Wow. I certainly have ignored this blog of mine, haven’t I? I believe it’s about time I began writing in it again, and not simply to chronicle the day-to-day events of my life...that kind of thing gets boring after a while. That is not what I set out to do; I set out and created this account and blog to capture ideas, constructs, poetry and memory—yes, memory, but only in its proper course. My life is not interesting enough to exclusively write a blog about, but when you add my ideas…well, perhaps it can be. Anyway, let’s pursue this, shall we?

The Village. Every city has one: an area where the rancid, diseased, scabbed-over aspects of urban life burst out into the open and bloom into something that’s strangely wonderful. A pub, clubs, bars…the pus of society gets drained out in these little triage centers, trickles away, carrying the infection with it. Most assume that this saves the rest of the populace; the poor, sickened souls that inhabit those locations are too far gone to ever recover, to ever survive, and so they’re left alone. We let the drunks and junkies slouch away and simply keep a tighter grip on our purses and wallets when they slide by us. It’s too late for them, poor things, why can’t we help them? They don’t want to be helped…however can that happen? What drives them to stay in the red-light districts and bars?

It’s simple, really. In the cold, bright symmetry of the skyscrapers, the 24-hour days, the glare of florescent lights…you freeze. That fire in your gut gets snuffed out; ice is jammed down your throat, numbing your lips and tempering your tongue like red-hot metal in the waterbath so that argument overcomes words of kindness. Your highbeams get turned off, and you cannot see ahead. But alcohol and laughter, rowdiness and obscenities, the deep bass beat of a good techno song...that makes the cold go away. You warm up to strangers, reach out and touch them and find something real and unbound by a nine-to-five schedule and set rules of conduct. You sing, make stupid jokes, try things you know you’ll regret and laugh it off as it happens. The tentative friendships—tiny heartbreak and comradry to lend more weight to the friendships back home. It’s so personal and impersonal, so dangerous and foolhardy and addictive; it’s better then the mundane. Sometimes it’s better to be transitive. Sometimes it’s better to be out on the street or at the bar; to be irresponsible and id-driven and ready to go out in a blaze of glowsticks and glory.

We need to have a little sleeze, a little disease in our lives. Something cancerous and warped out of shape, to offset the monotony. Sure, it’s dangerous and toxic, and it can build up in your system—I know that. I’ve been nearly claimed by it, and every time I go to the city I’m reminded of the danger by telephone booths, prepositions, the rubbing of cloth against cracks and scarring. I know that it’s stupid to get drunk and show up somewhere and talk with people I barely know; I’ll never see them again, and who knows what their intentions could be? That makes it so much more precious, though! What’s better? Having the time of your life, even if it claims it, bursts it and burns it like powder to match, or burning slowly and emotionlessly? Apathy or annihilation?

Both, I believe. Both.

Crash.

“I’m sorry.”

The words couldn’t help but escape my mouth. Quickly I looked away from the rear-view mirror, stared at Jack, stared at Jill, looked back again. “It’s just—I know—look, I’m sorry.”

Tom raised an eyebrow and grinned lopsidedly. “Déjà vu, isn’t it?”

“Yeppers. I could have sworn I’ve heard this before…” Max chimed in and reached over to pat my shoulder. “So I’ll say it again, Doorbell. We’ve made up our minds, and it’s okay. It really is, man.”

Yes, I’d had this exact conversation with Max and Tom at least three times already. The thesis was always the same—they were making the choice to join ARFA on their own. They’d been thinking about it for a while, it seemed, before I even showed up with Jack and Jill and my own stupid story. I hadn’t forced them to consider it, nor would I ever. It was their choice. It was all their choice in the end, and nothing could—or would—change that.

Still, I kept thinking about the apartment they’d just found, after weeks of searching. The studies that they probably wouldn’t be able to continue now that they’d be employed under ARFA. They had lives already, and now they were being turned upside-down by this newest chain of events. Tom and Max had spent so long trying to find a place to settle down and continue their studies, but now…now they were just going to give that up to help the poleepkwa. Hopefully they’d still be able to have semi-normal lives, but if Jake was any example that really wasn’t likely. The knowledge made me admire them all the more, though guilt still twisted in my gut and my thoughts kept turning to maybes. Maybe if I hadn’t mentioned it, they wouldn’t have joined. They would have found other, less dangerous ways of helping my people, but then again we needed all the help we could get. We really did, so shouldn’t I be thankful they would do this? That they were doing this?

I turned around in my seat and faced them. “But are you sure—“

Something must have happened in those few seconds that I wasn’t looking, because a squealing noise came and the car suddenly jerked forward, then back. Metal groaned and screeched; suddenly we were sideways and something collided with the back of my head—my vision went black and stayed black. Nearby I heard Jill warble in fear, and reached out for her. She was fine…no cuts or bruises, but she clung to me along with her brother, voice shaky and warbling. “Olo—what happened? The car’s sideways.”

