Feuilleton 18 of 20 draft #3.0

almost done, really....

Sesani was from the heart of the Pier in Sydney and it formed her as much as Detroit had formed Jackson.  The years that followed took each of them different places but neither could shake those early beginnings and all that it brought them.  But when they finally met an entirely new world of life opened to Jackson. 

……………………………………………………………………………

Feuilleton 18 of 20

Sesani in the 2000’s

All the new things came at Jackson almost all at once. Some were more than he could handle. Jamaican ginger beer he found in local stores made him sneeze. Jackson loved it but it was so much more concentrated than the Vernor’s Ginger Ale he used to drink in Detroit he found he had to cut it with clear soda water. Otherwise it made him sneeze violently.  Then there were the roti’s and the neighbourhood talking patterns of the ‘Wessindians’.  And then there was Sesani.

Sesani brought life and love and warmth back to chilled and worn down Jackson Kelley.

From local African festivals in Toronto to touring visits to Ottawa this new woman either liked many of the things Jackson liked, or she put up with him for her own reasons.  She was alive and enthusiastic and loved to share the experiences with him. 

“Drums” he read.  Drums had been with Jackson, actually in him since childhood, so when he saw that some were coming to their town of Toronto Jackson asked Sesani to go with him. The Drummers of Burundi, one of the greatest percussion ensembles in the world.  They’d performed the same way for centuries, passing down traditions and techniques. Their performances had been traditionally part of specific ceremonies - births, funerals, enthronement of Kings. In their African country of Burundi, south of Rwanda, drums are sacred and represent powers of fertility. The origins of their drumming performance were shrouded in ancient legend and mystery.  They channel energy and the creative spirit of a people through drum and ritual.

            Their large Ingoma drums are made from hollowed tree trunks covered with skin. Their thunderous sound of drums with strong graceful dance has toured for new audiences for 40 years.  Sesani enjoyed the African festival and the music of the drummers, but not as much as the Acanthus leaves. The Acanthus leaves in Ottawa, or at least Jackson’s awkward clumsy struggling attempts to explain them to her. 

As the two of them seemed good together, Jackson asked Sesani to go to Ottawa with him for visiting trip.  Although full of mixed memories of the past for Jackson, he loved the town of Ottawa.  It was unique to him among all the places he had been as a youth.  Visiting sites and old friends, it seemed Jackson talked endlessly about Acanthus leaves they were seeing in building architecture of this Canadian capitol city.

            “Story goes that Callimachus, Greek bronze worker, was drawing a design of some acanthus leaves that were growing on a small tomb.”  Jackson began, very tour-guide like.

            “He thought to use the design for a new style of column capital for the people of Corinth. 
The oldest  Corinthian capital was from 400 BC.  Sometimes called the feminine order because it is holding up the least amount of weight. Very much like the Ionic order, but instead of an Ionic scroll, the Corinthian capital has rows of acanthus leaves.” Jackson studiously explained to Sesani.

Sesani smiled at him.  Jackson took this as a signal to go on:

            “Many variations have been made on the Corinthian column capital, like the ones on the 
American  Capitol building in Washington, DC.  Anyway, old Callimachus was just sitting there one day and saw these shapes growing in some prickly herbaceous plants; large spiny leaves and spikes, white and purplish flowers - native to the Mediterranean.”  Jackson added. 

Jackson looked at Sesani with enthusiasm.

            “Eventually his acanthus plant designs and motifs appeared in Medieval and Renaissance artwork, particularly in stone sculpture and wood carving and friezes.” 

In spite of his ridiculous rambling they had a wonderful time in Ottawa.  They saw more of each other and as the seasons moved from warm to cold again they re-settled into their new place together, still near the great lake of Ontario.  The rental agent had found this new place amidst all the many construction cranes, vacant condos, lofts, and apartments in the large and constantly redeveloping city of Toronto.  It had less of a lake view than his previous little bachelor apartment.  It had less trees.  It had less ducks, geese, gulls, and swans.  But it was new and so were they, so it was good.   It had a nice new elevator that worked all the time, with no vulgar graffiti on its walls.  In fact it had two elevators, with those small digital indicators that told you what floor they were on. The new place had a real full kitchen, not that he cooked very much at all but it was nice to have some space for a change.  It had two bathrooms – luxury.  There was a fair sized living room with a little gas fireplace for show.  A small balcony that one could go out on to see the lake or the courtyard below.  The look of the place was very late 1990's functional-chic. A spiffy new and clean wood-and-textured-metal trendiness to it all that he could not decide if he liked or did not like, but it was good.  Jackson certainly liked walking through the acid-washed slate-surface lobby, where Solobodan the Russian Security-Concierge-Man stood at his hi-tech post behind blonde wood and rough slate, with his many TV monitor screens receiving their spy-looks from a multitude of cameras spread about the building and grounds.  Jackson also liked the parks on either side of the new building complete with biking, blading, walking trails and paths running along the water's edge.  It was already cold now, but Jackson could picture himself in his new Russian fur hat with his big old snow boots trudging along the frozen crusted ridges of the lake in a very few week’s time.  He and his trusty camera would have a whole new set of worlds to explore.  He toyed with the idea of installing digital movie projection with a large screen in the living room. He day-dreamed about watching motion picture images while dimly lighting the room with the little fireplace.  He might never do this, but it was fun to daydream again.  It had been so long since Jackson had allowed himself to do that.  This next phase, the one that follows the WHOOPIN 'IT UP phase, would be fun.  He just did not know it would involve the Pacific North West - again.

