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Here's a Thought
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The Girl with the Controls

I don't feel country.

The wrong here is the quiet.

Took everything back again.

The sun becomes that bother.

Still in tallest wheat fields.

Against the chill, beside the warm.

But I am shaking repeat.

It's not the right thumbs.

Not again with the protection.

Less control each day.

The doctor claims such things.

And stays with our mysteries.

When the hand is not the hands.

I see the signs above.

And with my power I go.

Stand atop and make survey.

Let me still appreciate sky.

And the colours crossed the ground.

With the pools of breaths between.

But I sense a glimmer of wrong.

As my hands go sinister that way.

There is a why of light.

Cut vertical for a moment.

Climb down slow and investigation.

But it withers on my steps.

And my hand is still not all mine.

"Wait, go back and play that bit again."

"What bit?"

"The whole bit."

I don't touch country.

Upon on the cracks of sound.

Took back everything again.

For the hand upon the fields.

The fingers against my mind.

Spreading sees the rains.

Drips through myself.

I bend to no demon or disease.

Fear that it will bend myself.

Now the leg is refusing to done.

So I welcome the entire sky.

Help me with going forward.

I am willing to consider teething prayer.

"Wait, go back and play that bit again."

"What bit?"

"The rest of the bit."

I don't claim country.

Ice quiet to much noise.

Holding onto another again.

Hands are against the sun.

Break my leg before it leaves.

Tears for my broken body.

While my soul-

"Wait go back and play that bit again."

"What bit?"

"The beginning of the bit."

I don't know country.

The wrong is fast growing.

This is not myself.

This not-

"Wait go back and play that bit again."

"What bit?"

"The beginning of the bit."

I think less country.

With no body for-

"Wait go back and play that bit again."

"What bit?"

"The beginning of the bit."

I touch all feeling-

"Wait go back and play that bit again."

"What bit?"

"The- shit!"

A ream of 4D spacetime in the surveillance truck splits in two, an unholy shriek beyond breaking glass, a much more authoritative leg kicking it open. For what feels like a second - if that's still a plausible measure of time - the limb sticking awkwardly out of nothing until it rocks slightly and its associate slides through as well. Then a trunk, a pair of arms and then the head of a very determined person with a slashing haircut and eyes like wild daggers.

Leyner and Chiang watch this dumbfounded, before having the sense that this might be dangerous. The former standing up and backing away into the corner and the latter wheeling as far in the other direction as he could on the stool he was squatting on.

Just by moving like this revealed the wrongness of the arrival of this... woman?... that simply seeing her from a slightly different angle showed-

With a ragged scratchy breath she inhales and the radiated particles warps what you see and how fast you see it. Like the air was a bubble that back-broke light as it passed through and the wall of (un)recording equipment appeared to stretch and bend.

Then she sang, no- hummed - in a strange monotone vibration that gave birth to the shapes pouring out from between her lips, which are moving in a specific series of motions like she's conjuring, like she disgorging this mess of multicoloured blots from her throat-

She was talking. She was trying to talk. Vomiting word bubbles confidently, each of them popping after a few seconds.

But that sound was just a hum, and she doesn't seem to be able to move very much, as if she became paralyzed or frozen in place as soon as she fully appeared here.

Leyner made a step towards her, still thinking that this is 'bad, weird shit' man, and that's when he noticed the icon on the bottom of her shirt of whatever you might call the piece of upper-body clothing.

A circle in a circle and a square inside of that.

Neurons full of timeless memories fired in rapid succession.

He recognized her.

From years ago.

From his childhood.

And just before 'that's not possible' reaches his lips, well, what's he's seeing right now is kind of fucking possible raw.

"What-"

Upon hearing a noise, a non-mechanical background noise, she twists her neck and it breaks. But not simply breaks, as the skin and flesh and bone fly off her body and become particle mist, this one simple gesture unleashing a chain reaction starting at the nape of the neck, all bits of her slowly exploding in puffs of greyish haze.

