joHN

                                One must face an unexpected
                                truth without fear.  Though it
                                may be counter to all that one
                                holds sacred, it is still the truth.
                                Truth is beyond hope and
                                despair, beyond love and hate,
                                beyond good and evil.
                                            ...................
                                            author unknown


        John lived.  Red bricks, cemented about into something called
walls.  Within walls, more walls -- glass cotton candy beneath
brick, then wood.  Though warm, they were walls nonetheless. 
Rectangular apertures broke the continuity of these faces.  They
were the corneas of the beast which held him.  
        More light broke into these eyes than out, and, early on, John
marveled at the colors, the intricacies of patterns woven out
there, beyond the walls.  There was gray, bringer of damp, of
winds that seemed to belong more within his own lungs than out
there.  It smelled of rotten things, and all grew quiet when it
came, save the irregular drumbeat of water above him.  They
could drum for hours, sometimes days, and they soaked the colors
out there.  Lime faded to chlorophyll, chlorophyll to olive,
brown to black.  
        It wasn't until later in John's existence that he saw them
drumming up there, on the tar scalp.  From where he stood, all
the eyes were dark, though they would give an occasional gleam. 
He learned that blustery day, that the silver streaks, those
drinkable needles, their edges capped with the gray one's
saliva, were the drummers.  He saw the droplets up there, and
they spattered, just as at his feet, onto his shoulders, onto
his head.  They shattered into smaller, fleeing drops.  
        He stooped to observe the aqueous shrapnel.  Would the smaller
drops meet the same cataclysm?  And how far could this process
continue?  Ad infinitum?  He could not see, however, for the
smaller drops merged into a sheet, which built up at the leading
edge of his shoe and streamed away from him.  
        And the dark pillows -- they were the source of the liquids
which drenched him, by soaking through fabrics and making him
shiver.  John thought that the gray one must live up there,
above the pillows which flowed, above the great red skull.  
        During times like these, when the gray one was close, when it
hovered overhead, spilling liquid mercenaries to the ground,
John felt gray, saw gray, lived gray.  He let the damp vapors
penetrate every part of his mind.  They moved in there, like
waves of syrup, seeping into the neural sponging, slowing
activity.  
        Sometimes, John would sit for hours, as he awaited the gray
one's departure.  There were many different colors, but, on such
days, all were dirtied and soaked by the gray.  He would count
the dribbles running down the cornea before him.  The skull's
lacrimations washed away any memories of the sun as the mind
longed for a brighter horizon.  
        He heard the roar of the gray one.  Nearby, a crisp tear would
rip the gaseous blanket.  John heard each rasp, each
oscillations of aged vocal cords, forcing air between living
pleats.  The roar rattled the skull and the cornea through which
he gazed, as the gray one flicked the tongue of flame.  At
times, the tongue was a single yellow arc, which flashed to the
ground from the pillows which concealed the awful visage.  Other
times, there were many forks, which snaked, intermingled.  The
tongue could burn his retina, etch a gash which would glow with
eyes closed.  The gray one's cloak would glow during the passage
of the forked tongue.  When far away, the roar was a resonant
rumble, muffled by layers of gray, the walls of water shard.  
        John watched the gray one.  He marveled at the ferocity, the
smothering hand, placed upon all things. 

        A heavy hand was upon all things when John opened his eyes.  He
blinked.  Gray light filtered through the cornea.  He listened
to the drumming, barely audible.  Arms stretched.  Muscles moved
to stimulate the circulation of fluids.  Neural activity rose to
the conscious level as he to his feet.  
        "Morning, world." 
        Once, "good" had been included in that greeting, but that had
been an ignorant John, one filled with wonder by those like the
gray one.  The gray one was now much different. 
        Water vapor, condensing around high altitude microparticles. 
Jet streams, determining the flow patterns, channeling dark
cumulus, until, pregnant and overloaded with the cooling
liquids, droplets fell.  Sufficient electrostatic potential
difference between earth and sky, due to conglomeration of
regions of like charge, visible when great arcs flash through
the sky.  Rapid air expansion surrounding the region of gas
ionization -- thunder.  No longer the roar of some age-old gray
one.  Now, just interactions of matter and energy.  
        Yes, a little education, perpetrated in other larger skulls of
stone, wood, and glass, had forced magic to yield to empiricism,
proven experiment.  Where once the gnarled hands of myth, hidden
within yellow pages and leather spines, had directed the flux of
life, now the printout of a computer instructed according to the
dictation of logic.  
        For a while, the little remaining possibility of supernatural
reality, one beyond a purely material world, found haven in
belief systems too delicate to survive, too quickly slapped
together with his muddied hands.  
        John continued to grow, stature and knowledge simultaneously. 
He found pain in an abstract melding of observed reality and the
magic.  There was too much inconsistency between the
supernatural thoughts and the growth flux, which grew to
enormity.  

