From: achen1@csupomona.edu (ALAN CHEN)
Subject: "Dreamwalking the Amazon" - Cut7
Date: 3 Aug 94 16:10:34 PST

"Dreamwalking the Amazon"


Cut7

I paint myself in the manner of the old medicine man, not exactly recalling
the pattern that he used, but substituting my own organic chemical symbols
when unsure.  The familiar patterns are more appropriate to my position as
a meta-medicine-man-scientist anyway.  Psychic satisfaction washes over
me at being able to recognize the approval of the gods of this place.
Reaching into my medicine bag, questing fingers find the wanted herb.  The
leaf is the same one displayed on my computer link, information feverishly
downloaded from my chemical and botanic databases two days earlier in
another world.  Above me, untold years of tribute from the tribe glow
above me, glittering where the gold is placed and darkly where the rusted
iron works hang from the trees.  I place the leaf in my mouth and chew,
ignoring the bitter taste the floods my mouth.  Sucking all the juice from
the leaf, I continue until only a dry, fibrous, bitter lump rests on my
tongue.  Never having learned the language of my tribe, I use sign
language, a dead language for a future-dead man commencing the ritual of
dreamwalk.  Like my demons, everything I touch mutates and changes from old
forms to new meta-forms.  I touch the scar behind my ear, a tribute to
Carly.

It is night, so I only have eight hours of computer time before my batteries
will empty themselves.  After that, I will have to charge the batteries,
hooking to their solar panel sitting on a rock like some strange reptilian
creature absorbing sunlight.  In a fever trance, I begin to work, cutting,
splicing, and recombining, readying the file that will feed the RNA
sequencer, a tribute the tech gods will choke on.  Death himself must fear
me now, for I control the tendrils of life in my hand, working in the
protection of nature and life; he rails against the barriers around me in
the forest as I work to unleash my next and last demon upon the land.

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?


From: achen1@csupomona.edu (ALAN CHEN)
Subject: "Dreamwalking the Amazon" - Cut8
Date: 4 Aug 94 17:23:32 PST

"Dreamwalking the Amazon"


Cut8

I remember Carly.  I remember her in class, the two of us passing gestured
words between us to the consternation of the teacher in the nobrainer
English class.  Carly had insisted on learning sign language.  I had the
surgery in grade school and hadn't used sign language for years, but
teaching her her all I knew was a joy.  Eventually our language mutated
onto our own personal form, more intimate then just any language as words
and phrases were generated to fill gaps in my memory or altered to suit new
purposes.  That was the first resurrection.  Everything began to rush back
into me, filling the void in my life with temporary memory and the pain of
past regrets.

Our favorite spot was the hill with one side overlooking the twinkling
lights of the city with faint sound of traffic below and the smell of sun
dried grasses filling our noses.  The other side was completely shielded
from the lights of the city and in the total darkness the fabric of the
stars shone in its totality, eternal light untouched by the brief, violent
overthrow of the manmade day.  There we would listen to the crickets
throwing their chirps into the air, enjoying our alternate reality,
shielded from civilization, breathing the sweet night air.  She would lie
silently against my chest, forming words and pressing them against my
stomach softly, a silent, personal communication of touch.  The SourceID
box blinks "Lost..."

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?


From: achen1@csupomona.edu (ALAN CHEN)
Subject: "Dreamwalking the Amazon" - Cut9
Date: 10 Aug 94 16:41:14 PST

Cut9

The details were unimportant to me, I could see the intent, the hand of
death involved in the suicide like brands upon the heads of the victims.
Once was a coincidence, twice a suspicion, but the third was murder.
The reports the Carly had brought with her to our hillside told of
the suicide deaths of several highly placed individuals.  An executive
here, a politician there, several others, I didn't really care about them
personally, but all had the secret stamp of my demon upon their souls.
Otherwise happy men and women committing suicide for no reason at all, the
thought scared me like the phrase, "authorities are baffled as to why _X_
individual would take their life."  The killings were in no particular
pattern, just tests of the demon I had called forth into this world, Carly
supposed.  I could think of a hundred different ways of delivering the
substance, none of them giving even the best of criminal forensics experts
the slightest hope of detecting the methods.  As for the motivation, I
knew that any of the old classics sufficed, money, power, greed of both.
I shuddered at mine own flaw, knowledge, the thirst eternally parching my
soul.

