My very very wonderful friend Dale is amazing in so many ways…from scripting, building, photography, teaching, mentoring, writing, brilliant thinking, terraforming to his incredibly open, caring, generous, beautiful heart and soul.  I would need to write more than several posts to even try to describe all of how wonderful Dale is as a person and to everyone who knows him.   And even then, words would fail.  But where words do succeed is in describing Dale’s latest creative venture:  that of a brilliant content creator!  Yay!!!!

Avid about so very very many things, among them boating and the ocean, Dale’s first product offering is a truly fitting one:  a hawt, powerful water vehicle that is jam-packed with amazingness:

very Wonderful Dale on his wonderful Seaspray 1.1

Very Wonderful Dale and the wonderful Seaspray 1.1

 Dale’s Seaspray 1.1 (available at Busy Ben’s Lot 44) is an incredibly sleek and scorchingly sexy, powerful and raucously fun boat.  I’ve had the great honor of watching Dale create the Seaspray — through various stages from conception to finished vehicle.  And I also had the wildly great fun of beta testing the Seaspray 1.1.  This boat tears through the waterways and handles with such elegance and grace even with all of its massive power.  It effortlessly slices along the top of the ocean.  It zips smoothly forward and backward, turns with gorgeous agility in any direction, and for those moments when you really want to amp it up, press the pgup key a few times in succession and see what happens!

I **love** the Seaspray.  It is built for speed(s), agility, wonderful surprise, and unquestioned hawtness.  And all of that comes not only from Dale’s beautiful imagination, design and scripting, but also from his beautiful selection of textures.  This baby is fully loaded.  Dale gives us 125 different colors, glow and shine features on a wildly hot boat that manuveurs in all directions, has screamingly fast and gently modulated speeds, and can be made to go air borne.  How much did you ask?  50L!  yes…50L!  Yes…TWO digits.  Only 50L!   For that price, Dale is basically giving away an AMAZING creation.  So put on your hottest, baddest racing swimsuit, zip on over to Busy Ben’s Lot 44, and snap up Dale’s utterly fantastic Seaspray 1.1.  I love it so much — and just can’t believe the price, honestly – that I literally purchased the Seaspray a few times (even though Dale generously gifted one to me), and I would gladly do so many more times.  Because it’s just that wonderful and that wonderfully fun.

Note:  Stay on the lookout for additional Seaspray products from Dale, who plans to release the Seaspray Subscription Line (100L for everything described above plus free updates for the life of the product) and the Seaspray Rezzer (200L for an unending stream of Seasprays to be enjoyed by friends and guests and the bonus is the boats automatically clean up after themselves when they are no longer in use!).

Ch 8 ~ Down the Rabbit Hole

For all she knew, the young romantic couple had sat at their table with their cell phones glued to their ears and with their free hands intertwined for quite a while.  Possibly close to a half an hour already or more.  Emily had lost track of time, not an unreasonable thing for her particularly when she transitions between the future and the present, but she was also fairly sure that losing track of time might be a chronic condition for the young romantic couple as well.  She shrugged.  Well, perhaps that’s true for most people in the world. 

They hadn’t changed their physical positions, the young romantic couple, but plates littered with crumbled nakpins cluttered their small table top.  Emily wasn’t at all certain how they had managed to grow another set of hands to use for eating, but somehow it appeared that they had. 

“What if we become the medium.  What if…we are the medium,” Forge repeated because he felt it an important enough point that deserved to be repeated.  In fact, it seemed to be his only point which suggested to Emily that in point of fact, he had something to prove.

“I think you’re going over the edge, Forge.  And I say that kindly.”  And, indeed, Emily’s voice had been very kind when she uttered those words.

The connections our brains make…she paused slightly and smiled internally.  She felt the redheaded young man’s energy.  It soothed and excited her all at once.  Yet she couldn’t dwell there too long (although she remained keenly aware of the energy from the redheaded young man) because another feeling  much less pleasant kept bullying its way forward.  In fact, it had crowded in on her mind like an angry mob, the mounting overload of chaos and noise that had been flooding her senses.  It was nearing its limit, she was fairly sure.  The back of her head ached in a recognizable way.  A way that usually indicated that her brain couldn’t process to much more.  At least, that’s what those types of knots at the base of her skull always felt like her body was telling her.  

Oftentimes, Emily’s body spoke for her brain when her brain couldn’t seem to find the words.  It was another one of her quirks that she had learned to listen deeply to.  And it was always shortly after those signals, if you will, that — at least for Emily — the sensory overload reached some limit and broke through some kind of threshold or barrier, carrying her to a place where all the data impulses around her were filtered automatically for her — beyond her say-so — or by her or to her through some mechanism or another.  She didn’t know which or how, but she was grateful in one sense.   It was nice that a part of her mind (she assumed) wouldn’t tell her what was going on because when it did do one of those surging information dumps, it was just too much.  Sometimes all the noise gribbed itself around her body and rattled her so hard intside that she just about hyperventilated and probably physically vibrated.   A near panick attack?  Maybe.  Her best defense was to pause and to focus on her breath.

What really mattesr?

Emily knew she wanted to continue feeling his soothing-intoxicating energy so she focused a portion of her mind quite fixedly there.  And she knew she should be polite enough to continue to hear — okay, even to genuinely listen to — Forge because to not do so would be completely rude and thoughtless, so she focused a portion of her mind there as well.  And for good measure, she kept an eye on Pat, because something was troubling her there, and half an eyeball each on the slight man seated in front of the slight woman who continued to slouch over the tabletop, hunkered over napkins on which she doodled.

Does anybody doodle anymore?  She shook her head.  Guess it’s just a feeling, she said to herself after glancing across the half-wall divide at the two slight folk seated separately in the other portion of the diner.  Guess it’s just a feeling…

“M’dear.”  His voice was quite a bit more firm, nearly terse.

“I’m not at all accustomed to being ignored quite so summarily or so blatantly.  At least be decent enough to indulge me by feigning interest.  I quite know you’re not listening.”

“What if we’re the medium…” she repeated softly, realizing Forge was entirely right to chastise her for her lack of attention.

He smiled a little. 

“Indeed.  We’ve long since been the messengers.  We’ve long since had a message.  What if we’re now able to be all three.  The messenger, the content, the broadcast station.”

After a long pause (several long seconds), she said, “I’m not at all sure where you’re headed with this, Forge, but I do know you don’t ask these things without a purpose in mind.  So, okay, if I’m trying to understand what you’re saying, then I have two questions.”

“Only two?” he twitched his nose as if her statement smelled badly.

“Well fo rthe moment…”

Pat zipped past, pausing only to expertly arc some piping hot coffee into their cups.  Catching the torn packets of sugar with her eyes, Emily realized they had been sitting at th ebooth for quite a while. 

“M’dear.”

Forge lightly spread his hand across Pat’s slender wrist, which had the effect of generating a snarl to rise just barely up from the base of Pat’s throat.  But she switched gears quickly, Pat did.  She was on the job afterall and always put in an honest day’s work.  She hit the pause button in the back of her eye, freezing whatever reality show she was currently watching in the back of her head into place.  Only then did she look at Forge, but when she did, she studied him with no small amount of displeasure.