Tom swore and a slight clicking sound came. “Goddamn seat belts. Hey guys, are you okay? Max? Kids? Olo?” More clicking sounds came and I felt movement. “The fucking car crashed…is everyone okay?” His voice was loud. “I’m going to try to crawl out of the side of the car, okay?” Metal began screeching, and I heard the tinkle of breaking glass.

“Here…holy shit! Oh god. Oh god, oh god—shit!” Max’s voice came from somewhere close to my antennae, sounding hoarse and pained. “Damn. My leg…shit. Shit shit shit.”

“Max?” I turned my neck and ignored the spike of pain the motion caused. “What is it…?” I blinked, first once, then twice. “I can’t see you.” Something wet was leaking into my eyes, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Was there blood in my eyes or engine oil?

“Here—Maxie, stay still. Still, Max. We’re gonna get you out—Olo, I need a hand here, man. Jack and Jill, you’ve got to crawl out of this.” Tom’s voice was steady—well, steadier then anyone else’s—and he guided me out of the car. "Look, we've gotta get out of here."

Rehash.

The conversation was light for the rest of the day; we rehashed the past and joked about old raving escapades while drinking various non-alcoholic beverages—Tom stuck to coffee, while Max and I had cola. We’d arrived late in the day, so no caffeine for Jill and Jack; they drank apple juice from a small carton that had been stuck haphazardly in the back of the refrigerator to cool down when we arrived. On a whim, I logged onto my facebook account and let Tom poke around, chatting with some of my other friends. Max grinned and began telling me what had transpired when I left.

“Yeah. After you left, we packed up and went to college—dorms.” He grimaced and rubbed at his soul patch before continuing. “Yeah, the dorms were bad. Remember the old apartment, the one we used to crash in all the time? The Hangover Hang-out?”

I nodded; how could I forget The Hangover Hang-out? It had been the place where I slept in a warm, reasonably clean bed for the first time, watched television sitcoms for the first time, gotten drunk for the first time. The chaotic, cramped residence was forever fixed in my head alongside the basement—the memories of the apartment, though, were warm and bright, at odds with the cold, blank bewilderment of my basement memories. It was good that I couldn’t forget it...it was really good.

“Well, these rooms made the old apartment look like the Ritz.” Max chuckled and sipped at his cola, shaking his head mockingly at the memories. “We couldn’t stay there—we were already catching flak from some of the jerks who lived there also—so Tommy came up with the idea of getting our own place. Of course, with him getting his chemistry degree and me studying my ass off with all the mythology and psychology courses, it was hard.”

From the other side of the room, Thomas grinned and looked up from the small laptop; there was no conventional computer here. “For God’s sake man, don’t study your ass off. You need it!” He laughed and looked back at the screen, eyes narrowing slightly as he read the text. “Hey Olo…who’s this ‘Thomas Rohrer’ guy?”

“A friend of mine. He works for ARFA—y’know, the Alien Rights and Freedom Association.” Quickly I warded off the impending question, antennae twitching slightly. “I’ll explain it all later, okay?”

“Sure thing.” Thomas nodded and went back to surfing the web.

Max followed that short conversation, then raised an eyebrow and stuck his tongue out at Tom, coaxing laughter out of Jack and Jill. It did look funny, seeing a man in his twenties resort to such an infantile gesture, but this was Max we were talking about. Age really didn’t seem to matter with him, nor appearances. That quality seemed to be in everyone I met…but of course that would be the case. I was an alien, after all, and not many bigoted people would want to be friends with me. Just my luck, I guess.

Sensing the conversation sputtering out like a candle deprived of oxygen, my black-haired friend blinked and rolled his neck. “So anyway…it took a while, but once we got some real free time away from classes, we started scouting around. New York isn’t the best place for people like us, at least when you want an apartment, so we waited until we could transfer together before putting the down payment on this place. Now we’re at the college nearby—it’s a nice place. Copacetic, really.”

Tom held up a fist in the air, his eyes never leaving the laptop screen. “Right on.”

Jack and Jill giggled again before scampering off. I kept track of them out of the corner of my eye—they wouldn’t deliberately cause trouble, but it was still possible that they’d knock something over, mix up a box or two…”

“It’s fine, really. It’s all cool.” He must have caught my expression. Max flicked his wrist a bit, driving away the idea as if it was a mosquito. “Jack and Jill can fool around all they want. They’re kids.” He smiled as my children pulled a deck of cards out of the duffel bag and sat down a short distance away. I gazed at them—yes, they were playing gin rummy. They loved that game.

