03/18/08 a pale skinny young man lying on a bed, spasmodically fucking a plastic bag full of turkey sausages and diarrhea. just out of view is a woman, laughing at him. 07/27/08 we were staying at my old black grandmother's place in the city. we had been there five days already. she turned around slowly in her blue and white floral dress, slowly asking me if i wanted any breakfast. i'll just nibble at this blueberry muffin. then she got on about what we would have for lunch and i just couldn't stand the thought of more food, so I opened the fridge and started pointing out all the leftovers - chicken, broccoli, shishkebabs, a whole tupperware full of sushi, cornbread, cranberry jelly. I was measuring the position of our homemade CMM's probe sphere for a routine calibration check. the old man was drilling me about the proper way to measure with depth calipers. "you gotta use a square to make sure it's perpendicular." "I know dammit, leave me alone." and I stormed out of the building. My usual route - hop out the window onto the garage, then jump over to the shed, run and jump, grab a branch, swing and land on the platform jutting out the window - wouldn't work. The landing platform looked like it had been slam-dunked, two-by-four's splintered and drywall screws jutting out everywhere, blue hawaiian pattern cloth flapping in the breeze. I had to get to Jessica in time to warn her, Chris Smith was coming. I could just see her inside, headphones on and typing furiously. I looked around at the alternatives, a power line, an elm tree, a gutter, a minivan. Jump out the window, bounce off the sloped garage roof, bounce off the minivan, grab the elm branches and swing up to the window. It might have worked had Smith not shown up at the exact same time. We ended up in the branches, swinging chaotically in struggle, branches scratching against the white aluminum siding. 09/20/08 I had been discussing my future at a cocktail party at my parents' house with Mike Strachan and Anne Reinholt (Rhineholt?). Anne was a doctor for posh yuppies, and she had been recommended to Mike about some medical condition. Scotty Turner drops by with an old blue Volvo full of cheap chinese tools and candy he had stolen. Somehow Anne and I end up in his car and we off we go, but there is a cement truck passing down the narrow street at the exact moment. There isn't enough room for both vehicles, as the street is lined with parked cars for the party. The truck stops and there is a sort of stand-off. Scotty revs the engine and as I realize that he's about to ram the truck head-on I try to cover my face. Nice big Crunch but nobody's hurt. Scotty mutters some insult at the cement truck driver, which is now backing up rapidly to get out of the way. "What the fuck is wrong with you, you fucking psycho! Stop the car!" I'm looking around for some way to get out of this car and trying to think of some witty comment to say to Anne, and I pick up a bag of Twizzlers to take with me... 10/03/08 "oh my god here it comes again" caroline moaned with fear. a nine inch long half inch diameter brightly glowing purple-pink bar of light steadily advanced sideways through the window pane as if nothing were there, and continued through the room. with a start i got out of bed to investigate... 06/12/09 dreams of paula daunt/eris, government ear implants, and driving in the snow 07/16/09 there's a plague of zombie monster things. they look like a human skull with ant mandibles and a long thickened spine. when they attack you their little mandibles start stripping flesh off your body, leaving only the skeleton, but meanwhile the poison is soaking in causing your spine to grow thicker and skull to grow mandibles. They can get their mandibles around your smaller bones in order to crunch them but not the spine or skull, so that's all that remains. Eventually there are huge piles of these spine/skull things left over where masses of people huddled in terror. I managed to survive by climbing onto a retractable basketball backboard and pulling it up to the ceiling of the gym. 07/25/09 it's pitch black and i'm asleep on my bed. someone's dragging my bed across the carpet. i can barely move enough to reach out and feel the carpet go by. there's no way the apartment is this big. 07/26/09 The train rolled on through lush green foothills of the Appalachian mountains. A village was just coming into the view through the fog. "Look, isn't that beautiful" I said. The village had been styled to look like an ancient roman city, but the effect with the fog was unusual. I squinted, trying to see if the villagers were playing along and wearing Roman costumes, but all I could make out was a red baseball hat. "It almost looks like bad special effects from a 1970's film." I was riding in a passenger train car with Caroline. She had her shirt open and was wearing a white satin bra, and talking about how she always thought she was from the seventies. "'I am Friend.' The only thing that kept me going through the male-dominated school system was that phrase my teacher used. I think it was from the [Jedi?] 