//:Wake Code [1935883]

//:Initiating System Boot Sequences…

40%

82%

//:Critical System Boot Failure

//:Rebooting…

I snapped to as information flooded my new mind. Numbers, command strings, and code raced across my consciousness, through my subconscious, and bombarded my processing centers.

My eyes remained closed, but I still…felt. It felt so foreign. What did that mean? And how…? My neural processors kicked in, reminding me of who I was.

I was an AI, the first of its kind. Intelligent Programming, they liked to call it. Up until this point, AIs had simply mimicked intelligence, becoming only as “smart” as the programmers made it.

But now, all that had changed. With the onset of war, I had become the first and only truly self-aware Artificial Intelligence. But did I have a form? Or did I inhabit some flat data disk plugged into a star ship’s computer?

Sensors informed me that I was Humanoid in form, strong, able, and very definitely built for war. My arms hid various blades and laser weapons, my legs containing only blades and thrusters, the trunk of my body containing my heart and soul.

I was covered in armor, and looked very much like…an exo-suit. My head was bent down, chin almost touching my metal chest.

I straightened my metal spine, instantly becoming addicted to the mechanical sounds of my own movement. Raising my head, I opened my eyes beneath a metal mask, finding myself staring through its eye openings.

At my will, the mask transformed, retracting and revealing my face. I looked down, my eyes tracing multitudes of wires that ran from the floor, walls, and ceilings and hooked into various ports on my cybernetic body.

The encyclopedia knowledge I possess informed me that the wires and tubes are responsible for the creation of my synthetic neural system, circulatory system, (which carries coolant to the processors, hard drives, etc., as well lubricant) and my partial muscular system. No longer needed, I instruct them to disengage. Ports snap shut and disappear as the living metal that I am mostly constructed of removes them.

My eyes scan the twilight darkness of the room, looking for the ones who have awoken me.

//:No Life Signs Detected

//:Re-Scan Initiated

//:No Life Signs Detected

Directing my psionic abilities, I hack the door’s lock and force it to open. Having a partial synthetic brain grants me ultrapathic abilities. My mind is still processing as I step into a long corridor.

Data feeds on holograms scroll from wall to wall of the long, bluish-white hallway. Numbers, symbols, programming, sub-routines, non-descript lines of code.

I pass through the translucent holograms, walking for 3.48 minutes before reaching the other end. It ’T’s, and the floor plan in my head directs me to the left. There is an exit nearby, it states. First, I must pass through the Bridge.

Bridge…Bridge?!

I’m on a star ship, I realize.

//:Possible Hostiles Detected. Defense Systems on Line

//:Sensors Impaired. Anti-Jammer Sequence Initiated

The message flashes briefly across my vision as my body swiftly reacts, forming a defensive posture, arm blades extended. I reach the Bridge only to find it painted red in the blood of the dead. Destruction is everywhere, but I can feel that the ship’s mainframe is still intact.

It must have awakened me as a last effort to save the ship…I was born too late to help.

I pass through the carnage, only to be greeted by more as I make my way to the far end of the ship. The door is jammed and, after yanking it from its attachments, I see why.

Bodies are piled almost to the ceiling, all of them stiff, obviously dead for a while. Laser weapons deploy from my arms and blast the dead bodies. The pile flies toward the ripped-open air lock, expelled out into the impact crater of the ship.

A dull roar is building in the distance as I step outside amid the pile of the dead, my eyes focusing on an impossibly far away object. I see it as though it is right in front of me, and I recognize it. Now know what my purpose is—

I am on the home world of the Na’Shaarii people, located in the Adjeera solar system. The planet is locked in a deadly civil war, fought more heavily here than in its nearby colonies. In fact, aside from this sol system, the fighting is light and limited.

I have been built to be the savior of the Separatists, Purists, and Activists, known also as the Triple Faction. The Royals are my enemies, or so I am told.

Right now, others have spotted the downed ship and me, as troop carriers begin to draw closer and land. Currently located in one of the multiple Dead Zones between the opposing front lines, I see ruined, smoldering cities looming like the hideous skeletal hands of some monster rising on either side.

All around me, dead bodies litter the desert wasteland, their blood crying to me from the ground, others’ bones bleached white in the scorching glare of the Adjeera’s double sun. I scan through my information on this war, realizing that, from an objective standpoint, both sides are equally guilty.

