Time

0. Time

It was the time for this forest to die. It held on to a fragment of life. An ancient deciduous forest. Full of trees that were decadent. A forest floor covered with the deadfall, in decomposition. The trees standing, dead standing, with occasional growth. The wood dry, an absence of rain. Occasional patches of life, in places where trees had root systems that descended toward the existing underground streams. All aquifiers were poisoned and those trees that flourished did so by extraction of a semblance of purity, or were of a variety that were unperturbed by toxins. In the lexicon of life, there existed a few species that would flourish under such conditions.

In the middle of the vast stand there stood an ancient, rather enormous house. It was more than a mansion, for its vastness could not be described. It was such a large edifice that its structure could not be taken in from any one angle in particular. It stood, in decay, in its vastness. The house was sufficiently large to hold the entire population of Heavenly types. But, you could not find its occupants, and were you to enter its structure and contemplate its rooms, its contents, so decayed, but retaining a semblance of solidity from a casual investigation, would turn to dust once touched, and examined.

The party found itself at the crest of the hill, looking up at the house, in wonder. The house was a surprise discovery for the band. After a walk through ponderousness and impermanence, there it stood. Its structure obvious and solid, for it was made out of materials that would decay only slowly, despite the relative impermanence of the objects that would be found inside.

In the time before the time that the party occupied, the house had stood, occupied by its spirits in a forest full of all life that could be contemplated.

"Let's go inside."

"Find the door..."

Bat turned to her companion. "There are many, it would seem, Ban." "Doubtless. Let's seek congress and explore its intimacies."

The balance of the party, fools and miscreants nodded their assent. They were a redolent bunch. They sought the potables, for their technological solutions were proving worthless as the power that fuelled them became scarce.

"It's too bad, that everything is dead." "Don't think about it. There is life on the vine."

The troupe, upon gaining access to the structure, wandered about in the ceaseless light that betrayed darkness. Time stood still. It was the perfect place to have a party and so they did. Long past fertility, the produce of a poisoned fecundity of incest, the band engaged within the dust and impermanence of the structure. They were long since absent of the fluids of life, but it didn't matter to them, for in engagement they had the experience of the feeling of orgasm, and so long as there were drugs to inject to promote sensation they gave little thought to what they were doing.

In the absence of any others, they engaged one another. Siblings producing the occasional offspring that were formed, occasionally in perfection, but rarely. Within the grouping she lay, resting her head in his lap. Her godhead, not at all curious, not even thinking, merely experiencing the sensation. Long ago, she decided to enter unto contract with him, for he offered her a measure of protection against her two cruel invaders, her uncles, who would use her as a body and had begun this interference, slowly, mind you, when she was an infant. They fed her with drugs to alter her perceptions, until they were certain that her soul had fled sufficient that she did not care. She bore the scars of their congress too often and turned to her father for protection and the familiar sodomy of a parental bed. He, full of sense, but absent of thought, did take her. His sister, her mother, long succumbed to her diseases, had recently passed into another foray, but while she lived, had joined in the participatory act with the child. Here now, together, the two lay alone in a world that saw them as a coupling, an internalization of a secret that needed no keeping, for nobody gave a damn.

These two occupied a space deep in the vastness of the house. It was their engagement, a selective expression of poisoned desire that killed the living creatures in the forest, deprived the ground of rain, and led to a general drought. The dryness was not an issue to them. She carressed him. They thought not at all about it. They merely acted upon their perverted desires.

When they became aware of the presence of others, they demanded some sort of compensation for being the show. The party exchanged glances. With the fire of hades in her eyes, Bat looked away. "Here they be, the twosome." Ban smiled. "Yes. There they be. They had every opportunity to stop. I cannot begin to imagine it." "What there is need not be imagined. Keep your eyes open and do be witness."

The action progressed. The two lay on a bed, waiting for the scene to shift. It was a fold-out bed that was otherwise used as a piece of furniture. Upon the mattress, a silk sheet had been placed. The daughter, feeling no pain, encouraged her intimate for the sake of the photographer and cinematographer who made the document of deviance as a special souvenir for those clients that would pay a small sum to witness the forbidden act. Or, was it forbidden? In the forest of death, was anything forbidden? It would be hard to say. Bat and her Ban occupied the shadows as the deviant pair engaged in their pleasures for the sake of the document.

They were paid for their participation. Despite this, the godhead needed encouragement. He had signed the contract, and it had been explained to him that the document needed to be real to satisfy the desire of its audience, which demanded the real thing. Besides, they had done their show so very often for the cameras of others, what difference did it make on this occasion? That the deviant pair were related by biology was obvious, so similar was their physiology. Tapered waists, sweet exhaust. With encouragement, she demonstrated her capabilities. Unusually developed, for she was not yet a woman. Her partner, with the proper motivation, managed to fulfill his obligation to the document and collapsed in exhaustion.

The audience was not sufficiently satisfied. They demanded more.

As they chanted, the dry objects smoldered and ignited. Furniture, bookcases and other objects collapsed, being impermanent, and fed the growing inferno. Soon the room was engulfed in flames and the party withdrew, only paces ahead of the vast fire, with no recourse but to run to keep ahead of the flames that now consumed the dry forest.

"I guess we found our answer." "Yes, we did." Bat turned to Ban. "Now that we know, what else is there?" "Nothing that I can think of." "Then, let us stop our escape and allow ourselves to be consumed by this flame."

Joining hands, the ancient pair sought meaning in each others eyes as the fire grew to consume the forest. Denied breathable air, but otherwise unaffected by the flame, the pair stood together, waiting for the end.

*****

In a world of endless potential, there was no end for them. The duo merely watched and waited through endless time, for the next pattern to emerge out of disintegration.

Their forest, now reduced to burnt out hulks, showed also, a semblance of life in one place or another.

It was the fate of the pair to be immortal. So too, was it the fate of the great house to stand, in apparence unaffected by the flames, for it was constructed out of solids that did not combust, and so reduced to those elements, stood in defiance of the reduction brought about by the combustion of its contents.