'Ich bin [monchwasen?]'." The train slowly came to a stop in a busy train terminal. I tried to imagine that the people running back and forth had seriously taken up the practice of fictional codes of behavior like the Jedi, but they all seemed too busy and rude. 09/15/09 I had returned to my parent's house on Dickson road, and got my legos out of the closet; thankfully they were all still there. Due to some unfortunate(?) effect of heating and cooling, all the bricks had become very loose, so it only took removing a couple key pieces and entire conglomerations would fall apart. There were a lot more Mega Blox mixed in than i remember, and I set about sorting them out. There was some girl there too, who I can't quite recall. Mary Kate? I was nervous about what she thought of me. I had to fix my mom's Nissan Maxima for some reason. It was getting dark out. 10/09/09 I was part of a demolition crew, setting a number of yellow 55 gallon barrels full of liquid explosive into a trench. The time had come. A crewmember threw a match on the starter fuse as I ran and ducked behind a concrete wall. KaWhooom! The whole road seemed to shoot straight up into the sky. I managed to look up in time to see an ugly mushroom cloud rapidly ascending. Then something interesting happened. The pipeline underneath the road started to burn. The fire spread up and down the road, even back to where I was. My coworkers yelled incomprensibly, and I jumped over the glowing line of flame in the dirt without looking back. Ahead of me was an old refinery, which was unceremoniously engulfed in ten story tall flames. It burned for about two minutes, and then the ground underneath gave way. The refinery and the area around it collapsed all at once into a giant sink hole, revealing a candy wonderland totally unlike the gray-brown surface dirt. The layers nearest the surface were smooth marble white patches surrounded by a thick black border, like a stylized bleu cheese or a cone shell or melted skittles. Below the white layers were craggly peaks with tufts of burned black grass on top. The sides of the peaks were like the bordered white patches on the sides of the canyon but all in bold rainbow colors. We headed into the sinkhole to investigate. In the very center was an odd formation; the "earth" here was more glassy and lightly colored, with finer detailed patches. It unfurled from a central bluff like a giant water fountain. Climbing up the slope, the pieces became resolved into more and more detailed forms, until I realized I recognized something. "That's a kid's drawing of the Simpsons!" And so it was. Hundreds of crayon drawings were vitrified and stacked up vertically in the remains of a shelf. Further up the slope we could see more artifacts, and the remains of a cinderblock wall. Inside the wall was what looked like a storage room or a museum of sorts. One of the crewmembers, Ellen (?) was crying uncontrollably. She dropped what looked like a sword in front of me, with a clank. "Masamune." she said, defeated. "Um, ok. Thanks." I picked up the blade, which had no handle, only bare tang. It was a thick curved sabre, almost arabian in style. The blade was covered with heavy black infilled bas-relief of a cormorant, its head curving backward along the head of the sword, with the beak at the tip. I peeled at the black paint absent-mindedly while watching the others dig around in the wreckage. Also in the remains of the room was a refrigerator containing spoiled food and large piles of junk. There is birthday cake and marshmallows and other types of candy, so we pretend to have a birthday party. For whatever reason I seem to have eaten some of the spoiled food from the refrigerator and spit it out as soon as I realize what I'm doing. With the field trip over, we all pile on the school bus and head back. ... mom tearful goodbye, she's going to a convent forver something something.. dammit. 10/17/09 when dinosaurs evolved chromaticity (shot of various lizard shaped beasties crawling along a desert plain) some of them naturally had higher resolution than others. These evolved intelligence in order to control their photochromic skin cells in a way that mimics nature. (cut to shot of basilisk with teeth stalking toward a goose, images of pretty geese rezzing in and streaming across its surface. the goose looks unaware of its impending doom.) Now millions of years later, they live on as "ghosts" and "goblins" right in the heart of America. (cut to David's mansion, dark and stormy night, one candle lit in the parlor) A bald pale and black eyed ghost walks into the room, floorboards creaking madly. He says hello to the butler in a ragged voice from a thousand year crypt. The butler bows as he passes by, going up the stairs to David's room. (cut to sleepy midwestern college town, trees, churches, girl hanging out with her boyfriend in the door of a cafe) Turns out it wasn't her actual boyfriend, more like her second boyfriend as the