The Stars, Maligned: 3

Elsewhere and before, it was telling of Lee’s destiny that he had been conceived, accidentally, after a violent argument about the future.

And he was about to create a momentous argument, an historic reshuffling of the power deck on Earth. But for now, the party was in a sort of lazy full swing of the usual lies, like a sickly social perfume. Lee inwardly shuddered, but his professional facade – that of an entrepreneur who was in his element – was unaffected.

He backburned to size up the most recent tuxedoed man in front of him. This particular specimen, this Priv, was proud – shoulders high and forwards, and his companion seemed enthralled, to Lee’s increasing disbelief. Needlepointed dismay prickled Lee’s backthoughts, as she seemed vociferously genuine and almost rapturously close to a breakthrough in her career, but the most he could do was indicate his appreciation of her ideas through quick body language, as his plan required total detachment. He sharply prickled at the unmistakable click of a secure man's rifle - behind him. Not trained on him, he knew, but a quick and healthy paranoia had let him live before. They couldn't be on to him. Everything -- she -- was perfect. This was now getting complicated.

The Privs were genuinely unaware – they moved around him like ornaments. But she moved like a pilot fish – she was higher, and the party was happening around her, but not to her. She was in green. He tried to backburn thoughts about the simple sheer of that dress.

Newly intrigued because he noticed that she had been, as he had, eavesdropping carefully on the Priv discussion to their left, he continued despite himself to scrutinize her, looking for a reveal. She was apparently called Cass to the Tux, and that rung some bell in a niggling backthought at well, but he was too in front to examine that abstraction. He fingered the impending natural disaster in his pocket, but remained superficially enthralled by the idiotic banter spilling from the Priv’s mouth.

The Tux intoned sideways and flippantly every time she filled a pause in the generic back and forth of meaningless party banter. He inferred from her comments that she was a Social Engineer under the West Synthesis, and, if true, that meant that she was shrewd, meticulous, and a Presque to boot.

Priceless and rare human cogs like her ground out the reigning administration’s policy lines, and West Syn had established itself so well that the East and North's propaganda had been choked to a whimper, if one cared to notice such political peanuts. Not by one of these spoiled fucks, he thought, and was then disarmed by his sudden rage. He reorganized his inner composure.

Lee had her down already as a genuine Special in her field. Her strident and peculiar gaze... he idled, considering it, while nodding enthusiastically to Tux’s most recent stupid boast. Her eyebrows were a shifting variable which propelled her gaze into some hypnotic equation. What was she doing here? She was definitely a person of interest, perhaps another Mover, but no one had warned him. She was, for now, a thorn, and a distraction - so distracting... Lee shook it off, and this time he had actually betrayed himself by a little flinch - not that the party at large noticed. He felt afraid that he was not invulnurable. He tried to detach again.

The moment she locked a return gaze on his scrutiny was one of those insane marathons of time when a quiet kills everything that is real, and cosmic curtains are opening on a great mystery. Forever about to be drawn.

The room fell away, for him. Her eyes were a precipitous pale shade of blue, natural and sharp. He had a backthought of synesthesia and felt the sound of hard diamonds obliterating walls of glass - the feeling, the sound was mesmerizing - and new ambitions and splintering futures seemed to spontaneously materialize in a dancing theatre inside.

He was rapt, but the scene was moving forwards around him in a meaningless cloud of black and white and glitter, and she had looked away, moments ago? Minutes? And now the couple was moving away. She was suddenly a priority, and he felt a new fear. He would have to prevent her death, and his instructions had been clear. And his vital priorities had seemed clear until Cass.

