Flower Of Kairos

Tower Zero, Part 1

My brother, God rest his soul, used to tell me stories of the kingdom into the early morning. Our family had moved away when I was too young to have really been part of anything, all I remembered was loving it because he had. The older we got the more  his stories made me feel like it was my birthright, like I'd been cheated out of something. When he died people I had never seen before but had heard about a million times over came to the funeral. Most notably a strange bald man who was not at all dressed for a funeral. Wearing gray camouflage cargo shorts and an old Celtics jersey, he puffed on the stub of a cigar. My mother and her brothers were visibly annoyed, but  no one made a move to tell him to put it out.  At first I was angry at these people who'd disappeared  until it was too late. They were all my brother ever talked about when he was drunk, which was most all the time.Soon curiosity replaced my anger. Holding my breath I inched closer and listened. Their half whispered words, were barely discernible. They all seemed to be worried about a missing key. The strange man told them all that was why he was there. Kneeling before my brother's body he stretched his hands out toward the coffin and muttered prayers. My mother and everyone sitting in the metal folding chairs nearest the coffin fainted. Bile crawled up my own throat. I remember him kissing  my brother's face but then he vanishes into the confusion.

Later that week sitting in my brother's bedroom I noticed a scrap of paper fallen beneath the dresser:

"It's weird, like I can actually feel the scars forming on my liver. It doesn't feel bad exactly. I've been reading up on OBEs and astral projection. When I die I want my soul to go to the tower"

Mom came in then and snatched the paper out of my hands before I could read more. The look on her face wasn't anger, it was fear,as if she'd just seen the bogeyman that tormented her in childhood. I was sure this tower had something to do with the kingdom. I spent the next months tracking down the few who actually left contact information in the guest book at the funeral parlor. Telling them  I was compiling an oral history of the old neighborhood in memory of my brother, I pressed for information on the tower, the kingdom, the key, and the strange man at the center of it all.  Some of them refused to say anything, others just called me an outsider and told me it was best to let it rest with my brother, but a few agreed to talk with me. Then, two days ago a letter arrived  for me, all it said: Friday 4:30pm Harmony Hill.

Looking at my wristwatch beneath the harsh glare of summer I see I'm fifteen minutes early. The street would be empty if not for one man with a broad chin and a  balding crown which was glistening beneath the noonday sun. Loading brand new card board boxes into the back of an old u-haul truck, he moved with the kind of wrote efficiency normally reserved for arithmetic.  "Excuse me," I said, my voice seeming to startle him, "Can I ask how you liked living here?" His face scrunched into a tense question mark as the though the very notion of someone speaking to him was mystifying. "We didn't live here long enough to say, why do you ask?" "Oh I used to live here, a long time ago." Looking around everything seems faded, the houses, the pavement, even the sky. At the edges of the cul de sac, the once well kept portals into the wilds were overgrown or else blocked by the decaying carcasses of storm felled trees. "My brother and I always thought it was paradise." He chuckles and says something about his wife that I only half hear. "What's that?" I ask. He laughs again, a deep good natured laugh, the kind you only ever hear when the deeply patient are forced to deal with the deeply eccentric, "My wife, she's why we're moving -  says the place is haunted. Every night the bats come out and she swears their screeching is the sound of ghost children in the woods."

"Has your wife ever seen the tower?"

"I think you should leave."

__________________________________



"Outsiders. They don't know shit about shit. People talk about him like he's a  ghost, and some of them will tell you the vote was a sham, that he was going to build the tower no matter what the final count. Not everyone who was around was really plugged in. There are plenty of hangers on who'd be plenty pissed to know I saw them as outsiders, but I wasn't the only one to see them that way. The kids who went home when the street lights came on, who never really  ran away from their homes to ours...they weren't pirates like the rest of us. We always kept the door open for them, and that's what the vote was about. Of course everyone voted in favor it, some of them might have been chickenshit, but they weren't dumb." - Romeo Vargas

