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An Excerpt from Memory Alchemycal

By: Sean Duffield

Their twinned hands entered the dark part of the cave. Thick with stone weathered under water jets over years of un-washed clay. They walked with backs straight, never fumbling over the crag there or the slippery chunk of wood in their paths. They walked with confidence through the darkest parts of a known beast, with smiles that would grow as the gloom stretched on into sunlight.

After an immeasurable amount of walking distance into the dolorous cladding of their personal fort and cave, a light began to peak. Its playful eyes wrapped upside down from above them, as if playing hide and seek.

The further the two entered, the friendlier the light became. Smoothing through the ceiling grooves and shuffling along the seams with joyful tailed wags. It puddled and stretched amongst the caveats of the cavern walls and soon the floor too, had it washing along. As the clandestine crawl continued, the luminescence began to grow alongside its disposition and approval of its owners coming home.

Soon the source was exposed. Olafur and Anabeila entered a surreptitious glade in the confines of their cave. Several feet wide it splayed its open source and turned the belly of the fort to bask in the light of cloud backed stars.

Flickers of lights at already adjusted lacidum were now expedited rays that drew iris’ to act responsively and pull their muscles radially to contract and close the open night sores from the gleaming light of day.

While its volume decreased, its density doubled and soon Olafur’s and Anabeila’s minds were alight with the splendour of a hidden gem amongst the Bodhi tree forest. A pool of aquamarine liquid sat inside a carved out section of cave. It came of level to their feet. Perfectly fed and dissolved by the opening above their heads. Glistening with specks of sunlight that hit mineral deposits of zinc and copper, reflecting back amongst each other the shimmer of the translucent conductivity of the surface water.

Insects and small fish zoomed about the laid back tension of the pond’s perfect veneer. Exposing languages of signatures that formed under nescient eyes. Olafur danced around the shallow bank at the side of the written encounter, it was daring to distract his eyes. Then he sat upon his rock, facing back towards Anabeila, still adjusting from the change inspired by her shocked radial eyes.

“So… ” Olafur leaned over the blue lucidity of the pool towards Anabeila. “Want to talk about today?”

Anabeila breathed in a volume of air followed by insects and invertebrate hair. She held it for a moment and looked over at her friend. Then exhaled into her mouth, puffing her cheeks out with the last bits of memories chagrin. Her eyes bulged before she rolled them over to the other side of the pond where her feet followed her, plodding along at indiscriminate pace and position. She sat down on another rock, looming under Olafur from a water body’s length away. Then she exhaled. Breathing out the confined emotions of another tumultuous day as a child in a society that preys on nothing, and demands everything, of their DNA.

“I was distracted,” she replied.

“By what?” asked Olafur.

“The insects in the conservatory. As usual.”

“You know you can make them in your forest.”

Anabeila shot rhetorical beams across the aquatic sheen.

“I’m just saying. You can bring the outside world in and love it all the same,” said Olafur

Anabeila had a knack for work in the dojo and a natural fighting figure to go along with her instinctual martial prowess. Morning classes usually comprised her throwing the other children upside down and twisting them inside out, with or without weapons on hand. But when they entered meditation and carved a trail into the confines of their quiet selves, she stumbled.

Notum referred to her as marble. Thick, strong. With providence at its center just waiting for strong hands to chisel it out. The other children called her a late bloomer. In other words. Dumb. Even with Anabeila’s lineage stretching into some of the original founders of the church of the Onus Consilium and her parents being great prospects themselves, she felt as though she was always behind. And the episodes in class were stark reminders of the truth that radiated her failures as a member of the church.

“I know Olafur. They’ve all tried to teach me several times to expose the roots or whatever. Clean the bark. I get it. I’m just not good at it.” Said Anabeila.

“You made an entire island so far.” You’re doing okay.”

“I have an entire ego to slay.”

“We all do. We sleep forever under its blankets. We just have to thin it out enough that the light falls in.

“Can we speak of something else?” asked Anabeila.

“What do you think will happen on choosing day?”

“It’s weeks away now, Olafur. Something else.”

“Well, do you think it’s true?” Said Olafur.

“What’s that?”

“The jaws of the behemoths?”