“This will only take a moment, I promise you,” he said evenly, then returned his gaze to Emily.  “Two questions, then?” he expectantly.

“Yeah,” she replied slowly, “You see a business opportunity in this messenger-message-medium idea?”

“Indeed.  Second question?”

“…isn’t,” she started even mor eslowly, “isn’t that what’s happening already now?”

He grinned.  Pat raised her eyebrow impatiently. 

Without knowing why, Emily suddenly realized she could expect to be seated in the booth for a very long time this day.

NaNoWriMos total word count this chapter:  1,070; total word count todate (not including this notation) this chapter: 9,970.

Ch 7 ~ “How many words do you see a day?”  asked and answered by the Utne Reader and a few others (links embedded within the link to the Utne Reader)

Miles Thomas Brown was something of a genuis by far and away more than his employer Forge Myers.   And the redheaded young fellow with the laptop was every bit as charismatic.  By far and away.  Actually, many times over and on an altogether different plane.  The difference was that Miles Thomas Brown didn’t have to work at being charismatic, and he never worked it either.  Becuase the truth of the matter was he never had to, but the more essential fact was that “working it” was just not any part of who Miles Thomas was.

On top of being a genuis, Miles Thomas Brown genuinely knew who he was (good, bad, and borderline), and he genuinely liked himself enough to be who he was and to keep improving himself.  He could admit to himself when that might be needed.  Admitting a need for self improvement (not business, but self) was not something that came so easily to Forge.  Trace elements of insecurity drove Forge, although he would never admit that not even to himself.  But deep down, Forge always felt a need to prove something.  Did success propel this?  Maybe.  And maybe Forge had forgotten that a deeper learning often comes about from failure.  But the fates had been kind to Forge, at least during this general timeframe.  Because it didn’t hurt any that with every effort to prove something (and he usually made it a point to be certain that he did), he also made a killing financially.  Nice side effect, that.  Forge wanted to believe it was innate talent…but somewhere deep inside even he had a hard time saying that while looking in the mirror.

As for Miles, he felt genuinely comfortable, well, anywhere as far as anyone who knew Miles could tell.  Even in the Glenwood Cafe where chaos had long since erupted and where he sat alone in a booth until he was beckoned over — as silly as Miles thought this whole “caper,” as Forge had put it, was.  Miles’s ability to go with the flow was truly a thing of beauty, particularly at a time when no one could see the stream for the tsunami.  That didn’t bother him.  Instead, he leaned back in his chair, slightly angled his shoulder blade into the wall and multitasked between scanning his laptop and absorbing what looked to be an animated discussion between, well, at least, Forge who was clearly hell bent on a mission with the girl that Forge had mentioned to Miles only a few days ago.   Miles wasn’t entirely sure why.  Something about her in the future, Forge had said, and left it at that for the time being.

Pretty girl.  Quiet.  Seems nice, Miles Thomas decided.  He sat in thought, twirling the ends of a pen with his fingertips.  He liked pens, Miles did.  He liked what they did.  They made words and pictures.  They were a means to communicate, to voice.  He also liked that the girl from the future with the mousy brown hair had noticed him earlier.  He especially liked how she had unwittingly “voiced” what he considered to be wonderful aspects of her personality to him.  When they first caught a glimpse of each other, he liked that she had returned a smile to him – in a very unconscious impromptu way, he could tell.  There was something quaint about that.  And something wonderfully simple and authentic…slowing down enough in life, holding the onslaught of information and noise at bay for just a few seconds even to notice these things.  To notice.  A stream of calm in the mounting tsunami. 

Somewhere, not far away…not far at all…a flock of ducks manuveured the air in perfect unison.  

Whoosh.

Miles smiled and took his own silent advice.  He paused from his RSS feeds to reflect on the world around him, which increasingly continued to converge with the digital world.  He absorbed the physical world with the digital world not only because that was one of many areas of genuis for Miles Thomas, but also because the idea of the “bleeding edge” was being decimated (Miles would say “has been decimated already and quite soundly”) by the relentless effects of hyper-exponential progress.   No human being possessed the capacity to be able to see precisely where the advances in one world held separate and distinct from and didn’t nearly instantaneously spill over into the living of life in another world.   The two were increasingly inseparable, the rate of change such that in anyone who used the phrase “bleeding edge” sound dated and completely out of it.  The “blurring edge” was more descriptive. 

At least this week.

A latest article in his RSS feed used probably 400 words to introduce a discussion about the volume and velocity of information on the internet.  The conversation on this topic suggests that , measured in words, a person could easily and quite routinely see more than 490,000 words online each day.  To provide a sense of context the article shares that “War and Peace” contains 460,000 words.  Not that anyone would want to count the words (except for maybe a mascochistic proofreader) to verify this, but as one who had read the classic, Miles Thomas didn’t doubt the claim.  

The slight woman shook her head in astonishment as she continued to draw circles on her napkin while she sat at the table on the other side of the half-wall divide that separated the major sections of the cafe.  (Was it a cafe, a diner, a restuarant, an establishment?  Did it really matter?  At some moments the place felt grandiose like a fine restaurant.  Other moments found the place in a very inviting mood, relaxed and open like a diner.  The furniture in the place seemed to suggest a quaint outdoor cafe somewhere in Europe, but somehow none of the patrons seemed to be lulled into the belief that they had been transported to Venice.  And the idea of “establishment” really had a ring of “old media.”)  In her eavesdropping of Miles Thomas Brown, the slight woman hazard a guess and a crass generalization:  she had not read War and Peace and she guessed that most people (probably the vast majority) in a 140-character culture hadn’t either.  Imagine National Novel Writing Month as a series of tweets.  Intrigued, she carefully placed her napkin with concentric circles safely to the end of the table that butted up against the half wall divide and grabbed a new napkin from the napkin holder.  With a constraint of 140 characters, the average word count on a tweet is in the 15-word ballpark, according to this webblog.  (The slight woman nodded her head in thanks to Miles for the url, which he found by googling “average word count for a tweet.”  Miles grinned in a subtle way and acknowledged her with a quiet wave of his pen before he found both its ends with both hands again and felt the weight of the instrument as it twirled between his fingertips.)  The 50,000 word count over 30 days that is National Novel Writing Month translates into 3333.33 tweets over 30 days, or 111.11 tweets a day for 30 days.  She doubted that even the most prolific twitterer could make that tweet level.  War and Peace deconstructs into 30,666 tweets or more than 1,000 tweets a day for 30 days.  If War and Peace were written in 30 days.  But the point is every day we see more words than all the words in War and Peace, or in tweet-speak more than 1,000 tweets a day.

And that somehow seems a significant point.   One way out of a myriad of ways to illustrate the blurring edge.  But yes, she admitted to herself, yes still a tangent that for some reason the slight woman hunched over the napkin-as-calculator felt the worthy enough to piggyback onto Miles’s overarching point about the melding of the physical and digital worlds.  As fascinating as that was for her, the slight woman still wasn’t entirely sure why she ventured down this path or what it all meant.  But she had the sneaking suspicion that if nothing else, it might mean that it was time for her to hit the “save” button. 