"I was there when he proposed the tower. If anyone would have voted against it, it would have been me, but I voted in favor. We all did. My relationship with him was complex. Before he went out into The Taboo he was just another neighborhood rat as far as I was concerned.  I mean, I knew who he was, everyone did, and not just in the way that we all knew each other. The Patriarch looked at him like a little brother and the Matriarch had set him up with her little sister. He carried weight. I was mostly removed from the politics, so I didn't think much about that for a long time. The neighborhood changed when he came back from The Taboo. He was different too, stronger somehow. His tribalism was terrifying. The neighborhoods had always been heavy on the  locals only vibe, but he was , I don't know, religious about it.  There were several landmarks in the area that he had some of  the local kids venerating. Some of it was stuff you might expect: rock formations, trees, and the vernal pond - but other stuff I just didn't get- like the transformer box at the end of the cul de sac. One afternoon Eric,  my first real boyfriend, carved our names inside of a heart into the red paint of that box.  The next time Eric came over they were waiting for him. The problem wasn't that he hard carved into the box, but that he had carved his name into it. Eric was an 'outsider' even if he was dating me. I should have known it would be trouble, but I was young and in love and the gesture was so sweet I didn't even think about it. Anyway he had four or five kids hold Eric down and they all took turns kicking him in the face and stomach. His nose was broken, eyes nearly swollen shut, and as I cleaned him up afterward he vomited all over my parent's bathroom floor. During the whole episode three girls, real shit kickers, held me back. I was lucky they told me, because he could have had them beat me. I didn't feel lucky, especially not when Eric broke up with me the next day. So yeah, if anyone had reason to try and monkey wrench his plans it was me. I hated him, but it was obvious the land loved him and because I loved the land I loved him too in an awful sort of way. I would have done anything for him, not because of who he was, but because of what he represented, especially after the Patriarch killed himself and the Matriarch just sort of vanished." -  Patricia DuBois

"I think it might be fair to say he brought a kind of paganism to the neighborhood, though only in what modern pagans would consider the pejorative sense. Most of the kids thought it was a game, but you know, just because it's a game doesn't mean you don't take it seriously. It's easy to remember him for his viciousness, and from an outside perspective he was that, but it was never personal. He operated on a level that was beyond hate or love. There was a tenderness in him too besides. Early one morning he took me up to one of the  rock formations that has since been demolished to make way for a new tract of houses. The morning was so cold and so dark the only thing you could really see was your breath. When the sun rose over the tree tops it set the sky on fire, and the cul de sac which had always seemed so run down to me, was lit up in glory.  Real 'Hosanna on high' shit. The neighborhoods, and especially the woods that connected them had always been weird, but it intensified when he came on the scene. Especially after he brought that witch around and started teaching magic to his inner circle. There was always the neighborhood, and it's still there today, but when one of us talks about the kingdom, that's something different, something that now lays in ruins because there's no one left there who acknowledges the spiritus mundi. His mother moved around so much he knew that the world could take it all from us at any moment and so I guess he wanted to preserve it at all costs? Maybe there was more to it than that, we weren't especially close, but as I understood it, that's what the tower was about." - Jasmine Constantine

"Every so often I run into one of us and because of who I was it's always bittersweet. They always want to know what happened, why I left after Z died. I don't think any of them would understand. I thought he was cute of course, all the girls did, but our lives were separate. Z knew it too and we'd occasionally talk about it as we watched the younger kids. The merger that happened was never my doing or Z's and I think the reason we encouraged my little sister to take in interest in him, was because we knew he was the reason for the merger. Besides, we liked our little game of royalty joining their kingdoms by arranging a relationship between our heirs. That's the thing though that no one understands, when  it stopped being two neighborhoods and became the kingdom our titles were a vanity. I knew it the first time I really looked into his eyes, it was always him, always. How anyone could have doubted that after he returned from The Taboo I'll never understand. He never consulted me or asked me to vote for the tower. I think like a lot of them he hadn't forgiven me. I became a pariah of sorts like an outsider they put up with because of my past. It's a mistake you know, to think he knew what he was doing, or that he was some evil mastermind... whatever he's become, back then he was just a kid. Anyway, if I had been asked? I would have voted the way the rest of them did, in favor." - Michelle McCormick