She sucked her teeth and rolled her head away. “I said something else!”

“Honestly though? Do you think the jaws will take us? Naturally. That it’s something we are supposed to just accept?”

“The proof is supposed to be the story of Muk’Til Dep. The planet that let their Bodhi trees grow like these for so long that the wasp came. And the jaws followed.”

“Yea. That’s the story. Do you believe it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I believe it. That the jaws will come one day. That our cycle will complete. It’s pretty. It makes me anxious, but it’s pretty.” Said Olafur.

“I don’t read that part much. I kept getting drawn back to The Body of the Worm.” Said Anabeila. Her eyes all stars and constellations.

Olafur turned his bewilderment to her again. “Which one is that?”

Afternoons like this would go forever. Each friend asking the same question. Each response falling under the sunsets of a lacquered sky. Whether she admitted it or not. Talking to Olafur was how Anabeila decompressed before they would start their trek back home. Through the woods. Away from the Bodhi trees that harboured their own destructions. A moment that Olafur called beautiful.

Was the Onus Consilium a church of death? Anabeila would always question that.

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Poeta part 1: 

What the hell kind of a meat loaf is this Christ bluop blou blo bl b bl blu almighty unimportant b bl blo blu bloo bluop b bl blo bloo blui bloope clinkering-coo bluop blou bloo bl b bluop blou blo bl flaming bundles of superheated sticks bl bloo bluop b bl blo bloo bluip bundles of white sticks bloope bluo blo b bluop loup op p ip loope over a bed of bluop blp bp b ip Bluop blp bp hot lava Drive round trip a hundred fifty-six times. oo lui loop blu bp pop uip loope brake for p up oop loop bluip bloope bluop blo bl b bp ope exactly p up oop loop bluip blpe op oup loop bloop and then they put their arm up again bluip loope blu bluop blou blo unimportant and then they put their arm up again Halfway up pass through what is probably not called the city of the dead but should be called the city of the dead. bloop blui bluop loup oop op clinkering-coo exactly! bluip loope uop up blu blo blo flaming bundles of superheated sticks rak for bloop bluip bluo blou bundles of white sticks It is probable that there are cemeteries large enough out on Long Island Middle Village for example that may even have their own zip code. luop loup oop op p pe boo bup blu loo bop over a bed of hot lava blip blop lup lop lp unimportant That is something that can be looked up. and then they put their arm up again over a bed of hot lava It’s a big deal. bluop Bup lou loop Clinkering-coo exactly That is something that would be interesting to know but interesting but but bundles of white sticks No that is way off topic Jules we got to stay on the track of the topic the topic the specific topic at hand which is the name Poeta which each and every time up on through the city of the dead is the only name ever successfully read off its stone at any speed probably. blo bui loo bluop bloup A big deal to have. flaming bundles There were about a hundred fifty-six times round tripped from here to that there way up past Poeta a precisely numbered exit one hundred and forty-eight. of superheated sticks To have your own zip code, but. brake for bloopi But the name Poeta only came over about seventy-eight times precisely. bloopee bluipoir No sentient creatures of any kind are assigned zip codes of any kind. unimportant Which is also the name of an intersecting interstate which coincidentally is named route seventy-eight. and then The same number as the number of times the Poeta stone in the city of the dead was passed during the time of needing to be passed about seventy-eight times precisely. they Which gives rise, my children, my children, my spouse; to the lie that the razor sharp wide awake those of you who were just told that. put their arm up again over a bed of hot lava The same number as the number of times the Poeta stone in the city of the dead was passed during the time of needing to be passed about seventy-eight times precisely. flaming bundles of superheated sticks brake The lie? for clinkering-coo exactly bundles of white sticks Why a lie? Aha hey ho and hello wake up and know, that the word about used to describe a claimed number if something is fine if there’s nothing contradicting and/or confusing the total truth of the numbers aboutness in the same sentence. bluop bloup bloop Likewise, the word precisely used to describe a claimed number of something is fine if there’s nothing contradicting and/or confusing the total truth of the number’s precision in the same sentence. bloop bluip So, it follows that the truth is that bloope— 

But what the hell kind of a meat loaf is this? 

Jules! There you go again! It never fails with you my God how completely true with you that it never fails! 