And that’s exactly what Miles Thomas did.

NaNoWriMos total word count this chapter:  1,400; total word count todate (not including this notation) this chapter: 8,900.

Ch 6 ~ “He forgot to put his hair on, didn’t he.”

“I don’t even want to begin to know what you could possibly mean by that,” she said.  Somehow the ridiculousness of his statement had the effect of calming her nerves.  With each passing second, she was definitely further removed from the future — as backwards as that may seem.  At least from that particular future.  With yet another man causing her to ask herself for the second time this day — but for wildly different reasons — who is he?  But really more than that.  Something really more than that gnawed at her. 

Why is he?   Why is he in Pat’s room.  Why is he shrouded in mystery.  Why does he seemed smothered in an air that easily tops the creepiness charts without any effort at all.  

Emily just had to keep thinking.  She just had to keep going.  Don’t pause, she told herself.  Let it all unfold on its own accord, how could anyone possibly map this out from a future date point to the present date point and a gazillion variables in between that could effect things in any number of directions.  (Was this Emily’s thought or the author’s thought?  Are we somehow letting the writing process have a voice in this effort?  What is the identity of a piece of art, afterall.  Does it belong to the creator or is it a separate entity?) 

How many butterflies could flap their wings anywhere around the world, not just the Glenwood Cafe, she reasoned.  It was less a question, more a reminder to herself that while she could see the future that didn’t mean she could control the future.  Necessarily. 

Is seeing, knowing?  Is knowing, doing?  Is doing, creating?  Is creating, impacting?  Is impacting, evaulating?  Is evaluating, rationalizing?  Is rationalizing, controlling?  Am I reaching?  What is it all but energy?  

She could see in the distance, not too terribly far away…not far away at all…a flock of ducks take to the air in perfect unison.

How many flock of birds could slice into the sky without a sound and set  the course of history in motion, pre-planned pre-scripted for the future.

But there were things Emily knew.  Without fail.  And even she couldn’t deny this.  Nor did she really want to.  She just didn’t have the answers to what she had just seen, no matter how much the wildly successful local entrepreneur who sat across from the table from her thought at this moment.  And at this moment, Emily could see as he cocked his jaw, that he was about to continue exploring.

“You see the possibilities in this,” he nodded his head back to the romantic young couple still thoroughly immersed in talk with who-only-knew on the ends of their separate blackberries.  (Emily suspected the people sitting at the adjoining tables might very well know who the folks were on the ends of those lines because the people sitting at the adjoining tables could hear every word.  Personal conversations as public “entertainment”, indeed.  Or perhaps public advertising.  Walking talking human billboards.)

“Actually…it’s not really what’s occupying my thoughts at the moment.”

“Precisely!” Forge sat straight, pumped with a surge of excitedness.

“Hmm?” she scrunched her eyebrows together.

“Imagine a time, Em, when we’ll look at the wireless devices people carry with them on the outside of their bodies as quaint.  Even…antiquated.”

“I suppose,” she shrugged, not entirely clear where Forge was going with this.  He grinned and held his grin for several, long seconds.  Somehow, she felt like she had missed his point and realized pretty quickly that it was more than a feeling.  It was a fact.  She had missed his larger point.

“Everything is getting faster and smaller…if that’s what you mean,” she said without a great deal of confidence that that had been anywhere close to what Forge had meant.  But the other thing was this.  If her confidence had been sucked out of the room, the sudden hyper explosion of activity at the diner could have played a part in that as well.  There was a defeaning cacophony of whispers and ramblings that roared over the place and crashed down on every voice around it, like a vocal tsunami that ironically snuffed out every sound in its path.  

Sunday mornings at the Glenwood Cafe were more than a bit ridiculous when it came to crowds.  Because on Sunday morning, it seemed like every crowd on the planet – forget that…not only “every crowd on the planet” but the entire freakin’ planet — converged in the tiny little diner of this sleepy little farmtown.  Every Saturday and Sunday every weekend over, the population seemed to double because every Saturday and Sunday every weekend over throngs of people — couples, families, children, grandparents, friends — wallpapered any and all available wall and countertop space as they waited patiently for an open table.  The food was plenty good here, there was that — some of the best comfort food around — and the service pretty fast and friendly (even if the wait staff appeared to be a bit zoned and into their own little world).   Pat had long since picked up her pace and had shifted it into high gear, buzzing effortlessly around tables, not batting an eye even when having to navigate what was increasingly a flush of customers that was now overflowing into some of the walking spaces near the patrons as they ate their fried green eggs and ham at tables not too terribly far removed from the front entrance.  Oh the places the crowds may go, but on Saturday and Sunday, inevitably there was only one place those crowds went for breakfast, th Glenwood Cafe.  And everyone in town (probably even those who were only driving through, like the young romantic couple) knew that the tables positioned half-heartedly as an offshoot from the entrance weren’t the best seats in the house, a fact that always motivated Emily to get out of bed extra early so that she could plop a comfortable squat in a lower-traffic area at the diner before the rush of the Sunday after-church crowd. 

She stlil had no idea about the layers-in-layers in which Forge’s meaning seemed perpetually to be wrapped.  But the chaos at the front entrance had distracted them both, Forge less intensely than Emily who admittedly was biding her time because she didn’t really know where this conversation was headed.  And who had just noticed a couple of individual customers move through the sea of limbs that swayed in the space of waiting bodies as they repositioned themselves and ears craned to hear if their name had been called yet by the hostess.  

The first customer was a slight man of average build who was seated by the hostess at a small vacant table just on the other side of the half-wall divide that buffered Emily and Forge’s table from the mass of patrons in the main section of the restaurant.  The second customer was a slight woman of average build who was seated by Pat at a small vacant table directly behind the slight man, again just on the other side of the half-wall divide that buffered Emily and Forge’s table from the burgeoning mass of patrons in the main section of the diner.

“Imagine a time,” Forge continued, undeterred by the random distractions that clammored about everywhere suddenly…or perhaps that had always really been the case and Emily had edited it out? 

Somehow that’s just too much of a subtle thought, the slight woman behind the slight man thought to herself.  What exactly is the point in saying that Emily might have edited that out, she asked herself, wholly unsure of the answer.  Relinquish structure…push beyond comfortable processes.  It reminded her of a phrase a friend had coined:  “he forgot to put his hair on, didn’t he?”, meaning that the balded-headed man was out of sorts when he didn’t follow his usual routine (in this case, affixing his toupee before entering the day…a known and comfortable, safe routine for this man.)  Damn that is not easy.  If she didn’t know any better, she might have to say that she forgot to put her hair on too, metaphorically speaking.  Not easy in the least, but it must be done, she said to herself then pulled the white napkin closer to her nose as she bent herself over the tabletop, removed a pen from her purse and began to draw circles.  She paused once to catch Pat’s attention who floated among the tables with a carafe of coffee that she quietly placed on the table to the right of the slight woman’s cup and hand, which had returned itself to the pen and the napkin and was busying itself with forming circles.