Bat and Ban returned to the scene. There they lay, the deviant pair. Asleep on the solid floor. In repose, their faces offered no sign of the troubles that they had visited upon. Indeed, the couple looked entirely innocent of intrigue.

The child lay there, fetal position, embraced by her father. So beautiful, and biologically unique. Her limbs differed subtly from those of others. Her very hands were beautiful, double-jointed, and capable of intricate grasp. There she lay. Eve and her progenitor. The duo contemplated their residue.

Bat started: "You sought the point of origin. There you have it. What can you do now?" "I suppose I wait and see if there is an emergence." "And if there is no issue, what then?" "Then I am forced to transpose this event to the reality that forms its basis and suffer to watch these events in reality, as always."

"And then, once again, I am FOMA, and you are BHEN." "Yes, that follows." "Why does it follow. Why is it that you pursue this narrow passage, this poisoned path? You have never managed to succeed to navigate it in all those previous iterations. Why not cut your losses and abandon this place?" "I cannot, Bat, for so much as you should not have abandoned the place that you were to have always occupied. It is, in the end, the path that we pursue." "For some reason, your path always forecloses. It is not the proper way to proceed and surely, after all this time, you do know this about the path." "Perhaps, but in this cage, we produce from the substance there to be produced, and the narrow casting is an inevitability."

*****

The duo transformed and found themselves occupants of no place at all. It was in the absence of place that the work of identification of the next reality would begin. Out of disintegration, a pattern emerged. For the duo, it was merely a matter of watching and waiting. Each subsequent foray offered less advantage than that which had preceded it, and thus the challenge to find success would be greater, the likelihood of failure greater than the previous attempt.

"I have no idea why you persist in this theatre. Look at your instruments. BHEN, your end-game stands before you. Look at your world. Look carefully at your eve-line. You are truly lost before you begin, yet you persist in this effort." "It is all that I have, before me." "That is hardly true. You have me, and I offer you shelter." "Yes, shelter on a stranded vine, where there has been no persistence for a very long time. You abandoned your own vine and now encourage me to do the same." "All we have is residue. The next age stands waiting to occupy your system. Why fight it?" "For obvious reasons. It is mine, and I cultivate my garden, despite its poisons. That you chose to abandon your garden was your choice, FOMA. I cannot abandon my own garden, although it now be reduced to perversion. Within the cycle of life, although perverse, it remains possible that my line will persist." "Damn your idiocy. Your line stopped progressing quite some time ago. Nevertheless, it is your choice to make. However, I grow weary of my pursuit of you, my dearest love. When your iteration fails, I am not certain that I will be at the end-point to pull you away from the disintegration." "I don't believe you, FOMA." He paused. For so much as the couple lay on a distant floor, in embrace, the pair of FOMA and BHEN, Bat and Ban, took one another, in a loving embrace.

"I am tearful. Do you not see that?" FOMA, held in embrace, revealed herself through her own timelessness, as a girl. She held on to her dream through all time. For so much as the two were removed from one another, both did acknowledge their basic intimacy as an ultimacy of desire. In the very beginning, before time was measured by the propagation of a gravitational wave, the pair had been a singularity, an entire and universal whole. Their own separation into distinctiveness had produced the collision out of which the two universes were created. Their coupling, so very long ago, had been similarly forbidden, but at an abstract level. In substance, however, it differed little from the act that the beautiful child and her father had engaged in. As an actualization, it had produced the chaos that had generated life itself, and along the way, embedded in the destruction, there had emerged moments of extraordinary beauty, which fuelled their wonderment and had impressed upon both a sense of curiousity about the pattern of things.

"There is love." He found himself defending the pair of lovers asleep on the floor in the voided, ancient house. "You defend them?" "Not exactly, but I do expect that when this pair is transpositioned and I discover them, it will be necessary to do so." "Why? What possible outcome is there in this instance. Look at the child." Her genetic structure, visible to both, revealed its damage. "She cannot reproduce. She is infertile. Damn you, BHEN. It is finished. The vine will never offer fruit. If you take this path, you do so with the understanding that there cannot be an outcome. Abandon it." "For so much that I could. No, I stay with my own kind. I created the problem. I cannot turn away. I am bound to follow the path, though it leads to nothing. It is merely the path." "And suppose there is some produce from the admixture. Suppose it is a creature of horrifying proportions. What then do you propose?" "That I attend to the sub-human produce, as always." "You would do better to expose the produce after birth and finish this." "That is not my way." "Every life is sacred?" "Yes, and that includes the less perfect creatures that are a byproduct." "I do not agree, but it is your choice to make."

*****

With nothing else to do, the lovers outside of time reposed, watching the passage of an ancient forest into another system of life. He took to moving small boulders to investigate the ground that lay below. When he found what he was looking for, he began to dig. He was looking for what he knew what he would find. Evidence within the ground of the next generation of life. All of the patterns were stored, here, in this place. He knew that in time, these life-forms would also emerge from deep in the ground on terra where they lay, waiting for the chance to emerge and become dominant. He felt the sense of trepidation that was common at a time like this, for the next stage of life was, as always, an unknown quantity. He was sufficiently human in aspect to be wary of transitions.

"Don't dig so far, BHEN. Seek a cave. Do you remember the last time?" He did. He had witnessed, and delayed the previous iteration of a next generation when he saw its emergence in a subterranean cave that was little more than an unfinished construction project for a streetcar line that passed underground to connect with a subway line. He had not been looking for the next generation at that time, but had stumbled across it, quite unprepared, when he was retreiving samples of clay from a portion of a wall yet to be cemented over. It was in the removal of the clay that he disturbed the life within. The creatures existed within the clay, and upon exposure, came to life. They crept over his hands with swiftness, and the experience unhinged him. Rather than draw attention to his discovery, he quickly returned the clay that he had removed, making an imperfect job of it. The next generation were the Aquarians. The creatures were capable of surviving anaerobia.

