The Absent Clock

Ripples

Countless Slivers

Nuances

Of The Infinite

Infinity

We see what we see

with our own eyes

and our mentality

the worlds we live in

and worlds worth imagining,

but we spirit away

far deeper understanding

every day we live

in every moment of reality.

-M.E.

201701181530

P.S.

Special Credits to: 

Remmy Ar'emen (another_proser) for photographing the unique lighting on my skin many moons ago, which became the cover art background.

All the Folks Tagged in the Comments, for assisting me without hesitation! Prose. Community at it's finest and I thank you sincerely!

Original Artists of Works in the Banners of Each Chapter, both (c) to their original owners, and used with humble admiration for the sole purpose of collaging my own unique perspective of each chapter. Several textures and other random images were used for each banner, photo-edited together by me, and I give credit where it is due. Thank you.

On a subway train; notable by the artificial lights flickering over head while the windows flash by segments of prolonged darkness with a blip of light here or there. A telltale rumble scream of wheels on tracks crackling with electric energy and propelled momentum is both the constant white-noise waterfalling through independent conversations, and the pulse which keeps them moving forward in a rocking like motion.

Sometimes, the lit-up interior of another train blurs by with a doubling roar, carrying other passengers to their destinations. But this subway train is on its last journey, and it’s going to miss a lot of destinations in order to divert just one passenger.

They'd been searching every car from back to front. They were twelve men, could have been SWAT except for their numbers, and the simple but glaringly black fact none of their uniforms or armor had insignia on it. With enough guns to start a small war in any city, they each took another glance at the photo they had on hand, then pocketed it like synchronized swimmers and readied their weapons for the next round.

They were a twelve-man singular sentinel organism of search and security and they were somewhere in the middle of the train, preparing to breach the next forward car. None of them spoke to each other, but those closest to the group could hear the whispers of their uniforms and the clink-click of their weapons settling in their straps like a quiet, humbled warning.

Passengers were torn between watching them, and trying to stay unnoticed. Some of them had enough empathy to feel sorry for the passengers in the next car, but yet, no one made a peep to alarm them- this wasn’t just another day on the subway train.

Hollywood likes to show people screaming at the sight of armed men; but on the subway, everyone who was conversing, or laughing, or even mumbling to themselves, became suddenly silent when the doors opened from the rear and vomited forth a wolf pack of heavily armored and armed men in black.

While the team set eyes to searching, the passengers eyes were warring between watching and ’I don’t see anything.' Some of them started a thought-prayer of one form or another, hoping they weren't the target.

The thickest tension came from those used to being profiled, already ready to endure the struggle and dehumanization. Some completed a mental inventory of the things they’d best leave with a friend upon their assumed impending arrest- for who knows what, it doesn’t always matter, doesn’t always have to be legit.

How the heart beats ticked by the absent clock, synchronized in the faces of those still waiting for an explanation, some sliver of understanding, a reason for the armed-team’s presence.

To their collective relief, one of the men shouted some acronym of authority and a spirited "get out, now! Out of this car, move it, everyone!"

The other armed men clearing a path for the passengers as surely as circling the car to seal off both exits after. They ignored the dirty looks, confusion, and mumbles of abused control in favor of their unspoken mission. The rest of the passengers were liabilities, better to herd them into the adjacent cars, even if the train was still moving.

Through it all, one passenger seemed oblivious to the commotion, sitting toward the forward middle. A feminine figure in warn out bootcut blue jeans that definitely weren’t bought that way, rag-tagging fringes licking at her faded black converse in contrast to the crisp, new, neon pink hoodie, and she didn’t even seem to notice what was happening.

To be fair, she was sitting behind a hand pole, knees drawn up with a book propped on them, blocking most of her view. Her eyes were glued avidly to the pages, fingers turning them with a loud shhhushing as the cart emptied of shuffling feet and panted breaths of -move faster!-, presumably drowning in a symphony of her chosen playlist via neon blue earbuds.

She was the one, the face in the photo, and no one made a move to disturb her. The team was hoping to wait until the exit of all other passengers, and the passengers were just glad to be out from under their scrutiny.

Afterall, how many folks get a run-in with the unmarked SWAT team and escape without cuffs, stinging eyes, or bruises of body and pride? Nevermind the slight up-tick of cool-points in getting to walk car-to-car mid-transit for reasons other than transience, the car was empty of other passengers in less than 60 seconds from the first command.

One of the men palmed the radio on his shoulder, thumbed the PTT button and grumbled an official; “Stage One of Operation Flamingo complete; I repeat, we have the Flamingo secured in Bay 7, proceed to Stage Two. Over.”

She was zoned into the book, the science explained and unfolding in neat linear sentences of understanding; fucking beautiful! Knowing precisely how much time passes (on average) between stops, and from her on-point to her exit-point, the reader had every intention of being in the world of pure science for the entire duration.

