Inhuman

When a nuclear power plant melts down, most people won't go in to investigate. I'm not most people.

I'm actually not a person at all, at least, that's what people tell me. I look like them, talk like them, you know, all the things I ought to do. I don't know why they call me inhuman.

I just know that they always send me into places like this, where they think no one will survive. The back of my mind wonders if they're trying to kill me, but that's just the part of my mind that still cares about that sort of thing. The truth is, I love these places. The smell of ozone, the burn of the sun, the knowledge that I could step on something oozing radioactivity and never walk again, it's all I live for anymore. The grass under my feet is green, but it will die in a few hours. I am the last one to see it green for a thousand thousand years.

The helicopter that brought me here is long gone, taking it's furious rotors with it. I've tried to tell them not to use helicopters in these places, and they never listen. I wait patiently for the dust to fall, keeping my feet planted securely on the living ground, shifting my pack around on my body, but never letting any of it touch the ground. I scan around me with and without my binoculars. The ancient Soviet relics have survived ten meltdowns now, not a single scratch on their pristine glass. The body is still painted its original foresty green in places. without them, I judge about half a mile to the plant, and over the smoothest track i can see, I guess about a seven minute walk on a pleasant, sunny day. The back of my mind, the part that still cares, laughs as it glances up to the dismal sky. The binoculars show me that my guess was only off by a matter of fifty meters or so, but they also tell me that my smooth track is already covered in ash. Now that the helicopter is gone, I can see the little flakes of radiation falling around me. Time to move.

Moving is easy, actually. The trick is moving in the right direction. I have to get upwind of the plant, but I also have to avoid losing my legs to the dying ground. I really didn't even have a chance to put away the binoculars this time, and as I ran, the strap flopped against my legs. I practice this stuff all the time, this precise and insane dash. I can't put my feet down aywhere that looks even remotely different than where I just was, but that means half the time, and as I get closer to the plant, most of the time, I'm making two-meter leaps. The back of my mind makes a note to wring the neck of the helicopter pilot as soon as I return. My groundspeed is far above a walk now, and I close the distance between me and the plant in about as much time as I had predicted for a liesurely walk. I have hooked far to the outside of my original intended path, coming up on the complex of buildings from the north.

Finally out of the ashfall, I can pause for a moment to catch my breath. I'm a lot closer to it now, and I can actually feel the heat wafting from the buildings. It's only a degree or two at the moment, but it's enough to make me glad I'm wearing what I am. Moving around the north side, back and forth, I can see which building is my target.

It's funny, they always hand me maps before sending me places. I always tell them I won't be needing them. They never believe me. Last time, they found the maps in my hotel room just after I left for France to recon the accident there, and they were furious. This time the pilot was charged with handing me the map as I got off the helicopter. I told him that if he didn't forget, he'd find bits of map in his stool for weeks. Maps are useless in places like this, useless and redundant. You can see exactly where things are the moment you get to the complex, no matter where it is. They're all the same, really. A front office here, a coolant pipe there, a reactor building here, here, and here, it's actually kind of boring once you've done this a few times.

Now I can put the binoculars away, I realize. Into their green kevlar case they go, and into the lumpy ruck on my back. I click on the Geiger counter strapped to the back of my glove, punch the record feature built into my mono-goggle, and tighten the holster safety on the CZ-75B they gave me.

Yes, they gave me a gun. They tell me it's so I can put the poor plant workers out of their misery when I find them. I've never used it.

That's not to say I've never found living plant workers in these things. I just didn't care.

Now that I'm recording, I figure I better just let them get their money's worth of footage. That's the whole reason i'm here anyway. I'm the first wave of reconnaisance, making the maps for the little robots that will come in after me and clean up. I walk slowly around the sides of the complex that are less dangerous, observing the buildings on the southwest side burning brightly. The reactor building was in the southeast side, and it wasn't visibly burning. It was just sitting there, belching transparent heat and grey ash like a volcano. I could hear nothing from the reactor building, only the crackle of the others. I walked inbetween the outlying buildings, seeing no life at all, not even skeletons. My analytical mind filed that under "Strange Things" and ignored it. They told me that most of the workers had been safely evacuated. The office building on my left was largely intact, and I fought the urge to explore it.