The slight man partitioned the movement in his neck in such a way that he barely turned his head to his left.  It was a movement as slight as the man was in build…it had barely registered to the world around him.  Except the slight woman knew.  She snorted quietly because she would like to think that she would have known this before it had even happened, but that really wasn’t true.  She only knew that the slight man had moved his head so very very subtlely only after the deed was done.  The slight woman chuckled, feeling somehwat knocked down a peg.  She’d like to think that she was inside of everyone’s head here.  Quite literally ahead of their own thoughts and feelings and even experiences, but that wasn’t the case.  She could have been like anyone else in that room who might have been paying attention.  But still.  It would have had to have been paying nearly excruciatingly close attention to catch the slightness of the slight man’s movement.  And that degree of focus certainly wouldn’t be attributed to Emily.  Her mind was a bit chaotic still, perfectly reflecting the conditions of the diner around her.  Couldn’t say that would be attributed Forge, either, he, yes, is perpetually focused but very selective about his subject matter.  At present, he was entirely too focused on a very slow reveal of his many layers (because he doesn’t really know where this is going either, the slight woman thought to herself).

But though no one heard the slight woman, although no one heard much of anything really except an ever-mounting crescendo of dissonant noise, Emily somehow picked up the message from some place that something maybe profoundly central to her entire existence had been put into motion.

“Em,” Forge said in a voice so sincere that Emily couldn’t help but snap her attention immediately to him.  “What if instead of holding these faster smaller devices…what if they were implanted within us?  Audio, video, phone, search engine, internet, social networking platforms, virtual worlds.   The works.”

She stared.

“What if…we become the medium?”

NaNoWriMos total word count this chapter:  1,800; total word count todate (not including this notation) this chapter: 7,500.

Ch 5 ~ Moments Unforgettable

And yet she had the feeling that most of what he was about to say would be.

“I’ve been thinking,” he began, his voice modulated down to something somewhat in the vicinity of a normal volume.  This had the effect of reducing his physical presence.  You see, Forge was a man of slight build who used his voice like another appendage. 

She stared at him, studying.

“It’s true…I have been,” he confirmed.

“Well.  Why does that usually make me nervous when you do that?”

Forge cocked his rather large-ish head on his rather slightish shoulders, hoisted a rather tightly groomed salt and peppered eyebrow, and released a rather light chortle.  “There was a time, m’dear, when those of your persuasion deemed my thinking to be quite charming.”

“I’m sure,” Emily said.  For some reason unknown to even her, she felt compelled to gaze from behind a wisp of her brown hair at the redheaded figure with the laptop.

At just about the same time, Forge’s small hand had swallowed her own (which were still noticeably smaller than even his even though his were very small indeed) and which had been clasping and unclapsing themselves on the tabletop.  She returned her gaze to their booth and squinted deeper into the plumpness of his gentle rather soft hand (this was not a man who labored).  She watched absentmindedly while his hands politely pawed at her fingers and quietly silenced her fidgeting…something she had been quite unaware she had been doing.

Emily had several nervous ticks.  Wringing her hands together while deep in thought was one of them.

“Your inability to focus is causing no small amount of concern in me,” he nearly whispered, all traces of his usual bravado gone and then added after a long pause “…the young fellow works for me.  Maybe he’s enough to entice you to come back under my employ again, as well?”

Her eyes, quite almondy and clear, changed.  Emily had been blessed with large eyes, this is true.  But typically her eyes were described not so much as big, but more said to be bedroom eyes.  This wasn’t because of any trying for that effect on her part, no.  She just happened to have been born with heavy lids that framed her gaze into a near perpetual come-hither look.  But now, as she thought more intensely about the redheaded figure — the quiet, good looking man with the laptop –  her eyes pooled wide.  Round and huge like two planets fixed in space but not in time.

“I…I think I’ve met him before,” she said just barely above a whisper.

“Oh?” Forge kept his voice low in return.  In fact, he had leaned in across the table, impercetibly so, but he had leaned in nevertheless one could only assume in an effort to crowd the thought and back it up into a corner.  “With me?  Or before that even?”

A small sigh escaped the corner of her large almondy eyes.  She knew — all too well — what Forge was asking.  

A familar road, this.  With the same general conversation signposts, she thought.

“I’m not entirely sure where…”

“Em…” he paused just long enough to make her cast her pooled eyes back upon him.  He smiled in that shit eating smile kind of way that he always tended to smile when he knew something and didn’t feel the least bit inclined to share that knowledge.  Cheshire cat.  He rather enjoyed the knowledge imbalance.

“It’s not so much ‘where’…is it?” he asked just a few seconds after her eyes looked into his, with his lopsided grin egging her on.  “It’s more… ‘when’ … wouldn’t you say?”

With that her hand recoiled from under his softened pawing.  She quickly withdrew from his physical attempt to pull or poke at meaning in what was for most people casual conversation but what inevitably became for Forge a strategic manuveur.  Or maybe it was more tactical than strategic, she thought.  In any event it just smacked of “some other purpose”…a thought that always launched an internal argument.   She’d had this thought before.  She’d had this internal debate before.  It’s what all friends do with each other when there are quirks or charactertistics or mannerism that confuse or go against the grain…we react, we make judgements, we get to the point of talking about it or not, we make allowances or not, we come to an understanding or not.  We get on with life somehow.  It’s all a journey.

She was no different.  While her internal debate raged on and Forge stared at her with growing expectation that she would say what was on her mind or he would nag at her until she did, it helped, at that moment, that a young couple had entered the diner.  Somehow they were nearly as loud as Forge, and that fact alone had caught everyone’s attention including Forge, who seemed to be quite dismayed that anyone could put on more of a show than he.  But he could gather some satisfaction from the fact that it clearly took at least two people — both armed with cell phones — to out-bluster him.  But the real thing that caught Forge’s eye was how deeply engrossed this young couple was in their separate phone conversations.  They held hands, strolling through the diner to their table, never once acknowledging the world around them or anyone in it save for the other persons on the end of their separate cell phones.  Yet decidedly a couple.  Most likely, a romantic couple.  Hands laced together as they trundled into the restaurant.  Laced hands draped across the tabletop as they sat in their chairs and Pat buzzed over them, menus in hand, daily specials rattled off all as if in a hurry, as if somewhere else.  The young romantic couple — passing through town, no doubt, and stopping for a bite at the local — never once looked at each other.  Even from the distance, Emily could see that their eyes were glazed…tunnelling inward to someplace where the thematic constructs of their separate story-telling was formulated and playing itself out through wireless devices.

He clicked the roof of his mouth and nearly smiled as he twisted slightly around to study them.  At the same moment, Emily gathered together the outer corners of her eyes and studied Forge.  Always an angle, she thought.  And just as quickly huffed at herself.  Yes, he is a friend, she chastised herself deep in the silent recesses of her mind, the one place that she felt fairly sure no one was interested in entering.  No one…except for this blasted friend sitting across the table from her, twisted into a corkscrew but still leaning forward toward Emily as if his entire body — his shoulder, his adam’s apple, the hair in his ears – could see into her skull without any need to use his eyes to evaluate her. 