"There were the special cases like the Matriarch after she renounced her throne.  I asked him once, was he really that angry at her? He told me she couldn't vote for the same reason Z couldn't...not because either of them were dead, but because they were foundational. Whatever he had done, he was always aware, always  grateful for the foundation that had preceded him. After her there was  the tiny minority of children who kept a respectful distance from the whoe scene we had going on; 'friendlies' we'd call them. They were outsiders, but not the kind of outsiders that had to worry about catching a beating. If you asked them they'd probably tell you the tower was the wooden edifice he had us build out in the woods. But ask the inner circle and we all knew it was something else. The wooden tower was a sign of our commitment, and a confession of our desire. It had to be monumental because what we were doing was monumental. The tower itself, the real tower,  existed in the woods with in the woods. Very few of us ever went there, some of us even had doubts, but everyone had that experience of being out there with him and in the blink of an eye he was gone. Then a few hours later, just as quick, there he'd be with some wild story to tell. In a dream I  saw the real tower once: a giant black monolith, behind it, partially obscured by the tower itself, burned an alien sun. " - Roberto Diaz

"Hallucinations were common, or visions, whatever you want to call them. Yeah, I saw the monolith once too. Late one night headed out to the site to continue work , as I looked  up the hill, for just a moment the woods grew strange and the black monolith's shadow fell over me. To say the real tower was that monolith is only partially true. He was the tower. The wooden effigy we built had ten locks. There were no actual doors, just locks through functionless latches. "Ten keys to the kingdom." he said. They were all combination locks except for the first. That was a keyed lock and he held the key, it was a symbol, like the wooden structure itself. He was they key to that first door." - Andrea Nudel

"The ten keys to the kingdom were basically these stories that would have to be ritually reenacted in order to open their respective door. Each lock had to be opened in succession. Each story had a theme or contained, what do call it?  An archetype, something he considered essential to the kingdom. Not all the keys involved him so the notion that he alone is the tower doesn't strike me as  quite accurate. It is true though that he hed the key to the entrance to the tower so there was no admission without appealing to him. I heard leaving the kingdom broke him though. A weird thought, he always seemed unshakable. My grandmother used to say he was the devil. Those stories, to reenact them you had to become the people involved, not just them but what they represented. He could see the mythic self hiding inside anyone. Many of us rarely had it in us to take on our own mantles and I don't think any of us ever had it in us to take on his. If it's true that he can't do that either, then I guess the tower stays locked. Maybe that's for the best or maybe not. I know what he put behind the first door. For it to just be sitting there, that's  like leaving a battery out; eventually the corrosion will see poison leech into the ground. Who knows how long it might take the machine to corrode though. Him and those two witches, they built things that weren't machines in the way you normally think of a machine." - Stephen Robson

"He was the tower. None of us could have built it, let alone what was inside it. Each level contains a treasure, the total sum of the kingdom awaited anyone who could make it to the top of the tower- and you know, I'm going to stop you right there- an outsider will never reach the top. The keys you'd need... none of us would ever give all of them to you. There isn't even any one of us who possesses all they keys. Well, maybe he does, but you don't want to find him. An outsider ike you? Goddess only knows what he'd do with you. Knowing the keys is one thing  being able to open the locks with them is another. I don't know what your angle is, or what you think you know about the kingdom. Look, he calls people to the tower.  It's a thing of black magic. You have no idea what you're getting yourself into." - Lisa Pagliuca

 

 

 

Harmony Hill

It's been quiet around here as living offline has been more pressing than getting shit online for all of us. We'll be posting a few things later on to spruce up the joint, but the  big news is that Samm is having a novel published this year!

It's called 'Harmony Hill' which should give some long time readers of this site an idea of what the book will be like. You can and also should  check out the synopsis over on the publisher's site:

"Weaponized is proud to announce Harmony Hill by Brian Shaughnessy, a new book added to the list of titles we’ll be publishing in 2010."

