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Saturday, April 29, 2006
09:28 
While flying to Exeter
 There has been little constancy in my NC life, although the benefit of 20-20 hindsight makes the changes seem much smaller than they ever do at the time. Take the appearance of Raven in my life and the way he seemed, at the time, to turn everything upside-down and inside-out. It wasn't really that big a change, although it felt like it when it was happening.
Then recently, this period of change, when I am finally — at least I fervently hope so — coming out of the mess that was Core. It feels a little like I have clawed out of Hell by way of my own grave; a journey that has taken me six years. Six years. I still have the scars, still have the after-effects. But they are scars now rather than open wounds, and the after-effects are like the ache in a once-broken bone caused by a change in the weather. Some of them may always be with me. Maybe they are like the wrinkles I now observe with a degree of ruefulness whenever I catch sight of myself in the mirror (generally when checking to make sure I have the correct eye in my face). Or the thick, pinkish purple line on my elbow that resembles a shark bite and is the visible remnant of an injury that still hurts when I lean on it.
The only constant in life is change, particularly for a shifter. More particularly for a pure sympathic metamorph like me: an engineered oddity — commissioned by the Prime; designed and built by Raven with embellishments by the Company of Tricksters and finishing details by the House of Wyrm.
There isn't another one out there like me. Even allowing for the mythical seventeen clones story (one of whom is dead now anyway). We are all unique, each of us in this big, bad multiverse: I just happen to be different by design.
"It'll never work, you daft old bugger. All of that will never fit into there."
"I'm not putting all of it in. Anyway. It's just a matter of packing."
Óðinn was right. It didn't all fit, and more has dropped off or been taken out over the years. Not only that but this is a high-maintenance design — it turns out they have to keep a tight rein on build-up and accumulated... well. Bob calls it gunk. I call it social responsibility.
Raven doesn't like high maintenance. Fond as he is of me, and inordinately proud, I don't think he'll be making any more like this, no matter what the interest on the market. The next generation will be stronger, faster, more adaptable and will require less work. Although I suspect they won't kick ass like I do or be as damned difficult to kill.
Change, you see. Everything about my life is about change.
Nevertheless there are a few constants, at least relatively speaking.
I have had two visions nestling in my mind like barnacles on a rock for as long as I can remember. They come out and waggle whenever the tide of circumstance produces suitable conditions. For one of these visions the tide is unpredictable. I never know when I will be transported into its clutches, or what the next trigger will be.
The other is much more obvious. It happens every time I travel alone on public transport. So I knew, arriving at the airport this morning, that my form would revert to the same form I always have when travelling alone on public transport. It is informed and produced by this barnacle of a vision that has been with me since before I was old enough to be allowed to use public transport by myself.
This vision I have lived with for my whole conscious life is one in which I am travelling somewhere, alone, in some mode that means I am not in control of the vehicle. I am sitting, minding my own business, and a man sits next to me in that casual way people do when looking for an empty seat. Then, at some point, he sticks me in the leg with a fast-acting sedative and then the waiting team of technicians are in there, with me safely unconscious. Next thing I know I'm waking up somewhere as part of some ultra-black weapons project.
I honestly have had this nestled in my mind since I was too young to understand what an ultra-black weapons project is. Sometimes I wish I'd kept the fiction I wrote as a child, because the thread was there. It was informing my writing even then. It has been so strong, this weird-ass fantasy, that I can't watch a scene in a movie in which someone is involuntarily injected with something without my stomach turning over and a spike of adrenaline rushing through my system. At times it doesn't feel so much like a vision of something that might happen as a vision of something that has happened.
It doesn't frighten me, this vision, except in that it speaks of some pretty fucked-up mental processes. In fact, I look forward to it. I actually wish it damn well would happen. I wish that whatever top-secret R&D team has the connections and the interest to find out about Raven's one-off design experiment and decide to get hold of her would fucking get a move on. The idea of that complete, irrevocable, total, forced change appeals to me. I like the thought of being ripped from my life and dumped in a new one; forced to adapt and change while being made to be the best I possibly could be as Raven's showpiece design.
Yeah, it's screwed. I don't know where this fantasy sprang from and I am not sure I want to know what it says about my state of mind. Some of it is pure ego-stroking: to be considered that special. That's common enough. Some of it is the regular old desire for irrefutable external validation.
But, in the meantime, this barnacle has almost become an expectation. So I scrutinise anyone who sits next to me on a bus, train, plane or while sitting in a station or airport. I strike up conversations with the most unlikely people, just to check them out (I've met some really interesting people that way, and it's amazing how surprised people are that a complete stranger is showing an interest). And, at the same time, I spend the journey feeling like I'm hot property on the international super-soldier acquisition lists and my journey might end up somewhere completely different from my intended destination.
And that, believe me, is quite a rush.
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Thursday, April 27, 2006
17:30
Time to share
 A long time ago, in a lifetime far, far away, the empath battled the Weapon.
Some incredibly profound stuff came out of that time. Much of it is hidden on an unlisted blog too self-absorbed and maudlin to share.
But this, this I think deserves some space in the outside world.
Father
Grandfather
Why me?
Why
Of all
My brothers and sisters
Did you
Choose me?
To be what?
Your pet?
Your plaything?
Your grand adventure?
No
My child
Daughter
Granddaughter
Loved one
Lost one
Found one.
This is your
Grand adventure.
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