Quietly I could hear him add, “Could you tell us your end of the story, now? What’s gone on over the past few months?” max didn’t say it out loud, but his quick glance at my scarred plating begged the question: what the hell happened to you? Tom looked up and closed the laptop, picking up that the conversation was turning away from its original trivial subject.

What the hell had happened over the past few months? When I stop to think about it, even now, it seems like so much…too much to have all happened. It did, though—I’ve got the memories and the scars to prove it, tangible reminders that my dreams and flashbacks really aren’t just in my head. They’re real, and they did happen. Slowly I felt myself tip the coke bottle and drink a few sips’ worth. Even though I was moving of my own accord, it was detached. I could have been an observer to it all; an audience member to my own monologue, listening in on my own soliloquy. I just wished that it was better then it actually was; Hamlet’s “to be, or not to be” seemed a whole lot better then my stories of Miss Miss, tripping, meeting ARFA…and the egg trade.

They didn’t need to hear that; I could have easily lied and used my brain—my somewhat talented brain, if I allowed myself the vanity of thinking that—to formulate some other way of explaining my cracked, still-healing frame. I could have fallen down a flight of stairs, or gotten into a memorable barfight, or gotten caught up in a rowdy MNU protest. But no: the story tumbled from my mouth in all of its bastard glory—and the best part? The best part? It was tame compared to some of the other ones I’ve heard. Take Seth Thomas, Sherry Johnson, Gabriel Mumper, Nick Gogan. What I’ve seen is nothing compared to what—

Max was staring at me, horror etched on his features. “You’re…you’re not kidding. You…really did that.” He ran a hand through his hair, looking down and shaking his head. “Just…damn. Damnit. That shouldn’t be happening here. Not in America, or anywhere. Damnit.”

My voice was quiet. “Well…Blue Fly doesn’t do it anymore. We—“ No. I would not tell them what happened to that monster. Let’s save some of their sensibilities, shall we? “We took him down. He got arrested. He's...he's in jail now.”

“But still, there are others.” Thomas tentatively put a hand on my shoulder. The blue cloth of his sweater rubbed against my green plating and I thought briefly of analogous colors. He was complementary, but I was analogous to him. Funny. Ha-ha. Why wasn’t I laughing?

Max chewed on his bottom lip for a few seconds, then stared right at me. “We’re joining this ‘ARFA’ thing. If this shit goes on, we’ve got to stop it.” He stared at Thomas, who had moved during my narrative to sit next to him. His voice was softer when he spoke to him. “Right?”

Thomas smiled grimly and flicked Max’s nose. “That’s right, Maxine.” He nodded and blinked at me. “We’re signing up to this. Can you put a good word in for us with the guy in charge? I checked it out…it was some ‘Commander of ARFA’ guy and Ryan Baumgardner, right?”

I could only stare at them, moth agape and mandibles hanging slackly. Their remarks…they were in English, perfect Tom-and-Max English, but for some reason their meaning refused to be processed. If I was a computer, I’d still be displaying the ‘Windows Is Loading’ pop-up.

“What?”

Reunion.

The trip to Max and Tom’s place wasn’t that hard, or long. One of them—I think it was Tom, since he tends to think of things like that ahead of time—sent me a set of directions through the email system that would get Jill, Jack and me to their apartment without a great risk of being spotted. Still, it was painstaking and methodical travel, especially when Jack and Jill wanted to look at and draw/analyze everything new they saw. They’re like miniature energizer bunnies; they’ll keep going and going and having a fun time doing it.

Finally, though, we were able to sneak up to the apartment and knock on the door. Jill and jack hugged my legs, blinking around silently at the somewhat dingy hallway. Hopefully nobody would see us…or whoever saw us wouldn’t care enough to alert MNU…

“Who is it?” I recognized Max’s voice, but it sounded…different. Less stressed, with an almost laid-back tone; from those three words I guessed that the college life had been treating him well. The question was, how much had he changed since I’d last seen him?

I shuffled my feet uneasily; Jack and Jill disentangled themselves from my legs. “It’s Olo—”

It immediately flew open. “Olo!” A man with black hair stood there for a moment, blinking at me, then letting his eyes travel down to Jack and Jill. I blinked in surprise myself; Max had changed his appearance since I’d last seen him. He’d let his short Mohawk grow out and actually had a soul patch-of-sorts. Good old Max…his expression was the same as I’d imagined it—full of good-natured surprise and happiness.

“Hey man—it’s great to see you again! Come on in. Tommy’s just straightening out a place for you guys to sleep.” He pressed himself against the door frame, allowing us passage, and closed the door behind us. After a few moments of silence, he grinned. “So? What do you think? We’re still getting settled in, but we’re nearly there.”