It was easy to let the world fade away to tribal drums and sounds of rain while her brain soaked in revelations of scientific advances in the human understanding of the most basic elements in the cosmos. It was a routine; a wind-down, a stationary astral-projection into the mind of another writer attempting to convey epiphany of science. For a while, she was in her happy place.

Against perspective better judgment, she ignored the unsettling feelings that tried to urge her eyes upwards, kept reading and thinking right up until a gloved hand reached swiftly into her field of vision. In a split second, her mind perceived the hand as going for her throat, not the ear bud wire where the two halves came together, and reacted on instinct full of self-preservation.

The book was dropped as her legs came down in purposeful kick to the man's inner knee, avoiding the hard shell of a protective knee cap, while her bare knuckled fist struck out like a viper to punch him in his throat. Wham-bam, he wasn't prepared, went down like a clattering (well armed) sack of potatoes growling curses in hoarse coughing fits that brought another man into her peripheral.

With Instinct in the driver seat, there were no conscious considerations, just sensory input and action. She SHOULD have taken the earbuds out, but didn't have a presence of mind to consider it, or why their mouths kept moving but she had no idea what they were saying.

Despite having guns, they didn't use them, let her fight like a hell cat till they could catch hold of her limbs and stop her. By then, they were all panting, sweating, some cursing, some hurting, and a few even bleeding. Her eyes danced at all of them, some masked with black ski-masks, some bare faced, but most of them (reasonably) angry.

Someone had the foresight to take out her earbuds before trying to get her attention again. He was one of the few men left standing and not holding her to the floor, trying to catch their breaths. She watched as he dropped the faint music to her chest and rose to a stand again, but her view of him was upside-down as he stood above her head.

In the moment, she didn't know which side of the train she was "headed" (haha-she laughed at her word choice) nor how long since the fight started. Instinct had a gnarly way of putting her brain on reset. Her expression said she didn't like it, but had enough conscious thought now not to try for round two.

"If I tell them to let you up, are you going to start swinging again?" He asked, fingering his bottom lip for unknown reasons.

She looked at the men holding her down, only a few would look at her in return, but their expressions were the same, 'please don't.' So, she looked back up at the man in charge and took a deep breath. "Not if you tell me who you are and why you cleared everyone out of here." The emptiness was suddenly profound.

The man laughed. The rest of the team didn't seem to know what was funny, but when he signaled them to let her up while he repeated his acronym of authority, they obeyed without hesitation or comment. To her surprise, despite fighting them on instinct, some of them men even helped her back to her feet.

“…which you would have heard had you not been nose deep in pages with your ears in MP3 land.” He went on, unenthusiastically. “You could have saved Xavoir the throat-punch and knee-kick and just let him complete the gesture of ‘remove your headphones’ but no, the book-“

She interrupted him with a ‘huh!’ of defensiveness followed with a retort, "You all could have avoided my survival instinct if you'd just wear insignia-"

"Survival Instinct?" He questioned, like he didn't believe her, took a breath, and confirmed it. "Instinct and some kind of training, right?"

Her thoughts side-lined by question, there was a sudden weight in the room that made her hyper-aware they were all looking for the answer to that particular question after she went violent before they could get a word in otherwise.

It was the man in charge that eventually became saddled with the weight of her gaze enduring theirs; "If you count One-Eyed Bill teaching me to aim for the other side, as in inside of my target as training, sure."

There seemed to be a pause, a flickering need to ask about One-Eyed Bill, but the man countered instead with a list of injuries she just dealt to his team on account of their standing ‘unharmed’ order, "You went for Xavier’s throat, his knee, broke Frankie’s nose-"

"Anatomy." She interrupted again, not wanting to know the exact list, already too aware of her misstep. "I was in fight or flight mode, I didn't know who you were or why he was reaching for me and I struck out with the intent to disable so I could escape, but without thinking in actual terms. I know you need air to breathe and working legs to walk, so on and so on." Her tone was apologetic and explanatory then, rather than defensive.

From across the car, toward the back door, a deeper voice rang out like he was trying to be quiet but failed because his voice carried anyway, "explain this, then..." One gloved hand fingered a neat cut through the underarm of his jacket and shirt with a hint of skin and blood peeking through.

"I have her knife." Another man confirmed, wiggled it in his fingers as proof the incident wouldn't be repeated.

All she had to do was look at the injured man and she remembered what happened and why she did it. However, she took so long trying to think how to explain it, she felt a tingle of a shiver building under their expectant stares and blurted. "Well, artery under the arm weakness in your armor aside, I might have actually tried to kill you...sorry…you're a giant of a man."

There was pregnant pause full of the dull roar and clamor of the subway speeding away on its tracks through the tunnels toward the next stop.

