walks out of the shadows into center stage, holding a glass globe prop made to pass for a crystal ball. 'They leave these fears behind when they take their rest, and I tend them in my garden. Come…’ The holocam focuses ever deeper on the glass, and a distorted hologram of a dining room with five comfortably dressed actors takes up the screen. 'Observe.’

CHAMELEON

Based on a story by Richard Roberson

Screenplay by Lourden Devoni


DARIL, SIGNE and KORVUS are laughing, standing next to a table where a dinner has recently been finished. One plate looks hardly touched. JASON clears the dishes, getting half in a go while ALESANDRU is finishing an anecdote.

Alesandru: And that’s how we lost the boat.
Signe: Reminds me of the time I networked my way into a bratwurst –
KORVUS interrupts. Korvus: Signe, that’s a very long story, and if you tell it we’ll be here all night!
Signe: True, I could try to keep it short, but no, we should have been gone half an hour ago.
Alesandru: Save it for next time, dears, it sounds intriguing. Oh, Daril?

While SIGNE, ALESANDRU and KORVUS were wrapping up their conversation, DARIL had surreptitiously stepped off camera; when he is addressed, he stops dead in his tracks and slowly, reluctantly turns, crestfallen, toward ALESANDRU. SIGNE and KORVUS walk toward the door arm in arm and exit stage, saying goodnight to DARIL as they go, unaware of his distress.
JASON returns from the kitchen; a few dishes remain, including one nearly untouched meal.

Jason: You nearly gave us the slip again! But we have the house to ourselves, and no one is the wiser.
DARIL looks behind him off screen.
Daril: Please. I don’t know what you want.
Alesandru: Why so suspicioussss, we’re all friends here! Just old alumni, reminiscing together.
Jason: Alesandru, don’t tease. Time to call it. We’re not working for anybody, Daril, but we’re understandably curious. All these little games you play, all these little tricks, and you’ve hardly touched your food.
Alesandru: That’s fresh nutmeg in that pilaf.
Daril: Working for – wait, what? Oh no. No no no.

DARIL holds his head in his hands and sits down in a chair. ALESANDRU sits on the edge of the table, one leg on a chair.

Alesandru: Daril, time to come clean. Who do you work for? Who are you? This has been entertaining, but if you want it to end, if you want to leave here tonight? No more games, no more shadowing, no more spying? To be sure, we’ll decide what to do with the information when we have it. High bids for turncoats and spies right now.

JASON is gathering more dishes from the table.

Jason: Could build that new deck we’ve been wanting. Daril would have liked that.
Daril: I am Daril. I – no, that’s not quite true.

DARIL raises his head from his hands. JASON sets down the dishes he had gathered, watching intently and menacingly. ALESANDRU is closer, and calmer, bemused.

Daril: I’m honestly flattered. But it’s not what you think. Do you remember that weekend where I disappeared twenty years ago?
Alesandru: Yes, go on.

DARIL is silent for a moment, staring down at his feet.

Daril: I don’t think I’m anybody’s asset. Yes. Yes, it’s time to end this charade, though. I don’t mean anybody any harm. Dru, could you please hand me that knife? Don’t worry. I won’t hurt either of you. I couldn’t, I would never do that to a friend. But I have something to show you.

ALESANDRU raises his eyebrows and reaches for the knife from DARIL’s place setting. It is clean, shining and unbesmirched, a simple steak knife. JASON frowns, grips the table, looking from one to the other, fretful and alarmed.

Alesandru: We’ll humor you. Twenty years we’ve known each other, if not the thirty we’d’ve liked to know Daril.

ALESANDRU hands DARIL the knife, handle first. DARIL raises his shirt and tucks it under his chin. JASON cries out in distress; slightly muffled, DARIL holds out his off hand to halt JASON.

DARIL: It’s all right. I said I wouldn’t hurt anyone, that includes myself.

Cut to a closeup of a bare, hairless torso, the shirt bunched up at the top, the waist of the pants below. DARIL’s hand cuts from the middle down with barely a trickle of dark blood, and then reaches into the cavity and pulls the skin easily apart, exposing inhuman organs and unusual bones.

Daril: As you can see, I’m not what I seem.
Alesandru: What– what is that? What are you?

DARIL closes the cavity again, setting the nearly bloodless knife aside with a soft clatter. Cut to him wiping his hands absent-mindedly on a cloth napkin ALESANDRU has just handed him, letting his shirt fall over a line drawn down his stomach. DARIL wipes the knife clean and sets it and the stained napkin aside.

Daril: I knew you wouldn’t take what I say at face value. It’s too unbelievable on its own. I had to show you first so that you’d have an open mind. But I’m no professional. If what you say is true, I’m no more a professional spy than you are. We’re all three just old college buddies.