The party seemed to freeze when Samsa was wheeled in. He was remarkably obese, and simple revulsion renewed Lee’s intent. Samsa was “in” his chair, and doted on by the two doctors who were charged with ensuring that the brain never died even though his body ostensibly had, long ago. It had been groomed and dressed in some kind of ceremonial robe. It was attached, Lee knew, to a sick constellation of pipettes and wires, bringing a sort of pumped artificial life to Samsa’s flesh. The boss of Kcor had opted out of the Drake’s siliclone, to reassure skitterish Privs and shareholders, but it was obvious to Lee that the man was only an intelligence, and was dressed in a fleshy slab so as to avoid the obvious recriminations and price drops of the alternative. But his intelligence, fuelled by a blackening narcissism and sociopathy, was formidable. Lee suddenly felt maniacally overjoyed to be his assassin.

The disaster switch seemed to squirm hotly under his fingers, but Lee remained stoic as the Help positioned Samsa at the table of honour, and as he was installed the threed above screamed into life with its eerie explosive fluidity. The projections were generic but definitely designed by Specials – their hypnotic effect was already making the attendees gasp with joy as the images whirled above their heads – and what better than a flyby of the conquests made by Samsa’s Kcor. He recognized the rebuilt complex at Jakarta, the undergrounds of France, but there were other images which were unfamiliar. The spherical spectre of the Moon suddenly replaced the entire field, superimposed in spectacular detail, over the chandelier. The terminator moved in its lovely inexorability from left to right, and Lee backgrounded some things that he had forgotten. The mission was still on as the carousel of memories careened in fastforward at the rear doors of his consciousness; he was missing out on a warning that in backburn he knew was essential and his mind was keen; but the party was almost at its end, and the holographic Moon was revealing its shiny new prosthesis.

Out of doors, unseen yet looming over Lee, his city was ever groaning in its urgent distress - its inhabitants were still on the tip of another deadly riot and the fester of their plight was more than ever Lee's reason. The Privs. Their ignorance seemed bottomless and they chattered and sucked down their drinks. The pressure of his disdain was crushing out the rest, and Lee quietly got ready to explode.

It was unnarrated, but the epic swell of carefully selected melodies, untethered from their contexts took the Moon, lustily spinning to reveal the unmistakable sight of PWR1 Station. All of its gaudy office towers, gargantuan battery hangars, the impossibly deep heatsink, and the monumental microwave dish... and the astounding twisted complexities which married them. The imbecile partygoers collectively aaaahhed, but Cass was the only one looking at him, through a rift in the crowd, and he realized, that almost for the first time, he had lost mission focus.

The projection winked away as the Samsa’s voice boomed into the ballroom. Lee went for her arm.

The Stars, Maligned: 2

She typed furiously. It was so good to let the ideas out when everything was blocked.

Lesley had been a cool dynamo at school. Her gifts, a blossoming attraction to her professors, made her a certain Special. She was huskily discussed in the institutional lounges of SoT in a mix of jealousy and respect. Lesley was sort-of loved; but in her view the teachers were fading now and lay ruined in the wings, and her parents seemed to value little of anything except those Abalay coupons. She fashioned her lifestyle into something less stylish, more clinical. The love was really not penetrating. It fell away like debris from lottery scratches. No one noticed her underlying personality until she got the look from Miss Y. That had been, well, a day to remember. Those coupons -- she knew that they were just something her mom and dad clung to, to feel togetherness after total failure. Love was gone and Les heard a lot about coupons.

She was unconscious.

But memories seemed like life! Amazing.

It continued, and the derisive laughter drove her out of school like she remembered; but it wasn't sadness she felt when she saw herself crying about it. It had been a tragedy of sorts, her upbringing, she understood from a new and bizarre vantage (she must be dreaming), but she was now frantic, running, and the shadows seemed outrun and exhausted behind her. She blearily opened her eyes again, and tried to turn the pillow to its cool side. There was no pillow.

Again in the deep dark behind her eyelids: Byron, always around in her hot states. This entrance replayed and was mythologized but still was true to her, and it was a dream. The hot states were the best. My leg is actually on fire.

