OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO oOOOO OOOO. OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" .OOOOOO OOOOOo OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOO oOOOOOOO OOOOOOO. OOOO oOOOO OOOO .OOOO OOOO OOOOOOOOo OOOO OOOO" OOOO oOOOO OOOO OOOO "OOOO. OOOO OOOOo .OOOO' OOOO .OOOO" OOOO OOOO OOOOoOOOO "OOOO. oOOOO OOOO oOOOOOOO..OOOO OOOO "OOOOOOO OOOOoOOOO" OOOO .OOOO"""OOOOOOOO OOOO OOOOOO "OOOOOOO' OOOO oOOOO ""OOOO OOOO "OOOO OOOOOO |---------------------------------------------------------------------------| | | | There Ain't No Justice | | | | #111 | | | |---------------------------------------------------------------------------| - Metamorph - Chapter 02 by Arifel II `Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.' - Goethe `i was living in Adelaide, more or less permanently on tour with a band called "Wax Sundial". i expect you've never heard of them.' i shook my head. `not surprising... they weren't very good. they let me write lyrics for them, sometimes; i didn't have much of a say in their musical direction, but i'd managed to work them around from being a halfway-decent Hawkwind cover band - this was the time of the hippy revival, mind - to the point of being borderline decent Goth - and one night, after a show, this girl from the audience came back to help us pack up. she wanted to talk to me, simply on the basis of the lyrics i'd written. `she told me that fifteen years before, she'd been given magical powers, and she wanted to pass them onto me.' i moved down slightly and nibbled her ear-lobe. `magical powers, huh? like the ability to change the length and colour of your hair?' `like the ability to change my shape completely. read people's minds, move objects without touching them... Fiona - that was her name - said that she could pass these abilities on to one other person, and she'd decided that i was that person.' `is this why we're sharing a bed? you want to give these abilities to me?' she m-hmm'ed assent. `yeah. she warned me first, it would hurt - every cell in my body had to undergo a sort of processing, and it took the better part of a week; around a hundred and forty hours of the most horrific pain imaginable.' there was something strange about the way she related this; as if she'd been terrified of the experience, but with an undercurrent of longing... `if i'd known how bad it would be, i wouldn't have done it, but once she'd started, it was too late to go back. `we went our separate ways after she'd instructed me in the use of my new body; since then, i've met about half a dozen others of my kind. we keep in touch.' `and you want me to join your, ah, kind?' i felt her lips smiling, brushing against mine. `i've been reading your messages. i've read the stories. i've been waiting for you to dump that Gary creature and get into the right frame of mind for this transition.' i smiled back, not believing a word of it and said, `well... why not?' she held me away again, looked into my eyes with a serious expression. `you agree?' i nodded, without really thinking about it. she grinned, exposing vampire-like canines. i froze for a moment, then grinned back at her, thinking i've finally found someone i can relate to, and maybe it was true after all... `well?' i asked. `well, what?' `well, when do we start?' she grinned and threw herself at me, pushing me back onto the bed. `right now.' she kissed my throat, her tongue tracing the line of the blood-vessels, tugging the neck-line of the jumper down so she could taste my collar-bone. `i meant, when do we start the procedure of making me one of you?' she kneeled over me, her hands on either side of my shoulders, and stared at me for a moment. `you're pretty eager to undergo the most agonising experience of your life, aren't you?' i returned her gaze levelly. `if you can appear as - or physically become - anything you want, why are you wasting your time with someone like me?' she took both my hands in one of hers, held them above my head, savaged my throat with her teeth. `i see inside. i know what you're like. i know what you can be.' `that's (agh), that's very flattering. you sound like Q, taunting Commander Riker...' she grinned at this comparison, while lifting the lower hem of my jumper and then ducking her head underneath the covers. `some of my associates are a lot like Q,' she said. `same sense of humour. one of them posed as a statue in the Art Centre for two months, and when there was a suitably large crowd of people admiring him, he suddenly came to life, announced "I'm completely bloody sick of this," and walked out.' i laughed. `i should introduce you to him. seriously... playing games like that, what we call "distancing" games, only emphasises how, how comfortable, how /good/ it feels to be human.' she lay herself along my body, writhed; `and to do human things...' i ran my hands