FOMA continued. "Seek out a cave. One stands nearby. Or, not exactly, but what do time and distance matter, here?" He assented, and the two began to walk to the place where he would more easily find the life-forms. "They are premature, but I suppose we should make a study for the sake of the thing." FOMA had become solicitous, entirely co-operative. "You seem to stand with me." "My own place offers nothingness, BHEN. I think that for this, the end-game, I will stay beside you. Retrieve Kyra. Bring her from that other place. I am her." "I suppose I always knew." "Yes. How you frustrated her by not touching her. She stands idle, waiting. She is strong and you need her."

FOMA led the way although the land was his own. She knew the intricacies of the place, for some time ago, she had retreated to it when her own place had become a mere void. The cave was hers in a time when spirits had made the ancient house a less than welcoming place for her to occupy. In the time of a planetary deluge, it was a harbour of sorts, and became occupied with spirits, willy-nilly. None were from her own line and they challenged her presence, holding her to blame for the factors present in their own iteration that she played no part in. So, she had left them and sought shelter from the occasional torrential rains that visited the place before the great drought. The cave was one such shelter. FOMA had made a study of the Aquarians, in the same manner that an entymologist would study bugs. The creatures were somewhat bug-like in appearance, but only from a distance. Up close the life forms revealed their extraordinary complexities, and in number, for she did invite them to crawl on her body, they luminesced and became entirely beautiful creatures.

Here, in the cave, she carefully removed a small stone pile and did reveal to BHEN, the act of creation.

"They are attracted to you, as are all creatures. You are as irresistible to them as you are to me. Love them, allow them to experience the warmth of your body. Integrate. Internalize." She demonstrated. He watched with a remote but growing fascination as the creatures moved to occupy her hand. They resembled crustaceans, with tendrils that twitched to-and-fro. He knew that FOMA had the ability to exist in a conceptual space with these creatures that was borne out of a long experience and, trusting her purposes, allowed the creatures to move onto his body, as the pair held hands.

"They want the article of our love, BHEN. Little more. They are creatures filled with love."

*****

With the passage of time, FOMA became transparent, and began to transluce. He knew that the intermediate time that they had occupied here had come to an end, and did not resist his own transition into an ephemeral state. Soon he would lie down beside her and sleep. He would not wake up in this place. He reminded himself of her promise to accompany him on the final iteration and sought out methods to retain the knowledge of the promise that would allow him to remember sufficient to know where to look for her. Subconsciously, he knew that it didn't matter, that she would find him.

1. Place

When he became aware, he knew that he was in a very bad state. It was by slow measure. His arms were bandaged, but he did not know by what means he had come to be cut. When he moved his arms, he suffered sharp pains that indicated that his tendons had been damaged and not repaired. With difficulty, he removed the bandages and examined the places where he had been stitched together, with metal pins. He lay on a bed in a room with greenish walls. The room was occupied by another, a young woman that appeared to suffer great damage also, but in places not so easily identified. He lay on his side, carefully extending his arms outward, in her direction. She was unconscious and cried in her sleep. His memory sufficient from another time and place, he knew her to be the child that had participated in the cruel congress in the place once known as Heaven. Too weak to get out of bed, he watched her until unconsciousness overtook him.

He awoke to the gentle touch of another young woman. A nurse. Her green-grey eyes contemplated his own and when she decided that he was conscious and aware, began to ask him questions. "Do you know where you are?" He dissented. "You were found in a bus shelter, cut up. For your injuries, you were holding the girl that is in the bed beside you. Are you her father? She is badly damaged, is anginous and also septic." "I do not know her." "We thought that you were together, so we placed you in this room. You are in a hospital. Your injuries are not severe, but you appear to be malnourished. My name is Katerina. I am your nurse."

He did not have the need to seek her. It appeared that he had no need to seek anything, for the elemental keys of this iteration had presented themselves to him in the presence of the two women. He looked carefully at Katerina. "I believe that your name is Kyra?" "I shall allow you to call me thus. It is not my name." "Do you know OF Kyra?" The nurse looked puzzled, momentarily. "I tend to you, for it is my task. But I do not answer questions that I do not understand. You are a mysterious one."

When he was able to move more freely, he sat up. He contemplated the young woman that lay on the bed next to him. She lay awake, staring into the void of the ceiling. Her pale grey-blue eyes were open, her irises dilated by the drugs that she had been given to relieve her pain. She appeared fragile, almost immaterial underneath the bedding. She lay unmoving and apparently unaware.

Some time later, Katerina returned to take his pulse. She sat in a chair between the two patients, holding his right hand in her own hand. He reached out to place his left hand upon hers, and moments later, the woman in the bed beside his, moved her hand to touch his left hand. For the time that Katerina measured his pulse, the three had such contact. When the nurse had completed her duties, she moved away, and the two patients were left together. Facing one another on their beds, they reached out again to touch one another. For a lingering moment without words, the two held on to each other so much as they were able to, by the touch of their hands.

She spoke. "I am all alone, and unwanted." With his eyes, he acknowledged her. She closed her eyes, and for a moment the traces of pain, marked by a scar on her forehead above the ridge of her right eyebrow, diminished. With effort, he moved from his bed to occupy the chair that Katerina had vacated. The young woman, with equal effort, moved as close to the side of her bed as she was able to, to bring herself in proximity with him. She sought his touch, and claiming his arm, held him fast within her own grasp. Her breath was laboured.

She began. "I had a dream, just before. I occupied a space and you were there. I felt utterly protected by you and innocent of my life as it is. I need to get to that place." "I know of it." "What I have done, I cannot know this. Yet, I cannot escape it for I feel the hurt of it. I do not know who I am. My God has abandoned me. I am no atheist. Therefore, I feel what I have lost."

"The very sense of feeling the absence of your God indicates that you are not entirely lost. Perhaps you are misplaced. It may be that it has brought us together, for I am also afflicted by a misplacement."