        Warm water, murky and thick with life, swelled during the rains
of mind growth.  Banks were forgotten, damns too flimsy, levees
inconsequential to the onrush.  Irresistible in its flow,
indomitable in its power, nourishing in its fertility.  A river,
fed from day primeval.  It moved to the drumbeats of chemicals
borne by the waters.  They were powerful molecules, which cut
valleys, shaped hills.  
        One day, John, in a bed of pain of his own construction, his
head resting on a pillow stuffed with pages of a book which had
already concluded, saw it.  He saw inevitability.  
        The river was a wall of black-green glass, rolling, crunching
over parched land.  And it found the foundations, the posts
sunken in mud.  A self built world crashed about him.  A ghastly
roar sounded, as the mighty river engulfed all.  It swept John
into its midst.  But he was buoyant, and he flowed into unknown
valleys.  
        Unlike others, however, humans with whom he was closely
acquainted, he refused to luxuriate, to bask in youthful rays. 
He saw silt, algae in this water, and he looked to its
structure, not to the river's course.  
        A mistake, to be sure, in the eyes of colleagues.  

        John jammed his foot into a shoe.  
        "One must have a strong set of basic assumptions," he murmured.
 "These assumptions enable one to order reality." 

        Had he looked to the course of the green river, indeed he would
have beheld the rocks, the hills which guided and preserved
unity of flow.  Instead, he was within the water.  He submerged
himself to study its composition.  He meddled his fingers in the
rocky bottom, the banks of the fluid flow.  He began to see
order ...  too much order.  
        He saw that the microcosmic ordering of each molecule, each
atom, foretold the order of the whole.  The motion, the swirling
of the waters in which he was immersed -- composed of motions,
submotions, minute eddies, thin as strands of hair -- twisted
about his head, moved gracefully before his eyes.  There was no
longer "river", "destination." Now there were only "chemical
bonds," "electrostatic forces." 
        Living organisms became highly ordered machines, their protein
helices serving as guide wires for their destinies.  Each
unicell monster, consumed and consuming other monsters, became
evident to him.  
        The ordered motions of these microcosms, a mere curiosity to
him initially, altered to commonplace processes, occurrences
utterly determined by inherent physical processes.  He could
imagine equations, written in some exotic mathematical tongue,
whispering, dictating to the turbid fluids, to twist one way,
contort another.  Master plan for all actions, all exchange of
energy, written at the moment when there was this mechanical
order, when the properties of matter and energy were embroidered
into the fabric of space-time.  Atoms and then electrons became
the quanta, the bytes of the program.  
        And as reality became the output of a machine, his feelings
also changed.  No longer the free soaring of a bird, rising and
falling with air currents, invisible rivers of gas.  Man more
robot than man.  Brain more integrated circuitry than living
tissue.  

        John shifted to the silver rectangle before him.  Machine
stared.  Parts a little softer than metal and glass, but
mechanics just the same.  John felt his right hand hanging at
his side.  He tensed the muscles, and the wrist and forearm
tightened.  
        "Raise right arm." 
        He lowered his gaze.  He had not completely lost a sense of
wonder.  Eyes grew wide.  His image shrank on the rectangle
until his back rested against a wall.  He rested his left hand
on the cool chromium.  He felt thin cables wrapped about metal
rods, cylinders, buzzing softly while flexing his fingers. 
Motions of fingers and thumb were normal, even smoother than
before.  
        Sound penetrated the door.  A loud rapping on wood, followed by
a voice.  
        "Hurry up, dear!  You'll be late for school." 
        He recoiled, his right arm moving back quickly.  After
listening to the fading footsteps, he moved the fingers and
heard the clicking of metal on metal.  
        School!  He had forgotten.  Conceal the forearm, the hand!  He
saw students, standing horrified before him, their minds
unaccustomed to such deviance.  The teacher, much longer
regimented by the daily life of adulthood, would be even less
forgiving.  
        His stomach crawled.  A pump in his chest accelerated. 
Electrons traversed new paths.  Contacts were made, neural
networks frantically computing alternatives.  
        John saw a sweater hanging on a brass doorknob.  Gloves
protruded from the pockets.  Rain fell outside, and the air was
cold.  Adrenaline flow slowed, and his muscles loosened.  The
gray one, usually an adversary, was now his excuse.  The gloves
would conceal his secret.  
        He emerged from the skull soon thereafter.  The mechanical arm
clutched a notebook.  John walked with large strides.  Rain
drummed on a hemisphere of wire-stretched fabric.  He breathed
in the damp air.  The gray one.  
        He continued onward, the sky growing darker, the rain pounding
more resolutely upon the umbrella.  John watched the clouds,
barely visible in the heights, from which the water fell in
miniature buckets.  He heard no birds.  The furred beasts of the
neighborhood, normally moving within the confines of jingling
links of metal, were absent from their posts.  

