A First Night of Dream

I dream. I am young and this is a time sometime in my past, but I can not place where this happening. While I might be young, and it may feel like the end of the 20th century, I can not escape the feeling that is happening somewhere in the future. I sit on a balcony and a city stretches out below me like a glittering sea of stars across the ground; or perhaps there is no ground and Space stares up at me from below. 

Wherever this is, it's seems of little importance. Six people are with me as well, all of them peers from youth. We chatter away like children, with very little substance to our words. In fact, I can't understanding our conversation at all. It's like the echoes of voices in a long school hall. All at once, we stop talking and play a game of rock, paper, scissors. When the loser is decided he has to leave.

Then we continue. For the life of me our conversation still has no meaning to me. I sit speaking and understanding, but the language is absent. It's like I sit in a silent movie, while an audio track of something strangely similar but different plays slightly out of synch. I need a drink of water, something to set my head back on straight. There's a fountain in the back corner, a big porcelain unit surrounded by cork board.

The water is refreshing. This balcony is so much more comfortable then one would expect. When I stand and wipe my mouth, I realize I'm not alone. A girl stands at the fountain with me. I recognize her immediately by the mistrust in my heart. Yet for all the fact that she is my enemy, she smiles and looks benign. She opens her mouth to say something, but then stops. 

We must play the game. Scissors. I win. She scowls at me cruelly and departs. I return to my friends.

There are only three of us left now. I adjust my clothes before I sit down, the t-shirts and jeans never feeling quite right. Even back then I feel conscious about my looks.  When I sit down we begin to talk again. Now I can understand our words. We are talking about age and time. Suddenly I feel as if I'm part of something very venerated. This is not the topic of children's conversation.

"Time is meant to move in one direction only. It is unseemly to step backwards when you should only go ahead."

"Everyone lives and dies. The purpose of life is too abstract. Stepping backwards in the mind's eye is consolation."

"Memory is not stepping backwards, it has no substance. It lacks the taste touch, smell and sense of reality. It is more fallible then anything." My one friend objects indignantly to the comments of the other.

Both of them suddenly look at me as if I were to have some grandiloquence to shed upon the subject. I ponder the topic for a moment with little success. Slowly, I come to a realization. I realize that I do not belong here. I am not the child that I outwardly appear. Inside I feel as if I am a fully grown man; I have earned wisdom beyond the boyish frame I inhabit.  I finally shrug. "We live and we die."My pair seem sated with my opinion.

A third time we play rock, paper, scissors. I smile at my friends and give an little wave as Space swallows me, and I fall endlessly away.

Graffiti Poetry 2012

Speak not to me of love's cold kiss,

When in her need, she's just amiss;

Or laying traps of guile and art,

To patiently wait and burn out your heart.

Leaving what's left at the end of the day:

An empty and a lonely dark.

Full of nymphs who want to play,

Who just don't seem to light my spark.

Oh, all I want's a nerdy hipster,

A girl to make my cold heart blister.

Who makes joy rage within my chest

For reasons alone of my own interest.

But remember, love is only fear and vomit.

It's for that fact I write this sonnet.

A Superhero Story: Part 1

There are exactly 437 corporations in the world that deal with the occult, the paranormal, the metaphysical and the abnormally gifted. 161 of them are based out of Europe, 78 split between the Middle East and Africa, and 135 are located in Asia, with the majority of those being based out of the Pacific rim. Another 44 are located across the continent of North America, with the remaining 19 existing in South America under the control of the remainder of the Mayan and Incan empires respectively. Of these corporations, I have personally served in 3; the specific corporations of course aren't really that important, anyone who has ever had experience with these groups knows that any one is the same as any other.

My exact job description: superhero. When I tell people that however, most of them have deluded visions of helping the innocent, protecting the feeble and upholding the virtues of justice. That of course is really nothing more than a bunch of rotting bull shit; fantasies dreamt up by douche nozzles who spent too much time reflecting on the mirror images of good and evil. I read this book once by a guy named Erich Fromm called the Heart of Man; now there was a man who understood the pendulum of good and evil. In fact I have an original manuscript of the book that I keep in my own personal library; sometimes I refer to it when I need a professional non-corporate opinion on what I'm doing. I do digress however.

What I'm trying to say is that being a superhero isn't quite the paragon of virtue that the modern world has moulded it into. Don't misunderstand, I've thrown myself into the Sumida River to save drowning children, I have been the shadow guarding the hunted from the hunters, and I've foiled the plans of people who tried to control the world through pain and fear. I've also rained misery down upon the weak and helpless, I've ignored those to whom I was their only help, and I've served as the personal executioner to some of the people I've cared about most. In honesty, being a superhero is actually pretty soul-stealing work, suited only to the most heartless and unfeeling of human. I struggle with it most days, and the days that I don't, I generally worry about myself.

Superhero is somewhat of a misnomer however. While it's true that almost everyone who works for a corporation has the ability to do something in some way, the truth of the matter is that we're divided between several different classifications of action depending on what our abilities actually are. Artificers are those who can use arcane and occult tools, though they themselves have no ability intrinsic to themselves; you probably even know someone like this, they tend to be the ones who put street lights out as they walk by them. Ninja are absolute pinnacles of human conditioning, their abilities aren't fancy, but their training and their dedication to that training make them some of the most dangerous people I have ever met. There are Specialists, and this is the category that I fall into. When people think of superheroes, Specialists are the people they are usually thinking of since we're the ones who have personal abilities and powers; I myself am a psychometric. Then there are the Operatives, the ones whose job it is to recruit and conscribe others into corporate activity. People in this position generally come from all across the board, my own Operative, Lynn Lieb, was once a Ninja (which was awesome). Finally of course there is the executive Brass, but their actual function is still somewhat of a mystery to me; I know they make the decisions and control operations, but the actual mechanics of that level I must admit my ignorance to. All I know is that their orders are absolute.

Each of these classifications have their own specific functions; being a Specialist, I'm usually the one tasked with the actual grunt work of what we do. When there is a target that has to be taken care of, I take care of it. When there is an obstacle that needs to be cleared, I'm usually the one to clear it. Where there is something that needs to be recovered, I'm the one who generally does that too. I have a partner of course, Specialists seldom work alone. In my own partnership, I play the part of intelligence, where my partner, Opera Vector, is the muscle.

Why am I telling you this? There is a story that I would like to get off my chest, but the problem is that it's one that need just a modicum of reference. My corporate psychologist made the suggestion that I write the story out, but honestly? To tell this tale, I need to cover more then just the details of the events that transpired. I need to understand myself the meaning of all the misery that I've put myself through, and the only way to do that is to start at square one and work out from there. At least now when I mention Ninja, you won't immediately jump to the thought of the 15th century Japanese warrior caste from which the name comes. Also, when I talk about conversations held with objects and items, you know that I'm psychometric, that this is just par and parcel with what I do. Have I told you quite enough yet? To be honest, I could continue on how I'm somewhat of an outcast among my peers (not in a bad way, but I'll get to that), or I could tell you how all of this began on the roof of the Zozo Apartment, on what normal people call Valentine's Day. I'll refrain from all that for the moment however, I get the feeling that I've already given you enough to chew already without even mentioning the meat of the story I'm about to tell. Besides, we'll get into that next time.