It's actually comforting to know that in a place like this, nothing is going to jump out and try to kill you. Everything here is either dead or dying, and nothing has the strength to force you to join them. You don't even have to worry about diseases in here. Your only enemy is the Invisible One, the particles of destruction slamming into your DNA and RNA patterns at nearly the speed of light. The only real thing you have to fear here is knowing that your next mitosis cycle will not be anything like the last one.

The still-camera pod hanging off to the side on my mono-goggle took a few automatic snapshots in the microwave band, the infrared band, then the ultraviolet band, sending data into the bulky solid state memory on my back. The warm brick of the power supply was alongside it, cooking away.

I have never wished for another job. I only work about every three to five years, I go adventuring with Danger on a leash, I don't have to deal with the idiots that are allowed to breed, and I name my own salary. Ducking around these buildings, I see only ash and emptiness. My body tells me I need to work quicker, adrenaline pulsing into my veins. I welcome the sensation, but control it viciously, spending some memory on a few random snapshots of the ground and laughing to myself. I come to a low warehouse and discover that it has been sunk into the earth. It's probably to store waste or spare fuel or something, and I move on.

Most of the ground is safe so far. The ash has piled up and drifted like blizzard snow, leaving about half the ground area of the complex perfectly safe. A few of the doorknobs show signs of contamination, making me wish i could explore the buildings behind them.

It's time to go into the reactor building. I stare at it for a little bit, wondering if this will be my last time. A creaking beam gives way and more of the west wall caves in. I can hear something inside flowing like water, with the occasional pop of a bubble. The back of my mind is silent now, as though switched off. I no longer have any part of me that even cares if this is my last time, except for the statistic. Nothing pushes me in, not even the people footing my bill.

Nothing holds me out, either. I walk to the main doors of the reactor building, which are still mostly intact, but hanging open. Someone had ripped off one of the crash bars when the building was evacuated. I switched on my heavy-duty air filters and battened down all the various tiny hatches on my suit and walked through the gaping entrance. The lobby was painted in cool greens and pale orange, a potted fake elm lying on it's side, pot in pieces. The front desk had been moved in the commotion. I wondered how it had happened, sizing up the desk to weigh about 250 kilograms. Looking up, the tall glass windows were sagging over me, and that was my cue to keep moving. I hopped over the desk and took more manual snapshots of the security desk, wondering if the information in the photos would help find the cause of the accident.

From this moment on, I would be performing feats of courage and brash stupidity that most humans will never even have the opportunity to chicken out from. Into the building, deep into the intestines of the disaster, I only hoped to come out alive again.

I think the difference between me and most people is that I do not perceive things to sound like other things. The building creaking under me sounds like a building. The fires outside sound like fires consuming office buildings. The heat in here was only radioactive decay, not some monster breathing upon me. I have no fear of things for what they are not. Things that cannot exist in a certain time or place have never frightened me. Even the robot operators spook sometimes and pull their bots from the disaster long before they should, claiming to see ghosts or nonsense like that.

My feet click softly down the tile hallway that heaves slowly under me. The soles of my boots are made of depleted Uranium, lined with lead, shielding my feet and legs from the brunt of the particulate radiation. My dim red headlamp switched on as soon as I walked into the building's natural shadows, casting shadows the color of blood. The heat in here has already crumbled parts of the walls, dust and minute rubble at my feet. It's hotter in here than it has been in any disaster in twenty years. The telemetry from the helicopters that I saw just an hour ago told me that this meltdown was comparable to the meltdown in Ukraine in 1985.

Whip

listen to the sound
shoulder
fire in a perfectly straight line
again and again and again
ribs
curling around and leaving red
back
across the white expanse
cool evening breeze made cold
shoulder
again
cracking softly
like a lover's whisper

Hey

Hey it's me again just like always
When the sun has shed his final rays
And I'm left with just myself
And all my doubts rise up without much stealth
I stare into the darkness
I ponder my new loneliness
But am I really alone
Or is this a clever illusion of home

Hey just wanted to tell you I'm still here
In spite of or maybe because of my fears

Dark like a rose in the night
Cold like the light from a street lamp
Where hope takes sudden flight
And the flood becomes only damp

Hey it's me again did you forget
Or am I just another one in debt
To the screen of anonymity
And you come to me through serendipity
So you wouldn't know why
Or you wouldn't even try
To make any sense of me
Or had the thought not even tried to be

