She watched the road drift by, laden with sloughed off layers of society. Theatre tickets lay side by side with safety pins and empty coke cans in the gutter. There's no separation between the classes when it comes down to the kipple, she speculated. Everyone's pocket-leavings end up in the same gutters and run-off troughs.

She picked up a small piece of bent metal and began to decide that it really was she who was still and the space/time continuum which slipped by around her. No, she knew from the slow gliding sensation, that she hadn't moved a single step. As the world slithered purposefully around her, she had no doubt that fate had it's reasons for bringing her here.

Hmph. Fate. Fate had it's goddamn reasons, alright, but no one ever shared them with her. In all the years she'd lived on instinct, she'd gotten used to asking questions after she made her move. This time would be no different. She sighed, knowing that this was for the best; that if she knew the why of things beforehand, she'd waffle over them and miss the moment. It was, quite simply, the way of things. (o, i have seen the speed of things)

Her consciousness trailed off into the sounds of passing traffic far out on the street; into the memories of warm flesh. 'How odd,' she thought upon realising that the flesh remembered, she'd never known. Perhaps it was merely a construction of flesh; a memory created by her own longings, based on the mental detritus of another creature. 'Aggelos.' She spoke the word out loud. Messenger. But of what? She speculated and sank deeper into the rising tide of memory. Here, he'd held her hand. (she hadn't always been alone?) And, over here he'd whispered secrets that weren't hers to know. (but hadn't she always known?) Messenger. She clasped her hand around the small bit of metal and wondered again. (i the owl, thou the wolf) Pieces came flooding back, battering her like the storm come ashore. (the rocks! but you're already dead...) but who was this messenger? She tried to focus her mind, despite the granules of badly spliced memory grating at it; soaring in the wind that only blew in dreams. She stood on the edge of the tempest. Somewhere in the void, in the vacuum between the particles, there was a figure smiling at her. Was this the flesh she'd held? (autes ginoskei e somai tautei ginesetai) Insofar as a construction of pure data (3.14159265358979...) could be flesh, yes, she knew this one to be he. He, only by the limitation of the greek, though. He was she, they, it...indescribable genders for which no pronoun had yet been concieved. And yet here she stood before the angel, while the raging reality storm picked and scraped the edges of her into oblivion. Her continuity slowly disintegrated, making her more contiguous than she'd ever been. (...my beautiful angel...) It was like standing before a subway train, or perhaps more like standing in a switching yard, watching the trains rush by, colours blurring, waiting to be smashed by a single impact.

The impact came. It was not at all what she had expected; not a paralyzing madness, or a neverending scream, but a sudden warm, black calm.

'You've come through the tempest.' Despite his flat, rational tone, he sounded a bit surprised; pleased, even.

Street Exit

vonGraeding '99