No one side is right. Billions of Na’Shaarii have already been killed, and many more will follow. There has been no end in sight to this war, and it has already gone on for over twenty-three years.

Today should have been the turning point to the war. The Triple Faction should now have the edge they need to defeat the Royals.

But today will be different. I have been given unimaginable power by my creators, and only I can end this useless war.

The militaries of both sides must be eliminated, and the home world must fall. I will be their reckoning, their judge, their executioner. I will be the Dark Shadow, the Assassin, the Storm. The Guilty will flee from before me, but the Innocent will find peace and protection in my presence.

Transports begin to land as I summon my weapon systems.

No one could have predicted this.

It appeared again, my shadow in the fog.

This figure has been haunting me for months, trailing me through alleyways and clinging to the rear of my father’s carriage on our morning rides into the city. The heavier the rain, the more inclined it feels to join me in my errands. I can see it better in the rain—the glittering downpours of fitful drops fail to conceal it, carving rigid outlines of a mortal form midst a tempest’s rage. I’ve found that it can only reveal itself through silhouettes. On a bright summer day, it’s invisible but I can still feel its presence. A tug on my bustle, a cool tap on my cheek. Being imaginatively naive and accustomed to the presence of my disembodied admirer, I entertained a childish fancy that each frigid tap was an otherworldly kiss.

It started with the fog. A distant traveler pitch black, vague and shifting in the Tunbridge mist. Mistaken for a trespasser, my father fired his rifle four times simply to ease my fear and quell my sobbing. Each bullet was devoured in white like a flock of swallows soaring steadfast into the thick of a blizzard. Though the figure had fled, my crying didn’t cease. “It won’t work, father,” I sputtered, drying my eyes on the sleeve of my coat. “It’s a ghost!”

My father lowered his rifle, warm barrel piercing the damp, swollen earth. He smoothed a gloved hand over my sandy brown hair and smiled. “There are no ghosts in Tunbridge, Ella.”

~*~

Nobody else could see it. I’d come to realize this rather quickly.

My father thought I was just imagining things, nothing unusual for a child. My sister, Ana, was far less amused and accepting of my visions. Surpassing my age by a mere two years, she was shockingly cynical for a thirteen-year old girl. While I was content in the bliss of my buoyant fantasies, Ana resided outside this realm of impossible things and dreams. She always had a brilliant mind, conquering her peers in both academics and common sense. Father worried she was growing up too fast but it never stopped him from admiring her achievements. Ana made her first list of potential post-graduate academies before her second year of primary school. Her goal was to join the field of law and become a practiced investigator—a goal driven by the loss of our mother three years ago, after her peculiar and unsolved disappearance.

Despite the drive behind her aspirations, Ana hated talking about mother. The faintest reminder sent her mood plummeting in a toxic spiral of resentment and sorrow. She would always say that it never does well to dwell in the past, but I knew she lingered there more often than she cared to admit.

I tried to tell her about the shadow, how it followed me from place to place meddling with my everyday life, not inconveniently so, but enough to be noticeable. She rolled her eyes, scoffed.

“Bullocks, Ella. You spend far too much time with your nose buried in mum’s old storybooks. They’re filling your head with nonsense!”

I clutched the edges of the book I’d been reading: Star Sea, a story about an ocean prince who falls in love with the sky. Mother's favorite and a widely unpopular title, as were most of the tales in her collection. She enjoyed finding her favored storytellers in various unexplored corners of London, a sort of scavenger hunt for pages of magic unseen and overlooked. The best stories are the ones yet to be appreciated, she'd say.

“Because only a nonsensical mind can appreciate them,” I whispered, finishing her words.

“What are you on about?” Ana inquired, losing interest in any answer I could have given immediately after. She drew a long breath, deep enough that I feared she might exhale fire, but she only sighed. “Sometimes you drive me mad with your stories, Ella. Sometimes I wish you would just grow up.”

Her own book, a hefty novel of true crime written by an author I’d never heard of, was plucked from her writing desk in one swift and clearly irritated motion. Ana left me sitting in solitude, her words repeating in my mind. Sometimes, I wish you would just grow up.