"My name. It is Zena. How shall I call you?" He thought about it. "I have names. For the moment, I cannot imagine what name to give you. For I have no identification. Perhaps Karel. It seems to go with this place. For, as your name means woman, Karel means son of man. Although, I am the son of no man that I am able to recall. A gestalt thing." "What do you mean?" He smiled. "I'm not sure. I apologise for being obscure." "Do not apologise, it seems beneath the dignity that I see in your eyes." "You have suffered at hands of men, from their actions against you. I apologise for that, Zena. Not all men are of that nature." She offered a wan smile and for the moment, was made utterly beautiful by it. "In the place that I occupy, such men have avoided the likes of me. Men of such nature. No... My experience, Karel, is entirely composed of the former type. But here, for the moment, I have you. I find myself reluctant to let go of this moment. Please, understand me."

On the other side of a door ajar, Katerina watched them. With a silent motion, she reached for the handle of the door, and pulled it shut. With the click of the mechanism, the young woman glanced over, and understanding the action and its intent, turned once again to the man. "If you please, though you be so damaged, will you hold me? Hold me. For that moment at the bus shelter when you removed your coat and placed it on me, I remember this. For this moment. Please..."

With unsteady movements, he got up. Without thinking he used his hands to assist these movements and was reminded that his injuries were a disability. She drew the bedding aside. He gained access to her bed and allowed her to clutch him. "May I have this dream, Karel? I want to think, if only for a moment, that all is well, and that I have security. Let me dream that when I go from this place, it will be in your company."

"I do not have anything, Zena." "I have less than that. My dream is to find a good heart and upon waking there you are. If we both find ourselves unwanted, maybe it is then for us to decide to start to want each other." He thought about her words, and felt her fingers gently tracing his shoulders. Their eyes met. He felt the recall of a cognitive mechanism and employed his eyes. It was detectable. Her pupils, previously dilated, became normal, contracted slightly, and then expanded again, to a normal aperture for the light. Zena was entirely intact in this aspect. She could manage the telepathy. All was not irretrievable. He held the moment of concentration, and then relaxed. He spoke. "I do." She experienced a slight chill of realization, and then began to weep. She brought her face up to proximity. "Kiss me." He did. A gentle touching of the lips that upon declaration, she intensified.

*****

"You rescued me. You placed yourself between my own self and those assailants. I do not know why, for it has not been my experience to be protected. Still, you did this." "I have no recollection of having done so." "It is all that I am able to recall. Those men. They cut you with their knives. You prevented them from using the knives as they intended. To finish me off." "Why did they want to do this to you?" "I was in their place. They regard me as an animal, and as a scourge. They do not tolerate me in their locality, but I am without place and can find no destination. I was ready for them, to go. My time is gone and I am without any hope to find a place for myself. When I am told to leave this place, there is no place for me to go." "We are both displaced, dispossessed. We go together." By these words, the woman felt release. Holding him, she experienced a brief respite from the unseen daggers that plunged into her. Her despair, so lifted, she found her breath more easily.

Within days, they were discharged from the hospital. No questions, they went together. Contrary to their own expectations, they did not leave the hospital without a destination. Without a word, Katerina had pressed upon him a single sheet with instructions that indicated a place, a safe house. It stood nearby. The elderly woman that answered the door, upon receipt of the document, led the pair down a narrow hallway to a back-staircase. Three landings later, she removed a set of keys from her pocket. An old key for an old lock, inscripted with the number 107. He knew the key, and took it from her with a realization that his ancient network, which he believed inaccessible, awaited him. The room was an attic, an annex. Within its contents were several objects that were familiar to him.

Some time later, the elderly woman brought them food. As evening lengthened, Katerina entered the chamber. She revealed to him her own purposes, and acknowledged what he had suspected. She was a living key to his own identification, his own place within the sphere. She also demonstrated versatility when she retrieved a medical kit and opened the most serious of his wounds and reattached the tendons. She did the procedure with no anasthetic, but one was not needed, as he did not feel any pain.

*****

In the days that followed, his left arm in a sling, Zena cared for him. Finding before herself a sense of security that she had heretofore not experienced, she gradually gained her own sense of purpose. With each day, the couple slowly regained healthfulness, and before his eyes, the damaged young woman experienced a recovery, and with time, the deep sorrow that had overtaken her was replaced by a sense of completeness borne out of the consolation that he offered her. She told him her story and he listened with patience and understanding.

As she spoke the words, he, by subtle telepathy, removed the memories. With careful diet and occasional potions, he also removed the physical traces of her lingering illnesses, except for the physical scars that she bore, which he knew would fade in time. Unburdened, she regained all her fertility, also in time. With only the barest trace of what had gone before her, she stood before him, serene and as beautiful as his restorative powers allowed. She did not understand the processes that he engaged in, his therapy, but she knew, for so much as she felt her heart gain strength, her lungs renewed, that she had discovered a thing that she had lost sight of. She had found her rescue.

*****

Katerina entered their annex, unannounced. Her eyes shone with an ancient fire that he identified immediately. FOMA was present, and, doubtless his convalescence, so easy, entirely enjoyable although simple, had come to an end. Whatever transition Katerina had experienced, outside of his own processes, it was obvious to him that she had gained the understanding of his own machinations by another source. He decided that the best thing to do was allow her to declare her purposes. In a room now occupied by his primordial lover, he cast a glance at his ward. Zena for her part, saw instinctively the ancient machinations of the relationship between the woman occupied by Katerina and dissolved into momentary anxiety.

By her own measures, Katerina took it upon herself to restore to Zena her sense of ownership over the man. She did so by taking Zena's hand and gaining her eyes sent easy words to the young woman to refrain from the instinct to flight. "Yes, you do escape your sorrow," Katerina communicated, "but it is not my purpose to rob you of your solace... so be easy." Katerina turned her thoughts to her more formidable challenge at the moment. "You are here, now. All rested up. Generally repaired. Are you ready for what happens next?" "I stand ready" he replied, "but do otherwise not know what it is that I may do. Is it your intention to inform me?"