It’s not that he had that kind of hair in his ears.  The point was, he was so *certain*…even about what he didn’t know he didn’t know.  How can anyone be that way.  That was the thing that usually drove her batty.

“Really,” she nearly snapped, her hands flying up to her side, fingers wide in exasperation.  She nearly snapped this to the hair in his inner ear since he was still engrossed in the odd behavior of the young romantic couple who were ever engrossed in lacing their fingers and talking a mile a minute to separate people on their separate phones.  They didn’t need to look at each other.  Forge made it clear he didn’t think he need look at Emily to know what was on her mind…even though he fully admitted he had no idea. 

“Do you all drive like this too?”

“erm…?”  His head swirled forward, revealing curious eyes and the corner of a slightly uplifted mouth.

She shook her head and waved at the young romantic couple.

“I know.  Utterly *fascinating*…I’m sure they drive like that.  Perhaps you drive with your head twisted to the back instead of facing forward.”

“Cranky pants,” Forge mumbled through a laugh and danced on her mood with pitying eyes.  He wasn’t one to baby, and she wasn’t one to seek babying.  It’s just that she had come back…from that place…with a fright and was quite a bit more out of herself than in herself.  Not at all prepared to handle herself around the likes of someone like Forge.  Yes, friend.  Yes, with an agenda. 

Pat sliced through the path of oncoming traffic without batting an eye or volleying a platter that was loaded with table orders.  No one batted an eye that she walked as if she were driving in Europe.  Everyone did these days.  The path of least resistance had become not fast enough, imagine that.   People slice out any path they can find anywhere, usually on impulse.  She refilled their coffee, mumbling something about “nice junk!” (a double entendre no doubt in reaction to the images of the Real Suburban Trashmen that were being broadcasted into the inside of her head…from the inside of her head…but no one in the diner would know that) and buzzed on.

“Yeah.  Well.”  Emily wrapped her hands around her freshly topped off cup.  “I couldn’t help but notice that…”

“…that nobody noticed?  Nobody noticed them?  Yeah, fascinating, ain’t it?,” he grinned big and jutted his jaw out with glee.  “I suspect, m’dear…” he paused for good measure, certainly for effect, “that you have an idea or two why that is.  And probably even more importantly, to me, at least, where that sort of thing might be headed, hmmm?”

NaNoWriMos total word count this chapter:  1,600; total word count todate (not including this notation) this chapter: 5,700.

Please plan to attend

Transformations, a jewelry installation of Cocoon Jewelry by Yoona Mayo, November 7th, 7 AM SLT, Shengri La sim 79.217.401

It is with great delight and pleasure that I share a little bit about Yoona Mayo, creator of Cocoon Jewelry.  Yoona is a huge talent.  She is a graceful, delicate soul whose outer elegance belies her inner strength.  As a Shengri La curator, I’ve had the great pleasure of knowing Yoona for many months while she participated under Shenlei Flasheart’s tutelage in the Shengri La Vintage Marketplace for new or early-emerging designers.  When Yoona came to Shengri La, she brought with her an astounding ability to work and very finely tune tiny tiny tiny prims and connect them together to form unbelievably intricate works of art in the form of jewelry.

And, Yoona’s artistry is simply breathtaking, as evidenced (below) by just a couple of the many pieces to be featured during “Transformations.”  By the way, the “Transformations” jewelry installation is at 7 a.m. STL because Yoona is from the Pacific Rim in FL, and the 7 a.m. SLT timeslot is the best hour to accommodate a pretty huge time difference.   (It will be very very late at night for Yoona and her friends, while very very early in the morning for many of us.)

But no matter the hour, I’ll be there with bells on (and coffee in hand).  In actuality, I’ll be there with the great honor of modelling one of the pieces to be featured:  the glorious jewelry wardrobe called Harvest Moon (below).  What can I say…I *love* this set.  It is unbelievably intricate and yet so richly detailed and somehow despite its delicate nature has such an unmistakable presence that it completely amazes.  

Harvest Moon from Cocoon Jewelry by Yoona Mayo

When I first saw Harvest Moon a few weeks ago, I gaped and purchased the earrings immediately.  (Yoona sells her earrings and necklaces separately, both at unbelievably reasonable prices.)  But I had snapped those earrings up shortly after Yoona created them and so I eagerly anticipated the creation of the accompanying necklace.  Then, because I have the good fortune of modelling in  “Transformations” (which I would do in a heartbeat in support of Yoona), I was gifted with the complete Harvest Moon set.  By the way, Harvest Moon comes in an array of gem choices.  My favorite is the diamond (featured in photos).  But all of them — from diamond, emerald to ruby and more – astound and confirm over and over again Yoona’s monster-size talents.  This level of design — from conception to build — is amazing.   For such a tiny, gentle soul with such a delicate and refined eye, Yoona is a screamingly massive talent.  Take a closer look at all the amazing intricacy in design on the earrings alone.   Simply wow!

earring detail of Harvest Moon set by Yoona Mayo, creator of Cocoon Jewelry

From earrings to necklace, Yoona echoes design elements, repeating the strongest theme in the structure even when the designs are ethereal and organic in feel, which the vast majority of Yoona’s creations are.  She creates this cohesive, beautiful symphony of levels and depth all in one set and interprets FL nature (Yoona’s source of inspiration) into gorgeously wearable jewelry-art for us to enjoy inworld. 

Here’s Yoona’s “Wisteria” set (below).  It, too, comes in a range of gem choices from diamonds, black pearl, ruby, to emeralds.

Wisteria earrings and necklace by Yoona Mayo, creator of Cocoon Jewelry

Here (below) is a photo that I share in an effort to show the dimension in the necklace.  The center design element on the necklace lifts up gently away from the body and the other branches of the neckwear.  The overall effect is this gorgeous depth and mimmicking of the wonderful cascading effect we see of wisteria in nature.  Only in this case, Yoona brings us a cascading effect of gems:

Wisteria earrings & necklace from Yoona Mayo, creator of Cocoon Jewelry

Not only is Yoona’s source of inspiration nature, but she loves working tiny prims and she does — indeed, she does – like nobody’s business.  In fact she’s elevated it to an artform in a way that very, very few have.  Please do come to “Transformations,” meet Yoona and see firsthand how incredible Yoona’s artistry truly is.  You’ll come away just as amazed as we all are, those of us who have had the pleasure of working with her.  And you’ll be sure to come away with any number of gorgeous wardrobe sets to fit perfectly in with the upcoming holiday season…really, with any season.

Transformations, a jewelry installation showcasing the gorgeous jewelry of Yoona Mayo, creator of Cocoon Jewelry

November 7, 7 a.m. STL, Shengri La sim (79.217.401)

Note:  I am continuing to write entries for NaNoWriMo(s) but am withholding posting them until after the November 7th Transformation show.

Ch 4 ~ Chaosversation

Shit.