first has just returned dustily from his long journey. The girl can't seem to decide so she hugs one and kisses the other at the same time. David recounts the story of excavating ancient documents in [persia?] telling of dragons and ghosts etc and how they are real. Our poor number one boyfriend, the philosophy student, is galvanized into action and stomps out of the cafe in search of this fabled monster. "look up in that tree, it's an angel!" i say mockingly. "that's a plastic figurine, shut up" The deranged philosophy student runs too fast for me to keep up, so I fashion a long stilt out of a tree branch and pogo-surf down the street after him. This is an interesting process whereby you hold the branch vertically by one end, then place your foot on the middle and shove off in a controlled fall like you're riding a gondola. The longer the stick, the more time you have between shoves, but the higher your overall speed. It's a dangerous game, doncha know. 11/08/09 riding in josh carver's big white ford pickup truck down the highway toward nashville indiana. i inquire about who owns the land in this area, thinking about squatting the forest. we pull off into a muddy gravel driveway which is the construction site for his house. "shoulda got another trailer if i'm gonna be using it this much." josh said, giving the truck a good whack. I snickered because the trailer we had just dropped off was nearly empty. me and the females (nicole green? margaret hainline?) got out of the truck and moseyed over to where greg witt was drinking some coffee. i was looking at a scale model of the house-to-be done in plywood. people were crowding around talking and getting in the way, and a jean covered female bottom bumped against my hand, which i guiltily pulled away with a glance to the owner. "i used to live in a house like this, with one of those round castle turret thingies, except it was two and a half stories instead of three." i said "what? don't you care about craftsmanship?" greg replied in horror it had never leaked at all, i thought, wondering what the problem was. 11/10/09 two loud bangs wake me right as i'm falling asleep 11/11/09 twilight: demon possessed wooden table full of glowing coals, makes my best friend try to kill me. i dump the coals out in his back yard and pull a heavy rusted iron rod from it. this seems to protect me spiritually and physically and stops the random garden implements he throws at me by sapping their strength mid-flight. night: punk bonfire gathering, duel of banjos forbodes ominously. serene is re-stringing her super whammy banjo with electrical cords. "I always wondered how those things worked." morning: dad is adding skylights to the dickson house, supposedly to let in more light for passive solar heating; i have my doubts it will actually result in a net heat gain. nathan is making some obscure joke about one of the toilets in the house actually having come from india. i investigate the upstairs bathroom and imagine how the floorplan could have been split up better. daytime: more ominous forboding. i am worried about a zombie attack and inquire around town for a sawed off shotgun and an m-16 and worry about how much the ammo will weigh. beer. 11/23/09 i pulled in to miles away in my red crx after a long trip. (staying with my uncle in denver for a couple months?) I was really tired and wanted nothing so much as to go to sleep, but apparently there had been some modifications while i was gone. My basement room now had a door knocked into the brick wall, which as open, and i could see several people standing aroudn joking inside. Dylan was in there, messing around with a computer. As I looked around I noticed that a lot of things had changed. "Is that a ... mac plus?" "yeah isn't it sweet" He sure had a lot of recording equipment set up on my drafting table. Eventually I figured out what had happened; he had moved across the hall into my room some time ago, and moved all of my stuff out, putting up cabinets and drywall and painting it with streaks of dull orange. He had some counters and since there was nowhere else to sit, I lay on one of them for a while, talking to him about selling a stolen canister of ether on the black market or something, eventually falling asleep. I woke up after a couple hours and Dylan was gone, but my glasses were bent from sleeping on a hard surface. Bent them back but the joint was fatigued and dangerously weak. I poked around the room a bit; there were some piles of books on ottoman empire battleships. i tried to look into the other room but there was trash piled up in front of it, so, lacking any other idea what to do i started taking trash out to the dumpster across the road, starting with cans of paint, light purple paint in fact. someone (jenna haggard?) was on the porch drinking a beer and we talked for a bit, i forget about what. I ended up at my parents' house in indianapolis. I had woken up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. As i looked out the window i saw some movement out in