We're super proud of Samm and excited to hear what you all will think of it (Julia and I are biased but consensus is, it's pretty fucking tight!)

Time And Space All Over The Place

Until now this webspace has served solely as a public record of Cell 144's work. Today it is our great pleasure to present a submission we recently received. Hopefully it is not the last we will receive from all of you.

Working with time magic, as this piece demonstrates, forces one to see, in the most startling of ways, how interdependent everything thing is. The author notes that this can be uncomfortable and confusing work. This is true, but we would also like to remind you, dear reader, hat given the state of our world the alternative is far worse. We have come to a cross roads where we can no longer afford to wait patiently for linear time to have it's way with us.

Besides, as difficult as this road can be, you'll neither see blossoms more beautiful nor taste fruits as sweet as the ones along this one. With that said, onward...

Time And Space All Over The Place

I'm giving you this warning right now so I can say I told you so later:

No matter how cool it seems now do not mess with time because believe me now and understand me later time will mess with you

I turned 23 yesterday but that was six years ago last night I was a twenty-seven year old alcoholic beatnik rockstar this morning I was an eighty year old renowned but reclusive writer living alone with his cats

There are a plethora of futures surrounding you in every moment you stand at the crossroads of here and now any twist or turn you make any hesitation kills a thousand thousand futures and births a thousand thousand more some of those lives have resonance and will some of those future selves will do anything to be born anything they'll tear apart your life kicking screaming and biting pulling themselves into reality through blood and fire

You can't see the landscape of consequences that you are swimming in but beasts of causation and accident can see you they can smell your unique power realization only the I of the observer can make things real how that eye looks at now moves you into the current and though you can swim in any direction at any time once you've floated into the center of a flow it can be buggerinly hard to paddle back out again and some of these streams have rocks waiting to smash your fragile bodymind against and again until yr sitting in a coffee shop scratching these words of warning into this notebook shaking and twitching while the barristas look on in pity hoping that next time you turn 23 you straighten up and fly right instead of sinister

And hear is the monkey's paw remember nothing but this you can realize your focus in every moment in time you will see you can move in any direction but it will never not be now

I told you so.

-Fenris23/Edward E. Wilson

Fenris23 is a Reality Surfer, Mojo Artist and Infictive Poet who manifests in the body of Edward E. Wilson while in meatspace.

Newcomen II Part 2

Overview:

(Those of you just joining us can find part 1 here)

I am writing this overview to provide an instructional counterpart to Samm's later recollection. The construction of the temporal anchor is not an emotionally engaging process. This is a matter of necessity as I'll explain, but Samm is being very adamant that this document be more than a "recipe" as he put it. Throughout we refer to the temporal anchor as a location called Door 23. This nomenclature was developed as a common point of reference once we started working with Elise who was not involved in the construction of the Newcomen II. The number 23 had no bearing on our choice for this location, at the time we had no idea 23 had significance to so many people.



(Elise's commentary: The 23's a pretty weird fucking coincidence if you ask me. I've taken advantage of it for certain calibrations I've made over the years. Not calibrations to the machine itself of course, because of its nature only Samm and Julia can do anything to the machine directly. It does allow me to get a sort of energetic resonance with the machine and helps me understand ways to refine and direct the output of the artifacts the Newcomen generates. This is how I was able to shunt the output of object twelve to those tied to the extremitas currents.)

The temporal anchor is the reference point for the moving parts of the machine. Using the metaphor of a lever, the temporal anchor is the fulcrum. Most people have unintentional versions of this; a definitive vision of what they were like as a child or a teenager for example. These anchors happen after the fact and more often than not are chosen for us rather than by us. The image I have of myself as a child, as an example, is more from my mother and father than my own memories which are few and fuzzy.