Ah, okay, but; hold that thought. Examine the sentence you just said. Why did you need to repeat yourself so in that sentence you said? That one there. Stretched on the floor there. Stretched on the floor there that you said— 

Jules! I feel you are not qualified to take part in this narrative! Please leave as soon as you possibly can, Jules.  

Jules backed himself down speechless a split second, mouth not knowing whether to smile, frown, or remain a taut line, as—since the words stated in response to anything are, in most humans of moderate intelligence, stimulated to send a message reflected in meaning and tuned up by tiny adjustments in tone, duration, and general clarity by the set-settle of the lips and mouth finally; according to the following steps (here slowed down to allow comprehension by a factor of ten-thousand) as, 1. The mouth maintains the same shape for a minimum time so minute that there is no unit of measure capable of expressing such-all teeny-tininess, then, 2. The face adopts a general look suggested by the emotions the form of the lips suggest the inner brain is experiencing, then, 3. The face solidifies in a look which to the one about to be addressed would be caused to begin to anticipate the nature of the words about to be uttered, and, 4. The anatomical structures along the entire airway from diaphragm lungs trachea throat tongue mouth cavity and all associated structured involved in the formulation and utterance of speech, are caused to immediately speak, then finally, 5. The brain, hearing the words the organs of speech and the lower areas of fight/flight involved subconscious bottom-brain have delivered outward, catches up to know how to feel what to believe and to begin to devise words to reply to the expected response in order to gain the upper hand and have the answer ready to deliver only held back by the need for words to be spoken by the opponent (it not mattering yet what the words might mean) to be replied to, creating the illusion that the conversation will most certainly be reasonable, intelligent, and be maintained at the upper limit of rationality; for loss of control, well, is generally guaranteed to label either speaker crossing the limit a shithead. The non-shithead will then appear to any onlookers or documentalist, the winner; or, if both cross the limit then they will both be shitheads and since two shitheads ranting and raving can hold the interest of any onlooker for any time at all, both lose yes, Nancy! Eh. So: 

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Artwork By: Shintaro Kago from Super Conductive Brains: Parataxix

An excerpt from Memory Alchemycal
By: Sean Duffield

Anabeila’s footsteps were heavy padded cotton as she slumped through the fabrics of New Maltazaer. Each step floating behind the next, each one soft under foot. Each without being deliberate, instead they were simple and habitual. She was simple and habitual. A child is. 

The light that waded through the thick atmospheric tempering agent was vastly absorbed by the city buildings and little was reflected down to the street, through the algae trees and into Anabeila’s eyes. But still she squinted as she walked, placing distracted hands over twitching brows. 

She tried not to pay too much attention to Olafur as they walked, but his barrage of questions and half assumed answers were difficult to ignore. They weren’t meant to harass or belittle, the only reason she stayed friends with him was because she knew better. She knew that Olafur’s consistent conversation was simple anxiety and today’s… complications in the temple class, had made him very anxious. 

They were friends. Olafur not shutting up was just him expressing his compassion and concern. 

“Everyone is talking about it. Like, no one is not talking about it.” Said Olafur.

“I’m aware.” Spoke Anabeila.

“They’re always talking about you. I think they’re jealous.”

“Jealous of what, my lack of control?”

“Probably. Although they might tease you a bit, kids think that sort of thing is cool. You know, against the grain.”

Aren’t the both of us ‘kids?’ she thought.

“I certainly don’t find the whole process… cool, Olafur. It’s pretty infuriating… And difficult… an—” Anabeila raised her finger to identify the most crucial of points when her vocal constitutor wavered, sending static to leak from her mouth, no words came out, just antenna radiation.

Anabeila flicked at the corresponding ‘minor-chip’ in her throat where normal vocal cords would go. It buzzed but would not re-engage.

Great! She thought. Another thing to make me cool. 

Olafur continued on as if nothing new was happening, as nothing new was happening. This was standard. Every step is uphill, thought Anabeila. She flicked the constituter again and again, a couple more times and it finally kicked back in.

“Olafur!” Her sudden outburst cut the chattering friend off, dismissing in entirety his rant concerning TENGEE radiation.