And as she disperses Leyner is able to see Chiang's face on the other side of the truck and it's a statue of disbelief. He imagines he has something similar on his own because what was just here was...it had to be a representation...

So how did a representation get here and then disappear.

But even that's not accurate because as he and Chiang take a tenuous step towards the site of the explosion they see there is an extremely thin film of residue in the shape of a person. Like a burned shadow or a standing chalk outline.

Chiang gets closest first and thoughtlessly bring his hand up to touch it, but just before it does the shadow flinches and shifts backward as one static. The arm didn't move, the entire body did. And it keeps shifting away from Chiang even though he's stopped moving in confusion.

"Don't-", Leyner starts, but then realizes he doesn't know what he's don't-ing, and finds himself getting out of the way of the shadow itself as it heads towards the door, or really the wall beside the door.

Which it passes right through as if there was no wall in the first place.

Suddenly, except for a bit of a white-grey mist (it does feel a bit damp in here, but maybe it's just their sweat), they're alone again. Leyner and Chiang lock eyes and wordlessly decided to

follow, rushing out after her/it/whatever, and of course fumbling with the door to the truck.

Oh hey, check it out, the rain's let up.

The two of them look up and down the rolling yellow fields that surround the vehicle. No sign of it, even as they followed a good guess of what the trajectory would have been if the shadow moved in a straight line.

"Were we tripping? Was that real?" Chiang asked, still briskly walking around, turning his neck at certain angle to see if that made a difference.

"Kyra Jones...she had the symbol", Leyner said, almost to himself, tired but certain.

"What?"

"Kyra Jones...from the Gold Hammer trilogy."

"The video game? What the hell are you-"

"I know. I mean...I know! But what the fuck was this, then?!"

"Well..."

Which is what they're going to have to decide on for now, hands on hips, breathing slowly coming back to normal.

"I think she's gone. Or it. Or whatever,"

"That can't be it, you know", Chiang said, turning back to the truck, "the fuck does a video game have to do with getting footage of an eagle?"

"I know that logo. I know what I saw", Leyner defiantly, before realizing the second sentence was pretty much total bullshit.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah", his co-worker replied, opening the door, "let's make sure the computers aren't fried."

Inside it was like a fog had descended upon the surveillance truck.

"Oh...", Chiang started, as he stepped inside.

"Is it safe?"

"Maybe keep the door open."

"Wouldn't it be crazy if we actually had a camera inside the truck for this?"

"Yeah. Fuck nature documentaries, we've just changed the world."

"Probably won't show anything. It would be like we're getting freaked out over nothing."

"Maybe there's footage of the black shadow thing outside."

Chiang cued up camera six from a couple minutes ago while Leyner prepped his vape pen, knowing that right now there's a fifty percent chance that he'd green out.

Nothing noticeable on the cameras, just the pair of them looking very confused and worried outside for two minutes.

So eventually they stopped small talking and theorizing about it, and went back to what they were doing before, checking the camera footage from earlier in the morning.

"Can I even remember where I was?"

"We were going back to that bit at about 6:13, when I thought I saw something."

"Oh yeah."

It had advanced a bit further from the time they last looked at it, since Chiang didn't exactly focus on pressing pause when the crazy shit started.

So he clicks the clip and begins to drag it back, and as soon as he does this, reality – not the camera footage - happens in reverse.

Leyner, puffing smoke into his vape as he leans back away from Chiang, and just finished seeing something in the corner of his eye. The particle mist suddenly getting sucked back into the centre of the truck and recombines into the woman, her neck twisting in reverse, her mouthing sucking back in the word bubbles, and then leaping quickly backwards back into the crack in 4D space time, her legs and then leg dangling out of it for a one very long second before flipping back into the crevice, and the crack itself finally zipping itself back up.

Chiang and Leyner sit in dumbfoundedness, plus headaches.

Now everything was truly back to normal, except that they knew what had and hadn’t happened.

They consider the contradictions in a lengthy silence.

Until:

"Maybe should write down the timestamps for camera three."

Pause.

“The whole bit?”

END