For the anchor to be useful as a piece of the machine is has to be deliberately chosen and rather being self referential it must be an image of the machine in relation to you. The goal is to create a static piece of time/space, an eternal unchanging and unchangeable moment. This can be difficult as the first spaces that are likely to spring to mind carry with them heavy emotional content. This makes those spaces unsuitable for a Newcomen II, as what becomes fixed is your fascination with the events that happened rather than the place/time they happened. (Samm's note: In part three the inverse principle will be in play. The goal there being to create a volatile fuel for the machine.)

The place I selected for the temporal anchor was an area outside our school where the two of us and a few of our friends gathered to talk regularly. Samm's recounting should fill in the rest of it. Good luck.

- Julia

(On this note, the Hadron project is in part an upgrade to the Newcomen II as well as way to bring Elise in as another piece of the machine without destroying the integrity of the anchor. Additionally much thanks to James who sent us this gem. Looks like Julia caused more of a stir than we realized.- Samm)

Outside the incinerator building the sun burned a violent shade of bright. Hot winds and bird song moved against each other like the gears of a great machine. Everywhere the grass had long given up its green, and the way the air shimmered above the road made you question why Winter was the season equated with death. I marched up streets that were not quite familiar hoping to avoid running into anyone who would know me well enough to stop me and ask to share my time. Eventually the familiar red brick came into view. To this day it reminds me of a fortress.

Julia was waiting for me by door 23. The same door we had met under nearly every day throughout the school years we had shared. We did not exchange words. Everything that had needed to be said about what was about to happen, had been said yesterday; also under door 23. When she explained it, it was so brilliant I was almost jealous that I hadn't thought of it first. Door 23 was not a place of power because it was strange, but because it was a perfectly normal place. A place that might have been any other door on any other school building where any other kids might have hatched their own secret plans; but it wasn't any other place, and try as I might, I could not think about my friendship with Julia without also thinking about this place.

What we hoped for and what happened is that now I can't think of that place without thinking of it on that day; without thinking of it as where the machine sits. Sitting across from each other we stared into each other's eyes, unflinching, until the sun's place in the sky had noticably shifted. Most people never have that experience, but most people do know how uncomfortable holding a gaze too long can be. Go long enough and that discomfort becomes transcendent, holy like only pain and discomfort can be.

My legs spasmed as I unfolded them. Julia ruffled my mohawk and I noticed her arm was covered with beads of sweat, mine was too. We were both flush from the heat. Julia wanted me to drag my hands across the black top, grabbing my hand and moving it herself as she asked. I can still feel the heat and roughness of the black top dancing with smoothness of tiny pebbles across the tips of my fingers. There was a small black bird watching us from the tree behind Julia. I told Julia to look at he bird, directing her gaze there with a firm but gentle push on her chin as I asked. "Listen to my heart beat." she said, pulling my ear to her chest. "Smell the stink of this place on me." I said burying her head where neck meets shoulder. "Taste the heat of the day." she said, bringing my lips to her forearm.

It went on like that until we'd each run the five senses several times over. Somehow there was nothing weird about it in that moment. Ask each other to notice and show each other exactly how to notice in full the time and place we were in. We owned that place and that day until it stopped being a place we found ourselves and became a place we had made ourselves. Two engineers building their machine until kingdom come.

Newcomen II Part 1

A while back we revealed the first details of a project involving the large hadron collider. Those details were admittedly sketchy, but something resembling full disclosure will be made eventually. In the meantime it is our great pleasure to present the completed manual for building and operating a Newcomen II type hyperdimensional engine. (Julia’s notation: The manual as stands is more of a third draft, but is the first version complete enough to be of any practical use.) The Newcomen II is, as some of you may recall, a hyperdimensional machine whose existence was revealed publicly for the first time here at foolishpeople.com. The purpose of the machine is the creation of artifacts used to construct hyperdimensional ley lines.