That always freaks me out.  Freakin creeping up on me when I least expect it but never — no, never — when I want to know what’s ahead.  That’s when the door is slammed tight, but yeah sure, just wait, Em, just wait.  When the future is the last thing on my mind, yeah, then I’m thrown right into the fucking center of the mess.  Of some mess.  Excuse the language (as if I really need to) but, fuck!, it never gets any easier.  Stupid rude jolt to the system.  Excuse me.  Do I really need to see the same thing over and over again?  Pat laying in bed, dying how many times now?  Do I really need that, Oh Great All-Seeing Future?!  What exactly is the universe trying to say to me with this scenario.  Covered completely in darkness.  Makes my hair stand on end.  Not to mention breaks my heart every time.  And now this…this…Strange is all I can say, definitely Strange-with-a-capital-S man…whoever he is.  Looking straight at me in there.  I could swear he saw me.  Plain as day right in the center of my own mind’s eye.  Acting like I’m the intruder.  Yeah right!    In my own freakin head!  Staring me down and watching the news.  In his own freakin head! 

Shit!!

She heard sounds, the most discordant sounds around her.   Saw a blurry fuzzy waving of what she knew to be the arms of a very loud man who bullied the air with his voice and who happend to be sitting on the opposite side of the booth from her.  Forget (pronounced “Fore jay”)…Forget Myers, her other friend in this small town of Glenwood.  Forget was more than a bit of an eccentric (as his first name might indicate…and in fact, most people referred to him as “Forge”) and more than a bit odd to the people who lived in Glenwood.  Because, although a huge question mark in most people’s minds, Forge remained nobody’s fool.  And yet he chose to stay in Glenwood when he clearly possessed a mind that was vastly much more global in view…and a heckuvalot larger than life.  He was the local entrepreneur…not budding, not failing, not faltering.  Wildly successful, in fact, several times over.  As much as the locals thought he was loud and obnoxious and were probably secretly (and not so secretly) jealous of him, all of them to a one respected the man’s bank accounts.   Emily was the only person in Glenwood who didn’t give his massive personal wealth the time of day.  He knew because she had worked for him in one of his ventures.  He had come to know her personality pretty well.  His mind was agile enough, afterall, to size up situations and people fairly quickly and to modify his thought processes when necessary…the secret to the longevity of his successes.   But when Emily turned down a substantial salary and chose instead to part ways with his businesses rather than be promoted into a rather generous slot on his Hummer size wheel of commerce, well, then his hunch about Emily not giving a rat’s ass about the rat race was confirmed.  Forge chuckled silently.  He was not accustomed to being told “no” yet somehow her “no” was palatble and they had become even better friends as a result.  Oh, they still worked together on projects from time to time, always initiated by him.   Forge knew Em “had the goods.”  Forge had a sneaking suspicion of her particular talent, too, and he made no secret about it around her.  She didn’t seem to mind.  If she had minded, he would know.

Em never pulls any punches, he whistled behind his eyes, and as nobody’s fool, Forge knew he needed someone like that around him, no matter how much he might not like it at the time.  This latest venture was definitely one of those times, he told himself as he studied her expression closely. 

She busied herself with tuning him out. 

So he spoke even more loudly, god bless his healthy lungs.

 ”Top of the morning!” he bellowed, even though he sat on the other side of the same table as Emily.

Her eyes glazed over.  She knew it to be so but really couldn’t do much to stop it.  Coming out of that void — basically stepping into and out of the future — wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, she chortled inside.  People had no idea…for the most part, because they denied the possibility.  Even if they did believe that she could see the future, people still had no clue.  It simply was never as easy as one might think, but this time it had been acutely alarming.

“Huh?!”  His hands clobbered the formica tabletop.  Silverware jostled with some annoyance.  Coffee hiccupped out of their mugs and slapped its umber color onto the napkins. 

“What’s the MATTER!”  

That always did it.  That exaggerated inflection he put into his voice.  Made her groan and roll her eyes.  As much as she hated it, somehow it always worked and brought her focus to him. 

“Why.  Must.  You.  Yell? – ” she asked with a voice that sounded like it was behind a velvet curtain that was roped around the back of her mind.

Exasperated and not quite out of what looked for all appearances to be a trance, her head lulled itself in a backward motion onto the weathered, lumpy stuffing of the settee in the less-than-shiny booth of the less-than-sparkly diner that had been around the block more than once or twice.   In fact, over the years, the Glenwood Cafe had been literally on the other side of the block and down the adjacent streets of the same block, here and there.  But, really, that was neither here nor there just now, Emily chided herself.  

“Top of the morning!” he bellowed even more loudly, determined to get her full attention and in the process creating quite a commotion…enough, in fact, to cause all the wait staff to scowl.  Who needs to listen to customers?   He could read the complaint as plain as day on their expressions. 

Pat rolled her eyes, being the most clearly invested in the complaining.  But there was something else to that eye-roll.  In her high annoyance, she just about hurdled her thoughts deeper into the far reaches of her mind.  The place where it was darkest and by contrast could provide the greatest illumination if a light were turned on.  That place — way back there — was where she retreated to alot these days.  Because it was a place where she could still have an idea of what was happening in the world around her even while fully concealed.   Like a cave…dark and enclosed in the recesses, but open to the outside at its opening.  Still.  For a person to be able to physically take her mind by the hand and go there — disappear into darkness but still reveal the world around her within each passing moment and through her senses…well…even Pat couldn’t help but marvel.  This was not something she took for granted.  Not until she turned the channel and was immersed in her favorite cable station. 

She sighed, hearing Forge’s bellowing.  You’d almost think he was a one-man orchestra for all the sounds coming out of his mouth, she thought.   Poor Em…better her than me, she thought and continued searching in the back of her mind.  There was some kind of electrical impulse.  They need to make that more obvious, she thought with some frustration.  She still struggled to find the “on” switch even after having this — what is it, she thought to herself, “contraption”? — inside of her head for a couple of months now.  There was some kind of switch somewhere in the back of her head to change the channel basically, and in this case at this moment, blot the bellowing Forge from her senses.  Remote access to a remote control to blip out of conversations or media that she wasn’t remotely interested in.  Thank god, she breathed, as her concentration brought forth images of South Parked, the Whether Channel, Project Frock, and the Real Suburban Trashmen of whatever city they were in now.  Trading spaces in a whole new way, Pat smirked in a very contented way because now the visual of Forge was quite literally out of her head, and she was walking around obliviously taking customer orders while she caught up on the boob tube. 

“Forget For-Jay,” she muttered with glee under her breath and quickly oogled the buttcrack of the Suburban Trashman as he dumped a load of garbage into the compressor…and as Pat scribbled out “two eggs over easy, bacon, rye bread, coffee.”

But not everyone had that luxury.  In fact, few really knew too much about this new technology.  Those who didn’t know reacted quite differently to Forge’s dramatics.  Of course, everyone’s heads (patrons, employees, cafe owners…all except the guy with the laptop) spun around, which had the effect of showering the carpet with more bits of food crumbs as they whirled off of utensils because everyone (well, patrons really and idling owners who hunched over the countertop noshing…all of them except for Pat and the guy with the laptop) somehow felt compelled to spin their hands with their heads. 

