Why chi?

And I found her there on the table. Stretched out. Limbs like a starfish spread to the sun. And I could do nothing for her.

Poor Elricha.

Bled like a pig. The sirens stopped in my head. I decided to stay by her side forever.

Burn it all to the ground chi. Doctor Pan everything must go.  

Absolution

Fire starter.

You are an agent of Dynaconn. God of black flame.

You must burn the city. But you must be careful. You must not burn everything. Because if everything burns then there will be no place for you.

Your mission is endless.

Hail Dynaconn Lord of Black Flames. 

Lord of all dark things

I saw him on the corner reading hustler.


Hey TV boy!


Read my story! Put it on the Sunday night special!


Think of all those stressed-out house wives!

The beach is too cold in October and I don't like scary stuff

I have to find Elricha! I’m from planet earth! Can’t you see?

We have to get out of here!

Someone help me! I know they’re watching. Those cameras, all the time, I wonder what they see? Do they see my horns? My innermost secrets? My burning tongue? Or maybe my chi? Like the god of the black fames or my first love Takkun.   

There haven’t been enough fires around here lately. Don’t you think so chi? 

Human Transmutation

A new life in every jar

Surubami

Super Spicy Curry Bread

The lead door slammed shut

“Iaku my name is Dr. Dobson. You may call me Pan. Don’t bother getting up. I understand how difficult that would be. I’m here to assure you that your treatment has almost come to an end.

Don’t fret. We will take very good care of you. The technicians tell me you’ve developed a fear of light.

This is often a late stage side effect of the treatments. Unavoidable really. Anyway, your last procedure has been scheduled for the tenth.”

“Where… Where is Elricha?”

“My dear, your voice has changed too. Elricha has been moved to a containment unit. Do not concern yourself with her. She had a very bad incident with one of the attendants during her last treatment. Consequently we’ve been monitoring more closely.   

Nothing to worry about though! Please get some rest! You have a big day coming up--until then my dear.”

The lead door slammed shut. Iaku cradled herself in the makeshift bed in the corner.  

Dr. Pan Dobson

A name

“Subject 17 I presume,” said the white coats behind the glass. “Do you remember who you are subject?”

“No.”

“Good. That is progress. Do you remember where you are subject?”

“No.”

“Excellent. Since it seems that we have finally found a treatment regiment that works, I think it’s time we give you a name.”

“A name?”

“Yes. A name is another word we call a subject. It is uniquely yours.”

“Uniquely mine.”

“Exactly dear. Your name will be Elricha. How does that sound to you?”

“Elricha.”

“Yes, yes, it’s a good name isn’t it Elricha. Would you like to know where you are and who you were Elricha?”

“Where I am?”

“Elricha you have the privilege of being one of the few newly successful neo-human Dynaconn prototypes. Of course we had to remove several aspects of your former self to achieve this, but I assure you it is all for the best.”

“Your name used to be Ninamori if I’m not mistaken. You were a beggar from the countryside living in the Dynaconn rail systems that run through Surubami. The tracks lead to this laboratory facility where repairs are done on the modules and specimens are introduced to their new environments.”

“Specimens?”

“Yes Elricha, specimens for biological trans-mutative testing."  

Subject 17

My hair has fallen out. I’m scared. Elricha says it’s because of the exposure. She says it happened to her too.

I asked her how she got here. She said she couldn’t remember. She said she lost her memory. She says the scientists gave her the name Elricha.

I’m glad not to be alone.   

Elricha

Elricha finally told me why they are keeping us here. I met her after the last time they came for me. She was waiting for me in the cell. Her hair was golden and her skin pale. She told me not to worry. She told me I was an exception.

Then, she told me about the testing. The research Dynaconn had been doing on human transmutation. I couldn’t believe her.

“Do you know what quantum mechanics tells us Iaku? It tells us that for every improbable statistic there will always be an exception.”

“Have you heard of quantum tunnel theory Iaku?”

“Do you know how radiation works?”

“In fission high energy neutrons are fired at critical masses. The masses divide, release alpha, beta, or gamma radiation, and transform into a different forms of matter.”

“Our universe is made up of negatives and positives Iaku. But imagine a world in which the positives and negatives were reversed. Would it all be the same?”

“Positrons colliding spontaneously with protons and neutrons. Imagine the implications Iaku. Imagine a world where the free energy change for the transformation of matter was attainable on the human level.”

I had a dream about my brother's jet engines.

Captivity

It was a week before I realized I wasn’t alone.

I was dragged from the cell late one night and strapped to a cool steel table. The attendants all had tattoos on their arms--black glyphs of some nature.

Across from me in a dentist chair was the man I’d seen yelling at his baby on the train. How long ago had I seen him? It hasn’t been long now? Or has it?

The man was gagged. Some intravenous prink drip was trailing out of his left arm. One of the man’s eyes had been removed. He was slouched over. He had to be unconscious, but I thought I saw his still live eye flash towards me once.  

One of the tattooed men stuck me with a needle. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d been drugged since capture. No point in panicking now. 

Captivity

I cried myself to sleep. Koenma is watching. The river is listening.

When I woke up again there was light coming from the steel doggy door.

I scuttled over to it.  Ate what they’d left. My head still hurt.

The circumstances of my kidnapping don’t make sense. I'd been on the train. I’d been watching a family and crying baby. I must have fallen asleep.

There are strange markings on my skin. I can’t tell what color they are in the dark. My fingernails are so long.

I want to bite them but there’s something wrong with my teeth. I think I have something pointy growing behind my teeth. I’m panicking. What’s happening to me?  

Captivity

I woke up in the dark. I’d forgotten what happened.