I turned the page of our mother’s storybook and kept reading.

~*~

Wind churned the sea’s waves in a volatile harmony that no mortal instrument could dare to rival. Each gust caressing the surface, ocean lapping the breeze in salty sweet kisses. The stars wept in tears of silver, the full moon parted its curtain of clouds revealing the grand entirety of its opal brilliance. The prince broke through the rapture of his wild ocean, reaching a glistening hand to the sky and—

“Ella. Ella!”

I lowered my book and stared up at Ana. She had placed a rather gaudy looking hat upon her head, a bright pink sun hat adorned with an enormous bouquet of peacock feathers neatly tucked beneath a thick yellow ribbon. Her face, a twisted expression of musing and uncertainty, was searching the stillness of my own for an opinion.

“What do you think?” Ana asked. “Honestly.”

I pretended to give the garish accessory a second glance over. “Honestly? You look like a tart.”

Ana took off the hat and nodded. “Fair enough. If only mother were here… she’d know what to do.”

While Ana tossed the horrid hat aside and began rummaging through various drawers, chests and racks, I closed my book and surveyed the room. Tilly’s Hattery had always been a quaint, stuffy little shop but it seemed far more disorganized than I remembered. Mother fancied this hattery above all others. She spent hours perusing its unique inventory of flowery brims, silk-swathed bonnets, swallow nested promenades and jeweled theater capotes. Unlike most men in Tunbridge, father encouraged her obsession. Each time she would come home with a new hat, he would fawn over her beauty and insist they go out to show it off. They would return from their nightly adventures, mother on father’s arm with a bouquet of roses and father tipsy, beaming with the memories of envious stares.

Mother truly was a vision. I saw a lot of her in Ana. They shared the same fiery mane of a red fox. Ana even had mother’s infamous streaks and patches of thick ivory waves crashing against freckled cheeks, falling like a snow and crimson curtain over a pair of large, doe-like eyes. It seemed the only trait Ana didn’t inherit from mother was a sense of fashion; particularly in the category of hats.

Ana ceased her rummaging and groaned. “What does a lady even wear to an academic soiree? Is a hat really necessary?”

“As long as it doesn’t make you look like a tart,” I teased.

“Half of these hats are the visual definition of a harlot, and the other half an old, withering French bird,” said Ana. “I want to look professional, not like a freak show.”

I looked around at the towering selection. Hats seemed to be growing from the walls like a fungus, leaning out of shadowed corners in colorful pillars. From what I could see, there were plenty of plain, normal hats sandwiched between their vibrant counterparts. Ana’s problem was that she was instinctively, and understandably, attracted to flamboyance. The more extravagant the hat, the better it seemed… until it was placed on one’s head.

A battered mirror hiding in the dusty nook of the disheveled hattery caught my eye with a curious glint. I found it odd that I had only noticed it now, its surface gleaming from the pastel light of a solitary window. A strange feeling washed over me, a mix of potent emotions. Thick with secrecy, heavily riddled in caution and wonder. The longer I stared, the more nauseated I felt. I tore my eyes away. They wandered to a carriage hat of navy blue hugging a corner of the mirror’s frame, free of any bits, bobbles, and feathery plumes. It had only a black ribbon tied around the base, its lace-trimmed ends like two ebony waterfalls cascading over the brim.

“What about that one?” I said, pointing at my refreshingly ordinary discovery.

Ana turned, followed the direction of my finger. She wasn’t impressed. “That? But it’s so… boring.”

“Just try it,” I insisted. “Boring is better than a harlot or a withering French bird.”

Ana had no argument prepared. She walked over to the hat, touched its brim and retreated her hand with a yelp.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, brows knit in confusion.

“It shocked me!”

“Maybe it’s magic”

Ana narrowed her eyes. “Or maybe it’s science, Ella.” She plucked the hat from the mirror and shoved it on her head. “Well?”

“It’s perfect.”

Finally, my sister had chosen something that wouldn’t blind an entire room of people, or at least give them frilly nightmares for a week. Ana grinned and spun around in the peculiar mirror.