The "giant of a man" was the first to bubble forth a chuckle of mixed understanding and amusement, "I am," he confessed; just like that, the tension in the car popped and more laughter erupted into a choir.

She didn't need to ask to know what was so funny, or why their anger seemed to dissipate with the laughter. Emotional chemicals aside, she could sense they all finally understood her initial over-reaction. Solitary woman, armed men, especially with a giant in the mix, it was all very understandable when the shoe was on the other foot for a moment.

The masculine amusement seemed worth the bruises, besides, it seemed wise to wait for the laughter to wane before she brought them back to reality of now, and what next.

In the waiting, though, she had a foreign thought and said it out loud. "Can't believe I skipped the beach for this."

"I was just thinking that." One of the men standing beside the man in charge responded with an almost sad but cautious admission.

"Too fucking bad," another man barked behind her, "we're here to escort you to our commander so just sit down and shut-up."

Even as she turned around to face him at the forward part of the car, he was reaching a hand to force her into one of the seats and she had an instinctive urge to stop him. As her bruised and bloodied hands came up defensively, he took a step back and the teammate beside him lifted the nozzle of his gun in her direction.

Her mind and body twitched in actions not taken before she quietly requested, "lower the gun, there isn't need for violence anymore, and in at least three other slivers of infinity, this ends quite badly." Her hands went to her sides as she forced them to relax to show she meant what she said, ignoring the bloodstains marring the pristine pink of her pink hoodie sleeves, a Christmas gift from her adoptive Grandparent.

"Slivers of... talking crazy-" the man without his gun aimed at her countered, angrily taking that step toward her again.

The man in charge named him as he intervened, "No, Ace, let her talk."

The atmosphere in the room snapped to attention, the other men looked at their leader with unspoken question; what did he know, that they didn’t?

By default, the unnamed man lowered his gun, but Ace turned away even angrier to have been shut-down by his team-leader in favor of the Flamingo.

He barely took a step and she had another foreign thought, this one in Ace's voice but she said it out loud anyway, "fuck'n bullshit."

Ace whirled around with a gloved finger pointed venomously at her, "stay the fuck out of my head you crazy bitch!"

"I wasn't in your head,” she countered, “YOU were projecting!" When she stepped back, away from Ace's rage, her body collided with a solid wall of armored man. A startled glance over her shoulder revealed it was the giant so, she couldn't be sure if it was his presence or their leader's following words of warning which stopped Ace from pressing forward.

One step put enough distance between the giant and her that she turned to face the man in charge, even as he addressed her next:

"You said Ace was projecting, what does that mean?"

She was caught by surprise, took a moment to circle her own thoughts and started with the basics "...Projecting. To extend outward beyon-"

"I know the definition; what YOU mean, in laymen’s terms?"

"I mean... wait... here, let me demonstrate." And by ‘me’ she really meant the giant man, herself, and their imaginations. It was the giant she turned to next, realizing he hadn't moved and was a little too close for her comfort, already within arms reach. "Do you-"

"Laith" the giant named himself with the smallest of smiles.

The passenger nodded, "Laith. Do you mind being my model?"

While everyone else laughed, Laith simply said, "no."

Someone made a comment about "Laith the Ape" being the next Tyra Banks, but she ignored them and looked around to wait for their eyes and minds to be receptive. One by one, it got quiet, Laith and their leader most patient, and finally she tried to put it in simple terms.

"Imagine thoughts with substance, like our breath. We only see our breath in extreme cold, but we know it exists because we feel it, we make it happen... and thought is the same way so, just imagine Laith's thoughts as steam radiating off of him."

Someone made a sex joke in whisper, others laughed but she pressed on. “Now, if Laith were to think a thought he wanted to say but didn’t, he might think it with such force, the steam radiates further than usual… follow?”

A look around the room said some weren’t following.

Steam? What’d she do, sniff it and know the thought?

Running a hand over her face, she sighed and rerouted her attempt by stepping closer to Laith, so close it seemed unnatural not to reach out and touch him. The urge was there, but she was making a point, and waited.

Aside from the noise of the subway, the car was absolutely silent with a side of breathless. No one knew what she was doing, or going to do, but she had their attention.

When she took a deeper breath to speak again, she felt it against Laith’s armored chest and abs. Her eyes looked up at him to make sure she wasn’t overstepping and found he’d already realized where she was going with this.

For the rest of the impromptu class, she explained; “Man, woman, or otherwise, someone stands this close to you, and you feel something inside you reacting. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, and sometimes it’s incredibly confusing.”

There were a few chuckles, but she kept talking, trying to take that tangible experience to the next level in their minds. “A thought has this much substance, you can feel it-“

“But you said it word for word.” Ace countered.

“Yeah, about the beach too.” The other man reflected aloud.

“You can’t feel words, can you?” someone else asked.

