Prunus Persica

I am with a friend, helping them illegally hack nto a handful of pirated digital storage devices. We need to gain more data, speed and power; mostly for the sense of enjoyment, relaxation, and especially freedom. At very least, perhaps some pleasant music; some more time…

Almost imperceptibly, like the faintest static shock, I become aware of what I am doing as if gaining a secondary consciousness, seeing myself through myself, simultaneously within myself and through a screen, inside an eternal blackness. The sense is immensely minute, but something seems different, new, wrong.

Witth silent conversation and visual connection thrpugh goggles and hazmat suits, in sync we tear through the sealed insulating layers of black and silver foil, plastic and adhesive into the inner connectors, and the power pack is finally open. I am urged silently to plug it into an exact copy of the device, which was previously issued legally to my friend. I have hesitations and second thoughts. What if this doesn’t work? What if we get caught? Even within our room, within our private living quarters, it still feels too exposed and out in to open, especially directly under the bright white-green glaring haze of the uncomfortably close fluorescent light hanging above our heads.

I proceed, and the connection is made. I hope this works, and I hope my friend ends upjust fine.

I move on to the adjacent occupiable space, looking for some form of release through distance and solitary thought. As soon as I turn te corner I satch a glimpse of the tv monitors above my head on the wal by the doorframe. I am floored with the thought and memory of what we had just done, replaying in my thoughts, I can see it again, somehow more clearly and frightening.

My vision becomes compounded, multi layered, rainbow colored. I see the real space I am in, alog with xray vision of everything. A new voices in my head. Too many thoughts happening at once. My refelction is a ghost over wires and circuit boards and metal and plaxstic.

The suffocating feeling and lightness of passing out, so bright. The cold heaviness of being numb.

I can see a memory meshed, woven, spliced into the double vision of what I can already see, as if my synapses are trying to connect similar gfeelings and moments.

I am in a train station in Amsterdam. I wait; standing on the cement platform in the exact middle of the night, peering into the unclosing doorway of the unmoving train whivch encapsulates my new friends and the girl who stole my heart. Only it’s too soon to reveal my feelings that have delveloped for her. I cannot tell for sure if her feelings are mutual. In this memory I know what is contained in the adorable duct-taped letter she handed to me right before boarding the train.

All we can do is watch and look, slowly, sadly as time continues to hold still along with the unmoving train and silent open doors, me on the outside looking in and them inside looking out. Sad eyes. The longerst goodbye. Glitching amongst the awareness that I am no longer the same, far ahead in the future, in a room on the floor, observing myself being observer through foreign eyes.

Holding on somehow still to the ability of movement in just one arm, I faintly see it tapping and I can make out a sound, interrupted with the seemingly still inmage of waiting by the unmoving traimn, then three taps, and three more, them ny friends on the train, the same tapping repeating, me standing there too sad and tired to continue waving, three taps: “S”, three more taps: “O”, the train, “S”, “O”… train… “S”, “O”… … … …