down her sides, found the hem of the lycra bike-shorts she was wearing, slipped my fingers underneath the hem and stroked her behind. she brought her legs up, gripped my hips with her knees and my shoulders with her clenched fingers, bent down and touched her lips to mine. we lay like that for quite a while, hardly moving, until she grew impatient and removed her lycra shorts completely. doing this caused some cold air to slip in under the doona cover, and in our writhing to recover some of the lost warmth, we ended up lying side-by-side, legs intertwined. boldly, she explored me, her fingers cold enough to make me gasp, strangely contrasting with a warmth centred in the palm of her hand. helpless before such temptation, my erection returned in full force; i lay back with my eyes closed and let her have her way with me. i felt a sort of pin-pricking feeling on the tip of my tongue followed by a hot flush, the sort you get when you've got flu and your body is trying to deal with it. she lay on top of me, holding me tightly. she moved her mouth close to my ear and whispered, `it's going to hurt, worse than anything you've ever experienced. but i'll be here all the time. i'll do what i can to help you.' i tried to answer her and found i couldn't speak; i tried to turn my head, move my hand. nothing. i simply lay there, no panic, breathing slowly, shallowly, feeling the warmth inside grow until it became a burning, aligned with my spine. a distant hum became a roar in my ears, and my vision was filled with the sorts of patterns you get when you rub your eyes in the darkness. the burning spread out, down my arms and legs, slowly ascending my backbone one vertebra at a time. i waited for it to reach my brain. i imagined it was like a sewerage pipe backing up, my head filling with lava, covering the temporal and occipital lobes, swirling around inside my skull, lapping against the somatosensory area, a shivering derelict wrapped in blankets waking up and finding someone's set him alight. the sensation stepped up a few degrees, to the point where it felt like my skin was being inflated with scalding water and my nerves, viscera, bones and the rest were swimming in it. i couldn't move or scream or protest; each time i thought it had levelled off to a degree i could stand, it got worse. i could see daylight against the outside of my closed eyelids. the sun had come up; it felt like i'd been burning for years, and yet the movement of the light indicated it'd been less than half an hour. i knew i wasn't going to make it, then; and it kept getting worse. i was screaming, inside, vividly imagining that i was shaking my head from side to side madly; then something cool touched my shoulder and neck, magically draining the heat and pain from me down my right side from my jaw down to my hip. ohh, yes, i can make it now, i thought. `i'm taking energy from you,' i imagined her saying. `this process generates a shitload of energy. are there any covens or mystics or psychics living nearby? they might sense it and come looking.' she touched my left shoulder and the heat retreated from that side, too; my feet had cooled down but my head was screaming white hot. i didn't think there were any witchy people around; this suburb was primarily for people to retire to. most of the magick types i knew lived in Coburg. `good. i'm going to do as much as i can for you right now, then i'm going to call some friends. we'll absorb the excess energy and help you through this.' you're going? `i'll be back in a few minutes; i just have to put out the call and i'll come right back.' oh christ, no - as soon as she removed her touch, the heat came back, worse than ever. it was all the worse for not being able to move - i imagined that writhing about, biting the carpet and shrieking madly might have helped me deal with it. maybe this was part of the process, learning to cope with the pain. i couldn't think of any distractions; usually, when you're hit with this sort of sensation, your only instinct is to get away from the cause. i tried thinking of music, something harsh, thrash? guitar? the pixies. this monkey's gone to heaven, i thought. it worked. i, visualised? audialised? the song as best i could remember it, creature in the sky, got sucked in a hole, now there's a hole in the sky, right, right... i imagined the guitars, the strings, the bassline, the rhythm thumping along mechanically and the pain pulsing in time to the beat. i imagined the guitar chords, D Major, B Minor, D Major E Major F Sharp A Major, over and over. with the pain changing intensity like this, pulsing, i felt i could survive for as long as i kept the song looping over in my head. meanwhile, my vision centres were going crazy, lines of bright blue laser light slashing back and forth, red giant suns searing me from either side, the left side of my brain squared off mechanical and ratcheting like a three-dimensional slide rule, a Lemarchand puzzle-box in full spin, the right side pulsing and sighing like a sponge soaked in blood, in love with life and seeping from a million wounds, and both sides were slowly expanding, spreading out to meet in the middle, and i knew when they met that something terrible was going to happen, that they were going to fight over me. i smiled to myself amidst the noise, the agony, the light and the approaching sense of terror. if i could've moved, i expect i would have run my tongue over my teeth like Frank Cotton in `Hellraiser', and said `Jesus wept!'