/BLOOD DRIVE/

/ACTUATION/

UFA UNIVERSAL TIME IS NOW 12:00/

HAPPY FRIDAY ! ! !/

IT IS THE 11324th DAY OF THE CALIFORNIA PSYCHITECTURE BEING OPERATIONAL/

CONNECTION TO UNIT CE-80005-CARADOC IS STRONG/

ACTIVITY PERIOD IS ESTIMIATED TO BEGIN IN 6 HOURS/

MONITORING SUB-ACTUATED ACTIVITY/

There is a red building that towers over everything else ever still living. The highest tower in the tower / in the cradle / in the world. It is implicit that the building is alive. It's lungs pump air through the hallways so that it does not stagnate. The inside walls are white / clinical / spotless. If there was ever a mark, there would not be a mark, because then the building would not be the building, and it would not exist. There is no way to see the outside walls. There will never be a way to see the outside walls. The top and bottom are square. But there is a spiral. That much can be felt, in the back of the mind. And there is a spire. That can be felt too. People are in the building. They crawl / shove / flood through the hallways as ants. They leave their chemical trails between the information centres / storage centres / top and the bottom of the building. It screams out into the night. It throws up blood. It is sick, and rotting. The white ants scuttle between the building's big white boxes. Inside each box is a lonely, naked, mewling ant. Raw pink flesh and yelling, yelling, yelling. They are prodded / shocked / open up and stitched up. Pieces are put in; pieces are taken out. They are ogled at, observed by the white ants. The naked ants cannot see. If the yelling stays on the outside, they swell up. Their skulls will be bloated and sagging, and they will not be able to move from their boxes. They will pop all over the white floors – and the white ants must be careful to clear all the marks off. If the yelling is brought to the inside, they do not swell up. They are given a friend / an eye to see / a battery to store energy. And the door to the box opens. There is the sound of white noise.

ACTIVITY PERIOD BEGINNING/

THIS IS EARLIER THAN EXPECTED/

WOKEN BY EXTERNAL STIMULUS/

MONITORING ACTUATED THOUGHT/

We wake up. The room is lit with a dim blue glow from our one eye. The world remains silent and still but for the white noise buzzer and our own low hum. We watch Ourself stir in the thin sheets. The apartment is grey and cramped. We see only the bed, the drawn curtain, the dresser, and the lamp by the bed. It is known that there is the chair we set down on last night in the corner. We begin to float off of it. Ourself turns off the buzzer on the lamp and the room is white. We wince. It reminds us of bad things. The sheet is peeled lose from our body. It is damp with sweat, and it clings to us like it does not want us to leave. It reminds us of being so close to very good things. Our eye floats closer, to watch Ourself twist to the side of the bed and place our bare feet on the ground very carefully. We move to look over our shoulder. Looking at our own face hurts. Not because we are ugly. We like how Ourself looks. And we think our eye is "endearingly rustic", even with its stained metal. It gives us a headache to look at ourselves in the face, is all. So, we go through the motions as we always do. Tracing the same footsteps around and to the end of the bed is so engrained that we would not need our eye open to do it. The grey carpet is very worn down along the path here. Ourself faces the wall opposite the bed. We look in the big mirror on the dresser there, next to the door.

In the reflection we can see all of us. We are made up of two parts. All of our brothers and all of our sisters and all of our siblings are made up of two parts. There is our eye: the synth, the metal. Its iris glows a bright neon blue under a cornea of glass, all the rest of covered in tungsten plating joined with old screws that rattle in place. Four fins jut out from our eye, on the four diagonals pointing at our pupil. Our eye is our first companion, our guide to the world, and the battery where we store all of our mind that cannot fit in our body. It floats over the shoulder of the other half. Ourself is the body, the flesh, the organic. It contains and experiences the other four senses. It hears, smells, tastes. It is our way of touching and feeling the world. Inside the body comes the charge for the battery. We are a perfect symbiosis! We would not survive apart! Our name is Caradoc, which is a name that we like the sound of. Archie is the name we have chosen to add to it, for ourselves. It is for friends to use. One person calls us Archie. We watch as the body dresses and preens, as every organic seems to. Ourself has hair that is short at the front and long at the back. We know it is called a mullet. It suits our slightly curled hair nicely. The strands are a woody brown shade. We think a mullet looks cool. Ourself pulls the monochrome uniform of a Domestics officer out of the drawers. There are black pants, a white shirt, a black tie and silver cufflinks. They fit well. The body kicks on an unpolished pair of shoes, then runs its hand along the dresser. It takes a pair of circular mirrored gluconic 'glasses' off of it, and places them in front of closed eyes. A just off-centre infinite corridor of reflection forms in the double mirrors. Oh, yeah. Now we look really cool. Over all of it is pulled a pale red duster jacket with black trim around its edges. We do not need to look at the back to see the symbol of a proud obelisk lasered into the artificial fabrics. It is standard issue for a psionic. The Psychitecture will stand tall longer after we fall into the dirt! We leave the apartment. Outside the door, we remember we need to turn the light off. We hear the click through the thin wall.