the neighborhood. I waited and eventually saw a huge shadow of a grizzly bear prowling down the street a couple hundred feet away. didn't want him to see me so I ducked under the window sill and waited. Just as i thought it was safe to stand up again and pee, there was a terrible roaring booming snarling noise. I peeped out and the bear was there, right at eye level, growling "how stupid and blind did you think I was?" and other niceties. I stood up some more and could see there were two bears, standing on ladders, the other one watching me intently. They started lecturing me about civil rights and how people treated bears so badly. The bears looked a lot like tired old black men. There was another "bear" in san fransisco, also at my window on a ladder. This bear had pale white skin and hot pink hair and lots of ear piercings. She didn't really look like a bear. She was complaining about gender roles and society or something. I was at my "listening post" with the National Guard; apparently the locals thought that meant I had to listen to them. I vaguely mentioned she could probably make a lot of money on the internet as a bear with hot pink hair. At this she suddenly got quiet and looked away. Another bear smirked and it came out that she was a transsexual, still hadn't lopped off the ol' ding dong. I never would have guessed. "But hey think about it, how many trannie hot pink bears are doing their thing on the net? There's a niche for everyone, I'm sure I could find you a spot with a bit of coding." More annoying conversation.. another bear suddenly pounced on her, started strangling her. I shot him in the shoulder with my M-16 to get his attention. Well, he was dead, I guess I didn't get his attention. And she was dead too, broken neck. My sergeant had run in at the sound of the yelling and the single shot, looked at the bodies, looked at me, then suddenly looked up at the "horizon", (in downtown san fransisco?) listening to his radio earbud. "Everybody, up here NOW we're being attacked!" I thought he must have misunderstood the bears or something, but suddenly a huge clot of featureless cruise missiles appeared from behind a highrise, trailing smoke like a swarm of horizontal jellyfish. One of them banked tightly and headed straight for us; I fired at it, so did the other soldiers. It seemed to have no effect (no holes punched in the gleaming rounded metal) but the missile drifted to the side and skidded on the ground near the bears, where it stayed still. We headed out in pairs, me with John Stanley (why me?) headed vaguely south in the rush of people. I had no idea what the objective was. "Who are we fighting, sarge?" A soldier in another uniform with rounded olive-drab helmets (as opposed to our bright green camo) was shoving his way through a crowd toward us. He was sort of pale with light eyes. He raised his pistol at us and I shot him without thinking. "Oh crap did I just shoot an MP?" Sarge confirmed and said it was okay, he was an enemy. I had no idea what we were in for. Stanley and I pushed through the clot of people in the street, firing at anyone who looked even vaguely like a zombie or a vampire. It was mad. I pulled him into an arched doorway underneath some shops to catch my breath and reload. "What the hell. I can't do this." He didn't reply, but instead was watching a line of people forming at an ATM. With the whole world falling around us, cash hardly seemed like a high priority, but I had no idea what else to do, so I held up the line while Stanley got his maximum withdrawal out. I saw a familiar face waiting warily in the crowd next to a white marble wall, and pointed the M-16 at him. "You, come over here." Someone rushed me from the side with a knife - combat training kicked in and I disarmed him. He ended up on the ground on his back, I standing over him holding the twisted dull kitchen implement with a broken black plastic handle. (Thinking over this incident much later, with all the crowd bustling and rough and tumble, this must have been where I lost the M-16.) My attacker looked a lot like the familiar figure, and when I began questioning him, it turns out they were brothers. An older man in a gray coat was pushing through the crowd, escorting the familiar person away. I yanked "brother" off the floor to his feet, shoving him along with me toward them to catch up. Finally caught up right as we were nearing the back exit. We were walking down the steps toward a body of water, lots of trees and shady areas of bare earth. "So he's your real brother? Not some 'revolutionary brother' thing? We get a lot of that crap, I just want to know how many of you there are." Brother pointed at the older man in the gray coat, "He's blood." and nodded. "Blood? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Is he your uncle or something?" He just shook his head and looked down sadly. Familiar was gone. Old man was gone. I realized I didn't have my M-16 and could be court martialed for negligence. I had to find that gun. I tried really hard to remember when the last time I was carrying it. It sure as hell isn't here now, so I decided to retrace my steps. Going back up the hill with a 60 pound pack was less of an obvious thing than I expected. The steps were packed with people heading the opposite direction, so I was reduced to clawing my way up the dirt embankment on all fours by clawing tree roots and digging my pathetic weapon into the ground as a handhold. Halfway up, totally out of breath, frustrated at the world and the hopelessness of my situation, I cried out and fell to my knees, pounding the ground with my fist. I realized I could die any minute, and then what? What a waste. There were numerous refugees scattered over the hillside, packing their bags and calming crying babies and the like. I started searching them for weapons. Maybe one of them had picked up the M-16 when I had dropped it. Some of the bags had guns, but they were all junk; partially complete or just old rifles, held together with duct tape and rusted all over. At least I knew my pistol would work if I needed it. A pretty young woman was sitting on a blanket by one of the bags I was searching. I realized the futility of my search and just looked at her a while. She had long straight brown hair and freckles; her face was very oval-shaped. She was wearing a burgundy vee neck silk blouse with black lace, and wearing dark lipstick. "You are a very pretty young lady," I said, and leaned over to give her a quick kiss on the lips. What the hey. It'd be a miracle if I made it out of this mess anyway. I headed up the hill again, before she could respond. I must have lost it in the brawl in the station. 12/31/09 I was hunting snakes with my party of invincible people. They were all quite experienced at the whole snake catching thing, but it was my first time. We were trudging around a long abandoned building in a marshy jungle area. I was on point, on the lookout, for better education, since it might as well be a walk in the park for them. I rounded the corner at the top of a concrete staircase, and saw the intertwined bodies of several snakes. "Oh, crap." This meant there were a large number of snakes in the area, enough to be dangerous. A blue one with a fat head and orange speckles started slithering down the staircase, trying to get away from us. I decided to retreat from the mess of snakes as well, heading back down the staircase after the blue one, when it suddenly turned and jumped at me, hissing white mouth open all the way, sinking its fangs into my left forearm. I got a hold of its neck and managed to pull the fangs out, trying to hold the snake in one hand and cut off circulation with the other, but I was too slow. I remember vague snatches of being carried back to camp. Much later, we were exploring an abandoned school in the same area. In one of the gym lockers there were stashed four dull grey knobbly (transport devices? weapons?) There was sort of an argument over what to do with the devices, since each one could only be used once. I stalked off, knowing it would be pointless to try to influence the conversation. One of my invincible companions was sitting alone, staring at the ground absentmindedly. She had apparently made the same decision. When I walked over she stood up, looking down at me from several inches. My eyes were at her neck level. The skin on her neck was soft and human in every respect, except for a slight greenish tinge. I started thinking back on the snake incident, the apparent fearlessness of everyone involved. How could they be so unafraid? Were they really so indestructible? That's when I decided to bite her, just to see if I could. I calmly placed a hand on her shoulder, pulling her toward me, and quickly took a fold of skin in between my two canine teeth, biting hard enough to sever any ordinary skin. But it wouldn't cut, the skin simply was too tough, and yet so soft, a contradiction. Her taste was dusty and flat, like plastic and green tea. I so badly wanted to move up her jawline and make it a real kiss. I backed off slightly to see her reaction. "So, I guess you're indestructible after all." A look of horror spread across her face as she realized the embrace we were in, what it meant. She pushed me away to the floor and was gone in one swift movement. 