“And how does ‘slivers of infinity’ fit in?” came from the one who’d aimed his gun at her, still puzzling over the possible endings she’d spoken about.

The man in charge cleared his throat and took them down another proverbial road entirely. “From the moment you said it was too bad you missed the beach for this, just describe your experience of the events to the best of your abilities.”

“You’re debriefing her?!” Ace asked, unhappy.

“We’ve got time.” His leader countered, and waved a bared hand toward their passenger for the floor once more.

Still resisting the urge to put her hands on Laith to push herself back, she made herself feel certain she could step backward without running into Ace or someone else. When she had room to breathe without touching anyone, she found herself looking at the floor; a mental note flashed about the constant feeling of motion zipping in vibrations beneath her converse and through her mismatched socks. “I call it a foreign thought.

“For me, it’s sometimes in my own… thought accent, if you will, but it’s not something I was thinking and without the weight of something shoved up from my subconscious.”

“Go on.” He said when he saw her look up to see if they were following.

“When I say a... foreign thought out loud, like the beach comment, someone usually claims it, just like you did.” While some laughed, she took a moment to smile at the simplicity of it, even if she felt bad for putting the would-be beach-goer on the spot. “That was what I call a ‘general projection’; he wasn’t thinking that thought AT anyone, just thinking it with a lot of conviction… right?”

“Yeah. I gave up the beach for a mediocre payday and I’m getting a philosophy mind-reading lesson.” His tone was a little dry, but he didn’t seem to be entirely disappointed.

Laith interrupted, “It’s more like… thought radio.”

“Yes!” She jumped, which on a moving subway is stupid, but a little stumble-step and she didn’t hit the floor. When they laughed, she laughed, but quickly tried to keep them on track. “In thought radio terms, a general projection is like a walkie talkie, and anyone open to all channels, or that specific channel, can hear it-er well, think it.”

“What about what I said? I was thinking it at Klepic.” Ace asked, and explained, throwing a head-nod toward the man in charge as he named him.

“Precisely,” the passenger replied without skipping a beat, “like a satellite dish aimed directly at him, but it’s still a stream of thought and I heard it, in your voice, in my mind.” It was a confession, but one she followed with clarification… for the record. “I didn’t reach in take the thought, you threw it across the car and I intercepted the edge of the band.

“Listen guys, I don’t know the exact science to it all,” she admitted, finally looking around the subway car at all their puzzled and skeptical faces, “but I know human beings are more than the matter and functions that make us physical beings. We feel the substance of our own thoughts in every emotion we’ve ever felt, albeit via chemical cocktails- … some of us, well, some of us are like open receivers, radio band scanners, whatever you want to metaphor to make sense of it, but for us, there are less boundaries between conscious minds and the slivers of the infinite infinity.”

Eventually, her gaze and attention shifted to the gunman before she went on, “to understand slivers of infinity, you’d have to think about every choice you’ve made since you suited up today, and every one you didn’t, because they all exist in some sliver of infinity.

“If you debated on shaving this morning, there are countless slivers of infinity where you chose the other option, where you chose an option not even on the table in this reality, and more still where it wasn’t even a question because you woke up with the perfect face.

“If you think you don’t own a pair of whitey-tighties, you’d be wrong, when you’re aware of infinity.” She went on, pausing so they could laugh and jab a few that apparently wore them in this reality.

When their eyes made their way back to her, she continued, turning in a tight, slow circle to look at all their faces, to see that on some level, each of them was beginning to understand, or at least now thinking in terms of other possibilities.

“Whether it’s a thought or emotion of someone else, or a touch of infinity, it’s all based in energy we don’t yet have the science to fully explain. Still, you’ve all experienced synchronization between slivers of infinity every time you experience déjà vu.” Again, the passenger paused to let that sink in.

“What do you mean?” The question came from Ace, no longer angry, but trying to figure out what she was saying without the right form of context in his own mind. His question was genuine, as was his impatience for understanding.

“déjà vu, it literally means “already seen” to the French, and describes those moments we’re doing something, but remember already having done this very same thing- like… living the same moment over again. What we fail to realize, as a whole, is that these moments aren’t just flicker-tricks of the mind anticipating what you’re doing, but using your anticipation to harmonize with the energy of another sliver of your infinity in which the said moment has already happened, or is happening simultaneously-“ she took another breath and saw some nods slowly gathering around the room.

“It’s like a quantum conscious data download; happens in a split second, but you feel the entire moment in a false memory even as you’re committing the deed…” Letting her voice trail off, she noticed Laith and their Leader, Klepic, were smiling. The other ten men were scratching their chins, their heads, or giving each other looks of weighted debate without a word.

