the worst done is become self-aware

it’s the crackle of fire and the howling winds
that gives us our coordinates
on a night such as this
one being constant another being not

and now your writer shudders with shock
and reckons it for fear
soon it is revealed to be a gasping for breath
and the tentative steps taken to breathe longer and deeper
and the fire of life is constant and warm
and it fills your body becoming

How/why was FarStretch created is the most brilliantly misapprehended of all FAQs. Until recently, until very recently, it was assumed that the FarStretch is a human-engineered construct—isn’t everything. The simple truth is we build into the Stretch. We know this to be true because the FarStretch is more resilient to gravity/time manipulation than are any lands in Empire. The model clearly shows resiliency of Stretch may be determined by the absence of human interference.

“That’s not the way it works,” one says to another.

“So. What do we do with a bunch of groupies?”

Lee glances up, “yeah, I was just thinking the same thing.”

Eventually they’ll decide to use them, because, you know, why not—we ascribe sentience and are thus bound to accept that it was free will that led them to wake our call.

They set up base in a quiet neighborhood, where you can mind your own business, and set about studying the biggest elephant in the room: EMPIRE ENDED, and no one flinched. Except for the Enlightened and the NewBorn no one noticed

NewBorn

“Back in Texas we had acres and acres of fire ants. Stand too long in a spot and you’d be knowing about it. Must’ve been, I’d say, from mound to mound, oh, about…”

“I hope you got a point somewhere up in that twang of yours Scotty.”

Scotty blushes and hates herself for it. “Well, Sir, it’s just, that, Empire is like a mound of fire ant that doesn’t know it’s dead yet. They’ll keep stinging you even if the queen is dead.”

“Well, Scott, if they’re that mindless, then they don’t have a fighting chance at assimilation anyway…this pretty well proves it.”

But they all knew it didn’t, but it got the feeling right. How much like a hapless cricket, this must be, being devoured and pulled underground to feed the last queen of the last generation. It’s all over save for the killing.

Enlightened

“What do we tell them?”

“That they don’t already assume they know?”

Lee wanted to scream, but why bother. Michelle was right, there’s no dealing with irrational minds, not even your allies’.

“You know what bothers me the most?” Lee says, “it’s that the NewBorn like us for all the wrong reasons.”

“You mean, they think of us as visionaries that weren’t blinded by the overriding paradigm of a galactic empire, one which was predicated on weak to false presumptions?”

“Well. If. We. We are as hapless as the grasshopper that ends up wherever its twitching legs takes it. We are criminals, as such we transgress natural/human laws, naturally, it’s our niche. We didn’t choose to cast doubt over a weak paradigm, it just happened as a function of the layout of underlying principles…”

“Predestination?”

“You know better.”

“You are uncomfortable with having responsibility thrust upon you, right, because you are a ‘criminal’. You have never had any overarching plan except for Upset, Deliberate or Otherwise, because you are a ‘criminal’. Yet, you react against the phrase predestination, and speak of knowing your place. I don’t have time to entertain your insecurities.”

Michelle bows and eases out of the cabin and waits for the clunk before she takes a contorted breath and grimaces.

Beyond Mundane: On Delocation of Personhood

Coffee smeared the headline and text from several sheets bled together to form what a poet of a certain calibre and disposition might take as inspiration or insight into the underlying poem of being. But you’ve already guess it’s going to be crumpled up and thrown out with half eaten eclairs and lemon slices. And then it’ll be ignored, no matter where it ends up. The realignment won’t affect it and it can never affect allied souls. It’s a distribution problem—we need to plant coffee smeared newspapers in the paths of fringe poets in order to propagate synthesis.

“They keep saying it’s been done before. But I don’t think they understand.”