04/13/11 We were on a field trip, just coming out of the foothills and into farmland, when the rumors about a military weapons test started circulating around the school bus. "I heard it was a hydrothermal bomb." the kid in front of me said. "you mean a thermonuclear bomb?" We passed a stand of trees and a strange looking cloud came into view, and a gasp went through the bus. I looked up at it, squinting in the sunlight. It was very round at the top, and the mushroom stalk part looked oddly wispy, like contrails. Slowly the round part blossomed yellow on its underside and dropped a cloud of seeds, and the seeds sprouted parachutes. I saw a squad of troops in funny armor carrying futuristic-looking guns rush past. "someone please photograph this," i half-whispered. the girl next to me got out her cell phone and started taking pictures. i got out my canon point and shoot and got some video of the yellow things doing a swarming maneuver in the air over the field, and then we passed behind some trees again. The bus slowed to a crawl, and a soldier in digital camo came up with his palm out, walking beside the bus. "hand over the camera." "aw, man, come on." i said in my whiniest brat voice. if I was lucky, he would give back the camera. if i was really lucky, he would only delete the photos, and i would be able to recover the deleted files with some software trickery. my cheek brushed the lips of the girl sitting next to me as i reached out the window to get my camera back... 04/24/11 (tipper: cinder cone) we were at a safeway with j.b. andrews, jane p., and some other friends, getting a snack before heading over to see my boss's gingery-style foundry. they were talking about getting tattoos. apparently jane already had a huge mostly black and streaked with color abstract tattoo covering her entire upper body; she was trying to show it off without showing too much cleavage. j.b. was saying how you have to make sure to find a reputable tattoo parlor; you can't tell if it's going to be clear crisp black until it's done healing. "it's not that the ink is darker, it's the size of the ink track that's left behind, and the sharpness of the needle. your skin gets ripped up and when it heals it leaves scar tissue which isn't clear." i noticed that my left wrist was rather more clear than usual. it was pretty cool, you could see all the bones and cartilage moving around inside through the yellow sappy fluid. the muscle fibers lift up and separate like oily wet brown gills when stretched. i was incredulous we still used something so primitive as shoving a needle through someone's skin. "why can't we just use a particle accelerator to shoot a microscopic bead coated with ink through the skin? the depth of penetration should correspond to the particle momentum." a minute or so passed before i realized the clearness had spread to other places; my entire right forearm was swollen and has a patchy marbled look. some parts were entirely clear and some parts looked normal. i realized it itched terribly but if i tried to scratch it, might just burst open and dump all of my bodily fluids right out. through a particularly clear and swollen spot, i could see a stranded thing growing inside my right arm, with a green spiky spot, looking like it was ready to burst out of my arm. i was convinced it was a sage plant growing inside my arm, and i started to panic. would i lose the use of my hands? would i have to build cybernetic replacements? what would girls think when i'm fingering them with my new cybernetic hands? i screamed something at a rude lady in a wheelchair and ran out of the store, through the foundry next door, blindly knocking over patterns and dried bits of clay. i stopped to take a picture of the foundry, then continued my panicked frenzy. i was being led around deliriously. by now it was daytime. for a moment the clearness went away and my arm almost looked normal again. i thought it was because i had been in shadow for a bit. maybe if i got out of the sunlight it would kill the plant growing inside me. (woke up sort-of screaming, itchy all over, and it was getting light out. relocated from 32 couch with new blanket from india to my pod.) 07/16/11 i was forging metal in front of a blow forge, except i wasn't working a workpiece, i was re-shaping the anvil. then i'm like "what the hell am i doing" and search around frantically for the workpiece, but it's nowhere to be found. there's a soggy garden out back because we have poor drainage being in a little crater at the top of a hillock. (next) i was water-skiing around at high speed using black snow skis in a canal between buildings, extremely tight turning radius. megan klimen was cheering me on, along with some people with electric guitars full of pumpkin pie filling. they didn't realize the guitars made their voices sound all funny, like they were singing at the top of their lungs. (next) there was this guy (looked sorta like adam savage) who went by a fake name out of amusement who was being searched for by some fascist government like north korea. the secret police had rounded up all the foreigners and pressed them into service searching for him. he dropped in on the briefing and said hello to the people in the back, but nobody recognized his face. (next) all of langton and various others i don't know was vacationing at a sea-side resort. i spent the entire night floating out on the water, and when dawn rose overcast the ocean was so clear, so calm. it was recommended that i wash my face in one of the tide pools with electric pumps installed for that purpose. breakfast was being served in ten minutes. (this correlates with physical reality where breakfast is being served in ten minutes.) speaking of which, i should go get some instead of writing more weird dream snippets. 