From: achen1@csupomona.edu (ALAN CHEN)
Subject: Dreamwalking the Amazon - Cut1
Date: 28 Jul 94 11:09:32 PST

"Dreamwalking the Amazon"

Cut1

Death sometimes whispers to me, late at night. Hearing, I
cannot move from the bed and, so, must listen.  His hollow
voice, soft like decay, urges me to action.  I have never
replied.  I will not take my life. Emotions slide between my
thoughts, gathering in the shadows, unidentifiable.
Death's cold grip steals upon my gut; he twists.  His liquid
voice rolls closer and closer, the whisper a shout.  Eyes
clamped shut, lips faintly moving, I begin to curse the
gods, starting with the Christian God, and onward, back to
older deities, Roman, Aztec, Norse, Greek, Egyptian, none are
spared.  To each a naming and an oath, for none of them have
really cared.  I continue until Death's cajoling voice and
icy grip fade to silence, and, myself, breathing a slow,
shallow, rhythm.  I never cry anymore.  After, I sleep well
and without dreams.

I try not to care, but I still do.  The pain of the
innocents disturbs my sleep as it fills my days. The jungle
outside my door awaits my presence, wet, humid, and patient.
I have released a savior demon upon the land; it has taken
the Amazon jungle in this locality and warped the ecology
almost beyond recognition.  The words of the pygmy medicine
man return to me again and again, "You have released the
spirits of the jungle.  They now walk the land in search of
a way back, or failing that make our world their own."

I clasp the necklace charm of the medicine man and run my
fingers through the magick in his bag.  The bag, my link,
and my mind are the only weapons I wield.  Standing outside,
every breath my last, dread fills me and threatens to
overflow, tears perhaps, or rage.  I hope I have buried him
deeply enough.  I mourn his loss for he was a good friend,
and a wise medicine man.  Finally, I walk into the filtering
fog and into the blackness of the waiting Amazon.

Copyright 1994
Alan Chen
(Pre) Occupations:        |"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
-Aerospace eng. undergrad |              -L. Long (RAH)
-RPG player               |Yes, I'm an ARO.  No, I'm not transferring!
-Dreamer                  |Email: achen1@csupomona.edu



"Dreamwalking the Amazon"
Copyright 1994

Cut2

Happiness, pure and simple.  No coming in a surge, but flowing through
my being in a rock steady stream.  The noble pursuit of knowledge fills
my mind with concepts, theories, equations, and, most important, a joy
I can find in few other places anymore.  The mythical (fictional)
Frankenstein could have not delved into the secrets of life as I have...
the double helix of life is mine to manipulate as I please and I am glad.
What can I do to take this knowledge gained from those before, striding
into the unknown like an olden explorer into a frontier land.  I thought I
received a good bargain in selling my soul.

I work every day in a research complex, a humorless construct of steel
and glass materially housing the labs, the researchers, the security
guards and beauracracy.  On a grander scale the building holds the
combined dreams of researchers and businessmen alike.  Researchers
delving deeply into the obscure depths of life itself and businessmen
dreaming of profits and stocks and the executive room in the corner
office.  What am I in the vast machine, but one component among a
intricate assembly of knowledge, laboratories, computers, managers,
and above all money.

I ignore all and instead look to the noble cause.  The quest the fills
my veins, I am the explorer in the name of humanity.  Each hill, each
hurdle is a possible cure to a disease or an improvement of the heath of
the public.  The work I do now will be realized in five or ten years, but I
don't care.  I am a crusader in search of knowledge, a holy grail of
scientists.  I make advances and this bring me joy.


Alan Chen
(Pre) Occupations:        |"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
-Aerospace eng. undergrad |              -L. Long (RAH)
-RPG player               |Yes, I'm an ARO.  No, I'm not transferring!
-Dreamer                  |Email: achen1@csupomona.edu
GE -p+ c++ l(+) u- e+(*) m+(*) s !n+(-) h(-) f+ !g w-(--) t+ r++ y?



"Dreamwalking the Amazon"
Copyright 1994


Cut3

"Is Carly there?"  The voice on the phone is breathless and soft and so
very feminine.  The video is blacked out and my curiosity is aroused; I've
been buried in my work for too long.  I wonder who this person is that's
called me in the middle of the night, recognition tugs at the corners of my
memory searching for purchase.  The SourceID box in the corner of my phone
screen is blinking the word "Acquiring" in the soft green originally found
on the HUD's of old military aircraft, synonymous with the idea of
situational data.  It usually does that when the lag is bad as it comes
from around the world or sometimes if linking with third world phone
systems with outdated and overloaded computers before locking onto the
number of the caller.  A hand emerges out of the blackness and gestures in
old sign language, "Meet me next week at our old college hangout."  Her
voice juxtaposes itself onto the familiar movements of the outdated and
dead language of the hand, "Oh sorry, wrong number."  She disconnects.