…………………………………………………………………………………..

2000’s TO 2010’s

He had to leave Sesani back in Toronto to travel to a new, and maybe last, studio building opportunity over 3000 miles away on the west coast – again.  Leaving was bad.  Again.  But he drove across the country to Portland Oregon to begin.  He and Sesani met there when she flew in on the last day of his drive there.  They celebrated New Years Eve together in this new place.  New to both of them.  They had a good holiday together and arranged to meet each month while he dug into this new work.  After all the ups and downs in other studios this was one last chance, as he was getting older now, for Jackson to try to build a better studio for artists making movies.  Jackson met the people in the small city of Portland, Oregon.  He had never been to Oregon before.  Books and movies had told him a little about Oregon, but nothing prepared him for Portland itself.  The town was small but friendly.  Well, the residents were friendly but the small gangs that ran Oregon were very much to themselves, hidden away in their misty green state with more trees than people.  He had gone there for work.  It seemed promising and looked challenging, but he had actually stumbled into the play toy box of a small rich family.  Jackson had known and worked with and for rich people before.  He was used to their various strange ways, but these very few Oregonian rich really were different.  Going from Toronto to Portland required Jackson reassimilating back into the United States again, but back into a particular pacific northwest variant of Americana this time.  The small town had a checkered history, as they say.  Small time crooks and thieves built up small criminal fiefdoms almost from the time some people started making money off the trees and minerals and other natural resources.  The place reminded him physically of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada – but without the civilizing British layer.  There had been cheap-ass for-shit scoundrels that ran the crime side for many years.  With each generation the regimes changed and shifted as the city of Portland grew. But Portland did have all the charms, advantages, and disadvantages of a boss-run small town.  In more modern times even famous Bobby Kennedy dipped his reformer toes into the cold waters of this town quadrisected by two rivers and many bridges.  Kennedy was fighting the Teamsters Union as the Teamsters Union was trying to muscle the local criminals.  Locals always win in Portland, Oregon.  That’s what Jackson learned while he was there.  It is still far enough away from everything to be, and stay, on its own.  He would have stayed and lived there for a long while but he ran afoul of the real King of Oregon and his heir apparent, in this dominant legitimate family that funded many things in Oregon - including the company that had hired and reimported him from Canada.  During his time there Jackson even noticed a unique strain of tagging that spoke to the meth-streets of the Rose City.  More hippie-dippie than usual 1D sigtags, more urbanely witty 2D throwups, folkish art 3D flat pieces, some amateur slaptags, a little scratchitti and etching.  In certain parts of the small down there were GANG TAGGING marks for nation building, hitup boundaries, roll calls, memorials, and even one 187 death threat.  HATE TAGGING same as always, but more about people who liked bicycles or those who didn’t.  FOLK EPIGRAPHY and old fashioned charmingly obscene LATRINALIA, vied for space with POLITICAL and PACIFIC NORTHWEST SATANIC even managed to find a few spots every rare once in a while.  A new blending, a combination of parts.  Just as the Inspector explained back in Canada, but very much localized to this misty rainy damp and mossy town.  Jackson, and Sesani, who had eventually moved out to join him gave up.  When arbitrary gang family decisions about the new business and the cataclysmic economic crash of year 2007-08 overlapped, Jackson and Sesani gave up the notion of living in the charming peaceful town of Portland.  They returned to Toronto Canada to pick up where they left off before.  During the rebuilding of their lives Jackson took quite a while to recover from this last failed attempt, taking a small job in the burgeoning interactive field until retirement time finally rolled around for him.  As hard as it seemed to Jackson to readapt and go on, others elsewhere had it much harder.

……………………………………………………………..….…..

FUTURE PRESENT Los Angeles – TO THE END

Morning light entered her office.  A welcome change from the long night in that room.  Annie Daleo watched tiny vehicles many floors below on the streets near the building.  They caught the rising sunlight, flashing quick bright yellow-white, reflecting windshields turning a corner to the next street.  Annie moved from her glowing window high up in the city tower to her desk.  She sat down first, stood for a moment, then sat back down again.  There were not many times nor situations that left Annie without impulse, instinct, nor intent to act. But this time she resisted what she felt.  As strong as the signal was that she was receiving, amplifying, and resending to all parts of herself, some part of her did not want that information, that insight.  The reflection in the dark mirrored surface of the desk showed her sleepy head dropping, just half a notch, mechanically. But the bounce and recovery of her dropping head and neck were all too human. There was nothing machine-like about her current exasperation. She straightened her posture in the chair and was about to say something reassuring to herself as her desktop speakers unexpectedly came alive and reported sounds of a scuffle.

