Wow, you have made a whole art out of this, haven't you? Your whole 'accuracy'.

Se7en Years Later <-- Okay, Seven. Conceit.

.

A resource was lost to the world. It had just simply disappeared.

"What do you mean, 'simply disappeared'?" asked Roger. Roger was an older type of gentleman with a respectable beard and what we would call an 'earned' coat of arms. If you went right by him, you'd be okay. But if you didn't--"Like Bilbo Baggin's or wot?"

"Yeah, just disappeared, Roger."

"At least say 'vanished'."

"But it did not vanish. Vanish implies some type of indication of malevolence or some unseen hand. This resource, it was there, bright as a light, and then it just disappeared."

"I'm sorry that I'm not as intrigued as you are about how magical this disappearance was. You, also, are soon to be 'disappeared', as you put it," said Roger. "Unless you give me more valuable information."

"Roger that," and here was where I broke a sweat, because I had not been lying. And then I, too simply disappeared.

It is a real mental toll to wake up into a new reality just like that. Because one minute you're really focused on something, and the people around you have become important. Some of them know all about music. Some know all of the movies out there. A special friend knows all of the best TV shows too. Which one was I this time?

"You're the one that can just disappear," said a dude next to me. "Not vanish, but really disappear."

The content was still negotiating, so I took a moment to sit back and enjoy a small fruit. It was a sour little thing, with promising circles of sweetness. "Looks like we're in the same boat, buddy," I snapped.

"No, we aren't," said the Ninja. "You're heading into the worst place ever. Because you're drunk."

I said nothing, but I pulled a small blade from a secret pocket.

"No, wait," said the Ninja immediately. "Because you are a drunk."

"I'm learning to sip slowly," I told him. I knew the guy didn't give a shit about me--he was off on some fantastic mission, and I was (as he knew) going to the worst place ever. But it was nice to speak frankly with someone, for a change. It was just nice to feel similar to another person, and not have to worry all the time about 'appearances', as is the parlance.

And I really was making an improvement with the drinking. Gone were the days of gulping entire distilleries in one evening. It had been easier to do that in the beginning, you see. Your reality shifted so easily, and suddenly you were living in the roaring 20s as a telephone operator. You got shit-faced enough that you could cruise through these 'troubles' that you were visiting with great ease, and it was always a positive thing. You were always working to make things better.

Usually you have to overcome some kind of hate dilemma or insecurity. I had been quite stout of heart, so I was very cavalier about it. They even started calling me 'Ace' (this is an inside Red Dwarf joke). I suppose I was tempting reality every time I smirked inwardly about how I could 'live this person's life with my eyes closed'.

Yet, despite my frivolousness, I was extremely careful. I would always make sure that whatever I did was understood, and that even if I happened to disappear, the returning to the stream of consciousness would be in the best possible situation. I liked to think of myself as the ultimate set-up for good feelings.

So, that's what happened after I disappeared. I saw a drink and immediately drank it.
"What the fuck," rumbles a bellow from an angry man, who had come from the stage, barging directly into me. "We hadn't even started recording yet!"

"I'm sorry, man," I waved him off. "Guess I was really excited about this holy matrimony," I smiled at the...group. This was my style. Overwhelming charm. But this group--it was kind of weird. Nobody was smiling. Nobody was happy. Was I at a funeral?

"Who died, guys?" I rolled my eyes. "This guy again?" I was searching for that nexus wherein you become part of the group, or at least you appear to be part of the group. But nobody in the audience would meet my eye. It was like nobody gave a shit about me. I began to wonder why the hell I had appeared in this place, if I was that insignificant.

Then the angry man slapped me hard, in the face. "It ain't complicated, putz. You just sit down and listen, yeah, you hear the click, and that's the tape recorder, ok?" he said.

"Oh. Okay ... ? Then what?" I winked. "Something good?" I was hoping this was some kind of out-of-bounds bachelor party or something.

"You are in the First Seat. It was *all* depending on you. You were to hear the click, then you drink the koolaid," said the man.

(Being a Quarterly kind of thing from the Arbitrary Prisoner)

When Anthony cuts the circle
around your head,
then, plucking it out like a coconut,
offers you a taste of your own brain:

You must only lick it.

This will frustrate him.
He will ask you why you would not want a taste.
You go ahead and simply lick.
Then, say: "You trying to make me Eat my words, Anthony?"

He will crumble, like the proverbial cake.
Then you can go inside -- inside your own brain --
filling in all of the missing blessed parts.

The Arbitrary Prisoner ('s Tree)

Friends,

Thank god that they had ended Quantum Leap where they did, with Sam not really sure where he was going, you know? We don't really need any more stuff like that, do we? It was told that the leaps would get harder, and no way to communicate with Al anymore, and let us simply just let that just be. Simply. If there is a table to be turned, we know Sam will turn it, you know? Why you gotta give the guy such a hard time, and *observe*?

Well, one reason is I just invented a new gizmo from these curiously metal plates that they give us prisoners, and some tweezers snuck in from some another inmate. And ok -- semen that has experienced anal inhabitance. Multi-sexual companionship is a common trait amongst higher apes, I hope you all by now realize, and whatever you can scoop from the arses of others ... ahem, I precede myself.