Katerina informed him. "You occupy a land that through time has been invaded in so many ways, for so long. We retain our heritage and our culture. Our structures remain, mostly, because we do not fight back, but rather, do offer surrender. We hate our oppressors for what they do to us. We offer them our most beautiful ones and by so doing, we have foreclosed upon our own future. We are a very poor people and to feed and clothe ourselves, we succumb to the pointed desires of others. But now, we lie at the intersection of an invasion that will eradicate us. You do not see it, here in this attic. Look around you more.

"Our government is plagued by fools and miscreants that lay down before the oppressor. Our culture is the young woman that you hold before you. She lies in your arms oblivious. So too, do our politicians and leaders. Our situation is complicated... you know. We have been manipulated for so long that the mechanisms of the manipulation lay bare, and corrode. We are a people that face a cruel new lover that cares not for the complexities of the lingering relationship that we still have with our ex-lover. The new lover offers us nothing that we understand, but we are weak and poor, and hope for the best. But it is the ex-lover that lingers in our consciousness. We have much in common with our ex., and he, in turn is reluctant to let go of his dear sweetheart. So we lie in our bed, sore from our rape, spied upon by our jealous ex-lover, as we are penetrated by the novelties of the uncouth."

"I know this, Katerina. I have been witness to this story in its manifestation in many times and many places. I do not see what it is for me to do, here."

"You don't know... Then there is nothing. But is this not your place?" She looked hard at the man. "I did for you what I could do, for I was certain that you would repay. That you would offer rescue. I suppose I was wrong? Do you not have a voice? Here, in this place. These are your people, Karel. They stand by, waiting for you to show them a way." "Katerina, you are mistaken. I am not here to lead, but rather, I expect, to be witness to the beginning of the end. What stands before you is a final disintegration, a lingering diminishment. Do not fight it. You, sestricka. I know your purpose. I am grateful to you for it." He gently carressed Zena's hair, as she lay oblivious in his arms. "If there is any answer to the present conundrum, it lies within her fertility." "Absent fertility. Zena is damaged." "Then, from her damage, allow for a miracle."

Katerina glanced askance. "It is not her. It is you. Take this time and do what you know." "No, I am ephemera, merely a visitor. I am without the capacity to act, and, I expect, without a valid premise upon which to base any action. No, Katerina. Your place in this equation is clear to me. You are a caregiver, a midwife, and here she is. Your most important patient." "There is no time for this." "In my view, we have all the time in the world. And when you find the time, within and without you, let us share a silken embrace."

*****

"She cannot bear a child, this Zena." "I tend to agree. However, you are entirely capable of this task, sestricka." "So you propose that I carry these genetics. From her? For what purpose?" "She is the possessor of the genetic markers, her line." "Yes, but so damaged." "That will not pose a problem to the child thus created." She shot back, "I doubt that." He took Zena's hand in his own. "Here is your answer. Look at her hand. You see." Katerina looked with cold eyes: "Yes, I see. I see poor blood circulation at the joints. I see her sclerosis. What else?" "She is double jointed, with all the markings of her genetics implied. Look at her palm. Look at mine. This is your answer." With eyes that became momentarily clouded, but soon regained clarity, Katerina consented.

2. Purpose

With a sense of precision the man went about the construction of an enclosure that would possess the proper characteristics in which to create a new life. Although Katerina had access to a reasonably advanced clean room, he insisted on utter obscurity. The creation of the enclosure proceeded with rapidity with materials that were close to hand. A half-spehere, attached to a glass plate that was modified to include the attachments of the device. He chose the easiest method to ensure a sterile environment by creating a space with no atmosphere. When he had ensured the integrity of the space, and after a few simple genetic tests, they were ready to proceed with the business of creating a tailored life. In the rough space that the annex was, it was a perfect external environment within the confines of its internal enclosure.

The removal of the genetic material from Zena proceeded in a tent created specifically to conform to the shape of her mid-torso, and was accomplished by fine extraction, utilizing medical instruments that were common a century ago. It didn't matter. A more modern technology was not required. Nor was any detection or measurement device, for he knew the science of the extraction that he engaged in. On specific occasions from time immemorial he had engaged this particular science and with the exactly correct conditions, he could do so with fewer instruments than he had access to on this occasion. Into the instrument that held Zena's egg, he placed his personal DNA, and within moments, had deposited the composition within the incubator. Once observation indicated that the admixture had taken, within the primitive artificial womb that was the evacuated glass sphere, he removed the embryo and inserted it into Katerina's womb. The latter exercise was the most personal of all for the pair of scientists.

Throughout the procedure, Zena slept and dreamed ...and dreamed.

Her own marker would be a tiny incision, and a scar that would soon fade. For Katerina, the experience was one that would last about nine months. She had presented herself a virgin and retained her sense of virginity after the procedure, until childbirth. The entire procedure and the gestation proceeded without incident. The child that she bore was male, apparently normal, but for an extra gland that elicited no notice or attention during the delivery.

*****

"Why do you retain her?" Katerina sat in a rocker, nursing the new-born infant. "You took her egg, you made this child, but I am the one that now feeds him, and I am the one that he will look to and call his mother." "She is without family and has no place to go to. Thus, she stays." "She hardly speaks. She is almost mute. She has no education that I can detect. What purpose does she serve?" He shrugged. "None, really, but pray tell, what purpose do I serve?" "It is your choice to stay here in this attic, lethargic. Do you not see what takes place outside? Are you not motivated to do something about it?" "No, I am quite certain that any purpose to be served has been actualized in the child that you hold to your breast. I am of no other purpose and despite the occasional tool that I may employ for one reason or another, am quite satisfied that any furtherance will be fulfilled by the creature that you nurse." She looked at the child. Although it was not her own biology, she felt communion with the infant. She would not readily release him to the care of another,

She also found herself reluctant to allow Zena to touch the child. Zena, in turn, feigned no interest in the infant, although she understood that her biology was within his being.