        John watched surroundings.  Robots sat about him.  Loud voices.
 Limbs moved to the orchestration of teeth, lips, and tongue. 
He saw emotions, tendencies, etched on brain cells like
hieroglyphics on stone slabs.  
        He was behind the others, and he avoided their glances.  Their
words about him were not his concern.  Neutral.  John found
safety and quietude in this neutrality.  It afforded his vantage
point, a social eagle's nest, lodged high on rocky crags,
amongst the clouds.  From there, peers were ants.  They moved in
circles, touched antennae.  He could watch, glide stealthily to
the ground, and then rise to his fortress on unseen updrafts.  
        He could harmonize his actions with others, just to avoid
attention.  He avoided an assaulting glance with an aversion of
the same direction and speed as the intruder's focus.  Avoid
aggression with downward glances, to appease the unconscious
animal, to unleash it upon others.  At first, this hiding had
been natural, but John had taken notice of its implicit
organization, the precise muscle twitches, cocking of the head,
shaping of the upper lip, so that he could use it at will, to
hide, to send forth a fog by which he could escape.  
        The same thing each day -- motion across expanses of polished
tile, the group's attentiveness to robot barks, repetition of
thought patterns, slight changes to provide the illusion of new
substance, concealing, glossing over the mere rearrangement of
the matter already present.  
        "Take anyone's brain," John thought.  "Change the chemical
balance a little, reroute several neurons, and you have an
utterly different person." 

        Some took notice of John's gloves that day.  
        "Why is John wearing gloves?" one boy asked.  
        "Probably because it's cold outside" a girl answered.  
        "Yeah, but wearing them inside, too?" 
        Shoulders shrugged.  
        "You know his mother, though.  If there's one cloud in the sky,
she makes him take an umbrella." 
        "Even with his gloves, he still looks cold.  Look how he has
his right hand." 
        They watched, grew bored, moved to other tasks.  

        John was suspicious.  Discovery of his hand would bring
attention.  People would watch closely as he attempted to
vocalize explanations favorably affecting the onlookers.  
        Doctors would marvel.  They would place him onto leather
couches and make him speak of the gray one, of the skull, of the
green river.  Rods would move into him.  Plungers would cling to
the remaining softness of his exterior.  High energy photons
would resolve the inner structure of the machine.  Specialists,
robots from faraway places, where they could gaze through glass
eyes to expanses of wave painted blue, would speculate on
man-machine interactions, talk science fiction answers to his
concrete self.  
        No, others could not know.  The dichotomy of appearance and
reality had to remain intact, to ensure John's security.  

        John returned home in mist.  He breathed the gray one's
exhalation.  Stagnant air, laden with moisture, moved into his
lungs and felt very natural there.  He swirled the motionless
gas.  John planned the evening.  
        Parents would pry at the seal he had secured.  The dinner table
would be no place for the gloves, the heavy sweater.  Isolation
was the only solution.  
        "I must stay in my room until tomorrow morning.  It's supposed
to rain tomorrow, so I can wear the gloves again." 
        Thoughts disturbed equilibrium.  The gray one could not remain
forever.  He could not hide the awful secret for much longer. 
Hands would have to emerge from the gloves.  Arms would emerge
from the sweater.  
        John remained there until a liquid diamond struck his forehead.
        He had a difficult question to answer, but many bridges had
been crossed at the last possible moment.  This one would be no
exception.  

        At lunch, John ate with the others.  He was silent amidst the
throng, as it assembled for refuel.  He chewed and tasted,
sensing chemicals as sweet, sour, salty.  Others babbled about
him.  
        He looked to dessert.  An insect was crawling on Formica, in
front of his tray.  It had a glassy, circular shell, and
hair-thin legs moved in sequence.  The insect scrabbled over
crumbs.  Traction proved difficult on a grease stain.  John
listened.  He heard the motion, the tapping, the scraping of the
legs.  The exoskeleton scraped on the table.  It was so clear to
him!  
        The insect soon found a suitable boulder on which to feast.  As
the mandibles cut into the bread, John listened to the tearing,
the clicking of mandibles as they snipped free portions of the
boulder.  But his attention soon moved to the cafeteria.  He
heard the heartbeat of a boy across the table, as well as the
breathing of Ed the janitor, as his hands pushed wet cloths over
the tables.  
        John saw food on the trays.  Colors shone forth, strange ones,
hues he had never before perceived.  Food, the bodies of people
about him, were aglow -- softer, duller than sanguine.  
        A spoon clanged onto the table.  His brain rattled.  He almost
choked on the food.  His hands fell to his sides.  His thighs
felt very hard, as if, as if...  
        Through the cornea, John saw the great orb of yellow as it
sliced through the blanket, the gray one's concealment.  He saw
ever more color, far beyond the glow of violets in the garden
beyond the cafeteria.  
        Images flowed, set to music by the myriad vibrations which
moved across eardrums far too sensitive for those of stretched
flesh and bone pistons to perceive.
        He heard someone talking about him.  He strained to filter out
the cacophony, to split sound waves, to analyze the
vocalizations.  
        "He's sure been acting weird for the past few days!  And look
at him now!  He's sick!  His face looks gray.  Now, nobody's
gonna' tell me he's healthy!" 
        Other eyes focused upon him.  Minds conjectured, turned over
possibilities within organic processors.  John required further
concealment.  He stood and moved smoothly into a rectangular
passage.  
        John found the door and entered.  The metal slab swung shut. 
John monitored his heartbeat, his breathing, as he moved before
a window, a portal through which to view himself.  