DARIL pauses, still looking very downcast, his elbows on his knees and his hands listlessly hanging between his legs.

Daril: Twenty years ago, I was abducted. I didn’t remember what happened at the time. You’ll recall my mother asked after me, and all campus was abuzz. When I returned on Tuesday, I was changed. I didn’t even know what day it was. Classes I had been good at, I was failing, and classes I had been barely passing I was now catching up in with ease. You’ll recall I’d always been good at math, but I switched majors to business. Everybody could tell something was very, very wrong, but I tried to just blunder through it as if nothing had happened.
By the year’s end, I’d long since noticed I wasn’t able to feel pain. I’d forgotten your birthday, and then nearly missed by own; they’re so close together, we used to celebrate them with a single party. But I didn’t remember that. And, of course, I didn’t bleed. Not really.
I haven’t been to a doctor since January of 1998. I’d scheduled a check-up. The doctor said he couldn’t find my pulse. I got out as fast as I could.
Slowly the weekend started to come back to me, usually in dreams. I remember the aliens, if that’s what they were. They took me into their ship. It was like I was in a trance. I was put to sleep, and when I woke up, without a word they dropped me back on the side of the road, in the middle of the night, in the same clothes I’d left the house in.
Since then, I’ve gone about my life as best I could. Every night I wonder, is this the night something will happen? Sometimes I think it all must be just some horrible dream, or that I’m going mad. I keep a needle in my pocket to prick myself to remind myself that it’s all true.

DARIL reaches into his pocket as he says this and draws out a small pin in a tiny plastic case. The end of the pin is dark with ichor.

Daril: Day after day. I’ve been waiting for twenty years for something to come of it. I can’t help but think, now that I’ve finally told someone, maybe it will all be over.
I’m sorry.

DARIL puts the pin back in his pocket and buries his face in his hands, exhausted. The camera zooms out to include ALESANDRU and JASON. ALESANDRU and JASON exchange worried glances, but look compassionately on DARIL, who speaks through his hands, muffled.

Daril: I really am sorry, Dru. I don’t know what happened to your Daril. I remember so much. I remembered you, and Jason and Signe and Korvus. They’ve become quite a couple, too. I’ve watched my friends grow up, get married, move on with their lives, while every day and night I just waited, wondering if this is the day my purpose will come to light, if this will be the day something terrible happens. I’ve learned how to lie, how to steal, how to run. I’ve learned so much about how to pretend to be somebody I am not. And now that I’ve said it, now that the game is up between us, I don’t know what will happen. Maybe tonight will be the night. Maybe I am an asset, but not for some government. Something very strange happened to me, and I don’t know if it’s ever happened to anybody else ever. I don’t know how many of us there are, or if there’s only me; I don’t know what happened to Daril, and I don’t know who I am anymore.
I’m sorry.

JASON comes slowly around the table and puts his hand on DARIL’s shoulder.

Jason: Dru, it sounds like we’ve put everybody here in a dreadfully awkward situation. Daril… We’re sorry, too. We had no idea you were going through all this.
Alesandru: I’ll go get the cordial. I think we’ve got a long night of waiting ahead of us. Daril… Do you still drink?

The episode ends. ALESANDRU’s words echo and the screen fades to the sorrowful Angel. 'Remember, this is but a memory. His suffering in life is over. But to what world does he depart?’
The camera pans a bit to the right, and an effects error makes the split screen obvious. ‘And from what world do you hail, stranger?’ The Angel walks onto the scene, speaking to the first, bewildered Angel, who sets the glass globe aside and peels back his robes to show ticking clockwork.

‘Why, I’m as surprised as you are.’

The second Angel peels back his robes to show a bare, hairless midriff, and both look up at the camera, surprised.