In my rage, I hardly noticed that Carly had emerged from the depths of the
Amazon, called forth by the twisted plots of death and armed with the
knowledge of the project I had begun work upon so long ago, before she
had left for more civilized lands. The hand of death stole upon me that
day, cleverly, and so subtly manipulating my fate like the lightest, most
skilled feather touches, teasing.  There was, however, no deviation
from my path, I only know that I made a wrong choice in the beginning.  The
warm, secure path of light instead of the unknown darkness.  On that day,
death stole Carly from me; in my rage I forgot to cherish her.  We would
have six months that he could not take, my most prized possession, a
pattern of neuronal firings, a memory of Carly.

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

                                                            ..............
From: achen1@csupomona.edu (ALAN CHEN)
Subject: "Dreamwalking the Amazon" - The last bits
Date: 13 Aug 94 13:18:11 PST

Cut10

The first touches of the wispy dawn, I sleep, waiting to steal the energy
of the sunlight to charge my empty computer's batteries, regaining some
energy myself.  The rush of the leaf's chemicals are a now a distant heady
static in heard in the distance of my mind but ignored.  The hand of
nature protects me from all sides and from within, death cannot touch my
dreams, but he knows that I have to soon emerge.  He waits.  Insects buzz
and crawl on the ground and throughout the environment around me.  Life
permeates the very air, twisted into the trees as vines, crawling,
croaking, screeching their presence into my consciousness.  I fight for
them.  The patience of eternity behind him, Death slavers for the moment
when he can rend into me.  I am like a vampire, inhabiting the night, yet
I have not the dedication to evil, nor the respite of those creatures of
the night.  Death yet stalks me.

Another session, maybe another one after that, and I'll be ready walking
into the arms of Death girded with the weapons I have created from nothing
except the nature and reality breathing around me.  I have taken the trees,
the animals, the insects and formed them into my armor and my spear.


End2

We fled.  We thought to find saftey from the hand of death, from the lust
of greed.  Oh to have seen event the faintest shadow of him following us,
regrets drift idly from my heart, filling me as does the rage, now.  I
tremble, shaking uncontrolled,  sweat at the edge of my brow a quivering
jewel of light.  We brought a plague among the innocents.  The purest
people of the jungle, hidden within its depths and we brought my demon to
them.  Living in the pressure cooker of an urban environment maybe made
Carly and I a little more immune, but those poor, innocents were ravaged by
my demon released among the land.  The son of the guide threw himself off
the edge of a waterfall.  His body churned among the rocks for two days,
during which arms, legs, sometimes a face, flashed by in the murky water
like some shy, mythical fish among the mist at the bottom of the falls.  The
guide soon followed the fate of the son, though wether it was the virus I
had brung that about directly or indirecly, I do not know.  Both deaths, as
well as the deaths of the others hang above my head, a terrible guilt, a
pounding upon my soul.

The medicine man tried to protect the tribe.  He went and he did his
magick, the herbs, the chants, all in vain.  The old ways were too weak to
control the evil of our new ways...I formed the next way.

End1

Sometimes Death is gentle.  I hang onto that fact though it offers only
small consolation.  I found her sitting in a little clearing, surrouded by
a sympathetic jungle, silent for a moment as if paying some brief tribute
to the one innocent who was the most important to me, or standing for a
brief accusation.  Next to her laid an empty syringe, probably taken from a
med-kit, and an empty bottle of vodka, purchased, I recall, at the airport
before we left for the Amazon.  Her head nodded down like she just fell
asleep and the bottle to one side looking like it just rolled off after her
hand released its warm clasp.  Death stole her from me when I wasn't
looking, my eyes burning, blinded, with the fires of justice and revenge.
I love you Carly.


End0

	The false silence of the jungle surrounds me.  Noises in the distance,
never still, never dead.  Somewhere within, I am comforted.  Everywhere
else cries out, in pain, in loss.   I know I am sick, I know that I carry
death within me.  I want it all to end, and, yet I force myself to
continue.  I leave the place of safety, journey to the field, that little
clearing with two mounds of dirt in the center.  His voice whispers out,
echoes in my body, I fight for control, and regain enough to hit the button
and set free my last demon.  It speeds into the sky, screaming toward the
houses of the corrupt, the immoral.  Death whispers to me, I laugh, and
embrace him.

Copyright 1994

That's it.  I'm a little burned out on "Dreamwalking"  Maybe I'll come back
and rewrite the ending...its not as strong as I'd like it.  Meanwhile, I have
several other works in progress...coming soon to a newsgroup near you....

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