His expression was slack-jawed and yokalling. He looked to Anabeila. “You have a spiser-bug in your hair.” She yelled.

“What?!” Shivers shimmied up Olafur’s body and sent hair on ends. His cheeks grew flushed, throat hot, chest filled with air. After a moment on tip toes and held breath that had Anabeila leaning into weaponized mouths, Olafur screamed with unbridled passion. 

He jumped, threw the bag from his shoulder and started bouncing while tearing at his dark hair with frantic fingers. Thoughtless behaviours spelled out stuttered letters of panic in the coordinated attack of his head. A sizable madness in the street.

In his distraction, Anabeila began to run. And laugh. As Olafur’s characterized outburst slipped away behind her.

Before he had caught on to the backstabbing trickery, Anabeila had already made it halfway down the street. 

Her deceit was an unwelcome regularity in their friendship and it had Olafur more blushed than the imaginary spiser-bug before. “Hey! Not fair Anabeila! You’re cheating!” Olafur screamed as he recovered the bag that had been thrown down, stumbling over his own feet to gain ground.

They ran as children do through New Maltazaer’s streets. Without care. With little concern for the future and only holding what they could carry. Leaving any weight that grasped at them far behind. 

The pair ran past the Neon Cup, and its patrons smoking silver tips. They passed the terraced views of Bodhi tree forests that stretched through acres of unclaimed nature. Beyond the medium people who never cared to study the faith. Away from the church they ran. 

She ran.

Anabeila ran as far from the church as possible. She placed eons of time between its requirements of her young soul and fragile ego, dropping hints of its tastes in the timeline that streamed behind her. 

Soon, she would be vanilla as she ran and those specks of flavour would pepper someone else’s plans. 

This is where Anabeila felt most herself. In the moment of now. Where she would run past the metaphorical guards and soldiers and drive directly into the future from the present, leaving the slips of the past behind. The only constants that followed her here were the white robes that trailed a childish sunshine, its escapade splashing neighboring windows with gentle bohemia as she ran. 

And the sound of her footsteps bouncing along the thin metals of walkways and polished smiles of passersby.

… and Olafur, of course, yelping like a mad frog in the background of her almost perfect surrealism. 

“Ana! Wait up. At least arrive with me. The kiss is yours! You know it!” He yelled through laboured breaths that clawed angry at his throat. 

But she knew better. That kiss was only hers should she arrive before him at the place amongst the forest, behind the withered sign. 

They rolled back round the city scape and found a thin pathway marked with brittle stones and flattened out soils. It weaved its way amongst the tall sun gathering buildings at each side, behind. But in front, it tethered itself to the forest network. 

Like a fairy leading the way. Anabeilas pace picked up as she dove left onto the scattered trail, maybe one hundred feet long. Her eyes were wide and chest was hard as she bent forward, entering the natural world to which she truly belonged with fervour. 

Olafur’s slipped footsteps scraping the ground as he teetered sideways rounding the corner could be heard in Anabeila’s peripheral ear as she entered the woods. Now at the end of the trail, she knew she had all the time in the world.

She followed the trail through the forest, covered with auburn hands grasping emerald umbrellas above her head. Anabeila puffed along its winding surface lined with roots and cuts and rocks covered in bat fur moss. She huffed through its hugged curvatures that swindled the skirts of great Bodhi trees into lifting their ankles and making room for beings of lesser ages and shorter thoughts. 

She trudged on. The physical conditioning of the martial arts they were forced to learn daily kept her muscles lean and her heart beat strong. She was a machine as she ran the forest green. Olafur disappeared further behind her, his physical training lagging way behind her own. 

At the critical juncture where the trail line split in twain, where the path could not choose its way and attempted to find the shortcuts both left and right ways, she continued straight into the woods, jumping first a couple meters over the leafy ground plants to ensure the path that they had made stayed hid amongst the brush. She landed and continued on. Through shadows and muck, under logs, over bugs and guts, to where, in the centre of her path it stood. It’s hard fused wooden signage wearing in the weather of its woods. 

A pole, or post and simple rectangular sign stood amongst the forest in her view. It was withered, it’s letters hardly understood. Its uses long abandoned. A city name, maybe. Camorre. It didn’t matter. It was simply the marker to their hidden fort.