Lesley then went about her duties as ascribed. She was a little better off than her beautiful little Rebecca, and she revisited a place she would have given anything to have frequented. Huh? Wait just let me rest. And the helplessness of being away from Rebecca during her formative years made Lesley a killer. I lost touch and now I will go. She often thought about the definitions of love that she had lapped up as a child - the blanketing and unresolvable feelings thrust onto her plate. I love you! I have no idea what I love. She hesitated again, getting taken to the place where everything was a reverberation, a construction, a dream. It all was now. I am a GREAT agent. So proud really, but no help from her friends. She was always acting, to everyone, but she had wanted more, before dying. So she was dying. That seemed unlikely right now. This was a great story! So tired at the same time.

Really! Her supposed lie, her careerist asset and apex, that which was at the root of what was going wrong with how Rebecca was being raised - was self generated transference of her own self-hate. Whoa, intense. Am I commenting on myself somehow? But then her baby sister Rebecca was a vision of beauty. The other situation was lusterless. Nothing else could matter because look at Becks! Now Les wasn't sure what was frustrating - her own latent fury - hey Rebecca wasn't even a child, she is just 2 years younger than I! Such a non-sequitur leap, no connecting logic, this was all so frenetic, and it was all suspicious. A strange mystery in my head and I know the signs of hallucination, and she knew it intellectually while she dissolved again. In that ocean, that resort and the problem with the food. Bobbing up again, she MUST be dreaming. So lovely and surreal though and I want to get back to that. And she was, and the eye would be sliced soon, but that was only a movie, not like those red fireworks like from the bridge, and the sound of ripping open the letter from West Syn and the laughing in the ice cream store and the zippered bag and she was outside in winter witnessing herself lone laughing, and then too close-up, and my teeth need attention because they are too clenched because my father is repeating the last thing he ever said, and this was then Nightmare terrifying actually, end end end end now end. On the floor her body shifted and she groaned pathetically.

I am thirsty, turn.

Byron, on the hill that old afternoon, was a glass of iced lemonade.

He said with outright authority that the power was shifting, and that seemed like the most adult idea. Her maskedball of opinions seemed to be naked suddenly. And the unexpected kiss made both of them almost die of embarrassment. She was utterly in control one moment, rationally calibrated to respond to any kind of input. The next, she was basically giving herself to him, and he was in reciprocal happy dismay. Initially. And then there was nothing but us.

He really sucks, she thought as the dream whirled in its naive trajectory in backburn. Les was a pragmatist and perhaps fancied herself a imaginary journalist, with her eyes closed and lips open to him. What a story!

She reflexively gave it a rational once over, and then decided to write a hate-piece on reflexes, and then she was thinking --

She stopped short, withdrew, glared at him, stood up in a stoneful mechanical rejection and then -

Byron said something. Did he? Wait that needs a bit of process --

Lesley was cut off at the knees and midway through the head, but managed to straggle away, righteously, from the gorgeous-smelling cut grass and in fact the whole sensational childhood memory. She thought she had made this sparkle a part of her collected childhood, like bottling, labeling and cataloguing a volume in her personal ephemeral library. That she was a normal girl. Her parents would revel in the story once uncapped in their presence -- an intense but shortlived kiss drove them in disparate directions in the dark park that night. And By and Les were facing a lot of jokes, she knew. There seemed to be a lot of disconnects in her train of thought actually. Where am I? I need to ash this smoke, it is going to fall. Leaves fell. She knew that while more fate was about to arrive like a massive clot, she was in total frozen despair, no ammo, no reason, and paralysed with delusion while it all was sucked away into a lost and unseen rest. She dreaded this something and it was the end and so scary and black but there was again hot on her face, and not as final-seeming as that other hideous coagulation. It was blotting her history away and coaxing her to intervene. Then it would be uniformly reset, my life, my life.

No - these silly consequences aside, in electric lively love, his face lit up again, and Byron (had once) made an observation that really stung. It was happening again in fact. And the sting was seriously burning. He had been correct, and now it was time and the cloister bell rang and the chickadees were fleeing and she turned the pillow and totally failed due to a predictable lack of pillow... and she smiled out in a real, sharp, and agonizing way.