As if they were driving while eating, Emily thought, as she looked around dimly.  As if *that* ever happens in a day and age consumed with driving while texting, with driving most definitely being the secondary activity.  What do they all talk about all day anyway, her mind wandered off for a nanosecond, until she pushed past her embarassment.

“WELL???!!!!” he boomed.

“Do.  You.  NOT.  Speak.  Lightly.  Or. Even.  Conversationally,” she rattled off in staccato, “Must absolutely everything — everything — be an announcement?”

“M’dear,” he said quite calmly for once, which was rather irksome to her…the moments when he chose to be calm.  They were usually the moments when she chose to feel quite justified in not being calm with him.  “No, not everything.  But definitely the important things.  Most definitely, those.  That is, assuming you don’t want what you say to be completely forgotten.”

NaNoWriMos total word count this chapter:  1,700; total word count todate (not including this notation) this chapter: 4,100.

Ch 3 ~ Membrane

She had heard of muscle memory and so when she flinched she wasn’t terribly surprised.  She had flinched this way for this reason before.  What did surprise her was the sense of time for this entire setting.  Because it wasn’t now; it wasn’t here.  It was someplace off…somewhere.

A short average-sized man stood in darkness in some kind of room.  A room that felt large despite the fact that she couldn’t make out much beyond the man and his illusive shadow.   Like anonymity personified, he hovered over a thickness that teased at exposure in the gathered darkness. 

She narrowed her focus, concentrating her mind to put meaning to the edge of a context that somehow bound itself into black inky secrecy.  Eventually, she recognized a bed, a form.  A body yes, a body, she confirmed in her mind…a body that lay in the bed.  Someone asleep?   She couldn’t tell exactly but knew somehow that the person was alive even if every other appearance suggested otherwise.  The sudden quiet hum of machinery that penetrated her mind surprised her at first then reassured her when she realized what it was.  Her eyes quickly chased out meaning.  She could see now that the wavelenghts pulsing from the source of the noise were saturated halos that flickered in and out ever so subtlely from beyond the encasement in which they were housed…from beyond the boxes of what she assumed only could be medical equipment.  In a deathly-still quiet room.  With a body lying just as dealthy still.  In a bed.  With a chillingly-shadowed man standing — no…prowling — silently over it.  More alarmingly, over the person in it.

Why am I here, she wondered in her mind, in this space, in the dark. 

And as if he heard her –

of course he couldn’t have just heard me, she panicked abruptly and more than what she was certain was quite loudly into the silence  –

And as if he had heard her..she flinched.  Because he had turned his head under and he had cast his eyes over an average-sized shoulder — his shoulder —  to deliver a hooded and ominous gaze directly into the center of her eyes — into the center of Emily’s pools.

Holding your breath was radically difficult, she now knew, when you felt deep within each molecule of your being that your thoughts and your entire thought process…was alive.  Thought as form.  Intention as presence.  Made manifest.

Nearly hyperventilating, she tried desparately not to move.  She was virtually transparent — even though, for crap’s sake!, she was barely in the same physical space! — she fought the possibililty of materializing and blossoming out from an uncontrolled will into a room that on a primal level every impulse in her shouted flight!  NOW!  Her heart raced so furiously that her pulse thrashed within her eardrums and nearly deafened her.  She forced herself not to blink from the compression.  Staring straight into his cold eyes, in the void of his expressionless stare, she saw nothing that would identify him.  But what she suddenly did see startled her more than she already had been startled…even more than the fact that somehow he had become aware of her intrusion.  She realized he must be thinking “Intrusion.”   She allowed the word to sink into her aura like an anchor, locking her firmly to this place.  Or like a pair of cement boots, plummeting her to the drown in the depths of her own demise.  Intrusion into what, she nearly screamed within her brain.  Into why?

Then, imperceptibly at first, the wheels turned in his head.  She watched a series, a small tightly compact series, of cogs and screws whirl slowly into a circular progression that suggested forward movement born from a firmly coupled feat of engineering.  Images flickered across the blank canvas that was his darkened mind.  Astounded, she found herself leaning toward him, hunched forward scrunching her eyes, compelling them to render the images that flew rapidly past in the front of his mind.  There were backwards the images…entertainment-newscasts?  mixed-reality shows?  social platforms?  tweets? 

“What?” she gasped.  

His eyebrow cocked itself and the machinery behind his eyes immediately hid itself from her view.  Several seconds passed as she tried to make sense of what she had just seen.  Several more seconds passed until she realized she had gasped not only in her mind but through her breath.  Her startled state had become manifest, and the short menacing figure with the machinery in his head had heard. 

It was then, that Emily blinked.  

NaNoWriMos total word count this chapter:  760; total word count todate (not including this notation) this chapter: 2,403.

Ch 2 ~ Visceral

Emily had a little talent that she rarely kept to herself, unless she was in a particularly shy mood.  Usually, she was.  God…sometimes thoughts just didn’t come to her.  At least sometimes not in a way that made any kind of sense (at least to outside people) so why would she give voice to the clutter that frequented her brain?  Exactly, she said to no one in particular but herself.  She laughed.  In a small way.  Nearly imperceptibly, which was the point exactly.  Because it was more than just a touch ironic, that thought back there.  A couple of sentences back…she nodded her head back as if to point to the precise sentence that floated like a cobweb somewhere in the back of her mind.  The one that mentioned talking to “…no one in particular but herself.”  Yea, that one.  Ironic because most of the people in this quiet-smallish still-but-caught-in-a-perpetual-cycle-of-terrible twos-farmtown of Glenwood thought of Emily Wentwood as precisely that.  (See what I mean?  What a jumbled thought that was.)  No one in particular.  Just a transparent film of a person with a knack for blending into the background.

Still.  Even that wasn’t Emily’s particular talent.

“Welllllllll!” a voice boomed over the cluster of tables and chairs and half eaten breaksfasts with jellies and ketchup slopped carelessly over the plates and onto the surface.

She poked a long strand of mousy brown hair out of her eyelashes and turned her head around to stare over her shoulder.  Her eyes pinched, stressing the skin across the bridge of her nose and mounding it into bundled creases of fuzzy curiousity, until at last, her vision focused.   

She could see through the window, not far away…not far at all…a flock of birds manuveured the air in perfect unison. 

He glanced up from his laptop.  His mousy blondish-reddish hair blurred the air, his smile tentatively entered into her sight.  She flinched in some kind of recognition that she didn’t fully know, couldn’t at all ignore, wouldn’t possibly explore at this moment because that bellow from somewhere further down, striding down the aisle, jerked her head away until her vision landed squarely on the chaos that seemed to be unleashing itself at every table before her.

People eat like such animals sometimes, Emily thought before barely having time to register all of the napkins lifting off of the tables like flat, spineless flying structures that were propelled into the air by his wildly exaggerated movement.   Nevermind the mounds of food crumbs that graffitti’d the floor.

The patrons in this diner bullied food.  He bullied air, he did.

Here thoughts flew back to the general vacinity of the laptop.   Whoosh.

Who is he? she ventured to ask with no time at all to discover an answer.