Anabeila slowed and stopped beside the sign. The entrance to their fort just to the right. An empty cave with nothing inside.

They had checked its inner reaches the first time they arrived and found no animals were nesting in it, so the children did themselves. Now this was their home away from home. 

Anabeila caught her breath at its entrance and waited for Olafur. His footsteps finally tumbling down the trail as her breath smoothed into laminar flow. She stood up as he entered the final clearing.

“Last again Olafur.” She sneered.

“As usual, you cheated to win.” Olafur replied.

“I don’t think there are any ground rules. Even if it induces sore losers.”

“Not sore. Just don’t know when I’ll have my own first kiss at this rate.” 

It was a childish thing and Anabeila knew it. Of course she would let poor Olafur have his first kisses with whoever he desired. She would never keep them from him for herself, but it was fun to tease him. To remind him that even though they were only friends and always partners, he still belonged to her in a special way. Somewhere in each other’s hearts. Besides, she didn’t want the thousand kisses he now owed at this point, anyway. When it came up, she would claim she was too young to remember how many there were anyhow.

“You’ll never get it for yourself, it seems.” Anabeila looked away sly while she spoke it. “Come. I want to sit and wash away the stink of church.”

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The Reality of Knowing Nothing at All -Part 3
Jim Meirose

No one knew the why, but my dear, there’s an ‘efinate process; yes, a process, a good process, quite fine; to returnback for—plant these rose—f’ recoinsideration ‘f any possibly mistake ‘f lack of presence of any character ‘f number forming any of the words—rose seeds—which, strung together, form the name of the thing less than present, and one unusual day the Paul came to work on time, all calmly putting palms down ‘n soothing gestures with, No, I am fine—I had a neck problem. Got hurt in the pool. I had to get surgery. I was gone for that reason, eh deftly swiping the next available excuse in the ‘x bin for fitting the ‘gory of universal no-show, the prior being, I went to the dentist for a cleaning—with the x’bility to be ramped up into, and I ended up with a broken—plant these rose seeds—jaw no I don’t know why they didn’t call you that’s just one ‘nother facette oof there indocompetenance, maybe they don’t know you exist—no I said no I don’t know why they didn’t try and find you out, dig you up, clean you raw, as existing I cannot answer for their dos, or do nots, and even so if had it been done, how the ‘eck ought they have figgered ‘ow to du-it. Then, as for me, after my wiring, I could not speak a syllable ‘cause this jaw’s wired immobile okay, okay, I know this’s off topico’ sinn et’s know not big shot Paul’s excuse, how dumb do I look I did hear you know that yes his was I had a bad spine, and yes his was also; I had to stop lay down and lookie heah’ listen, gaaa. Gaaaa! Stop, let him fix things using tools some long and sharp some short and blunt—these rose—some in be the ‘tween so. Stop, lookie here I do seem to you to be a different person now, say that you all wrong all that hey, ah? Is that—seeds—it? Well, bah. Ahh, you don’t know me. So you say? No, shut, listen. You may look at me. No, shut, listen. You may look at me. No, shut, listen. But you don’t see me. You don’t know eh o’ look at me. But me, you look at me, you don’t? Yes you do—but you can’t see me, don’t know me, now ‘r never. Hear me! I am Paul Repititian, I am here to work out my way! I am yes, the big Papa and Paul and all that, just like that. Let me work. And. He being ten. To. Plant seeds. Being ten feet. Of. Ten feet tall and half as less sametimes. Tall and tall and half-broad as tall, nobody questioned Paul any times over then,’bout any possible hoax, more afta’ that. Paul, the big Papa, and both of all others go’ resurrected, went on to sainthood, the one already, the other, no, not yet, but—surely soon after. There are those that—and sorry, but the scroll rips gone down diagonally at that point. And so that is it. But knowin’ half—if that be the number— ‘s better than knowin’ nothing at all. The reality of knowing nothing at all, is not I’m afraid, my dearie o’ dear-o, all there is, so no it is not all—plant these rose seeds—there is no not no. Yes? Not in any way, either. No. Accept things please no or all’s gone by’s been flat wasted. There he goes; plant these rose seeds.