Flower Of Kairos

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.

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.