A voice grumbled from a standing position somewhere near the edge of Emily’s booth.  “Oh brother,” Pat said.  She had a habit of saying that.  She had a habit of thinking she knew everything that was about to unfold.  But see…that’s the thing.  Pat didn’t have that particular talent.  Pat was just one of those who thought she had everyone’s number because she people-watched for a living.

“More coffee, Em?”

Emily rolled her gaze back to Pat, who stood as all waitresses do on the outer edge of the booth and who looked down at Emily with a smirk on her face.  Not all waitresses did that, but at least Pat’s smirk was friendly.  Yet, a smirk just the same.  Knowitall, she thought but Emily really knew that Pat was okay.  She was, in fact, her closest friend in a town that really regarded Emily (and possibly to some extent Pat, for all she knew) as inconsequential at best.  Pat might exercise snap judgements far too frequently, but the one constant she displayed was a genuine caring for Emily.  And that was very mutual.  So, Pat’s tendency to think she knew everything at all times simply by virture of the fact that she waitressed at the Glenwood Cafe was annoying, yes, but, really quite minor if you could look past it.   Emily could.  It was always nice to have a friend.  Besides.  Emily knew Pat had a heart of gold and that in two years that same heart would constrict so massively as to snuff the life of all of that self-satisfied knowledge right out of her.  For good.

Emily knew this as nearly unavoidable fact.  Regrettably so.  Because that was Emily’s particular talent that she rarely kept to herself, unless she was feeling particularly shy (which was usually the case) or particularly fearful (which was definitely true in Pat’s case).

Emily could see the future.

“Sure…sure, Pat.  Thanks.  Love some more.”

She shoved the thought of two years down the road far away into the recesses of her mind and focused instead on the steady stream of coffee arching out of the carafe into her cup.  Not one dropped spilled.  Damn, Pat was good.  As steady as they come.  Who would guess what was coming at her.  Emily only hoped she was wrong on this one; she only hoped that her inner eye was as blind as her external vision appeared to be.  But she had little time to dwell on all of this because before she knew it, he had bullied the air completely out of the room and was standing completely in focus next to Pat, wearing a wiseguy smile to beat all heck.  Pat raised an eyebrow which had the odd effect of turning down the corners of her mouth in a rather exaggerated, comical way.  Emily couldn’t help but snort softly.

“Wellllllllllllllll!  HI THERE!  Mind if I join you!”  The man doesn’t ask questions.  For the most part, he punishes the air.

Emily shook her head in mild amusement.  I mean what does one say to such an exhibit of a person?  Especially after Pat turned on her slammed heel like an exclamation point punctuating the close of her participation in this conversation.

He snickered.

“WHAT?!  What did I say!”

Emily held her hand out in surrender and gestured for him to sit.  Because, after all, she knew that he would whether she wanted him to or not.

“The question might be,” she leaned in and mumbled quietly in the hopes of stifling the stares he was generating, “what haven’t you said.” 

Then, for some reason – one that even she didn’t yet know – she craned her chin to her shoulder.

And in that moment, their eyes caught, wordlessly from laptop to booth, underneathe tassles of mousy hair, for the second time that day.

NaNoWriMo(s) – total word count this chapter:  1092; total word count todate (not including this notation):  1,635

Happy November 2009!  Here in deep fall arrives national novel writing month (NaNoWriMo).  /me smiles tentatively.  This was so *not easy* when I first tried this last year.  (Very wonderful talented friend Dale…you utterly amaze, having done this every year for the past decade now?  You utterly amaze in so very many ways.)  On my first attempt, I didn’t finish the novel in the 30-day time allotment; I took 6 weeks instead of 4.  But the larger triumph for me was finishing…and the process (as agonizing as it was on several evenings when the computer taunted me with a blank page).  This year, for me, the effort is more likely to be NaNoWriQtr (quarter indeed) because, well, I have a sneaking suspicion that’s going to be a more accurate description of the time it will take for me to reach 50,000 words.  I will do my best not to backslide.  I admit I wrote 4000 words sporadically a couple of days in September and then a couple more days in October and then promptly became lazy.  What is it about time pressures that spark a writing process?  Is that where my muse is?  If so, then I better launch right in…because NaNoWriMo or NaNoWriQtr — either way — time’s a wasting and the process is itching to begin.   

Ch 1 ~ Sunset

Somewhere, not far away…not far at all…a flock of ducks manuveured the air in perfect unison.  

Whoosh.

It was late afternoon.  The birds flew low at first, swooping silently just over his head before they lifted into the silhouette of dusk.   With amazingly few beats, their wings cut a powerful sweeping arc across the sky’s cloudy backdrop.  The atmosphere’s early evening veil overlay what looked to be a turbulent sunset.  Blues, purples, fiery reds fairly vibrated on the horizon as they inked the boisterous clouds that masked the star.

Funny, this.  That he had taken the time to even notice this unsettled display of nature.  But the irony hadn’t escaped him…even in the heat of this moment or of the moments that had just come and gone.  Indeed.  It had been a turbulent night.  For one, he thought as he easily concealed his weapon of choice.   He had just killed a man.  Did it really matter how?  A terrible threat had been averted.  Snuffed out completely by a more powerful, forceful will.  

Only to him — and to no one else — did the details matter.  Not unless you were looking for the evil in those trivialities.   But, he told himself with total convinction, you still wouldn’t find me…not even then.  He focused himself with even more purpose.  Although he dwelled a bit on this topic, it was much more reality for him that his mind had swept well past this act, well past this scene.  His body soon would as well.  He walked rapidly now to his car, keeping his eyes on the flock of birds as it continued a graceful flight of unspoken purpose, natural precision, and unwavering instinct. 

He smiled rather easily, concealing to himself any rationalization in which his mind might still be engaged.  Perhaps at some level.  Perhaps not.  He wouldn’t really know, because if he gave focus or effort to those thoughts…if he voiced them even silently…he would risk acknowledging some sense of guilt or agnst.  And he simply had none.  If not angst, then, conscience, perhaps.  But no, he told himself because he had little of that to speak of either.  And that wasn’t really the point, he calmly reminded himself as he sat in his car, heard the gleaming door close with a gasp, and strapped on his seatbelt.  A safe killer.  No, no, he frowned slightly until he corrected himself:  “A responsible victim. Yes.”  The point was that the man laying dead in the alley had to be removed.  He was loud.  He was dangerous.  He was on the verge of unleashing a capability far more overwhelming than conscience.  Soon enough, if not tonight, then soon enough, somewhere not too far away, he was on the verge of giving the world access to a word similar in sound to “conscience” but more importantly some would argue, profoundly more powerful in capability.  The collective.  Such a potently dangerous notion.    

This was simple, he reasoned as he manuveured his spotless vehicle, a muscled vehicle that with just a few accelerations silently cut out a powerful stretch down an otherwise politely submissive road.  Just like the flock of birds, this was instinctive.  The doing of this act, he confirmed to himself, done to maintain a thing of beauty really…the perfect order of disorder. 

NaNoWriMo(s) 2009 – Total word counts, not including this notation or the intro:  545