. this was what i'd been looking for all those times i'd taken hallucinogens, and here it was for the price of a kiss. wau. the two halves of me were about to attack each other when she came back. it seemed like months since she'd left me, and the relief from the pain she brought made her appearance like the arrival of an angel. she appeared as one to my spiky, skewed vision; i couldn't actually see her, but the phosphenic noise clustered to one side and formed an MTV-style figure, black-and-white face from some old movie, a burning purple halo like neon rings of Saturn torn from around the planet and run through with current, her wings formed from thousands of scattered feathers dancing fitfully to the beat of my imagined music, her hands drifting down to me like descending sheets of ice rain. as they settled around my face, the bright lights faded to the point where i could be sure i'd imagined them, and the heat receded. my brain no longer felt like a tennis ball in a bath of molten metal. `it's okay, i'm here now. i've sent out the call, and the others will be here soon.' others? `of my kind. of our kind. some of us keep contact, share research, ideas. sometimes we collaborate on a project. i know of three who'll definitely be here, two more maybe. `our shape-changing isn't limited to the outside. there's a modification that, uh, comes with the ability, sort of an optional extra; it's like a combination quick-reference, add-on computer, instant data storage-retrieval system. it handles most of the usual, boring stuff like keeping records of patterns you might like to replicate one day.' she moved her hands from around my face - the pain flared up until she replaced her hands on my shoulders, massaging gently. `there have been Metamorphs on earth for over eight thousand years... records go back that far, at least. there's a sort of initiatory tradition where newly-changed Metamorphs travel to Nereid - the smaller moon of Neptune - and leave their signatures on a block of onyx there. i haven't been on the Pilgrimage yet, but i'm told there's more than two thousand signatures on it.' how would someone get there? hitch a lift with NASA? `Hah, no... various methods. one of us left in fourteen fifty-two and travelled at sublight speeds. she got back only last year.' you can travel faster than light? `when it suits us to. don't ask how, i don't know the details. they're in storage somewhere. when you need to make the trip, you work it out.' i lay there, eyes closed, feeling like i was lying on the surface of a huge balloon filled with some dense gas. occasionally, ripples would go through it, and i'd feel like i was about to fall through the surface and sink into the gas. Lydya sat beside me for the first light-to-dark period, her hands touching me, either both sides of my head or my chest. the moments where she moved her hands were terrible; the pain had escalated to the point where i couldn't bear to be deprived of her touch even for a few seconds. later that evening, two others arrived. i could sense them at the end of the bed, radiating cool aloofness, occasionally moving to get a better view of me. i still couldn't sense any great change in me; sometimes, i lost track of the outlying parts of my body, my feet and hands; sometimes i was reduced to a tiny brain on an abbreviated spinal column, a rotten, wrinkled apple dangling from the end of a withered branch. Lydya talked me through the first night. she told me of the things that the Metamorphs had done in the past while remaining in the background. some had obsessions; there was one who lived in Canada who was taken with uncovering conspiracies, who knew the names of the three men who had really shot Kennedy; there was one who roved the world, collecting genetic samples of every life-form in existence before the humans have a chance to kill them. `most of us lead fairly ordinary lives on the surface. we don't draw attention to ourselves. we live as you do, from day to day, accumulating experiences, storing sights and sounds and scents, researching the physical world, looking into the past as revealed in the genetic library, looking out into the skies at night. we don't judge what might be considered wrong or right, but we all have