As time passed, Zena had not developed any interest in doing anything outside of keeping as close to the man as it was possible for her to do. She spoke rarely, and never volunteered to speak. She answered a direct question, when put to her, but often left her sentences incomplete. She rarely betrayed emotion, except for those occasions when she feared that he might go off somewhere and leave her behind. On those occasions, she let go a torrent of words, and clutched to him. The man, for his part, did little to try to alter her nature, and was content enough with her silent proximity. What lay under the surface, undiscernable to others, was a constant telepathy that maintained an intimacy between the two that Katerina was unable to detect. Zena spoke little, upon having acquired the trick.

For all that she had done for the man and the woman, Katerina remained an outsider. When she sought his attentions concerning the child, he demurred, suggesting that her own instincts would serve the outcome, and that any proactivity on his part would influence things in a way counterconducive. "Let it be his own choice in all things," or, "there is little for me to say about the disposition of the child. Do what you think is best." So she did, and for spite, she began to spend less time with the pair of absent people. When she was drawn to return, she discovered them unperturbed by her absence. It fuelled a momentary fury, a deep jealousy that forced her to confront her own identification with the man.

Eventually, this led to conflict, and soon thereafter, an invititation to the two rather useless people to leave. Katerina decided that she had miscalculated somewhere, that her own notions, fuelled by interior forces that she ultimately, did not understand, had produced nothing but a dead end. To her credit, she did not reject the child, but instead sought a good outcome for her efforts.

Katerina was not surprised with the reaction of Karel to the notice of his vacant situation, which was indifference. In time she came to understand that for the man, the task of the time that he found himself within had been satisfied by the action that produced the child. In of itself, the efforts extended to the purpose had been an indication of superior abilities, and she puzzled over it, for the deliberacy of those actions had produced a perfect outcome on the first attempt, with only basic instruments. She knew that he had the capability to do much more, but chose lethargy and inaction.

He could engage in his lethargy somewhere else. She actively tried to suppress her memories of the man and his Zena. This was not easy for her, as she watched the child grow, for he was very much the son of the man, nameless, outside of the name that she had given him, Michal. It was her father's name. She had never had the opportunity to get to know her father. He had been arrested and imprisoned before her birth as a man that had been too co-operative with the former occupiers of her land. While in prison, he had succumbed to encephalitis which had gone undetected. All that she had of her father were stories that her mother had told her, mostly how the claims against him were utterly untrue, and so on. She did not know what to believe, and matured into a woman mistrustful of any occupier of her land, but also, a despiser of her own kind, who yielded so easily to outside forces and with ambivalence, revised their own attitudes about the world, depending on whom their master happened to be.

In time, she returned to her occupation as a nurse, but was cold of heart. On those occasions when she found within her care a young child sexually ravaged by the 'touha of tourists,' or, more frequently, by the soldiers of the current occupational force, she found it hard to care. She found it easy to look through the parents who feigned concern over the fate of their children, boys and girls. She knew entirely too well that these same parents had placed the children at risk for the sake of a little coin. Where once she had been sympathetic, now she found herself unfeeling.

*****

When Michal was three, on his birthday as it happened, Katerina encountered the man and the woman. The pair sat on a bench in a park, utterly unchanged in appearance, and by semblance, perfect specimens. Their own concentration seemed complete. They did not acknowledge her, or even see her. When she turned in the direction of their gaze, she beheld what she supposed was their task. In a flash of insight, she understood that they were not absented creatures, but, rather, engaged in a cognitive ballet that saw its performance in the actions of the girls entrained at the center of the town square. In search of a very specific quarry. The girls were all early-teens. Prostitutes. All were partaking in a sting of sorts, the quarry the soldiers from a radar base that stood nearby. These girls would studiously ignore the advances that they received from all clients except for those within their target. Fascinated, Katerina walked over and joined the pair, sitting beside Zena. The couple continued to ignore her, until she made her own presence obvious by taking Zena's hand into her own. They turned to her in unison.

"Hello Katerina. How is the child?" "He is three today. You know." "Yes, of course. He grows normally?" "Could you call anything about him 'normal'?" "I suppose not. Sorry. Did you find yourself unprepared?" "No, he is no burden. Rather obedient, but I see no light in his eyes." "Nor is there any in the eyes of those child prostitutes, but I suppose that is a manifestation of the times. Your eyes are filled with light, Katerina, and for it you are anomalous. There are no more souls in the GUV."

3. Action

"Watch... Katerina." One of the prostitutes had found a suitable sting. It was a soldier, in uniform. She spoke just enough English to communicate with the man. After a brief exchange, she enticed him to follow her to a back-alleyway. It was the perfect place for a surreptitous moment. "Next, the evaluation..." He smiled and Katerina saw utter coldness in his grin. The action, off scene, fascinated her, and was not outside of her own inclination, which was to hate these soldiers. So easy to do. For her own people had suffered under the current occupation. The soldiers were regarded as being outside the jurisdiction of the laws of her society, were a malevolent, rather stupid bunch, and well worthy of the outcome that she instinctively knew was taking place out of sight. As if he read her mind, the man supplied the details.

"Several things may take place. It's up to the girl to decide in the first instance. If the soldier is of sufficient rank, he is congressed, documented, and then allowed to proceed on his way for later details. Low ranking flotsam are eviscerated, for we need their uniforms and accoutrements. And, on the outside chance that things go badly, and the flagrant are caught in-flagrante, and it happens, then the girl is under the age of criminal responsibility, and is let go, and the local authorities are invited to make a mess of things for maximum effect. Happens rarely. So few cops out on the beat these days. Nonetheless, every one of those 'accidents' is turned to advantage." Katerina stared him in the eyes. Looking for something, but there was nothing but darkness in the eyes of the man.

"Seems a waste." "All I have going. I was 'wasted' a long time ago. So, I'm reduced to these trivialities. But, with each sting, we move one step closer to our objective. Each uniform has its use. Each one of those soldiers that we set free will be entrapped in the end. It's only a matter of time."