Julia and I built the first Newcomen II many years ago. Whether that's many years in the future, or the past, or some other more sideways distance of time is anyone's guess; likely it's a bit of all them. A hyperdimensional machine is not built in a string of linear moments.  The pieces, by the very nature of the machine, must be spread out through various dimensional spaces, times, and places. When all the pieces are set in place the machine goes live. The bulk of the engine sits outside of time; only ever breaching our temporal universe when it is set into motion. To our flawed perception this can sometimes make it feel as though the machine had beem completed even before work had started on it.

Constructing the Newcomen II was not a very complex endeavor; in truth we've always disdained overly elaborate ritual, preferring instead the beautiful and brief explosions of intensity one finds in a perfect punk rock song, or a really good orgasm. Each piece of the Newcomen II was constructed through a series of simple but highly intense ritualized experiences. For the sake utility we will attempt to place the construction of each piece in a linear framework. In order to avoid the sort of gigantic text block that turns minds high on the internet to mush, we will be breaking this up into several pieces which will be posted over the next several weeks.

We encourage you to build each piece as the instructions are posted instead of waiting for the full text to be posted. Each step will be accompanied by personal accounts of our own construction process. This will hopefully illuminate the process as well as inspire would be hyperdimensional tinkerers. These recollections are not simply historical documents however. They are potent artifacts of the memories and experiences used to build the first Newcomen II. With this in mind, Cell 144 will take all the credit but none of the blame for any hyperdimensional shifting resulting from exposure to these documents.

The Assembly And Operation Of A Newcomen II Type Hyperdimensional  Engine

A Newcomen II is not strictly speaking a physical machine; unlike like your car you can't go buy parts for it. The machine's pieces are built from experience, memory, and a created narrative which binds them all together. This narrative is like nuts and bolts; while vitally important it is not the machine itself and should not be the most engaging part of the machine. For example, the narrative which will hold your engine together is this instruction manual. The machine you will eventually create exists because of what you're reading right now.

You can thank us later.

Step 1: Creating The Temporal Engineer

For those of you who have no experience with hyperdimensional engineering, certain aspects of this project will seem confusing no matter we try to simplify them. This is because, as a wise person once noted, the map is not the territory. Once you begin construction a degree of clarity otherwise unattainable will settle in. While it's entirely possible a future or past version of yourself is responsible for your decision to build this machine, it's still up to the you reading right now to do something that will pass for a beginning.

Tomorrow you will be someone else. Though you will remember the person you were when you read this document, that version of you will become increasingly unfamiliar as who you are right now becomes a story passed down through various temporal iterations of yourself. The Temporal Engineer breaks that cycle by creating a version of you so specific and so defined by function that you'll forget your first love before you forget The Temporal Engineer.

While drawing up the blueprints for the first Newcomen II Julia said to me, "The day we start we have to be like pieces of a machine, not like people." I understood exactly what she meant; I was like that when I was skating. I became an extension of the board. I did not have hopes or dreams in those moments because only the next line, the next trick mattered; in those moments I was not a person, I was an experience. Most people have secret places they go to cast off the detritus of the world and after a time emerge a new person. Those of you who have no such place will need to find one before you can continue. When Julia and I were building our machine, my secret place was an abandoned incinerator building in Framingham Massachusetts. (Julia’s note: I have decided not to make the details of my involvement in this part of the process public.)

Many nights had been passed in that building, usually drinking with friends, but being there alone always seemed to make it an entirely different place. I spent the week leading up to the project start date sleeping there. Every daylight hour was spent in an altered state of consciousness, turning myself into a piece of machinery. (Julia’s notation: There is no proscribed length for this stage of the process.)  Each night I laid out my blanket and rolled my clothes up into a makeshift pillow. That summer had been brutal and those nights were no exception. Sleeping completely naked was the only thing that made the hot, still air in that place bearable enough to lose consciousness. Laying in the darkness I would imagine myself standing on my skateboard before a park of endless possibilities, and struggle to push away any other thoughts until at last sleep overtook me.