I was captive. I’d been on the train--every day on the train--back and forth. I could trace the route with my finger. The bends, the bridges, the tunnels, the nauseating closeness to the other cell mates.

Hermetically sealed uniforms filling the factory conduits: pink-red to packing, light blue to redistribution, cream to assembly, and us whites to the labs.

Little white light bulbs with disposable plastic gloves and carcinogenic chemicals. 

Mugger Blues

You spend your life in clouds. Days pass by. 

And one night,

You fall asleep on the train home from work.

And it's a new dream. 

A waking dream--an awake dream--a dream that makes life 


seem little more than a blurry 

two hour nap.

And they'll ask you.

Was there, 

brown-green metallic light irradiating the wood beyond the 


factory fences?

And now,

is there an odd cough or the unexplained bruise?

Think nothing of it I say.

You look fine to me.  

On break

            On the way to work today something alarming happened.

I was on the subway. I was watching one of those historical documentary TV ads. It was early. The cabs weren’t too crowded yet.

There was a pretty woman holding a baby--and beside her, an out of the ordinary looking man shouting at a slightly older, slightly less pretty version of the woman with the baby.

This continued for a moment and was mildly annoying.

Bump, bump, bump. The subway was getting busier. Bump, bump, bump. Whether it was from the annoying argument or the unpleasant ride, I can’t say, but that baby burst out crying as if in pain.

The shrieks dulled the senses of everyone in the cab. All eyes watched. It became clear to me that the man and women weren’t from around here. I could hardly tell what they were saying.

The man began screaming at the baby for a time. I couldn’t tell what he was saying at all though. It was uncomfortable to watch. The woman who held the baby eventually got him to stop.

When I got off the subway I lost myself in work.      

Clinophobia is the fear of beds

       Chaka took Ray and I to her parent’s house for vacation. They live to the south in a small place. We stayed two days then came back to the city.

Ray took this picture of me at the train station on the way home. He tried too hard to get me to smile. Ray is funny like that. Chaka and I don’t talk about him much. Her parents made Ray sleep by himself.

Chaka says I talk in my sleep. She says she caught me mumbling something that sounded like; “swan meridian,” whatever that means. I can never remember my dreams.

  

: p

Surubami Pt. 2

“Shinta make the baby shut up!”

“Can’t you see I’m trying Ninamori!”

            And he was, but the baby was obviously hungry and the crying couldn’t be helped while Sue-Sue was asleep. Sue-Sue had been asleep in the next cabin since they’d left. She needed her rest though. I don’t want the crying to wake her, Shinta thought.

            “And another thing Shinta, why are you taking us to Surubami! Don’t you think you’d have better luck finding work in Shandong or Wuxi?”

Shinta didn’t reply. Why Sue-Sue had insisted on bringing her sister was beyond him. She could rot on that toxic farm for all he cared. He was getting Sue-Sue and the baby out.

“If you thought that at the station Ninamori then why did you even come?”

Ninamori’s face went indignant and was about to burst into argument but then, as quickly as she’d gone sour, she thought better of it and did her best to ignore Shinta.

They’d been on the train for over three hours and were all starting to get edgy.  

Surubami Pt. 1

I live in a city called Surubami. It was designed by the government as an industrial zone on the outskirts of the bigger cities. Not much happens here.

I work at the Dynaconn Silicon and Aggregates Refinery Plant. Dynaconn is a subsidiary of Medical Mechanica. Medical Mechanica is a ninety-five percent market share. 

Every day I wake up in Surubami and see the steam coming from the State Grid freighters on the Koenma River. And each day I take the subway across the river to the Yingli district for work.

The steam and smoke from the refinery plant make it hard to see past Surubami. I’ve never been to the mountains or out to sea. I sometimes wonder if my life happened a long time ago and now my memories are stuck here in a cloud. I tell Chaka this at lunch and she leaves her mark on me. She just says not much happens here. 

wake up sleepy guy!

On the chuchu train!

:p

sleepy guy by my shoulder is sleepy!

Electrics

            I had work off last weekend so I went to visit my brother in Shandong.

            I arrived Saturday night and we went out to dinner. The evening went great until I spilled hot-red sesame oil on my now ruined cream dress. Just above the waistline, the dress is smudged with blotches of beet red fabric mutations. The stain will undoubtedly be a bitch to get out.

           

            On Sunday, Allen had to go into work early so he took me along and then dropped me at the train station during lunch so I would get back for work Monday.

            Allen operates machinery at a jet engine assembly factory called Electrics. He tells me he operates a winch and moves different turbofan parts. He says Electrics primarily configure two-spool turbofans, on which both the fan and LP spool are mounted on a LP shaft running to aforementioned spool. I don’t really know what this means, but I smile and pretend to be mildly interested to please Allen. He says the company is actually a subsidiary of a Dutch company called Silverwing. Says Europeans over engineer these things.

            I took a quick picture of the factory. It was forbidden but no one was around. 

798

When I graduated from technical school a year ago last April, my father took me to the 798 districts in Beijing. The districts had once been vacant old factory buildings. The artist community refurbished the old warehouses and turned them into galleries and coffee shops. Artists from all over the world show there now.

It was a fun day :p       

My name is Iaku Yokozawa

I was born in Gansu province. When I was twelve my father took my brother and I to Hebei to stay with his family--my great grandfather came from Japan in the 1920's for work and his family settled there. My mother stayed behind in Gansu to care for my two younger sisters and Grandmother.


In Hebei, my brother and I would go to school while my father worked. We stayed with my father’s family for three years and four months before moving into an apartment closer to Beijing.


When my brother graduated, he went to trade school three hours south by train in Shandong. My father and I visited him twice. I rarely get a chance to see him these days.