The end credits roll.
ANGEL ….. LOURDEN DEVONI

minor edits 10-12-18

Conversion

[author's note: Desperately needs an opening, however brief]
Sherry, an attractive blond news anchor, had been going on about the Olympics. A cyclist for the American team had split his head open in a bad crash, and was in critical condition. She threw to Frye for the robot news. I couldn't recall this ever having happened before.
The studio lights shone off Frye's boxy head pleasantly. I was momentarily captivated, lulled into almost a doze until he shifted slightly in his seat, reducing the glare.
"Healthcare costs for the elderly have increased 300% this week due to the closure of Hewlett-Packard's last vacuum tube manufacturing plant. Senator Y-10 is under pressure from special interest groups to nationalize vacuum tube production."
The visual cut to a press conference. 'Sen. Y-10, A-OR,' said before the gathered press, "The alternative is 'capitalism with a conscience,' not a single-payer scheme for our transistors and eye-cees, but an appropriate balance of fiscal and personal responsibility. The market demands transistors, and transistors will be produced to meet the demand."
I desperately wished I could ask Pol what he thought of this, but he wasn't in the room even now, a fact which bothered me a little. Perhaps this moment was only for me, and nobody else, but then what good could it do me? It could have been a joke of some sort, but that was rather unprecedented; our local news was award-winning and boring stuff.
The robot anchor droned on mellifluously:
"A human slavery ring in Malaysia was dismantled today; with their liberation, productivity doubled. Spokespersons for Matchbox couldn't be reached for comment at this time."
I became suddenly glad Pol wasn't here. I was having a bad flesh day. The chrome and metal of my skull had accidentally come unhooked, causing my skin to slide off. It would be difficult to explain, and embarrassing as well; surely I looked like I'd had a stroke. I clutched my hand to my temple and looked for somewhere to lean that would look natural. I suppose it must happen to the best of us.
My attention was once more wrested back to the television. Pol had been in the bathroom quite a while, as far as I could guess, since the programming had moved on from the news. There was some strange show on now, starring silvery people, and one guy like me, living together in an apartment. Same old, really, but the chrome on the actors was a fresh twist.
    'Whatcha doin', Skinny?'
    'I'm doing philately,' said the pink guy.
    'That sounds dirty.' A laugh track.
    'Uh, it means stamp collecting.'
    'I know what it means, that's why it sounds dirty. Why, what were you thinking?' Laugh track again. Could have been a live audience; it sounded canned regardless.
The theme song sounded familiar, but I couldn't quite figure it out.
"Zero one one zero one zero, zero one one! Zero one one! Zero one zero zero one one!" Zebutron and Friends, it said. I was a captive to the show, the remote just out of reach, and my face kept in place only by pressing it against the side of the chair opposite the coffee table.
    'Zeb, you've been on the computer all day. Shouldn't you be looking for a job?'
    'No, this is better, turns out the landlord has a backdoor.'
    'Why doesn't our apartment have one?'
    'We're on the third floor.' Laugh track again. 'I mean a real backdoor. He's old, man, super old. I've been playing solitaire while he's sleeping.'
    'Wait, you are in the landlord's head? Move over, I want to see his logs.'

I wonder if the person born of this chrysalis will better understand sweet things. Sugary and saccharine things have always been so alien to me, and one mustn’t forget what has helped before, as one owes it a debt of gratitude, but what if the emerging person has begun to understand the opiate, the power and joy of the balm?
For just one moment, I want someone to hear a song the way I hear it. The frisson of a transition, the beauty of dissonance, the three dimensional landscape invoked in my mind by several layers of different sounds.
Perhaps I wonder about this sweetness because I hope, if in emerging able to grasp sweetness I can feel it as others do, that I shall become like them. This is, however, impossible; and desirable or not, it is not to be hoped for.
What if all were one? If it meant we were narrow it would be a tragedy. It would, however, be a source of peace until a division were necessary. But what if Kaworu is right? We are human because we are alone. Yet I am reminded that, lacking water, we make a religion revering thirst. Humanity without distinction, humanity without death, would not be human. But it doesn’t mean it should not be.
It doesn’t matter much. Such conceits are fiction. Be they a heaven or a hell, they are not of this world.
And it’s not as though what emerges will be any less myself than the cocoon of terror and pain I hope to slough off, nor the thing which was wrapped in it in March. If I become alien to myself, I nevertheless am me, and to despise that would be a tragedy.

Chrysalis

Etymology
From Latin chrysalis, from Ancient Greek χρυσαλλίς (khrusallís), from χρυσός (khrusós, “gold”), because of the color of some of them.

  Noun
chrysalis (plural chrysalises or chrysalides)

1.    The pupa of a butterfly or moth, enclosed inside a cocoon, in which metamorphosis takes place.
2.    The cocoon itself.
3.    (figuratively) A strong constraint.

From Wiktionary, retrieved 10:21 AM 8/3/18

I’d said elsewhere I am in aestivation, but I feel more and more this is not true. Instead, I seem to be a chrysalis.

A pupa that is a chrysalis in a cocoon digests itself, entirely dissolving. Professor Martha Weiss says the butterfly which emerges, dissolving or cutting its way free of the cocoon, remembers its time as a caterpillar despite a near total dissolution inside the cocoon.

Whatever I was a year ago could not last; it is not merely that all things change, but that it was especially unstable. This leads me to where I am right now, in the midst of realizations, of a mental whiteboard of plans for how to proceed, and of divesting myself of things which have caused me a great deal of pain and could not continue indefinitely.

When I am stable again, when I have emerged, I shall try to learn how to engage in politics as my new self, whatever that may be. Moreso, I shall try to learn how to engage in my personal life as this new self.