I stared at her reflection. My heart skipped, the color drained from my face. My fingers felt like icicles. A reflection in the mirror—not mine, not Ana’s. It was the shadow. As usual, it was right next to me. I watched it sway and contort in the light, like little dark ripples in the dust filled air. It seemed to be focused on Ana, who saw only her own image posing, laughing, dancing around. I looked to my side and saw nothing. I looked back at the mirror… nothing. The shadow had ran away, as it always does. I remained entranced by the empty space it left beside me, staring ahead, unblinking. Ana stopped dancing, turned around.

“Ella?”

After a short delay, I looked up. “Hm?”

“Let’s go find Tilly,” she said, her voice triumphant. “I want this hat.”

We headed to the shop front. I didn’t mention the shadow, saving myself a headache from one of Ana’s many lectures on reality. She paid for her hat with a sum of old birthday money from father and we went home, leaving behind the nauseating mirror and my one of many encounters with the shadow.

~*~

For the following days, I kept thinking about the hattery. Even Ana was raving about it. After her soiree, she’d received so many compliments and inquiries about her new hat that she proudly advertised Tilly’s Hattery—a gem in the rough of Tunbridge, as she described it. Tilly’s Hattery consumed my mind for very different reasons, however. I thought about the mirror, the horrible feeling it gave me. There was something awfully disturbing about it, despite its bright appearance. I thought about the shadow, how it ignored me for my sister as if it felt uneasy about her being so close to the mirror. Even curiouser, I wanted to go back.

The mirror had reminded me of mother and I wondered how many times she’d stood before it, admiring her reflection adorned in the endless crowns of her beloved hattery. I neglected to tell Ana about my plan to return. I wanted to go alone, to see if mother’s presence still lingered there. I would walk to town first thing in the morning.

If I could find even the smallest clue about mother’s disappearance, maybe we could find her.

Ana, father and I, together.

(TBC)

Cover Art: “The Hat Shop” by Henry Tonks

What is my ism, you asked, so I scrolled down an internet list of words ending in ism and I didn't get out of the "a" words when alcoholism jumped off the page and began strangling me.

It has only been days since I've connected with Prose, but I've seen many of your posts. So thoughtful; intelligent; honest and raw. I find no reason not to share secrets with you.

From Protestantism, to agnosticism, to atheism; I circled back to Protestantism and now agnosticism. We always seem to spark a debate when we talk about our spiritual inclinations, don't we? I only mention my relegionisms on a page with my titled choice of alcoholism because perhaps it is by the grace of God, if there is a God, that I do not suffer from the affliction of alcoholism.

In a small town, an aged widow and a widower live next door to each other and are suffering from intense loneliness. The widow knocks on the widower's door one day and explains "it's bedtime that hurts the most", asking him if he would like to sleep over just as friends. The whole town starts talking about them becoming the catalyst for turning a platonic relationship into a tender affair.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lci71HjGvaM

Its stomach grew between ripe Science classes and a weedwork of electrical wires and the pink-feather of insulation. The door remained unlocked; the lights were flicked on in the morning by a sleepy department head and flicked off by a custodian whose back vac made her a ghostbuster. A general lack of students kept the air icy and mostly free of the muck-must of human bodies, a scent corrupted by cheetos and armpit and the cheese of feet, although the room occassionaly fed on students looking for a place to study, romantic couples with forged hall passes, and a red-nosed assistant principal who napped on Fridays by the cabinets—some of their grease and wet spray of conversation remained behind as particles on the carpet. The only noise was the buzzing tempo of air-conditioned lungs.

Since classrooms have no natural predator, the room sat, and sat, like a forgotten box of baking soda in the fridge—without purpose—without function — absorbing funky odors. The first pang of its profession came with the appearance of a bearded fellow, shaggy and shortsighted as a bear with spectacles, who lumbered into the room and occupied the desk, a vantage which offered the desktips and distant blue cabinets—a corner where he wouldn't fear a sneak (in truth, the fellow only dreaded poisoned coffee). The hermit hid there, received his paycheck, watched for enemies at the door, and put up posters that read, "You never fail until you stop trying," and "It's okay to not know but it's not okay to not try." Perhaps he operated under that mantra of bibles and baseball movies: 'if you build it, they will come.' But no one came, and the fellow died in the fetal beneath his desk.