“It’s…wow.” They’d quickly described their apartment in the various emails we’d exchanged in the past few days, but seeing it in person was so much different. The walls were a nice turquoise color, while a green carpet was halfway spread out on the floor. One side was still undone; grey cement winked at us like the sidewalk at the edge of a lawn. Boxes were scattered around the place, pushed up against the walls and stacked on top of each other to make makeshift tables and work surfaces. We seemed to be in some form of kitchen, but there was a sofa and a small coffee table in here as well. I remembered a remark from the last email: it’s not a huge place, so we’re combining some rooms. It should make for an interesting layout. It sure did.

Jack scampered away from me, heading towards another room that was adjacent to the one we were already in. he turned and fled back to me as a figure exited the space and stopped. “Yo.”

My mandibles twitched, then froze in surprise. This man…this man couldn’t really be Thomas, the same Thomas that had admittedly “tried to rock the nerdy look, and failed.” He’d gotten different glasses—these were rectangular frames, a far cry from his old circular ones—and he had to have grown at least four inches. He’d even gone ahead and dyed his hair…it was a brilliant orange color that contrasted with the blue sweater he wore. That at least hadn’t changed: Thomas had a knack for wearing warm clothing even when it was roasting out. The guy was permanently cold.

“Oh hey there. You’re Jack and Jill, right?” Thomas scratched his head and looked down at the two little poleepkwa.

Jill nodded. “You’re…you’re Thomas?”

“Yeppers.” Tom grinned and knelt down, so he could be at eye level. “You can call me Tom or Tommy, though. Thomas sounds so formal.” He made a face; Jill giggled and Jack smiled. Straightening up, he gestured with his head at the duffel bag I was carrying. “You want me to get that Olo?”

“Uh…sure.” I handed off the bag to him, and he walked off with it. Thoughts churning, I turned to face Max, who was still smiling. “We have an awful lot to talk about, don’t we?”

"Yup. You could say that."

old friends.

I rarely, if ever, check my email; the last time I checked it I had over three thousand notification emails from facebook and other spam sites. So when I logged on to my email, I expected nothing but hordes of pointless spam messages that I would have to systematically rifle through and delete. Of anything, I did not expect a letter from a friend, especially a friend that I had not heard from in a while.
Maxie and Tommy—the two college students that had found me and taught me the rules and ways of the rave. Quite possibly, the two first nice humans I’d ever met.

Hey Olo! Max here.
Long time no see. Or talk. Or message. Or rave. :( It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Hope everything’s been going well in your little universe. I got your emails a while ago—sorry that I haven’t responded. It’s just been so chaotic with the moving around and college and all of that. Can you believe that it took us over a month to get an apartment? Some people just hung up on us when we said we wanted to lease an apartment for two men. They were jerks…oh well. PLUR, right? ;)
Anyway, when are you coming over to visit us with those little kiddies of yours? I’d LOVE to meet Jack and Jill, and I know Tommy would too. Let me know ASAP, bud! It would be great to meet up again!
-Max, the magnificent.

The epitaph made me smile a bit. Trust Max to use that nickname I’d given him so long ago…how long had it actually been since I’d seen them last? Months, at the very least. I’d been with Miss Miss since September, so it had been months. Too long, much too long; it would be nice to meet up with old friends again. Quickly I typed up a response, grinning wider with each tap at the keyboard.

Olo the Doorbell here.
Sounds like a great idea! Just send me the address—it might take a while, but I’d love to join in the housewarming pleasantries. ^,,^ Jack and Jill send their regards. See you two soon!

The Cat Came Back (Remake)

Old MNU had some troubles of his own
He had a yellow cat which couldn't leave his home;
he abused it and he used it, since it couldn’t run away,
one got back to the mothership and flew far, far away.

and the cat came back, the very next day,
The cat came back, they thought it was a goner
But the cat came back; and then they all got away.
Away, away, yea, yea, yea

The grunt around the corner swore he'd kill the cat on sight,
He picked up his cattle prod and went out to start a fight;
He waited and he swore that the cat would not return,
He was never heard from again; oh, won’t they ever learn?

and the cat came back, the very next day,
The cat came back, they thought it was a goner
But the cat came back; and then they all got away.
Away, away, yea, yea, yea

He gave it to a blue fly, with a dollar note,
He told him to take it ‘cross the ocean in a boat;
They tied a rope around its neck, it must have weighed a pound
Now they search the docks for a blue fly that was drowned.

and the cat came back, the very next day,
The cat came back, they thought it was a goner
But the cat came back; and then they all got away.
Away, away, yea, yea, yea

He fumed and he swore when the cat met with UIO,
he tried to say it wasn’t true when it told its tale of woe;
But then a voice cried out in rage, and said “this won’t go on!”
The faces turned to the podium; alas, the cat was gone.
and the cat came back, the very next day,
The cat came back, they thought it was a goner
But the cat came back; and then they all got away.
Away, away, yea, yea, yea