“Now, imagine becoming so familiar with déjà vu, you begin to see beyond the moments of harmony, beyond the moments of synchronicity… imagine, for a moment, you could sense a déjà vu-feeling for the choices you didn’t make, for the possible futures in the choices you will make…”

This time, she let them think on it especially long. Her eyes watched their faces, most of them having taken the masks off altogether, though some merely lifted them into an awkward beanie. It was her turn to go off book and just take it in, that she was in a subway car with armed men, being escorted to an undisclosed location, but they were thinking about worlds beyond this one, choices beyond the ones they chose, and collectively not present in the car, consciously.

Her smile bloomed into a grin while her heart swelled in a kind of awe that she had nothing to do with.

Like a mountain shadow, she felt edged by a setting sun and lifted her gaze to see Laith watching her with a knowing smile. She knew he knew why she’d grinned and somehow, it made it even more worth the indulgence before her appreciation was interrupted by a question from Frankie.

She only knew it was him because of the sound his voice made with the handicap of a broken nose Klepic mentioned earlier.

“Yur talk’n super connectivity, righ?”

The looks his teammates gave him suggested Frankie wasn’t known for being a deep thinker, but she was absolutely delighted he’d asked, even if he seemed to be questioning his term.

“Yes, super connectivity,” she confirmed, turning to meet Frankie’s eyes and allow him to ignore the team’s looks, “but more specifically, the tangible infinity, the part we can sense through the substance of thought.”

She had an idea, and she ran with it, looking again around the room as she described it. “Think of it like this: you’ve all been a part of a group in a room, conversing, cavorting, whatever… and someone else walks into the room and changes the mood simply by being present. Now, you don’t have to look around at anyone else, or hear any of their specific thoughts on this new person, but you feel the weight of the collective response changing the literal metaphysical atmosphere of the room, right?”

She got a few skeptical “uh huh”s and confirming “right”s with a speckling of nods and blank expressions waiting for the rest of it, Klepic was a part of the latter group, so the passenger continued. “Now, holding on to that notion and imagine we’re all in that room, that the person walking in is your Commander. I’ve never met this person, but I’d know it was this person simply by the way you all change the way you’re thinking, the way you project yourselves…

“aaand, holding on to that notion, imagine you center yourself to have no reaction, but instead, to openly receive the reactions of your teammates…”

Even as she said it, one of the men who’d been silent so far but whom had helped her to her feet, finally chimed in, “this shit is crazy.”

“I was just thi-“ Ace began, but stopped himself as the subway car erupted into an epiphany inspired, mouse caught in the thought trap symphony of laughter.

“You just experienced the substance of thought and fluidity of consciousness, gentleman.” The passenger laughed with them.

“I just thought out loud… we just had the same thought at the same time, how is that the same thing?” The speaker asked, looking at Ace for a moment, almost apologetically.

She took a step toward the inquirer, pleased by questions as much as daunted by them, for it didn’t just challenge her ability to communicate an idea or understanding, but also gave her understanding of the building blocks they were working from. “In the quantum consciousness, or quantum awareness, saying you spoke a thought out loud the same time someone else was thinking it, totally independently, is like saying sliced cheese grows that way.”

There were two voices that made the same befuddled tone when they asked, “what?” while others laughed again in their masculine chuckles.

“Cheese is, for lack of a better word, grown –or… cultured more specifically, but my point is, if all consciousness is the block of cheese, we’re the slices of cheese… but, we’re all still cheese.” She answered with a sideways smile.

“So, we’re cheese now?” Someone else asked, and earned more laughter and a few punches in the arm.

“No,” Laith rumbled with obvious amusement, clarifying as if it was a serious question, “but we are all made of the same stuff.”

Frankie’s distinct voice muffled forth with another question, directing it at the passenger instead. “So… yur say’n we’re all made of the same stuff sliced up individually, but you leave a pack of sliced cheese open, only the slices closed to the open air get hard and theys not the same no more. Explain how hard cheese has the same thought as soft cheese, huh?”

His teammates weren’t the only ones impressed by his grasp of the conversation, and challenge to her explanation using cheese. His question was valid, and the passenger found herself regretting breaking his nose more than she had before. Ignoring it, and everyone else’s expectant looks, she answered him with a grin. “You’re right on track.

“The difference is, the people that are the cheese in this metaphor have conscious awareness, and in that, we’re tethered by our sentience and that same stuff we’re all made of; so, despite experience that changes our individual perceptions, hard cheese or soft cheese, people have the ability to consciously connect.

“We already do it on instinct, on a surface level when we meet someone new and ‘feel’ them out, when we walk along side someone and synchronize our stride, when women in the same home synchronize their bleeding cycles, when we meet a strangers eyes from across a distance of space but feel an exciting familiarity…but we can do it consciously if we let ourselves… and then we can reach further and connect with more on a conscious level.”

“Infinity?” Ace asked for his teammate, still fingering his gun like it could tell him how things might have ended.