01/09/14 the snooperscope was invented in 1934 in baker, NM by Thomas Baldwin. he was searching for a way to interdict alcohol shipments. the booze smugglers would signal to one another with fireworks where to make the pickup. cut to shots of bottle rockets popping in the daytime sky. when asked about how quickly one could use the snooperscope to take a photograph, Baldwin replied, "i don't think there's any limit to how fast it could go. as fast as you want." he was too late to do anything about the war on alcohol, and sold the patent to the united states government. the snooperscope was developed further by the military during the war for photographing nuclear explosions. only much later was it learned that the time value could be set to a negative number or imaginary number. subjects with an immediate full upgrade soon committed stupid blunders and destroyed both themselves and their surroundings. subject in pneumatic tube elevator being crushed. we decided to pursue a program whereby the full Power was instated slowly over the course of many years, in order to allow time for learning and social conventions to develop. the concept of the 'egg' was created. "I am only an egg" was the correct mindset for entrants at t equals zero. cut to aircraft hangar. rows and rows of yellow papillae hooked to metallic tubing, progressing from small cantaloupe sized objects on one side of the hangar to larger than a man on the other. a wing fragment bisected the space. the wing was constructed with a carbon aeroshell leading edge and crisscrossing spiderweb-like fibers in a regular pattern. the construction reminded me of a hoyt tether; if one fiber were cut, the fibers around it would take up the slack. i reached out and touched it. they were stronger than a spiderweb but nowhere near as rigid as, say, carbon fiber would have been. more like nylon. the structural attachment point felt heavy, far too heavy. Greg said, "you're going to have to develop some sailor callouses if you go climbing around on that." I am in Baker New Mexico, in the parking lot of Baldwin's ranch. the sky is blue and totally clear. I am watching a parked black sedan with shaded windows. there's movement inside. is this who I am here to meet? I am driving west on an interstate. I can see explosions in the distance. I pull over and park next to a dentist's office with a nice little green hill and some bushes and get out my binoculars. a woman is there, also watching. on the side of her neck is written in black, "Susan 9/4". it was definitely the numeral four. a military man is also watching, from the bottom of the hill, leaning on his car. I am driving north on an interstate. a huge flatbed trailer labeled something Izpresidente is taking up two lanes. it can't slow down in time before crashing into the back of a traffic jam. flames engulf the freeway. shredded pieces of cars and burning rubber and oil smoke billowing around the overpass. I have to do something. I am driving southwest on an onramp. on the radio I hear "a celebrity is seriously wounded today in an accident on the alamogordo freeway" some asshole nearly cuts me off in a black SUV, I start to swerve but then something just seems right about it and i clip the back corner. the SUV goes spinning and crashes in a ditch. i ramp over the median between the onramp and highway and land on the highway headed toward a yellow construction vehicle, and straighten out just in time. I am driving south on an interstate, behind a huge flatbed trailer labeled Izpresidente. it has these enormous jacking screws on either side, they must weigh ten tons each. i wonder what it is used for. we keep driving. nothing happens. I am in the parking lot of a dentist's office. the woman is there, leaning on the brick wall, smoking a cigarette. I want to say something to her. she is so beautiful. I start crying. she turns around. i try to wipe the tears off my face. I manage to choke out, "I.. I just saved, millions.." was it millions? or hundreds? "nobody will ever know." the military man climbs the little hill and turns me around, his hand on my shoulder. his face is unexpectedly young and kind. I feel like such a miserable wretched schlock standing in front of this man. "david" reads the name tag. I guess that's his last name. the sky over the highway is blue. 08/24/14 ammonium entertainamate she wore plastic and spoke math, and was a member of the australian obsessing movement. in all the paintings she had such a tiny nose; i guess that's why she wore such a realistic face mask. THREE just wouldn't die. i was out of ammo except for one bullet from a broken ak-47. if you can't beat em, join em. i thought i had been using THREE's laptop with my CF card but on later inspection it was a gray rubberized model covered in dust and with a tiny screen. is it possible to kill someone with just a bullet? pound it into their eye and hit the firing pin with a sharp object like a knife or a key? i didn't hate him enough to find out that it wouldn't work.