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.

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.

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."

The Flower Of Kairos

She dropped to her knees and pulled a piece of chalk from the front pocket of her black wool coat. This was the kind of chalk sidewalk artists often use, twice as thick around as a man’s thumb. She drew a flower with eight petals and the geometry of a tesseract for a stigma. Perhaps it was subtle moisture on the faded blacktop bleeding the chalk, or something in the geometry itself, but each line seemed to blur and vibrate. “This is it, the dagger for the demiurge.” she said, rising and brushing chalk dust from the front of her jacket.

I had dreamt of this flower, golden dreams that tasted like bee’s wax and honey. I had pressed my face into its blossoms and it had smelled like the first neck I had ever tasted. The pollen was alive and swarming, the kind of infection waiting to happen that gave our ancestors mitochondria. These were the engines of kairos. This was something that used you as much as you used it. Paranoid priests feverishly dreaming of nefarious pacts signed with the devil had only been crafting metaphors for this harvest. “I’ve dreamt of this.” I said aloud at last. “I knew you would have.”

Crows called out from across the still waters of reservoir just as they had two years ago. “I have a plan” she said as the winsome echoes or the crows faded into the breeze.