“Yes. Not just your own infinity, every version of yourself, but also the nuances of this sliver of infinity and the way each conscious mind shapes it.” She knew she was losing them again so she rushed on, her hands mimicking motion to keep them drawn in. “Just think about the moment you breached this car, the way the weight and feel of the room changed as the passengers noticed you all.

“Think about the choices those passengers made, the choices you made, how you each were riding your instincts and consciously fixed on your training, or routine… It seemed so easy, but also very intense, was it not?”

She had them back in that moment, she knew it, and went on to bring that moment back to their topic of conversation. “The state of the world today, their minds could have went different ways, you may have even caught yourself on the edge of sensing it and leaning toward taking action or waiting for their choice to be made first…

“This could have ended before anyone even thought to reach for my earbuds. But it didn’t. There was a fluidity of conscious understanding. Whether they didn’t care about my wellbeing, or sensed none of you were here to harm me, they left and you got the job done, and I’d bet a tenner it was without ever stopping to consider there was a force behind your collective conscious mission.” The passenger was looking around at them but few of them were looking at her; somewhere in their minds trying to make sense of what she was saying.

“I stupidly ignored it, that force,  in favor of my reading,” one of the men, she noticed, had her book in hand and finally took a look at it as she went on, “but if I hadn’t ignored that, I’d have had more time to process what was happening and I could have saved us all injury. My mistake, and also my point.

“Infinity isn’t just the abstract of every possibility, it is also the ones that exist right here and now, as we live them. Every single person in this room is contributing to our experience of this sliver of infinity. Just as I made the decision to ignore the disruption that led to our injuries, someone else made the decision to have this subway blow right past the last scheduled stop.

“Now, that decision has affected every other individual upon this train, and the new choices facing those individuals will affect the choices of those they cross today, but wouldn’t have if they’d gotten on, or off at that stop. Assuming you’ve had this entire train commandeered until a specific stop, think of how many conscious decisions that one decision has now changed.”

Mental gut-punch; her words made a tangible impact throughout the subway car, as each man in the team realized the weight of their every-day obedience to orders that affected more lives than the ones they were directly involved with. Some, she could sense, took the thought further and came to realize the substance of every choice they’ve made or not made that sent others into a spin of choices they might not have otherwise had to face.

Conscious awareness, being fully awake, clearly wasn’t all kittens and rainbows.

Laith broke the contemplative silence with a personal question, looking directly at the passenger giving them this epic thought test. “Do you live like that? Thinking foreign thoughts, hyper-aware, and caught in a spiders web of the infinite conscious decisions?”

She laughed, but everyone else seemed suddenly serious, looking at her differently as if they could see crazy on her, or something. After clearing her throat to chase the surprise amusement, she answered. “Not exactly. I do, in that I am aware, but it’s like walking through air to me. It just is, in all its complexities, I don’t usually have to think of it in these specific terms.”

“This all for our benefit then?” Ace asked, sounding a little disgruntled once more.

“Well, yes, you misunderstood, and Klepic asked.” The passenger responded, recalling what began the unlikely conversation about consciousness and infinity.

“I asked,” Klepic chimed in unhurriedly, “because you have no formal secondary education, no specialized credentials, no security clearance, no drivers license, place of permanent residenc-“

“You wanted to know what qualifies me for your detail?” The passenger asked without letting him finish the list of reasons she was, on paper, a nobody.

“Yes, and when you mentioned slivers of infinity and thought projection… well…” He confirmed, evenly, watching her like he meant to read the unspoken answers in her chi even as he let his sentence trail off unfinished.

“No one told you why I’m needed in audience, did they?” When she asked the question, it almost sounded like she not only knew the answer to that question, but also the ‘why’ question.

“No, they didn’t.” Klepic responded honestly, if also cautiously.

No one else in the subway car dared to jump into the conversation, but she glanced at them anyway, unable to hide her smirk, before leveling her eyes on Klepic. She gave no answers, but asked another question. “What did they name this mission, your… goal of secure and escort the woman in question?”

Klepic wasn’t the only one who laughed at the way she worded that, some of them shaking their heads while the man in charge hummed back his amusement. “Mmm. Well, we certainly don’t call it that, but you’re right, we were handed the name of the mission as sure as the goal. It’s called ‘Operation Flamingo’…” and even Klepic couldn’t say it with a straight face.

There was a soft applause of chuckles around the subway car, but all of their eyes centered on the passenger in an appropriately neon pink hoodie, plus the bloodstain reminders of the old book cover proverb.

“Operation Flamingo?” The woman repeated with a laugh in her voice that didn’t give way to the bubbling roar of hilarity built up inside her from the way he’d said it, to the way they all reacted to it. Still, she didn’t let them confirm, she knew the answer; who would lie about that? “Okay… assuming they didn’t know I’d be wearing the hoodie G-ma gave me today, it’s either arbitrary, has to do with why me specifically, or what someone like me is needed for.”