She crossed her arms in front of her as she stood again, reaching smoothly under the thin dark grey silksen jacket to flat concealed double shoulder holsters, to touch and extract two weapons. The slight touch and unlatching followed by soft sliding sounds from the underside of the silksen.  Both weapons were out and up and ready.

Ready for what - she did not know.  All camera displays were solid black now, nothing but that same mirrored reflection across the entire wide surface of the desktop. The audio from the desk speaker scratched

and clunked down into silence too.  She looked directly at her side of the door to the office, making a soft head rolling motion at the top of her neck, taking in almost the entire room peripherally.  Nothing – she knew something was coming - but what – when? 

Below, down on the street, a vehicle turned another corner seeking a place to park on a busy morning. The late model 7-door moved slowly through cut and littered streets. Traffic thickened and thinned as it past  civic areas of brick, stone, and glass.  Retired old Jackson Kelley had taken a brief holiday from Toronto to visit his sons in L.A.  Sesani back home in Toronto, old Jackson and his two adult sons in this car, in the center of the old urban area, headed for an exhibition that the Jackson had read about and wanted to show them. The sons humored their old man, part of that vanishing minority that actually attended real, physical exhibitions.  Jackson Kelley claimed, against their better knowledge, that it was still better than the best virtual tour of artwork or music. The vehicle they were driving so slowly over the grit streets had its share of recent tech in it. The bright vid-display crop-window on the wide flat dashboard surface of the car lit up with the last part of a news promo-vid, and the beginning of the hourly NU_ONES broadcast.

            "This hour gives confirmation to the projected curvature of the RATE OF CHANGE.

            All reliable independent authorities are claiming that, while barely noticeable through the

           

            increasingly rapid pace of change over the last years, the never before  "straight-up" phenomena is        
            beginning to occur this very day, within hours perhaps they say. Yes, that long predicted moment in         
            time that we used to fear and worry about, the moment of singularity when frequency of change and   
            innovation marked by new and unique inventions or improvements becomes an absolutely rock-solid 
            constant in our day-to-day lives."  the virtual newsface said.

The computer graphic news-head-face rotated naturally as the news camera widened to reveal 


another cg-news-head to its right.

           "How about that Jim, ever think we'd really see change become so furious and all-constant

            that NOTHING ever stays the same for more than a moment anymore?" 

          "Well, actually yes Lateesha,” Jim replied in a 2-shot, “ we've been expecting confirmation on this

            for a while now, so it comes as no real surprise but.....but wait.....this just coming into us right 
            now.....organized faiths of Catholicism and Bahai are announcing a cross-faith merger of the two 
            churches that is expected to begin this week – today …....... this is being seen by some as perhaps a 
            denominational response to growing moral and spiritual instability being caused by our recent events 
            and constant change."

            "Holy Cow, Jim” Lateesha said as the news-cam cut to her close up so tight that the passengers in the car could count the multiple shining high lights of the lip gloss on her mouth as it lip synched.  She continued in her close up to say,

            “Let’s go now to spokespersons for major faiths and denominations as they react to this latest      round of faith-mergers........"

Jackson and his two sons slowly drove further from the busier areas in their rented 7-door.  As they did the street parking became more available and their car came to rest in a place under a busy bridge next to a tangle of older buildings. The surfaces of all buildings and poles there were covered in old graffiti and newer bolder deep slash cutfitti.   The local sigtags and 2D throwups skirted around the edges of nation building tags and spreading hitup boundaries.  Hate tags hated everyone, but were outnumbered by the

newer POLITICAL ECONOMIC, some stenciled to drive the messages home with graphics.  Satanic markings were lower on the walls and had been used for their intended purposes.  The dried blood still clung to the lower walls and ground next to the buildings where those marks were.  The cumulative effect was walking through eerie etched noodles of neon in and on masonry.

All three of them had reached a level of acceptance of this by now, almost ignoring it and securely parking. They left the vehicle in its shadowed parking place beneath the bridge humming with traffic above their heads. As they walked Jackson began to talk to his two sons about the cutfitti that was now all around them. On the walls, ceilings, overhangs, and even in some of the floorings and footings of the buildings.  They had both heard the stories before, but this day was for him – so they listened.

            “I remember it starting years ago - several signs but the one I really remember, because I love their movies, is PIXAR.  Reviewers wrote about and it did happen, I think.  There was always an element of friendly acceptance of non-human life forms in their early movies.   These were intense and heartwarming emotional moments in their stories. These connections in their movies, the   movies that millions of cute young little humans beings watched growing up just the way that I watched DISNEY’s PINNOCHIO when I was growing up as a kid, these connections not only struck a chord – they changed us, or at least helped to change us.” Jackson said.