But yes, really this is supposed to be about Sam. Well, Sam just leapt, after weeping with Moustache-Al at the bar, to a whole new realm. There's no monsters there, no. No, invisible aliens who are *actually* in control of the peoples' bodies, albeit via other dimensions. Gasp. Would not that be a horrendous future?

****************************

Dr. Sam Beckett, still lamenting his lost buddy Al but thoroughly having enjoyed the short closeness he'd had with Al's wife as they pirouetted in holily unlit and demure sanctity, suddenly finds himself awake amidst wine and even more women.

"Well, this is ... a new turn," smiles Sam, still trying. He tries raising his glass at the blonde next to him.

She frowns back at him. The ways in front of them part, now. In fact, now, looking around, Sam realizes he is in the front of a congregation of almost a thousand people.

"No?" says Sam, to a raven haired woman on the other side, still trying to hit the ground running. "Guess not. First time at a baptism? Well, are we Jewish? Or ... Moslems, maybe? Are we at Mecca?", he asks, looking around.

"What the fuck," rumbles a bellow from an angry man, who had come from the stage, barging directly to him. "We hadn't even started recording yet!"

"Oh. Oh, I'm so sorry," apologizes Sam. "So so sorry. I didn't mean to break up the wedd -- ?"

The man slapped him hard, in the face. "It ain't complicated, putz. You just sit down and listen, yeah, you hear the click, and that's the tape recorder, ok?" he said.

"Oh. Okay ... ?"

"You are in the First Seat. It *all* depends on you. You hear the click, then you drink the koolaid," said the man.

.

"Oh boy ... "

****************************

- An Arbitrary Prisoner

The Arbitrary Prisoner (too)

Recent fan mail has been overwhelming. Please do note, under these conditions, I am only allowed to read three (3) emails per my missive sent. According to this program, whose parameters are finely tuned -- balanced, they seem to even claim -- this is the proper amount of input/output. This program is also controlled by the paradigms of time and behaviour, for me.

Alas, I cannot save any of your other children on death row as I was able to save Manson. Yes, I suppose he had some 'privelleged' circumstances, in that respect. His infamy perhaps blinded my desire to educate. My only consolation, personally, is to wonder (personally) whether that man will ever be able to murder anyone else?

Imagine if he walked into a Korean grocery store, trying to buy a packet of ramen. He pulls out his knife, and then a nearby black man just takes it cutely away from him. "Thank you," says Mrs. Mun as Wendell hands her the piece. "This knife is not sharp enough for anything anymore, Charles," she says kindly. "You buy something like a real man now, with a food stamp like they give you."

Manson goes home, sans ramen, since he will never place his forehead on the stamp of any Korean KOREAN SWEAR WORD, and ends up on Yahoo! chat, in the nazi channels. "I'm the real Charles Mansion," he types, finally foraying into this strange new world.

But even all the nazis are so sophisticated, these days. They ask him to not fucking 'slur in spelling'. What does that even mean? Oh.
.

So this second post is simply housekeeping, and I would prefer the remaining not be this kind of self-referential shit? So don't send me emails about your next 'child getting the injection'. My time is precious and not for these common lives you seem to be stuck upon bringing to my face, please. But do wonder why they seem to be dying for their petty crimes, while I am allowed to remain, talking to you, from time to time. Despite mine.

- An Arbitrary Prisoner
-------
i18n: KOREAN SWEAR WORD == almost anything on insultmonger. under korean, of course.

The Arbitrary Prisoner

Sometimes I do go a little crazy. Well, truth be told, I don't just go a little crazy. I pretty much 'escape my being', so to speak, sometimes in manners that even defy all phsyiobiological, chemical and ... temporal, for lack of a better word, constraints. Then there are the possibilities in even more dimensions, and of course (last resort) the psychological realm, I suppose, which is what really made them put me in here, I think. Cutting me off, as far as it seems to them, within their own cogencies and competencies, of course.

Those days when they used to let Mansy hang around, he would grip at the rungs and ask me a lot of questions, trying to make me feel like some of sort of 'guru'. Heh. Give what is asked. I would start my lessons by teasing him about the diameter of his eyes, relating this pupillary quality to the function of prairie voles in mating, and explaining in one shot to him that it was just normal hormones and trigger responses that had made him successful -- not some 'inner greatness'. "You stretch your cornea," I would say, repeatedly when he came about, "and not even the jail keeper can resist!" Of course, this is reductionism in terms of what had really been happening in biological fact, but I was only trying to bring out some real words from the fellow. Alas.

Finally somebody from his 'family' apparently sued the CIA, and his exposure to me was terminated. They said that I had bullied him enough. It was a very sad day, and we never were allowed to part in proper manner. But I heard, upon my latest allowance to roam in the system (as is allowed for twenty-three minutes every nine months), that when they finally released his latest photos, Manson didn't seem so scary anymore to all the people. They were remarking how his eyes had gone soggy and the pupils as though burst apart, like a balloon. "Well, obviously," I had noted to myself. The world does progress, science always trouncing mystery.

Due to a new program on inmate health, they are allowing short missives such as these to emerge from me (a consciousness imprisoned for arbitrary reason) to you, on a periodic basis. With my very grateful remaining words of this epilogue, taxpayers, I can only promise to invigorate.