“The Commander isn’t arbitrary.” Laith rumbled with a note of ‘I should know.’

Klepic gave a nod of agreement while everyone else remained silent.

“Thinking about your previous missions, uh, operations, were the names related to the target of the mission or why the mission was deployed in the first place?”

“Both” Laith, Klepic, and another voice she didn’t pinpoint rang out in unison. Klepic adding, “It’s not usually one word, the first word usually relates to the reason of deployment, as you worded it… while the second relates to the specific target.”

Ace barked in an unhappy laugh of words while he palmed the beanie on his head “Listen to you guys playing Watson to her Sherloc-“ but he got an elbow to his exposed underarm and it cut-off his retort and made him choke on his own words at the same time.

“He’s still sour, carry on.” The gunman tripping on infinity said oh so calmly as he pulled his elbow back and dared a wink at the passenger. Then, he squared a cautious look at Klepic that turned relieved and grateful in the same span of a heart beat.

She smiled in return and shook her head to clear the irrelevant thoughts and get back to the subject. “Flamingo’s get their color from the food they eat; it’s their most known feature. Those who get the lion’s share of food, have the best color… so, considering the insight of our previous conversation, am I the mental-food to color your brain-feathers, gentleman?”

Though she’d asked them all, her eyes were on Klepic. He’d initiated the conversation and his men weren’t the only ones wondering what he knew that they didn’t. Even so, it was Laith who answered, and her eyes were torn from their leader to meet the giant’s.

“We’re not likely to see you after we deliver you to our Commander so, we’ll likely never know the answer unless we ask during debrief and are cleared NTK.” His eyes were honest, grateful, if also veiled with an anticipation of longing.

Was he going to miss her already? She curled half a smile in Laith’s direction before she stopped herself, lest the rest of them think she was flirting. Was she? Nevermind, don’t answer that. Before she could re-direct her thoughts, someone decided to clarify for her- as if the acronym hung her up.

“NTK, need to know.”

“Thanks, Kwon.” Klepic replied immediately, but not all that gratefully, naming the gunman contemplating infinity.

“Thank you, Kwon.” She repeated more heartfelt, and sincerely, not just for the unneeded clarification, but for not shooting her earlier, and taking a moment to consider the other possibilities. It was something she hadn’t done in the very beginning and it was eating at her every time she saw one of their bruises, dried blood, or… poor Frankie’s face.

Noting another stop zipping by, her eyes went back to Klepic, her mind warring with the physical feeling of a tether between her and Laith and not having a way to peel it off without being obvious. Ignore it. “How far is this train going?”

“End of the tracks. We get you off, the train returns down the rails to let everyone off at the-“

“We’re blowing by all the stops?” She interrupted him.

“Yes, that is what the end of the-“

“I know what it means, I meant… do you know how much time you’re stealing from how many people, in addition to altering their available decisions with this Operation Flamingo? Why didn’t someone just say ’hey, we need your help, can you meet us at x-location?”

“And you’d have just said, ‘yeah, I’ll meet a bunch of strangers for an unknown reason at public place,’ right? And then followed us no-questions asked to a non-public place?”

“Not in so many words,” she cracked a smile, quick to add, “but yes. On a variety of levels, I’m not exactly defenseless.”

“It’s done, and we couldn’t take any chances.” Klepic returned her smile but also put an end to the conversation.

From across the car, Frankie’s muffled voice brought some unexpected enlightenment. “Just think, if this infinity stuff is real, we did all that in some slice of cheese, right?”

Everyone, including Klepic and the Passenger laughed, an abrupt orchestra of chuckling, giggling, and belly laughing reaction that shook off the tension and enjoyed genuine amusement at the delivery of intelligence awakened in Frankie.

“But the cheese slices were our independent consciousness, not our infinite selves.” This came from Kwon, who seemed to feel some authority to question Frankie’s understanding of the subject of both consciousness, and infinity.

“You’re not wrong, Kwon, but neither is Frankie.” The Passenger intervened with a note of tangible excitement that got everyone else’s attention too. “You both actually just landed on the root of it all; consciousness IS infinity. Or, I should say, as close as we can get to it tangibly with our current handicaps.”

Off all she said, Ace got hung up on the last word, “handicaps?” He sounded offended.

“She means our individual mental limitations, which for most of us would be disbelief.” Laith answered for the Passenger, not sounding like he had an emotion on the subject, just stating what he knew.

“Yes, exactly.” She confirmed.

“So, you reading her mind now?” Ace challenged Laith without moving more than the muscles required to utter it.

The passenger held up her hand to stop any of the other men from jumping in, and Laith from answering that challenge like it was valid. She took a step toward Ace, which caused him a quarter turn to face her, and asked very quietly. “Where does all that rage come from, Ace?”