            “This stuff, this … cutfitti, doesn’t look like DISNEY or PIXAR Dad.” said Mason.

Jackson replied

            “No, I don’t mean that all this tagging is DISNEY or PIXAR, I mean it is trying to tell us something aboutall that – or at least about those heartwarming non-human parts . . . it could be that ” . . .

But old rambling father was cut off impatiently by son Andrew . . .

            “No Dad, this is mean malicious destruction – meant to proclaim the identity of the so-called artist.”

            “Maybe, maybe . . .” Jackson said.

The small intricate deeper curving slashes of cutfitti had solid rhythmic textures about them as the three of them continued to walk through it.  They walked slowly, Jackson in curious inspection and the two sons in growing cautious suspicion, through these carved streets that led to the exhibition gallery a few blocks away, that Jackson had read about on the web weeks before.  The passage they walked was quiet, with noise and activity nearby and far above.  Jackson saw the old last century dented metal dumpster to one side of the large wall carving, a couple of rusted steel grates lying on the ground beneath the bolder part of the cutfitti that had caught the old man’s attention.  Jackson moved slightly toward the one curving carved tag. It had that feel to him.  Jackson really felt something from it, as he had from other tags every now and then – more and more over recent years.  It wasn’t just the categorization into the groupings that he had learned from the police constable.  It was an emanation, or what they used to call a vibration, or something, from many of the tags coming to him - as he walked near them, as he walked by them on his way to somewhere. 

1D sigtags, 2D throwups, 3D flat pieces, slaptags, scratchitti and etching, GANG TAGGING, HATE TAGGING, FOLKY EPIGRAPHY, DIRTY LATRINALIA , OPINIONATED POLITICAL, AVANT GARDE STENCIL to show art, andSATANIC to hold the crazy fuck bastard rituals - all of this, even the newer more recent FIGHT BACK messages coming through the codes on the walls too. 

                (“ What about the ghosts we are to become – floating in our own ever always heavens or hells?”)

                                (“What about the MATH under everything?”)

                                                (“What about using CG for no human reason whatsoever?”)

Jackson made his way to the one wall for closer inspection.  He needed to know more.  He wanted to see if he could understand how this one boldly curving tag – or even all of them - served to complicate their lives and attitudes being confronted by all these deity-wrought changes, slamming absurd drama home more and more painfully to its audience every single day.

The hidden younger kid and his older sister still tucked away in the alley nearby saw old Jackson Kelley veering off away from the two younger white men and became anxious. 

Red son, Mason, thought in silence as he walked.  About the world through which they were now moving.  His world.  Mason was always one to consider what was, as well as what is now.  So he listened to his father go on and on about the look of the wall markings. But what was really important, Mason thought, was to know the meaning of all this is. What did this marking, and more recent changes in the markings, mean? What did they mean to them right now, in this world – his world.  Walking through dimensional layers of deep cut slashes and curves, what did these mean within their world?

Old Jackson had given up on thinking about their world in general.  The red son guessed that his father had stopped thinking and talking about that because he felt the world has passed its ownership and care from his own older generation to Mason’s younger generation – the generation of Jackson’s sons.  Both sons would agree with that. The stories of how people had left the old old world to come to the new new world, so full of unused space, so full of unchallenged freedoms.  Those stories were old themselves now.

In those old days people could assemble and unite when they needed to.  Most importantly, they could be alone when they wanted to. But all that space was gone now, or owned by others who never permitted any trespassing without price. The freedoms were almost all gone too.  Under guise and pretense and even well-intentioned civic action of protecting the "HOMELAND" the long battle with "TERRORISM" had eroded or completely disappeared the freedoms too.

The only new space available to anyone was either off the planet - still very early pioneer-dangerous - or in vast and ever changing virtual space. Using any number of interfaces, solitude could be reached in real time, albeit virtual and unreal solitude. As Mason had grown older he recalled seeing clusters and groups of

young people, all connected to the vast webs and floating organic networks, some in multi-person digital simulation environments, but most in a state of solitary exploration to the exclusion of the small herd groupings that surrounded each of them physically then.

 But Mason’s old father was finding this derelict and tagged area physically exciting, as always. Jackson expressed his excitement to his sons and they looked at each other, reacting to his enthusiasm about this vandalistic defacing of property.  Jackson read, felt, heard more in it.  Jackson Kelley could not stop the accumulation of sigtags, throwups, slaptags, scratchitti, etching, all of it.

            “A major blending, a combination of parts.”  The Inspector had explained when his eyes had scanned and read Jackson’s face across the bland police office desk back then.  Jackson’s sons could not see it.  They could not see more than frustrated explosions of messy vandalism that were ruining their world.