        The water flowed swiftly.  He spun in the currents, dizzy from
the journey.  And now, the stone precipice, the gnarled lip of a
cliff, sheer walled, lay ahead.  Water foamed beyond the edge,
into the free air.  The water carried John, still engulfing him.
 The hands of gravity pulled the eddies.  They straightened into
pencils.  
        He was weightless, tumbling in the emerald column as it fell
into the chasm, the bottom many feet below.  The chasm yawned,
baring its bright fangs, opening wide enough to swallow all in
one gulp.  

        He touched his face.  The metal fingers repeated a path over
his temple, down a cheek.  Each time the fingers sensed greater
solidity.  The epidermis dulled in color.  His skin grew as that
of the gray one.  The gray became silver.  
        Moisture evaporated, throat tingled, dry and rigid.  John spun
his head, smoothly oiled bearings rolling in one direction, then
the other.  His neck shone brightly, like his face, his head. 
His scalp presented reflections, bent wildly at the edges. 
Fingers moved over the forehead, nose, mouth, chin.  Metal
scraped against metal.  
        The gray moved over the torso, along the caps of his shoulders.
 Calcium became steel, tempering the skeleton's solidity. 
Movements were so smooth, unimpeded by elastic tissues.  
        Microprocessors operated rapidly.  
        Commence escape plan.  
        Microseconds elapsed.  Electrons flowed and were held. 
Energetic reactions occurred rapidly.  Plans were modified,
simulated within the metal structure.  As photosensors viewed
photosensors, which viewed photosensors, which viewed...  the
electronic simulation vanished.  Motor centers activated.  
        The metamorphosis was complete.  He averted glances of
self-awareness, revealed by the reflective panel.  
        Organized crisscrosses of cotton and nylon threat hindered
efficient locomotion.  Metal manipulators tore free sections of
fabric.  White laces were unfastened, shoes discarded.  
        JOHN stood.  Hands unlatched the transparent cornea and raised
it.  Onto a photosynthetic carpet, soft beneath his feet.  
        The gray one was still present.  Droplets played music on the
metal dome with a steady rhythm.  Clear fluids washed over
JOHN's light sensors, obscuring clear imaging.  Trees swayed
before him.  Leaves waved jerkily with raindrop impacts.  
        The metallic form, a negative bipedal shadow, moved across the
carpet.  Motion became tedious upon penetration of the green
canopy.  Droplets fell larger and more slowly now.  Foliage
thickened, and JOHN moved on, seeking further concealment.  He
dove into the crisp, green glove, which closed behind him.  

        Aerobatics neared conclusion.  Solidity lay below.  Shaded
forms of rock, wet with flesh hunger, rose from the abyss. 
Dagger stalagmites leered, at once sharpened and dulled by
surrounding forces.  He reached from electron clouds and meddled
further -- binding forces within nuclei, constituents of quarks.
 Inches below, quanta of frozen energy were arranged in deadly
fashion.  These infinitesimal dents in space-time would serve as
no cradle for the perpetuation of his consciousness.  
        Painless impact, too rapid for neural interpretation.  The
river pooled about him.  

        JOHN felt the tightening of joints, but onward he went.  The
metal form lumbered.  He lunged with surges of motor energy for
one more step.  
        He stopped.  Metal feet, smudged and bent, lost traction.  The
figure toppled.  Sound sensors still operated.  
        JOHN lay and listened to a fluid requiem, conducted by the gray
one.  The orchestra played on, and the music grew soft and
undefined.  The drummers played for a long time thereafter,
until the gray one departed.  

        Sol rose and set several times.  

        A human, clothed in gray, bent over wreckage.  Photons danced
on the ornate plate of metal, securely anchored to his chest. 
The figure soon departed to continue the search for a missing
boy.  
        Metal parts lay strewn about the ground.  Together, they were
reminiscent of someone who grew up too quickly, who saw the
truth and found it impossible to face.  

        JOHN continued to rust in the sun drenched humidity.