“Why don’t you just read my mind and find out?” He spat, rolling his shoulders under the armor like he was itching to fight her.

The Passenger had no desire to fight him, or escalate his desire to fight her, but she stood her ground with calm despite his poking the fire. “I could be over-simplifying here, but the big bad world is way big, and way bad, leaving you feeling helpless in ways without answers… so you rage, because rage feels like power.”

When he tilted his head and raked his lower lip with his teeth, the woman resisted her urge to flinch at the impact of actions not taken. She waited. Eye to eye, but it was no blinking contest, she’d have lost at the first breath; no, their eye contact was about intent and she felt it when he got it. Knot on the anchor undone, the weight plunged away to a larger source of baring burdens.

For clarity, she spoke quietly to him, but knew everyone else was also listening. “Like adrenaline, rage can become power, but you cannot live a life sustained on it alone. Even in the cheese block of infinity, you have free will in your slice, to choose to experience the best version of your life-“

“yeah, no open cheese bags.” Frankie chimed in with a muffled, pained laugh.

“Only open minds.” Laith added, as if to make sure the point wasn’t missed in the laughter while they approached yet another stop they weren’t going to stop for.

Ace’s face went from laughing to dead-serious, but only because he was looking into the face of the Passenger as she had a foreign thought so distinct and powerful it overwhelmed her current train of thought. She breathed one word in a whisper, but projected hard-core the entirety of what she really meant when she said: “Bomb.”

Consider it a conscious drafted e-mail forwarded to every mind on the car (and those beyond) containing the foreign thought. 

Not any specific words, but that whomever had been thinking so hard she heard it, had the distinct impression an explosion was imminent at the next stop while their subway blurred by without stopping. Total obliteration of the station, collapse of the tunnel with a heavy side of derailed subway cars knocked off their tracks as surely as this one.

Like a real e-mail forward by a stranger, most minds filed it in an automatic spam filter hunked down deep in their subconscious, while a few got the disturbing inbox chime “incoming!” conscious discomfort but ignored it for later, or never. The men in the car, changed by conversation, got the message loud and clear, some more vividly than others.

The blast would likely hit before their car passed, or as their car passed. Survivability was in question, but the Passenger at least seemed strangely confident it wasn't her day to die.

By the time she whispered the word "Bomb," she wasn’t the only one who shifted position to hit the car’s floor with hands protecting brain matter in a delicate head. As if they'd rehearsed it, as if the word was a flash mob signal to hit the deck. Whether it was because of training, their connection and trust of the passenger, or instinct when someone says bomb like it's about to go off, car seven reacted in near unison just two seconds before it happened.

She barely felt the cold surface plastered across the front of her body before a warmer, bulky form covered her back, and then all hell tore loose through the train car as the explosion went off ahead of them. Her heartbeats raced through time while adrenaline flooded her system alongside an equally heavy dose of cortisol making her body and senses more acutely aware so her perception of time slowed.

The force hit before the heat, the heat hit before the sound, and the sound deafened her to the world outside of a piercing ringing and the hyper-sensitive feeling of her armorless body being hammered by the armor of the man-shield taking the brunt of it.

Momentum fought the concussive force that eventually propelled them off the rails. It was hot, then that special flavor of warm that sets in after cooling from a scorching, and punctuated by a moment of weightlessness.

She felt the man who’d shielded her gain distance between her, hit something, and then become the air-bag she landed against next. Unfortunately, someone else collided with her and the passenger was winded as surely as sandwiched while the train rolled in a tight, screaming, partial barrel roll for a handful of heartbeats before it jerked in a sudden stop that threw them all upward for another impact that nearly slammed them down with a ground trembling rumble she didn't have to hear to know was a cave in.

Even as their bodies moved in a sick dance of physics, the cars behind them continued with their momentum and crunched the metal around them in a fit of protesting heat and pressure. Not all of them made it. The train was still screaming even after it stopped shaking and collapsing in on itself from behind. The air was thick with toxic smoke, there was a weight to the earth they were buried under, everyone had limbs entangled with each other and parts of the train that would shuttle passengers no more.

For those who still lived, there was work to do, and some of them were newly equipped with an expanded mental awareness. Their new decisions were difficult, but not impossible. 

---

The End

(for now)

Aloha Prose. Reader!

This book was written raw, describing a dream I had, pretty much how I dreampt it. Please, I ask humbly, help me finish this work off, polish the edges, and ensure readers have both the information needed to grasp the concepts, and the right amount of description to feel in the moment.

Feel free to message me privately, or simply comment on this post, let me know what chapter and what I could improve on.

If you notice any errors (I re-read so many times I could have missed some), let me know so I can correct them!

I appreciate the feedback, and your time.

Reviews are greatly appreciated if you enjoyed reading this book!

Cheers,

M.E.

201701081522