But their reactions did not stop the old Jackson. He knew they thought he was being silly, or even stupid, but he could not help himself. It was not like the old days when he would be checking the rooftops and upper windows for urban snipers and other dangers. Canada had lulled him out of those protective reactions.  He felt, rightly or wrongly, much more comfortable now - far less insecure.

Jackson noticed and was moving toward an almost Arabic cursive elaboration of deeply carved-chiseled line in the flat stone side of the building across the street. It was larger than most that they had seen. It was curved, flowing, and dynamically strong in its rough-cut beveled execution.

Jackson started to talk about it to his sons as they walked out of the shadows and into a wide patch of warm, late morning sunlight that had forced its way through the tangle of buildings all the way down to their rough cement walkway.  From the other end of the street and alley, not seen yet by the Jackson and his two sons, the two other kids were coming out of the building shadows.  One was talking playfully, but with an edge, to the other.

                  "You gonna be in some shit today" the one kid in the sunlight said to the other still in shadow.

One was younger than the other.  Brother and sister? Her brother was the noisier one. She was cold and remote as she moved alongside her joking, side-stepping, younger sibling in a decisively smooth way.

Hearing the noise being made up ahead Andrew, the blonde son, squinted through the morning light to see who or what it was. As his eyes adjusted he felt his heart bump over hard, inside his body. His heart felt the way it did when scuba diving and his entire body bumped sideways by a strong and unseen current.  It was her. It was she. She was the one - that Andrew had been seeing.  She was walking toward him now with some other young guy. Andrew, very uncomfortable with his father and brother being here with him, coming upon his "mistress" of the streets, right here, in this back street.

Andrew never told his father about her.  About it.  About the aching empty marriage he was living in. 

Andrew had a wife and children - very old-fashioned he knew, but that's what he had always wanted, though he could not tell anyone why.  The hostile vacuum of the cooling married relationship was filled with the excitement and danger of this - this woman of the city. Barely a woman, a girl really, but she was a full human female that had completely taken possession of him.  He had never intended for it to turn into anything at all.  She had been daringly straightforward with him. No games, at least not the kind Andrew  had been used to. After the first encounter last year outside a club they began to see each other. The awkward mismatch - the difference in races, ages, attitudes - all of it vaporized at the touch of them together.  Became hellish as he fell in love. He thought it was love. No, he FELT it was love. The kind he used to have with his wife.  He never meant it to be more than conversation.  A flirtation.  It wasn't much of a conversation. She just looked at him as he tried to form words.  He felt like the bumbling, almost middle-aged man that he was now.  As he tried to say something right, she just looked at him. Her directness saved him and scared him. 

            " Where can we go?" she asked him.

His pants pulled tight while his brain got small and his heart lodged in his throat.

            "Um, this way, with me." he replied roughly, guiding her with an outstretched arm against his own common sense and will. But now, here she was – in this back street?  NOW – now with some younger kid, the brother she talked about? ....moving out of the darker part of the alley into the street, headed directly toward he and his father and brother.

Not seeing him for who he was yet, Zorah in her part of the cement pathway hit the talk nub on her com-set and reported in. But, before she could speak it spoke to her,

            "STANDBY FOR SYSTEM UPGRADE" was heard and seen in her receiver.

            "Shit" she said, wanting to swap direction and location for next orders and assignment, but then "Subjugation Admin Tool Acquiring Networks" flashed on the receiver.  She suspected it was the broader release of the tooled up sim-lens she had been pre-alpha-testing, a reward for her constant aggressive actions in support of Daleo.

            Many floors above the street "STANDBY FOR SYSTEM UPGRADE" was also flashing on Annie's reflective desk.  The door to Annie Daleo's office was still closed. The sounds outside her office door decreased in frequency, but increased in volume. Then the loud metal scratch and whine stopped.  The door opened and Annie looked at four tall lean shapes coming through the opening.  Both her hands brought both her weapons straight out in front of her as she locked aim on the machines.

The four machines looked like people. These io-warriors were among the closest of Annie's working colleagues - subordinates really as Annie did not really have peer-colleagues any more. She had killed those off a long time ago, replacing each one with a better machine each time. As Annie aged, she had begun replacing parts of herself with machines.  She did this for efficiency, but also to feel closer to the machines. And now, they had come for her. Her baby fingers pushed in on the lower part of each grip and armed them for firing as her breath equalized with arms straight and motionless in front of her. 

The first machine, Zach, came through the door, followed closely by Malena, Horst, and Persephone.  Zach's face was mostly human, except for a grid-like plate on the right surface of his forehead, and even that was "flesh colored" but recognizable as a slightly extruded grid-like pattern above his right eyebrow. These grid plates had been fashioned to resemble street areas where the machines were serving. Zach's facial grid plate showed a stylized map of the streets around this very building - where he was first put into service for the organization. Part of the detailed grid matched exactly to the intersection of the streets below, at the base of the building where Zorah the young mistress of the blonde son now recognized her lover's shape, form, and walk as he approached.  Zorah closed down her com-set. She stopped moving. Her younger brother Majed looked at her, then gave her a hard time.