I hope this new self doesn’t have these panic attack cry jags every day. Those would be troubling in the long term; it’s been two months and they’re troubling already, especially during spans when they are, in fact, daily occurrences.

I will need other people to help me know myself as I complete this metamorphosis, or rather this particular phase thereof; like the song says, even the things that seem still are still changing. Nevertheless, there’s a kind of settling, a shaking out, which must surely occur once this goddamned summer is over. Perhaps the depression will lift; perhaps I will learn how to operate around it more effectively if it does not. Perhaps we’ll find the meds work fine when I’m not in direct sunlight; perhaps they won’t, and I can taper off and start eating corned beef again (or, for that matter, liver with fava beans and a light chianti. None of which I actually like.)

The important part is that this phase, too, cannot last indefinitely; already there have been changes, and the pace of these changes cannot continue. The season will pass, and something different will emerge.

So far he’s a nonbinary dude who keeps a mustache because it doesn’t bother him to do so, wears a rather smashing cap when the weather permits, and is probably going to try to run a Freire-style class among his fellow Aspies to try to determine what goes wrong when we try to organize with allistics (still not used to that term) and what accommodations to allow us to safely engage with others in a context where so many people are so easily hurt. As it stands, I have discovered that simply walking on eggshells and accepting whatever hurtful things happen to me as necessary evils is not the way to go. If they deserve my compassion, so do I deserve it not only from them but from myself.

Let us discover what I shall be. I long to know what he is. I long for my wife to be a part of that, to have her with me now and forever, and I hope she can help me discover who this new person is, who emerges from this cocoon and takes wing. I fear to burden her, but she has a right to be a part of this process, because she loves me and has been my security, and I love her and have been hers, and it would be an injustice and a dreadful logistical error to try to handle this by myself. But I have other friends as well, who can help me know myself in ways she cannot, and I should also work with them to discover who emerges and how to accommodate that person, to mitigate the Henry which still exists and has a right to his thoughts but needs to just sulk over his spumoni now and then (Dream Song 4), but who is a source of strength when strength is needful for myself or others.

I grow weary and impatient, but I shall rest as best I can and we shall see what shakes out, what remains when the changes are, for a time, done and the thing which stands in my place is more resistant to its environment than the chrysalis hiding in its cocoon.

Playlist:
Best Imitation Of Myself (Ben Folds Five)
Your Most Valuable Possession (Ben Folds Five)
Everyone Says Hi (David Bowie)
anti-nostalgic (Bad Luck, from Gravitation)
Passover (Joy Division)
Everybody’s Lonely (Harry Chapin)
New Slang (The Shins)
The Biggest Lie (Elliott Smith)
Faraway Promise (Yasunori Mitsuda, from Xenogears)
People Ain’t No Good (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)
Mr. Dandy (BLUEW, from Bubblegum Crisis)
Your Possible Pasts (Pink Floyd)

#cocoon metaphor #my cruft #personal playlist #there ought to be a law against henry #why isn't liszt on there dammit #change #settling out #even the things that seem still are still changing #reverse sad #nonbinary #i met her in 2000 and we're still nauseatingly cute 18 years later

In the book The Last Unicorn (Peter S. Beagle), there’s a figure who uses the name Elli. Her song is as follows:

“What is plucked will grow again,
What is slain lives on,
What is stolen will remain
What is gone is gone…
What is sea-born dies on land,
Soft is trod upon.
What is given burns the hand -
What is gone is gone…
Here is there, and high is low;
All may be undone.
What is true, no two men know -
What is gone is gone…”

Later, after her scenes are done, another person sings a verse she hadn’t sung, and doesn’t remember where she heard it.

“Who has choices need not choose.
We must, who have none.
We can love but what we lose -
What is gone is gone.”     

He’s not the only astronaut to pass away recently, but Alan Bean has been on my mind.

Alan Bean was an Apollo astronaut, one of the few humans to set foot on another world. While there it became necessary to dislodge a plutonium slug which had welded itself to its shielded container. Bean did not act unilaterally, but eventually nobody had a better solution than his suggestion to hit it with a hammer.

It worked great. They set up the RTG and all was well, as a result of that hammer.

I also know Alan Bean as an artist. I should study him more in general, but his fellow astronauts apparently suggested he take up painting scenes from space. He had a unique talent among the astronauts who had been up there at that point for visual arts, including the lovely picture of Earth taken from Apollo 12.

http://www.alanbean.com/

I’d been sitting on this post for a while, uncertain what to say, but I guess tonight I decided it was time to close the tab on that photograph, which meant posting now or never.

Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss. Not entirely satisfied with it; it’s actually pretty creepy now. The lovely wife suggested it, though, and seems to like it, so it’s got that going for it.

#the hell are you doing sir