I remember learning sign language as a child.  Unconsciously, I touch the
scar behind my ear that holds the electronics that link me and every deaf
person into the world of sound.  Like Latin, sign language died.  Latin
died when it stopped being spoken so long ago, ressurected when scientists
wanted to name species and body parts in a language that was stable and
didn't mutate, and sign language when the artificial ear was invented and
when the gov't began sponsoring the operation for free.  For what purpose,
then, were those twice dead communicative gestures ressurected?  Old
sights, sounds and experiences from college begin to bubble up from the
depths of my mind working their way around the obstacles of my current
life.  I remember Carly.  The SourceID box blinks "Lost..."


Cut4

I can hear ragged movements in the deep forest. The moon sometimes peeks
through gaps in the canopy overhead like an animal looking for prey.
Sometimes a twisted cry hurls its way skyward echoing through the distance,
maybe warped by the soft fog tangled in and among the plants...or not.
I know that sound is not one of the normally strange background noises
that I had become acclimated to in my month staying in here before change
surrounded me in its grasp.  I think maybe I am hearing the first of the
children I brought into the world.  I continue to walk through the
underbrush feeling the mud curl around my toes and the dank, humid smell
of the ground creeping into my nose.  The medicine man's burial mound
flys into my mind, an image of the softly curving hill of dirt I covered
him in to keep the predators away.  Death stands atop the mound mocking,
beconing me to join him.  My clothes, shoes, and hat are left on top of
the grave.  Before, I destroyed his world and tried to give him mine in
return -- a poor trade.  Now is the time for retribution.

I find the spot, the holy site where I was first introduced to the ways of
the tribe.  The area is as isolated as nature could provide.  The thick
canpoy covers the sky, the hand of nature giving respite from unrelenting
satellite observation.  Terrain in the mountains prevents any conventional
travellers attempting to penatrate the secrets of the jungle in vehicles.
Even the hillsides curving upward and around help protect from stray EMF
going in or out the this little valley hidden the the forest.  The most
important, I remember my sattelite uplink dying as I walked into the small
clearing.  I remember Carly.  Her voice behind my ear, up close and intimate,
"Look up, the decorations, they form a faraday cage."  A net of gold, and
iron, and bronze jewelry hung from the trees, dripping onto the ground,
swatting the signal of my sattelite link out of the air like a pesky
insect.  Intricate chains, images of animals carved, pounded, and inlaid
into metals twinkling and dancing as if alive in the torchlight.  My breath
caught and for the first time, those foreign nature gods touched me and
held me in the image of those metallic leaves and vines.  I know now that
this is the site where I will ready myself the the battle, in the safe nest
provided by the olden gods of nature, the trees, the earth, the sky, safe
from the tech gods of my so called civilization.  I sit and begin the
dreamwalk.

Alan Chen
(Pre) Occupations:        |"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
-Aerospace eng. undergrad |              -L. Long (RAH)
-RPG player               |Yes, I'm an ARO.  No, I'm not transferring!
-Dreamer                  |Email: achen1@csupomona.edu
GE -p+ c++ l(+) u- e+(*) m+(*) s !n+(-) h(-) f+ !g w-(--) t+ r++ y?



"Dreamwalking the Amazon"

Cut5

Carly.  I remember lying on a hillside, looking up a familiar stars and
speaking intimate thoughts with her, warm and solid in my arms.  We were
kindred spirits, but I doubt she knew to what extent.  Both of us explorers
in the core of our souls, she loved to walk into the unknown of different
cultures, peoples and foreign lands.  Carly was studying to be an
anthropologist, and I had too many directions to choose from.  Though I
wandered the terrain of chemicals, molecules, genetics, formulas and
equations which were every bit as exotic and unknown, though I walked the
knowledge frontier, I also wanted to take the role of the traveler, the
musician, the writer.  I could see the great adventure stretching in any
direction that my hand and my mind would choose to follow, but my vision
was always too broad, I needed to focus and choose my path, but there was
fear in my heart.  What tore me in different directions was the urge to
stay with her, join her in her explorations.  I knew I could be successful,
and knew I would love field research.  I could be Lewis to her Clark --
Carly and Finch walking into the unknown cultural, chemical terrain of the
world.  I told her I'd follow her anywhere that night.

Daylight followed darkness and brought my undoing; I should have stayed a
creature of the night.  I got an offer, a generous offer from the
corporation, a student internship.  Fear, and greed, and death consumed me
alive that day.  I took the secure pathway, exploring only knowledge
boundaries, hiding behind walls of financial security rather than risking
corporeal exploration.  Carly looked on with eyes of understanding, and
disappointment as I told her my treason with terms of security, of a sure
thing, of my lifelong ambition, of safety in exchange for adventure -- a
poor trade.  I graduated with a degree in biochemistry, and a safe, well
paid job in a genetics corporation waiting for me, a hollow prize.  Carly
had left the year before, taking here degree and stepping into the depths
of the Amazon.  She never looked back, but Carly would have waited for me
if I were brave enough to follow.

Copyright 1994
Alan Chen
(Pre) Occupations:        |"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
-Aerospace eng. undergrad |              -L. Long (RAH)
-RPG player               |Yes, I'm an ARO.  No, I'm not transferring!
-Dreamer                  |Email: achen1@csupomona.edu
GE -p+ c++ l(+) u- e+(*) m+(*) s !n+(-) h(-) f+ !g w-(--) t+ r++ y?