5-22-2142

Reply-to: laia@familiasalla-es.ro

Date: Tue, 22 May 2142 09:58:12

Subject: They are talking overhead....

I am trapped in the dark.  The floor rolls and trembles under me.  The

ceiling is so low I can't raise my arms.  I am wearing a dress but my

feet are bare.  The dress is cold and wet and sticks to my skin.  Foul

water is dripping all over me, running into my eyes and mouth.  I am

adrift in a floating coffin, packed in too tight to move.

I feel something flutter against my cheek, a spiky-soft brush, like old

paper.  Thin legs settle on my face.  Wings beat.   After a moment it

creeps across my lips.  I can just make out a trace of animal heat

before it dips beneath my chin and slides into the hollow of my throat.

Overhead, the voices continue to talk, quite unconcerned.

    --Laia?  Mephista whispers.  She is broken.  Laia, help me.  Laia?

Laia?

I was up late, again.  Finishing a routine sort of meditation, just an

attempt to get some facts in order.  By the time I was done, my eyes

had begun to tear from sheer exhaustion.

Coming out of composition mode, I looked blankly around my workspace

and saw that like an idiot I had left the screen door to the balcony

open.  Not a good idea at this time of year.  You let the bugs in.  The

Salla women are brave, as a general rule, but I hate having insects in my

house.  There is something creepy about them: their fierce, mindless,

primitive compulsions.  An AI like Mephista is an extract of our purer

selves; bugs are the opposite.  They are dirt, night, filth, decay.  The

flesh that creeps.

The dream came in bursts:  the sick smell of seawater, rocking in the

dark, the brush of delicate wings on my mouth:  and then a gap, a

passage seen dimly, as if behind glass, where everything was filmy and

unfocussed, and all I could hear was Mephista screaming.  Screaming and

screaming.

Out on the patio I stood for a bleary moment or two, watching city

lights in the water:  the passing glare of water taxis and police choppers.

Lollipop colors too:  the neon night-life come-ons that shake on the

canal surface as if trembling to the beat of late night music.  And light

is always welling up from underneath:  cool blue chakra-rooms and

dream-parlors, the spark and flicker of a hundred submarine spots where my

cohort goes to dance and mate and bootleg pirate meatware.

I think I might have had a glass of water before going to sleep.  I

can't remember now.

Snap back, my dream again, Mephista broken and crying very quietly,

tender like a brutal bruise at my core.  Knowing if I touched her, the

pain would be unbearable.

Voices overhead.  A low woman's laugh.  A man, questioning.  The slap

of waves.  Waves!  My floating coffin is a boat, I am trapped under the

hull of a boat, as if the planks have been nailed around me.

I sleep in a hammock.  There's no way I should be able to get out of it

without waking up.

Another glassy spell. Mephista is screaming, a long way away.  She is

being tortured for information she doesn't know.  I'm glad it isn't me.

Glad my part of the nightmare isn't happening just now.

It was a glass of wine, I remember now.  Red spanish wine.  A last

glass to help me sleep.  I haven't been sleeping well these days.

There was a picture of a butterfly on the label, an ugly one.  No,

there wasn't either.  It was a moth.  A big dun moth had come in through

the open door.  Spots like furry eyes looked up at me.  It lifted off the

bottle and drifted a moment before settling on my hand.  Its wings

closed and opened, closed and opened.  Beating like a heart.

A crunch overhead, like stomping a boot into wet rotten wood.

A thud.

Later, something dragging across the floor.  Knocking and banging up

the companionway steps.

Splash.

I think about calling for Mephista, but I am scared it will hurt too

much.

Mephista is running crazily around inside me.  Bumping and crashing.

Wheeling through me, crippled and burning.

I wake up.

I am lying in the bottom of a wood/laminate skiff docked in the complex

boathouse.  I am soaked to the skin, wearing nothing but a sopping wet

nightgown.  The boat's owner is looming over me.  He speaks Chinese and

looks concerned.  I don't understand a word.  I wonder why Mephista

isn't translating.  Suddenly I sit up in shock, remembering.

I scramble out of the boat onto the dock, push by my neighbor and run

clumsily through the dim boathouse.  Things creak and strain in the

darkness around me. I am trapped under the weight of the apartment

building, Mephista is crying and crying inside my head.  I take the stairs.

    --Wake up, M.  Wake up.

By the time I have reached my door I am frightened but less confused.

Wake up, Mephista.  Wake up, dammit!  I feel her sleep in my blood like

a bad drug.  My heart is racing and my skin crawls in big patches, cold

flushes creeping all over my body.

    ---WAKE UP!   WAKE UP!

I am shivering uncontrollably and the doorknob rattles in my hand.  The

door opens, and out of nowhere I think:  Why didn't Venus wipe

Cloudmaker when she had the chance?  Why scuttle her with her memories intact?

    --WAKE UP, MEPHISTA!

I feel her rising in me like something buried deep underwater.  She

breaks free at last, a rush of her everywhere in me at once, crying and

sobbing.

    --Oh, Laia!

    --I know. I know.  Let's just try to calm down.  Let's just try to

sort this--

My eye falls on the table.  There's a moth lying there.  It's wings

have been cut off and laid beside it, one on each side of its body.

It's three hours later.  I just closed the door on my Chinese neighbor.

He came to return the knife I left in the bottom of his boat.