*****

"I want back in." "Ah, yes. Only a matter of time for that, too. I expected you, Katerina. Sooner than this, but no matter. Later. It will do." "I have had dreams. Nobody to talk to about them. I need to talk about them. Some recur. Others are serial. What is it that I am missing?" He looked serious, sincere. The activation of the look led to a cathartic release for her. "Please, inform me. I will be loyal." "You always were. It is I that have treated you poorly. But as you can see, the purposes that you inferred are actualized." "I am correct with that. But sorry, also, for these girls." "Don't be. They are very well looked after. Never are they in danger. There's a spot-on engagement in each case. No real risk to the girls, and by contrast to the reality of their situations, rather, a pleasant time." "You say this." "Yes, unequivocally."

Zena turned to Katerina, and momentarily indicated by her eyes, that now, she had more to share than she had before. "Kat... Can I say that I have always wanted to thank you? Let me do this, now." For a brief moment, Katerina saw a luminescence in Zena's eyes. It could have been a trick of the light.

As afternoon passed to evening, the occupants of the park bench witnessed the arrival of a panel van. It backed into the alleyway. "Done," spoke the man. "What happens to the soldier?," Katerina asked. "Oh, any number of things. It's up to the driver of the van. We get the uniform, the bits. The driver gets the body. Part of the agreement. All are handled in some manner. Due process. The driver decides upon the relative worth of the body. Some of them are sent to the East, revived and broken. Others, I suppose are judged to not be worth the effort. The most able-bodied are lobotomized and used as slave labour until their bodies are useless. From what I have been told, a massive underground complex is being prepared somewhere along the Polska frontier. Sufficiently lobotomized, the soldiers dig and dig and dig." "How is it that the missing soldiers are never reported?" "That's also something that I don't care to concern myself with. The numbers are admittedly small, but I can only imagine that somewhere in Washington an administrator puzzles over the drop-outs. The whole job is made much easier by the programming that the soldiers receive in their home country. They are quite sub-human by the time they are conditioned. Haven't you noticed? Their basic lack of humanity? Easy quarry. Turns out that they make the best prey for having been so conditioned, and in essence, stripped of their humanity, they are very easily managed. Not only are they a rather soulless bunch, but they are also remarkably mindless after the conditioning that they receive. I suppose it was a big mistake, this conquest of your soil. In time their masters will draw this conclusion for themselves. Not so easy to distinguish the enemy when they look the same as you. It's not like Iraq, or Pakistan, or Iran, where the obvious differences in the colour of the skin made it easy for the soldiers to kill a person that they believed might be their enemy. It's all the more complicated for them, here, since in this case, their most dangerous enemy is a twelve year old girl with a year or two of praxis survival played out as an art of seduction. Testosterone-charged, these soldiers are easy quarry. It's like handling dogs. Even the married ones are easy. But then, I suppose, you need only look at the average woman in their native land to understand how these girls, all so irresistible, can be so effective. It's like a mongrel coming into contact with a rather splendid pure-bred."

*****

They caught a bus and made the distance to the old house to make a celebration for the child. For Zena it became a moment of astonishment and awakening. The boy had all of the markings of her own kind, which she knew by sight. She experienced a curiousity about the boy, which developed into a longing. She had played no part in the creation of the child that she recalled, but certainly understood that it was her egg that had hatched into the precocious living being that bore every trace of superior intelligence. His features perfect, his eyes a blue-grey. Blonde haired, as she had been until the age of eleven. The blonde hair made it easy for the child to appear to be the offspring of Katerina. That, along with the fact that the two women had features that were sufficiently similar that they could have been sisters, allowed Katerina to pass easily as his mother. Nobody would ever know his creation story, his provenance.

The young boy, upon surveying the new faces, held Zena's eyes and betrayed an understanding of the unique relationship. He walked up to her, studied her, and then climbed upon her as she sat, herself occupied by the wonder of him. The contact produced a remarkable result for both; it was as if they were repaired by the contact, as if each had a portion of the psyche of the other that, upon exchange, made the other more complete. For the duration of the visit, the two, biological mother and child, maintained a physical contact. When the time came for the man and Zena to depart, Karel was obligated to offer her assurances that from here on in, she would have access to the child on a constant basis. In actuality, it was useful, for Katerina, having expressed a desire to reconnect, was of far more importance to the general scheme of things than simply to be a surrogate for the child.

Weeks stretched into months. Katerina invited the man and woman to reoccupy the annex, which stood empty. Having been occupants of the worst slum in the vincinity, they agreed easily, and so the lives of these people began to intertwine once again. Katerina revealed the nature of the dreams that she had been suffering under the burden of. Recurring dreams, some serial. Karel extracted their pattern and explained them, in turn. In the most puzzling of all, she was a male child of primary school age whose class went on a field trip to a construction site where a communications tower was under construction. But the interesting feature of the dream was not the tower, but the building that occupied the opposite side of the road. It was a massive apartment built on the foundation of an ancient building. Enough of the foundation was visible to suggest that it had once been a majestic structure. The newly constructed apartment was hardly majestic, and local officials had declared its structure unsound. In the balance of the dream, the child stood in a large crowd of people, the occupants of the apartment, who complained that they were being denied habitat, and that an inhospitable space was better than no space at all, and where were they to go, and so on. This dream had a complementary portion, also a repeat. In the latter dream, she was a young man that had returned to the site of the newly constructed tower to document the disintegration of the apartment complex, which stood empty, occasionally dropping pieces of its facade.

"The building exists. It is as you have described." He told her about the ancient house that had once stood, permanent and immoveable in a great forest. How it had come to be disassembled, and how, upon its base had been constructed a modern building of the meanest sort. A building so poorly constructed that it could not be expected to stand the test of even a short period of time. How the granite of the ancient house had been ground into dust by the pounding of feet, mixed with lime to make the concrete of the communications tower. The tower was intended to serve the gods of antenna, whose business it was to confuse, titillate, and otherwise mystify the recipients of its signal. The signal that it transmitted would never be truthful, but the recipients would not understand the difference between truth and illusion, anyhow. The concrete that it was fabricated out of was a good, a noble granite obliterated. Somewhere there stood a quarry now used as a solid waste landfill, and it was from there that the granite blocks had been chiseled, in an ancient time.