The appointed day broke like lightning; a flash of consciousness, and a sense of alertness that had not had to wind its way through the labyrinthine corridors of dream. A brassy light filtered through broken windows casting shadow sigils across my pale skin. I looked around at the hollowed out building for the first time consciously understanding how perfect it was that I had chosen an incinerator building as the place I went to rise from my own ashes. I was sticky with summer by the time I finished dressing and collecting my things but the juju of that place, conjured by my own memories of it, energized me with a sense of purpose normally unknown on days ruled by summer sun and black asphalt. I was no longer a man with a past or a future; I was simply the man who builds the machine.

(Next up, Step Two: Creating The Temporal Anchor

Philosopher's Stone and A Crackpipe

Cell 144 from left to right: Samm, Julia, and Elise. Faces manipulated to protect the guilty.

Catherine writes to ask, "What exactly is Cell 144?"

Catherine,

Some nights are too cold to sleep alone. Huddled together in the light of dying days we were a murder of crows; broken wings and all we taught ourselves to fly. I grew up with Elise. We traded the sharp geometries of their world for hidden non euclidean paradises of our own. And when it was torn from us we became a choir of angry voices singing songs of hope.

Julia says the best games can't be won. Like those two kids on the block who played the same game of basketball for four years. There was nothing casual about their game, they played it like their lives were on the line. But they were better players together than they ever would have been alone. She was a witch then, and even as a child she knew how to make it rain, but together we got ourselves into more shit than we'll ever be able to get out of. Thank god for that. She is love of the game, and absolute devotion to this art.

Julia says I saved her soul from an arranged marriage to a life that was not her own. Elise says she'd be dead without me. These are the places from which our magic is born. Out by the calm waters of the reservoir we can reflect, and we each look on our past as individuals and together. Things were simpler then and so we say "Those were the best days of our lives." But we swear a pact that those days shall not remain the best of our lives.

The world is still a pyramid scheme, a hierarchy of needs and wants where what you need will never matter as much as what the folks at the top want. But somehow running away no longer seems like a viable option, so instead we start building among the ruins. You ask "What is Cell 144?" It's what happens when you realize you can't go home, and you can't stay here.

Hadron Project Update

After causing over 21 million dollars in damage to the large hadron collider with their clandestine experiments in September, Cell 144 is releasing the first images of the fruit of those labors, object 144:12.



(more detailed image here)

This image was taken during our recent convergence in Massachusetts and was obtained via a four-dimensional volume-holographic microscope. Cell 144 would like to thank or anonymous benefactor for giving us access to the device despite thinking we were absolutely crazy...at first. (Julia's notation: I have modified the image to protect the source of the image)

Initial testing with object 144:12 was conducted by Julia on the night of October 29th in an unpopulated area of Iowa. Initial tests, though technically a failure, far surpassed all expectations and appear to have caused a bit of commotion with locals in the surrounding area.

"The event was not entirely dissimilar to the catastrophic orgone implosion of Feb 06 while I was staying with Elise in Maine. However, the typical physiological sensations accompanying orgone exposure were absent. The initial signs of hyperdimensional tearing were definitely present I only wish I could afford to stay and monitor the effects on the surrounding area." Excerpt from and October 23rd entry in Julia's diary.

"I wouldn't be surprised if they get their own Montauk Monster, though out there, fuck knows if anyone would even notice." - excerpt from Elise's email response to Julia's initial report.

Early on the morning of November 1st Julia and I returned to the site of the Newcomen II and attempted a second experiment with object 144:12. Though it is too early to gauge the success of the experiment, the fact that that it didn't blow up on us like in Iowa is a promising sign. Progress reports will follow as we see fit. We will say this much, the object was named after Psalm 144 verse 12:

"To make thy might known to the sons of men: and the glory of the magnificence of thy kingdom."

Till New Eden come,

Cell 144

Nothing Can Stop Us Now

Sometimes you get a sign so tremendous that even after years of miracles and impossible synchronicities, it all seems so fresh again; but for the large hadron collider to be switched on during a leap year? Right now I'm watching cern's live webcast. I think now it's safe to share a few details....


