S2*W6 * susan * Contact
Seems at first, we reluctantly came to the blank page to write or type it out first to be transferred, possibly edited, to the journal. Once we started it was hard to stop. True for me. In fact, some of us are starting out own personal journals where we can do just that. This is such an intense time that allowing the gates to open to our private intuitions, thoughts and fears, feels good! The Dummies guide to Journaling through the apocalypse or now being called just Meltdown. In a sense, held up here, it feels like the center of the whirlwind of contrasting dark and light energies fighting it out on a cosmic scale and when sitting in the stacks at night with moon light shining through the high windows, beautiful!
Salutations from a front row seat to our extinction! Susan, 26, multimedia artist, inquisitress of our current human peril, lover.
On The Word, a woman in a denim jumpsuit in a garden, stops hoeing and gives the keeping a journal speech and orally posting it. It runs at least once a week and promises quantum encryption that changes every second, encouraging all of the remainders to publish their oral entrees for all to read as an ongoing record and testament to this time. Up until yesterday there was no way to do this but this changed sometime last night with ten logs-in already, some good. Kinda like the new TikTok. I have to admit that listening about others plights gave me both hope and concern. And yet, I felt I was back in the god-awful days when it was impossible to make heads or tails of anything. Who do you trust. Even the fact-finding sites were compromised. Was this from the reborn again one percent or from the same corrupt, earth killing one percent of one percent or maybe some off shoot because in this nether world, we feel as though we are in some weird limbo between before and after.
Do we wait until we hear something on The Word and believe it or not or do we risk giving our location away? MEETING. Zenith knew it would be contentious so held it in the morning with the last of the precious coffee. The decision could be momentous. We, like one of Dr. Seuss’s children’s books, feel like it might be akin to Horton hears a WHO. Or to others a trap, part of the clean-up we heard about on the streets. Do we wait to see how many, how quickly more are available and do we even have any reason to believe they are genuine and not just bait, just the same old same old.
There are other things to consider too. We for the time being have stayed inside, kept the plywood nailed over the lower windows and fortified any other place that could be easily breached. As far as we’re concerned no one has eyeballed us either directly or by Sbot or drone unless the Pogs are playing dumb. Security, for some, after eighteen months living on the streets, is precious. But there is one thing that the three new members told us, that might be true, that clean up meant ridding the city of hybrids, not us but they needed us off the streets to do it. Being out there day after day in protest, clogging the streets was a lot like the kids' game of telephone, a message gets distorted after only a few passes.
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The gathering started slow listening thoughtfully to all the nuanced considerations but after a while a free for all ensued, not abiding by the rules set down. Contentious, angry, distrustful, vulnerable, mostly feeling like it was the same old, that nothing had changed. And then as if on cue something happened to change the whole dynamic, there came a steady knocking at the door. A few went to look through the peep hole, heard the door creak open and shortly afterwards, leading a young girl, maybe fourteen. She told us she’d been walking for three days looking for anyone and us being the first to answer. When asked about hybrids, she told us the city was like a ghost town, nothing moving but seagulls, pigeons and rats. Scavengers she said twice. ‘Nothing!’, we said in unison, incredulous that a small girl would even think of making that walk in daylight. Nope, she replied. We asked her if she wanted to lie down, and she said yes. The girl slept all day while we argued, debated, posted a few on top to watch for Pogs and finally agreed that the streets were clear.
The final verdict was yea, but not until we could share orally on the lozenge with others, a promise made but not yet delivered. In the meantime, we decided to begin a planned scavenger hunt in concentric circles with a dream list, pack packs and both guns. There are a few here who spent time in the military, so they volunteered to go.
This morning Tris was gone, her name on a note to us, having unlocked then locked door somehow. The note said, thank you for a great night’s sleep, I took a book but will bring it back. You are all really nice people.
Cuma, our youngest here at sixteen, said she’d come up last night and forgetting why, decided it must be because she was hungry but on her way to the kitchen saw a light coming from the stacks and went to investigate to find Tris reading a Nancy Drew book, The Curse of the Black Cat. She patted the floor next to her and asked Cuma if she could read a few pages to her. After a whole chapter, Cuma hugged the girl who hugged her back, kissing Cuma on the mouth, then immediately fell asleep as she curled up holding the book. Cuma said that she felt at peace with the girl and wondered how she could be so non affected by everything. Also, that the kiss wasn’t quick but a ten second wet one, maybe showing how grateful she was to find us. Our self-appointed librarian, Krystal, looked the name up and found that it literally means three or trinity. We hope she comes back so we can ask her questions about her journey through the city.
It was Seuss, then Arwen with Seuss together in the stacks, then Tris and Cuma. Slowly over a week, they came up from below, some holding blankets, a pillow finding a spot in the labyrinthine stacks to bed down with the presence of a feline and with the words of our disappearing civilization. The stacks and Seuss have become part of our renewed power as a group. Everything that happens from now are not just interesting things but have become integral organic pieces of our evolving story that informs us. Nothing happens randomly any more It’s a live heart beating story unfolding with us, its characters caught in the flux.
I am moderately insightful and when things ring true, I pay extra attention so I will say this; that little girl is our first encounter, and I swear on a tall stack of the best sci-fi stories ever told that that little girl was the cleanup crew. LOL, and I’ll bet my magical nose ring that the girl was just a costume put on to gain entrance.