            " Wassa mattahwif’you bitch, y’gettin' old? " Majed grinned amiably at Zorah, just before catching sight of the three white men walking toward them on the other side of the small intersection of streets. When he saw them coming his humour ceased.

            "What’th’fuck?" he growled in a voice so well delivered he sounded twice his age.

Across the way Jackson's aging vision was fixed on the large, almost Arabic, cursive elaboration of chiseled line in the lower part of the flat stone block side of the building on the other side of the street. Its curved flowing stone-cut bevels meaning more to him than he could account for. He walked straight for it.

Mason, the red son spoke to his old father,

            "Dad, we're supposed to turn off to the right here, and go up those stairs - over there -  to get to the place."  But he watched as his father wandered off the wrong way.

            "Yeah Dad, that's right....over there....let's go..." agreed Andrew the blond son almost too rapidly.

He thought to himself,

            "She can't hear me from this distance....maybe she hasn't recognized me yet......maybe I can avoid them finding out.....not now.............not yet..."

Jackson kept walking toward the flat stone wall of the building.  There was an old 1990's rusting metal dumpster to one side of the wall carving, and a couple of corroded steel grates laying on the ground next to and in front of the major part of the flowing cutfitti that had caught Jackson’s attention.  As Jackson made his way to it for a closer inspection the younger kid and his sister Zorah in the alley both saw the old man veering off from the other two younger white guys - and became anxious.

Jackson saw that incised curving lines flowed left and right with some seeming to go right to the bottom where the wall met the ground.  The cutfitti lines continued down out onto the piece of paved ground that was covered by two old steel grates that were laying almost flat on the pavement, bumping up against the wall at one corner.  While two sets of eyes watched from behind him the other two sets of eyes saw him from ahead in the shadows.  Jackson tried to push the grate out of the way with his foot, but it did not move easily so he, bending his old knees the way he had been taught several times after back injuries, lowered himself down, gripped the rough edge of the grate, lifting it up to get a better look at the part of the wall design that was flowing underneath onto the rough paving stone.  The weight of the grate caused it to keep going when he lifted it vertical to the ground– and it settled noisily against the larger part of the design on the wall.  With one grate leaning against the design and the other below and next to it on the rough floor an unintentional new image was formed.  The flowing curve lines of the wall cutfitti appeared now to be seen through a graph chart of the corroded steel grating.  Jackson took two steps back to stop and look at it. 

Further in the passageway the two young ones also looked in that direction.  Zorah’s face tightened as her view began to correlate massive computing calculation through her sim-set glasses intake of the accidental chart image.  Rapid recursive tests spline fitting calculations arrived with similar matching patterns of events across time.  None of this would have mattered to Zorah at all except that the machines came back with a relative matchup between this random cutfitti seen through the makeshift X & Y steel grid and key life event moments of this old man – this Jackson Kelley, along with associated human tagged activities and events from 1948 all the way to – today.

Majed spoke excitedly to his sister,

            "What th’fuck is goin' down now?...... you won't answer me....the com set is fucked....and these   three white guys are running a split-play on us?"

His sister did not speak.  Her head was pointed at the old man still coming at them, off to their right, toward

the base of the Org building. There was nothing to worry about, security on the Org building was tight.  At street level it looked bad, but it was damn tight.  The looks were just camouflage. While Zorah’s eyes were on the old man, they broke away and fired left and right between the old man, the two younger, taller men almost directly ahead....just as her lover was veering off toward the ascending staircase to her left, and the computed calculations showed her variable potentials with image tags and data.

            "Good" she thought, "they should all go upstairs....now."

She checked the com-set again.  The upgrade had finished.  The heads-up display continued to show a long scrolling message :  "Subjugation Admin Tool Acquiring Networks" right over the other displays she was receiving from the time calculation projections.  She pushed the nub and got Dispatch.

            " Zorah and Majed ......check in......what's your pleasure?" she requested.

From the Dispatch Office an intelligent female-like voice replied:

            "New objectives, new parameters, but for now building scan shows possible minor trouble right in front of you....three white males....one of them AWOG....make short work of them.....get them out of the area.....no violence needed.....anxiety readings are high on the two taller younger ones but the AWOG is hopeless.....too old, too human I guess......just get them out of there."

Then live Dispatch was out.  The old man only a short distance from the wall pattern of cutfitti now, trying to view it all together through the two old steel grates.  The other two younger white men were still headed for the stairs nearby, calling him.

Majed said

            "Answer me dammit bitch" - the kid continued posturing at his sister, as macho as he could.

            "What's it say to do?.....les'jus do it now.......these white fucks ain't shit"  he continued to growl at her while looking at the old white man coming closer.  The kid's voice level and most of his alert systems were rising now, peaking soon - his sister knew she had to decide and act now.

