text: I Fall With the Rain (gamma) (Intercepted Communique routed to Colonel Herbert Rhodes, Third Fleet) It’s from the edges of things I think. Yeats said the center is where it falls apart, but I disagree to a point. I think the center is where the rot begins. The center loses cohesion sure, but generations of aging infrastructure can hold the shape of the ancient heart long after that heart has died. People carry on carrying on in the center, sometimes unaware that they live their lives in the ventricles of a vast dying (or already dead) organ. Maybe on some level they are aware, some nagging doubt hanging on the periphery of their consciousness; on the edge of their awareness. The edge of awareness. Taking the analogy forward, when the body begins to die, it conserves it’s resources in the core, the trunk. Blood flow, oxygen, heat is retained as long as possible in the core, and the periphery is starved. The fingers, the toes, and eventually closer and closer towards this core resources are starved as this body mercilessly casts off every unnecessary attachment in a desperate stalling tactic of what may be inevitable. The body conserves what it can in the core, the heart and mind, in hopes that it will survive. There may be loss of those distant limbs, but the being will survive. But when the core is already dead. Dead isn’t the right word, rotten isn’t either. Here is where the metaphor collapses. Dead is dead, there is nothing for this core to salvage. This hypothetical creature has nothing to save. What of madness, then? What if the intellect of this living being is fundamentally insane? What if the mind is chemically alive, but consciously (as far as we can understand the conscious) has flat-lined? The infrastructure remains and the commuters commute and the consumers consume as they have for generations unaware (except from the edge of their awareness perhaps?) that the heart or the mind has long since ceased to be a properly functioning center of order and progression. What of the periphery? The peripheral fingers and toes. What of the edges of things? Does the disparate realms of the edges continue on unaware that the core has collapsed into madness? The blood remains flowing, the oxygen content remains as rich as ever, do these extremities carry on unaffected? I can only assume that the fingers remained well nourished as the mind drove them to write the same five words on a wall of a distant lunar mining station over and over with no readily apparent sense. But proof that the fingers are sometimes consumed stood before me today as I surveyed the cell where the second set of five words were written thousands of times. We ascend with the light. I fall with the rain, we ascend with the light. A cyclical process. These ten words seem to encapsulate the simple to understand water cycle. Condensation, precipitation, evaporation, condensation, ad infinitum. The cool air causes the water vapor to form into larger molecules of water, eventually falling to the surface as rain. The rain forms rivulets that feed into streams that feed into rivers that feed into oceans. The surface of the ocean is heated by the dissipation of the clouds and the exposure to the sun, to the light. The water is heated to the point of evaporation, the vapor rises into the sky. The process repeats. The process unending. We ascend with the light. It was what had been written in his cell. These five words written over and over again with the rubbery digital crayon, (at least to begin with) that he had been given to occupy what remained of his mind here at the institute. The words had begun on the sheets of data flimsy provided, but once those were covered, they had moved on to the floor, the walls, the edges of the sleeping palette and portions of the ceiling that I assume was as far as he could reach. He was dedicated to his craft and to his message. The crayon had provided enough of a tool to provide for his creative endeavor, for a while. What remained of the inmate’s fingers evidenced the fact that the crayon hadn’t kept up with the needs of his driven mind. The core, in it’s madness, sometimes destroys the peripheral limbs, the edges of it’s being to provide whatever sustenance the diseased mind is demanding. The edges begin to crumble, and are worn away. The edges begin to die. Maybe the edges always eventually die whether the end comes from within or from without. Frostbite cause the body to conserve the core, and starving the limbs. Madness consumes the mind, leaving the limbs, and eventually the body in it’s entirety, driven to destruction as they are fed into this internal consumption. Maybe it’s late. Maybe I need to take a stress pill and get some sleep. I’m worried though, Colonel. I’m not one typically prone to see dire visions in my synthetea or throw salt over my shoulder should I spill a few grains, but something about these words leave me feeling cold. Look at how I’ve waxed on about collapsing societies and dying processes! What for God’s sake makes that come to mind as I’m standing in an inmate’s cell, rich with the coppery smell of drying blood and corruption? Corruption and obfuscation. What has caused that report from that stringer pilot to be buried? Given this second line, coupled with what was written on the walls of Tlalocan, what was broadcast to the fleet ships, seems to be a simple explanation of a simple hydrologic process. What does the water cycle have to do with death and the dying process and the mechanics of madness? The mechanics of madness. I think after I wrap the autopsy files and the official report of the inmate up and process it into the core data banks, (and I think I’ll delete record of this file in all other databases; I don’t know why, but that feels prudent at this juncture), I’m going to step outside and have a smoke. It’s raining, but I can deal with that; I brought my jacket to the office today. - Dr.