2-29-08 1:44 am :

"This place is fantastic. The drive and passion it takes to build something like this.... ....What little I have seen has been enough to restore my faith in humanity. When Samm and I built the Newcomen II we never would have been able to imagine this. That's magic I guess. Funny how no matter how many times I say it, it still sounds utterly bizarre; That's magic. ________ has assured me no one will ever find the devices we brought. I think he can be trusted. He owes Samm too much now not to keep his word."- excerpt from Julia's journal


"I knew it was supposed to be huge, but holy shit! Huge doesn't do the fucker justice! Standing here all these years after the cell first formed all I can think of is that yin/yang line Samm is always quoting, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology". Julia calls it the Clarke-Niven Uncertainty Principle. Nerds."- excerpt from Elise's journal.

"This experience paid for in blood and wrapped in night...I know now why the shepherds cowered before the angels, and why the angels told them not to be afraid. I have killed my very self. Slaughtered everything I ever was, to become the person who could do what was necessary to be standing here. Tower Zero. I almost choked when he said it.


(9/09/08 no hour recorded) A doomsday device...as if the end of this world is something to mourn. How backwards do you have to be to dress for a funeral on your way to a baptism anyway? I can hardly wait to hear back from Elise and Julia tomorrow. Less than twenty four hours to go, hopefully then I can get some sleep.." - excerpts from my personal journals.

Death Postures

Portrait Of Elise

Bodega bodhisattva you are the summer. Women who don't taste like you always leave me cold. Snake bite eyes and antivenin lips. Your flesh set fires. How I felt about you is to say like, you made me sweat for the first time and how you made me fall in love with daylight because like the sun I lived to taste your skin. You are a metaphor for finding all the missing pieces in the hands of a beautiful stranger.

You wanted to know the night because your life was full eclipse. So I asked you.

Have you ever seen an Angel? Beneath the white flight feathers is a soft downy gray, it is the same beneath the midnight feathers of their fallen brothers. That was the color of the sky that day. I can still feel the way you held my hand as we set off to a far corner of our small woods. A place where shadows move on their own. You wanted to see an Angel. You wanted to be devoured by the sky.

I saw you collapse in sorrow like a prophet who had forgotten how to pray. You had been the tree of life for me and now it was my turn, so I curled around you like a snake in the garden; to teach you that sometimes in order to be heard our prayers must be uttered with our very last breath. Reticulated grip around your throat, squeezing tighter and tighter and urging you to let go. The way you tensed but didn't fight to break free said everything about the ways in which you loved me. Whispered like thunder in your ears "Try it like this." Tension faded and I watched your soul tearing loose. Stream of consciousness like rubber burning on the highway black top at night.

I didn't let go until you did. The woods went darker than I'd ever seen, and the night opened up like the maw of a great serpent. The dark silhouettes of Angels filled they sky. Your eyes were open and seeing things I couldn't. Time was frozen like a river until your started crying like the Virgin Mary bleeds. The moon broke through the clouds like an eye opening. The Angels were gone then, but you were back. I kissed my own prayers into your tears, to let you know I may have helped you find the door, but whatever was behind it was just for you. Your face was beauty and terror.

Pushing me into the earth and pulling my hands up to your sky you asked "What was that?"

"Magic."

And if I place a crowbar in your hands?

Pretty teeth tear and tease. Old flesh will fall away like a new dress. New flesh will yield like spreading thighs, like sure hands guiding me in. Organic machinery. Hypertransitional. Our eyes. Future perfect past tense.

Elegant like the lines of her body. Watching the way we move. Inside and out. Smile like the sea, her undertow dragging. I want to drown. Inside a fire is burning like starlight in her eyes.

Tesseract winged crows picked at our berryselves. Not yet ripe but still juicy just like....On the shores, inside her conch shell it all slowed to a stop. Breathe in. Don't blink; it's not over yet.

Slow hands ask the question. Soft lips mark it. Turtleneck. Straight razor. Bleach. The end draws nigh like a warm shawl around a lovers neck. Documents. Keys. We hold nothing in the psalms of our hands.