Hey just wanted to tell you I'm still here
In spite of or maybe because of my fears

Dark like a rose in the night
Cold like the street lamp light
Rain falls like shards of glass
Every song just like the last

Hey I'm still here
Hey did you forget
Hey

Reflections on the street
I stop to stare back at myself at my feet
Breeze like a dagger cutting
Hear the gates of heaven shutting
Flicker there now slowly
Chase away my melancholy
Remind me that I am still
More than mist with a troubled will

[Untitled XVII]

Who defines here?
Or is it just a myth?
Or am I just another one
Who's lost inside the labyrinth
Of all that you could fear?
Am I just another catalyst
For all from which you run?
Do you really want to know?

Who defines there?
Or is it just a tale?
Or are you just another man
Whose love for me will pale?
It's nothing but a flare
Nothing but a laggin fail
But love me while you can
'Cause someday I'll be dead

I never meant for this to be
Like walking over broken glass
I've tried to patch me back together
But the sky just keeps on falling down
I'll try to be so you can see
Through the scars and pain at last
I know we're both birds of a feather
But I'm still afraid that someday you will frown

Shadow of Cold Rain

I have nothing left to give
Hollowness like a red abyss
I'll just die the way I live
In the shadow of a cold rain

The curtain of this stage
Is the rain falling like shards of glass
The script is written--just a blank page
I am lost inside this shadow's mass

I am cold

I've been down this road before
You're not the first to want this
Another of a few or more
Here in the shadow of a cold rain

The curtain of this stage
Is the rain falling like shards of glass
The script has been read--just a blank page
I am writhing in this shadow's mass

I am cold

But you can try, I guess
To clean up the mess
Everyone left inside of me
No one else has cared enough
But i wonder if you dare to be
The one to teach me love

The curtain of this stage
Has risen to a new dialogue
A song has filled this empty whit page
I am dancing now out of the fog

I am here

Introspection

So many people trapped in one body
So many faces singing and weeping
Like an awful schizophrenic parody
They're all saying my sanity's not worth keeping

Ten thousand people dancing
In a room too small for me
Ten thousand people laughing
They say this is all there is to be

No longer just me myself and I
Now there's ten thousand people inside of me
All they do is laugh at me
She's such a fool
And in my head without the rules they all run free

Ten thousand people dancing
In a room too small for me
Ten thousand people laughing
They say this is all there is to be
Ten thousand people's eyes
All watching what i do
Ten thousand people's voices
Which one gets through to you?

Is this everything there is?
Of course it is
Can there be any more?
Oh, no! Never!
Was there ever anything for me?
Oh, dear child, you know there never was
Does everyone always laugh at me?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha..............

Ten thousand people dancing
In a room too small for me
Ten thousand people laughing
They know this is all there is to be

muse

i don't really know why i keep writing this same story over and over. i suppose it seems narcissistic, writing the same woman's death over and over from different points of view.

it's not. honestly, it's just an exercise in character creation. each iteration, you see another person, get to know him, understand little bits of his personality and life, until for a moment, you know him.

what i suppose is ironic is that this woman will never know these men. she's just not that kind of girl. sure, she cares about people, suicidal people distance themselves from others. they don't want you to know them or miss them. they just want to disappear and let the world breathe easier without them.

returning to the void.

do you think that would really be so bad?

why is it that every time evil shows up in art, it is represented and foreshadowed and wrapped up in darkness?

who decided that the light was benevolent?

i'm not saying i'm out to change that meme, don't misunderstand. all i am doing is painting realistic pictures in monochrome. shades of gray, representing the universe.

shade.

shade --n. 1. the comparative darkness caused by the interception or screening of rays of light from an object, place, or area. --n. 2. a place or an area of comparative darkness, as one sheltered from the sun. --n. 3. a shadow. shades -- n. 1. a reminder of something: shades of the Inquisition. --n. 2. a secluded or obscure place: He was living in the shades.

kinda funny, i totally screwed up this idea once. i wrote a cycle of poems i called Shade, but each poem was another color, and a commentary on life.

shade, tint, saturation, gamma, f-stop.

ways to represent reality with subtle lies.

isn't that what art is? in all its forms?

"for now we see, but in a crappy, fragmented mirror, obscurely."