opinions. for example - well, speaking personally - if i came across someone being raped, i'd do some uniquely painful things to the rapist. i'd make sure he never did it again. for a while, that's all i did, wandered around looking defenceless, attracting the attention of the sort of people you wouldn't want to see wandering free at night. and then taking care of them.' from what i could judge of the light coming through my still-closed eyelids, the sun was coming up again when she stepped back, briefly charging me with agony before one of the others stepped forward and touched me. the pain dropped back slightly, but was still foremost in my senses. it was tolerable, but very uncomfortable; about the level you would be at if someone were torturing you and you were bravely resisting, spitting in their face and saying `do your worst, damn you!' i knew it could get a lot worse than this, so i maintained. whoever was there didn't bother to speak to me, so i just lay silently, trying to feel out my outlines, establish what parts of me were still present. with a little concentration, i could feel most of me; my nervous system was still intact. i thought about the previous week, about driving my car, the feel of wind on my face through the poorly-lined soft top, of driving late at night with the music cranked up loud, of getting drunk and reading electronic mail, of Gary and the way things had been when i'd first met him, of my friends, of visiting Goth clubs, the crowds of people, of watching Siouxie and the Banshees on the overhead video systems, the taste of vodka and lemon, the smell of stale cigarette smoke, the taste of peyote, the dizziness, late nights and early mornings trying to achieve alternative states of consciousness and the futility of trying to describe them by writing it all down on pieces of paper with ballpoint pens. abruptly, the pain rose to the awful level that signalled my being alone. i suffered in silence, my mind darting about desperately trying to find something that would relieve the feeling. nothing worked, not even mentally playing the song `bone machine' over and over. the last thing i recall is imagining my brain, smaller than ever and slowly shrinking as it sank below the surface of a bathtub filled with molten lead. shiny rivulets worked their way into the cortical fissures and then completely covered it. with a buzzing sound, my consciousness receded, and for a long time after this point, i was aware, in a sort of dim, uncomprehending, passive fashion; usually, one's thought processes involve imagined sounds, words as you talk to yourself internally, snatches of music, phrases, desires, stimuli from your body, itches to relieve, hungers to sate. i didn't think; i wasn't even aware that the pain was gone. i simply was. the bright patterns were gone; i observed the cycle of light and dark slowly parading over my eyelids... and i waited dark light dark light dark light again dark again wet dark wet rain cat hello cat light wet light wet dark cat again hello cat light she wet she hello she Lydya she. it's been raining. i think i've been asleep. i'm in the uh garden. i'm in the back yard. i'm under the lemon tree. cat. i think he wants to be fed. cat food is in the house. get up. no? crawl. to the house. open door. cat food is in cupboard. cat food is in can. can is closed. cat can't open can. squeeze, it's open. broken can. cat eats. it's night time again. it's raining again. i'm lying on the grass. looking up at the sky. the rain falls on me. it's warm. there are things swimming in the rain. i can see them. a green thing has landed on my nose. lacewing fly. Chrysopidae, backbrain says. i can see inside it, see the working bits, see how it unwinds and flies from one spot to the next. it looks like a clockwork toy, no more intelligence than one of those wind-up monkeys that plays cymbals and bugs its eyes out. it does what it was wound up to do. it was raining a few, uh, days ago. i have a vague memory of sitting in the back yard, back against the lemon tree, just sitting there and watching the clouds wheel past. it rained. i felt like i'd become a plant, just content to sit and catch sunlight. (smile) maybe i'd put some roots down. she was here all along. Lydya. i suppose she was keeping watch, making sure i didn't run off or something. i hope she fed the cats. they seemed pretty hungry when i, uh, woke up. i remember opening the can by squeezing it, and it didn't take any more effort than you might use in crushing a paper cup. (smile) the cats didn't mind. i remember looking at that lacewing fly that landed on me. it looked big; well, huge, as if it'd landed on the stage of a microscope. i could see the tiny nerves, muscles, quivering hairs, twitching eyes, antennae, air whispering in and out of spiracles, cells dividing, code sequences undoing, doing up again, undoing, like