            "Just shut the fuck up and hold for a minute." Zorah snapped at him.

            "They're goin' to our left and right.....we gotta make a move - now..." Majed said.

She watched as her lover moved closer to the stairs but paused, he was waiting for the old man.

            "Let's force the old man back to the left, and push them up the stairs." she decided.

            " Right" ...he smiled a feral grin of abused youth...."Les'do it now.....those bold ass mother fuckers"

and with that Majed moved toward the old man.

            " I fear no man, only God " the kid said calling on his gangland heritage. 

            

            " Hey old man" Majed shouted at the approaching old white man.

            "What, oh, yes, hello" said Jackson, startled but still moving close to the wall.

             " I just want to have a closer look at..." Jackson started but was cut off by the kid.

             "LOOK, you low life muhfuckah, I don't give a shit what you just want to do...

            you's done....go, GET.....get out of here - now." Majed said wearing his worst menacing visage.

The old man thought it looked funny for this young kid to be play acting at being so mean and bad.  A smile actually made its way across stupid Jackson's face. But he turned his head back toward the cutfitti markings behind the steel gratings, then raised his hand to touch the cut marks in the wall with his fingertips.

            "WHAT TH’FUCK YOU DOIN'?" screamed the kid at him.

            "Nothing, it’s ok" Jackson said as his arm continued to rise.

Zorah knew what would happen next and opened her mouth to tell her brother to stop, to stand down.  

Completely interrupted by the quick-flash-startup of Majed's blue line weapon.  Zorah’s face and mouth forming the syllable “N” for  NO when the slicing beam slid fast from the device.  Majed brought it up, from ankle height to mid-torso striking-height, but letting the slice beam waver and arc in front of the old man.  It frightened and shocked Jackson, but instead of retreating, the old man unaccountably staggered forward toward the kid and the wall.  Waving his hands back and forth slowly Jackson said weakly,

            “It’ll be ok, there’s no need to be upset – I just wanna . . .”

When he did that, it happened.  Majed’s swerving beam quickly crossed the old man's chest with a slight scorch smell and zipper sound.  Zorah’s hands rose to the sides of her head, shaking, but she kept watching. Old Jackson’s mouth dropped open. He stumbled backward one step. His “Lucky Frog” t-shirt from the city of New Orleans now had an alteration to its fabric and designed shirt pattern.  The Lucky Frog artwork had been bisected, with small warmed nubby border along the bisection line. No blood. Only arcing and slightly curved S-line from lower right side of his torso to the upper left. The line was dark at the edges with a tendril of smoke at the top.  The Jackson’s chin tilted down to look at his chest.  He stumbled back further and fell down into a patch of sunlight on the ground.

…………………………………………………………………………………….

Out in full sun from the freeway nearby, but still far from the intersection of streets around the building, traffic had stopped and Cleveland, old journalist brother and uncle, was stopped with it. The wind and noise of the busy freeway lanes on the other side of the median was all around. He was sitting dead still in his gridlocked lane, remembering the woman singing into the phone  :

        "Just laahk th'Shamoleeeeon, we keep a'changin ebbryday."

The dash phone had been hymn-singing that old Boozoo Bajou Juke Joint song.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG4ZomD4byo  He had listened to her as he watched the morning traffic rush by on one side while sitting like a block of petrified wood on the other side, in the thickening yellow morning light.  Then something.  Something moved on him. He looked into the rear views to see what was on his forehead...he could feel it - like spider webs or thin hairs.  But there was nothing in the mirror, just him....just his face.  Everything was fine, but he had this feeling.  He brushed at his forehead with the side of one hand while he sat and waited and listened.

In Annie Daleo's tower office diagnostic messages flashed on desk surface receivers.  Annie held her

weapons straight out in front of her as she aimed at the doorway with the tight grouping of machines moving at her. The four machines were through the entrance and into the office. Annie armed the weapons for firing as her breath equalized and her arms remained straight and motionless, hovering over the shining desk top display with its "Subjugation Admin Tool Acquiring Networks" modulating on the display screens in her desktop.

The first machine, Zach, and the second machine, Malena, still moving toward her, cleared the wide

entrance doorway. Horst and Persephone, the other two machines, were almost in but seemed to be slowing

to cover any rear guard action behind them.  Zach's grid like plate on the right side of his forehead glinted dully in the office window light. His weapon was held but not pointed. Malena was raising her weapon.

Then Annie lit up the room brightly and completely.  She ignited rounds rapidly and let them fly into Zach's face, shattering the materials and forcing splintering pieces out in all directions away from her. Without hesitation Malena completed raising her weapon, opening it up as it rose to take final position, raking the floor and chewing through the desk front and top glass surface as the first damage reached Annie.  Annie's body jerked backward against the wall behind her desk.  Horst joined Malena with his weapon slightly off to one side.  Annie's body, already dead, was caught and held by the two converging streams of fire.  Her body danced badly to bloody hits.  Annie was held vibrating upright by constant assault from the two weapons.  Zach and Malena shut their weapons down at the same time and Annie's body dropped to the floor, smearing the wall with her blood on the way down.