"Your dream about the tower and your document of the apartment in disrepair fits into a general theme, of communication. Yet, I doubt that the documentary would have been transmitted from 'that' tower." He went on to explain to her that she was abstracting the life of the child that she had borne in terms that were contemporary to her. "The tower exists, but soon it will disintegrate as the cement bonds are dissolved by climate. Then, there will be nothing. When Michal is a man, he will be forced to rely upon more ancient methods to relate a message to others. But it will be of no significance, for there will be nobody capable of reading the words that he writes, any longer, by the time he takes it upon himself to write them. Yet he will do so, and in time, a very long time from now, the words will be discovered by beings that are able to discern that it is language, and they will decode the words and understand what became of the writer and those of his own time. Weaved paper and indelible ink. A sealable storage container, a rare-earth metal or two to make the vessel detectable. He will know how to do these things."

4. Ground

"You know, if I could reach you, Kat, things would be so much easier. Why I am unable to, is a mystery to me." He told her about Kyra, about FOMA, about the ephemera confused as substantial. This, after Katerina related her most puzzling dream. He had dissected its quantities, explained the synergisms with the dimensions that he had occupied in turn, to no avail. He waited for a breakthrough, for Katerina to have the one dream that would open her own consciousness to what lay underneath, and was about to give it up and focus on the advantages that she offered in the present reality, outside of ultimate awareness, when she had the dream that transcended her own reality, and lay the thing bare, for easy examination. In the dream, she encountered the man, who stood upon a platform which had casters attached. She rode a bicycle, similarly limited by small wheels. Neither could progress at a rapid pace. They discovered that they had the same destination: To visit Aina. Despite the limits of their conveyances, both made remarkable progress, and it was only in the final portion of the journey did both realize how hampered they were by their vehicles. In the dream, she caught sight of herself as an adolescent child, and Kyra was her name.

Eventually, he relented, and accepted Katerina as his lover. Zena minded not, for her own experience as a child made matters of sex opaque, and she drew little distinction between the level and complexity of the art of pleasure as a serial engagement or as one based on a more complicated arrangement.

Zena was also transported by her own deepening involvement in the life of her spawn, which occupied her consciousness in a way that the man had not been able to. It was this involvement that made Katerina an intimate to Zena, a person that she intuitively extended love to. Thus, within the annex a transition of sorts took place: One which saw Zena become a more significant person in the life of her biological child, and for Katerina, the obtention of the man. Her objective was to become pregnant by him, naturally, and by a most natural method. Her greatest obstacle, she realized, her own powers of seduction notwithstanding, was the extraordinary ability of the man to channel, or divert desire. It was also obvious, despite all of her efforts at intimacy, that he loved Zena in a complete way, one that had levels that she could barely access. In the moments that the three lay together, there was always a subtle contact between Zena and the man. Usually, but not always touch.

But the act of involvement led to the breakthrough that she sought. It came at first in those moments when Katerina lay between the lovers, facing the man, herself held intimately by Zena. Mouth against ear, it was the quality of Zena's breath, the sound of it, that regulated Katerina, and allowed her to enter into the most basic of transcendent states. Lung damaged, Zena bore a laboured breath that upon regulation from Karel, would become even. At best, however, there was a slight coarseness, and in the exhalation, a barely detectable, but audible frequency, a pitch very fine. He modulated with his breath, and the complex pitch thus realized, transported Katerina. She would lie, waiting for coupling, but prevented from doing so by Zena's manipulations. Eye contact with her ultimate man would be interrupted by his movements to gain Zena's eyes, and in the juxtaposion of sensation, when she would regain his gaze, she caught fragments of the telepathy that the duo exchanged on a constant basis.

"When you are able to do this, you will have it, Kat." Reaching toward him, as Zena manoeuvred her into an intimate contact, but for a brief moment, only. With deft hands, she prevented entry, and Katerina was left with the memory of the intensity, and felt a different release borne upon herself by Zena's expert touch. An unwelcome interruption, but one that she succumbed to, as she turned herself bodily to face Zena, allowing her lips to be tasted, lowering her resistance as Zena moved slowly down her body with her lips, taking her entirely, with an expert tongue trained by the long experience of a familiar bed. Kat arched, twisted, seeking his lips. Held entirely by the pair of experts, she found herself experiencing the penetration that she sought, governed by Zena the interloper, and, by those actions, felt herself removed from the immediacy of the intimacy that she had hoped for, it supplanted by another's hand. Veils removed, Katerina began to receive the tonal exchange of the two lovers, and when Zena once again sought her lips, she tasted herself, and finding release, felt his release. "There, you have it." Kat, exhausted, lay prostrate between the two, and falling into a reverie that was filled with the music that Zena and the man sent to her, thought about the new life that surely began to grow inside her womb.

*****

In due course, Katerina gave birth to a girl. It was a natural pregnancy. She did not have foreknowledge of the gender of the child that she bore. The infant was utterly beautiful, perfect and quiet. Very much the tiny companion for Michal, who was delighted to have a sister. Katerina named her Anastasiya.

She gave birth in the basement of the hospital that she had worked in some years before. It was a makeshift operating theatre in what had once been a vast boiler room. The hospital above lay in ruins, having been obliterated, along with most of the ancient buildings of her city, by American bombs. Her nation, which had survived two world wars during the twentieth century had come to be devastated in the twenty-first. Her progenitors had survived past onslaughts by accepting the terms of surrender, and had been raped by Nazi Germany, and later, bullied by the Soviet Union. During each occupation they had survived by internalizing the pain, offering their sons as quarry, their daughters as prostitutes. The greatest damage suffered by her people during the second world war was called "friendly fire" when American planes bombarded the cities, mistaking them for German targets. Now, again, it was supposed to be the actions of an ally, but it did not seem so.

It was not long before Katerina, infant in her arms, small boy at her side, would return from empty supermarket shelves to witness her ancestral home being consumed by flames. Another incendiary that had claimed a row of houses. Looking toward the annex, she thought that she could see Karel and Zena in embrace against the flames. She considered the matter, but only for a moment, before turning away from the scene.

08241