magnetic Lego blocks that kept changing shape. within seconds i had... realised it, comprehended it fully, from egg to adult. it was like those structures you could generate in Conway's Game Of Life, the ones that would fly across the screen spewing copies of themselves in all directions before hitting a wall and dying. looking at it on that level, it was pretty sad; get born, eat, reproduce, die. i begin to think that the complications introduced by consciousness are needless complications. these things happen; life lives and then dies. what's the point of agonising about it? what? the hell with this. i intend to have some fun with life. at one point - i can't remember when - Lydya warned me about the dangers of looking inwards straight off. if i'd looked into my own form with the thoroughness that i'd invested in that lacewing fly, i'd've been here for ever. i don't feel hungry. i haven't eaten for days. maybe i did put some roots down. * i get up, my muscles protesting at first and then sliding smoothly; i go inside. there's a funny smell in the house, one i hadn't ever noticed before, sort of a heavy, musky odour. the rooms are in partial darkness. in the living room, Lydya is reading one of my books (`The Lowbrow Art Of Robert Williams') and listening to an LP (Adrian Belew's `Lone Rhinoceros'). i stand in the doorway, staring at all the things i'd never noticed before. unbidden, a kind of pulse surged up in me, my vision blanking bright white for the briefest instant; when it subsided, the entire room was perfectly outlined, every piece of furniture highlighted, absolute distances between things marked down to within a micron. the amount of dust in here is phenomenal. Lydya looked up at me, smiled warmly, put the book down. the volume on the record player dropped without her touching it. `welcome to the real world.' she said in earnest. i just stood and stared at her, taking in the words. i'd been without them for so long, i wanted to savour their strangeness, how the universe could be bound up into little packets and tossed around so casually. humanity is so arrogant, in that respect. imagining that words can encompass reality. i realised that the narrow way humanity thought, the narrow world-view allowed into their narrow consciousness through the tiny narrow slit that their narrow limited perceptions could manage, was just one way of looking at things. it worked fine if all you needed was to keep your belly full and to ensure a viable environment for your children. i'd always imagined that there was more to what we understood. now i knew. i entered the room and sat down before her, my legs crossing with an ease they'd never known before, my hands resting easily on my knees, my face blank, eyes wide, open, ready for anything she wanted to communicate. i became aware of a new sense; the tiny hairs that grew along my cheekbones were sensitive to changes in air pressure, much like a cat's whiskers were; it was a welcome supplement to my other senses. i found my voice, finally. it sounded strange to me; `now what?' she rolled her eyes in exasperation. `come on, there must have been a thousand things you would have wanted to do if given the ability to change your shape! what happened to them?' my attention wandered from her face to the dust motes floating in the shafts of sunlight coming in through the kitchen window. presently, i found more words. `that was before. i feel like... well, like my volition has been derailed, completely right-angled. i could really spend the rest of eternity in the back yard, looking at insects.' she smiled at me. `would you like to go on a pilgrimage?' ú ùþ ú ú þù ú ÛÛÛÛÛÜÜÜÜþÜÜÜÜ ú ù ú ú ù ú ÜÜÜÜþÜÜÜÜÛÛÛÛÛ ±±±±ÛÛÛßÛ²ÝÛÝÛÛÝþ Üú úÜ þÝÛÛÝÛݲÛßÛÛÛ±±±± ±±±±²²²²²ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÜþúÝ ù ù ÝúþÜÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ²²²²²±±±± ±±²²²²ÛÛßßÛßÝÛÛÛÛÛÝÜúþ þúÜÝÛÛÛÛÛÝßÛßßÛÛ²²²²±± ²²²²²Ûß þúßÞþßþþÜùþ þùÜþþßþÞßúþ ßÛ²²²²² ²²²²Ûß ú ù ù ú ßÛ²²²² ²²²ÛÝ ÝÛ²²² ²²²ÛÜ ÜÛ²²² ±²²²ÛÝ ÝÛ²²²± ±±²²²ÛÜÜÜ ÜÜÜÛ²²²±± ±±±²²²²²²ÛÜ Phoenix Modernz Systems: 908/830-TANJ ÜÛ²²²²²²±±± ÛÛ±±±±±±²²²Û VapourWare BBS: 61/3-429-8510 Û²²²±±±±±±ÛÛ ÛÛ±±±±±±²²²Û underworld_1995.com 514/683-1894 Û²²²±±±±±±ÛÛ ±±±²²²²²²ÛÜ RipCo ][: 312/528-5020 ÜÛ²²²²²²±±± ±±²²²ÛÜÜÜ etext.archive.umich.org ÜÜÜÛ²²²±± ±²²²ÛÝ ÝÛ²²²± ²²²ÛÜ ÜÛ²²² ²²²ÛÝ ÕÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ͸ ÝÛ²²² ²²²²Ûß ú ù ³ TANJ Mailing Address ³ ù ú ßÛ²²²² ²²²²²Ûß þúßÞþßþþÜùþ ³ PO Box 174 ³ þùÜþþßþÞßúþ ßÛ²²²²² ±±²²²²ÛÛßßÛßÝÛÛÛÛÛÝÜúþ ³ Seaside Hts, NJ ³ þúÜÝÛÛÛÛÛÝßÛßßÛÛ²²²²±± ±±±±²²²²²ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÜþúÝ ù ³ 08751 ³ ù ÝúþÜÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ²²²²²±±±± ±±±±ÛÛÛßÛ²ÝÛÝÛÛÝþ Üú ÔÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ; úÜ þÝÛÛÝÛݲÛßÛÛÛ±±±± ÛÛÛÛÛÜÜÜÜþÜÜÜÜ ú ù ú tanj@pms.metronj.org ú ù ú ÜÜÜÜþÜÜÜÜÛÛÛÛÛ