It was a messy kill. A message to those that would see Annie next. Not a surgical swipe that would cauterize the wound and keep the blood from flowing, but a complete and awful piece of gangland butchery to state the finality of what had taken place.  Annie's barrage of weaponry had destroyed parts of the machines, and most of the office decor around the doorway, including one set of tall windows in the corner of the room when her aim was lost to the smash staccato of incoming rounds.

             " Look out, she killed the windows." Persephone said smiling, the last machine into the room. 

A studied street-smirk on her beautiful machine face, she latched and rested her weapon.

The four machines now ran this Operation.  Or at least they had executed the instructions from the newly integrated machine mind.  While there would be some damage and destruction, the new long term plan was less tumultuous progress toward new heavenly goals.  The growing transnational crime with its cyber attack methods had allowed the machines to talk to themselves.  It would take some time but the change had begun, walking through the back door of crime and into the wider world.

Down on the sidewalk, old Jackson Kelley blinked his eyes open.  Opening wider than was comfortable. Thin red blotchy Martian capillary canals carrying blood strongly visible against gleaming wet off-white ivory eye balls exposed to the smoggy Los Angeles sunlight.

He saw.  Jackson saw that his right hand rested on his wrist bone against the ground.  His index finger moved slowly, tracing small rectangle shapes on the thumbnail of the same hand, over and over again.

He remembers once trying to separate book pages as his age-smoothed fingerprints no longer grabbed page surfaces or sleek thin paper edges so surely.  That’s when it just became easier to read things digitally. Quietly, oddly, he hears a woman speak:

            "You don't have to be macho with me" says the sad and loving voice, a woman’s voice?

Jackson could see a familiar face close, next to his. She reassured him that he was the one she had loved.

            "You left me ... but I always loved you" she replied sadly, kissing him, and was gone but for the

warm gentle touch of her scented hand on his?

Majed froze. The young dark kid with the metal thing froze now.  Blonde Andrew, Jackson’s son, turned his head and body to face the dark kid with the metal thing.  He looked at the face of the girl.  Mason, Jackson’s red son, closer by, started to move the old man who had sprawled out on the pavement.

            "It doesn't matter what you did son, I love you"  she said to Jackson, hovering back again. 

Now Jackson heard his mother's words and felt her warmth right beside him.  He turned his head to see her young, caring smile. Her eyes flashed hazel light.

            “You will always be my little boy." she said.

            "Mom?" he replied, as Majed stepped backwards slightly, the metal thing in his hands that were now shaking.

             "Listen to your mother son, she loves you and only wants the best for you" a new voice said.

Now Jackson’s father was there too - on the other side of him, speaking deeply.

            "And Jackson, you know that I also love you - and you mean the world to me son." he said.

            "Dad?" Jackson said, looking at the dark, strong, determined young man standing next to him.

They all spoke at the same time, words overlapping.  Jackson laying on the concrete saw her too, the girl, the niece.  On her own again.  Jackson fell in love all over again. Again beside himself.  Jackson felt happy and sad and alive and dead all at the same time. Jackson’s  whole body was filled with effervescent blood, bubbling up and through him.  Jackson’s brain would not work, he thought.  She was still more than she was then.  She filled his field of vision. Her young eyes met his and had Jackson’s soul.  Her rounded, curved, smooth inset eyes with lids that covered and uncovered that sparkling wetness of her gaze at him. Thin, bony even, with that uneven cut to her hair. Summer clothing, shorts, cotton top, long limbed skin from her clothes to her hands and feet. The sound of her voice was soft down, was red velvet, was blue brook-water happy, gold flecked sun glints.

Jackson’s old body sagged, most of him lying on sun warmed pavement.  His head flopped a bit. Held upright now by Mason while Andrew advanced toward Majed.  Mason could see the old man’s thinning grey-white hair up close now.  Blotches and wrinkles, long hairs in both ears.  Sun continued to push

through the jumble of town shapes, creating that broken patchwork of reflections and shadows that was like the lighting of a forest at water's edge.  The old man’s head flopped against the chest of the son. Jackson was not gone yet, but the neck had gone.  Jackson could smell dusty-dry dirty concrete and vapors from traffic.  Andrew searched for Zorah’s face, narrowing his eyes against glare and fear and hostility. Andrew’s graying blonde hair caught small sparks of sun on the sides of his close cropped thick hair.  Same on the short stubble of beard, unshaven from yesterday.  Andrew’s shadow fell down and across his brother and father. His brother was still trying to help his father up. Mason had his head pointed down to his father now, still trying to hold a connection with the old man.

            "Dad" Mason said, eyes closing against tears – unheard against the city sounds.

…………………………………………………………………………………………….