This whole show, she thought, was being taken by black, something totally black with no face and no way away. She felt its hunger which was for her suddenly her death and she was waiting like prey, close by and deadly enthralled to see if she might flinch or if she would go home, and now no control. Death can't be really eating my dreams. I will not die.

Les was immediately on the ground on an unforgiving different plane, was strangely shocked that the floor was so hard and sticky?, and there was no pillow, for SURE. She was then passed out again and wondered if she would lose consciousness and that was a feedback loop endlessly when

The old screen door hissed open with a touch, and the minority of insect life carried in on the breeze with her were destoyed immediately. The meeting of Movers was about to start and she had the astounding evidence in her left hand, with which she suddenly tried desperately to turn her pillow, and she wasn't able to even know where her arms were. And her leg was broken? and watched Byron approach in a weird dream superimposition. There was no pillow and her neck was definitely sore. There was this terrifying stickiness on her face ... but she was okay with Byron, because she remembered and eager to relive every second they had shared.

What a hot bother. She couldn't believe how easily love had made itself felt. Legendary!, she thought in a headline writing mode.

And then in the morning, it was years later. The incident (was happening and I am about to wake up) had temporarily shorted out their love story, she thought as though she might write it down. She typed furiously. Where was the pillow. OH

I was dreaming. I knew that. Ouch what the fuck --

By is right there. I am on the floor. That noise. It is getting closer.

She was dazed and bloody and she remembered what had just happened as her dreams dispersed and she began to get her bearings through what she now perceived as true waking life. And her leg was certainly broken. It was under her opposite leg at an obscene angle, bleeding and she caught a glimpse of bone? Her face was hot and there was no pain that she could recognize, but a shrill alarm was unbearably screaming in her mind.

The situation seemed very bad. She summoned her desperation and tried to make a noise. It faltered somewhere in her chest, and emerged funnily weak. Her concussed brain was still promulgating ironic death-skits, tempting her to return to its easy dreams; and she was totally disconcerted by what she had dreamt, until By's voice exploded, real, physically next to her, and she instantly swung her right arm behind her blindly to find purchase. She hit something, and leveraged that inertia into an agonizing uprightness for a better view

of what exactly was going on here

She barely had the time to execute one desperate instinct.

Then the impenetrable glass smashed, and it entered the Observation Deck.

The Stars, Maligned: 1

There was some hesitation on how exactly to put it. But it was a short reflection. He also wondered who would be interpreting the description - and perhaps melodramatically, who might even remain to interpret the label.

Out Of Order.

The words which had been the catalysts long ago were front and centre again, and were portentious in a way which By had only ever thought possible in some fictional universe. Then again, By supposed, portent was not finality, and he was still alive, in a sense.

He again glanced around at the deactivated forms which surrounded him. The once impressive square panel of switches and lights now seemed as useless as a prop. And facing that console, to his right, the motionless Les, who seemed to sleep.

He strained again, without much passion, at the latch. He stared at it blankly.

The monitors had been dead for almost eleven hours. The noises were louder; and he knew what their source meant, but denied that particular notion any reign over his waking efforts. The blasted latch. That fucking hook inside that what -- metal widget -- was so stupidly primitive but damnedly the most serious obstacle to carrying forward. Christ, he thought again and with hot nihilism, what kind of fail safe fails like this.

The smouldering flicker in his mind's eye blazed again just as he closed his eyes in exhaustion, and the dark side of the Moon exploded for the millionth time.

The goddamn power failure. The whole fucking world, Out of Order.

His uselessly trapped leg twitched, again, as the moon was demolished in his head. The noises got louder, and for the first time, a form was moving outside the glass. He breathed, half awake and still in shock, and began to brace for the end.

That was when his eyes snapped like sparkplugs. For she had surely made a sound.

Les was awake, and the hope and adrenaline was like a cluster bomb in his brain and the hated latch almost popped outright as he spasmodically screamed her name.

Everything was about to happen.