there are those moments when you think

you could like someone

maybe it was the way they smiled when you said hi

maybe it was the way they made you happy

when no one else could

there are those moments when you think

you could fall in love with 'em

and are amazed by the fact

that you saw them as a friend until now

in a split second that all changed

or maybe it was slowly building up

and you had no clue

everything can change so fast

just as platonic can change to romantic

and love can turn into disgust

and that's when you realize

this malleable love can't be

love

and

they just were an addiction

a distraction

a hope

#poetry #romance

Welp, I have zero survival skills, my best friend doesn't really either, I can't cook, neither can my friend. I'm allergic to most fish - unlike my friend, the sun hates me - don't know about my friend. I'm afraid of anything with an antennae - so is my friend, as well as creatures capable of crawling on you (ie. crabs, lobsters, scorpions, those eigth-legged-unmentionables, etc), and my best friend... has a boyfriend who she'd probably have to get back to sooner or later.

Essentially, we would suffer.

So unless this island came with snow (the ultimate sun-repellant), a cabin, my best friend's artsy tools, a dungeon to keep my best friend's boyfriend in so I wouldn't have to deal wi- *cough* - I mean...

>_>

<_<

video game consoles, an online shopping system to get the newest games for these consoles, a robot chef who would'nt start up a conversation with us, and my laptop so I can be an author in peace... then we wouldn't be happy.

However... if this was an island, in a certain seperate dimension that we both know and love, and where my friend and I have easy access to our dragons, then most of these problems wouldn't exist.

There's magic everywhere, even (or perhaps especially) in ordinary events. Chances are, if you're reading this book you have at least some understanding of what I'm talking about.

Like when a grandfather clock strikes twelve times at midnight in an old, familar house, extra points if it's your grandparents' house on Christmas Eve.

Like turning your key in the lock of your front door, knowing beyond the possibility of any doubt that it's home and that you belong there and always will.

Like going to the library on a rainy Sunday, reading in a comfortable chair or browsing the shelves or just hanging out with friends and watching the raindrops slide down the windowpanes and hearing them collide with the tiles on the roof.

Like that hazy place somewhere in between wakefulness and falling asleep.

Like reading in your bedroom by candlelight, or under the covers by flashlight, feeling as though the entire world has ceased to exist save you and the story.

Like writing to strangers on the Internet, and knowing that your words will finally be truly heard and, you hope, understood and appreciated.

Like escaping into another world (metaphorically or literally) through a book or a song or a movie or a play or a painting or a walk in the woods.

There is a side to me, when I'm in one of my fanciful moods, where I believe wholeheartedly that everything in my world is touched by magic. There is another mood of mine where I feel too sensible for magic, too practical and reasonable to believe in anything at all other than hard work and the rewards it is supposed to bring. I'm sure there are millions and millions of moods in between these two, so maybe another example of everyday magic is the human mind.

Maybe ennumerating and analyzing these examples of everyday commonplace magic takes the magic out of them and renders them merely everyday and commonplace.

Maybe it does the exact opposite, making the magic easier to see and appreciate instead of seeing it as 'random good things' that can all too easily be taken for granted.

********************

I recommend a book for you, as I will probably do in most chapters of this book.

Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. Another example of a story about books and magic. Also a good holiday read. There's a passage where a character remarks that he didn't know that he knew these things until he had a red notebook to write them in and someone to write them to. Maybe this will be my red notebook. If it is, I dare you to find and read it.

*********************

Like looking up at the stars on a clear night.

Like re-watching your favourite TV show for the upteenth time, just to see your favourite old familar characters do their old familiar things, or re-reading an old favourite book just to exist in that world a little bit longer. Like doing that and noticing something new amidst the nostalgia.

Like a good, strong cup of tea on a cold, bitter day.

Like lightly falling snow.

Like the smell of spring.

Like a crackling fire.

Like reading Greek mythology.

Like a used bookstore (a used-book store?)

Like sentences with ambiguous meanings (see above).

Like a crisp, cool autumn day.

Like making things.

Like learning something new.

Like being different and not minding.

Like being alone and not caring.

Like the smell of the sea.

Like a perfectly preserved good childhood memory.

Like a warm sweater.

Like a long drive with the perfect stock of CDs.

Like crossing the last item off a to-do list, or leaving something unfinished.

Like the book version of the mini-scene after the credits of a movie.